Tuesday, May 24, 2016

16 Transforming Ourselves

16
Zen and the Art of Lost and Found
We become free by transforming ourselves from unaware victims of the past into responsible, responsive individuals in the present.
How I felt about what was done or who did what to whom or what was said as it was done is considered by some to actually be profound and insightful … worthy of great insight, understanding and definitely denoting a sense of wisdom on the speakers behalf … it is like he or she knows the answer before they have done the work.
Discovery Made: The emotions that we feel are not a description of who we are … nor are they an indicator of how close our relationship is with God or anyone else for that matter … they are just feelings … and for most of us, we don’t know how to either read them or interpret them … they can only tell us where we are in proximity to something that reminds us of something or someone we have experienced previously on this journey … not benchmarks that denote where we are on our journey and more precisely not who we are … I always hoped it would but it never did!
The trick to the whole thing seems to be not to ignore or deny feelings … in fact what I learned was that as I became more aware of them I found they helped my perception of my reality … paradoxically odd but true.
Another Discovery Made: To change my appreciation of my feelings … changes my perception … as I did this change of appreciation thing I discovered what my feelings could do for me, shifted somehow … became different …

Yet Another Discovery Made:What I found was … I could now use my new working awareness of my feelings to take care of day to day business … little things like … not getting lost in someone else’s stuff … things like … coming to terms with knowing when to finally let go and put out the emotional garbage … when to be done with something and move on … developing that sense seemed to point me in a direction … one that seemed to be the onset of wisdom … now that was profound for me … understanding that alone freed up so much of me for me. 

Neil Tubb 
Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

260 What Happened

15
 Zen and the Art of Lost and Found
Remember that it is not about who I am. But rather it is about what happened to me.
Emotions are worshiped like gods … we suppose they have power of their own … we worship them in a vain attempt to appease them … before they hurt us yet again … hoping against hope that they will return to that place from whence they came … never to come out into our lives and bother us again …
Throughout the course of our day or our relationship(s) or our life we are constantly vigilant … ready for the slightest indication that the sleeping giant might be stirring … will the volcano go off … to day … We rush to what we believe is an instant understanding of what it is that we think we just felt.  Did you hear all of the circular-feed-back-loops in that statement?
Why?
So we can think that we are safe …  safe from what?
What it is that happened to us many years ago … and in some instances lifetimes ago … sometimes changing its form so we don’t know what we are looking at …
I began to suspect that if I searched this out and release the pent-up energy I held about what it was that happened to me … that just maybe things might change for me …
Just maybe I was not what it was that I had always thought I was …


I really was not … not special

Neil Douglas-Tubb
Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

Thursday, May 12, 2016

38 On Appreciating - The Simple Truth of the Matter

38  On Appreciating - The Simple Truth of the Matter


EXPERIENCE has taught us that the processes of healing and recovery have some very predictable need to’s that must be addressed if we are to get on with our journey of searching out the self. 
First, there is a great difference between I want to and I need to.  The vast majority of us tend to lean on the side of I want to simply out of inherent laziness.  We tend to stay in this place of laziness until our lives become so unmanageable, so painful, that we’ll do anything, even the need to’s to get away from the discomfort.
Need to’s have to be done sooner or later.  They are what the mature adult in us will do to get on with having the life we want to have.  The want to’s, on the other hand, are what the lost child in us will want to do most of the time. 
This expression of a supposed need versus a supposed want is deeply rooted in infantile dependency needs. 


It Is Very Much A Primal Force.
Neil Douglas-Tubb 
Experience Has Taught Us, 175 Missing Pieces

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

With A Single Step

11
                   Zen and the Art of Lost and Found
We begin our journey to awaken with a single step.
Some days nothing is going to go my way …

Nothing is going to work to day
It will all be wrong … everything … all of it
Then there will be other days …
When … things will be in sync with me and me with them … all my wants, desires and dreams.
But I can not freeze in taking my next step
I can not freeze in the anticipation of what might be … or what should be … or how I think it should be … I can not freeze in the concept of Life according to Me … that is too limiting …
I must make this next step … this is where I awaken more deeply …
In the Metaphoric “Moment” Of The Swing of my Metaphysical Leg … that is where it happens …


I awaken …
One eye at a time …
One step at a time …
It is all held in the process of the next step.


… My Awakening ...

Neil Douglas-Tubb (2003)
Zen and the Art of Lost and Found