Where do I begin a blog like this? Well certainly not like that – but alas too late, I already have.
Just talking in the blissfully warm Italian sunshine to my friend Lucca, a psychiatrist-psychotherapist and one of the loveliest people a person could know, about the possible value of that boring subtle shadow many people appear to be willing to live with, that sense there’s much more to life than this but without the willingness or drive to let go of the comfort of the familiar and find it.
He, like me, is an excitement addict, so wasn’t trying to convert me to boredom – we were just musing about its possible value.
I remain unconvinced however.
If mild or sometimes extreme moments of insecurity are the price for adventure, then I’m willing to pay it and have always been.
I’ve never been willing to pay the price of boredom for security however.
How about you?
Are you in the security-boredom camp or the insecurity-adventure camp?
Or a little of both?
Talking to a lovely woman from Monaco before – I’ve always fancied a spell living there or some perverted reason, even though I know I’d probably dislike it intensely – made me yearn for the madness of Ibiza. I haven’t felt that yearning for a while.
Retreat to the hills
Meantime, here I am running a most splendid retreat with twenty truly delightful participants from around the world at The Hill That Breathes, courtesy of my dear, dear friends, John and Gaia, who are without doubt one of the most masterful couples on the planet, and who’ve created what must be the perfect spot and situation for running retreats.
The underlying thrust of the week has emerged organically as an inquiry into the differential between the state of mind and being that occurs when immersed in the realm of the constructed self or ego as it’s more usually known, and the realm of the witness-bearer at the core, the immortal spirit, as the Taoist sages call it.
My thrust is that by learning to identify progressively more with the latter, not only do you immeasurably enrich your moment-by-moment experience of being alive, you also become more effectual at playing the game of daily life, thus scoring on both counts. Whereas, by being mostly identified with the former, you may well score high in the mundane game of people and machines but your spirit will be left bereft of sustenance – your life will not have the significance that is the source of true wealth in all senses.
And that by training yourself using the methods I teach, you first find yourself oscillating between the two states and gradually defaulting to the immortal spirit state most of the time, wherein you find yourself in a state of pretty much perpetual bliss, only occasionally attenuated by the usual stresses of daily life but then only momentarily.
You must keep up your daily practice if you wish to remain on top form
The group is uniformly enjoying this spirit-referenced state and as always with these events it’ll be fascinating watching how many sustain it in any long term sense, or whether it’ll merely prove to be a short-lived holiday romance.
Based on my findings from similar retreats over the past few years or so, my success rate in influencing participants to sustain the training required is pretty high.
But that’s not hugely uppermost in my mind at this point. We’re all enjoying the actual event too much to care at this point.
Global entropy
What fascinates me even more, I must confess, is observing the steady, exponential decline of global systems on every level at the moment and watching how that will affect us all. And watching to see how my work will be of use in helping people remain afloat in all senses.
Before I lose myself in narcissistically inclined musings however, let me share a simple yet potent trick for identifying with the witness-bearer aspect of self and thus enrich your life rather than deplete it by immersing yourself exclusively in the mundane realm.
One of life’s great secrets
Essentially it all boils down to this: when you’re immersed in the world of the world and thus prey to the inner turbulence arising from the impact of the inevitable cyclical rises and falls of fortune, your whole person tends to cramp itself into the frontal aspect of your body – your face, your throat, your chest, your belly and your genitals – you find yourself falling forwards within to meet life.
When you’re identified with the immortal spirit, witness-bearer aspect, your person tends to be tilted into the rear part of you – the back of the brain, the back of the neck, the shoulders, the back, the buttocks and so on.
So if you stand up with your feet fairly close together and tilt forwards onto the balls of your feet to the point of nearly losing balance, you’ll feel yourself cramped into the front of you in an intense way.
Now if you tilt back onto your heels to the point of falling over backwards, you’ll feel yourself slid back within.
Now rock between them to and fro and you’ll get the sense of oscillating between the two realms with nimbleness and ease.
Finally settle somewhere just in front of where you’re falling over backwards and you’ll find a spot at which you feel weightless.
This is the optimal place to be to be in the world but not of it.
Try it out, play with it a while and see what you think – leave comments below with your findings if you like.
Events
Just finished a magnificent session in the geodesic dome with everyone chanting in F sharp and sounding like a Philip Glass opera – I’m going to record it tomorrow and use it on a tune for you.
Meantime already getting excited about the next Sunday satsang series starting on 11th September, same day as my Soho Theatre gig, which is going to a blast – 2 hours of total improvisation around the theme of what the f*ck’s going on on our blessed plane right now and what we can do to balance it all out, and the Health Solutions series is going great guns at the moment too.
And before I get into a mindless waffle here, let me bid you a brief on your bike and I’ll see you again very soon.
Thanks for reading: your energy is important.
CHI!
By learning to identify progressively more with the witness-bearer within, not only do you immeasurably enrich your moment-by-moment experience of being alive, you also become more effectual at playing the game of daily life.
