Beelibee's Blog

I spent years trying to “create my own reality” and feeling slightly frustrated at the fact that all my reality creation didn’t seem to be affecting my reality that much and was actually making me feel worse for the fact that I thought I must be doing something wrong. I’d got my head round the fact that my reality was my world as I saw it and experienced it, but it took a while for it to seep in that whilst I could certainly change my attitude to things that happened to and around me, there were plenty of things that I didn’t seem to have any control over at all.

Eventually I realised that actually what I wanted to be able to do was control events around me so that I could avoid negative feelings. Difficult. Difficult and counter-productive, not to mention a long way removed from reality. So I decided to start over and see whether I could get to a position that was more viable and connected with reality. The preface to Charlotte Joko Beck’s “Nothing Special: Living Zen” helpfully provided the following:

“Living Zen is nothing special: life as it is. Zen is life itself, nothing added. … When we seek … the fulfillment of our fantasies, we separate from the earth and sky, from our loved ones, from our aching backs and hearts, from the very soles of our feet. Such fantasies insulate us for a time; yet in ten thousand ways reality intrudes, and our lives become anxious scurrying, quiet desperation, confusing melodrama. Distracted and obsessed, striving for something special, we seek another place and time: not here, not now, not this…

“Living Zen means reversing our flight from nothingness, opening to the emptiness of here and now. Slowly, painfully, we reconcile to life. The heart sinks; hope dies. “Things are always just as they are”, observes Joko. This empty tautology is no counsel of despair, however, but an invitation to joy. … Abandoning magical thought, awakening to the magic of this moment, we realise in dynamic emptiness the grace of nothing special … living Zen.”

Steve Smith, Claremont, California, February 1993

Starting from the position that things are as they are is actually a better springboard than living in a castle in your head. Nobody is saying you shouldn’t think positive; nor is anyone suggesting you should catastrophise. But whatever you do, start by letting reality in. You’re going to have to let it in sooner or later, so why waste time, effort and feelings staving off the moment? I believe that seeing things as they are is better for you than insisting on believing them to be as you would like them to be. Sometimes reality is too harsh and too difficult to be let in all at once, but the door has to be ajar so that it can come in when you’re ready.