I NO LONGER FEEL LIKE A FAILURE.

I NO LONGER FEEL LIKE A FAILURE

In an interview I saw earlier today, Australian author Tim Winton said “When I was growing up, I never met anyone like me.” I felt an immediate connection with that.

But I wasn’t always happy about it.

I desperately wanted to belong – to be accepted by everyone else. So, as Colin Hayes often said, I sold out and went-along to get along. It didn’t work; I still  made an easy target for bullies, and I did my own share of bullying when I found someone even less able to defend himself. I grew up not liking myself much.

------------------------

As with a lot of people of my era, I was brought up to “make something of my life.” Among the many admonitions from my parents I had drilled into me “Finish what you start.” Unfortunately that was at odds with an unacknowledged personal inclination that went something like “If at first you don’t succeed, don’t be an idiot. Try another way – try something different.” Holding those two principles in one space has proved to be one helluva challenge.

By the early 1980’s a very busy life that had involved aggressively pursuing several careers began to seriously unravel, culminating in the shock departure of my wife of 18 years, and subsequent divorce. I hadn’t seen that coming. The bottom fell out of my world. After that, there’s nothing much new you can tell me about hell. I felt life had just sucked me backwards through a sewer, and I was drowning in it.

What had I done wrong? Had I missed something? If so, what? And why hadn’t somebody warned me?

A few years before, aware that since branching out of theatre and TV into more commercial pursuits I’d lost some direction, I decided it was time to stop surfing the waves of fortune that had borne me so far, and take some deliberate control of life. I jumped headfirst into the personal development movement, lapping up breakfasts and seminars led by success gurus, and learning techniques for disciplining my wayward mind. I gobbled down and practised techniques for winning friends and influencing people. I set daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, 5- and 10-yearly goals. I affirmed myself silly. The whole mind-gymnasium….

At first, it seemed to work – things got better, except sometimes. As months turned into years, though, I realised it wasn’t working, except occasionally. Because I couldn’t find what I was doing wrong I concluded I was missing something. There was something else – a “secret ingredient X”. I had not yet learned there’s a difference between control (not possible), and Mastery (the purpose of it all).

                                                     ----------------------

Like most people of the time, I was viewing my life as a series of mostly continuous time lines, each with its own identifiable beginning, and directed towards an end that meant achieving a consciously imagined goal – an attainment that I could call “Success”. 

As a pianist and organist I aimed to make magnificent, stirring music, play  grand organs, with choirs and orchestras. As an actor I wanted to get to know the parts in me and create revelatory moments of experience for an audience. I also later wanted to be recognised, rich and famous. As a director I wanted to inspire. As a business man I wanted to create success, for others and, ergo, myself. As a father I wanted to support, inspire and create children who would be self-reliant, self responsible, and … happy. As a writer and radio presenter I wanted to inform, inspire and empower.

Each of those line-journeys was all about attaining that “Success”. Anything that fell short of success was, by definition, Failure. Thanks to some of the 70’s rah-rah-rah training, I wasn’t too fearful of failure – God knows I had experienced it often enough and lived to fight another day! I chose to regard failures as learning-stones to Success.

But…. when I moved to Thailand I looked back along my timelines and saw that, in none of these endeavours along the line, had I finished what I started. Each had come to an end, un-completed, with goals un-attained. I felt a failure. I stopped writing my life story – it seemed pointless. Although I could see and feel how I was becoming wiser and more effective, and changing my life styles and habits was propelling me to evolve as a human being, I was still quietly carrying this failure-feeling in my back pocket for more than a decade longer.

Then came a changing moment, so small and yet so deep that it resonates still, every day…….

I travelled to Maidenhead earlier this year to intervene in my son’s life at a time when his world, like mine years before, had come crashing down. Having learned so much from the aftermath of losing my marriage and the journey that disaster had launched me onto, I had acquired knowing and understandings of real value to offer the lad, ready and waiting on the backburner for years for the appropriate time to put them to him.

This was the time.

I was walking through a local garden on the Thames riverbank when the thought struck – “My whole life has led to this moment.” It was a goosebumps revelation. My pulse quickened with a sense of immediacy (not to be confused with urgency) Then, soon after – “Yes, but now the past no longer matters. The power is Now. And this moment here/now is complete in itself. There’s no failure here; no success. Starting from this quiet Here, all there is, is Possibility. And whatever I decide now to do next.”

I sat watching the river, with its traffic of work barges, pleasure yachts, cruise launches and white swans. Looking much, much closer at any lines with the aid of a magnifying glass, they lose their solidity and appear as a series of dashes and dots, with space in between them. And in those spaces in my timeline I heard Your life has been a series of dots, each complete in itself. Each perfect. No failures. Look at it. Life is also a dance of dot-moments of “A-hah!

The spaces opened up.

Memories fell into those bits of nothing, memories of fabulously full and complete instances when I had momentarily experienced what I’d longed for. I recalled the freedom of dancing down the steps of the Perth Concert Hall like Gene Kelly, the repleteness of standing in the empty studio after the hugely successful opening night of Channel 4 in Albury, the ethereal wonder of waking up at 3am to a moondrenched view over Paris, the moment I first held my newborn son, the awe of watching him chillingly burn the house down as an actor in “The Browning Version”, the sheer pride of watching my daughter stage manage a concert I’d produced, the connectedness with choirs I’d conducted, and the sense of power playing the awesome organ at the Sydney Town Hall, celebrating life-changing moments with my daughter in Inward Adventure, shopping and coffee in Windsor, as my youngest granddaughter opened bits of her life to the light, walking my youngest grandson to and from school, listening to another wise old man in a young boy’s body …. (memories of his Dad)

I got it. I had failed many times along the way, but I wasn’t A Failure.

So much evidence I’d let slip by un-noticed.

And in this moment…… nothing…. Just suchness.

Why had I hung onto this feeling “I’m a failure”? What was the payoff supposed to be? An answer wasn’t long in coming – to goad myself to succeed. I was using a prospect of failure to get success.

Insane!

---------------------------

Changing my view of seeing a life story as a series of complete moments of “now”, instead of an uncompleted historical line en-route to some distant Awards Night, has had a big effect on me since.

I started walking a few months ago to "get into training" for a cruise I’m booked on next year. Unfit as I was and ageing as I am, the walking was hard and painful work (huff-puff). "If the cruise doesn’t happen, this will be all for nothing" thought me. Then one day I decided to take along a camera I’d recently bought  -- to get acquainted with it, ready for cruise next year (another goal). Having the camera around my neck prompted me to notice minor miracles of life along the way each day and capture an image of the moment. Something happened. I got interested in the process of walking itself, as well as its objectives. I downloaded the images, played around with them in a photoshopping programme, then started to share some of my moments of “now” on Facebook. The daily walks developed a parallel purpose of their own. Walking became less suffering and more "Wow, look at that!" I realised a change this week -- If I don't get to go on the cruise, this won't have been "all for nothing" I’m already feeling better.

The difference between the dynamics of Linear and Dot approaches to life can be more simply explained if I use the example of travelling from here to London. If I were doing this linearly I could fly there direct; and come home again. Job done. There is an aspect of living linearly that allows us to postpone experience (“job done”) to a future time. 

But this time I want an experience in which arriving at my destination (London) is a possible bonus, while the real juice is inherent in all the rich moments of the journey itself – and I won’t know what a lot of those are likely to be until I’m actually in them. That’s my idea of surfing an Adventure!

Of course, I get to sleep in the same cabin most nights, and a lot of pre-planning is going into the trip, but because I’m navigating new territory on the internet, with embassies and health providers, even this is a challenging adventure in itself.

The map is not the journey, any more than a restaurant menu is the meal.

--------------------------

Experience has taught me –

·       A Linear (Kinetic) life is always incomplete until the goal is reached. Then there’s a lot of doubt about whether the attainment of the goal brings the desired satisfaction anyway, but that’s a discussion for another time.

·       A Dot (Energerial) life is complete in every moment you’re aware of. Each now-experience itself is a “goal-attained”.

While I was walking in order to make the most out of a future event, I was thinking linearly. But once I made each walk a complete event in itself, I began walking energerially. Each walk is a series of now-wows, and here/now is the ONLY place we can be alive. It’s our choice whether to fill now with Wows, or with bits of a dead past or scraps of a future nightmare. All there ever is, though, is Now. 

Are you living en route to somewhere/sometime else, or here and now?

It’s your choice. Always.

I think it was Socrates who said, “Without a purpose, life has no meaning.”. At the other extreme, Sartre and Adler both said, “Don’t stress yourself, life is meaningless.” By holding these two opposites side-by-side in my heart, I get “Here now just IS – any meaning is the meaning that you give it” Your life just IS; its meaning is up to you. And whatever you decide this moment means to you, you get to be right about it, opportunities come to your door for you to explore and express that meaning, and you get to experience the results of your choices.

In your life, you get to be god, just as I do in mine

.

You give your meaning to your life; I give my meaning to mine.

We experiment – just to see how it turns out.

And then we can get together over a drink and compare notes.

Some of my experiments have turned out to be other than I expected – well most of them, actually. But somewhere along the line I realised in that moment in that garden by the Thames, that in all the things I had set out to achieve – I had my moments! Wow! And now I was slap bang in the middle of more moments where, sooner or later, I’d get what I wanted, or something better than I could imagine (there have been LOTS of those!)

And I’m still here and a smorgasbord of moments awaits. All that is required of me is to be present and available to as many of them as possible. To give them meaning that is meaningful to me, I look for opportunities to connect and share them with others. 

But that’s just me.

The bottom line of it all is interpersonal connection – Love -- and our challenge is to summon the courage to drop our defences and ideas of separation, and be that vulnerable.

------------------------

It was about this time that I noticed that the pall of “failure” had lifted. From my soul.

------------------------

Now, the only Love I can be certain of is mine. It took a long time to get confident in my own love and trusting enough to be my own guiding star, but – hey – better late than never.

Love. This is enough.

Looking to be recognised in return is a treadmill going nowhere. Just love, for its own sake opens the vaults of joy and happiness.

If someone or something else decides to love me back….

That's a bonus.

That’s a bonus.

IN PRAISE OF UN-COMMON SENSE

UN-COMMON SENSE

Is there is such a thing as common sense?

My parents ap-parently thought so; they chose to remind me often that I was severely deficient in it. They were mistaken. I had picked up from them the gist of “common sense”; it just didn’t appeal to me.

And it’s taken me all this while to articulate why. Ah well, better late than never.

It seems to me that “common sense” – something that I was allegedly “born with” and had since discarded -- is what parents evoke to secure compliance with their dictates on everything from going to the toilet before going out, to dissuading us from jumping off the roof holding an open umbrella.

But “common sense” can be a dangerous concept when applied to more complex matters, as the journalist and writer Chris Wallace noted in a recent article.......

“Common sense is such a lazy, bogus concept,” she wrote, referring to current politics. “When someone dishes common sense at you (“everyone knows”) it typically camouflages an emotionally charged, unexamined, partisan position on something important that the Common Sense propagator wants to dismiss as beyond debate…”

Interestingly, politician Cory Bernardi’s blog is named “Common Sense Lives Here”. And he means it – he really assumes that everything he believes is just "common sense", and anyone who doesn't think like him is, ergo, not sensible. Perhaps that's because he has attracted unto himself a bunch of people who will, for whatever personal proclivities and preferences, give him agreement.

Their views do not make them wrong, but the religious zeal with which they identify their selves with views and attitudes they claim to be universal to the exclusion of any other possibilities, does make them narrow-minded.

Neither common sense, nor wishful assuming, nor faith, nor redneck dogma is a reliable guide to intellectually and emotionally mature decision-making. For that, you need a focused mix of openly heartful enthusiasm, real verifiable evidence that gives equal weight to views from all differing perspectives, wide-angle awareness, disciplined intention to get at a core truth of the matter, analytical intelligence, compassion and mercy, widely-shared moral values and an awareness of their hierarchy in your personal ethic.

An effective mix of these requisites could hardly be considered to be “common”. On the contrary, I'd describe it as being almost rare.

Politicians and their acolytes seem to be the most prone to glibly strewing phrases like “it's just common sense” and “everyone knows” and “it's obvious” every time they refer to the feedback they get from the limited cache of people who have a vested interest in telling them what they want to hear. The implication is that, “if you don't agree with what I claim is common sense, there is something seriously wrong with you”, and you instantly become one of their lesser-thans”.

From my observations, it seems that those who are loudest and most pedantic about “common sense” are those who are secretly the least sure that it actually exists. 

Pontifical cantors like Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, Michaelia Cash, Eric Abetz, Corey Bernardi, Julia Gillard, and Kevin Rudd all betray an underlying ground being of desperation and doubt. And I suspect that the volume and vehemence of their blustering is somewhere in direct proportion to the breadth and depth of their uncertainties. In their insistence upon playing the Right/Wrong game for keeps, they betray set-jaw, shut-down, steel-trap states of mind. They will be right, at all costs. They'd even rather be right than effective. They'd rather be right than happy. And they'll take you down with them if they can.

At every level I'm aware of, feudalistic intellectual and moral superiority is the polar opposite of Evolution. But the possibility of growth and transformation is unlikely to cut through while these people refuse to question their conviction that they alone know what is best for all of us.

And I could be wrong about that so please don't believe me. Look for yourself. Look at what they say they stand for and measure that against what they leave behind them in their wake. Make up your own mind – after you've examined evidence from more than one position.

Common-Sense apologists may end up like Tony Abbott trying to hand out “Vote for me” cards to shoppers who go out of their way to ignore him. He'll still go home to Margie (if she's still listening to him, that is) comforting himself with the mantra “But I'm right”.

It might not make sense, but that is their “common sense”.

Sadly, the delusions that one class of intelligent people have a privileged ownership of common sense, are far too common amongst the ruling elite. And right now these people ain't doing too well. In fact, they're making a mess, and the “common people” are showing signs of getting pissed off, but with no idea of what to do with their disillusionment.

Stories of the world actually working are more often populated by individuals and small groups who don't cite “common sense” as the basis for their actions. Such people tend to act solo, or gather together in smallish groups, with a clear mission to meet a perceived humanitarian need in ways that sometimes defy “common sense”. They tend to heed inner voices inspired by community-directed states of being like compassion, consideration, contribution, mercy, forgivingness, and harmonising interdependence.

If only those qualities were the Common Sense!

Well, maybe not on a massive scale yet, but the evidence of big shifts is revealing itself – the instances of people actually thinking for themselves and pulling random acts of selfless kindness are on the rise.

And looking at upcoming generations of young people, like my grandchildren and those of my friends, the signs are hopeful.

TRUST AND CONFIDENCE

TRUST AND CONFIDENCE

Quite some years ago I was doing serious inner work on Self-Trust, using as a guide a remarkable book by Ron Smothermon called “Transforming #1.” I was working my way up through his hierarchy of states of Integrity, and found myself stuck for several days at a point where, to rise out of states of Opposition and Disloyalty to the next level, I had to accept that I am not to be trusted. That wasn’t so bad; I could tell the truth of that to myself. But I baulked at the next bit --- the admission had to be declared to the last person on earth I wanted to know about it.

There was no doubt – that person would have to be my friend and mentor, Colin Hayes. My problem was that I was living in a community on his property just south of Perth, and I was afraid he’d tell me to leave. I was out of work at the time, and leaving would have put me out on the streets. Because I needed something from Colin, I could not take the risk of being honest with him. For several days I told myself “There’s no need to be THAT honest. Surely it’s enough if I tell the truth to myself!”

A week later I was still stuck, unable to move, until I could stand it no longer. Plucking up every ounce of courage I could muster, I walked into Colin’s house one morning. “I’ve got something important to tell you.” He looked up at me. “I have to tell you that you should not trust me.” Holding my gaze, he paused for a moment, then quietly said very matter-of-factly “I already know that. Anything else?”

“No. Thanks” And I walked out.

I’d gone but a few metres when something remarkable happened. A lightness flooded over and through me, as if a lifelong burden was being lifted and tension was leaving my body. In its place flushed in a realisation that sounded something like this – “If I had a friend who had the courage to tell me ‘I’m not to be trusted,’ I could trust someone with that kind of commitment to his truth and growth.”

 I discovered I could trust myself, completely. As long as I made a commitment to be honest and open about the times when I should not be trusted. Only then did I discover to my surprise that, when I declare that I’m going into one of my “Don’t trust me” zones and that I should be treated with caution, I’m suddenly free of any need to be un-trustworthy. How’s that for a miracle??

It was one of those truly changing moments in my life. I knew it then, and I know it still.

Since that day, though, another question has arisen for me to stand in – Is this about Trust? Or Confidence?

Is there a difference?

Say them out loud – I have trust.

                              I have confidence.

“I trust” rings a little less positively to me. Why?

While standing in this question a book called “The Courage to Be Disliked” [Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga] showed up, offering a significant possible  difference ---

Trust is conditional.

Confidence is unconditional.

SURRENDER

I’ve come to this point through a very deliberate commitment to live my life in a state of Surrender – a way of being in which I resolve to, as often as possible, engage creatively with what-is, exactly as it is. It’s a way of being that has got me off a lot of futile suffering I used to indulge in – 50-odd years of wishing that things were different, resisting things I didn’t agree with, and insisting on the ways I was sure things should be.

Guess how much joy and satisfaction trying to power my way through life like that delivered……????

Surrender doesn’t often appear on the Top 20 Ways to Live Lists, probably because it is usually confused with notions like “giving up” or “quitting”. As I see Surrender, however, it’s actually the polar opposite of chucking in the towel. During the process of being born, I encountered some difficulties with an inexperienced doctor. From that moment on I decided, “If I survive this idiot, with my life, I’m gonna live it as fully as I can until the man in the white coat calls Time.”

My version of Surrender means accepting oneself as-is, seeing other people and situations as they actually are, and making myself actively and creatively available for play with Acceptance and Courage.

In surrender we can grapple directly with the truth of the thing. No need for false optimism, hopes or faith. No more standing in front of the bathroom mirror intoning “Every day in every way……..” and waiting for Godot to come back.

TRUST

Trust is a state of reliance on the integrity, justice, etc., of a person, or on some quality or attribute of a thing. It differs from Confidence in that conditions are involved – [I trusted you and you betrayed me!!!]

Kishimi and Koga use the analogy of going to a bank for a loan. The loan manager does an assessment of the applicant’s personal and financial resources, and advances as much money as he decides the applicant can repay.

Consciously or otherwise, we do the same thing with our trust, we handle it like the bank manager dispenses credit – How much is this person good for if I decide ‘You owe me back’? And most times we under-research and overestimate our friends’ capacities to repay our “trust”. We also fail to spell out in advance what actually we expect and will be prepared to accept as “adequate value” in repayment. It’s all left very airy-fairy – until we feel we’ve been cheated. Then watch how specific we get!!!

CONFIDENCE

Coming from a ground-being of self-reliance, assurance, or boldness. Confidence is an innate, unconditional belief in the long-term trustworthiness or reliability of a person or group, a state of affairs or a thing.

No set conditions.

Without confidence, a satisfactory social or community life is just not possible.

Is Trust a necessary precursor to Confidence?

No.

As I said before, I don’t always trust myself but, as Maria sings in “The Sound of Music”, I do have over-arching confidence in Me. I feel the same way about many others. I find confidence possible when I know a thing or a person or a group well enough to pinpoint circumstances or occasions where they might not be trusted. It helps if you know the Laws of Duality. Until I get to know a person or group of people well enough, I give them my confidence (for free), and leave any questions around Trustworthiness open to the effluxion of time, tests and intimacy. Because I don’t expect any body to not to have hidden opposites, I rarely get bent out of shape when a contradiction arises and a person does something sometimes described by people who didn’t know that person very well at all as “out of character”. For me it’s just a case of “Oh, there it is!” and make a note to remember Beware! Unstable ground here. Instead of being upset, I’m more relieved.

“But how can you have unconditional confidence in people? Some of them will take advantage of you!” Yes, of course they will. It’s a consequence of duality that it’s not only possible; it’s probable. But if you take it personally, you’re buggered; you’ve handed authorship of the moment over to them, and because their expectations are different to yours, they may not even understand why you’re hurt and what you’re on about.

I’m able to handle it firstly because of that changing moment decades ago as I was leaving Colin’s place when I realised I could trust myself. From that grew a quiet, inner confidence in my insight and ability to deal creatively with people when they “flip”. Continuing to give space to others, even when they “betray” you is a valuable part of “self-confidence”, and it’s a product of Surrender. It’s also the best known antidote to “self-doubt”. 

If you shy away from the challenge of having confidence in yourself and others, in the long run, you’ll never have a satisfactory relationship with anyone – yourself included.

Looking at it from the point of view of the one who has “betrayed” you – if their behaviour is met with understanding and a clear communication that taking advantage of you was something they chose to do, and that they’ve crossed a boundary, what are the chances they might do it to you again? Fairly low in my experience.

If, however, you meet betrayal with self-doubt you’ll soon have “users” lining up to get to know you. It’s inevitable because any skerrick of doubt in you will have you looking over your shoulder, certain that everyone is out to get me. You might as well have a neon sign hovering above your head – Come and Get Me. On the other hand, if you meet betrayal with unconditional confidence you’ll sow the seeds of deeper, horizontal relationship.

I guess it’s possible to go through life skating across thin relationships that need little courage; at least the pain of separations are slight. But is a flat, two-dimensional life experience really why you went to all the trouble of being born and growing up?

Really?

Bottom line here – it’s an essential task of being human that you learn how to manage relationships. Being born into a family and tribe pretty much made sure of that. And that means that, sometime or other, you’re going to get hurt.

People who can’t face being hurt never grow up. How do you best deal with hurt when it arises? The secret is simple – do the one thing you’ve never tried yet. If you find yourself hurting, experience the hurt to your heart’s content. Instead of acting-out and dumping it on others (NOT-experiencing), just be with it for as long as it takes to burn itself out. Practise handling hurt, sadness and disappointment, and give your growing children training in Risk Managing and Hurt Handling. That will prevent them going into the world as naïve emotional dimwits. The training you give them will build up their self-acceptance and confidence immeasurably, and along the way grow enough courage to Trust.

Unconditional confidence creates mates, except occasionally. It’s the “except occasionally” bit that introduces the element of risk and the need for courage. Yes…. 

Confidence requires courage.

Finally, a quick reminder about individual responsibility. If someone shafts you, that is his/her business.

If you decide there’s too little opportunity in a relationship to develop and practice trust or confidence, if you sincerely feel it’s not worth your while making your relationship with this person better, sever the relationship. That’s your business.

CLEARER-ING YOUR MIND

Clearer-ing Your Mind

Let's start somewhere near the beginning ---

Sometimes the biggest life-questions that you can ask yourself-- “Who am I?” “What is my purpose?” “Where can I find fulfillment?” – come down to three very simple and immediate challenges:

• “What shall I do to today?”
• “Why?” and
• “How?”

Actually, the third of those questions takes care of itself. As any actor worth his/her salt will tell you – What you focus on doing and Why you choose to do it organically influence How you will go about it.

Grand visions aren't hard to make up, and they either grab you, or they don’t. But the next stages of

• thinking them through,

• real-ising them,
• recruiting resources, and
• carrying them out

are where constipation and confusions start to show up. Having an emotion-backed resolve is pretty important, especially on those days when the fire in your belly gets low. Everyone's days get their share of hurdles, wet blankets and distractions. Duties and the demands of otherness pile up steadily. The bigger issues start to blur when your to-do list is overflowing with demands that don't get sorted into hierarchies of Importance and Urgency so that they can be effectively managed. Arteries begin to clag up.

In meeting the challenge of bringing our inspirations into form, how can we effectively bring projections and pragmatism closer together?

The world's wisdom traditions tell us to look firstly inside ourselves (yes, we have more than one) for hidden but real obstacles that block the way to fulfillment, or sabotage the results we strive to get. Secreted away from sight in our inner operating systems (mind) are long-forgotten, entrenched thoughts, beliefs, concepts and opinions – bots that blind us to the whole of present reality, take over, sabotage and trip us up the minute we try to move beyond our current self-limitations. The “joke” is that most of us don't know they're there. In our ignorance of our selves, we conclude our “failures” to meet our own expectations are caused by “other things”.

Why can't we find them? Because our minds are full of clutter. Stuff that has nothing to do with, or runs counter to what we really want.

Unsorted external and internal demands will always fill the time given to them, and pitch us head-first into the willy-nilly of daily life. Without at least a rough idea of where we want to be by the end of each day, some flexible intention of how to go about it and a clear resolve to get there, distractions habitually indulged inevitably make our existence seem stressed and chaotic.

If only there were crap-cleaning systems for our minds, similar to ones I use on my computers.

There are.

And they work while we're asleep. The bits we're aware of we call “dreams”

What can we do to get mind-cleaning kickstarted?

First and foremost, look past what's on the telly or Facebook and examine instead our inner reality – what are our reactions and responses to what's happening in front of our faces. Notice and pay attention to what's really going on in the boardroom of Me Inc.

What's happening in your mind is, I maintain, the first and perhaps only place you have real influence over where clarity may emerge. People with a clear vision of what they're doing, and why, have a far greater chance of inspiring the same qualities in others than those who don't. 

Clarity of purpose is catching.

But you may have to clear away a lot of accumulated garbage to find where you last left your vision and resolve. Might I even suggest that you no longer have much idea of what Clarity actually looks and feels like since you long ago sold out on it to something that, at the time, seemed more expedient.

What most people find when they look inside are the following conditions in their mental climate:

Confusion – resulting from the presence of wants and needs, values and principles that are either out of date, irrelevant, at odds with each other, or all three. Confusion manifests as not setting clear priorities because the path ahead doesn't look as clear and decisive as once upon a time.

Confusion and cross-purposes leave behind them a trail of dashed hopes, unresolved intentions, failed fantasies, and a pile of debilitating conclusions like “I can't do this”, “Don't set yourself up for a fall”, “I don't deserve...”, and “I'm a screw-up.” There are plenty of others – the human condition comes with a smorgasbord of de-powering stinkin' thinkin' for you to choose from, peddled and pushed at you by others who've already given in to disillusionment and are only too keen to pull you alongside for company and comfort.

To make things even trickier, a lot of us are not even aware of, or will vehemently deny any suggestion of the presence of contrary compulsions within. We are most often and most disastrously brought undone by what we don't know or won't acknowledge.

Distraction -- manifests as a hundred small things that hook and pull your attention this way and that. We were deliberately born into a wonderland of tempting possibilities, each competing for our favour. And if our parents neglected to teach us how to choose relevant life styles and make decisions congruent with our choices, then it's no wonder we lack the skills to select interesting projects that match our temperament and skills, and follow each one through to some relevant kind of result, Without practice in self-discipline, we're more likely to stay stuck in a childish pursuit of the next shiny bauble, the next “big thing”.

If you ever want to be taken seriously as a human being, maturity must be developed alongside your child-ness. Maturity, in this case, takes the form of your ability to make intellectually and emotionally intelligent choices and commit to them with appropriate decisions. Youngsters fare much better in later life when they are mentored into developing a desire and capacity for withholding their childish temptations to instant gratification. Maturity Parenting, by example and encouragement, leads growing children to voluntarily forego lollies and blue ribbons, and instead develop life skills until they've evolved enough in order to experience Satisfaction.

Self-Discipline is a skill that has to be learned and practised.

Disorganisation – arises from a lack of the kinds of orderly, strategic thinking that lead to productive results. Disorganisation is also a symptom of self-discipline deprivation. If you were spoiled (over- or under-indulged) as a child, then you'll have to learn self-discipline yourself. That's not as tragic as it sounds. Even those of us who grew up under a cover of extreme discipline had to, when we finally broke out, learn the difference between “discipline” and “self-discipline”. There's a universe of a difference between those two! One predicates a life subject to imposed regimes of strict rigidness – the other evolves into a life directed more by voluntary self-mastery

Confusion , Distraction, and Disorganisation are signs of a deficit in the managerial department of our mental and emotional life. Learning to take charge and manage yourself creatively is a basic necessity, unless you really want to live the rest of your life disempowered as a victim. In which case, good luck. There's nothing wrong with being a victim and you certainly won't be lost for others to play games with, but please remember this one Ruthless Rule of Reality – “A Victim's life does not work.” (Just thought I'd mention it).

There's an infinite spectrum of problems and just when you think you've seen them all, some bastard keeps inventing new ones. The problem spectrum changes from person to person, depending on the type of temperament you were born with and the personality you've constructed upon it. Those person-to-person differences are partly caused by dis-agreements about what we actually see as a “problem”, and partly by how our “personalities” and circumstances mysteriously attract (and repel) particular experiences (Why does this always happen to me?!).

At either end of the spectrum you'll find the polar opposites of - a) the tightly controlled, highly disciplined thinker; and – b) the loosely-wound vapid dreamer. There are countless variations on how we deploy our minds, our heart and our spirit, depending on our personal inclinations and the particulars of each situation. And, of course, no two people have exactly the same mindsets, perceptions, capacities for awareness and empathy, and qualities of spirit.

But the paths to attaining clarity are the same for all --

If your goal is clarity, set to one side the thoughts and sensations that fill your mind every day. Differentiate when a more subjective or more objective viewpoint may be more helpful to you. Focus first, on the goal of finding clear air, and that may often mean taking a more subjective look.  If you don't know how to, get yourself with someone who has clarity, and learn. People who are clear-minded are rare, but easy to spot in the crowd.

Confusion is solved by getting honest about what your values really are, getting your priorities of them clear and straight, and knowing under what circumstances you will re-order their hierarchy, even if only temporarily. To do this successfully you have to be ruthless about ignoring what you'd like them to be, what you think they might be, and what you wish they were, and look very critically at the evidence of your behaviour – what you actually do, and what you leave behind you for others to live with. What you leave behind you is the surest test of what's really going on inside you – By their deeds you will know them. And by what they say about the motives and ploys of others will let you see into their hearts.

Confused people confuse others. So do dissemblers and manipulators. The latter confuse others on purpose. They distract in order to camouflage what they're really on about.

Distraction is solved by honing your awareness of subtle shifts in energy and congruity, and getting better at focusing your attention. There's only one way to do these – widen your depth and field of vision by continually checking your insight and your peripheral vision, and exercise directing your attention with intention – on purpose. Since we know from quantum physics that nothing exists until you give your attention to it, and that your attention energises whatever you give it to, I cannot over-emphasise the importance of where you direct your awareness. As I learned from a painful accident I had while learning to ride a bike -- keep your eye on where you want to go, not where you DON'T want to end up.

And another I learned while train-hopping through Europe – travel light. The less luggage you have to carry, the better.

Disorganisation is solved by throwing out non-essentials and tending to the urgent and the important things first and foremost. There's only one way to do that – find yourself some self-discipline and practise it. Start with easy days first, do a stocktake; make conscious choices and decisions as a daily exercise. Ruthlessly throw out anything or any one that has passed its use-by date and keep doing it until you have a new habit – paring down to essentials you need right now, instead of hoarding mementoes from the past (Oh, I might need that again one day?). It may feel hard at first, but you'll soon be rewarded by the awareness of your being getting lighter.

Remember that we are talking here primarily about your inner life, so achieving clarity isn't the same as clearing out your house and straightening out every room. You can have a very busy and complex life going on around you and be calmly clear about it at the same time.

The solutions to lack of clear-seeing don't lie in attacking the problem habits directly; you've tried that and your mind resists you, doesn't it? Mind will not take what you call “Trash” and delete it: what suddenly becomes trash to you will still be “treasure” to the mind. Mind will hide it from you, and use it later to get back at you, either by sabotaging you just when you think you've made progress, or by bringing it back in the form of mental or physical dis-ease. Your mind is indispensable to you, but never be fooled into thinking it's your best friend. If there's a showdown between you and your mind, your mind will dispense with you, if it can, in order to ensure its survival. – I really want you to be clear about that. It's one of the consequences of leaving it in a position of absolute power over your life for so long.

Take care of reorganising your inner life awarefully and watch your external world curve in to travel alongside. Let the external world renovate itself – it will, with a modicum of interference from you. Sound miraculous? There is an explanation for it in quantum physics but, like electricity, you don't need to have a science degree before it will work for you. Just flick the switch.

So, getting back to re-organising. If you became the kind of positive-thinking, mind-control efficiency expert that became so popular in the '90's, you could probably sort your thinking out in a more orderly, focused way. But the effort would be a strain, and the results are likely to be only superficial and temporary because there are inner saboteurs at work under your ground.

The problem I've struck with “positive thinking” is that the preactice takes no account of the Laws of Duality – every positive has equally powerful negatives which, un-addressed, will seek the light of day, just to get things back into balance. The pendulum swing will get you back sooner or later. Positive Thinking is one manifestation of Ego that I call The Topdog – Think only positive thoughts! I'm making you do this for your own good! The Underdog face of our mind is very good at saying “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Three bags full sir” to your Topdog face, but sotto voce it is whispering “I'll get you for this”. And so will your heart, unless you’ve listened considerately to its wants and needs along the way. Believe me, having the suppressed half your mind and/or heart for enemies is not going to be good for your happiness or health. I know from hard experience.

You once promoted your ego/mind, both faces of it, to the CEO's chair, a job it just cannot do, but a position it will not give up lightly. And you need your mind to look after the communications and intelligence centre, you really do.

Take back your job as CEO, bust your ego back to the mailroom and welcome your “negative” bits out into the light and start re-integrating your self. A person of Integrity is one who gratefully holds all of his/her qualities -- positive and negative, desirable and not – evenly in balance. Nothing is hidden in a person of integrity. No nasty surprises.

Commit matrimony with your whole mind and heart, conspiring together to do what you want done. Harnessing both sides of your dualities gives you stereoscopic insight and harnesses latent qualities that your judgments of “bad” and “negative” previously kept hidden. Find a way to let/encourage, train and empower your mind to become orderly, focused, clear on its own, and your servant rather than your slavemaster. 

We've all been taught, one way or another, that the mind will run amok if it isn't watched and controlled. Like a child it is easily distracted; an undisciplined mind will run around in all directions. But few people have actually tested whether the mind's nature is so chaotic. What we call “chaotic” may be a very creative, non-linear way to sort out ideas, thoughts and perceptions that may have arrived on your doorstep randomly. An example of mind doing its irrational thing quite well is to watch it when we are “dreaming”. So many of our dreams, upon awakening, don't make much “sense” at all. But mind does know what it's doing. While we sleep, the backrooms are busy sifting through and sorting out today's changes, ready for the next new day. It works. And people who, for one set of circumstances or another, are deprived of the chance to let the mind dream, become very ill indeed.

There is something else altogether going on here, and there are nearly as many theories about what that might be as there are dream therapists. We take for granted, looking at our own confusion, that it would be a struggle to turn inner chaos into something more orderly. But I've done enough time in the wilderness, recording and studying my dreams, to realise that dreaming is one of the mind's ways of automatically doing the sorting, filing, data processing and cleaning up for us – on the night-shift while the rest of us is asleep.

Perhaps if I drop the terms “chaotic” and “disorganised”, since some of that activity might be quite functional. If I use instead the terms “disturbed” or “perturbed” or “unsettled” to describe how we feel when we're out of balance? This is where the world's wisdom traditions offer a valuable secret. They teach that the deeply unsettled mind comes about through one thing only –- identifying with some thing, some notion, some belief, some principle or value or some way of being that we are NOT, thereby losing sight of what we really ARE. In this context it may be that the depth of our suffering may be evidence of a gap between our true self and those fabrications that we are not. From time to time we all get lost and lose our bearings. Feeling “off” is just a warning bell.

There's no long-term ascendancy in selling out to “otherness”: in fact, quite the opposite. Neither you nor I can possibly be a puppet of outside demands and pressures unless we see our true self as secondary, while whatever else that we've attached our “I” and “Me” to as primary. After all, reasonable mind tells us, how can you eat, put a roof over your head, raise a family, and so on without plunging heart and soul into the “hard realities” of daily existence? Well, I suggest that we can – by engaging creatively with the hurly-burly of the world “out there”, but not identifying with either “it”, or with the struggle. The difference may be described as the difference between riding a horse and being a riderless horse. By playing with the challenges, but not making or taking them personally, we free-up our selves. There is great freedom, agility and power in this one simple secret – Don't take it personally. People who take things personally may be letting a false sense of self-importance take over. And my emphasis is on “false….importance”

It also helps to know at what level of Need your current challenges are coming at you, and to meet each of them at that level, according to the rules of that level. Are your challenges biological/physiological, basic safety or survival, or are they social, or related to poor self-esteem or are they matters arising from a deficiency of self actualisation?

Needs Levels

• Biological and Physiological needs include air, nourishing food and drink, shelter, warmth, sex and sleep.
• Safety needs include protection from the elements, security. stability, order, law, and freedom from fear.
• Social needs include friendship, intimacy, affection and love from family, a sense of It's OK to be here”, friends, groups, romantic relationships.
• Esteem needs include experiences of achievement, a sense of mastery, awareness of inter-dependence and choices, a sense of place in the order of things, recognition, prestige, self-respect and respect from others.
• Self-Actualisation needs include experiences of realising personal potential, experiences of expressing yourself and finding fulfilment, the experience of personal growth, and a few peak experiences to put a cherry or two on top.

Maslow himself summarised his theory – 'It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread. But what happens to man’s desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled? At once other (and “higher”) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still “higher”) needs emerge and so on. This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organised into a hierarchy of relative prepotency' (Maslow, 1943, p. 375).

In the light of all this, look at what's in your face now. If you're going through a major trauma like grief, divorce, loss of a job or geographical relocation, you'll probably find yourself being bounced by a complex set of challenges around different levels of need. You feel like the ball in a squash tournament and find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the scale and the number of whacks you’re copping. Yes?

Take some time out to tease out the knot of problems and sort each separate strand onto a shelf-level that feels appropriate. Don't get hung up on whether you get this sorting process “right” – trust your judgment. What's of prime importance right now is to just do the identifying and sorting. There can actually be no “wrong” choices here and you can shift something around to somewhere more appropriate at any time. What's more important is that you make an aware choice and stay awake and present to what shows up next. Decide at which level each need demands to be met. Then prioritise according to the hierarchy I've just given you.

Again, there are no right or wrong choices in which position you place things on your hierarchy – hierarchies change anyway – continually; it's the act of making this choice now in these circumstances that lifts you from being the emotional subject of the problem to being more objective. It creates separation and distance between “Me” and “the Problem” and helps you see more clearly through what once seemed either an impenetrable knot or a dead end. And just in the seeing there is movement.

You'll soon realise for yourself that you have to settle lower-level, basic needs like food, shelter and safety before you start working on your social skills, self esteem and attending to getting the most out of life. Only when each level of needs has been deliberately and demonstrably satisfied can you effectively move on to higher vibrational-frequency levels. In the meantime, don't worry about the peak level of self-actualisation because as you consciously and intent-fully deal with the lower levels, you’re already in training and higher aspirations will automatically start to fall into place, too, all by themselves.

There's a cosmic joke that you already are what you're looking for; you just haven't seen it yet. But working your way up each rung of the ladder of more basic needs will help you real-ise those ultimate questions -- Who am I? What's my purpose, etc? You'll probably find you really are, and have been all along, a conscious agent who is free to choose at any time which level of being to operate from that may be most appropriate to the moment. What has happened up to this point is that, in the absence of you making conscious choices, your ego has determined default choices for you in your absence. That's why you've been in a rut, getting the same results, over and over again.

While you're doing this groundwork, do take time out each day – even if only for 10 minutes – to reflect quietly and appreciatively on the wider picture of what you're doing, how far you've come, and where you'd like to get to. I do this every night on retiring, giving my subconscious all night then to work out the details. By committing to a practice of meditation, you take your mind to a level where daytime clarity will become more natural and effortless.

Perhaps the analogy of a river will help to show what happens.  On the surface, a river can be fast-flowing and whipped up into waves and eddies. As you descend into it, however, the river's flow becomes slow and steady, and at the very bottom, the water may be so calm that it hardly moves at all. In the same way, there's a level of emotional and mental consciousness that knows only peace, calmness, and clarity. But unlike a river bottom, it's not sluggish. There is an exquisite self-balancing coexistence between relaxation and alertness. 

A settled, alert mind, in fact, is the most capable of meeting the day's demands because it is guided from within and coming from a state of balanced readiness. Self-awareness permeates every aspect of your being, and when you pay attention to it you know where and who you are in any given moment and, grounded in that knowing, you are clear about what’s happening and where you're going. Suddenly it turns out that the day contains enough time for you to experience gratitude and feel fulfillment, which is a timeless way of being, undisturbed by demands, duties, and distractions.  

An awareful way of being also leads to changes in your daily life that can be summarised as things you naturally do and things you just don't do any more..... not because you forbade yourself, but because they just don't interest you any more.

YOU DO

• Make your surroundings orderly and uncluttered.
• Take a close look at stresses that need to be addressed.
• Identify, and engage with, influences that work for you.
• Find a friend or confidante who shares visions of clarity and fulfillment.
• Take moments to Centre yourself several times a day, and additionally whenever you feel distracted or unsettled.
• Go outside to soak in the calm and inspiration of Nature. Note how she works. You might notice there's a lot of Allowing going on, and not much interference.
• Follow a regular daily routine, without being enslaved to, or browbeaten by it.
• Get at least six hours of good sleep every night.
• Eat and exercise healthily.
• Hold Balance and Possibility as sacred look-fors in every situation.
• Surround yourself with playmates and life-lovers. 

YOU DON'T

• Remain in situations that turn disordered and stressful and which you don't have the power to change.
• Push your work time to the limit of exhaustion, mental or physical.
• Get tied down by other people's opinions and attitudes.
• Let stress go unaddressed.
• Act while under the pump.
• Let a good night's sleep slip by more than once or twice a week.
• Drown yourself in bad news and the world's chaotic unrest.
• Ignore your body's signals – be aware of when it wants rest, nourishment, down time, and a chance to reset itself through meditation and quiet time alone.
• Forget to provide yourself with pure food, water, and air, restful and comfortable shelter. 

What these lists suggest is that as your inner world becomes more orderly and clear, your actions in the outer world follow suit. If they don't, look inside again – you've missed something. Both sides of every equation are important. Life is a Balancing Game. Just remember that without inner clarity, all the external neatness and organisation won't serve as a substitute; it will merely be a temporary cover-up.

Inner fulfillment is the goal of life, and spreading fulfillment around is its purpose.

It has always been thus.