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I work as a hypnotherapist and am fascinated by the potential of the human mind. Back in the 1970s, after a lot of searching, I discovered Zen, a powerful and profound way of spiritual and self realisation.
The way of Zen is a discipline that I practi
Recent Posts Tagged With 'illusion'
Muddy Water Can Clean…
I am happy to get back to my blog after an absence of several weeks. I have been moving house and doing my best to keep it as Zen an experience as possible. I have been thinking though - not very Zen! Perhaps! An illusion cannot exist, so why u...
Zen Impasse
This is what came up in my zazen today. The beginning of transformation may be when we begin to see the world as a place of illusion. When we begin to see that the moment we are experiencing right now, it gone the moment we notice it and that phenome...
Happiness and Illusion
Life is so much of an illusion that we think there are periods when we are happy. Is this real happiness when we recognise it only because of the absence of sadness? If this is true, what is real happiness? One thing seems certain, and that is that h...
Not Me
As draw external conditions into my consciousness, they will become part of my experience; part of me. If I treat them as problems to be solved, I make them separate from myself and confusion can manifest. The more separate problems I create in this ...
Illusion
In my zazen there is often a "battle" to still the mind, but there is no real battle at all. How can this be? Because the battle is an illusion. But if I say there's an illusion it is a contradiction, because how can an illusion exist except in the d...
Beyond Thinking, Beyond Words/
Idle thoughts create illusions. This can easily be verified if I think of my dreams, as they are all part of my thinking processes. Most of the day, my mind is full of idle thoughts (day dreams) adding to the illusion. I am so grateful for the discip...
Just an Illusion?
In the game of judgement, blame and condemnation, self and other are the same. When I blame the other, I am really blaming my self. When I blame my self, I am blaming the other. Forgiveness is the only antidote. Small and large judgement are an illus...
Not Knowing..
When I judge my fellow human beings, I am either going to be looking up to them or down to them. This is an illusion for all is one. I already know this, they already know this. There is nothing to teach, nothing to learn. All to awaken to and experi...
Truth
I need to realise this. That whilst I feel I am in a battle with Truth, I am living in the world of illusions, for Truth does not oppose anything, and that includes illusion. It is All. It is simply so....
Eternal Now
The moment of now has no beginning and no end. There always was and always will be the moment of now. It is real and eternal. So, what does that say about the illusion of time?...
Nothingness: Empty Mind
Nothingness: In my meditation my intent is to experience the “empty mind” then ultimate Truth can enter. It cannot enter whilst opposing thinking processes do their battle attempting to cancel each other out. What will this make the immovable o...
Attack
It is an illusion that self can attack self in the same way that it is an illusion that an eye can look at itself: for it can only look at its reflection, never at its true self. If you can accept that all is one, then what is all this attack busines...
Ego Complexities
In meditation, I recognise the mind as a sophisticated machine that is programmed by decisions and beliefs. When I’m trapped in this machine, I cannot see that I am anything else but my mind – this is ego, also a part of my creation. However, whe...
Awakening.
Awakening to self is not the end of the “journey”, but the beginning. From this beginning, I have to remain vigilant for who I really am, for the ego will not be. There is no distinction between my self and the whole, so it stands to ultimate re...
Preference
Preference is separation of one thing from another, yet all is one. How do I then, stop this “preferring”? Do I prefer not to prefer? And what of Heaven and hell? If is all one, then all written here symbolises illusion!...
Light and Dark
It seems that when the light of enlightenment comes, it penetrates darkness and exposes all illusions that lurk in the darkness. By meditation and focus on the moment of now, I am penetrating illusion - light illuminates darkness, that cannot contin...
Easy and Difficult - No Promise
Zen gives no promise that it will be easy, yet it is only an illusion that it is difficult. At-one-ness is simply so. It is beyond the concepts of easy and difficult – these are judgements created by the ego....
Challenge
It is dawning on me that my earthly experience in which I am separated is an illusion. For the moment I have a thought it is not immediate reality, for the thought is an echo of the experience and not the experience itself. The past is no more and t...
