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 numerous other articles which are regularly published. Scroll down for articles:
Bringing on the new
Wipe the slate clean and start again
Swap your stress for calm
You have a clear choice in each and every moment of your life
Expand your life in a jiffy
Transform your life from dark to light with forgiveness
Realease your attachment to the past
Unleash the spirit of pure fun within
Don't think, sink
Turn the world on its head
Monday Special – focus, focus, focus
The joy of being who you are
Bringing on the new
Look back over your life at all the big shifts and you’ll discern a pattern: just before each time you jumped up a quantum level, just before each time your life expanded to afford you much more and much better of whatever it was you wanted, just before each time you got that something huge and new you’d wanted, you were required involuntarily to let go of something, say goodbye to something, leave behind something of equal hugeness.
And if you look back at those times, you’ll remember how with each you initially perceived that loss as a terrible, painful thing, when now, with the wisdom of retrospection, you can actually see them as the necessary levers to bring on the new, bigger and even better.
And where you are now, whether in the throes of letting go of something or on the way to doing so, is no different. So while whatever’s happening may feel hard on your soul, assuming you’re facing or dealing with loss of any kind, allow yourself a brief yet potentially profound fillip here and remind and assure yourself that whatever’s happening now is actually an expression of the Tao’s pure and absolute love for you, no matter how painful it may be currently feeling and that the result will be as beautiful, joyous and magnificent as it’s presently difficult.
I wish you instantaneous deliverance into the new.
Love, Doc
Wipe the slate clean and start again
In each and every moment – this one for starters – you have a choice between grasping at the stress, rising up to the drama all around (and within) you or dropping back into your centre and retrieving your power and tranquility.
Grasping for the stress is beguilingly appealing, hinting falsely you’ll resolve all aspects of life by it. However the most effective way to resolve life is to allow life to resolve itself, which you can only facilitate by ceasing to grasp at the stress and instead allow yourself to revel in the simple yet profound pleasure of being alive.
Once you surrender to the underlying miracle of being alive, all the rest takes care of itself.
Once you let go of grasping at the stress everything feels fine and there is nothing lacking.
Nothing lacking you are complete, complete you become magnetic, and life adds to you naturally without you having to strive for it.
Drop back into your centre by inhaling deeply, then exhaling with a long sigh and as you sigh, let all your muscular tension dissolve and along with it your attachment to all the drama eliciting it in the first place.
I wish you a beautiful re-set and a magnificent day as a result.
Love, Doc
Swap your stress for calm
Oftentimes the stress of dealing with the details of the day-to-day-ness of it all overcomes your innate propensity for calm, calm being the natural state occurring spontaneously whenever you desist from driving yourself mad with the stress. Whenever this happens it causes stress to radiate al around you, making others feel stressed in your presence and then passing it on to others. Conversely, by seeing yourself as a nexus of calm and seeing that calm pervading and radiating all around you, not only will it spread calm to everyone else, it’ll also increase the calm you feel within and thus attenuate your stress – it’s like method acting and it works.
I wish you calm.
Love, Doc
You have a clear choice in each and every moment of your life
All the while things are coming at you – information, people, ideas, feelings, scenery, pictures: life – and as you sit there, stand there, lie there crouch there, star-jump there or do whatever you’re doing there, as you bear witness to your life unfolding moment by moment, you have a clear choice in each and every moment, between feeling sorry for yourself having to process that flow, or saying thankyou.
For there’s no doubt being alive is the greatest miracle you’ll ever know and to waste even just one moment preventing your enjoyment of it by assuming the victim’s role, is not only silly but rude in the face of the Tao who goes to all this trouble to make it all happen.
On the other hand, thanking the Tao, your Tao, for each and every moment, and for each and every nano-detail of each moment, no matter how irksome or painful, nor how magnificent or grand, simply because without any of these nano-details in place, your life would fall through the crack of existence and land in the black hole of non-existence, thanking the Tao for it, raises your instantly and powerfully energy levels, refines your field and increases the frequency your soul is vibrating at, and this not only improves your enjoyment, it also instigates a fresh degree of magnetism in your field which draws more enjoyable events your way, so you win all round.
So unless you fancy being a real stick in the mud today and through the weekend, train yourself gently to start and keep saying thankyou under your breath for every single nano-detail of each and every moment that arises henceforth.
I wish you the miracle doing so will elicit.
With love,
Doc
Expand your life in a jiffy
Without realizing it, you spin a web around life comprised of all the descriptions and definitions, opinions and assumptions you’ve formed about reality, which is necessarily limited and so eventually makes your life feel too tight and constricting. One superfast way to undo and reverse this tendency in order to expand your life to more comfortable, less constricting proportions is to consciously open yourself to receiving beautiful surprises.
This game involves desisting from attempting to guess what these surprises might be, or even in which area of life they may appear. It involves letting go of all prejudices and preconceptions about the way life should be, and instead allowing the Tao free reign to be fully creative.
To do otherwise would simply be rude and bad form.
Merely open yourself, fling wide open the doors to your heart and allow the Tao to love you and show its love by showering you with beautiful surprises now – today, tonight, right through the weekend and beyond.
Simply relax everything – muscles, nerves, blood vessels, sense organs, brain, breathing, everything – and momentarily attuning your full awareness to the Presence behind the scenes, the Tao, your Tao, say/ask/command/suggest (as the mood takes you – the Tao doesn’t mind which) with feeling and conviction, ‘Shower me with beautiful surprises now, Tao.’
And that’s exactly what’ll happen, so stand by.
I wish you the most magnificent of beautiful surprises – a whole slew of them now.
Love, Doc
Transform your life from dark to light with forgiveness
Suppose all of this, all these myriad shapes and swirls of the light we think of as the world, this unfathomable material manifestation of the subatomic realm, the world of the ten thousand things, as the Taoists call it, suppose all this is really just one big, universal sized mind or consciousness, all its parts intrinsically interconnected, only not realising it, in the same way as your arm is intrinsically connected to your shoulder but isn’t necessarily cognitive of it - it just gets on with doing whatever arms do - implying that you, yourself, are a manifestation of it too, a nexus of it, a point of assemblage of it, and that we all are.
And suppose this universal sized conglomeration of phenomena all of it occurring within the one big mind, is in essence love, implying anything anyone (including you) does that appears unkind, or destructive, though a distortion of love, even in its distortion, is love nonetheless.
Does this afford you a glimpse of how, in that light, in the light of love, it’s now possible to begin to forgive others and forgive yourself, a sense that somehow, even though what they do may disgust or perturb you, they’ve merely been acting out in an attempt to express this love to the best of their abilities, according to their current state of personal evolution and if they could’ve done it any better they would’ve?
Carrying resentment and blame blocks the flow of love through you, depletes your vitality, darkens your spirit and lowers the frequency of energy transmission from your person, the combination of which blocks the flow of blessings, opportunities and gifts from the world around you.
Forgiving everyone, including yourself for your own short-fallings, doesn’t mean forgetting what they or you have done that needs correction for the future, nor does it mean no longer holding them or yourself to account: it means letting go of the misguided need to punish by way of revenge in the case of forgiving others, or by way of guilt-alleviation in the case of forgiving yourself.
One powerful, direct and particularly swift way of forgiving everyone including you and thus instigating a huge surge of lightness of being, vitality and blessing-flow, is to think of everyone you know or can think of, especially those you’ve perceived as having wronged you and mentally, from the heart as well as the head, tell each one in turn, ‘I forgive you,’ and in between each one, think of yourself and say, ‘…and I forgive you too.’
I suspect you’ll appreciate the up-rush of existential glee this elicits.
I wish you that today in spades.
With love, Doc
Realease your attachment to the past
One of the more powerful Taoist techniques is the daily discipline of releasing the past, or more precisely your attachment to it, and actively embracing the potential-filled present moment and the future it holds in store for you. You can link this two-phase operation to various sets of movements. The most simple of these is exhaling to release the past and inhaling to embrace the moment. You can embellish this, for instance by pacing in an anticlockwise circle to release the past and a clockwise one to embrace the moment. Or by standing, feet together, with arms stretched out in a T-shape, palms facing down as you exhale to release, then turned upwards to embrace.
Getting into a daily habit of this will, by and by, help purify and refine your field of possibilities.
When releasing the past, thank it and bless it, along with all the people who comprised it. By extension, thank and bless what’s to come too.
This will activate an even more potent stream of magic.
I wish you a fully blessed flowering of the moment today.
Love, Doc
Unleash the spirit of pure fun within
To have fun, you have to let go: let go of that veneer of adulthood, that inhibiting mantle of self-consciousness obsessed with looking good and fitting in. The way to it is to slide yourself back through the crack in time till you find yourself once again 4 years old, playing in the mystery of existence with hardly a care in the world and let the spirit of that child inform you instead.
The rest is simply down to relaxing all your muscles and soft tissue as much as possible, as it’s rigidity in the tissue that makes you stiff in the mind – and reminding yourself frequently, ‘my main purpose for being here is to enjoy it, because when I enjoy it the Tao enjoys it through me and there’s nothing greater than the Tao having fun.’
May you find yourself as a major conduit of cosmic fun today and through the weekend.
Love, Doc
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Don't think, sink
The tendency is to think yourself into a frenzy about all the details and possibilities of your life, what can go wrong, what to do to make it all go right and so on, which is highly addictive for the adrenalin it releases into the system, which in turn pulls the energy of your body upwards into the chest and head, thus making you top-heavy and liable to make silly decisions, hence totally counterproductive. However there’s always the option to sink your energy instead – plunge it down below the level of your navel so it can be re-circulated by the kidneys, thus increasing your vital flow, clearing your head and so making it easier to focus.
And all you have to do is breathe in, then breathe out and as you do, allow everything going on in your head and chest to drop – this is addressing context rather than content – slide the whole shape of what’s going on downwards, rather than get involved in the thoughts comprising that shape.
And keep doing this. The beautiful paradox is that by releasing the thinking mind’s grip on the action, you create a space which the Tao then fills with wonderful surprises. Doing it the other way you merely create a barrage of noise that keeps the Tao and its opportunities away.
So don’t delay, sink that chi and have a marvelous day.
Love, Doc
Turn the world on its head
If today you find yourself taking life and all its details so seriously you lose your inner smile and don’t know how to draw yourself back into balance but need to in order to keep your vitality flowing so you can get through the tasks at hand, here’s a wonderful instant reset technique.
You know how the earth is a sphere rather than a flat surface, hence that the so-called fact that the sky is up and the ground down, is actually merely a myth. In reality the sky is out, away from the sphere’s center and the ground is in towards it.
This myth is in fact a throwback to when the earth was believed to be flat – old habits die hard – so is totally up for grabs.
So the ancient Taoists who knew the world was a ball, developed the upside-down method, by which you reverse the illusion and become like a bat, hanging down from the ground into the sky. That’s right, you make the ground up and the sky down, so that the roofs of the tallest skyscrapers are pointing down deep into the sky and your head is pointing down towards the ceiling, while your feet are up there on the ground.
A few moments of this will instantly reframe your view of reality and reset your perspective, making all the Monday details and tasks, just details and tasks.
I taught this once to a leading QC (UK version of a senior court lawyer), who used to turn the courtroom upside down just as he was about to make his closing speech and reckoned he invariably won his cases on account of it. That’s how empowering it can be.
However if you already feel your world has turned upside down in an unpleasant way, check the Members’ DocBox for a powerful technique to turn it the right way up again.
I wish you such inner poise and balance today you don’t care which way round the world is.
Love, Doc
Monday Special – focus, focus, focus
Even if you’re not working and simply getting on with the business of having fun, there are so many details that need attending to in any one day, in any one moment even, it could make your head spin if you let it, and the internal dialogue insists on rambling its way through the front of your brain regardless, as if you didn’t have enough to be getting on with. This reduces your natural enjoyment of being alive and increases your stress factor.
Conversely if you want to reduce your levels of stress and increase your levels of enjoying being alive, no matter the day of the week, no matter what you’re doing or aren’t doing, you have to make a new agreement with reality.
You have to agree with reality, that you’ll treat each task and even each stage of each task, with equal significance, based on the notion that in each and every moment, whatever it is you’re focusing on doing (or not doing) provides a pathway to enlightened connecting with the Tao, the Presence behind all the charade, whence springs your power and potential for glory.
Then because each task and even each stage of each task is of equal significance as a potential doorway to the divine, you are obliged to, relax, breathe, be in your body and focus entirely on what you’re doing moment by moment, rather than trying in vain to focus on eight things simultaneously.
Doing so, not only will you perform each task more easily, excellently and effectively, you’ll also be feeling the calming, soothing, empowering presence of the super-self or call it what you will and knowing that, your day will be utterly transformed.
But don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself and see the results for yourself.
And if you want to learn a super-powerful trick for increasing focus-ability, focus in on the Members’ DocBox.
I wish you a Monday of sheer ease, excellence and enjoyment.
The joy of being who you are
Worrying about what other people think of you is hardwired. However it doesn’t and mustn’t prevent you being, thinking and living originally, authentically and creatively, as failing to do so means you’re depriving yourself of the fullness of the gift life is presenting you with – and that would be rude.
This doesn’t imply going into denial and pretending you don’t care what other people think.
What it does mean is understanding that the level at which we judge each other is illusory. All this is the Tao manifesting itself in myriad versions through us – it’s theatre to amuse and entertain the Tao. And it’s the Tao playing all the parts itself, wearing different faces to do so.
It makes it totally convincing so each of its manifestations (you and I and everyone else) actually believes itself to be an individuated entity. It has to do this or the theatre would get swiftly boring for it and it has to hang out for eternity so needs to make its theatre good enough to last.
But theatre it remains in essence so the opinions of others, or more usually, your assumptions and projections of the opinions of others, are essentially meaningless.
The local self, the disguise, naturally cares, but the universal self, the Tao behind the disguise, just laughs.
And as long as your heart is filled with the intention to spread and share love and the innate joy of being alive, your actions will all ultimately bear good fruit no matter how convoluted the way there may become at times.
In short, hold a loving intention, be who you are and disregard the opinions of others and be who you are. This facilitates a far more wonderful life for you and by extension and in the fullness of time, those around you, and in any case it’s your divinely ordained duty.
Through your originality and creativity the Tao finds its fullest expression through and within you.
May the Tao find its full expression in and through you today (and tonight).
For a wonderful acupressure technique for strengthening healthy self-fullness see the Members’ DocBox.
Love, Doc
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