Zen: The Art of Nothing

Yesterday a friend mentioned to me that the recent medical report had shown haywire vitals, a severe imbalance. I knew what the emotional root cause was, and called immediately. She parked her car on the side and I ran her through a round of EFT over the phone. Just one round. 

The self-directed anger, disgust and hatred she had received as a gift from her mother and tortured herself with for decades just vanished. The right timing, along with the right words and insights make EFT work like pure magic, cutting through the need for years and years of therapy. 

If you’d like a tip, here’s one. Many of you who’ve worked with me know the importance of surrender. But sometimes in the name of surrender, we tend to suppress what we’re really feeling. You learn the hard way from life, that certain attitudes and actions are painful. So we reverse it, feeling either nothing or by suppressing the action/ feeling. This causes disease. The key is to FEEL what is happening inside, but merely to not let that transform into actions. But the feeling bit it critical. Feel it, and ideally, EFT it. 

But more than anything, practice deep listening. I cannot overstate the importance of this. It’ll help you get a much stronger grip on what is really going on inside. And also on what is going on in the hearts of those around you, probably more clearly than they themselves are aware.

We just spent the evening with a brilliant Swiss man who manages business in 55 countries. He’s worked for cancer hospitals and like others we know, he’s quit because he couldn’t take it – couldn’t face the inhumanity of what was going on behind the scenes… bone chilling stories that patients never realise, but that’s for another day.

The really interesting bit was this. At one point as we shared about spiritual practices, he asked us.. ‘but what is meditation?’ And I found it a little bizarre because he ‘looked’ like someone who would know, from his energy field. But I explained, and then he said yes yes, my mother taught me this, and proceeded to explain the meditation, relaxation and the visualisation techniques his mother taught him which he also used to top his class many times. No wonder he had such a beautiful aura. 

And it makes me realise I miss it so much, people who know SO much, and whose knowledge empowers them instead of inflating their ego. We’ve become a generation of defending belief systems, instead of being open to learning from each other. What a beautiful reminder this has been, of how enriching conversations can really be.

Here’s a woman who was in pain for many, many years. About 3 days of short chats over Whatsapp and this is what she said. The spiritual path way is not about never having problems. Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it is as if there is nothing but pain.

The spiritual pathway is about choices. When your world is falling apart, can you surrender to the pain? When your life is perfect, can you surrender to the joy? And believe it or not, even that is rarely done. And there’s immense freedom in that state – sometimes it is almost like you’re smiling behind those inconsolable sobs. 

One of the most powerful paragraphs I have read recently in Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts sums it up –

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

We all tend to think that we’re people that hurt no one. But all the same, we say and do hurtful things to manipulate people who love us. 

Today, let us reflect carefully on what we tend to do, to hurt those close to us. Do we tell them they aren’t a good enough.. spouse, son, daughter, parent, employee, anything else? Do you raise your voice or say harsh words when you’re angry? Do you deliberately do things you know will hurt that other person to get back at them? There is no need to judge ourselves for the things we do, but there certainly is a need to change the fact that this happens – There is absolutely no excuse for hurting someone else deliberately. 

Not only is there no excuse, but when we open our eyes, we see that we only ultimately hurt ourselves for a short-term bargain or illusion of control. This habit of hurting people ruins our relationships, we lose credibility with the people we love, and lose the capacity to open up and be vulnerable with the other person too because you cannot want to control another person and give your heart to them at the same time. If we want deep and fulfilling relationships, we have to learn to be kind and forgiving, and own our pain instead of blaming or trying to fix the other person.

Let us be more non-violent in our hearts. When we own our pain, it makes it easier to manage the pain as well as our relationship. When we try to change the other person in order to remove our pain, we only create more problems.

One of the biggest themes that came up a lot recently is about how so many people think that ‘spiritual’ people have no problems. Indeed, many step onto the pathway thinking that life will be completely problem-free now, only to so many times find the complete opposite. I’ve said so many times that if the spiritual path was easy and free of pain, everyone on it would already be enlightened.

What does happen is that ‘spiritual’ people tend more to enjoy the moment as it is so they’re probably perceived a lot more as problem-free or pain-free people. 

‘Enlightenment isn’t a cure for life’, Jacqueline had said to me once, and I so love that. To me, the pathway has always been about accepting what comes, and letting life flow unrestricted. 

One cannot appreciate light without darkness. On the plane of duality, of course you are going to experience both. You WILL experience pain and misery as much as you will experience joy and bliss. But when we are in surrender, we can learn to dance with it, and move on without baggage when the tide turns. That’s all,

The state of the world right now gives us much to worry about, but do not be disheartened, stay strong and ‘tuned in’. We didn’t incarnate here to get lost in the drama.

Jacqueline Maria Longstaff

And I might add that we’re in Mercury Retrograde now which can cause some issues in communication and with electronic devices. Some I know have been experiencing emotional upheavals. and this can happen depending on where Mercury is placed in your chart. Communication issues which have been suppressed can come up for resolution, so if they do, just take a step back and witness it, try to refrain from engaging with it 

I was speaking with a friend today morning and he told me about another mutual friend asking him to join her for an evening out. I can’t come, he said, ask another friend? I have no other friends, she said.

“She has me” I responded… “I don’t know why she forgets that”

While we’re still on call, she messages me and asks if I’d like to hang out. 😍 

Love has no boundaries, really, and I’ve seen this so many times. When I tell people not to help others without permission and process their own pain instead, they say, how is it possible that that will create any change? 

And yet I have a multitude of examples where just ‘witnessing’ another person’s pain and becoming deeply aware and accepting of the pain it is causing within US, actually brings about such deep shifts within ourselves as well as the other person. Love has absolutely no boundaries. Not space, not time.

Life is so strange. I had a bizarre dream and I was so perplexed why I would see what I saw, because I had not thought about any such thing recently. I was sharing the dream with my mother and she started laughing loudly. “What’s so funny?” I asked, a little irritated and a little curious.

“This is exactly what I was thinking about all day, yesterday!” 

Ooooooh dear 😄 This isn’t the first time it has happened though. 

Did you know that when your ‘basket’ is relatively clear, you ‘process’ things for the ones you love, and for the collective? When your mind is not crowded with things, you will often dream about the things your cook was thinking of, when he made your food. You’ll dream about the things the person who slept on your bed before you was thinking of, if you’e in a hotel. 

It is so interesting, and also so important, to be ‘intimate with your mind’, as Jacqueline puts it, so that you are able to distinguish between what are your own thoughts, and what are not. You have to process them in either case, but it makes life easier to know.

UPDATE: Actually you know what, it works vice versa too. I was speaking with a student and I realise. Every time I am at a meditation retreat, several people who are close to me energetically undergo a lot of powerful cleansing as well. Happens every time! Now I’ve made it a habit to warn people before I go hahaha, but looks like I have to widen that circle. More people than I imagined, get the benefit! Like Jacqueline says, you never progress for yourself, you always progress for the collective.