The Secret of Life

The 'Left Brain - Right Brain' Dancer

One of my Deeksha givers, Ed Harpin, forwarded me some information on last week's lunar eclipse:

"During these times, people can tend to be more emotionally expressive. Often untruths can come to the surface and whatever part of our lives is not in sync with our life's purpose can show the most change. Old realities crumble away, and there is a feeling of freedom as we let go of the past and take a step into the new, the fresh, and the magical unknown."

This turned out to be very true in my case! Last week, over two days, I was due to attend meetings on three separate projects, none of which I wanted to be involved with. They were things I had taken on because I thought I 'should'. But there are times when something just has to give, and this was one of them. I got so stressed out with everything, I almost ground to a halt altogether. I really didn't want to be doing these things and I couldn't pretend otherwise any longer. Changes had to be made. So I've managed to get rid of two of the projects and I'm working on dumping the third. These were worthy enough endeavors but they didn't really need me - and I certainly didn't need them.

In one of my responses to the comments on my previous post, I wrote: "it's like my underlying 'program' still isn't reading my blog" - and last week brought it home to me how true this has been. Way back in January of last year, I wrote here: "in our present state, it is 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". I went on to point out that this isn't actually true, but that it is a deeply ingrained misapprehension which most of us have: we are so preoccupied with the face we present to the world.

And yet here I am, all this time later, still seeking validation for what I am doing: still judging each day in terms of its achievements instead of simply Being. As my Mentor-in-Chief, Sue Ann, has been telling me on her blog: "we're all busy seeking a sense of validation from the world outside of us, instead of recognizing the substance of what's within us". Well, last week showed me that the time has come for me to make that change. I've written about my need to reduce my level of stress. I had intended that this would start in April, when I visit the clinic in London (as I explained in the previous post). But it's going to have to start now.

I don't think it's a coincidence that my computer problem has slowed down my blogging, because The Secret Of Life is going to have to change too. Or - to put it more accurately - my attitude to this blog is going to have to change. I'm going to spend less time worrying about sticking to a 'regular' schedule and less time checking the Stats. I'm going to write when I feel the need to write and trust that whoever needs to read what I've written will duly find it. If you would like to be one of those readers, that'll be great - it may help to put me on one of your favorites lists so you can check when I've posted. And who knows? You may not even notice much difference here - it'll be me that's changed.

So under the circumstances, I make no apologies for the fact that I still haven't finished those posts on 'the ultimate truth' which I mentioned last time. But ultimate truths always take a bit longer than ordinary truths, after all. And in the meantime, here's an interesting video. Look at it for a while and see what you see:

I don't know how this thing works. It originally came in an email - forwarded,  synchronistically enough, by another of our growing band of local Deeksha givers, Heidi Fawkes. It came as a GIF file and it looked fine in image viewing software but when I tried to post it, the motion mysteriously disappeared. So I managed to find this You Tube version instead. Here's the text that came with the original email:

If you see this lady turning clockwise, you are using your right brain. If you see it the other way, you are using your left brain. Some people do see both ways, but most people see it only one way.

If you try to see it the other way and you do see, your IQ is above 160, which is almost a genius. Then see if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain's current.

Both directions can be seen! This was proved at Yale University over a 5 year study on the human brain and its functions. Only 14% of the US population can see her move both ways.

Just to provide a bit of context: experiments have shown that the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for logical, analytical thought, while the right hemisphere is associated with a more intuitive, holistic approach. This would suggest that meditation, for instance, would be a right brain function.

When I first got the email, I tried this out, and the results seemed to bear out the theory. Most of the time, I saw the dancer rotating anticlockwise, but as I managed to relax and still my mind, she changed direction. Today, the results are less well defined. Most of the time, she's clockwise, but if I look away and look back again, she sometimes changes direction for no apparent reason. Maybe I'm more relaxed today.

Or perhaps my IQ is falling...

Let me know what you see - and if you can make the figure change direction!

P.S. I've just found another, 'cleaner' version here.

The Fifth Cowboy

Sorry I'm posting a bit less frequently right now, but as I mentioned before I've got a computer problem - and there's some other things which are slowing things down a bit too. One of these is that I'm working on a series of posts called 'The Ultimate Truth'.  (I hope you're impressed with the title!) As with the earlier 'Heart Of The Secret' posts, I'm planning to get this whole series written before I start posting them. This is because - as you might glean from the title - they're kind of challenging and there's a possibility that I'll lose my thread in the middle and the whole thing will fall apart. In which case, you'll get a really interesting post about the weather instead...

On top of which, I'm traveling down to the Optimum Health Clinic in London in a few months time to get some treatment for my CFIDS (or ME as it is most usually known here in the UK). Just to explain briefly: the theory on which this clinic operates - which is not (as yet) mainstream - is that the root cause of the condition is a dysfunction of the mitochondria, the energy-producing part of the body's cells. The theory goes that this dysfunction has been produced by a viral illness (or some other trigger) and does not heal because the person gets stuck in a highly stressed 'fight or flight' state. The clinic treats this on two fronts: a nutritional approach to help heal the mitochondria directly and also a series of cognitive techniques (including Emotional Freedom Technique which I mentioned in an earlier post) to treat the 'fight or flight' condition. If you have CFIDS yourself and would like to discuss this further, then please leave a comment.

But the main reason I'm mentioning all this is that, ahead of my visit to the psychologist at the clinic, I'm writing out an account of my early life, and my writing energy has therefore been channeled into that instead of into the blog. Waste not, want not, though, and I thought you might be interested in something I've been remembering. Don't worry - I'm not planning to make this blog 'all about me', but the following story ties in with some of what we've been talking about in earlier posts...

One of the things that has come up for me is how isolated I felt in my early years. I was an only child and my parents didn't seem to understand the need for me to socialize with other kids. I remember well the trauma of my first day at school. It wasn't the lessons that were the problem - it was playtime. I remember standing at the edge of the playground, feeling utterly baffled. The teachers couldn't understand why I didn't know any other kids. The only one I knew was the little girl from down the street, but she wouldn't play with me because I was a boy. She later sent apologies (via her mother) which was kind of nice, I suppose.

Eventually I became friends with a boy called David, who bullied me. I can remember very little about this relationship except that I didn't enjoy it at all, and I suspect that is the reason why my memory has blotted it out. I can remember distinctly the reason why I put up with it though: the only alternative was being lonely and alone.

Then one day, David was away sick. I remember standing at the edge of the playground, once more alone, but watching in wistful fascination as a line of four boys snaked in and out amongst the other kids, occasionally firing imaginary guns and frequently slapping their hands against their thighs, as though to encourage the imaginary horses they were riding.

I should explain that this was round about 1959, and if you were a British boy at playtime, you had two options. You could either be a second world war soldier, Hitler having been vanquished in the relatively recent past and the war still being very prominent in the nation's psyche, or else you could be a cowboy. This was the age of Cheyenne, Bonanza, Rawhide, and numerous other western series. It may seem strange to us now, but if you switched on the TV in those days, it wasn't going to be very long before you saw a cowboy.

There was also another option, I suppose. You could always be an Indian - and I'm proud to say that I possessed both a tomahawk and a teepee - but this was kind of alternative and I remember having a long argument with one kid who thought it was ideologically very suspicious to be an Indian. I don't think he ever came to play with me again. The term 'Native American' had not yet been invented, of course, and no one would have understood why there was a need for it.

But these kids I was watching were cowboys and I desperately wanted to be one of them. So it was like the answer to my wildest dreams when the lead cowboy - who turned out to be called Keith - suddenly held up his hand in a signal to halt, drew sharply on his reins to pull up his 'horse' beside me, and asked me if I wanted to join his gang. I could hardly believe my luck. Moments later, I was running along at the end of the line behind the charismatic Keith, mischievous Andrew, amiable Paul, and sullen Graham. I was the fifth cowboy, the lowliest member of the gang, but I was firing my gun and slapping my thigh with the rest of them. I was wild with excitement. I was where I wanted to be...

But I hadn't reckoned with the little girl down the road. She told her mother that I was in a gang, and of course my mother got to hear about it and wanted to put a stop to it. She didn't want any son of hers involved with a 'gang'. I had plainly got in with the wrong sort. She told me I would have to stop playing with this gang. And what was wrong with that nice boy David anyway?

I was in floods of tears. I couldn't believe it! After the uphill struggle of trying to hold my own amongst the other kids after the isolation in which my parents had chosen to bring me up, I had finally managed to find some proper friends, but now my mother was trying to put a stop to it! I understood perfectly the injustice - and utter stupidity - of what my mother was trying to do, but I didn't possess the ability to explain it to her. I was helpless, totally dependent on a couple of clueless parents. There was nothing I could do to help myself...

When my father came home, my mother told him the bad news and he came across to talk to me. What was this 'gang' I was in?, he wanted to know. Still crying, I couldn't bring myself to look at him as I explained.

When he had heard what I had to say, he went next door to talk to my mother.

I can still remember those wonderful words coming through from the other room.

"It's all right," he said. 'They're just his friends."

My father had 'got it'. We just called ourselves a gang, that was all. We didn't go round robbing banks. It was going to be all right after all...

So I got to stay in the 'gang'.

OK, so I was the fifth cowboy, but I always got along very well with Keith and I think he would have promoted me up the line if he'd had the chance - but he knew that the other cowboys wouldn't have liked it.

When he got back off sick, the bully David was angry. I can still remember his words to me: "You're not playing with them - you're playing with me!" But I could afford to turn my back on him now. I didn't have to be scared of being alone any more.

I remember all these emotions I felt so clearly - and also the frustration and confusion of being unable to express them. It's been useful for me to reconnect with them. I've spoken quite lot in this blog about the need to release the suppressed emotions we carry around with us, so it's helped to get in touch with the way some of those emotions felt when I first encountered them - and how the inability of a child to express them is part of what led to them being suppressed in the first place.

And we wonder why children throw so many tantrums...

Free Blog Listing On USA Today Web Site

Here's one for my blogging readers. FuelMyBlog and Blogger & Podcaster Magazine have got together with USA Today to offer all FuelMyBlog members a month's free listing on the USA Today web site (in their Blogger/Podcaster Guide). This listing normally costs $49-95 per month.

All you need to do is to join FuelMyBlog and then go here to see details of the offer.

The only snag I've noticed is that you have to give your credit card details. Then if you don't cancel in time, you'll be billed for subsequent months. But a note in your diary should take care of that.

(And if necessary, a note to remember to look in your diary...)