I was watching a YouTube video of Haramein recently in which he discussed his decades of work on a unified field theory. I never got clear on whether he’s a theoretical physicist or a pure mathematics man, but I was managing to sort of keep up with his presentation (or rather not get too swamped by it), when he said something that knocked the wind out of me, sat me down hard and took me back almost 40 years.

It was 1975 and my parents had just sold their plumbing business in Chicago and moved off to retire in, of all places, Kansas. For their mode of retirement, they had chosen to buy a farm, which, it should be noted, is not too different from buying THE farm.

Anyway, there I was in my early thirties, foolishly volunteering to help my parents settle in on their new homestead, a 120-year-old farmhouse with a hand pump in the kitchen and a 30-yard walk to the outhouse. All the amenities.

Since the farm lay five miles outside the nearest small town of 8,000 souls, and there was little in the way of entertainment , I spent a good deal of time paging through some of Mom’s old magazines. One stack I found particularly novel was some kind of UFO journal. I gave the articles only casual attention until I stumbled over an interview of Bruce Cathey, a retired airline pilot who claimed he had personally witnessed UFOs on many occasions during night time flights. The man sounded less white-eyeball than most of the people featured in the articles, so I read, and then re-read the interview.

Now, I should note here that a couple of Cathey’s books can still be found on Amazon today. One is titled “The Energy Grid: Harmonic 695: The Pulse of the Universe” and another is “The Bridge to Infinity.” Both are classed as Alternative Science.

In that UFO interview Cathey referred to an energy grid inherent to the Earth’s gravitational field, which, he said, accounted for UFOs’ characteristic skipping movement when they fly, which resembles stones skipping across water. He said they were literally propelling themselves in spurts or leaps from one grid intersection point to the next.

The Day Gravity Disappeared

I can no longer recall the chain of logic I followed forward from his grid point theory, but after a week or so of thought experiments, I (reluctantly) reached the conclusion that the phenomenon we call gravity is not inherent in physical bodies as is commonly assumed. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Gravity is not an attractive force at all, but a repelling one.

And it’s all because what we think of as empty space isn’t. It’s much more full than the densest matter.

And that’s what Nassim Haramein, the FBI agent lookalike, was saying in his YouTube interview. Empty space isn’t empty, and our current model of the universe is actually a negative picture. Up until now we have had everything backwards.

Here’s how it would work. Researchers already know about “zero point energy.” That is, more potential energy is contained within a single cubic centimeter of vacuum than we could ever release from our biggest nuclear device. However, they’re not exactly sure yet how to access that energy.

The implications, though, go far beyond energy sources.

What to Use Instead of Gravity

Think about gravity itself. We see our world keeping the moon in orbit, and we say it’s because of mutual attraction. But it may not work that way at all.

Just for a moment, let us imagine that the natural state of the Universe is to be “empty” and void of matter, but that here and there a warp or flaw appears in the seamlessness – a bubble of matter, if you will. Why might this happen? We don’t know that yet, but just for the sake of our hypothesis, let’s say it happens. And further, let’s imagine that the so-called “empty space” tries to push the bubble away, to repel it.

This type of phenomenon is not unknown to us. Go underwater and release a bubble, which is less dense than the water surrounding it. What happens? It moves upward, right? We call that buoyancy.

Water is non-compressible, so the pressure per square centimeter increases with the depth.

Our bubble is surrounded on all sides by water, but the pressure at the deeper side of the bubble is greater than the pressure at the shallower side. The water is pushing harder on the bottom than it is on the top, so the bubble gets moved away from the greater pressure.

The actual mechanism of buoyancy, then, is literally a kind of squeezing action.

Deep Space Bubbles

Now, take that image and transfer it into space. Empty space is the very dense water, and matter is the bubble. In the deepest part of outer space, way out there between galaxies, there would be almost no variation in the “density” of space. And a single world sitting there would have equal pressure being exerted on every side. It wouldn’t be moved in any direction.

However, place two worlds a hundred thousand miles apart, and because the worlds would be mutually shielding each other from the repelling force on the sides facing each other, the pressure gradient in the space between them would be lower. That means the worlds would be squeezed toward each other, like that bubble being pressed in the direction of lower water density.

In other words, gravity isn’t two bodies attracting each other, but space trying to reduce the amount of distortion by combining the two “solid” bodies by pushing them together. The two bodies are being repelled toward each other to take up less space. In short, gravity may not even exist – except in our mistaken explanations of how things work.

Now, I’ve never had the math skills (nor talent) to handle a concept like this, so I laid it down and walked away from it. And there it lay until two weeks ago when I ran across Nassim Haramein, who spouts to anybody who’ll listen, this “heresy” about an inside-out Universe in which everything is the opposite of the way we think it is.

I’m delighted that someone else had the same idea and particularly glad that they had the math to pursue it.

But Wait, There’s More -

Actually much more – to this subject than gravity and UFOs.

For example, all those intricately interwoven atomic and sub-atomic particles that science is so busy discovering? That same science is also telling us that those particles don’t really exist as such, even though their behavior exists. It seems that instead of particles, we have rapidly moving waves of energy that, when there are enough of them acting together as a group, take on the characteristics we call “solid matter.”

But why? Empty space is perfect and pure. All points are filled with limitless potential, and everything that can exist does exist there, although it’s only in potential – only in undifferentiated and non-physical form.

Doesn’t this sound vaguely like the philosophers and teachers who have taught us that everything we desire already exists in potential, waiting only for us to call it into reality?

I have long believed that the force which causes the limitless potential of empty space to suddenly disgorge something solid and corporeal, such as a star or a planet or a new car, is what we call conscious choice.

Until some conscious entity decides something, nothing happens. No new events occur. No new things come into existence.

Way down there in the deepest part of empty space, where we find atomic and sub-atomic particles, there are only two states. One is rapidly moving energy, and the other is perfectly static stillness.

There is either movement, or the potential for movement. What causes this difference?

Now, it has always been tempting to assume that, between the two states of “real” and “not-yet-real,” the waves of moving energy (the matter) side of the equation are the more important of the two. But investigators are now saying that, after all, it’s the other way around. But more than that, I believe that there is a third state, which we would call consciousness, that can act upon the void of stillness and cause it to differentiate into “reality.”

In the beginning was the Word.

You and I, already act in harmony with these new ideas. We have long believed that the riches and abundance and plenty that surrounds us is real. That it’s limitless. That we only have to claim it – to call it forth from Ali Baba’s cave of vast riches – and that this is all it takes to make the things we desire come into reality.

In other words, for a very long time we have known that making a conscious choice – issuing a personal claim – is all it takes to call something utterly new and wonderful into existence from out of “nothing.” Now, science is increasingly ratifying that knowledge.

And so it is.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

I don’t know if the following story is true or not, but in either case, it shows how some of the things we unquestioningly believe in don’t  even exist.

Does Evil Exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?

A student bravely replied, “Yes, he did!“

“God created everything?“ The professor asked.

“Yes sir“, the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil“. The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, “Can I ask you a question professor?“

“Of course“, replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, “Professor, does cold exist?“

“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?” The students snickered at the young man’s question.

The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat.“

The student continued, “Professor, does darkness exist?“

The professor responded, “Of course it does.“

The student replied, “Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.“

Finally the young man asked the professor, “Sir, does evil exist?“

Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”

To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.“

The professor sat down.

The young man’s name — Albert Einstein.

Of course, the name you use for “God” may be something else. Universal Intelligence. The Law of Attraction. The Order. Or something else entirely. That’s not the important point – or probably shouldn’t be. The real point is, are you still blindly accepting concepts and ideas that have been handed down unquestioningly for generations upon generations.

So back to those bad habits we struggle against so mightily. We know that feeding them energy always makes them stronger and sinks us deeper into a quagmire of our own making.

How much more effective would it be to spend our time mulling – not our failings – but the positives we want? No more struggle. Simply a steady consideration of higher qualities. And if we screwed up – as we sometimes do – what if we gently said to ourselves, “No, what I really wanted to do was this…” and go right back to our higher aspirations?

Indeed, what if?

Cheers,
Charles

Everybody else will have the same old year they’ve been repeating for ages. Slapping a new number on the same old stuff and pretending it’s the Emperor’s New Year is either cynical or self-delusional.  Only a change of Actions, Thoughts and Intentions will make 2012 something new for you and me.

So as we go about wishing everybody “Happy New Year,” do we really mean it, from deep down in our guts, or are we just mouthing easy words?

Happy New Year?
Charles

Even apart from the new year period, the fact is, most folks spend their time focusing on the ways things go wrong: What didn’t get done; what I don’t like, can’t do, am not suited to, wouldn’t be interested in, and anyway it’s just an awful lot of bother. That’s the best worn pathway in most of our minds.

Two main ways most folks talk about new year’s resolutions: One way is with great resolve and hope. The future gleams before us anew, and we’re giddy with the thought of making a fresh start. A start in which we won’t be shackled by any failings and weaknesses that might have hobbled us in the past. This attitude is most common around the first week or two in any new year.

The second way we talk about hopeful new ambitions is with a wry, not-quite-cynical-but-close-to-it grin of dismissal. We may be apologetically pushing away our own pretensions of optimism, or we might be discussing someone else’s obviously overblown and hopeless ambitions.

However, as the Buddha said,

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

And in another place,

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Notice what I wrote above? That the most common habitual way of thinking about ourselves, about our hopes and our aspirations is dismissive, even slightly cynical? Indeed we are what we think.

Notice also that the other way, the optimistic and hopeful way is on the right track, but it has little staying power. At the first signs of opposition it usually cools like stale steam and drips away in tiny dribbles.

So in the spirit of the new (possibly world-changing) new year, I have a different suggestion, one that I like to call New Year’s Realizations.

More about that in a moment, but first, I’d like to share with you some extremely well-thought-out observations and suggestions from guest author Peter Vajda on ways we use to keep ourselves inside the failure fence.

One Way We Might Subvert Resolve in 2012
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

New Year’s resolutions are on the tip of most everyone’s pen and tongue. Thousands of suggestions, “how tos,” and “best ways” are being offered to help folks make, and carry through on, their New Year’s resolutions. Sadly, as in past years, 98% of those who make resolutions will have given up or failed by Valentine’s Day.

Three major causes of failure are:

When we understand the nature of the “victim consciousness,” we gain insight into how true and real change occurs.

The victim is rife with self-limiting and self-sabotaging habits and patterns of living, working and relating. It is these self-limiting patterns that prevent us from do-ing and be-ing from a place of integrity, responsibility, maturity, accountability, dedication, and commitment. It is our subconscious drives that cause us pain and suffering.

When we look deeply inside, honestly and self-responsibly, we uncover our shadow self – a self, feeling victimized, that lives a life of greed, ruthlessness, egocentricity, blind ambition, irresponsibility, inaction, and/or self-sabotage. Choosing to reflect and become conscious of these habits, patterns and programming in an effort to release them supports us to evolve to a place where clarity and a truthful picture of our inner and outer realities will serve us well.

When we look deeply inside and reflect, we become more able to transmute the energies of our self-limiting habits and patterns into the energy of authenticity, integrity and trustworthiness – supported by our inner qualities of courage, commitment and steadfastness.

Four characteristics of a victim mentality are:

• lack of clarity about our goals: ping-ponging between and among realistic and unrealistic or illusory expectations and goals, and blaming others for our lack of clarity;
• inability to deal with time and resource limits and constraints and blaming other people and events for our inability to use time and other resources effectively and intelligently;
• confusion around the law of cause and effect – lack of awareness about how we are creating/causing the current events in our life and a lack of clarity about how we can change our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, intentions, behaviors and actions to effect positive change, believing that my issues are not about “me” but about others who are responsible for my issues; and,
• denial that my life choices have positive or negative mental, physical, emotional and spiritual effects on my overall health and well-be-ing, and that my pain and suffering are caused by some external event or circumstances.

Mired in the quicksand of victimization, we find ourselves constantly projecting our anger and negativity on to events, circumstances and others for our predicament. We project our (unconscious) inner frustration with ourselves out towards anyone or anything we feel we can blame for our state in life. Sadly, we’re actually creating our own universe but blaming others because it’s not what we want.

Taking time for honest and conscious self-reflection supports us to take responsibility for our self – including our “dark side.” Self-reflection sheds light on the “stories” we make up to avoid taking responsibility for how we project our “stuff” on to the world. Self-reflection supports us to identify how our emotional programming – anger, fears – create our lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

When we are honest and clear about our wants and needs, and what we are willing to do, we can create a solid foundation for our personal growth and development. We attract and relate with others who share the same self-empowering life view.

When we understand the lessons we need to learn from our current situation, what we need to do becomes obvious. Then we have to choose to take action. However, this understanding requires focus, commitment, consistency and compassion for our self.

Spending time in our inner world through meditation, silence, journaling, etc., is both emotionally and spiritually nourishing. This nourishment supports awareness of the “how” and “why” things appear in our lives – how we are creating our personal universe. Time in our inner world nurtures our capacity for self-love and self-kindness – which support us to create and inhabit a love-based, victim-less personal universe.

In this place of safety and protection, we begin to extricate our self from a victim mentality and move forward from a place of positivity and steadfastness. In our inner world, there can be no victimization as it’s a place of neutrality – a place of soul qualities – clarity, peacefulness, groundedness, stillness, surrender and allowing.

Self-reflecting helps us observe how we use our emotions to create our inner and outer worlds, our worlds of victimization. For example, are we being “nice” to accommodate others in our attempt to feel acknowledged, seen and loved or because we authentically wish to engage in adult, heart-felt, mature relationships – are we holding our physical, emotional and psychological boundaries with others or allowing others to threaten and abuse our boundaries so we can feel wanted and liked?

Once we have cultivated support, self-love and solid ground within, we can expand our space to include others. But we must be very conscious not to include any event, circumstance, idea, thing or person who will take us away from our center, from our self-love and move us back into feeling the victim.

When we surrender to someone else’s agenda, at work, at home, at play and in relationship, we enter their universe as a victim. The important question is why we allow others to control us. Perhaps,

Inner work and self-reflection, done diligently can often support us to

Inner work and self-reflection can support us to focus on what really matters, to let go of what holds us back, to trust our soul and Spirit for guidance and to use our core, inner strength (not “willpower” which hardly ever works) to take positive action for our self instead of engaging in self-destructive and self-sabotaging actions, releasing our self from the stranglehold of victimization.

Many “resolutions” are not conscious choices. They are knee-jerk reactions to something we don’t like about our self – and it’s usually about our “packaging” or some surface issue. True “resolve” requires a deep, inner, and conscious process. The start of 2012 is a wonderful opportunity to change our experience of failed “resolutions” to one of true and lasting change and transformation. We can choose to release the victim within and see what being in true control of our life is really, really like.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Who or what is my guiding authority? How is this authority working for me?
• What are my core values and how do they direct my choices and decisions at work, at home, at play and in relationship?
• How do I choose and implement my personal standards?
• Am I self-reliant? How so?
• Do I ever explore the dynamics of my inner world?
• What bright light shines in my inner world?
• What does not shine in my inner world? Do I know why?
• What feelings and thoughts inhabit my inner world? Are they supportive or limiting?
• Who’s in my personal world? Are they supportive or toxic? Do I want them there? How have I attracted them into my life?
• Did I (or others in my family) experience being a victim when I was growing up? How so? What was that like?
• How can I create a more nurturing, loving and compassionate inner world for my body, mind and emotions?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
….. We’re not beginners here. We know that our thoughts create our reality. Our thinking forms our path beneath our feet even as we’re stepping forward into it. Yes, we know it, but…

So the question is, why don’t we see more change in our lives, more satisfaction, more positive achievement?

And in that very question lies the answer we’re seeking so desperately. To be satisfied, we find ourselves needing more, more, more.

However, what if we decided to put some of that dissatisfaction on hold for a bit, and – just for a little while – dip a tentative toe into the pool of satisfaction instead?

Rather than keeping that so-elusive satisfaction far, far away, out there in the future somewhere, couldn’t we – just for a little while – find something we have right now to be satisfied with? Even one little thing?

After all, if we’re what we think, what are we thinking? What are we thinking?

New Year’s Realizations

So my big suggestion is really quite small and easily accomplished. Instead of our usual frantic, frenetic round of doing, of running in this and that direction, what if we just think a few of our thoughts differently – just for a little while – and watch what happens?

Now, the conjoined twin of cynicism is impatience. They always walk in together, a matching pair, and where you see one, you’ll find the other as well. Of course it has to be that way. Isn’t it obvious that cynicism and low expectations cannot bear being in the presence of patience? And vice versa?

The other day I mentioned to a friend that this year I’d be doing New Year’s Realizations rather than the traditional resolutions. She asked, do you mean realizations as in “new awarenesses” or realizations as in “things that become real”?

My answer: why make a choice? If we’re doing the new awarenesses properly, then the new things becoming real will follow quite naturally and easily.

That’s why, in 2012, I’ll be spending more time on my thoughts and mental processes, and I’ll be spending less time thinking about all the stuff I want more, more, more of.

Instead, I’ll be directing my thinking toward all the things I’m glad about, all the things I’m thankful are already in my life, all the ways I already have so much joy and happiness and fulfillment and health and friends and family and satisfaction in my life.

I hope you’ll join me – just for a little while – in these New Year’s Realizations.

Cheers from the end of 2011,
Charles

P.S. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think. Even better, tell me what you’re going to do?

This is a book about initiative.

In Amazon’s book description, they say:

“If you’re stuck at the starting line, you don’t need more time or permission. You don’t need to wait for a boss’s okay or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke.

Disclaimer: I have not yet read the book – it’s still on its way to Thailand – but I have devoured many of the reviews, and from those alone, I’ve walked away with real inspiration to act – go and do stuff – begin – start now.

God knows what’ll happen when you and I actually read the book itself.

However, the reviews are powerful content in their own right. Here’s what Daniel H. Pink, author of the New York Times bestsellers Drive and A Whole New Mind, said about Seth Godin’s Poke the Box:

Let me begin with a professional and personal disclosure: If Seth Godin weren’t a friend of mine, I would probably hate his guts.

He makes those of us in the word-slinging, meme-spreading trade look like a bunch of ne’er-do-well slackers. He is so preposterously creative and so endlessly productive–a new blog post every day, a new book every year, dozens of efforts to raise money for charity, Squidoo, the Domino Project, and more–that I once suspected “Seth Godin” was really a cover name for an army of elves toiling in a work camp near the Hudson River.

But after reading this remarkable book, I’ve discovered Seth’s secret: He’s willing to poke the box. To start. To initiate. To begin. That’s all.

Indeed, the message of this book is so profoundly simple and so simply profound, I can encapsulate it in a single word.

Go.

Don’t cogitate. Don’t ruminate. Don’t plan on getting started or wait for permission to begin.

Go.

Of course, that’s a little scary. Starting is a risk. Things might not work out. You could flop. But one theme of this book–and it’s a theme that you should write on a rock, imprint on your brain, and inject into your bloodstream–is that we ought to be much more concerned about mediocrity than failure. “If you can’t fail,” Seth writes, “it doesn’t count.”

Like the man who produced it, Poke the Box is inspired and inspiring. I’ll place it on my shelf alongside two other extraordinary books: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. If you enjoyed those two, you’ll love this one. It will simultaneously stir your heart and kick your butt.

Which brings us to a final question: When should you get started on that project, that business, that work of art only you can deliver to the world?

Seth has the answer to that, too: “Soon is not as good as now.”

In other words, go.

Now, it’s true that Godin’s message to exercise some initiative – to “start something now” – is not exactly new. After all, a generation ago, Nike was telling us to “Just Do It.” And every motivational speaker and writer tells us the same thing. But few of us writers and speakers are practicing what we preach at the full-throttle setting. Seth Godin does.

And that’s his power. Speaking from a platform of “I’m doing it myself,” he’s uncannily convincing.

So whether you get the book or not, at least go read the reviews. See if you don’t gain a new eagerness to achieve, and a greater sense of your own power to do it.

Now.

Cheers,
Charles

And I’m going to need your help to accomplish them. My primary target is to turn out products, products and more products this year. But not just any old products. I don’t want to turn out the same-old-same-old stuff you can get anywhere.

So that’s what I need your help with… I want you to give me your problems.

Whatever your biggest, meanest, hairiest, scariest challenges are, whatever the things are that you’ve never-ever been able to get past – whatever they are – I want you to hand them over to me. (I ain’t scared.)

Please give me your worst difficulties, your biggest nightmares, your roughest, most stubborn blockages – I’ll be more than happy to take them off your hands.

And I’ll even thank you for them.

Just share with me what you need and I’ll build solutions for you that’ll work straight-up, exactly like they’re supposed to do. And I won’t quit till they DO work.

Now, at this point, I could probably offer a list of suggestions to get things started, but rather than prattle on about what I think is on your mind, instead I’ll just stay quiet and listen to you.

Send me your problems here…

First, a disclosure: I am not an enlightened being (probably), nor do I play one on TV. I am, however, a guy who has wasted many years of my adult life and untold ergs of energy chasing one mistaken incarnation of enlightenment after another. So I may be slightly biased, but stay with me for a bit, and I think you may pick up some useful ideas.

Hah? Did he say useful? Yeah useful, as in – Hey, dang, my life just got a little easier here, Mabel.

Would enlightenment really cure what ails you?

I’m convinced that ‘enlightenment’ has been seriously over-sold and under-understood. Now, I’m not trying to tell you the Buddha got it wrong – only that most of the world have, perhaps, got the Buddha wrong.

If you’ve ever felt dissatisfaction with your life, I can tell you the two things you did about it. For the longest time you obsessed over what you believed was missing from your life. Then you moved on to taking measures – trying to fill that gaping hole with some of whatever you believed would fill the gap.

Problems come in only three varieties: health, money and relationships. If you’re depressed, it’s because you feel deprived in one of those areas. If you’re angry, it’s because you feel deprived in one of those areas. If you’re afraid, it’s more of the same. It doesn’t matter what form your discontent takes, it’s always about something you don’t have, and you feel like it’s difficult or impossible for you to get. In a word….

Lack.

Any feelings of dissatisfaction with your life arise from the idea that your life just doesn’t measure up, that you’re missing something. In other words, what you want is still out there somewhere, and you feel incomplete without it. Again, this is an incarnation of lack.

I can also tell you exactly what happened next. Whatever action you were taking, it didn’t work… at least not for very long and not very well. So you chased even harder and faster, trying to get something else – thinking it was the rest of whatever you thought you needed to make you happy.

The missing part… the ‘rest of yourself,’ as long as it’s out there somewhere, can make you really, really frustrated. So you keep on chasing whatever that missing ‘rest of you’ is (and to compound the problem, your ideas of what’s missing keep shifting).

Eventually, if you’re at all introspective or spiritual-minded, you’ll come around to positive thinking, affirmations, law of attraction and other inward directed efforts. These are virtually always used for ‘attracting’ whatever it is you want.

And there’s an endless variety of things you want, but they all boil down to three areas: health, wealth and relationships. These areas are the yardstick we measure ourselves by as we judge how we’re doing.

It’s like measuring your height. You’re nine years old and you’ve grown an inch since last July. If you’re a nine-year-old girl, and you’re already towering over all the other girls, making a mark on the wall that’s another inch higher is not a happy occasion. For boys, it’s just the reverse. In either case, however, that mark on the wall has no meaning at all… until we compare it to other people’s marks. That’s when we decide that we’re doing better than or worse than other people.

We do pretty much this same dance when we compare our money ‘marks on the wall’ too.

So we try this and we try that, and if we don’t get satisfying results, we eventually run through all the physical problem-solving measures we can think of (or all of them that we feel capable of doing).

And then, sooner or later, we turn to ‘spiritual’ measures to try and repair our shortcomings. We pray. We program. We affirm and treat and meditate and visualize and chant, all in hopes of persuading some higher energy or greater being to join the game for our side.

We hear urban legends of this person’s friend or that person’s mother who attracted home and car and lottery winnings. We don’t know the person directly, but a friend of a friend has assured us it was true. Or such-n-such guru relates the successes of many of his own followers.

So we pick up a belief in a higher mind (I’m not saying this is incorrect, only that we gradually learn that it exists). Usually, however, we get many of the finer points wrong at first. All the new knowledge and ideas, as they come in, are still being filtered through our current wishes, hopes and feelings of lack.

So we latch onto the idea that there’s a higher energy. And if we can only master that higher energy – become enlighted – then we can use the power that comes with it to get all the money, good health and romance we’ve always dreamed of. Never mind that our dreams are all skewed. Yep, they’re skewed badly by that same old idea that we need something or someone ‘out there’ to complete us.

But What if You Don’t Need Completing?

What would happen if you suddenly saw – very clearly – that no amount of money could complete you, that no lover, no matter how devoted, could make you more than you are right now, or that your health, no matter whether you’re robust, ill or even dying, can make you more complete than you are right now? Tell me, what would happen if you suddenly grasped the full clarity of that reality… the reality that you’re as complete right now as you’re ever going to be?

No matter what you find yourself desiring right now, what if it were totally irrelevant to your worth, your value, your completeness. And further, what if it never has been relevant?

The Japanese have a phrase: ‘This is this, and that is that.’ This cryptic phrase is a warning to never fall victim to your own muddy thinking. Just because we think two things are related, that doesn’t mean it’s so.

And just because you’d like more money, more health or more love, and just because you’re feeling frustrated, that has nothing at all to do with your worth. Nor your completeness. This (the missing ingredient) is this, and that (your actual value) is that. They’ll only appear related if you MAKE them related.

But since we haven’t yet learned to separate ‘this’ from ‘that’ in our thinking, we continually flounder off in this direction and that, searching for some kind of higher ability – enlightenment – to help us become a ‘better’ (richer, healthier, more attractive) person.

If only I were rich, I would be more complete. If only I had better health. Or more sex. Or lots of friends. Or were able to do – whatever. If I had that, I’d be happy and content.

Well of course that’s all a bunch of BS we’re feeding ourselves.

When I was in my late teens and all through my twenties, I stayed overwhelmed and intimidated by life and its unpredictable nature. Life didn’t work the way I thought I’d been told it did, and I just couldn’t understand what was wrong. I really believed that my missing ingredient was courage… the guts to stand up, face life, and hit life harder than it was resisting me. Everything appeared to take more courage than I had, and so I was convinced that courage was the one missing ingredient I needed to ‘be successful.’

In fact, I often wished there were a book titled How to Have Guts. I even vowed that someday, when I’d become successful, I’d write that book myself.

It took me years to figure out that I didn’t need more guts. In fact, I probably had more courage than most people because I kept on, day after day, year after year, ramming myself face-first into all the ‘obstacles’ that seemed to block my pathway (rather than simply and easily strolling around them).

I was seeking enlightenment, but it was a flawed concept of enlightenment. I still thought that the only way to reach what I wanted was to command more force, more power, more courage to charge fearlessly into the jaws of fierce opposition from the Universe itself. To dominate and beat down all those ‘obstacles.’

What a joke on me.

By now you’ve probably figured out that I’m using this word ‘enlightenment’ as the solution to whatever your current obsession might be.

If you’re feeling, right now, that money is your problem, then the power to make lots of money will be the color of your enlightenment. Or if you have health challenges, that will be the main focus of your brand of enlightenment. Failing at love? Then the power to attract more love is what enlightenment looks like to you.

See what we’re doing to ourselves here?

Whatever is standing in the way of our instant gratification is a ‘problem’ to be solved, an ‘obstacle’ to be surmounted, an ‘opponent’ to be beaten and demolished.

In short, we’re still being impatient and childish, refusing to focus on anything beyond immediate gratification of our own desires.

Take money, for example. Maybe you have a high degree of skill in something. Let’s say you’re good at meticulously painting famous proverbs onto tiny grains of rice. Wow, that’s an amazing skill.

So you decide to write books, make DVDs and give seminars on how to do rice paintings. And you’re going to be rich!

But…

What if the rest of the world isn’t terribly interested in rice painting? So you advertise and market and knock on doors and write articles and books and reports. But the world yawns at you. They ain’t buying it.

You have several options available at this point. You could:

1. Get desperately depressed and shoot yourself,
2. Give up and feel sorry for yourself for the next few years,
3. Keep right on doing what you’re doing now, hoping something ‘out there’ will change,
4. Switch to doing some other money project that you’ve heard about from a get-rich guru,
5. Look for the reasons why people are not buying,
6. Research what they DO want to buy, seeking something related to your skill, but much more in demand,

Now clearly, some of these strategies are less likely to lead to success than others. But often we become so fixated on what WE want that we never stop to ask what our prospective customer might want. Total self-absorption.

Resolutions, Goals and Other Things We Throw against the Wall

Okay, so we’ve looked at one common way we misapply our efforts. Another way is when we set goals (or New Year’s resolutions). We really feel like our life would be better if we only lost that last 5 pounds (or 50).

But we do remember, don’t we, that nothing ‘out there’ in our world (or in our future) is really able to make us more complete than we are right now. So if you’re waiting to impress others before you can like yourself, the truth is, you’ve unwittingly given all your power and self esteem away to other people.

So most of the time, our resolutions and goals are two-bit, small-time and small-minded. They’re very often aimed at getting something to impress other people, and once they’re impressed, that’s how we know we’re okay.

That benchmark – how much we impress others – that’s the most common way for us to judge our own self worth. It’s a piss-poor way, but it’s nearly universal, nonetheless.

But What Could We Use Instead?

We already know the answer to this, but knowing and doing are two different things. The fact is, we have many gurus and truly enlightened people trying to point the way for us. They tell us and tell us how important it is to release our identification with the things we think we lack. They remind us to practice being in the present and to stop listening to our monkey mind.

They tell us… and we learn all about what they say. But learning (knowing) is still not doing.

They point the way and we, idiot-like, stare at the pointing finger rather than the truth they’re trying to show us. Or as the old Buddhist proverb says, ‘The master points at the moon but the fool stares at the finger.’ The teaching is not the truth; it’s the pointing finger. And nor is the master the truth; he also is the pointing finger.

At some point our awareness must leap that gap between the pointing finger and the moon. Between the master (and his teachings) and the truth.

This all boils down to one thing: at some point you’re going to have to reach beyond all your knowledge, take a deep breath and step off into the gap where you don’t know squat, and experience the thing for yourself.

We do this all the time, but we don’t realize it. The day your father took the training wheels off your bicycle, you did it. The day your mother left you at school with the teacher and all those other kids, you did it. The day you started your first new job, you did it.

Your first sexual experience, your first dive into the deep end of the pool, the birth of your first baby… all of those things were steps into new, uncharted territory.

Sure, you knew about some of those things from watching others. But only when you stepped up and started doing it yourself were you really doing it.

And this enlightenment thing is exactly the same way.

If your current concept of enlightenment means more money, or better health, or a happier love relationship, then the only way to get there is to stop learning about it and start doing it. That means dive in and experiment with real events, people and actions.

Did you get that? Dive in… take action… do stuff… not just meditate about it. Visualization and meditation are fine. They’re important. But alone, they’re not enough.

How to Let the Non-Working Crap Go

Ready to release the things that keep you from being effective? Ready to let go of the time and energy wasters in your life? (Right about now, you may be starting to feel just a bit anxious. After all, it may be starting to sound like I’m suggesting you give up some of the comfortable little time-killing routines that fill so much of your day.)

I can almost hear the protest: ‘Hey, if I can’t have my little routines, I might be forced to stay insanely busy all the time and never get any rest… sounds like too much pressure… I need my leisure time, my familiar little busy-ness.’

If anything like that briefly flitted across your mind, then you’re in good company because most of the world is wired the same way.

Now, the things you use for filling your day, your actions and your thoughts… something like ninety-five percent of those things are out-and-out habits. And another three or four percent are habit-based, with only a little room for variations. In other words, virtually everything you do and think – they’re all habits.

YOU are habits.

There’s not really anything wrong with that – it makes survival in day-to-day life easy and relatively automatic. But… as soon as you decide you’d like to change your daily life a bit… those habits make it hard to alter your behavior or your thinking. All your thoughts and actions have been running in well-worn grooves for years, and that’s where they want to stay.

So it takes some effort to carve new grooves for yourself. It’s entirely doable, but at first those new routines won’t feel as comfortable as your currently established grooves. And this matter of “it takes effort,” well… that’s what derails most people seeking to reroute their lives.

Mostly, we let our habits take care of themselves. We get comfortable driving our car, and we don’t try to change anything until we buy a different car. Then we climb in, sit down and find that our old driving habits are slightly out of place in this new vehicle, and for the next week or two, driving feels odd. But with repetition we gradually grow accustomed to the new vehicle, and soon we’re comfortable again. We’ve adjusted our habits to match our new circumstances.

We do the same thing if we move to a new neighborhood, or change jobs, or trade in our old computer for a new one, or suddenly find ourselves single again after several years of marriage.

We cope.

But that’s event-initiated change.

What if we try to change something just because we want to?

Like shedding weight, or standing up straight after 20 years of slumping, or thinking of ourselves as prosperous and rich.

We’ve heard that affirmations work. Or hypnosis. Or visualization. Or dream boards. We’re not exactly sure why, but “they” say these things work, so we dive in and try them.

And these techniques may work for us, but more likely they don’t. The fact is, these techniques fail to produce the desired results in a large majority of cases. If they do fail us, we usually don’t know why. We go skulking off wondering “what’s wrong with me.” We’ve heard all the stories about other people getting what they want. And we didn’t. So it must be us.

Well, yes it is us, but not for the reasons we assume.

Here’s a well-known fact about habits – well-known, but almost nobody takes it into account when they start trying to change their life. Ready? Here it is:

And I hear you thinking, “Well, duh… of course you make habits with repition.”

However, if it’s so obvious, why do so many people fail at changing their thinking and acting? Their habits of thinking and acting.

It’s well known that breaking a habit is super hard to do. Ever try to stop yourself from saying “uh” or “you know” in your conversations? That’s not easy. And yet, to change your driving habits, all you need to do is get into a different model of car and simply drive it for a few days. That IS easy.

So here’s how you change things in your life… the big secret…

You don’t suddenly try to make drastic changes in your behavior. Instead, you take habits you already have and think of ways to gradually shift your old behavior into new channels. In other words, you add on to an old habit, gently reshaping it, until it’s something new entirely.

I’ll write more about this in another post, but for now it’s enough to know that your current habits are not particularly rigid. They’re not walls holding you trapped in your present situation. On the contrary, they’re more malleable than you’ve ever realized, so instead of walls, your habits represent bridges you can use to reach any new behavior you desire.

Imagine that… your habits are the very thing you can use to bridge the gap between what you know can be done and what you do.

Living Without Lack

As soon as you really “get” this, and begin feeling it in your bones, you’ll never feel trapped again. You’ll always know that you have a clear straight path to the life you want. Just take one of your habits and redirect it in the new, desired direction. And with simple repetition, you’re there.

You’ll no longer feel separated from the objects of your desire. You’ll no longer be frustrated by the feeling that “it works for other people but it won’t work for me.” And you’ll no longer feel like you’re helpless in the world.

Once this sense of real, practical empowerment takes hold within you, you’ll never feel lack. After all, everything is now within your reach. All it takes is a new habit of thinking or of acting, and what you desire is yours.

With this new factor at work inside you, what’s the coming year going to look like for you? What’s possible? Pretty much everything, right?

And enlightenment, in whatever form you conceive it, will take you there because you’ve finally gotten it right.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Yesterday I ran across a random bookmark, which, when I followed it, led me to discover a new way of performing that I’d never even heard of before. It’s called “beatboxing,” and it just blew me away.

Here’s a sample of two enormously talented young guys at a recent competiton.

Reeps1 vs. ZeDe

This strange new human talent is still largely underground, though if you’re of a younger persuasion, you may already be familiar with it. But since I’m an old fart, it was new to me. As my very good friend Russ Hamel said, this is a perfect example of not knowing what you don’t know. In any case, the popularity of beatboxing is rapidly growing.

If you liked that, then here are a few more links you may also enjoy.

• Reeps1 vs. ZeDe
• Markooz VS Reeps1
• Shawn Lee VS Vahtang
• Mando vs Vahtang

Now, just in case you’re thinking this is only about making noise, think again. The following two interviews reveal that at least some of the performers are actually pretty thoughtful people.

• Joel Turner the Beatbox Battle World Champion from Australia
• Rahzel the Godfather of Noise

And it’s definitely not just a guy thing. The ladies are well represented, too.

• Lyn, from Japan, was at the BeatBox Battle.
• Sophia is quite young, but she makes it all look incredibly easy. Here, she’s recording herself in a classroom at school.

At the Beatbox Battle International Competition, four young ladies appeared and were standouts for their excellent teamwork.

• Female All Stars 1
• Female All Stars 2
• Female All Stars 3
• Female All Stars 4

By now you’re probably wondering, “Hey, didn’t BullsEye Living used to be a motivation and inspiration blog?” In fact, you may be ready to ask…

“Okay Charles, Where Are You Going with This?”

As engaging as all of that boomboxing is, it’s just light entertainment… uh… isn’t it? Well, yes and no. As I was “wasting” an entire Sunday watching these (and many more) video segments, I realized something important. Something that involves my capacity (and yours) to achieve far more than we’ve done before.

Here are a bunch of young people who can do something – extremely well – that nobody ever even conceived of doing until recently. In other words it’s a whole new kind of performing art.

And how did they get so good at all this? They did it the old fashioned way. They worked their tails off, practicing endlessly, as they tried out new ideas, and polished everything to a diamond luster. Please notice that there are no “old masters” or established gurus sitting back and running beatboxing schools. Each one of these people is teaching themselves, partly by paying attention to what others are doing, but mostly by going off alone and experimenting.

In other words, every one of these people is a trailblazer. They’re all taking a few basic sounds, then combining them in their own unique way, trying this and trying that, and keeping what works for them. In other words, they’re pretty much making this stuff up as they go.

Talk About Self Motivated People…

In your entire life have you ever been motivated enough to try that hard at anything? What you’re seeing in these videos (if you’re paying attention) is the stuff that makes any person a high achiever. And if you want to be a standout, you’ll need to get some of that same stuff.

So what’s in this motivation “stuff”?

Yeah yeah sure… you’ve read the books and attended the seminars about motivation. How’s that working for you? Are you getting a lot more done?

Are you now a high achiever? Or are you still farting around reading books, listening to CDs and attending seminars? Still seeking the magic pill that’ll make it all come effortlessly?

Of course, there’s noting wrong with filling your mind with positive material. But it often becomes an end in itself – a substitute for the real task of living your life at full power.

What Is the Real Job?

Often, when a company is on the verge of failure, they’ll bring in a turnaround specialist. This is a guy who comes in, examines everybody and everything, and very quickly gets rid of whatever stands in the way of profit.

The reason they bring in an outsider is because he has fresh eyes. He can see the loafers and lazy people who don’t pull their own weight. He can recognize the departments that are wasting resources. And he can find and get rid of the obstructive little internal fiefdoms that gobble up corporate resources without doing anything for customers.

In other words, a turnaround specialist cuts the company back down to only its essentials.

So imagine this… let’s say a life turnaround specialist came in and examined your life. He (or she) will be able to see things that you can’t. He’ll see all those things you’re doing that don’t lead you anywhere.

All those books and CDs (and blogs) that you’re consuming – are they really part of getting your job done? Or are you just avoiding the real job? We sometimes do that, you know. We do things that are easy (but sound admirable) so that we can avoid working on the real job.

So I ask you again – what is the real job?

And if you tell me it’s personal growth, I’ll ask you to cut out the bullshit.

Listen, personal growth is good, but wisdom never comes from reading about wisdom. Nor from hearing some wonderful teacher explain wisdom. That includes me by the way (because I’m neither a guru nor wise).

Wisdom comes as a byproduct of doing real things. Wisdom is not an understanding of some high-sounding set of universal principles. It’s a deep, visceral connection with and appreciation of your own inner resources and how to use them in the real world.

This is true in every field. If you and I begin reading about chess or billiards, we may come to know all the rules, most of the techniques, and much of the game’s history. But we still won’t be able to play the game very well. The only way to get good at the game is to play it. Play it a lot. Play it every day, every chance we get. And every time we make a mistake, to learn from it.

Here is one of the few really useful rules for living:
EXPERIENCE ALWAYS TRUMPS KNOWLEDGE
And of course, knowledge in partnership with experience trumps experience alone.

So yes, there’s an important place for knowledge, but it won’t get you there all by itself. You need both.

And a Third Time I Ask You – What Is the Real Job of Your life?

Years ago, a friend of mine, John, went to India when he was about 19 and very full of himself. He was convinced that he already had all the answers to life’s most important questions. While meditating at a high mountaintop retreat, he met a humble old holy man one day, and he asked the man, “What is the purpose of life?” John said he expected to impress the priest with his own wisdom.

He said this doddering old man suddenly transformed. He looked intensely into John’s eyes for more than a minute, then he laughed and said very slowly, “The purpose of life is simpler than you yet know. The purpose of life is to live.”

I found that statement profound the first time I heard it, and I still do.

Simple isn’t it? Your purpose isn’t to become wiser… that comes automatically as a side effect, but only if you’re paying close attention.

And the purpose is not to gradually shed your humanity. So somebody thinks that human-ness is a burden to be sloughed off? Baloney! It’s a gift that we’ve been generously given. Why would we despise such a gift? We’ve been entrusted with this humanity, been gifted with our physical, mental and emotional natures to enjoy, to cherish and to become adept at using.

What do I mean by that? Just look to the beatboxers who are practicing and expanding their vocal abilities and you’ll have a good example of how life can be lived with joy and intensity.

But beatboxing isn’t “important” is it?

Pay attention here – this is the most important thing you can ever learn. Importance is not assigned by the Universe, the Angels nor the Space Brothers.

Importance is assigned by you, through conscious choice. Choosing what’s important to you, then living like you mean it.

That’s the real job in your life.

So are you doing the job? Or are you waiting around for some higher being to tell you what to do? If you are, it may be time to call in a turnaround specialist who can help you get back on track.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

EDIT: Added January 2nd

Another amazing example of going beyond what’s considered possible is David Blaine’s record of holding his breath underwater for more than 17 minutes. In this TED Talk, Blaine discusses the months of intense training he put himself through to reach that record.

His achievement didn’t just happen – he didn’t drift into this accidentally. It took planning, training, specialized knowledge and a willingness to go way out there to the edge of current abilities, and then to step off that edge into uncharted territory.

If you’re thinking of stepping outside your own behavioral norm (comfort zone) this year, know this: you’re going to need a little more drive, commitment and faith in yourself than you’re using right now.

Want to work on this with me in 2011?

That’s right, I’m talking about answering meaningless tasks with an equally meaningless act of rebellion that declares (at least to ourselves): “I’m bored as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”

Today’s guest author Jennifer Robinson suggests that a bit of private liberation could be a good thing. All you’ll need are…

Backside + Photocopier = Personal Revolution!
by Jennifer Robinson

The photocopier is amongst the most mind numbingly pragmatic and banal devices ever invented in the history of office based technology. Upon inserting a banal item of bureaucratic detritus and pressing the relevant keys, one is left with two items of bureaucratic detritus and a slight increase in the level of one’s self hatred/murderous rage.

The photocopier is a device which, given the opportunity and the timely intervention of a sufficiently twatish and merciless superior, will devour your time and convert it into an ever expanding pile of irrelevant garbage (working under the assumption that the vast majority of offices in this world deal with documents that are of very little interest even to the people who deal with them).

But every so often, something magical happens. Every so often, between one set of tiresome invoices and the next, a soft, plump, joyful pair of buttocks graces the indignant glass face of our most hated office chum. A flash of light and an irksome, mechanical groan later, and this wondrous event is recorded forever, thereafter a part of our history as a species!

From time to time, it happens with boobs as well. Verily, the urge to photocopy one’s unmentionables is strong, but what is it that makes this activity so compelling? (Apart from the fact that any activity that has a greater than 7% chance of including boobage must automatically be graded as “awesome”).

Perhaps the key to the matter is subversion; the desire to undermine and disregard the systems that stamp themselves over who we are.

Fully one third of a full time office worker’s waking life is given over to “the company”, organised and structured according to the company’s needs, their dress, their hair, their manner of speech all regulated and stifled by the needs and goals of the company. Everything in the office environment reminds the worker of the grim functionality or his situation (save for the trivial “personal touches” allowed by management, e.g. a kitten themed calendar or a mug declaring oneself “BEST DAD EVER”).

The hole-punch punches holes, the ring binder receives that which is punched, the stapler staples, the franking machine “franks” away merrily until we’re all dead.

But the photocopier… now that’s a different beast. The distinction is that the photocopier is meant to do a particular thing, but could potentially do things that it’s not meant to do!

It’s subvertable!

It’s a chink in the armour, one of perhaps only two or three. This could well be the explanation for that unshakable urge: that the photocopier represents one of the only opportunities we have for semi-genuine self expression in an environment hostile to it. The hole-punch will punch holes and the stapler will make staples, but the photocopier grants us a choice if we only have sufficient cunning! Be gone foul invoices! Let mine own rump be the subject matter! Let my hearty bosom be the business of the day! In this moment, let me be the boss!

There’s a lesson here. The human spirit demands expression, it demands subversion, and if that has to involve naughty-bits, so be it.

Jennifer Robinson writes for Online Connect UK together with Kasim Aka. Online Connect are a specialist supplier of photocopiers and office equipment. Find Cheap office copiers at there website http://www.onlineconnect.co.uk/

Back to Charles:
Hmmm… private liberation indeed. But doesn’t it sometimes feel good to do the forbidden, slightly wacky thing? To silently thumb your nose (or other parts) at the dull, hide-bound authorities who never seem to get it that you’re human and have self-expression needs too?

So if you’re feeling stifled lately, maybe it’s time to head for the copy department and let your hair down – or whatever.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

I don’t usually run health-related items, but this one is too interesting to let slide.

So I’m going to give you the link and let you go decide for yourself – if you’ve still got what it takes to make your own judgments. Either you do have, or you don’t… and this way, you’ll soon find out which you are.

Let me just preface the link by asking a hypothetical question: What if there were a health treatment that many respected researchers had thoroughly tested through scads of solid, well designed scientific studies, but which is being deliberately ignored by the larger “scientific” community? And what if, further, today’s social norms were denying all that well-proven evidence a fair hearing?

Alison Forsyth, one of my readers, has not only investigated this treatment but has used it to regain her health and eliminate a long list of conditions and ailments. And now she’s written a book relating her own actual experiences.

If you’ve got a bit of daring in your soul, and don’t give a fig what “the neighbors might say,” then go take a look at this book on wellness.

I double-dare you.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles