The Real Beginner's Mind

Zen-Mind

WHEN YOU TRY THESE SELF-HEALING TECHNIQUES PLEASE BE AWARE: In order to heal yourself, you will have to work through the ego — not without it, as some meditation teachers and traditions seem to suggest.  You have to learn to co-operate with your ego before your ego will allow change.  Egos are very clever.  They know when they are being threatened and a defensive ego is dangerous!

It says: "Oh! So you think you’re ready to try and be the boss? You think you’re ready to feel your feelings?  All the feelings I have been hiding from you all these years?  Well alright then: Go ahead then and: FEEL THIS!

And it sends ALL your bad feelings at you at once...

In this strategy, the ego floods you with emotion.  It is betting you will back down!  Once it overwhelms you, ego believes you will “think again” before you choose to “feel again.”  It hopes and trusts you will retreat, like you have done so many times in the past. 

Ego wants you to “thank your lucky stars” that it is there to guard you and protect you and keep you safe from “uncomfortable feelings.”  Ego forces us to change our mind and “think twice before we do THAT again.”

This is called: Postponing.

Qigong is how we learn to stop postponing.

Ego is Beginners-Mind.  This is where we all must start from — the beginning.  Egos generally arriv sometime during our “terrible twos” when we first learned to say:  No!  When we learned to say: Mine!  When we learned that we were separate from those who love us.

Despite this, try as hard as it might, the ego is not the Boss!  The ego has to get used to this idea. 

Ego thinks it is the Boss because it’s the part of us doing most of our thinking.  It’s the part of us that is busy talking to itself.  But really it has no idea what is going on. No, that’s not right.  The ego has only ideas about what’s going on — ideas and ideals that it struggles to live up to.

But the Heart does it’s own style of thinking too - and the same goes for the Gut.  So the ego keeps hoping and pretending that maybe no one will notice we are not really “in charge” of our lives.  It is our Soul that has the final say so...  Even when we are completely I-dentified with Ego, the World is not "mine!"

Ego can never be “master.”  Some crucial “part” is always missing — our true Self.  The only things egos are ever master of are ”Illusions."

We begin to get a handle on this — the root cause of most of our pain and suffering — when we realize this: Egos are meant to be servants, not Masters.

The reality is: Our social-ego’s real job is to protect and serve us, not to Interfere.  Egos were meant to defend us from harm; not become Defensive.

Why do you think egos need so many "fences?"  Because your ego sees what it is not!  Your ego feels threatened by reality.  So it argues with Reality.

Meditation, like the word "healing" means to make yourself whole; to know your true Self.  This is the goal of Meditation, the goal of Zen, the goal of Qigong: To heal the errors in our thoughts.

                                   In Zen they say: “To give a turning word.”

                              In Qigong they say: “Withdraw vision in-wards.”

Both sayings point us in the right direction...  Meditation teaches us to go within and see the truth revealed.

Egos detest Meditation.  Meditation transcends ego.  Meditation reveals the field in which thought occurs.  It shows us that we are more than what we think — much more!  And more than what we feel!  

In time, Meditation can reveal the real you to yourself.  When you learn how to witness the activity of your mind — your ego and all it's defense mechanisms — you become more than just an ego.  What they call “Enlightenment” is really just seeing through the Illusion of Separation; the illusion created by our ego — by our history, by our thoughts, our feelings and experiences.

Zen asks us to “re-turn” to our true inner-awareness of a child, to know our original face before our ego — our "beginner’s mind" — was born.  Zen helps us see with “real-eyes” that our egos are nothing more than the frightened little “me” hiding and trembling behind the curtain. And not at all as they claim to be:  “The Great and Powerful Oz.”

Hao la!

--Pahka Dave

When you feel like you are "Up Against a Wall" it is time to face it!