The Secret of Life

Being Ourselves

Here's a lovely, empowering quotation I found on Angelbaby's site:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through me into action because there is only one of me in all time. This expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist in any other medium. The world will not have it. It is not my business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is my business to keep it mine clearly and directly and to keep the channel open."

    Martha Graham
    US choreographer and dancer (1894-1991)

I wish you all a very happy New Year! I shall be keeping this quotation close to my heart. Here's to all of us being ourselves, fearlessly and joyfully, in 2009...

 

These may also be of interest:

To Simply Be

Your Perfect Offering

If It Be Thy Will

For my Christmas post, I've decided to carry on the Leonard Cohen theme from last time. By coincidence, this has proved to be a topical decision, as here in the UK, rival cover versions of his most famous song, Hallelujah, are in the top two positions of the Christmas pop charts: not bad for a 74-year old!

This You Tube video features another of my favorite Cohen songs, 'If It Be Thy Will'. I hope you enjoy it. This particular performance is truly magical, I think, an effect which is only very slightly diminished by the presence in the audience of a man with a marrow on his head...

I always find this song tremendously moving - I think it speaks especially powerfully to those of us who have had a long-term illness: "if it be thy will/to make us well"... Yet at the same time I'm aware that the song doesn't entirely fit in with my current beliefs about our relationship to God. It appears to be very much about us bowing down before an all-powerful being, about us surrendering our will to His. It appears to be dualistic - based in the idea that 'God' is over there and 'we' are over here, whereas what I believe, and write about in this blog, is more about Unity, the understanding that 'the Kingdom of God is within you', that All is One.

It is worth mentioning in passing that I don't use the word 'God' all that much here at The Secret Of Life because some people find it off-putting. I tend to use other words that serve just as well, such as 'presence', 'the universe', 'What Is', even 'the quantum field'... But as far as I am concerned, it is all the same thing. Sometimes, words just get in the way...

Which is what Cohen, and writers in general, are about, I suppose: trying to use words in such a way that they don't get in the way. The difficulty of doing this is highlighted in another of Cohen's songs, 'Love Itself', about a peak experience. To me, this is a marvelous attempt to capture the wonder of such a moment. Others, who it seems to me are not really paying attention, have interpreted this song as a lament for lost love. But the lyrics in the song 'love itself was gone' are not, I believe, a lament at all. They are not about loss. They are a way of stressing that 'love itself' has been experienced.

'Love Itself' is a much more recent song than 'If It Be Thy Will' and seems to be much more rooted in 'Oneness', perhaps representing the current state of Cohen's spiritual understanding rather better. The intervening years he spent in a Zen Buddhist monastery may have influenced this! Yet Cohen still includes 'If It Be Thy Will' in his concert repertoire, so he clearly still believes it to be relevant - as indeed do I.

What it is important to understand is that in surrendering our will, we are not surrendering our power - quite the opposite. What we are surrendering is the little me, the ego, the part of ourselves which stands in the way of getting in touch with our true selves, our true power. For the God to which we bow is greater than ourselves yet not separate from ourselves. And if 'this night' is truly to end, we all have to play our part in making it happen.

Thank you for reading The Secret Of Life. I wish you a wonderful Christmas season and a peaceful New Year for us all!

(P.S. If you'd like to hear an audio version of these Christmas greetings - plus greetings from numerous other bloggers, some of them in song! - have a listen to Robin's 'Blogger's Recording Project'.)

Peace Intention Experiment & Earthdance 2008

Here's some information on two upcoming events which may interest you:

September 14, 2008 will see the first in a series of Peace Intention Experiments testing the power of group intention to lower violence in areas around the world.

This could be the largest scientific study in history, with hundreds of thousands of participants sending an intention for peace under highly controlled scientific conditions.

Lynne McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment, has assembled a scientific advisory body of leaders in consciousness research, to devise a strict protocol and measure violence levels before and after the intention is sent to see if there is any effect.

This team includes:

• Dr. Robert Jahn, former dean of engineering at Princeton University and director of the PEAR Lab 
• Psychologist Brenda Dunne, also of the PEAR Lab
• Psychologist Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona, and director of the Laboratory for Advancement of Consciousness and Health, who has run many healing energy experiments
• Psychologist Roger Nelson, formerly of Princeton University, and director of the Global Consciousness Project
• Dr. Jessica Utts, professor of statistics at the University of California at Davis, considered the world's leading statistician of consciousness research

We're currently building our team of technical experts who will make sure we have a reliable web platform from which to run the experiment - so that you and hundreds of thousands of intenders across the world can join together at the same time via our website.

I mentioned a similar event on this blog last year, World Oneness Day, and we had an interesting discussion in the comments on that post about whether such events actually have an effect. The influence of that event was measured by the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University and the results - along with those of over 250 other world events - have been published on their web site. (Click on 'Results' and then on number 241 in the list of events.) The trouble is that this is very much a scientific site and you need to have studied statistics in order to understand the results! I hope that the Peace Intention Experiment will produce some more user-friendly information. I shall be taking part myself and I'll watch with interest. You can sign up for it here.

Another upcoming event promoting worldwide peace is Earthdance 2008, described by Time Out London as 'like Live Aid with dance music'. It will take place on September 13th. There will be 300+ events in 60+ countries, all of them joining together in a synchronized Prayer for Peace. Angelbaby has more information here - and she's presented it as a tag so you can help to spread the word...

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.)

Cartoon Time (and more...)

A few things this time. First of all, here are a couple of interesting animations on a similar theme:

This first one, based on a vintage recording by Alan Watts, makes an interesting comparison between life and music. It's an old recording and the quality is poor at first, but it swiftly improves as it goes along:

I found the above on richgrad's blog. Many thanks to him for finding it!

Thanks too to Linda (aka Cosmic Sunshine) for sending me the link to an animation called The Book Of Now, which you can find here. They request your email address unfortunately but I don't seem to have been spammed as a result - and it's a great animation, kind of a cartoon version of Eckhart Tolle's teaching.

Did anyone else try the recent Jyothi transmission? I've written about my own impressions here. Please feel free to add yours too...

Special thanks to those of you who left supportive comments on May's blog, in response to my recent post! May left some response here.

Finally, here are a couple of local notices. If, like me, you live in Yorkshire in the north of England (or thereabouts) my friend Ed Harpin (who contributed two fascinating comments on enlightenment a few months back) is starting up Deeksha sessions in Huddersfield again. He is now combining Deeksha (also known as the Oneness Blessing) with Kundalini Yoga. The details of his classes are here.

And if you live a bit further north, Heidi Fawkes is continuing her regular Deeksha sessions in Otley and Hunton. You can contact Heidi here.

There are links to information on Deeksha sessions worldwide in my original post on Deeksha.

Receiving Deeksha Through Music

I've written in a previous post about Deeksha (otherwise known as the Oneness Blessing), a transfer of energy which is said to nurture a feeling of Oneness - connection with "all that is" - in those who receive it. People who wish to give Deeksha to others must travel to the Oneness University in India to attend a 21 day process, the idea of which is to allow them to act as a vessel through which the Deeksha energy may flow. This transfer of energy is normally achieved by a laying on of hands, the same as in Reiki or spiritual healing, but not everyone who graduates from the 21 day process will choose to give Deeksha in this way.  Some may prefer instead to use their own individual skills, such as music, artwork, or writing.

Now, a group of musicians have joined together to produce a CD with the specific intention of passing this Deeksha energy to all those who hear it. Everyone who has worked on the CD: the musicians, the writers, the producer, and even the sound engineer (not sure about the guy who fetches the sandwiches) have undergone the 21 day process. The CD is Om Deeksha by Maneesh de Moor, Maneesh being the musician who has coordinated the project.

Regular readers of The Secret Of Life may regard me as a sucker for all this spiritual stuff, but I honestly didn't approach this CD with any great sense of anticipation. For whatever reason, the idea of receiving Deeksha through someone's hands (which I had already done myself on many occasions) seemed a rather more credible prospect than simply putting on a CD and flicking a switch. There may not be much logic to this, but that's how I felt. So as I sat back to listen, I didn't expect to experience a great deal more than some relaxing music.

It came a very pleasant surprise, therefore - an unexpected and very welcome gift - to feel the familiar sense of peace which Deeksha can bring spreading through the room as the music played. There was something very powerful happening here, and Chris, who was sitting beside me, also sensed it. I have played the CD many time since then, and have always felt that same sense of peace, sometimes even of joy.

I cannot guarantee, of course, that you will experience a similar effect from this music. But if you are intrigued about Deeksha and either find the laying on of hands a bit too wacky or are too far away from a Deeksha event to attend, then do consider trying this CD. After all, this is world music. It's cool. You don't have to own up to the spiritual stuff if you don't want to!

The CD is widely available. Here is the link for Amazon.com and here for CD Universe, where you can listen to samples. The CD is also on iTunes, but I don't have iTunes on my computer, so I don't know if it is possible to download individual tracks. If it is, then try the first track, Moola Prayer, which is almost ten minutes long and should provide you with all you need for a Deeksha experience in itself.

Now comes the tricky bit to explain. If you listen to this music, please forget all I've said above. These things are best approached with an open mind and without expectations. I don't know what - if anything - you will experience from this. So simply listen to the CD as you would any other music. Then see what happens...

(Naturally, I shall be interested to hear any feedback you may have!)

Something else that's worth mentioning here is a new book, an excellent introduction to Deeksha called Awakening Into Oneness by Arjuna Ardagh (with a foreword by Ervin Laszlo). This is the preeminent book about the Deeksha phenomenon. I opened it almost at random just now to quote you a bit and this is the encouraging extract I came across:

There were several things that really impressed me on that first visit to The Oneness University... I have spent a great deal of my life around organized spirituality. The situation has always been more or less the same. A great teacher, great teachings, wonderful practices, meditations or prayers, and then among the followers, there was always a certain degree of politics. Who could get higher in the organization? Who had the power? During my three-week stay at the university, I looked under every rock and behind every bush. Where was the politics? I could not find it, even after an exhaustive search. What I found instead was an extraordinary quality of oneness: people living together, working together, being together as many bodies but one heart, one consciousness.

Does that sound like a good way to run the world?

Update and Events

Events at The Secret of Life HQ are continuing to produce serious impediments to effective blogging. Not only do we (strictly speaking) not actually have an HQ - unless you count the occasional work station I manage to worm my way into here at the public library - but my wife Chris has gone and scalded her leg very badly by spilling a cup of (almost boiling) tea all the way down it.

I'm please to report that her recovery is progressing successfully (if somewhat painfully) and she has learnt the important lesson that next time she makes a cup of tea she doesn't like she should pour it down the sink instead. But what with all the trips to the doctor to get Chris' dressing renewed, the seemingly endless process of house moving, and grabbing a few precious minutes once in a blue moon to sneak away to the library only to find that all the computers are down, there hasn't been much opportunity to post on this blog in recent weeks - though you may have noticed this already. Your patience really is greatly appreciated - but I am even now researching ISPs for the net connection at our soon-to-be (permanent!) residence, so I hope that normal service will be resumed here very soon eventually.

I hope to have a more substantial post completed shortly, but in the meantime I encourage you to take a look at the comments on the previous post, where you'll find some particularly intriguing insights on enlightenment from Deeksha giver Ed Harpin. I especially like this bit:

Just to avoid the idea of hierarchy or competition... it can be good to know that there are always infinite beings less Enlightened than you, and always infinite beings more Enlightened than you..! so wherever you are on the path, you are always in the middle...!! And wherever you are, that is the only and most perfect place for you to be.

You can read more from Ed here. And just in case you were wondering what Deeksha is, you can read all about it - and find out how to get info on Deeksha events worldwide - in this previous post. If you happen to live near me in Yorkshire, Northern England, Deeksha giver Heidi Fawkes is running numerous Deeksha events over the summer. You can contact her via her web site here.

Finally, a bit more information for British readers (which I realize a lot of you aren't!). The Secret Of Life reader and peace activist Linda has asked me to mention some upcoming British concerts by James Twyman. According to Twyman's web site, Twyman is "an internationally renowned author, singer and "peace troubador" who has a reputation for drawing millions of people together in prayer to influence events of world crisis. In 1995 he had an experience in the mountains of Croatia that led to his best-selling book Emissary of Light, called "the second coming of the Celestine Prophesy" by Variety magazine." You can read more here.

The James Twyman concert dates are as follows: 18th July Liverpool; 20th July Leeds, 22nd July Shrewsbury; 24th July London; 28th July Devon. Tickets are £10 in advance. For full details re. all these venues, phone 0870 879 3623. Linda herself is a contact for the Leeds concert at Lidgett Park Methodist Church. You can email her for full details.

All the Colours

Another good way to be in the moment is to immerse yourself in some creative task or other. Harry mentioned that this happens when he is painting (Harry's art is excellent, by the way. I did a search. You can find it here and here) and the same thing can happen to me when I'm writing. I focus so much on the task in hand that all my attention is focussed here in the present. I lose awareness of any hopes, fears or regrets that might otherwise bug me, and lose awareness, too, of the passage of time.

Doing something creative works well because it absorbs so much of the attention that the mind has no spare capacity to chatter on to itself as it usually does. You simply don't have the space in your brain for all your usual worries, so you have to let them go. But the activity doesn't have to be creative. All that is important is that whatever you're doing commands your full attention.

A few years ago when I used to run the meetings of a local patient support group, I would often be surprised to suddenly discover that "all the colours had bled into one" (to paraphrase U2). It was as though I was suddenly looking through coloured lenses. The walls of the room, which had previously been white, now looked pink, while other things in the room had become an ill-defined colour, as though their original pigment had been mixed in with the pink to produce something sludgy and muddy.

Now as it happens, I wasn't new to this effect, but when I'd experienced it before I'd always been doing something vaguely spiritual - like meditating  for instance. I had no idea what it was all about - I wasn't seeing people's auras or anything I'd heard about, except for that cryptic mention in the U2 song - but nevertheless I tended to associate it with spiritual experience because that's what was always going on whenever it happened. But now I was getting the same effect while simply chairing a meeting, immersed in the midst of everyday life, interacting with other people. What exactly was happening?

Now you may think the likeliest explanation was that I was going out of mind, that I had some kind of mental aberration that was now starting to interfere with my everyday life and some sort of therapy might be advisable. If so, I quite understand where you’re coming from and I hear what you’re saying (as they say). But you may not be surprised to learn that my own take on the matter is slightly different.

I still have no idea what the coloured filter effect is, but over the years I’ve come to just shrug and accept it. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve come to see it as an indicator of when I'm connecting with whatever it is that makes the present moment so powerful. It's kind of like litmus paper changing colour.

So that’s what I think was happening while I was chairing those meetings. I was so absorbed in interacting with the other people that I was very much in the moment. Although I was definitely active and engaged in the world, my state of consciousness seemed to have something in common with a state of meditation. Two apparently disparate forms of action had a strong link between them. And the link has to be about being present, of noticing what is in front of us, whether it’s something creative we're working on, a focus of meditation, or just the person who is sitting across the room from us. It’s all about seeing the world as it really is, which isn’t something we very often notice.

There weren’t many jokes in there, were there? In the next post but one, I’ll tell you a funny story – but first I want to respond to babenbelgium, who left an interesting comment on my previous post, Yabba Dabba Do. See you next time.

 

This may also be of interest:

Feeling What Is

 

Yabba Dabba Doo

Paul and Harry both picked up on my reference in the last post to "living in the moment": actually focussing on what we're doing at the present time, instead of being lost - as we so often are - in idle thoughts of the past or the future. Except that I was playing devil's advocate and had it the other way round. So the idea is that if you're playing The Flintstones on your iPod shuffle, which you have crammed to bursting point with Hanna Barbera theme tunes (as you might do - if you were my osteopath)  then you'd focus on the Yabba Dabba Doo of the present moment , instead of indulging in idle speculation about whether Top Cat or Yogi Bear is coming up next.

Paul mentioned the difficulty of holding onto this. I find a good way is to connect with one of the senses. If you're listening to music, you can focus on what you're hearing, but if you're simply walking along, you can rub your hands together and feel your skin or - and here caution is advised depending on where you are - sniff whatever scents may be on the air. This has a way of bringing you into the here and now, of making you aware of your body and your surroundings. This has two advantages:

1. You're less likely to get run down by a truck as you cross the road, and
2. Your experience takes on a whole different quality. As Paul put it: "Suddenly, you're filled with the sheer wonderment of being where and when you are." (That's Paul who left the comment, I mean, not St Paul. I like to get these things clear.)

If there's anyone reading who's never tried this, give it a go and let me know how you feel. And then, if you find your mind's wandered or you've slipped into thinking about having the experience instead of actually having the experience, don't beat yourself up. Just connect with one of your senses again.

The best writer I know on "being in the moment" is Eckhart Tolle. His classic book is The Power of Now, but the one I've read is the shorter Practising The Power of Now, which concentrates more on putting it into practice.

Changes

Thanks to Pam for leaving this blog's first ever comment with the tale of her mechanical 80s iPod. The fact that a CD changer can now be regarded as an antiquated relic makes me feel very old indeed. And I never even got around to owning one...

Thanks too to Paul for your contribution. (I should explain that I know both Pam and Paul from my previous life as a fanzine writer. It's been great to hear from them, but please also feel free to contribute if you don't know me. This blog is open to everyone.) As Paul says, there is something very compelling about random plays, though it's a bit problematic for me with all the audio books on my player. It's a bit disconcerting when Jimi Hendrix fades into Charles Dickens.

A few weeks ago, I went to my osteopath and we listened to random Hanna Barbera themes on his laptop. There's nothing like having your bones manipulated to The Flintstones. But we both agreed that it's wondering what's going to play next that's the really interesting bit. Actually listening to the tunes themselves can sometimes be tedious by comparison. After all, some of them last over three minutes! - and when Bridge Over Troubled Water comes on, it's positively traumatic. (No, I didn't mean that. I mean that it's long...) It's waiting for what comes next that seems to be what's important.

There's an important spiritual lesson in that last sentence. See if you can spot it, and feel free to comment if you do (or don't). (And this is only the second post! At this rate, we'll all be enlightened by Christmas.)

Pam also mentioned that this blog is a bit impersonal, so I've taken the time to improve and expand my biography. It now tells you a bit more about me and explains how my life experience has finally blossomed into this glorious blog. It also explains a bit more about what the blog is about, which may be useful, especially in view of the rather cryptic spiritual content there's been so far. You may feel that my aspirations  are a bit ambitious in view of the fact the blog so far has approximately two readers, but hey, you've got to start somewhere. So please go and take a look at the bio (just click on "About") and I'll be back with another post real soon.