Be One With the Love Within

“How do you find the love within? Easy. You must look inside, and become one with the love within. Before looking elsewhere to understand love, you must first look within, for the whole focal point of love is to come into your life and teach you to be extraordinary. This is the universal truth: The love within must speak to the love without.”
— Mickie Kent

Life is based on love. Love - or the absence of it - will be a part of our lives from the day we are born. Sculpted out from our formative years, in adulthood we will live out the love we were shown as children. How strong its touch when young often decides how weighty its hand as an adult. And even though our love isn't always rewarded, when we make our decisions based on love, we feel it has a kind of rightness to them.

Naturally, if we don't get the expected payback we may feel hurt, or foolish (especially in dealings of a romantic nature), but then sometimes just doing something can be its own reward. One of the 20th Century's major poets, T.S. Eliot wrote that there was no vocabulary for love within a family, for instance, that this love was silent. From his 1959 play in verse, The Elder Statesman, to Eliot it was love "that's lived in but not looked at, love within the light of which all else is seen, the love within which all other love finds speech".

Arguably it is this "silent love" that speaks to all the other loves in our lives. We take our childhood within us; we may grow up, but we never grow out of those days in a way. When I was very young, I remember a family friend tell me that, when it rains, raindrops never hit one another because angels carry them down, and if they were to collide, they would disappear. Whenever it would rain after that, I would always try and watch the rain, fearful that they would collide and an angel would disappear. Even now, whenever it rains, I remember that story, and smile at how pliable and imaginative young minds are.

It's thought that our identity is partly shaped by the way we are treated by other people, as children and in adulthood - a concept psychologists call the "looking-glass self" - and it has the potential to colour our interactions with society. Many believe that childhood is one thing from which people never recover from, and that over time - the one thing that never breaks - for better or worse - is family, but it's not only family that deeply affects us; the long-term scars that childhood bullying can have on someone when they grow up is well documented. Of course, even if these obstruct the way to inner love, we can get back on track again. It can be hard, sometimes it will be hardest thing you've ever had to do, but it IS possible.

Nevertheless, Eliot's term - this "silent love" will help form what love means to us, and certainly we all have our own personal fantasy of what love should be or do. One of my favourite quotes on love is from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, because it's close to my own personal vision. It's where he says: "Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself, Love possesses not nor would it be possessed: For love is sufficient unto love". Gibran's words are not a lesson, as such, but a reminder that we can't direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But to really understand love, we need to go inside ourselves, because that's where our personal of vision will have formed - more importantly, before we had a chance to connect to our true self. Thus in love - and in life - when we are disconnected, meaning can elude us. Imagine love to be a book we read; disconnection from the story will mean the content doesn't always immediately offer itself to us as the reader. Sometimes the reader is required to work a little, if anything the story or message it portrays unclarifies - and so, before we can get to the stage where we can easily grasp our story and its complexities, we need to first break them down to our basics.

Before we opt for the poetic over the declarative, we first need to know where we stand. And where we stand will be a constantly evolving thing; it will change as we age. We are still in a stage of evolution not only as an individual throughout the stages of life, but as a species, too. We need to connect and reconnect with who we are, and who we are becoming, constantly. Any starter route to love, therefore, that is disconnected from your authentic self will cause conflict and, often unwittingly add to the confusion by trying to define love solely from another viewpoint that may conflict with us spiritually. And that's why we need to take a step back, and take a good look at ourselves, before we decide what love means to us.

Understanding the story of love

We may think we know what we want of love, but do we really? We can often get confused between love, liking and attraction, because there are so many different "types" of love. You can love someone as a friend, you can love someone as a cousin or sister or brother. You can share a platonic love.

Often we don't believe that men and women can share a platonic friendship, and this is reflected in popular culture. Rarely do we see such relationship depicted on the big screen. It does not exist in film unless it's about a girl and her best gay guy friend. I cannot think of more than one film where there are two main characters of the opposite sex and neither one is carrying a torch for the other.

The best example I can think of is Harry and Hermione in the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They dance. They get each other through some hard times. There's never even a hint of romantic love that the author J.K. Rowling now regrets not adding into their relationship. However, it shows a different kind of love. Sometimes the family you need isn't the one you're born into.

And then there are different intensities of love. You can love someone with the love of the divine. You can love someone as a superstar you adore. You can love someone as the love of your life. The amount of passion, the amount of fire and the amount of energy that you have in your love for that person determines the intensity of that love. How much force is there, how much power and how much focus? Is it like a flood of warm sunlight shining on that person or is it like a laser beam completely targeted and burning ferociously with such intensity and fire?

There are different depths of love. How deep does that love go? Is it so deeply in rooted layers within layers that it’s almost next to impossible to remove? Can it come one moment and go the next, or will it remain forever even to the very ends of time and space? Whether short, sweet or passionate, in some ways we want our love to be like a sonnet, a short poem made up of one verse and 14 lines which is seen as the perfect love poem. Something that can express the true complexity of its emotion in an extremely condensed form.

Others, however, see love as less spiritual and more pained in its passion, and thus possibly more obtainable and human. For who, ultimately, hasn't felt loss, rejection and heartbreak? Sixteenth century English ambassador and lyrical poet Thomas Wyatt, whose sonnets were often about rejection, wrote, "I love another and thus I hate myself".

This unglamorous realism to love is really the absence of love in my opinion. We often mix our own human feelings of frustration, entitlement, bewilderment, rejection, abandonment in with our own failed expectations (which often have nothing to do with love itself), but Wyatt captured this messy quality of life as lived, and in doing so transformed English literature - setting the tone for English poets from Shakespeare to Philip Larkin.

Yet, how can we seek love in others, if we cannot find it within ourselves first? It makes love elusive not only in its manifestation, but in its definition as well. But what does love mean to us? What does it mean to you? In a perfect world, love should be the constant companion that sits down with us, talks with us, and teaches us. It should make our smile as warming as a sun. It should help us over the ditches in our lives. It should be that favourite sofa chair we move from house to house. The one object we can never do without.

From the minutiae of daily living to the magic of being, maybe the point is that love should be such a fantastical spiritual experience - at moments fun and frolic and at others terrifying - that we have difficulty understanding or describing exactly what love does to us. Some would say the very nature of being indefinable is what makes love, love.

What does love mean to you?

Of course, love should take us to a whole new level. But for a few it goes one step beyond to the esoteric. They believe that love is something far more that just a hormonal mind tool the body uses to propagate our species. They believe love has a reality of its own; its purpose is to teach us lessons already agreed to prior to this incarnation. Thus our destiny in life is not simply to marry and to have children and to do well in life, but to evolve the materials we have been given - in mind, body and spirit - to a deeper (or higher) level that gives us an inner understanding to existence itself.

Whichever way you pull it, love does indeed elevate. It can make you overcome differences in your chosen profession, make you an influential artist, or make you push a glittering career aside to concentrate on family instead. Love can help guide an individual when making those difficult life choices, and even influence political policies that aim to boost the well-being of a nation. In a recent survey when asked to choose the kind of society they would prefer to live in, 87% of adults in the United Kingdom picked "greatest overall happiness and well-being", over the 8% that said "greatest overall wealth".

Conversely, if the statistics are right, in the UK we seem to feel a lack of purpose more than any other Western society, although this is predicted to decrease. Possibly this is why we yearn for more well-being rather than money, and why we have begun to look for different ways to get value out of life. Across the world, history has shown that countries with virtually limitless wealth has not brought happiness to its people, and it feels like we in Britain - having so quickly forgotten our past post-war poverty - are only now starting to realise that.

Family lifestyles are also changing; we are all having to become more austere and family dependant in our economic outlook. Young people are settling down later in life, remaining in the family home for longer simply because it is too expensive to move out. The buttress of family is a protective layer during such times, and certainly, when we talk of attaining happiness or fulfilment, love is always part of the quota because it brings purpose to the conversation of life - and how you feel at any given time.

Love is like a point of reference for us, we use love to measure our scale of happiness, and it intuitively influences our choices and decisions. For instance, have you ever noticed how you can tell a lot about a person and their current emotional state by the music on their phone? Are they in love? Are they out of love? And like music, according to a psychological study, even colours affect the emotions of the mind, while your food and drink preferences can tell a lot about your state of being. Your preference over the type of coffee you drink reveals a lot about your personality, so we are told, and all these intuitive choices that subconsciously echo our frame of mind, some say, are signs of a disconnected self trying to get through to us.

Love also influences our outward actions; there is no motion without emotion that can help you get back on track to you again. Often if someone has shown us love, we want to reciprocate in kind; a selfless act of kindness that saves your life is an act many of us would hope to return to the sender. Furthermore, this chain forges stronger links between us; it gives us purpose and meaning.

Human beings need purpose, or a philosophy to love their lives by. Down the centuries, we have many to choose from, as diverse and driven as love itself. Although we need to all make our own way, sharing such wisdom is one good way to accumulate our own - keeping in mind that greatly differing philosophies WILL conflict.

Besides, searching for wisdom isn't about avoiding conflict, it's about getting you through it, and conflict based on civilised debate and respect can help to raise questions and ideas that may not have been otherwise. I often believe that reading stories about good motivational speakers and their techniques (or, my preference, radical thinkers) helps to get people to think in different ways - without necessarily having to buy into what they want to "sell".

Wisdom, like love and happiness, is best when shared and discovered with your own authentic self, and with others. Even better, the accumulation of our own wisdom is greater when thinking in between the lines drawn by greater minds, and by breaking out of the box they have provided for us as a starting point. So, as an example, let's take a few differing schools of thought to see if they provide any inroads to our inner self.

One theory on how we should live our lives is based on an altruistic philosophy. This is the theory that if all people would stop and think about how they can help each other out from time to time, the world would be a much happier place. More importantly, recent science has shown it's this nature of sharing and working together that helped our brains evolve in such a different way from its primate beginnings. This philosophy, or story, of helping each other is based on love, and is a great way to teach us all to share, and that there is nothing wrong with relying on others from time to time (once we are sure in who we are).

But there are philosophies that take a completely different view; these theories put forward the argument that being so selfless is actually against human nature. We should not act like altruistic, sacrificial lambs (indeed it's to our detriment to do so) but must come from a completely self-serving view. We should help others only if it helps us, or if they are of some value to us.

Finding your own philosophy to live by

Harsh as it may sound to some of us, this view was pushed by Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand, and which was avidly followed in eighties America in the 20th Century. Rand believed feelings were not tools of cognition or guides to reality, but the consequences of thought and action - not the primary source but the by-product of what we do.

According to Rand, being "selfish" meant being self-aware, and that rather than doing something because we feel like it, we should do it because we concluded consciously it was the right thing to do - right for whichever goal is being undertaken. We decide and choose rationally what steps we need to take to pursue that goal. So that if you take a given action, you do so because you think it's right.

Rand's theories are founded in the argument that humans must train themselves to be rational human beings, putting the mind above all else, and that a person must help themselves first, and yet hinder no one in their pursuit of that same goal, too. Although a lot of criticism has been aimed her for supporting a selfishly driven form of self-determinism, she also believed that one of the greatest values of life was romantic love. The purpose of life to Rand was to find your own happiness, and if that was selfishly putting value in another (by being in love with them), then that was acceptable to her philosophy.

An atheist like Rand, but coming from a different perspective, Sam Harris' basic message is that the time has come to freely question the idea of religious faith. Harris consistently criticises Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, which he says tend to be monolithic and ready to harm others only for their religion - and this is something Rand would have completely agreed with, as she believed religion subverted the young mind. The difference between Rand and Harris is that for self-determination we need to work together, for our own self-interest, but also for the interest of our species as a whole.

In my "Love in the Shadows" post, I wrote about how our fixation with looking at love through one single religious doctrine had helped forge the ever widening rifts between us we see today, and similarly Harris feels that the survival of civilisation is in danger because of a taboo against questioning religious beliefs, and that this taboo impedes progress toward more enlightened approaches to spirituality and ethics. However, he tends to shy away from the using the word "atheist", offering instead new terminology for putting logic and rationality up as the keystones for human harmony; again similar to Rand, but where arguably Rand looked through a completely single, individualistic lens, Harris seems to incorporate a philosophy that shifts between an altruistic one and Rand's objectivism.

Stephen Fry: "How Can I Be Happy?"

In tow with Harris, and in my opinion a person who expresses it much better (although as a Brit I'm biased) is actor and comedian (and all round good-guy genius) Stephen Fry. He explains the whole thing in a concise but comprehensive three minute video for the British Humanist Association. Entitled, "How Can I Be Happy?", Fry tells us that there is no single meaning to be happy, but the time to be happy is NOW. Life is what you make of it, and according to his humanist philosophy the meaning of life is to get on and live it, as fully as you can - to go find your own version of wisdom, and bring value to your life.

Ultimately, the common ground between all these philosophies is common ground of allowing an individual to choose his or her own path. Whether that focuses on helping others, and bringing the value of love into lives that way, or whether that is focusing completely on yourself, and coming from that view - or taking a more humanist merging like Harris - the similarity all three share is that the choice must be a conscious one, taken freely, with forethought and insight. In short, it's about finding your own philosophy to life, because the meaning of your life is whatever meaning YOU give it.

Searching for meaning, you could say, is really just another way to eliminate fear. Of course, fear is relative, and depends on vagaries like the time, mood and the darkness, but it's been said before with great validity that the worse thing to fear is fear itself. There is great truth in that I feel, because reducing ourselves to our fears makes us tiny, but reducing our fears cuts them down to size.

How to find the love within

In dealing with our fears, the major ingredient of any recipe for fear is the unknown - and existence is filled with unknowns, far too many to mention. So, being frightened is a normal human reaction, then, like breathing. This means it's how you react to fright that counts, and not the reason for your fear. Character is not found or made in the fear itself, but in the reaction to fear. The most successful amongst us will face fear and terror like all of us, but the difference is they face it down. When we realise all we actually fear is the feeling of fear we feel, then the realisation can be life enhancing.

When we use these philosophies to form our own path - to help us get over our fears, to live better lives, or as a route into the key to meaning, and all those ways we believe we can achieve meaning, namely love - then it can be character building. We are looking inwards with the help of outer wisdom, and discovering the true measure of who we are. For the love we carry inside is the true measure of our self-stature; and it's only once we find ourselves underwater that we can discover how tall we can really stand.

The capacity to love is a vital, rich, all consuming function of the human animal, and you can find nobility, sacrifice and love wherever you may seek out - especially in the heart. Although the potential of human suspicion and hatred might never cease to amaze, no matter what the future brings, our capacity to rise to the occasion remains unaltered, and our potential for tenacity and optimism continues as always, because we feel that, somehow, like-minded people will always stand together at the eleventh hour. It's a current reality that we all face the remorseless truth that no law can be passed that can abolish cruelty, hatred, or desperate need, but neither can any law censor blind animal courage for facing fear in times of greatest need.

At least this is my philosophy, and the one I follow; blind courage, but not blind faith. It's based on science, and a rational logic that realises it need the balance of the spiritual to create a truly humanist view. We must think at times without clouding emotion, but unless we FEEL, nothing we think will ever come to fruition. The way to do this is by find balance between the two; as much of an oxymoron as it may seem, we need to emote with more logic, and add more feeling to our rationale to see the human aspect of our challenges. Achieving such a balance is difficult, and indeed, it may never be achieved, but the purpose, and the meaning of life some would say, is to strive for equilibrium.

Real love, in this respect, is the balancer of life. Its absence unbalances, which we may mistake for love, but true love - an emotion that works with a logic and rationale all of its own - brings balance. It illustrates a more spiritual philosophy to follow. One that tells us we need to connect to our inner self, and with others, with this type of love, otherwise no amount of altruism, or selfishness, on our part will give us value or make us feel happy.

To do this, however, we need to face certain truths, and I mean that literally as well figuratively, because a core component of real love is honesty. It's how we recognise real love from the absence of it; love does not thrive in dishonesty. When we lie to other people, and when we lie to ourselves, all we are doing is pushing ourselves further away from real love.

When we lie, the sages say, we disconnect from our higher self; our minds become confused, and we cannot trust ourselves. This doesn't mean that although it's healthy to be brutally honest with ourselves, or that everyone else is at our level of understanding of self-criticism to accept such honesty from another person. Belief in self is paramount to hear the truth correctly.

Moreover, in line with another philosophy, according to the wisdom of the sages, it is better to remain silent than to speak a harsh or cruel truth, too. If we keep in mind that the purpose is to strive for balance, then we must not overdo honesty so much that it ends up hurting ourselves, or others. Hurting people with honesty will happen in the delivery of that truth (and if it's generally unsolicited), but if we are coming from a place of love, we will take care to tell the truth in a way that causes the least harm.

Before we offer an unsolicited opinion or criticism, the love within will advise us to pause and consider: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it useful? Is it kind? This is how it acts as a balancer, and once we find ourselves on a proper footing with honesty, we'll realise that the truth, like our fears, can become our best friend when we embrace it.

The Greek philosopher Sophocles said, that, "truly, to tell lies is not honourable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonourably is pardonable". Furthermore, when we perfect the practice of mindful, loving truthfulness, then we gain the power of manifesting our speech, some believe. What we say comes true. Based on this philosophy, then, for this reason it's essential for us to put to be mindful that what we say is beneficial in a compassionate and gentle way. But if we are already linked up strongly to the love within, then we are strong enough to handle the truth, when taking it and when dishing it out.

Walking the journey within

“So, you know, Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is it? It is perfectly apparent that he is monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, and more worth living in my opinion.”
— Stephen Fry

Subsequently, the philosophy that works for you, to find the love within you, will be a deeply personal one, but for it to be the real thing, it has to be honest, so it can make an honest man or woman out of you. It's an uphill struggle to achieve, but the rewards are great. Because real love based on honesty, and the integrity that brings, truly can set you free. To give an example, I want to end by telling you about a long-standing male friend of mine who - acting from a place of love and caring - told me five years ago his tightly kept secret. He was gay.

I was honoured that he believed our friendship to be strong enough for me to hear and accept him for who he was. Being gay is certainly not the risk it once was, but it still comes attached with stigma - especially amongst so many people who believe themselves to be spiritual, and yet can't accept that same-sex couples can fall in love, too.

I respect the people that hold to that philosophy, but I can't pretend to understand why they do. I was brought up in a family where homosexuality was never an issue, but even so, it was an issue for my twin flame and his family. It shouldn't make a difference; but would it? Would we be able to accept my friend into our family home once he found himself a partner?

In my personal philosophy, romantic love is not restricted to gender simply because of religious dogma, not when it means ostracising a huge section of society and treating them inhumanely. It's not rational, it's not human, and I knew my twin flame (for all his masculine exterior) to be the most kindest and gentle man I had ever met. His outward thoughts didn't gel with his authentic self. Because my friend loved me enough to be straightforward with me, I decided to be brave enough to be straightforward with him about my fears over my twin flame. I asked permission to share his secret with my twin flame, and to acknowledge his actions.

During that time, little by little with my help, my twin flame released the truths stored in his body, unveiling the root causes of his mental and emotional behaviours towards same-sex couples. It also served my friend and I, who took the opportunity to get to know each other again - and last year, when my friend married his twin flame, my twin love was his best man at the wedding.

If I hadn't been ready to face this truth, my twin flame's beliefs could have damaged, or even ended, the friendship with my friend. But instead, my friend opened the way for my twin flame and I to start examining ourselves. Some patterns were easy to discern and change; others so deeply embedded that we will always be in the process of uprooting them - and that's how it should be. Because life is always about striving for that balance.

The more layers of untruths I unearth, the more I discover to work through. But each layer I dig up takes me deeper within, closer to my inner core. And I find that the more honest I am with myself - in a loving, playful, non-judgemental, accepting way - the more honest others feel they can be around me.

There is a great freedom in being able to be who we really are, rather than hiding behind a mask of what we think others expect us to be. It allows us to be more spontaneous, more in tune with our creative intuitive side, and, ultimately, more open to explore the deepest truth of all - self-realisation. As we remove the layers of our cultural conditioning, we expand our beliefs to allow new perspectives, and as we clear inner spaces, we catch more and more glimpses of our true self.

It's all a cycle really; to find the love within, you must first look inside with an honest love that brings stability and balance, thus allowing you to see clearly where that love resides. Once you find it, it will direct your course for the rest of your life - and I promise you, its journey will take you out of this world.

Yours in love,

Love in the Shadows

“Understanding love from only one religious doctrine - like understanding God - usually sets us up against each other. It's only when we free ourselves from the shadows of limited thinking will love be the bridge across differing viewpoints, and not the cause of them.”
— Mickie Kent

A good friend called me the other day. She was uncharacteristically grim. "When I look at the news headlines, I just despair," she said. "It's all so dark in the world." And she is right. Our climates are in upheaval, our living costs rising, our communities feel fractured - and with stories of public disasters the mainstay of headlines, we've lost trust in our police, the politicians and even the people that print the news. Not surprising, some would say, when it seems that our society has been built to accommodate the "lucky few" of the population, while the majority carry the burden of making society work.

But the dark shadows that loom over us are long ones. It stretches back down the ages to when we began living in societies that pushed for dominance. And there are very large chapters in our history that still haven't been properly addressed. When we look at war torn places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what the creation of borders can do to people, it sometimes feels like we haven't learnt anything from two world wars. There was a time battles were fought only by soldiers, but now everyone is a target - men, women AND children. And the traumatic impacts of each war humanity fought has lingered, helping to make us who we are.

Just recently the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestine accused Israeli authorities of conducting colonialist policies that constitute forms of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie and British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Bosnia to promote a campaign to end sexual violence against women in war. In a very real sense, as the spiritual descendants of war victims, we are all suffering from post-traumatic stress.

And soldiers suffer mental breakdown, too. The news is filled with recruits being charged with explosives and terrorism offences, going on mass killing sprees in their own encampments, or killing civilians during drug-fuelled sadomasochistic sex sessions. But it's the good that stand out in any conflict, and we must not forget that the majority of those who served in Afghanistan, and Iraq, will be paying the true cost of war for decades to come, the physically incapacitated and the mentally injured, along with the families of the dead.

In the nations they have fought for, many believe that these returning soldiers should be considered national heroes for the conduct and courage they have shown in wars they really should never have been in, while it's the government and politicians who argued the case for war who should bow their heads in shame. Yet, for all of us, it's a nightmare from which we just can't seem to wake up.

However we need to break from our stupor, because although it would be convenient to try and imagine such things never happen, it isn't feasible in the long run. If we truly wish to invent a better history for ourselves, we have to change our perspective - and in doing so, rather than seeing things as being wholly bad, reinterpret them as actually being another chasm to cross, or another step in life's surprising journey.

Great minds have pondered that as there can be no East without West, so there can be no good without bad. Those who want (or expect) an extant state made up entirely of good don't understand that good can only be relative and not absolute. Without an opposite to be compared to, it can't exist they say. Others, though, believe that bad is a negation of good, rather than a purpose for it - but I believe that either way the wrongs committed only negate goodness if we allow them to fall on fertile ground.

Every Palestinian who has suffered at the hands of the Israeli armed forces, every Bosnian who has suffered at the hands of the Serbs has the chance to turn death into a fighting chance to reconcile, and to live. Because in the face of its truth, especially at our end, there is little to distinguish us, Jew or gentile. We can't escape the truth that the world is only as good as the people in it, but then, so, too, is it true that the world always looks worse than it is.

And as sure as we live and die, love MUST have its chance in between. Because if the love within your mind is lost, if you continue to see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much education or knowledge you have, no matter how much material progress is made, only suffering and confusion will ensue. Furthermore, it reads like cosmic irony to say human beings wish to control everything but the violence they have inbred into themselves.

Regardless of how we have subverted our true nature, love shows us that it's not about control at all. It's just about being and allowing every other living thing to be, too. Today we are reaping the poisoned fruits from the seeds of bloodshed sown in a long history of war, but by getting back on track with love, we can come out from under the long, generational shadows cast by its dark clouds, and avert many of the very real crises of global conflict afflicting us today.

We must also keep in mind that these are times of changing definitions, and conflicts will arise because often defining something is not synonymous with understanding it - especially if we try to categorise people and beliefs. Definitions can limit as much as they explain in such cases, when what is first and foremost necessary is understanding.

Understanding the shadows of the past

Understanding will always come from within. If people are rude and inconsiderate, then often there will be a reason for it. If someone is rude without reason, we usually suspect a failing in their mental faculties. If a kitten doesn't encounter a human in a friendly context between the ages of three to eight weeks, it is more liable to go feral - and we are not much different. It's only the truly courageous that seek to be caring in the face of mistreatment time and again. This doesn't mean, however, that they are glutton for punishment. It means they have discovered that if they allow their own caring nature to be corrupted by the mistakes of others, then they will have been defined by another's actions, and not their own.

This is why when we consciously choose to pursue a career doing what we love, we often break with our own stereotypes in order to do it. For example, if a woman's passion is motivational speaking and she wants to become a public speaker, there are many definitions she needs to break in her own mind, as well as that of her audience. Historians point to ancient Greek thought and what is said to be the beginning of Western literature, where from the outset women are told they cannot speak with the voice of authority.

Pertinent to this issue, art historian Mary Beard spoke on the public voice of women, as part of the London Review of Books Winter lecture series recorded at the British Museum. In a talk titled "Oh Do Shut Up Dear!", Beard explored how, from torn-out tongues to internet trolls, women's voices have been silenced in the public sphere throughout the history of Western culture. Women risked a backlash exposing their voice in ancient Greece as they do exposing their breasts to breastfeed in public today.

Using examples ranging from Homer's Odyssey to contemporary politics, and from the writings of Henry James to threatening posts on Twitter, Beard argued that public speaking has all too often been regarded as "men's business" and that commonly held attitudes to the voice of authority need to be readdressed and reappraised. Her argument highlighted how this Homeric moment has pervaded the nature of communication between male and female, and indeed, what we consider to be male or female communication - where men hold authoritative "muthos" as opposed to the chatter or gossip of women, or "mythos", from which the word "myth" is derived.

The Rape of Philomela by Tereus, engraved by Virgil Solis (1562). In Greek myth a defiant Philomela's tongue is cut out to silence her.

Such classical thought arguably permeated into Christianity, too. The Greek corruption of the original Biblical translation from Aramaic is said to be blamed for the misogynistic and homophobic text we are struggling with today. A few commentators also emphasise that America continues to be corrupted with this Greek thinking and way of doing things - in terms of celebrating strength over weakness, and lauding competition and victory above all and of course xenophobia, their irrational hatred of the "other" - especially through collegiate and high school years, to cultivate teens who seem to be lacking in any basic humanity whatsoever.

Obviously Western culture does not owe everything (good or bad) to the Greeks or the Romans, in speech or anything else. Newly uncovered discoveries have formed the understanding that the ancient Greeks weren't great original thinkers at the best of times - most of their thinking was taken from somewhere else, such as the ancient Semitic civilization of Phoenicia, or the Assyrians and even further back to the Sumerians. It's a pity the ancient Greeks didn't adopt the Sumerian way of treating women as equals, but some historians now treat the ancient Greeks as simply passionate documenters whose historical text has had a good survival rate (thanks in large part to its assimilation into the ancient Roman Empire).

And to be honest, thank heavens our culture doesn't owe everything to that classical way of thinking. As Mary Beard said, even a classicist - or especially a classicist - would not fancy living in a Greco-Roman world. Our political system has happily overthrown many of the gendered certainties of antiquity, most obviously - if only formally - equal political rights for women. It's a reminder though that the "fairer sex" haven't had it fair at all, battling hard with the myths and stereotypes attached to their gender to break into the "boy-biased" areas of life with their own contributions, and gain equal recognition for their efforts.

A shining example is pioneering developmental psychologist Professor Uta Frith, whose lifetime study of people with autism has transformed our understanding of this mysterious condition. In a film by Horizon for the BBC, her contributions show how people with autism perceive the world and interact with their surroundings, and how, for them, another kind of reality exists, and that many of us could be just a little bit autistic, too. You could say that it was her "motherly instincts" which attracted her to this particular field, because of the autistic children she first encountered. Passionately wanting to know more about them inspired her to dedicate the rest of her career to studying the autistic mind. But her efforts have benefited man, woman and child alike.

If clarification were needed, women's voices have always been raised in cause for women's issues - even in antiquity, if not consistently - but their voice has never spoken for the whole community, as it can do so now. Today they can speak up not just for women, but for men, too, and for all living things. It is no longer niched into their own gender.

Yet, we still lie very much in the shadow of the classical world. For although the voice of women may today carry just as much authority as a man's in Western societies - America is an exception, still locked in her Greek classical cage. This is true, even though - conversely - it has been the voice of the American woman that has been heard the most throughout the wider world, especially when it comes to global issues, possibly because their country has helped cause many of them.

And although we are under the shadows of our past, Beard is not saying we're simply the victim of classical inheritance, or that the ancient world was merely misogynistic as a rule. But those classic patriarchal, violent traditions have provided us with - and continue to provide us with - a template for thinking and how to deal with things. In Britain, for example, our identities were forged by the ancient Romans when they built Hadrian's Wall, forcing a middle land of peoples into a north-south divide when they belonged to neither. The border legacy has remained, however, with the issue of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom still alive and kicking.

Along with historical borders, gender is obviously a part of that identity mix, but so, too, is how we treat the vulnerable and the meek. Should we put our weak babies out into the wild to die of starvation as the Spartans did? Thankfully the majority of us would be horrified at that, but as historians we can see classical themes being replayed and re-emerging all across the 20th Century, and we are witnessing its death throes in the second decade of the 21st Century.

What the future will bring

Death throes or not, we have yet to discard this traditional package of views that goes back two millennia. It still underlies our assumptions towards each other. We continue to trivialise people we see as weaker. Women who stand up for themselves are whiners we say, while men who stand up for themselves are winners. We are still trying to learn how to connote authority to love, and to peace, and to wisdom that speaks, rather than the obvious roar of the charging brave. That has its place too, no doubt, but so does a consoling whisper - be it from a man or woman.

These problems are not hard-wired into our brains, but hard-wired into our culture, our language, our way of talking about different opinions and people and into the millennia of our history. Lest we forget, women are not the only groups in our culture who are, or feel themselves to be voiceless. And having these minorities ape the majority to have their say may be a quick fix, but not the long term solution. It's just a transference of power, rather than a shift in understanding.

Likewise a powerful Palestine would probably act no different than Israel, and the criticisms aimed at America can also be made of Russia, China and even India. We need to start hearing differently, speaking differently, and thinking differently. We need to rethink our governing principles to encourage communication that can transcend the classical voice of violence. It won't necessarily guarantee us a better future, because there are no guarantees in life, but it will at least be a change from the old one.

All futures are ones that "might be", but often they are not new worlds - simply an extension of what began in the old one. If we continue to pattern ourselves after every dictator who has ever planted a dirty boot on the pages of history since the beginning of human acknowledgement then what else can we expect, but more of the same? Obviously such a future will have refinements, technological upgrades and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom, but like every domineering society that preceded it, our future will stick to one iron rule: that any opposing logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.

Nevertheless, such a future is also destined to fail in time. Any state or belief or ideology that fails to recognise the worth the dignity of all life renders, is itself obsolete by default. And this is the most disheartening truth of all: that it's we humans that continue to keep alive a self-destructive philosophy by transference every millennia or so. We are not only the victims, but the creators of this vicious cycle that serves no one.

As humans we are built out of flesh, but we also have a mind that can overcome the adversity of that flesh - and stop what was previously planned to happen. But that requires an extraordinary consciousness, not solely personal but global, too, for until we are all connected with our soul, a human being can be endowed with a divine mind and yet be separate from it. Our human history is a prime example of this. The culture that gave us Aristotle, also gave us many of the schisms that Western thinking finds itself battling with today.

And as those ancients did before us, we are misguided to think we need violence as the drive in our genes to take us towards the pinnacle of truth, like a car needs speed to move forward. But neither life, nor the religion that instils subservience to its violent doctrines, is akin to a car that can reliably take you anywhere. Yet, zealots will tell us to go on "blind faith" - on petrol made out of thin air - not realising that it's such idiocy that helps to subvert, and thus stall, the mind.

Faith should help make us more self-aware, not blind us to the truth out there. If holy books are indeed a sat-nav to help guide us through life, then it needs to be open to the ever changing nature of life. Rather than a guide that spews out stories about a god who keeps bouncers at Heaven's gates to keep out people irrespective of their quality of goodness - such as same-sex couples, the suicidal and whoever else doesn't fit within the confines of a narrow mind - we need a better guide to steer us out of the shadows that still hang over us today.

And merely swapping one religious doctrine for another is again just a transference of power, rather than a shift in understanding. There are some that will argue Judaism is no better than Christianity, and Islam is just an extension of the two, while Buddhism and Hinduism have their own barbarities that would translate as awkwardly into 21st Century thinking as any Islamic fatwa. Buddhists see same-sex coupling as degenerate for example, and even the Dalai Lama will not be pushed to defend the right of same-sex couples in a free-thinking society.

For even those of us that cling onto love as a saviour can be misguided, if we hold steadfast to only one definition that has at its root a dogmatic doctrine we are told not to question. When this is the case, religion becomes the eternal presence of an absence. Neither love in its truest form, or its adherents, can be said to consciously reside there. Moreover, such religious beliefs will always fail to satisfy us spiritually if we are constantly told we need to subvert our authentic selves into a moulding of medieval piety that was never much pious to begin with.

The personal "hell" of seeking heaven

It's only once we stop rejecting the idea of a truly universal love that embraces all living things simply for what they are, and not for how subservient they can be, will we be able to come out from the shadows of our past. Achieving this will not create an adversity-free utopia (like many religions promise after life has ended), rather it will bring an awareness about the real secrets to life.

For some that will mean that the negative and scary aspects of existence are every bit as needful as those we love. The Arabs have a wise saying, "Too much sunshine creates the desert." Clearly, real happiness comes in between a dialectic of sunshine AND storms. To enjoy anything, you have to be without it at times, so the sage says. The full stomach can't be filled, only the one that's not full; and the less there is in it the more pleasure there is in filling it.

For others it will be the realisation that balance comes in discovering it's not how much you have, but what you have that will bring purpose to life. If we keep wanting materials that are hollow and meaningless, they will leave us unsatisfied after time. Most men may fantasise going to bed with a glamour model, but ultimately if she doesn't love him, it will be devoid of reality. Thus getting everything you ever wanted can become an eternal punishment, if nothing you want is ever going to make you happy or give you joy.

In Bernard Shaw's 1903 four-act drama Man and Superman, he takes the same view - in his presentation of heaven and hell, hell is an eternity of parties and enjoyments and sloth, while heaven is involved in work and toil and improving reality. Similarly with women, who face the societal stereotype that there must be something wrong if they choose to stay single and focus on themselves. But why should life for a woman be all about chasing a wedding ring, instead of a healthy relationship - be that with Self or another self?

We shouldn't consciously search for more suffering, either, or decry the beauty of life, because if our existence is a lesson to greater wisdom, then we have to attend class. Being absent from life is the real crime, even if we are told that denying our existence here will reward us with heavenly afterlife. If one's eschatology features a state transcending the categories of phenomenal existence, and you conceive of an afterlife similar to that which Christians and Muslims believe, involving people in some paradise, then you're always going to be dealing with an altogether different proposition of what the purpose of life is.

But more conversely, if you presuppose an heavenly or hellish supernatural existence similar to this one (no matter how refined one's enjoyments and actions), then how can the transfigured dead be beyond good or evil? Anyone in a resurrected body will still be in the realm of interdependent opposites; and it will be as impossible for good to exist without bad in paradise as it is for up to be without down, or East without West.

Our ideas of "heaven" and "hell" are really a certain reference of the human condition that seeks a perfect "utopia society", which neither exists, and even if it did, in reality would be a terrifying nightmare. Imagine an eternal paradise with no challenges, no problems to solve, and nothing to strive for. Being in a blissful state forever would be boring to us after a time, and we would feel stuck, and want out. Of course there are those that disagree and use the analogy of the lives of royalty - their lives seem blissful from a distance, and they don't want out, so why would we if we were blessed with such eternal sunshine in our lives?

The notion of the idle rich is an old fashioned one, but under closer scrutiny, being born into a world of burden and obligation, disconnected from your species and put on a pedestal is far from being a happy state. And their lives will, in turn, be just as bad or as good as those who seemingly have access to far less materialistically than a king or queen. The happiest people, however, will be those that understand the bad will be requisite to enjoying the good. Because if without an opposite to be compared to goodness can't exist, then those who want a state made up entirely of goodness must understand that it can only be relative and not absolute.

Bringing love from out of the shadows

With complete certainty I can write that a lot of things will happen to us in this life. As season succeeds season, some will be cruel and some nice, but the funny thing is that it's always the cruel things that make us who we are today; the wise help us out, but it's the cruel that carve us out. We learn the lessons, raise our game in deference to the pain, and strive ever harder for something better. It's a spiritual balancing act between our mental, emotional and physical well-being.

And the end of March (or any time of any month) is ripe with opportunity for finding balance in our juggle to be better. The first days of January might be long gone (along with all our best resolutions), but if you were to ask astrologers they would say that now is the time to take another look, and consider new alternatives to maximise our efficiency. For those that follow astrology, the 21st of March marks the start of the spring equinox and the astrological New Year, when the sun enters the sign of Aries. For many of us, however, it's just a time to enjoy the sunshine out from under the shadow of the previous season. It's a time to banish the winter blues, as the weather warms us inside and out, and to keep striving for improvement.

At least, that's what we should do, but it's amazing how many of us still can't see so clear a truth as the preciousness of balance in the scheme of things. And true love is the great balancer in life. With that in mind, we need to get a new way of thinking about love, and a new way of looking at things in general. More than ever we need to strive to bring love from out of the shadows of dogma and limited thinking. Rather than looking at it through the current human level of understanding, we need to keep searching for wisdom with an open mind.

We have to stop imposing our human frailties, with their severe limitations and restrictions, on our aspirations, and rather accept them as the materials with which we learn about our world. If we are to advance as a species, and work towards any sort of utopia without these "flaws", then we are going to have to first embrace - rather than deny - their existence anyway. Once we do that, we are free to escape from their shadow, because they are no longer a threat to some blissful existence, rather the stepping stone towards improving our lot in life.

And the progress towards enlightenment will always be a rocky one, as the scales constantly realign to keep equilibrium. We will always have stories of the good and the bad, and of those holding sway in between. Because every swing of the scales in truth is a fresh start, a second look at a dark episode that may not be so dark after all. And wanting to maintain that balance is always the perfect opportunity to begin anew.

For as long as we exist, there is always a chance for change, which we should embrace. It should always be the speciality of our day. After all, life doesn't stand still; it's like a city that's constantly regenerating, renewing and re-inventing itself, and we should do the same. Because whatever you believe, the point is that the shift of the scales can give everyone a chance to start over - an opportunity not to be missed, if only to finally bring love shining out from beneath our own shadow.

Yours in love,

Love to Live

“We are walked on to this bridge of life, and find ourselves too readily across the other side before we even have a chance to appreciate the beauty we have seen. If life is a play, then many of us will feel we have come to the final curtain of the last act without understanding a thing. But is life just a blast of fury signifying nothing? Are we just spirits that melt into thin air?”
— Mickie Kent

If you are a passionate Shakespearian as I am, you may indeed look into his plays for a few of the questions that have been asked of life over the recorded centuries of our existence. One of the great contemplations of death and mortality can be found in Hamlet, when the Prince of Denmark comes across the open grave of his old court jester Yorick.

Hamlet reflects on the ridiculousness of being alive, picking up Yorick's skull to remark to his friend Horatio that he had known Yorick as a child, had sat on his lap and watched him make the entire room laugh. He asks where those jokes are, and where that man is now. From living beings, once our essence flies its nest, our bodies become a symbol of death - given to science or the soil to decompose out of sight.

So, then, why is it that many of us seem so preoccupied with the physical part of us - which is destined to rot away and return to the cycle of life which turns the planet - by wasting precious time trying to make it as pretty or as young looking as possible? Defying age and time is seemingly hopeless. It's a futile attempt at fighting a losing battle.

Keeping ourselves healthy is a different matter. That is about respecting the bodies we have been given; it's about providing ourselves with a quality of life for the amount of time we do have on Earth. When we enjoy mental, physical and emotional well-being, we are more likely to walk across this bridge of life in appreciation, gratitude and conciliation - rather than fear and bitter resentment.

It stands to reason that the less you furrow your brow, the less wrinkled you'll be! Feeling and looking younger than our years, maintaining our virility and strength for longer are just natural by-products of the main goal of bringing love to your body. Whether we choose yoga for a stronger foundation, or just change a few "bad" habits (even by simply thinking more positively) we'll soon notice the difference in our lives. Studies show that it's incredibly easy to manipulate the perception of our own bodies by the brain, and using gradual step-by-step sequences can provide long lasting change for the better. Scientists now believe that using such methods may cure many of us of our allergies, for example.

In a very real way, some argue that working for our health means working for the common good, because it's only spiritually healthy people that can contribute meaningfully to the community they share. When we make it our purpose to understand our own feelings, to raise our instincts to the heights of loving consciousness and make them transparent, to extend the wires of love's will to touch our darker side and thereby raise our self to a new plane, will we feel fit within ourselves to work tirelessly to bring the value we experience to others. Yet, to do that, we need to be healthy in mind, body and spirit.

We all need to find our own ways to reap the abundance of the universe from what we sow in our soul. For some of us this may immediately make sense, but for others this requires a great change in thinking, as it goes against many ingrained conventions we have been trained to follow. Although an open mind is always the first requisite to learn, in times past we have labelled free thinking as dangerous and degenerate.

Centuries ago we used to believe free-thinking was dirty or "libertine" - a sin against God - but narrow-mindedness is the true sin against life, because it blocks us from being able to visualise what we can't see with the eyes alone. Scientific theorems are sparks from the minds of great thinkers, and the scientific method is the observable way to prove or disprove them. Experimentation in the pursuit of knowledge, testing our limits for greater understanding is arguably what has helped humanity reach eras of enlightenment.

You would think being progressive would be something we all want to attain, and yet out of fear, there are many groups that would drag us back into the dark caves of the mind. It's difficult to believe that in the 21st Century we still read reports of nations gripped by religious dogma, but it's true. To some it may seem extraordinary, but in Mexico priests say the country is under attack by Satan, and that more exorcists are needed to fight him. Meanwhile the imaginary idea remains that devil-worshippers mark a Satanic New Year on the 1st of February, we have all-American teen girls from Arizona performing exorcisms on live television, and even a United States police captain says he believed the story about a woman who claimed her children were possessed by demons.

It reads like reports from the Dark Ages. Is this really where we still remain at this stage of our evolution? Frightened cave dwellers throwing rocks at the Moon? This isn't about ridiculing outmoded beliefs, it's about ridiculing fear - which forces us to further the ongoing denial of rights to those in need. Otherwise, why do we continue the struggle if we are to end anyway? Although life has been called "a beautiful lie" and death described as "the painful truth", it's about refusing to fear death. It's about loving to live, and thus giving purpose to the mortality of our brief existence in the pursuit of a higher one.

However, while physical immortality, like the search for eternal youth, seems a project destined to failure, some do see death as a disease, and believe there is a cure to be found. Always looking at the natural world for inspiration, a few adherents to this view cite a handful of bizarre animals that appear to defy the normal ageing process. Lobsters are well-known for this, often described as "biologically immortal". While the passing years often bring arthritis, muscle loss, memory problems and illness to humans, lobsters seem to be immune to the ravages of time. Rather than getting weaker and more vulnerable over the years, they become stronger and more fertile each time they shed their shells.

Nevertheless, although such animals may not deteriorate with age, other scientists are quick to point out that they do die - just not as a result of their own cells it seems. As for humans, along with most species on the planet, there are many reasons why we deteriorate with age. Mutations in DNA and the battering that our 100 trillion cells take every day contribute to the slow, inevitable decline.

But scientists have discovered that our cells also have a built-in fixed lifespan, and with evidence growing that training the mind or inducing certain modes of consciousness can have positive health effects, researchers have sought to understand how mindful meditation practices physically affect the body. They offer a "cure" in the sense that with practice we may be able to alter the lifespan of our cells with our minds.

Can immortality ever be achieved?

Others have put forward the notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. They point to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life, implying intelligence existed prior to matter. They also claim that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding. We carry space and time around with us "like turtles with shells", meaning that when the shell comes off (space and time), we still exist.

One thing we can all agree in, though, is that death does not discriminate between rich and poor, dictator and downtrodden, or east and west. We are all made from organic chemical compounds that are the basis of all life and which are subject to entropy. Thus, death is a part of the nature of existence - which many of its secrets are still locked away from us. So, in a world of unknowns, you have to live in the moment you are alive. We're alive, so we might as well live it - and live it well. Whether it is by luck, random chance or a script penned by the Fates, we are here. So, why not make the best of it, and enjoy the time we have?

If we did any less, it would be a waste, but more than that, our species would not have progressed very far from their first caves. Thankfully, we are too inquisitive not to want to know, despite the danger to our existence. Our insatiable curiosity is a common ground we share. It's in our nature to explore the outer limits placed upon us, and there is possibly no more dangerous environment than for those working in outer space.

Living among the stars

Living in an aluminium bubble like a space station, for instance, where every thump or crack of a meteor or space debris that hits the walls is likely to serve as a reminder of your tenuous situation, astronauts have learnt it's better to focus on the reality at hand. You can't let the fear of the situation dominate you; for them it was better to be mindful of the amazing experience of being in space instead.

When we hear of astronauts speak of the experience of being in space, they all seem to agree that it changes them. It changes their view of the Earth and themselves. And while some have had a sudden epiphany or a huge change in direction in life, many more have experienced a more subtle - yet probably just as fundamental - shift in the way they view the world than those first that went before them.

One such example is Chris Austin Hadfield, a retired Canadian astronaut who was the first Canadian to walk in space. He joined TV presenters Dara O Briain and Professor Brian Cox on their BBC programme Stargazing LIVE recently, to celebrate the night sky and talk about his experiences in space.

Hadfield spent about six months in total over three space flights, and when he speaks you get a sense of oneness - that we are all in this together - a perspective which he did his best to share in the photographs he distributed through the social media. Watching him talk on the BBC show, it was evident this also had a profound effect on his own views. On that programme, he said:

I think what it did fundamentally was broaden my own horizons of the world. What I would view growing up as "us and them", when you go around the world thousands of times, that line where "them" begins recedes further and further away, until eventually the whole thing becomes just "us".

But you don't have to travel as far as Hadfield to see there is truth in what he says. French writer Simone de Beauvoir believed that our life had value so long as we attributed value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship and compassion. We should, however, see value in not only our life-form, but in all living things. And as converse as it may seem, the mortality of life adds value to it. It's all the more precious, because it's finite in its working parts, and yet paradoxically infinite as a whole.

As such, death is a process of life that brings balance to nature's cycle, but when we ask, "What is death?" we are probably asking the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing from a destructible form into a forever unchanging form. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden, which will then give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness, with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion.

Considering the marvellous complexity of the universe, its cog-work perfection, its balances of this against that, matter, energy, gravity, time, dimension and the like, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond practical measuring systems, and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality. And we really only understand who we are in the face of death, or how we face death, itself.

When we look at our "reality", today, it's amazing we have survived, at all. When it comes to human nature, we're too ready to entertain our darkest imaginings, even if we don't quite believe them ourselves. We seem to find no tranquillity in anything. We struggle against the inevitable. We thrive on conflict. We are too aggressive, hostile and militant. We are selfish, and yet value loyalty. We are rash, quick to judge but slow to change. Humanity, on the face of it, is a story filled with contradictions.

Nevertheless, even though on paper we might not work, more often than not we work when it matters. What we read rarely chimes with real life. There is evidence that compassion is a natural human predisposition, and that war is not an innate part of our character, after all. There are theories that believe our warmongering, inhumane and selfish ways have been educated into us, and that we have become far removed from our authentic selves.

Traditional education is often believed to have compounded this. Considered as the foundation for creating a well rounded and productive society, instead of producing creative and compassionate people however, the current style of competitive education either creates outcast rebels or more submissive, obedient and trained graduates. In this way, the current system is always maintained, some say.

And what helps to maintain any current system is ingrained habits. We never seem to question whether these habits are "bad" or "good" for us, because performing out of habit is easy to do. Our brain switches on to auto-drive and we are no longer aware of our actions (or the consequences of them). It can be done without thinking, like driving your car, in a sort of "micro-sleep". This is when we need to try something different to wake us up. Drive down a new route. Do things a little differently.

Of course this is easier said then done. The science says you can't simply create a new habit in the short term - say in a month. According to psychologists at University College London, their research suggested that it was more like 66 days. Whatever the time frame, though, it's certain that we need to identify what is no longer serving us and change these habits for the long term. The fact of it is that unless we destroy our bad habits, they will end up destroying us.

Break the bad habits of a past lifetime

Change isn't for tomorrow. It's for today. We need to educate ourselves and our children to break out of the hardened shell of habitual negativity. This goes beyond esoteric questions of life and death. It's a necessity for pragmatic reasons. Even if we go back to our old ways, we go back having learnt from the experience. We go back a little wiser. So the next time we try, we'll be stronger. And we don't need to frighten ourselves off with huge changes to our lifestyles.

Gradual change is better for many, even if not for all. Find something you can manage, and do it all the time. Take the drama out of it. Most of us discover that we can manage semi-avoidance at first, where we begin to train ourselves to see healthy habits as less painful than negative ones. A fancy term for this is "neuro-associative conditioning" (NAC). It's a human behavioural science founded by Anthony Robbins on the basis of neuro linguistic programming (NLP) where with NAC you are reprogramming your brain to attach "pain" to bad habits and "pleasure" to healthy ones. So, practice healthy habits a little at a time. If for nothing else, then because the science says it'll help you live longer.

Even small changes will eventually have a great impact on our lives. When scientists warn that certain types of mouthwash increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke and are a "disaster" for health, simply changing the mouthwash you use is a start. If energy prices are making it difficult to heat your home, looking for innovative ways to keep warm can also open up other avenues. Having the central heating on may be contributing to our ballooning waistlines, Dutch researchers suggest, so using these systems less may help us shed some weight as well as save money and energy.

It could also force us to be more active around the house, or get out of the house more and into the gym or the sports field. Football participation is considered a good way to get men and women to slim down, but getting out into the fresh air and sunlight, whatever the weather, is believed to be necessary for a healthy mind and body.

Yoga, too, is a good habit to practice. It can help you learn to love and accept yourself, but only if you embrace the true meaning of the practice. It's more than just a series of difficult poses and stretches. Yoga can help you learn to love your body, and thus your life. Loving your life will also accelarate your spiritual evolution.

Click here to change 6 negative habits.

Healthy habits will make for a healthy life, and will help to manifest all amounts of goodness as the by-product of a well-lived life. For instance, research shows that eating lots of fruit and vegetables gives people a golden glow that makes them look more attractive to prospective partners. But it's not just what you eat that makes you beautiful, but what you do.

I honestly believe that there is no such thing as ugly people, only ugly behaviour. We are too quick to kindle our tempers, and to be discourteous, when a kind word - which costs nothing - may make all the difference. The emergence of trolling, Facebook bullies and "Twitter storms" in social media outlets is a prime example, while many researchers are likening social media models to infectious diseases.

But storms can be as cleansing as they are destructive, depending on circumstances. The real disease is the infection of acting out of synch with common sense, good judgement and our authentic self. Tweet unto others as you would have them tweet unto you, is a good adage here - although it requires a requisite amount of empathy. Nevertheless, the technology that has made us less empathic, may also be used to enhance human empathy.

One innovative idea aimed at nurturing empathy is said to help you see the world through your partner's eyes. That's the concept behind BeAnotherLab's Gender Swap experiment that uses Oculus Rift headsets to let wearers experience how other people see the world. Each partner wears the head-mounted displays, and by synchronising their respective movements, they can virtually feel and see the other person's body through their own eyes - in effect swapping bodies between genders.

It seems like the stuff of science fiction, but with technology out there that may even one day influence our sleep induced dreams, fantasy can fast become fact. Outside of our dreams, another innovative project aimed at partners is called Pillow Talk, aiming to connect long-distance lovers. Each person has a pillow for their bed and a ring sensor that they wear when they sleep at night. The sensor wirelessly communicates with the other person's pillow; when one person goes to bed, their lover's pillow begins to glow softly to indicate their presence. Placing your head on the pillow allows you to hear the real-time heartbeat of your loved one. The result is an intimate interaction between two lovers, regardless of the distance between them.

Such tools can be used to promote intimacy, empathy or increase understanding of differences. These are good habits to have, but we have these core values inside us already, without necessitating a heavy reliance on technology. There are plenty of human stories out there that show us values of compassion and community have no age, and compassion has no limits and community has no boundaries. There are many stories of inspiration around the world from which we can take hope.

Towards this aim, all we have to do is look around us and we will see people with their own special needs living their life to the best of their abilities, wise mothers teaching their children how to use social media responsibly, thoughtful fathers planning how to best bring joy into the lives of their loved ones. Do you remember the inspirational tale of young Luke Rowles and the fox he rescued from the hands of a gang? His act of selflessness became the spark to help many more disadvantaged animals in his community. His story is just one out of thousands being lived out every day.

Sportsmanship, too, is a quality worth sticking up for, even if some fringes of sport fans aren't inspired to do the same. On YouTube, along with so many clips of taunting and exulting and athletes making the choke sign, you can find footage of moments of pure sportsmanship - penalties wrongly rewarded, and then deliberately missed, wrestlers stopping in mid choke-hold to assist an opponent, bitter old foes embracing at the end of the game.

It is an attitude we need for all occasions. Doing good can make you feel good, but there is a lot in modern life to make us feel so bad, we feel we don't want to do good, either. Whether you're worrying about looming deadlines, job insecurity, traffic jams, or a troubled relationship, such stresses takes it toll on your body, breath, and mind. It disrupts our inner harmony, and can affect us even on a subtle level.

Some days you wake up with the energy of a tiger, ready to take on the world. And then on other days, you feel as though someone has poured concrete into your shoes, you feel absolutely sluggish and negative about the entire day. We have all been here at some point of time or other. Some people go through these ups and down more often than others, even if the stresses seem the same. But how do you wake up and go through the day happy, every day?

The Dalai Lama is attributed as saying that happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. If this is true, then the secret is that happiness is a practice; the more you practice, the easier it comes to you. Based on this principle, more than anything, happiness is a choice we make, not something that dawns upon us. If you wake up with a decision to be happy, nothing can bring you down. It's a mindset you train and nurture.

It's often heard said that life is a synonym for test - it will always test you and push you. Whether you can make the best lemon sherbet out of the lemons life throws at you is something you have to decide on. Therefore another good habit to nurture is the practice of happiness. But if faith is the substance of things hoped for, then it seems that presently we have lost faith in happiness - so we no longer hope for it.

Put your faith in happiness

Today, although we seem to have little or no faith in happiness, we're still keen to hear about what we can do to make us happy. From health to wealth, enjoying your job, spending time with your family or socialising with friends there are so many things that we have as an opportunity to enjoy life. Then why do these important areas of our life stack up in the misery stakes? The missing key could be that we need to inject purpose, value and happiness (a.k.a "passion") into these aspects of our daily living to truly feel as though we are living out our destiny.

Simply put, we need to feed the soul, as much as we need to feed the body and mind. Some adhere to the view that our soul has distinct desires, which are inherent aspects of our soul, used for the purpose of fulfilling its unique potential. It's believed that learning to honour these desires allows us to thrive at every level and leads us to a complete and balanced life. This equates not only with happiness, but with an abundance that many of us often fail to manifest into our lives.

Read about the philosophy of happiness.

For instance, according to psychologists the feeling of loneliness isn't when everyone ignores you, but when a special someone ignores you. If we have a special person in our life, even if we are living in isolation, if we truly care about that person then they are enough to stem any feelings of loneliness isolation typically brings. A survey for the BBC suggests as many as half of all England's adults have experienced feelings of loneliness, and if the psychologists are right, then the problem of lonely people does not just stem from their physical isolation.

I often reiterate that loneliness is a state of soul and mind. If you are in the right frame set, you can be single and completely isolated and yet insulated from feeling lonely if you are happy within yourself. Indeed, there are people who cherish such "special times" to be by themselves and re-energise. Naturally, however, at heart humans are sociable creatures, and we thrive best in communities where we can effectively communicate.

This is cited as a major reason why video did not kill the radio star. Down the years plenty of technologies have looked set to kill off radio: talking pictures, television, the cassette tape, the CD, the iPod. Today in our hyper-connected world it's streaming music services like Spotify - and yet radio still thrives. In 2011, radio listeners in the United Kingdom listened to 23 hours of radio each week, with 198 community radio stations currently on air. It's thought because people want to be connected with other people, they want to be part of a tribe, they want to be accepted and that's what radio brings. It has a connection with the audience.

Join the tribe of humanity.

If you want to have a connection with happiness, therefore, be one of the tribe of happy people, and try and persuade others around you to join up. Build your own support group. Or if you find that you love the people who make you cry more than those who make you laugh, realise that has to change.

Happiness can also be a map into our innermost feelings. For example, when we are happy and suddenly feel unhappiness (as if for no good reason) it can be a signal that subconsciously our soul is missing someone. If you are completely disconnected from self, your soul could be trying to tell you that it misses YOU. And thus, it won't matter what opportunities for happiness arise, they will all end up on the toxic dump of regret.

It seems, then, that whether it's our very own self, or someone else, or the things we do in life - for them to bring us value and purpose - we need to love them, or more specifically, BRING love to them. Only then will we be successful in capturing in some measure the idealised happiness which seems to elude a lot of us.

So, you can stop reading if you've read this all before, but with this in mind, there is some powerful techniques that we can use to become friends with happiness, and thus in turn use it as a tool to power up our love for life.

How to be happy in your every moment

The first suggestion comes from the classic self-help book, The Magic of Believing, written in 1948 by Claude Bristol. It's called the mirror technique. In short, you stand before a mirror big enough to see your face and body, stare into your eyes, and then speak out loud about what you want to have, do, or be. You give yourself the pep talk of all time. You reprogramme your mind with your voice and your own authority.

Some people like to upgrade this by staring into the mirror while playing their favourite rousing music, or even making a recording of their own voice with positive affirmations and feel good self-talk. You can use whatever music makes your heart sing and your feet dance, and whatever quotes inspire you. When you first look into the mirror, you may cringe or feel weak, but if you stick with it, and truly command yourself, you can transform your mind to be a conduit for the better things in life.

Is trying too hard to be happy making you sad?

The theory goes that in that state, the "you" that is tied to a past and a future, the negative personality if you like, is hardly there any more. And yet nothing of value is lost. You are still essentially yourself. In fact, you are more fully yourself than you ever were before, or rather it is only now that you are truly yourself - because you are communicating more effectively with your true nature. It feeds into Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now, where it's suggested to experience total freedom from limiting beliefs you have to feel the power of the moment you're in now.

Being able to feel your presence like this, brings a kind of fullness of being. This helps us work out what really makes us happy, and to pursue those passions relevant to our own unique being. Talking to yourself in the mirror, rehearsing life as it were, is a technique with many testimonials as to its effectiveness.

The reasoning is that if thought processes are creating guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity, then you're not only reinforcing a false sense of self, but also helping to accelerate your body's ageing process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche. You can verify this for yourself by observing those around you who have a strong tendency to hold on to the past. These people are so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there.

Get on track with love.

Stress is caused by being "here", but wanting to be "there", or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It's a split that tears you apart inside. We should not want to be anywhere but NOW, and be happy in it. But if you find the past takes up a great deal of your attention, and you frequently talk and think about it, either positively or negatively, then you are putting your own chance at happiness at stake.

The great things that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences, or your victim story and the dreadful things that were done to you, or maybe what you did to someone else, are all things that can encroach into your present and steal your NOW. Unless you get clean of it, unchecked it sucks the lifeblood from your life's veins. However, Tolle suggests you can stop this health and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the present moment.

According to Tolle, we do this by anchoring ourselves in the now with mindful breathing and meditation, and by only referring to the past when absolutely necessary. We need to process and be at peace with our past, but it needs to reinterpreted through the filtration of the present moment, where it helps us to realise it no longer holds any power over us. If our happiness is not subject to it, then we can change our mindset from one of "waiting" for happiness and abundance in some unknown future, into one that drives us to find happiness in every second of every moment we remain aware of being alive.

As Tolle puts it, you can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future - nor do you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action, or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after. So you can look into the mirror and speak these truths, and in effect hypnotise yourself to feel the power of your own thoughts. The key is to access the power of Now, which is none other than the power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from thought forms.

So we need to deal with the past on the level of the present. Tolle's theory is that the more attention you give to the past, the more you energise it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it. The focus here is to give attention to the present, to your behaviour, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present.

The past is in all of us, but if we can be aware enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but without judgement, then we are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. It frees us up to be truly happy, because Tolle asserts that you cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present. This is what Earl Nightingale - considered one of the most prominent motivational speakers and authors of all time - would have called part of his secret - that we become what we think about.

Is sadness genetic?

So, when you see yourself analysing or negatively judging what you observe in yourself, whether it's a thought, emotion, or attitude, step back into the observer; observe but don't judge. Remember to make every disturbing element the object of your observation, and to anchor yourself in the present. Don't emotionally relive painful experiences, but view them from a more detracted, divine perspective.

Consequently, the effect of these techniques is about changing your self-image. The mirror technique doubles as a "daily declaration" of your desires, and the super suggestion method, where you place yourself in a suggestive frame of mind before you start your positive self-talk, is really the upgraded form of the mirror technique.

And by changing how you think about yourself, you'll change how you feel about yourself, and unblock the restrictions you've subconsciously been placing in the way of your own happiness.

Be happy to feel love, feel love to be happy

When we think about about the things that make us happy in life, it goes without saying that at the top of the list will be our health and well-being, and that of loved ones. For some, happiness doesn't get more specific than that, and I have to confess I'm one of them. I've never been materialistic, and I am lucky to have a general mindset of being happy with one's lot.

I try to find happiness in even the smallest of things, because the sort of things that can prevent people generally being happy in my opinion are very high expectations. So, as a general rule, I try not to have any. I prefer to have goals, and just to let life surprise me on the expectation front. After all, who said life was meant to be fair? Yet, we somehow have an overly high expectation that it should be fair, and - if not to anyone else - then most certainly to us.

In my life, I tend to shy away from labelling things as "unfair"; I find that enjoying the company of my loved ones, eating well that day, and having mind-blowing sex with my twin flame is as "fair" as life should get - because there are many of us out there not lucky enough to have even that.

Life is beautiful with love.

I'm always mindful to count my blessings. The way I normally resolve cutting my expectations down to size is my comparing my life to those less well off, and basically not to worry too much about things. Keeping a calm mindset in a crisis is better than needlessly worrying over it. That generally just adds to the woe.

Of course, there will be times when things can get too much even for the most calmest mind, but in my family we're a team - we pick each other up when necessary. Point being, we have a weekly "dance blast", where we'll allow ourselves to act silly and dance any blues away that might threaten to build up. It's a great way to de-stress, and it's good exercise, too!

Plus, I always like to get advice from the senior members of our family. My parents are filled with a wisdom which comes from experience - they have been through it all before, and it helps to give me perspective over my own crisis. But often, not allowing a crisis to get to you means half the battle is won, and if your mindset is generally trained to a happy disposition, then what is there to stop you?

How to get happy when you're sad.

So, I love to feel happy, and it's why I'm feeling very happy right now. Because life is good; I've no expectations for anything, and that being the case, none are broken. I don't expect a fair deal from anyone, and all I ask of myself is my own well-being and that of my loved ones. Issues which are in our hands, and not dependant on anyone else.

Moreover, when I started work, I purposefully chose a profession with a work ethic that would add value to my life. Thus, even when work gets stressful, it's a positive force, because I feel as though I've done something worthwhile. It's my belief that the old 20th Century ethos of working hard and playing hard makes you unhappy. Working WELL and playing WELL is what will provide our lives with value and purpose, and thus happiness.

On my outlook of the world, the best statement that describes happiness is being able to make your own choices. If you want to do something, celebrate the fact that you have the freedom to go out and do it. If you can't do it, learn from it, and move on.

For my part, happiness allows me to be more of a focused individual who doesn't necessarily achieves things, but achieves BEING in things. Thus, circumstances that may often seem very mundane to others, can bring me great happiness. Eating a perfectly made cupcake on a moonlit night, for example, or discovering a wonderful piece of verse, or moment of song. A sunny day. A shelter in the rain. Or watching a loved one's face light up in a smile.

We often underestimate the power of a smile. It not only increases our face value, but is a powerful tip that is easy to implement in any "power techniques" you choose to use, and could possibly make a huge difference to you personally, and quite immediately, and for different reasons.

For instance, if you try the mirror technique, try doing it by smiling at yourself in the mirror. Next time you go to a yoga class, set yourself up for a observation-filled practice. At some stage (or several stages) during your class, take the time to observe yourself and smile through your poses. Allow yourself to enjoy the feeling of relaxation in your body, and the breath filling you up and fuelling your onward progress.

Remember that life doesn't have to be a serious pursuit. We don't have to employ a punishing regime to harness well-being. Your overall approach can be light and breezy regardless how motivated you are for your dreams and goals to succeed. And it goes without saying that I have my own grand plans, too. These include getting my pilot's license, learning a new language and travelling the world with my family, but these are really on the periphery of what is really important to me - a spiritually full life. The rest just adds to the fun.

It's no big secret that when you start smiling a little more, you'll discover that your body will respond favourably to a little lip curling. It's up to you to decide whether you curl your lips up or down.

Be a star when the world is dark

Now, I'm sure my outlook will come as a surprise to some - especially with the state of the world at the moment. It's a reality that while the world is in a season of changes so are we, but that doesn't need to affect the power of my mindset in Tolle's Now. Indeed, it'll help me see any upheaval as an opportunity for improvement.

If you look at the news headlines from England, I wouldn't blame you for thinking there is a lot of reasons to be pessimistic. What with the way Britain is soul-searching over its treatment of illegal workers and immigration issues, its build-up of environmental waste, and the austere times we've found ourselves in - where we've had to cut so many things - it's a reasonable assumption to make. It can seem as though we should all be depressed and fully down in the doldrums.

And even though the UK is finally getting a bit of the boom back into its economy, an austere climate still rules over here on the street - with many giant retailers being disappointed over Christmas sales. At first glance, there doesn't seem a lot to shout home about. But there us another way to look at it.

In a way, the imposed austerity is a good opportunity to return to the real spirit of Christmas. And the true meaning of the Advent and the season (for those that celebrate it) isn't about how much you buy. Irrelevant of what commercials tell us, consumerism doesn't make you happy. It's about providing us with many different choices and ways to express our happiness. On top of that, the recent austerity could make us healthier, too. World Health Organisation scientists are saying that the globe is facing a "tidal wave" of obesity, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered.

Likewise, I love to dine well, to work on making my house into a beautiful home, and I love to travel, too. But I buy into these things to express our happiness, not to make us happy. There is a difference - and that difference being that we can do without them.

If we had to do without a holiday abroad, for instance, this wouldn't make us sad as a family, indeed it would open the opportunity for us to have a British based holiday. We have many beautiful sites in England and Wales, especially in the Home Counties. Besides, my twin flame loves to camp and hike, too - so it really wouldn't make much difference to us.

However, as much as I love my country, I see most people in our beautiful England do NOT share the same view, and I sometimes wonder whether we couldn't benefit by being a bit more laid back - like our Mediterranean cousins. To enjoy life more calmly when things don't go our way. And as long as we have our well-being, I am optimistic about my future, and the future of my country - and our world - as a whole.

It's a grounded optimism. We just need to re-tune our mindset a little, and not allow worldwide events to impact on our own happiness. No one said life would be easy, and these are things we cannot control. All we can control is how we react to them, and by spreading some understanding, politeness and kindness when we are out in the street to our neighbours will, I believe, impact on the happiness of the entire country.

Tips on how to make someone happy.

Because as crises are inevitable so, too, is this: Things will get better, because they always do! So, I always start off every moment as I mean to go on, with a merry heart - and I try to reflect this in my writings. Similarly, I'm usually inundated with emails after every post, and very often I'm asked why I'm so happy to share my articles for free. They ask, what do I get back? How can I be so joyful all the time?

Well, the primary reason is that I'm really writing all this for myself. It's a way to clarify my thoughts towards my personal path of learning. It benefits me immensely, and as it benefits my life, the abundance I gain from my writing overflows to a like-minded audience of free-thinkers I'm honoured to connect with. As such, I've no problem with allowing the value it gives me to be shared with others. I don't mind sharing it for "free" because the first reader it benefits is my own self. So, the way I see it is, by the time I publish a post I've already been in paid in full. Besides which, writing makes me happy, so why not?

I always aim to feel happy - and I usually DO feel happy. And you know why? Because I don't expect anything from anyone. As mentioned already, broken expectations always hurt, and life is far too short for that kind of pain. There's too much hurt in the world already for us to add to it needlessly. So I love life, and I advise you to love yours to be happy. And keep smiling. That's life - feel it, live it, enjoy it, but most of all, love it. Because life is not your enemy, or something you have to fear.

If you're alive, that means you've been invited to the dance. Life wants to know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Like a lover, in turn, it wants to see you. It wants to know your voice. To recognise you when you first come round the corner to play on the street, or for you to sense its scent when you come into a room. Life wants you to become familiar with the way it leans into your spaces to kiss you, and for you to know the joy of whispering, "more".

Say something, and watch your life respond

“Everyday I say this prayer: Allow us to keep wisdom not only on the tongue, but in the mind. To keep a smile not only on lips, but in our hearts, too. Allow us the knowledge that love is deeper than the skin when it gives life to the very soul within. To be notorious in our bravery when we destroy the shackles of a limiting reputation. Allow us to forgo the safety of comfort, and to live where we fear to live. And despite all that may happen, to never forget how to love to live.”
— Mickie Kent

Life whispers for us to enjoy it - but do we listen? Although in Britain economic recovery will probably gather momentum this year, life has seems to have become one long rummage in bargain basements. In continuing austere times such as these, rather than giving more to our communities, we're planning to cut back even more.

This change in mood has transformed the very fabric of society, killing off everything from patronage of the arts to our community spirit. Disillusioned by bureaucratic corruption and political parodies, we've become less open with each other, and less willing to help our neighbour. And if we can't get on with the people living next door to us, how will we ever get on with other nations?

With new emerging economic giants ready to set foot on the global stage, learning to co-operate has become more essential than ever. We could also learn a thing to two. Take the Uruguayan President Jose Mujica for example, who donates about 90% of his monthly salary to charity and is sometimes called the world's poorest president. His markedly different lifestyle than our own politicians - who lead less than austere lifestyles whilst imposing austerity on others - is something to take note.

So, too, with the late Nelson Mandela. His bank account certainly did not match his stature in the world. For all the respect he enjoyed around the globe, he was not a rich man, and it was very much in line with his character that it was revealed after his death he bequeathed funds to his staff and the schools he attended. Not surprising for a man who chose to forgive and reconcile with those who had tried to harm him.

Or how about Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser, the poor yet proud inventor whose invention has spread throughout the world to light homes and save energy? His invention will be in one million homes by early 2015, and while he does earn a few dollars installing them, it's obvious from his simple house and his 1974 car that his invention hasn't made him wealthy. What it has given him is a great sense of pride. He says:

It's a divine light. God gave the sun to everyone, and light is for everyone. Whoever wants it saves money. You can't get an electric shock from it, and it doesn't cost a penny... There was one man who installed the lights and within a month he had saved enough to pay for the essential things for his child, who was about to be born. Can you imagine?

To be frank, it's difficult to imagine that in the West. But as the "Moser lamp" symbolises, the ethos should be to reach out, and yet in developed countries we are becoming more divisive. Instead of uniting to tackle global issues such as poverty, and put an end racial and sexual inequality in our hearts and minds, we have seemingly grown indifferent to the plight of others. But what are we saying to life? With our actions, our thoughts - in short our attitude - what are we putting out there?

Love your haters and wish them on to their own path of self love.

We can't expect positive returns with toxicity, and yet we are allowing the mistakes of the past to poison our future. Because what we are doing today not only affects our present moment, it's influencing our children, one way or another. Next time take a look at how your child treats his or her friends. It's a reflection on you. So, speak to your child of love, and you will hear that love talk back.

Saint Augustine, an early Christian theologian, is attributed as saying that if we are filled with love, we are filled with God himself. Acts of kindness are the blossoms of the soul. Even if beautiful people are not always good, good people are always beautiful. I believe in that. For example, we will all have experienced haters in our lives at one time or another. For those people, I wish only the best while keeping my distance.

Turn off the poison valves in your life.

Why should we wish the best for everyone, even if they don't wish the same for us? Well for starters, if your enemies are happy within themselves they won't want to send out any negativity your way! Wishing those problematic individuals in your life a great life of their own will mean they will stop being preoccupied with hating on you, or others. Your positive attitude, meanwhile, guards you against inner toxicity. It's a win-win situation. When we do this, in the words of Yúnmén Wényǎn (the monk Unmon), a major Chinese Zen master in Tang-era China, every day is a good day.

On this point, one blogger is using her internet haters' to fight back. If we require proof that the internet is a hostile place for women, we need to look no further than blogger Lindsay Bottos' Tumblr, where the 21-year-old artist and student, tired of the vitriolic anonymous comments she received about her looks, artwork and personal life, decided to use the words of her haters right back at them. She started a project where she combines pictures of herself with some of the harsh comments she has received, carefully combining image and comment to put her point across.

Sending out this type of "love" not only reduces a "bad" comment down to its petty size, it also gets people to start thinking about what they write. For what we say will respond back to us. This is true if you're an antagonist. It's also true if you're kind. And even if your kindness to a particular person seemingly goes unrewarded, it will come back to you somewhere down the line in the form of a kind word, or helping hand - when you least expect it.

And the moral of Bottos' story - as with so many others - is that we can set ourselves on a mission to be better. Often something unexpected can make you smile; just don't make your smile an unexpected occurrence. Bring beauty to what you do, and to how you live. If life is an effort, make it worth the climb. Elevate your craft for living, by appearing (and so being) calm in the most oppressive situations.

Cultivate a loving mind. It should flow where you go. Don't confine it, or squeeze it into a narrow corner of your life. For example, when you walk, walk with joy everywhere you go. Feel the cool grass under your feet. Notice the brightly coloured flowers, the beautiful trees, a single bird flying in the sky.

By staying in the present moment, you will fall in love with your life. Then anything that touches you - even stress, anger, anxiety - becomes an opportunity to turn to love. It's a chance for us to reaffirm the importance of love. And that ultimately - knowing that we need love to live - we MUST love to live.

Yours in love,