Achieving Harmony

Acheiving harmony is such a big challenge for human beings. Those rare moments when we are at ease with ourselves and the environment we are in refresh us and put a special glow on living. There are two ideas to reflect on to give us more of these moments. The first is the idea of noticing. It sounds easy but so few of us do it. We often experience anxiety, anger, sadness, happiness, tiredness, hunger, frustration and so many other feelings in an automatic flow of not noticing. Noticing what you are experiencing is a first step towards achieving harmony. If you notice it, describe it, stand back from it and look at it, see what you do and don't understand about it and let some time pass with this noticing you will gain great insight. As with any exercise you get better at this the more you do it. You will get to a state when you can say to yourself 'I notice that I am angry and the characteristics of this anger are x, y and z and I can choose to keep this anger or to let it go.' Try this and see what it does for you. Notice.

The second idea is to be interested in yourself. Much of our dissatisfaction in the world is related to conflicts taking place within ourselves. We find it easier to blame the environment or someone else but very often we avoid looking at what is going on inside ourselves. I do this, most people do this and you probably do too. When you notice an experience, in particular one you don't like, explore what it is telling you about yourself. If you can't do or have something and you believe it is because of someone else look inside to see if there is something you are avoiding. Often you will be and you will have to look hard to see it to overcome our own very clever mechanisms for blaming others over taking responsibility for what you avoid yourself. The wonderful gift of this idea is that once you discover that it is something going on inside you that is causing you problems you then have total control on fixing it. It might be tough and require commitment but the outcome will often be better than the false pleasure you get from blaming someone or something else?

What do you think? Does this make sense and what does it raise for you?

Reflections on Being

It is so easy to write the word 'being'. And yet there is so much wrapped up in this short arrangement of letters. On one level it is one of the most complex ideas around. On another it is the simplest. We are 'being' all the time we are alive. What could be easier than that? It is as we dig deeper and start to describe it that the mystery begins. Consider the difference between being a plant and being a person. How would you describe that difference? The plant comes in to existence, grows, responds to the environment, reproduces, lives and dies. It is certainly aware but how much consciousness does it have? We know it is aware because it responds to light and dark, to hot and cold and to wet and dry. Is this response just a reflex or is there some consciousness involved? How would you distinguish between a reflex and a conscious response? Most people will opt for the reflex idea but will have difficulty explaining why this is so. At the other extreme we have human awareness and consciousness. People will generally say they have volition and a conscious filter where choice takes place after awareness. We believe that we choose our responses to the world. But do we? There is now evidence in neuroscience to show us that prior to the conscious decision to take an action the choice has already been made in the preconscious processes of the brain. Some neuroscientists now believe that consciousness is nothing more than a post event rationalisation of what took place. Its use is to create a memory for use by our internal cognitive reflex responses in some future situation. An extreme position on human beings is that they are a stimulus reflex response organism in just the same way a plant is. The difference is the level of sophistication of the machinery doing the pre reflex work. Or perhaps a plant has more consciousness than we think. It could be that enlightenment in meditation is when we achieve the level of awareness of a plant. Being is so simple if we let ourselves just be. What do you think?