I’m here for 4 days in Byron Bay taking stock in my third week in Australia, as to where I go next in this important year 2012. I walked along the ocean this morning, passing just 3 people during my hour long parade along the tide, while thinking, creating and examining options. Then this afternoon I attended a rebirthing breathwork group session with Alakh Analda, who with her partner Vic are hosting me so well in North Byron.

We were asked what we wanted to focus on during the breath, what was our ‘intention’, and my mind went back to the morning walk.

As well as the end of the Mayan Calendar and it’s forebodings, 2012 is also the year I reach 65 in May, and ‘God willing’, 30 years clean in October – both milestones. As Alakh noted I don’t look 5 years away from 70 but it dawned on me that I am, so some solice and reward for not picking up one mood altering drug, one drink or one ciggie for 3 decades.

As we started group we picked a card from a pack of themes, with eyes closed, and my card was ENDURANCE and Wiki informs me that ENDURANCE holds these qualities :

Endurance (also called Sufferance, Stamina, Resilience, or Durability) is the ability for a human or animal to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue. In humans, it is usually used in aerobic or anaerobic exercise. The definition of ‘long’ varies according to the type of exertion – minutes for high intensity anaerobic exercise, hours or days for low intensity aerobic exercise. Training for endurance can have a negative impact on the ability to exertstrength^[1] unless an individual also undertakes resistance training to counteract this effect.

They say you get what you deserve.

Well I laughed at the card, then focussed on the intuitive meaning.

Leaving wiki aside, I wrote down Endurance ( = struggle ) Tenacity ( = determination ) then LONGEVITY ( = security ). Negative thoughts around Endurance reminded me of the battle I had living with chronic Hep B in the 80′s/90′s then finding Rebirthing breathwork in 1988 as solution, Stuart Wilde’s booklet ‘ Life was never meant to be a struggle’, and the concept of Physical Immortality which led me to discovering the Babaji energy in ’88, who remains till this day my Higher Power. Om Namaha Shivaya.

I don’t teach Physical Immortality now, but it was very useful in the late ’80′s when I held a life threatening illness as a lesson in ENDURANCE to stay alive, but I have no interest in living till I am 300 years old but totally dedicated to living in the moment.

Living in the moment takes time to practice. Living without struggle takes courage to change. Many have heard me discuss the three “P‘s” to take you down the road of codependent struggle : Perfectionism, Projection & Procrastination. Wrap that bundle up with People Pleasing and you may as well be using, for they eventually lead to the same path of discontent. Steps 6 & 7 begin the release in my experience.

Getting older brings fresh lessons. I have had to work through the Unconscious Death Urge to unravel survivor guilt, control and needing to know outcomes. If recovery, over the years, was ever an endurance for me, I would never have made it. I discovered that once that 1st step is made, and held, the chore is over. However, tenacity has often been required to pull through bad days but the desire to look back with moist lips has never occurred. I have never been tainted with the need to revisit using, but forced by circumstance and sanity to revisit the recovery path of longevity maintenance.

One of my early Rebirthing affirmations was ” I no longer need struggle in order to survive “. Eventually it came true. My latest one is ” I am always wanted and loved at any age “. Get to 65 and images of immobility, mental health and living in the world of lack endure the memory. As many have witnessed I don’t fall into these images of age, as I swan around the world carrying my own luggage. But reality bites hard when detail is done, when travel outside of Europe is always risky, as I am ‘uninsurable’ for liver disease and heart conditions. I thought this this morning, as I got some angina pain walking the beach. Babaji can only protect me so far, the footwork needs to be done by me, so it’s only one long haul trip a year from now on, and Australia has booked me again for next year, so other continents will have to wait.

The rebranding of my present life means staying more in London until next year, to rest, relax and review where I go next. While I’m deciding, I will be in Marrakech again next month and Sweden in May so if this is ENDURANCE, I can handle it, or should I say the Masters of the Universe are handling where I go to next. I sit back and wait. There is no deeper spiritual lesson to endure. No worries.

http://rebirthyourlife.me/   http://www.babaji.net/

The quick fix generation demands twitter like answers when a paragraph takes time to yawn. When it comes to therapy, healing or transition it’s not so ‘how much?’ but . . . ‘how long?’ The result of the ‘money rich, time poor’ society we have created.

Commitment in itself has become a dirty word.

Commit to a lifelong relationship and people coo codependent, behind backs. Commit to a 3 year training and the response is ‘why bother’ when we don’t know what’s going to happen next week, let alone next year. As we herald in 2012, the year of imminent collapse in some predictive quarters, and certainly financial collapse already here, the much written about *celestial speedup* ( unless you scanned ), is about to test seat belts on a rocky ride into an uncertain world future. I have to say that if I’d known it would take me 14 years of therapy, counselling, trust, faith and nut case therapies to sero-convert a life threatening virus that was killing me, I doubt whether I would have even started, so the lesson learn’t is : it’s best NOT to know, or the ego will kill you stone dead.

But I DID lose incurable chronic-active Hepatitis B Virus, with Rebirthing Breathwork after 14 years of constant personal development, because I committed myself to the process of staying alive, no matter what. How many of you do that? Most people are carrying round a body from pillar to post, deeply unsatisfied with what life offers while leaving their arse on the sofa of procrastination, blaming and complaining. Then only the ego – the king of fear – smiles back. Not a good look in attracting change, emotional prosperity and gratitude, as any Coach will tell you.

Who would have guessed that the reason I have been invited to share my work around the world these past decades is through troubles overcome, not through good times, theory or philosophy, but via pragmatic application, spiritual guidance and karma yoga. The idea of quick fix, dip-in therapy never occurred to me in the way that people nowadays expect results. When I began to attend 12 Step Programme meetings in 1982 I did 5 a week for 3 years, then 3 a week for 5 years, just to get a handle on living clean & sober, not how to find a new relationship, career or friendship circle. It was hard work. Even in my 30th year of recovery it can be testing. How people think that club guest list – coffee shop recovery is enough to stay clean is beyond my experience. Without sponsorship and outside professional help, it’s gonna be a tough road and those unwilling to walk it by other means, often return to previous tracks and companions, and without commitment the relationship of mind, body and spirit is fractured.

People think, in early daze, that dipping into a meeting twice a week will encourage and manifest recovery. It doesn’t, it only encourages what most addicts delve daily into – getting away with it. Having short term therapy like CBT is hugely successful for many and their first expose into someone offering direction and listening to them without judgement, but if work is not followed up you may as well stay on the profiterole diet and stay fat.

Try to observe personal development as a pension that you pay into and it pays out long term. I’ve spent thousands over the years, instead of having holidays, as well as weekends on trainings that consumed my social life, and now I can’t fit all the holidays in. It’s HOW IT WORKS. Happiness has nothing to do with money, possession or partners but everything to do with soul. Why demand passion from life when you can’t commit to trusting a passionette process of discovery. Why wait for a drama to wake you up? You could wake up NOW, this month, today, this minute.

So don’t scan it. Read it. Study it. Attend it. Do it.

For as long as it takes.

It’s been a while since my last post.

My new best friend was indifference. 

Flatlining recovery or hitting shrugged shoulders is a blessing in itself, for ‘living your vision, living your dream’ all the time is exhausting and nor was it ever meant to be the norm. For those addicted to excitement, romance or plain old fashioned drama, recovery can appear to be a let down if living on the edge threw up motivation in the past. I once led a seminar in Milan on Motivational Coaching and told a staring crowd that I hadn’t been motivated in 6 weeks, but I managed to get here. The point of that memory is to remind me that we are not machines who churn out relentless.

I’m no Barbara Cartland. Barbara bashed out so many novels that she out-sold only 2 writers ahead of her – Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. There was no room for indifference in Bab’s world, pumping out the next trashy romantic dictum was the point of getting up in the morning. Good luck to her bulldog spirit.

In truth I have been travelling overseas every month this year and blogging got left on the back burner. Simple as that. Now sitting in December Canary Island sun I’m trying to get back on track before my next seminar jaunt to Morocco in January, breeds more lack of blog management. Living in a target led society supports competitive thinking, fear based projections and anxiety, especially during these troubled times of financial indifference. WE ARE ALL DOOMED, the media sprays forth, no point in even budgeting, the world will collapse anyway. It’s difficult to know who to believe.

In the present I believe that we are powerless over world currencies but have all power over our purses. So indifference toward spending can be a friend that stabs you in a backlash, especially during Christmas and New Year, when clarity can fly out the window. I am heartened that many now have a spending speed bump over gifting. Many families say 20 quid is the limit, so regular bills can be paid as well without fear of debt. Common sense prevails.

My new best friend, apathy, is not as depressing as it sounds, in fact it’s quite liberating. My urban younger readers familiar with ‘wotever’ and ‘meh’ will understand that the world can be overwhelming at times so “meh” seems spot on. I think apathy is underrated. Look where competitive materialism has got us : the opposite to excitement, passion, motivation and concern. There must be another way of living and surviving. To throw things up in the air and say “wotever’ is in itself a spiritual task. “I have no idea what’s going on, please sort it” is a Step 3 request in my book.

In order to make sense of living we need to embrace the fear of death in order to breed aliveness and the same goes for embracing indifference as a new best friend. This too shall pass, as quickly as spring follows winter. Periods of apathy, indifference and depression are natural phases of human development not shame based emotions. The sense of shame is often a parental projection, many feel apathetic when they really need a rest. I suggest you take it like I did and greet the next series of dawns with delight. Enjoy your duvet time, it will pass. Energy, inspiration and desire will arrive like the first cuckoo – when it’s ready.

I say this with plenty of experience, now in my 30th year of recovery from active addiction, so if I can survive apathy and greet it as a friend – so can you.