When the SELF leads the WAY

                  feelings

ego           environment           SELF

                  thoughts

We have it all wrong. Our mind only knows that much when it comes to God. Actually, it is even worse. Often the mind thinks it knows, only to be told years later that we have deviated even further from Her, well-meaning as we might have been. But then, feelings can sometimes not be trusted either. It takes our entire arsenal of our mind, heart, and the environment we operate in to discover Her. There is a divine Guidance inside of us - the SELF - that very much like a global positioning device always is connected to the Way.

We always can listen to the Quiet Voice inside; we can get in touch with our big heart, follow the serene flow of our beautiful mind, and be one with the environment that surrounds you. Fact of the matter is, the God connection is both inside as well as outside of us, always ready to be accessed. Before we were on auto-pilot, swayed by feelings, thoughts, the events in our life, and the conflicts between all of these. Yet, once you have a glimpse of the Way, everything - thoughts, feelings & the daily occurrences flow just as She desires it.

Heart and Mind along the Way

                                    Soul


Heart/Feelings                                   Mind/Thoughts


                                      Tao


I am a thought-driven person and have been all my life. I remember a time when a childhood friend died and I "thought" about the situation. I simply didn't feel anything. It was a scary moment for me personally. The feelings must have been repressed, why exactly, I have no idea. The good thing is that in recent years all the feelings have started to come to the surface. I still am a mind-driven person, but I now feel what is going on within me and the people I am with; sometimes with the intensity of a volcano.

Emotions connect us with the current moment we are in, but at the same time we are beyond them.  Our connection with our heart is very much like the relationship with our mind.  By observing our emotions and thinking, we can understand how we are at that moment just as we can experience and understand the Way. We learn to dance with our heart and our mind, without being driven by them. We are passionate during the tango and feel the love as we walz; and sometimes we walk off stage when the music gets too annoying. 

Of course, we cannot make the "observer" in charge over night; it is a process to live in tune with the demands of our Soul. God has many children and She made many Paths; in fact, one for each of us. Yet, all of us will one day converge with the Way. We can approach via the Path of Love; alternatively, we can seek God via the Path of Wisdom.  Along the Way, for some of us the learning experience will be to detach ourselves from our mind, while for others the learning process will be the realization that we are not our emotions. 

God created our hearts and minds to allow us to experience divinity while being here on earth. By being in tune with our heart and being aware of our emotions, we can literally feel our Soul and the Way. And by making use of our mind, we can have a glimpse into God's grand plan. Our Soul communicates via all dimensions with us and is connected with other Souls along the Way. Feelings, thoughts and life are there to capture our connectedness with God. When we hold Her hand, we are One.

Do You Have a Choice?

You are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you exercise choice.
(A Course in Miracles)

Neurologists ran a strange experiment. They observed brain activity and found that there is an institution in our brain that apparently knows about a decision before we are consciously aware that we made this choice! Could it be that we don't have a free will at all and only ex-post explain what we would have done anyway?

Have you ever seen people on auto-pilot? The way they run after money, fame, power, entertainment, or trophy spouses? Do you have observed people who worry excessively? The way they would like to protect and scheme themselves into safety? Everybody probably acts like a robot on one level or other, the question is whether we can - with the help of a spiritual quest - increase our degrees of freedom.

Sure you can! Have you ever meditated on a day when you feel absolutely carefree? You perceive thoughts popping up and they do - just like cloud formations in the sky - disappear as quickly. In contrast, how different everything becomes once you go after something that you care a lot about. Thoughts and actions soon can't be separated any longer and the deeper you get lost in whatever it is that gets you going, the more intense the stream of thoughts become until they can't be shut off anymore.

Have a look at the wheel below. Thoughts bubble from what appears to be the subconscious. But they themselves are a function of what you have been occupied with in the past. Thoughts form in your mind and once you start engaging with them you act them out, which on turn gets the new subconscious thought pattern going. As long as you live this wheel will always be spinning; but you can definitely decide on its intensity and the direction you want to take with it.

                                       subconscious



action                                                           thought



                                         engage



The question is now, how can you spin this wheel in the desired direction: away from fear, worry and greed towards love, peace of mind and freedom. That's where the spiritual path comes in. Engage in stuff that gives you peace and happiness and avoid the stuff that pulls your energy frequency down. It is a process. You can't will yourself to be an angel. And when the dark stuff pops up from the subconscious at times then you have to deal with that to.

As you clean your agenda you will observe that a distance starts growing to the thoughts that go through your mind. They no longer define you. I started the note with a strange neurological experiment. Whether we have free will in the end I cannot say. But I can tell you that you can always look back on the past - very much like a recovering addict would - and decide that in some areas of your life you now have a choice whereas before you didn't.

When the Observer Holds the Reins

Walking a spiritual path is about learning how to get in harmony with all our experiences, whether they might be physical or emotional, or whether they happen on a spiritual or an intellectual level.

To be in harmony requires to be completely present at this special moment. We feel our body, we perceive our emotions, we hear our thoughts and we are connected with our spirit. All this happens at a time when we are completely immersed in the occurrence of the moment. To say that we have an information overload would be putting it mildly - we are one with the Flow when all that just melts into one feeling of lasting connectedness.

There is an observer at work when your agenda fades into the background. Everyone has to have an agenda, that is what the concept of the "I" is all about. Before we walked the Way we perceived and felt things differently. With tunnel vision you just zoom into the stuff you want to get out of a situation. But in doing so you often overlook things that the "I" considers as non-essential, though a spiritual traveler would tell you they matter a lot! The tunnel vision also often puts you out of touch with your emotions, body and spirit.

The agenda of a spiritual traveler is not to have one. Over and over we have learned that tunnel vision brings trouble. Again and again we realize that we cannot really root for something given that we ourselves don't really know what constitutes "good" and "bad". When we get in tune with our body, emotions and spirit, we feel the situation we are in and the thoughts become a conclusion rather than a precursor of the situation we aspire to be in. When the observer holds the reins, the Self is projecting Itself through us. Whenever this connection is there, we feel peaceful and harmonious and we are sure to walk the Way.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Merging with the Flow of Life

Walking on the Tao sounds mysterious but it is actually pretty straight-forward for anyone who is interested in self-improvement: the Way  encourages you to face your emotions, be mindful of your thoughts, be aware of your body, and experiences life with courage, awareness, openness but without attachment and judgments.

When you really observe yourself, you will find that most of our so-called "life problems" actually just reflect our attitude toward our emotions, our thoughts, our body, or the situations we are in. We have opinions about our emotions; we don't let them just pass through our system. We dislike feelings such as loneliness, sadness, or uncertainty, so we devise escape strategies such as being too busy or too wired to notice. This may work for a while, but the negativity is just repressed somewhere in the basement of our being. They certainly will catch up with us whenever we have some spare time.

It is human nature to experiences these emotions, thoughts and different situations, but if we are open to them we can see them pass by just like the clouds do across the blue sky. With honest acknowledgement of everything that comes our way and without repression we can be so much more relaxed and comfortable. Struggles comes when we anticipate events, feelings and reaction and never really experience them as they truly are.

Observe and accept everything that comes your way with an open mind. Merge with the flow of life and realize how much simpler and happier everything turns out to be.

By Su Zhen

11:11

When you are a Tao master you have your way of communication with the Source. Christian tried describing a few glimpses of this communication channel in his book, "The Magnificent Experiment", but these can at best be pointers. This communication is a highly idiosyncratic experience. Many path travelers report seeing 11:11 when they are connected as just one example.   You will have your own channels and when you are connected the message will be blazing as the sun so that you cannot overlook them; yet, very much like the 11:11 symbol,  when you try to communicate it to others it will feel somehow childish.

After this communication channel has been established you will certainly know when you are not connected. When you are in that stage, most of the time you will feel very unstable. The voice in your head will be in overdrive and you literally will be too busy to observe what happens in your environment. From time to time you will bump into things, a subtle reminder of the Tao to stop everything and just observe. You  probably will wolf down food when you are excited or not eat at all when you are depressed. The food will be tasteless anyhow. You will literally not perceive it, just as you block out everything that happens outside of you.

When I am at this state, even I walk in a beautiful park full of different species of plants and flowers, I cannot appreciate a bit.  I cannot see the beautiful scenery, the lake, the mountains, the trees, the flowers; I cannot hear the birds sings and bugs hum; I cannot notice the people walk by and say hello.  Hence I am not able to receive this wonderful present that mother earth has prepared for us.  I am not able to resonate with nature at this moment and be lifted up by its pure energy.  Connection means you are "here", you experience the divine Now that Eckhart Tolle described in his book The Power of Now.

 Have you observed yourself that how often you become disconnected?  This is a state of mind when you just get lost in some external energy that isn't you. If you are very busy with your work, your family, your daily activities. In fact, you are so lost in it that you simply forget being mindful. You don't realize that your mind is run by a force outside of your Self.

The life run by the mind is unstable because that is its nature. Thoughts pop up like bubbles from seemingly nowhere and the only choice you have is to pop a few while letting the others become in a creation of your Self.  If you observe your mind, you will find that it is a little bit like the wind. Thoughts seemingly come from nowhere and disappear into nowhere.  However, when you have no idea how your mind functions you will take your thoughts for real and will try to solve all the problems that your mind comes up with. What a waste of time and energy! Reflect for a moment. How often has it happened to you that life took a very different turn than all the scenarios you stewed over in your head?

 All you really need to do is to recognize that your mind is in action again. Let it run its course, observe it, but stay in the Now. At some point, when you engage with your life, your daily activities, the voice in your head, the endless back and forth  will suddenly stop.  At this moment, you can suddenly sense a void, something so vast that is able to include everything.  You are then able to sense the nature, the songs of birds, the rain, the smell of your environment, the people around you.  It is like you suddenly wake up from a dream.

Your state of mind state is can be quite surreal and unrealistic.  It keeps you from being in touch with the beauty of Now. The people, the lively energy the Tao puts you in touch. Let special symbols like 11:11 remind you of the state you belong to. Embrace the Now and learn to disconnect from the energy that isn't you. Wake up friends, sleeping is easy but will keep you from experiencing something wonderful!  Join the world, join the Tao, join the lively vibration, excitement, you will find life is lots of fun!

By Su Zhen

Meditation and True Self

There are so many things that we identify with, like our body, something our parents may have said about us, our perceived attractiveness or lack thereof, our role as parents or children, our social status or profession, our emotions, and so much more. All these identifications are subject to change. The young beautiful girl will eventually become old and lose her physical attractiveness. The powerful manager will one day be over the hill. Your status will vanish when you get fired or someone else becomes the new hot shot in your company or your community. You work hard to keep your position, but the fear that you one day might lose it all will remain. People with low confidence and perceived weaknesses might fall into the trap that their lack of confidence makes the negative outcome self-fulfilling. They might keep looking for evidence to prove that they are victims of life, or they might with hard work and the help of positive psychology turn their life around. All along they will identify with some role, be it that of a loser or a rising star.

Sooner or later every role will be transformed. While the mother will always identify with her role, it will still be hard for her to accept when her children grow up and move out. All ego roles are fleeting in nature and we are here to learn that we are not any of that. You are not your changing emotions, whether it is happiness or sadness, whether it is exuberance or depression. You are neither a boy, nor a middle-aged man. You are not your thoughts, not your fantasies and not your desires; the list can go on and on. Life will teach you eventually that you are not any of that, but you can take a short-cut and come to this realization here and now. In meditation you get a glimpse of who you truly are. When your thoughts come to a standstill you can liberate yourself from all the prisons you have created for yourself and merge with the Source. At this blissful moment you get a taste for who you truly are.

By Su Zhen



Sent from my iPad

Mind Power

"Be still and know that I am God", the bible says, but the big question is how does one silent one's mind. The mindful spiritual path traveler can actually do a lot to raise her mind power, though the eventual stillness of mind comes after a lot of practice and a long journey of mindful living. On my path, I have found a few ways of directing my thoughts.

You cannot control the stream of thoughts that hit you all the time, they come from your conscious mind activity as well as the subconscious and will probably always have some randomness attached to it, that you as the thinker simply cannot control. However, mindful living will affect the thought process. Let me give you an example. You happen to walk down the road on a hot summer day and you happen to see an incredibly sexy specimen of the human race. Your eyes probably zoom into her body - I presume this example has more relevance for the male audience - but you definitely have the choice to move your vision up. As you zoom into her face and eyes instead, a completely new novel will open up. With your perspective your stream of thoughts is changing as well. Mindful living tailors the world of perceptions, the events that you are attracting into your life as well as the thoughts you generate. So in effect you still don't have much control over your thoughts, but you can at least flip the subject channel.

The second avenue you can take is to mentally interrupt a train of thought. Say a random thought is hitting you and it happens to be one of your pet worries, triggered by an event that has just taken place. Surely you must remember a time when you were lost in mental torture, anticipating one bad outcome after the other when you suddenly you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder and a friendly voice says to you "sister, where are you right now?". If you practice mindfulness over some time and happen to know your weak spots and the events that trigger them, you can stop this train of thought from leaving the station very effectively.

Living in the now is a popular concept these days and indeed seems to the answer to bring the conscious and the subconscious together. If you completely embrace the now, if you are dying to the moment as J. Krishnamurti always used to say, you will experience that your mind goes into overdrive. All the signals, from your environment as well as from the inside are processed at an incredible speed until there is literally no space left to think. At that infinite moment there is silence, and with it, the capacity to observe the creativity that lies beyond.