Sub­scribers to this BLOG can now down­load 3 of my e-books, absolutely free. I’m not sure if this is a “for­ever” thing.
If you look at the top of the e-mail ver­sion of this BLOG, sub­scribers have a link to the free e-books.

If you know any­one who would ben­e­fit from my e-books, and ben­e­fit from this BLOG, send them to: http://www.phoenixcentre.com/cgi-bin/prolinkz/pl.cgi?free

So, today’s post is going to be a sort of “State of the Union” mes­sage, as we have some stuff com­ing up, and I wanted to talk about all of it.

Help, please!

On to the News

First of all, I’m doing a tele-seminar / webi­nar thingie.

I’ll be online and on the phone, talk­ing about how to iden­tify and change your thought patterns—how to shift from auto-pilot to Sim­ple Pres­ence. There will be a free, one hour sem­i­nar on Wednes­day, May 27, start­ing at 5 Pacific, 8 East­ern time. There will be 4 addi­tional one hour sem­i­nars, on the fol­low­ing 4 Wednes­days, same time. You’ll learn the details on the May 27^th call, but broadly, I’ll be dis­cussing the acronym NAIL–Noticing, Accept­ing, Inte­grat­ing, and Let­ting Go.

Here’s the promo text for the event:

It has been said that life is 10% action and 90% reac­tion. How are your reac­tions in your life serv­ing you?

This Could Be Your A-HA Moment

What if…

* you could dis­con­nect your auto-response mech­a­nism and live with full aware­ness, pres­ence and intention?

* you were always act­ing with your high­est and best self in mind?

* your mind was con­stantly filled with lov­ing thoughts?

* you could instantly rem­edy unde­sir­able states of being?

Are you ready to move “Beyond Beliefs” and rethink a new life for yourself?

Are you will­ing to com­mit to notic­ing your think­ing and ques­tion­ing your thoughts?

Are you will­ing to let go of the wor­ries that are out of your con­trol and accept what you can­not change?

If you are inter­ested in mak­ing a last­ing pos­i­tive change in your life, please join Ther­a­pist, “Sim­ple Zen Guy,” and Author, Wayne C. Allen for a FREE tele­sem­i­nar and web­cast hosted by TheSelfHelpSchool.com on Wednes­day May 27, 2009 at 8PM ET, 5PM PT. We will dis­cuss the for­ma­tion of self-responsibility through explo­ration of how we cre­ate our lives.

Please click here for more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event. Reserve your space now as space is limited!

We look for­ward to work­ing with you at the Teleseminar!

PS. For­ward this email to any­one who could use a change in their lives because there will be many A-HA!s dur­ing this call.

My New Book is Progressing

My new book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall, is out for review, and we still think we’ll have it avail­able in June, or the begin­ning of July at the lat­est. I’ve picked June 15 as a tar­get date, but a lot depends on the review­ers. I want to include their com­ments in the book, and the turn around on that is a cou­ple of weeks.

Today, I want to share the cover with you, and to thank Den­nis (Boo­gie Jack) Gaskill for the design. Den­nis is a friend—we’ve writ­ten back and forth for a cou­ple of years, he’s read my stuff, and has always been gen­er­ous with com­ments and sug­ges­tions. I hap­pened to men­tion the new book to him, and he offered to work up some cover designs. He donated his time and ser­vices, and I’m so grate­ful. It’s a great cover!

To whet your appetite, here’s the Intro of the new book. I’ll be post­ing sam­ple sec­tions over the next few weeks, too!

Intro­duc­tion

Back in 2005, my book, This End­less Moment, was pub­lished. Fairly quickly after that, I thought about writ­ing the next one. In This End­less Moment, I wrote from a West­ern per­spec­tive about sev­eral core con­cepts that related to sim­ple pres­ence and liv­ing. In this book, I am play­ing around with East­ern views of these same concepts.

I want to encour­age you to step back from West­ern cul­ture and belief sys­tems, for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son other than to give you a chance to air out your mind. This is meant to be like walk­ing around a statue. The front and the back may seem dif­fer­ent, but it is the same statue, seen from a dif­fer­ent perspective.

Ulti­mately, my wish is that you expand your reper­toire regard-ing how you choose to view, under­stand, and live your life. This book will sug­gest a moment-by-moment path to deeper, commit-ted, and pur­pose­ful living.

While you will see Zen sto­ries, quotes from the Tao Te Ching, core Bud­dhist teach­ings, and mate­r­ial from the Bhagavad-Gita, this is not a Zen, Taoist, Hindu, or Bud­dhist sales pitch. I am not declar­ing what you are read­ing to be right, or cor­rect. What I do know is that I have tested the con­cepts that I write about, and have found them to be ‘so’ in my own life. I write, as always, from the class-room of my own experience.

I invite you to join me, to eval­u­ate what you read with a crit­i­cal eye, and to exper­i­ment with the con­cepts pre­sented. The Bud­dha said,

“Believe noth­ing, no mat­ter where you read it, or who said it, no mat­ter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own rea­son and your own com­mon sense.”

In this book, my over­ar­ch­ing frame­work is the Zen per­spec­tive. I have made use of old, old Zen sto­ries, as well as new Zen tales that come from my expe­ri­ence with life, with Dar­bella, with fam­ily, friends, and clients. If you are new to these East­ern sto­ries, you might at first strug­gle with mak­ing sense of the plot or point. If you are famil­iar with some of the sto­ries, you may find your inter­pre­ta­tion of the story’s mean­ing dif­fers from mine. In either case, hold what you read lightly, let­ting thoughts play in the depths of your mind and heart. I claim no author­ity over meanings—this book is sim­ply a light-hearted invi­ta­tion to loosen your grip on your inter­pre­ta­tions, thoughts, and actions.

We can dis­cover the essence of Zen in the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion (zazen) and con­tem­pla­tion (effort­ful mind­ful­ness, or con­cen­tra­tion.) In the still­ness that arises, our nor­mal busy­ness, analy­sis, and ‘monkey-mind’ (jump­ing from one thought to another) can fade into the back­ground, as another, per­haps more inter­est­ing essence floats to the sur­face. In this empty still­ness is great depth, insight, and wis­dom, none of which has much to do with think­ing, rea­son­ing, or being ‘wise.’ We dis­cover the realm of sim­ple pres­ence in the end­less flow of Now.

This realm is where the mys­tery of us—of we ‘mere humans’—becomes less cloudy. As we bring our­selves into the dis­ci­pline of still­ness and Empti­ness, our dra­mas, excuses, eva­sions, and lack of integrity begins to dis­si­pate. We find our­selves, find­ing our­selves. Para­dox­i­cally, our find­ing reveals that there is no one, any­where, to find.

In the Tao, we read, “If you mould a cup you have to make a hol­low; it is the Empti­ness within it that makes it use­ful.” This con­cept of look­ing into Empti­ness is a for­eign one in the West, where exter­nals, looks, pos­ses­sions, and score­cards of var­i­ous forms and stripes are the way we define our­selves. Yet, if we are to progress, look we must—into the Empti­ness that gives form meaning.

Walk with me, then, into the depths of life, into the heights of who we are, and into the swirl and flow of the chi of life. In the still­ness, there is both peace and presence.

This book is divided into sections.

In the First Sec­tion, we have a look at Zen liv­ing as it is reflect-ed in Tra­di­tional Zen Sto­ries. What I write is not intended to be seen as the only, sin­gle, or even cor­rect expla­na­tion of each story. Rather, I am shar­ing what arose for me as I related to the story.

In the Sec­ond Sec­tion, I present some Zen sto­ries of my own, com­plete with hints as to their mean­ing for me. I urge you to read them and con­coct your own meaning.

In the Third Sec­tion, I present for your con­sid­er­a­tion the utter­ings of a 20^th cen­tury Zen Mas­ter, Yogi Berra.

In the Fourth Sec­tion, we explore liv­ing in a new way, as we re-late in open­ness, clar­ity, and integrity.

Enjoy.

Lastly, Here’s a Call for Suggestions

I’ve had sev­eral requests for rela­tion­ship help, in the form of a new book. I’ve been play­ing around with this, try­ing out for­mats in my head. A cou­ple of days ago, I thought, “Why not ask read­ers for rela­tion­ship questions?”

I’m think­ing that the book could be in ques­tion / answer for­mat, and the top­ics could be about any­thing rela­tional – com­mu­ni­ca­tion, sex­u­al­ity and sen­su­al­ity, con­flict man­age­ment, keep­ing the rela­tion­ship alive—whatever.

So, please, if you have ideas or ques­tions that would fit this for­mat, send them to me at wcallen (at) rogers (dot) com. You know how to turn that into a proper e-mail address. Or, use the form, here:

http://www.phoenixcentre.com/info.htm