Dancing Geek

What’s the problem?

Allowing = active not doing

So someone I like wrote somewhere I’ve forgotten.  And I liked what they said.

Allowing is like letting go, but it’s more proactive than reactive.  It feels more powerful, it’s a choice I’m making rather than a correction.

But the idea of letting just anything happen is not so hot.  Indeed, without some action I would just be a leech, and that does not appeal.  So how can I balance allowing (the art of actively not doing) with doing?  They would seem to be polar opposites.

Resolving paradoxes for dinner

The apparent paradox resolves when I think of allowing as actively choosing not to do some things, like trying to control everything, worrying about the future, panicking about money, shoulding on myself and generally making life more difficult that it needs to be.  The doing then becomes the re-focussing of that effort and activity to a direction that I would like to see more of (a mindset of abundance) rather than trying to prevent life from happening (a mindset of fear and incidentally impossible to achieve).

So I ask myself, what would I like more of?

• I’d like my home to be even better at providing me with beauty, nourishment, support, protection, calm, entertainment and relaxation.
• I’d like my body to be even stronger, more flexible, more coordinated and more controlled.
• I’d like my friends to feel closer, for me to trust myself and them more, and for us to talk more about clever things.
• I’d like more money coming in, to see more abundant value in what I enjoy doing, to do more that involves Learn, Try, Teach, Leave.
• I’d like love to feel more abundant and unconditional.

So can I do stuff that tries to move me towards these things whilst allowing the rest to take care of itself?  I guess I can at least try it out!

The what now?

The Wisdom of the Ages written as a school science report.

Yeah, exactly, but that’s what happens when you live inside my head.  I’ve broken it up with lots of pictures because a) that’s what school kids do these days, and b) it’s kinda long and chock full of goodness, so you don’t want to skip too much text.

Hypothesis

I will be truly happy all the time if I shed my negative mental models.

Happiness

• freedom to act from my truest best intentions for myself and others
• freedom to enjoy others company, giving value & being still
• freedom to accept all of what is, including myself

Negative mental models

• fear
• limiting beliefs
• negative prejudice & assumptions

(Take a moment to think about that while you look at this picture.)

Proof

Happiness is subjective, no objective proof can be given.  But if it is true for me then I can prove it to myself by trying it and testing the results.

Corollaries

• There is nothing one can receive to make one happy (wealth, love, respect)
• Happiness is not the result of an action
• Unhappiness is the result of certain thoughts
• There is nothing I can do to be happy except stop doing that which makes me unhappy

Methodology

The simple (but not necessarily easy) breakdown of steps to happiness.

• To be happy more often I need only change my thoughts.
• To change my thoughts I need only be aware of them and inquire about them.
• For the change to become lasting and effortless I need only do this repeatedly until I create a new pattern.
• To sustain this repetition I need only motivation and energy.

If I follow this reasoning in reverse I get the way to greater happiness:

1. Motivation and energy, which supports
2. Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

This leads to new mental models and if the hypothesis is subjectively correct, then I will be happier.  If I am not happier, it is subjectively false.

Step 1: Motivation and energy

My motivation

If I can truly yearn for the freedoms I listed under happiness I will have my motivation.  If I remember them, I yearn for them.

Energy

I need to balance the expenditure and replenishment of my mental, physical & emotional energies.  As well as refuelling these energies, greater efficiency in their use can improve performance, as can the quality of the fuel.

Refuelling: Food, sleep and the support of friends*

Efficiency: (reduce losses) Warmth, safety & comfort.
(more effective burning) Fitness, mental agility & emotional intelligence.

Quality of fuel: Quality of food (diet), quality of sleep and quality of friends and your relationship with them.

*Friends can include family and partners

Step 2: Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

Bringing awareness to my thoughts

• Shiva Nata
• Conversations with myself
• Mindfulness & witnessing

Inquiring about my thoughts

• Byron Katie
• Conversations with myself
• Exploring alternative mental models (e.g. the benevolent Universe)

Example thoughts to inquire about

• There is something that will make me happier if I get more of it
• That was bad and shouldn’t have happened
• People will not like me because I am selfish
• I should do things for others to be happy
• I’m incomplete, unfinished or broken

Notes

It is a practice, not a goal

I do not complete tasks so that when I have finished them & completed 100% I will be happy, but until then I am not.  Rather, the more I repeat these tasks the happier I will be overall.  There is no end point, except possibly death, and, as the small print goes, my happiness may go down as well as up, so I must keep my investment working over the long term if I seek the best returns.

Photo credits:

• Student in Class by foundphotoslj
• freedom by Guille
• Where thoughts are legible in the eye… by carf
• Resurrection by Untitled blue
• Pebble Art by pshutterbug
• I’m thinking of… by gutter
• Minimal perfection by Yago1.com

My pasta is boiling over

So I had a bit of a holiday, because I needed one, because I’d been working through lots of thoughts and ideas and learning and changing and my brain and body needed a rest.

Only problem is, that after that I started to get that bubbling feeling, where I can tell there’s something under the surface starting to build up, like when I cook pasta on our annoying electric hob and because I can’t get the temperature right it’s constantly bubbling up under the lid.

Well, the starchy bubbles have started to pop out of the top of the pan, and they are spilling everywhere, making a mess, and generally unwelcome.  In the analogyverse the obvious thing to do is to take the lid off the pan.  However, that’s drastic, results in the pan then going completely off the boil and annoying to have to keep doing.

What I really want to do is get the temperature right so that I’ve got my pasta simmering away but the pan doesn’t spill over.

Balance

What I need is a balance so that I’ve got space for the stuff to come out, but that it’s not so much that I’m overwhelmed.  And in my mind I should be able to find a way for that to happen where I stay in a blissful state of balance the whole time, but I’m suddenly thinking, right now, that maybe that’s not going to happen.  That life doesn’t work like that and that it’s more a case of letting a little steam out every so often.  Little and often, my second rule for testing if something is true.

So if the method is more about little and often, about making it a practice rather than a state of being, what would that involve?

• Time to reflect
• Time to do
• Time to rest

So yeah, my holiday has interupted by Alternative MA, and that’s what it was supposed to do, but it’s also telling me that something wasn’t working.  Despite all my best intentions there apparently still wasn’t enough rest time.  Which is just horrifying, because I really tried to give myself lots of time out, more than I was necessarily comfortable with, and it looks like I need more.

Still, there’s a few things I can start back on now, including my practice for releasing a bit of the steam (Dance of Shiva, and writing here – you know, that 30 day trial thing I did a while back and haven’t wrapped up any lovely tidy conclusion from, before your mind starts wondering).

Time to do is things like the garden and cooking, both being things that are bringing me massive joy at the moment.  And lots of reading.

Rest?  That’s where I get stuck I think.  How to rest.  How to rejuvinate?  I’m so used to doing, I’m struggling to find ways of being that aren’t so far removed from the familiar that there’s no chance they’ll stick.  Add to that the fact that the second I ‘do something to relax’ it becomes another task on my list and brings all kinds of effort and expectations which are basically what I’m trying to rest from anyway.

Wise self: Dear James, you have permission to just chill out for a bit, ok?

Me: Ummm, how do I do that without ‘doing’ it?