Choices and Illusions (18 page)

The Zen Master

Before we leave the subject of “now,” allow me to share two

more stories with you. This one I heard years ago from a friend

who did not know where it came from. It is about a Zen master

who made it a habit at noontime to meditate while he walked in

the gardens. On this particular day, he became so engrossed in his

meditation that he wandered far into the jungle, where he met a

hungry tiger. Well, our Zen master did what any Zen master would

do, which is to attend to the urgency of the moment. He fled as

fast as he could with the hungry tiger in pursuit. Soon he came to

the edge of a sheer cliff, but with a hungry tiger about to eat him, he jumped over the edge. On the way down he grabbed the only

thing jutting out from the cliff, a small tree. There he hung on as he heard a roar from below. now, there was a hungry tiger above

and a hungry tiger below. Just then the small tree began to pull out of the ground. He looked to his right. nothing. He looked below.

nothing. He looked to his left. A beautiful strawberry. He picked

the strawberry, and it was the best fruit he’d eaten in his life.

101

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 101

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

I have told this story many times in seminars around the world.

Sometimes I have added things that might go through the minds

of many: “Oh, I love strawberries, but I’m allergic to them,” or we might fret those last precious moments of “now” away in panic,

fear, and blame: “Why me, God?”

There are as many divisible units in “now” as there are in infin-

ity, mathematically speaking. living fully in the moment allows us

to enjoy life with awe. The moral of the story is, be mindful—you

will find the strawberries.

Look for the strawberries!

After I told this story to an audience in Malaysia, a fellow

approached me during a break and asked if I knew the entire story.

“I thought that was the entire story.”

“no,” he said. “Would you like to know it?”

We sat down and had coffee while he related the story that he

said comes from Paramahansa Yogananda. It seems that the Zen

master, when confronted with the tigers, was actually hanging

from a small apple tree while mice were digging away the light

soil that the tree was rooted in. The story cuts away to a picture of the event hanging in a gallery. There spectators are viewing the

art, when one speaks up, “look at that stupid fellow. He’s selfishly indulging his senses while blind to his circumstances.” The story

then returns to the Zen master. Another tiger runs onto the scene,

and now there are two tigers above. The Zen master enjoys his

apple, and pretty soon he sees vultures circling overhead. The two

tigers have fought and killed each other. The mice see the shadow

of the birds and flee. Below a herd of deer comes down to drink

from the brook, and the tiger below sets off in pursuit of them.

In short, what seemed like dire circumstances fixed themselves or

were fixed by some power above.

102

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 102

6/20/13 3:41 PM

a Simple Model of Mind and Behavior

The Power of Good Deeds

Years ago a young woman came to me for help. To maintain

confidentiality, I will invent a name for her. I’ll call her Mary.

This young woman in her late 30s had a history of self-mutilation

and suicidal behavior. She came in for pastoral counseling, and I

agreed to see her only if her psychiatrist agreed and was kept fully informed. That issue out of the way, her first appointment was

made. My secretary brought me her file, including the pre-process

forms I used. As I reviewed her information, I was taken by the fact that one of her prior therapists was a famous psychiatrist. I thought to myself,
And what on earth am I to do if this person couldn’t help her?

during her first session, the terms of our arrangement were

agreed upon. I would see her for ten weeks, once a week, and my

conditions and requirements had to be kept. She agreed, and the

session began, or perhaps more appropriately, she began sobbing

and wailing. An hour passed, with nothing but tears to show for

it. Few words could I understand amidst the sobbing. “Until next

week,” I said, and we parted.

I thought about her for the entire week and decided to try

something totally new, at least for me and for that time (circa 1990).

I theorized that all the excessive crying was simply her attention-

seeking mechanism combined with true feelings of despair, but to

get past that, we had to dispense with the wailing. I took a mirror that had been given to me by a cosmetic-surgeon friend, and which

I had used for years to show, as he did, just how uneven the halves of our faces are (left versus right). Brain hemisphere dominance

theories suggest a correspondence, so this was in keeping with my

research and work.

When Mary visited in week two, she again began crying. I

placed the mirror in front of her, explained as nicely as I could that she had to maintain some composure for me to help, told her to

look at herself while she cried, and then said to let me know when

she stopped. I stepped out of the office. Soon she opened the door.

As I began to sit down, she started weeping again, so once again I

103

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 103

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

exited. After three or four repetitions that admittedly took more

than half of our time together, she stopped the sobbing and began

talking. Her story was a sad one, about a child who was neglected

in favor of a younger sibling who was smarter and prettier. Her early relationships with men were equally sad, but not out of the realm

of what happens to psychologically well-balanced people.

When we were finished speaking for the day, it was clear

that Mary had dwelled on all the bad, shared her cookies all too

willingly, each time probably exaggerating them, and otherwise

remained almost fixated on the worst possible future—in her case,

becoming a bag lady in las Vegas.

I gave Mary her homework, as part of our agreed terms. She

was to do one good turn for someone, anyone, every day. She was

to record the good deed in her journal just before going to sleep,

focus on how the deed made her feel, and imagine how it made the

recipient feel. The deed could be anything, as simple as holding a

door for someone or as emotionally demanding as helping a col-

league she didn’t like. She was to bring the journal with her each

week when she visited me.

The following week we reviewed her journal entries and her

thoughts and feelings regarding each. Admittedly, some of her first week’s good deeds were pretty weak, but a couple of them provided

an opportunity to draw out the difference in how it made Mary

feel, as well as how she might have felt if she had been the recipient. Her homework for the remaining weeks was simple: two good

deeds every day and recorded per the earlier instructions.

Mary’s perspective changed. Her focus moved from bad things

to good things. It was that simple. There is nothing more eloquent

than just saying it how it is. Armed with a positive outlook and an eye for opportunities to do good deeds, and supported with what

I call a warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from helping others, Mary

began to reinforce her own worth and find joy in living. It wasn’t

long before her medication was cut back and then eliminated. Mary

found meaning in life.

104

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 104

6/20/13 3:41 PM

a Simple Model of Mind and Behavior

The Warm, Fuzzy Feeling

I suggest to you that the real meaning in life comes from what

you give, not from what you take. As Wayne dyer puts it in his

book
The Power of Intention,
purpose is not about vocation—it’s about service! I believe that the warm, fuzzy feeling we derive from a true service experience—going to the aid of another in need—is

the best feeling we can have when we put our head on the pillow

each night. Gerald Jampolsky, M.d., has observed in his attitudinal healing centers that when a person goes to the aid of another, even otherwise intractable pain disappears.2

I am very fortunate to have many faces in my memories that

give to me regularly. There was a time, before the prison study,

which we’ll return to in a moment, that my life was a wreck. Oh, I

was successful by most standards—fancy cars, large homes, rental

and recreation property, but my personal life was a total wreck. I

didn’t know how to have a personal relationship unless there was

something in it for me. Some of the people around me accused me

of changing women as often as most men change shirts. My only

life definitions were money and power. From the outside I might

have looked like I had something going, but on the inside I was a

barren wasteland. I became agnostic, to say the least, cynical and

paranoid, and seldom enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Fortunately for

me, something inside combined with circumstances to show me

another choice, an alternative that at the very least held within it a sense of peace, balance, and even purpose.

As another aside, before continuing our prison story, when

the centenarian population was studied to determine the reason

behind their long lives and health, everyone expected something

like “clean living and self-denial.” It turned out that that wasn’t the case. Indeed, the comedian George Burns could characterize

many of the centenarians. They lived life without fear, full of

joy and humor. What they all shared was a sense of purpose or

connectedness to a Higher Power. The value of this sense of con-

nectedness and purpose cannot be overstated. For me the warm,

105

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 105

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

fuzzy feeling keeps me connected and provides purpose. It doesn’t

really matter what we do for a living, provided that we do it with

integrity and for the good of others. A piece of Chinese antiquity

I cherish is a book written on jade. The author, Su dongpo, a very

famous Chinese writer, says it this way: “We do not work or search

for food but for truth.” As President Woodrow Wilson stated over

1,000 years later:

You are not here merely to make a living. You are

here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with

greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish

yourself if you forget this errand.

Forgiveness Messages

But let us get back to the inmate population at the Utah State

Prison. To undo the blame in order to produce self-responsible

and, therefore, self-empowered persons, and to move away from

the anger-fear loop, I decided on three messages that to this day

we include on every InnerTalk program we publish. The three mes-

sages:
I forgive myself, I forgive all others,
and
I am forgiven.

We also included statements in first person (“I,” not “you,”

phrases), because subliminal information is processed from the

inside out and becomes our words in our stream of consciousness,

affirmations designed to build self-esteem and gratitude. At that

time, the mid-1980s, the idea of forgiveness having a therapeutic

value was new. Since then, many studies, journals, and books have

been written about the power of forgiveness.

Okay, what happened with our inmate population? The pro-

gram worked. The results impressed everyone. The magic bullet,

forgiving, together with general affirmations of well-being, worked.

The post-test indicated a meaningful result. (If you are interested in more detail, see Appendix B.) The Utah State Prison officials were

as pleased as I, and they followed up by installing libraries of our InnerTalk programs in all of their facilities. When they wanted a

106

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 106

6/20/13 3:41 PM

a Simple Model of Mind and Behavior

program for, say, weight lifting, we did it. not so the inmate would become stronger per se, but because every single program included

the forgiveness messages together with self-esteem units. Other

prisons copied the system, and to this day many inmates work with

the technology. And me? I went on to a new career.

In conclusion, when you forgive, you essentially undo the abil-

ity to blame. If there is nothing to blame, then you are in charge

of your response to outside stimuli. There is less room for anger

without blame. There is less to fear when you’re empowered. The

purely pragmatic point is that it works!

In the next chapter, we will take a more thorough look at sub-

liminal information processing and some of the disinformation out

there regarding it. Still, if you never use anything else from this book other than the forgiveness lesson, your life will change for

the better—and that’s a promise! For what it is worth, I want you

to know that I had my own epiphanies along the way. I started out