Archive for July, 2008

By Steven Mills

There is nothing better then finding that you have carved out a spare hour in the day to sit and meditate.

The daily worries of the world have started to float away, and the big thoughts that fill your normal waking mind have started to quieten down. A slow, easy feeling of peace works its way over your body as you focus on the simpleness of in breath and out breath. You begin to focus on nothing, to pull your observing mind out of the “stream of consciousness” and begin to notice your thoughts as something separate.

Then you start to hear them.

“Oh yes doing well, yes quieten down the thoughts” says one.

“You really should be doing that blog post and not meditating” says the next.

“Sounds like a truck outside, wait.. wait… no it’s a bloody leaf blower!” complains a third voice.

It’s the small voices of the mind, the thoughts that during waking life dictate your actions and way of thinking, but now in meditation serve to distract you from your aim of letting go and giving the mind a rest.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

If you have tried different methods to achieve happiness (meditation, reading self-help books, therapy, etc.) but have not succeeded then I’d like to share with you a very simple trick to being happy that has been blowing my mind lately…

In fact I actually believe it is the key to enlightenment and world peace.

Here it is …

Give up.

Or rather…

Let go.

Let go.

Let go of all that you are clinging to.

Let go of all the ideas in your mind.

All the should’s. All the want-to’s. All the trying-to’s. All the seeking-to’s. All the how-to’s. All the going-to’s.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

When I despair of and don’t know what to do about this crazy world we live in then I just try to do something positive. Help someone, give a little money to a cause, or if I feel the urge, just have fun making something cool. I believe it all counts.

It counts because every time you follow your creative urge, you are contributing to the great mission we have been charged with: to create a better world.

Creating cool stuff – be it a work of art, a healing practice, a cake, a blog, or just a nice vibe in a room – helps to add a little pebble of goodness to the slow growing tower of joy that (I believe) is the destiny of life on Earth.

Yes, that’s something I believe. I also believe that we all need to believe in something in order to function successfully – we need a purpose. So although I don’t know if it’s true, I choose to believe that our purpose is to make positive contributions to the evolution of Life and to eventually triumph over the unenlightened condition and become a spiritually advanced, peaceful, happy race living in harmony with all of nature.

By Steve Mills

Remember a few years ago when that song came out, I’m sure you know the one. It had a super catchy chorus, more hooks than a fishing shop and embedded itself so deep in your skull that you found yourself humming it while “on the job”. Sure it was annoying as hell, but everyone was going nuts over it. For weeks it was all you could hear on the radio. It was so popular that it sparked new novelty dance crazes, giving wedding DJ’s an excuse to throw out their tired old copies of the “Grease Megamix” and the “Bus Stop”, and play something new for drunk old people to dance to.

Then one day, something happened. A new song came along, and it had a really catchy chorus, hooks aplenty and was heard pumping out of radio’s from New York to Upper Cumbucta West. Two weeks later no one wants to hear the Macarena, and everyone wants to hear Beyonce. Time moves on, things change.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

Well, maybe they do. Truthfully, I wouldn’t know, but I can’t help but reckon that those who walk around claiming to “perfectly enlightened” are probably at least partially faking it – if not out and out bullshitting us all – and so therefore they must have some pretty human moments. Try and picture it with me …

The seminar is over and the Guru has slipped into some casual attire and is down in the hotel lobby having a scotch, listening to the depressingly blue jazz band and trying to catch the eye of a pretty business woman. Unfortunately she turns her nose up at him so he downs his drink and retires to his room; yet another one. They all look the same.

He checks his email. Nothing interesting; just work and irritating questions from a few of the more obsessive disciples. “Why can’t they just switch on their brains and sort out their own problems?” he mutters, “Ah well – it’s a living.”

He flops on the bed and flicks on the TV. Sport. More sport. Bad movies. Oooh! Porn! Oh, unless you pay for it the screen goes blank after thirty seconds…

“Bah,” thinks the Guru. “Might as well turn in, gotta be up early for tomorrow’s flight to Seattle”.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

Arm Rests. Adjustable ones. The key to happiness is being able to notice that things like this exist. Allow me to elaborate…

When things get wacky (difficult, painful), the hardest thing to do is to see the woods for the trees. Let me begin with an example – the common occurrence of a friend’s advice to a lovesick mate:

“It will be okay; either you’ll break up with your boy/girlfriend or you’ll work your problems through and stay together. Either way you’ll be fine and it will all be for the best.”

An answer to which our lovesick puppy will categorically fail to relate to until later, when he will see that it was absolute truth all along. Until then the problem will seem tragic, unbearable, and probably life-threatening.

Meanwhile it’s comically easy for the friend of our love-sick puppy to see the solution to the problem. Puppy just needs to be himself, do his best, and wait. That’s it. End of story.

But onward, holistic soldiers, to the arm-rest thing, and the promised ‘key to happiness’ I know you are breathlessly waiting for …

Oh, the Pain! The Pain!

I have heard it said many a time that every person on this planet has a story tell. If you sat down with a pensioner from Melbourne, an office worker in Berlin or a 12 year old kid in Beijing, each would have a unique and compelling tale to tell. I bet that you also have an interesting story regarding your life and your place in the world.

You possess a chronicled history of your past, a unique viewpoint on the present and a predictive prophecy about what you assume is going to happen to you in the future.

Everyday when you wake up you listen to the story of what today might be like, and the story of what occurred yesterday. We are constantly re-telling this life story to ourselves, checking it against our immediate reality in order to make decisions, evaluate what other people are doing and to know our cultural place in certain situations.

This story is the blueprint that the voice inside your head, your inner narrator, uses to explain to you what you are seeing, thinking and doing in the present moment.

By Seamus Anthony Ennis

It’s just my opinion, and I have no idea what I am talking about, but you – yes, you – have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on.

Yes, you heard me, and that goes for your guru, coach, expert or teacher also.

You see, sometimes when I am at barbecues, beer comfortably resting on my belly, paper plate piled high on my knee, the subject comes up that I write personal development articles and, for better or worse, I cringe. Why? Because the first thing that happens, at least in my mind, is that people look at me and think “Well, what the hell does he know that I don’t? He’s no guru; look at that blob of mayonnaise on his beard! And isn’t that the guy who drank a couple too many at Jo’s party last fortnight and made a fool of himself? Personal development writer indeed – hmmph!”

And the truth is they are right. I don’t know diddly. But neither do ‘they’ and neither, my friend, do you.