Is your brain always on? Can you turn it off? Listen… without your brain.

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Use the next 2 minutes (exactly 2 and more is optional) to digest something different:

“What if your brain is not capable of sensing everything? What happens then?” – Johwa Choi

Really?! Use your brain to imagine what it would be like to not use your brain?????? Huh?!

Wait… how do you confirm what else there is to sense if you always use your brain? Listen to the 1 minute trailer. Breathe. Experience it. Don’t use your brain only!

Hundred shades of ego – brighter anyway

“How do you know that your ego is not getting ahead of you?” – my friend asked me recently. Good question. I thought about it and realized that I examine my ego quite frequently, on everyday basis. I am just not calling it ego anymore, and it does not necessarily have a shameful and regretful connotation.

When we were children, we were taught what was good and what was bad, and there was not much in between on this scale of black and white. If we keep judging ourselves and others with this primitive binary scale of zeros and ones, likes and dislikes, love and hatred, saint and evil, we’ll end up in a living hell. None of the important life questions can be resolved by applying the same answer to all people and situations. Same with the ego – it’s not all good or bad, there is much more to be learned about our egos.

The ego does not only show up when we do something terrible. We could be sensing it even if we just think something judgmental or express ourselves in a non-optimal manner. That’s not a peaceful existence, but is there a solution? Yes, there is.

In ZEN method for executive leaders training I took recently, it became so clear why the usual ways of dealing with negative feedback of ego do not work. Our teacher Johwa Choi explained why the type of meditation majority of people are practicing these days may be good for stress relief and relaxation, but not for someone seeking answers to who they truly are, someone seeking for authentic change beyond the physical and energy phenomena.

I won’t do justice to what we learned over two days of this one-of-a-kind intensive weekend training in this short blog, but I will say this. If we perceive our ego as enemy, we don’t get to know it well enough, and we can never become whole. It isn’t an option to live ego-less unless we die or become saints. Then our teacher advises us getting to know who we are intimately, including ego’s clever mechanisms of self-preservation. One of the fastest ways to see and experience this intricate relationship between thoughts, emotions, consciousness, the ego and the truest self is via a powerful method called ZEN method – Zero Enhanced Nothingness. I wish Gilbert Chesterton knew of this method when he wrote: “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”

Brightness anywayThrough meditation one can and should develop a better sense of who he or she is. Gradually the screen lightens up with a wider spectrum of colors – different hues and shades of ego and truest self are coming to life. These colors may be dark and depressing at times, but switching to a brighter scale becomes easier and faster with practice. To me this is where true freedom can be found – a place of brilliant brightness with the ego playing under its embracing rays.

Impostor of Love

“Your body language shapes who you are” – said Amy Cuddy in her TED talk. We are more used to thinking that our body language is a manifestation of who we are, not the other way around. The authors of the controlled experiment inferred that by changing the posture for only 2 minutes they were able to observe significant changes in body chemistry. In the power pose group the average cortisol level (stress hormone) decreased by 25 percent and the average testosterone level increased by 19% from the baseline.

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What impressed me most is duration of poses: in only 2 minutes the body responded to  postures. My teacher Grand-Master Johwa Choi always said that human body is very honest, it does not lie. You could train your mind by training your body, and the other way around. Then the question is: what value do I want to internalize and project the most? For some people or situations, it may be power, and doing the power poses as suggested in the talk might help. For others, it may be love, freedom, and hope.

Practitioners of meditation have long known of the self-persuasion process. Our feelings are subjective because they are judged by us, the very same object that is feeling them. Feeling love or not feeling love is not a yes/no type of measurement, and over time practitioners can recognize purity, vastness, and subtlety of their own feelings. It is quite possible to feel tired and uplifted at the same time, painful and joyful, sad and hopeful.

I choose to focus on expanding my love, even if I am not feeling it at the moment toward a person or toward myself. Sometimes it is so tiny, I have to send in a SWAT team to make it show itself. The subject of love can be anything, the bigger the better – humanity or even the whole Universe. Love keeps growing with constant care, attention, and practice, until one day it will become 100% love all the time, everlasting and overflowing.  I live for that day.

Dr. Cuddy’s main message was: “Fake it until you become it.” My teacher’s message in the ZEN method workshop is:

“Breathe love until it flows out of your eyes and ears.”

What kind of love? Not the relative love, but the absolute MuAh-centered love. Enjoy your  love!

Drop the hurt and dive for Freedom

HM_conflict1 Many conflicts arise in our lives, and many pass unnoticed because we are so used to them. The built-in operating system of suppression/ release, openness/ closeness, judging good from bad is running in the background without a hitch. There is a time, however, when the conflict becomes so big we are not able to ignore it. Depending on the conflict resolution habits and personality type, some choose to release the stressful energy through blaming and attacking the “enemy”, some choose to ingest it internally, some choose to ignore it. These could all be reasonable responses, however sometimes we need to go deeper and learn from it – what made me react this way? Why couldn’t I contain the stress and resolve it peacefully? How can I avoid repeating this pattern in the future? What made the other person to react to my words/ actions in this fashion?

When we are young, our minds are open and our hearts are big, and we can forgive and let go much easier. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, we don’t have a strong preference of who we are. As we grow older and gain status and comfort, our mental attitudes might change without much recognition from ourselves. It becomes harder to forgive and stay open. We might abandon the process of examining the status quo of our beliefs and our default emotional state.

After gaining a stable social status and a comfortable life, I noticed that my mind shrank significantly. I became judgmental and closed to new people and experiences. I could only be friends with people who had similar background and views. I considered myself a sophisticated modern woman while I was just getting further and further away from myself.

I was not happy at all with that change and searched for answers. Through the practice of Harmony Meditation  I learned how I can stay open in my mind and warm in my heart despite the challenges. It does take courage and willingness to look deeper and see myself without embellishments. A discipline of applying critique to my own self can be excruciating. It is easy to blame the other party and close the subject. With practice, the process of exploring becomes much less traumatic. At times I am able to chuckle at myself – what the heck am I doing? At times I even look forward to receiving a not-so-pleasant feedback from my teacher because I know and trust the process. I know that when I weather the internal storm of a hurt ego with a right attitude, a new beginning will come. And that feels like a miracle – what a great potential each of us hold.

“In our lives we can free ourselves if we realize that we have not one way to choose, not two ways to choose, but we can choose all possible ways.” – Johwa Choi.

In a conflict situation, I try to apply the teaching before plunging the sword of judgment and declaring myself right and the other party wrong. I know the answer is almost never black and white, and there is something to learn for me. By admitting that my worldview can be limited and flawed, I open myself to new possibilities and freedom.

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