Happy Wednesday to You!
I hope you are all enjoying your creations each day.
I had a fantastic day yesterday. I needed to be outside in nature the last couple days, so I worked on creating rock art instead of pulling on handles in the gym.
EMPTY FULLISHNESS!
Many people have the belief that an empty mind creates something akin to a zombie; that would be an empty skull. The truth is that a mind free of thoughts and desires is essential to realizing the Tao (Way) within.
The empty mind is part of our original nature, and a primary goal of spirituality is to recover our original state of oneness with the cosmos.
The ordinary person cannot realize their original mind (cosmic connection) because it is occupied (often devoted) to mundane thoughts and desires. If these flirtations with the largely unimportant are let go of, a state of vast openness and connectedness emerges in which things happen efficiently, and as though effortlessly.
Here you can see me standing next to my exercise project for the day yesterday. When I’m working with stones this large on unpredictable, often on rough terrain, I can’t afford the risk of having a cluttered mind.
I often have to walk (usually bare footed) across sharp objects and stones and sticks that tip and turn unexpectedly. I have to be very careful of snakes and insects that may (and do) bite! I have to be very careful not to smash fingers, toes, or tear holes in my skin with heavy sharp rocks.
If my mind is on bills that need to be paid, or I’m experiencing emotional entanglement because of challenges in a relationship, or any such mind-clutter, pain is much more likely.
When I want to create something unique or challenging, I know that I must first enter a state of body-mind coherence. Only from that place am I calm and centered enough to create without thinking about it.
That doesn’t mean that I’m literally “not thinking”. It means that I’m in a state where I follow my natural impulse and am able to feel subtle energies as a form of guidance.
For example, I like to create with the land. I invite the forces of nature to work with and through me. I don’t actually look at the rock and measure things, get specifics of how the next rock face must be shaped to fit!that’s thinking.
I simply empty myself and invite the rocks, and the spirits of the land to guide me through my intuition. I have a “feeling” that the next rock is “over there”. I go look.
I feel a pull from a specific stone and I pick it up and more often than not, it looks and feels as though it grew there all by itself.
When I’m done, honestly, I don’t know how I create some of these things. It shouldn’t happen based on what we usually perceive possible when believing in physical constraints; the rock you see level with my torso weighs about 250-300 pounds.
You wouldn’t “think” someone my size could get it up there!and I try not to “think” that way either!
The rock calls to me. It wants to be there. It’s BIG and I trust that the way to get it there will emerge as naturally as the way I got to it. It does.
I have, as many of you know, built uncountable numbers of educational programs, DVDs, audios, books, and so on!I look at them when completed and it’s as though I was participating in a lucid dream.
The less “thinking” I do in the creative process the better. The less thinking I do, the more I find myself relying on my “feelings” and instincts, which equate to the rest of our mind’s capacity.
When we are in no-mind, we are free of thoughts about this or that, yet we are connected to all that is. We are at one with the Universal or Cosmic mind. It is relaxing, peaceful, and paradoxically, very productive there.
In zen Buddhism, it is taught that the true nature of mind is empty and that enlightenment is none other than recovering the true nature of the original (Cosmic) mind.
You are always there, but like looking out the window of a beautiful house, you can forget you are in a beautiful house.
When we learn to relax our mind and enter into no-mind, there is no longer a window between the house and the scenery outside. They are as one experience, therefore, there is no need to be “in here” or “out there”.
The experience becomes seamless as one.
Tips for entering no-mind:
1. Give yourself a worry break. Get serious about your worries for 10-15 minutes. Write them down. Then be a professional and stop. Your worrying is done for the day. Now you can relax! Go play!
2. Begin with simple, repetitious movements. I start with simple, small stone formations that allow me the freedom to relax without having to deal with high intensity or complexity.
This becomes a meditation in which time begins to disappear. Then I know I’m ready to enter into the fullness of my Cosmic Consciousness.
3. Do what you love to do. If you are hoping to get into no-mind and feel the joy of being an expression of the universe, then it is best to practice doing things you love to do.
If there is angst or stress involved, you will just be listening to your ego-self complain until it’s over and all you’ll have done is reinforced a disease that is rampant in our world today; monkey mind.
I hope you all have a lovely, relaxed day of unbound play and creativity; if you say you can’t do that because you’ve got “work to do”!you are “working for a living” and that will always create resistance to your natural flow and leave you wanting, wanting, wanting!
It is best to get clear on your love, live it, and be here now.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
