It was Michael Neill who first raised my awareness to this distinction. Have a read and see what occurs to you.
What are we looking at here?
A couple of people in my life this week have been in touch about feeling stressed and anxious even though they don’t have a lot on. And then of course there are times when we feel stressed when we do have a lot on. Consider that ‘stress’ is an exaggerated form of ‘busy’, and that busy feelings are a reflection of a busy mind, not of a busy life.
Busy is a feeling. Having a lot on is maths.
Have you ever had a situation where you felt so busy, frantic busy? …
At what age did boredom start becoming a ‘thing’ for you? So what was happening before that? Where’s the freedom with ideas of boredom or feeling fed up?
Let’s start with exploring how experience is created
We, including the neuroscientists, don’t really know how we work.
We can see a piece of machinery inside people’s heads that we call a brain and we can see bits of it light up with different activities — but nobody has yet proven if or how a brain has anything to do with our conscious experience.
What we have learnt is alot about the machinery of the brain which correlates with behaviour (note — no proven ‘causal link with’ behaviour).
One of those correlations is how the left hemisphere is involved in the chunking-up of life.
*Rather than be in…
I always believed that once you saw through the illusion of self you would automatically be a loving, emotionally intelligent being. But it turns out, no!
I’ve been watching alot of Ken Wilbur this week and I love his Integral Theory with stages of: Waking up — Growing up — Cleaning up — Showing up — Opening up.
Waking Up
is the altered state of consciousness that gives us a first person, direct experience of oneness and connection to all things. It can be increassed / maintained via the progressive path (e.g. ongoing meditation and spititual practices) or via the direct path…
After seeing the quote in the image last week I got to thinking about it in the context of truth.
I was reflecting yesterday about when I first worked with Piers Thurston and heard him say “it feels real and isn’t true”.
I considered how this phrase can get a reaction from egoic thoughts, self-referential thoughts, or what I call sandbank thoughts.
When we think we’re being told that something that’s happened in our life isn’t true – in fact that everything that’s happened in our life isn’t true – the automatically assumed implication (at that level of egoic thought) is that we’re lying.
I guess in some ways it is a lie we’re telling ourselves, if we believe something…
Four realizations about the nature of addiction and how thought keeps us cycling the same habitual loops
I’ve been on social media for over 7 years now, including plenty of times when it’s been my primary place for social interaction, and with that interaction seemingly more important than chatting to my husband, or kids…
I’d started to notice, in the weeks leading up to this, that every spare moment involved going straight to my phone, going through each app in turn, checking for notifications and messages, looking at a few posts, liking, commenting. Fine. …
My inbox is full of business end-of-year emails lamenting 2020. Friends and family are talking of looking forward to 2021 with the vaccine and going back to “normal”. A consistent theme of 2020 being a terrible year. But what if it wasn’t?
“I know how devastating 2020 has been” began one company’s email.
It was perhaps the most striking of them all, it stopped me in my tracks, I haven’t experienced 2020 as devastating so it leapt out at me as a surprise.
It also leapt out because I seem to have developed an allergic reaction to the media / emails / other people whitewashing a whole experience into one ‘thing’ and assuming that ‘thing’ is a universal experience for all. Telling people how they must be feeling.
I know for some there’s good intent, trying not to assume it’s all fine, trying to be respectful of what has been a difficult year…
My client, Phillipa Bray, shared this beautiful piece of writing from a key phase of our work together and she kindly said I could share here. Each client goes on their own journey and has their own experience of realising what’s true — who knows what your journey would be like, but this is Pip’s. I invite you to swim in the wisdom and beauty of it all.
“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being!” Hafiz of Shiraz
Excerpt from my journal, 4 weeks post-mastectomy, 10 minutes after my weekly coaching session
‘Wednesday 21st October 2020 10.55am
I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL!
Cancer is the most wonderful lesson in this regard.
Even as I write this my mind grasps for answers. As the tears drip down my face and little whimpers leave my mouth, like a child that has just realised she doesn’t get to have her own way, even now my mind races for all the solutions for certainty and control … I could get Jo to read…
Each week my newsletter explores different aspects of life through the lens of truth. Today’s was on, what appears to be, the fundamental truth of our experience as a human being — consciousness. But why would we talk about it? What difference could this conversation make to our everyday lives? Thanks to the reader that asked for the topic, and to the other who led to the idea of sharing it as a post. Read on and see what you think.
“You cannot fight against the ego and win,
just as you cannot fight against darkness.
The light of consciousness is all that is necessary.
You are that light.”
Eckhart Tolle
When I first began this work, the fact I was having a conscious experience wasn’t something that had crossed my mind. I was just a person doing a job, living and working with other people doing theirs.
Then Piers opened the door into a whole world of curiosity about consciousness — why are we conscious? How does this thing we call experience work — why can we taste a flavour…
There’s been a theme in my life over the last week about finding our own path, doing it our way, not looking to anybody for answers or approval. And yet — we’ve been brought up to learn or think we need to know the “right” answer, which generally means the answer the people around you agree with. Oh the limits! So what instead?
“There is no one way to anything.”
Chinua Achebe
For the last two years I’ve been deep in spiritual exploration. Learning from the fields of the Three Principles and Non Duality, and which has included drawing on the works of teachers such as Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Adyashanti, Rupert Spira. As well as exploring into the science of what’s known beyond what we think we know— Anil Seth, Donald Hoffman, Iain McGilchrist, Chris Niebauer, Cynthia Larson. And the world of energy, beliefs and chakras via John Amaral, Dawson Church, Bruce Lipton.
I write all that to highlight all…
Is the world really that terrible? What if you consider the possibility that it’s infinitely kind, and it’s job is to wake us up to our confusion by reflecting confusion right back at us.
“Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.”
Ideas of limit reflect limit right back to us.
The other week I had a tough call with some peers where I felt majorly “got at”. Like every word that was said was telling me I wasn’t good enough, that I…
