Superconscious

This story captures the power of equanimity – meeting experiences in an even way by tempering your emotional reactions. 

Equanimity is one of Rudolf Steiner’s six basic exercises of Anthroposophy. Steiner is best known for Steiner Schools which he never wanted them to be named after him but called Waldorf schools. He was such an incredible yet humble man. It is because of lectures he gave that whole movements started.

Steiner / Wardolf schools are the largest non denominational schools in the world, there is even one in Kathmandu, Nepal (which I was fortunate to visit). Steiner’s lectures were like Ted talks – ideas definitely worth sharing and people saw that. He gave over 6000 lectures in his life on a variety of topics including medicine, colour, architecture,  art, farming, education,  special needs and more. Biodynamic farming originated from 3 weeks worth of lectures he gave to farmers, and like the schools, spread all the world and continue to flourish today!

Wow!

If you want something to research I suggest checking him out. I am huge fan of his and used to teach at the Steiner School in Sydney so if you have any question please get in touch.

One way to develop equanimity is to practice waiting 3 seconds before responding to anything for 21 days. So when your phone rings, you get an email, you spill a drink: wait three seconds before you do anything.

When I completed this exercise it gave me an amazing habit to take a pause in situations where I previously would have reacted and said or did something I later wished I hadn’t. Have you ever snapped at a loved one or had road rage in the car in front of your kids / friends?

The 3 Seconds Exercise creates a habit of a small pause! It seems simple to wait to answer a phone or answer a question but it creates an amazing strength…

The small pause is magical!!

It allows you to contemplate – what do I want to create in the situation?

What is the most vital action for me to take that is in harmony with service to myself and service to others?

I invite you to experiment with the ‘Waiting 3 Seconds’ exercise. If 3 weeks seems like too much, do it for one day.

This is the difference between reacting and responding.

Reacting happens when there is no space between the stimulus and the response like a knee that jerks when hit on the tendon under the patella.

If a person receives a compliment they will likely feel happy, if a person receives an insult they will likely feel angry or hurt, automatically, with no space in between, it happens in a instant.

A person who is training themselves to achieve self mastery will observe their mind and how it wants to react to the insult or compliment and create a space between to make a choice.

They will respond rather than react, and if they are wise that response will be moving them in the direction of their goals and dreams.

Another exercise is to Observe your feelings, restrain strong responses and strengthen feeble ones. Do this for 4 weeks.

This exercise is not done with an object or at a fixed time, but throughout the day. When something happens to you, look at your feelings, either at that moment or later.

If you start with this exercise, at first you might not experience many different feelings, but in the course of four weeks there appear to be more and more, both positive and negative, with fierce and feeble reactions. It may help to make a list or a map of your feelings and their intensity at the end of the day.

Feelings are like the weather. They are just there. We experience them, but unlike the weather we can adjust our reaction by our thoughts.

• An example: I say something to someone. He leaves the room and the door closes with a bang. I get scared and feel fear. Is this banging of the door a response to what I said? Did I hurt him? But is this thought justified? Perhaps the door was shut by a gust of wind. When the person comes back and smiles or says something like: the door fell out of my hand, then I am reassured and understand that my response was not correct and slowly I will be able to change my attitude to the slamming of a door. A next time I will be less scary and perhaps I am more neutral to such an event.

• Another example: when I am pushed in my back while walking in the street, I feel anger, annoyance or fear. When I see that I was pushed by a blind person, I understand that he could not help it. Perhaps that thought leads to a modified feeling about the event. And I can take it a step further by cultivating the thought: “Others may be blind to how they affect others. It is their ignorance or failure to see, that leads others to act towards me in ways that may evoke my anger.” Then, gradually, this thought permeates us and our feelings and reactions become modified. Maybe they are not as intense, or they don’t last so long anymore.

You cannot take a particular moment, but you need to restrain your strong responses at the moment that you experience them, and likewise cherish the subtle ones. When you look back at the end of the day, you will find that sometimes you could do that, and that you missed an opportunity at other times. The next day you go on with that awareness.

It’s not always easy to name feelings. There are feelings that are close to each other and yet different, such as happy and cheerful, anxious and afraid, angry and upset. Negative feelings are often easier to tackle than positive ones.

You need to distinguish feelings from quasi-feelings, which usually start with “I feel”, e.g. taken, used, loved, attacked. Real feelings usually start with “I am”, e.g. angry, happy, sad, surprised. It can help to make a list of feelings.

Where your focus goes energy grows.

There is certainly a lot in this world pulling at us for our attention. Biologically we are wired to be in a state of flight, flight or freeze or rest and digest. This design is meant to help us flood our body with energy so we can run away, freeze or fight a danger and when the danger passes rest and digest. Unfortunately, for a lot of us the ‘danger’ that we face appears constant and our bodies get stuck in a fight, flight or freeze state where our bodies get flooded with the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Stress is super common and many of us are stuck in a go, go, go state that never lets us fully relax. What does relaxation mean to you? How do you relax? How do you care for yourself?

This month I invite you to find time to do things you enjoy. Or simply enjoy doing nothing. I would like to suggest you do your best to carve out 15 minutes a day to cultivate a joy of being. Flick the switch from doing to being. How? One way of cultivate an ability to stop doing and start being is to awaken the observer within you. 

For some of you relaxing may be easy. You may be able to simple be. For others it may be a muscle you have not exercised for a long time or there may be things you find hard to face when you stop. Intense, frightening thoughts and feelings might rise to the surface. Two simple exercises you can use to build your relaxation muscles and increase your spiritual fitness are:

• Put it in a box
  • Before you begin your relaxation or beingness, imagine a box and putting everything that is causing you anxiety, stress, depression or dis-ease in that box.
  • Then put the box anywhere in the universe.
  • Set a 15 minute timer and just be.
  • After the 15 minutes you can pick the box back up and sort through the emotions using EFT or any other emotional processing tools or you can send the box to the sun.
    
    Ultimately emotions are e + motion = energy in motion they want to be processed and released not stuck in the body. Sometimes processing and releasing them can be easy sometime it can be a challenge.
    
    Healing is a journey not an event, a marathon not a sprint. Where ever you are at on this journey I wish you peace, love and acceptance.  

• Watch your thoughts
  • For ten minutes a day (set a timer so you won’t be concerned with how much time has passed) sit in a quiet place where you will not be distracted and allow your thoughts to float through your mind.
  • Set the intention for you to be a passive watcher being in a neutral state of mind. As you do this you will become aware of how you judge, criticise, analyse, rationalise, intellectualise and justify your thoughts but do it being neutral.
  • Just be in a state equivalent to watching TV late a night and an advert comes on you have seen many times, you are aware of the advert although you are not engaging in it or associating with it in any way and at the same time aware being neutral.
    
    This is the first step to go beyond the conditioned mind and awaken your higher intelligence.

1. Relax more throughout the day to generate and maintain energy for your dream work. Often times we can get caught up in downward spirals in our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, choices and decisions. Be aware by observing what you are thinking, saying and doing? Are you caught up in worry? Do you feel stressed? Use some techniques such as meditation, Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) or experiment with this two minute exercise that stimulates your vagas nerve and gives you nervous system the message to switch from fight and flight to rest and digest. “Place your hand on your low belly / abdomen. Take a deep breath, breath in through your nose and send the breath to your hand making the inhalation last for three counts, hold the breath for three counts and exhale out your mouth for the count of three. Repeat for a least 3 rounds.
2. Give yourself a hypnotic suggestion as you drift off to sleep –  “I will remember one dream tonight, I will remember one dream tonight, I will remember one dream tonight”. If you already remember one dream give yourself the suggestion you will remember all your dreams. We have 3-4 dreams a night.
3. In the morning write your dream on a scribble pad and jot down as many fragments as possible. This will strength your recall muscle and before long you will be writing pages. Just like any physical exercise it takes practice and building up slowly. We may not be able to do push ups or lift heavy weights but we can do easier exercise and build up the degree of difficulty. If you are already remembering your dreams work with writing them out in as much detail as possible or you may be ready to take the next steps towards lucid dreaming.
4. Write your dream out in the first person, present tense. The subconscious and unconscious minds never sleep! As the conscious mind rests (unless you are in a lucid dreaming state) the subconscious mind continues its work and consciousness. The subconscious mind consciousness relates to the eternal now, everything is happening in the moment. It relates to I am statements (rather than I will and I was). It is the conscious mind that exists in the linear timeline, which is past and future orientated. By using I am statements you will have access to greater recall. For example, it is common upon waking to write or think, “I was being chase. There were two bad guys following me. I got stuck in a dead end alleyway. I tried to run but my legs were made of lead. I tried to fight but my punches didn’t land”. Experiment with, “ I am being chased. Two bad guys are following me. I am seeing the look on their faces. I am feeling scared and out of control. I am yelling no. I am getting stuck in a dead end alleyway. I am trying to run. My legs are feeling heavy.”
5. Sometimes writing can mean the dreams slip away. Working with a voice recorder app on your phone means you can keep your eyes closed. You can lie in the same position you sleep in and recall your dreams. Remember to state them in the first person.

Recalling your dreams is the first step in accessing the incredible power of your subconscious mind.  It is what we are unconscious of that creates repetition without illumination, repeated experiences of self-sabotage, feeling stuck and like a victim of life rather than a creator. We are either in a dysfunction pattern in which we are playing our false beliefs we decided were true during the first 21 years of life or we are in a success pattern where we are choosing what we want and experiencing it.

Beliefs either liberate us or limit us. But some of the time we are not even conscious of our beliefs. They are subconscious and come from things we were told or observed as children. I invite you to shine a light on these shadows and make the unconscious conscious. 

This month I facilitated two tapping circles and the last one was incredible. We started by tapping with one of the participants who had a belief “I don’t appreciate things”. She also believed “I can create anything I want”. How this was turning up was she had created a lot of success in her life but could not hold onto to it as she would end up in self sabotage. She was anxious at a crossroad wanting to create but afraid of not been able to enjoy and maintain. Through the powerful tools of the emotional freedom technique she discovered where this began as a young girl hearing repeated messages “You don’t appreciate things / me / etc”. This message had become internalised. What we believe turns up in our lives as thoughts, feelings, experiences and the ways in which we can view reality through our perception and deception filters.

How do you interpret your reality? And how does that effect your choices especially what you are willing to explore and go after?

Gary Craig one of the founders of EFT used the metaphors of the palace of possibilities and the writing on the walls. He says we have so much potential we have hundreds of rooms we could explore but we stay in one room limited by the writing on the walls. The writing on the walls has been written by our parents, siblings, culture, school teachers, religions etc things like no pain, no gain, you’re not enough, that room is only for certain people not us / you, you can’t go in there to do art you will starve., etc. 

Please watch the below video for further explanation and a short guided meditation to erase your writing on the walls and choose to write new beliefs and see how your life transforms. 

Change is the only constant and yet it is something many of us have resistance to. How can we harness the energy of change to work for us? 

For many attachment forms to the familiar and comfort zones develop. Often times when we are in a comfort zone we can just be going through the motions rather than consciously making choices about what we want to create in our lives. The waves of change come and can knock us off our feet. A master is someone who takes any situation no matter how bad it seems and changes it into better than if it never occurred. No matter what waves roll into your shore you have a choice to how you internally and externally respond. Change is driven at the level of choice.  

Change is happening at an exponential rate. Look at what has unfolded in 2020 – unprecedented change. It is a vital time to be awake and aware of ourselves. Change relates to the energies of necessity and opportunity. When you encounter change what energy do you relate to? When we are deeply in a comfort zone it can mean we miss the call of our soul and what we are really wanting. Ignoring and repressing it to the point where we respond out of the energy of necessity rather than opportunity.

Imagine your true self / higher mind wants to tell you to make a change and it can use a metaphorical feather, brick or bus. For instance, you feel called to make a change in your life’s work but are in a comfort zone in your career. First you may get a feather, a little voice inside that says perhaps I could explore this type of work. If ignored you make get the bus which could turn up as an illness, an accident, getting fired and if this is still ignored duck because you may just get a huge cosmic kick up the butt. Perhaps we have received a collective kick up the butt? It’s a matter of choice. 

Two exercises I suggest to enhance your ability to work with change are:

1. Contemplate what you want. What do you really, really want? Imagine it even if it is just for a few moments. One day I was at a Cacao ceremony on a rooftop and one of the women was cold. She kept talking about how cold she was for around ten minutes. Her partner said, “Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you were warm.” She did. A few minutes later a new person arrived and had a spare blanket. Coincidence? Matter of choice. Personally, I don’t think so. Either way, give yourself a break from ‘being cold’ whatever that is for you and take a few moments to imagine ‘being warm’. Tell your subconscious, “I choose to be warm”.

2. Do things differently. My mentor Paul went to see his teacher one month expecting a profound assignment. He told him to go away and tie his shoelaces differently and come back in 6 months. Experiment with doing things differently – tying your shoes differently, take a different pathway home, wash your body in a different order, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand and observe your state of being. 

Get in touch with your experiences and questions and enjoy the journey.

What does relaxation mean to you?

Perhaps it is having no where to go or nothing to do. Perhaps it’s spending time with loved humans or pets. A day at the beach or amongst trees.

Relaxation is a natural state for us to be in. However, it is not always normal. Many people are in a chronic state of fight or flight and in great need of relaxation. 

Consciously you may think you are relaxed – (“I’m fine”) – but subconsciously or unconsciously you are in fight, flight or freeze.

Kind of like Marge thinking she is sitting on the couch.

Our autonomic nervous system subconsciously put us in one of two modes ‘rest and digest’ (parasympathetic) or ‘fight, fight or freeze’ (sympathetic). This is ancient programming because fight, flight or freeze would save us from predators  back in cave man pre fire days (think The Croods) and when the danger past we would be free to sit around rest and digest our food. This would happen automatically we would get flooded with adrenaline so we could react. It happens without thinking. A small version is when you think a stick is a snake or your hair is a spider. It happens to our bodies before our minds know.

When we are stressed we don’t sleep well, eat well or feel very creative, chronic adrenaline prevents these natural inclinations. These days we don’t have literal predators but perceived and real dangers that can lead to disease in the body from chronic stress.

We do have choice in this though. We can become more aware of our bodies, our emotions and our subconscious. Breath is one of the major bridges between our conscious and our subconscious. Breathing happens subconsciously the majority of the time. Breath is a clue to how we are feeling. If we are breathing shallowly or rapidly it often indicates stress. 

I would like to share one quick technique with you. It only take 1.5-2 minutes and will do wonders for you physically, mentally and emotionally. It requires you to consciously turn your attention to your breath.

It’s called 3,3,6 breathing.

• Sit or lie in a comfortably position.
• Fix your gaze on something just above eye level.
• Take a deep breath all the way into your abdomen, bellow your belly button (rather than chest breathing).
• Breath in through your nose for the count of 3, hold for the count of 3 and exhale out your mouth for the count of 6. Repeat 3 times.
• On the third exhale, you may close your eyes, if it feels good stay in that relaxed state for a few moments and when it feels good internally count to 3 and open your eyes.
• Go about your everyday life feeling more refreshed and relaxed.

This technique physically gives your body the message to relax through the stimulation of the Vagus nerve.

I suggest doing it once in the AM and once in the PM. And by the way, it totally counts as a meditation if you are wanting to have a daily practise. 

Exercises to strengthen your mind, heart and will.

Wait Three Seconds

We can either respond or react to the stimuli in our lives. An obvious reaction is when we are having a ‘bad day’ get cut off in traffic and swear. It’s a ‘knee jerk’ a button gets pushed and in a spilt second we react. This example esculates when we react with anger to a loved one, especially if that loved one is a child.

Responding is when we create a pause, a space, so that we break the circuit, the conditioned programming (from childhood), where we first learnt to get angry to control or for revenge. How can you create a pause? How can you train yourself to automatically have a buffer or filter between stimulus and action?

WAIT THREE SECONDS for 21 days before you take action to any stimulus. Phone rings, wait three seconds before picking it up, someone asks you a question, wait three seconds before answering, you smash a plate, wait three seconds before cleaning it up, you get cut off wait three seconds. If you complete this process with discipline you will have created a habit of responding rather than reacting. That small space is a world of possibilities where you invite your true self (not the bundle of programming) to make a CHOICE. 

Choice is free will and an enormous gift of human life. Choice to respond, choice to apply this exercise, followed up by many decisions to support the choice to grow and steer the direction of your ship, rather than being blown about by the winds and the tides of other energies.

Watch Your Thoughts

For ten minutes a day (set a timer so you won’t be concerned with how much time has passed) sit in a quiet place where you will not be distracted and allow your thoughts to float through your mind. Set the intention for you to be a passive watcher being in a neutral state of mind. As you do this you will become aware of how you judge, criticise, analyse, rationalise, intellectualise and justify your thoughts but do it being neutral. Just be in a state equivalent to watching TV late a night and an advert comes on you have seen many times, you are aware of the advert although you are not engaging in it or associating with it in any way and at the same time aware being neutral. This is the first step to go beyond the conditioned mind and awaken your higher intelligence.

2019 draws to a close. Are you taking time to reflect on what you want to let go of and what you want to create? What is your current reality? What is your vision?

There are many rituals, processes and ceremonies one can do to let go of what no longer serves. I will share one with you.

But before I do, what does ‘what no longer serves’ mean? 

We are here to be creators and to have fun. 

We have some basic tools and materials for creating our reality: thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, decisions, choices (materials) and imagination, will and desire/expectation (tools).

These tools and materials are in service to our creations.

How sharp are your tools? How developed are your materials?

A blunt will or imagination will not serve building the life you want to live. 

Unhelpful beliefs like ‘money doesn’t go on trees’ or ‘I’m just not creative’ also don’t serve a vision of creative fulfilment and prosperity. Many beliefs are unconscious and turn up as self sabotaging behaviours. You can learn to identify them and you can over come them through acting out of choice rather than habit.

Let’s look at beliefs… 

I have just spent a few days with a dear friend of 20 years who lives on the other side of Australia and has been on an intense truth seeking path for as many years as me, since we were teenagers. He was in a lot of pain and suffering. He had lost touch with his will. He had the openness and vulnerability to share with me his truth that no matter what he did there was a pit of despair waiting for him. He had a compulsion of self destruction and a belief he was worthless deep down.

Knowing him well and all the work he has done I felt responsible to challenge him that his pain and suffering was a choice. That somewhere along the line he had made a choice to believe he had no worth, no value. The idea for him that he created his reality of pain through choice was mind blowing. His spiritual practise had been about surrendering to the pain. Focusing on the silence and stillness and feeling it. While his practises have been valuable for him he had lost a sense of his own power to create. 

I asked him in all his work if he had experienced himself as true love and oneness. Surely after 15 years of meditation there had been a moment he could have experienced himself in this way because this is the truth – we are all worthwhile, every baby, every human is worthwhile it is our birthright. He had experienced it. So it was a choice from then on to believe that he was worthless or to believe that he was worthy. He realised worthiness was scary and he had to let go of the payoff of worthlessness which was for him not been responsible for his life and wallowing. Believing in his worth means knowing what he wants and going about creating it.

It is common to have conscious or unconscious beliefs – I am not good enough, I do not have enough or I do not know enough. When we choose to wake up to our own power it is time to start challenging the truth of these beliefs and be prepared to make new choices. Byron Katie has four questions she uses:

• Is it true?
• Is it really true / can I know that it is absolutely true?
• How do you react when you believe it is true?
• Who would you be if you did not believe it was true? 

I invite you to look at your beliefs before the end of the year and challenge if they true. You can add a level of imagination by erasing the beliefs and writing new beliefs.

Sometimes we do things automatically often because we saw our parents doing it. In one family at Christmas a woman always cut the end of the ham before she cooked it. When her partner asked why, she said that’s what my Mum does. When she asked her Mum, she said that’s what my Mum did. When she asked her Grandma she said, oh I did that because I only had one pan and the pan was too small. It can be so valuable to make the unconscious conscious and choose to do something differently. 

We live in a palace of possibility but we often keep to one room because someone has either told us to or we have assumed we don’t belong in the rest of the palace. The limiting beliefs are like writing on the walls of that room. I invite you to read the writing on the walls of the room you stay in. Imagine rubbing it out and writing new beliefs that allow you to explore the whole palace of possibility. 

I asked my friend what it is you want? He said he hasn’t asked himself that for a very long time, that it is almost unfathomable. I asked him, do you want to know what you want? He said yes. I said well, start there with that choice – I want to know what I want and the belief I am worthy.  

Happy New Year Superconscious Peeps! 2020 is a palace of possibility and I will be writing with some suggestions in the next week on creating lasting change / conscious reality creation. In 2020 I will be running a live 7-week program in Sydney to deep dive with a group into self mastery. Send me an email to register your interested or stay tuned for more details.