The Secret of Life

Eckhart, Oprah.... And A Giraffe

There's been a lot of publicity, but just in case you hadn't heard, Oprah Winfrey is talking to Eckhart Tolle about his book A New Earth in a series of ten live interactive webcasts on Monday evenings. Each of the webcasts will focus on a different chapter of the book. You can sign up to participate here.

The first of these webcasts took place last week and is now available to download here. The project seems to have been very well planned. There's even a handy reckoner here to work out when the webcast will take place in your particular time zone. It works out at 6pm US Pacific time, 9pm US Eastern time, and 2am here in the UK (where the downloading option is proving rather popular).

Apparently half a million people watched the first webcast live, so it looks like the project will bring this kind of teaching to unprecedented numbers. I know it's shamefully frivolous of me, but I can't help wondering if Eckhart's trademark beige sweaters will become the must-have fashion accessory of 2008.

I have to say that I found the first webcast compulsive listening. Oprah Winfrey's contributions brought an interesting new perspective to Eckhart's teaching and the webcast may be of particular interest to those who are unsure about how to integrate spiritual teachings with existing Christian beliefs. Do let me know what you think...

And finally... What was that about a giraffe, you may be asking? Well, we've recently touched on IQ tests here on the blog and some of you expressed a bit of skepticism, so I though you might appreciate an antidote to such tests. Here's a link to a test of... well, something or other. I think you'll enjoy it. Take the giraffe test here! And if you'd like to let me know how you get on, I'll be happy to hear from you...

Philip Pullman - A Process Of Evolution

Reading an interview with author Philip Pullman in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, I was reminded of a post I wrote a few months ago, in which I argued that a wholesale change in human consciousness will be needed if we are to survive the approaching environmental crisis. Here's what I wrote at that time:

"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."

To some extent, Pullman appears to echo this in his Daily Telegraph interview:

"I think we've evolved in such a way that suited conditions on the savannah 500,000 years ago, a way of life that was acquisitive, territorial and combative. The degree to which the processes of civilisation, or socialisation, can overcome that depends on the timescale. In the long term, I back evolution - if we can survive this crisis that we're in...

"It's like going down a river, and about mid-century we're going to go through the rapids, and it's going to be terribly difficult for all of us. But we can survive and if we can get through this... it's going to be wonderful."

How exactly Pullman thinks that this necessary process of evolution is going to happen isn't entirely clear - but then with evolution it rarely is. Don't get me wrong - I'm no creationist - but the small print of evolution has always puzzled me. How did those fish come out of the water exactly? Gary Larson's explanation (in one of his Far Side cartoons) that the fish were playing baseball and evolved legs in order to get their ball back when it landed on dry land seems about as convincing as any other.

All Pullman seems to suggest is that the environmentalists' storytelling skills need to evolve so that they can better communicate the message about what people can do to help the planet. He says:

"People feel helpless when they see pictures of devastated forests cut down and the glaciers melting and the poor polar bear sweating on its bare rock in the sea. 'What can we do, what can we do?' People need to be told what it is that they can do."

I wish I shared his optimism that this will be enough to make a difference.

Pullman, of course, is widely known for the anti-religion stance of his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, an ancient, authoritarian 'God' being unceremoniously killed in the final volume. Personally, I kind of like these books, such misgivings as I have about them having a lot more to do with the shambolic plotting than with any underlying agenda. I doubt that Pullman would view this blog in such a kindly light however. He has been quoted as saying "I don't think it's possible that there is a God: I have the greatest difficulty understanding what is meant by the words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality'".

So I assume that Pullman would be fairly horrified - or at best bemused - by my belief that the necessary evolution is going to be a spiritual one, a process of evolution in which we come to realize that all of us are One, that all of us - including our planet and all the life forms upon it - are part of something which some might describe as 'God'.

Yet Pullman goes on to say in the interview:

"I suppose the real story, the basic story, the story I would like to hear, see, read, is the story about how connected we are, not only with one another but also with the place we live in. And how it's almost infinitely rich, but it's in some danger; and that despite the danger, we can do something to overcome it."

Are we really so far apart, I wonder, the 'spiritual' me and the 'secular' Pullman?

I hope not, because it seems to me that it is a gap which is going to have to be bridged in our forthcoming process of evolution...

(You can read the Telegraph interview with Philip Pullman here. This in turn is an edited extract from the forthcoming book Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth? by Andrew Simms and Joe Smith.)

The Heart Of The Secret 3 - Contemplating Perfection

Earlier this year, The Secret DVD did much to publicize the law of attraction - the idea that we can create our own reality through the power of positive thought. In this series of posts, I'm highlighting what I see as the most useful techniques in The Secret, and the one I'd like to talk about today is one which you may not have encountered before even if you've seen the DVD, because it doesn't appear in the movie, only in the accompanying book.

The reason it didn't make it onto the DVD may be because it will only make immediate sense to those who are already familiar with the idea of being in the moment and connecting with the energy which can be found there. If you read this blog regularly, you'll already know what I'm talking about. Otherwise, I urge you to look at one of Eckhart Tolle's excellent books The Power Of Now or the briefer Practicing The Power Of Now, which will explain all about it.

You could also try taking a look at one or two of my earlier posts. Feeling What Is briefly describes the process of coming to rest and connecting with the moment, while An End To All Abuse contains a visualization in which you imagine being one with the universe, an integral part of everything that is.

Both of these are gateways to the same state of consciousness, in which you realize that you are an integral part of everything: a part of the force of nature, a part of the universe. In such a state, you are able to focus on your own perfection, on your own boundless abundance, for if you are a part of this great energy, then you too must share its attributes, you too must possess its limitless power.

With a focus like this, there is no longer any room for the anxious thoughts which might creep in if you were trying to imagine a new house or a car. Those nagging questions "will it work?" or "do I deserve it?" become irrelevant. Once you are aware that you are part of this energy, that you are one with the universe, there can be no doubt that you share in its perfection. So focus on that perfection - and bring it into your life.

This technique can be particularly useful for working on your health. The Secret DVD suggests that to improve your health, you should imagine yourself being well, but this can be hard to achieve if you are severely disabled or in great pain - or even if you've got a bad cough for that matter! In such a situation, doubts can be hard to dispel. If you feel really ill, it isn't always easy to imagine feeling better again.

If, however, you realize that you are one with all that is, that you are not separate from the life force which puts the buds on the trees and brings the green shoots from the earth, then you cannot fail to understand that on a spiritual level at least, you are perfection. Contemplate this perfection - and feel it seep into the cells of your physical body.

This is a wonderful exercise, but if you have difficulty with the whole 'oneness with the universe' thing, I came across a useful variation at Sue Ann Edwards' excellent blog, Always Embraces All Ways.  This has the rather dull title of Standard Technology (not Sue Ann's name!) but it's a very powerful exercise.

Briefly, what you have to do is to imagine that there's a perfect cell in your body. I think all of us are willing to accept that we have at least one of them! Imagine that cell all vibrant and happy, then set it as the standard for all the other cells in your body. And watch the perfection spread throughout your being...

If you like the sound of that exercise, please go and read all about it at Sue Ann's blog here.

Next time, in the last of this series, I'll be talking about the most powerful law of attraction technique of all. And this one is very, very simple...

(To see the previous posts in this series, please click here: part 1 - part 2)

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.

How Does It Feel To Win A Million?

Looking through the biography notes on Arjuna Ardagh (author of Awakening Into Oneness, the book I mentioned in the previous post) I came across this interesting quote about the culmination of Ardagh's search for enlightenment:

(Ardagh) had the profound realization that he had been seeking for what he already was, and always had been. He realized that it was in the abandonment of seeking and wanting that his heart found its fulfillment.

What might he mean by this?

It seems to me that if people think about enlightenment at all - and it helps to remind myself from time to time that not everyone does - then it's usually in terms of lots of foreign travel. People are expected to journey along perilous mountain passes to isolated monasteries, where they rise in the middle of the night to pray, drink yak's milk, and smite themselves with sticks at frequent intervals. If they are lucky and survive twenty years or so of this, they become enlightened, which means that they sit around with their knees crossed and make cryptic remarks to their students.

Whatever this enlightenment thing is, the idea goes, it is out there. You have to go out and find it. It is all about long haul flights and frequent flyer points. You have to search under every stone, and having searched, search again. There is no such thing as a long weekend to enlightenment.

And yet increasingly, people like Ardagh seem to be suggesting that this popular concept of a lonely soul scouring the world for some hidden truth is mistaken: that enlightenment is really closer to home than we think. That if we only understood, we could have it here, right now, in this moment.

But if so, then what is it? What is this truth which is supposed to be staring us all in the face?

Eckhart Tolle tells a story about winning a million dollars. This is something which makes people happy. But why should that be, he asks?

We know from reading the newspapers that many people who win such a large amount of money don't stay happy for very long. They may be bouncing off the ceiling a while, but when the elation has worn off, they find that they just have a new set of problems. They may be besieged by people begging for money; they may have trouble with jealous relatives; they may have arguments with their partner about how to spend all the money; or they may simply become morbidly obsessed with the fear of losing this vast fortune, in spite of the fact that they have managed perfectly well without it until now.

So with all this in store, why are people still so happy to win the lottery?

It clearly isn't the money itself, not really, for even if they manage to hang on to it, the chances are that some of these problems will come along to make them miserable anyway. Even at best, it seems inevitable that the elation will start to dwindle away over the weeks and months, even if all the money remains.

So if it's not the money itself, what causes that initial burst of elation?

Eckhart Tolle points out that we tend to spend a lot of our time 'disagreeing with reality'. We refuse to accept that things are the way they are. He describes this as a kind of madness, and if we think about it a while, we can see that he's right. Things are the way they are. Period. There's no getting away from it and no amount of raging against it is going to change it. We might wish we'd done this or wish we'd done that, and want to have this or want to have that. We might want politicians to tell the truth, or our relationship not to have ended, or to have got that job we wanted, or to have eaten a bit less chocolate for breakfast. We might want it to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer. We might want the trains to run on time. But things are the way they are are the way they are - and banging our heads against the wall and wailing isn't going to make them any better.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we shouldn't take action to change things. If we notice some injustice that's being done to us or to someone else, or if we see how something might be done more efficiently, it's perfectly reasonable to set out to change that. But it's important to distinguish between that will to change and our absolute point blank refusal to accept the less than perfect nature of how things presently are.

The truth is that when we see something we think is wrong, we don't put all our energy into changing it. We don't do that at all. We channel a lot of that energy, perhaps most of it, or - let's face it - in most cases all of it into moaning about how things are right now, in refusing to accept reality, in resisting what we can see in front of our eyes. "The buses should run on time," we will say. "You shouldn't have walked out on me." "Chocolate ought to have less calories and then I wouldn't get fat!"

This resistance does nothing to change things and neither does it make us happy. It makes us tense. It makes us angry. It makes us frustrated. In the end, it is not the situation to which we object which causes us so much pain, but our blind, obstinate, utterly mad refusal to accept that it is so.

And this, Eckhart Tolle suggests, points to the reason why winning all that money can make us happy: because for once in our lives we are willing to accept that things are the way they are. We have won a million dollars - yes, we can accept that. So just for once in our lives, we can drop our resistance to how things actually are. We can drop our disagreement with reality. We can drop our obsession with how things were or how they might become, put our plans and dreams to one side, finally stop resisting and let in life. It is not the money itself, it is the great relief of doing this, of letting go of that struggle, which feels so wonderful.

Which brings us back to Arjuna Ardagh "seeking for what he already was, and always had been". Ardagh reports that he found fulfillment when he stopped this seeking, when he abandoned his wanting. In other words: when he no longer disagreed with reality, when he simply accepted the way things were - and accepted the way he was.

So perhaps it is this acceptance, this surrender, not just from time to time but continuously, from one moment to the next, which forms the cornerstone of enlightenment. Which means that we don't, after all, have to search the world for the ultimate truth. It really is waiting for us right here. We just have to give up the struggle and accept the way things are.

So if you want to know what it feels like to win a million, just try accepting the way things are in this moment, really accepting. Then feel the tension ease...

Feel the lightening.

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.

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.

The Elusive Truth

Straying a bit from the usual The Secret Of Life subject matter, I was intrigued by a recent article in The Sunday Times called "According to Wikipedia, I'm The Mona Lisa", this title appearing alongside a picture of Rodin's The Thinker. (Get the joke?) This article is based on an interview with 'net entrepreneur' Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur who argues that web 2.0 is killing our culture. The article is only available online on subscription (which is unfortunate but also pertinent to this post). But you can read about Andrew Keen's book on Amazon.com and on the BBC Newsnight site.

According to Keen, we amateurs who are producing our own content through blogs, pods, and YouTube are like the proverbial infinite number of monkeys who have finally been connected - courtesy of the web - to all those typewriters, and are producing not masterpieces but a deluge of bad art and inaccurate information.

What with all the wacky ideas I go on about in this blog, I suppose that Keen would consider me to be the epitome of what he's talking about. But I try not to be a channel for misinformation, and generally speaking, as far as I can tell, so do the other blogs I see. Some of their material may be opinionated, but it usually seems to be clear enough that this is what it's intended to be - this in contrast to some of the professional news media, which frequently try to pass off comment as information.

My favourite blogs are those in which people reflect thoughtfully - and sometimes wittily - upon their own lives. A problem with the professional media is that we only hear from 'ordinary people' under editorial control. 'Reality TV' is only as real as the editors wish to make it, while radio phone-ins often offer little but garbled repetitions of second-hand ideas. Having been on a couple of radio shows myself, I know how hard it can be to get any more than simplistic ideas across. In a blog, you have the time and space to say what you really want to say. A post can be as long or, crucially, as short as you wish it to be. This latter, too, is a welcome contrast to many newspaper articles, where sparse ideas are often stretched to inordinate length to fill up the necessary inches.

You'll have gathered by now that I don't exactly agree with Andrew Keen's ideas, not that I see web 2.0 as any kind of replacement for the mainstream media, more as a welcome adjunct. According to the Sunday Times, however, Keen sees us driving the professional media out of business altogether. 'If traditional news-gathering disappears,' the article asks, 'who will hold the politicians to account?'

Could that be the voters, perhaps?

This is clearly going OTT. No one is getting driven out of business. Many people realize that the news corporations have their own underlying agendas and if they turn to blogs it's to read the opinions of those who are free from such constraints. It's to broaden their outlook and perhaps be entertained. They're not looking for something to supplant the commercial media.

In any case, which medium you turn to for information and opinion is as much a matter of convenience as anything else. During most people's leisure time, newspapers, radio and TV are more conveniently to hand than the internet. If the predictions of the dawn of the computer age had been correct, paper would have been phased out long ago. And yet, surprise surprise, people still read books, newspapers, and even magazines. These media have outlasted the floppy disc, and I'm willing to bet they'll also outlast the DVD. All this stuff about web 2.0 driving newspapers out of business is simply hyperbole, presumably intended to sell more copies of Andrew Keen's book - just as similar hyperbole is used on a daily basis to sell more newspapers. And what seems particularly remarkable is that Keen appears to be actually praising newspapers for their accuracy. If you have ever read anything in a newspaper about which you had special expertise, you may not share his opinion.

Andrew Keen's ideas about all the fiction and poetry on the web appear to be even less convincing. Here again, he seems to believe that commercial publishers are being driven out of business. Yet what it seems like to me, as the author of three unpublished novels (one of which is really quite good, honest) is that while there might be all sorts of opportunities these days for self-publishing fiction, it's just as hard to get anyone to read the stuff as ever. While the standard of professionally published fiction may be more uneven than it used to be - with some books apparently finding a publisher less because of their literary merit than because they fit a promising marketing niche - professional publication is still the best indicator that a book may actually be worth reading. And with so many such books on the shelves, why should anyone turn instead to a self-published ebook by an unknown author?

Self-published non-fiction may stand more of a chance of finding readers, but only if its subject matter is being overlooked by the professionals. This alternative channel for publication serves to keep the professionals on their toes and is surely all to the good. Keen warns of the dangers of inaccuracies in such books, yet readers are able to judge them the same as they can any other work of non-fiction: at least partly on the strength of the sources they cite. Our modern world certainly requires wary readers, but I suspect it has always been so.

Yet what of the sources themselves? What of our sources of reference? Here, at last, I find Andrew Keen's ideas more convincing. I've touched on the shortcomings of Wikipedia in a previous post but I hadn't realized quite how 'democratic' the site is. According to Keen, no weight whatsoever is given to the established expertise of contributors. The input of a university professor is apparently given the same weight as that of someone who wishes to remain anonymous. If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt Keen's word - after all, it appears in a proper newspaper! - then it does seem to be taking even-handedness a bit far. In some areas, such as - arguably - the interface between science and spirituality which I was discussing in that previous post, expertise may actually be an impediment to the emergence of new ideas. The defence of an entrenched position may sometimes be seen as a greater priority than the establishment of the truth. In others, however, it is simply a matter of getting your facts correct, and turning your back on the experts seems a bit daft.

Keen contrasts the popularity of Wikipedia (17th most trafficked site on the net) with that of the venerable Britannica, with its Nobel prize-winning contributors and 4,000 experts (which comes in at 5,128th). This may be partially a reflection on Britannica's level of readability but it  probably has more to do with the fact that it is subscription-based. And it may say less about surfers' lack of discernment than about Britannica's failure to adapt to the realities of the internet. Perhaps it is time for Britannica to drop its charges and start using Google AdSense instead.

But what should a humble blogger do? I've tended to provide links from The Secret Of Life to Wikipedia as some kind of independent source of information because it is popular, frequently (though not always) readable, and is accessible to all. Is it time for me to re-think this policy? Andrew Keen suggests Citizendium as an alternative, which apparently "aims to improve on Wikipedia's model by adding 'gentle expert oversight' and requiring contributors to use their real names". This sounds like a reasonable compromise between people power and established expertise. What do you think? As ever, your views on this are welcome. (It's OK - you don't have to cite your credentials.)

One closing thought: my wife Chris buys The Sunday Times, so it is often lying around the house, and occasionally an article attracts my attention enough to make me want to write about it here. I find it rather irritating, therefore, that articles on The Times and Sunday Times web sites are only available free for a week after publication. After that, access is only available via subscription. OK, I could pay the subs, but I can't expect all my readers to do so too. So I can never put in a link on my blog to the article I'm discussing.

Why do the Times newspapers adopt this policy, I wonder? Presumably it is to increase their revenue. But I can't honestly see it bringing in that much money. This seems to me to be another case of a traditional medium failing to accept that we are now in an age where people expect to access information freely online. If people start to turn elsewhere, then perhaps the newspapers should look to themselves for the answer.