zen baby: 01

finding yourself step one:

To begin, start with a notebook and a pen.  Then, leave your environment and go somewhere you have never been to before.  Find a place without TVs, without noise, without interruption. Go there, find a corner and make yourself comfortable. Now take the pen and begin.

Try to remember when you were a child.  Go as far back as you can remember and find your own voice. Look for those thoughts that did not come from school or the TV. Is it hard you hear the voices of the TV?  Of teachers?  Of preachers?  Think of those voices and then write what they told you to do and what they told you to be. Did they tell you that you have to be thin, fit, beautiful, intelligent, and successful? Did they tell you that you had to have toys and cars and houses and beautiful things?

Now try to find your voice outside of those voices. Do you hear anything? Can you find anything? .Look for your influences. What are your influences?  Are they the TV?  The teachers?  The media?  The preachers? Look at those voices. What are they telling you to be, to do, to buy, to conform to?

Now ask yourself why are they telling you to do these things.  Are they good for you? Do they make you happy? Does it really matter to you if you have a new car? Or a better job?  Or a better wife? Are you listening to them because you feel you have to?  Do these voices love you? Or do they want your time, your energy, your money, your abilities? And what do they give you in return? A better car?  A bigger house? Do these things make you happy? Are you happy? Are you living trying to be happy and never feeling happy? Do they tell you if you aren't happy, something is wrong with you? Something is the matter? Do they tell you that if you're not happy, it must be that you are depressed you have a chemical imbalance?  That you are not right? That you are not working enough or doing enough or making enough or buying enough or have enough?

But do these things really make you happy? Are you really feeling content or are you always feeling unworthy and not good enough?  Do you feel that you have to earn more and make more or be more in order to be happy?


What is it to be happy?

To be happy all the time is to never be happy because how can you know happiness without knowing sadness? How can you know what it is to dream if you don't know what your dream is?  If your dream is the American dream, what is the American dream?  To have a nice car, a condo, and a 9-5 job? If our reality is so good, why must we escape from it? Why are we always dreading Monday? Why are we afraid to turn off the TV? Why are you afraid to be alone with a pen and paper? Why are you afraid to leave your city? Or your country? Why are you afraid of the dark or of people with another color skin or having nothing to do and doing nothing? Why must you always have a TV on or a radio on or be on the phone or be entertained?

What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that if you question these things, you may find that you don't really like them at all? That you would rather be living in the woods or be an artist or be free or do something completely different? But maybe doing that you wouldn't make money or enough money or  maybe you would offend your teacher or preacher or the people on the TV that tell you that you're not pretty or worth anything unless you own this and that and do this and that and look like this or that.

Do you eat more than you need to fill a void? Do you control your feelings by shutting them out? Are you afraid of silence so that even when you go to your God, you go to a place where they tell you how to pray and how to sing and how to find God? Are you afraid to find God in silence because you're afraid that the God in silence may tell you that you're not listening to your heart at all?

Are you afraid to feel pain or sorrow or loss or depression or anger? So when you do feel them, as opposed to searching to understand why you feel this way, would you rather turn on your TV or eat or drink or go shopping or take a pill?

Those things, however, only keep the feeling down as long as you are hooked or on it or doing it and as soon as you are not distracted, those voices come up.

So now, what do you do to cover that voice? Start there.  Find your distraction.  Is it work?  Is it the TV?  Is it drinking?  Is it drugs?  Is it a pill?  Is it shopping? Is it gossip? Is it game shows?  Is it pornography?  Is it reality TV?  Is it religion?  What is it?  Find it. Dig for it.

Now, write it down and look at it. Then make yourself aware of it. You have found your blindfold, so you can now take it off.  You may feel strange and you may feel like screaming or crying or like you're falling or that you're empty or that you're longing or that I am insane and you want to turn this voice off.  You may want to put the pen down and run away from that voice.  You may be struggling because something is trying to pull you away from this place and back into the cocoon.  But I dare you to stay here.

Now, if you do stay, sit with your pen and write down every thought you are having. I am not strong enough; I am not good enough; I can't be without; I don't feel good; this is uncomfortable; on and on.  Write everything out.  Write all those thoughts out and keep writing and keep digging.

I write and I hear first the voice that tries to control me. Then I keep writing and I find my own voice. Where is your voice?  What is your voice? Is your voice under the TV?  Under the noise?  Under the constant input of a culture that now sees you and me as food? We are the energy.  We have to feed this machine because if we do not feed the machine, then we are nothing.


Or are we? What are we?  What am I and you under all those layers of years of input from a TV?  From the media?  From all those who told us what we need to be and what we need to do and who we need to love and how we need to love? Who are we under the American dream? Is the American dream our dream or, rather, have we been through years of constant exposure to a concept been programmed?

What was life before the TV? What was life before the internet? What was life before we were always so busy or always busy being busy? Who are we? And how do we find who we are without these things?

The first step is to understand what it is that is our main programming.  Was it the TV? Was it education? Was it a religion? And did we ever think to question if all it told us was true?  Do we question what we look for when we look for someone to be in love with? Do we want to be in love because it is as close to being spiritual as we are going to get? Do we want to be in love to be distracted?

What is love? Is love a feeling? If love is a feeling, then love will never last because those feelings come and they go. The feeling of being in love lasts maybe nine months. After that, the feeling always will be tested or it will fade. If love is based on a feeling we will never be in love.  If loving is all about feeling and not about anything more like trust or knowing each other or vulnerability or sharing or partnership, we will go from love to love but never be in love for more than a very brief time.

What is love? Is it something you can earn by being good? Can you work for it? Do you think that you get love by being good or pretty or thin or rich or powerful? Are you afraid that if you are not good enough, you will never be loved?

Why do we crave love so much? And why is it that even when we have love, we want more? Even when we have someone who loves us, we need more and we wander outside.  We are searching even when we have someone there who will be there for us no matter what.  What are we looking for?

What is it that we live for? What are we doing here? What is your purpose in life? Why are you here? The common answer is "I don't know," so are we supposed to do the right thing, to be good, to fall in love, to have lots of things?  If so, then how come no matter how good you are or if you have ten lovers and you own millions, you are still unhappy? What is going on here?  What else could there be?

According to most of what you have been taught, you should be happy if you are good, if you follow the rules, if you have a lover, if you have a good job, if you have a car, if you go to church, if you take a vacation twice a year, if you have new shoes, if you run three times a week, if you eat a healthy diet. Then why are 73 percent of adults in America not content, unhappy or have a disorder? To me, this is frankly another way of distracting ourselves from questioning why we really feel the way we do?


What is it exactly that we are distracting ourselves from? What are we hiding from?  And now that you are sitting here staring at this screen, are you wanting to click back to the news or a movie or pornography or a chat room? You want to distract yourself again, don't you? Why do you want to run? What are you running from?

Let's dig further.  If life was only meant to be based on logic material and physical things, I don't think seventy three percent of us would be running from ourselves.  I don't think that depression and suicide, divorce, homicide, obesity, eating disorders, drug addictions, TV, internet pornography, alcoholism and pill addictions would have sky rocketed the way they have. Why have we become increasingly unhappy with our technological advancement? The more money and food and toys we have, the more depressed and unbalanced we seem to become according to the research I and others have done.

Something is missing from us and no amount of food or alcohol, love, sex, money, TV, internet pornography, relationships, power, fame, and so on can seem to fill that void. That feeling of void is what you work so hard at distracting yourself from each and everyday. You will walk away from here and most likely get caught in a semi-trance state that will preoccupy your mind.  You will find a way to tune in and drop out. That inner voice will be overwritten with a louder, more demanding voice which will prevent you from hearing the other voice as long as you pay attention to it and don't turn away from it..

This is the void I invite you to come to. I invite you to turn everything off and to let it all dissolve. It will haunt you, but if you work at it, you can shut it off and you can then hear the voice from the void. It is when you are here in the void that you will find your voice. It is in this void you will be able to regain your sense of your own self, your own voice, your own dreams.  .

This void could be called the soul. This is what we have forgotten and this is the place we try to remain distracted from. This is the place where, if you go there, you will find your dreams waiting for you, wanting you to come to you.  Listen and to pay attention.

Now, we are in a time where we have to make room for this voice to be heard. Here are a few ideas on how to hear it and how to listen. Many things will distract you from this voice -- your TV, some music, some places, the cell phone, and so on. In order to hear the voice, you must give it attention just like if I was going to have a conversation with you, I would want to go to a dark and quiet corner with maybe some mellow music. Or I would like to take a walk in the park or by the water or in an isolated city street. I would want to be able to hear you. I would want you to feel comfortable.

In order to hear the voice, you must spend time to get to know it. If you are driving to work, turn off the radio or listen to music like ambient trance or classical music without words.  Listen to music that opens you up and just listen for that inner voice. If you live in the city, find the quite places like parks or cathedrals when they are empty, mediation rooms, or quiet coffee houses.  Go there alone with just time and pen and paper.


Writing is one way to really learn how to listen to that voice.  When you write, it comes from inside.  All those feelings may seem like too much alone.  You may find yourself feeling overwhelmed or like you're in a cage with a million thoughts that you can't make sense of. Writing is a safe place.  It is a place that is sacred.  It is between you and your inner voice. No one can see if you don't want them to know.  No one will hear it unless you choose to share it. It is a place where you can explore and you can also revisit.

It is proven that people who keep active journals and who write tend to be more centered than people who do not. It is because writing is an ongoing conversation with that inner voice.

I am encouraging you to find your distractions and remove them and find yourself and bring it out.  If you take time each morning and write three pages everyday, your life will start to make more sense. It takes time to make habits but this one will alter your life forever. Writing helps you find the truth in yourself. Writing is connecting with the soul and bringing it to life. Writing is a link between the physical, the mental and the spiritual. What we are lacking in our world that is making us so unbalanced is not the mental or the physical stimulation, but, rather, it is the connection between the mental, the physical and the spiritual.

The first step to finding yourself is to start bringing back to life your spiritual side. Many churches and religions have become almost anti-spiritual and understanding why is simple. If you are in tune with your soul, you are in tune with the divine. If you are directly connecting to the divine, you will, over time, learn that you don't need many of the things you think you need. You don't need approval by a priest or a teacher or a leader or a preacher. If you have the approval and love of the divine and you connect to it directly, it makes you one with it and therefore the only fear you should have is the fear of losing that. The fear of losing all these other things starts to pale in comparison to losing the connection with the divine. This means that you will no longer be so easily manipulated or controlled by your preachers, teachers, leaders or the media, which is the very reason everything tries to keep you distracted.  If you stop living for their love and approval, and live only for the truth, you become someone who questions everything, including them.

Needless to say, the distractions are created to keep you away from that connection because that connection will set you free. Nothing else will.  All else will control you. These distractions have always been here. It has been here as long as we have been here although now it seems they have gained the upper hand.

Question everything.  Including me.  But also question yourself on why you are questioning me.

Zen Baby