Archive for category: Blog

Well, I have got Covid 19 for the second time. This has meant that I have needed to cancel a lot of this week and will have lots to catch up on next week. The one thing that Covid does give is time to think. Everywhere I am looking I am seeing the expanding crisis with Putin in Ukraine. As I look across the world it all seems so much like an action replay of the 1930s prior to the Second World War.

This is a tough blog and very much embedded in our time and the very things that are happening around us. Across the world there is political lurch to the right that, in many cases, is becoming fascistic. The last world war happened because, at that time, the fascist, totalitarian, dictators in Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan and eventually Russia all came out to play. The war lasted six years and encompassed the world. The estimates vary between a death toll of 60 to 80 million people during the war, including the 6 million in the holocaust. 

Are we about to do it again? And, if we are why?

We have a very human problem and it is the lack of awareness or lack of awareness in the vast majority of people. This allows for headless chicken syndrome where short term objectives override the longterm effects of our decisions. I have worked for many years with thousands of people and my work would suggest that what I was taught in my Ayurvedic training about human awareness, when I was a novice, is true. This understanding was as follows. The awareness pyramid shows an ascending scale of awareness the world’s population. The percentages are arbitrary but I think you will get the point. 

Deep asleep – about 50% of the population

In the darkest state, the human consciousness is only aware of its limited self, only aware of the importance of the individual ego. Here it is too dark to see anything or anyone else, this is isolated aloneness. Therefore the deep asleep person treats everyone and everything around them with total insensitivity, oblivious to the damage that they are causing, they simply cannot see it or feel it and do not understand. It is only when things become lighter and brighter that we begin to see what is around us. In the darkness, we are all blind and alone.

If as I suggest that half of all humanity are deep asleep then levels of social and political awareness will be low and the decision made only have a chance of serving us well.

Dream sleep – about 20% of the population

In this stage level of awareness is the realisation that there is strength in numbers the individual realises the benefits of co-operation with other individuals. This may be the simple realisation that sleeping with another person is warmer than sleeping alone. Or there may be a benefit from mutual security and support or help with hunting bigger animals and so on. The problem is that once we have group based on common interest we have those inside the group and those outside the group. We have ‘us’ and ‘them’ and all the prejudice and bigotry that comes with not, not understanding or being fearful of ‘them’.This is what is currently playing out with the migrant issues across Europe and the USA and the fears other religions.

The Waking State – about 12% of the population

In this state people want to be different, they no longer want to comply with the norms of the group they have new ways of looking at things that threaten the group rules. When we close down and confine our support to only those of our group, say on the immigration issue, it is these people in the waking state that question and fight for the rights of those not in ‘our’ group. But these people are not yet truly awake and their demands may be made in ignorance and be unrealistic. It only when human consciousness awakes that we see the ability to make things difference because the currency of awareness is power.

Awake-ness – about 8% of the population

Power is often seen as a dirty word. In reality those that are awake exercise power over those that remain asleep. the asleep people are referred to in politics as ‘the silent majority’. The sleeping people hold the ability to dictate the outcomes in human evolution but they do not realise it so those that have the power manipulate them to achieve desired outcomes.

Power is like a knife, it is neutral. A knife can be used to create a work of art, a wonderful meal or death and destruction. The knife is neutral. It is the holder of the knife who dictates what it will do. It is exactly the same with power. Often, money or influence and power go together. In the case of politics it is power, influence and money that get people elected. 

It is easier for a rich person to wreck the world 

than it is…

For a poor person to become president

People that use power negatively use those that are asleep as the cannon fodder in the market place and in wars.

Objective Consciousness – about 5% of the population

Those that can see the effects of the power brokers can see things objectively and will work to control a restrain the unfettered use of power. These may be parents attempting to moderate the behaviours of their adolescent children or it may be people trying to encourage us to be different with transport and pollution.

Objectivity is often parliament and rules often the only control that can have an effect on the excesses of power, However, sometime objectivity can easily become a set of rules and dogma that become fixed and immutable laws that do not bend this is when “the law is an ass’.

Intuitive Consciousness – about 3% of the population

This level of awareness is above thought and above word. The currency of intuition is meaning. This is direct knowledge without knowing. Those that have a deep intuitive function have long sight that realises outcomes that those who are less awake fail to see. Those that are in deep sleep see everything in terms of the immediate effect. Those in intuitive consciousness do not focus the effect of things today, next month or next year, they are seeing ten, twenty and hundred year ahead. Often these people are described and Indigo or empathic.

Creative Consciousness – about 2% of the population

The currency of creativity is in images. Advertisers spend their lives attempting to manipulate those in asleep-ness to buy into ever changing images of what they are now told that they definitely need. But this is at a low level of awareness the truly creative image makers give humanity inspirational images that last for decades or entire eras. The images shared but Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha and Mohamed have inspired millions of people and many hundred of years after the events their teachings are still active and alive.

Negative creativity

There is also a negative side of imaginative inspiration. Hitler’s managed to persuade hundreds of thousands of people to go around the world, to kill and to die, all for this cause that he managed to inspire other people to enact. We see a similar thing going on with Putins war. 

At all levels of consciousness we have a choice to act positively or negatively.

Current Social Cycle

The goodwill and drive for cooperation that developed after the Second World War is now coming to a close. Right wing xenophobia is in the ascendant. It is happening at all levels in all countries and in most cases it is being driven by fear. The fear that is felt by the majority who are, in my estimation, are asleep. I suspect that we are collectively blundering into future crisis that is not yet in focus. Hopefully not a Third World War.

I say these things from my position of working with people…

If we all look after each other we will all be ok

My concern is that we blunder into another global war and turn the cycle again before we return to a more caring and sharing world order.

The world could be, and often is, such and wonderful place. Why do we choose to create conflict and pain?

Take care

Sean x

Let’s make a pandemic (of happiness)!

As the various disruptions have happened in society over the last few years psychologist  tell us that happiness is really a state on mind. I guess most of us would agree that this is in most ways true but I would think it takes a lot of strength and belief to keep cracking jokes when the bombs are going off outside.   (https://www.happiness.com/magazine/inspiration-spirituality/why-happiness-is-a-state-of-mind/) 

Over the last few years leaders from across the world are also now deciding to tell his that happiness is a state of mind. Bhutan is held  up as a world where happiness is described as their “gross domestic product” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14243512).  This seems a level of enlightenment that the rest of us can only observe with envy or discount as nonsense. It may be something that we all need to tap into right now.

All that we now know about brains and neuroscience tells us that this idea is really on the money, and that we all do create our own experience, in the sense that we do have choices as to how we respond to any event in life, even the worst. It is hard to decide whether the political drive behind publishing such an idea as happiness for all is real concern for our welfare or a way of making the difficult decisions about economic cuts in mental health support more palatable.

Many apps now offer us ways to step over our negative thoughts and feeling. Our friend Andy Puddicombe at http://www.getsomeheadspace.com/, is actively attempting to change that way that we all think and feel with his headspace meditation programmes.

My own area of work with mangers in both the private and public sector to develop a coaching style of management that improves the moral of staff because, surprise, surprise, a happy workforce is more productive.  Check out this article (http://m.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/15/happiness-work-why-counts?cat=money&type=article), it explains why a positive work force might actually save money and even make money.

In my own work I know that when an organisation decides that their customers are more important that their staff, they have lost the point.  The principle is simple, if you look after your staff they will always look after your customers because it is in the ethos.  Just go into an Apple Store, or a branch of John Lewis and you will realise what I mean.

When I first started my training in psychotherapy my teacher said very clearly “what you hold in your bindi will come to pass”.  In western psycho speak we would say “thoughts become things”.  Now neuropsychology tells us the same thing.  Once we understand that we are in control of what we do and think, we do have choice.  The biggest realisation is that we are also in control of what we feel.  Mindful managers, politicians and leaders who understand this encourage others to feel positive and good. This has never been more important. In the likely troubles ahead as things get tighter we need to stay positive.

If we take the politics, the news and Covid out of the idea then it is exactly and completely true.  The only reason that anyone is not happy is that they have learned to be that way.  When you are in a miserable or unhappy state it can feel that the task of being happy is impossible and that the idea of having a choice is ridiculous or even demeaning.  It may be hard but the one thing that I have to tell you is that if you are not living a happy life then you have learned that way of being, thinking and feeling, probably from the moment of birth. These habits do not serve you well, and, whatever your situation you can change it to create the life that you want.  It may sound far fetched, it may sound ridiculous, but over the years I have worked with thousands and thousands of people who have down exactly that, including me.

So, how about for a little while we forget the politicians, health and wars and concentrate on ourselves, how do you feel today?  If your response is anything other than “I’m doing ok” or at a pinch “it’s tough, but i’m getting there” you need some help to the get your head on the right way around. There are plenty of books and ideas that will help you in your task including the resources on the liveinthepresent.co.uk website.

Marharishi Mahesh Yogi, the inventor of transcendental meditation had one simple aim.  If he could get six million people meditating a the same time then the bioenergetic mindbank would be great enough to affect the course of human destiny for the good. I wonder how powerful the mindbank would need to be to change the course of Russias aggression.

Have you meditated today? When you do meditate you add a bit more positive energy to the collective consciousness.

Take care and be happy 

Sean x

We have been asked in this episode to look at addiction with particular attention to alcohol.

We use the word ‘addiction’ to indicate an illness which is based on the behaviour of a person who is compulsively or habitually ‘addicted’ to a substance or a set of behaviours. Most behaviours that are described as addictions are seen as negative. When we hear the word addiction we tend to think of drugs or alcohol. We might even consider the workaholic. Which ever way we view it addiction is seen negative.

I will get onto alcohol in a minute but first consider this…

Perhaps we are all addicts

I would like to suggest another way of looking at it, we are all addicted, we are all addicts, it is just that we are often unaware of what we are addicted to. So my question is…

What is your addiction?

An addiction is simply a chemical state, that is in both our brain and our body.  We become addicted when we have learned to accept this chemistry as our ‘normal’ state of being. The chemistry comes from the habits that we have practiced from the moment of our both. We know that when someone exercises regularly their brain responds by releasing powerful endorphins. We also know that once this chemistry has been established  as their normal they can become addicted to this exercise. Once this habit has been established we find that if they are unable to exercise, perhaps because of an injury, they go into withdrawal just like any drug addict. All the symptoms of drug withdrawal are played out through their brain and body until either they restore the exercise and the chemistry or undergo the ‘cold turkey’ of drug withdrawal and re establish a new chemical norm.

Any behaviour from meditation to sex, from knitting to hill walking, from laughing to crying, will have a chemical effect on our mind body system. Once these are established in our mind brian they become our habit and our chemical normal. The issues of anxiety, anger, depression, love and happiness may also be our addictions.

As an ex drug addict, mainly opium and having had an interesting relationship with alcohol, I know quite a lot about alcohol and drugs as a therapist but also as a practitioner.

Let’s have a look at alcohol

Alcohol 

Alcohol is probably one of the most natural substances we can become addicted to. I have seen horses in very strange states after eating fermenting apples that had fallen from the trees in an orchard. Human beings probably slipped quite easily into using alcohol as the vegetables and fruits around them fermented and the relationship was made between the alcohol and the pleasurable feeling of being tipsy or drunk.

The way that alcohol works is that it turns off the frontal lobe of the brain which takes away our worries, concerns and feelings. Alcohol is an emotional anaesthetic. We stop feeling. Then we get the rebound of the depressant effect as the frontal lobes attempts to fire up again. When the depressant effect is on us the easiest thing to do is to have another drink, known as the ‘hair of the dog’, and anaesthetise the depression. Once the cycle is established it is the normal behaviour of addiction. However the cycle will vary. Some people can drink a lot of alcohol before their frontal lobe switches off. For others it may be half a glass of wine. The thing is that once the frontal lobe switches off resistance to more alcohol and normally unacceptable behaviours diminishes. Plus all reason and cognitive thinking is lost.

Controlled drinking/drug programmes 

My experience is that for the vast majority of people controlled programmes do not work. For most of us you are either in or out. One of the main problems with alcohol is that, outside of Muslim countries, there is an alcohol pusher on every street corner, in every super market and in television adverts. It is the wests acceptable addiction.

Therapy

Therapy is usually the only answer. That often means rehab and some supportive medication as the addictive cycle quietens down in the system. In our society in the UK I do still commonly deal with alcohol, nicotine, skunk and anger addictions. Though I experience that we are all addicted to something even if that means being addicted to having a completely clean system.

So what is your addiction?

Your chemical normal is the one that makes you feel just right. It comes from the habits that you have established throughout your life. If something happens to alter your ‘normal’ you will adopt behaviours that will return your chemistry to recreate your normal. My normal involves meditation, cooking, often running, definitely playing music, mainly guitar, certainly working with other people and always my lovely Rie and holidays away. When I am deprived of my addictions I feel withdrawal and need to act to bring my chemistry back to my normal.

Some addictions are good, as in they do not harm us or others. Bad addictions do harm us or other people. We have a choice. Once we mindfully examine our behaviours we can decide which addictions we will feed and allow to grow and which once we will starve and allow to wither.

We may decide that allowing our children to develop the habit of internet gaming is a good or a bad addiction. Current evidence would suggest this is a bad addiction.

Be happy and check your addictions.

Take care

Sean x

Someone said to me ‘do a blog to make me smile’. I went away and though about it. Science tells us that it takes seventeen muscles to smile and as many as forty three to frown. That means it takes a lot more effort to be miserable than it does to be happy. So, what it is that makes some people happy while others are not. So what does the science tell us.

Money. Many people consider higher per capita income is a precursor to happiness. Having sufficient resources to survive with comfort and to feel that there is no stress can certainly a part of happiness. However having more money than you need does not actually make you happy. We joke that at least with money ‘you can be miserable in comfort’ but it proves that money will never make you happy. It is said to say that I have worked with so many people who are very rich and very miserable. I guess we need enough money so that we don’t have to worry about it but so much that we do have to worry about it. For many people too much money is a burden.

Health plays an enormous part in happiness. Health creates greater life expectancy, less time off work and more time to be happy. When we exercise we have higher levels of happy hormones in our brain. We know that raising your heart rate for just twenty minutes a day can really support your mental health.

Autonomy is important. People’s freedom to make life decisions is a part of creating their individual happiness. So many people do what they do because they feel that they should or to please other people. This approach to life seldom leads to happiness. It is so important to do things that make you feel good.

Generosity in both giving and receiving raises the spirit. I can remember when I was training reading the research about how the effect of giving could create more positive endorphins in the giver than those in the receiver. It seems that giving makes us feel good. 

Belonging. We all need friends, family and social support that creates a sense of belonging and overcomes loneliness. Happiness does not need to come from big social events. Often it is the small ones, the family gatherings, Sunday lunches and so on that make us feel like we belong. 

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom”. Benjamin Franklin 

The Vikings left us with happiness. So what is the secret?

Genetics, in Scandinavians are shown to have a particular effect. There are three genes that, when activated, create increased levels of serotonin which is the natural precursor of wellbeing. Now, any country that, in history, was near to or invaded by the Vikings have this genetic structure, Guess what? British people have a genetic structure that is very close to that of the vikings. So why are us Brits not showing our happiness, rather than moaning about our lives? Or Are us Brits happier than we let on?

All these issues, beyond that of genetics, are considered by scientists to be too subjective, too emotional. Associate professor Wataru Sato and his team at Japan’s Kyoto University went one step further into trying to understand the basis of happiness. The researchers used scans to determine which areas of the brain are involved in people feeling happy. The results showed that volunteers who rated highly on happiness surveys had more grey matter (cells) in their brains.

MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS

Now, this is the magic part of this research. We know how we can increase the grey matter in our brains, we meditate. Brains scans have shown, for years, that mindful meditation increases the grey matter in the brain, especially around the areas that control our emotional experience in the limbic system. the bottom line is:  

It does not matter how good your life is materially, 

if you do not have enough grey  brain cells 

it will never feel good enough inside your emotions 

So, what we have learned is that if we do have a genetic predisposition to happiness we might be ahead of the game, and that the nearer we are to Scandinavia the more likely we are to have a positive genetic makeup. But that is not the end of it. We now know, from the scientific research, built around brain scans, shows that if you regularly meditate you will create more grey matter in your brain, ( it takes about two years of daily practice) and we know that more grey matter equal more positive control of our emotional self. In short it creates happiness.

The bottom line is that we all need to meditate and that we need to practise meditation persistently and consistently on a daily basis over time. If you know an experienced meditator you will be aware of their calmness and lack of stress. You may also be aware of their general efficiency is their work and their happiness in their life generally.

Devote some time to yourself, be happy and, if you can, try some meditation.

Take care

Sean x

A listener asked us to look at the effects of personal disappointments. Coming out of Covid they have trying to get a new job. They were asking what to do when the job interview doesn’t go so well or when they feel let down in other areas of their life? This raises the issues of competition and the idea of winners and losers. At the moment it can be easy to feel like a loser. In tough competition we often see it as the survival of the fittest. Then we can feel like we are the weak one. The reality is that in a competitive world disappointment is just a fact of life. You can’t have one without the other. Currently there may be two hundred people going for one job. That means there will be a lot of disappointed people.

But there are alternatives to feeling bad and disappointed about it 

To be disappointed you first have to buy into the concept of wining and losing, of gain and loss. These concepts involve the separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ or ‘you’ and ‘me’. For ‘me’ to win or succeed ‘you’ have to lose or fail’. If ‘we’ win ‘they’ lose. These tribal separations are the seed of all conflicts and wars be it religious, sexual, ideological, sectarian, ethnic or whatever. Just look at the Russia Ukraine stand off. Who will win? Who will lose? Is it possible that they can both win? Or, is it possible that they both lose?

You can’t be disappointed without your permission.

In the personal sense for ‘me’ to succeed at the interview and get the job ‘you’ will be disappointed. On the other hand you ‘you’ get the job then ‘I’ will be disappointed. Unless we begin to see this process of winning and losing in a different way. Perhaps these things that I identify as disappointments are actually good things.

We don’t have problems we just have learning opportunities 

My own assumption is that the universe is not out to get me ( I don’t think that it is) and that the things that I am presented with are for my own growth and development then I can learn and grow. I am not a fatalist I believe in free will but I do get the law of attraction and see that the things that happen to me do so because they are meaningful to me and my own level of development. I see the same things as true for you also. In this way nothing is ever bad. It is my response to what happens that labels it as either good or bad.

What if I didn’t get the job because, in the greater scheme of things, it would have been damaging to me or the wrong direction for me, maybe it would have held me back and not allowed me to develop to do even greater things? If this were the case the fact that I didn’t get the job should be a focus of celebration and thanks not one of disappointment and loss.

To be disappointed assumes… 

1: Expectation. This is craving, my demand for the outcome that my ego seeks. When we project forward in expectation of outcomes, be they good or bad, we are firing up our anxiety circuits. Learning to see the things that happen in life not as problems but as learning opportunities then our anxiety dissolve. If you consider that the human race has survived because we each have this amazing problem solving ability that, should we need it, will come to our aid and solve whatever the issues is that we are faced with. If we see it this was it is true that…

…we don’t have problems we have learning opportunities.

2: Loss. This is attachment, my inability to let go of my feelings of possession for things, people, events or the belief of what I saw as ‘mine’. It could be that I saw the job as ‘mine’ before I went to the interview. This attachment to the past creates depression. When we feel the loss or bereavment for what was, or for what might have been we often ruminate. When this happens the rumination keeps it negatively alive, so that many years after an event it can still feel like it is live action, as though it has just happened.

When we learn to let go we overcome depression and  and stop projecting into the future we can then live in the present. In the present, in the now there can never be any disappointment because there is no attachment to the past and there is no carving for the future. The trick to living in the present is gratitude. The following is attributed to Buddha.

Let us rise up and be thankful, 

for if we didn’t learn a lot today, 

at least we learned a little, 

and if we didn’t learn a little, 

at least we didn’t get sick, 

and if we got sick, 

at least we didn’t die; 

so, let us be thankful.

At the end of each line of the above the option is to be disappointed or grateful. It is not what happens it is the way that we see it. We are not effected by events but by our response to those events.

In a very real sense being disappointed is a choice. What do you choose?

Take care

Sean X