I just discovered this video on You Tube. I think you may like it...
You can read the message around which the video is built here. Research on the net suggests that it may not come from the Hopi Elders at all, but may in fact be the work of a Cherokee Elder. It still speaks to me, whoever its author may be...
((Additional Note: There's an interesting discussion about Hopi prophecy and the possible validity of this message here.))
There's a wonderful story in last week's edition of the Eckhart Tolle & Oprah Winfrey webcasts which echoes what I've been talking about in my recent 'Ultimate Truth' series of posts. It lasts about five minutes. You can listen to it here.
The whole of these weekly webcasts are available on free download (in either audio or video format) from Oprah's web site. If you haven't been following them, I urge you to give them a try. I thought that last week's (number six) was particularly powerful.
You may have noticed a picture which has recently appeared at the top of my sidebar. This is a recent award which was passed on to me by the generous Angelbaby. I think it's a lovely image and one which appears to symbolize a lot of what this blog is about, so I stuck it up there on the mantelpiece as soon as I got it. But it's a chain of friendship award and the idea is that I pass it on, not hoard it for myself.
So, if you are reading this, please consider yourself my friend! Please feel free to accept this award and know that you deserve it. You can use it on your blog (if you have one) and pass it on to others. Let's spread the love around and let it encompass the Earth...
Last time, I was talking about something I call Emotional Breathing Technique or EBT. I've added a few more tips for using this technique in the comments on the previous post. You can find them here.
If you try the technique and would like to discuss it or give me feedback, do leave a comment. But if you've tried it and find that it doesn't work for you, then don't panic. There are lots of other ways of dealing with emotions - I mentioned a few of them last time. The only trouble is that some of them don't actually release the emotion, they just put a sticking plaster on it. It seems to me that the NLP anchoring technique falls into this category, for instance. Creative activity, which I also mentioned last time, is probably half and half. It's partly displacement activity, to take your mind off whatever you're feeling, but it's also possible that in your creative work you will be actually working through - and so releasing - the emotions.
EFT, emotional freedom technique, is the same as EBT in that it seems to actually release the emotions. Nick Roach's technique for dissolving emotions (as described in the earlier post 'How To Deal With Difficult Emotions') also falls into this category. Indeed, it seems to me that EBT is a variation on Nick's technique. Instead of simply observing the emotions, as Nick suggests, EBT involves actively welcoming the emotions. The best thing to use is whatever works for you...
Quite aside from the sheer relief of getting rid of the things, there's another good reason why releasing these unhelpful emotions is so important. As I described in an earlier post, 'A Sun-Filled Room', our suppressed emotions block our connection to the sense of joy, of 'all-rightness', which is naturally ours. They block the connection to our true self. So releasing them is a vital part of spiritual development. This is true on a personal level but also on a global scale. If the transformation in consciousness which is needed for humanity's survival is to take place, then we as a race have to shed the great weight of hurt and grievance which makes our world such a painful, chaotic place. Only then can we stop hating and killing each other and join together to find a way to sort out our mutual problems. So when you work on releasing your suppressed emotions, you are not only helping yourself, you are helping us all. You are helping to shift a small part of the massive great hulking chip on humanity's shoulder.
Which really ought to be enough of an ultimate truth for one series of posts, don't you think? Except that this wasn't the ultimate truth I had in mind when I started this series. There's another one coming up in a minute, and this one is all about the full implications of total acceptance.
(That's the thing about ultimate truths: they're a bit like buses. You wait ages and then two come along at once...)
So just let's remind ourselves for a moment what we've been talking about in this series of posts. In part one, we discussed how practicing full acceptance means that sometimes you have to accept that you don't accept. This means being OK with all the 'negative' emotions which go along with that. In parts two and three, we went on to discuss how this acceptance can be achieved - and how full acceptance can actually help to release these emotions, freeing us from them forever.
But the point is that just being willing to accept these emotions is a big deal in itself. Think about what it means. If you can really be OK with the various negative emotions - the whole range of 'awful' emotions you can feel - you've done something very important. You've broken free to a place where there's no longer any need for fear. This is because, when you come right down to it, it isn't the 'awful' things in life of which we're afraid. It's the way they make us feel.
Just think about it. Think of any one thing of which you're afraid and ask yourself if it's really the thing itself which causes you fear or the way that thing makes you feel.
Let's do a few examples. Say you're afraid that your partner will leave you. Is it really their absence you fear or the way that absence may make you feel: the loneliness, the sense of loss, the hurt, the anger, the righteous indignation? The departure itself may have practical ramifications: you will have to make adjustments to your life. But once again, is it really those adjustments you fear or the way you may feel about having to make them? Think about losing your job or your home. The arguments are the same.
The ultimate fear, perhaps, is fear of death. But once again, isn't it really the feelings around it we fear: the having to say goodbye, the pain, the uncertainty? As for non-existence, is even that really an object of fear - or is it only the way we may feel about non-existence?
(I've a hunch we might be talking about this in the comments...)
So if all we really fear are our feelings but we've reached a stage where we're OK with having those feelings, what place is there left in our life for fear? What is there left of which to be afraid?
It seems to me that we have then reached a state of total freedom.
We should not underestimate the enormity of what this means. According to Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God, whatever action we take, our motivation comes from only one of two places: from love or from fear. If fear is overcome, then what remains?
In a post a few months ago, I quoted a Native American prayer about living fearlessly: "Oh Humankind," went the heartfelt cry, "we must stop fearing life, fearing each other... Life is wondrous, awesome and holy, a burning glory... Love is life believing in itself."
Could it be that there is a way to break free to this wonderful dream, this fearless life, this absolute freedom?
And could total acceptance be the key?
For if we've come to a place where we understand that all our fears are ultimately groundless, that it's OK to feel those 'horrible' feelings after all - and that if we do, it actually helps to get rid of them - then the hold which fear has upon us is overcome.
Then we are free to live the life we want to live - and to build the world of our dreams.
(I'm going away for a few days. As ever, any comments you make will be welcome! I shall respond when I return...)
As we've discussed in the earlier parts of this series, to practice full acceptance means that we sometimes have to accept our failure to accept - and the 'negative' emotions which go along with that (see part 1). But what is really good is that if we can truly accept the way we're feeling, those emotions can be fully expressed and so released. Through acceptance, we can be free of those unwanted emotions for ever (see part 2).
Which sounds like it's worth a try, you might say, but how do we do it? How can we come to fully accept whatever unwanted emotions we might be feeling?
First of all, we may want to check if we really need to experience whatever we're feeling. Often, we experience negative emotions out of sheer habit. Take reactive depression, for instance. Something can happen which sets this off, but a year later, we're still stuck in the dumps, perhaps having even forgotten how we got down there in the first place. The anchoring technique (from NLP - neurolinguistic programming) can be useful for dealing with this kind of stuck emotion. I'll do a post about it one day but it should be easy enough to research on the net. I just found a good article about it here.
Habit can also cause us to have knee-jerk reactions to certain events, for instance always getting annoyed by the same people or similar situations. We get annoyed at such times because we always get annoyed. It's what we do. Here again, anchoring can be useful, or perhaps we need to simply become aware of what's happening and ask ourselves if we really need to be angry. If someone has pushed in front of us in a queue, for instance, does it matter? Are we really in a hurry or are we just getting annoyed because that has become our habit?
There's lots more information around about how to get out of a crabby mood - some of the excellent blogs in my mini-directory are good places to look for info on how to be happy if you're not. Creative activity has been a popular choice when we've discussed this subject before, then there's good old-fashioned endorphin-promoting exercise of course, and don't forget emotional freedom technique, which I described in a recent post.
The reason I'm going into all this is to make it plain that in encouraging you to fully accept negative emotions, I'm not promoting feeling miserable for the sake of it. But what I find is that there comes a time when you've tried everything you know and you're still left with strong unwelcome emotions. Either that or you've used the techniques and they've worked, but the emotions keep on returning nevertheless. This is when it can help to practice acceptance.
We may be feeling negative emotions because something really substantially unpleasant has happened in our lives, in which case it is only natural to feel the way we do. In this instance, we can't necessarily expect that acceptance will 'magic away' our emotions. There are times when it is simply natural to feel 'bad'. Even so, if we are willing to fully accept what we are feeling and allow ourselves to fully experience it, the process of working through these emotions will be accelerated.
Alternatively, we may be feeling an unwelcome emotion for no very good reason. We may have become habituated to feeling this way, or perhaps something has come along which has triggered some emotions we have previously suppressed. In this case, the emotions we are feeling will usually be out of proportion to whatever has happened.
This is where acceptance can really work its magic, and emotions can actually disappear instantaneously (as I described in the previous post).
But how exactly do we put the technique into practice? How do you practice total acceptance? How can you get into the kind of mindset where you can fully accept your unwanted emotions?
You might think that one good way would be to bear in mind what I've just said: that accepting your unwelcome emotions is a good way to get rid of them. But unfortunately this doesn't work. In order to truly accept your emotions, you have to be willing to accept them staying around. If you're only 'accepting' the emotions in the expectation of getting rid of them, it isn't really accepting at all - it's just pretending.
So we need to have another think: what reasons are there to really accept having those negative emotions?
These are the reasons I use myself:
1) Bear in mind that as long as you feel these emotions, you're alive. Try to really get into this idea. Uncomfortable sensations are a part of life on Earth. We're here to experience.
2) Remember that you need to feel these negative emotions in order to feel positive ones. Darkness is needed here in this world in order for there to be light - otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In order for us to feel happy, we sometimes have to feel sad.
3) These emotions have surfaced in order to be released. They are on their way out... Notice that this is subtly different from expecting them to immediately disappear. You have to willing to accept that the process of release may take a long time...
Like I say, I use all of these (though number 3 is my favorite). Then, when I have convinced myself that I am prepared to accept, I go a bit over the top. I welcome the emotion. I feel it with all my being. I take a deep breath and hold it for as long as is comfortable. (Please note that turning blue isn't part of the process.) I imagine that I am breathing in the emotion so that it surrounds me like a fog. It may help to imagine going for a walk by the sea on a cold blustery day. We think of the cold and damp as being unpleasant but there is also something very stimulating about this. It makes you feel alive. Think of that emotion like a cold mist all around you. Allow it to be there. When you feel the need, take another deep breath. Keep on doing this for as long as you wish. I find that it doesn't take very long until the emotion fades, to be replaced by a kind of heady, peaceful feeling. But don't anticipate this happening. Simply allow the emotion to surround you...
I call this technique EBT, emotional breathing technique! (Well, I have to call it something...) I find it works best when the emotion you're focusing on is strong, simply because that makes it easier to totally surrender and imagine it all around you.
Right then, now it's over to you. I'd be interested to know if this works for you. The specific breathing process is something I've developed myself, so I'll be very interested to know if it works for anyone other than me! Please leave a comment if you try it - even if it's a long time after I've posted this. After all, you may not have an unwelcome emotion to try it out on right now...
Next time, in the fourth and final part of this series, I'll talk a bit more about some alternative ways to get rid of emotions - and I'll also get further into the reason I've called these posts 'The Ultimate Truth'.
In the first part of this series of posts, I discussed a bit of a paradox about acceptance. To really practice acceptance, you have to accept that sometimes you don't accept things. Sometimes you do get angry (or whatever), but that's OK.
To explain a bit more about this, here's a quote from Sri Bhagavan. (It is worth also reading the whole of this quote. You can find it here.):
"Whatever you are, just accept it. When you accept it, there is no conflict... Physical pain itself will become bliss. Sincerely experience all psychological pain. If you fully experience, it becomes joy. Don't try to escape. If you try to escape from pain, you are putting it under the carpet. After some time it starts stinking. That is what most people are doing. They never confront their pain. Somebody dies in your family, you lose your job, some other problem, but you don't experience the pain. You run away from the pain...
"Suppose a tiger enters this room. Most of you would climb up on the fan and hang on there! What I am telling you is that hanging from the fan is really pain because the tiger is here and you are hanging on there... Come down from the fan and let the tiger eat you. If you are eaten, the pain is gone. Allow the pain to eat you. The pain is the tiger. See what happens. It will become joy."
Huh?
When I first read this, I couldn't relate to it at all. Pain becoming joy? That didn't seem likely. And who wants to be eaten by a tiger anyway?
It was only when I started trying it out for myself that I began to understand what it was all about. "Whatever you are, just accept it," says Sri Bhagavan. So one day, I did just that...
I was consumed with anger over some household skirmish or other. The emotion was out of proportion to what had happened and just wouldn't go away. It was hanging around to such an extent that it was really annoying me. Know what I mean? I didn't want to be annoyed but I was annoyed nevertheless, and the fact that it carried on just stoked my annoyance further. I was caught up in a vicious circle of disgruntlement.
But Sri Bhagavan's words came to mind and I decided to give them a try. I turned things around and deliberately welcomed the anger. I embraced it. I breathed it in as though it was an exotic fragrance. I don't know how I did it exactly, but I did it nevertheless. And then suddenly something wonderful happened. It was like turning a key in a door. All of a sudden, like magic, the anger was gone.
How could this have happened?
I think the process is best explained by Carl Jung's phrase: "what we resist persists". This seems to be what happens with emotions. The emotion gets stuck because we don't want to feel it. We don't want it to be there.
It's this resistance to the emotion which is the problem. The resistance stops us expressing the emotion. And unless we can fully express it, it won't be released.
What we have to do is to allow the emotion to be. Allow ourselves to fully feel the emotion. Only then will the emotion be released.
How quickly this happens depends on what is going on in our lives. If something truly tragic has happened - something really big - it's only natural that we're going to feel bad for a while. But even in this situation, it seems to me that the process of working through our emotions will be speeded up if we can drop the resistance and truly accept how we're feeling.
In a great many cases, however, we have much less genuine reason to feel so bad. A lot of the time, what we're feeling is out of proportion to whatever has happened. This is because the event has served as a trigger, and suppressed emotions from earlier, similar events have come to the surface.
And why do we have such suppressed emotions?
It's the same story again. Because in those earlier times, we did not allow ourselves to fully express those emotions - and what we resisted persisted. The emotions have remained with us, bubbling under. Now they have risen to the surface again in order to be released.
We therefore have two choices. We can either refuse to accept the way we are feeling and so maintain our store of pent-up emotions, or we can simply accept those emotions, allow them to be - and be rid of them forever.
Next time, I'll be looking at how we can put this into practice...
Well a title like that ought to bring in a few more readers, surely? I might have called it 'the secret' but I think that's been done already, so 'the ultimate truth' it is.
So what am I talking about here? Is this series of posts going to be something special or just a load of hype?
I'll leave you to judge for yourself...
And the truth is, if I'm perfectly honest, that you've heard it all before. But there's a difference between hearing it and actually getting it. The point is: I've written about this 'ultimate truth' myself on this blog, but I didn't get it either. Only now am I starting to get it - to really understand its full implications - which is why I'm going to share it with you here.
What I'm talking about is acceptance. You may remember that I wrote about this in a previous post. I pointed out that there is no point in 'arguing with reality', that the only sane approach to take is to accept that things are the way they are, because they are the way they are whether we like it or not. We may be able to change them in the future but just for now, in this moment, they are as they are and we have to accept that. End of story.
I wrote that, but I didn't fully understand it. When I wrote about acceptance, I was thinking about something bad happening to you and you being OK about it. Like for instance, going back to where you've parked your car only to find that a parachuting elephant has dropped on top of it - just to take a typical example from everyday life.
So an elephant has dropped on your car. That's OK - you're perfectly cool. You just accept it...
Yet what if you don't accept it? What if you're really furious about it? What if you're really, really p*ssed off about this elephant dropping on top of your car? What happens then?
'Ah,' you might say, 'but you shouldn't be annoyed! That means that you haven't accepted what's happened!'
And yet you are annoyed. In this moment, you are really, really annoyed. So how now, right now, are you able to practice acceptance?
The answer is simple. All you have to do is accept that you are annoyed.
That is the bit that I hadn't understood before.
To really accept, you sometimes have to accept not accepting. Because that is the way things are...
It may take a while for the full implications of this to sink in.
If we really accept that we sometimes don't accept, what it entails is being OK with all the 'negative' emotions which this might bring. It means us being OK with anger, OK with sadness, OK with fear, OK with frustration, OK with the whole ghastly gamut of *stuff*, the whole range of troublesome feelings which afflict the human race...
Which is not an easy thing to contemplate.
But what if I told you that this 'trick', this acceptance of 'negative' emotions, is the ultimate key to happiness? That if you can really be OK with whatever 'terrible' stuff you might feel, then you finally have the key to the garden of Eden.
I'm going to explain why - along with some practical advice on how to accept your emotions - in this series of posts. Part Two, 'Into The Jaws Of The Tiger', will be along very shortly...
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.
One of the blog posts I read over the festive season which has really stuck in my mind is the December 27 post by Stephen at Birthing Your Life Dream, in which he sings the praises of the new iPod his wife brought him for Christmas.
What with this being a spirituality blog, this might seem like a strange thing for me to focus on in this way. An attitude of skepticism - or even disdain - towards such consumer goods might appear to be more in keeping. Yet there is a genuine innocent delight in the way Stephen writes about his present which is endearing.
He writes:
What joy it brought me to return to those sacred songs of my... (early) ...life, look them up, buy them, then have them ringing through my head once more, with a fidelity that one can only describe as heavenly. In fact, one of my very favorite love songs ever - Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell's If This World Were Mine, absolutely sounds like it was channeled and sung by the angels.
It's as if I said: "OK, God... do you remember this song that I used to sing when I was 12 years old? I loved it so much! Please bring it to me so that I could hear it once again in its grandest form." Then voila! Out of the Akashic Records it materializes, to dance in my head with exquisite aliveness."
Stephen reminds me that all these gadgets we humans have created: these iPods, games consoles, digital cameras, wide screen TVs and the like are actually wonderful things. If they'd been shown to the six-year old me living in post-war austerity Britain, it would have been like I'd died and gone to heaven. What we have done is to grow up and create the toys and artifacts of our dreams. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with these things. They are genuinely wonderful inventions. It is truly magical to immerse ourselves for a while in the fantasy world of a console game, or to watch a nature program or a favorite movie on a screen which almost fills your living room wall. Such things have never been possible before in the whole of human history. It is a great privilege to be able to have such experiences.
And yet... I suspect that Steve is unusual - at least among adults! - in taking such genuine delight in his new gadget. Walking past the shops in recent days, with the January sales in full flow, I have seen little such delight on the faces of the bargain-hunting customers. They seem to walk into the shops not in the expectation of any kind of fulfillment of their dreams, but as though they are about to engage in mortal combat. As they emerge again, clutching their enormous screens or tiny gizmos, they don't look happy. They look as though they've just completed a tedious household chore, like putting out the trash.
Why is this, I wonder?
To some extent, we're justified in restraining our enthusiasm about whatever we've just bought. Bitter experience has probably taught us that in all likelihood a) the instructions won't make sense and b) the thing won't work in any case. In all probability, what we have to look forward to as we walk out of the store is not year after year of blissful enjoyment but many weeks of bitter wrangling with the customer services department. I recounted the sad tale of my own mp3 player in the very first post on this blog. It took me months to get the thing working and I had to erase the hard drive of my PC and reload all my software in the process. I don't have to tell you that this sort of thing is not unusual...
And then there is that insatiable need that we have to find a bargain. If we don't get a large discount, we feel we've been ripped off. We want to feel that we're paying less for the product than everyone else is. Otherwise, we can't settle down and enjoy it. I mean, how can you possibly enjoy watching a 52 inch flat screen TV with stereo sound which cost you five dollars more than the guy next door? It can't be done.
And then, of course, there's obsolescence anxiety. Is the product you've bought going to be out of date before long? Will they bring one out in a few months time with extra bells and whistles that you don't have? And what if the thing gets damaged? That would be terrible, wouldn't it? I myself have to listen to an mp3 player which has visible bits of dust beneath its screen. As you can imagine, this is a source of endless torment to me.
And then there's the stress of trying to find time to actually use the gadget. How on earth can you find a few hours to enjoy watching your widescreen TV when you also have to listen to your iPod, make calls with your color screen cellphone, and take photos with your digital camera - photos, furthermore, which then have to be uploaded to your multi-media PC so that you can download them to the hard drive of your DVD or print them out with your all-in-one photocopier, ink jet and fax machine? To even attempt such a thing, you're going to have to download several audio books on time management to your mp3 player - and how are you going to find the time to do that?
In any sane world, on the other hand - and it may well be that Stephen is living in a small bubble of one! - you wouldn't buy any gadgets that you didn't have time to use, and you would happily go on using them for many years to come, irrespective of whether any newer models had been introduced in the meantime. And because you would therefore be buying less stuff, you would be able to pay a bit more for them, so that the manufacturers would be able to provide a better standard of workmanship and customer service and your experience as a consumer would be much less troublesome. When your gizmos eventually did stop working - many years down the line - you might even take them to a little shop round the corner where someone would fix them for you, rather than having to go out and buy a new one. And you certainly wouldn't worry if your various gadgets developed a scratch or two because you wouldn't have bought them in order to show off!
The point is that there is nothing 'wrong' with these artifacts themselves; it is our attitude to them which arguably falls short of our greatest good, because a lot of the time here in what we call 'the developed world', we are so caught up in the ego stuff around them - the whole business of possession - that we don't have chance to be there in the moment and take full delight in actually using the things.
It's another example of what we're so good at: failing to live in the moment, of being focussed on the next iPod - the one the guy next door has, or the next model up that we might have bought, or the one coming out next year - and so failing to hear the one that's attached to our ears. The point is: we work so hard for this stuff, but a lot of the time we don't even enjoy it when we've got it. We give up so much of our precious time to work for it that we don't have time to use when we finally have it.
It's all a symptom of unconscious living, of doing things without really thinking about it, of buying things because that is what we do. Like I say, there's nothing 'wrong' with all these artifacts, but it's a terrible waste of the earth's resources if they're not really being appreciated. They can be a gateway to joy, but only if we schedule in time to use them, and make sure that we're actually there in the moment while we're doing it: actually seeing those wonderful pictures, really hearing those marvelous sounds, instead of going off into a fantasy about what we might buy next.
Otherwise, well, perhaps we should just find a better home for these glorious gizmos on eBay.
Perhaps we ought to remember: an iPod is not just for Christmas.
In a recent post, I promised to share some more ways to deal with unhelpful emotions. One approach which is gaining in popularity is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). You can learn all about this on the net - or if you prefer, you can be trained by a practitioner if there is one in your area - do a Google to check. Once you have learned the technique, you can do it yourself whenever you need it.
Put simply, the technique involves tapping on the body's energy meridians, the same points which are normally used in acupuncture. You can watch this introductory video which will take you through the technique - it comes from the tapping.com site - or you can download a free manual here.
Further free online videos on the tapping.com site are entitled The Science Of Tapping, Self Acceptance, Killing Procrastination, Stress Relief, Waking Up, Insomnia, Overcoming Depression, Anger Management, Quit Smoking, Memory Release, and Chakra Clearing. There's a full list of them here. The technique may seem a bit strange at first, but I'm hearing some excellent feedback about it and I'm going to try it myself - I'll let you know how I get on! And if you decide to try it, I'll be interested to hear how it goes...
Eckhart Tolle tells a wonderful story about a candle in a dark room. Because the room is dark, whether or not the candle is lit is all-important. By the candle flame, we can find our way round and are reassured, but without that feeble flame we are totally lost.
If, however, the room is flooded with sunlight, the candle becomes irrelevant. We are no longer dependent upon its light.
Tolle suggests that in our current state of consciousness, most of us live - metaphorically - in a darkened room. We are dependent upon the ups and downs of the material world to illuminate our darkness. As long as things are going well, we are happy enough. But when bad things come along - as is bound to happen from time to time - we lose sight of the light.
If, instead, we can learn to live in sunlight, we can be free of our dependence upon the material world. In the brilliance of the sun-filled room, even when things go wrong, we can still be happy.
So how exactly can we learn to live in sunlight?
It is said that once this came naturally to us. When we were babies, we were in touch with a natural sense of joy. OK, so things would come along from time to time to cloud that joy: a touch of indigestion, for instance, or if we flung our rattle away. But these upsets were swiftly forgotten. There were tears - and then our smiles returned. Our connection to joy was never far away.
As we grew older, however, we lost that connection to joy.
It seems to me that there were two main reasons for this.
First of all, we were taught the importance of thinking, to such an extent that we eventually became so preoccupied with this new pastime of ours that we no longer took much notice of what was going on around us. So we ceased to notice if the connection to joy was there or not.
Fortunately, this can be easily corrected. Just stop thinking and there it is: the connection to joy is still there. Or else, the connection is there if you give it half a chance. You will probably have experienced it from time to time: as a sudden sense of peace while out for a walk in the country perhaps. Or else suddenly realizing that you are inexplicably happy for no apparent reason, absence of thought having caught you unawares for a moment or two. Stopping thinking isn't really so hard. It's just keeping it up for more than a second or two at a time that's the difficult bit...
Rather more troublesome is the other habit you were taught that got in the way of that connection to joy: learning not to cry if you threw your rattle away. Or if your best friend moved out of town. Or your dog got run over. Or you lost your job. Or your marriage broke down. Until eventually you were going through life carrying around a load of suppressed emotions, because somehow or other you got the idea that it wasn't OK to express your feelings any more.
And all this stuff that you are carrying about is a double whammy. First of all because it makes you unhappy and gets in the way of your present day relationships - as you may have already noticed - but also because it blocks that connection to joy, which is something which may have been less apparent.
This was something which was made very clear to me last summer. I wrote a post then about a process called the Quantum Light Breath which allowed me to release some of my suppressed emotions and seemed to open me up to what I can only describe as 'light energy', reconnecting me with that sense of joy. The impression I got was that the connection had been there all along but had been 'clogged up' with the debris of my emotions. It was literally like a dirty flue being cleared!
I have had similar - though less spectacular - experiences since then, and I have to tell you that being connected to that joy, even for brief periods, is every bit as wonderful as it sounds. That 'sun-filled room' is real, and I am sure that it is attainable by us all.
I've posted previously (here and here) about other ways to clear these suppressed emotions and I intend to post about more of them in the coming months. I have come to realize that it is vital to deal with these emotions if we're to break through to that 'sun-filled room' and start to live our lives there. The good news is that we don't have to analyze all our stuff, but we do have to face those feelings to allow them to be released.
As for stopping thinking, well joking aside, this can also be quite a task, though perhaps a rather less painful one. Meditation is useful here, as are the teachings of Eckhart Tolle - though I also suspect that as the emotions are cleared, unnecessary thought is also quietened. When there is less hurt, there is less need to go round and round in endless circles of thought.
Please note that by 'stopping thinking', it's this constant pointless mind chatter to which I'm referring, the 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' and just plain gibberish which chunders on and on in our brains for most of the time. So the brain surgeons and air traffic controllers amongst you can relax - it's still OK to think when we really need to! - but you might be surprised at what a small proportion of the thinking which most of us do that actually is.
With the New Year upon us, what I've tried to do in this post is to clarify what the shift in perspective which underpins this blog is all about and the steps we may have to take if we wish to allow it into our lives. Spiritual awakening, self realization, enlightenment, call it what you will, doesn't interest everyone, but if you feel drawn to it, or are tired of the pain which our habitual state of consciousness tends to produce - or a combination of both! - then perhaps you will start to prioritize making that change. If you choose to do so, then the road before you may be a bumpy one, but the glimpses I've had of the way ahead suggest that it will be worth it in the end. I'll place as many signposts as I am able to find on this blog, and of course there are many more to be found in other places...
The good thing is that you don't have to believe anything in particular to make this change. If you already subscribe to a belief system, that's fine. If you don't, that's fine as well. All you have to do is to clear the emotions and thoughts which get in the way of that natural connection to joy.
And, as I've mentioned before, this is not just a personal thing to help ourselves as individuals. A glance around at the state of the world is enough to show that the human race is sorely in need of a shift to a higher state of consciousness. As we make that connection to joy and start to live our lives in the 'sun-filled room' to which Eckhart Tolle refers, we will come to realize that we are not after all separate beings but an integral part of the human race, a part of the universe: that we are all in this together. As we move into 2008, that is a realization which is long overdue for us all.
Happy New Year! It looks like it might be a challenging one. May it be a time of positive transformation!
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