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News & views

Barefoot Doctor

As always, we welcome the Doc's articles and continued support as a member of our Team. We value his candid and compassionate writing. Here he gives us an update on his view of divorce and how best to try to handle it as well as several other articles which are regularly published. Scroll down for articles:

The power of presence – weekend special
What to do when someone blocks your progress
Secret compact with yourself
How to make authentic connection with others today
Barefoot on the radio
Understand Yin and Yang
Don't panic
When life gets strange round the edges
Getting clear guidance on the best way forward
Turn off the box and make way for your creativity
Is your progress blocked, as if your life has got all stuck?
School For Warriors now open
Adjusting yourself so you feel absolutely at peace with yourself and your life
Transforming the external world on a Monday
Don't be mean and fearful, blocking the flow of love and also blocking the flow of opportunities
Spreading positive energy to benefit and enrich you and the world
Learn how to meditate for the weekend
Everything has to come, everything has to pass
Handling the peaks and troughs
Handling the wobbles with aplomb
Stop yourself fretting
Don't let your focus be pulled towards the ugly
Barefoot strikes a resonant chord for the weekend
A weekend special on the meaning of life
Relax into your skin
You may think you know what’s going to happen
Happy New Year Special: More joy, fulfilment, delight and abundance than you think possible
Are you feeling sorry for yourself?
Overcoming your pain
Don't feel despondent or dismayed - it's all in the process
You must never panic
You want it and you want it now. I know you do
Don't lose yourself in self-pity, self-doubt and self-punishment
Let your thoughts drift
Keeping on keeping on
Rising to the everyday challenges
Maintaining an open heart and a feeling of grace
Explore your inner world of thoughts
When external conditions seem to be stacked up against you
Employ discipline to handle your moods
The angels around you - No matter how turbulent your external world appears, remain centred in your body
Fancy an uninterrupted phase of inner peace?
Nothing could stand in your way now
Don't succumb to feeling overwhelmed
Advice from Barefoot going through separation and divorce
Yin and Yang - Simple
Sharing the blessings
Be yourself, complete with the all the flaws and glitches

The power of presence – weekend special
Doing tai chi is like acting out a metaphor for life in general, through slow graceful, effortless movements, emphasizing  calm balance and inner poise that flow like a river, at the other end of which you feel refreshed, energized and recharged, ready again to live, love and ride life for all it’s worth. That's when you’re present during practice. Because of course the tendency, even for masters, is for the monkey mind to busy itself with thoughts and worries about past or future or both, even while in the midst of practicing this powerful meditative art.

And though this will still have beneficial effects on the body and energy flow and eventually even on the mind, it certainly doesn’t give you the full hit.

On the other hand, when you surrender fully to the movement and remain focused via the sensations in the body on the present moment, allowing thoughts of past or future or both to subside, you experience such power and recharge factor, it’ll give you all the power you need to handle whatever life throws your way.

And it’s no different in everyday life. All of life is Tai Chi – the name actually means supreme ultimate reality in any case and that includes just about everything. Be present in the moment – allow the past to subside into history where it will resolve itself and the future to remain in the latent state where it will take care of itself – and you’ll be with such power from moment to moment that nothing could stand in your way.

What to do when someone blocks your progress
As you glide along like water, every now and then, others will inadvertently or sometimes even advertently get in your way, on account of agendas of their own, causing you, if clued in, to divert and flow around or over the obstacle, just like water.

However, when defaulting to the non-clued-in state, as we all do from time to time, on account of misguidedly falling prey to momentary lapses into the realms of vanity and self-importance, the tendency is to take their obstacle-making actions personally. In fact everyone is living out their process as best as they can, each according to his or her current stage of personal evolution – you just happen to be in the way of that momentarily.

So let yourself be the one in the way and stop being in the way by yielding like water, while continuing in your forward momentum, swerving a bit to left or right or flowing right over the top, or even underneath if an opening permits so to speak.

You can only do this when divested of all illusory notions of self-importance and so carry your spirit lightly – and you can only do that when coming from a place of power within, itself arising from breathing properly and holding your body correctly as you go.

With that in place, it’s a simple step to remember that everyone and everything is merely the Tao throwing shapes and the Tao only wants your unbridled, untrammeled and unobstructed progress, at which all illusion of obstruction somehow seems to melt and he or she who was playing the part of someone in your way is no longer doing so.

But this obviously requires getting into the right frame of mind, especially when dealing with the more unmovable of obstructive presences, for which instructions await you in the Members’ DocBox: to join skip to http://barefootdoctorglobal.com/signup/1/.

Meantime, I wish you a flow that carries you through fresher, more verdant, more wondrous and more magnificent pastures than you’ve ever hitherto dared to expect.

Love, Doc

Secret compact with yourself
No one has to know about this. In fact the more under your hat you keep it the better.

The idea is to make a secret compact with yourself in which you promise to experience whatever happens to you as an expression of the perfection of the Tao made manifest and even though your rational mind may find some or much of what’s currently manifesting pretty messy and far from your ideal of perfection, once you’ve made the promise, you’re then obliged to see it as perfect even in its messy state. Furthermore, you’re obliged to see what you might have hitherto judged as a mistake as something that was meant to be for the highest good, especially if it looks far from that to your rational mind.

This means you accept what you’re feeling even when you’re in pain and no longer waste energy fighting it and imagining it shouldn’t be happening to you. Just as it means you accept what you’re feeling when you’re elated too without limiting your enjoyment.

In acceptance comes peace.
In peace comes miracles.
In miracles comes success.
And it doesn’t mean being a slovenly fatalist.

You always intend to acquit yourself with excellence and aplomb and never judge yourself harshly when you inevitably fall short of what you imagine excellence and aplomb to consist of. Simply assume things might have been much worse had you not acted with the maximum possible excellence and aplomb at the time.

The main thing is to keep going.

And to keep going you need all the support and encouragement you can get, especially from your number one supporter and encourager: you.

With you fully behind yourself, rather than fighting yourself, you have full vitality flow and that’s what keeps you going.

So whatever you’re feeling right now, however things are shaping up or not, as the case may be, your vow is to trust implicitly that this is precisely how it’s meant to be at this precise moment, exactly as you manifested it to be and specifically what’s required to produce the best possible result for you and everyone involved in your life.

All I can say is make the compact and your life will lift off into a new level of experience, influence and effect altogether.

I wish you an unprecedented day, night and week ahead, unprecedented in the level of lift-off you achieve.

Love Doc

 

 

 

How to make authentic connection with others today
Why would you want to? To give your day value. It’s only through authentic connection with others that the day takes on a meaning and meaning gives it value. If the Tao is manifesting itself in human form through each of us, what greater function could you fulfill than making an authentic connection between the Tao in you and the Tao in the other?

And the key is simply to be authentically connected to yourself.

This means that rather than identify solely with the version of reality you’re unwittingly concocting in your forebrain, you’re referencing your awareness to what’s going on in your body – your breathing, your relaxation levels, your postural alignment and so on.

The swirl of activity and related responsibilities occurring in and as a result of the external world tends to take care of itself once you do this.

This swirl mostly comprises the effects of your communication with others.

The more authentic, the more of a smooth spin you facilitate.

Reference your awareness of self to what’s happening in your body, especially when you speak with others, centre yourself in your belly, soften your heart, relax your forebrain, allow your communication to originate from deep within your body and others instinctively feel it. It triggers an automatic resonance, which gives rise to them finding their own authenticity.

To refine and hone this skill, check today’s Members’ DocBox.
Meantime, I wish you a day of surprisingly beautiful moments of authentic connection with whoever you encounter and the results of that be unprecedented and magnificent.

Love, Doc

 

Emergency Pick-You-Up and Barefoot on the radio
What to do if you’re feeling so tired of it all, so exhausted from playing the game and seemingly getting nowhere fast, you’re losing the will to engage and are veering dangerously towards self-obliteration?

Two steps: first acknowledge it, and second, remind yourself you have options.

To explain: until you accept where you perceive yourself to be you can’t set about changing it, hence acknowledging you’re veering dangerously towards self-obliteration is the starting point. Implicit in this is accepting it rather than wasting energy making a melodrama about it. It happens to everyone on a cyclic basis, so you’re not a freak or a loser, you’re just human.

Once you’ve accepted where you are, you then have to remind yourself that though it may appear that you’re stuck, you’re actually not, that this perceived obstruction to your freedom is an illusion. You have options. You don’t even need to know what they are. Most of the energy drain occurs from unconsciously fighting against the bogus notion you have no alternative, that you’re imprisoned by your situation. There are always options, even if some of them are downright scary at first glimpse. Simply knowing there are options frees up energy into your system. Implicit in this is that there is never a conundrum that doesn’t come with its own solution – there’s always a way back to balance, in other words. But you don’t even need to know what this is. The Way will show you the way once you acknowledge there is a way – that’s how this magic works. Simply by being willing to let go and flow, you get your chi back and the chi then leads you where you’re meant to be to get the balance back into your life. Usually within no more than 30 days of reading this or similar.

I wish you a sudden, surprise influx of strength, enthusiasm and general miracles to turn your life around in a jiffy.

Love, D

PS my weekly radio show on Hay House radio starts today at 09.00 PST, 17.00 GMT - it'll be unique and a great boon for the soul - at the appropriate time, or after if you can't make it as it's happening, hop lightly across to http://www.hayhouseradio.com/show_details.php?show_id=164&episode_type=0

Understand Yin and Yang
The entire universe, which is no piffling thing, so pay attention, is governed by two alternating, complementary and opposite forces: yin and yang. Yin refers to the contractive, destructive, conservative, static, dark, soft, passive, yielding, force – yang to the expansive, creative, progressive, dynamic, bright, active, assertive force. The eternal dance of these two preatomic forces governs everything that happens on a microcosmic level too – your body, your mind, your experience, your relationships, your work, your affairs, your timetable, your energy levels, your sleep pattern, your work-rest pattern, your success-failure patterns, your extrovert-introvert pattern and any other pattern you care to mention – it’s all governed by the alternation between the yin and the yang.

When the yin is at its zenith, the yang has already begun to grow – when night is at its darkest, the dawn is already about to show its face – when the credit crunch is at its peak, the first glimmer of the next boom is about to poke out its nose – when depression reaches its darkest stage, the seeds of enlightenment are born – when summer is at its hottest, the first cold breeze of winter starts putting its boots on ready to go out and play and so on.

Learn to discern the phases of the various cycles operating in the different spheres of your life and of the world around you and you are empowered with divine understanding and power over the temporal.

My wish: that you attain supreme clarity and can see to the subtext thus gaining in wisdom and acuity by a quantum leap today.

Don't panic
There are moments in the drama when the details needing sorting pile up and a thousand decisions need making and you start feeling overwhelmed to the point of internally squealing to yourself that you can’t cope and want to walk away from it all, and it takes great courage at those moments to stop yourself entering a full-scale panic about what’s in your head and calm yourself down enough to think clearly and practically about what to do next.

And there are things you can do to smooth the process out considerably so it hardly registers as a blip rather than set off you off into full panic-attack mode.

For a start, you can remember that you won’t resolve it by thinking about it. Instead, by coming more fully into your body and breathing in stillness, with your mind retracted into the midbrain area, you are able to engender an inner silence, a brief vacation from the drama, during which your priorities tend to set themselves in the optimal order, without you having to even think about it.

Exhaling, you sink into your skin and void your mind momentarily, then command your subconscious to order your priorities for you by the time you choose to re-enter the drama realm and that’s exactly what will happen.

You’ll slide out of the meditation state back into the everyday realm and you’ll have an urge to do something. You follow that urge and it leads you to the next urge and so on, until you find yourself fully engaged in the game again, panic over, new direction discerned and your primordial fearlessness reactivated.

After a while it actually becomes fun handling a panic. To make it so, have a look at today’s Members’ DocBox* for the low-down on how to increase the relevant energy in your body to combat the propensity to grow nervous, anxious and panicky in the first place.

Wish: your nerve gets as steady as steel and your heart as warm as summer sunshine.

Love, Doc
*Editor's note - You would have to become a member of the Doc's website community to access this.

When life gets strange round the edges
Sometimes life gets strange round the edges, sometimes to the core, as if you’re on a similar but unfamiliar planet or have stepped onto the wrong film set. At such times, the general rule is not to adjust your set, other than to ensure you’re as grounded and centered within as possible by relaxing your muscles, lengthening your spine, sinking your weight below your navel, drawing your mind back into centre brain, softening your face and chest and breathing deep down, slowly, evenly and smoothly.

The strangeness occurs when the tectonic plates of the reality you’ve constructed through your perceptual faculties are undergoing a shift, generally as a prelude to a new phase of increased enlightenment, clarity and sense of purpose – rebirth pains, in other words.

The quicker you let go of preconceived ideas about how your life should be and accept the strangeness, the quicker the shift occurs. It’s down to acknowledging the strangeness as an essential aspect of the dynamics of existence, then rather than fight it, tell yourself, ‘I like strange,’ and simply keep breathing and attending to all the above pointers for relaxation and centering until strange becomes normal, by which time external conditions will have shifted to match that and you’re into the next phase.

I wish you a smooth transition with a pot of gold at the other end. Expect a miracle this weekend.

Love, Doc

Getting clear guidance on the best way forward
Take a moment to scan your body for areas you’re gripping on for no reason and wherever you find tension, say, as if addressing a person, ‘Tension, reeelax!’

Repeat this all up and down your body – back of neck, shoulders, face, throat, upper back, chest, middle back, upper abdomen, lower back, lower abdomen, pelvic floor, hips, arms, hands, legs, feet, until your whole body has softened.

Now give your body the command: Breathe!

Let your breath slow down. As the breath comes in, relax your chest and let your belly gently swell. As the breath leaves again, again relax your chest and let your belly gently flatten.

Now think of a situation – any situation that’s causing your stress at the moment, any situation that’s presenting you with a challenge.

As you do this remain relaxed and in your body with your breath flowing freely.

Now imagine that deep inside your skull, roughly where your midbrain is situated, is a cave and in the cave sitting on a sumptuous pile of richly coloured silk and satin cushions, is a miniature version of you, except this version is the perfected one – and it’s glowing with a light of absolute clarity, a humble smile of serenity and knowing on its face.

With the situation in mind, ask this inner mini-being, this inner font of all wisdom, to reveal the precise steps you need to take to ensure the optimum outcome for you and everyone involved.

Within the hour, you’ll hear the still, small voice of that mini-self, giving you the information you need to succeed on the next leg of the journey. So be alert.

Love, Doc

Turn off the box and make way for your creativity
Turning off the TV and leaving it off is perhaps one of the most profoundly sensible moves you can make these days if you wish to keep your mind and outlook relatively clean and untainted by the plethora of spurious, subjective nonsense pervading the airwaves most of the time – it’s a real energy suck and gives you nothing back but stress. And yes, there are some good things on it but so what – there are loads of good things not on it too. The screen hypnotizes you and renders you passive and semi-helpless, while the gamma rays suck your chi and the questionable editorial policies of the various channels play themselves out in a dull shower of mediocrity in front of your eyes. And while you think not watching it could put you out of touch with the zeitgeist, in fact it’s the opposite because once your mind is free of the dross the box (mostly) purveys, you are far more easily able to tune in to the actual undercurrents driving society.

Instead of sitting there sucking up other peoples’ ideas, use the time to create your own output in whatever format most suits – use the time to contribute something valuable rather than consume loads of mostly worthless rubbish and you’ll find your whole life takes on a new dimension, a new depth. It’s true the commercials are works of art on many levels but is it really worth devoting your precious time on earth to marvelling at the art behind selling things to you?

De-hypnotize yourself and give that time and energy back to you.

Remind yourself that your own life constitutes an adventure far more thrilling and amazing at every level than anything anyone could possibly conjure up on TV and only watch it if someone actually comes up with something even more riveting.

But considering where you actually are right now – on a planet hurtling through space at no less than 600 miles a second, when you calculate in the movement of the solar system and of the galaxy, sailing into the heart of the mystery of self-realization, it’s hard to imagine what could be more exciting.

So off the box, say I, and be creatively proactive.

Merry Monday wish: that you spontaneously discover a creative seam that opens your adventure up to a whole new and vastly more delightful dimension.

Love, Doc
Is your progress blocked, as if your life has got all stuck?
I know there are times you feel as if your progress is blocked – as if your life has got all stuck and that the tendency at such times is to try and manoeuvre things into a different configuration. However that’s not necessarily the optimal approach to getting things moving.

Instead you could try the Taoist wu wei (effortless manifesting system) approach, which rests upon the premise that you create reality the way it turns out by the choices you make, either consciously or unconsciously and that you can create it any way you choose, including it presently consisting of an apparent blockage in affairs but if you like, also with an actual huge transition occurring invisibly behind the scenes today on your behalf, courtesy of the Tao of your life, which is even now causing things to shift to produce precisely the result you’re after in terms of having a life of abundant health, wealth, love, joy, satisfaction and everything else you want.

To initiate this now, assuming you unraveled the preceding convoluted sentence and should you be of a mind to, simply gather yourself into a unified force and tell yourself with full sincerity of heart, ‘Even though I’m currently feeling as if my life is blocked, the process of me manifesting everything I want is happening at optimal levels now anyway.’

Then exhale deeply with a relaxing sigh and let go into trusting the possibility that this is now so. For as you trust it, so it will be.

May you experience unexpected, unprecedented shifts for the better today as a result.

Love, Doc

School For Warriors now open
School For Warriors is a revolutionary new online easy to
follow, step-by-step training program that brings you
confidence, energy, vitality as well the happiness and
success you want in your life.
Barefoot shares his many years of study and experience of ancient Taoist philosophy. Learn with him in online bite-sized chunks of daily exercises.
See the video at Divorce Recovery/Divorce Aid

Adjusting yourself so you feel absolutely at peace with yourself and your life
When you’re at sixes and sevens with yourself – don’t adjust your set – being at odds with yourself is an essential part of the cycle of internal dialogue – there has to be confusion for new clarity to emerge – it’s yin-yang. Instead, relax into it without identifying with it. So you pull your focal point back into your midbrain, settle into body fully, soften your muscles (stop gripping on to/for nothing) and breathe – slowly, freely, mindfully and deeply all the while.

Bear witness to the way you’re fighting with yourself – and love it – don’t try and stop it – love it and it will swiftly pass of itself.

In Taoist numerology, 6 represents reduction – in this case, reduction of clarity, while 7 represents manifesting something new.

Hence before manifesting something new, it’s inevitable there’ll be confusion, doubt and fighting with yourself. This is merely symptomatic of the yin urge-to-stasis, giving way to the yang urge-to-change and is best treated by relaxation and observation as above, rather than attempting to meddle in the internal debate, which only adds more voices to it and so slows the process down.

Life is not what occurs in your mind.

Life is happening within and all around you. informing you and all you do. And it does this more fully when you’re more empty (of attachment to the drama in your head).

Love where you are, how you are and only then can you change it. Trying to change where and how you are, while you’re still resisting it and all you do is carry resistance with you, which slows the manifesting process down.

May this serve you well today.

Wish: you’re at absolute peace with yourself and your life today and in that peace, life informs you with bliss.

Transforming the external world on a Monday
There’s a strange phenomenon probably dating back to the time we lived in caves and the pressure to get ready for the crucial winter solstice festival was great, but have you noticed that as the holiday season grows closer, people out on the streets on the roads, in the stores and so on, appear to be increasingly stressed? This is partly due of course to the upcoming expense and on a slightly deeper level to knowing they’ll be required to do their annual holiday season facing up to their innermost selves process – an inevitable aspect of engaging with any sort of regular temporal landmark such as Christmas.

But rather than berate them for it, instead assume responsibility for adjusting the atmosphere and teach by example.

Take it upon yourself to be the one to let others go in traffic jams, to let people get on trains before you, to ease off at the check-in line, to hold doors open and so on. You be the one to set the example of patience and kindliness.

At first you may not notice a shift externally, but if you continue on the patient, kindly path, you’ll notice within no more than 24 hours, the external world matching you.

And instead of seeing only rude people pushing their way through, you’ll notice patient, kindly people everywhere – on the street, on the roads, on the trains, on the planes, in the stores and everywhere else.

You create external reality by creating your own internal reality – the energy you inject into the collective mix is the energy you subsequently receive.

Merry Monday wish: that you access the deep internal well of loving kindness for all humanity today and as reward are showered with unexpected blessings.

 

Don't be mean and fearful, blocking the flow of love and also blocking the flow of opportunities
In tough times, people often grow even more afraid of being loving in the mistaken fear it might cause them to be taken advantage of by others, thus possibly depriving them of getting, having or keeping what they need. But there’s a great difference between being loving and being a pushover. Being a pushover doesn’t arise from being loving, it arises from being unclear about your function. Your function is to receive and transmit love. To do so you require various resources to enable your ongoing survival.

Your function, however, is not to make others happy. That’s their responsibility, not yours. All you’re required to do is receive and give love. What others do with the love you transmit is up to them. Knowing this you are able to say no when you need to say no, rather than saying yes to make others happy at your own expense. But you are able to do so lovingly rather than meanly. Knowing you have the power to say no when you need to and yes when you want to, you become clear on your boundaries.

Being clear on your boundaries enables you to be loving. Being loving you are inclined to be generous. Being generous is not being a pushover, as long as your generosity arises from love rather than the fear of saying no when you need to. And this is important now because it’s crucial to be loving to manifest the opportunities you need to succeed. Opportunities come to you through other people.

Being loving, fully able to receive love from others and fully able to transmit love to others, you trigger opportunities to arise from the quantum field. Being mean and fearful, thus snagging the field by blocking the flow of love, you also block the flow of opportunities. So while you may score some minor short-term, short-lived gains through fear-induced meanness, you can only score major long-term sustainable gains through love-inspired generosity.

Allow generosity to inform your thoughts, words and deeds and the world will respond by being generous back. Let people go in traffic jams, hold doors open to let others through, be generous with your time and energy and money if you have it – not out of fear of saying now but out of a desire to make the word more beautiful for everyone - and the world will act in beautiful ways towards you.

Contrary to the erroneous belief that this approach is a merely a luxury for easy times, this approach is now more necessary than ever if you wish to be effective in sustaining your mission on earth.

Wish: that you exercise the free flow of love-inspired generosity today, tonight and right through the weekend, that unleashes a powerful string of opportunities in all aspects of your life.

Spreading positive energy
You know how if you find yourself in the company of someone who’s feeling particularly negative, angry, fearful, or self-pitying and is dumping it on whomever will take it, how swiftly it depletes your vitality and optimism.

On the other hand, if you find yourself with someone who’s feeling happy, confident, enthused and engaged with the miracle of life, it rubs off on you too.

While no one would rightly advocate being in denial of your suffering and putting on a false brave face for the sake of appearances, remaining mindful of the quality you’re injecting into the collective mix, therefore, is a responsibility you carry as an awakened being on the path.

Take care to be mindful of the quality you’re contributing today and through the weekend. Clarify your intention in respect of others. Let it be to cause them to walk away from you feeling as good about themselves as possible. Let people go in traffic jams. Be considerate and generous to others at every turn. Be loving, caring and humane. And before you know it, you’ll have instigated a benignly infectious spread of that far and wide.

Your instant rewards for that will be finding yourself living in a more harmonious environment and your vitality will increase for interacting and exchanging energy in a positive loop.

My weekend wish: that you find yourself living in utmost harmony and that wherever you go today, tonight and right through the weekend and beyond, people so are kind to you and each other, the very air shimmers with joy

Read more at Barefoot Doctor's website


Learn how to meditate for the weekend
Possibly the most powerful, all-purpose power technique in the entire Taoist pantheon, at least in respect of something you can do anywhere at any time, without the need for equipment or special clothing and which requires no more space than the amount you need to sit on, is to sit with your eyelids lowered almost all the way, allowing just enough light in at the bottom to prevent you falling asleep and from the centre of your brain, between your ears, gaze alertly into the deep, dark, endless void you’ll find between and behind your eyes and forehead. As you do so, relax your body, breathe slowly, lengthen your spine and raise your breastbone and just keep sitting there. You’ll notice a tendency for random thoughts to pop out of your forebrain and swamp your view of the void. Rather than follow or lose yourself in thee, simply gather your mind again in centre brain and carry on gazing into the void.

It’s relatively hard to remain like this in pure consciousness for long but if you can manage just half a minute without being interrupted by following a stray thought or by congratulating yourself on managing to remain in pure consciousness, thus, no longer being in pure consciousness, you’re actually doing remarkably well and merely this amount of time spent in that state will refresh your mind and reinforce your connection to the restorative power of spirit, for the rest of the day.

However – and this is especially pertinent if suffering from insomnia - you can exponentially multiply the benefits by meditating yourself to sleep and waking up with it too. So as you close your eyes to sleep, sink your mind back into the midbrain region and gaze into the void, then simply remain like that and fall asleep. You’ll sleep more deeply, yet also encourage conscious dreaming and wake up feeling profoundly rested. But before opening your eyes in the morning, spend a while again with mind pulled back into centre brain, gazing into the void.

Practice this daily and within three weeks you’ll notice your mind and your mind’s connection with your spirit will be notably stronger, bringing you more confidence and clarity in everyday life.

My wish: that you do indeed try and enjoy this so much you start using it today and everyday and experience the profound benefits for yourself, and that by doing so, your whole life sorts itself out in optimal fashion as you go along without you having to meddle to make it happen – starting right now for the weekend

Everything has to come, everything has to pass
When good times come, do not cling to them, do not fool yourself into believing they will remain forever and be aware that the more you do cling and fool yourself, the more it’s going to hurt when they pass. Similarly, when bad times come, do not be deluded into thinking they’ll remain forever. They too have to pass.

Over time develop the wisdom that derives from transcending preferences for the good or the bad. Instead develop a preference to identify with the unchanging Tao informing the passing of one phase into another, as that is the only constant in existence. The more you are identified with the underlying source of all existence, including both the good and the bad, the less either extreme of the swing affects you at a radical level, thus enabling to maintain a fairly constant state of perpetual inner peace.

My wish: that you experience absolute equilibrium in the midst of activity to the extent nothing today can disturb you.

Love, Doc

Handling the peaks and troughs
On the spiritual path you’ll experience peak moments in which you’re able to see the whole truth of all aspects of the entire universe and your hallowed place in it, spread out before you with such clarity, neither confusion nor doubt has a place in your cosmology, to the point you are sure you’ll never be confused or fearful again, because you’ve seen the truth at last with such clarity there could never again, for the rest of your life, be a moment you weren’t feeing totally secure and right about who, where and how you are.

But of course, according to the perpetual contract-expand, yin-yang dynamic inherent as the underlying driving force in all phenomena, after such an expansive view of reality, is bound to come a contracted one. So after any peak experience of expanding in awareness to encompass all aspects of the universe, inevitably comes a (hopefully) short phase of the opposite: contraction, doubt, confusion and fear.

Rather than fighting this, or punishing yourself for still just being human when it happens, the only viable antidote to the internal suffering it can cause is to accept it as totally necessary for the growth of you soul, for according to the yin-yang principle, after contraction, inevitably comes expansion again and before you know it you’ll be scaling the next peak.

So whatever you’re struggling with within, don’t be hard on yourself about not being so enlightened you don’t have to struggle with yourself anymore. Instead accept your humanness, accept your confusion, accept your doubt and then remind yourself that this whole level of internal dialogue is illusory anyway and not really who you are and that who you are is actually the Tao in disguise as a human being with your name.

As soon as you do so, you open the way to the next expansion phase with all the clarity and joy it brings.

Just glimpsing the truth of what and who you are at the deepest level, you see there are no answers because there were no questions in the first place and that there is nothing to fear because assuming you want it that way, the Tao is always looking after you. It stands to reason it would, if you are it and it is you.

Eventually it’s not about the peaks and valleys, it’s about breathing and being peaceful in your body enjoying the theatre of it all unfolding come what may.

Having a body and mind through which to experience this show is the greatest gift.

May you love it so much today tonight and through the weekend regardless of circumstances or whatever’s going through your head about it all, you all but burst with joy.

Love, Doc

Handling the wobbles with aplomb
There are times, no matter how centred you usually are, no matter how much enlightened perspective you generally enjoy, that you are somehow forced into a dive and find yourself scattered, without a clear view of where you sit in relation to external reality.

When this inevitably occurs from time to time, perhaps on account of the astrological set-up, perhaps because of a build-up of apparently negative external events leading your mind a certain way, perhaps because you’ve been hanging out with pessimistic or cynical people, or perhaps just because you’re tired and so feel overwhelmed by the choices before you, it’s important not to waste too much extra energy fighting it or berating yourself too much for having fallen off the Buddha-train.

Sometimes you simply have to experience the dark, scary side, to feel the sensation of being existentially all at sea, so you can grow stronger through the process of subsequently righting yourself. It’s like taking homeopathic medicine: a trace of the relevant poison, makes your mind and body rebel and fight back harder. It sharpens your immune response to the vicissitudes of everyday life.

This applies to any minor wobble you may experience at any time during the day or night too.

All you need do to efficiently process it, is tell yourself – it’s alright to have a wobble or even an internal earthquake if that’s on the cards, as everything makes me stronger, including this, indeed I am growing progressively universally stronger all the time.

And breathe – it’s crucial to let the breath remain steady, smooth and constant, slow- and free-moving and deep down in your belly at all times and the first step towards this is to stop holding your breath now.

May your day and night be blessed with grace and ease of passage that sees you handling the wobbles with aplomb.

Love, Doc

Stop yourself fretting
Back in 1980 when the then USSR and the USA were at loggerheads and threatening mutually assured destruction by atomic bomb, I was having dinner up near Oraibi in northern Arizona round at Thomas Benyaka’s house one night, as you do. At the time he was the official keeper of the fabled and ancient Hopi prophesy. As the prophesy has it that the world as we know and love it will be destroyed by atomic bombs, we fell into discussing how best to deal with such an eventuality. He explained the only course of action for people of power (in the personal, magical sense), was to ‘illusion’ the problem away by literally seeing the world differently with enough psychic force to cause the actual conditions to shift. The Hopi method for doing this consists in praying but not praying as we know it in the West – not following any prescribed format or liturgy but rather talking on the level as a friend to the Creator, the Great Spirit – what we might call the Tao – and asking for what you want. However in the Hopi way of doing this, the supplicant rarely prays for personal gain of any kind. They pray for the collective good. In this instance, he explained we must pray for wisdom to prevail. We must see the warheads being dismantled and both sides being willing to live in peace with each other.

While I knew intellectually he had a point, the cynical aspect of my mind found it hard to conceive of how a few prayers issued from this wild desert landscape of the Colorado Plateau miles from anywhere could have an actual effect on people making decisions in Moscow and Washington.

As it happens, it appears that any doubt on my part was fortunately no match for his faith, as but a few weeks later, both sides voluntarily dismantled a whole raft of warheads and within nine years the USSR was no more anyway.

Hence why it’s important any time you catch yourself fretting over the human race’s prospects for survival for whatever reason, that you instead use that energy to visualise and ask the Tao for wisdom and enlightenment to prevail and for the effects of that to be peace, abundance and freedom for all.

Having done so, visualise and ask the Tao to manifest wisdom, enlightenment, peace, abundance and freedom in your own life today, tonight, through the weekend and thereafter.

The Tao will take care of all the details in both cases. It just needs to know the general outcome you desire, in order to give its manifesting process a spot of direction.

The more of us that attend to the global version of the vision, the more synergetic power will be generated to lend force to a spread of peacefulness and abundance.

On the other hand, the more energy you/we invest in fretting over potential disaster, the more your/our mind is creating that possibility for everyone.

May the Tao manifest an unprecedented exponential spread of wisdom, enlightenment, peace, abundance and freedom throughout the world and in yours specifically, now.

Love, Doc

Don't let your focus be pulled towards the ugly
It’s too easy to allow your focus to be pulled towards the ugly. Yet the soul naturally craves beauty, beauty in all possible forms of expression, whether in people, nature, things, or events. Beauty as a preatomic essence, rather than an opinion, is innate in every atom and merely requires activating by your being willing to notice and acknowledge it. Beauty as a preatomic essence responds instantly to your command.

You can actually trigger something beautiful happening in real time, simply by repeating the following life-affirmative thought no less than six times with full concentration:

Something really beautiful happens to me today.

Do this with sincerity and something beautiful will definitely happen.

Pave the way for its coming by being willing to see the preatomic essence of beauty behind the surface in every person, aspect of nature, thing and situation today and tonight.

May you be veritably flooded with beauty, may beauty shine through your eyes and every pore in your skin, may beauty inform your every action and every action others take around you, may beauty be all you feel today and tonight and as a result, may something really beautiful happen for you now.
Love, Doc

Barefoot strikes a resonant chord for the weekend
You must trust the Tao, life, destiny, whatever it is you call it, to bring you everything and everyone you need to succeed in all aspects of life. Questioning or doubting only depletes your energy and spirits, leaving you feeling miserable and flat. Feeling miserable and flat it is all but impossible to achieve excellence and without the drive to strive to achieve excellence, the Tao seems to stop cooperating. It’s a paradox but one easily cut into and resolved by being willing to let go of the railings and allow the Tao to carry you, trusting it implicitly, never questioning it and never doubting it or yourself.

When you do find yourself questioning or doubting, simply tell yourself, ‘in spite of the fact my rational mind is questioning and doubting the Tao and myself here, my deeper choice is to relax and trust it implicitly.’

Then all you have to do is focus on being excellent at whatever you’re doing from moment to moment, no matter how big or small, always loving the sensation of being alive, even in the midst of pain, by relaxing into your skin, breathing and being present in the here and now, where everything is actually always OK.

Allow every in-breath to feed you with life and the thrill of being here so sufficiently you don’t even feel the need to be fed by external factors. Allow every out-breath to divest you of any traces of fear and grasping.

And if you’re willing to remain in that, what amounts to a state of grace, the Tao will reward you by showering you with untold gifts of unexpected delights from every quarter.

It’s all down to relaxing, breathing, trusting and loving being here. All the rest will be added.

May this strike such a resonant chord in you, you find yourself recipient to a thousand gifts of unexpected delight today, tonight and right through the weekend.

Love, Doc

A weekend special on the meaning of life
What’s the meaning of your life? The meaning you’re giving it.
What’s the meaning of enjoyment? The meaning you’re giving it.
What’s the meaning of all your interactions with others? The meaning you’re giving it.

The field of reality and the way it appears is wide open and awaiting your command. But what if you desisted from ascribing it any meaning at all?
What if, in that case, it had no meaning at all?
Would that fundamentally matter?
Would it matter if your life and everything you do in it to express and enjoy yourself, had no meaning at all?

Would it really matter?

Freeing yourself from life having to have meaning, if only for a moment, if only for experimental purposes, might be just the ticket for refreshing your meaning-driven and –riven system. Freeing yourself for an instant from the compulsion to ascribe meaning to everything might be just the thing to liberate you from the shackles of the humdrum.

Imagine yourself as a playful child, simply happy to be experiencing the fruits of reality as they present themselves without needing to analyse, categorise, evaluate or in any way process the nature of those fruits, content merely to enjoy them. Feel the profound lightness of spirit that state affords you. Notice the tension drain away from your face and chest. Notice yourself sighing a sigh of deep relief. Notice the world hasn’t stopped. Notice that you are refreshed and more willing to re-engage with the action.

Repeat this procedure at least once an hour today, tonight and right through the weekend, even while you’re sleeping, if you’re good at conscious dreaming and you’ll enjoy a quantum upsurge of empowerment that will quite astound you in its potency.

May you be so astounded by the potency of your own goodness today, tonight and through the weekend, it’s all you can do not to dance with wild abandon in your nearest shopping mall or town centre, shouting, ‘Barefoot is a brick’, on top of your lungs for all the world to hear.

Love, Doc

Relax into your skin
When your body’s relaxed, your breath’s flowing freely and your consciousness is fully filling your skin, you have running through you the same power that manifests and generates all the stars in the universe and are therefore capable of achieving all your goals appertaining to living a life you can enjoy from top to bottom. When your mind is focused instead on how you need to behave in order to win the approval or admiration of others, or to avoid their displeasure or opprobrium, in other words, when you’re immersed in the realm of vanity in the broader sense, concerned with what you imagine to be other peoples’ perception of you, you are inhabiting that realm and are not in your body, not filling your skin and, hence not available to channel and process the generative power wanting to come through you. Only with this power can you manifest and generate the appearance of reality you wish for, the one that will facilitate your perfect fulfilment on all fronts.

So while it’s always tempting to be drawn out of your centre and into the realms of what essentially boils down to neurosis (obsession with what others think, say and do, specifically in regards to you), simply because that’s the bogus way we’ve been wired to conduct our minds, if you want to manifest and generate a set-up that works for you on every level, desist from doing so as often as you catch yourself doing it by letting it all go on progressively more on each successive out-breath, for which you’ll need to be mindful and diligent and it’s well worth it.

Because as soon as you learn to maintain your consciousness within your skin, pretty much all of the time instead, not only are you happier and more empowered to manifest whatever you want more swiftly, easily, effortlessly, enjoyably and miraculously, you also paradoxically find others perceiving you in a more favourable light, simply because they’re instinctively resonating with the power of the universe running through you.

So it’s all down to relaxing into your skin by means of breathing mindfully and mentally telling all your muscles to relax, especially around your chest and face, while sinking your consciousness deep into the central region of your brain and gazing out from there as if your two eyeballs were mere portholes in the front of your skull, as well as by maintaining an intention to be in your skin in order to avail yourself of the universal power at all times.

May you be so empowered by this today, tonight and through the week, you light up the world for hundreds of miles all around.

Love, Doc

You may think you know what’s going to happen
You may think you know what’s going to happen and you may well be right, by coincidence. But just because things always seem the same on some level, that’s just appearance and anything could happen at anytime without exception or limitation.

To think you know what’s what is merely arrogant, even though we all indulge in it from time to time. However clever you grow, existence is a mystery, replete with surprises at every turn;if you allow it to be. Instead of attempting to hold things in a defined shape, according to past experience and the pictures you’ve built up about them in your mind, thus inserting a filter over your lens through which you perceive and thus limit reality, allow them to morph as they will, aware of every atom dancing.

Relax your grip on the picture (relax your muscles) and afford life a little more space to surprise you. Address life squarely in the face, take a long, deep breath and say, ‘Surprise (and delight) me.’ And if you’re willing to let go and remain awake to what’s going on, life will proceed to surprise and delight you at every turn, causing self-empowerment levels to rise exponentially.

That’s how the metaphysical equation works: see it differently and it acts differently – regard the world of the ten thousand things differently and it will show up differently. But you have to be willing to momentarily step out of habitual modes of thought and belief about how things are in order to trigger the shift.

May you trigger such a shift this merry Tuesday, the effects completely startle you (in a delightful way).
Love, Doc

Happy New Year Special: More joy, fulfilment, delight and abundance than you think possible
Like walking up a mountain path for hours wearing a backpack you forget you’ve got on until you take it off and then feel light enough to float. This is the time of leaving behind all the dead weight of the past, all the outworn modes of operating, all the used up beliefs, all the redundant self-limiting blocks to enjoying yourself and all attachment to any situation or reality-set that no longer serves to encourage your full flowering as an individual in terms of self-expression and sphere and scope of activity and influence: it’s time to leave it all behind.

It’s always time to leave it all behind in any case but with the annual illusion of year-end, new-year-beginning upon us, you have an official mandate to do so now. And if all this seems too abstract, too theoretical, use your body as the kinetic metaphor and take a moment to indulge in first shrugging, then fully dropping your shoulders with a large sigh and, as you do, feel yourself relinquishing your grip on all that’s gone before, in order to clear space for the new and then repeat that frequently leading up to New Year’s Eve.

And on New Year's Eve, as the seven turns into an eight, albeit these digits are arbitrary and comprise merely a game we collectively play with the illusion of linear time, having dispensed with any obligatory mindless kissing and shrieking, open your arms into a wide-open embrace, contemplate the new good that is coming your way in a thousand different guises and welcome it with all your heart and soul.

There’s no doubt external conditions are set to become tougher as the world goes through its inevitable upheavals of transformation. So be sure to welcome in a palpable increase of strength in all its aspects, along with flexibility, imagination, daring and originality. For times of greatest crisis are simultaneously times of greatest opportunity and you need all the strength, flexibility, imagination, daring and originality you can access to be optimally poised, both to take full advantage of the opportunities coming your way and to remain inwardly centred and in command of yourself and thus attain to unshakable peace in the midst of the maelstrom.

Like this you become a pillar of equilibrium for everyone around you and the more equilibrium the better chance we have of collectively thriving rather than tipping into total global pandemonium.

Let all this pass through your mind as you stand with arms in wide-open embrace, then slowly lower them, say, ‘bring it on,’ and carry on as you were.

Happy New Year. May it bring you more joy, fulfilment, delight and abundance than you think possible.

Love, Doc

Are you feeling sorry for yourself?
When you stop feeling sorry for yourself, when you stop moaning about the view not being perfect, when you stop whinging about your aches and pains, when you stop bemoaning the disharmony in your relationships, when you stop lamenting lost opportunities, when you stop groaning about not having enough money, it starts dawning on you how blessed you are: blessed to be here in the first place, blessed to have a mind that provides you consciousness, blessed to have a body to serve as a vehicle for your consciousness, blessed to have people on the planet with whom you have a deep connection, blessed to have the potential for deep connections with countless numbers of people, blessed to have a sense of humour, blessed to have sensation, blessed to be on such an interesting and beautiful planet, blessed by the ability to love and be loved and so on – the list is endless once you start focusing on it.

The trouble is your pride gets involved so once you’ve chosen to feel sorry for yourself, your pride makes you want to justify that choice by reinforcing the negative thoughts to back up your argument that life is shit, because your pride makes you always want to be right.

At times your pride can be so fierce, it even overcomes your craving for happiness – often in fact – hence why it’s hard to get off the self-pity, however if you don’t all you’re achieving is unnecessary misery, which is fine if you enjoy that sort of thing but otherwise pretty much a waste of time.

So join me now in blowing a kiss goodbye to self-pity and a opening your arms wide to embrace all the new good coming your way. Say bye-bye self-pity, hello new good, three times sincerely, carry on as you were and before you can say Davey Roll Dush, something spectacular will occur in your life.

May you be blown away by the degree of spectacle you now experience.

Love, Doc

Overcoming your pain
Everyone’s in pain. Most are doing a damn efficient pretending job about it. They cover it with a brave face, throw up a clever shield, they sport a good look, conduct themselves with appropriate style but everyone’s in pain. The pretence is so effective, most don’t even notice the pain within, so numbed is it by external focus and obsession with worldly distraction. There’s nothing unnatural or wrong with this, other than it’s painful: pain is intrinsic to the human condition.

How else would so many drugs of all sorts, legal, medical, illegal, non-medical, semi-legal, semi-medical, including the drugs people don’t think of drugs, such as tea, coffee, alcohol, sugar and assorted anti-depressants be sold around the world? How else would so much produce appealing mostly only to vanity (cosmetics, toiletries, fashion, lifestyle, cars etc) be sold around the world? How else would so much dross passing as entertainment be sold around the world? People want numbing from the pain, even if they’re so distracted by the medicine, they don’t consciously realise it.

Pain, however, is only pain – merely the transverse of pleasure.

Indeed by allowing yourself to enter fully into the pain in the moment, this one for example, whether the pain is emotional, mental, physical or a combination, by desisting resisting or distracting yourself from it and really immersing yourself in it, breathing into it, within but a few concentrated breaths, it ceases to be perceived as pain and is experienced merely as sensation. A few more breaths and even the sensation diminishes. If you really let go and focus on the breath, it vanishes altogether. All you have to do then is repeat the procedure as often as you remember throughout the day and night and thenceforth for evermore and not only will you significantly gradually reduce your pain, whether headache, heartache, mind-ache, purse-ache or worse, you’ll equally reduce your reliance on external factors to bolster you.

You can’t heal the world, you can only heal yourself. You can help others heal themselves by healing yourself and setting an example. Healing consists in acceptance and breathing, as described here. The more you accept the pain, accommodating it rather than eliminating it, by breathing into it, the more at one you are with the pain-free, pleasure-filled natural state, that is your birthright.

By accepting and breathing, may you surprisingly, naturally, feel so little pain and so much pleasure, in fact, it’s all you can do not to go dancing crazily in the street, shouting I love you to all the world.

Love, Doc

Be your authentic self
In the centre of most of the action on the east side of London, is a humble patch of grass surrounded by an iron fence and a slew of cafes and bars going by the name of Hoxton Square. It used to be the hippest patch in the city back in the mid 90s, when the Blue Note club was open and the likes of Giles Peterson used to play tunes down there at his Far East night, the now regrettably defunct Straight No Chaser, was operating from two doors down, all manner of artists and pioneering creative types lived and worked there and I used to teach my free weekly tai chi class to the great and groovy on the grass but then the property developers got wise to it, gentrified the soul out of it, pushed the prices exponentially, all the artists moved further out to London Fields and deepest Hackney or Bow and it morphed into a self-conscious theme park parody version of itself, where now the people but pose at being authentic Hoxton (Hoaxtown), pretty much as has happened with similar spots all over the planet over the past decade or so.

And that’s all well and good. I was born and raised in London so am used to the constant shifts and switches, not to mention the artifice – dynamic change is intrinsic to the health of the city’s soul and artifice makes it pantomime style fun. What does get me though, is the way they charge £1 for approximately ten paltry minutes on a parking meter in the square. Is it assumed by the local council that anyone vain enough to partake in the faux froufrou of the square, anyone daft enough to fall for the hoax, if even just to park up and walk through to somewhere else, deserves to be unduly penalised?

Which brings to mind the apparent ethos beneath today’s living-model: charge the maximum at all times regardless of fairness – plunder your brethren for all they’re worth and plunder likewise the resources supporting us all if you can get your hands on them.

What would happen if we reduced this ruthless mercenary streak in us? Would we be left without? Or would there be more to go round for everyone?

Are commonly practiced generosity and fairness, other than as expressed by individuals or groups in isolated incidences, to be consigned to history forever?

What would happen if we didn’t charge the maximum? I mean if everyone agreed not to? In the current paradigm, this would be symptomatic of undervaluing ourselves.

However, by overvaluing ourselves as we do now – charging/spending inordinate amounts on maintaining an airbrushed sheen to reality, with its plethora of personal choice and so on – we are having the effect of devaluing everything – music, money, life, love, luxury and everything in between.

I muse only. I have no investment in any idealist expectation of a reversal occurring. I imagine the ruthless, greedy impulse might merely grow and grow until all the resources are gone. But I also wonder in my heart of hearts, whether by promoting the generous impulse in our own individual lives, we can gradually instigate a subtle collective sea-change that will attenuate the negative effect enough to help make way for a new paradigm to emerge quantum style, miraculously transforming the warp and weft of reality from the meta level in one deft sweep of the arm.

In the process of which I think we can do better than this – we can love more, be more authentic, be more caring, be more awake to the miracle of existence, be more tolerant of each other, be less aggressive in our dealings, allow wisdom to guide us more and vanity and the striving for status less. And it has to start with each of us as individuals. We have to be brave enough to take that chance. So doing, at first we will probably be taken advantage of, but over time, as things balance out, the meek will by and by inherit the world.

It’s an angle – a mood – a view through a yin prism – something to roll round your mind. I’m not declaring it as absolute truth – just offering it as an alternative look – a trigger to provoke thought.

I hope it’s provoked some quality thoughts in you, which somehow light up your mind and lend a certain existential sparkle to all your activities today and tonight.

Love, Doc

Don't feel despondent or dismayed - it's all in the process
You probably feel as if you’re working your socks off trying to get things done and make something of yourself and your life, while there’s still time and finding things mostly not living up to expectations, however much magical manifesting you’re doing, which may be causing you to feel despondent or even dismayed at times.

However by reframing the situation now and training yourself to seek fulfilment from each and every moment by attuning yourself to the miracle of existence, rather than allowing yourself to be numbed by the everyday into forgetting that being here is miraculous, no matter what you achieve or don’t achieve, you instantly realign yourself to the creative force informing the entire show and so doing, will impregnate your process of manifesting success with new vigour.

See the miracle in each and every detail of whatever happens today and let it inspire you – literally fill you with spirit, for it is the spirit within which manifests things, rather than the externally referenced local self.

Remain mindful of your greater goals but stay focused on enjoying the process of attaining them. There really is no destination – only process. The process is the destination. Learn to love the process and the destination arrives of itself without you moving anywhere. However as soon as it does, you’ll instantly see it’s an illusion – you haven’t arrived anywhere because you’ve never left where you were in the first place: the all-embracing Tao. All you’ll find, wherever you wind up, is more process.

Fight it no longer. Eschew goal-induced stress now and seek satisfaction from the process instead, a viable method for amplifying the effectiveness of which is detailed in today’s BAREFOOT JOURNAL, for which you’ll need to be or become a member and it’s worth it.

Meantime, may you enjoy each and every minute detail of the miracle of existence today and tonight so much, it’s all you can do to contain yourself running headlong to the highest natural or human-made point in your district and shouting, ‘Barefoot is a brick,’ for all the world to hear.

Love, Doc

You must never panic
I once went to visit Mrs Tweedy, an elderly Russian mystic-guru, who was popular in the 80s. After meditating together, she wanted to know if I had any questions. I asked her whether it matters if you panic at the point of death, whether that would spoil your chances of retaining your spirit or vice versa as you crossed over. She fixed me with her startlingly clear, bright blue eyes and said emphatically in her thick Russian accent, “You must never panic, my dear.”

Panic is insidious. You rarely notice it creeping up on your from deep in the belly till it’s already got hold of you. Often you are gripped by it in a low-level form without realising. The main sign is a tendency to inhibit the exhalation, to subtly or not so subtly hold your breath. This is done unconsciously to fend off the panic but all it does is perpetuate or exacerbate it. As soon as you notice and allow your diaphragm to let go so the breath can flow again, the panic starts subsiding.

Panic releases adrenalin into the system. Adrenalin is addictive. Hence the tendency to panic (and to hold the breath): to fuel the addiction. Acknowledging this, you become aware you have options. You can choose to lessen the panic or you can choose not to panic at all but to breathe and relax instead. You may not take these options but knowing you have them, in itself, starts to undo the compulsiveness.

As with all uncomfortable states, knowing it’s you, yourself, who generates them, as opposed to having them visited on you from without, instantly empowers you. Being empowered you feel able to make choices about which state to generate.

Choosing to relax, breathe and expect the best in any one moment and holding constant to that choice, will gradually engender a fairly stable level of calm no matter what’s occurring (or isn’t occurring) around you, however it will not prevent the wobbles. The trick is not to panic about them when they arise and the trick to that is partly in the breathing and partly in actively, consciously choosing relaxation instead.

Choosing and getting the choice to stick involves retraining your mind to think affirmatively, something I go into in more depth in today’s BAREFOOT JOURNAL – check it out.

Meantime, may you feel so relaxed today and tonight, nothing can wobble you off balance.

Love, Doc

You want it and you want it now. I know you do.
The clock is ticking. The world and all its resources are running out. You are running out and you want everything you want to happen now in case you miss it.

In this state you are missing everything by overlooking the gift of life you have and will continue to overlook it even when whatever you want to happen, happens, simply because you’re stuck in wanting mode rather than being mode.

Hence the impatience – at some level, you feel if you can make everything hurry up and get here now, it will slide past your defences and make you happy. And it probably will but only for a moment. And then you’ll be back to wanting again, because dissatisfaction is the state you’re habituated to – like a drug that does you no good but which you feel powerless to give up.

So what to do? Nothing. That’s the point. All the doing going on in your head is what blocks you enjoying being here. Stop doing. Let your mind be still and instant enjoyment floods you.

Paradoxically (there’s always a paradox), once this stillness-induced, natural state of pure enjoyment arises, the warp and weft of external reality tends to correspond by morphing over time into the very set of conditions required to make your dreams come true.

That’s right, by enjoying yourself more, you get more of what you want. There’s a distinction here between titillation and enjoyment, the latter referring to the true enjoyment arising whenever you desist from seeking enjoyment and allow your mind to be perfectly still.

Hence stillness is the key to overriding debilitating, life-blocking impatience. But how to achieve it? One way is explained in the current BAREFOOT JOURNAL, with specific reference to antidoting impatience and getting what you want without straining.

Meanwhile, may you attain to such stillness today, tonight and through the weekend ahead, that were it not for the all-encompassing smile on your face, you’d hardly know you were here at all.

Love, Doc

Don't lose yourself in self-pity, self-doubt and self-punishment
You’ve got to be strong, keep on keeping on and have faith in yourself now.

You could choose the alternative and lose yourself in self-pity, self-doubt and self-punishment if you’d find that enjoyable but it wouldn’t benefit you as much or help speed you along the path to your perfect happiness as quickly.

So without further ado, exhale sharply three times and expel the very essence of negativity from your person.

In between which, inhale deeply three times and draw into you the very essence of optimism and trust that all good things are coming to you.

Then stop and remind yourself that your perfect happiness does not depend on external conditions, no matter how many good things are coming to you but depends entirely on being willing to celebrate your existence exactly as it is just now, this very moment and the next and the next and so on.

Perfect happiness is the natural state and will be evident whenever you stop doing harm to yourself by indulging in self-pity, self-doubt, self-punishment or self-limiting, stress-producing moves of any kind.

It’s as simple as that. Stop doing yourself down in a thousand different insidious ways and allow the natural state of perfect happiness to be yours.

It’s your birthright.

You don’t have to earn it.

You don’t have to work for it.

You merely have to stop working against it.

The more frequently you allow the natural state of perfect happiness to be your default mode, the more life responds by producing external conditions that will best facilitate perfect happiness for you.

Hence, be strong – strong enough to relinquish negativity – keep on keeping on – stay in the game and have absolute faith in your birthright.

May you feel supremely gifted today, tonight and right through the weekend ahead.

Love, Doc

Let your thoughts drift
Ease off on yourself a moment, stop driving yourself mad about what you want and how or whether you’re going to be able to get it, or if you do get it, whether you’ll still want it and all the rest of that self-punishing enterprise, ease off on your body: stop holding your breath, stop holding onto your muscles and let the whole complex you’ve grown accustomed to thinking of as you sink into itself and relax completely. At the same time, mentally lengthen your spine to keep you upright, imagining someone suspending the top of your head by use of an invisible thread attached to your crown.

Let your thoughts drift and allow a picture to form itself in your imagination of you a short way into the future, enjoying yourself so much you can hardly contain it. see yourself in this state because you’ve miraculously managed to create all the requisite external conditions to facilitate such joy: you’ve somehow jumped over all current problems and are now totally sorted in every respect. You don’t need to know how or why this has happened. All you need to know is it has happened. Don’t rush it. Allow yourself to indulge it for as long as it takes. Enjoy the feeling as if it’s already a fact. Give thanks to the Tao Of You for making it be so as if it has already been made so and in your own time, return to the world of the everyday.

Then smile, clap your hands and carry on as you were.

For detailed explanation of how to employ this technique with optimum effect in respect of creating a new level of abundance in your life, see the current BAREFOOT JOURNAL, for which you’ll need to be or become a member and it’s worth it.

Meanwhile, repeat the above procedure at least three times each day today, tomorrow and right through the weekend ahead and miracles will start occurring in your life.

May you be inundated with them now.

Love, Doc

Keeping On Keeping On
Sustaining the internal power to keep on keeping on depends a lot on unifying your focus, especially now at this annual fulcrum point between summer and autumn or winter and spring depending on which side of the equator you find yourself, when the mind is split between pondering what’s just been and anticipating what’s to come.

Generally, without intervention the mind squanders its energy in any one moment on dwelling in past or future events rather than being here now in the present. This draws on the general energy reserves of the vital organs and causes a dragging effect to varying degrees depending on how much chi you have running through you.

By focusing the awareness on now, you instantly liberate that chi and are able to pick up a tailwind and proceed with your life without the drag. When the mind focuses on a single thought there is nothing within the realms of physical possibility you can’t achieve.

Try for instance tuning actively into the invisible, silent, supra-conscious presence informing the universe: the Tao, or however you wish to name it. Know or picture yourself in the centre of it, manifest as an infinite field of limitless possibilities, spreading out from your core in all directions: above, below, to the sides, behind and in front of you.

Colour it a soothing, energising shade of your choice and as you breathe in feel it draw in and hug you tighter, as you breathe out, feel it expand all around you, until you feel you’re literally breathing the universe.

As you do so, notice your thoughts of past and future have subsided and your mind is energised yet still.

In this rarefied state, project into the field the word, ‘focus’ lit in coloured neon about a tennis court’s distance from you and as you gaze at it mentally repeat the word over and over: focus, focus, focus, focus, focus, focus and so on, for approximately the duration of nine slow inhalation-exhalation cycles.

In your own time, slowly return to the everyday state and carry on as you were. You’ll notice immediately you have more energy and less resistance to what’s going on and the notion of keeping on keeping on seems exciting rather than a drag.

To learn how to harness this power for specific ends such as achieving greater success in whatever you’re doing, have a look at today’s BAREFOOT JOURNAL, for which you’ll need to be or become a member and it’s worth it.

Meanwhile, may you have a day and night of keeping on keeping on with excitement and glee.
Love, Doc

Rising to the everyday challenges
There is humble joy and satisfaction to be gained through persevering in the tasks and projects that challenge you – provided you know for sure you’re not just banging your head against the wall – no matter the apparent set-backs and hiccups that occur along the way, you just relax, let go of the stress, desist from taking any of it too personally and, with quiet resolve, continue working away at it, whatever it is.

I’m talking about your life’s work here – the job you came to the planet to do – the true offering of your heart to the world. This may not necessarily be in the conventional work context. You may not earn your keep doing it. You may have found other ways to do that. It’s the contribution you’ve come here to make – the way you are able to encourage people, to help them see and feel the best in themselves, the way you’re able to alleviate suffering and help people feel safer on their journey through life and the way you light them up and make them smile with pure happiness – that’s your life’s work, no matter the form is assumes in real time and you may or may not be earning your living by it – what’s important is that you continue doing it, for not only is it making the world a more palatable place for everyone you touch, it’s also lending your own existence meaning and purpose, without which life can seem too random to fully enjoy.

And the nature of the game is that obstacles are thrown in your path, intended to test your mettle on every level: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual – not because life is sadistic but because only through rising to the everyday challenges do we grow more fully into the magnificent beings we truly are.

And among all the requisite qualities for such a lifetime’s endeavour – courage, strength, patience, flexibility, humility, humour, confidence, kindness and so on – perseverance is perhaps the most crucial, perhaps the one around which all the others can gather with maximum effect. Of course you could choose just about any noble quality around which to hang all the others and be just as effective with it, which is why I ‘perhaps’ it but I’m feeling the romance intrinsic to perseverance at the moment and as it’s an unlikely one to find the romance in, I thought it time to afford it a bit of a shout-out, hence why I’ve persevered through to the end of this piece, as I hope you have too, for now, having hopefully inspired you to keep on keeping on with your life’s work, in spite of all the set-backs and obstacles, all that remains is to inform you that in today’s BAREFOOT JOURNAL you’ll find an enjoyable Taoist exercise for developing perseverance and to wish you an utterly spiffing day (and night).
Love, Doc
Find yourself today at BarefootDoctorWorld


Maintaining an open heart and a feeling of grace
There are times you feel the fragility of the human condition – how frail we are and how we need each other as reference points in the mystery to provide ballast and support, a raft on the tossing waves of chaos. And how perhaps the greatest gift we can give each other is being present to offer love and a connection to the source of everything, the Tao, which we do by being in tune with it ourselves. Have you noticed walking along a busy street how certain people you pass leave you with a feeling of grace, while others leave you with a certain distaste? This would be on account of their varying levels of connection with the source and quite possibly with the levels of their active participation in the miracle flow.

I know many who actively bless those they pass, sending them good wishes and visualisations for health and wellbeing. I do it myself. It’s a fine way to pass the time as you’re going from one place to another and I recommend it highly, playing the part of angel, for though it seems nebulous, positive thought always reaches its goal and has impact.

Our greatest service is to channel the love and all it takes is maintaining an open heart through keeping your chest relaxed and being willing to breathe and let the love flow naturally all about you.

It’s easy to fall into judging and cussing others as you pass by along the way and indeed can be fun momentarily but it eventually depletes you and leaves a trail of negative chi behind you wherever you go, which gradually flattens the atmosphere for everyone including you.

With only a little discipline you can generate an atmosphere of happy, healing chi for everyone to enjoy, including you and this is best done by wishing others well and allowing the natural love in your heart to flow freely. Of course this extends to everyone you think about as well as everyone you see. Let your thoughts about everyone be positive and healing. Train yourself to have healing thoughts about others, rather than allowing yourself to default to thinking negatively about them.

It’s obvious stuff but so easy to forget.

The benefits won’t necessarily accrue immediately but within a day or so you’ll notice your worldview and feeling about life improve considerably. Along with this will come an increase in opportunities coming your way, as that’s how the Tao works.

That’s my top Thursday message: spread the love.
May you feel engulfed in it all day and night.

Love, Doc

Explore your inner world of thoughts
In the front of your brain is an internal dialogue that’s been going on since you were old enough to think and that will keep going on till you die and for all we know possibly even after in some form or other.

There is nothing short of getting yourself a frontal lobotomy you can do to stop it. Right now, for instance, you’re already discussing and evaluating what I’m saying.
That’s right, you talk to yourself all the time.

Some of this conversation is about others and the outside world, some of it is about you and your inner world of thoughts, feelings, impressions and sensations.

What you say to yourself and the tone you say it in, for there is a tone of voice to all your thoughts, determines the quality of your experience from moment to moment. Quality of experience from moment to moment determines the quality of your life.

If you wish to improve the quality of your life, talk to yourself kindly, respectfully, acceptingly, forgivingly, compassionately, supportively and, above all, patiently.

Rather than give yourself a hard time for every slip up and off-kilter move, acknowledge yourself for every positive, life-affirming action, including even the most simple, everyday moves you’d normally take for granted on account of their frequency of repetition, such as the feat of managing to get yourself out of bed in the morning when you’re feeling tired or weary, managing to get yourself ready, managing to arrive at your place of work and so on. For each successfully completed move, no matter how seemingly insignificant, say to yourself, ‘well done’. For every communication clearly conveyed, even if it’s something as simple as successfully asking for what you want when you go to the store, say to yourself, ‘well done’. For every time you smile at a stranger and receive one back, say, ‘well done.’

For every time you break through your fear barrier and accomplish something you’ve never done before, say, ‘well done’. For managing to accomplish something you’ve accomplished many times before, say, ‘well done’. For managing to maintain some degree of harmony in your relations with others, say to yourself, ‘well done’. For managing to contain your innate fear of life enough to have enjoyed some or many moments during the day, say to yourself, ‘well done’. And when you lay your head on the pillow to sleep, having made it through another day, say to yourself, ‘well done’. Say it in the tone of a loving parent, in an inner voice kind, supportive, wise and warm.

Once in the habit of acknowledging yourself for every positive, life-affirming action you make during a day and night, try extending it to more complex acknowledgments, such as, ‘you’re beautiful, you’re doing well, you’re getting better at this game all the time’, or even, ‘I love you, you’re marvellous.’

When you’re alone, able and in the mood, take it one stage further and speak the words aloud.

When you make foolish or life-negating moves, do not punish yourself. Be that wise, loving supportive parent to yourself. Say to yourself, ‘look at this and see what you can learn from it in order that you might not compulsively repeat it in the future.’

The more you allow yourself to fall into this habit, the more relaxed, happy, confident, steady and engaged with life you are. The more you feel that way, the more you inspire, encourage and enable others around you to feel that way. The more others around you feel that way, the more they inspire others around them to feel that way and by and by you instigate a spread of that positive, life-affirming feeling around the world.

Furthermore, when you notice the inner chat turns to others and you find yourself passing judgement, being critical or downright nasty as you inevitably will at times, train yourself to counter it by tuning into the beauty in their heart, however buried or obscured you perceive it to be and say, ‘bless your beauty’.

This constitutes a profound contribution for which life will richly reward you in all manner of ways.

May it do so today, tonight and right through the weekend, so spectacularly, it’s all you can do not to go dancing in wild abandon at your local shopping mall or busy town centre, singing, ‘You’re marvellous’, for all the world to hear.

Love, Doc

When external conditions seem to be stacked up against you
London like many other huge cities has a large pigeon population. I have lived in London on and off all my life so far and have seen so few dead pigeons in all that time I could count them on one hand, which leads me to wonder where pigeons go to die or whether in fact they are on the whole immortal. It’s not something I spend vast spans of time pondering and have filed it as an issue in the same category of potential conundrums as where odd socks, pens and lighters vanish to. I occasionally have visions of another dimension replete with all the odd socks, pens, lighters and dead pigeons in the world but generally keep breathing at such times and let the visions pass.

It’s the same with moods and their respective mind-sets. If you’re stuck in one you don’t like, one that is making you feel miserable, you’re free to click on the X and close the window.

In the same way you don’t really give a damn where all the pigeons go to die and can drop the issue without a second thought, you can drop a negative state of mind, which would otherwise produce an experience of being diminished in spirits and vitality.

At every turn you are free to adopt a positive mind-frame and enjoy the lightness of spirit it engenders. Sometimes, when external conditions seem to be stacked up against you this is difficult to achieve but it essentially boils down to being willing to click that X. The X-clicking mechanism consists of desisting from holding your breath and allowing it to flow freely in and out instead, thereby releasing the negative state you were holding onto, progressively more on each out-breath and welcoming in more and more fresh life, replete with limitless potential, on each successive in-breath, regardless of the circumstances.

Tell yourself, ‘I’m choosing to optimise the value I derive from this day (and night),’ and carry on as you were now.

But really, where do all the pigeons go to die?

I wish you optimum value from today and tonight and may you be pleasantly stunned by how surprisingly well it all turns out.

Love, Doc

Employ discipline to handle your moods
The joy you feel when you step out into a beautiful morning, the thrill you feel when you dive into an aquamarine bay, the excitement you feel when the band begins to play, the love you feel when you hold a newborn baby in your arms, the relief you feel when the cheque arrives in the mail, the satisfaction you feel when you’ve completed the task, the comfort you feel when you’re surrounded by people you love and who love you, the contentment you feel when you’ve put your world the right way up, the clarity you feel when you finally know you are not your body, not your mind and not your personality but something far larger and unbounded, something universal, are all examples of triggers that engender an affirmative feeling tone, from which arises health and wellbeing of mind, body and spirit.

Unchecked, the tendency is to focus on the stress and strain of daily life. This elicits a life-negating feeling tone, whence arises unease. Unease leads the way to disease.

If every hour or so you were to momentarily step out of the everyday, by sinking back into the centre of your brain, feeling the depths of your chest, aware of being anchored deep in your lower belly, and from that centred place within, remind yourself of typical moments as above, that bring you joy, thrills, excitement, love, relief, satisfaction, comfort, contentment and clarity, you would initiate a potent process of increasing well-being and health of mind, body and spirit.

For though handling your moods seems a complex matter, it really is quite simple – it’s all a matter of being willing to employ discipline with yourself. A moment of focus on thoughts that make you happy and of allowing yourself to appreciate the sensations these thoughts stimulate deep within can set your mood straight for an hour or more. The more regularly you tune in, the more steady your mood will be. It’s your birthright to take advantage of this, no matter how pressing the demands of the external world.

What you focus on grows.

Focus on the positive images in your mind conjures up warm feelings and wellbeing grows. When the force of being well grows steady within, you become a magnet for good fortune in all forms.

May you magnetise an abundance of it today.

Love, Doc

The angels around you - No matter how turbulent your external world appears, remain centred in your body
The key to wu wei, the ancient Taoist art of manifesting what you want, (always be suspicious of any sentence that begins like that – wu wei has no lock, so needs no key and entry to the wu wei zone occurs in a style and manner beyond the scope of the rational mind to conceive of keys for, nonetheless, the key to wu wei) lies in not being so distracted by external effects – the world of the ten thousand things – and to remain identified with the level of causation, access to which lies within.

In other words, no matter how turbulent your external world appears, remain centred in your body by feeling what you’re feeling. Sometimes this will be light, sometimes heavy. When light, rejoice in that and allow it to expand and carry you regardless of the perceived external turbulence, regardless of the shouts from your rational mind to succumb to life-depleting thoughts and feelings. Be light and the lightness will deliver you to safety. When heavy, rejoice in that too – it’s an equally valid expression of being alive – the flip side – so rejoice in it and at the same time, realise you have an option, which is to choose to relinquish the heaviness, as soon as you’ve acknowledged it and taken whatever lesson it had for you and allow yourself to flip back into the light again in the same way a cork always floats to the surface.

Feeling light, elongating your spine, as you sit here, breathing freely, letting your mind sink back into the centre of your brain to quieten your forebrain where your ongoing commentary about the external world incessantly rages, warmth spreads from your heart and transmits love to the world, which reduces tension levels in the air and causes the angels around you to smile. When the angels start smiling (you can sense it), you’ve entered the wu wei zone or flow and everything you need to sustain you on your journey of discovering and expressing the pure beauty that is you will come to you without effort or strain.

You’ll still have to work and do things but these will be done as an act of communion with the Tao (the force behind wu wei – the original creative force of the universe). When you commune with the Tao, you makes it happy. It creates you so it can enjoy your unique company. When the Tao is happy, it relaxes and that allows the angels (the chi) to fly about (flow) more freely, thus clearing the pathways for your success in all respects.

That’s the message for this wild Thursday.

May it bring you a flurry of beautiful surprises.

With love,

Doc

Fancy an uninterrupted phase of inner peace?
Fancy an uninterrupted phase of inner peace during which you desist entirely from driving yourself nuts with thoughts of what if, what could be, what isn’t and why?

Fancy an unbroken interlude of feeling totally relaxed and comfortable in your skin?

Do you believe it’s possible?

It probably isn’t because of the overload of stimulation assailing your senses at every turn and the fact you’re not spending all day in silent meditation.

However it is possible to reach into the still place deep inside you whence springs bliss, peace, relaxation and comfort, if only for brief moments and to allow each brief moment spent that way to nourish you for hours and even days at a time.

The effectiveness depends on regularity more than quantity of time spent. And the method is fairly simple.

It consists of sighing deeply and releasing all the tension in your muscles from head to toe, allowing your shoulders to drop and all your weight sink below your navel, three times, while simultaneously elongating your spine, raising your breastbone a tad and smiling with your eyes, while at the same time, drawing your awareness back from your pre-frontal lobes into your midbrain region instead. On each inhalation between the sighs, mentally imbue the in-rushing air with the essence and power of profound bliss, deep peace, total relaxation and absolute comfort.

When you’ve done that, you’ll notice yourself feeling more harmonious with the world around you too, or at least more harmonious in the way you feel about what you perceive as the world around you. To make it official, say aloud or under your breath as appropriate, ‘I’m choosing to feel and be harmonised with myself and the world around me now.’

And in case your mind needs it spelling out fully, declare, ‘…and I’m doing it by accessing more of the essence and power of pure bliss, deep peace, total relaxation and absolute comfort within my skin with every breath I take.’

Finally spend a few moments visualising yourself as the person feeling and being all that. see yourself in a state of pure bliss, deep peace, total relaxation and absolute comfort. Watch that person as if watching someone in a movie. Then remind yourself that person is you and carry on as you were.

May the weekend ahead be a fine one for you, in which you are surprised and delighted no less than three times by three unexpected major turns of event you weren’t expecting.
Love, Doc

Nothing could stand in your way now
It’s easy to be filled with courage when you’re feeling courageous – that’s obvious – but real courage means being willing to access the will and strength to keep going in the face of challenges when you’re feeling timid and not courageous at all. That’s the quality you see in others that makes you want to weep for joy at the magnificence of the human spirit – the grace that comes with striding forth quaking in your boots.

It’s not a loud sound, this courage, it’s so quiet, in fact, you’d miss it in a noisy room and seeing as your mind is mostly a noisy room, you’d tend to miss it yourself, so to amplify it now, try this old Taoist trick.

Courage arises from heart energy. Gently raise your breastbone and pound gently, yet firmly and rhythmically with your fists on the centre of your breastbone for 20 to 30 seconds, while chanting as resonantly as you can the sound, ‘HAAAAAAAAAAAH’. Then stop suddenly, wait patiently and within a few seconds, you’ll feel the heart energy release and spread throughout your chest in a warm, tingling, fluttering sort of way. Tell yourself, ‘I’m choosing to access my innate courage now,’ to make it official and carry on as you were. And within only 40 minutes or so, you’ll notice your jitters have calmed and your resolve strengthened.

I wish you a day and night of feeling so supremely courageous that nothing could stand in your way now.
Love, Doc

Don't succumb to feeling overwhelmed
Sometimes it’s appropriate to fly up high in the sky of your mind and look down at your life below with the eyes of an eagle. Sometimes it’s appropriate to keep your nose down and only see, with the eyes of a field-mouse, the next task to be performed. Neither is better than the other – just because the eagle soars high, doesn’t mean its panoramic vision is any more valid or important than the up-close vision of the field-mouse. Both have their uses and often work well in harmony if alternated in quick succession.

When there is much to be done and many tasks to be performed to keep your material existence and relationship with the world of the world (of people) on an even keel, there’s a tendency to succumb to feeling overwhelmed. However this can be instantly overcome by seeing with field-mouse eyes and entering fully into the relationship with the task at hand as if caressing and massaging someone you love and wish to make feel beautiful. Alternate that with about one frame in ten of looking down with eagle vision, just to remind yourself that no matter how seemingly important, no individual detail or group of details of your local existence on the planet is more important than the adventure of your existence itself, which is an ineffable miracle from start to end, even if you do go complacent on it from time to time.

The trick is to keep reminding yourself that adventures are fun – sometimes scary or sad but then only to give the storyline dynamics. Once the adventure of your life is recognised and acknowledged as an overall fun event, the irksome details become less irksome. Once you appreciate that when having dropped your body, assuming you retain your individuated thread of consciousness after you die, there’ll probably be times you’ll crave some irksome details to distract you, the irksome details you have to contend with in this lifetime, suddenly seem more loveable.

And once you start loving the details, not with obsession but with an unconditionally light touch, the details start loving you back and making themselves instantly less irksome.
For instance, if I have a stream of pieces to write in a single day, which I generally have, the key to my peace, happiness and effectiveness, rather than succumbing to feeling overwhelmed, lies in my loving the sensation of typing on my keyboard – and loving every aspect of the experience of producing a piece, in the visceral sense of enjoying the physical sensation of each act and each aspect of each act, small step by small step – because these acts and aspects of acts, these incremental steps, however miniscule, comprise the ineffable adventure of my existence right now, which I honour above all because in that I meet the Tao, the Great All-Informing, All-Connecting Current face to face.

And what helps you and I remain patiently focused on the detail at hand like that, is paying attention to the breathing. Breathe out now. All the way. Then allow the breath to re-enter on its own. And so on – always that at the core of whatever else you’re doing – always the breathing – harnessing you to the underlying thrust of the storyline and preventing you getting lost in delusions occurring in your forebrain, which otherwise habitually distract you from the majesty of your original divine nature.
Say immediately without even thinking about it, ‘What I am is majestic and divine in origin and everything I touch with my loving hand, yields up its blessings freely now.’
That should work a bit of magic and alter the flow a tad for the better.

May you have a day and night of being so effective in everything you do, no matter what, that it’s all you can do to restrain yourself running to the highest point in your region and shouting, ‘Barefoot is a brick,’ for all the world to hear.
I love you, Doc

Advice from Barefoot when going through separation and divorce
A while back I wrote an article for Divorce Aid
Having been divorced twice by then, once at 28, then at 35, hence with the resilience of youthfulness, I suspect what I wrote might now appear a little uncompassionate. Being 52, married now for the third time and deeply in love, I have what I believe to be a more rounded view of divorce, which I'd like to present now.

Fundamentally a break-up is painful whether you're married to the person or not. To the extent you've invested psycho emotionally in the relationship, the break-up can profoundly undermine your confidence, self-worth and self-esteem and generally upset your worldview. Healing from this requires determination and fortitude, along with the help of good friends and ideally a good therapist, as well as a few massages at regular intervals to bring you back into your body, rather than remaining fixated on the thoughts in your head.

The healing process, which without doubt can comprise one of the most painful existential passages imaginable, can last anything from three months to three years and sometimes even longer if adequate help hasn't been found. However when this is compounded by the reality of divorce, including, not only the breakdown of a structure or life-model you've subscribed to but also the legal and financial aspects, involving the introduction of external parties into what was once a sacred bond between you and someone you loved or still love, the pain is likely to increase exponentially.

There is no advice I could give that wouldn't seem glib and there are no easy solutions. However, I would strongly suggest the following.

Meditation as a way to still and strengthen the mind in the midst of crisis.

Massage as above to keep you aware of yourself on a physical level rather than being stuck in your head with all the stressful thoughts.

Regular daily exercise to keep your body strong and flexible and your energy levels up, Training yourself to alter your perspective for a few moments on a regular basis, during which you observe your situation as if observing theatre, thereby enabling yourself to stop taking it so personally. Actively choosing to use the painful passage as an opportunity to grow stronger and better-rounded by affirming such positive thoughts as, 'everything makes me stronger and better-rounded, including this.'

Spending regular moments visualising the life you actually do want - see yourself looking happy and content, prosperous and successful in all aspects of your life including your love-life, for instance.

And above all being mindful not to hold your breath against the pain but to breathe slowly, deeply and freely at all times. None of these tips will take the pain away, however - only time does that - but they could help provide a rudder or sorts, along with a few mechanisms that will speed and ease the process.

Ultimately life goes on and you'll emerge all the stronger and more magnificent for the pain you're going through - and it helps enormously having Divorce Aid from which to glean help and support.

Hence why I wanted to contribute.

I sincerely hope it provides some help and solace.

Doc

You can learn more about the Barefoot Doctor in the About Us section. Visit his website at www.barefootdoctorglobal.com

Yin and Yang - Simple
As the venerable Albert (Einstein) said,
' Everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler.'

And what could be as simple but no simpler than the notion of it being you, who invents reality as you see it and therefore you, who can reinvent it to look (and feel) how you want it to?

You ascribe the negative or positive tone to every thought you have. You generate the story of your life as you go along, according to the tone you’re creating. A sweet (relaxed, positive tone), induces a sweet, easy day. A sour (stressed, negative) tone, induces a sour, stressful day. And the external details will arrange themselves accordingly of themselves to fit that.

In other words, the mind makes a choice. The body-mind complex’s energy is instantaneously mobilised in that direction and external reality, the world of the ten thousand things, instantaneously reflects that back at you by reshaping itself accordingly.

Smile and the whole world smiles with you. Frown and you just get the whole world down. Not that one is necessarily more valuable than the other. There is always an admixture of the two – down and up, yin and yang – but the deal is to do what you can to ensure the balance is at least 51% in favour of the aspect that works for you best in the long run. So assuming you enjoy the sensation of up, of sweet, of easy and you feel that serves you in terms of gaining optimum value from being alive, do what you can to ensure you’re inventing a story of joy rather than of sorrow.

Stop holding or inhibiting your breath. Let it flow freely now, in and out, in and out.

Let your mind settle.

To attune yourself, take a moment to gaze around you and as your attention falls on one object after another, remind yourself, it’s you who have invented whatever story you associate with that object. Then turn your gaze inwards, perhaps closing your eyes to assist concentration and as fearful thoughts of whatever’s currently stressing you arise in your forebrain, remind yourself again that it’s you who have invented whatever story you associate with each.

Having attained some psychological distance between you and your thoughts, reinvent the story attached to each until you see a landscape that pleases and feels safe to you, one in which you can walk in peace and comfort, fully yourself, fully realised and fully operational in all respects.

You may notice, at this point, your rational mind throwing up resistance thoughts, along the lines of you not quite having what it takes on some level to actually be able to muster this reality-reinvention power for real and that you’re somehow deluding yourself, so should really shut up and carry on being a victim of the world you see.

Merely thank your rational mind for playing devil’s advocate and continue investing in the picture you want to see. Then, as I said, your energy will be mobilised in that direction and the external realm will start to instantaneously reflect that back at you – and the details will rearrange themselves accordingly, affording you as splendid a time as you fancy having – the limits are up to you, as in how high you like to fly, wind currents and air pressure taken into consideration.

And what could be simpler than that?

Albert would be happy.

Have a beautiful weekend ahead, during which you are veritably stunned by the elegance with which life unfolds before your very eyes.

Love, Doc

Sharing the blessings
There’s a tradition among the Native Americans I was privileged to live with up in the New Mexican high country a few decades back, as a younger man in my 20s. It's doing good turns for people as an unspoken-about, high-yield investment (subject to terms and conditions) in the karmic futures market, so to speak.

Not that they would speak in those terms or put such conditions on reality as occur when you try and define aspects of it, such concepts and modes of perception being outside their cosmological structure and nature, itself based on the animistic idea that the Great Spirit (the Tao, if you like) informs all known phenomena from the hugest galaxy to the tiniest grain of sand, from the weeniest quark or meme to you and I. This world of the world including everyone and everything in it, is a manifestation of the Great Spirit and as such is informed with its universal intelligence, thus if spoken to lovingly and respectfully, will respond in like manner, so affording you at least the requisite 51% good standing in the world of the world, with not only other people but with even the elements, the planet, the galaxy and everything there is, including the mountains, the deserts and the rolling seas, providing most of the time you remain in loving, respectful dialogue with it, in thought, word and deed.

They call the maintenance of this dialogue, praying. On this basis, what you give to another by way of service, if done with a pure heart from this place of being in dialogue with the ineffable, is tantamount to giving to the whole and so will elicit a similar response from the whole back in your direction, except exponentially multiplied by the amount of love and respect you put into it, however you’d calculate such a measurement – it happens on an instinctual, rather than contrived level in any case, so precise measurements are irrelevant.

In other words, the more generous you are to someone in need, no matter the recipient, if coming from a place of strength rather than weakness, as in not giving for a result of any kind, life, the Tao, whatever you want to call it, will be generous back via others in an apparently random, yet actually highly specific way, just when you need it most.

In short, give generously of yourself at every opportunity and the world will give generously back.

This doesn’t preclude being momentarily taken advantage of from time to time by unscrupulous souls and various assorted hungry ghosts but providing you’re giving from the totality of your self, the story will flip back in your favour before you can say Snopme Chaddelow (character from my TWISTED FABLES novel).

Giving can be in the form of time, energy, smiles, kindness, love, warmth, money, connections, affection, caring, healing or any other form of help you can imagine – doesn’t matter how big or small – big and small are all relative anyway – a heartfelt smile and meeting of eyes in the street as you give change to help a homeless person know the dignity of being acknowledged can save them from topping themselves on a cold night, the same to someone working in a shop bored out of their minds on the verge of a breakdown can restore their faith enough to keep going, even just sending a stranger a kind wish in the street at random can cause miracles to happen in their life.

They didn’t make a big deal about it up there in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. You either did it or you didn’t. People didn’t mention it much. The magic just used to appear to happen on its own.

But I’m glad we had this little chat of a workaday Monday and hope it inspires you with a pleasant strategy for the day (and night). It has me. In fact I was inspired by having done a touch of it of late, as the opportunities arose and have been rather bowled over by the beautiful chain of events it’s evidently triggered off, so wanted to pass it on to you.

Sharing the blessings is what makes the blessings grow.

And now I’ve got to go.

May you have a day and night in which sheer magic occurs at every turn, leaving you feeling so blessed, it’s all you can do not to go running with gay abandon to the highest natural or human-made point in your region and shouting, ‘Barefoot is a brick,’ for all the world to hear.

Love, Doc

Be yourself, complete with the all the flaws and glitches
Learning to listen to your body in terms of what you stick in your mouth to feed it, is as crucial to listening to it for signs of danger, similar to the facility animals have for sensing an impending earthquake, or indeed, listening to it for signs of fascination, for in that direction lies your destiny.

Rather than depending on the latest media-promoted, often irresponsibly reported dietary fad, listen to what your body wants. It knows. Against the advice of well-meaning people over the years, I have remained, for instance, a stalwart fan of black tea drinking and only last year, scientists concluded black tea was a viable anti-oxidant. Similarly I have always been an adherent of eating a few squares of quality chocolate a day and now scientists have concluded that chocolate made from cocoa rich in flavanol increases the blood flow to the brain, thus promoting mental acuity.

Had I waited the thirty years or so for the scientists to give me the all-clear, I’d have missed out on three decades of anti-oxidation and extra brain-blood.

However we must always remember that nothing is perfect – while every cloud has a silver lining, every silver lining also has a cloud. Black tea is mildly toxic and so needs its effect balancing by engaging in activities intended to relax the liver and so aid the detoxifying process, such as daily tai chi, chi gung and most exotically, dropping a small clump of dried chrysanthemum petals on top of the black tea and drinking through the petals, which open up in the hot fluid. And chocolate, no matter how it’s prepared is rich in calories so must be balanced with exercise and so on.

It’s all about balancing.

It’s impossible to be perfect and bad for your health to try – like banging your head against the wall – but it is lovely when you stop, just like trying to be perfect is.

Be yourself, complete with the all the flaws and glitches. It’s the only way to be able to hear what your body’s telling you. You can’t hear if you’re distracted trying to someone else.

The quickest way to be yourself, if you feel you’ve lost contact, is to stop thinking by drawing your point of observing reality backwards into the midbrain, relaxing your muscles and sinews, where in tension you store the madness, dropping your shoulders, letting your bodyweight sink below your navel, pushing your neck back gently to lengthen your spine, breathing slowly to calm your entire person, lowering your lids till only a slit of light remains and gazing for a few moments into the expanse of inner space between and behind your eyes with a smile on your face.

Repeat this a few times each day and you’ll gradually fall into line with yourself, thus making yourself privy to the crucial messages from your body, which are obviously far more extensive in their scope than simple matters of whether to imbibe black tea or chew bits of chocolate and indeed throw light on all aspects of your journey if you let them.

May you have a day and night of being so in tune with your body, so in tune with your original self, it’s all you can do not to go dancing the wild fandango at your local shopping mall or high street, shouting, ‘Barefoot is a brick,’ for all the world to hear.

Love, Doc

Editor's note: And as Judy Garland once said,
'Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.'

 

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