Choices 2 - Little Things

Choices. Little things we can do to become more conscious of our choices.

Early morning, upon awakening:

• We have the choice to be happy to be alive or bothered by some kind of stupid thought. Choose happiness. We’re lucky we’re alive. Breathe fresh air and be thankful for it. Be mindful of the water you use to shower, flush the toilet, wash your face, brush your teeth. Not everyone in the world has access to fresh water like we do in “civilised” modern society.

• See what toiletries you are using. You have bought them for some reason, but whenever you buy, you are making a choice  – Where do they come from? How are they made? Who makes them? What ingredients do they contain? Are you supporting a clean industry? Is it sustainable? Are the workers happy? Every single product you see has hundreds of stories to tell you. Are you aware of the power this gives you?

• See what you drink in the morning? Water? Coffee, tea? Juice? How good are they, really? How are they packaged? What happens to the packaging? Where do they come from? Who made them? More stories, more power to you – more responsibility on your shoulders…
• What transport do you use? How much fuel are you using? Where was your bicycle made? Your car? The train or bus you take? What sights do you see on your way to work? Do you litter, or do you pick up after yourself?

During the morning:

• What work do you do? How do you do it? How do you greet people? How do you relate to your co-workers, if any? What do you talk about? Silly things and gossip? Or deeper things? Is this possible? How to prod people into awakening and enhancing their Consciousness for a better world? Or is someone else going to do it? Who?
• Obviously your smart phone is with you all the time. What do you feed on? Gossip, fake news? “Amens” and prayers? Quotes of the day? Friends and acquaintances? Are you really communicating, or just touching the surface? Everything has its pros and cons… Are you mindful of your choices in communication?
• Do you eat anything? What? Same as above: where does it come from? Is it health-giving? Do you really need it? Have you done any charity for others yet, before you feed yourself? Were the eggs laid by happy hens, or unhappy featherless prisoners in cages? Everything is a choice, but if you are unconscious of the consequences of your choices and actions, does that exempt you from mistreating animals, plants, other humans? Do you care about your choices and actions?
• How many banknotes and coins go to others during the morning? What are you supporting with your purchasing power? You may only vote in elections once every four years, but every cent or Eurocent you spend is a vote for something – what is it?

Lunchtime:

• Same as above: What do you feed on? Where does your food come from? Who grew it? Who processed it? What did they put in it? How did they package it? Are their workers happy? Are they paid properly? Do they have health insurance, social security, or are they in some kind of sweatshop halfway across the globe?
• Same goes for window shopping or buying something in an off-moment. What are you supporting with your purchase? If it’s plastic, it’s made from petroleum? How much oil is left? How much gas is left? Can we continue to use natural resources without concern? Do you care?
• Have you looked up at the sky yet, all morning? The sun should be overhead now. Why not look up and inspect the cloud formations? What if you have a heart attack right now? Are you stuck in your petty thoughts and worries? Or are you alive and enjoying it? It is a marvel of Nature, that you should be alive today, don’t you know that? Can you feel it?

Afternoon:

• What, still worrying about work? Counteract this by contemplating all those who are jobless, unemployed or working as slaves. You can work joyfully. If you don’t like your job, either like it or get out. You only live once.
• There are no “people problems”. Only “issues” to be handled with other people. Don’t use emotions where they are useless. What? Can’t help it? Who told you bad feelings and noxious thoughts are part of life? They’re not. Whoever it was, you tell yourself something positive. It’s your choice always. If you don’t know how, find out!

Evening:

• Haven’t you realised that your “man-made society” is just a sham? A fiction? You may talk about the environment, but have you touched the earth, put your hands in the soil today? Do you know where meat comes from? Fish, vegetables, dairy products? Do you know how the plants and animals live? Who cares for them and how?
• Have you touched real water during the day? Or do you just buy soft drinks? Who makes them? With what? What effect do they have on the body and mind? Do you think soft drinks and other modern-day inventions were around when man became modern man, some 45,000 years ago? Was anything really wrong with drinking fresh water from a stream? We’ve been doing it for thousands of years before the ex-morphine-addict John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola, came along…
• Have you noticed how you breathe all day? Do you realise you do breathe? And that if anyone takes your breath away, somehow, you wouldn’t survive for even 3 minutes? Isn’t it worth paying attention to something that is so vital to life? Or do you only really notice breathing when you smoke? Mmmm….
• Contemplate the invisible things that make you what you are: without gravity, you would float off into space; without space, you wouldn’t have any shape or form; without form, no name; and without name and form, total nothingness… and without any nothing, there couldn’t be a something. If that’s too difficult to grasp, just get entertained – but by whom? And with what? Even a good book is nice in the evening, but does it really make you a better person? More choices, at every step…

Nighttime:

• Have you reviewed your day? Have you been alive, happy, joyful? If not, what’s the point of living? Just to pay sales tax when shopping? Are you alone? Good. Have you made yourself happy? Are you accompanied? Good. Have you made others happy? Still more choices…
• Are you ready to rest, after using up all that solar power all day on making yourself and others happy and peaceful, not sad and angered? The Sun gives us everything – your thoughts are only possible because the world is the way it is and we have a Sun and a picturesque Earth full of marvels to live on. Don’t let any thought concern you that much that you forget your innate joy. 

Have a good night. Be at peace with yourself and the world. And tomorrow maybe there will be no more war.

Garden of Eden Revisited – Choices 1

The apple and the serpent – man’s and woman’s choice, resulting in knowledge of good and evil… Is this something that happened eons ago according to an old book called Genesis? Is it just history or myth? No. It is a living reality. It happens at every single moment, even right now. There is always “the choice”.

If you want to blame it on Eve, and Eve on the serpent, so be it! But as reinvented Adams, we shall place no blame on others. He did and was punished. As students of Self-Awareness, we realise we are talking about the human mind. There is a tendency, based on the underlying assumption that the physical world is all there is to reality, that “I am not to blame” for whatever is out there – it is always others who are to blame. But this is not true. When we see how minds work, because we see our own, we cease to blame others. We only see our choices. And we have a choice at every turn. Of course, if we see it. If we don’t, then we’re just normal and ignorant, like before that smart snake came along to teach us...

Today, in a globalised world, we all have choices and they are clearer than ever, with just a little intelligence and a quick overview of world history. For centuries past, man could gather together in his little tribes and make war upon others for food, riches, land, flags, creeds or ideologies. Mother Nature could hardly care. What of a few screams and some sanguinary splashes here and there? It’s a pity, maybe, but the species is still… viable. Because the Biblical God told them to increase and multiply, and they do that very well!

This was the mindset, even for countries perpetrating revolutions, like America in 1776, France in 1789, Mexico and other Spanish colonies in the 1800s, Russia in 1917 even. But with the Industrial Revolution, and the mass manufacturing of more powerful arms, we had the World Wars of the 20th century with their mass destructions, and small clans became whole countries, blocs and continents. After the splitting of the atom, nuclear weapons and chemical and biological arms began proliferating, and today, Mother Nature really can get worried about her little boys playing with matches… one day someone’s going to get even stupider and strike the wrong match at the wrong time.

In this 21st century, we should now realise that small-scale warfare is wrong, anyway, and dangerous. But if small-scale “undeclared” conflicts (of which there are hundreds at any given time) escalate into threats affecting nations, whole regions, and then continents, and then the entire world, then we’re all in the same boat heading for self-destruction. The governments and politicians we are paying to protect us will actually turn around and kill us – and then they will cry again and set up another United Nations, and see if that one works – if there's anyone left!

That is where the perpetual choice of Eve, and Adam, comes into the equation.

So, the choice is ours, but how do we make it? The only solution is an individual enhancement of human consciousness: I am responsible; it’s me, not others. I work for peace by creating peace in my own mind, first. Then that will affect others. The rest is just illusion and wishful thinking.

For the record, let us state what needs to happen, wishfully, in the “outside” world. We have to:

1) Stop outmoded nation-state hegemony by implementing proper education.

2) Halt the manufacture of arms and destroy current arms stockpiles by obliging democratically-elected officials to do this, and exerting pressure on non-democratically elected officials to follow suit.

3) Grant more powers to the United Nations Assembly to arbitrate and solve conflicts; we should be able to find some intelligence amongst the 193 member nations of the world, and if lacking, we must remove unsuccessful officials, find others who can do the job, and implement proper education.

4) Reject US, British, French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc. armed interventions outside their territories. The representatives of the big warring countries must be re-educated. Single nations can no longer patrol the world, it breeds mistrust and rejection.

5) Call a halt to violent entertainment throughout the printing industry and the media, as this affects immature minds and continues the threat of violence and war amongst the populace, part of the re-education program for a New World.

6) Do away with bad discriminatory education that justifies war crimes and violence as used in the past. It’s over. It’s the past. Today is today, and we must now become non-violent merely to survive.

7) Start proper education of the psyche of all men and women and children, everywhere, to promote enhanced Awareness, inclusive Consciousness. We now live in a globalised world where boundaries and differences must be overcome if we want to survive as a species, and this means working on the mind, and correcting the kind of “normalcy” that breeds warring, violent lunatics, always justified by “circumstances…”, and always blaming others…

This is a multi-generational plan. We have to find a way to implement an intelligent, viable program that spans generations. Short-term elected officials cannot achieve this. Which is why it is illusory, and the start has to be made by each individual mind, wherein the problem actually lies. If I can do it, you can do it, and this – hopefully – will have a domino effect on others…

The choice is mine. Now.

Tomorrow “Choices 2 – Little things you can do”

Am I happy with what I do in life?

“And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.” Mark 5:6-13. Yes, we are many. It is not some kind treatise on demons, pigs or unclean spirits. It’s a psychological fact from normal, present-day human life. It was true in 33 BC. It’s true today.

Look. It’s morning. You (1) wake up and roll over, thinking (2), “oh no, it’s Monday, I don’t want to get up. Just give me a few more minutes till the alarm rings again.” You (3) drift off and have a dream about something crazy happening to you (4). The alarm rings and wakes you (5) again. You (6) curse and say, “oh well, I guess I have to, or else I’ll (7) be late and there’s no one else to get that meeting prepared,” which is what you (8) have to do today, remember? The sunlight is coming through your window and you (9) think “oh, that’s nice, I (10) wish I could be at the beach again today like I (11) was yesterday.” It was nice, especially when you (12) saw those two good-looking girls in bikinis from afar, but, then that guy came back and kept them busy, and you (13) couldn’t make your approach, could you? Your feet come onto the floor, damn (14), where are those slippers? I (15) forgot them last night. Oh well, at least the bathrobe’s here. That stupid bathrobe tie has come out of its loop again! Jesus, I (16) hate Monday mornings! Everyone does, I (17) don’t blame them. It’s a bunch of crap. They should do away with Mondays; five Fridays a week would be better. What? The phone at this time? Didn’t I (18) mute it last night? No, it’s a Whats. I (19) should’ve muted that chat, shouldn’t I? Oh no, I’m (20) supposed to be there already, I (21) forgot we had an early-morning briefing session before the meeting. Why didn’t I (22) remember that? Sh*t! Now trembling, you (23) get to the bathroom, almost slipping at the door, and try to open the shower curtain, but it snags and you (24) curse again, turning on the hot water. Then lifting the toilet cover, you (25) remember  you (26) didn’t flush it last night. That’s funny, I (27) always flush it, guess I’m (28) getting lazy. Oh well, yawning and shaking your thing, you (29) finish, picturing your boss red with anger when she finds out how late you’re (30) going to be. If she could see me (31) now, shaking my dick, wouldn’t that be funny? I’d give her… (32). But wait, the water’s boiling hot already, time for a quick shower and out… Let’s forget the dressing part and the problem with the lift – “too many people in this building, I (33) should move! – Coffee downstairs, that’s the slowest waiter I’ve (34) ever seen, just when I’m (35) in a hurry, damn, and the coffee’s too hot as well. Give it a shot will ya?, what the heck, I (36) must have some chewing gum somewhere so they won’t notice the cognac and a few quick puffs, yeah, I (37) was going to quit, but can’t do it now, can I (38)...? Forget the motorcycle, let’s get a taxi, shit! Three already and all busy. This is ridiculous, I’ll (39) never get there. Why don’t I (40) find a different job? For Chrissakes…”

Just a brief span in the morning and there are already at least 40 “me’s” vying with each other for attention, all taking over the whole body and mind, making it tremble, shake, get tense, stressing it up, fuelling anxiety, all demanding their part in the show. Bitching, complaining, demanding, giving importance to me and mine. All day the “me’s” do this, and it’s a wonder the body and mind don’t go completely berserk. If you ask this Hipster “Where are you now?”, he would give you a funny look and think, “whaddya nuts?” He doesn’t have many moments of actually “being aware” of his thoughts and emotions; they just happen to him and are acted on. There’s no calm observer in the background applying will to a decision. There’s no plan. There’s just a compendium of movements-feelings-thoughts being elicited by occurrences and being played out as if on a stage. Everything’s going on front stage, and there’s no director in the house. There wasn’t even a dress rehearsal.

This is life compartmentalised into tiny sections. Every “me” battling against another. How can someone be happy like this? Or happy with what they do in life? The answer to the question “Are you happy with what you do in life?” can be very tough, or very easy. It depends on your mind-set, and your inner make-up. If something of permanent value has been found in daily life, there may be inner calm, peacefulness and happiness. If there are a just bundle of conflicting thoughts, emotions and behaviour patterns, there can be little happiness – it just comes and goes from outside depending on circumstances. And so life goes on, with a tendency to seek out more pleasures than pains in a losing battle, because in the end, when it comes time to say goodbye, the memory of past pleasure gives us nothing, and the pain of no more pleasure-hunting is the final notice that you’re life has been lived in vain.

“…and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.”

Remember that Jesus was that “manner of man” that even the wind and the sea obeyed him (previous verse Mk 4:41), really meaning that he had conquered the elements of water, earth (and fire and air) within himself. So when the “two thousand” drowned in the sea, it was because the fragmented egoic structure had finally been dipped in the water of truth and had disintegrated. This is what we are urged to do: re-structure our conditioned mental makeup by mastering the elements within us, and finding peace inside once the swine have choked to death. 

Tweaking the System: Slight change, Big difference. A Sensing Exercise.

My information about the “sensing exercise” comes from sources that are “ancient” for me, i.e., going back decades... 

Robert de Ropp explained this exercise in an appendix to his “Master Game”. Ouspensky and de Salzmann mentioned it. J.G. Bennett described this and others, and so have many other people in the Gurdjieff tradition. The Master himself gave an account of it in Chapter 7 of the First Book of “All and Everything”, when Beelzebub was instructing his grandson Hassein on how to prepare himself for the future: “…at your age, it is indispensably necessary that every day, at sunrise, while watching the reflection of its splendour, you bring about a contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your general presence… Try to make this state last and to convince the unconscious parts – as if they were conscious– ”...not to “…hinder your general functioning....”, after which he went on to enumerate the consequences of this.

Now unless you have some kind of guru or teacher, the individual seeker has to look after him or herself, and be reasonable. There are so many “opinions” about one thing and another, relating to eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, waking, believing, thinking and offering yet more opinions, that it behoves the smart student to do all the necessary research, and then forget everything and start afresh. Find out for yourself. We’re supposed to be doing things to make ourselves more conscious, more in the present, more aligned with reality, not more dependent on others. So as long as you don’t jump off a building, or play Russian roulette, or blindly enter a sect, you’ll be fine... Just go your own way and discover. Listen to all, but get real data only from people who are tried and tested Masters, with real knowledge. And even then, test it out for yourself.

My sensing exercise, or “I”-Placement exercise, placing Awareness into 27 parts of the body successively and then bringing awareness of the body in its totality, has served me pretty well until now. It’s 25-28 minutes of pure concentration. It’s a challenge to remain awake. It’s a way to move energies around and experience sometimes powerful results. But it’s just a preparatory job, much like something for a child as “immature” as little Hassein. So, inspired by a new exercise which I have not done yet, but plan to do (the Isha Kriya from Sadhguru, a truly living source of wisdom today, and highly active in social media), I changed one little adjective to an definite article in the mental phrases that I use for my exercise. That means that instead of saying “I am in my right eye”, I made the change to “I am in the right eye”, thereby modifying the whole mindset of “proper English usage” and copying the Spanish, French and Germans and others, who use reflexive pronouns and definite articles with verbs indicating things they do to their bodies. Paraphrasing them, it’s like saying: “washing myself the hands”, “taking off the shoes for myself”, or “combing (for myself) the hair”, which all sound funny in English, but are realities in other languages, in which speakers strangely choose not to identify so much with their body parts and personal items, using “the” most of the time instead of “my”, “your” or “ours”.

This made me laugh a little, and it sounds strange, but it did the necessary trick. Suddenly the exercise became a little more objective. I was not identifying so much with “my” body and “its” parts anymore. It refuelled my attention and awareness. It was like hovering over a meadow like a drone, dropping my awareness into different sections of the field as if I were a farmer sowing seeds, and hoping for a good crop!

So that’s part of the game, master game or otherwise, of making up and modifying your own exercise as you go along, keeping attention riveted and preparing the field of the body for higher experiences, if possible.

Clingers and Hoarders I Have Known

Sadhguru of the Isha Foundation recommends a simple exercise for wellbeing called Isha Kriya. We can all do it, but it’s a great solution for clingers and hoarders as well – people who are blindly identified with their possessions. 

This exercise is a big revolution – or a terrifying revelation if you haven’t pondered on this before. Within the complete exercise there are various stages, but stage 1 is that on the in-breath you repeat to yourself “I am not the body” and on the out-breath – it gets even worse –: “I am not even the mind”. Poor materialists! They are left in the lurch here. Will their personalities or even their humanity be taken away from them if they do this? If they’re not the body or the mind, what’s left?

There’s a lot left, the whole universe in fact, and it’s infinite, so don’t worry. Animals are stuck in their patterns, humans are supposed to be able to grow and move upwards…

Let me just mention two cases of clinging and hoarding. One is a little old lady who, it is said, grew up in the war years (WW2) and is thereby supposedly justified for keeping all her things, however big, small, useful or potentially useful or useless, or because they came from this person or that, and although she normally knows where these things are, she really does have quite a quaint little house all full of objects, tools, heirlooms, papers, clutter, even stacks of scratch paper and Shredded Wheat cards, and of course lots of dirt, grime and filth.

The second example is an elderly gentleman who as a boy collected vinyl records, left them at his mother’s home 45 years ago, went back to visit only once for a few days in all those years, and has never bothered about the records since, but when they were recently cleaned out of the attic and sold to a collector, and he was told about it, he protested effusively from another continent that no one should have interfered with his affairs!

Now compulsive hoarders always have a justification for keeping all those things others “mistakenly” call unneeded. They are very adroit at explaining why such-and-such an object is of great value to them. See the "Batman" parody, below. And egoistic, uncaring persons who cling to things only when they’re gone are also very good at berating others for their insensitivity. But they are not so strange. The fact is that attachment and identification affect all of us – it’s just the degree and the object of attachment that are different.

What we are most attached to is of course our body. Body-love is drummed into us from all sides from the moment our little baby tummies are tickled by kind-hearted relatives. Some people possibly develop body-loathing by themselves later on. Yes, we have to learn how to use the body. Sure, we need to learn motor skills. But when there is no antidote to constant body-identification, we grow up firmly ensconced in our little shells and think that the body is all there is, and, for some reason, it has to be kept young as well when age creeps in. Some people actually progress a little further to think it’s their minds that make them who they are. And reeling its head over both these domains is the grandiose Ego who also thinks he’s the biggest of bosses, and woe unto him who offends that entity, because it will rear its ugly head and smite all and sundry and pummel them down into the dust.

So it’s quite easy to progress from the love of or identification with the physical body, and our attachment to our minds, and extend our boundaries to include our things, our possessions, our little souvenirs of life that no one knows what to do with when we die – unless the chain of identification continues in offspring or relatives. Of course no one would spurn a nice inheritance – especially cash, land and buildings – but what about those old letters, postcards, photos, mementoes and papers that meant so much to one person but fail to attract any interest from descendents?

So, yes, those familiar with Thoreau will side with his “Simplify, simplify”, but it really means that we have to look at things from a new viewpoint.

Growing means accepting life as it is. As life goes on, we should become wiser and wealthier in understanding, not necessarily in possessions. When we die, we leave everything behind – body, mind and possessions. So why live life clinging onto these and hoarding them? What possible good does it do to “us”? Because behind the body, and behind the mind is the “I” that is the Observer, the Consciousness, the small-scale representative of the Creator. That is what we need to promote and nourish and care for, not dust and ashes, not sense perceptions falling onto the field of awareness and being reacted to, not things made of clay, stone, wood, paper and man-made composites, however needed or useful they may be during our lifetime.

Celebrate your Self-Awareness and thank heavens you are not just your body, or your mind. But much more than that if you really want to be. 

Are You in Control?

Dear Mr Concierge, what do you really control in your life?

My concierge said he had a problem... He shares a flat and has been told he has to move out in 2 month’s time because the property is being sold after 17 years of rental. This was a terrible blow to him, and he complained about the injustice of this… He says he needs more time.

Well, whenever something unexpected hits you in life, it’s because you haven’t analysed exactly what you control in your life. But wait, is total control possible? There’s a simple answer: N-O, no. Externals will always get out of hand at some point. But it is a good exercise to put things into focus once in a while. A rough guideline would look like this:

Money:	Job, income, outlays	Is my job secure? I could lose it any time, then I wouldn’t have an income. Am I prepared for this?
Roof:	Housing, property, rent	Do I own my property? Taxes may increase. If I’m renting, contracts can be terminated, so I need to realise that.
Possessions:	Transport, collections, furniture, decoration, personal items	Do I have a vehicle? It may be break down or be damaged at any time, even stolen. Disasters can strike and destroy my possessions. Robbers could break in and steal something, etc.
Food:	Eating and drinking	Do I control the source of my food? Do I know where it comes from, how it’s grown or produced? Is it natural or full of man-made chemicals and preservatives, factory food and fast food? Is this healthy? Am I in control of the water or liquids I drink?
Relationships:	Spouse, family, children, friends	Can I be sure a marriage or relationship will last forever? Do family members create problems for me, or I for them? Are my children growing up properly, and what does that mean? Can I always trust my friends? Will they make me happy at all times? Are they supposed to?
Health:	Sickness, disease and death	Will I succumb to illness at some time? Am I healthy? Will disease strike unexpectedly? Will I even die two minutes from now, I do not know, do I?
Mind:	Thoughts, feelings, impulses...	Can I trust my own mind to work properly and not misguide me? Am I in control of my own mind? Do I control thoughts, feelings, impulses? What about the unconscious and/or subconscious? What about my dreams, hopes and fears? Is my mind even mine? What is my mind composed of? Do I know?

You see, there’s no guarantee from outside sources, from the “externals” in our lives. Anything can change at any time, and the epigrammatic Murphy even made a Law of it. If anything can go wrong, it will (and some add, “and at the worst possible time!”).

So an intelligent human being will never trust only to “externals”, nor will he or she have any expectations that override actual occurrences. A smart person will get to the bottom of the whole equation and realise that it is the MIND that is the problem. We (mis-)“train” our minds (or they have been mis-trained for us due to wrong education) in such a way that all externals, all our sense perceptions of whatever happens out there, simply automatically (and without much intelligence) spark off a reaction in the mindstuff that opposes the reality of any situation that doesn’t coincide with our little wishes, our likes and dislikes or expectations. Our minds are out of control, and therefore any situation can go wrong at any time and make us anxious, stressed-out and miserable.

The solution to this is to “re-train” the mind to see reality as it is. It may be useful to make a chart of your “externals” and see how they might change at any time and so be better prepared for when they do, because they will. But that’s a makeshift plan. The real plan is to work on the mind so that it will not simply react to a changing circumstance and produce anxiety, fear, worry, misery or what have you, but on the contrary simply see the occurrence and find a solution, if there is one, or adapt. Now what do we need for that?

We need a total “mind overhaul”, and for that we have to sit still and look inside where all the action is happening all the time. We may think something is happening “out there in the world” that affects us, but it is not really happening there. It is taking place inside our heads and hearts, because that is where the seat of our experience can be found. We receive impressions and that is what makes up our world, and our world is inside us. So why are we looking around outside for a solution? It’s a neverending mistake to do that.

This has been stated ever since the first smart guy or guru began talking to someone else – many millennia ago. There’s a Mullah Nasrudin story about it, with the Mullah looking for the key to his house out in the garden, having lost it inside, where it was too dark to search, and I’ve also found a French cartoon strip about this adapted for America in 1942. Take a look... and search for some light in the inner darkness.

9 Mind Cleaning Tips...

This is dedicated to "E" and "J".

One. First, it’s a good idea to get familiar with your “personality type”, and one good way to do this is to take the Riso Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator test, available from the Enneagram Institute or downloadable on request from this blog in either Spanish or English. After you do the test and hand in your results, you can have the .pdf version of The Wisdom of the Enneagram (only in Spanish at present).

Your personality type will either confirm what you already know or give you a surprise why you do, say and feel things in your own way. It also helps to explain why other people do the things they do, and what kind of relationships you can have with them. When you see how personalities interact and how others affect you, you are beginning to bring a certain amount of order into your mind. This “liberates” you to a certain extent, because:

1. You no longer expect to receive from others what they cannot give. This includes parents, siblings, friends spouses, lovers and acquaintances.

2. You realise your strengths and weaknesses as regards yourself and others.

3. You begin to free your “you” from the contents of your mind. Personality was formed from your childhood and youth in quite an unconscious way, and you have to bring this into your present consciousness and accept it.

Two. Establish a plan. You’ve read self-help books, psychology or spiritual or transformational material to the bursting point. You’ve gone fishing here and there and found interesting things.

- If you’re the intellectual, ectomorphic or cerebrotonic type, you’ll never stop reading and thinking about things and you’ll get stuck in words only without action. Life isn’t just brains.

- If you’re the physical, mesomorphic or soomatotonic type, you’ll want to do things and you won’t bother studying too much – round yourself out and study as well! Life isn’t just muscle.

- If you’re the fun-loving, feeling, endomorphic, viscerotonic type, you won’t read and you won’t practise much – you’re busy having fun. But life isn’t just socialising and gut!

So consider your type and devise a plan that works for you. Edward Wells’ plan, which is pretty hefty, calls for at least 3 to 4 hours per weekday of “work on the mind and body” (excluding weekends which are for socialising), including rituals, yoga, breathing exercises, yoga exercises, sensing, zikr or prayer, walking with mental practises, meditation and contemplation. You have to make your own plan depending on your time, work, leisure and family. But you can start with much less. Just be creative and keep adjusting. Believe nothing, find out for yourself.

Three. Do it. Implement your plan. Sit down and practise. Don’t just make timetables and then not do it. The reality is in the doing. If you need help, go to four.

Four. Find other people interested in doing the same. Or study material that really helps you look inside yourself. Reading about it is not enough. Stop reading and start doing, and if you have others who are interested, compare notes. Find inspiration. There has to be fuel in the machine to start it and keep it going.

Five. Cultivate the “Witness” or the “Observer”. You should already have realised that “you” are not just your sensations, or your feelings (that’s tough for some!), or not even your thoughts (that’s even tougher!). You may feel like you are being stripped of everything you’ve acquired in life – your likes and dislikes, your opinions and beliefs, your pet peeves and fixed ideas… Sorry, it’s not that they have to go, you just have to realise that you aren’t them, nor are they “You”. There is a “You” standing behind all these workings of the mind which is your Self-Awareness, your Consciousness, your “You” that is able to observe or witness all these operations of the mind – the thoughts, feelings and sensations. Sensations are pretty easy – you have a hunger pang and you can decide whether to eat or not, or what to eat. You’re not going to starve if you don’t eat for an hour or two, right? So a sensation is just a message to your “You”, and “You” are the boss! A feeling, you may think, is much more you – but it ain’t necessarily so, as the song says, because your feeling comes from an initial thought and you have not analysed all your feelings and thoughts yet, so maybe your feeling, especially if it’s a “negative” or “bad” feeling, is just an old habit of thinking along certain lines and generating the corresponding feeling. You need to be free from feelings you don’t choose to have. We are looking for mind cleaning and freedom from the past. Because your thoughts are only generated from past inputs. You can’t logically think something you don’t know. Thought is wonderful, but it’s only “this is this; this is not that”, in computer language 0 or 1. We need to go beyond thought to “What is this?”, “Why is this?”, “How can this be?”. That is a question to the “You”, the “Witness” or the “Observer” that requires mental cleansing and silence for an answer to come. And that answer comes from beyond thought.

Six. Persevere and stick to it. Nothing is going to change in 3 days, 3 weeks or 3 months or a year. We are so steeped in our own mindset, our society, our memories, our habits and our conditioning, that it will take major efforts and a long time to bring about any change. Either you apply steadfastness or you’re dead. You can’t just chop and change and expect immediate results. We’re talking about years and years of non-self-awareness, status quo and unexamined life that cannot be changed until we really want to change it and go all out to realise change. If in doubt, continue. When in doubt, continue. When all seems lost, continue. There’s no other way.

Seven. Look into your mind and see where the things you call “you” really come from. Re-analyse your personality type and go deeper and deeper. Establish order, struggle and do your practises.

Eight. Readjust your plan. After a time, you should feel quite comfortable with your working plan, and you won’t need to struggle with yourself to actually do it. You want to do it. You feel the need to find time to sit and meditate. You actually start enjoying it and needing it. You start having an “inner friend” who’s on your side now. You may miss a day or a session here and there, but you will feel the urge to come back to your practises, and you will want them. You’re moving inward. You’re feeling stronger. Outside, you may even start looking calmer and younger to others, more relaxed, more attractive….!

Nine. Re-assess everything. Your sense of inner calm is much stronger now. You are discovering that “You” are much more than body, feelings and thoughts. You are behind and inside all this; these are all externals of the mind, the content of mind, and “You” can decide, within your limitations, what thoughts, feelings and sensations you will have. You are freer than before. You are at the gates to freedom... You have a long way to go, but this is just the beginning of in inward journey that will only end for this body, as far as we know, when you die. But do not speculate, do not come to conclusions... doubt and you simply can't go wrong.

After this, stop thinking and reading, and start doing!

Edward’s Diary Entry 86: More about empathy: The good, the bad and…

Take a person with a problem and I’m that person’s friend. An empathetic listening session could provide some suggestions. If these are appreciated by this friend, he or she may eventually solve the problem. Empathy has seemingly worked.

You can call it what you want, but why use the term “empathy”? It is simply the use of awareness, interest, attention and a little intelligence and an attempt to gain a clear perception of the reality behind the problem. And this is where the session works both ways: there is a person who benefits from being listened to and understood, and there is the listener who also benefits by being able to practise charity, compassion and learn about how people cope or don’t cope and maybe why they do or don’t. It’s a two-way transaction.

You can describe it as “empathy” if you want, but it’s no mystery, special ability or additional (sixth or seventh) “sense”. It’s just that two people are friends and feel for each other; it could happen with any two human beings… And if it doesn’t, there’s another factor at work: they are not “friends”, they don’t trust each other, or they have prejudices and belong to different “groups” and can’t forget their own little selves for a moment so as to open up to another.

What doesn’t make sense is when “empathy” means simply “sharing the same feeling”, or “experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions”. That may be frequent amongst both the joyful and the moaners, but it can only be good and do good if the emotions are “positive”. If we analyse it, it can’t possibly do much good if the emotions are “negative”. Let’s go back to our “feelings chart" and review the nasty ones, where we can see the following: 

Fear (fright, panic) Despair (disappointed) Impatience Covetousness (envy) Sadness (hurt, sorrow) Boredom Anxiety Annoyance Irritation

Anger (wrath) Frustration Nervousness (worry) Jealousy Disgust Contempt (hate) Hostility (bitterness) Guilt (shame) Pride (vanity)

Say that Mr “A” feels “fear, fright, panic”, so I as Mr Wells empathetically feel the same thing. Is that going to help Mr "A"? Or do we just starting running together?

Or Ms “B” feels “despair”, is disappointed, resentful. She has a grudge against someone. So do I as Mr Wells help her by feeling the same thing?

Adolescent “C” feels impatient, stressed out, fed up with his school life, and I as Mr Wells am doing him a favour by feeling the same thing?

No, in none of these cases does “feeling the same” help the other person. To help the other person, it is not the feeling that has to be the same. There has to be an intelligent application of interest first. There has to be attentive listening, implication, involvement and this only comes with the development and application of “awareness” – of ourselves and of others. Then there can be a meaningful transaction. If not it’s just a moaning and whining session.

If you look at it, people mostly complain about “bad feelings”. Or do they complain about the “good feelings”? No way! So when facing a problem, and being unable to cope with it, they generate bad feelings, and these are simply the result of wrong thinking.

For example, Mr A (Homo sapiens sapiens) feels “panic” when he sees a house mouse (Mus musculus). Well, obviously, since we know that mice cannot and do not lash out at grown men with their fierce claws (1 whole mm long!) and attack them, but rather run away to protect themselves from what they know are dangerous beings – those humans – Mr A has to put his headbrain and nerves into order and stop his cowardly reaction. He will need some time to do this if he has always reacted this way, because it is an ingrained habit. But habits can be changed, it’s just a question of knowing how and doing it.

Ms B goes on and on about how her ex-boyfriend was so stupid and unkind to her, and she carries her grudge around like a crutch and uses it on any occasion when someone mentions boyfriends, lovers, couples…or even when they don't!  She is wallowing in the mud, because if he was that stupid, why was she with him that long? And if he wasn’t, why is she being so cruel to him now? Will she ever get over the past and enjoy the present? Her head needs ordering.

Teenager C says he’s stressed out, but he hasn’t learned yet that he is the cause of his own stress, and that stress-free living is possible. He needs support from a more knowledgeable person, because obviously his parents and teachers aren’t helping him much. His method of thinking needs to be re-ordered.

So, no, so-called empathy is useless when it comes to helping or curing people or making them feel better if their feelings are derived from wrong thinking. Because that is a vicious circle within each person's head. To assuage this and cure it, the subject himself must establish some kind of order in his own mind.

And just tell me: which of the emotions would you rather feel? The nasty ones, as above, or the nice ones, shown here below?

Courage Trust (confidence) Calmness (serenity) Generosity (thankfulness) Delight Joy Excitement Happiness (contentedness) Tenderness (caring) Love

Compassion Satisfaction Interest Pleasure Friendliness Surprise (amazement) Amusement Hope Longing (desire for good)

There is no other way for a feeling to come other than through the mind, because we interpret everything through the mind – be it a bodily sensation, a pain, an ache, or a bursting forth of unexpected joy. So what do we do? First we set the mind in order and think straight. When in fear, apply fearlessness. When in despair, apply purity of mind. When impatient, perseverance. When there is envy, noncovetousness; when sadness comes, invoke joy. When boredom looms, apply excitement. Faced with anxiety, annoyance, irritation, frustration and anger, apply non-violence and compassion. And so on. A feeling comes from a thought. Change thinking and your feelings are healed. How to change thinking? Cultivate Self-Awareness, apply Virtue 7, Studiousness, and then sit still with eyes closed for 15 minutes a day and follow your breathing and you’ll see. It’s that simple.