Mind Calm (11 page)

You don't ignore what's happening in your life.
You ignore the judgements your mind has about your life.

Believe it or not, you can enjoy a massive amount of serenity and success by recognizing the is'ness of life. By putting your attention on the context, you rest within an inner yes that allows this moment to be, exactly as it is. The result: peace and a whole host of other ‘positive' emotional experiences as well, including joy and love.

How do you know when you are successful? Surely a life lived with an ongoing sense of peace and happiness, love, clarity, creativity and abundance would be one amazingly successful life. Although this book can help you to enjoy more external life success - by accessing more confidence and creativity and getting more done with less stress - this part of the Content–Context model is more about feeling successful on the inside - which, for many, is a major factor in feeling successful.

Having worked with many highly successful business people at my clinics and retreats, I have observed that true success is not an external thing. Many of the millionaires I've worked with have accomplished more in life and business than most people could dream of. Yet, despite the external success, they don't necessarily feel successful yet.

One of the main reasons for this highly confusing predicament is that, despite their riches, they don't feel successful on the inside, as their focus is entirely on the limited content of their life.

No external possession or position in society can fulfil you if you are missing a huge aspect of your real Self and reality. It costs nothing to rest within the fullness of the context of life. By shifting your attention to the context, you immediately engage with a sense of abundance, completeness and success that is free to everyone; it doesn't require you to prove your worth and has nothing to do with your qualifications, skills or job title.

Being still doesn't mean you become idle; quite the opposite in fact. When you are inwardly aware of stillness, your mind quietens and you naturally experience clarity, intuition and creativity. You enter a heightened state of being that many sportspeople or artists know very well as ‘the zone' or ‘flow', in which you are present and your thinking mind is out of the way.

From the here and now and with a clear mind, you will be amazed at what can be accomplished. Personally, I rest in this still silent state when writing my books, working with
clients at my clinics, running residential retreats, teaching my Academy courses and socializing with friends - as life is so much more effective and enjoyable when I do so. In fact, at school I was told I had dyslexia, so the thought of writing a book still frightens my mind. But, by being still through attentiveness to the context of life, I find the words flow and the fear goes.

Success becomes easier when you are still. By still I don't mean physically sitting or standing still. I'm referring to being attentive to the presence of still silent space within your conscious awareness. From this inner state of being you find that you can remain calm, even when you're faced with a big workload.

When fully present you give your full attention to whatever it is you are doing right now and, given the now is immediate, there is always very little you can do right now. For example, writing a book is a daunting and potentially stressful task, but writing this word is very easy and takes very little effort. By remaining present while progressing through whatever work requires your attention, you deal with what's in front of you now, and then move on to the next thing and then the next. Before you know it you've written a book, built a business or achieved something pretty spectacular - all with very little stress and while enjoying a great deal of serenity. You get to enjoy the journey properly and experience the destination as a bonus, not a necessity.

Until a person develops the skill of context awareness by being consciously aware, they can suffer from what can
best be described as a hellish life! In other words, they spend their days missing life, distracted by incessant judgemental thinking about the past and future. Their enjoyment of life goes up and down, depending on which side of the Judgement Game they happen to end up on. If they end up on the negative, bad, worse or wrong side then life can end up feeling like a never-ending series of problems needing to be fixed or avoided. They never quite get ‘there'.

When things don't go to plan they often end up resisting life, which leads to unnecessary stress and heartache. Not to mention a sense of being a failure, irrespective of what they achieve, as their mind convinces them that they are never quite ‘there' yet. In order to make things better and get ‘there', people lost in the content side of life often end up being overly controlling, manipulating and managing life in a bid to make things better, which all contributes to prolonging the frustrating and unfortunate cycle.

Thankfully, on the other side, freedom is waiting for anyone willing to search out a new way of relating to life. The more you can learn to let life be, by resting in the calm that resides within the context, the less you need to control what happens. It becomes clear that the opposite of control is freedom. By that I mean that the less you need to control life, the freer you become. And the freer you are, the more serene and successful you naturally and automatically feel.

Given the choice I don't know anyone who would choose hell over heaven. If you take a step back and look at the two lists on the next page, I hope it is much clearer that being lost in the content is very unappealing when compared to
resting in the context of conscious awareness. This alone is a great motivation to meditate! When you come back to the context you become present and experience the perfection of is'ness, and the serenity that comes from disengaging negative thinking and instead having an inner ‘yes' to life.

Content	Context
Stuff	Space
Sounds	Silence
Movement	Stillness
Mind	Conscious awareness
Time	Present moment
Judgement	Is'ness (Love)
Problems	Perfection
Inner no	Inner yes
Resistance	Bring it on
Emotions	Emotions
Failure	Success
Control	Freedom
CHAOTIC MIND	MIND CALM

Moving your attention from the content to the context is one of the most important skills you can develop. It frees you from problem-based thinking for good, and gives you the living experience of nirvana now. So how can you make the shift? One of the most powerful ways to cultivate the habit of context awareness is, of course, meditation. And the best news of all is that the wait is over. Next up, I will teach you Mind Calm meditation.

Chapter 7

MIND CALM MEDITATION TECHNIQUE

The purpose of meditation is to be your Self: to rest into your conscious awareness. Remember your consciousness is already perfectly well, calm and content; it is your permanent most powerful Self. It is the underlying still silent spacious foundational context in which all physical, emotional and life movement happens. Consciousness is the being in which all doing occurs. A natural consequence of reconnecting with your being once again is that you need to be willing to let go of doing, trying and exerting effort when meditating. Such a turnaround in how you engage life requires a very simple way to meditate such as Mind Calm, which reveals the exquisite quiet presence of your being within.

In this chapter I'll share the three steps required for Mind Calm meditation. Before I do, however, I want to make it very clear that you should engage with the ‘steps' in the most effortless way possible, without any ‘doing' on your part. To engage in any effort when meditating actually moves you away from your natural state of being. You'll
discover that ‘you are the real you' when you are not trying to be someone or something else.

You do not make yourself calm.
On the contrary, calm will happen to you
when you stop trying to be calm!

Trying to get these steps right can actually be counterproductive, frustrating and, in the main, ineffective. Instead, they are given more as awareness-raising guidelines, which will quickly and effortlessly move you into an aware state of conscious being. The steps shared are to be used as a way of highlighting when you've left the present moment, started thinking and stopped being consciously aware. So, to get the most from Mind Calm, make it your intention not to try to find or force calm. Instead let calm occur by letting go of doing anything except being attentive to whatever naturally presents itself each moment you meditate.

Consider this: What remains present within you when you let go of your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and stories in your head about your life?

By letting go of what you are not you
will find the magnificent being that
you have been the entire time.

Whenever you're using Mind Calm, aim to notice when you are thinking and be willing to let the thoughts go so that you can return to present moment awareness. I appreciate the thoughts can be personal and about things that are important to you; however, thinking all the time hasn't brought you the peace, love and joy that your heart yearns for - so let the thoughts go. Similarly, I want you to notice when you are engaged in an emotion - positive or negative - and let it go too, to return to present moment awareness. And I want you to notice when you have become distracted by body sensations and return to present moment awareness. Quite simply I invite you to notice when you are busy doing instead of effortlessly consciously being.

When I first learned to meditate, my meditation teachers told me about this amazing thing called “still silence”. Naturally, in my desire to experience the same peace and joy as the teachers, I started looking for the “still silence” that they spoke of so splendidly. It was only after many months of frustrated meditations that I finally realized that the act of trying to find the “still silence” was the very thing moving me away from it! The more I looked for it, the more I missed it. It was almost as if I was looking away from my Self in an attempt to find myself. So please hear me when I say, don't try to find “conscious awareness” or be calm. You become consciously aware when you engage GAAWO, which in turn will reveal still silence. Relax and let it happen. If anything be more interested in noticing what remains when you let go of everything that can be let go of - because if you can let it go it then it's not permanent and therefore not you.