Wanting what you get is better than trying to get what you want

From a spiritual perspective, we want for nothing.
Materially we might need water or food or other things which, if withdrawn from us, will cause us to die. But from a spiritual perspective, there is always abundance.
Right now, you lack nothing. You lack no insight, no knowledge, no realization – it is all there and available to you.
Because this is it. This is all there is.
How could there be any more?
You have everything you need to make the perfect next step in your life; to solve that sticky relationship that you have always been struggling with; to experience complete union with the divine essence of life.
The only trouble is that we do not believe it. We think that if only I understood this thing, or did not have that pain, or could travel to this place, then everything would be perfect.
Not true. You have it all now.
We think we have to change. We think we have to be different in order to become whole, to become healed, but we do not.
Each of us has been dealt a hand in our lives, and most of us spend our lives trying to throw in the hand we were given, and get another one.
The thing we never figure out is the fact that the game is fixed. We might only have been dealt a pair of fives, however in the game we are playing, a pair of fives is a winning hand. Because the game is set by the same essence of life that dealt us our hands in the first place.
We look at what others have, and we say – “If only I had wealth and fame, then I would be able to have everything I wanted.”
And yet that is almost always not true.
You might have been given a hand where the ultimate spiritual and emotional fulfilment in your life comes from being exactly who you are and where you are.
In fact you are the only person who would be able to be content in the situation that you are in, because that is how life works.
I am not saying that one should not strive to get on and achieve, to go for excellence, and generally to try and make the best out of our lives. We should all do that. What I am saying is that we should play to the hand we have been dealt, knowing and trusting that it is a winning hand, and if we play it correctly we will get our heart’s desire.
As Khalil Gibran says “accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.”
It is all here and available, right now. The rest is what you think about it.
Real transformation comes when you see ‘what is’ for what it is. That pain is just pain, and joy is joy. They are different. It is about wanting what you get, rather than trying to get what you want. And when you do that you trust life. You trust the hand you have been dealt. You trust your ability to play that hand, and you make no pre-judgements about the way the game is going. You are not running the game; life is running it.
Work with your life and you have everything you need. The moment you try to take over the game, to change your hand, to change the game, you are lost – because it is not your game, you are a part of a bigger game being played by life.

New Year’s Resolutions? – No change there then!

The years roll by, the scenery changes, and yet much in our life stays the same.
Whereas it is easy to move the furniture about in the space that represents our lives, it is more difficult to see how to make fundamental changes.
We might move house, change cars, swap partners or switch careers, and yet inside it often feels the same. Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.
We are so caught up in the process of living that it is often hard to see what levers to pull to change channels, rather than just adjust the brightness or the contrast.
Changing channels requires a deeper introspection than just reviewing how our lives are going. We tend to make such a review at the beginning of each year, because making resolution after taking stock seems to put us control.
Yet a few months (weeks? Days? Hours?) later, we realise that nothing much fundamental has changed. We might have lost a bit of weight, saved some money, or drunk less, but the same mind is still in charge, and it still seems capable of making the same mistakes. So it is pretty much guaranteed that nothing substantial will change.
For real change to take place, you have to change your mind.
Not in the sense of exchanging your brain for another one, but more like changing the way that you think. We have to realise that we are not our minds. That there is more to us than the rational thinking processes that we so readily identify with.
“You are not your mind.” It is not a phrase that many minds take kindly to.
“What do you mean ‘you are not your mind’? Of course you are – what else could you be?” I can hear your mind say. Because the mind does not like to have its authority challenged.
“We’ve done OK together up till now – you are alive aren’t you? We have formed a unique personality together that we are comfortable with”. And so it goes on. The mind’s justification as to why you should identify with it.
It has a monopoly over your thought processes, and won’t let you go that easily. Some people so identify with their minds, that if you show any lack of respect, they will pick a fight with you.
We feel that we are our personalities, and to challenge any part of the way we think is to challenge the very essence of who we are.
And yet the very word 'personality' is an interesting one. It comes from the Greek word 'Persona' which were the masks that actors used to wear in Ancient Greece to signify their roles. The word literally means 'that which is spoken through'.
Our personality is just the mask we choose to speak through. It is a construction that the mind uses to negotiating its way through life. It has no intrinsic reality or value.
The problem comes when we have so identified with our personality that we almost feel trapped by it and we cannot think our way out of it.
Real change only comes when we realise that we are not our minds, that we are not our personalities, and that it is possible to identify ourselves with something much deeper than the constructs of our minds.
When we realise that there is a fundamental essence in life to which we all have access, and if we were to go beyond the limitations of our minds, then we would begin to see a new horizon that we could begin to aspire to.
It is this new horizon that facilitates the real change in our lives that many of us strive towards; that enable us to break the long established patterns of our lives, and therefore explore new ways of being.
Ironically, the way we access this essence is by becoming more aware of the extent to which we are trapped and programmed by our past. Gradually we become aware of new possibilities, and through taking up these possibilities we set off on a new direction in our lives.

Don't forget your toothbrush!

There is nothing quite like having to pack and unpack all your gear every day to remind you how important the physical universe is in your life.
Today Cardiff, yesterday Bristol, the day before Bath, and before that Oxford and Cambridge.
Arrive unpack, do the gig. Pack up, go to wherever you're staying, unpack, sleep, pack up.
Leave anything behind and there is no picking it up as you are probably 200 miles away before you realise it.
We are so dependant on all that material kit. And yet when you do leave something behind (flip charts once, phone charge once) you find you can do without it.
(Actually, that,s not strictly true, on Friday I drove for half an hour to recover my phone charger as I did not think I could do without it!).
I feel panicky when I am loading up, worried that there is a mistake about to happen.
I feel that I have to over-compensate for my possible lack of attention, and that makes me feel stressful.
Then there is the travelling (hopefully not dying) delivering the presentation (hopefully not dying) and generally keeping body and soul together.
It all seems quite a schlep.
But then I am reminded of that old Midland Bank commercial (old admen never die, they just use ads as divine wisdom). "Do what you do best, let the Midland do the rest, and your part of a winning team" - amazing how it is still there.
If you just do what you do, as well as you can, and trust that the universe is a friendly place (as Einstein suggested), then things generally work out.
You can only take life one second at a time. Try to think much further than that, and you enter the realm of speculation. What if.... what might....or perhaps..., and you're off with the fairies.
It is a good lesson to remember that the planet looks after itself, and so do our lives, if we let them.
So we just have to stop worrying, and get on with whatever is in front of us.
The rest can take care of itself

Life on the road

At Starbucks in Middlesbrough availing myself of their free WiFi as I travel between Manchester and Teesside Universities on the northern leg of my Book Tour.
I say 'book tour', but that is too grand for the series of small meetings that I am driving hundreds of miles to attend.
I went for University Chaplaincies, as they seemed organisations who might want a bit of 'left field' thinking to drum up a crowd of a few more than the usual suspects.
But invitation and happenstance has broadened my destinations to include church groups and meditation collectives.
It is a strange sensation to head off onto the motorway, leaving loving family behind and drive towards who knows what. Strange people, strange beds, stranger loos and bathrooms. I take my own pillows to make sure that I at least have the chance of a good night's sleep.
But so far the hospitality of my hosts have been amazing. Kind people willing to open their homes to a strange man they have never met, feed him, talk to him, and deliver him to the venue. They have all provided lovely food and an understanding of some of what it means to be 'on the road'.
It is, however, a humbling experience to arrive at a destination with a car load of flip charts and aids to the sort of spiritual giggery-pockery that constitutes and evening of 'Developing Consciousness', only to be confronted by a crowd of 9. All who are as embarrassed as you are by the paucity of their numbers.
We all consider whether or not the evening might have been a mistake both in the 'putting on' and in the 'deciding to go to'.
But nevertheless you are in blood stepped in so far, and so you go ahead. You raise the hammer, like Thor, and bring it crashing down to work the magic. And sure enough, with only 9 present the light comes out and we are all transformed, however briefly, by the glimpse of the eternal that we all catch and marvel at, before shuffling off into the night to go our separate ways.
But it is not all like that. There were 33 in Leeds, two groups of 18 and 10 in Loughborough and the same 20 people turned out twice in Wells, Norfolk.
It may sound a bit dispiriting and small, but there is a strange sort of satisfaction in setting up camp, displaying one's wares and then for people to be really quite kind in their responses.
Which is not to say that you do not doubt the efficacy of what you are up to. In other words, you sometimes think you must be bonkers.
Travelling round the country peddling a kind of pseudo-intellectual culturally relevant take on the nature of reality, and why there is a force for good behind everything, and why that makes all the difference.
As you pull into another motorway service station and pour £60 into the tank that you are not sure you will get back as 'expenses', you do begin to doubt it all.
You continue doubting as you roll up to the next 'hosts' house, as you are driven, like the condemned man, to the venue; As you clear away the mess of a University function room to make it presentable, and as you wait for the 9-33 people to arrive.
It is only when you spring to your feet with a 'good evening everyone' that the blood begins to flow and out of nowhere the road ahead seems clear, and you have all the gears you could possibly want to enjoy the ride.
Roll on Teesside University 12.15 tomorrow.

Quo Vadis?

It takes patience to recognise the path that is laid out for us to take in life. As Robert Frost said in his famous poem "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both".
We get a choice, if we look hard enough.
Most of the time we do not look, we just take the road of common sense. But if we look, there is always the other path available - the path of love.
Less obvious, more difficult, yet once perceived it is the only one that we can take, while maintaining our integrity.
It may be harder, but it will take us somewhere we could never have imagined.
It is the path that can only be seen when you are looking with love in your heart, because it is prepared for you by that which is infinite. It is the path you were meant to take.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Don't worry, be effective.

Living with uncertainty is never fun. I much prefer to know what is going on, or more's the point, what is going to happen.
Right now I'm not clear about either.
And yet that unclarity does not seem to impose itself on the present moment.
When I do not think about it, things just present themselves to be done:
Have breakfast, go to my desk, do some writing, make phone calls.
The great scheme of things does not have a huge bearing on the day to day.
So why the worry?
I think it is my desire to be in control. To know is to be in control. So when I do not know, I feel out of control.
In the same way as 'if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves', if you look after the moments as they go by, so the future will look after itself.
I can't do anything about the future. I can do something about the day ahead: Be conscientious, do my best, be optimistic. Just thinking that way makes me feel better.
We spend so much time worrying about the things we cannot effect, but which might happen. Much better to stop worrying and do something positive.
There, blog written. Good positive start for the day.

How to discover what you are meant to be doing in life.

How to navigate your way through life? It is surely a key question.
Most of us take bearings on our situation, and then set a course and plough on. Our minds control the action.
I can honestly say that from the age of 19 I have decided what I wanted to do, and then gone out and tried to do it.
Sometimes I succeeded, and sometimes I did not. But in all cases the journey was pretty much an exercise of will: Attempting to impose my will on the circumstances that confronted me in order to make the best of those circumstances.
Nothing really wrong with that, except that the great limiting factor in the whole equation was the extent of my own imagination. All my horizons were set at the limits of that imagination, and as a result they were severely limited.
When your mind is running the show, it can only ever create that which it has some experience of. And therefore it always tries to make life conform to what it believes it to be.
If it thinks that people are unreliable, it will gather evidence to that effect.
If it thinks that life is unfair, it will find the proof.
Therefore a life that is controlled by the limited imagination of our minds will always be limited to the capacity of our minds.
I have begun to try to let go of my mind’s insistence on what it thinks I should do, and open up to seeing what life out there wants me to do.
The difference is subtle. It involves taking bearings on my situation as before, but then not setting a course, but simply taking more bearings and allowing the wind to take me where it will: Allowing life to lead me to the actions that I need to take, rather than dictating those actions and trying to make life conform.
The key to acting like this is to give our lives the credit of having a natural intelligence that will guide us into the right place at the right time, if we will let it happen.
We have to give up the desire to control, and simply allow things to happen.
That is not to say that one should take no definite action; just that once action has been taken, we then review the situation, rather than deciding what to do next.
It means holding our ultimate goals lightly, and willing to change them as circumstances unfold. Not always deciding what one wants to do beforehand, and then ploughing on regardless.
Doing this frees us from the limits of our imagination and gives us whole new horizons that we could never have thought of on our own.
Life then becomes more like a voyage of discovery, rather than a race that has to be won.