By this I mean it’s not (in my opinion, unqualified by any particular dogma) something that just happens and then that’s it – you’re enlightened for the rest of your life.

For me it’s somewhere you have to make the effort to go (although sometimes you stumble upon it without trying, like walking out of the trees into an unexpected clearing in a forest).

And like all visits, you sit, maybe drink some tea, enjoy – but then you have to leave, already looking forward to your next visit.

Usually, I travel to this delightful place by meditation, and it can be a bumpy ride getting there. Sometimes I run out of time and steam and have to turn back without reaching the destination. Usually, if I keep steadfastly on, I get there eventually.

I used to go to this place a lot but over the last year or two I have rarely made the effort or found the time to visit this place.

I think this is ok (I had things to do) but it is not sustainable and the price is always increased feelings of negativity and decreased well-being. Recently I have had to admit to myself that this has been reaching a quiet kind of crisis point and I have really needed to get back on my chair and meditate. Thankfully, my trusty old steed is still happy to bear my load.

Maybe this is also what is meant by “returning to the breath”?

By Seamus Anthony

I enjoy meditating. Personally I wonder what would have become of my life if I hadn’t discovered it at the time I did.

Recently I have decided to put my own personal meditation techniques down into a more general eBook about meditation (which is finished and coming out shortly).

A meditation book, that is, more general than Psychedelic Meditation, which sells quite nicely and in fact contains meditation instructions which will suffice anybody, but is if course angled at the “get high without drugs” niche.

Admittedly, using meditation to get high is a pretty obscure reason to practice such a noble art, and as I was doing some research to assist with the writing of the book I noted (not for the first time) some of the many reasons people meditate. From what I could tell, the two main reasons can be loosely categorized as:

1. Health
2. Happiness

And with good reason; meditation is well and truly proven to be excellent at improving your health and helping you to feel happier. I myself have more than once used meditation to help me to focus become healthier when I have been a slack little fatty and to fight off depression when it came a knockin’, it’s foul stinkin’ breath comin’ in under my door.

(Hey a bit of poetry there, cool!)

Now – health and happiness are two fine over-arching categories for the reasons people meditate, but they are not very specific. I want to know in closer detail, why people “sit and do nothing”.

Here are some of my guesses, maybe you have some more, if so please add them to the comments section:

Reasons To Meditate

• Mental Clarity
• Improves Physiological Health
• Facilitates Healing
• Decreased (effects of) Stress and Anxiety
• Increased Happiness and General Feelings of Well-Being
• Lowers High Blood Pressure
• Increases Energy and Vigor
• Increased Creativity
• Increased Ability to Focus
• Supports efficient post-operative recovery
• Increases serotonin production, which affects your mood (low-levels can cause depression)
• Helpful for those suffering from insomnia
• Helps Eliminate Headaches
• Can Help You Overcome Addictions
• Can bring on blissful “Cosmic High” type experiences
• Helps manage symptoms of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome
• Greater Self-Knowledge
• Can help you identify your life purpose or ‘calling’
• Sharper Intuition
• Spiritual insight and enlightenment

Photo by Manaki5

The Self-Aware Silly Season

Enjoy your weekend – I’m off to drink beer! Ha!

Seamus Anthony

Meditation Article Part One

• How mainstream society (and in particular the medical community) has accepted the evidence that meditation is effective in assisting healing.
• The dark side of our connectivity culture – stress.

Meditation Article Part Two

• How your body reacts to stress
• Why you are probably more stressed than you need to be
• Why stress is bad for our bodies

Meditation Article Part Three

• What is the Relaxation Response
• How to achieve Biological Balance (and why it’s good for you)
• The many benefits of meditation

Also don’t forget to go check out my new eBook “Psychedelic Meditation: How to Get an Awesome Cosmic High Without Drugs” and learn how you can not only enjoy the health benefits of meditation but also the recreational possibilities of meditation too!

Peace out dudes. Have, like, a totally tubular weekend…

Seamus Anthony

I am a big fan of spot meditations, which are quick meditations done “on the spot” that can take anywhere from an instant to a couple of minutes. Here’s a longer one that I sometimes do in the morning when I get up.

First thing I do is put the kettle on, then while I wait for it to boil I do a quick, relaxing meditation.

I have an old stainless steel kettle that we heat up on the gas stove-top which takes a minimum of five minutes depending on how full it is. You could do an electric kettle meditation but that would be a true ’spot meditation’ as they boil pretty quickly.

My kettle meditation technique isn’t complicated – just sitting up straight, focussing on the breath and enjoying the morning peace and quiet. Obviously I live somewhere that is peaceful and quiet in the mornings, I guess if you don’t then you’ll have to meditate on the noise – which can be ok also (but more challenging in my opinion).

Our kettle sings this lovely, warm two-note harmony when it boils which is great when I am doing the kettle meditation and nobody is home, but truth is I usually flick the whistle up so that it doesn’t sound, in order to get a precious hour’s writing in before the little ‘un wakes up.

I find this meditation useful on mornings where I want to get straight into writing first thing while my mind is fresh, but have that nagging voice telling me that it is also a perfect time to meditate. This way I get just a nice taste of that lovely, lush, pleasant feeling that washes over me when I meditate, and then I get to work with a nice hot cuppa tea at hand.

Ah, it’s a wonderful life!

Speaking of the blissful feelings that meditation can bring on, we have just released a 60 page e-book this week about just that. Please visit our Psychedelic Meditation website to find out how you can enjoy a blissful Cosmic High by meditating.

Did you know you can practice meditation in pretty much any situation?

If you lead a busy life and find it hard to make time to meditate, then you might like to try meditating while you get some “mindless” chores done. I do it when I am washing the dishes. Here’s how …

Turning Mindless Chores into Mindful Chores

We usually think of housework as being pretty mindless work. That’s why some people like it, they find it relaxing, and why others (like me) hate it. I dislike it because I would much rather be somehow engaging the grey matter a bit more (by doing something creative).

Why do I feel the desire to be doing something more creative? Because I have an idea in my head that this is more worthwhile – but the truth is no action is more or less worthwhile in life – they are just what they are no more no less.

I know this in theory – but nevertheless I have always tended to get frustrated and irritable when doing household chores. That’s why (as my wonderful, long-suffering partner will attest) I avoid them like the plague.

And that was how I intended to live my life out; I never really thought I’d come to a place in life like I am now where the amount of household work I am required to do has massively increased.

Newsflash: Children Create Havoc, Mess and LOTS of Housework!

Seriously, as we were wistfully looking at the growing bump and contemplating names for the impending bundle of joy, I never for a moment twigged that with the joy of becoming a father would come a gigantic increase in the amount of crap that needs doing around the home.

It creeps up on you too, at first having a little bubs seemed like a walk in the park, all she did was sleep, eat and poop. But now, as she enthusiastically carves a path of destruction towards her first birthday, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time wiping, washing and tidying up. And that’s just me, save your sympathy for my darling partner. As I type away in some kind of warped attempt at breadwinning, I can see her out my window hanging yet another load of washing out to dry. It just never stops – and we’ve only got one kid!

Yeah, So Like, Whatever Gramps – What About the Meditation Lesson Already?

Oh right, sorry. Got carried away.

Mindfulness is a term used to describe the process of focussing only on what it is that you are doing now in the present moment. This skill is pretty much the basic skill of meditation (although there will be various opinions on this statement no doubt).

So whether you’re processing customers at the fast-food counter, perfecting a new skateboard move, coding the next Facebook, or in my (sad) case, doing endless piles of dishes, you can quite realistically meditate while you work.

Here’s the ‘Housework Meditation’ technique:

1. Focus only on the task at hand
2. And your breathing
3. Breathe normally, just pay attention to it
4. And the task at hand
5. Try and catch yourself when you start thinking about something else, something irrelevant to the task at hand
6. Then – without berating yourself for losing concentration – move your focus back to the task at hand
7. repeat until the task is done.

Boring – But Beneficial

Remembering that the idea is to remain focussed on your task as much as possible, this process will be easy if you are enjoying what you are doing, or if it requires a lot of concentration.

It may prove more challenging if the job you are doing is dull, repetitive and, in itself, not challenging, but the benefits for practising this “moving meditation” are plentiful.

• You will do the job better (and potentially faster).
• You will be exercising your “focus muscle”, i.e. your ability to concentrate.
• And, with any luck, you will hopefully notice an increased level of relaxation and inner peace.

This last benefit is why I try to practice meditation while I do the dishes. Otherwise my irritation at this never-ending, boring chore starts to wind me up and before I know it my mind takes this bad attitude and runs with it. Next thing you know I am seething about “what she said” and “what he did”, and this kind of thinking my friends, is bad news. Very bad news indeed.

On the other hand if (on a good night) I manage to relax and clear my mind of bullshit while I clean those (wonderful, lovely) pots and pans, I find myself infused with a Universal perspective and a sense of gratitude. Then when I turn around to see that the little horror bundle-of-joy has created some gigantic mess and the darling wife is losing the plot over it, I am more likely to be able to help diffuse the situation with my, like, totally Zen energy (maaan).

Any interesting ways and places that you like to meditate? Tell us all about them in the comments section below, and don’t forget to go here to get your free e-book (by me, it’s quite good).

By Seamus Anthony

If you read a lot of Zen stuff, enlightenment stuff, you’ll come across the idea that we are all inherently enlightened, and I believe that this is true.

But also true is that most people don’t usually feel anything like they’re enlightened at all.

In fact most people either don’t even know what enlightenment is or they believe that it’s something “up there” that they cannot hope to achieve. Well, we’re not the first but we at Rebel Zen are here to tell you that it is true – you ARE enlightened but you just don’t know it yet.

Getting in Touch with Your Inherent Enlightenment

At the core of your being, underneath all of the emotions, moods, thoughts, opinions, and physical sensations is your True Self or your soul. Your True Self knows that it is one with all of creation, the Universe, God. It exists in a permanent state of peace that cannot be shaken even when you are in the midst of the worst possible crises imaginable. It is NOT the part of you that freaks out because somebody is pointing a gun at your head (or more likely, because the new guy in the office is using your favourite damn coffee mug). This part of you, much more readily accessible, is your ego.

So how can you get in touch with your True Self? Here’s some ideas:

1. Forget All of Your Assumptions About What Enlightenment Actually Is
   The reason I never turn to strangers at the pub and say “Hi, I’m Seamus and I’m enlightened” is because I don’t really want to be branded a complete tosser, such are most people’s assumptions about what it means to be enlightened.

   But the truth is I do consider myself to ‘be enlightened’ and so are you. The difference between me, and some really advanced spiritual practitioner, and your average crack-addict street thug is that I fall in the middle there somewhere in terms of being in touch with my True Self.

   What this means in practical terms is that I spend most of my time being aware of the calm, expansive, connected-to-the-universe part of me and am able to tap into this to be a very calm, confident, disgustingly chirpy individual most of the time.

   And then sometimes I lose touch with that and blow my stack, or become overcome with fear or get the blues. But increasingly less as my ability to walk in the light grows.

   Sorry I know phrases like “walk in the light” are pretty lame but it is sometimes hard to describe such an intangible feeling without resorting to cliches. (And besides, it’s getting late and I wanna watch a DVD, ok?)

2. Learn To Meditate:
   This may not be groundbreaking news for every reader of this blog, but for newbies it is the logical place to start.

   When you meditate you quieten the loud voices of the ego, move out of ‘fight or flight response’ and learn to increase your awareness of a deeper calmer You underneath all that noise and emotion. This chilled-out version of you goes by many names, I prefer True Self. I go into more detail about this ‘most bodacious’ aspect of You later in this list.

   It goes beyond the scope of this post to teach you how to meditate, but there’s plenty of instruction out there. If you don’t already meditate, make a note to investigate this further later because once you know how to meditate then you will be able to …

3. Realise that Existence is Just An Onion …
   
   Okay, I’m being funny, but what I mean here is twofold. The first meaning is that if you want to experience your inherent enlightenment (and believe me you can) then you’ll need to peel back the ‘onion layers’ of your mind to find the still, calm ’space of good feeling’ that lies at the core of your being. This is where your True Self abides. Again, more on the True Self later

   The second level to the onion wisecrack is…

4. Discover That Life Is Just A Zany Dream.
   I know that people feel real pain and hunger and that on a practical level this sort of flippant New Age talk may not do the disadvantaged any immediate good*, but nevertheless, on a philosophical level, we all grow up to believe that we know What Life Is.

   We can see it, right? It’s right in front of us. We read about it. We are animals on a planet in a galaxy in the universe.

   Hello! We DON’T know What Life Is and for all we know we could be little bugs living inside a gigantic onion. And hey! Maybe that enormous onion is about to be sliced up and sprinkled over some kind of unfathomable cosmic pizza and slid into a big, hot quantum oven!

   Ok. Probably not. But still, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that we know what it’s all about. We don’t. And we never will. And enlightenment is about knowing that we don’t know, not suddenly knowing all the secrets to the meaning of life.

   That’s all she wrote about that, dude, so don’t believe the hype. Gurus who tell you that they know all the answers need to read the next point…

5. Keep A Leash On Your Ego:
   Realise that your ego doesn’t need to freak out every time something happens. It is healthy and normal to get upset when you’re in the midst of a car crash, it is not healthy to lose it when somebody else steals the sweet car park nearest the supermarket doors. Your ego is an idiot (so is mine by the way) and needs to be kept on a leash like my big dumb dog does. Otherwise, like my dog, your ego will go and crap in the worst possible spot right when everybody is looking. It’ll go jumping up at strangers and stealing candy bars off children.

   But how to you control your ego?

6. Become Aware That Your Ego Is Not All Of You:
   It’s just a part of you, and a bit of a stupid part too. An evolutionary throwback that unfortunately most people in this world still let run the show. Really, on an emotional level, humans as a collective species are pretty much operating at the level of cavemen (albeit cavemen with really impressive toys).

   Become aware that you can observe your ego even when it is going about its usual business. If you practice you can even take a step back into True Self while your ego is throwing a hissy-fit and actually observe “yourself” having a tanty with a sense of wry, detached humour. Which part of you stops you from murdering your husband when you are having a row? Not your ego that’s for sure.

   I put “yourself” in quotes because we often make the mistake of thinking that “I lost my temper”. The whole of you did not lose your temper, only the ego did, it’s just that most of us have been raised to fully identify with that little bit of our minds even though it actually makes no sense to do so.

   Know that there’s a wide, expansive, calm, intelligent part of your mind quietly waiting for you to come home to it and hear what it has to say. Your True self.

   The ego is loud and demanding. It’s impatient. The True Self is quiet and patient. It knows that it makes no difference if the ego gets what it wants or not because in the end your True self is eternal, only the ego faces certain death.

7. Realise that Only the Ego dies, but your True Self is eternal.
   The True Self is eternal because it is a seamless part of the whole and we all know that when ‘we’ die, the Whole goes on. Part of the reason the ego behaves the way it does is because it knows it is going to die and it HATES that idea. You may also feel a bit scared at times about dying, but know that your True Self goes on, just your ego dies when your physical body expires.

   Logic tell me that conscious awareness of myself as an individual therefore ceases then too, but of course my ego likes to believe that I will still ‘be me’ afterwards; that I will be like “Oh, I am still here, my True Self, just off on a nice fuzzy journey somewhere new.”

   Hey – maybe. But then again, maybe not.
   Hell, what do I know?
   We’ll all find out soon enough I guess but meantime…

8. Deliberately Notice How Magical Life Is Again
   I think part of growing older can be that we forget to see this natural world that we live in as it really is: an incredible miracle full of mystery, magic and wonder.

   Just look at your hand! Look at your cat! Look at anything and see again, like you would have when you were a child, what an incredible, amazing, wondrous mystery Life is.

   Part of finding true, deep and lasting happiness is learning to live in the moment as much as you can and when you are living in the present, you cannot fail but to see how incredible it all is. It’s like you develop a kind of mild super-power of the eyes. It actually reminds me of when I was younger and silly enough to drop the odd tab of acid, not that I am recommending that (it’s unhealthy for the body) but anyway, those who have been there will know that I am talking about a Way of Seeing that brings you acute awareness of the pure magic that surrounds us everyday.

   If you are thinking “What is this freakin’ hippy on about? I am looking around me now and all I see is my Dad’s butt-crack as he bends over to get at the last beer in the fridge (and there’s nothing magical about that let me tell you)” then I advise you to learn to meditate and especially try meditating on nature. Just sit there and stare at a beautiful flower for half an hour or as long as it takes before you suddenly get what I mean. Then look around you. Even your Dad’s arse will look better from then on.

   And whether life is feeling magical to you or not at all …

9. Be Grateful for Your Chance At Life
   And be grateful for all the things in your life. Even those things you would sooner live without.

   We’ve all got aspects of our lives that we would rather just disappeared and I don’t know how it works but I have found that if you consciously practice gratitude for everything in your life, even the ‘bad’ stuff, you will more easily and more often connect with your True Self and enjoy the fruits of your inherent enlightenment: peace of mind and deep happiness.

   If you are having trouble with the idea of being grateful for your hemorrhoids then …

10. Practice Non-Judgement
    Every time you judge something as “bad” you disconnect yourself from the flow of the Universe, from your True Self. This can be a very, very hard skill to put into practice and I doubt you or I will ever manage to practice non-judgement 100% of the time. For instance I’d be happy to bet a dollar that if I were to poke you in the eye, you’d judge that as a pretty crap move on my behalf. And this inherent tendency is useful on a level. If you remained impartial about oncoming buses or falling pianos then you wouldn’t be around very long!

    But it is amazing how much angst we put ourselves through by taking such strong stands against minor things. Things like “what she said” or “what he did” or even truly small things like “I don’t like brussel sprouts” (guilty of that one myself).

    Fuck it. Eat the sprouts. Forget what she said. Dismiss what he did. Don’t waste your energy and time getting all pent up over it when you could be experiencing the peace and joy of enlightenment, or, for that matter, a Mars Bar.

    Judgment causes a disconnect between your consciousness and your True Self, who is at peace with all and judges nothing. So next time it rains, catch yourself hunching up and frowning. Truly, be still! What does it matter? Is rain a bad thing? No way! You know that. It’s awesome! It isn’t acid; it’s a life giving miracle! So stand up straight and revel in it until you get to the bus shelter, and you will have proven to yourself that you truly are a fully enlightened soul. Enjoy that feeling, and gratefully share it around

*BTW – Metaphysical discourse, or fluffy New Age talk, may not be much use when you’re starving or in the middle of a war, BUT if the majority of people realised their inherent enlightenment then such problems would disappear because all those overblown egos that cause all of these problems would lose their hold on the puppet strings of power. That’s why we must strive to help people get in touch with their True Selves, because if we eventually reach critical mass, then we finally WILL solve the problems of the world. And maybe the new Age of Connectivity is going to herald that change. Make it so.

There is nothing better then finding that you have carved out a spare hour in the day to sit and meditate.

The daily worries of the world have started to float away, and the big thoughts that fill your normal waking mind have started to quieten down. A slow, easy feeling of peace works its way over your body as you focus on the simpleness of in breath and out breath. You begin to focus on nothing, to pull your observing mind out of the “stream of consciousness” and begin to notice your thoughts as something separate.

Then you start to hear them.

“Oh yes doing well, yes quieten down the thoughts” says one.

“You really should be doing that blog post and not meditating” says the next.

“Sounds like a truck outside, wait.. wait… no it’s a bloody leaf blower!” complains a third voice.

It’s the small voices of the mind, the thoughts that during waking life dictate your actions and way of thinking, but now in meditation serve to distract you from your aim of letting go and giving the mind a rest.

In the still silence of meditation each of these small voices begins to sound very loud. And while you would think on a Zenish blog such as this I would be all against the annoying babble of the ego, I have come to have a small sense of respect for this misunderstood aspect of my psyche.

The way that I see it, each of those voices is a mini revolution in your head. It is your mind, or more accurately your ego rebelling against the idea of being quiet. The ego will do anything to get you to stop focusing on something else, but instead go back to how you spend a lot the other hours of your waking life, focusing on it. It puts on characters, it puts on plays. It will start to talk to you like yoda.

It will send you off on strange mental journeys to remember what you had for lunch on the 3rd of April in 2004. It will try to convince you that are 232 better things that you could be doing with your time right at this very minute. It will try to send you to sleep; it will try to make you uncomfortable. Some call it monkey mind, but more often then not it acts more like King Kong then a friendly chimp.

So you can see that while you start to quieten down these voices, the ego part of you starts rebelling against the observer.

An internal war escalates, with both sides digging in and upping the ante from minute to minute. The harder you directly fight the inner voices and forces of the ego, the harder it will fight back.  If you continue to fight it will end up in full on war, with all of your attention being used to quell the voices and associated images, and none left to focus on the object of your mediation. And you thought this stuff was all peace and love?

Well, instead of fighting this inner rebel, the thing to do is to accept him. Let go of the idea chasing all of the voices down and let them speak. As they do though, imagine that the volume on each is turning down, and that the voice is slowly floating away.

Allow them to say what they have to say, but don’t buy into the story that they are telling you.

You possess a chronicled history of your past, a unique viewpoint on the present and a predictive prophecy about what you assume is going to happen to you in the future.

Everyday when you wake up you listen to the story of what today might be like, and the story of what occurred yesterday. We are constantly re-telling this life story to ourselves, checking it against our immediate reality in order to make decisions, evaluate what other people are doing and to know our cultural place in certain situations.

This story is the blueprint that the voice inside your head, your inner narrator, uses to explain to you what you are seeing, thinking and doing in the present moment.

When we start to meditate, one of the first challenges we come up against is how to work with this inner narrator, to detach the observer part of us from the narrator part, so that we can begin to see the stream of consciousness for what it is… a story. This inner narrator is the ego, the part of the mind that will do anything to remain in control. As we go deeper into meditation, the ego/narrator will begin to recite parts of your story in order to get you to listen. It will tell you that you should be thinking about money, it will say that it was unfair that that guy pushed in line at the supermarket last week, and that you should go out for dinner on the weekend.

The ego is like Uncle Bob that you have to sit next to at a family BBQ because all of the other chairs are taken. You are trying to relax and enjoy your steak and beer, and he is constantly waffling on about what he did last week, what he thinks about a vast array of mind numbingly boring topics and why he likes to wear blue socks. It is a never ending stream of inane chatter.

We listen to the ego telling this tale to us all day, and one of the ways that meditation benefits us is by giving the poor observer part of us 5 minutes break to start to collect its own thoughts, and not listen to Mr Ego’s waffling 24 hours a day. So what can we do?

SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS.

While there are many ways to detach from our thoughts during meditation, I find one of the techniques that has worked for me is to label each thought as “Story” as it arises. When thoughts break into my meditation space, I can push them away by the thought “Story”, and they are not picked up by my observer and listened to. By coming to the realization that most thoughts are just the ego playing the role of narrator, I can keep a Zen-like perspective with them and see that the thoughts are not reality at all. They are just an interesting tale constructed by your ego to keep your attention focussed on it, rather than the timeless, universal, limitless real you that lies beyond.

KEEP IT IN PERSPECTIVE

By learning this perspective about ones thoughts during meditation, you gain a valuable skill. Instead of constantly referring to the story of your past to determine what you should do, now you can break this conditioning and start to live more in the now. You can take the circumstances and events of your life on face value, and not be trapped in past negative behaviours, or do things just because “that’s how I have always done them.” Now I am not suggesting that you should be ignoring the story all of the time, here at Rebel Zen we are all about keeping and enhancing the one thing that makes you different and unique in the world, your personality and “Youness.” I am just asking that you recognise your inner narrative and are mindful of it.