How is it with you also when you quite sensibly plan something in advance but then there are signals and suggestions – moods, thoughts and circumstances change – that almost imperceptibly suggest that maybe it is no longer the right thing to do?  Can you (1) notice and (2) respond quickly to such internal sensory information?  Do you notice when subtle energies of life mean that perhaps something which once was, is no longer a good idea in the new context?

“What you measure, you can manage.” – Chris Newton

There are at least three ways to measure competency in such things, and therefore at least three areas of focus which can be used to aim for and assess improvement and development of the ability of flexibility of mind;

• How often you notice when circumstances change to require a different approach
• How quickly you notice when things have changed to make a different thing appropriate
• And how well you react and respond to that changing of the mood of things.

So the optimum might be to always notice immediately when things have shifted, and respond fully well, congruently and consciously to the new situation, context or environment’s requirements.  A lofty ambition indeed, but quite possibly worth working towards for a more – or most – effective life.

I recently managed to pick up  a very subtle thought sensation that made me realise that something I had rightly felt was a good thing to discuss with someone was no longer appropriate, and would have been a rather graceless “overkill” of the situation.  In and of itself this is just a small thing, a minor preference or better outcome, but over time, and extrapolated over many incidents and occasions of life, it can be a move towards a much better quality of life, as things flow rather than jolt and displease.

How to develop such things?  As with many things, the twins of Practice and Attention can take us a long way, and certainly give us the start to get going and make all other things possible.  This is simply a sub-set of Self-Mastery, Self-Awareness or being fully luminously conscious.

I wonder if one such incidence or occurrence of this will come up for you this week.

Best wishes and happy conscious living, and good luck on your own journey of self-mastery and self-fulfillment, grounded calmly in the grace of inherent beingness perfection.

Until next time,

James Blacker

Related Pages

• Wisdom The Course Module 18. Sensory Acuity: Your Inner Compass

In any kind of investment situation, whether it be of investing money, or time, or even developing an emotional or psychological strength to live the way you want to, there might have to be a period in which the ‘good things’ in life are foregone, at least for a period of time.  The key is to make sure that your future expectation isn’t an illusion. 

If you are certain that you can attain it, and that the basis of it’s plan is real, then you can more comfortably invest yourself in your own future, whilst at the same time enjoying the journey of the experience.

This is the notion of “Jam tomorrow”. An entrepreneur will happily forego or forsake certain things in the present because they know it makes sense in the long run. They can be without for a while if it is neccessary in order to bring their plans to fruition. Is this something you can do? If not, it might be something you can develop, with wisdom and insight, vision and the inner self-control that comes about from developing self-knowledge.

This is a highly valubale skill, though, and not just some platonically given attribute that everyone has automatically.  The ‘have now’ culture has been a cause of this skill being rather lost, with the consequence that most people shut down their own options available to them because of it.  As a friend of mine pointed out recently, most people don’t have the capacity or the patience to focus on a project that may be many months or even years in the making and reaping of the rewards.

Great Plans and Living in the Moment

Many people who are familiar with the spiritual notion of living in the moment will wonder how it fits in with “Jam tomorrow”.  Well, it fits in perfectly alongside.  Living in the moment and living and working on a long-term project are simply two things that you can do simultaneously.

Living in the moment is about mindfulness.  And conscious living.  But it doesn’t mean living in a way that denies the context of one’s life.  Wisdom is a paradox, a mixture of beingness and becoming-ness, a blend of peace and dynamic activity, and if you can hold both in mind, simultaneously, to get caught up in the passion of your plans for life, without living in the future on “Someday Isle”, then you might be able to benefit from developing the capacity for “Jam tomorrow”.   If you can, then you are merely opening up to your full potential, and allowing no blocks to what you can do with your life.

Best regards and wishes,

James Blacker

Related Internal Links

• Strength for Life: Living in the Moment (audio)
• Wisdom The Course: Module 2. The Person: Liberation and Ego, Heaven and Hell (including ‘Living in the Moment’)

It has been said that to feel the earth under your feet is to reconnect with nature, and is a very soul-replenishing, healthy, positive and rejuvenating experience.

It is certainly natural, and while the right choice for all such things is whether you would really like to or not, it might be the sign of a return to self and a remembering of the basic passions and desires that lie within us to choose to do so; the continued ability to play naturally and find joy effortlessly.

Whether it is the sand of a beach, the grass of a field, or the water and pebbles of a cool stream, to occassionally walk the earth skin on ground with our bare feet is to touch base with the glory of the planet, and of ourselves.

You can't witness The Witness, but you can get a sense of your deeper self by dis-identifying with the things it observes.

We can think of The Witness as or our ever-present sense of self – our very beingness, suchness, or unqualified consciousness; the constant awareness that “I am”, whatever else may be happening. The Witness is just a term, though, just a word.  Some people also call it The Watcher…  Some people in Quantum Physics call it The Observer.  Different spiritual or self-awareness traditions may also call it different things.  That sense of “I am” might be aware of different things in different moments, but whilst what it experiences, and how, may change, the underlying sense of existence or “I am” is always there.

The saying goes that ‘the only constant in life is change’, but this awareness or suchness is also a constant.  So we have two things.  And actually, these two can be equated to what I like to think of as definitions of Absolute Truth and Relative Truth; Absolute Truth as this constant presence of pure consciousness or being-ness, and Relative Truth as the ever-changing world around us; the come and go of events, people, conversations, factors, environments, mood, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and so on. The latter is what we readily refer to or mean by our concept that ‘the only constant is change’. Some people also like to call this ever-changing quality of life as ‘the dance of finite things’, a phrase I, too, like.  And ultimately, we can re-integrate both elements of ourselves, to function effectively, and freely.

I was interested to note in his emailed writing this week, that Peter Ragnar also referred to this only constant as change, yet was also aware of the second constant, by his own name for it, as demonstrated when he wrote…

“I’ve concluded that most people would rather rust or rot than change. Yet few realize that in life, there’s nothing permanent except change. We’re either growing or dying; nothing ever stands still except the still center within us all. Finding that still point allows you to see change as a necessary step of growth.”

What we call The Witness, and what I’ve also known Peter Ragnar to call ‘The Watcher’, he is here referring to an aspect of this as the ’still center’ within us all. This, again, is the essence of wisdom and of wisdom coaching; the awareness that we are not ultimately subjectively the things that dance around us in our awareness; our thoughts, our feelings, our statuses and associations. They can and may come and go as they like – and do. I like the use of different names for this same, ever-present phenomen as I suspect it helps us to get a sense of something that is, by it’s very nature, impossible to pin down.

“You can’t witness The Witness, otherwise what part of you would be witnessing that?!”

So we can now think of life with the mindset that there are two things which are constant; the change that we are by now so familiar with – and we can see how well we can get in touch with what is our own constant essence before any qualifiable content is poured into it. It can’t be witnesssed. You can’t ‘witness The Witness’, because as soon as you say “Ah-hah, that’s it!”, you’re now talking about a relative thing, an object. But we can get a sense of it, and allow that sense to provide us with a ’still center’ of strength to operate ourselves by.

“You kind of have two Selves; an Empirical Self, and a Transcendental Self.”- Ken Wilber

Developing this sense of self that is ultimately dis-identified from final subjective identification with these relative, finite things is the development of wisdom.  They are things we experience, but ultimately not what we are.  The key is not to identify exclusively with this Finite or Empirical Self.

Best wishes ’til next time.

James Blacker

Peter Ragnar – The Watcher

Related Pages

• Ego and The Authentic Self (includes Video of Ken Wilber talking about The Witness)
• Newsletter: Only Two Things in Life Are Constant

Unconditional love. Attachment and fondness or affection are different things entirely.

Have you noticed how love starts as a blossoming flower, fully expressive, radiant and open, and often moves away from that, as expectations replace invitations, creativity dissolves into habit, and fear of loss replaces desire?

Attachment, and Conditional Love, which is really Neediness or fear by a more generous name, are pretty much the same thing, or at least the one causes the other.  In relationship, also, the extent to which we have the one, we exhibit the other.  This is not roughly, this is EXACTLY.  There cannot be any dissociation between the two.  They are totally associated…

Maybe we don’t outwardly express that conditional quality, but if there is Attachment then the Conditional Love is there, internally, working away on ourselves at the very least, gnawing, jarring, and this will also influence how we conduct and approach our relationships – and how we feel about them.

I have recently been discussing how Attachment is a different thing to both fondness, and commitment.  This is an important distinction to make, because we don’t want to become aloof in interpersonal relations as a result of thinking we’re being ’spiritual’ by being cold or withdrawn, because apart from anything else, if we deny these qualities of fondness and desire and commitment, that in itself becomes Resistance – another form of Attachment.

Attachment, and its opposite, Resistance, is any belief or thought process in which we put our sense of self outside of our already liberated nature, and in things.  These things may be people, possessions, protocols, rules or habits, associations, statuses, thoughts, beliefs, our body, or any other things.  To enjoy them may be healthy.  To directly attach to and identify one’s ultimate sense of self with them leads to self-constriction…  and fear.

And with that fear comes self-condition and Conditional Love outwards to others, and in relationships this can be a killer.

So if we can recognise Attachment and Resistance in ourselves in relationship, and we release them and let them go, we shall become naturally and effortlessly unconditional lovers.

Best wishes as always,

James

Related Pages

• Love

Someone has placed a comment on the YouTube site under John’s video clip on Charisma, which explains the act of uncovering one’s natural charismatic self, asking if there is any way you can speed that process up?

Yes, you can. 

I’ll embed the video in question here, but here below that is the answer to the question which I’ve also posted back as a comment reply;

This kind of inner achievement is known as Transformation – we could say from an Ego-nagging mind to a naturally expressing one (Authentic Self).

There’s also what we call Translation – uncovering what we call The Shadow – the bits of our True Personality we suppress – often when we’re young.

Working on all this is known as Transformative Practice – primarily Meditation – which is the only thing proven to date to help people transform (overcome the nagging Ego mind).

Speeding up Transformation. Integral Life Practice was pioneered to give you 'the most bang for your buck'.

…that’s not to say that other things can’t, but that as yet they haven’t been demonstrated to get people up what we call ‘Vertical Stages’ – the ability to take deeper perspectives on one’s own self, and on life.

But to make this as quick as possible, pioneers have designed INTEGRAL Transformative Practice, and now Integral Life Practice, with Mind, Shadow and Body exercises put next to the Spirit (mostly Meditation) element.

Our own colleague, Gary Hawke, also runs the London Group for this Integral Life Practice.

So as this Transformation and Translation is the cornerstone of everything, this is why we’re considerably focussed on developing support areas for this;

http://wholelifewholeworld.com/practice/

AND if you live in London, you can even come along and join us in person…

http://ilp-london.wholelifewholeworld.com/

Regards,

James Blacker

We are in the process of developing a series of support areas for an Integral Life Practice, the first of which, Body, is already live and underway.

If you want to get straight into it as quickly as possible, we recommend the book, ‘Integral Life Practice’.

Related Pages

• John Christian Seminars

Related Links

• ‘Integral Life Practice’, The Book

When I realised also that my emotions often changed with the same kind of frequency, from dull to bright and back again, I realised also that in addition to any exercises I may do to embrace my emotion and get to the bottom of it to find it’s ‘gifts’, I didn’t either need to see the emotions as any kind of permanent negatives in themselves.  Uninspired moments pass.

This is an exercise in observing - seeing the come and go of emotions as passing things.

With the awareness that I had developed of how my – and perhaps everybody’s – emotions come and go, I was able to get into the habit of thinking to myself, “Ok, so I know I’m not feeling too hot now, but because I know how my emotions work I know that in the next chunk of life that arises I will be inspired again, so there’s no permanent bother really because the mood will pass”.

And that’s not to deny the ability that we each have to control, choose, heal or deal with our turbulent emotions, either.  It’s an extra element or string to your bow.  I do indeed assert that we can be the masters of ALL of our emotions, and that we are the manufacturers of them.  Rather, this understanding is a complement to it.  What this is about is an exercise in observing, seeing the come and go of emotions as passing things – things that are not really what we are, but things that we are aware of.  Our Authentic Self is not dependent upon them.

So that’s something to become or practice becoming aware of; the simple coming and going of emotions, arising and falling…  We can observe them as objects, not ultimately what we are at our core, but passing like the weather.

Best wishes and happy and successful emotion mastering!

James Blacker

Related Pages

• Wisdom The Course: Emotional Mastery: Wisdom Opens The Door

The Summer has gone, and for some that can be a big loss.  But unless you intend to chase the sun round the world – a valid option in itself - then learning to live in the moment by enjoying all four of the seasons starts with recognising that we can live more consciously in the current moment by looking for whatever beauty and opportunities are there, and what better way to begin than with the season that is on our doorstep right now.

We hear a lot about living in the moment for personal fulfillment, and it’s a valid point.  Actually, we always do live in the moment – we cannot not.  What we’re talking about when we use this phrase is being conscious to enjoy and be fully consciously present within the moment we’re in, rather than waiting on possible future moments.  And we cannot do that if we are pining for the Summer.

Changing seasons bring opportunities for different things. What do you like most about the Autumn, Winter or Spring?

There was once a professional rugby player called David Campese – unofficially the sport’s first millionaire – who didn’t see the Summer for ten years.  He would follow up a Winter’s season playing in Australia with a Winter’s season playing in Italy.  Not my advice if you really do love the Summer that much that you can’t be without it, and if that’s true then why not try to find some way to do the reverse of what Campese did, living only the Summers…  But you can bet he could only have achieved his success by living and being fully present in each moment.  We talk a lot about living in the moment in our coaching and teaching discussions, about what it means and what it doesn’t mean.

Here’s my colleague, David Heard, and I discussing living in the moment.

• Strength for Life: Living in the Moment

One of the best ways to enjoy the changes of temperature throughout the seasons is to start by building good health and vitality and a healthy diet.  A healthy person copes much more easily with extremes of temperature of both heat and cold, and so developing this is the first thing I sought to do in aiming to enjoy the four seasons as much as I can.  I realised three or four years ago that I wasn’t living in the moment in the colder months for the sake of wishing it was the Summer, and so that had to change.  It’s actually this improved awareness, and the improved quality of life that went with it, that has motivated me to write this article, to share the idea and the thinking, in the hope that you might also see something you want to do differently or think differently, feel differently, for the better.

I’ll leave you with this rather great speech by Eckhart Tolle.

Best wishes,

James

The Art of Presence by Eckhart Tolle

Some quotes from this video;

“Some Egos love to be personally offended when these things happen.” – Eckhart Tolle

…and a great one of relevance to our theme for today;

“…the weather should be warm by now…” !

If people allow themselves to cry if they feel like it this is a strength, rather than a weakness.

It would be anecdotal, and is certainly speculative on my part, but I would guess that the prevalence of diseases such as cancer is slightly higher among those who don’t allow themselves to cry when they feel the need to do so, compared to those who do. Cancer and what else? Depression? Heart disease? Relationship difficulties or breakdown? Entropy?

We have developed a society which isn’t really comfortable with the idea of people – adults – crying, and particularly men.

I don’t believe in crying for the sake of it, or puttng it on, and certainly believe in the development of emotional strength into adulthood which can genuinely dispel the need to cry on many occassions. However, the intellectual thought that one must not allow oneself to do so is a negative, limiting belief, indeed, and one which may cause much damage until we renounce it, individually and socially.

At a spiritual group I once belonged to I had the mickey taken by the group leader, albeit quite gently, for crying. He later apologised, stating his own belief that it was right to express emotion, and how his ridiculing had really gone against what he truly believed, that to hold in tears is akin to a cloud holding in rain, and therefore not to be endorsed in any life affirming circles or groups.

…I already knew that allowing myself to cry if I felt like it was a strength, rather than a weakness.

Of course, this specific area of crying is a sub-set of the more wider area of freedom for authentic self-expression generally. Moreover, not crying does not neccessarily equate to not needing to…

There is a difference between not needing to cry and not admitting to the occassional need. Those who never cry don’t neccessarily never feel it arising in them. Many have been conditioned to keep it inside. Unless someone tells us how they feel, how will we ever really know? But more importantly, what damage are they doing to themselves by denying the expression of their very truth and beinghood?

How many times do we say it; the Mind – great servant, lousy master.

And I believe also that freedom to cry leads to the greater inner strength which makes upset less likely, bearing most of the comings and goings of life against the backdrop of personal inner peace, which is gained from knowing who you are and an unshakeable commitment to being true to self.

Just as the mucus that comes from poor diet is better off in one’s handkerchief than in one’s lungs, the notion of better out than in for our tears also follows the wisdom principle of operating from the inside, out. We are guided from within as to what is right for us, and so when we have faith in this we can easily override the mental limitations of social conditioning as and when they arise in our internal dialogue and intellectual thoughts. That is why it was possible for me to know already that the freedom to cry is a strength.

Crying itself is the practice – the action. As such it is inherently neither right or wrong. That is dependent upon our intentions and motives. The principle is the important part in all this. And that principle is the freedom to cry, if we find we wish to or need to.

James Blacker