Intro to "The Spiritual Coach"

What is a Spiritual Coach?

 It could be said that I am a "coach of many colours" - working, as I do, across a wide range of coaching disciplines.The question above, therefore, is a rather important one, particularly for me, as I have been asked to explain it a number of times since I nailed these particular colours to my mast!
What is it ALL about?

Well I believe it starts with an Understanding about ourselves at a spiritual level - or that place where we might say our Soul dwells. This spiritual place, that I might also describe as "The Cosmic Domain," is the domain of Universal Mind or where everyone, all of us, is united in the grand scheme of things. I've also heard it described as The Collective Unconscious.

So there's a lot of titles for this formless place that has, seemingly, been around for ever - and has certainly been in the Minds of Men since mankind began contemplating the beyondness of all things.
There's a wonderful, eternal or spiritual perspective taken by the French philosopher, theologian and cosmologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), which is encapsulated in this, his most famous quote:-

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience
We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

There are two other fundamentals that are with us every step of this journey. One is the power of Thought as a never ending and formless energy, and the other is Consciousness. Consciousness, through our sentience, gives us the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.
This, essentially, is the human experience that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is talking about - it is our relationship with our thinking and our level of Consciousness at any moment in our lives.

So how does this translate into "Real Life" you might ask?

Inside Out

We are born as spiritual beings and we set out upon a journey of distinctly human experience. We learn about all the things that occupy our small corner of the world, and we also learn how to navigate ourselves within that world. Most of all we learn how to express ourselves within that world through the power of verbal language.
We discover, very quickly, that this verbal language is the coded way we can communicate with everyone within that world - including our Self. We now have the means of turning things we can only feel with our senses - via sensual language - into words. we can now make sense of what everyone else is trying to say to us, and also we can now communicate with ourselves beyond our Inner Language of Self.

Round about now with our developing selves, we also start to establish our relationship with the power of Thought, that shows up in the form of our thinking. When our thinking becomes enmeshed and entwined with our verbal language, we then become almost seduced by the nature of Outside In. And with Outside In we set out on the road of believing our thinking to be a reflection of what is Real in the moment. Since it seems WE are the centre of our 'universe' then what we feel is happening to us is caused by things on the Outside of Us. This is what I mean by Outside In.
Our modern, material world, is full of the simplest illustrations of things outside of us being the main cause of things happening inside of us.
Take the power of the Now, that pivotal moment in our experience where EVERYTHING only ever happens.

We have the capacity to only ever be ONE thing at a time in every NOW moment.

So why would we not be happy, as a choice? Makes sense, doesn't it!
Yet - we put off our happiness Right Now by saying to ourselves "I'll be happy when I've got ... the house, the car, the relationship, the job, the money, the right amount of money, the clothes, the degree, the ability, the perfect whatever."
This choice that we have is something of a divine gift. Yet if we don't know we have the choice then how can we exercise that choice? Instead we merely shrug our shoulders and whisper to ourselves, "Because, at the end of the day, I'm only human, after all."
We affirm to ourselves that we are Human Beings and this is a Human Experience.

So, in terms of our Spiritual Being having a Human Experience, you can certainly see how Outside In takes us further and further into the Human Experience and further and further away from the Spiritual Experience.

Of course there are people for whom the Human Experience is a totally adequate way of living their entire life. Yet there's more to Life than THAT - and we all know this and feel this somewhere deep down inside. There are moments in our lives when we come face to face with our Spiritual Selves - we make an Inner connection - and for some of us we keep that connection going, and we become aligned with our TRUE Selves.

The Human Experience persists

The thing is - we may regain the Understanding we were born with and reconnect with the Inside Out nature of reality - however, the Human Experience persists. And it persists mainly because we are LIVING it! It is there every day, every moment of our Consciousness, in every thought we have.
And this is why we will always have moments of frailty as well as moments of clarity. When our Understanding is out of equilibrium, or off centre, or out of kilter, then our clarity will diminish and our frailty will increase. When our frailty increases we lose our sense of wellbeing and security. When our clarity returns we realign with our sense of wellbeing and security.
It is a simple though not always easy equation.

And with easy and hard - like that - here I'm reminded of Robert M Pirsig's quote in his book
Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance ...
"Is it hard?"
"Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard."

The Video

In this video from December 2016, I talk about "demons of wayward thinking" that beset me in the midst of a dark, dark night. These are the times in our lives when we are either very much alone with our thoughts in Mind - or FAST ASLEEP! And it is very easy to endlessly plough the fields of our thinking at 4am, especially when that thinking is Wayward.
In the commentary I point at the awful nature of the demons, and the surest way to clarity.

That, in essence, is the nature of my conversations with clients when I am working as a Spiritual Coach. To point people towards their relationship with the power of Thought as made into the form of their thinking - and to realign them with the Inside Out nature of reality that we were all born with as Spiritual Beings.

The Space Walk

On Saturday 8th October I joined my good friend Liz Scott on one of her Dartmoor walks. These walks are centred around locating certain crosses, of which there are many dotted in and around the Moor - and she takes along her sound recording equipment in order to interview conversations she has along the way with her companions.
This day I was delighted to be one of those companions and we shared our thoughts on a topic that, for me, is very much central to all coaching and particularly to transformative coaching - Insights.

Insights

Insights emerge from our innate place of wisdom, and as they present themselves in our consciousness, they assume a rather similar identity to our thinking, the trains of our thoughts, the products of our harnessing the power of thought. However, whilst our thinking has emerged from our intellect, our insights have emerged from a much deeper place - the inner mind, you might say, or the deeper energy that is linked to our soul. This is the spiritual plane, which I tend to refer to as the Cosmic Domain - a universal place where everything just IS.

Needless to say, this is a very far-out view and might actually beg the question - am I, as a human being, really connected to all this, even something way out at the far reaches of the universe? Am I, as a very ordinary person surrounded by the very ordinary trappings of everyday life with all my trials and tribulations, am I really connected to all that out there?

Cosmic Domain

Well for me the answer is a resounding YES, and there's a very interesting link between the vastness of the Cosmic Domain and ourselves that involves ... space. They say nature abhors a vacuum - and in a similar way it could be said that our conscious intellect, our Ego if you like, abhors space.
In our busy lives we are beset with endless boatloads of thoughts, and if there is any space around we tend to want to fill that space. Of course, in the very act of filling the space we ask masking our insights!
One of the joyous spin-offs from such a walk as ours on that day, was the fact that we were surrounded AND in the midst of, a huge amount of physical space. Some of the views were almost as astounding as gazing up at the heavens on a very starry night, where it is easy to get a sense of staring into the infinite. Yet - out there in the infinite - is a sense of Home, where we connect with our inner, our spiritual self. And it is as if our insights are a message from Home perhaps saying "here is the way back," "here is the answer," "you have everything you need," or "don't worry - be happy," even.

Space

Another aspect of the vastness of space is our Inner Space. This is a space where, at a molecular level, we know from science that there is more space than substance. In our psyche, also, there are enormous areas of space, that - even if we just consider them, imagine them - can have an extraordinary calming and beneficial effect.

The thing about all this is that it is so very easy to ignore it all, to let it pass us by because we have to attend to what is going on right now, to prepare for what is coming tomorrow, and to remind ourselves about all the yesterdays.
Yet there is so very much more going on out there, and in there, in the vastness of our spiritual places.

Anyway - enough of a preamble!
Here is the recording of some musings on our actual AMBLE, our walk or, as I called it ...
Our Journey Into Space!

Be Well!

We don't need no Thought Control

Part of the narrative of my book Navigating The Ship of You explores the power of thought and the nature of how we personalise that power into what then becomes our thinking. In this extract I outline the role the RAS (Reticular Activating System) can play with our thought processes.

The RAS and our Thinking

It is important here now, to get a degree of “knowing” about an area of the brain called the Reticular Activating System or R.A.S as it is more simplistically known.

The RAS is situated at the base of the brain stem and is a highly complex and functional, though older, part of our brain. By older here I mean part of our “lizard” brain that was there back in the earlier stages of our development.

Amongst a considerable number of diverse neurological functions and roles relating in particular to our consciousness (our awakeness say), the RAS is described as being “the portal through which nearly all information enters the brain”. The RAS filters the incoming information and affects what we pay attention to and how aroused we are.

We can consciously direct its attention towards filtering out, and also to filtering in. Consequently we can filter for noticing similarity and, conversely, we can filter for noticing difference.

Now this is quite understandable in terms of information and data – yet what about our thinking, our thought processes, the content or product of our harnessing of the power of thought?
Can the RAS filter this as well?

Well the key is in the nature of how we might be intending to use the RAS. If we use it as a FILTER then the outcomes are more likely to be beneficial; if we use it as a CONTROLLER then we are more likely to run into difficulties.

The FILTER usage is crucial in helping life’s navigation skills in a number of ways. One is where we need to be oriented towards the Unknown, and noticing what is different and needs to be recorded. Another is to orient us away from noticing “sameness” when we are journeying into the “Known”. The consequence of the latter is to guide us away from ‘lazy’ navigating. This way we will spot the new thoughts rather than wholly relying on the stale thoughts.

The idea that the RAS can be directed to CONTROL our thinking is not beyond question – although we can and have all experienced the power of positive thinking from time to time.

Directing our perceptive filtering to ignore certain things and notice others is straightforward enough – so, as the song goes, when we accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative -then we “Don’t mess with Mr In-Between!”.
It’s the panacea for all our ills, isn’t it?

“I want to be an optimist!” We hear the cry.
“How easy is it going to be?” We hear the rhetoric.

Well to the person who has no grounding in good life navigation, then the controlling argument mentioned above will sound attractive, very compelling, and will work for them for a while.
Yet nothing will have changed – particularly their attitudes and beliefs!
It would be like them holding a compass and pointing the needle towards the direction they want to go – rather than letting the compass tell them where true north is.

Or, as I have said to a number of people hell-bent on following their noses, it would be like trying to stop a car by grabbing the speedometer needle, turning it round to zero and THEN convincing your self, the “I” part of you,  that the car had stopped!

Delusional – certainly.
Perceptive blindness – definitely.

The Consequence

Of course we can arrange and filter our thinking, but it is only a temporary process.
It is a process we need to remember to do over and over again. Plus – at the end of the day – it is ONLY ever going to be dealing with, shuffling and re-arranging our thinking. And it’ll be stale thinking as well!

It is the classic domain of the “confidence player” in sport, for example. This is the person whose performance relies upon endless positive affirmation of ONLY what is good about what they are doing, or how they are performing.
They are constantly thinking and judging and thinking and judging – in the midst, all the while, of actually playing as well – or trying their ‘best’ to!
“Am I doing well? Am I doing well?
Well, if I think I am – then I am! But if I think I’m not then I’m not.”

“What do you think?” He’ll ask.
“Well, you need to stop thinking for a start,” I’ll reply.

The Paradox

Do you want to know the sure fire way to becoming a Positive Thinker?

You need to harness the power of thought and gain an Understanding of the power of thought from the ground up. This lays a firm foundation.
Here’s the thing about becoming a Positive Thinker, however.

The solution is a paradox.

The solution will happen when you notice the difference having first laid a firm foundation. And the difference you’ll notice is that there is no positive or negative any more – just our thinking!

There’ll be nothing to accentuate, or eliminate, or latch onto.

It’ll just be the way we are.
And then we’ll know the answer to the question,

“What’s it like to be?”

For when we realise our thoughts are uniquely ours AND that we’re the ones doing the thinking, only then can we really start to get out of our own way.

Then we can start to properly navigate our own ship.

A few things to consider before writing the list of “50 Things to do before I die”

The Unknown Journey

In the book “Navigating The Ship of You” I explore the unknown-ness of Life and how, through navigating well, we can step into the unknown and come back having made it known.

Every day contains a vast amount of “unknown” and in order to gain the most for ourselves from the day we need to journey well. And a crucial part of journeying well comes in attending the present moment, for every present moment IS the journey – unlike the past, or the future.

Of course, part of today’s journey might involve some preparation for tomorrow’s journey – and if we do not attend well to that preparation, when tomorrow finally arrives then that “today’s journey” will unfold for us in a different way than we might have thought – yesterday!

Planning for tomorrow is fine - provided we understand that when it arrives it becomes another unknown and unfolding today.

And therein lies the paradox – the mystery of Life if you like – and our preparation, however that might be, is all about how we might be navigating.  

Finite

One of the crucially finite things we need to remember about Life, of course, is that ALL of our roads lead not to Rome – but to our Final Resting Place.

As a result, we can realise that all the roads and all the journeys are and have been of THE most paramount importance to us – and that that importance has filtered out to those we love and those we influence. It is not difficult to conclude that the more roads travelled and the more journeys undertaken – the fuller and richer all our lives will be as a result.

We often hear of the rueful catalogues of regrets and missed opportunities from people at the end of their lives. All the “I wish I hads ...” and the things they would have done differently, are testament to the relevance of perhaps how they could’ve been more contenders in the game of Life and not mere spectators; how they could’ve been better at Navigating their Ship of You.

By the same token, the lists of “Fifty things to do before I die” that abound, also are a reminder that we forever dream to lift our noses from the Grindstone in order to put some self-directed perspective into our lives – Before it is too late!

We were never born with that Grindstone, but we looked at it and were told it was our salvation – and then in true Faustian manner we have sold our souls to it. The irony of our “50 Things” lists is that they are an attempt­ to buy back our souls by giving us an imaginary glimpse of some uplifting experiences we may (or may not) get to do.

Re-Confide

However, buying back our souls is very much a here and now thing, rather than compiling a lexicon of the best future climactic moments.

The first thing we need to realise is that we haven’t actually sold our souls – we have lost touch with them. We have ceased to confide in them to such a degree that we have trusted our confiding to more temporal and everyday things. When we are unsure about the “unknown” of days and our security as we journey, we go for the comforting option of travelling to the “known” instead.
And here’s the thing about the “known” – it is VERY ordinary!

When we go for re-opening our dialogue with our soul, in a spiritual sense, we start to notice how that confiding gives us the confidence to journey, daily, into the “unknown” – to enrich our lives in real time without having to compile a list of a mere 50 future climactic moments.

The opposite of the ordinary is the Extraordinary. And in terms of our souls, would it not be a better thing to dare, for –as we know - Who Dares Wins!

So, allow your soul to dare,
to sail out toward the unknown region.
To venture across where there is
neither ground for the feet nor any path to follow.

There is no map, nor guide, until the one that is yet to be fashioned
by the work of your own eyes and hands.

More than all of your undreamt dreams await fulfilment in that region,
that once inaccessible land.

So loosen your ties, weigh anchor,
and feel the wind filling your sails.
For once you dare to choose to become your own Navigator,
then every day you can set course for some amazing places.

You can be a contender, not just a mere spectator. 

Blocks

Perspectives

There are perspectives for literally everything we encounter in life – and the thing about perspectives and “easy” or “difficult” is this:

We often only have to shift our perspective slightly in order to find out that how we do something or how we feel about something has changed.

Now this will happen for us whether we previously found something easy or hard – there is a shift in our experience and a shift in our feelings about that experience.

If you’re not sure what I’m getting at then go and clean your teeth holding the brush in the other hand, and notice what you notice. It feels different, you feel different, you find the same level of dexterity is harder to accomplish at the same speed, you can’t do it very well, you feel imprisoned by being less capable, you’re not very good, and so on and so forth.

This is both amazing and bizarre - purely from doing some well-learned and simple everyday task from a different perspective you notice that a whole raft of perceptions come up that you hadn’t expected or that you hadn’t asked for either! Still – there’s a safety net for you, because you only have to put the brush back in the other hand and all is well and normal once more.

Taking this a stage further, you might imagine that a stroke or some other paralysis had taken out your use of that “strong” or favoured hand. Now you’d have to endure this “hard” way of brushing your teeth every day henceforth in your life. How difficult would this be, to live with, to endure? How will you ever cope even with such a simple task? How might your “confidence” deal with this?

This happened for my mother with her painting hand after her first stroke. She saw how she was coping with signing her name and something inside made her decide to not lift any type of paintbrush for over a year. Her confidence had gone and she couldn’t face attempting to paint or even draw.

When we lose an ability, or think we’ve lost an ability, or feel we can’t possibly master an ability, then our confidence takes a hit. And when the ability is actually our confidence itself then we the take the hit in many more (or sometimes all) areas of our life.

Frames

One of the easiest ways of shifting our perspectives is through the use of frames. By this I mean HOW we frame something, or HOW we set the context.

Take the illusory image below – now you can either see a black vase, or two white faces.

So if our context, our frame, is to look for faces in the image then we’ll ignore the vase and see 2 

faces.

I asked a group of people to count how many ways they could get out of the room. They all counted the number of possible exits because they assumed that as being the frame of the question. When I showed them they could go through every exit in a number of different body positions, or using a number of different ways of moving, they realised their assumption of the frame was restricting their perspective. Suddenly their answers went from “2 doors and 3 windows” into a much larger or potentially INFINITE number of ways.

I coached a young man who was something of a perfectionist. Even in practices he would make mistakes – and then “beat himself up” about making the mistakes. The frame of his perfectionism was bounded by zero tolerance. I pointed out all his successes and how good he was in the eyes of all of those around him, yet he still couldn’t free himself from the self criticism. Until, that is, the moment I changed the frame of the way he judged himself.
I didn’t try to curtail the judging, and when I asked him how he’d got from being less good at something last year to being as good as he is at it RIGHT NOW, his gaze seemed to focus on some very distant point. I expanded on this timeline of his “gaining mastery” by describing everything he did as being “work in progress.” From that moment his judgement perspective shifted from the “finite ideal” that he was comparing everything with, into an infinite point of mastery that he was progressing “towards”. That way, for him everything was now just a step along the way. It enabled him to work on the processes of his technique without constant criticism, which then enabled him to improve that technique with much more effect.

He’d stumbled across the building blocks of how he could get even better!

Blocks

So here we have some blocks - and the images can be seen to represent stumbling blocks or building blocks. Interesting isn’t it how the “stumbling” image is in dull greyscale whereas the “building” image is bright and colourful.

When we think of blocks to or for our progress then even our inner perspectives follow this positive/negative means of representation. They are still just blocks, of course, yet we are very good at constructing, of framing, what contexts they mean for us. Plus we will use specific language to reinforce the meanings and the boundaries of these two frames.

We need to remember that the stumbling blocks have been built by us, out of building blocks.

The “Frameless Frame”

There is a frame of the infinitely possible, a bottomless pool of endless outcomes, an unbounded ceiling of capabilities. 

This is what I call “The Frameless Frame.”

There is a Frameless Frame to what is possible in the world, and a Frameless Frame to our capabilities and potentiality. Fundamentally this is the same for all of us, and applies to all of us.

Within the Frameless Frame there are blocks – an infinite number of blocks that represent the power of thought. Now how we use these blocks is entirely up to us. We can either use them as Building Blocks to help our Understanding of how things work best, or we can use them to construct Stumbling Blocks to our progress towards our Understanding of how things work best.

So let’s say we might ask ourselves, “What am I capable of? Is there nothing I cannot do?” If we apply the context of the Frameless Frame to our questions then the answer is “Yes, I can do anything.” And for as long as we continue to apply the Frameless Frame then we will use those blocks in the way they were meant to be used. We might still construct the odd Stumbling Block and discover that something doesn’t work so well – yet provided we remain with the Frameless Frame, then we can deconstruct the Stumbling Block and assemble something else, something more useful with the blocks.

If we become unsure, however – if we question our security – then we have constructed the limitation, the stumbling block, of insecurity. We have stepped into the finite and shrinking area of possibilities. We are no longer capable of “anything”, but have now constructed a reduced number of our capabilities. We are stumbling along life’s path; our route is restricted by large boulder-like stumbling blocks.  

“So how easy is it to use the Frameless Frame – of viewing life from that perspective?
Can I try it out first or do I have to go ‘all-in’?”

Well, let’s go back to using our toothbrush in the other hand. What are we going to notice about how it feels and how we feel? What are we going to be saying to ourselves as we do this? HOW are we going to Notice and Listen?
Are we noticing or hearing limitations? Are we colliding with constructed Stumbling Blocks? If so we need to ask ourselves “How might I deconstruct these Stumbling Blocks and use them differently, perhaps as Building Blocks?”

IF we needed a reminder just consider the number of times Thomas Edison invented a light bulb that didn’t work until he eventually stumbled across a constructed light bulb that DID. He never bumped up against the walls of “this will never work” or “I just can’t do this”. He was working within the Frameless Frame, and as such he knew it would work it was just a matter of HOW and (since this was always and only ever Work in Progress) and WHEN.

Conclusion

The blocks are just blocks – blocks of thoughts if you like. How we use them and what we construct with them is entirely of our own making. Life is just full of blocks – in some people’s perspectives there are building blocks and in others’ there are stumbling blocks. How we experience the blocks is entirely up to us as well.

So, maybe if you encounter a stumbling block, you need to take a different perspective – perhaps take a trip around the block – and then you’ll see it for what it really is, as well as the easiest way to deconstruct it for Good!

Intuitive versus Impulsive

One of the particular features of Clear Thinking in the Moment is when we make decisions based on impulse rather than intuition.

Both intuitive action and impulsive action are fast – and it might seem that we never weigh things up or consider things carefully or think things through with either case. Yet intuitive action is taken when we are clear, grounded and uncluttered in the moment – like Equilibrium. Whilst on the other hand, impulsive action is a result of an attempt by our intellect to take a shortcut to bypass muddled and ponderous thinking.

It is as if we are saying to ourselves, “Look I know something needs to be done, AND done now - but I can’t think what that is. So I’ll latch on to the next thing that comes into my head.”
These are the instances where we might run heuristics.

Heuristics are experience based techniques that speedily bypass slow, clunky and ponderous conscious considerations, yet they can also divert us from intuitive action by driving us towards impulsive action. They are often referred to as cognitive biases.

When we are grounded and have clarity of thought, then there is never any need to act on impulse. Here we will act on our intuition. This is because intuition comes not from the cognitive intellect but from a place of deeper wisdom. We call it a “gut” feeling.

There is a wide variety of perspectives on Thought and how we might manage how we are consciously Attending. There are some key things to take from this particular exposition, to enable you or your team to become a more consistent Clear Thinker(s) in the Moment.

Any thought is mere energy until we personalise it by making it part of our thinking. Once in Mind it can either help or hinder us. The real power we have to control the direction our lives however, lies in how we manage our Attention.

The clearer our Thinking, the more our Attention occupies the foreground. The denser our Thinking, the more it dominates our Attention.

(Taken from The CACTUS Approach)

The Zen Hours Contract

Intro

Occasionally our poor eyesight, let’s say when reading something without our spectacles, can make us believe we have read some words that invite us to marvel at what that might just be.

Thus it was this morning when my blurred perception of “Zero hours contract” was consciously translated into Zen Hours Contract. I did a double-take, my mind jerked into contemplative mode and I began to wonder what such a contract might entail. Of course, all the while my mind was wandering down that contemplative pathway, I was also chuckling at the sensual ‘Doppler Shift’ caused by my eyes seeing some different words.

Shifts

Now, according to Wikipedia, the Doppler effect (or Doppler shift) is the change in frequency of a wave (or other periodic event) for an observer moving relative to its source (or the source moving relative to the observer). It is named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842.
In terms of our modern everyday experience, when the sound of a fire engine, police car or ambulance siren changes as it goes past us, there is a change in the frequency of the emitted sound waves – relative to us. If we are INSIDE the source - fire engine, police car or ambulance - the wavelength of sound of the siren or engine stays what it is, i.e. constant. Yet if we are OUTSIDE the source, what we hear differs before it arrives and after it goes past.

Now, consider for a moment, the idea that our minds can also be on certain “wavelengths”. We’ll use such a word in a metaphorical sense to describe particular “trains of thought”, certain “mindsets”, or some other such perspectives – if you get my drift!

Here again, and in the manner of the Doppler effect, if we are totally on the same wavelength as another person - in rapport so to speak – then the meaning of their communication is totally understood by us, and vice versa. We are in the same “source vehicle” and singing from the same “hymn sheet”. However, when we’re not in that state of mutual understanding, we’ll hear what they say but interpret it as something completely different RELATIVE to what OUR position is.

Opening and closing the Mind

Right now I am again chuckling, rather in the same way as I was when I was amused by believing I had read “Zen Hours Contract” earlier today – only to be fooled by my sensual Wavelength Shift.

Of course these shifts are happening to all of us all the time. Yet because we are so firmly bound up with our own interpretation of what we believe is Reality, we are constantly fooling ourselves.

Okay I spotted almost straight away that my eyes had deceived me with the “Zen Hours Contract”, yet there are far too many other instances when it takes much, much longer for us to spot the fooling effects of our mental wavelengths. The saving grace is that every time we DO spot that we are being fooled, or are fooling ourselves, we are re-opening our Mind.

Our Minds narrow and close through the reliance we place upon our perceptive filters and our beliefs to serve us with a sense of Reality. We use our thinking and our language to support this reliance – for they are the vehicles which convey meaning.

“What do you think this means?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think it means.”

The only truth about our thinking is that we all believe our thinking far too much. We place too much reliance on it, and bolster that reliance with the language we use to ourselves.

The phrase “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” contains a rather large piece of linguistic pre-supposition. It presupposes that a lot of knowledge is a thing of security, and it points us towards the phrase “safe in the knowledge of....“

Within these small and almost insignificant phrases, our language fools us, hoodwinks us, into believing something is there when it isn’t – in the manner of my “Zen Hours Contract.”

Practice Makes Perfect” is another one of those loaded phrases that allows us to infer that we will reach perfection through endless practice. Of course anyone who has gone down the route of that kind of “Endless Hours Contract,” arrives at a destination that informs them otherwise. Through practice they have certainly become better at what they have been repeatedly practicing. Sadly, however, they haven’t become perfect at it. They are still flawed.
They would have become better more quickly and more comprehensively had they chosen to engage in “Perfect Practice”. Mind you, “Perfect Practice” is a vague and nebulous model – a concept that might invite us to fulfil it through signing up to a “Zen Hours Contract”.

The Zen Hours Contract

So what is it – this metaphor fashioned from my involuntary piece of mental hoodwinking?

Is it just an amusing play on words, a linguistic artefact, or might it perhaps be something more actual, or more relevant? Maybe it is the means of spending some time in open-minded contemplation, following the power of intuitive thought to some possible conclusions?

Consider our mental wavelength when we pause to observe the world, or to meditate or contemplate – when we are a non-moving source. When we do this, we make it possible to notice the many wavelengths of thought in the rest of the world as it rushes past us. We open our minds to the infinite possibilities.

When we are caught up in the hurly-burly of that rushing world however, we notice or make sense of just our own wavelength and those others also “on our wavelength”. We struggle to notice or make sense of anything else. We conflict with those not on our wavelength. We close our minds around a finite number of possibilities.

A Zen Hours Contract, or signing our self up to opening our minds to noticing the infinite number of wavelengths around us, places us on a pathway towards understanding the answer to that most crucial of questions - What am I? We find ourselves on the unwinding pathway where the manner of the journey is far more important than the nature of the destination.

“The fish trap exists because of the fish.
Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap.
The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit.
Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare.
Words exist because of meaning.
Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”

                                ~   Zhuangzi