My apologies.
I have been travelling through the Never Never between Hayes Creek and the Alice and have not been in either ‘phone or internet range even though I am assured that 97% of the continent is covered by wireless connection. I still have another 1400kms to go before I reach a major town so my posts may still be a little erratic for the next few days.
John Audet
Ultimately the responsibility for the quality of your life is yours and unless you are prepared to accept this obligation no amount of outside help will secure your wellbeing. It is your duty to analyse all the information that is made available to you then assess its value and if it has credibility use it. But finding merit in an idea does not make it work for you. It is useless unless you put the idea into practice. This requires a degree of belief and understanding that can only be built by applying the idea to your every day life. Participation is the one ingredient absolutely necessary for the control of your life. Those attitudes that are built with the knowledge that comes from a conscious decision can only be strengthened by the personal experiences of self-implementation. These attitudes can be the foundation of good self-esteem and act as a stabilising force. They are designed by you for your own happiness. Without belief and a guiding moral purpose you are creating a vulnerability to everything mindless. Such a lack of purpose is a desolate and lonely place. The one thing that makes a good concept a personal one is your participation. The suggested answers to life that are put forward and require no participation from you but expect you to merely believe are not your truths. Someone else’s accepted normality will eventually be rejected in some way and be replaced with another normality. There can be no solutions if your thinking persists with the notion that your lack of contentment is someone else’s fault that you are in a dilemma. Or that your problems are the complete cause of outside factors. There may be blame elsewhere, but the solution is with you. You are the only one qualified to know .Accept the responsibility for the quality of your life. The price of involvement is not so high, nor the effort too great that you must sacrifice your happiness to the merchants of abuse.
It is my firm belief that my mental attitude affects my physical health and in return my physical health influences my mental state. A healthy mental attitude encourages my body to function to its capabilities and a healthy body helps my mind to perform well. At times my mind is the dominant partner and at other times it is my body. Though the degrees of influence change considerably depending on the occasion. Because both of these states need each other to exist it is important that one or the other does not exert undue pressure and cause unnecessary stress that in turn can create overload and collapse. The short term goal may be realised but the cost to overall health will have to be accounted for.
A conscious thought in a single action trains both body and mind to respond to that thought. Thus as part of our subconscious it becomes part of our new way of doing things. Our future thoughts and actions are dominated by our specific wanted thoughts. And our behaviour and actions are what we want them to be.
There are five principles each requiring effort that I consider necessary for a person’s wellbeing.
Humility,
Accept your need to change.
Recognise
That you have negative aspects.
Release,
Your negative aspects.
Identify,
Your positives and the ones you want.
Encourage,
Both your own and aspired positives.
All five are used in conjunction with each other. Their purpose is not to work in isolation but as a unit of self. And they all require effort. If the reasoning power of your conscious mind accepts that these principles are worthwhile then your subconscious can also accept them. In a non-invasive manner you can tread the path to self-contentment. They have at times brought me back from the brink of total despair and allowed me to continue in my quest.
Humility
Time is a conscious illusion
Space is a place with room
Event is not the same
Only a shadow is needed
To commence a life
It is easy to get side-tracked in life, to forget to think, to let things keep going the way they are because they seem fine. There doesn’t seem to be any problem. Your job is ok. The family is doing well. There are plenty of things to do and you lead a good social life. Then why isn’t it all quite right?
At some time in your life you will come to this conclusion, that not everything in your life is as it should be. Admit it and you will realise that there is a need to change-something. You may not know why, but you know that you are not entirely satisfied with your life. It takes a little courage but be brave enough to face up to it. Be humble enough to confess that you have elected to travel an easier road rather than take full responsibility for your affairs. Let go of your ego. Don’t be afraid to declare this fact to yourself. It is this admission of humbleness that starts each new cycle of events. You want contentment. The way you are going to get it is by first acknowledging that you need it. Although you do not necessarily understand the what, where or how of it.
If you clutch on to what you’ve got, good or bad, for fear of losing it, how can you ever realise what you need? There is nowhere to put it! But you can do something about it. Return to your basics and practice a little honest assessment. This is the toll you pay on the road to contentment.
Recognise
Spawned by the Mother of Fear
I have known a thousand Deaths
But they will not have me; though
Buried deep, these genes of Slavery
I know who you are
In recognising negative influences in your life, some are obvious; others are buried deep in your subconscious. The negative forces affecting you that are not apparent are most likely more deep rooted than you are ready to accept. This does not mean that they are less influential. Look at the obvious known negatives for what they are; not for what your previous conceptions have told you they are. You may have been looking at the effects of wrong thinking and seeing only a reaction. Strip them of all their colourful trimmings. Never allow yourself to fret over these negatives, wondering where they came from and why this is happening to you. They are already with you. These questions have already been answered by the state of your life. These negatives are with you. See them as they are. See them in their nakedness. All negativity is caused by excess. Once excess is recognised it can be let go and balance achieved. The reason you are isolating your negatives is to find the fundamental cause and not dwell on the unwanted effect. That effect will go when there is no longer a reason for it being there.
Release
Unlocked are the gates of bondage
Free now but will they go
Their names have no qualities
Old comforts denied
Let each go Four ways and more
The obvious has been stated. The negative recognised. Give it no further thought, let it come, recognise what it is and let it go. Holding on to it is selfish. It is not yours. You do not want it. You have already recognised it. It is truth. Let it go. Time and time again a negative entity will show its self because in the past you have made yourself to be a comfortable home. That is no longer the case, now you do not wish to. The more you recognise what it is, give it no mind, and then allow it to go on its way, the weaker its influence becomes. It is like the traveller who is used to staying at the same hotel every time he comes to town. He will have to find somewhere else to stay if that hotel closes down. The same is true of all negative actions. Once you recognise what the root cause is, let it go, that is, once known, don’t hold, let go.
See illness for what it is, it has no emotion and it has no mind. Do not nurture the ailment for what you can get out of it. Let all sickness and injury be the natural adjustment to circumstances. If you confront your negatives you may beat the symptoms but you will replace it with something else later on. If it could be beaten by confrontation it would not have been there to begin with. It is stronger than you are as long as you hold on to it. Let go and you are free to get on with your life.
Identify
Leaving emptiness and lonely spaces
Who were their enemies
Do they know this void
And the others
Can I see them now
The negatives have gone, leaving a vacuum that must be filled. You are necessary to the functioning of all things. All things could not be what they are without you. You are equal. You have a choice in happiness. You are complete. You neither grow nor diminish and as one part of you changes so does another. As you let go of one thing you will replace it with another. Everything you are is important and necessary. Your completeness is your happiness. A positive can be either known or unknown. Isolate the positives that you know. Identify them. Take caution that it is not your ego at work nor that you are looking at effects. Strip them down. Remember that if there is a negative to recognise and realise there is a positive to be found and identified. The negative will keep coming back if the positive has not taken its place. Positives are everywhere. You will find them once you give yourself space to look.
Positives that are unknown to you will be seen when you have let go sufficiently and made enough room for them. They are the deep rooted qualities that have been buried by the excesses of self. Until you allow them to surface they will continue to be hidden away. They need to be identified. Apply the identification of positives to everything you do until eventually you do it without thinking. Then you will know the unknown ones.
Encourage
Foreboding and Dark this vast expanse
Cold Nothingness awaits
“Be Fearless” advises the friendly wind
Of this voyage I know
Simply shed your burden And come home
Once you have identified the positives, cultivate them by constantly using them. In turn they will expose avenues for you to further discover others. As you become better at identifying and encouraging the positives it will become a part of your nature and a natural way to finding completeness. As with anything worthwhile making the right amount of effort is important. But do not let this become traumatic and a soul searching dilemma. Strain and you will turn the situation against yourself. Find the relative amount of time and effort which does not mean only when you feel like it. Unless you try, it has no meaning. You must use and practice and nurture these positives if they are to help you attain satisfaction in your life. Acknowledgement alone is incomplete. Encourage means to do something, what to do, you have already identified. It is a simple matter to read my words and to think that the idea is good and makes sense or to even dismiss it all as too simple and unworkable for modern life. This has little value.
The five efforts follow a natural progression from one concept to another. These efforts are not just something to think about. They are something to think about and do.
John Audet
The expectation of immortality is as obscure as it is interesting. Evidence in favour of a survival of individual consciousness after death is provided from the past by narratives supporting apparitions of the dead. But these stories do not justify by any nature a decisive verdict on their credibility. The moral argument is equally evasive. To some it seems incredible that extinction awaits us. Even for those who display the qualities manifested by mankind at his best and animated by unselfish purpose, all to be obliterated. But then there is the moral judgement which dooms people to extremes of bliss or misery in accordance with the rules set out by one group or another and depending on what side of the line you fall will decide your fate. Surely our conscience feels that no one deserves either heaven or hell. Moreover, this same conscience would doubt whether anyone really deserves complete perpetuation. We are of a complex nature; some elements of our nature seem to deserve to be eliminated, and others to survive. Thus the moral indictment against the old expectation of judgement is that no one deserves either of its extremes. Judgement should be not between man and man, saving one and condemning the other, but between different parts of each of us. For in people good and evil are always present. Is what we ask for the ultimate elimination of some parts and the constant growth of others? Moreover, even in the short space of life which we can observe, elimination and selection are clearly present. The child and the old man are one, not by identity but by continuity of life. The path of wisdom does not weigh the merits of various inconclusive arguments, but it distinguishes between what we want and what we know. Desire for most of us is to remain essentially what we think we are, the preservation of our identity. The healthy enjoy life, and even the unhealthy cling to it. If we are candid would we not admit that we would like an indefinitely prolonged existence, that we have a burning curiosity to know what is going to happen in the world and a wish to take part in its development? This is desire. What do we know? We know that matter is indestructible, though it changes its form and that energy is equally indestructible, but constantly varies its form. If life is similar to energy this gives us reason to believe that it is permanent, but that its form changes. If, however, life be a type of energy, not a force similar to it, it too will change its form. But what about abstract reality and its relation to life. To those who are convinced by the arguments in favour of abstract reality, though conceivable but not imaginable, moral life belongs to it and it shares its beliefs of eternity. But does this mean that eternal life is personal, that we stay the same when we die for all eternity?
Life is a succession of losses. The passage from youth to middle age and the change from the middle age to old age are losses. No one willingly surrenders the flexibility of youth or the power of middle age. But the experience of going though it teaches us that through loss came gain. Yet how many of us ever foresaw the form which the gain would take? After old age comes death that too is loss. Is it also gain? If existence continues and that at least seems probable knowledge teaches us that it will change its form and that here, too, gain will come through loss but is this the denial of the survival of identity and it is identity not life, which we desire. No doubt we want to keep much of which we lose and yet come to see that only though loss could we achieve the greater gain. After all, faith is not belief in spite of the evidence but life in scorn of consequences, a courageous trust in the great purpose of all things and pressing forward whatever the price may be. Who knows whether the identity of which we focus so much on and know so little about may not prove to be the temporary limitation rather than the necessary expression of life?
John Audet.
Be open and receptive to others and listen to what they have to say.
Always give them the benefit of any doubt if you have no reason to think otherwise. Make sure that you are discreet in your dealings with others being careful not to belittle their efforts.
Never intend to do others harm for your personal benefit.
It takes courage to change, to move away from the way that you’ve always done things and do them differently. There is comfort in old habits and ways. You know what to do and how to act and re-act and most importantly, you know what the results will be. What you are now.
Change means letting go of your fragile ego and finding an alternate way of doing things. Take a look at yourself honestly with your character flaws and weaknesses and your strengths. Ask yourself, what is it about me that I need to do that will enable me to let go of my ego enough so that I am prepared to be open to ideas and suggestions that may be different to the way that I have been thinking? Do I have the courage to break away from my childish notion that I am always right and error lies elsewhere? Ego defends what you are now but it does not protect you. If you want to be open to an improved situation you have to let go of the one you have. Not necessarily all of it but certainly the elements that restrict your receptiveness. Changing things can be scary and this is often the case but change can also be fun and exciting. A half- hearted attempt rarely works. The dreaded Plan B. This is when you keep something back in case your new attitude doesn’t work, then you can go back to your old ways. By gently, gently you can always fall back if things get too hard and accept the mediocrity of your old way off life. It is only when you fully embrace and act on your changes that you have become a different person with different goals and objectives in life, with no safety net, to the ones you have now. You are committed to a better life.
Courage requires commitment and commitment requires courage. When you need a different outcome to the one you have now then the way that you do things must also be different. Look at the things that you think you can change. Then tackle those changes wholeheartedly with no further thought of the consequences but think of the improvements that will take place. Don’t be discouraged easily. There is no need to be impatient, sometimes these things can take little more time to happen than you have accounted for. After all you have been doing your old ways for a long time and your ego will not want to let go.It still wants to keep control and keep you are where you are. Be optimistic and opportunistic; the moment you decide to make your changes and do things better, then accept that they are better and act that way. You will see opportunities where there were non before.
John Audet.
