Z.K.’s blog

In Julia Cameron’s masterful book “the Artist’s Way” she has a beautiful way of describing god to atheists and agnostics; G.ood O.rderly D.irection.  This description is much easier to digest than the dogma that surrounds such a word – I think most skeptics and non-believers are against the idea of “god” because it conjures up an image of an old deity that has the traits of a male parent, and that the logic behind this sort of entity controlling a vast universe that keeps expanding as our telescopes do, seems unrealistic.

To that end I do agree – I believe the imagery tied to that line of dogma is just a way of man’s ego to be translated from such an angle that it’s omnipotent and unquestionable; a method of psychic dictatorship that can’t be challenged.

What I feel that most people that do have a strong spiritual connection have a hard time describing is what “god” actually is.  The term itself is so loaded with misunderstandings and reductionist definitions that saying that “you believe in god” can be translated that you believe in a white-bearded man in the sky, controlling things from afar.  Let me clear first of what I mean by “spiritual connection” – it’s a waking feeling-sense of being connected to a network of intelligence larger than your physical self that you have access to, and it has access to you, and speaks through subtle “languages” of intuition that operates most efficiently when the thinking mind is put aside momentarily.

Herein lies the problem – how do you explain an intangible experience to someone that has no point or reference and an unwillingness to experiment?  Well you usually can’t – you can try to describe an orgasm every which way but words don’t usually suffice to explain, nor are they needed when you have one.  Furthermore, the willingness to put aside the thinking mind is usually not possible until one reaches a point of being able to let go of it, and this isn’t possible without the experience and knowledge that the mind itself is an instrument and not the entirety of a person’s content.  I theorize that people always DO know something of a greater order operating at all times, but are either immersed so deeply in thought, or are scared of it and it’s implications, or a combination of both.  Transcending the ego is usually the first and last step in the practices of philosophy and religions that seek a universal “union” with a divine source, and this comes as no surprise – if you don’t learn how to be quite, you can’t hear very well  (for a quick primer on this, read MIND TRAINING in my permanent pages). Also, people are scared to feel small when they think they’re important in some way – “a dew shivering before it falls into the pond….the ocean spray looking at itself from above….a ray of light claiming its essence to be its own…”.

The most fascinating aspect of god/universe/spirit/matrix/whatever/etc is the has access to you part; namely, the shifting that takes place commensurate with your beliefs about it.   People can tell themselves there’s nothing there, and they see nothing except the evidence that disproves a higher ordering….and invest their conviction only in those that support their beliefs.  Here’s the toughest part to get – your entire “system” of experience keeps in tune so your assumptions are upheld.  The opposite is true as well – you can look for patterns, intelligence operating in all things, and you’ll see it; coincidences turn into impossible synchronicities (from my experience it’s not just the perception of them, but a rapid increase in occurrence and direct meaning to your personal life), pondering how the planets got here become a wondrous form of art that took billions of years to form, and so on.  Now perhaps it’s because I’m in the latter mode of experiencing that I can say this -  don’t both points of view further prove that there is a force at work? To me the ones who refute anything greater than what they can “see” have trained themselves to be dull to it – the impossible magic of us even being here is rationalized without even considering what it took for us to get us here, to have a voice within ourselves that can even question such subjects, that even the physical forces and reactions necessary to have a conversation are all taken for grated.  Sunblind.  Look to long at it and it vanishes from view, along with everything around it.  Prove it?  You’re here.  Ponder what it took for you to get here, throughout human and cosmological history and what’s going on to sustain our place in the universe.  No amount of theory or explanation is needed once experience and practice are given a chance.  The question is, why are you afraid to let go and work with it when you’re doing it already?

*as a side note, I think a huge part of James Cameron’s AVATAR’s success is because of his ability to transmit this type of spiritual connection through storytelling, and people recognize and miss it in some part of themselves.

These guys were contestants on Silent Library, and they kicked much ass, and so does their music – check them out on their myspace page (addy below).

The Call Out is five young men who were brought together to form this powerful Pop Rock group that in based from the heart of New Jersey. The front man and lead vocalist, Jon Ferris, along with the lead guitarist, Sean Marmora, are from Ocean Township, NJ. Rhythm guitarist, Anthony Manginelli, and drummer, Danny Wrensen, are from Middletown, NJ. The newest addition to the family is bassist Dan Szpakowski from the heart of Brick Township, NJ. These five come together to put on an exciting and energetic live show. You are bound to be hearing from this group very soon while they take the music industry by storm. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for The Call Out. They have appeared on national television and several radio stations and will not rest until widespread recognition is reached and their music is world wide. Stay tuned for what TCO has coming in the next few months. Myspace.com/TheCallOutNJ

It seems that a lot of people are sold on the idea that you can get something for nothing, and after years of trying and ultimately failing in the pursuit of maximal gain and minimal effort, they can’t see that perhaps it’s this very approach that’s flawed.  Of course there is contrary evidence if you train yourself to look for it, but it’s my idea that what you want wants to be owned by someone that deserves it – that the desired outcome is really a logical side-effect of staying true to your chosen craft/endeavor/dream.  Actually, I go further and say that whatever you desire requires you to be a different person in many regards; that it requires that you “grow up” in a matter of speaking.

I’ve heard many a friend talk about an emptiness that comes over them when they hit their mid-twenties mark – what they do and how they do it doesn’t give them that “kick” anymore; the assumed mental/emotional reaction that was there as a result of doing something/job/activity/etc. isn’t there or isn’t the same as before.  I realized that we’ve been through this many times – your toys when you were 2 don’t have the same feeling when you’re 10, and the games you played at 12 seem trivial and silly when you’re a late-teenager.  The thing is, we don’t feel this shift so obviously as we pass into adulthood, perhaps because there isn’t such a radical transformation physically, mentally and emotionally as when we were passing through adolescence.  Instead of toys, we now have values, motives, psychological gratifications resulting from our actions and how we perceive they add to whatever we value.  It’s still the same growth, but we stunt our capacity for growth when we deny that the same thing, just doesn’t do the same thing anymore.

Ask yourself the question of what it is you value now and how it’s different from before; your motivations may have changed vastly without you being too aware of it.  Ask how who you think you are now differs from the person you need to become to be the person that lives up to what you now value.  The wording isn’t important – the important part is the self awareness that your old “toys” aren’t working for you anymore, that you’ve grown up (again) and just need to see what it is about yourself that needs to catch up.

We shift through different selves seamlessly through our lives, with the insight to see and honor this, we give ourselves the power to become our own flame that we pass through.

Hey everyone, just to vent – here’s a little airport experience -

“Hi,

Yesterday, I arrived an hour and a half before my flight, then told to check in at kiosks that didn’t take my confirmation number.  After being told to wait in the wrong line by a SEVERELY unhelpful and HOSTILE staff, I wait there until someone asks me where I’m going, then told to wait at re-ticketing because I’m “too late” for my flight.  When does waiting for a flight have to include the time of ignorant and unhelpful staff?  After 2 hours in line, another very unhelpful and MOCKING counter woman tells me to pay 2,000$ for the next available ticket, or just wait until January 25th – she does this with a sadistic smile, AFTER I TELL HER I HAVE NO WHERE TO STAY IN MANHATTAN.  No help on fare, no offer to fly standby, and she makes it my fault that the airline staff is completely inept and that the snow conditions the night before are my responsibility somehow.  Finally she gives me an offer to stay until the 26th for 370$ more. (Why the hell wasn’t that the first option??) What that experience, I’m completely convinced that Delta does this just to make holidays a profitable time of the year, while not giving a damn about it’s costumer’s needs or even takes into consideration that maybe we want to be with somebody special for xmas, which now I won’t be able to do”

*Couple days later – guess what they offer to say sorry?

“as a gesture of apology for the inconvenience caused due
to lack of customer service, I have issued an Electronic Transportation
Credit Voucher (eTCV) in the amount of $50.00.”

Petula P. Dawson
Coordinator
Delta Customer Care

……….ARE YOU F’N SERIOUS?

Ok so I’ve heard enough from people that Delta does that all the time and I think a class-action lawsuit is in order at this point – what do you guys think?

Any one else has experiences like this with this company?  Email me (request@zerokazama.com) and I’ll add it to the blog

How many of us here are where we’re at because we took a leap of faith into the unknown? Perhaps a work situation or a living situation wasn’t working the way we wanted to and we just dropped everything and opened ourselves up to whatever life could throw at us. Regardless of the context, taking a leap of faith requires that we let go of our agenda on how things should work out; we let go of the rigid controls that we have on our lives (perhaps sometimes just to let go of the feeling of control that life has on us).

Everyone that has done something like this, whether you want to call if faith or not, usually has seen things work out in ways that can’t be figured out, anticipated, or contrived. Sometimes situations manifest that just completely blow our minds with the amount of synchronicity it took for it to take place. There’s a sense of aliveness and openness in the senses when life unfolds like this, a feeling that can’t be described in words that well.

If you’ve done this or lived like this and wonder where that magic has gone now, here’s a question – at what point did you think you’re in control again and pretend everything is your doing?

The question isn’t made to make you go on a hunt for the answer, rather, just to point that many of us after willingly letting our lives unfold in hands greater than our own, and then seeing miraculous unfoldings as a result, start to delude ourselves into thinking we made it happen or we have to micromanage it from now on. When does the leap stop in a “leap of faith”? Is there a point where you say “thanks, but I’ll walk from here”?

Take a moment to remember how gracefully and effortlessly life can flow if you just let it go – it’s not going to make you lazy or inert; rather you’ll be more available to life as life reflects your cooperation with it again, rather than refusing to go along with your demands that you never used to have when you still felt you were mid-way through your leap. One act of faith creates all the other moments afterwards to be one as well, it’s up to us to recognize that and live in a state of trust and release, or we can live like our lives need to be looked after by us every waking moment.

You’ve heard the term “Jump and the net will appear”? Well, you’re already in the net, and always have been. Resting in it, or getting tangled in it…it’s up to you.

How this works in a nutshell – Resistance to life causes blockages due to our uncooperative stance with greater possibilities that we can’t comprehend or outline; faith is conscious non-resistance and the willingness to let forces greater than our own (like the force that created galaxies) work with us and through us.  From this stance, we’re more on “recieve” than “transmit”, so we open our intuitive faculties and thus the synchronicity it entails. This works best when you know exactly what you want but without demand, and feel no urgency.

How many of us here have moved living locations, changed or broken up with partners, only to see the same scenarios played out in a different setting or with a different person?  Perhaps after a series of failed relationships (romantic or otherwise) we’ve chosen solitude over repeating the pattern that brings out the emotional reactions that we’re so tired of living through.

Most of us don’t realize or don’t want to awaken to the one thing that can’t be taken out of the situation; the common denominator is always YOU.

Now, this isn’t meant to point out the “wrongs” of you or anyone, rather, it’s a wake up call to realize the vast power in taking responsibility for the circumstances in your life (and this means taking the reigns as a co-creator, rather than an experiencer by default), and this is done by first seeing how cosmologically near-impossible it is for these scenarios to replay themselves over and over.

Currently, the earth about 6.7 billion people.  Think of the forces at work to put you in the right (or wrong) time, place, situations, that line you up with the perfect people to replay a scenario in your life over.  How were these people raised?  How did their lives and how they interpret it line up perfectly to match up to re-enact an old story that evokes a similar reaction you’ve had with someone else?  Broken down further, what are the odds of you even meeting these/this person?  How many situations that we can’t begin to imagine have to line up in order for you to come into contact with these people in the timing that you did?

Just for fun, let’s take the example of a romantic partner – let’s say it’s a one in a million chance that you’ll meet someone that’s going to make you feel the exact same unwanted feelings as your last partner.  So let’s multiply that odd with the US population (just to be conservative) – that’s a .000099% chance of that happening, and that’s being generous. 

To shift from victimization to empowerment, all you have to be willing to do is to step back and realize the vast amount of power working for you here (all effortlessly) and recognize it as molding around what you believe to be true about yourself.

How you see yourself will always be re-played, no matter what you try to change on the outside.  “No matter where you go, there YOU are”.  In more philosophical terms, it could be said that the only thing that is absolute is the self, and that this self is reflected everywhere.  Perhaps the hardest thing that many people have is becoming willing to let go of their view of themselves; letting go of the old stories they’ve been telling everyone their whole lives, but with this letting go of an old order, a newer, better one can emerge.

Here’s a process that you can use, but there must be a willingness to let go and trust; you can’t have a life you’re not willing to live up to nor can you control the powers that weave the fabric of your life together.  You can only change how you view yourself, and that’s all you need to do.

-Be aware of your reactions as causal-

~How a situation made you feel isn’t about the situation – think of the situation being there so the reaction can take place.  Without a reaction ready to jump out in the first place, the situation will more than likely NEVER show up, or if it does, has no emotional charge behind it, so it won’t even be seen as significant.  This is no small thing – it’s essentially saying that your reactions “reach out” to weave future events together so the events conspire to show you what you’re looking for.

-Realize what this reaction is protecting-

~What it’s protecting is always a self-definition, a key point in how you tell your story about yourself.  Something to the like of “I was treated this way again because I AM always _______”.  Note that it may not always be that obvious, but there’s always something that you’re protecting about how you see yourself, how you tell yourself about others.  Yes, it may feel like your whole LIFE is going to crumble when some things become questioned (who would I be if it weren’t for my problems? my drama?).  Recommend reading this blog page to supplement.

-Realize that it’s not worth protecting-

~Nothing that people hold onto that keeps them in suffering is worth holding onto unless the sole purpose in that person’s life is to be right and stay the same, and they never see the misery in this.  If being a martyr, victim, unlucky, alone, etc. is really worth fighting over, no one is going to stop anybody.  The realization that madness only leads to more madness needs to be recognized before it’s seen as it is; madness.  Taking creative responsibility is liberating, but also asks you to question if you were right about who you thought you were, and assuming a different stance on life.

So see how this intelligence around us corresponds so precisely to the things we don’t like to see happen over and over again – let that be a wake up call to the powers available to you at any time, since they’re working all the time.  Trust that this power is working on your behalf (since it always is, but often on default) and take the leap of faith in yourself that you might be able to weave something greater than you thought possible by letting the old go, and let your imagination create a greater version of yourself.  You’re free to upgrade to reality 2.0.

More than likely, even if you’re a action-movie fan, his name might not ring a bell…but it will soon. I met Jon on a photo shoot for a director we’ll both hopefully be working for soon; a post apocalyptic film I can’t disclose just yet. On the shoot I had on a tanto dagger in a gun holster, and as I’m not looking I feel it sliding out, and there Jon is, sneaking it out of the sheath, ninja-style saying “I coulda taken this from you, and you’d be screwed” in his native British accent. Awesome, made me laugh. “Cool dude” I thought. Later as he’s doing his shoot, he does a standing flash kick (back flip kick) and a few other trick kicks that looked rather insane. Now I’ve seen a fair share of trickers, but most of the time they look fancy but weak. He looked like he could break a skull doing them. Like so -

Yup. He’s the kung fu/wushu fighter in Tom Yum Goong/The Protector. Very very badass right? He also got a little part in the new Tekken….and by little I mean he’s playing -

Yup.

This makes me hopeful that Tekken will make up for Street Fighter and Dragon Ball.

Keep up with Jon and learn more about him on his official website HERE.

Let’s all give this guy some much deserved love and support -ZK

I met Sae on the set of Tropic Thunder – he’s trained in different styles of knife, stick and sword fighting that are so fast and awesome that my brain has a hard time keeping up with.  You’ve also probably seen him getting shot and thrown around in video games like Resident Evil 5 and the new new Star Wars: The Old Republic.

At one point or another, those along the path of personal development realize or learn that we’re all great storytellers – our story is our own and how we weave the adventure.  In this sense, it could be thought of as persona development; how you shift your point of view on how you view yourself in relation to what has happened, what is going to happen, and what is.  This becomes on of, if not THE most powerful way of transforming your life, since at the core of your experience is your self.  Change the self in relation to an experience and the whole experience changes.  This is not just a mental event, but an insightful revision to something that you’d like to see changed; coupled with conviction, a new way of looking at things changes the thing being looked at.  Without getting too complicated here’s the best way I know of to apply this -

Shifting the past through the present

-No matter how solid a past event feels, no matter what kind of evidence that you have that the past “happened”, the past is only an experience of recollection happening in the present moment.  There is no denying that an event happened, especially with physical trauma, but the way that it’s being told in your life story is always open to revision.  Let’s say that someone that you were in love with left you and hurt you in the past, and now you feel that you risk being hurt again if you did open yourself up to the possibility of another relationship.  So the narrative of your story sounds something like “several years ago, my heart was scarred and I closed it, afraid to open it to anyone else for fear of being wounded again.” With the willingness to take responsibility as your own story teller, you could revise it to something like “I was hurt before, but I survived and became more self-empowered as a result, and I know that part of how deeply hurt I was, was because of my emotional immaturity that I’ve overcome and am now open to share life with another person”.  After the story is told differently, your identity changes from “I AM hurt and afraid to love” to “I AM a strong person open to love”.  Outer facts soon follow the identity corresponding to a different tale.

Be creative, anything can be re-cast differently.  Take note that both of the narratives ARE TRUE, commensurate with the conviction and faith behind which side of the story is told.   The challenge in this practice is realizing and accepting what kind of shifts in your life story will result from a newly cast storyline; if you change one aspect of the story, you have to be open to your entire story shifting.  Be willing to let go of old self-definitions that you no longer want.  One shift in the story can and will ripple outwards.  So taking the example of the “love story” above.  If you shift from one to the other; – you can’t keep talking about your hurt to all your friends – you’re open to meeting someone in unexpected areas of your life – a pessimistic on relationships is no longer a part of you – etc.etc.  Your memories of how the past played out and how you anticipate the future also shift in relation to the new story, just like if were watching a movie and it’s revealed at some part in the film, that a character you thought was one way was actually another – your whole perception of the movie, and how it played out in relation to the character also changes doesn’t it?  The events themselves don’t change, they’re just given a different meaning. Remember – evidence follows from your truth; have faith in whatever it is that you’re trying to prove and the evidence will show up. There’s no sense searching for evidence in support of something you don’t want to believe.

Make a twist in your life story and watch yourself play out as a different character, one that you’d want to play.

“Make it happen” – seems to be a motto for many of us.  We believe we create things from out willpower and force.  The thing is, if you contemplate it, non of us are here as a result of our will to beging with.  We didn’t set up our parent’s meeting, the events that lead to their parents meeting, and in a broader context, all the chaotic factors that needed to line up in the world for even the meetings to be possible.  For instance, how many of us wouldn’t be here if WWII didn’t happen?  The atrocities of war are things that I hope will never be repeated, but in the context of this page, I’m using it to point out that we’re here as a result of many reasons, many events, and many intersections of things we can’t even begin to imagine.  Expanding the context further, our will doesn’t create the world, the balance of oxygen and other gases in the air, and our body’s physiology, or anything that allows life to become possible in the first place.  So at what point did we start to believe that our willpower is the creator of our life?

Am I saying that we don’t have free will?  The answer isn’t black or white, like most philosophical answers aren’t.  We first have to break down what “will” means – is it our individual means of expressing our choices and power?  Is it the power to hold attention on something?  If so, what inspired us to hold our attention there or what was it that inspired us to go after what we’re choosing to go after?  Taking the larger context into view, we didn’t put the events, people, etc into place that inspired us in the first place, nor is the thing we’re holding our attention of our own individual creation.  Contemplated deeply, the “will” in the individual sense is illusory, in the same sense that looking at a 3-D image on a tv screen will trick your perception into thinking something as having depth in a two dimensional matrix.  Just because you know it’s not real, doesn’t make it seem less real to you.

Now, this isn’t going into a nihilistic, victimized route that many others may; the will, and our desires that direct it are a synergy of our individuality that’s become unified with Universal intelliegence (God, Spirit, etc).  Operating from this stand point, this means your will is a will working THROUGH you, and not yours alone, since we’ve discussed earlier, there’s not much evidence pointing to your will being a result of you in the first place.  Just how it took an infinite number of things going a certain way for us to exist here at all, if you open yourself to a shift in awareness, your desires become a pulse of growth coming forth from an intelligence that’s unified with all that is.   So here’s where it gets interesting – if you open yourself to the idea that your will and desires are in conjuction with all-that-is, then using your will to get away from something, or willing very hard to make something happen puts you in a place of being “cut off” from this universal intelligence.  If you really understand that the will of a higher order is working through you, an order that you cannot begin to fathom, them what is it that you’re willfully fighting against?

Taking all this into consideration, paradoxically, we ARE free to choose what we put our attention to – an intense will/the presence of great effort usually means we’re fighting against or denying the thing we want, or believe that it can’t happen, since we can’t see any way for it to happen, forgetting that us being here is far beyond anything we can imagine.  We can give it up to the higher power to manage the course of evolution (and I’m talking about planets, stars, galaxies, not just humans) of all things, something we can’t begin to understand, but if we can’t see a way to get a job we think all is lost.

Strange…almost stupid isn’t it?  We have a hard time understanding how this light from this monitor is being shaped into words, let alone how you’re eyes and brain translate it into a voice you hear in your head.  Yet we still believe our will and limited knowlegde is the determining factor in life?

So, why are things not going the way you want them?  1. You think you have to do everything 2. You’re not letting the higher order operate through you 3. You’re focusing wrongly

To clarify -

1.Do your part; just do what you feel you should do – after you’ve done what you feel you need to do, let it go.

2.People forget that if you really want something that’s different from your current life, it means that the person living in this other life is also radically different.  You can’t have something you’re not willing to grow into.  You can’t have something for nothing.  You need to be the change you want to see in your life, and this is intuitively felt, but often denied.  You also have to trust your intuition and impulses that are coming from the greater whole: there’s no tangible way to describe this, once you open yourself to a greater intelligence, you’ll often feel that things are moving to and through you, you’re being directed.  Often times your mind/illusory will, will try to rationalize it and block it’s action.  Learn to be still, clear, and follow your inner guidance.

3.Focus on things that make you feel better instead of worse, plain and simple.  The universe can only say “yes” – allow yourself to find evidence of things that you want to see happen.  Just like realizing an illusion, you’ll see that things aren’t how you really thought they were once you shift the way you look at them, or look at something else all together.

-ZK