Form is emptiness, emptiness is form
Wer like to believe that things are unchanging, fixed, immovable. You hear people say, “I’ll always love you.” “That will never happen.” “I only want to be happy.” (That last one should be put, “I want to be happy only.”) And yet, emptiness is the rule, as everything is impermanent, changing. That’s what’s up with the client, above. Her partner changed, and she decided she didn’t like it. Yet, change is the essential makeup of existence.
Letting go of Assumptions
The first 16 years is all about what I call the “Ego Project.” It is important to note that the personal ego created in this process is self-aware but not self-reflective. I know that I am I, but I do not really know who ‘I’ am.
You Can’t Win
It’s an odd one, how many people think that the reason something they are doing doesn’t work is that they aren’t trying hard enough. Or, they think that, with a little extra persuasion (from me, from their partner, from their doctor or some other authority figure,) the non-working thing will magically shift.
Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t work because it’s the wrong approach!
Seeing the Light
It takes both courage and persistence to change what does not and has never worked into something that does work. This is radically different from what I see a lot of. People expecting others to change so they can be happy, for example. Then they learn a few skills and find better ways to talk, but the message is the same: “I expect you to change, or the world to change. I have all my beliefs and affirmations in place, and here I sit, waiting.”
Dropping the Excuses
The Buddha said some variant of, “All that you are is a product of what you have thought.” He meant that how we think determines our self-identity and our view of the world. It’s not the ‘right’ view, but rather how we frame our reality. Once we get the joke that the frame is warped by our perceptions, we can have a laugh and let it go.
Putting Your Soul into your Being
It seems to me that life in the 21st century has been dumbed down and cheapened. Perhaps more so than ever before, people are fixated on buying happiness at any cost, and then depressing themselves when what they bought doesn’t have any lasting effect. The solution: Simple Presence as a Spiritual Discipline
Zen Based, Present Living
