The Five Efforts

Ultimately the responsibility for the quality of your life is yours and unless you are prepared to accept this obligation no amount of outside help will secure your wellbeing. It is your duty to analyse all the information that is made available to you then assess its value and if it has credibility use it. But finding merit in an idea does not make it work for you. It is useless unless you put the idea into practice. This requires a degree of belief and understanding that can only be built by applying the idea to your every day life. Participation is the one ingredient absolutely necessary for the control of your life. Those attitudes that are built with the knowledge that comes from a conscious decision can only be strengthened by the personal experiences of self-implementation. These attitudes can be the foundation of good self-esteem and act as a stabilising force. They are designed by you for your own happiness. Without belief and a guiding moral purpose you are creating a vulnerability to  everything mindless. Such a lack of purpose is a desolate and lonely place. The one thing that makes a good concept a personal one is your participation. The suggested answers to life that are put forward and require no participation from you but expect you to merely believe are not your truths. Someone else’s accepted normality will eventually be rejected in some way and be replaced with another normality. There can be no solutions if your thinking persists with the notion that your lack of contentment is someone else’s fault that you are in a dilemma. Or that your problems are the complete cause of outside factors. There may be blame elsewhere, but the solution is with you. You are the only one qualified to know .Accept the responsibility for the quality of your life. The price of involvement is not so high, nor the effort too great that you must sacrifice your happiness to the merchants of abuse.

It is my firm belief that my mental attitude affects my physical health and in return my physical health influences my mental state. A healthy mental attitude encourages my body to function to its capabilities and a healthy body helps my mind to perform well. At times my mind is the dominant partner and at other times it is my body. Though the degrees of influence change considerably depending on the occasion. Because both of these states need each other to exist it is important that one or the other does not exert undue pressure and cause unnecessary stress that in turn can create overload and collapse. The short term goal may be realised but the cost to overall health will have to be accounted for.

A conscious thought in a single action trains both body and mind to respond to that thought. Thus as part of our subconscious it becomes part of our new way of doing things. Our future thoughts and actions are dominated by our specific wanted thoughts. And our behaviour and actions are what we want them to be.

There are five principles each requiring effort that I consider necessary  for a person’s wellbeing.

1. ACCEPT – Your need to change.

2. RECOGNISE –  That you have negative aspects.

3. RELEASE – Your negative aspects.

4. IDENTIFY – Your positives and the ones you want.

5. ENCOURAGE – Both your own and aspired positives.

All five are used in conjunction with each other. Their purpose is not to work in isolation but as a unit of self. And they all require effort. If the reasoning power of your conscious mind accepts that these principles are worthwhile then your subconscious can also accept them. In a non- invasive manner you can tread the path to self-contentment. They have at times brought me back from the brink of total despair and allowed me to continue in my quest.

Accept (Humility)

Time is a conscious illusion

Space is a place with room

Event is not the same

Only a shadow is needed to commence a life

It is easy to get side-tracked in life, to forget to think, to let things keep going the way they are because they seem fine. There doesn’t seem to be any problem. Your job is ok. The family is doing well. There are plenty of things to do and you lead a good social life. Then why isn’t it all quite right?

At some time in your life you will come to this conclusion, that not everything in your life is as it should be. Admit it and you will realise that there is a need to change-something. You may not know why, but you know that you are not entirely satisfied with your life. It takes a little courage but be brave enough to face up to it. Be humble enough to confess that you have elected to travel an easier road rather than take full responsibility for your affairs. Let go of your ego. Don’t be afraid to declare this fact to yourself. It is this admission of humbleness that starts each new cycle of events. You want contentment. The way you are going to get it is by first acknowledging that you need it. Although you do not necessarily understand the what, where or how of it.

If you clutch on to what you’ve got, good or bad, for fear of losing it,  how can you ever realise what you need? There is nowhere to put it! But you can do something about it. Return to your basics and practice a little honest assessment. This is the toll you pay on the road to contentment.

Recognise

Spawned by the Mother of Fear

I have known a thousand deaths but they will not have me;

though buried deep, these genes of slavery I know who you are.

In recognising negative influences in your life, some are obvious; others are buried deep in your subconscious. The negative forces affecting you that are not apparent are most likely more deep rooted than you are ready to accept. This does not mean that they are less influential. Look at the obvious known negatives for what they are; not for what your previous conceptions have told you they are. You may have been looking at the effects of wrong thinking and seeing only a reaction. Strip them of all their colourful trimmings. Never allow yourself to fret over these negatives, wondering where they came from and why this is happening to you. They are already with you. These questions have already been answered by the state of your life. These negatives are with you. See them as they are. See them in their nakedness. All negativity is caused by excess. Once excess is recognised it can be let go and balance achieved. The reason you are isolating your negatives is to find the fundamental cause and not dwell on the unwanted effect. That effect will go when there is no longer a reason for it being there.

Release

Unlocked are the gates of bondage

Free now but will they go

Their names have no qualities

Old comforts denied

Let each go four ways and more

The obvious has been stated. The negative recognised. Give it no further thought, let it come, recognise what it is and let it go. Holding on to it is selfish. It is not yours. You do not want it. You have already recognised it. It is truth. Let it go. Time and time again a negative entity will show its self because in the past you have made yourself to be a comfortable  home. That is no longer the case, now you do not wish to. The more you recognise what it is, give it no mind, and then allow it to go on its way, the weaker its influence becomes. It is like the traveller who is used to staying at the same hotel every time he comes to town. He will have to find somewhere else to stay if that hotel closes down. The same is true of all negative actions. Once you recognise what the root cause is, let it go, that is, once known, don’t hold, let go.

See illness for what it is, it has no emotion and it has no mind. Do not nurture the ailment for what you can get out of it. Let all sickness and injury be the natural adjustment to circumstances. If you confront your negatives you may beat the symptoms but you will replace it with something else later on. If it could be beaten by confrontation it would  not have been there to begin with. It is stronger than you are as long as you hold on to it. Let go and you are free to get on with your life.

Identify

Leaving emptiness and lonely spaces Who were their enemies

Do they know this void And the others

Can I see them now

The negatives have gone, leaving a vacuum that must be filled. You are necessary to the functioning of all things. All things could not be what they are without you. You are equal. You have a choice in happiness.  You are complete. You neither grow nor diminish and as one part of you changes so does another. As you let go of one thing you will replace it with another. Everything you are is important and necessary. Your completeness is your happiness. A positive can be either known or unknown. Isolate the positives that you know. Identify them. Take  caution that it is not your ego at work nor that you are looking at effects. Strip them down. Remember that if there is a negative to recognise and realise there is a positive to be found and identified. The negative will keep coming back if the positive has not taken its place. Positives are everywhere. You will find them once you give yourself space to look.

Positives that are unknown to you will be seen when you have let go sufficiently and made enough room for them. They are the deep rooted qualities that have been buried by the excesses of self. Until you allow them to surface they will continue to be hidden away. They need to be identified. Apply the identification of positives to everything you do until eventually you do it without thinking. Then you will know the unknown ones.

Encourage

Foreboding and Dark this vast expanse Cold Nothingness awaits

“Be Fearless” advises the friendly wind

Of this voyage I know

Simply shed your burden And come home

Once you have identified the positives, cultivate them by constantly using them. In turn they will expose avenues for you to further discover others. As you become better at identifying and encouraging the positives it will become a part of your nature and a natural way to finding completeness. As with anything worthwhile making the right amount of effort is important. But do not let this become traumatic and a soul searching dilemma. Strain and you will turn the situation against yourself. Find the relative amount of time and effort which does not mean only when you feel like it. Unless you try, it has no meaning. You must use and practice and nurture these positives if they are to help you attain satisfaction in your life. Acknowledgement alone is incomplete. Encourage means to do something, what to do, you have already identified. It is a simple matter  to read my words and to think that the idea is good and makes sense or to even dismiss it all as too simple and unworkable for modern life. This has little value.

The five efforts follow a natural progression from one concept to another. These efforts are not just something to think about. They are something to think about and do.