To be clean means to be a success.

Projection:

We usually interact with others based on our past experiences with

them. Even if there has been a single negative experience with

someone, we keep that in our mind and all our responses are based

on that experience. We are, then, not able to be fully successful

in our relationships.

Solution:

In order to succeed in our relationships we need to keep our mind

free from the experiences of the past. We can do this when we look

at the uniqueness and speciality of each individual that we come

into contact with. This practice makes us respect all and be free

from the negativity of the past.

Few words are required when thoughts are positive

Projection:

I sometimes find myself using a lot of words to convey what I feel or to give explanations to others. Yet I sometimes find that others are not convinced with my words. I am then at a loss about what is to be done.

Solution:

Positive thoughts actually reach out to others and create the right environment. All I need to do is to create an atmosphere of positivity by maintaining my own positive thoughts. Then I will not have to use so many words to prove my point or to convince others.

The Sound of Silence

“Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm. One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence”. Andre Kostelanetz

If ever there was an oxymoron (contradiction in terms) it is found in the phrase ‘sound of silence’. And yet, if you ask anyone who has been practicing meditation for some time they will tell you that it’s as if, in silence, there is a kind of sound. The silence that they refer to is of course the silence ‘within’ the self, and the sound is more like an awareness, a feeling, of the sweetness and power of ones own being. By many accounts the ‘sound of silence’ can have the effect of altering ones perceptions and perspectives so profoundly that life and living are never quite the same again. When the self resides in the silence of just being, where all ‘doing’, including thinking, has temporarily ceased, there is a profound sense of the unlimitedness of the self and it’s from there that everything else appears as it really is; small, limited and almost insignificant.

”Silence is the secret to sanity” Astrid Alauda

Central to almost every ‘spiritual/wisdom path’ is the understanding that we are spirit not form and that the heart of our being is silent and still. If it wasn’t then our consciousness would be in almost constant chaos. It is the still and silent core of our being that provides our strength, stability and the ultimate sense of security, much like the invisible foundations of a building ensures the building stands solidly and stably on the ground. Just as we return at the end of every day to rest and refresh our energies, the central stillness and silence of our being is our spiritual home where we can and do rest, refresh and reinvigorate our spiritual energy. However while rejuvenation and refreshment of our body may require hours of rest and relaxation, the re-empowerment of our being, which is beyond time, can take as little as a few seconds or a few minutes. If we don’t do it consciously, if we don’t empty our awareness of all that would capture and drain our energy, then we will do it unconsciously in our sleep.

Most of the time the vast majority of us are not aware of this inner state or condition of stillness/silence as we are all now well practiced in seeking, creating and living in a constantly distracted state. We habitually fill our awareness with the noise of thoughts, emotions, experiences and desires. This ‘noisiness’ appears to be coming from ‘out there’ in the world around us but it’s not! It comes from what we do inside with the world that we allow and bring into our awareness. This, combined with the noise of our senses, our sensual input, completely drowns our awareness of our still and silent self, thereby diminishing if not destroying our capacity to feel truly stable and secure. This is why we often crave inner peace but because of the myth of ‘outside in’ we learn to seek it in the place where it can never be found.

The practice of ‘being in silence’, of consciously emptying our awareness of all forms of noise, is essentially the practice of meditation. Meditation is the ‘way into’ silence. Being silent is the foundation of mastering our mind, healing our heart and accessing our conscience

A Silent Mind

Self-talk is the term that is often used to describe what can be the incessant mental noise of all the inner conversations that we have in our heads with ourselves and with others. The root cause is our forgetfulness of who we really are. We have learned to create many identities based on what we do, where we live, who we are with, where we work etc. The energizing of these multiple identities is what generates many ‘thought forms’. Sometimes it seems like we have a crowd in our head all complaining, judging or projecting one minute, then accusing, worrying, hoping or regretting the next! A silent self is someone who has realised these conversations are not only a waste of time and energy but are also based on an illusory sense of self. They have nothing to do with the authentic self which is simply the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’.

It’s not difficult to calm your mind and move into a quieter state. Sit in a quiet place and practice observing your thoughts. Allow your thoughts to come and go, and as they do notice that ‘you’ are the observer, the one who doesn’t go anywhere! Practice NOT ‘hooking on to’ thoughts and allowing them to expand and carry you away. If you do get on a ‘train of thought’ as soon as you ‘notice’ that you have, come back to your observer position/awareness. Then watch for the space between your thoughts. It’s small at first but gradually it will expand. In that space is the silent power of your being

A Silent Heart

When the self knows itself as ‘I am’ (which is ‘no thing’) it also comes to know ‘what’ I am. You cease to crave and search outside for love in the form of the attention, acceptance and approval of others as you realise love IS what ‘I am’. Love IS the heart that ‘I am’. With this awareness the heart returns to its natural state which is radiant and giving of itself. As it does it naturally becomes quiet. The noise of desire and attachment subsides, all emotional upheaval dissolves and the heart, the self, then naturally and silently shares itself with whoever is present regardless of whatever is happening.

It’s not difficult to restore the power of a silent heart, which is essentially the self. Sit quietly and watch your feelings. Let your feelings rise and fall, as they do. Then consciously invoke your peace. Consciously choose to be at peace, to feel peaceful. Allow any other distracting thoughts and feelings to pass, as they do. Return to choosing to ‘feel’ peaceful. Practice with immense patience! Notice that when your heart, when you, are at peace, there is a subtle pulse. This is the intention and inclination to give, to share, to connect. This is the pulse of your spiritual heart, of you. This is the pulse of love.

The art of right decision making lies in thinking less.

Projection:

When I am faced with a difficult situation, I naturally begin to think a lot. I tend to feel that the more I think, the more choices I have and the better the decision I will be able to take. But such thinking only creates more and more waste thoughts

Solution:

I need to make the effort of thinking less about the problem. Even a few moments of internal silence helps me develop my intuition and the right decision is made from within; because silence brings solutions.

The Ground of Your Creativity

Peace is both the heart of our being and the power of our life. If you did not return regularly to your heart, your spiritual heart, to be nourished by your inner peace, you would likely be permanently exhausted, easily burnt out, over stimulated, hyperactive and a real hurry and worry addict.

Peace is one of those words that seems to have lost its true meaning, its real significance. Real peace, true peace, is not the absence of war or the resolving of conflict between two sides. Authentic peace is a state of being, which shapes a state of mind, which generates positive and focussed thinking, which are then expressed as proactive attitudes and behaviours.

Every human being is intrinsically creative by virtue of the fact that every human can think and choose, discern and select the thoughts they would like to manifest in the world. However, the ‘quality’ of our thoughts is another question. If creativity is a function of consciousness then the ‘quality’ of your creation is a line along which whatever you create may be measured. At one end of the line is low ‘quality’ thinking/creating i.e. negative, cruel, angry and ugly thoughts. At the other end of the line is high ‘quality’ thinking/creating, i.e. positive, compassionate, loving and caring thoughts. If that line were now stood on one end, with the low ‘quality’ at the bottom, and the high ‘quality’ at the top, and if we could imagine it as a thermometer with ‘peace’ as the mercury indicating the level of ‘quality’, at what level would you find your thinking/creating?

Inner peace is both the foundation and the sustenance of positive thinking and beautiful thinking. Perhaps the occasional inspirational thought could be ‘triggered’ by cruel or angry intentions, but a steady flow of insight and inspiration is guaranteed when the mind is quiet and peaceful. Just as we cannot see deeply into the ocean if there is a storm on the surface so we cannot see and allow what is deeply within our self to rise to the surface if there is mental and emotional turmoil.

Ask a writer why they suffer from bouts of writer’s block and most will tell you it is because of distracted attention, obsessive thought patterns or simply an agitated mind that is disturbing their inner peace thereby blocking and distorting the mental flow that generates their creativity. Take a second glance at works of many modern artists. Do you see something of great beauty or an expression of mental darkness, confusion and fragmentation? Yes it is creative, but what is the ‘quality’ of the creativity. Listen to modern music. Are you struck by the beauty of the tones, the subtle harmonies within its structures, or are you shocked and shaken by the edgy, often discordant tune, which is also accompanied by words that express the creator’s angst, frustrations and solemnity? The purpose is not to criticise, but to review, to sense the presence of ‘quality’, or its absence.

Perhaps the message here is simple – when we lose touch with our inner peace the quality of our creativity is degraded, the quality of our expression is distorted and the quality of our life will consequently be polluted. This is not to say that life is always a bowl of cherries when you are ‘in your peace’. Wordsworth knew loneliness intimately (as we all probably do even in a crowd) but the nature of his peace, and the peace of his nature, allowed him to ‘behold’ (hold in his being) and celebrate the beauty of the daffodil.

We are all creators, all artists, all in the process of manifesting our life from inside out, not outside in. It is often only when we are fully aware that the ‘quality’ of our creation originates from, and is dependent upon, our state of being, that we value and consciously nurture our inner peace.

The ‘quality’ of our peace correlates directly with the ‘quality’ of our creation.

Question: What is peace exactly and how do you know peace ..exactly?

Reflection: Think back on something of high quality and of low quality that you have created in your life. Notice your state of being in each instance.

Action: Try this today. When you read the newspaper, look at the billboard, listen to the music, and see if you can measure the quality of the creator’s peacefulness that lies behind their creation. Don’t judge it, criticise or condemn it. Just see if you can ‘see’ it. At the end of the day look back and see your day as a painting, and discern what was the ‘quality’ of your peace behind the creation of your day. What would be the reading on your inner peace thermometer? Set out tomorrow to see only, and create only, the highest ‘quality’ of thoughts and images.

* HAPPINE$S *

Some people would rather be right than happy. You’ll know that when you find yourself defending a position or an opinion in an argument. You find it impossible to climb down, let go, withdraw, give in, because you believe that would be losing. And you cannot accept the thought of being seen as a loser. Winning equals happiness and losing equals sorrow, that’s what you think. But hold on a minute! When you are doing that, how do you feel? You are certainly not at peace with your self, you are not satisfied, there is no joy in your conversation and you are unhappy at the thought of losing this…battle! You’ve forgotten it’s only a conversation, it’s only an exchange of views. And who created all this inner peacelessness anyway? You did. Is it ever worth it? In fact it just becomes a bad habit, and the absence of happiness becomes almost permanent. Time to change. Winning an argument isn’t winning, it is simply the ego’s way of trying to convince you that you are victorious because you avoided defeat.

Question: With whom and in what situations do you tend to find yourself defending opinions? (it’s usually with the same people, and with similar issues and situations). How do you feel during the process?

Reflection: How can you see yourself responding differently in these situations so that you don’t lose your inner peace and your satisfaction?

It’s ALL in the Mind…or is it?

They say the mind is like a parachute - it works best when it’s open. When the mind is open it can be used as it is designed to be used, which is to creatively play with ‘possibility’ (creative thinking) or to order and juxtapose various thoughts/ideas in the process of reasoning or the formulation of a rationale.

The mind is like a canvas upon which we ‘can’ consciously create our life. However, more often it’s our subconscious that ‘throws up’ thoughts, ideas and perceptions and they become the raw material of our creativity, which is why life is not so much a creative process as a repetitive process!

Mind is the ‘faculty of our consciousness’ which allows us to originate and shape our future in ‘the invisible’, in the ‘here and now’, before it becomes visible in the ‘there and then’.

If the mind is closed it means we are holding on to something, we are wrapped around and busy with some thought, image, idea, concept, memory or belief that is ‘on’ our mind. In such moments we are not able to be creative and playful, we are not able to juggle with possibility, not able to consciously ‘dance our attention’ between, around and into new insights and ideas. A closed mind is a classic sign of attachment and the habit of attachment is the cause of all our anxieties, tensions, fears and angers. These are the emotions that can easily become permanent fixtures in our personality, all because we have the habit of closing our mind.

An open mind is like a window with the curtains drawn back. Light can get in and light can go out. A meeting of open minds is a bright, lively and playful gathering in which there is a great deal of lightness and the process of co-creation enriches all minds and therefore all hearts that are present. A meeting of closed minds is a dark, tense and somewhat heavy encounter in which only the ‘old and the stale’ tends to be the currency of exchange.

You have a mind but you are not your mind. Out of the light of your consciousness you emerge the faculty of mind as the ‘arena of creation’. The most common mistake is to lose your ‘self’ in what is ‘on’ your mind. That’s when you allow your self to be shaped by what is on your mind. This will be an image in the form of an idea, memory, belief etc. This is when you ‘cloak your self’ with what’s on your mind, sometimes consciously or more often unconsciously, and develop a false sense of ‘I’. This is the moment when you cease to be a master of your mind. The feelings, which then arise from this mental state, will always be uncomfortable and unnatural because you are acting against your true nature, which is free of attachment to anything ‘on’ the mind. A free spirit is not grounded or trapped by anything mental.

All of this can be ‘seen’ in the practice of meditation and in the process of reflection and contemplation. Sit back and stare at the ceiling – bring all your attention within – be aware of your self being aware – watch your thoughts arising – notice how you get ‘lost in thought’ – see how ‘you’ the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ is easily lost ‘in’ an image of an idea, memory or desire – see how you close your self around and trap your self within the thought/image.

It’s not right or wrong but it is a mistake to stay ‘in there’ for if you do you will see how it starts to shape your sense of identity as you start to identify with my thought, my idea, mydesire. This is how the ego is born, for what is EGO but a case of mistaken identity, the birth of a false sense of ‘I’. From the day we are born to the day that we depart 99.999% of us will likely learn, practice and perfect such a mistake and not realise it is the one and only reason why we are ever unhappy, discontent and/or peaceless.

If you contemplate and reflect a little more, if you meditate with some regularity, you will start to see this as the root of ALL your emotional discomforts, the source of ALL your suffering, the origin of ALL your stress and that it really means ALL. Which is good news because it means you can do something about it. But ‘the doing’ is not between you and the world out there, not between you and other people, it’s between you and your mind. Our freedom and therefore our happiness is impossible until we stop living in our mind and losing our self in what is on our mind.

But don’t believe a word that you read here…but don’t not believe it either! See for your self and you may notice that every time you get lost in what’s on your mind you are really looking for your self. But that, as they say, is another seminar!

Question: What two aspects of the above are not clear for you?

Reflection: I am not my thoughts.

Action: Which three trains for thoughts do you tend to lose yourself in the most – practice pulling your self off the train!

Letting Go Of The '' Past ''

The influence of the past on our personality, hopes and fears is deep, and difficult to trace. The past is by definition a collection of memories. It is also the journey on which we have picked up the skills required in our day to day activities, because of which we tend to believe that remembering the past will help, sustain (strengthen) and protect us. There are certainly great benefits in learning from our past mistakes, but too much attachment to the past can damage present satisfaction.

Many of us are very worried about avoiding past disaster, even to the extent that we forget how to enjoy the present or how to hope positively for the future. E.g. if we have been badly hurt by someone in the past, we may allow this to damage our self-esteem. We become worried that the unhappiness will occur again, because of which we see our current relationship with some other person with a negative frame of mind. As a result of that the negativity is reflected back at us. The relationship fails, which strengthens our belief in the past, and increases negative feelings about the future.