Posts Tagged ‘yin yang’

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

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 Steve Mills

Many eastern spiritual texts put forward the idea that you must learn to have a full awareness of your whole self. While our self looks like it is an integrated whole from one level, scratch the surface (via meditation or other methods of self-enquiry) and you will find a whole heap of different parts of your personality, all striving to express themselves. The one that stands out the most initially is the Ego, the self-important, self-centric aspect of our personality . The ego (which is a modern western psychological term I might add) has been given a fairly bad rap in the modern “new age” scene.

image by Swiss Bones

Somewhere along the way, our Western minds have turned this into the ridiculous notion that to be happy you must get rid of, or even completely destroy the ego.

My own personal experience has brought me to a different understanding. I believe that there is no reason to destroy what is essentially a part of yourself. The real power is in learning to integrate this and all of the other interesting and unique parts of your personality into a functioning whole.

People go through life without a second thought to the idea that there are separate parts of their self, which manifest themselves at different times and in different situations. The ego is just one of these parts, the one that thinks that it is separate from the rest of creation, and that IT is the most important thing in the known Universe.

And quite frankly, it is good to have this instinct kick in from time to time. It stops you getting walked all over, gives you the confidence to claim your place in the world and also to create and express yourself. Knowing that YOU are you, what your place in the world is has a profound importance to our whole selves. But it also has a negative side of selfishness, aggressive behavior and helping us justify doing things that may not always work out best for everybody involved.

The image that makes the concepts more tangible for me is the Yin-Yang. Your personality is in constant flux, and each part must be in harmony with the other for balance. The Ego, or separate, selfish self must be brought into balance with your quiet, inner, calm, connected observer self. Let one part express itself too much and you become overbearing, self-important and obtuse. Too much of the other and you become meek, mild and can have no meaningful interaction with the outside world.

Hey, and don’t get too beat up if you find yourself acting like a complete tool from time to time. Seriously, everyone does it!

DYNAMIC balance means that even though you may find yourself at one end of the Ego scale, you have the self awareness to bring yourself down to a centered state at the appropriate time.

Of course it is not as clear cut as all that, and these are only arbitrary labels that we have placed on very strange and complex phenomena. But at least it gives you a framework to get our talking monkey-brains around and be able to see where all of the pieces fit in.

So in order to address this all important balance, here are my top 5 strategies to keep your ego in proportion.

1 Realise your size in proportion to the universe

When it comes down to it, you are a tiny speck on a tiny speck, floating in a vast sea of nothing more giant and unfathomable then you could ever get your head around. The very notion that what you do on a daily basis affects things at the scales that really seem to matter in the universe is wishful thinking gone crazy. As Seamus put it in his excellent “Looking through the wrong end of the telescope“: You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Anything.

The liberation and true freedom of insignificance is yours to grasp at any time. When the ego gets up and starts jumping up and down about its importance, just keep this fact in mind to bring it all back to perspective.

2 Realise that you are where you are only through the help of others

The network of other people you build up around you in friends, co-workers, family and neighbors is one of the most fundamental assets in life. Think that you have accomplished so much in your life? Sure, a lot was done by you, but there is no way anyone could get anything done without the help, co-operation and support of people around them. All of life is a team exercise.

3 Understand that everyone is just as important as you

A lot of the ego’s jumping up and down, complaining and self importance is because it believes it is more important than ANYONE else in the world. You know why so many people in traffic jams start getting irate and honking their horns? It is because each of those people think their journey is more important than the person in front of them. Next time you feel the anger and indignation that the ego fires up when it feels like it is being threatened, just remind yourself that everyone, and everything is just as important as you in the universe. No more, and no less.

4 Realise the inherent impermanence in all things

As I stated before in the “Impermanence Top 40“, today’s front page news is tomorrow’s forgotten fact. So many events in our life that the Ego blows up into monumental proportions seem trivial the next day, and are forgotten next week. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing remains in the same state as it is now for even a second. Strive for your goals, and enjoy the journey. But realise that everything is just a castle in the sand, to be washed out to sea by the waves of time.

5 Realise that humour is the true currency of the universe.

Just about anything in life has a funny side to it, when looked at from a certain perspective. The greatest way to disarm the Ego is to see the inherent humour in everything. When we laugh, we see the connectedness of things, the joy in everyday life and realise that the world is not such a serious place after all.

Humour is all about connectedness, it shows us how previously unthought-of concepts are connected in unexpected ways. It connects us to others in the shared experience of having a laugh and goofing off for a while. Next time you find yourself acting from ego, have a laugh.