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3rd post in the three part Curly’s Law series by Seamus Anthony

This is a bit of a long post with two parts: 1) How the Mega Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness and 2) How To Discover Your True Life Purpose.

How the Mega-Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness

The great over-achievers of this world don’t just use wishful thinking or hard work to get to the top, they use the ‘real’ secret which is Curly’s Law. Curly’s Law states “Do One Thing” and is essentially the act of having laser-like focus on what you want. It is about identifying your One Thing and just going for that at the expense of other areas of interest. It’s about the power of mono-maniacal obsession, and if you want to achieve great things, then you can use this trick to get ahead in leaps and bounds.

The Richest Man in the World and His Great Secret for Success.

Long before Billy Crystal and his mates saddled up and rode of into the the sunset, Curly’s Law was known by some as ‘Carnegie’s secret’, after Andrew Carnegie, the old-world steel tycoon and philanthropist who advised people to ‘put your eggs in one basket – and then watch the basket’.

Carnegie, at one time the richest man in the world, and a self-made man, was said to have a ‘great secret’ about how to become rich. This was popularised by Napoleon Hill in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich”. The secret was not explicitely revealed in the book but was rather hinted at and the author said it was important that you figure it out yourself. People have since thrown a bunch of guesses around as to what the secret was, from the whole Law of Attraction thing to the less glamourous suggestion that you just need to get on with it and work hard. Searching around I found this quote, and as far as I am concerened it puts the stamp of authenticity on the worthiness of Curly’s Law and also puts an end to the speculation about what carnegie’s secret was:

“Here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it: adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. This is the great secret…” Andrew Carnegie

I don’t understand the conjecture myself. the man’s exact words were “This is the great secret”. End of story.

All Great Achievers Use Curly’s Law to Make it Big

Whether they know it or not, I propose that all of the mega-successful use the Law of One Thing to get to the top of their chosen field.

Here’s an excersise: choose one of your greatest heroes and ask yourself this - do they have what you would describe as obsessive single minded determination, laser-like focus on what it is that they do?

I would be willing to place a bet that the answer would have to be ‘Yes’. Let’s take a few of my personal heroes as examples (in no particular order - and you may wonder why these people are my heroes but all I can say is, each to their own!).

• Jerry Seinfeld - obsessively cared only about and worked only towards being a stand up comedian for his entire life until he became the most successful stand up in the US and went on to become the wealthiest comedian ever.
  
• Steve Jobs (Apple Computers) - obsessively strove to achieve innovation in the world of computer design until he finally got it right and made Apple what it is today. (And tell me he didn’t lie up all night scheming about how to win Apple back when he got kicked out for a while!)
• Nick Cave - this guy has pursued a singular artistic vision relentlessly for his entire adult life and I’d be willing to bet that he’s artistically satisfied (although I doubt he’d admit it) and probably doesn’t get too stressed out about paying the mortgage off either.
  

Now these are just three of my heroes, and despite the twists and turns in their journeys, all three of them have always returned like a heat-seeking missile to their One Thing. They knew what it was - and they sure as hell weren’t about to let anything trivial stand in their way.

I challenge you to come up with a list of ten mega-successful people who achieved greatness by being wishy-washy, choppin’ and changin’, unfocussed, undetermined, people who could never make up their minds about what it was they wanted to do. I’ve never tried to do this, but I am willing to take a punt that it wouldn’t work.

Madonna: was obsessed with becoming the number one female pop star. Stephen King: wrote compulsively his whole life and only ever wanted to be a novelist. Bob Hawke: gave up alcohol so it wouldn’t get in the way of becoming Prime Minister of Australia. Abraham Lincoln, lost something like 8 elections before he went on to be President of the United States. The list goes on…

How To Discover Your True Life Purpose

But I can hear some of you already thinking “But I don’t KNOW what my One Thing is! That’s the whole problem!” and I don’t know either. But I have been through all of this and have some suggestions that may help you.

First get yourself into a contemplative, relaxed frame of mind. Have a bath, turn the lights down low and stare at the fire or go for a walk in the woods by yourself. If you know how to meditate, do some before you start this process.

There are a lot of techniques out there for discovering your true life purpose, but here is the one I used. It is deceptively simple but the key is not to move on to the next question until you have answered the one before it to your full satisfaction.

for the rest of the post and heaps more great articles go to http://www.rebelzen.com

Part Two of a Three Part Series

By Seamus Anthony

One line from the cheesy 1991 movie City Slickers (yes, the one starring Billy Crystal) helped me to achieved absolute and total spiritual enlightenment in a blinding flash of inspiration.

And no, I am not kidding you.
Well, actually … maybe just a little bit

But the point is I did get something amazing out of that film and this is a thing that I later came to see being referred to as “Curly’s Law“.

Curly’s law states simply this: Do One Thing

Curly was the tough old cowboy character played by the late Jack Palance. Here’s the scene from the movie where Curly espouses his life philosophy to Mitch, Billy Crystal’s character:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

Curly: This. [holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.

Now that little nugget of wisdom is so simple, that I dare say you’ve watched that movie more than once and never really gave that statement much thought at all. But I am telling you now that - unconventional source that it may come from - there is enough power in that little statement to change the world for ever, and to make the difference between you achieving your dreams or not.

for the rest of the post and heaps more great articles go to http://www.rebelzen.com

By Seamus Anthony

Part One in a Series of Three

Do you struggle to achieve mental clarity in a world of busyness, complexity and clutter? Do you find yourself chasing your tail, always busy but never seeming to get around to doing the things that are most important to you, like discovering your True Life Purpose, achieving your dreams, or devoting the time and energy to your family that you know deserve?

Wouldn’t you love to know what the secret is that the great achievers of our age use to move mountains? What it is that your heroes know that keeps them at the top, the thing you are missing, the thing that holds you back? How do they manage to churn out such amazing work, and rack up win after win while you chase your tail and struggle to pay the bills?

Well, despite the hype of recent times, the ’secret’ that these people have is NOT simply magically focussing on the end results that they desire. It is NOT simply a case of ‘ask, believe, receive’ or else we’d all be running around being fabulously rich and have all the time in the world to do whatever the hell we like (and look good doing it). Creative visualisation and the Law of Attraction are part of the overall process for success, no doubt about it, but there is another closely linked secret that gets overlooked.

And no, it’s not ‘hard work’. That’s an obvious, a given. Of COURSE you have to work hard - and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. (That doesn’t mean that some things won’t come easy to you, they can and will if you set yourself up to attract that, but my point is you’d be a gormless ninny to sit around and expect everything handed to you on a silver platter.)

for the rest of the post and heaps more great articles go to http://www.rebelzen.com

By Steven Mills

There is nothing better then finding that you have carved out a spare hour in the day to sit and meditate.

The daily worries of the world have started to float away, and the big thoughts that fill your normal waking mind have started to quieten down. A slow, easy feeling of peace works its way over your body as you focus on the simpleness of in breath and out breath. You begin to focus on nothing, to pull your observing mind out of the “stream of consciousness” and begin to notice your thoughts as something separate.

Then you start to hear them.

“Oh yes doing well, yes quieten down the thoughts” says one.

“You really should be doing that blog post and not meditating” says the next.

“Sounds like a truck outside, wait.. wait… no it’s a bloody leaf blower!” complains a third voice.

It’s the small voices of the mind, the thoughts that during waking life dictate your actions and way of thinking, but now in meditation serve to distract you from your aim of letting go and giving the mind a rest.

In the still silence of meditation each of these small voices begins to sound very loud. And while you would think on a Zenish blog such as this I would be all against the annoying babble of the ego, I have come to have a small sense of respect for this misunderstood aspect of my psyche.

for the rest of the post and heaps more great articles go to http://www.rebelzen.com

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

If you have tried different methods to achieve happiness (meditation, reading self-help books, therapy, etc.) but have not succeeded then I’d like to share with you a very simple trick to being happy that has been blowing my mind lately…

In fact I actually believe it is the key to enlightenment and world peace.

Here it is …

Give up.

Or rather…

Let go.

Let go.

Let go of all that you are clinging to.

Let go of all the ideas in your mind.

All the should’s. All the want-to’s. All the trying-to’s. All the seeking-to’s. All the how-to’s. All the going-to’s.

Just drop ‘em like hot potatoes.

When you manage to do this, even if it’s just for a few moments, you will suddenly see who you are. Who you have been all along. You will understand all that goofy zen-talk that you’ve read, and you will see how it is that words can never truly explain this state of mind.

And you will feel high. Not always in a hallucinatory kind of way, sometimes, but not always. Sometimes you will feel high in a crystal clear, jiggy-with-the-here-and-now kind of way. You will reach a place that many meditators have given many different names to: Nirvana, enlightenement, Buddha-mind, enrapture, Christ-consciousness, Satori, Bliss, or my favourite, the Clear Space of Good Feeling.

And it’s all about letting go.

It’s not about learning how to do something properly. It’s about letting go.

It’s not about attaining skills. It’s about letting go.

It’s not about getting somewhere. It’s about letting go and realising that you are already here now.

This morning I was at a yoga class. I am just a beginner at it and was finding the postures quite difficult. But every time that I figured out why my body wouldn’t get into position, I realised it was because my mind was holding on, and this meant my muscles were holding on. The secret is to let go.

Same goes for when you are meditating. Let go of wanting to meditate effectively and it will happen.

But the thing is, the mind is very subtle and the ego is very tricky (the ego is the scared little wimp inside of you who does not want to let go for fear of what could happen). Just when you have let go of one thing (one idea, train of thought, fear, etc) the ego will latch on to another. You may even find yourself latching on to the idea of “letting go”.

Let it all go.

And when you think “I can’t let it all go”. Let that fear-based idea go.

And when you think “That’s it! I’ve let it all go!”, let that go too.

Let go. It’s the secret to happiness in this life - or at least one of them.

Imagine if you let it all go, all of those things that you worry about: the rent, the future, your health, your career, the kids, your parents, your love-life, your social life, your to-do-list, the past, the bad things, the good things, what people say to you, what you think of other people, your opinions, the environment, the wars, the human rights atrocities, the poor, the rich, the indifferent, the misguided….

It’s a big call, just to let go of all of this, but then again it’s not - because it’s not about doing anything difficult, it’s just about letting all those difficult things that we take on go.

I am not saying I have totally done this, but the more I do, the happier I get and the more I get out of life and the less I worry about anything at all.

Meditate. Let go of trying and just sit.

And wait.

And let go of what you are waiting for. And of waiting.

You see for some reason, getting what you want is a topsy-turvy affair. You have to try not to want things too bad or else they somehow get repulsed. What it is that repulses is the fear you have of not getting what you want. It’s like a teenage boy who is keen on a girl, if he is too keen chances are she will smell his fear (of not getting her) and be turned off. But if he was initially interested but was detached enough to take it or leave it, the chances are she will find herself intrigued and will be more inclined to return his attraction. (It’s cruel, but that’s the way it works kids!)

Same goes for trying to find happiness. If you are too attached to the end result, you will never get there. You have to detach from what you want and just do your meditation.

Let go.

Every time you find yourself thinking about something irrelevant - let go of that thought.

Then return to your technique - and then let go of returning to your technique.

Then when you are successfully practising your technique - let go of the technique. Still do it - but let go of doing it.

It’s a subtle art, and it takes some practice - but if you try you’ll get it.

Then let go of trying!

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By Seamus Anthony Ennis

When I despair of and don’t know what to do about this crazy world we live in then I just try to do something positive. Help someone, give a little money to a cause, or if I feel the urge, just have fun making something cool. I believe it all counts.

It counts because every time you follow your creative urge, you are contributing to the great mission we have been charged with: to create a better world.

Creating cool stuff - be it a work of art, a healing practice, a cake, a blog, or just a nice vibe in a room - helps to add a little pebble of goodness to the slow growing tower of joy that (I believe) is the destiny of life on Earth.

Yes, that’s something I believe. I also believe that we all need to believe in something in order to function successfully - we need a purpose. So although I don’t know if it’s true, I choose to believe that our purpose is to make positive contributions to the evolution of Life and to eventually triumph over the unenlightened condition and become a spiritually advanced, peaceful, happy race living in harmony with all of nature.

I know, I know, that last sentence made you raise a cynical eyebrow right?But I don’t care - I have to believe this or else what’s the fucking point?

I like to think of humanity in the future being like one of those super-hip races of aliens that Captain Kirk and his motley lot used to come across sometimes - all synked-in together and totally chilled, in touch with our inherent enlightenment. Space-aged Buddhas in silver outfits. Perhaps no longer in need of a physical body or maybe just capable of living happily and healthily for a couple of hundred years before moving to a known and welcoming after-life.

We as a collective are, obviously, a long way from this yet. But like I said, I believe that every positive contribution, no matter how small,
helps us get closer to this eventuality.

So get up and do something, help someone or the planet or make something inherently “good” and you will be helping the cause.

It’s like the tortoise and the hare. Evil (the hare) raced ahead, but the slow fire of Love (err, the tortoise) will eventually win out through persistence and resilience. We must be unrelenting in our faith in this.

Anyway, that’s how I cope. I choose to believe that every little good creation or act of kindness helps towards the final positive result. Otherwise how could I get up and get to work? Why would I bother write an article or a song only to die and for all my efforts to mean nothing? That’s a dispiriting concept. We need meaning in order to be happy. I’ve tried believing in Meaningless and it left me cold and depressed, no matter how much I meditated or rationalised that this hypothesis makes the most sense.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe I just need to get over my egotistical need to contribute. Maybe enlightenment, as I used to believe, means admitting that we are just ’straw dogs’ after all (as the Tao Te Ching tells us), that life is devoid of purpose and meaning. Certainly we risk being ‘trampled underfoot’ every day; so many lives lost early and cruelly…

But I have decided to believe something different: that it is worthwhile creating something good and that it does make a positive difference, however small. I don’t know it for a fact, nobody knows anything for certain in this bizarre and trippy dream we call life, but I choose to believe because it gives me the strength to help others somehow everyday (even if it is just by cracking a few lame jokes, although hopefully in more ways than just that).

So have faith and make something good, be it a masterpiece or a plate of slightly over-cooked muffins. Believe in the positive evolution of Life, help somehow, whether it be by saving a bug from getting washed down the drain, or by flying out to serve as a volunteer in a needy part of the world.

It all counts.

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By Steve Mills

Remember a few years ago when that song came out, I’m sure you know the one. It had a super catchy chorus, more hooks than a fishing shop and embedded itself so deep in your skull that you found yourself humming it while “on the job”. Sure it was annoying as hell, but everyone was going nuts over it. For weeks it was all you could hear on the radio. It was so popular that it sparked new novelty dance crazes, giving wedding DJ’s an excuse to throw out their tired old copies of the “Grease Megamix” and the “Bus Stop”, and play something new for drunk old people to dance to.

Then one day, something happened. A new song came along, and it had a really catchy chorus, hooks aplenty and was heard pumping out of radio’s from New York to Upper Cumbucta West. Two weeks later no one wants to hear the Macarena, and everyone wants to hear Beyonce. Time moves on, things change.

Just like popular songs, movies and books, everything that we can see in our world is in a transitory, impermanent state. People and places, empires and cities all come from nothing, grow and flourish for a time, and then inevitably at some stage return to nothing. It’s the nature of reality. The Buddha said that “Decay is inherent in all component things,” and his followers accepted that existing in the world meant being in a state of flux, a continuous becoming.

Just like these one hit wonders, most of the stuff that happens in our day to day lives is transitory and impermanent. Events so strange, unpredictable BUT also over so quickly that if you weren’t living through them you would laugh. Events, like being stuck in a traffic jam on the way to an important meeting, or missing out on concert tickets arise into the NOW, flourish for a short time and then vanish, never to be seen again. Detachment to thoughts and negative emotions of past events becomes easier when we gain a perspective of just how small a role in the events of the Universe we take.

But just like the top 40, where the current hit songs are change positions dramatically from week to week, it is this constant flux, this interplay between Ying and Yang, manifestation and destruction that makes life interesting. Change is what makes life worth living. It can be exciting, frightening, exhausting, or bring relief. It can deliver sadness or happiness, resistance or attachment.

If everyday of your life did not have this underlying impermanence, the world would be a very boring place. To me there is no more motivating or perspective changing idea then “No moment ever again, or ever before in the history of the Universe will ever be this moment.” The nature of your impermanence means that the fact that your are alive and conscious in the here and now, thinking these thoughts, breathing this air, seeing these exact things is remarkable. Of all of infinite time and infinite space you are here right now.

And once this microsecond has passed, The Universe as it exists right now will never exist again.

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By Seamus Anthony Ennis

Well, maybe they do. Truthfully, I wouldn’t know, but I can’t help but reckon that those who walk around claiming to “perfectly enlightened” are probably at least partially faking it - if not out and out bullshitting us all - and so therefore they must have some pretty human moments. Try and picture it with me …

The seminar is over and the Guru has slipped into some casual attire and is down in the hotel lobby having a scotch, listening to the depressingly blue jazz band and trying to catch the eye of a pretty business woman. Unfortunately she turns her nose up at him so he downs his drink and retires to his room; yet another one. They all look the same.

He checks his email. Nothing interesting; just work and irritating questions from a few of the more obsessive disciples. “Why can’t they just switch on their brains and sort out their own problems?” he mutters, “Ah well - it’s a living.”

He flops on the bed and flicks on the TV. Sport. More sport. Bad movies. Oooh! Porn! Oh, unless you pay for it the screen goes blank after thirty seconds…

“Bah,” thinks the Guru. “Might as well turn in, gotta be up early for tomorrow’s flight to Seattle”.

Ok so I made that scenario up - and truthfully it’s most probably a reflection of what I would be like if I got myself a traveling guru gig - but you know…

The Set Up

When I hear people rave on about being perfectly enlightened I can’t help but feel a little cynical. Why do they feel the need to set themselves up to be so flawless?

Well the reason is simple: By setting themselves up as being Enlightened (or Rich, or Fit, or Productive, or Whatever) what they in fact are saying is “I am more Enlightened than you“. (Or rich or whatever.)

This then triggers in you a longing to be like you perceive them to be. Surely then you too can be rid of all that nasty fear, angst, depression, regret and the rest of the bad feelings that come with the package that is “being human”. Proclaiming perfection creates a tension in you, and that tension makes you buy their stuff.

Not that there is necessarily a problem there. If their stuff makes you feel better, even for a little while, then it is probably a good thing. And if all you do is make an effort to learn something and improve yourself a little - then great. But read back over the last line of the preceding paragraph.

See anything wrong with this picture?

Gurus Create Tension!?!

That’s just crazy! Isn’t it their job to relieve you of tension?

Nope.

It should be, but in reality their job description is just the opposite.

The Perfectly Enlightened guru makes you feel un-enlightened. The Perfectly Fit guru makes you feel like a fat slob. The Totally Rich guru makes you feel like a worthless loser. They have to - otherwise you wouldn’t buy their book.

Which might be fine with the Fit guy or the Rich guy (as long as you have, at least to some extent, the wisdom to rise above the Ego and its desire for what it perceives you lack). Chances are they ARE super-fit or super-rich (doesn’t mean they aren’t jerks though).

But the “Perfectly Enlightened” guy? That’s a whole ‘nother story.

Ain’t no such thing, Dude. Ain’t no such thing.

Further Reading:

Zen is Boring

You are already enlightened.

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By Seamus Anthony Ennis

Arm Rests. Adjustable ones. The key to happiness is being able to notice that things like this exist. Allow me to elaborate…

When things get wacky (difficult, painful), the hardest thing to do is to see the woods for the trees. Let me begin with an example - the common occurrence of a friend’s advice to a lovesick mate:

“It will be okay; either you’ll break up with your boy/girlfriend or you’ll work your problems through and stay together. Either way you’ll be fine and it will all be for the best.”

An answer to which our lovesick puppy will categorically fail to relate to until later, when he will see that it was absolute truth all along. Until then the problem will seem tragic, unbearable, and probably life-threatening.

Meanwhile it’s comically easy for the friend of our love-sick puppy to see the solution to the problem. Puppy just needs to be himself, do his best, and wait. That’s it. End of story.

But onward, holistic soldiers, to the arm-rest thing, and the promised ‘key to happiness’ I know you are breathlessly waiting for …

Oh, the Pain! The Pain!

Both at work and here in my home office I have been struggling for a while trying to get comfortable in front of my computers. I have tried sitting up straight for hours on end, relaxing back like a slob, stretching every few minutes, sitting on cushions, adjusting the monitor height, adjusting the chair height (at work anyway, my home chair is stuffed). I tried acupuncture, massage, and yoga. Nothing helped. I have been constantly uncomfortable, always suffering pain. In fact, I experience more back, shoulder and arm pain now working at a desk than I did all my long years working in…

…the Hostility Industry

Sorry, *coughs*, I meant ‘hospitality’, of course.

I used to come home from ten hour bar tending/dish washing/table waiting shifts rubbing my shoulders and groaning that I wanted a desk job because I assumed that all the bending and lifting, and thumping and flexing, and go, go, go was causing stress and strain and was directly responsible for my gargantuan shoulder pain.

Hello! It was just the opposite! One month after I stopped pounding the cafe boards I started experiencing a whole new world of distress and pain. Needless to say, movement is extremely important to our overall well-being and we should never forget this, my information dazzled, overly cerebral friends.

Anyway, yesterday, I suddenly had a blinding flash of inspiration. The reason for my pain was not my posture per se but the fact that the stupid arm-rests were forcing my elbows and shoulders skywards - an unnatural position and obviously the cause of my agony. Being a talkative chap in a talkative office I exclaimed ‘Eureka!’ and announced my discovery and my newfound life-mission to solve the problem. “I will make my fortune being the guy who solved the Great Arm-Rest Debacle!” I cockily predicted.

“Dude, too late”, said Karen, the sharp-as-a-tack young lady to my left. “The arm-rests are adjustable.”

And so they were.

Like, Duh.

One click of a button and the problem was solved, my shoulders dropped and I noticed an immediate increase in postural comfort. Then this morning I sat down here at home and discovered that the same applies for my salvaged-from-the-side-of-the-road home office chair. As mentioned, the seat height doesn’t adjust up and down properly, but the arms adjust as freely and carelessly as a wind-sock in an indecisive breeze.

Cripes! Wake up brain! Such an easy answer to a couple of year’s worth of pain and frustration. But how do we train ourselves to see the easy answers that stare us in the face? To see the clever idea that will easily make good? To separate the wheat from the chafe? To best deal with pain and stress?

Well, it’s easier said than done, but I believe it’s best to take Love Sick Puppy’s friend’s advice and just be ourselves, do our best, and wait.

Ask questions; meditate; allow things to work themselves out.

Even when we are ‘losing it’, we do well to recognise this fact and just go with it. It would probably be more damaging to hold it all in and act like a stoic. Energy needs to flow, so if it’s time to freak out, then freak out already. The sooner you release your negativity, the sooner you’ll be smiling again.

And, not least, persist. If after all the cushions, and stretching and fifty-dollar-an-hour treatments I’d given in to the pain and never put my mind to the problem again, then I never would have had the pleasure of, if belatedly, discovering the tactical solution to the Great Arm-rest Debacle.

P.S. By the way, the fact that we are all already enlightened is a bit like the fact that I had adjustable arm rests: the solution was already there - I just didn’t know it yet. Same goes for your inherent enlightenment: it’s there already, it’s just a matter of getting touch with what that feels like.

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I have heard it said many a time that every person on this planet has a story tell. If you sat down with a pensioner from Melbourne, an office worker in Berlin or a 12 year old kid in Beijing, each would have a unique and compelling tale to tell. I bet that you also have an interesting story regarding your life and your place in the world.

You possess a chronicled history of your past, a unique viewpoint on the present and a predictive prophecy about what you assume is going to happen to you in the future.

Everyday when you wake up you listen to the story of what today might be like, and the story of what occurred yesterday. We are constantly re-telling this life story to ourselves, checking it against our immediate reality in order to make decisions, evaluate what other people are doing and to know our cultural place in certain situations.

This story is the blueprint that the voice inside your head, your inner narrator, uses to explain to you what you are seeing, thinking and doing in the present moment.

When we start to meditate, one of the first challenges we come up against is how to work with this inner narrator, to detach the observer part of us from the narrator part, so that we can begin to see the stream of consciousness for what it is… a story. This inner narrator is the ego, the part of the mind that will do anything to remain in control. As we go deeper into meditation, the ego/narrator will begin to recite parts of your story in order to get you to listen. It will tell you that you should be thinking about money, it will say that it was unfair that that guy pushed in line at the supermarket last week, and that you should go out for dinner on the weekend.

The ego is like Uncle Bob that you have to sit next to at a family BBQ because all of the other chairs are taken. You are trying to relax and enjoy your steak and beer, and he is constantly waffling on about what he did last week, what he thinks about a vast array of mind numbingly boring topics and why he likes to wear blue socks. It is a never ending stream of inane chatter.

We listen to the ego telling this tale to us all day, and one of the ways that meditation benefits us is by giving the poor observer part of us 5 minutes break to start to collect its own thoughts, and not listen to Mr Ego’s waffling 24 hours a day. So what can we do?

SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS.

While there are many ways to detach from our thoughts during meditation, I find one of the techniques that has worked for me is to label each thought as “Story” as it arises. When thoughts break into my meditation space, I can push them away by the thought “Story”, and they are not picked up by my observer and listened to. By coming to the realization that most thoughts are just the ego playing the role of narrator, I can keep a Zen-like perspective with them and see that the thoughts are not reality at all. They are just an interesting tale constructed by your ego to keep your attention focussed on it, rather than the timeless, universal, limitless real you that lies beyond.

KEEP IT IN PERSPECTIVE

By learning this perspective about ones thoughts during meditation, you gain a valuable skill. Instead of constantly referring to the story of your past to determine what you should do, now you can break this conditioning and start to live more in the now. You can take the circumstances and events of your life on face value, and not be trapped in past negative behaviours, or do things just because “that’s how I have always done them.” Now I am not suggesting that you should be ignoring the story all of the time, here at Rebel Zen we are all about keeping and enhancing the one thing that makes you different and unique in the world, your personality and “Youness.” I am just asking that you recognise your inner narrative and are mindful of it.

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