The Secret of Life

Global Meditation/Prayer For Peace And Healing

My friend Linda has recently sent the following letter about continuous meditation/prayer for peace and healing to her Peace Information Network. I think it's a wonderful idea, so I suggested we could also publish it here. After all, we were talking last time about sending out positive thoughts to attract the things we want in our lives - and I think that peace and healing for the earth are on everyone's list. Linda quotes several instances of the benefits of this sort of practice, and in my previous post, on the movie What The Bleep?, I included links to some published research on the positive effects of group meditation on crime. Perhaps now is our chance to make a real difference to the world...

Over to Linda:

According to some recent experiments that measured results from global healing meditation/prayer times, it was shown that while the meditation/prayers were in progress, changes were being made on the earth -- for example, the number of bad things happening reduced dramatically during a synchronized global healing. However, as soon as the meditation/prayer ended, the number of bad things started to rise again.

Therefore, I would like to propose that we set up a global network of people, someone in each time zone, who would dedicate one hour a day to a global meditation/prayer. This would produce a wave of continuing meditation/prayer for global peace and at times, if we wanted, we might add in a healing meditation for specific people.

I have personally witnessed what seemed to be a miracle healing for a teenager who was in a very serious car accident and in a coma, not expected to live. I contacted someone who was part of a prayer chain, the chain was activated and people all over the world who got the message prayed or sent healing to this boy. The chain was kept activated for 4 days, at the end of which the boy came out of his coma. I am also aware of a time when a group of people in one place decided to meditate 24 hours a day to bring peace to a specific conflict. They did this for a month, making sure there was always someone who was 'on duty' during the meditation.

I would like to ask if there are any of you (or those with whom you are in contact) who would like to join in a global continuing meditation for peace on earth. I would hope that we could have someone somewhere in the world who was in meditation/prayer at all times for this one simple request -- the healing of the earth.

If you are interested, please email me and I will happily co-ordinate the efforts. I know many of you will have joined in the International Day of Peace on the 21st September and I believe that had an effect. So now, what about we get together for a continuous healing of the earth.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who would like to join in. I already meditate every day so I expect many of you do as well.

With love and peace and healing to all - Linda

Don't forget to email Linda if you are interested in taking part in this great idea.

My promised post about law of attraction techniques will follow on next time. Many thanks to all who sent in comments on the previous post. I found the discussion fascinating and it has helped me to develop my ideas on the law of attraction. I hope to be writing more about this soon...

Positive Thinking For Beginners

The Law of Attraction, the idea that we can draw to ourselves whatever we want simply through the power of positive thought, seems to be all the rage at the moment, due at least partly to the success of Rhonda Byrne's DVD, The Secret. I know that a lot of my readers are heavily into this already, and, believe me, you have my support - but I have to admit that when it comes to this sort of thing, I myself am a bit of a beginner.

I'm also a bit confused, to be honest. The spiritual techniques I tend to use derive from Eckhart Tolle, Nick Roach, and indeed Sri Bhagavan, the emphasis of which are accepting what is. The law of attraction, and its central idea of drawing to us whatever we desire, seems to me to be an alternative - and perhaps conflicting - strategy. I'm not sure that there has to be conflict, but I can't get it entirely straight in my mind.

If you have any thoughts on this, please do leave a comment!

Some of the content of The Secret causes me further confusion. We are told that when we are imagining what we wish to bring into being, feeling good is important. If we don't feel good we should put on a favourite piece of music or think of something we like, and then we'll feel better and be more effective at attracting the right things.

But surely feeling good isn't always that easy? And if it is so easy, then why exactly do we need to attract all these things into our lives anyway? Isn't the idea that they're going to make us feel good? But if we can feel good anyway just by putting on a piece of music, why do we need all these things in the first place?

I also wonder whether forcing ourselves to feel good all the time is necessarily helpful. I've previously talked about dealing with difficult emotions, and part of the problem seemed to be that we tend to have emotions inside us which have long been suppressed. Don't we have to accept that it is part of life to feel such unhelpful emotions from time to time, at least for limited periods? That we need to feel these emotions and allow them to be released? If we're trying to feel good all the time, aren't we simply suppressing such emotions and storing them up to cause problems in the future?

I feel a bit bad about writing this post, because I guess people come here for positive stuff and here am I being a bit negative for once. So let me make clear that I do believe in the law of attraction. If you're on a roll with it and you're making it work for you, then that's brilliant. The last thing I want to do is to stop you - you're doing a brilliant job! I guess my concern is really with people like me who have difficulty with this thing. It's not the law of attraction that's the problem so much as our ability to make the thing work!

A lot of it is down to attachment really. I've written about this before in a previous post, How To Have It All.  The basic problem is that if we're really attached to getting something, any positive thoughts we put out to try to attract it to us are likely to be cancelled out by negative thoughts such as 'This'll never work!' or 'I don't deserve it!'. Only when we can lose such attachments and connect instead with the universe, with the wonderful source of energy I keep talking about in this blog, do we realize that our happiness does not need to be dependent upon such material things. Only then can our happiness be assured.

Then, when we no longer need them, good things will come along, because we are no longer putting out the negative, anxious thoughts which help to keep them away. (I hope this makes sense! I may have explained it more clearly in the post I mentioned above.)

So this is the path I'm going for myself: accepting what is, releasing stored up emotions, and tuning into the universe. Then whatever I want will be mine when I know that I no longer need it.

But you don't have to listen to me! If the law of attraction is working for you, that 's brilliant.  This blog is not about trying to impose specific belief systems on people. You have to find the truth that is right for you. And we are all working with the same energy anyway. The energy you tune into when you are imagining what you want is the same energy I tune into when I relax and accept what is. We are coming to the same thing from different angles.

But when the connection is made, it is effortless. When it all seems to flow, you know you are doing it right!

If you are working with the law of attraction and it doesn't seem to be flowing, however; if you feel negative energy creeping in and you're beating yourself up because you can't feel good all the time, then maybe you need to think about changing your strategy: not to abandon the law of attraction altogether but perhaps to choose the specific techniques you use more carefully. Because in spite of what I've written here, I'm going to go for the law of attraction myself - alongside my other spiritual practices - but what I'm going to concentrate on are three specific easy techniques, two of which are mentioned on The Secret DVD and one of which isn't. Call it 'positive thinking for negative people' if you like! I'll talk about these techniques and why I've chosen them in a future series of posts.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on any of this, please leave a comment - I am looking for guidance myself!

(There were some interesting comments on the previous post, The Ultimate Purpose Of Life? and I was given plenty of opportunity to expand on my ideas. You can see the discussion here.)

The Ultimate Purpose Of Life?

Ever wondered what's the point of life? What are we doing here? Why do we all exist?

Well, I don't know the answer any more than you do, of course. But here's my take on things. See what you think.

First of all, imagine that you are God. You may not believe that such a being exists, of course. But we're doing a 'just suppose' here, so see if you can humour me for the purpose of this post. Imagine that you are God, then. What do you do?

You're an all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite being who simply is. You always have been and always will be. But what do you do? How do you spend your time?

You can just hang out in a state of bliss for all eternity, of course. But this isn't an 'either-or'. You have infinite power, so you can hang out in infinite bliss and do other stuff too. So what do you do?

All you have for now is the infinite you. If you want to experience anything more, you have to create it first. So all you have to decide is: what will it be?

As you have infinite power, you might as well use it. So what you decide to bring into being is everything that could possibly be. It's probably best for us to think of this in terms of what we know, so imagine an infinite series of bubbles. Each of these is a universe and one of them is our own.

What you will want to do now, of course, is explore these worlds of substance which you have created. This is easy for you to do, for all of it was created out of yourself. No other raw material was available. So while you explore your creation, you are being your creation, each lump of rock and every living thing.

This exploration is entertaining, but is there perhaps something more for which you are searching?

Let's look at what you have. There is the infinite bliss from which you emerged and you also have the substance which you have created. But are either of these enough?

In bliss, which we might call heaven, there is only the light of yourself. Nothing very much happens there, and without any shadows, it's all a bit boring. How can you even recognize the splendour of the light when there isn't any darkness against which to observe it?

Down in the worlds of substance, it is different. These are places of light and dark, where there's plenty to entertain you. But the darkness is painful and sometimes it seems like the darkness is all there is.

If only there was another way of being!

Perhaps you are waiting for such a world to emerge.

These worlds which you have created are not static. They are living systems, constantly evolving, bringing infinite possibilities into being. In time, you know that the worlds you want will emerge: worlds of shadow yet worlds in which the glorious light of yourself will also be known.

Is such a world emerging here? Is it possible? Is this why Deeksha and other techniques are available now? Could all of us (who are really you) be on the verge of this new way of being: going about our daily lives with all the drama and interaction which the light and shadows provide, yet always aware, deep inside, of the glorious light which can drive the pain of the shadows away - and help us to understand why the darkness is there.

What do you reckon?

Deeksha

I promised to share with you more about how to connect with the wonderful field of energy I keep talking about in The Secret Of Life, and the greatest assistance I've so far found is from something called "Deeksha" (also known as the "Oneness Blessing").

Deeksha is a transfer of energy which has been brought into the world by two avatars in southern India, Sri Bhagavan and Sri Amma. It nurtures a feeling of Oneness - connection with "all that is" - in those who receive it. It dampens down the individual ego and encourages us to think of ourselves as part of the wider family of humanity. Which is a useful mindset to have if you like the idea of global peace and harmony, a distant dream though this might seem at the moment.

So how is this energy transferred exactly? Some of you might be thinking of old science fiction movies, with metal helmets connected by wires and a high voltage transformer. But I'm pleased to be able to report that it's all a lot less scary than that. Deeksha is simply transferred by a laying on of hands, the same as in Reiki or spiritual healing, with which you may be familiar. Indeed, Deeksha itself has a similar healing effect, as well as promoting this helpful change in consciousness.

I've been going on in this blog about "waking up", about enlightenment, about "living in the moment", about making what is really only a subtle change in perspective and the benefits which this might have for us all. If we could only stop listening to the voice of our ego, carping on in our minds all the time like an interfering aunt, with fears for the future, regrets of the past, and telling us all the things we have to do to keep up the image of ourselves we feel we have to present to the world! If only we could drop all that and reclaim the joy of simply being ourselves in this moment, free to experience whatever is happening now to its fullest extent, and tapping into a source of infinite power.

In isolated moments, I've experienced this feeling myself - and I've even strung such moments together from time to time (as I've described in the previous post). But it is possible - so we are told - to live like this all the time, and what is so remarkable is that all it will take to do it is this subtle change in consciousness: so easy to understand yet so hard to put into practice from day to day. We have grown up with a whole different way of thinking: to watch out for ourselves and those we are close to above all else, to think of ourselves as in competition, rather than in subtle connection, with the rest of humanity. The consequences of this perspective are all too clear to see, in our own lives and on the global political stage. We desperately need our mental program "rewriting" - and I don't think that Windows Vista is going to do it.

Fortunately, various teachers and practices - some of which I've talked about in this blog - are available to help us in this, and like I say, the most powerful one I've found for myself is Deeksha. I've been receiving it for about eighteen months now, and I guess it's a large part of the reason I'm doing this blog. I've tried various other teachings and practices over the years, but although I've found them impressive on a short term basis, I don't seem to have allowed them to make much practical difference to my life. It's like I've gone "Oh gosh, wow - yes!", but then the old familar program has clicked back in again as though nothing has happened. The difference with Deeksha is that I am now aware of how I'm acting on a day to day basis. Most of the time, my old mindset is still in operation, but now I'm aware of the unhelpful ways in which I'm thinking and behaving and how they might be different. This self-awareness is the first step towards change.

We all change at a different rate, however. Instantaneous enlightenment can happen with Deeksha, though for most of us, the change will be much more gradual than that. We need to carry on our normal lives while this is happening, and rapid change will usually make this difficult. What you are very likely to experience if you do try Deeksha, however, are moments of connection with Oneness, with the source of energy I've been talking about in this blog. So if you've been wondering what on earth I've been going on about, now's your chance to find out... Even here, though, it's best not to have expectations. Deeksha is different for everyone, and as with all spiritual practices, it's best just to accept whatever happens.

If you would like to find out more about Deeksha, here are a few links. Deeksha is now available in a great many parts of the world, and you may well find that there is a Deeksha event not far from you. The main web site is Oneness University, and this has links to a great many others worldwide. The US site is Oneness Movement and the UK site is Oneness University UK. You can use these sites to find Deeksha events near you. (In the UK site, search here.) The UK site also contains some interesting articles about the neurological effects of Deeksha on the brain by the neurophysicist Christian Opitz.

I urge you to approach Deeksha in the same way as everything else I mention in The Secret Of Life: if you are drawn to it, try it and see what you think! But it's probably important to mention here that this isn't some new religious movement. Here's a quote from the Oneness University site:

The University does not propagate any particular belief, dogma, religion, faith or teaching. The underlying concept behind every one of its activities is the thought of Sri Bhagavan and Amma that says, "Truth however profound, when it is not yours still remains untruth." Accordingly the university aims to put every individual in touch with the truth of his faith via the medium of a personal experience.

It's like I've said before: this isn't about belief. It's about what's real.