Articles

Articles

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1. Karma?

I imagine we all have certain challenges in life. We may choose to call these challenges, ‘lessons’, obstacles, karma, whatever. They exist no matter what name we give them, sometimes obviously, more often subtly, a part of our being that has been with us for so long we simply accept it as who we are.

Depending, to a degree, upon your cultural heritage, you may see these challenges as gifts, or burdens, something unavoidable, that for whatever reason, you are having to face and deal with (or not). There are people who seem to fight against what life presents, those who appear to rise above it and those who succumb to it. Perhaps if we understood where ‘it’ came from, we may be in a better position to do something about ‘it’. Maybe if we took ourselves less seriously, there would be no ‘it’ in the first place.

I think there are many ways to approach life’s challenges, perhaps as many ways as there are people. Yet if we were to take all of the different ways people have of dealing with issues that arise, for the most part, we would see people working within the structure out of which the issue arose. Many people are trying to fix things around them so the issue either goes away or is sufficiently buried, out of sight, out of mind.

It was Einstein who said “ Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them”.

Yet still we persist. It is easy, in hindsight, to comment upon the path and the decisions taken both by individuals and humanity as a whole as it moves forward, and to come up with a multitude of reasons and justifications why we are where we are now. To learn from one’s mistakes is something I often heard in childhood. That is indeed one way of looking at life. Yet perhaps there are no mistakes, perhaps the biggest mistake we make is to think that there are lessons to learn here, and that the lessons are all about doing something so that we feel satisfied, safe, as though we have accomplished something of importance.

What if the real ‘lesson’ is all about acceptance. Acceptance of what is. How much easier, and more simple would that make our lives. I don’t mean to say here that we just accept our fate, roll over and wait to be walked over, or die, whichever comes first.

More, More, More...

I see a lot of problems in the world arising out of humankind’s perception of lack, always wanting more. More money, more power, more safety, more clothes, happiness, excitement and gratification, more, more, more. It can be never ending. I think this need arises from a very strong association we have with the physical body as being who we are, rather than the possibility that this is simply a vehicle, a suit that we wear in order to experience life on this planet. Imagine taking your physical body to the moon without life support... You would not last very long; the same applies here on planet earth, without the bio-suit of the body your experience here would not be quite the same.

Whilst the body is the foundation of the experience, it has certain basic needs, among them: shelter, food, clothing, to love and be loved, fun, excitement, a deep desire to feel safe and happy. Born out of these needs a person looks around and wonders how best to manipulate the environment so these needs are met. The needs are very personal, limited to the self, the immediate members of their family, ethnicity, tribe, political party, religious association, culture, country. When the needs are focused on the self, family or social grouping, then rest assured, other selves, other families, other social groups will suffer. Nothing new in this. History, as told by the ‘winners’, repeatedly tells us that the stronger, the more cunning, the more violent will always come out on top. (And the meek shall inherit the earth... they have been waiting a long time!). Seems the meek are always open, by their very nature, to exploitation. Yet perhaps this is not the meaning of meek; more in a moment.

So, rather than learning from history, and seeing that where we are unavoidably heading, which is down the same path that has been trodden a multitude of times in the past, we just make the same decisions as we have in the past and create more of the same for ourselves and those who follow.

Have you never stopped to consider the decisions you make now, on what are they based- some fairy story told so many times you believe it to be real?

Is there another way?

Have you never paused to wonder if there is not another way. Many of you have of course, you would not be reading this if those thoughts had not arisen at some time in your life.

The million dollar question is still the same one it has always been - yes there has to be another way, but what is it? And how will one person make any difference to a collective that seems bent on imposing greater limitations upon itself and ultimately the destruction of its environment?

When we look for answers to the big issues, we almost always revert to looking for those answers within the box of our current world view. How can we even imagine anything outside of the box? Most people are not even aware that they are in a box in the first place, so naturally they seek resolution from within the framework of their imagination, perceptions and memory. Do you seriously believe that, coming from your personal history, the decisions you make now can create a more loving, safe tomorrow?

A definition of the box could be your association and deeply held belief that you are: your genetic memory, your soul memory (?), your experiences and your environment, your parents’ values and beliefs. This is both your physical body and your personality. So, simply by being a product of your past, personal and genetic, any decisions you make are based on your history, both personal and genetic.

It is similar to the concept of ‘tunnel vision’ or blinkers (blinders) on a horse. We can only see that which is directly in front of us. Or, in this case, what we have been conditioned to see, to expect. Our conditioning has been based on judgments, which of themselves become entrenched ways of being and consequently develop as reactive ways of being in the world rather than responsive.

The box then dictates our decisions. Freedom of choice only exists within the limitations, or confines of the box of our personal history.

It would be naive, or even delusional, to assume that any decisions made from a ‘personality’ that is conditioned to want more will be able to truly change the world for the better. This hasn’t seemed to have worked in the past, why would the future be any different?

While we continue to judge according to our personal likes and dislikes, we, unconsciously, create conflict. This happens primarily because our values are often in direct opposition to another’s. Because of this, there can never be a satisfactory resolution (a win-win situation). The main way used by most societies to maintain order has been to pass more and more legislation.
Win Win?

And why would anyone want a win-win situation? If you are on the winning team, then your goal is surely to stay on top, whatever the cost. If you are down the ladder a ways, then your goal would be to climb to the top, no matter who you step on along the way. This whole mentality, born out of a few basic needs, has led us to yet more conflict, and will continue to do so well into the future unless something is done to change it.

Any country that has colonised other countries in the past is paying the price now, with social systems put through massive change as the colonised colonise.
We may believe that we have just one life, and the goal of that life is to get as much as possible regardless of the cost to future generations. But there would have to be a whole new way of thinking if we were those future generations. “As you sow, so shall ye reap”. If you knew that your decisions would come back to haunt you into an unending future, perhaps you would think twice before making decisions that only benefitted you or your social group.

But this is not a moral tale, this is not to judge the decisions that are made, more to see where they come from and why.

Is there an alternative, another base from which to make decisions? I think there is, but this is not something that I know. In fact, I really do not have any answers; all I can do is share my journey. 35 years ago I shared my understanding of the Dharma. I still do, but looking back I think I must have made a complete fool of myself then, though those who listened were kind enough not to say so. For what did I know, what did I presume to know?

Will I look back on this time, in 10 years and say, ‘wow, what a fool I have been’? Probably. I have discovered something at least on my journey, and that is that I do not know. Any ‘knowing’ that I may have associated with is transitory. It comes and it goes, and for a moment, I may have thought that I knew. But I have discovered that that is just the mind playing tricks. If the truth is out there, then I have not found it. As I listen to those who claim to have found it, or a representative of it, then I am aware that they also are just on a journey, a journey of discovery and they no more have the truth than I or anyone else.

My current choice, or way of making decisions is a process that is ongoing, and ever changing. But still I am limited by association / identification with my past.

As long as we feel safe, we can share in an open-hearted way. This feeling of safety is a reflection of our personal comfort zone. Areas that we do not feel safe in are a product of our shadow, or as we say in the workshops, our back-pack, information that we carry around, albeit unconsciously, that in part dictates how we deal with life and its challenges.
Held back by the past

I think it is difficult for many people to take the step required that would enable them to make decisions that are totally win-win, because the association with the past is so deeply entrenched into the psyche of the human race.

“The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and open-ness to all situations and emotions. And to all people – experiencing everything totally without reservations and blockages so that one never withdraws or centralises on oneself.”

These words, attributed to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, give a Buddhist perspective. Try not to close your ears because they come from a tradition that is different to the one you are used to. Any steps along the path that lead us to a greater understanding of the self should, like any tool, be used, and when finished with, passed on so another may benefit from them.

Acceptance is the key word. While we judge, we either try to fix, or condemn. This creates greater polarity and we, inadvertently, become a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution. The ‘us’ and the ‘them’ approach. Acceptance is too easily misunderstood, for those lost in the us and them. It implies accepting anti-social behaviour, agreeing with abuse etc.

True acceptance, to me, requires a lot of training, a lot of personal experience and understanding of the nature of the world. It requires that we see just how our future is made up of our past. It sees the law of cause and effect in operation. This is not limited to any Buddhist or Hindu concept. Refer to the words of Jesus once more, “... As you sow, so shall ye reap.’’ True acceptance requires we see a bigger picture than the viewpoint of our personal likes and dislikes.

If we can come to terms with the possibility that we are a product of our past, and our future is built on our past, then why should it be any different for every other person alive? If we concede that each and everyone of us is a product of our past, then the situations we find ourselves in makes a whole lot more sense. And coming to terms with this idea is a big step towards being free from those ‘challenges’.
Outside the box

When we begin to look outside of the box for answers, then, shaky though those first steps may be, we are on a journey of self discovery, one that knows no limitations, one that is free from the charge of the past. I do not think we can, or even should be free completely from our past, for we are little without our past. But I do think it is time to leave the past where it belongs, in the past. If every person’s current reality, or the challenges that they are faced with is a product of their past, surely the only way to change anything is to change one’s perception of the self. This does not require that we do anything, or fix anything.

Acceptance is one way of doing that. I don’t think we need go off into the ‘what-if’ land. The ‘what-ifs’, unless you are currently in that particular situation, are projections based upon current understandings and past, reactive, conditioning. If you change from reactive to responsive, then whatever ‘what-if’ situation were to arise, would be dealt with very differently. This is assuming it ever arose in the first place, which is unlikely as you have, by changing your attitude, decreased the likelihood of that event happening, to you at least.

I sometimes picture the energy of who we believe ourselves to be to similar to an electrical charge. The more power there is, the bigger the charge, the bigger the charge the more likely we are to immediately fall into a reactive condition. Acceptance is simply about, through awareness and compassion, reducing the charge, enabling us to be more responsive than reactive in any given situation.

When we can respond, based not upon our personal likes and dislikes, there is a greater opportunity for the charge held in any situation to be released. And it only takes a short leap of imagination for us to become a part of a solution, instead of continuing to be a part of the problem. It is only by our continuing association with a limiting personality that we feed charge, or energy back into any situation. As we put energy in, so we create, so the law of cause and effect is maintained, so we must, at some point on our journey, reap what we have sown. Better to reap the rewards of loving thoughts than those of fear or anger. So, is there an answer? I am not sure, though there is a way, one which may lead to an answer. Change your mind and your reality will follow. Don’t know how to do it? Want to? Then come to a workshop and join like minds and like hearts, surround yourself with those practicing this way of being and the possibilities will be endless.

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2. Simplicity

How can we add to, or take away from simplicity?

When we are given the essence of the nature of creating personal reality, some reasons why we create as we do, and some ideas on why we continue to repeat those old patterns, what else is there to know?

>From this information we can begin making choices, especially when we are given the tools and awareness to assist us in making choices within which we feel safe and comfortable. But we cannot add to or subtract from the essence we can only try approaching it from varied and different directions until the ah ha moment.

This is what my book is all about, why, when and how. And the consequences of our decisions.
Those who know me have been told many times, not to believe a word I say, so why did I bother writing about my perceptions? I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I know some will. I do not offer this information as the truth but as an unfolding personal journey which may, or may not, be of assistance to others seeking to really know who they are.

Like the words in the book, they are just words and should not be believed simply because they have found their way into a book. If the Buddhist’s are to be believed, then the moment the soul, or whatever it is, finds it’s way into the body of a baby, a great forgetting occurs. We forget our true nature and identify, more and more, with the body of the child, the emotions the child experiences, the thoughts that arise in the awareness of the child, its environment, family conditions, the list is endless.

This certainly helps explain why we forget, if there is anything to forget! And why we persist in taking ourselves so seriously, the more we identify with the body and its accruing personality, the more we externalise our own fears and anxieties, hopes and desires, the more we add to the creation of a reality based on a simple misunderstanding.

Life, as seen through a brown paper bag...

I am not different, if indeed I have based the book on a limited understanding of the true nature of who I / we, am / are, then my words cannot be the truth, simply an expression of one seeking to understand. If this is true then the same understanding is going to apply to everything that has ever been written. My analogy is the brown paper bag. When we are born one is immediately placed over our head. We then try and make sense of our world from within the brown paper bag. As does everyone else. No wonder there is conflict, and the eternal search for the self, and the many, and varied forms that search takes. If I have a paper bag on my head, and I try to tell you something that I have seen, perhaps when I believed the paper bag was momentarily removed you may well think I am going crazy, and of course, if I tell many people, and they all think I am going crazy, then perhaps it is true, I am crazy.

There is a saving factor, I am not alone in my craziness. Everyone is doing it, all of the time, sharing their perceptions, ideals, beliefs, trying to gather support for their reality so they don’t feel quite so crazy. Believe in us, you will be saved... What they are really saying is believe in us because the more people who do, the safer we will feel. And the more extreme our beliefs, the more fundamental they become, the more polarised we find our selves. And if we are right, then someone must be wrong. And here we go again.

If we did indeed forget our true nature when we inhabited a human form, then all of the challenges we face in the world today are a result of that forgetting. The goal therefore may be to remember, or not, the true nature of who we are. I don’t think we will remember by trying to manipulate the manifesting reality. Nor by associating with thoughts and feelings which are products of the past, by dwelling on our past and trying to change it, come to terms with it.

We experience what we experience, we feel what we feel, we think what we think, we deal with manifesting reality as we deal with it, all dependant or based upon decisions made in the past. To try and ‘fix’ a manifesting reality that was built on a misunderstanding seems a pretty strange thing to do to me. If we want a different future then we may need to start changing the program that created the world we find ourselves in today. This is not easy, as Carl Gustaf Jung once said, reportedly, “... One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious, this process however is disagreeable and therefore not very popular”.

This implies that there is something with which we are not too familiar affecting what happens to us, what experiences we may encounter and how we might deal with those experiences. Dr. Bruce Lipton has suggested that a major part of ‘who we are’ is subconscious, in fact in many cases he says, only 5% of us is conscious, the rest lies in the subconscious. Jung’s ‘shadow’!

So perhaps remembering who we are is simply a matter of accessing all that sub-conscious stuff, making it conscious, and hey presto, enlightenment.

The Shadow - scary stuff?

How can we be expected to bring that shadow stuff to the light, there must have been a reason it was created in the first place? And if that reason was that all that stuff in the shadow was scary at some time in my past, or overwhelming, stressful, painful, then it is no wonder I buried it all long ago. Bring it into the light, no thanks, best kept where it is. Until that is, the benefits outweigh the fears.

This begins to happen when we see the part our subconscious plays in creating the reality that we deal with on a daily basis. Externally the world in all its diversity how it impacts upon us, and the part we play in sustaining it. Closer to home; relationships at home, at work or in a social sense. And totally personally, when we understand that our association with certain thoughts and feelings creates a pathology, meaning we do indeed become what we think, and feel.

So angry or hateful thoughts and emotions are creating a very toxic internal environment, and there is a price to pay, maybe not straight away, but sooner or later the body is going to complain loudly about this mistreatment in the past.

There is a lot of wisdom in the saying “Don’t worry, be happy”.

The entire range of workshops I present are, in a sense, all back to front. The early programs are the most complicated, appealing to the mind, which dominates so much of our lives. Later, as people practice the work, so they are naturally more open to increasing simplicity. It would be nice to be able to achieve enlightenment in one weekend workshop. And perhaps one day we will, but for the time being, it is the journey that is important. I do not hand out ‘Get into Heaven Free’ cards at workshops.

Each and everyone of us needs to come to our own understanding, in our own time, about what is important for us. And then act on it.

My words are my journey, use them as you will, but please don’t take them either personally or seriously. Find your own truth, know that it is only a transitory truth, attach little importance to it, be prepared to let it go when a greater truth reveals itself. We cannot even comprehend the truth while there is still some vestige of the brown paper bag obscuring our vision. Know that most people on the planet, have, to some degree or other, the brown paper bag impairing their vision.

Who really knows what is going on?

If this is true, then it is easy to realise that no one individual, well almost no one, knows what the heck is going on. So why believe them. We tend to associate with beliefs that give us a sense of belonging, of safety. We may hold onto these beliefs till the day we die, possibly even after. But did it help? Sure it may have helped you get by, but did it help you wake up to the true nature of who you are? I try and practice the art of questioning everything, believing nothing. No matter who wrote it, when it was written, how many other people believe in any idea or concept, a lie told many times in the past becomes the truth today.

Sometimes I succeed in this faster than other times, I may appear outwardly to believe something I have been told, or read, but I am only using it for momentary support, it may appear real at the moment, but time is the great leveller. Will it still be true 5 minutes from now?

I can reflect on my understanding of certain information in the past, and see how, embarrassingly, way off I was. Use what ever you need to help you along the way, like a crutch helps you get around when your leg is broken, but discard the crutch when the leg heals.

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3. Personal Progress

I am continually delighted with the effects of the work on my own life. As I continue to practice noticing thoughts and feelings and simply accept whatever arises, without identifying (where I am able) it is as though ‘I’ am reborn on a moment by moment basis. This allows the future to unfold in a way that is both new and familiar at the same time. Still a lot of the more personal hang-ups pop in now and again, but are taken much less seriously on a deep level and pass ever more lightly.

This impacts on how events in my life unfold and of course, how I ‘choose’ to deal with those events. The more choice I appear to have at any given moment, the less likely I am to re-experience old patterns.

I continue to let go of the thought that I have any control over how my future unfolds, the work in particular. Once upon a time I felt the need to do something, to make sure workshops happened, for example. This was a hard road, profitable possibly, but still full of doing and all that entailed. After the Vietnam workshop I felt that the work had to unfold effortlessly, if obstacles arose and were not easily dealt with, then let the workshop go.. Life is too short to push too hard. I should have enough experience of the path unfolding effortlessly by now to not get anxious about the future. Anxiety simply becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and I can do without that (as I am sure we all can).

With workshops just about finished for this year (one more Clearing the Self in Ireland mid December) and a break over the New Year it will be interesting to observe how life/the work unfolds.
Accepting how things are doesn’t mean simply sitting back and letting whatever happen happen. There are still workshops to organise, dates to set, venues to be booked. Yet within the usual administrative side of presenting this work there is still room to move and go with the flow, a lot more open space in my diary for 2008, at least at the moment.
Noticing Change...

I am also noticing the long term effects of applying this way of being in the lives of many people around me. There appears to me a greater lightness of be-ing in those who have been practising this for a while. An increased ease in dealing with situations that previously may have been much more challenging. In general, a relaxed lifestyle leading to more inner contentment.

Not always a quick fix though. Perhaps that is why this way of being is not as widely accepted as I would have liked at this stage of the journey. Yet it can be a quick, and sustainable ‘fix’. The only thing getting in the way of change is you, you and your sub conscious addictions to old ways of being. Yet, until these ‘addictions’ can be recognised there is little chance of fundamental change. Instead, what seems to happen is that, within our own personal drama, we seek to make sense of a world that is basically a product of our own imaginings.

This is not meant to place blame on anyone, this is simply a different way of observing life as it unfolds, and to see how, when we recognise the part we each play, on a cellular level, in creating the manifesting reality that arises, we can begin to make conscious changes to that manifestation.

It is both super simple, and one of the most difficult things in the world to do. It requires that we stop doing, something that many find enormously challenging, and start accepting. With acceptance comes the realisation that we have spent years running around, putting out fires, that we ourselves lit in the beginning. Stop lighting fires and notice the changes that come into your life.

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4. It is all in the timing!

Time going fast, time going slow; time going in a straight line, time following a wavy line; time standing still, time disappearing; time being sequential, time offering ‘deja vue’ moments; time appearing to create order, time = Mc2...(?) Or was it ‘time = money?

What if, among all the other things created by the mind, we have on one level, all agreed to time as being sequential? What if this belief is not correct, not wrong necessarily, just not the only way of perceiving time? We are certainly creatures of habit conditioned by our relationship to ourselves and the manifesting world, so it is not hard to accept that possibility that one of the habits to which we subconsciously subscribe, is the nature of time.

Just throwing in a curve ball here, a few ‘what ifs’ to test beliefs. One thing that teaching this way of being has ‘taught’ me over the years, is that most people hold onto a belief or beliefs, handed down or picked up along the way, like drowning people hanging onto pieces of flotsam, the old ‘clutching at straws’ trick. Yet rarely do those people actually question, in a truly fundamental way, the basis of the belief. Perhaps this is the nature of faith. Something we gladly give our power away to in the hope that it, whatever ‘it’ may be, will save us, help us, deliver us from evil, whatever. Another thing I have learnt from the years teaching this is that we energise or create that which we give energy to. No belief is necessarily right, none wrong, they are just the product of the personality, which in turn is simply a collection of points of view that we, consciously or subconsciously, subscribe to.

The challenge in questioning points of view is that the questioner is held within a certain framework called the personality. The personality has been hard won, fought for, long established, built over many years of associating with, identifying with judgements, belief patterns and a whole host of other phenomena that arises in the awareness of the individual. So much have we identified with the thoughts and emotions that have arisen in our awareness that we have even developed the pathology of those thoughts and emotions, we have become our thoughts and feelings. From within this citadel of being, we look out at the world, and we judge it (and ourselves).

It is quite hard for us to imagine that this way of seeing the world is unique to us, and though we may hold beliefs (time is sequential!) That many others hold in common, we still have our own very special way of interpreting the world around us.

The Dilemma

Trying then to question fundamental beliefs, from within this citadel is an almost impossible task. The tools with which we question the manifesting reality are all contained within the citadel of the self. The self, that diverse collection of ‘points of view’ does not find it easy to seriously examine itself. Examining the self would involve opening up a pandora’s box of shadows that quite possibly is the reason we choose faith over questioning. Faith here is not limited to religious beliefs, or time being sequential, or airy fairy phenomena. It includes those on the path of science, for that too is faith, faith of a different kind, one that questions, but, if we were to be honest, one that questions still from within the citadel of the self.

The Answer??

A rather obscure example: I believed, for a long time, that I could not drive a left hand drive car with a manual transmission. I was taught in a right hand drive car and we drove on the left hand side of the road. Living in the US I quickly adapted to driving on the right hand side of the road, but always in an automatic. Whenever I went to Europe and drove, it was always an automatic. I believed, for some unknown reason, a reason that I never really did question, that I could not drive a left hand drive vehicle with a gearshift. I would all the time joke about reaching for the door handle to change the gear. This was, for most of my life, not a problem, automatics were readily available and I gave little real thought to my belief, my ‘point of view’ about what I could and could not do.

A little over a year ago we had a workshop in a mountain resort in Switzerland. The owner of the resort picked me up from the railway station in her automatic Subaru. It was a half hour drive, partly on motorways, mostly up a very narrow, windy mountain road, no room for passing.

I knew others would be arriving later that afternoon and offered to go down and collect them myself, thinking I could easily handle the Subaru. “Wonderful” she said, “You can take the bus.” Bus, I thought, what bus, what about the Subaru. Arriving on the top of the mountain I saw the bus, a largish 4 wheel drive, high off the ground, and, of course, it was a manual. I easily noticed the feelings that arose as the image of the gearstick clashed with a long held point of view. I knew I still had a choice, I could say, sorry, I don’t know how to drive one of these, and backed down. Instead, I noticed the feeling and let it go. The feeling after all was only a chemical reaction to a point of view. I have been teaching we are not our point of view for a long time, now it was time to put my money where my mouth was, another opportunity to walk the talk.

The time of departure grew rapidly closer (a case of ‘time’ moving vary fast indeed) and on two occasions I noticed the feelings of uncertainty (and fear?) Arise, each time I acknowledged the feeling and let it go, moving my awareness onto other things. Remember, we energise that which we focus out awareness on. It would have been easy for me to fall into old patterns and build a good case to not drive this vehicle down the mountain. Not just any old mountain, but a car with a gear shift and on what was little more than a very narrow track winding down a mountain. Anxiety is an interesting thing which more often than not disables us completely.

The Moment of Truth!

At last the moment was upon me. I collected the keys, made sure I had my satellite navigation plugged in, and started the car. The doubt was just a fleeting thought now, and I went through the process of putting the car into gear and driving off down the mountain effortlessly. My main concern was that someone would be coming up the mountain while I was trying to get down it. But, no, no one appeared and the trip was not only uneventful, but a pleasure, and a great breakthrough for me personally. So much so that I repeated the drive twice more that day, once even at night.

What was all the fuss about?

This may all sound very silly and minor, and looking back, of course it was. But the hold that belief pattern had on me had ruled my life for many years. Where did it come from, what basis in ‘reality’ did it have...
When we consider that we are all unique collections of points of view, when we imagine that a point of view is sacred, that our point of view is the one and only ‘right’ point of view, it is easy to see how we limit ourselves, and how conflict can arise.

My conflict was internal, internalising conflict may not appear to harm anyone else but it can certainly harm the person who holds onto a pattern and internalises the results or consequences of that pattern. Mine, for example, was anxiety about driving a car with manual transmission on the other side of the road to that which I was accustomed. The anxiety that is created when that point of view is challenged is creating an healthy environment in my body, the chemicals released by the body when anxiety is personalised are, over a period of time, quite destructive.

To blame or not to blame?

I can run from that feeling by avoiding driving the car, this does not change my point of view, in fact it supports it, and I convince myself more and more that I cannot do this thing. I could blame the owner of the resort, or the car, for putting me in this uncomfortable situation. Crazy, yes indeed, but notice how, when your point of view is challenged and you are taken out of your ‘comfort zone’ you kick out, often at those closest to you. How you judge and blame the world and those in it for your own discomfort. A common enough response to the chemicals of anxiety. But if you blame another, or the neighbours dog, or the government, whatever, you are still reinforcing a point of view, which, really has no basis in who you truly are.

The trick then is to develop the ability to become a little more objective each day. To try and question the basis upon which you have built your world from within the citadel that created that world is difficult, if not impossible. But to begin to notice the feelings that arise around any point of view you may hold on to is not so difficult. This will allow for other possibilities, possibilities that will slowly free themselves from your past, allowing you to be more in the world and respond to the world on a moment by moment basis. Until you try stepping out from the shadow of the past you will not know just how much a victim to conditioning that had no basis in reality, you have been.

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5. Cultural Differences ?

The various cultures and sub-cultures that I encounter around the world certainly add diversity and colour to the world. They are what differentiates the various peoples of the world. Once upon a time it was truly an adventure to go to far away places, always seemingly more exotic than ‘home’.

Globalisation has taken away from the differences in lots of ways, nowadays, to expect to find a bargain in Hong Kong is naive. The products, and the prices there are the same as can be found in New York, Paris, London, anywhere really where you find a capitalist based economy. There are still a few places left where authentic local products are available, but these are shrinking as local, and foreign entrepreneurs export and import all around the world.

All the varied cultures, and sub-cultures have something else in common, something that has nothing to do with globalisation at all. Cultural patterns are learnt behaviour, patterns that give identity to the people concerned. No matter where we were born, we too have our cultural belief patterns, firmly tucked away so deep within our sub-conscious that we hardly know they are there at all. More importantly perhaps, are belief patterns learnt at an age where we absorb information much like a dry sponge absorbs water. We don’t judge the water as being too hot, too cold, too salty, too sweet, we just take it all in.

The thing we all have in common is that we are very much victims to that early conditioning, the information that we absorb goes so deep into our psyche that we are not even aware it exists. So we play out a part that we had no conscious involvement in creating. Then it follows, that all subsequent decisions and behaviour is very much based upon those early, sub-conscious foundations. How could we possibly expect to make rational decisions based on whatever each moment presents when we have conditioned ourselves to react based on sub-consciously learnt experiences.

So the likelihood is that we, without any awareness or questioning, will continue to play a role imprinted upon us without any knowledge of events on our part. In a sense, we never really grow up, all the time we react, we remain victims to a past learning. And the worst part is, we don’t even know we are victims to this unasked for past. Unless we discover a way to become aware of our hidden past we will pass it on to our children, who will then be locked into living a life within the same sub-conscious patterning that we did.

The goal here is not to lose any cultural identity, but to make sure that we are more conscious in life of all parts of ourselves. With consciousness comes choice, there is no choice when we operate from sub-conscious belief patterns.

The Shadow Rules

Jung has called the sub-conscious our shadow, we call it our back-pack. A place where information is stored which we have learnt without any conscious involvement or later information that we encounter which we deny, based on some misguided sense of self preservation.

My travels around the world have taught me a great deal. One big thing has been not to take myself (or my cultural beliefs) too seriously. I still ‘work’ on this one because, in order not to take oneself too seriously, one has to be aware of where and when one is taking oneself too seriously. Relationships will always tell you, when you can listen, where you are attached to your past.
If, on my travels, I run a sub-conscious tape of superiority, or inferiority, being well able, being less able then guess what I will meet along the way. Even though any presenting situation may be open, without judgement of me being better or worse, able or unable, my conditioning would kick in and create an outcome that satisfied that old patterning. Remember I am not aware that that conditioning was ever a part of my past, the sub-conscious (or shadow) being what it is. So, the outcome would simply confirm my conditioned belief, adding to the power that belief has over me.

Every time I support an old way of being, with or without awareness, I create, on a cellular level, a greater addiction to that way of being, which then increase the chances of meeting situations along the way that will feed that addiction. A true ‘Catch 22’ situation, I spend my life in damage control trying to avoid, in effect my ‘self’ because I feel as though I am lost and alone, a place from which I blame those around me for the discomfort that I feel.

Awareness, the key to change

The common ingredient, amongst all cultural patterns is unconsciousness. No matter what part we play in the world today, for the most part we are driven by our sub-conscious. How can we expect leaders to lead when they too are lost in their own cultural identities, in a world where those identities are supported by others lost in the same illusion?

How can we, as individuals, discover our true nature when we are surrounded by a community that firmly identifies with all the old patterns, never questioning those patterns, or where they came from, just repeating over and over again the same old stories. It is hard, assuming the light comes on and your start to look around with different eyes, to stand out from the crowd, to be different from those you have grown up with. Difference is not acceptable in many cultures, it is frowned upon, and those expressing too much difference are cast out of the community.

‘Excommunication’; psychiatric institution; a witch’ eccentric; weird; unsociable; dangerous. All labels used to identify difference, and to build public opinion (and remember public opinion is simply the adherence to patterns of conditioning of which the individual is unaware) to be rid of the ‘rotten apple’ the individual who has dared to declare their awakening. Jesus, a classic example.

For much of the past, when an individual has stepped out of the mold of cultural conditioning, they have been alienated by their community because they are seen as a threat to the ordered life of the community.

We have experienced people returning from residential workshops experiencing just that. They have changed, in the sense that they have awoken from cultural pattering to some degree. When this process starts, the natural inclination is to move away from previously accepted ways of being to explore the new. This is what alienates those left behind.

Trading old for new?

One cannot swap one set of beliefs for another, believing the new ones to be better than the old and still be accepted in the old community. Instead, with practice and more exposure to other ways of being, we see the new belief pattern simply as that, a new, and different belief pattern, no better nor worse than the previous one, but one that allows us to be more expansive we can include, with greater compassion all of the old patterning. We no longer take it (our-self) quite so seriously, but we do allow it in our hearts. This allows cultural conditioning to coexist, so instead of alienating, we expand to include the new as well as the old.

According to recent research we are only 5% (and that is being generous) conscious. The other 95% is sub-conscious, learnt patterns, how to walk, drive a car, the body taking care of itself, but included in that 95% is all of the information absorbed, without judgement, when we were very young. It is this patterning that sets our future out for us. How we will handle life’s experiences, and consequently, how our body will adapt to its environment.
“As we think, so we become” all well and good, but if 95% is running the show, there is little opportunity to make a conscious decision.

If then, we use the 5% (or 3% or 4%) to try and bring the sub-conscious into awareness, then perhaps there is a chance to slowly increase the 5% to 6%, and then 8%.. Instead of remaining a victim, we can begin to make conscious decisions, based on what presents.

Intolerance of other beliefs, be they cultural, religious or political is a consequence of early imprinting and subsequent identification with that imprint, it is childlike and lacks any responsibility, and can only create more separation and conflict.

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6. Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?

Have you ever had a thought that seemed totally out of character? A thought you had never had before? One so unusual, so different you stopped for a moment and wondered where it came from?

And while we are thinking about that thought, what about all the other thoughts we have, where do they come from?

I have a theory... not necessarily new, but...

What triggers a thought?

Briefly, the theory is that we each have the capacity to receive information that is unique to who we have become, both as individuals and community. That all information exists all around us, all of the time. Like a radio receiver we have the ability to pick up radio transmissions. We are selective in what we pick up, the criteria for the selection is based upon our personal journey through time and space.

Recently the father of friends died, here in Ireland. The tradition is for the relatives and friends to have a wake in their honour. A ‘wake’, not a part of my cultural background. What does it mean, a ‘wake’? That triggered a chain of thoughts, which led to ... a mental picture, a map if you like, a way of laying out my theory that just might make sense.

Ships that pass and leave behind, in their wake, their story.

Some poetic licence here. The ‘sea of consciousness’ that I refer to in workshops is not a sea that we float upon, but one that is all pervasive, all around us, up down, sideways, front ways, back ways, we are totally immersed in the sea of information. We exist within the sea and cannot exist, in our current form, out of the sea. The sea is not only the planet we live on, the air we breathe, the sun that shines, the rain that falls, the wind that blows, the electro smog, not only everything that we can see, touch, hear, smell, feel. It is all of this and more.

Back to the wake of the ship, or the wake of the person who passes through time and space.

Imagine that this sea is not, for the moment, something that is all encompassing, rather it is like the ocean, and we are looking down on it from above.

And looking down, we can see all manner of boats and ships, large and small criss-crossing the sea. What happens when a large boat passes a small sail boat? The bow wave from the large boat causes the sail boat to flop around and if conditions are right to capsize. The bow waves are an important part of the picture.

Now, according to my theory.

When anything moves through time and space the energy in the space changes, for better or worse, in a big way or barely at all, but it does change. The extent and quality of the change depends upon who is passing through. Any lasting effect would be a product of the intensity of any energy / information that is left behind combined with the existing energies of the environment. Compatibility, resonance, high energy, low energy. All affect the mix.

When information is left behind, or changed in any way, others occupying the space are changed, again depending upon existing conditions.

Ever thought that someone was inside your head (Pink Floyd - “There’s someone in my head and its not me...”) Ever thought someone was reading your mind? Ever thought that someone had picked up on your thoughts?

Back to the surface of the sea.

Imagine for a moment, lots of small boats sailing on the sea, each occupied by a single person, all the thoughts of that person contained on the boat. No big boats for the time being. Each individual, sailing across the sea, lost in their own thoughts, oblivious to the other sail boats, and people. And from your position, high in the sky, you can see each of the bow waves created by the passing of the sail boat, each bow wave meeting other bow waves, forming intricate patterns for a moment, then collapsing back into the sea.

As each of these bow waves meets other bow waves the patterns they form are unique, different from what existed before. This is a step along the road to the creation of the world as we know it, of people interacting with other people. Though they may not know it, lost in their own thoughts, on their own little boat, they are creating patterns that are laying the ground work for new patterns to manifest.

When a wave of information is created (the bow wave of the passing sail boat) it contains, in this sea of consciousness, all of the thoughts and feelings, beliefs and perceptions of the person sailing the boat. It is their personal record. Although there is no physical evidence of their passing, the wave forms that have been created, unique to the individual, once created will mix with other wave forms, bow waves, interact and create something new and different.

When wave forms meet, they collide, this process is known as interfering wave patterns. Crests meet crests, troughs meet troughs, crest meet troughs. And out of this the world (as we know it) is born. It is out of the unique contributions each and everyone make that the world, as we understand it is made manifest.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, (according to some).

What is a word if not an energetic transmission, which we call sound, a series of waves forms, which meeting other wave forms (now where did those other waves forms come from?) begins the process of interference. To bring this home, land it on your doorstep and make it more real for you, an example. Have you ever been angry with someone? Really angry, like boiling up inside! And has that person been angry with you? Anger is not always met with anger, it can be met with fear, capitulation. There are all sorts of ways to respond / react, but for the moment, imagine two very angry people together. Neither giving way, just getting more and more angry.

Something’s got to give

Sooner or later the tension is going to break. How that break manifests depends upon the people involved. The point here is that tension is building, and sooner or later going to have to break, either in reconciliation, violence or separation. The tension is palpable, you have heard the expression, ‘you could have cut the air with a knife’. What do you imagine is happening there, in that situation where anger is building? The ‘word’ can indeed be a word, it can be a thought, it can be an emotion, it can be many things, but it all comes down to the same thing, energy is being expressed.

A wave form is being sent out, from the bow of your little sail boat. Only now you are not alone on the sea, there is someone facing you down, and they too are putting out a bow wave, their own anger. The two waves are meeting in the middle of the room creating something that did not exist before. Tension. A feeling in the room that will remain after the two sail boats have left. If the energy each person / sail boat is putting out is turned up a degree or two, then the tension escalates, turn it down and the tension falls away. But keep turning it up and obvious conflict is almost inevitable. Out of a word, thought or emotion violence is created. In the beginning was the word!

So, now with this example in mind, look down on the sea again, see all the bow waves from all the individual sail boats, all meeting other bows waves forming complex, intricate patterns, and see how, if any bow wave is stronger than any other it will have greater influence.

All the time, each individual adding to the whole, innocently, creating the bigger picture. Yet each individual cannot see the bigger picture, so absorbed are they in their own world.

Lets travel back in time to the cave man. I don’t know the various ages, names given to the unfolding and evolution of humanity, if that is what we are looking here, so am going to lump them all together for the purpose of this story. There is no evidence that the cave people had sail boats, but this is all pretty symbolic anyway, so who cares, we are pretending.

When the cave people wandered the planet there weren’t that many of them around, according to what we believe we know now. So mostly the seas are empty, one or two lone sail boats appearing on the horizon, and slowly making their way to a different horizon. Not many bow waves to interfere with each other. All in all a very peaceful picture. Now, along comes a wave form created by a sabre tooth tiger. Yes, although it might be difficult to picture a sabre toothed tiger sailing a little boat, they do leave energy imprints, along with all other creatures, great and small. Imagine a woolly mammoth sailing a yacht.

The picture starts to get a little more complicated, more waves forms appearing and interacting. The cave people form small communities, safety against the sabre tooth tigers! These communities add their wave forms together. Different ‘jobs’ are allocated according to various skills. With a few hiccoughs along the way, community is established. Imagine now, looking down on this, several small sail boats, all sailing together, a mini flotilla, imagine the collective bow wave when it meets lone yachtsmen, cave people who still have not joined a collective! Sink or swim, or join the community, if they’ll have you. Swear allegiance to the flag or get fed to the sabre tooth tigers.

Imagine what happens when one flotilla passes another collective! Bigger waves crashing against bigger waves, and our cave people are still quite primitive and operate on base emotions. Run? Or fight? Depends, how many people are in the other collective, wave forms, now generated by a community, meeting other wave forms generated by a different community. Complex patterns, patterns that are unfamiliar, what to do?

Even if the two collectives pass without conflict, they will each have affected the other. Perhaps, over time, the strength in numbers was a deciding factor in survival. But each sail boat that passed the flotilla would have had some impact, some trading perhaps, of skills, bartering of products.

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To be continued.........

Research