The Secret of Life

Alignment

My Dad is 88 and hasn't got much memory left. He spends a lot of his time trying to work out what he's supposed to be doing. I reassure him that he doesn't have to do anything: that he is safe in the home for the elderly where he lives, where they see to his needs and cook all his meals for him. But he can't seem to quite understand this. 'Are you sure I don't have to go out to work?' he asks. 'Yes, quite sure,' I tell him. He looks unconvinced and peers down at the book in front of him, where we write down the things that we do on my visits, searching for 'the answer'.

Perhaps, after all, there is one thing that my Dad still has to do, and I suspect he has been doing it all his life: to teach me. He has always been a worrier, and in him I see my own worries amplified. For I, too, have been searching for 'an answer' - and feeling very frustrated not to find it.

It seems to me it is a Christian idea - though doubtless shared by others - that we all have certain God-given gifts which it is our obligation to discover and make use of. More recently, this idea of finding a life's purpose has also appeared in self-development books. I have always found the concept appealing, though I have started to believe that it can also be a trap.

I used to think it was writing, this thing that I had to do. I have been driven to write since an early age and used to berate myself for writing for fanzines instead of buckling down and writing that novel. So eventually, I buckled down and wrote that novel. And another. And another. I wrote two adult fantasy novels, of a type which turned out to be out of fashion, and a children's fantasy novel which was described by an editor as being 'original but too weird to publish'. I regard having written a fantasy novel that is 'too weird' to be a certain kind of success, but unfortunately it is not the kind of success which makes money or gets readers.

What I found very difficult about all this was that I very much liked what I had written. Clearly, I needed to do better to get published, but how would I know when I was writing something better if I liked the stuff I had written which wasn't good enough? I obviously needed to upgrade my internal critic, but I wasn't sure how to do that.

So, I decided I would write something else entirely. I wrote a spirituality book. And I did what I always did: I gave it to a few likely victims people to read, listened to their feedback, and revised the book accordingly. All of which took me a year or so, by which time my ideas about spirituality had moved on so far that it didn't feel like my book any longer. I had intended to self-publish it and market it online, but I no longer had the heart to do that. I still liked a lot of what I had written but the book's angle was all wrong. It just wasn't the book I would have written if I'd written it today. I could revise it of course, but that would take me a while. By which time...

I should have been pleased, of course, that my spiritual development was moving so quickly that my writing couldn't keep pace with it, but all I felt was frustrated. Here was I with this amazing natural God-given talent for writing (ironic smiley inserted here) and not making proper use of it! What is more, if I didn't find a way to use my writing, I would feel I had failed in my life's purpose, that I had let myself - and the universe - down in some way. And yet what could I find to write? I could no longer think of anything that would 'work'. I was already writing this blog, of course, but my readership here is not exactly vast. (You are reading it, of course, which is what is really important, but we'll get to that a bit later...)

And yet, if I didn't write, what else should I do? My current state of health dictates that everything I do has to be done in short bursts punctuated by rest/meditation breaks, which kind of cuts down the available options.

I couldn't see any way out of my state of frustration.

Or could I?

A week or so ago, I decided to take a look at some of the helpful stuff which I and others write on this blog and came across a quote by Helen about asking for help. So I decided that is what I would do.

But I didn't sit down and explicitly ask for help in finding my purpose in life. I remembered what Joe Vitale had said in The Missing Secret about the importance of aligning your will with that of your higher self, something which is also implicit in a lot of what I've written here myself at The Secret Of Life.

So I asked for guidance to align my will in that way: to put aside my ego-driven desires and declare myself open to whatever the will of the universe might be, to whatever my higher self might have in mind for me.

And the wonderful thing is that I got some assistance in this.

I held various suggestions in my mind one by one and waited to see if I got a reaction. I'll explain exactly how I did this later. One thing came over very strongly: that I should be with my wife Chris. And something else which came up is that I should carry on doing this blog. The idea of writing another book did not get a reaction, and nor did another creative project which I had in mind.

Humph.

Naturally, I queried this reaction. The idea of being with Chris was all very well, but it wasn't very 'grand'. It didn't seem to involve any fame and fortune, for instance. This was me, Simon, we were talking about here, and I had always kind of thought that I had some sort of well, you know, 'destiny'. Was the universe sure that it hadn't got me muddled up with somebody else?

But the universe seemed very sure that it hadn't made a mistake. Being with Chris and writing the blog: that's what I was to do. That was my 'destiny', for the time being at least.

Hmm...

I might have been rather more disgruntled if it hadn't have been for the other things which happened during this process:

1) I experienced a feeling of overwhelming love and compassion.

2) I received healing for my neck, a long-standing problem which had been giving me a great deal of trouble in recent weeks. Since that time, it has been a lot better. I have been lucky enough to receive a great deal of healing energy over the years, but I have never previously experienced anything quite so directly 'hitting the spot' as this.

So overall, I was very happy with the outcome, thank you very much, and any misgivings I had began to fade away as a clear picture began to emerge of what I had discovered.

It seemed to me that the idea that I had some 'grand destiny' to fulfill had been a weight around my neck. Was it any wonder that I had such pain and discomfort in that part of my body? What I was being told was that I didn't have to succeed in these 'great achievements' after all. It was my ego that had laid them upon me, not the universe or God or my higher self or anything else. There were other things which were more important than these grand designs, like simply being a good husband to Chris.

It also seemed to me that the emphasis on 1) my marriage and 2) this blog was telling me something else. It was encouraging me to focus on my spiritual development. Relationships are a great way to work on self realization, because what they are about - ultimately - is recognizing the divine in each other, and so helping us to find it in ourselves. This blog, too, is a guiding hand in this process: hopefully, in some small way, for some of you, but certainly for me, for it allows me to develop my understanding of such things and to maintain my focus on the spiritual part of my life.

It also came to me that I no longer have to think so much about how many readers I get. If people are meant to find this blog, they will find it. It is as simple as that. You have found it after all, and as I have said, that is what is really important. If I only speak to one person, that is enough. Thank you for being here to read this.

Perhaps, too, at some stage, I will find a larger audience. Perhaps I will return to my books and find a way to get them 'out there'. Or perhaps I will write others. But now is not the time, and I think I will only return to such things when I have learned to get my ego out of the way, when I have found my way back to sitting down to write them because that is the thing to do, not because I have some grand vision of a 'me' that I have to become.

To be like that would only to be like my Dad, vainly searching for the thing that I have to do. He and I must both find a way to peace.

There is more I would like to say here, to discuss the feeling of compassion and healing I received for instance, but this is already a long post, so it will have to wait for another time - or perhaps for the comments section.

But one thing I do want to add as a postscript here - as promised - is to say a bit more about the way in which I communicated with the universe or my higher self or whatever it was that gave me all that useful information. This is particularly important because it is something which you may like to try for yourself. I have certainly found it useful, even liberating. Perhaps it will open a similar doorway you.

So, when I held each of those ideas in my mind (my relationship, the books, the blog etc.) and waited for a reaction, how did that come exactly? Did I hear a disembodied voice? You may be relieved to learn that I didn't. What I used was a process I developed some years before, after reading some material by a guy called Bob Scheinfeld.

What Bob suggested was to develop a process of communication with your intuition by simply asking for this to be done: to ask for some kind of physical sign meaning 'yes'. So what you do is sit down and ask your intuition (or your higher self or the universe or the quantum field or God or whatever you think the source of deep inner knowing within you may be) for a sign meaning 'yes' to allow it to share its wisdom with you. Then you sit there and wait for the sign to come.

(It's a long time since I read that book of Bob Scheinfeld's, so apologies to him if I've got his teaching here all scrambled, but I hope I've captured the gist of it.)

I seem to remember that when I first tried this, it took a few weeks for my sign to emerge, but when it eventually came it was a kind of vibration around the eyes. My eyes are very sensitive, so perhaps it is not surprising that this should have happened. Nowadays, the sign is a rather more general vibration or energy, sometimes with flashes of color. So when I put forward each of those ideas, I waited to see if that energy would come. If it did, it meant a positive reaction. If not, then negative.

I'm not claiming that this process is 100% reliable, and it's as well to test any ideas a number of times to see if you get a consistent reaction. I still feel rather surprised that I usually do...

I hope that this doesn't seem too weird. If so, then I'll just trot out the usual mantra: give it a try and see if it works for you. It's really rather similar to the idea of kinesiology, as promoted by Dr David Hawkins and others, which gives you a strong muscle reaction for 'yes' and a weak one for 'no'. The idea is that you are tapping into some deep well of truth within you. It is allowing you to partake in a part of that truth.

Ten Words That Can Heal The World

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the audio program The Missing Secret by Dr Joe Vitale. Vitale was one of the contributors to the phenomenally successful video about the law of attraction, The Secret. As you might have guessed from the title, The Missing Secret promises to fill in the missing bits you didn't get in The Secret, the bits that meant that the law of attraction didn't work as well as it said on the wrapper.

There's a lot of this sort of stuff around, so I didn't have particularly high expectations when I listened to The Missing Secret. It therefore came as a pleasant surprise to find that it's a sensible, honest and comprehensive guide which happens to echo a lot of what I said in my own series of posts on the law of attraction, The Heart Of The Secret, and which provides exhaustive information on the various techniques you can use to defuse the problems which can get in the way of success.

I still have reservations about the practical use of the law of attraction for those of us who aren't either a) naturally positive people or b) enlightened - and to give him his due, Vitale pretty much accepts its limitations himself. But if you still want to give the law of attraction a go (and why shouldn't you?) then I can't recommend The Missing Secret too highly.

But what really excites me about this program is the third of the six CDs. This covers a Hawaiian technique with the unlikely title of 'Ho'oponopono', which in my opinion has implications of far greater importance than the kind of creature comforts we so often associate with the law of attraction. It has the potential to literally heal the world.

Vitale first came across this technique when he heard about the work of the Hawaiian psychiatrist Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len, who was in charge of a hospital for the criminally insane, the inhabitants of which were generally considered to be beyond cure or redemption. Eschewing all orthodox methods, and without even speaking to the patients himself, Dr Hew Len apparently used the Ho'oponopono technique to cure all but two of the patients to the extent that they could be reintegrated into society. The hospital was eventually closed because it was no longer required. Perhaps surprisingly, this remarkable and heartening chain of events appears to be well corroborated.

The version of Ho'oponopono used by Dr Hew Len was developed in the 1980s by Morrnah Simeona and is based on an ancient Hawaiian practice. Its underlying concept takes the law of attraction to its ultimate conclusion. If we do indeed create our own reality, then it follows that we create everything in our world, even (for instance) the things we hear about on the radio. It entails taking total responsibility for whatever there is in our life.

Yet this isn't about a pointless guilt trip. It is all about healing what has happened. At the heart of the technique, there are four simple phrases: "I'm sorry", "Please forgive me", "Thank you" and "I love you". Through these phrases, the healing (or 'cleaning') can be achieved.

The first two phrases are about expressing regret and requesting forgiveness for whatever in us has created the circumstances we wish to heal; "Thank you" is said in anticipation of the forgiveness we know will be forthcoming; and "I love you" reestablishes the original, natural relationship with God - or 'the Divine', as Joe Vitale and Dr Hew Len prefer to call It. If you have a problem with either of these words, you can of course substitute a word of your choice: the universe, consciousness, the quantum field, the source, whatever you'd like to use instead...

The Missing Secret has a section which repeats these phrases over and over again so that you can play them in the background whatever you are doing; while Vitale himself likes to keep repeating 'I love you' as he goes about his day, which is a powerful exercise in itself. Alternatively, you may prefer to use the phrases to work on specific issues. In earlier posts, I've talked about dissolving away negative emotions using both Nick Roach's approach and my own welcome breath. I still use both of these, but I find that Ho'oponopono usually works even better. I focus on the emotion and then repeat each phrase in turn until the energy changes and the emotion dissipates.

I suggest you try using the phrases in various ways and find out what seems to work for you. If you are drawn to the technique, then do investigate The Missing Secret and/or Joe Vitale's book Zero Limits (which is all about Ho'oponopono) to find out more. Or if you are within traveling distance, consider signing up for one of Dr Hew Len's seminars on Ho-oponopono, details of which which you can find on his web site.

Of course, you may be asking why you should believe a single word of any of this stuff. Given its unlikely nature, this is a fair question. I guess it comes down to the same as everything else on this site. Just give it a try and see what you think. Judge it by its results or any gut feeling you may have about it. I'm impressed by Ho'oponopono because it helps to dissipate my emotions, and I sense a feeling of power when I say the phrases. But you really have to try it for yourself...

You may also be wondering exactly why you should be expected to take responsibility for all this stuff on the news that you never thought had anything to do with you. You may not buy the idea that this is the ultimate consequence of the law of attraction. You thought that the law of attraction was all about getting a nice new house and that sports car you always wanted. You weren't aware of the little-known sub-clause that, along with the house and the car, come total responsibility for worldwide war, famine, earthquakes, crime, anti-social behavior and bad TV.

But the way I look at it is this: if we are all truly One (as I have argued on this blog), all part of a single field of energy, then of course we share responsibility for everything that happens in this world. If we are all interconnected, then collective responsibility follows.

But even if you don't believe in this spiritual stuff, if you prefer to ignore quantum physics and insist that we are all entirely separate from each other, then perhaps you will be willing to accept that we are nevertheless united by chains of cause and effect. Other people are affected by the way we interact with them, and this in turn affects the way they behave with others. Bearing in mind the widely held belief that there are, on average, only six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on the planet, it can be argued that the way we act has an important effect on the world in which we live.

All these actions are stored in memory, and for most of the time - in our current state of consciousness - it is these memories which shape events in our world. It is memory which elects governments, which makes those governments fearful of others, which promotes and prolongs war - because of who did what to whom in years gone by. And if we look in our hearts, perhaps we can come to understand that the emotions which arise within us when we come into conflict with others in our daily lives stem from the same source as those which cause others to kill, abuse, and exploit other people across our planet.

According to Ho-opnopono, all actions arise from one of two sources: from memory or from inspiration. The answer it presents is to heal or 'clean' those memories, to clear away those centuries of accumulated grievances, passed down through the generations, once and for all: to clear away the collective karma of the human race, so that all that remains is inspiration, connection to source, connection to love...

I have written before about the way in which our emotions get in the way of our natural connection to joy. Well, here is more of the same, yet for 'emotions' read 'memories', for it is memory from which those emotions spring.

Remember the four simple phrases: "I'm sorry", "Please forgive me", "Thank you", and "I love you". They can be used to clean away those memories and reestablish our connection to joy.

Find the best way you can to use them. They are ten words that can heal the world.

Related links:

Dr Joe Vitale

The Missing Secret

Zero Limits

Dr Hew Len: Foundation of I

Is There Someone Standing Behind You?

Here's a really interesting exercise which has been developed using neuroscientific research. It can have a very powerful, immediate effect. This effect will most likely be very pleasant, even ecstatic, but be warned that in some cases it can be less pleasant - and of course, it's best if you don't try it while driving!

First, you need to get into a meditative state. The easiest way to do this is to focus on your breathing. Just be aware of your breath going in and and out, in and out... If other thoughts come along, then as soon as you are aware of them, just take your attention gently back to your breathing: in and out, in and out...

When you are feeling more relaxed, imagine that you are feeling a 'presence' somewhere behind you, over to your left.

What do you experience?

That's all there is to it...

*     *     *

If you felt something significant, then tests have shown that this will have coincided with activity in your amygdala, a part of the brain which is associated with emotion. In most people, the amygdala in the left hand side of the brain is associated with positive emotions, which is why you were asked to imagine the presence on the left side. Many such people will have a pleasant experience when asked to imagine the presence in this way. This can range from feeling safe and protected to sensations of ecstasy. Some people even find that they have a visual image of the imagined presence, which might be an angel, a hooded monk, a knight on horseback, a spirit familiar, or one of a range of other forms.

In a minority of people, the amygdalae are reversed - a bit like being left-handed. In this case, the left amygdala is associated with negative emotions, so such people are more likely to have a bad experience when they imagine a presence on this side. This can range from mildly unpleasant to a feeling of impending doom!

These people tend to have a positive experience when they imagine the presence on the right hand side instead, whereas most people have a negative experience when they imagine it on this side.

Some people have positive experiences whichever side they imagine the presence. Apparently, these are invariably people who perform regular spiritual practices such as meditation.

There is also a twist in the tail. Apparently when people have their amygdala artificially stimulated in the laboratory, they are likely to spontaneously sense the presence!

Many thanks to my skeptical friend, Lee (who has been following this blog but hopes I will grow out of it) for drawing my attention to Todd Murphy's excellent Spirituality & The Brain web site, where I found the above exercise. Todd is a behavioral neuroscientist, who has worked with Dr Michael Persinger, the neuroscientist who pioneered the research which underlies this exercise. Todd's special interest is in understanding how the brain contributes to spiritual experiences, and his site contains a wealth of information on the subject.

The sensed presence exercise is fascinating but what does it mean? I think we are unlikely to reach any kind of consensus on this. Todd Murphy seems to argue that so-called 'spiritual' phenomena are simply the product of certain brain activity. He doesn't deny that such experiences can be beneficial, but he doesn't believe that they relate to 'real' phenomena outside ourselves.

A new-agey person like me, on the other hand, is more likely to believe that we have these pleasant experiences because a link with some kind of presence is really happening. The fact that some of the people in the experiments come up with entirely unprompted visions of what this presence might look like seems to me to support this idea. And yet... do the unpleasant experiences which many people have, if they imagine the presence on the other side, suggest that a darker figure, some shadow self, is also in existence? That's an idea with which we might be rather less comfortable...

I hope to return to this subject when I have had a chance to look at more of Todd Murphy's site. Until then... if you tried the 'sensed presence' exercise, I'd love to know what you felt. Please leave me a comment! And afterwards, I'll leave a comment to let you know how it was for me...

The Door To The Garden

I didn't intend to go quite so long between posts as this, but things have got in the way. I mentioned before that I was going to spend more time gardening over the summer, so you might assume from the title here that I'm going to entertain you with stories of all the blissful afternoons amongst the shrubbery that have kept me away from blogging. But as so often in life, it hasn't been quite like that.

There has been time for a bit of horticulture in between the traditional English summer raindrops - not to mention the gale force winds that ripped the honeysuckle off the side of the garage - but in fact my protracted absence has had more to do with unscheduled health problems than to undue time spent dawdling over the bedding plants.

I mentioned a while back that I was going to be consulting a specialist clinic about my CFIDS. Tests have now been carried out and I'm duly imbibing a host of noxious concoctions to start to put things right. Which means that I'm now in one of those 'worse before you feel better' situations, with which all of you who have consulted an alternative practitioner will no doubt be only too familiar. On top of which, I think I may have contracted a stomach bug, though with everything else that's going on, the truth is that it's difficult to be sure.

I've been ill for about twenty years all in all, so you'd think I'd have got used to it by this time. But my condition is variable, so I experience different degrees of feeling ill. There are times when I've managed to organize my life around the condition so well that I pretty much forget about it altogether. But these last few weeks, I've found myself remembering how I was at my worst, and tapping into some of the trepidation, helplessness, and sheer mind-numbing frustration which went along with that.

In other words, I've been arguing with reality. I've been feeling ill but wanting to feel well, not just at some time in the future, but right now, this moment.

If I'd read my blog carefully, I'd have known this wasn't a good idea.

It's fine to imagine a healthy body, to conjure up dreams we would like to bring into being, but to wish for the present moment to be something other than how it is is like banging our heads against a wall. And that's what I've been doing.

It's funny - when you're down there, when you're doing that, it's often difficult to see that you have any alternative. I found myself wishing I had some complex routine of spiritual practice to which to turn to help me to find a way out of it. There's something to be said for Dharma, I think. The only thing I do every day is meditation, which isn't always enough to knock me out of that old familiar human condition of raging against what is.

But then, the other day, I suddenly found my way back. I found the key and turned it in the lock and emerged into that wonderful garden where struggling ceases. The tension inside me faded away and I felt an energy flowing through me, as though everything I'd been raging against was now a part of my own power instead. It was as though I had been struggling against the river of life, but now I had turned and allowed it to carry me forward.

All of this was familiar enough. I've now experienced it numerous times and have written about it here on the blog before. The key, too, was familiar to me. I've written about that too, over and over again. And yet, as always, to take that key and feel it turn in the lock and actually emerge into the sunlight of the garden came as a wonderfully welcome surprise - as though it was happening to me for the very first time.

Regular readers may have guessed that the key I used was acceptance: that I simply accepted the way things were, including how I was feeling, instead of raging against it and demanding that the universe be other than it is.

I feel I should scream this from the rooftops. Simply accept this present moment, really accept it, and you hold the secret of life in your hands. That is all you need to know about enlightenment, all you need to know about anything. Once you accept What Is, in this one moment, right now, then all the tortuous ego dance of 'what if', 'if only', 'I really have to' and 'I shouldn't have' can finally fall away and leave you free to live your life as it is, in the glorious wonder of the present moment.

It really is that simple.

At least, when you're there in the garden, it seems to be that simple.

And yet, curiously enough, when you're here on the other side of the door, it doesn't always seem to be quite so straightforward.

I spent that whole day 'in the garden', 'in the zone', feeling the universe moving through me. And just for the record, no, I didn't make a miraculous recovery. Yet feeling as relaxed as I did, I felt a lot better, and the remaining discomfort no longer seemed so important.

But now, several days later, I am outside the garden again. I have found my way back to the door and am holding the key in my hand. But I can't seem to quite turn it in the lock. You know how it is with keys sometimes. You need to have the knack. Just jiggle the key a bit to the right, or a bit to the left. Or pull up the handle of the door while you're trying to turn it. Every key is different.

But right now, I no longer seem to have the knack of opening this particular door.

I know that the key is acceptance, but I can't quite seem to quite manage it. I tell myself I am willing to accept what is. From time to time, I even seem to do this. But I am still outside the garden.

So I ask myself: what is wrong? What I am not accepting? Is it the way I am feeling? Or is it something else?

And I have come to the conclusion that it is something else.

What I am not accepting, right now, is that I am standing outside the garden.

And I won't get back in that place until I do.

The Taste Of Tomatoes

I recently attended a workshop run by Sally Chaffer, in which she introduced us to the spiritual experience of eating strawberries. Now, this may seem more like recreation than spiritual development, but it was all about mindfully eating strawberries: being aware of their appearance and texture as we held them in our hands, smelling their fragrance, and then eating them slowly a bite at a time, giving ourselves a chance to enjoy their luxurious taste.

I have to confess that this is very different from the way I normally eat: gulping things down mindlessly as I focus my attention on something else entirely.

I'm not sure how I came to eat like this. Was it because I would get into trouble with the adults if I didn't eat up my dinner, so I learned to eat as quickly as possible lest my appetite dwindled away and left me stranded half way through the green beans? Or is it because some primitive survival instinct kicks in and prompts me to eat up my food before some competitor grabs it away and I starve to death?

Whatever the truth of it, Sally's approach to eating is much more fun. And as you might have guessed, she was using the strawberries as a practical exercise in being in the moment, illustrating the advantage of focusing your attention on what you're actually doing, instead of being somewhere away in the past or the future, missing the experience of actually living your life.

If you happen to live within traveling distance of Leeds, UK, you may be interested in attending one of these workshops of Sally's. The next one is scheduled for 19th July. She titles the workshops Inner Peace Now! and you can find some details about them here. (You may recognize Sally from the comments she leaves here at The Secret Of Life - I've written more about my experience of her workshop at Sue Ann Edwards' blog.)

That experience with the strawberries reminded me of something which happened to me several years ago. A friend offered me an organic tomato she had grown, inviting me to taste it and see what I thought. Biting into that tomato was a real revelation. There was a sweetness to it, a subtlety of flavor, which brought me very vividly back to my childhood. It was a long time since I had tasted a tomato like that.

"Wow!" I said. "That's what tomatoes used to taste like!"

My friend smiled, clearly pleased at my reaction.

But afterwards, something unexpected happened. The next time I ate a tomato, just an ordinary non-organic tomato I bought at the supermarket, I tried tasting that one as well. And you know what? That tasted pretty good too. Not as good as my friend's tomato perhaps, but I could still detect that same sweetness and subtlety of flavor. And gradually, as I tasted more and more tomatoes, I realized that tomatoes generally tasted pretty good now, a lot better than all the tomatoes I'd tasted for many years. And I soon realized that this had nothing to do with the tomatoes themselves. It was all to do with me. It was simply because I had started paying attention as I ate. Tomatoes had really always been this good. It was just that I hadn't been focusing on what I was eating. I had been biting into something which my mind had labeled 'tomato' and then dismissed from my attention. Why go to the bother of tasting those things, my mind had been saying, I know all about them already!

But now I knew better. Now I had experienced the benefit of actually tasting the tomatoes, of being present while I was eating them.

Of course, I had failed to extrapolate this fully and bring the same degree of attention to all my eating, but it's never too late to start. And there may be more benefit involved than simply enjoying the taste. Some people believe that eating mindfully improves our digestion and allows us to extract more nutrition from our food. This seems to make sense. Why shouldn't our digestive system operate more efficiently if we're paying attention while we're using it? So many other things do - why not our stomachs?

Mindfulness can also be helpful in losing weight. Compulsive eating doesn't tend to be mindful eating. It tends to be something we do while we're thinking of something else, perhaps focusing on whatever problems have led us to eat compulsively in the first place. Or perhaps what's happening is that we're focusing on what we're going to eat next: eating a biscuit while our mind is on the biscuits that are still in the packet. Or worse still, on the packets that are still in the shop, just waiting there to be bought...

If compulsive eating is a problem for you, you could try eating mindfully for a change. Focus on that biscuit. Enjoy its taste, its texture. You may then derive more pleasure from eating that single biscuit than you did from all those packets you slung mindlessly down your neck.

And then: who knows? That one biscuit may be all you really desire.

Postscript: My blogging platform, Typepad, has now introduced more flexibility in typefaces, so I've taken the opportunity to increase the font size. I find this a lot easier to read. Do you agree, or do you find it too large? Any feedback is welcome!

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 "Ten 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.

(Additional note: Some readers have pointed out that Jill Bolte Taylor has also written a book about her experience. You can find it here.)

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.))

The Oneness Temple

I've written previously here at The Secret Of Life about Deeksha or Oneness Blessing, the transfer of energy which I've been receiving for about two and a half years now and which I believe has had a remarkable effect on my spiritual development. The aim of Deeksha is to facilitate the shift in human consciousness which many of us believe - or at any rate, hope! - is almost upon us. Deeksha works not by creating the shift - which is going to happen anyway - but by helping the brain to attune to the transformation.

Now, at the Oneness Movement's HQ in southern India, a new project is coming to fruition. The Oneness Temple is a vast structure which is 108 feet high, stands on a 42 acre plot, and contains the largest pillarless hall in Asia. It is not dedicated to any particular religion but to 'the one divine presence which is everywhere'. After many years of work, it has now been completed and is being consecrated tomorrow. Built on an intersection of ley lines, the temple is intended to act as a spiritual 'power house'. The idea is that all times, eight thousand enlightened people will be meditating in the great hall, radiating their consciousness throughout the planet, facilitating the change.

This information may produce a wide range of reactions: awe, joy, curiosity, skepticism... For myself, I look at the state of the world and see how much we need such a transformation. How else are we to find a way forward? I can only be grateful for such a project. I shall be open to whatever it may bring.

Please see my Spirituality Links page for information on Deeksha-related sites.

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...