Archive for category: Blog

…or should that be ‘correctly’?

Twice, in the last month. I have had to deal with couples who have got to the point of being about to part company because one person misheard what the other person said and the following miscommunications tumbled into a battle. The impression that I get is that in the lockdown/furlough process many of us are switching off emotionally and not paying proper attention to what is going on around us. The potential for miscommunication just grows. This shutting down is an understandable coping mechanism to deal with the potential boredom and monotony but not helpful in maintaining a relationship. When ‘that hitch’ is heard as ‘fat bitch’ we have a problem.

Recently I cooked a birthday meal and printed a menu for the diners. In doing it I remembered that, back in the London of my childhood, people would accidentally, or deliberately, get words wrong. So, Aperitif became ‘a pair of teeth’ and Hors d’ oeuvres became, ‘horse’s doovers’. Then today Chris Abouzeid made me laugh when he tweeted…

…‘So evidently our 13 year old thought ‘prima Donna’ meant anyone born before Madonna (i.e. pre-Madonna). Please send oxygen. We cannot stop laughing.’

It made me laugh as well. It was the tweets that followed that made me think of how we so easily miscommunicate. The child, who’s mother was a potter, went into panic at the news the baby sitter had been ‘Fired’. Laura who had thought that euthanasia was a young people’s place in Japan. I recall my younger sister, in her teenage, stunning us all when said ‘what is the point of oral sex? Why would you just to want to talk about it?’ Mind you, these days in the various forms of Covid lockdown many people have little else to do than talk about it.

Madam de Gaulle stunned a post war BBC interviewer when her answer to his question ‘what would you like with your retirement’ sounded like ‘I just want a penis’. She was actually saying ‘I just want happiness’ but with a strong French accent.

In the vagaries of Cockney rhyming slang the word used would be the one that didn’t rhyme. So ‘apples and pears’ meant stairs but you would only ever use the word ‘apples’. ‘Could you go up the apples and get my titver?’ = Can you go upstairs and get my hat? (Tit for tat = hat)

I think about the problems that we have communicating the simplest of everyday things in our relationships and then I look at the immense mis communication taking place over Covid-19 and Brexit. When I look at the government floundering around making u-turns and rewriting the rules day on day it would be fair to say that they are making a right orchestra of it all.
(Orchestra stalls = Balls).

In everyday conversations we often only hear want we want or expect to.

Said: ‘Wow, I think you are really good at that’.
Heard: ‘Oh, so you now want me to do it all the time do you’.

Said: ‘You look really curvy it that’.
Heard: ‘So you think I am fat.’

Oronyms are when we completely mishear a sentence. It is assumed that this is something going on in the brain though I suspect that lack of attention might be the real culprit. (audicus.com Diana Michel )

Said: ‘I got a new Toyota’
Heard: ‘I got a new toy Yoda’

Said: ‘What is the biggest hurdle you have overcome?’
Heard: ‘What is the biggest turtle you have overcome?’

Chinese whispers are when the words of a message get changed as it is passed from one person to the next. The classic is the First World War example of a commander sending a message back to HQ, ‘send reinforcement we are going to advance’. By the time the message was passed from one to person another down the line the message that HQ got was ‘send three and four pence we are going to a dance’.

Even worse that verbal communication is the text or email that we know can communicate as little as 7% of what the sender intended. The chance to mishear digital communications is huge.

There would seem to be three elements when we attempt to communicate. The first is what I said, the second is what you heard and the third is what you thought I meant. They may all be different.

There is only one way to be clear about the words used and meaning behind them and that is to ask. So, my resource for this week is try this on the people around you…

‘When you said that I heard ………………………. Is that what you meant?’

You will be amazed at how many times you get the wrong end of the stick. Either way you might be elated or totally disgruntled by what you thought you heard and in. both cases be completely wrong.

So, this week take a breath, stop and check what is going on around you, you may have it wrong.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

So, will lockdown end on December 2nd? Will we be able to have a normal Christmas? Is it okay to book a holiday for next year? Do I need to go out and stock the house with all the products that we might need if all the shops run out of everything? Will my job be safe after the furlough ends?…. The list of anxious questions goes on forever. The bottom line is that nothing is certain. We are in the land of uncertainty. My teacher once said to me…

…enlightenment is living with total uncertainty and being totally secure.

Now that is a thought. In reality all of the world alway is and always will be completely uncertain. None of us know what tomorrow will bring. We can not be sure of anything moment to moment. The human mind seeks positive and affirmative things as anchors to create security that in the end is an illusion. Sadly certainty seldom happens and this leads us to feelings of anxiety and in the extreme anxiety disorder. Uncertainty is always a form of anxiety. Anxiety is living an imagined future right now in the present moment. To be anxious is to not live in the present. Anxiety and uncertainty are bed fellows. Even the most focussed and determined of people can never be 100% sure of the outcome of life or their endeavours. Yet, we are not all anxious why is this?

I recall reading a study of men being kept on death row somewhere in the USA. The research showed that while under the threat of execution the inmates would produce high levels of stress hormones and feel high levels of anxiety. However, once they had been given a death date, even if it was a while in advance, their production of stress hormone would drop. The conclusion of the study was that uncertainty creates stress and anxiety but knowledge, knowing what will be happening, even if it is awful, takes away the stress. It would seem that certainty, even is we are certain of difficult outcomes is less stressful that simply not knowing. And, guess what?, in lockdown and with Covid we simply do not know.

Whatever will be, will be – the path of acceptance
There is another way of approaching the future and that is in accepting that whatever will be, will be. There are things that we can change and things that we can not. It is helpful to know the difference. Though in knowing we need to let it go and live in the present.

Serenity

Is the state of calmness where there is peace and untroubled thoughts or feelings is what we call serenity.

According to Wikipedia the Serenity Prayer was authored by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr 1892–1971 The best-known form is:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

In the 1930s and 1940s the above prayer was adopted and popularised by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs. The original prayer requires some belief in a religious Godliness and looked more like this…

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

The Law of Allowing
In our, live in the present, work we use the law of allowing to avoid engaging in thankless tasks that will only wear us down or wear us out. Allowing the mad people to be mad without joining them or needing change them leads to serenity. When we can accept the world, and others, as they are the uncertainty, anxiety fall away.

This is not fatalistic
To be fatalistic assumes a lack of control. In the law of allowing to be the observer of events does not make use powerless or inactive. It is more that when we choose to engage we do so mindfully with a clarity of vision and purpose. We do not engage with headless chicken syndrome running around in panic and worrying about things that we cannot effect, or that we cannot effect ‘yet’. Though we may get all angry and vocal about it and demand that others see and understand our point of view.

Become a positive script writer
In mindful psychology we know that we are each writing our own experience before it happens, we are choosing how we respond to life. When we wake in the morning feeling bad about the day we write the bad script and then go and experience it. Afterwards we can congratulate ourselves on how right we were . ‘I knew today would be bad and just look I was completely right’. Perhaps, had we chosen a better script, the day could have been better.

We are not effected by events
We are effected by our response to events

We have choices and anxiety, to be anxious, is a choice. It may not feel like that at the outset and in extreme cases we may need medication to help us reset our system. Anxiety is never the way that we are, it is the way that we have learned to be, we can learn to be different, to not be anxious.

Thoughts become things

We don’t have problems we have opportunities
When we realise and embrace the amazing creativity of human consciousness and our ability to solve problems, whatever they are, anxiety and uncertainty does not exist. When I know that whatever happens I will be able to deal with it there is no fear. It is only when we loose that perspective that uncertainty and entirety take hold.

Catastrophisation
Often the things that we do become anxious about are neither here nor there. It is simply that by focussing on them they have got bigger. We can make a drama out of a crisis.

What you feed grows and what you starve dies

OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, is the result of focussing exclusively on something and allowing it to grow so large that it takes over our entire perception so that now we cease to be present, in the moment, and live in fear, uncertainty and anxiety.

Our friends uncertainty and anxiety
Uncertainty and anxiety are our friends they have been with us through out our evolution. They have kept us safe in our quest to survive by not be eaten by predators or falling from trees. The awareness that comes with normal anxiety is good, not scaring and does not create uncertainty. When appropriate anxiety gives us the awareness that we need to stay safe. When we over focus and over think we develop anxiety disorder. This is not helpful and becomes a problem.

Meditate, be serene and be happy

Sean X

As we go into another lockdown we have two choices as to how we deal with it. We can either put on our negative head and develop bad feelings or we can look on the bright side and decide that’s we are going to have a good time and and work out how best we can do that, so that ion the end we have the best time that we could possibly have.

Even in the worst of situations there is always a bright side, it is just that it may be a bit hard to find at the time. Retrospect is a powerful tool but looking back and seeing how far we have travelled can be a very powerful experience. It tells us what we have learned and how we have grown. The most negative of situations can be a powerful teacher if we have the eyes to see and the ears to listen, then we can grow. People say to me “well it’s couldn’t get any worse.” I think, ‘don’t say that. You have no idea how bad it could get’. It can be helpful to look at the current difficult situation as…

…well it’s not as bad as it could have been.

It is never as bad as it could have been. Most difficult situations develop from the thought or feeling that we are out of control or have no control over what is happening. The first step to getting better, or getting a handle on it, normally begins with taking some control. This means developing an awareness of the things that we can control and the things that we cannot. We cannot control the weather but we can control what we are wearing. We cannot control what other do but we can control how we respond.

Get into a positive vibe and energy. Be with people who are positive and won’t collude with your negative ideation. Most importantly listen to them and where possible take their advise. Being with others can raise you mood, give you purpose and ideas.

Listen to your mind. We all ruminate. When you are feeling bad about things you are negatively ruminating. It is time to get some positive thoughts and feeling going in your head. When I get down I play the…

…I’m so happy and grateful game.

I begin with the above phrase and then I add positive in, they usually rhyme so it might be…

…I’m fit and healthy, rich and wealthy

Then I play with it and often makes me laugh…

…I’m slim and sexy

Then I play the rhyming game. So what rhymes with sexy?

…I’m supple and flexi

The game raises my mood and takes me to a feeling of gratitude. Positive thoughts, feeling and gratitude all run together. It also reminds me of the importance of humour. You may not feel like laughing right now but watching a comedy show or movie can help.

Then it takes me the positive self talk. Once I play the game I begin to change the negative rumination into positive rumination. As I said we all ruminate. The choice is making it positive or negative. Once you become aware of your ruminating mind you can choose to go positive or negative. My option is to not give the negative head space. Any negative thoughts observe them, don’t fight them, let them go and return to some positive thoughts.

If you have problems getting started visit the site and download the morning focus meditation. It is just five minutes to get you head on the right way around and get the best that you can from your day.

Reinforcing the positive helps to build the positive. At the end of each day try the evening review meditation. This allows you to review the day and dump the negative stuff and reinforce the positive. If you really want to build your positive energy start a gratitude diary and record positive experiences from your day. If it is only 

‘today I am still breathing’, 

well, that is a start. You can build from here.

When we get too negatively self obsessed it can help to think about or help other people. There are always those worse off than us that could benefit from our help.

If you are at home with your family during lockdown think about what activities you can do together. It could be anything from decorating the house to cooking together, playing games, going for walks or runs. As the winter nights draw in a board game around the fire can be a lot of fun. 

It is often said, ‘the family that eats together stays together’, and there is truth in that statement. In there current situation we might find that the family who play together and laugh together are the ones who get through this in one piece. 

Listen to your mind and your thoughts and do your best to keep them positive. And remember my favourite phrase…

…if we all look after each other we will all be okay

Take care, stay safe and be happy

Sean x

In modern psychology we tend to look at people from three aspects. These are thinking or cognition, feeling or emotion and behaviour or doing. In the Ayurvedic system people are seen to have eight aspects or facets, that are denoted by the chakras or colours of the spectrum, red to violet plus magenta. This blog is an audit of these different faces or colours of you and a chance to consider each part of yourself and decide what you might need or like to do about each or all of them.

The one gift that Covid has given us is the opportunity for self reflection. For many of us life is generally so busy that we have little time to think about ourselves or our wellbeing. Those people that get involved in mindfulness learn to take some time to observe themselves and the world around them and are subsequently more likely to be attentive to their own needs as well as the needs of others. 

When looking at these colour, or facets of your self, you may find that some are more important to you than others. In fact some may have no importance at all. The magic of being a human being is that we have all of these colours within us. If you think of them as lights then the colours that are working strongest will shine with the brightest light while those that are not used so much will be a dim light. As these colours mix we can see that although we are all composed of the same facets they are mixed in such a way that we have individuality. In the Ayurvedic systems when all of the lights are shining at their brightest so that we are full of light we would be described as ‘enlightened’. 

Because some facets or colours shine brighter and are more natural for us to access the Rishis, or scientists, developed the eight paths of Yoga one for each colour. Yoga means to yoke or gather together. All yogic paths are designed to lead, eventually, to the same place of enlightenment. The yogas are Karma Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Mantra Yoga, Raja Yoga, Tantra Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga.

What are the colours of you?

So here are some questions to ponder and decide which colours are strongest in yourself. It is important to remember that you can develop any, or all, of the facets or colours of you, at any time if you wish to. When you look at yourself in this way there may be things that you can see that you need to change or develop. It may be that you need help to do this from a teacher, coaches, therapists and so on. 

During lockdown and covid restrictions paying attention to our needs on every level or facet of ourself is very important.

Red – Physical – Karma Yoga

Your Red world is about what you do and how you act. Karma is the consequence of how you have acted. Karma is neither good nor bad just simply the consequence. The counterpart to Karma is Dharma. Dharma is to do the right thing or to act in the right way. Those that act Dharmically do not create so many negative Karmas. Related to the body, the greatest Karma that we all have to face is how have we treated our body? What we eat, how we exercise, how we work and so on will all take a toll on our body and in the end will dictate how we live, how long we live and how we will die. For the Karma Yogi their body is the temple of their soul that they treat with great respect and gratitude. Related to our body are other bodies. How do you treat you own body, how do you treat other people’s bodies, how do you treat the environment and the world around you? These are all aspects of the Red facet.

Self Audit

• Are you fit, are you healthy?
• What exercise do you do?
• Do you eat a good diet?
• Do you look after your immediate environment?
• Do you consider the wider environment of the world?
• Do you care for other people’s physical wellbeing?
• Do you physically bully or intimidate other people?
• What do you need to change in your red facet to improve your body and your behaviour?

Orange – Social – Hatha Yoga

Your orange world is about vital energy. Red bodies live in groups that we call families, communities, societies, cultures, nations or even the whole of humanity. What holds people together is the ‘glue’ energy. Orange energy is called bio-energy, prana, chi. Ki and so on. When that energy is in tune we have harmony. When the energy goes out of tune we have conflict and problems. The balance of energy starts within us and then moves out to others. Hatha Yoga is the balancing of personal internal energies. Ha and Tha is positive and negative, symbolised by sun and moon, also described as yin and yang or Purusha and Prakritti. Hatha Yoga is the balance of energies. In our families, communities and society we need a balance of social energies to create collective harmony, wellbeing and happiness.

Self Audit

• When and how do you come together with your family and friends?
• Do you have enough friend time?
• Do you have enough family time?
• What do you do to ensure the happiness of those around you?
• What do you expect from those around you to make you happy?
• What do you give to those around you that need your support at this time?
• How could you help them?
• What do you need to change in your orange facet to feel more connected with those around you?

Yellow – Experience/Intellect – Jnana Yoga 

The magic of the intellect is its ability to discriminate. If you present the yellow facet with a list of pros it will instantly come up with a list of cons and visa versa. The intellect is the tool of perception unlike the blue conceptual world of thought. Yellow is external observation and blue is internal construction. 

Jñāna yoga, also known as Jnanamarga, is one of the several spiritual paths in Hinduism, which emphasises the “path of knowledge”, also known as the “path of self-realisation”. It is one of the three classical paths for moksha [is a word used in many disciplines to denote enlightenment]. The other two are karma yoga and Bhakti yoga. Wikipedia

In the everyday sense the Yellow world of experience is all about having fun. It is okay going out for a good Orange social jolly but unless you have a good flowing Yellow facet to your personality it may not be that much fun.

Self Audit

• Is you life fun?
• When did you last have fun?
• What were you doing?
• When did you last have a new experience or go somewhere completely new?
• What are you reading at the moment?
• What are you studying at the moment?
• If you could go anywhere and do anything where and what would it be?

Green – Emotion – Power – Service – Bhakti Yoga

The Green facet is about self power, self esteem and self worth. When you can go to the mirror look yourself in the eyes and say ‘I love you”, and mean it, your Green esteem is shining. This should not be mistaken with arrogance that is when we expect other people to tell us that they love us and that over all we feel that we are better than them. Green is about the ego and how I see me. The interesting fact is that some peoples egos are so large that they can include other people within them. Mother Theresa of Calcutta had an ego that was so big she could include all the poor of Calcutta within it and treat them as if they were herself. That is Bhakti Yoga the Yoga of Service. The obvious famous ones are people such as Gandhi, though they are everywhere all around us doing what they can to help others. When the ego goes the other way it becomes self serving and egotistical, demanding attention, needing to be showered with admiration. This is a problem exhibited by many celebrities and politicians.  

The Green facet for us includes money and power but also the power of emotion. The Matriarch may dominate the family but it is mostly through positive power of green love. Often when we look at love we are looking at Greenness and the easy sharing of emotions.

Self audit

• Do you have self confidence and self esteem?
• Do you like yourself?
• If yes what is that you like and why?
• If not, why not and what can you do to make this better?
• How do you know that you are loved?
• Do you feel loved?
• How do show someone that you love them?
• Who do you include in your ego bubble?
• Who would you look after as though they were yourself?
• What can you do to increase your sense of self esteem?

Blue – cognition – thinking – organisation – status – Mantra Yoga

The Blue world is the internalisation of the Yellow world. Yellow is built of Percepts and the Blue is built of Concepts. Precepts are what we perceive out there as our experience. Concepts are what we internalise as our thoughts and our memories. Internalisation requires ordering and organising. The mind can be like a filing cabinet. If you have a good Blue facet you will be able to recall events going back many years you will be able to order your thoughts and feelings and present them in a calm and logical way that may baffle those that are more emotional.

The Blue world likes status and position. The honours system was designed to fulfil this Blue need for status and position. For Green the currency is power but for the Blue it is status. When someone calls you and says ‘this is Mr Sean Orford’ they are claiming a simple title and not simple being Sean Orford. If the handle could be bigger than Mr perhaps, Doctor, Director, Manager, Duke, Lord, Lady it would maybe gain more status. When someone asks you ‘Who are you’ we normally respond by giving them a list of what we do and from this list they will give us status. The important point here is that we give ourselves and other people status, not by who they are but by what they do.

Self Audit

• How would you describe yourself?
• What roles do you play in life?
• Do you feel that what you do gives you status in your own eyes?
• Do you feel that what you do gives you status in the eyes of others?
• Would you like more status?
• What would give you more status?
• How could you do this?

Indigo – Intuition – Meaning – Raja Yoga

For any one of us to feel right and a sense of wellbeing our Indigo facet needs to be at least functioning and preferably shining. Indigo is meaning. What is it all about? Up to this point our different facets are concerned with questions of ‘what’ and ‘how’. When we get to Indigo the question changes to ‘Why?’ Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you go to work? In fact, why do you do anything? When life has meaning we are motivated towards doing things. When the meaning has gone we become depressed or even suicidal, ‘what is the point?’ The currency on the Indigo world is intuition. It is that sense of knowing without needing to know why, you just know. That knowing can include the reason why you are alive or your life purpose.

This intuitive facet is introspective. It can be reached and developed in practices such as mindful meditation. Unlike the previous facets that are often active and even noisy Indigo is often silent. This is a knowing silence in which you can hear the answer to your questions and your problems. The self audit at this level maybe a bit challenging and often creates the need to talk about our deep intuitive feelings and thoughts.

Self Audit

• Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
• What is the purpose and meaning of life?
• What is the purpose and meaning of your life?
• What do you believe happens when you die?
• Does the answer to the above question affect how you act or live?
• Do you meditate?
• Would you like to learn to meditate?
• What could you do to create more calm, tranquility and silence in your life?

Violet – Imagination – Creativity – Tantra Yoga

Let me start by saying that when most people hear the word Tantra their first thought is sex! Well, the word Tantra in Sanskrit simply means to weave together or to become as one. The sexual act is a good way of understanding how two people could weave together to become as one. Imagine if a family, society, community, culture, nation, group of nations, or even the whole of humanity could become Tantric and be as one. There would be no wars, no starving, no prejudice, no unhappiness. When I say ‘if we all look after each other we will all be okay’ I am describing this Tantric relationship.

Imagination is the key. In modern psychology we use phrases such as ‘what you think about you bring about’ or ‘what you feel you create’. What we really mean is ‘what you imagine you will create’. When we wake in the morning we will imagine the day ahead, we will see it in pictures on the screen in our mind. These pictures create a forward memory that we then go and play out. The Violet facet is the script writer of our life. When faced with a problem we can imagine ourself overcoming it or we can imagine ourself failing. The image creates the action and the outcome.

Self Audit

Project forward to your birthday ten years from now. Someone is reading out a speech about your life and your achievements. The speech that they read is your forward memory, it is your imagination in action, it is your script. Write that speech now so that the speech says exactly what you would want to hear then, now go and live your life and create what you want it to be.

Magenta – Fantasy – Doesn’t exist

We all dream and we all daydream. None of the dreams are real. The dreams that do become real are really the images of the Violet facet. A Magenta dream is just a fantasy. It may be a good light fantasy or a dark negative fantasy. The whole point is that it is not real it doesn’t exist. Yet, we have the ability to take these fantasies and play with them in our mind and feed them and develop them so that they feel so real that the dominate and overwhelm our lives.

The vast, vast, majority of anxiety is nothing more than a Magenta fantasy.  Our worries and fears about what other people may think about us, how they see us, that they are talking about us, that the plane will crash, the bus will be late, we won’t get the job, we will all…. fill in the blank. Once this Magenta facet becomes activated it has no limits from monsters under the bed to every conspiracy theory you have ever heard. Obviously, some rumours (Orange) will have a basis in truth and some report (Yellow) will be true. However much of what we hear on the news and read on social media is Magenta and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt unless it is backed by research or facts (Blue).

We all have this Magenta fantasy facet, It is really good for informal stress management and you walk away from the boss who has just told you off and you replay the conversation in your head but use Magenta to change it so that you told him where to go and exactly what you thought about him.

Self Audit

• Keep a daydream and a night dream diary and enjoy what you are dreaming about?
• If your dreams becomes dark, negative or violent you might be holding unresolved issues and need some psychotherapy.
• Become an active dreamer or day dreamer and create the fantasies that make you happy and enjoy them.
• Write a book. Many ideas for books began as a daydream or a fantasy.

During this time, we have a rare chance to examine ourselves in ways we have not been able to before and may never be able to again. Many of us have time and that is when the mind wanders. All the different facets of ourself that we have looked at in this block could do with some attention, some more than others. Take the time that you have to do a bit of positive self examination and develop the bits of you that could do with some attention.

Be whole and be happy.

Take care

Sean x

What is done is done.

During lockdown and the COVID restrictions I have been listening to the themes that people have been sharing with me. I have noticed that time to ruminate has, for many, been time to go over old, raw and unhealed wounds. This reliving of unresolved past events can easily poison the present and become the seeds of depression and future anxiety. We say that the devil finds work for idle hands. I say the idle mind find space for negative rumination. In Covid many of us have had too much time to think. Unless you are able to mindfully control your thoughts and feelings the monkey in your head will go bonkers and throw negative bananas at your thoughts and feelings.

I see this being played out across the board by various people from around the world.  It becomes so easy to criticise and blame for past events. From racial discrimination, through to the Holocaust, bad Covid decisions, to current failing relationships. We can never change what has happened and we cannot change what will happen, we can only change what is happening right now.

I understand that many groups of people feel, and rightly so, that they and their ancestors have been badly done to by previous generations. This is real and requires both that we acknowledge what has taken place as a real part of human history. But it would be wrong for us now to grab a German teenager off the streets of Berlin and blame them for the Nazis misdeeds, the Holocaust and the Second World War. They may be the right race but they are out of that time, it is nothing to do with them.

Equally we cannot blame a teenager in the streets of London for the misdeeds of ancestors building the British Empire. The Common Wealth Organisation went some way to normalising these negative events as did the United Nations after the Second World War. Yes we need to learn from history but we do not need to keep reliving it.

I realise that this works both ways and that the deniers of bad events are also responsible for keeping the past alive in the current human awareness in the moment. Through the development of human kind there have been bad and wrong things done by one group to another. This was not only the European Empires it was equally local groups. The atrocities that stick out most is the way that the whole of Africa was mistreated by the European Empires, the abuse suffered by Native American Indians, the Aborigines and Maoris. But it goes on today in every case of ethnic cleansing that has taken place on every continent from Yugoslavian right up to the present day, Myanmar and the ethnic ‘re-education’ of Muslims in China. Even the Celts in the UK would have a case for reclaiming the whole of England as their land that was token from them by the past conquest of the Angles and the Danes.

The same attitudes still prevail in smaller groups and communities. As a Londoner I am aware of the antipathy between those born south or north of the River Thames, or those from West or East London. The same thing is true in family groups whether they are extended or nuclear.

Whatever the group that we are looking at, when we allow the unresolved issues of the past to intervene in the present we are lost. This is where vendetta and the holding of grudges develops and may last for so many generations that we forget why or how it began and why we don’t like a particular group of people we just know that we don’t like them.

With Covid and the governmental decisions there will probably be recriminations for many years to come about who should of done what and who is to blame. The arguments have already begun and are partisan as we seek to blame whoever we can for the current state of things. When Trump describes Covid as the Chinese disease he may be talking from some inner knowledge that we do not know. Equally it could be that the pandemic could have originated in any particular country. It often suits the human mind to have something or someone to blame for how we are feeling for what is happening to us.

When we look in the ‘Now’ the past has gone, we cannot change history. We also cannot or live in the future it has yet to be. However, we can play a large part in what happens next. This is called creativity… thoughts become things. However if we are to create a future, positive or negative, we can only do so by starting to own the now. It is the thoughts, feelings, actions and attitudes that we manifest in the now that will create what happens tomorrow. Today we plant the seed and in the future we can reap the crop. The harvest will either be luscious and abundant or weak and failed depending on where we planted the seeds and how we tended to the crop while it was growing.

This is true on every level of human experience. We do have some control over the pollution of the planet and my favourite topic is our over use of single use plastics. We also have control over the air quality and what we are breathing in and is Eds favourite topic ‘get out of your car and onto your bike’. We can blame whoever we want for the state of the planet, we can only act in the now to make it different. We can blame whoever we want for the mistreatment of one human group by another, we can only act in the now to make that different in the future and value each other. We can blame who we want for the state of our families or how we are feeling. We can only act in the now to put it right.

Live in the present, be here now. In the end that is all that we have. As soon as you read this it has become the past. Living in moment requires precise concentration. The last breath that you took was your past and the next breath that you take will become your future. It is only the breath that you are taking right at this moment that is your now.

As my resource for this weeks Podcast I have chosen Elkhart Tolle ‘The Power Of Now’. This is a fascinating read that goes some way to explaining that all we have is in the present moment.

Take care, be happy in your present, let the past go and stop worrying about what will happen next.

Sean x