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The Family Business

Over the past few years, I’ve come across a few highly successful, ‘family businesses’
I am taking a little poetic license with the term ‘family’ as I mean a small close knit group of people who may or may not be related who have been working together as a team for a very long time.
There are some businesses (which might better be called corporations) that are huge and may have one or two family members at the ‘top’. Ford as it was springs to mind as an example, but these were never really ‘family’ run.
1n 1981 Meredith Belbin described from his research nine key roles in any team. This is pertinent here as those nine roles don’t need nine people but probably, as the roles are related to personality behaviours, need around 6 individuals – any fewer would inhibit functionality.
Besides the nine roles there are distinct business functions that need to be carried out and happen in parallel to the roles. The roles described are not specific to any of the functions.
These functions in any business are Operations (what the business does), Marketing, Finance and Compliance with ‘the rules’ that may or may not apply to the business.
There is also, on a larger scale, the ‘People’ function but in the ‘Family Business’ that is encompassed within the team dynamic.
The thing is, you and I are probably quite capable of performing all the functions that we need to operate our own Personal Businesses, as I outlined in my book ‘How to Create Your Own Personal Business’, but that’s going to limit our effectiveness both as a business and as an individual.
We should take account of the advice of Sir John Harvey Jones, late Chairman of the chemical giant ICI and famous as TV’s ‘The Troubleshooter’, – “Only ever do what only you can do” and this is where the family team is key.
You can ‘outsource’ some activities like accounting and marketing but the business functions better if these are kept in house and that’s where the well-structured ‘family business’ team has the edge.
I’m using the ‘Family Business’ here as an analogy and a continuation of the story of ‘what goes wrong’.
A successful Personal Business will naturally evolve into a ‘Family Business’ structure as I will describe in my forthcoming book. After that though, is where it starts to go ‘wrong’.
The temptation is to allow or cause the business to grow and grow, to create additional layers of management, to introduce a central command and control system and so on. This is deemed necessary when the business begins to employ more and more people to perform all the functions as they get bigger.
And the same thing happens with nations and societies inventing government machines to perform the functions required to ‘run the country’
But it doesn’t have to be like that, and it hasn’t always been like that.
We can disperse, decentralise, devolve and diversify creating a new ‘distributed’ culturescape where we operate on a ‘peer to peer’ basis.
We have the technology, mostly, which we didn’t have in the days before the first industrial revolution that started this whole thing off.
By ‘peer to peer’ operation I mean that instead of everything going ‘up to the centre’ and back ‘down to the people’ (notice how we’ve been trained to use up and down there), everything works person to person, business to business, group to group, tribe to tribe – without any need for central government power structures, whether that be corporate or national.
We can communicate direct using the internet.
We can transfer money direct using the blockchain
We don’t really need, do we, to go to the Supermarket or the shopping mall to buy our stuff. Go back to the family business ‘high street’ and get what we need direct from the local producer.
If we want stuff that isn’t produced locally, we can purchase it online and have it delivered
We can ‘work’ at home, we can teach our children at home.
We can decentralise health care and deliver it locally – like we used to.
This may sound like the ‘old days’ before things were centralised and became supposedly more efficient but it isn’t. I’m not suggesting a return to the past because that’s not where we’re going.
In the past we didn’t have the technology, systems or knowledge we have now and importantly we didn’t have the ability to communicate as we do now.
In the past those who craved power over others took advantage of this, keeping people in the dark as to the truth and alienating groups by telling them different things – the divide and rule strategy.
That of course is still going on with massive amounts of misinformation and disinformation (aka fake news) and misleading ‘facts’ flying about everywhere. Reality is being obscured to the advantage of one group or another.
There are some other issues though. The devolved culturescape is still ‘under construction’ and there are a lot of ‘details’ to be resolved.
You and I cannot venture into this new world tomorrow, but we can make a start. We can look at what’s involved and how we can sidestep those who seek to retain power over us.
The thing is that most of the technology we need is under central control.
The internet can be switched off, the blockchain can be switched off, ‘energy’ and fuel can be rationed and redistributed to the ‘centres’ only, and the pace of centralisation accelerated towards a dystopian future world of the likes of ‘Metropolis’ or ‘Things to Come’.
You and I and everyone else would be left out in the cold – ‘doing what we are told’.
Now some people like that, some people crave that, they want to be told what to do and how and when to do it, it gives structure and order and has been going on for millennia.
You and I need to make a stand.
We need to support ‘family businesses’ – groups of people working together, We need to manage how we use the internet, keeping it positive and disconnecting from the negative and we need to secure the blockchain by buying into digital money before it gets swallowed up by state financial institutions.
There is much more but the first thing we need to understand is what underpins everything and that’s where I’m going next time.

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Culturescape

This is a word coined by Vishen Lakhiani (founder of Mind Valley) in his book ‘The Code of the Extraordinary Mind’.
He uses it as a sort of concatenation of ‘cultural landscape’ but it’s a bit more than a simple description of the different cultures we live in throughout the world.
It also identifies how or why some culturescapes no longer serve us.
In this insight I’m going to continue the exploration of how we might change or even reverse some cultural paradigms.
I wasn’t sure whether to call this the paradigm of control or power or culture because it encompasses all three and more.
Let’s start at the beginning by looking at ‘culture’ and it’s development.
In the world today there are many cultures and sub-cultures
The ‘western world’ is largely dominated by the ‘work culture’ or ‘work paradigm’ I touched on last time. You know, the one where you get a good ‘education’ then you get a good ‘job’, then you ‘save money’ and then ‘retire’.
It’s a rubbish paradigm and doesn’t really work but here’s the thing, it’s all based on ‘ordinary people’ (whoever they are) ‘doing what they are told’ for the majority of their lives.
Pre-school – do what you’re told by your parents, at school, do what you’re told by your teachers, at work, do what you’re told by your boss (who by the way is also doing what he or she is told to do – however ‘high up’).
Then when you ‘retire’ and you think you’ll be able to do what you’d like to do. Nope, you don’t have enough money, your movements are restricted by age based regulations (extra driving tests, inability to get insurance etc.) and generally being considered ‘too old’ to do certain things so you end up being told what you can and can’t do by your kids!
In the so-called ‘East’ usually meaning Russia and China it’s much the same but there a greater emphasis on control by the ‘State’ which exists in ‘the West’ as well through in a more subtle way.
Most people think this ‘state control’ came out of the Communist era but both Russia and China have always been ‘ruled’ by and autocratic hierarchy. Current leaders are behaving in a very similar way to the former Tsars or Emperors – but that is the underlying culture in those areas and its probably fair to say the ‘people’ are probably better off than they were a few hundred years ago.
Elsewhere we have the phenomenon of control by religion which was also very much the case in Europe before the ‘work culture’ took over. Control and persecution – because people don’t do what they are told – on the grounds of ‘religion’ have been going on for a very long time.
Control is achieved by the deployment of ‘power’ and here I’m using the term as power exercised through ‘Force’ in the lower part of Hawkins’ Scale of Consciousness rather than power achieved through being on a higher vibrational or dimension level.
The paradigms of Control and Power are closely related but not the same as we consider where ‘power’ comes from, how it is achieved.
It is possible to have control without power through force, control by consent, and I’ll come to that later when I describe the fourth culturescape.
Power has to come from somewhere and in the culturescapes I’ve described it comes from ‘the centre’.
This is more obvious in places like Russia and China where power and ‘government’ are highly centralised but it’s also the case with western governments, global corporations and religion based societies.
Whilst there may be significant elements of ‘devolution’ to local ‘governments’, state or corporate, control is always exercised from the centre – the centre of power within whatever organisation we are looking at.
For millennia there has been a strong drive towards this idea of controlling the ‘people’ from a ‘centre’.
First came the establishment of towns and cities – ‘civilisation’, and then the formation of, in the monarchic age, ‘principalities’ and ‘counties’ – a word introduced by the Normans to denote an area ruled over by a particular Count and administered by a ‘Shire Reeve’ or ‘Sheriff’ (remember the Sherriff of Nottingham?).
Out of all this further centralisation led to States and Nations and now the associations of these such as the European Union, United States of America and so on.
On top of this there’s the centralisation of money, of the exchange of value. Bartering was phased out because ‘money’ makes it easier, especially when it came to collecting the taxes needed for the governments to sustain themselves.
Each nation developed its own currency, managed and controlled by the State and this developed into the globalisation of money where all currencies are related to the ‘Global Reserve’ currency, namely the US Dollar – why the price of commodities like oil and gold is quoted in USD rather than the currency of the country from where it originated.
You and I, and pretty much everyone else are living in a culturescape of centralisation, and control but there is a fourth culture which still operates but is continually under attack because it goes against the trend of the other systems of culture.
I call this the decentralised or ‘tribal’ culture and it’s where we started on this planet in the first place.
We lived in small groups, families and tribes, maybe small ‘villages’ created around and natural resource or facility such as a harbour.
We made our decisions in those groups with ‘everyone’ involved managed usually by a ‘council of elders’ – who by the way would probably be in their 40s.
Decisions were made not by ‘democratic vote’ where the ‘majority’ wins and tells everyone ese what to do, but by agreement and compromise until everyone was of the same persuasion. Anyone who could not agree, maybe one or two, were ‘free to leave’ the community and find another more to their liking.
This culture still exists and operates in some tribal and aboriginal areas of the world today.
It broke down largely because people did ‘leave’ but then cane back to ‘take over’ by force, becoming ‘warlords’ and setting one tribe against another usually on the grounds of fear or greed.
This divide and rule strategy gave rise to the situation we’re in today
It worked because of one thing – the inability for different groups to communicate with each other over distances even of a few miles.
If they had been able to talk to each other and keep up to date with what the disruptors were doing, then things would have turned out very different.
But now, things are different – we can communicate on a peer to peer basis, and although governments make every attempt to stop or disrupt free communication it carries on and gives us what we need to ‘return’ to a form of decentralised culturescape I will discuss further next time.

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Paradigm Shift

I explained the concept of ‘Brave Thinking’ last week before I posed some question to which you and I might apply this technique or discipline.
Alongside and closely associated with Brave Thinking is the idea of ‘Paradigm Shift’ which Bob Proctor champions.
In essence, the ‘future’ – individual future, community future and global future, will come about through you and I and others using brave thinking to shift the paradigms that currently control everything we are and everything we do.
A paradigm can be summed up as a ‘way of thinking’ or a framework that we live by but it’s rather more than that.
Our paradigms, and we have many of them, include our core values, our patterns of belief and faith, and what we know and understand.
Many of these paradigms have developed quite recently by which I mean over the last couple of hundred years and many over the last 70 years and 20 years.
We seem to be creating paradigms like wildfire with little or no thought about what they mean in terms of the impact they have on us as individuals and as communities.
Now is the time to examine some of these paradigms to see how well they serve us in the light of the changing world in which we live.
(As I write I’m listening – in the background – to The Scorpions ‘Wind of Change’ from just over 30 years ago – which seems very apt right now!)
So where to start?
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve bitten off a bit more than I can chew here because the more I think about it the more this topic expands. I started off with half a dozen key paradigms but now it’s expanded like the Universe!
So much so that there could well be a whole book coming out of this (or books if I stick to ‘Peter’s Rules’!)
I can’t help thinking there’s going to be a connection here with the Laws of the Universe/Laws of Physics which I’ve referred to before but I’m not going to make that connection today.
I pointed a few areas up in the questions I asked last time, but I’ll just outline the way I’m thinking at the moment, bearing in mind that this is very much a ‘work in progress’.
Let’s start with that one – the Work Paradigm – the idea that we have to be continually ‘working’ towards something, making ‘progress’ towards something.
And I don’t mean in terms of self-development or learning, I’ll come to that later, I mean about ‘production’ – producing stuff, whether that be works of art or the ubiquitous ‘widgets’. It might be about plants or even ‘growing’ – a ‘business’ (a sub-paradigm in itself).
The end result of this progress, achieved through ‘work’ is some sort of tangible outcome that we have grown, created or manufactured which becomes part of, on a national scale, the Gross National Product or an ‘achievement’ on a more local or personal scale.
The work paradigm is about constantly putting effort into achieving more; but there’s another part to it.
The idea of working to achieve something, to produce something isn’t enough for this paradigm because it also includes the sub-paradigm that ‘work’ requires a reward.
You see, the achievement of producing or growing something isn’t enough, the work paradigm includes the concept of receiving ‘pieces of silver’ – money – for what we do.
The work paradigm frames the successful outcome of work not as the achievement, although that is part of it, but as the payment we receive for doing the work.
I could go on to explain why we’re ‘stuck’ in this paradigm, maybe another time, but we really should start thinking about changing this one because it’s doing just that – keeping us ‘stuck’ where we are. This paradigm may ‘work’ (excuse the pun) but we have to seriously question whether or not it still serves us or needs to be changed.
The second paradigm out of I don’t know how many, is the Knowledge Paradigm.
This is related to and perhaps driven to some extent by the Curiosity Paradigm which I’ll talk about another time as it’s a more fundamental part of our make up than those I’m discussing today.
The Knowledge Paradigm could be summarised as ‘the need to know’.
The need to know how things work, which goes with the corollary that if we don’t know how something works than it doesn’t, and the results it can be seen to produce are some sort of ‘luck’ or ‘magic’.
If there is no ‘proven scientific basis’ to something then it’s simply dismissed as ‘mumbo jumbo’ or an ‘old wives’ tale’.
This paradigm has now effectively ‘stolen’ the idea of Education from the Curiosity Paradigm. Children and adults are taught what is ‘known’, what has been proved, and discouraged from looking at anything that hasn’t.
You’ve heard my views (as a scientist) on ‘science’ where ‘researchers’ are paid to find and ‘prove’ a specific theory or result. The problem with knowledge is that some is ‘approved’ and some isn’t.
Further, knowledge is treated in a rather cavalier fashion. Bob Proctor says that most people have a lot of knowledge but only a few have any understanding of it, what it means, what it does, or what impact it might have when applied.
Come to that many people who have knowledge, even when they do understand it, have no idea at all how to apply it. I learnt that from years of tutoring MBA students.
The knowledge paradigm is that we must have as much approved knowledge ‘in the bank’ as possible, discarding or ignoring what has not been ‘proven’.
Just like the Money Paradigm it’s not about using that knowledge, or even understanding it; it’s just about accumulation, and much of the knowledge you and I are given to ‘educate’ us is not a lot of practical use anyway!
Once again, is this paradigm really serving our greater good? Do we need to change it?
More next time – I have Government, Belief, Life and Dimension to discuss, among others!

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Brave New World

This phrase was first coined by Shakespeare but became prominent as the title of a book by Aldous Huxley published in 1932 describing dystopian a future world, one of the main themes being the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies.
‘Dystopia’ is the antonym or opposite of ‘Utopia’ – the ‘ideal state’, described by Sir Thomas More in 1516.
To some extent and according to Huxley’s stated intention, his book is a parody on H G Wells’ ‘A Modern Utopia’ published in 1905. Wells discussingthe ‘bright’ side and Huxley the ‘dark’ side of humanity.
There are similar dystopian themes in the writings of D H Lawrence and of course George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ published in 1949. Interestingly Huxley’s book was set in the 26th Century whereas the date of Orwell’s book has already passed. Both wide of the mark but I surmise Orwell might have been closer.
Later in 1957 Ayn Rand published her classic work ‘Atlas Shrugged’ again set in a dystopian world of ‘Peoples’ States’ and here’s where all this becomes relevant.
The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”.
This corresponds exactly to the writings of Napoleon Hill. Wallace D Wattles, Henry David Thoreau, Neale Donald Walsch and many others.
Hill’s statement “Whatever a man can conceive and believe he can achieve” or in other words, and drawing on the other authors in this field – nothing ‘happens’ unless and until we (as humanity) cause it to come about.
As the Bible puts it more simply (from NKJV Matthew 7:7-8) – “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”
But we don’t even have to ‘ask’. In Matthew 6:8 it states that prayer (or wishing or asking or manifesting) is not necessary as God (The Universe, Source, the Higher Power) knows what a person needs even before they ask.
It’s amazing what you can discover when you strip out the religious connotations and focus on the faith.
The situation you and I are in, the situation the whole world is experiencing is a function of what ‘we’, as collective humanity, have been thinking, praying for, wishing for, manifesting for, casting spells for, setting goals for and so on.
There is something good in the current situation for everyone.
There are answers to prayers, to discontents, to longings, to wishes, to dreams, and much more.
It’s all there – it just didn’t quite turn out as expected!
But the thing is, the point of this insight is – what ‘happens’ next?
What happens when the majority of people are wishing this would all be over or that things would get back to normal?
You and I know that one cannot step in the same river twice. Whatever our concept of time we cannot go back and re-live our lives in a previous time. We can go back an remember or observe but we cannot be as we were then. The same thing happens going forward – we can envisage we can create ‘future memories’ but we cannot really be ‘then’.
You and I will not be going ‘back’ to normal – we are not going ‘back’.
So, the thing is, where are we going?
Where do we wish to go?
What do we wish our ‘brave new world’ to look like?
Probably not dystopian but ‘utopia’ also has its ‘problems’, restrictions, conventions and cultures that may not fit in with what you or I wish for.
Now is the time for Brave Thinking.
Brave Thinking is a term coined by Mary Morrissey, perhaps as an antonym to Thoreau’s idea of ‘Common Hours’ thinking – “If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams and endeavours to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Common Hours thinking is limited and restricted to ‘normal’ whatever that represents in any particular culture, but Brave Thinking is ‘outside the box’ – way outside the box, even out of sight of ‘the box’.
It’s close to what used to be called ‘brainstorming’ (before that became ‘politically incorrect’) now often referred to as ‘masterminding’ where people got together to solve ‘problems’ or challenges by throwing out any idea that came into their head however ridiculous it might seem to others prior o reaching a consensus on a way forward.
It’s not that, it’s more powerful and more individual but is often employed between what Morrissey calls ‘Partners in Believing’ because there are certain tenets you have to have ‘on board’, primarily those that ‘everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality’ which I have alluded to before and also the concept that everything is driven by belief and faith that whatever is being conceived in the mind will come to pass.
There is a technique to this which, as a certified Brave Thinking coach I will explain another time, but just as an experiment I’ll pose you a few questions.
Given a ‘clean slate’ – What if . . .
There was another way of transporting goods from place to place – what might that look like?
There was another way of working, without gathering people together in one place – what might that look like?
There was a different way of educating children and adults – how might that work?
A way could be found to do all the things that require IT or AI to operate – how would we go forward without our computers and our smartphones? (Remember we’re not going ‘back’)
There was a different way of transporting people around the world (apart from a Start Trek style ‘transporter’) – what might that be?
Just a few questions, but what about you?
What would you like or love your ‘new normal’ to be regarding –
Who you are, what you know and understand, how you feel, your health and fitness and so on?
How you relate to others, individually, in communities and cultures and how you relate to the environment and Universe?
What you do, what you contribute, what you give?
Where you live, your lifestyle, what you receive in reward for what you give, your freedom?
These are Brave Thinking questions.
Are you up for finding the Brave Thinking answers?

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Empty Spaces

Over the last few years, I’ve been watching, observing, reading, what people around the world are doing and saying.
There has been much focus on the past, ‘the way we were’ – or more correctly the way many people imagined ‘we were’, not actually having been around at the time envisaged.
There have been many considering the way we could be, speculating on how things could be different but with no clear idea of what that would be like. And as you and I know, lack of clarity leads to resistance.
Resistance to anything different.
And that brings me to the third ‘school of thought’, a preference for ‘the way we are’, for preserving the status quo, for keeping everything ‘the same’.
The ‘problem’ is that everyone is ‘wrong’!
There is a saying that you cannot step in the same river twice. We cannot go back to the ‘way we were’, wind back the clock because we cannot change the timeline.
What has happened has happened, what could have happened didn’t. I’ve written about this before, but the thing is – we cannot change ‘now’ by going back to ‘then’.
Let’s consider the present.
The idea that we can remain in a condition of constant stasis, the status quo, again is not possible. If nothing changed, we’d be in ‘Groundhog Day’ – every day the same.
Those who wish to ‘keep things as they are’ of course don’t mean that, but it is the impression they put across – “don’t change anything”.
Not going to happen!
What about the futurists?
The issue here is that there is very little consensus on what the future might be. There is no ‘plan’ no ‘grand design’.
Granted, individuals will have their own plans, goals and ambitions, as you and I have, but we are all parts of a jigsaw for which there is no ‘picture on the box’ to work towards.
All we have is chaos or fantasy, bright or dark, and much confusion between what ‘could’ or ‘might’ happen and what ‘will’ happen.
The fact is that nobody knows.
While you and I can have clear visions of our own futures we have no idea of what they will ‘be’ or where they will ‘be’ in the ‘grand scheme of things’.
But there is no ‘grand scheme of thigs’, no ‘divine plan’, no external ‘higher power’ looking after us or working on our behalf.
It’s just ‘us’, you and I and all the other people on the planet, thinking what we think and believing what we believe that brings it all about.
There are three types of people in the world.
• Those who make things happen and know it.
• Those who believe everything is happening to them outside their control (the victims).
• Those who wake up each day saying, ‘what happened’?
This however is not entirely correct as everyone is continually ‘making things happen’.
I’ve explained before that the Universe/God/Higher Power responds to what every individual wishes for, it has no alternative but to do so, and again I’ve explained before why this is the case.
What takes place on this planet, what ‘happens’, is a result of the whole of humanity’s requirements, as expressed in their wishes and dreams and based on their beliefs.
Nothing just ‘happens’.
But of course, compromises have to be made to achieve the ‘best result’ for everyone and so things usually ‘happen’ in a way that no-one quite expected.
It comes down to belief, to belief and faith.
There are two types of belief – belief on its own and belief with faith.
We may have strong beliefs backed up by complete faith in that belief, or we may have beliefs based on evidence discovered by ourselves or provided by others but no ‘faith’ to go with it.
Many people misunderstand the idea of ‘faith’ because it has religious connotations and there’s a reason for that. Religions provide people with ‘faith’, not in themselves but in the religion.
You see, we cannot have no belief or no faith – we cannot have an empty space, believing nothing or having faith in nothing.
Faith of course is very similar to belief – faith is a strong, firm and steadfast ‘knowing’ that something is true or real (at least for us) without any necessity for supporting ‘evidence’ of any kind.
Faith just ‘is’.
You and I create our own beliefs from what we read, what we see, what we experience and what we think about and add to this our own personal understanding of it all to establish the beliefs we hold.
We then underpin it with faith in ourselves and faith in those beliefs – we don’t need to ‘prove it’ or provide evidence. All we need to do is trust and have faith in our beliefs and our selves.
Other people don’t – they take on beliefs from others, after all it saves them from thinking and as Wallace Wattles said – “Thinking is the hardest and most exhausting of all labour; and hence many people shrink from it.”.
They take on beliefs from others and have faith in the source of those beliefs, TV, radio, social media and so on.
Their faith is not their own and neither are their beliefs.
They believe what they believe and find themselves defending those beliefs because they cannot be without belief.
Even those who prefer to be ‘unaware’ have a belief in their philosophy of ‘it’s nothing to do with me’ and their faith that this is a safe place to be.
So consider – what do you believe?
Is it your belief or someone else’s?
Is it supported by faith and if so faith in what?
Are you someone who makes things happen or someone that things happen to?
Who do you know who needs to read this?

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Be Careful What You Wish For

I’ve used this phrase a few times before and it’s one that rolls easily off the tongue.
Most people though, have very little idea of what it really means.
The best way of putting it is to refer back to Marisa Peer’s ‘Rules of the Mind’ I wrote about in detail a while ago.
There are several of them but the ones that particularly apply here are:
• 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
• We make our beliefs and our beliefs make us
• Your mind loves what is familiar and rejects the unfamiliar
• Your mind learns by repetition
Put these together with the Laws of the Universe as defined by Raymond Holliwell and augmented by Bob Proctor and you have the formula for creating your personal Universe.
It would take too long to go into detail on this so I’m just going to deal with the results.
There is however, a ‘catch’ in all this and that is that you and I don’t have full control of the process.
You see our ‘mind’ which in this case is our conscious and subconscious minds working together, takes in everything that is going on around us – or should I say that we perceive to be going on around us.
If we allow ourselves to be surrounded and immersed in words and pictures of panic, impending doom and stuff we just don’t understand then we will react instinctively according to the rules
It seems like pain, so we desire to get away, it sounds unfamiliar to we attempt to get back to the familiar. We see pictures and hear stories about how the world as we know t is coming to an end and we react.
We hear repeated ‘bad news’ (hardly ever any ‘good’ news) and begin to ‘learn’ that message and turn it into belief – and our belief becomes who we are and what we do.
We react, we react to what we believe is ‘happening’, what is happening to the world around us and to us.
It becomes our Universe.
Why? – because we made a choice.
We chose to allow ourselves to react to what we perceived rather than to respond.
I carry with me a token given to me by Bob Proctor. On the one side it says, ‘React and you lose Control’ and on the other ‘Respond and you’re in Control’.
Responding is a result of being able to differentiate the words and pictures you and I are generating and those ‘coming at us’ from the alternate universes that we perceive to be ‘outside’ our own.
Responding is about making considered choices – we make choices all the time and probably about half of them are ‘in response’ to something.
You and I are the masters of our own Universe, you and I create what happens there and as such choose who we are and what we do. (That’s the other half of the choices by the way).
We can choose to boost our immune system for example, to heighten its awareness of any perceived threats, whatever they may be and take quicker action against them.
One way of doing that is by using affirmations – “I have a phenomenal immune system” and so on, or you can use a guided meditation/self-hypnosis like this one.
Managing our Selves and different aspects of our human functionality in this way is very effective – if we do it right.
You and I must be really clear on how we wish our personal Universe to be, who we wish to be and what we wish to do and have in our present lives.
If we get it ’wrong’ or more importantly aren’t clear, then ‘anything can happen’. Remember the mind acts on what it thinks you wish it to do together with the words and pictures you give it.
We often imagine ourselves in different ways, paint scenarios, what ifs, negative and positive, we create our own ‘alternates’ – and sometimes they happen, because the mind, connected to ‘the’ Universe believes that’s what we’re after and acts upon it.
You and I must be really precise about what it is we wish for and really clear.
That doesn’t mean though that we have to describe every tiny detail (except those that are important to us), we just have to create a clear and precise picture and avoid using words or phrases that may be ambiguous in describing whatever we wish to manifest in our Universe whether that be to do with wealth, health, relationships or anything else.
If we follow these rules and Laws, you and I can manage and develop our own personal Universes really effectively, but we must remember –
Be careful what you wish for.

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Alternate Universe?

There was an article in the news a few days ago claiming that ‘scientists’ had ‘accepted’ the ‘possibility’ of the existence of one or many ‘alternate universes’.

Now if ‘the Universe’ is everything and everything is energy in space, how can that be possible?

There would have to be another ‘set’, another instance, of ‘everything’.

And if the Universe is infinite, there would have to be other ‘infinities’ to accommodate the alternate universes.

In all languages there is only one infinity – it means everything everywhere, there is no other ‘infinity’.

Another word, often misused, is ‘unique’ – there is only one instance of any ‘thing’ that is unique.

You can have ‘almost unique’ or ‘almost infinite’ but you can’t have ‘very unique’ or ‘very infinite’.

We exist in a unique infinite Universe – there is only one, and of course as part of that there is only one of us, explained by Neale Donald Walsch as I have discussed before.

But there are lots of stories about imagined alternate universes, where individuals similar to ourselves, our counterparts, exist and operate – always in a slightly or significantly different way.

And there is the clue.

There are alternate universes, and they exist everywhere.

Each one of us, you and I, and everyone else out there, inhabits their own personal alternate universe.

Your universe – the universe you see and live in, is different from my universe.

I’ve spoken about this before; no two people see the world or the universe in quite the same way.

I see my universe, you see yours – they are not the same, but they are similar.

The difference is that I see you in my Universe, I don’t ‘see’ me, and you see me in your Universe, not you.

Even if you and I are sitting next to each other watching a movie we aren’t having an identical experience.

But how can this be? We’re both in ‘the Universe’? Aren’t we?

No, we’re not and, yes we are.

We are both in our own individual ‘alternate’ Universes but for me there is only one Universe, and for you there is only one Universe.

In the ‘grand scheme of thigs’ there is only one Universe – but we exist in our own unique ‘alternate’ versions of it’.

Our ‘alternate Universes’ are based on what you or I see, hear, feel, taste, smell and touch and on our own personal intuition or ‘gut feelings’ together with what we have experienced or learned during our life up until now.

Our ‘universes’ are where we exist, how we exist, why we exist.

Our personal alternate universes are who we really are.

‘The Universe’ is what we, individually, make of it, our take on it, how it appears to us.

It (the Universe) is ‘different’ for every living creature on the planet.

And if in our Universe we choose to believe there are living creatures or other kinds of soul inhabited ‘life forms’ on other planets or even independently in space, them as well.

The thing is that ‘The Universe’ is not ‘out there’.

The Universe is within – it is ‘inside’ you and me – there is no ‘out there’.

You are the Universe, and so am I, and we experience it in alternate ways.

‘Out there’ is an illusion, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ‘real’.

Our illusion of ‘out there’ is essential for our capability to exist in our (The) Universe.

Everything is real but it’s also an illusion that we create from the building blocks of Universal energy – which of course is what we really are.

OK, I’m going a bit deep here. How does knowing this ‘help’? What’s the ‘practical application’?

We’ve heard about the power of the mind, we’ve heard that everything is created twice first through thought, then through action, we’ve heard that whatever we fully believe we can achieve.

There are hundreds, even thousands, of books written about this, there are hundreds of learning programmes and courses where teaching is provided on how to harness this power.

There are the Universal Laws of which I’ve spoken before, that cover all this.

But more often than not, people don’t understand, or if they do aren’t able to make it all ‘work’.

The power of the mind and the universal laws have to be ‘unlocked’ and probably ‘unblocked’ as well.

I’ve just spent two days with someone who has the key.

Marisa Peer created a technique called Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) which is dramatically effective in unlocking and unblocking the mind and has trained around 4000 people globally (including myself) to do this.

But the technique, the therapy, is not the point.

The key is that there are a set of rules, similar to the Laws of the Universe, by which the mind works.

Put simply, the mind will do whatever you tell it to do and acts upon the words and images you give it.

It has no choice, it follows your orders, your commands.

But there are two key catches which will always case things to ‘go wrong’.

You can only command your mind in the present tense, it doesn’t recognise any concept of time. So asking for it to do something in the future doesn’t work – it can only be now.

Second, it only speaks ‘positive’ – so words like ‘not’ and ‘don’t’ or ‘won’t’ are ignored.

Now if you’ve ever done any ‘personal development’ or ‘personal growth’ work you’ll have heard this before but what you’ve probably not heard is the concept that everything is controlled from ‘inside’.

By your mind, by you, inside your own personal alternate universe.

But how? How do I make it ‘work’? Watch this space . . .

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The Power of Giving

In the 15th century, Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish nobleman and founder of the Jesuit order came up with a prayer that included the words “to give and not to count the cost” – I’m sure you’ve heard of it and how the rest of it goes.

I have found that the meaning of ‘giving’ is something very few people really understand.

Sometimes it’s seen as an obligation – something we ‘should’ do, like giving to charity and so on and more often than not this ‘giving’ is done under a level of duress, however minor.

Look at the charity ads on TV – they all attempt to create some sort of feeling of guilt about what ‘you’ should be doing to support their particular interest.

They propose that if you give to their charity you’ll be seen as ‘good’ or you may feel ‘good’ that you have satisfied an obligation.

But in most cases people ‘give’ with the expectation of getting something back.

They give their time and effort in exchange for a salary or wage – but this isn’t ‘giving’ it’s just a formal transaction of ‘selling’.

Selling has nothing to do with giving.

When you or I sell something whether it be our time and expertise, our labour, or our book or training programme, we do it in a formal or informal ‘contract’ – there is an agreed price for what we do.

Sometimes ‘payment’ is ‘in kind’ rather than money, where the purchasing party provides a service or product to us that ‘matches’ the value of what we ‘gave’ them.

In these circumstances what you or I do for someone, what we might feel we are ‘giving’ them (our time, expertise etc) is a sale, not a gift.

And that’s the thing. If we give someone a ‘gift’ then we don’t usually expect something back – or do we?

Do we ‘count the cost’ of what we have given, and expect ‘equal measure’ in return, or even ‘greater measure’.

If there is any expectation of some sort of return directly related to any gift, then it’s really selling and not giving.

Whenever we believe we’re giving but are expecting anything in return we’re operating on the lower level of Hawkins’ ‘Scale of Consciousness’ or Esther Hicks’ ‘Low Flying Disc’.

Hawkins scale of consciousness, which I’ve discussed previously, is divided into two areas, the higher area of ‘Power’ and the lower area of ‘Force’.

‘Giving’ in order to receive, whatever it is, is an expression of ‘force’. If you don’t get what you expect in return than you resent what you’ve given.

This is ‘giving’ in order to receive – or in other words selling.

But here’s the rub.

Even if you simply expect ‘thanks’ or gratitude for your ‘gift’ rather than measurable reward you still have an expectation.

You expect to get ‘something’ back.

And if you don’t get thanks for your ‘generous donation’ then to say the least you feel a little ‘put out’.

The more you operate in the lower levels of the scale the less you are operating in harmony with the Universe.

You see, when you are in the ‘Power’ level you naturally give without expecting any reward and without ‘counting the cost’.

When you or I love someone, especially if that love is unconditional (on our part) then it should end there. Unconditional love is giving of your soul without any expectation of the person you love returning that love. It’s a one-way thing.

If we expect love, or anything else, back, then it becomes a transaction – a sale.

My love for your love – never going to work is it?

Apply the principle to everything else you give – true giving is a one-way thing.

But – when you’re operating at the power level, in the 5th dimension of consciousness, there is a Universal ‘blockchain’ that records everything you do – what you gave to whom and when.

And it all adds up.

Things start to happen, you start to ‘receive’ from the Universe ‘out of the blue’ as they say.

The difference is that what you receive from the Universe is not usually related to what you’ve given. It’s more likely to be a result of whatever you’ve been manifesting for which could be something completely different, nothing to do with whatever you’ve been ‘giving out’.

Certainly, when you give without thought of reward and without counting the cost, you will receive in equal or greater measure – but you must not have ‘expectations’.

But, there is a catch!

The Universe will offer you rewards, it will offer you what you have been wishing for or manifesting using the Law of Attraction and Vibration, but often when this happens, we don’t recognise it!

It arrives in a different way or form than what we thought we’d asked for.

(Be careful what you wish for!)

Its very common that people have difficulty receiving, receiving thanks or gifts from others – it’s because we’re not taught to receive, or to give’, we’re taught and trained to operate at the lower level, to undertake transactions.

I’ll do this for you if you’ll do that for me.

That’s how the world works, we’re told.

Well it may be how ‘the world’ works but its not how the Universe works.

Only when you and I fully understand this, will we be able to start to move away from the transactional state of mind (the Force level) and towards the higher levels of what we might call ‘disconnected’ giving and receiving (the Power level).

Let go of the idea of ‘exchange’ – then we can grow and evolve.

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Are We Good Stewards?

Throughout religious texts and especially those of the ‘people of the Book’ – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – there are countless references to ‘stewardship’ and how we should be ‘good stewards’.

Much has been written and preached on the subject of stewardship, but few people really understand what it’s all about.

For most people the concept of a ‘steward’ is usually someone who serves or looks after them on a ship or aircraft or helps manage a sporting event.

This how ever is far, far, removed from the original concepts of stewardship and being a steward.

In earlier times a steward was a high official, someone charged with the management or oversee of an estate or even a country in the absence of the owner or ruler.

Denethor in ‘Lord of the Rings’ was the ‘Steward of Gondor’ responsible for the success of the Realm in the absence of the King.

Stewardship carried a high responsibility, the main function being to ensure, not only that the estate was maintained at the level at which the owner left it but also that it grew and prospered and was returned to the owner in a better state.

Psalm 24 verse 1 says: “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord”

Although sometimes difficult to interpret the writings, whether they be Jewish, Islamic or Christian, all make it very clear that ‘Man’ is the intended steward of the earth and everything in it.

The trouble is that we, the ‘human race’, have spent so long fighting over the various interpretations that we’ve forgotten what it is really all about.

Stewardship is about maintenance and increase, not consumption.

But let’s go back to Psalm 24.

As I understand things ‘The Lord’, God, Allah, The Higher Power, Source or whatever name you wish to use IS the Universe and everything in it including all living things.

My interpretation of this verse is simply that ‘everything’ is (belongs to) the Universe.

The Universe consists of only two things – energy and space – and neither can exist without the other.

Everything that is ‘real’ is just energy combined and placed in space in a certain way and with a unique vibrational pattern.

Even two objects that appear to be identical are different, because they occupy a different area of space.

Now I don’t wish to go too deeply into the ‘everything is energy’ discussion as I’ve dealt with it before but here’s the thing.

You and I cannot ‘own’ energy and so neither can we own any ‘thing’ whether that be seen as matter, thought such as an idea, or ethereal concepts such as knowledge, money, time, culture, identity and so on.

Our role in all things on this planet, as individuated infinite universal beings inhabiting physical forms, is one of stewardship, not ownership.

But stewardship does not mean keeping everything ‘the same’.

That would be the mistake made by the servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25 14:30) who buried his share in the ground rather than investing it in something that would cause its value to grow.

Stewardship is about increase – as Mary Morrissey puts it ‘becoming a person of increase’.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be converted or changed.

We cannot ‘use up’ energy, what we do is change it from one form to another.

There is no such thing as an energy shortage or energy crisis unless that relates to the form the energy happens to be in or the space in which it happens to be placed.

We have become expert in moving energy about or changing it from one form into another but that doesn’t mean we ‘own’ it but rather part of what the stewardship of energy – everything – is about.

Where you and I go wrong however is what we do with the things we have created or obtained by some means of energetic transfer – by using money as an exchange facilitator for example.

A good example is a car.

A lot of effort was put into converting other forms of energy into the car. The whole ‘energy equation’ of how to create a car is massive. Think about it, starting with the minerals in the ground.

(It does of course start earlier than that from the ‘creation’ of the Universe)

But then what do we do with our cars?

For the vast majority of the time – nothing. We leave them ‘parked’ somewhere between the relatively short times we use then to travel from A to B.

Is this not ‘bad stewardship’?

When we are using our cars we are creating ‘increase’ – that which arises from taking us to our destination – would we be going there if it wasn’t to our advantage in some way?

But while they are idle there is no ‘increase’

The question that arises is “why do I need to ‘own’ a car?” “Why can’t I just use one when I need one and let someone else use it when I’m doing whatever it is at the destination it took me to?”

The same applies to pretty much everything else we own – most of the time the material things we ‘own’ are not in use.

There is some movement in this going on with car pools and jet pools and hot desking and so on but there is also the counter argument that if we stop ‘making things’ then people won’t have ‘jobs’ making them.

This three-dimensional thinking is counter to good stewardship and is rooted in the idea that we ‘own’ or need to own ‘stuff’ – the focus on ‘things’ rather than on energy.

Look at your own ‘estate’ – or in other words everything that you believe you ‘own’.

Are you using it to create increase?

In everything – matter, knowledge, understanding, ideas, culture, identity and so on. (Not ‘money’, money is just the facilitator for everything else)

Or are you the foolish servant in the parable who buried his talent and ended up having it taken away from him.

Because that is what will happen for you and I and for the world as a whole if we don’t abandon this notion of ownership and replace it with stewardship.

Are you a good steward – a person of increase?

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Routines and Rituals

You and I are ‘creatures of habit’.

We are ‘ruled’ by two kinds of habit – routines and rituals – that we carry out every day or on a regular basis.

We get into a ‘routine’ – a way of doing things during the day, or the week. Probably not the same routine every day but more often than not a clear pattern of how we ‘operate’.

A ‘daily method of operation’ or a weekly version, not to mention the ‘annual cycle’ of ‘holidays’ and other events.

Now of course, this has a beneficial effect in that it helps to keep us ‘on track’ with what we need to do towards achieving our goals, but it also has a negative effect.

We fall into a habit of following that familiar routine and it becomes more important than it should.

We ignore or reject ‘interventions’, unexpected opportunities, and ‘special’ events in favour of our familiar routine.

As Marisa Peer explains, the mind always hangs on to the familiar and rejects the unfamiliar and so we find it hard to ‘break out’ of the ‘routine’ – whatever it might mean to our advantage.

“No, I think I’ll miss out on that webinar and watch my favourite TV show instead”

“No, I think I’ll stay in and do what I usually do on a Tuesday evening rather than going to that meetup group”

It’s too much ‘trouble’ to change the routine.

You and I are fully aware of this scenario, not just because we have difficulty getting people to engage with us, but because – we do it as well (be honest now!)

There’s always something that’s ‘too much trouble’ – and its not about doing whatever it is, the ‘trouble’ is moving away from the familiar. That is what causes the problem.

Let’s go a bit deeper.

Routines are made up of rituals, big and small, that ‘describe’ the way we carry out our ‘routine’ activities.

I’m not talking about deliberate, conscious, rituals like meditating or journaling and other things we specifically prioritise such as our ‘do list’: I’m talking about the way we do certain stuff.

The way we make a cup of tea, the way we brush our teeth, the way we get into and start the car, and so on. You and I have our own individual ‘ways’ and those are our unconscious ritual habits.

The thing is though that while these ‘little ways’ are the things we’ve probably inherited from childhood; they may not always be the ‘best’ or most efficient ‘way’ of doing something.

But we find it so hard to change and even get resentful when someone ‘points it out’ even when that’s done in a loving way.

They are OUR ways and we’re sticking with them!

It’s that familiar – unfamiliar conflict again.

But hang on, you and I have changed the way we do things and have changed our routines over our lifetimes – how does that work?

We do change our routines and our rituals.

We change them for two reasons: one to adapt to changing circumstances and new technology, and two because we are being manipulated so to do.

That may sound a bit strong, but you and I know that it’s true.

We are being manipulated all the time especially by mass advertising, by social media, by ‘regular’ media and by the ‘powers that be’ – not necessarily just politicians, what used to be called ‘the establishment’ has a lot to answer for in this as well.

But how does that fit in with ‘familiar – unfamiliar’, are we not moving away from the familiar when this happens?

Your mind only ever does what you tell it to do and thinks what you tell it to think, but it doesn’t just listen to you.

Your mind is listening and observing all the time. Bob Proctor explains it as a barrage of information continually coming in through your senses which you have to filter to match as ‘acceptable’ your understanding of the way things are.

You and I know only too well that the more an idea is repeated the more acceptable, the more ‘true’ it will become.

The intensity of that repetition plays a part as well because the more channels the ‘message’ utilises the more effective it will be in ‘changing your mind’ in making the previously familiar unfamiliar, and the previously unfamiliar familiar.

Familiarity is not cast in stone because the mind is highly suggestible.

It’s not just about what you hear, see or read on the ‘news’ its about the adverts and the reality shows and the ‘popular drama’ (used to be called soap operas) and everything else that we see, hear, smell, taste or feel that purports to be ‘real’.

People, including you and I, are undergoing programs (deliberately spelt that way) of conditioning to accept the new, whatever that might be, and to adapt out mindset to it.

To take on new (or sometimes old) paradigms, to see change and the adaptation of our daily routines and rituals to fit in with it as ‘normal’ and ‘familiar’, and here’s the kicker.

Because of these routines and rituals, we just don’t notice what is going on, we’re too preoccupied with the ‘daily scenario’ to notice the world, or our part of it, is changing.

And this isn’t just on a global or national scale. It happens on a personal scale as well, within relationships, within families, within workplaces, everywhere.

The answer, if we’re not happy to say ‘c’est la vie’ and go with the flow, is to take notice of what we, you and I, are doing.

Question our routines, and our rituals.

Do they really serve us? Are they taking us where we want to go, towards who we really want to be? Are they allowing us to be manipulated towards the fulfilment of someone else’s vision?

Mary Morrissey says “notice what you’re noticing”

You and I need to do just that.

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