The Secret of Life

Summer Schedule - And A Video About Trust

We've been having some nice warm summery weather here in the UK and I've been finding that the trowel and the watering can have been shouting rather louder than blogging. Last year, while we were moving house, I put The Secret Of Life on the backburner for a few months to give me a chance of keeping my life in some sort of sane balance, and all of a sudden, it seems like a good idea to do the same again this year. All this means is that I'll be posting once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week over the summer, which will allow me to revitalize and bounce back all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the leaves start to fall from the trees again.

In the meantime, the best way to keep track of my occasional posts might be to subscribe to my feed or register for email updates (if you haven't already done so). You'll find all the necessary clickable bits in the sidebar. This might be a good idea, because I've got some interesting posts planned in the next few months, including one with the intriguing title "Twelve Words That Can Heal The World'. I'm hoping you'll like that one...

A couple more things this time: you may remember my earlier posts about neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's remarkable experience during her stroke. If so you may be interested to download Taylor's recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, the first of a new series of spirituality interviews which Oprah is running as a follow-up to her Eckhart Tolle - New Earth series.

And finally, here's a video which reminds us of a very important factor in using the law of attraction: trust. I described this element as 'letting go' or 'non-attachment' in my 'Heart Of The Secret' series of posts, but 'trust' is another excellent way to look at it.

It's easy for those of us who are motivated to produce art in some form or other to become pessimistic about our chances of finding an audience. After all, there are so many demands on people's time these days. But the guy in this video turns this idea on its head, quietly trusting that his audience will come... and it seems to work for him!

I found this inspiring - do take a look...

In case you didn't catch the name, the singer in the video is called Terry Prince. Incidentally, I came across this video on a blog called Bold Thoughts by David Hooper. (David has written a book on the law of attraction, the audio version of which is available on free download.)

A Native American Message

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.))

We Have The Biology

I just want to share a few thoughts about the video by Jill Bolte Taylor which I mentioned a few posts ago. If you haven't seen it, do go and take a look. It's quite amazing.

Jill experienced a stroke which intermittently incapacitated the left hand side of her brain, so that her right hemisphere became dominant. She reports becoming disconnected from her mental chatter, experiencing a sense of peace and euphoria, and feeling at one with All That Is.

She realized that she had found Nirvana and yet she was still alive. If this is true, she reasoned, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana. She pictured "a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate people who knew that they could come to this space at any time".

This got me thinking about human potential.

Many people believe that our ultimate goal is to merge with universal consciousness, with All That Is, with God, or whatever you want to call it. Then our suffering will come to an end and we will dissolve in a cloud of bliss.

This is quite a nice idea and is certainly a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but I can't help having the sneaking feeling that, when push comes to shove, it isn't enough. That, ultimately, bliss is not enough.

The way I look at it, bliss is where we started from. We embarked on our current adventure in the so-called material world in a quest for something more than that, for experience, for darkness as well as light - in order to allow us to fully know the light.

The only trouble is: we got too heavily into this. It's like we were playing a game of, say, Tomb Raider, but forgot that we were playing a game. So we started thinking that the Tomb Raider world was real. Which is where we are at the moment. Only now we're starting to wake up and remember it's only a game. Not to stop playing the game - because the game has great potential - but to wake up and get the game into perspective. To see the world as we know it now, with its seemingly solid objects, but also to see that all this is really a fantasy in a field of bliss. To walk around and interact with the world and the people in it, but understand at the same time that we are all part of a quantum field of energy, that all of us are really One - and start behaving accordingly.

This is what I see as our ultimate goal (at least for the time being!): not the release of oblivion, but something more like what Jesus called 'Heaven on Earth'. To be in the world yet not of it, to live in our 'material' universe with all its potential for rich and diverse experience, yet at the same time to know who we truly are: to live lightly and fearlessly, free of the heavy burden of separation.

Jill Bolte Taylor's video suggests that we have the potential to do this right now, in these bodies of ours, with these heads of ours. We have a left hemisphere to see our familar world of 'solid' objects, and a right one to see the field which underlies it . All we need to do is get those hemispheres into balance.

Heaven on Earth is only a tweak of consciousness away. We already have the biology we need.

Acceptance & Friendship

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...

The Ultimate Truth 4 - Living Fearlessly

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...)

The Ultimate Truth 3 - Breathe Away Your Emotions

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'.

The Ultimate Truth 2 - Into The Jaws Of The Tiger

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... 

The Ultimate Truth - 1

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...

Not Between You And Them...

Here are some words I love:

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
  people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,
  you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway. 

If you are honest and frank,
  people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,
  someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway. 

If you find serenity and happiness,
  they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway. 

The good you do today,
  people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway. 

Give the world the best you have,
  and it may never be enough;
Give the best you've got anyway. 

You see, in the final analysis
  it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.

Mother Teresa

In the previous post - and, indeed, several times on this blog - I've talked about our need to validate ourselves in the eyes of others. How are we to lose this unhelpful habit? Perhaps one way can be found through these words of Mother Teresa. Because it may help to bear in mind that what is considered 'success' won't necessarily bring us true recognition - even in the eyes of the world. All too often the jealousy of others will get in the way. Only in the eyes of God can the truth prevail and our genuine worth be acknowledged.

These words can still resonate, even if we don't acknowledge the existence of God - or don't care for the word. It was never between you and them anyway. It is between you and the universe, you and truth, you and justice. It is what is to be done.

How Much Do We Really Know?

There were some interesting comments on the previous post, The 'Left Brain - Right Brain' Dancer. Some saw her turning clockwise, some anticlockwise, and others a bit of both. If you haven't looked at this picture, you might want to take a look now.  If you see the dancer turning anticlockwise, perhaps you would like to try a little experiment for me? Place your attention on your 'heart center', the center of your chest, and hold it there for a while as you watch the dancer. Does she now turn clockwise, I wonder?

One of the people who commented on the post was Liara Covert of Dream Builders. I am grateful to Liara for the interesting - and sometimes challenging - comments she leaves here. This time she remarked: "...research studies always offer food for thought. We can choose to believe them or not. We can choose to take information with a grain of salt."

Having a scientific education, I'd once have disagreed strongly with this statement. These days, however, I think I'm closer to Liara's point of view than to my own stance back then. I wouldn't  go quite so far as she does. If I jumped out of a plane, for instance,  I think I'd want to take a parachute with me, whatever I might decide to believe about gravity. But this is an extreme example. Is our knowledge of things always so well defined?

In our society, we like to think of ourselves as being governed by logic, but the truth is that all too often we have insufficient evidence to come to a purely rational decision about things. Our lives these days tend to be complex, and a great many factors are often involved. We rarely have all the relevant information, and even what we think we know can often be based on guesswork and supposition. People who think of themselves as essentially rational will grit their teeth and try to apply logic nevertheless, in spite of the lack of sufficient evidence, but isn't this really like building a house on inadequate foundations? Is it really any more sensible than reading tea leaves or looking for signs in the sky?

It may seem like anathema to the modern mind to take notice of such signs and omens, but many of us do such things instinctively even though we may believe we are creatures of logic. Prime examples are buying a house or choosing a partner. Most of us wouldn't dream of doing either of these without giving a great deal of weight to how we felt about it.

If, on the other hand, we were buying, say, a refrigerator, we would be much more likely to rely on logic, ticking off a checklist of features perhaps. How we felt about it would seem much less significant. It is only when we step up to larger, more important purchases, such as a car, that our gut feelings come to seem important. Even more so for a house - and even more than that for choosing a partner. In other words, the more important the decision, the less we tend to go on logic alone and the more we go on our feelings, our instinct, our intuition. How does this fit in with our rational, scientific world view exactly?

Of course, it might be argued that there are whole areas of our lives where logic can be applied with complete confidence. Think of all the scientific evidence we have built up about this, that and the other. This allows us to build at least parts of our lives upon certainty.

Or does it?

Liara says we can choose to believe such information or not. But how can she say such a thing?

Perhaps she is simply keeping up with the news...

I wonder if you saw a news report last week about a research study carried out at the University of Hull here in the UK which reviewed the data from 47 clinical trials into the use of SSRI (and similar) antidepressants. The study concluded that in most cases, the drugs are no more effective than a placebo. This is contrary to the evidence from previous studies. So why the discrepancy? Simply because the Hull team studied unpublished as well as published data. It seems that the drug companies have chosen to publish only those studies which suggest that their drugs are effective. If the studies have shown the opposite, they haven't been published. The Hull team had to use freedom of information legislation to get hold of the missing data.

(It occurs to me that the team in Hull must have really gone out in a limb in order to do this - and I find myself wondering if the study has been reported outside the UK. Has anyone seen it in the US or other non-UK media, I wonder?)

So in this case at least, the research studies didn't reflect the outcome of scrupulous research according to rigorously applied scientific methods at all, but simply the vested interests of the companies which had financed them. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that a similar approach may have been taken in the study of other drugs.

Suddenly, the body of research evidence in the field of therapeutic drugs no longer seems such a strong foundation for rational analysis. Other areas of research may be less controversial perhaps, but we are fooling ourselves if we ignore the potential influence of vested interests in all such studies. What results will encourage further finance? What results will assist the researcher's career? When a scientific study has been carried out, it doesn't have to be published if the researchers don't like the results. And if they only like part of the results, they don't have to publish the rest. On top of which, of course, there's a lot of scope for different interpretations - the way the results are presented can have a significant effect.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to dismiss the value of scientific research entirely because of such factors - or to ignore the immense benefits which science has brought us over the years - but we the general public are fooling ourselves if we think that our science is based upon absolute certainties. It does not equate to our world. It is, at best, an incomplete and often inaccurate model.

When set against this, it is perhaps not so ridiculous to place emphasis on what our own experience and intuition tell us. What do we feel inside? Do we detect a voice inside us which sometimes seems to speak with absolute confidence? Is it possible that we are connected to some source of intelligence which transcends the shortcomings of the scientific model? That if we trust ourselves, we will find inside a knowing?

The next time I jump out of a plane, I'm still going to take my parachute. After all, it feels right to have something to hold on to. But bear in mind that I didn't discover gravity in a book. I did a lot of research as a child: falling over and painfully scraping my knees.