Filed under: asperger's syndrome, autism, disability, success, Writing | Tags: AS, asperger's, asperger's syndrome, Giggleswick School, information processing, language, literature, memory, personal development, personal growth, self empowerment
As a former pupil of Giggleswick School I am sent Gig: News, the magazine that keeps us in touch with the school. As well as news, it always contains plenty of reminiscence, which stirs my own memories of a childhood which grows happier the further I am removed from it. The latest edition contained a report of the quincentenary OG Day chapel service, which reminded me of having to learn the hymns for the end of term service which, in tribute to the former pupils who served in two World Wars, took place in blackout conditions. I was amused and pleased when the words of “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” sprang without effort to my mind after forty years. I, personally, loved the end of term service and always found it moving and magical, learning the hymns was a small price to pay. Of course, back then learning by rote was common, I still have fragments of poems learned nearly half a century ago immovably fixed in my memory.
I have cause to be grateful for the religious life of Giggleswick. When, freed from the discipline of Gig, my university career fell apart I sank into one of my periodic, debilitating, depressions. For a period the only thing that held me together were remembered pieces of the “Book of Common Prayers and from “Hymns: Ancient and Modern”, they were all that kept me from surrendering to utter despair. However it was not the beliefs behind the words that sustained me, but rather, the beauty and familiarity of the words themselves; were it not for the ten years of repetition in the school chapel that fixed the words in my mind, I doubt I would be alive today.
Today we tend not to learn pieces of writing by heart as we used, but I am inclined to the opinion that it was useful discipline that extended beyond the chapel or the classroom. I suppose it may be argued that rather than fill our heads with information, we can substitute Google for memory. To some extent it’s a valid point that we don’t need information as long as we know how to access it, it is better to know “how” rather than “what”. Just as we learn how to perform mathematical calculations rather than memorise the answers to all possible sums, it is better to learn systems rather than facts. However there may come a time when one is cut off from the internet or the library, and the only place to which one can turn for answers is one’s own mind; that is when one will be glad to have more on which to draw than systems. There is a value in remembered stories, poems, songs, and dramatic scripts, the building bricks of our culture. The memory is a tool which if not used becomes rusty and when needed may fail. Remembering should be practised and the use of memory taught to our children.
Filed under: success | Tags: emotions, est, information processing, Landmark Education, language, neurolinguistic programming, nlp, personal development, personal growth, self empowerment, Werner Erhard
When I say, “I am going to be powerful” I am declaring that I am NOT powerful.
When I say, “I am someone” I dissociate from myself, I put me at arms length.
When I say, “there are doubts” or “doubts occur” I am declaring that I am not in control of my feelings, I am abdicating my responsibility.
When I say, “I doubt” I am responsible. I am doing the doubting, it is not something happening to me. I choose to doubt and I can choose not to, I am in control.
When I drop the “someone” and instead say simply, “I am” I put myself at the heart of the action, I am where everything happens.
When, instead of, “I am going to be…” I say, “I AM fun, I AM joyful, I AM powerful!” I am declaring this is who I AM. This is who I am BEING regardless of how I feel. This is not who I hope to be this is who I am and the world will adjust itself accordingly, because I say so and, as I learned from Werner, “My word is law in the Universe!”*
* “If you keep saying it the way it really is, eventually your word is law in the universe.” (Werner Erhard)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AS, asd, asperger's syndrome, depression, emotions, est, information processing, self empowerment, spiritual development, spirituality
Today I awoke tired and sore, all my muscles ached, my throat was burning; in short i was displaying all the symptoms I have learned to associate with the onset of, what I call, a CFIDS, event. Yesterday I did not behave entirely sensibly. I came off a night shift and just took a couple of hours nap before heading off to Edinburgh for the afternoon and evening. I had committed to a seminar in the evening, but the afternoon was optional. Neelam had a meeting in the morning so I thought it would be fun to spend the afternoon in Edinburgh, logically not the most sensible of choices, but I was right it was fun. We went to Patisserie Valerie where the food is good, but the cakes and pastries are magnificent. Edinburgh is always a nice place to visit, even if all one does is walk around and look. We walked and we looked, we visited the Peace and Justice Centre.
While we are on the subject there is a weekend of Scrap Trident action in Glasgow this weekend beginning on Saturday with a demonstration in George Square at 10:15 all details from http://www.scraptrident.org
In the evening, increasingly tired we went to my seminar. I was too tired to do it justice. Had I had a proper sleep things might have been very different, but I chose a day out. The point is, as I realised on reflection today, I chose; no one else chose for me, what I got, I chose. The strange thing is, the moment I realised, I chose to feel better and I felt better. Ok, I still felt tired, but I didn’t let it spoil my day, I chose to rest as I needed, I chose to have a bath and, above all, I choose to feel good. It is not wrong to feel tired, or to have a headache, it may be inconvenient, but it is not wrong, at worst it is merely what’s so and that may not have to be true. Look around, wherever there is cause for pain and sorrow and suffering, some suffer, but some do not. Wherever there is cause for joy and celebration, there are always some who, nonetheless, suffer. What matters is not the circumstances in which we live, but how we live in our circumstances. Although I may have got little out of the seminar last night, I was reminded of my est training and that I, and I alone, am responsible for my experience and I alone can transform it. The strangest part of this is that one’s circumstances seem to mirror one’s experiences. If I am happy I can quickly find reasons for my happiness; in truth it is not our circumstances that cause our experience, but, rather, the experiences we choose that give us the world in which we live. We will always be able to find reasons for how we feel, but how we feel will determine the reasons we find and so, if we choose to rejoice in and enjoy our world we will find plenty of cause for joy. Rejoice!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creation, god, hinduism, Karma, One, personal development, personal growth, reincarnation, self empowerment, Shiva, Siva, spiritual development, spirituality
In the beginning there was only the One, nameless and formless – some call it Siva –, no time, no space, content in itself. The One stirred and became two and multiplied and diversified spreading out through what had now become space and time, although as yet there was no one to recognise it as such. Everything that came into being was formed of the One and was informed by a fragment of the consciousness of the One, all creation is contained within the One. The One who remains at the same time – tricky bit coming up – whole and undivided; the One is whole and undivided and content within itself, while at the same time each individual consciousness is not entirely aware of its oneness and experiences separation and a longing to return to wholeness. It may be noted in passing that none of this is inconsistent with Science, although it may not be empirically provenn, it does not contradict science, were it to do so it would obviously be wrong, in my opinion.
Into every new life there enters an individual consciousness, a fragment of the One. When an individual fully realises its oneness it ceases to exist as an individual, but every one that has not accomplished oneness must continue until it does. Thus there comes a point in the expansion of creation where each thing created is not populated by a new fragment but by one that is continuing its – often unrecognised – quest for wholeness. I am personally of the opinion that, when the number of available fragments of the One for incarnation, is equal to the number of bodies available for occupation, the expansion of the Universe ceases and, as individual fragments return to wholeness, begins to contract.
Karma is the law that determines one’s birth. The purpose of each of us is to return to wholeness, but it is not enough to comprehend intellectually that we are one, it is essential to understand it experientially. Many of us undergo experiences that cause us to become separate from each other, further removed from wholeness; after each death we are given the birth that will put us into a place where we can best move on from our previous fragmenting experiences. You may be wondering how this is determined. There are those on the path back to the One who have chosen to remain, temporarily, as individuals while being aware of their oneness. Because wholeness comes from the return of all the fragments to the whole, these enlightened ones assist others to progress along the way. Aha, you may ask, “But what about those individuals who choose to return to the one and don’t remain to help others, how can they be whole while some remain individuals?” The One is always whole and complete while retaining within itself all of creation, it observes creation while remaining aware of its wholeness, creation exists only in its observation, this is why creation is described as the god opening his eyes and dissolution when he closes them.
One’s birth does not determine what will happen during one’s life, but it does put one in a context where some things may happen, for example , it is impossible to climb out of poverty without first being in poverty. Karma is entirely non-judgemental, there is no punishment for sins, but hurting others will inevitably present one with lessons to be learned, it is only possible to injure others when one is unaware that they are actually aspects of oneself; the one who hurts others will return to learn a lesson, but that does not necessarily mean they will in turn be hurt, they may as well be born into a family which teaches them respect or better still one that understands how this all works. Sadly there are those who misunderstand Karma and introduce the idea of punishment into the mix. The fact is that life presents one with challenges and lessons, the good as much as the bad and the only tool we have for successfully learning our lessons is our capacity for awareness. It may seem unjust that a cruel tyrant may become aware of his actions within the scheme of things whereas a kind gentle saint may not – the converse is probably more likely – but enlightenment comes from understanding and the lessons with which we are presented give us each the opportunity to understand.
Ultimately as the fragments – you may want to call them souls – return to the One there is less of the material into which they may incarnate until ultimately there is so little that the truth of Oneness becomes inescapable, even to the most recalcitrant. This is the point at which all is reabsorbed into Siva. his contemplation continues until such time as he gives birth to another universe. This is Karma and reincarnation reduced to its bare essentials, volumes have been written on the subject, but essentially this is the whole of it. Actually navigating one’s way back to wholeness generally requires rather more, but the information, all the information, you need is available…The Truth is out there. (I just couldn’t resist!)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AS, asd, asperger's, asperger's syndrome, autism, Christianity, Eckhardt Tolle, emotions, information processing, Jean Pierre Caussade, neurolinguistic programming, nlp, personal development, personal growth, self empowerment, spiritual development, spirituality, Werner Erhard
“The mind is a complete multi-sensory record of successive moments of ‘Now’” (Werner Erhard).
This quote has remained with me for nearly thirty years, the idea of complete multi sensory records speaks to me although my memories are far from successive. My wife says I have the biggest “Now” of anyone she knows, I also have very little awareness of past and future. Some people wonder what the future holds for them, I wonder what’s for dinner. Dinner time is about as far ahead as my conscious mind routinely looks our cares to look. Most people arrange their memories on a line from past to future, my memories are stored spatially around me and not in a line, sometimes I can be seen literally grasping for memories with my hands. For the point of exercises I can make a timeline, but its positioning is arbitrary – I once put it from left to right in front of me, and accomplished as much in an hour as I would normally in a day, but that’s another story – and I change it as I choose. The work of NLP in looking at how we store our memories and how we can use that to enable someone to heal a traumatic personal history is an amazing gift. Steve Andreas & Connirae Andreas applied Richard Bandler’s insights on submodalities to how we relate to time, and in turn Wyatt Woodsmall introduced it to Tad James and together they developed Timeline Therapy ®. I learned Timeline Therapy ® on my NLP Practitioner course and was amazed at the speed with which we were removing the emotional charge from people’s traumatic memories because the name Timeline Therapy is so closely guarded others who work therapeutically with timelines, many of whom have progressed beyond TLT, tend to use tother terms like, for example, “Time-Based Techniques” for what they do. A popular use of the timeline is to empower the goal setting process. This is done by putting the completed goal onto someone’s timeline as a complete multi-sensory representation of their accomplishment of the goal, with all the attached positive emotions to make it compelling.
One of the reasons that traumatic memories continue to plague us for years is that memories are complete multi sensory records, any sensory stimulus that was present when the first traumatic incident occurred when repeated will bring back the memory, that’s how anchoring works. NLP has techniques for discharging unwanted anchors, but also for installing useful anchors, for example, to put one in a resourceful when facing a challenging task like public speaking.
I remember during the est training, one of many light bulb moments occurred when we got to realise that we only experience in the present, because by the time we start to think about an occurrence it is already in the past. “You aren’t even remembering what happened, you’re remembering a concept of what happened!” This is, of course, the truth that underlies the spiritual injunction to surrender to the present moment found in Eckhardt Tolle and Jean Pierre Caussade amongst others. The essence of spiritual practice is to be aware in the present. Most of our problems exist in our interpretions of past events or in our anticipation of things to come; and it’s all made up! I am fortunate in my now disconnected from past and future. So many people live lives of discontent because their thoughts are elsewhere, they wish they had different jobs, different partners or they were somewhere else, and so they can never fully experience nor enjoy the present. I rarely suffer from anticipation of the future because like many Aspies I tend not to connect actions to consequences. I can logically plot a course of action, but I don’t have emotionally charged dreams and hopes. The only place we can live is here, the only time is now. I cannot imagine a better time or place to be than now.
Filed under: asperger's syndrome, autism, disability, success | Tags: AS, asd, asperger's, asperger's syndrome, autism, Dain Heer, dyslexia, information processing, language, neurolinguistic programming, nlp, personal development, Richaed Bandler, Robert Dilts, self empowerment
I remember when I did the est training nearly thirty years ago we were taught that, “There is no power in answers, the power is in the question!” and it is true. However some questions contain more power than others, the point is to question with purpose and awareness. It occurs to me that the best technologies in the human potential movement derive their power from language and particularly from questions.
I have a favourite question from NLP which is a response to someone’s assertion that they don’t know what to do, “And if you did know, what would you do?” amazingly this nearly always has them respond with a list of possible actions. It is as if questions open a door to the unconscious mind. I have recently developed an interest in Access Consciousness which is described as energy work, but it uses questions coupled with a “Clearing Statement”. Again the questions are used to open up possibilities, one I particularly like is, “How can it get better than this?” as it opens up the possibility of getting more, joy, fun, love or whatever, whereas a statement like, “It doesn’t” get better than this” immediately closes off possibility.
One of the questions in Access Consciousness, “What else is possible?” reminds me very much of Richard Bandler’s question on learning anything new, “What else can I use this for?” a question entirely about opening up possibility. One of the cornerstones of NLP is Modelling excellence, which is eliciting how someone with a particular skill does it so that others can do it to. Modeling is also used used to elicit less than optimum strategies so that they can be changed, replaced or improved. The modelling process relies upon intensive questioning so that every detail of a strategy becomes clear. Once one has a strategy it can be opened to improvement with further questioning like, “What would happen if I did this instead?” or, “What would happen if I skipped this step?” Of course once the strategy has been improved to apparent perfection, there comes the aforementioned question, “What else can I use this for?”.
In NLP there appears to be a fork whenever a new technique is discovered and developed; on the one hand there are those like Bandler who look for new questions and on the other, there are those who take the technique, for example the Spelling Strategy, and build a career on it. I am not saying this is wrong, thousands of people with dyslexia have been cured by people using the Spelling Strategy, specialisation can be good. And there are those whose interest is in discovery, but there is little point in discovering useful strategies if they are not used.
Science is all about asking questions, many of which are along the lines of, “How can I answer the question?” the cause for every experiment. All progress derives from questions, from refusing to accept that, just because something has always been a particular way, it must always be so. The root of progress lies in, “What else is possible”, “What more is there”, “Why is this happening?”. When faced with any any apparently insurmountable problem, or uncertainty, the key to progress lies in asking the right question.
