Avoid Judgment - Just Be Mindful

A grown man kneels on the floor and screams as the whip of the Dominatrix slices through his skin. You can look at this scene and ask why in a normative fashion. Why would a grown man, a judge or a police chief with a family, reputation and a profession to risk, dare to succumb to these dark pleasures? Well, you can, but then you simply continue the same not-so-merry-go-around game that got him in this place to start with. Our ego is the institution that judges our dark desires, but is also the voice that whispers on a full moon night that kinky stuff like that is worth our while.

What we can do instead, we can ask more helpful questions. Why is pain equated with sexual pleasure? Why is there the desire of being beaten up by a surrogate mother figure? Why is there this dark energy floating around in the first place, ready to be expressed in a twisted sexual fashion? Mindfulness is the answer, not judgment. Simply observe! Who can say whether BDSM is the problem or the solution. Emotions need to flow, soul-lessons need to be learned. For some acting out the negative energy might be the way, for some re-channeling this energy, and for others quitting the job that caused the imbalance to start with.

When you look at the situation from a spiritual perspective then you naturally come to the conclusion not to engage in these practices. What use is it to re-activate the negative energy by expressing it one more time in a sexual way? BDSM is a power game. Someone in on top, someone is below. So the judge and the police chief are just recycling violent energy from their work that they have been unable to digest. What looks to be like an honorable and a much needed profession - Law, Law Enforcement, Army - is in fact a spiritual divination from the Way; yet, someone has to do it; and the people who do it need to find their way to deal with the negative energy.

We cannot say what the solution should be. Should they simply quit their profession to find peace of mind? Should someone else do their "dirty" job, that many would say is in fact an honorable and necessary one? Emotions have to be expressed to stay healthy. Perhaps the whole dimension of the problem can only be brought to the surface for some by sexually reliving the professional problem-statement. Isn't it better for all parties involved if they let off some steam rather than falling sick from the undefeated energy imbalance? No-one has the right to say what the solution should be. There is no right or wrong. There can only be observation of the turmoil inside, a contemplation of the question why it is happening in the first place, and an examination of what should be done about it. The heart knows what it wants, and the soul needs to live through what it set out to do.

Avoid judgment - mindfulness is the way.

The Best Present Ever

This year, I will remember that people are more important than things.

(Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)

During this holiday season, when you think about getting presents for your loved ones, do you feel stressed or are you filled with joy and love?  Do you consider it necessary to buy them presents? It is actually a good habit to buy presents for your loved ones, especially when you pay attention to what they like and feel the joy and love for them as you select the gifts. It is a habit that we can cultivate, not just for the holidays. You can literally anticipate how joyful and touched they are when the people we care for open their presents full with surprise. 

While we are developing our habit to select thoughtful presents for our loved ones, we can develop the ability to pay attention to the people around us. It turns out that our attention is what is important, not what we end up buying. Too often we zoom into the things that fancy our attention while we don't spend enough time on what it is actually is our loved ones want. What we think will be good for them may in fact be just our fancy.

How often do we find ourselves simply too busy to spend time with the people around us and really listen. We are spending time together but our minds are worlds apart. We are thinking about our to-do lists and are out of touch with what is going on in their lives. We are together yet we feel alienated and lonely. So what a nice opportunity it is to drop everything and spend a while to tune into their needs and aspirations. The holidays are the season to remind us what really matters to us; the preparation we make for our get-together and the presents we select are expressions of our love for others.

The holidays should be just a reminder of our resolution for the upcoming year. How can we be really with our loved ones all year around? The trick is that when we manage to live in the here and now, we cannot help but to be with our loved ones 100 percent. When we are able to sense our body, observe our thoughts, be with our breath, and be present with our environment, we are totally connected with everyone. Often it is our loved ones who help us snap out of a train of thought or a lack of attention. This presence creates the communication and energy exchange between each other. This presence is love!  When we are able to be with others, listen to them and feel loved.  

Why don’t you try it today?  Try to be here and now no matter who you are talking to today.  Let’s hand out the present of truly being with each other. If you can manage to live in the now today it will not be hard to make it a daily routine!  Let’s light up each other’s heart with care and love in this holiday season!

By Christian and Su Zhen 

The Purpose of Life

What is your life's purpose? If you are a spiritual traveler like us, it might just be to unravel the secrets of your being. Try that perspective and see how relaxed you suddenly become. You will no longer dread certain situations but will be curious instead how you might be reacting to them. Suddenly you will pay as much attention to your own feelings as to those you interact with.

When you are really in tune with everything that bubbles below the surface it will be easy for you to spot pain-bodies; little pockets of painful memories that rise to the surface when someone pushes your button. Sometimes we throw a tantrum; sometimes we experience fear. It feels like a psychological band-aid that someone accidentally rips off. How easy it is to understand these links once you start digging. Unfortunately we rarely go back to understand what injury we may have experienced in the past, or what belief-set we still carry around. Instead, we blame others for our pain or fear. 

All it takes it is just to step outside of our pain, our panic, for but a moment. Instead of starting a new movie with new accumulated psychological baggage we just rewind our archives and mentally disconnect today's conversation from yesterday's pain. This self-inspection doesn't prevent us from experiencing pain, but it does prevent us from breaking even more China. 

Try to observe how you react to a situation and how your interpretation sets you on fire. When you blow up according to your past understanding of today's conversation, you really lose a chance to interact with what is. You do not interact with your conversation partner but with a ghost of the past.

Don’t worry if the theory is crystal-clear to you but you still often mess up in practice. It is hard to break with patterns of the past. We have a lifetime to figure this out, and opportunities are plenty. We are here to learn. If you are a spiritual traveler like us, let life constantly remind you about your mission. As a matter of fact, that's what the Tao does for us. She is a life-coach who can be accessed in every daily interaction. Make the Way your life's purpose and insight will follow you no matter what.

Let's be present at this precious moment and the past will slowly dissolve. We want to experience our life with intensity here and now. Let's be totally present at this holy moment whether it is full of darkness or light. Never mind a little pain if it propels us into Her arms. And who needs a thrilling pleasure if it keeps Her at a distance. Our life's purpose is to merge with this special, precious moment. That alone we want from life.

By Christian and Su Zhen 

Being Mindful Here and Now

How do you feel when you are walking by a homeless?  Do you feel pity or are you indifferent? What goes through your mind when one of your relatives commits a serious crime?  Can you forgive him? How do you feel when someone in your family is doing extremely well? Are you jealous?

As we always say, walking a spiritual path is more about bringing awareness into our daily encounters than achieving anything.  When we drop our expectations we become more centered and step outside of this eternal yin and yang of desires and regrets, actions and counter-actions. We become less surprised and upset when we observe that we are stingy, horny, loveless or aggressive. We don't attack ourselves when we realize that we do something that is totally against our spiritual notions. We just suddenly understand how we are at this moment and it also dawns on us where it is coming from.

A spiritual path takes time to travel so please don't be surprised if you find it hard to let go of judgement, regret and anger. Just let all the emotions come and go. You will be surprised to find out what kind of voices, demons and memories hide inside of you. When they all come out, you get a wonderful chance to take a deep look of all this stuff.  When they all come out, and once they have passed the system, you feel that you have dropped a big weight by the wayside.

Too often we try to will ourselves to be someone, to become enlightened, to be better, not realizing that it is this drive that sets in motion the yin and yang of attraction and repulsion, the battle of good and evil. Too often, we stop ourselves when we observe something that we label as bad. We create taboos and forbidden activities, not realizing that it is these value judgements that give the demon inside his energy. In doing so, we lose an opportunity to really know ourselves.  Give yourself a chance. With a pair of curious eyes and an open mind, isn't that fun to let them all come out?  How long you think your reaction and emotion can last?  

When we think of practicing spirituality this way, we experience a relief and we transcend the yin and yang of good and evil, attraction and repulsion. We feel relaxed about ourselves and about others.  We experience everything that happens in our life with amazement!  This is our life, and we are here and now!

By Christian and Su Zhen 

Mind the Voice in Your Head

Did you ever notice that there is an eternal nay-sayer in your head? I am not sure that I ever distinguished myself from the voice in my head before my spiritual path started, but now I do. Sometimes the voice and I march in unison, like in this note for example. But often we disagree big time! I can only say in amazement that this stuff that comes out from the depth of my being can be really negative and totally egoistic. Sometimes I tend to do exactly the opposite of whatever it is my voice comes up with. Unless, of course, my gut feeling or the Tao tell me that the voice in my head is onto something.

Have you ever noticed how uplifting it is to work on something together with others? Again, whenever the voice in my head warns me about something, one look at my friend next to me tells me what really is going on. Again and again I have discovered that my negative and egotistic mindset can't prevail with my soul siblings are around. Unless, of course, they are telling me the same thing.

Have you ever noticed that you have the best life coach at your disposal free of charge? The Tao reminds you of your mission and your dreams day in, day out. If unexpected set-backs occur, you immediately are told why this closed door opens in fact an even better alternative for you. For a Tao traveler the voice in the head has no meaning when it differs from the Way.

Mind the voice in your head and feel your way through life, often going against what your ego has to say.The message of the Tao is as visible as a red thread showing you the way. All you have to do is to follow it, step by step. You are neither optimistic nor pessimistic, you just acknowledge the wisdom of the Way.

Mindfulness

"Go ahead, have that piece of cake. It has been filling up your freezer for so long. Just have it and be done with it!"

"Oh no, you idiot, you stuffed your face yet again. Look how bloated you feel. You will never get into your jeans when you go out with your friends tomorrow!"

The voice in your head seems to be a fair-weather friend. The voice wants you to do something and then beats you up over it. The voice is not the only one, your subconscious also does the beating. Where do you think the bloating, nausea and constipation comes from - the system responds to the guilt that you feel.

The voice in your head is not you. You are the one who is aware that someone is talking. You do not need to engage with the voice. Breathe in and breathe out, through all the babbling in your head and though all the cravings that your body experiences. Once you start to argue with the voice in your head you identify with it, and the war within has already started. Simple awareness can silence the dialogue inside: when you perceive the emptiness, the nervous energy, the restlessness and cravings, you have the choice not to react. And when you don't react, the negative energy wave has already lost some of its energy. Sooner or later the bad energy leaves the system and you can be yourself again.

Mindfulness can't completely shut off your monkey mind and your cravings, but it can take the wind out of its sails, and with it, protect you from vicious feed-back loops. When you don't identify with the energy that is circulating inside, you are the one who is in charge.

Life is a Present, but Only if You are Present

Being mindful allows you to track down what appear to be subconscious processes, disentangle them and bring them out in the open. Say you lie in bed, your partner is fast asleep but since you are lying next to each other, you can feel a touch on your body. You feel sexual energy rising in you, you feel relaxed because it is Saturday and you have a long weekend coming up, you are touching yourself, you picture your favorite sexual act and you effectively begin to masturbate.

When you think about it, there are actually many things going on in this scene. A lot happens between the moment you wake up and the time you masturbate. Waking up is obviously out of your control, as is the experience of the touch of your partner and the fact that sexual energy is rising in you. You may be a person who always feels sexual energy most intensely when you are relaxed. Knowing the mood you are in helps you understand how you are likely to react. Once you are mindful of what is going on inside, you suddenly realize that you have a choice in touching yourself and a choice in creating exciting sexual mental images. Before you were just on an autopilot that led to masturbation even though many of the processes weren't subconscious at all, be mindful gives you a choice in what experience and lets you experience everything more intensely.

Try to be present when something is happening inside you, say sexual energy surge in you like in in our example. How do you react to this energy surge? How is your mood when you experience it? Are you angry or pleased, anxious or relaxed, are you in a good or in a bad mood? Try to be present when these processes run, or otherwise you will be just dragged around by these emotions and energy and will end up acing like a slave. Are you a master of your emotions and actions or are you controlled totally by the robot inside?

To become a master of your emotions and your actions can be learned. Try to be present when these energies surge in you, feel how different emotions work on your body, and try to understand why you have these reactions. With your total attention and total presence, with the gaze of your love, these emotions calm down like a purring cat. Please practice this by yourself, you basically can see the transition of your emotions in action. You can experience how pain is transformed into love and joy; anxiety into peace; anger into forgiveness.

Please don’t suppress your emotions. Accept them as they are. Try not to judge them and label them as good or bad. Take them all and in experience them as they are. The problems for most of people is that they are controlled and dragged around by their emotions. The emotional, mental and physical dominos are falling and afterwards the outcome gets labeled as good or bad. When something is labeled as good, you are happy to experience what is going on and you want them to stay with it as long as possible. On the contrary, when the emotions are labeled as bad, you don’t want them, you try to get rid of them and you afterwards beat yourself or someone else up over them.

If you really watch these emotions and observe them carefully, you will find that, as a matter of fact, these emotions come and go by themselves. But if you resist them, suppress them, or try to control them, they will stay longer. Just be present with them, you will be able to transcendent these emotions, understand them and yourself, and experience life

With your presence, the intensity of every emotion will become strong and you will also gain back the feeling of liveliness. Do you recall how you experienced life as a child? Can you feel the breeze when you walk in nature? Can you see the flowers blooming all over the places? Can you taste the flavor of food? Have you ever experienced talking to your loved one and feel the love flowing back and forth between you two? Have you ever experienced the pain when someone you really care is walking out of your life? Yes, these situations trigger our emotions and sensations. If you are present in these happenings, you will connect with the lively energy of these things. You cannot help feeling that life is wonderful and exciting because you are lively there participating every thing.

Dear friends, please get out of your mind and your auto-pilot and join life instead. Leave the roller-coaster of emotions, just experience the first push, the psychological trigger and experience how the stimulus is fading naturally when you just observe. Life is a present and a blessing, but only when you are present will you be able to get it. You have lived in the illusionary world full of worry and fear long enough. Join the real world and be ready to receive your present.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Mindfulness and the Tao

If you like to follow the Tao and get away from the control of your ego, your ability to be mindful of everything that is going on inside of you is key. So what exactly does it entail to be able to observe yourself?

Observation is the ability to detach yourself from everything that you are doing and, at the same time, be able to observe everything that is going on within you and in the environment that you are operating in. It is very much like you are watching a movie of yourself, but you are sitting in the audience at the same time. In the beginning you will probably get involved quite frequently, so you will be the actor on many occasions and the spectator in others, but that is ok too. Never try to force anything or your ability to observe will disappear.

You probably spend time analyzing how other people behave; you analyze their mistakes, or why they behave the way to do. But at the same time, have you ever thought that you can apply the same methodology to yourself? If you observe yourself carefully, you will realize many things about yourself, know the reason why you are getting stuck in some cases, find out why you experience these emotional swings and understand why it is so hard to quit some of your habits.

When you are observing yourself, you actually get in touch with your spiritual consciousness, and you will discover a universal healing power. Under your observation, you will learn how to step back and will have a shot at overcoming your robotic responses to your environment. Once you reach that stage, 'karma' will no longer stick to you and you will learn how to set yourself free. Awareness is a very powerful healing force.

When you observe, naturally, you will realize many things. For example, it is very common that we are triggered to react in a certain way when we are interacting with other peoples or when we are in special circumstances. We get mad when people say something that doesn't meet our expectation. Without this understanding, we are just carried away by our emotions without the ability to grasp what is behind all these dramas. We think that we have good reasons to be mad at others and blame them for our suffering. In doing so, we cut into our own power base - by losing control, we become the slaves of our emotions. The good news is that we can spot these points when we lose control and respond before the emotional train risks leaving the station for good. In fact, if you can transcend these moments, you will see for yourself that you can save a lot of money on antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills that way.

There are little tricks to get to this level of mastery. For example, you can look out for the moments when you have a strong emotional reaction to something and you can literally hear a voice kicking in and saying 'Hey, I am being emotional again - what's going on here?' In these cases, give yourself a time-out. Go to a quiet place and be with that emotion; feel how this emotion is influencing your body and what kind of thoughts you have. If you are really able to connect with your inner state, you will be surprised to realize how mechanical your emotional reactions always are in response to some pretty straight-forward triggers; you will be also be surprised to see how your emotions are transformed under your observation. Once the shock of the emotional swing has been digested, you will see for yourself that all you are left with are joy, love, peace, and understanding.

There are some ways to train yourself to raise your level of awareness:

1. Meditation: Regular meditation can really help you practicing your observation skills. Set a time every day aside for 10 minutes, sit still and watch whatever thought or emotion arises, the noises, the aches from the body, the thoughts rising to the surface. It is an observation without judgement. In the same way, learn to receive whatever comes your way in life without judgement.

2. Mindful living: Observe how you eat, what is the smell of the food, how does it taste and how fast or slowly you eat. Notice how your system digests the food and how your energy level is changing in response. Observe how you walk. Can you tell how your leg and feet coordinate when you walk? Observe everything that comes your way in that fashion.

3. Doing exercise might be a good practice as well. Just as you build muscle strength when you exercise, you can develop mind power when you do your awareness exercises. Can you be aware of all your body parts as you exercise them?

Once you are very skilled in observing yourself, it will be very easy for you to understand what is going on inside yourself. It is a process to get to this level of mastery, but every situation and interaction that comes your way is a new opportunity to practice. You have a chance to say good-by to the robot inside, and you will quit being a victim of your environment. At this point you will become a creator of your reality and stop being a follower. Soon you will learn that along the Tao there is nothing really that can give you an excuse for being grumpy about. Instead, you are grateful for whatever it is that is coming your way - your life is blessed after this realization.

By Sue Zhen

Your Behavior affects your Thinking

There are some psychological experiments in which people were asked if they would have sex with partners who were considered as physically unattractive and the outcome very much depended on whether or not they were sexually aroused. Before arousal, only a small fraction said they would, whereas in a state of arousal there was a significant jump in interest. Well, I guess you didn't have to run an experiment to get this insight, common sense could have told you that as well. To me, this is just another example that shows that your behavior affects your thought process and your desires, and with it, the next decision you make.

Sometimes I think of a 'personality wheel' that is spinning inside of us. Dependent on the situation we are in, and what kind of psychological triggers we get, we move from one personality trait and one desire to the other. When the wheel is spinning really fast, it is hard to even recognize the person who was on the other side just a short while ago.

The outcomes and the intensity of the states is by no means random. What you do and what choices you make very much determines the next event and your perception of it and reaction to it. The Law of Attraction seems to be at play here. This chain of event is perhaps obvious when it comes to addiction. The alcoholic may still be able to hold back when he passes the liquor cabinet, but once he has opened it and taken the bottle opener in his hands, the addiction train has probably already left the station. You can experiment with this concept yourself. Take one of your New Year's Resolutions and reprogram your behavior for 21 days as many self-help books suggest. As the days go by you can literally study the fog in your head - changing programmed traits temporarily throws the system in disarray - but after a few days the system clears up and you are literally a changed person afterwards. 

 As you do, so you think, and as you think, so you do, so I hope you agree with me the the world can be your oyster if you are making the right choices along the way.

Willpower

There are some who say there is a force inside ourselves, the ego, who wants to keep us from going home. Well, if that is the case, you will have to apply willpower to advance on your spiritual path, at least initially until you have figured out what the scheme of the ego is all about. When you look at the final temptations Jesus Christ and the Buddha had to endure before they reached enlightenment: it was authority in the case of the Christ and it was sexual lust in the case of the Buddha.

What is it that gets your passions going? Chances are the force that wants you to keep you from going home will zoom right into it. But if you get your chastity belt out you also know that you are doing something wrong. Don't torture yourself as the Course in Miracles states, it is more a matter of mindfulness. The initial stage is just about figuring out where the problem statement lies, that is, discovering the two forces at work. But once you have figured out the scheme, all you have to do is to apply mindfulness as well as a little willpower. Once your mind goes back to your favorite subject, the observer kicks in and gently reminds 'Here we go again!'

Spinning the Personality Wheel

S. S. Cowen described in On Talks with Sri Maharshi how a group of spiritual seekers were listening to the master when he suddenly asked out of the blue "Tell me, what is missing at this moment?" Nothing was missing! Everybody felt peaceful and full of bliss in his presence. All lust, professional ambitions, hunger for recognition had just vanished. But alas, for most of them this moment was just a temporary relief. Without the master all these desires would be back rather sooner than later.

A lot is written about the lower versus higher self perspective and our attempts of thought control, and like everyone else I have experimented a lot with these concepts. However, in the end I found that "mindful living" works best for me. Let me try to explain. You can think of yourself as a spinning wheel of personalities, which is getting activated by the people you spend time with, the memories that get activated, the thoughts you have, etc. Mindful living steers this wheel in a certain direction. The more time you spend on areas you aim to be, the more likely it is that associated thoughts, feeling and actions follow you in your desired direction. Of course there are moments of lust, greed, fear, etc., but they slowly vanish. And if they suddenly pop up out of the blue, you have a perfect opportunity to study what behaviour triggered it.

Every Step You Take

Imagine you find tooth paste on your bed and you realize that your son must have dropped it the other day when he slept in your bed. What exactly is the message of this you ask yourself and then you conclude that he is probably still too small to brush his teeth all by himself so you decide that you will again do it for him next evening.

Albert Einstein was once quoted saying "whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters". I think that is true. I also have a hunch that every little misstep, every little inconvenience we experience actually has a message for you to do things differently next time around. It is hard for me to find a message in every little nudge that I receive just because I get way too many at work and at home to see a clear connection in all occurrences. Still, I am hopeful that as my cleaning process continues, it will be easier over time to perceive clear patterns.

A couple of songs come to mind as I write this note. The first one my boys learned at preschool:
Clean-up, clean-up,
Everybody, everywhere.
Clean-up, clean-up,
Everybody do your share.

The second one you might have guessed from the title: be mindful of every step you take and every move you make and you will soon have figured out the meaning and significance of every misstep.

Know Your Symbol of Power

The inexperienced Navy JAG was a man of short stature, but full of life and determination. During the trial of his lifetime he had moments when he felt like giving up, but then he always reverted back to the time of his glory: during his teenage years he was a baseball star and had won numerous games with his last minute home runs. So when the going got tough during the trial, he mentally grabbed his baseball bat as he agitated Jack Nicholson, and when the Colonel shouted the now famous words "you can't handle the truth", he literally saw the ball flying towards him and he hammered it with his imagined bat over the wall for the game-winning home-run.

Do you have a symbol of power as Tom Cruise had in A Few Good Men? Actually, I have seen some self-help books advising you to create one, like a magic wand, a sword, or whatever works for you. I don't know about that, but there is something fascinating when you happen to have a symbol of power. When your symbol flashes in your mind, you actually can analyse what event, person or words triggered this response. If this happens often, you will learn a lot about the workings of your mind that way. Our mind can sometimes be quite predictable and by analysing and understanding our trigger points, we can make a big step forward on the journey towards mindfulness.