0: A Beginning

Absolutely everything in this book isn’t true. Neither is it a lie.

This book is a model. It’s just one model for how to live your life perfectly and to start doing that right now.

Models are approximations, simulations and summaries such that we can more easily understand, view or comprehend the complex, or even the invisible.

Models are useful as they allow us to see things that are hidden from view. A good example is the map of the London Underground. The underground system cannot be seen as it’s buried several tens and hundreds of feet underneath the streets of the city. The iconic map that Harry Beck designed back in 1931 is still used today. It shows at a glance a really complex set of routes and interconnections that is even partly or wholly memorable. You can see it in entirety on a wall poster, the Internet or even have a copy that you can carry around in your pocket. It also is language independent and is so successful that the map has been emulated, copied and enhanced by virtually all urban transport systems worldwide.

Something else that is invisible, to our eyes at least, is an atom. At school, we are taught about a model where the atom has a nucleus, rather like our Sun. Around it revolve layers of electrons which are rather like the planets. For those that progressed on to further study, that simplistic model becomes more refined and stylised until it becomes incomprehensible to many and even just a mathematical formula. Even at these more refined levels of sophistication, it’s still common to hear quantum physicists referring back to the more rudimentary model.

What we are setting out to model here is not a tube system or atomic structure. We are attempting to model something rather more complex. In fact, it’s the most complex thing we know of in the material Universe. Us.

To enable us to build this model, we’ve researched a large body of collective knowledge and learnings. We’ve drawn from scripture and arcane texts as well as leading edge research into the workings of the brain and the structure of matter and the Universe. What emerges is not only the complexity of the matter but also a picture of harmony and convergence of thinking and understanding.

We want to show that by looking at ourselves using a different model, we can all live a Perfect Life, Now.

As an example, even the title of this very book has a different meaning just by changing the first word from a noun to a verb. Do it now. Do you want to Perfect Living, Now or do you want to have Perfect Living, Now? As you can see, just by looking at something like these three words from a slightly different perspective, you can change your view.

Incidentally, we hope that by reading this book, and carrying out the exercises at the end of each chapter, you will achieve both the meanings embedded in the title.

So what has to change in our view of ourselves in order to make this shift in perspective? Is it even possible for us to understand ourselves?

Well first it is important to define what living perfectly really means. You’ve heard the phrase “Is the glass half empty or is it half full?” By shifting perspective, it is relatively easy to make someone’s life more perfect. We believe that such a trivial approach though is dodging the issue and certainly doesn’t merit a whole book on the technique.

This is because, as well as perspective, subjectivity comes into play. You might think someone richer than you is living a more perfect life while they might be miserable. A religious adept who has rejected all worldly wealth might be happy and living the perfect life for them but you might think that a life like that would be horrendous.

So what is perfect for one person is hell for another. This means a more generic, and alternative, approach is needed and indeed a whole new definition.

There must be a common denominator.

We define the perfect life as one where you are in control. You are working at cause and not just reacting to events that happen around you. Once you learn how to do this, you can create the conditions in your life to make it perfect for you and, to some extent, those around you.

The secret to achieving this is indeed in controlling your thoughts but at a much deeper level than just seeing the glass half full. What then emerges is a new and exciting understanding of not only our reality but the very nature of what it means to be sentient in our Universe. What is emerging is an understanding of the interplay between our consciousness, matter, energy and even time itself.

The knowledge in this book is not new, it’s actually re-learned wisdoms presented in a modern context to help people perfect their lives in modern society. We fully expect, no we insist, that others after us refine this model and even replace it with something that works better for generations to follow. Part of the aim behind this work is indeed to help create a better society such that there is an abundant world for our children and children’s children so they can build even better models and attain higher insight.

As it’s a model, we also expect you will challenge it and we insist that you don’t treat it as dogma that must be blindly followed. The model actually falls apart if this happens as we will explain.

It is important to stress that this work is agnostic and is designed to complement and augment your current world view, not to challenge or replace it outright. Whether you follow a religious or secular path, or perhaps live a hedonistic or ascetic life, this book will make your path a bit more perfect.

Like all journeys there may be some painful realisations along the way. We’ve designed this book to be as pleasurable as possible and to illuminate the path as best we can.

So who should read this book?

We hope it will have wide appeal to every man, woman and child on the planet.

If you find nothing nice seems to happen to you, we hope you will find solace here. If you are doing OK but are disillusioned, wondering what the point of life is, we will give you new purpose. If you are doing great and want to do even better, you will get new insights and enlightenment here.

If you are poor, you will find a path to abundance here. If you are wealthy, you will find new ways to invest your time and focus your energies.

If you are a teacher, you will find ways of passing these learning on. If you are in public service, you will find new ways to honour and serve the populace.

If you are a healer, perhaps a nurse or a doctor or an alternative practitioner, you will find a new paradigm for treating your clients.

If you are already on a path to enlightenment or in the service of a church, you will find this book compounds and reinforces what you already know. You may find it useful to share with people you are working with to help them on their path,

If you a quantum physicist or astronomer, you will find new insights to help in your research. The answers to Life, the Universe and Everything do not just lie in The Large Hadron Collider, or in the Hubble Telescope. These marvellous analysis tools are just extension of our minds, created by our superb intelligence, for us to better understand the Universe and our role in it. Many of the answers, and even deeper insights, are available to each and every one of us without the need for any technology.

Without leaving the comfort of your armchair, or sun lounger, we will actually be dealing with some big concepts like time, the nature of reality and how we are able to ask big questions like “Why are we here?” and why we are able to be asking this question in the first place. That said there are no mathematics or equations here and nothing that is hard to fathom.

How should you read this book?

You can just read the body text and then come back and do the exercises later. You can also just read Mary’s allegorical story by itself, in one go or as you go along. Mary, by the way, is an ordinary woman in a job she doesn’t like, still trying to find her life partner and a reason for living. We’ll introduce each chapter with a snapshot of Mary’s days.

You can read the book forwards, as you would normally, and then re-read the book again but taking chapters in reverse order. We highly recommend this for deeper enlightenment.

You can pick it up later and just refine your understanding of a particular section when you come across something less than perfect in your life.

It’s also a book of three parts, written by three minds. We just ask you bear that in mind for now and be open to learn the reason why as you read on.

Exercise 0: Noticing things

Let’s start of with one really simple exercise. Like all our exercises, the reasons why you are doing this will be revealed later. For this reason, don’t be fooled by their simplicity or think that they are not important. The beauty of living perfectly, now, is that the answers are ludicrously simple and have been under our noses all our lives.

For this initial exercise, each single day we would like you to make a list of a few things that you noticed that came unexpectedly. It could be something you noticed on the way to work. It could be a nice surprise or something that you started to understand that had previously baffled you.

To make this happen more easily, you should also try and do something different to break your normal routine.

This doesn’t mean take a bungee jump or walking backwards to work.

Try something like this:

- If you take a bus or train to work, try a different route, get off a stop earlier or get it a little later or earlier.

- If you open your email as soon as you get to work, try doing something else you’ve been meaning to finish first.

- If you give your child a sandwich for a packed lunch, give them something else.

- During the day, if a person comes to mind you haven’t thought of, or heard from, for ages then call them or email them.

- When you get in from work, or home from the school run, do you switch on the television? If so, try listening to some music, read a book instead or make that call to the person who came to mind that day.

Doing and noticing something different is the first, simple step to living the perfect life.

In fact, all the exercises in this book are really simple. We hope you enjoy your next 21 steps as much as we have enjoyed experiencing them ourselves and writing about them.

This particular exercise is one that we recommend you do, at least, for the duration of reading the book if not for the rest of your perfect life.

1: Being Conscious

Being Conscious is a pretty amazing achievement.

~~~~

Mary was having yet another a bad day. Every time she tried to get things done, either the ‘phone rang or one of her ‘tele-sellers’ popped their heads over her divider to ask her a question. How she longed for that office with a door she could close that had been promised to her for over two years. She was very conscious that her list of things to do was just getting longer and longer. Her days just consisted of her helping others reduce their lists. She was determined that she would not break her cardinal rule and take her work home to plough through it in the evening.

No tonight especially was Mary-time, as were all Wednesdays. This was her strategy to get from one weekend to another, being completely anti-social half way through the week. This was probably the only bit of advice she had actually taken from her mother who, after her dad had left, made sure Mary was always doing some activity herself, or other, on her Wednesdays. Mary had been to no end of classes from ballet to basket weaving and she almost took pleasure in proving to herself she had no talent for any of them.

So on Wednesdays, a hot bath, gin and tonic with a dash of Angostura bitters was on the agenda. She’d follow this by finishing off the rest of the casserole she had made earlier in the week with a glass, or three, of that Pinot Noir she had bought. ‘Three bottles for the price of two’, she thought, ‘how long could they keep that promotion going?’

She really could do with some magic back in her life and was just musing on whether the bloke at her favourite vintner fancied her when Brian shouted, “Mary, I’ve got another person who is reporting us to the Telephone Preference Service.” Two seconds later his bright shiny head appeared around the corner with that annoying smile that she knew meant he thought that this was now her problem to solve, not his.

She knew she needed to get around to doing something about that database.

~~~~

You may believe that our ability to write these words, and yours to read and comprehend them, is feat made possible a Creator or the chance result of a Big Bang 13 billion years ago. Either way, it’s still pretty amazing and hats off to who, or what, ever worked out how to make matter and energy actually aware of itself.

We do not propose this book to be an argument for either point of view. Neither is to be a scientific explanation for how consciousness works, or seems to. Many others have researched, debated and written sagely on these subjects. We have added some recommended reading at the end of this book that we found enlightening, if you want to learn more.

What this book is about is how you can interact with and understand your consciousness such that you can live a more perfect life.

Although we have this amazing ability, ironically, many people are not conscious of their consciousness. The exercise at the end of this chapter will show you what we mean by this.

Even fewer are aware that by controlling, understanding and listening to your thoughts, you can start to really take control of your life and all that happens around you.

For example, trivially, you could just take an optimistic as opposed to pessimistic outlook and, hey presto, everything becomes more perfect. Look at a half empty glass and see it as half full and the job is done. There would be no need for us to write any more and you can go off and start leading a more optimistic and perfect life.

Many books have been written about the power of positive thinking and we do advocate this as a basis, of everyone’s world view, for a marvellous starting point.

What we postulate here is that by looking at our consciousness in a novel light, the ‘half full glass’ can even refill itself to its brim, seemingly on its own accord. We know this sounds counter-intuitive and, for clarity, we stress that this is a metaphorical glass. That’s for now, at least.

Just by being more aware of your thoughts and thought processes, events and happenings that occur around you, we believe you can generate a more perfect existence.

As we said in the introduction, perfection is both relative and subjective. When we are asleep, we are not aware of how imperfect or perfect our lives are. It is our conscious perception that dictates our level of perfection. Our perceived level of perfection often varies during the course of a single day. One telephone call, brown envelope or email can change your day from being OK’ish to hell.

How many times have we spent the whole day worrying about a tax demand that arrived on the doorstep or a critical remark someone made about us?

What else could we be doing with our thoughts instead of thinking about past events we can’t change or worrying about future uncertainties?

You will see, and experience if you do the exercises, that it is our very own consciousness that in absolute control of how perfectly we live.

To explain, it’s worth explaining how it evolves in our own lifetime.

When a child is born, from 9 months in the womb to the first few years, it is fair to say that awareness is limited. A child can feel temperature, pain, hunger, discomfort and even separation say from its mother. Most of these responses are actually what is dubbed subconscious and somewhat autonomic.

The true sense of self and individuality takes about seven years to form.

We have all played “Boo!” with babies and seen toddlers think they can hide themselves by covering their eyes. You simply vanish from their sight in an instant.

Understanding and managing this simple process whereby the conscious mind can actually control what appears in your Universe.

Here’s a quick example of how you can make things disappear now.

Do you have any worries at the moment? If so, write your top five worries down. Now write another list of actions you can take to address these worries and set aside times in your diary for when you will deal with them. Now rename the worries list as a list of concerns, that you are dealing with and have a strategy for. Forget about your worries, simply take action when you said you would and, hey presto, you’ve made your worries go away.

By interacting with peers in nursery and school, children learn that they are not the centre of their own Universe and they learn strategies such as giving in order to receive and form real friendships that can last a life time. A sense of responsibility for actions emerges as does a sense of right and wrong and guilt.

These are all components and building blocks of behaviour necessary to live in a lawful and co-operative society. Sometimes such early programming can lead to psychological problems later in life. More often though, they are the seeds of limiting beliefs that can hinder people from fulfilling their true potential.

From the point a child knows their name, the sense of self, the ego and a conscious awareness starts to build. Protection of the self and the immediate support group of friends and family become paramount. Later in life this might get replaced by behaviour such as allegiance to a football club or the company you work for. The opposing team is often demonised and some lovely people in competitive companies could even be dubbed enemies. Religious and nationalist animosity and stereotypes even lead to war based on xenophobia. This sense of “us” and “them” all comes from the sense of self, our innate survival instinct and ultimately from the phenomenon called our consciousness.

So at the same time we become aware of ourselves, we also start to the see world as separate to us. We react to events outside our control, seek people to blame and often find all manner of excuses not to succeed. This is known as being At Effect. Our parents and teachers, and their parents and teachers before them, can imprint conditioning upon us that will subsequently be passed down future generations.

None of us need to live like this. To reverse this behaviour, simply take responsibility for your own actions and, most importantly, be aware of your own consciousness. You will start to become the Cause of what happens in your life and not be At Effect.

One of the reasons why most people don’t work like this is because the conscious mind is so good at what it does. By giving us a sense of awareness, we can move around in our three dimensional world without bumping into things. We are blessed with a free will with which make decisions based on past experience and an imagination to foresee several possible futures.

In actual fact the only time you have absolute control over is what is happening in your brain right now. As you start reading this sentence, that time has gone and been replaced with what you are thinking right now. And so forth.

By becoming precious of the direction and quality of your thoughts, you master the direction and quality of your life.

It’s just so perfectly simple.

Exercise 1: listening to your own thoughts

This technique is very simple, takes no more than five minutes, and is useful if you are learning to meditate as a way of quietening “the babble”.

Find a place or time in the day when you are unlikely to be disturbed by the ‘phone ringing, your child asking for something or the dog barking.

Sit in a straight-backed chair with you arms on your knees, or the arms of the chair. Have your legs uncrossed and feet flat on the floor. It doesn’t matter if you have your shoes on or off.

Then close your eyes gently and start to breath steadily and deeply. As you breathe in, you can thank the Universe for giving you life giving air. As you breathe out, think of the Universe for loaning the air to you and give it back with thanks.

After about 10 or so of these breaths, start to think and listen to thoughts that are in your head. Ask them these questions:

· Where did they come from?

· Why are they in your head right now?

· Where are they going?

· What are they made of?

Then start to notice that the original thought gets replaced by another thought and another. Ask these new thoughts some different questions.

• Would they mind if you paused them for a while, they can come back later?

· Is it possible to pause a thought and even reverse it?

· What colour and shape are they?

Become aware of the new thoughts that come in and start to ask another question.

• Would your thoughts mind awfully if they were to stop for a while?

When you are ready, open your eyes slowly, come back into your room and notice the following:

• How you feel?
• Are there any new sights, smells or noises in the room?
• What do you now plan to do?
• Was this process enjoyable and something you might consider repeating?

If not, don’t worry, the later exercises will uncover more and more about how you feel and think.

For many people, thinking about your thoughts is something that you would never think is worth even thinking about.

Now there’s a thought.

2: Gaining Awareness

Gaining self awareness in the first place, and how it happened, is a hotly debated and researched topic in the scientific community.

~~~~

Mary was aware that the bath water was getting cold. She had been thinking about doing a makeover on the bathroom and how grotty the grouting on the tiles had got. Apart from anything else too, she felt like she deserved a second gin and tonic.

“What can I do to get my life back under control?” she thought as she was drying her hair.

Another list beckoned. Mary was hot on lists and kept notebooks full of them. Many of them were fanciful like “Top Ten Film Stars I would like to sleep with” or self-depreciating like “Seven things I would change about my body.”

Her good friend Jane had pointed out to her that having Bridget Jones as a role model and heroine probably wasn’t a good idea.

Tonight a new plan formulated in her brain.

“What if I could just change three things tomorrow?” she thought, “Now where shall I start?”

1. To tell Brian not to interrupt so much.
2. To get the team together to flesh out the database cleansing project.
3. To do something so next weekend wouldn’t be like the last, and the one before that.

Mary needed to get out more.

~~~~

If you completed the exercise in the last chapter, you have taken the first step on an amazing journey of self-discovery.

These thoughts that are running around in your head, are they you? If they aren’t you, who are they?

Is there someone else watching them flit by your mind? If so, who is this other person and where are they?

You may also be asking. Where are these thoughts coming from and where they are going?

What happens to them once they are gone?

Maybe, if they are on the way somewhere, is it a silly question to ask, what are they travelling on?

Working out how our own minds work while we are actually “inside them” is a bit like changing the wheel of a car while driving down the fast lane of a motorway. You sort of need to stop to get off and have a look from the outside back in.

Experience indicates that something as complex as the phenomenon as our own consciousness must need a fairly complex explanation. This is true if indeed you are looking for a physiological or neurological explanation of how our brain and nervous system generates the illusion of consciousness. For it is that, really complicated.

Fortunately, our task is much simpler as we are merely outlining a model that embraces our consciousness that will help lead us to a more perfect way of being.

In this model, all that is necessary to do is to be aware of these thoughts. There is no need here for any understanding of what happens in the synaptic gap between our billions of neurons. We just need to appreciate the end result of what we think, experience and feel.

Like the child playing hide and seek in the last chapter, let’s imagine that the world outside of our heads is completely synthesised. It is a projection of our very own experience and perception. Our minds are like the light bulb of a projector and our senses the ‘film’ through which we project what we think of as reality. This type of model was graphically depicted in the series of Matrix films. We’ll use it here to show what results from using it.

In this model, then the way we project the world may not be how others project it. For example, how do we know each others’ projection of green is the same? People who suffer from colour-blindness, or Labradors, it almost certainly isn’t. Here differences in our genetic makeup change perception.

We can also change projections and perceptions using alcohol or prescription or non-prescribed drugs. These could have the effect of making the world ‘rose-tinted’, or causing psychotic behaviour. A simple painkiller, for example, changes our perception of the world by reducing the firing of nerve receptors. Imagine if you could do this by thought alone?

We can, of course, change what we see, listen to and hear by concentration or by day dreaming. The external world is perhaps not as fixed as it appears.

Police officers investigating crimes experience differing witness testimony from people who had been clearly at the same event.

Our world is synthesised, filtered and extrapolated by our brain and nervous systems interpretation of our sensory organs.

It takes a huge leap of imagination to see the world as a multi-dimensional slideshow projected from inside our brain via our senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.

With your eyes, focus on different parts of the world, bringing them in and out of existence. Then close you eyes and you can bring up your awareness of sounds around you. Listen to the ticking of the clock or the fan on your computer.

The world completely changes depending on how you perceive it. Another way to experience the world to project differences world ‘out there’ so that your perception of it changes. In some respects, it doesn’t matter which is right or wrong.

What’s significant here is that you can flip from one world view to another in an instant. You are the controller of the world you perceive not the other way around.

It takes time and practice though to project the world that you want. We’ll deal with this in more detail during the course of this book but for now initiate an alternative thinking process to help with the journey.

We all have things that happen daily which are less than ideal and could have gone better. Imagine if these events weren’t ‘out there’ to get you but to teach you or for you to learn from.

What learning can you get from stubbing your toe on the corner of the bed post? Why do your emails consistently seem to wind your boss up?

Perhaps there is another route from your bed to the bathroom to avoid the offending post or a way to communicate with your boss that could end up with a different outcome. By projecting an alternative view, you could even end up with a design for a stub-free bed frame or end up writing a book on stress-free communication styles. Neither of these will come from repeating the same old pattern of thought.

By learning from mistakes and hardship, new strategies emerge for us that help us do better and better. This is something we used to when we were at school. We completed exercises in a relatively safe environment to help us cope with life. As adults, many people think that their learning stops. How many retirees vegetate as opposed to finding new leases of life and challenges?

The more you start to embrace issues, the deeper will go your level of understanding. More and more insights come your way. While writing each of theses chapters and exercises, we were all given challenges at the time which served to deepen our own understanding. It was like we were being tested so that we could better explain what seemed to be going on to the reader.

By projecting a model of the world where it is a vibrant place to experience, thrive and learn as opposed a place where everything is out to get you, you can start to see perfection even in adversity.

Lucky people aren’t so much optimistic in outook as opposed to being pessimistic; they are simply observant not unobservant.

Modelling the world as being a projection takes on a new resonance when you start to see other people as projections themselves. Each person who you admire or chastise has attributes that are inside you. This has to be otherwise their behaviour wouldn’t resonate with you.

So, if someone annoys you, there are some simple ways you can deal with them.

The first approach is to stop thinking about them and they will go away. Admittedly, this is a bit tough if they are close to you so an alternative strategy is needed.

For a loved one, a family member or a work colleague, try to work out exactly what they do that angers or annoys you. Write it down.

Now, is it at all possible that you exhibit that behaviour yourself occassionally, either to them or others. If so, write that down too – when and how you do it. The next step is to stop and change the behaviour in yourself and just observe what happens. Try to be calm and patient as sometimes it takes a while for the ripple to take effect. If it doesn’t work, repeat the exercise and be sure you have eliminated all of that behaviour in everything you do.

The key to living the perfect life is to achieve perfection inside yourself. There is no formula for this as each and every one of us is different and unique. The path to inner perfection can be followed with others though.

Exercise 2: changing perception – converting worries to concerns

Have you ever lain awake in the small hours, not able to get back to sleep? The same list of worries goes around and around in your head? Well you can try and do Exercise 2 in these situations but, if that doesn’t work, here’s another exercise that might.

You may well get up and do this or, better still, complete it in your waking hours or just before you retire if sleeplessness is an issue you are tackling.

Write down your top 5, or 10, things that are worrying you. Rate them out of 10 where 10 is really worrying and 1 is troubling but you wish it would go away.

Label the list something like “My Top X Worries” and date it.

Label a separate sheet “My Top X Concerns”. Make three columns and transcribe your worries in order of most worrying first into the first column. Leave a fair bit of space between them and you may like to use several sheets or even a sheet per worry.

Now in the second column, against each worry, start to list what you can do about these worries to make them less troublesome. In the third column, set a date and time when you intend to do something about them.

Now shift your focus to the second column.

What would happen if week by week, or day by day, you actually took the actions in this second column. For one, you would be focussed on the action to address the worry as opposed to the worry itself. To some, this would be worrying in itself but this doesn’t matter as it proves you can shift focus by looking at a problem in another way. For others, you may find that the worry either disappears as a result of your action or, seemingly, all by itself.

What you have done here is changed perceived worries around and projected them out as concerns. The following exercises will show you how to have these concerns dealt with.

Wouldn’t such a worry-free existence be more perfect?

3: Dancing with Reality

Directly what appears in front of our eyes, the sounds in range of our ears, what touches our skin, the tastes in our mouth and smells picked up by our nose is what we think of as our reality.

Everything else is in our imagination.

~~~~

Mary’s day was about to get very real. It was annual review time again. That morning, and for the last few days, the conversation she wanted to have with her boss had been going around and around in her head. This was her third review and she was determined that she would get her points across this time.

She, of course, had made a list. There were only four things on it.

1. She wanted an office with a door she could close.
2. She wanted four of her telesales team off calls and on to the database cleansing project.
3. She wanted a decent pay rise.
4. She wanted to know what the company planned for her future.

What she didn’t know was that Tony, her boss, also had a list with four things on it. None of them matched hers and he already knew that he didn’t have the bravery to say any of them.

Tony was having a much worse time of it than Mary as he was having loads of these imagined conversations as he had 22 staff to review. Like Tony’s wife, Mary wasn’t remotely aware that he looked forward to Mary’s more than any of the others.

~~~~

Try this as a simple taster of perfection.

Imagine you were seeing the sun setting on the horizon while sitting on a beach in the Caribbean. You can hear the sounds of cicadas as they started starting their night time courtship ritual. The Tequila Sunrise really hits the spot and was just sweet enough, with not too much tequila. The air was still warm enough to be in just a T-shirt and your anti-mosquito spray was warding off any invaders. The chef had started the barbeque and the smells had just wafted past your nose.

Does this sound perfect? Does reading this make you feel better because you felt you were there or miserable because you are not?

Either way you have just done something we all do all the time. We continually alternate between being in a reality and jumping to a remembered past or imaging future reality. Films, television, radio and music can be used to evoke and create these imagined, alternate worlds.

We can be brought crashing down again when we emerge from a Harry Potter film only to realise we don’t have that magic wand to fix the overdraft or incessant inclement weather.

So reality is, in a way, what we make of it.

So, as well as the five most recognised senses, there seems to be a new actor on the stage. Have you been aware of this internal dialogue from an Inner Voice? Is this Inner Voice even real in the same sense as the world we percieve with our senses?

If so or if not, who is reading these words to you right now? Where do they live and where did they come from? Do they die when we die?

We’ve all talked to ourselves at some point. Have you ever found yourself saying things like?

“Phew, that was lucky”, perhaps when you just ducked in time or avoided a car prang

Or:

“Right, let’s do it then”, when you’ve made a decision.

People have even been locked up for doing this more often than is deemed healthy.

Who exactly is talking to whom here and what possible role could they have in helping you achieve a more perfect life?

The clue comes from appreciation of another aspect of our minds and its contribution in creating the reality we experience. This is our unconscious mind, also often known as the subconscious.

Keeping ourselves alive would be impossible if we had to think of matters such as regulating our blood sugar level or even remembering to breathe or beat our hearts. In fact, there are about 2 million bits of information hitting our brain every single second. This is whether we are asleep or awake.

Our conscious minds, perhaps this inner voice, take a snapshot of these two million bits of information and filter them down to just a 100, or so, bits each second. These can be just the things we are focussing on like the words on this page or something that grabs our attention. An example could be a dog barking or a phone ringing. Alternatively, it could be a background noise you have been ignoring like a computer fan stopping.

When that phone rings by the way, did you ever have the sense that it was about to or just know who was on the other end before you picked it up?

It is this trickle of information from our unconscious mind, narrated on by our Inner Voice that creates our illusion of reality.

It is an illusion too as the whole filtration process from unconscious to conscious mind takes about half a second. This means that the world outside you is about half a second ahead of how you perceive it. It’s a bit like being in a permanent transatlantic ‘phone conversation with the world. What is weird is that everyone is like this but no-one perceives the delay.

Much in the same way our brains invert the image on the back of our retina, they also remove this time anomaly. Sort of.

As our reality hasn’t actually happened yet in our conscious minds, you can even change it before it does.

Many people go through their whole lives completely unaware of their unconscious minds, and its role. As one its functions is to dictate how we are feeling, it therefore the single thing that stands between us and perfection.

By studying animal behaviour and the evolution of intelligence, it can be established that an unconscious mind was necessary as something upon which consciousness and self-awareness have developed. It was natural that in gaining consciousness, scant heed was paid to the role of the unconscious mind in its formation. We can’t imagine an evolution where consciousness existed first and then all the other forms of awareness emerged.

This is because the unconscious mind much more though than a computer program that keeps us alive. It stores experiences, strategies and patterns for what has worked and not worked in the past. Once it learns how to do something, it takes over so you can get on and do something else. It also acts as a conduit to our memories and to our imagination.

Simply put it is needed as part of our development from which our consciousness can be synthesised.

If you learned to drive, you may have come away from your first lesson exhausted and thinking you would never master this. The same is true of riding a bike or learning to swim. Have you ever made it all the way home in the car and not remembered anything of the journey? Who was driving as you made that call on the mobile? Have you ever been catapulted out of reverie by a driver breaking in front of you too suddenly?

Perhaps that’s when your Inner Voice said, “Phew! That was lucky.”

The unconscious mind is even allowing us to type these words while we “think” what comes next and for you to comprehend and interpret them while you “read”, without having to think about the meaning or pronunciation of every single word.

It is also a marvellous learner and can be taught new patterns or even come up with them seemingly all by itself. As such, if your life is less than perfect, the unconscious mind holds the keys with which to turn it around. Handily, it’s not difficult to do. No specialist skills or training is needed and you can start to do it straight away.

Exercise 3: Tuning into your Unconscious Mind

This procedure is very simple and helps makes the most of your sleeping time.

Step 1: Reflect on your day

Before retiring at night and tucking yourself in, on a blank sheet, write down two or three things that went well on that day.

They could be small surprises, unexpected phone calls or just things you noticed for the first time. Of course, they could be amazing bits of news, improvements in relationships or good tidings for you, your friends or family.

Tip: Note that what happens when you do this exercise is that the latter starts to happen with increasing regularity.

Step 2: Getting in bed to go to sleep

Forget about what you have just written down.

Bring your attention down into your body.

Allow your awareness and attention to be directed to the whole of your body. Feel the mattress underneath you and the covers on top.

Scan and notice the whole of your body. Start anywhere you like but do not forget the tips of your toes and your fingers.

Move and stretch your toes. Move and stretch your fingers.

Remember that this is the physical vehicle in which you live and move.

Whatever it looks like and no matter what condition it is in, it’s the only body you have and it deserves your attention.

If there is any part of your body that is in pain or feeling tense, then touch yourself in that area. Let the warmth of your hand comfort your own body.

Pause for a moment and give your body a moment or two of gratitude and affection.

Remind yourself: “this is my true environment”.

Allow yourself to fall sleep.

Step 3: On waking up

Stay comfortably in bed.

Scan and notice the whole of your body. Start anywhere you like but do not forget the tips of your toes and your fingers.

Move and stretch your toes. Move and stretch your fingers.

Lie there, relaxed and patient, and softly allow yourself to be aware of the sounds, smells and sights around you.

Step 4: Reflect on the day ahead

Think of the things you would like to happen on the day ahead.

These are things that would really make your day and make you smile. Again, they can be small kindnesses shown to you or that you would show to others.

Or big things that would make you feel life was worth living.

Now get up slowly and, before you forget them, on a new sheet of paper, note them down and try not to think of them as the day progresses.

After time, you should see the things that you write down in the morning re-appearing on the notes you write down before going to bed. They might not happen on that day.

Tip: When your dreams come true, put a tick or a star next to them in your note book and say “Thank You” to whoever you feel it’s appropriate to whether it be your God, your Guardian Angel, your spouse, child or pet – or just your bed.

4: Harnessing Ego

Having an ego is a natural consequence of being conscious and self-aware. It is what is known as an epiphenomenon.

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Tony wasn’t fully aware of it but he was really enjoying having his ego massaged. Unbeknown to him, Mary had discarded her list and in the bath last night, with the obligatory G&T, had come up with a whole new strategy for her annual review. Her normal trouser suit was replaced by a figure hugging, just above knee length skirt. She had applied modest makeup which she normally saved for Friday and Saturday night.

Mary had decided to tell Tony not what she thought of him and the company but what she thought he would like to hear. The result exceeded her dreams.. Tony told her that she would have her own office within five days as HR were making cut backs. In addition, she was been given a £5,000 discretionary bonus on top of quite a nice raise in her basic salary.

She felt great but her elation would have been severely dampened if she knew what Tony was really thinking. He was imagining a new life with Mary and wondering how to mimimise the fallout from leaving his wife and kids.

~~~~

While it’s sometimes good to refrain from using big or obscure words, the English language is so versatile and diverse that, sometimes, we have to use one or two from its marvellous repository. An epiphenomenon being one of them.

You probably have heard of the word phenomenon. It describes something that is observed but perhaps not yet fully understood or explained. An example might well be psychic phenomenon or the paranormal.

Well an epiphenomenon is something that sits on top of a phenomenon. It refers to something unexplained yet observed which sits on top of something else observed and not yet fully explained.

In this case, the initial as yet fully unexplained phenomenon is our self awareness. This emerges around our seventh birthday. At the same time, the ego also forms. You may notice that your baby, your dog or your goldfish doesn’t seem to have one. Seemingly neither does a tree or a house plant. In actual fact they all do and being mindful of them can have amazing results.

Actually all life has some sort of ego as well as some form of consciousness.

Even a glass of water has feelings. The work of Masaru Emoto, a creative and visionary Japanese researcher shows this graphically. When he beams good or bad thoughts at water, he has shown its structure changes. Even putting a label on the glass with a good or bad word or playing music to it seems to affect its molecular structure.

The ego is pretty weird as we’ve all heard about people with an ‘ego the size of the planet’ but, despite there undoubted size, no-one’s ever actually seen one. They are just felt.

What’s more. even though we all have one and they have a really useful function, nobody speaks about ego in a favourable manner. Egotistical people can even seem to have a demonic reputation.

Our ego comes into the fore in two main ways.

Firstly, and quite appropriately, when we have done something we are proud of we like to share our sense of achievement with others.

Secondly, our ego can be damaged when an injustice or affront is made to us, or our family, friends, football team, company, religion or country.

It is actually the ego which is responsible for many a war.

As we are composed of 90% water, perhaps it is the water in every cell of our bodies that is either offended or praised. We just pick up an overall sense. “I can feel it in my water,” is an old saying.

Our ego is actually our protector. It has a sense of what is right and good. At the same time, it is the arbiter of the unjust and unfair. In some ways it acts as a window to how we are feeling and how the world is treating us.

Herein lies its main benefit and curse. If our ego has been insulted or called into question, it can have a major impact on your day and cause you to think of nothing else but righting the wrong that has been done to you. Thoughts of revenge surface as well as hours spent working out a strategy to put the world to rights.

Conversely, if our day started with an email or phone call from someone who said how marvellous you are, you can spend the rest of the day either bragging about it or being equally benevolent to those around you. Of course, this state is extremely fragile and can be upset in an instant.

Clearly, getting your ego under control would be as advantageous in the same way that breaking a wild horse so it can be ridden allows you to move ahead in a new way.

Exercise 4: Keeping an Ego log

Reining in the ego though is not easy as it is such an integral part of our make up. The benefits of doing so are so immense that is worth putting in the effort.

To begin to put it in harness, you have to get to know it. Once tamed it is such a useful ally.

Using the chart below, copies of which can be downloaded from our web site, try and keep a record of your ego state throughout the day.

You only need to record 5 states at 5 points for 5 days. Try and include a weekend if you can.

State 1: Elated – on Cloud Nine

State 2: Fairly OK with yourself

State 3: Neutral

State 4: Mildly at dis-ease

State 5: Really hacked off

· Points in the day:

· When you get up

· Mid-morning

· Just after lunch

· Just before your evening meal

· Just before you retire

At the end of the 5 days, look at the charts for correlations. Are there certain times a day when you are better than others? Are there times in the week where your ego takes a hit?

Let’s imagine our water content harbours our ego. This is why it feels so all pervasive. By replacing tarnished water, we can top ourselves up.

If you weren’t already, try the same exercise again with a daily intake of 2 litres of water. Imagine the water is replacing your aqueous ego with fresh material which is at the very least neutral.

5: Victims of Effect

Very often you can go through a whole day and not achieve anything they set out to do. This is known as being at effect.

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Since Mary had had her review and her pay rise, the job had seemed to get worse. She was so taken aback by the generous bonus and salary increase that she thought she would have to fight for that she had not pushed for the extra staff she needed to cleanse the database.

What made it worse was her best friend Beryl had split up with yet another one of her long line of unsuitable boyfriends. Mary had really warned her that this last one was real trouble. Both of them were really shocked that the demise of this relationship was a visit by the police force. His considerable charms apparently weren’t just lavished on Beryl but also three concurrent marriages and a massive pension and time share scam several hundred early retirees had allegedly fallen for.

The result from Mary’s perspective was Beryl had moved in and her evenings of solitude had evaporated. Mary’s suspicions had been based on the fact this chap moved in with Beryl so rapidly. Beryl had a perfectly good flat but couldn’t now bear to be in it.

~~~~~

Being at effect is a pretty thankless and unrewarding place to be. You seem to be a servant to all that is going on around you.

That said many people wallow in this state as it is a relatively safe place to be too. If you are merely responding to events that go on around you, you can hardly be blamed if something goes wrong.

When you don’t achieve something you set out to do or ‘the system’ fails, it’s simple not your fault. The blame either never gets pinned on you or just slides off your ‘Teflon shoulders’.

Politicians love a society working at effect as there will always be someone else to blame. Where they are also masters is to, often falsely, latch on to successes they had a vague hand in. The media, who should know better, fuel this culture. After any catastrophe or scandal is reported, the next target is the person or persons who were at fault. This obsession with what went wrong seems not to be driven so much by a desire to make things go right but by a ghoulish voyeurism to see people who are worse off than you. This can make your plight seem not so bad,

Take any national newspaper and a marker pen and put a ring around any positive news. You will be surprised how little there is.

When you get a whole society, or just a business, working at effect, huge effect loops are created where blame is passed on perhaps never landing anywhere particular. The result is a malaise often offset by consumerism. Ultimately once all the latest gadgets are purchased to fill the house and car you wanted, dissatisfaction sets in.

How do you tell if you are at effect – what are the tell tale signs ?

So if being at effect and keeping your head below the parapet is such a safe place to be, what incentive is there to change the situation?

Well quite simply none. If you want a quiet life, being at effect can be quite a useful strategy. Especially if you have been though some emotional or physical turmoil, having a quiet period of your life can even be advisable.

Staying at effect though will prevent you from reaching any sort of perfection. To break through to working at cause requires very little effort. You just need to listen to your inner voice.

The dialogue you are using internally is a tell tale sign of how you are operating.

Do you ever find yourself saying?

“It’s not my problem.”

or “Why does this always seem to happen to me?”

If so, try asking yourself something like this.

“If can work out a way to solve this problem, wouldn’t it be brilliant?”

or “If this is actually happening to me for a reason, what could that reason be and what am I supposed to learn from it.”

Many people go through life unaware of this internal dialogue and its role in our consciousness and make up. It is something we can all significantly benefit from when we tune into it.

First of all, who is actually doing the talking? If someone is doing the talking, who is doing the listening? Are there two people inside our heads or are we all in some insane way talking to ourselves?

There are many ways to envisage its function but, in the context of living more perfectly, it is handy to see it as an objective commentator and as our best friend and guide.

To tune into it, just close your eyes and actually think about what it is that you are thinking. As soon as you do that, the initial thought gets replaced by another, and another and another. It is actually quite a good meditation technique to do this and then replace the initial ‘babble’ by a mantra.

Imagine it is there to point us in the right direction and it is acting as a kind of sixth sense or gut feeling. As such, what it is telling you can be used to get you out of Effect.

Exercise 6: Getting out of effect

Each day before you start out, write down 10 things you would like to achieve by the end of the day. At the end of each day, tick off the ones that you’ve tackled.
For the ones you didn’t achieve, write down all the reasons that you feel you didn’t achieve them.
Repeat this exercise for a week and, at the end of the week, look for reasons that come up repeatedly – these are the things in your life that are keeping you at effect.