Category: Musings

Reflections

More musings after a year of ‘blogging’.

The greatest realisation that the last year has produced for me is that, in the end, it is our attitude to everything around us (that really means our attitude to everything within us) that is the most important thing in the world.

Yes, that’s a grand statement – everything in the world comes down to attitude.

Why? Because our attitude drives our thoughts and behaviours. Our attitudes are the manifestation of our internal energy. Think about it! Your attitude to something fuels the energy that goes into that belief. And, as so many of the great teachers in life say, “We get more of what we think about most“!

Here’s Wayne Dyer in his book, There’s A Spiritual Solution To Every Problem:

Our institutions are built and organized around the idea of facilitating, regulating, and guiding human behavior. You cannot go to schools, businesses, governments, or even churches, mosques, or synagogues to negotiate the presence of energy. These institutions exist to deal with the material world and to keep human beings in line. They vibrate to the lower energies of the material world and often are the source of, rather than the solution to, your problems.

Eventually, enough people will reach a higher state of spiritual vibration and form a critical mass. Then you will see institutions emerge that are not designed to regulate, facilitate, or guide human behavior, but to access, implement, and teach a spiritual approach to life. In short, the purpose of our institutions will shift from controlling to promoting bliss.

We can go back much further and see the same message. Here’s an extract from Galatians 5:1:

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

One can explore the writings of many other great thinkers and see the same message coming over time after time.

The peoples and creatures upon the face of Planet Earth are involved in one of the greatest experiments of all time. How will we survive the next couple of hundred years?

We all truly know that our ‘institutions’ are not the answer, indeed they are part of the problem. Conversely, we also know that mankind has the ability, literally, to move mountains. The last year has shown, on a personal level, that a fundamental change in attitudes can also move emotional mountains.

It’s been an honour to publish Learning from Dogs for the last year – and I am very moved that so many of you have chosen to call by. Thank you.

By Paul Handover

On being … well, honest!

Conscientiousness isn’t all it’s cracked out to be!

(Foreword from Paul.)

Jon is one of those rare individuals who not only has been committed to a path of self-awareness for more than 30 years but who has also studied incredibly hard so as to be able to help others and do so from a base of real competence, as his own Blog describes. I can speak as a current ‘client’ of Jon who is assisting me in my own journey.

But then I realised the great strength in what Jon has written. It is this.

There are many notable teachers out there who thousands upon thousands have turned to for a deeper understanding of what life is all about. As far back as time itself teachers have surfaced and given spiritual guidance to those that come in need. But it’s very difficult to read or listen to these great teachers and connect with the fact that they were born, as we are all born, with nothing. And all of them, like many of us, went through Hell on wheels to come out the other side with a greater self-awareness and a deeper understanding of the real truths in nature. Like all of us who wish to rise above our present place they first acknowledged their own frailties. It is the starting point.

So, let me get to the point. Jon has the awareness and understanding to offer real help to those that seek answers that are currently beyond reach. Jon’s article is an wonderful illustration that he experiences the same fears and feelings of helplessness that you and I feel. You and I and Jon and all of humanity are much more closely connected than we realise.

Paul H.

—————————————–

Consciousness — To see in is to see out!

I’ve been running my own business for about 12 years now. In the beginning it started because I had a thirst for wanting to make a difference in small business in our local area and a passion for wanting to do it through working with people directly, on their behaviours. Still have, really.

I think this came as a form of acknowledgement to the few exceptional people managers I experienced while I was employed, and the all too common, terrible ones.

I was also mentored by a group of people to whom no developmental tool was barred. My eyes were well and truly opened to how a change of view could change outcomes.

The final boot up the backside was redundancy in the late 90s. I was all ready to go and just needed a kick.

My work ethic, trained at home and then through an engineering apprenticeship, was to conscientiously work hard and try hard and to treat people the way you want to be treated. Nothing wrong with that. I assumed automatic reward would follow as long as I did those things.

Over time I wised up and became a bit less idealistic and a little more politically aware but carried on in much the same way.

Much later I found myself embarking on a whole new adventure, with a lovely wife and family, all dependent on me, with a few contacts to start getting work from!

It took a year before the first jobs came in that didn’t necessitate robbing the almost non-existent savings and redundancy payment just to keep food on the table. Then, work slowly picked up and it started to get quite good for a one-man band. We were able to go on holiday once a year, camping, but still great, and then abroad.

All the time, I beavered away, trying hard, being very conscientious, as I’d been brought up to be, but slowly getting very stressed.

Time was when it took Friday night to de-stress, then 3 days, then 10 days and recently, not at all.

So faced with this present downturn, which is likely to go on for much longer than any of the others I’ve seen and survived, I’m wondering just what new strategy to adopt. Money is already getting very tight and everything is feeling very ‘hand to mouth’. Can’t really see one month in front of the other.

I notice our local farmer who I went to school with but didn’t really know.

I’ve got degrees, lived abroad, can speak Finnish fluently, (what use is that, I hear you say!), and can turn my hand to most things, but I still feel quite dis-empowered and at a bit of a loss.

My farmer friend is always smiling, he’s got a flock of geese he’s fattening up, the same with his beef cattle, does livery for half a dozen horses or so, has fields planted with various cereal crops, and has his finger in lots of different pies – and definitely does not look stressed. He is also renting his land plus another farm.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this all except for a few really important things – the importance of diversification, relationships and appreciating what you’ve got, especially people things, here, in the now.

I have also come to the realisation that I still haven’t cracked the main thing with being self-employed, and that is replacing fear with trust.

It’s been said by various enlightened people that we see a reflection of the world we hold in mind. Going forward into this brave new world I would like to see opportunities rather than fear, I will diversify into things which make more use of my wide range of talents, and I will swap fear for trust.

By Jon Lavin

Fire lighting

The answer to whom we turn to when the times are tough.

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that a few days ago, Sherry wrote a piece entitled Light My Fire? It expressed her view that lately she was finding it a problem to be inspired, finding the passion as Sherry put it.

I have been thinking about Sherry’s article for the last few days and a couple of peripheral things come to mind.

We tend to get more of what we notice and orient towards. By allowing ourselves to become absorbed in the negative, that is what we tend to notice. The fact is that the media thrive and make vast sums of money focusing on the negative. Just compare the amount of negative with the positive in any news cast.

That is not to say that we should not be aware of the negative or hide our heads in the sand. We can however change the way we view things and that has to come from within.

In fact, the answer rarely lies “out there”.

Change in how we view things, i.e. our attitude, needs to start coming from “within” ourselves.

The one thing that characterises these times is uncertainty.

A lot of us don’t even know where the next bit of money to pay the bills is coming from. In spite of the tendency to look ‘out there’ for strong direction, I still feel that the inner resolve has got to come for inside.

Another thing, I don’t believe it’s possible to think ourselves out of this one.

Although it’s a subject I go on a lot about, the sense of direction and well being has to come from us, or rather the feeling of interconnectedness that we share with everything. At a level, we are all connected.

Weareallconnected — We are all connected.

The one thing that gets us all through is a faith in some higher consciousness, that we can all tap into when we remember and ask for that miracle of clarity.

This is not thinking. The opposite in fact. This is a process of trust and ‘allowing’.

Allowing requires a power that few can sustain for long as we’re all geared to doing. ‘Allowing’ requires us to turn off the noise machine that is in our head and creating a quietness and space for awareness to surface.

Paul recently wrote an article on Living in the Present that describes this way of letting go rather well. I know for a fact that Paul is new to these ideas but already he is finding a peace and clarity emerging that shows that there’s always a good time to start – NOW!

Back to my thoughts. I am not advocating lying down and letting the world roll over us – the opposite in fact. By bringing awareness into this whole mess, we are more likely to take the right action.

I have honestly noticed that the more effort and circular thinking I have put into my present financial difficulties, and I’m a real expert in worry and circular thinking, the worse things have got.

I notice that by returning to silence and simply observing, a background is created that allows solutions and options to rise.

By asking to be shown the way forward and then letting go of the need for an instant solution, subtle options and ways forward present themselves.
Then right action follows.

An acceptance that in any moment we are all operating at our maximum level of consciousness. We are all doing the best we can. If we knew better, we would do better.

Therefore, what is going on in the world is a reflection of ourselves and is absolutely perfect for where the sum total of all of us are. (“Perfect”, does not mean we have to like it but it is, never the less, inevitable)

It follows, therefore, that the best way to help the world is to work on ourselves by striving to be the best we can, in every way. And the only way to do that is with awareness.

I think it was Abraham Maslow who coined the phrase, “Self Actualising”, meaning, being the best we can in every way, mentally and physically.

During these undoubtedly troubled times in the earth’s history, we all tend to turn to someone or something to provide a sense of direction. That someone you need to turn to is yourself.

By Jon Lavin

Happiness

That pre-frontal cortex is at it again.

There’s a fascinating video on the http://www.TED.com website given by Prof Dan Gilbert. Prof Dan is Professor of Psychology at Havard and there’s a good resume on WikiPedia.

Here’s how John Brockman describes Dan Gilbert.

Dan Gilbert doesn’t have an instruction manual that tells you how to be happy in four easy steps and one hard one. Nor is he the kind of thinker who needs Freud, Marx, and Modernism to explain the human condition.

Gilbert, the Director of Harvard’s Hedonic Psychology Laboratory, is a scientist who explores what philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics have to teach us about how, and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how, and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy.

There can’t be a human that hasn’t pondered on what makes them happy. Gilbert sets out some fascinating and possibly counter-intuitive ideas. Here’s the video

By Paul Handover

Letter from Payson – The Farmers Market

A foreigner but not a foreigner!

Despite the fact that we have now been living in Payson, Arizona, since the end of February and, therefore, a degree of familiarity exists in both directions, the local Saturday Farmers Market prompted this thought.

Why do I not feel a foreigner here?

There is no question that America, in general, and Arizona, in particular, is very different to England. In many ways the differences are far greater than, say, England and Australia, or England and New Zealand (I’m picking other English speaking countries to avoid to obvious difference between countries of different languages).

I love Farmers Markets. They seem to encapsulate the wholeness of locals growing meat and produce for other locals. They seem to serve as a reminder of the integrity that is needed just as much in food as in all other areas of life.

Of course, I am not so naive to think that we could wind the food revolution back to before the days of supermarket chains – food is wonderful value nowadays especially for those families on tight incomes.

But I can’t be the only one that ponders what the long term effect of all those

E-numbers and other strange ingredients that one reads on most packets of most items, and whether or not fruit is sprayed with anything that we should know about, and so on and so forth.

That’s why that place in my psyche is ‘stroked’ so well by wandering around the Farmers Market.

One would expect if there was going to be any place where yours truly, dressed and sounding like the Englishman that he is, is going to feel foreign, it would be at the Payson Farmers Market. I don’t even try to hide my origins, responding to a “Howdy folks” from the stall-holder with a quintessentially English “Good Morning!”

Inevitably there are reasons why I am made to feel welcome here in Payson, my hunch is that it is much to do with this being a pioneering town for most of the last 100 years, and therefore co-operation, collaboration and a welcoming attitude were key elements of sustaining a way of life, but, in the end, analysis is pointless.

What matters is how we are made to feel, and we are made to feel very welcome.

Indeed, Payson with it’s predominance of right-wing, independent thinking, tough ‘cow-boy’ inhabitants echoing a recent past, may have an important lesson for all of us, across the globe, as the forces of disconcerting change build and build: be local, think local, preserve local.

I’m very proud to be slowly but surely turning into a Payson local.

By Paul Handover

Dealing with the fear of the Known!

Can we ever conquer fear?

In a recent article I discussed the fear of the unknown, linked to the down-turn, redundancies, etc.

Per Kurowski, a great supporter of this Blog, posed the following question.

Great advice… but how do we remove the fear of what is known?

A simple, and slightly flipant answer would be,

“Develop a different relationship with it.”

What I’m saying is that when we are facing the known, and I’m assuming that it’s something unpleasant, our choices are limited. It’s going to happen, so the only thing we can do is change the way we view it.

This brings us back full circle to developing a different relationship with it.

Let’s take the word, ‘fear’.

“All fear is an illusion, walk right through“. I heard Dr David Hawkins say on a CD. Granted, a great trick if you can do it!

Here’s another description of fear: Fear= False Evidence Appearing Real

Fear is generally future-based. We tend to use the past as a learning reference to inform us of what to be afraid of in the future. So human beings live their lives trying to predict and prepare for the future, limited by their past experiences.

Unfortunately, the only way to work with fear of the known is to live in the present! [Just like dogs! Ed.]

Our whole society is geared up to look into the future. We are forever worrying about or planning something for the future.

To begin focussing on the present, try this.

Simply, to start off, become aware of the breath and sensations in the body. This will slowly start to remind us to be present, or embodied, in our own body.

Problems, fear and spiral thinking, often at 3 or 4 in the morning, are generated in the mind.

Thoughts occur randomly, although we call them, “Our thoughts”, and refer to, “Our mind”.

By dropping out of the thought processes into awareness of the breath and body, the noise stops, even if only for a moment.

So very few people in the world will have even the slightest inkling what these words mean.

If more of us got used to coming out of the mind before making an important decision, and simply sat with the question for a while, the answer would probably present itself.

This will probably raise more questions than it answers but that’s not a bad thing.

By Jon Lavin

[If you have been affected by this Post and would like to contact Jon, he would be delighted to hear from you. Ed.]

A Way Forward?

Removing the fear of the unknown

I’ve been working with most of my clients recently through painful transformations brought about by the economic downturn.

An interesting metaphor really because since the first wave of uncertainty triggered panic, first noticed in the UK banking system, I have been picking up on that uncertainty that feels like it’s stalking the globe at the moment.

Interestingly, I, too, have been aware of an underlying fear that was difficult either to name or source.

It has been rather like a deep river in that whilst the surface feels slow moving, currents are moving things powerfully below.

So this ‘fear’ has caused a few household changes.

We now are the proud owners of 9 chickens. Our youngest son, Sami, and I have dug up the back lawn and planted vegetables and built a poly-tunnel.

We have also installed a wood burning cooker. Right back down to the base of Maslow’s triangle really!

maslows_chart — Maslow’s triangle of needs

These feelings have brought about such change everywhere and I wonder seriously whether we will ever return to what was; indeed would we want to?

I might not have mentioned it in previous blogs but as well as an engineering background, in latter years, I have focused on how interpersonal success in business is linked directly to relationships, integrity and vitally, self-awareness.

To inform this, some 7 years ago, I embarked on an MA in Core Process Psychotherapy, primarily to work on myself so that I could be the best I could be in my relationships, in and out of work.

The point I’m trying to make is that the same panic I notice in many of the companies I work in, and in me, is based on fear of the unknown and on a lack of trust in all its forms. I’ve deliberately underlined that last phrase because it is so incredibly important.

The truth is that we get more of what we focus on.

So we can choose to focus on the constant news of more difficulties, hardship and redundancies, or we can focus on what is working.

In the workplace this positive focus has been pulling people together across functions and sites and pooling resources and ideas.

When we realise we’re not doing this alone it’s amazing how much lighter a load can feel and how much more inspired we feel.

I also notice how humour begins to flow and what a powerful antidote for doom and gloom that is.

Transformation is never easy but the rewards far exceed the effort put in ten fold.

So what is it going to be? Are we all going to bow down to the god of Doom & Gloom, fear and anxiety, heaping more and more gifts around it, or are we going to start noticing and focusing on the other neglected god – that of relationship, joy, trust, abundance and lightness?

Whatever the future holds for us all a belief in our inherent ability to adapt and change and focus on the greater good rather than fear, anxiety, greed and selfishness is the only sustainable way forward.

By Jon Lavin

[If you have been affected by this Post and would like to contact Jon, he would be delighted to hear from you. Ed.]

The Foreign Policy Handbook

An outsider’s view of the European Union

Recently Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian organization that I write for, published the second issue of the Foreign Policy Handbook, a magazine on foreign policy written by and for students.

However, the fact that it’s “for students” does not mean that others aren’t encouraged to check it out! (Who says you need to be in school to be a student, anyways?)

My article in this issue, “The European Union: Eurocrats and the Eurosphere,” discusses a few problems that I see with the European Union. The article begins:

During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, European governments came under attack for their colonial policies in the African continent. One of the primary claims made by pan-Africanists and other anti-European individuals was that such European policies denied the peoples of Africa the right of self-determination. For example, the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, drafted at a 1920 convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association led by Marcus Garby, stated, “We believe in the self-determination of all peoples.” Through policies ranging from direct rule via military force to indirect rule via forced economic dependency, European governments were holding African countries back from determining their own course.

While the modern “third world” certainly is not free from the tethers of traditional western powers, the situation has greatly improved from what it was a hundred years ago. However, the modern European governments now are directly denying the right of self-determination not to the peoples of other continents, but to the peoples of Europe itself. Considering the rhetoric surrounding the European Union, such as a commitment to “sustainable development” and the goals of “peace, prosperity and freedom” for the people of Europe, this is a sad irony indeed.

Other articles in this issue of the FPH include:

“The War on Terror and Sun Tzu: Is American Strategy Sound?”,
“Why Conservatives Should Hate Our Foreign Policy,” and
“Law or Hoax? Disproving Democratic Peace Theory.”

Check out an entire digital copy for free here.

By Elliot Engstrom

Basel

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

I suspect that you, like me, know diddly-squat about the Basel Committee. As the Bank of International Settlements puts it:

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision provides a forum for regular cooperation on banking supervisory matters. Its objective is to enhance understanding of key supervisory issues and improve the quality of banking supervision worldwide. It seeks to do so by exchanging information on national supervisory issues, approaches and techniques, with a view to promoting common understanding. At times, the Committee uses this common understanding to develop guidelines and supervisory standards in areas where they are considered desirable. In this regard, the Committee is best known for its international standards on capital adequacy; the Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision; and the Concordat on cross-border banking supervision.

The Committee’s members come from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The present Chairman of the Committee is Mr Nout Wellink, President of the Netherlands Bank.

OK, that’s clear then!

Well, according to a good supporter of and Guest contributor to Learning from Dogs, Pers Kurowski, we really ought to know much, much more about this ‘committee’.

Pers has a Blog called Tea with FT (as in the Financial Times) and there is much to read there that helps us understand why we are in so big a mess with the banks. Here’s his piece from the 4th May.

Basel Committee, why don´t you just shut up!

Sir who do these Basel Committee regulators really think they are bullying us around with an arrogant “the banks should be sensible and realise that it might backfire if they protest too much”? as reported by Brooke Masters, May 4.

They themselves are the ones who thought everything would be fine and dandy if they just had some few credit rating agencies determine default risks and then gave the banks great incentives, by means of different capital requirements, to follow those credit risk opinions. They themselves are the ones who believing in the abundance of safe triple-A rated lending and investments, caused the world to stampede and fall over the subprime mortgages. They themselves should shut up, because rarely has the world seen such a gullible naive and outright stupid bunch of regulators.

Now the banks, in the midst of a crisis, need to build up the equity they do not have precisely because the Basel Committee did not require them to have; precisely when we need the most the banks to lend. The regulators, instead of bullying banks, should busy themselves day and night finding ways for severely capital stretched banks to be able to lend to those small businesses and entrepreneurs who have had to pay the cost of higher capital requirements but who had absolutely nothing to do in generating this crisis.

And just in case, for the record, I am no banker, only a citizen, very upset with the fact that in the 347 pages of the regulations known as Basel II, there is not one single word that describes the purpose of those regulations. Basel Committee why do you not start defining a purpose for what you are doing? Is that too much to ask?

By Paul Handover

Radio Caroline

A real blast from the past!

Recently we rented the film, Pirate Radio, a somewhat ‘true’ story about the days of broadcasting rock and roll from a ship moored just outside British waters. Here’s the official trailer of the film (somewhat glitzy as is the manner of Hollywood):

Anyone of my sort of vintage living in England during the 1960s will recall the fun and excitement of Radio Caroline, the name of the radio station that started up in 1964.

Here’s a good extract from the WikiPedia entry:

Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O’Rahilly, to circumvent the tight hold the record companies had on the broadcast of popular music in the UK. It originally commenced transmissions as an offshore radio station broadcasting from a ship anchored in international waters off the coast of South East England. Originally unlicensed by any government, for the majority of its early life, it was labelled as a pirate radio station.

Amazingly, at its peak Radio Caroline had an audience of 23 million listeners. In a very real way Radio Caroline was another symbol of what became known as the Swinging Sixties, a transformation period for post-war Britain.

Tony Blackburn was just one of many famous disk jockeys who started life out on Radio Caroline, with Tony being the first presenter of the BBC’s Radio 1 station, broadcasting popular music, when it came on air on the 30th September, 1967.

Anyway, if you are nostalgic towards the ‘good’ old days of the sixties, do watch the film.

By Paul Handover

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