Why is your glass half empty, when mine is half full!?
Why does one person believe that the World is a cruel place, when another feels like a kid in a candy store?
What are the factors that define our behaviours, create our Mindsets and therefore our Worldviews?
A big “up” to Rebel Wisdom, Daniel Shumachtenburger, and author Tomas Björkman.
I tried to connect with Rebel Wisdom, an inspiring Youtube channel here in the UK, who put out interviews with the cutting edge philosophers who are emerging at this time.
I tried several times in recent months, but sadly have heard nothing back from them.
This illustrates part of the World view that’s so prevalent currently. Lots of Speaking without much Listening. I put my hand up too, if you send something to me on “MSN Messenger” it could lay dormant there for months! (I do try to reply to every email I receive though!)
There are an awful lot of people who see it as important to get the “word out” – but if you’ve ever been in a one-sided conversation, having to listen to a diatribe rather than a two way interaction, you’ll know how frustrating and boring it can be.
Social media has become this one way street, and is now so heavily curated by big business and politics, that it’s almost worthless. Please don’t think that your new posts are ranging far and wide, like scouts discovering new territories, no – they just end up under the eyeballs of the same old crowd – people who think and look like you!
Rose-tinted Spectacles
I suspect that my wife wonders where I got them from, and when! The truth is that I have always had them. But why?
I had a pretty privileged upbringing compared to most.
It was a bumpy start, as I was adopted at about 10 days. Most psychologists agree that these kind of events leave an indelible mark in the psyche.
For me this is true, it’s something in have explored and worked with extensively over the years. As a practitioner of Chinese Medicine, and Chinese Psychology I know only too well that these events, un-examined, lead to chronic illness in later life. I decided early on that I would try to be the best version of me, so no stone could lay unturned. Who knows when the work will be done, but at least I know where the shadows are cast.
At some stage in my youth, I was struck by the good fortune of it all. When forced to tell the story to friends, it was a choice to seek sympathy for poor baby Jeremy, or state the amazing luck that I’d had.
I was brought up in a stable and loving environment, as a fourth child. (By the time my parents got through three natural children, they had calmed down quite a bit, and they saw me as a gift, I was lucky to get a special place in their hearts..)
this information was communicated to me as early as I remember.
That’s what lead to me choosing to be a happy person, and see my life as a stroke of luck.
Life is all about Choices
Our hormones are the results of our thinking processes. Electromagnetic thoughts, pass to the Endocrine System, which releases chemical messengers out into the body. However, You can choose to feel however you like.
Sometimes the prevailing current of bad vibes in your body can be turned round, if you decide you want to. It’s the feeling in a “blue funk” and then deciding that going out for a walk in the woods is a better plan..
It’s feeling cross with your partner, and then deciding not to continue hostilities..
It’s the snub you don’t take personally, the choice to feel different.
I understand that in depression, that the chemical process has gone into overdrive, so saying to somebody who’s clinically depressed “just change your mind” isn’t helpful!
I’ve been blessed with a wide worldview, and when you see the bigger picture (always) it’s much easier to pull yourself out of the pit – it’s the “Nobody died!” viewpoint.
Master of the Universe
When you go to a Public School in the UK, you join a very privileged group.
However, there’s a misconception that everybody is a stuck-up Toff!
There was actually a huge swathe of middle class boys, almost NO landed gentry or Lords, and a smattering of really rich foreign students.. (You have to go to Eton or Harrow to meet the really high class snobs!) – I didn’t go there..!
Let’s be clear, it’s REALLY middle class, very few people from a Working class background made it there, making it a totally unrealistic slice of life, but also not making it like “Tom Brown’s School Days” entirely. (There were moments of being beaten by Prefects and the like! – But only moments..)
I had a really nice mix of friends, normal people with normal worries, and with ambition for a better life. The Teachers tended to fit that profile too, Middle class people from educated families.
What’s the point I’m making?
The ideas that were delivered were aspirational, they suggested possibility and success, they hinted at the finer things in life, they opened one’s mind in many directions.
It’s a different World
My lovely wife and I share differing world views.
I’m Yang, and she is Yin. We rub along really well.
What, after all, is the point of having a partner who agrees with every thing you say? I think life would be really boring!
That we are so different is really wonderful for me, everyday is a careful compromise for me, everyday is a challenge to consider somebody else’s view point, before crashing on through life..
She’s from a farming community, in the depths of Brazil, one stop short of the Amazon.
She comes from a place where people often have to scrape a living, where the battle if fought between Man, heat, snakes, virus’ and bacteria all day every day!
She only expected to be in the UK for a few years, in an effort to make good, and go home. I rather spoiled those plans! For her, life is not an easy place, everything needs to be fought for, you don’t get something for nothing.
Her early life and education told her a very different story to mine.
We see life through completely different lenses. It’s good for me, it keeps my raging optimism in check, my feet on the ground!
Money is the Root of all Evil
What a load of nonsense, of course the root of all evil is the person wielding the money!
(Usually Bill Gates…)
Money is Energy. You get rewarded by society for putting your back to the wheel, society gives you “tokens” to prove what you’ve done.
As Tomas Björkman points out in his excellent essay
If we look at money from the perspective of the individual, in the modern world, we are, one could argue, as individuals equally dependent on money as we are on air or oxygen. We need air to breathe and we need money to survive.
But if we look at the collective level of society as a whole, there is an important difference between money and oxygen. Because even if we gathered all humans in the world and collectively decided that we do not want to be dependent on oxygen, we couldn’t do anything about that natural and essential dependence. However, if humanity collectively decided that we wanted to have another way than money to allocate goods in our society, then money could be gone tomorrow.
Just take that in for a moment, Money – gone for ever..Interesting.
It’s clear, that it’s a driving force, and that human’s don’t really react well around Money, it tends to drive us a bit mad, and make us a bit desperate!
This begs the question, what about the various experiments round the globe, suggesting that everybody gets a minimum wage, what would happen if that were to be accepted as the norm?
Don’t get me wrong, I feel there’s a huge number of invested individuals who would be profoundly upset and would spend their hard earned cash to stop other “slackers” getting a free share of the pie..
But, just say it were possible?
Again, we go back to Tomas Björkman, he’s suggesting that we can “save the Earth” – whatever that might look like.. by being free to use new thinking.
I partially agree with him. I really like the ideas of inventing our own way out of of the impending disaster (I don’t subscribe to the idea of zipping off to a nearby planet, pillaging that, and then bringing back the resources to sustain what we are still doing..)
If you are a regular reader, you’ll know that I’m a long term student of a school of Qigong from China, founded in the 70’s by a Doctor Pang Ming.
His exercises form is used widely for healing Chronic Illnesses.
Beyond the basics of his form, it’s used as a method of self-cultivation.
Rather than being tied to old-fashioned ideas from thousands of years ago, that could only be “transmitted to you” by some teacher of the lineage, or that sort of nonsense, Dr Pang’s ideas are tied to Quantum Science.
The idea that by observing the now famous “Double Slit Experiment” we start to understand that we, “The Observers” are the creators of this experience that we call life, we start to see that we can change our paths and our lives, without “Masters” or “Gurus” or even Gods..although the more you look, the more implicit some Universal force turns out to be!
The bad news is that it’s down to YOU! The good news it that it’s down to YOU!
Dr Pang translates Qigong into Qi, Space and Information. He explains that you have always had the power inside you, to fix you, he explains that with decent application that you can discover Supernormal abilities within, and eventually your Trueself, your connection to all there is..
What! Did you say I could be Superman?
The fringes of Science are the place to look for the really interesting stuff.
Nobody has explained to me why for the last 1000 years, the Catholic church has had a series of Saints, who used to LEVITATE in front of huge crowds. (Have people been hallucinating for 1000 of years, or just looking the other way, because they can’t describe it through current scientific understanding?)
There are scholarly news reports, by esteemed doctors who have sat with an Indian Guru who stopped his heart for EIGHT DAYS, and then restarted it: All carefully observed by Doctors and ECG machines.
I have witnessed students, bending spoons, turning them to toffee, I have seen people turn pins magnetic with their minds, and pick up other pins. I watched in amazement as one acquaintance plugged himself directly into the wall, and then administered various gentle shocks, with differing voltages (all displayed on a volt meter) to a group of 15 of my students. He offered differing resistance, depending on what you could manage!
I got the full 220V, I saw the meter jump up (I have a film of this if you think I’m crazy!)
The charge “crept” into my arm, over the minute we were touching, it crawled up my should, and neck. It ended in my jaw, in a tooth that had been hurting on and off for days.
From that day on, it never hurt again..
Dr Pang’s suggestion is that time spent developing oneself through deep practice, will slowly heal your old problems, and start to develop latent abilities that all of us have.
I have met many people who have healed themselves, and many who have developed themselves further.
The Final act
It’s tempting to think this is a cult, but unfortunately, there’s nobody taking your money, there’s nothing to join, nobody’s going to offer you any guns, only a bit of friendship on your journey to a healthier you. You don’t have to become Superman, but maybe you could.
Where do you think Humanity has got these Superman ideas from?
You just have to hear a story of a Mother, lifting the back wheel of a Car off her child’s leg to know that deep inside are resources we didn’t know we possessed. Individuals through history have known how to do this, now it’s time for us all to give it a try.
It’s time for society to come together, not focusing on THINKING of better ways to fix the world, but to DO things to make us all better people, and in so doing the world gets fixed..
This is not a problem for Philosophical thinking, it’s a time for action of the self.
If you work with me long enough, you’ll start to see that war, struggle, hardship, fighting are all futile. If we stop raping the Earth, if we start to live in harmony with each other, and with our planet, things will heal really soon. This is not a grey homogenous life, with no joy, quite the reverse, it’s REALLY being alive! It’s living a full, safe and happy life in total balance with everything round us, and with each other.
If we were to decide to make sure that every person has a meal, and a safe house, with water and drainage. In short, meet Maslow’s Hierarchy, then we would all have the space to spend time in self-development if we wanted
I hold this dream every day of my life.
I also hold the optimistic dream that one day I’ll win one of those crazy prizes on the lottery £170 million pounds!
If I get that tomorrow, you’ll soon start to see spaces arriving, where I’ll pay YOU to come on a Self-development course! (You can come on one right now, with my school, Three Monkey’s School of Qigong – sadly, we are still in the old paradigm of you having to pay me!)
As scientist, Author and Philosopher Amit Goswami said, when I interviewed him, “Do, Be, Do, Be, Do!” – now’s the time for Doing!
As we say in Zhineng Qigong – Hao Le! (It means – “Everything is GOOD already!”)