By Séamus Anthony
You don’t need drugs to get high. Pure, substance-free bliss is waiting for you right now!
Sound like advertising copy?
Maybe, but it’s true.
The only thing is – it’s one of those you-had-to-be-there scenarios.
Language is powerful, but not enough to fully convey the fantastic life experience that is a “Cosmic High”.
There are descriptors: Nirvana, Bliss, Samadhi, universal consciousness, the mind of God, clarity, awareness, the Tao, perfection, oneness, no-mind, beginner’s mind – the list goes on but none of them suffice.
If you really want to know, you’ll have to go there yourself.
The good news? It’s not necessarily difficult … but it may take some patience.
Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun
The most tried and true method to make the connection is meditation. If you have never meditated, or you have and found it frustrating or un-enjoyable, take heart, this is normal. But if you want the reward you have to do the work!
You do not need to give your life (or your cheque book) over to an organisation if you do not want to. There are many methods, and beginning with an informal approach is fine. A book, a website, one class – all of these can be enough to set you off on the journey. The only requirement on your behalf is a little commitment. It may take you a few attempts, but you can make “the connection” and feel the incredible peace and blissful well-being that is on offer.
Here’s the basic formula: The intensity of your experience will be directly proportional to the effort you put in.
Sorry, instant bliss, while not impossible, isn’t a reliable goal.
The hard yards
This morning I meditated for an hour. I wanted to make the connection, so I made the time. I resolved to sit until it happened.
As usual, my mind wandered a thousand times, and I had to bring it back to awareness of the moment (focus on the breath) over and over.
I passed through several stages. There was one long period where I could not hush my mental voice from continuously telling me to stop and go get breakfast; that I had done enough for one morning. After all, Zen masters say that ‘this is it’ so why not get up and make a cup of tea?
Another stage I regularly pass through when meditating is a creative surge. I get so inspired to write or play my guitar or make plans to rule the world or whatever that I can barely stay on my cushion for excitement and the desire to get on with things. This is extremely testing, for as an artist I always want to run with the muse, but I know that this is a device of the ego to distract me into ending the meditation session before making the full connection with Tao. The ego is scared, for making the connection means surrendering, abandoning the illusion of separate-self, disempowering the ego, weakening its day-to-day hold thereafter.
I kept at it, always returning to the breath. Trusting that, eventually, I would ‘get there’. Getting there is actually returning to where we already are; waking up to where we have been all along. Strangely this often requires hard work, whereas mentally travelling to some imagined paradise is comparatively easy (but nowhere near as rewarding).
The time ticked slowly by, and I grew very impatient. I was tired of trying, frustrated with doing nothing, eager to get on with my day. But I made myself persevere, focussing on releasing the concept of effort. This is the great paradox of meditation: The work is to forget the work.
Beginner’s headspace
Eventually my mind grew comparatively still, and out of the stillness appeared a dream-image of a child’s face, smiling and full of wonder.
‘It’s easy! Can’t you see?’ the child said.
And then I got it. I mentally looked out at the world through the eyes of a child, as if everything was new. Pure, unadulterated bliss was mine - the Cosmic High. It had been there all along, it was just that I needed to let go of all my clouded adult preconceptions and just see ‘what is’.
Then, call me a tripper, but I had a second pleasant dream vision. I would like to present it to you now as an analogy for spiritually inspired personal growth, and also as a guided meditation that you might like to use. If you have never meditated before, just sit or lie down comfortably with a reasonably straight back during a quiet time. Gently focus on your breathing.
Climbing the tree
You are standing at the foot of the tallest pine tree in the forest. You can’t see very far because the forest is thick and the sun can’t get through. There are animals everywhere, bouncing around, chattering; lots of noise and activity. As you start to climb, you notice that the branches of the tree are also busy; home to many more animals and birds, all getting on with their day.
Climbing the tree is not intrinsically difficult. It requires focus and determination, but all you have to do is keep climbing one branch at a time. As you get higher up the tree, there are fewer animals, and consequently less noise and activity (the animals represent thoughts).
Eventually you are near the top, and as you scale the last few branches you see that this tree is indeed the tallest in forest. Perched on the uppermost branch, you now see the wonderful view – the forest stretching for miles, the mountains in the distance, and above you, much higher even than the tallest tree in the forest, eagles soaring on the breeze. Onto all of this shines the sun; the air is crisp and fresh, and you truly feel that you are free.
You can now see where you have been all along.
This article barely scratches the surface of the topic so if you would like to learn more about how to achieve a mind blowing Cosmic High without using drugs then please subscribe (see below) because we will be releasing much more detailed information on the topic very soon.
By the way, a different version of this article was originally published in LivingNow magazine, Australia’s favourite holistic print magazine. Incidentally, Steve and myself are currently rebuilding their website and you might like to take a look and subscribe to it as there are plenty of awesome articles there that were first published in the print magazine; we are uploading more every day or two from their massive backlog. Here’s one I read last night that particularly blew my mind. Peace out trippers.
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By Steve Mills
Mystery makes the world go around. The only reason you are reading this article, and not checking your facebook or twitter profiles is that you don’t know how it is going to end. When things get predictable people tend to lose interest and look elsewhere.
When you get down to the fine detail and study life closely, Mystery is the animating force of the world, the reason why every man and woman gets up in the morning, has breakfast and steps out into the wild crazy world.
The search for meaning and answers behind the events of your life is fueled by your innate curiosity. Curiosity is a force so powerful that it sets the direction of our civilization and species, fills the wallets of gossip magazine publishers and drives people to continue to search for answers against great odds.
You only need to look at prime time TV, with its wall-to-wall crime shows and detective dramas to see the popularity of people searching for the unknown. Do people like the blood, the gore, the tales of tragedy? Some do perhaps, but most glue their eyeballs to the screen 4 nights a week because they are addicted to the idea of mystery.
The Seeker
Most spiritual and personal development seekers start out on journeys of self improvement and inner reflection with the best intentions, looking for truth and insight wherever it appears to be available.
It soon becomes apparent that there is a huge amount of people willing to share their answers with you. Some will give them to you for free, other want you to buy it from them, and of course there are others that will give you their version in exchange for the sane, rational part of your brain. There are simple answers, complex answers, mantras that explain the universe in a single Sanskrit sentence, through to multi-layered pantheons and metaphysical systems.
Some people will get sick of the searching, and go for a “quick fix, one answer fits all” approach to life, which could take the form of joining an organized religion, buying the full $30,000 training package from the personal development guru or becoming a strict and unwavering atheist.
Others will become disillusioned with the search altogether and fall back into old patterns, exchanging the path of awakening for a lifetime of being asleep. For them the seeking is a painful experience, something that must be accomplished or they have somehow failed. They are always looking for that missing part of themselves out there in the world.
Some people think that once you become enlightened, suddenly the answers to all of the questions of the universe are revealed. The true wisdom (or at least my version of it) is in fact the exact opposite. It is the idea that the truth may never be found, but it is in the seeking and searching where the realities of life, the universe and the contents of your inner world become visible.
I tend to search and read and meditate without the need to lock down a certain fact as being true. Once you get to the stage where the answers are no longer important, the search becomes pure joy, it is truly the stuff of being alive. You embrace the fact that you don’t know everything, and will never know everything. There is always another perspective to every situation.
A lot of the things that I once considered true have revealed themselves in my life to be false, and vice versa, so that I can safely assume that any of my beliefs could be thrown on their heads in the very next instance.
OPEN AND AWARE MIND
An open but aware mind is the key. With a developed skill of discernment you can separate the wheat from the chaff (or use another less polite euphemism) and take every “answer” and truth provided to you with a grain of salt, knowing that only via the power of direct experience should you take anything for a truth.
By living this way you can use the perpetual mystery to propel you through life. To always seek new experiences and adventures, to truly experience an enlightened state by seeing everything in the world through fresh eyes, like that of a new born child. Once you realize that every experience in life is unique, and that most of your truths are really just preconditioned assumptions then the everydayness of your life takes on a life of its own.
You are not searching for something outside yourself to complete something that is missing, but marveling at the strange place we call our lives, with all its hidden subtleties and whack-you-over-the-head realities.
By keeping your sense of mystery and wonder at the universe, you continue to feel alive inside.
The answers are the boring part; it’s the journey that is the thing of value. The journey to understanding and wisdom is the thing that can’t be bottled, packaged or put into a 10 stage seminar program. That is the true gold of the eternal quest of the spiritual seeker.
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Or How to Achieve Liberation Without Joining a Cult
By Seamus Anthony
The Age of Do-It-Yourself Enlightenment has arrived. Here’s social proof (check out the comments).
But what does this actually mean? Well, in our welcome post Steve and I explained this concept quite well. No real need to go visit that post, here is what we wrote:
“DIY Enlightenment is about finding your own version of truth, peace and happiness. It’s about learning to go with the flow and really experience life free from other people’s rules and dogma. It’s about recognising that ‘enlightenment’ is a concept that you are free to research, define, and achieve on your own - you DON’T need a guru to tell you what to do or to decide when you have achieved enlightenment…
“The Guru (or in the west, the Hermit) used to have the monopoly on the enlightenment niche because information about ‘enlightenment’ was not readily accessible and so it had to be transfered by direct verbal instruction.
Then as the written word came about, well these handwritten texts could only be in one place at a time so they naturally stayed in the guru’s library. And, frankly, it was good for business for the guru to have all info, so this model was maintained for a long time, even after crazy ideas like the printing press and *whoa* the interweb came about.
But dudes! This system is just a clunky, rusted artifact of the past! Never before has so much information been available so easily to so many people!
So, while it may mean bad news for those in guru business, there is no reason why an intelligent person such as yourself can’t access and study all kinds of different viewpoints and realise your own version of enlightenment right there in your own home in your own time and by whichever method suits you.
Because it’s not the method that matters, it’s the result.
Anyone who tells you that their method is the only way, is either a cynical bullshit artist, or is seriously self-deluded, and if you believe them… well, that’s your decision. We hope it works out for you.”
A Simple Three Step DIY Enlightenment Process
Like most truths, it is actually simple to get in touch with the enlightened state of mind and experience a remarkable increase in the amount of time that you enjoy inner peace and happiness. Probably the most difficult thing is getting out of your own way and allowing new ideas to take hold in your mind. Here’s some of my suggestions.
Step One: Read
Realising your inherent enlightenment is a matter of taste-testing a lot of different ideas. It’s about trying different concepts on for size; mixing and matching until you come up with a personal ‘look’ that suits you. And the most tried and true method is by reading.
There is so much stuff out there on the internet that you could probably read enough to get the ideas you need just by surfing the web. Personally I also recommend an old fashioned concept called the ‘book’ also, but maybe that’s just me being old school!
However, apparently a great percentage of people dislike reading (although I suppose they probably wouldn’t have made it this far into the article) so, personal preferences aside, listening and watching audio/video is probably just as good if that’s what suits your learning style.
Another great option these days is to join in conversations via social media - or start them. Ask “what is enlightenment?” and analyze what people say!
The point is to take in as many different viewpoints about life and philosophy so that you have a wide knowledge base from which to make your own decisions about “what is”.
Step Two: Live Life
Get out there an experience the wonder that is life on Earth.
Travel around the world. Have adventures. Take risks. Open a business. Work hard for the thrill of it. Find your passions and embrace them. Climb Mt. Everest. Explore your dreams without caring what others might say (let them stay home and be safe while you really live). Get tattooed from head to foot. Spend six months in a remote place by yourself painting and writing poetry. Train to become an Olympian. Have several wild, passionate love affairs and then experience what real love means (it’s different). Or the other way around!
Learn what it means to be alive. Get into trouble and then get yourself out of it. Take risks. try as many different experiences as you can and really be aware of these experiences as they are happening (see step three).
I am nearly 35 and have packed more flavour into my life so far than a lot of people ever do. I have been a (seriously minor) rock star, run a vibrant cafe in a strange city, studied acting, French, Kung Fu, Chi Gong, and yoga. I’ve flown around the world and spent weeks - even months - living with locals in foreign lands. I’ve worked my balls off in the corporate sector (Blech! But the experience is priceless) and I’ve spent months doing nothing much but contemplate the breeze.
I’ve thrown myself into excessive hedonism and spiritual asceticism - and wriggled my way back out of both. I’ve had the beautiful lovers and had my heart broken on several occasions. I’ve enjoyed a close and truly satisfying relationship for 8 years now. I’ve sat in deep, silent meditation with true masters, and danced and babbled in tongues with Born Again Christians. I’ve started and run a nightclub of the all night variety. I’ve fathered a child. I’ve taken six months off to write a novel. I’ve battled addictions. I’ve tried any experience that in any way appealed to me, more than I can write about here, and there are many more I intend to try.
I’ve even tried stuff that I am ashamed off (and really don’t want to share with the world) but I am GLAD of those things I did (even if I regret the consequences) because it has all given me one thing: a decent measure of wisdom.
And without wisdom you will never have self-confidence, peace of mind or joy of heart.
Step Three: Meditate
It doesn’t matter what kind of meditation you try. Just try it. In fact try several different types and read lots about it because if it doesn’t blow your mind straight away (and it probably won’t) then be assured it will eventually.
Why is meditation so important? It is essential to enlightenment practice because it develops Awareness, with a capital A.
Awareness, the ability to truly be present in this exact moment, is the most important skill you can ever learn because without awareness you are never really living authentically, but rather you are all in your head living in the past and future and living out twisted versions of reality as filtered through your unchecked ego.
Meditation is probably the best way, but it is true that people achieve Awareness in other ways. Why do you think skydivers get addicted to the thrill of jumping out of planes? They sure as hell aint thinking about much else other than the present moment when they are hurtling through the sky!
As this blog grows, we are going to go further into meditation and how it works to help you realise liberation in this lifetime, but this is too big a topic for this one post.
So for now: get reading, get living and start experimenting with meditation - before you know it you will be a card carrying Rebel Zen Master!
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By Steven Mills
Firstly, Hi to all of our new subscribers to Rebel Zen and for the great comments we have been getting for the latest posts. Both Seamus and I really appreciate your thoughts and feedback.
I wanted to write today about a concept that is all too common for modern, internet connected people.
Almost everyone I know these days seems to be living their life at a frantic pace, working far too much and not spending enough time on themselves. They are living life at a speed that would make even Led Zeppelin circa 1973 want to lie down and take a Nana Nap. Sure it’s not hard livin’, hard drinkin’ party all night style living, but attaching yourself to a computer screen for 12 hours a day can certainly take its toll.
There is so much media and connectivity simultaneously vying for our attention that the important things like personal development, exercise and spiritual practice are often let go.
We put it to the back of our mind, and instead of keeping our meditation times and going to our yoga classes; we put personal time to the side until the busy period is over. Which is a shame, because meditation, yoga, and any other time where you get to sit, center your mind and simply be is the BEST thing to do when you are crazy busy.
It’s what you should be taking the time to do at 3.00pm when your mind is completely fried from a hectic work day. If you start to feel the old brain doing back flips under the strain of another spreadsheet or word document take 10 minutes to stop, and refresh yourself the best way you know, and then continue.
But if we don’t do this, and continue to push ourselves past our limits without rest, then there is the risk losing our true selves to work. Our unique personality, the fun loving part of ourselves that makes us who we are, is often the first part to fade when we become overtired and too obsessed with the unimportant things in life. We lose our ability to connect in a meaningful way with those we love, or don’t find value in spending time just being. Do this for long enough and all that will be left are the boring, stressed out and grumpy parts of us.
You see workaholic types that have lost any idea of who they are and what makes them happy. They lose that spark that makes them who they are; they become someone that is just “going through the motions”.
Don’t let this happen to you, you owe it to your SELF.
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By Seamus Anthony
This is the first installment of the (spontaneously created) “Rebel Zen Masters Interview Series”, where we interview people from differing walks of life that we feel represent the Rebel Zen ethos.
I am sure this happens to most us: Every now and then you come across a writer, musician or artist of any kind and get blown away by their work. Exploring their wares you get all excited and inspired and find yourself thinking “Man - that’s exactly how I feel!”.
Well that’s what happened to me just last week when I stumbled across Jonathan Mead’s writing at IlluminatedMind.net
I promptly left a few excited-like-a-kid comments at the bottom of some of his posts and then emailed Jonathan to see if he’d do me the honour of interviewing him. Here’s the result (my questions in italics).
BTW, there are heaps of links to his fantastic (and popular, if you need social proof) posts throughout the interview so make sure you go read ‘em!
There’s no doubt your cowboy style of personal development writing is taking off. So tell us about yourself. What’s your story in a nutshell, that brought you to this place as the Illuminated Mind dude?
I’ve always had a natural curiosity for life and the “stuff” it’s made of. I’ve also always had a desire to improve and better my life. Living a suboptimal life never appealed to me. Well, when I started getting into Alan Watts and Eastern Philosophy, I started to realize that everything is non-dual and in reality there’s not such thing as opposites. I initially got kind of bitter about this and thought, “there’s no reason to try to better my life, because there’s no such thing as something better than anything else, there just is.” That’s a true statement, but it can be taken too far. Ultimately what matters most is your integrity and your conscience. Our society has an obsession with figuring things out logically before we act. Your heart may be screaming “this is what you need!” but your mind is saying “I refuse to make a decision until we get all the facts straight.” Ultimately, this will leave you paralyzed because there’s a lot of things in life that just don’t necessarily have a logical explanation. It’s the difference between trying to “find happiness” and “being happiness.”
What do your old school mates think about all this zany personal development talk? Or do you strategically fail to bring it up at barbecues?
This might sound really depressing but I actually don’t have many friends. My wife and I prefer to spend most of our precious time together alone. I also went to about 10 different schools growing up so I don’t really keep in contact with any of my old school mates. If I did, I don’t think I would have a problem with it though. I’ve always been the kind of person that says what everyone else is thinking, but is afraid to talk about.
I notice in a post about meditating, you mentioned various meditation aids like incense, walking, and music as “props”. I am a no-frills meditator myself these days, having tried and dispensed with most of the cliched extras. Do you have a personal aversion to ‘props’ now in your meditation? Describe how you meditate. Do you have a routine?
I think those things are good for beginner and “mid-level” meditators. It’s not easy starting out meditating though and most people give up before they actually experience the gap between thoughts. The problem with this is we talk to ourselves all the time. We’re constantly doing rambling away, whether important or not to ourselves, and meditation for the first time is a big shock for the mind. The mind naturally revolts and feels it’s existence is threatened. The key is not to wage a war against thinking, but to start out simply witnessing your thoughts. The longer you can go just witnessing them, the more your mind will start to naturally quiet down and you can actually experience meditation.
As for me, I don’t really use many props now when meditating. At times I do enjoy listening to Japanese flute music while meditating, I find it to be the most calming music I’ve ever experienced. I also still greatly enjoying walking meditation, it provided me with my first real breakthrough with meditation so I think I’ll always have a certain fondness for it.
You talk about “total contentment” as feeling like “You’ve released all thoughts, labels and judgment and you simply are. When you do this, there’s a subtle feeling that there’s no longer a difference between you and everyone else, between what in here and what’s out there”. To me this sounds like I feel when I’ve had an amazing meditation or just have simply managed to access this state during my normal activities. This to me is the enlightened state of mind. How well would you say you manage to keep this state of mind during your usual activities (if at all)?
I’m certainly not a master of keeping persistent awareness of an enlightened state throughout my entire day. It hasn’t become a permanent fixture of my consciousness, but it is something constantly running in the background for me. I would say though that I always perceive life through the lens of non-duality and unity. I don’t see myself as a separate ego, I see myself as the universe embodying a physical form in which I create a story and experience physical reality through the senses.
What are your thoughts on God? Hung out with him lately?
Wow, that’s a loaded question. My thoughts on God are that “God” is really another word for Reality or Consciousness. Obviously there are many other names, “the Universe,” “Intelligence,” “Brahman,” etc.
But yes, I hang out with “him” constantly. We shoot pool and talk shop.
Claiming to be enlightened and other such outrageous acts of sacrilege is bound to piss some people off. Is it a case of a strategy of “divide and conquer”?
No it’s not a strategy of divide and conquer at all. I just wanted to show that it’s OKAY to talk about Enlightenment, or being Enlightened for that matter. I knew when I wrote Enlightenment is Overrated it would piss a lot of people off and I risked being viewed as an arrogant bastard. The problem is, those same people that view me as arrogant, are the same people that view Enlightened people as so far beyond themselves. They think it’s reserved for sages and celibate monks. That’s exactly the opposite of what needs to be communicated. Enlightened people are just like you and me. We get pissed off, we make mistakes, and we have problems. Enlightenment does not equal some false image of perfection. Perfection and imperfection are concepts. Reality is not a concept.
Do you lead any kind of workshops or meditation classes?
I have not, but I have considered it. I have to figure a way to make a living out of this somehow.
I loved your line “I was so obsessed with thinking outside the box, it began to follow me around”. Give our readers a brief run down of your theory of embracing your creative ADD.
Embracing Creative ADD for me means accepting the fact that there’s a million different ideas constantly running around in your mind. It’s finding the connections between those seemingly disparate thoughts that seems to create the best ideas.
On a side note, I think far too many people don’t respect the gestation period of great ideas. They try to force an idea to completion before it has reached it’s natural maturity. Creative ADD is about respecting the germination of ideas and allowing your subconscious to do the work it does best, making connections. If you can simply let go and trust that your ideas will mature, you can exceed the limits of your imagination.
You wrote “I’d rather have one amazing idea than 200 muddled & broken ones”, which reminds me of my pet theory of Curly’s Law . If you are able, what would you describe as your One Thing, or does this idea fill you with horror? 
The essential theme I think behind “One Thing” is not sacrificing your love for doing different things, but finding the prime factor. In your case that was media. Once you realize that media is your strength, you start working on developing that strength. But it’s not that simple and I think where people like you and me get so frustrated is answering the “money question.” If we can’t figure out a way to make a living doing that “one thing” we risk end up resenting our passions.
We have to develop our inner business man and find a way to actually make this whole thing profitable. There’s a lot of mental block many of us “creative minded” people face with making money doing what we love. We think it’s sinful, we think it’s unethical. What this really stems from is a kind of rebellion against all the unauthentic people that have capitalized off of factory line music or art. We don’t want to sell out and produce art that we know will sell, but we still want to be able to feed ourselves. We have to realize that making money doing what we love doesn’t have mean selling ourselves out and we can remain authentic doing it. It may take a lot hard work and failure, but I would rather be striving my whole life in the pursuit, then be a slave to someone else’s agenda.
I can relate to your addictive problems. I have been there myself: alcohol, pot, hard drugs. It’s taken me way longer than you to kick my old habits as I always found it near on impossible to do it until I really, really wanted to. Not just ‘thought it was a good idea’, but truly, deep down just didn’t want to do it anymore. That liberating moment came first with hard drugs, then cigarettes, then pot and now drinking (for now, bets are still out on whether I stick it out with that last one!) Have you got any pointers for people out there who feel that they should probably “kick the shit”?
What it really comes down to for most people, or at least for me, was realizing that I was searching for something out there that I wasn’t finding within myself. I wanted that good feeling, I wanted that buzz, or that escape. I wanted an unnatural high because I didn’t have it authentically. I’m not sure how much advice I can give, because most people have to hit a bottom before they realize this themselves. You can scream it at them all day, but they don’t get it until it’s something they realize for themselves.
The only word of advice I can really give is to take a hard look at your past. Take a hard look at yourself. Are you trying to escape something? Have the courage to be honest with yourself and true with yourself.
What kinds of training, if any, have you done? Chi Gong? Upside-down Vampire Bat Yoga?
Haha, is that really real?
I haven’t really done any formal training. I have practiced Chi Chong breathing a lot recently though, but not through any kind of formal tutelage. I’ve always been kind of a rebel and am a big advocate of DIY enlightenment.
You mention that you are a member of BrazenCareerist.com network. How does this help you?
Brazen Careerist has gotten me some good exposure to a wider net of people than I would have gotten otherwise. It’s been more of a networking tool for me than anything.
It’s also helped me branch out to connect with people in related (and unrelated) fields that I never probably would have connected with otherwise. It’s also helped me realize that PR, Non-profit, Marketing, Personal Development and other seemingly divergent groups are really often working toward a common vision. We’re all just coming at it from different angles.
I gotta say it’s awesome to read about somebody else who’s given the Cult of Productivity the flick. I used to try and try to be this uber-organised dude, but then I was reading Getting Things Done and I just snapped and thought “You know what? Bugger this!” and since then I just write down the five tasks that will move me closest to my goals each day, and I have a running list of just absolutely everything that may or may not get done. I try and get the Big Five done but if not I say “Meh!” and I go bounce my little girl on my knee. And I am getting more done than ever! Counter Intuitive - but it works. I slack off for half the day and I am getting more done than ever! Got any anti-productivity tricks of your own to share?
I think the realization that happiness is not the result of productivity seems to be a widespread consensus moving through the personal development space.
Remaining authentic and following your natural rhythms will bring you greater happiness than any type of bulletproof productivity system.
I think we often forget and fail to respect that there are many different types of personalities in the world. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. What matters most is how you personally feel about it. You have to have the courage to freestyle life.
I have found that quitting your job is the greatest way to get ahead in life. How do you earn a crust these days, if you don’t mind me asking, and do your career plans include being the Illuminated Mind guy?
I work a regular 9 to 5 job as a graphics designer for a non-profit healthcare company. It’s really a great job and I probably complain about it more than necessary. I think the main reason for this simply that I want to be in control of my time and want to work toward my own goals, not someone elses. I want to own my mind.
I would love for Illuminated Mind to be my primary source of income, but I’m not going to bet all my chips on it. It can take a long time to bring a blog to the point of profitability. I would love to use this as a possible platform to get a book deal or sell information products.
This last question is about blogging rather than personal development. Hope that’s alright … Looking at your blog, I notice two things: 1) you are getting pretty popular and 2) you do a fair few “Top Tens” and other lists. Is it true that we still need to make lists to get a lot of diggs and up our blog traffic? How many lists can we take in? I, for one, am all listed out and (no offence) tend to pull a face whenever I see blog posts starting with “the Seven Steps to … ” or “Nine Ways to … “. Do you think rampant listing is on the endangered list?
I think people have really abused the list. They use it as a crutch to produce an article when they really don’t have an interesting idea or something worth saying. Lists also mean you don’t necessarily have to write transitions between points, which let’s be honest, is not always easy to do.
A lot of people also write lists because they’re popular. The more items on the list, the better it seems. “What, 67 ways?! OMG, 67!” They know these usually do well on social media as well, so it can be really tempting.
Lists also do well because a lot of people don’t really want to read a real article that will make them think. They want bite sized feel good bullet points. They want conveniently packaged productivity and travel size wisdom. It’s makes them feel good reading a list of “10 ways to be make your grandma feel special.” The reality is most people forget these lists before they even started reading them.
In defense of the list, however, there are certain times where a list is the best choice. If you want to give someone ten suggestions for something original (because you know I don’t need 10 more ways to make my day great) and there’s no real way to format it into a paragraph-style article, then by all means make a list. Just don’t sell your soul doing it. A good example of this was my last article 7 Rules to Re-Claim the Ownership of Your Mind. There really was no other way for me to write this. Sometimes thoughts are just better organized in points.
It’s damn hard too as a blogger trying to fit a lot of ideas into a single post. If we were all writing books, those “7 ways” might be broken up into each having their own chapter and we wouldn’t get as much shit for it.
So the lesson here is, be authentic. Write a list when you feel that’s the best choice, but don’t sell your soul trying to write what you feel will be popular.
Thanks for your time Jonathan and I hope these questions don’t blow too hard.
They didn’t blow at all, thanks for having me Seamus. Keep up the great work at Rebel Zen, I see great things in the future for this blog.
*********
Jonathan is the author of Illuminated Mind - The less boring side of personal development. His articles include Living Freestyle; Life Without a Template and Liberate Your Life: Put Yourself on Auto-Response. You can subscribe to his here, or get more from him on twitter.
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… the trick is getting in touch with this truth so that you feel it.
By Seamus Anthony
If you read a lot of Zen stuff, enlightenment stuff, you’ll come across the idea that we are all inherently enlightened, and I believe that this is true.
But also true is that most people don’t usually feel anything like they’re enlightened at all.
In fact most people either don’t even know what enlightenment is or they believe that it’s something “up there” that they cannot hope to achieve. Well, we’re not the first but we at Rebel Zen are here to tell you that it is true - you ARE enlightened but you just don’t know it yet.
Getting in Touch with Your Inherent Enlightenment
At the core of your being, underneath all of the emotions, moods, thoughts, opinions, and physical sensations is your True Self or your soul. Your True Self knows that it is one with all of creation, the Universe, God. It exists in a permanent state of peace that cannot be shaken even when you are in the midst of the worst possible crises imaginable. It is NOT the part of you that freaks out because somebody is pointing a gun at your head (or more likely, because the new guy in the office is using your favourite damn coffee mug). This part of you, much more readily accessible, is your ego.
So how can you get in touch with your True Self? Here’s some ideas:
- Forget All of Your Assumptions About What Enlightenment Actually Is
The reason I never turn to strangers at the pub and say “Hi, I’m Seamus and I’m enlightened” is because I don’t really want to be branded a complete tosser, such are most people’s assumptions about what it means to be enlightened.
But the truth is I do consider myself to ‘be enlightened’ and so are you. The difference between me, and some really advanced spiritual practitioner, and your average crack-addict street thug is that I fall in the middle there somewhere in terms of being in touch with my True Self.
What this means in practical terms is that I spend most of my time being aware of the calm, expansive, connected-to-the-universe part of me and am able to tap into this to be a very calm, confident, disgustingly chirpy individual most of the time.
And then sometimes I lose touch with that and blow my stack, or become overcome with fear or get the blues. But increasingly less as my ability to walk in the light grows.
Sorry I know phrases like “walk in the light” are pretty lame but it is sometimes hard to describe such an intangible feeling without resorting to cliches. (And besides, it’s getting late and I wanna watch a DVD, ok?)
- Learn To Meditate:
This may not be groundbreaking news for every reader of this blog, but for newbies it is the logical place to start.
When you meditate you quieten the loud voices of the ego, move out of ‘fight or flight response’ and learn to increase your awareness of a deeper calmer You underneath all that noise and emotion. This chilled-out version of you goes by many names, I prefer True Self. I go into more detail about this ‘most bodacious’ aspect of You later in this list.
It goes beyond the scope of this post to teach you how to meditate, but there’s plenty of instruction out there. If you don’t already meditate, make a note to investigate this further later because once you know how to meditate then you will be able to …
- Realise that Existence is Just An Onion …
Okay, I’m being funny, but what I mean here is twofold. The first meaning is that if you want to experience your inherent enlightenment (and believe me you can) then you’ll need to peel back the ‘onion layers’ of your mind to find the still, calm ’space of good feeling’ that lies at the core of your being. This is where your True Self abides. Again, more on the True Self later
The second level to the onion wisecrack is…
- Discover That Life Is Just A Zany Dream.
I know that people feel real pain and hunger and that on a practical level this sort of flippant New Age talk may not do the disadvantaged any immediate good*, but nevertheless, on a philosophical level, we all grow up to believe that we know What Life Is.
We can see it, right? It’s right in front of us. We read about it. We are animals on a planet in a galaxy in the universe.
Hello! We DON’T know What Life Is and for all we know we could be little bugs living inside a gigantic onion. And hey! Maybe that enormous onion is about to be sliced up and sprinkled over some kind of unfathomable cosmic pizza and slid into a big, hot quantum oven!
Ok. Probably not. But still, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that we know what it’s all about. We don’t. And we never will. And enlightenment is about knowing that we don’t know, not suddenly knowing all the secrets to the meaning of life.
That’s all she wrote about that, dude, so don’t believe the hype. Gurus who tell you that they know all the answers need to read the next point…
- Keep A Leash On Your Ego:
Realise that your ego doesn’t need to freak out every time something happens. It is healthy and normal to get upset when you’re in the midst of a car crash, it is not healthy to lose it when somebody else steals the sweet car park nearest the supermarket doors. Your ego is an idiot (so is mine by the way) and needs to be kept on a leash like my big dumb dog does. Otherwise, like my dog, your ego will go and crap in the worst possible spot right when everybody is looking. It’ll go jumping up at strangers and stealing candy bars off children.
But how to you control your ego?
- Become Aware That Your Ego Is Not All Of You:
It’s just a part of you, and a bit of a stupid part too. An evolutionary throwback that unfortunately most people in this world still let run the show. Really, on an emotional level, humans as a collective species are pretty much operating at the level of cavemen (albeit cavemen with really impressive toys).
Become aware that you can observe your ego even when it is going about its usual business. If you practice you can even take a step back into True Self while your ego is throwing a hissy-fit and actually observe “yourself” having a tanty with a sense of wry, detached humour. Which part of you stops you from murdering your husband when you are having a row? Not your ego that’s for sure.
I put “yourself” in quotes because we often make the mistake of thinking that “I lost my temper”. The whole of you did not lose your temper, only the ego did, it’s just that most of us have been raised to fully identify with that little bit of our minds even though it actually makes no sense to do so.
Know that there’s a wide, expansive, calm, intelligent part of your mind quietly waiting for you to come home to it and hear what it has to say. Your True self.
The ego is loud and demanding. It’s impatient. The True Self is quiet and patient. It knows that it makes no difference if the ego gets what it wants or not because in the end your True self is eternal, only the ego faces certain death.
- Realise that Only the Ego dies, but your True Self is eternal.
The True Self is eternal because it is a seamless part of the whole and we all know that when ‘we’ die, the Whole goes on. Part of the reason the ego behaves the way it does is because it knows it is going to die and it HATES that idea. You may also feel a bit scared at times about dying, but know that your True Self goes on, just your ego dies when your physical body expires.
Logic tell me that conscious awareness of myself as an individual therefore ceases then too, but of course my ego likes to believe that I will still ‘be me’ afterwards; that I will be like “Oh, I am still here, my True Self, just off on a nice fuzzy journey somewhere new.”
Hey - maybe. But then again, maybe not.
Hell, what do I know?
We’ll all find out soon enough I guess but meantime…
- Deliberately Notice How Magical Life Is Again
I think part of growing older can be that we forget to see this natural world that we live in as it really is: an incredible miracle full of mystery, magic and wonder.
Just look at your hand! Look at your cat! Look at anything and see again, like you would have when you were a child, what an incredible, amazing, wondrous mystery Life is.
Part of finding true, deep and lasting happiness is learning to live in the moment as much as you can and when you are living in the present, you cannot fail but to see how incredible it all is. It’s like you develop a kind of mild super-power of the eyes. It actually reminds me of when I was younger and silly enough to drop the odd tab of acid, not that I am recommending that (it’s unhealthy for the body) but anyway, those who have been there will know that I am talking about a Way of Seeing that brings you acute awareness of the pure magic that surrounds us everyday.
If you are thinking “What is this freakin’ hippy on about? I am looking around me now and all I see is my Dad’s butt-crack as he bends over to get at the last beer in the fridge (and there’s nothing magical about that let me tell you)” then I advise you to learn to meditate and especially try meditating on nature. Just sit there and stare at a beautiful flower for half an hour or as long as it takes before you suddenly get what I mean. Then look around you. Even your Dad’s arse will look better from then on.
And whether life is feeling magical to you or not at all …
- Be Grateful for Your Chance At Life
And be grateful for all the things in your life. Even those things you would sooner live without.
We’ve all got aspects of our lives that we would rather just disappeared and I don’t know how it works but I have found that if you consciously practice gratitude for everything in your life, even the ‘bad’ stuff, you will more easily and more often connect with your True Self and enjoy the fruits of your inherent enlightenment: peace of mind and deep happiness.
If you are having trouble with the idea of being grateful for your hemorrhoids then …
- Practice Non-Judgement
Every time you judge something as “bad” you disconnect yourself from the flow of the Universe, from your True Self. This can be a very, very hard skill to put into practice and I doubt you or I will ever manage to practice non-judgement 100% of the time. For instance I’d be happy to bet a dollar that if I were to poke you in the eye, you’d judge that as a pretty crap move on my behalf. And this inherent tendency is useful on a level. If you remained impartial about oncoming buses or falling pianos then you wouldn’t be around very long!
But it is amazing how much angst we put ourselves through by taking such strong stands against minor things. Things like “what she said” or “what he did” or even truly small things like “I don’t like brussel sprouts” (guilty of that one myself).
Fuck it. Eat the sprouts. Forget what she said. Dismiss what he did. Don’t waste your energy and time getting all pent up over it when you could be experiencing the peace and joy of enlightenment, or, for that matter, a Mars Bar.
Judgment causes a disconnect between your consciousness and your True Self, who is at peace with all and judges nothing. So next time it rains, catch yourself hunching up and frowning. Truly, be still! What does it matter? Is rain a bad thing? No way! You know that. It’s awesome! It isn’t acid; it’s a life giving miracle! So stand up straight and revel in it until you get to the bus shelter, and you will have proven to yourself that you truly are a fully enlightened soul. Enjoy that feeling, and gratefully share it around 
*BTW - Metaphysical discourse, or fluffy New Age talk, may not be much use when you’re starving or in the middle of a war, BUT if the majority of people realised their inherent enlightenment then such problems would disappear because all those overblown egos that cause all of these problems would lose their hold on the puppet strings of power. That’s why we must strive to help people get in touch with their True Selves, because if we eventually reach critical mass, then we finally WILL solve the problems of the world. And maybe the new Age of Connectivity is going to herald that change. Make it so.
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3rd post in the three part Curly’s Law series by Seamus Anthony (here’s the first and the second)
This is a bit of a long post with two parts: 1) How the Mega Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness and 2) How To Discover Your True Life Purpose.
How the Mega-Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness
The great over-achievers of this world don’t just use wishful thinking or hard work to get to the top, they use the ‘real’ secret which is Curly’s Law. Curly’s Law states “Do One Thing” and is essentially the act of having laser-like focus on what you want. It is about identifying your One Thing and just going for that at the expense of other areas of interest. It’s about the power of mono-maniacal obsession, and if you want to achieve great things, then you can use this trick to get ahead in leaps and bounds.
The Richest Man in the World and His Great Secret for Success.
Long before Billy Crystal and his mates saddled up and rode of into the the sunset, Curly’s Law was known by some as ‘Carnegie’s secret’, after Andrew Carnegie, the old-world steel tycoon and philanthropist who advised people to ‘put your eggs in one basket – and then watch the basket’.
Carnegie, at one time the richest man in the world, and a self-made man, was said to have a ‘great secret’ about how to become rich. This was popularised by Napoleon Hill in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich”. The secret was not explicitely revealed in the book but was rather hinted at and the author said it was important that you figure it out yourself. People have since thrown a bunch of guesses around as to what the secret was, from the whole Law of Attraction thing to the less glamourous suggestion that you just need to get on with it and work hard. Searching around I found this quote, and as far as I am concerened it puts the stamp of authenticity on the worthiness of Curly’s Law and also puts an end to the speculation about what carnegie’s secret was:
“Here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it: adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. This is the great secret…” Andrew Carnegie
I don’t understand the conjecture myself. the man’s exact words were “This is the great secret”. End of story.
All Great Achievers Use Curly’s Law to Make it Big
Whether they know it or not, I propose that all of the mega-successful use the Law of One Thing to get to the top of their chosen field.
Here’s an excersise: choose one of your greatest heroes and ask yourself this - do they have what you would describe as obsessive single minded determination, laser-like focus on what it is that they do?
I would be willing to place a bet that the answer would have to be ‘Yes’. Let’s take a few of my personal heroes as examples (in no particular order - and you may wonder why these people are my heroes but all I can say is, each to their own!).
- Jerry Seinfeld - obsessively cared only about and worked only towards being a stand up comedian for his entire life until he became the most successful stand up in the US and went on to become the wealthiest comedian ever.
- Steve Jobs (Apple Computers) - obsessively strove to achieve innovation in the world of computer design until he finally got it right and made Apple what it is today. (And tell me he didn’t lie up all night scheming about how to win Apple back when he got kicked out for a while!)
- Nick Cave - this guy has pursued a singular artistic vision relentlessly for his entire adult life and I’d be willing to bet that he’s artistically satisfied (although I doubt he’d admit it) and probably doesn’t get too stressed out about paying the mortgage off either.
Now these are just three of my heroes, and despite the twists and turns in their journeys, all three of them have always returned like a heat-seeking missile to their One Thing. They knew what it was - and they sure as hell weren’t about to let anything trivial stand in their way.
I challenge you to come up with a list of ten mega-successful people who achieved greatness by being wishy-washy, choppin’ and changin’, unfocussed, undetermined, people who could never make up their minds about what it was they wanted to do. I’ve never tried to do this, but I am willing to take a punt that it wouldn’t work.
Madonna: was obsessed with becoming the number one female pop star. Stephen King: wrote compulsively his whole life and only ever wanted to be a novelist. Bob Hawke: gave up alcohol so it wouldn’t get in the way of becoming Prime Minister of Australia. Abraham Lincoln, lost something like 8 elections before he went on to be President of the United States. The list goes on…
How To Discover Your True Life Purpose
But I can hear some of you already thinking “But I don’t KNOW what my One Thing is! That’s the whole problem!” and I don’t know either. But I have been through all of this and have some suggestions that may help you.
First get yourself into a contemplative, relaxed frame of mind. Have a bath, turn the lights down low and stare at the fire or go for a walk in the woods by yourself. If you know how to meditate, do some before you start this process.
There are a lot of techniques out there for discovering your true life purpose, but here is the one I used. It is deceptively simple but the key is not to move on to the next question until you have answered the one before it to your full satisfaction.
- What do I want to be?
A very simple, short and open question. If you are in a relaxed, contemplative mood, the answer may come to you directly. Just like that. Your own voice in your head may just serve up the answer like a piece of pie on a plate.
Or it may not come for a while. If you don’t manage to hear your True Self straight away then it is up to you to simply wait. Wait for the answer. Wait for a number of days in need be but be sure to find quite time to contemplate this answer. Or talk to somebody you can be open with as this often helps you to unlock the inner workings of your own mind. Tarot cards or other oracles are also great for this kind of thing. They don’t tell you the answer they help your mind expand, provide the catalyst for the expansion of your consciousness.
When the answer comes you will know.
And here’s a hint. It won’t be about your career. By asking yourself what you want to be, the only honest answer lies much much deeper than that. We are talking about the true meaning behind your life, behind all of our lives.
I have to admit, my process was backed up by years of spiritual and personal development - reading, meditating and inner work - so if you’ve never gone this deep before, give it some time. Who knows, it could take years for the answer to come.
But listen very carefully to your inner voice when you first ask the question because it will without a doubt answer you straight away, without a doubt, but the question is whether you can be quiet enough inside your mind to hear what your true-self wants.
Once you know what you want to be, then ask…
2. “Why do I want to be what I want to be? Why have I chosen this as my main sub-conscious motivator?”
Here is where you will get into your own psyche and discover why you are who are why you behave like you do and why you want to be the person you want to be. Again, make sure you are quiet inside before you ask and then listen very carefully to the answer that will come directly from your True Self.
When you listen to the quiet voice of your True Self, you will not only know WHAT you want to be but WHY and this will be a great liberation to you.
If you listen softly enough, you just might be lucky enough to hear your own voice identify your true purpose in life. Good luck!
And remeber what Curly the Cowboy said: “Do One Thing … you stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit”.
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Part Two of a Three Part Series (here’s the first)
By Seamus Anthony
One line from the cheesy 1991 movie City Slickers (yes, the one starring Billy Crystal) helped me to achieved absolute and total spiritual enlightenment in a blinding flash of inspiration.
And no, I am not kidding you.
Well, actually … maybe just a little bit
But the point is I did get something amazing out of that film and this is a thing that I later came to see being referred to as “Curly’s Law“.
Curly’s law states simply this: Do One Thing
Curly was the tough old cowboy character played by the late Jack Palance. Here’s the scene from the movie where Curly espouses his life philosophy to Mitch, Billy Crystal’s character:
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Curly: This. [holds up one finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.
Now that little nugget of wisdom is so simple, that I dare say you’ve watched that movie more than once and never really gave that statement much thought at all. But I am telling you now that - unconventional source that it may come from - there is enough power in that little statement to change the world for ever, and to make the difference between you achieving your dreams or not.
The reason it blew my puny little mind so hard is because for years I had been struggling with the fact that I never seemed to be getting any real lasting results, either in terms of income or of artistic satisfaction, when I was always running around busy on a number of awesome projects. If I had so many great projects on the go, then why wasn’t i getting he pay off?
Well, when I watched that old cowboy hold up his finger I suddenly got it - I had a Zen-like Satori moment. Satori is a blinding flash of insight that brings instant enlightenment. I suddenly saw that my problem was that I wasn’t ever truly focusing with the kind of laser like intensity that I should have on just One Thing. I needed to discover what my One True Thing was and just do that.
But this wasn’t an easy thing to do. I am a musician who loves writing who loves entrepreneurship who loves personal development and spirituality - that’s four things! Which was I going to do? I tried to make myself just choose one but I couldn’t because this just seemed forced and I knew I would always be wishing I could write something if I just chose music or that I could start a cool business if I was only writing or whatever. So I decided to chill out and get to the bottom of the problem.
To cut a long story short I eventually came to the realisation that beneath my different interests lay a common factor - everything that I loved doing (career wise) revolves around media. If I am doing a music gig, well that’s about promoting my recorded work and it also leads to people being interested in buying my writing. And my writing is most often about personal development. And my personal development entrepreneurial ideas tend to be about selling media products designed to enrich people’s lives. So essentially my One Career Thing is media and the different aspects of that all complement the single main career purpose, so whatever I am doing, whether it be writing, making music, or working on my personal development business interests, I am always working away at my Career One Thing which is Media.
But What About The Meaning of Life?
Oh yeah, that.
Well, above and beyond the career question, I felt the need to go deeper and find out what my One Thing for my whole life is. My Definite Major Purpose as Napoleon Hill calls it in Think and Grow Rich, and as it is more commonly known, my True Life Purpose.
Whoa … a heavy question. In City Slickers, it is basically implied that Billy’s Crtsytal’s One Thing is his family, but to me that seems a bit one dimensional. Family is certainly one of the most important aspects of life to me but yet I still felt that there was something deeper, or higher, that underpinned everything like Family, Career, etc.
I had to go through a process to find this out (the complexity of which is beyond the scope of this article) but I did come to a realisation of my true Life Purpose, One Thing, or Major Definite Purpose.
I don’t believe it helps me to go telling every person in the world what this is, because it would read trite compared to the intensity of the the experience of discovering this One Thing and the power that keeping my focus on this thing brings into my life. But I am here to tell you today that if you can go back and discover what your One Thing is, well you will never look back and a lot of your problems and frustrations and confusion will dissapear into thin air once and for all.
So by now you may be thinking “Gee how did we get from a cowboy whose One Thing was simply ‘bein’ a cowboy’ to deep and meaningful shit like the above? And where’s the one-thingness gone anyway? You’ve been talking about all kinds of things…”
Well, to clarify: What I am saying is that when you discover what your overall One Thing is in your life, you will then find it easier to identify your lesser One Things, or if you like, your Sub-Things. For example, underneath your Major One Thing might come four headings “career” “family” health” and “society” (you might have more headings, or different ones, it’s just an example). And each of those could be broken down into smaller and smaller subsections, like in a family tree or the random company employee-structure diagram below that I grabbed off the ‘tubes.
And you can keep breaking these things down until you get to the level of your daily To Do List. And here’s where the power of Curly’s Law really kicks in on a couple of levels.
Firstly, you will know that everything that is on your To Do List is congruous with your One Major Thing, and that if it’s not, then you should just shaft that thing out of your life.
Secondly, when you are doing anything, JUST DO THAT ONE THING. Here’s where all of the Zen stuff you’ve ever read comes in. Zen masters say that true enlightenment comes from Present Moment Awareness which means only putting your focus on whatever is happening in this moment right now. That’s what the Zen dudes are on about when they are doing archery or flower arranging or of course meditating, they are just focussing on the thing that they are experiencing at this precise moment now.
And that’s how they find such contentment and fulfimment and inner peace. Think about it, when you are doing something that you enjoy so much that you are absorbed in the ‘flow’ of what you are doing to the exclusion of everything else that is there to distract you should you allow, don’t you feel at peace? Maybe you love knitting, and when you knit you just count and twiddle your needles and stare at the wall and become very peaceful because you are just knitting, you are not knitting while checking your emails, while wondering what you are going to have for dinner while talking to your husband, you are just knitting and that is why you are at peace.
Simplicity brings peace because it eliminates tension. Complexity causes tension.
Just Do One Thing.
The cowboy said it, the multi-millionaire said, and I am saying it.
Just Do One Thing and you will experience greater success and inner peace in your life than ever before.
“Wait A Minute? What multi-millionaire?”
I didn’t I mention him yet? Well you will have to wait until the next post in the series about Curly’s Law, where I show you examples of mega-successful dudes and how they used mono-maniacal obsession to get to the top of their chosen fields.
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By Seamus Anthony
Part One in a Series of Three
Do you struggle to achieve mental clarity in a world of busyness, complexity and clutter? Do you find yourself chasing your tail, always busy but never seeming to get around to doing the things that are most important to you, like discovering your True Life Purpose, achieving your dreams, or devoting the time and energy to your family that you know deserve?
Wouldn’t you love to know what the secret is that the great achievers of our age use to move mountains? What it is that your heroes know that keeps them at the top, the thing you are missing, the thing that holds you back? How do they manage to churn out such amazing work, and rack up win after win while you chase your tail and struggle to pay the bills?
Well, despite the hype of recent times, the ’secret’ that these people have is NOT simply magically focussing on the end results that they desire. It is NOT simply a case of ‘ask, believe, receive’ or else we’d all be running around being fabulously rich and have all the time in the world to do whatever the hell we like (and look good doing it). Creative visualisation and the Law of Attraction are part of the overall process for success, no doubt about it, but there is another closely linked secret that gets overlooked.
And no, it’s not ‘hard wor
