Uncover your motive

Two men visit a Zen master, looking for advice.

The first man says: “I’m thinking of moving to this town. What’s it like?”

The Zen master asks: “How was your old town?”

“It was terrible. Everyone was mean. I hated it.”

To that, the Zen master replies: “This town is much the same. Don’t move here.”

After the first man leaves, the second man enters and says: “I’m thinking of moving to this town. How is it?”

Again, the Zen master asks: “What was your old town like?”

“It was wonderful. Everyone was friendly. Just looking for a change.”

The master replies: “This town is very much the same. I think you will like it here.”

There is always more than one reason why we do things. The mind tells us one reason, the rest of the body offers other insight often overlooked. What we seek is what we find. Why we do what we do matters as much, if not more, as the experience itself. The rhythm of our breath offers clues to our underlying motivation for action. Focusing on the breath and engaging in breathing exercises can reveal what we run from or tward or whether we are truly present.

Ultimately, what we find is determined by how we chose to seek and what we are ready to make conscious. All behaviours and life choices are pointers to what is going on inside ourselves.  We are the creator.  Every moment our thoughts and feelings are creating every moment and direction of our lives. Uncovering our motive for a geographic move or other life change is something we only reveal to ourselves when ready. Ponder the role of mindfulness and mindlessness...

6 questions to be more aware

In my first book, Self-Disclosure: Changes from Within (2009), many questionnaires are included to encourage readers to get to know themselves better and come to see how and why they are not living authentically. To take this process deeper, you create situations to interact with people who allow you to make the unconscious conscious.  Now, 12 books and much expansion later, I am still inviting individuals to explore, reframe and see beyond conditioned perception.  No matter where you are on this journey, ask 6 questions to be more aware:

What is running you?

Who is asking?

Where are you really coming from?

When is the focus of your attention (& is this changing)?

How are you feeling (and what are you hiding)? 

What is your relationship to time?

Change your thoughts & your life

To get different results from yourself in any area of life, you have to start thinking differently about people, relationships and situations.  Changing your thoughts changes your perception of everything and also transforms your life.

Recall that people function based on their level of consciousness. How you view the world is not necessary the same as how someone else views and understands things. Note the metaphor of 'seeing eye-to-eye' or at the same level. As it happens, everyone is not always 'on the same page.' 

When you see someone as an enemy or trouble maker, your experience has to confirm it. If you see someone as a teacher or partner or something else, evidence arises to confirm that. You get to choose how to think, what to feel and experience.

You may not like what other people do or say, but not liking how they behave is not an excuse for you to not accept accountability for how you behave. Stop waiting for other people to change, or complaining when they do not. You choose how you think and feel, not a reaction to someone else. Taking personal responsibility is everything.  This is also true for the ‘difficult’ people. The only way they will ever change is if they choose to. 

People don’t change for your reasons, they change for their own, if they change at all. Allowing negative emotion to arise does not change this. Recognizing you only control how you feel is one of the most liberating gifts you can give yourself.

Be aware of what you say

Words have the capacity to create a dynamic that engages you, that invites you to explore something deeper within.  What you talk about, the words you choose, reveal thoughts and feelings toward your true nature, as well as about the apparent focus.  Be aware of silent messages in what is said and left unsaid.

1) Notice feelings arising when you do not say anything 

2) Notice feelings arising when you interject, agree or disagree

3) Notice hidden reasons for speaking up or remaining silent

Discover how to decode your mixed messages.  Watch confusion and conflict dissolve.  It all begins and ends in you.

It all comes down to this

It is very simple to understand the human and its ego. Yet, one cannot understand the being.  The journey of the human+being is to begin to see the nature of each part and bring them together or begin to recognize how they are inter-connected.

The human ego thinks it is a separate individual. The human exists in perceived time and space that it imagines is filled with objects, concepts and references. Each human creates his own life, reality and sense of things, his own thinking. The individual thinks it has free will and is unaware of how he thinks things into being.  By watching the human, you get acquainted with the being.

The being resides in the changeless now.  The nature of this now is love.  This is the changeless moment where there is no memory such as the moment of giving birth. There is no ego in this kind of love. The very awareness of such love is being.  Now contains the present moment. The present contains your past and future.  Love and freedom are natural expressions of being in the unchanging now which is eternal. Being is the only reality.  Divine will is the only will.  You arise from and dissolve into the divine. Everything you do, you do it for feelings you imagine having.