An old work colleague of mine once stated to me that in his opinion “humanity has proven itself to be a failed divine experiment”.

I must admit that when I first heard this unsolicited comment I was shocked and rather dismayed. How could this possibly be I asked myself as surely all human beings or at least most of us adhere to some sort of ethical and moral standards of conduct particularly those persons we have elected to political office and upon whom we have bestowed certain privileges that go with their offices as stewards and guardians of our countries?

Recent events around the world and in particular Syria are fertile ground for supporting the notion that a significant proportion of those in power have got it horribly wrong. So lets look at what now seems to have occurred:

1. On the ground independent observers in Syria have discovered that atrocities have been committed by both sides in this conflict and that fundamentalist extremist groups are being armed by Western powers. Apparently there is alot of money to be made in manufacturing and supplying weaponry to those who are prepared to pay regardless of their intentions.
2. The same Western powers who are supplying the weapons to the so-called resistance denounce the violence and killing in Syria.
3. Ten months after the conflict breaks out the UK approves the sale of chemicals that can be used to make the poisonous gas Sarin to the Government of Syria.
4. The Syrian regime uses Sarin on its own people causing widespread death.
5. Both the US and UK denounce this barbaric action and threaten an immediate armed response. Weapons manufacturers rub there hands together with glee at the prospect of another war. 
6. The UK Government is surprised when it cannot get the numbers it needs to ratify support for the US lead intervention in Syria. The US is on its own and is quickly backtracking.
7. Other countries such as Iran threaten acts of violence against Israel should the US attack Government targets in Syria. Russia increases its military presence in the area.
8. The United Nations Security Council proves to be toothless in the face of opposition to intervention by some of the big players such as Russia and China.

This stuff is far too crazy and farfetched to be believable fiction yet it is playing out in real life on the world stage! If you were to ask a visitor from another galaxy/planet what they thought about all of this it is most likely they would shake their heads (if they had heads that is) and use words that when translated meant “insanity”, “bonkers”, ‘fucked-up” and so on…However, these events are not isolated – look at what is happening in Egypt and elsewhere, look at the violence being perpetrated in the name of political, religious and economic expediency, look at the poverty of many and the wealth of a few, look at the extent that the freedom of expression of individuals throughout the world is being impinged upon by state sanctioned spying. One could be excused for thinking that “its all going to hell in a handbasket!”

There is a cure for these malignant dis-eases and it simply requires a daily does of Integrity, truth, compassion, kindness, forgiveness and love for each other regardless of race or creed. Ironically this all has coincided with the recent celebration of Dr Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I had a dream..” and that historic rally that was held to promote inclusiveness rather than separation and divisiveness.

We all have to be prepared to awaken from our apathy and to speek our minds. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. We are now more connected than we have ever been before and we can find out what is going on around the world at the click of a button. What matters is what we do in our own lives that promotes the cure for our global malaise.

Peace is and has always been the answer we just need to embrace it.

“Sow a thought, reap an action, sow an action, reap a habit, sow a habit reap a character, sow a character reap a destiny” Anonymous

 The Loop

 Events + data (information) = truth (meaning) + thoughts + emotions + actions = results which produce events:

 No result (event) can occur without some form of action being taken.

• No action can be taken without an emotional driver.
•  Most emotions are generated by a prior thought (NB body/chemical impacts).
• Many of our thoughts comprise unconscious thinking patterns that have been generated as a consequence of what we believe about life (our filter of perspective or personal truths).
• Our personal truths are the unique meanings we have attributed to what we have experienced in life so far (events).
• Poor information in = poor results

The age old question “What is the purpose of life?” has been the topic of many a worthy treatise yet many proferred answers go only part of the way in answering it.

Some of the usual answers to that question include happiness, love, peace, joy, wisdom, growth and learning. While these may be by-products of the purpose of life they are only part of the answer.

If we accept that we contain within us the spark of the divine then our purpose must include a spiritual element as well as mental and physical elements – the triune of spirit, mind and body. Unfortunately for us we appear to have lost our spirit connection which is the light within us and spend our lives expressing and experiencing only the mental and physical elements of existence.

From a divine perspective (if there is even such a thing) our lives give us the opportunity to express and experience more of our true essence in the duality of physical form. Yet while our inner light still shines we have covered that up with the debris of life much like the Golden Buddha the true nature of which had been covered  for 200 years in layers of mud and grime.
Continue reading →

This is part of an ongoing series of articles on business and life coaching by Hutt Valley lawyer and coach, John Gray. You can find his first book, “Who’s Following This Conversation?” on amazon.com.

We are all today afflicted by a very serious and highly contagious mental dis-ease which keeps us imprisoned, isolated and destined to keep making the same mistakes which have resulted in the many faceted crises facing us all today at both a global and interpersonal level. It is a dis-ease which is fostered and nurtured by our societies that have been constructed by a ruling elite hungry for more and more power and control.

The dis-ease I am talking about here is – FEAR.

This dis-ease is indoctrinated into us at a very young age and is nourished throughout our juvenile and adult lives. We have been brainwashed to believe that the world is not a safe place and that we are separate and alone. We have been bombarded by our politicians, educationalists, clergy and jurists with misinformation designed to lead us away from the real TRUTH and to keep us enslaved and focussed on survival. False Evidence Appearing Real has become the tried and tested philosophy used to prevent us from discovering our One True Reality that we are all aspects of the One Divine Creation and as such are always connected, safe and loved.

We are constantly reminded when we open a newspaper or turn on a television set about how unsafe we all are -the top articles and news items are without exception about violent acts, murder, disasters and a multitude of other abhorrent acts. It’s little wonder we are reluctant to lower of our defences and show our vulnerability. We exhibit the side-effects of the dis-ease of fear through being highly competitive, reactive, possessive and narcissistic. We have become so scared of life that we tremble at the sight of our own shadows and continue to allow ourselves to be manipulated. We have become prisoners in our own uniquely warped versions of reality which we protect with our lives.

The good news though is that there is an antidote to this disease which has become a malignant cancer on the face of humanity. That antidote is the LOVE DRUG! Fear is illusory and its darkness dissipates in the bright light of love. Fear only gains a foothold in the absence of love it can never replace love which is the ultimate reality.

Attached is a link to a talk by Dr Bruce Lipton acclaimed bestselling author and biologist. He makes some pertinent observations about how our beliefs can affect us at a cellular level. If we are facing problems in our lives then it is more than likely our closely held beliefs have caused us to experience these challenges. If you want to get a snapshot of what you believe about yourself and life just look at what you are experiencing in life right now. If you don’t like what you see then change your belief about what is troubling you.

There are many disciplines, tools and processes available that can help us to change our hardwired beliefs. Our coaching programmes incorporate many of these processes. Can you afford to continue to go it alone down a path which has led you to where you are right now particularly if that path leads to disease and death?

Namaste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBKoyrsuGoY&feature=youtu.be

While I am an avid fan of the television series “Dr Who”, I know that time does not exist – only clocks exist. Time is a linear progression of many moments linked together to give the appearance of a homogeneous whole – our lives.

We have simply reached a tacit global consensus that we will alow our lives to be dominated by an artificial construct. We have confused this shared construct with something that is real and tangible and as a consequence have become its slave. We are no longer Lords of Time. We have become its prisoners. Continue reading →

This is part of an ongoing series of articles on business and life coaching by Hutt Valley lawyer and coach, John Gray. You can find his first book, “Who’s Following This Conversation?” on amazon.com.

We are supposed to be respectful of others’ beliefs, cultural imperatives and psychology but does that mean we have to tolerate the bad behaviour that these can lead to?

We are all free (well as free as anyone can be within societal and environmental constraints) to live our lives as fully expressed and unique human beings. However, there does come a point when who we are being and what we are doing can impact negatively on other people and we cannot expect others to continue to tolerate our crap.

Our crap can vary from low level negative behaviours to extreme and dangerous behaviours and everything in between. We would most probably all agree that it is not okay for other people to hurt others physically or emotionally in an attempt to make themselves feel better about their lives or to gain power over others. When lives are taken in the name of religious, political or cultural rhetoric those acting violently towards others cannot vindicate themselves through the deluded belief that the ends justifies the means or that vengeance is required to somehow balance the scales of justice and fairness or to otherwise push a secular agenda. Such beliefs arise from small mindedness and the fear that it engenders.

We are in the world today facing ever increasing levels of stupidity from irresponsible, narcissistic and childish dictators, dysfunctional corporations and individuals motivated by power and greed. On the one hand we have nations threatening nuclear war as a negotiating stance, fundamentalist extremists blowing up innocent people to prove a point and individuals going on killing sprees in schools. There are families at war with each other fighting over money and other stupid stuff. There are individuals unable to forgive and move on with their lives.

We are at the mercy of our own small immature EGO driven lives.

There are no excuses. Time is short and we need to do a whole lot of growing up really quickly if we are going to save our planet, survive and fulfil our true potential.

So what can you and I do about all of this?

We can stop tolerating this stuff and fix our mental focus on what we can do in our own lives to engender peace, harmony, respect, love, compassion and to reflect the perfection of our Divine inheritance. We don’t need to trample over others in order to live fulfilling and rich lives because we embody that already- we have simply forgotten who we are – WE ARE DIVINE SPIRITUAL BEINGS.

We are uniquely individuated notes on the vast manuscript of the Divinely inspired and created ONESONG (universe). When we remember this we no longer need to seek to empower ourselves through external stimulus and can find all that we need within ourselves. Let us sing our unique song in peace and harmony.

Modern world thinking has in the last Century at least been influenced by the predominant belief that our lives are controlled by our DNA. Afterall why wouldn’t we believe this – this is the dogma that we have had drummed into us at school! We have been programmed to believe that our physiology has been so engineered that we are little more than flesh and bone “robots”.

As this belief has gained such a foothold in our psyches we regard our talents and even our disabilities as the consequences of our inherited gene codes. The natural extension of this belief is that we are the victims of our own heredity. This has resulted in the global epidemic characterised by a lack of self-responsibility both as individuals and as a civilization. This is not surprising if we believe ourselves to be at the mercy of our gene pool! Continue reading →

The focus of health care in modern society is the quick treatment of physiological symptoms regardless of cost and potential harmful side effects to patients. An example would be the dispensing of the anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac which is liberally prescribed by GPs to alleviate pain generated by swollen muscles and sprains. What you are not told, however, is that the drug increases the chance of heart attacks by about 60 percent! Another example is the over prescription of anti-depressants for the relief of stress and anxiety. These anti-depressant drugs may well be useful in severe cases for short periods of time however, long term use can have insidious impacts on our lives.

So the potential side effects of such drugs can be significantly more deleterious than the original complaints. So why is this occurring – surely this cannot be in the public benefit?

Well, the simple answer, whether we like it or not, is that the prescribing of drugs has little to do with health and more to do with the corporate greed of international pharmaceutical companies. These companies will only peddle drugs if they can obtain patents for them and sell them at usurious profits. There are many examples where promising cures for diseases like cancer have been shelved because the pharmaceutical companies were unable to secure patents over the constituent components of the cures and therefore could not generate profits from their sale. It does not seem to matter whether people are dying unpleasant and dehumanising deaths from these diseases. It would therefore be easy to dismiss Western medicine and its trappings altogether if it were not for the good that has been achieved amid the greed of these corporations.

GPs these days work long hours every day and they simply do not have the time to spend in searching out alternative cures for our aches and pains and can be excused for resorting to dispensing short term relief at the flourish of a pen. Healthcare unfortunately has fallen prey like everything else in our modern society to the relentless pressure of the working day where hours worked must correlate to money earned.

The future of effective healthcare therefore lies not in the sole reliance on Western medicine but on a combination of this and other alternative medical traditions and natural health care remedies. Such non mainstream traditions include homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, hypnotherapy, emotional freedom technique and many others. Many of these traditions do not just focus on alleviating symptoms but also focus on generating cures. They focus on the individual as a whole person comprising a mind and body.

Much research today shows that many modern day ailments arise from both mental and physical dis-eases. A fully balanced health care system would ensure that all patients had access to the best possible solutions for their ailments rather than the limited number of solutions we are currently given today.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way. Continue reading →