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Rules of the Mind

Marisa Peer, creator of Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) defines some of the keys to achieving a life transformation as having a clear understanding of the ‘Rules of the Mind’.

She defines these as:

“What is expected tends to be realised

Imagination is more powerful than knowledge

Imagination is more powerful than logic

Your mind always does what it thinks you want it to do

Your mind works to move you from pain to pleasure

Your mind responds to the pictures you create and the words you say to yourself

Your mind learns by repetition

Your mind loves what is familiar and rejects the unfamiliar

Your mind cannot resolve or understand conflict

We make our beliefs and our beliefs make us”

To begin to understand this we need to be clear that there are three parts to the brain.

The ‘lower brain, or ‘reptile brain’ is the part that deals with all the mechanics of the body – the part that keeps you breathing and deals with the ‘fight or flight’ response when you are presented with some form of ‘danger’.

It also deals with bodily responses such as pain or hormonal changes and keeps you functioning properly or warns you when something is ‘wrong’.

The mid brain or limbic brain is where your ‘sub-conscious’ resides.

It is where everything you have ever done, thought, said, heard, felt, tasted or smelt is stored – and I do mean everything although you and I don’t have access to it most of the time.

The subconscious is where our ideas come from, where our intuition resides and is the source of our imagination.

The subconscious is the home of our feelings and it’s connected to other nerve centres like the solar plexus which is where those ‘gut feelings’ we get from time to time come from and the heart centre that gives rise to feelings of ‘heartache’ and other emotions.

The subconscious mind hosts the parts of us that prevent us from doing things, saying things or behaving in certain ways – sometimes for good reasons, but most often for bad, or redundant reasons. It’s role here is to keep us safe.

The upper, or forebrain is our ‘conscious mind’.

It’s where all the ‘thinking’ occurs, where information and experience are turned into knowledge and where we apply ‘logic’ usually based on that knowledge.

The conscious mind often questions our intuition, dismisses our ‘gut feelings’ and sometimes ridicules our imagination.

It is also positive, in that it’s where our ‘plan’ lives. Our plan for what we want to do with our lives and how we will live it.

It’s the part where intentions, expectations and goals are set, and it’s the part of us that commands and controls how and when we put all those things into practice.

So how do these ‘rules’ work?

And how do you and I put them into practice?

The second and third rules state that imagination is more powerful than knowledge and logic. Or in other words your subconscious is more powerful than your conscious mind.

That doesn’t mean though that it is in control because if you give it a clear command from your conscious mind it does what it is told – or at least what it ‘thinks’ you are telling it.

Because – if there is a conflict between different things you are asking for, it cannot decide which thing to do as one counteracts the other – so you end up doing nothing.

You and I have been there. We want to have a ‘day off’ and relax, but we also want to get some important ‘job’ done – result – stalemate – we end up doing neither and getting frustrated.

Because – if what you are asking is something ‘unfamiliar’ then it may reject or modify that command in favour of what is familiar.

We’ve been there too. Every time we start doing something ‘new’ there is always an element of fear of the unknown – the ‘unfamiliar’. And sometimes, because of this we just don’t go through with it.

The remaining rules all work together.

We create pictures in our mind and ‘talk to ourselves’ continuously. We visualise all the time (even if we think we can’t) – if I say ‘zebra with red and green stripes’, you’ll see one – guaranteed.

You and I create scenarios in our mind all the time.

All the ‘what if?’ questions we ask – all the pictures we paint and words we say to ourselves build up, and the more we repeat these things the more strongly they fashion our beliefs, making us into who we are.

Our attitudes, our take on things, our prejudices, our opinions, our ‘way’ – and so on.

We repeat stuff to ourselves, we make our beliefs, and these become or influence our expectations.

We become what we believe, and our expectations turn into realities.

So why don’t you and I always get what we want?

Why don’t you and I always achieve our goals?

Why don’t you and I always realise our expectations?

When we want, where we want, how we want, with whom we want and so on?

The rules of the mind hold the answer.

There are three keys.

Repetition, Conflict, Clarity.

We must be absolutely clear about what we want.

We must be certain that the things we want do not conflict with one another.

We must repeat, repeat, repeat, everything in our conscious mind until we ‘train’ our subconscious to accept it, because in the end, remember that the subconscious is more powerful than the conscious.

That’s why we use vision boards, affirmations, mind movies, gratitude journals and so on to reinforce what we really, really, want to be, do, have and give.

And that’s why sometimes we need to dialogue with our subconscious to find out those things that we’ve forgotten about but which it is really holding on to as fundamental beliefs created usually when we were very young.

Because those deep hidden beliefs are so strong that they can simply stop us in our tracks when we decide to do something in conflict with them.

Adults don’t need to behave like children, but often those childhood beliefs and conditioning prevent us from doing those things we need to do as adults that were not available to us as a child.

And if something was unavailable to us as children than our subconscious minds, unless they are ‘cleared’ will continue to make it unavailable at any age.

There are many ways to clear unwanted beliefs and conditioning but that’s another story.

At this stage what you and I need to know is what actually is holding us back.

What are your underlying negative beliefs?

Everyone has them.

Write them down – now.

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‘It’s a Kind of Magic’

Roald Dahl wrote in ‘The Minpins’ –

“Those who don’t believe in Magic will never find it”

To which the corollary is that if you do believe in Magic then it will happen.

The song Roger Taylor wrote for Queen and featured in the movie ‘Highlander’ contains these lyrics:

(I’ve left out all the chorus lines)

“One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal
One golden glance of what should be
One shaft of light that shows the way
No mortal man can win this day
The waiting seems eternity
The day will dawn of sanity
This flame that burns inside of me
I’m hearing secret harmonies
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time”

So what is this thing called ‘magic’?

Is it real?

Does it exist?

Quite often ‘magic’ is something that you or I do to produce a result that surprises other people.

They have no idea how we did it.

They call it ‘magic’.

So by this reasoning, ‘magic’ does exist, but that’s a generalization.

It goes deeper than that.

Deeper than you or I doing something, causing something to happen, that others don’t understand.

That’s magic on a superficial level.

Let’s go back to Roger Taylor’s words.

To me they explain magic very well, drawing on much of my understanding of fifth dimensional universal realities.

(And if you read last week’s message, you’ll recognise that I’m now entering the realm of pseudoscience – the inexplicable – the “we don’t know how it works so it can’t be happening”)

Dahl says that if you don’t believe in it, you’ll never find it.

You must believe, you must have faith, in what you are doing to make it work.

Because to find magic, to make it work, you do have to do something.

Magic doesn’t just ‘happen’ by itself.

There is a power behind any form of magic.

Spiritual power, universal power, or, if you like, a ‘higher power’.

Some people prefer to use the word ‘miracle’ rather than ‘magic’ but it’s the same principle.

An individual person or soul can call upon universal energy to ‘make something happen’ – to cause something to change.

It happens every day. All over the world energy healers and other practitioners who tap into universal Source to help people are curing (oops, not allowed to use that word) resolving disease, and physical and emotional pain.

They are helping people to change, helping people to discover who they really are and become who they really want to be, helping people to get rid of the blocks and restrictions inherited from the past that are holding them back.

Helping them to escape from the conditioning, manipulation and propaganda they are bombarded with every day.

Helping them to find their ‘way’ through ‘life’.

No-one really knows how this works – but it does work – it’s real magic.

Amazing magic happens in hypnotherapy, especially RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy) – it does what it says on the tin – it transforms people rapidly, not over several years but in just a few hours.

Magic

We are now seeing different anti-ageing and even age reversal therapies being developed that can reduce biological age in a few months by 10 years or more.

Magic

Meditation, mindfulness and similar techniques, both physical and mental can achieve amazing results enhancing people’s lives in many ways.

Magic

But remember, in all of this ‘work’ has to be done, both by the therapist, coach or trainer, and by the person undergoing it.

It doesn’t just ‘happen’.

Like the lead character in Highlander’ you have to undertake a quest, and you have to throw off outdated beliefs that most people hold to be true.

To find magic you have to be different – you have to do your own thing.

And to do that you have to be a warrior.

A warrior against ‘convention’, against ‘the way we do things round here’, against the ‘establishment’, and most of all against those who believe that power over others, even when they are ‘democratically elected’ (as if there is such a thing) to hold or wield that power, has anything to do with the well-being of anyone other than themselves or their clique.

But that doesn’t mean there has to be any sort of ‘confrontation’.

To be a magical warrior means first and foremost that you must believe in yourself.

You must believe that you are enough.

You must love yourself, having the ability to be independent of others.

You must believe in Magic

Believe that it can be done.

That the world can be changed

One person at a time

Starting with you

“One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal”

“There can be only one”

As Neale Donald Walsch describes in his books ‘Conversations with God’

“There is only one of us”

That’s where the magic comes into play –

If there is only one of us, ‘all of us’ – how does that work?

It’s a kind of Magic.

Become a warrior for magic.

Start by believing that in yourself – believe that you are ‘enough’

And if you don’t quite ‘get’ this start with Marisa Peer’s book ‘I Am Enough’

Follow the instructions and make a start and be that warrior.

Right now!

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The Art of Science

A friend of mine recently underwent an appraisal to give a talk at TEDx.

She is an energy healer and is particularly interested in helping women in pregnancy.

She was told that she would not be allowed to use the words ‘energy’ or ‘healing’ or anything else that in the opinion of whoever runs TEDx is ‘pseudoscience’.

Now the techniques that she uses do actually work, and have been working for millennia, but as yet there is no-one on Earth who can actually ‘prove’ how they work.

‘Pseudoscience’, as defined by academics, relates to anything that cannot be understood or proven by using scientific method. Or in other words the logic these people who take it on themselves to classify things is this:

“It may well work perfectly, but if ‘we ‘(clever academics) don’t know how it works or can’t find a way of doing that, then it doesn’t work – it’s a fraud and no-one may talk about it. ‘We’ don’t know how it works, therefore ‘you’ shouldn’t use it or talk about it – end of.”

Now I was taught at school a very long time ago that ‘science’ itself is simply a process – as is art; and there’s a significant difference.

Artists create something out of nothing, out of an idea (so according to the definition above ‘art’ must also be pseudoscience!) whereas science is the process of breaking something down in order to understand how it was built up or how it works.

The process is this:

You create a hypothesis – an idea or starting point for your scientific investigation.

You test that hypothesis through a series of experiments.

If ‘enough’ of those experiments support your hypothesis, you then turn the hypothesis into a more detailed ‘Theory’ based on the results (or at least ‘some’ of the results) of your experimentation.

Then you persuade other ‘scientists’ to test the Theory by conducting their own experiments.

If ‘enough’ of those scientists concur with your Theory, it then becomes a ‘Law’- as in ‘The Laws of Physics’.

You’ll notice some flaws in this process of ‘proof’.

Not all of the experiments carried out by the first scientist have to work to move on to the next step. The scientist who is wanting to prove his hypothesis will conveniently ignore the results that are inconsistent.

Theories are usually tested by scientists ‘friendly’ to the first scientist or his hypothesis, and again they will discard results that are ‘inconvenient’.

This happens a lot – it’s called ‘bad science’.

It’s as if you are given a brief to carry out ‘investigations’ and write a report on something but told in advance that you won’t get paid unless the report is consistent with the opinions or theories of whoever commissioned the report.

(This has happened to me more than once – I didn’t take it on)

That happens probably more than we think – and it shows up when two different ‘schools’ of economists come up with totally different theories about how the country should be run.

The thing is, that so you can ‘prove’ something ‘scientifically’ you have to come up with a hypothesis – and that’s where the ‘art’ comes in.

It kicks in again when you start to design the experiments to support your idea.

The process of science is an art in itself.

And no-one knows or can prove how human imagination and creativity works.

So, science itself is ‘pseudoscience’ – because what causes it to work – the art of science – cannot be proven by science.

One of the secrets of good marketing is to test – to experiment – with different approaches to discover which works best.

‘Why’ or ‘how’ it works isn’t particularly important on a case by cases basis and certainly cannot be proven by scientific evaluation.

So, according to the ‘academics’ marketing must also be pseudoscience!

But there’s a problem underlying all this.

Why are TEDx inhibiting the freedom of speech by banning what they see, in their opinion, as pseudoscience?

Why is it that they are refusing to allow people to talk about the benefits of these things or provide explanations of how they work?

Because they are not ‘scientific’ – whatever that means?

Because they might make people think about things and situations in a different way?

Because they might be ‘disruptive’?

Or are they just scared of the ‘establishment’ that is always against change (unless of course they think it up).

Not sure what’s going on here as I thought TEDx was a platform for people to express themselves.

It seems however that you can only do this if you only talk about things that have been scientifically proven – which in many cases means not proven at all.

After all there is a very good scientific ‘proof’ lying around somewhere that the Earth is flat!

And there are still people adhering to this proof and attempting to convince the rest of us that it’s true!

Maybe we should get together and set up TEDy devoted exclusively to ‘pseudoscience’ – which is pretty much everything really!

It doesn’t matter whether we know how something works.

If it works for you – use it.

If something has been working and giving benefit for millions of years, then we should really take that benefit and not refuse it because we don’t know how it works.

After all, if we needed to know exactly how it worked, we’d stop using our brain!

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‘Reach for the Sky’

This was the title of a film many years ago about WW2 fighter pilot Douglas Bader who lost both legs in a crash. He was told he’d never fly again but he wasn’t having any of that.

Bader rehabilitated himself over a short period of time and was soon flying in combat again.

Now we have the story of a young man called Billy Monger (Billy Whizz), a junior racing driver who similarly lost his legs in a crash.

Such is his passion for racing that he repeated Bader’s achievement, rehabilitated himself, and is back pursuing his passion for motor racing.

Likewise, another racing driver, this time at the Formula 1 level, has ‘come back’ after a massive injury that nearly severed his right arm. Robert Kubica (‘koo-bit-za’ to pronounce the Polish properly) has returned to race at top-level next season.

There are thousands of others who have overcome physical difficulties of one sort or another to compete in sport at events like the Paralympics and Invictus games after being told that they would ‘never be able to do that again’.

And it’s not just about losing limbs or suffering other physical damage.

I know personally one woman who, having been given a few months to live because of kidney disease, succeeded in repairing her one remaining kidney and bringing it back to normal health – she is still going strong nearly 50 years later.

Another woman has been twice diagnosed with cancer – each time, she has succeeded, by herself, in eliminating it completely.

And then there’s Stephen Hawking who lived on for some 40 years beyond what the medical profession considered possible.

How does this work?

Perhaps the answer to that question is another – why does this work?

It’s not ‘positive thinking’, ‘mindfulness’, meditation or anything ‘mystical’ or occult as some people would have us believe.

It’s all about vision, passion and the will to realise the vision you are passionate about.

And by will I don’t mean ‘will power’ – our will to do something or achieve something is driven or powered by our vision and passion – ‘will’ doesn’t power or drive itself.

You and I can have the will – or intention – to do or achieve something, but we’re not going to do anything without vision or passion.

They ‘go together’ as well – neither is much good without the other.

There’s a fourth element in the mix, though, without which nothing will happen.

Action.

It doesn’t matter how much will, passion or vision we have, nothing happens without action.

Sometimes that’s physical action, and at other times metal or spiritual action.

Sometimes its action taken by us, at other times its action performed for, with, or on us by others.

So what action did all these people take to ‘heal’ themselves in the way they have?

Physical damage can be repaired (as was the case with Kubica’s arm, up to a point), prosthetic ‘parts’ can be added or an environment can be created, as it was for Hawking, in which we can operate satisfactorily.

‘Faulty’ or diseased parts can be removed by surgery and various therapies and interventions can be applied to deal with so-called ‘mental’ problems.

I say so-called because many perceived ‘mental’ problems are simply the case of an individual not behaving ‘normally’. There are of course some real mental malfunctions that are more difficult to deal with – at least at this level.

I would classify all this as 4th dimensional conventional medicine – it’s at the ‘awareness’ level – being aware of the 3rd dimensional damage that has occurred.

It can ‘fix’ but not necessarily ‘resolve’ the problem.

It has been the first step for all the people I have mentioned.

What is it that causes these people to go beyond this and ‘reach for the sky’?

What is it that has enabled these people to achieve their vision and fulfil their passion?

It goes beyond the 4th dimensional work into the 5th dimension of healing – the dimension of belief and understanding.

And like the 4th dimension we need to take action and we need others to help us with that action.

To help us understand what is going on and to believe in what is possible and achievable.

All the vision, passion, will and action will lead us nowhere unless we understand and believe in what we are doing.

Unless we understand how the effective combination of mind, body, spirit and higher power can help us take the right action at the right time to ‘make things right’ for us in terms of our vision and passion

To empower us to take the action that we need to take to reach for the sky.

You can do it ‘by yourself’ – if you understand what you are doing, but, as with most personal or business enterprises or projects it always helps to get guidance and assistance from outside.

This is where coaches and therapists, sometimes called ‘healers’, come in.

Most of the people I listed before had ‘someone else’ helping them – partly because the action they had to take was ‘hard work’, and partly because they needed to ensure that they were taking the ‘right’ action in line with their passion and vision.

The ‘right’ way or the ‘right’ action is not always, rarely in fact, the quickest or easiest.

This process, carried out by ourselves with the help of therapists and coaches, is what Kathy Maslowski (‘maslovski’ – more Polish pronunciation) calls “5th Dimensional Healing” and it goes way beyond, whilst adding to, 4th dimensional ‘conventional’ medicine.

It’s also very different in that most 4th dimensional treatments have been evolved from or rely on some sort of ‘scientifically’ proven theory, whereas the 5th dimensional work is based on practice, experience, belief and understanding.

There is (as yet) no scientifically proven theoretical basis to it but, it works – and it works more reliably than many of the theory-based treatments we are used to.

But it’s not just for people who have been ‘damaged’ in some way.

You and I can use the techniques in 5th Dimensional Healing to help us to discover and build our visions and passions, and to take the actions we need to take to bring them into reality.

Understand and believe.

Clarify your vision and passion.

Set your intention.

Take action.

Reach for the sky!

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“Deaf, Dumb and Blind Kid”

Pete Townshend’s ‘Rock Opera’ “Tommy”, performed by The Who is a story about the journey taken by a boy called Tommy – played in the Movie by Roger Daltrey.

The movie, the songs and the album sleeve – remember those wonderful 12” album sleeves – tell slightly different stories about how the young Tommy came to be traumatized in the first instance resulting in becoming – apparently – deaf, dumb and blind.

“You didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it . . . never tell a soul what you know is the truth”

This is classic. It’s what happens to most people. It’s certainly happened to me.

We get told things, or we overhear things, we see things on screen, or we read things in books.

Usually between the ages of 2 and 12 but sometimes earlier or later.

And it has a profound, really profound, influence on the rest of our lives.

You see, at that time of our lives, you and I are open wide to ‘programming’ – not always as extreme as in the case of Tommy – but it happens.

It happens to almost everyone.

However good and careful their parenting is, most people cannot prevent direct and subliminal messages getting to us.

“Don’t speak to strangers” for example is not much use in later life and unfortunately no-one ever tells us as we grow up when it is OK to start speaking to strangers!

We just suddenly get ‘told’ to speak to groups of people we don’t know, to people we want to influence in some way, to describe to ‘strangers’ what we do – and so on.

But it isn’t our parents who tell us to do this, it’s someone else – someone who our subconscious sees as a ‘stranger’ – and we don’t talk to them, do we!

These ‘programs’ are hardly ever ‘deleted’ from our subconscious or conscious minds except through some form of therapy.

Using Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) I have helped several people discover how they have unwittingly been programmed in this way and shown them how to remove, or at the very least ignore, these thoughtforms.

All that ‘normal’ childhood programming can be removed, as can the results of more extreme childhood trauma, in a very short space of time. The techniques are really quite simple but as a therapist I have to know which tools to use in which circumstance.

But there are other issues that lie much deeper because in certain ways most people are still “deaf, dumb and blind kids”.

You see, there’s an underlying story to ‘Tommy’ which was explained by Pete Townshend in a documentary I was watching the other day.

And I must admit, I was surprised.

Townshend explained that the story was a metaphor for a spiritual journey. A journey from darkness to enlightenment.

A journey that you and I take, a journey everyone takes – and like Tommy, most people screw up.

In the story, Tommy realises the truth of his existence, but like many others who have done something similar he attempts to ‘convert the masses’ creating a cult, a pseudo religion, aided and abetted, as has happened many times in reality, by people around him who want to exploit his celebrity.

And at the beginning of the story, Tommy wasn’t really deaf, dumb, and blind. He was just doing what he’d been programmed to do.

  • He wasn’t hearing
  • He wasn’t seeing
  • He wasn’t communicating

And in his case the programming was so strong that he wasn’t hearing anything, seeing anything, or communicating anything, and because of this there was a lot of other abuse along the way that embedded the program even further.

There are some interesting lyrics in the section titled ‘Amazing Journey’ that describes a Gandalf/Dumbledore like figure that would guide him to learn ‘all that he should know’.

And Tommy found a channel, a way to express himself – pinball.

He played pinball by feel, by vibration, by intuition, like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars learnt to use the light sabre.

Tommy is an echo of everyone including you and me.

We are on an ‘amazing journey’, and we have our own guides.

Spirit guides – they act like Gandalf, Dumbledore and Yoda – they don’t necessarily tell us what to do or how to do it, but they do show us the way.

If we are listening – if we are seeing – and if we are communicating with ourselves in understanding.

Butt the thing is we’ve been programmed for lifetimes not to do that!

Not to do it ourselves anyway; most people have been programmed to listen, see and communicate through someone else, through some ‘organisation’ that claims to have ‘higher authority’ or access to a higher power.

The fact is that we all have direct access to a higher power – whatever we choose to call it, perhaps ‘the Universe’ ‘Spirit’, ‘Humanity’, ‘God’ and so on and we are being guided by that ‘higher power’.

All the time – not just when we ask.

The whole idea of personal spirituality is dismissed by most people as some sort of ‘mythology’ – it’s dismissed as ‘a load of nonsense’ or something to be scared of because those organisations who have assumed some sort of ‘spiritual authority’ have been marketing that idea for millennia.

Although strangely they are all giving out the same message – there is a higher power.

One of the best descriptions of a higher power is actually ‘humanity’ – humanity collectively, acting and thinking together.

As Neale Donald Walsch says in ‘Conversations With God’ – “There is only one of us”.

But are we listening, hearing and communicating this truth?

Have you found your ‘pinball’?

Your channel for communicating what you hear and see.

If not, or even if you’re already on your way, follow you spirit guide (we all have a few), your intuition, your ‘gut feeling’.

The ‘truth’ isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s within you – just listen, watch, and communicate with others to help them discover it too.

Enjoy the quest.

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The Journeyman’s Grace

“Oh please, journeyman, help me on my way
Oh please, help me please, I won’t be afraid.

Someone told me there’s a grace that leads you straight from place to place
And you always leave the road behind you
You don’t need your horses shod, just a dowser and his rod . . .”

So wrote Dave Swarbrick and Richard Thompson in 1971 on the Fairport Convention album ‘Angel Delight’

The song is about the journey through life, death and beyond, facilitated by the ‘journeyman’.

You and I are on this journey.

We go from place to place.

We travel steps on the way.

Following the ‘light’ that guides us.

Imaging you are driving at night on an unlit road. As you move forward your headlights illuminate the road ahead. You follow the light that moves forward with you showing the way.

The lights on your car are like the dowser and his rod – leading you on.

And as we travel – along the road and through our lives – we ‘experience’.

There is constant change going on.

Now I’m in one place – but now I’m further across the page, in a different place.

Experiencing different things, writing different words.

It goes on constantly; every moment is a new experience.

And consciously or not, every moment is a new ‘learning’.

Neale Donald Walsch in the ‘Conversations With God’ series explains that experience is exactly what we are ‘here’ for – on this planet, in this lifetime, now.

That is ‘what it’s all about’ – experiencing different things, different states, different emotions.

That is why we are, who we are, where we are, and what we are.

It is ‘The Meaning of Life’ and in the movie the Pythons actually did ‘get’ that.

It’s the ‘Journey’ we take through this life that gives us those experiences.

And it’s up to you and I to decide the journey we are on, or the series of journeys we want to undertake.

And that’s simply what we do, all the time, time and time again.

We travel.

But we need just one thing to be able to undertake our journeys.

We don’t need a horse shod to carry us and we don’t need a car with its headlights.

We need to know the ‘Way’.

From time to time people have appeared and said, in one way or another, “I am the Way – follow me”.

And people have followed – more often than not to their destruction.

It may have been the self-appointed leader’s ‘way’ but it wasn’t their way

Their own individual; ‘Way’.

This is where the ‘journeyman’s grace’ comes in.

The ‘journeyman’ is your own intuition.

And here’s where the two lines of the chorus in the song are really relevant and important:

“Oh please, journeyman, help me on my way
Oh please, help me please, I won’t be afraid”

Don’t be afraid of your intuition, your ‘gut feeling’ – let it help you on your way.

On the way you are supposed to go, not the way someone else wants you to go.

It will take you through the experiences you want, that you are meant to have, not though the ‘stage direction and script’ of someone else’s ideology.

But here’s the thing:

All ‘journeys’ have a start point and an end point.

Some are ‘short’, some are ‘long’, and some are concurrent – some journeys are part of another.

And to find ‘the way’ – your way – you need to know where the start and end of each particular journey are located.

At the same time, both your start and end points are ‘way points’ on your bigger journey.

But let’s just take one step at a time – one piece of the journey at a time.

Set up your intuitive ‘sat-nav’ – your ‘journeyman’ – to help you on your way.

The journeyman needs to know where you are now, who you are now – in the context of your proposed journey.

And then where are you going? Why are you going there – what experience are you seeking?

The journey is all about the experience you seek and there may be criteria you want your journey to meet.

It’s like programming the SatNav in your car to avoid traffic, avoid tolls, or find the quickest route.

Ask yourself:

  • What journey am I on?
  • What experience am I looking for? Or, what do I expect to find? At the end or on the way?
  • And as a ‘quality check’ – Is this my journey or someone else’s? (Most people miss this one and spend all their time going on other people’s journeys.)

And then:

  • Do I know the Way? Can I see the way?
  • Am I prepared for the unexpected that might occur along the way?
  • Is the way open? Or is it shut or blocked for some reason that I will have to circumvent – how ‘clear’ is the Way?
  • And again – is it ‘My Way’ or someone else’s?

And when you start and are on your journey, just like when you’re driving a car; constantly monitor and adjust according to what you’re experiencing.

What journey are you on today?

Do you know your Way?

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Making a Difference

One of the things many people aspire to when asked about their goals or purpose in life is to ‘make a difference’.

There seem to be three levels.

Some want to make a global ‘difference’ – to change the world through mass political change.

Some want to ‘make a difference’ to a particular community in some way.

And some want to ‘change the world, one person at a time’.

All can be done, but we know the first one usually goes horribly wrong and has never really worked for those who have tried it – unless it is ‘downgraded’ into the second more local level.

But even then, the results are usually relatively short term in the grand scheme of things.

At the second level, which could be geographical – nation, city, neighbourhood, street, or relate to some kind of interest group, results in terms of making a difference can certainly be achieved.

But often the initiative, which usually starts with one person, becomes ‘organised’ and the focus of the change – the ‘difference’ being made, becomes diverted, or subverted into something else.

And the initial instigator, the person who started it all off, is often ‘expelled’ from the very community they were trying to improve – and replaced by some sort of ‘committee’.

I suppose this happens for two reasons.

‘Making a difference’ implies change, and people don’t like change, so the initiative is diluted so that it becomes less of a ‘threat’ or less ‘dramatic.

“Yes, we’d like things to be different, but we don’t want to change anything”

I think this is known as having your cake and eating it?

The other reason why ‘making a difference’ often fails is related to this – it’s called ‘democracy’.

You see, we’ve come to believe that everyone should have a ‘say’ in anything being done that might have an impact on them, or even have no direct impact on them – they just feel entitled to ‘vote’.

The idea of some individual taking action on something without ‘consulting’ all and sundry is considered, sadly by most people in the ‘civilised’ world, as being in some way ‘wrong’.

Even if it does bring them a direct benefit.

They weren’t consulted, therefore whatever it is must be ‘wrong’.

So that leaves us with the third way.

The third way of making a difference.

And thanks to the communications revolution this has become, in a way, a lot easier.

You and I now have the ability to change the world – one person at a time.

So how does this work?

And how long does it take?

Well, the secret lies in the fact that people are far more likely to make changes in their lives based on a one to one encounter.

Because no-one else is involved, no ‘vote’ is required.

They make the choice to change for themselves and by themselves.

And if the change they are making in themselves impacts on someone else then, again, it’s a one to one encounter.

Now that doesn’t mean that you or I can only communicate with one person at a time.

We can speak to large gatherings, send messages to a large list of people.

The difference is that we aren’t attempting to ‘change the mind’ of the group as a whole, which is what the other methods are about.

It doesn’t need a group decision; no vote is required.

It’s all about individual choice.

Let’s say you’re speaking to 2000 people about some topic that could make a beneficial impact on their lives if they decide to adopt your way of thinking.

Even if only 20 people choose to change, then you are making a difference.

But then, if it’s just you giving out the message, it’s going to take a long time.

A very long time.

Depending on the message this may or may not matter – but how can you and I speed things up?

How can we get our messages out to more people, more quickly?

Well, aside from the technology we now have available, we need what used to be called – ‘disciples’ – defined as a follower, advocate, proponent or pupil of a teacher, leader, or philosopher.

It comes from the word ‘discipline’ as used to describe a particular system, method or philosophy.

The thing is, if we have a ‘system’ whether that be to do with coaching, therapy or a learning programme it can become a ‘discipline’ or the newer ‘buzz word’ – ‘modality’.

We can ‘spread the word’ – tell people about what we have to offer – not just by ourselves but by other people we have trained to teach our system, modality or discipline – whatever we call it.

That way, more and more people are offered the choice.

The choice to change their lives.

The choice to be, do and have something different

To change their world, and maybe impact other people around them who can then also make the choice.

There are many speakers, teachers and so on, ‘out there’ talking about how things can be different, better, for people.

Social media is littered with affirmations, sayings, quotes, thoughts and images intended to inspire or ‘motivate’ people.

Now this is all very well, but as Mary Morrissey says –

“Inspiration without action is just entertainment”

– and sadly, that’s what many of the social media posts and famous (or not so famous) ‘inspirational’ and ‘motivational’ speakers are all about – entertainment.

The effect, if there’s nothing to follow it up, soon fades.

I’ll cover why this is in more depth another time, but for now there are two things you and I need to do to change the world.

The first is to systemise our message – turn it into something that people who choose to adopt it can do – practically – to reinforce and embed the change into themselves.

The second is to recruit people to spread our message, system, modality, discipline – and teach them to do it through a straightforward process they can follow.

Simple!

Go ahead.

Change the world.

One person at a time.

Make a difference.

.

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More Than Enough?

My mentor Marisa Peer in her new book ‘I Am Enough, Mark your Mirror and Change Your Life’ explains her concept or mantra “I Am Enough”.

She proposes that there are two fundamental underlying causes to all our ‘problems’ and behaviors in life.

They are

  • Not feeling that we are ‘enough’
  • Something not being ‘available’ for us

In our personal opinion or belief that is, not in reality.

The idea that in some way the belief held by an individual that they are ‘not enough’ is the root cause of addictions, of weight problems, of certain sexual behaviour and so on.

People strive to get more of whatever it is they believe they don’t have enough of.

It’s the reason why some extremely rich people are always striving for more and more money – even though they have far more than they already know what to do with.

Conversely, the idea of something being ‘not available’ is the reason why some lottery winners go all out to spend the money as soon as they can.

They have the underlying belief that money is ‘not available’ to them and so they get rid of it as soon as possible.

And of course, these two concepts apply in many more contexts.

We don’t have ‘enough’ of it or it’s ‘not available’ to us – whatever ‘it’ is.

These underlying thought-forms are very difficult to overcome as they are deeply embedded in the subconscious mind.

But you and I weren’t born with them.

We picked them up at a very early age and usually by the time we reached double figures they were deeply embedded – unless our parents and those around us were very very careful and knew that this could happen.

In any case they form the basis of everything we think and do.

Until we get rid of them.

You see the mind only ever does what it thinks you want it to do – and although you can make a conscious decision about something, your subconscious mind will often ‘misinterpret’ this.

We know, for example that the subconscious ignores negatives.

You decide you’re not going to drink alcohol.

Your subconscious first ignores the ‘not’ and then adds in not being enough and also brings another concept into play.

The mind always chooses the ‘familiar’ over the ‘unfamiliar’

So it returns the response ‘Rubbish, of course you drink alcohol, besides you haven’t had enough, and it’s what you usually do – it’s familiar – it would be scary to do otherwise!’

And it might also throw in that being sober is something that’s not attainable for you.

Just try applying that set of ‘subconscious mind logic’ to other things and see what answers you get.

“I’m not going to do that, it’s unfamiliar and scary – it might hurt!”

“I can’t have that, it’s unavailable to me, I couldn’t have it when I was little so obviously I can’t have it now”

“I’m not going to stop doing that, I haven’t had enough, I’m not enough’, I need to keep having whatever it is, it might run out, I might die!”

This is subconscious ‘logic’ and whatever you decide to do consciously, your subconscious mind will override it or put up a fight.

Which leads to anxiety, stress and depression – and physical pain and illness as well.

And all the knock-on effects and circumstances that these lead to.

So, how do you and I get rid of these underlying thought-forms?

The key thing Marisa suggests is that you convince your conscious self that you are ‘enough’.

Write it on every mirror, have it on your screensaver, carry I with you on a cad and so on.

That’s great, and it works – but only when you and I understand what it means.

It is, after all a bit difficult to grasp – ‘I Am Enough’?

Most people will say

“No, I’m not enough – because I want that new job, that new car, that new relationship, more money, a better house – and so on – I’ll be ‘enough’ when I have all that”

The meaning that you and I should be understanding it that – ‘today, at this time, at this moment’ I am enough’.

Right here, right now, Enough

To get through the next minute, the next hour the next day and so on ‘I Am Enough’

Tomorrow, or next week I will have more knowledge, more money, more time – but I will still be ‘enough’

I am always enough.

And my ‘enough’ of today, is more than my ‘enough’ of yesterday.

Every day I Am Enough

But that doesn’t mean I can’t be more than enough tomorrow.

But tomorrow I am still enough.

You see ‘enough’ is dynamic.

It changes from day to day, ‘more’ or ‘less’, it doesn’t matter.

Every day, you and I are always ‘enough’.

Once we know that, once we believe that, the old ‘I am not enough’ thought-form becomes redundant and is replaced by the new ‘I Am Enough’ thought-form.

The effects can be dramatic and rapid.

It opens up a whole new frame of reference for your subconscious and starts to chip away at the concept of things not being available or attainable.

Because being ‘enough’ means that those things don’t matter – as far as your subconscious is concerned.

Because the perceived need is removed the blocks to those ‘needs’ are also removed, and you mind gets a better understanding of what it thinks you want it to do.

It even starts to be more flexible about what is ‘unfamiliar’.

Everything starts to come together.

All you need is just three words – and the belief that goes behind them

I Am Enough

Try it, embed that phrase in your mind – see what happens.

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Theory or Practise

I was once acquainted with the senior economic advisors to both the Labour and Conservative parties, they got on very well together, to the extent that one sent a message praising the other at his funeral.

But they held completely opposing views on how that nation should be run from an ‘economics’ point of view.

They had developed different theoretical standpoints from their research into the subject.

Two schools of thought.

But the thing is that this was all about theory, and although lots of testing had been done on the practicability of those theories, both claiming that if put into practice their way of doing things, their theory, would work better than the other’s, the measures proposed were developed from thinking about it and not from actually doing anything.

You see, our conscious minds are obsessed with logic.

  • We want everything to be ‘proved’.
  • We want to know ‘how it works’
  • We want to know ‘the process’
  • We want to know ‘what’s going to happen?’

And we spend years in ‘education’ learning the theory behind everything, learning what other people have already discovered and repeating it back to our teachers.

Apparently, this means we are ‘educated’, we have ‘knowledge’, we have the theory.

Trouble is that despite all this ‘education’ and ‘knowledge’ pumped into us, no-one actually tells us what the **** we are supposed to do with it or how we are supposed to use it.

You and I know that we can’t learn to ride a bike, swim, or drive a car from a book, from the theory, from the accumulated knowledge that exists about swimming, driving cars or riding bikes.

We just have to get out and do it.

I’ve just spent two weeks learning a powerful hypnosis technique that has been proven to solve pretty much any ‘problem’ that anyone has – in a few hours.

But there are no scientific papers on it, it wasn’t the result of someone’s PhD research, there is no written down ‘theory’ about how it works or why it should or should not work.

It just works.

It was developed by Marisa Peer, trained as a traditional hypnotherapist, who just tried a few different things and left out a few things that were in the ‘theory’ of how, and why hypnosis works.

The technique was developed over several years by ‘doing it’, through the reactions and effects it had on her clients, not from ‘learning’ about it from books and so forth.

And we were taught to do it the same way – by doing it, practice, practice, practice, until we all got it ‘right’ – or at least good enough to be let out into the outside world as certified therapists.

And it’s the same with lots of other disciplines except that in most cases there is a mass of theory in big thick textbooks about whatever it is – often written by people who have never actually ‘done’ whatever it is they are theorizing about and purporting to teach people about.

And the thing about ‘theory’ that most people forget is that it’s not ‘real’.

A theory is just an academic word for an ‘idea’, that’s all it is. Someone’s ‘idea’ about something explained at length. Great length in some cases.

And it doesn’t matter how much you talk or write about an idea, how many papers you write or lectures you give, it’s still just an idea.

Just imagine what would have happened if the Wright Brothers had put their ideas about making a flying machine down on paper, written lots of books and given lots of lectures about making a machine that could fly.

Flying would never have got off the ground.

But they didn’t.

They put their ideas straight into practice, they tried them out, they tested them, until eventually they took off.

Ideas are great, you and I have them all the time – but as ‘theory’ they are absolutely useless – we have to put them into practice, to try them out, to see if they work, and then develop them to work better.

Despite the resistance of our logical conscious minds that keep coming up with the ‘buts’, and the ‘what if it goes wrong’ and the ‘it’ll never work because it’s never been done before’, we need to set our subconscious intuition free and just give it a go.

Whatever it is, good idea, bad idea – we’ll soon find out.

So we can focus on the good ideas and put them into practice.

And if we really want to write a book on the theory we can do that afterwards.

Not before which is usually the case.

There are a lot of people out there selling theories that don’t work, ideas that haven’t been properly tested – especially about marketing in the new internet driven world.

Things that seem like a good idea at the time but haven’t been turned into a tried and tested practical application.

That haven’t been turned into something that works – in practice.

Got any good ideas?

Try them out.

See if they work.

Modify them

Make them work better

Or if they don’t work, bin them and try another idea.

Don’t just think, write and talk about it.

Try it.

Try it now.

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Law of the Jungle

Long long ago in a galaxy far far away . . .

Well not that far actually and not that long ago, people formed themselves into groups or tribes. Other sentient beings, animals, did so as well, and still do.

Why did we do that?

We did it because finding food and shelter and protecting ourselves was more effective as a group than if everyone acted as individuals.

Different people took on different roles – the things they wee most suited to.

Some were ‘natural’ leaders and organisers, others (mostly men) were natural fighters and hunters, some (mostly women) were natural managers, nurturers and healers.

This worked well for a very long time, and in remote places now it continues.

We did what we were meant to do, we survived, we created art, we invented things, we found new ways and processes for doing things, better ways of communicating and so on.

But then it all went wrong.

We became ‘civilised’.

What I mean by this is that as populations grew people began to coalesce into larger and larger groups, and as the groups grew they became unable to function, as the tribes had done, according to the ‘natural’ laws – or the laws of nature.

Instead of autonomous tribes we created ‘societies’ and ‘cultures’ and developed the ideas of ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘government’.

And instead of valuing each other’s’ contributions to the tribe equally, because all roles taken on were equally vital to the survival of the tribe, we invented the idea of ‘class’.

Some roles were less valuable than others, some people were more ‘important’ than others.

Having a ‘more important’ role was converted into being ‘better’ than those who had what were seen to be less important more ‘menial’ roles.

(This by the way was where the subjugation of women came in)

You see, as the populations of each state or nation grew, there were more clashes between them, more fighting over the limited natural resources, primarily land, that were available in any particular area.

Men did the fighting – men were more important.

And some men (and occasionally women) were more important than others – we invented the idea of an ‘aristocracy’ which, translated from the Greek, means ‘the best’ (aristos) ‘rule’ (kratos).

And so it came to pass, that in most places in the world a ‘ruling class’ emerged who took charge of each state or nation usually using a hereditary succession process.

No-one else got a look in – except very rarely when there was a ‘power behind the throne’.

The Greeks in Athens had a slightly different way of doing things. This was called ‘democracy’ – translated as ‘the people rule’. However, the definition of ‘people’ (demos) really meant ‘native adult male residents’ of wherever this system was applied.

One man was selected as the leader of the state by the other ‘people’ (remember the definition).

Sometimes this didn’t work because the ‘elected’ leader would get the idea of appointing a successor, ending up with what might be termed a hereditary democracy.

In other cases, most other democracies in fact, a ‘ruling class’ of politicians would emerge from whom the ‘leader’ was regularly chosen.

Now instead of the law of nature it’s the law of the jungle.

Members of the ‘ruling class’, whether they be elected or appointed, and the people who ‘follow’ them fight among themselves for power and the authority to ‘rule’ as they see fit.

But things are changing.

There’s a shift in the ‘balance of power’ going on and the power of individuals or the ‘ruling class’ to rule is being degraded.

You see, power is achieved as a result of many things, but one of the most important is ‘information power’.

If you have control of information and communication, then you have control over pretty much everything else.

That’s why the media channels, TV and radio and the press, are the top strategic targets in the event of an invasion or coup d’état.

But that’s not so easy to do any more.

Information power is shifting to individuals, quickly in some parts of the world and slowly but surely in others.

And it’s becoming easier and easier for individuals, acting on their own or sponsored by an organisation to ‘mess’ with the information, to make people believe something is true which is not, or vice versa.

So, there’s now a fading trust in ‘information’ and especially ‘news’ in general.

And when people don’t believe the information they’re getting, don’t know if it is true or false, its power fades.

People are beginning to realise that the decisions they were asked to make in terms of an election or popular vote on some topic of importance, were based on ‘information’ that had no grounding in truth (whatever that is – ask Shakespeare!)

And more and more people are starting to lose faith in the current concepts of government and democracy and turning to their own resources to achieve what they want from life.

What does all this mean for you and me?

We have the power to govern our own lives.

Switch off the ‘news’, ignore the politicians and the media.

Create your own information.

Inform people about you, about who you really are and how you feel about life the universe and everything.

Not just a re-hash of someone else’s information or belief, but how you see life, history and the world as it is today.

Your take on it.

Now it is time to act as individuals!

Tell ‘them’ out there – who you are.

Who are YOU?

(BTW – this wasn’t at all what I intended to write today – it just flowed out)

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