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.

The crucial first 6 years of life

And here’s where it gets interesting … because most of these traumas happen to us before the age of 6. Why this age? Well, before this we live mostly in theta and alpha mind rather than the beta mind that is associated with conscious thought. Alpha and theta are slow brainwave functions, exactly what you get when you enter a state of hypnosis. So children, in effect, are in a permanent state of hypnosis – they accept whatever you tell them. If you tell them Father Christmas is real, they believe you. Now this innocence and lack of judgment makes children super quick at learning new things, but it also means that what gets learnt tends to really go deep into the mind. Think of how kids pick up languages so easily – the language becomes part of the deep operating system of the mind. This is all well and good when the learnings are positive – but not so good when the learning is negative.

If a child picks up the message that they are unwanted, unloved, bad, unworthy, clumsy, ugly, stupid or anything else negative, they will make this a part of their identity, and no amount of talk therapy later in life is going to convince them otherwise. This is because talk therapy operates almost exclusively in the conscious mind (beta mind) while the trauma or negative learning was made in alpha or theta. To uncover and resolve that negative learning you need modalities like hypnotherapy or EFT that get below the thinking mind into the subconscious body-mind.

Resolving the issues with EFT and hypnotherapy

These modalities offer the possibility of profound transformation in a very short time because they bypass the thinking, conscious mind and get right down to the level where those pre-conscious memories are stored. Health issues, emotional issues, relationship issues, wealth and abundance issues … all of these can be resolved quickly and painlessly by accessing the subconscious mind.

And for those interested in enlightenment and spiritual growth – deep therapy like this is perfect because it resolves those negative beliefs that separate us from God/Self/All that is. And where do those traumas of separation come from? Try being born! Try going to school for the first time!

PS – we’re not really blaming the parents. You’re off the hook! I just wanted a catchy title for this post

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.

But why does this happen? Are we just weak and lacking in willpower?

The truth is that we are not weak at all – it’s just that we haven’t understood that the bad habit we’re trying to get rid of is performing a vital function in our inner minds. That’s right – the bad habit is trying to do something good for us, so there’s no way the inner mind is just going to let us get rid of it.

If you’ve got a bothersome habit such as smoking, overeating or drinking, sit down and get in touch with what the habit is trying to give you. Here are some common positive intentions of negative habits:

• Comfort
• Stress release
• Privacy
• Reward
• Companionship

Your inner mind is always trying to balance you and counteract any stress that life brings you. Now if the only tool you’ve given it to do this is food or cigarettes or alcohol, you can see what sort of a conflict you will be experiencing.

To set you free of the habit, we need to identify the positive intentions of the habit, and then find other, more healthy, ways to achieve the same effect.

In a state of relaxation such as you might experience in hypnosis or coaching, you will naturally gain access to greater inner resources that will guide you to find acceptable alternatives for relieving stress and gaining reward. Often the alternatives are as simple as taking a breath of fresh air or going for a walk. Other times you might need to make bigger changes. When your inner mind agrees to do these things instead of using food, alcohol or cigarettes, your habit will just fade away and you really will be free.

Russel Brownlee: Expert hypnotherapy and life coaching in Cape Town

Now also offering telephone coaching!

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.

Just for a moment, let’s entertain the notion that we were not actually in control of any of this, and that pain, joy, sadness, and happiness are simply experiences passing through our awareness. When we freeze time and really get into the Now we might observe that trying to stop or control any of these experiences involves an effort of will, and to exercise will we must be in a state of separation. If we eliminate the separation, we observe that these experiences are simply happening by themselves and don’t require our involvement at all. This insight is the basis of mindfulness-based therapy – the idea that it’s enough simply to observe the symptom and the experience without seeking to change it in any way. This profound acceptance brings in a dimension of wholeness to the experience that is itself healing and capable of creating the deep change we seek.

So, if you are having a difficult time with fear, anxiety or any of the other heavy emotions – the first thing to do is to take care of the ‘therapy’ part of it, in other words the practical physical and psychological steps to try and resolve the issue. Then while you are doing this, you can adopt a mindfulness practise to take you into acceptance of the experience as it is.

Mindfulness practice

Here are two simple meditations you can use to transcend any physical or emotional pain.

1. Simple mindfulness

1. Begin by fully accepting the presence of the pain. Don’t try to get rid of it or escape it.
2. Take your mind off the pain and focus on your breathing. Focus very intently on the sensation of the air as it enters and leaves your nostrils. As you do this, your body and mind will begin to calm. You will also begin to notice that there is a ‘you’ that is observing the breath.
3. Now focus this observing self on the physical or emotional pain. Be a pure observer of the sensation of the pain – absolutely without judgment of whether it’s good or bad. Describe the pain – is it heavy, sharp, crushing, black, dull? Become very curious about this sensation. Notice that as you are observing the pain with this curiosity, it’s like there is a space around it. The pain is still there, but there is something calm and unaffected that is observing it.
4. Hold onto this sense of space and acceptance around the pain. Notice that when you can hold the pain as simply a sensation rather than as something bad that shouldn’t be happening, the suffering diminishes.
5. The silence that surrounds the pain is your transcended Self – by focusing on it rather than on the pain you are bringing this dimension of acceptance and healing into your life.

2. The acceptance meditation

In Western healing paradigms, we are taught to avoid the negative and focus on the positive. There is certainly a lot of good sense in this, but taken too far it once again creates a duality between what is approved and what is rejected. The following meditation is from the Buddhist tradition and works at incorporating the pain we wish to disown so that it may be transmuted.

1. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing for a while. Just be the observer of the breath.
2. Now focus on the particular pain you are suffering. Note its texture, the sensation of it.
3. On your next inbreath, imagine you are breathing more of this pain in. This is not inviting more pain, it is getting fully in touch with it. On the outbreath, imagine you are breathing out the pain’s opposite. So if you are in physical pain, imagine breathing in the pain, and then breathe out comfort.
4. Do this for a while, completely immersing yourself in the pain, and then immersing yourself in its opposite. After a while, try extending this to all the people everywhere who suffer the same pain. Breathe it in for all those who suffer, and breathe out comfort to all of them. When you do this, you will truly know you are not alone in your pain.

Both these meditation will bring you the insight that you do not own your suffering. The suffering is within you, but it is not you. Who you are is that aware, unaffected, space that observes the pain. When you know that the suffering does not say anything about who you are but is simply an impersonal force existing within the space of who you are, you will more easily be able to accept it. And as you accept it without judgment, it will be free to release when the time is right.

Summary

There are two aspects of healing:

• Working directly with the symptom or pain (therapy, psychology, medicine – the doing aspect of healing)
• Working with the awareness of the one who suffers (meditation, acceptance, awareness – the being aspect of healing)

Russel Brownlee: Expert hypnotherapy and life coaching in Cape Town.

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.

Difficult emotions

The same goes for feelings. We always try to squash those unpleasant feelings and emotions. But in doing this we are unwittingly reinforcing them – by opposing them we are affirming their reality. Next time difficult feelings arise, just try observing them. Note that when you tune into those feelings of anger or fear or grief, and you simply don’t follow the thoughts that arise with the feelings, the feelings are simply sensations within the body. It’s like you turn down the volume on a television and just watch the images. Now the images have no meaning and they just resolve into a play of light. The same with feelings – when you tune out the noisy thoughts that surround them, all you have is sensation, and this sensation occurs within a space of silence.

For instance, fear might feel like a certain jumpiness and coldness in the solar plexus. There might be a tightness that rises into the chest. And what’s wrong with these sensations? Nothing. They might be uncomfortable, but they are no longer threatening. Fear is quite happy to be fear as long as you don’t interfere with it. It arises and then it moves and then it falls away, and perhaps it rises again. When you do not think about it, where is the problem?

Now in this space of observing you can also become aware of any action you can take to apparently change the situation. Perhaps you can do something about the situation that makes you angry, perhaps not. Either way, when the situation and the emotion arise they are manifestations within the Now and they cannot be changed. Desiring to change something is always after the fact – it is always trying to change something that is already in the past. What happens now cannot be any other way. Wishing it were different is suffering.

A pilgrim sets out for some destination – a shrine, a holy mountain – but that is just the excuse to be on the way. The pilgrim might reach his end goal, perhaps not, but the pilgrimage is fulfilled in each step. A seeker, on the other hand, stakes his life on achieving an outcome, whether it be a manifestation in the physical world or a state of spiritual accomplishment. A seeker will never be at rest, one thing will always lead to another, and nothing will ever be enough.

So if we are going to travel, let’s do so as pilgrims rather than as seekers, knowing this step now is all we have.

___

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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”.

So the Now has become a trap. If you love Eckhart Tolle’s writings, as I do, you might fall head first into that trap, as I have done. We imagine that when we have finally attained the Now, we’ll be in love with everything, nothing will get us down, and we’ll float serenely through our days, just like Eckhart does. What a load of horse manure!

Nothing to attain

Let me share with you another perspective on the so-called Now. When we read Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie we imagine that one day the clarity that they have will come to us, and then we start trying to be in the Now and trying to be present all the time. In short, we try to attain this Now. But to attain something puts it into time, which we don’t have. The Now is right now, this, reading this article, feeling it’s a great story or it’s a load of nonsense. It’s getting up to make tea, it’s feeling tired, it’s feeling angry at your neighbour. Whatever is arising right now, that’s the Now. It’s not one day being able to love everything and walking around in a perpetually blissful state. If you believe that you have fallen into the trap and you’ll feel like your hell just got a lot worse.

It’s always Now

So, to truly be in the Now, give yourself permission to experience the things that arise. Because here’s the thing – you’re always in the Now, whether you know it or not. The Now is now, things happening, feelings arising, “good” things happening, “bad” things happening – and you’re not in control of any of it. Control is a time-based fantasy of a separate ego called “I”.

If you really want to experience heaven, give up the fantasy of control and simply observe what arises. Love yourself even as you’re getting pissed at your colleague or your partner. When that anger or irritation arises – that’s the Now!

Can you love it?

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.

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’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.”

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.