300 Words a Day - #21: The Way of Visualisation - Part 1

In a previous post, I mentioned how I had used visualisation to help my dream come true.

(If you read that post then you will know I ended up not wanting the dream when I got it, but what I did worked, regardless.)

I thought I would use this post (and future ones, as I don’t fancy trying to squeeze it all into a mere 300 words) to explain exactly what I did, back when I was in my teens and early twenties.

I should start off by saying, that when I started visualising, I hadn’t read any books on the subject, nor did I know there was a name for what I was doing. I was fourteen; I was just conjuring up images of what I wanted.

To give you an idea of what I was playing with, I wanted nothing more than to become a recording artist.

That was my dream.

When I was ten, my great-uncle Bill asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up.

I can remember thinking for a second, and then said,

“I just want to do something I like.”

At the age of fourteen I found and began to develop my passion for music and music production.

A fantastic science teacher called Mr Clarkson told me, that if I could find enough people who wanted to go and see The Prodigy, he would book the tickets and take us. 

That same afternoon I ran back to his classroom with a list of names.

That concert, at Manchester G-MEX, in 1997, changed my life.

Now I had first-hand experience of what I wanted to be and do, which made imagining my dream as a reality all the more easier. 

I had something substantial to play with.

My quest had started.

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300 Words a Day - #20: Never Stop Asking Why

I had a coffee with a good friend recently.

We usually meet once every two months and try and set the world straight.

We always cover various topics, such as out of body experiences, astral projection, consciousness, the self, fear... and Trump.

I brought up the issue of asking why, no doubt because of a previous post on this blog, whereby I spoke about how, whilst playing with a magnetic alphabet, my student, a young boy, looked at me and said “There is no Y.”

I understood the Y as “why” and I had a good laugh to myself, all the while the small Taiwanese boy was looking at me as if to say, “Foreigners are weird.”

My friend, whilst sipping his mocha-latte, hit upon something interesting:

“Every time I think I’ve got it sussed out - my purpose for being here, that is - something happens out of the blue, which makes me go back to the drawing board.”

Yes!

Exactly!

I’m not sure about you, but this has happened to me countless times.

Every time I think about “why I’m here” and I think I have the answer, life seems to say, 

“Okay, what about now, when I do this?” leaving me looking like I’ve been given an algebra equation to do, whilst standing on my head.

I had completely forgotten about this routine I go through with life.

We loosely concluded, (loosely because we concluded that conclusions never quite conclude anything we want to really bring to a conclusion!) that life enjoys us asking why, because it keeps the dance going, and it loves dropping us hints and clues (feelings and chance encounters, for instance) because life is playful like that. 

So asking why is child’s play at its grandest and we should never grow out of it.

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300 Words a Day - #19: Which Future You Do You Really Want?

Be careful which future you you’re chasing.

I was overly ambitious, and it was devastating to my health, both physical and mental.

This was mainly when I was in my late teens and early twenties.

The trouble was I thought I was certain I knew what I wanted.

(Certainty brings rigidity, and if we’re rigid we can break more easily.)

Comparing my then present circumstances with my future vision was painful, to say the least.

Visualising can bring hope, but it can also give us a painful contrast.

It depends on our state of mind at the time.

Mine was unstable.

I finally got what I wanted when I was 23.

My habitual practice of visualising before going to sleep worked like a charm.

But when my then present self caught up with my future vision, I felt numb.

I wasn’t expecting that.

And nothing could’ve prepared for it.

All those years I was visualising a future me, and I never considered that when the time came for that vision to become a reality, I would no longer resonate with it.

I invested so much of myself, so much of my identity in that future vision, in what I wanted to do, in who I wanted to be, that when I admitted to myself that I no longer wanted it, I was left with an identity crisis on my hands.

I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but it was like breaking up with someone, and that night I cried myself to sleep. 

With my future me gone, who was I?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lost.

But what a gift!

Such a tough lesson to learn.

A friend said at the time, “This could be one of the greatest things that has ever happened to you.”

And it was.

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300 Words a Day - #18: It's Never Too Late to Start Living

I recently ran an adult class, here in Taipei, called Life and Death.

I designed it with the sole intention of shedding more light on death.

I’m not there to teach anything per se; I’m a student just like everybody else. I feel like I’m there to facilitate a discussion, guide it and direct it.

The class was a success, although there were a few moments where what was being shared made one or two feel uncomfortable; questioned their sense of self and their mortality.

(Mortality as being viewed from the thought “I am this body”. Of course, if we identify with that which crumbles and breaks, and comes and goes, the fear of death is inevitable.)

The thing that caused slight anxiety was this:

When you’re 40-years old, you’ve been alive for around 2000 weeks.

2000 weeks, man.

That’s 2000 Sundays. 

40 summers.

If you live till you’re 80…

That’s approximately 4000 weeks.

How does that make you feel?

Does it make you feel full of life? 

Grateful?

Does it make you feel you want to start living life differently, to work on things that mean something to you, that give you a sense of purpose? 

Does it make you look at other people and nature differently? 

Does it soften the grudges you’ve collected over the years?

Does it make it easier to forgive? 

Does it make you want to go for that thing you were always afraid to go for, because you doubted yourself, or you listened to the opinions of others too much, or you feared failure or feared success?

Or does it fill you with fear and anxiety, as if you’re trapped and there’s nowhere to turn?

There’s nothing to be afraid of, other than a life not lived.

Remember, it’s about who you become.

It’s never too late to start living.

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300 Words a Day - #17: Knowledge and Belief

I was once teaching English to a boy in Taipei, playing with alphabet magnets with him, missing out letters and getting him to fill in the gaps, that kind of thing.

“Where are you, Y?” I said. “Where are you? I can’t find you.”

I really couldn’t find a Y. 

The young boy looked at me with complete sincerity behind the eyes, and said,

“There is no Y.”

I laughed out loud.

There is no why.

How much trouble do we get into by asking why!?

We get confused and frustrated because the answers to our burning questions seem beyond our grasp.

When we lose hope, we turn to groups and organizations, teachers and leaders, that promise us they have plenty of it to go around.

We find solace in their wisdom and their beliefs and experiences.

And that’s where the issue lies.

We so easily adopt the beliefs of others, without questioning them.

They give us hope, and for many of us that’s enough.

But this hope stands on someone else’s foundations… not ours. 

I can tell you what the sun feels like from my own experience, but I can’t experience it for you.

That’s your job. 

Thomas Campbell, in his mind-blowing book My Big TOE, says that, in order to obtain the answers to our whys, we don’t need to listen to anyone else. He says we should be willing to get rid of every belief we have and adopt an approach of open-minded skepticism (that among other things).

His reasoning is that a belief is just that - a belief.

It’s not knowledge.

Bruce Lee said, “All knowledge is self-knowledge.”

There is a why, we’re just looking in the wrong places for the answers.

*

Later, that boy and I discovered there was no I, either.

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300 Words a Day - #16 - A Message for You

“Don’t fall for the trick.

You’re not alone.

You never have been.

You never will be.

I know it’s easy for you to think you’re in a one-I show.

Your pain feels so personal.

So close.

But I will say it again,

You’re not alone.

‘Then show me,’ I hear you say.

I do.

I am.

Every moment of you, I am.

You’re linked to me, like breeze to a fan.

Scent to a flower.

Rays to the sun.

It’s only your way of perceiving yourself that you mistake me for someone else.

Some thing else.

When all is us.

You thought you were this minuscule piece of star dust?

Please… 

Give yourself a break.

The only reason you can’t think of yourself as being bigger than who you think you are, is because you can’t think that which is beyond thought.

The thought basket is too small for you.

You can’t fit in.

But I’ll give you credit, because you really do try.

And as a result, you suffer.

I’m not asking you to believe me.

I don’t want you to believe me.

I want you to find out for yourself.

To know.

You feel unloved?

You’re listening to the wrong voice.

You’re scared of death?

You’re paying attention to the wrong images.

Everything is going to be fine.

You don’t even have to trust me.

You will see.

But you can choose to see before you are confronted with your fears, and they give rise to seeing.

Have you noticed that when you confront a fear it evaporates?

And you think, ‘What was I scared for?’

You’re on the right track.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind you:

I’m here because you are.

Now hold that head up high and shine our light.

Love.”

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