Mind Calm (9 page)

Life can become an emotional roller
coaster if you fully engage in every
thought that passes through your mind.
Seeing your thoughts instead of being
your thoughts makes all the difference.

Being consciously aware is paramount to how you relate to your mind. Remember, you are that which is aware of your mind. Meaning if you are unaware then you are more likely to engage in a negative thought, and get lost in unproductive downward-spiralling thinking and feeling. If, however, you can be aware enough to observe your thoughts then it creates some space between you and the thoughts, and you simultaneously experience the inner calm of your conscious awareness.

To illustrate this point, let's do a quick experiment. Stop reading for a moment and look at the next page.

 

OK, so once you have looked at the page, I'd like you to consider this question:
What were you immediately aware of the most?
Would you say your attention went mainly to:

1. the bird in the centre of the page, or
   
2. the blank space everywhere else on the page?
   

Despite this being an incredibly simple exercise, it shines a light on where you might be habitually putting your attention most, and thus how you currently relate to your mind, emotions and life in general.

Most people say their attention naturally focuses on A - the bird in the centre of the page - but in doing so, they are unaware of the blank space all around. This was true for me, too, the first time I did this experiment. So if your attention also went to the bird then you are not alone. We are so accustomed to putting our attention on the most obvious content that we unintentionally miss the context (more about this in
Chapter 6
). Plus, this common habit of focusing on the content means we inadvertently end up missing more than we could possibly imagine.

But before I get into what exactly, let's take our bird analogy off the page and up into the sky. I want you to imagine that you are outside on a summer's day looking up at the big blue sky. That day there isn't a cloud to be seen from horizon to horizon. You find yourself sitting enjoying the vast vista that extends as far as you can see. That day the bigness of the sky is awe-inspiring. Taking it all in (with your attention wide and open) you feel calm, as you rest back attentive to the stunning still sky. Then,
out of the blue, a bird flies across your field of vision. Upon noticing the bird, you take your attention away from the sky and place it all on the bird as it flies on by.

After a few moments of tracking the bird across the sky, you start wondering what type of bird it is, why it's there, where it's headed and why it's alone. Engaging in thoughts about the bird, you stop feeling as calm as you did when your full attention was on the sky. Instead you start feeling your thinking that's started happening in your mind about the bird.

Nice story, yes, but the practical implications of this little analogy are IMMENSE when it comes to mind calm. Allow me to hazard a guess that the exact same scenario is actually happening within you, too. Obviously you might not think much about birds, unless you're a birdwatcher, of course. But inside you now there exists a vast sky of light-filled conscious awareness with thoughts and emotions (birds) flying around within it.

If, out of habit - and because we aren't usually taught a better alternative while growing up - you've been missing mind calm, then you will have been putting most of your attention on your thoughts, instead of the conscious awareness that's aware of your thoughts. Or said slightly differently, you have been putting most of your attention on what you are aware of, instead of what is aware. In doing so, you've been missing the still silent spacious conscious awareness that is inherently peace-filled.

Now here's the really cool question: In the case of this sky-bird analogy, just because you might have all of your attention on the bird, does it mean the sky stops existing?
Of course not! Similarly, just because you've had all of your attention on your thoughts and emotions, it doesn't mean that your calm conscious awareness has ever stopped being present within you either. It just means that you may not have noticed it, yet!

With all of your attention placed firmly on all of the movement happening in your mind, you can end up unaware of the calm conscious awareness that's watching all of the mental and emotional activity. Consequently you can end up walking around with peace built into the fabric of your being, but miss it your entire life. What a tragic predicament!

What if you've been looking for calm by stopping or changing your thoughts and emotions when, all the time, the consciousness that is aware of your mind is already as calm as calm can be? Without waking up to this liberating possibility, you could spend years searching for peace in places it simply cannot be found.

Looking for calm by stopping your thoughts is a bit like looking for a winning lottery ticket in filing cabinet A when all the time it's sitting in filing cabinet B. You can look all you like, put filing cabinet A into perfect order and even invest in some nice shiny solid gold dividers, but if your winning lottery ticket isn't in the drawer you're looking in then it doesn't matter how long you search, as you obviously won't find it. The same is true for peace, happiness, love and true success. So, perhaps it's time to stop looking for these things by getting rid of your negative thoughts and emotions, or by attempting to perfect your body or life.
The consciousness that's aware of it all is already perfectly calm and the source of truly abundant living.

You don't need to try to get peace by
having no thoughts because the still
silent conscious awareness that's aware of
your thoughts is already peace-filled.

Growing up I was constantly learning how life worked. For example, anytime my mum seemed to be having a bad day, appearing frustrated or unhappy, I'd often hear the same few words come out of her mouth: ‘If I was just a size 12 again then I'd be happy.' Quite inadvertently, observing my mother I ended up picking up the belief:
For me to be happy, my body must be perfect
.

Fast forward a few years to my late-teens, and I had times when I didn't feel secure or happy within myself. Assuming my body was the cause of my discomfort, off I trotted to the nearest gym to start pumping iron. After a few months of working out almost every day, I remember looking into the mirror and, despite a rather pumped physique being reflected back, I wasn't happy yet. So I concluded that it must be due to something else:
My skin is the wrong colour
. I'm not kidding! So, I started using a sunbed to tan my body with the hope that I'd finally feel good. It didn't work!

I thought I was my body so assumed changing it would make me feel more loveable and happy.

‘Peace with body' is possible because you are not your body. Instead you are that which is aware of your body. If you were to lose the end of your little finger, would you be less of you or would you have less of a body? You would be fully intact (your real Self that is). Your body would just be missing a bit. The permanent consciousness that resides partly within the temporary body constantly changes, eventually gets old and returns to the earth. By becoming more consciously aware, you can rest within the aspect of you that never gets sick, fat or skinny, or dies. Consciousness is beyond the physical body and therefore mind calm is possible, irrespective of the weight, shape or health of your physical body.

Getting peace with your body is just one example of how you can transform your relationship with life in general. By getting peace with your thoughts about your relationships, career, finances, living conditions and so on, you can be calm and contented irrespective of how these individual elements of your life happen to be. Instead of having individually to fix, change or improve your life, you can totally eradicate the sense that something is wrong. By adopting my ‘peace with' strategy to be at peace with your emotions, your body, your relationships, your career and so on, you can engage life in a liberated way, free from fear and full of courageous contentment and clarity.

Looking for peace in your mind (by having no thoughts), in your emotions (by only feeling positive), in your physical body (by it being healthy and looking how you think it should) or in your career, money, relationships or any other aspects of your external life circumstances does
not work. You don't need to take my word for it; your life experiences can be evidence enough. So, if you haven't found mind calm or true fulfilment by trying to change, improve and perfect your body, your mind or your life, it's probably time for a new strategy.

The miraculous fact that your conscious awareness is already inherently still, silent and peaceful means you don't need to stop your thoughts in order to experience calm. Instead you just need to learn how to be at peace with your thoughts about your body and life through being inwardly attentive to your conscious awareness. With the Mind Calm meditation and Peace with Mind Protocol shared in the next couple of chapters, you'll learn how to do this by being consciously aware in daily life. But, before I teach you the full methods, I'm going to prepare you further by making you more willing to release your grasp on the mind. To do this, I want you to see why there is so much more to life than you think…

Chapter 6

THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS STILLNESS

On the surface, success appears to mean different things for different people. For some it might be optimum health, while others associate success with financial wealth or reaching the top of their organization or profession. Irrespective of your personal benchmark on what a successful life looks like, without discovering the inner presence of stillness, experiencing success in life can end up only ever being fleeting and often lack lasting satisfaction.

Despite accumulating possessions and prestige, the nagging sense that there's more to life can continue. Mainly because, without knowing inner stillness, you are missing a huge aspect of your Self and life that no set of circumstances can satisfy.

Like the surface of the ocean, your thoughts, emotions, body, career, relationships, finances and all other aspects of your external world are constantly changing. That's what they do. Thoughts and emotions happen, while the
body does its thing. New people enter your life as others leave. Careers change, political parties rise and fall and economic climates change as quickly as the weather. Owing to all these aspects of your body, your mind and your life being in a constant state of flux, ebbing and flowing between what the mind deems as being good or bad, up and down, it is no wonder you don't find much long-lasting serenity or success by attempting to find it in the transient movement of life.

On your quest for success, I'm excited to now share my ‘Content-Context' model, which illustrates why living a truly successful life only really becomes possible when you get to know the stillness within your abundant consciousness. It is my hope that you clearly see the choice that must be made moving forward, if you want to step beyond surface-level success to enjoy genuine and lasting deep satisfaction in business and life.

My explorations into finding true serenity and success within this lifetime have included meditating day and night for many months. During these extended periods of meditation and, of course, my daily meditation routine, I've discovered that this Content-Context model offers a roadmap for finding freedom from mind-made problems and enjoying what can best be described as heaven on earth - in which you experience life in its perfection.

With exquisite simplicity, this model explains how the quality of your life ultimately comes down to where you put your attention in any given moment, and specifically whether your attention rests on:

• the
  content
  of your life, or
  
• the
  context
  of your life.