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Worry, fear, anxiety were certain key emotions which I was becoming increasingly aware of. They were being played to me at ever greater intensity until finally I cracked up, sat up and took notice. It was a few years prior to the stock market crash of early 2000 and I was using the perfect vehicle, investing in highly volatile small high tech shares. God had a field day with my emotions losing thousands one day and gaining it all back the next. When I won I was immensely pleased but not as pleased as I thought I should be, especially with one share up 96 times in a couple of weeks. When I lost, I was overwhelmed by a crushing sense of loss, far more than I thought I ought. I could feel my mind tighten around my skull as it sought desperately for a way out of the loss, numbing all sense of reason, panicking at having lost so much money. While I had indeed lost a lot of money at certain points, compared to what I had made in the year I was still well in profit. What was going on? This panic was getting in the way and causing me to sell when I should be buying and buying when I should be selling. My emotions were playing havoc. If I had been devoid of these interfering emotions, a rough calculation on my profits, would have been bigger by a factor of ten. I would have made a million not a few 10’s of thousands so I was mighty disappointed with these emotions. With money set as the goal I was determined to get to the bottom of this and sort out these emotions. Vast profits lay ahead.

It was at this very point, after a crushing loss on Pace electronics, diving only a day after I bought them that I began the task. To separate emotion, worry, fear and anxiety from the physical event. These emotions were patterns in my being, deeply rooted and frankly were getting in the way of making some serious money. They exhibited themselves by attaching themselves to physical events, to exert themselves over the individual. This continual reinforcement, by attaching to real physical events is what made these emotions so powerful. In this case it was the sense or fear of loss attached to money. We all hate to loose and loosing money, watching it slip through your fingers on the screen of the computer was particularly poignant. Through all of the chatter I could hear my inner voice guiding the purchase and sale of shares, contradicting the emotions prevalent and my mind. Emotions told me to buy when the going was good when the share was higher and sell when the going was bad when the share was lower. Intuition was guiding too, but during the direst moments when the cumulative fear of the market was at its zenith, to buy when you thought you should sell was a hard act to follow. Providing you picked the right

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shares then this was an amazing strategy. But during the dark moments of a crashing share price and profit warnings, my nerve undermined by emotions running amok, gave way and bowed to emotional turmoil wrecking the intuitive guidance and loosing potential profits.

It was when I looked back in my notes at all the shares that intuition had recommended that I really sat up and took notice. Had I followed intuition’s guidance and not been shaken out of the market by my mind’s lack of nerve, had I kept the shares I was supposed to, and bought the recommended amount of each share instead of a more conservative amount, dictated by the mind. Then prior to the big tech stock crash I had lost out to the tune of 1 million pounds by following mind, not intuition. Intuition had however been running a bit of a scam, testing my trust at every opportunity. It wasn’t as easy as just buying the share with intuition’s guidance and seeing instant profits. Under intuition’s guidance, I would often have to buy a share just before it temporarily plummeted in value, forcing my mind to panic me into selling, but then to my horror, some months later, the share I no longer owned would sail away up and up into the distant sunset, defying both logic and gravity. Many shares went up by 100 times in a couple of years. So when I invested an average of £5,000 in each share you can see my disappointment.

Over the years of trading, sat alone at my computer in my little village, I had found the start of the trail, to begin to separate emotions from events, and it was here that I was given the opportunity to see that they were two totally independent parts, not one as I had thought.

This whole period of life was not about the money, although to me this was the carrot on the end of the stick. It was all about learning to separate emotion from events. The stock market was a cold, cool environment to practice in, where events happened on a daily basis, triggering fear where no one could get harmed. It was just my bank balance which either went up or down. And it was this relationship with the chief stockbroker which led to a growing trust that he did in fact know better than I did, if he wanted to. My mind reading the Financial Times and churning through facts and figures was no match for his divine insider knowledge and intervention. He after all knew it all, present, past and future.

I had learnt that an event was independent of the emotion and could go one way or another, independent of the emotion which was trying to attach itself to the event. In fact the paranoia from the emotion attaching to the event

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could even bring the feared event into action. Worrying or fearing an event certainly was not a way of event prevention. Inner knowing on the other hand could be a more likely indicator of which way an event would go, as this was based in the now. Whereas the pattern of emotions attaching to events was based on past experiences laid over today’s events.

Through dabbling through stocks and shares, the mind through research of old data and patterns tried to interpret the future, but it was pretty blind as everything it knew was based on the past. Emotion, fear, greed and worry were totally independent of the present event, but instead relied on attachment to the present event for its very existence. Without this attachment in the physical world the emotion could not exist and would become powerless. But this emotion was clever and when unseated from one event would soon find another event it could, unknown to you, attach itself to.

In my case I had an overriding sense of fear of financial loss. Every time the fear appeared, I would check and calculate my financial position in my head and check all was okay, and then try and continue. This emotion was indeed powerful, but over time, and by constantly being aware of it, in this artificial situation of profits and losses on the stock market, I began to see through this trick. I had begun to separate the physical event from the emotion and in doing so knocked the wind out of that emotion. This I began to repeat across many of my patterns. This wasn’t so that I could become emotionless and cold, but quite the contrary, so I could be more aware and helpful in life. It was to prevent these old patterns ruling and ruining life. I did not want to be ruled and entrapped into old patterns of my past reflected into the present. I wanted to live my life now, not then.

I thought I had conquered this emotion of fear of financial loss but it was a tough nut to crack. It was some time later when it reared it’s head again. I had to my benefit, a good level of understanding of the problem and it’s effect was obvious in my energy field so I was compelled into physical action as before. It all started when we sold our business and house. We became income-less, but we were still pretty well off and our outgoings were very modest. There was nothing to worry about, but I felt poor, nearly bankrupt yet at our present rate of expenditure it would have taken nearly 50 years to exhaust our cash supplies. So you can see how stupid these emotions are and the patterns they re- enforce in our life. These patterns can create war, hatred, murder, passion, and success, they can react positively or

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negatively in your life, but all the same they control your life.

It is always harder to break a positive pattern because who wants to stop being successful, there isn’t much incentive. So on the practical side, the physical reality, I was wealthy yet the old pattern was triggering a sense of loss and poverty. It was so convincing, even when I sat and looked at all the bank account balances I could not shake off this sense of impending financial doom. I did eventually crack this particular event and now feel like it is more or less gone but the final way to shake this off was through an energy shift in my body accomplished over another year. The cause had been an old life pattern, which had risen to the surface, causing all this havoc. The events of the following year were brought about to help dissolve this pattern.

Before I engrossed and fascinated myself in the mystical East, I would often hear of spiritual people such as gurus and monks. It seemed such a waste of time for them to sit so still all day and do nothing. So pointless. It seemed so unfair on the rest of the world busy making clothes, cars, and food to sustain us. I could not entertain the idea that these spiritual people were doing anything in the slightest bit constructive. What interest could any of the world have in people doing less? It was such an alien concept.

Only later in life I would discover that I did indeed have quite an affinity for doing nothing, staring at the skies and gazing towards the oceans. What added even more to the task was that many people found this quite a distressing occupation, which I did find all too amusing. But at the back of it, these same people had a secret wish to be still, to retire and swan around the world doing nothing but travelling. Many reserved this for the end of their life, a card of achievement, a reason to work so hard, be so sensible, and earn so much money. The only problem for most of them was that this was simply impossible, a task too far. This was not for the lack of money which we all would think, but that doing nothing as they had dreamed and strived for was a task in itself, a vast achievement that most of them were simply incapable of achieving, or certainly not in the next million years.

As I became more and more practiced in the art of doing nothing, men of achievement began to take notice. Some would be violently annoyed by my utter disregard for achievement in life. Then to my surprise, I met more and more people who despite being high achievers themselves were secretly trying, quite hard to match my efforts of not doing and my apparent hap hazard approach to life. Little snippets of comments would inadvertently slip into the conversation, briefly hinting at their dream. This did come as a bit of a surprise when people I respected as achievers, and doers were secretly trying to emulate this lack of doing. Maybe it was cool? Had it been mentioned in Vogue and now becoming a status symbol? I had no idea but it did puzzle me why anyone would want to do nothing.

As I practiced the doing nothing concept, I began to find out what a hard job I had indeed chosen. Even one of the simple exercises I gave myself was proving quite a challenge. Quite to my surprise I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew.

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When I began to study it in depth there seemed a lot more to the task than I had first assumed. I had amassed a mountain of learning on the subject. I think that if I had had the support of my fellow comrades this would have made the task a little easier. Somewhat annoyingly, despite my companion’s quiet inner wanting to learn this feat, outwardly they would cast scorn, and rebuke me for my apparent laziness. They would splutter and fume as I lay on the bench in front of our house practicing my afternoon “nap task”, despite having had a full and plentiful night of wonderful restful sleep.

Snoozing away in the nap task was probably my most favourite part of the day. As with all new ventures there were constant setbacks. This task did require some pleasant amounts of heat which were only provided in England during the brief summer, and for only a short spell of time. The frequent clouds crossing the sky would prove a constant source of difficulty as they obscured the sun. This had the worrying effect of lowering the body temperature resulting in the need to move location or retrieve a blanket, destroying the whole philosophy of the practice.

Wind rain and the cold winters were proving a challenge to the system despite having a good quality south facing bench against the South wall of the house. To make matters worse, as the summer warmed up to the optimum temperature this provoked a hive of disturbing external activity around the village.

The geographic positioning of the bench was indeed a major problem which would lead to catastrophic results. The south side of our house faced the village road, and my arm, when outstretched could reach the boundary fence with the road. As the weather continued to warm you would have expected progress to be swift as the warm weather should have provided a lulling effect on the afternoon nap.

Disaster struck. Passing villagers began to notice my efforts at the task in hand and it was as if subconsciously they tried to divert me from success. Thinking I was laying on the bench because I had nothing better to do, they would all stop and ask how the weather was? what I was doing today? when was I going to get a job? Telling them, “absolutely nothing”, just didn’t seem to wash. Had I not said it loud enough? Or did the concept just not ring home to them?

I would repeat it again, but still they would persist with their infernal chatter of this and that. Had I not been deeply involved in my task of immense achievement, then I would have been only too pleased to have interrupted

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the boredom of the day with trivial conversation and tit bits of local gossip, such as who had died, who was ill, and the weather, which I was only too aware of. Eventually my lack of response would begin to come to their notice and most would move onto more fertile ground, leaving me to re focus on my task.

As time passed so more obstacles to progress appeared. Had I mistakenly taken on too much? I had worked hard all summer on my bench, and did not seem to be any closer to the nothing I had been aiming for.

As I studied the literature available, I was beginning to get a little worried. There seemed far more to this task than I had originally assumed. It became apparent that the job description was much longer than my employer had let on. The first task I had tried to achieve was to do nothing all day. This was a hard task in the village where I lived, and I had resigned myself to trekking to a remote part of India where the ambient temperature was more conducive, and the natives would not wish to trouble a white man with trivial conversation in a foreign language.

This was all very well, but as I began to probe below the surface, I found that what I had been trying to achieve was only the tip of the iceberg, and the trip to India would still prove an arduous adventure. To reach the top of the promotion tree you had to achieve the true and full complete doing nothing, which had an infinitely long list of tasks. To cut this short doing nothing did not just involve laying around on the bench and lazing in bed. This had just been the introduction, the freshers week, the temptation, the carrot on the stick. It had as little to do with doing nothing as doing everything. I was floored, I had been coaxed into a job by a faulty description and gross misrepresentation by my cheating boss. I wondered about legal redress, but the only problem was, it was my own mind that had played the trick, and misled me all the time.

The task was quite specific. Doing nothing really meant what it said. Sleep was something, it had a name and a concept and so even this was not part of the job. It all began to revolve around the mind. The mind was the driving force behind this obsessive doing which seemed to infiltrate all of life. Even people lazing around were doing something, so were not as lazy as they thought. They were not achieving the nothing they thought they were. How did I achieve this nothing?

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The mind kept whirring round and round, throwing out ideas concepts, lists, jobs, needs and wants on a constant basis, faster and slower. It seemed like all of life was subject to this relentless force. No one ever seemed to question this machine. They just followed its constant demands. It was as if they were its slave. Each person had a justification for relentlessly following the mind’s demands, the children, the mortgage, missing out on opportunities, the list went on. If one reason wasn’t given, another would do. People with seeming plenty of money, food or possessions would still hungrily want more. In fact in my life I had found the more money I had, the more I wanted ‘more’. We were all subject to this force, some more than others. It wasn’t as if it was greed, it was more an inability to combat the problem, a lack of realization about the situation, a lack of perspective. Above all it seemed like the mind drove people to be busy, so they had little time left to do nothing.

This seemed like a conspiracy. It was as if the mind was hiding the nothing from view, obscuring it with excessive tasks, well above what was required for pure survival and the pleasant enjoyment of life. At least this went some way to satisfying my guilt. Because there were so many people doing so much in life and to such an excessive amount, I need not feel so guilty about lazing around, doing nothing and leaching off the rest of society, skimming off some of the froth of produce for myself as I lay comfortably on my bench. There was a surplus of doing which frankly needed to be balanced out.

It took some time to come round to the idea that the real doing nothing that I was trying to achieve had to begin with the mind. It was this that was the foe. I had to begin to identify the two sides of myself. On one side I had a part that sought peace solitude, bliss and love. The other was out to wreck my bliss and provided a smoke screen to this, throwing endless projects, tasks, demands, emotions and problems in the way. As time passed I slowly learnt to separate the two, but it was a vague boundary. It did not seem to have a definite definition like I thought it should. This made the task even harder, as I could not identify the problem with any certainty, and without this identification it would be hard going to silence the mind. The deeper I looked into my course of study, the bigger the task seemed to get. Doing everything again suddenly seemed like a much better idea, it was simpler, much easier, but once the challenge had been laid in front of me I was unable to let go.