The Cultivation of Love-3

“People love to hate each other, don't they? And they can always find somebody new to hate. This is what we have been taught for generations. Until we break out from the lines of such classical thinking, we'll never manage to cultivate a field of improvement where what we finally reap is sown in the light of today, and not what was sown in the darkness of yesteryear.”
— Mickie Kent

Doesn't it seem like all those dystopian futures we read about are finally coming true, with experts warning of soaring food prices and worsening global conditions? Whether it be the weather, or the changing climate, it has really dominated our lives. We are always talking about the weather; from record heavy snow causing havoc in Japan, to Britain being battered by winter storms, it spans the world. We can hardly look up and see the stars in the sky thanks to climate problems; we are dirtying our windows to the universe simply because we find protecting the future too hard.

Bitter irony then, that on another Earth Day (celebrated with different animal species by a Google Doodle this year) we have reached another milestone. In May 2013, it was big news when, for the first time, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit 400 parts per million. Now, researchers say that number has been consistently above 400 for the last month. Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, say this is higher than it's been in millions of years.

It shows that the problem of the environment is not just a future problem; it has a great impact on our health today. A new interactive map allows users to enter their postcode and discover their community's risk of developing 14 serious illnesses, including breast cancer, prostate cancer and leukaemia in the United Kingdom, and it is helping to identify the important questions that need answering about patterns of health and environment risk for future avenues of research.

Different climates will inevitably bring with them a different set of problems, but what with record-breaking wet weather damaging food production and paving the way for greater genetic modification of our foods, to the rising high levels of air pollution causing premature deaths, and the continuing global quakes in one country or another, doesn't it feel like this life is a TV drama that has reached the end of its lifecycle?

Nevertheless, if we are witnessing the death of our perceived global dominance - like so many 20th Century cultural icons to have gone a similar way - is that such a bad thing? What has our human dominance given us? The destruction of almost half of the genetic diversity in the animal kingdom thanks to our inhumane hunting habits? The way we treat each other just as inhumanely by murder, by a punitive approach to imprisonment, and by enslavement? A disparity of community as a result of the proliferation of techs and apps in our social lives?

The world is full of animosity, sadness and segregation, and as our divisions grow out of systems of class, the power play of privilege and politics and its petty policies we have become cynical. With governments and religions restricting our natural freedoms, and policing becoming more about generating revenue than saving lives, we are becoming embittered against the institutions meant to serve us.

Yet, some say since this manifestation of modern society, it has always be this way. People have walked and drove and bought and sold and fretted and laughed side by side with the threat of disaster of one kind or another. The world has gone on much as it goes on today, with the tentative tiptoeing alongside a precipice of crisis - global worries and all the other myriad of problems, major and minor, that have somehow lost their incisive edge of horror because we are so familiar with them.

Some would even look further down the line and say that this is just the natural evolution of humans going from dust to dust, because ultimately - even if a billion years down the line - the end WILL be nigh. The metamorphosis of going from the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in some cosmic soup is just the way things are set up to be, and is not complete science fiction. And how we see the future is, in actuality, a reflection of the present.

For instance, the abstract future envisioned by the celebrated TV series The Twilight Zone is an an acute reflection of a rare and intense moment in American history; a space-age cult classic that captured the messy transition between post-World War II America and the chaotic 1960s. Atomic war, space exploration, government control, anxiety, and mortality are all common themes in the show. But if there's one twist that encapsulates the series, it's the idea that humans are the true monsters. And for civilisation to survive - at least for the comparatively short term - the human race has to remain civilised.

Regardless, we continue to witness "Punch and Judy" style politics, with politicians hurling insults at one another; a reminder of an era where clashing politics went hand in hand with clashing policies. Today in Britain, while government policies create financial hardship and distress for the most vulnerable in society, they pursue drives to increase disability figures amongst the elderly. The lack of cohesion and principle behind the policies of our publicly elected is staggering to say the least. The same shit, just a different day.

Meanwhile, across the world, with sanctions by America against Russia beginning to take hold, cash-strapped European countries may have to look again at defence budgets now that Moscow has turned to force rather than diplomacy. Brutality is a far more universal language to us than charity, but it's only by understanding the world of others that we can learn more about our world. Differences in culture, food and music broadens our horizons, but rather than opening our borders to get through the upheavals together, however, the destructive qualities of our quest for dominance and greed, and the ensuing economic collapses, have forced us into a bitter retreat into austerity, pushing us further back into the darkest recesses of our prejudices. We have become pettier than ever. No surprise, then, that amongst the richest nations, those most depressed as a country were not amongst the most tolerant.

When you considers the historical parallels that have been drawn between the Western empire and that of the Romans, doing everything to excess is certainly on the table. Easy money in the eighties era of the 20th Century made us not care at all, while strapped for hard cash in the 21st Century has made us care only about ourselves. We mistakenly think because less money devalues our lives, we should also devalue our minds, and other people. A great case in point was April Fools Day this year. Many will have read about the so-called 1st of April hoax about pop boy band One Direction member Zayn Malik being dead. The Twitter hashtag #RIPZaynMalik trended soon after a fake article mocked up to look like the BBC had written it did the internet rounds.

This could naturally be just a backlash at the pervading superficial tween culture discussed in part two of this series, but why was the targeted member Malik and not the others? Malik is the only token boy of colour in the line-up, and from a Muslim background, as well. Now, we could say that we have all become a little too over-sensitive over gallows humour, and to complain about such things is political correctness gone mad, but I think it's absolute laziness to feel we need to disrespect people of different faiths and backgrounds, and laugh at their expense. I am definitely NOT a musical fan of Malik or any of the other boys in that band, but that doesn't mean I have to make him a target of my mockery, either.

We need to continue to stand up against racism, because it still holds relevance in the modern world where inequality and human rights violations still abound. Coaching political correctness in derogatory terms is the racist person's tool, as though we have somehow solved the world's problems, and can afford ourselves the luxury of humouring what only the most narrow-minded would find funny. Of course we need to laugh racism off, but I didn't laugh while watching, "Skin", a powerful drama based on the true story of Sandra Laing, a black woman who - due to a rare genetic irregularity - was born to white Afrikaner parents in 1950s South Africa and ostracised from white society as a result of the apartheid regime. A child torn apart from her parents simply because of the colour of her skin is as saddening to me as a foolish joke run off the back off a boy, who happens to have been singled out because he is the only boy of colour in a boy band.

It's a sad fact of our modern world that among us roam the remnants of a dying mindset, and racism is just the adult equivalent of bullying. Those who fall victim to bullies and racists are harmed most immediately, of course, but in truth, all of us pay a price for toxic mindsets and cruelty. It's precisely because of such narrow-minded attitudes, Great Britain is increasingly becoming Little Britain, and the more defensive we become over our narrow-mindedness, the smaller in stature we will become. Sixteenth century English poet John Donne meditated that the persecution of any person diminishes us, because we are involved in humankind.

We need to stand up to bullies. When we don't let bullies intimidate us, they stop very quickly. After all, a bully needs a victim. When we don't play victim, the bully has to find somebody else, but trying to understand a bully mentality is to our benefit, too. When we feel fear, separation, isolation or an inability to get what we want (at the core level, love and acceptance), then we are indeed a vibrational match to what's really going on inside a bully. Bullying, and of course racism, are often passed down from generation to generation. Ignorance is the great big player, but on an emotional level, this is about disconnection.

Also, when we feel good about ourselves – when we love and accept ourselves, "warts and all" and connected to our authentic self, it's just not possible to be cruel to others. Ask yourself, what does it take to be cruel to others? The answer is that it generally takes two things: To feel separate from them, and to feel like shit about yourself.

Moreover, the way we treat people that are not citizens of our country with less dignity than we confer to our domesticated pets - simply because we believe we cannot afford their presence in our country - is insulting to our humanity. It means we feel shit about our species as a whole. The level of intolerance and ignorance displayed by the majority over the issue of migration is appalling. We can only hope our children will be better treated if they have to migrate to the Far East to find work. Most seem unaware that nations and nationalities are an artificial construct of previous centuries. The history of humankind is dominated by mobile populations - constant emigration and immigration.

Any "foreigners" in a western country are often there as a consequence of an imperial past, and yet now we say we can't afford to welcome immigrants. While we rarely question the billions we spend on defending the nation's security by going to war, and now seemingly have made the migration of people an issue for national security, too.

The simple fact is that armed nations are not the basis for our freedoms. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and firearms have no place in them. But defending our borders has become a mindless mantra thanks to George W. Bush and America post-9/11, leaving us the legacy of a world to inherit that's an even narrower place than the mind of a deluded racist poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice. It's a terrible statistic, if true, that in the last 5,000 years we have only enjoyed 100 years of peace.

History is constantly on repeat because, more than a case of the wheel that turns, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As a species, it seems that we have yet to change for the better. Which is a shame, because being human can be a beautiful thing, if only we could learn to love ourselves. But will we ever learn? It would seem apt, therefore, to ask the question about the future of humanity.

What happens next?                            From this...

...to this                                    ...to this?

From what we have aspired, to what we have achieved, to what will come next. Staring into the deep future is about getting us all to ponder the single question that future generations - our descendants - would want us to ask: what happens next? Videos from top to bottom: Charlie Chaplin's last speech in The Great Dictator [1940], Vincent Price talks humans into The Monster Club [1981] and Quantic Dream's Kara, a prototype game idea for the PS3, provides a disturbing look into the future.

Just where are we headed? And do we even care? The tween culture that holds prominence - believed to idolise immediacy, speed and to see future implications as something to divert to a later date - at least feels more open to accepting one another's differences than the old guard, if the widespread critical response to the Malik practical joke is anything to go by. But at what intellectual cost do we delegate responsibility to future generations too quickly?

How to cultivate more love in life

In my "Be One with the Love Within" post, I mention how we all need time to find our authentic self, through a mixture of wisdom, ancient and modern, and our own personal experience, through a lifetime of trial and error, as constant inspiration for our emotional, physical and psychological well-being. This takes time. It takes a lifetime. But most certainly it takes more than the very basic of our formative years to discover who we are - because not only is this a lifelong task, the answer to that question will change over time.

The only way to get through that journey of uncertainty and darkness, is to shine your own light, to walk your own way. On this theme, in the book The Pillars of Consciousness, author Osho explores the four major streams of Eastern wisdom - Buddha, Zen, Tao and Tantra. Attempting to bring a deeper understanding to complex philosophical concepts using humour and the art of storytelling, the book promises to pave the way for readers to be, as Buddha is purported to said, a light unto yourself.

Sharing wisdom in this way is one method of passing on what has been lived before, so we can ignite our own personal journey. Storytelling is a very powerful element of humankind; the creation of the comic book superhero is one such example. Superheroes inspire the young. We cannot fly or see through walls like Superman, but we can emulate his goodness and honesty. We cannot climb a building or swing on a web like Spider-Man, but we can still do selfless good deeds.

Captain America can defeat an entire army single-handed. We can’t. But we can share his passion for duty. And though we have neither the means nor inclination to dress like a winged rodent and strike terror in the hearts of criminals, we can, much like Batman, endeavour to improve ourselves, physically and mentally, to be the best we can possibly be. And perhaps even correct the odd injustice along the way.

If we can improve and somehow move forward the way people share their stories and ideas - especially with the new technologies - that's going to be pretty major for human cohesion to shine. But to be able to cultivate this "light", we need time. There is risk in sudden spiritual upheaval, just as in anything. You can't go from chaos to clarity in one small step.

It is tempting after having seen what a mess the old guard have made of our world, to want the new guard to take over as quickly as possible, but in passing the torch of responsibility too quickly, the flame is in danger of going out. The solution is not to brush aside everything that has gone on before, but to take the wisdom of past mistakes, and out of them forge a better philosophy that shies away from dogma and dominance. Unless the transition is gradual ans sure-footed in inner wisdom, then the younger generation is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the old.

In this way, the change we are seeing now will not really be a change, but an extension of what went on before, and the misery will continue. As the poet Philip Larkin once wrote, we shall hand misery on to the next generation, to "deepen like a coastal shelf". In his powerful poem "This Be The Verse" he warns us that although we do not mean to "fuck" each other up, because we are filled with the faults of previous generations, that is often exactly what we do.

This means that we need to go within ourself to heal, and no longer be a match for the toxicity passed down to us through the unnatural divisions placed upon us by the dogma of religion, politics, economics or any other outmoded institution that has infected humanity down the centuries. Without being completely nihilistic, therefore, the point is that although the younger generation are indeed the greatest potential for change (as has always been the case), none of us are born knowing it all, because the wisdom of those who have lived the longest will tell us that we will never know it all! No one really knows. Even experts need advice. It's our life experience that adds weight to our knowledge and our actions.

In the same vein, there can be no true love without living; we must reproduce feelings out of our own experience. Whether that be tragedy, or great joy, it only comes when we go out and live life. From experience comes the understanding that the important thing underlying real cultivation (and everything we do) is love, or the absence of it. Above everything we enjoy that creates rather than destroys: the kindness of strangers, the support of family, or the understanding of a loved one, and under everything that destroys rather than creates: appearances that can be deceiving, bullies that harm others for no reason, or mindless violence, there lies the core connection (or disconnection) with love.

It is the strength of this connection that will decide whether the next generation is ready to take on the responsibilities of the world. It is true that a majority of young minds today have not been subverted by dogmatic religions as in the past, and that we have many more questioning minds and many more young people in tune with themselves. Sadly, it is also true that there is a large a percentage of young minds now damaged by war, either by directly participating in it or being the victims of it by being forced into warfare. Another large majority of the younger generation are being subverted, so it's claimed, by our ever increasing technological advancements.

While war is a complete disconnection, technology can disconnect as well as provide great opportunities for connections in ways not previously possible. But many fear, however, that the speed with which progress is developing over our technologies means that we are skipping the necessary period of acclimatization to the effects of that change.

Burnout naturally will ensue, and many other dangers (psychological, physical and emotional), not apparent on the face of it. Complaining about this ever shortening baton race is one of the most successful songwriters of his generation, Ryan Tedder, who has said that technology has helped create some terrible artists.

There are artists nabbed off YouTube who probably should not have record deals. They did not have time to develop, so anything they sing you don't believe, because they haven't lived it. They've just racked up 15 million views on YouTube and been signed. I won't work with artists under a certain age at all. I don't care how good you are. We could write I Will Always Love You but guess what? If you're 15 or 16, no-one's going to believe it.

There's also the issue of parents, and providing responsible - what is termed as - digital parenting. Children need to learn how to be safe online, and it's not just about protecting from online predators, children need to know how to deal with and avoid with cyber-bullies, the damages of websex and sexting - and even online marketing campaigns aimed at sexualising children at a very young age. This takes a great degree of awareness of self, that requires time to form.

Digital parenting should not overtake real parenting; because as adults we can suffer from overload from all the online and offline advertorials about the edu-taining software that is a "must-buy" for your child. It goes without saying that advancements in technology have benefited our lives in many ways, it depends on how responsibly we use technology. Studies have shown that computer tablets, for example, are helping children with autism develop communication skills because they are "predictable and neat". However, it's not so much the edu-taining gadgets we need to buy, just that little extra time to give guidance and love. As parents, if we just informed ourselves we wouldn't be intimidated by new technology, and education IS the key to using them properly - or at least being made aware of the dangers.

It's up to us whether we create a generation of brains dumbed by the Google effect, where Twitter and other social media networks are like the state surveillance agency of celebrities staffed by gullible volunteers - a Stasi for the Angry Birds generation. There is the danger, too, that individualism has been thrown out of the virtual window; we follow the digital crowd, where it's hard for young, forming minds to cultivate their own inner voice in what can increasingly become an echo chamber of merging voices.

Wisdom is not only a bar against the risk and realities of technology; wisdom is a path to happiness, too. In that sense, children have their own wisdom in abundance - because it comes from the spirit before it's tainted by the imprint of others. We often think with wisdom comes responsibility, seriousness and that a wise mind should have no mind for fun or happiness.

But those who seek true wisdom, seek it in all things, and always try to keep a youthful, inner exuberance. For cultivating ourselves isn't about silencing the child inside; it's about protecting our inner child. We need to be good parents to ourselves as well as to our children - because in turn that will make us better parents. Being happy is not a frivolity, nor just the vanity or vain luxury of youth. Being happy is essential for a rationally working mind, just as much as for an intuitive one.

How to cultivate more love in the world

“Promise nothing. Just do what you most enjoy doing. Sign nothing. Just do what doesn’t require a signature of any kind. Offer nothing. Just share what you have with those who express an interest in it. Expect nothing. Just enjoy what you already have. It’s plenty. Need nothing. Just build up your reserves and your needs will disappear. Create nothing. Just respond well to what comes to you. Seduce no one. Just enjoy people. Adrenalise nothing. Just add value and get excited about that. Hype nothing. Just let quality sell by itself. Fix nothing. Just heal yourself.”
— Thomas J. Leonard

There are many other criticisms, arguing that today's technology has helped create a younger generation that needs its information summarised and mashed into easily acceptable sound-bytes. Such a culture reliant on technology and its magic tricks - our increasing over-reliance on big data, for example, although it has been shown to save lives - can tend to force us to over-simplify things. Over-simplification of life and people can be a dangerous thing, it removes the uniqueness out of life. It can also make us see people as numbers, and products, rather than individual people, with their own quirks and quips.

Not everything in life can be seen, touched or measured - and thus not everything can be "owned", even if only superficially. Claiming dominion over things - when we are all going to physically die anyway - is an exercise in futility. Nature has loaned us our bodies, it's the earth that really owns them.

We are charged with looking after our bodies, and the better we do this, the more our quality of life in the present will rise. Not only does it celebrate life but, more often than not, it is the best way of reflecting on life. And when that term is over, our bodies will be recycled back into the carbon cycle in due time. Death comes as the end for all; the point is not how long you'll live, but how you well you live. Only by living well do we attain wisdom, and living wisely means a life well lived. Subsequently, the only thing we really have to "own" is the present now, and to be present in the now is the only way to cultivate a better future for ourselves - and the world.

One way to look at the recent "pains" we have experienced globally, on an economic and environmental scale, are in terms of a readjustment to our outlook. Society is changing in Britain. Whatever your view, there is no doubt that there is a major change in the manner in which our economy operates and in how its recent recovery has come about. It echoes, at the micro level, the change of the individual.

Modern society is charged with being very narcissistic, but it also has become an avenue for people to pursue different avenues, to be more innovative and creative in how they approach life. It has given us umpteen forms of expression. A few experts in this field note that this also stems from more people wanting to be independent.

Britain now has more people working for themselves than ever before, and it's more than just financial freedom people are after - it's the freedom to go after a job you love to do. This is part of bettering our lives, because we are adding value to who we are - not by what we do per se, but by the joy it brings. In Britain last year, when asked on a scale of 0-10 whether if they were satisfied with their life, the response was an average of 7.5 - and this is predicted to rise.

Meanwhile, we all need to accept that - old and young alike - we are ALL instructed by our biases, and new science suggests that these might not be as easy to get rid of as we used to think. In part two of this mini-series, we touched upon how our belief of the insignificance of the future is one factor why we seem to act so irresponsibility over our eating and sexual habits. According to a professor from Duke University in North Carolina, Dan Ariely, this is one of our most important biases, but we have many more. These biases affect us all, whether we are choosing a cup of coffee, buying a car, running an investment bank or gathering military intelligence.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that confirms what we already know. It's why we tend to read a newspaper that agrees with our views. There's the hindsight bias, the halo effect, the spotlight effect, loss aversion and the negativity bias. This is the bias that means that negative events are far more easily remembered than positive ones. It means we feel the pain of financial loss much more than the pleasure of a gain. It means that for every argument you have in a relationship, you need to have five positive memories just to maintain an even keel.

The area of our lives where these cognitive biases cause most grief is with anything to do with money. It was for his work in this area that Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize - not for psychology (no such prize exists) but for economics. His insights led to a whole new branch of economics - behavioural economics. Professor Kahneman realised that we respond very differently to losses than to gains. We feel the pain of a loss much more than we feel the pleasure of a gain. He even worked out by how much. If you lose £10 today, you will feel the pain of the loss. But if you find some money tomorrow, you will have to find more than £20 to make up for the loss of £10. This is loss aversion, and its cumulative effect can be catastrophic.

One difficulty with the traditional economic view is that it tends to assume that we all make rational decisions. The reality seems to be very different. Behavioural economists are trying to form an economic system based on the reality of how we actually make decisions. Ariely argues that the implications of ignoring Kahneman's research are catastrophic. He believes that if the regulators had listened to behavioural economists early on, we would have designed a very different financial system, and we wouldn't have had the incredible increase in the relative markets or the financial catastrophe - which has made us so much narrower in our vision, and in the cultivation of our human relationships.

Like our pursuit of wealth, some say we should pursue our passions in life (and our relationships) with less hubris, impatience and intolerance to risk to cultivate healthier connections in our lives. And not just in our personal lives. In public life, especially in politics we have seen the unfortunate results of extreme pride or self-confidence stemming from a passion. We have seen how politicians and rulers have exhibited a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of their own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially after holding a long position of power. This hubristic trait, this excess of ambition, pride - improperly cultivated - will ultimately always cause the transgressor's ruin.

Naturally if we allow power or money to make us happy, then letting go of power, or being unable to afford the latest gadgets or follow the latest trend is going to make us less happy and less productive as human beings. There is an insightful saying that if we cannot get in front of our superficial desires, then we shall always be the slave of those that promise to supply us with them. We have become addicted to a certain way of doing things (however negative) because we feel it rewards us with what we think we want. So what are we to do? Can we gain an understanding of our biases, and begin to clear the way to really cultivate ourselves and better our lives?

Dr Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University, has been investigating how deep seated these biases really are. Until we know the evolutionary origins of these two systems of thinking, we won't know if we can change them. As part of her research, Dr Santos taught a troop of monkeys to use money. It's called monkeynomics, and she wanted to find out whether monkeys would make the same stupid mistakes as humans. She taught the monkeys to use tokens to buy treats, and found that monkeys also show loss aversion - making the same mistakes as humans.

Santos' conclusion is that these biases are so deep rooted in our evolutionary past, they may be impossible to change. She explained that what we learn from the monkeys is that if this bias is really that old, if we really have had this strategy for the last 35 million years, she believes her studies show that simply deciding to overcome it is just not going to work. We need other ways to make ourselves avoid some of these pitfalls.

Other theories say that we can change ourselves, because even by just being aware of these biases can be enough to help limit their influence on our decision making. We can change ourselves, because life is constantly changing, and we are always in an influx of change - we just have to make ourselves aware of it. Cultivating ourselves means picking up and taking out our sabotaging biases towards change, and shining a light on our thoughts and actions as we move towards authentic betterment. You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate.

Our thoughts are sometimes those details staring us in the face that we miss. But the act of speaking does something to your brain that actually allows your eyes to see more clearly. If you want to see the trees, you have to not just think wood, but SAY it. In my "Love to Live" post, I mention a daily mirror technique, where looking at yourself and actually voicing positive thoughts in the mirror can have an influence on your behaviour.

In the same way, using the mirror technique, you can pinpoint your bias, say it out loud, and say that you will NOT let it influence you today. Or if you are biased towards doing what you are told not to do, then use reverse psychology on yourself. Do what works for you, the point is not the method, but the aim of awakening your consciousness to your subconscious.

Another argument attached to raising of awareness is that love can provide the evolutionary leap we need to overcome any inherent biases Santos says we may not be able to change (easily at any rate). Similar to scientific studies that have shown it was the human trait of sharing and community spirit that allowed our brains to evolve so differently from our primate cousins, some believe that the effect of "love" may help us on the route to the next stage in our evolution. Love makes us more than the sum of our biases.

Love's evolutionary leap

This description of love is a great ode to life. It may just be the irresistible appeal of the romantic ideal, but for many humans, it's the only truth that matters. Even if it were true that love is an "emotional lie", or a trick conjured up by the hormones fired in our brain to help us swallow the bitter pill of life more easily, it's one that could help us leapfrog our limitations to progress up the evolutionary ladder. Because the science says we are still evolving; it's just that we have a hand in that evolution to a greater degree than we've ever had before.

Here, then, is a wisdom we can all share. You can be the most rational person you know, or the most religious, you may believe you have known real angels in your life, witnessed magic and miracles, or just believe that life itself, and the scientific beauty it has to offer, is magic enough. But we all will have loved, we all will have been loved, or been damaged by the absence of it. It doesn't matter if it is just a mental trick conjured up hormonal imbalances, the reality is we love, and are loved.

When the end comes, we will realise the rest was just peripheral, destined for the earth. Love is the only thing we can take with us, and all our attainments, all our efforts should be in the pursuit of that of wisdom. For that is what our journey is; it is up to us to get wise and attain personal wisdoms that bring that value to life.

Thus when our fears want to take us down, we remember to look up - into the sky of our potential and see how beautiful life is, and to be grateful for who we are, and for what we have. In doing so, we nurture the child inside, and as healthy parents will nurture our own children with that wisdom.

You love your own inner being, your husband, wife, child, boy or girlfriend, or any person you love, because the love you share is what keeps you from being unloved. It's this drive that keeps us fighting for freedom, to never quit life until our last breath, to always try and cultivate something better for ourselves and our loved ones. If you hold an unloved child within you, love it; never neglect what can make you strong and proud to be exactly who you were meant to be.

If your past made you afraid of life, or helped to further ingrain or trigger inherent biases, then your struggles to overcome these challenges can give you the strength for the present, and the future to come. As human beings, it's only natural we will have our fears, but we can make those fears our friends when we love who we are; we can make cultivation a daily thing to power the love within. It's with this wisdom that you gain the confidence to know whatever you're faced with you can endure. This life experience is what will make you strong, or wise to the potential of betterment every challenge can bring to your life, to allow you to discover your authentic self.

In turn this will help us all cultivate a better world. And even if our biases are so evolutionary ingrained that we may not be able to change our outer selves to connect with who we really are inside, at least by being aware of our cognitive limitations, we may be able to design the environment around us in a way that allows for our likely mistakes in public life. Ariely sums this theory by explaining that we are limited, we are not perfect, and we are irrational in all kinds of ways. But we can build a world compatible with this, which gets us to make better decisions rather than worse decisions, and to get on better with one another.

Irrelevant of which theory or science you agree with, what is accepted by all is that change is necessary - the situation we find ourselves in illustrates that we need new structures for a better society. To do this, some will want to burn their bridges to the past to build a better a future, while some will need to build a bridge to the past to better understand their future.

The secret is that none may do either without being present in the moment they are now - even if that "now" feels like on the brink of catastrophe, because a life in suspension also means a great awakening is possible. It is during that period the greatest cultivation is achieved, if only we open ourselves to its possibilities.

Always remember, the coming dark is our chance to shine.

End of Part Three | Read more in this series: -1 -2

Yours in love,

The Cultivation of Love-2

“What is the first step on the journey to betterment? Well, that depends. We all know the wisdom of every journey beginning with the first step, but each first step will depend on the shoe that fits.”
— Mickie Kent

One of the journeys to a better life is obviously through physical well-being. Health is a major issue in today's modern societies, and first world problems are often occupied with not if there is enough to eat, but what to eat.

Food, and the science behind it, has centred largely in our lives in this decade. We are bombarded with so much conflicting information, we don't know what to do with it all. Should we be eating five-a-day, seven-a-day or ten-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables for long life? Or should we eat like the Japanese, drink red wine and have sex three times a week to boost our life expectancy as some experts suggest? Meanwhile it's a chilling thought that even parasites we unwittingly consume may be influencing how we behave in ways we do not yet begin to understand, making us more reckless in behaviour.

But what we do know is that we don't want to constantly be on a diet. And some experts say we don't have to be. Reducing calorie intake by just 10% is said to extend life expectancy and slash the risk of disease, while eating more than five portions of fruit and veg daily can promote long life by cutting risk of dying prematurely by 42%, scientists believe.

We want to eat mindfully, and we don't want to waste food, or waste time worrying about food. We want to make the right healthy food swaps - adding salads and vegetables to our usual dishes to reach our fruit and veg targets for instance, while opting for less sugary fruits and cutting down on sugary snacks. Eating a healthy, balanced diet is more important than ever during times of stress when your body is likely to be run down and your immune system weakened.

During the last 20-30 years, dieticians say there has been a massive rise in both food allergies and food intolerances. And while some of the rise can be explained by better diagnosis and awareness, this doesn't account for it all. No one really knows what is making us susceptible to food hypersensitivity, but many suspect that there are things in our environments which are the cause. One of which is that our eating habits have changed considerably in the last fifty years.

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Some believe that our digestion is an important element that governs us on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. A problem concentrated within the digestive system, or area of the abdomen, can manifest itself in a lot of problematic ways. The practice of rejecting temporary diets in place of incorporating long-term awareness, awakening, and strengthening of wisdom towards our bodies and the foods we eat seems to be a better way forward, experts now suggest.

Others argue that diets, like the search for self-improvement, has become a fad, rather than a way of life. We're looking for quick ways to boost our mood, or instant feel-good fixes, when most say it should be obvious how to live better - by employing some common sense. By keeping food restrictions to a minimum so that our meals remain as varied as possible. By eating real foods as opposed to processed ones that promote a longer shelf life as much as possible. We should listen to our bodies more. They like routine. This goes for sleep, for food and for work - but balance needs to maintained. Too much routine can lead to stagnation.

Our brain can stagnate or get bored with too much routine, for instance, as things get too easy for it. It can switch off as we go through the regular motions. We often call this "going on auto-pilot", and it can be useful, as you want to know how to do most of your everyday things without thinking about the how of doing it. However, the problem with auto-pilot is that many of us confuse it with "being present".

Presence is noticing what is going on, and auto-pilot is as far from mindfulness and being present as you can get. It's when we make decisions on auto-pilot that "mistakes" can creep in. With every decision you take, every judgement you make, there is a battle in your mind - a battle between intuition and logic. And the intuitive part of your mind is a lot more powerful than you may think.

The problem with being tricked by our intuition and memory is linked to our ability to pay attention. The more mindful we become, the stronger and more trustworthy the link to our intuition and memory will be. Next time you do something, pay attention to the little tiny details of every movement, to how your body moves and and feels, because that's how you are learning to be in the moment.

Mindfulness is also about not settling for the way it's always been done, just because you've always done it that way. So we need to shake up that routine once in a while and do something in a different way, like brain training, and keep those pathways firing and rewiring. The same goes for exercise. Our body can like routine a bit too much there, and hit what trainers call a plateau.

We also need to learn how to be able to switch off - even though in our modern 24/7 connected society that might be difficult. We need to be able to break away from our smartphones, tablets and other portables, and take a breather. At times, isolation has its own beauty. Look around the real world without the help of a screen - even if it's just with our minds.

Practical tips for you to use

Towards this aim, some say practising self-hypnosis helps you switch off the analytical, critical, conscious part of your mind and allows you to relax both mentally and physically. Clinical hypnotherapists suggest trying self-hypnosis tracks especially for lowering stress. In your relaxed state you listen to a series of positive suggestions to help you stay calm and manage daily stress more effectively. You can even record your own positive affirmations, or use something called the mirror technique I described in my "Love to Live" post.

Neuro linguistic programming (NLP) practitioners suggest using a relaxation technique with a specially designated word anchored to the situation. For example, one such technique can be employed when you lie in bed. Allow your head to sink into the pillow and, in your mind, hear the word "soften", said softly and gently. Focus on your left shoulder and pretend the word "soften" is coming from inside there. Allow your shoulder to relax, then repeat with the right shoulder, the hip joints, the eye muscles, anywhere you like. The important thing with this technique is to do it slowly and gently, and just let go.

As a baby we discard things that don't serve us very easily, but as we grow into young adults we quickly learn how to hold on, and forget how to let go. Letting go is easier said than done. It can actually take years for us to relearn just how free we are. We grasp onto our problems so tightly for so long that they often feel a part of us. But if we can just unlearn that, and learn to open up ourselves in the right way, we'll find our problems easily falling away from us.

Here's an experiment you can try right now. Focus on an issue you'd like to feel freer about. It could be something to do with your money, health or relationship, or just something to do with your overall sense of well-being. When you have decided on what it is, focus on it and allow yourself to welcome whatever it is you're experiencing in that moment. After this first step, then ask yourself some questions: Could I let this go as though I were dropping a stone into a lake? Would I? When? If your answer is "Yes" and "Now", then you actually have let go a little in that moment.

Follow the process and see what you feel. What did you choose to focus on? Were you able to welcome it or allow it into your focus? Did you ask yourself if you could let go, and whether you would, and when? If you are able to imagine dropping your problem from you as though dropping a stone into a deep lake, then you'll be able to let go of anything.

It starts very simply, and very easily - but experts tell us not to be fooled by its subtlety. For the more you do this, the more you let go, the more profound and powerful it gets - until even negative patterns that seem insurmountable and have locked you in their cycles of stress for as long as you can remember will start to drop away. It just requires some focus and attention, and repeatedly doing that same process of focusing, questioning and imagining yourself letting go of whatever doesn't serve you.

Another method experts suggest is to take a leaf from the most important book of your life - your own diary or "gratitude journal". Many life coaches now advise that you can boost your mood through gratitude journalling, concluding with a deep relaxation technique of your choice. For example, write down five good things in your life (even the smallest things) in your diary, and be grateful for them as you wind down for the evening. Eventually it's hoped you'll get to the point where you have a hard time limiting yourself to just five items. And that will be when you start to maximise the positive momentum of this little daily ritual, and come to realise that you feel grateful for your life as a whole.

As your journey unfolds, at a deeper level, less a conscious process than a natural consequence, gratefulness leads to awareness of the peaceful and enduring core that is our true nature; the desire to prevent harm is a spontaneous expression of that awareness. We begin to realise that the inner self in others is identical to our own inner self, and we wish no harm to come to any being. Towards this aim, we can practice being more kind, accepting, and forgiving of yourself and others. When this is fully embraced, an inner confidence emerges that is deep seated and surprisingly powerful.

Use the positive habits mentioned above to inwardly learn to recognise the cascade of fears and other negative emotions that prompt you to twist reality. Write them down. Question and analyse your thoughts. Once you have understood and processed these fears, your thoughts, speech, and actions can be realigned with the truth, even as you look more deeply into your needs and desires.

Outwardly, it will help you to refrain from telling lies and to speak with kindness, compassion, and clarity. The urge to do the opposite, and is believed to arise from a sense of unhappiness, incompleteness, and envy. The solution is to practice giving any chance you get of what you can. Give food, give money, give time, give love. Volunteer, do charity work, or show your support. Since wealth is ultimately a state of mind, you will feel increasingly wealthy, and through this form of measured selfless giving, your sense of inner wealth may bring you outer wealth.

A yogic maxim says that all the things of the world are yours to use, but not to own. Whenever we become possessive, we are in turn possessed, anxiously holding onto our things and grasping for more, of what is in reality mere "stolen" objects of the world. But when we make good use of the possessions that come to us and enjoy them without becoming emotionally dependent on them, then they neither wield power over us nor lead to false identities and expectations.

As a practice tip, examine your own tendencies toward possessiveness. Do you take better care of an object in your possession than one belonging to someone else? Do you acquire more of something than you can use? Do you depend too much on others, give more in a relationship than is healthy for you, replace mutual give-and-take with the need for tight-fisted control, or attempt to increase your self-esteem by gaining someone else's love? The practice of non-possessiveness helps us to examine our assumptions and guides us back to healthy relationships with others.

Incorporating these coping techniques into your life might not seem like a big deal, but such attempts (however small) chip away at the overarching negative patterns we all hide under at one time or another. When we chip away at them repeatedly, they will fall, and free us from their shadow. But for the majority of us, we have difficulty in letting things go. Often this leads us to living inside our heads, cluttered up with thoughts of the past. Of regret of things we did, or didn't do, or of things others did to us. These are things we can't change, and yet, unless we learn to break free from them, they will keep us chained inside the vicious hamster wheel we run inside our heads. We tire ourselves out so much on it, that we have no energy to focus on the present - and focus is a great power which we can use to help us make our lives better.

Focus can influence everything from your appearance to your health and self-esteem in real life, but - again - too much of a good thing can quickly turn the other way. Everything is at its most optimum during times of balance. The way we think, the way we emote and feel - even the pose we strike - can help to change the chemical make-up in our bodies. The trick, however, is to use these as aids to recalibrate balance, not as a "cure-all" for your ills. The "cure", in actuality, is for you to harmonise your life with your own unique balance of energies.

Searching for a middle way

Another tip a few experts suggest is making wise choices about the books and magazines you read, the movies you see, and the company you keep, as this will help you conserve energy and keep your mind focused and dynamic. It's about finding balance, or the middle path. It goes so far as to suggest being moderate in all sensual activities, so that you don't fixate on them, staying committed and faithful to one partner in a relationship that is mutually supportive, for example, rather than falling prone to the addictive dangers of websex.

This isn't an attack on society becoming more extreme, it's just we need to digest things emotionally and psychologically as we need to do physically. Mass consumption, or constantly feasting on junk, or pulp fiction, isn't good for health experts say. Another danger is that we might become desensitized to the extreme nature of many things, making us less able to feel horrified at the plight of human beings, for example, disconnecting us from our empathic sensibilities in a way.

We are not necessarily a more permissive society today: We control hate speech and harassment quite tightly. Until recently, society permitted fairly wide gaps between this form of harassment and legality - many things were legal that were considered immoral, especially in excess - but now we tend to legislate our morality, so that what is unacceptable is also criminalised. And profanity that is losing its ability to shock may retain an ability to entertain.

But it may not be true that we are more accepting of profanity; rather, our definitions of profanity have changed. Broadly speaking, profanity has evolved from 19th Century prohibitions against blaspheming, through 20th Century preoccupations with sexuality and bodily functions, into 21st Century fears about hate speech and incitement to violence.

We primarily use words such as "fuck" as an intensifier, and intensifiers only work if they are interpreted as intense. In the 19th Century, "damn" and "blast" were unacceptable in polite conversation. Now, as a linguist noted, if a film or book character spoke in "damns" and "blasts" he would sound like Yosemite Sam. Although "fuck" was always an indecent word, it was used in limited ways, to describe sexual acts. Now our notions of profanity tend to circulate around bodily functions and relationships. There is a reason why "motherfucker" is ruder than "fucker" - we are much more outraged by incest than by sex. By the same token The Wolf of Wall Street would have been far more controversial if its characters were espousing racist sentiments instead of saying "fuck" in every sentence.

Are these words junking our minds? Are such subjects blockages to cultivation? Along with these questions, there remains the crux of the matter when it comes to limiting art in our lives, the impossibility of legislating taste, and ever-shifting socio-historical contexts. Much of what film censors prohibited a century ago would also make modern audiences uneasy. Earlier cinema audiences saw homosexuality as a perversion whereas we are concerned by depictions of paedophilia. There were similar concerns about the hardening (or desensitisation) of audiences to violence, and these prohibited showing the methods of crime so that film couldn't become an instruction manual for wrongdoing.

What has been termed as "excessive" violence, nudity, sexuality have always been prohibited but our threshold for excess has been considerably raised. A prime example is The Wolf of Wall Street, which includes male nudity in a sexual context, long the uncrossable frontier between pornography and mainstream cinema, as well as cocaine-taking and a lot of sex, including a gay orgy. Clearly, this represents something of a brave new world in mainstream cinema - and, some would argue, a depraved one.

Art can raise the mind as much as it can lower it; the difference may not be how it does that, but whether it makes you think. It is not news that one viewer's art is another's pornography, and Anglo-American culture has not succeeded during centuries of debate, over painting, sculpture, literature, television, magazines or, indeed, film, in drawing a cordon sanitaire between the two. Nor are fears about seduction and imitation likely to disappear - they accompanied the arrival of the novel, as ministers sermonised against the corruption of readers by fictional lies, and have never left imaginative narratives behind, for the very good reason that we know that people learn from imitation, and from inspiration.

Does TV affect our minds?

The only way we can safeguard the impressionable, and even our own impressionable adult minds, is through education and graded exposure, or limiting their influence by moderation (a middle way) to realise that we only have a responsibility over ourselves (and the forming brains of our children) over what we watch. The imagination of others cannot be legislated, even if representation can be controlled. As long as we live in a culture that values free speech and artistic expression, we will continue to have debates about how to classify art, even if we don't always think that's the argument we're having. They say there's no disputing taste but that doesn't stop us from trying.

Aiming for moderation, and avoiding excess, in our personal lives is one way to achieve a middle path, but it is not the only one. There are many paths, and many routes, on the same journey to discover, and cultivate, who we are.

No single path on a single journey

There are many paths to our inner wisdom. Some say they have lucid dreams to guide them through their decision-making process, others prefer a more rational and logical take on setting and achieving their goals. What works for you will not work for another, and vice versa. Similar to our emotional make-up is our physical being, although we are the the same blueprint for humankind, our skin tissue and its oil, organs and chemical balances vary infinitely (not to mention this is determined greatly on what we eat and drink) - so we need to factor these in with our own psychological environment that has helped have a hand in producing who we are.

For example, having a healthy body and a healthy mind is important to me, so it's naturally become part of my everyday life and influences the choices I make. I try to make these positive habits almost second nature to the behavioural aspect of my Self, because I believe it influences my thoughts and outlook, and thus how well I feel. Others believe that although a positively repetitive routine is great, sometimes you need to mix it up a little, and avoid the dreaded "plateau" or flat-line of improvement that you will hear many life coaches and trainers talk about.

This form of "divergent thinking" is also believed to boost our creativity skills. Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda wrote that a person "slowly dies who becomes the slave of habit, repeating every day the same" thing, but that is how a brain learns. The point is not to be a "slave" of habit, but a partner with it - to consciously use it as an aid, and not subconsciously be tied to it. However, to kick start your brain's learning again, or to re-emphasise the training, learning the same thing in a different way is believed to keep the brain up to speed, and stop the fall into a subconscious, automaton-like learning state.

If we sleepwalk our way through life, we miss its beauty, and doing things a little differently may open our eyes to the present NOW. So it is that often I prefer to take a synergistic third path between overt mysticism and cold logic, a path merging science with a humanist philosophy at the heart of it to harmonise our inner being with modern life. This need for synergism not only provides opportunity for constant appraisal and thinking outside of the box, it also states that life is sacred, and universal - but at its core individually unique.

Thus on the path to cultivation, every human being is afforded the right to dignity, irrelevant of whether their non-harming thoughts, beliefs and practices clash with our own, and the freedom to choose their own path in life. It may not always take us where we want to go, but sometimes the inroads we make for the sake of freedom will echo to future generations. Take the story of Bettie Mae Page, for instance, an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. She turned to religion and shunned her career later on, but while she did her work, she never thought it was anything wrong - she was exploring the freedom to be independent. Some would argue that Page helped mark the beginning of the end for sexual morals, others would say it paved the way for greater freedom of expression. Page envisaged neither; she was just trying to survive with a wage after a disastrous marriage.

Today, many rockabilly and gothic girls emulate Bettie's hairstyle with the black blunt bangs. You can see Page's hairstyle and timeless facial features emulated in many modern pin-up models - the entire career of burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese would not have been possible without Page's courageous first forage into exploring society's stance on freedom of expression and sexuality. And according to MTV, Katy Perry's rocker bangs and throwback skimpy jumpers, Madonna's Sex book and fascination with bondage gear, Rihanna's obsession with all things leather, lace and second-skin binding, Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction all have Page to thank for her influence.

Page's thumbprint of popular culture is certain, whether or not that is a good thing is a matter of taste. The important thing is that we enjoy the freedom to pursue our tastes, as we discover who we are. It's up to you whether you want to be a more productive citizen of the world than your average Kardashian, but you must live your life the way you want to live it. Some may argue that this type of freedom is irresponsible, and the root cause of the problems in society today, but without a free environment we can't develop. That has to be balanced with gaining the wisdom to know that in pursuit of betterment what we need are those things that bring real value to life.

How do we learn this? We learn this from the wisdom of others, but mainly from our own life experience, boosted by the support of a loving group. Page's life story is also a cautionary tale, but until we go through the same experiences, the lessons may not resonate with us. And depending on whether we have a loving support group or not (even if that is just yourself), how well we will deal with the experience ourselves. This means we are all responsible for our own enlightenment, but that sharing wisdom and working together is the strongest way to get to the love within.

Balancing an environment of sharing and support as an important ingredient to foster betterment, is the need to be honest with ourselves and carve a personal space where we can evaluate who we are. To find a way to get closer to our true Self, in my "Be One with the Love Within" post I talk about how we must be open and honest with ourselves, to catch a stronger glimpse of your real Self. This involves deep humility and a steadfast anchoring into the centre of your own, pure soul, along the way feeling all the emotions you have never dared to feel. It's believed that only by cultivating such love, can you nurture the growth of all other forms of human or natural love into their ultimate potential, based on universal laws of truth and harmony. It's only your authentic self that will set you free.

We asked at the end of the first part to this mini-series on life cultivation what was meant by the term "authentic self". What do we exactly mean by the Self? Is soul and spirit separate, and if so what is the difference between them? We know that conciousness is mediated through our minds, but not limited to our brains, and yet what about when the brain suffers damage? There are times that because of brain damage, the self - that thing we say makes us who we are - seems to disappear. If consciousness is not solely the domain of the brain, why then is it so dependant on it?

In my "Love in the Shadows" I wrote how the dark side of dogma and religion illustrates well how a human being can be endowed with a divine mind, and yet be separated from it. Similarly, if we are disconnected from our soul, if the conduit is broken (like a damaged brain) - it may feel like the Self disappears, because we can no longer see it. This disconnection highlights the difference between the soul and the spirit - the spirit is the energy of life itself, the soul as its unique manifestation or vibration can be disrupted if the links are broken.

When we look at our modern societies today, we could use the same analogy. It's like the whole of humanity is suffering from a protracted form of Alzheimer's disease - we have forgotten who we were, and who we are meant to be. The spirit exists, but our spiritual vibrations are being disrupted, and thus disconnected from our true selves, we are unable to truly reflect who we are either in our private or public lives.

And walking towards this destination of true connection, our path will be completely different from every other soul. Your truth will only come from within you - not necessarily from looking at what anyone else is up to, or imagining how much better life would be if you knew what some others know is the wrong attitude to take. The chances are that those people living "charmed lives" are just living true to their designated paths. When you look at your neighbour and ask, "Why does he get to do that cool thing for a living?" or "Why is she so successful?" you're forgetting your own unique journey that you chose long ago. As we look around us at what others are doing, we lose our way.

When you're on your unique path, you feel impassioned by your own life and work - no matter what anyone else is doing, and no matter what anyone else thinks of you. When you align with it and take steps forward from that place of knowing, abundance flows to you, and your life is in harmony. When you're not living true to what you signed up for - nothing may seem like it is working well. Of course, this all goes on subconsciously as we bumble our way through life unconsciously. But once you're aware that the treasure map to your success is hidden within you, you don't have to spend years, months or even hours trying to figure out what is next for you on your path by following others.

Thus, what you need to eat for your own physical well-being you must discover for yourself, because physical, and emotional, well-being will mean different things to different people - like an image of freedom - it will look different to everyone. We may have the same general picture, but the details will be painted in our own colours. For some of us freedom will mean the mutual respect between humans and animals, for others freedom will mean being able to look at the world with hope and accept love from anyone or give love to anyone without fear. For many, freedom will mean choice, and without choice you can't hope to take any steps towards betterment.

We need to shine a light to illuminate who we are, and who we have the potential to be, because humans have depths darker than the deepest oceans of the world. The route to elevating us from the darkness passes through freedom of choice. It's a major player in our lives. We will all have a memory when someone acted to restrict our freedom - it either worked to quash our identity or, in our struggle against it, helped to form it. There will be a threshold against the restrictions we can no longer stand, or a moment when we feel no longer have anything to lose. Fighting for our freedom may drag us into that darkness, but going into that darkness without struggling to be free means we slide into darkness with regret, and there is nothing worse than to leave life with that sort of regret.

Without freedom, we cannot progress, or create a new society, a new time, or a new you. And creating a new you is really about finding the real you. We just need to be allowed the freedom to do that. Such tips as rapid problem solving to train your brain, using an elimination diet to heal your gut, or getting a massage to relax are good ways to check and balance yourself towards that aim. In the freedom of your own personal space, you live and learn, and tweak. Likewise, with the exercises you do, or the work you follow, it will be a case of experimenting to see what feels right for you.

Life, after all, is an adventurous journey of trial and error for all of us. The wisdom of others will inspire, and educate and guide, but ultimately by listening to your body, and building up trust with your intuitive voice, it will guide you on your path to personal wisdom - to experience a freedom that no one can restrict, because it comes from deep within.

No easy answer in life

Wisdom is not merely the accumulation of knowledge, but the application of it. So, it may take a slightly crazed individual to embrace the beginning of each day with a full heart and a big grin, but for some just starting the day with a smile will work. For others, however, no amount of smiling will rid them of their depressed state.

But the way some well-being articles tell it, happiness should be easy. Anyone who has read extensively on well-being, or even if they haven't, can all do the brain science: dopamine, a natural opiate, being released by the nucleus accumbens equals happiness. Feelings of love and eating chocolate are said to raise dopamine levels, so it should be easy to boost our happiness, right? And yet, the state of happiness eludes more of us than ever.

The reason is that there is no simple answer - and we don't want to hear that. We want an easy, one-minute cure for everything, when the actuality is that life is far more nuanced and complex than that. Life does not lend itself to over-simplification. If true happiness was simply tied to hormone levels, then we could all find happiness in a chocolate bar. That has the danger of trivialising people with very serious problems, where no amount of positive thinking or dopamine-inducing mood boosters are going to save the day.

If that is the case, then the balance we will need to seek is the wisdom to live with what we term as our "ailments". This will mean getting the appropriate help, and finding the courage to do battle with our inner demons by enhancing our other strengths. It will also mean that we will have to make peace with the enemy, as it were. We will have to embrace those "weaknesses" as strengths, too, somewhere down the line of our therapy, because ultimately they will have contributed to making you the unique person that you are. After all, it's the search for and the understanding of ourselves that will bring wisdom.

In the search for ourselves, we are all looking for ways to maintain equilibrium - with ourselves, within our relationships and as an active part of our community. However, as society becomes more technologically advanced, fast paced - and conversely - retreats to spend more time in front of a screen, how easy is it to balance yourself within it, or to cultivate your own individual voice in this new fibre-optic echo chamber we live in?

Does it seem to you as though we are living in a human world where a garish form of popular culture reigns supreme? Everything "iconic" within it has become sexualised or trivialised, from derrières to dresses. Meanwhile, the Facebook flock follows the lead of attention seeking icons who don't seem to be parting with snippets of wisdom, but often just playing to the crowd for maximum exposure.

Some would take the argument further and say we are locked in a culture that deifies youth and superficial beauty more than ever. It has turned our Western societies into a surreal tween world where our connecting screens are either filled with the same kind of silly violent nonsense that boys everywhere tend to like, or girls going crazy over prepubescent singing celebrities and fictional glittery vampires.

These new "realities" are not as harmless as they sound. I am mindful of the news story of a young boy who turned to his computer and the internet for entertainment, after struggling to make friends, only to be stabbed to death by someone he had met online. It highlights the potential dangers of the internet, but also of the darker side to the youth culture of our day that struggles with the most of basic of interpersonal skills.

Moreover, anyone not in the loop to these constantly changing subcultures - those twenty-five and above - are all suffering from a tween-life crisis themselves, believing their lives no longer hold any relevance within a popular culture that streams out from every portable gadget, which goes for connectivity in our lives today. But those who built the modern world will tell you that since society came of age, it has always been thus.

From a quick reading of our society, I'm sure some will wonder how we ever managed to get out of our demonised version of the Dark Ages (if we ever did at all). But that's the point, the Middle Ages weren't as dark as we imagine, and neither is the world today. Like an underground sewer system, this popular patois powers the ebbs and flows of modern existence, of the upheaval between the old and the new.

However many now argue we need counterpoints to this "accelerating culture" and short-term thinking that dominates modern society. We live in a Fast Food Nation, and it's believed it's this sort of bias towards the short-term that causes things like overeating, smoking, texting and driving, and having unprotected sex from a young age. Some even argue that our modern preoccupation with being "present" and focusing on our living moment pays lip service to this pop culture of speed. But in actuality spiritual "presence" forces you to slow down and take notice of the details, which might otherwise be missed in a world all about speed.

Correctly paying attention to what is happening now removes you from living your life on auto-pilot. It doesn't mean we shouldn't concern ourselves with the future. Those mindful of the future whilst anchored in the present, are not concerned about the immediacy of the moment, because moment taken is seen as the journey itself, rather than simply a step in the journey. The process itself is the important thing, not the result. The future is just a by-product of steps correctly taken. But those steps are taken with a bigger picture in mind - whatever that maybe, the pursuit of wisdom, happiness, love, or progress in all three.

For we are learning, and growing all the time, and there is no final stage of enlightenment that we really should aspire to; there is no possibility (or long-term benefit if it indeed were possible) to learn everything. However, as one generation makes way for the next, it seems to do so with ever decreasing peace of mind. It's been said that the young are too quick to form an opinion of life. As the time frame of this generational handover gets pushed back earlier and earlier, there is no time left to understand that there is really nothing to pass on - except wisdom.

Wisdom is as wisdom does

With wisdom comes the realisation that what we think are the "ills" of modern day society are not recent trends. As discussed in my "Love in the Shadows" post, they have been a long time coming through the ages. A prime example being our preoccupation with real wars filtering into the current media that preoccupy our young. It's a language we have been trained to talk in, and understand.

It's only natural that some will therefore use it as their main means of communication. That's why still we read news reports in 2014 of Spanish warships disrupting British military training, and violent riots in the Ukraine, Thailand and Venezuela. Even those spiritually tasked with creating aren't immune it seems, with stories of artists causing destruction in protests.

When I see conflict continuing to ignite around the world, I often remember my visits to the Royal Artillery museum, appropriately titled as Firepower, situated in Woolwich in south-east London. The place is home to some three-and-a-half million items concerned with the history of artillery and its use in conflict. As you can imagine, the collection of guns in there is vast, dating right back to the 14th Century up to the present day. It's filled with firearms and other unusual items related to wartime personnel, all with a story to tell - but we are usually left with the wrong impression of war.

Instead of being wiser to the destruction we have wrought through the centuries, we build such places celebrating military achievements. But whilst we elect politicians who utter high minded platitudes, quote national interest and drag us into what we are told are limited conflicts but take years, millions pounds and thousands of lives before coming to some sort of resolution, there is always a possible flashpoint for escalation and further warfare.

And when governments continue to build death-traps for their wars, continue to stonewall its citizens, censor their creativity, and disregard the vulnerable in society, then war and conflict will never be far off. This year Britain is commemorating the centenary of the start of the First World War, and some are asking whether there will be a Third. It shows that we have yet to learn the lessons of past warfare, and will continue to wage war until we ultimately fight one so devastating as to put an end to all war.

It's hoped that enlightenment may come before that needs to happen. That we learn although global conflicts may continue to be a part of life, our military response need not be. It's also hoped that we no longer need global upheavals such as world wars to push for social reforms or medical and technological innovations, and that the drive for such progress will stem from a belief rooted in the dignity of life, and not the domination of man. War also drives the need to play "a blame game" - the idea that there must be two or more opposing sides, with one "right" and another "wrong".

But we have seen how such toxic cultures breed murder. Believers in vengeance and murder will in turn be slain by their own ideology, for murder breeds yet more murder, and unless we change, it will go on to the end of our history, always in the name of right, honour and peace, but really in the name of revenge, punishment and judgement.

Extending the principle, redefining our supposed violent nature goes hand in hand with redefining our gender roles, where families have to be seen as equal partnerships for them to work. Can we up scale this trust-based micro-environment to the wider world? Possibly not, until again we learn from the wisdom that tells us when we try to own something, rather than share it, its intrinsic value is lost. Dominance also projects the wrong message not only to the individual, but to the wider world in general.

Wanting to dominate comes out of fear, and rejecting a philosophy of dominance can act as a force shield we put up to protect us from its negative results. There is a more spiritual belief that sometimes whole communities are held strongly by a certain thought pattern and fear. As a result, they project a strong form of fear over their community which seems to take a life of its own. This mass form of fear seems to have a life of its own because it is being fed by the fear energy of the community. It seems to suck the life energy out of every new person who comes to the community.

Similar to this analogy of modern society, at other times, individuals surround themselves with needless fears to torment themselves, feeding off their own energy. Some say the worst cases are when such people see things that nobody else sees – but which are merely the projected forms they have produced themselves. Mystics say that evil spirits are able to manipulate these negative astral forms and energy to affect the natural world through weather, creating "natural" disasters, or some materialisation that causes harm to humans.

They blame the manifestation of new forms of sicknesses and diseases as part of the work of these evil spirits projected from our own, and society's, fear and hate, too. In the spiritual world, the simplest desire or free choice of a person not to be tormented by such negative emotions or thoughts causes a spiritual force shield around the person and his family, or property, so that no astral form or any evil spirit can penetrate. It is like a shield of fire around them.

Although we may not share this view, more pragmatically, if we believe that our thoughts can affect our behaviour, and thus how others treat us, and if our actions are a chain of events that link all of us, then surely we need to start projecting a more positive future? And reject a philosophy of feeling the need to dominate?

Experts say we need to keep our mind on this bigger picture, and must ask questions of the deep future, so we can gauge where humanity is headed. In the conclusion to this mini-series, part three aims to explore those questions, and whether we are steering not only ourselves, but our world, to a better life.

End of Part Two | Read more in this series: -1 -3

Yours in love,