image: ts1230 

Part of the extraordinary mechanics of the human mind is its ability to transcend its current situation and either endure or persist anyway. You may think this refers to people finding themselves in a war torn region of Africa. You may think it refers to Jews in the Holocaust but it does not. It refers to all of us at all times.

Studies carried out among the brightest and the best have found that young people, bright achievers at university, find themselves overwhelmed by the expectations put upon them. They find themselves almost paralysed by the stress of modern living and its high achievement ethos. In point of fact, they find themselves as far removed from happiness as it is possible to be.

Chemical dependence and suicide levels have skyrocketed in our age and we have a major problem. We have, in esence, given rise to a world that people can’t cope with the complexity and structure of. The pressure to be and do something that may be alien to our intrinsic nature is massive and we see a generation emerging for whom celebrity and the extravagances presented within the mass media are almost assumed to be automatic entitlements.

Fine if you are one of those who actually reaches this mythical nirvana at the apex of material and cultural abundance. The difficulty arises when you are not among this illusory elite and are lacking the cognizance to give your perceived ‘failure’ a context. If you are raised on a diet of soap opera, ‘reality’ TV, celebrity magazines and a media that shoves the accoutrement of this meaningless world in your face and thereby shapes your mind, expectations and cognition you have a big problem.

It’s like the old adage about winners and losers. You set twenty kids up to run the egg and spoon race at school when they’re five years old and you have created the dynamic for nineteen losers and one winner. Statistically that’s not so good because that means that you have created fertile soil for all sorts of things to grow in that will play out in later life. I’m not against competition, it is within the natural order of things, but I am against creating false perceptions of what life is actually about and then releasing people into that model like so many lab rats.

We don’t know what the eventual outcome of this bizarre celebrity based culture will be but the indications are that it is not for the best nor will it, to juxtapose utilitarianism, create the best possible outcome for the greatest number of people.   

What are you left with? There are the simple things that have underpinned the circumstances governing our lives for time immemorial. What the Greeks called Eudaimonia or the Good Life. The idea of right thought and right action bringing about the best outcomes. As an individual you will serve a master, whether it is adherence to celebrity nonsense or indeed Eudaimonia, your thoughts and actions will be subliminally directed by those things you have allowed yourself to fall under the spell of.

Mostly your formative years will have placed you in no option scenarios whereby you will have eaten whatever was served up before you. Now you are a more discerning individual your dietary options have refined and you may be more selective. The Good Life is there to be had, whether you can find your way to it is a matter that is in your hands.

I believe that by the law of attraction you will get what you are looking for, we all do. The art is to know what it is you are looking for. If you are a seeker of wisdom then wisdom will come to you, if you desire celebrity then it will come to you. The real skill in living a life is to have the wit to perceive the eventual outcomes of what it is that you choose to serve and what its ultimate payment to you will be. Equally you must bear in mind the charge it will exact from you before giving its bounty up.

image: marta p 

Do you find that there are particular themes recurrent within your life?

Have you noticed how at times you tune yourself into particular issues, whatever they may be, and find books, articles, references et al concerning that issue? You may strike up conversations with people and discover it’s something they are an expert in or have given great thought to. You may catch bits of conversation, documentaries that relate to the area you are concerned with.

It’s like being a spider at the centre of a web. Consider the Universe as a multi dimensional matrix, composed of matrices that overlay and interact with one another. Your place within that is of being a pathfinder. Creating routes that join up seemingly unrelated areas and fashioning a web or net that trawls the dark matter of human consciousness in the hope of capturing sparks or flashes of light.

Have you ever wondered what being illumined means? Consider a light-bulb and the two states that it can occupy, switched on or switched off. Think of the difference between the two states. One is an inanimate and pretty limited contraption. The other is the bringer of light and the harbinger of opportunities denied by the darkness.

An illumined individual is no less than that. Where a light-bulb requires an electric current to heat the filament and start to glow white hot and thus radiate light an illumined person too requires an electric current. The difference being that a light-bulb needs electricity with wires from a generating station that is fed along a grid to the point of usage. An illumined individual draws their energy from what they become connected to, what they are ‘plugged into’.

In the same way that a light-bulb requires a particularly engineered structure, the filament, the power source and the glass bowl to isolate the process and allow the concentrated heat generation, so does an illumined person. The engineered structure is their level of accomplishment, they become the filament of their own lives and the things that they connect to empower their systems. The glass bowl, to extend the metaphor, is their own integrity and ability to maintain a cohesive process while not becoming subject to distractions that may inhibit or interfere with their process. It is this which allows illumination and the individual to radiate a light within the darkness. Clearly this does not refer to a person taking on light-bulb like characteristics but a light that engenders illumination in others when they are touched by it.

This is what distinguishes the truly great teachers from the rest. In the presence of an illumined individual the proces is contagious and it is possible to see the light and achieve new perspectives upon previously impenetrable areas. Problems are solved, questions are answered and darkness is banished. This is how true teaching happens, it is a process of contagion, in the presence of such an individual you ‘catch’ whatever they have. The significant thing is that unless you have the necessary structure within yourself to hold what you have caught it becomes merely a high point that is soon forgotten.

It’s like putting rocket fuel in an engine that can’t burn it, it may roar brightly momentarily but it is soon spent and useless. this is where development comes into the equation. Development is about engineering a circumstance in oneself that is capable of handling high grade material without becoming burned in the process.

So few do and the history books are littered with the tales of those who, like Icarus, flew too high, too soon. the imperative upon the individual who seeks enlightenment is to do the necessary groundwork beforehand and make the whole journey manageable.

image: Swamibu

When you can see the Universe in a handful of dust, when you can see the simplest cause in the most apparently complicated process, when you can transcend the storm and locate the stillness that is in its eye you are close.

There is a special place in all of us, a portal into a multi-dimensional space that enables us to expand and to connect with the flow of energies that  swirl and gather to form the physical worlds. The spaces in between are a symphony of frequencies and emanations that interact with one another and give character to the chamber of occurrences that is the setting for all our lives.

In moments of insight something alights upon your consciousness much as the insect pollinates the flower and causes fertilization to occur. Your mind,so long as you do not shut it down, is a fertile circumstance that is primed always to create and connect to the next piece in the unfolding jigsaw that is your life. 

Stay close by, do not become drawn into the peripheral matters of existence. Try not to lose sight of the things that are important to you, those things upon which you may draw sustenance as a thirsty traveller drinks deeply from a fresh mountain stream. As long as you try, as long as your intention is clear then you will not stray far from the path.

image: Altus

Sometimes you can sit and wait for that which has your name on it. Yes there are things for you and they do not all have to be chased. Sometimes they seek you out.

Like a feather on the breeze or the ruby in the dust, sometimes they find you.

Often I have wondered at the majesty of the Universe and I am humbled to be a part of it. I do not know precisely what my part is but I know that it could rend and crush me in an instant… yet it does not.

I give thanks for that which has been surrendered to me. To those knowings and wisdoms that have been delivered to me by a benign hand. I thank Creation for allowing me to be a part of it, for knowing it, experiencing it.

It is a process of pitch and yaw. You cannot be always thrusting, there has to be the yawing too, otherwise you will offer no succour to those things that would share and enhance your life.

Make time for the small things, count your blessings. You are bathed in a richness that is exquisite, take the time to acknowledge it once in a while.

image: Nasa 

Imagination rules the world. There is no middle ground in this. There are those with the capacity to imagine a future and conjure or manifest it in their now and then there are the others. Which are you?

Consider such thinkers, no let’s call them imagineers, as Albert Einstein or Napoleon Bonaparte who placed great emphasis upon imagination. The thing that sets them, and their kind, apart is the ability to act upon their conceptual pioneering. What does this mean for you in the here and now, because it is always easy to be wise after the event?

Your capacity for imagination is the key to your tomorrows. Whatever you can envisage you can create and bring about. Within any such study there are always caveats to be noted, and you are bound by planetary and Universal law. So you can’t imagine something from the realms of pure fantasy and then complain that ‘this stuff doesn’t work’. Everything that you come into contact with in the world began as a spark in someone’s imagination, from the most startling things such as the Internet to the most seemingly mundane.

In the here and now there are two areas to be considered. They are intention and realisation. What do you intend to do and how much of it actually gets realised? Imagination is rarely the stumbling block, most people can come up with good ideas if they are prompted. What is lacking is in the area of motivation and following through to completion.

What this means is that there are few self starters and few doers. It is reasonable to say that there are two types of people, doers and watchers. Ask yourself, which one are you?

We start our journey bright eyed and full of hope and the twists and turns of the road can make us jaded or weary or cynical. This is understood, it is not a judgement call but the empathy we owe to each other in the understanding that all are brother or sister within the same setting. This is the point when imagination becomes stifled, horizons lowered and expectations diminished. Now I work with young people whom the world has often disabused and treated with outrageous contempt and that is an entire study in itself but one of the strange things that can develop in them is a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

I’ll not put on my sociologist’s hat here and attempt to analyse that but I will reflect back to you about your own sense of entitlement. Do you think that the world owes you a living? If you do then you will stifle your own ability to do and be as you wait for things to be presented to you on a plate, or even a silver platter.

It’s important because you write your own ticket. You create your own reality and establish the tone of what surrounds and is attracted to you. What makes imagination important is that it allows you to be pre-emptive in your life rather than reactive. You can define your own boundaries and specify those things you will have and will not have in your life. There are things that will come ‘out of the blue’ that you could not have anticipated but how will you be when those things arise? How will you react to the unforeseen? Will you panic, freeze, explode? What would you want your responses to be?

Imagination is the ability to allow your mind to free range and explore the possibilities of what you know and engage with what you do not know. Imagination is the gatekeeper of the unknown and each time you visit its house you push back the limitations of your own life a little further. It’s a little like being a hunter/gatherer - you forage in unknown territory and bring back whatever you find to nourish and sustain those who depend upon your skills and abilities.

In the tribe that is you, this is the challenge that life sets before you. How you meet that challenge is entirely your decision to make. Imagination is the tool that unlocks the door into your tomorrows.     

How does your garden grow?

How you garden is how you are in your life. What you cultivate is an external reflection of your inner process. One of the great difficulties is finding a source of objective reflection. If you garden then it is there for you.

There is something calming and settling about being in the garden and working to assert yourself upon it and the way it is. One of the balms in my life is cutting the lawns and trimming the hedges in my own garden. I love to work on the shapes, the curves and the angles of the hedges and derive immense pleasure when I am finished from stepping back and seeing the result of my labours.

There is satisfaction and fulfilment to be had in the most simple of things. I love to keep the tools sharp and clean and love to sweep up after the cutting and trimming is done.

Consider the following:

What kind of plants do you like to grow? They reflect your nature, they feed back to your own inner process and you will grow those things that resonate or harmonise with you at a deeper level. Me? I love to grow orchids indoors and passion flowers outdoors, I love vines that grow all over the brickwork and outbuildings.

What kind of shapes do you like in the garden? Regimented lines, flowing curves, tightly clipped or left to their own devices? Personally I like a combination but I love things that meander and paths that sweep through well tended beds and turn to reveal ponds or statuary.

This can be extended and is a rewarding study. Add into the mix colours, scale, water features, trees, bushes, heights, mixes, flowers or foliage, evergreens or deciduous plants, broad or narrow leaved plants. We are even approaching the territory of medicinal plants, cookery, herbalism and a whole branch of arts and sciences that derive from our interactions with the fauna worlds. Whenever you are feeling less than at your best get into your garden to contemplate and be transported to another place. If your own garden isn’t right yet, it’s been neglected perhaps or you live in a place without its own garden then take yourself to a public garden, a botanic garden, an arboretum, don’t deprive yourself of these simple pleasures, they are food for the soul.

Look at your own garden and the things you cultivate with fresh eyes, whether it is a vast estate or a window box, and see what it has to offer back to you. 

This is one of those questions that’s like a hardy annual. It keeps coming back. For someone who perhaps isn’t clear about these things, here are some pointers.

At the physical level we see clearly the progression from a newborn to a mature adult. Procreation represents a logical next step followed by gradual decline having reached the physical peak. Gradual decline resulting ultimately in the death of the physical body. That may be fine if you are a frog or another less complex life form than a human being. The issue as far as we are concerned is that the physical aspect of our existence represents only one facet of what we are, in a multi faceted state of being.

That, really, is where we start. The physical aspect of our lives is a platform upon which the rest of our lives rests, without the platform there is nothing else but the pitfall to avoid is thinking that the platform is all that there is. Our scientists have shown us how we are a collection of synapses and neural firings that stimulate and trigger the release of physiological state instigators, things like hormones, endorphins and those catalysts that float around our bodies waiting for the call to action. By that definition we are indeed randomly formed and arbitrarily arranged, creatures of whim and lacking any sense of agency within our own lives.

And that is where we stop. Providing you are prepared to buy into that particular doctrine. Personal development considers the evidence and says that there is something greater to be achieved providing the individual can access the means with which to accomplish it. Unlike a frog we exist within a framework that offers greater possibility than merely spawning and dying having left the legacy of a new generation to do the same thing. For the expectations of a frog that may well represent ultimate fulfilment, but for a human being that only gets us to base camp.

For me personally I look to the evidence of those whom I would refer to as the illumined or the great teachers of the human story and all of them indicate that there is a higher purpose to adhere and align oneself to. That the first and most basic requirement upon any of us is to work out what that is and then spend our lives refining and pursuing that higher motive. In the Mechanics of Happiness I have crudely defined that as a triumvirate of growth and development leading to fulfilment leading to happiness. It is a progressive journey that transcends the confines of our physical state and says that we have an infinite potential to grow and expand far beyond that which we currently understand or are capable of perceiving.

Let me offer an example here. Let’s take food. You eat food and your body goes to work on the food, it becomes busy with the process of nutrient extraction. There are vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, sugars and so on that your body needs. We know this because there are conditions such as rickets or scurvy directly attributable to dietary deficiencies. A wise person therefore pays attention to their diet and tries to eat those foods which offer the greatest nutritional benefit. The more nutritional the diet, the healthier the body, the healthier the body the greater, the sense of well-being and we see that a whole positive sequence is enacted.

And that, in one sense, is what personal development is about. It is about positioning oneself in such a way that as many positive sequences can be triggered in one’s life as possible. The result being an aggregate of well-being. But that only knocks on the door, it doesn’t go much further than that. To consider the area more fully it is necessary to factor in the whole of one’s life possibility, what I mean is that your life is not summed up by one potential outcome, but that there are a whole network or a matrix of possible outcomes for your life based upon the many facets that go to make up your life.

We have already acknowledged the physical but what about our cognitive life? The life of our emotions? Our perceptive ability and so on? it becomes apparent that our lives are the confluence of a series of streams all flowing into the one channel we know empirically as our life. A thorough development process requires that all are addressed and given the best opportunity to thrive and flourish in precisely the same way as we introduce the best possible foods into our bodies.

This is about quality, the quality of life experience and the residue that leaves as it passes through. Suppose we were to acknowledge that each experience we had in our lives left a fingerprint upon our being, it made its mark. We could than say that a person is the sum total of all that they have experienced and done in their lives. Each thought they have had, each book they have read, each conversation and so on. There would be a particular flavour or colour to that person’s life according to the mix of influences and processes they had sanctioned within their own affairs.

This is enormous because it puts the sense of agency back in your court, it says that you are indeed responsible for yourself at a very profound and tangible level and also it emphasises the benefits of personal development. Because personal development is the process of constantly refining what you do, how you do it, and the way that you think about that. You are an unfinished book, a story that has not yet reached its conclusion. As such you are the author of your own story and the better informed you are the more capable and worthwhile that story will eventually be.  Refinement is everything, it represents the keys to the door of the mansion that is your development potential as yet unimagined, only by refinement will you be able to craft an approach to living an effective life as opposed to a physical life which takes no effort at all.   

The ‘why’ is concerned with conceiving your life as a process of absorption, maturation, and extraction of nutrients that transcend only the physical. This requires time, effort and resilience on your part but the returns are extraordinary because the refinement that they bring creates an entirely new life which does not replace the original, it enhances and deepens the experience. This is a quite huge subject, due to time constraints I have to stop here but it will be picked up elsewhere. 

So you know a little more about the source from which these words are flowing here are some facts about me…

I hold a BA(Hons) in Philosophy from Durham University

And another in History from the University of Sunderland

And an MA in English from Northumbria

I lectured for several years at East Birmingham Business School in Business Studies where I was awarded the student’s best lecturer award for three consecutive years.

I have established several offline and online businesses some of which I have sold and others that are still running. Most notably Powerbond which has been established and traded successfully now for more than ten years.

I have been a lecturer, speaker and writer for more than twenty years with particular interest in the art of self improvement through personal growth and development. My latest work in this area is the Mechanics of Happiness series which is presumably what brought you here.

I am also a qualified life coach, holding a Diploma in Life Coaching, and have worked with a great many people as a mentor and specifically in the area of helping them to achieve their goals.

Some years ago after struggling for 15 years with an illness that passed ‘under the radar’ I was diagnosed with a rare potentially fatal genetic disorder of the liver called Non Alcoholic Steato Hepatitis (NASH). I was told by doctors that the condition was incurable and that it would kill me within a few years. My partner, Margaret, and I set out to disprove the ‘incurable’ tag and remedy the disease that I had. Through diligence and research we managed to create a regime that did indeed result in a 100% cure of the incurable disease. Unfortunately for other sufferers my liver specialist Prof. Chris Day, one of the world’s leading authorities on diseases of the liver, advised that he could not pass on the benefits of my own cure to others without subjecting it to extensive and thorough clinical trials over many years. However I am the living proof of the efficacy of our method.

In addition to writing, consulting and running other businesses, I work with children that have severe Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) and have done since 2004. These are young people that we foster and try to engender a positive attitude in about their lives and situations which are often anything but positive. I am qualified to work with children and young people who find themselves disadvantaged for various reasons and have achieved ‘outstanding’ feedback from fellow professionals.  

 We have two adult children who are uniquely brilliant and accomplished in their own fields but whom I would not presume to embarrass here. They are quite capable of that through their own Facebook pages. 

It doesn’t matter what you think is important. It doesn’t matter what you prioritise. What is important is HOW you do those things. Some people worry about the rainforest and some don’t give a damn, what is truly lacking by majority is elegance in thinking.

You see whatever floats your boat is fine, it’s subjective really and at the personal level it is irrelevant. Why do I say this? Because over the decades I have seen people who are passionate about the most unlikely of things and it does it for them.

Does what? It open doors, it pushes back the boundaries of their own space. So my message to you in this post is to train yourself HOW to think rather than just be told WHAT to think…

I smell the cordite of fuse wires being lit, I get the whiff of sedition, I sense the perfume of anarchy, the sublime chaos of iconoclasm ringing the changes in the corridors of power. The fortress of your mind is up for grabs and you must make sure that you are the victor! Hey ho, bit of pathos never hurt anyone, did it?

Just recieved a note from a man who was hit in the leg by a flying bit of pathos, leaving the leg red and sore for a couple of days, so perhaps pathos can hurt, just a little.  

It was Oscar Wilde who said that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Here in the West there is anxiety, I’m reminded of ‘Panic’ by the Smiths, the idea that the icons of our great surge forward have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Feet of clay, the exquisite pirouettes traced by the fantasies of a million happy home owners whose wealth would never cease to grow has all come to an abrupt halt. A bit like when the alarm clock interrupts a particularly satisfying dream.

In days like these people start to consider what is actually important. There is a process in the zeitgeist of reassessing and re-evaluating. People tend to take stock of their situation and start to slow down a little in the headlong pursuit of material abundance. Let’s just wait and see, I predict a time of serious introspection and a clamour of discontent, especially among those who have never known anything other than the embarrassment of material riches that the West has ‘enjoyed’ these past decades. 

Life is for living and is an arena wherein the dramas and accomplishments of our experiences may be embellished and added to. The acquisition of wisdom and understanding is an ideal that outweighs the acquisition of physical objects or things. In the theatre of all our tomorrows will we weep tears of joy or anguish and whose seeds are already sown in each of us. Let us harvest the crop of our own hopes and dreams and hope that they are a fitting match for the priorities that the place we discover ourselves in sets as its standard.