Posts Tagged ‘personal development’

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”?

Read the rest of this entry »

By Seamus Anthony

Now that I have made the commitment to blogging here again, I have been pondering what this blog is actually about. To start with it was about “personal development”, “self-improvement” and “success” but I have never felt comfortable with any of these labels whatsoever.

I think I prefer to decide that this blog is about “Meaning”.

Why? Because that’s what we all need and crave in this life – Meaning – and big time.

It is my humble opinion that all of human activity, everything we do, is shaped and coloured by the fact that we are given life, wonder “why?”, get no answer and then have to die. This shaky sequence of events, facts and mystery is the foundation on which the entire human condition is built.

But Why?

The thing that sets us apart from the animals, as far as we know, is that we hit the age of 2 or 3 and suddenly we wonder: “Why?”

It’s like – all this stuff exists … ok … got my head around that …

… but why?

Why does it exist? Why is my Mummy so tall? Why am I eating potatoes? Why does the dog have black hair with a white stripe on his nose?

In fact (can you tell I have a 2.5 year old kid?) it is very interesting to follow the train of thought of a toddler and discover in this, the entire problem of “being human” – we just don’t know what it all means. (Some people think they do of course, but they have no precise way to verify their beliefs about meaning so it cannot be denied that they are anything more than conjecture.)

Here’s a hypothetical discussion with my 2 year old:

Daddy what are you doing?

I am working.

But why?

Because we need money.

But why?

Because if we don’t have money then we can’t buy food or clothes or toys.

But why?

Because this is the system that is set up, it’s called Capitalism.

But why?

Well, truly, I don’t know why Capitalism exists, probably because of all the systems they have tried, it is the one that seems to work, albeit far from perfectly.

But why?

Dunno – maybe because it is the system that most honestly addresses and mirrors human nature.

But why?

Because humans are by nature very concerned with getting things, with survival and with the pursuit of pleasure.

But why?

Because that’s how our brains are wired up – we chase pleasure and avoid pain and do our damndest to survive.

But why?

Because that’s just what animals do and we are animals.

But why?

But why are we animals? Well … because we just are. Nobody knows the answer to that question.

But why?

Because when you ask the question, you’ll never get an answer.

But why?

You’ll never know why you never get an answer to this either. We do not truly know why we exist and we never get an answer when we ask the question. It’s just a big, big mystery.

I wonder if you started with any question whether it would always come down to the eternal question that every human must ask and never get an answer to: Why?

So I guess that’s what this blog is about – it’s about the eternal, fruitless search for Meaning (yes, with a capital M) and what to do about that.

It’s not really about trying to sell you on an answer – because there is none. Rather, this blog is about finding ideas and ways to cope with the absence of Meaning, and to connect with others along the way – so please, drop me a line and say G’day!

By Seamus Anthony

I was just reading a blog post that explained something I kind of knew but hadn’t really thought about – that the old gatekeeper barriers (to a career in the creative arts, creative business, etc) that the Internet has famously blown away were only ever a smokescreen anyway and that the real barrier still exists – hard work, persistence, focus – all that tough stuff that we don’t wanna do a lot.

Just so happens that I was also just reminiscing with an old friend who I used to live with in the 90s and with whom I have recently made contact with again ala Facebook. We were talking about where the time goes and how did we get this “old” already so fast and I said something about how I wish I could time travel so I could go back and tell the very happy-go-lucky 26 year old me to get the fuck on with it and do some hard work (that mattered, as opposed to tending bars until 4:30am like a crazed go-bot for minimum wage).

Then the thought struck me that I CAN time-travel and that I SHOULD and that in fact it is VITAL to do so.

I can and should travel forward through time to when I am 46, then turn around and travel back through time to now and be the 46 year old me and tell the current 36 year old me to get the fuck on with it and do some hard work (that matters, as opposed to lazily doing cool shit like write the odd blog post, build the odd website and strum the odd guitar chord until 4:30pm before going in for a pre-dinner snack like a dazed slow-bot).

Do you get me? What I am saying is that when I am 46 I am potentially going to feel the same about me NOW as I do about me ten years ago – which is that it’s all very well and very nice but for God’s sake – there is SO much opportunity right now for those who work their arses off.

Don’t get me wrong: I am all for, you know, being all like, Zen but Hey! News Flash! Zen dudes work harder than, like, anyone, you know?

ok I do work pretty hard, but I can always work harder.

By Seamus Anthony

Do you find yourself confused as to what your main direction in life is? Do you find yourself exploring This and then That and then berating yourself because you reckon you should have spent that time working on One Major Purpose instead of allowing yourself to get distracted?

Well, if so, RELAX!

Maybe you aren’t wasting time at all!

Maybe – just maybe – you are in the process of creating something amazing and highly original by combining different concepts and fields into One New Thing – a new category even!

READ

Can’t see how this applies to you and your disparate interests? Well, then maybe you need to explore this concept a bit more. Some good books to read are “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin, “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Kim and R. Mauborgne and “The Medici Effect” by Frans Johansson. All great books about the importance and methods of creating extraordinarily original offerings.

DRAW

Another awesome method of seeing where the connections lie is mind-mapping. If you are such a tech-head that you need to, you can find software to help with this, but personally I prefer a pen and the back of an envelope – this way I just bang out the ideas in my head, explore the connections, and move on to doing some real work. I don’t recommend spending hours fluffing about with this kind of thing, because it’s not real work, but a quick mind-mapping sessions can certainly help when inspiration strikes – or when it doesn’t.

Fly in the Face of Convention

This concept of combining seemingly unrelated fields of endeavor into a new original category or offering can be difficult for others to understand if you try and spell it out to them as a hypothetical theory. For example, my (always evolving) offering involves combining original music, humour, writing, personal development and entrepreneurship into my One Thing, but unless it serves a purpose (such as to illustrate my point), I don’t try to get people to understand this ambitious plan. Why? Because …

A) I don’t need the let-down when people don’t get it (because it sounds ridiculous to them) and tell me I’m crazy.I know I’m crazy anyway – and I don’t give a fuck! I like it!

B) I don’t fully understand my One New Thing yet myself! It’s an ever-evolving exploration of Self, through which I hope to help others to realize their own True Nature and/or simply to enjoy living more.

C) Because you don’t have to be able to explain it as a theory. It’s just not necessary!

Have a look around and you will find that truly original Creators are Do-ers and tend to either not be very self-analytical, or if they are, they keep this to themselves and just get on with creating the Original Work.

Then what happens? Other, not-so-original thinkers come along, formularize the original innovations, and reproduce lame Robo-Creations that have no soul and are in every way inferior.

Case in point? Jimy Hendrix. Originality oozed out of the man’s pores; he was instincively unique. Since he blew everybody’s minds his style has been rehashed to the point where it is in itself a sanitized and overwrought cliche.

Don’t do the same old shit. Try harder! Combine your different interests and see what you can come up with! Analyse everything about yourself and find what it is that makes you You.

It’s not always easy, but actually being original, then working really hard at getting that “out there” is one of the major laws of success. Good luck!

By Seamus Anthony

If there is something you are truly shit scared of doing then I reckon that the best gift you can possibly give yourself is to step up to the plate and do it. But how do you get yourself off the couch and into the fire? Here’s a couple of personal examples of how I managed to confront my worst fears and come out reasonably unscathed.

Flying into the Face of Fear

Ok – so “feel the fear and do it anyway” has become one of many clichés in the Personal Development world, but nevertheless, like most clichés it contains a powerful truth. I have repeatedly found that if something is worth doing then it is probably going to be a bit scary. Why? Because it means stepping outside of your comfort zone and risking failure.

I can think of several occasions where this has been true for me: getting on an airplane to fly from Australia to Europe for example. Despite all the comforting statistics, my Taoist/Zen philosophies and my deep breathing techniques, I still hate flying and the longer the flight the more jittery I get. Nevertheless, it meant a hell of a lot to me to see Ireland, the country of my immediate ancestry and France, my wife’s country of birth, so I got on the damn plane and strapped myself in. The failure I was scared of was fairly remote (crashing) but like most fear, rational thinking had nothing to do with it. I was shitting bricks for months in advance and had repetitive nightmares (about falling out of a disintegrating airplane hull and down through the air to wind up bobbing about in a burning sea waiting to drown) in the weeks leading up to and during the trip away.

Well, suffice to say, the plane didn’t crash, although it did seem likely at one point. We were flying over the Himalayas and the old bird relentlessly shook and bumped like a bronco for three hours while lightning strikes outside briefly illuminated grim stewardesses faces, their South-East Asian complexions looking decidedly pale and disconcerted. Meanwhile my wife, who isn’t scared of flying – just of apparently imminent and genuine catastrophes – was sobbing uncontrollably into my lap about how she didn’t want to die this way.

That bit wasn’t so cool, but apart from that I enjoyed the trip immensely. If I hadn’t gone the pain of the real failure would have slowly have eaten away at me. Some opportunities you just have to take, not to do so would just lead to future dissatisfaction and remorse – and this would have been the real failure.

How To Puke and Shit at the Same Time

The airplane journey from Hell was a couple of years ago now, but just yesterday I confronted another fear and transmuted it into achievement: I stood up in front of a large crowd and delivered 5 minutes of my own original stand-up comedy material.

The reason I decided to do so was twofold. Firstly, I am a solo singer/songwriter and after many years of hit-and-miss banter between songs, ranging from brilliantly executed comedic genius to embarrassing, lame nervous mumbling, I have long desired to get my act together to the point where the bits between the songs are as reliably entertaining as the songs themselves. Secondly, I just love stand-up comedy so, so much and I have been writing my own material for a couple of years and secretly coveting this particular flavour of the limelight – after all, I know I am a funny guy, I just get too many laughs out of people to doubt this. So why not?

I’ll tell you why not … because cracking your mates up with spontaneous one-liners and standing up on stage delivering quality (funny) stand-up comedy are two very different things. I didn’t even need to have done any stand-up to know this is true – it’s just a well known fact. And making a mug of myself in front of rows of un-amused faces just scared the willies out of me.

So for years I avoided acting on it, but as part of my renewed commitment to my live music show this year, I decided it was time to bite the bullet. So I signed up (in a fit of bravado) online for the annual Raw comedy competition here in Melbourne, Australia. (Home of the International Melbourne Comedy Festival, Melbourne is an awesome place for live stand-up comedy.)

As the event drew closer I began to wonder if I should just call up and drop out. But no, I didn’t. Not because I am particularly brave but because the true extent of the fear I was going to have to face just wasn’t kicking in yet. Unlike long plane flights, I don’t get that nervous in advance of stage performing, mainly because I have been getting up and singing in public since I was eighteen (so that’s nearly half my life). But, I do get quite nervous the night before and all during the day of the event and I knew I would be super-nervous before this because of that fact that when it comes to stand-up comedy, quite obviously, I had no idea what I was doing. I was (and still am) a complete comedy noob.

Watching other people do something doesn’t prepare you for doing something. Reading “how to” books about doing something doesn’t prepare you for doing something. The only thing that prepares you is having a go and getting some experience under your belt.

Two weeks out from the event I realised that if I didn’t start preparing soon then I was a dead duck. But the trouble was I wasn’t sure where to rehearse. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it at home on front of my wife and child, and I wasn’t about to shell out to hire a rehearsal room so I found a novel solution. I have been in the unenviable position lately of having to drive into the city between two and four times a week (for work). This drive takes me about an hour in the traffic, and everyday I see people apparently talking to themselves in other cars. I presume they are talking to people on speaker-phone into their cell phones. So, I figured, if I were to be practicing my stand-up routine aloud in the car to myself as I fly down the highway at 100 kilometers an hour, other drivers would probably assume I was just another tosser using his mobile phone on the go. Perfect!

After nearly two weeks, I had a routine that I hoped was good memorized, but I hadn’t yet bothered to time it. Often I would actually stop for a few seconds while I was running through it in order to concentrate on driving (it wouldn’t be very funny if I crashed while cracking funnies to myself now would it … or would it?). So I decided the time had come to go out to my bungalow office and put up with the fact that my wife and my neighbours could probably hear me and run through the routine with a stopwatch.

It came to 12 minutes! Whoops – the competition only gives each contestant 5 minutes each – and unlike the music business where people just tend to do little more than complain privately about stage-hogs who go over their allotted timeframe, in the comedy world you get a very blunt “fuck you” in the form of a red light in your face, followed shortly by loud music and a dead microphone should you fail to take the first hint!

So I went through the material and chopped it ruthlessly back to five minutes. Trouble was I had been over and over this stuff so much without any audience feedback that I had little idea if I was cutting out the funny stuff or not. I would just have to wait and see on that one.

The big day arrived, and although my wife (a classic ‘shrinking violet’) was apparently catatonic with fear, I felt ok. A little highly strung perhaps, but apart from a few truly non-Zen moments, I was cool … or so I thought.

It was an afternoon gig, and as I drove into town to face the music (although strangely not literally for once) I ran over my material one more time for good luck. Suddenly I was struck with a terror powerful enough to stop a nation. As far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing funny about the useless drivel I had been rambling on about to myself over the past two weeks, and it would be best for everyone if I just turned the car around and went home and got really drunk by myself in the dirty gap under the house.

But no, fool that I am, I continued on. I walked into the venue and, as it was a first round heat of a competition, there were about twenty other wanna-be’s there for a briefing. I felt relieved that nothing the organisers had to say was disconcertingly new to me. Do your five minutes and get off basically. Not a problem. Then the doors opened and as I sat there waiting for my friend to rock up and hold my hand, it was just me and a bunch of gloomy, sweaty-palmed hopefuls sitting around, trying to avoid eye contact and sipping on beers a little too fast. It was very similar to the atmosphere in a plane shortly before take-off. Actually (minus actual screaming, I suppose) this was more like the atmosphere in a plane, shortly after take off, in which the captain has announced that he’s a lunatic terrorist and intends to fly the plane really fast into something really hard.

I truly didn’t care about winning the competition, I just wanted to do the gig, remember my lines, and hopefully get a few laughs, nevertheless the nerves began to play major havoc, especially when actual people began pouring through the doors in disturbingly large numbers. I had imagined a tiny crowd of about twenty other funny guys and their girlfriends, but obviously others in the line-up were not so shy of inviting their entire Facebook friends list along to the gig! Fuck!

Crunch Time…

(…”crunch” being the sound my balls make when they voluntarily compress together in an attempt to form a new black hole to suck me into in order to save me from hideous embarrassment and a life of bitter regret…)

Once I had watched about two contestants be really, really good (funny) and two others really, truly woeful, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to puke or shit or both at the same time.

Then my moment came, they called my name out over the pumping music, the applause still continuing from the act before and I was walking up the stairs to hit the stage.

How it went isn’t important, or maybe I am just saying that because it didn’t go fantastically well. Not that I can remember it very clearly. I don’t know about other performers, but my time on stage is usually all a vague blur to me as soon as it is over and the more nervous I am the more this is true.

I certainly wasn’t the funniest there on the day, not by a long shot, but I did get a few laughs here and there. That’ll do me for starters.

I didn’t forget my lines, but I went so fast due to extreme nervousness that I ended up reinstating some of the material I had axed. Really what I should have done (and I knew it at the time but just couldn’t seem to find the brakes) was slow down and give the jokes some air.

I discovered just how fucking horrible it is when you crack a joke and nobody laughs … and I felt the sweet, sweet relief when people did. I spontaneously dropped in a couple of ad-libbed moments, and to my surprise they got the biggest laughs. I don’t think this was because the jokes were better, but because they didn’t come out sounding scripted, which, to my detriment, the pre-prepared stuff did (but that’s the key to stand up, apparently, appearing spontaneous when delivering tightly scripted material).

Oh, and I didn’t get through to the next heat, but I really didn’t care about this. Why? Because I know for a fact that many of Australia’s most successful comedians didn’t make it through their heat in this long-running competition, and they made it anyway. How? Well, I don’t know but I can hazard a guess: persistence and hard-work. Or maybe they knew who to sleep with, I dunno…

I went home that night happy that I had faced my fear and rode it through. And I went home determined to do it again, and again, until I get better at it and can relax up there in the (incredibly bright) glare of the spotlight and just ramble away like I do when I am cracking up my mates.

So how do I suggest you face your fears and do it anyway? Well, just make the initial commitment and then get ready for the ride. Buy your plane ticket, book your spot on stage, or lock yourself in for whatever it is you want to do. Then, when the time comes, – - just do it.

…and you don’t even need a new pair of Nikes.

Photo by Fluzo

OK so my last post was a bit hardcore, but it was meant to be. I wanted it to be a short, sharp, unexpected shock.

Why? Because I don’t want Rebel Zen to be just another blog. In fact, Steve and I do not intend Rebel Zen to just be a blog but something much more multi-faceted than that.

We have both of us had a break from regular posting in order to refresh and now I think we are ready to come back to Rebel Zen with a fresh perspective for 2009. And no, it’s not going to turn into a ‘doom and gloom’ activist blog BUT we are hoping to shake up the personal development scene as best we can – to confound expectation. That’s why it’s ‘Rebel’ Zen not ‘Feel Good Zen’, y’know?

What I am interested in is how can we move boundaries around and mix the idea of a personal development brand with activism, with art-for-art’s-sake, with music, with offline ‘real world’ happenings, and with whatever else we want to throw into the mix. And importantly – how can we make this something about ACTION not just IDEAS – because ideas are fantastic but without action they are just puffs of smoke on the breeze.

So yes, life is wonderful; we have the opportunity to jump on the back of life and ride it like an untamed stallion. It might not always go the way we want it to, but if we work with it then we just may find it leads us to water.

Yin, Yang and The Underlying Whole

The juxtaposition between ‘Life is fucked’ and Life is wonderful’ is the Yin Yang model at work. This model, so often co-opted and turned into a cliche, is an incredibly powerful concept (or rather underlying fact of existence) which, true to its own nature, is at once so simple and so complex that I find it hard to write about the mind-splitting ruminations I have had about its fundamental importance. I’d like to explore this some more this year.

And underlying the opposites of Yin and Yang is the Tao which is complete and all-inclusive. Represented by a simple circle, the Yin Yang model fits into it and is embraced by the Tao. And so as MonkMojo said in the comments under the last post:

“Reality contains the fucked, non-fucked and an infinite number of fucked flavors in between. It is complete. ”

This is truth. But nevertheless, this kind of psycho-babble may be of little help to you if you are having a hard time of it right now because sometimes when you are going through Hell, it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. To help with this, in the next post, I will go through some practical ways to experience less of the ‘fucked’ and more of the ‘wonderful’.

Stay tuned and meanwhile, here’s to 2009! May it be wonderful!

Seamus Anthony

Photo of laughing girls by A4gpa

How’s that for a positive “personal development” message?

But it’s true; life on Earth is actually pretty fucked up.

We live on an insane planet full of misery, illness and evil. Right now millions of people are dying of horrible illness, injuries caused by accidents, crime and war or they are starving to death. They are starving to death because of “man’s inhumanity to man”, in other words they are dying because those in power are too evil and selfish to do the right thing.

People, often innocent women and children, are terrified, injured and/or dying because of war. Stop and think for a minute what war is, how truly insane and disgusting it is: Governments sending armed soldiers (usually under-educated, immature men who have been encouraged to act like savages) with high-tech weaponry to tear other people’s flesh, to smash heads and bodies in a splatter of gore, to put other people through massive, unbearable agony, burning, disfiguring, severing limbs – babies, children, women, men. The horror is so hard to face up to, so easy to ignore and yet so real for a great number of people.

“Disgusting”, you mutter – but ask yourself this: did you vote for a government that willingly sanctioned this kind of behaviour? Even Obama, while I am more than happy to give him the benefit of the doubt (God knows we could use a saviour) is, unfortunately, more than likely to give the green light to acts of barbarism and violence at some point in his reign.

You Were Never Asked If You Wanted To Be Here

Think about it. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of life, that we were squeezed out of our mother’s wombs only to discover sooner or later that we landed in a world of pain and suffering, some unnecessary, but ultimately unavoidable.

And for what purpose? Nobody knows. Some claim to know, but truly, nobody has a clue why we exist.

And we don’t exist for very long either. If you’re in your twenties, then I’ve got news for you: in the blink of an eye you’ll be in your mid-thirties and you’ll be wondering where the hell all that endless time went as life forces you to work and work and work and work…

So there it is, we all live pointless, doomed lives, and before you and your loved ones eventually die, you will no doubt experience suffering to some extent – most likely by painful, drawn-out illness.

So What Are You Going To Do About That?

That’s my point: Life is precious so what are you going to do with it?

And what are you going to do about all the extra, needless and easily avoidable suffering that evil people and corrupt systems add to the heap on top of the unavoidable sufferings of life? And this question goes for me too because – mark my words – I am as guilty of selfishness and inaction as the next guy.

What are you going to do? Fiddle with another wordpress widget while precious time slips away and while children watch their parents maimed and murdered? Write another top-ten-ways-to-hit-the-front-page-of-Digg while parents watch their children die of curable diseases because drug companies are too profit-driven to reach out and help? Watch another episode of Law and Order when you could be letting your light shine and inspiring people to build a better world?

These are the realities I am facing up to in 2009. What about you? Because soon my friend, you and I will be dead – and what if we ARE held accountable at the end? Will we hang our heads in shame? At this point I still believe that I would, and given the fact that death can come at any time, I know that I need to change this about myself and get moving.

It’s time to mobilize, people! Get busy!

By Seamus Anthony

By Seamus Anthony

Have you noticed a shift in the personal development world lately?

I have, and I know I’m not alone. I believe there’s a quiet movement on the rise that straddles both the worldly “success” field and the spiritual “enlightenment” field.

We’re a movement of connected individuals who DO want powerful tools for personal advancement in this life – but aren’t about to buy into the “bleached teeth and power suit” cliche of the “Wow! Transform Your Life and Get Rich Instantly!” variety.

We’re a movement of connected individuals who DO want to find lasting inner peace and happiness (which is – the way I see it anyway – all enlightenment really is) but who scoff at the idea of the “all-knowing” guru. And we’d rather give the “dolphins and rainbows” aesthetic a miss too, thanks very much.

Choose to Cruise

Example: While there will always be those who worship productivity, and who will run around trying to find systems to leverage their every moment, there is a new movement of those of us who have tried all that shit and have come to the conclusion that it is truly better to just “flow with the Tao”. That doesn’t mean we don’t try and get awesome things done, but it does mean that we don’t invite complexity (even complexity disguised as “simple systems”) into our lives. And we don’t live in a panic, trying to cram so much into our day that we are perpetually stressed out.

Instead we ‘choose to cruise’. We figure out what the few most productive actions we can get done every day are and we Keep It Simple Stupid.

We value the moment. The moment is all we have and we know it. And a moment spent scratching your dog’s ear is no less well spent than a moment spent pummeling away doing the grunt work needed to get something done. I just stopped typing for a moment and looked out the window from my office. My office is a bungalow in my back yard, and my back yard is in the temperate rainforest hills outside of Melbourne, Australia. It’s spring and tiny insects are frolicking, diving and chasing each other through the warm afternoon air. Kookaburras are laughing and there are flowers everywhere.

I may have a to-do list as long as my arm but I’d be a fool not to stop and take all that in.

Sure, we get things done, but if it doesn’t get done on time, it’s not the the end of it the world. Why? Because we have perspective – we are fully aware that we are going to die one day – could be tomorrow even – and once we’re dead, all the glory and money and even the work itself will fade away and become nothing. Even Shakespeare will be a nobody one day and a time will come when Jesus, Mohamed and Buddha are forgotten relics of the past. So the chances of the good work we are doing lasting for ever are nil. Nothing lasts for ever, so why get all bent up out of shape about things?

That’s just one example of what I see as a shifting consciousness amongst those at the ground level of the personal development movement – i.e. the actual people who are developing. It’s not about all those bloody cheeseballs in the Secret DVD, nor is it some “amazing discovery” coming top-down at you from Anthony Robbins or whoever. I mean these people are probably lovely in their own right, but what they represent, or the way they try to sell to us, is off-base and losing relevance fast.

Step Off Dudes

I could go on all night, but I’ve got a lovely family to hang out with and I’m hungry, so I won’t. But if you resonate with what I’ve typed here today, with what is written throughout this blog, and more importantly, with what you are reading and hearing and seeing from other blogs and just from people you meet, then you should know that your time is now.

Our time is now. Let’s do it, in our own laid back way mind you, but let’s do it. Let’s stand up and say to the George Bush’s and Sarah Palin’s of this world “Step off dudes, you’ve got it all wrong.”

And if the Wicketty-Wak Ones question who you are to stand up to them, feel free to say “I’m a Rebel Zen Master, my friend, who are you?”

That’ll give ‘em something to think about

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By Steve Mills

Mystery makes the world go around. The only reason you are reading this article, and not checking your facebook or twitter profiles is that you don’t know how it is going to end. When things get predictable people tend to lose interest and look elsewhere.

When you get down to the fine detail and study life closely, Mystery is the animating force of the world, the reason why every man and woman gets up in the morning, has breakfast and steps out into the wild crazy world.

The search for meaning and answers behind the events of your life is fueled by your innate curiosity. Curiosity is a force so powerful that it sets the direction of our civilization and species, fills the wallets of gossip magazine publishers and drives people to continue to search for answers against great odds.

You only need to look at prime time TV, with its wall-to-wall crime shows and detective dramas to see the popularity of people searching for the unknown. Do people like the blood, the gore, the tales of tragedy? Some do perhaps, but most glue their eyeballs to the screen 4 nights a week because they are addicted to the idea of mystery.

The Seeker

Most spiritual and personal development seekers start out on journeys of self improvement and inner reflection with the best intentions, looking for truth and insight wherever it appears to be available.

It soon becomes apparent that there is a huge amount of people willing to share their answers with you. Some will give them to you for free, other want you to buy it from them, and of course there are others that will give you their version in exchange for the sane, rational part of your brain. There are simple answers, complex answers, mantras that explain the universe in a single Sanskrit sentence, through to multi-layered pantheons and metaphysical systems.

Some people will get sick of the searching, and go for a “quick fix, one answer fits all” approach to life, which could take the form of joining an organized religion, buying the full $30,000 training package from the personal development guru or becoming a strict and unwavering atheist.

Others will become disillusioned with the search altogether and fall back into old patterns, exchanging the path of awakening for a lifetime of being asleep. For them the seeking is a painful experience, something that must be accomplished or they have somehow failed. They are always looking for that missing part of themselves out there in the world.

Some people think that once you become enlightened, suddenly the answers to all of the questions of the universe are revealed. The true wisdom (or at least my version of it) is in fact the exact opposite. It is the idea that the truth may never be found, but it is in the seeking and searching where the realities of life, the universe and the contents of your inner world become visible.

I tend to search and read and meditate without the need to lock down a certain fact as being true. Once you get to the stage where the answers are no longer important, the search becomes pure joy, it is truly the stuff of being alive. You embrace the fact that you don’t know everything, and will never know everything. There is always another perspective to every situation.

A lot of the things that I once considered true have revealed themselves in my life to be false, and vice versa, so that I can safely assume that any of my beliefs could be thrown on their heads in the very next instance.

OPEN AND AWARE MIND

An open but aware mind is the key. With a developed skill of discernment you can separate the wheat from the chaff (or use another less polite euphemism) and take every “answer” and truth provided to you with a grain of salt, knowing that only via the power of direct experience should you take anything for a truth.

By living this way you can use the perpetual mystery to propel you through life. To always seek new experiences and adventures, to truly experience an enlightened state by seeing everything in the world through fresh eyes, like that of a new born child. Once you realize that every experience in life is unique, and that most of your truths are really just preconditioned assumptions then the everydayness of your life takes on a life of its own.

You are not searching for something outside yourself to complete something that is missing, but marveling at the strange place we call our lives, with all its hidden subtleties and whack-you-over-the-head realities.

By keeping your sense of mystery and wonder at the universe, you continue to feel alive inside.

The answers are the boring part; it’s the journey that is the thing of value. The journey to understanding and wisdom is the thing that can’t be bottled, packaged or put into a 10 stage seminar program. That is the true gold of the eternal quest of the spiritual seeker.

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.

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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.