Shadow Jedi: Lecture #17

Zen and the Shadows
Shadowside@forceacademy.com

If someone were to ask me to sum up the shadow side in a word, "Zen" would be my answer. That state of simply being in and of the force. The ultimate state of pure paradox, it is nothing yet it is absolutely everything. Such is the way of the force and the shadow side itself. As I sat reading last night I came across this passage in a book and thought how perfectly it explains the shadow side.


What is Zen?

Try if you wish. But Zen comes of itself. True Zen shows in everyday living, consciousness in action. More than any limited awareness, it opens every inner door to our infinite nature.

Instantly mind frees. How it frees! False Zen wracks brains as a fiction concocted by priests and salesmen to peddle their own wares.

Look at it this way, inside out and outside in: consciousness everywhere, inclusive, through you. Then you can't help living humbly, in wonder.

"What is Zen?"

One answer: Inaya Khan tells a Hindu story of a fish who went to a queen fish and asked: "I have always heard about the sea, but what is this sea? Where is it?"

The queen fish explained: "You live, move, and have your being in the sea. The sea is within you and without you, and you are made of sea and you will end in sea. The sea surrounds you as your own being."

Lady Redlum
bagpipes@hotmail.com