Welcome back.
But wait there's more.
I love this second this.
This is the fun part I love to go over the different philosophies of Zen.
There's so many.
We've got a ton more for you so let's jump right in.
Now a lot of people they look at disillusionment like it's a bad thing.
I mean when you hear that word disillusionment does that sound like a negative thing.
Yeah.
For most people it is a symbol.
There was a very disillusioning experience like they like they lost something they did.
They lost the illusion.
But people are in love with their false beliefs with their illusions.
Zen is the process of disillusionment.
The removal of illusion.
Disillusionment is the best thing that can ever happen to you.
It's the greatest gift you can give to another human being and certainly yourself.
So denial is the process of holding on to your illusions.
Disillusionment is the removal of illusion.
And once you have reality in front of you of reality what a fine thing.
Once you have that in front of you now you can act with precision and with power you can never get the
right answer when you're in the illusion.
You simply get trapped in the problem.
So illusions are traps in their prisons.
You shouldn't feel bad about them being removed.
Now here's a great quote and this is always true.
A person with all their excuses removed has no alternative but to succeed.
Write that one down attack it up on the wall.
If you follow that philosophy it'll change your life.
Here's another great one.
This is actually from the AA Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book and it's in I believe it's in the chapter
under how it works.
It's one of the first things that they go into.
Don't you have to read a chapter like how it works.
It's a very simple quote.
It says it's all about acceptance and the beauty of it and how it can literally save your life and give
you joy in life and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today when I am disturbed is because
I find some person place thing or situation some fact of my life unacceptable to me.
And I can find no serenity until I accept that person place thing or situation as being exactly the
way it is supposed to be.
At this moment nothing absolutely nothing happens in this world by mistake unless I accept life completely
on life's terms.
I cannot be happy.
I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed
in me and in my attitudes.
Remember that acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
Addicts in recovery say this over and over again like it's a prayer they got the serenity prayer Grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change accept the things I cannot change courage to change
the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Another phrase of what acceptance perfect practice this.
Write this down.
Print this out.
Tack this up on your wall Shove this in your pocket.
Use this philosophy as often as you can.
It's as old as the ancients.
It's as old as Zen.
Thousands of years old.
And it's here for you today.
You now have these gifts as well
love.
This one I believe this is another Jim Rome quote.
Happiness is first a study then a practice
here's the Zen portion of it.
How do you see you look.
How do you find you search.
How do you build strength.
You struggle.
How do you change.
You become open.
These are all secrets.
Look these over.
Think about things I don't need to explain it to you.
You're smart enough now at this point in the course.
You can do this for yourself.
Now in Jim Rollins said happiness is first to study and then a practice.
He said most people can't be happy because they don't know the secrets how to be happy.
You didn't know many of the secrets to be happy an hour or so ago.
Why.
Because they've been hidden from you.
I doubt that you saw most of these things anyplace else except here.
Because when I started studying Zen that's when I found most of these I found little bits and pieces
of them because I'd read hundreds and hundreds of books in little different bits and pieces in places.
But boy when I started studying studying the Zen which is literally the study of life of happiness of
reality.
That's where it was all laid out before me.
That's where you'll find it.
That's where you should look.
That's where you should search but these things sounds so obvious why because they're so true.
But when you look at how do we actually do it.
We fall short of it.
We have to stop falling short.
Now when I was a therapist I would always teach clients how all life events serve them in some fashion.
I love this quote says nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so what's happening is in
life things will happen to you and depending upon how you look at them you can always find the seed
of an equivalent or greater benefit.
If you look at over everything that happens to you when I look over the things that happened to me in
my life that were horrible that I wish never happened to me in retrospect I'm glad they did.
They prepared me for things to come.
They gave me strength that I needed.
So I did get crushed once but I would have been crushed dozens of times if I hadn't gotten that lesson.
I wouldn't be as compassionate with others if I hadn't been crushed in those situations.
This is almost like the good people bad people you need both.
So I want you to figure out how all of life's events serve you in some fashion.
I love to watch this with addicts.
They have absolutely positively in record time destroy their lives.
But in having made those mistakes they can save dozens if not hundreds of other people by sharing their
story.
Plus these failures teach them the steps to success to make their life better than it ever would have
been had they never had this problem.
We sometimes call these the gifts of recovery.
I'll tell you I've seen a lot of people that have had horrible horrible addictions that you would never
wish on anybody but they got so many gifts they learned so many things that they never were to learn
that they became such beautiful people and so strong and so kind and so loving because of it.
And so mentally powerful and wise that their life was better than if they'd never had it.
Beautiful beautiful thing.
You need to look through your life and find these areas.
Next being certain is the opposite of being open when you think you know something.
You cut yourself off from any other possibility you show.
You shut your mind out you are now closed minded because your mind is closed where you think that word
comes from.
Don't be certain.
Always be wondering did I get it right.
You never know when you're running an old program.
You never know when you think you found an ultimate truth and it was a layered truth that there's actually
one more piece an additional piece or a piece that just blows away and makes the other piece wrong OK.
It's a whole new level of understanding that's a beautiful thing.
So never never never be absolutely certain always hold a question mark in your mind.
So when our minds are closed we're cut off from the world.
We blocked herself off closed mind means closed.
Nothing can come in an open mind can absorb anything.
A closed mind can absorb nothing.
We want to constantly be drinking in life and new ideas and testing things.
Why would we ever closer mind off unless we were afraid that our ideas would be attacked and we'd be
found wrong.
Only your ego cares if you're found wrong.
You as a human being are excited when you find out you're wrong.
Oh I'm thrilled when I find out I'm wrong why because when I find out I'm wrong I stop teaching it wrong
and I teach a lot of damn people.
Thank you for solving that before I destroyed more lives.
I love finding out I'm wrong.
It also takes the system that I had and makes it obsolete gives me a beautiful new system that's going
to help me be even more massively successful.
I love finding out that there's a better way or that I was wrong.
Either one of those is like gold for me.
I used to hear and I used to be embarrassed by it I used to hide it from other people I used to deny
it.
I used to try to block it off and say No no no it's not true.
Now I run towards it I'm excited.
It's almost a goal of mine to be wrong.
Don't tell my wife.
How.
This is another thing that comes from a and a but it's also a Zen philosophy.
How is an acronym inside of the Twelve Step halls.
It stands for honesty openness and willingness.
These qualities open the door to growth.
If you have these three things you're virtually unstoppable.
If you're completely honest with yourself which means you let go denial and you stop you stop lying
both yourself and others.
That's a prerequisite if you're open you're wanted to learn new things and you're willing you're willing
to take suggestions you willing to try new things.
Then you can do almost anything.
If you're missing any one of these you're done.
This is why we want people to be honest and open and have a willingness to listen.
In recovery not because we want it they must have it to grow.
It's a prerequisite for growth.
So always remember the how acronym
and finally for this part of the training mistaken certainties we talked a little bit about this earlier.
I want you to learn to question all your beliefs.
Never be too certain.
See the girl with the question mark.
The human mind has a very hard time not having an answer.
It will grab an answer even if it's wrong.
Just as a place holder it hates avoid.
You know what a vacuum does in physics.
It sucks in everything around it.
Nature abhors a vacuum so does your brain.
It has a hard time until you train it keeping a question mark there.
So I use every idea is a question mark or a place holder.
This is my current level of understanding.
I am not completely certain.
This is only the best idea that I've found so far.
I'm hoping and praying that something comes along that will blow this away and take me to the next level.
Okay so remember when the core concepts of Zen is that you are not awake yet to the truth.
You have to learn to question all the answers we have to go back through and look through all our programming
even the new things that we've learned even the things that I'm teaching you today.
Is there a higher level of understanding than what I'm teaching you.
I don't know.
I hope there isn't I'm going to keep looking and when I find it going to come back in I'm in another
training.
I'm only teaching this training with such confidence because I know these things were hidden from virtually
everybody.
If you were even interested in these course you clearly don't know these things.
Even if you know these things and you've done a lot of Zen work I'll probably come up with two or three
things that could be life changing out of the dozens and dozens of things that I've shared with you.
You only need one concept to change your life and you'll be excited by that and that'll be a quantum
leap for you.
Or you didn't know any of these things because they were hidden from you or most of these things.
But because I'm I'm teaching them simply they make intuitive sense to you and you can grow and you can
feel wonderful about how much you've changed just by the end of this training and as you incorporate
this into your life as you begin to understand it and accept it more it'll get more and more and more
powerful over time.
As long as you have that honesty openness willingness realized that there's something called your current
level of awareness.
They talk about this in the book Love is Letting go of fear that I recommended and that we're always
looking for the next level of understanding.