The Formula For a Peaceful Life

 

Snakes & Spiders  –  Thinking  =  Peaceful Life

Ok,  the snakes and spiders are just an idea, the thing thats getting in our  way of a peaceful existence could be any number of things we perceive as stress.

So why mention snakes and spiders?

Flashing back to my first NLP (Neuroscience-Linguistic-Programming) training in London in April 2006, to  ‘Fears and Phobia’s Day’.   I and everyone attending was given the opportunity of letting go of a fear or a phobia via the “five minute phobia cure’, I thought back then of now  better way to create a peaceful existence.

Albert & Victoria’s presence at the venue created a buzz of energy in the room, being  two large python snakes accompanied by a couple of  tarantulas whose names I can’t remember created an atmosphere perfect for phobia day.  I have no idea of the spiders names,  Perhaps because I had no reaction to the cute hairy spiders, whilst the sight of the snakes had me squirming, squealing and reacting like an overactive teenager.  Far from a peaceful existence.

My chosen partner and I spent the morning learning the phobia technique.  Following the steps and teasing out each others strategy for ‘doing’ fear,  and even though I felt far from ready, when the time came, I approached Albert and Victoria with dreaded anticipation.

Magic

The time for came for me to test if the NLP phobia strategy had worked.  Initially I was convinced it hadn’t, I really didn’t want to touch the snake, but I faced my fear and before long was holding Victoria in both hands whilst her tiny head crept up my arm.  The sensations within my body and mind felt like a re-wiring as years of belief around possibility fell away.  I truly thought it was a belief change in me as a result of the technique.

Full of excitement I told Richard Bandler that “If I could do that, (touch the snake) I could do anything”.

It was only later  as I deepened my grounding around the principles of mind, consciousness and thought, I realised the truth.

Touching the snake and looking into it’s eyes I felt love.  Feeling a similar sensation to the love I felt for my budgie, Sparky. I knew I was seeing and feeling something beyond my fear,  beyond my thinking. Something fell away and I sensed something deeper than I have ever seen or felt.  In a flash I knew, I had been making up a story about the snake.  A part of me knew that the snake wasn’t going to kill me otherwise it wouldn’t have been in the seminar room, but something interesting happened over time.

Later in the year, whilst ambling along a street in  Santa Barbera, California with my hubby,  I became aware of a crowd of people.  As we got closer,  a guy randomly held a snake out for me to hold.  Time seemed to slow down, I took hold of the snake, I was amazed that I wasn’t screaming, followed by a second thought,  help!  I’m holding a snake,  it might bite me, at which point I’m sure the snake sensed my fear, I  took a deep breath,  looked up to see lots of people around me all holding snakes.  Switching from fear to calm, from calm to fear and fear to calm, quickly in my mind, back and forth.

When the guy appeared and reclaimed his reptile,  my legs almost gave way in relief but the feeling inside once again seemed to come from somewhere other than thought.

Looking back now, I was in and out of my thinking, feeling the ebb and flow of thought in the moment.

 

Thought and Feeling

I have no words  to describe my feeling these days,  other than a deep peaceful sense of knowing I am ok and you are ok, no matter what experiences, challenges, situations or events we face.

My first unconscious awareness of the principles behind clarity came via reading

Richard Carlson’s book ‘Stop Thinking and Start living’ in Summer 2010.  Initially,  this book,  and further knowledge that Michael Neill and Jamie Smart had switched their focus from NLP to a different approach led me  on a journey of discovering the work of Sydney Banks.

Fear, Stress & Anxiety

My childhood was based on fear, not blaming my parents, but I mastered anxiety from a young age.

I am always fascinated by how the mind works and  trained as a psychiatric nurse in the late 1970’s.

Overtime, I have collected heaps of skills, tools and strategies forming  my identity of specialising in stress.

A belief of copying my Dad’s behaviour  was the story I unwittingly attached to my identity and reason for my own anxious ways.  I witnessed the pride my Dad had in his work, often working seven days a week as a self employed decorator & window cleaner, propelled by his strong belief that no matter how poor he might be he can ‘put up an appearance and look smart’, even when in his latter years with a  left side  paralysed from stroke, he spent hours polishing his shoes and wore a tie till the day he died, I have no memory of ever seeing him wear a pair of jeans.

Beliefs and Values

I knew the importance of being a good girl, to do my best and look smart.

But perceptions can trick and on the inside I was a mixed up bag of nerves who had set the bar so high that I set myself up for failure time and time again,  even though I had a bunch of skills, and managed my state most of the time and had great results with clients, I felt as though a piece of the jigsaw was missing.

Until, I deepened my understanding around the true nature of life explained by Sydney Banks.  This realisation isn’t something I can give you, there are no techniques or exercises, but you can, like I did, let go of old patterns of behaviour and beliefs through insight, via a feeling.

Insight

The difference in how I view the world is profound.  With my first conscious insight, I knew or sensed a feeling that something had changed within and  it felt good.

Since then I have deepened my grounding and understanding in the principles through sharing what I know via conversation,  coaching and been coached. I completed  Jamie Smart’s Glasswing Program and am coming to the finale of  his Clarity Practitioner Program.  Even now,  know I have just scratched the surface to a world of possibility beyond fear, beliefs and thought.

The principles of mind, thought and consciousness Sydney Banks speaks of are simple to understand at an intellectual level but that’s not where the magic lies, there are no words to explain what Syd points to because he is talking about the form and the formless, the ‘issness’ and the ‘allness’ and we can’t intellectualise the ‘allness’ because it is before thought, for this reason metaphor is used as a way of communication.

Peaceful, Easy Feeling

 

I am aware of a sense of peace and wellbeing in  the strangest of situations, in the photo here meeting up with my grandchildren after flying across the globe from Australia to Yorkshire, you might expect me to feel a rush of love as I hold  those two precious boys in my arms.

What the photo doesn’t show is the sadness around the reason for the trip being that my brother had been diagnosed with a brain tumour.   My  brother died just a couple of weeks later, but  the loving connection I feel  for him and my family binds us together in ways I can’t describe.

Whether the fearful thinking is around snakes, spiders, death or anything else, it’s never the thing that is scaring us, but our thinking around the scenario.

 

 

Dying

I am not saying I don’t feel sad at losing my brother, yes sometimes I get lost in thinking and have moments of panic, I allow

these thoughts in and let them wash over me and back out, before long I am smiling at a memory, seeing his smiling face winking at me in my mind as a sign that all is ok… and it is.

 

Sydney Banks

Born in Scotland, into a poor household with limited education, Syd Banks  reminded me a lot of my dad.

Although, unlike my dad, Syd found the answer to his troubles whilst attending a seminar.  On a break his buddy noticed something within the conversation and said to him “You’re not insecure Syd, you just think you are”,  Syd heard something profound and over the next three days he became enlightened, he saw the truth behind the nature of life.

For the rest of his life Syd shared what he knew to be true to friends, colleagues, psychiatrists, psychologists, in prisons, hospitals,  writing books, changing lives and creating a sense of peace from anguish.

Syd refers to an energy that powers life he calls this energy as universal mind.  What Syd points to isn’t religion but all religions talk about a powerful being or energy source, whether this is God, Chi, Allah, Buddha or other enlightened being.

Whilst alive, this energy ebbs and flows, sometimes we are aware and lots of times we are lost in our insecure thinking, learned from a young age, we lose sight of our wisdom, creating beliefs, values and concepts via the thoughts we pay attention to.  Through the gift of thought we form our ego, our  Identity  and this is how we all live in a seperate reality.

We create a movie in our mind via our senses, based on the thinking we are paying attention to. Each one of us creates our own reality depending on our beliefs and values which are all a bunch of thinking.  We create a map of reality, based on an illusion not truth.

However,  moments of awareness are like flashes of inspiration, insight,.  In those moments of clarity it is like all thinking around life falls away and we know the truth…  just like I felt holding the snake.

 

Snakes can kill.

I live in Australia and have had a few close encounters with Eastern Brown Snakes, the second most deadliest snake on the planet.

A brown snake fell on my chest last year as I opened the boot of my car, I looked down and saw it on the floor, I admit it was only a baby, but still dangerous.  My mind was absent of thought,  I didn’t scream, where once my mind would have flooded with thinking, there was quiet.  In  that moment I knew exactly what to do, I stepped back, closed the boot where my little poodles were just about to jump out, headed back to the car and rang my husband!

Help!

Although, I felt love towards the snake in London, this love has developed into a healthy respect, snakes deserve to be here just as much as I do, snakes don’t usually go out of their way to hurt you, they bite to keep themselves same, just like you and I really.

One of my favourite Sydney Banks quotes is

“if the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of  their experience, that alone would change the world”.

 

If something in this blog post resonates with you, I can recommend a heap of books  and after finishing reading for the third time I can confirm that I see something new and have a peaceful feeling  every time.  Rather than overwhelm you with a list, start with this one.