Now and Zen
by Brad Jensen
Copyright 1996 Brad Jensen All Rights Reserved Permission
is hereby granted for any publication in electronic form.
PART 2
``Song of Praise''
The best in my life is a song of praise to that creation which I serve
as master. When enlightenment comes and I know my true place, my thankfulness
is now complete.
The Good Fight
When I reject the form of the lesson for which I have so earnestly prayed,
even the angels weep.
When you give yourself permission to be wrong, nothing can prevent your
success.
This moment is the keyhole to heaven.
Live the blameless life. Do not paint others with blame. Do not paint
yourself with blame. Blame and its firstborn child, guilt, are used to
shield you from awareness. It takes great courage to choose awareness over
blame, but only awareness leads to the path of healing. How do you overcome
blame? Through forgiveness.
The other choice is to repeat the experience over and over again until
you see it clearly enough, that you choose to forgive. If you have the
power to give yourself the experience, you certainly have the power to
forgive it also.
I feel frustration when things do not come out as I expect. This can
happen when I do not see the cause clearly, often because I am denying
that the cause is myself. To let all distractions fall to the side, and
focus my attention through love to the true cause, will lead to the release
of the source of my frustration.
When we see something clearly, we say we have reached the heart of the
matter. In this, we recognize that the true source of understanding is
our courage to change.
If you are having an argument with yourself, who can intervene?
When a problem seems unsolvable, ask yourself how love enters in to
this. Have you made a place for love to enter?
So many times when I am angry at another person, it is because I am
afraid that they do not respect me. I have made my guess of their opinion
of me, more important than my opinion of myself. If I do not think I can
control my own mind, how do I imagine that I can control someone else's?
My dream of what they think of me, is less frightening than encountering
the reality of how I view myself. To escape from this nightmare, I must
stop blaming myself and others.
When you blame yourself, you are blaming others. When you blame others,
you are blaming yourself.
It is a constant battle to keep my awareness submerged, and avoid enlightenment.
Fortunately, I have practiced since birth hiding my true nature, and I
manage to skilfully prevent encountering myself, except in dreams and deep
meditation.
I'm Here By Mistake
Enlightenment is not something that needs to be created. It exists now
within you, and you can discover it, like recognizing a friend from long
ago.
The purpose of prayer is not to teach the universal how to work with
the man, but the man how to work with the universal.
Is God outside of and greater than man, or to be found entirely within
his nature? Yes.
Love is not vapid sentimentality, but one-pointed, clear, direct, full
awareness of the object of your attention. It is compassion that expands
so fully, that it folds back and encompasses the self.
The only face that God can show you is your own.
Any thought you develop to the point of desire, will not subside until
it has completed the cycle of giving and receiving.
If you express through unselfish love, you will experience unselfish
love. If you express through anger, you will experience anger. As a wave
has a crest, it must have a trough.
Do not pray to be shown wisdom, but to show wisdom.
Stop waiting for permission. You were given permission long ago to be
yourself. What authority figure do you plan to use, to trigger your willingness
to move forward and express yourself honestly and completely? When do you
plan to do this? It will still be your decision when it comes. You don't
need to trick yourself into the courage to act, you have it now. So use
it in this instant.
I'm afraid I won't like myself if I fail. But failure is just the temporary
lack of success. Once I choose to do it, I will eventually succeed, now
or at some point in my life. So I begin to celebrate at the moment I decide
to change my life. How can I help but admire such a successful person?
You are the spiritual equivalent of a black hole, and your event horizon
is the limit of your perception. Yet even black holes are fuzzy.
I do not deny the reality of pain. I deny the permanence of pain. I
deny the dominion and authority of pain. I deny the authenticity of pain.
I am willing to forgive my pain.
Jesus Christ tells us to choose life over all the other urges competing
for our attention -- pain, suffering, self-condemnation, comparison to
others, and even death.
The only price you pay for life, is attention. If you want a better
life, be prepared to pay the price.
Your intention to be aware is the philosopher's stone. It transmutes
the leaden experiences of life into golden understandings.
Any act performed with the positive expectation of success leads to
greater success.
Use your brains, don't let your brains use you. ``It can't be done''
is the second silliest statement you can make. The silliest is, ``I can't
do it''.
Treat your reality as if it were real, but do not get too caught up
in it. Treat your mind as if it were awake, but do not forget who does
the waking and sleeping. Treat yourself as if you knew your name, but remember
your name is your Father's name also.
It is better to be, than to be correct.
Those who reject this outer, physical world as being of no value to
the spirit, are probably trying to remember why they chose to come here.
They worship the external world through rejection and fear, and in their
denial bring it ever more near.
``I'm here by mistake'', shows no great spiritual attainment.
The Die or Move Away Theory
Can any adult reading the Bible, think that original sin was a mistake?
At least we got to leave the kindergarten of Eden by choice! Now to climb
that tree of life!
The original sin of Adam was denial of his responsibility for his decision.
This submerged his awareness into unconsciousness, and separated him from
awareness of his higher self. You are always choosing what to believe.
To deny that awareness is what Jesus calls the "sin against the Holy Spirit".
Your life cannot choose for you. You must choose.
When only the absurd remains, truth is near.
One more thought, added to the pile of many thoughts, dissolves all
thinking and reveals the truth. When conclusions collapse under their own
weight, beginnings are possible.
I choose to believe in God, because I developed a greater and greater
suspicion that God chooses to believe in me.
Since there is no absolute determinism, it is all superstition at some
level anyways. I might as well take responsibility for my thought and go
on living.
When asked how he juggles so well, the juggler says, ``I just keep throwing
the balls in the air. Gravity does the rest.'' When you understand and
use the laws of awareness, you experience the same relation to your creation.
All new discovery begins with doubt.
Two men walked on water. What is possible for two is possible for any.
Attention is directed by intention and held steady by will. A moment
of meditation is worth a lifetime of talk.
You do not have to close your eyes, make special sounds, or sit in special
ways, to meditate. True meditation draws its power from your intention
to be a complete being, totally responsible for your awareness in this
moment.
Choose to live in the world of causes, and let the laws of the universe
create the effects.
From a certain perspective within you, your life makes perfect sense.
We create separation by looking for it. When we stop looking for it,
it disappears.
There is no ``out there'' or ``in here'' to mind. Your life is one seamless
creation which flows outward from your point of decision, and inward to
your point of understanding, while remaining perfectly still.
Sooner or later every person that you think you depend on for your continued
success or failure will either die or move away. Then you will need to
be aware that your value comes from within yourself. Why not make the decision
to understand that now, and avoid unnecessary pain?
Down The Road
My unconscious mind begins where my sense of self-worth ends.
The proof of the existence of a spiritual reality underlying and supporting
physical reality is simple and direct. Hold a positive thought in mind,
one that benefits yourself and harms no one. Be sure that your thought
does not interfere with anyone else's will. For some period of time, a
day, a week, or a month, continually energize that thought by going over
and over it in your mind, adding desire and excitement to it, till it seems
to take on a life of its own. Then release it and forget about it, thanking
yourself for the creation of this new reality, as if it had already come
true. Try this ten times, with simple, believable, but unlikely things.
Please note that you will be unable to prove this to anyone else, you can
only prove it to yourself.
People have so many problems because that's all they will pay attention
to.
Let other people be the way they are, and you will discover more of
who you really are.
You can increase your will power by practicing a task you now find unpleasant,
with your complete and undivided attention, until it becomes pleasant.
We feel threatened by change because we confuse what we have and what
we do with who we are.
You can waste a lot of energy arguing with your life. When you continually
ask yourself why your life is the way it is, you pull yourself back into
the same situation over and over again. Decide how you want to change your
life, and begin acting on those changes. After you are safely down the
road, you can look back and see the why.
Peanut Butter Zen
Instead of wondering, ``what do I want?'' , try asking yourself, ``what
would I like to see happen?'' or even, ``how would I like the situation
to be?'' Often your fear of self-judgment pushes new ideas and possibilities
into the unconscious mind, where they resist the completion of their becoming.
Your power to control your own thoughts, is your power to recreate your
world. Don't give up your power to change, by resenting or blaming others.
You can't prove anything to anybody. When you try, you lose the ability
to convince even yourself.
The scribes and Pharisees of old were the people who wrote down their
perception of truth, and then worshipped that graven image. They were always
looking for a formula for salvation, and trying to police the beliefs of
others to distract themselves from their own doubts. They were proud of
the traditions and beliefs of their fathers, but Christ said to call no
man on earth father. We have people like these with us today.
Your school is the universe, and your teacher is your inner self, responding
to your conscious and unconscious desires.
There are two kinds of history, the history of what you have said, and
the history of what you have become. Which do you consider the true history
of your self?
When God has made each of us so completely unique, it is funny that
we expend so much energy trying to dress, act, speak, and even think the
same way.
This moment is the end of time.
Oh, to run out into the world and disappear from history! So many of
us end our days, prisoners of our own regrets. How have you ended this
day?
You can never see another's true self, but only what they reflect to
you of your own.
Meditation is the act of being responsible for your thoughts. It is
acting as God acts, to your own world of creation.
Prayer is not reaching out to God from a great distance, but purposefully
forgetting the distance out of existence.
It is simple to become the spiritual master of your life. In each situation
ask yourself one question. If I were God, and I had designed this situation
for my own highest and best purpose, what would I be trying to teach myself?
What can I do to make this learning easier and my understanding more complete?
Then do that thing.
God is no more a personality than we are.
Be aware of he who has a strong desire to convince you. He is not aware
of his own doubt. Until he casts this beam from his own eye, he will be
unable to help with the mote in yours.
We think of ourselves as three-dimensional beings, when we are four.
Our becoming is the most evident, and yet forgotten, dimension of ourselves.
What if you could live, in perfect health, in this body you have now,
for three hundred years. What would you set out to create? Begin it in
this moment, and it is done.
There is or there isn't, but you always are.
God did not die, but our limited perception of God did. Thank God for
the agnostics, who destroyed the prison of words that we had placed ourselves
in. It is the atheists who most strongly react to the presence of God,
while the rest of us often continue unawares.
If your beliefs can be offended, then they are not really your beliefs.
Thank you Father, that I continually discover myself as I teach.
To be of some use to the world -- what a wonderful thing! To no longer
be of use to the world -- what a wonderful thing!
Words are so loud and impressive-sounding, we forget that they are but
the fading echoes of thoughts.
Peanut butter on the bottom, jelly on top, and the uncoated sides of
the bread face the outside. The world is safe and orderly once more! Zen
begins where the peanut butter and jelly meet. To insert awareness where
there is no room left for it, is the beginning of Zen. And the beginning
of Zen is the end of Zen!
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