Back to you

I have had many teachers in my time. There have been people whose books I have read and reread over periods of years, learning more and more deeply from them as I integrate the teaching.

In the end, though, I come back to myself. There is actually danger in being too indentified with someone else’s message, whoever they may be and whatever they may say.

We each need to live our own truth. So, ultimately, although a teacher may have shown us much of the way for a time, we have to get past that teacher to walk it.

I can feel when something I am learning and loving starts to stretch me away from myself. It starts to feel strained and remote, like there is just so much of it take in.

That’s the time to get back to myself. If the teaching is of value, I will have internalised it. But I needn’t become it.

I need only be me. Coming home to that restores my inner peace. The answers are within and they are simple.

Your being is inherently intelligent.

Expectation

The quickest way to be unhappy, to create inner turmoil and stress, is to live with expectations. They create a split between where you want to be and where you are.

Joy is here and now. Everything we need is in the present. Our true selves are synonymous with presence.

Expectations arise in the mind and stem from a separation from our true nature. The mind is never happy with what is and always wants more, thinking that it will bring fulfilment.

The lack of fulfilment came from leaving the moment and great expectations, although they may give flashes of excitement, bring great discord. The pursuit of meeting them brings great suffering.

I have spend years with a constant, subliminal companion, a sense of tension and anxiety, a fear based subtle anguish. I feel it in my body and just beneath.

It is simply a gap between my true self and my mind, between the now and my expectations. Lately, I have been aware of it and bringing myself back to presence.

I simply let go of expectation and the consciousness, the unconsciousness that comes with it. Here now. Now.

With the release of expectation comes the release of tension and a return to what it's all about.

When you stop squeezing it, the moment opens to fill your life.

Give it up

What do you give up to earn a living? If there is something, it may be well be holding you back.

It’s easy to justify giving up something in exchange for income, it’s still the norm. It’s still the way most people think. In the name of reality, they keep doing it, even defending it.

But is it what you want? Do you want to give up part of your life to support yourself? Does that make any sense? Is it necessary? Is it the best approach in our times? Are you perhaps being nudged to re-evaluate?

Sometimes it’s not the conscious choice to do what you love for a living that leads to change, it’s a creeping up of circumstantial pressure. You keep doing things the old way and they just don’t work anymore.

Business is just not happening. Clients aren’t coming and people aren’t buying. Your strategy isn’t taking hold. The more you work, the less it works.

Then, after resisting to the bitter end, and then some, you start to surrender to new insight. You start to consider... doing what you love! And, because you have nothing left to lose, you take the risk.

And it works!

So, whatever you are giving up to earn a living, give it up. Then you can begin to be yourself.

Trust

One of the fundamentals of life has been taken from us. We can get it back.

Inherent in our oneness with the whole is complete trust. Our separateness is an illusion and we do not really die, so what is there to fear?

That trust has been eroded, though, because our sense of oneness has been severed. We have become identified with the superficial, lost in mind and the ego, which brings with it inherent fear.

Most things around us - the language of the world; egoic relationships; religious, political, social and economic institutions – reinforce a sense of separateness. We are surrounded by constant messages of subconscious threat.

All it takes to re-establish trust, though, is presence. You don’t have to fight or insure or deceive, you just have to be, fully be. Then the illusion of time and separation subside and your spirit steps forward.

Your dominant awareness shifts gently yet powerfully from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’. Your timeless nature takes precedent and worldliness takes it rightful place as a secondary experience.

It becomes fascinating, playful, experientially rich and growth filled. But it is not the dominant you and you are not lost in it. You are in tune with who you really are.

And there, or more precisely, here and now, you are filled again with trust. You begin to see how much subliminal fear you have been carrying around as it subsides.

Beneath the fear there is eternity, holding you eternally in its hands. You are free with no need to worry.

Presence and trust are one and the same. Now, you can truly live.

Perfect sleep

This morning, I am up with the birds... There is nothing like it!

The air is fresh and crisp and I feel vital. I got to bed late last night, after an afternoon and evening of meetings, workshops and networking followed by writing back at my home office. But I woke up at sunrise.

Yesterday it was a rainy morning and I woke up at 9.30am... There is nothing like it!

Apart from sleeping in when everyone else was wishing they could, I got about nine hours of sound sleep, which I needed, and felt superb. You know what it's like when you have an inner reservoir filled with rightful rest?

This morning I feel a little tired still and so I will probably sleep some more today sometime. Often I am up early, do some writing and then go to bed again for a while. Often I have a short sleep in the afternoon.

I have no rules or routines, I flow with my feeling... There is nothing like it!

I almost never use an alarm. I wake up naturally (if the neighbour's dogs are gracious enough to oblige - little bastards) and allow my body to manage itself. I ease into the day because that's what works for me.

I usually lie in for a while, waking up and reflecting meditatively. I often have much to process after my night's sleep, so I do that. Usually I read something spiritual before I get up.

Other people jump up and get going immediately. We are all unique and we each need to do what is right for us. We need to be in tune and to trust our own rhythms and ways.

Listening to our bodies and living in line with our own inner knowing is vital.

There is nothing like it!

Here or going somewhere?

Where are you? Are you in your head or are you in this moment?

You can tell that you are in your head when you are going somewhere. Your thinking is in the future. Your attention is on where you want to be. Your awareness is not here now.

This moment to you is then a means to an end, not the end in itself. Everything you do now is to bring something about, which means you are fighting with the way things are. You are fighting with life.

You cannot be truly alive if this moment is a means to an end. You will be frustrated, irritated. “Come on!” you will be saying to life, “let’s get there.” That is your mind speaking, taking you nowhere.

The mind is never happy where you are. The mind is never where you are and the mind is never happy. The mind always wants more.

Happiness is accepting where you are, accessing your being beyond the mind.

What I do when I find that I have left the moment is I gently bring myself back to it. Like, when I find myself shouting in traffic, I laugh at myself.

I bring myself back to the now and notice all that is happening in it, without judgement. I just look... at the movement of the trees, the richness of the colours, the vastness of the sky. I smell the interior of the car, hear the music playing.

It's like being a child again where everything is psychedelic and wonderful. It's not a big thing, a challenge or a chore, just another gentle reminder to come back to the moment, which steadily opens the present more each time.

Stop right now and look around the room. Just look, like you are doing so for the first time. Look at the stillness with which things are here, notice the movement of others, hear the sounds. Feel the energy of the now.

This moment is all there is and if you are fully present, you merge with life.

Feelings, facts and freedom

We all struggle with feeling caught between knowing that there is a better way and feeling powerless to bring it about.

We all know the feeling of frustration with how the world works and the feeling of anger followed by hopelessness when we try to make change. We know how it feels to be rejected and ostracised by our community when we speak out.

We all know how it feels, bit by bit and day by day, to give up our insight and intelligence and, along with it, our ability to be fully alive.

The fact is that there are subversive forces in society that keep us stupid. They do not serve us as people or as a species and they do not serve the earth or life itself. They are a collective unconsciousness.

One could source them in sinister circles of power hungry people who serve only the ‘elite’ but still they are simply unconsciousness. The solution is not a war on them but a healing of the whole. The healing comes with waking up.

The healing is from seeing the truth as it is. When you do that, you are set free and you can simply change what is not right, what is not working.

When you are upset – feeling angry and powerless and hopeless – you are feeding your enslavement. You are right but you are stuck.

But when you are simply aware and awake, clear with consciousness, the truth can work through you. You are not attached to change so you are not vulnerable to defeat. You are powerful.

You are powerful because you are not you, you are the whole. You have lost your sense of separateness, which is what kept you powerless and caught in pain.

You are one with the facts, with truth, and thus able to stop being stupid. When you get past the feelings, you become intelligence, the force of true freedom.

Being not becoming

There is a simple yet fundamental distinction to make in life that determines how you live. Seeing the distinction leads to a simple choice, made with consciousness.

The distinction is between being and becoming.

We have been sold the lifestyle and mindset of becoming. It seems to make sense – realising your potential, being your best etc. – but it is a big con. It has been sold to us by people wanting to cleverly manipulate and control others for their subversive hunger for power.

The result is collective unconsciousness, subtle slavery and cycles of violence.

If you are into becoming, you are not happy with who and where you are. You are out of touch with yourself and out of the moment. You are lost. And, as such, you are weak and open to the influence of people offering guidance and hope, religious, political or otherwise.

So becoming is part of not being, the root of the current human condition and all the problems in the world. We are looking for ourselves outside somewhere. We are unaware of our inner split.

What we are looking for cannot be found, so we are being sold down the river, with our consent.

We need simply to wake up from the hypnosis being perpetuated by the media and other agents of collective unconsciousness, like schooling and social conditioning. We need to become aware of the mechanisms of becoming.

Then the most profound yet simple insight liberates us: we already are. Whatever we seek is within us. We need not seek it because it is already here. Seeking is lost, being is found.

Find your being. Allow consciousness and presence to take over your life. Let go of becoming in all its forms.

Everything is here and now. You are the truth. Wake up to it.

Being paid for what comes naturally

It’s easy to negotiate for more money when you are trading what you resent doing for getting paid. The difficulty comes when you begin to do what you love for a living.

If you dislike what you do, trading money for it makes sense. This is how most people relate to their income. However, this way everything is upside down.

You approach a promotion like going to war and feel deflated after receiving it because the next one is now a long way off. You get reinforced for being unhappy.

When you shift into doing what comes naturally, your whole world, including your relationship with income, changes. One of the challenges becomes charging for your work.

That’s because you are now charging for who you are. What is that worth? Your personal identity is at stake and your true self cannot be costed.

You can use market-based pricing for similar services as a guide and pitch yourself on the scale relative to others. You can use your experience and brand reputation as benchmarks, or you can develop a value-based measure.

Still, it may not feel right to you. In the last 13 years, I have never felt comforable setting my rates. On the one hand, my work feels priceless. On the other, I’ll happily do it for free.

So I am trying a new arrangement where I only do work that has a heart for me, work that I find intrinsically rewarding and I will leave my other passions for. I invest in relationships and projects without attachment to money and let it fall into place as we go.

It takes some courage and trust. It seems to be taking me and the people I work with into a new place of sincerity and honesty, where we do business in a more conscious way.

Being paid for what you love is an awakening.