The Lessons of Forgiveness

If we accept the fundamental impossibility of remaining totally innocent or completely guilty during our lifetime, we arrive at a deeper understanding and fuller conscious participation in the reality of human life without any arrogance or artificial holiness. We join all other human beings in a humility shared as a common ground.
(Bert Hellinger, With God in Mind)

The trick to forgive is to always remind you that the brother you are mad at could in fact be you. People can be grumpy, can't you? People experience a lack of love, don't you at times?Recognize yourself in your brother and all the artificial holiness you perceived only a moment ago vanishes in a heart-beat. We are neither totally innocent nor completely guilty, and neither is our brother.

The trick to forgive is to always remind yourself that whoever hurts you, probably doesn't mean to.  Your brother is going down that robotic road of reacting to pressures, experiencing old psychological wounds, and fall victim to disappointed expectations. Is is really that hard to imagine that you could be in that situation instead?

If there is one thing we should all watch out for, it's the lack of love. The ego gets us there. Give us a situation that undermines our spiritual balance and we likely miss the love connection in a heart-beat. Worse, our mind will always find a way to rationalize that whatever we did was the right thing to do; yet, if we were truly in tune with ourself, the heaviness of our heart would remind us of our ego trip. The moment you realize that something is off in you, use that opportunity to snap out of it! And if a sister can't do it right now, why don't you disarm her with your smile and your love.

Whenever you realize a lack of love in a situation, it is often not because others want to hurt you, it is because they cannot connect with love at this moment. Let your sister remind you of your love connection. Let the strength to forgive arise in you and know that next time around, it is your sister who will carry you instead.

Instead of just looking at people’s weakness and hurt they may have caused, realize that they have tried their best and done some amazing things for you in the past. Now it is you who is able to look at the bigger picture. Your heart is the magnet that jump-starts hers at this special moment, and tomorrow your hearts will beat in unison again.

Whenever we realize that the treasure called love is really a dance that requires equal participation from all sides, it is quite easy to overlook occasional missed steps. Either we succeed together or no one will. No one is a perfect dancer, but all of us have to put our best foot forward. Let's figure this dance out together, shall we?

Whenever you realize the fact that sometimes people are not capable of giving you the love you need, just as sometimes you are not capable of giving people the love they need, you are suddenly free from all the hatred and regret.  You learn the lesson of forgiving others and yourself. We all make mistakes.  We all need to learn to forgive and be forgiven. With this realization a whole new world opens to us, a world of peace, acceptance, and infinite love.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Shake it Out

 Sadhguru once met with a convicted murderer. As he embraced him you could see the relief on the face of the crying man. It was as if he could let go of all his accumulated psychological baggage at this moment. Guilt is a horrible affliction, yet we can tell you that it is a senseless burden. Whatever you may have done in the past, it simply doesn't matter in the divine Now. So when ghosts of the past trouble you, pull yourself into the Now instead and they disappear like fog does during the sunrise.

But just saying that the past doesn't really exist is not good enough, you must also believe it. If you want to get rid of your guilt, you will also have to drag your subconscious brain along. There is something deep inside of you that needs some extra convincing that the bloody deed has indeed been paid for. The Tao will do this for you. Just show up when life calls you and always put your best foot forward. Find out for yourself that this way time will literally heal you. All you have to do is to shake your history out just as Florence and the Machine recommend it in their beautiful song " Shake it Out". It is always darkest before the dawn so just keep moving:

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

Our love is questioned, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cry it out and then restart (my edit)
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone
It's always darkest before the dawn

Oh whoa, oh whoa...

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Well what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me, yeah

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

(Florence and the Machine, Shake it Out)

Love Yourself

Most Religions practice Atonement - a time and scheduled process when you can let go of your perceived  sinful acts; a time when your higher authority forgives you for all your misdeeds. Wouldn't it be nice if you could let go of your guilt every day, or perhaps even better, not accumulating anything to start with? This doesn't mean that we expect you to be an angel, but rather that you accept all personalities about yourself.

Love has to start with loving yourself, even the darkest part. It is so easy to love our good part, just like it is easy to love a good person, but it is so difficult to love all the aspects of yourself that appear to be a little darker. It may be lust, it may be greed, it may be the hunger for social and professional recognition. Often these guilt programs run subconsciously since you are not always willing to face them. The psychological fact is though, whether you acknowledge these drives in you or not, you will punish yourself over your perceived misdeeds. Can you imagine that you are in fact cruel to yourself? Where do you think your illnesses come from - it is you beating yourself up over something. We are mad at ourselves and want to punish ourselves for our mistakes. Isn't this violent and aggressive?

When you are greedy, psychological programs are running that have been in the making for eons. Have you ever noticed how a soccer dad is spurning on his boy during the game and afterwards, when the team has won, tabs him on the back and says that the game is just about having fun. How can you criticize yourself for having competitiveness inside you, how can you blame your father or coach? How can beat yourself up for hormones running through your body, or society telling you subconsciously as well as openly that you should conquer women? Accept everything that is going on inside. Love all aspects of your being.

Every day we experience lots of different kinds of energy which we identify with and think that it is us. No, these energies are not you, they are just flowing through you. A personality wheel is spinning with different aspects shining through dependent on the energy centers that are activated inside of you and the triggers that are activated by your environment. Whenever, you identify with all the characters you create a false self for yourself. You probably realize yourself how these false selves are often in conflict with each other. The saint in you has an opinion about the devil in you. The truth is neither the saint nor the devil are you. The devil is your ego, as is the voice of the saint. This is how you fragment yourself. We are not saying that you should go and live out all your urges and desires, but we are saying that it is possible to integrate all aspects of your personality in a wholesome way. Acknowledge first all the drives in you and then do something creative with them.

Being in peace with yourself is the first step to building a peaceful society. Peace, love, and kindness should start with yourself. Stop attacking yourself and accept every part of you; to experience them as they are without judgment is your key to your peace and to becoming whole. Love every part of you, then you will be able to love every person who comes your way. Jesus says you should love your enemy - you should certainly be kind with yourself as well, right? May peace be with you!

By Christian and Su Zhen

Along the Tao there are No Mistakes

People suffer because they shy away from life. They feel powerless and wish they could be competent as others. People are also afraid of mistakes they might make. When they actually have made them, they wish them away and spent countless hours wining about how much they are inconvenienced by them, or they feel guilty.

Along the Tao this is unlikely to happen, not because mistakes are absent, the Tao traveler will do them as much as everyone else, but simply because you are too busy to mind them as you are retracting your steps, apologizing to people and fixing the problem. Along the Tao you will be encouraged to always show up for everything, no matter how large or small, or how much of an uphill struggle the task might appear to be. You know that when life calls you, you simply have no choice but to show up. But don't worry, if you choose to accept your mission, the tools do deal with it will be given to you just in the nick of time. This fact by itself is so much fun to experience that it completely takes the anxiety out of the problem and all that you are left with is some creative apprehension.

Admitting mistakes makes you humble and makes you realize that there is no hierarchy whatsoever between any of us. All mistakes along theTao will show you that everyone and everything matters, but also that you should relax because everything is easy as 1 2 3, no matter whether it is about creating something new or about fixing old things. All you have to do is to show up for your task at hand with good cheer. You also will never be given more than you can handle along the Tao.

Along the Tao there is no 'could have', nor is there a 'should have', no guilt and no missed opportunity. There is only action and countless opportunities to express your creativity and love. There is no faith required, the Tao will show you over and over, if you always put your best foot forward, you will merge with the Now and every outcome will be spiritually meaningful for you, and in its own way, good as is.

The final purpose of our earth existence is to merge with the Source. So all activities, how creative and how important they might be for you, are the means to transcending to the next spiritual level. From that perspective there cannot be any mistakes; every missed step is as priceless in allowing you to let go of the 'I', as every successful one is a priceless gift. One thing is for sure, whenever you overcome your demons and put your best foot forward, there is always a gift waiting for you, hand-selected by the Tao.


By Christian and Su Zhen

Mind the Voice in Your Head

There is a voice in your head that you identify with. After all, if it isn't you then who exactly is talking? The voice in your head worries endlessly about everything that could go wrong and is scheming how to get things and also beats you up over past mistakes. Well, this voice is not you, it is just the ego in action, using your ability to reflect on the past and to anticipate the future to take you for a joy ride and a guilt trip. The good news is, there is an Ancient Voice buried deep down inside of you. You can connect with that Voice but it takes time. You must be very still and must learn how not to get distracted by what it going on in your head.

Our brain has evolved from the animal brain which mostly operates in the now. We have the ability to reflect on the past so to make sure that we don't repeat our mistakes, very much as we are able to anticipate future outcomes to be better prepared for it. Our brains allow us to abstract, use symbols, make decisions based on reasoning, calculations, etc. Symbolically, we ate from the Tree of Knowledge and when that happened, we unfortunately lost that ongoing connection with the Source in the process. The voice that always speaks first and loudly has taken over. But you can get the Ancient Voice back.

The voice in your head tells you that you are different from everyone else, that you need to worry, protect yourself, scheme to get things. This voice tells you that you need to work hard to be worthy of love. The ego makes comparisons. When you think you are better than others, you feel arrogant; if you are worse than others, you feel bad about yourself. This ongoing measuring, comparing and contrasting in your brain creates tension and angst. Do this for a few decades at an accelerated pace and you will get really depressed.

Don't get us wrong. Using your brain is of course useful. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge has brought us a long way. All we are saying is to use your brain for all the technical and useful purposes, do not let the voice in your head tell you anything about your interpersonal relations as well as your destiny. Leave all these decisions up to the Tao. All you have to do is to reconnect to life and your Ancient Voice despite the loud babbling in the background. Congratulations! If you have come to this point, it means you will soon break free from the insanity that has plagued you for so long. The voice in your head is not the real you and you can strip out of it like an old set of used and smelly clothes.

The voice in your head wants to take you for a ride. It promises you a pleasure ride, but each trip always ends up in tears. This voice wants to be in control, wants to map out everything. But then when unexpected things happen along the way the voice will create stress. People who follow the unrelenting commands of this voice will sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, but will always end up with a headache. As you age you will withdraw more and more from life as you learn that there is perfect control if you don't interact with anyone and if you don't do anything. But if you withdraw from life you die. Life is to be accepted and enjoyed. Embrace life with open arms and the Tao will present you so many impressions along the way that the load voice in your head will naturally be silenced.

The voice in your head is always expecting something, always looking forward to, always anticipating. The Course in Miracle states that an outstanding characteristic of the ego is that whenever you have reached your goal you will still not be happy. That is what the voice does, always reminding you that the carrot is still dangling in front of the donkey.

The voice is also very good at judging. I ask you, have you ever met anyone who was truly on your level? There are those who are above you in the hierarchy be it professional, social or even spiritual. How different this voice is from the claim of the Course of Miracles, namely that we are all soul siblings, no one is above, no one is below - we are all Daughters and Sons of God.

Our education system wants to make you smart, fast, intelligent and efficient. All we do is to feed that voice in our head. You will be an intellectual. You will dissect what is whole only to find after decades of labor that what you have in your hands is dead. You will get caught up in an imaginary and artificial world of the mind and you will get lost in it. But in a weird way that is good. Send all the students of the world to Harvard and MIT, for these institutions will not only make the students smarter, but will also generate so much pressure with that ever continuing rate race to climb up the intellectual and social ladder that many will lose their way. That is unfortunately exactly what the homecoming process entails. You need to get lost first before you will look for a new way. Unfortunately you need to drive into a wall first before looking for a new direction. Getting lost instils the hunger in you to listen to the Ancient Voice.You will enter our post-graduate studies and the school master - the Tao - will teach you how to become children again and how to regain your innocence and be always full of joy, laughter and serenity.

The Tao is all-knowing. The Tao operates in the past and the future via the Now. But the Tao is nevertheless the polar opposite of the intellect. The Tao only deals in the present, the Tao never judges, never compares; gives you everything that you need , but not what you want because you don't really want it anyway. The Tao is beyond duality; the Tao is non-linear, creative, imaginative, always changing and in the end nothing but pure love.

So how to detach from the voice in your head and connect with the Tao? There are some signpost that you can watch out for and you can learn to get your life back. Watch out especially for these signs: 

1. When you feel you are in big conflict and experience struggle in everything you do. If you feel this way, most of time you are geting caught up in mind games. Once you are aware of this fact you can step right out of it. Just listen how insane some of these mental connections are. It is just a voice, not you.

2. When you feel fear and anxiety. Most likely you are contemplating all kind of downside scenarios. Can you come up with an equal number of upside scenarios just to create a balance? The point is when you follow the Tao and embrace life with open arms you will have little time to think. Instead you will learn to accept whatever comes your way without thinking much about it.

3. You are telling yourself that you are bad, miserable, unloved, a loser....you feel bad about yourself and start attacking yourself. If you notice that the voice is telling you these stories, know that this is an impostor speaking. God loves you, as do your soul siblings who are waiting patiently to interact with you. Just step out of your mind games and open up your eyes to a new reality.

4. You feel resentful and guilty. Your mind goes back to the past and you lose the connection with the Now that way. Well the past is dead, wake up and join the living instead.

You don't need to silence your mind, just learn when to use it. You also need to learn how to embrace the Now - the Tao will teach you that. We will present some practices that will allow you to disconnect from the voice in your head, so please look out for those in coming weeks. Perhaps you already want to check out The Worry List (zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-worry-list.html) as a first practical step to silence your voice. Do not worry, you will get back your life and everywhere you will look there will be joy, love and laughter.

By Christian and Su-Zhen

Puppets of the Tao

We all tend to blame ourselves for our shortcomings. We hate that we are not able to accomplish whatever we set our minds to. In my own experience, you should never worry about what you might have overlooked in the past and never blame yourself. If something doesn't work out despite your best efforts, the Tao has probably better plans for you and She always knows best.

There was a time when I wanted to be a 'better mother'. I certainly knew what I should have done instead, but I was unable to fulfill my high expectations. Yet after this rocky period, I realized that I didn't really have a choice at all at that time. A strange force was in control of me and I didn't have the ability to break away from it.

Last night I was reminiscing and first I started again blaming myself for not having been a better mother, but then out of a sudden I started forgiving myself as I realized that I did the best I could at that time. I also remembered the mistakes my parents made and I realized that they probably also tried doing their best. That is what every generation does. We repeat the cycle our parents started and we try to improve on it. But then we leave some homework for our children as well.

We are also biased in our thinking. We zoom into the mistakes that we make but forget about all the good stuff we do. Blame and guilt are very negative emotions - they drain your energy. Forgive yourself and others as best as you can and then try to move on.

You can only truly forgive others if you are able to forgive yourself. If you have a balanced view of yourself, you will also be able to apply the same to others. Try to appreciate your short-comings and enjoy how they enable you to be much kinder with others. Everything is perfect as is. Every yin comes with a yang attached. For every Dalai Lama there is a Mao Zedong; for every John F. Kennedy there is a Adolf Hitler. The Tao creates hurricanes as well as sunshine. Accept and value the forces that are beyond your comprehension and put your best foot forward in all the things that you can affect.

On occasions we are just pawns of the Tao. Too often, we think we have the ability to decide what we can do. Often this apparent degree of freedom doesn't really exist. The Tao is the puppet master behind the scenes and we have to do whatever it is what we do, because our karma and the evolution of the world dictates it. Forgive yourself for the mistakes of the past, reflect and try to do your best next time around. One day you will break free from the chains and if not you, your children will because you have laid the foundation for them.

By Su-Zhen

The Zen Master with Sticks

I remember a day in the Fall a few years ago when I was waiting for the elevator together with a colleague and I pointed out a new artwork to him which depicted a beach somewhere in Cape Cod with a beautiful cloud formation and when he asked me what I thought it stood for I answered, 'the sky is the limit'. 'Strange', he responded, 'it makes me feel insignificant. The painting seems to portray the perspective of an insect'. On that day he was laid off given that our firm had to downsize in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

We humans are psychics at times. We feel it in our bones when a negative event is likely to hit us even though we consciously would never admit it. I have been a Tao traveler for a number of years now and have observed something odd. I observed that days when you pursue your not-so-holy activities tend to be more stressful than others. Does that mean that the Tao punishes us very much like a Zen master with a stick, ready to swing it at the poor student whenever he has missed a Zen moment just to hammer the necessary alertness and awareness into him? 

Possible, but unlikely. I rather think that you cut into your own power supply as you develop a bad conscience. So the day would have been challenging anyway, but you felt that trouble was heading your way so you felt more inclined to let your more destructive nature run its course. And as your energy dropped in the aftermath, you experienced the consequences as more harmful as otherwise would have been necessary. Viewed from that perspective, it indeed looks as if the To beats you up over your missteps.

 I remember once someone saying in a spiritual forum that you could kill a man in the morning and still ascend to Heaven in the afternoon. Well, I don't know about that, but I get the idea that if you somehow can get rid of your guilt, your energy should manage to rebound since the Tao always welcomes you with open arms very much like the prodigal son in the Bible.

So I could imagine a very advanced soul who deliberately hurts the Devine order and then makes a symbolic act of cleansing and his sins are washed away in the process and the laws of karma are disengaged. Of course, if this is all too intellectual or questionable for you, you can always follow the advice of the Buddha instead: 'Just do the right thing', and you will be all-set along your Way. Unfortunately it doesn't really work like that. A spiritual path is like everything else in nature, for every two steps forward there has to be one backwards. Just make sure that in the aggregate you are headed in the right direction otherwise the Zen master will get you with his stick in the end.

Guilt

Someone in my spirituality forum (Personal Development Forum for Smart People) said that you could kill a person in the morning and still ascend to Heaven in the afternoon and I actually understood where he was coming from. I suspect that  few people these days would subscribe to the Bible phrase 'Vengeance is Mine, says the Lord', yet, many of you will probably believe in the laws of karma, i.e. once you pull the trigger that there is nothing to stop the bullet and the impact which will in the end be an attack on yourself.

I have a hunch that even the law of karma is nothing but guilt that eats itself deep into your subconscious and that wants to be re-lived and digested. If you find a way to make it disappear, either by psychologically off-loading it, or by knowing that this force that made you pull the trigger now wants to beat you up over it, but that this force is not you, then you will be ascending Heaven in the afternoon. Heavy stuff!

Guilt

"You idiot, you blew it again. At this pace you will never get anywhere on your spiritual journey". "But didn't I hear this before? Didn't you tell me exactly the same thing last time around only to find that four days afterwards you couldn't even remember what the supposedly counter-productive incident was?" Silence.

Believe it or not, this is the mental exchange that goes on in the head of many a spiritual path traveler. Who is the one who reminds you of your short-comings? And who is the authority that responds? I have no idea, but it also doesn't matter much. On the spiritual journey there is no sin, there are only delays. And every delay serves a purpose. It gets you insights about the ripple effects your actions have, and when you study them there is insight that changes behaviour.

They say that one day you will wake up in the same way as you woke up this morning. Nothing you ever did mattered, because everything you feel guilty about doesn't exist in this state. Whatever it is that agonizes you will disappear like a shadow as the light falls on it. In the meantime, it might take you a little mind acrobatics like the one above to get you to this realization.

A Happy New Year everybody - A new beginning is just a step away!