Tag: overthinking
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Acceptance As Awareness: Goldilocks Gets It Just Right
Read time 4 Minutes. Acceptance reframed as awareness. In the ongoing effort to simplify the teachings, acceptance seems—at first glance—like the simplest lesson of all. Familiar, gentle, obvious. Yet if taken too literally, acceptance can lead to confusion or frustration. I know it did for me in the early stages of practice. So let’s revisit…
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Spontaneous Mind: The Paradox Of An Actively Passive Existence
Read time 4 minutes. Spontaneous Mind is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox. Former pro quarterback Hugh Millen once told a story about John Elway, who gave him a deceptively simple piece of advice: “You don’t want to be thinking out there. You just want to be reacting.” At the highest level of the…
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Unconditional Trust: A Leaping Embrace Into Uncertainty
Read time 6 minutes. Unconditional Trust is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox. Today we turn again to paradox. Specifically, the paradox of being and becoming, and how this dance reveals the deeper presence of trust. In doing so, we must also recall the earlier lesson of simplicity and complexity—because unconditional trust, like…
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Koan Practice: Self-discovery And The Virtue of The Unknown
Read time 6 minutes. Koan Practice is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox. We’ve been exploring the role paradox plays in cultivating a stable Zen mindset. Each paradox nudges us out of conventional thinking and into a new way of being. Today, let’s pause and step back. What is paradox, truly, in practice?…
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Mind Means Disturbance—and That’s Not a Problem
Read time 3 minutes. Turn overthinking into a useful tool—an alert for mindfulness into peace of mind. A common misconception of Zen training is that we’re supposed to rid ourselves of all thoughts and emotions. But if we make that the goal, we’ll likely end up frustrated. As Nisargadatta Maharaj says in I Am That, “There…