The Secret of Life

Stringing It All Together

I've had an echo of the dream I described in my earlier post, Special Green Plates, where I was having a meal in the open air, surrounded by people and feeling inexplicably happy. But on this occasion, it happened while I was awake.

We were out at the theatre, having a drink before the start of the play. As I sat there, I allowed my thoughts to drop away and focussed on being there now, in the present moment, paying attention to what was going on around me instead of to my own internal mutterings. I made the connection I talked about in the previous post Feeling What Is, tuning into the peace and subtle energy which are always there in the present moment if we give ourselves chance to feel them.

All too often, a connection like this is very brief. A turn of the head is enough to break the spell. But on this occasion, the feeling lingered. As I looked around at the crowds that were gathering before the play, the peace remained and the feeling of joy that I'd felt in the dream returned.

It is probably worth mentioning here that the drink we were having before the play was tea, rather than anything stronger, but there was something else about the evening which might also have helped me to have the experience I did. The play we were going to see was The Wizard Of Oz - and tonight it was dress-up night.

All around, there were witches, lions, tin men - and the occasional little girl with a dog in a basket. Everywhere we looked, there were excited children. The scene could not have been better prepared for a magical experience. Everything seemed to sparkle. Even as we finished our drinks and made our way into the theatre itself, I was feeling echoes of the joy I'd felt in that dream all those years ago.

This is usually the difficult part - at least for me!- carrying the peace of the present moment with us as we move around and interact with others, for all too often the events of the world tend to chase it away. Yet here I was doing just that, as I believe I did in the dream, aware of what was real from one moment to the next, carrying that awareness with me and stringing the moments of peace together - like precious stones on a necklace.

I believe that your comments on the dream I described in Special Green Plates may also have helped to trigger this experience. It was intriguing - and indeed inspiring! - to learn that so many of you have had similar experiences, whether asleep or awake, and perhaps your responses helped to reinforce the idea that such a thing was possible. It doesn't help to anticipate such experiences, for this seems to chase them away, yet what they are about is knowing - and experiencing - what is real. Some would say that we live in a shared illusion, caught up in our artificial world of thought. Perhaps to share time - or even blog space! - in the company of others who share an alternative vision can help to bring what is real into focus and dissolve away the veil which can keep it concealed.

Eckhart Tolle's books The Power Of Now and the condensed version Practising The Power Of Now are the best guides I know to experiencing the present moment. And if you click here, you can take a look at The Secret Of Life reader Sally's site, which lists details of local Eckhart Tolle groups in the UK, where you can experience the present moment in the company of others. For Eckhart Tolle groups worldwide, click here.

Some Days You Eat The Bear

This isn't my usual sort of post but I couldn't resist! I first saw this news report when it appeared last summer (before I was blogging). Now it's turned up on the BBC News site's most emailed list, so the word must have got around. It's a picture of a cat chasing a large black bear up a tree, and it's possibly one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen. I hope you like it! (It's OK - the bear survived...)

Feeling What Is

Have you ever thought that 'the secret of life' might be here in front of us all the time but we don't notice it?

Imagine a wild flower growing in a field at the side of a highway. Are we likely to see it as we whizz past in our car? Perhaps there is something beautiful that we are missing.

We spend so much of our time rushing around doing stuff, that we rarely have time to pay attention to what is in front of us. Even when we do stop for a moment, we may be so caught up with whatever is going on in our heads that we still don't look around us. Our thoughts are usually not in the present moment at all. They're bound up in thoughts of the past or plans for the future - and these are often regrets of the past and fears for the future. In other words, we spend so much time thinking about what didn't happen and what might never happen, that we miss the only thing that is ever real. The present moment. What is happening now.

And what is this exactly?

If you allow your body and mind to fall still for a moment, you may find that there is a peace and stillness present in the space around you that you hadn't previously noticed. If you don't find it amongst the crowds, then go somewhere where you are alone. A garden would be ideal. Or into the country, or by a stream. It is easier to find in some places than in others. But it is always present if we can be aware.

And in this stillness, there is something else: a subtle, vibrant energy, an aliveness which seems so palpable that we might be surprised we'd missed it before. This is the flower at the side of the highway: beautiful, peaceful, and bursting with life. The secret of life is to carry this awareness with as we travel, so that every moment of our lives is just as alive.

Thanks to those of you who commented on my previous post about the Conversations With God books, especially Cosmic Sunshine, who contributed an invaluable summary of the later books in the series. See those comments here.

Conversations With God

I've already mentioned the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsch on this blog, but they made such a remarkable impact on me when I first read them that I thought they deserved a post to themselves.

Walsch started writing CWG Book One by writing an angry letter to God about how awful his life had become. At that point, he was not intending to write a book but simply to vent his spleen. So what happened next took him completely by surprise. He found himself still holding the pen, and writing an answer which apparently came from God. The book then developed along the same lines, with Walsch and God in conversation: Walsch asking questions and God providing surprisingly clear and straightforward answers.

I have to say that to a cynic like me, this didn't seem like a very good idea for a book, yet I found to my astonishment that it all made sense to me. I'd never found any religion which really spoke to me, yet here was this little paperback from some apparently crackpot guy which was setting out an explanation of God and us and the universe which resonated deeply within me. As I read, a little voice inside me kept saying "yes!" I felt that, after all this time, I was finally starting to understand what was going on.

A lot of the ideas which I have been writing about in this blog were ones which I first encountered in Neale Donald Walsch's book, and if you haven't already done so, I urge you to go and read it. The first book, Conversations With God Book One was the one which made the most impact on me, though I've also read the rest of the original trilogy, i.e. CWG Books Two and Three. Many others have followed, though I am not familiar with these. If you've read them, please feel free to leave comments on any views you may have on them.

I think it's important to note that Walsch makes no claim that these books of his are the absolute word of God. He fully accepts that they have been filtered through the very human brain of Neale Donald Walsch. I hope it will not shock you if I state my belief that similar limitations must inevitably be present in all religious texts.

If I have a criticism of the first three books, it is that they are very good at describing what is going on with God, the universe, and the human condition, but not so good at suggesting what we should do about it. For this, I have turned to other books, such as those I have previously mentioned by Eckhart Tolle and Nick Roach, and practices such as meditation. This does not, however, detract from the worth of the Conversations With God books - they are, to my mind, a magnificent achievement - and more practical information may be available in some of the later books which I haven't so far read. Any recommendations you may have of these are welcome.

I would also like to give special mention to Walsch's children's book, The Little Soul And The Sun, which is a wonderful parable of the human condition and how it arose - developed from one of the chapters in Conversations With God Book One.

I have now placed links to Conversations With God web sites in the sidebar.

Now on to a Public Service Announcement. If, after reading my recent post The Revenge Of The Slime Monster, you are eager to have a clothes valet experience for yourself, UK readers can now purchase one at a bargain price here. But don't delay - the opportunity to get hold of a clothes valet doesn't often arise! (I wonder why not?)

And don't miss out on taking a look at the comments on these posts. The conversation on Special Green Plates was particularly interesting. See it here.

Special Green Plates

While writing the recent post Waking Up, I was reminded of a dream I had few years ago. I seemed to be in some sort of community. There were people of all ages around me and we were having a meal together in the open air. Everyone seemed to be smiling and chatting cheerily to each other. We were sitting at long wooden tables and people were passing round plates which seemed somehow to glow.

But what I remember most about that dream is how happy I was. I was blissfully happy - yet without knowing why.

Even at the time, I didn't know why. I remember waking from the dream with a burning desire to somehow record that happiness. I grabbed a pen and paper to try to write something down to explain it - but I didn't know what to say.

It seems to be quite common for people to experience something a bit like this in a dream: the idea that they've suddenly grasped the secret of life or something and they wake up and write it down, only to find in the morning that they've written absolute gibberish. I've occasionally cited this experience of mine in conversation as an example of this. And yet in my case, there's a slight difference. The point is that I wasn't surprised to find that I'd written rubbish. Even while I was writing it, I knew that I didn't really know why I was happy, that I couldn't think of anything to write that was helpful. I just remembered the vivid experience of that happiness and had to try to write something down in case it helped me to somehow find my way back to it.

What did I write down?

'Eat off special green plates'.

Well, it was the best I could do at the time.

It wasn't till all these years later, while I was writing that post the other week, that I finally realized what this had all been about.

There wasn't anything special about the plates. There wasn't anything special about anything I saw in that dream. The only thing that was special was my consciousness: it was the way I was looking at things. I was in touch with that source of energy that I've talked about in this blog. I felt one with the people around me. There was no pain from the past, or hopes and fears for the future. I was simply filled with joy.

What I had was a dream of being enlightened.

The Revenge Of The Slime Monster

The 'humour' (or 'humor') component of my category cloud has been under a bit of strain recently with all this serious stuff, so I thought it was time for one of our occasional slices of domestic reportage, which are usually good for a snigger or two at my expense.

And here at The Secret Of Life HQ, we're preparing to up sticks and move in the next few months, something which will involve some strategic smearing of paint and brushing of dust under rugs in an effort to make the present abode more saleable, all of which I'm going to find very challenging.

I don't know why but I don't get on with tidiness. I've nothing against it, you understand, it's just that it doesn't come very easily to me. Everywhere I go, I seem to amass a great mess of magazines, unopened mail, bottles of water, mugs of coffee, portable radios, clocks, keys, CDs, bags, and jumpers, all congealed together in an amorphous gloopy mess, which would take a month and a half to separate out, dust, degloop, and file away in appropriate places - always assuming the will was there to do so.

Which it usually isn't.

Chris calls it my 'trail of slime', but she only says that to try to shame me into clearing it up, and she ought to have realized by now that all such attempts to manipulate me are futile. I do occasionally tidy things up, but only when I've tripped over one cup of coffee too many or searched too long to try to find my spectacles in the midst of a pile of mail order catalogs, apple cores, and pending correspondence. I would tidy up more often, I honestly would, but experience has taught me that it only goes and gets itself all untidy again. Entropy rules, so we might as well just admit it.

One Christmas, Chris bought me a 'clothes valet', a weird kind of freestanding coat-hanger, over which I would drape the clothes I'd worn that day when I went to bed - as opposed to slinging them over the banister rail or laying them out on the floor ('like dead animals' as one of my previous girlfriends described this peculiar habit of mine). Then the next day, when my mind was more alert, I would calculate how many days or weeks I'd worn them and whether it was more appropriate to wear them again or sling them into the laundry basket lest they crawl there of their own accord.

So all night, the clothes valet would stand there at the foot of the bed, wearing my habitual jumper and jeans, looking like the spectre of someone who bore an uncanny resemblance to me, looming threateningly out of the darkness when I woke from fitful dreams and greeting me in the morning like some sort of admonishing scarecrow of doom, its jumper askew and its flies undone, a bitter reminder of the disheveled state into which I had descended.

After a while, entropy got to the clothes valet as well. Its rods and wires began to bend under the weight of too many layers of winter clothes and thick-knit crew-neck jumpers, and it took to collapsing spontaneously in the middle of the night, waking us up in a feverish clatter of poles, springs, and ruptured gussets, and requiring careful reconstruction the following morning. Eventually, even Chris had to accept that the experiment had not been a success: that the clothes valet was now contributing to the general clutterdom of the household instead of being an ally against it. I was therefore given permission to take the thing to the tip, where I cheerfully flung it into the skip and left it there to its fate, spreadeagled amongst the mattresses, curtains, and contiboard shelving, looking like a broken robot from a nineteen-fifties science fiction movie.

According to Nick Roach (in his CD, Dealing with Life, Living with Enlightenment), we are attracted to our partners because they reflect back to us parts of ourselves which we haven't yet recognized. We therefore feel more whole, more fully ourselves, when we are around them. And indeed it is true that I see things in Chris which I would like to see in myself. I would like to be more obviously 'a people person', as chatty, gregarious and easy in company as she is - and part of me, yes, would like to be tidy too. I would like to be able to put things away to one side in such a way that I instinctively stack them in tidy, agreeable piles, from which they may be readily accessed whenever I need them, instead of finding that they somehow stray to a formless, mouldering heap where they slowly fester and rot.

Chris, on the other hand, is apparently drawn to a part of her she has yet to discover which is just as untidy as I am. Her state of spiritual development is such that she doesn't yet understand why this should be - and, to be honest, neither do I, but I can only rejoice that she needs to be here at my side with me and my mess.

(Click here to see ongoing discussions on previous posts: How To Deal With Difficult Emotions; Thinking Outside The Illusion.)

How To Deal With Difficult Emotions

A few months ago, I attended a talk by Nick Roach (organized, as it happens, by The Secret Of Life reader Andy). Nick claims to be enlightened (the state I described in the previous post, Waking Up). I use the word 'claims' here not because I have any reason to doubt what Nick says but so that I can make a statement of fact, there being no way of knowing whether someone is enlightened or not. (A flashing beacon on the top of the head might have been useful, but neither God nor evolution have managed to get this together.)

My limited experience of enlightened people is that they don't always communicate very well with people who are not enlightened. Nick Roach, however, speaks very clearly and simply, and just appears to be a very nice, ordinary guy. Indeed, he still works for the council!

The main thing I took from his talk, and which I would like to share with you here, is that what gets in the way of our becoming enlightened, of reaching a sense of peace, are our emotions.

This certainly ties in with my own experience - and all too often, the emotion can seem to come out of nowhere. For instance, I can be walking along, full of the joys of spring, and apparently connected to some bottomless well of benevolence, only to find myself suddenly seething with inexplicable anger, just because someone has pushed in front of me at the supermarket checkout queue.

Where this seething emotion comes from is never clear to me, though it always seems to be out of proportion to whatever has provoked it. I can only presume it is rooted in previous emotions which have long been suppressed.

What, then, can we do when something like this happens, when an emotion such as anger or something else seems to literally 'take us over', either for seemingly trivial reasons - as in my case - or for more substantial ones?

Nick suggests a technique which involves allowing ourselves to feel the emotion but without getting sucked into a mental conversation about it. He argues that all the seething inside about whatever has happened, about who did what to whom and the reasons why we were so badly treated only serve to fuel the emotion. Once we have taken whatever steps we can to resolve the situation, we should let go of these thoughts and simply allow ourselves to feel the emotion. Then, without its fuel, the emotion will simply dissolve away.

The really good thing, according to Nick, is that this technique will also dissolve any underlying emotions . So whatever long-suppressed feelings may lie behind my supermarket rage should also dissolve away.

The full technique is a bit more complicated than this; Nick gives full instructions for it on his CD Dealing With Life, Living With Enlightenment. So if you'd like to try the technique, please get hold of a copy of this. It's better to hear the technique from the man himself, so you know you're doing it properly. (It may be worth mentioning that I'm not on an affiliate deal for this!)

Nick also has other books and CDs available and a recording of the talk in Leeds, which I attended, is forthcoming. You can find his web site here.

So, does this technique sound too good to be true? Well, perhaps - but my experience suggests that small shifts in perspective or behavior can make a big difference to things. And bear mind in mind that you have to be prepared to feel the emotion here, which may not be as easy as it seems.

Does the technique work? I tried it out myself for several weeks after I attended Nick's talk and it seemed to be helping to staunch my bouts of inexplicable anger. Then something big came along and I started forgetting to use it!

This is the thing to remember about this and similar simple techniques which can change our perspective on life. They may seem too easy. They may seem too simple to make a difference. But this is the difficult bit: you have to remember to use them and go on using them if you want to make a difference to the way you see the world. Change rarely happens overnight. So it's not safe to stand next to me in the supermarket queue just yet...

Thanks for your comments on my recent posts, ranging from Gaia to bicameralism! To see these comments (and join in the conversation), here's where to click: Waking Up, The Universe Within, Taking The Lid Off - 2, Taking The Lid Off - 1, Thinking Outside The Illusion.

Waking Up

Writing this blog is sometimes like opening a series of Chinese boxes. I write one post and that reveals something else which I have to write. In a recent post, I mentioned the idea of us 'waking up', and I thought it might help if I made it plain what I meant by that.

What I am talking about is coming to know from moment to moment that the ideas we've been discussing in this blog are a reality: that everything in the universe, ourselves included, are a single entity. We are all one. We are all part of the same being: part of a living energy field which some may choose to call God. This is what I am suggesting (very politely) in this blog.

But I'm not expecting you to believe this just because I say so. This isn't about 'belief'. All I suggest is that you approach these ideas with an open mind and an open heart and see what you make of them. Do they seem 'right' to you? Do they resonate in any way in your consciousness? If they do, or even if you are not certain about it, perhaps you will investigate some of the teachers I mention in this blog and some of the practices I suggest. I've mentioned some of these already but there are many more to come. It is all about finding a way to connect to that field of energy: that same field which lies behind the illusion we think of as matter. It is all about waking up to what is real.

This does not mean abandoning any belief system you may already have. I'm not trying to turn anyone away from any belief which already serves them. It seems to me that the concept of unity is entirely consistent with the great spiritual traditions and I'd like to talk about this in a future post. But at the same time, there isn't any conflict either if you don't believe in God. The energy field we're talking about can simply be viewed as a natural phenomenon, which doesn't have to be labeled as 'God' if you'd rather not.

This 'waking up' can also be called 'enlightenment', which might be described as 'a lightening of the load', literally a lifting of the burden of life from our shoulders. After all if we are really all part of the same being, if when we look into someone else's eyes, we see only ourselves looking back, where does this leave our striving for position, our need to stay 'ahead of the pack', our constant attention to the image of ourselves we display to the world?

In our present state, it as though we are all carrying an enormous statue of ourselves on our shoulders, a statue which we believe is of enormous interest to everyone else around us, all of whom are constantly studying the statue and seeking to identify some deficiency in it. In actual fact, unknown to us, our statue is hardly noticed, for everyone is too busy taking care of their own statues to pay any attention to ours. When we wake up, we realize this and can finally lift that statue, that great burden we have carried the whole of our lives, from our shoulders. We can finally feel the lightening of the load.

Happy New Year to you all! May the years ahead bring a lightening of the load for humanity...