The Secret of Life

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.

Global Financial Crisis - A Blueprint For Transformation?

What can we learn from the current precarious state of the world's financial systems?

A lot of us seem to have taken the lesson that greed doesn't pay. It didn't do the banks any good to try to make lots of money by offering their customers loans which they couldn't afford to repay. Nor was it good for those of us who took them up on those offers.

The situation could also be seen as a text book example of the law of attraction in action. While financial mismanagement lies at the heart of the crisis, the resulting loss of confidence is making it so much worse. People are selling shares because they are afraid that their value is falling, and this in turn is driving down the price. People are attracting the very thing which they fear.

But perhaps there is another yet more important lesson to learn.

About a year ago, I wrote on this blog about the importance of us coming to think of ourselves an integral part of the human race, rather than caring mainly about ourselves and our own selfish needs. Only then, I argued, could we work together to find our way out of the mess we're in.

At the time, I was thinking about the environment, war, terrorism, inequality: all the factors we've come to equate with the state of the world. It hadn't occurred to me that the thing which might actually start to bring us together would be a banking crisis. And yet that is what seems to have happened.

It was interesting to watch the rocky passage of the US government's banking rescue package through the House of Representatives. On the first occasion, they threw it out because they wanted to punish the bankers. But the second time, the bill passed because the truth had finally dawned: people couldn't punish the bankers without also punishing themselves. If the banks went down, then so would the whole economy. We were all in this together. Doh!

And perhaps a lot of people also realized that it wasn't just the banks that had caused this mass. They couldn't have done it without the compliance of those of us who took them up on the reckless offers they made. The public wanted to blame the bankers, but the truth was that once again, we were all in this together.

Perhaps the most unusual and abiding image of the crisis has been the sight of Republicans and Democrats sitting down together to try to work things out. It seems that the more serious things get, the more inclined we are to find common ground.

Over here in the UK, where - as in so may other countries - a similar financial drama has played out, there have also been signs of a coming together of opposing political parties, with the opposition pledging support for the government's efforts to stop things falling apart entirely.

Europe-wide, there have also been efforts at unity, though this has been less successful, with governments pledging to work together on Sunday, then going their own separate ways the following day. The resulting uncertainty has had a disastrous effect on the markets, another reminder that we all have to work together on this if we're going to make it through.

In the previous post, I also mentioned 2012, the year when many of us new-agey type people believe that the world will change, when the global shift in consciousness I've mentioned will come into being: when we will all come to think of ourselves as a part of the whole, rather than as individuals battling for survival. Can this really come about? Some people are saying that we're fooling ourselves to think it can happen in only four years time, while others are claiming that it's already begun.

Well, I don't know the truth of it, to be honest, but it seems to me that the financial crisis is providing an example of how it might actually come about. What if the financial systems do fall apart? What then?

On a personal level, it seems that spiritual transformation often occurs when things get so bad that you 'can't stand it any more'. Such transformation comes about through crisis. So could something similar happen on a global level? The more serious things get, the more we pull together... But what would have to happen to really make a difference? Just how bad would it have to get?

I used to joke that the only thing which could unite the human race would be an invasion of extra-terrestrials. But perhaps our salvation when it comes could be something just as unexpected, yet rather more mundane...

 

These may also be of interest:

Earth Doomed! (see page 53)

Philip Pullman - A Process of Evolution

Follow My Leader?

Between One Moment And The Next...

Last time, I was talking about Phil Bolsta's book, Sixty Seconds, in which various people describe brief moments of spiritual awakening, and I asked if any of you have had similar experiences. Thanks to those of you who responded! Now perhaps it's time for me to share an experience of my own...

There have been several occasions when such a thing has happened to me, and I consider myself very lucky to have been granted such revelations. I think it's happened several times because, set in my ways as I am, I've needed a great deal of prodding to grab my attention. The experiences I've had were pretty seismic shifts in consciousness, our everyday world falling away to reveal an altogether deeper truth beneath, but even so my consciousness duly shifted right back again afterwards, a bit like a snail unscathed by a nuclear bomb.

Not entirely 'unscathed' though. I think it was Sue Ann Edwards who described the process of awakening as a bit like a large cargo ship changing direction. It happens only slowly and gradually. Each revelation has made a contribution to this process, but my particular ship has a very large turning circle...

The most profound of the revelations occurred when I was twenty-one. A group of us were on a camping holiday and were staying at a place called the 'lakeside camp site'. This was in Lincoln, UK, which is not noted for its lakes, but I reasoned that the place wouldn't have a name like that if there wasn't a lake somewhere nearby. I fancied a bit of peace and quiet and a short break from my friends, so I went to look for it.

 

I came upon the stretch of water almost at once. It wasn't very far from where we were camping, but the place was extremely quiet, cut off from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the site. I remember spending a pleasant few minutes gazing out across the lake. It was a peaceful location; there were water birds and tall reeds by the shore. It was all very pleasant. But I don't suppose I would remember any of this now except that, as I turned to go and rejoin my friends, something extraordinary happened.

Suddenly, without any warning, my whole perspective was turned on its head. I perceived a unity, a connectedness, in everything: a connectedness which included me, except that I'm not even sure I existed any more, except as a part of the whole. I remember seeing some birds flying overhead and one of them calling out with a hoarse cry. It seemed that those birds and everything else I could see - the lake, the sky, the trees, the reeds - were a part of me: a part of my own vast, limitless being.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon me, the revelation disappeared. I was left back in my old perspective, standing alone on the shore of the lake. Yet as I slowly turned and went back to my friends, I was certain that what I had perceived in those few moments was closer to the real truth of things than the ordinary world with which I was so familiar.

So what did I learn from this experience? How did it change me?

To be perfectly honest, I lived the following day in the same sort of way as I had done the day before. In the short term, nothing very much changed. Yet those moments have stayed with me always, and if not for them - and other, similar incidents - I doubt that I would be writing this blog. They have allowed me to understand - or, at any rate, an important part of me to understand - that this unity, this 'oneness' I write about here at The Secret Of Life is real, and not just a theory.

But something about that experience at the campsite has always puzzled me. Why did the revelation come upon me as I turned to go? Why did it not happen earlier, as I was standing there, gazing out across the lake? Surely that is the time when I was at peace, when such a revelation might have been more likely to occur?

I have only recently come to understand what might be the answer to this riddle.

Our minds have a lot of work to do to keep us functioning in this world. This is because the world we see around us doesn't really exist. Nothing we see is solid, not even ourselves. All that exists, science now tells us, is a field of quantum particles, tiny entities smaller than an atom - except that these 'particles' aren't really particles at all. They are waves of probability, which only resolve themselves into particles when they are observed.

Our minds have to interpret this quantum soup which is reality in such a way as to allow us to function, identifying chairs for us to sit on, floors for us to walk on, and even bodies for us to inhabit, every moment of every day, every day of our lives.

But the work doesn't stop here, for our minds have evolved to do more than this. As well as identifying these objects, they have chosen to assign each one an additional significance: a significance which frequently goes way beyond what is really required for us to function. So a piece of paper is not only identified as a piece of paper. It is also attached a significance according to what is written on it. It may remind us of something we have to do a week on Tuesday, for instance - or it may be a goodbye note from a lover. People are also assigned this additional significance. This is my boss. This is my wife. This is the person who looked at me rather strangely as I walked across the street. Frequently, an object is attached a significance which has nothing to do with itself, but because it reminds us of something else which is of significance. So this room is like the one in which my mother scolded me as a child. This rose is like the one which was given to me by that boy who ran off with my best friend the following week. And so it goes on...

Our minds are carrying round this vast weight of information, some of it useful, some of it decidedly unhelpful, all to interpret a physical reality which is really little more than empty space. No wonder we tend to get so tired. No wonder there feels to be such a burden upon our shoulders. We have to work very hard to keep up this illusion...

Which is why it is impossible to anticipate a spiritual experience. If we're expecting it to happen, it doesn't happen. A spiritual experience is a glimpse beneath the woven layer of meaning we call the world. It is a glimpse into the reality which underlies this artificial tapestry. It reveals an aspect of What Really Is: the quantum field itself.

So of course we cannot have such a glimpse when the mind is engaged, when we anticipate, when we expect... At such times, our minds are busy fabricating their own interpretation of reality, poised to assign meanings from a library previously encountered experiences. This is intended for our own convenience, but it can only obscure what is really there.

Only when the mind is quiet, can the truth be revealed. When we look with innocence, like a child, before the layers of meaning have been constructed. Or when we are caught off guard, in mid-breath, our thoughts caught between the last task and the one which lies ahead.

Which is why that experience came upon me when it did, I think. I didn't see the quantum field, but I saw something much closer to that than the world with which we're familiar. Perhaps it was as close to the quantum field as I could get and still have some chance of a glimmer of comprehension. And so it could only come to me when my mind had dropped its own understanding of the lake, and was about to interpret the next object of interest. It could only come as I turned to go. Between one moment and the next.

 

This may also be of interest:

A Sun-Filled Room

Sixty Seconds That Can Change Your Life

I've been dipping into Phil Bolsta's new book, Sixty Seconds (subtitled 'One Moment Changes Everything'), in which forty-five prominent people recount brief moments of spiritual awakening. It's an intriguing and often uplifting book, and as each contribution is short, it's ideal for dipping into when you have a moment to spare.The contributors include spiritual teachers such as Caroline Myss, Joan Borysenko, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, James Redfield, Gregg Braden, Deepak Chopra, and Bernie Siegel, along with people from other walks of life, including geneticist Francis Collins, movie producer Stephen Simon, and basketball star Trent Tucker. The experiences encompass visions, premonitions, out of body experiences, guardian angels, healings, and - above all - sudden moments of realization.

A recurrent idea I find in them is a falling away of the world we know to reveal a deeper reality within. It's as though we're on a theatrical stage, with cardboard scenery all around us. Then the scenery falls away to reveal the welcome and familiar sight of real hills, trees, and flowers which have been waiting there behind it all along.

In Sixty Seconds, this new world reveals itself in many different ways: as a vision of a treasure chest, as love and compassion, as connectedness, as a sense of 'all-rightness'... The revelations take many different forms, and perhaps people see what they need to see at the time. Yet this begs the question: what exactly is the point of such revelations? What are they for?

For many people in the book, these extraordinary moments have changed their outlook on life. Author Andrew Harvey embarks on a life of 'sacred activism'; Dr Janis Amatuzio becomes more sensitive to her patients; psychic Echo Bodine begins to follow her intuition... Yet I have also heard warnings that such experiences can be an impediment to spiritual development. People can get hung up on trying to recreate these peak experiences and lose sight of the lasting changes which really matter.

Speaking personally, none of my own moments of revelation have transformed me in the short term - perhaps because I'm stubborn and set in my ways! - but they've piqued my interest in spiritual matters and encouraged me to believe that spiritual transformation can be a reality.

What about you? Have you experienced such moments? Do leave a comment if you have - or even if you haven't. What did you experience? And how - if at all - did it change you?

Related links:

Sixty Seconds - One Moment Changes Everything

Phil Bolsta's Blog

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...

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.

 

These may also be of interest:

How Much Do We Really Know?

To Simply Be

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

 

These may also be of interest:

A Sun-Filled Room

The Heart of the Secret

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.

 

These may also be of interest:

How Does It Feel to Win a Million?

A Taste of Enlightenment?

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!

 

These may also be of interest:

Taking The Lid Off

Feeling What Is