I'M NOT GUNNA MAKE IT????

I'M NOT GONNA MAKE IT......

I just got something funny -- thanks to a difficulty with a rookie doctor at Castlemaine hospital while I was being born, I've lived my whole life so far coming from Fear, engendered by the thought "I'm not going to make it."

Now, nearly 75 years later, I'm happy to realise why I'm exhausted, and wondering what my life might be like, from now on, without that millstone????

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

The last person in recorded history who genuinely asked “What is truth?” got a vacant stare and a reverberating silence from someone who actually knew the answer. In that blank ego-less gaze was the answer. But what was it?

For Pontius Pilate it had already been a bad day. Over breakfast, his wife had complained of a sleepless night of troubling dreams, and begged her husband not to go to work that day. Now the native medicine men, a bunch of oily troublemakers with whom he had to keep the peace, were having a field day with him, conniving to get him to condemn to death one of their country’s hundreds of crackpot prophets. “Honestly, there must be something in the sand of this benighted province”, Pontius groaned inwardly. He put on a show of interrogating the poor blighter, but now the ragged young man was going on about truth! Determined to shut this waste of time down, the scholarly Pontius said archly, “OK smartypants, you come in here rabbiting on about truth. If you’re such and expert, you tell me, what is Truth?” That’s when everything went quiet and Pilate began to wish he’d listened to his wife. Since there was nothing coming from the mind of the prisoner before him, Ponty could only hear the sound of his own ego clanging away inside his head and feel a kind of powerless confusion gnawing away at his gut. He got it. That was his truth in that moment, and he was in the presence of someone who knew something deeply disturbing. In the presence of this man who looked as if he’d never hurt a fly, Pilate felt deeply threatened and perturbed to the core of his being. Finally, he couldn’t stay still any longer, washed his hands of the whole affair, and was never heard of again.

What is Truth? Good question? We mention Truth a lot – it gets a lot of press. But when pressed, few people seem to have a handle on what it is. The ultimate answer is, of course, to be found in silence, but I can’t give you that tonight because this is radio, and if I stop talking for more than 8 seconds, alarm bells will go off in the station’s computer, and the silence will be replaced by nice, irrelevant music.

So, seeing I cannot give you Truth, the best I can do is talk about it, and leave you to look in the direction I’m pointing.

Let’s begin with the possibility that there are at least two versions of Truth – on the one hand there is The Truth, and on the other hand there is your truth (and my truth, and Aunty Freda’s, and Malcolm Turnbulls, and the Pope’s……..)

Let’s see if I can point to THE Truth. How’s this? The Truth is the infinite entirety of What Is, as it is. Truth is what remains when every skerrick of not-the-truths, half-truths, obfuscations, mis-takes and downright lies (or un-truths) is washed away.

Which immediately raises a couple of problems for the human mind. The first is that truth is infinite and it is evolving, and the egoic mind is not. So anything finite and fixed cannot possibly contain the infinitely evolving. That would be like trying to stow a car into its ashtray while it’s being driven along the freeway.

The second problem truth has for the mind is that mind is a device for thinking-about. That means – 1) It cannot be in the present, which is the only place truth can be found; and 2) Mind cannot BE truth and, on its own, cannot take you to truth; the best it can do is think about truth, and commentate just like I’m doing now.

The third problem for mind is that it has a limited range of views. It cannot see the whole thing. And it has this function of taking up points of view which it has to be right about and calling all of that “reality”. You know this. You know you have a reality, and someone else you know has a very different reality, and you both think you’ve got a hold of “the truth”. You don’t. I don’t. We cannot. Whatever we think is “the truth” – ain’t. It may be a sliver of the truth. But that leaves a LOT out there unseen

Truth is NOT dogma, ideas, concepts, judgments, opinions or beliefs. We're up past our eyeballs in all that stuff, and we're no nearer Truth than when we started. Try this on for size -- anything you can be certain about is NOT the truth. The best it can be is your truth, your reality, which means you have to separate yourself from those who don’t share your reality, those who see it another way. Sure, you may get some agreement from some other “others” that your truth is the real thing, and you may build a congregation on it. But there was a time when everyone knew the Earth was flat. That didn’t make it so. It just meant that we had a limited point-of-view that  didn’t include seeing it from outer space.

Dogma, opinions and beliefs are clung onto by those who are not aware that what they think to be “the truth” – isn’t, that some of their other truths might not be, or are too frightened or not yet ready to allow those possibilities, or just can't be bothered to search for the truth.

Figments of the mind like dogmas, ideas, concepts, judgments, opinions and beliefs position themselves in duality on positions of either This or That. Every position creates opposition. – [That is not a belief of mine, by the way; it is a ruthless rule of reality. Like the law of gravity, it doesn’t give a damn whether you believe it or not – it just is.]

Absolute Truth is utterly non-positional – it is both This and That, with no feelings attached. Truth is what it is in the moment; everything else is variable, negotiable, depending on who’s involved and how you feel about it.

Why do our minds just hate that? It goes all the way back to when we were growing children. Our parents and other role models in our life taught us how to think and, in a lot of cases, what to think. And we had natural feelings about those times. But most of us were taught to shove a lot of those feelings – the “unacceptable” ones -- under the rug. We got a lot of instruction about what feelings were OK to show and ones that were not, but we got precious little conscious training in how to healthily manage all our feelings as they arose. Problems began to fester apace when our training turned to schooling and training us how to override our feelings by logical thinking, reasoning, and downright denial. Young people who were to become “somebody” and make “something” of their lives had, we were told, to behave in certain ways. And feelings about such disciplines, especially negative ones, were downright discouraged. During the external instructing in which the mind became the authority, and feelings were trained to be subservient, these same dynamics, at the same time, were internalised.

And to this day, when the chips are down, your mind lords it over your feelings. What mind sees as “truth” is based on its opinions and beliefs, and these rarely change to be appropriate to a situation. In fact, mind sees to it that you will see each situation in such a way that it will “prove” its opinions and beliefs to be correct.

Your mind cannot know Truth except through a period of willing co-operation and partnership with feelings. A period long enough to dissolve the iron grip that the almighty mind has over your seeing. Then you will be able to drop your memories, beliefs and feelings about a situation and accept it for what it is, just as it is.

The truth of a situation has no emotion. No likes or dislikes. No need to assert or defend. Truth is what-is, with every component in plain sight.

The quiet, calm voice or feeling which is not tugging at you for attention, but just noticing facts and neutrally observing relationships between them – this is your inner voice, the voice of Truth. It invites you gently always to let go and surrender to what-is.

So how and where do we now clear away the distractions and noise, and access this still, clear voice of Truth?

Well, by going inward, and by asking –

Is this the truth I’m seeing/hearing here?

Every time you find yourself reacting to some situation, especially if there’s a feeling behind it, just observe what’s going on in your mind and body.

Is my experience of this being distorted by my memories of past experiences, the feelings that are tied up with them, and by conclusions I reached then that blinded me to the truth of that original experience, and those that followed it which I lumped into the same bin?

See if you can remember when this reaction has gripped you before, and know that, in this state of mind, you were mistaken then, and you are not seeing this situation now clearly as it is. Let that be. Just notice it. Don’t try and “fix” it. The seeing is enough.

Long entrenched mis-truths may come back again and again for a while, but you’ll notice each time that they carry less and less emotional charge, and you will be more able each time to see what-is, without emotion, more clearly.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that if your stop “feeling” about it, the situation will engulf you. It won’t. In fact, the opposite will happen. Habits that you let be, will in time, let you be.

And you’ll be left in peace with Pure Truth.

RAINING? DANCE A LITTLE.

PAUSE A MOMENT GRATITUDE – DANCING IN THE RAIN [Broadcast on 3rd March, 2012] Once upon a time I lived and work in tropical Broome, in Western Australia. It always amused me how, after the long, hot, humid approach to the wet season, the first huge drops of tropical rain used to send the tourists scurrying for cover,  **** while the locals came out and danced in the streets! The tourists called it “going troppo” [SFX: Thunderclap] [Dancing in the Streets – Human Nature (A) 23 secs] Fade @ -2:35 American business dynamo and writer, Vivian Greene coined the quote:- Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass – it's about learning to dance in the rain. Singing and dancing in the rain? Let's Pause a Moment.... [La Raya – Eric Serra] Pause a Moment..... When you find yourself stuck under a cloud..... Take a step or two back, and try another way of looking at it.... What I'm about to suggest to you may sound too simplistic to feel important, but I've found most triggers to truths to be so astoundingly simple, it's little wonder they get overlooked. Our minds thrive on complexity and insist on difficulty and 95% of the time we leave our minds to direct the show. So if your life isn’t as simple as you think it should be, or would like it to be, you now may have some inkling about who might be to blame. Yes, your egoic, life-wasn’t-meant-to-be-easy mind. But who made that decree – life has to be hard? Malcolm Fraser? No – he was just repeating something he’d heard from someone else. And they hadn’t really checked out the truth of it either. Life is what it is. We have the choice – do it hard, or do it easy. I’m going to suggest to you tonight that, unless you insist, life does not have to be this hard. But to make the switch from Hard to Joyful, you’ll have to give up some old habits. And you may find that a bit difficult. Let’s put it to the test. Let's see if you can suspend your prejudices for a moment to consider this possibility – one word can change your attitude and thus, your life, forever. This one word can have you dancing in all weathers. And that word is “Gratitude”. What? Gratitude for what I have to put up with? OK, I hear that, and I'm not asking you to change your mind right now. But instead, for just a moment, see if you can step outside the conflict zone for long enough to sit with this question – are you ready? You've tried resisting what you have to endure.... how well has that worked for you? How much have you enjoyed the struggle, and how much have things improved for you? Hmm-mmm-mmm? Not much, huh? Here’s another possibility I invite you to make space for, just for the next few minutes. It is this …… Is it possible that your resistance to what’s going on is keeping you engaged to it? Your resistance is feeding your energy to what you don’t want, perpetuating it. I’m not asking you to believe this. But I am inviting you to put the idea into your “Maybe” tray for a few minutes while we consider some other proposals I have for you. Don’t worry, we will come back to this. [Main Theme – A River Runs Through It] Hold under....>>>> OK. let's imagine for a moment, if there was something about your life that you could be grateful for – how might gratitude feel for you? Just imagine, for a second or two, what the feeling of gratitude used to feel like. Remember gratefulness? It doesn’t matter how large or how small your memory of it, what did it feel like? If you really can’t remember that, think of something you’d like now, and imagine what it might feel like to get it. Where was that feeling in your body? Where is it now? Same place, or has it moved? Gratitude. Thankfulness. What size is it? What shape is it? What colour is it? Feel it now? Good! Enjoy that feeling for a moment...... If your mind wants to think about it, and it probably will, let that urge go and just return to enjoy the memory of the feeling. Just be with that feeling for a while. If it wants to change into something else, let it, and be with that. Gratitude. Go wherever it takes you..... When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives, but to shift our attention to something that's present...something that we can, here and now in this moment, be a bit thankful for, we begin to experience Gratitude. We get a little taste of heaven on earth. Reading inspirational stories about the trials and tribulations of others is one thing, but finding moments of gratitude in your own struggles and suffering is quite another. You connect with something long buried, and the act of just watching it begins to infuse its power into you.

Today, I'd like to share a unique story from a book called “Learning to Dance in the Rain.” by Mac Anderson and BJ Gallagher. This is a technique you can use today to turn your life around and show you how to dance in the rain, using the power of gratitude: [Singin' In the Rain – Boston Pops Orchestra] Fade under....... Plant a Trouble Tree We all have storms come through our lives, but one thing is for sure—we have no right to make everyone else miserable with our own unhappiness. No need to rain on others' parades. A simple story illustrates my point: The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tyre made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw carked it, and now his ancient truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face was wreathed in smiles, and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss. Afterward he walked me back to my car. We passed the tree, and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier. "Oh, that's my Trouble Tree," he replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, work troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I can pick them up again. "Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there ain't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before." Assigning our problems a place outside of where you live is a really good idea — it separates us from our problems, and reminds us that - I am not my problems; they are just something I have. This is me here, and those are my problems over there. Separating from them helps to de-escalate the situation and put the details where they belong, in a more realistic perspective. It prevents our difficulties from spilling over onto other people (especially our loved ones) who are not party to those problems. They can't do anything about them, nor are they supposed to. Why burden them with our baggage? There's a very healthy reason why a lot of cultures around the world ask you to take your shoes off before entering a house. It has to do with symbolically leaving some things outside. So, plant yourself a trouble tree outside your front door—or a potted trouble plant, if you live in a unit—and leave your stuff outside whenever you come home. It puts a whole new spin on the famous remark about a camel getting though the eye of the needle, doesn't it? You want to get into heaven? Leave your stuff outside! Be grateful that you have loved ones to go home to, even if your loved one is simply a dog who’s glad to see you, or a cherished cat or a prized goldfish. When I go to sleep, I leave instructions for the overnight staff (my subconscious mind) to go out there and do some sorting for me while I’m asleep. It seems to work! And when you pick up your troubles on the way out each morning, remember to notice and  be grateful if they're not as heavy as they were the night before.

*****

We all face adversity in our lives, so it's less the actual content of the troubles than how we react to them that will determine the effectiveness, joy and happiness in our lives. Going to war on our troubles will never bring peace to our world. During tough times, do we spend too much time feeling sorry for ourselves and energetically resisting what we can’t change for the moment, or can we, with gratitude, let go, let be, and ...learn how to dance in the rain? And welcome the chance to enjoy the challenge?

[Let's Dance – Chris Rea – 6:43]

You've been listening to Pause a Moment. I'm Barrie Barkla. Thank you for listening....

HOW TO LIVE WITH RISK? EASY.

PAUSE A MOMENT

HOW TO GET EASY WITH THE RISKS OF TRAVELING

{28:25}

Good morning once again, and welcome now to Pause a Moment. Tonight, we are standing in the question - How do I get to feel in my element with the risks that go with just being alive?

[How Can I Be Sure? – Daryl Braithwaite (A) – 3:33]

There is a cliché that goes “We live in uncertain times”. It's hardly an observation of great daring – it's my perception that, throughout our history (personal and cultural) we have always lived in conditions of uncertainty. That puts us at odds with the all-knowing human mind which cannot allow any taint of inadequacy or not-knowing to befall it.

The problem is that man-mind on its own simply cannot truly know anything; it can only think it knows. But by its habit of thinking it knows all there is to be known and having to be “right” about that, the human mind does an effective job of persuading us that “thinking we know” and “true knowing” are one and the same thing. They’re not, but since most of us are spending a lot of time “thinking we know” while wallowing blindly around in a condition of uncertainty, let’s get a handle firstly on some of the basic rules of this game of “seek and find” we joined.

The first is a bit of a joke on God’s part. We were born eternal – all of us. But in the process of being born we forgot that and bought into the thought of “I could die here!” There could be a purpose to this misdirection: by forgetting that we and all creation are one and eternal, we get to experience dramatic stuff like “separation” and “danger” and “risk” and “adventure”. I mean, if we knew nothing on this earth was truly fatal, where would be the excitement, the struggles, the learning, the growing, the evolution? We don’t learn much when things are going well, do we? And where would be the elation when we finally wake up – yes, in this life—that we made a mistake; that the learning lessons were mock-ups. They weren’t real but, because we thought they were, they were effective and --- wow!!! – what a ride!!! And how much greater have we become as a result of acting out this tragi-comedy?!!

But before we reach that awakening, we expend an enormous amount of righteous energy in fuelling our have-to be-certain minds in their vain effort to control the far-from-certain situations and folks around us. Thanks to the duality of everything around here, we’re continually ricocheting between opposites – pleasure and pain, right and wrong, good and bad, up and down, winners and losers, us and them, safe and dangerous…. We live in states of constant argument where the original purposes of contending, viz. exploration and insight, have given way to verbal stoushes. And the war effort is kept superficial by reluctance to dig down into our own lurking Uncertainties, Anxieties, Stresses and Griefs that underlie every human condition. No wonder we eventually reach a point of frustrated exhaustion. We find ourselves shadow boxing with each other on a treadmill going nowhere.

“Life is risky” is a conclusion we came to very quickly. Even before conception, life on this plane was impossible without risks. Several million sperm cells and only one gets the prize! Is that supposed to cheer us up with the thought that, after that, everything else should be a breeze?

Well, it isn’t. Our entry into this world, thanks to the process of birth (natural or caesarean) was for most of us a traumatic life-threatening experience over which we had no control. Some introduction! The (unverbalised) message we got probably went something like This becoming-human lark is a danger to life! We all began our journey in a direct #.1. experience of threat to life, accompanied by feelings of fear and increasingly excruciating discomfort. We were set up to experience every discomfort afterwards as possibly life-threatening (Oh no, here it comes again!), and develop strategies to fight or escape.

Now that we’re older, we still gauge strange situations as either “good for me” or “bad for me”. And our mind does that automatically. Without some retraining, which is what tonight’s chat is all about, we rarely stop and ask ourselves “Am I seeing this as it is, or is my view being distorted by past memories and feelings that carry apprehension, doubt, and memories of others telling us to “Be careful”? We’ve been primed to view Risk with grave suspicion.

Life gives us very few natural cushions or guarantees. Most of the pillows we use, whether they derive from psychology, religion, economics, or politics, are artificial (man-made) and fallible. All of us face decisions, daily, that could turn out badly. That’s what’s real. In every ad. break we're invited, encouraged, and in some cases legally forced into an assurance industry that's based on a blatant principle of engendering Fear of Loss, making promises of security in return for your investments, then paying out less than they take off you.

Every day and at every level of our life, those who choose to live deliberately take leaps of faith, large and small. We lean our trust against others, hoping they'll do the “right” thing (well, our definition of it). We count upon predictions and trends that could slam into reverse at any moment. Risk is simply another word for Uncertainty and Insecurity, and it has been shown many times that uncertainty and insecurity increase the chance of a stress response. Risk is unavoidable, even in the most reclusive life. Therefore, how you handle risk will be vitally important to your emotional and physical well-being, peace of mind, comfort, your stress level, and your success – whatever that means to you.

Psychologists have shown that it is impossible to remove emotions from decision-making. Therefore, to handle risk well, you must not only inform yourself thoroughly on those in whom you invest your self, you must equally take into account your own pattern of psychological reactions to uncertainty, difficulty, opposition, paradox and ambivalence.

[Blithe Bells – Aust. Chamber Orchestra (A) –]

Hold Under>>>>

If you know yourself well enough, you can become friendly with risk. If you’re game enough to give it a go, here are some guidelines to get you started:

1. Know your prevailing ambient anxiety level. If it is unhealthily high, find out how to bring it down. Get to become aware of what triggers sudden surges, and be honest with yourself about it.

2. Be patient with your emotional reactions. Tolerant empathy is the beginning of emotional intelligence. Emotions are stored in every cell of our body, attached to memories of the past experiences that created them. In the present, a thought crossing the cortex of your brain has triggered some of those stored past memories out of which have popped feelings that are stored with them. Our mind says “This here now is the same as that time then”, so memories are tapped and feelings released. This is natural. Don’t interfere; just watch and let it happen. We are re-living and releasing old stuff. Gently train yourself to simply observe the memory and feel the feeling. Give it space to just be, and allow it to go in its own time. Because our recurring problems were felt into being in the first place, feelings are the key to cleaning them up. Reasoning just won’t work, not for long. Nor will resisting the feelings; feelings you resist will persist. Venting your feelings doesn’t work either; that just reinforces them in your psyche, and makes life a misery for anyone in earshot. But every time you allow a feeling to arise and let it be until its power diffuses (transmuting), you are clearing the associated memory banks of baggage you no longer need, and releasing the long-pent-up emotions. Simply seeing your mind in action is all the cleansing needed, and you may even feel a burst of lightness when the feeling goes. When that happens, notice it, be grateful, and come straight back to the present.

3. By all means be rational, but don't be fooled that reason, logic or positive thinking can defeat risk or the resulting anxiety. It cannot. There’s a ruthless rule of reality that says – You cannot reason your way out of anything that was not reasoned into in the first place. And very, very few of our rough spots were ever reasoned into. Logic and reason are handy to have around, but they’re not duct tape for the soul.

4. Gather as much useful information as possible.

5. Take in other points of view, the more the better. The more sides to a situation that you can see and embrace, the more risk-ready and resilient you become.

6. Don't trust the crowd. The crowd nearly always gets it wrong.

7. Don't believe that trends are the same as certainty. In fact, be very wary of anything purporting to be “certain”. Certainty was put high on the room service orders by humans soon after we checked in, and we’ve never been short on charlatans ready to promise us Certainty. But the truth is, it’s not on the menu. It never was.

If you really must have certainty, be certain of this – nothing is certain.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The parts of yourself that you might like to get more familiar with are those parts of you that are patient, rational, gatherers of information, not swayed by what the rest of the group thinks or feels, and psychologically at ease with who you are.

Here's a meditation that you may find as revealing as I do. For the purpose of the game, assume that our present experiences are actually answers to questions that we once asked of life – eg. The Answer is “Me writing this blog”. Perhaps the question years ago was What does it feel like to be a 75-year-old blogger? This game simply turns upside down the usual question/answer exchange.

I’m going to give you a number of answers, which represent the truth of your present experience. I’m asking you to suppose what might be the forgotten questions for yourself that have been answered by each of these experiences as they are with you now. Rest assured, this is just a game. It is entirely for you and there can be no right or wrong answers. Its value for you lies in thinking about your Life, not as an unsolved question, but as a perfect Answer to a question you may have forgotten you once wondered about.

See if you can find a question that leads to these answers……

•   Living with the family I've got. {That’s the answer. What might the question have been?}

•   In the middle of this relationship {What was the question that might have led to this answer?}

•   In the middle of abundance.

•   In the middle of scarcity.

•   In the middle of knowing.

•   In the middle of uncertainty.

•   In the middle of sex – your experience= the answer. What might the question have been?

•   In the middle of feeling.

•   in the middle of not-feeling.

•   In the middle of freedom.

•   In the middle of restriction.

•   In the middle of experience.

•   In the middle of all that is.

•   In my middle.

Notice, as you went through this list with me, any question-answers that came up more than once. There might be one originating life-question that leads to several experiences. Similarly, you might also find multiple life-questions that lead to one experience – nature can be wonderfully economical.

I’ve found this game a marvellous way of getting to know your true self, and what has motivated you and led to your current circumstances, state of mind and mood.

I hope, too, that as you’ve done this exercise, you may have realised that nothing in your life has been wasted. Your whole life has brought you to this point.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Now let’s address Risk.

At first glance, it's hard to see how risk could be anybody's friend, which is why there has been such a push to remove the human element from so much of daily business. Do we really have such a low opinion of ourselves that we assume we add unnecessary risks to an enterprise? "Rational risk" seems preferable to the kind of risk that keeps people up at night and promotes a nagging state of anxiety. Far better, it would seem, to turn risk into a matter for the number crunchers. The rise of heuristics and computerised risk assessing testifies to the popularity of Quantified Risk.

But at the same time, Rational Risk has proved to be a dismal failure. The complex financial instruments that led to the economic collapse of 2008 were devised with the input of physicists and mathematicians, who supposedly had reduced risk to a sliver. What they didn't count on, and still don't, is human ego. Human jealousy, greed and rivalry intervene, along with other psychological factors - denial, competitiveness, temptation, self-importance and over-reaching. Irrational forces toppled the whole rationalist scheme - as it was bound to do.

The psychological downfall of those who misjudge risk is writ large in the current political and economic debacles we find ourselves in. Now is your opportunity to look into yourself to see the factors that even the most prominent figures are prey to. Tell the truth to yourself now – do you ever, in any context....?

1. Deny that there is a problem with your choices and decisions?

2. Freeze, or flip out in the face of crisis?

3. Find yourself in difficulty dealing creatively with fear and anxiety?

4. Find yourself fixated on winning something? Obsession can blind you to process. Have you ever been heard to think the ends justify the means, the rules won't apply to me in this case, I'm above criticism, I can deal with the consequences later?

5. Get competitive - refusing to lose, no matter what it takes, or who it takes out? Is argument for you a declaration of battle, rather than an exploration of possibility? Are you never tempted to destroy any opposition or dis-agreement, or even dismiss it as “stupid”? Have you ever thought “If you aren't for me, you're against me.”

6. Over-identify or attach your image and reputation to a project, making the crisis and controls personal? Have you ever recently suspected you might be over-controlling, focusing on irrelevant details while losing sight of the big picture.

7. Obfuscate how things, overall, really are. Are you guilty of looping and distracting attention away from what's really going on.

At the risk of over-simplifying, these psychological blind spots can be overcome by asking every day, "How am I doing?" I don't mean this in the sense of how you are performing, or did I win that one, but rather how do you feel about what's just happened? Do you rest easy? Can you look others cleanly in the eye, without having to stare them down. Do you detect signs of stress or anxiety? Is that enthusiasm emanating from you, or are you putting on a bit of a show, or do you look as if you've just sucked too hard on a pickle? If so, what are you doing about it?

We're not talking about psychoanalysing yourself. We're talking about being aware and in touch with yourself. Your psyche is constantly changing; change is the only constant. Being able to stay in touch and in harmony with your ever-changing self is a huge benefit if you want to keep up with the shifting scene at work or in the markets. When you are flexible, open, courageous and alert, you are becoming the master of risk. When you're defensive, aggressive, fearful, jealous and closed, you will be toppled by your own excesses. Bank on it. 

In the end, risk becomes your friend when you have enough self-awareness and humility to be comfortable with change, uncertainty, and unpredictability. These are inescapable aspects of life. They're what make it interesting. Otherwise, we might just as well have stayed home in heaven. It's up to you whether risks create stress inside or the very opposite - out of uncertainty can come creativity, new solutions, discovery, and the fulfillment of your inner potential.

I earned this wisdom back in March 2009 on a 7-hour bus trip from Bangkok to Surin City. I had sold up everything I owned, packed a few belongings, and flown to Thailand to start a new life. Suddenly I felt more utterly alone and vulnerable than ever before in my life. And this is what I wrote ==

[Rufiyaa – Phoung Anh]

Hold under>>>>

ON THE BUS -- BANGKOK TO SURIN (March 2009

I am a stranger here.
Leaving the country of my birth at age 66,

I have come to live in this beautiful land,
But a country that has no niche with my name on it...........
I feel like a homeless tourist,
Welcome (up to a point)
And still alien.

I have no control;
I am suddenly so very ordinary
And lost.
I feel my physical and mental well-ness
Being stretched and stressed with such rapid and drastic changes in locale.
My mind's reaction is to search for and attempt to restore
Something familiar --
To retreat from this landscape
To a country more familiar
Into rituals of familiar normality.
But I can't;
This time there's no-where to escape to.
I feel isolated, fearful and un-well.

I can feel myself creating this moment.
In this strange country I must accept whatever comes in the next,
Moment to moment
On its terms, not mine. I have no authority here.
Here, barrelling though picture-card rice paddies
Populated by alien people
Whose lives are filled
With their own concerns,
Notions of my self-esteem and meaning
Have no currency whatsoever.
They have lost their former power
To define and control this experience,

If ever that power really existed.

There's something I can do, though
And I'm doing it with all the focus I can muster --
I'm sensing into the energy of each new locale --
The air-plane, the stopover terminal at K-L,
The Bangkok customs hall,
The bus station booking counter,
The lunch-stop markets.......
And maintaining a sense of balance in each place,
Observing and assimilating "How it's done here",
And being appropriate to that.
Balancing at that level.
Making it deeply OK to be shifted and swept off my feet
By the unfamiliar currents and eddies of a new environment,
Going along with the flow,
And creatively harmonising with it as much as I can.

Surrendering to just this much;
Until I have no more resistance.

When the current slows and allows,
I open up carefully like a newborn babe,
Exploring new and strange sights, sounds and smells gradually
Allowing uncertainty, fear, sadness and loss
To rise and fall --
And allowing a new energy to flow over and through me,
Dissolving the old boundaries between "Will"" and "Won't".

I've been blessed at just about every check-in counter along the way
With fellow-travellers who seem determined to do it the hard way,

 Hanging on for dear life to their “shoulds”,

Bristling with self-important "Won'ts";
People who resist the way it's happening for them.
Thank you. You remind me that's not the way to do it.

...... I'm learning a lot today
About transformation.”

Fade out>>>>>

[Post Script: I had absolutely no idea when I wrote these notes, that these experiences would turn out to be a vital dress-rehearsal to surviving the physical and transformational upheavals immediately following open heart surgery just 12 months later  There are no accidents......]

HANDLING THE UNKNOWN.... can be a bit like going to live in a new country --

Get out and around, get familiar with the layout,

Allow yourself to get creatively lost in strange surroundings.

Learn the language,

Smile "Hi" to the locals,

Get to know the new rules, the customs, and "the way it's done here",

And be respectful and appropriate to them.

Expect some stress,

Our minds usually tolerate only so much

Before resisting the unfamiliar.

That's just how minds are.

Practice extending the threshold of your tolerance.

As you get older, take it from me – you're going to need it.

Make it OK to be shifted and tossed around

By the currents and eddies of change.

Drop every urge to fight the flow.

It's just culture shock

Make it OK to open slowly

And explore everything gradually.

There's no need to rush.

Surrender to each new experience,

And gradually get into harmony with it.

(Unison is not required – harmony is pleasing)

Wherever you find yourself,

Sense the energy of each new space;

Step into it and strike a fresh sense of balance.

Allow times of uncertainty, fear, sadness or loss if they crop up --

Such feelings are common and normal responses to radical change.

Make them OK. Allow new energies to flow over and through you unimpeded.

Allow old boundaries to dissolve.

Allow the fullest possible flush of new freedom

To sweep you up.

Now is the only available time

To be stretched and re-shaped

By the powerful forces of what is

As yet unknown.

You need only three items in your travel kit --

•   Willingness to venture

•   Openness to experience

•   An elastic personal integrity.

******

With these three willingnesses, you can be whatever you choose. All you have to do is decide your destination for now and embrace the journey. Shoulder your belongings, and put one foot in front of the other, the path will open before you. It always has, hasn't it? Aren’t you here now?

And it always will. Because when you stand far enough back you'll see that you and your eternal creator are one. You are eternal. The "risk" isn't real. It was just put there to make the game interesting.

Namaste.

[The Tender Trap – David Bridie (A) – 5:05]

POWER UP WITH POSSIBIILITY

JUST A MOMENT........

[THE POWER OF POSSIBILITY]

[Broadcast on 8^th September, 2011]

{26:30}

PART - A

For just a moment tonight I'd like us to consider together the Power of Possibility......

[I Can Do Anything – John Farnham (A) – 4:27]

If I had a religion, it would be a religion of Possibility... We're all too ready, I think -- and I'm just as guilty of this as anyone – to overlook something we can't immediately see, or something we decide has too many strikes against it, and consign it to the Impossible Basket.

And I suspect the habit is cultural. For example, as soon as I decided to make Possibility my topic for JAM tonight, I typed the word “possible” into my music catalogue. Not a single entry; but a stack of “impossibles” – “Mission Impossible”, “You're Impossible”, “It's Impossible”, and enough versions of “The Impossible Dream” to sink the stoutest of positive thinkers. Which suggests to me that Don Quixote's chivalric method of finding Possibility by tilting at the windmills of the Impossible, while romantic as all get-out, may not be such a good idea for prosaic plebs like me who've got things to do other than going around making legends of ourselves.

But what if there's another, easier way to find and attain what's possible? Are you so wedded to your firm ideas about what’s feasible, or would you be willing for the next few minutes to hit the Pause button on your scepticism and come with me on a journey into the unknown? Don’t worry, I’ve been there before, and I promise I’ll bring you back safely.

 OK, for just a moment tonight I'm going to turn The Impossible Dream in on itself. I invite you to look with me at how our lives might change if we changed our minds and stand, just for a while, before an open-window Assumption of Possibility. Let the breeze blow in past you and through you – that the seemingly impossible just might not be so impossible; that if we can think it, if we can imagine it, just possibly, one way or another...... we may be able to feel it into existence.

[La Raya]

Just a moment.........

When you're troubled or stuck........

Try another way of looking at it.........

Let me tell a bit of my story and see how much of this resonates with you...

[The Impossible Dream – Ferrante & Teicher]

My relatively 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 Dearth – chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression. I just didn't have the will to resist it any longer. I didn't care much whether I lived or died. I wasn't going to top myself; I was just too shagged out to make the effort. It's just that Nothing mattered any more. But then that became my saving grace..... Something, in me, shifted, and I don't quite know how to describe what that shift feels like, but here goes.......

You know those 3-D pictures that look like a flat, jumbled pattern of coloured lines and squiggles? You stare at them 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, seemingly 3-dimensional world that you hitherto had not been able to see. The drawing, as such, has not changed, but what you see is magically transformed in half the blink of an eye. And you can suddenly see something wonderful that was there all along, but lost in the confusion, the detail and, sometimes, our ignorance of the fact that there is more to what’s in front of our noses than immediately meets the eye. What we’ve seen in the past often blinds us to a lot of what is actually in front of us. If we don’t like what we see now, maybe we don’t need as much a change of scene as we do need new ways of seeing.

My transformation felt similar. Not caring too much about what others thought, and feeling that nothing mattered any more, both suddenly became a source of freedom, of possibility, of lightness and exhilaration. “What you think is no longer my business”......Whew! “Your opinion of me doesn't matter any more, not to me anyway!” Thank God for that. A load lifted. Without my having to do anything about it, my panicky grabbing onto a need to be accepted loosened. I surrendered to what Les Murray calls “the Is-ful Ah-ness” of things as they are. Isn't that beautiful? – The Is-ful Ah-ness of this moment. It happened without warning one afternoon as I was walking to the bus stop on the way to work I became sharply aware of space..... in, around and through me being choc-full of Possibility. Anything could happen in the next moment. The sense of freedom that washed over and through me in that moment was en-lightening. En-lightening!

Nothing changed, and yet I've never been the same since.

In just a moment, I'll be back to relate what happened next, and share what it's like to feel the Power of Possibility.

PART - B

[Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)? – Mark Vincent (A) – 2:40]

[Here's a song that's familiar – you know the words. Listen, and imagine that you're singing this as a love song to your self......]

As I daily become more aware of the hitherto unnoticed possibilities that flow through and around me, aware of how once impossible dreams are becoming more and more possible.....

[The Impossible Dream – Mantovani]

….I find myself using my own awakening spirit as a guiding reference point, rather than using other people’s expectations, or their beliefs, as benchmarks.

….I find myself relying less on signs, omens, and random coincidences as reassurances for meaningful action.

….I listen to, but rely less on either the approval or agreement of others in order to feel OK about myself or what I'm doing, or even the way that I'm doing it. Almost immediately I feel lighter.

…..I fear less and have fewer panic attacks than I used to.

….I've been able to give up the need to try and control the impermanent and the un-controllable (which is just about everything).

….I've lost so much of my need to feel “special” or “important”.

….I no longer feel I have to be “liked” to get the job done. Sure, I still prefer to feel that I'm bringing something worthwhile to the table, and I'd much rather other people felt better about themselves when I'm around, than have them arc up in antagonism: but I'm not going to lose any sleep over how others feel about me (well, not much anyway). Whatever they think of me is none of my business. It never was.

I'm also losing the need to hang onto being “safe” and “right”. Demands for security blankets and comfort zones come solely from your unkind mind. Acknowledge the urge to be cautious when you get it, consider it, then follow your instincts. By plunging into a situation, I'm getting to know my Courage, and discovering the Stimulation of exploring the Un-known. There are those moments, too, when I become aware of the Serenity of a Silence that is ever-present, and the unlimited potential of Nothing, from which everything new is created.

It is a given of the parasitic human mind that, unable to be in the present, it is always looking to some horizon for More, looking for Better, looking for Different out there in the so-called “real” world. Well, it’s my experience of horizons that they are always annoyingly just beyond reach. But we were pushed on. I, like everyone else on the planet followed the strong messages and directions I got from my parents and wider family, directing me towards who and what I ought to be, and how I should be. But the further I ventured out, the farther I got from that-which-I-am, and the harder I had to work to shore up the illusion of the shopfront personality I'd created to please everyone else. The further I wandered away from the source of power, the more energy I needed to beg, borrow or steal from others just to keep going. In my quest for relevance, importance and some measure of immortality, I weighed myself down with acquisitions – social and career positions, important responsibility, ideas, beliefs and opinions to be right about, and influence over others.

To use a racing analogy – the horse was riding the jockey, and the jockey was buckling under the weight.

The truth is, there was never enough, nor would there ever be enough success or importance to fill the dead emptiness of an ego disconnected from its source.

Well, nothing significant has changed since. Discovering the Power of Possibility is not about changing anything: it's about embracing more of what we are. I still have much the same persona (or is that “personum”?) as before; There is still the same holy arsehole about me that I've had since I started going to school. But that’s not the whole of it now, not by a long way.

I'm seeing myself these days in another light – in the light of Possibilities that show up when we free our selves from out limiting minds. And that lightness is proving to be immensely attractive to surprising new opportunities. More of everything I truly want has come to me in the last 12 months, all without 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!

[I Can Love You Like That – All 4 One – 4:22]

[Here's another love song to your self] (11 secs)

You, me, everyone we know, and those we don’t yet know – find the Common Origin of it all. Find it where it can be seen and where it is not yet immediately obvious. In an ocean of infinite possibilities, we are each just one bunch of possibilities that showed up like a ripple on the surface. I am, so are you – a wave of possibilities cresting on an ocean of possibility. From the biggest tsunami to the tiniest ripple, we are still made of the same possibility as the ocean which gives rise to us, comprises us, and supports us. I Am and always have been that which I'd been looking for. You Are, and always have been, that which you've been looking for. We are not the ripple, but we are that which is permanent and remains after the ripple has washed up on the shore. We are that which is Aware – of everything we previously thought we were. Unlimited Possibility is inherent in that Awareness, from which has arisen everything that will be, everything that now is, and everything that once was.

[The Impossible Dream – David Hobson (A) – 4:10]

From here – from now – everything is possible. All you have to do is choose.

Now that's Aliveness for you!

ARE YOU IMPERFECT? PERFECT!

JUST A MOMENT

YOU ARE IMPERFECT?  PERFECT!!

[Broadcast November 14^th, 2011]

****

This is Just a Moment: I'm Barrie Barkla. This morning we're going to spend some time being with the possibility that our supposed imperfections are actually perfect, just as they are.......

[Help Me – Casey Donovan (A) – 4:10]

Casey Donovan – Is there any way to set my mind free? Well – yes. Fortunately, there are many ways, and it’s well worth while exploring some of them because you may find that the more areas of your mind you liberate, the more self-governing you become.

Let’s look first at why I bother to ask questions like this at 4.20am. Well, I’m awake at this moment because I have a radio programme I’ve committed to do. If you’re up and about because you have a job to do or someone dear to you urgently needs your attention, then maybe the next 40 minutes or so won’t be of immediate relevance to you. But if you’re awake right now when you’d rather be peacefully asleep, then perhaps it’s perfect that you tuned in this morning…….

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, you and I and everyone else, awake or asleep, are searching for something. We are trying to find that One Thing that will give us the freedom and peace that we crave. When it’s soul-based, the urge to be better is evolutionary and uplifting. But once the mind gets hold of it, the censure of deficiency is a burden. And our minds won’t let us rest.

The human mind is always after something. It’s always trying to change something outside of itself into what mind thinks it should be, but it rejects any challenge to radically change itself. Left to its own devices, your mind will not change. Not much. Some people’s minds, like mine, set up expectations for us, then beat us up if we’re less than successful in living up to its idea of how we should be. Lurking in the back of my mind there’s a thought that rears its head from time to time when I feel a bit low -- “I should be better than I am” Have you got one of those “be perfect, or else” minds?  OK, I’ve got something for you tonight.

How do we get ourselves into this bind of compulsory perfection? It’s not a simple question to answer, but if you look back along your life line you’ll notice that you, like most others, were groomed to “be someone” or “do something with your life”, yes? By our parents, by the school system, and later by career pursuits, we were persuaded that there were still more steps to climb before we could say “I’ve made it!” And that someone or something we were supposed to live up to probably had less to do with our innate temperament and talents, and was more tied to their family, academic and cultural expectations. There were rewards for compliance and meeting benchmarks, and penalties for failure to live up to their expectations.

But in trying to comply, we moved gradually further away from our core self. As we grew into teens and young adulthood, we gradually lost sight of a lot of what we are, and no-one else could get to know us either, least of all those who pushed us into this estranged state. We were too occupied trying to perfect expectations that may not have been even ours.

How might we deal with a Tyrannical Impost to Be Perfect?

Here's a way that works for me. It involves, firstly, being willing to loosen up a bit on my fixed ideas of “perfection”. My prejudices around “how I should be” proved to be mostly beyond my reach, and impossible to live with – both for me and for others having to put up with me.

I got started on the Great Escape from the tyranny of faultlessness by being willing to get off an ideal of “perfection” that polarises itself opposite “imperfection”. Years of struggling to hide or completely get rid of all my “bad bits” proved to be fruitless. One or more of them would pop up or ooze out at the worst possible times. Just when I thought I had my dark side licked, there it would be back in my face.

So, I eventually tried something different. I decided to embrace my imperfections as being OK for the time being. I began training myself to look at Perfection rather as a context, a state of being that allows imperfections to comfortably co-exist and co-operate with classic ideals. Surprise! It’s demonstrably how the world works!!

Look at nature around you – isn’t it replete with “imperfections”. On my daily walks I pass eucalypts and peppercorn trees whose images would never make it into any coffee-table books on Landscaping or Gardening. But not only does the Creator of these trees not seem to mind, I find some of them inspiring the most beautiful moments in my day! And if an imperfect tree that’s had a hard life, expressing the joy of its being, is OK to be part of the Big Picture, then maybe there’s a place in this same picture for me!

Nature speaks to me about fullness, a richness in life and living, and of how experiences shape and colour us into an infinite number of variations on the theme of Being What We Are. Maybe “perfect” was an idea dreamed up by a masochist. Behind it I hear echoes of the doctrine of Original Sin – ie. there’s something basically wrong with all of us, just because we’re human. What party-pooper dreamed that one up!?? That’s not the creator I see out there in the wilderness. If God doesn't bother to clean up “imperfections” after her, if she sees a place for them in the Big Picture, what gives us licence to think we know better???

[La Raya]

When you're troubled or stuck........

For just a moment.........

Try another way of looking at it.........

[Fade....]

There's a widespread dis-ease abroad, arising from an assumption that we should be better than we are. I'm not saying that's wrong, but there’s an arrogant Topdog-to-Underdog note of censure behind it that causes enough needless emotional, physical and mental discomfort, unrest and suffering for me to seriously question whether “I should be better than I am” is right? Does it make for better people? I don't see much evidence of that. Does it bend a lot of people out of shape trying to live up to some impossible external ideal? I see plenty of evidence of that. The quickest way to condemn someone to hell is to convince them that there's something wrong with them, something vital missing from their makeup. Children whose well-meaning parents used such in-vogue negative “motivations” to get them to be “better”, by and large now comprise a generation of people who, when left to themselves, have no idea of who or what they are -- broken, depressed, dysfunctional,  anxious shells for later generations to deal with.

You should be better than you are smacks of standover bully stuff. It’s nasty. Why would you feel it necessary to do that to yourself?

Do you think that perhaps you could be a bit better tomorrow? Gives you some wriggle room. It opens up some choices. It invites you to author-ise what happens next.

****

[Something's Missing In My Life – Marcia Hines (A)]

V/O: [12 secs]

If we were not subjected to that treatment ourselves, most of you listening tonight probably know someone who had that done to him/her in childhood by overbearing family members.

There are questions worth asking when you, or someone else close to you adopts a mien of I’m not good enough…….

·       Not good enough? For who? For what?

·       Who says so now?

·       OK. What has to happen before you’ll know that you’re “good enough”.

The legacy lives on; we do it to other people. Either directly by accusation, or indirectly by implication, expectation or attitude, we leave people whose standards don’t measure up to ours in no doubt that they are failing our pub test. The drop in temperature can be felt in Alaska.

[@ -3:56 = Fade]

There are two separate imperatives going on here – one natural and evolutionary, one artificial and destructive. The first is a relatively healthy, innate urge to continue to grow and evolve as a person and as a member of a social group and a species. The other imperative is a mind-induced, somewhat hangdog search to be perfect that arises from a false perception of Deficiency and Lack in what we are now. The evolutionary urge to change and grow is in harmony with a universal force and is self-administered. The drive to overcome a mistaken perception of deficiency is guaranteed to keep you stuck in a rut going nowhere. Now there’s a surefire handicap to start with! If you, like me, got the “there’s something wrong with you” message stuffed into your emotional saddlebags, here are a couple of questions to stand in.....

·       This idea that “I Lack” – where did I ever get that from?

·       Who gave it to me?

·       Who else fed it along the way?

·       What if it isn't true?

·       What if it never was true?

Sure, we can all in some way be better today than we were yesterday. Most of us want that. But unless we’re getting some feedback that we’re making progress, the wanting becomes a chronic condition of futility – and it's in that chronic resignation to feelings of inadequacy that we get stuck. In this condition “wanting better” comes from a presumption of dissatisfaction and lack, a recipe for failure. Trying to grow seeds of Improvement in a soil of unhappiness and impoverishment isn't going to work.

If you were brought up by harshly critical parents, caregivers, authority figures and age-peers, then it’s quite possible that your self-worth gradually imploded and that you’ve seeped into adulthood with a thin veneer of bravado masking a deeply entrenched belief in being not-up-to-it. You were conditioned to feel this way, and it takes a lot more than a few “Well-dones” to overcome a downpour of put-downs.

Your first homework will be to get to know who you really are, because accurate self-knowing is your first key to freedom and accomplishment. Do not for one second longer allow anyone, including yourself, to fill you up with either unrealistic expectations, or snide reminders of failures-to-meet. At any time you catch yourself trying to live up to an ideal that might not have been yours in the first place, please remember this – While I’m trying to be what someone else wants, I cannot be my self. How, then, can I ever know my genuine place in the world, and be anything but feeling  Lost?

We cannot become better than we are until we first undertake and embrace a realistic appraisal of our qualities and their potential right now. And no-one can give that to us; we each have to find it for ourself. If that takes some time to undo years of negative influence, do not despair. Be patient, and take the time to appreciate yourself for your efforts and conjure gratitude for the chance to turn your life around in good time. Out of acknowledgement and gratitude, the tide turns – naturally. Learn to ride it.

****

[All the Things You Are – Martin Taylor & Steve Howe]

While ever we continue to put a separation wall of shortcomings between what we think we are and what we'd rather be, we're creating and widening a gap of empty “Am-Not”-ness which gets filled with all manner of unhealthy crap. Separating-from creates an illusion of isolation; it stops us from experiencing the absolute self-balancing perfection of the universe – the universe of which we are each reflections. We start to get a sense of Perfection when we stop ways of thinking, feeling and doing that artificially separate us, and swap them for ways of thinking, feeling and doing that honour and merge us with the manifold unity.

Consider this possibility – just as a possibility – You do not yet know just how great you are. If you did, you wouldn't be losing sleep over the Crap Gaps --- those chasms between who you think you are (limited), and who someone once told you that you should be (impossible), and who you really are (as yet unexamined). How the hell is anyone supposed to find fulfillment and happiness twanging around between the Limited, the Impossible, and something you haven’t yet realised?

<< >>

You are Light. You are Thought. You are Feeling. You are Worthy, for you are God, getting to know, through what we call “you”, what it's like to feel less-than-God.

****

X-fade.....

While you are dwelling in a question like “There should be more to this; how do I get there?” you are absent from the here/now and perpetuating the habit-thought of Insufficiency and Lack. You can test this for yourself right now. Think about something that you lack. Hmm-mm? Something you think you’re not…. Yes, that. That’ll do. Think about it…... Now notice something in the room where you are….. Now go back to whatever it is you think you don’t have….. Now notice the object again….. Back to the lack feeling……. Back to the object ------ Did you notice that, in the moments you were simply present with the object in the room, there was no thought or feeling of loss or lack or insufficiency? You had to flick yourself out of Now and go back to it, to the past, to a place that has no power to effect change.

That kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ is just habit. Most times you don't consciously think “insufficient”; it is thinking for you automatically. You just go along for the ride, and it's a bumpy one, isn't it? Everywhere we go, we go looking for “Missing”, and we always find it. We go looking for Disappointment, and we're never disappointed not to find something to be disappointed about. We always find what we're looking for. Who was it said “Seek and ye shall find”?

Right now, nothing is ever missing.

[More – Ferrante & Teicher – ]

And there is more – always. More, lying waiting in an infinite field of here-and-now possibility. Ready to serve. Waiting for you to notice it.

In the past, we’ve gone looking for “more” in the field of Missing and Lack and Loss. Well, that hasn’t worked, has it? We can only connect with “more” in the one place we have not yet thoroughly explored – in the fields of Enoughness and  Abundance. We’ve thought all along that if we allowed our selves to be satisfied with having enough, there would be no space for more to turn up. How mistaken we’ve been!

Now. I can't rationally explain how deciding to be satisfied works; all I know is that it brings us into Now (the only place of power) and that it DOES work.  [Jeshua the Christ spoke about it in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25: 14-30)]. Everything we need for this moment, we already have – right now. Nothing to “get” that we don't already have; nothing and no-one to be “worked on”. Nothing to “work out”. Not now.

And when we get that this moment is already completely sufficient to itself, the next moment takes care of itself, and then so does the next, and the next…. When you alight on this here/now, nothing can be missing. If you are aware of “missing”, you have left your present to drop into mourning for a past or worrying about an imagined future. Here and now, everything is, and there is nothing that is not. In Now, everything is always whole and complete.

If there were anything that you are not, then you would not be who you are. And you are who you are, aren't you? You just haven't got to know the full extent of yourself yet......There is a lot more to you yet to get to know and embrace with empathy, delight and gratitude. Right now, you are everything you need to be – perfect for this moment. Don't worry about the next moment – live this one now.

Your old thoughts and concepts and ideas and beliefs of perfection were just that – ideas. And most of them weren't even your own ideas – you adopted them without question from someone else. That's OK – they got you this far, but no further.

Know this –

Perfection does not have a mould, or even a template.

You will never, ever reach someone else's idea of Perfection;

You're not supposed to.

Their perfection is their business; yours is yours.

For now, you ARE perfection. Even your imperfections are just perfect for now. Your world and everything in it is perfect for now. And what other time is there ever, but now? Let that be so, and your perfection will be eternal.

Be grateful for the God-given freedom to be all that you ARE.

Perfection is the aligning of all that you are, just as you are, aligning with all things just as they are. In that suchness you will find the experience perfection you’ve been looking for.

Once you have surrendered to a state of grateful perfection, it gathers you in, in gratitude. That’s when you find perfection is not a static state but the ever evolving movement of the Creator.

.

****

[ I Love You Just the Way You Are – Billy Joel – 3:20]

[This has been Just a Moment; I'm Barrie Barkla. Thank you for listening....]