How To Create Harmony - Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that we, culturally, are becoming less and less good at. We find it hard to forgive even the most basic of mistakes, impulses or reactions, resulting in unsavoury consequences for our businesses, relationships, teams and above all, our own mental health.

 

In our search for an answer, we all find 1000's of reasons for our low moods or feelings towards another person, organisation, event or official. Some may look familiar:

 

• "My boss is always having a go, and puts me off doing a good job and makes me mad"
• "I work my fingers to the bone for this company, and never get recognition, it really depresses me and stresses me out"
• "That presentation went so badly, what's the point in doing anything else today, maybe I should look for another job because I can't get my head around this one"
• "The ref was terrible, he made so many bad calls, he put us off and that's why we lost"
• "It's just that guy, he's impossible, he just rubs me up the wrong way. We can't do business at all, it's really stressful"

Now, I can see how that looks like a totally plausible explanation for why you feel the way you do about a person, company or event. The trouble is, looking in this direction not only never solves the problem, but it is also holds the feelings in place and all of the problems that go along with it.

 

Einstein abstract notions pointed towards a solution (and who are we to argue with a acknowledged genius?):

 

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it"

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction"

 

Now, in order for us to make sense of this, we must first be pointing in the right direction and understand what is really at work.

 

The REAL creator of your experience

 

Conflict and disagreements are inevitable across life. Why? Because we all get lost in thought from time to time. 

Thought creates our experience of all things, and it is also the driving force behind all interaction and therefore, conflict. With that in mind, anything we experience will be a product of our thinking, including the feelings we have about those things too. It's all born of the same principle.

 

The experience we have about certain things is actually just a formulation of thought, experienced through our consciousness. When we think something, our consciousness brings it to life, and we experience it as real. This fundamental truth is playing out for all of us, all the time, even as we read (and write) this blog.

 

In situations of objection, disagreement and conflict, it is not the external variable that is responsible for the feelings we have, rather our own thinking. If we really understand that, at a fundamental level, we see that everyone is formulating their experience the same way, from the same place, and we are all innocently taking our thinking as reality and trying to deal with it as if it's "out there".
It's totally innocent, but the products of it all are actually shaping our world (and it's an increasingly troubling place).

 

Why Forgiveness is essential

 

Looking in the direction of "I am the creator", we can see that something is working behind the ego, behind our intellectual understanding of the world and behind any experiences we have.
The fact human beings are creating experience the same way, worldwide, means that regardless of the form that our thinking takes and how that plays out, we all have something in common.

We all get lost in our ego, in our thinking about life, and we are all the creators of that experience, and the form in which it appears.

In fact, our thinking is approximating our understanding of the world. Our attempt to deal with what we see as real by thinking about it actually leads us further from the truth and the solution than we assume.

What Einstein was saying is absolutely true. No problem can ever be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. In any case of conflict or bad feeling, an attempt to "get our head around it" will actually hold our consciousness in place. Which means that we can have no chance of finding the solution to the bad dynamics and personal feelings we experience. The only answer is forgiveness. This is why it is so important to us.

 

When we can really see that anyone, regardless of how it looks or plays out, has just created their experience and perception the same way we have, we can forgive them. If we don't see that, then forgiveness is something that has to be worked on and is a really hard pill to swallow, because intellectually it often doesn't make sense.
That doesn't mean that we should condone, or justify their behaviour or "let them off the hook" in any way. It just means that we ourselves have also become lost in the experience, and therefore, lost in our thoughts about the act, event or person. We then become part of the problem.

 

I am not suggesting for a minute that all criminals should instantly be forgiven and have their sentences and punishments expunged.
What I am saying is that they are as lost in their own thinking as the rest of us. It has just played out in a different way. What they have done should absolutely still carry a punishment. No action is without consequence after all, but if we cannot see a situation with more perspective, then we cannot expect others to do the same. I have used crime as the example here, but it really relates to any circumstance.

 

When we forgive, we bring a new perspective to the situation. Our own consciousness rises, and we are able to see problems neutrally, without getting bogged down with the bad feelings that were present in the situation.

 

Why?

 

• Because we are only ever feeling our thinking.
• If we are feeling bad, then we are not seeing situations with a great deal of perspective.
• By trying to think our way out of it, we are actually holding the feelings in place, and keeping our consciousness low.
• We will never see the full perspective of the situation and be able to move past it looking in this direction.

 

This does not just extend to forgiving others. We also would be wise to forgive ourselves too. We can often get lost in our own thinking, fly off the handle, lose our way, cause conflict and bad feeling. But we can forgive ourselves because it is just an illusion we have created. We just get lost in our thinking sometimes.
We have created that experience, and that situation, and just a quickly, once we see that, we can bring a new perspective to it, see it differently, and have a different experience.

 

The only person responsible for your experience is you!

 

Forgiving ourselves and others may just be the most important shift we can make in our work and social life, because it gives us back the power to see past problems and to even prevent them from happening in the first place.

 

Like Einstein alluded to, one thing we need is courage, to look in the opposite direction from the one we think we understand. This goes against what we think we know, it challenges our education and to an extent our upbringing and conditioning. This is why it takes courage to look in this direction. The reward is to realise, at an experiential level, a new way of interacting with each other and to the world around us.

The 2nd thing Einstein alluded to was 'a touch of genius'.
Genius is not created from complexity, rather simplicity and commonality. Making sense of what has never been fully understood, for ourselves and others. We are all capable of genius, if we are willing to have courage and look in the other direction. 

 

 

 

 

 

Body on Fire, Head in the Fridge - Bypassing Stress Under Pressure

I remember this phrase well, since it was the great Dave Alred (England and British Lions Coach) who said it to me during a coaching session.

He was referring to bring able to perform fine closed motor skills, in this case a place kick at goal, when in the most high stress and pressure situations. At the time, I claimed to know exactly what he was talking about; that I needed reminding of the importance of mental clarity and coolness under pressure. Turns out, I really didn't get it until recently. You see, I assumed that because of what I was told, that there was a degree of separation between subject and object. As a result, I sometimes struggled to be mentally cool in situations that were considered high pressure, and I could never quite put my finger on why?! This would also cause me undue tension and stress because I was so desperate to find the answer.

This is something that I'm sure there are many of you out there would appreciate; being able to perform consistently under pressure and, at the same time, not have the experience or lasting effects of stress that regularly go hand in hand with high pressure performance.  
I myself was always searching for this state in performance, within my sport as a young athlete and also as a pianist in public recitals. What I have discovered is that there are 2 sides to the coin with this, and the key message with both is understanding what's behind the scenes.

Heads - What Creates Pressure?
Pressure, by definition is "A compelling or constraining influence, such as a moral force, on the mind or will or an urgent claim or demand". This covers a lot of ground, since this pressure can relate to just about anything you'll be part of and experience.

Our intellectual references tell us that everything is exerted from "outside" upon us. In fact, if you can cast your mind back to science lessons in your teens, chances are that you'll remember some work on forces, gravity or friction. This tends to substantiate our understanding that it is an "outside-in" existence.
The trouble is, despite how it appears, "the outside" is not actually where pressure is created. Life isn't a material existence. What you see is not a reality created on the outside, but an experience of reality created on the inside.

There are 3 principles of psychology, discovered by the late Sydney Banks in 1973, which point to how the human experience is really created. To better understand any psychological variable, these are the building blocks that will show how they are created. The three principles are:

• Mind - although there is not definition of this, it points to the energy and intelligence that exists in all life. It is the life force of everything, a formless essence that all living things have access to and have running through them, which has an unlimited potential.

• Consciousness - our ability to be aware of our experience of reality. Consciousness makes our creations appear and feel completely real. It is like the screen on which our experience of life is projected.

• Thought - thought is our creative agent. It is creating our experience of reality moment to moment, and is completely unattached to anything. Being a creative agent, its only function is to create the pictures that we then experience as a reality in consciousness. Thought has no meaning, it just exists.

Pressure, and indeed Stress for that matter, is a function of the principles within our minds. Rather than having to fix the outside conditions to get the experience we want, we actually have the innate ability to create and then experience any number of realities. The potential is phenomenal.

Sure, the things on the outside still exist! For example, your experience of a bus coming towards you on the road would be a function of the principles within the mind, but it wouldn't mean that being hit by it wouldn't cause you considerable harm! The principles is just pointing to what's behind life and creating life as we know it, which is all created from within.

Tails - All Well And Good - What Now?

OK here's where it can get tricky. You see, if you find yourself in a pressure situation and experiencing stress from it, chances are you've been told a whole heap of things that you need to do about that. In fact, some of you may even have done some training in psychological techniques to try and better regulate what you're experiencing and be more effective.

It's no surprise that I'm going to say that this is actually the wrong direction to look in. You see, when you're stressed out or under pressure, the feelings you're getting are an indicator of you're thinking in the moment. If you're thinking "yes, I get that", firstly get what I am really pointing to. It's not the content of your thinking you should look to, rather the quality of thinking behind the scenes of what you see. Then what you might want to do is test what happens when you stop concentrating on thinking about doing something about it?

In my experience and the experience of my clients, as soon as we are no longer holding those ideas in place, they get replaced by different ones. More often than not, those feelings associated with the ideas (tension, anxiety, worry, panic, guilt) are usually replaced by nicer feelings too. This tells you something about the nature of the principles in the situation. Thought is creating our experience of reality, and just as quickly as it creates feelings of tension, it will create a whole host of other feelings.

We feel like we do because we are feeling our thinking

The less involved you are in the process of thought, the quicker it will change. It's totally the opposite to the way the world understands it. When we just allow thought to be, and be nothing but an idea, then it will pass and another thought will take it's place. The feelings you get are an indicator of how close to "reality" your perception r is in the moment. If you feel bad, then its a sign that you're not seeing things right and you should just ease up on your thinking for a moment.
It's like putting your hand on a burning stove. The feeling you get tells you to take your hand off it because it is doing you harm. It wouldn't make any sense to put it back on the stove while you "figure out where the feeling is coming from". It's so automatic, it is innate. It happens without your involvement.

Its the same with pressure and stress. Despite what you've been told to believe, the feeling is the same as the feeling you get from the hand on the stove. The only problem is our understanding of what's really happening. We get in our own way essentially, by trying to intellectually figure out something that isn't intellectual. It too is innate. If you stop getting involved with the thinking you're doing and just proceed, and all will become clear. This is the fundamental truth to real performance under pressure without stress, anxiety or worry.

Think to when you're at your best, and I can bet that you're not really thinking a great deal. Things seem to happen and manifest automatically, leaving you to see a bigger picture and be able to navigate situations more easily. You're engagement levels with tasks, people around you and the experience itself is far greater and more impactful.

And yet, you're not doing anything.about it. That's the best part. Your innate wisdom and intelligence is guiding you through, showing you the way forward. The potential and power of the principles is being realised to a greater degree.

Sometimes this manifests in people so automatically that they don't even have to understand the principles, because it is an innate quality we all have and we can all realise for ourselves. Understanding gives you perspective to realise the potential for a greater state of experience no matter what is happening on the outside, and points you firmly in the right direction when you're lost in your own thinking.

To your well being

Asa

Why Stress Relief/Management doesn't work

We currently live in a world that encourages "hard" work, rewards everyone based on outcome/output, and dismisses stress as a by product of circumstances. In fact, you're encouraged to take stress on if you want to reach the top in any field.

An example of this would be if you're not quite getting the result you want, or working out the solution to a problem. Western conditioning tells you to keep working at it, and this is substantiated by leaders, peers and the media. The result of this is an experience of stress that appears to be circumstantial and situational, and this is how stress relief and stress management have come to exist and be major industries in the world today.

The problem

The problem is like that of baker who doesn't understand ovens.

The baker goes to work every morning, and bakes bread and pastries all day. The baker puts the bread and pastries into the oven by hand, and takes them out by hand. He goes home every day, and has very badly blistered hands that hurt. He relieves this pain by putting his hands under a cold tap. This works in the short term, but the same thing happens day after day. He gets blistered hands, he uses cold water after work to relieve the pain, and so on.
And he can't work out why he keeps getting these, so he tries to make up reasons for it to manage the problem.

"It must be the flour, let's change the flour". So he changes the flour, and looks for a change but there isn't one.

"It must be kneading the dough. I will get a machine to do it". This improves his work output, but he is still getting the blisters.

"Well, then it must be when I shake customers hands or take money from them". So he stops serving customers and just works in the kitchen, which actually makes him feel less satisfied and still hasn't helped him.

After failing to find a solution he just decides "well, I'm a baker, this is the way it is so if I want to do this I better just put up with it".

The solution

Bereft of his job and life that he used to enjoy, he tells a friend about it. His friend asks him "you know the oven is hot right?" He says "of course, but I'm talking about my hands, what the hell has that got to do with it?" His friend explains to him that the oven is creating his blisters, and that by putting his hands into it when it is hot, it will continue to do what it does. The friend suggests that he should probably find another way of getting the products in and out of the oven, as that's the real source of his symptoms.

The baker doesn't believe him at first, but curious, he tests his friend's theory. He uses a wooden paddle to place the bread in and out of the oven. Daily, he becomes more aware of his hands and how they are no longer in pain, and soon he doesn't even think about it. He KNOWS that it's the oven that was causing his pain, so he works out new ways to make the job easy but at the same time understanding the power in the oven and what it can do. He realises that if the oven is used in the way it was intended, it can turn his simple flour and water into a vast array of delicious foods and treats. Used in other ways it can create symptoms that are potentially harmful. He also realises that by knowing this, he has a greater amount of freedom in how he lives his life

How this relates to stress?

The scenario is exactly like experiencing stress. The bakers example looks trivial and silly looking at it from our level of understanding about ovens and heat, but to him it was normal.

With stress, it is our conditioning to look at what is happening in our lives and use that to explain our stress and our moods around it, in the same way that the baker was looking at the circumstances for the solution to his problem. When you realise, at an embodied level, that YOU create your stress through THOUGHT (not what you think, but that you think), in the same way the baker truly understood the power of the oven, then you will be able to transcend the limitations of your thinking.

The key is looking beyond the visible, to what is happening at a principle level. Once you see it's your thoughts that are creating your experience of life, your own oven if you like, and not what you can see around you, then you will understand the creative potential behind what you can see and know that you will see a different reality just as quickly as you saw the first one, if you allow it to just be.

This will give you freedom from stress, because you'll realise where it was created, and the limitless potential for new thought to be created in place of a current one. All this will happen without any involvement from you, by just knowing it and letting it happen. Once you realise this, you don't need to change the conditions or circumstances to get a different experience, in fact, trying to do something about the circumstances or conditions will always appear to be the last thing you should do, since that will get in the way of new experience being created - it will keep you in your stress rather than freeing your from it.

In the same way as the baker tested his friends suggestion, I invite you to do the same. The next time you get tense, panicked, rushed, anxious, insecure, angry or whatever form your stress takes, remember its not coming from "out there", its actually coming from you - your oven. In that moment, you'll see that freeing yourself is easier when you know where the keys are

To your wellbeing