The Secret of Life

Making Plans

In a couple of recent posts, How to Slow Down Time and In the Zone, I was talking about a recurring theme in this blog: living in the moment, as promoted by Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power Of Now. This is all about being in touch with our senses: focusing on whatever we're actually doing at the time, instead of being lost in a tangle of thoughts as we so often are. I've described this myself in more detail in another earlier post, Feeling What Is.

One criticism which is often leveled at the idea of being in the moment, especially by those who wish to dismiss it as a 'new age fad', is that of course this is impossible, or at any rate unwise, because we have to plan ahead to organize our lives. We have to think about the future because we have to be prepared for whatever life has in store for us. At the very least, we need to make sure we have some food in for dinner tonight.

Now strictly speaking, it is said that we humans are able to reach a state in which we don't have to plan ahead. If we become enlightened, we will be so in touch with the flow of life that we respond spontaneously and effectively to whatever life may throw at us. We are permanently 'in the zone', like a pro sportsman in touch with his game, as I described in a recent post.

But most of us, regrettably, are not enlightened - at any rate, not yet. Even after dabbling in this spiritual stuff for some time, I am only catching glimpses of this wonderful state of being for myself. But that doesn't mean to say that living in the moment is impossible for us. Yes, we have to plan for the future, but we don't have to do it all the time.

If we have a meeting tomorrow, for instance, we may have to think about what we want to say - perhaps jot some notes down on a piece of paper - and work out when we will have to set off to arrive in time. If it is an important meeting, we may even think about what we should wear to create the right effect. But we don't have to spend all day thinking about it. We don't have to think endlessly on about what we should wear, or whether we will be held up in traffic, or whether we should set three alarm clocks instead of just two to make sure we wake up in time. We don't have to turn these things over and over in our minds as we go about our day. And yet this is what we often tend to do. Which means that real life - the actual business of living - goes on almost unnoticed around us.

When I was a kid, I used to love the vacation and hated going back to school (at least until I got there, at which point I realized it wasn't so bad after all). So because of this fear, I used to spend my final day of freedom in a state of dread about what was to come: all those lessons, all that homework, aaagh! Then one day, I realized that I was wasting a perfectly good day of the vacation by worrying about all this. I could have been enjoying that day instead of being miserable all the time. So I decided that in future, I would save worrying about going back to school until the final evening of the vacation. That way, I could enjoy myself for the rest of the day.

And that is what I did from then on.

If I'd been really smart of course, I'd have decided not to worry about school at all, not even in the evening, but even so, I don't think I did too badly for a twelve year old.

There's no reason why we can't adopt a similar approach to life in general. If there is something you have to plan for, ask yourself if there's anything you need to do about it now. If so, take that action. If not, then put the matter out of your mind for the time being until some specified time which you designate for doing the necessary planning. When that time arrives, give the matter the thought it requires. Then put it out of your mind again until one of two things happens: either some further prearranged planning time arrives or the thing you are planning for - gosh, wow - actually happens.

Occasionally, of course, something unexpected will come along which will require you to give the event additional attention - you have to be flexible. But generally speaking, organizing your planning time in this way will free up a lot of space in your brain for other things - like paying attention to actually living your life.

Which is all very well, but if you're like me, you may find yourself hearing a little voice in your mind from time to time which tells you that you are being irresponsible in not worrying about this event in your life that's about to happen. It is your duty to be worried, it may tell you. It's very important - you have to think about it! "But I've decided to think about it on Tuesday morning at half past ten," you reply. "That will give me plenty of time for all the planning I need." Ah yes, the voice says, unconvinced, but you should be worrying about it now. You should be worrying yourself sick. You should be...

Just tell it to shut up, that's my advice. You've taken any action you need to take at the moment. You've prearranged the necessary planning time. If anything unexpected turns up in the meantime, you will deal with it then. That's all you need to do. It is not your duty to worry about it now, quite the opposite. It is your duty not to worry. The more you worry about it, the more wear and tear you will put on your nervous system and the less effectively you may deal with the event when it actually happens. What is more, you will be missing out on life while you worry away. This is your life we're talking about here. It only happens once - and you have a responsibility to be there when it does.

In any case, it is wrong to assume that just because you are not consciously thinking about something, you are failing to give it any attention. From time to time, you have probably woken up from a night's sleep to find that you suddenly have a solution to some problem which has been troubling you. This is because your subconscious mind has been dealing with it while you were asleep.

Yet your subconscious mind can also work on problems while you are awake, especially if you are not getting in the way of it by turning them over and over again in your conscious mind. So give your subconscious a chance and focus on whatever is happening in the present moment instead. Then you may find that when your prearranged planning time arrives, you have subconsciously done a lot of the planning already.

What is more, when we are in the moment, we seem to tap into a source of what appears to be almost supernatural energy. (I don't think it is really supernatural - it's just that we don't understand it yet...) This source can manifest itself in a great many ways. One of them is in the perfect connection of bat on ball when a sportsman is 'in the zone'. And perhaps that same enormous power can be brought to bear on this problem of yours, on your plans for the future, on all aspects of your life... if you can only learn to put them out of your mind.

Natural Focus

The forms of meditation with which I'm familiar use a primary focus, which may be a form of words (such as a mantra), a visual object, or simply your own breathing. The idea is that you place your attention on this. Then, if you notice that other thoughts have intruded, you gently return your attention to this primary focus.

But why not use the natural world as the primary focus? Then, when you notice that thoughts have come, you can turn your attention back to the breeze on your face, to the smell of the flowers, to the song of the birds. I've mentioned before that being out in nature is a great way to be in the moment, because it makes the moment so alive, so full of energy. So why not use all this power in a meditation?

In a recent post, I described how Chris and I had focussed on the moment while out in the natural world. We focussed our attention on a nearby fountain and began to notice so much more about it. We observed new areas of light and shadow, and extra complexities of sound.

Writing of this reminded me of a post I saw a few months ago on Malcolm Campbell's excellent blog The Round Table. In it, he describes a procedure for the sort of thing I'm talking about, a meditation which uses the natural world as its primary focus. It really is a great idea for an exercise. You can find it here.

(The ongoing discussion on the previous post, The Secret Antidote, can be found here. Feel free to contribute!)

The Secret Antidote

In a post a few months back, I mentioned The Secret, the DVD which has recently done so much to popularize the law of attraction, the idea that we can draw to ourselves whatever we want through the power of positive thought. Now Secret Of Life reader Pam has emailed me about a new critique of The Secret; by psychotherapist and author Thom Rutledge. It's called The Secret Antidote and you can find it here.

If you're using the law of attraction and making it work for you, you may not wish to read Thom Rutledge's article. Just keep up the good work! If, on the other hand, you are having difficulty in making the law of attraction work for you in practice or you simply want to investigate The Secret phenomenon further, then you may be interested to take a look.

As for myself, well, I expressed some reservations about The Secret in that earlier post, but I find that I have a similar reaction to Thom Rutledge's analysis. All in all, I think he's a bit hard on The Secret, but rather than say any more just now, I'll leave you to see what you think. If you let me know, we can chat about it in the comments...

Bloggers Against Abuse

Here's one for the bloggers out there. As part of their Blogging for a Cause initiative, Blog Catalog are organizing a Bloggers Against Abuse day on 27th September 2007.What they are asking is for everyone to blog on that day about putting an end to some form of abuse. (Which kind you choose to write about is up to you.) To read more about this special day, please click on the logo below.

(Note to subscribers: As the finer points of blogging are a bit of a mystery to me, I'm not sure if the logo above will make it into the subscription version of this post. In case it doesn't, please click here instead.)

There were some interesting comments on the previous post. You can see them here.

In The Zone

In the previous post, I was writing about an article on Steve Taylor's book Making Time, about how time can seem to get shorter as we get older. That article mentioned how top sports players often report that time seems to slow down when they are in a state of consciousness they refer to as 'in the zone'. When they are in this state, time seems to move so slowly that they are able to predict with absolute certainty where the ball will land and have plenty of time to make the right response to it. They know exactly how to strike the ball and where it will go.

Players seem to enter this 'zone' spontaneously when they are having a good day and the phenomenon has become so widely known that the phrase 'in the zone' is now in common use. This is perhaps the most generally recognized example of being 'in the moment', the practice promoted by Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power Of Now. The players are concentrating so hard on their game that they are completely present in the moment, instead of being lost in thought the way we all so often are. They are fully alert to everything their senses are telling them and so can pick up on information they would otherwise miss.

Chris and I had an example of this the other day. We were sitting in a garden, chatting away, and decided to practice being in the moment together for a while. We let the chatter, both verbal and mental, fall away and connected instead with our senses, so that we were really there in that lovely garden instead of somewhere away in our heads as usual.

After a while, we reported back on our experiences. We had both been focusing on a nearby fountain. Chris reported seeing areas of light and shade in the spouts of water which she hadn't noticed before, while I remarked on something similar in the sound of the fountain. There had seemed to be almost a choir of voices within the sound. I hadn't realized that gurgling could be so complex.

In our everyday lives, such complexities tend to be overlooked. If we hear the sound of the fountain at all, we file it away in our heads as 'the sound of the fountain' and dismiss it from further investigation. Then we rush around in our heads, giving simplistic labels to everything else our senses are telling us, leaving us free to get back to the all-important business of worrying about whatever is on our minds today.

It is the same for the sports people too. If they have a problem in their private lives or are concerned about how they are playing or something that might have been written about them in the press, their game is likely to suffer. Preoccupied as they are with these worries, they will be out of touch with their senses. They will not be 'in the zone'. They will not quite connect with the ball and the perfect shot will elude them.

Perhaps it would help if they read The Power Of Now...

I wonder how many of those who regularly find themselves in the zone on the sports field - and we are talking here about a great many people, not just professionals - realize that they could carry this over into their everyday lives, that if they focussed on their senses all the time, just as they do on the playing field, they could live their whole lives in the zone. Then they would always be alert to what is really going on in front of them instead of being lost in a tangle of thoughts; able to respond in spontaneous perfection to whatever life might throw at them; and able to experience life in all its glory, moment and by moment - like a ball well observed and perfectly smitten, heading towards the sky.

How to Slow Down Time

Here's an interesting news item about how time can seem shorter as we get older. According to Steve Taylor, author of  Making Time , there is truth in 'proportional theory', the idea that as we get older, a year is a smaller proportion of our life as a whole, so it seems to pass more quickly. But he also believes that time seems to pass more slowly for children because they are taking in lots of information from the world around them. "Children are experiencing everything for the first time," he says. "All their experiences are new... Children are incredibly awake to the world around us, so time passes more slowly for them."

We've talked a lot in this blog about 'living in the moment' (as described by Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power Of Now ): the idea of being in touch with our senses and so experiencing the world as it really is, instead of just being lost in our thoughts as adults so often are. It's interesting to make a connection between this and Steve Taylor's ideas. Think back to an afternoon in which you were preoccupied with your thoughts for most of the time. When you think back to that afternoon, you will remember very little about it because you didn't do anything. There will be nothing for your memory to latch on to, so it will seem to have been very short.

Now imagine instead an afternoon in which you met with some friends or explored a new place - or better still both. Or even an afternoon in which you just pottered in the garden but were alert to your senses so that you really experienced each moment: feeling the breeze on your face, the soil beneath your fingers, smelling the scent of the flowers. These afternoons will seem to have been much longer because you were interacting and taking in information from the world around you.

If you have practiced living in the moment yourself, you will already know how good it can feel, but you will also know how hard it can be to maintain that presence. The habit of living for most of the time in our minds instead of in the real world is deeply ingrained in most of us and it can be hard to break out of this 'programming'. It is good, therefore, to have another reason to remember to make that change: the idea that it may allow us, at least subjectively, to experience longer lives.