Published by: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 3^rd edition
ASIN: B01KIYAEXU
Pages: 288
Price: INR 967
Format: Kindle Edition

Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning has inspired, and continues to inspire, people around the world with his fascinating insights into human behaviour under intense duress. As an inmate of one of Hitler’s concentration camps, Frankl experienced the extreme torture of the holocaust firsthand. Being a neurologist and a psychiatrist, he felt inclined to study the behaviour of his fellow inmates suffering with him. In the three years that Frankl spent inside the horrendous camps, he concluded that no matter what challenges you face, you have the ultimate freedom to choose your attitude and your response to what is happening to you.

This, at heart, is the foundation of Prisoners of Our Thoughts.

That Viktor Frankl himself encouraged Dr Pattakos to write this book makes it all the more fascinating. And once you go through it, you realise that the insights this book contains are exactly what the doctor has ordered for humanity, which ails from a serious lack of meaning. But, it’s not the meaning of life that we need to find, say the authors. “It is the search for meaning in your own life that is important. Meaning is different for everyone—there is no one right answer; there is only the answer that is right for you. However, the search for meaning in our own lives often seems like such a large undertaking,” they write.

Do you want to find your own “right answer”? This book tells you how to look for it. The seven core principles that Alex and Elaine introduce in the book contain the essence of Viktor Frankl’s entire teachings and wisdom, with the added bonus of having a contemporary context.

What makes this book immensely readable is that throughout it, the authors use reflections from their own lives as well as examples of real people to drive home the message of each principle. Plus, the many exercises scattered across the book will make it easier for you to bring about the necessary shift as you go about looking for meaning in your own life.

Towards the end of each chapter, you will find a Meaning Moment Exercise followed by a few questions—both designed to bring greater clarity of the meaning principles to your unique life situation. Finally, every chapter has a Meaning Affirmation that will help reinforce the key message of that chapter. To strengthen your understanding, you can keep coming back to the exercise, questions and affirmations much after you’ve finished reading the book.

Prisoners of Our Thoughts is not a self-help book. Think of it as a friend, philosopher and guide who helps you look beyond the limits of your ordinary, everyday conditioned patterns while gently nudging you towards what really matters to you. To get the most out of this book, don’t approach it casually; read it earnestly. That’s because it carries within it the seeds of authentic transformation.

The post Prisoners of Our Thoughts by Alex Pattakos and Elaine Dundon appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Human beings are, by nature, creatures of habit. Searching for a life that is both predictable and within our comfort zone, we rely on routine and, for the most part, learned thinking patterns. We create pathways in our minds in much the same way that a path is beaten through a grass field from repeated use. Because these patterns are automatic, we may believe these habitual ways of thinking and behaving to be beyond our control. Thus we rationalise our responses to life and fall prey to forces that limit our potential as human beings. By viewing ourselves as relatively powerless and driven by instinct, the possibility that we can create, or at least co-create, our own reality becomes difficult to grasp. Instead, we often lock ourselves inside our own mental prisons. We lose sight of our own natural potential and that of others. In essence, we become prisoners of our thoughts.

Yet we can reshape our patterns of thinking. Through our own search for meaning, we can unfreeze ourselves from our limited perspective, find the key, and unlock the door of our metaphorical prison cell. We can change our perspective once we realise that we do, indeed, have the freedom to choose our attitude toward whatever is happening in our lives.

The responsibility for choosing our attitude lies solely with each of us. It cannot be transferred to someone else. This ultimate responsibility applies both to our personal and our work lives. We have made this claim over the years to various business and government clients, especially in cases where workers, including executives and managers, seem intent on complaining about their working conditions rather than doing anything to change the situation. We all know people who habitually define their work or job in a negative way.

Take, for example, Bob, who would appear to many to be a fairly successful bank executive. However, his work journey has taken him through some dramatic twists and turns, causing him much stress. Bob rarely, if ever, seems positive or optimistic about his job and, by extension, his life. He complains incessantly about his responsibilities, his colleagues, his customers, his community, and just about every other aspect of his working life. Bob’s colleagues and family hear nothing but stories of misery, negativity, and despair.

Unfortunately, Bob seems unable and unwilling to see that he is creating his own reality, that his constant complaining is hampering his work success and negatively affecting his family and his personal life. One by one, Bob’s friends have drifted away from him, not wanting to surround themselves with such negativity. His family perseveres, enduring through a sense of obligation but certainly not through a sense of joy.

The responsibility for choosing our attitude lies solely with each of us

Complaining about a miserable job around the water cooler or starting a “bitch and moan club” at the office might offer moments of camaraderie, but it doesn’t nurture meaning— for oneself or for others. The idea that work is neither fun nor fulfilling takes a huge toll on our ability to bring meaning to our work. When we habitually complain, we make meaninglessness a habit. Before long, we are so deeply invested in complaining that any opportunity to see the work experience as a rich part of our lives vanishes. Instead of taking the time to find meaning, we take the time to find and focus on meaninglessness. Such complaints trivialise our experiences— both at work and in our personal lives. When we complain, we disconnect. When we complain, we hold whatever or whoever we’re complaining about as a shield. We therefore perpetuate victimisation and helplessness.

What is a serial complainer to do? The first task is to become aware of when and why we are complaining. The second task is to stop complaining! This doesn’t mean we won’t complain once in a while; it means that we become aware of when we are complaining and that we are choosing to complain, choosing to be negative. This does not mean that we deny our burdens, our grief, and our worries and sign on to a Pollyannaish, blindly optimistic perspective of the world. Viktor Frankl certainly had the opportunity to complain. He could have chosen to be negative. However, he excavated the darkest despair and discovered meaning in his circumstances. He didn’t have to create the meaning— it was there waiting to be found. He knew well the meaning of unavoidable suffering through his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. He knew the darkest human behaviour and, at the same time, the brightest light of human possibility. Frankl carried the awareness of both potentialities, which deepened his humanity and created in him a deep and abiding faith. He saw people rise out of the most depraved circumstances and offer all they had to others. Viktor Frankl saw the manifestation of spirit on a daily basis.

When we habitually complain, we make meaninglessness a habit

When we recognise that we always have the ultimate freedom to choose our attitude, we are free to choose whether it will be negative or positive. By releasing our negative attitude, we release energy that can then be used to connect more meaningfully with others. When we authentically connect more deeply with others, we create a new community of support and possibility. When we make this kind of authentic connection, we can’t avoid meaning. It’s waiting for us around every water cooler, in every elevator, cubbyhole, taxicab, conference room, and corporate boardroom. When we open ourselves to meaning, when we stop to appreciate ourselves and others in meaningful ways, we immediately enhance the quality of our own lives as well as the lives of those around us.

Ten Positive Things Exercise

One of the simplest yet most powerful tools we use to reinforce and apply the “Exercise the Freedom to Choose Your Attitude” principle is our “Ten Positive Things Exercise.” To begin, think of a situation in your personal life or at work that is particularly stressful, negative, or challenging for you. Now write ten positive things that resulted from or could result from this situation. Write down any thoughts that come to mind, without filtering them for realism or social acceptance. Try to list as many positives as you can, going beyond ten if possible. Feel free to determine or define what “positive” means to you. After you have completed your list, review it and let the positives become possibilities in your mind. This requires letting go of your current blocked or old ways of thinking, moving beyond disappointment or frustration, and perhaps even abandoning anger. This exercise can open you to a higher level of optimism, no matter how challenging your personal circumstance.

The “Ten Positive Things Exercise” can be applied to many situations. Imagine doing this exercise with this instruction: List ten positive things that would happen if you died today. Most people are not used to discussing, contemplating, and exploring the positives associated with someone’s death, let alone their own! Having done this exercise with many groups, we can assure you that once people get over the initial shock and resistance, they relax and actually have a great deal of fun looking for the positives in what is perhaps the most catastrophic situation imaginable. Many people start to see a silver lining or hopeful side in something even as terrible as their own deaths. On one occasion, we had a participant state as a positive: “My wife can finally marry the person she always wanted to marry!”

If we can find something positive to say about our own death, it should be easier to find something positive about our work situation, family life, and so forth. Use this exercise to help you find the positives in such varying and challenging circumstances as losing your job, being in a car accident, and others.

Try these:

• List ten positive things that would happen if you lost your job today.
• List ten positive things that would happen if your department at work was eliminated.
• List ten positive things that would happen from a breakdown in the production line at work.
• List ten positive things that would happen with an across-the-board 20 percent budget cut at work.
• List ten positive things that would happen if you were in a car accident.
• List ten positive things that would happen if your credit card was lost.
• List ten positive things that would happen if your romantic relationship ended today.
• List ten positive things that would happen if you gained weight.

Each of these situations can be viewed from many different perspectives. No matter how desperate the situation or condition may be, we can always find something positive upon which to focus our attention. When we view the situation in a different light, new ideas, solutions, and opportunities are more likely to come to the surface. Our experience with conducting this exercise in group settings has shown that the positive energy among participants increases dramatically as they learn new things about themselves, each other, and the specific situation they are facing. Everyone learns to release themselves from their self-imposed thought prisons and, as a result, recognises that ultimately we are all free to choose our attitude, no matter what the circumstance.

Many people start to see a silver lining or hopeful side in something even as terrible as their own deaths

Exercise in Action

We have effectively used the “Ten Positive Things Exercise” in many different settings, in a wide variety of life and work situations. Here are two examples of the exercise in action.

Father and daughter

The first example involves a client-training session we were conducting in Alaska with the U.S. Forest Service. At the end of the first day of a two-day session, we overheard comments from one of the more reluctant participants, Paul; he was not interested in the training and didn’t feel that it was relevant to him. The “Ten Positive Things Exercise” had been introduced and practised that afternoon, and Paul obviously was not impressed.

The next morning when we returned to the training venue, we noticed Paul sitting beside two other participants, laughing. When we asked him what had happened, he reported that when he went home the evening after our session, he was shocked to learn that his teenage daughter had received a tongue piercing and was now sporting a new piece of jewellery in her mouth. Angry and upset, Paul argued with his daughter and wife; in short, he had a terrible night with his family. When he returned to the training session, looking tired and depressed, he confessed to his two co-workers what had happened. Immediately, they asked him to list ten positive things that might result from his daughter’s action of piercing her tongue. Working together, he and his co-workers identified many potential positives to be gained from Paul’s stressful experience (for example, his daughter was alive, she wasn’t pregnant, she wasn’t in jail, she had shared this event with him, and so on). By looking at these optimistic realities, Paul fostered an entirely new and positive attitude toward his daughter and even our training session! Doing this exercise put this situation in perspective for Paul and helped him to see that things could have been worse for his teenage daughter. He soon changed his attitude about the piercing.

Free even in the prison

The second example involves a unique twist. I (Alex) had been asked to conduct a workshop on the principles outlined in Prisoners of Our Thoughts for inmates at a state penitentiary. The idea of discussing ways to escape one’s inner mental prison with actual inmates, some of whom had been sentenced to serve years in prison, was an unusual and challenging opportunity. “Okay, everyone, I would like you to list 10 positive things about being in prison,” I told the group of about two dozen inmates, who looked at me like I was crazy. In a room designated primarily for education and training purposes, the inmates sat at tables arranged in a circle. Each participant had been given a pad of paper and a small pencil (confiscated at the end of the session for security reasons). They began writing. Some inmates grumbled and others laughed at what they had been asked to do, but all of them participated in the exercise in one way or another. As expected, some participants were unable to find anything positive in their incarceration, at least not until they heard what their fellow inmates had to say. Some inmates were very serious in the way they framed their responses to this exercise, while others let their imaginations soar with a sense of humour that might have seemed out of place under such circumstances. Here are some examples across the spectrum of what they shared:

• “Society is now protected from me since I’m locked up.”
• “I now know what I don’t want to do with (the rest of) my life.”
• “I can be a role model for others so that they don’t do what I did.”
• “I’m no longer homeless.”
• “I’ve learned who my real friends are and who aren’t.”
• “I’ve been reborn and now value life and freedom like never before.”
• “I get to work out a lot.”

Of course, these reflections comprise only a snapshot of what the participants shared. The exercise lifted the heavy weight of the energy in the room and tapped into the human spirit. The participants no longer had to think and act only as prison inmates, so each person could experience, even with a sense of humour, the sharing of his authentic thoughts and feelings with the others. The experience enabled them to explore what some might call the silver lining in their current predicament. By being challenged not to be prisoners of their thoughts, each participant had the chance to exercise the freedom to choose his attitude despite the circumstance of being incarcerated in an actual prison.

This article has been adapted from Prisoners of Our Thoughts (Third Edition, Revised and Expanded) by Alex Pattakos and Elaine Dundon; Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Used with permission from the authors.
Buy this book.

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Just before Buddha died somebody asked him: When a Buddha dies where does he go? Does he survive or simply disappear into nothingness? This is not a new question, it is one of the oldest, many times repeated and asked. Buddha is reported to have said: Just like a white cloud disappearing…

This very morning there were white clouds in the sky. Now they are there no more. Where have they gone? From where do they come? How do they evolve, and how do they dissolve again? A white cloud is a mystery, the coming, the going, the very being of it. That’s the first reason why I call my way The Way of the White Clouds.

But there are many reasons, and it is good to ponder, to meditate upon them. A white cloud exists without any roots. It is an unrooted phenomenon, grounded nowhere or grounded in the nowhere. But still it exists. The whole of existence is like a white cloud: without any roots, without any causality, without any ultimate cause, it exists. It exists as a mystery. A white cloud really has no way of its own. It drifts. It has nowhere to reach, no destination, no destiny to be fulfilled, no end. You cannot frustrate a white cloud because wherever it reaches is the goal.

If you have a goal you are bound to get frustrated. The more goal-oriented a mind is, the more anguish, anxiety and frustration there will be, because once you have a goal you are moving with a fixed destination. And the whole exists without any destiny. The whole is not moving anywhere; there is no goal to it, no purpose.

And once you have a purpose, you are against the whole—remember this—then you will get frustrated. You cannot win against the whole. Your existence is so tiny—you cannot fight, you cannot conquer. It is impossible to conceive how an individual unit can conquer the whole. And if the whole is purposeless and you are with purpose you are going to be defeated.

A white cloud drifts wherever the wind leads—it doesn’t resist, it doesn’t fight. A white cloud is not a conqueror, and still it hovers over everything. You cannot conquer it, you cannot defeat it. It has no mind to conquer—that’s why you cannot defeat it.

Once you are fixed to a goal, purpose, destiny, meaning, once you have got that madness of reaching somewhere, then problems will arise. And you will be defeated, that is certain. Your defeat is in the very nature of existence itself.

A white cloud has nowhere to go. It moves, it moves everywhere. All dimensions belong to it, all directions belong to it. Nothing is rejected. Everything is, exists, in a total acceptability. Hence I call my way The Way of the White Clouds.

The white clouds have no way of their own—they drift. A way means reaching somewhere. The White Clouds’ Way means a pathless path, a wayless way. Moving, but not with a fixed mind—moving without a mind.

This has to be understood, because purpose is synonymous with mind. That’s why you cannot conceive how to live without purpose, because the mind cannot exist without purpose. And people are so absurd—they even come to me and ask: What is the purpose of meditation? Meditation cannot have any purpose because meditation basically means a state of no-mind: it is where you are, not going anywhere; where just being, just to be, is the goal.

The goal is here and now. Once the goal is somewhere else, mind starts its journey. Then mind starts thinking, then mind starts a process. If future is there then mind can flow, then mind can have its course, then mind has space to move. With purpose comes future, with future comes time.

A white cloud hovers in the sky, timeless—because there is no future and no mind to it. It is here and now. Each moment is total eternity.

But the mind cannot exist without purpose, so mind goes on creating purposes. If the so-called worldly purposes are lost, then mind creates religious purposes, otherworldly purposes. If money has become useless, then meditation becomes useful.

If the so-called world of competition, politics, has become useless, then another world of new competition, of religion, achievement, becomes meaningful. But mind always hankers for some meaning, some purpose. And to me, only that mind is religious which is purposeless. But that means that mind is no more a mind at all. Think of yourself just like a white cloud, with no mind.

The post What the white cloud teaches us appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Published by: Cognite—an Imprint of Embassy Books

ISBN: 978-9383359660

Pages: 232

Price: INR 250

Death and the afterlife are among the most debated issues, not just today, but forever. Do we go to heaven or hell? Do our loved ones remain in the skies, looking over us? Do they walk among us? What is the journey like? The questions are innumerable, and there are as many answers as there are people. The answers could be religious, spiritual, or philosophical, and there are many tomes which deal with it in detail. Priya Kumar’s latest book deals with the same subject, though in a much simpler, easily readable manner—one that we can all relate to, and actually understand.

I will go with you is a story of 300 passengers and the crew aboard a flight, whose pilot has decided to commit suicide on duty. It might seem, at first glance, to be fatalistic, as well as macabre, but Priya Kumar tells us a story filled with adventure, twists and turns and suspense, intertwined with deep philosophy and as well as discussions on life and death that leads the reader to introspection.

There are 300 passengers on board, but we hear the stories of only those in row 26: Sarah, a writer, struggling to decide whether to trust her boyfriend, or not; Jim, a young man obsessed with technology, who falls in love with Sarah the minute he sets eyes on her; Muttu, a clairvoyant and blogger, the only one who has an inkling of the death that awaits all of them; and Paul, a rich and successful businessman who struggles with questions about life and living in the larger perspective, and who changes his seat from the Business class to join the other three on Row 26 in Economy, thus leading to the conversations which enable him to finally get answers to his questions, albeit at the very end of his life.

In this book, Priya Kumar lives up to her reputation of being a stellar story-teller who has developed a keen knack of inspiring people even as she entertains them. Her wisdom flows through in the dialogues by Muttu, the most evolved character of this story.

This is an intriguing story that combines the heavy questions of life, death and everything in between, in the form of a suspense thriller. The author intersperses the fictional narrative with bits of philosophical thought, making make us stop and think about the situation, and even  helps us relate them to our own circumstances. In spite of this, the story doesn’t lose its momentum.

The book is aptly titled for it is indeed a journey of a lifetime—for the passengers of the flight as well as for the reader. After all, every journey of life ends in death.

I especially like the end, because it reminded me of a conversation I recently had with my son, where he said that in his opinion, people who die, don’t really go to heaven or hell. They stay back, unseen, with their loved ones, in the form of memories. Priya’s ending, though not exactly the same, brought back that conversation, and I appreciated how she turned the negative emotions into positive ones, by choosing to let her departed characters turn inspirational—for those they loved, as well as those who needed them.

The genre of ‘inspirational suspense’ is new to me, but this is one book I enjoyed reading!

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Meaning comes alive

Published by: BenBella Books

ISBN: 978-0525954187

Pages: 255

Price: INR 1350

A couple of months ago, on the occasion of our 8th anniversary issue, we wanted to choose a topic that would connect deeply with everyone alive. So we settled on ‘finding meaning in everyday life’. We then started looking for someone to write the cover story on such a profound and universally relevant topic. As providence would have it, we found Alex and Elaine, who had just finished writing their new book on that very subject. We invited them to write and they accepted, and wrote one of the most significant cover stories in Complete Wellbeing.

Their new book The OPA! Way is now in stores. The book expands on the ideas presented in the cover story. But it’s not a run-of-the-mill self-help book. Far from it, The OPA! Way is an insightful odyssey that takes you back to the basics in a delightfully non-preachy style and tells you how you can weave joy and meaning into every single day.

The book is based on the authors’ travels to Greece, the land of philosophers, where they learned the secrets of living a life filled with joy and meaning. What makes the book come alive is the narration—every chapter starts, and is interspersed, with personal anecdotes of the authors’ experiences and encounters with Greek folk. As they share their stories, we accompany them to the narrow lanes of Greek villages, visit Greek kafenios [cafés], spend time at the village plateia [public squares] and meet a variety of ordinary Greek folk who, through their words and actions, teach us that living joyfully each day is far easier than the struggles that most of us have become used to.

Every chapter of The OPA! Way is sprinkled with generous doses of wisdom that strike a deep chord with our fundamental humanity. As an example, when you meet someone for the first time, the conversations are about making you comfortable and establishing a human connection before asking about work and accomplishments. So, instead of asking, “What do you do?” which is the common introductory question in the west, they might ask, “Which village are you from?” Throughout their travels within the country, Alex and Elaine were recipients of kindness from total strangers—people they would meet on the streets, or in cafés—they encountered gestures that reinforce the basic goodness of humans, despite how hopeless it seems to those of us living in large cities.

Even though the book flows like water in the river, it has a basic structure. Divided into five sections that include an introduction to lay the foundation of the book, followed by the three main sections—connecting meaningfully with others, engaging with deeper purpose and embracing life with attitude—and finally concluding with a summary of the key OPA! lessons. To emphasise the ideas and insights that they gained, the authors extensively use quotes of Greek thinkers and philosophers including Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Epictetus, Pythagoras, Hippocrates and many more.

Another endearing aspect of the book is the Aesop’s fables that spring up every now and then, making a point that is at once simple and yet intense. The tales, although familiar, seem fresh and different in the context of the ideas presented in the book, leaving you to contemplate on the meaning in the little things in life. The chapters end with a short OPA! affirmation to help us remember the essence of the ideas contained in them.

Indian readers may find a striking similarity in many aspects of the Greece and India—and may also recognise, albeit somewhat unhappily as I did, that we have been fast losing the heritage that makes our culture and tradition so rich and fulfilling. In blindly following the west in its mindless pursuit of wealth and possessions, we are paying a heavy price. But the good news is, we can all return to sanity.

The OPA! Way is a reminder for all of us stop and reflect on why and how we are doing what we are doing. It tells us how we can bring greater joy and fulfilment into our daily lives by following the timeless and universal values that put us back in touch with our glorious humanness and our innate potential for bliss. Read this book if you feel empty or incomplete—or just to enjoy the many heartwarming stories that bring a smile on the lips.

Buy The OPA! Way

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“Man, a being in search of meaning.”
—Plato

On our travels around the world, we’ve encountered many people who have told us that they felt something was missing in their lives and that they felt overwhelmed, lonely and unfulfilled. A pessimistic air seems to have engulfed our world, with increased levels of stress due to unemployment or job insecurity, financial hardship, health and relationship issues. Today, we see that despite being in an increasingly networked and connected world via technology, too many people feel disconnected from and untrusting of others—neighbours, co-workers, leaders—and, perhaps most importantly, from themselves.

Unsure of where to turn for solutions, many seek to ‘escape’ through addictions: television, sex, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, the Internet, etc. Left unchecked, these pursuits can turn into a vicious, downward cycle and manifest themselves as an endless and joyless undertaking—much like the one experienced by the Greek hero Sisyphus, who was ordered by the gods to push a big rock uphill, only to see it slip out of his hands at the very last moment and roll down the hill once more.

Is happiness the answer?

Some say the solution is to seek happiness. “Just find something that will make you happy” is the advice we hear often. But what does this really mean? Does it mean a person should find something to make them happy in the moment, perhaps distracting themselves from the reality of their life? Although this approach might provide temporary reprieve, we believe that life is not about the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is not the ultimate goal of life. Happiness is an emotion that is linked to pleasure but it is fleeting; it doesn’t last.

We can share a happy moment when we are enjoying a good meal or a good laugh with a friend, but this emotion only lasts a short time. Believing that happiness will relieve us from our anxiety and stress is misguided. What happens when life throws us a curve, when things don’t go well, when we face suffering, illness, or death? What happens when our ability to make sense of life is challenged? The pursuit of happiness will not necessarily help us in these difficult times, nor will it bring us the deep sense of fulfillment we are all looking for in life.

Christopher Reeve, known all over the world for his leading role in Superman, had a bright acting career and a life filled with unlimited possibilities ahead of him. He was thrown from a horse in a tragic accident that broke his neck, and he was challenged to make new sense of his life as a quadriplegic. An inspirational role model for others, Reeve proved to be a real Superman after his accident, not because he chose to pursue happiness as his ultimate goal, but because he searched for something much deeper—the “strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” Moreover, in spite of having been thrown a curve by life, Reeve not only survived but also thrived in his remaining years by fighting for himself, for his family, and for thousands of people with spinal cord injuries around the world. By engaging with a deeper purpose and extending beyond himself, this real-life Superman found happiness not by pursuing it but by allowing it to ensue as the unintended side-effect of his dedication to a cause greater than himself.

Is it power we want?

Some believe the solution is to seek power over our lives and the lives of others. Power is about being strong and dominant, having [or trying to have] control over other people, events, or things in our environment. Ultimately, though, the pursuit of power leads to emptiness because power over others, and even most of our personal circumstances, is actually an illusion. Power is an exhausting game to play and, like pleasure, it is fleeting and always subject to unforeseen forces. In this connection, the search for power also becomes an endless and joyless undertaking.

The search for power in our lives is parallel to our search for happiness and pleasure. For the most part, it too is ‘out there.’ Power over our employees, our bosses, our customers, our shareholders, our kids, the waiter in a restaurant, or a clerk in a retail store is illusory at best and terribly destructive at worst. We think we have power, but we never know for sure. Even if we do, in the power game there’s always an opponent; the ground is always shifting. Just ask the parents of teenagers who, even with the best of intentions, find that parental guidance is much easier said than done! Indeed, with parenting comes the realisation that the search for ‘power’ over children is an exhausting, ever-shifting game!

Power is an exhausting game to play and, like pleasure, it is fleeting and always subject to unforeseen forces

What about money?

The pursuit of power through monetary wealth is also an illusion, one that often leads to unintended consequences. We have all heard people express the idea that more wealth will bring them meaning and fulfillment. “If only I had more money.” “If only I had a bigger house.” “If only I had a first class ticket.” We’ve been conditioned to believe that these are authentic symbols of success—the more the better. Having money and material things has become the end goal for many people because they can count it, keep score, and use it to compare themselves to others. Living the ‘good life’ seems to be just one thing away.

But when we don’t look the way we think we should or if we don’t have the same [or greater] amount of wealth or abundance of things as others do, we trap ourselves into thinking that it is we who are not enough. In other words, we become “prisoners of our thoughts.” Unfortunately, such feelings of inadequacy and the relentless pursuit of trying to overcome them typically lead to increased stress, and often depression.

The costs, whether intended or unintended, obvious or hidden, of the hunt for more power and money, which effectively is a primitive form of the search for power, are staggering. We postpone finding and experiencing deep meaning in our lives when we are so busy seeking and trying to get ‘more’. We ignore our relationships while we focus on accumulating more; we overlook our health in our chase for more. Interestingly, the results of many research studies have shown that once we achieve a certain level of wealth, enough to cover the basics of life, any increase in new wealth does not necessarily result in a lot more satisfaction, especially lasting satisfaction. In other words, doubling our money won’t bring about a doubling of meaning in our lives.

It’s not about happiness or power, it’s about meaning

We strongly believe that the overall goal of our lives is to live a meaningful life, which is really what the ancient Greek philosophers referred to as the ‘good life’. In this context, world-renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, author of the classic bestseller, Man’s Search for Meaning, famously espoused that the search for meaning is the primary, intrinsic motivation of human beings. Importantly, Dr Frankl also advised that we don’t really create meaning—we find it. And we can’t find it if we don’t look for it.

Many people refer to Aristotle as one of the first to say that the goal of life is happiness because of his reference to the Greek word ‘evdemonia’. Unfortunately, they are making an error in the translation and interpretation of this important Greek word and concept believing that it means ‘happiness’ in English ^[1]. “Evdemonia demands not only complete goodness but a complete life,” professed Aristotle. He believed that evdemonia could be achieved through the proper development of our highest potential as human beings, which involves knowing ourselves, developing virtue and character, taking right action, and going beyond ourselves to help others. True evdemonia—being deeply fulfilled by living a meaningful life—is measured not at the surface of our being but deep within our soul. So you can see, meaning is much deeper, expansive, and transformative than just the pursuit of happiness, power, or money/wealth!

Applying meaning to everyday life

Only the search for meaning holds the potential to bring the kind of authentic enrichment and fulfillment that most people desire in their personal and work lives. So how do we apply the concept of meaning in our everyday lives and work?

FIRST, we should underscore that it’s not about the big existential question, “what is the meaning of life”. Rather, it is the search for meaning in your own life that is most important. Meaning comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it looms big in our life; sometimes it slips in almost unobserved. In short, meaning is different for everyone—there is no one right answer—there is only the answer that is right for you.

We cannot answer the big question unless we discover answers to the smaller ones: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What do our lives mean to us? What does our work mean? Every day our lives are rich with meaningful answers, but only if we stop long enough to appreciate meaning will it bloom in our lives. By reflecting upon our existence and seeking to detect the meaning of life’s moments, we also create the opportunity to draft our personal legacy. In other words, how do we want to be remembered?

SECOND, meaning always exists and therefore can be found in the everyday moments of our lives, so there doesn’t have to be just one answer to the question on how to find it. However, it’s up to us to detect the meaning of the experiences we have each day. Another ancient Greek philosopher, Epictetus, wisely advised that it’s not the event but the meaning you put to it that matters most. What’s more, meaning can be found even in situations that do not bring us happiness or power. Viktor Frankl was convinced that, in the final analysis, “there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of a meaning.” So, find the seeds of meaning in all that happens to you today.

THIRD, it is important to define the concept of meaning. Some people define meaning in terms of feeling that your life matters while others define meaning in terms of extending beyond yourself to serve something bigger than yourself. We go beyond these types of definitions to offer a simpler, more metaphysical definition:

Meaning is the connection to your true nature or, as we call it, your core essence.

Meaning comes with being ‘who’ we are in this world. When you believe something is meaningful, it is because it resonates with your true nature or core essence. When you believe something lacks meaning or is meaningless, it is because it does not resonate with your true nature or core essence.

It is the search for meaning in your own life that is most important

In a metaphysical way, your life involves the continual search for a closer connection
to your true nature or core essence, throughout each day and over the course
of your entire life.

Every living thing in the world has a natural state and qualities or attributes that make it who or what it is. Our core essence is what defines us and is at the heart of what makes us a unique human being. Although we can belong to a certain group and share characteristics of that group, we are still a unique being with our own unique essence.

The greatest challenge we face is to discover and embrace our core essence. Many people tend to focus on what type of job or career they think they should have, where they should live, or with whom they should have relationships. But, in actuality, a truly meaningful life starts from, remains engaged with, and ultimately returns to, one’s core essence—awakening our true selves by connecting to whom we really are. As Euripides, an ancient Greek playwright proposed thousands of years ago, “there is one life for each of us; our own.”

The search for, the discovery of, and the connection with our true nature or core essence are what gives our lives meaning every day.

FOURTH, it is important to understand how meaning can infiltrate and therefore affect many parts of our lives on a daily basis. Fundamentally, we believe that meaning should be at the core of all that we do, each day. In order to live a complete life, we must understand what brings us meaning in our lives and what drains meaning from our lives. When we know this, all things become clearer. We come to know and feel more confident in our decisions and direction, and we also notice more energy flowing to and through us to others. In other words, we are no longer working against the flow of who we really are.

The greatest challenge we face is to discover and embrace our core essence

Meaning leads to engagement and resilience

To be engaged means to be involved with and connected to a certain activity, to the people who surround you, or more metaphysically, to your true nature or core essence. Conversely, to be disengaged means to be disconnected from the activity, other people, and/or your true nature.

In many workplaces around the world, leaders complain about people with whom they work as being disengaged from and disinterested in the work they are doing and in other people. Metaphorically-speaking, we’ve been invited as advisers to workplaces where, like a scene from the M. Night Shyamalan supernatural film, The Sixth Sense, “we’ve seen dead people!” Although there are leaders who have attempted to implement so-called ‘engagement programmes’ in their organisations, more often than not, these programmes fail because they do not address the real underlying issue: the lack of connection to the true meaning of the work. Employees want to feel that their work matters to them and to others [co-workers, customers, citizens, and the broader society]. Employees also want to challenge themselves to discover new sides of themselves, to discover new talents, new viewpoints.

In a broader sense, we are also witnessing a lack of engagement in our neighbourhoods, villages, cities, and societies as a whole. People tell us that they want to connect meaningfully with others. Yet, we are finding that people feel lonelier than ever before and, sadly, share that they feel that they have very few people with whom to talk openly and share their ‘real lives.’ We’ve found that the more time people spend interacting with their electronic devices, the less time they spend in face-to-face contact with others and the lonelier they feel. Aristotle wisely espoused that “man is a political animal,” which means that we find meaning in interacting face-to-face with others and in knowing that we are not alone. We must remember that our relationships and our villages are built one conversation at a time, so we must remain vigilant and make the effort to counterbalance all the potentially false connections made online in the ‘virtual’ world!

 Employees want to feel that their work matters to them and to others

To be resilient means to be flexible, capable of adapting to and quickly recovering from difficulties or change. The nature of life is change but we often resist this fact of life, wanting things to remain the same, trying to design and control our lives so that change does not happen. But the status quo is yet another illusion because even if we want to stand still, everyone and everything else around us is changing. Indeed, there is a saying, “If you want things to stay the same, then something is going to have to change!” Life cannot be pre-programmed, for it flows like a river, twisting and turning, changing at different rates, sometimes appearing more stable, while at other times, tossing us around in the turbulent rapids. We can try our best to hold onto the sides of the river of life to resist the flow, dreading or fearing change but, in the end, we know that life requires us to surrender to the forward motion and “go with the flow!”

From our book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, which was written at the personal urging of Viktor Frankl, we highlight a number of techniques to help you find meaning and build resilience on a daily basis:

1. Exercise the freedom to choose your attitude: Even though you cannot determine or control all the circumstances or events that you experience in your life, in all situations, you always have the ultimate freedom to choose your attitude toward them. Searching for the meaning in the situation helps you make sense of it and helps you build the resilience for the changes you may now need to make as a result. For instance, perhaps you were faced with a difficult relationship with a family member or friend, or were facing a difficult boss or co-worker. What was your attitude at first toward the situation? How did your attitude change? What, if anything, did you actually do about changing your attitude? As you think about the situation now, what did you learn from it? What could you have done differently?
2. Shift your focus of attention and look at yourself from a distance: To find the deeper meaning of any given problem or life challenge, deflect your attention from the situation at hand to something else, preferably to something positive, in order to build your coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and change. Moreover, since only human beings possess the capacity to look at themselves from a distance, you have the resilience building option of viewing the situation at hand with a sense of perspective, even with a sense of humour, in order to ensure that you don’t become imprisoned by your thoughts and allow the situation to effectively crush your spirit.
   As an example, Viktor Frankl frequently found himself shifting his focus of attention and looking at himself from a distance during his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps. Often, as a means of survival, he kept himself going by imagining himself as an observer rather than as a prisoner. This kind of creative distraction or ‘mental excursion’ as a means to build resilience and find meaning in life’s inescapable predicaments and hardships was also used by the Italian film producer and actor, Roberto Benigni, in his internationally-acclaimed, Academy Award-winning movie, Life is Beautiful. In this film, Benigni shares his sentimental tale about a man trying to shield his son from the horrors of the Holocaust, which was based on his own father’s two-year ordeal in a Nazi labour camp.Invoking the power of our imagination, including seizing on various fantasies, is a meaningful way to fight off despair and hopelessness no matter what our personal circumstances. Our ability to detach from the distress and focus imaginatively on something that pleases us can return us to our freedom and to our source of authentic meaning.
3. Don’t work against yourself: Often we are our own worst enemy. Although we may say we want something, all our actions and words often support the very opposite. Put differently, have you ever worked so hard at something that the more you tried, the harder the task became and the farther away you seemed to get from your goal? You know, one step forward, two steps backward? In this regard, especially when the stakes are high and our success essential, focusing on the results rather than on the process can prevent a successful outcome. Avoid becoming so fixated on an intent or outcome that you actually work against the desired result. Viktor Frankl called this “paradoxical intention”—our good intentions actually become the cause of our failure. So how might you use the notion of paradoxical intention in your own life?
   Recall a situation in your personal or work life in which the harder you worked to achieve an outcome, the farther away you seemed to be from your goal. Perhaps you were trying to develop a romantic relationship or a close friendship with another person. Perhaps you were seeking a promotion or were trying to get a creative idea or project approved by your boss. How did you first come to recognise that you were not making progress? How did you rationalise or justify your dilemma? To what extent, if any, did you think that you were partly to blame? What, if anything, did you actually do about it? Looking back, what did you learn from the situation and what could you have done [and would now do] differently?

Often we are our own worst enemy. Although we may say we want something, all our actions and words often support the very opposite

Meaning leads to wellbeing and health

Many illnesses are the result of stress and anxiety which, when left untreated, start to negatively affect the body, as well as the mind and spirit. One of the challenges of modern medicine is that we often treat the symptoms of an illness but fail to address its root cause[s]. For various reasons, physicians today have little time to see each patient and even less time to ask about lifestyle or stress and the broader connection between the patient’s spirit, mind, and body. Instead, more often than not, they are forced to focus primarily on relieving symptoms and managing diseases quickly through drugs or surgery.

The vast majority of our health care budgets are spent on treatment versus prevention. If stage I is being healthy, stage II is having stress and blocked energy, and stage III is illness, most people wait until they are in stage III to react and then want quick fixes for their illnesses. If we focussed on the prevention of illness and, in particular, on stages I and II, we would not only be healthier [individually and as nations], we would save billions in health care costs. Just as we actively prevent car accidents by encouraging people to take driver’s education classes, and just as we brush our teeth to prevent cavities, we can learn to take a more proactive approach to our general health and well-being by focusing on the prevention of illness.

Plato wisely said, “the part can not be well unless the whole is well.” Health and wellbeing must start from the core of meaning. When we are engaged in meaningful activities that we enjoy, when we feel that we matter, and when we tap into our optimistic, positive spirit, energy can freely flow within us, through us, and to others. Conversely, when we are engaged in activities that are meaningless to us, when we feel that we are not living authentically, or when we are overwhelmed with anxiety and stress, we lack the connection to our true essence and, therefore, suffer from a lack or void of meaning. Energy ceases to flow smoothly and energy blockages can eventually show up in some form of illness or disease. Everything, as Plato wisely said, is interconnected. Meaning gives energy and power to our desires and intentions and, as a consequence, helps us live healthier, more holistic lives.

The vast majority of our health care budgets are spent on treatment versus prevention

Meaning leads to performance and innovation

Often leaders and managers will ask for higher levels of performance, creativity, and innovation from their team members. Often these requests are ignored or discounted by employees, already feeling that they are contributing more than their fair share and perhaps suffering from high levels of ‘burnout’. Even if some employees have good intentions, often they feel that they just can’t do any more than they are already doing.

People want opportunities at work to express their creativity and to be appreciated for their creative contributions. Importantly, they also want to express who they truly are and who they want to become. In their work lives, they don’t want to have to leave their spirit at the front door in order to ‘fit in’ and, as a result, possibly lose their identity, sense of self-worth, and humanity. In short, they want to make a living but, at the same time, they also want to make a life. If leaders understood the ‘Core of Meaning’ concept with its implications for performance and innovation, workplaces would not only be much more productive and innovative but also more engaging, enjoyable and meaningful.

FIFTH, join the meaning movement!

Finding meaning in everyday life is an ongoing process, one that demands attention to both intrapersonal and interpersonal needs. Moreover, the human quest for meaning, even though it has been a formidable, existential challenge since the very beginning of our species, is now a megatrend whose time has come. In large part, it represents a shift in consciousness, a heightened awareness that life is calling out to us and we are responsible for answering life’s call.

It is significant to note that we are seeing people in all stages and walks of life paying increasing attention to the quest for personal meaning. This is an especially healthy and positive development when considered in the context of the dysfunctional symptoms, stress-related illnesses, and existential angst in the today’s fast-changing, complex and uncertain world.

Against this backdrop, we invite you to join us in the Meaning Movement by encouraging everyone around the world, including yourself, to live and work from the “Core of Meaning.” Meaning is the life energy or fuel that motivates us to achieve our highest potential as human beings. In fact, meaning is an integral part of our innate humanness, and it is the search for meaning, our primary intrinsic motivation, that distinguishes us from other living entities. As explained in our book, The OPA! Way, we strongly believe that our connections with others, our engagement with deeper purpose, and our ability to face all the ups and downs of life with a resilient attitude, are the key elements and determinants of living a meaningful life. Just imagine how much more joy and meaning there would be in the world if everyone lived from a closer connection to their true nature or core essence. The search for meaning begins with you!

^{[1] Evdemonia, which is frequently misspelled phonetically from the Greek language as “eudaimonia” or “eudemonia” in English, is much more complex and holistic a notion. Aristotle was actually referring to the deeper concept of “having good demons or spirits” in the literal sense of the word or feeling deeply fulfilled by knowing that one’s life has meaning. Some people try to define or refer to evdemonia with words like flourishing but such descriptors are still too limited and do not give the concept true justice. Plants or animals can flourish whereas the concept of evdemonia involves such personal attributes as deep reflection, reasoning, and good actions.↩}

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Many years ago, when I was still pursuing graduation, a friend lent me a copy of It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It by Robert Fulghum, whose uncomplicated outlook on life, together with his fresh and funny style of writing, quickly made him one of my favourite authors. Over the years, his books made a profound impression on me, besides influencing my writing.

In the aforementioned book, there was a chapter on how we mix up our identities with the work we do professionally. It was a hilarious read—so funny that I laughed at nearly every sentence. And yet, there was also a very powerful message contained that made me question my priorities. Fulghum wrote, “I often say that I don’t worry about the meaning of life—I can’t handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life—day by day, hour by hour, while I’m doing whatever it is that I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I’m doing it.”

These words of Fulghum sum up the essence of our 8^th anniversary issue. No matter what anyone does, we are all yearning to live a life of meaning. But, there is no formula to decode life, nor is there any universal meaning of life—that single answer to the great quest of humankind. Meaning is personal and comes from within each individual. That is what Alex Pattakos and Elaine Dundon, two bestselling authors, have come together to help you understand.

“Meaning is the life energy or fuel that motivates us to achieve our highest potential as human beings. In fact, meaning is an integral part of our innate humanness, and it is the search for meaning, our primary intrinsic motivation, that distinguishes us from other living entities,” they write as they share practical ideas to help you to discover, and apply, meaning in your everyday life and work.

I urge you to read this month’s cover story slowly, and then read it again. Absorb its message fully. It contains pointers that will help you answer the ultimate question we all ask. And once you find your own unique answer to this question, your life will be filled with the only wealth that counts—meaning.

Read the full story here.

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What is happiness?

What is happiness, you ask. It is something to seek within—a state of mind. It’s a harmonious balance of the various spokes in the wheel of life. My definition of happiness is to achieve my mission statement:

To be with family and friends, leave a legacy, achieve and maintain mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, professional and material wellbeing.

Meaningful relationships with family and friends make life worth appreciating and sharing. Leaving a legacy for future generations helps make the world a better place. ‘Busy hands are happy hands,’ says an old saying. But I reckon that the moment one has some free time and resources, it is important to give back to society. It is important to actively work for and espouse various causes, and pass the baton to future generations, so the good work gets carried on. Enjoying the ‘here and now’ might confer temporary happiness, but enduring happiness comes more easily out of thinking and acting for others.

Happiness is realising that learning to live a life goes far beyond simply making a living, and that the simple pleasures of life are priceless—enjoying a beautiful sunset, hearing from a long lost friend, watching a tiger in the wild, an eagle soar…

Learning from history should not mean carrying the burden of unhappy experiences. It is also important to remember past successes, to reinforce confidence, while enabling the visualisation of future successes. A bright and successful future awaits the person who decides to learn from the past and look ahead in life, with all the health, wealth and happiness life has to offer. This enables us to live in the moment and experience the joy of living, as well as look forward to a future of boundless, endless possibilities.

Happiness is also about understanding and applying The Law of Attraction. Eloquently brought out in the movie ‘The Secret,’ it says that thoughts manifest into reality, and we become what we think about and focus on most.

What is motivation?

The dictionary defines it as, “a force that drives character to overcome conflicts or a set of forces that cause people to behave in a certain way?” Motivation is simply “a reason for doing something.” In a rousing commencement address to Stanford University students in 2005, Steve Jobs shared some very personal stories about his life. Given up for adoption when he was born, Jobs was fired from a company he started, and diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tremendous motivation led him to unbelievable efforts, resulting in him being recently named ‘CEO of the Decade.’ He said, ‘Sometimes life hits you on the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. You’ve got to find what you love.’ Indeed, wonderful lessons in motivation –‘Find what you love’ and ‘The triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.’

Most of us spend a great part of our life working. It is critical to foster an atmosphere where the best talent is recruited, retained, nurtured and unleashed. An environment with open and honest communication, mutual respect, fair recruitment and appraisal policies, growth opportunities, customer orientation, and a strong set of values and ethics go a long way in creating a strong sense of belonging towards an organization. The best workplaces promote meritocracy, and have an environment that promotes collective responsibility, ownership, mutual cooperation and benefit, unimpeachable integrity, camaraderie and a win-win proposition for the employer and employee. The result: inspired employees who take individual and organizational performance to another level, where everyone works with passion, honesty and inspiration.

Productivity and motivation in an organization are greatest when there is a confluence of the heart, mind, body and soul. Organizations should strive to create that environment where employees bring not just their bodies and minds, but also their hearts and souls to work. Once that is achieved, we can have a paradigm shift, from employees heaving a sigh of relief every Friday afternoon (‘Thank God it’s Friday’) to a charged up ‘Thank God it’s Monday’ – where all employees want to and are able to give their best, every moment. Motivated employees relish the prospect of both challenges and opportunities.

Motivation and happiness are inter-related. Motivated people are far more likely to feel happy, as they have a purpose and direction in life, and are far more likely to actively seek happiness.

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With the help of scientific studies, Health psychologist and Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal explains why the self that’s really good at change is not the self of self-crtiticism or self-bashing but the self of self-acceptance. For instance, she cites a study that found that if you eat a doughnut and feel bad about eating it, you are more like to eat a whole box of doughnuts. This happens because of the way we bash ourselves up after we have let ourselves down. We feel that the self that we are can’t really be trusted. We feel worthless and hopeless and therefore go ahead and indulge more. The scientific term for this phenomenon is the What-The-Hell effect.

Kelly McGonigal then proceeds to tell you how mindfulness can help you to cope with this self-defeatist tendency and build self-trust.

About the speaker

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Suddenly after my mask came off, love was all that mattered. I knew it like a child knows that she can walk. There was only one problem. Although I knew I wanted it more than anything I’d ever wanted, I still didn’t know what it was. I wanted answers and I wanted them badly. At this point, I started carrying a voice recorder with me. Everywhere I went, my question went with me. I asked, “What is love?” in hopes of, one day, running into a definition that made any sense to me. This went on for several months. After months of furious obsession, during which I consumed hundreds of ideas from just as many sources, clarity came to me in the strangest of packages.

A drunk brings clarity

That fateful afternoon, I was nestled in the sand when he came up to talk to me. He was covered in dirt, smoking a cigarette, and reeked badly of alcohol. He was extremely angry and gesturing wildly. Over the course of the next half hour, he revealed to me that he’d been released that very same day from the mental health wing of a prison. His grammar was poor and his words slurred. He alternated between yelling and crying. He told me that he’d just come home to find that, in his absence, his wife had left him for another man. She wouldn’t let him in and told him he’d never be able to see his daughter again. He told me how he’d spent the last 20 years counting down to the moment when he would be able to see his family again. Now he could go home but he didn’t have a home to go to.

After months of furious obsession clarity came to me in the strangest of package

After a while, his movements became less aggressive and he seemed to have released his pent up frustration. We sat in silence as he stared towards the horizon. After a few minutes, he said that he should probably go. He thanked me for listening and turned to walk away. Suddenly, he turned back and asked me if there was anything he could do to thank me. He suggested a shot of whiskey, holding out his flask. I politely declined and instead pulled out my voice recorder. I asked him to tell me what he thought love was. He thought for a moment and then he said:

“Love is the most important thing.”

I smiled politely and was about to push the little red button to turn my recorder off when he said,

“Wait, I’ll even explain.”

He paused again, and then continued speaking slowly, enunciating clearer than he had throughout the past hour:

“Love’s when you meet somebody and you look at them, and there’s a moment right there. You just pick up on it and you just know. There’s something there. You know it. You actually feel it going through your body. You grasp it. You keep it safe.”

After that, he left. I’ll never forget the way I felt as I sat there in the July sunshine. Suddenly, I felt clear. Rapidly, everything started making sense. I just sat there half-paralysed for hours while I played the incident over and over in my head and the recording over and over in my ear. Love, I realised for the first time, was a form of unity. In the absence of all similarities, love remains dominant. Everything that isn’t love is just like tassels—decorative and irrelevant.

Love is like the sun

Love does not depend on us to sustain it, nor is it something we’ve created. It is ever-present and abundant. It is we who are confused. Yet our confusion does not change love.

The sun was not dimmer before we understood its function. Love is the same way. No matter how much we ignore it or pretend it does not exist, it does not fade. No matter how many times we say ‘love’ when we mean sexual attraction, addiction, or some other little thing, love does not change.

Love comes and goes like the sun rises and sets. The sun doesn’t really disappear when it goes down. It simply goes out of view. Every day, the sun rises and every night the sun sets. The sun, however, stays in the same form. It is not the actual sun that rises and sets. It is not the sun that turns red or orange. It is our perception of it from where we’re standing that changes.

Love is like this too. It flows abundantly and eternally. What changes, however, is perception. Our awareness changes depending on where we’re coming from and, thus, love takes on all sorts of adjectives, meanings, and forms. We feel a connection and we call it love, but this does not mean that we’re referring to the unifying power of love. We’re just referring to our understanding of it from where we’re standing.

The sun was not dimmer before we understood its function. Love is the same way. No matter how much we ignore it, it does not fade

Our position determines our attitude. We can stand in the dark cursing the sun’s absence, in the light catching its rays, in the dark knowing it is still present, or in the light within the shadows of blindness. When we are trying to look at something that involves us so deeply and directly, our own position has much more power over our awareness. We cannot see the whole universe while being a tiny speck within it.

Love, in order to flow, does not need your acknowledgement or approval. The sun doesn’t care if you dislike its rays on your face. It will keep shining. The sun also does not care if a neighbour’s tree is casting a shade over your garden. Of course, that situation may be frustrating. It may cause you to get upset and scream. Ultimately, however, you can yell all you want, but the sun will shine as it shines. If your garden is not in the sun’s rays, no amount of blaming the sun will solve the problem. Its rays will not go around objects or through them. You can never expect the sun to change itself for you. It will shine as it shines, completely oblivious to whether or not you’re attending to it or using its rays to your best ability. It shone the same when we clubbed one another over the head and communicated only in grunts, and it will continue to shine the same now that we’re “civilised.” And so it goes with love.

Can our awareness of love be fine-tuned?

Our collective awareness of the unity that binds us is in its budding stages. Just like our opposable thumbs were weak when we first received them, our possibility for awareness is weak. In order for us to capitalise on our new found gift from evolution, we must first understand it, train it, and sacrifice the comfort of our old patterns for the vast possibilities of new ones.

We have evolved into our ability to love like we once evolved into our ability to nourish ourselves with food. There are no other animals who think so far ahead about food as we do. No other species has such complex systems of growing, harvesting, packaging, and delivering food. Once upon a time, getting food was a problem for us. The process of feeding ourselves once consumed most of our time, closely followed by escaping predators and finding a place to sleep. Thousands of years later, it only crosses our minds a few times a day and is easily fulfilled. This is how we evolve.

Now, we’re finding love like we, at one point, found agriculture. It’s new, fresh, and exciting. It’s unfamiliar, frightening, and full of promise.

The entire practice of agriculture is what gives us the power to do most of what we do with our time these days. We would not have careers, hobbies, or arts if we were all too busy looking for food. That one simple discovery—the discovery of how to harness the power of a constant, ever-present source of livelihood to our advantage—has made a monumental difference in our lives. Learning to harness the power of love will also make a monumental difference in how we live our lives. It will completely change the way that we relate to one another and to our own selves. The next stage of evolution is the evolution of perception, the evolution of the mind. The future of our personal, spiritual, and communal development lies in expanding our awareness of love.

Adapted with permission from The Love Mindset, published by Soulux Press

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