'Reconnect' for Mental Fitness
by Paul
Bailey, Author, Researcher, Lecturer, and Modern-day Spiritual
Philosopher
(Adapted from ‘Think of
an Elephant’
)
Your life is reflected in your state of mind. Thoughts are
energy. All emotions - positive or negative - create
tangible ripples of peace or disharmony through your psyche and
out into the interconnected world around you. Here are a
number of helpful tips that can help you get happy.
Firstly, reactivate neglected 'Connections'. This
is the great de-stresser. Get body and mind reconnected.
This means get your body and mind grounded in the same
place. At work your body is in the office but your mind is
wishing you are elsewhere.
So, next time you are on holiday, be sure to make the connection
and break the split pattern you had at work. Get your body
doing what your mind is saying, and vice versa. 'Be' present in
mind and body wherever you are. Also, whether with family,
friends or nature, it is the harmonious energy you feel when you
connect heart-to-heart that helps you de-stress.
Secondly, we all look for ways to overcome tension,
disempowerment and unhappiness felt when we have a personal
falling out with someone. It can be extremely stressful and
depressing and preoccupy our mind. In addition to this,
there is another stress which can also be causing anxiety and
powerlessness. It is the big global issues portrayed through the
media. 'TV News stress' is post-traumatic stress, nothing less.
It seems to be unavoidable. I'll give you a tip which may
help.
To avoid internalising negative information and thoughts which
leads to dis-ease, use this feeling as a reminder for you to
'mind your mind'. Don't merely absorb the information and
feel helpless. Instead, use this incoming negative message
as a reminder - a reminder to quickly fill your mentality with
the clear message of how you would like things to be.
This is very important, because this is your personal antidote.
This 'mindfulness' takes your whole biochemistry into the
desired state. Then your cup is full, and the
incoming negative has nowhere to dwell and take root in you.
This is mental akido - the art of deflecting the negative force
without absorbing it or forcing it away. Then you are empowered
without being in denial. What you are doing is denying
a place for the negativity to take hold.
With practice, this mental dexterity can be made to work with
almost all problems to minimise their hold on you. For
example, a major crisis sweeping the world today is
depression. Depression is a disease of disempowerment.
This disempowerment is minimised and may be completely overcome
when we master the art of mindfulness, and practice it.
The book
Think of an Elephant
takes you to the frontiers of science, quantum physics,
philosophy, environmental issues, evolutionary studies and
studies of the mind, helping provide the antidote to
depression's growing feelings of disempowerment, helplessness
and hopelessness. It does this by engaging you in
experiencing just how deeply you are connected to absolutely
everything else around you - that your perception itself has
real potency, your consciousness has a charge, and your
attention by itself has real influence.
Thirdly, we know that thoughts produce reaction. Try
creating an 'Unresolved Issues Diary' that you fill out daily.
Be honest. By writing down all the unresolved issues and
feelings, your subconscious feels you're dealing with the
matter. You'll become less stressed and more effective. Be
tolerant and patient with yourself.
Concurrently create a 'Positive Thoughts Diary' for peace and
balance. Note all the good qualities in yourself and
others and the wonderful things in your life, however small.
These are energies for good. It's like getting a shot in the arm
of endorphins. And the more you look, the more you'll see.
Fourthly, a major point of stress for all of us is spiritual, or
existential, stress. A lot of this comes from the fact
that the 'reality' we get in touch with through our senses is
only a fraction of the total reality. When we come to
experience the dimensions of the greater reality that we are
missing and the higher dimensions of ourselves that we have lost
sight of, we are well on the way to happiness.
When we come to see the extent that each of us as individuals is
interconnected to literally everything else in the greater
scheme of things we come to realise that our big fear and our
biggest unhappiness is unfounded. Both our mental health
and our physical health require us to engage and upgrade our
mentality.
Think of an Elephant
shows us the path to gaining a healthy, balanced mentality.
Evolution of Thought
1. This book inspires a genuine paradigm shift - the
mental tipping point we have to have if we are to avoid the
environmental tipping-point we are going to have.
2. Quantum Consciousness - a term loosely used in
literature to date - is set to become a field of study in its
own right. Science is already speculating on the possibility
that our universe is a figment; a quantum reality of some sort
(New Scientist cover Story 23rd June 2007)
3. The quantum ability for one thing (subatomic particle of
energy) to be in two places at the same time
(super-positioning), along with the quantum ability of two
separate things (two subatomic particles of energy) to exactly
mirror each other's behaviour without any linking mechanism
(coherence), defies our sense of reality, but none the less
these weird things really do happen.
4. We are reassured that these fantastic occurrences cannot
happen up here in our 'big world' of lumpy, bumpy classical
reality of solid stuff because any particle - however big or
small - needs to be absolutely cut off and completely isolated
from its entire background for the duration, because contact
with the background environment immediately interferes and
'dissolves' the fantastic effects. There goes that party
trick I had planned.
5. In February 2007, quantum scientists showed that there was no
gate or cut-off that would keep the weird quantum behaviour from
coming 'up' and into our lumpy, bumpy world. This doesn't mean
that the genie is out of the bottle, just that there is no cap
on the bottle should the genie ever want to get out.
6. Leading-edge quantum researchers are presently defying
belief, and are able to demonstrate the same amazing behaviour
in some atoms and molecules in certain conditions, meaning that
the genie actually has made the first steps up into the very
substance and structure of our familiar physical universe.
However, we are reassured that no political despot or deluded
psychic can make themselves instantaneously appear everywhere,
because any such 'weird-world' effect would be immediately
interrupted by - you guessed it - the background environment
that is impossible to escape from entirely, try as we sometimes
might to get away from the kids. Still, we now know that lumpy
matter - the stuff we call real - can be made to act
weirdly if we really try.
7. There are microbial forms of life that actually cross-share
genes from one individual to another. This was considered heresy
- an impossibility - by geneticists until the discovery of these
disobedient microbes.
However, rather than viewing this gene-sharing merely as
evidence of two points of life sharing one gene-pool, we can
equally see this as evidence of one life creating itself in two
places. WE NOW HAVE EVIDENCE OF QUANTUM LIFE.
8. Accepting that the quantum weirdness can fully and freely
occur only when isolated from all identifiable environments (see
point 6 above), there is just one dimension where this can
occur. Introducing (fanfare of trumpets): INFINITY.
9. Most people accept that infinity is 'out there' beyond the
edge of the universe; if you get beyond everything, every single
thing, you don't get nothing - instead, you arrive at infinity.
But the weird workings of quantum science suggest that infinity
also appears down amongst the smallest particles on the
sub-atomic level. This bi-location of infinity means that we are
bracketed by the possibility of quantum weirdness. How so, you
ask?
Because both extremities of our reality - the absolutely vast
and the infinitesimally small - share the one aspect that is
needed for quantum phenomena to appear: both present us with an
uninterrupted, singular whole - one big, one small - that is
complete unto itself, free of any interfering background.
These two extremes -the vast and the minute - present the exact
conditions necessary for quantum weirdness - a singular
undivided whole, set on the 'edge' of infinity, and therefore
uninterrupted by any environment. But shouldn't size make a
difference; it does in our world? No, because when set to
infinity, the size of anything no longer matters; from an
infinite outlook, each and every location is no further away
than any other, and no time is sooner or later, faster or slower
- all measurement becomes incoherent, and all places one and the
same. Now, that is weird!
10. By definition, infinity is without context; inexplicable.
However, by experience, it is intimate and personal, something
we can experience by allowing our mind to be there. The only way
we can make any meaningful difference is through our
connections, so it is worth knowing what our connections are,
right? The better connected we are, the better off we are,
and the best vantage-point to realise all our connections are
from infinity. If we think about it, we can see that the
best religious metaphors throughout history have talked quantum
and infinity - an omnipotent and omnipresent power called 'God',
an all-seeing, all-knowing, eternally present power, etc.
11. What the ELEPHANT uncovers is that the apparent gap between
everything in the world out there and us somewhere else operates
as a state of mind, and though there is reality outside
of us, it is not completely separate and disconnected from us.
The ELEPHANT says that once we grasp this we begin to activate
this powerful interconnectivity - our healing connections within
the whole of the whole - and come face-to-face with the true
power and influence of our position. Then we consciously move
from self-absorption to self-awareness, from success to
significance, from control to influence.
12. Control is a myth, a myth that depends for its
slight-of-hand on a set period of time - the shorter the
measured length of time, the greater the appearance of control.
But as we extend the length of time, the appearance of control
falls away as the surrounding environment comes into play with
more time to affect things: the shorter the length of time, the
more we can claim the powers of the quantum genie and play
God-the-controller; the longer the length of time, the more our
individual separateness and control slip away to reveal our true
place in the quantum scheme of things.
13. Evolution is progressive and does have a purpose, as
evidenced frequently across the increasing complexity of life
and living systems.
14. It's all of life that's evolving as a whole - and that is
the master key: 'as a whole' - rather than individuals within a
species or individual species themselves.
15. Genuine altruism (rather than mere social trade-offs) is
definitely evolving within several species, and even between
species. Altruism is a glue of holism rather than a gift of
godliness.
16. Consciousness is evolving across life as a whole, and not
confined to humans only. (For instance, we now know that some
species can reason abstractly.) We have recently discovered that
life at some of its points is so integrated that some bacteria
transfer DNA, on contact from one to another - an absurd notion
to geneticists until recently.
17. The whole of complex life is evolving to support advancing
consciousness. Finding our place in this advance of
consciousness is key to the spiritual evolution of the species
as well as our personal destiny.
By linking the apparently unrelated fields of quantum physics,
holistic health, cosmology, theology, neuroscience, evolutionary
theory and consciousness studies,
'Think
of an Elephant'
uncovers the complete set of tools we've got in our mental
toolbox;
it
shows us the path to gaining a healthy, balanced mentality.
For more information on workshops and training, and to
contact Paul Bailey, the author, please visit:
www.thinkofanelephant.com
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