PARDON ME, BUT .............

When you Pardon someone,
It's an act of arrogance and control -- lightyears away from Forgiveness.

Forgiving is LETTING GO
Pardoning is HANGING ON. A connection of obligation remains. There's an element of control ("Do it again and I'll bust your balls!")

Do you want to be free?

Then STOP.......stop........stop...........
Just...........let.........go.

When Forgivness happens (and it's often an act of grace) baggage is dropped forever. The one most blessed is the Forgiver.

Two celibate monks were travelling from one village to another. They came across a swift stream, where there was a woman waiting on the bank, fearful of the depth and the current. She begged the monks to carry her across.
The elder of the two picked her up, and the three made their way safely to the other side, where the woman thanked them profusely and went her separate way.
For the next mile the two monks travelled in silence, but the youger monk was in turmoil. Finally he could contain himself no longer. "You should not have done that," he railed upon the elder monk. "We are celibates. We are forbidden from touching women. You have been tainted. The abbott will be furious when he finds out!"
The elder monk turned to his companion and replied calmly, "She asked for a lift. I gave her a lift, and put her down a mile back. How come you're still carrying her?"

Forgiveness is not an occasional act: it is a permanent way of being in this world.

TO BE HONEST WITH YOU.....

Have you ever heard a statement prefaced by "Well, to be honest with you....."

Have you ever heard your self say it?

When you hear that one next time -- be aware.......
(There's a lie lurking nearby.)

YOU'RE A LONG TIME DEAD

I remembered that old saying just a day or two ago -- You're a long time dead....
Well, no time at all really.
Maybe it's a good time to take time (while you still have time) to experience whatever takes your fancy,
while "you" is still alive.

THINK FOR YOURSELF

Think for yourself.

There are no right or wrong answers; no right or wrong turnings --
Only Experience, being experienced.
The question is, are you home for the experience, or out on the world's longest lunch-hour?

John Lennon wrote in "Beautiful Boy" -- "Life is what's happening while you're making other plans."


To think for yourself is to be free of those who seek to influence your choices.

Life serves up a smorgasbord of experience, with an invitation to be conscious and present for the feast.

No need to dress up: come as you are.

PEACE

The polar opposite of Peace is Apathy.

(Apathy is an overwhelming mixture of fear and resentment in disguise. )

In a condition of Apathy, nothing is possible. In a state of Peace, anything is possible.

Peace is the abiding state of all creation. Other stuff may obscure it from view, but cannot destroy it, any more than a cloud can destroy the sun. Peace is at peace with all things as they are -- even conflict.

A Japanese master once gave a pupil a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal and asked him to draw his concept of Peace. For half an hour the pupil laboured diligently and finally handed his master back the paper. On it was a drawing of a serene mountain lake, with the mountains, the trees and tufts of woolly cloud floating in a sunny sky perfectly reflected in the unruffled surface of the lake.

The master nodded his appreciation, then took another sheet of paper and stick of charcoal. For less than a minute the charcoal flew and swirled vigorously, then stopped abruptly. The master handed his paper to the pupil.

On it was a crude representation of a thundering waterfall. On the face of the cliff at the very edge of the boiling cataract he saw a tiny bush, clinging for life in a niche in the rocks. In the fronds of this precarious perch a bird had built its nest. On the edge of the nest the bird was feeding morsels of food it had brought back to its chicks, who were eating greedily.

The pupil looked up inquiringly at his master. "That is Peace," the master said quietly. "What you drew me was Stagnation."

Peace is the presence of God. Silence is the language of God; everything else is just static. Find the silence behind the static, and be at Peace. Find the Peace that is at peace with the existence of war, and be at peace.

Peace is with you: go in Peace.

SOME THINGS JUST TAKE TIME

SOME THINGS JUST TAKE TIME

Well, in this realm of the senses, they do. In the world we now exist, the idea of time has been created to mark off the distance between perceived beginning and ending points into more or less equal parts. I’m thinking of the time between sunrise and sunset -- the time between one revolution of the earth and the next, the time between one circuit around our sun and the next.

Time is an idea we have adopted to help us manage living in this plane. And look at the plethora of instruments we’ve invented to keep track of these imaginary markers! Look at our dependence on them, and the authority we give them over our lives! We even pay king's ransoms for certain of these "timepieces", when all they do is mark "time". A cheap watch from your local mall does just as well.

But if we take a few steps back and see our existence in the space of infinity, time becomes irrelevant. In Infinity there is no beginning, and no ending. There are no marker points to measure off from or to.

Time is an appearance; a fiction. Time is useful, up to a point. Until we realise that it doesn’t exist.

Then where are we?

Where we always have been -- in Eternity.

There is a misconception widely abroad that Eternity is waiting some time in the future. Not so. Eternity is -- where it has always been and will always be -- here and now.

All we have is NOW.

How long is a “now” moment? No time at all. Now is eternal; it never ends.

“I” would like to spend more time here/now, in no time at all. Trouble is, “I” starts to think about it and – bang – “I” is out of now.

The good news is that the Not-I never leaves the Now. “That-which-I-truly-am” and “now” are one, and remain so regardless of what else is going on. All we have to do is remember that.

“Oh, my God, what time is it?”

Now.

WHAT'S THE MATTER?

Everything matters.

Nothing matters.

Both are true. It depends on your point of view.

Now we find that even what is termed "gross matter" is just an illusion -- particles of organised thought that stand still long enough for me to notice them, then go on their merry way being nothing to me, and something else to somebody else.

Nothing matters.

So what's the matter?

WITHOLDING OUR WELLBEING

Some people spread happiness wherever they go; others spread happiness whenever they go.

Oscar Wilde

Is there such a thing as “evil” in the world?

Yes, there is. I didn’t say if it was good or bad, right or wrong, but is there “evil”?

Yes. It is evil to withhold our wellbeing. It is the denial of Life itself. “Evil” is “Live” in reverse.

Withholding your wellbeing is like driving down the highway in low gear, engine revving, with your head stuck in the rear-view mirror and the handbrake full on. No wonder you get a rough ride!

Why do you do that?

To manipulate, dominate and control someone or something.

But how much cheese is it getting you?

It was 10 am and I was driving to location for a day’s shooting on a children’s TV series, cutting it fine for time. Driving along the busy Esplanade skirting the Perth CBD, the less-than-healthy vehicle I was driving started to play up: the battery stopped charging, the water temperature gauge shot right off the end, and some terrible noises emanated from under the bonnet.

Now, one of the things I have not “got” is motor cars. What I don’t know about cars would fill a mechanics manual. I was immediately gripped by long-familiar feelings of Fear and Inadequacy ….. Fear because I’m running late and there is nowhere on this busy arterial road to stop, and Inadequacy because I don’t know the first thing about motors. Up ahead, the traffic lights suddenly turned as red as my face, and then I started to really panic: I’m now stuck in a long carpark with no chance of making it to a side turnoff.

I pulled up, then suddenly remembered something I’d heard Colin Hayes say many times over – “We withhold our wellbeing to try to manipulate, dominate and control a situation.” I got it – I saw the joke! And the joke was ME! Getting into a stew of Fear and Inadequacy wasn’t helping one little bit. Whether the car made it to location in time and in one piece was now entirely out of my hands; it either would or it would not. I was making myself feel Fearful and Inadequate to manipulate, dominate and control a clapped-out LandRover!! The Landy was supposed to think “Oh, poor Barrie; he doesn’t know anything about motor cars. I’d better get him to location on time!”

Absurd? Of course it is. But don’t we do this kind of absurdity all the time? Fear and Inadequacy are my favourites – I’m addicted to them. What are your addictions? What are the negative emotions you turn to by default in any situation you’re not happy with?

Imagine -- you have a row with your partner over breakfast. You leave for work and get caught up in the day’s events and you forget all about the row. You’re going great! Come knockoff time, you get in your car, drive home, park the car, walk to the front door, and with your hand on the doorknob you suddenly remember the row you had that morning. You change instantly from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll, a shrivelled prune of anger and righteousness. Why?

To manipulate, dominate and control your partner.

How well does that work for you? Not much? Why do it then? Because, once upon a time, it DID work, or at least you thought it did …………..

You were lying in your crib, a tiny baby. You had become aware of your body and physical feelings of hunger, thirst and wind and nappy discomfort. You were not yet conscious of this awareness because you did not yet have language for it. But you were aware that you had certain physical needs that had to be met, and that you could not meet them for yourself. You were aware that you needed these people you later came to know as Mum and Dad to supply them for you. One day these people were not right there when one of your needs arose. A thought popped which, if you’d had language at the time, might have been something like “Oh, shit! What happens if they’ve left me and don’t come back?” A feeling of insecurity we’ll call Anxiety quickly followed the thought, and you started to grizzle a bit. Mum, who had been waiting for you to wake up, came into your room and the emergency was over. Bingo! Cheese!

The next time this thought popped and Anxiety followed, you grizzled. Bingo! There she appeared. One time, however, Mum was out hanging wet nappies on the line. When you grizzled and felt anxious, nothing happened. The feeling of insecurity intensified, so you started to cry. Suddenly, there she was, come to see what was wrong with you. It worked! Bingo – cheese! So next time you felt hungry or thirsty or uncomfortable, you cut the preliminaries and went straight to feeling anxiety and putting on a bit of a turn. Hey presto – Mum or Dad appeared. Attention! Cheese!

After a while, however, Mum and Dad got to know your grizzles and wails, and which ones were real and which were bunged on. For the most part they stopped responding as quickly as you liked. Now it is important to realise that every one of your turns was classified by your mind as “Essential to My Survival” – (THEY STILL ARE!!) So you started getting into your insecurity feelings and poured it on, powered by your feelings of anxiety, worry, annoyance, fear, outrage, panic……. And sometimes it seemed to get you what you wanted – attention.

But, even when you got it, did the attention bring you lasting happiness?

I’ll say it again because it’s really important that you get this – Every cause of discomfort to your mind is classified by it as a threat to Survival. Your Mind cannot differentiate between a real and present threat, and a perceived threat from the past: it reacts in exactly the same way and with the same intensity. You are wired up like a stimulus/response robot. This is most important if you are to have some compassion for yourself, and in this respect you need all the compassion you can give yourself.

In the very first instance this removing of wellbeing and getting into suffering was real, but it soon became largely all an act to get the attention your Survive-Above-All-Else mind told you that you had to have. But after a while of that, you had done the act so often that you forgot this denial of wellbeing was just an act and you once again took it to be for real. In other words, you no longer had these thoughts and feelings – they had you, and they've been leading you on a most un-merry dance ever since!!

Now of course, most of us no longer need someone else to feed us and wipe our bottoms. But because the human mind is what it is, whenever we feel our security being threatened we react more or less as we did back then in the cradle. We may have learnt in the interim to suppress the raw feelings, or disguise them as something else more benign; we may have learnt from our primary caregivers sneaky, more sophisticated strategies for getting our way, but at the bottom of all our suffering is a deliberate (if unconscious) withholding of our wellbeing in order to manipulate someone or something else into giving us what we want, when we want it, the way we want it.....Give me what I want, or I'll suffer, and it will be all your fault!..... Unfortunately it rarely works to our satisfaction, and even when it does get us what we think we want, we’re not satisfied because we know we manipulated in order to get it. The cheese was removed from that tunnel long ago, but we keep going down there as if we have no choice.

This is the essence of the Third Tunnel – addictively returning to outmoded, ineffective strategies when our equilibrium is threatened or our addictions to particular sensations are not fulfilled. Isn’t that a good definition of insanity? Most of the time we are not aware of the fact that we’re doing it (or It is doing us, actually – It being the default condition we’ve created for ourselves), and because just about everyone else is doing It, too, we don’t see anything very odd about it. It’s almost as if there’s a tacit agreement between us that, although our strategies for improving our lives are not working, we’ll tell ourselves and each other that they ARE, and go on bumping, spluttering, belching and lurching through each day in the vain hope that the cheese will be down here somewhere (maybe when we die and go to Heaven!)

We’re told, especially by priests and politicians, that this is the way life is meant to be, and if we’re really good and don’t complain too much, there is another life waiting for us if we just follow the Instructions, and a very much worse one if we don’t!

And when we meet some authentic spirit who is direct, free of pretence, open and without guile, we feel mightily uncomfortable and even threatened in their presence, especially when they don’t react as they “should” to our manipulative games.

What is it that is so threatening about freedom of spirit? Why do so few people choose to be free?

To withhold your wellbeing is silly; to withhold your grandness is tragic.

What negative feelings keep you in bondage? What positive feelings are you so addicted to that you’ll sell out on your integrity and freedom to get them?

Every feeling you want is available to you, without selling yourself out.

GETTING AUTHENTIC

A couple of days ago. I was in two quite distinct minds about an issue at work that involved most of the staff, and I had to make a decision that could not please everyone. I called a meeting with one of my colleagues and another manager. I knew my colleague's position; it was quite unequivocal.
The other manager, as it turned out, took the opposite view. Suddenly and silently my colleague did a 180 degree U-turn under the table and came up beside her. I wasn't surprised; he is her boyfriend.

*************

A master was meditating one evening when a stranger entered his house, demanding the solid-gold begging bowl that had been given him by the king in gratitude for his sage advice.

The master asked “Why do you need it?” “I don’t,” replied the stranger, “but I am a robber – the best in the land. It is what I do.” He was expecting a lecture on the evils of thievery, but the master said to him simply, “I see. Well, keep stealing, but be aware,” and returned to his meditation.

Some nights later, the stranger again burst into his home, livid with frustration. “You have messed up my life!” he roared. “Last night I broke into the king’s chamber. There before me lay all the riches of the treasury. I reached out to touch some of it and your words came back to me – ‘Keep stealing, but Be Aware’. I froze. I couldn’t go through with it. I am no longer a thief!”

Oh, how we steal from ourselves on a daily basis!

Keep stealing, but become aware.
Thank you Colin Hayes

Let’s look at the basic assumption that you are a fundamentally nice person – a genuine, truthful, valid, authorised, reliable and trustworthy person. I’m not insinuating that you’re not, I’m simply inviting you to question your own assumption that you are. If you continue to assume what you’ve always assumed, nothing is going to change.

Here’s a question for you –

How do you know when you’re lying, if you’re a habitual liar and don’t know it?

You’d swear sincerely that you are honest. But what if you’re mistaken about that?

How can you test your assumptions (in this case about your authenticity)? By doing something you’ve probably never done before – by assuming for a while that, as a human being, you are often NOT authentic, possibly more often than you realise. Change your point of view, and then notice everything that comes up for you while you’re standing in that different perspective.

What’s the point of challenging your assumption of authenticity? Well, apart from the considerable entertainment value, it is fundamentally futile to work on your relationships, your health, your finances, your career, or just about anything else of yours if you are unconsciously duplicitous and deceitful, and deceiving yourself about that too.

Just as an experiment, sit in this possibility for a while -- a helluva lot of what we’re up to each day is about looking good, to others and ourselves. We don’t really mean a lot of the “polite” things we say automatically (e.g. “How are you?”, or “Have a nice day.”) and sometimes we know we don’t mean it. We don’t always believe the things we say we believe in, and we know that. Sometimes we switch to a diametrically opposite opinion in public in order to “get along”. We regularly swap around our hierarchy of values to suit the occasion and the company we’re in at the time, excusing our duplicity to ourselves with the tag of Pragmatism. We apologise without feeling at all apologetic. We go out of our way to be “nice” to people we really don’t like, because we want their approval. We make promises we know we may not deliver on, kidding ourselves that feeling guilty about it afterwards will be enough recompense. We’re afraid to express our fears, doubts and misgivings for fear of not looking strong. We withhold a truth for fear of hurting another person’s feelings. And so it goes on…………… We are so inured to being disloyal to ourselves that we hardly notice it any more, and when we do, we tell ourselves that “It doesn’t matter. It’s trivial. It’s not hurting anyone.”

It is, you know – it’s hurting you.

If you are inauthentic about your disloyalties to yourself, don’t be surprised when others are disloyal to you. In fact, be surprised if they’re not, sooner or later. Inauthenticity attracts inauthenticity. If you cannot cop to your dishonesties, you are a pushover for anyone else who can get at you through the bits you won’t look at. How else do you think our kids learn so early where, when and how to push their parents’ “hot” buttons? How do con-men find their victims so easily? By Implicit Invitation. It’s almost like we wear a neon sign over our head saying “Dishonest, vulnerable Victim here: come and get it!”

And if you want something from someone, you are totally at their mercy. All they have to do is look as if they might withdraw their approval from you, and you will flip over faster than a politician’s promise.

At a deeper level, our inauthenticity is the root cause of our insecurity, and all the separating emotions that emanate from that. If we were totally authentic, we would no longer feel vulnerable.

How are duplicity, disloyalty to yourself and inauthenticity possible? How did they come about?

THE ILLUSION OF DUALITY

We talk often about the importance of “being true to ourselves”. How can you be true to yourself if there is only one of “you”? How can you talk to yourself if there is only one of you? Who is talking; who is listening? How can you deceive yourself if there is only one of you?

We live in a dual-verse, a sub-section of the uni-verse. Everything has its opposite. Everything we claim we “are” has its opposite in us. To the extent that an opposite remains unacknowledged or disallowed, we are affected by it without our knowing it.

I strongly suggest that you look at that last paragraph again, put this down, and just BE with that for a while. Let it be.

The Law of Opposites is a Law of Life. Like another Law of Life, the Law of Gravity, it doesn’t give a hoot whether you believe it or not -- it just IS. Like gravity, when you are aware of its existence, it can be very useful to you, e.g. it keeps you grounded: but if you don’t know about it or fail to take it into account, it can do you a lot of damage, e.g. if you’re up a ladder and lean out too far, the ground comes up relentlessly hard and fast!

Have you ever experienced someone you thought you knew really well suddenly do something quite “out of character”? Of course you have. The only reason you could be taken by surprise, is that you have not heard of, or you’ve forgotten the duality/duplicity of human nature. The same applies to you. Have you ever broken a promise? Of course you have. How come? Because the bit of you that broke the promise has said “I didn’t have the microphone when you promised that one!”

I call this aspect of myself “I/Me Pty. Ltd.”

We used to play a game in Inward Adventure called the I/Me Statue Game. Anne Ameling would call out the word “I”, and we would feel into that and assume for ourselves a posture that expressed that feeling. Then she would call out the word “Me”, and we would feel into that and assume another posture that expressed that feeling. So the game went on for 15-20 minutes, alternating between “I” and “Me”, enabling each of us to get a first-hand experience of the difference between the two entities. You might like to try it for yourself now. Go on, give yourself a treat.

The Law of Duality has its good uses. Duality is an illusion that enables us stand outside of our self and look at who we are. Duality enables us to look at ourselves in a mirror image. If you really don’t know what unacknowledged parts of you remain undiscovered, look at the qualities of those people who show up in your face and whom you judge as “bad”, or “good”. Those qualities exist in you: they must, otherwise you could not recognise them. You are looking at yourself. Those people are mirroring something for you that you need to see about yourself. How neat is that? Be grateful to them.

When you acknowledge and say “Yes” to your duality, and the duality of everyone around you, you are more likely to see things as they are, and less likely to be vulnerable to surprise attack

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THE WINDOW OF WILLINGNESS

All you need for your life to transform is Willingness.

Without Willingness, nothing has ever showed up, can show up, or will show up in your life. But with open Willingness, your truest desires show up, in due time, and in a fashion consistent with the life you have designed for yourself.

That is a Life Guarantee.

Willingness is a state of being open and available to Possibility. Willingness is the key to manifesting. Without Willingness, nothing can work; with Willingness, anything is possible. It must be an absolute, unconditional and patient Willingness to ALLOW what you want, or something better, to manifest itself in its own time and in its own way. No cheap attempts to engineer quick-fixes will do: anything other than open, allowing willingness is an ego trip.

I need to differentiate here between my understanding of Willingness and Desire. The latter is a narrowing down, an emotional focussing of intent, a gradual exclusion of possible alternatives, a forge for emotion. Desire is a Preference on its way to becoming an Addiction. Desire leads to an act of Will, which is light years away from Willingness.

Willingness is a letting-go, a calming, an opening to possibilities, a creation of space for thought to manifest itself.

Wherever Desire is, there will your mind be also.

Wherever your Willingness is, there will your spirit be.

WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION?

What is your Intention for today? What do you want to have happen? What do you want to experience? What is your Intention in reading this article?
It is another Law of Life that your real intention always shows up. The corollary is also true – whatever you are experiencing now is the result of a desire you once had and felt into existence. If you don’t like what you’re experiencing right now, then maybe you forgot your Intention and got lost somewhere along the way. Some backtracking may be called for – or you could just drop the whole thing and work out what it is that you really want right now (and that may not be as easy as it sounds, depending on how right you want to be about what got you here/now) and simply be willing for it to show up. I suggest the latter.

In the meantime, there is no getting around the experience you are in right now; the only way out is through. It is at this point that devout Victims get stuck. They resist the flow and vigorously avow “This is NOT what I wanted!” Every available drop of energy and feeling goes into resisting what they don’t want. Resisting what you don’t want is a very different dynamic from creating space for what you DO want! You need to drop every scrap of resistance you have to it, because in order to resist an experience, you have to give your attention and energy to it, hold on to andf engage with it – albeit negatively. By resisting anything, you perpetuate it. (How many wars have we fought to end all war?)
Position creates Opposition. Resistance nails it firmly into place right under your nose. Try, instead, surrendering to it; i.e. engaging creatively with it. HAVE the experience. Any experience fully welcomed, held lightly and then let go of, disappears and you are left with --- space. Nothing. And Nothing is another name for unlimited possibility.

Whatever you are experiencing now is the result of a thought that you have willed, possibly unconsciously, into existence. Why would you do that?......... For the experience – part of which is the experience you are in right now. If you seem to be stuck in this experience, it is because you are resisting that experience. It is another Law of Life that whatever you resist – persists. There is an enormous difference in dynamics between being Willing for a particular experience, and Resisting its polar opposite. You get more of what you give your attention and energy to i.e. the exact opposite of what you want.

We FEEL our desires into existence. A thought pops, a familiar feeling automatically follows, usually very quickly (in microseconds). Electrical and chemical reactions spread the feeling to every cell in our body. We become the feeling. An aura develops around us and the message goes out, attracting people and events that we experience in a way that validates our exisitng thoughts, feelings, concepts beliefs and opinions about “the way life is”.

We all get to be right about our stuff. I’m sure you have heard, and maybe even used expressions like “This always happens to me”, or “That’s just the way life is, I guess”, or “Shit happens!”, or “All men/women are bastards” or “Life is just a bowl of cherries”…….. you know how it goes, and you’re right!! People and events are attracted to you that prove just how right you are! You get to be so right about your rackets that you’d rather be right than be happy!!

So what is it in particular that you are being right about?

Ask yourself this – “Am I a junkie for certain feelings -- anxiety, anger, frustration, jealousy, guilt, excitement, euphoria, release, etc. etc. etc……?” It’s easy to tell; cast your mind back to other incidents in your life that have generated the same feelings. If you can remember more than three, you are on an emotional addiction. But take heart; the first step in freeing yourself from an addiction is to tell the truth about it. And because the experience you’re reluctant to have is no more real than last night’s dreams, it will pass – as long as you are willing to say "Yes" to it, then when you're done, let go of it and let it be gone.

But in the meantime you’ve got these feelings and thoughts churning over wildly and repetitively. What can you do?

Re-member this – there is you, and there is your stuff. YOU ARE NOT YOUR STUFF. You are that which is unjudgmentally aware of your stuff -- the mindless observer. You are that which is left when all your stuff passes on. If you find you’ve allowed your self to get caught up in your stuff, and it’s bucking you around like a rodeo bull, remember you’re just the rider. Jump off. Let the bull (your stuff) do what it likes; just don’t jump back on board. (If you must, at least enjoy the ride!)


There once was a man who hated the sound of his own footsteps and the sight of his own shadow. He hit on a plan: he would run away from them. So he ran, and he ran, and he ran….but still his footsteps stayed there and his shadow followed him close behind. So he decided to run faster in order to get away from them. He ran faster, and faster, and faster…but still his footsteps were there and his shadow stuck by him. Day after day, week after week, year after year, he ran faster and faster, but still his footsteps and his shadow dogged him.

One day, exhausted, he dropped dead, which was a pity

Because all he had ever needed to do was –

Step into the shade

And sit down
Colin Hayes


Stop. Just stop. Drop it. Don’t move; don’t do anything. Just stop…………….

Drop being right about your suffering and just HAVE it, all of it. You created it, and the creator is always bigger than it’s creation. Have it so that you can have done with it and get on with your journey.

Victims do not want to hear this stuff. “You don’t understand – this is definitely NOT what I wanted!” they avow energetically, with voices raised in pitch. (A tirade is a complaint turned up loud). They emanate a palpable aura of “Victim over here.” Haven’t you noticed how some people seem to carry a permanently lit neon sign inviting misfortune? That includes those aggressive (in)dividuals who invest their considerable energy and feeling into resisting what they think they don’t want. By resisting and giving energy to what we don’t want, we bring it into existence. It happens by a kind of reverse attraction.

I have a very dear Aunt who has spent all her life resisting intimacy. It enabled her to get space from someone who was very tough on her, and it certainly got her central position any time she wanted it, because she could always blame someone else (in this case, her mother) for her condition. But now, in her rapidly declining months she is all alone, and wields it like a battle-axe to try and attract sympathy. Guess how effective that is! The law of reverse effect applies – very few people, other than those who are paid to do so, want to be near her: the safest course with a rampaging elephant is to give it plenty of space! She is only just beginning to realise that she is lonely because she organised it that way.

So do you: whatever your present condition, it is the result of choices and decisions you have made and feelings you have nourished. Sure, things just “happen” to you over which you have no control; unforseen and unwanted events “happen” to everybody. What you DO have control over is your response to them. Your response is yours, and no-one else can take it away from you -- we're not supposed to.
The problem is that we do not creatively respond to situations, we knee-jerk-react to them. Way back when we were tiny babies, we responded by complaining and protesting – withholding our wellbeing – and that response became hard-wired into an automatic reaction. Our reactions, in turn, created a condition that attracts people and situations that allow us to go on experiencing all the colours and levels of that condition. We become masterful at it, all the while complaining “This is not what I wanted!” How do you know that? How do you think you know that you are not willing the events in your life to happen? Perhaps, keeping you supplied with an unwanted condition is another (hidden) programme running in the back of your life that you are unaware of; something else you do not know that you don’t know, or have forgotten you put there.

My point is, no matter what your condition, you don’t have to put up with suffering about it any longer. The first step is to separate the two dynamics: on one hand there is the condition that’s bothering you, on the other is your suffering about it. The two are quite separate, except in your mind. Once you realise the separation, you can deal with the suffering quite independently of your circumstances. When suffering has ceased, the circumstances are transformed.

This is really very simple, but not always easy. After a lifetime of reinforcing your preconceptions about the way life is, willingness to let go of the habit – and that’s all it is – may, or may not come easily. Either way, don’t sweat it. For me, the shock of hitting bottom, not once but three times, was needed before I got how imprisoned I was. Along the way I was rudely shocked more than once how much like my father I had become. The bathroom mirror became a tool of enlightenment!

I don’t know whether this is so for everyone, but in my own experience, and from watching others do their trip, it seems that varying degrees of discomfort are on the menu. Hence the need to keep our avowed Intention and Willingness before us like a miner’s torch. Changing anything -- minds or underwear -- involves getting out of our comfort zones. Changing my mind raises a dissonance between its old compulsions and my determination to do life another way, and all minds hate discomfort. Changing my behaviours has occurred naturally, though, when I’ve checked in on my Intention (where I want to go) and been willing to brave the discomfort of allowing my old addictive thought and feeling patterns to be thwarted. The depths of grief and the heights of joy have opened up my heart. Uncomfortable? Oh yes. But I have learned to use any kind of discomfort, not as a block, but as an assurance that I’m headed out of my comfort zone and in the direction of Freedom.

How about you? Have you had enough of suffering?

OK. What is your Intention right now?

Speak it.

Are you ready?

Are you willing?

OK. So be it.

THE POWER OF POSSIBILITY

My fairly recent awakening to the existence and availability of Infinite Possibility came just in the nick of time. After 60 years of living in a permanent state of anxiety and anger, I succumbed to the Black Death -- chronic fatigue and depression. I just didn't have the energy to resist it any longer.

I didn't care much whether I lived or died. I wasn't about to top myself; I was too tired to bother. I just didn't care about living any more. Nothing mattered.

Then something shifted, and I don't quite know how to put it into words, but here goes...........

You know those 3-D pictures that look like a flat, jumbled pattern of coloured squiggles? You stare at it and de-focus on the detail until there comes, of its own accord, a click-shift in your perception. Suddenly there is revealed a magical, three-dimensional world that you never knew existed. The picture as such has not changed, but your view of it is magically transformed in the blink of an eye.

My transformation felt similar. Not caring about what others thought and feeling that nothing mattered any more suddenly became a source of freedom, possibility, lightness, and even exhilaration! Without my having to do anything about it, my grip on life loosened. I surrendered to the "Is-ful Ah-ness" (Les Murray) of that moment. It happened without warning one afternoon as I was walking to the bus-stop on my way to work. I became sharply aware aware of the space in, around and through me being choc-full of Possibility. The sense of freedom that washed over and through me in that moment was en-lightening!

Nothing had changed, and I've never been the same since!

As I daily become more aware of the infinite possibilities that flow within and around me, I find myself using my own spirit, rather than other people, signs, omens, or random coincidences, as my guiding reference points. I rely less on the either the approval or disapproval of others in order to feel good about myself. I feel lighter; I fear less than I used to. And I've been able to give up the need to try and control the uncontrollable (which is just about everything). I've lost the need to feel special or important. I'm losing the need to hang onto being "safe" and "right". I'm beginning to discover the security of the unknown, the serenity of the silence that is ever-present, and the unlimited potential of nothing.

"I" used to sally forth, ever outwards, looking for More, looking for Better, looking for Different out there in the "real" world. The further I ventured out, the further away I got from that-which-I-am, and the harder I had to work to maintain the illusion of a personality. The further I wandered away from the source of power, the more energy I needed to beg, borrow or steal from others in order to keep going. In my quest for importance and immortality, I weighted myself down with acquisitions -- social position, important responsibility, ideas, beliefs and opinions, influence over others. The horse was riding the jockey, and the jockey was cripplingly exhausted.

There was never enough success or importance to fill the dead emptiness of a persona dis-connected from its source.

Nothing significant has changed since. I still have much the same persona (or is that "personum?); I'm still the same holy arsehole I've always been. But I'm seeing myself in another light -- in the light of Possibility. And that lightness is immensely attractive to surprising new possibilities. More of everything has come to me in the last 12 months, all without any conniving or manipulation games. But only since I began to live each day in Gratitude for what I am and what I have in this moment. That is transformation!

In an ocean of infinite possibilities, I am one possibility that showed up like a ripple on the surface. So did you. Even the tiniest ripple is still made of the same stuff as the ocean which gives rise to it. I Am that which I'd been looking for. I am not the ripple, but That which is permanent and remains after the ripple has washed up on the shore. I am that which is Aware of everything I previously thought I was. Unlimited possibility is inherent in that Awareness, from which has arisen everything that has ever been, is now, or ever will be.

From here/now anything is possible.

Now that's aliveness!

POSSIBILITY OUR ESSENTIAL NATURE

We all showed up in, and are part of a field of Infinite Possibilities. No matter what we contemplate, no matter what we fix upon, something else is always there – available – waiting for us to notice. We live in a multi-dimensional spectrum of available experiences that are waiting for us to choose and say “Yes” to.

A "higher consciousness" is awareness of that field of All Possibilities – infinitely creative, free, unbounded, joyful and powerful. This is our intrinsic nature. It's the stuff we're made of.

You already know this; you once lived in that knowing: at the time you just weren’t aware that you knew it. Then one day someone who loved you very much started selling you on their idea of Limitation. They weren’t being nasty – a condition of limitation was their reality (sold on to them by their parents) and they wanted you to “know the score” so that you could grow up to be at least as happy and fulfilled as they were. Bit by bit you sold out on your possibility and defined a set of boundaries for yourself.

We all did it. We traded unlimited possibility for a more “realistic” condition of Limitation and Lack. Except for rare, fleeting moments of inspiring expansiveness generated perhaps by the presence of a magnificent sunset, the first cry of our firstborn child, an inspiring phrase of music, the touch of a beloved one……..we lost touch almost completely with the grandeur of Possibility -- our very nature.

Looking at it from a wider perspective, however, is it possible that this process was immensely creative?

It has been said that a fish doesn’t know water until it is out of it. It has also been said (by T.S. Eliot in “Little Gidding”) …….”and when we come to the end of our days we will arrive at the place where first we began, and know that place for the first time” Is it possible that there have been no mistakes?

Maybe we deliberately (as distinct from consciously) got lost in order to find who we truly are. Is it not a possibility that what we’re looking for is what we already are, waiting to be re-cognised? What we’ve been reaching for is out of reach – it is too close.

Possibility only needs a “Yes” for it to become accessible. Let go of the desire for it: desire separates you from it (you can only reap more desire from seeds of desire). Release any attachment to what you think the outcome should be. Let life itself take care of the details.

Isn’t it possible, though, that nothing is possible? Sure, if you believe that. Anything is possible, including nothing, if that's the way you want it. Possibility is happening in and around you right now whether you are aware of it or not. What’s separating you from what you say you want is desire, and barrage of filters and firewalls you’ve surrounded yourself with for “protection”.

How do you get out of your self-made prison? Say “Yes” to the possibility that your prison is an illusion, blinding you to the presence of what you thought you’d lost.

Possibility is where you left it -- waiting for you to come home.

NOW HERE THIS

How much of what we perceive from moment to moment is actually in the moment?........ 10%? (very rare). 0.1%? --- almost universally. Except for a Boo!, an orgasm or a sneeze, we're not home.

So what happens to the here-and-now while we're not there? Nothing: it is always present, waiting for us to return from our wanderings around the dead past and the imagined future. The pity of it is, we rarely notice that we're not present and available where we are, we have gotten so used to flying on defaultpilot while we're off with the fairies and demons.

Leo and Enza Vita use a very good example of how far from the what-is we get. Have you ever stepped onto an escalator or moving footway that is not moving? Isn't it eerie? No matter how much you tell yourself "It's not moving", the eerie sensation of a moving escalator still imposes itself on your experience, and you walk like you're strapped into calipers. This is a small indication of how powerfully our memory and anticipation of "what ought to be" affects what actually IS. And we spend most of our lives off with the "oughts".

When "what-is" becomes more important than "what-ain't", suffering ceases. (Thanks Colin Hayes for that one)! Could it possibly be simpler than that?

HOW I GET BACK INTO THE NOW.....

I notice something. Anything -- it doesn't matter. The feel of the surface I'm walking on under my bare feet, the breeze on my face, the actual sounds going on around me, the noise in my head........ In that moment of noticing, I'm not thinking about it (thinking about something is ALWAYS in the dead past).

"What's wrong with right now, unless you think about it"

Sailor Bob Adamson

My favourite is to notice what's going on in that great Cineramic expanse of my peripheral vision -- that vastness I never see while I'm focussed in on something. The habit of noticing the peripheral without neccessarily turning to look at it broadens my outlook, prevents accidents, awakens intuition and opens up a whole world of possibilities, waiting in the wings for me to notice them.

Here-now is not lost. It's where you left it, waiting for you to return to the only place where everything you want is possible.