Maybe Love Really Is All You Need

May 12, 2008 – 6:07 am

My previous post about your intention is your being was the result of a discussion I had on the Steve Pavlina forum. You can read the thread here. My name is ‘mercuryrising’ over there.

In that thread, I began to enter in what state of being I wished to become. The intention I came up with was to be a lover of the world.

Last night I was doing a search on-line for meditations on love and came upon this site that describes the meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum. And I realized where I got the Mr. Bigstuff Meditation. From the site:

In visualization practice we imagine ourselves to be a Buddha, in this case the Buddha of Compassion, Chenrezig. By replacing the thought of yourself as you with the thought of yourself as Chenrezig, you gradually reduce and eventually remove the fixation on your personal self, which expands your loving kindness and compassion, toward yourself and toward others, and your intelligence and wisdom becomes enhanced, allowing you to see clearly what someone really needs and to communicate with them clearly and accurately.

I think the person you see in the Mr. Bigstuff meditation is the buddha that you are. The idea is to get the avatar (the body you are inhabiting) to align itself with the buddha. And while it may not be good theology, a buddha is a being of total compassion or unconditional love by my definition.

I’ve been considering how all the things that I want come through love. Yesterday was a bit of a struggle for our little family. There was a heated discussion about money. My daughter wouldn’t eat her taco. It sounds so petty in retrospect (probably because it is). I came to this point where I just couldn’t take it. I worked overtime this week and I wanted to have a good Mother’s Day weekend with the family. My intention to be a lover came back to me as I smoked a cigarette in silence after dinner. I felt my attention drop from my head into the center of my chest.

After that I told my daughter and girlfriend that I loved them and that was more important than what we do or don’t have or whether we eat our tacos.

Angela in the above mentioned thread asked me what I saw as possible from being a lover of the world. At the time, my thoughts were rather limited. My internet search gave me a larger perspective. Love is the teaching behind every religion. It’s what attracts everything we could ever want into our lives. It dissolves all conflict. This has been an eye-opening weekend for me.

So, let me ask you: do you believe in love?

Spread the Love

ned |

Miscellaneous |

Comments (2)

Your Intention Is Your Being

May 9, 2008 – 9:03 pm

Whatever I have (or don’t have) and whatever I do (or don’t do) is determined by who I am. I know what I want and I’ve spent a lot of time, money and effort trying to get it. What I didn’t realize is that I had to change who I am in order to be congruent with what I want. That means that in the beginning, I have to tell myself who I am even though it seems completely out of place with what I am currently getting. The process of change from what I am manifesting in my life now and what I want to manifest is largely determined by my willingness to be intention.

I didn’t start out knowing exactly who I am or what I wanted to do. I spent several years trying on different self-images to see which one fit the best. Eventually I realized that I can fit to any self-image I could imagine. I found this realization to be overwhelming and I allowed circumstances to decide my identity for me. I got into a position as a machinist and told myself, “I guess I am a machinist.” Most of the women I’ve dated have been the first ones to come along and I took there image of me as a reflection of who I am. In other words, I took what I could get and assumed that’s all that I could get.

The good news is that I discovered that I could change at any time. No matter how old I got, no matter what kind of work I’m in and no matter what I do or do not have; all of that can change by intention. In order for the external world to be the way I want it, my internal world must already look that way. As Gandhi put it, “You must become the change you want to see.” That means talking to myself differently, visualizing myself as the person I really am and re-affirming my intention often. At first, it seemed like I was deceiving myself because I habitually let the external reality determine the internal one. In order to make a change, I had to reverse that process.

Once I made my intention clear, it came down to a matter of willingness. There is nothing that can really stop me from becoming what I want to be except me. Most real obstacles can be overcome; it’s the obstacles in my mind that can be difficult. Fighting those blocks only made them larger. To get through to the other side, I had to surrender. The shift in reality is an uncomfortable, disorienting experience. The swiftest way through change is by not resisting and staying focused on my intention. I have written a simple meditation technique here– the Mr. Bigstuff Meditation– that helps me make the changes in my life. Perhaps it will help you too.

Spread the Love

ned |

Psychology |

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The Confidence Mindset

May 5, 2008 – 9:10 am

I read an article about the preacher Joel Osteen, famous for the book Your Best Life Now, where he responded to critics of his “name it, claim it” style of Christianity. “People want me to talk about sin and damnation,” he said (paraphrasing), “but that isn’t my message.”

I don’t know if I agree with Osteen’s ministry or not, but I can understand what he means about having a particular message that is custom made for you to proclaim. It seems that no matter what topic I might choose to write about, the same message comes out of me just with different wording and examples. It is either that I am supposed to communicate this idea or I am falling back on something I know for fear of stepping into unknown territory. I lean towards the first theory, simply because I have always enjoyed learning and I try hard to stay open minded. The longer I’m around, the more I appreciate the mystery of life and the less I care about proving to anyone that I know more than they do.

Anyway, I started off researching confidence this past week and I end up discussing meditation with some folks. Imagine that: me talking about meditation. I guess it was more about what I see to be the essential reason to meditate (non-attachment) rather than the actual practice. Same difference though.

Have you ever heard the story about the boy who gets a horse and all the villagers say how lucky he is? Later he falls off the horse and breaks his leg and all the villagers say how unfortunate he is. Then war breaks out and all the young men are sent to fight, except for the boy who has a broken leg. There are several variations of this same theme. The meaning behind this parable is that good and bad are a matter of perception and our attachment to those perceptions is the cause of suffering. Remaining detached from external events leads to serenity.

What does this have to do with confidence? My theory is that confident people are able to maintain this state of non-detachment. They don’t get bent of shape when things don’t go their way. And they don’t trip over themselves when they do. They don’t define who they are by external events. This is the independent mindset.

People who are insecure blame others when bad things happen and become self-absorbed when life is good. Their emotions move back and forth, from one extreme to the other. They are constantly looking outside themselves for validation, happiness and security. This is the dependent mindset.

The irony is that people with the independent mindset are more likely to find external validation, happiness and security than the people who desperately need it. It’s this strange paradox that when you stop chasing something, it comes looking for you.

Meditation is not the only way to establish an independent mindset, but it has to be one of the fastest methods to do so. Meditation is like a dojo for the mind. By just sitting and not reacting to whatever arises in the mind, you build non-attachment. And through practice, you discover what enhances the independent mindset and what doesn’t.

As I said, this is just my theory. What I propose is to put this theory to the test. It’s great that I know this stuff, but it doesn’t do me much good if I don’t live it. So I am posting up a challenge to myself, right here and now. I meditate sporadically right now, but I’d like to get back into a regular routine. As a short-term goal, I will meditate for thirty minutes when I wake up and thirty minutes before I go to bed for the next thirty days. I’ll keep you up to date each day on this blog (unless the internet gets cut off like it did last week). We’ll go from there.

In the next post, I’ll go into the type of meditation I’ll be doing as well as other methods to achieve the confidence mindset.

Please let me know what you think. And if you would like to join me in this challenge, I’d like to hear about your experiences and how it affects your self-confidence. You could end up in a book ;D

Spread the Love

ned |

Psychology |

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Confidence Profiling

April 28, 2008 – 2:03 pm

I found this website, Confidence Club, which looks quite good. I took a quiz to determine my level of confidence, based on five different areas.

Peer Independence

Physical Presence

Social Confidence

Stage Presence

Status Confidence

The quiz suggested I look at physical presence, social and status confidence. Obviously, I’m an independent thinker and I don’t have a fear of public speaking, which explains the two areas it didn’t include. I should mention that the site is selling hypnosis CDs and (of course) they have one for each area of improvement. Anyway, here are the results:

Ned’s confidence profile

You have the courage of your convictions. You sometimes feel stressed by the difficulty in convincing others of the excellent observations and judgements which you have made.

In formal settings, where you have a specific opportunity to put forward a particular viewpoint, you excel. You have the discipline and passion for truth necessary to put together a convincing argument. In informal situations the reverse is sometimes true : it is as though you are invisible, or inaudible. In such situations you are sometimes frustrated by the ease with which comparative lightweights dominate the conversation, even though they may have little of value to contribute.

You have an instinctive sense of hierarchy and seek to make a valuable contribution in the role ascribed to you. This quality, coupled with your inherent honesty and commitment to doing what is right rather than what is popular, can mean that internal meetings can sometimes be quite stressful for you.

You have the capacity to develop your social skills and your ‘presence’ quite markedly. These developments could transform your relationships and your career. There is no need for your career to plateau at your current level; you have not yet found the limits of your talent because of confidence-related barriers which you can overcome. Socially and romantically you can develop your social skills and ‘charm’ by a significant degree, resulting in more satisfying relationships. Crucially, you can become significantly more proactive in seeking out your next partner, if this is one of your objectives.

Spread the Love

Church of Ned

Maybe Love Really Is All You Need

Your Intention Is Your Being

The Confidence Mindset

Confidence Profiling

Ned’s confidence profile