Reactions and Responses

On my facebook page I likened writing my new book Birthing the New Consciousness to giving birth to a real baby, and I think it’s a good analogy. First you conceive the idea, then you slog away at it until it begins to resemble something like a finished product. In between at divers times you tear your hair our (or in my case scalp!) thinking you can’t write anything and that the thing will never be finished. I’m sure this is the way with every writer.



What started out with great hope and fanfare is set aside for weeks on end only to be picked up again with a new flourish. Eventually, ah yes, parturition looms. Those last few days see you up till dawn peeps furtively over its hill, emails are left unopened, correspondence left neglected, refuse piles up at the door as domestic life grinds temporarily to a halt, some days you even forget to eat! But then your new arrival ‘arrives’ and all the hard labour is forgotten as you spend your days going oogly-oogly over the delightful creation. Well it’s the very same with completing a book (apart from the oogly-oogly bit!)



We are living in strange times. Sweeping changes in North Africa, across the world even. My heart and thoughts still go back to Japan. If you’ve read the book you’ll know that one of its pivotal arguments revolves around an earthquake and tsunami. Some of you may wonder if this is a reference to the one of March 11th.



Actually it’s not. This ‘earthquake scene’ was one of the earliest pieces to be written, oh, about a year or so now. At first I was going to have a train crash, then I was thinking around other disasters, maybe terrorism, but the higher beings were having none of it. It was made clear to me it had to be an earthquake-tsunami and in no specific part of the world. So I admit when the disaster in Japan happened just as the book was ready to go it was kind of eerie to me. I felt a bit uneasy about it, for one brief moment I thought of not releasing the book at all, but I knew this would be moral cowardice. I did ‘delay’ launch by a few weeks though.



For those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about let me explain. One of the central motifs in Birthing the New Consciousness is how our reactions to outside stimuli impacts on our thoughts and internal state. We think our reactions and feelings to external events are involuntary, but this is not the case, you are always the author of your own feelings. These produce the states in your body that become your way of being, whether you realise it or not. Most people don’t. That’s because most people live slightly below the level of wakeful consciousness, they live their lives on automatic. And essentially what Birthing the New Consciousness is about is facilitating people to become more conscious. We all do it, just go along through our day, one thing happens after another and we never think much about it. Then when a light bulb goes in the middle of some important work we say damn! (or something stronger!) Or when someone bumps into us on the pavement we may go, ‘hey mate, you think you own the place?’



Now all the time this is us reacting to something else, something outside us, but as soon as we become conscious that it’s us that’s doing this, and that we have other choices, then we stop those automatic reactions. We even react to our own thoughts! But that’s more complex still, which I go into further in the book.



Now when we’re not reacting to things all the time we get to reclaim more of our own minds, and become more calm, peaceful and have better judgment. So much of our actual thinking space is taken up with thinking about outside things, or after-effects of some drama. Which of us hasn’t spent hours arguing in our head about something that happened hours earlier? We are constantly being pulled this way and that by our minds. When we learn to stop that not only do we become more peaceful, but we have more room to be creative, to focus on what really matters, to allow prosperity and innovative thoughts to come to the surface, if that’s what we want.



And this brings me to another cornerstone of Birthing the New Consciousness which is response, There is a huge difference in when we respond and when we react. One is a listening to, and engaging with whatever arises, the other is being pulled into someplace we don’t really want to go, into other people’s reality. Response is not always about ‘positive thinking’. I was out shopping yesterday and the canned music was playing a song I don’t know by whom, that went ‘smile like you mean it’. I thought, well, if you have to force it why bother? There’s no necessity to smile. There are a variety of responses we can bring to any situation. An automatic reaction – like lashing out – is one, but so too is apathy. And sometimes this is worse. We are so bombarded with information today that unfortunately that is the response of many, famine fatigue they used to call it.



Obviously to such a disaster as Fukushima apathy or numbness is not an appropriate response. I’ll quote a short passage from my book to illustrate this:



“An awakened response is always measured by the willingness that is ready to receive it. Its purpose is to meet each situation as it stands, not to turn it into a different one. If something elicits a sad feeling in you don’t rush to change it. It serves no one to apply a veneer of happiness over what may be a moment of intense sorrow. When operating from a state of awakened consciousness a response will be chosen, and it will be an appropriate one, and will fall between the delicate balance of sorrow and sensibility.”

In that spirit, returning to Fukushima, I think an awakened response is called for. The immediate one may be to send financial assistance. But also it is crucially important to send loving thoughts of healing to all those who suffered and are still suffering. see Do this through prayer, through meditation, through distant healing whatever you are comfortable with.

There is a book called Messages from Water by Masaru Emoto which is really worth getting. It reveals the amazing power of water and how it is receptive to our attitudes towards it (as indeed is all nature). In a series of experiments Dr. Emoto exposed water to a variety of words, intention, music and even pictures, and then had the water frozen. Upon examination of the crystals under microscopic photography it was found that the crystals were aesthetically beautiful when they had been exposed to words and thoughts of love and kindness, but when spoken to in violent or angry way their shapes were random and disproportionate.



I mention this not just because of the importance of the experiment but because Masaru Emoto has asked people to send loving thoughts of healing to the Fukushima plant. He has requested that people say the following prayer while holding beautiful thoughts towards the water in our mind:


“the water of Fukushima nuclear plant, we are sorry to make you suffer. Please forgive us. We thank you, and we love you”. Masaru Emoto




I think this is a very appropriate response. And it spells out exactly what I meant by that quote in the book. Don’t be fooled by the nonsense in the media that all this doom and gloom is beyond your control. You can change the actual world. You can affect the climate, and the water and all the other things in the world by your thoughts, and by your intention. Things don’t happen in your life by accident. Something happens and people go, ‘Oh life is so unfair!’ Nor do these things happen as a punishment from a vengeful God, see God and the parent These are both reactive positions sourced in living below the consciousness level. We create our reality, and what we create becomes our world. We are creating a lot of anger and hatred and ill-feeling towards the earth right now, not only towards our fellow man but also towards nature. We are depleting her resources, raping her, and the earth is angry. Think about it, when we all get mad don’t we lash out at someone, often someone we don’t want to hurt. It’s no different for nature. For example, the more oil we extract from the earth the less it has to lubricate the platonic plates that keep the earth’s floor in place. These get loose and start slipping then, and what happens, seismic shifts. It’s logical really! Our actions do have consequences.



God knows nothing about punishment. But you do. And your anger will destroy you, as it will the water, as it will the earth if you let it. This kind of thinking is simply another way people have of reacting to things, reacting from fear. It’s time for a new reaction, one that is sourced in Love rather than fear. It’s up to you to make it.

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