There’s a glorious story about Orson Welles, who imported a real witch doctor from Haiti to play in a black version of Macbeth. A critic from the Herald Tribune, one Percy Hammond, gave the play a bad review. So the real witch doctor begged Welles for permission to put a ‘beri-beri’ curse on Hammond. Welles, thinking nothing of it, told him to go right ahead. Hammond was in hospital in 24 hours and dead in 48. That much is documented.

Mind or matter? No surprise that medical experts declared the cause to be a long-standing physical ailment. But when a modern audience came to the opening of a play about Welles which contained the story, it was asked for a show of hands with this question: ‘Do we have any critics in tonight?’ Not a single hand was raised.

Traditional science says that original cause is physical matter. The spiritual masters say that original cause is consciousness. At first sight it seems that one must be right and the other wrong; the two could not possibly have anything in common.

But they do.

I imagine the front cover of—say—Time magazine, in the near future. It has a picture of a bride and groom. The groom is spirituality, the bride is science and the bride is wiping away tears, but looks resigned. The headline is: Spirituality and Science: will it be a shotgun marriage?

Yes it will. Science is being dragged at ever-increasing speed towards the altar. And those doing the dragging are scores of courageous scientists whose discoveries are shaking the foundations of traditional science. The universe is not what we thought.

This is nothing short of a revolution that will force much of humanity to re-examine what it means to be human. The old science paradigm says there is an objective universe to be discovered; that it is made of dead, isolated physical matter, with thought as an inexplicable by-product. But the spiritual paradigm says the universe is entirely subjective; that it is made of an infinite ocean of consciousness, with physical matter as a means of creating and expressing itself.

No wonder science feels threatened. ‘Rogue’ scientists have had their careers ruined for daring to research consciousness. Students have been censured by their departments. Scientists with evidence opposing the science paradigm have been labelled as deluded or as frauds. If only to survive such attacks, so-called rogue scientists have carried out some of the most carefully constructed, rigorous experiments of the past 50 years. And their evidence is mounting.

I’ll mention just a few. Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg. And Cleve Baxter who showed that plants are aware of each other and react to human thought. And Masaru Emoto who showed that pure water is sensitive to human thought. And Jacques Benveniste who showed that water has a memory of molecules previously dissolved in it—a concept central to homeopathy.

Then there’s the placebo effect. Doctors have used it successfully for at least 200 years, but the science paradigm doesn’t even begin to explain it. One modern experimenter, Ted Kaptchuk told his ‘placebo’ group that they were getting a placebo which creates mind-body self-healing, and they still did better than the control group.

Perhaps the most spectacular discoveries of all are coming from quantum physicists. They have shown that the universe is a vast web, in which all particles are connected to all other particles; that physical matter constantly pops in and out of existence; that sub-atomic particles appear and behave according to what is going on in the scientist’s mind. Traditional science doesn’t dispute those results, but says they can’t possibly be true at the everyday macroscopic level.

The point is not whether traditional science has been right or wrong; the point is that consciousness creates physical reality, whatever the belief system. And science is a belief system. Science does not discover—it creates, and what it creates is real. It has been arguably the most powerful belief system in human history, giving birth to the technology which has populated and transformed the planet.

Which means that the paradigm of traditional science is, after all, perfectly valid. It’s  just that it fits into one corner of a much bigger paradigm—the one the spiritual masters have been telling us for thousands of years. Aham Brahmasmi: we are both the Creator and the Created. We are powerful beyond measure and we have only to remember the fact.

So, here’s how the forthcoming liaison of science and spirituality affects us all. In the past, science has brought us many comforts. It has also brought us nuclear bombs and germ warfare and experiments on animals as if they were robots with no feeling or awareness. When science does accept that it and we are all part of Consciousness, that it is a creator, not a discoverer, how will that change its behaviour? How then will it affect the technology that shapes the future of the planet?
 
The answer to those questions will affect all of us and all of our descendants for as long as there is such a thing as human life.

Namaste
Michael

This will be my last newsletter for 2010. I’m going to spend a little time beside a lake in the mountains where Finding the Field is set. I’m looking forward to plenty of peace and quiet. Silence.

Not true silence, of course, because even in the still of night, the bush has a thousand conversations.

 There are two kinds of true silence. One of them is so rare it’s almost a curiosity. The other is available to anyone, and can transform your health and well-being. I was lucky because for me, the first led to the second.

The first kind is the complete absence of sound. I experienced it half way between New Zealand and Tonga, over the Marianas trench, where it can take 24 hours for a discarded can to reach the bottom. There’s no point in telling the whole story here, but for about an hour my six-year-old son Sam and I were alone, far from the yacht, in a tiny dinghy. The Pacific was asleep, dreaming long, slow dreams; not a breath or breeze, not a ripple in the glassy water, not even a whale cry from the depths. So, for a few minutes Sam and I experienced life utterly devoid of sound.

At first, my mind objected to the silence and filled it in, making me think I could hear my own breathing and the blood moving in my veins, especially around my temples. Then, after a few minutes, it seemed that silence was itself like a sound: a long vibration. Which is how I glimpsed the second kind of silence.

Profound stillness. It’s been known since ancient times—always in us, waiting for us to notice. It’s the stillness that holds all sound, like an ocean holding a dinghy. In fact it holds everything, including us and all our thoughts and adventures. I call it Consciousness, or the Field. Quantum physics calls it the inseparable web of dynamic activity that brings forth all physical objects.

Hard to get your head around it? Imagine that you are watching a rock. Imagine that you zoom your vision down to the surface of the rock; closer and closer until you can see individual atoms vibrating, and even further in until you can see each sub-atomic particle dancing the Wu Li in empty space. And yet when you zoom out again, you see only the stillness of the rock which you now know contains a trillion moving things.

Like the rock, Consciousness moves within itself. When we find the stillness within us, we find Consciousness.

And we find ourselves. That’s the prize. Many claim it through meditation. No one needs to go to sea, climb a mountain or build a sound-proof bunker. It’s right where you are, right now. Once you’re practiced, you can find it in a second even in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. But, of course, beginners need to start looking in a reasonably  quiet place.

But there’s a catch. Many of us are instinctively afraid of losing our ego identity if we contact this profound stillness within us. Many are even afraid to sit quietly and alone without distractions. We fear the poverty of loneliness, when it is really the richness of solitude. I know, because I’ve had that fear myself, and the breakthrough for me was discovering the difference between thought and awareness.

Want to try it? Find a quiet room and gentle music. Put something in front of you to engage your visual focus; it hardly matters what—for me it’s a candle.

Now, turn off your thought track—but don’t try too hard. When a thought does come, don’t treat it like a nuisance. Instead treat it like an atom in that rock and ‘zoom’ out of it until you are watching it from a distance. It’s like lucid dreaming, where you dream on one floor of your mind and watch the dream from the next. When you’re watching the thought pass by—I think this is working, or I’m hungry, or I wonder when Jack is going to call me—then you have begun. You are in two ‘places’ at once. Now, no matter what the thought is, just be aware of it; don’t form an opinion about it, don’t judge it, and don’t judge yourself for having it. Keep ‘zooming out’ until you can no longer see the individual thoughts, but are simply aware, until you are extended way out into the universe around you.

Do you see the possibilities? What is it that’s aware that you have a body? Is it your thoughts, your mind? And what is it that’s aware that you have a mind? Is it your spirit? And what is it that’s aware that you have a spirit? What, then, is the real you?

The real you is all of that and more. Body, mind and spirit. We are like the legendary child made of salt, marching through the mountains and the valleys of its life until it reaches the ocean. It dissolves into the water, changing itself and changing the ocean that gave it birth.

The complete you is in the all the layers of the ocean, all the way to the bottom. You can wait until you reach the beach, or, through meditation, you can experience the ocean on the way, travelling the mountains and the valleys with an inner current of joy—yes, even the valleys.

Perhaps I’ll find another layer on this summer break. But perhaps not. I’m in no rush. For your own break, summer or winter, mountain or valley, may you take joy with you.

I’ll be back in a few weeks.
Namaste.
Michael

There were three significant experiences in one evening! I do believe it—I have to, I was there—but as you’ll see, it confused me for a while. Here’s what happened. Do let me know what you think (comments).

Two weeks ago, I noticed a small advertisement in the local newspaper. Someone called Gangaji was speaking in my town, on December first, a week away. I had never heard of Gangaji. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word. Apart from the vaguely spiritual context of the ad, I had no idea what she represented, let alone what she would say. Also, I don’t rush off to listen to every spiritual speaker who passes by. But I was drawn to the name, and something kept nudging me to go. I marked it in my calendar.

The night before her speech, I had a strange dream. I dreamed that Gangaji looked at me sitting in the audience and invited me up on stage with her, to sit on her right hand side and talk with her in front of the crowd. In the morning, of course, I dismissed it ‘just a crazy dream’.

But before we get there, I need to backtrack.

If you read last week’s newsletter, you’ll know that I’m in the happiest space of my life right now—which I put down to a new realization. Here’s a list of the main points I made in that newsletter: stop chasing enlightenment; you’re already where you want to be; nothing has to be fixed because nothing is broken; look for the silence between your thoughts; your thought of who you are is not who you are. And more. (If you want to read it again, click here.)

I sent that newsletter to you (to subscribers) just two minutes before I left to listen to Gangaji. Then, in the first few minutes of her talk she said all of that. Every main point of my newsletter.

That was significant experience number one.

In those few minutes, I became an admirer—not because she was echoing my new realization, but because of her presence. Gangaji was radiant. I have rarely seen anyone with such love and compassion. Once, when a woman in front of her was fighting tears, she did not try to fill the silence with words, instead she just smiled at the woman. It was a huge smile, wider than a dawn, and it was the right smile.

And then the dream turned into reality.

I tell you I did not force it to happen; in fact, I resisted it. Unlike the woman in tears and the other three who went forward, I did not volunteer. Dream or no dream, I had no desire to be a centre of attention and no burning question. I was there to listen. But Gangaji clearly thought otherwise; when there was no one else on the stage, she looked directly at me and beckoned.
     “You have a question,” she said.
     In spite of the dream, I was startled. I  looked around at my neighbours, back to Gangaji, and said, “Who? Me?” (Okay, call me slow on the uptake.)
     “Yes, you,” she smiled. “Would you like to join me up here.”
     Now I knew that the dream was unfolding.
     “Okay,” I said. I went up there, I sat on her right, I talked with her in front of the crowd. Here was the dream in every detail, except, oddly, that the size of the real audience was smaller than in the dream.

That was number two.

I did think of a question to ask her, which she answered. But that’s not what stayed in my memory. It’s what followed. I was so captivated by her presence that I said, “I know what I want… I want the look in my eye to be like the look in your eye.”
     To my astonishment and the crowd’s amusement, she chuckled, produced a mirror (!!!), and thrust it in front of my face, forcing me to look at myself.
     “But you do have that already,” she said. “See for yourself.”

No, I’m not planning to parade as the next Gangaji. In fact, as I left the stage, I was puzzled. Her manner suggested more than stage playfulness… there was serious intent there. What was she really saying to me? What was the point? Well, now I have to laugh at myself. How could I have missed it? It took my friend Tom Newnam in Philadelphia, to take off my blindfold with an email. His words, summarised: What you saw in Gangaji is not only who she is, but also who you are.

Of course, of course. In admiring Gangaji, I was primed to see—in her—the best in myself. We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. We don’t see people as they are; we see people as we are. She didn’t say that in words, but it’s what she was telling me. More to the point, she made me feel it.

That was number three.

Could there be a finer illustration of the second universal truth: that your life is your mirror. How extraordinary that she actually held up a mirror. How subtle, how playful, how mischievous. (And how startling… did she have that mirror ready?)

Had you or anyone else expressed the same desire as me, she could have made the same reply.

Turn it around. When 100 people look at you, they each see a different version of you: the version that best reflects them, their beliefs and aspirations. It’s not you that affects them, but their version of you. Not one of those 100 versions is the real you. So who is the real you? You’ll only find the answer by looking into the looking glass that is your life – yes, that life which seems to happen to you, but is really created by you. In this incarnation, your life, and everything and everyone in it, is you. Literally. The universe is not objective, it is subjective.

On the face of it, that stretches credibility. You could, for example, be in a coal mine one day and a cruise ship the next; so you might ask, How could I change so much overnight? But your physical surroundings are only the shallowest reflection of you. Instead, look to your relationships, the events you attract, and the attitudes you take with you from one place to another.

Here’s some Sufi wisdom, repeated from Finding the Field.

Once upon a time, somewhere between the mountain peaks and the shores of the azure sea, there was a village in which there dwelt a Sufi master renowned for his wisdom. One day, a stranger entered the village, and immediately looked for the master to ask advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?”
     And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?”
     “Ah,” said the visitor angrily. “They are terrible people. They are robbers, cheats and liars. They stab each other in the back.”
     “Well now,” said the Sufi master. “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.”
     So the man departed the village and was never seen there again.
     Soon, another stranger entered the village, and he too sought the Sufi master for advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?”
     And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?”
     “Ah,” said the visitor in fond remembrance, “They are wonderful people. They’re kind, gentle and compassionate. They look after each other.”
     “Well now,” said the Sufi master, “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.”

You do, most comprehensively, take your mirror with you wherever you go. You want to find yourself? You don’t have to go anywhere. You want happiness? You don’t have to wait. There’s joy to be had, even in the difficult times.

I have Gangaji to thank for the reminder. And also for the moment when she looked around at the audience during a silence, and said softly, “It’s all so very simple.”

Yes, yes, yes.
Joy to you.
Michael
P.S. Next week’s newsletter will be the last for this year.

To find out more about Gangaji, try this link.

This week is different. Something significant has shifted in me and I want to share it, in the hope that it’s useful to you. I especially owe this to you if you have read or listened to Finding The Field.

A little background. I was 10 when I first started to wonder, Why is there pain? Actually, I’m smiling right now, remembering my egocentric outrage that such a thing had dared to enter my life. But even then I sensed that there was more to the cause of pain than the most obvious cause in front of me. (No, no details… I just want to get to the point.) Within another 10 years I was seriously looking for answers to the big questions: What’s it all about? Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my place in the universe? It took another 40 years for the answers to fall into place, and then into Field. In spite of what I’m about to tell you, that has not changed. The answers are satisfying to many, it seems, which is wonderful.

Now, let me try put my recent discovery into words.

I’ve been startled by new understanding of something I’ve heard many times, and so, probably, have you. I wrote it into Field: The journey is the destination; the destination is the journey. I learned that one when I journeyed through the Andes looking for the Truth in the classic way. Ironic, yes? I thought I understood it fully back then; but I didn’t, because I somehow never saw the connection with the first universal truth: You are entirely the creator of your reality. Existence is subjective, not objective—even in the hunt for the Truth. Yes, I know, it’s way too academic. Too much thinking. Which is exactly why I missed the point. Here’s the point…

Stop looking.

I must stop looking for enlightenment, because if I believe it is not here, it is not. If I believe it is elsewhere, it is. My beliefs create it so. And I must stop looking even inside myself, because if I believe it is hidden, it is.

Call off the chase. Stand down. Just remain quietly open, aware, relaxed.

Through intense, anxious decades I chased: answers, truth, enlightenment, awakening, fulfilment, self-realisation, serenity, all of that, chasing a butterfly I couldn’t see. What did it look like? Was I running towards it, or away from it? Would I recognize it if I saw it? I didn’t know.

Now, I must stop and allow it to settle gently on my shoulder.

Some have that butterfly on their shoulders all their lives and never speak about it or even think about it. They just live it. But we can sense it, if we want, when we are very still, aware of the silence that holds all sounds and the light that holds all sights and the invisible ocean that holds all thoughts and all things.

You know, I feel wonderful right now. Butterfly safaris were never this good. Why on earth did it take me so long?

Well, I do know the answer to that. I was like the Buddhist student who wanted to impress his master.
     “I’m going to plant this seed,” he said proudly, “and its growth will be an allegory for my spiritual growth.”
     “Yes it will,” smiled the master.
     And the student planted the seed and watched its growth anxiously. He gave it too much water and too many nutrients and it struggled to grow. So he dug it up and re-planted in different soil, again over-watering and over-feeding. Again it struggled and again he re-planted.  And so it went on.
     The day came when the master arrived to see the results, and there was, of course, little to show. The student hung his head.
     “I’m sorry, master. I wanted it to be an allegory of my spiritual progress, but it hasn’t worked.”
    “Yes it has,” smiled the master.

So, this newsletter is something of a confession. I am certain of what went into Field, but that doesn’t mean that the butterfly was flapping vigorously on my shoulder as I wrote. In some ways I was blinded by my own words, even though there is truth in them. My thought of the truth is not the same as the truth. My thought of who I am is not who I am.

But no one has to worry about such things. Why? Because everything works perfectly anyway. We lose the butterfly when we are separate from Consciousness, we find it again when we re-connect. It just doesn’t matter; one state is no better than the other, because  separation and connection are fundamental to creation. They are fission and fusion in perfect dynamic balance and the one has no meaning without the other. Consciousness does not have accounting columns marked right and wrong, good and bad. Jesus and Judas were two faces of one being.

Which means that there’s simply nothing that has to be fixed. Certainly our efforts to fix things add to the great adventure of life, but our efforts are not a requirement of existence. Nothing has to be proved. No one has to be saved. Nothing has to be done. What liberation!

I think I just dealt myself the get-out-of-jail-free card.

I surely have something in common with the man who said, “When I was young, I prayed to Allah to give me the strength to change the world. When I was middle-aged, I prayed to Allah to give me the strength to change those around me. When I was old, I prayed to Allah to give me the strength to change myself.” Well, I think that’s me. But I would add one thing—when I depart this body, I might pray that I have had the strength to be true to my heart. Which is what I seem to be attempting right now.

So does this new relaxation mean that I will become an aimless, protoplasmic blob?

Of course not. I aim to enjoy myself, including plenty of earthly pleasures in the mix. I aim to live fully and love well and make a difference to the world of people around me. But I don’t have to do anything. How terrific to know that everything is part of the perfection of existence—including that pain I experienced as a 10-year-old. How terrific to know that my individual existence will not be weighed on scales. How terrific is that?

And I will not think too hard. Maybe sometimes I will not even describe the smell of roses—I’ll just smell them, for heaven’s sake.

But I will keep writing these newsletters. Yes, I will, as long as you value them and as long as people keep asking me about Finding the Field. Don’t worry, I won’t always treat this newsletter as a confessional.

A last thought. In my writing I have dipped into compassion. But I realise now that I just had my toe in the ocean. The butterfly whispers to me about how vast that ocean is and I suspect that when I have as much compassion for a scorpion as I do for a puppy, I’ll have this whole thing sorted.

But I’m in no hurry.

Joy to you.
Michael

     There was once a man who died and woke up in the afterlife.
     He knew immediately where he was, because the evidence was all around him: luxuriant gardens, marble mansions, tubs with gold taps, grapes and candied artichokes, harps to sleep him, nightingales to wake him, and a giant feather bed for him and all his loving women.
     So, he enjoyed the most perfect pleasure and comfort, day after day… after day… after day… until…
     One morning, he noticed that his plate of brandied truffles was empty. And—as usual in such moments—another full plate appeared before him. Instantly. Always, without fail, his slightest whim was satisfied faster than the blink of his eye. But this time, he just stared at the plate and thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the worse he felt. So he turned to the nearest servant.
     ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Just for once, I wish that perfect food would not appear the moment I think of it. I would like to work up an appetite.’
     ‘Oh no,’ said the servant. ‘You might suffer from hunger. That’s not allowed.’
     The man’s frown became a scowl. He looked out the window at the perfect weather and complained, ‘And just for once, when I go outside, I wish it could be raining.’
     ‘Oh no,’ said the servant, ‘You might suffer from cold. That’s not allowed.’
     The man became angry and pointed rudely at his bed, where seven perfectly gorgeous, naked women were waiting for him with perfect love in their eyes. And he snapped to the servant, ‘And just for once, I wish I could wake up without them.’
     But the servant laughed merrily. ‘Oh no. You might miss them and suffer loss and grief and pain. That’s not allowed.’
     So the man shouted at the servant. ‘Look, this just isn’t working for me. I don’t like it here. I want the other place. I’d rather have hell.’
     ‘Really?’ said the servant, ‘Where do you think you are now?’

Perfection needs to change its publicity agent. The idea that perfect happiness requires a sky free of pain-clouds is simply nonsense.

Do you know how to get the best experience out of eating and drinking? Do without for a day or two. Want the best shower you’ve ever had? Do without for a few days. Likewise, the full experience of hot must contain the experience of cold. Up has no meaning without down. A coin’s value is in both faces. You appreciate light best when it’s been dark, and starlight as the mist melts away. You hold more happiness when sadness has hollowed a cavern inside you. You feel friendship more deeply when your friend has been away and come back. Nothing can be fully experienced, appreciated or understood or have any meaning without its opposite or lack, or contrasting partner.

Yes, partner. The Tao symbol has two halves, black and white intertwining, each holding the seed of its opposite. Taoism understands the intimate, dynamic, oneness of the dualistic universe.

Think of pain and pleasure as partners holding hands as they look at you. Think of them together, because it’s a delusion to think that one must follow the other. Happiness never comes tomorrow, because it is never tomorrow, around the corner, or when the ship comes in. There is only now. Many people pass their lives in a semi-permanent state of anxiety—about past and future—fleeing pain in pursuit of the happiness that stays always beyond reach.

But happiness offers itself to us in every now, even as we experience the bad times. To achieve it we have to turn, not away from pain, but towards it, embracing it as a partner in our journey. I don’t mean that we should deliberately seek pain—that would need a word with the people in white coats—I mean that when pain happens we should accept it like the weeping willow that accepts a gust of wind, bending, straightening, strengthening. Only then can we then fully embrace the other partner, the patient one—happiness.

That’s what I aspire to. And I have found a useful device to help me. It’s called viewing the movie of you. It works for both mental and physical pain.

But let’s stay with mental pain for now. Let’s suppose you’re experiencing the pain of… say… anger. It might help here if you think about someone who makes you angry. You’re about to view the movie of your angry self. One thing before you start: to make this work you must decide not to turn away from your anger. Don’t deny it, block it or fight it. Don’t judge or label it or yourself; to think this anger is wrong, this pain is terrible, or  I must be a bad person for being angry simply nourishes the pain.

 Ready? Okay, here’s how to make viewing the movie work.

 First, Allow. Allow yourself to feel the anger. Accept its existence. Say to yourself, ‘This part of me feels anger.’ Even in this first stage, you will notice a difference, because most suffering comes not from pain, but from resistance to pain. Resistance comes from fear, and fear is what makes pain hurt.
     Second, Observe. Close your eyes. Strongly, vividly, imagine that you get up and stride a few paces away from your angry self then turn to look back at it as if it were playing on a screen. Say to yourself, ‘That part of me feels angry’. Notice the distancing shift from ‘this’ to ‘that’.
     Third, Release. Release the anger-ridden self on the screen. Let it dissipate in its own time. Don’t push it away; it’s not a rejection, just a letting go. Say to yourself, ‘That too will pass.’ Now you are standing back, viewing your full self, with a mind free to control your next thought or action, consciously directing the new scene. And feeling less pain.

Allow, observe, release. Now, now you can feel the happiness which is inherent in all of us, even in the difficult and challenging times. Now you’re in a state where you can master yourself, take command of your next actions, and allow the remaining pain to bid farewell.

It’s more than a state of mind. It’s a state of consciousness, a silent all-inclusive awareness in which you can discover that colours are brighter, sounds sharper, tastes more exotic. You can also discover the exquisite richness of the present moment, with past and future anxieties fading away. And you may well experience a surge in compassion.

Compassion? For whom?

Well, you, for starters. But it’s also possible that you will feel compassion for those who gave you the pain, and understand that they have their own pain and their own seeking of happiness. And what is compassion but oneness? I know that when I view the movie of me, that’s when I feel closest to that One being that has many faces, many adventures, many sorrows and many joys.

When my son Sam was a small boy and stubbed his toe on a rock, he wailed. That’s what children do, they wallow in the pain. Pain and the outrage of pain fills their world. But we found a useful trick. We would talk severely to the rock. “All right, rock, if that’s how you’re going to behave you’re not coming to Sam’s birthday party.” Instantly a smile would beam through the tears on the cheeks and soon the sniffles faded. You see it, don’t you? His awareness shifted from inside pain to outside pain. (Incidentally, it fascinates me that even toddlers understand the joke.)

Well, instead of verbally abusing a rock, try viewing the movie of you. It does work just as well for physical pain—try it at the dentist. Don’t abuse the dentist.

I would love to hear how it goes for you. You can leave a message below, or send me an email directly to michael (…at…) findingthefield (…dot…) com

May you become a talented director of the movie of your life.

Namaste
Michael

Here’s what happened. Nicola was dying of muscular dystrophy, but was still well enough to attend school classes in her wheelchair. I was in her classroom, making an item on the mainstreaming of disabled children into normal schools. The children adapted quickly to our presence and got on with a normal day.

Nicola dropped her pencil. She leaned over the edge of the wheelchair and looked for it, frowning. Immediately, half a dozen other youngsters, both genders, dropped what they were doing and cast about under the table, until they found the pencil. Then only two of the helpers returned to schoolwork. The rest stayed as Nicola held court about the birthday party she’d had in the weekend. She waved the pencil about, punctuating her statements in the air.

She was obviously very popular.  Was it because she was in a wheelchair? Were they sorry for her? Had the teacher instructed them to look after her needs… especially today? Was it the presence of a camera, or the unusual attention of adults?

It wasn’t any of those things.

The sequence finished and the camera operator nodded at me. The teacher changed the activity. Now it was posters and group discussion. Video-taping began again. Nicola continued to be a strong presence, her every utterance doted on by other five-year-olds. And beside me, smiles grew on the faces of the cameraman and sound recordist, who, like me, had seen many things that don’t lead to smiles. The teacher said nothing, but her smile was knowing. She saw this every day.

They were entranced by Nicola.

I was fascinated.  This was more than superficial popularity. What was it that gave this five-year-old such magnetic presence? Her physical looks? Well, no, she wasn’t pretty in any conventional way. Was it the way she spoke? I noticed that she never stumbled over her words. So perhaps the secret lay in her words—but I could hear nothing essentially different from those of her friends. And yet, somehow, here was a small child with charisma. The ‘X’ factor. How does that happen?

The explanation didn’t emerge until the interview.

For that, the camera crew set up outside, then Nicola and I wheeled and walked across the playground towards them.  On the way, there were a couple of clues. When talking to me, she did not speak child-to-adult, but person-to-person. Also, a waiting television camera crew can easily be intimidating to a child, but she showed not a shred of self-consciousness.

The red light winked on, the tape rolled. Nicola did not change in any way. She continued to chat with me without self-consciousness, as if there was no camera at all. Somewhere in the middle of the interview—I couldn’t resist it—I nodded in the direction of the classroom and commented on her effect on other people.

“You’re very popular.”

Recognising the question for what it was, she screwed up her face and cocked her head to one side for about five seconds of serious thought. Then her expression cleared and her eyes came back to mine.

“I think it’s because I like them,” she said.

Not they like me, but I like them. That, from a terminally ill five-year-old, was an interesting reply. But it was years before I understood it.

Here’s the second universal truth. Your life is your mirror. It shows you what you’re creating and who you’re choosing to be. In the language of the Maori, our indigenous people, Ko au te taiao, ko te taiao ko au: I am the world, the world is me. What you think, feel and believe is what you get, and every object and event is an external reflection of your internal adventure. It’s the secret language of things and events.

The day we know that is the day we start to place what we want in our mirrors.                

There is no physical universe that exists independently of you and me. Everything is an expression of Consciousness, which includes your mind. And your mind—both conscious and subconscious—expresses itself constantly, creating your own adventure stories around you. But so that our adventures can be real to us, we forget that we are the creators. We forget that our thoughts, feelings and beliefs are potent, casting themselves around us like movie projectors.

As we grow, our challenge is to take conscious control of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs—and conjure our life story deliberately.                                         

I didn’t finish the story about Nicola. Yes, she died shortly afterwards, but not as expected. She died in an accident, sparing her the prolonged death of muscular dystrophy.

You know, even as I write this, I realise that I missed out the essential word in her five year life story: love. Nicola loved everyone around her—and it came back constantly in her mirror. Her love included me, a complete stranger. How about that? I love her for it. I’m about to have a glass of wine, I’ll raise it to her memory.

Namaste
Michael

Take me to all the five universal truths

There was once a bandit leader, feared throughout the land for his cruelty and contempt for human life.
      One day, his gang surrounded a village and herded the trembling inhabitants together in front of him. He strutted before them, enjoying their terror, prolonging the uncertainty of their fate. But then he came to the village monk who was calm and unafraid. Surprised, the bandit stopped in front of him. But still the monk showed not the slightest sign of fear.
      So the bandit mocked him loudly and taunted him. “Before you die, monk, you must enlighten me. You must tell me about heaven and hell.”
      “No,” said the monk. “I will not.”
      The bandit leader could not believe his ears, so he repeated the demand, this time with a voice that promised a hideous fate if he was not obeyed.
      “No,” smiled the monk. “There is no need.”
      Then the bandit leader’s brows darkened with fury and he fell into a rage so terrible that he shook, and blood roared in his ears and rushed into his eyes, blurring his vision. Even his own men fell back in fear. But not the monk—who was observing him with great interest.
      “There,” said the monk, looking into his eyes. “That is hell.”
      The bandit leader was so shocked by these words it was as if his body had been pierced through with a great spear. But even as he fell to his knees, his heart began to soar—filled, for the first time in his life, with understanding, light and compassion. So the monk spoke again.
      “And that, my friend, is heaven,” he said. “You see? Heaven and hell were already inside you.”
      Immediately, the bandit leader wept and begged to become the monk’s pupil, and his gang fled in confusion.

The foundation of the universe is not physical matter. It is thought. Or, more accurately, a giant feeling called Consciousness. Consciousness expresses itself as all things and through all things, as us and through us. So the question where do we find heaven and hell? does have an answer. They are in our minds, deeply present, bringing real joy and real torment.

The poet John Milton once said, “The mind is a place in itself. It can create a heaven out of hell, or a hell out of heaven.”

Can you see where this is going? Don’t wait for a post-mortem white-bearded gent to hand you tickets to your ultimate destination. You are at your destination now. And now is all there is, with past and future mere malleable dreams.

Here’s the fourth universal truth: You are already home. Amidst all the paths weaving the tapestry of our combined Soul is your path. Wherever you are on your path, that is your spiritual home. Your home is not at the end of the path, or around the corner, or when the ship comes in. It’s here and it’s now. If you wait fearfully for hell, you are already there; if you wait joyfully for heaven, you are already there.

Which means that heaven is as close as the blink of an eye. We have only to see it. As Jesus of Nazareth said, “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.”

Yes, we can look around at poverty, hunger, illness, and the abuse of man by man and we can think, If this is heaven, then I will choose the other place. But if that’s what we choose to perceive of our earthly playground, then we have already chosen the other place. What we think, we become. What we feel will follow. What we choose to believe and perceive is the only reality—the idea of an absolute reality independent of mind is a mass illusion. All that stops us accepting immediate ownership of heaven and moving in is what we choose to think and feel and believe.

The trick is to choose consciously and deliberately.

Looking elsewhere for heaven is like going out to look for the horse.

What horse?

The horse. To look for it, you gallop to the top of the hill and gaze into the distance, and when you can’t see it there you gallop to top of the next hill and gaze into the distance, and when you can’t see it there…

Live now as if you were in heaven, and you will make it so. Become the master of your life and your bandit.

Namaste
Michael

A distressed Buddhist monk goes to his Abbot for advice.

“People in the street are mocking me,” he complains. “They’re calling me a dog!”

“Turn around and look at your rear end,” the Abbot says.

The monk looks at his own backside.

“Do you see a tail wagging?”

“No,” says the monk.

“Then the matter is settled,” says the Abbot.

When I heard that story, my first thought was, it’s not that funny. But my second was that it contains an interesting question. Why do we give other people—even strangers—the power to make us feel badly about ourselves?  Eleanor Roosevelt understood the same point when she said, “No one can make us feel inferior without our consent.”

Our reaction is a personal choice. Put a thousand people through the same event and a thousand paths will come out the other side depending on how each person chooses to react.

In the West, we habitually seek external cause for our current condition: we blame our parents, our upbringing, lovers, accidents, fate, the stars, the government and God. And people in the street. In doing so, we miss the point.             

Here, again, is the first universal truth: You are entirely the creator of your reality.

Entirely?

Entirely. At mostly subconscious levels—starting before birth and fuelled by the accumulated gestalt of thoughts, feelings and beliefs that were once conscious—you create every event, detail and nuance of your life. The day you live this truth and take conscious control is the day you declare your freedom and power. It’s also the day you cease to be a victim.

Before birth you choose the highway. During life you choose the lanes. One highway, a million lanes, and you negotiate those lanes with your thoughts. Most of us have little idea of the long-term power of our conscious thoughts. But Hindu teachers have known for 3,000 years. What you think, you become; what you feel will follow; what you believe will be manifest around you. Just as a beautiful building is the physical expression of an idea, so is our entire, magnificent universe the continuous expression of thought. It is a mass illusion that the physical world exists independently of thought.

The lesson is clear: take control of what you think, feel and believe. Choose. At any moment in any situation, ask yourself, Does this thought, feeling or belief serve me? Does it serve me now? Will to serve me tomorrow?

You may be asking how you could possibly be responsible for that earthquake, or tsunami, or pandemic. Do you believe that many things just happen? Nothing to do with you? But that belief, of its own accord, shapes much of your life.

Where are you on the scale of self-fulfilling creation-beliefs? 

Here’s the lowest, most helpless level of creation-belief. That you’re not the creator of your life, but a victim of circumstance. You always blame your condition on something other than yourself. You never stood a chance. You are inherently worthless. Life is a valley of sorrows.

Is that you? If you have read this far, probably not.

Try the next level, more evolved: you are sometimes the creator of your life. You can influence some events, but most external forces are too strong to fight. You blame most of your condition on something other than yourself. You take some responsibility for what happens to you. You have some worth, some potential. Life is a painful struggle with a few highlights.

Is that you?

The next level: you are mostly the creator of your life. You can influence most events, though sometimes external forces are too great. You take responsibility for most of your actions. You spend little time blaming others for painful events. You are a worthwhile person with faults. You have a lot of potential. Life is an interesting and often enjoyable challenge.

Is that you? If you have read this far, it probably is.

Or is it this? The master level of creation-belief is that you are entirely the creator of your life. You do not see your Earth character as you, but as your work of art. Your every thought and action is your choice. You are fully responsible, not only for your creations but for your response to your creations. You never blame or judge others for your experiences. Your inherent worth and potential are vast. Life is an exciting, surprising, sometimes painful, yet joyous adventure.

Is that you?

Do you see the irony of those levels of creation-belief? What you believe, you will manifest. None of them is right or wrong—you will simply create the conditions that appear to prove you right. The power of a belief is not in its truth, but in its depth and intensity. That is the potency of the first universal truth.

A last word. If you see any value in what I’ve just said, don’t waste even a second faulting yourself for past beliefs. The word is not fault, but cause. Instead, begin the habit of choosing your conscious thoughts, accepting some, dismissing others. Your most frequent and vivid thoughts inform your feelings, which inform your beliefs, which sink into the shadows of your subconscious mind where they become powerful creators of your life.

And if anyone calls you a dog, the length of the tail is your choice.

The Christine O’Donnell witchcraft scandal has been hugely entertaining. O’Donnell, a rising star in US tea party politics, is wearing a storm over her admission that she ‘dabbled in witchcraft’ in high school. I’m especially enjoying it because I also dabbled in witchcraft, or ‘wicca’, when I was young.

The Bible puts witches and wizards together with words like ‘evil’ and ‘defiled’ and ‘shall surely be put to death’. The Old Testament God was offended by the craft and so are many modern Christians.

Yet those who seek the common essence of all religions quickly see through that nonsense; it swiftly becomes clear that the essence of Christian prayer is the same as the essence of a witchcraft spell. Let me say that in a different way. Faith-driven passionate prayer to God works, faith-driven passionate summoning of the Goddess works—and both use the same inner or subconscious power available to all of us, a power which knows nothing of right and wrong.

The only difference is in the imagery.

For that difference, thousands of witches were burned at the stake. While the Catholic church was enforcing its orthodoxy, it also took witchcraft very seriously—as a competitor. Some of those put to the torch really did summon power in the unorthodox  ways, including old women who invoked the Goddess and used herbs to heal the sick. Yes, the persecution was partly a cynical exercise in power, but it was also the product of blindness: zealous authorities could not see through their own god to the being that not only creates all things, it is all things and rejects nothing of itself. It’s a being many call Consciousness.

So, all that to tell you a little story, then to ask you a question.

Imagine this. A little boy comes to his mother in the middle of the night, crying, upset by a nightmare. He says, ‘The giant is coming to eat me again.’ So the mother gets him to draw a picture of the giant, then helps him set it alight in the fireplace. As the paper burns she gets the child to ask the Goddess for help, then to chant the incantation: ‘Bad dreams with me do not belong. With this fire, bad dreams be gone.’ The drawing goes up in smoke as the child—with unwavering faith—claps three times and cheers, triumphant that the nightmare has been banished. Witchcraft, of course.

So here’s the question. If the child had asked God for help rather than the Goddess, then chanted the incantation, would that make it prayer or witchcraft?

The answer is that it doesn’t matter; they are just words for arbitrary ritual. And I have successfully used the same process with my sons, without any appeal to a deity. My son’s faith was in me; but that doesn’t matter either. The essence of the process was faith, not the object of the faith. Belief, not the object of belief. And the power that belief generates is inherent in all of us.

I can’t resist another question. If witchcraft really works (and it does) then couldn’t  it be used to do harm as well as good?

Of course. Just like Christianity and Islam.

We are creators within the Creator. We create not only our religions, but also our science. We create our past and future, our right and wrong, our sorrow and joy, our reality and our truth, like a giant flower eternally unfolding. But we are also created to forget that we are the Creator, so that our experience can be real—and so that the Creator can, through us, experience itself in a billion exquisite ways.

Namaste
Michael

Heard this one…? A man passes the local Lotto shop and sees that the big prize is a million dollars. And he prays, “Please God, let me win Lotto.” He waits for the result but to his surprise, he doesn’t win. The next time he passes the Lotto shop, the big prize is five million dollars. And he prays, “Please God, I beg you to let me win Lotto.” He waits for the result, but to his annoyance, he still doesn’t win. The next time he passes the Lotto shop the big prize has reached ten million dollars. And he prays, “Now look, God. I’m imploring you to let me win Lotto this week. I could really use the money.” And a voice speaks from the heavens, “Well you could meet me half way and buy a ticket.”

I imagine George Washington would have enjoyed the story, because he said this: “Success is not a matter of spontaneous combustion; you have to set yourself alight.” And remember the old saying that God helps those who help themselves?

For years I have been fascinated by all the different methods for achieving goals: prayer, visualization, affirmations, suggestion, hypnosis, meditation, step-by-step goal-setting, witchcraft, and sheer willpower and more. Of course none are always successful and none are always a failure—including prayer (note that Pope Benedict XVI prayed that he would not become the Pope). The real question is this: when those methods work, what do they have in common? In other words, is there a pure method more likely to succeed than any other?

Yes, there is: it’s a feeling-based visualization called the quickening*. But, as you’ll see, there’s still a catch.

First, the core of the quickening. Imagine that God is a giant feeling expressing itself through the continuous creation of all things, which includes you. So you, a piece of God, are in essence a multi-layered bundle of feelings expressing itself through your life. And your bundle includes your conscious and subconscious beliefs—the deeper you go, the more powerfully they create your life around you. And who built those beliefs? You did. Are you getting the picture here? We are not just the art, we’re the Artist, and feelings are our paint brush. We’re creating like this all the time—the point is to learn how to direct it consciously. The quickening method involves deliberate focus on specific passions. For example certainty—can you see the place of faith in this?

The catch, of course, is your willingness to meet God half way. Whatever goal-getting method you use (the quickening, prayer, visualization, casting spells etc), here are some essential points…

Make the decision… to have, to be, or to do what you seek. You may wish to be a millionaire, but when did you make the decision that you would become wealthy? A firm, irrevocable decision gets your deity (creative subconscious) into action immediately.

Get imagining and get passionate. Vague imagining and wishful thoughts won’t do it. A thought is a dried up feeling. Try to work a method with dispassionate thinking and your deity won’t even bother to get out of bed.

Make your actions consistent. Once you have used a goal-getting ‘method’, don’t stop there—make all your subsequent actions, thoughts and feelings consistent with the certain arrival of the goal. Don’t hedge your bets, don’t use the if word.

Finally, a warning about mixed messages. Millions of goals never materialise because of underlying mixed messages. What are yours? You may feel a strong desire for that ten million dollars, but what if your underlying feeling is I’m so frustrated that I never have money. Instead build the picture and the passion money comes easily to me, how wonderful!

*The quickening is described in full in Part III Chapter 6 of Finding the Field (to order the book click here), or you can hear it for free in Part III Chapter 6 of the audio book.

Namaste
Michael