Your daily ticket to Narnia

“I hate when I look in my closet and find clothes instead of Narnia.” 
― H.B. Bolton

(Picture courtesy of http://www.oldvic.ac.uk/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe.html)

Last night I saw the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Christmas Show “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and spend a magical time with Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund in Narnia; a great start for getting into the Christmas spirit.

Sadly Christmas can be a very stressful time. Venturing into any town centre at this time of year, rather than being immersed in feelings of magic, wonder and anticipation you probably will experience sensations of stress, rushing and impatience all around you. Having been caught last Saturday in the crush of Bath Rugby supporters, Christmas market visitors and Christmas Shoppers I really did not see much evidence of people smiling and feeling happy or any other expression of the Christmas Spirit.

Anxiety, worry and stress not only rob us of the experience of happiness, can make us ill and our life miserable, it also is known to block the flow of our creativity. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have an easy simple technique to access the inner space of creativity, if we could find our very own wardrobe entry to this magical land?

Recently I have come across the work of Tom Stone, the creator of Human Software Engineering, a system to help debug and reprogram the human mind for more happiness and greater productivity. Without going into too much detail about the programs he designed, I found that by just experimenting with one of the exercises he created you can quickly and easily experience a great sense of inner peace. This can be can be your ticket to your very own Narnia. So Daughter of Eve, Son of Adam, get ready to enter “the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe” (in the words of the adorable Mr Tumnus in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).

Let me introduce you to Tom Stone’s GAP exercise. GAP stands for “Greater Awareness Place”. Tom Stone uses the metaphor of a partially cloudy day when you can see the clouds travelling across the background of a blue sky. In this metaphor the clouds stand for our thoughts and the blue sky represents the constant background of our pure awareness. He says that pure awareness is our essential nature but through our early conditioning we habitually identify with our thoughts and our stories and forget that behind those thoughts and stories we always are and always will be pure awareness. What you will experience when you do this exercise, is a place of calm and peace, a space that can be described as unbounded, limitless, spacious and expansive. Out of this space feelings of peace, love and joy spontaneously arise. This space also gives birth to our creativity.

To do the GAP exercise just follow these simple instructions:

1)   Commit to 10 – 15 minutes to do this exercise. Sit quietly and close your eyes.

2)   Then just notice what happens. Thoughts come and go. You may notice the feeling of your body sitting in the chair. You may notice other noises or sensations. Do nothing. Simply be the witness and observe what’s happening.

3)   Allow yourself to notice a gap between your thoughts. You can asked the question “Where is my next thought coming from?”  Notice what happens.

4)    Immerse yourself in the gap between the thoughts. Notice that there is a space of emptiness. This is the experience of pure awareness. A quiet still place filled with limitless potential. Notice how you feel in this place.

5)   When you are ready slowly open your eyes and re-orientate yourself back into the room.

6)   Realize that even though you are back in the room, pure awareness is still there in the background, like the blue sky behind the clouds.

 

7)   Notice that when you were aware of pure awareness there were no sensations of stress or anxiety or any other of the negative feelings we experience on a regular basis.

Simply committing to do this exercise once or twice a day every day will bring more of the qualities of pure awareness into your daily life. You will feel calmer, happier, more productive and new ideas will come to you easily.

You can read more about Tom Stone’s Pure Awareness Breakthrough Techniques for free here.

I hope that this Christmas you will give yourself the gift of experiencing pure awareness and that in 2014 instead of clothes you will find Narnia in your closet.

And remember:

“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Creativity on Tap

Michael Neill recently released through his website a video of a joint workshop he presented with Cathy Casey called ‘Creativity on Demand’.

In one of my earlier posts I wrote about Michael Neill and the Three Principles: thought, consciousness and mind. The three principles explain the nature of mind and how we create our daily experience through thoughts. For example, we can love or hate a person. Depending whether we experience the feelings of love or hate, we will have a very different experience. Loving thoughts might give us a good experience and hateful thoughts a bad experience. Whatever we experience is created by our thoughts, never by the person we have the thoughts about. The crazy thing is that we then start having thoughts about our thoughts, we might feel guilty or ashamed or bad that we have certain thoughts.  Whatever we experience, we have a thought first and then we feel the thought. The more we think about our thoughts or try to control or change our thoughts, the more they can become locked into place, the more ‘solid’ they become even though thoughts are completely formless. If we just allowed the thoughts to be what they are without adding further thinking, those thoughts would dissipate and fresh new thought would come through. Less thinking is certainly more living. Importantly less thinking also allows space for more creativity to come through.

Michael and Cathy explain that the normal function of the mind is infinite creativity and wisdom. We create all the time, even though we might not always like what we create. We create our experience through thought. New thought always comes in. If we let this process run freely, we will find that new creative ideas are always available to us, on tap.

Michael mentioned a wonderful quote about creativity. He didn’t say who said this quote but here it is:

“The reason that so many people stifle their creativity right at the outset is because they have really good taste but they apply it to their own endeavours too early before they put in the hours to get good enough to produce at the level that their taste demands.”

It’s ok not to get it right the first time. It’s ok to experiment and not to be perfect. It’s ok to fail and to learn. The world would be a better place if we would let ourselves and each other off the hook. It would also be better if we allowed ourselves to play more and get better through practice and experience. 

Now behind all that thinking always is an infinite source of wisdom and creativity, shining through when we allow our thinking mind to calm down. Cathy had a great expression for our busy mind: the ‘zoom zoom zoom’ mind. I’m very familiar with the zooming mind. Casey asked the audience to remember a time when they were so lost in thought that they were not present in the real world, sometimes with hilarious results. I remember that many years ago when we lived in Leicester, I left the house to drive to a supermarket to do some shopping. I came back home to find the house door wide open. I was shocked and thought that somebody had broken in. I hardly had the courage to go in. Eventually I ventured in very slowly and carefully. I found everything like I had left it. What had happened? I had left the door wide open when I drove off without realizing what I was doing. I had been lost in my own thoughts. Not a good recipe for life. Fortunately that time nothing had happened. I had been lucky. Can you remember a similar thing happen to you?

Eric Maisel, the American creativity coach, recommends a centering exercise. He says in his book ‘Coaching the Artist within’: “Creating requires your centred presence.” He adds: “If you remain scattered, confused, unfocused and uncentered, you throw away your chance to create.” He further explains that “When we come to a complete stop we give ourselves the chance to see that our fears are smoke.” We notice that our fears are smoke because our fears are created by our thoughts which are formless.

This is Maisel’s centering sequence:

1)   Come to a complete stop. Drop all thoughts. Empty your mind with your breath.

2)   Empty yourself of all expectations.

3)   Name what you want to work on.

4)   Trust that you have all the resources you need.

5)   Become present in the moment.

6)   Return to your work with strength.

7)   Do the work.

Don’t worry. Be free. Create. Your creativity is patiently waiting for you, 24/7, on tap. Your creativity is waiting for you to become present.

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.”

Pema Chödrön

You can’t control the storm or the rain, all you can do is to wait for the weather to change. Just like the weather your thoughts are always changing and always creating.

If you like to watch the video “Creativity on Demand” you can buy and download it on Michael’s website.