FIVE IDEAS THAT CAN REALLY CHANGE YOUR LIFE

‘You are terrible, but happily for you, you are not you.’ Vernon Howard.

Words have power—for better or for worse—and ideas have even greater power. An idea that expresses an eternal, metaphysical truth is the most powerful thing in the world. 

Here are five empowering ideas that have made a huge difference in my life. They have lifted me out of the depths of despair.

1.   You are be-ing

Life is pure be-ing-ness actualized. Life forever gives of itself to itself so as to create more life in one form or another. The tree of life is be-ing-ness, or Be-ing, itself. I AM-ness. Oneness. It is the impersonal principle of life that is forever becoming personal as you and me and all other persons and things.

Life is the one formless, source-less, essence-less, unlimited, unsearchable, self-existent, self-knowing, self-giving, absolute, omnipresent, indestructible, and abundant self-existence that forever takes form—incarnating as you, me, and everything—but which is never even for a moment absorbed by the innumerable objects of its self-expression. 

The omnipresence of life forever manifests itself as the eternal now by means of an endless process or renewal of the present moment. Each moment is a ‘centre’, for want of a better word, of life's own consciousness. Forms of life constantly change. No form is permanent. Indeed, every form will pass away in time, but the essence of life is formless and eternal. It never passes away. Yes, the life that takes shape in one form or another can never be destroyed. You are life itself—a unique individualization and expression of life. 

Yes, you are part of life’s self-expression, and life cannot other than be. You are be-ing and you are also be-coming. Indeed, you are always in a state of becoming because change is the essence of be-ing-ness. This means that you are constantly changing whether for better or for worse. Once you fully understand this metaphysical truth, you are ready to take charge of your life.

2.   You are consciousness

Life is consciousness. We are life itself—an integral part of life’s self-expression. Each one of us is an inlet and an outlet of consciousness. 

The materialist view that asserts that the mind and the brain are one and the same—the so-called mind-brain identity theory—is not supported by recent discoveries in neuroscience and quantum physics as respects the nature of reality. Those discoveries tend to show that the mind and the brain are not co-extensive or identical, and that mind or consciousness is the creator and governor of so-called matter. 

Because you are be-ing, be-coming and consciousness, you have the powers of thought and observation. There is a time to think and, yes, a time to simply observe … choicelessly. Listen to these words of J. Krishnamurti, pictured right:

I wonder if you have ever walked along a crowded street, or a lonely road, and just looked at things without thought? There is a state of observation without the interference of thought. Though you are aware of everything about you, and you recognize the person, the mountain, the tree, or the oncoming car, yet the mind is not functioning in the usual pattern of thought. I don't know if this has ever happened to you. Do try it sometime when you are driving or walking. Just look without thought; observe without the reaction which breeds thought. 

There will always be a time for rational, critical thought, analysis, judgement and interpretation but if you do these things every second of the day, you will end up with analysis paralysis. Learn the art of choiceless awareness. Look. Observe. Be attentive. Be aware. That is what mindfulness is all about.

3.  You are what you think

No, I am not contradicting myself. As I have said, we need to think. This is the first verse of the Dhammapada according to one famous English translation: ‘Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.’ The same idea is expressed in the Hebrew Bible: ‘Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts’ (Prov 4:23); ‘For as a person thinks in their heart, so are they’ (Prov 23:7).

As we are consciousness, we must watch your thoughts. Are our thoughts positive or negative? Positive thinking has its detractors these days but I have never seen any benefits in negative thinking. Positive thinking is good for the mind and the body. Positive thinking releases life-affirming, healing chemicals into the brain and the body. Negative thinking releases life-destroying, malignant chemicals into the brain and the body. It’s clear which one is better for us. Of course, we must be realistic thinkers. We need to always see things-as-they-really-are. The true positive thinker is a realistic thinker who sees things-as-they-really-are but at the same time refuses to be deflected, let alone overwhelmed or defeated, by that which is negative. The true positive thinker never dwells on those things.

So, in the words of Plato, ‘Take charge of your thoughts; you can do what you will with them.’

4.  You cannot change yourself

The ‘I’ of you cannot change the ‘me’ of you. One of my all-time favourite spiritual teachers Alan Watts, pictured left, has this to say in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity about the wrong way to embark upon self-improvement:

I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good ‘I’ who is going to improve the bad ‘me.’ ‘I,’ who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward ‘me,’ and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently ‘I’ will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make ‘me’ behave so badly.

The reason the good ‘I’ can’t change the bad ‘I’ is because they are one and the same and they exist only as self-images in our mind. Yes, all the 'I's' and 'me's' in your mind are little 'selves' that brought about by thought. These 'selves' have no separate, independent reality in and of themselves. They appear to be 'solid,' 'fixed,' and 'permanent,' but they are not. They are the product of thought which divides itself. You have hundreds of little 'selves' within you. None of them are the real you—that is, the person that you are. The person that you are is a mind-body complex in respect of which both physical characteristics and states of consciousness can be ascribed. Only the person is ontologically real. 'Selves' come and go; they wax and wane. They have no power and have no separate and independent existence from the person that you are.

You, the person that you are, can change. First, you, the person, must want to change. Secondly, you, the person, must do what is necessary and appropriate to change. The power to change is within, but it is always a ‘power-not-oneself’. Self has no power. Self cannot change self. The ‘I’ of you can never change the ‘me’ of you. Never forget that. Never.

Vernon Howard, a great spiritual author, wrote:

While there is no you who can rescue you, there can be an impartial awareness of the rescuing process. The rescue is complete when the awareness is complete.

What is this 'rescuing process' alluded to by Howard? It is none other than the process of choiceless awareness from one moment to the next, undertaken by the person that you are. Howard wrote:

You can begin to catch your false behaviour by asking the question ‘Who said that?’ and you will catch false personality being pleasant, sarcastic, and so on. As often as you can, you will interrupt yourself and say ‘Who said that?’ and if it is negative in any way at all, that is the invented self speaking in your name. 

All your little, false selves purport to speak in your name. Give them no power over you. They have no power in and of themselves. You give them power only when you believe them to be real. Don't do that!

5.   Acceptance is the answer to all your problems

‘On the acknowledgement of what is there is the cessation of all conflict,’ said Krishnamurti. Yes, acceptance—that is, acknowledging what is—is the answer to all your problems. Now, I am not saying that we should simply give in. No, not at all. However, before we can change we must first accept the reality of what is. Alcoholics cannot recover from their disease until they first accept that they are alcoholics. There’s more, though. Krishnamurti has stated a metaphysical truth of supreme importance, namely, that once we acknowledge what is, conflict in the form of resistance and the like comes to an immediate end. We must surrender in order to gain victory. Never forget that.

There are many other empowering ideas that can change your life. Many of these I have explored and discussed in other posts over the years—ideas such as the law of indirectness (don't attempt to put a thought or problem out of your mind directly but rather let the problem slip from the sphere of conscious analysis’), the principle of non-resistance (what you resist, persists), truth is a pathless land (we are always in direct and immediate contact with truth, so there is no separation or distance between us and truth), and truth is a moment-to-moment experience (truth is dynamic, not static).

I love empowering ideas. As Victor Hugo said, ‘Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.’

All power to you!

Note. The substance of this post first appeared on September 2, 2016 as 'Five Empowering Ideas That Can Change Your Life Forever'. Some new material has been added while some material in the original post has been omitted.

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HOW TO DEVELOP AN UNTROUBLED MIND

The great American preacher and author Dr Norman Vincent Peale [pictured right] used to say, ‘Problems are a sign of life. The only people who don’t have them are the ones in the cemetery.’

Yes, problems and trouble are the price we pay for living. Peale used to say that the more problems we have, the more alive we are. ‘If you don’t have any problems you’re on the way out, and you don’t know it,’ he would exclaim.

It’s impossible to eliminate from our lives all problems and troubles, but the fact remains that so many of them are of our own making. All too often we think negatively and react badly to external events. We obsess over our own thoughts. We obsess about the past. We worry about the future. We don’t relate to other people as well as we could. The result? A troubled mind. The good news is that problems and trouble need not trouble you. In other words, you can have an untroubled mind despite the occurrence of problems and troubles in your life. That may sound Pollyannaish but it’s true.

Now, there are many ways to develop an untroubled mind. An obvious way is to simply refuse---yes, refuse---to worry about both the past and the future. What has happened in the past can’t be changed. Let the past stay in the past. As respects the future, what you are worried about may never happen. Worrying will not prevent something happening if it's inevitable that it's going to happen. Actually, apart from death and taxes, there is really nothing else that is bound to happen, and if what you’re worrying about doesn’t happen, then there was no point in worrying about the dame thing in the first place. Of course, all of this is easier said than done.

The Bhagavad-Gita has much to say about the importance of developing a ‘stable [or steady] mind’, that is, a mind that is imperturbable. An imperturbable mind is one that remains unmoved and undisturbed by not just external circumstances but also the vagaries and agitations of the contents of the mind itself, especially our thoughts, feelings and emotions. A person with a stable and steadfast mind takes things as they come, irrespective of their likes and dislikes (the ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’), is not swayed by either their senses or their thoughts and feelings, and has an attitude of non-resistance and acceptance toward change. There's a metaphysical law known as the law of non-resistance. One formulation of that law is, 'What we resist, persists.' That's so damn true. Here's some very good advice from the Islamic scholar and Sufi mystic Rumi:

‘Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?’

Meditation is a most useful way of developing a stable and untroubled mind. Millions have found that to be true all over the globe. I have found that the regular practice of mindfulness is the best way to fortify the mind against worry, fear and anxiety. Listen to these wonderful words of the Buddha as recorded in section 3 (‘Mind’) of the Dhammapada (translated by Thomas Byrom):

'An untroubled mind,

No longer seeking to consider

What is right and what is wrong,

A mind beyond judgements,

Watches and understands.'

There you have it. An untroubled mind is a non-judgmental mind, a mind that is choicelessly aware of the action of the present moment, be that action internal or external. An untroubled mind is a mind that ‘watches’ and ‘understands’. It is an alert mind which is open and receptive to whatever is happening. Actually, what the Buddha has so brilliantly described is mindfulness, and the characteristics of a mindset that is mindful as opposed to mindless. On the same point, the world-renowned authority on Zen, Alan Watts [pictured right], also got to the heart of the matter when he wrote, ‘Zen is not concerned with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.’ Got that? What is.

Now, we must be careful here. Neither the Buddha nor Watts is saying that we should no longer concern ourselves with what is right and what is wrong. Buddhism, in particular, has much to say about those two things as do all other religions and codes of ethical living. The point is this. All too often, when an event occurs, we immediately proceed to interpret, analyse, compare, contrast, judge and evaluate that event rather than experience the reality of the present moment. We either fight against that reality or cling to it. The plain and simple fact of the matter is this --- unless we learn to let go of the present moment we will never experience and enjoy the reality of the next moment and the one after that and the one after that. The present moment is ever renewing itself as another present moment, then another, and then another. To live mindfully is to let go, but before we can let go we must---‘let be.’ If we interpret, analyse, compare, contrast, judge and evaluate the present moment we are not letting be. By identifying with the present moment we end up getting stuck in the past.

Pull yourself up every time that you find yourself interpreting, analysing, comparing, contrasting, judging or evaluating an everyday happening or event and immediately return to watching and observing the reality of the present moment as one moment unfolds after another. That is the only way you will understand. Pay attention. Watch and understand. Non-judgmentally. Choicelessly. 

I quoted Dr Norman Vincent Peale at the start of this post. Here's some great advice from him on the subject of developing an untroubled mind: ‘Sit still, be silent, let composure creep over you.' That's all you have to do. Get the body still first, then the mind will follow. Do that many times a day if necessary. Sit still. Be silent. And let---please note that word 'let'---composure creep over you. The Theravāda Buddhist leader and teacher of the Buddhadhamma Ajahn Chah said more-or-less the same thing:

'Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.' 

‘Let not your heart be troubled’ (Jn 14:1a). Trouble need not trouble you. You have a choice. So, let the past stay in the past. Make amends for wrongs committed and then move on. Prepare wisely for the future but don’t live in it or worry about it in advance of it unfolding. The future will unfold as it will. Live mindfully.

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