The Direct Path to Self-Realisation and Beyond: A Spiritual Path for the Twenty-First Century

By Cliff Bunnig

This is a book about spiritual development - your spiritual development actually. It is about empowering you, so that you can take charge of your own spiritual development so as to have a meaningful and deeply rewarding spiritual life. You don't need to join any organisation, or even leave your own home, in order to achieve your full spiritual destiny.

Surprising as it might seem, this unique book sets out how you can achieve Self Realisation, (enlightenment), in as little as one to two years. This is something that normally takes many decades or whole lifetimes to achieve using traditional methods.

How is it done? By learning a simple, easily mastered method of contacting, and mentally talking with, in a two-way mode, any high level spiritual being you want to. It's called channelling, but there is no spirit taking over your body or funny stuff like that. So you get spiritual guidance, tailored to your own individual needs, from whomever you like, as often as you like, on a 24/7 basis, and entirely at no cost to you. You can see why it is called The Direct Path to Self Realisation and Beyond!

What does the Direct Path require of you? Just a strong desire to achieve your full spiritual potential as a human being. The book is written in a warm, personal style, so it is accessible to everyone, and usable by anyone.

The way forward is all laid out for you. The only question is - Are you up for the challenge?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452501758

Cliff Bunnig

Cliff Bunning was an organisational consultant and management educator for most of his working life. During his spiritual search, he was initiated into four different spiritual pathways, and became a Reiki Master. Cliff achieved Self Realisation and developed the Direct Path spiritual approach with channelled Divine guidance. Cliff says of himself, “I am just an ordinary person with a simple message: You can talk directly with spiritual beings.”

Book preview

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

How to be Happy

CHAPTER TWO

Meditation Skills

CHAPTER THREE

Achieving A More Meaningful

Spiritual Life

CHAPTER FOUR

Finding Your Direct Path To God

CHAPTER FIVE

Broadening Your Range Of Contacts

CHAPTER SIX

Some Spiritual Development Activities

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Spiritual Perspective On

Human Behaviour

CHAPTER EIGHT

Spiritual Healing

CHAPTER NINE

Your Meditation Revisited

CHAPTER TEN

About Relationships

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Learning How The System

Really Works

CHAPTER TWELVE

Some Advanced Activities

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Wonderful World Of Being

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Achieving Self Realisation

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Making Of A Master

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Moving Towards God Realisation

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Spiritual Path - An Overview

INTRODUCTION

9781452501741_TXT2.pdf

This is a book about spiritual development - your spiritual development actually, as when I wrote it, I had you in mind. It is not about launching a new religion or forming a new sect, and it is definitely not about me setting myself up as some new grand spiritual leader. It is about empowering you, so that you can actively take charge of your own spiritual development. You need never leave your own home nor join any organisation, in order to use this approach to achieve your full spiritual destiny.

The Direct Path is subtitled A spiritual path for the 21st century. Why is it called that? Because in the 21st century, the pace of life is fast and getting faster. People want to achieve outcomes with a minimum of time and effort. That describes the Direct Path very well. Instead of it taking decades or even lifetimes to achieve Self Realisation, using Direct Path methods it can be achieved in as little as one to two years. There are no priests nor incense, no traditions to observe, nor rituals to perform. There are not even any meetings to attend. But the main reason why the Direct Path approach is so fast is that the system makes it possible for you to receive instant, personalised feedback on your spiritual development efforts, as often as you need to, on a 24/7 basis. And that feedback is free, expert, and you choose whom you wish to receive your feedback from.

This book is not a novel, so it is best not to read it straight through, from front to back. Nor would I recommend that you skim it, looking for the parts you already know about and agree with, and putting the unfamiliar or strange sounding bits in a mental bin labelled Doubtful or I’ll think about that some other time. No, this book is definitely not intended as fast food for the Soul. Rather, it is a practical, self-help, spiritual manual which is very serious about showing you how to achieve the ultimate spiritual goal. So, after you read a chapter, (and this applies particularly to the early ones), please do something to implement what it is being talked about, before going on to read the next chapter.

However, I know that some of you want to just browse and skim. So be it. But sooner or later you will need to face up to practical application, and work fully through the chapters, one by one, if you are to ever achieve the book’s potential. The topics you skip over can have a habit of coming back to bite you at some future time, because you missed doing something important.

The title of the book mentions Self Realisation, so I suppose I will have to say something about that topic, although frankly, I would rather not at this stage. Self Realisation is the destination, and a destination is best described in detail when you are getting close to it. Like life itself, the journey, and the general direction of that journey, are what is vital. If you get that right, you are bound to arrive at your destination.

But if I were to define Self Realisation, I would say that it is the achieving of your full human potential. Not some strange, exotic, spiritual transformation, but your overall, full, human potential, because your spiritual and human functioning are so connected that they can only be considered together. To develop yourself spiritually is, in fact, to achieve your full human destiny. To not develop yourself fully in a spiritual sense, is to be less than all you can be as a human being.

The material in this book comes from high spiritual sources, and so has significant purity and merit. However, having said that, the Direct Path is, after all, only one path to God. It might not prove to be the one that will ultimately entice you to take your spiritual journey back to where you originally came from. Or it might be destined to be your path, but at a deeper level outside of your awareness, you might have chosen to experience some more frustration and delay, before coming back to making a serious spiritual effort a few years from now.

Please don’t think me heartless if I say, should that be what you ultimately, by default, choose, then that is just fine by me. You have my best wishes, regardless of how briefly or deeply you engage with this book. Although I am, of course, less than neutral in the matter, can I say to you with the deepest conviction, that I believe that you are holding in your hands a jewel of priceless worth.

However, it might appear to you, after looking through it, more like just a piece of glass, as the merit of something lies in how the person themself sees it.

I do have an apology that I would like to make upfront to the female readers of this book. I am sure that you have noticed that the world seems to be dominated by men, and perhaps you are just a little tired of that. So I am sorry that all of the spiritual beings whom I write about who had previously lived on Earth, were men in their last life. Of course, spiritual beings don’t really have any gender, but nevertheless, apart from my Guardian Angel Rosemary, and Quan Yin, the Chinese Godess of Love and Mercy, there simply aren’t any female names in the book. In India there are many female Masters, as I’m sure there are in other countries, but it seems like the men get most of the attention.

But I do have one bit of good news for you! The very first person to successfully use the procedures outlined in this book, apart from myself, was a woman! And she took far fewer lives than me to get there. Which just goes to show that the old saying, that if you want a job done well, give it to a woman, has some truth to it. A few men I offered it to in the early days, all did the Sideways Shuffle, which underlines the point I make in Chapter Ten that women seem to have more of a natural affinity for addressing personal matters than men have.

I should also make it clear that, although I use the pronoun He in respect to God, this is just an unfortunate convention that is difficult to avoid. God is definitely not male, and, in fact, is not even a person, but more a consciousness, composed of pure, intelligent energy.

However, I don’t want to get male readers of this book offside right at the start. After all, men can, and of course have, achieved great spiritual distinction in the past, and the door is open for you to do so also, by using the Direct Path methods outlined here.

Incidentally, have you ever wondered, if there is a loving God, why that mother of two young children got breast cancer at the age of twenty six, and was dead before she was thirty? Or why that angelic little girl of only six was brutally raped and murdered? Or why that man, when driving home from a day’s work, was hit, head-on, by a drunken driver coming over the top of the hill on the wrong side of the road, and is now condemned to a lifetime of pain because of his shattered body? In short, why do bad things happen to good people??? If you are like me, you might have found the traditional religious explanations for these sorts of things rather unconvincing. Well, although it isn’t the main focus, you will find in this book a clear and logical explanation as to why things, which on the surface appear to be so unfair and tragic, happen to innocent people.

This is a book for people who don’t believe in God. This is a book for people who do believe in God. And this is also a book for people who aren’t sure whether they believe in God or not. I guess the only people this book is not suitable for are those who couldn’t care less whether He exists or not. Why is it suitable for people who don’t believe in God or who aren’t sure? Because it doesn’t ask you to have faith, or to believe something because I said it was true. The Direct Path is an evidence-based approach. So if you follow the method, you will get clear answers to your questions, and have experiences that confirm that what is said to work, actually does work, for you.

I should also mention in passing, if you have a bit of a hang-up about God, that with the Direct Path, God is not the central focus - you are. This is not a path of worship; it is a path of spiritual self-development, and you are helped in this by various spiritual beings who are of your own choosing.

The book has been written in as clear and simple style as possible, so that the ideas are accessible to everyone, and useable by anyone. But the plain fact is that only a small proportion of people have spiritual development as a sufficiently high priority in their life, that they would be prepared to put in the time and attention that such a task inevitably requires. And of those, many already have a strong commitment to their current religious or spiritual beliefs, and so would be inclined to dismiss the viewpoint and procedures of the Direct Path out of hand.

However, the fact is that you can bring your existing faith, whatever it is, with you and use the Direct Path’s expanded capacity to deepen and enrich your existing spiritual experience, provided you are genuinely open to broadening your horizons, and not merely seeking to confirm your existing beliefs and doctrines. Spending a lot of time and energy trying to reconcile the new material you encounter on the Direct Path, with your existing beliefs and practices, will keep you trapped in mental gymnastics. What would be best would be if you were to warehouse your current religious or spiritual background for the moment, and approach the new experiences and approach with a simple, uncluttered mind.

The need is there, as Caroline Myss (2007 : 14), identifies so clearly:

People crave a grounded, contemporary spirituality that they can practice every day. We don’t want to work haphazardly anymore with a hybrid spirituality of intuition and mind-body practices. We want the power of deep mystical prayer and discipline without having to take off to ashrams or adopt extreme practices of deprivation. We don’t want to take vows of poverty or chastity. We don’t want to renounce family or friends. In short, we want to be mystics without monasteries.

So it is up to you. As I said at the onset, I wrote this book with you in mind. I sure hope you don’t let this opportunity slip past you. My best wishes go with you, as you explore, and hopefully undertake, the adventure that lies ahead for you.

PART ONE

GIVING YOUR JOURNEY ENERGY

AND FOCUS

Practical concepts and techniques which you can use to really get moving on your

spiritual journey

Do not expect to be showered with Divine blessings.

The Keys to the Kingdom will only yield

to focused intent and hard work.

CHAPTER ONE

9781452501741_TXT2.pdf

How to be Happy

This chapter started life as a separate paper which I had written to introduce some spiritually sound principles to a wider audience, including those with no spiritual beliefs, and those who were negative to anything that smacked of religion, because of some prior experience.

Although it contains some powerful truths that could transform your life, I have to warn you that just reading it, and even agreeing with it, will bring you no benefit whatsoever. Even trying out a few of the principles half-heartedly for a couple of weeks will have no effect. But be assured, that if you were to fully embrace these suggestions as a way of life, this change would, without you doing anything else described in this book, enable you to achieve a degree of peace and happiness in your life that you can hardly imagine.

Quite soon after my wife and I got married, she started to discover some aspects of my personality which I had managed to conceal from her during the niceties of courtship. (This was in the days before you had a test run by living together). One aspect was that, if we planned to go for a picnic at the weekend, it was very important to me that the weather was absolutely perfect. By Thursday, I would start anxiously scanning the skies and checking weather forecasts. This tension would progressively build up as Sunday got closer. On that day, the agonising dilemma was often, Well, there are a few dark clouds. Should we go or not? The rain clouds were my enemy and I would complain that this had happened on the last two occasions we had planned to go on a picnic, and surely that was more than mere coincidence!

My wife, who was quite easygoing about the weather, thought that all this drama was insane, and that we should just set off for the beach, and take it as it comes. One person was relaxed and happy and the other person was uptight and far from happy. Yet each was convinced that their feelings were sensible, given the circumstances as they saw them.

We all would like to be happy, but most of us don’t always achieve that, and some of us have given up hoping that it will ever happen. So although happiness is universally desired, it can be rather difficult to achieve in practice.

If you would like to be happy more of the time, this introductory chapter provides you with ideas about how to achieve that, but only if you are willing to change some of your beliefs and behaviour. If what you are doing now isn’t working, then perhaps the time has come to try something else. It probably isn’t realistic to think you can ever be happy 100% of the time. Nevertheless, what follows are some suggestions about possible new attitudes and new ways of behaving that can transform your life, so that you have less stress, and more times when you do feel great.

Suggestion 1

Realise that happiness is primarily a function of your inner world of beliefs and attitudes.

Let’s start with the big one first. Our whole culture and consumer society promises that your happiness is a consequence of things in your outer world e.g.

Get a good education (and you’ll be happy)

Find a partner in life (and you’ll be happy)

Have a family (and you’ll be happy)

Look good and be slim (and you’ll be happy)

Get a really good job (and you’ll be happy)

Become rich (and you’ll be happy)

Buy a new car and a better house (and you’ll be happy)

Use alcohol and drugs (and you’ll be happy)

Compared with fifty years ago, we are better educated, richer, live in bigger homes, drive better cars and can go on more elaborate holidays more often. Yet are we happier? I suggest Western society is actually a lot more fractured and unstable, and that many individuals are more stressed and less happy than their parents or grandparents ever were. So getting more stuff obviously doesn’t necessarily create happiness.

So the first step in seeking to increase the amount of happiness you feel, is to be willing to look critically at your own beliefs and behaviour for reasons why you aren’t happy, rather than outwards at your circumstances in life and what happens to you.

Suggestion 2

Accept that you are responsible for your own feelings.

This is another outrageous contradiction of the everyday wisdom that we are all exposed to. Most of us would nod sympathetically, when a friend says any one of the following to us:

The other driver cut me off deliberately. He made me so angry, I was fit to be tied!

Her remark to me was so spiteful, I felt quite humiliated!

When I dropped the glass of red wine on their white carpet, I could have just died of embarrassment!

I have applied for 25 jobs, without getting one interview. What’s the point? I feel totally frustrated!

My son never rings me. I feel so hurt and rejected!

We feel alright, a bad thing happens to us, we then feel bad. The connection is obvious, logical and apparently indisputable. There are only two difficulties with thinking that way:

black.jpg    It leaves us permanently powerless and vulnerable, because other people and events, over which we have little or no control, determine how we feel, and furthermore,

black.jpg    It just isn’t true. For example, two young men, at different times and locations, each dive into shallow water and become quadriplegics. One sinks into depression and wants to end his life, whilst the other learns to paint using a brush between his teeth, and becomes a motivational speaker.

What is the difference? Not the outer reality, because that is identical. So the difference lies in how they each interpreted their reality. Similarly, in the introductory example, the meaning I gave to the possibility of inclement weather was vastly different to the meaning my wife gave to it, and so our feelings were quite different. So what happens to us doesn’t cause our feelings, how we interpret those events is the actual cause of our feelings.

We all seem quite willing to take ownership of our good feelings, such as kindness or courage, but want to blame someone else or some event for our bad feelings like anger or hurt. But we really need to own the lot, including any bad feelings we might be currently experiencing. This is scary, because it means that if we are depressed, angry or bitter, it isn’t their fault, but our own fault. But it is also very empowering, because it means that, if we actually created those feelings we don’t like having, then we can do something about them ourselves, because we created them in the first place. What can we do? Read on.

Suggestion 3

All feelings, good and bad, are basically the same energy.

Am I saying that hate and love are not totally different, but basically the same? Yes I am. What about fear/confidence? impatience/calmness? selfishness/caring for others? unhappiness/happiness? Yes, all these sets of feelings derive from the same energy, even though they are completely different in outcome. They are simply the same energy flowing in the opposite direction. Some examples from the physical world will illustrate this:

black.jpg    Searing hot and freezing cold are just different aspects of temperature, and one can readily be transformed into the other, because their fundamental nature is the same.

black.jpg    Similarly, bright light and complete darkness are the two extreme states of the one thing, the degree of illumination.

black.jpg    Positive and negative terminals in a battery merely reflect the different direction of flow of the underlying energy, in the case, electrical current. And so on.

But even if this is true, of what use is it? Well, as it turns out, of considerable use, because it means that, if you have had some on-going bad feelings for quite a while, you are not stuck with them forever. They can be transformed into the opposite feeling!

Step One please imagine in your mind’s eye a vertical pole about 30 centimetres (or approximately 12 inches) high, with a sliding marker on it. At the bottom of the scale is the undesired feeling, for example, anxiety, which we will assume you are currently feeling. Step Two is to decide what is the opposite feeling to the one you currently have and don’t want. Let’s say in this case, it is calmness. So visualise the word calmness at the top of the scale. Step Three consists of sliding the marker up to the top of the pole in your mind’s eye. Within a few seconds, you will feel calmness coming over you, and the anxiety correspondingly fading. (Obviously this should be tried when you actually have a negative feeling, so that you experience a change).

Pretty strange eh? Most people don’t expect something as simple as this to work, and are quite taken aback when it does. It works because you have intentionally reversed the direction of the energy within you, which was creating the negative feeling you were experiencing. Two points should be made:

black.jpg    You should keep your eye on the marker, as it can tend to slide back down. So you will probably need to push it back up periodically.

black.jpg    As this technique does not address the causes of your anxiety, anger, fear, or whatever negative emotion you are feeling, it is not a permanent solution. (See later for those). But it does give you a break from the bad feeling, long enough and often enough for you to be able to get on with the more permanent change necessary in your inner world. And, more importantly, it gives you a dramatic demonstration that the bad feeling you have doesn’t have to be permanent.

If you get into the habit of reversing negative feelings as soon as they appear, by using this technique, it will greatly add to your sense of control over your feelings and your life.

Suggestion 4

Forgive everybody for everything.

I just love starting off with a whole lot of outrageous suggestions! This is another one, because most of us were brought up to believe strongly in justice in human relations. If someone is nice to you, be nice to them, but if someone behaves poorly to you, then -

black.jpg    give it right back to them in spades (an eye for an eye approach), or

black.jpg    tell them what they did wrong in polite terms, or

black.jpg    act coldly to them, so that they get the message, without there actually being a row.

Some feuds within families or between neighbours or friends can go on for years, with the resultant tension or open hostility feeding the conflict endlessly. How can this ever lead to happiness, particularly when each feels they are the injured party, and so is filled with righteous indignation?

Expecting other people to behave in particular ways that you define, so that you will be happy, is going to lead to disappointment. You wouldn’t accept other people’s rules about how you should behave, so why should they accept your rules about how they should behave? Right and wrong are slippery concepts, as the Israeli/Palistinian conflict, which has been going for more than 50 years illustrates.

Forgiving somebody for something (or lots of things!) doesn’t involve weakness on your part, it doesn’t involve agreeing with their views or saying your position was wrong after all. It certainly doesn’t involve deciding to tolerate somebody or something with gritted teeth! Forgiveness is not about the facts of the case. It is about really hearing other people’s feelings, and accepting that you have both probably contributed, to varying extents, to this on-going conflict, and that little is served, anyway, by continuing a process that brings out the worst in both of you. For your own sake, draw a line across the page of events to date, forgive the other person, and forget about it, even if they are not ready at that point to respond similarly.

What is needed is not an armistice, where the fighting stops but the hostility remains, but an acknowledgment that we have all done things in the past that we wish, with hindsight, we hadn’t. Happiness comes, in these cases, by walking away from the past, and freeing yourself to move on unencumbered. Tough on your pride? Pride doesn’t correlate well with happiness. Genuine humility and compassion do.

While you are at it, forgive God if you think He has let you down also. It is a complete waste of time staying mad at someone you can’t see, and who doesn’t even answer you when you criticize Him! Get over it, turn the page, and so open your heart to experience life joyously, without the baggage and pain from your past.

Suggestion 5

Forgive yourself if you feel guilty about something.

Some of us are tortured by self-criticism and guilt, often for events that took place years or even decades ago. Beating yourself up daily doesn’t help; it just continues your bad feelings. In fact, because of an inbred model of justice mentioned earlier that some people have in their minds, even though they are unhappy with themselves and their life, they feel they deserve to be unhappy, and are therefore quite resistant to healing their hurt and moving on.

What you did or didn’t do is in the past, and the past itself no longer exists. Don’t believe me? Do you remember that kid who deliberately pushed you over in the school ground when you were eight, and you ran crying to the teacher with a grazed knee? No? Well, is that because you have completely forgotten the incident, or because I just made it up and it never happened? You’ll never know, because what you have forgotten might as well have never existed anyway. It is sad but true that most of us have already forgotten, beyond recall, more than 90% of all of the everyday events of our life to date. So why remember the bad bits? Unless you re-create a past event by continually thinking about it, it doesn’t exist for you. So stop thinking about your alleged crimes or sins, and you will feel a whole lot better. (Actually, I did make up that thing about a kid pushing you over, so don’t worry that your memory is going).

If you want to, make it up to the injured party or if that is not possible, do some other kind act, and then get on with your life. You can’t rewrite the past, so stop reliving it. Many people with guilt exaggerate their so-called bad behaviour anyway, which, whilst it might well have been foolish or less than desirable, was merely the result of their beliefs and the situation at the time. Move on!

Suggestion 6

Replace your judging with easygoingness.

Most of us grew up in an environment where the process of judgment and evaluation was highly valued and thought of as the path to success. School, particularly in years gone by, was all about the students being judged as regards their academic performance, sporting performance and general behaviour. The alternative to being judgmental was seen to be sloppy, indiscriminate, easily fooled and therefore, a loser.

What creates the need to forgive others and to forgive yourself are the problems caused by you being judgmental of others and yourself. Judgments don’t draw us together, they separate us. They create a gulf between people, which then needs to be overcome. Sometimes we suspend judgment – for instance, we might look at a child’s drawing and praise it. But do we see it with innocent eyes, or is there a patronising unspoken thought behind it that it is quite good, for a child her age? Try a more innocent, naïve approach to life. You will feel better, because you will be more open to enjoying life just as it is.

The alternative to being judgmental is not to be an easy dupe, but to be easy going. So be slow to judge, and quick to see virtue. You can still prefer A to B, for example, politeness to rudeness. But that does not require you to condemn rudeness, merely to prefer politeness. Just quietly step around any rudeness, and stay unperturbed.

The topic of this chapter is how to be happy. Is a person who needs to pay $100 or more for a bottle of wine that will please them, happier than a person who drinks a cheaper wine and enjoys it? Are wet days necessarily worse than fine days? If so, then you are never going to be happy on wet days. What a waste!

For most of my life, I used to get angry if I got too many red lights in a row when driving. How infantile! But more importantly, what good does it do? Now, I still might notice (or not), the unusual number of red lights, but either way, I don’t really care, and so am happier for it. I still like getting green lights, but it is better to just take life as it comes. Much of what we get upset about really doesn’t matter anyway, in the larger scheme of things.

Being easy going is not about being dull, or not knowing the difference between good and bad or right and wrong. It just involves being more relaxed and open-minded, with far less rules about the way everything should be, so that far more people and events fall readily into your zone of acceptance. The less rules you have about how things ought to be, the better you are going to feel, because you will value positively your life and your everyday experiences, just as they are.

Suggestion 7

Do it now!

A significant source of your worry and stress can be putting an unpleasant task off, sometimes for months if you can. Most of us have done this at times. It could be putting off ringing up about a telephone bill that seems way too high, or not going to the dentist when you know you should, or delaying starting your exercise program. Whatever it is, (and you might have a few at the moment!), putting off dealing with what you expect to be an unpleasant matter is not a good strategy for a number of reasons:

black.jpg    You cause yourself weeks or months of feeling bad just thinking about the problem, when the unpleasantness of facing up to dealing with it will take much less time, sometimes only a few minutes.

black.jpg    As well as the bad feelings generated by the issue itself, you wind up with additional guilt, because you know you are avoiding the issue, and showing a lack of courage by not facing up to it.

black.jpg    Putting off dealing with an issue can cause extra problems due to your inaction, which can just make a bad situation even worse.

black.jpg    Finally, sometimes you have exaggerated in your mind how unpleasant handling the matter will be. It might turn out to be surprisingly easily resolved. All that misery for nothing!

Worry is a common response to having problems, but the drawback is that it doesn’t actually deal with the problem at all. So resolve never to worry about a problem ever again. Either take what steps you can to move towards dealing with the problem now or, if you can’t, then put it out of your mind until you can, and, in the meantime, get on with your life.

Suggestion 8

Give out positive vibes.

They say that what goes around, comes around. This is a rather peculiar statement if you look at it closely, but most of us know that it basically means that in the long run, you get back from life what you put into it. So for example, if you smile a lot, and smile first, you are going to experience more people who are friendly to you, than if you don’t.

It is sad that in human relationships we so often don’t express the positive feelings we feel to other people. Men are particularly prone to this. So why not tell someone whom you do value, how much you appreciate their friendship, or their actions? Don’t hide the positive feelings you have for others - express them.

You could become a volunteer helper for some charitable organisation or aged care home, where you would be in direct contact with people not as fortunate as yourself. It can greatly stimulate your compassion and humility, as well as giving you new friendships, and a sense of being relevant and useful to the community you are a part of. Having very few social contacts or friends is rarely associated with happiness. The more connection you have with other people of similar, or different interests to you, the more reason you have to feel relevant, worthwhile, and cared about. Giving out positive vibes draws people to you.

Similarly, break out of that dreadful justice model, and do random acts of kindness to others for no apparent reason. The film "Pay it forward" popularised this notion. Numerous cases have been reported of people when at a toll booth, paying for the car behind as well as themselves, without any idea of who is in that vehicle. Of course, with the advent of electronic tolling, you might have to think of some other means of distributing kindness. When you do so you will feel better, regardless of whether you get paid back for your efforts or not.

When your positive attitudes or gestures are not responded to in the same spirit, don’t feel rejected or, worse still, annoyed. Instead, feel compassion for the person who is so immersed, at this point in their life, in a negative experiencing of their life. Remember negativity is an equally compelling view of the world, and with plenty of evidence to back it up. It is just that it doesn’t have any chance of leading to feeling happy, so it isn’t a strategy you would wish for them. Remain blissfully undeterred in your irrational pursuit of a positive view of the world.

Suggestion 9

Feel grateful daily for what is good in your life.

When your car works as it is supposed to, you take that for granted. It only gets your attention when it goes wrong. How many other things in your life does that apply to?

black.jpg    your partner

black.jpg    your children

black.jpg    other people in your life

black.jpg    your body and your health

black.jpg    the weather

black.jpg    the traffic, and so on.

Why only notice people and things when they are not performing as you would like? This makes no sense. So start each day by choosing one aspect of your life and noticing all the things about it that are just fine. It really does redress the balance of the hassles you might be feeling. What about your feet? Whoever gives a thought to their feet unless they hurt? Most of us are blind to all the things and behaviours around us that are just fine, and so we draw no satisfaction from them, or their contribution to our life. How can you not be happy with a life that is 95% on track?

And I am not talking about just big, important things. What about noticing and appreciating the weed by your garden path with the pretty flower on it? Learn to enjoy the little things in life - the cup of coffee first thing in the morning, the blue sky with the wispy white clouds. Living in the present moment, rather than constantly regretting the past or fearing the future, can open the door to you noticing a whole variety of pleasurable experiences that were there all the time, just waiting for you to become aware of them. Slow down and be grateful for what is.

Suggestion 10

Love your body.

If you are typical, then you also almost completely ignore your body unless it is giving you trouble.

It is worse than that, actually. Normally, bodies get mentally abused by their owners for being too short or too tall, too fat, or too thin, not attractive, getting older, getting sick at an inconvenient time, or various other crimes. If you treated your friends like you mentally treat your body, they would have dumped you years ago!

Your physical body is the only one you have, and you need it to last, if you are going to make the distance. Also, the better your body feels, the better you will feel, and so that is another potential source of contribution to your happiness. You know all the health stuff, so I won’t go into detail here. In general, exercise most days a week - walking is just fine for example. Eat low fat, nutritious food and don’t overeat, getting your weight into the recommended range.

But, most of all, give up negative judgmental attitudes to your body. Practise mentally telling your body daily how much you value it and appreciate it, just as it is. Just as it is!.

Suggestion