Tag Archives: spirituality

I Love CHAOS! And YOU asked for it? (The Extropist Series – Part III)

October 18, 2013 The Extropist 1 Comment

I have often pondered over chaos and control. What is the point of chaos? Why do we have it in our lives? And how does it relate to being an Extropist? Then one day it came to me. It’s there because we ask for it to come into our lives. And when I understood this I realized that I love chaos. This new idea about chaos came when I learnt something about evolution. EVOLUTION REQUIRES CHAOS. When something in the environment is destroyed and removed from the eco-system it creates space for new beings in this system to come in and take advantage of the change. The new being evolves to then thrive in this new system structure and be more effective and powerful than before.

This is the same thing that happens in our own lives. Something comes along and throws the stability out of our world by changing the environment. It is then up to us to best develop and evolve ourselves in order to better handle the new environment. We are forced to reassess the structure and workings of our world, tear it down and rebuild it as a new and stronger, more effective system. So you might begin to see that chaos is a good thing, but people don’t see it that way.

The Problem of Chaos

Several things make chaos seem like a bad thing. Firstly, we are hesitant to break our world down as we have become comfortable in the world that we have created. Next, rebuilding the system of our world takes energy and work. Energy that we may not have or are reticent to spend on reconstructing our world to take into consideration the change in our environment. And finally, it is the resistance that we have to the chaos and change that limits our ability to properly function and motivate ourselves to use our energy in the most effective manner to make change.

Calling Chaos

The only difference to what we see in the larger phylogenic (or species) evolution is that people can consciously create change from an ontogenic (or individual) evolution that feeds the change for the species. What this means is that we call chaos into our lives so that we can evolve our individual system. That’s right! You literally ask for chaos to come in and mess up your world. WE CREATE CHAOS! Chaos is simply disordered energy. We need more energy to increase the size of our life and perpetuate our evolution. But this energy wont just come on a platter as a ready to plug-in battery pack. Sadly, that’s not how it works, nor would it be fun if we didn’t have to solve how to evolve.

When chaos enters into our lives, there is a greater overall amount of energy now in our lives. However this disorder is causing the current system to become inefficient, as it has not been calibrated to handle the new energy. This is why we often feel unstable and out of control with it’s introduction and so we often have to completely change the whole system in order to handle the new incoming energy. It is this reordering that causes the system to be more evolved as it has learnt how to better work with the new energy in the system. This can then have a trickle down effect for the whole species because then when another person sees how this new way of being is more advantageous they may choose to follow the new system. Then another. And another until critical mass is reached and there are more people using the more advanced system than the old. So you see that chaos might actually be a good thing for not only you, but everyone.

Karmic Chaos

But you may ask “how can we call chaos into our lives? And why would we?” Well, I’m certainly not advocating forcing chaos into your life by doing something dangerous such as jumping off a cliff, but rather begin to listen to the natural ebb and flow of life. Chaos is partially karmic, as it is a consequence that mirrors the amount of energy that you have put into your life. You are actually asking for the injection of new energy because you have used up all your energy in the system and now you are getting an equivalent amount of energy back to work with. Its kind of like pushing the pendulum. When you push it away from you, you get the fruits of the upswing, but slowly it reaches the top and eventually stops moving. So we need more energy to bring into the system to continue the growth and that comes back to us in the form of chaos. It is this energy from the back swing that you get to work with to evolve the system.

With each swing you get stronger and so you can push the pendulum farther. This in turn creates a greater experience and use of the energy in your life. A bigger swing also brings back more chaos into your life. You, however, are now stronger, wiser and more able to handle the introduction of greater chaos into your life. Some people resist and deny the chaos in their lives while others embrace it. There is a great saying, “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.” But know this: You can only bring into your life as much chaos as you are able to handle and never more. This is a very important point. This is because you can always handle the force of the return swing because you created the first amount of energy. Therefore the only time chaos can overwhelm you is if you feed into the old way of thinking and tell yourself that chaos is a bad thing due to one of the three points earlier. This will limit your ability to work with the new energy, to evolve the system and create a more amazing life.

So you can see that chaos is intrinsic to creating anything in our lives. Progress requires chaos. We must not be afraid of chaos, but understand it as a natural part of the growth process in life. When you feel the all too familiar feeling of change in the air, that something is happening that is out of your control, trust ultimately that you can handle it. You don’t need comfort and security all the time if you know things will turn out for the best. When you can trust in life and the process of it, you will be able to control the chaos. You can KNOW this because you called for chaos to come into your life. Instead of shying away from the small problems and living a small life, embrace the big problems when they come so that you can live the biggest life you can dream of.

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Overcoming Obstacles – Strive to Surrender

July 9, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

We strive so hard to create something in this world that we can call our own, that we can be proud of. We come up with the idea, we go out and we work at it to make it happen. Sometimes we get there sometimes we don’t, but always we face one thing – A road that is filled with its ups, and most certainly, its downs. These downs are a trial by fire that has us look into the depths of ourselves. It questions whether we are deserving of this creation to become manifest and real or to fall into the lost shadows of things that could have been.

This decision is not made by a cosmological jury that rests high on some ideological mountain, nor is it a mythical being that weighs up all that you have done which validates your worthiness of birthing this creation. That which that decides is you. You are the person that needs to accept you. You are the person that needs to look deep into the person that you are and decide and define yourself as worthy of receiving.

So often when we attempt to create these dreams, obstacles come in our way, but why are they there? They are there to strengthen and stretch you. They are there to have you realize that you can do it. That you can say to yourself and the world… “Yes I can!” And that is the point of these troubles. That is the reason that YOU brought them into your life. You must grow into the bigger version of yourself in order to have the strength to handle the bigger version of your life. There is a great saying – “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.”

It is interesting to think that if you have asked for these things into your life, ultimately asking for these tests to present themselves, then what else can you ask for and how can you handle them? Do you fight against the fact that they have arrived? Do you try to wrestle them down to the earth and slay them like they are undeserving of existence? Maybe. Another way to handle these situations is with a word. A word that to many people seems like defeat but it’s a word based on faith and trust in the process. That word is… Surrender.

How, some may ask, can surrender result in a win? The answer is trust. When you try to create something, you set in motion a chain of events that results in your dream to be created. The chain of events are the never-ending and interconnected line of cause and effect that results in a continuous stream of action to occur, resulting in something momentous. The butterfly effect states that even from the smallest butterfly wing flap, a giant tsunami can form.

Our thoughts affect the world, not only through our action as an indirect consequence but also as a broadcasting station that reaches out past our bodies. The magnetic field from our heart has been recorded several feet from outside our bodies. Such thoughts and feelings affect the surrounding world and can result in a cascade of events that results in your test, your impasse, in which you struggle to get through.

It is however your resistance and fight that makes this transition a struggle. The same that if you try to stretch and move a tensed muscle, it is not very fluid, movable or mobile. However, when we surrender to the stretch, when we breathe into the experience, accepting it, we allow for movement and change. It is this trust that we have when we stretch and surrender to the movement and hurt, we will grow from it and ultimately be better and bigger by putting ourselves through the experience.

The same exists in our experience of life. We are stretching our consciousness. We are making ourselves bigger, because we asked for it. Because of what we are trying to create in the world, like with growing pains, as we grow we must surrender to the inevitable result of letting go of the past versions of ourselves and accepting the new bigger and better. Allow yourself to be your best, trust in the process and you will find yourself earning your rites of passage.

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Head to the Heart – the fastest journey to fulfillment

February 22, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

We as humans seek for the highest experiences of life. We strive in many different ways through many different activities, all in the name of reaching our highest peaks.

But what are these peaks made of? And how do we get there? Peaks are made up of highs and lows, the valleys as well as the mountains. If they weren’t, then everything would be flat. So too are our personal peaks made up of polar opposites. These poles exist in our body and given the names the Heart and the Mind. The mind is the active pole and is the engine that drives us toward an end. The heart is the passive pole that stores the passion of our dreams and fuels our drive. These are the polar opposites that have been spoken about for thousands of years across hundreds of cultures. The Yin and the Yang, Shakti and Shiva, etc. These two poles have different requirements to satisfy in order to reach our peak experiences.

Mind: Emptiness is Freedom
Let us first look at the active force. In a battery this is considered the positive pole and its role is to send the electric current to the negative pole. This is also considered the masculine energy and its pinnacle is freedom and is experienced through emptiness. As a person strives for a goal in their activity and works hard in order to complete the task, once they have finished the task they have started they are deserving of a break, of a moment of peace and freedom. A space where they don’t have to think but they simply can revel in the joy of what they have created or completed. This active force opens us up to an empty space in which we can truly experience freedom. A good example of this is in sex for men in which they are often the active force of the task and once they have reached their climax of the experience they move into an empty space, one of freedom, where the built up tension has been released and they can go to sleep.

Freedom is the Mind
Emptiness and freedom is an action of the mind. It is a place where we realize there are no limitations and we embrace abundance and true potential. Our conscious minds role is to constrict, to limit and to process. It weighs up options and says what can and can’t work. Upon reaching a freedom state, people often don’t remember the experience, they feel like they have transcended time and space. This is often called Flow or in the zone and it is here that we move out of our mind and the freest we can ever be.

Filled freedom leads to anxiety
When we are not in a freedom state we feel anxious, we feel overwhelmed and constricted. People often express they are feeling physically squeezed. This is because their minds have the tightest hold on them and they are as far away from freedom as possible. They are wearing the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are obliged and responsible. Of course this is all in the mind.

Freedom Practice
We can begin our journey to freedom through the practice of meditation. It is here that you can observe your thoughts and understand the limitations that you place on yourself. When you are quiet you will literally hear the stream of chatter in which you are telling yourself about how limited you are. About how much responsibility you have. About how you are surely going to fail.

Start with 10 mins, 5 mins, or whatever you feel comfortable with and begin to add a minute a day. Sit or lie down, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Slow it down and take long deep breaths. Count each breath up to 10 and then start your counting again. You will notice your mind wander to limiting thoughts. Catch your mind and understand these are not real but only thoughts and then bring your mind back to counting your breath. We can look at any experience and feel free in what we are doing. When are free we don’t have those limitations anymore. Anything is possible and we can be anyone, anywhere at anytime.

Heart: Surrender is Love
The second domain is a little different. This is the negative pole in the battery and its role is to receive the energy from the positive pole. It’s akin to the feminine energy and its pinnacle is love, which we experience through surrender. Surrender is the complete experience of receiving without any resistance. When we can truly receive we can fill ourselves up. We are deserving of what we are given and we take it completely and wholly with thanks. This feeling of love is a feeling of whole-ment of fulfillment, where we are full and whole from life and what we were doing.

Love in the Heart
Love and surrender is an action of the heart. It is the opposite of the mind. As the mind is a limited channel that strives for emptiness and freedom, the heart is a truly abundant channel that requires you to open it up as much as you can – To have the courage to be vulnerable. To be free, to love as big as you can, because the bigger you love the fuller you’ll be.

Limiting love leads to Depression
We often see this love and fulfillment stop when a person is in depression. Here a person has closed themselves off from their hearts and they feel empty and worthless. Their life is now without purpose or fulfillment. They block out the light in their life. They block themselves from receiving anything and anyone that they would let into their heart. This is a dark experience and one that hides a person away from experiencing their life to the fullest.

Love Practice
So it is so important to be brave. To have the courage to take a step forward towards being vulnerable and opening yourself to experiences. To life. To love. To learn. By trying new things and being open to the unknown we will most certainly make mistakes. This of course is not saying go from depression to universal love because that is a dangerous and somewhat difficult task. Instead, work out the step that is the right size for you. What can you do today that opens you up one step closer to Love. Write a love letter to someone – you don’t even have to give it to them. Say thank you to a stranger. Smile at the teller at the market. By giving you are opening yourself up to receive. And remember… You deserve it. You are worthy of it all.

Head to Hearts
You may have noticed that there is a natural movement from the head to the heart. This is the same as the energy flow from the positive pole to the negative pole of the battery is the masculine pole of the mind to the negative pole of the heart. The energy naturally wants to flow towards a space that can harness and handle copious amounts of good flowing to it we just need to stop restricting the channel. A wise Native American proverb states the longest journey we will ever travel is from our head to our hearts. I find it amazing because our minds and hearts are truly the yin and yang. We are moving to fill up our hearts and we moving to empty our minds but everything and nothing are the same thing and both have an unlimited capacity for abundance. So move towards freedom by becoming aware of your mind and give to yourself and your world and you will fill up your heart. And with each step you take you will be one step closer to your dreams filled with freedom and love.

ELEVATE

Know the world outside to understand your inside

January 17, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

In this world we are often thrown around on the stormy seas of life. Life can be such an exciting and enjoyable unknown. With many so many peaks and troughs, we forge through our rolling emotional waves that take us to the tops of the world or leave us feeling incapacitated and ill with despair.
There is a great power to be found in the unknown, because it keeps life spontaneous and fun. We are given the opportunity to play it like a game. If we knew what was going to happen all the time then life would become predictable and boring. It would leave us for the most part, without novelty and we would be left in the doldrums of our own monotony. So hopefully we can see that the scariest and unknown parts of the ride are often the most fun.

Often though we are left with a feeling of being overwhelmed by what is being presented to us. We can feel sick and incapacitated by the anguish and the sheer size of the obstacles before us. Well, first off, we are often not even aware of what we are feeling and this is one of the most rampant dilemmas that we, as modern humans, face. We are severely disconnected from our emotional experience. As time and industry has progressed we have been propelled continuously into a cognitive world. Such cognitive weighting has led to great innovation and progress but at what expense? We are richer than we have ever been but we are less satisfied. We are in great and ongoing conflict with ourselves and others around us and we are left with an ever-increasing epidemic of mental illness.

The Cost of Emotional Distraction

One consideration then is the importance to connect with what we are feeling. People may often find themselves feeling the need to drink or take drugs or have sex or watch TV. But why? One reason to consider is that we are experiencing something emotionally but we don’t know what it is. We don’t know how to experience it. We don’t have the courage to look at what we are feeling and name it and understand why we are left feeling hurt or confused or frustrated or stressed or whatever the feeling is. So we distract ourselves with behaviour that will fill the emotional trough that we are experiencing in some way that will move us back up to the peak. Unfortunately this is merely a bandage solution and will more often than not exacerbate the problems that we are experiencing. Such distracting and destructive behaviours will then compound and build up so that the next time we feel overwhelmed by the emotional rollercoaster it will become ever faster and even scarier to the point where the sheer force of the stress will start degrading our body and ultimately strain our minds leaving us with any number of mental illness. Substance abuse, addiction, anxiety or depressive disorders, schizophrenia and so on…

Name What You Are Feeling

A great method that we can use to diffuse the emotional tension that we are experiencing is by naming the emotion that you are feeling. If you notice that you feel emotionally off, check your feelings, check your thoughts and name it. Out aloud is best, but if not write it down. What is it that you are feeling right now? By naming it you are allowing yourself to see what you are dealing with. It is like in the films, the monster is always scariest when we can’t see it. Our imaginations create the worst, but once we know what it looks like, once it has a name and a face, it is no longer as scary and usually is on its way to being defeated. So don’t run but stand and face the fall and you will see that’s its not so big. At first, you may find it difficult to properly name what you are feeling. You might start saying you feel “BAD” or “STRESSED” but over time you will gain a greater vocabulary and you will be able to see what you are feeling, catch it and help diffuse move away from an emotional slump and instead you will be able to change tracks and begin to lift again.

Empathy: Builds a Vocabulary of Life

To better help gain an understanding of yourself and your internal world it can also help to connect to the world around you. This is a great cost of being a cognitive society is that we don’t even know that we are upset, nor what we are upset about. We don’t even have a proper vocabulary for it with ourselves. We are amazing processors of information and constantly taking in huge amounts of information beyond what we could ever consciously comprehend. By becoming greater processors of our external world we can better understand its impact on us. The way to do this is through empathy. Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Experiencing what others are experiencing. When you see a child cry, try to understand from their experience why they are sad because their ice cream dropped on the ground. Is it because they are instant gratifiers and are sad they will have to wait for another? Are they living from a limited mindset where they don’t believe they will get another? Is it because they are sympathizers and feel bad for wrecking the carpet?

By understanding the world from a greater perspective than just ourselves, we not only see how the world impacts on us but we can also gain a greater insight into how we can control that impact. There is no right or wrong way to practice empathy, but the very act of putting ourselves in another’s shoes teaches compassion, and brings a greater connection and control over our emotions. Maybe, most importantly, empathy provides a deeper insight and emotional intelligence into the way in which people are experiencing the world and therefore will guide our own behaviour to get the best out of another person. This might not seem so important, but when we remember that “no (person) is an island”, we understand the constant barrage and importance of our daily interactions with the populated world and how people can harm or help us. So get to know yourself by knowing your world and you will carve through the stormiest seas with the wind in your sails and a smile in your heart.

ELEVATE

Don’t try and change what exists. Instead create a new space for your dreams.

December 12, 2012 The Extropist 2 Comments

Each and every one of us has the option to live as an Extropist, someone who steps powerfully towards chaos and transforms the energy into a usable form. The Extropist often is working towards creating their purpose, as purpose is one of the greatest motivators that we can use to materialize our dreams. However, many of us have spent much time chasing dreams only to find that they constantly slip through our fingers. Why is it that our goals can be so slippery, and what can we do to help our chances in realizing these elusive manifestations in our life?

One thing that may help you along your path is the fact that everything that you see has already happened. That sounds a bit confusing, so let me further explain. The time it takes for light to bounce off an object to reach our eye and then be processed by our brain is milliseconds past the actual occurrence of the event itself.

This is important to note because what it means is that you will always be one step behind the event you are trying to change. This is why it can be so difficult to catch a rabbit with your hands, because the goal you are trying to reach has already moved. Therefore, don’t try to change what already exists. Instead create new conditions to move into.

The hunter knows not to chase after the rabbit but instead to create the right conditions in which the rabbit will come straight into his grasp. This is the same for catching your dreams. Know what things you need to do to have your dream come to you. If you are attracting a partner, don’t chase them around instead create the person that you need to be in which the partner will come to you. What type of person do you need to be to attract your dream partner into your life? If it’s a job, if you simply turn up to job interviews, chasing any open position, the job will already be gone by the time you arrive instead, what are the things you need to do to be an employ at your perfect job? What do the other employees of this job do? What is the company passionate about and how can your actions better create an inspiration of similar interests?

We can create changes in our lives to use our energy efficiently and effectively so that we can harness the chaos that surrounds us and use it to our advantage. This is further emphasized by the famous physicist Niels Bohr, who said, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. He meant that if there is a condition in the Universe where nothing exists, the Universe will work with great urgency to fill this space. This works all the way from quantum states and the zero-point field to more classical Newtonian states such as diffusion. What this means to our story, is that by setting up the right conditions, the Universe will actually push our dreams towards us in ways that not only seem improbable but actually impossible. But this is how some of the most amazing and magical loves have been ignited and baby businesses have boomed. It is all by setting up the right conditions within oneself and the entity than trying to chase down an elusive goal.

When you know what your dream is, instead of spending the time running around chasing it, spend some needed time to understand what conditions you need in yourself and the situation in which you can allow the dreams to come to you. Start with a piece of paper and write down exactly what your life will be like when you are living your dream. Then try and action as many of those conditions as possible so that you are beginning to create a space for your dreams that needs to be filled. In this way, Life will turn on its axis in the most unusual ways to have you realize your dreams in order that it will fill the space that you have created.

ELEVATE

Follow your Bliss…The hero’s journey always reaches their dreams

November 14, 2012 The Extropist Leave a comment

Everything that we do in life is a journey. It is in fact a hero’s journey. A journey of growth and learning on how to better ourselves by tackling the darkest aspects of ourselves. These can be fraught with dark moments of doubt and shame. But we must remember to hold strong to our dreams and know what are the essential characteristics that will allow the hero to vanquish the demons that lie before us on the road to a hero’s victory.

We can think of any task that lies before us as all part of the hero’s journey. Relationships work the same way we think of exams, and the same way we think of making money, these are a means to an end. These are tasks set before the hero to prove their worth on the road to his dreams. They are a currency that we use to reach our dream. They are the things that give us security and feed our egos but they aren’t our dreams. I have not heard of any person in their life saying, “when I grow up, I want to be a person that gets the best grades”. No, typically people dream of being a doctor or an architect or a fireman. These are of course arbitrary. The point is that they dream about becoming someone who does something of worth and provides something, whether it is their love, or something or service to the rest of the world.

When you define ‘why’ you want your dream, you elicit emotional responses deep in your physiology that will drive and motivate you with the joy you receive from your dreams to reach the person you want to be. So, who do you want to be when you grow up? Don’t think about the “how”, focus on the “what” and the “why”? What do you want to be? A doctor. Great! Why? A designer. Great! Why? A wonderful partner. Great! Why?

Your “why” will also give you an armour to protect you on this treacherous path. It will give you a resilience to keep on charging forward when you have taken a blow to your psyche and your dreams. Our love for a dream is what has every hero reach their goal, no matter what the challenge that falls before them. So give energy to define who you will be in your future and you will be able to reach whatever dream you have in your mind. The definition gives a context for why you are doing the things that precede the dream so that you can reach it. It means that when you are working on a relationship, studying, working hard to get a business started or putting in a big effort as an intern, you can use your passion for your dream to motivate you and understand that this is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Which leads me to the second part of the hero’s story. Once you understand your dream and have defined why you are taking the long journey to its gates, you then need to bring your head back from out of the clouds and focus back on your task. Whether you are studying, working, or paying your dues. You must give to the task with everything you’ve got, like this is the only step on your journey, and then you will take another step with the next task, class or client and you will give to that with everything you’ve got. Eventually, you will have taken the thousand-mile journey and walked the path one step at a time with integrity and grace. You will have learnt all that you need to prepare you to open the doors and walk through the gates of your dream.

The best thing about all of this is that originally you will begin your journey on the promise of the glory of your riches but ultimately the real treasure will have come from the journey you took to reach your dream rather than the dream itself. This is something to remember and hold in a prominent position in your mind because when you begin to feel overwhelmed by the task at hand, you can be thankful that you will overcome this obstacle, and when you do, reaching the ultimate goal will mean so much more than if it was given to you on a silver platter. So I ask that you enjoy the difficult times, remember why you are doing them to give them a context that motivates you. Give to the task at hand like it is the only task that you have to do and give to it with all your might, energy and love.

With these tools at your hand, you will be able to tackle any troubling times to reach any goal that you have and bring a new richness to any and every task that lies before you. You are the hero of your life and the only person that needs to believe in you… is you. Good LucK and Follow Your Bliss!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAE8fPbXr58&w=560&h=315]

ELEVATE

Dream Big, Think Small

October 3, 2012 The Extropist 2 Comments

So often we find ourselves asking the question what does it all mean? Why am I here and what am I doing? We usually find ourselves asking this same question in the same place. A place that is the most relevant to be asking and more often than not the most depressing space, and that is… our job. So often our careers are the most dissatisfying element of our lives, yet they are where we spend the most amount of time. We spend in fact, outside of sleeping, the majority of our day at work. So what is work and what can it be for us? It can be that which truly fulfills and nourishes who we are inside. It is not just a proxy to our dreams, it is the real thing. Our work is the space where we can step forward and fulfill our purpose. This is a very important idea, because it answers the age-old question why are we here? Well each person is here to answer their own question. Another way of saying this is that there is no meaning to life except for the meaning that you give it. That meaning is your dream!

The bigger the dream you choose the harder it will be to fulfill, but also the more meaning you will receive from life. Taking meaning from life fulfills you as you step towards that dream. For instance, if your dream goal is to make $1000, you will work towards it and reach that goal and then what? You will have to make another goal. There is nothing wrong with this and it is actually a very effective method, when you know what the FINAL outcome is. The big dream that you are trying to reach. This may be daunting to think what this dream could be, but once you select it you can then begin to take steps towards it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of optimal functioning, said initially the goal justifies the means but ultimately the means justifies the goal. What this means is that while you originally thought the luster of the treasure at the end of the rainbow is what will give you the satisfaction in life, in fact it’s the journey that you went on to get to the that makes the dream and the life all worthwhile.

So why tell you all this? It’s because while you have to dream big you have to also think small. Because if you try to contemplate the magnitude of your dreams you will become overwhelmed and literally become nauseas from the great heights you will have to climb. What I mean by ‘think small’ is only focus on the step in front of you and give everything you have to that one step. Think about everything that you will need to do and break them up into smaller packets of events. If those seem too big then break those down. Each one is like a brick in the wall. Instead of focusing on the wall and the thousands of bricks you have to lift up and put in place only focus on the brick itself and make sure that you really put it in place properly. If the brick is too big break it up. It’s more important that you can handle the brick than get to your goal quickly. As my friend said to me, “you don’t have to eat the elephant in one go”.

Remember what Aesop told us about the hare and the tortoise. Life is not a race, you are running only for yourself. Find patience and pace yourself by what you need to accomplish to reach the finishing line of your dream. If you compare yourself with those faster than you, you will be overwhelmed and doubt yourself and your chances. If you compare yourself with those slower than you, you will become arrogant and sloppy. Focus only on the tasks in front of you and give to them. You won’t waste your resources thinking about other people or your performance capabilities. Keep your attention outside on what you have to accomplish.

Slow and steady wins the race.
Aesop (Greek slave & fable author, 620 BC – 560 BC)

What does this mean in a real-life application? If you were talking about a dream job? What are the things you need to do to get the job? Know the job you want. Know the person you need to be for that job emotionally, mentally and physically. See yourself in that job and understand the things that you will do. Know the reason why you want the job. Understand that it is in your planning that you will become clear on who we need to be now to reach our dreams. Sun Tzu (Chinese General – The Art of War, 500 BC) said “Now, the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.”

We must understand the person we need to be for our dream. Whilst we have patience for the dream we have to embody the person that we will become. We have to take an active role in our transformation of becoming the hero of our journey. To take the planning further and create a greater belief of the hero in you. So know what you will do when you get the job. Know who you will tell and how you will feel. Know what this job means to you and write it down. Write it all down and take action where you can. Take action and give powerfully to every life detail of your big life dreams. Life wants you to take the reins and give the meaning that only you know it can have for you, because when you are the main actor in your life… Well then, all the world is your stage!

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New Health comes from Knowing the ‘What’ and the ‘Why’

August 22, 2012 The Extropist Leave a comment

One of our most important creations, if not our most important, is health. There is a beautiful truth in the saying, “if we don’t have our health we don’t have anything”. There is a great wisdom in this as we always must remember that our bodies are our temples and our engines. They need sanctity as well as maintenance. And we can do both those thing through respecting ourselves by giving to ourselves time, space and love through gratitude. There are times however when our bodies break down and require maintenance from inappropriate or over use. We then get sick or have afflictions that need to be remedied. There are always lessons to be learnt with affliction and we can look at these with great gratitude and openness for without them we may have completely run off the rails and no longer exist.

When we have a problem with our bodies, we look for ways to heal ourselves. Through the advances of medical science we as a civilization have created many physical healing aids that have led to a great boon in medical practice and ultimately the well-being of its patients. Outside of the medical practice there has been many examples of more energetic phenomenon, which have not yet been explainable by traditional medical science and instead labeled miracles. And then there have been advances in the mind and psychology that have taught people how to best progress with such afflictions and how to create a change in their mindset to rectify what the suffering they may be causing themselves.

I bring all this to your attention because your subconscious mind connects with life and the Universe around us in many different ways and the path of healing is not a single road. In particular, neither is the way life likes to travel in the Universe’s matrix. Therefore, you can create whatever dream you have by using the steps of Asking for what changes you want in your life to occur, Believe and act that it is possible, and open yourself up to Receive as we have to believe that we are worthy of a change for it to happen. Thus to Receive you must believe you Deserving. So instead of getting bogged down by the intellectual elements of the how things are going to happen, which only limit the avenues of life to work in the Universe, focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ things are going to happen.

The ‘what’ is the power of your thought. It creates the image, or the blueprint, of the reality that you want to create in your life. However your thoughts are only that, blueprints they are as thin as paper. What you need is some real power and that comes from the ‘why’. Why do you want to be healed? What is working in your life with this ailment? What will work better in your life when you are healed? What will you do in your life when you are healed?

When you know not only the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’ of the things you want to create in your life, and you leave the infinite possibility of ‘how’ up to the Universe, then you will be well on your way to creating great change in your life and bring beautiful and radiant health. So write a list of what you want to happen and then write why. Write all the things you are grateful for doing and experiencing when you feel great. Try and feel how it feels when you feel great and when you feel grateful for those things that make you feel great. Your positivity and joy is a great healer and will begin you on your journey to health along with the purpose you find from your why’s defined by what you want in your life.

ELEVATE

Become a Creator and Thrive through the Hard Times

August 6, 2012 The Extropist Leave a comment

When someone speaks ill of you or about something you associate yourself with, they are taking from you. When someone takes something from you, like you dignity or feeling of self-worth, then you want to take back. Often we do this by finding ourselves in an argument or agreeing with them and feeling bad about ourselves. There are two ways in which to work under these conditions in which to grow the most from them. The first is to unidentify from who you think you are and instead realize that you are who you are at that moment. It then hurts because people are creating a split in what you think your reality is versus what they think what reality is and so because of that dissonance we fight to diminish their projected reality in order that we can hold our own as real. We can therefore give no credence to their words or we cannot be attached to our own.

While this can be effective in knowing about our fight for a stable reality, there is another way however that can be more effective and more easily understood and actioned. For this to work we first must consider the age-old law of the Newtonian Universe – every action has an opposite and equal reaction. In other words, by giving you shall receive. This means in these difficult situations in which people are taking from you, you can ensure within yourself that you are not taking but giving through an understanding that they know not what they are creating for themselves. These people will undoubtedly be taken from to balance out the Newtonian equation. It is not for you to be that person to try to rebalance it, but trust that in these actions, there are always consequences in order to rebalance the Universe. Therefore, you don’t always have to be the person that conveys the lesson in what they are doing wrong but show them through your positive way of being how the situation can be. They will experiences the consequences of their destructive behaviour and if you are the person who tries to show it to them it means that you may only be creating an even greater moment of destruction in your own life.

There is always an energy equation in everything that takes place in the Universe and thus will always need to be balanced. When a person expels negative energy out into the Universe this will undoubtedly be rebalanced by the person receiving this energy back. Therefore this provides an amazing opportunity for you to practice compassion Learn more in: Compassion is a Tool to Rule your Heart (http://bit.ly/N0XH6k). In compassion comes an immeasurable act of giving that will unequivocally give back to you ten fold if you can give back to a person that is trying to take from you. When you can transform a negative situation into a positive one, you become a creator. A creator is part of what it means to be an Extropist, a person that changes the spin of the chaotic cycle to one of harmony and greater sophistication. As a creator you work to lift the total energy of this world toward a positive balance. As history progresses we have become ever more complex, sophisticated and conscientious to the point where we will naturally turn the tides from a world that is framed with negative events to one that is ever more connected and harmonious.

So I offer that through these difficult times you find compassion for these types of people who know not what they are doing and find a sense of love for whom they are and the journey they have been on. When you watch a film about a person’s transformation from a bad to a good person, you always see that the hero has been through hell along their journey and so too will the person that is making you feel bad. They are typically fighting a very hard battle with themselves and it just so happens that they are releasing their negativity on you, the obliging person in front of them. So hold strong to the beautiful and powerful person that you are, and understand the consequences of their actions. Instead you can give openly to a person taking and that you can become a creator, who simply in this one act of compassion has helped change the world into a better place.

ELEVATE

Realizing how small you are in the Universe leaves you feeling BIG

July 30, 2012 The Extropist 3 Comments

In looking at the way of the world and how it works, we can consider a time gone by when the world was heavily influenced by God. God helped explain our actions and drove our choices. We needed God to help explain the mystery of life AND death. We needed God to explain why the world worked the way that it did, and we needed God to help us work out where we were headed as a world.

You see, we used religion and God to help explain the framework of how life operated, so that we could have a sense of control and a feeling of safety in this chaotic world. This, however, lead to some interesting and questionable choices by religion in order to protect the stability of its framework. Religion declared war on those around them that spoke of a different framework of life and thus, provided alternative arguments that may endanger the stability found in the current framework of life. Time and time again we read of people doing unthinkable and amoral actions in order to protect the mental framework that affords them so much security about the way life works.

As the world gained in its wealth of cumulative knowledge through the Gospel of Science, people found more concrete and reliable answers about the framework of life that appeared to supersede even God. Slowly but surely, as information became the ever-greater currency, God was no longer needed to help keep our reality concrete. With each passing generation humanity moved further and further away from looking to God and the dogma of religion for answers about how to be in this world.

Whilst people have found a great freedom in Science that allows them to let go of some of the antiquated rituals of the past, unfortunately many of those rituals included guides not only about the way things worked but about how people worked. Without many of these ideas from religion, we were never taught about life being so much bigger than who we are, about not taking things so personally, or about the fact that dreams are possible simply by will. Without the values of religion we were never taught about sanctities of friendship, about mutual respect, about living with appreciation and wonder. Without religion we were thrown into a world of chaos and isolation that left us no sense of continuity of life and death and life with other life.

When we left the education of our values to sensationalized and pop media, no wonder we are left to see children with guns and drugs, people with the full gamut of unseen and unknown mental illness as well as the shameless exploitation of the world we live in. When we did away with religion, we through the baby out with bath water and left no moral grounding for our highest values to grow from. In the modern world we may have gained a stronger framework for reality but lost the framework for being human.

Whilst the role of religion degraded and money pervaded, there had been a simultaneous new framework that grew out of the decline of the old religious dogma. The hippy movement, while too extreme for the times, began to trial ideas of high values taken from many of the great religions from around the globe. They synthesized these ideas into a place that required no regiment to control with, no positions of power to be abused and no codes to punish with. A sense of personal responsibility was incited and personal freedom was highlighted.

Unfortunately when you give a child matches when they have not properly learnt how to handle the responsibility of the power in their hands they will inevitably get burnt. However, slowly over time, the populous matures with more and more people learning about their own personal responsibility, their symbiotic connection to the world around them and the gift and majesty that life is. This new framework is one without dogma, a more free-flowing construct that embraces the highest ideals of who we are and who we can be for each other and the world. This new framework, we can call “Spirituality”. We can be religious and not spiritual, we can be both and we can be spiritual without religion.
I offer you these following elements as a place to begin opening yourself to your spirituality:

Everyday for the next two weeks, start your day by giving thanks for ten things in your life and end your day by giving thanks for the best thing that happened to you that day. This begins to open you up to the wonder of your life that you are so lucky to experience.

Meditate for ten minutes, by sitting comfortably, closing your eyes and focus on your in and out breath. When you lose your mind to turmoil, catch your thoughts and bring your mind back to your breath. By meditating, we create a space separate from the world, where we can see that there is a peace within us. We create a buffer from the chaos and randomness of life, and with patience learn to let it blow over us like a storm. We teach ourselves to slow down and simplify our lives, that all we need to feel good is to breathe.

Finally, walk in a park, go on a hike or walk in nature. Really pay attention to all that you are a part of. Notice that this is one moment, in one place, on a world that is filled with unimaginable amounts of such beauty and moments in a Universe that is infinitely larger than what we could even try to understand. Truly think about how big that actually is, and you can see within all of this exists that you are one moment in the mix of many. Whilst that may be overwhelming at first I offer that you can simply be glad to know that you have been given the opportunity to collaborate and contribute to the workings of the Universe, and know that you have the ability to leave this place better than when you found it simply by smiling at your neighbor, helping out a stranger, and hugging someone who you love.

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