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

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