lies Archives – The Zen Diarist

Fear of missing out – FOMO – and what to do about it

October 4, 2021 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

The fear of missing out, “FOMO” as the social media vernacular expresses it, is bandied about a great deal these days. This week, FOMO is particularly disruptive causing panic buying of fuel and shortages of commodities. Henry Ford sometimes gets the blame for this human tendency. Because of the saturation of the automobile market in the 1920s, he created changes in the designs of his cars so that people would want the latest model. Hey presto – desire created and, along with it, fear of being left out. I doubt very much that this phenomenon can be solely attributed to Mr. Ford. He and his advisers were no doubt cashing in on something that was already known. But that is the way advertising works – create a desire and with it comes the parallel fear of missing out.

This fear is like a pernicious disease

It is not an exaggeration to say that the fear of missing out is a disease. It literally puts us ill-at-ease and it is highly infectious. One day it is not there and the next, thanks to some ill-advised remarks by those who should know better, it spreads far more rapidly than covid ever did. “There is no need to panic buy” immediately creates a fear that there is. The result is bizarre human behaviour, rather like how the body reacts when exposed to an allergen, mistaking it for a virus. Society, already not being in the best state of health, suddenly becomes even more sick.

Don’t carry on, become calm

When fear arises, it creates all manner of disturbances in body and mind. The stress response kicks in and we feel very uncomfortable. It is difficult to think straight when we are like that. If we sit down to meditate, we may find that it is almost impossible to settle as we become aware of our increased heart rate and the strength of our pulse. The mind chases one thought after another. How can we become calm when we are like that?

Dismiss the fiction

Our imagination of what the future might hold creates fear and upsets our equilibrium. But instead of thinking that our fear may become reality, it is perhaps far more helpful to remember that it is just a fiction we have created. It isn’t real – we made it up.

You are still here

If we can haul ourselves back to the present and notice whether we are breathing or not, we may be pleased to notice that we are. If we stick with it a little longer, we may notice that we haven’t died yet and that one breath follows another. In those few breaths, we don’t need to buy anything or become anything or anyone else. The fear of missing out is based on the fiction that we are not whole and that we need something from elsewhere to find it. We don’t.

This is not to advocate non-action but simply to see things as they really are. Then we can respond as and when we need to. It is when we live in an imaginary future world of dread that we completely miss out on living. Now, that is something to fear.

The Art of Not Doing

Why? A child’s laser-like question that hones in on everything

July 13, 2019 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

“Why?” is a question invented by very small children to wear down adults into submission. Everyone who has had, or has looked after, young children knows this to be the case. Any and every explanation is followed by another why? It’s a brilliant question and one that as adults we don’t use enough. Or answer truthfully enough.

Why truth matters so much

Politicians lie. We know that. But they are not the only ones. Lying is rife throughout all human affairs. It always has been and, until there is such a thing as an enlightened society, always will. Even with climate change threatening the world’s ecosystem as never before, the lies continue. We have to keep challenging and we have to keep asking why?

And don’t forget to ask yourself

Like the child querying everything, we need to ask it of ourselves, not just others. We can only have an enlightened society if everyone lives truthfully. As individuals, some self-examination can be very revealing. Why am I doing this? Why do I keep doing it? What makes me resist change? What is my real motive in everything? It sounds quite painful but actually, like learning to say no sometimes, it can be a huge relief. And we can stop wasting huge amounts of energy on things we don’t need to acquire or don’t need to do. That’s better for the world, too.

Learning how to do less to accomplish more is an essential key to life. The Art of Not Doing is a book about just that.

Action: Why everything you do and say is more important than you think

April 20, 2018 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Every action generates karma – an outcome of one sort or another. Nothing is without a consequence, so what we do is important because it carries the seed of the future. This doesn’t mean it is safer to lead a life without action – omissions have consequences, too. Rather it suggests that whatever actions we undertake need to be carried out with care.

Action can be good and bad at the same time

Ideally, all activity should create positive seeds for the future. A positive consequence is that the result of the act will benefit others. We must also take great care to see that no harm is done to anyone else. For example, if we steal in order to provide material benefits for ourselves and our family, a narrow view might cause us to think that that’s acceptable. A more intelligent view is that although there is some benefit, the action may be causing disadvantage or harm to the victims. That is an obvious example but in the world of human affairs there are limitless variations on that theme, some of them so subtle that we may not perceive them as negative in effect.

Guarding vested interests can be dangerous for this precious world of ours

In spite of best efforts, sometimes we may find ourselves guarding our own interests. It is easy to be more concerned for ourselves and our own than for those we don’t know. It is human nature to do that and naturally we do our best to protect our home, money and resources as well as our loved ones. If that causes no harm to anyone else, all is well and good – but what if, in protecting our own concerns, we cause or prolong the unhappiness or suffering of others? Then the actions or omissions are not right. Along with the immediate positive consequences for ourselves, we have also sown negative seeds. The impact of those we may never know.

Actions may speak louder but words can still devastate

Although none of us knows what life is going to throw at us, whatever we do today will almost certainly affect the future. Some things are more obvious than others, such as the long-term effects on the body of an unbalanced diet, too little or too much exercise, and so on. And we know, too, that if we act or speak violently, the results can be devastating. Tweeters (and that includes you, Mr President) please take care. However, it is the more subtle factors that usually provide the greatest challenge. Our concern should be to identify any tendencies to negativity in our speech and every action and to winkle them out.

More than harmlessness

If we want to achieve self-realisation, it is essential to cultivate an attitude of harmlessness. Ensuring that our action does not create any suffering or hardship is important but harmlessness means something more than that. Rather than creating an ideal of causing no harm, the evolutionary path requires that our actions become beneficial – positive rather than merely neutral. To put it in a simple way, we should feel that we are doing our best to contribute to making the world a better place.

This is an extract from my book The Art of Not Doing – How to Achieve Inner Peace and a Clear Mind. More details here.

Free guided meditations here.

Lies: why they are bad for your health

December 4, 2016 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Lies, lies and more lies – these have been a great feature of campaigning in the US elections and in the run-up to the Brexit referendum in the UK earlier this year. Deception and divisiveness seemed to have ruled the day. The fact is, deceit has always been part of human affairs, sadly, but this year the spotlight on it has been particularly bright, and some of the shadows appear very dark. The consequences have yet to unfold, as they always must.

Although these have been enormous untruths, they can only subsist while there is a collective consciousness that supports them.

Most of us at one time or another have hidden the truth to some degree, albeit on a much smaller scale. We all have responsibility to speak and act with complete integrity. But what if we don’t?

Pork pies and polygraphs

When we tell an untruth, there is a physiological effect. Mr John Augustus Larson was a medical student at the University of California back in 1921 and invented the modern polygraph or lie detector. The basis of the machine is that telling porky-pies has a direct effect on the physiology. Blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity can all give the game away. Lying is more than a mere mental process. The body is affected, too.

Lies and consciousness

Lying isn’t natural. Our natural state of consciousness is honest and open. There is nothing to hide or hide from because pure consciousness sees everything as a reflection of itself. There is no “other”. But as we don’t have that pure perception yet, we feel a need to protect ourselves and our interests. When we lie or distort the truth, it stems from that ignorance.

Telling a deliberate untruth is uncomfortable (although repetition is said to make it easier) because we know it is wrong. There is a conflict inside us. In effect, we deny who we are. Knowing A to be true, we deliver B. Like a naughty child ignoring its parent calling to it, we turn a deaf ear to our inner voice.

Truth or lies which is better for health and wellbeing?

The key here is energy. As the mind thinks, energy follows. Positive thoughts tend to increase vitality and increase wellbeing, and so on. If the mind is tense, our energy is constricted; if it is relaxed, the body and its energy system tend to relax also.

A lie is negative in nature. It creates a distorted pattern in our consciousness and consequently in our energy. The body responds as being stressed – the polygraph shows this. Our sense of wellbeing takes a downward or inward turn.

So does telling fibs make you ill?

Every day, we do things which have a positive effect on our energy and some that are negative. Being untruthful, which can take many guises, is largely an internal matter because it is generated in the mind. There may be external effects through what we say or write, which we will have to put right with other people, but first we have to be honest with ourselves.

Unless and until we resolve that, negative energy patterns will continue. They may not make us ill but we will not have a completely happy heart. To live as complete human beings, our hearts need to be open and full. The world will be a much better place for it. And maybe healthier, too.

Mental karma is explained more in the book The Art of Not Doing: How to Achieve Inner Peace and a Clear Mind which is available in print edition and as an ebook.

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