Posts Tagged ‘peace’

By Seamus Anthony

You may or may not have noticed that I have not written as much for Rebel Zen of late as I used to. There is a twofold explanation for this:

1) Lack of time – not a lot I can do about this at the moment; gotta put food on the table.

2) Negative frame of mind – basically, I am a musician who also writes personal development stuff, and over the years of I have noticed a roller-coaster shaped trend to my personal development content output based on my reoccurring and longish cycles of depression.

Basically when I am feeling groovy, I write lots of personal development stuff, but when I am going through a prolonged “dark night of the soul” my armchair-Zen-style blatherings tend to dry up (which is very inconvenient because it is quite a lucrative writing market for me when I have good momentum going).

Zen and the Art of Being Miserable?

When I am dark, I find it easy to keep writing music, because these are works of art that feel fully at home with states of mind of like depression, anxiety and paranoia. After all where would some of my favourite musicians like Nick Cave, Pink Floyd or Morrissey be without their “black dogs”?

All three parts of my meditation series are now online over at PickTheBrain.com. The articles are called “How Meditation Improves Your Health”.

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

By 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).

By Seamus Anthony

A long time ago in another head space, I wrote the the following:

“Everything is Appropriate

“Just as above you is the Macrocosm, a massive spiralling universe, far too huge to even idly comprehend, so too within you is a microcosm. This microcosm reaches and descends within you to the most finite level, and then beyond measurement. On top of this, every other ‘cosm’ of whatever size or description (a hair, another person, a distant star) has it’s own microcosm descending within, and it’s own perspective on the macrocosm in which it is suspended.

“So it is obvious from this that the concerns of a single human individual do not count for much at all. Yes, that’s right. The often harrowing emotional pain and terrible physical misfortunes that eventually befall all humans to some degree, mean not a blip to the massive universe as a whole. And then, to really push the point, if these issues are so insignificant in comparison to the universe that we know, consider then their significance in the larger macrocosms that our universe must surely be a minute part of…And so on……

… 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.

By Steven Mills

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.