Welcome


If you're interested in conscious living, then likely you're just as equally interested in Zen but simply not knowingly interested.

Usually Zen is associated with Japanese culture and religious or Buddhism practice, but true Zen (or at least the way this site uses the term) is emphasizing the value of conscious living.

Zen and conscious living come together and go hand-in-hand. Hence, conscious living without Zen is a huge oversight and vice-versa because these are not two.

"Conscious Flex: Zen & Conscious Living" is designed to offer a partnership of how these seemingly two are actually one movement.

Zen is the foundational spaciousness or presence from which conscious living derives. In the same manner that an artist, inventor or intuitive actions come from the stillness in the silence of non-movement.

In other words, Zen is a resting in the powerful space of not thinking about thought, not doing anything about doing, not trying to be the solver or understander, the knower collector but simply allowing the intelligence of life to flow through you and as you.

What is described can be thought of as meditation or accessing our intuition, but it's actually just natural living.

Often you will see kids in a natural resting space or presence and we tell them "snap out of it" because we think they are in "lala land" or "fantasy land" and not paying attention but actually they are simply being completely present with what is. It's natural to just rest and be, that's the flow from which insight and wisdom arises from.

Hence, conscious living is also the natural flow of how life organically expands upon itself. Consequently, conscious living is Zen living, when it's pure and without conceptual overlays.

Enjoy!
  • Nobody Understands Me, There is NO Hope for Tomorrow, Nobody Knows the Real Me, & I Am All Alone

    We have all been through horrible experiences in our lives...
    Perhaps you are going through such an experience right now...
    You feel very victimized, abused, and confused. You can't help but to think maybe it's your fault, if you were somehow a better person, then things wouldn't be so dim. You feel the pain from inside-out, like pins and needles in your veins and sharpened drops of rain.


    Nobody seems to understand, you are left alone - head in hands. You wish you dared to share, how your sorrow makes you dread tomorrow. Why can't anybody see? Please, why can't somebody understand the real me!?!

    I have felt like this for most of my life and every negative experience, just added to it. I can even remember having similar thoughts as a child. In recent years, my memories were confirmed, when my mother showed me report-cards from kindergarten saying, "Your child needs to participate in group activities."

    Yet, in my childhood years, I didn't have the awareness to translate (into thoughts) what I was feeling. My communication skills were not developed enough to express emotions into words. Therefore I was tortured by my feelings, since I couldn't release them. As I grew older and learned how to use the art of words, to let out what I was bottling up, nobody I talked to could relate to what I was feeling, let alone understand it. They just did their best to cheer me up. As a result my feelings AND thoughts started torturing me.

    Growing up into a religious environment, I was pounded with religious ideas until I was about 7 years of age. Naturally, as I got older, I began the process of finding my own path to follow. Eventually I did find my own personal truth and what resonated with me. I even met a group of people that shared the same beliefs. On one hand, I was not alone in my beliefs and I began to understand myself, life, and the universe in a way that was congruent to my truth.

    On the other hand, all the information I was absorbing, confirmed my sorrow and pain. The group of people related to the belief aspect, but they would always respond to the pain they experienced through the format of their beliefs and not accepting their pain as an obvious part their experience. Their beliefs matched their truth, but their own personal experiences told them of a different reality. Given the aligned perspective, the experiences could fit nicely along the side of the beliefs. However, it didn't feel right to ignore my experiences of pain, for a belief that I never experienced, no matter how aligned the belief felt.

    The Spiral
    As a result, my thoughts and feelings were back again to torture me in the realization that nobody could see the extreme difference between these unmistakable realities. Now my beliefs about life and the universe joined the torturing! Every negative experience I had from that point forward, sent me down a bigger twisted spiral of nothing but depression. I couldn't see the point. Why was this happening to me? What a laughable joke I must be to the universe, there is no end to the energy-sucking consequences and coincidences. I must deserve this! I know this is my fault somehow!

    I analyzed my life from all the perspectives I could face, until I couldn't face it anymore. There was only one thing left to face... I looked at myself in the mirror, and I told myself: "This is never going to end, you have to end it yourself."

    Yet, I always felt that life has more to offer than what we experience and I have used all the information on this site to experience life in a new way. In short, I proved myself right. I learned how to be happy by growing my awareness and sharing that growth. In fact everything I have learned in life from my depression days up to this point, there is an article explaining it.

    However, I didn't solve the underlining issue of how the depression came about in the first place. I managed to merge my life experiences with my surface beliefs and see them as one reality, but I didn't manage to merge my life experiences with my core beliefs, where the pain and sorrow was living. That has been with me all my life, until recently!

    One Universal Answer
    I discovered how to merge the two! This discovery is universal too, in other words, it does not matter what negative experiences you are having right now or whatever past situations you hold on to, there is one answer to relieve you of all painful experiences. If you apply the information I am going to share with you, to any aspect of your life, you will never experience another negative situation as long as you live and you can let go of the past. Just hear me out and humor me please, this information could be life-changing, if not life-saving.

    In order to lay a foundation of what I want to express, I am going to use an example of someone famous, someone that you might have heard of before. Albert Einstein was one person I always looked up to in life. He was a scientist but had a spiritual manner, that is a very rare and profound quality. He was quoted saying, "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure." I always found that my beliefs resonate closely to his, which is a delightful feeling when you consider that he was labeled a genius by all that knew him. ;)

    In studying Albert Einsteins work, I found that the same patterns in his life, would keep showing up in my life too. Everything I have ever discovered in my life, that has benefited me in a positive way, the answer was always simple. Einstein expressed this by saying, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." and "Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler."

    Therefore to put this in a simple way. Life is about perspective. Everything in life is a matter of perspective. Einstein would put it this way, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.” or "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." Here is another one: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." If your current reality matches the first paragraph of this article, then chances are you don't experience miracles. Are you beginning to understand why? If you wanted to experience a miracle, do you see what you would have to do? Once you change your perspective, you also change your experience.

    In other words, perhaps there is an objective reality outside your own perspective, but you would never know it (or experience it) because your subjective perspective will not allow you to see the objective perspective.

    Now that this article has a foundation, let us build on that understanding. What perspective would you have to hold, in order to experience a life of absolute positivity? (I will explain how to adopt this perspective too, but first lets find the solution, then we will talk about how to apply that solution.) There are many perspectives about life that you could hold in order to experience life in a beneficial manner, but there is only one perspective that can allow you to experience life as nothing expect heavenly. What would you imagine that perspective would be?

    In order to answer that question, let's look at the motivation that drives us all as human beings and what we all truly desire. The best way to understand this is by looking at the traditional things that most everyone follows or tries to aspire to: find a relationship, marriage, have children, and grow old with your partner. Why is that the way? What drives people to lead that life? Love. Love is the reason behind all those things (or at least in theory), correct? In fact if you think about it deeply, you will see that everything you have ever done (or didn't do) in your life was for love. What do I mean by that?

    Everyone seeks to accomplish love in many different ways. For most it's in subconscious ways. I observe that sometimes people will seek to know themselves as love by being unloving. Be being unloving they project and create what they do not desire in their lives, in order to know what they do desire. Alternatively some people will banish love, destroy love, and reject love because they do not feel they deserve to be loved. They feel worthless and choose to hurt themselves because in this manner they are asking for love.

    Can you see how every attack is a cry for love? Therefore to me, it's only logical to respond to unloving people... with love. Give someone love when they least deserve it because in those times is when they need love the most.

    Mainstream Ideas
    However, the mainstream idea about love is that it should be limited to certain people and only at certain times. People tend to only love the people they are close to: their partner, their family, and their children. People forget the fact that we are all human beings with the same biochemically structured behaviors, emotions, and thought patterns. The human race is your family.

    If you were to look at humanity as a whole and every person in humanity is a cell, you can see that the best way to help the whole is for all the cells to come together. Come together, come together in the same place of love for the people you call your blood-family. In fact, every cell and atom in the human body works together for survival of the body as a whole. Scientific research found enough data and knowledge to discovered that this is a natural law of the entire universe, reality as a whole, and everything in it. Everything acts in accord to this natural law. Except for human beings and the reason is based on perspective, the perspective that love is somehow limited and can not be shared.

    Have you ever noticed that you can never love one human being the same way you love another? For example, you love your mother in a different way than you love your child. In fact, if you have more than one child, you will noticed that you love them all differently. You respond to them differently, they respond to you different, you say things to one child differently than you would express things to other child. They have different needs, different ways about them, so naturally you respond to them differently, but they are the same because they are your family. The same can be said about the romantic partners in your life, you can say you're not 'in love' with your ex-partners anymore, but you will always hold a place of love for them and it will be in a different way than you are loving your current partner. Even if you admit you're 'in love' with your ex and your current partner as well, you can still not be in love with them both the same-way.

    The reason for this is because love is infinite and has infinite ways of loving. As a result, you are free to express your love to everyone, since you are not taking your love away from one person and giving it to another. You can love all 6 billion people on the face of this Earth and you will see that you can achieve 6 billion different expressions of love.

    It's widely accepted that love is limited, jealous, and judging. In fact, love is quite the opposite of those things. If there is an opposite of love, it would be fear.
    Love heals, opens up, expands, sends out, reveals, shares, stays, creates, and lets go.
    Fear harms, closes down, contracts, draws in, hides, hoards, runs, destroys, and grasps.
    It would seem that we were all taught of fear, not love!

    Love sees love in every experience, therefore it does not judge any experience. Have you ever met someone that you were not attracted to, yet after you got to know their personality, they looked attractive? Your perspective of that person changed. Love is always in the perspective of love, hence it sees beauty in all forms. Love is very attractive and beautiful, love can not be experienced any other way, unless you perceive fear and call it love.

    Fear
    Fear is the experience of protecting yourself from harm. Fear is your ego trying to save you from a painful experience. Fear remembers the past and tries to protect you from experiencing the pain you experienced in the past. Fear never lives in the moment, it's always reminding you of a scary past of pain. Anger, jealousy, and revenge are twists of fear trying to protect you from feeling pain.

    However, fear is just an illusion. No fear is ever justified when truly faced.
    When I was in school, there was this bully that would always pick on me. One day I was sick and tired of it and I was done with being scared all the time, I decided I was going to stand-up to him. I thought to myself, "It is better to get the crap beat-out of me, then to feel scared all the time. I might as well get it over with, I will know what to expect next time instead of expecting to feel scared." Seemed logical to me at the time.

    When I arrived at school, I was walking down the hall and I saw him by his locker. I knew if he seen me that he would start something and I already decided I was going to do something about it, so my heart was pounding out of my chest as I tried to hurry past him. He noticed me, he started walking down the hall beside me, nudging me with his elbow and taunting me. I stopped walking and faced him. Face to face, eyes to eyes, and I said "You got something to say to me!" with the most stern and assertive voice I could muster. I remember standing there, looking slightly up as I tried to keep my face aligned with his, and thinking to myself "Get ready for it, he is going to cause you a world of hurt!". Yet that never happened, instead, using a voice that expressed attitude and cockiness, he said: "So what if I did, not like you would care what I had to say anyways." As he walked away.

    He never harassed me again and that was the last thing he ever said to me. However I felt disturbed by his statement. In fact, I felt more disturbed by that statement then I did the whole time he was bullying me. I could not make logical sense of why he would say that. Eventually it angered me. Of course! I don't care what he had to say! Why would I after he has been mistreating me all this time?! What part of that doesn't he understand!?

    Consequentially though, it was me that didn't understand. I didn't understand that he was using fear (intimidating me) because he felt the fear that nobody cared what he had to say. He acted out in fear because fear was his perspective. I also didn't understand that he was seeking to be heard (to be loved). If I knew what I knew now, I would have approached him while standing in love and listened to him. I could see that we perhaps would have became really good friends, which is all he wanted in the first place. A friend that would listen. How sad that he was not taught about the perspective of love, he would have found what he was seeking.

    My fear of him was unfounded. Every-time I faced fear head-on without backing away, this has always been my experience. Fear (F.E.A.R.) stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Can you see how the bully was in a perspective of fear, causing him to act out in fear, and instilling fear within me, all in the name of love? If your child is running towards a busy highway chasing a ball, what motivates you to run after the child and save them? Was it fear or love that caused that action to happen? It was the love for your child that stimulated the fear within you. Can you see how even fear (the complete opposite of love) is a twist of love? Love is all there is, love is the only answer to every question. Albert Einstein put it this way: "Where there is love there is no question."

    The One Perspective
    The perspective that will invite you to heaven on Earth is the perspective that: Love is everywhere, Love is everything, Love is the only answer, always being in a place of Love, constantly choosing Love, and seeing Love in every situation/experience.

    This is the part I have had trouble with my whole life (until recently), this is the part that I failed at. I could logically see and belief that love is the answer, but I could not ignore the pain in order to choose love. It did not feel right to ignore my experience of pain, for my belief in love because that was not my experience, no matter how aligned my belief about choosing love felt.

    I reached an awareness level where I could see the logic in choosing to love a person even when I am being victimized by them (or at least I could understand the concept of the idea in the mists of pain). What I had trouble with, was how can I love the situation/experience? The person was crying out for love, that was obvious, it's easy to see and accept the solution. The experience however is just a consequence of the person needing love. How do I accept the experience as love?

    It Is What It Is
    "I Am That I Am."... What does that saying mean to you?
    To me it means that everything is what it is and can be nothing else. Every experience you have, is what it is. It's your perspective about the experience that gives the experience meaning to you. When you judge a experience, now you are labeling it as something certain. When you say an experience is painful, you are using fear to describe it. Fear judges and in it's judging it CAUSES pain. Fear creates pain and fear is an illusion appearing real. Therefore pain is not anymore real than fear. If you were to face pain head-on and never giving-in to it, you would find that the pain was not as painful as you thought is was. Especially when you can logically see that the pain was created out of a cry for love. Pain can be healed by choosing love.

    Likewise physical pain can be dissolved by being in a place of love. You can heal yourself from sickness by realizing that you and everything that exists is love. It is all the same-thing, therefore how can anything really effect anything else? You created the sickness out of the illusion that there is something else besides love existing. Remember it's all perspective! When you stop judging certain experiences as painful, you cause it to become a new perspective, the perspective of natural. It is not one thing or another, it is what it is. And once you look deeply you will see that it is what everything is: love. Consciously change your perspective and you will change your experience. "A problem can not be solved with the same consciousness that created it" ~Albert Einstein

    "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love."
    ~Sophocles

    Love experiences growth in EVERY experience because love is everything, so it experiences a part of itself in every experience. In fact underneath all the conditions, programs, and limited mental perspectives (to core of spirit), our natural State of Being is love. Love is that which Love is.

    Conclusion

    There are different levels to the understandings in this article. The first level is questioning it, in this way you try to understand it better. You might see the pieces and how they are forming the bigger picture of the puzzle, but you will likely have a difficult time fathoming how this type of living is even possible. If you are at this level and want to understand more, I would recommend further reading (these articles take this same idea but explains it in different perspectives):

    Understanding the Love Perspective
    Understanding How It's All Connected/ All the Same-thing
    The second level is logically seeing that love is the answer and the solution. During this level, you can see that love does fit as the answer, but something about it doesn't feel right. At this level, you may have a major problem with the last portion of this article, I did most of my life. Finding someone who understood it from an emotional aspect, allowed me to let it go because I was not alone in my perspective. I no longer held the fear of being the only one who sees life as I was perceiving it. Dropping that fear, allowed me to drop the pain, and the 'not feeling right' perspective.

    The third level is that love becomes both logically seen and emotionally felt, in every aspect of life. Having the emotional understanding allows you to FEEL love in every situation. Connecting to the place of love from feeling (rather than just logic), allows you to choose love more naturally (instead of having to remember to choose love). You start to break the pattern of mainstream conditioning. You start to see "fear" (and all twist of it) as nothing more than an opportunity to see and choose love. You can began to see how heaven on Earth is possible.

    I am not sure about the last level because I am have not experienced it. Yet, I would imagine that the place of love would no longer be seen as an emotion (or logic), but rather a way of being. Reaching a point where not choosing love, is not an option anymore. I imagine that you would merge with love, be the love you are, and only experience love. No other experiences can exist. Truly heaven on Earth.