Not being attached to what you want

13 September 2011 By

At work, desire is rampant. You want to please your boss, to get a promotion, to get a rise, to impress colleagues, to be well-regarded, to win that contract, to make more money, etc. Desire is something of a paradox to seekers of inner peace as we also have needs to satisfy in order to live. And at work, there we are busy earning money in order to do that. So it sounds reasonable.

I guess one way of looking at this whole matter is to separate out everyday functioning to support ourselves and others. As Zen monks were told, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” Life carries on. Just because you are feeling blissed out doesn’t mean you stop the daily round of work, chores, care and all those other things that support our material existence, unless that is you are so able to get by without these things. Most of us are faced with needing to return to everyday life at some point! The question could be, how do you manage your mind and deal with the ego when you are doing that? How far are you keeping your focus on what uplifts you as opposed to what drags you down into the mire of unmet desire?

So, there’s something in there about detachment, or non-attachment, being able to maintain your centredness and not get caught up in the thoughts and feeling around desire. You can still do whatever needs to be done, but you would need, with this approach, to be aware of how you do it and what goes on in your mind.

At work, this gets very difficult. The workplace is full of wants, yours and others, your boss, your team, customers, suppliers, and a whole army of different characters in our drama of life. A classic example is “expectation”. They’ve even invented a term for dealing with this, “managing expectations,” what others expect of you, or what you expect of others, ie what is wanted, and how you influence that.

But nothing is different at essence. Wherever you go, you get desire, while you are attached to it. If you are focused on it as something that causes you difficulty, if it is a problem for you, if it isn’t serving you, you’ll likely be attached to it. It’ll keep figuring in your life.

When you become the witness of the experience, with the understanding that it is “not you”, when you are no longer driven by it, when you can just notice it and not go anywhere with it, you’ll very likely be making progress. After all, you are so much more than the petty desire of the ego.

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How desire and wanting are inimical to inner peace

12 September 2011 By

As you begin your week, you may be conscious of what you need to get done, what needs to be achieved, to meet your goals. What you will be doing is likely to be linked to something you want. Dealing with our wants may seem like an essential ingredient of living. However, for those who seek inner peace and contentment, to have more joy in their lives, this is also something that contradicts that search.

Desire, wanting, is regarded in many traditions as inimical to achieving inner peace. It is a great interrupter to inner contentment. If you meditate, you may be aware of how thoughts related to unmet desire can interrupt the stillness of meditation, maybe thinking of something you need to do, something you are missing, something you want to happen…the list can be endless.

We can eat our hearts out about unmet desire. You might want more money, a better job, a girl or boyfriend to attend to you more, certain material goods, a better car for example. To be absorbed by wanting is also a statement of lack, of something missing. So the message we put out to the universe is of what we haven’t got. In Law of Attraction terms, we then get more of lack. For example, if you invest thinking and feeling into a lack of money, what you create is a powerful negative energy which attracts to you more lack.

There’s something over there you want, and you are aware of not having it and needing it. So we set up a duality, a polarity, a separation between us and what we want. This we get to play out more of the ego experience of duality, of separation, of subject and object, rather than unity.

Of course, with desire as with so many other things, what we need to do is to become aware of it and let go. But what we find is that there’s so much going on around us to remind us of what we’re missing, that it keeps coming back to plague us. This is where a deeper understanding of the function of desire can be useful.

We teach ways in which people can create more inner peace in their lives in our program Connecting to Inner Peace, and one key area that it is essential to address is the experience of desire and how to manage it.

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Every moment you have another choice to be

10 September 2011 By

What fascinates me is how every moment of Now re-presents us with an invitation to connect, to be present, to be Aware, to enter into a “holy moment of now”. So, in our theme of this week, being caught up in the “nano-second society”, we have yet another invitation to connect.

Will you or I take it?

Every moment we become aware that this is happening, we have a chance to connect. Do we take it?

Or is it that the compulsiveness of the nano-second society is so strong that we’re back on our laptop, our ipad or our smartphone, hooked on the vast number of things that can get us engaged for hours.

I was so doing not long ago on holiday, when I suddenly realised I had just spent a whole stack of time trawling aimlessly through the internet and was, lo and behold, actually bored! It was mindless, mind-numbing, like just aimlessly watching TV. My mind had become numbed. Not very present! As I wrote earlier this week, this can be addictive.

It poses a question: where would I prefer to have my awareness, being numbed, or being in bliss? We have this choice every moment. The next question is: do we take it? And if not, why not? And is this serving us, both individually and collectively?

In the incident in question, I got up, turned off my laptop and went outside and sat looking at the view, and spent some time being very aware of being right there with all that beautiful scenery. Nature is one way for me to connect.

What will yours be this weekend? And will you do it? And if so, will you do it regularly, so that you start to build a habit of being present with Who you really Are? Try it.

In our program, Connecting to Inner Peace we provide a training in how to focus the mind more and more on our Awareness of Who we really Are, and how to be present with the experience of peace, joy and love that is our birthright.

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What does it take for you to give yourself peace?

9 September 2011 By

Our theme for this week has been about managing the mind in the “nano-second society”, about how to focus the mind on what uplifts us rather than being caught up in the compulsiveness of multiple stimuli.

As you approach the end of your week, you might perhaps think about how you can focus your mind on a few simple things, as opposed to being caught up in the way that’s been described.

This is where the techniques of mindfulness are so useful. This is about being very aware, or mindful, of each thing you do, catching yourself when your mind has gone “off on one”, where it’s racing, where it is going that doesn’t serve you. And of course you may need to start by developing your awareness of how your mind gets “caught up”, so that you know what you are dealing with.

Being aware of the moment is very important. So, as you go about your day, let yourself do that in awareness of what you are doing, very deliberately. Each time your mind get’s absorbed in thinking, bring it back to awareness of the Now and what you are doing. Plan an activity where you can practice this, like going for a walk, or gardening, or doing household chores (yes!).

This is about choice, about intentionally working towards letting go of the habits we’ve acquired with the advent of the digital age, arguably. We’re so many of us “normalising” how we live, legitimising it, and so denying ourselves choice and control over it.

Inner peace is always there, “here”, right now, in every moment, if we choose to go there.

So, give yourself some peace this weekend! You’re worth it!

We teach people the whole process of learning to access and stay with our inner peace in our program, Connecting to Inner Peace .

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When you get caught up in a drama in your mind

7 September 2011 By

We’ve been following the theme of the nano-second society and our tendency to get caught up in things, be unable to be present and aware but instead deflect our awareness or be desensitised from the underlying subtlety of life. Thus we many of us are disconnected from an Awareness of Who we really Are. So our Ego Watch for this week is the pattern of the mind to get caught up in something, rather than be still and simply aware.

To feel pressured, to be constantly on the go, to be flitting from one thing to another, may to many people seem perfectly “normal” (whatever that is), until one develops an awareness of one’s inner centre of Awareness. Then the contrast can be quite painfully obvious, except that the attractions of the digital age, for example, are so strong that it feels very hard to break away, and let go, centre yourself and be still. Then you might get how you can get “caught up”. If you haven’t developed this awareness, you won’t know what you’re missing, except perhaps a nagging feeling that there’s a gap in your life. And that sense of a gap comes to us at different stages in life, for different reasons.

To get caught up is to be seduced by the perverse attractions of our ego patterning. So let’s say you tend to worry about things and see problems where others might not, or get worked up by the possibility that something might happen where others might not. That doesn’t mean you’re abnormal (what’s “normal”?) or that something is wrong with you (what’s “right”, and who says so?). It means that you might be aware that you have this pattern, that this is what your mind can do at times. OK, so you notice it. That’s a great first step in accessing Awareness. A part of you has noticed it. Then you can start to challenge it. But, with our example, you keep getting worried by things. Each worry phase can be an example of getting “caught up”.

It’s like your mind goes off on one. It can almost seem like a drama, with you the chief actor. This might happen, then that might happen, then all these things might happen. You might even catastrophise. I wonder how many are believing right now that Islamists are planning something for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The point with worry is to catch yourself doing it, take some deep breaths, come into the present, and let go of thinking. As I described in an earlier posting, you might need to work on letting go of the feeling of fear too, but the key is to stop the thoughts that fuel the feeling and the merry-go-round of worry. This is why cognitive-behavioural work (CBT) is so useful in dealing with anxiety.

Worry is a great fuel for the nano-second way of being.

So, in our example, you will have interrupted a pattern, using awareness and managing the mind, to bring yourself back to the present and, with skill, be able to centre yourself. This is one way of using the mind to manage the ego.

The awareness skill here is to be able to notice that you have got caught up. If you don’t, you’ll carry on doing it!

To be able to develop skill in connecting to your centre of Awareness, your Inner Peace, is what we teach in Connecting to Inner Peace

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Learn to be present to what is

6 September 2011 By

Our theme this week is about how so many of us are struggling to really connect and stay present and are living in a nano-second world, flitting rapidly from one thing to the next. Many people seem to find it difficult to concentrate for long and to stay with something and see it for what it really is.

When I was discussing this issue during a talk recently, I was asked, “Is there a quick fix?” nicely but quite innocently underlining it for me. We want it quickly, and preferably without much effort on our part. If we slow things down, pause the seemingly endless whirring of the mind, and face what’s really happening, we have to deal with what’s really going on.

One reason why people find it difficult to really connect with the really deep and meaningful in life is that we have learned to deflect or desensitise our awareness. To face what’s really going on might, we fear, be too disruptive and threatening to the ego, which is all about survival. Thus we cut ourselves off from really sensing what’s going on, and are unable as a result to feel deeply into the subtleties of things which could otherwise be giving us a great deal of data. Or we perceive it as too uncomfortable and we deflect away from it. So, for example, many of us are unable to sense the love that runs throughout the universe, or the aliveness and energy of nature, an aliveness that is also part of us since energy runs through all things. Those who have reported awakening experiences have reported being strongly aware of both these things.

We need to move through the fear that gets in the way, that our identity and ability to hold ourselves together and function will in some way be threatened, that we’ll fall apart, that we’ll go down some dark spiral – all ego survival fears. Facing fear enables us to see it for what it is, an illusion.

Staying present with what is allows us to experience deep beauty, aliveness and pure enjoyment, “the nectar of bliss”, as the gurus say.

So, we need to re-train ourselves in our awareness of the underlying positivity of the universe, despite how it seems in the so-called “everyday life”. One antidote to the nano-second society is learning to be present, mindful of what is happening, and not caught up in it.

This is what is offered in our program, Connecting to Inner Peace

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Do Mondays really get to you?

5 September 2011 By

I don’t know if you find it difficult to re-focus at the start of each week, but people often talk about the Monday morning syndrome, the challenge of re-adjusting to the weekday routine after the relaxation and distractions of the weekend. So Monday is often a day when things seem to get off to a bad start, particularly if you aren’t really getting the best out of your job, or a problem crops up and it really hits you when you come back off your weekend, or things seem to go wrong on Mondays, or you are not in the best of moods.

Continuing our theme of the pace of life seeming to distract us from who we really are, Monday can serve as a useful example of how, despite our best intentions, when we get back into the so-called “real world” all our best efforts to be connected, centred, in touch with our inner state of peace and calm, all that seems to go “out of the window” in the face of the challenges and upsets and sheer drivenness of today’s living.

Another can be coming back from holiday. I’ve just got back from my month-long sojourn in France and there’s already a big pile of correspondence, meetings coming up, arrangements to make, courses to sort out and the various needs of my life back home that have been on hold. People often come back from holiday to find all sorts of changes at work, new things happening, things to catch up with, that they often say they almost don’t feel they’ve been away.

A common experience connected to my work is how people can come on a powerful personal development program and yet feel a big wrench when they go back home and to work. I call it the “re-entry experience” because the adjustment can be a big one.

Yet what is key here is that this life is what there is, whether we’re blissed out in some retreat or busy at work. There’s no more a “real world” here than there, only that which we perceive through our particular coloured glasses, through our filter system of our egos. It’s how we deal with what occurs, both what happens in us and how we respond to what happens “out there” around us and in relationship with others. As stuff goes on, in each moment we get another challenge to connect, to reinvent ourselves, to be present and aware, to see into things rather than replay the old “record” (CD/mp3) of our programming. Developing your ability to connect, and not be thrown by what happens, to be more and more who you really are moment by moment, is today’s challenge.

And it’s possible. We do not have to be the victim’s of what life seemingly throws at us, but what is of our own creation but we haven’t got it yet. In every moment, including a very busy day, on the train, in the airport lounge, in the midst of a lot of noise, when there are multiple demands on your attention, you can be connected to who you are.

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It’s hard to stay connected with all that’s going on

4 September 2011 By

Do you feel you live in a nano-second world? Lots to think about, lots going on, feeling pressured, too much to do, no time?

As one who is used to encouraging people to slow down and really get into the deeper meaning of something, this can sometimes be a challenge!

I was having what I thought was an interesting conversation with somebody, in which I thought they were engaged, and I was making what to me was an important point – and I was really getting into it – when I became aware that they were no longer “there”. Their lights were on but they had distinctly gone somewhere else, and in fact started talking to someone else. I at first continued talking but quickly stopped since I was aware of just talking into nothing. I suspect they had completely forgotten what we were talking about – and they are very polite people and weren’t being rude. Their mind was elsewhere. Have you had this experience?

The sound-bite society: “Just get to the point, and then move on. Just nail it for me. Give me the News at 10 headlines. I don’t have the time to stick around. You’ve lost me. I’ve moved on to something else.”

No wonder we have children who suffer from ADHD. Modern technology, the fast-paced society with multiple stimuli, and the drivenness of the ego today, among other things, can make it very hard to get to the deeper meaning of something. Instead it encourages a partial, incomplete understanding. No more so than the ability to connect with the deeper, more profound parts of ourselves. Instead, it encourages a split in awareness, a crucial disconnection from awareness of Who we really Are.

The result? Profound unhappiness.

As an awareness check, how often do you find yourself flitting from webpage to webpage on websites, bombarded with short-lived stimuli? How often do you find that you don’t stay on one thing for long in life, but feel the need to move on to other things? What then would it be like for you to pause, breathe deeply…and breathe two of three times deeply again…and allow yourself to let go of all thoughts…and be very present in the moment…being very aware simply of breathing…being very aware of the sounds around you…of the sound of the air as it comes in through your nostrils…and out again…being very aware of the stillness…like it was everything?

How would that be?

Would it be a huge effort to slow down and pause the endless flood of stimuli, of rapid thinking, of always being on the go, and just rest awhile in the your awareness of the eternal Now?

It might be an effort, and your ego might resist it, but you can give yourself a moment of heaven. It’s in your grasp.

Through this week we’ll be discussing how hard it is for people to connect and stay connected in today’s world and why it is so important today to deal with this issue.

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How much do you get absorbed with bad news?

3 September 2011 By

I’ve recently been out of the UK and have relied for one of my news sources on the BBC News website. Abroad, the website opens on the “World” page, and it’s been striking how strongly that page has reported disasters, wars, conflict, and economic problems unflinchingly. I have for example been able to follow the Arab Spring with interest. However, there’s been little that’s positive. Does this fairly reflect the condition of the world today?

It might more reflect how news editors select what we might find of interest, and thus also reflect how we see the news. Consider today’s “World” page, for example, which shows as “home” outside the UK. Look at the verbs being used. The page will change during the day but as I write the verbs showing are “mourns”, “attacks”, “scraps”, and “protest”. On the UK page, we have “…death police to quiz…”, “denies”, “oppose”, “declines”, “child murder charge man…”, “sue”, “risk”, “feared”, etc.. There’s a distinct violent focus.

So we could say it’s the media, except that the they put up what is of interest to us and therefore it reflects our own orientation. So, you might like to ask yourself, how much do you find yourself focusing in on bad or negative news rather than positive events? It’s a useful bit of self-awareness, to catch yourself thinking in a certain way, noticing where your mind tends to go. So are there times when, despite your principles, you find yourself attracted by something negative?

It’s like we hook on to it. It fascinates us. This reflects an aspect of us, one might say the shadow side of us, that which we disown.

So, if this grabs you, maybe a useful bit of self-awareness work over the weekend would be to notice when your mind goes off on one in this way.

The point of awareness work is that when you highlight something that goes on for you, the more you tend to notice it, the more you are likely to challenge it and let it go.

The Point of Awareness is core to our programs and we have one program that is specifically devoted to developing this skill.

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How we struggle to forgive others

1 September 2011 By

Reading about the punishments being meted out to those involved in the recent English riots, it might be worth refelcting a moment on the implications for those who will now have criminal records, and for what that says for our society as a whole.

On the one hand, it is understandable that many of us feel that those who break our laws should suffer the consequences (note the use of the words “should” and “suffer” for later). That is the view both of lawmakers and law enforcers. Many of us, one suspects the vast majority of us, would want it to be that way. Put another way, it’s about taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences.

Having such a record, however, can have long-term devastating consequences on those concerned (I’m not dealing with the victims here, although they too are majorly affected by the misdeeds of the criminals – think for a moment of a small business wrecked by the gangs, or the families of those run down while trying to protect their properties). As you can see from this article, once the sentence is served, the person with the conviction will continue to suffer the consequences potentially for most if not all their life. Having a record affects job prospects, choice of work, ability to get a mortgage, insurance, travel, housing, etc., not to mention the ensuing guilt and shame (I’m also leaving out those who take up a career in crime or have no remorse, etc). So the student who stole the bottle of water and got a 6 month sentence will carry that for God knows how long.

I know this whole subject is fraught with controversy, with deep feelings on either side. Consider for example the parents or other family members who lost a child to a serial killer and struggle hugely to forgive. Or those who lost people or limbs in New York’s 9/11 or the London July bombings or the Madrid train bombings. Forgiveness is hard, and the hardest bit can be to let go of blame, anger and resentment in oneself. Think therefore of how this is translated across society and of how hard we all find it to forgive.

We need rules, standards, and agreed behaviours in order to function as a society, but at time we can become prisoners of those rules, such that our “shoulds” become internalised rules that limit us in terms of the choices we make and we continue to suffer ourselves because we seem unable to let go – and be free.

This is not about condoning the evil deeds of others or being “soft” on crime. It is about reflecting for a moment on our own ability to forgive and let go, and give ourselves freedom. How can we teach to others what freedom is really about, including taking responsibility, if we don’t now how to make ourselves free?

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