Where All Things Exist

Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy and religion. Every intellectual effort must culminate in it, or rather must start from it, if it is to bear any practical fruits. Every religious faith must spring from it if it has to prove at all efficiently and livingly workable in our active life. Therefore Zen is not necessarily the fountain of Buddhism thought and life alone; it is very much alive also in Christianity, Mohommedanism in Taoism and even in positivistic Confucianism. What makes all these religious and philosophies vital and inspiring, keeping up their usefulness and efficiency, is due to the presence in them of what I may designate as the Zen element.

D.T Suzuki explained the life force, which permeates all consciousness in his 1949 book Essays In Zen Buddhism. Zen is a region of consciousness. Zen is not a product of Buddhism; it is the source of Buddhism and every other religious belief. Western religious groups call this life force by other names, but the energy captured within those names comes from the same region of consciousness that Suzuki identifies. Our beliefs about the nature of this region creates the mystery that surrounds its existence.

When we examine our belief structure, and consciously change the beliefs that don’t give us the experiences we want, we discover the power of Zen. Zen is the region where all things exist. In that region, energy manifest very quickly. Our imagination illuminates the light of Zen, and our emotions signal the physical presence of Zen. Our imagination, beliefs, and emotions create our world. These psychic elements constantly change our reality even when we are unaware of the power within them.

Information Is In A Constant State Of Change

Facts do not carry labels indicating the appropriate level at which they ought to be considered. Nor does the choice of an inadequate level lead the intelligence into factual error or logical contradictions. When the level of the knower is not adequate to the level of the object of knowledge, the result is not factual error but something much more serious: an inadequate and impoverished view of reality.

E.F. Schumacher, the Buddhist economist, may be considered a bit judgmental by some readers. In the view of our essence, all realities and levels of awareness are acceptable to the conscious mind experiencing them. We attract awareness like a magnet. Awareness always moves toward the consciousness that is attracting it in the form of information. Information is never dead; it is connected to all those who originate, perceive, accept and understand it. Information is in a constant state of change.

The inner portion of the conscious mind is filled with unique information. That information has already been used by some form of consciousness. When the conscious mind stimulates the brain in the direction of that information it becomes new information. That information creates awareness in a psychic channel in the conscious mind. Ideas and imagination are psyche material. They can dislodge unsuitable beliefs as well as create new beliefs. In order to get rid of unsuitable beliefs, the imagination must repeatedly move information in and out of the conscious mind.

When we become aware of the power of our imagination, it can propel new information in the direction of our desires. The brain analyzes new information, and the experiences that result from this process are in line with our current belief structure.

Layers Of Beliefs

The exploration of the highest reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities has involved for me the continuous destruction of cherished axioms, the perpetual coping with seeming paradoxes, contradictions and vagueness and the occasional collapse around my ears of long established, firmly believed in and seemingly unassailable laws of psychology.

Abraham Maslow, the 20th century American psychologist, is considered the founder of humanistic psychology. Maslow identified a hierarchy of four layers of basic needs. The four basic needs are: physiological esteem, love, friendship and security. Beyond those levels higher levels of needs exist. Those needs include understanding, esthetic appreciation and spiritual needs. When all of those needs are satisfied the need for self-actualization is activated, which means a person becomes the person they think they were born to be.

We live in a body filled with beliefs. Maslow identifies needs, but in essence he is talking about our belief structure. Our ideas and thoughts are not shadow images. They are electromagnetic realities that have substance. Thoughts and ideas impact our nervous system and the body responds accordingly.

Our conscious mind is designed to evaluate and assess our physical reality so we can chart a course in our corporeal universe. The energy within the inner self is concentrated to initiate the results asked for by the conscious mind. Our power of action follows the concentrated thoughts and ideas that we turn into beliefs. If we believe we are weak we deny our power of action. Similar beliefs attract each other. We like to be consistent in our experiences as well as our behavior.

Learning to deal with beliefs directly instead of indirectly will change the way we look at the self. If we combine our beliefs with imagination and emotions and form a mental picture of the desired results we can initiate action that will manifest physically. In other words, the inner self creates what we want and the conscious mind responds, but the responses may be tainted with certain beliefs that restrict rather than expand our desires.

Our Belief Structure

Fame or integrity: which one is more important? Money or happiness: which one is more valuable? Success or failure: which one is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, You will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, You will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have, Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, The whole world belongs to you.

Lao-tzu, the father of Taoism, lived 500 years before Christ was born. His words are the foundation for moral awareness as well as self-love. We experiences what we believe because we focus and concentrate on those beliefs. Thoughts about our reality are reinforced consciously as well as unconsciously. Our family and all those we have contact with have a hand in influencing our belief structure.

Our belief structure is a complicated creation. We have visible as well as invisible beliefs. The visible beliefs are called core beliefs. Invisible beliefs can be called subsidiary beliefs. It’s easy to spot the invisible beliefs in others, before we identify our own invisible beliefs. Invisible beliefs can change our experiences. The exterior sense data we accept may compliment the ideas that spring from our invisible beliefs.

We limit the physical self by the evidence we accumulate through sense data. The collaboration between sense data and our beliefs create our experiences, and we associate those experiences using a dualistic judgment method. We place those experiences in a positive or negative category based on our core beliefs about those experiences. There is a portion of the conscious mind that overrides our judgmental categories because the influences and associations about our physical reality may be filled with distorted truths. Distorted truths can become distorted beliefs so our physical reality is a learning reality as well as a judgmental one.

Core Beliefs are strong ideas about our reality. Subsidiary or invisible beliefs reinforce core beliefs. They only seem logical in relationship to core beliefs. The strength of our core beliefs will draw from our inner conscious mind only those ideas that fit into the structure of a specific or a group of core beliefs. Our core beliefs as well as our invisible beliefs create the physical energy in each experience. We are what we believe. When we recognize our visible as well our invisible beliefs, we are able to change how we perceive our experiences.

The Ying Of The Yang Of The Conscious Mind

The Poem

It discovers by night

What the day hid from it.

Sometimes it turns itself

Into an animal.

In summer it takes long walks

By itself where meadows

Fold back from ditches.

Once it stood still

In a quiet row of machines.

Who knows

What it is thinking?

Donald Hall, the 14th U.S. Poet Laureate, digs deep into the subconscious, and we find another portion of the conscious mind smiling back at us. The subconscious has gotten a bad rap through the generations. Religion plays a part in shuffling the deck of fear, and then dealing us a distorted hand filled with half-truths. The Western World has been taught to believe that the subconscious is unpredictable, unreliable and filled with unpleasant energy.

The door to our inner self has been padlocked with a mental combination lock. We have been taught to believe that we are divorced from a portion of our own reality. The concept of original sin holds us in a hammer lock of uncertainty, and the only way out is to participate in superficial rituals and guilt-filled obligations. The idea of a tainted consciousness opens the door for major psychoanalysis and soul reconstruction.

As Hall points out, we live without consciously knowing how we maintain and use our physical awareness. But, we do know. The atoms and molecules within the cells have their own consciousness, and they mesh with the molecules and atoms in the air, earth, and universe. That mixture produces a unique reality that is built for us by our subconscious.

Our subconscious believes in us even though we don’t know what it is thinking. It is the night of our mental day or the ying of the yang of our conscious mind.

.

The Inexhaustible Energy Of Consciousness

When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.

Therefore The Master Acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.

Lao-tzu, the Chinese philosopher, wrote those words 2500 years ago. The Master is the inner self. The inner self adopts a physical consciousness in order to manipulate the world we call our reality. Our consciousness exists in many forms and is active in many dimensions, but our conscious mind is focused on directing outward activity using a dualistic method. That method is a product of our belief structure.

From the duality the conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about using the inexhaustible energy of consciousness. The value of the conscious mind is its ability to set direction and make decisions. The conscious mind has a dual role. It assesses data that comes from the inner self as well as the information we perceive from the physical world. When the conscious mind is not limited by our beliefs, it is able to act without doing and teach without saying anything.

We are taught to fear the consciousness within us. We fear our own thoughts, and accept the beliefs of others. We distort inner data and our physical expressions reflect those distortions. There is no war between the inner self and the conscious mind. That is only a perception based on our choice to ignore the information we receive from our subjective self. But, the inner self continues to give us the information we need whether we use it now or store it in a mind cell labeled “forever.”

Interior Hut Of Consciousness

This hut is larger than the earth, Since there’s nothing that is not. In the small charcoal stove

Burn sun and countless stars, And the corners of the kitchen Buzz with humankind

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem Here is a good example of 1920’s Dadaism mixed with an abundant dose of what-the-hell? The 20s and 30s were restless decades in Japan. Takahashi was an emerging artistic figure. His work gave that reality a touch of existential flavoring.

The hut in Takahashi’s work is the inner self. Before we perceive anything physical we sense it through our inner pathways. Everything exists in the non-temporal reality before it is materialized, and perceived physically. Ideas generate emotions and imagination. They activate interior patterns, which come from the creative force from which all realities manifest.

We consciously react to the noise of physical data. Takahashi calls it “the buzz of humankind.” Physical data is carried through the nerves using time lapses. Time lapses are necessary within this dimension. The sun and the stars represent the invisible light and sound patterns that form using the electromagnetic energy of the nothing that is not. This nothing is not ruled by time and space, and cannot be explained using our limited format.

From that nothing temporal perception takes over, and we separate everything that is not accepted by our educated conscious mind. But in our interior hut all physical and non-physical events and objects are recognized and connected.