You might be wondering, why doesn’t he just focus on one: meditation or the sleep schedule? Well, the problem is that they rely on one another. The sleep schedule makes the meditation possible and vice-versa. On top of all of this, I have a volunteer project that I’m abominably overdue on. That’s an energy sap, but I refuse to cave on that one.

A thought comes to mind of one of the greatest real-life examples of the “re-route power” analogy: The Apollo 13 mission. If you haven’t seen the movie Apollo 13, you really should. It’s a masterpiece and pretty accurate, as well.

Having cut power to everything, they barely survived until it was time to start-up everything for the last part of their journey. But there was a problem: If they started up everything, then they wouldn’t have enough juice. No matter how they arranged it, no matter what permutations they used, it just wasn’t enough.

I found myself in the same situation. I needed enough willpower to get my meditation and sleep schedules started, but I’m starting from a point of exhaustion. Today, after artfully letting an emotional gut-punch at work roll off me, I decided that I was going to deliberately relax. My focus is getting back on balance. For the rest, I’m going to be gentle with myself. Yes, I’m going to continue to eat healthy. Yes, I’m still going to a job wherein people scream demands for the impossible. And yet, having made the determination to be good to myself, I find the situation already changed. I’m meditating tonight, and I’ve cooked up a couple of ways to make sure that I’m up when I need to be. The rest will take care of itself.

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A failure of active planning made for an environment where stopping to meditate wouldn’t work. It’s not enough to have commitment to the process. I have to set structures in place to keep it going. This blog is one, and Habitforge is another, but I still need to make it happen. The counter goes to zero. Sigh.

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In other news, I seem to be rapidly returning to the tonal I remember. Making those existential “bookmarks” seems to have helped.

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Optimizing will only take you so far. Can you trust enough to go further?

I’ve been scavenging for bits and pieces of knowledge and skill for a long time. And it’s served me well. But the large-ish problem with that is that you can only stretch an existing setup so far before you have to start up something new.

Take stories for example: Sequels are notorious for being of inferior quality to the original, and long series tend to lose their focus and wind up with fans wishing for the early days.

Before the blog went on hiatus, I was starting to work with a meditation system that was simple enough to be useable, yet very far-reaching in its effects. The system has a core, or “foundation”, and you can study different branches of the knowledge from there.

Not long ago I was studying the topic of Surrender. Here I have to make explanations as I try to suppress my frustration with that word. Surrender in terms of meditation and inner development is vastly different from the normal meaning of the word.

Surrender in the day-to-day world means giving up, being defeated, throwing in the towel. This is not what I am talking about. This is an altogether different experience, and the only reason that “surrender” is used, is because it is the only word which comes close.

Surrender in the realm of personal, spiritual and psychic development is more akin to learning to move past the comfortable, yet restricting, thoughts and energies that we bind ourselves with. But surrendering them we become free.

Learning Surrender.

As I mentioned in my post regarding the Sedona Method, learning to let go can open doors you didn’t even know were there. My work on releasing was helpful to me, but Surrender goes beyond letting go of hurts and expectations. Surrender, in this context, is learning to trust. Learning to open yourself up to experiencing what the Universe wants to show you. All of the little things we hang onto are in fact holding us down, turning us into machines.

By learning to open yourself, you find that you don’t have as much need to fear (or any at all, really, but it’s difficult to maintain this state of being). You can be true to yourself, and act from the best place in you.

My Experience With Surrender Techniques.

Being primed with my Sedona experience and knowledge, I pretty much figured I had the “letting go” thing down. I have a coach I work with and he advised me to try working a little differently.

I started setting aside some time dedicated to the process of just letting go. I started making more progress, and I felt more flowing and adaptable, so I kept going. No big breakthroughs.

Then, one evening I was working with Surrender just before my normal evening meditation session. As patterns, events, and people came up, I released them. I wanted to see how far I could go. Eventually, I came to the image of a singular point, represented by a blue sphere, like a glowing rubber ball. This ball was resting on a concrete platform, and was (interestingly enough) wearing what looked like Renaissance metal armor, complete with a plumed helmet.

The blue point/sphere was obviously myself. What chilled me was that as I looked closer at the armor, I realized that it wasn’t what it appeared to be. What at first appeared to be protection, instead was slowly revealed to be tie-downs, chains of imprisonment.

Using the techniques I’d been taught, I started releasing the various pieces of armor, and all that went with them. It took time, but I was down to the concrete platform. I knew that it, too, had to go. Yet, I was still afraid. If I give up this solidity, how will I keep my bearings? How will my mind work without this solid structure in place?

It was at this moment, that a half-remembered quote from years out of the past floated across my mind. Here is the original:

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
-Andre Gide

Realizing that I would not progress unless I was able to stand on my own without this construct, I was finally able to step off the platform and let it go. The peace, excitement, and love that I experienced then can be hinted at with words, but must be experinced to really be understood.

Finding the Courage.

Of course it’s scary; As one of my favorite teachers is fond of saying, “If it were easy, everybody would do it”. But, it is worth it. If you feel like you are in a place where you can learn to let go and truly be yourself without the baggage and garbage, then I urge you to seize the opportunity. May you find the courage to take the leap.

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I have been pursuing many different things recently. One thing has been my meditation practice. I’ve been looking to get certain results from my meditation beyond relaxation and such. I fancy myself something of an explorer, and I wanted to use my meditative practice as part of that.

I have been following a specific path for so long, that it took an outside view to really make me aware that I was completely missing what I was looking for. I had been so focused, so intent, on the process, that I was unable to accept the result. I had quieted my mind to hear, but still I wasn’t listening.

The equivalent is if you are standing in the woods and you’re listening for a specific bird. You may be focusing on standing still. You may be trying to make your breath as quiet as possible, You may be trying to be as unobtrusive as possible so as not to scare the wildlife around you. However, if you are consumed with these thoughts, you will never actually listen to hear the birdsong.

Quite often, in our mad rush to accomplish, to get and to have, we don’t recognize that most of what we want, we pretty much already have. In the Sedona method, you learn to let go of the sense of lack. In the process you find that you have more of what you thought you were lacking than you ever imagined. Take the time to remember what you truly have and who you are. You are a uniquely gifted individual. Don’t throw those gifts aside because they don’t appear the way you expect.

If you would like to read more about how to recognize what you’re looking for, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

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I’d like to start off today with a quote I just recently discovered:

“Meditation is to religion what the laboratory is to science.”
–Paramahansa Yogananda

Myself, I would have phrased it differently, substituting the word “spirituality” for “religion” as I associate religion with dogmas and strict thought restrictions, but the principle holds just the same.

The more I meditate and the more regularly I do so, the more mental space it gives me to observe what’s going on in my life, both internally and externally. I ran a 30-day challenge back in November to meditate daily, and in January I fell off the wagon here and there. I never gave up, but I wasn’t as good about it as I wanted. In late January/early February I started meditating again. I being a man who likes to stack the deck in his favor given the proper environment, decided to try a new approach: a method whose strength was tied to it’s simplistic method. This helped, but regular meditation has helped even more, I think. I’ve been meditating twice a day (once a day in a busy/long day) ever since.

If you want to get in touch with your spirit, I cannot think of any technique, trick, or tip more effective and elegant then meditative practice. Like the quote above, it’s not something where you meditate for a while and then you’ve meditated all you need and can halt the practice. Instead view it as an ongoing process, like science. When a physicist makes a breakthrough, they don’t sit back and say “well, I’m good”. Instead, they’re interested in finding out what their breakthrough means to the Big Picture. Meditation is no different.

If you don’t know how to get started with your meditation practice, then just try a few out. There are a lot of good forms of meditation out there that can help you along. Ultimately it is about doing what works for you, and sticking to it so it gives you the results you’re seeking.

If you’d like to read more about how to make the most of your meditation, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

P.S. If you’re interested in the meditation technique I’m using, it’s called the Foundation by the Higher Balance Institute.

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As much as it may have seemed like I was coming down on external tools in Friday’s post, it was just a lead-in to these articles. I wanted to convey that while I like these tools for what they can do, I don’t like to rely on them.

Guided meditation is a powerful tool, in that your job is to be as relaxed as possible and to let the experience happen. This can be anything from a cleansing experience (good for defragging) to something else entirely. You can use guided meditation to face your fears, get a glance at your mental filters and sneak a peek at what’s beyond them, face parts of you that make you uncomfortable, resolve unwanted issues, work on integrating desired character traits and more.

Using Guided Meditation.

There are actually many different ways you can do this. Typically, one thinks of popping in a tape or CD, or perhaps grabbing your mp3 player. However, there are many different ways to go. One classic example, is to have someone guide you through it themselves. If you can trust the person, I would call this the ideal method, simply because you can hand the situation over to them and let them handle it. Their job is to monitor you and make sure everything goes according to plan. Your job is to relax and pay attention to the experience. In a safe environment with a trusted friend, you’ll be much better equipped to focus.

Another method would be to read them yourself. You could either record them and play them to yourself (I have gone into greater detail on that here), or read it to yourself aloud. The second one takes a bit of skill, but I’ve had some pretty good luck with it (I’ve gone into more detail on that one on my hubpage). This also maintains trust, and hearing your own voice seems to enhance it somehow, probably because you identify with the voice immediately.

Last but not least, we have the recordings. There are thousands of them out there and they run the range of excellent to atrocious. Only experience can tell you which is which. I’m not making any affiliate money with this, but if you are going to go for such recordings, I would suggest going with the Paraliminals. They’ve served me well, and have helped me get through a tight mental jam once or twice. They have a whole library of paraliminals on many topics. (Although if you’re looking for more esoteric development, you might want to check out Higher Balance, but I’ll come back to them at a later time.)

When you are looking to use recordings, remember to make sure that:

• You feel safe (i.e. you don’t feel mistrust)
• You are using a recording that actually pertains to what you’re going for, and
• The recording “feels right” to you.

Trust your gut on this one. If you start listening to something, and it feels wrong, drop it like a hot piece of metal. If on the other hand it feels like a stretch, then I would advise simply remaining open to seeing what develops, and watching yourself. If you don’t like where it’s taking you, you can still drop it. If, on the other hand, you find it empowering or a positive change, then you can take it out of your mental “sandbox” and accept it.

Above all, remember what I said on Friday: Guided meditation is great, but remember that it’s an external tool designed to create an internal change. It’s not doing anything that you can’t do yourself.

If you would like to read more about ways to sort the best from the rest for ways to expand your thinking, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

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There are lots of tools out there designed to help you clear out the mental clutter. Tools designed to enhance your meditation, tools designed (in some cases) to basically meditate for you – All you have to do is listen. While they are all helpful so far as they go, there are reasons why they are side dishes for me instead of the main course.

The Advantages of External Tools.

Two such tools that I can think of right off the bat would be binaural beats/brainwave entrainment based tools and meditation recordings. There are many, many more, but these two can be used to represent the rest.

The first represents a big boost as far as getting to alpha state for meditation. By playing slightly different tones in each ear, it causes your brain to react by bridging the gap in frequency. This, in turn, puts you into alpha, or sometimes theta state, often with no real effort or practice involved. You just ride along. You can engage in a meditative practice on your own while listening, and get to states that you were unable to achieve, up until now.

The second is similar (and in many cases, includes the first in some way) but this one actually uses guided imagery and hypnotic cadence to guide you through what they wish you to experience. This can be ideal if you know what you’re doing, and have a quality recording that you can trust and use properly. I myself am rather partial to the Paraliminals put out by Learning Strategies, but as I said, they serve a secondary role, not a primary one.

The Problems With External Tools.

The problem I have with the first is that while it’s great for getting to Alpha and Theta and so on, it’s got a severe limitation in that in order for it to work, you have to use it. Except in certain circumstances (and there are a few), you aren’t trained to operate without it, meaning that you can’t operate independently. Furthermore, if you use it too much, it starts dropping in effectiveness very quickly. I’ve seen this happen time after time when I was first learning to use binaural beats.

As for the recordings, there are actually a couple of problems with this. First, there’s the trust issue. I remember I was listening to such a tape one time, and was pretty relaxed. Then, just at the edge of hearing, I caught a word fragment. Subliminal messages. That could have anything in it. I was immediately alarmed and was now inherently distrustful of that disc and the publishers.

The second problem that I have with the recordings is that like a train on a track, you’re pretty much limited to where they take you. They may give you some freedom of movement, but I’d rather learn to play an instrument, than have a collection of tuning forks.

The third problem I have with the recordings is the same one that I had with the “aid” tools: Dependence. If you want to get the benefit of the recordings, you have to listen to them. That’s not a huge problem for me, as I have them on my mp3 player. But the idea of relying on an outside source for doing internal work is one that I find rather frustrating.

Why I Prefer Internal Tools.

If I have mental/emotional techniques that I can access at will that will do the same job, I’ll use them even if it takes a while to learn. It may not be as quick or easy, and I may not be as dead-on as the external tools at first, but the payoff in the end is that I have all the tools I need inside and won’t need to depend on binaural tones, or meditation recordings to get the results that I can produce on command.

What do you think of using external tools for internal work? Do you have any experiences to share? If so, please leave them in the comments.

If you would like to read more about finding the right fit for you in terms of development, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

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I’ve been focusing a lot on newer developments, but haven’t spoken much on the classics. Why? The newer techniques have been refined and are (in theory) more sophisticated than the older techniques. They should (in an ideal world) be a concentrated or optimized version of the earlier technology, possibly with new enhancements. The problems with any new technology are the same, however: It tends to be buggy, and also will quite often suffer from compatibility issues.

In many cases, the two problems are expressed as one. Both the Sedona Method and EFT have provided great benefits to me, but each has had their fair share of detractors, claiming that it doesn’t do anything. Well, it’s entirely possible that for them, it really didn’t.

On the other hand, Almost all personal computers (and practically all servers) in the world are using processors that work basically the same way as the 8086 processor that was released in 1978. Unix, upon which Linux is based, is a powerful operating system. So much so that (from my perspective) Both Microsoft and Apple’s real improvements have been along the lines of imitating the functionality and security of Unix. The kicker? My Unix teacher liked to quip that we were studying cutting-edge 1970′s technology.

For that matter, how long have we been using knives? A good, long while. The reason? It works. Remember, the reason technology is kept or discarded is how well it works. Sending Internet packets via carrier pigeon is a novel idea, but it’s not used, simply because it would be of no practical benefit, other than a good April Fool’s joke or a stunt to pass an afternoon.

The Value of Old Technology.

What’s great about using old technology is that it has already been through many revisions. It’s solid. You don’t get unpleasant crashes or other such monkey business like you do with the newer stuff. True, it may not have as many bells and whistles. The interface may be more difficult, and it may be clunky. However, reliability is where it really shines.

Would I rather use a computer, a calculator, or a sliderule? I would prefer to use them in the order given, but I’ve used them all. Unless you’re a User Friendly character, you can’t necessarily use them interchangeably, but the principle holds. (By the way, if you check out that comic, keep reading the next few. It’s pretty good.)

Some might consider “meditation” an old technology. In a way it is. But that’s about as accurate as saying that “Windows” is an old operating system. Which variant, and what version? Vista is still pretty new (biting my tongue here), but you can trace it back 20 years or so. So to say that meditation is ancient is not necessarily false, but it is less than accurate.

I do meditate daily, oftentimes twice daily. This was kicked off by my 30-day challenge back in November, but it’s served me well. The variant isn’t as important (for our purposes) as the fact that while the version I am learning is fairly new, it’s still pretty stable, and doesn’t get too fancy. Like any older technology, it simply does what it is supposed to do. I find that I continue to reap the benefits of regular meditative practice, and it’s improving. Nowadays, I’m actually surprised when one of those mental land mines pops up. I’ve got a full arsenal for turning it into a very decorative crater planter, but the surprise of actually finding one has more of an impact than whatever it tries to accomplish.

When you’re assembling tools for your mental defragging toolbox, don’t overlook the basics, and don’t ignore old technology. It can really back you up when the latest-and-greatest jams up.

If you would like to read more about how to make the most of your techniques, or pick up new ones, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

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Picture it. You have gotten rid of that old anger, the pointless worry and irrational doubt. You have allowed yourself to let go of the jealousy and accepted and celebrated who you are. There is always more to do, but you definitely notice a difference.

The Scenario.

See yourself going through a typical day. Some ups, some downs, and a close brush with “disaster”. The only thing is, that on this day something is different. Contrary to your experience, nothing gets you down. The day flows smoothly and easily. You find that even the brush with “disaster” doesn’t put you off-balance. Instead, you almost feel like you are surrounded by a warm, fuzzy blanket.

The question you ask yourself is: Are you reaping the benefits of releasing unwanted baggage? Or are you perhaps simply deluding yourself into thinking that everything is going correctly? Is it possible that you have just arranged for a natural “high” of brain chemicals so that you are basically drugged out and not caring? Or are you instead actually at the top of your game, and you just hadn’t realized it?

How to find the answer.

The answer lies in looking at the results. How did you perform that day? Were you taking care of business or off staring at the wall? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with staring off into space. It’s good for you, in balance with everything else. But if you did that all day you might have your answer. Take an unflinching look at the numbers. Don’t be overly harsh, but don’t be overly easy, either. How do the numbers look as compared to the previous average? If you show an improvement, then you have made a solid step towards freedom, and have improved your work situation along the way.

If, however, you note that you didn’t perform as well, then you know that something is gumming up the works. It may be that you are so busy thinking of a field of daisies that you are not noticing when something comes up. Your reaction and reflexes are slowed, and it’s just causing you problems. Set that technique aside, and try something else. It may come in handy later, but for now it just isn’t serving you.

My own experience.

Over the last few days I have been working with various techniques to improve the flow and effectiveness of my day. Especially when it comes to work. My job is a “multitasking” nightmare of a whole bunch of “top priorities” screaming for attention. I have been coping pretty well (I’m waaaay past the average time for burnout, but I’m still going), but I was tired of the toll it was taking on me emotionally.

I practice what I preach, meaning that I’m always experimenting to see what works best for me. Recently I came upon a combination of methods that is getting solid results for me. Although it had been building up for a while, I find that I’m much more emotionally balanced than I have been before. I mentioned that in the Podcast. That, combined with setting my day up right has made a huge difference. Remembering to acknowledge and welcome my guides, as well as a brief but effective meditative/hypnotic practice in the morning were the changes I made.

The changes I saw at work were impressive. I easily slid through the problems at work. At first, I thought that perhaps it was an “easy” day or that I was just off in space somehow. Looking for some hard data for me to use, I decided to keep it up. In the following days, the effect just intensified. Continuing to accept and release feelings, as well as a proper start to the day has made a big difference.

Almost in response to my thoughts regarding the “easy” day, the next ones were “hard” days. One of them also presented me with a situation where I was in Big Trouble if I couldn’t produce proof of my innocence of something. I didn’t have the proof, but I stayed on balance. In the end, out of my calm and untroubled execution of my duties, the proof presented itself. By that point, I had already released emotional attachments to the outcome.

My result.

Seeing this event, I decided to pull up some numbers to get a feel for how my work is affected. Not only was there improvement, the numbers are actually trending upwards. In other words: There is an improvement, and that improvement is still going. How high it goes is anyone’s guess, but the requirements are satisfied. I’m having far better days, and instead of interfering with work, my performance has improved. Not La-La Land in this case

If you would like to read more about how to tailor your inner world to suit you instead of the other way around, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

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