The Secret of Life

Equanimity

'They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God, you get to keep him.' - from Valis by Philip K Dick.

In the novel Valis, Horselover Fat, the thinly disguised alter ego of science fiction writer Philip K Dick, had a peak experience which he spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of. Yet the more he sought to find his way back to that experience, the further away it seemed to become.

I understand how Dick / 'Horselover Fat' must have felt. A few weeks ago, I posted rather smugly here about being 'in the zone', about the 'connection to joy' I sometimes experience. The postscript is that the following day, this connection was gone, and I have rarely felt so far away from getting it back.

This should not have come as a surprise to me. I've blogged about a similar experience before. On that occasion, I described what it's like to be 'in the zone' rather well, I think, even though I say it myself:

' The other day, 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.'

Yet a few days later, sure enough, I had lost that wonderful connection again. I was 'outside the garden' again - and I didn't know how to get back in.

What I concluded in that previous post, and which I have just discovered again now, is that I couldn't find my way back because I so much wanted to do so. My very wanting was pushing it away.

This shouldn't really come as a surprise to any of us. It's the cardinal rule of what has become known as the law of attraction. I first came across it in Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God Book One . All of us who have read about the law of attraction know about it, but we tend to forget it because it's the awkward bit. It's the tricky sub-clause which means that for much of the time, the law of attraction doesn't actually work the way we want it to.

As 'God'/Walsch puts it: 'You will not have that for which you ask, nor can you have anything you want. This is because your very request is a statement of lack, and your saying you want a thing only works to produce that precise experience - wanting - in your reality.'

So just when we think the law of attraction isn't working, it's actually working very, very effectively thanks very much - it's just not quite what we had in mind when we expressed our needs in the first place. What's happening is that when we want something, we are indeed attracting exactly that: a condition of wanting. The more we want, the more we push it away.

My recent experience of feeling very much connected in to the universe, then losing that feeling and very much wanting it back, yet now feeling further away than ever, has confirmed to me what a powerful mechanism this is. Whatever we want to manifest in our lives, we have to lose our attachment to it first. Otherwise, we're just pushing it away.

This applies to whatever we'd like to see in our lives, whether its a new car, enlightenment, or world peace - the mechanism is the same. If we don't lose the attachment, we're working against ourselves.

It's important to understand that, in contrast, it's fine to have a vision - and to use this vision as an incentive to take the action we need to achieve it - but if we get stuck in wanting something, if we resist not having it, that's where we run into trouble.

It's the same with however we're feeling, whether it's being out 'of the zone', sad, or angry, the more we want to feel differently, the more we reinforce that condition of want. It comes back down to my favorite word, acceptance, though for this post - just to ring the changes - I thought I'd use a related word 'equanimity' instead, just because I like the way it sounds.

Now I look up the definition of 'equanimity', I see that at first sight it's not exactly right. Apparently, it means 'evenness of mind, especially under stress'. So it isn't really right - and yet it is. It actually highlights the enigma which lies at the heart of all this. I'm talking about evenness of mind while feeling angry, evenness of mind while feeling sad or even depressed. Is such a thing possible? Well yes, it is. It's all about calmness in the eye of the storm. It is possible to feel these so-called difficult emotions and feel OK about them. It is possible to feel sadness and equanimity at the same time.

And you know what? When we can do that, when we can be OK with these feelings, the sting goes out of them. It's actually our resistance to them which makes them feel so heavy - and which keeps them hanging around. Because the added bonus is that as soon as we stop pushing these feelings away, as soon as we stop wanting to get rid of them, they're much more likely to go away of their own accord.

None of this is new to The Secret Of Life. I covered it in the Ultimate Truth series of posts - and it's no less the Ultimate Truth now than it was last year. It's just that I don't read my blog as much as I should so I keep forgetting it. So now I've reminded myself, I'm reminding you. Because this is really it. This is the secret. Be OK with what is, however you are feeling, whatever is going on, and you have taken the most important step towards freedom.

As ever, I look forward to hearing what you think about this post but Typepad is still playing up. So if you have a problem posting a comment, please email me using the link near the top of the sidebar and I'll post it on your behalf. I'm hoping to go away for a few days next week, so please be patient if I take a while to respond.

 

These may also be of interest:

The Ultimate Truth

How to Have It All

The Door to the Garden

How Does it Feel to Win a Million?

The Audacity Of Hope

It's been a bit of a frustrating business, watching the US election from the far side of the Atlantic: knowing how important the outcome is but not having a vote! I think many Americans would be surprised to learn how closely the election has been followed by Europeans, but the world is so interconnected these days that our fortunes are very much bound up together. So many of the issues which face us, such as the economic crisis, climate change, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are shared by us all. It could be argued that the result of the US poll has as much impact on life here in Britain as that of our own elections.

But if yesterday was a nervous night for us, I guess it must have been even more stressful for those of you who actually live in the USA. It was interesting, for instance, to watch this video of Neale Donald Walsch (of Conversations With God fame) urging people to vote. He doesn't mention a specific candidate but most of us could take a pretty good guess who he's rooting for. And it seems to me that the Neale in this video sounds not like Neale Donald Walsch at all but like someone who is attached to an outcome! I make that comment with great affection and respect for the man: just to illustrate how much we have all invested in this.

Before I go on, I feel I should acknowledge the fact that, in spite of what I've written above, I'm looking at events in America from a long way away, so I hope that my US readers will indulge me if I write about the way things seem to me.

As you may perhaps expect, I was rooting for Barack Obama, and I woke this morning to hear news of his victory with a sense not of elation but of relief. It would have been just so depressing if he hadn't won - not because John McCain is such a 'bad' man (which I don't think he is) but because it seems to me that a great opportunity for change would have been lost to us.

Watching the faces of those who were gathered in Chicago to hear Obama's victory speech, I found myself being moved by the light in their eyes: full of expectation for that change, full of gratitude and even disbelief at the miracle which has occurred, that a black man has risen to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world. This in itself is surely a cause for celebration, sending as it does a message of unity to the world. And better still, the man is Barack Obama, a bridge builder, a healer, and a great orator, whose choice of words is every bit as resonant as the timbre of his voice. As I watched, it seemed to me that this would be viewed as an iconic moment ten, twenty, even fifty years from now. It seemed too good to be true. It was like a movie.

And oh, the weight of expectation in those eyes. Can it really be good to expect so much from any one man? Does Barack Obama really have it in him to make that change, to deliver so much?

To attempt at an answer, I'd like to go back to something which almost derailed Obama's campaign in its early stages: his relationship with the controversial Minister, Jeremiah Wright. It may seem contrary to revisit this now, but I believe it points to an understanding which Obama has, and which is vital not only for him but for all of us.

I probably don't need to remind you that Wright made some very outspoken comments about racism in America, comments which were made in the church which Obama attended.

It seemed to me that Obama knew exactly where Wright was coming from when he made those comments. He understood - and how could he not? - all the long years of genuine grievance and discrimination which fed the roots of the preacher's invective. He understood the reasons for Wright's outspoken anger, which was why he was so slow to distance himself from the preacher. Yet he also understood that the anger was part of the past. If genuine change was to come, it was not to come through bearing grudges. It would be through a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. It was not that everything the preacher said was wrong. It was that he had failed to let go of the past.

As regular readers of The Secret Of Life will know, I believe that we all have to come to a similar realization: to let go of our past grievances, the stored emotions which keep us apart from each other and separated from our true nature. Only in leaving the past behind can we come together as one and solve the many problems our world is facing. This is true on a personal level and also internationally.

Can Obama do this for us?

The answer of course is 'no'. We have to do it ourselves. But it helps to have a leader who is coming from the same place, who shares an understanding of what is needed.

So I don't look to Obama with a heavy weight of expectation, but I do look on with hope.

George Bush thought in terms of 'us' and 'them'. Obama thinks in terms of 'us', of consensus, of coming together. And that is a start.

What will Obama do? What will he deliver? The answer to those questions is uncertain. Which perhaps is for the best, for only from uncertainty can genuine change arise. Perhaps now is a good time for us to facilitate that change, to imagine the kind of world we wish to see. Not to look with expectation at one man, and wait for him to succeed or fail, but to search inside ourselves and bring forth the imagination of hope. Not the usual kind of hope, the kind of hope we pin on this or that and is often disappointed, but enduring hope, resilient hope, audacious hope for the future.

Changes

I talked in an earlier post about Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God series of books, and I notice that there is an opportunity to join Neale in a live teleseminar on March 31st.  Click here for details.

The subject of the teleseminar will be the last of the CWG books, Home With God. Here's some info on the book from Walsch's website:

"Death," says HOME WITH GOD, "is a process of re-identification.          
" It occurs in three stages:
                  1. Release of identification with the body;
                  2. Release of identification with the mind;
                  3. Release of identification with the soul."             
Learn about these stages...and about how we continue on in an amazing journey, re-embracing our present worldly identity, re-visiting every moment of our life in an inspiring way, and re-engaging our True Self as we prepare to return to Physicality with a new identity/lifetime, or returning to re-live this present lifetime all over again, making new choices along the way!

I haven't read this particular book, but these ideas seem to be building on what was said about the afterlife in the third volume of the original CWG trilogy. When I discussed CWG in the earlier post, I mentioned that the first of the books resonated deeply within me, that "as I read, a little voice inside me kept saying "yes!" ". I felt instinctively that what I was reading was true. When I first read what CWG had to say about the afterlife, however, my reaction was slightly different. It wasn't "yes!", so much as "if only..."

Not everyone likes the concept of reincarnation. My wife, Chris, for instance, is horrified at the idea. "But I'd have to go back to school again!" she complains. It is, however, an idea which makes a lot more sense to me than the traditional teaching of my Christian upbringing that we are "judged" on a single lifetime, whether that be a life of hardship or luxury, and whether we live to a ripe old age or die in the first few moments after our birth. (I really should write a post about this some time...)

What particularly interests me here, however, is this alternative idea which Walsch has thrown in of re-living our present life with the chance to make different choices along the way. This is something that really appeals to me! In many ways, it would be a pain to have to go back to the nineteen-fifties again, to a world without central heating and foreign food, and to have to grow up again in what I realize now was a highly dysfunctional household. And yet - like many people, I imagine - I can identify various decisions I've made in the past which I'd like to do differently if I had my time over again. Don't get me wrong - I've come to terms with these "mistakes" - what has happened in my life has made me what I am today, and the life I've lived - and continue to live - has riches of its own. But nevertheless it would be nice to have had the chance to do things differently too. To see what might have happened if only...

I wonder if you feel the same?

Conversations With God

I've already mentioned the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsch on this blog, but they made such a remarkable impact on me when I first read them that I thought they deserved a post to themselves.

Walsch started writing CWG Book One by writing an angry letter to God about how awful his life had become. At that point, he was not intending to write a book but simply to vent his spleen. So what happened next took him completely by surprise. He found himself still holding the pen, and writing an answer which apparently came from God. The book then developed along the same lines, with Walsch and God in conversation: Walsch asking questions and God providing surprisingly clear and straightforward answers.

I have to say that to a cynic like me, this didn't seem like a very good idea for a book, yet I found to my astonishment that it all made sense to me. I'd never found any religion which really spoke to me, yet here was this little paperback from some apparently crackpot guy which was setting out an explanation of God and us and the universe which resonated deeply within me. As I read, a little voice inside me kept saying "yes!" I felt that, after all this time, I was finally starting to understand what was going on.

A lot of the ideas which I have been writing about in this blog were ones which I first encountered in Neale Donald Walsch's book, and if you haven't already done so, I urge you to go and read it. The first book, Conversations With God Book One was the one which made the most impact on me, though I've also read the rest of the original trilogy, i.e. CWG Books Two and Three. Many others have followed, though I am not familiar with these. If you've read them, please feel free to leave comments on any views you may have on them.

I think it's important to note that Walsch makes no claim that these books of his are the absolute word of God. He fully accepts that they have been filtered through the very human brain of Neale Donald Walsch. I hope it will not shock you if I state my belief that similar limitations must inevitably be present in all religious texts.

If I have a criticism of the first three books, it is that they are very good at describing what is going on with God, the universe, and the human condition, but not so good at suggesting what we should do about it. For this, I have turned to other books, such as those I have previously mentioned by Eckhart Tolle and Nick Roach, and practices such as meditation. This does not, however, detract from the worth of the Conversations With God books - they are, to my mind, a magnificent achievement - and more practical information may be available in some of the later books which I haven't so far read. Any recommendations you may have of these are welcome.

I would also like to give special mention to Walsch's children's book, The Little Soul And The Sun, which is a wonderful parable of the human condition and how it arose - developed from one of the chapters in Conversations With God Book One.

I have now placed links to Conversations With God web sites in the sidebar.

Now on to a Public Service Announcement. If, after reading my recent post The Revenge Of The Slime Monster, you are eager to have a clothes valet experience for yourself, UK readers can now purchase one at a bargain price here. But don't delay - the opportunity to get hold of a clothes valet doesn't often arise! (I wonder why not?)

And don't miss out on taking a look at the comments on these posts. The conversation on Special Green Plates was particularly interesting. See it here.

 

This may also be of interest:

The Ultimate Purpose Of Life?