I really like the insight from EFT (emotional freedom techniques) that all symptoms – either emotional or physical – are the result of disruptions in our energy fields. In our essence we are whole and complete, but various traumas and negative experiences from the moment we are born (and even before) create blockages in our energy fields. We feel these blockages as repeated negative patterns, thoughts or emotions. Read More
Many of us spend a lot of time trying to get rid of our bad habits such as smoking, overeating, or drinking. But no matter how hard we try, we just seem to fall back into our old ways as soon as we relax our willpower a bit. It’s like the part that runs the habit is just waiting for a gap, and when it finds one it returns with a vengeance.
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A mindfulness-based approach to coping with fear, anger, grief and other difficult emotions
Most of us have some trigger issues that send us into a tailspin of uncomfortable emotions such as fear, anger and sadness. No matter how much we work with these issues, we still seem to get caught out and become overwhelmed by negativity.
When this happens, we need to take a leap into a different dimension of healing – the field of awareness. When there is something that we simply cannot solve – when our lives are literally stopped and no amount of therapy will get things right – it’s time to consider that perhaps we are not being called upon to cure our affliction but to transcend it.
Transcendence is the ultimate acceptance of whatever it is that we are trying to get rid of. If you think about it, trying to fix something implies a duality – a split between a part that perceives itself as the good and another that is perceived as unwanted or bad. The actual symptom or behaviour might be causing us pain, but the belief that the pain is ‘not us’ and should not be part of us leads to mental suffering. Read More
Do you have to give up thoughts to live in the Now?
It’s often said that to be in the Now you need to give up thinking. However, it is the nature of mind to generate thoughts, and even trying not to think is just one more thought. The real problem is not the thoughts themselves, but rather our interest in those thoughts.
Next time any stressful thinking occurs, don’t try to stop it. Just observe the thoughts. Become interested in observation, and remove interest and investment in what the thoughts are saying. You will find that thoughts happen and observing happens. When there is no investment in the thoughts and you don’t give them any belief and you don’t follow them, they are just thoughts arising, and they cause no harm. Read More
I recently spent a few days at Temenos retreat in McGregor. While there I meditated on my own quest for knowledge and enlightenment. It seems I have been seeking something all my life, and all that has been found is more questions, more goals to be attained. Then it occurred to me that being a seeker was not the only way to be on the road in a quest for truth – one could also be a pilgrim. Read More
The concept of “living in the Now” has become popularised in recent years through the books of people such as Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. They tell us how important it is to live in the present moment and not to get distracted by fears (which are future projections) and hurts (which are perceptions of events in the past). If we can just stay focused in the present, we’ll discover true freedom and the end of suffering.
Well how many of us have got it right to actually do this? What seems to happen is that we become focused in the moment, and then suddenly the phone rings and it’s someone with bad news. Then where does our precious “Now” go to? It vanishes, and suddenly we’re back in psychological time and we’re suffering – except that now instead of just the bad news to cope with, we’re also beating ourselves up for being so easily thrown out of “The Now”. Read More
Before you began reading this sentence, while you are reading the sentence, and after the sentence is finished being read, awareness is here. Can you see the futility of seeking present awareness? It is what is, what is awake, what is simply being right now.
If you’re looking for Enlightenment, this article on Awareness by Scott Kiloby will help put an end to the search. Read the complete article.
In a conversation recently an ecologically-minded young woman told me of her doubt over having children. She wanted children, but it didn’t seem right to have them when the world was already so full of people. They would only add to the burden of the world and consume more of a dwindling supply of resources. It was quite a dilemma for her, and perhaps she is not alone in feeling this way.
How can we satisfy our own desires and the desires of the planet when they seem to be so much in conflict these days? Those who care about the environment feel real pain at what is happening. All evidence says the world needs fewer people, not more. And it needs the people who consume without regard for the future to stop doing what they are doing. We know what is good for the world, we are sure we know. It does not occur to us that this ‘knowing’, and the pain it causes us, are part of the problem.
Separation
In order for us to see the world as needing saving from the ignorant people, the greedy people, we need to view ourselves as separate from both those people and the earth itself. It does not occur to us that our willingness to sacrifice ourselves to save the planet is itself a form of violence. We see the world as out there, in distress, as something that needs fixing. It gives us a sense of identity to know that we know what the planet needs. But really, how do we know?
Could it perhaps be that we and the earth are not separate at all, that what we love the earth also loves? How terrible to think that the world might require us to deny the love that seeks to come through us. This thought is based on separation, and it places us on the same side as the speculators and developers who are plundering the earth in their own way. We are not different to them. If we see ourselves as different then we are simply affirming how similar we are – all of us lost in the same dream of separation.
Ending the war within
The world needs fewer people. Is that true? Perhaps it might be more true to say that the world needs fewer people who are at war in themselves. The planet can handle any number of people who understand that the greatest thing they can do for it is to allow love to come forth in the way that love chooses. If it wants to appear in the form of a child, let it do so. If it wants to come through as some great project, something that excites and inspires you, then it is the world itself that brings it forth. It is not your job to refuse it because you think you know what the world needs. You don’t.
All you will have to let you know you are right is a feeling of expansiveness and inspiration that flows up from the heart when you contemplate a particular action. If you feel this, then your project is a blessing to the world because it is no different to the world. If it feels like duty, like a closing down, then it is simply ego trying to tell the world it knows what’s best. And, quite simply, it doesn’t.
I was walking to the shops the other day and suddenly it struck me that there was no purpose to this walking beyond the walking itself. When I set out my intent was to go and get some groceries – this was my purpose. But while ambling along by the banks of the Liesbeeck river, for a brief moment the story of my getting to the shops ceased and there was just the walking. No other story, just walking. And there was no other purpose in the world. Just this, what’s happening now, in this moment.
I’ve been writing quite a bit on this site about life purpose as something to be found, but now it seems that in fact there is nothing to be found. Your true purpose is whatever you are being or doing right now. As you read this your purpose is to sit and read. Or more precisely, one might say the reading is simply happening, you are not doing anything. There’s absolutely nothing beyond this reading, because anything that would be beyond it is a projection out of the Now into a past or future. A projection into one more story, one more fiction.
So now I will define true purpose as who you are when the stories about yourself have ceased. It is the life that lives through you, as you. How do you get to this? Stop the struggle, stop trying to make things happen when they’re just not happening. I’m glad I can blog about this so I can come back and remind myself when I forget (which happens often!).
There’s a quote from the Conversations with God series that comes to mind:
“There is nothing you have to be or do except what you are being or doing right now.”
Much of what I’ve written on this site concerns ways of finding clarity on life’s great questions: Who am I, what is my purpose, what really matters? As a life coach and hypnotherapist I have a range of processes that can be used to help people dive deeply into these questions and find answers or new directions that bring greater meaning to life. But what happens when the answers are elusive, or when you get several answers to one question?
I was thinking about this recently when I found myself in my characteristic condition of alternating frustratingly between two quite different modes of being. One part of me wants to be out there making a name for myself, and the other wants to sit quietly in a chair, contemplating life and letting the world go its way undisturbed. So who am I, which path should I follow? As I sat with this perennial question, I noticed a kind of quiet space develop around it. The question had always been with me and always would. It was a knowing that a straight answer would not be forthcoming, and that it wasn’t required. I could have several answers at a practical level about who I was and what I could do with my life, but at a deeper level, where I tried to connect everything, logic did not work. The tools and processes ran aground. The purpose of my life, then, was not a thing at all but rather a space between things. The question would be forever asked and never answered.
Perhaps it is never answered because the answer is hidden within the question itself. The answer is to be in the “I don’t know” space, in the not-knowing. When we find answers to things we discover certainty, and certainty hardens our self-image, our separation. But when we discover the question that refuses to be answered it is like stumbling upon a doorway into Being itself. Suddenly our words stop, our constant stream of self-defining thoughts have nowhere to go. In that moment there is space, the peace of knowing you do not need the answer. You don’t know, and that’s OK.
It can be a great comfort for people who are suffering an intractable problem or serious illness to finally put down the burden that they should know how to fix it or how to heal themselves. In the end you simply don’t know the purpose of your condition or what it means, and perhaps there is no meaning other than that it has brought you to the place of silence, of not knowing. You don’t know what death is, either, and if you’re honest, you don’t know what life is. Do whatever you can to know, but if the question evades your best efforts, perhaps it’s one of those questions … the questions that open up into Being itself. Sit with it, be with it, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is it.
