Zerolimit

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I have heard about Ho'oponopono and how Dr Len has facilitated the healing of an entire ward of criminally mental patients in Hawaii State Hospital. And he did that without even seeing anyone of them. However, when asked, Dr Len said that he didn't heal anyone, but worked within himself to let go of the 'data' in him that has caused the situation. That we are all cluttered with data, such that we have lost our Zero state. He says that we are all 100% responsible for what happens around us.

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In Zero state, everything flows: like the right person will turn up at the right time and right place,...etc,   miraculously. That it can be so smooth that you don't even have to make a choice. He even added that if you have to make a choice, that means you are not clear enough.

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This actually rhymes with what a wealthy Malaysian businessman once said to me when I interviewed him for a magazine. He said (in his halting limited English), "In life, no choice is the best choice". He said that as he related a time when he was financially broke and had nowhere else to go but to go to Indonesia to meet a cousin to start all over again. There was nowhere else better to go. Then, when over there, he grabbed the first opportunity that came, because he had 'no-choice'. Today, twenty years later, he is a fabulously rich man both financially and otherwise.

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Then I thought "Has this Zero state happened to me before?  Has what happened to me in going into acting, a result of getting back to Zero?" 

The story of how I got into acting was surprising, even to myself. As it goes, I was asked to act in a film by a director who saw my photo online (not from an actor's portal), then during the shoot she praised me a lot and urged me to take it up acting as a career.  And so I believed her, and a year on, I have done over 40 gigs  and acted in two films that won international awards. And all that happened out of the blue, as I can't recall having made any intentions,about being an actor, at least not consciously.

The other experience I have was the watching of the video of Dr Len's explanation about his work. It came out of the blue from my friend who was screening the film. I attended the screening and in the video, heard Dr Len's mention of making 'solarised water' using blue glass bottles. Then there was a question from the audience of where one could find such blue bottles, and Dr Len said that if one is in the Zero state, then the blue bottles will turn up. At that point, I cheekily wondered if the blue bottles will turn up for me. 

"Where will I find those bottles turning up for me out of the blue?"

"Perhaps it will be at a pub, probably in town, like Clarke Quay?"

As it unfolded, I didn't go to that part of town nor any pub, but when I reached home, I found two blue glass bottles freshly washed in the kitchen!!! Now I must try getting water into those blue bottles, have them solarised and use them to 'clean' myself to get into Zero. Will keep you posted on my progress.

Actually going into 'Zero', isn't new. I can relate it to Guru's common advice to just "go meditate". And he often say that when you meditate, things will be clear and sorted. It is like polishing the diamonds. We are already the Divine - the Diamond, that needs polished, or 'cleaned' as Dr Len will call it.

Why Positive Thinking Is Bad for You

By Srikumar Rao

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The "power of positive thinking" is so firmly enshrined in our culture that knocking it is a little like attacking motherhood or apple pie. Many people swear by positive thinking, and quite a few have been helped by it. Nevertheless, it is not a very effective success tool -- and it can be downright deleterious. There are much better ways to get the benefits that positive thinking allegedly provides.

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Perhaps the statement that best exemplifies positive thinking is "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade." It seems so obvious that this is good advice that we never question the wisdom of the adage. But it does not take a whole lot of digging to unearth the flaws in this reasoning.

For one thing, did life really hand you a lemon -- or was that merely your initial, unthinking reaction upon finding yourself in a difficult situation? And is being handed a lemon really a bad thing?

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No matter what happens to us in life, we tend to think of it as "good" or "bad." And most of us tend to use the "bad" label three to 10 times as often as the "good" label. When we label something as "bad," we greatly increase the odds that we will experience it as such. And that is when we assume that we need to apply positive thinking. We have been given a lemon, and we had better scramble to salvage something out of the situation by making some lemonade out of it.

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How tiresome and tiring!

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Think back on your life. Can you recall instances when something that you initially thought was a bad thing turned out to be not so bad after all -- perhaps even spectacularly good?

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Maybe, for example, you missed the early-morning train that you always take to get to work on time, and you had to wait a whole hour for the next one. But in that hour, you struck up a conversation with someone else who had missed that train... and a beautiful friendship developed. Or maybe you didn't get a job that you desperately wanted. But then you were unexpectedly offered a much better job -- which you would not have been able to accept had it not been for the earlier rejection.

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And consider the story of Olympic champion Michael Phelps. He broke his wrist after slipping on some ice. He was in the middle of intense training for the Beijing games, and thought his career as a swimmer was over. But his coach wouldn't let him quit. And though he couldn't swim for a few weeks, he kept training just by kicking his legs.

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Phelps did make it to the Olympics, and he won the 100-meter butterfly by one of the closest margins in athletic history -- 1/10th of a second. Turns out the weeks of kicking had given him leg strength he'd never had before. While his opponent had to stop kicking and glide at the end of the race, Phelps was able to keep going and win.

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Now, let me propose something radical and revolutionary: No matter what happens to you -- no matter how terrible it may seem -- you do not stick a "bad" label on it. You are fired from your job... your mortgage lender sends you a foreclosure notice... your spouse files for divorce... or whatever. Is it possible, just possible, that the reason you experience such things as personal tragedies is because you have been conditioned to think of them that way?

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In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells about a beautiful girl from a privileged background who was grateful to be in a concentration camp because it allowed her to connect with a spiritual side of herself that she never knew existed. Observations like this led Frankl into his life's work of trying to determine why, when faced with extreme adversity, some people flourish while others disintegrate.

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Many who rise triumphantly never label what they go through as "bad" and, thus, don't agonize over it. They simply take it as a given -- like an engineer surveying a swamp through which a road is to be built. From his perspective, the swamp is not a bad thing. It is merely something that has to be addressed in his construction plan.

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If you never label a situation as "bad," you won't experience it that way. You won't need positive thinking to get yourself through it. And all of the stress associated with figuring out how to make lemonade out of your lemon simply goes away.

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That's a lot different than saying to yourself: "This is bad. Really bad. But somehow I will make some lemonade out of this lemon -- and then perhaps it won't be so bad." What you're doing, here, is falling victim to the huge pebble in the positive-thinking shoe. First you think your situation is bad. Then you think you will somehow make it less bad. Meanwhile, you can't help but wonder if you're just kidding yourself. And if you don't manage to make lemonade out of your lemon, you're devastated -- because the success tool you were conditioned to believe in caved in on you. That's why I say that, in some cases, positive thinking can be harmful.

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Can you actually go through life without labeling what happens to you as "good" or "bad"? Sure you can. But you have to train yourself not to do it. You have been conditioned to think of what happens to you as being either bad or good. And you can de-condition yourself. It is neither easy nor fast, but it is possible.

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Let's say you break your leg. Yes, there is some unpleasant stuff you have to do -- like having a doctor set the broken bone and going to therapy when the cast comes off. But the real unpleasantness in this situation is what you inflict on yourself: "Why did this have to happen to me? Bad things always come my way. I am in such pain." All of that is simply baggage. You don't have to pick up this load -- and the only reason you do is because you were never told that you don't have to.

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I am telling you now. Don't pick up that useless burden. Don't label what happens to you as "bad." Then you won't need positive thinking -- and much of the stress in your life will simply disappear. Poof! Just like that.

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[Dr. Srikumar Rao is the author of the new book Happiness at Work -- Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful, No Matter What. Visit www.srikumarsrao.com to read more of his articles and to buy the book. You can also follow Dr. Rao on Twitter: @srikumarsrao.]

In Sickness and In Health 12 - the Flow

My cough is unbearable and I needed the cough syrup badly, but the bottle is closed tight. The cap refused to budge even with my bull-strength trying to open it. Tying a rubber band on the cap to enable better hand grip to open didn't work. It was a long time ago since I had a cough and opened the bottle, so the syrup had solidified around the screw threads and glued the cap to the bottle in a deadly embrace.

Not much else I could do, I turned the problem literally on its head in hot water.

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After just a few minutes, it opened without any resistance. I was expecting it to give at least a bit of struggle,... but none at all! The cap turned open effortlessly and smoothly. 

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From that, I wonder if it is the same with life. That is, if we have the correct ingredients and the correct steps in the correct order, life will just flow. [NLP experts would attest to that!] If we get the ingredients, steps or order wrong, then life will be a struggle.

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Makes me wonder how I can improve my life in these respects.

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Bucky Group 35 - Flow

One of our Bucky member is a volunteer with the charity organisation, the Firefly Mission. Here, they are selling these packets of cashew nuts raising funds for the Myammar Cyclone Nurgis Rehabilitation.

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This week we listened to a TED talk by Mihaly Csikszentmi about creativity, fulfillment and 'Flow'. He asks, "What makes a life worth living?"

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Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow."

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Discussion:
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Mihaly used the above chart to illustrate when the person is in the 'flow' as the activity enters a high challenge that requires high skills. While this may be so for most cases, it need not be the case if one has a keen interest in the activity and subject. For instance, with a keen interest, even when the skill level is low and the activity is high, the person in the activity will not feel anxiety, but instead could get into the 'flow' state.

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To experience 'flow', we had an exercise where we drew mandalas. Everyone was given a blank sheet of paper with colour pencils. We were told to draw anything that is bounded by a circle. It was very relaxing, drawing anything I want without constraints, mixing colours, images, graphics and images. It transported me into the time when I was a child - free and imaginative.

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This is a mandala from Kong. He said he drew this because he felt like a child when he drew his.

This one has many circles.

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This one tells a story, with the family and house on one side of the river with a bridge crossing over to nature on another side.

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This one is very similar to the one below. Incidentally, both of them had a similar state of mind, drawing mountains, whales, sea, famliy...etc.

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This one is mine. I started the mandala wanting to create a symmetry of designs and colours. Somehow, I wanted a structure and didn't think that I could also be telling a story within the circle.

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Here on, all the mandalas are symmetrical. I guess you can tell that some people are structured and others are the story telling type.

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This is Joo Hock's mandala. He didn't draw but just showed us this photo on his mobile phone. Though he captured the pix himself, he didn't draw or create it and therefore it is not really a mandala. A mandala is not just a product or destination, it is also the process of reaching there. The process where we go through the meditative thought process to reach a graphic design. After the design is done, we throw it away, just like why Tibetan monks sweep their mandalas (made of coloured sand) away after they have gone through their long meditative states of producing them.

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You too should get on to draw one. Looking at what others have produced do not give you the same effect. :)

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