Number 8 Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

8

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

If we choose to content ourselves with an intellectual appreciation and understanding, often referred to mistakenly as ‘wisdom’, we will remain lost in the sphere of delusion and self-deception.

It is fascinating to be able to look back at something … especially with my now well-trained analytical eye …

I can always see what I did or did not do … what was right or wrong … that was always easy … 

When I am lazy as Hell, which is often, … I can be content with seeing what I did or did not do … watch and do nothing.

What eludes me is the comprehension of the metaphysical drive forces that act as the engine of my passions at times … that pushes me on to do things … to create thoughts … safe imaginings … pretense … and grand illusions about who and what it is that I think I am … or should be … or could be …

Discovery Made:

These grand illusions are what keep me prisoner in and of my own mind. 

These grand illusions are the concoctions of my diversions … they allow me not to see … not to feel … not to be … while all at the same time appearing to be filling all those supposed functions … and doing nothing other then wasting the only true life currency I have.

Time

An Absolute Importance

6

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

There is an absolute importance of sorting through the truth of our real experience and it is so essential to our well being (at all levels - mentally, emotionally and spiritually) that the loss of this truth to our mythical defensive delusions almost always is expressed sooner or later in some form of grave illness.

Have you ever noticed: Why You Are Afraid When You Are … it is different than when you notice: Why You Think You Are Afraid After The Fear Has Passed … when I really stopped and looked at this one while I was still in the midst of my fear … I noticed I Could Not Discern The Truth. The truth was out there … in the jumble of my reality but I had lost sight of it … somehow.

What I also had noticed as I sorted through certain variations on a theme on my life was I had lost sight of the truth of it for sometime … more importantly … I was really not too sure what it would look like if it came up and bit me. This observation I found fascinating … something akin to the look on the moose’s face just before the train hits.

Oh I knew it was there … some place … but I could not determine what it was or what had really happened to me, or for that matter … who really did it … there I was hung in this limbo land … not knowing and not being able to see clearly what it was that I was being told was the truth … I could not see ... I had no idea what I was looking at.

Oh I could see all the superficial things … houses and people and things … but I had senses that were running a muck trying to see between the lines … it simply did not make sense to me … and I had no one to turn to … because … I had also noticed that everyone else who was seemingly sharing this experience with me could not agree either … with me or each other … on what the hell it was that we were experiencing.

Trying to discuss this with people … be that family members or not … made for interesting discussions that often as not turned into flat out arguments and fights.

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found #4

4

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

But as I give over my need to be ‘against’, my need to hide, then I will naturally merge with all that is ¾ The Way of Things.

As I began to notice that I needed to give over my fear, to something or someone … I began to notice the intrinsic problem the conundrum-of-life held. 

It was difficult to give over what I had been given as a gift in the first place.  I naturally labeled fear as bad and had set-out to avoid and evade it at all cost, but I had never considered it a friend … this was turning out to be a journey of proportions that I would never have considered at the outset.  

Considering Fear as a Gift … as a friend … 

Imagine that … a place for fear in my life … 

But first I had to deal with the rigid image I had of it, and the limitations that rigid image had on me making the journey I thought I needed to make.  Now this turned out to be a challenge that I would never had imagined. It is called surrender, by the way, and it is often confused by most with compliance … For the sake of the definition, surrender is a place where I finally give over my way of thinking and imagining to something far greater than me and then begin to deal with life as it presents itself, where as complicity is me appearing to let go of control and me appearing to do life in a surrendering fashion while I still hang on frantically to those things that I so desperately think I need for my own safety … habits or addictions.

I needed to begin to give over my dependence on me and begin to look deeper into me for life’s answers … I also needed to look past what I considered to be the contest of it all … being either special or non special … and just get on with being me … not trying to define me as an individual in terms of something or someone else or by how and what I did. 

… I could tell this was going to be work …

12 Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

12

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found

There Are No Time Machines To Go Back And Fix Things, To Prevent What Happened From Happening. What Happened Is Exactly That, What Has Happened.

There are miracles of course ... and I have wished for more than my fair share of them. But here is the interesting twist, I seldom stopped to notice the affect any of them had. Then I stopped and noticed this one time, stopped and noticed the affect of a wish. It was then that I noticed just how it was that I really wished for something ... my particular way of doing it. What I had invested in the wish.

On Bargaining with God

I noticed that my wishing my wish did not make me feel more separate or together or special or non-special... 

When I wished what had happened to me had never happened it was then that I realized that most of who I am today ... source of my pride in me ... as an adult ... is a direct result of what happened to me as a child. Who would I be today if what happened had not happened?  I have discovered that it is a mistake at the deepest level to believe that God would help or heal another and ignore me ... even after I had invested so much time in developing a conclusion that could conjoin my sense of self pity with my low self esteem. This ends up defining me to both myself and the world ... by my limitations. It is a mistake to believe that God whispers the secrets of life to His Chosen Few. I noticed after some deep investigation of the matter ... that His Chosen Few were chosen by themselves ... and not by Him. Oh there are many who promoted this thought, but what I have come to understand is, those people are even more desperate and alone then I ... and they seem to feel the absence of God in their lives more then I do.

Neil Douglas-Tubb 2001