The Secret of Life

Earth Doomed! (see page 53)

More 'Heart Of The Secret' to follow soon but first of all I'd like to draw your attention to the UN Geo-4 report on the 'global environment outlook', which was published last week. According to The Times, 'the report was drafted and researched by almost 400 scientists, all experts in their fields, whose findings were subjected to review by another 1,000 of their peers'. The report warns that 'the speed at which mankind has used the Earth's resources over the past 20 years has put humanity's very survival at risk'. We are warned that 'the point of no return' is fast approaching.

What causes me greatest concern is not the report itself, chilling though it is, but the low degree of priority it has been assigned in the news media, at least here in the UK. I heard about it last Thursday morning in a brief bulletin on BBC Radio 5 Live but as the day went on, the story seemed to slide down the news agenda. When I searched on Google News in the evening it appeared at number 9 in 'world news'. When I checked the papers the following day, I found that of the four 'quality' UK dailies, only The Times and The Independent chose to put it on their front page. To their credit, both ran it as their sole front page story, clearly believing that it deserved maximum publicity. In The Telegraph, by contrast, it appeared on page 16.

I also checked the Daily Mail, the 'popular' UK daily which does so much to inform our population about the threat to our national way of life from immigrants and other minorities. But they didn't seem to believe that the threat to our national way of life from the destruction of the planet warranted so much as a mention. At any rate, I couldn't find anything about the report in the paper at all, and I got as far as page 56.  I could have actually bought a copy, I suppose, and checked more thoroughly, but that would surely have been taking things a bit too far.

OK, so we already knew that the planet was in a bad way, but we're talking here about an authoritative, well-researched international report which clearly states that the survival of the human race is in imminent danger. The fact that it has been given such a relatively low profile in the news media says much about the capacity - or rather, incapacity - of humanity to respond to this crisis. An immense concerted effort from us all is required if planetary disaster is to be averted, yet not only can't we be bothered to make such an effort, we don't even feel it's necessary to make sure that everyone knows it's needed.

If you read this blog regularly, you may have gleaned from the occasional comment I've made that I believe - or at any rate hope - that the human race will shortly undergo a subtle transformation, that we're in for a consciousness upgrade, from a mindset in which we care mainly about ourselves and our own selfish needs and desires to one in which we come to perceive ourselves more as an integral part of the human race and the universe, in which we 'widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty', as Albert Einstein put it. For as Einstein presciently warned: 'we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive'.

The reasons why I 'believe' in this transformation are several:

1) Starting with what some might see as the 'wacky' side of things: there are numerous prophecies - including the fact that the Mayan calendar ends mysteriously in 2012 - which suggest that either the end of the world or a new golden age will occur at this time. Being a natural skeptic, I wouldn't give much credence to these were it not for the following:

2) So many resources are now available for personal transformation. I've talked about Deeksha and other resources on this blog. I shall talk about more in the future. Most of these have only emerged in recent years, some having apparently been guarded secretly for millennia, waiting for this time in history to arrive. It is not unreasonable to ask why all these resources have suddenly emerged. Could it be because we are going to need them?

3) And finally, the most compelling reason is the one which echoes the words of Einstein. A transformation is surely required if humanity is to survive.

In a recent article in The Sunday Times, the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss asked the question: 'is human consciousness fit for purpose?' As it stands at present, the answer is clearly  'no'. Our perspective is too self-absorbed and short-termist. We are so entrenched in our present lifestyles that it would take a tsunami and California-style fires on everyone's doorstep to grab enough of our attention to prompt us to take the action that's needed to save ourselves. And if such a thing happened, it would probably already be too late...

So that's the principal reason why I 'believe' in the coming transformation: not because of the prophecies or because there's  a 'new age' category in the bookshop, but because  I'm at heart an optimist and I can't see any other way ahead.  It's as though the prophecies and the planetary crisis are converging synchronistically into the only possible future for the human race: a future of transformation.

Only when we come to think of ourselves as first and foremost an integral part of the human race and the universe at large, rather than as separate entities in competition with each other, will we have the perspective needed to sit down as one and work together to find a way out of this mess. Even then, the road ahead will not be an easy one.

But at least we'll be in with a chance.

The Heart Of The Secret 1 - Intention And Acceptance

In writing this blog, I'm hoping to share ideas about life which may be useful to other people, but also - a lot of the time - trying to work things out for myself. Clarity comes and goes. Sometimes I think I've got all my ducks in a line and everything makes perfect sense. Then someone posts a comment and suddenly I'm all over the place with feathers flying everywhere. "Whaat?" I cry, "How does that fit in?"

But that's OK - it's what it's all about. Yet it can be inconvenient if I'm just in the middle of writing a post...

Leaving the quantum physics aside (which I always find is best unless I particularly want a headache) there's nowhere I've struggled more in the whole spirituality area than with the law of attraction, that idea which was so successfully popularized earlier this year by the DVD The Secret. This is the idea that we can create our own reality by the power of our positive thoughts. I've written about this before in Positive Thinking For Beginners and also in the comments to another previous post, The Secret Antidote.

One particular problem I have is in reconciling the law of attraction with acceptance of what is.

If you've been reading this blog in the last month or so, particularly the posts How Does It Feel To Win A Million? and Ripples On A Sea Of Peace, you'll know that I'm pretty big on 'acceptance'. Indeed, it seems to me that acceptance, as in truly accepting and being OK with whatever is in our lives right now, may be the real big 'secret' of life, rather than the law of attraction.

Acceptance is all about not arguing with reality, which is something we do all the time but (when you think about it) makes absolutely no sense at all. "The buses should run on time", "Chocolate shouldn't make you fat", or "You shouldn't have walked out on me", are the sort of things we say every day, but they don't get us very far if they're simply denying the way things actually are. This sort of denial of reality uses up a vast amount of energy but we don't realize what's happening because we've been doing it all our lives. If we can let go of that resistance, and feel our whole body relax as we stop saying "no" to what's happening now, we may suddenly feel an incredible burst of freedom. (Read more about this here.)

But how can we have this acceptance of life yet also use the law of attraction to bring about changes?  Do we have to choose either one or the other approach?

At first glance, there does seem to be conflict here, yet when you actually read the small print of the law of attraction, the conflict falls away. To make the law of attraction work, you have to be free of attachment to whatever outcome you're trying to bring about. This is kind of skated over in The Secret but it's very important. In fact, it's one of several important features of the law of attraction which you could easily miss if you watch The Secret, and which I intend to highlight in this series of posts.

So just to get this straight: what you have to do is to put the intention out there - imagine whatever you want to happen - and then let it go. You can't be thinking "I do hope this works..." or it won't! It's necessary for you to imagine richly and passionately whatever you want to bring into being and then be willing to accept whatever happens.

Why is this non-attachment so important?

What we are told is that the law of attraction takes things very literally. It brings into being whatever thoughts we're putting out there. So if what we're doing is wanting something, that's exactly what we get: a situation of want. We don't actually get that shiny new car (or whatever it may be) but we create a reality in which we very much want a shiny new car. Which almost certainly isn't the outcome we had in mind! So to be successful,  you have to keep the wanting out of the equation. Put the intention out there and then let go.

Another important factor is the need to keep unhelpful, negative thoughts at bay.  A big problem with putting the law of attraction into practice is that thoughts such as "What if it doesn't work?" and "What if I don't deserve it?" tend to creep in. These thoughts tend to push whatever we're trying to bring into being away from us, undermining the whole process. If we can drop the attachment, however, and be easy with whatever the outcome may be, then such anxious, negative thoughts need no longer trouble us. Why should they, once we are willing to accept whatever may be? As I like to put it: we can have whatever we want, once we realize that we no longer need it.

I've described this problem with negative thoughts at greater length in the previous post, How To Have It All, and it's the main reason why I personally find the classic 'imagine what you want and get it' version of the law of attraction hard to put into practice. I fully accept that this isn't a problem for everyone however: such as, for instance, people who have a very positive disposition (the sort of people who will tend to be successful even if they never read a self-development book in their lives!); and those who are enlightened, who have total acceptance of whatever may be, who understand that worldly circumstances can never be a source of lasting happiness.

But where does this leave the rest of us? Should we forget all about the law of attraction? Should we put The Secret back in its box and list it on eBay?

No, that's not what I'm suggesting. Though I don't believe that the law of attraction is the universal panacea that some have claimed, there are lots of things in The Secret that are valuable to us all. In this series of posts, I want to focus on what I believe are the most important aspects of The Secret, one of which does not even appear in the film, only in the accompanying book. They are things that you might have missed, yet it seems to me that they lie at the very heart of The Secret - and they may be particularly valuable to those who have so far found it difficult to put the law of attraction into practice...

Coming next: The Heart Of The Secret 2 - Walk Before you Run!

Harry Potter And The Holy Trinity

As regular readers will know, this isn't a Christian blog, but I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan, and by way of a bit of a change, I'd been planning a post about Christian ideas in the Harry Potter books - especially in the final volume, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. I'd spotted the parallels myself, but I did a search of the net a few days ago, and found that the Christian-Potter link was still being hotly debated. It was therefore interesting to search again today and find that the author, J K Rowling, is now talking openly about the whole thing on her US book signing tour.

"To me (the religious parallels) have always been obvious," she says, quoted on that well-known theological web site, mtv.com, "but I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."

Of course, this is all particularly ironic because the Potter trilogy has long been vilified by many Christians due to its supposed links with witchcraft. Yet even before the final book, it seems that some such opinions were starting to soften, a change in perspective I can only applaud as a triumph of sense over superstition.

Spoiler alert: If you are a Potter fan who hasn't read the final volume, you may not want to read any further!

To illustrate the links with Christianity, the mtv.com article quotes a couple of biblical passages which appear in The Deathly Hallows and points out that towards the conclusion of the book, Harry appears to get zapped by his arch-rival Voldemort, only to apparently return from the dead in triumph. Meanwhile, another recent article (in Newsweek) points out that Harry spends his time between death and resurrection in a misty sort of afterworld which he calls 'King's Cross'. (Get it?)

What strikes me as particularly significant, though, is that Harry goes into the final battle with Voldemort in the full expectation of laying down his life to save his friends, after which gesture they are suddenly able to turn the tide of the battle in their favor -  all because, we are told, of what Harry has done.

The evidence for the Christian connection seems to be scattered throughout the book(s), and more ardent scholars than I will no doubt gather it all in, but I'm particularly grateful because it helps to explain the puzzling presence in the final book of all those magical artefacts. Magic swords, enchanted chalices and the like are the stock in trade of fantasy fiction, of course. The critic Nick Lowe used to call them 'plot tokens'. But rarely have so many been introduced in a single volume as Rowling manages to cram into The Deathly Hallows.

To start with, there are the Horcruxes. Harry doesn't have to find three of the things, not even five, but seven of them. Why so many? No doubt the clever kids could cope with them all, but were there any adult readers who hadn't lost track of the blessed things by half way through the book? A single magical artifact can have a certain power and charm if the writer describes it well, maybe even three of them can work at a pinch, but any more is too many and seven is just plain boring. Would The Lord Of The Rings have worked better if  Frodo had had to destroy seven rings instead of just one? I don't think so.

So why didn't the publishers ask Rowling to think again? Was it because she was adamant that there had to be seven Horcruxes? Because there are seven seals in the Book Of Revelation perhaps? Not to mention seven trumpets and seven basins into the bargain. (I think they were basins anyway - I can't really remember. Even St John  could have done with a firmer editorial hand...)

And not content with those seven Horcruxes, Rowling goes on to introduce yet more magical artifacts. Half way through the book we finally encounter the Deathly Hallows themselves - all three of the d**n things: the sword of power, the ring of resurrection and the cloak of invisibility. Now what is that all about? Even Harry is uncertain whether to turn his attention to the Hallows or the Horcruxes, and readers can only sympathize with his plight. Perhaps it was a good thing that he didn't look too closely. If he'd realized that the Deathly Hallows might symbolize the Holy Trinity - the power of God the father, the resurrection promised by God the son and, well, Ghosts are invisible, aren't they? - he might have chosen them instead of the Horcruxes. But of course, that would have been a mistake on Harry's part. That would have been using Godhood for earthly power, as Voldemort wished to do. Get thee behind me, Satan...

Aside from this muddle of artifacts, however, I do feel that some aspects of the final Potter book can genuinely speak to the soul. Harry's time in the wilderness is surprisingly bleak for a children's book. I had expected a breakneck chase from one location to the next as they tracked down the various Horcruxes, but it isn't like that all. A lot of the time, Harry and his friends just sit around clueless, not knowing what to do next. As I read, I wasn't sure whether this was just bad writing or deliberately making a point. In the end, I think, there's sufficient evidence that the latter is the case. It's as though the characters have to look inside themselves to find the answers, a concept which will be familiar to readers of this blog. At one point, Harry remarks that he was meant "not to seek but to know", a curious quote in the context of the book - and one which holds echoes for me of one of my earlier posts on enlightenment. As for Harry's frustration that things haven't been properly explained to him, there are many times in my life when I've felt exactly the same. What exactly are we supposed to be doing here? Why doesn't life come with a proper set of instructions?

So why was the Harry Potter series so popular, I wonder? Can it really be explained by the cozy school-story comfort food of the earlier books? Or was it Rowling's reputed use of the law of attraction to sell her books that made the difference?

Or did readers perhaps unconsciously sense the underlying spiritual message right from the start?

The latter may seem unlikely, yet I find myself wondering too about that most popular book of the twentieth century, The Lord Of The Rings. Again, why the immense popularity? I've been a great reader of science fiction and fantasy, believing that the former - and sometimes the latter - are greatly underrated, yet when I first read Tolkien's trilogy as a teenager I was disappointed. The quality of his writing did not seem to match his world-building skills and, well, I could have done with a little bit of humor. Yet I found watching the movie of The Return Of The King a profoundly moving experience. As I watched, I began to realize that the Great Ring, which promised the bearer so much power yet which weighed him down and threatened to destroy him, might be seen as a symbol of the human ego - this great weight which we all carry - which had to be burnt and cleansed in the fire of the mountain.

I don't know if that's what Tolkien (or director Peter Jackson) intended or not, but it's a great way to watch the movie! Do other people see - or sense - something similar, I wonder? It sometimes seems to me that such ideas - the kind of stuff we discuss in this blog - are actually of great importance not just to a wacky minority but to the population at large: not consciously perhaps, yet glimpsed beneath the surface of popular art.

Consciousness Animation

In a recent post, I returned to my favorite quote from Einstein:

"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness..."

Here's an interesting animation on the same theme which I found at Mike's blog: Enlightenment, Sex, and Sweeet Guitar. Let me know what you think!

How To Deal With Difficult Emotions - 2

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most popular posts on The Secret Of Life has been How To Deal With Difficult Emotions. Now a new piece of research gives me a good excuse to return to this important subject.

A study at UCLA has shown that labeling emotions - saying "I'm feeling angry," "I'm feeling sad" and so on - helps to make them less intense. Apparently when people see a picture of an angry or fearful face, they have increased activity in a region of the brain called the amygdala, but this activity is reduced when the emotion is labeled.

Why should this be, I wonder? The study does not suggest any explanation, and maybe we don't need to know. Maybe we should just put it into practice and see for ourselves what happens.

Even so, it is interesting to speculate about what is happening here, not least because this may point the way towards additional strategies for dealing with emotions...

First of all, it is worth pointing out that in many cases you may not even need to feel the emotion, let alone label it. If we feel anger, or any other difficult emotion, then perhaps our first response should be to ask ourselves where it is coming from. Do we really need to feel it or are we simply doing so out of habit? Are we responding to an event or simply to a story we are telling ourselves about the event? In such cases, simply changing our perspective on what is happening can be enough to jolt us out of the emotion altogether.

Something else we may need to look at is whether we can take some action to resolve whatever situation may be triggering the emotion. If so, then this may be another way of defusing it.

But if after all that, we are still left with the emotion, then we have to deal with it in some way. Suppressing it - simply pretending it isn't there - can be unhelpful. If the emotion is not expressed, it will simply surface again at some future date. Indeed, the emotion we're feeling now may be one that has been previously suppressed but has now been brought to the surface, triggered by some present event. If we are feeling anger which is out of proportion to whatever has just taken place, then this is probably what is going on.

At this stage then, perhaps we should do what the research suggests and label the emotion. But why should this help? Here are a few explanations which occur to me:

• Putting a label on it limits the emotion. It's like sticking it in a box. "That over there is the anger - this over here is the rest of my life." This is helpful, because when we are in the grip of a strong emotion, it can seem like it is taking us over entirely. This is a way of acknowledging its existence yet putting it in its place.
• And a slight variation on the above: in order to label something, we have to step outside it. So now we are observing the emotion from outside. Rather than being entirely overwhelmed by the emotion, we can clearly see what is happening and get things into perspective.
• And finally, in saying "I am feeling anger" or "I am feeling fear", we are focusing on what we know to be true. This may be the only thing about the situation which we know to be true. Anything else we might have been telling ourselves, such as "she did this to me because she hates me" or "it is always me that has to suffer" or even "these people are a load of incompetent b*****ds!" may be untrue, and will only serve to feed the emotion and make things worse. By contrast, focusing on the mundane truth that we are feeling a particular emotion helps to defuse it by getting it into perspective.

This reminds me of the use of the Sanskrit expression "netti, netti" or "not this, not this", which is a way of reminding ourselves that we ourselves are very much greater than whatever emotion we might be feeling. This, again, is a way of putting things into perspective. (See more about this in this previous post.)

The UCLA researchers also found that the use of "mindfulness", described as "a technique in which one pays attention to his or her present emotions, thoughts, and body sensations, without passing judgment or reacting" reduced the activation of the amygdala, so that the emotion was less intense. What is described here sounds remarkably similar to Nick Roach's technique for dissolving emotions, which I talked about in the original How To Deal With Difficult Emotions post.

You can read more about the UCLA studies here.

One of the researchers, David Cresswell, remarks: "This is an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha's teachings - more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience - with modern neuroscience."

This is all very interesting - and it's great to have scientific evidence for some of these techniques - but I'm not so sure about that last bit. Have you heard of Buddhists labeling their experience? Would any passing Buddhists care to comment?

A Virtual Tour

Did I tell you we'd moved house? With so much else to blog about, I don't think I've got round to mentioning that we moved into our new place a few months ago. Which is kind of rude, considering that I shared so much of the stress of our move with you. The least I can do is show you round...

One thing I like about the house is that there's a kind of warp in space-time between the front and the back. There weren't many houses with one of those in our price range. The front is all light and airy and kind of public. Our front garden is on quite a steep incline so that our house is elevated above the road, yet on the other side of the road the ground rises again, so that we're looking out on a great sweeping panorama of suburbia, with houses and gardens rising each upon the last, like something out of a painting by Mr Zip.

There's excellent scope for snooping here. If I wanted to, I could sit at our large bay window with a cup of tea and a writing pad and make copious notes on the doings of all our neighbors. If any illicit affairs go on, we'd be the first to know about it. Maybe that's an idea for another blog...

All in all, though, I think I'd rather sit at the back of the house instead. It's altogether different here on the other side of the space-time warp. It's cozy and private and it's like looking out on a meadow. There are cottage garden type flower beds near the house, while at the bottom of the garden on the far side of the lawn there's an apple tree and an overgrown patch of shade-loving plants and weeds. If you go out there at dusk, you can hear a very noisy rustling of leaves as our heavy-footed hedgehog comes traipsing through on its nightly rounds, rooting out supper. It's a good thing those slugs and snails and whatnot aren't too bright - or else are hard of hearing - or they'd be oozing off out of the way before the poor thing could get within sniffing distance.

The kitchen is kind of tiny and the porch is falling down, so we'll pass those swiftly by and take you up to the next floor instead, where there's a massive new bathroom with a walk-in shower. Our predecessor led us to believe he was into communal bathing - or at any rate, he clearly had this earmarked as a principal selling point for the house, being careful to emphasize that the shower and the bath would both take two people, though whether both appliances were supposed to be in use at the same time wasn't clear. I'll draw a veil over whether or not we've tested this out, but suffice it to say that we don't have to worry about getting claustrophobic when we're taking a shower.

The back bedroom used to be the kids' room and is decorated in glaring blue and yellow. There used to be a picture of Bart Simpson on the wall but our predecessor took it with him, which is kind of upsetting but I can't quite bring myself to bother to buy a replacement. Without Bart, the blue and yellow color scheme doesn't really make sense any more. It's like a piece of modern art which has lost that manifesto thing which explains what it's all about, and the room is now under threat of being magnolia-ed.

The front bedroom is even more light and airy and public than the room below - kind of like Turner meets suburbia - so it's rather intriguing that there aren't any curtains. Nor any means of hanging curtains. Nor any sign that there has ever been any means of hanging curtains. Curious, eh?

The last room on this floor is the tiny study - The Secret Of Life's control center.  You can commiserate with me for a moment about the impossibly cramped and squalid conditions under which I toil, then follow me up to the top floor, where you have to mind your head because of the roof beams. This once used to be the loft, but it is now an en suite bedroom, and due to the low ceiling it's the coziest room in the house. We can lie here and watch the sky though the Velux window.

From time to time, a white feather appears on this window. Some of our friends tell us that this is because we've been visited by an angel. We like this idea, but I have to admit that the skeptic in me keeps looking out for a balding seagull instead.

So that's the house. It's a nice place, but the main reason we moved was actually nothing to do with the house at all. It was because the part of Leeds in which we lived before was rather soulless. Here in Roundhay, there's much more sense of life. Just a short walk away is the Friends Meeting House, where Sally (who often leaves a comment here) runs an Eckhart Tolle group on a Monday night, and which hosts many other interesting meetings and classes: meditation, healing, yoga and so on. Further along the main street are bustling bars and cafes, while a bit further still are Roundhay Park and the Canal Gardens, which I may well write about in a future post. Here too is the Roundhay Fox pub, where you can sit outside on one of the rare summer days we have and watch the world go by - on its way to the park and back again - while the staff pour you endless refills of excellent coffee.

This being the internet, I'm conscious of the fact that the manager of the Roundhay Fox is likely to google this at any moment and set me straight, so I'd better point out that customers are really only entitled to one refill of coffee. But it's worth taking a chance or two in life, don't you think?

Which brings us back neatly to the subject of moving house. If you want to step outside your comfort zone, I recommend it. As I mentioned in that earlier post, Chris and I built up a lot of drama around the whole business. OK, so there was a guy along the chain of purchasers who was playing around and complicating things, so there was plenty of scope for drama. But then, in life there usually is. We didn't have to feed it if we didn't want to. Instead of getting all anxious, we could have just trusted, which on reflection would have been an awful lot easier on our nervous systems.

And after all, it turned out fine in the end. Which is probably down to Sally, who was using the law of attraction on our behalf all along. As indeed was Chris, who had written our names and our new address on a sheet of paper which she kept on prominent display at all times.

As for myself, I found that acceptance did the trick. As you may have gathered, I'm not exactly accomplished at putting out positive intentions, but when the sale got very difficult, I trusted nevertheless. I trusted that what would be would be and that whatever happened, it would be All Right. And as soon as I started thinking that way, it so happened that everything fell into place and the sale went through.

Which kind of begs the question, where should we put our focus: intention or acceptance? And is there a conflict here? Can we seek to attract specific outcomes in our lives yet also accept the way things are? I raised this point in my earlier post (Positive Thinking For Beginners) and The Secret Of Life reader Bet has also raised it here.

Meanwhile, Sally (who is getting rather a lot of name-checks this post) recently attended a retreat with Eckhart Tolle, at which he was asked about that incredibly popular guide to the law of attraction, The Secret - she has shared Eckhart's response here.

All of which makes me think: I've written quite a lot about 'acceptance' recently (in the posts How Does It Feel To Win A Million? and Ripples On a Sea Of Peace), so perhaps it's about time I turned my attention to the law of attraction again...

(I hope you liked the house, by the way. Do call again!)

Petition For The People Of Burma

In the spirit of the previous post, An End To All Abuse, here's a link to a petition which pledges solidarity with the people of Burma in their stand against oppression. Please consider signing it here. The organizers are hoping to gather a million signatures worldwide. When I signed earlier today, they had over 500,000...