This Week's Insight...

Don’t be Fooled

Worries, niggles and doubts are always lurking in the dark corners of our minds.   Fear and anxiety creep up on us at the most ridiculous of moments.

If you feel anxious, worried, stressed or fearful, if you doubt your own abilities or if there’s simply that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, then you’re not yourself!   All those signs are symptomatic of your subconscious mind – your personality – playing tricks on you.   The real you cannot feel anxious, the real you cannot worry or doubt.   The real you knows no fear.

It goes without saying – if you’re not doing the right thing, you must be doing the wrong thing.  But, what is doing the right thing?   

Most organized religions place great emphasis on not doing the wrong thing – a rather negative way of approaching what should be a life-enhancing subject.   But, then again, organized religion tends to dwell on the negative (particularly so in Western culture).  However, other than, perhaps, the odd exhortation like “loving your neighbour as yourself” or “loving your enemies”, little guidance is given us.

And, therein, perhaps, lies a key problem in modern society.    We tend to want guidance – we want others to take responsibility for our deeds and our misdeeds.   From the Nazi foot-soldier who was just following orders, to the modern-day banker who technically did nothing illegal, the easiest thing in the world to do is not take responsibility for our own actions and, therefore, not have to worry too much about doing the right thing.  

But, as we said at the outset, if you’re not doing the right thing then, by definition, you’re doing the wrong thing.   No-one is a little bit virtuous!   Nor is anyone half-honest.   There are no grey areas.    There are also so many reasons for doing the right thing, so many benefits and so many downsides to doing the wrong thing.

For starters, from millennia old philosophies, to modern turn of phrase, we all know that what goes around, comes around.   Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.  As you sow, so shall you reap – Buddhism calls it karma.   Put it more simply, if you lie, you will be lied to – don’t be surprised.   If you steal, you will be stolen from.   If you’re dishonest, don’t be surprised if you’re conned.   If you play with people’s lives (as, in my experience, many senior managers do), don’t be surprised if you fall on your own sword – I’ve seen it happen with a vengeance.   In other words, don’t do to someone else what you wouldn’t like done to yourself.   You may be of a mind that thinks “business is business” or “all’s fair in love and war”, but you’re still not playing the game of life by the appropriate rules.

So what are the rules of the game of life?   Unfortunately, unlike a new car or laptop, we weren’t delivered with a user’s manual!   There is no written set of rules.   And, yet, the preceding paragraph gives us more than a subtle hint as to how to live our lives.   From a philosophical or religious perspective, you might say that we all get what we deserve, based on our actions.   From the perspective of modern quantum physics, the equation is far simpler.  Energy in – energy out.   You get out what you put in.   Put in bad, you’ll get bad in return – not necessarily from the same person, not necessarily on the same day – but the whole of the universe works on an interplay of energy.   Be nice to someone and someone will do you a good turn – not necessarily the same person, but it will happen.

The problem with all this for normal people is that they put almost nothing into the living of their daily lives.    Research indicates that off all the energy they have at their disposal, they only put 1% of it into the only time and place they can be – here and now.   Nothing in – nothing out.  No wonder most people muddle along, no wonder normal lives are mindless and often hopeless.  No wonder people who put more than 1% into their daily experience stand head and shoulders above the crowd – yes, from both ends of the spectrum, be they the Mahatma Gandhi or Adolf Hitler, Nelson Mandela or Pol Pot.    Energy in – energy out.
So, are you doing the right thing?   And how would you know what the right thing is to do?   How would you know?

Well, first of all, just because everyone else is doing something that, at some level, feels not right to you, doesn’t mean that it’s OK.   After all, almost everyone is mad – if they’re only 1% present.   Secondly, I think most of us know when we’re doing the wrong thing, if we even take a split second to reflect on our actions.   But it is that split second that is key because, clearly as we’ve already discussed, normal people do not reflect, they just follow the herd – that’s what normal is!  

That split second reflection needs to be available to us, at our fingertips, at each moment, each day.   Because, at each moment, we have choices to make.   Make no choice at a given moment and your normal subconscious will make a mindless choice for you – and that’s a slippery slope.   The only way you can fully know what’s best to do in this moment, is to ensure that you can access your abnormal state of mind – the clear, cool and centred state of mind that is foreign to the normal person but which is, in fact, our natural state of mind.

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