Quantum Learning Rotating Header Image

Posts Tagged ‘peace’

AWOL and Future Plans

May 27th, 2010
by ianpeatey.
10 comments

I’ve not published anything here for a while.

If anyone had asked me I would have said it was about three weeks since I wrote something. In fact, the date of the last article is 20 March 2010 – definitely longer than 3 weeks. And that time just slipped by.

No-one did ask me, which is a little disconcerting, but I’ll get over it.

I didn’t intend to take a break and was just planning to slow down while Mona and I got used to being parents together – maybe writing once a week, maybe a little more. No way did I plan to stop entirely.

Plans for Quantum Learning

I’m going to restart publishing in twice a week (Monday and Thursday) and to make it a bit more explicitly focused on what I consider to be the essential dimensions of peaceful living:

  • Inner World
  • Family Life
  • Work Place
  • World We Live In

Inner World

Sometimes I experience huge inner peace and self acceptance, even self love. These are what I might call ‘flashes of peace’ and is certainly not a steady state. I wish it was! I’m often stressed about day to day stuff, often paralysed by indecisiveness and often wallow in self pity and doubt.

Sometimes I forget everything I’ve learned and revert to a shallow, mean-spirited creature.

Yet those ‘flashes of peace’ show me that there is another ‘me’ bursting to get out. Finding ways of freeing that ‘me’ – the person I would like to be, is what I mean by Inner World.

Family Life

Even if you don’t have children, you were a child once upon a time. Even if you live alone, it wasn’t always that way. You were, for better or worse, part of a family of some kind.

How I live in intimate relationship and raise my children are two of the most nurturing experiences – and can also be two of the most challenging! I don’t often  think in terms of ‘my legacy’, yet through my kids, part of me will carry on when I die.

I’ve made many mistakes along the way and many people have been hurt by some of the choices I made and decisions I took. On the other hand I can look back over this first part of my life and celebrate some of the wonderful things I’ve contributed to myself and those around me.

I’ve struggled many times with the idea of ‘family’ but I discovered that a firm family foundation supports peace within me, in the connections with others and, through my children, the future of peace on the planet.

Plus, for a site devoted to self development, I can’t ignore the huge amount I learn from my 3 children. The oldest just turned 18 and no longer a child. The middle  is 7 and no longer a baby. My third is 3 months and no longer a newborn.

Work Place

I’ve been working with three dear friends on a concept for a new business venture I’m very excited about.

We believe there are plenty of people in business looking for respect, kindness, compassion and meaning in their working lives – and rarely finding it. We’re hoping to bring those people together and to support them through coaching, consulting and workshops.

We’re calling it ‘LightWork’ and wanting to play with the double meaning of that name.

Where is it written that work has to be ‘hard’ and heavy and a sacrifice? Who decided that competition needs to be tough and aggressive? When did we separate ‘work’ and ‘life’, as though work is not really part of living?

Interesting times ahead. For me anyway, and I hope you’ll join me!

Healing Ourselves

Mar 20th, 2010
by ianpeatey.
9 comments

Nothing we can do will avoid the fact that at some point our physical bodies will stop working and each one of us will die.

How you react to that will probably depend, in part, on whether you see death as an end or as a beginning. Personally I believe it’s both but I’ll only find out for sure when it comes. I react to the thought mainly with peace with some moments of fear (maybe I’m wrong, and it is only an end).

Scars On the Journey Of Life

The good news is, for now, I’m alive and well in a physical body, subject to emotional ups and downs, learning new stuff all the time and gradually connecting with a spiritual dimension to my life.

Part of this journey I call ‘life’ are the knocks and bruises we all suffer. Accidents and diseases damage my physical form, emotional traumas leave their invisible scars and my intellect gets misled by wrong thinking or factual mistakes. The other part of me – my spiritual dimension – is , as yet, unfamiliar to me and so far less tangible. Many traditions teach that even our souls can get damaged, for example, through ‘sin’, though I prefer to believe that my soul is pure and untarnished whatever happens in this life.

The quality of my life, the inner peace I strive for, is heavily influenced by my overall health.

If I’m un-healthy in some way, then my energy is used dealing with that rather than getting on with life. We’ve all experienced the need to rest after an illness – our energy goes on recuperating.

The Healing Power Within

If I fell over and broke my leg I’d probably go to the doctor to fix me up, right? She/he would align the bones, put on a cast to keep my leg rigid and after several weeks the break will be mended.

Who healed me?

Neither I nor, in this case, the doctor do anything to heal my leg. Realigning the bones, administering chemicals (natural or otherwise!), resting, paying attention to how I’m moving are not ‘healing’ but all things that support the natural healing process and allow it to work smoother and faster. The healing takes place at a deeper level from within my organism and is really quite extraordinary – the other stuff is just helping this invisible process.

For me this is vitally important.

Keeping Healers In Their Rightful Place

  • Doctors don’t heal our bodies.
  • Therapists don’t heal our hearts.
  • Religious leaders don’t heal our souls.

No-one can heal me, no matter how much I’m told the opposite.

Healing is what happens within each of us and not something we receive from the outside. We can receive many things from the outside that can help the healing process, and those trained and experienced in healing different wounds have a lot to offer. But doing the healing is not one of them.

I want to keep so-called ‘healers’ in their right place – as people who can offer potential support to the healing that happens within.

I want to take responsibility for my own health and not abdicate to the ‘health’ industry in its myriad forms or to anyone else, for that matter. Nobody cares as much about my health as me and that’s exactly as it should be. I know plenty of people who go running to the health centre at the first sign of illness, for example, or whole communities living their spiritual lives by rules laid down by their local priest or guru.

Doctors, therapists and priests are not gods but most of them deserve respect for their experience and expertise in particular aspects of health and healing. I want to know when and where to seek the support and guidance of others – including those from the health industry with relevant expertise – but not pass responsibility to them.

I confess I don’t yet take as much care of my health as I would like and I’m not very well informed about the support available. I need to be in order to make sensible judgements. My own apporach is to avoid the health industry wherever I can and I don’t take especially great care of my health in all its forms.

Not yet anyway!

Taking Responsibility

What this means for me is:

1.   Recognise that most wounds (physical, emotional, spiritual) will heal

2.   Honour and respect the remarkable capacity for my being to heal

3.   Support the healing by creating the right conditions to allow the inner process to work its magic

4.   Give patience and time to the healing

5.   Call on those with relevant experience and never pass responsibility to them

And I want to always remember that nobody will ever care more about my health than me.

5 Ways To Live With Fear

Feb 15th, 2010
by ianpeatey.
5 comments

Fear gets a lot of attention in the self development world – some of it rather negative.

Fear is one of the reasons that people don’t get what they want in life.

Fear is the most pervasive psychological problem we have today.

I disagree with this! Fear might not be very enjoyable but, as with many things I’m born with, is a wonderful tool! It’s like the lights on the dashboard of the car communicating that something urgently needs attention. When my needs for safety and security are compromised, fear is my internal warning sign.

Imagine having no mechanism to warn of danger. It would be like driving that car with no instrumentation, no headlights and with my eyes closed.

Exciting, yes, but probably a short-lived trip!

Fear becomes a problem when I misunderstand it, misuse it or allow it to hide what’s essential. I believe I need to develop my  personal relationship to fear on my path to inner peace.

Here are 5 traps I can fall into when I don’t effectively use the fear signal on my personal ‘dashboard of life’.

1.   Pull Out The Wires

If I don’t like the warning lights on the dashboard I can disconnect all the wires.

Hey presto! No fear!

If I can numb myself enough, fear won’t register and I can ignore danger. The price I pay is also to numb myself to all the wonderful things life can bring me.

Modern living gives me a whole range of possibilities for unplugging from the experience of living so if this is your chosen way to live with fear, then try some of these for enhanced effect:

  • take drugs – plenty are available legally, many without prescription
  • watch as much TV as possible – preferably soaps, reality TV and mindless game shows
  • get a routine job – the less mental and physical activity the better

2.   Dance In The Disco Lights

Picture a disco with lots of different lights coming from every direction.

Fear comes in many shapes and sizes, from mild nervousness through to paralysis and panic, and all the shades of fear try to grab my attention. These can be confusing and it’s not always easy to distinguish the feelings and read the signals. Some of that fear might be an urgent warning while others are gentle reminders of things needing attention.

Dancing the fear ‘disco lights’ is most likely from trouble differentiating between fear signals or it could be from an addiction to the adrenaline rush of living the life of a disco dancer (‘Saturday Night Fever’, anyone?).

If this is your way to live with fear:

  • live ‘on edge’ 24/7 – you never know when danger will come
  • treat all danger as equal and life threatening – well, it’s best to be safe isn’t it?
  • react immediately to the slightest sign of fear – don’t think, just do it
  • move as fast as possible from one trigger to the next
  • deal with multiple ‘emergencies’ at the same time.

3.  En-light-enment

If I have no attachment to anything at all I have no need of fear – it becomes a useless tool and disappears from my life.

Danger is only relevant if something I’m attached to is threatened in some way. If I’m not attached to anything then threats have no effect on me and I will feel no fear.

Probably.

Things I might typically be attached to:

  • money – fear of losing it or not having it
  • health – fear of getting sick, of disease
  • image – fear of looking stupid or making a fool of myself
  • life – fear of death.

I’ve heard some people define ‘enlightenment’ as the release of all attachment and hence the removal of fear. This can be a very seductive idea and I’ve met a few people who live by this philosophy. It’s hard to have much of a conversation with them as they seem to be floating in the air and there’s little common ground!

If this is the way you choose to live with(out) fear then be prepared to lose:

  • all possessions
  • everyone you know
  • your identification to everything other than your spiritual core
  • life itself.

That’s not to say you will lose these things, but your reaction to doing so is the only sure way I can think of to test whether you have lost attachment or not.

[On a side note: I find this a great way to look at life, but not especially practical for the vast majority of us. I do want to make conscious choices about the attachments I form, accepting fear as a possible price I pay. For example, I am attached to my own life and those I care about - I accept this comes with some fear when those are threatened.]

4.   Seduced By Bright Lights

There are plenty of people out there with an interest in keeping me afraid.

Not least of which are all those working in organisations profiting from my fear. The more afraid they make me, the more they profit – and I’m not talking about some secret mafia!

a.  Insurance

It’s  a dangerous world so insurance seems a very sensible thing to buy. The industry has a vested interest in pointing out all the things that can go wrong – theft, flood, accident, illness, old age. Even acts of God (though if I read the fine print I may find I’m not actually covered for those!).

b.  Banking

My money is clearly not safe so, for a small fee, banks will look after it and protect it. After all banks never fail, do they?

c.   Defence

The companies involved in defence might not sell to me directly, but they need my support to ensure vast budgets (from my taxes) are allocated to them. The more I fear foreign invasion, terrorists and attacks on my precious way of life, the more I’ll support money for soldiers, weapons and expensive trips to foreign lands.

d.   Health

Most of the ‘health’ industry is, in fact, more interested in my sickness than my health. There’s not much profit in me staying fit and well all the time.

e.   Media

Disaster, pain, suffering, violence gets my fear-adrenaline flowing in way that warm, safe stories don’t. It’s addictive and it sells.

f.   Government

Obviously my government passionately wants me to be happy and fulfilled with life. I have to vote for them, though, and an effective political tool is to generate fear – of economic collapse, invasion by foreign armies, cheap foreign labour and subversive ideas.

Ways to get seduced by all these shining lights:

  • buy and read as many different newspapers and magazines as possible – the more sensational the better
  • watch / listen to 24 hour News channels
  • spend as much time as possible around politicians
  • invite an insurance salesperson around for coffee
  • get to know your bank manager (like in  the good old days!).

5.   Blinded By The Light

Ever caught a rabbit in your headlights?

They sit there, unable to move. We tend to think this a very stupid thing but it’s a very valid fear mechanism – I imagine it worked pretty well before the advent of the motor car.

Freezing in the face of fear works if the danger will pass by without bothering me. It can also be as effective as it is for the rabbit going head to head with a fast approaching vehicle!

I have this paralysis response as part of my fear/safety toolkit. I’ve been in tight spots where I was completely unable to do anything. I’ve also been motionless in the face of nervousness around things I really want to do. And sure enough, those great opportunities just fly past withouth paying me any attention!

Here’s a few tips to get in the mood for this approach:

  • list all the exciting things you’d like to do in this lifetime
  • against each item note all the things that could go wrong
  • ge creative, e.g. if it involves flying – write down all the possible ways the plane might crash
  • visualisation – close your eyes and for each disaster scenario imagine you are in the middle of the crisis.

Any tips you’d like to share for allowing fear to dominate your life?

Surviving Christmas

Dec 21st, 2009
by ianpeatey.
10 comments

It’s Monday 21st December and  I’m looking out of the window at the snow on the ground wondering if we’re going to have a white, Romanian Christmas. The sun has nearly set so the coloured lights of the Christmas trees are starting to appear.

Christmas is everywhere – even the desktop icon on my favourite media player has mysteriously grown a Santa hat (I kid you not! It is cute but truly bizarre! Go to the end of the post to see what I mean).

For the last few years I’ve become increasingly ‘anti-Christmas’.

To be more precise, I’ve become increasingly ‘anti-Christmas-commercialisation.’ I wrote last year about the Corporate Take-Over of Christmas so this year my scrooge-like attention is drawn to the personal domain.

15 Carol Singers

The weekend heralded the arrival, en masse, of carol singers, ranging from well trained young theology students with angel voices through to ragged groups of gypsies who seemed to think that blowing random notes on a trumpet was a good way to herald the holiday season.

I didn’t get the impression that any of the approximately 15 visiting groups were interested in anything other than receiving money. I have a very non-peaceful desire to get all zealous and throw cold water over them – but then I know that would ruin it for everyone.

1 Supermarket Trip

Mona and I went to the supermarket early on Saturday morning, just after it opened at 8.00 am, to buy a few supplies. We assumed that at that time of day everyone would still be asleep or digging their cars out the snow and we’d be able to shop in peace.

I really should learn not to make assumptions.

It was packed with people frantically stocking up and you would have got the impression that the end of the world was about to arrive. We were doing the same, so it would be highly hypocritical of me to complain and we spent at least twice as much money as we normally would on a regular excursion for provisions. There’s really no reason for it other than some vague fear that we might starve over the holiday season and not be able to buy anything if we run out.

I don’t normally notice myself respond to a ‘scarcity’ view of life – but this was definitely one of those times.

Starvation, thank God, is not part of my reality and I count myself fortunate when I think of all the millions of people who do not have enough to eat.

559 tree decorations

We just decorated our tree and I have to say it’s looking very pretty. I’ve even taken the liberty of putting a photo of it here!

One thing you will notice is that when it comes to decorating the tree, the concept of scarcity is far from our thinking. There are 559 individual decorations collected over many years. It reminds me of my childhood when the tree was a highlight of the year and a focal point for family life and revellry.

I didn’t actually count them – the number 559 is random and simply implies ‘a lot’. It’s a reasonably harmless demonstration of the excess I usually subject myself to at this time of year.

Excess baubles, excess food, excess drink, excess lazy days in front of the TV.

I doubt I can be 100% frugal but would like to curb some of the usual excess.

How to survive Christmas?

‘Survival’ and ‘Christmas’ may seem like strange sentence bedfellows. Either that or it’s a clear sign of my scrooginess coming out again. At this time – a few days before Christmas – I start to get edgy and I do usually worry about how to get through the festivities without exploding.

This year I decided to stop fighting and go with the flow.

I might not actually enjoy the hordes of money-grabbing carolers, supermarket freaks and glittery plastic things hanging from the tree. But that doesn’t mean I should get irate about the secular perversion of this time of year and shut myself away for a week until it blows over.

It is how it how it is and I can choose to enjoy it or fight it. I’m free to enjoy my way, everyone else is free to enjoy it their way.

To those who celebrate Christmas – enjoy your Christmas. To those who celebrate something else – enjoy your something else. To those who don’t celebrate at all – enjoy your non-celebration.

Life’s too short not to enjoy as much of it as possible – even desktop icons that strangely grow Santa hats!

Start Here – Passion and Compassion

Dec 9th, 2009
by ianpeatey.
13 comments

There’s a lot of sickness, cold calculation, hatred and violence in the world. It’s easy to forget the opposite is also true and resign ourselves to the ills of the world. I don’t believe I can directly or easily change other people – nor do I necessarily have the ‘right’ to do so.

553298_old_man

What I can do is start with myself and trust that it makes a difference.

There are three things I consider important:

  1. Look after myself
  2. Live with passion
  3. Choose compassion and peace.

1.   Look After Myself

Maybe you’ve heard the story (or similar) about the favourite uncle who lived to 105 years smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day and staying stubbornly overweight all his life. The conclusion is the secret to long life is to smoke and eat a lot.

Clearly this is false logic.

The uncle (if he indeed was real) was an exception and not the rule. Long life came despite the nicotine and excessive calories, not because of it. Just because it’s possible to live a long life no matter how I abuse myself doesn’t make it probable.

Looking after myself improves my chances I maintain the inner resources for a full, happy and meaningful life. It’s about looking after my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

It’s about:

  • choosing to put things into my body that are healthy
  • keeping in shape
  • developing my awareness of and listening to my emotions
  • constantly questioning my assumptions and beliefs in the sure knowledge that I can never be certain of anything (except that I can never be certain)
  • seeking out new experiences, people, ways of seeing the world, ideas, bodies of learning
  • finding and maintaining a spiritual practice.

2.   Live With Passion

860335_bungy_rideLisis over at Quest For Balance recently published an article ‘The Passion Paradox’ about passion. She writes about what she calls the modern day ‘snake oil’ salespeople promising easy riches if only you follow your passion in life. She points out the same false logic as the ‘favourite uncle’ story – if Mr/Mrs X followed their life’s passion and got rich it does not mean everyone will do the same.

There are many people in the world who have accumulated a lot of wealth – and there are far more who haven’t. Wealth, of course, doesn’t define any of us as human beings unless we allow it. Passion is much closer to defining who we are.

As Lisis writes:

we should bring our passion into anything we do, with no expectation of profit

Passion is about how I manifest myself in the world – defining what I choose to do and what I give of myself when I do it. If I’m passionate about what I do, results are secondary. I might change the world. I might get ridiculously wealthy.

I might not.

If I do something out of passion – I do it for myself, not for others. If I live with passion – with all my resources – mind, heart and soul – the results don’t matter. When the results matter to other people, when what I do is valuable to them, I might get some feedback. I might receive praise, appreciation, and yes, perhaps even money. The more people touched by what I do, the more I’ll likely receive.

It’s about:

  • Knowing what gets me excited, interested, motivated
  • Doing things that give me pride and a sense of achievement
  • Caring about what I do and how I do it
  • Eliminating as many of the things that don’t excite me and I don’t care about.

3.   Choose Compassion and Peace

How I relate and treat the people around me is a choice I make.

When I choose compassion over hate I build bridges, heal wounds in me and others, bring gentleness instead of  harshness.When I choose peace over violence I calm things down, I connect rather than separate and I create in  place of destruction.

Most importantly when I’m compassionate and peaceful with others I’m also loving to myself. And that’s much more powerful than hate and violence. It may not be as obvious, may not be as immediate but it’s effects are far deeper and last much longer.

It’s about:

  • Valuing each and every human being
  • Reaching out when I feel like withdrawing
  • Holding out my hand not my fist
  • Taking responsibility for my life and not pretending I’m a victim of others.

Finally

Healthy living doesn’t guarantee a long happy life. Following your passion won’t necessarily make you rich. Choosing compassion and peace won’t eliminate hate and violence.

These things don’t come with any guarantees – but that’s not a good reason to choose the opposite.

← Earlier Posts