SELF-MOTIVATION TECHNOLOGIES -- JUNK-FOOD FOR THE SOUL

A professor was taking tea with zen master Nan-In.

As the first cup filled and began overflowing,

Nan-In continued pouring.

Tea trickled all over the table and onto the floor.

Finally, the professor could contain his discomfort no longer --

"Master", he said tentatively, ""The cup is filled."

"So it is," replied Nan-In

"Like this cup

You are full of your own opinions and expectations.

How can I show you anything

Unless you first empty your cup?"

I am grateful to the likes of Wayne Dwyer, Jim Rohn, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar. Deepak Chopra, Stuart Wilde, Norman Vincent Peale -- 

They opened up gates of possibility

At a time when I was drowning in my own ordure.

I found that their philosophies and techniques worked -- except sometimes;

And then they stopped working for me -- except sometimes.

I seemed to be always, almost back where I started;

Nothing much had changed, 

Except I now had an extended vocabulary in more high-fallutin' bullshit.

What had gone wrong?

Nothing.

I was simply about to make another discovery,
Another blinding flash of the bloody obvious.......

There is more.
Aways.

When we find ourselves seemingly back where we started,

It's a sure sign that there is more to "get".

Got it?

Good.

Everything is an invitation to deeper, wider Awareness

The question is --

Am I going to come home and be present for this,

Or stay out on the world's longest lunch-break?

At its core,

The religion of self-motivation, self-reliance and self-service

Relies on integrity, shared humanity and alignment

For it to work.

That is, in and of itself, an enormous leap forward.

It's not deep, but it isn't silly either;

It's a lot more intelligent than the conditions of ignorance it replaces.

It awakens an awareness of Spirit

That is usually a lot more practical than that provided by traditional religion --
One of the reasons why many pentecostal churches have jumped on board
And integrated the techniques with their fundamentalist interpretations of scripture.

It's a lot easier, too, to go deeper
If the more basic needs of life -- food, shelter and some measures of intimacy and achievement are taken care of,
And you can manage a higher level of competence and success.

I also re-discovered some Hope in Personal-Growth-erism.
After years of covering up a sneaking, growing despair,
The simple possibility that there IS a way out, was liberating,
Even if that wasn't it.
And it wasn't. The despair didn't go away:
It just got covered over and driven deeper.
The adage "Fake it until you make it" doesn't work;
No matter how often or how earnestly we try,
Nothing fake will ever become genuine

The core problem I eventually identified with motivational whoop-ups
Arose from their lack of deep-soul nutrition.
The content of most of the seminars and conferences I took part in
Was junk food for the soul,
[Junk food being that which satisfies the act, but not the purpose of eating.]
To me it's a perfect irony that one of the breakfast groups I became involved with met in Maccas' stores.

The limitations of the teachings begin to show up when we reach the limitations of the mind.

The religion of self-motivation and positive thinking is (mostly) head-stuff.

It works on the mind.....

It is, in fact, the mind ....working on the mind.

It focuses on change for the better, instead of transformation.

Instead of first clearing the clutter and detritus of past, outdated beliefs and habits,

It adds more and "better" ones to the pile,

Then attempts to organise and control

The dog's breakfast that results.

The hot pursuit of Personal Growth is still based on:

• a belief in, and fear of Lack,
• A delusion-creating resistance to the inherent negative side of everything,
• A constant addiction to produce,
• An assumption of Scarcity, and
• A compulsion to Earn (money, love, forgiveness...), arising from an inability to get that Deservingness is our birthright. (I am, therefore I deserve.)

Self-motivation tempts it's followers to compete, rather than create.

It's goal is Achievement,

Often at the expense of peace, happiness and balance.
It allows achievement and success to substitute for fulfillment.

It is ultimately self-defeating,

Since a fear of scarcity and lack

Will never produce a harvest of abundance....

Thistle seeds do not grow wheat.

From within the scientific technologies of personal growth

Material, emotional and, yes, even spiritual attainments

Become the measure of how well we're doing.

We begin to define ourselves by one or more of the following --

• My career
• My social status
• My family status
• My possessions -- material and non-material
• How I feel
• What I think

(Thou shalt have no other gods but "Me")

In the midst of a burgeoning business life,

I found myself, more than ever,

Still a victim,

And a victim of more pressures --

• A victim of a need for More, Better and Different
• A victim of a need to Succeed
• A victim of a need to Achieve
• A victim of a need to be Right
• A victim of a need to be Positive
• A victim of Social Consciousness; and
• A victim of Ego, my own and those of everyone I wanted something from.

At this point,

May I proffer some notions that you may like to sit with for a while? --

• Ideas have an inherent tendency to transmute themselves into being and into experience, which then becomes your reality. Sometimes a little personal input is called for; sometimes it works better if we get out of the roadway.
• All achievement began as an idea.
• All lasting achievement began as an idea evolving from a desire to create an experience, not from an urge to avoid another, feared experience.
• If you're getting what you don't want, part of the reason is that you're unknowingly harbouring an idea that is overriding the idea of what you want. There's an experience you need that you will not acknowledge. Your wheels are spinning. Traction begins with acknowledging and owning both positive and negative ideas.
• Creating is the act of producing something out of nothing -- out of no-mind.
• At the higher vibrational levels, it is the subconscious no-mind that is connected most closely to the forces of the Infinite Intelligence -- the Intelligence that is so creative that it created all that is. Maybe, if we looked at how that Intelligence goes about the job of creating, we might learn something?
• You are not the thinker. Thoughts are not yours to own.
• The Source is abundant. The range and variety of available ideas and thoughts is infinite. Any perception of limitedness or lack is self-generated, an impoverishing state of affairs that Abundance allows us to indulge in.
• Lower-level thoughts appear out of the soup of thoughts we swim in.
• We surround our self with a "mood" -- a filtering atmosphere that lets through thoughts that reflect and reinforce the emotional condition we've set up for our self. Whether the atmosphere is "heaven" or "hell" is down to each of us.
• The thoughts we adopt and entertain have the power to open us up, or close us down to contact with the sources of abundance.
• The sources of abundance and freedom often come heavily disguised. There's a good reason for that. Go figure for yourself.
• Our internal self-image acts like a thermostat. We live up to our own most deeply felt expectations, and no further. Unless and until we deal with that, we're always going to be hauled back, kicking and moaning, to where we're coming from.
• Our past and our present environment -- physical, mental, cultural, and emotional -- do not fully determine our present behaviour. There is always a Point of Choice, a point at which the cycle can be broken. Just because we cannot see that point at the moment does not mean that it's not there. If you cannot see it, get help; there's plenty available.
• Our present environment is useful feedback on the nature of our deep, unconscious levels of self-image.
• No-one can change either his self-image or the resulting environment until he has deeply recognised his responsibility in it. The extent of change is directly proportional to the level of that acceptance.
• Others are worthy, too. All of them.
• Justified or not, resentment is an expensive emotion. It costs the sufferer everything -- happiness, power, freedom and possibility are just some of the goodies thrown out to make room for more resentment, victimness, inhibition, anger, frustration, guilt and righteous justificating.
• Emotions are neither good nor bad. How we use them determines how appropriately and effectively we respond to the present.
• Resentment, fear and guilt fixate us on a past that is dead, forcing us to disinter the body every moment in an effort to change that which cannot be changed. They are, therefore, inappropriate. They also cause inhibition.
• Worry and anxiety fixate us on an imaginary future which, in turn, is inexorably pre-ordained by our present state of mind-thinking/feeling.
• All separating emotions pull us out of the the only reality there is -- the present.

BEYOND THE RAH-RAH-RAH....

If we haven't already done so,
Some time before death, life will see to it that we move
Beyond the sciences of motivation and success

And into grander experiences of Growing;

We will shift focus from personal development

To Evolving as human beings.
My choice is to do it now and take time to really experience these transitions,
Rather than be forced to whip through them just before "lights-out"
While my life flashes before my eyes.

There's a bonus to doing moving on now rather than leaving it to the last half-minute --
People who are healthy, interdependent and developing as human beings

Are naturally fulfilled in all that they choose to do

To express who and what they think they are.

They don't need to go looking for success;

Because there's no emptiness to fill.

Personal development systems in the pursuit of success 

Are just a spring clean and paint job.

They are technologies for tinkering around with one's ego --

Moving ideas, beliefs and concepts around the house

And slapping on a new coat of varnish

And maybe hanging some new curtains,

While the house and all its lean-to's are leaking every time it rains,

And crumbling at the foundations.

Personal growth is not intrinsically bad;
It just doesn't go nearly far enough.

It's just an ego-devised short cut

That fails when it takes no account of Real Self.

Satisfaction is intrinsic in living the Whole of Self.

It cannot come from little fragments of self-ishness,

Or from anywhere else.

If the mechanisms of personal development are exercised
In a context of Conscious Exploring,
They can be invaluably enlightening.
When they work,
They succeed, not because of what they are,
But because of the willingness, purpose and integrity
Of the person.
Without that willingness to know all of self,
The mechanics are of very limited value.
When they produce a modicum of success,
That very success, without self-realisation, becomes destructive of Self.....
We all know stories of people who have acquired sudden fame and success,
Only to self-destruct.
Most of them come through to the other side,
But not all.
Some don't make it.

Outside of the ranks of the highly-publicised and famous,
The force-fed growth of personality without a commensurate growth in awareness of self
Has produced the kind of monstrous ego-freaks
That show up at stock exchanges, parliaments, pentecostal churches,
And phony TV "reality" productions like "Survivor", "The Apprentice" and "The World's Greatest Race",
And other sideshows.

Closer to home,
Personal development programmes can trigger a spurt of growth for us,
But if we start to believe in them and hang on for too long,
They'll stunt the same growth,
Well short of ripe maturity.

There is more.
Always.....

A realising Self does not take positions of right/wrong, or good/bad;
Real growth is not personal, therefore it does not traffic in offence -- giving or taking.
True Self chooses to respond creatively,
Rather than react robotically.

Success and Motivation teachings and disciplines
Gave me some sense of relief, hope, purpose and gratification:
I thought "This is it". I thought I'd got it. But I hadn't.
Some situation would arise, or someone would say or do something
That I would react to self-destructively.
I lost it, in more ways than one.

What's the difference between development and growth (in this context)?
Gratification doesn't last;
Satisfaction always Is,
Whether we realise it or not.
Gratification is a filling-up;
Satisfaction is an emptying-out, creating space.
The switch from gratification to satisfaction
Is a switch from Mind to True Self.

Success and Motivation disciplines are highly palatable and reasonable
And may even be inspiring;
Conscious Growth may be un-reasonable and highly intrusive,
But it will be empowering.
The purpose of Human Growth is enlightenment;
The result of Personal Improvement is enheavyment.

Personal Improvement may have its place in your Becoming,
As it did in mine,
But don't dwell there any longer than you need to.
Learn from my mistakes.....
The technologies won't take you where you want to go.
Self-Motivation is a side-street that leads to a heap of stuff you can't take with you;
It's a cul-de-sac you're eventually going to have to back out of.
Sure, it gives you goals to aspire to,
But only filling gaps.
It takes you on a search for fulfillment
When you are already, and always filled-full --
Full of "missing".
You've heard the expression Less is more?
We don't need more of any thing to make life work,
We need less.

Michaelangelo was once asked how he designed his sculptures.
He replied "I don't design them, they already exist within the stone.
I saw The David locked in the block of stone;
I simply chipped away at the not-David,
To reveal the perfection of what lay hidden within,
Of what already was."

In conscious growth there is nothing missing at any point;
We're already full-up.
We've just forgotten who we are, and what we need,
And slathered all of that with layer-over-layer of "Not-Me".
Human Growing is a process of chipping away at the "Not-Me"
To reveal once more the perfection of all that we really are.

THE MEDIA

I don't propose here to either criticise or defend "the media".
It is my intention, rather, to question the validity of our assumptions and expectations
That underly a lot of criticisms of the practises and products of those who work in it.

Media mediate;
That is what they do.
They interpose between us and the event.
That is their function.

There is nothing sinister about this;
The process of communication is one of mediation.
The bottom line of all communication is that human beings cannot transfer experience directly from one to the other.
We cannot connect by ethernet radio or cable and download or upload experience.
There has to be some encoding, the use of a suitable medium, and some decoding going on.
This is true even of communication in the extra-sensory realm --
For human beings at least.
No medium, no message.

In general, there are four kinds of communication, classified by their aim --

1. Communication that Entertains
2. Communication that Informs
3. Communication that Inspires
4. Communication that Empowers

It's my experience that what we call "The Media" manage to do all four,
In about the same proportions as any other forms of communicating.
The Medium is like a vehicle;
How effective it is is up to the driver and passengers.

Now let's get down to some basic realities about The Media.......
The way that it is.
Do the media manipulate?
Yes, of course.
As I'll demonstrate in a moment, manipulation is inherent in the communicating process.
Are the media manipulated?
Yes, and a lot less than conspiracy theorists love to think.
How do the media manipulate?
Media such as newspapers, television, film, radio, and the internet
Must, of necessity, selectively frame, reflect, select and initiate;
They cannot help but do what we all do when we're experiencing anything for ourself --
They view an event or idea from a particular point of view,
They modify what they experience;
They emphasise and de-emphasise,
According to some sense of importance,
Thus framing and skewing the evenness of pure reality.
I repeat, there is nothing inherently nasty about this;
It's the nature of human perception.
The quirks and weaknesses of human communication can, of course, be exploited and abused
Just as we do every day with our friends, family and people we don't like.
The media, being staffed by humans, are subject to the same condition as we are.
Any resistance to the Is-ness of that may be a useful source of self-reflection.

How are the media themselves manipulated?

Obviously by government regulation and political, cultural and religious pressure.

One also has to remember the commercial reality

That our media have to be paid for.

In our free market system

Most media are funded by selling space.

We should not be miffed or surprised then, 

That the pipers give some consideration

To those that are paying them.

Don't bemoan it;

Just be aware of possible constraints or hidden agendas

And make allowances in your perceptions

And the levels of trust that you invest in them.

Spread yourself around

And get a range of views,

Then make your own choices and decisions.

In a country where we have the freedom to shop around for truth,

It is our individual responsibility, if we can't actually be present for an event,

To look for as many different viewpoints as possible.

(That is our responsibility in all of life;)

It's not the responsibility of the media to relieve us of our responsibilities.

Why do we feel so vulnerable to "media manipulation"
Since it is simply not possible for us to personally experience
All the events that may affect some aspect of our lives,
We look to the media to tell us about them.
Problems arise, however, when we allow the media
To replace our own responsibilities to listen, read, explore and think for ourselves,
When we ignore the inherent limitations of any mediated experience.

THE STORY IS NOT THE EXPERIENCE --


-- No more than the menu and the press reviews at your favourite restaurant
Are the meal.

I can tell you the story of my heart operation,
But what you experience will be nothing like my experience of the real thing.

The story is no more like the original event,

Than the moon is like the sun it reflects.

To expect otherwise is to invite disappointment.

This isn't something to get bent out of shape about --

It's one of the givens.

All media commuinicators, consciously or unsconsciously

Have no choice but to do a number of things 

That distort the full reality of what they're observing:-

• They see it from a limited perspective. That is a given. No matter how widely they research and probe, there is always more to be known than they what they see and hear.
• They report and comment either within an existing context, or in a freshly created one; i.e. a perspective from which to view, explore, describe and report. When a context is changed from one report to another, the experience changes, and so does the story. That is the nature of all perception; make the most of it. Look over someone else's shoulder at another newspaper and get another slant.
• No story can tell the whole of even a limited perspective. And each particular medium itself imposes limitations on the  number and extent of the senses that can be used.
• Decisions have to be made about what to include and what to exclude from the story. We may question the integrity and appropriateness of such choices, but those choices must be made.
• Choices have to be made on where and when to cut from one perspective to another.
• Choices have to be made as to which segments or sequences are placed adjacent to each other. All human minds make connections, emotionally and mentally relating things that often have no real connection at all. Juxtaposing images can lead to creating impressions, advertent and inadvertent, that can be far more powerful than the sum total of the parts. Thanks to the bridging function of human minds, editing implies, creates or reinforces links, bridges and connections that may be factual or emotional, accidental or intentional. Serious communicators and media practitioners are very careful, and they can still get into trouble.
• In film and television, choices are made about which images to attach to which sounds. Such decisions can also have an enormous effect on how the story impacts on the audient.

NEWS

By far the largest proportion of so-called news stories originate from the desks of faceless people with axes to grind who've got something to sell, and who want you to experience them or their organisations in a very particular way. In the more serious media, you will find journalists who do not take their blurbs at face value, and ask discomforting questions, which is why pollies and CEO's take classes and surround themselves with minders to deflect and warp questions they don't want to answer. And they're getting daily more brazen about it.

Just about 70% of so-called current-affairs programmes and newsmags emanate originally as "media releases" from PR Spinners or Marketing Managers of corporations and organisations who have something to sell -- the resulting articles are nothing more than advertorials. So-called "info-tainment" travel and lifestyle programmes fall under this heading. I recently watched an episode of a state-based travel programme that has deteriorated into a string of undisguised, paid-for promos for cafes, wineries and B & B's, stopping every 10 minutes or so for a commercial break! Even the ABC is stooping to pass off promos for its programmes as "news" stories in the 7pm bulletin.

But we get the standard of media we deserve:
Lazy, undiscriminating viewers and readers
Licence lazy, deceptive journalism.
We're far too eager to assign to the media the responsibility to do for us our discriminating, thinking and holding business and government authorities to account. We're all too ready, I feel, to assume ignorance as an excuse for laziness of will, and to allow certain media to shape and reinforce our opinions, which we then give the status of gospel truth and ferociously grip onto them to the exclusion of any dissenting alternatives.

We get the media and the political and religious leadership we deserve,
And it takes irresponsibility and a victim consciousness to its absurd extreme
To blame the media for the results of our lassitude.

HUMILITY

I know two basic kinds of Humility -- false and genuine.

The practise of False humility creates a facade of phony self-deprecation, sometimes masquerading as sympathy, or "understanding", or sometimes as "joking". It is an activity we do, often to avoid being with a genuine feeling, like embarrassment. False humility feels like both a manipulative strategy to engineer others' opinions of "me", and a defence tactic to preemptively ward off fear of vulnerability and external criticism by getting in first. But coming, as it seems to, from a soft-spot of negative self-image, and from the secret files of my Inner Critic, criticism is not avoided. False humility is The Mole at work, critically undermining ourself from within, destroying genuine confidence and replacing that with its opposite -- hubris. But "I" thinks that anything I do to myself doesn't do any harm. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Genuine humility has a very different feel to it, for both the wearer and those with whom he/she comes into contact. Genuine humility is not something to be done; it is a way of being to come from. Humility is characterised by a complete absence of self-importance, and a propensity to surrender to whatever, grateful for any new, fresh opportunities and possibilities this experience may provide.

False humility is a cunning stratagem of pride and arrogance, flowering from a flawed perception of self, and self importance. Consequently, I see the polar opposite of Humility to be Self-Humiliation.

True Humility feels like a quiet radiance; it is one's life's expression, an energy that underlies and gives a wholesome flavour to all that we do. Humility is that true power that never seeks to enforce itself. Humility fosters dignity, humanity, empathy (not sympathy) and grace.
Humiliation wallows around in sentiment and wounded pride. In humiliation we cede to others every scrap of authority and power in the matter.

Humility is knowing and living your Place and Purpose in the natural order of all things.
Dignity arises from living your Purpose (whatever you create that to be) in harmony with the natural order of all things. So the two are not quite synonymous; humility without feeling particularly dignified is possible, for brief periods. True dignity arises when we drop our defensive embarrassments about our shortcomings

In a state of Humility, ego takes a back seat, delivering the messages and memos.
In a condition of humiliation, ego, in the driver's seat, succumbs itself and subjects you to the egos of others. Humiliation sucks. Dignity, alignment and integrity go out the window.

When ego tries to own humility, it becomes "virtue"
(If the image of a politician pops to mind, you are forgiven).........
God protect us from all virtuous people!

SITTING DUCKS

I find it extraordinary that horticulturalists and zoologists have known for ages
That when we forcefully squeeze, then freeze the evolution of a species,
And aglomerate the resultant mutations together into a mono-culture,
They become sitting ducks for pests and diseases.
Corn, cotton, wheat, apples, sheep and certain breeds of dogs
Are the obvious examples of species pushed to the brink of biological extinction,
Requiring enormous inputs of energy from us
And huge volumes of poisonous pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides and drugs
To fight their biological foes for them
And maintain their existence.

These are admittedly the worst possible examples,
But every living thing that man has interfered with,
Including himself,
Is subject to the same law.
Man does not have a large enough overview of anything
To truly know what he's doing.
There is a price, and it will be paid.

With so many allergies and other diseases of progress now proliferating,
And pests and diseases mutating faster than we we can find ways of killing them off --
How come we haven't joined the dots?
Or do we really think that human beings
Can somehow exempt ourselves from the principles of life?
How ignorant and arrogant can we get?

WHO ARE WE?

We are:-

• What we do
• That which manages what we do
• What we think and feel about it
• That which is simply aware of it all.

GROWING

In order for growing to take place

We have to give up doing

What we know how to do,

And start doing

Something we don't know how to do.

LOYALTY

To all the women on dating sites
Who want Loyalty........

Loyalty is a function of feeling appreciated.

Please don't matronise me with Praise:

Praise is as much like Appreciation

As a sunlamp is like a romp in the spring sunshine.

Praise is a calculated act for a desired effect;

Appreciation is a space of gratitude.

If you want loyalty,

Let me feel your genuine appreciation.

OK. The ball's back in your court.

EXPERIENCE, OR REPETITION?

Once upon a time
A guy applying for a job with me stated he'd had 20 years experience.
I put him on trial.
It soon became obvious he'd had about 6 months of actual experience,
Then repeated it 39 times.

Experience is fresh, alive, and forever leavening.
Repetition is stale and sterile.

WORK -- Glimpses Around.......

What follows are a few thoughts that popped

While musing....

Each strikes me as a truth,

To which there may be an equally valid converse,

So none is the whole truth.......

Just another way of looking at.

Work is something we do

When we'd rather be doing something else.

As long as we are physically and emotionally capable, 

And mentally alive,

We have a responsibility to our own growth and learning

And consequently the growth and learning of all existence,

To do all that we can.

We work because we can, and because there is work to be done.

We work because working works.

We work because it is a basic human need.

We work because other people need our help.

We recruit others because we have something they're looking for, and it is our need to give it away.

We work because it's a great way to express and share who we are.

When you work -- work like you own the business.

If you get in to something -- get in all the way.

If you can't get in all the way -- get all the way out; you're just occupying someone else's space. Find your own.

It's not the job that matters,

It's how we see our self in the job.

And that's entirely up to each of us. 

There are wealthy people and poor people who all do what I do;

One of the differences is that the poor ones are flat out making a living,

While the rich ones are enthusiastic about designing a life.

My various occupations provide me with opportunities

To express different aspects of my being:

But I have to play my part.

An arena without players is just architecture.

• If you can see a need, you're elected.
• You're never offered an opportunity until you're ready to grow into it.
• Without long-range vision, you're prone to short-term derailments.
• Circumstances and others may slow you down temporarily, but only you can stop you permanently.
• If you wait until all the traffic lights are green before you start your journey, you'll never get started.
• Have a map, and make it OK to improvise as you go along.

JEALOUSY

Jealousy is an insane, irrational condition
That arises from a ground-being of
"Without you, I am not enough and sufficient for myself."

The experience we generally label "Jealousy"
Is different for each of us.
But as a general observation,
I see two basic kinds of jealousy --
Male and female.
Male jealousy is property-based.....
"You belong to me."
Female jealousy is based on a fear of Lack --
"Without one of these things with a tag of tissue between his legs, I cannot survive."

Jealousy is a complex emotion,
A bit like a curry.
Some of the ingredients I've identified are -

• Possessiveness -- a monopolistic urge to own and control
• A seismic belief in, and dread of, Lack and Loss
• A certainty of Scarcity, giving rise to a consciousness of Competitiveness
• An unhealthy addiction to "winning".
• A deep-rooted fear of, and resistance to being Inferior (I make myself feel inferior to attract and hang onto a superior being)
• Cowardice.
• Laziness -- a lack of motivation to go responsible and create what is desired.
• Egocentric obsessiveness.

Jealousy is a self-defeating strategy
In which we settle for central position,
When what we're looking for is intimate connection.
Jealousy repels the very thing it seeks to attract.


It's never going to get us to happiness.

GRATIFICATION -v- SATISFACTION

Think of......
Gratification as the indulgence of Pleasure,
And Satisfaction as the experience of Enoughness.

SEX ENERGY

Your whole body is a sex-energy phenomenon.
Every cell in our bodies is a sex cell;
We were born out of a sex act,
And the union of two sex cells,
Which triggered a riot of sexual proliferation.

Let go tight-arsed control,
Surrender to the experience.
Forget what little you know
And all of what you think you know.
Let there be no hard and fast rules --
Cultural, moral, religious.......
Breathe into your belly, and
Give yourself totally to the moment.

Let sex be a celebration,
Life-affirming
And life-renewing.

BREATHE

It came as a surprise to me
That, after I'd been on life support,
I and my body had to be "told" to breathe again on my own;
It wasn't going to happen spontaneously.
That reminded me -
What we don't use, we may lose.

So this is my gift to you now --
A slap on the bum.
BREATHE!

How?
How do I breathe?
Are you kidding?!
Nope. We've been on the drip for so long
We've forgotten how to breathe.

And breathing is basic, don't you think?

When we mess with nature at that level,
(And we do).......
Expect problems down the track.

We live our lives according to certain operating programmes,
Principles based on conclusions that we formed un-consciously during our early years.
Some of these fundamental operating principles derive from a long way back --
Back at least as far as the way we experienced the womb,
Our passage along the birth canal,
(Or ripped out of the womb in the case of a caesarian),
And the way we took our first breath. 
All largely matters of pure chance
That have had effects so lasting and profound
that they have shaped our lives.


But we have no rational recollection of what these principles are, or how they came about
Because at the time we didn't have language with which to formulate what was happening,
Or what we'd concluded from those experiences.
Bur we do have sense-memory of them,
Which can be accessed via the same mechanism that was present at the core of the trauma we experienced --
Our breath.

The memories of our birth are almost universally traumatic,
Ensuring that they're vividly imprinted still in the amygdala,
The most primitive area of our brain,
Where it will likely remain so until the moment we die.
Whoever designed the process of being born,
Had obviously never tried it himself.
It was a total shock to the entire system,
The like of which we are never likely to experience again.
It is almost as if some cosmic joker decided
"If you can survive this, you'll survive anything."

The assumptions we unconsciously formed while Armageddon was going on
Were fundamental in shaping our approach to this life
And to everything and everyone that has been dealt to us post partem --
We jumped then to conclusions
About our self, about the sudden discovery of "otherness", and about life.
We typically have absolutely no idea what those conclusions were,
Nor do we have the foggiest notion of the distorting effect that they're having,
Shaping and continuing to affect all our ideas about how life is, what we are, how others are, and how we deal with change.
There's a very real sense that every thing and circumstance in our life since
Has proved the correctness of the conclusions we made then:
And most of us haven't a clue what they are.
But they can be accessed.
It you're finding life difficult,
It may be well worth your while
To find out what's causing it.

It is my own experience, and the experience of the hundreds I've seen go through rebirth,
When our particular "laws" are revealed,
The lights go on for us,
The shrouds are thrown off,
We remember past incidents
And spontaneous laughter and celebration breaks out.
It's a flowering of freedom
From the bondage of ignorance.
At last we're no longer stumbling around in the dark without a torch.
We might still be up Shit Creek,
But at least we now have a paddle.

Breath therapy and rebirthing can uncover the hidden operating principles;
They free us from the conclusions that have kept us nailed to the floor,
Racing around in circles, chasing our own tail since we were born.
We are released, too, from the hidden, pent-up emotions,
The ones we don't feel --
They feel us, and keep our stuff in place.

HOLDING PATTERNS


Outside of some other actors, most classically trained singers, and musicians who play wind instruments,
Very rarely do I come across anyone who knows how to breathe.
It never occurs to us that,
Like the difference between looking and really seeing,
Between hearing and really listening,
There's one helluva difference between respiration (which we can all do)
And Breathing (which most of us have forgotten about).

During birth,
And from time to time as we were growing up,
We became overwhelmed by, and fearful of, our experience.
The limbic (primitive fight/freeze/flight) area of our brain kicked in,
We instinctively modified all of our natural functioning in some way,
And then the crisis passed.
Now, although our breathing, metabolism and other behaviour in that moment had nothing to do with abatement of that crisis,
Our mind connected the two--
"If I hold my breath, speed up my heart, lock my jaw and act this way, the crisis will go away and I'll survive."
An un-conscious, not-thought-about pattern was set,
Which now kicks in whenever there is a possible crisis, or even an imagined threat of one.
Our mind cannot tell the difference between a real and an imagined threat.
On top of that,
The holding patterns create their own anxieties and disturbances,
Which add to the spiral.
The condition quite quickly becomes chronic,
And so familiar,
That our bodies and psyches reset and re-define what's "normal";
They now operate habitually at levels of between 6 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale;
We've completely forgotten what lower levels of stress feel like,
Or that more tranquil states even exist.
No wonder we wear out and burn out early
To obesity, diabetes, breathing disorders, allergies, stroke and cardiac problems!

There's another good reason why we continue breath patterns and lifestyles that depress and suppress us --
They limit the depth of unpleasantness to which we can sink.
Unfortunately in so doing, they also squash the "highs" like joy, happiness, satisfaction and prosperity-consciousness.
This is the law of balance in operation --
When you cut off the lows, you also lop off the highs.
While inside we remain emotionally churned up,
Life flattens out
And loses it's dynamic appeal.

In response to traumatic events
And growing levels of stress, anxiety, depression,
And chronic habits like withholding and suppressing our selves,
We've distorted the way we breathe.
Typically, we breathe in and out in a piston-like motion --
Sucking breath in, cutting it off, holding it while some threat passes, pushing it out, cutting off again, and so on.
The naturally smooth, even, connected flow of breath
Becomes jerky, uneven, obstructed and disconnected.
We raise the psychological centre of our breath from deep in the belly
Up into our chest, throat, and even up as far as the sinuses.
Our naturally resonant voices become throaty, croaky and raspy,
And, in some cases, nasal and shrill.
Young teenage girls, for example, find it fashionable to strangle their throats,
Constrict their jaws, tongue and lips,
Shove their voice up into their sinuses
And distort speech into a croaky smirk.
What is that about?
What could possibly be attractive about a young girl sounding like a 90-year-old hag with cerebral palsy?

A person under stress tends to breathe like an asthmatic,
Taking in deep gulps,
Tightening the belly,
Holding the diaphragm rigid,
And heaving the shoulders and upper chest
(Immobilising all but the upper, pointy ends of their lungs with the least area available for oxygenation)
And breathing out in tightly controlled squirts.
An angry person does the reverse;
He/she tightens up all over,
Sucks air in shallow bits,
And then exhales in blasts.

At every point along that scale,
We exhibit a unique, personal pattern of breath-holding.

Holding Patterns on both the in-breath and the out-breath,
And during speaking,
And during moments of high emotional arousal,
Not only reinforce the hidden programmes that cause them,
But in turn cause their own patterns of disease and illness --
Physical, emotional and psychological.
The way you breathe is both the result of,
And the further cause of
Illness and dysfunction.
The next time you feel uncomfortable, upset or angry,
Notice how you are breathing (if at all).
What you will be looking at is one of your favourite Holding Patterns.

LIVING TOTALLY


The moment we first adopted a Holding Pattern,
Nothing happened that anyone would notice.
A choice, and consequent decisions were made, but without the benefit of language to give them form,
And by a part of our being we had no knowledge of.
These first choices were the beginnings of what we would later come to recognise as our Ego,
And Ego plays its cards like a politician at a Senate hearing.

From the moment a Holding Pattern was put in place
Our facility to feel anything totally began ebbing away;
That was its unconsciously intended purpose -- to protect us from pain.
By "living totally" I mean to be so utterly absorbed in whatever is happening, while it is happening,
That no trace of unfinished business remains at the end of the experience.
We move on, without any left baggage.
When we experience something totally,
It is finished, done with;
No psychological stuff is carried over
To pollute the next moment.
But since the innocence of childhood
We have rarely been total in any experience,
So incomplete business hangs over into the next moment,
And the next.....
Accumulating exponentially.
It shows, in our faces and bodies as we get older
As "aging".
[I experienced a striking example of this  at a cardiac rehab. class yesterday. A new patient who's had heart surgery about 8 weeks ago made a comment that "My cardiologist said I'd be dead by now. He was wrong!" It seemed so odd that he would want to so bitterly want to make his doctor wrong -- so that he can be "right"; about what? It struck me, too, that his cardiologist probably had a lot to do with him being still alive, both by giving him a kick up the arse to get him to have the surgery, and by successfully performing whatever he's had done. But this guy has chosen to resent the man for the comment, rather than be grateful for the outcome. When this guy got up to the gym, however, I began to understand the dynamics. His face was permanently drawn down into a resentful scowl, and he walked stooped over, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. I tried the same gait and face-mask for a few laps, just to find out what it felt like to live inside that body shape. I gave up after a couple of minutes -- I started to feel quite ill.]

Haven't you ever wondered
Why certain patterns of discomfort and misfortune
Seem to come around again and again?
Even though the circumstances and the dramatis personae may change,
Patterns recur,
And the common denominator between them is......
You and me.
We've seen it in other people, too. haven't we?
What is that?

A good place to start for yourself
Is to look to the holding patterns on your breath,
The patterns that prevent you from fully feeling your experiences.
It's not even necessary to do any post mortems on them;
They don't need to be analysed,
Just experienced,
Totally.

INTEGRATING BREATHING

We can do this through Breath --
Integrating our breath
Integrates our experiences.
The more often we consciously remember
To replace our jerky old breathing habits
With a smoothly flowing new practice,
The more integral our experiences will become
And the sooner and better our emotional and physical dis-eases will heal.

Re-breathing begins when, in a state of physical and emotional relaxation
We simply observe our breathing,
The way we normally do it.
Without analysing, we just become aware of how and where
Our breathing gets caught up, restricted and out of rhythm.
Then we start joining the ends of of each separate in/out motion.
Instead of a pumping action,
We begin to turn the breathing pattern into a figure "8",
Merging the ends of the in and the out breaths into each other
To create a smoother, more integrated flow.
Don't worry if you only have partial or fleeting success at first;
Every connected breath-end has a beneficial flow-on.

Let each in-breath fill your lungs and, towards the apex, let it turn in on itself
and become the out-breath, and let each out-breath empty itself (don't push, or hold back) and, towards the bottom, let it begin to turn in on itself and become an in-breath.... and so on........

If at any time you experience a transition from breathing to being-breathed,
Allow this to happen for as long as it lasts,
But do not strive for it.
Beyond experiencing the connecting of your formerly separating breaths,
Let there be no other goal to this meditation.
Let breathing be the Means
To which there is no End....
Allow what ever happens to happen
And continue connecting your breaths anyway.

Breath meditation is best done with experienced supervision,
But that does not preclude you from connecting your breathing
Right here, right now.
Take it gently. Take in no more breath than you need.
If you're not comfortable, you're pushing too hard. Back off.
Force nothing,
Or you run a slight risk of hyperventilating.
If that does happen, simply stop, relax, and allow your habitual breathing pattern to reassert itself until you are completely grounded once more.

This conscious and deliberate reconnecting
Of the natural flow of breath
Enables re-connection to happen
At all levels of your energy and awareness.
Blockages are released,
Space is created,
And aliveness is expanded.
All that we need to do for let-go and expansion to happen
Is to be present and aware of each moment of breath,
And to be present and transparent to what ever is going on
In body and mind
While you're here and now.

As the holding patterns release you,
You'll experience an expansion of qualities of life
Such as  aliveness, happiness, joy, abundance, prosperity and self-expression.

It is possible to get back to being total in what we do.
When we are total,
Bliss happens as a natural consequence.
Life becomes beautiful as it is,
In its suchness, it needs no improvement.

I don't know how or why re-breathing works,
And, to be honest, I don't care.
It does work --
At all levels of awareness at once,
And that's all that matters to me.
These days.....
I'm decreasingly obsessed with being right or wrong
And increasingly fascinated
By anything that works.

HAVE WHAT YOU'VE GOT

Have what you've got.
Not what someone else has got,
Or what you think you ought to have......
Have what you've got:
It will take you home.

HANKERING

If you find yourself hankering after something,
There's a better-than-even chance
That there's something in there
That you once had
(Otherwise you wouldn't know it well enough to hanker for it)
And that you failed to experience while you had it.

If you had been total in that moment when it was available to you,
If you had been present, available, transparent and utterly engaged with it,
Unfettered by resistances or expectations of "how it should be",
The experience would have completed itself there and then
And you would no longer be hankering
After what is "unfinished business".

Look, I know how this feels --
To be in a situation, but preoccupied with something else;
Then when I'm later somewhere else,
To be wishing I was back where I wasn't while I was there.....
If you get what I mean.

Learn from this experience.
Be wherever you are.
Be total in this place, in this moment.
If hankering is what you've got,
Enter it.
Be with the idea of whatever you're hankering for and, more importantly,
Be totally immersed in your hankering.itself.
Smell it, taste it, look into it, feel into it with all your senses.

Instead of doing what you've always done --
Which was looking for satisfaction from something external in order to assuage the hankering,
Dive into the hankering itself and deeply drink
Until you are fully sated with your hankering.
Be in the heart,
In the moment,
Experiencing your longing and hunger
For its own sake.

When we're hankering,
We're looking for something we think we haven't got.......
I make myself feel "haven't-got-it" in order to get it."
Where's the juice in that?!
There must be something in it, we all do it --
We withhold things from ourselves in order to get them;
How is that supposed to work?
Serious question worth pondering for yourself.
(Human beings aren't wrong, but we are capable of stunning stupidity!)

If you want to experience satisfaction,
Be satisfied with what you've already got!
If hankering is what you've got,
Be glad you still hanker for whatever it is.
(One day, you'll no longer be able to.)
If the truth were to be known,
What you're hankering FOR
Is not what you really want anyway;
If you got it,
You still wouldn't be satisfied.
You are never going to find satisfaction
By coming from dissatisfaction.

Here's the punchline.....

If you stay with hankering for long enough,

You'll discover the difference between hankering and Pure Desire,

And you'll stumble across Who-You-Are.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Two excerpts from The Gospel according to St.Thomas:-

When you make the Inner as the Outer

And when you make the Above as the Below...

Then you shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

When all opposites are accepted and balanced,

They cancel each other out,

Leaving the Bliss that always was

Unblemished.

Let him who seeks

Not cease seeking until he finds;

And when he finds

He will be troubled.

And when he has been troubled, he will marvel,

And he will reign over all.

Seeking is what we all do, nearly all of our time --

We're so used to it, we sometimes hardly realise

Either that we're looking for something,

Or what it is that we're looking for.

But finding is another matter ------

Sometimes

The answers to our questions are troubling.

They profoundly perturb and disturb

Right to the core of everything.

Our minds say "That's not it"

And we go on seeking --

To avoid finding.

Give up the search;

That which we thought was lost

Is found.

It was always here,

Right where we left it last. 

RESPECT

Respect, as a context, is what-is.
I see it in the driving force of the whole of existence.
When we lose sight of the is-ness of this, however,
We imagine respect to be separate, subject to lack and possible loss,
And something that has to be earned, or reached for.
We make up expectations and demands for "respect" from others.
Respect becomes a position,
Which automatically creates its opposite -- Dis-respect.

What is this intangible no-thing that we call "respect"?
What does it look like?
When we "respect" someone or something,
What are we actually doing?
We "do" Respect
When we grant esteem
For another and for our self.

Respect is a genuine regard for the innate sovereignty and dignity of one's whole character,

Not as you think it might be,

Or ought to be,

Or hope it will be,

But as it is.

Respect entails noting, giving due regard and space to, acknowledging, owning, recognising and allowing whatever is, to be just as it is.

Respect begins with one's self.

Without respect for self,

We have nothing genuine to give away 

To anyone or anything else.

Don't confuse self-respect with self-justification,
You can feel the difference --
Self-justification rides on waves of right-ness;
Self-respect reposes in a quiet assurance of completeness.

In the absence of genuine self-respect,

We're forced to get by with, and strew around fake, synthetic substitutes
Such as "liking", approving, agreeing, and kowtowing.
There's no respect in any of that stuff.

Living in a state of Respect
Is a two-way exchange.......
We experience

• deferential regard being shown and felt,
• esteeming, honouring, and being esteemed or honoured in our being,
• considering and being considered.

There are only three ways to get respect that I know of --

1. Give it, without expectation of quid pro quo
2. Deserve it. Be the kind of person who inspires respect.
3. Assume that it exists in whatever comes back to you. Loosen up on your ironclad expectations of what respect should look like.

Any addictive demand on your part for respect from others is evidence of

a) a paucity of self-respect; and

b) an unhealthy amount of self-importance, the very quality that will repel the likelihood of the respect you're looking for.

Respect for another means refraining from interfering with...
Being sensitive to, and giving due regard to personal boundaries.
Unless you have legal parental responsibility,
Or have been specifically invited to engage in the way another lives their personal life,
Mind your own business.
Respect includes honouring every other person's right to do life their way,
To face the challenges and have the experiences that life delivers them
So that they can learn the lessons they've come to live through,
Under their own steam.
That's how we all grow and evolve.

Respect is a universal right,

But if you abrogate that right by disrespecting anyone,

Especially your self,

Don't complain when the rest of the world 

Disrespects you.

BEWARE THE UNWOUNDED HEALER

Our wounds
Are the marks of our initiation
Into Life.
The scars mark the entry-points
Of our wisdom.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Promises are like mermaids --They look and sound enticing,
But.................
(A bit fishy).

I become a bit wary when someone says to me "I promise......".
I get and appreciate the good intentions of the promiser,
And I also know that the persona who makes the promise
Is not alone in the body and eyes of the person I'm talking to.
Other personas are lurking in there who will, if it suits them,
Disown any responsibility for the deal.
Should something go awry, the persona who made the promise
Won't be home when I call back.
He will have been replaced by someone else.

I'm always wary, too, of someone's need to volunteer a promise,
And just as wary of anyone's need to demand one.
If you know so little about the human mind,
And you're naive enough to demand a promise and trust it,
You deserve whatever happens next.

If the person making the promise does not know his/her own duality,
I gracefully receive promises in the spirit in which they're given,
And privately take them with a pinch of salt:
I will wait, and simply watch what happens.

How do we get to know how and where someone is with their duality?
Listen
To how they talk, and what they say, about others.

INTENTION


It's a truism that

Our intention always shows up, sooner or later.

Very few people, however, are ruthlessly self-honest
About their real Intent.
Having just automatically promised to do something,
Very few people examine what they've just said
And question whether it will actually happen -- no excuses.
Even fewer, when they discover there's insufficient internal support for delivering on their promise,
Will turn around and say to the other,
"I'm sorry about this. But I've just had a closer look,
And what I just promised you is not my intention".
You just couldn't bear to look that bad!
You prefer to not-deliver,
And rehearse excuses for that.
You may convince another with your reasons-why,
But the bottom line is -- you didn't deliver;
Your own soul knows your truth
And is damaged by your lack of integrity.
When you don't deliver on a commitment
You hurt your self.
This isn't about punishment --
This is the Law of Cause and Effect,
There is no Cause without a commensurate Effect;
There is no Effect without a Cause,
And this law cannot be manipulated.
When you breach your integrity,
There are inescapable consequences
Inherent in the act itself.

People only promise something
When there's a serious, unexamined doubt lurking somewhere around
That, without vowing it, they might not deliver.

Why so?
What is it about promises that feels "iffy"?
Well, every promise generates a canopy of Damoclean threats --
Dire social repercussions that will befall you if you break your word.....
The internal blackmail underlying every promise isn't likely to generate peace and joy!
But it's more fundamental than that.......

We are not whole;
We are dual
And we live in a world of duality.
That's one of the ground-rules of human-being.
There are a million and more reasons for the urge to make a promise,
Ranging from altruistic and sincere, all the way along the scale to manipulative and deceptive.
None of the reasons for promising, however, arise from a ground being of Integrity.
All promises are made by one part of our ego,
At least in part with the internal intention to coerce or shame the rest of our ego into compliance.
No-one likes being coerced, least of all, our ego.
When an aspect of ego that did not have the microphone at the time of the vow
Gets onto the throne,
Watch out for sabotage.

The opposite of a promise,
Is a simple, quietly assured, whole-of-being commitment.
The aware person knows his duality,
Consults the rest of his inner management,
And negotiates support from all sides.
Any commitment or agreement that this person makes
He makes first with himself,
And then shares with the other person/people.
His agreements and commitments have integrity
Because they come from a wholeness of agreed purpose.

Anyone who is unaware of the duality of humans-being
Can, and will, be caught unawares, puzzled and hurt,
Trusting promises from people and friends he/she only half-knows.
Conveniently ignoring his own uncomfortable little hypocrisies,
The aggrieved party feels victimised by treachery;
It never occurs to him that his own blind ignorance of human nature may have had something to do with it.

INTEGRITY


An integral person is someone who has it all comfortably together --
Not just the best-looking bits,
But the whole box and dice.
Integrity is that state of knowing the complex nature of all our dualities,
Being aware of all the areas and places where, given sufficient motivation, we will shift positions
And go to whatever lengths to justify that switcheroo to ourself.
Integrity also includes how we synthesise these fragmentations into a complete, functional person
That others can reliably relate with.
In a state of Integrity
Nothing is denied or rejected.
Everything is creatively integrated.

Only someone of integrity --
That is, someone who knows and accepts the exact nature his own inconsistencies
And that of his friends and acquaintances,
Can be trusted.
A person of integrity knows where he is not to be trusted
And either does not go there,
Or makes special arrangements in that area.
If he stuffs up, he takes responsibility for that
And makes amends.

An unaware person, conversely,
Strives to "not-be" what he/she doesn't like,
And projects pet "hates" out onto others.
He unconsciously finds "friends" who'll go along with his lies as long as he goes along with theirs,
And then wonders why he/she gets shafted.

An aware person gets to know his friends' soft spots.
He doesn't think any the less of them for their human inconsistencies
Nor does he try to fix them, unless asked:
Thanks to his own duality, he can empathise;
He knows how it feels to live with contradictions.
He appropriately treads aware-fully in the grey areas.
And is not taken by surprise.

Duality is one of the greatest gifts of being human,
And it's also one of it's most monstrous downers;
It can enable insight, empathy, just as equally as opposition and hypocrisy.

Inconsistency is natural.
Hypocrisy is born when we are trying, or pretending to fulfill something
That doesn't have our own whole-hearted support.
All because we want to look good,
To ourself and to others.
We will make sincere promises in one context,
But without consulting the rest of the cabinet in our cranium.
And that's where the problem arises.
The unconsulted cabinet members will, in certain different circumstances,
Feel trapped by these impositions,
And get either openly indignant, resentful, or even hostile,
With you, with others, and even with the person to whom you made the promise.
Or your "underdogs" will become secretly subversive.
Then watch the internal gymnastics!
Your promises will be undermined by circumstances and persons unknown.
You may suffer mysterious accidents or illnesses,
Or contortions of logical spin to justify your dishonesty,
That excuse you from taking responsibility for not carrying out your commitments.
The two most common avoiders are --
"I'm sorry, I forgot" and
"I was only joking."
Make no mistake,
Most avoidances are real!
(The accidents happen. The symptoms are real. We really do forget.)
But underneath that is another voice whispering to your heart -
(I wasn't there when you made that promise! You never consulted me!)
Even if all of you gets together and decides to do the "right thing",
It's still a falsehood,
And you wonder, after years of living "honourably",
Why you come up feeling empty?
Wake up!
You've been living several part-lives,
Flip-flopping back and forth,
With no part complete or satisfied.
And it has destroyed your very soul.

Promises are made, not from a ground being, and as an expression of, who we genuinely are,
But from a need to reinforce either what we like to think we are,
Or what we'd like others to think we are
At that time.
It's part of the front we put up --
Trust me, I'm a nice person.


Any urge to promise
Could be a warning to you,
That there's another part of you involved here
That needs to be heard first
Before making a commitment you may well regret.
And any promise made to you,
By your ego or by anyone else,
Could well go straight to the "Maybe" basket,
Just in case.
See what actually happens.
Someone very wise came across a fig tree one day.
It was a gorgeous, fulsome, showy, leafy tree,
But totally bereft of figs.
Turning to those who were with him, he commented dryly,
"You can pick 'em by their fruit."

ATTENTION & LOVE

It has been said that -

Love is the quality of our attention.


Love and Attention are very closely related --
To love and be loved is a basic human need;
It's natural.

That need gets perverted, however,
When the being denies love and attention to itself,
Demanding instead that all its needs be met by others.
The "give" side of "give-and-take" dries up,
Because no-one can give away what they don't have.
Flick-passing works for football, but not for love.
Love must be received and experienced
Before it can be paid forward.
Love comes through you....

If you regard yourself as unworthy of love and attention,
You will feel unloved,
Even 'though the the whole world might be paying attention to you.
There is never enough to satiate the hunger of self-imposed impoverishment.
And you -- unloved orphan -- will get to be right --
If you insist that you are "unlovable",
It will not be long before the rest of existence supports and agrees with you.
Now that's love!

When we suppress or deny our need for self-acceptance,
Our need for love subverts itself
Into a symbolic addiction to solicitousness from others;
We'll do anything to be the centre of attention,
Even if that attention is abusive.

If you want love and quality attention
(And who, in their right mind, does not?)
Give it --
Not as a negotiation in order to get it back,
But give it freely
For the inherent joy of giving
To yourself and others
As an expression of your natural being.

Whatever you put out
Will come back to you --
Maybe not directly from the place you sowed it,
But come back to you it will,
Many times blessed,
For that is the Law of Sowing and Reaping.

FALSE NEEDS

Before we can be healed,
One thing needs to be "got" deeply --
You and I are both neurotic,
Deeply split.
Our thinking and our feeling
Have separated.
Natural feeling has been suppressed,
In favour of think-feeling
(A false feeling, where we think that we're feeling).

We hide behind a false face
Because we're afraid to enter the raw, genuine emotion,
Which we've judged as unbearable, undeserved, or unacceptable.

This split from reality lands us in a very neurotic state.
After a while of faking it,
We no longer know who we are or what we want,
Our real, legitimate, authentic needs have been labelled "Baggage",
Suppressed,
And hidden in the Left-Luggage cloakroom.

In their place we have created Symbolic Needs --
Like comfort-food, sex, internal border-protection, sensation, status, recognition, and approval.
Because these needs are false,
We go looking for them in some very unhealthy ways and places,
And they never satisfy.
They may temporarily gratify, perhaps,
An "upper" that quickly evaporates
As the false need escalates into an addiction.
We are never nourished by False Needs;
There is no fulfillment.

LOVE

Love expresses itself
As a rock-solid comfort and self-acceptance
That has no need to prove itself.

The love of which I speak
Is not an emotion,
But a space in which all emotions are possible.
It is a way of being
In which all ways of being are possible.
It is not something that is done,
But something that is done through "Me".

Love accepts everything.
That doesn't make you a doormat
Or give you licence to push or be a pushover  --
In self-care at lower levels of awareness,
"You" needs to have its own boundaries;
Give your beloved the gift of being clear about them.
But be prepared, too, to be flexible enough
To dissolve boundaries that limit your growth.
And don't get bent out of shape
That others don't have the same rule book as you.
Move on.

One reason we may find it difficult to experience love,
Is that we have limited, self-defeating rules governing what "love" ought to look like,
And too-narrow criteria for deservability --
Our own and the "other's".

The more intimately you come into contact with your own being
The simpler things look
And the clearer they become.
Easier?
That I cannot promise you.
Yet.
But I live in hope.........

GOD IS BUSY

This email was sent to me today -- I love it!

A British soldier was attending some college courses between assignments.  He had completed two missions in Afghanistan .  One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist, and a member of the ACLU.


One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, 'GOD if you are real then I want you to knock me off this platform.  I'll give you exactly 15 min.  The lecture room fell silent..  You could hear a pin drop.  Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, 'Here I am GOD, I'm still waiting.'


It got down to the last couple of minutes when the soldier got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and decked him; knocking him off the platform.  The professor was out cold.  The soldier went back to his seat and sat there, silently.


The other students were shocked and stunned, and sat there looking on in silence.  The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the soldier and asked, 'What in the world is the matter with you?  'Why did you do that?'

The soldier calmly replied, 'GOD was too busy today, protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot... So HE sent me.'


I have found....
God often sends the most unlikely messengers and means
To deliver wake-up calls......

INNOCENCE

Do you want to know what God looks like?
You don't have to climb Mt. Sinai, looking for a burning bush......
Relax, instead, into the shameless, unjudgmental gaze of a child
And experience for yourself
Ego-free "I-know-sense".

Innocence is simplicity.

We replaced our Innocence
With stubborn-arsed Attitude
When we sold out on having our own experience - -
Un-adult-erated.
We got separated from it
When we discovered things we had to be right about.
Once we take a position on anything,
We say "Goodbye" to innocence.
Riding pillion with that right-ness
Are Loss and Regret
That we are no longer child-like.

Innocence is stifled, generation after generation,
By those who love us
And want us to grow up,
In whatever ways that are meaningful for them.
The price of losing Innocence is too high
And not necessary.
While we may accumulate years and knowledge,
There is no true Maturity
Without Innocence.

The good news is that Innocence continues to exist,
At the core of all life,
Almost unnoticed,
Completely unrecognised,
Yet yearned for.
Watch the faces on a bus,
When a wide-eyed baby comes on board.

Innocence means living in unobstructed contact
With your complete self --
Higher and lower.

Fear may be characterised
As an inability to be innocent in the matter.
In Innocence, there is no fear.
(An opposite of Courage is Innocence. Both may produce similar fear-less action, but for very different reasons, and with very different consequences. Courage is the product of fear: Innocence is the natural state of being we were born with, before fear.)

In a discussion one time about the movie "Being There",

I was asked "How come Chance walked across the water?"

The answer that popped was "It never occurred to him that he couldn't."

In innocence, the human mind and heart simply assume
An infinite array of possibilities.
There is no question about it.
The Christian Church, for one, found the idea of Innocence so threatening
Its bishops concocted the Doctrine of Original Sin,
One of the most corrosive, evil ideas ever foisted on an innocent people.
It happened.
But dare to look, for yourself, into the eyes of a child
And tell me if you can see "original sin".

This consequently rare condition of Innocence,

Of being unscarred by pain and suffering

Allows a direct knowing of life itself,

Just as it really is --

Undistorted.

This is true in-tuition,

Connecting you to life itself --

Not stuck out on  a limb,

Trapped by someone else's idea about it.

Denial is where problems arise;

Intuition is the place where all problems are dis-solved.

At times, however,
I have found returning to child-likeness difficult.
My mind is highly reluctant to let me let go
Of something it thinks it needs
For its survival.
Layer after layer,
My mind resists surrendering its stuff.......
I have to be very patient.

When you're ready,
Give up being right about your resentments.
Say "Yes" to your Innocence:
Reclaim it.
The more you come into contact with your child-like being
The simpler things are,
Resistance is dropped,
And the easier living becomes.

PAST & FUTURE PRESENT

Some of us live in the past (resentment)
And occasionally visit the future
To predict yet more doom and gloom.
Others of us live in the future (hope)
And occasionally visit the past for justification.
The Present is like one of those little towns
We speed through in transit:
If we blink, we miss it.

Truth is, of course,
Whether we're stuck with our heads in the Past or the Future,
We're doing it Now -- in the Present
And we miss it.

STEPS TO HAPPINESS

PRESCRIPTION

1. Whenever symptoms arise, contemplate the diverging characteristics of Happiness and Fun. Reach into your self and get to know the difference in experience.
2. Get that Happiness Exists. It's all around you. Happiness doesn't have to be created or reached, just tapped into. It is closer to you than the end of your nose.
3. Accept what is -- for now. Get happy with what you've got. [NB Do not attempt to skip this step, and do not proceed until you're happy]
4. Be very careful what you ask for -- you might get it.
5. Let go your withholds. Breathe! Create the intellectual and emotional space for what you want. Release every demand or limiting expectation of how it should show up. 
6. If at first you don't get what you say you want, don't despair: there may be some preparatory work to be done. Accept the fact that you have a limited view. Be willing to accept something that will later turn out to be better. Trust the wider intelligence at work that knows you, knows what you need, and that's willing to conspire with you. Be flexible about your timetables, expand your availability and transparency to the process, and pour on your love anyway.
7. Let go. Breathe more deeply. 
8. Resume growing. In order for growth to happen, something has to be stretched. Allow the unallowable. Accept the unacceptable. Forgive the unforgivable.

SOME SIGNS & SYMPTOMS OF HAPPINESS

• A tendency to engage spontaneously with what is, rather than react to fears of what might-be, uncoloured by the anxieties, guilts and resentments that attach themselves to past experience.
• A marked aura of freedom emanating from an inner knowing that the past is past, the present is present, the future hasn't happened yet, and the three are actually unconnected. [You can go on letting your mind connect them until hell freezes over, but that doesn't change the fact that they have nothing to do with each other] Actually, the past and the future don't even exist, but I don't want to stress you out too much today. But think how much happier you could be without a past to feel guilty about or a future to worry over.
• An unmistakable propensity to enjoy each moment for what it is.
• A willing loss of reliance on the assumption that we can accurately interpret the motives of others.
• A loss of interest in judging the actions of other people.
• A loss of interest in conflict as a way of getting what we want.
• A loss of the ability to worry.
• Frequent and sometimes overwhelming bouts of appreciation and gratitude.
• Contented feelings of connectedness and delight with others, one's self and with nature.
• Frequent bouts of smiling, and growing incidences of loving laughter.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others, as well as a growing urge to pay it forward.

SPACE

I want to make a comment about nothing........
The encounters of this moment
Fill the world.
Space, if you need it,
Has to be created.

That means, among other things, letting something go.

When space does appear,
Don't be too anxious
To fill it up with something else.

Wait........
Watch......
See what life delivers.......

REALITY & TRUTH

What is the difference between Reality and Truth?
It's a bit like the difference between
"Elm" and "Tree"....
All elms are trees,
But not all trees are elms --
There are other types of tree.
Similarly, every reality is a truth,
But not the whole truth,
And some truths are not everyone's reality --
Not until that truth is experienced personally.

THE Truth
Is the sum total of all realities.

No single person knows the Whole Truth.
But it is available.
It is known,
But we do not know all that we know.
How do we access what we don't know that we know?
First,  let go of everything we think we know
And surrender to Not-Knowing.
In that state of permanent innocence
Truth reveals itself
As and when it is needed.
Experience it,
And own your truth
For your self.

ADAPT-ABILITY

Adaptability is natural.
There is no freedom without it.
It is a built-in facility of all sentient beings,
Essential to the survival and evolution of all species.
Creatures that don't adapt to circumstances
Die......
That's the way it is.

Nature usually organises for the un-adaptable creatures to be taken out
Before they procreate.
The un-adaptable strain is gone within a generation.
Humans get around that,
Which is why we get stuck, as a species,
With children who have inherited the inflexible limitations of their parents.
No matter, life has a way of prompting us to do something about our inflexibilities --
It's called Crisis.

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

No matter what the age in history
Or country of birth,
Or the social or economic circumstances into which they're born,
Children have always, and probably will always
Adapt themselves into whatever they're born into.
Our parents managed it; so did we;
We're here, aren't we?
I don't think we have to worry about that.
No question about it.
Children explore, play, experiment
And construct realities and personalities for themselves
From where they are.
They're not fettered by any internal pre-judgments or expectations
Of how it should be.
This is what they showed up in --
This is the way it is.
They don't question it -- yet.

Limiters are acquired later.
Ideas, opinions, beliefs, concepts, values, goals, rules and expectations
Are developed, adopted, formed, and otherwise put in place,
Hardening the arteries.

If we are to remain alive and engaged with life,
Flexibility of emotion, intellect and spirit has to be fostered and attended to
Otherwise it will be lost
And rigor mortis will set in at all levels of being.
We've all met zombies who are upright and dead --
A helluva way to choose to live your life,
And not one that I'd recommend,
But some people insist upon it????

Periodic health-audits of our limitations are called for
To keep ahead of necessary repairs and adjustments.
When these checkups are neglected,
The lives we've constructed may come up for major repairs, renovations and make-overs.
Long-term neglect leads to dysfunctions that eventually call for total demolition and re-build.
Fine.
It happens every day,
So commonly, in fact, that there are even names for it --
"Mid-Life Crisis" being one.

We only become afraid to undertake such radical makeovers
If we think that what we've built
Is what we are!
(Shit! Don't touch that -- that's what I am!)
Unfortunately, most of us fall into that trap.

But if what I've built is what I am, then --
"Who was the architect/builder/owner?"
Me, of course. Who else?
But the builder and the house cannot be one and the same.
The builder is not that-which-has-been built.
You are the dweller, not the dwelling.
No more are you your mind, your body or your personality;
To think that you are is an insanity.
You are that which designed them ,constructed them, and which dwells therein.

This realisation can be immensely freeing for you;
Anything you have constructed, you are entitled to re-construct.
You can demolish and rebuild what you live in
Without fear of damage to Who-You-Really Are.

Let's go back to you before you started building what you've now got.....
Who was born?
"Who was before I was?"
"I-am" was.....
I am an idea whose time had come.
Who was before you were?
You were.
Always.
You are an idea whose time has come.

FREEDOM -- DEPENDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE

We have trapped ourselves into a cruel joke:
As very young toddlers, our minds put it together that
"I need to be dependent (on my parents) to survive."
Well, we didn't have a choice about that;
It was something we had to surrender to.
Later, however, we began to rebel against that --
"I need to be independent (of my parents) to survive."
Our mind, however, has to be right about ALL of its ideas, beliefs, opinions and conclusions,
That's just how minds are.
It could not ditch the old idea in favour of the new.
In an gobsmacking piece of elastic logic,
The old conclusion and the new got stapled together --
"I need to be dependent in order to be independent (and vice versa)"
This is just one aspect of the bewildering love/hate duality of our relationships with our parents;
Logical,
And absurd.
You can begin to see the stress and suffering inherent in that trap!
I need to be dependent and independent,
And I have no idea where, when, or for how long,
And I have no idea how to tell you this.

Considering that our relationship with our parents is THE fundamental relationship
That influences all the other relationships we've ever had,
It begins to throw some light on the problems we have with relatives, life partners and authority figures.

This kind of thinking is not confined to our relationships.
Some other examples of how we get caught in the Law of Reverse Effect are:-

• I need to feel grief and hurt to get validation and honour
• I need to suppress myself to be noticed
• I have to push in to opt out
• I make myself feel stressed to get relief.
• I need to feel (angry, jealous, upset, afraid....) to get peace of mind
• I need to hold back, stop myself or trap myself in order to be free.

These are just starters,
To get you thinking about your own arsenal
Of absurd joy-stoppers.

It's fairly easy to find out your own particular quirks:
Take a few quiet moment on your own
And go back to a recent time when you were upset.
Disregarding the story,
Identify two emotions you felt at the time (e.g. hurt and anger).
Then, in one short sentence, bottom-line what you wanted the end result to be.
Then do what your mind has already done --
Put the two together.
[e.g.  I've just had a blue with my partner. I'm feeling hurt and angry. All I wanted was to be understood.
So, in this case, I make myself feel hurt and angry in order to be understood.]

Look at what you've got.
This is the absurd logic of the Mind in action.
Caught on tape.
Is this operating principle in front of you a recipe for happiness?
No?
Good.
The seeing is the movement.
Just be aware.
Catch yourself,
Get to know yourself,
And have a laugh about it.

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

A truly independent person

(Which I confess I am not)

Simply lets others be

(Both inside and outside him/her self)

Resistance to the way they are is recognised

As arising from a need to dominate and be right

And is dropped.

Resisting and judging only demonstrate our freedom

To imprison and destroy ourselves.

When we give away our ability to let things and people be

We lose our ability to be responsible for what-is.

When we cannot be responsible for things the way they are,

We give ourselves no space to manouevre;

When we have no space,

We cannot create,

We can only react.

There's no independence in being a robot.

It is only in the act of Creating

That we begin to experience true Independence.

The old way of doing things has been

To resist, dominate. control, be right, and make wrong

In order to be free and create.

How's that working for you?

Me either.

Patterns of resistance, domination, coercion, and the need to be right

Cut us off from our self and from otherness.

They erode our ability to let things be

And our ability to be responsible.

They I-solate us from space, freedom, and the ability to create.

If we want a way out of a mess that we're in (and I do)

It seems that the thinking that got us here

Probably needs to be completely reversed

If we're to experience Independence and Freedom.

Independence is not the absence of anything, including dependence:

I suspect Independence is the state of being 

That lightly embraces everything.

Let whatever is, be

And rejoice that it is so.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

Life has no apparent purpose to which we can relate
Until we create one (or more) for our self
And venture forth to meet it,
Inwardly and outwardly.

In a context of unconditional love
Life will take on whatever purpose(s) we give it.
Choose carefully,
Because any purpose you decree for your life
Has absolute creative power
Over what happens with you from then onward.
Become aware.
Meditate into your life.
Pay attention to it.
Watch with interest where it takes you.
Be available to all that is happening
And open to what more might be possible,
Inside and out.
Without feeling the need to justify anything,
Create what you want,
And add to that as often as you want.
At any given time stand by all that you've created,
Go responsible for it, and stand on it.
(My stand, for example,  is -- There is always another way...")
When you put yourself on the line
Life comes to meet you,
Bearing all manner of gifts.

What is your Purpose of Living?

• To successfully survive, until you die?
• To prepare for another life?
• Spiritual discovery?
• To resist and suffer?
• To advance civilisation?
• Self-gratification?
• Power and control?
• What....?

The answers that matter will not come from your head,

But will show forth in the evidence at sunset

Of how you've spent today,

And the quality of interaction you've had during the course of this day

With the rest of existence.
Let the fruit you bear be the evidence
To the purpose of your being.

Let this be your daily evensong.

Purpose,

Whether consciously formed or not,

Directs our life.

A consciously created Purpose,

Enlightens our choices and decisions.

Purpose generates movement in the direction we want to go

And delivers increasing satisfaction.

Without commitment to conscious chosing, however,

We're blown around willy-nilly

By the flaky winds of cross-purposes,

Most of which don't even belong to us.

I am not about to suggest what your Purpose of Life may be,

But I offer you a few possibilities to get you started

On your own exploration ---

• Life is for the purpose of Conscious Experience, and learning Mastery (the opposite of "control")
• Life emerges from the realm of absolute, unconditional love so that we might experience the opposite of all that, and so come to know all that we are.
• Life gives us the hitherto unavailable opportunity for both the divine and the secular in us to discover, experience and express loving and being loved.

On your deathbed, I promise you,

All of your preoccupations with career, education, image, money, security, power, and people you don't like........

Will evaporate. Totally. Gone.

Alongside getting on with the business of letting-go,

The only issue of importance to you will be --

Who did I love? (and you'll get some surprises)

Who loved me? (more surprises)

Do they know how much I love them?

Did I express my love adequately, and honour it appropriately?

Given that you are still alive and reading this,

I can safely say that you, like me, have not yet achieved the Purpose of Life.

We're not done yet.

We're still caught up in intricacies;

We have not yet mastered the simple purity

Of loving and being loved.

This life is the arena where we get all the opportunities

And all the experiences we need.

We were placed here

Without an Instruction Manual.

The directions back home have been fragmented, translated into code,

And hidden along the way.

We have no memory of where we came from,

Only occasional and fragmented flashbacks of past expeditions.

We're like an amnesiac,

Cast away on an island isolated in time and space

Along with a bunch of other amnesiacs

Who, despite their protestations to the contrary,

Also have no idea who they are, where they are, or why they're here.

(That includes me, by the way. Don't follow me -- I'm lost, too.)

The implied Instruction for Life is - 

"Make it up as you go along."

Now, if we can really get a handle on this as possibly "The Way It Is",

Without rebelling, or being dominated by an "I-know-better" ego,

Then there's a good chance we'll begin to experience our own Innocence.

We may stop straining,
And let go of everything we think we know

And start to relax into the condition of Knowing Nothing,

The only state from which Creating is possible

(Creating is the art of bringing something forth from Nothing. Something from something is just change.)

From Innocence we can create Purpose --

For life and for our self --

A personal Purpose that will organise everything we think, feel, say and do,
And everything that we experience being done to us,

And that will connect with the Universal Purpose of All Life

I suspect that there is no escaping the Universal Purpose of life.

It was given to us by the creative source before our life in this body began.
But what is it?
Why is there Life at all?

Every moment of the day and night we are reporting back

On how we're doing,
Without really knowing "compared to what"?

It's possible that those who have experienced past lives
May well have realised they missed the boat
And returned to "have another go".

Who knows? It really doesn't matter one way or the other.

But I get that the general idea is to make the most 

Out of the chance to live the life you've got.

Begin by realising as clearly and as often as you can

The Love that is manifest in Living,

Everywhere you look,

However that love is expressed in your world.

The Purpose of Life?
For myself I've made it --
To liberate others who are willing
And myself who is very willing,
From whatever is holding us back.
That's what I've created for me.....

Now,
What is the Universal Purpose of All life?
That would be handy to know,
Because you and I are both a part of that, too.

I can't be sure -- the jury is still out;

I'm still here, so there must be more for me to get yet,

Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely.

But I have found something

That I've tried and tested in some pretty extreme circumstances

And, so far, it's still working for me.

If this tweaks your interest,

Feel free to try it for yourself ---

For the whole of Existence,
The purpose of life

Is Life itself.

OLD HABITS

Habits don't get broken.

We either remain a victim of a habit,
Or we choose a more effective behaviour.
Our choosing.
Our deciding.

The old habit remains.
How do we live with it?
Let it be.
Be aware,
And choose instead
Whatever delivers what you want.