MINDFULNESS AND THE ART OF FAILING UPWARD

I have a story for you. It’s the story of the sunrise of the human mind, but this sunrise came after a long dark night of many years. It’s my personal redemption story of how I freed myself from the difficulties and that darkness of life. It's also the story of how you can free yourself too, and begin to live a heavenly life...right here, right now.

This is me, way before any thoughts of mindfulness. Circa, more years than I care to admit. I found this ancient photo by accident. I wasn’t really looking for it but since it has shown up in my life, it's haunted me a bit, quite a bit.

Look at him. Opportunity was unbridled all around him. He had youth, energy, and I very humbly submit, he was okay to look at. It's fine, I can say that now because, like many of us, Father Time has given me a make-over...against my will. But I digress. I only draw attention to my youthful, more attractive self in order to explain that it was all a mere a shell. The inner guy was not so attractive, not so put together and his inner darkness skewed any possibilities of opportunity.

I was haunted by this picture because it brought back memories of the dark life I lived. Don’t get me wrong, I did have good times and good friends but those good times were always scattered throughout times of difficulty and even misery. Inside of that shell was a guy who just could not get things to work out. That darkness was my existence. I'm guessing I'm not alone. In some measure, couldn't the same thing be said about some people in our current era?

The Storm Before The Calm

I had no direction. No Career. I went from job to job to job and moved from place to place. Besides numerous jobs, I tried a few make-the-big-bucks-quick business ideas. However, that’s the point right there. I was only ever trying. Trying to solve a perceived problem or right a perceived wrong that only existed in my mind. And yet, I had no clue as to what the problem was! I was trying to escape a life in constant flux and out of control. Most importantly, in all that trying I was never actually creating, just reacting.

Relationships? Forget about it! That woman beside me in the photo, I'm not so sure, did I altered her image to protect her innocence or is that just how she looked after dating me? I'll never forget what I heard through the grapevine that her father said after hearing that she broke up with me: "Whew, that was close." Ouch!

One night in particular, my inner darkness showed its ugly face while driving another girl, I was dating, home. Our conversation got slightly heated and then I blurted out in exasperation: “I’m just getting so tired of all this!” She stopped, looked over at me and asked what I meant by that. I denied that it meant anything. As I reflect on my ancient photo I now see it came from deep inside.

As I look back I saw signs of how people were quick to judge with little understanding of my situation. I can’t say I blame them, I had no understanding myself. I was often de-friended, the real life kind, before that became an online sensation. Or a little more recent event when one of my business ventures had me cross paths with an old friend of my in-laws.

He was a man raised in the 1950’s when things were done a certain way and no other. It was an era you could set your clock by, no time for my shenanigans! I demonstrated my business proposition to him. After our meeting we walked to the front door of his offices. The last thing he said to me was, “It’s about time.” Ouch again! It was clear what he referring to. The business deal went nowhere but hey, like I said, I was trying!

Personal Growth Begins Young

So why the darkness? Why couldn’t I get anything to work out? Why did I live in my car for a little while? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Well, when I was child a cataclysmic event happened in our family. My kid brother was taken from us by leukaemia. Because of that, my parents had a hard time keeping things together. There was a lot of animosity, including money issues and very heated arguments! Eventually my family broke apart and fractured in two, moving to opposite ends of the country.

I love my parents and they loved and cared for us. They gave us all we wanted and needed so I don’t hold anything against them. However, sometimes we parents forget that there are little sets of eyes and ears watching and listening to us, even in our lesser than stellar moments.

All that familial and financial breakdown and the resulting chaos informed and programmed my subconscious mind. We rely on our subconscious to collect data to do the involuntary things we can do in life, drive, cook dinner, make love, etc. Seeing life break down in front of me, specifically relationships and money was dark data for my mind. That darkness within followed me all through my life, and sabotaged many aspects of it.

The second major impact was to my everyday consciousness. That's the part of us that claims to be in the driver seat of the car of our existence. Its real seat though is our prefrontal cortex. That's the region of the brain that handles your executive functions: planning, decision making, short term memory, to name a few. My everyday consciousness also suffered through the onslaught. I unknowingly invented and lived by ideas, thoughts and supposed truths and facts informed by that long dark night, but they also fed it. For so long I just couldn't figure out why life was as it was or how to become free of it all.

First of all, I share my story with you because, maybe, just maybe we can all have a little more empathy for those of us who fall behind in life. Psychology of the mind can be a complex thing, and can be an unknown quantity to the owner of that mind. If someone desires a great life or career or relationship(s) but can't make them happen, that's a good indication that there's a level of mind below their everyday consciousness that is calling the shots. The subconscious mind rules over 90% of our lives, after all.

I immersed myself in a two decade long exploration of humanity...mine. Which in most ways resembles everyone else's. I read ferociously: The Tao of Physic, Elemental Mind, Quantum Reality, In Search of Time to name a few. I kept a journal, asked big questions and sat and waited for the answers. What came was my book, Swimming with Gandhi and Einstein and the interactive course/seminar Being Paradise.

Mindfulness Is Not About Having A full Mind

One thing explored in Being Paradise is our Life Canvas. It's the blank canvas of life and the world we are born with. Some would say we don't start out life with an entirely blank canvas but I'm sure we can all agree that being a young child is the closest we get to it. It's that beginning version of us that partially gives my course the title of Being Paradise. I see childhood as a kind of paradise. It's a paradise of play and fun. In my opinion, generally, It's the version of humanity that works best. However, we slowly transform into adults and more often live in our minds where the occasional hell scapes like mine can take root and grow.

So, there you are as a child in front of your life canvas. You're at your most creative, imaginative and innovative. In one hand you hold a big paint brush that you use to paint and bring the world around you into being, including the part you play in it. As an aside, Being Paradise clearly demonstrates this. It shows how your sensory mechanisms play a big part in the world you inhabit. In your other hand is another paint brush. With it you paint a second world on your canvas. A world of thoughts and words.

As a child, the thoughts and ideas (your new and growing rational mind equations) that you painted on your canvas didn't stick, they fell away. Why? Because that's not what filled your sails. As a child, your life was all about the paradise life of experiences in front of you. All of that play and fun! "Daddy, your'e my sweetie boy. You give me a creamy heart." Those were the words of my daughter when she was about four years of age. How awesome is that?! Those words stuck with me as one of the best thing I've ever heard in my life! And her? Well, she just made that comment and then moved on, to other great adventures. She was living in the true mindfulness of the moment.

Soon that all changes. Eventually ego and surviving life and controlling the world begins to creep in and our second world writings begin to stick to our canvases. Enter the young me in that photo: "Life is difficult." "No matter how hard I try, I can't get ahead." "This company isn't fair." "I don't need to be in a long term relationship." "Did my parents even really care?" Etc, etc, etc! My life canvas was crowded with descriptions and comments about life. I related to them like they were my life. In essence they were a fiction of the mind. As my canvas filled up over the years with permanence, I lost sight of the paradise I was born into.

Am I alone in this? I'm just a regular kind of human being, so I think not. Could our stresses, challenges and problems in our families, organizations, political parties, nations be the result of this unknown faux world pretending to be something more than generated by electrical impulses in our minds? Any wonder we are where we are?

Love or hate, success or failure, they can only be generated before being passed on, or lived by. Had I known this, life would have been far different for me. BUT, the mind bending irony is, had I known this back then, there would not have been a Being Paradise program from which to free other minds. If I could go back in time to relieve my pain, would I?...No! Life is funny that way.

Living A Life With A Transcendent Mind

So what are the results of living this idea of Being Paradise? It’s a life where I now begin my days with the simple thought: ‘Wow…How great. I get a new day!’ It's a life that is one of light instead of darkness. I discovered a personal paradise within me, a personal paradise within us all.

I didn't stop thinking and talking. Some canvas scrawlings can be considered to be honest approximations of the world around me, like: "My family split in two." However, most of what I thought and said about myself and my life after that was pure invention. Actually, in essence I now see it all as an act of creativity. We are less victims of life and more like artists, if we choose.

Realizing the source of my world (me) allowed my life canvas writings to fall away or allowed me to just not write so much, and enjoy the glorious experiences around me. That's because, in so many ways, it all just doesn't matter! I simply let it all go, added in some gratitude for simply being alive and suddenly I could see that paradise more often. And in 2022 who couldn’t use a little bit of paradise?!

Let me get right to the real-world point of what the young version of me wanted but was always out of his grasp: financial success and and a loving relationship. By redesigning my everyday consciousness and programming my subconscious it all began to show up! Within a week of completing the latter, my struggling business at the time, grew by 85% within days! People just began calling.

As for love? Well, Years ago I was fortunate enough to find a beautiful woman to spend my life with, but my curiosity about life and things behind it was never her curiosity. In important ways we began to grow apart. That's until she began her own journey of discovery of her inner personal paradise. We became new people, new friends and we're together today because we begin and end our days simply wanting to be together.

Could this be the key to life? We human beings battle, struggle, and claw our way to "get ours" but maybe what really fills our sails is waiting for us to merely step out of our mind's second (faux) world and into the moment, that we happen to also be painting on our life canvas. Creators all! That's what I did, and my new career of introducing people to their heavenly lives showed up. I failed all the way to paradise! But there's one more thing that appeared...

My little life canvas illustration is the first of the three modes of consciousness. That canvas is the beginning of redesigning your everyday consciousness. Add to that the paradise you can achieve from reprogramming your sub-conscious mind and you're left with a new clarity and freedom of thought. With that new opening your third mode of consciousness can come into being.

That last one is the super-conscious awareness. It's what Einstein got in touch with and used on his front porch as he watched the clouds go by. Legend has it, that's where he'd end up when answers and solutions weren't forthcoming to his rational mind questions. It was in that clearing of his mind that solutions and answers were handed to him by that lofty, bigger than life, consciousness. If anyone asks, that potential is what you have in common with Mr. Einstein.

The big takeaway from all of this is that your mind and your world are far more intertwined than you know. There's a big element of creation in you. Also, I'm living proof that one's failures are merely life's re-directions, and that an ultra mindfulness awaits us all.