Life is a lot of Fun When You Believe It Is

You will be what you are.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Your mind-set decides pretty much what you will experience in your life. When you doubt people, when you lack trust, when you see scarcity wherever you turn, you will find plenty of evidence to prove to yourself that you are right.

On the other hand, when you believe in love, when you trust the people you interact with, when you know that you are fine regardless of what happens, be ready to experience a magic world opening up to you. A whole new dimension is waiting for you to experience - life is a lot of fun when you believe that it is.

How you feel inside also pretty much decides how you are going to experience life, work, and your interpersonal relationships. When you think that you are not popular, you won't. When you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. But then, when you discover that you are true love, you will be surrounded by it.

Stand ready to experience your life radiating with the warmth and intensity of a sun. Actually, you don't have to convince yourself of anything. All you have to do is to let go of all the interferences that held you back in the past. The nay-sayer within; the suspicious mind that sees a downside in anything that comes your way. Drop all expectations and open up to life so that you can receive the abundance it has to offer.

You are part of the Way once you let go of the little fenced up reality that you used to perceive. Don't be afraid of life just because you carry a few old scars around. Life is a lot of fun when you open up to it. Enjoy!

By Christian and Su Zhen

Life's Spiritual Wisdom

I am hardly a spiritual master but I am an expert in something; I know a lot about my human side. I certainly have experienced the greed in me and have faced my fears on countless of occasions. I also could write volumes about lust. And I know how egotistic I can be, not to mention my insecurities and jealousies.

A spiritual journey encourages you to be aware of everything that happens beneath the hood. Actually, the trick to deal with them is awareness, not repression and not confrontation. If you battle your jealousy, lust, greed or egotism, if you condemn your nature, you are really starting a war inside. It is a merry-go-around game that the voice in your head plays with itself. Actually, it is not so merry at all; it is quite destructive and cancerous. The only way you can be in harmony with your human drives is being aware of what is going on. Observe everything without getting involved; even when you hear the righteous voice in your head that feels superior to the "darker" emotions. You will realize that even this voice is the ego talking to itself.

Buddha once said, you can't think yourself into Heaven. So just being mindful of the stuff that happens inside doesn't make you a spiritual master. Yet there is an all-knowing master who is available to you any time and completely free of charge. This master is called life! When you are mindful it is not hard to figure out what life is all about. Everything that you attract, every interaction, all the so-called successes or disappointments, everything is just a reflection of your inner frame of mind. Life wraps itself around you and puts you through this virtual reality show. And while you are running after what is meaningful to you, life in fact sends you on a subconscious journey Home. We spiritual travelers encourage you to make this journey a conscious one.

The Law of Attraction folks have figured out that with the right mindset you can steer yourself in the direction of your liking. That is certainly true! In a way, the Law of Attraction insight could be compared to lucid dreamers. They have realized that you can master the art of waking up within a dream and start manipulating the dream to your advantage. That is certainly a nice power to have but we spiritual travelers want more. Why should we wake up within a dream if we can wake up period. Life is designed to bring us Home and all we have to do is to open up to it and discover its spiritual wisdom.

If you think that a spiritual path entitles you to peace, love and happiness every step of the way, you most likely will be disappointed. A spiritual journey is about gaining insights, about struggling; it is about transcending and letting go. "Not this, not that" becomes your way to proceed. A spiritual path is about de-masking the illusion. Heaven on earth is what remains once you see love shine through behind every choice.

There is no book that you can read, no master who can tell you what to do - it is your journey Home. You have to stumble through insecurities and righteousness, arrogance and humility. But after a while you realize that no matter what happens, no matter what path you might have taken last time around, life always wraps itself around you and offers you the same choice again and again: "choose love", it says. Often it whispers and sometimes it screams. There is incredible wisdom in the choices life presents. If you get lost in it, if you just follow that simple road-map life offers to you, you do not need to be wary of your human dimension at all. All distractions melt away in the busyness, loveliness and joy of living and all that remains along the Way is pure love.      

In Awe of Life

I work in the forecasting business. I make educated guesses about the future of economies,   politics and asset classes. I have my moments of brilliance, but sometimes I simply look  dumb as well. In search of perfection, I always feel I am so close, but somehow I never seem to be able to reach it. It is what it it is. At the end of each year I look back, tend to be  pretty happy with my accomplishments and get ready for the next one.

Are we here to get what we want? Are we here to be successful or to be happy? Are we here to transcend? Well, it depends on your perspective I guess. My goal is to stay connected with the Way and I can honestly say that life keeps you pretty busy with that goal in mind. I feel like a dancer who improvises spontaneously, performing to a song that he has never heard before, yet, that feels instinctively familiar.

As the dancer can't grow a belly with all his high-intensity dancing, we can't form a comfortable personality blanket as we aim to stay connected with the Way. Being in the Now, the ego somehow retreats. Being in awe of the complexity of life, you have no desire to scheme. And if you miss a step along the Way at time, you have no time for regrets as you are too busy focusing on the directions of your dancing partner who pushes you gently in the right direction.

We are in awe with life; we are in love with the divine music. Perfection exists, but we patiently wait for it to come our way. As a matter of fact, it is the perfect imperfection that keeps us experiencing Her every step of the Way.

Welcome to the "Real" World

Walking on a spiritual path is a way to a new reality. Have you ever wondered why there are so many conflicts and struggles in our life?  If we observe carefully what is going on, we can find that we all live in an artificial, mind-made world - a fantasy world really. We accept "reality" as is, yet we never question whether our believe system has caused it. Instead we think there must be something wrong about us when we are not able to meet the expectation society has set up for us.

 We never question our role in society. Like robots we go and do our job day in, day out, apparently not questioning whether we are happy or not. One day we may have "made it", actually fulfilling the expectation society has for us. However, we can never get the peace, happiness, love, joy and abundance we are dreaming of. Until that blessed day when a new soul connection opens up. That's when the spiritual path starts in actuality.

The "real" world is wild and full of energy!  It doesn’t care much about the rules and regulation of our society. It invites us to thrive in it. As a spiritual traveler, we are most excited when we get a glimpse of this new world! A new, authentic life is waiting. We eagerly experience everything life brings our way, regardless whether it is up or down, happy or sad. We live intensely in success or failure, health or sickness. Drop all your expectations and discover the magic that is waiting for you.

By Christian and Su Zhen

It is as it is

"It is as it is."
(Bill Belichick, Coach, New England Patriots)

We have a tendency to reject stuff that displease us. We sometimes label people as bad as well; perhaps a mean neighbor, or a grumpy colleague. We are afraid of diseases and mind negative thought patterns. All that makes us shy away from what is. We would re-iterate here what many spiritual travelers have said before us, honor what is. Often it is the thought, the anticipation and the regret of this the so-called negative event that creates the misery and not the event itself.

Apparently God - or the Tao - has no opinion about whatever is happening. Whatever has to happen does; it may be a natural disaster or a personal misfortune. The wheels of karma are turning, bringing down everything that stands in its way, just as they are lifting up everyone who is in the midst of the next wave of creation.

Our rejection of our experiences creates turmoil in ourselves and generates negative energy spirals. This is ok too. This rejection process itself is part of learning. When we suffer because of our rejection, when we feel unsettled inside, we know that something is wrong and we are eager to figure out what to do better next time.The trick is to step outside of the movie once you become aware of it. As you step outside of your opinion about the event - not to mention the destructive emotional energy cycle -  you realize that there is a silver lining in about everything negative, just as there is a downside in just about every "positive" event.

It is a learning process. Step by step we tear down our memory of previous psychological shocks. Someone who has burned her hand on a cooking plate instinctively pulls back the hand in a similar situation. Yet, the Tao encourages you to look at every situation with a fresh set of eyes. Sure, it takes practice to override memories but each time you sleigh a monster of the past, a present will be waiting for you.

It takes effort to step out of the negative cycle but it can be done. Life encourages us to step outside of our memory lane. No one will be able to push your buttons anymore once you travel the Way. We experience our life in an authentic way and taste whatever it is we are dealing with, be it bitter or sweet. Isn't a spiritual path exactly like this? Rules are dropped by the wayside unless they are dictated by the Tao itself. We live! Isn’t this is the purpose why we are here?

William Shakespeare once said, "Nothing is either good or bad, only thinking makes it so." Those are wise words indeed. Drop the moral standards by the wayside, live authentically and just see what happens. Along the Way you will perhaps one day conclude, "it is as it is, and as is, is good in its own right."

By Christian and Su Zhen

The Picture of Dorian Gray

You may remember Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, the story of someone who schemes and lies himself through life but who magically keeps his innocent appearance. Only much later does he realize how ugly he looks beneath the facade - it is a monstrous vision indeed!

There is a lot of wisdom in this book. Unless you are a magician, after 40 years you are responsible for your face, as Eric Fromm once remarked. But I think this erosion of natural beauty is not so much about the ego which our spiritual community loves to attack; true "ugliness" originates from crimes committed against life. The stealing, cheating and scheming, or perhaps worst of all, the robbing of innocence. If you just run after your ego's passions you can look old at times, worn down perhaps, or sometimes just plain, but with a little wind in your back, with a little success, you get your old fire and your youthful look back. In contrast, the schemers, criminals and cheats can only hide their ugliness if they even manage to fool themselves. Still, the "ugliness" will come out one way or another, sometimes in form of an illness, or sometimes with bad breath. But there is good news, you can always let go of your psychological baggage if you embrace life instead.

We have no right to attack the ego, the ego is still an expression of life so let people fulfill their mission if they feel the passion to do so. We can only give advice to those who are sick or find that they no longer recognize the person in the mirror. The uplifting message we can tell them is that Oscar Wilde's scary story is just fiction. Everyone can turn this ship around; just stop going upstream and go downstream instead. Experience how easy and how much fun it is. Going with life is natural and easy, while going against life is evil. You know that "evil" is "live" spelt backwards, right?

The Spiral Towards Life

Most of us have had a glimpse of what an addiction feels like. It starts with a nagging voice that you want to have a little happiness, or perhaps that you want to plaster over some pain with the help of a substance or an activity. You can spot this tendency in many little things: the unnecessary shopping trip that nevertheless makes you feel good about yourself, reading that next self-help book that will finally turn your life around, the power work-out that makes you feel alive, the urge to drown a stressful workweek with food, sex or alcohol. We all hear this nagging noise sometimes and feel the emptiness inside that we want to shut out. All that is perhaps just the price we pay for living a stressful life,  but unfortunately for some these little steps are just the beginning of a long road to nowhere.

For those who get ever more dependent on the mood booster and the pain killer, the road into nowhere becomes soon clear. Step by step, life is being shut out; an auto-pilot takes over until  little vitality is left. Hard as it is, it is always possible to turn this ship around. The further down the addict goes the road of destruction, the louder life screams to wake up. Chances are the addict has something holy to hang onto, the screaming children, the care and the pleas of the soul partner, or the help from a community of recovering addicts who have been done this road before.

If addiction is a road into nowhere, a spiritual path would be the opposite. Addiction is the spiral away from life, a spiritual path is a spiral towards life, towards love and into the arms of God. Just as everyone has experienced the whisper of a dark voice inside, everyone probably also had a glimpse of magic in the air. God is real and She can be experienced; as every novelist would tell you, there is divinity and magic in life. But you have to be 100 percent open to receive it. If you just live in your own world life indeed will look random to you.

How can you you experience this divine force - the Tao - all the time? If you look carefully you can observe that the Tao is always there. But unfortunately sometimes you are not. Instead you experience spirals, periods of extreme connectedness followed by periods of emptiness and dread.These spirals that you experience are caused by your pain body and the fluctuating energy of your environment. Sometimes the voice in your head screams so loudly that it drowns out everything; sometimes something in your environment activates a painful memory and you shut down in response.

The universe works in spirals, you can even see star formations and galaxies arranged that way. A spiral is a convenient way of bringing you towards God just because you have to live out previous life-patterns and the Source will make sure that you only get exposed to as much as you can handle psychologically. With every iteration you will face some stress, some tears, some pain, but also experience plenty of joy, love and laughter along the way.

Think of yourself as the ancient voice that is finally returning home. You have experienced it all, you have been the sinner and the saint, the lover and the villain, the addict and the sacrificing mother. Let this all pass now, you are ready to go Home. You actually don't really need to do anything. Just look for the magic in the air, recognize the love for your foe without wishing for it. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Experience the pain of dealing with the monsters of the past and see it disappear in front of your astonished eyes. Let the Tao show you how to say yes to life. It can look scary at times, but after a few steps towards it, it is easy to make a habit out of it. The divine spiral will lead you safely home.

Let the Tao Answer Your Prayer

Osho has a very interesting observation about how people pray to God.  He said when people pray, they often try to change God's Mind about what they should get. God should fix the problems they have. Isn't that how we all are? We have opinions about life and think that things should be otherwise.

God is outside of us as long as we run after our illusions, just as a magical world is opening up to us when we start recognizing God's loving messengers. But there is even something magnificent about the troubles that we have created for ourselves. These challenges are subconsciously designed to bring as back into God's arms. There is only one requirement, let go of your expectations and deal with, even honor everything that comes your way; independent of whether you think it is a blessing or a nuisance.

Why don’t we switch our mindset instead?  Instead of seeking our notion of happiness, success, and stability, we take life as it is.  Let’s face and accept the fact that life is never an centrally controlled air conditioner; life is wild and mostly out of our control no matter how hard we try. This is actually the fun part.  Let’s welcome life as it is and drop the idea of changing or controlling it.  Let’s go downhill skiing while it snows and let's go surfing or boating in the summer; enjoy the flowers blooming in the spring and float with the drifting beautiful leaves in the autumn wind.  Let’s tune into the rhythm of life and be in peace with it!  When you do that, observe for yourself how your expectations and opinions are swallowed by the Now.

God is always there for you and every single prayer of yours is answered. Yet there is one requirement to receive Her messages, let go of the manufactured world that you created for yourself. If you truly want to meet God we have good news for you. Let life - the Tao - bring you to Her. Embrace life and get lost in it. Without your grandiose expectations you will start seeing glimmers of love that you have never noticed before. A small opening to this divine parallel universe is all that is needed. Soon you will be bathing in a blazing light that shines away the small and stale world of yours. Life wants to give you so much more. Go out, face the music and dance to your heart's desire. The secrets and the mystery of the Tao are waiting for you. Take the first step and you will have a lot of fun.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Tao of Darkness and Light

You are mirrors of truth in which God Himself shines in perfect light. To the ego's dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there because I know these images are not true."
(A Course in Miracles)

Our spiritual giants have been telling us over and over again how to deal with our dark sides: don't look at whatever it is that pulls you down and just know that it is not there. The mind is like a fertile soil they say, keep the weed out otherwise you will have to do a lot of painful plugging ahead.

If you think about it, this is exactly how most of the recovering addicts are dealing with their issues; sometimes even when memories of the old addictive habits get triggered, the floodgates of their old passions are reopened. So to survive they effectively have to cut out every aspect of their previous addiction from their lives.

Yet the approach we suggest is different.  You don’t really need to cut anything out of your life.  You face life and all the things that come your way  and are mindful about everything that happens inside of you and in your environment. You in fact can see for yourself that if you try to cut something out of your life, you actually give more energy to it. If you just observe everything with an open mind and with open eyes, you will find that the dark side, fascinating at it can be, always says no to life. The Tao is the opposite. It is the divine force that encourages you to say yes to life instead and teaches you to recognize all the love that surrounds you.  Life invites you moment by moment to join, and if you do, the spell of the dark passions will naturally fade in the background. All you have to do really is to open your eyes and see what is happening in your life.

By being mindful you align yourself with Tao.  When you walk the Tao you get clear instructions how to proceed. These steps certainly require effort at times, but you will see that saying yes to life will lead you away from depression, which happens to be the playground of the devil's advocate. Something else will become apparent that way. These temptations and these activities that induce your mind to go to sleep are nothing but a facilitator to help you wake up. So instead of cursing them, accept them and see them what they are, milestones on your journey Home.

We are not advocating that you put blinders on. Quite the opposite, we want you to face openly whatever it is life brings your way. We also don't want you to abstain from whatever it is that gets your blood pumping only because some other spiritual authorities say so. Go and face the life that comes your way and experience it with your best intension to find your True Self.  Let the Tao teach you how the world really looks like. What we say, however, is that once you have recognized an activity to lead away from the Tao, reengage with the Tao. On the highway to God every roundtrip will hurt you a lot.  Don't waste your energy with these games and just follow Her lead instead.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Let Your Heart Take Over

Take a random collection of people you interact with, your family, colleagues, old friends, people you care less about, previous lovers, and look at each photo just a couple of seconds and then move on to the next. What feelings pop up and what thoughts? Do it and you will find a whirlpool of emotions in that short time span. We are are sure you will also find plenty of judgements; in effect, a ranking of people, because that is what the mind tends to do.

But then, take a collection of photos of people you have interacted with for a long time. It might be your siblings, lovers with whom you have shared a big part of your life with, buddies of yours you have gone to school and college together for many years or colleagues you have gone through thick and thin with. Observe for yourself, is there a hierarchy at all? If you truly love someone the mind doesn't get involved, the emotions have a straight connection to your heart.

You may ask how to get to that loving state if our mind is wired that way. There is a simple solution. Let life transform you. If you just perceive the world from your mind perspective, you will have no idea what others are going through. The native Americans are saying that that if you truly want to understand someone you have to walk in their moccasins for a day. True empathy comes if you open up to life and get a taste for what your brothers and sisters go through. If you have lost a lover you suddenly know how hard it is to function normally again. If you had to take care of a sick friend or family member you realize how frail life can be and if you start a business you end up seeing what it means if you lose important customers or actually having to fire a friend.

All your experiences are meaningful for you and can make you the person you were born to be if you embrace life with open arms. Good experiences as well as bad ones are part of the Tao's lesson plan. Good experiences make you enjoy life while bad ones make you enjoy people. We are all one. Along the Tao you will only see love. Judgement can be expelled out of your mind and even your subconscious. Love accomplishes that feat. Life is not black or white and neither is it grey. Life is multi-colored and it is beautiful, but unfortunately incomplete if any of your soul siblings would be missing from it.

By Christian and Su Zhen

On Squaring the Circle

There is only one answer to the paradox, "How do you get there without going there?" and that is, you already are "there". If you need to go "there" then the ego is talking which will happily lead you on a path of self-improvement without ever getting you anywhere. This is as logical as being on a circle, always on the look-out for the other side and keep on walking until you get "there".

The circle contains both, heaven and earth, Durga and Kali, light and darkness. Just stand there and let the circle of life come to you. In the circle of life the ego vanishes, as does all contemplation of how heaven might look like since you happen to experience heaven in the here and now. Transcend the ego in the holy now, do that for as long as you live and understand that you already are "there".

Accepting Life As Is

Most of us are driven by fear without realizing it. Most of people strive for more money because they are afraid that they might end up financially miserable; some work very hard and run after status because they are afraid that otherwise no one will love them; some people eat healthy food and take really good care of their body because they are scared of getting sick; some people do lots of charity because they are afraid of going to hell after they die; some meditate all the time because they are scared to experience turbulence.

I am not saying that you shouldn't eat well, work hard, strive to be successful, or experience material abundance. Meditation, helping others, all of these activities are of course good. Just try to be aware what drives you and why you do things. Do these things out of love, not out of fear. Eat healthy because you love your body; work hard because you love your job; help people because you have so much love to share; meditate because you want to understand yourself and connect with your True Self.

Fear often drives our behavior, but unless you break free from it, you cannot experience love in it fullness. Fear always causes struggle and it drains your energy. Fear makes you zoom into the wrong aspects of life. You pay lots of attention to the goals you want to achieve and you shy away from all the emotions that you are afraid of. You want to control life, but you can't. The emotions you try suppressing come back to haunt you.

Instead, take life as it is - accept whatever comes your way and you and the Tao will be in harmony. Try to face every occurrence in your life; experience it without any fear or attempt to control anything and you will find out all the bad things you try to escape from will disappear like a passing dream.

The problem is that we always aspire to have sunshine but life doesn't work that way. We need the rain for our vegetation and our water supply. At home you may enjoy a rainy day with a good book, sitting next to the fire place. Likewise, if you truly accept your emotions, you will find a silver lining about everything. Also, remember that the emotion that gets you down sets you up for your next high.

Have you ever noticed that you accept happiness wholeheartedly?In contrast, your sadness and anxiety tend to stay longer because you never accept these emotions from the bottom of your heart. Experiment with this concept. Take everything as is, then you will taste the flavor of life. You will discover that your life is always blessed if you wholly accept it.

By Su-Zhen

Embracing Life

I remember once thinking during a colleague's retirement speech how nice it must be to have that sense of accomplishment, that feeling of leaving all the ups and downs of life behind with a feeling of security. When I mentioned that sentiment to my wife she said that perhaps I should have my eyes on the journey rather than the end of it. Fact of the matter is that this sentiment was an expression of fear - the fear of life and the unwillingness to get lost in the moment at hand no matter whether the outcome would be pleasant or not. On the day when you retire you may enjoy the perspective of having completed an important chapter of your life, but you will have a new chapter to look forward to, nothing will really change for you on that day.

If there is one spiritual advice I would have to give, it is to embrace life day in day out, no matter what it is that you are doing. There is only one way to get to the next spiritual level and that is to 'feel the fear and do it anyway' as Susan Jeffers put it so succinctly in her book. The reality that you perceive doesn't exist. The monsters that you see along the way will dissolve into air just when as you try to touch them. It is not easy to be a hero, but life will first encourage you and then force to be one. The first dragon will be hard to slay, but all the others will fly away once you arrive on the scene. Embrace life, be bold enough to face its demands and then realize that you live in a magic kingdom in which only joy, love and laughter are permitted.