Practice and the Path

Practice and the Path

In this section, I talk about the importance of practice, and discuss some of the transformative practices that I have found to be most effective. One of the problems that I always had with self help books and approaches to success is that they were often a list of things that you just had to do to, without recognizing the importance of internal transformation. I tried many self help books, and did everything that I was told to, and it never seemed to work for me. So, either I was getting it wrong, or all these people were making everything up. Somehow, I couldn't accept that everybody was making all this stuff up. Second, I don't believe you can just copy someone and get the same results they are getting. Your actions will produce results, but you will always be limited to doing things their way. All actions come from an interior state of being, which is a complex combination of beliefs, values, emotional states, and how the world is perceived. First you ‘be' it, then you ‘do' it, and then you have the results. Most approaches tell you how to ‘do' something, without offering you a path of how to ‘be' it first. I have had to learn the hard way, and I have had to transform myself internally in order that I act with increasing congruence and focus, thus increasing the probability of creating the results that I want. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this book, there are certain skills and abilities that are required in order to live a trusting, creative existence, where you can really start to create the life that you want. Everybody is capable of developing these skills and qualities, and when you have developed them to enough of a degree, then you will begin to get the results that you want in life. This is where the idea of practice, and a path of transformation, becomes important. Anybody who is really good at anything usually spends a lot of time training and developing themselves, and likewise, if you genuinely want to be good at creating the kind of life that you want, which has emotional, financial, physical and relational bottom lines (and any other bottom lines that you may want as well), then you have to prepare yourself.

Genuine internal transformation often happens in an instant, yet is the result of sustained, repetitive practice. Many people like the idea of change, yet are not prepared to submit themselves to the long, hard and painful reality of personal growth. Ironically, on the other side of all the struggle and effort, lies a way of being that is free and effortless, and where action and doing are a deep and authentic pleasure. Before you can reach this effortless way of being, a time of preparation is required, which needs a lot of persistent effort. When I think of biblical stories such as Moses leading the Israelites across the desert for many years towards the land of Canaan, I think of my personal growth journey. Many times it felt as though it had been going on too long, and I was never going to reach my promised land. Still, I kept the vision, often inspired by those who had walked the path before me. I would continually seek inspiration from those who had endured difficulty, returning from the exile of alienation from spirit, to once again find their promised home. Looking back, I was always taken care of, and had food and water for the journey, and I learned to trust God, and to trust His path for me. Likewise, I would like to offer support and hope to others who wish to travel the journey to find their way home, and that is one of the intentions of these pages.

If you want a different life, then you have to change. This does not mean changing external events and situations, although very often a shift in environment can facilitate an internal shift. It means that you have to consciously engage yourself in transformative practices, and have a long term view, knowing that it may take a few years to change yourself. If you have spent the last 20 or 30 or 40 years acting and behaving in habitual and unhealthy ways, then to expect to change overnight is unrealistic. The longer you have been doing something, then the greater its momentum to repeat itself within your bodily system. Deeply ingrained habits and patterns take time to shift, and the longer you have been doing something, then the more inertia there is to be overcome. Habitual behaviors are stored throughout your body, and when you start to try and change, your body's natural ability to resist change will assert itself, and ironically, even if your behaviors are unproductive, your body will try and keep them because they were originally  formed in you for a good reason. You will have to learn to keep going through times of discomfort, breakdown and confusion. Your results reflect your actions and your actions reflect your values and beliefs, so if you begin to take different actions because you want different results in your life, then you may start to rub up against any values and beliefs that are in conflict with your new vision and goals. One of the problems that you will encounter is that your consciously espoused values may be in conflict with your unconscious values, or what you really believe to be true. So, what you think you are, and what you actually are, may be quite different, and that manifests as a lack of integrity and an inauthentic life. That's where transformation becomes necessary, because if you want to create sustainable changes in your life, that are not dependant on continuous willpower to maintain them, then you will need to learn to let go of your old beliefs and values that conflict with the changes that you want in your life. If you don't transform yourself, then before long, you will find yourself acting like your old self again, and you will be back where you started before you got excited by all this transformation stuff. If you haven't learnt to face the parts of yourself that cause you to feel dissatisfied through your unwillingness to face them, then dissatisfaction will repeatedly arise in your life, and reaching your goals will bring you only a temporary, transient happiness. Genuine transformation is extremely challenging and requires a perseverance, dedication and willpower beyond which most people have to offer, yet it is possible.  I would be very careful of change programs that promise pain free rapid wonderful results. I have found personal transformation to often be a grueling process, yet in difficult times, I simply refuse to allow myself to give up the possibility of what I desire for myself.

I have committed to a daily practice for several years now. It hasn't always been a daily practice, but I have slowly built it up and expanded it and so my life has become practice, and every moment is an opportunity for transformation. Each day, I commit some formal time to practice, and the practice has changed from a duty into a joy. Creating a regular habit of transformative practice is tough, because to transform yourself, you have to resist acting in your habitual ways, and choose to act in a new way instead. This will often feel like a horrible denial of your self, and you will feel very uncomfortable. Discipline is needed in the initial stages of beginning a practice, yet the discipline will eventually give birth to freedom. However, once you have created new habits that serve you well, then life will once again become a pleasure. You will not necessarily be spared the difficulties and challenges of life once you are transformed, instead, you will be far more capable to confront them with strength and balance, and to enjoy the challenge of dealing with them, rather than wishing they were not there.

For me, my practice begins where I am. I have a body, and so I need to feed it well, and exercise it, with my goal for my body being health and energy. I have found that many people on personal growth paths think that real transformation is not a physical thing, and they live as a mind disconnected from their body. My experience is that the blocks that hold us back are stored as knots, or deeply held tensions, within the body, and those need to be accessed and released. If you do not have a healthy and honorable relationship with your body, then it will be very difficult to create a healthy and honorable relationship with the world, which is what you will have to do if you want a sustainable successful life. Your body is your vehicle for action in the world, so why not keep it well serviced? I would suggest that one of the first steps in any path of transformation is to make exercise a priority, and allocate 30 minutes a day to exercising. You may complain that your life is too busy and that there is no time, because there are so many other demands on your life. If your life is too busy for health then I think you have serious problems. You don't need to be a super hero, or spend lots of money on joining a gym, although the better the facilities you have, the better you can exercise. A simple program to get started would be a follows.

I am not a doctor or an exercise specialist, so I suggest that you consult a medical practitioner before beginning any program. If you haven't exercise regularly before, then beginning an exercise program will be tiring and difficult. You may get sick as your body reacts against the stress and as toxins are released from your body. It takes 3 to 6 months to permanently establish a new habit in your life, so if you can exercise for 6 months, you will most likely exercise your entire life. If you can continue and establish the habit of regular exercise as a permanent part of your life, then you will have many other benefits, such as an improved immune system, circulation system, and so on.

• Do three twenty minute cardio sessions a week. These could be brisk walking, or swimming, or cycling, or jogging, basically anything that gets your heart rate up to 80 % of its maximum, and builds up a sweat. You can do intervals in the workout, where you increase your speed to maximum rates 2 or 3 times during the session, then slow down again and recover. It's important to push yourself, and not just take it easy. The key here is to build up your aerobic capacity, get oxygen into your blood, get fitter, and build a little stamina. Also, you will get used to pushing through your limits.
• Do three short weights sessions a week, of not more than thirty minutes. If you don't have a gym, you can do slow squats using your body weight, push ups, stomach crunches, and you can get a pair of dumbbells for the other exercises. Once you understand that the mind can create resistance, and you don't need heavy weights, then you can do a lot of exercises at home. The important thing is to do something, and to use the resources you have to the best of your ability. If you wait until conditions are perfect, then you may never get started. Start where you are, with what you've got, and do the best you can.  Remember, the universe applauds action, so the sooner you start doing things, the better.

My current exercise program is to train every day at a nearby gym, where I run for half an hour three times a week, and do weights for half an hour three times a week. Then, if I have time, I take a 20 minute sauna after the workout, where I focus on my intentions, and ask myself if I am genuinely committed on bringing forth the changes I want or if I still have some conflicting interests within me. And, then, if I recognize conflicting interests, then I will contemplate them, and try to resolve the conflict.

After a healthy body, you need a healthy mind. The first step to creating a healthy mind, is to be aware of your mind, because once you are aware of your mind, you can then decide if your mind is healthy or not. And then, if you are aware you're your thinking and habitual patterns are unhealthy, you can begin to change some things. So, you will need to start building moment to moment awareness of what is happening in your emotions and in your thoughts. The goal is to be continuously aware of your thinking and emotional state, without being lost in them. The first step here is to practice present centered self-awareness, and I do at least a few minutes of simple awareness meditation each day, where I just notice what is arising in my awareness, without acting on it. A meditative practice is outlined in the section on Essential Practices.

Change happens as a conscious decision to bring awareness to what is happening to you in the moment, being able to clearly and accurately name what is happening, and then to make a consciously different choice. Change does not happen in the future, at another time. It happens right now, in the present, always, and that is the mindset which you will need to adopt if you decide you want to make changes in your life. Decide to be different, act different, and your universe will respond, and the first step is to know what is happening in the present. Building present centered awareness is a challenging task, and you will need to be stronger that the habitual momentum of your past conditioning. It wont happen in a day, yet with continued, persistent and tenacious action of coming into the present, moment by moment, it will become easier and easier until its effortless.

Once you have a basic physical practice, and a habit of building awareness in the moment, then you have two excellent foundations to start to build upon. The creative universe is in many ways a dance between the masculine and feminine energies, which I have spoken about elsewhere in this book. An important part of the journey of becoming a conscious, capable creator of your life is to learn to embody the dance of the masculine and feminine within your being, knowing what it is to be open, relaxed and receptive to opportunity happening to you, and what it is to be incisive, focused and filled with intention, ready to seize opportunity when it arises. If you want to learn to embody both the masculine and feminine, and to use them consciously in your day, then you have to practice them. For example

• When saying your daily affirmations, focus as intently as possible on what you are saying, with an absolute determination for what you say to be true. Concentrate as if your entire body was an energy point that had condensed into your affirmation. Then, once you have said your affirmations, relax, allowing yourself to be spacious enough to contain the entire universe (which includes your thoughts and feelings, by the way) within you. This relaxation is a real moment of well deserved self indulgent luxury as you treat yourself to unconditional rest. It's important here not to try and relax, as trying to relax is an effort in itself. Here, relaxation is as simple as noticing whatever is happening within you, in your thoughts, feelings, sensations and impulses. This focus and relaxation is simply the masculine and feminine energies happening inside you. A way to get a feeling for effortless relaxation is to notice your breath. As you release your breath after an in-breath, notice the relief you feel as it's released. That's the type of relief you should feel in relaxation. It's an effortless letting go of where you have been holding on.
• When you do weights, you can begin your exercise by feeling the touch of your feet on the ground. This simply brings you into the present moment. Then, you allow yourself to feel the muscles that you are going to use in that exercise, and then you concentrate as fully as possible on that muscle, trying to feel it from the inside. As you do your exercise, you put as much concentration on the muscle as you can, feeling it fully as you move. All the while, you are breathing easily, and you can imagine the breath carrying energy through your body to the muscle where it's being used. If your attention drifts from the muscle and you start to lose concentration while doing the set, simply notice that you have shifted attention, and return to the muscle being used with as much focus and concentration as possible. A good rule is that energy follows attention with intention. It took me a while to figure out that its not attention in my head forcing my body to move, rather, attention is shifted away from my thinking into my body. In this way, I am not using so much willpower to drive my body, but I am letting my concentration and attention drive the body. A good way to know if my attention is too focused on my head is if my face is contorting with effort as I do the exercise. So, if I am doing squats, and my face is grimacing, then I am not relaxed in the face, my energy is concentrated in my facial muscles, and its not being released into the leg muscles where it's needed. You could try that, just see if you can keep your face muscles relaxed while doing weights. Then, once you have completed your set, then you simply relax, by allowing yourself to expand fully, and by being aware of whatever arises inside your experience again. Then, after a minute of relaxing rest, you can do another cycle of weights. The key idea here is that you are consciously training you masculine and feminine energies, the masculine being the intention and focused action on the muscles, and the feminine being the receptive phase of relaxation, where you simply open yourself to embrace through your receptivity whatever is happening.

A final point I would like to make here is to return to the idea of ‘From the inside out', and look at that idea from an energetic perspective. So, how does this relate to the masculine and feminine energies, and to awareness training in the moment?

Again, one of the problems I always had with the self help movement is that it's very dogmatic, and people recite mantras like ‘Think abundance' without really knowing how to learn to authentically embody energetic states of abundance. The practices in the section on ‘Essential Practices' will gradually shift you from a state of powerlessness, to a state where you recognize your inner power, embody that power and learn to use it for action. When you do the weights, for example, you have shifted from the habitual weight training perspective that you must work against external resistance to create the results that you want, and believing that the amount of energy you need to exert is determined by the external forces, to a state where you generate the energy from within, and depending how much internal energy you can learn to generate, that will determine your results. So, you learn that you are the source of the energy, and you can focus that source, and turn that it up or down, and then, depending on how much energy you wish to create, that will influence the results that you get. So, you can do a workout with light weights, yet generate large results. Let's compare that to setting an intention and saying an affirmation. It doesn't take much energy to create a thought, yet if that thought is created with your entire focus and attention and concentration, it will generate a much larger creative response from Spirit. You are the creator, and you are the source, and you need to learn to radiate energy which is internally generated and consciously chosen, not because of a reaction to the demands of the world upon you. If you only act due to reactions to the world, then you effectively spend your life as a victim of circumstance. F.I.T. training teaches you how to generate internal energy at will, to be directed for a purpose of your choice. Secondly, with awareness training, if you find yourself having thoughts and feelings of need and lack, then as soon as you notice those thoughts or feelings, then those thoughts and feelings are automatically contained within the fullness of your being. You will start to realize that your sense of who you are doesn't depend on what you are feeling or thinking, because you are always there to know that you are thinking or feeling. And so, you start to realize that fundamentally, you are untouched by lack or need. Each time you bring your moment to moment awareness to any feeling of lack or need or doubt or anxiety, you are holding those limiting states within the fullness of your being, and you are weakening your attachment to them, and their hold on you. And then gradually, or suddenly, a miracle happens, when the fullness of your being starts to shine through you, and you start to act because you are full and overflowing into the world, instead of because you are empty and dry and the world has to flow into you to complete you.

As mentioned in other pages, your state has a strong determinant on how you perceive the world. If you are feeling positive and abundant, then you will perceive a positive, abundant world, and you will notice events in your world that reflect that. Alternatively, if you are feeling deprived and scarce, then your focus will shift toward noticing deprivation and scarcity in your world. So, keep in mind that being able to shift your state will shift your focus (or where your attention is), and action (or inaction) follows attention. Being in a state of abundance, for example, doesn't mean that you will receive abundance. There is a modern myth called ‘The law of attraction' which suggests that if you can just hold a state for long enough, then your world will start to reflect that state, so if you hold a state of abundance for long enough and think about what you want, then you will get those things. My experience has been that you also have to act when opportunity arises, and actions create results. Being in the correct state, and priming your mind with supportive thoughts, just helps you to notice opportunities for action (yet how those opportunities arise is a great debate).You will then to have to act in an appropriate and timely manner with as much focus and clarity as possible.

Doing the practices to support your goal achievement process is a path to self mastery, and if you genuinely commit to practice and do the work, then you will have a higher chance of achieving the results that you want in life, as you will be the master of your body and mind, and not the other way around. This transformation requires a path and it requires practice, and if you are not fortunate enough to have grown up around wise role models, then you will need to embark on this path to create the changes that you want.