Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life
So many are saying Where is God when I need him? Especially today. Many feel deserted and alone. But it is only that we have been looking in the wrong direction, searching everywhere but at home. The surprising answer to the question tells us instead, that all we need is right here with us in our everyday life. In fact it is right at the kitchen table. It is only that we have been looking elsewhere, searching all around. These episodes offer specific ways in which we can encounter God, fulfillment, enlightenment right here in our daily lives, wherever we go.
Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life
NOTHING IS MISSING, ALL YOU NEED IS RIGHT HERE NOW
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There are simple new steps to take to make the New Year rich and fulfilling. In this episode we explore ways of realizing that we are ready right now to live a complete and fulling life. There is no point in waiting to attain this or that, or to fill a sense of missing something. As we take these simple, new steps, we realize that all we need in right here. In the sharing and giving of ourselves, great healing, enjoyment and fulfillment appear.
Good morning, good morning, and a very, very happy new year. Here we are at what looks like the very beginning of a whole new year, and it is thought of that way for sure. A new year. We turned a corner. We're in 2026. And there is in our mind a hope here, maybe, for change, for freshness. Let's start again. That's very much part of the idea of the new year. Maybe the best way, another best way to start again, excuse me, is to realize that everything we need, everything we want to search for in the new year, everything that we want to achieve, get. Win. Correct. So many a bar. What keeps us motivated? Going, going, all those kinds of thoughts. How's it going to work out now? What am I going to get? Turn that around, turn that around. What am I going to give? That's a much, much safer and smoother and more beautiful path. What am I going to give? Who am I going to give it to? Well we'll see. Who's brought to us? Not to search, search, search for that person. This is more like a year of allowing a way to be in the year. And to realizing that every single thing that we really need is right here with us now. Now this very moment. This very moment we are complete. We are full. We're filled up with so much that we can offer to others. There's always this sense that we need more. Give me, give me. I don't have enough. I'm not ready yet. I don't know enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not ready. Something something is missing. That is often the sense that keeps us going on and on throughout the year, trying to fill up and find what it is that is missing. What is missing? Something. And once I find it, then I'll be able to have all I want, or be all I want, or experience all that I want. May I suggest that that is an enormous illusion. It's an illusion that keeps us rolling along on the hills. Something is missing. My old friend is missing. Nothing is missing. Things are changed, yes, for sure, of course, inevitably. And as the years go by, we really cannot we cannot pretend that things do not change, change, change. It's just the very nature, the course of life itself, and there's a beauty in it, and a need to accept that as well. Change is not loss, change is just change. It can feel like loss, but there's another way to approach all of it. All of it. What you need is within you right now, is here. It's alive. It's active. Even if that person, maybe that person passed away. What they gave you, the interaction, the connection, is alive. The love is alive. You gave each other whatever you gave each other. It's cooking, it's alive and it's providing. Maybe the person themselves, you can't see them, you're not with them. But what happened between you is very much alive and present and available. Maybe things happen that you might not have liked so much. That's possible too. That part can be learned from, can be integrated, digested, absorbed. The nourishment from that event can be part of your life, and you can accept the nourishment from that event, how you grew from it, what you learned from it, and you can also discard what you didn't eat. Like when we eat a meal, we we digest the meal and we accept and receive the nourishment and then we discard the waste. It's just a normal process. It's a normal process. And those normal processes, they just function. They function inevitably and positively. You know, even if we run into maybe a painful event or situation or condition, there's something to digest from that. Something good to absorb. There's nourishment in it, and there's something to let go of in it, and that is itself the very beautiful process of our life itself as it rolls along into one year, then another, then another. Hopefully, each year the wisdom grows. And I would say hopefully the ability to live grows. That is something we've learned over the years. Now it's very natural, it's very simple, it's very inevitable. And when I say we learn how to truly live, what I mean is that we learn how to stop fighting our natural system, stop fighting events that appear, stop resisting and opposing everything that happens. That we welcome learn how to welcome the beauty that's around us all the time, because it is, if we're willing to see it and to receive it. In a sense, the process of life itself is like going to a huge banquet. Huge. Every kind of meal is served, you could imagine. All kinds of guests are arriving. Many of us don't like what's being served and we walk away. Others don't like the guests at the banquet, is as if it has anything to do with us. It's not banquet, it's not our banquet, it's the banquet that's being served. And all the guests are being served the banquet as well. Some of us sit down at the banquet and we eat and eat and eat, but we cannot be filled up. We it cannot fill our hunger. Interesting, interesting. Why not? Because we want something else. We want different kinds of food. There's many, many ways we can react to the banquet. Whether we like the food, we don't like the food. We can move to another part of the table and eat something we like. If one person is distressing for us, there are many, many people at this banquet. Or the one who is distressing, we can actually get to know them and see what is so distressing about this. Can I let that distress go? Can I enjoy the meal together? So many ways of approaching the banquet of life. And the first step, the very first step, is to see how are you really approaching it? Are you thinking you're empty? Some people think, oh, as I get older, I lose this, I lose that, I get emptier, smaller, sleep more, move less. No, no, no, you get richer and fuller and more. You're the harvest now. You're the harvest now of all the years. It's how are you viewing it? How are you relating to these events that matters here? What's missing, really? The past, you if you're living and clinging to the past, you may say, oh, this is missing, that's missing. If you're willing to be right here, right now, you will be utterly fulfilled and surprised and delighted. The difference between the two is our willingness to be present to where we are right now and be here. And not constantly want to repeat the past or dwell upon the past or grieve the past. Even though there have been losses, but in a sense, as I said, there's another way to relate to those losses. I would say they're changes. I would say that all the interactions that happened have been some kind of wonderful teachings for us, wonderful source of growth and love and beauty, and nothing is gone. They're just not gone. They're inside, they're around us, they're part of who we are now. We can honor them every day. We can say hi, we can thank them. And those who taught us a great deal, who are really pivotal in our lives, we can offer them the honor of a life well lived. That's a beautiful thing to do. We can thank them every day if we want to. We can keep them with us, keep them alive in that way by what we learned, how we grew, and the very important point is to then offer it to others. That's a step that many of us somehow don't take. Because we don't even recognize how we've grown and what we've learned. Many of us think I don't have anything to offer anyone else, but that's not true. That's really not true. We have a whole world to offer others. Offer it. Offer it. Start by offering it to just one person, something small. Turn your way of thinking around, not into what am I getting, what am I receiving, but what am I giving? What am I offering? And look within and let it come forth in your life. That is such a great feeling. It's a feeling of blooming, of blossoming, of dancing. What a nice way to greet the new year, to think of dancing and to whom you can offer a lot of goodness and a lot of beauty to. I mean, it's actually finished. I'm just editing it. Part of my whole life's work put together in it, called Sacred Psychology. And it's a very different picture of what it means to heal, to live. Maybe the opposite of the way we're trained in many respects. But it's time, it's time for the world to to enter a new phase of growth and of looking at things. So let's all open our eyes together. The more we do it together, the more support we have in it. And let's join in this wonderful evolution, and I call it a true evolution of not looking for something else or not feeling so inadequate or so inferior, but really planting ourselves in the fullness, in the richness, in the beauty of who we are and what we have right now, which is a lot. A lot. And then together we make that step of offering it. Well, I really thank you for listening again to this podcast. It is evolving just as I evolve, growing. And I hope to meet many of you on Zoom, too, because I've begun to do more and more on Zoom where we could say hello from all the different countries. Such a good feeling to say hello. Love it. I love that. A real hello. Okay, thank you again for listening. I will be back next week. And I truly, truly hope that your new year is really, really fulfilling. And it will be. It can be. It's up to you. It's up to you to make it so. Have a wonderful day.