Archive for the ‘Rebel Zen’ Category

By Seamus Anthony

What follows is the massively-inspired, half-drunk process of me trying to finally define what “Rebel Zen” means in a slogan …

Rebel Zen: It’s not about being perfect – it’s about being alive.

or

Exploring what it means to be alive…

or maybe

Exploring what it means to be human…

or

… and the Glorious Art of Being Imperfect

Yes! That’s it!

Rebel Zen and the Glorious Art of Being Imperfect!

‘Cos to me that is the point – it is about what it means to be a human – warts and all.

What it feels like to be alive; the search for meaning, for authenticity, what it feels like.

The very thing artists strive to express – musicians, poets, madmen.

Forsaking fantasies of perfection – Zen as in “being here now”, whether that feels good or not.

What it feels like to be a human being, with all the inherent imperfection and beauty and baggage that comes part-and-parcel with it it.

What IT means.

THIS.

What THIS all means.

Meaning – and the absence of meaning.

By Seamus Anthony

If you are anything like me then you are sometimes a messy blob of anxiety, stress and over-imaginative worry.

Between you and me, I think we should get over ourselves already and get on with enjoying our lives while we still have the chance. Easier said than done? Here are some unconventional ways to help you live a little:

Take Some Time Out To Really Imagine The Worst

There’s a lot of advice out there about setting aside some time to visualize all the good things that you’d like to come into your life – you know – the whole Law of Attraction thing.

Have you ever actually watched The Secret?

I mean – pluh-eeez … as IF!

I think far better advice is to throw out your superstitious hokey-pokey and get real. Spend some time conjuring up all the worst things that could happen. I do this sometimes and I find that by naming my fears I somehow strip them of their power.

By Seamus Anthony

One of the most liberating things you can realize in life is that there are no rules.

People will try to tell you there are – but it’s not true.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for your actions. There most certainly are, but my point stands – you can choose to find happiness and success your way and without buying into somebody else’s self-serving nonsense.

And even better, there are so many people (ordinary, non-guru people) online and off, just waiting to help you make up your own mind by chipping in their own angle on “Life, the Universe and Everything”.

We Don’t Need No Guru – We ARE the Guru!

In fact, in this Age of Connectivity, and on the heels of the Information Age, we can not only find enough information to make up our minds, to find our own ways to worldly and/or spiritual success, but we can very easily find many people online willing to help, whether directly by conversing with you, or indirectly by publishing their own helpful content.

This is what I mean by “we are all the Guru”.

By Steve Mills

For most of our daily life, we are completely saturated with ideas and messages that do not originate from ourselves. Walk down the street and you are bombarded with advertisements, sit down on the internet and you are quickly mind boggled by the sheer amount of content available. The modern world has provided us with access to information that would be beyond the wildest dreams of someone even 20 years ago.

The paradox is with access to so much information about other things; we have become detached from a large amount of knowledge and wisdom about ourselves. There are so many distractions available, and so many different types of media to consume. The very fact that we may have to sit alone, with our own thoughts for even 30 minutes fills most people with a small sense of dread.

I am sure that this is not the natural state of human consciousness. In the past, you would assume that there were vast stretches of time, once food and shelter had been looked after, that men and women would be able to sit around and think. In this time they would have the power to consciously address the contents of their minds, rather than let themselves run on autopilot, never really exploring the depths of their inner life.

Or How to Achieve Liberation Without Joining a Cult

By Seamus Anthony

The Age of Do-It-Yourself Enlightenment has arrived. Here’s social proof (check out the comments).

But what does this actually mean? Well, in our welcome post Steve and I explained this concept quite well. No real need to go visit that post, here is what we wrote:

“DIY Enlightenment is about finding your own version of truth, peace and happiness. It’s about learning to go with the flow and really experience life free from other people’s rules and dogma. It’s about recognising that ‘enlightenment’ is a concept that you are free to research, define, and achieve on your own – you DON’T need a guru to tell you what to do or to decide when you have achieved enlightenment…

“The Guru (or in the west, the Hermit) used to have the monopoly on the enlightenment niche because information about ‘enlightenment’ was not readily accessible and so it had to be transfered by direct verbal instruction.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

If you have tried different methods to achieve happiness (meditation, reading self-help books, therapy, etc.) but have not succeeded then I’d like to share with you a very simple trick to being happy that has been blowing my mind lately…

In fact I actually believe it is the key to enlightenment and world peace.

Here it is …

Give up.

Or rather…

Let go.

Let go.

Let go of all that you are clinging to.

Let go of all the ideas in your mind.

All the should’s. All the want-to’s. All the trying-to’s. All the seeking-to’s. All the how-to’s. All the going-to’s.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

It’s just my opinion, and I have no idea what I am talking about, but you – yes, you – have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on.

Yes, you heard me, and that goes for your guru, coach, expert or teacher also.

You see, sometimes when I am at barbecues, beer comfortably resting on my belly, paper plate piled high on my knee, the subject comes up that I write personal development articles and, for better or worse, I cringe. Why? Because the first thing that happens, at least in my mind, is that people look at me and think “Well, what the hell does he know that I don’t? He’s no guru; look at that blob of mayonnaise on his beard! And isn’t that the guy who drank a couple too many at Jo’s party last fortnight and made a fool of himself? Personal development writer indeed – hmmph!”

And the truth is they are right. I don’t know diddly. But neither do ‘they’ and neither, my friend, do you.

By Steve Mills

Too often in spiritual and  personal development circles, the unique part of you as an individual is overlooked in the pursuit of grander visions. The special part that makes you “you” is not seen as important, and sometimes it is seen as something to be suppressed.

It is however my belief that you don’t have to become anything more than YOU to become enlightened. The Rebel part of you is as important in your pursuit of enlightenment and happiness as the disciplined, restrained and conformed aspects.

The Rebel part is that spark inside everyone that makes them unique. The part that doesn’t play by the rules , that laughs in the face of danger. It is the essential part that continues to fight when things look grim, the eternal part that knows life is there to be lived.

Some might even call it their spirit,  if they are that way inclined.

People who lose this free part of themselves quickly fall into despair, hopelessness, and that too common modern affliction, depression. It is the free rebel inside of us that allows us to break thought the constraints in our lives, and take action instead of passive wishing and thinking.

You Are Already Enlightened!

That’s right, and no – I’m not joking.

Zen Masters have publicly said that we are all enlightened, the trick is knowing it (or getting in touch with it). And if you haven’t any idea what it feels like to connect to this state of being then all I can say is it is very difficult for anybody to express in words. To briefly try (not the main point of this post) let me paraphrase Rachel Pollack’s words about the Hanged Man tarot card (from her book Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom): It’s feeling free to be who you are, even if everybody else thinks you have everything backwards; it’s the feeling of being deeply connected to life.

But here’s the rub: “perfect enlightenment” is probably a myth. A beat up. It’s a bit like saying ‘perfect musicianship’ or ‘perfect scientific methodology’.

These things most likely can’t exist and in fact, certainly in the case of artistic endeavour, absolute perfection ruins things. It stifles the life out of things and therefore makes them inherently imperfect again in some kind of weird feedback loop to nowhere.

This is a blog about Do-It-Yourself Enlightenment.

It’s about finding your own version of truth, peace and happiness. It’s about learning to go with the flow and really experience life free from other people’s rules and dogma. It’s about recognising that ‘enlightenment’ is a concept that you are free to research, define, and achieve on your own – you DON’T need a guru to tell you what to do or to decide when you have achieved enlightenment.

The Guru (or in the west, the Hermit) used to have the monopoly on the enlightenment niche because information about ‘enlightenment’ was not readily accessible and so it had to be transfered by direct verbal instruction.

Then as the written word came about, well these handwritten texts could only be in one place at a time so they naturally stayed in the guru’s library. And, frankly, it was good for business for the guru to have all info, so this model was maintained for a long time, even after crazy ideas like the printing press and *whoa* the interweb came about.

But dudes! This system is just a clunky, rusted artifact of the past! Never before has so much information been available so easily to so many people!