Posts Tagged ‘Enlightenment’

I may be completely unenlightened, and therefore have no idea what I am talking about, but to me enlightenment is not an event but rather, it’s a place.

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

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.

The glorious, never-ending, futile, wonderful search for meaning and our compulsion to look forward when it, this, the answers are here now.

But they aren’t here now at all. They are elusive, or we would find already and stop searching.

The continual paradox of apparent meaninglessness coupled with our insatiable desire for meaning.

The Yin and Yang play-off of ‘Meaningless Life’ and ‘Awareness’.

What THIS feels like – and the validity of this experience.

This is what Rebel Zen means to me – if it must be defined – that we live, impermanently, meaninglessly, and that – surely – THIS is okay…

…but somehow it’s not,

….but somehow it is,

…and on and on without resolution …

Without resolution but with an aching wonder, a beauty, a Love…

… a dream.

…. a dream framed by razors and barbed wire

… and then framed again with clouds of forgiveness and Love …

… and on and on and on without resolution.

Until … ?

Yes … I bloody LOVE it … Rebel Zen … is

The Glorious Art of Being Imperfect

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.

I think ‘what if “that” happened?’ And ‘what if ‘THAT” happened’. After a little while of doing this I just get fear-fatigue and I realize there is nothing to do except A) take all reasonable precautions, B) hope for the best and C) relax and get on with enjoying the moment as best I can.

Oh yeah – and in case you are worried that by focussing on the worst you will magically attract the very scenarios you want to avoid – put that out of your mind – it’s woo-woo nonsense.

Seriously – that’s like worrying that airline safety teams are in fact inviting distaster by going over all the possible malfunctions that might beset an aircraft. If those guys didn’t do exactly that there is NO WAY I would get in a plane!

Just Do Things When and If You Feel Like It

One day you’ll be dead – and will it matter that you did or did not have the self-discipline to power through all those boring to-do list items that really sucked? Probably not.

Go Out and Get Pissed

Or go bungy jumping or whatever. My point is, you gotta just let it all hang out and be a hairy beast for a while every now and then.

I was at this (very nice) guy’s house the other day and he was proudly telling me how he never drinks very much and how he has a nice new white carpet and a nice new beige car . And I kid you not – his trousers were beige too.

Lovely guy mind you, I really like him – but for God’s sake – do you want to be like that? Are you already? ‘Cos being boring is fine some of the time – even most of the time – but for the love of Pete you gotta have some fun sometimes!

So get amongst it, I say. Hang out with the hairy people for a night. Live a little.

And beware of becoming one of the beige people, take it from Billy Connolly.

Dwell In The Angst

This is similar to focussing on the worst that can happen but this is more about focussing on the bad feelings that are messing with you.

I accidently came across this liberating technique way back when I was first experimenting with meditation. I was trying to establish a routine of meditating every day whether I felt like it or not. Well, on one particular day I certainly did not feel like it: I was so depressed and anxious that I could barely think (I was partying very hard at the time, even for me, and this was leaving me strapped out).

Nevertheless, I sat down to try and meditate anyway but I couldn’t get into it because I was squirming with an angst that was so acute it was manifesting itself physically: I literally felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

I felt like giving up and lighting a joint. Even though I knew that this wouldn’t really help much, I was just about to get up and do that when a “voice” said to me “Stay and dwell in the angst”.

Listen To The Voices In Your Head

Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear “voices” I listen up good. Maybe they lose their impact if they never stop, but thankfully my voices keep to themselves most of the time, so I just went with it and tried to “dwell in the angst”.

At first it was horrible. I focussed all my attention on how horribly stressed and anxious I felt, and for a few minutes it was almost more than I could bear. I  was in tears (and I usually find it very hard to cry properly).

But then all of a sudden the angst just lifted. It was gone and I felt quite calm and relaxed – quite fine.

Somehow by listening to the voices in my head and dwelling in the angst like I was told, I worked through the stress and anxiety that was knocking me around. Instead of pushing it down with more drugs or distraction, I acknowledged and paid attention to how I felt. To my surprise, that was pretty much all that was actually required to quell the bad feelings.

So there you have it – no doubt the sanest advice you’ve ever read: Imagine the worst, get pissed, be irresponsible, listen to voices in your head and meditate on feeling really crap. Regulation stuff really.

Photo by StuartPilbrow

By Seamus Anthony

Should you strive to change your habits, your circumstances, your whole life?

Or should you enjoy increased inner-peace by accepting who you are right now, unconditionally so you can relax and enjoy the moment?

I find life to be a constant tension between these two approaches, and I can’t help but notice that in what we loosely call the “personal development” field there are many pushers of both ways towards inner satisfaction.

I have for a while now leaned heavily in favor of the “Zen” path of warts-and-all self-acceptance of yourself and have been scornful of the Tony Robbins “go-get-em-tiger” school of hyped up motivation and the “follow-these-sacred-rules-and-kiss-my-Guru-ass” schools of overtly serious and holy spirituality.

That’s the attitude we founded Rebel Zen on: a different, down-to-Earth, street-savvy approach to Enlightenment and Worldly Success – and God help us if we ever lose sight of this mission because in my opinion it’s what is sorely needed.

BUT…

The other night I was awake at about 4 in the morning and a thought struck me like a punch in the face.

As I sat there next to the cot, trying to coax my little 1 year old daughter to go back to sleep, my mind was racing through things in a semi-conscious way and I suddenly realised that if I kept going down the path I am on, of comfortable self-acceptance, then I am quickly going to turn into on of those mouldy middle-age dudes who is stuck in a nice comfortable rut and has lost his edge.

What I mean by this is – unless I decide to change some things then, while the good things in my life will probably stay good (and there is plenty of that for which I am infinitely grateful), the BAD stuff will GET WORSE.

Example: I don’t exercise enough and my pot belly is inching its way forward day-by-day and my muscles are fading bit-by-bit. And that shit don’t get better – it gets WORSE.

Example: I STILL haven’t learned to speak French very well even though my partner and her family speak it around me all the time and we want our children to speak it also. And that shit don’t get easier – it gets HARDER.

And there are more examples, but that will suffice for now!

Why Do You Read Personal Development Stuff?

Is it because you want drastic change in your life or because you want to learn how to be happy now as you are?

In my case, more than ten years ago, I got into meditation and personal development because I desperately needed to change my ways and figure out “what it’s all about”. Once I had tempered my self-destruction a fair bit and developed a model of the Meaning of Life (links to my old model which needs a revamp as according to this post here) I then stepped into a different mode, the above mentioned mode of just chillin’ and accepting myself as being perfect even though I am human and regularly fuck things up and then some. (I have, as you can see, learned a little French at least!)

It’s a Yin Yang Thing

It probably won’t blow your mind to hear me say that I reckon we need a bit of both in life, we need to strive to achieve and meanwhile we need to accept our lot as is, be grateful for the gifts we enjoy and be happy now. But the Yin Yang model isn’t about just hovering in a static place in perfect balance, it is about moving through different ratios. A good example of what I mean is day and night: at one point of the 24 hour cycle it is brightest, at another it is darkest, and during the rest of the cycle we are bathed in degrees of light and dark mixed together.

So what I am getting at is sometimes we need to swing to extremes and there is nothing wrong with this. My friend and Rebel Zen business partner Steve, calls it ‘Dynamic Balance’. He is a classic for it, sometimes he won’t write a post here for months because he is immersed in another project. Then when it’s done he moves back into a more generalist space.

The reason for this long-winded post is that I have come to the realization that I need to move into an “extreme” phase now. A period of Striving for Big Changes. It’s just what I need to do and to be honest I am a little scared because it means I am going to set myself up for possible failure.

To add an extra element of craziness to the mix, I am going to document this process here at Rebel Zen. I have no details yet, but hopefully it will be of benefit to you and your progression through this kooky old life. Meanwhile let’s just finish off with a quick look at the two polar dynamics of personal development:

Striving and Self-Acceptance

There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to both extremes…

Striving – the Pros

• Can result in lasting change for the better
• You CAN be healthier, richer, happier, more productive, a greater contributor to the problems facing society than you are now
• and such success CAN bring you increased enjoyment of life
• Tomorrow DOES come and the seeds you sow today … you know the rest

Striving – the Cons

• Can set you up for failure and disappointment
• Can lead to unhealthy obsession and alienate you from your family and friends
• Can distract you from enjoying the moment and being happy now (’now’ being the only reality you will ever actually experience)
• Can bring negative effects of stress into your life, eg. reduced immune system functionality

Self-Acceptance – the Pros

• Can be a huge weight off your shoulders
• That allows you to Just Be Happy Now (no mean feat)
• Gives you a lightness of heart and a self-confidence that is a pleasure for yourself and others to behold
• Attracts luck your way because your positive vibes make people want to work with you and help you
• Helps others because you stop focusing on your own perceived problems and start reaching out with compassion

Self-Acceptance – the Cons

• you run the ‘danger’ of becoming stuck in your own self-satisfied rut, i.e. you can become very mouldy
• you may actually only be so full of self-acceptance because you live in a very sweet situation day-to-day. Therefore if the shit hits the fan, will your enlightened state persevere or will you succumb to stress, self-pity and fear?
• You may be underestimating yourself and settling for a lesser contribution to society than you could be making
• You may be deluding yourself – you may in fact have actually given up on your dreams and are masking your own deep, sad sense of disappointment in yourself and life with a veneer of false self-satisfaction.

Well that’s all for me for now but this is certainly the beginning of a series of posts exploring these themes and setting myself up for some kind of public challenge.

What are your thoughts on these ideas?

By Seamus Anthony

Once a young man called Snoozer sat dozing in his favourite spot at the bottom of a great mountain.

All of a sudden he was rudely awakened by a foot poking him in the ribs.

“Hey man! What’s up?! Snoozer demanded. He looked up through sleepy eyes to see an older man grinning down at him as if he had just thought of an extremely funny joke.

“I’ll tell you what’s up – the answer to all of your prayers, that’s what!”, chuckled the old man.

“What are you talking about, Old Dude?” Snoozer asked, not really wanting to know. Just what he needed, some old crackpot getting in his face. Snoozer scrambled to his feet and started making moves to leave.

“Not so fast! First you listen to me.” Old Dude said “I live at the top of the mountain, and from up there I can see everything very clearly. Each day I look down to see you wasting away your youth sleeping all the time, so I thought I’d walk down and let you know that if you venture up to the top of the mountain with me, there you’ll find the answer to all your prayers!”

“Huh?” Snoozer hadn’t really woken up properly yet, and this old geezer was a bit much.

“The great secret of life! The way! Enlightenment! If you walk up to the top with me you’ll be able to see it all as clear as day!”

“Look mate…I don’t know what you’re on, but I am totally not into it. So, I’m just gonna go now, and you have a nice day, OK?” And with that, Snoozer began to back away from the old man, who was obviously nuts.

“I thought you might say that – so that’s why I brought this!” Old Dude then pulled out a large wad of cash. “If you walk up the mountain with me and answer my questions correctly, I will give you the money! If you won’t walk up the mountain, then no money for you!”

Suddenly Snoozer was much more interested! The bundle of cash Old Dude was holding out was really quite large, and being a very lazy young man, Snoozer had a lot of bills that were overdue and needed paying up.

“And don’t think you can just snatch the money off me, I’m faster than I look! You’ll have to keep up with me all the way!” Giggling to himself, Old Dude started running at a speed that belied his advancing years. Snoozer hated running with a passion, but he really needed that money. So he took off after Old Dude who was bounding up the mountain path.

The mountain was pretty big. And Snoozer was a bit fat from lots of eating and sleeping, and not much exercise. He ran as hard as he could, but soon he began to get puffed out, and eventually he slowed to a hurried walking pace. Old Dude was ahead out of sight now, but every now and then Snoozer could here him cackling away at the top of his lungs. It began to get dark, and very cold. Snoozer fell over, cutting his knee and grazing his hands on the rocks. His chest hurt and he kept getting dizzy with fatigue, but he really wanted that money. So he didn’t stop chasing after Old Dude.

Snoozer ran and walked and climbed all night. It was the longest, most miserable night of his life. He felt like he would never get to the top of the mountain, and doubts began to plague him. What if the old man was playing a trick? What if he came to no good up on the mountain? Snoozer’s mind raced. He felt like he was going crazy. Delirious tears rolled down his dirt-smeared cheeks, as he moaned and sobbed from his gut like a child.

Then, as morning finally broke, Snoozer stumbled into a flat clearing and saw the whole of his country spread out before him. He saw all the places he knew and loved, his hometown, and the houses of his family and friends. He saw his own house and he wished he were back there now, cosy and warm, asleep.

Then a voice spoke from behind, making Snoozer jump. It was Old Dude.

“Tell me, young man, does this world that you are from look like it has changed now you are at the top of the mountain?”

“No”, Snoozer replied, “It is still the same place”.

“So, are you telling me that it does not look any different to you from up here?”

“Oh, it looks different all right. I can see most of it all at once. The way things are set out is very clear from up here, and it looks somehow less real, more like a dream. But I don’t think it has changed, it’s just that I am seeing it all from a different perspective. It’s as if I am seeing the world the way God might see it.”

“Good.” Old Dude smiled and placed his hand on Snoozer’s shoulder. “Now you know the ‘great secret of life’.”

“I do?” Snoozer looked out at the incredible view. He didn’t really feel as if he knew any great secret. He looked up at Old Dude in bewilderment.

“I do?” He repeated.

“Yes you do. Now off you go. You’ll have plenty of time to think about it as you make your way back down the mountain.” And with that, Old Dude turned and began to walk away.

“Wait a minute!” Snoozer piped up. “Where’s that money then, eh?”

“Oh, of course, the money.” Old Dude stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I left the money at your favourite spot down the bottom of mountain. I guess you were so sleepy you didn’t see what was really going on!”

Snoozer suddenly felt a bit sick, and had to sit down on a rock.

“Well go on!” Old Dude said. “You’d better get a move on, or someone else will find the cash before you do!”

“Hugh…” Snoozer’s head felt like it was spinning on a stick. “What about you? What are you going to do now?” Snoozer called after Old Dude, who was shambling off towards a small wooden hut.

“Why, I’m going to bed, of course! All this mountain climbing has left me plumb tuckered out!”

If Snoozer knew about Curly’s Law, then he might have been a bit more motivated in the first place. You can read about it now by clicking here to get your Rebel Zen “Curly’s Law” Ebook – FREE!

By Seamus Anthony

You will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

I will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

The Buddha did not achieve it.

Nor did Jesus.

Nor did Mohamed.

Nor did Lao Tzu.

Nor did Osho.

Nor did Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa, The Maharashi, Rudolf Steiner, Douglas Harding, Mother Theresa, Brad Warner, Deepack Chopra or Eckhart Tolle.

In fact nobody in the history of the world has ever achieved enlightenment.

And nobody ever will.

How can I say this?

Because enlightenment is not something you achieve, it’s something that you realise.

That might just be a little nit-picky matter of one word, but I believe it makes a lot of difference. Why? Because it changes your whole focus. My advice (not that you asked for it) is stop trying to achieve enlightenment (whatever that means to you anyway) and just let that shit go.

Enlightenment isn’t “out there”. You don’t have to become a ’seeker’ and go on a ’spiritual journey’
to find it. Nor do you need to go on some kind of Jules Verne type mission to centre of your being to find it either.

Enlightenment is right here in front of your nose. It is something innate. It is everything everywhere.

You realise your inherent enlightenment by accepting what is here now.

Click here to get the first Rebel Zen e-book – free. It contains a powerful trick to realising your inherent enlightenment – and what’s more it’ll help you kick butt in more pragmatic areas of life too (like career etc.). Go on – click already (it’s free).

Steve and I have been trying to define what Rebel Zen is all about and one thing we want to convey is that it’s not just meant to be a mega-phone for what we have to say, but rather what we really want is to be part of the conversation.

Ok, that sounds like a bit of a Web 2.0 cliche I admit, but nevertheless it’s true.

Our reason for starting this website was to help others to see that there is so much information out there now that everybody who is seeking what we loosely call “Enlightenment” can truly ‘do it themselves’. Hence the DIY Enlightenment tag.

As for what enlightenment means, well that’s not something that we feel we have the right to define for you either. Defining what enlightenment is (and realising this enlightenment) is a totally personal and subjective thing. You might completely disagree with us, for example, by believing that your guru is the one and only path to true salvation. That’s okay as long as you’re prepared to enter into a discussion about that.

Or to give a less extreme example, you might not be so sure that everybody is already enlightened. So write about that (or make a video or whatever) and let us and every body else know.

Can You Hear the Voices?

I personally have been delighted by the bloggers and thinkers that I have discovered are out there over the months since we started Rebel Zen. With the motivation of wanting to attract some “traffic” (horrible term that) to this website, I started taking the time to read more blogs, and follow their commenter’s links back to their own blogs and I must admit I have been surprised and impressed. I now truthfully surf around each day just because I genuinely love reading the words of all these awesome people that are out there, shining their lights for all to see.

There are so many great thinkers who have been given voice by the social internet and so many different opinions, ideas and strategies for personal liberation. I just think it’s a wonderful thing. Not just wonderful but, really, it’s quite amazing, especially if you stop to think about how things were in the past, when information of this type was a scarce, top-down commodity. These days, to get back to the DIY Enlightenment theme, it really is possible to wade through mountains of inspiring words, sounds and images, and even better, to start or join in conversations about ideas you either don’t get, don’t agree with, or just think are so amazing that you must share them with the rest of the world.

So stay tuned to Rebel Zen over the coming weeks and months, because we have plans to really “open-house” this little corner of the web. They’re loose plans, and better to show than waffle on about them (because some of these ideas might not stick) but these cautions aside, we hope it’s going to mean that RebelZen.com becomes a very useful place to visit if you’re interested in deciding for yourself what “it’s all about”.

To kick things off, and why I made up the new category of “Worth A Look”, I am now going to roll through some of the most inspiring stuff I have come across via the tubes today. Feel free to point our noses in the direction of anything complementary (or not, doesn’t matter) via the comments function:

A Singularity in Time Part II

Here author Peter Russel talks of the dawning of a Wisdom Age, sprouting off the back of the Information Age. He says, “Never before have we been able to access so much spiritual wisdom.” – and that’s exactly what I was yammering on about above. Further to this Russel says, “Something completely new is emerging: a single spiritual teaching that is a distillation of the world’s wisdom traditions” and he gives the reason for this as being the amazing availability of information that the internet has facilitated. I couldn’t agree more. I see the perennial philosophy being discussed around the cyber-traps every day.

Don’t be a Sellout: A Guide to Staying Real

Jonathan Mead is back with a cracker of a post over at Illuminated Mind. This dude’s getting real popular and it’s in no small part due to the uncompromising stance he takes on a number of issues, mostly how to live an authentic life on your own terms. He includes a couple of links in this post, the following two of which really rocked my little socks.

What is the Meaning of Life?

Good question.

Umm, is it cheese cake?

I’m pretty sure it’s a cake of some kind…

Zen practitioner Mary Jaksch offers up some words for the wise here – pointing out that if you see life as a path then you’re likely to miss the point. You’d be forever projecting into the future instead of actually being aware of the present moment (i.e. reality). I like her quirky suggestion that life is better viewed as a spot than a linear progression.

Not Being a Real Person: The #1 Self-Development Anti-Hack

As I said in its comments section, this post really made me feel better about being a freak. I mean to say, I’m pretty cool with that fact most of the time, but today I was sort of feeling a bit guilty that all I really could be bothered doing was just lazily surfing through my RSS browser and eating butternut snaps.

Well – good God damn – why the hell shouldn’t I? For I am an “unreal person” not some lame-arse ‘fraidy-cat conformist.

Shit yeah.

And the late, great, drunken Rebel Zen Master, Alan Watts supports this unreservedly in Life and Music.

Don’t fall for the hoax kids! Live the here-now with passion and leave the future be.

Cheers,

Seamus Anthony

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.

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!

So, while it may mean bad news for those in guru business, there is no reason why an intelligent person such as yourself can’t access and study all kinds of different viewpoints and realise your own version of enlightenment right there in your own home in your own time and by whichever method suits you.

Because it’s not the method that matters, it’s the result.

Anyone who tells you that their method is the only way, is either a cynical bullshit artist, or is seriously self-deluded, and if you believe them… well, that’s your decision. We hope it works out for you.”

A Simple Three Step DIY Enlightenment Process

Like most truths, it is actually simple to get in touch with the enlightened state of mind and experience a remarkable increase in the amount of time that you enjoy inner peace and happiness. Probably the most difficult thing is getting out of your own way and allowing new ideas to take hold in your mind. Here’s some of my suggestions.

Step One: Read

Realising your inherent enlightenment is a matter of taste-testing a lot of different ideas. It’s about trying different concepts on for size; mixing and matching until you come up with a personal ‘look’ that suits you. And the most tried and true method is by reading.

There is so much stuff out there on the internet that you could probably read enough to get the ideas you need just by surfing the web. Personally I also recommend an old fashioned concept called the ‘book’ also, but maybe that’s just me being old school!

However, apparently a great percentage of people dislike reading (although I suppose they probably wouldn’t have made it this far into the article) so, personal preferences aside, listening and watching audio/video is probably just as good if that’s what suits your learning style.

Another great option these days is to join in conversations via social media – or start them. Ask “what is enlightenment?” and analyze what people say!

The point is to take in as many different viewpoints about life and philosophy so that you have a wide knowledge base from which to make your own decisions about “what is”.

Step Two: Live Life

Get out there an experience the wonder that is life on Earth.

Travel around the world. Have adventures. Take risks. Open a business. Work hard for the thrill of it. Find your passions and embrace them. Climb Mt. Everest. Explore your dreams without caring what others might say (let them stay home and be safe while you really live). Get tattooed from head to foot. Spend six months in a remote place by yourself painting and writing poetry. Train to become an Olympian. Have several wild, passionate love affairs and then experience what real love means (it’s different). Or the other way around!

Learn what it means to be alive. Get into trouble and then get yourself out of it. Take risks. try as many different experiences as you can and really be aware of these experiences as they are happening (see step three).

I am nearly 35 and have packed more flavour into my life so far than a lot of people ever do. I have been a (seriously minor) rock star, run a vibrant cafe in a strange city, studied acting, French, Kung Fu, Chi Gong, and yoga. I’ve flown around the world and spent weeks – even months – living with locals in foreign lands. I’ve worked my balls off in the corporate sector (Blech! But the experience is priceless) and I’ve spent months doing nothing much but contemplate the breeze.

I’ve thrown myself into excessive hedonism and spiritual asceticism – and wriggled my way back out of both. I’ve had the beautiful lovers and had my heart broken on several occasions. I’ve enjoyed a close and truly satisfying relationship for 8 years now. I’ve sat in deep, silent meditation with true masters, and danced and babbled in tongues with Born Again Christians. I’ve started and run a nightclub of the all night variety. I’ve fathered a child. I’ve taken six months off to write a novel. I’ve battled addictions. I’ve tried any experience that in any way appealed to me, more than I can write about here, and there are many more I intend to try.

I’ve even tried stuff that I am ashamed off (and really don’t want to share with the world) but I am GLAD of those things I did (even if I regret the consequences) because it has all given me one thing: a decent measure of wisdom.

And without wisdom you will never have self-confidence, peace of mind or joy of heart.

Step Three: Meditate

It doesn’t matter what kind of meditation you try. Just try it. In fact try several different types and read lots about it because if it doesn’t blow your mind straight away (and it probably won’t) then be assured it will eventually.

Why is meditation so important? It is essential to enlightenment practice because it develops Awareness, with a capital A.

Awareness, the ability to truly be present in this exact moment, is the most important skill you can ever learn because without awareness you are never really living authentically, but rather you are all in your head living in the past and future and living out twisted versions of reality as filtered through your unchecked ego.

Meditation is probably the best way, but it is true that people achieve Awareness in other ways. Why do you think skydivers get addicted to the thrill of jumping out of planes? They sure as hell aint thinking about much else other than the present moment when they are hurtling through the sky!

As this blog grows, we are going to go further into meditation and how it works to help you realise liberation in this lifetime, but this is too big a topic for this one post.

So for now: get reading, get living and start experimenting with meditation – before you know it you will be a card carrying Rebel Zen Master!

By Seamus Anthony

This is the first installment of the (spontaneously created) “Rebel Zen Masters Interview Series”, where we interview people from differing walks of life that we feel represent the Rebel Zen ethos.

I am sure this happens to most us: Every now and then you come across a writer, musician or artist of any kind and get blown away by their work. Exploring their wares you get all excited and inspired and find yourself thinking “Man – that’s exactly how I feel!”.

Well that’s what happened to me just last week when I stumbled across Jonathan Mead’s writing at IlluminatedMind.net

I promptly left a few excited-like-a-kid comments at the bottom of some of his posts and then emailed Jonathan to see if he’d do me the honour of interviewing him. Here’s the result (my questions in italics).

BTW, there are heaps of links to his fantastic (and popular, if you need social proof) posts throughout the interview so make sure you go read ‘em!

There’s no doubt your cowboy style of personal development writing is taking off. So tell us about yourself. What’s your story in a nutshell, that brought you to this place as the Illuminated Mind dude?

I’ve always had a natural curiosity for life and the “stuff” it’s made of. I’ve also always had a desire to improve and better my life. Living a suboptimal life never appealed to me. Well, when I started getting into Alan Watts and Eastern Philosophy, I started to realize that everything is non-dual and in reality there’s not such thing as opposites. I initially got kind of bitter about this and thought, “there’s no reason to try to better my life, because there’s no such thing as something better than anything else, there just is.” That’s a true statement, but it can be taken too far. Ultimately what matters most is your integrity and your conscience. Our society has an obsession with figuring things out logically before we act. Your heart may be screaming “this is what you need!” but your mind is saying “I refuse to make a decision until we get all the facts straight.” Ultimately, this will leave you paralyzed because there’s a lot of things in life that just don’t necessarily have a logical explanation. It’s the difference between trying to “find happiness” and “being happiness.”

What do your old school mates think about all this zany personal development talk? Or do you strategically fail to bring it up at barbecues?

This might sound really depressing but I actually don’t have many friends. My wife and I prefer to spend most of our precious time together alone. I also went to about 10 different schools growing up so I don’t really keep in contact with any of my old school mates. If I did, I don’t think I would have a problem with it though. I’ve always been the kind of person that says what everyone else is thinking, but is afraid to talk about.

I notice in a post about meditating, you mentioned various meditation aids like incense, walking, and music as “props”. I am a no-frills meditator myself these days, having tried and dispensed with most of the cliched extras. Do you have a personal aversion to ‘props’ now in your meditation? Describe how you meditate. Do you have a routine?

I think those things are good for beginner and “mid-level” meditators. It’s not easy starting out meditating though and most people give up before they actually experience the gap between thoughts. The problem with this is we talk to ourselves all the time. We’re constantly doing rambling away, whether important or not to ourselves, and meditation for the first time is a big shock for the mind. The mind naturally revolts and feels it’s existence is threatened. The key is not to wage a war against thinking, but to start out simply witnessing your thoughts. The longer you can go just witnessing them, the more your mind will start to naturally quiet down and you can actually experience meditation.

As for me, I don’t really use many props now when meditating. At times I do enjoy listening to Japanese flute music while meditating, I find it to be the most calming music I’ve ever experienced. I also still greatly enjoying walking meditation, it provided me with my first real breakthrough with meditation so I think I’ll always have a certain fondness for it.

You talk about “total contentment” as feeling like “You’ve released all thoughts, labels and judgment and you simply are. When you do this, there’s a subtle feeling that there’s no longer a difference between you and everyone else, between what in here and what’s out there”. To me this sounds like I feel when I’ve had an amazing meditation or just have simply managed to access this state during my normal activities. This to me is the enlightened state of mind. How well would you say you manage to keep this state of mind during your usual activities (if at all)?

I’m certainly not a master of keeping persistent awareness of an enlightened state throughout my entire day. It hasn’t become a permanent fixture of my consciousness, but it is something constantly running in the background for me. I would say though that I always perceive life through the lens of non-duality and unity. I don’t see myself as a separate ego, I see myself as the universe embodying a physical form in which I create a story and experience physical reality through the senses.

What are your thoughts on God? Hung out with him lately?

Wow, that’s a loaded question. My thoughts on God are that “God” is really another word for Reality or Consciousness. Obviously there are many other names, “the Universe,” “Intelligence,” “Brahman,” etc.

But yes, I hang out with “him” constantly. We shoot pool and talk shop.

Claiming to be enlightened and other such outrageous acts of sacrilege is bound to piss some people off. Is it a case of a strategy of “divide and conquer”?

No it’s not a strategy of divide and conquer at all. I just wanted to show that it’s OKAY to talk about Enlightenment, or being Enlightened for that matter. I knew when I wrote Enlightenment is Overrated it would piss a lot of people off and I risked being viewed as an arrogant bastard. The problem is, those same people that view me as arrogant, are the same people that view Enlightened people as so far beyond themselves. They think it’s reserved for sages and celibate monks. That’s exactly the opposite of what needs to be communicated. Enlightened people are just like you and me. We get pissed off, we make mistakes, and we have problems. Enlightenment does not equal some false image of perfection. Perfection and imperfection are concepts. Reality is not a concept.

Do you lead any kind of workshops or meditation classes?

I have not, but I have considered it. I have to figure a way to make a living out of this somehow.

I loved your line “I was so obsessed with thinking outside the box, it began to follow me around”. Give our readers a brief run down of your theory of embracing your creative ADD.

Embracing Creative ADD for me means accepting the fact that there’s a million different ideas constantly running around in your mind. It’s finding the connections between those seemingly disparate thoughts that seems to create the best ideas.

On a side note, I think far too many people don’t respect the gestation period of great ideas. They try to force an idea to completion before it has reached it’s natural maturity. Creative ADD is about respecting the germination of ideas and allowing your subconscious to do the work it does best, making connections. If you can simply let go and trust that your ideas will mature, you can exceed the limits of your imagination.

You wrote “I’d rather have one amazing idea than 200 muddled & broken ones”, which reminds me of my pet theory of Curly’s Law . If you are able, what would you describe as your One Thing, or does this idea fill you with horror?

The essential theme I think behind “One Thing” is not sacrificing your love for doing different things, but finding the prime factor. In your case that was media. Once you realize that media is your strength, you start working on developing that strength. But it’s not that simple and I think where people like you and me get so frustrated is answering the “money question.” If we can’t figure out a way to make a living doing that “one thing” we risk end up resenting our passions.

We have to develop our inner business man and find a way to actually make this whole thing profitable. There’s a lot of mental block many of us “creative minded” people face with making money doing what we love. We think it’s sinful, we think it’s unethical. What this really stems from is a kind of rebellion against all the unauthentic people that have capitalized off of factory line music or art. We don’t want to sell out and produce art that we know will sell, but we still want to be able to feed ourselves. We have to realize that making money doing what we love doesn’t have mean selling ourselves out and we can remain authentic doing it. It may take a lot hard work and failure, but I would rather be striving my whole life in the pursuit, then be a slave to someone else’s agenda.

I can relate to your addictive problems. I have been there myself: alcohol, pot, hard drugs. It’s taken me way longer than you to kick my old habits as I always found it near on impossible to do it until I really, really wanted to. Not just ‘thought it was a good idea’, but truly, deep down just didn’t want to do it anymore. That liberating moment came first with hard drugs, then cigarettes, then pot and now drinking (for now, bets are still out on whether I stick it out with that last one!) Have you got any pointers for people out there who feel that they should probably “kick the shit”?

What it really comes down to for most people, or at least for me, was realizing that I was searching for something out there that I wasn’t finding within myself. I wanted that good feeling, I wanted that buzz, or that escape. I wanted an unnatural high because I didn’t have it authentically. I’m not sure how much advice I can give, because most people have to hit a bottom before they realize this themselves. You can scream it at them all day, but they don’t get it until it’s something they realize for themselves.

The only word of advice I can really give is to take a hard look at your past. Take a hard look at yourself. Are you trying to escape something? Have the courage to be honest with yourself and true with yourself.

What kinds of training, if any, have you done? Chi Gong? Upside-down Vampire Bat Yoga?

Haha, is that really real?

I haven’t really done any formal training. I have practiced Chi Chong breathing a lot recently though, but not through any kind of formal tutelage. I’ve always been kind of a rebel and am a big advocate of DIY enlightenment.

You mention that you are a member of BrazenCareerist.com network. How does this help you?

Brazen Careerist has gotten me some good exposure to a wider net of people than I would have gotten otherwise. It’s been more of a networking tool for me than anything.

It’s also helped me branch out to connect with people in related (and unrelated) fields that I never probably would have connected with otherwise. It’s also helped me realize that PR, Non-profit, Marketing, Personal Development and other seemingly divergent groups are really often working toward a common vision. We’re all just coming at it from different angles.

I gotta say it’s awesome to read about somebody else who’s given the Cult of Productivity the flick. I used to try and try to be this uber-organised dude, but then I was reading Getting Things Done and I just snapped and thought “You know what? Bugger this!” and since then I just write down the five tasks that will move me closest to my goals each day, and I have a running list of just absolutely everything that may or may not get done. I try and get the Big Five done but if not I say “Meh!” and I go bounce my little girl on my knee. And I am getting more done than ever! Counter Intuitive – but it works. I slack off for half the day and I am getting more done than ever! Got any anti-productivity tricks of your own to share?

I think the realization that happiness is not the result of productivity seems to be a widespread consensus moving through the personal development space.

Remaining authentic and following your natural rhythms will bring you greater happiness than any type of bulletproof productivity system.

I think we often forget and fail to respect that there are many different types of personalities in the world. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. What matters most is how you personally feel about it. You have to have the courage to freestyle life.

I have found that quitting your job is the greatest way to get ahead in life. How do you earn a crust these days, if you don’t mind me asking, and do your career plans include being the Illuminated Mind guy?

I work a regular 9 to 5 job as a graphics designer for a non-profit healthcare company. It’s really a great job and I probably complain about it more than necessary. I think the main reason for this simply that I want to be in control of my time and want to work toward my own goals, not someone elses. I want to own my mind.

I would love for Illuminated Mind to be my primary source of income, but I’m not going to bet all my chips on it. It can take a long time to bring a blog to the point of profitability. I would love to use this as a possible platform to get a book deal or sell information products.

This last question is about blogging rather than personal development. Hope that’s alright … Looking at your blog, I notice two things: 1) you are getting pretty popular and 2) you do a fair few “Top Tens” and other lists. Is it true that we still need to make lists to get a lot of diggs and up our blog traffic? How many lists can we take in? I, for one, am all listed out and (no offence) tend to pull a face whenever I see blog posts starting with “the Seven Steps to … ” or “Nine Ways to … “. Do you think rampant listing is on the endangered list?

I think people have really abused the list. They use it as a crutch to produce an article when they really don’t have an interesting idea or something worth saying. Lists also mean you don’t necessarily have to write transitions between points, which let’s be honest, is not always easy to do.

A lot of people also write lists because they’re popular. The more items on the list, the better it seems. “What, 67 ways?! OMG, 67!” They know these usually do well on social media as well, so it can be really tempting.

Lists also do well because a lot of people don’t really want to read a real article that will make them think. They want bite sized feel good bullet points. They want conveniently packaged productivity and travel size wisdom. It’s makes them feel good reading a list of “10 ways to be make your grandma feel special.” The reality is most people forget these lists before they even started reading them.

In defense of the list, however, there are certain times where a list is the best choice. If you want to give someone ten suggestions for something original (because you know I don’t need 10 more ways to make my day great) and there’s no real way to format it into a paragraph-style article, then by all means make a list. Just don’t sell your soul doing it. A good example of this was my last article 7 Rules to Re-Claim the Ownership of Your Mind. There really was no other way for me to write this. Sometimes thoughts are just better organized in points.

It’s damn hard too as a blogger trying to fit a lot of ideas into a single post. If we were all writing books, those “7 ways” might be broken up into each having their own chapter and we wouldn’t get as much shit for it.

So the lesson here is, be authentic. Write a list when you feel that’s the best choice, but don’t sell your soul trying to write what you feel will be popular.

Thanks for your time Jonathan and I hope these questions don’t blow too hard.

They didn’t blow at all, thanks for having me Seamus. Keep up the great work at Rebel Zen, I see great things in the future for this blog.

*********

Jonathan is the author of Illuminated Mind – The less boring side of personal development. His articles include Living Freestyle; Life Without a Template and Liberate Your Life: Put Yourself on Auto-Response. You can subscribe to his here, or get more from him on twitter.

… the trick is getting in touch with this truth so that you feel it.

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.