A Sovereign Life: Recent Episodes
Hung
As I was showing my final client of the day to the door - someone who’d been receiving regular acupuncture sessions since I first opened my clinic over 25 years ago - I mentioned that I was in the process of revamping my website.
‘Why are you doing that?’ they asked. ‘I looked at your website today and it looks beautiful.’
‘Well’, I explained, ‘I need to make some changes so it truly reflects what I do.’
‘But everyone knows what you do - you’re the last chance saloon. You’re the person people go to when all else fails. And to be blunt - no pun intended - you stick needles in people and make them feel better!’
After laughing for a moment, I paused at the door - ‘Well, in some ways you’re right about the last chance saloon. But these days I’m being called to go deeper - to make a shift from penetrating needles to penetrating questions.’
‘Penetrating questions eh? How on earth does that work? Surely questions can’t work in the same way as needles? Why are you changing? And why are you doing it now?’
We’ve all had the experience of a ‘lightbulb moment’ or had that feeling of when the ‘penny drops’.
The two terms both suggest a flash of insight or sudden inspiration - a new level of understanding that changes the way we look at things.
But did you know there’s also a crucial distinction between the two?
A lightbulb moment is a flash of illumination up in the head. It’s powerful and arresting and allows us a new vantage point from which to see our lives.
A penny-drop moment is different because it has a definite and direct knock-on effect in our innermost Being.
Stress, fear, worry, insecurity, and anxiety - it seems like this family of related feelings are front and center for all of us these days.
Whether it's in the news, on social media, in our conversations, or in our quiet solitary moments, stress and anxiety are on the rise like never before.
In what follows I’d like to explore the deeper drivers behind these experiences, not to fix or explain them away, but to provide a practical framework with which to respond skilfully to the rising tide of stress in our lives.
Two pretty profound questions are crucial to our discussion: Who are you? And where do your experiences really come from?
In the context of stress and anxiety, just learning to pose these questions can be of immense benefit. And when you’re able to answer them directly for yourself, the benefit is even greater.
You’ll begin to experience more freedom from worry and fear, and you’ll start to enjoy a greater sense of peace, presence, and possibility in all aspects of your life.
This works because if we are able to tune into the first principles that underpin experiences like stress, we’re then able to deconstruct the emotional/conceptual infrastructure that holds those experiences in place.
Have you ever wondered why healing occurs at all?
Over the past 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve seen time and again how - despite good medical care and treatment - some people get better while others do not.
Physiology - the miraculous way in which the body works so well day to day - is the missing piece of the puzzle hidden in plain sight.
The over-focus on sickness and what’s wrong with the body misses out on the miraculous way in which the human body not only survives but thrives.
In fact, it’s curious that so many of us lose sight of this inbuilt capacity altogether and end up feeling stuck and limited as a consequence.
It’s also curious how we know a great deal about what the body is made of and how it works, but remarkably little about why it works at all.
In reality, the body is a pulsating galaxy of activity, working for the most part without your input. We don't know why this works but we know that it works.
And this gives rise to a brand new way of relating to health and wellness: all you need to do is recognise and respond to the mysterious mechanism underpinning the body’s complex processes, and that profound mechanism will do all the heavy lifting by itself...
As I walked through Highgate Cemetery - where so many of the greats are buried - something about the gravestones suddenly caught my eye.
Whether it was a huge elaborate mausoleum or a simple rough-hewn headstone, each life was summed up in exactly the same way: two simple dates and a dash.
It was the dash that caught my attention.
A ‘dash’ can mean being in a hurry or rushing towards something.
And I would argue that most of us approach our life in precisely this way - as a dash towards some promise of future happiness.
Because this ‘dash’ is habitual and unexplored so much of our life goes unlived - so many aspects of our experience, and even happiness itself, are missed out on entirely.
And it turns out that our notion of time has a big role to play here.
In reality, time just means impermanence - the fact that things change moment by moment. But that real aspect of time only ever happens in the moment.
Are you curious to discover what happens when you allow your experiences to be exactly as it is without trying to change them?
This session is a journey to discover what it would be like to let go of guiding or controlling our experiences whatsoever.
Each moment of experience is mediated by the mind moment by moment.
A primary function of the mind is awareness, a knowing of things.
Normally we’re only aware of the activity of the mind, rarely are we aware of awareness itself.
Let’s use the image of a lake as a metaphor.
During my walks around lake Coniston in the Lake District, on days when the wind was down and the sun would make a welcomed appearance and the water was calm.
On such a day, one of my favorite activities was to find a place to sit and just marvel at the play of light and crystal clear reflections the landscape with and birds flying across the sky in the water. There’s something so calming about the whole thing.
This activity gave me an insight into meditation which I’ll now share with you.
Normally we are aware of the reflections on the water, but rarely are we aware of the water itself.
Let’s say if we were to observe the water for a few moments. We’ll notice that what it reflects changes moment by moment - but the water itself is constantly there, unchanged by these reflections in each moment.
In a similar way, if we were to observe our experience moment to moment and allow everything to be as it is, we’ll notice that awareness is constantly there, although what it’s aware of is always changing.
And we can go further and imagine that everything was disappeared from the field of awareness, what’s left is awareness itself.
Let’s now go on this journey together and see what we discover...
In this session, we shall embark on a journey into the domain of Being, into awareness itself
Each moment of experience is mediated by the mind moment by moment.
A primary function of the mind is awareness, a knowing of things.
Normally we’re only aware of the activity of the mind, rarely are we aware of awareness itself.
Let’s use the image of a lake as a metaphor.
During walks in the Lake District, on days when the wind was down and the sun would make an appearance…I’d find a place to sit and just marvel at the play of light and reflections the landscape with and birds flying through the sky in the water.
Normally we are aware of the reflections on the water, but rarely are we aware of the water itself.
Let’s say if we were to observe the water for a few moments. We’ll notice that what it reflects changes moment by moment - but the water itself is constantly there, unchanged by these reflections in each moment.
Similarly, if we were to observe our experience moment to moment and allow everything to be as it is, we’ll notice that awareness is constantly there although what it’s aware of is always changing.
And we can go further and imagine that everything were to disappear from the field of awareness, what’s left is awareness itself.
As you embark on this journey, let go of any expectations and enjoy the experience, be curious, and be open to what shows up for you.
What to do with stressful feelings: REMOVE or REMAIN?
Clarity of thinking is vital for making decisions that matter. So what do we do when we find ourselves caught up in the ‘3 S’s’ of being stressed, scattered, and shut down?
When we’re stressed we have no stability or flexibility of mind. When we’re scattered our attention is literally ‘all over the place’ and we’re miles away from the actual present moment of our life. And when we’re shut down we can’t be vulnerable or authentically connect with the emotional needs of others.
In such times, the solution is found by accessing the 3 P’s of peace, presence and possibility - but when we’re struggling with painful feelings such a state of peace seems inaccessible and wholly out of reach.
Our tendency at such times is to fight against the stress in our mind - to try and push and squeeze our mind in the direction of happiness. And in our attempt to ‘remove’ that stress as quickly as possible, we inadvertently strengthen the inner conditions that gave rise to the stress in the first place.
Instead, consider the helpful acronym ‘REMAIN’ - and explore the counter intuitive step of strategically welcoming stressful feelings as the best way of allowing them to clear.
Recognize
Experience
Map out
Accept
Investigate
Neutralize
Recognize the stressful feelings arising in your mind
Experience them fully without resistance…taking a few long, slow deep breaths.
Map out the feelings in terms of (1) bodily sensations and (2) thoughts.
Accept both as entirely normal, non-catastrophic phenomena within the perceptual field - to knowingly receive - welcome.
Investigate the default ‘remove-as-quickly-as-possible’ response from this new perspective.
Neutralize the need to ‘remove’ the feeling, by allowing the feelings to disperse.
“The proper function of the mind is not to be fighting or resisting or struggling with experience, but to be resting in the presence and being effortlessly aware of experience.” ~ Alan Watts
Normally we are caught up in limiting beliefs, so we have a corresponding experience of life that is characterized by the 3S’s - stressed, scattered, and shut down. And when we’re in this place, we cannot see or experience any possibilities of change in this state.
The good news is when we let go of these layers of conceptual confusion and duality, the essence of who we are, our real identity is revealed by the 3P’s - peace, presence, and possibility.
Meditation is a brilliant invention to help us to actively engage in the process of letting go of limiting beliefs - about some fixed and solid future and past - and fall into the present moment.
Simply show up to practice, with no expectations, only an open-hearted curiosity, and notice what shows up for you.
Rather than making the mind busy, distracted, bored or dull - meditation actually uncovers them.
This information is super valuable as it means we can start the process of letting go and become truly free from limiting beliefs - the real source of all our stress.
In the peace of our mind, we will bring an example of daily experience and ask the question: Is this experience inside or outside my mind?
Just ask the question and wait for what comes back for you.
What do you see, what do you hear, what do you feel, that lets you know where experience is coming from?
In this session, we shall abide in the stillness of the mind.
Start by settling the body and mind with mindfulness of breathing.
Then release tension from thinking by letting of emotional anticipation of a future and carrying the past.
Arrive in the present moment - attending to the sensation of air entering and leaving the nose, moment to moment.
Meet the tendency to clench up with relaxation and releasing of tension in the body and mind.
Finally shifting attention from the breath and enjoying and abiding in the inner stillness of a relaxed body and settled.
Allow your awareness to be absorbed into this stillness, moment by moment.
In this session, we shall deepen our experience of peace with the deep peace boost.
Allowing ourselves to heal is an act of loving-kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. Why? When we give ourselves permission to heal, others are also allowed to heal.
When our mind is obscured by confusion, there can only be conflict. In attending to these states of mind, we unquestioningly identify with a split, a separation, from who we truly are. Beneath the waves of turbulent mental activity, there is a deeper feeling of peace, presence, and possibility. This is the essence of who we are.
Normally our body and mind are not in sync, so our default setting is stressed, scattered, and shut down. When body and mind are in sync, we become inhabit another setting of peace, presence, and possibility.
When we are peaceful, another possibility to respond in a beneficial manner avails itself to us.
That is the qualities of love, compassion and wisdom are who we are beneath the layers of conceptual confusion and duality.
These qualities can only be fully online when we allow our bodies to relax and our minds to naturally settle into peace and presence.
This is why we train in attention.
Systematically training in developing our attention is an act of loving-kindness and compassion for ourselves and others.
This is the place to come from when we train in meditation.
It is well known and documented that stored stress and tension are major contributors to ill health, unhappiness, and addictive patterns of behavior. If this state of imbalance is not addressed, further sickness and worsening of addictions can ensue.
The great news is, just as the body has the capacity to heal itself, so too does the mind. This is the beauty and majesty of the design. When we rest and relax the body it will naturally heal and restore itself. Likewise, when we allow the mind to settle, it too will heal itself. A natural peace and clarity reveal themselves to us.
Physicians know all too well that they do not do the healing. They merely assist nature in the process of healing the body by cleaning a wound or setting a broken bone for instance. The rest is down to the marvelous healing and restorative capacity of nature.
Normally, when we observe something that we can control, we attempt to do something to affect it in some way. However, in the practice of mindfulness of breathing, we simply allow the breath to flow freely of its own accord without imposing anything from our side. It is as if we allow our body to breathe itself - which of course it does - even when we’re not aware of it. Just like it knows how to mend a wound and heal an ulcer. The value of being mindful of breathing is that it purposefully invites healing to the body and mind.
Combining relaxation of the body with mindfulness of the breath is an enjoyable and effective way to bring about this marvelous innate recuperative capacity. This practice is simple but can be made difficult by our preconceived ideas and judgments of what is possible for us. Letting go of this thinking and immersing ourselves in the practice, we will see this healing occur right before our eyes. Whilst we are not in control of the winds of change, we can learn to gracefully and masterfully fly once we gain an embodied understanding of the fundamental truths of who we really are and what’s really possible for us.
In daily life, keep a proportion of your awareness on the sensation of the breath as a counterpoint to your activities. It keeps you grounded, relaxed, and clear. Mindfulness of the breath keeps your body and mind present.
When your body and mind are in sync they’ll function beautifully. You'll notice the speed of thinking reduces, there is more space and calm at your core. The natural clarity of your mind avails itself, resulting in better decision-making and high-value results for ourselves and others.
In this practice, you do not need to regulate your breath in any way. You’re simply allowing the breathing to settle into its natural state.
Instead of focussing attention on a specific image, mantra, or region of the body - such as the tip of the nose, our awareness is simply open to the entire field of sensations throughout the body, especially in relation to those of respiration.
Why? This is to emphasize mental and physical relaxation.
When your body and mind are in a constricted state, any attempt at developing shamatha will aggravate the tension that’s already there. By learning to settle your awareness and relax the body, you diffuse the knots of tension in the body and mind. The tightness unravels of its own accord, soothing the physical and energetic networks in the body. This greatly contributes to improving the state of health in the body.
Mindfulness is widely understood as the moment to moment, non-judgmental awareness of whatever arises.
However, in this context, mindfulness refers to attending continuously to an object of meditation without forgetting or distraction.
Training in meditation is training in developing single-pointedness of attention.
It does initially require a little effort to keep returning the attention back to the physical sensation of the breath.
The quality of this attention is not too tight, not too loose; it is relaxed yet focussed.
With familiarity, you'll be able to maintain this attention without too much effort.
The key points of practice are:
- sequentially relax body
- recentre the mind to here and
- return attention to rest on the breath
- attention is not too tight, not too loose
- enjoy rather than perfect - the improvement will happen as you take it nice and easy
You're beginning to develop and sharpen your attention by using the breath as the object. This is called training to develop Shamatha.
Shamatha is a Sanskrit term used by the Buddhist tradition. It is often translated as the "tranquility of the mind", or "mind-calmness". Shamatha is one of two qualities of mind which are developed in meditation, the other being vipassana (insight).
As your attention improves you will sense more stillness, peace, and clarity of mind. This eventually becomes the place to return to and live from - your grounding or center. As the turbulence in your mental activity settles, the natural peace, presence, and possibility of your mind/consciousness will reveal themselves to you. You are do not need to add anything else.
The innate characteristics of peace, presence, and openness to possibility will avail themselves for you. As the relationship with yourself becomes peaceful so too will the loving presence that you bring to your relationships with others. You will naturally see many more possibilities for how to authentically show up, serve and prosper in the world.
The simple exercise of focusing on the breath helps us to become more calm and centered not just because it reduces our habitual busyness and distraction, but also because it reveals to us, first hand, how consciousness is always creative in nature.
Whatever we give our attention to naturally begins to expand and appear in more detail. The breath can become our best friend and guide - helping us to remember that we are in the driver's seat and that we can change our experiences by changing the attention that we are giving to things.
Our attention is important and valuable at all times - that’s why it's something that we ‘pay’.
Over the course of our life, we’ve acquired incredibly complex skills, and abilities. And we've mastered really sophisticated, demanding techniques. So just focusing on your breathing should be really easy. But it isn't. And recognizing that difficulty is one of the most valuable things that you can do. Why? Because you then realize that you're taking this basic problem of distraction into every situation of your life.
So what opportunities are you missing? What important conversations are you not picking up on? What things about yourself are you not understanding? What aspects of your life and what you're capable of are you completely missing out on because of this basic problem of distraction and inattention?
So here, you're learning the skill of deliberately, and strategically, returning again and again to the breath.
The breath is a moment-by-moment experience. It’s not thinking ‘about’ the breath, and it's not focusing on an idea of the breath. It’s a physical sensation, in real time, of the breath coming in and out of the nostrils moment by moment - with no commentary and no addition.
What that is also you to do is get out of that excessive conceptuality. It shifts you into a direct, non conceptual experience of just breath, just sense awareness.
In my work I encourage people to reflect on their experiential ‘location’ through the use of three diagnostic questions:
- Where are you?
- When are you?
- And who are you?
Although these questions might feel somewhat strange to pose, they are actually incredibly important.
Because according to the experience of mystics and meditators over centuries - and now corroborated by the latest neuroscience - most of the time we are not abiding in our authentic, reality-based location.
This means that we are also out of sync with our real nature and cut off from our genuine potential.
Tuning into the three P’s of peace, presence, and possibility allows us to arrive where we actually are, and to establish an authentic inner security based on our actual identity.
Timings of the recording
0min: Introduction
3mins 24s: Contemplation
16min 37s: You can pause here if you don't have time to listen further.
Total length: 26min, 21s
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We explore maintaining attention all the way on the in-breath and all the way on the out-breath. We're allowing our attention to ride on the breathing; not making it a task to accomplish. The three qualities of cultivated attention are calm, balanced, clear. Also, we explore, being aware of awareness itself - or more accurately, we're resting with a naturally settled mind.
This is achieved through developing samatha - paying attention, in a relaxed, balanced, and lucid way.
This is not a passive activity, like zoning out; here, we're using the powers of attention and alertness (in a relaxed sense) to ensure that the three qualities of attention: calm, balanced, clear. These qualities are gently and kindly cultivated and from the get-go.
Emphasizing the clear and lucid nature :
- like tuning a string instrument: attention needs to not be too light and not too loose, just right
- if too much chatter, return to attending to the breathing
- if too distracted, relax the attention and settling into the object (eg the sensation of breathing)
- if too drowsy, open eyes
- if the object not too focused, not clear, then to slightly relax the attention
Developing our attention through training in Shamatha.
Attention has three qualities: Calm, Balanced, Clear
In this session, we're emphasising the quality of clarity or lucidity, by attending more fully to the sensation of breathing. We do so without sacrificing the other qualities of calm and balanced. So relax more if you start to feel agitated before returning to attending fully to the breathing.
Continuing to develop our power of attention (Shamatha)
Three essential qualities
- Calm: in the body
- Balanced: body and mind
- Clear : clarity, luminous, lucid - these words describe the quality of the mind that is unobstructed by the distraction of dullness.
It's like having a lucid sleep - the body is deeply relaxed, yet we maintain lucidity throughout the process.
An experiential exploration of the question: What happens if I just allow things to be just as they are?
This is a guided talk through the qigong routine that we learned this week. After watching the demonstration from the recording, try listening and practising along with this guided audio.