Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Teaching the World to Breathe
Buddha: Zoë, let’s teach the world to breathe.
Readers, close your eyes and take a deep breathe and another and another. Now, opening your eyes, what were you aware of when you breathed? One nostril is always more dominant at any one time than another. Which nostril of yours had the best free flow of air in and out of the body? If you cannot answer this question, shut your eyes once more and take a couple of deep breathes again and see if you can feel which one is which.
If you haven’t been able to sense this may I ask you to close off one nostril and breathe in and breathe out, then close off the other nostril and breathe in and breathe out and your answer will be apparent.
Now I wish you to focus on the breath, taking a strong breath and with this strong breath we wish you to focus on strengthening the body: breathing in and out. Now picture me in your minds eye in front of you and breathe strengthening, breathe and focus on me. If your mind wanders, which I expect it will, bring it back to me and the strengthening breath and focus on this. Focus on this for a long as it takes until your mind wanders, then focus on it once more, do this three or four times. For some of you this may be a second for some of you this may be a minute. Regardless repeat this process three times and lets get you breathing strength and vitality into your bodies. Enjoy this process and know that I will be with you.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Mind is Strength, Faith, Focus, Union with Spirit
Buddha: Zoë, you have been hearing my words in your head, ‘resist nothing, resist nothing’ and so on. Let me explain what this means.
For mind and mastery to be complete there needs to be a full understanding of the nature of mind, the workings of mind and the ability from that therefore to direct mind. “Resist nothing” does not refer to earthly pleasures or deliberately indulging in squalid, dirty, self gratification states. However, the fear that that is where the mind could take one, means that one resists certain thoughts, urges and in the resistance, one becomes unable to see what is real. In other words, the fear of what might be real creates resistance so that reality is never quite achieved albeit heavily sought by the individual.
Your mind takes you in a myriad of directions always towards the same point though: truth, honour, trust, faith, strength. Yet this is not the experience of mind that people have. For most, ‘mind’ equates perpetual thinking; perpetual thoughts that take you in a myriad of directions. When one approaches a type of thought that one identifies as ‘bad’, such as what we have already spoken about, one immediately censors those thoughts.
Yet where do these thoughts come from? Why would you censor one and not all thought?
If we were fully present we would be aware of the nature of our thoughts and the thinking process.
I will try to keep this clear and simple on this occasion.
Mind is strength, faith, focus, union with spirit. It is a gateway to the essence, to the soul, to God, and the God experience. The road to this union is paved and littered with thought. These thoughts are like leaves fallen from the trees in autumn. How do we choose to respond to our journey whilst in body? It is often to become distracted by the thoughts that are on the path to the point that we become concerned only with the nature of the leaves and the nature of do we like the leaves. And we have forgotten that the purpose of the path is to bring us to union: union with ourselves in the arms of God. Therefore, resist no leaf. As you are dedicated to following your path, the path to you, the path to union with God, falsehood comes only from focusing and identifying and creating relationships with thought forms. Therefore, resist nothing. Accept all and continue on your journey where we will await you.
Buddha: We are moving to a time where earth will be as one. A great peace will descend from on high, from on low and this peace will arise in those who are awake and those who are seeking to become awake. We are looking to help this process and this will indeed be speeded up. Speeded up by you, readers, as you choose to open yourselves to change, to love, to peace and work in your own lives to become centered. So for each of you who choose a centred life, one by one, you help choose peace, a new age. And we all thank you for this. There will come a time when there is a significant number walking the earth that will be able to pull us into their hearts. The mechanisms of this are with those who are seeking peace, seeking a different way of being. A harmonious one, a loving one, a joyful one and those that are taking the action to create a centered existence. So for all of you who wish to see the change be the change. These are words well known amongst several of you. Center your lives: not by changing what you do, but merely by focusing on how you do it. The new earth will not come about by the world becoming poets and philosophers. It will come about as each individual in their day to day lives awakens, makes choices and takes action to become the change, become the peace.
Buddha: We wish to speak to you today about extremes. Because extremes move in different ways from a perceived central point, are they any different? No. To clarify, if one is looking to get fit, becoming a couch potato could be extreme, exercising for five hours a day could be perceived as extreme. Are they any different? While the behaviors of a couch potato person and someone who is exercising five hours a day may seem radically different, extremes are extremes.
People who move into extreme behaviors are cut off from their center, so, although we are speaking about extremes, we are actually speaking about those who are devoid of center.
At Wimbledon, the most prestigious court is center court. I like this! One of the best thing or compliments that can be given to a person is that they are centered. Would you trust someone more or less if you described them as centered? Would it be easier to love someone more or less if they were centered?
Humans were designed to be centered yet many spend their lives rushing around in extremes. What do I mean? I mean that ‘centered’ means feeling strong, feeling safe and sound within your own being. How many people actually spend time practicing this within their day-to-day activities? Equally, as there are so few people who practice feeling centered, there are also fewer people who exist in their center; center is all there is.
I ask that all readers find their center. How do you know where your center is? It’s the mind state that makes you feel ‘centered’. I try not to play with words. Sometimes I resist the opportunities to play with minds other times I don’t. The irony is that it is the mind that takes one out of ones center! But let’s not toy here.
To get into your center stop, breathe. You can still do all that you need to do in your day-to-day activities. You can go to work, be at work, come home from work, cook, sleep: centered. You can wake up the children, feed the children, take the children to school, get on with your daily chores, collect the children, feed the children, feed yourself: being centered. Or you can become un-centered and end up in extremes whereby you are in a rush to get to work, rush to complete your work, rush to get home, rush to cook, rush to get to bed. Similarly you can become lost in the chores or lose you own center by focusing on the children’s centers. Are the children fine, are the children fed, are the children ready are the children this, are the children that? These are extremes. I will speak about child rearing at a different time for now it is suffice to say if you are lucky enough to be raising children physically, then be aware- as they say on the airlines, fit your own oxygen mask before you fit that of the child’s. In this case center yourself. A centered parent will raise centered children: simple as that.
So this is your message today from the center to the center, saying find your center. How do you do that? Stop, breathe, be present. Once you have this go about your day to day activities and you will be successful. Success follows center. Spend a minute now thinking about how mundane tasks feel when you’re centered and how mundane tasks feel when you’re not. Similarly think about a big event. How does a big event feel when you’re centered and how does a big event feel when you’re not.
This exercise itself should conclude the importance to you of being centered at all times.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Uniting with the Body Using Breath
Buddha: Today we are going to focus on respiration: in and out. Why have so many of my teachings, and those who have followed me, focused on the breath? Firstly, as everyone is aware, breathing happens with or without you. Secondly, when you consciously engage your breath you are consciously engaging with the state of being that is happening whether you are aware of it or not. This is one of the easiest, and always the most successful, way of being in the present moment. You cannot escape your breath for breathing is happening to you. But when you join with what is happening to you and offer no resistance, then oneness is developed. There is nothing quite like this. There need be no association with thought. So observation of breath and conjoining of being is my favorite tool for teaching people to become still and whole.
After a few breaths the system becomes energised. Energised not only from the oxygen it has been breathing, but from the release of energy that happens when one becomes present in any given moment. By being conscious of the breath, conscious and conjoining with what is happening and offering no resistance, a huge energy release is borne. It’s akin to a star burst. This is you, one, in ones full potential in any given time simply by being aware of the breath conjoining with being, activating energy. It is from here and only here that transcendental states can be reached.
And what is the message? The message is that one does not ever escape the body to achieve greater levels of spirituality. One doesn’t ever go anywhere else than where one is to achieve greater levels of spirituality. One simply stops, observes the breathes, star burst happens, and the transcendental experience can take place. Simple isn’t it?
In my life as Buddha, I tried everything I had ever heard of to achieve greater levels of spirituality, to reach nirvana. I tried everything that meant leaving the body, in some ways looking back now, killing the body. I also had had from my previous times experiences of indulging the body and all the body was doing was being! Simply responding to what I did with it. If I ate it would digest it, if I drank it would absorb, if I fell it would bruise, if I laughed it chortled. What a close relationship you have people, spiritual beings, with your body. This is something never to be overlooked, but something to be nurtured. This is your best friend. Look after it, but more importantly be one with it through oneness with it. The star burst happens the transcendental state can take place. Care not for what it looks like only its levels of health. If something needs fixed or restored work towards that goal in whichever way you know how. Do not criticise and judge it for being something that it is not, for it is and your development will happen through your uniting with the body, not from desecrating it for it being not something that is a construct of the mind.
So for all of you breathe, enjoy, relax, come and meet me [Buddha laughs].
Buddha: So, what have you been today, a Rose or a Lily? The truth is you have been unconcerned with all. There is a reality beyond that of knowledge, beyond that even of acceptance. It is the reality of just being-ness.
One knows when one has reached this stage for one is neither concerned with the state of the lily or the rose, one simply just is. Up until then be aware of who you are.
It is important for all of you to have days of rest. Days where you allow the mind to calm, even be listless, where you enjoy game playing, where you give yourself nothing much to do. You refer to these times as holidays. Yet even on holidays you can seemingly charge the mind, believing that because it is different information such as that picked up at a historical sight than what you’ve previously known, it’s a break.
Ensure that at all times that you give yourself breaks. It is through breaks that you will prosper. Perhaps not in the material sense, but certainly within a health and well being sense. And from all that I have seen and witnessed this is what you need more than anything else. So enjoy your times of rest and give them to yourselves deliberately and guilt-free.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Right Use of Mind
Buddha: We need to get to the bottom of why people do not choose to use their minds correctly. A well working mind is like a well-oiled machine: it takes you clearly, decisively and definitively to where you need to be. Yet people choose to allow their minds to rust and take them down roads and paths to oblivion. There needs to be recognition, first, that the minds of men need to change.
Second, there needs to be a clear understanding that change can exist and thirdly, there needs to be easy to use methodical, logical, dependable, un-debatable tools. You cannot escape the mind although the mind can escape you. This is not something to be feared or fearful of.
Mind simply exists. It was created as a means of allowing humans to rise above that of the levels of animal. As I’ve said before, this has happened. However, for many this has meant dipping below the level of animal. With needless violence, killing, disgracing, maiming and shocking. What for? For the purpose of satiating an out of control ego.
Buddha: Lets speak more about mind. As you know there is no one conscious reality, there is no one consciousness. Instead, there are interlinking realities. And what is that interlinking reality? Love: love inter-relates all. What do we mean by love? The ability to be joyous in just being.
The flower is just a flower. A rose doesn’t try and be a lily; it simply extends the best of itself to try and meet the sun as a beautiful expression of the creative wonder of God. And this is what we want for humanity. If you are a rose don’t try and be a lily. If you are a lily don’t try and be a chrysanthemum. Simply be, learn to be.
There is nothing to do there is no way to be, other than through the suspension of mind. Yet, interestingly, it is mind that inter-relates all. There are many paradoxes to this as there are many layers of reality. What is real for your cat Zoë, is real. What is real for the bird that the cat is watching, is real. What is real for you watching the cat watch the bird, is real. What is real for me is the connective force that unites all of us, of which I am part, and the willingness for a transcendence. The transcendence of the current state of humanity. This current state is nothing but a state mind. When enough people change their state of mind there will be a change in the state of reality. This is not hard. It is easy to do and it starts with every individual taking account of their lives, their works and choosing to wake up.
Spending your time as a rose trying to be a lily is exhausting. Ultimately you will fail. But understanding that you are some sort of flower that through becoming peaceful with the self turns out to be a rose will be a wonder. And this is what we wait on: the return of the rose.
How do you know if you’re a rose trying to be a lily? It hurts. How do you know if you’re a lily trying to be a rose? It hurts. You are reaching for something that is beyond your form, beyond essence, beyond your blueprint, yet you bend and twist and dye, and contort. And ultimately there will be no peace, there will be no stillness, there will be no wholeness- there will only be pain for a rose cannot be a lily and a lily cannot be a rose. How do you know if you are a rose? You are a rose and you have peace. How do you know if you are a lily? You are a lily and you have peace.
What is peace? A fundamental feeling that all is well and all is well with you.
All that is not well can be resolved. Some things will take large efforts, some things will take smaller efforts. But ultimately only a rose can be a rose and ultimately only the lily can be the lily. To try and be something else is to inflict pain. This is not the purpose of a rose even though it has thorns! This is not the purpose of a lily even though its pollen can be toxic! A rose is a rose and a lily is a lily. Let that be for now.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: It Simply Is (Part Four)
Buddha: How often is it then that a distractive mind becomes a fearful mind? There are very few of you who have spent time exploring their minds so that a distraction becomes fear, fear becomes a distraction and all that exists is the hamster wheel of being, of doing, as opposed to the presence of God in the moment. So I say to you explore the mind.
There is nothing to be frightened of. You will find fearful thoughts, fearful forms, but more importantly, you will find distraction. And of what you feel is fearful, only a small proportion will actually be fear-full; the rest will be distraction. And of that which is fear-full, simply sitting and acknowledging it as a thought form will allow it to move. Simply state, “You are a thought form, go. I am capable of being. I need not acknowledge you, and in that acknowledgment, allow you to take me over and allow you to become.” For that is all that happens when one engages in these types of thought forms, the thought form is able to become. And as a human being, is this not you worst nightmare? Engage not with the thought form. Simply acknowledge it and state to it, “You are a thought form go. I am me, I will be.”
The minds of men are messy, are distracted—have become fear-full. Chaos reigns and only those who are willing to become a disciple of clarity will work to free themselves from the bondage. For this is the truth: Mankind as whole is in chains to itself, in chains to that which separated it from an animal, which for some has meant that part of the species has become lower than that of the animal and through desires, through allowing thought forms to become have allowed catastrophes and horrors of being, such as that not seen in the animal world.
This is not your destiny. This was never your destiny going below the level of animal, no. You were meant as a species to find us from the level of form; to explore new ways of love and being while inhabiting different forms. This is all within you. This is the blueprint of humanity. However, this will require the disengagement of current mind, the individual to become disciple of clarity and from there mankind will be able to raise itself to its destiny. And individuals, such as yourselves, will be able to see clearly what is the beauty of this place that you call your home, earth, the love that does exist within the hearts of all, the essence of God, the connection, the oneness to all that is an indisputable truth.
Work to become clear of mind and the gifts of gods will be yours.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: It Simply Is (Part 3)
Buddha: So once peace has been established, once there is recognition of it is, then there can be resolution. But this resolution need not be the end point, for what does this resolution mean? In some cases the end of suffering will come from having peace with what simply is. When the mind can let that go there can be an immediate and everlasting end of suffering with this issue. However, in other cases this will not be so.
There will be an immediate end of suffering and then there will come the realisation that action, rightful action, action borne out of the desire to end forms of suffering entering into one’s life, to end one’s karma with these particular issues will ensue. An example is, “Why, why, why, this hurts, this hurts, this hurts. I want this car, why can’t I have it. I feel so unhappy I can’t have this car. Life is poor, I am poor.”
When there is an understanding of it, there will be a resolution and for some this will mean an acceptance that a perception of poverty is acceptable. And for others there will be the understanding that, ‘Yes, it is and this is not the way I wish to live my life therefore I will take action’. But rightful actions are very different from the actions coming from the needs to satisfy our desires that will lead to suffering. So some actions will end suffering, some actions will lead to suffering.
This is why we ask you to consider the concept of rightful action. Does this lead me out of my karma of pain or does this lead me into another karma of pain? How does one distinguish which is which? One simply knows. If one is unsure one finds a place of stillness and asks the question once more. There is nothing difficult in this. If one is unwilling to find a place of stillness to ask a question of oneself, then one is creating karma of pain and suffering. This must be made clear. This is the end of this lesson.
