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Faith in yourself is as easy as letting go

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Faith in yourself is an essential ingredient for creating a happy and fulfilled life. It harnesses energy by the bucketload and has the potential to make enormous changes – or none. True faith doesn’t come from anxiously repeating affirmations until the brain gives in but is a mental state embracing the elements of complete trust, relaxation and poise. Intuitively, deep in our bones, we know everything is working out as it should and that nothing can threaten us. We just have to learn to let go.

Faith, waves and the art of eliminating the little me

The biggest threat that we have is not from some outside source but from the belief in something fake – the “little me”. This little me does not ultimately exist but we think and act as though it does. We cling to individuality, yet it is as impermanent as an ice sculpture. Everything in the universe is a play of energy and everything is connected to everything else. We are all part of that play, and it should be fun.

Let’s stop creating disasters

The disasters that humankind keeps propelling itself into come from denying that interconnectedness. Whether as individuals, a group, a sect, or even a nation or culture, our problems come from belief in a permanent individual self. That self will seek out anything that reinforces its delusional independent existence. It is madness and is as ludicrous as a wave on the ocean believing it is a wave, wanting to be bigger and better than all the other waves, when really it – and everything else – is simply water.

The strength of holding onto nothing

Faith is knowing that we are more than that wave. Each of us is a manifestation of, and part and parcel of, the universe. Our true nature is unbounded in every sense but we are so often tricked by the form in the mirror, by our fears, feelings and beliefs. Having faith in ourselves is knowing that all those things are like appearances in a dream. We can continue to hold onto them and perpetuate the dream, or we can safely let go because there is ultimately nothing to cling onto. That’s a very liberating faith.

Thank you to those who occasionally get in touch or comment. It’s always good to hear from you!

Awakening Heart: ebook and paperback

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Worrying: how to stop this pointless habit

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Live fully in the present instead

Worrying has become more commonplace these days and mental health is at a low ebb, so many reports say. That’s bad news. Better news is that most of us can do something about everyday worrying and improve our sense of wellbeing. Those nagging thoughts are completely pointless, totally illogical and we don’t need to entertain them at all.

Worrying is a plague in itself

Worry is part of the plague of thinking too much, and being overloaded with information that comes at us from all directions only exacerbates matters. If we observe our thinking processes, we will quickly notice that one thought inevitably leads to another. Worry is simply a chain of thoughts with a backdrop of fear – a fear of something either not turning out as we want it to, or turning out as we don’t want it to. It’s a harmful habit that we need to quit.

Worrying – the opposite of our true nature

Our true nature is clear unbounded consciousness. In rare moments of clarity, we may have brief glimpses of it, like a completely cloudless sky. It isn’t out there somewhere, nor inside us. There is no inside and outside. It simply is, and that pristine unboundedness is who we are. After a few seconds – longer if we are lucky – something stirs, thoughts come and the clarity is lost again. However, if we learn to become still by being relaxed and focused in the present, some of that clarity will return and start to infuse our lives, in everything we think, say and do.

No magic fix – but there is magic to be found

There is no magic fix, we just have to keep training ourselves to come back to the present, taking time to gaze, to stop and breathe, to wonder, to love. Those moments are the magic of life. Yes, there will be things we need to do for others, but we are of far more use to this troubled world when we become a still and loving presence than if we fill our life with “what-ifs”.

How to live now is the theme of the book: The Art of Not Doing

Related posts:

  1. Motivation: how using Nature’s power can change your life
  2. Stop the world? You can’t, but you can stop yourself
  3. Simplicity – the root cure for all problems?
  4. Fear of missing out – FOMO – and what to do about it

Finding one’s centre is easy – and essential

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Finding one’s centreFinding one’s centre – to be at home with oneself – is the basis of a happy and fulfilled life. There is nowhere we have to go physically in order to find it. We are rarely in the wrong place; it is the mind, or rather our awareness, that is focused elsewhere. The wonderful Thich Nhat Hanh once said that there is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. Once we find our centre, everything else naturally falls into place.

Coming back home

What does finding one’s centre mean in everyday life? We might hear someone say, “I need to find myself,” when what they really mean is that they are not happy and feel something has to change. When we feel like that, it is because our attention and awareness have become fragmented, resulting in feelings of fatigue and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Our energy, if not our essence itself, is scattered and depleted. On the outside, we may look much the same but, like a cracked vase, we can hold very little.

Go with the season

The winter is a particularly good time to do something about it because nature also tends to move inwards. Even the qi of the body is said to gravitate towards the bones in the colder months, as though consolidating and strengthening us before extending outwards in the spring. Going with the season’s flow of energy, it can be easier to allow the attention to settle so that we are more “at home” with ourselves.

The trouble with moths

Our sense of wellbeing depends on our mind and energy. These are influenced greatly by our environment, of course. The human being is not a closed system and we are not immune from modern life, which has little respect for our natural biorhythms, persistently clamouring to distract us. So many of us are drawn out of ourselves and into the world of electronic screens and the media, like moths fluttering around a light or a flame. Craving for the unreachable never ends well.

Time to stop

Inevitably, sometimes it all becomes too much. When it does, we need to take our attention off the busy world for a while. It won’t fall apart without us, so just stop. This is the crucial first step to being centred. Stop and breathe. It sounds simple, and it is. Enjoy the rhythm of the breath, feeling the belly rise and fall. Standing, sitting or lying down, enjoy just being as you are, where you are. To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, there is nowhere you need to go because you have already arrived. This is being centred.

The Art of Not Doing – How to Achieve Inner Peace and a Clear Mind

I wish you a very happy, healthy and fulfilled 2022!

Andrew

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  1. Fear of missing out – FOMO – and what to do about it
  2. Losing those we love, and the search for constancy
  3. Rest: how to get what you really need
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Fear of missing out – FOMO – and what to do about it

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fear of missing outThe 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?

meditation 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

Related posts:

  1. Thoughts: Why we need to think less
  2. Stop the world? You can’t, but you can stop yourself
  3. Action: Why everything you do and say is more important than you think
  4. Habits – when and how to manage them

Why freedom and happiness are here now, if we want them to be

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Freedom and happiness are fundamental universal human rights. In spite of that, these basic qualities have been rather elusive for much of the world for quite some time now. The UK Government purported to hand its citizens “freedom day” on the 19th July this year. An odd turn of phrase, some might think, if not a little ironic.

Real freedom is here, not somewhere out there

Liberation is much more than escaping legal or physical restrictions, though, and if we really want to be free and happy, we have to transcend normal thinking. Real freedom can only occur in the mind. It is as much an inner state as an external one. There are stories of people who have been wrongly incarcerated yet, due to their spiritual training, they have felt completely free. Such are extraordinary people, of course, but there is no reason why we cannot train ourselves to be freer and happier.

The big problem? The conditioned mind

The way we think and react to things depends on how the mind is conditioned. That conditioning comes mainly from our past experiences and what we have been taught or led to believe. At the root of all that is the very basic sense of “I”, which gives rise to a belief in “me” and “mine”. The mind is very clever and will do anything to defend itself and the personality, the “I”, it has created.

Selflessness brings freedom

To lessen the mind’s grip, we need to cultivate selflessness. Instead of maintaining our imagined position as the centre of our own little universe, which takes a great deal of energy and effort, we might try letting go a little. It’s a very relaxing thing to do; quite liberating, in fact.

The real crisis

It is selfishness, not Nature, that has driven humanity into the throes of a climate crisis and only a reversal of that will free us from it. It is far more of a threat than coronavirus. As individuals, we cannot change the world overnight but we can change ourselves. By beginning to train the mind to be calm, clear and open, we can be free wherever we are.

Awakening Heart—The Blissful Path to Self Realisation

Meditations

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