Even if I do not know each and every one of you reading this article, my guess is that you have sought or tried to achieve this life mastery in some way or another whether it was a defined goal or otherwise. Perhaps you have read some books on personal development, spirituality or philosophical systems. You might have attended some workshops or seminars or tried some practices that are aimed at helping you achieve improvement in some life area – motivation, self-discipline, habit forming, coping with stress and emotions are all possible candidates. In short you have done something about it and I applaud you for your drive and effort. You have done well.

“The real path to mastering life is though non-action”

What I’d love to share with you, however, is the idea that when you distill the essentials of all the perennial philosophies, ancient wisdom and spiritual practices, you come to understand that there is a very common pattern in the tapestry and this pattern is one which tells us that the real path to mastering life is through non-action.

This is something which the western mind finds hard to reconcile with culturally installed beliefs such as ‘hard work is rewarded’ or ‘stop sitting on your butt and go out to get it’. The Taoist concept of ‘Wu Wei’ or ‘action through non-action’ has very little correlates in our action-oriented modern societies.

Yet there are simple three simple non-actions upon which self-mastery is built upon and they are the only ‘actions’ necessary since everything else is born out of them. These non-actions are: Trust, Appreciate and Just Be.

These are the only 3 things required for you to flow with life and your purpose, to be in your centre of power when everything else seems to flip on its head. They are the only thing required for being the master of your own life.

I will expand a little bit these concepts not by describing what they are but rather what they do.

Trust

Allowing: When you allow things to be even if they do not meet your expectations. Give space to situations and people to just be without judgment even if they of not reflect your values of what is OK.

Surrender: To surrender is not the same thing as giving up. When a life situation seems irresolvable, you open your heart space and surrender to a higher power behind the noise of your thinking and analysis.

Flow: When you offer no resistance you flow effortlessly with life. The mind creates pressure, damns and resistance to the flowing water of life. When you are aware you let go of this resistance and things start taking shape and fitting in with a seemingly miraculous power of their own.

Divine Will & Courage: When you are immobilised by fear and uncertainty but dare to commit yourself in taking a first step forward, a great power and courage descends on you. It is a courage that comes from trusting and allowing the divine will to act through you.

Positivity: When you trust and allow things to be, your consciousness shines through the problem which makes you see it in a new and different light. This brings hope and positivity.

Appreciate

Gratitude: I guarantee you that no matter how miserable your life may seem at times, if you sit for a moment to find and be thankful for those things that are working for you, you will be amazed at how many you will find! Being grateful gives energy to those positive things and shouts the announcement that you are ready for more!

Perspective: When you are grateful, you are changing your perspective by putting the spotlight on your blessings. The power of perspective is everything. It gives you the power to make the impossible possible.

Compassion/Forgiveness: Learning to appreciate does another amazing thing – it opens your heart to be compassionate allowing you to forgive others and yourself. What happens after you forgive and let go is nothing short of a miracle.

Inner Peace: If you appreciate your life and open your heart to forgive, you find inner peace. Inner peace brings bliss, happiness and stillness. You feel at home and where you should be even when a storm is raging outside.

Just Be

Meditation: We think of meditation as a practice or action because there are techniques or ‘ways’ that help us meditate. In reality there is no ‘way’ that shows you how to meditate just as there is no ‘way’ that shows you how to just be. Meditation is just being without the noise and barriers of the mind. Without expectations and ideas of who you are. You connect with the simplest essence that has no form – your being.

Presence: When you are just being without doing or having, you are present. Presence means having your awareness rooted in the here and now without being transported by your thoughts and worries of an imaginary past or future. Being aware of a single breath is enough to anchor you to the present moment.

Realisation: When you practice to just be present, less and less illusions in the form of thought patterns, beliefs and emotions will have power over you. The less illusions you have, the more realisations arise because you become grounded in the only reality there is – the eternal now.

Clarity: And of course when you allow yourself to just be your life comes in greater clarity and focus. There is less mind clutter to obstruct your view.

Resourcefulness: The real limitless pool of resources come from within you. When you are being and not preoccupied with doing or having, you turn your attention from the limited resources outside to the limitless resources within. You start tapping into your inner resources and realise that you can master your life because you can call upon any resource you need to tackle any imaginable life situation.

source:

Soul Hiker

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An interesting side note to the whole idea of superhuman powers is that when you look at the powers projected onto comic strip heroes you will find that the only powers which are unmatched in ‘reality’ are physical ones. You know, like flying in a jiffy from pole to pole in a dandy costume or holding a building on the palm of your hand or shape-shifting into another form, etc. When it comes to ‘mind powers’, you will always find that some humans have shown to have manifested those abilities in some way or another throughout history – Mind over matter, telepathy, remote viewing, the incredible gifts of autistic savants and so many others.

In our information-laden society, we have put the spotlight on some modern-day superpowers such as photographic memory and speed reading – the ability to read up to around 300% faster than normal reading. People who speed-read or teach speed-reading will tell you that in reality, speed-reading is not some sort of power but rather is achieved through unlearning and relearning sub-routines on how we read. Various online courses such as Iris Reading will in fact guide you step by step in relearning how to read without all the limitations and bottleneck of conventional reading.

The questions many people ask is “Is it for real?”, “Can we read The Lord of the Rings from cover to cover in an hour or so?”. To be able to make a final judgment about that, one has to look into the theory and logic behind speed reading and of course, try it out for oneself.

What’s the limit?

The average reader in the U.S can read normal text  at a rate of 200-300 wpm (words per minute) with the top 1% of the population  reading over 400 wpm.  Now what proponents of speed reading claim is that people can read up to 2000 to 3000 wpm (up to 10 pegs per minute or a 300 page book in half an hour).

For example, Tim Ferriss had claimed that in a 3-hour cognitive experiment known as the PX project, speakers of five languages, including dyslexics increased their reading speed by 386%. Let’s have a look on how this is possible.

Eliminating Jumps and Stops

When one studies the visual processing and eye movements involved in reading, it is seen how normally we read in certain patterns and routines. One of these patterns is called saccadic movements (jumps). This means that instead of reading by following a straight line, we make small jumps and pause for 0.25 – 0.5 seconds to take a snapshot of text within the focus area and carry on with the next one and so on. These cumulative pauses of these saccadic movements increase considerably the time required to read through a certain amount of text.

The other pattern is called regression. In simple words it means that we very often back-skip to reread a word and this process cumulatively takes 30% of the total reading time.  So, when you learn to speed-read, the first thing is to re-train yourself to read with no saccades or regressions.

The way that this is normally done is by using a tracker and pacer – most commonly a simple pen. Use a pen (with cap on) under your hand and flat on a page and underline each line for about  a second per line then increase to about 1/2 second per line while keeping your eye fixation on the tip of the pen. Do not worry about comprehension. At first while practicing this, nobody will understand anything and this is normal. The exercise is just used to train your brain into pacing the reading speed. Comprehension will gradually come later after repetition and practice.

Using Peripheral Vision Wisely

Another limitation in normal reading, according to speed-reading theory is that normal readers use only central focus but not horizontal peripheral vision thus missing out on 50% of the the total number of words that can be read per fixation. When we read from the first word to the last word on a line, we waste 25%-50% of our peripheral field on blank margins.

The proposed training for making better use of peripheral vision is to use the tracker and pacer technique to read but instead of reading from the first to last word, you practice by starting one word in to one word before the last. Maintain pace of one line per second and then increase to half a second per line. Once again do not think about comprehension. Keep on doing the exercise but progress to 2 words in from the start of the line to two words before the last. Finally the exercise should proceed to 3 words in from the both ends of the line.   With repetition and conditioning, the mind will start picking up around 6 words from its peripheral vision without using time in jumping (saccades) or back-skipping (regression).

Silencing the Inner Reader

Some speed reading techniques also involve re-training oneself to stop ‘sub-vocalising’ when reading. Sub-vocalisation is the tendency to ‘read aloud in our heads’ while visually processing the words on a page or screen. We do this naturally and it has got to do with how we understand and interpret language symbols. In fact this particular idea of sub-vocalisation is contested by some researchers on the ground that  sub-vocalisation is necessary for understanding what we’re reading since we process meaning through the sound of words and not just visually.

The Issue of Comprehension and the Validity of Speed Reading

The last point about comprehension is the bone of contention between proponents and critics of speed reading. The counter-argument to speed reading is that eliminating regression and sub-vocalisation will make comprehension extremely difficult. However the whole point behind speed reading theory is that the mind is flexible enough to retrain itself to read – and comprehend – using different pathways and routines. We learn a task such as reading because of conditioning even though Psychologists such as Steven Pinker consider reading and writing to be ‘cognitively unnatural’.

Yet this doesn’t dissolve the argument but makes it stronger. Through repetition and conditioning we can train ourselves to do something which feels, and in many ways is, unnatural to us. We can see this in so many different physical and mental feats that some humans managed to achieve through training themselves to do things differently.  What is different with reading?

Moreover, comprehension is something which cannot be ultimately objectified and it’s an elastic concept in itself. If after you put down a book or paper, I had to ask you to tell me what you understood, you can never summon up all the details but the mind would have extrapolated enough information to build a gist of the whole picture and this can vary wildly between different readers. Furthermore, speed reading can have specific applications. If you enjoy reading for leisure, you don’t need to speed read really as this takes away some of the pleasure of reading in itself. But if for example you need to read through a pile of papers to get a quick idea of some type of information while saving 30 minutes in the process, then we can start seeing the real value of having the ‘super-powers’ of reading extremely fast.

Is you Brain working Optimally?

Although it’s designed to be highly adaptive and flexible, it can easily work ‘sub-optimally’ in adverse conditions, and it’s no surprise that it’s often the case. Think about a situation where you felt a real good mental performance – your were focused, had clear thoughts, could remember things in a flash and creative solutions were flowing in easily. Now compare that to a time when your thoughts were foggy, found it hard to concentrate for more than a few minutes, got stuck for words or names and felt mentally drained in general. That’s the difference between a healthy brain functioning optimally and one that is not.

Luckily adverse conditions to brain performance are easy to identify, even if perhaps we are not aware of them most of the time. Some of the main culprits are stress and tension, lack of good sleep and over-thinking and worrying. These are the main sources of a sub-optimal brain function. In extreme cases they can lead to acute mental fatigue, exhaustion, depression and a general apathy towards life.

Is your environment You-friendly?

Less obvious but can equally be adverse, especially when aggregated together, are environmental and rhythmic factors. In the case of environmental factors, these could be spending a long time in a crowded and noisy environment perhaps with not-so-good air ventilation and uncomfortable furniture. The latter is of course also a source of physical symptoms.

Sitting in poorly designed chairs or sitting in a bad posture for several hours can create both physical and mental issues. The brain is picking up information from your body all the time and if your body is constantly sending distress signals while you are doing some mental weightlifting on your job, it ends up dropping off your optimal mental level. Environmental factors are also psychological such as spending long hours in a socially unhelpful environment – in other words dealing with negative, judgmental or unsupportive people.

Keeping the Rhythm

Rhythmic factors are when our daily schedules brush against our natural cycles. The most common bodily cycle that effects our brain performance is the circadian rhythm because it involves regulating sleep and hence mood and mental acuity. If you sleep only a few hours a day or your sleep is constantly disrupted, it will obviously effect whether you wake up in a worst of moods or refreshed and ready to face a brand new day. In the long term, poor sleep can seriously affect mental performance. For example, one way in which we go against our circadian rhythm is by using electronic screens till late. The ‘blue light’ emanating from the devices is easily confused with daylight and will delay the circadian cycle from kicking in. The solution to that is either stop using electronic devices (laptops, PCs, tablets) after 6pm or else some people use orange filter glasses to filter off the blue light.

The 5 Kickass Brain Performance Aids

1. Move your Body:

Regular exercise is still one of the best things to help you maintain both mental and physical health. Ironically, physical exercise is even as important, if not more important, than doing mental exercises. It isn’t so hard to imagine why though. The brain is of course physically embedded and part of the whole physical body.  If the body is healthy and supplying the right amount of oxygen and nutrients to it, it will have enough resources to keep working efficiently. One of the best exercises is running or fast walking in highly-oxygenated tree areas.

2. Supplement & Reinforce:

The power word in today’s health supplement world is Nootropics.  Nootropics are prescription-free supplement pills that have a variety of cognitive enhancing abilities – enhancing memory, focus and concentration and mental alertness / acuity in general.

The three most powerful and popular cognitive enhancers are Adrafinil, Sulbutiamine and Noopept which sometimes you can find to buy in a cost-saving pack such as this one which also includes Alpha GPC.

Sulbutiamine is a powerful memory and mood enhancer.  Noopept is considered to be the strongest among the cognitive-enhancing group known as Racetams which are usually taken to improve concentration, increase verbal skills, decrease anxiety and increase motivation . Adrafinil is converted by the body into Modafinil, a substance known to greatly increase attentiveness. In fact Modafinil on its own is usually sold as a very expensive prescription drug.

Although these supplements are known to have negligible to no side effects, it is always highly recommended to follow the dosage instructions and check out for known contra-indications.

3. Brain Training:

This is my favourite part because it involves ongoing brain research. There are various forms of training we can use to keep our cognitive faculties sharp. The traditional ones involve mental exercises such as completing crosswords and word games or math games so as to keep giving mental input and stimulus for the brain to work on. Memory games are also very important which can be social – such as family board games – or perhaps digital such as simple online memory games and quizzes.

Recent research is also shedding light on how video games can positively effect cognitive development. Contrary to common fears that video games are addictive and promote adverse psychological conditions, some experiments have shown that certain games can produce long-term benefits such as improved attention and memory, visual processing and better decision-making.   Although the subject has been shrouded in controversy and debate, there is an increasing number of note-worthy studies that are changing the way we look at the relation between gaming and cognitive development.

4. Brainwave Entrainment:

Apart from training the brain there are also ways of ‘entraining’ the brain and creating a setting that is conducive to better concentration and learning. ‘Brainwave entrainment’ is a process by which the brain is ‘entrained’ to enter into slower brainwave states – commonly Alpha and Theta states – through the use of special sound tracks called ‘Binaural beats’ or ‘iso chronic tones’ (see more here).

When we are at work, or go about our day, our brain produces electric signals which EEG devices record as ‘brainwaves’ that range predominantly in a certain frequency range known as ‘Beta’.  When we are relaxed, chilled out or for example in a calm and focused mood, our brainwaves slow down into the Alpha range, or deeper still into the Theta range. When the brain is in the alpha or theta range, it is more prone to function better and learn deeper or retain more information. So, the idea behind brainwave entrainment is to induce such brain states through listening to binaural beats or sound tracks that are engineered to produce the effect. For instance I use brainwave entrainment quite often as I find it to be an easy, effective method that is completely free from any side effects. I use it when I need to concentrate more, unwind or for meditation purposes.

5. The Art of Sleeping Better

Having good restful sleep at night is one of the most important factors in maintaining good mental performance and good mood in the long run. The effects are of course quite evident and we all have experienced them. All we need to do is compare how we perform mentally after a good night sleep in contrast to a sleepless night.

There are some natural things that can help you induce sleep easier or enjoy a longer, healthier sleep at night. For instance herbal teas that are based on plant extracts such as Chamomile, Lemon Balm, valerian root and passion flower among others can be effective in helping you relax and unwind right before bedtime.

Listening to relaxing music is of course a well-known sleeping aid which can affect people to certain degrees depending on their predispositions or practical circumstances. Also interesting is the fact that I know people who prefer to listen to sounds that use ‘white noise’. An example of white noise is the ‘static’ on a blank TV channel. White noise is when all the hearable frequencies are played together at random. Since it is so constant and diffused, it can help some people enter and remain in sleep better.

Another sleeping aid is eating foods that contain a relatively high amount of Tryptophans such as nuts. Tryptophans are amino acids that are metabolised into the neurotransmitters serotonin and melatonin, both of which are responsible for regulating sleep.

Last but not least are messaging certain pressure points such as the Shimien pressure point, sometimes referred to as the insomnia point. It is found by drawing a line from the ankle bone down to the sole of the feet, just ahead of the heel. It is a very tender spot so massage gently with your thumb without applying excessive pressure.

The Historical Demise of Imagination

The root of all this comes from a global culture in developed countries that has been increasingly leaning towards a patriarchal, logical and rational based society. In spiritual literature, creativity is seen to be more the domain of the feminine and in neuroscience, creative imagination is found to be more dominant in the right hemisphere of the brain. If you look at the history of the western world, one can see a crescendo, especially during the last 200 years, of a trend towards a ‘left-brain’ dominated society. In the early 20th century, Ideologies such as Fascism and the scientific movement known as ‘logical positivism’ come to mind. These are notorious examples of ‘chauvinistic’ or ‘left-brain’ ideologies.

Imagination Driving us into the Future

“What really made us leap forward as humans since we invented fire is our imagination”

What I find interesting when I look at the two sides of our brain – logical rationality vs creative imagination – from a historical perspective, is that the world has not progressed because of logic and rational thinking but despite of it. What really made us leap forward as humans since we invented fire is our imagination . I am not discrediting rational thought. Rationality was and is helpful to refine, make clearer and structure ideas and thoughts. It is also needed to keep imagination in balance because if imagination runs too wild and out of control it can also be destructive as much as a society completely devoid of it.

Even Science which is considered to belong solely to the domain of logical and analytical thinking has progressed forward because of human imagination. If you look at the greatest Scientific theories and discoveries, you will see that they were spurred by the use of the imagination and intuition. Rationality, logic and mathematics is later used to verify (or falsify), structure and define those conjectures and ideas. In short, imagination is what makes the world go round.

The Power of Imagining your World into Being

“I think of imagination as not just the power of summoning up images and fantasies in the mind, but rather the power to make something out of them…”

Going back to why imagination has been misjudged, I believe that it has been given the wrong attributes. For instance we think of imagination as being at odds with reality or as being completely illusory and hence has no place in everyday life. I think of imagination as not just the power of summoning up images and fantasies in the mind, but rather the power to make something out of them and hence has a practical dimension too.

Yes imagination can be just playful and fun with no consequence whatsoever other than putting up some fancy mental images together. Yet imagination can also be used to create your world into being. It can make you see things differently and beyond the limitations of what your ‘reality’ is feeding you. It can make you leap outside of the social matrix and look at a situation from different angles. It can invoke powerful visions that motivate you to move forward when you are stuck and debilitated from taking action.

Who Killed our Imagination?

No one knows if there was one culprit or assassin. The imagination has been a victim of our times. Some say that our loss of using our creative imagination, such as more ‘primitive’ cultures did was an unavoidable consequence due to the cyclic change of the ages and we are now heading back to an age where our creative and imaginative side will be embraced once again.

“our education system has a lot to do with the subversion of our creative sides”

On a more practical note, I believe like many that our education system has a lot to do with the subversion of our creative sides. We have built a schooling system that is geared up to encourage academic thinking but not how to think better in the first place, even less how to use our creative imagination in extraordinary ways.

What are we missing out On?

I think the most interesting discussion about imagination has to do with how it can be used and applied. From another point of view we can ask ourselves “what potential are we missing out on if we lose our imagination”?

There are various practical aspects to imagination apart from the most obvious such as in the Arts. Here are a few I would like to share:

Inspiring Positive Change:

When you are stuck or debilitated into taking action, it is because you cannot see past your current situation. Your perception and perspective is limited. Imagination can make you leap beyond that limitation by ‘seeing’ things in an alternative possibility. You can envision an alternate reality with an alternate you and the more vivid this imagination is, the more it can stir up a strong attraction towards that imagined reality. In short imagination is what will inspire us to change. Nobody ever got inspired to change by seeing things as they appear and without using the power of imagination.

Creating Your Destiny:

Following the point above, by envisioning your possible future you are creating a template for action. First and foremost imagination creates the energy and the excitement to create something new and secondly it offers a blueprint to follow that goal. Imagination is extremely powerful for creating your own destiny because without it we would be stuck into the same patterns of behaviour. Imagination fuels the will to create, to change and to go for it.

Solving Problems:

Any creative thinker will tell you that imagination is the most important element in problem solving. Once again it compliments logical and analytical thinking beautifully, but it is many times more important to imagine outcomes and alternative possibilities when problem solving rather than deducting it logically.

Healing your Wounds:

Imagination was central to the ancient healing arts. Visualisation, which of course involves the use of the imagination, is a very important tool in conditioning the subconscious mind to change emotional imprints and even bodily manifestations. This is because the different levels of our being – the mental, emotional, physical, energetic and spiritual – are all interconnected. Imagination is one of the keys to hack through any of these levels.

Motivating Yourself:

Of course whenever you create a goal in your mind and then bring it to life through the use of your imagination it gives you a motivational boost. This is not the same thing as day dreaming (although yes it is also part of the imagination) but rather projecting yourself in the future through the conscious use of the imagination. Whenever we imagine or visualise something, the mind acts upon it as if it were a real input from the external environment. It doesn’t make the distinction. Hence, when the imagination it applied in the right way, it creates a positive emotional response in the form of motivation.

Embracing a Fuller You:

Imagination is part of our being. It is not something extra that we can use once in a while. It is an integral part of us and the more we deny it, the more we are reinforcing our own fragmentation. It has to be accepted and embraced. The more we do embrace it and apply it, the more we are giving space to ourselves to grow and mature as complete, well rounded individuals.

Featured image: The Unbounded Spirit

This comes to no surprise since our contemporary frenetic culture has installed in us a different kind of program – one that is more bent towards, logic, rational choice and left-brain kind of thinking in general. Society doesn’t engender intuitive skills, imagination and right-brain creative thinking.  It’s not something they teach in mainstream schools do they? There is no formal guidance on how to harness your right-brain skills when you are a child or growing up. That would be such a charm don’t you think?

Yet there are simple steps that can guide ANYONE to open up, grow and harness more intuition in life. But why should anyone become more intuitive you might ask? Why not learn some other skill in your free time such as a language, programming or design? Here are some kickers as to why intuition is a fantastic gift and ally to have:

1. Energy-Saver: Intuition saves you a lot of teeth grinding, head scratching, intensive mental acrobatics and strenuous analytical thinking. Why? Because intuition leaps outside the box of linear thinking and what-if scenarios and goes straight to the answer. At some level you implicitly ‘know’ the answer without needing to go through the process.

2. Problem-Solver: Sometimes no matter how hard you think about a problem, you can’t just hit a solution. Could be because you are trying to look at it from the same angle over again or perhaps there are some variables you can’t see or something entirely different. Intuition very often offers a solution to a hard problem because it accesses a deeper level of mind and attunes to your heart’s calling – something your rational judgment alone doesn’t do.

3. GPS and Route Finder: Intuition is the perfect tool to give you directions when you are lost. As mentioned above, sometimes certain variables are unknown hence we get lost in uncertainty. When we are more intuitive we somehow know our way out or what we need to do and the more we trust it, the more accurate it becomes.

4. Ass-Saver: Yes sometimes trying to use rational judgment alone to make a decision can get you more into trouble rather than away from it. Similarly, there might be a troublesome turn of events that you can’t predict by just analyzing a situation. Intuition on the other hand can save your ass out of a situation by giving you a ‘feel’ that something is odd and it’s time to stir away from it.

5. Relationship Counselor: If we had to live our relationships through our heads, they are bound to be total disasters. Once again, intuition can work beautifully alongside or within relationships. It can give you bearing on how the relationship is going, help you identify issues and give you insights into what can be improved.

Developing intuition requires three different stages – Setting the stage, refining the process and reinforcing the habit. The ten steps I would like to recommend to you fall in each of these three stages.

Setting the Stage:

1.  Pattern Breaking:

A very interesting and fun way of prepping yourself to be more intuitive is breaking free from rigid habitual patterns. This idea of de-patterning trains your mind to be more fluid and be open to new things outside habit. An example of de-patterning is changing routines when you can, refreshing house decor, changing your route to work, wearing colors you usually don’t.

2. Gentle Self-talk:

Imagine intuition as a sweet young girl who is gentle and playful at the same time. Your thinking is the adult in the room. How do you invite the girl to play with you or at least not to scare her away? Being rough, strict or plain boring is not going to help. Same thing with your thinking and inner conversation. Being self-critical, skeptical or cynical is not going to invite intuition anytime soon. Be gently with yourself.

3. Trust your ‘Instincts’:

An important aspect to facilitating more intuition to flow in your life is to trust more those gut feelings and instincts. Learn to first acknowledge they are happening and then start trusting that they have something to say. The more you do that, the more you start sending out the message to your deeper consciousness that you are syncing in and ready to take the call.

4. Give Space:

So following all of the above three steps will open up inner space to accommodate more intuition to flow in your life. By breaking some patterns of habit, softening your inner conversation and giving more trust to your ‘instincts’ you are making more room for intuition to arise. After all, lack of intuition is nothing more than a lack of space for it to come through because your inner space was already fully packed with certain beliefs handed down to you by society.

Refining the Process:

5. Be Ready:

An important thing about intuition is that when it comes, it comes. You cannot hang up on it or put it on hold. You cannot say “Leave a message please and I’ll get to it when I’m free.”  Intuition is spontaneous and is a manifestation of a living, breathing system. It happens in the present. So when you do get the call – take it and always be ready for it. This will bring in more of it.

6. Change your focal point:

When your focus on something is too narrow, it can bring things in clearer view. You can see things coming in sharp focus which weren’t in the focal field before. However intuition works best when we change our focal point for a while. Being too focused helps you bring things in higher definition but then you need to step back, defocus a little bit and wait for  your sub-conscious mind to synthesize the information and return back with an intuitive answer. Learning the process of changing focus is a powerful tool to refine your intuitive abilities.

7. Listen to your Body:

The body is an antenna that both receives and transmits information all the time from/to the mind and the energetic field around it. Think of ‘gut feelings’, butterflies in the stomach, tightness in the chest, etc. So the body can be a good indicator of what’s happening inside you at  more subtle levels. Refining the process of intuition requires that you make it a habit to check on your body for these indicators. I like doing it in quiet moments and sometimes in meditations. Being receptive to these signs will make you more sensitive and engaged with your intuitive side.

8. Ask the Right Questions:

Intuition can also be aided by the logical and rational mind but not overpowered by it. So as in the case of changing the focal point to something, we can also direct our inner attention to something by asking the right questions. I belief this is extremely helpful and powerful at times. Sometimes our idea about something is fuzzy and unclear. We lack direction and confidence. It’s like we don’t know where to start. Intuition may give us a clear answer but if not, then you need to help it out by asking more specific questions. Write them down. When you start asking questions, you discern the situation more and that is where you might hit the right spot (or focal point) and bang….intuition!

Reinforcing the Habit:

9.  Tuning in the channel:

Being ready, changing your focal point and listening to your body are really great access points to tune into your intuitions. Yet this process has to be reinforced into a system. It needs to be practiced over again. There is a wonderful course I recommend called ‘Tune in’ by intuition expert Sonia Choquette, author of NY Times best sellers The Answer is Simple and Trust your Vibes among others. It’s a good way to learn all the above or more in a guided and structured way through videos, guided meditations for intuitive guidance and visualization aids. Check it out here.

10. Be Thankful & give Value:

Last but not least, intuition is reinforced in your everyday life by recognizing and being thankful of the guidance it has provided. Being grateful to something is a way of making it more present because you are shedding the light of your consciousness on it and opening your heart to it. So never take your intuition for granted is a good advice. Be thankful to its blessings and value it as being one of the biggest assets in your life.

However you look at it, creativity not only happens despite of chaos or uncertainty but it only happens because of it. Chaos and disorder are the requisite precursors to creative change. It is also conceptually and linguistically obvious since you cannot create something that has been formed and set already but creation is the process of forming something new out of ‘nothing’ or ‘chaos’. When I was studying how intelligent systems behave some years ago for a thesis, it became apparent that intelligent systems self-organise themselves by first momentarily breaking down when the system faces novelty, uncertainty or a mismatch between its internal structures and its environment. This is true for all systems whether microbiological, humans, social systems, eco-systems, etc. In short, for there to be creative change in any system, there must first be a temporary system crisis whereby old structures are broken, making way for new levels of organisation. This continuous cycle of recreation is at the heart of evolution whether biological, consciousness and spiritual.

The idea is fascinating but more importantly it is a lesson to learn and integrate into our life perspective. For most of us the idea may sound very counter-intuitive because when we face uncertainty about the future or live through turbulent and chaotic times, we feel that we cut ourselves off from the creative life force and get withdrawn, feel dull, demotivated and even perhaps depressed, which is the epitome of lack of creativity and joy. This is because we get overwhelmed by fear and anxiety…we get simply lost. Yet this happens not because we face uncertainty and chaos but because of our attitude towards it. Attitude is the magical ingredient that changes the recipe, the cook and the whole kitchen around him for that matter!

So what are the attitudes that we need to adopt to reconnect to the creative life force in a chaotic and ever-changing world?

The Innovator:

Real innovation always happens at the fringes of society and never at the core of the mainstream. Innovators are usually people who are following their passion despite facing opposition and being in conflict with the mainstream thinking and way of doing things. The innovator lies at the outskirts of society – just where normalcy meets chaos and disorder. In fact the innovator is at ease with being on this border and also thrives in it. He or she doesn’t seek to get in the fold of group thinking or morality but would rather stay on the outside tinkering with uncertainty, chaos and change. This is where the innovator gets the creative force. One cannot easily get such creative power of innovation through following the comfort zone of herd thinking and anaesthetised living.

If you ever watched the TV series ‘Fringe’ it can summon up some relevant points. The series was about an extended arm of the FBI called the ‘Fringe Division’ composed of a motley crew – Dr. Walter Bishop, the mad scientist archetype and his son Peter, FBI agent Olivia Dunham and agent Astrid Farnsworth. The Fringe team had the task to solve mysterious out-of-the-ordinary type of cases while trying to keep two parallel universes from annihilating each other. The main hub was Dr.Bishop’s old Lab in a forgotten basement space at Harvard University. This was the ‘Fringe Lab’ – where the innovative genius of Dr.Bishop was at work coming up with creative solution to seemingly insolvable problems.  The ‘Fringe Lab’ is the perfect analogy to innovation and innovators. In order to deal with the ‘monstrosity’ of a highly chaotic and unpredictable world, the innovator returns to his ‘fringe lab’, puts on his creative thinking hat and puts all his enthusiasm and focus on solving issues despite of mainstream society thinking he or she is totally nuts. This is what the innovator attitude is all about and this is the key to not only surviving but thriving in a messy and fuzzy world.

In our personal lives we can also adopt the innovator attitude by first questioning how deep are we sucked in the comfort zone of herd thinking. We then need to find our ‘Fringe Lab’, that space and courage to be different and follow our authentic aspirations, motivations and passions. Screw what others think – really. Be yourself and see what happens. You will slowly get out of your comfort zone, the system and start not only dealing with all the uncertainty and chaos that you face in life but actually realise that it is funding your fringe lab! Be smart, be cool, be different 🙂

The Sailor:

As they say a good sailor is one that is always a sailor whether in clear blue waters or nightmarish sea storms. That means that a good sailor represents constancy in the face of calmness or storm, glory or tragedy, rough times or good times. A sailor navigates the seven seas and deals with lots of change – it’s never the same dock or scenery for too long. The only constant in life for the sailor is change. Once again, the sailor doesn’t only deal with an ever-changing world but thrives in it. It’s what makes the sailor a true sailor.

Similarly we need to understand and learn the sailor’s constancy in change and adopt it to our lives. How does the sailor do it? The secret is with an open heart and being OK with all the experiences that arise without attaching yourself to them or being averse to them. Openness means allowing any experience to come and go without forming judgments or struggling with it. When you approach life situations with an open heart, you not only are OK with undesirable or unpredictable situations but you graciously seek the lesson in them. “What can I learn from this unwanted turn out of events?”, “How can I embrace it within my life and make use of it?”. This particular attitude of openness will give you the power to find constancy in an unstable world. You no longer sway with the ups and downs of life but elegantly navigate through them with an open heart and mind. You become a real sailor of life.

The Mountaineer:

When we face setbacks and disruptions due to unforeseen changes, we lose our focus on our goals. In turn this makes us lose balance and we get easily swept away by the currents of life or get stuck in what we perceive as obstacles. This stops our vital creative force to flow through us. We lose our vision and inspiration. We end up being unamused by life and generally fall into a moment of stagnation and dullness.

The mountaineer has always his or her eyes on the ultimate goal – that last ascent to the peak. Of course any mountaineering journey is full of obstacles, challenges and setbacks. Adverse weather conditions, injuries, extreme cold and team mates leaving the group because of problems. The biggest challenge of the mountaineer is not physical but mental. He or she has to keep self-motivated and turn his/her mental eyes away from the immediate problem and back to the ultimate goal. Hence all turbulence, challenges and unpredictable changes are overcome by being driven by the bigger picture.

Similarly one can see our life as the mountaineer’s journey – full of challenges, adversities and unpredictable circumstance that change all the time. In order to keep ourselves from being self-defeated we need to turn our eyes, and our focus, away from temporary setbacks and keep them steady on the bigger picture – our mission and purpose in life. Whenever you face a difficult situation or an unexpected turn of events, perhaps even a plan gone into total chaos, there is one important thing necessary for you to do and that is find that vision, that peak that will keep you get back on your tracks and keep you going.

The Healer:

Navigating through changes, uncertainty and chaos requires the constant healing of oneself. By healing I mean transcending beyond fear and the disconnection with our inner self – our source of power and creativity. So all the rough waters that cause temporary anxiety, fear of the unknown and a disconnection from oneself require some form of healing.  It requires us to become healers and heal our wounds and our sense of separation with the changing world. In fact what most people feel when their whole world has changed beyond recognition is a big sense of separation – a distance from their past, their comfort zones, their points of reference.  This feeling of separation is what creates unnecessary suffering which in turn we attribute to an unstable world rather than to our inability to heal ourselves.

We heal ourselves through acceptance, letting go and reconciliation. The suffering comes from a part of us clinging to our old selves, our way of life, our reference points. There is a widening gap between our present and past and often we get emotionally sucked into this gap. The healer knows that to get past the gap you need to allow yourself to reconcile the old and the new – more specifically by creating space to accommodate the new. This is achieved through an exercise of letting go, trusting and accepting that it’s OK not to be OK sometimes. There is an element of self-love and forgiveness – even gentleness I would add. Sometimes it feels not easy but this is because we fail to go beyond the initial inertia. Once we give that first push and look at our ailment with gentle acceptance and self-love, the hardness begins to melt away into softness. The frenetic worrying eases away and slows down, thus making space for the new to be accepted in. If we keep on banging our heads on the problem or seeking what has passed and changed we will never allow this space to be created hence ourselves to be healed.

The Hermit:

Bringing in the archetype or analogy to the hermit may seem inappropriate or even counter-intuitive. After all the hermit is someone who has purposely withdrawn from the frenetic life and went to live somewhere cut off from the hustle and bustle of modern life – hence away from the chaos and instability that it brings.  Yet isolation is not the only trait of the hermit. The hermit is also someone who looks inwards. His journey is towards an inward path and hence the deliberate choice to move away from the outward path. We do not need to live in caves or move away from civilisation to use this trait of the hermit.

One of the effects of living in an ever-changing and increasingly unpredictable world is that we lose our internal focus. We forget to return to ourselves and find our inner workings. The more we forget to do this, the more we are left open to be swung in all directions by the currents of life. Returning to the inward path can be followed in many different ways – spiritual retreats, time alone, meditation, authentic heart to heart conversations, spiritual practice, contemplation, journeying, etc. Following the inward path is one of the best ways to keep connected to our creative power amidst change and chaos.

The Dancer:

If like me you are not very articulate in the dancing arts – errr, totally clueless is more like it – whenever you give it a shot at dancing you look more like someone in pain than someone who is dancing 🙂

Of course once you start getting the hang of it you realise that you need to go with the flow, follow the rhythm and the flow of energy and go where it takes you. Rigidity starts dissolving into elegant movements, inertia makes way for flow. For the more experienced dancer, it becomes second nature to go with the flow and the rhythm and more importantly to break free from rigidity.

We also need to dance to life in order to flow gracefully through change and unpredictability. At first we are rigid and the first movements are an eyesore. Yet as in dancing, we need to overcome this resistance and learn to flow with the rhythm. The more we let ourselves go with it, the easier it becomes and even if the tempo changes from one song to another, we quickly adapt our movements to it. We become experienced dancers. The power of the dancer’s attitude is to let oneself be guided by the rhythm no matter if he or she doesn’t know the beat or it changes from one to another. It doesn’t matter because the dancer trusts her abilities and also let’s herself go with the music. It’s easy once you let your body move and get past the inertia. Same thing with life – let go the mental rigidity; let yourself move with the changing rhythms and most importantly it’s perfectly OK if you slip that one time. Get back on the floor and dance to the music again. Enjoy!

Note to Reader:  As a thank you to all the support shown here on this blog, The author would like to present The Mind Unleashed readers a special discount of 80% to his self-improvement course “Simple Living Hacks: Declutter, Organise & Get More Done”. By using the coupon code TMU80 and following the link here, you will be able to purchase the online course for only $10 (normal price $49). This is a one-time limited offer exclusive to TMU readers. A big THANK YOU for all the loving feedback and support to the TMU team and readers!! Blessings!

Contemplating on these aspects of my life allowed me to see the broader dynamics into play and made me understand a little bit closer which are those enabling factors that are conducive to the so-called moments of clarity.

But what is clarity really? I think it is simper to explain what lack of clarity in life is since unfortunately it is so familiar with most of us. Lacking clarity is like being stuck somewhere with no motion forward. There isn’t one clear ‘a-ha’ feeling that comes forward and gets you rolling up your sleeve and working excitedly on a goal. Lack of clarity is also synonymous with confusion – when there are too many bits and pieces strewn around and we are at loss how to put them together and form the one big picture of our life. Lack of clarity can be general, as in with regards to our life’s purpose and mission, or can be specific to a particular situation or passage in life. For instance we could be unclear about doing a certain life transition or what to do in a particular relationship. These are all different facets of the same problem.

So leaving behind what lack of clarity is, I want to share with you what has been my recent ‘clarification’ (excuse the pun) on clarity.

Clarity does not come from thinking:

The biggest misunderstanding regarding clarity is that we assign the idea to the mind or thinking. We expect that we get clarity on an issue by getting some magical clear thought that resolves all the confusion and misunderstanding. This is actually not the case in reality. Although we use the expression ‘having a clear head’ or ‘clear thinking’, this actually has nothing to do with what I mean by clarity here.

In reality, clarity comes from the heart or rather when we are in sync with our heart’s calling. We go through the classical battle between mind and heart throughout most of our life. The heart pulls one way and the mind is obstinately tied in a loop or pretending not to be listening and doing its own thing. On one hand there is a general undercurrent of authentic motivations and desires coming deep from our heart and on the other there are all the stuff, fears, beliefs, ideas and rules that the mind is clinging on as a result of us being in a cultural context and social environment.  It is the battle between our authentic aspirations and those goals expected from us by others.

A real moment of clarity arises when we definitely cross a boundary and resolve that we must follow our heart to do a particular change even though it will be resented or frowned upon by others. It is when you listen to that call and answer it. You basically pick up the phone. So clarity starts from the heart by identifying and accepting that we need to do something without fearing disapproval or failure. Once that is brought in the light, the mind then can see it and translates it into words and ideas. This is why we think that clarity comes from thinking because when the mind translates what the heart is clear about, we say something like: “I think I know what I have to do about this….”. In reality the thinking is secondary.

So what’s the point to take home? Well, I think it boils down to a simple advice that has been repeated too many times in too many forms but ultimately still slips away :  Listen to your heart – Give more attention to its calling – Trust it more

Giving Space

Another important aspect of clarity is space. Clarity is always born from an open space. When we are trying to squeeze and pour our emotions onto something or else thinking an overanalysing a given situation, the less likely it is that clarity arises. When we stand back from our inner conversations and give more space to the problem we are trying to address, it is like opening up a door through which we can hear and see our intuitions and deeper motivations. It is also a space that allows internal conflicts to be resolved and processed.

We create space by detaching our mind from the situation and give our mental operations a pause. We stop the expectations, the possible scenarios, the analysing, the comparisons and all the other stuff that our minds so easily gets us sucked into. It is also releasing our emotional attachment to something. When something troubles us, we tend to focus our emotions and thinking on it, believing that the more intensely we do it the more we will solve the issue. It can’t be farther from the truth. When we disengage from trying to grasp something, we are instantly giving space for our inner wisdom to come through in seemingly moments of clarity. When we pour our fears and concerns onto something we are giving those fears and concerns energy and power thus constricting our freedom and possibilities.

Think about it for a minute. How many times did you resolve something by worrying or over-analysing it? On the other hand how many times did you get clarity by abandoning and accepting the problem? Did you ever wonder how things manage to resolve themselves beautifully without our input?

A Sort of Homecoming

The clear path is one that drives you home. It is a sort of homecoming. Through most of our life we are bombarded with so many thoughts, fears and ideas that are not authentically ours. We are distracted, alienated and taken off course from our purpose and real life aspirations. The more unconsciously we follow the signs posted by society rather than our own internal heart space, the farther we drive off course….the more distant we get from home.

So for me, a real moment of clarity is one which reminds you which way is home – back to your heart, to your real Self and inner wisdom and power. It is a sign post or a map telling you how to get there. Indeed, clarity is not about something outside of us, like a problem or situation (although it might be), but it is mostly internal – an opening to the path towards your heart.

Once again, it’s good to keep present in mind that what we seek when we yearn for clarity is actually already there in our internal heart space – that space which can be accesses once we resolve to let go of the mind’s objects, our anxieties, projections and fears. Let go of all that and the path towards the Self becomes apparent. It’s not an ‘if’ or a ‘but’ – it’s a certainty that works all the time because this is the way it works.

The more we shed of our daily concerns, the games of the ego and the merry-go-rounds in our mind, the easier it is to become clear about our path, our purpose and our way home.

The Tragedy of Being Locked in One Absolute Reality

The way we perceive our reality is crucial and fundamental to our own living and survival both individually and collectively. Conflict, war and genocides were born out of interpreting the current reality according to one’s ideologies, beliefs and twisted historical facts no matter how irrational or insane they were. Cultures are separated by different collective interpretations of reality and each one believes without question that their ‘reality’ is true and absolute.  In our modern day world, for instance, we do not often realize how we are living a consensual reality of unconscious consumerist madness. We just feel that’s pretty normal and the way it is…but clearly it is not…it is just a constructed and warped reality in which we were molded.

Moving Forward: From a Flat World to the Multiverse

On a more positive note, there has been a kind of slow historical drift or movement in Science, Philosophy and Culture towards the appreciation that reality is pluralistic. That means that the way we perceive and experience reality can be different for different people, cultures and timelines. Beyond this, Science has since the dawn of Quantum physics opened up its doors to the theoretical possibility of parallel Universes or what is often referred to as the Multiverse. All these conceptual advances are starting to reshape the way we look at the nature of reality. What was unquestionable now becomes a subject of scrutiny and what was taken as absolute is now considered as a matter of degrees. This for me is the advancement of human knowledge.

One can now talk openly about the possibility of parallel realities and parallel timelines without feeling embarrassed or threatened by cynics and bigots…well at least to some extent. So let us talk clearly and openly – new discussions need to open up and evolve. There is now some general consensus even in scientific circles such as in Cosmology, Quantum and Theoretical Physics and Astronomy that there are multiple realities – not just different interpretations – but real objective realities that differ from each other either minutely or completely.

Infinite Worlds and Possibilities

The basic idea behind the so-called Multiverse theory, supported by eminent proponents such as Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Max Tegmark and Michio Kaku among others, is that there are other Universes outside our own that follow the same laws of physics but have different configurations. This means that there are possibly Universes that have evolved exactly as our own albeit minute details. This means that there could be a Universe where you exist or have existed through the same historical timeline with some minor insignificant variations – such as where you wouldn’t have had small pox when you were a kid or one in which you chose not to sit for a particular exam.

More interestingly is the ‘many worlds interpretation’ in Quantum physics, which in short says that certain observations cannot be predicted in absolute terms since there is a range of possible observations with a different probability and each of these observations corresponds to a different Universe. On a macro level, the implication of this is that every choice, action or interaction you make is a range of possible outcomes that collapse into one in your current timeline. However all the other possible range of choices or actions would have been carried out in a parallel timeline – in a parallel Universe where a Parallel you would experienced a different set of circumstances and carried out different choices.

Connecting the Parallel Lines through Higher Dimensional Consciousness

The big question is now whether these parallel realities and timelines experienced by different versions of yourself are just possible realities out there or are they realities we can connect to, exchange information with and possibly switch from one timeline to another. Weird as it may sound, there are people who theorise that we sometimes ‘switch realities’ without knowing because it happens in an instant and the variation is so small that goes unnoticed.

I’m not sure about this point of view but what I am very confident about is the idea that our consciousness may be experiencing multiple timelines at some higher dimension. I do not want to get sidetracked by my ideas about consciousness but in short I subscribe to the point of view that our consciousness is layered over multiple dimensions of reality at the same time although we mostly experience this third dimensional reality. Some non-ordinary states of consciousness such as those experienced through certain entheogens give you the ability to experience your multidimensional consciousness. You access higher dimensional states of yourself transcending beyond time, your limited views of reality and beyond your ordinary sense of self. You can access information about your future because at even one higher dimension than our own, there is no unilinear direction of time. You can literally ‘walk’ through time in the same way you walk through space. At even higher dimensions, it is very possible to ‘walk’ through all possible timelines at once. It is like jumping from one version of yourself to another.

Meeting your Other Selves

I believe that this is why we can sometimes have precognitive dreams or Deja-vu because information from our consciousness at a higher dimensions seeps through our normal waking consciousness or in dreams. So the question is whether we can access information from a higher dimensional level of our consciousness which is experiencing different timelines of ourselves. In other words, can we ‘meet’ other versions of ourselves and experience or learn alternative possibilities. Think for example of the possibility of seeing how a more entrepreneurial or creative version of yourself behaves. How does she or he think, talk, walk, behave in certain situations. What habits would he or she have? and so on.

Making the Quantum Leap

Interestingly there are people like Burt Goldman who has spent his entire life exploring and teaching others about this possibility through a program called ‘Quantum Jumping‘. He believes that there are certain methods we can use to ‘get in touch’ with alternate versions of ourselves and get inspired to change and to acquire those traits which our parallel self possesses. Imagine for example meeting the explorer version of yourself or the best-selling book author. What would you learn? What aspects of his or her personality would you like to brush off on you?

Fantastical as it may sound, I do have an inner conviction that there is so much potential to discover about shifting our consciousness and realities we still know little or nothing about. Just look at the way we sometimes get stuck in a flat reality with little possibilities on the horizon. We then make a shift in consciousness – our reality and the way we experience changes completely. Our horizons expand and we start seeing opportunities we weren’t seeing before. We get energized and start doing things we never thought possible. This seems like literally quantum jumping to another version of our self. What makes this shift? What makes us jump? How did we bend our reality? These questions are definitely important and ones we should keep on asking. Let’s keep on talking about this possibilities and as the saying goes – Give yourself a chance to be yourself….or perhaps other versions of yourself.