Paddle Your Own Boat
Paddling downstream means spending one’s life working on the one thing we can change-ourselves.
Healing the Mind - Body Split
I’m suggesting that you examine your emotional list, and discover what you’re clinging to.
Emotions, in and of themselves, do not mean anything. Thoughts, in and of themselves, do not mean anything. You are not your thoughts, and you are not your emotions.
Emotions & Thoughts are things you have, not things that you are.
Letting go of clinging is all about detaching from identifying with these internal processes.
Undoing Trauma’s Knots
There’s no question that in every life, stuff happens. Some of the stuff that happens is really, really uncomfortable. Some of it even qualifies as a full-blown trauma.
It’s important to recognize that my goal here is never to diminish or negate the traumatic experiences that you have experienced. However, healing and moving on requires one thing.
You must learn that trauma is one real moment in time. Thus, a trauma does not go on.
What can go on is imagining (and suffering over) this past event.
Live Fearlessly - 7 Tips
Many people wish to put their fears aside and to create and live a full and elegant life. In Zen, we say this is simple, as in “Simply Sit.” Or, “Pay attention!” Or, “Wake up!”
The point of these little aphorisms is to bring living into the present moment.
Fearful living disables our ability to act in the here and now. Of course, when you think about it, the fear is totally internal. I fear what I am imagining might happen, and therefore am standing still doing nothing, or doing what I always do.
Fearless living is not reckless. It is both present and prepared. It also recognizes this fundamental truth:
All you can control is the action, not the outcome.
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A Lesson About Growing Up
Many of my clients are “Boomers,” and many of them are ’squeezed’ between their living parents and their kids. I want to frame what I’m about to show you with this: The goal of parenting is to raise your kids to be independent adults—and the age of independence is 18-20. That this is not happening is terrifying.
Always has been, always will be.
The joy of non-duality
All interpretations are the same. Sensory data comes in, and you interpret it and give it a meaning. In other words, if you see a box, and say, “It’s a small box,” the “real” part is the box. Small is relative, as it means, “Small, compared to…” The box does not have “small” as a characteristic—it is not a part of its nature. Small (red, rough, etc.) are descriptors you have added. The same is so for your internal interpretations. (Nice, cold, angry, bad, good, fat, smart, stupid, etc.) Interpretations made in your head about someone are not ‘true.’ They’re just your stories.
Zen Based, Present Living
