Paul's Blog Newsletter

How to Get Out of Your Shell

Its Time to Break Out

Imagine what it would be like living in a shell and you’re just bursting to get out—like a chick about to be born. Then, all of a sudden you break out of the shell and you see a whole new world. Now, we all have had this experience when we were born. We were comfortably living in the shell of our mother’s womb and then all of sudden broke out into a new brave world.

Unfortunately, we “forget” this experience. We don’t remember our birth and for that matter the entire first few years of our lives. Our rational and intellectual abilities were not yet developed. Therefore, we remain in a state of awe and wonder with everything we come into contact with. We reach out and touch things, people, our parents, for the first time. Everything is fresh and new! We have great curiosity and are on an endless journey of exploration…

Enlightenment is Death

Do We Need to Die in Order to Experience Death?

One of the most powerful experiences in my life was gaining the insight to answer that question. But the answer was not a thought-out deliberated one; it wasn’t a debated philosophical one, nor was it a faithful religious one from the depths of my subconscious. It was an experience that struck to the core of my bones and resonated throughout my flesh. It was an experience from which there is no return, no debate, no questions; it was a reality that I later called “lemon-consciousness.”

You don’t need lemons. The same story has been told countless times and has been related to just about everything from crows to streams to insects. Mystic tales are filled with different triggers that produced the same result. What result you ask? You can absolutely, experience death while living. How? By piercing through the ego shell and into the experience of spirit…

2012 Awakening or Day of Reckoning

Well, Happy New Year and here we are starting out 2012 which apparently the
Mayans said would be the end of humanity’s calendar. That sounds a little
gloomy to me, since I’m the eternal optimist! I believe we are in a
transformation of consciousness—an awakening if you will. If we look at
history, we can see that our consciousness as a society has been slowly
evolving over the last 100 years.

But in order for the awakening to fully manifest itself in our world today, we
need to get past not only our individual egos but our collective ego as a
society. A societal collective ego is nothing more than the collective cultural
behavior of a group, weather it be a religious group, a community, or a
country. In order to fully awaken as global society, the biggest and most
difficult hurdle for us to overcome is both our…

When the Sailing Gets Tough, the Tough Find Their Zen

We were so excited to start our honeymoon in the beautiful British Virgin Islands. My wife and I both had some sailing experience, but never sailed together, although we did take a Coast Guard 3-day navigation course together. We booked a 10-day sailing trip on a Beneteau 463 with a local chartering company called Caribbean Sailing BVI, aka Caribbean Yacht Charters BVI (Caribbean Sailing BVI – Caribbean Yacht Charters bvi.com – http://www.caribbeanyachtchartersbvi.com – http://www.caribbeansailingbvi.com – Caribbean Sailing BVI – Charters British Virgin Islands). The pictures of the boat on the website looked alluring, and the owner of the chartering company, led us to believe he was an honest, nice man. We were really looking forward to our first romantic time on the water.

We didn’t foresee the problems we were about to encounter. We made some bad choices that could have been avoided had we done a bit more homework, and had some good solid advice like what follows in this article…

Be Genuine This Year. Cut the Holiday Crap!

Another Zen Flash…December 23, 2011

Be Genuine This Year.
Cut the Holiday Crap!
Holiday Thoughts from the Bitchy Zen Master

What’s funny is that someone once called me the Bitchy Zen Master. Of course,
she’s dead now! Just kidding, I laughed when I heard that, but have been
thinking what a perfect point of view to express. I think people would really
like the alternative perspective…

Neurotic Mindfulness: Old Dead Masters Advice

Neurotic Mindfulness: Old Dead Masters Advice

#1 in a short series dedicated to our
neurotic antics of meditation

I was giving a round of Table Topic questions the other night at my Toastmaster
meeting on the subject of Zen and I could feel how uncomfortable some people
were with their spirituality. Admittedly, this round of questions was more like
Zen koans (paradoxical questions or nonsensical statements). I tried these
questions once in the past, and they met with some resistance from the
audience, but I thought I would give it another try.

To give you an idea of the type of questions I was posing, here’s an example:

“A mystic one day tells you that you are Better Without Yourself. First you
think ‘how could this be, better without myself?’ and then you think about this
for a moment and say…”

Thankfulness from the Dalai Lama

Happy Thanksgiving!

We all have so much to give thanks for if we really just think about our moment
to moment lives that we live. Every moment is precious! I believe the Dalai Lama
says it all in a Thanksgiving quote:

A Precious Human Life

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am
alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to
use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to
achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind
thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about
others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”

Many people ask me what Zen really is. And people constantly ask me, “Where’s
My Zen?” Of course, they mean their Zen. People are looking for their Zen to
balance their business life…

Those Weren’t Monastery Bells. Those were Wedding Bells!

What Do Monastery Bells and Wedding Bells Have in Common?

I’m sitting here in a little harbor side restaurant in St. Thomas (U.S. Virgin
Islands) waiting for the ferry to Road Town, Tortola in the British Virgin
Islands. I am sitting across from my new lovely wife, Lori, who I just married
a week ago. It was a beautiful and very personal ceremony with just under 30
people.

We are now on the first day of our 12-day sailing honeymoon and she is sitting
across from me reading and editing my upcoming book. She takes such an interest
in what I do and what I want to do, it’s really remarkable. We have a two-hour
wait for the ferry and just got kinda trapped here in this little touristy
watering hole. It’s a beautiful day here, absolutely delightful to be
“trapped” here in one of the Caribbean islands with my new wife…

A Pirate’s Life For Me

Yo Ho Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me?

Are Pirate’s Enlightened?

I just woke up and went out on deck of our 47’ Beneteau sailboat that we
chartered for our honeymoon. I am thinking about whether a pirate is
enlightened or not? Where’s a pirate’s Zen? I’m going to try to answer that
question later in this blog.

But first, it’s our seventh day of the sailing trip. Sailing is a great way for
a couple to experience that teamwork spirit required for long-term
relationships. I’m watching small flying fish jumping in and out of the water
in perfect harmony performing Las Vegas-style acrobatics and Pelicans diving
into the water for their breakfast. It’s their simple first meal, raw fish. For
my first meal of the day, I prefer a Flax waffle with fresh blueberries.
There’s a rainbow over the edge of the bay touching the water where legend says…

One Minute Intuition for Love, Business, and LIfe

Try This One-Minute
Intuition Booster?

We all know the overwhelming feeling when something feels just right. Somehow
beyond reason, we know that we should do whatever it is that we are feeling
compelled to do in that moment. We all heard of the stories, “I just knew it
was the right thing to do!” or “I knew I just had to make that decision when I
did.” We all know about woman’s intuition and how some people are more
intuitive than others. But what is the real hard line between “real” intuition
and “unreal” intuition. By unreal I mean simply fulfilling your own unconscious
personality patterns—your ego?

How do we really know? Well, sometimes we don’t really know if it is real
intuition or just our mind seeking a familiar comfort zone. The brain is a
neuro-associative mechanism and relies on patterns to understand the world and
respond accordingly. If we have a…