I want to share a very simple technique which you can use on the run,
wherever you are in life. The technique will help you to control the
habit of negative mind chatter about what has happened in your life
previously. If you've had some struggles in your life (and who hasn't?),
then you probably find yourself occasionally regurgitating those old
problems, e.g. relationship dramas, financial losses, health issues,
etc.
So, here's the technique:
Every time you catch yourself
thinking or speaking about something that has happened to you in the
past which caused you pain, loss or suffering; IMMEDIATELY in your mind
see the statement you're making about your life and draw a big red cross
through that statement. Now, say to yourself, "That's not my reality
anymore. This is my reality." Then state what new reality you would like
to experience instead of this bad memory.
If you had a terrible
divorce for example, your new reality statement could be "I always
experience peace, harmony and joy in my life. My life is filled with
loving people, and I live a fulfilling happy life now!"
If you
had a financial loss, your new reality statement could be "When one door
closes, another better one opens for me. I am always being drawn to
experience more abundant life. I give thanks that greater things are
happening for me now - greater peace, relationships, health, fulfillment
and wealth."
These are just a couple of examples. The basic idea
of this method is to stop your uncontrolled mind talk, and to start
taking back control of what thoughts you are continually feeding into
the field of all possibilities.
Remember, what thoughts you
continually entertain in your mind, WILL become form in your life. This
process will help you to regain possession of your mind and give you the
power to CHOOSE moment by moment what thoughts are allowed to occupy
it.
I used this process many years ago after going
through 2 years of one life crisis after another. I realized that all I
could talk about was my past problems. So, guess what I kept getting in
my life? MORE PROBLEMS! Within a couple of months of doing this process
every day in my mind, catching myself each time I ran the old stories,
my life returned to peace. I stopped attracting problems to myself
through the magnetic energy of my thoughts.
For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 3 month coaching program, a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .
Showing posts with label how can i find peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how can i find peace. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 January 2014
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Who Am I?
Who Am I? Over 100,000,000 people seek an answer to this question each month. This would indicate there's a widespread lack of connection with the Self in our world. How does this happen you might ask?
If we look at our lives from birth onwards we will most likely find some answers to the question of how we became so disconnected from ourselves. From birth we are constantly told how to live, what to wear, how to behave, how to think. Our main stream schooling system promotes conformity to what's considered 'normal' behavior, thinking, clothing,etc. By the end of our time at school we're popped out like mass produced 'entities' totally unable to connect with our own inner knowing or guidance. We desperately seek our answers on the outside, looking for reassurance through what we own, our clothing style, our job and so on.
Is it any wonder that so many tertiary college degree courses are never used by the people who have completed them? How many people have left school, taken up a course that looked 'acceptable', 'profitable', a 'good idea', but when they discover what it's like to live inside that career they realize they have no interest in it at all.
If you want a quick way of accessing who you really are, there is a very simple process that takes about 5 minutes to complete. You'll need a friend to do the process with you. Maybe you can do a swap - one of you has the opportunity to do the process, then the other.
So, here's what you do... You and your friend will sit face to face about 30cm (1 foot) away from each other. One person will close their eyes and the other person will softly and quietly start to ask the question "Who Are You" over and over. The questioner asks "Who Are You?" and waits for the other person to reply. Then again the questioner asks "Who Are You?" This process is repeated throughout a 5 minute period of time.
The important key to the answering process is to answer with the very first thing that comes to your mind. Don't labor over your answer trying to find some acceptable or 'normal' answer. Be as childlike and spontaneous as you possibly can.
In my first experience of this process, I started out answering things like - bus, chair, room, car, house. In a very short space of time my answers started to change and I experienced increasing peace. Very quickly I started to experience myself as this vast energy being. The truth of me was not bound to my physical body. I experienced myself as everything - everywhere at once, unbounded by the body, limitless, vast, all possibilities!
The reason why the answerer needs to be totally spontaneous in answering the question "Who Are You?" is because the mind needs to be totally free from efforting or concentration. The mind has to be allowed to rest, float freely and just be observed as it darts here and there. By spontaneously saying the first thing that the answerer observes, the mind lets go of controlling the moment and enters a space of peaceful observation.
In this free floating space of simply observing the mind moving, we start to experience our self as pure energy/presence. You will begin to experience yourself as being one with everything you thought you were separate from previously. You will see that everything you see, touch, experience 'out there' is actually 'the same stuff' as yourself. For perhaps the first time in your life you will experience yourself as pure energy - unlimited by boundaries. You will experience that in behind everything in your life there is this peaceful, eternal, present observer. This process will lead you to a direct experience of your true nature quickly and easily.
After 30 or so years of daily meditation, I was amazed at how quickly this little process could bring a person to direct self realization. This direct experience of inner peace that I'd labored to find through daily meditation appeared so effortlessly in 5 minutes! I have done this process with people who have done no "inner work" and watched as these people were transported into a state of absolute peace and expansion and a consequent elation about their life. It has been life changing for these people to have this first hand experience of their true nature as their former limited and restricted view of life opened up to greater possibilities and more peace.
Here's a video from Gangaji on this topic...
For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .
If we look at our lives from birth onwards we will most likely find some answers to the question of how we became so disconnected from ourselves. From birth we are constantly told how to live, what to wear, how to behave, how to think. Our main stream schooling system promotes conformity to what's considered 'normal' behavior, thinking, clothing,etc. By the end of our time at school we're popped out like mass produced 'entities' totally unable to connect with our own inner knowing or guidance. We desperately seek our answers on the outside, looking for reassurance through what we own, our clothing style, our job and so on.
Is it any wonder that so many tertiary college degree courses are never used by the people who have completed them? How many people have left school, taken up a course that looked 'acceptable', 'profitable', a 'good idea', but when they discover what it's like to live inside that career they realize they have no interest in it at all.
If you want a quick way of accessing who you really are, there is a very simple process that takes about 5 minutes to complete. You'll need a friend to do the process with you. Maybe you can do a swap - one of you has the opportunity to do the process, then the other.
So, here's what you do... You and your friend will sit face to face about 30cm (1 foot) away from each other. One person will close their eyes and the other person will softly and quietly start to ask the question "Who Are You" over and over. The questioner asks "Who Are You?" and waits for the other person to reply. Then again the questioner asks "Who Are You?" This process is repeated throughout a 5 minute period of time.
The important key to the answering process is to answer with the very first thing that comes to your mind. Don't labor over your answer trying to find some acceptable or 'normal' answer. Be as childlike and spontaneous as you possibly can.
In my first experience of this process, I started out answering things like - bus, chair, room, car, house. In a very short space of time my answers started to change and I experienced increasing peace. Very quickly I started to experience myself as this vast energy being. The truth of me was not bound to my physical body. I experienced myself as everything - everywhere at once, unbounded by the body, limitless, vast, all possibilities!
The reason why the answerer needs to be totally spontaneous in answering the question "Who Are You?" is because the mind needs to be totally free from efforting or concentration. The mind has to be allowed to rest, float freely and just be observed as it darts here and there. By spontaneously saying the first thing that the answerer observes, the mind lets go of controlling the moment and enters a space of peaceful observation.
In this free floating space of simply observing the mind moving, we start to experience our self as pure energy/presence. You will begin to experience yourself as being one with everything you thought you were separate from previously. You will see that everything you see, touch, experience 'out there' is actually 'the same stuff' as yourself. For perhaps the first time in your life you will experience yourself as pure energy - unlimited by boundaries. You will experience that in behind everything in your life there is this peaceful, eternal, present observer. This process will lead you to a direct experience of your true nature quickly and easily.
After 30 or so years of daily meditation, I was amazed at how quickly this little process could bring a person to direct self realization. This direct experience of inner peace that I'd labored to find through daily meditation appeared so effortlessly in 5 minutes! I have done this process with people who have done no "inner work" and watched as these people were transported into a state of absolute peace and expansion and a consequent elation about their life. It has been life changing for these people to have this first hand experience of their true nature as their former limited and restricted view of life opened up to greater possibilities and more peace.
Here's a video from Gangaji on this topic...
For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .
Sunday, 9 June 2013
How Can I Find Peace?
How Can I Find Peace?, you may ask - particularly when you turn on your television and all you can see is war here and there, murders on the streets, robberies, rape, home invasions, bank foreclosures, divorce, etc, etc.
In this blog I am looking into The Work process by Byron Katie which she says will bring constant peace of mind whatever might turn up in your life. The process is a very simple questioning of the thoughts that cause you distress and suffering.
My partner and I have been practising this method now for a couple of years intermittently. More recently we have been doing the process daily. Every thought that arises in our mind which causes us distress, anxiety or suffering in some way, we make sure we sit down before the day ends and start the questioning procedure in the "Judge Your Neighbor" work sheet, then we move on to the "One Belief at a Time" work sheet.
After numerous Work processes I am finding a gradual shift happening in my life to what Byron Katie calls the "Don't Know Mind". I had read of a mind state like this in the biographies of spiritual masters and other people like Eckhart Tolle who had life changing shifts in their perception of the world.
I can only describe the state as feeling very light, not bogged down with the need to 'make things happen' or 'plan'. For the first time ever in my life I am having glimpses of living life in a completely different way. It feels like an absolute certainty that everything is already handled - there is no need for me to know how it is - just a knowingness that this still, peaceful mind within me is guiding and directing everything in my life. There's a real sense of spaciousness and not needing anything to come to me from the outside.
Let's have a look at what happens in The Work process and why it can help you to find more peace in your life.
The "Judge Your Neighbor" worksheet requires a total emptying out of all your bitter judgments about others. It encourages you to be as mean spirited, childish and judgmental as possible. My partner and I have done this worksheet on aspects of our relationship that have caused us suffering in the past.
To be able to finally express all the things that you may have swept under the carpet previously, is a total release. Finally you can be real with another person about how their behavior has impacted on you. It's a very cleansing part of the process. The process itself acts like a mediator. The judgments are not expressed as "you did this or that", but, for example "Joe did/does this or that". By talking about the person as a third party entity, it is less personal and the effect is such that you start to see all your judgments are really just your stories about the person.
After this emptying out you then move onto the One Belief at a Time worksheet where you question your thoughts.
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
Who/what would you be without your thoughts?
Finally you then have to turn around your thoughts - firstly back to your self. So, if you have made a judgement about someone else, you need to find how you do this same thing to yourself. For example, your original statement might be "my partner is unloving towards me". In the first turnaround you would say "I am unloving towards myself". Then you must find 3 different ways that this is true. From this step you may get in touch with how you don't honor yourself in some way or you don't treat yourself lovingly and with care. Perhaps you drive yourself in workaholic ways or don't listen to your body's need to rest?
The second turnaround is to the other. Using our statement above you would turn it around to "I am unloving towards my partner" and then you need to find 3 ways that this is also true.
The final turnaround is to the opposite.Still using the original statement above this turnaround would be something like "my partner is loving towards me" and you would then need to find 3 ways that this is also true.
In every case, with some thought, you will be able to find that all possibilities do actually exist in this person. This process causes quite a shift in your thinking process as you start to see where you previously thought something or someone was 'set in concrete' or could only be viewed in one way, you are now able to see that this 'other' encompasses all possibilities and all opposites - all dependent on the thoughts you choose to entertain in the moment. You start to understand that there is no out there. It's all happening in your mind.
After doing a Work process you'll most likely experience a real sense of peace and a more loving feeling towards not only the person you previously judged, but the world as a whole. The "Don't Know" mind starts to creep in. You realize that nothing IS THIS or THAT. There's a simple acceptance of what is appearing in the moment and no judgment of it - just an ability to simply BE with what shows up and delight in that.
Katie says the tyranny of suffering arises out of being at war with reality. We experience suffering when we want 'what is' to be different in some way. After we do The Work process the mind naturally becomes open, flexible and allowing. Actually the mind as you once thought of it seems to step out of the way and an opening of the heart glides in.
If you think you would like some help to do this process you can email me to arrange a telephone or Skype appointment. If you haven't done a lot of inner work on yourself previously, it could be helpful to have some assistance, particularly if you're experiencing ongoing relationship problems. The raw honesty required in The Work could be very challenging if you attempted to do the process with the person you're having the issues with if neither of you have any prior experience with self inquiry.
For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .
In this blog I am looking into The Work process by Byron Katie which she says will bring constant peace of mind whatever might turn up in your life. The process is a very simple questioning of the thoughts that cause you distress and suffering.
My partner and I have been practising this method now for a couple of years intermittently. More recently we have been doing the process daily. Every thought that arises in our mind which causes us distress, anxiety or suffering in some way, we make sure we sit down before the day ends and start the questioning procedure in the "Judge Your Neighbor" work sheet, then we move on to the "One Belief at a Time" work sheet.
After numerous Work processes I am finding a gradual shift happening in my life to what Byron Katie calls the "Don't Know Mind". I had read of a mind state like this in the biographies of spiritual masters and other people like Eckhart Tolle who had life changing shifts in their perception of the world.
I can only describe the state as feeling very light, not bogged down with the need to 'make things happen' or 'plan'. For the first time ever in my life I am having glimpses of living life in a completely different way. It feels like an absolute certainty that everything is already handled - there is no need for me to know how it is - just a knowingness that this still, peaceful mind within me is guiding and directing everything in my life. There's a real sense of spaciousness and not needing anything to come to me from the outside.
Let's have a look at what happens in The Work process and why it can help you to find more peace in your life.
The "Judge Your Neighbor" worksheet requires a total emptying out of all your bitter judgments about others. It encourages you to be as mean spirited, childish and judgmental as possible. My partner and I have done this worksheet on aspects of our relationship that have caused us suffering in the past.
To be able to finally express all the things that you may have swept under the carpet previously, is a total release. Finally you can be real with another person about how their behavior has impacted on you. It's a very cleansing part of the process. The process itself acts like a mediator. The judgments are not expressed as "you did this or that", but, for example "Joe did/does this or that". By talking about the person as a third party entity, it is less personal and the effect is such that you start to see all your judgments are really just your stories about the person.
After this emptying out you then move onto the One Belief at a Time worksheet where you question your thoughts.
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
Who/what would you be without your thoughts?
Finally you then have to turn around your thoughts - firstly back to your self. So, if you have made a judgement about someone else, you need to find how you do this same thing to yourself. For example, your original statement might be "my partner is unloving towards me". In the first turnaround you would say "I am unloving towards myself". Then you must find 3 different ways that this is true. From this step you may get in touch with how you don't honor yourself in some way or you don't treat yourself lovingly and with care. Perhaps you drive yourself in workaholic ways or don't listen to your body's need to rest?
The second turnaround is to the other. Using our statement above you would turn it around to "I am unloving towards my partner" and then you need to find 3 ways that this is also true.
The final turnaround is to the opposite.Still using the original statement above this turnaround would be something like "my partner is loving towards me" and you would then need to find 3 ways that this is also true.
In every case, with some thought, you will be able to find that all possibilities do actually exist in this person. This process causes quite a shift in your thinking process as you start to see where you previously thought something or someone was 'set in concrete' or could only be viewed in one way, you are now able to see that this 'other' encompasses all possibilities and all opposites - all dependent on the thoughts you choose to entertain in the moment. You start to understand that there is no out there. It's all happening in your mind.
After doing a Work process you'll most likely experience a real sense of peace and a more loving feeling towards not only the person you previously judged, but the world as a whole. The "Don't Know" mind starts to creep in. You realize that nothing IS THIS or THAT. There's a simple acceptance of what is appearing in the moment and no judgment of it - just an ability to simply BE with what shows up and delight in that.
Katie says the tyranny of suffering arises out of being at war with reality. We experience suffering when we want 'what is' to be different in some way. After we do The Work process the mind naturally becomes open, flexible and allowing. Actually the mind as you once thought of it seems to step out of the way and an opening of the heart glides in.
If you think you would like some help to do this process you can email me to arrange a telephone or Skype appointment. If you haven't done a lot of inner work on yourself previously, it could be helpful to have some assistance, particularly if you're experiencing ongoing relationship problems. The raw honesty required in The Work could be very challenging if you attempted to do the process with the person you're having the issues with if neither of you have any prior experience with self inquiry.
For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .
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