Byron Katie

I originally posted this on my old myspace blog, but I have re-posted it here on the off-chance it might be of help or inspiration to others.

THE WORK OF BYRON KATIE

I'd like to talk about a woman named Byron Katie, an incredibly inspiring woman who has achieved a remarkable degree of 'enlightenment' and a total peace and oneness with life. More than that, I want to share a simple process she calls 'the work', a process that has helped me immeasurably. Whereas once I used to suffer depression at various times in my life, I now find that depression is pretty much impossible. And although challenges and stressful things continue to happen in my life (for such is the very nature of life), I find that things simply don't 'get to me' like they used to. I don't get hooked and pulled in by them nearly so often and even when I do, I usually manage to re-align myself pretty quickly. The key thing I learned from Katie was to question my thoughts. The core of her teaching is that when you unconsciously believe every thought that passes through your mind (especially the negative ones!) you suffer. When you learn to look at them objectively and question them, you're no longer at the mercy of them. You are at peace with what is. Katie's process of 'enquiry' is an incredible tool that anyone can use and which cuts through suffering like a sharpened blade...

It's helpful to consider Katie's own story. As her website explains:

Byron Katie became severely depressed in her early thirties. For almost a decade she spiraled down into depression, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom.

Then one morning in February 1986, she experienced a life-changing realization. There are various names for an experience like this. Katie calls it "waking up to reality."

In that instant of no-time, she says,

"I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always."

She realised that what had been causing her depression was not the world around her, but the beliefs she'd had about the world. Instead of hopelessly trying to change the world to match her thoughts about how it should be, she could question these thoughts and, by meeting reality as it is, experience unimaginable freedom and joy. As a result, a bedridden, suicidal woman was instantly filled with love for everything life brings.

The essence of Byron Katie's teaching is that suffering is the result of waging our own little war with reality. Not only is it a war that we'll never win, but it's one that will inevitably cause us suffering. "Any thought that causes stress is an argument with reality. All such thoughts are variations of a theme: 'Things should be different than they are.' 'I want...', 'I need...', 'he should...', 'she shouldn't...' It always hurts when you argue with what is.'

You stop arguing with reality by using a process of self enquiry called 'the Work', in which you identify any thought or belief that is causing you pain or suffering, and use four questions to examine it. Whenever you feel upset about anything, you can ask yourself 'what would I have to believe in order to be upset about this?' Ultimately we confuse our thoughts and beliefs and interpretation of reality as being reality itself. Believing that we know best, that are supreme arbitors of what 'should' and 'shouldn't be' is the ultimate delusion and it's a recipe for a life-long dose of suffering, because we suffer each time life doesn't match up to our mentally-fabricated story of how it should be.

"As you inquire into your own thoughts, you discover how attachment to a belief or story causes suffering. The mind's natural condition is peace. Then a thought enters, you believe it, and the peace seems to disappear. You notice the feeling of stress in the moment, and the feeling lets you know that you are opposing what is by believing the thought; it tells you that you are at war with reality. When you question the thought behind the feeling and realise it isn't trye, you become present outside your story. Then the story falls away in the light of awareness and only awareness of what really is remains. peace is who you are without a story, until the next stressful story appears. Eventually, inquiry becomes alive in you as the natural, wordless response of awareness to the thoughts that arise."

It's not about ridding your mind of thoughts; that would be like emptying the sea of water. It's simply about being aware which thoughts work for you and which don't. If a thought brings peace, it's working for you. If it doesn't, identify it and question it.

The Work involves taking a stressful thought and applying four questions and a turnaround. This is best done in writing rather than in your head (because as you know it's easy to go around in circles in your head, but on paper everything is given concrete clarity).

Stressful thoughts might include: 'he shouldn't have spoken to me like that', 'this shouldn't be happening,' 'I'm so useless,' 'I'm too fat,' 'my mother never loved me,' 'my sister should be more supportive,' 'I should have a better job by now.' You might already have a truckload of justifications to support each one, but let go of all your stories. You have to have an open mind to do this and you have to want to know the truth more than you want to keep holding onto your story. Hold the thought or belief and ask yourself:

1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know it's true?

3. How do I react and feel when I believe that thought?

4. Who would I be without that thought?

You can then turn the original thought around; for instance, try on the exact opposite and see if you can come up with at least 3 reasons as to how this new thought might be as true as or truer than the original.

It's amazing how you can simply transform even deeply-entrenched thoughts and beliefs that you might have been holding for years. Holding them up to the light of truth you might immediately see how thoughts like 'nobody likes me' are ridiculous generalisations and yet you've believed them for years. Then there's the realisation that if we are really honest, we see that there are very, very few things we can be absolutely certain about in life...

When we realise that holding onto a thought that we probably don't even know is true causes suffering and letting go of it enbales peace and freedom, we can go onto the turnaround, in which we identify the opposite of your original thought and find at least 3 ways in which the opposite is truer or just as true than the original statement.

The process is elaborated more fully on Byron Katie's website (www.thework.com) and in her books 'Loving what is,' 'I Need Your Love, is that true?' (an excellent and ground-breaking look at relationships) and 'A Thousand Names for Joy'. The latter is the first book I read of hers and is an extraordinary portrait of a woman who lives at total peace with life. It's not as though she has had an easy ride either; she has suffered from Fuch's dystrophy, a corneal disease that rendered her intermitantly blind and in constant pain. The way she dealt with that was a total revelation to me. Inspiring isn't the word.

I hope that this has given people some food for thought. I really recommend that anyone uses the four question process anytime you are dealing with difficulty in life. I have found it incredible. When feeling very ill and down about it, I realised that the thoughts 'I shouldn't be ill' and 'this shouldn't be happening' were causing more suffering than the actual illness. I questioned them and let them go and felt a peace in spite of the physical symptoms. It didn't mean I didn't want to get better (don't confuse acceptance with apathy and giving up), because I still did everything I could to get better, it just meant I was at peace with what is - and that sense of peace surely did more to help my immune system than all the stress and frustration.

In closing, here are some quotes by Katie which I love:

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

The mind's job is to validate what it thinks.

There is nothing that isn't true if you believe it; and nothing is true, believe it or not.

When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

I realised that it's insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!

Peace is our natural condition. Only by believing an untrue thought is it possible to move from peace into emotions like sadness and anger. Without the pull of beliefs, the mind stays serenely in itself and is available for whatever comes along.

Who would you be in people's presence without, for example, the story that anyone should care about you, ever? You would be love itself. When you believe the myth that people should care, you're too needy to care about people or about yourself. The experience of love can't come from anyone else; it can only come from inside you.

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God's. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself," I am in your business. When I'm worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God's business. If I am mentally in your business or in God's business, the effect is separation.

Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage.

No one has ever known the answer to why? The only true answer is because. Why do the stars shine? Because they do. Why is the glass sitting on the table? Because it is. That's it. In reality, there is no why. It's hopeless to ask; the question can't go anywhere--haven't you noticed? There is no ultimate answer to anything. There's nothing to know, and no one who wants to know. Just have fun with the asking, because there are trillions of answers, as many as the stars in the sky, and not one of them is true. Enjoy the stars, but don't think that there's anything behind them. And ultimately, do you even care about an answer?

Awakening

The following is a 10 minute excerpt from an interview with Adyashanti, a spiritual teacher from a zen/advaita background, conducted as part of a podcast (the full podcast is available for free on iTunes, under 'Conversations with the masters'). I put it onto youtube and now post it here because it had a profound effect on me. It really sparked something within me and, funnily enough, rather than 'adding' anything to me, it felt more like a subtraction, or a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders, or a massive screen of illusion suddenly dissipating. The point that 'enlightenment' is simply seeing the world as it is, rather than what we think it is, is almost ridiculously simple....and yet it is THE KEY to awakened living, to achieving inner peace and to actually being free from the perpetual pull of ego.

Adyashanti is a gifted teacher with an uncanny knack of cutting to the very heart of what all spiritual teaching attempts to point us to. No dogma, no mysticism or storytelling, just powerful pointers to truth. It really is time for us all to wake up. 'Step it up, step it up, step it up' is the mantra I keep hearing in my head. We've been asleep for so long - and the world has suffered so greatly due to our unconscious actions. We all have to awaken now. Maybe this short clip will help. It certainly helped me.

Advice to myself

Well, there's been no writing happening this week - and very little else, due to a nasty flu virus which has wiped me out. But I'm feeling more human now. And anyway, here's a question I was posed and I posted my response on a forum and I just wanted to copy and paste it here, simply because I liked what I had to say! Try it yourself. You might find it enlightening and inspiring.

The question is: if you could go back in time to when you first arrived on the planet and could give yourself a pep talk, what would you say?? (This is assuming, of course, that the baby 'you' could understand what you were saying!)

Well, upon some reflection, this is what I had to tell my younger self:

Welcome to life, buddy. It's not what you're used to - but it is what it is. It sometimes hurts, but again that's just the way it is. Try not to lose the innocence and openness you came in with, and when the mind starts to develop, just keep an eye on it. It, and its subsidiary, the 'ego' will want to take over the show. It will be desperate to impose its vision of what reality 'should' be and it will cause to to suffer greatly when its efforts are thwarted (and oftentimes even when it succeeds). You are not your thoughts and the world/others/life are not what you 'think' they are. Thought cannot ever encapsulate truth, so just remember to use the mind as the tool it is without being used BY it and thus becoming a tool yourself.

Let life unfold around you and enjoy it, without the need to overly control it. By all means change what you want, but don't base your happiness solely upon achieving those changes. Let go more and don't labour under the delusion that you have to work everything out with your head, that you have to judge, label, compartmentalise everything, including yourself and others.

'End the struggle and dance with life'...

Other people will often behave like jerks, but this is no reflection on you (or even, at a deeper level, them - at least not who they truly are. It's just unconscious, conditioned behaviour). So don't take it personally. It's never personal. You will be prone to chronic self doubt, but learn to see through it and follow your heart anyway.

Try to see the good in everyone, no matter how deeply it's buried.

Try to see the good in every situation, cos it's always there.

Try to fear and stress less and laugh and love more.

Try to let go of the past and future (they don't really exist, anyways) and stay fully anchored in the present moment.

Don't be blind to the beauty around you. Listen to great music (there's a fab music project named 'Enigma' that you might want to check out).

Make whatever kind of art and tell whatever stories you want to without any care to what the world might make of it. 'The world' doesn't know half as much as it would have you believe.

Don't eat yellow snow.

Creative unfolding

(One of my new digital art series, the theme being the formless behind the form)

The blogging has slipped a bit to the wayside. But that’s not really a bad thing actually, as I’ve been channelling my creative energies elsewhere. So sometimes no news is good news...and radio silence might simply mean that I’m engaged in some other project. I had the idea of taking some photographs of various flowers and plants in the garden - which is absolutely beautiful right now, and which I’m really enjoying spending time in - and to combine them with fractal images that I have digitally created.

The theme of this series is an attempt to capture or indicate the formless behind the form; the creative life energy which is responsible for the growth and flourishing of all forms of life. I’ve often stopped and wondered what it is that makes the flowers grow, the waters flow, and what it is that even makes my hair or fingernails grow. To me, this ‘life energy’ is what some have termed ‘God’, a term which I copiously dislike due to the endless abuse this term has suffered at the hands of limited minds and distorted understandings. This creative life energy isn’t to be personified as some belligerent old git sitting on a throne amid the clouds casting judgements and behaving like some vindictive old alcoholic...no, it is the ever-present force within and around everything, the creative force that unfolds the universe, keeps the planets in orbit, the seas flowing, and every cell of our bodies in perfect functioning. It is the Tao.......and I’ve long wanted to somehow capture this formless essence that interpenetrates and animates all matter. It fascinates and compels me, this in-dwelling creative force. Without some kind of animating spirit, nothing in this universe would have cohesion...

I’ve been greatly enjoying creating this series and I have, for the most part, managed to jettison that critical faculty which previously ran rampant and so often blocked me before I’d even begun (the whole “this isn’t good enough, no one’s gonna want to see this, you’re really not talented enough to do stuff like this”). I’m just having fun and doing it because I feel the urge and inspiration to do it. And I intend to bring this attitude to all future creative endeavours, including my next book which I feel I am going to start writing very soon - maybe even next week.

I’m no longer doing it for some end result; the be published or sold, or to receive praise or adulation. I’m just doing it for the sheer enjoyment of it, and because I feel a strong urge within me to do it - a deep, creative impulse which I know won’t go away and won’t permit me rest until I act upon it and create what it is I feel I must create. Ironically this book is maybe a little more immediately ‘accessible’ than my last, it might be a bit easier to sell as it’s a more straightforward story...but that wasn’t my intention at all. The story, the characters and the entire world and its history and conflicts pretty much came to me, fully formed. I didn’t so much have to create this book or its plot, as simply still my mind and be open to what images and concepts were coming to me. I’ve never experienced a creative unfolding as ‘easy’ as this...and hopefully the book itself will be easy and fun to write and not the all-but crucifixion that my first book was to write. The actual theme of this work didn’t come to me till a bit later - the notion of triangulation, something I won’t go into here - but now I know why I have to write this book, and why it has something important to say instead of simply being another fantasy book written for the sake of being written (or being sold).

I certainly haven’t given up on getting my first book published, and will continue to cast out feelers as I set to writing this other book, but I’m no longer as attached to the outcome. Either it gets published or it doesn’t - if it’s meant to be out there, somehow or other it will be. After I finished my first book it was perhaps akin to having had a hard labour, and it took so long and so much energy and love - and life - out of me that I didn’t think I could ever do it again. I’d written what I wanted to write, said what I wanted to say, and I felt I could die happily knowing that I’d created something special that had been within me for most my life. I really had no interest in writing anything else, and didn’t even think I had it in me to go through the whole process again. ‘The Key of Alanar’ was not an easy book to write, and I constantly had to battle my own chronic self-doubt, fear and lack of belief in myself. The struggle of darkness and light that my central character experienced almost mirrored my own struggles. Which maybe was necessary to make the book feel authentic. So, it’s nice and amazing that I have a new baby waiting to be delivered into the world. Hopefully this time the birth will be an easier one...although sometimes, I’ve learned, a little pain is necessary to a writer’s work. If we all lived ultra-easy, pain-free lives we’d probably all be hollow, shallow people and for an artist that’s tantamount to death...although some artists don’t know that. There’s enough hollow, shallow art out there.

Anyway, enough ramblings. It may be a slow process writing the new book. My energy levels dip very rapidly, in fact I’m tiring just having writing this blog. But if I can get a small amount written each day, the momentum will be built. Prior to starting the project I have immersed myself in some great literature, including works of Albert Camus and Herman Hesse, simply to ignite a certain spark within me. I’ve also been reading a brilliant book which is essential reading to every writer: ‘Becoming a Writer’ by Dorothea Brand, a classic guidebook originally written in the 1930s and one that has inspired writers for generations.

The next step is actually to create complete space for a few days and read absolutely nothing and spend much time immersed in stillness and silence. Then we’ll see how it goes as I put pen to paper and allow the words to come.

I doubt I’ll have much energy left over for blogging, but I may surprise myself. I will definitely write small check-ins and continue to share my own particular musings and perspectives on this remarkable thing we call ‘life’. I will also perhaps transfer some of my favourite old postings from my previous myspace blog which I want to preserve after I delete my myspace account, which I never use anymore. So I’ll still be here, in some capacity. In the meantime here are a couple more of my digital images...

There are no random events

Everything that has ever happened in the entire history of the universe has brought me to exactly this point, right here, right now, in this room, on this day, typing these words. There are no random events - everything is a result of countless billions of causes, interrelated, interlinked, operating together like the cogs in some kind of giant timepiece.

There’s a cobweb on the light above my bed and I realise that this is no random occurence either; a million different causes, different actions and interactions was necessary for precisely that cobweb to be here on precisely that light in precisely this house, in precisely this moment. The interrelated web of causes included this house being built, and all the countless people involved in that process; those that bought the land, constructed the materials and assembled them, fitted the furnishings, manufactured the actual light - and by extension, everyone that has ever been involved in the lives of the people that did these things: their families and the countless generations that led them to be there precisely where they were at the time of doing what they were doing, all the innumerable people that supported their lives, including the people that built their homes and were responsible for producing food and the basic necessities of life in order to sustain them, in order that they might live to one day assemble the house in which I live and the light at which I’m looking.

What is inescapable is that all our lives are inextricably interlinked with the lives of thousands - millions - of other people. Every action and reaction and cause and effect was necessary for anything and everything that you care to look at to be as it is, now. Every cause and effect that has ever been set in motion led that particular spider to be in my room when it was and to set up home above my light. Every cause and effect that has ever been has led me to be living in this house, as I am, and to notice that spiderweb.

This massive interrelation underscores the spiritual notion of oneness being at the very heart of our existence. There are no isolated occurrences, no random events. And moreover, it could be said that:

“There is not a single atom in the universe that’s out of place. How could there possibly be?”

Those words came to me a while back when I was in the midst of a particular turmoil and they hit home which such force and power that they cut through my feelings of resistance and melted my pain like ice in the sun. The mind loves to cut reality into bite-size chunks, to divide the indivisable and compartmentalise, label and pass judgement. But all these notions of ‘this and that’ are ultimately illusory; they are mind-created. They are stories. When everything is seen as it truly is, it is all part of a vastly interconnected tapestry, deftly interwoven and each part inextricably linked the other. There’s ultimately little point in focusing and isolating individual parts of the design and mentally designating ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It’s all part of the tapestry and everything is there, not by chance, but by a series of interrelated causes stretching back to the very origin of the universe.

Everything that has ever happened since the beginning of time was necessary to bring you to this moment now, sitting where you are, reading these words and whatever else you have been doing, thinking, feeling or experiencing. We’re all drifting in this vast ocean of eternity, gently being carried upon a tide of cause and effects, each moment birthing the next by virtue of an unseen multitude of invisible causes. When you observe the infinite interrelatedness of life and get an appreciation for the true profundity of it when mind no longer cuts it down into digestible, seemingly separate chunks, you get a sense of the infinite. It becomes easy to see why Byron Katie declares that, for her, reality (that which IS) is synonymous with ‘God’. You step out of duality and enter a state of oneness in which all is actually quite perfect as it is, even what previously appeared to be unspeakably ‘bad’. It’s all really just part of an unspeakably vast tapestry, dark threads and light, and when viewed from an elevated perspective we become less likely to chop that tapestry up with a pair of rusted scissors, brandishing handfuls of cut cloth in our raging fists and declaring that we KNOW what reality is for us, and what’s ‘good’ and what’s ‘bad’. From such a limited, grasping, delusional perspective we really don’t know anything at all. The mind simply doesn’t have the capacity to understand the totality of life in its true perspective; all it can do is grasp onto its erroneous concepts and judgements and continue to tear things up with those scissors.

Only the heart, or that deeper state of consciousness below and above mind, can ever grasp the expansive perspective of which I suddenly caught the barest glimpse this morning when looking at that cobweb and musing at the fact that everything that has ever happened since the beginning of time was necessary in order for that cobweb to be where it was and for me to be there in order to witness it. When you think of things along those terms....isn’t EVERYTHING pretty darned mind-blowing?

Time

I’ve been thinking about time. Well not so much ‘thinking’ about it as being open to insight...

And I had a flash of insight this morning when I recalled the old saying that we are born anew each day and that, basically, all that gives us a sense of the continuity of ‘time’ are the thoughts and thought patterns in our minds. Without thought there would be no past and no future. Past and future exist as nothing other than thought. All that’s actually ‘real’ is the present....it’s the only reality. It’s all that ever has or ever will exist in terms of time. Nothing ever happened in the ‘past’ (it happened in the present moment; the form of which simply changes). Nothing can ever happen in the ‘future’ (it can only happen in the present moment). Is it the human mind that keeps us locked in a sense of ‘time’ - an illusory sense that is glued together by mere thoughts?

In Eckhart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth’ he makes the point that if you were to visit a world where there were no humans; only animals and trees and could ask them what time it was (and assume that they could answer you!)...they would probably stare at you as if you were mad and answer simply ‘Why, it’s NOW! What other time could it be?’

If ‘time’ is simply a mental construct held together by mere thoughts...why do we cling to it so strongly? Is it because from our past we assemble a sense of identity (which can only be our ego identity, the false self, because the ‘content’ of this self is incidental and interchangable and therefore can’t reflect our TRUE, innate ‘identity’)? And do we need the notion of future simply to project onto it our desire for fulfilment and wholeness (which we mainly tend to seek by acquiring and accumulating ‘things’ and objects)?

Is this inability to be at peace, to appreciate and dwell fully in the present moment because we’re bound by the mental constructions of past and future an inherent human dysfunction?

When I say that past and future don’t really exist obviously I’m not denying the passage of ‘linear time’ as we experience it. Buuut....there is no succession of separate ‘moments’ really; there’s only one infinite present moment without beginning or end, and the form of this moment changes constantly (one moment I’m standing in this room, the next moment I’m moving into another room).

The thing is, we latch onto these changes and make stories of out of them and we cling to those stories and invest them with meaning and emotion and carve an identity out of them, rather than simply letting them go. We carry the ‘past’ with us rather than realising that it’s simply the movement of a dance. Once a particular movement has been performed it’s over; the present moment takes on a new movement. Why keep that movement alive in your mind and miss what's currently going on? And why project yourself into an imagined future to think about what the next movement will be, again missing what's currently happening?

I don’t know if I’ve expressed this with any clarity. But I know what I mean, at least. I remember Byron Katie explaining to Oprah Winfrey how we can deal with the ‘bad’ things that happen to us. I remember her saying that if someone hits you, for example, the good thing is that the moment it happens, it’s OVER. The only way it’s kept alive is if you keep replaying it in your mind and running stories through your mind about it. If you keep replaying it in your mind, then it’s not the other person that's hitting you - it’s you that’s hitting yourself. (This doesn’t obviously mean you ought not take action to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but it does mean that you immediately let it go, because it’s no longer real - it’s just a memory, which means it’s just a thought and nothing more). I found this tremendously liberating and something immediately ‘clicked’ in my mind.

Obviously we can't escape the measurement of time in this world of ours. We still need to operate by the clock in order to function in our society. There's no escaping 'clock time' But perhaps psychologically we can unhook ourselves from it and recognise it simply as a construct. The past is over the moment it happens and so we can just let it go. By all means, deal with whatever issues come up from it in the present, but then let that go as well. Just let go of all your baggage of ‘past’, and equally the baggage of ‘future’. Recognise it all just as thought. It has no inherent existence. All that’s real is this moment, right here, right now. The form of that moment is continually changing. Let's just flow with it and stop creating ‘time’ out of it.....

Waving the white flag of surrender

Been totally exhausted the past couple of days, which I can normally accept in itself but every so often it’s accompanied by terrible feelings of exasperation and hopelessness. And I just feel like GIVING UP.....now, some people might race over and beg me not to jump off the nearest cliff. It’s not quite that kind of giving up. Although the cauldron of emotion that precipitates it is anything but pleasant, it actually feels like quite a liberating kind of ‘giving up’....a surrender to what is. You see, fighting reality as it stands is just too exhausting and painful...especially if you have something like ME. You don’t ‘fight’ it to overcome it. Like I stated in an earlier blog, the tree that fights the wind has its branches cruelly snapped. The tree that surrenders to the wind and just ‘goes with the flow’, survives intact.

Sometimes the world seems like a bleak and lonely place and these past few days I have been confronted with the horrendous suffering that man perpetrates on himself and his fellow species (I’m always getting action alerts to sign certain petitions and support various causes, which I’m delighted to be able to do in order to help in some small manner...although when I’m feeling sensitive and get graphic and descriptive emails about how 36,000 dogs have been brutally beaten to death in China it hits me like a punch in the gut - maybe not everyone would particularly care, but I am an absolute animal lover and sometimes actually prefer them to people). I guess when you’re feeling low physically and emotionally you’re more liable to view everything through a certain screen, and the world can seem rather insurmountably hopeless.

But in order to feel like that I realise I’m attaching to opinions and mental viewpoints that are destructive rather than constructive. The moment I realise that the ‘mental bubble’ is back up and keeping me locked in a certain set of negative thoughts and the corresponding emotional ‘juice’ that keeps them afloat, I can just recognise this mindstuff for what it is - thoughts (in this case storm clouds) drifting across the sky of mind and I can let them go. I can burst the bubble. I do that by GIVING UP. I just....quit.

Quit everything. Surrender everything - all viewpoints, all mental interpretations, all judgements of what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be happening, including all hopes and dreams...they all go into a big bonfire - and free up some inner S P A C E . I then feel that I’m no longer the one in charge - was I ever really? And just who is this “I” that “I” constantly attach to, anyway?? Upon investigation, there IS no “I”...and, mercifully, no “me” equals no struggle. There’s just a surrendering to life, and allowing the tide to pull me out to sea. Whatever the sea is, whatever it will be and wherever it will take me, I just let it be. I let go and I let life be whatever it wants to be. Ultimately anyway it’s aaall the same. No one gets out of this experience we call ‘life’ alive...how deliciously ironic. At least the ego never gets out of it alive...the deeper reality of unconditioned, undifferentiated consciousness, the formless that animates the form, was never fully born into this world and so can never die.

When I reach this state, a feeling of inner spaciousness and release pervades. The body can still be physically exhausted with little energy, but the ego-mind has ditched it’s struggle (why do we all act like petulant toddlers anyway; thinking that our mind tantrums and protestations will actually change life and it it what we think it ‘should’ be?). It is what it is and there’s a feeling of emptiness inside, but a good emptiness. If the body wants to be tired, it can be. The deeper part of that which is ‘I’ (the big Self and not the little ego-self, that is) doesn’t actually mind all that much, I don’t think. It just allows whatever is to be. I once heard this described as the ‘benign indifference of the universe’ and it’s a strangely comforting thing.

today the key is complete surrender to what is. completely letting go. giving up the illusion that reality should be anything than what it is. only mind would suggest otherwise - and my days of being completely entranced by mind and unquestioningly buying into every thought are truly over. what is mind anyway, but ripples on the surface of a pond; mainly conditioned habitual thoughts stemming from unconscious patterning. most thoughts are actually aimless, repetitive and destructive. once you realise that, i think, a portal opens to genuine peace and freedom....even in the midst of turmoil.

"In the darkness, I get closer to the crossing point of life"

The title of this blog is actually a lyric from Enigma’s ‘Le Roi Est Mort VIVE Le Roi!’, which is officially my favourite album of all time. That particular lyric is repeated twice, in two separate songs and for the past few days it’s been repeating in my head over and over again. It’s not the usual case of getting a song you’ve heard on the radio stuck in your head; in this case it’s more like the words mean something to me - although I haven't really been sure WHAT they mean. They somehow feel significant, as though applicable to where I am right now. I don’t even fully know what the phrase “I get closer to the crossing point of life” means; at least not with my rational mind. Intuitively, however, I seem to grasp some deeper meaning to those enigmatic words.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I feel as though I’m at a crossroads in life and I have a big choice to make. My train is coming and it’s absolutely vital that I’m ready to jump aboard; or else I’ll miss it altogether and life will take an altogether different turn. I can’t elaborate on this more fully, it’s almost an intuitive feeling I have and it’s not something that’s isolated to me, I don’t think. I get this feeling that with so many things in life and with so many people, this is make or break time. It’s time for us to really stop what we’re doing and ask ourselves if we’re truly living our lives in a way that’s authentic and aligned to what we know, deep in our hearts to be true.

I can see the many ways in which I’ve not lived authentically until now. The ego loves to direct the show and arrange our priorities. With ego calling the shots, our priorities are roughly as follows: I want to look good, I want others to think I look good, I want others to recognise me and approve of me and validate me, I want to be accepted, I want to be the top of my game, I need my beliefs and opinions to be respected and validated, I need to be right, I need to be in control, I need to be better than (or at least appear to be better than) this person and that person...the list goes on actually. Oh that’s all just so familiar to me (and probably to you as well, if you’re honest. There’s nothing personal in all this - it’s just the way the human ego operates at present). I ran the show from this operating system for a number of years, all the while trying to be THE DUDE (!) - above all, wanting to be cool, wanting everyone to melt in my presence, wanting everyone to see how charming, intelligent and irresistably attractive I was. I don’t suppose there was anything wrong with that - it’s a valid enough choice to have these as your priorities and there is really no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the way you conduct yourself so long as you’re not hurting others.

The thing was, underneath the surface I always knew that I had deeper, truer priorities and ones that were being stifled and suffocated under the ego’s need to be king. Being Mr Popularity was nice, but beneath the surface was a nagging discontent and an aching pain, because I knew that I wasn’t really being authentic to who I am at the deepest level. I wasn’t really being ‘True’. Life circumstances conspired to strip me of the trappings of Mr Popularity, primarily by imposed upon me an illness that left me unable to socialise much and kept me confined to...just myself, a lot of the time. In that space, in which all the old false stuff gradually burned away, I unearthed my true priorities, the things which I know I really have to bring to the surface and actualise if I’m to “catch my train”.

Previously I’d never have shared these aspects of my nature with anyone, perhaps for fear of being ridiculed or shot down, but strangely since turning 30 I’ve become a bit more fearless in my ability to express my deepest nature and most intimate truths (I guess once you pass through the ‘fear’ of passing the 30 barrier you achieve a measure of invincibility! We shall see...). I feel the truest priorities for me include being able to express myself creatively without fear of ridicule or rejection; to be, as Wayne Dyer often puts it, “free of the good opinion of others”. I no longer write or speak what I think others want to hear: I simply express what, in my heart, I know to be true for me. I intend to write books that are fully aligned with my own personal vision without regard to whether or not they might be commercially ‘viable’ or whether other people will 'get' them. Getting published is no longer my primary motivation - being true to my muse is. That might sound like I’m veering toward self indulgence, but I don’t know if it is. Maybe SELF indulgence (and I’m talking the big ‘Self’ with a capital ‘S’, if you get my meaning). But not ‘self’ indulgence (the little self with a small ‘s’): if it were that kind of ‘self indulgence’ I think the primary motivation would again be to get published and have everyone think how brilliant I am - basically, to resurrect Mr Popularity.

But I guess my prime motivation or priority is actually to help other people. I don’t mean that in a noble, heroic kind of way...I just mean it as a matter of fact. I’ve come to realise that the only true fulfilment - and ultimately the highest purpose and potentiality for our being here - is not to GET all we can out of life, but to GIVE all we can to life. In our culture we’re always so focused on what we can ‘get out of life’ that we’re locked into a ‘me, me, me’, ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ mentality that is actually quite distasteful and ultimately extremely self-defeating (after all, the world can NEVER give us all that we seek - it’s simply not the nature of life to be able to do that).

How could I, in all good conscience, live my life from a place of continual self-striving and self-seeking when there is so much suffering in the world (and pretty much all of it needless)? Why should I be totally rooted in acquiring more and more money and things and possessions and ‘prestige’ (all ego-food; superficially tasty, but ultimately hollow and unfulfilling), when people are starving out there, pointless wars are being fought, people are abusing each other, animals and the planet, simply because they’re gripped by unconsciousness and delusion? Imagine getting to the end of your life and realising that while you reached the ‘top of your game’, made heaps of money and had a great house and four holidays a year, you ultimately did NOTHING to make the world in any way a better place? Great legacy, huh?

So where am I going with this? Basically I just feel it’s time for us to examine our truest priorities. So many people around me are living ego-driven lives (each devoting just about all their energy in striving to construct and maintain the perfect Mr or Miss/Mrs Popularity). Realise now just where that will lead you. Ask yourself how you will feel when, at the end of your life, all you have to show for an entire lifetime is a fabricated ego identity which will sooner or later crumbled like dust anyway? How would things have been different if you had lived your TRUE PRIORITIES? And I don’t buy the excuse that you ‘don’t know’ what your true priorities are. They lie deep in your heart, etched into your soul, embedded into every cell of your body - all you have to do is stop the mind and the stream of ego-stuff long enough to LISTEN. You know what’s truly important to you in life - and you KNOW that you know, so please don't kid yourself otherwise. Just get over the fear of what others will think, or how ‘scary’ it will be to chart entirely new terrain (or rather the same terrain, but with an altogether different map). People that are still stuck in their own ego-crap probably will think you’re insane. So what? They can’t have a clear view of who you are until they have a clear view of themselves.

The train is coming......and it will only stop if we’re ready to climb aboard. The destination is the same for all of us, and yet the route is different for each of us: it’s the life we were born to live, the life that’s hard-wired into us, but which has hitherto been subverted by ego. Life is so short - we kid ourselves into thinking otherwise, that death is some ‘far off’ thing - so we only get so many opportunities to embrace the ‘True’ before our tickets become invalid.

I’m about ready to make my choice. When the train comes I’m going to try and jump aboard. All that can stop me are my old habitual conditioned fear patterns and the entire ego-embargo (I want to be liked, admired, validated, damn it!!). I can overcome those by measuring them up against the reward offered by being true to my real priorities in life: BEING FREE. FULFILLED. AT PEACE.

So I urge you, as I'm urging myself, to ditch the false, and align with the True aspects of yourself. Remember Pema Chodron’s powerful question: “Knowing that death is a certainty and that time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?” Be clear on that and be willing to act upon it, rearranging your life to appropriately honour these new priorities. That is “the crossing point of life”...

Waking up, laggers...and fascists

Following last week's elections, I was alarmed to hear that the BNP (British National Party - or the British Nazi Party as it might as well be named) has achieved it’s highest polling yet and that it now has two seats in the European Parliament. It really sadden me that this racist, homophobic, extremist right-wing party gets ANY voters at all - much less enough to secure two seats in the European Parliament (what a shocking way to have our country represented in Europe). There will always be an element in society that is deeply entrenched in ego toxicity and feels the need to bolster their own sense of identity by savaging others; in the past it’s been easy to dismiss BNP voters as hateful thugs, but the sharp upturn in the number of people voting for this party makes for unpleasant analysis.

‘Your primary purpose in life is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet - because it is the purpose of humanity’ writes Eckhart Tolle.

By awakening he basically means recognising that this ego-identity, the ‘false self’ comprised of accumulated thoughts, beliefs, preferences and other such mental activity is in fact a phantom self; that who we truly are is above and beyond the movements of thought across the sky-like essence of mind and that we are, in essence, ONE. Einstein grasped this fundamental spiritual truth when he declared that the notion of being a separate entity existing independently in time and space is but an ‘optical delusion of consciousness’. This spiritual awakening takes place gradually - oh so gradually - but can be quickened by spiritual teachings that are sufficiently ‘clear’ and devoid of dogma and the hollow ‘stuck on the surface level’ mentality that characterises the input of many religions. Yet, everyone is equally open to this ‘waking up’ from the illusion of self and the mass hypnosis of 'what is' that's being thrown at us by a world that’s buried beneath the spell of hollow materialistic maya. It can happen to anyone regardless of their religious persuasion or if they have none at all.

Many believe that this ‘waking up’ from the spell of mind and this reverence of an illusory sense of self is, in fact, an evolutionary break-through...and one that is necessary if our species is to continue without absolutely obliterating itself and the planet it lives on. When you no longer believe the content of your mind and unconsiously have the need to defend this ego-identity you mistake for ‘you’, there is no need for conflict, for making others your ‘enemy’, for oppressing and harming others in thought, word or deed.

More and more people are waking up, I believe. Slowly, sporadically, perhaps, but the proliferation of teachers whose words simply and unobtrusively point to awakening is encouraging. More and more people are recognising that this gnawing unrest and achingly persistent lack of fulfilment at the core of their beings can’t be allayed by simply buying more and more ‘things’ or trying to use drugs, alcohol, TV or other weapons of mass distraction (WMD) to patch over the cracks. What they are really seeking is a way out of this mind-creating hell known as ‘ego’ and the accompanying need to build, fortify and defend this illusory construction for dear life. It’s the only true freedom in life....the ability to stop believing your own mental stories; the stories that you erroneously confuse with being 'reality'. It’s the only way to peace.

Yet, it seems that although a growing number of people are recognising that it’s time to wake up - and indeed, this planet can’t endure much longer without the sorry nightmare ending - there are a growing number of people in whom the ego is solidifying its hold. They clutch ever more tightly to their beliefs and stories, to ‘who’ they think they are and ‘who’ they think others are and their need to be right by making others wrong. This can be seen in the people supporting extremist organisations such as the BNP...people who need to bolster their own identity and ‘rightness’ by oppressing and trying to expel others. How else do we construct and maintain a facade of ‘self’ than by determining it in relation to ‘others’?

This is the old way, though. Although the increased support for elements such as the BNP shows that many people are actually falling deeper into the dream - and an unpleasant one at that, one in which we must persecute others in order to make ourselves ‘right’ - I still believe that there is an almost 'evolutionary' trend away from this kind of deeply dysfunctional mentality. The backlash against these hate-filled extremist ideologies is pronounced and the majority of people are rightly disgusted by the BNP and its exclusivist policies. Poll after poll seems to indicate that the majority of people are in fact becoming more tolerant and accepting of others. It's impossible to overlook the significance of a black man now being President of the USA, when just a few decades earlier black people were utterly - and legally - second class citizens. The USA certainly has many other social issues and prejudices, notably the whole proposition 8 thing, but even then, opinion polls show that at a rate of about 2% a year, the American public is becoming more supportive of gay civil rights, such as the right to have relationships legally recognised. Again, if we are to move forward we can no longer single out any group of people as being 'less than' or deserving of societal or even legalised oppression.

This is, after all, one world.....and nature demonstrates that diversity IS life. Strip away that diversity, convince yourself that one element is 'better' than another, and eventually things break down and the balance is destroyed. Life turns on itself like a cancer. Because within that diversity is ONE BEING, interconnected, interrelated in the same way that every fish in the ocean is interrelated by that ocean. The sooner people start to ‘get’ that the better.

So how do you reconcile the people that are intolerant of others and hateful and extremist in their outlook? Is that just part of this diversity?? You certainly can’t ‘fight’ such people. Maybe they just have to be accepted as part of that whole? As a staunch opposer of oppression in all its forms, I often muse about whether being intolerant of intolerance is an act of intolerance in itself? I have never yet reached a satisfactory answer to that....I only know that all action must originate in HEART and not mind. My heart was bruised by this increased support for what is essentially a fascist party, so i had to speak these words and share my thoughts on the subject. The way forward is to ‘wake up’ to reality and burst the mind-bubble that keeps the majority of us prisoner to a fabricated, and often warped, version of reality. There will always be laggers, which is fine. Just so long as these laggers don't get out of control as in the cancer analogy. It's always a sad possibility...

White Space

At the moment I don’t really have many words to share - I don’t really know why. Every so often I just enter a more reflective, introspective phase and the thought of blogging turns me off a bit. Even though there are still a great many things I’d like to say, I just don’t feel like saying them at this time. It’s at times like these that i like to withdraw into what i call ‘white space’...where i can be alone with my thoughts and, indeed, my lack of thoughts - or more specifically that still, blissfully peaceful s p a c e between the thoughts and waves of mind which is accessible through meditation. That space is the zone of all possibilities, the region where creative sparks are born. It’s probably no surprise that during such times, when I feel my energies withdrawing from outer to inner, that i become infused with creative ideas. It’s not really a time for actually bringing those creative ideas to fruition or working on them, more for being open to receiving them and letting them form and gestate.

For instance, the other day I could feel ‘something’ inside of me that needed to be expressed - something insistent and solid, ripe like fruit ready to drop from the wine. I needed to be able to ‘catch it’ as it fell. Ideas for my next novel had already been circulating through my mind, but now they’d reached a kind of fruition and they were ready to ‘drop’! I sat down and transcribed the entire outline for the novel from beginning to end. I say ‘transcribed’ because it was almost like the novel was already fully formed in my mind and i was just jotting down what i was ‘seeing’ as the plot unfolded. I didn’t struggle with it or try to force it, I just let it flow. When I got ‘stuck’ or lost the flow, I left it and came back to it a bit later and just let it begin streaming through my mind again. I now have a very workable plot filled with intrigue, drama, action and tension - and a set of characters that interest and excite me. They just seemed to jump out of my mind and onto the page more or less fully formed. I’m delighted to ‘meet them’ and look forward to getting to know them better as I write them.

The main character, after whom the novel is provisionally titled, is called Eladria. She’s been in the back of my mind for some time now and it’s around her that the entire novel seemed to fashion itself. She’s a very fiery, headstrong, dynamic character, filled with energy, aggression and frustration. She hasn’t yet opened her heart and lacks the energy of compassion - that quality which makes an ordinary person a great person. But she will grow and acquire much in the tumultuous path she takes in the book. I’m actually looking forward to getting started writing. I’ve really missed writing fiction.

I really relate to what Madonna said when asked why she continues creating music and performing - her answer was that if she didn’t, a part of her would die. And I feel that about writing. If I stopped now and let these ideas just drift by, a little part of me would die.

Huh, after convincing myself that I had nothing to write in my blog, I go and surprise myself. Anyway, there will be no more writing - or much anything else - for me today, as I have a nasty cold or minor fluish thing and am sniffly with a sore throat and extremely tiiired. Gonna rest and relax now. Have an Adyashanti audio series I’m listening to and a stack of DVDs I can chill out to.

Incidentally, after initially taking a hard-line against Twitter (“it’s the work of the devil”, LOL) I finally received one invitation too many and thought I’d check it out. It’s actually quite fun and harmless - though I can see how it might be addictive! That said, I’ll probably tire of it within a month - but if anyone wants to find me I’m ‘lucidexposition’ - I kind of like that username, it’s just about random and off-field enough to be ‘me’.

Funnily the initial reason I took an aversion to twitter is that it basically cements the illusory ‘ego’ self (the “I am this,” “I am that” kind of stuff which ultimately no more encapsulates the reality of ‘us’ than our big toenail). But I guess the way we function in this world is as seemingly individualised units of consciousness. So why not just relax and make it fun? You can still take part in the dream while recognising that it is a dream. But that’s a whole other topic...