Blog posts covering Knowledge, Motivation and Productivity | Get Lasting Results with Mike

BEING more SPIRITUAL

Get Results: spiritual practice stay in the moment

Spirituality is about reconnecting with your true self, which remains obscured, as long as you identify with your thoughts. When you identify with your thoughts, you believe them to be WHO YOU ARE, rather than realising they are just thoughts.

Think about this for a minute. How do we experience life?

We experience life through…

Sense perceptions – see, hear, smell, taste, touch,
Bodily awareness – awareness of breathing, pains, cramps, twitches,
Thoughts – rational as well as emotional thought
Emotions – which come from thought. We can use the intensity of positive and negative emotion to help drive us towards a goal, but often emotions are the very thing that hold us back with strong sensations of fear and inner conflict.

And what else…

Consciousness – true consciousness is awareness and freedom from thought, and can only be found by living IN THE MOMENT. Consciousness allows you to find your true self, your spiritual self, free of identification with thought (otherwise known as the Ego).

THOUGHT

Thought is good as long as you don’t lose self in it. After all where would we be without..

Reasoning
Critical thinking
Decision making
Problem solving
Memory
The ability to learn, comprehend and recall.

Thought is an invaluable servant, there’s no disputing that, but equally it can be a destructive master.

When trapped in identification with thought (Ego), you lose yourself in thinking. You take your thoughts to be who you are. You are unknowingly possessed by them. It becomes part of your sense of identity, part of your sense of self, but it is a false self.

Thoughts directly feed emotions and can make your life a misery.

Thoughts also colour your sense perceptions and Bodily awareness. They give meaning to them. Thoughts interpret your perceptions, they make stories of them, often based on what? Social conditioning, fragmented and limited life experiences, which you believe and value either positively or negatively. Beliefs and values are themselves, thoughts.

When lost in thought you live in fear of pain and suffering. Thought is consumed with the preservation of self, and always bases decisions on avoiding pain and suffering and the desire for pleasure.

It is competitive for what it believes are scarce resources, and tries to separate self from others, to make self more in comparison, by lower others or increasing self.

It attaches to the thought of possessions, relationships, mental positions, ideas, beliefs and values to make more of self. They are pulled into the false sense of self.

It judges and labels to better understand, pigeon holing and stereotyping as it goes, but in doing so. grossly reduces the ultimately unknowable down to a simplified version, which it better understands. It also does this to make itself bigger and better.

You become lost in thought rather than experience the world around you as it is. Life loses its sense of wonder.

Thought can only exist in a state of psychological time (past and future). Using the present moment only as a stepping-stone to the future. Or using it to relive the past, and using the past to predict the future. In reality there is only ever this moment, the present.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Awakening is the separation of awareness and thought. It is space around thought.

You become an observer of thought, and see thought as just thought. A very useful tool to use as you navigate through life, but a very destructive master. You no longer identify with it, or mistake it to be you. Awareness and thought are separated.

Consciousness is accessed through the present moment, the only point we can interact with life from. Past is memory, future is anticipation, both are thoughts.

If you’re in the present fully, thought cannot exist. It cannot diminish, or reduce life to something you can judge, label, attach to, resist, separate from, you are too present, within consciousness.

Joy flows into what you do, not from it, and any doing should have a full sense of consciousness within it. Bring BEING into any DOING.

You understand that you are part of the whole, life and consciousness, So much more than the confines of your skin. Consciousness becoming conscious of itself through you. Formless around form. Part of and one with the whole. “Life is the dance, you’re are the dancer” as Eckhart Tolle says.

For more about spirituality check out our guide here.

Making Money From Your Website

Get Results: basic online business model

If you are looking to make money online you need to be aware of this very simple equation

The internet equation: Traffic plus Conversions equals Online Success

There are only 2 ways to make more money from your website :-

#1- Get more traffic onto your site, which involves promoting on other websites, search engines and social media, which can add cost if you need it to be effective and in a timely manner.

#2 – Improve the number of conversions on your website, which doesn’t involve any more cost. It is best practice, to improve your conversion rate before getting more traffic, so that you make the most of any traffic and don’t waste resources increasing leads only to waste them. Think of it like pouring water into a bucket, which has a big hole in it.

The success pyramid, illustrated below, shows the likely success rate of website visitor’s either providing their email address or buying from you. Starting from the bottom of the pyramid, X amount of traffic comes to the site, a small percentage of which will convert (give their email address) with a smaller amount actually progressing onto buying something from you. So out of 1000 visitors, you might get one paying customer at the end of the process. If you can increase your conversions to 2 for every 1000 visitor’s you have doubled your sales from the same amount of traffic. Focus on improving sales with existing traffic volume for best results. Don’t focus initially on getting more traffic to start, as this will increase acquisition costs

The conversion system I’m going to recommend works in the following way:

Generate traffic via PPC or SEO (subject of another post)
Traffic arrives on focused landing page (known as a squeeze landing page because it’s designed to squeeze the email address from the visitor)
Traffic is incentivised to provide their email address
Auto-response email sequence is sent to build relationship with prospect by providing more info, adding value and building trust. Prospect is warmed up to allow sales pitch to be more readily accepted and acted upon
Sale pitch (via email and taking to a sales landing page) is aimed to help prospect speed things up, save time and money, or make things easier etc.

Let me add just one thing at this point, it is vitally important to add value to your vistor’s/prospect’s lives by providing a product/service that will genuinely help them achieve something, or save something. Don’t get into online marketing just to make money, do it to help visitors in a business-like manner, so that you can sustain your help and provide even more value going forward.

To improve website conversions there are a number of things you need to have in place.

A focused squeeze landing page and sales landing page,
An email capture form and
A system to allow visitors to pay you over the internet such as Paypal.

There are a number of tools available to you, in your quest for online success, some of which cost money and some of which don’t. The system I use for my businesses cost me less than £100 for all of them as one-off lifetime payments, with no monthly recurring subscriptions. I will be happy to provide links to such resources if you subscribe to my email list.

Reduce fear and build trust

Having a squeeze page is one thing, but you still have to make that page effective in capturing visitor’s email addresses. Before a visitor is likely to provide their email address, you will need to prove to them that you are trustworthy. Visitors don’t like to give their email address because they are worried that you will send lots of unsolicited emails, or sell their email addresses onto third parties, who will then go on to spam them with no value offers. So make sure you assure them that this is not the case, to help reduce this fear. Use statements such as:

We hate spam just as much as you
We will never share your email address with any 3rd parties
We will never spam you
100% privacy guaranteed

next to your opt-in form to help reassure the visitor. But make sure you keep your promise.

note – There is some evidence to show that the subconscious mind is unable to differentiate between negatively framed words and positively framed words. For example using the word “spam”, even if you’re using it in the context of “We will never spam you“, causes a negative association and can lead to lower opt-in rates than if you were to use a generally more positive phrase such as “100% privacy guarantee“. The best way to determine if this is true, is to run your own test to see what works for you and your audience.

Get the email address and build a relationship

A squeeze landing page should be constructed around one idea or offering. Give your visitor something in return for their email address. Providing valuable free information is one way to do this, in the form of a white paper, e-book, diagram, a free tool, list of handy resources, a cheat sheet, recipe, or video lesson etc. The strategy behind this approach, of giving them valuable information in exchange for their email address, is so that you can build a relationship with them via email, and over time hopefully convert them to paying customers, once they know and trust your brand. It is much easier to sell to someone who you have already had some dealings with, than if they are a complete stranger.

Having something to sell

If you haven’t got something to sell at the end of it, then you’re not going to make any money and you won’t be able to continue provide a great resource for your visitor’s, unless of course you’re just doing it in your spare time for fun, which means you have limited time to devote to helping your audience.

It’s best to start from the sale and work backwards. For instance if the product you’re selling is a cookery coaching program, you can give lots of cooking tips and tricks away for free and have a buying guide for equipment as your opt-in incentive. Alternatively if your product is a photography course, you can give lots of tips and tricks to improve photography for free and have a photography equipment buyers guide as an opt-in incentive.

The difference between a Sales Landing Page and a Squeeze Landing Page

A sale page is the same as a squeeze page but instead of trying to solicit an email address from the visitor, it allows the visitor to buy your product/service.

Anatomy of a landing page

Both squeeze pages and sales pages should contain the following elements:

Headline

An eye catching relevant headline – This should be linked to the source of the visitor, for instance, if they came from a Pay Per Click (PPC) advert, then the headline on your sales pay should be the same as the text used in the original advert they clicked on. They should know they are on the right page once they arrive on your landing page based on what they saw on the previous page.

The headline should address a need or want. It should promise a clear benefit or offer. The headline must encourage the visitor to read on. If it’s not engaging enough the visitor will leave without taking action. If you have used PPC to get the visitor onto your landing page this is a wasted click and has incurred a cost to you, so make sure you test your headlines to get the best chance of conversion.

Call to Action

Have a clear call to action, with action oriented text, “click here to get…“. The whole purpose of the landing page is to get the visitor to take one action. This is the call to action. The one call to action on a squeeze page should be aimed at getting the visitor to give you their email address, or on a sales page it is to buy now. If you don’t get it from them, the landing/sales page has failed, pure and simple.

With just the headline and call to action in place the full bare bones of the offer should be completely evident. Everything else on the page should just support these two elements.

Support elements

Supporting text to expand on the headline promise and provide more detail and also address any possible objections. You will most likely need more supporting text on a sales page than a squeeze page simply because people will give their email address away more easily than money.

An image relevant to the offering

Bullet points of exactly what you are offering in exchange for their email. The greater the value you are providing the better the chance to get that email address or a purchase.

Trust elements – such as testimonials, case studies, customer logos, press mentions, number of followers, customers, subscribers

Risk reducers – such as money back guarantees, free trials, free samples etc.

Tell them who you are. Tell them exactly what you want to do with their email, what offers you will be sending them, and that they are relevant to the offer you are currently providing etc. You will still need to reinforce this on a sales page, even though they should already know you from the squeeze page and your email sequence.

Email sequence

There are a number of email options you can use, some for free, while others have a monthly fee. You can set up auto-responder emails which will send out pre-written emails at set intervals once someone has opted-in.

This can be set to deliver your valuable information directly to their inbox and of course, your sales message and link to the sales page. Growing an active email subscriber base is a key element to online success, because it gives you access to the people who are likely to want your products and services and who already know you.

The old adage “The money is in the list” could not be more true. The key to keeping subscribers on your list is keep providing them with great useful, relevant information, insight and value. If you want to convert them into paying customers you must have something of value, which they’re willing to pay for and that adds more value to their lives than it costs them.

Summary

Converting visitors into customers is key to online success. The elements on a landing page, while crucially necessary can be varied in their construction. For instance there is no one great headline that will work for all products and services. The only way to know what’s best for your particular niche is to test, test and test again. Testing different, headlines, different calls to action, different landing page copy, and different images is crucial to improving your landing page performance.

You can use products like Google Analytics to measure your landing page performance. It is vital not to overlook such a great feedback opportunity. If you don’t know what your audience is doing or not doing, you are left to guess and hope for the best. Of course ultimately your bank account will tell you whether your efforts are providing a return on investment or not in the end, but knowing where your efforts are failing within your sales funnel, will help focus your attention. Are you getting lots of clicks on your PPC adverts but no one is opting-in to your email sequence? Are you getting lots of opt-ins but no one is converting on the sales page?

This is what it takes to become an online success. Having a strategy, working the strategy, testing the variables, measuring and reading the feedback data, testing again, improving all the while in an ever improving cycle.

I will be adding more information about each of the elements of a landing page in more detail in future posts, such as killer headlines, and call to action best practices, so please subscribe to my email list so that I can keep in touch.

Check out our internet resource page, you’ll find lots of handy, tips, tools and resources.

For more marketing insight, check out our Marketing guide.

Emotions Cloud Rational Decision Making

Why is it we are good at giving others advice, but struggle with our own situations.

For instance people advise others about relationships when they themselves are in bad relationships. Maybe we should take our own advice. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just a recommendation.

We know the answers, when it comes to other people, but we can’t see it for ourselves. When we’re caught up in our own emotions, they tend to cloud our judgement. Rational thinking is easier when emotions aren’t present.

When we’re outside the scenario, everything is all too clear to see, but within it, everything is confused. If we imagine a stranger being in our situation, what would we tell them to do? Whatever the answer, is our solution.

THOUGHT: Way To Salvation Or Root Of All Problems?

Get Results: Awakening: use thought don't be used by it — Get Results: Awakening: use thought don’t be used by it

It’s common for people to believe the more THINKING they do the more chance of solving their problems or thinking their way onto success. While this is true to some extent, if it goes too far and a person gets so consumed with the idea of thinking their way to salvation, they will, in fact, find that THOUGHT is the root of all their problems.

Let me explain. Thinking is caught up in the past and future, psychologically speaking, and uses the moment that life unfolds as nothing more than a stepping-stone to whatever is wished for in the future. It is being constantly in a state of discontentment, wishing for something better than the present offers. The human condition is preoccupied with wanting to HAVE MORE and thus BE MORE than present reality, and this is also the case for individuals who, by other people’s standards already seem to have it all, such as the super rich and successful.

The difference between FULFILMENT and ACHIEVEMENT

If seeking FULFILMENT, you’re not going to find it outside yourself. Seeking growth is aligned to ACHIEVEMENT rather than fulfilment, but as soon as you start to chase down ACHIEVEMENT you move into the realms of discontentment and dissatisfaction. Yes these can be used as MOTIVATION and spare you onto so called greater things, but you won’t ever find FULFILMENT at the end of this road. You might find it later, after you’ve achieved, but it really isn’t connected to that achievement. FULFILMENT is with you now, if you look inside yourself, it is there, but not if you’re lost in ACHIEVEMENT, because the two aren’t particularly compatible. You can’t be fulfilled and discontent or dissatisfied.

So if you want to achieve more, understand that you’re not going to feel particularly fulfilled while doing so.

It’s important to take a closer look at your THOUGHT processes, so as to understand how you can help yourself enjoy better quality of thought and in the process a better quality of life.

How, what, when/where and why

Change HOW you think – your inner vocabulary. Tony Robbins said, “If you want to change your life, if you want to shape your decisions and your actions, shifting your emotional patterns are the key. One fundamental tool that can change it faster than anything else is consciously selecting the words you’re going to use to describe how you feel. This is how you create a level of choice instead of a habitual reaction.”

It’s the difference between using RAGE versus DISGRUNTLED to describe your emotions.

Change WHAT you think about – your focus. Change your habitual thought patterns and reactions. When something negative happens, instead of energising the negative reactionary emotion, change your thoughts to appreciating (gratitude) what good you have in your life. It’s hard going to start off with, but it does get easier with practice. Over time you will change your brains wiring though something called plasticity.

Change WHEN/WHERE you think – don’t lose yourself in thinking. Give time to be IN THE MOMENT, after all it’s the only point in time we interact with life in.

Change WHY you think. Sure we need to use thought constructively for things like problem solving and decision making, as a tool, even using emotional thought to aid motivation, but we should never get so lost in thought that the slave becomes the master. Thought should benefit us, after all thought is just thought, it’s not who you are, so don’t identify with thought. Always separate your awareness and your thought.

“13 Reasons Why” Got Me Thinking

Get Results: don't let your story end — Get Results: don’t let your story end

Having just binge watched the whole series of “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix, I got to thinking about the subject of suicide and wondered how this fitted in with my spirituality education.

It’s a very difficult subject to talk about, and my hat goes off to the makers of the series for bringing the topic into the open. If you haven’t heard about it, 13 Reasons Why, is the story of a teenager called Hannah who takes her own life, but before doing so, makes a series of audio recordings on cassette tape explaining the 13 reasons why she did it. Each of the people identified in the recordings are given a copy of the tapes, passing them on to the next person, when they have finished. The story follows one particular character, Clay, as he works his way through each of the cassette tapes, revisiting each of the situations, an observer, as the story unfolds. It really is a riveting watch.

Now personally, I’ve never been in a situation, where I seriously thought about ending my own life, either as a teenager or adult. However many of the situations Hannah finds herself in are common experiences for many teenagers and adults, me included, such as bullying, disloyalty and betrayal by friends, rejection, mockery etc. However there are much more intense experiences that Hannah has to deal with, which I won’t go into, so not to spoil the series for you.

Suicide seems such an extreme and unfathomable action to take, and I do not wish to begin to lecture to anyone so hurt, that contemplating suicide seems like a viable option.

We can never truly understand what is going on in another persons mind. Even if we walked in their shoes, we might react differently. There is no right or wrong here. We are all different, and that’s a good thing.

Being unique in the way we look, think, talk, act, and dress makes the world such an interesting place. We should embrace our differences, while understanding that we have many things in common, even through such differences.

Commonalities

We all want to love and be loved, feel connected to others, because we are social creatures.

We all want to feel a sense of progress, of more, of better. We look to those ahead of us with some degree of envy. We base our standing and self worth, by comparing ourselves with others. We tend to focus more on those we perceive as ahead of us, and less so on those we perceive as behind us.

We form attachments to people, relationships, thoughts, status, attributes, affiliations, mental positions, possessions and just about anything that make us feel better, or more than we would otherwise feel we were. We can also attach to pain and negative things and feelings, if they somehow perversely add something to us in some way. Being a victim can become part of our sense of identity in the absence of something more positive. Becoming addicted to drugs for instance is thought to be partly down to a lack of healthy human bonding, so bonding with drugs is better than nothing.

The underlying INTENTION is to try to move away from pain and suffering and towards pleasure. We are all trying to do this, we are all the same as far as this is concerned. Bullies often bully because they are covering up pain in themselves. I’m not making excuses for bullying mind you, but a healthy, happy personality doesn’t try to hurt others. Lashing out comes from inner pain.

Suicide, in the same way is an attempt to escape pain. It is perceived by that person, as the best option to take, because maybe they feel so low, life offers nothing for them, or they feel under such attack by bullies, or have had their sense of themselves devalued to such an extent that there is no other way from their point of view.

Let me just say at this point, if you ever feel such pain, please ask for help, there are help lines available if you don’t feel you can approach anyone you know. Check out this website for further help www.supportline.org.uk. This is a section from their website

Suicide is very final – if you succeed in taking your life – there are no second chances and nobody really knows what will happen when they die. It may be difficult to take in at this moment in time but the feelings you have at the moment may be temporary – you may not always feel like this. There are people who have been in the exactly the same position as you and have somehow found the strength to come out of it and have gone on to find happiness and fulfilment in life and to be able to cope with life more easily – they have found alternatives to suicide and were glad that they did not take their own life. – supportline.org.uk

We are a mixed bag

While watching 13 Reasons Why, I noticed there were people in Hannah’s life who had great love and affection for her, but she was so consumed with the bad that the good didn’t seem to register with her. She had a distorted view of herself based on some of the meanness of others around her who were themselves in pain to some degree and for a variety of reasons. She wasn’t always a victim, sometimes she was a perpetrator, ignorant to how her actions affected others.

The underlying feeling that I came away with after watching the series, was a sense of sadness at such a waste of a life. Hannah was a beautiful pure spirit, and you wonder how she could have thought of herself any differently. We are all pure spirits underneath our pain, fears, even hatred.

We get caught up in our thoughts, thoughts about ourselves, of what others might think of us, how others have wronged us. We kick the cat, because someone kicked us, in an attempt to redress the balance, adding value to a sense of devaluation. We do these things, not because we are evil, but because of our own fear of pain.

Sometimes a simple gesture, an acknowledgement, time taken to care can make a disproportionate difference to someone else, and if we all did this, we would have less pain to fear.

If only …

If only we could prevent our self-worth being entangled with how we think others perceive and judge us.

If only we could go through life not consumed so much with fear of pain and suffering, and instead give attention to the moments of love and kindness we share.

If only we could love ourselves more, accept our imperfections as being what makes us uniquely us and give us a unique perspective of the world. After all we are the perfect versions of ourselves.

If only we could come to understand pain isn’t who we are, but a result of distorted thinking, which is blocking our light from shining through.

If only we could see we are connected and interconnected with everyone and everything and that each interaction has a knock on effect on everything else and trying to unpick the smallest thing would change so many more things, maybe everything.

We would understand how amazing we are and how much we can and do make a difference to the world we share and are an integral part of, even when sometimes it doesn’t seem that way.

The More You Have To Lose

Get Results: weighing your sense of self down

When lost in THINKING, you always WANT MORE.

You psychologically attach to things/people/ideas/possessions making them part of your SENSE OF SELF.

In the belief that the more you HAVE, the more you will BE.

At the same time fearing the more you HAVE, the more you HAVE TO LOSE.

STOP IDENTIFICATION with THOUGHT. Your THOUGHTS are just
THOUGHTS, they are not SELF.

Separate AWARENESS and THOUGHT and FREE SELF.

Check out our spirituality guide.

The Pathway To Being Happier

You are HERE in THIS MOMENT,
which is OK.

But because you want to be
somewhere else, for you, HERE and NOW is not enough.
You yearn for SOMEWHERE or
SOMETHING ELSE/MORE/BETTER.

By doing this you are not fully HERE and NOW.
Your attention is already SOMEWHERE else,
doing SOMETHING ELSE,
via THOUGHT and IMAGINATION.

YEARNING or THWARTED WANTING results in a
feeling of discontentment because your EXPECTATIONS
and PREFERENCES are not being met by your perceived
reality of THIS MOMENT.

You may experience ANGER, SADNESS,
DISCONTENTMENT, lack of FULFILMENT, or some other
negative emotional reaction.

Changing the focus of your thoughts changes your mood.
If you replace ANTICIPATION with APPRECIATION, or
ACCEPT instead of EXPECT you feel better.

If you stay PRESENT in the MOMENT,
without IDENTIFICATION with THOUGHT.
you can not feel bad.

For more about spirituality.

For more about gratitude.

The Egg by Andy Weir

Imagine suddenly coming to the realisation that you play every role of every actor that has ever lived and is living. How would that change the way you perceive and treat other people? The Egg by Andy Weir, puts you in that very situation allowing a shift in perspective, to a more compassionate and empathetic point of view when dealing with others.

The Egg

You have died.

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident, nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two
children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you but to no avail. Your body was so
utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What.. What happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a.. a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup.” I said.

“I.. I died?”

“Yup, but don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies.” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the
afterlife?”

“More or less.” I said.

“Are you God?” You asked.

“Yup.” I replied. “I am God.”

“My kids.. my wife,” You said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be alright?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “..you just died and your main concern is your family. That’s good stuff
right there.”

You looked at me with fascination.

To you I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure,
maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry.” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t
have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but be secretly relieved. To be fair,
your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” You said. “.. so what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither.” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” You said. “.. So the Hindus were right.”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “.. walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “.. It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my
experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all past lives. You just don’t
remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders.

“Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only
contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or
cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the
experiences it had.”

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your
immense consciousness. If we hung out here for a long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But
there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant
girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your Universe. Things are different where I
come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained. “.. I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know
you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “.. but wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have
interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s
happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You are asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” You persisted.

I looked you in the eye.

“The meaning of life, the reason I made this Whole Universe, is for YOU to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just YOU. I made this Whole Universe for YOU. With each new life YOU grow and mature and become a
larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “.. in This Universe, there’s just YOU and ME.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on Earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of YOU.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you are the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “.. You were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve
done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be,
experienced by YOU.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, YOU will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my
child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you
will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the Whole Universe,” You said, “.. it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

By: Andy Weir

A great story, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I find it helps me look at other people in a completely different light, and allows me to examine my own attitude and approach to others. If we can be more compassionate and empathetic towards other people, we can connect in a more meaningful way.

Judging and labelling others, and we all do it to some degree, stops any meaningful connection by putting up prejudiced barriers. As a result we act differently in different social situations, we become actors, role playing. Thus connections are rarely deeper than the surface level of those roles.

We mistakenly believe the roles played by others, are a true representation of them, when in reality people are much more complex.

People’s attitudes and behaviours are much more influenced by their environment and situations, than we give credit for. We should be less judgemental, because we know very little about the person underneath the roles they play. Only by walking in their shoes, can you get close to possibly knowing how they feel and why they behave as they do.

Hope you enjoyed this post.

For more about changing perspective, check out this post.

The Great Way: The Third Patriarch of Zen Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-T’san

If you seek out a more spiritual existence, more connected with BEING, and less focused on WANTING, HAVING and DOING, it’s important to live in a state of non-resistance, non-attachment and non-judgement. The Third Patriarch of Zen Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-T’san is a great guide to being more spiritually aligned.

The Third Patriarch of Zen Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-T’san

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood,
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such
erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity
your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way
fail in both activity and passivity,
assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things
is to miss their reality;
To assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
do not remain in the dualistic state.
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that,
of right and wrong,
the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend.
And when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes:
As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind):
the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult.
But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:
Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way
and there will be neither coming nor going.
Obey the nature of things (your own nature)
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden
for everything is murky and unclear.
And the burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals
but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise
from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind
is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment
there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air –
foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong,
such thoughts must
finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things are as they are,
of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached,
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary
and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage:
Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no exertion of the mind’s power.
Here thought, feeling,
knowledge and imagination are of no value.

In this world of suchness
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality
just say when doubt rises “not two”.
In this “not two” nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.

No matter when or where,
enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension
or diminution in time and space:
In it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there,
but the infinite universe
stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries are seen.

So too with Being and non-Being.
Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments
That have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things,
move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this realization
is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.
To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,
because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.

Translated from the Chinese by Richard B. Clarke
Featured in Jack Kornfield, Teachings of the Buddha.

Thanks for reading, please check out our spirituality guide while you’re here.

As a bonus, I came across this insightful audio version of Alan Watts “The Book” which covers the same subject matter and is a great companion for this post. If the video doesn’t play, please let me know so that I can update it. I have also included a link to the book and audible versions below, in case you want your own copy of a great piece of work.

Politics: Serving The Ego

POLITICS is a game of opinion. Sold on half truths and well presented self-serving arguments and unfulfillable promises. It is a battle waged by Egos vying for power. It is most divisive, it has to be to work.

Made up of rigid mental positions driven by beliefs and values that refuse to see the validity of another way, all in the pursuit of power. Held together by projections of what could go right or wrong if only…

The winner is the one who is most persuasive, the losers must go back and construct better persuasive arguments, and tell their target audience what they want to hear, and divert attention away from their failure to subsequently deliver.

Opinions of the Ego

Your BELIEFS and VALUES form your OPINIONS. To you they are the truth, but to others they are just OPINION. The fact you believe in them so much means you are lost in Ego.

To clarify what I mean by Ego, Ego, the way I am using it in this article (and the way I use it throughout the site), is identification with THOUGHT. It’s the process of mistakenly believing your thoughts to be who you are. Identification means to “make like”. Thoughts include BELIEFS and VALUES at their core, out of which come OPINIONS.

Get Results: everything we hear is opinion

Separation: The Enemy

Alternative views are cast as the enemy and the evil that lurks ready to destroy any chance for utopia, and those that hold them are seen as misguided, uneducated and not to be trusted to cast their vote. This allow us to dehumanise them, and prevents any connection or chance of empathy and compassion.

We see examples of this in arguments about Brexit, and Donald Trump. Separation is forged as sides are taken. Winners and losers, competition for gaining the moral ground, all are classic Ego positioning.

Get Results: bother each other with opinions

United by Intent

We must remember that all we have are opinions, that have become polar opposites with exaggerated consequences. They are not the truth. Truth comes from what motivates both sides, which is INTENT. We are divided by opinion, but united by intent. We all want the same thing, to have a better life, and do what is best for us and our loved ones, we disagree about how best to achieve it.

Instead of working towards something that works for all, politics keeps us stuck in division with no will to find a solution that works for all. Instead of conflict, we should try to work towards acknowledging and respecting alternative views and working towards a mutually rewarding solution.

For more about spiritual enlightenment check out our spiritual and wellbeing guide.

THOUGHT

CONSCIOUSNESS

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