Stagers Mind of Calm

The Tuesday Meeting of The Ten Stages discussed Viktor Frankl on the Art of Presence as a Lifeboat in Turbulent Times and What Suffering Teaches Us about the Meaning of Life

2017-09-26T18:26:00.001+01:00

Tuesdays 10 stage Meeting discussed the work of Viktor Frankl on the Art of Presence as a Lifeboat in Turbulent Times and What Suffering Teaches Us about the Meaning of Life:

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The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science | Life and style | The Guardian

2017-09-25T06:42:00.001+01:00

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science | Life and style | The Guardian:

'via Blog this'

The Ten Stages is a studied recovery course. It is a source of reconnection a method of unlearning and a reintroduction to our child within which leads us back to our one true intuitive voice.We start to learn and come out of our protective dysfunctional shell and reclaim our lives. www.thetenstages.com

Stagers Mind of Calm is the modern meditation technique that proves the secret to success is ten stage stillness.

2017-09-25T05:52:00.002+01:00

Stagers Mind of Calm is the modern meditation technique that proves the secret to success is ten stage stillness.

Instead of having to stop our thoughts, change our emotions or perfect our life before we can enjoy serenity and recovery. Mind of Calm can help us to access the inner perfect child within of calm, clarity, confidence and contentment - Quickly. While also helping us to perform at our best, sleep better, access our intuition and creativity and connect with others.

Stagers Mind of Calm works by helping us to change our relationship with our perfect child within by being 'consciously aware' during daily life. Different from mindfulness because it is awareness-based instead of mind-based, you can enjoy the big benefits of Stagers Mind of Calm anytime and anywhere. If we want to stop our minds from working overtime, worry less, feel better and get more done with less stress, then Stagers Mind of Calm is the modern-day meditation technique .

Remind yourself that eating a potato chip with Kindfulness is vitally important.

2016-03-23T23:32:00.001+00:00

Remind yourself that eating a potato chip with Kindfulness is vitally important.

Kindfulness brings in more, that in modern times we're losing that connection with our heart

2016-03-23T23:00:00.001+00:00

What mindfulness has come to be -- which is being aware and accepting -- is about a technique, and it really needs to be something broader and deeper. Mindfulness really needs to include people's motivations. In short, mindfulness lacks heart, and you could also say it lacks soul because it is lacking a depth. What mindfulness has come to be -- which is being aware and accepting -- is about a technique, and it really needs to be something broader and deeper. Mindfulness really needs to include people's motivations. In short, mindfulness lacks heart, and you could also say it lacks soul because it is lacking a depth. Kindfulness brings in more, that in modern times we're losing that connection with our heart

Our Solution the practice of lovingkindness in everyday life

2015-12-11T00:43:00.001+00:00

Our Solution the practice of lovingkindness in everyday life

We don’t just cultivate ,lovingkindness, in our meditation. It can be cultivated, and eventually experienced, in every aspect of our lives.

We can take lovingkindness practice into our daily lives, and develop it in our interactions with friends, family, and even with strangers. As with anything else, practice helps us to become better at what we do. Of course we’ll make mistakes — we’ll lose our tempers, harbour grudges, have irrational dislikes, fail to be compassionate even when our friends are suffering — but making mistakes is just a part of the process of learning any skill. The important thing is that we try to learn from our experience. But one of the lovely things about developing lovingkindness is that our mess-ups offer us an opportunity to develop greater kindness toward ourselves. We have the opportunity to realise that “to err is human.” We have the opportunity to forgive ourselves.

Really what we’re talking about when we’re discussing taking lovingkindness into daily life is practicing ethics. But this isn’t ethics understood in terms of obeying rules, or in terms of escaping punishments and earning rewards (LovingKindness has its own rewards, but they are simply the natural consequences of our actions, not something handed out by an external judge). What we’re talking about is in developing a quality of awareness that is kindly and compassionate. And this quality of awareness leads to us acting, more and more, in a naturally kind way. It’s said in fact, that someone who is enlightened no longer has to practice ethics. They’re naturally ethical, because acting with meditation and compassion comes naturally when you’re enlightened.

Until we’re enlightened we do have to work at being kinder and more compassionate to ourselves and others, but in time we find that it comes naturally, just as with learning any other skill.

Cultivating LovingKindness in meditation has an effect on how we behave in our daily lives. Even if we don’t notice that we’re kinder, other people often do. But how we act in our daily lives also affects how easy it is to cultivate lovingkindness in our meditation practice. If you’ve been finding fault with others all day, or have been involved in arguments, when you sit down to meditate you’re going to find that your mind is turbulent and conflicted. The arguments and fault-finding will continue in your mind, even though you’re the only person there.

On the other hand if, during the day, you let go of critical thoughts whenever you notice them, try to speak kindly, and try to empathise with others even if you disagree with them, then when you sit in meditation you’re going to find that you feel better about yourself and that it’s easier to connect with a sense of kindness.

So the relationship between meditation and daily life is a two-way street. Each has effects on the other. If we are trying to cultivate lovingkindness in meditation but are acting in our daily lives in a way that undermines our kindness, then we’re obviously going to get “stuck” in our development.

In fact this might be one of the most common causes of lack of progress in meditation – that we are busy undoing the effects of our meditation while at work or with friends and families. So we need to look at every aspect of our lives and see to what extent it helps or hinders our development of LovingKindness.

We, have been conditioning ourselves

2015-12-10T14:55:00.001+00:00

We, have been conditioning ourselves, or more accurately, allowing ourselves to be conditioned through family, relationships, community, and religious views for so long that we have lost the use of our individual intuition to manage on our own lives.

Krack our Konditioning

2015-12-10T14:49:00.001+00:00

Think for ourself, trust the process. “Krack our Konditioning.” Let’s kYk it! It’s time for a r-evolution for the body, mind, and spirit.

Join us as we embark on this journey of cracking our social and personal conditioning and finding a way back to our true Selves our child hidden within.

We cannot drop a ball unless we are holding it in our hand.

2015-12-10T14:39:00.001+00:00

Recovery is not about renouncing the world. It is not about renouncing anything. It is rather an opening to what is, and a realisation of the perfection of what is.

This is accomplished by realising the nature of illusion as it is generated by the personal self -- me, my desires and my fears. That, combined with a passionate and abiding interest in ultimate truth, are the twin tools for recognising the true nature of reality. However -- and this is a crucial point -- to recognise the illusions of the personal self does not mean that we leap over the personal self, in some mis-guided attempt to bypass it rapidly, to dismiss it as illusion, when in fact we are still in its grips. If we attempt this we will likely fail. Instead, what is required is a full investigation of the personal self, a mature willingness to be responsible for its manifestations, and to take full ownership of it.

We cannot drop a ball unless we are holding it in our hand. We cannot drop the delusions of the personal self until we have seen and understood the full extent of our identification with it. This requires a profound level of honesty, and a consistent willingness to face within.

The essential difference between animals and humans is the ability to self-reflect.

2015-12-09T23:46:00.000+00:00

The essential difference between animals and humans is the ability to self-reflect. A chimpanzee, our closest genetic relative (around 99% similar in DNA), can be taught to do basically everything a human can, though of course at a more generally primitive level. But no chimp can self-reflect, that is, take that mental and spiritual leap of stepping outside of himself and seeing himself from an alternate perspective, or realizing consciously that he is alive, that his heart is beating, that he is walking the planet, that he will die someday, and that the moon is overhead.
A human being is capable of great degrees of self-reflection, but few people achieve much of it, and many of the most intellectually sophisticated achieve little at all. Essentially they live their lives as highly intelligent animals. They work, they solve great intellectual problems, they learn complex skills, they multi-task at profound levels, they have profound memories, they learn numerous languages with radically different syntaxes, they mate in unusual and complex ways – but they often never stop to truly reflect on their existences, much less the utter depths of their existences.
To fully become a full human being – that is, a fully enlightened human being – one has to master the art of self-reflection. This involves resolving one’s deepest traumas, opening the deepest doors to one’s core, and then taking the terrifying and beautiful leap of looking within. The answers to all our species’ problems are there.
The answers to the whole universe are there.
And there is where it is our responsibility to go.

At the Ten Stages we recognise that meditation uses words, images, and feelings to evoke a lovingkindness and friendliness toward oneself and others is the healing balm of our practice.

2015-12-07T15:10:00.000+00:00

At the Ten Stages we recognise that meditation uses words, images, and feelings to evoke a lovingkindness and friendliness toward oneself and others is the healing balm of our practice.

With each recitation of the phrases, we are expressing an intention, planting the seeds of loving wishes over and over in our heart.

With a loving heart as the background, all that we attempt, all that we encounter will open and flow easily.

You can begin the practice of lovingkindness by meditating for fifteen or twenty minutes in a quiet place. Let yourself sit in a comfortable fashion. Let your body rest and be relaxed. Let your heart be soft. Let go of any plans and preoccupations.

Begin with yourself. Breathe gently, and recite inwardly the following traditional phrases directed to your own well-being. You begin with yourself because without loving yourself it is almost impossible to love others.

May I be filled with lovingkindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May I be well in body and mind.

May I be at ease and happy.

As you repeat these phrases, picture yourself as your are now, and hold that image in a heart of lovingkindness. Or perhaps you will find it easier to picture yourself as a young and beloved child. Adjust the words and images in any way you wish. Create the exact phrases that best open your heart of kindness. Repeat these phrases over and over again, letting the feelings permeate your body and mind. Practice this meditation for a number of weeks, until the sense of lovingkindness for yourself grows.

Be aware that this meditation may at times feel mechanical or awkward. It can also bring up feelings contrary to lovingkindness, feelings of irritation and anger. If this happens, it is especially important to be patient and kind toward yourself, allowing whatever arises to be received in a spirit of friendliness and kind affection.

When you feel you have established some stronger sense of lovingkindness for yourself, you can then expand your meditation to include others. After focusing on yourself for five or ten minutes, choose a benefactor, someone in your life who has loved or truly cared for you. Picture this person and carefully recite the same phrases:

May you be filled with lovingkindness.

May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May you be well in body and mind.

May you be at ease and happy.

Let the image and feelings you have for your benefactor support the meditation. Whether the image or feelings are clear or not does not matter. In meditation they will be subject to change. Simply continue to plant the seeds of loving wishes, repeating the phrases gently no matter what arises.

Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find lovingkindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in lovingkindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart.

When all the shame and blame have passed. As we retrace our child withins history, we inevitably reach an ancestral place

2015-12-03T20:28:00.001+00:00

When all the shame and blame have passed. As we retrace our child withins history, we inevitably reach an ancestral place of connection. That of the Child Withins connection to the ancestral genetic chain....Ghosts, so claim the distinguished Hungarian psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Mária Török, are psychological unfinished business. Whereas for Freud it is individual repressed traumas that return to haunt us, for Abraham and Török, repressed traumas can be transmitted down the generations. And this repression often comes in the form of family secrets.

"What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others," they wrote. Ghosts, like dreams, constitute a return of the repressed children hidden within. They are traumas that have not received a proper burial. Too painful to mourn, they are avoided and passed down the family tree. And the point about ghosts is that they have a way of coming back to haunt you when you least expect them. Assimilation only ever runs so deep.

One of the threads that runs through so many of our child withins lives is shame. Not for what we had done, but for what our parents, grandparents, and other ancestors had done. It is as though what our forebears did had somehow become our story, and we feel implicated—as we though they had done it, or inherited it, or would pass it on.

Another theme is lack of maternal love: mothers who were unwilling or unable to provide physical and emotional security, affection, solace, and caring because of their own limitations, blind spots, mental illness, or emotional genealogy. In some cases, the cruel hand of fate removed a mother through death.

A third thread is absence: adults who were physically there, but emotionally remote or not present. Or who sent their children away to orphanages, boarding school, foster families, or to live with other family members.

There are shared stories of violence, emotional and physical trauma, drug or alcohol abuse, lying, secrets, scathing words, denial.

The goal is not to dwell on problems, but to look at what each of us has inherited emotionally, and how we can transform that inheritance, release it, or release our fear of it in order to live fuller, more satisfying lives. We had to separate our own child withins story from the story of those who came before us. Their mistakes were not ours. We had to swing open the closet door and look fearlessly at the skeletons that were rattling around in there. And then we had to close the door. There was forgiveness, self-forgiveness, commitment to make better, freer choices for our unique child within finally shedding our ancestral bonds.

Our behaviour patterns can actually pass down in our genes. As our lives progress, something turns those genes on….and, something can turn them off.The Ten Stage course of recovery assimilates that change process.

True Recovery comes through the true self, our child within.

2015-12-03T14:36:00.001+00:00

True Recovery comes through the true self, our child within. The perfect conduit for recovery is an honest person—pure of heart, healed of trauma. For recovery to come through us without distortion, we must not be barricaded by defences or poisoned by resentments from the past. We must become a clear child within.

If we are living not from our child within but from a defended, distorted reality we will fail to recover truly. If, in childhood, we have hidden our true selves from the crippling clutches of our history,familial and ancestral a world that would crush us and we have not healed this, our adult expressions of recovery will be distorted. Until our true self is redeemed, our recovery will be filtered through our child’s murky memories of terror and betrayal and will always have a hidden agenda: a secret, unconscious need for rescue, and when that fails—revenge. We will be incapable of affirming the fullness of life in those we claim to love and we will even doubt our own lovability—and withhold affection from ourselves.

The source of our compromised ability to recover is rooted in the necessary defences that we built in childhood. We built these emotional defences to protect our pure essence from the violations we received from our parents and others. Until we carefully dismantle our defences through our painful grieving process, they will cloud and distort our recovery. If we refuse to heal, our attempts to recover will never be true.

But if we do recover, if we do grieve our past, we will be able to recover, deeply and truly.

We need to walk in our own nurturance, delight in the pleasure of our own company, and contact our own child within

2015-12-03T14:09:00.000+00:00

We need to be able to be in contact with ourselves. We need to walk in our own nurturance, delight in the pleasure of our own company, and contact our own child within—our child within that awaits our attention and affection. Then we can love others without strings attached. When we’re in full contact with our child within we can approach others without neediness or a hidden agenda or our old expectations of rescue.

If we were neglected as children, we enter adulthood as chronic dissociates. Now we must take the time alone, without the distractions or projections, in order to contact our child within. We must take the time to connect to the life force glowing within us. A stages guide—a guide of caring and respect and boundaries and maturity—who witnesses our true value may provide us the first experience of loving-kindness we’ve ever had.

It is easy to avoid self-love by instead misusing others. We may project our child within onto another and then try to love them. His or her needy nature calls for our attention. We see their ache, but not our own. In fact, we dismiss our own cry for compassion as we project our pain outward, seeking to cure another instead of ourselves. Or, we may take a different tack to avoid recovery and try to seduce and manipulate love and attention out of others selfishly, because we are unable to give ourselves our own nurture.

It is important to remember that love becomes a manipulative bargaining chip when self-love is missing. When we can take ourselves into contact with our child within our own care, we can then truly begin to love our neighbours as ourselves.

When we recognise how to go back to our child within and listen carefully every day for five or ten minutes, healing will take place.

2015-12-03T06:14:00.001+00:00

When we recognise how to go back to our child within and listen carefully every day for five or ten minutes, healing will take place. When you climb a beautiful mountain, invite our child within to climb with us. When we contemplate the sunset, invite our child to enjoy it with us. If we do that for a few weeks or a few months, the child within us will experience healing and communion with us.

With practice, we can see that our child is not only us. Our child within may represent several generations. Our mother may have suffered throughout her life. Our father may have suffered. Perhaps our parents weren’t able to look after the child within themselves. So when we’re embracing the child in us, we’re embracing all the children of our past generations. This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but for numberless generations of ancestors and descendants.

Our ancestors may not have known how to care for their child within, so they transmitted their child to us. Our practice is to end this cycle. If we can heal our child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but we will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us. The abuser may also have been the victim of abuse. There are people who have practiced with their child within for a long time who have had a lessening of their suffering and have experienced transformation. Their relationships with their family and friends have become much easier.

Well, first let me say that of all the tools and principles in recovery, loving-kindness is the most important of them.

2015-12-02T14:31:00.002+00:00

Well, first let me say that of all the tools and principles in recovery, loving-kindness is the most important of them. You might ask, isn’t compassion the most important – well, yes, but to practice loving-kindness, one must have compassion. Loving-Kindness is the quintessential lesson that we are asked to learn on The Ten Stages Path. And, because of that, it’s also the hardest.

You see, Loving - Kindness is one of those things that can only happen after something REALLY intense and negative has gone down.

Loving-Kindness isn’t a lesson we learn with a smile on our face. In order to TRULY be able to practice Loving-Kindness, we must first be betrayed, either by ourselves or by someone else. And when that happens, unless you are an enlightened Master, there’s a compassion curve that begins. Some of us never complete our compassion curve – we hold onto a grudge until we die. And that is the worst kind of life; a life lived in the constant and perpetual pain of wishing the past could be different than it was – an impossible wish and also a really great excuse NOT to grow into our recovery.

The Compassion Arc starts with accepting and coming to terms with what happened. Depending on the nature of the event, this may be very easy or very hard. Many times we push down things we don’t want to remember, but when we do that, they tend to pop up in all kinds of weird ways. First we must accept that it happened. This doesn’t make it right, but it does put us in touch with the truth.

After we accept what happened, then we must step into feeling the feelings we feel, and not doing anything about them. And knowing that we are not a bad person for feeling this way – it’s totally normal and natural to feel negative feelings around an event that requires loving-kindness. We give full expression to the pain through journaling, through therapy/life and through meditation. First we accept, then we feel – without making our feelings wrong.

Then, we give expression to our feelings. This could be writing it out, journaling, compassion – all those things help us to express the emotions. As we begin to do this, we step out of the certainty of anger and embrace the uncertainty of the sadness that is below the anger – and we express it.

If we do not begin to reframe what happened, then we will go back into anger and begin a vicious loop of anger into sadness into anger into sadness. That loop will continue until we step into the next phase – which I call Loving-Kindness A.

Loving-Kindness A is where we are willing to forgive whoever hurt us – this includes forgiving ourselves. This doesn’t make what they did right, but it does begin to free us from the pain and sadness cycle. We forgive them, not for them and not to let them off the hook, but to free ourselves. After a while, if we do not do this, we are actually letting them win by holding onto the pain. The best way to get back at someone who hurt you is to forgive him or her, because then you get to take your power back and they no longer hold dominion over your life.

As we step into Loving-Kindness A, life gets better. We are beginning to move on. It’s not as bad as it used to be – the charge is less.

And most people stay in Loving-Kindness A, which is totally fine and perfect. And if you can get here, that is a MAJOR win.

But Loving-Kindness B... that is the place that is the hardest to get to, yet it's the most rewarding – and the most confronting.

Loving-Kindness B takes compassion to a whole new level. Loving-Kindness B is the level of compassion and empathy on which Jesus, Buddha and the like practiced loving-kindness. And it’s hard. Level B loving-kindness asks us not only to forgive those who hurt us, but also to have compassion for them. And see that, from their point of view, they are in tremendous pain and their act against us was just a very messed up request for empathy. So, we step into Loving-kindness those that hurt us. This doesn’t mean they have to become out best friends; we can have compassion for them from a distance, but if we get here – we are totally free. And we can express our true compassion to those who have hurt us most – which will help to set them free as well. Because they are still suffering from the event, just as you are.

And when we step into loving-kindness B, we also see that what we once thought was a horrible event, we now see as Grace, and an event that shaped our lives in a way that – even though it was extremely difficult – was a part of our lives that happened to help us grow. When we can see events that hurt us as Grace, then we are totally free and nothing will ever be able to touch us again.

Wherever you are on the Compassion Arc, it’s okay and perfect for this moment. One of the worst things we can do is try to rush this process. Compassion is an acceptance process and it is very personal.

The one thing I would like to share is that when we get there, we have totally gotten the best kind of personal solution we could ever imagine – because we are living a life that is no longer touched by the negative ghosts of the past! So, don’t practice loving-kindness exclusively for them, practice Loving-Kindness for you!

Todays Meditation: We are a drop of water coming home to the beautiful ocean from which we came.

2015-12-01T07:26:00.001+00:00

MIND-OF-CALM: We are a drop of water coming home to the beautiful ocean from which we came. In doing so, we can merge into a wave and do far more connected to this Source than we ever could do alone or with another person.

The child within is frozen which is caused by intense fear during childhood.

2015-12-01T07:02:00.000+00:00

The child within is frozen which is caused by intense fear during childhood. It means that the child within was deathly afraid of being abandoned, which for the child means death. The child was deathly afraid of not being accepted, which also means death to a child. The Child Within emotionally die as a reaction to childhood.

Different external inputs pull up different unresolved internal emotional problems from our childhoods

2015-11-29T19:26:00.000+00:00

Different external inputs pull up different unresolved internal emotional problems from our childhoods

We do not have control over the external through internal thoughts, beliefs, or images . To re-function well, we have to learn how to work with the world the way it is. Working with external reality, when trying manifest goals and purposes in the world, for example, requires discernment about the actual external context that we live in. Living in external reality requires seeing realistically what our current life can understand, embrace, or see as valuable.

Our Child Within (formed from our earliest experience of life) generalises our life experience to the point where we are not able to clearly see objective external reality. Different external experiences pull out different unresolved internal responses and reactions. Until we look at our habitual mental and emotional associations from our childhood, we will continue to overlay the past onto our current experience.

Our emotions gained in childhood are always younger than our current age

2015-11-29T19:10:00.000+00:00

Our emotions gained in childhood are always younger than our current age, formed at a time when we did not rationally understand the truth of our life.

It is common to try to force ourselves to feel and act more mature than we actually are. Because most of us are scared of the wild irrationality of our child within, we do not ever let our emotions "grow up." Child Within growing pains are just as necessary as physical or mental growing pains. We experience child within growing pains when we honestly admit to our immature emotions.

Meditation is about being in contact within ourselves.

2015-11-29T06:55:00.001+00:00

Meditation is about being in contact within ourselves. Inside of us is where we can experience hope, faith, peace, warmth, love, and other positive states of mind.Making contact with our Child Within.

It is not too late to grow into our child within

2015-11-28T12:02:00.000+00:00

It is not too late to grow into our child within, retaining the capabilities of higher thought, but fully awakening our capacity for insight of the intuitive voice.

600 million years ago, out of the blue, a rather curious molecule came into being.

2013-05-18T13:11:00.000+01:00

DHA in non-linear conformation with numbering from both ends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It had never been there before. Its arrival was a uniquely significant biological event. Though this relatively simple carbon compound now goes by the name of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), its impact on evolution has been stunning. In view of its remarkable importance, there are two absolute certainties about it, which must be clearly stated. The first absolute certainty is that if it had not arrived, you would not now be reading this page, nor I writing it. This is because it permits nerve tissues to transmit, and eventually human beings to think. Without it we would be nowhere. However, in order to see quite how remarkable this is, it is equally important to acknowledge the other absolute certainty – namely we shall never, ever know how it came into existence, nor how it has managed to persist unchanged for an aeon of geological time.

The plight of our globally deteriorating mental health demands a much clearer strategy than that currently deployed. With the WHO predicting more deaths from mental disease than from obesity and cardiac diseases combined, radical action is required. And in particular we desperately need a device, a modern version of Occam’s Razor to guide us through our phenomenal and ever-growing complexities. In 50 years’ medical work the type of rule of thumb I found most useful is one that is simple, understandable and more often right than not. In medical practice, it is vital to prioritise, to concentrate on those enquiries that prove more fruitful, at the expense of those less so. Not only does this save invaluable time and indeed lives, it also discourages toxic speculation. Accordingly expanding Occam’s Razor from stating that “simplicity is best”, we need to explore every item under four Points – 1) where does it come from? 2) what is it like? 3) what does it do? and 4) what it is for?

The practical value of this approach, termed here the Certainty Principle, is that it redirects attention away from what is indelibly unknowable to what we can certainly know more about. And a minute’s reflection will confirm that it is rather easier on the mind to wrestle with problems and challenges we can do something about, rather than to struggle endlessly with questions that can never be known, which are quite beyond our comprehension anyway, and will always remain so.

MANUAL CERTAINTIES

The main thrust of this paper is the application of the Certainty Principle to consciousness and its better wellbeing. However such intangibles benefit from concrete examples. So before proceeding to consider how and why our current versions of psychiatric practice need remedy, it is prudent to digress and apply this Principle to that most practical of all items, the human hand. If the reader will consider how this applies to his or her own appendage, the discussion might bear more weight. Point 1 of the Certainty Principle enquires as to the origin of this invaluable extension to human anatomy. For my own part, I have simply no idea where my hand came from. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, and probably for some time before that – but where it originated, I cannot possibly say. This reinforces the absolute uncertainty of our knowledge of our hand – we cannot begin to know how it came about, and there is generally little practical value to be gained from pursuing this line. Speculation is usually interesting, but should not be confused with concrete, evidenced knowledge – thus we may have developed our hands to help pick up small shell fish and other edible items on the sea’s edge – but we cannot be sure, and it would make little sense to invest huge amounts of time or mental energy on the question.

Point 2 relates to what the hand is actually like – and here again, I have only a grossly inaccurate picture. What you see on the outside is very far from what the hand really is. Nor does the picture become clearer on closer, more detailed examination. You might like to think that your hand has four fingers and a thumb – and there are those who would agree. However, if you were to set out to define precisely what you meant by ‘thumb’, you would soon come to grief – the tighter your definition, the sooner and deeper the grief. Suppose you defined your thumb as consisting of two bones, how do you place the skin fold, which comes halfway along the second bone? What are you going to do about the ‘third bone’, the one adjoining the palm, which links the first two to the wrist, and which alone makes provision for the invaluable ‘opposing’ of the thumb. This third bone by itself won’t get you very far – you need the several wrist bones, which in turn call upon the radius, the humerus, the clavicle and so on, all of which blend with the other 400 bones in our complex makeup.

This is only the bony substrate. The nerves, muscles, blood vessels, skin, tendons, even blood all need to be included in any comprehensive ‘definition’ – there is no limit to the number of items involved, nor therefore any end to what we may ‘know’ about the thumb. Even when the anatomy of this invaluable object is disclosed, its physiology or function leaves the mind gasping. It is powered by what medical texts cheerily label ‘voluntary musculature’ – does this entail Free Will? Are you convinced?

It is therefore a verbal illusion to suppose that we can know more about an object by describing it ever more minutely. Which takes us, with much relief, to Point 3) of the Certainty Principle – ‘what does the hand do?’ And here, provided we stick to pragmatic principles, we are indeed for the first time on solid ground. The simple answer is that it performs an infinite number of manual tasks, from feeding invaluable fish oils into our mouths to composing verbose texts on what it is all about. This may seem rather less than absolute, and open to the suggestion that different individuals will have a differing answer to the question – ‘what does your hand do?’ However, it does at least make sense – a vital commodity when considering items as intrinsically complex as consciousness. It is reasonable to concede that what one person might wish to do with their hands is rather different from another – but there is much less harm in variety than in dogma.

If there are many answers to the question ‘what do hands do?’ then of course there are innumerably more to the next question ‘what are they for?’, which forms the fourth and final Point of the Certainty Principle. However from a medical viewpoint, this question has vital significance. Indeed clinically it is the most important of them all. In the overall clinical context, every medical symptom represents a failure or partial failure of one aspect of the whole human being. So the question, ‘what is that aspect for?’, has immediate practical value. In the case of the hand, if it is diseased, what can you no longer do ? – if feeding, then alternative gismos need to be invoked, if shaking hands, an alternative form of greeting needs to be acquired. Whatever the loss, the remedy is to ascertain the fundamental purpose that has become deficient, to then evaluate this on a life-death scale, prior to implementing the best available remedies to address that loss. Clinical medicine (and global politics) in a nutshell.

So here the Certainty Principle is applied to the hand – 1) we have no idea where it came from, and this should trouble us little. 2) Our picture of what it is really like, is astoundingly inaccurate, and though this is troubling, it is less so. 3) We know what it does – indeed we perhaps know too many things it does, but this is much better than our indelible ignorance as in the first two Points. Finally 4) we know well enough what it is for – it is to help us through the many challenges which beset all living organisms on this rather curious and not always quite so hospitable planet.

Bill Wilson is on record for having found a solution in 1960 for treating anxiety and depression

2013-04-10T11:40:00.001+01:00

Bill Wilson is on record for having found a solution in 1960 for treating anxiety and depression using vitamin B-3 therapy and worked tirelessly for eleven years begging for its inclusion into A.A. recovery circles. His desire was to help alcoholics stay recovered. This means he would have immediately brought this mineral replacement therapy that eliminates alcohol cravings forth without exception. Master of ceremonies, Andrew W. Saul, includes Bill Wilson as an inductee of the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame at the Hotel Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, April 29, 2006 in his induction speech, “…To this day, selective history records A.A.’s 12-Step Program, but has forgotten, or deliberately purged, what Bill wanted to be A.A.’s 13th step – orthomolecular therapy with vitamin B3.”[Lee Brack1] In February 2009, Orthomolecular Medicine’s founder, Abram Hoffer and Bill Wilson’s good friend, clarified to me over the phone, “..yes, Lee, he wanted to share this information as an added step and talked about it all the time because he felt so strongly about nutrition…” Abram Hoffer passed away a few months later in May having lived healthy and happily for ninety one and a half years.

Understand the inherently peaceful presence of Awareness the art of Living in the NOW

2013-03-31T16:14:00.001+01:00

Understand the inherently peaceful presence of Awareness the art of Living in the NOW, and see that this peace is not dependent upon the condition of the mind, body or world, just as a screen is not dependent on the quality of the words or images that appear on it.

Stagers Mind of Calm

The Tuesday Meeting of The Ten Stages discussed Viktor Frankl on the Art of Presence as a Lifeboat in Turbulent Times and What Suffering Teaches Us about the Meaning of Life

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science | Life and style | The Guardian

Stagers Mind of Calm is the modern meditation technique that proves the secret to success is ten stage stillness.

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