Zen, Hypnosis, Law of Attraction.

There is nothing magical or mystical about hypnosis. Hypnosis is persuasion, and to realize any form of success we have to persuade our subconscious mind that the success we aspire to is possible and is as good as manifest. I have practiced Zen meditation (zazen) for many years and have realised first-hand the power it has to support me in realizing my goals in life. It was when I first started practising zazen that I realized that it was practically identical to a self-induced hypnotic trance.

Positive thinking, using what is known as the Law of Attraction, may work amazingly for some people, but there are others who just get bogged down by one failure after another and consign positive thinking and the Law of Attraction to the dustbin. But when Zen is applied, this can all change.

What many people fail to understand with positive thinking is that not just our immediate awareness is involved and if a person has certain conflicting tendencies leaning even very slightly towards failure, the Law of Attraction is still working, but working with subconscious doubts and scepticism against our immediate wishes.

No Judgement or Analysis

As a hypnotist and a Zen practitioner, in my experience, each goal needs to be examined carefully in zazen (Zen meditation). In Zen, and in the Law of Attraction, there is no time, and there is no judgement or analysis of what is good or bad, just the Law of Attraction, acting like a magnet that becomes stronger and stronger with the daily use of zazen.

Zazen is about focusing the mind and when you have a certain goal, you will need to focus on it to the exclusion of all other thoughts. What happens when (or if) we are a "doubting Thomas", is that the ego immediately feels challenged. The ego is like a taskmaster, who has taken on the role of control - control of what we have learned to believe is or is not possible.

The ego is the result of whatever life experience has taught us. For instance, if we have "learned" from peers, teachers or parents that we cannot ever amount to very much, the ego will be infused with a very negative law of attraction, and until we can resolve this learned response, we will keep attracting situations and events towards our self that will manifest our ego's desires - desires which are based on conditioned failure.  This means that the Law of Attraction does not judge or analyse, it just attracts.

In Zen Buddhism the goal is enlightenment and I would say that in "Zen Business", the goal is improved business practices on all levels from sweeping a factory floor to the perfection of the ultimate product - e.g. a perfect piece of technical apparatus.

The Journey, Not the Destination.

Whatever we apply Zen to, perfection is the goal, and there is always more to perfect as there is always room for improvement and always will be. It is infinite.  So the point I am making here is that whatever achievements we realize, we will always aspire to want to achieve more and more. In Zen, this is referred to as making the "journey, not the destination" the focus of our awareness.

The journey towards each goal always has barriers, some small and some not so small. To those of us who are fortunate enough to have total 100% trust that we are going to get our goal, the Law of Attraction works 100%. But there are many of us (probably the majority of us) who have barriers and it is those people to whom I have addressed this essay.

All is One

In Zen, it is often said that all is one and in the domain of the spiritual mind, this is true. But I don't want you to just blindly believe what I am saying - not that your believing me makes it less true, but that a belief is not the experience itself, but the thoughts, ideas and images of the experience. Once a belief becomes actual experience, it is quite often different to what was envisaged beforehand.  To realize (make real in our experience) that all is one needs investigation and deeper questioning and this is best done in zazen.

As it unfolds that all is one in consciousness, there is also awareness that time is an illusion and that past and future do not really exist. The past is gone but can be visited in the present, the future isn't yet, but can also be visited in the present. Therefore, past and future are present. There is only now, and now contains all time, and this make it paradoxically timeless.

So when in zazen, we are focused on the present, and if we create a desire, whilst in Zen Buddhism this would be seen as the antithesis of true enlightenment, because desires are considered barriers to ultimate enlightenment, to us lesser mortals, who are not yet ready to want ultimate enlightenment, the focus of intent of achieving whatever we want in life, zazen can seem to create miracles and mobilize the Law of Attraction.