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Sunday, April 22, 2007
Your Soul Purpose - Chris Walker
Arguably, love is the most important, sort after, misplaced and trouble making experience of our lives. As if the soul of human beings is directed at love as a pre programmed target, and all else is simply distraction.
To love your work, your past, your future. Love might just be the soul purpose of life. Love is not holistic. To love something, anything it seems, might be enough. To love self or a Guru, might satiate the hunger. To love a dog or cat, friend or business, to love a sport or environment – maybe the love, real love of something is enough for the soul to feel purpose and therefore rest in the journey.
For me, the love of anything other than a person has rarely lasted. I love what I do, but deep down, there’s a part of me wanting to achieve something as a result of what I do, therefore it is not real love. I love going to Nepal and climbing up those magnificent Himalayan slopes, but, I feel that this is an addition to my life, therefore it’s not real love.
I have friends I love, deeply, they are wonderful. But their lives are not entwined with mine, therefore there is not the depth of provocation that causes me to feel vulnerable, as it seems my soul requires in order to feel satisfied, this love, I think, is not the Real love.
To further challenge my virtue in following the path of Real Love, soul purpose, I found the need to understand a sense of a God in my life. As a spiritual human being, I acknowledge the presence of a creator, the cause of creation. I struggle to put a name or face to this origin of everything. The whole universe comes from a beginning one can never know. From that first thought, like in our own lives, everything began. Who thought it? This is my idea of a creator.
That thought is real love. The original thought. And so, for me, God is love. Love was the first thought, and all that follows it, the creation and destruction of stars and moons and heavens and earths, came from, and exists in, that first thought. Then, maybe my soul purpose is to tune to that first thought? Because it was the first thought, then it exists in everything, everywhere. Maybe this, is the definition of the souls purpose, to see what already is.
When I fall in love with a person, I fall because it is new. It is like a new territory, unexplored universes, and I wish to find the love that is hidden in it. But we are distracted. Children, jobs, houses, health, money, careers, friends, family and more. We are distracted from love because these things are treated as separate from it.
People try to parent their children. Achieve in their jobs, own their houses, improve their health, increase their money, succeed in their careers, help their friends, and collude with their family. Such ambitions it seems are normal, but for me, such drivers, lack the love my soul aspires to.
Love is the synthesis of all emotion
To love a child is beyond prescription, but to avoid an emotion with that child is to avoid love. Parents who are afraid to be strong, or soft, of challenge or support. Cannot love, can only placate a child, manipulate and control by non confrontation.
To love a job is to explore challenge, to face the reward and hardship with equal enthusiasm. This seems, for many people, to be the one area of life they are unafraid of, primarily because they are free to be aggressive in this one area of life, tough on themselves to live out their hypnotized expectation of life.
To love a home is a substitute for an understanding and trust of anything bigger than self. The ego thrives in a home that is loved. Self obsession reaches its pinnacle if the home one lives in is a proud and designed environment. Here an individual feels they, and their universe are one. Deluded in an avoidance of their real fear.
Money is essential, the love of money is vital. Obsession and possession with holding, building and creating wealth is the fastest and strongest path to the avoidance of love. For the broken heart, the fearful mind, the belittled spirit, an obsession with collection and protection of money is the antidote to lovelessness.
Small is good. A healthy humility is a rich asset in this grand universe. We are nothing, and it is wise to know it. But is a healthy mind, small is wonderful, because small means we are a part of something huge, and that hugeness is the magnificence of that first thought, the whole of creation, the magnificence of a love beyond. But for most people their smallness is not humility, it is shame and irrelevance. Then they cling to careers that kill them, families that need them. This cave is a shelter from the vulnerability a belittled spirit feels. When a person looses their place in a loving universe, they create a substitute, and this substitute is attachment in which pride, need and safety are at the core. This is not love.
Like a child in a kindergarten, we play with toys. We play innocently thinking that our games are real and like a child in kindergarten, we eventually become bored with the games, we need bigger toys, faster swings, more challenging puzzles. We automatically grow out of our shoes, and we automatically grow out of our obsessions. Soul seeks love and cannot remain inside a body that substitutes.
Take human hardship. Take the purpose of soul. Understand the keys of Soul love – real love and our innate desire for it. Like a tree searches for the sun, we too have a life giving quest. That quest is not satiated in anything earthly, it is only guided to grow through them.
Love is not another possession. One finds it for someone, something and one grows and adapts and becomes used to it. The profound becomes the mundane. Therefore in the purpose of the soul, a relationship holds no key other than an initial witnessing of a new possibility and the removal of a distraction. The quest – the quest of the soul, will not be satiated within a job, a career, a family, a relationship, a bank account or anything we can build or own.
True happiness, true love comes from the journey, the ongoing quest to witness the beauty of creation. To see beauty in family, money, relationship, career, home is to deconstruct it and in doing so, reveal that first thought of creation within it. That deconstruction is not a moral or ethical one, those are human laws. The deconstruction and the purpose of the soul is to witness the universal laws in all, everything, and therefore evolve, through real life, to real love. Everyday, every hour, another step on the path to the purpose of the soul. It simply wants to go home, from whence it came, home to the thought that created it, through love.
To the body – mind there is pain and pleasure, and mine and yours, life and death. But to the soul, no such boundaries exist. It only knows its purpose, though life after life, body after body, all it knows, is that it is away, uncomfortable – it wants to go home, to its creator, home to love.
Now, you may understand a little more, why relationships feel so good at first, but might not feel so good at last. When your soul feels love, that falling in love it feels home. But this is not home. This is an earthly reminder of where home really is. And before it reaches that home a million billion such reminders will be required. They, like moments of sunlight nourish, guide and direct its growth, going home, from whence it came. To that first thought, to love.
Live with Spirit
Chris Walker
To love your work, your past, your future. Love might just be the soul purpose of life. Love is not holistic. To love something, anything it seems, might be enough. To love self or a Guru, might satiate the hunger. To love a dog or cat, friend or business, to love a sport or environment – maybe the love, real love of something is enough for the soul to feel purpose and therefore rest in the journey.
For me, the love of anything other than a person has rarely lasted. I love what I do, but deep down, there’s a part of me wanting to achieve something as a result of what I do, therefore it is not real love. I love going to Nepal and climbing up those magnificent Himalayan slopes, but, I feel that this is an addition to my life, therefore it’s not real love.
I have friends I love, deeply, they are wonderful. But their lives are not entwined with mine, therefore there is not the depth of provocation that causes me to feel vulnerable, as it seems my soul requires in order to feel satisfied, this love, I think, is not the Real love.
To further challenge my virtue in following the path of Real Love, soul purpose, I found the need to understand a sense of a God in my life. As a spiritual human being, I acknowledge the presence of a creator, the cause of creation. I struggle to put a name or face to this origin of everything. The whole universe comes from a beginning one can never know. From that first thought, like in our own lives, everything began. Who thought it? This is my idea of a creator.
That thought is real love. The original thought. And so, for me, God is love. Love was the first thought, and all that follows it, the creation and destruction of stars and moons and heavens and earths, came from, and exists in, that first thought. Then, maybe my soul purpose is to tune to that first thought? Because it was the first thought, then it exists in everything, everywhere. Maybe this, is the definition of the souls purpose, to see what already is.
When I fall in love with a person, I fall because it is new. It is like a new territory, unexplored universes, and I wish to find the love that is hidden in it. But we are distracted. Children, jobs, houses, health, money, careers, friends, family and more. We are distracted from love because these things are treated as separate from it.
People try to parent their children. Achieve in their jobs, own their houses, improve their health, increase their money, succeed in their careers, help their friends, and collude with their family. Such ambitions it seems are normal, but for me, such drivers, lack the love my soul aspires to.
Love is the synthesis of all emotion
To love a child is beyond prescription, but to avoid an emotion with that child is to avoid love. Parents who are afraid to be strong, or soft, of challenge or support. Cannot love, can only placate a child, manipulate and control by non confrontation.
To love a job is to explore challenge, to face the reward and hardship with equal enthusiasm. This seems, for many people, to be the one area of life they are unafraid of, primarily because they are free to be aggressive in this one area of life, tough on themselves to live out their hypnotized expectation of life.
To love a home is a substitute for an understanding and trust of anything bigger than self. The ego thrives in a home that is loved. Self obsession reaches its pinnacle if the home one lives in is a proud and designed environment. Here an individual feels they, and their universe are one. Deluded in an avoidance of their real fear.
Money is essential, the love of money is vital. Obsession and possession with holding, building and creating wealth is the fastest and strongest path to the avoidance of love. For the broken heart, the fearful mind, the belittled spirit, an obsession with collection and protection of money is the antidote to lovelessness.
Small is good. A healthy humility is a rich asset in this grand universe. We are nothing, and it is wise to know it. But is a healthy mind, small is wonderful, because small means we are a part of something huge, and that hugeness is the magnificence of that first thought, the whole of creation, the magnificence of a love beyond. But for most people their smallness is not humility, it is shame and irrelevance. Then they cling to careers that kill them, families that need them. This cave is a shelter from the vulnerability a belittled spirit feels. When a person looses their place in a loving universe, they create a substitute, and this substitute is attachment in which pride, need and safety are at the core. This is not love.
Like a child in a kindergarten, we play with toys. We play innocently thinking that our games are real and like a child in kindergarten, we eventually become bored with the games, we need bigger toys, faster swings, more challenging puzzles. We automatically grow out of our shoes, and we automatically grow out of our obsessions. Soul seeks love and cannot remain inside a body that substitutes.
Take human hardship. Take the purpose of soul. Understand the keys of Soul love – real love and our innate desire for it. Like a tree searches for the sun, we too have a life giving quest. That quest is not satiated in anything earthly, it is only guided to grow through them.
Love is not another possession. One finds it for someone, something and one grows and adapts and becomes used to it. The profound becomes the mundane. Therefore in the purpose of the soul, a relationship holds no key other than an initial witnessing of a new possibility and the removal of a distraction. The quest – the quest of the soul, will not be satiated within a job, a career, a family, a relationship, a bank account or anything we can build or own.
True happiness, true love comes from the journey, the ongoing quest to witness the beauty of creation. To see beauty in family, money, relationship, career, home is to deconstruct it and in doing so, reveal that first thought of creation within it. That deconstruction is not a moral or ethical one, those are human laws. The deconstruction and the purpose of the soul is to witness the universal laws in all, everything, and therefore evolve, through real life, to real love. Everyday, every hour, another step on the path to the purpose of the soul. It simply wants to go home, from whence it came, home to the thought that created it, through love.
To the body – mind there is pain and pleasure, and mine and yours, life and death. But to the soul, no such boundaries exist. It only knows its purpose, though life after life, body after body, all it knows, is that it is away, uncomfortable – it wants to go home, to its creator, home to love.
Now, you may understand a little more, why relationships feel so good at first, but might not feel so good at last. When your soul feels love, that falling in love it feels home. But this is not home. This is an earthly reminder of where home really is. And before it reaches that home a million billion such reminders will be required. They, like moments of sunlight nourish, guide and direct its growth, going home, from whence it came. To that first thought, to love.
Live with Spirit
Chris Walker
Friday, April 6, 2007
Corporate Cruelty - Has Management Gone Mad?
Corporate Cruelty
The best engineer might make the worst manager. The best manager might make the worst engineer. The best sales person may be the last person on earth you’d hire for the sales managers job. The best doctor doesn’t run the hospital. Management is a job. A set of skills vastly different to any other. To be good at it is a gift, but not everyone is born to manage, all day every day.
Wrong people in wrong jobs causes domestic breakdowns, social violence, office politics and personal health breakdown. Business’s that demand high levels of management skill from their best technical or creative people are demanding blood out of a stone and should be held accountable for it.
The best sales person might ask to become a sales manager, because for them, this is their only path to leadership. They might look at the company hierarchy and see that the only way forward is either up or out. So, like most, they choose up. But management is different to sales and no matter how many training programs or MBA’s a person gets, there are certain people who are just not suited to the task.
Personnel consultants have no idea. Don’t rely on a staffing agency to be able to determine the sustainable managerial qualities of a person. They are as vulnerable to the smoke and mirrors game of endorsements, testimonials and references as you.
The key here is to understand the differences between your expectations of how a job will be done, the individuals expectations of how they would do the job, the needs of the job and the leadership required to support a team. Four factors and even then, the story is not finished. What if, the technical skill, the experience and the capacity of the individual you are considering for a job are perfect? Is that it?
If you trained an elephant to jump through a hoop, would you expect the elephant to do it all day, and last the distance. Cruelty to animals is prevented by law. Cruelty to humans is endorsed by business. Wrong people in wrong jobs, is as cruel to the individual as any other breach of human rights. We are just not sophisticated enough to see it yet.
Self management means knowing your constitution. Built for speed? Build to lead? Built to create? Built to Engineer. Built to manage. Management is, without doubt a career, and doing it well demands a series of capacities that are particular to a certain group of people.
To get around this we must divide management up into its component parts.
Leadership
Organization
Communication
Planning
Visioning
Motivating
Accounting
Coaching
All people can do all of these elements. All people cannot do all of these elements for long periods of time. So, some management jobs are 99% planning and 1% the rest. Or some management jobs are 99% leadership, communication and motivation and 1% the rest.
So, instead of dividing jobs into generic categories like “Sales Manager” you are far better off to divide jobs into percentages of the above categories. Then, you know the sustainable strength you need from a person.
A high coaching percentage will eliminate fire and air people. A high visioning percentage will eliminate earth people. The key here is to understand that everyone can do every task. The only real question is sustainability. For how long can a person do a certain element of the management role?
Cruelty to animals is banned. Cruelty to humans is not. Putting people in the wrong job, affects their health, family, relationship, happiness and ultimately their spiritual core. Both employee and employer need to be conscious of the pitfalls of “I can do anything: mindsets.
Live with Spirit
Chris
The best engineer might make the worst manager. The best manager might make the worst engineer. The best sales person may be the last person on earth you’d hire for the sales managers job. The best doctor doesn’t run the hospital. Management is a job. A set of skills vastly different to any other. To be good at it is a gift, but not everyone is born to manage, all day every day.
Wrong people in wrong jobs causes domestic breakdowns, social violence, office politics and personal health breakdown. Business’s that demand high levels of management skill from their best technical or creative people are demanding blood out of a stone and should be held accountable for it.
The best sales person might ask to become a sales manager, because for them, this is their only path to leadership. They might look at the company hierarchy and see that the only way forward is either up or out. So, like most, they choose up. But management is different to sales and no matter how many training programs or MBA’s a person gets, there are certain people who are just not suited to the task.
Personnel consultants have no idea. Don’t rely on a staffing agency to be able to determine the sustainable managerial qualities of a person. They are as vulnerable to the smoke and mirrors game of endorsements, testimonials and references as you.
The key here is to understand the differences between your expectations of how a job will be done, the individuals expectations of how they would do the job, the needs of the job and the leadership required to support a team. Four factors and even then, the story is not finished. What if, the technical skill, the experience and the capacity of the individual you are considering for a job are perfect? Is that it?
If you trained an elephant to jump through a hoop, would you expect the elephant to do it all day, and last the distance. Cruelty to animals is prevented by law. Cruelty to humans is endorsed by business. Wrong people in wrong jobs, is as cruel to the individual as any other breach of human rights. We are just not sophisticated enough to see it yet.
Self management means knowing your constitution. Built for speed? Build to lead? Built to create? Built to Engineer. Built to manage. Management is, without doubt a career, and doing it well demands a series of capacities that are particular to a certain group of people.
To get around this we must divide management up into its component parts.
Leadership
Organization
Communication
Planning
Visioning
Motivating
Accounting
Coaching
All people can do all of these elements. All people cannot do all of these elements for long periods of time. So, some management jobs are 99% planning and 1% the rest. Or some management jobs are 99% leadership, communication and motivation and 1% the rest.
So, instead of dividing jobs into generic categories like “Sales Manager” you are far better off to divide jobs into percentages of the above categories. Then, you know the sustainable strength you need from a person.
A high coaching percentage will eliminate fire and air people. A high visioning percentage will eliminate earth people. The key here is to understand that everyone can do every task. The only real question is sustainability. For how long can a person do a certain element of the management role?
Cruelty to animals is banned. Cruelty to humans is not. Putting people in the wrong job, affects their health, family, relationship, happiness and ultimately their spiritual core. Both employee and employer need to be conscious of the pitfalls of “I can do anything: mindsets.
Live with Spirit
Chris
A personal Story - Finding Answers
Finding Answers – A personal Story
Way back, before electric cars, solar bicycles, microwaves, computers, colour televisions, mobile phones, rocket launchers, plastic explosives, terrorists, ipods, fm radio, McDonalds and speed dating were invented, I was born.
I decided, at an early age, that I didn’t like the world the way it was. Mum died when I was still getting all of my nourishment from her. I was promptly handed out for adoption, taken back, moved to a country town, and from this exciting beginning, I learned to be somewhat sceptical when, a few years later the preacher would pat me on the seat of my pants and say, “God is watching over you”
Since then, I’ve vacillated between playing God, judging the people of the world for all their misdemeanours, and feeling like a God, when the sun shone and all looked just so fantastic. In those times when I searched for a meaning outside of myself, I was often temporarily impressed. A seminar, a meditation class, a new yoga back bend, falling in love, a book launch, a happy client, the birth of my children. But, alas, reality crept back in, to remind me that my idea of a God or faith that could protect me from the ravages of sadness, disappointment, failure or loss, was an illusion.
As time went on, and as an educated environmental engineer, my interest in ecology took me deep into the study of humanity, sustainability and the lifestyle of the average person. I was overwhelmed with doom when I read, Paul Erlich in the 60’s and discovered we were eating ourselves to death. I was even more shocked when I worked and travelled in Indonesia, Nepal and India to see people living for a year, on what I spent on a daily beer at the pub.
I searched for alternatives to deal with my own wish to feel good, and usurp the guilt I started to feel about the inequalities of life. I discovered that the human desire to escape pain drives most of our consumption, religion and spiritual self development. I discovered that my ambition, in seeking answers to life’s deeper questions was not to achieve some advanced level of consciousness, but to avoid or at least rationalize, pain and struggle.
For me, there were a couple of things that helped. The first was the perspective I achieved by working and travelling in the poorest places in Asia I got a perspective on my own, and other people’s problems that just made 99% of all my worries incomprehendably stupid. How could I feel sorry for myself, when I saw dead babies in the arms of helpless mothers, whose naked breast had dried to a wafer thin sack and finally could not even sustain the life of a baby. All this, as I drove in my limousine to the factory of some Asian billionaire right next door.
Another thing that helped me reconcile my issues with pain and struggle was 15 years as a personal consultant. In that time I met some of the wealthiest, fastest, most powerful people, movie starts, rock stars, farmers, tycoons, sports stars. I found Catholics, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Native Americans, Jews – I found seminar teachers on happiness, inner peace, inspiration and spirituality, and none of these people in their real life, no matter how wealthy or devout, how luxurious or pious, was immune from the shit life dishes up and their reaction to it. It is still to this day, an important affirmation for me, that I am no better or worse than anyone else, even if, from time to time it feels like it.
Along the way I gained knowledge and this also helped. I learned ways to rationalize situations. I could sustain my personal comfort even when I was looking out of my office window watching the World Trade Centre collapse not more than a mile away. I could re think it, and experience no pain or emotion. This fuelled my already lopsided masculine side, think don’t feel. Understanding things is such a great way to escape feeling. But did I really want to witness life, or experience it. I had to make a choice, and this was an important turning point. If I was to feel life, I had to be willing to feel both the pleasure and the pain. A stark contradiction to the ambition that had driven most of my “spiritual and self development” quest to that time.
I discovered, hidden in those feelings, a new intimacy with life. And, the biggest surprise, a deep connection to my own intuition. Being a feeling, intuitions are definitely associated with emotions. To celebrate this intuition, I realized, that both positive and negative emotion lay in its path, this was not exactly what I expected to discover.
There were thousands of experiences, each and everyone potent. The years working with indigenous people’s of Canada on reservations, frustrations running corporate retreats for people, stuck in the wrong job, feeding the wrong marriage, paying the wrong mortgage. Their life was more spiritually impoverished than any Asian ghetto I had found. But the greatest lesson of all came from the Himalayas of Nepal.
Purely by accident, if there are such things, I found myself, carrying some emotional pain up to the top of a high mountain trek in Nepal. I reached the summit on that trek, and sat there scanning the panorama few people could dream of. Blessed in every sense of the word, I sat there, miserable, broken hearted. I was the same Chris on top of this mountain as I was sitting on the dunny, back in Sydney. Places don’t change us, places remind us. They remind us that we are the real cause.
Perspective became my catch cry. I knew that everyone gets bad luck, no matter how hard they pray, I knew that everyone has something to be thankful for, no matter how miserable. I knew that every self help program on earth ended up teaching a lie. I searched for the keys, what are the rules of the game? What are the REAL expectations of life? What are natures laws before humans add their hopes, fears, frustrations and reactions to them?
Answers came slowly, but they came. 90% of the solution comes when we ask the right question. Slowly the answers unravelled. I discovered that I was not the first person to ask this question. Thousands of people had searched before me, and many had found the answers hidden in the ancient mysteries. They too had also found that the average person was looking for pain relief, and therefore looking for the illusion not truth. Buddha even advised his teachers. “teach them the illusion until they are ready for the truth”
Perspective.
One night, in my dream, I was sitting on the moon. Looking back at this tennis ball sized thing spinning around so fast. There was earth and I, sitting with my legs crossed was watching it like I would watch a movie. Births, deaths, disasters, victories, happiness and sadness. And yet, in spite of all this mayhem, I was smiling. The whole mess, the whole drama was actually quite magnificent. The pieces of the puzzle finally came together. The real spiritual perspective comes from separation. The human one comes from attachment. When we are in it, we have no perspective, like in a relationship, a business or a speeding car we are a part of that circumstance, and therefore, we are in a human perspective. This is real life, experience, emotion, frustration, romance, success.
The opposite to human perspective is spiritual. The moon. Detached. From that perspective there is an order in the chaos. A witnessing that shows us, that our pain, and our happiness are just two sides of a coin, joined by an umbilical chord, inseparable. That suffering comes from attachment, wanting to sustain a pleasure. Not willing to experience its other half, and therefore stuck, fighting the cycles that are natures laws.
After that dream, I learned to let go of those things that I held precious. I learned the difference between loving something or someone from the moon, and attachment to them, from the earth. Suddenly, I had a way of feeling, experiencing, falling and rising with the tides of life, and yet, holding a perspective which meant, I was not like a piece of paper blown in the wind. In that dream I found home. And maybe from that day, it has been hard to find an earthy one.
What I do know now, is that love means perspective. It means sitting on the mountain top in Nepal, seeing the beauty that are the laws of nature, separating human hopes, fears and false expectations from the universal ones. Love means hold and release, hold and release. And today, sitting here in Sydney, I am once again challenged to apply what I know is the truth about love.
Live with Spirit
Chris Walker
Way back, before electric cars, solar bicycles, microwaves, computers, colour televisions, mobile phones, rocket launchers, plastic explosives, terrorists, ipods, fm radio, McDonalds and speed dating were invented, I was born.
I decided, at an early age, that I didn’t like the world the way it was. Mum died when I was still getting all of my nourishment from her. I was promptly handed out for adoption, taken back, moved to a country town, and from this exciting beginning, I learned to be somewhat sceptical when, a few years later the preacher would pat me on the seat of my pants and say, “God is watching over you”
Since then, I’ve vacillated between playing God, judging the people of the world for all their misdemeanours, and feeling like a God, when the sun shone and all looked just so fantastic. In those times when I searched for a meaning outside of myself, I was often temporarily impressed. A seminar, a meditation class, a new yoga back bend, falling in love, a book launch, a happy client, the birth of my children. But, alas, reality crept back in, to remind me that my idea of a God or faith that could protect me from the ravages of sadness, disappointment, failure or loss, was an illusion.
As time went on, and as an educated environmental engineer, my interest in ecology took me deep into the study of humanity, sustainability and the lifestyle of the average person. I was overwhelmed with doom when I read, Paul Erlich in the 60’s and discovered we were eating ourselves to death. I was even more shocked when I worked and travelled in Indonesia, Nepal and India to see people living for a year, on what I spent on a daily beer at the pub.
I searched for alternatives to deal with my own wish to feel good, and usurp the guilt I started to feel about the inequalities of life. I discovered that the human desire to escape pain drives most of our consumption, religion and spiritual self development. I discovered that my ambition, in seeking answers to life’s deeper questions was not to achieve some advanced level of consciousness, but to avoid or at least rationalize, pain and struggle.
For me, there were a couple of things that helped. The first was the perspective I achieved by working and travelling in the poorest places in Asia I got a perspective on my own, and other people’s problems that just made 99% of all my worries incomprehendably stupid. How could I feel sorry for myself, when I saw dead babies in the arms of helpless mothers, whose naked breast had dried to a wafer thin sack and finally could not even sustain the life of a baby. All this, as I drove in my limousine to the factory of some Asian billionaire right next door.
Another thing that helped me reconcile my issues with pain and struggle was 15 years as a personal consultant. In that time I met some of the wealthiest, fastest, most powerful people, movie starts, rock stars, farmers, tycoons, sports stars. I found Catholics, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Native Americans, Jews – I found seminar teachers on happiness, inner peace, inspiration and spirituality, and none of these people in their real life, no matter how wealthy or devout, how luxurious or pious, was immune from the shit life dishes up and their reaction to it. It is still to this day, an important affirmation for me, that I am no better or worse than anyone else, even if, from time to time it feels like it.
Along the way I gained knowledge and this also helped. I learned ways to rationalize situations. I could sustain my personal comfort even when I was looking out of my office window watching the World Trade Centre collapse not more than a mile away. I could re think it, and experience no pain or emotion. This fuelled my already lopsided masculine side, think don’t feel. Understanding things is such a great way to escape feeling. But did I really want to witness life, or experience it. I had to make a choice, and this was an important turning point. If I was to feel life, I had to be willing to feel both the pleasure and the pain. A stark contradiction to the ambition that had driven most of my “spiritual and self development” quest to that time.
I discovered, hidden in those feelings, a new intimacy with life. And, the biggest surprise, a deep connection to my own intuition. Being a feeling, intuitions are definitely associated with emotions. To celebrate this intuition, I realized, that both positive and negative emotion lay in its path, this was not exactly what I expected to discover.
There were thousands of experiences, each and everyone potent. The years working with indigenous people’s of Canada on reservations, frustrations running corporate retreats for people, stuck in the wrong job, feeding the wrong marriage, paying the wrong mortgage. Their life was more spiritually impoverished than any Asian ghetto I had found. But the greatest lesson of all came from the Himalayas of Nepal.
Purely by accident, if there are such things, I found myself, carrying some emotional pain up to the top of a high mountain trek in Nepal. I reached the summit on that trek, and sat there scanning the panorama few people could dream of. Blessed in every sense of the word, I sat there, miserable, broken hearted. I was the same Chris on top of this mountain as I was sitting on the dunny, back in Sydney. Places don’t change us, places remind us. They remind us that we are the real cause.
Perspective became my catch cry. I knew that everyone gets bad luck, no matter how hard they pray, I knew that everyone has something to be thankful for, no matter how miserable. I knew that every self help program on earth ended up teaching a lie. I searched for the keys, what are the rules of the game? What are the REAL expectations of life? What are natures laws before humans add their hopes, fears, frustrations and reactions to them?
Answers came slowly, but they came. 90% of the solution comes when we ask the right question. Slowly the answers unravelled. I discovered that I was not the first person to ask this question. Thousands of people had searched before me, and many had found the answers hidden in the ancient mysteries. They too had also found that the average person was looking for pain relief, and therefore looking for the illusion not truth. Buddha even advised his teachers. “teach them the illusion until they are ready for the truth”
Perspective.
One night, in my dream, I was sitting on the moon. Looking back at this tennis ball sized thing spinning around so fast. There was earth and I, sitting with my legs crossed was watching it like I would watch a movie. Births, deaths, disasters, victories, happiness and sadness. And yet, in spite of all this mayhem, I was smiling. The whole mess, the whole drama was actually quite magnificent. The pieces of the puzzle finally came together. The real spiritual perspective comes from separation. The human one comes from attachment. When we are in it, we have no perspective, like in a relationship, a business or a speeding car we are a part of that circumstance, and therefore, we are in a human perspective. This is real life, experience, emotion, frustration, romance, success.
The opposite to human perspective is spiritual. The moon. Detached. From that perspective there is an order in the chaos. A witnessing that shows us, that our pain, and our happiness are just two sides of a coin, joined by an umbilical chord, inseparable. That suffering comes from attachment, wanting to sustain a pleasure. Not willing to experience its other half, and therefore stuck, fighting the cycles that are natures laws.
After that dream, I learned to let go of those things that I held precious. I learned the difference between loving something or someone from the moon, and attachment to them, from the earth. Suddenly, I had a way of feeling, experiencing, falling and rising with the tides of life, and yet, holding a perspective which meant, I was not like a piece of paper blown in the wind. In that dream I found home. And maybe from that day, it has been hard to find an earthy one.
What I do know now, is that love means perspective. It means sitting on the mountain top in Nepal, seeing the beauty that are the laws of nature, separating human hopes, fears and false expectations from the universal ones. Love means hold and release, hold and release. And today, sitting here in Sydney, I am once again challenged to apply what I know is the truth about love.
Live with Spirit
Chris Walker
Monday, April 2, 2007
Face to Face with reality. The real answers are always simple. Better life, more profit, personal happiness, lots of love at home.
All of nature can be divided into five elements. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether. So, there's a competition to see who can destroy a drop of water. Everyone thinks they can get rid of it. They boil it, bash it, freeze it, pray for it, drink it, throw it. But sadly for them, the $10,000,000 prize remains in my hands. Because you can't destroy things in this whole wide universe. Nothing can be destroyed, only changed from one form to another.
Now, religion and psychology will tell you that one form is better than another. They'll argue and blow each other up. The only thing they achieve is stupidity and wasted life. Apply this to everyday life and you'll see people suffering. The cause of suffering is the attachment to one form or another. So, a father looses custody of his kids in a divorce, and he says "the only form a father can be of use to his kids is in the earth form, by doing things for them" so he's going to suffer hell on earth right? But his value as a father is possible in so many forms. If he could shift his mind and see that his Etheric prayers, his Air can shift to what they want, his fire can help them be inspired, his water can just love them, then his earth mindset can simply shift - like that drop of water, and serve his children in so many different ways.
The same goes for a person at work. Say you ask a person to do a job as part of a team. Most people have this stupid idea that teamwork means collusion. But teamwork means collision. Diversity really means that if you were to be honest in a team with mixed talent, everybody will disagree on how to do something, even if they agree on what to do. In other words, great team work comes from common vision (like make a profit) and then the process is a mix of support and challenge. Get real leaders, you can't hope for peace in a great team. The best team argues on how, but not why or what they are doing.
When we say "know yourself" in self help, we don't mean get stuck thinking that your stories of the past are real. They are just constructs of your imagination. What we are suggesting is that you change your perspectives so that you can see the difference between your unhealthy stories (conditioning) and the truth - which is really different. Why do you want to know this? The answer is so that you can adapt to situations and keep a loving heart, a commitment to your dreams, a humbleness to something or someone bigger than you and happiness.
So knowing yourself peels down to knowing - not what you think about things - no that's your BS, knowing yourself means knowing whether you were born a race horse, an elephant, a tiger, a bear or some other form of human. It's called your constitution. Your constitution is based on how much of each element - earth, water, fire, air, ether you have in you. Some people have allot of earth, so they are good at earthy things. And so on.
The self help gurus cheat you. Because they distort this. They say "here's what you could be, and here's how you get there" but those people are just ripping you off. How could you take a race horse and turn it into a rabbit? How could you take a lion and turn it into a giraffe, Bloody stupid stuff this sort of self help.
Lets take another example. A woman goes to the office. She's light boned, shortish, and her job is to do the accounts. She's in charge of money. She's good at this job but she's always stressed - so she goes to the yoga class sponsored by her well meaning boss. The yoga teacher tries to help and suggests that she meditate and practice the yoga of the class called "Ashtanga Yoga" this is all good. But what if this job is not suited to this person. What if, a light boned shorter person doing accounts is like a pelican taking a shit in a tigers lair.
I agree, we can do anything we put our mind to. And that's the problem. Mind. Mind can do anything and that's the problem, we have developed the skill of working in our head and leaving our heart and body and intuition at home. What sort of life is that? An Air person can do accounts, make no mistake, but they have to do it different to what the "accounting profession" would call "the right way" - this lady, can do accounts, as long as she has 5 other responsibilities as well.
The key, that all the self help books leave out is the word, sustainable. Sustainable, means doing it for a long time. Sustainable behavior in a relationship, sustainable behavior at work, sustainable happiness means more than a can of coke, or a chocolate bar. It really means, BE IN YOUR ELEMENT. Know yourself, know your element, know what you are born for and get out of your head. It mean create the work style that fits your constitution, the environment that fits.
Now, be careful. If you listen to the Guru's they'll say "oh you are always hyped up, you better calm down" or "you are too busy you better slow down" or "you are too material you better meditate" but these people are full of cruelty. They have a model of a "good you" and a "bad you" (which of course matches your illusions too) and they will say balance yourself.
You don't want to balance yourself. No - rubbish, you want to balance your mind so that it can get out of the way of you doing what you love. Really, we need to say - Fire people must always change - that's why they are bad managers. Earth people express their love through their material collections, their logic, Water people express themselves through care and nurturing, and Etheric people are always looking at you and others thinking about what is possible, visionaries,
Yes, before you scream blue murder, all people can do all those. But ask a fire person to nurture someone who is sick for 12 months, or give compassion everyday and nothing else. Fire people can do water things, but not for very long, and not very often. Be in your element means to know what you are born for. If you are ether, you can work for a watery company that provides social work, but your job had better be visioning, imagining, idea generating. If it's hands on baby washing, you are going to collapse, and end up going to another Deepak conference to find yourself. Really, you never lost it, you just thought you were someone you were not.
Be in your element brings you back into your body/mind, lets you do anything, naturally, your way.
Try it. Do you know your element? Go to
http://www.chriswalker.com.au and download the free Ebook, Be in your Element under the books, personal development link. It has a questionnaire that defines your element. This is a great start. Maybe you’d like to add comments to the Blog now, and then again after reading the book.
By the way, this BE IN YOUR ELEMENT work is a great corporate workshop. Helps build teams, create a greater use of talent, build diversity, get better decisions and reduces stress. That’s fun!
Let Nature be your Guide
Chris Walker
All of nature can be divided into five elements. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether. So, there's a competition to see who can destroy a drop of water. Everyone thinks they can get rid of it. They boil it, bash it, freeze it, pray for it, drink it, throw it. But sadly for them, the $10,000,000 prize remains in my hands. Because you can't destroy things in this whole wide universe. Nothing can be destroyed, only changed from one form to another.
Now, religion and psychology will tell you that one form is better than another. They'll argue and blow each other up. The only thing they achieve is stupidity and wasted life. Apply this to everyday life and you'll see people suffering. The cause of suffering is the attachment to one form or another. So, a father looses custody of his kids in a divorce, and he says "the only form a father can be of use to his kids is in the earth form, by doing things for them" so he's going to suffer hell on earth right? But his value as a father is possible in so many forms. If he could shift his mind and see that his Etheric prayers, his Air can shift to what they want, his fire can help them be inspired, his water can just love them, then his earth mindset can simply shift - like that drop of water, and serve his children in so many different ways.
The same goes for a person at work. Say you ask a person to do a job as part of a team. Most people have this stupid idea that teamwork means collusion. But teamwork means collision. Diversity really means that if you were to be honest in a team with mixed talent, everybody will disagree on how to do something, even if they agree on what to do. In other words, great team work comes from common vision (like make a profit) and then the process is a mix of support and challenge. Get real leaders, you can't hope for peace in a great team. The best team argues on how, but not why or what they are doing.
When we say "know yourself" in self help, we don't mean get stuck thinking that your stories of the past are real. They are just constructs of your imagination. What we are suggesting is that you change your perspectives so that you can see the difference between your unhealthy stories (conditioning) and the truth - which is really different. Why do you want to know this? The answer is so that you can adapt to situations and keep a loving heart, a commitment to your dreams, a humbleness to something or someone bigger than you and happiness.
So knowing yourself peels down to knowing - not what you think about things - no that's your BS, knowing yourself means knowing whether you were born a race horse, an elephant, a tiger, a bear or some other form of human. It's called your constitution. Your constitution is based on how much of each element - earth, water, fire, air, ether you have in you. Some people have allot of earth, so they are good at earthy things. And so on.
The self help gurus cheat you. Because they distort this. They say "here's what you could be, and here's how you get there" but those people are just ripping you off. How could you take a race horse and turn it into a rabbit? How could you take a lion and turn it into a giraffe, Bloody stupid stuff this sort of self help.
Lets take another example. A woman goes to the office. She's light boned, shortish, and her job is to do the accounts. She's in charge of money. She's good at this job but she's always stressed - so she goes to the yoga class sponsored by her well meaning boss. The yoga teacher tries to help and suggests that she meditate and practice the yoga of the class called "Ashtanga Yoga" this is all good. But what if this job is not suited to this person. What if, a light boned shorter person doing accounts is like a pelican taking a shit in a tigers lair.
I agree, we can do anything we put our mind to. And that's the problem. Mind. Mind can do anything and that's the problem, we have developed the skill of working in our head and leaving our heart and body and intuition at home. What sort of life is that? An Air person can do accounts, make no mistake, but they have to do it different to what the "accounting profession" would call "the right way" - this lady, can do accounts, as long as she has 5 other responsibilities as well.
The key, that all the self help books leave out is the word, sustainable. Sustainable, means doing it for a long time. Sustainable behavior in a relationship, sustainable behavior at work, sustainable happiness means more than a can of coke, or a chocolate bar. It really means, BE IN YOUR ELEMENT. Know yourself, know your element, know what you are born for and get out of your head. It mean create the work style that fits your constitution, the environment that fits.
Now, be careful. If you listen to the Guru's they'll say "oh you are always hyped up, you better calm down" or "you are too busy you better slow down" or "you are too material you better meditate" but these people are full of cruelty. They have a model of a "good you" and a "bad you" (which of course matches your illusions too) and they will say balance yourself.
You don't want to balance yourself. No - rubbish, you want to balance your mind so that it can get out of the way of you doing what you love. Really, we need to say - Fire people must always change - that's why they are bad managers. Earth people express their love through their material collections, their logic, Water people express themselves through care and nurturing, and Etheric people are always looking at you and others thinking about what is possible, visionaries,
Yes, before you scream blue murder, all people can do all those. But ask a fire person to nurture someone who is sick for 12 months, or give compassion everyday and nothing else. Fire people can do water things, but not for very long, and not very often. Be in your element means to know what you are born for. If you are ether, you can work for a watery company that provides social work, but your job had better be visioning, imagining, idea generating. If it's hands on baby washing, you are going to collapse, and end up going to another Deepak conference to find yourself. Really, you never lost it, you just thought you were someone you were not.
Be in your element brings you back into your body/mind, lets you do anything, naturally, your way.
Try it. Do you know your element? Go to
http://www.chriswalker.com.au and download the free Ebook, Be in your Element under the books, personal development link. It has a questionnaire that defines your element. This is a great start. Maybe you’d like to add comments to the Blog now, and then again after reading the book.
By the way, this BE IN YOUR ELEMENT work is a great corporate workshop. Helps build teams, create a greater use of talent, build diversity, get better decisions and reduces stress. That’s fun!
Let Nature be your Guide
Chris Walker
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