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The I-T-I-A Formula

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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I-T-I-A stands for:

Intention

Thought

Imagination

Action

The I-T-I-A Formula takes into account everything known about how mind processes information and brings about change. But you must do all four; otherwise the effects won’t be permanent.

Intention

Personal change starts with a decision – to learn a new skill, to develop a new personal quality and so on. For example, you could decide that from now on you’re always going to treat yourself with love and respect and behave confidently. It’s as simple as that.

Ask yourself:

What do you want out of life?

  • What kind of person would you like to be?
  • What changes would you like to make?
  • What are your goals? Are you prepared to commit to them?

Remember, the clearer your goals and the stronger your intentions, the more likely they are to be realised.

Thought

Step back and observe your self-talk (your thoughts). Are they generally positive or negative? What questions do you ask yourself? What are you trying to achieve by thinking that way?

Examine your attitudes and beliefs. Are they true? Do they serve you well? Where have they brought you so far?

The more positive your thinking, the happier you are and the more likely to succeed at whatever you set your mind to.

Imagination

Learn to use your creative imagination and intuition. They are the key to a successful future.

Imagine achieving your goals. What will they look like when brought to fruition? What will they sound like? Feel like? Do this often, especially when you are physically and mentally relaxed.

The imagination is the fast track to your unconscious mind. You can imprint your desires – and the belief that they will be met – on your unconscious using your imaginative faculties.

Action

Take small steps in the right direction – towards your goals – every day. You may feel uncomfortable, but ignore your discomfort, feel the fear and do it anyway.

Monitor your progress and make adjustments if necessary. Do more of what works and stop doing what doesn’t. Change never feels right, but when you act ‘as if’, eventually the uncomfortable feelings fade.

Keep going until success becomes a habit – every step reinforces your progress. And don’t be put off by others.

The process is a little like the old domino trick where the performer pushes over one domino and all the others fall over in sequence. Every change you make influences the next step, which in turn affects the step after that, and so on. The important thing is to begin. Go on – push over that first domino now. Promise yourself that you’ll give it your best and never give up!

©David Lawrence Preston, 2018

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Building Self-Confidence in Practice

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In-I-T-I-A-te change!

When you apply the I-T-I-A Formula – Self-awareness +Intention +Thinking +Imagination +Action – to confidence building, the shift in consciousness is not necessarily dramatic, more like a gradual awakening. Over time, you cast off your negative conditioning and adopt more empowering beliefs. Then feelings and actions change too.

It’s like climbing a ladder; don’t try too much at once, take it one rung at a time. Small steps are important. Every day, stretch yourself a little further; have a go at something which you would previously have found too daunting, like striking up a conversation with a stranger, asserting yourself, or giving a talk to a local group.

Each time you succeed, you gain encouragement, your attitude changes, and before long it will get easier and you’ll feel better than ever before.

One of the secrets of confidence building is to act ‘as if’ you’re growing in confidence, and ‘as if’ you are the person you want to be. This is what William Shakespeare meant when he wrote, ‘Assume a virtue if you have it not’.

Project an air of quiet confidence, even if you don’t feel it. For instance, if you feel shy in the company of people you don’t know, shake hands firmly, look them in the eye, speak with a confident tone of voice, and smile. It may feel like a big effort at first, but even if you have butterflies in your stomach, act as if you’re confident and you will feel more confident. Eventually the uncomfortable feelings fade.

Many outwardly confident people had to work at it, knowing that if you act confidently and look as if you know what you’re doing, then sooner or later you will feel that way.

If it feels uncomfortable to begin with, remember that it’s only your programming and conditioning trying to keep you to old habits.

It’s important to keep in mind what you’re striving for – reinventing yourself as a calm and  confident person with high self-esteem and a healthy and secure self-image.

Mental rehearsal

Creative imagery is a great ally when building confidence. Mentally rehearse any impending challenge, creating the perfect result in your mind every time to impress this on your subconscious. ‘See’, ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ yourself as a confident and successful person.

Here’s a useful four-stage routine for building confidence. Let’s say you have some goal in mind, such as making a sale, attracting a member of the opposite sex, passing an exam or attending a job interview:

  1. ‘Visualise’ yourself as a confident person and imagine what it would feel like to be loaded with confidence.
  1. Next,’ visualise’ yourself behaving confidently, for instance delivering the talk with assurance, interacting with others confidently and handling difficult questions with ease.
  1. ‘Visualise’ yourself having accomplished your objective.
  1. Finally, ‘visualise’ others’ response to your success, e.g. applauding, congratulating you etc.

Remember also to use the modelling, and anchoring techniques to the full.

Celebrate your progress!

Every time you take a step forward, reward yourself. Buy yourself a small treat, take a weekend break, go on a course – something that will give you a further taste of pleasure and success.

If on the other hand things don’t work out as you planned, don’t chastise yourself. Reflect on what you can learn from it and put the episode down to experience.

Focus on the positives

Every moment, think of all the good qualities you have. Don’t get caught up in what others think of you – or, more correctly, what you imagine others may think of you (because we can never know for sure what another person is thinking). Otherwise you’ll only attract people who demand you to keep them happy.

Instead, keep yourself happy! Be the kind of person you want to be and you’ll attract others who are the same. Remember, like attracts like. The rest follows automatically.

Be patient

If you really believed in yourself, how would you feel? Then isn’t it worth spending a little time each day working on yourself, building your self-belief? Of course it is. With a good self-image, confidence, a clear purpose and a realistic action plan almost anything is possible.

But you’ll have to be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and, if your confidence is currently low, neither is self-belief. So start now, wherever you are at, and never, never give up. It’s open to everyone!

©David Lawrence Preston, 25.8.2018

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The greatest mind-body healer?

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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The greatest mind-body healer of recent times was a diminutive and rather brusque character
who lived in New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. His name was Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby. He deserves to be much better known.

QuimbyHaving cured himself of tuberculosis, considered impossible in those days, he developed a healing method that focused on changing the destructive beliefs of his patient. These dysfunctional beliefs, he asserted, were the root cause of all health problems.

He wrote, ‘If you have been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come into contact with your enemy and restore you to health and happiness.’

Quimby’s methods were highly unconventional. Usually he imagined a courtroom
scene in which he (an attorney) pleaded with a judge (the patient’s subconscious) to release
the thought patterns that created the illness. Sometimes he challenged the patient’s beliefs aloud, but as his skills developed, would challenge them without a word being voiced, as he silently ‘intuited’ the cause of the problem and ‘projected’ healing thoughts into the mind of the patient. This he could do in their presence or at a distance. He brought about many cures without even meeting the patient!

Quimby fervently believed – in opposition to the medical and clerical ‘wisdom’ of his day that health is the birthright and natural state of every human being. The life force or ‘Intelligence’ which sustains us was like a TV station broadcasting health and well-being for all, but could be blocked by erroneous beliefs which prevent us from enjoying long and happy lives.

I’m guessing you’ve never heard of him. Few have, even though his achievements were well documented. He helped over ten thousand people  and left behind a voluminous body of writings. He influenced almost every mind-body healer who came after, whether they were aware of him or not. The best accounts, though, came from those whom he had cured. Several testified to his prowess and wrote detailed accounts of his methods and results, including one, Mary Baker Eddy, who founded her own healing movement and claimed his discoveries as her own.

PPQ

Quimby practised an early form of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).  His methods were also a forerunner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, on whom much of NLP is based, knew all about him). Many best-selling authors have made a fortune writing about the mind-body connection – they would be nowhere without him.

Awareness, intention, attention, thought, imagination and belief – correctly applied – are the keys to mind-body healing. I sum this up as the I-T-I-A Formula; Intention, Thinking, Imagination and Action. When all four are applied, as Quimby knew, the results can be astounding.

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 29.3.2017

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For further information on the I-T-I-A Formula, see also

https://blog.davidlawrencepreston.co.uk/2015/03/the-i-t-i-a-formula/

For further information on the place of mind-body techniques in healing, see:

https://blog.davidlawrencepreston.co.uk/2013/07/consciousness-and-healing-1/

https://blog.davidlawrencepreston.co.uk/2013/07/consciousness-and-healing-1/

https://blog.davidlawrencepreston.co.uk/2013/07/consciousness-and-healing-1/

 

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Healing and the Imagination

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The imagination can be a potent force in healing.

It’s no exaggeration that patients who cannot imagine themselves well are unlikely to be or stay so, and an increasing number of doctors and complementary practitioners agree. For example, in pain control clinics patients are taught to imagine the sore area going cool and numb, and visualise a dial or slide control representing the degree of pain and turn it down. It works because pain is a subjective experience highly susceptible to mental processes.

Try this: sit down comfortably, take a few deep breaths and focus your attention on your dominant hand. Imagine it getting warmer. What’s happening? Now imagine it getting cooler. Any difference? Experiments using sophisticated measuring equipment have registered significant changes in skin temperature when people use their imagination in this way.

Leading physicians such as Dr Carl Simonton, Dr Bernie Segal and Dr Dean Ornish have written and lectured widely about their experiences using the imagination to assist the healing process. Dr Simonton teaches his patients to visualise tumours shrinking and the cancer disappearing. Dr Ornish uses creative imagery, nutrition, exercise and group therapy to clear coronary heart blockages. Dr Segal uses a range of techniques to galvanise the healing power of the mind, including visualisation. In each case, the results are well documented. This author, too, has used it (with hypnosis) to relieve a range of conditions including eczema, frozen shoulder, muscular aches and pains, blushing, allergies, eczema, headaches, obesity, bed wetting and a variety of fears and phobias.

Using the imagination, especially the creative visual imagination, works because of two quirks of the unconscious mind (where the body’s automatic regulation systems are located). The first is, the unconscious processes pictures and feelings better than words and ideas. Tell your heart to speed up and nothing happens.  Imagine yourself waking down a dark alley with the sound of footsteps getting louder behind you and suddenly a heavy hand on your shoulder…..

The other is even quirkier: the unconscious can’t distinguish between fact and fantasy, ‘real’ and imagined. That’s why people wake in a sweat after a bad dream and cry at the cinema. So if you create a mental image of yourself healthy and healed, your unconscious works to make it a reality.

Creative imagery has proved its worth in healing time and time again. Katy came to see me after suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) for many years. It made her days miserable and kept her awake at night. IBS is a stress-related condition exacerbated by poor diet.

I took her through a couple of guided visualisations and encouraged her to practise at home. She relaxed deeply and imagined she was examining her bowel from the inside. In her imagination she created a vivid mental picture of the problem area. It looked rough, angry, red and sore. She then imagined herself smearing the affected area with healing oils and balms, sensing the discomfort melting away, seeing the angry red change to a healthy pink. Finally, she turned on a make-believe tap in the bloodstream which provided extra nutrients and oxygen, to encourage healthy bacteria to flow in.

Within two weeks the IBS had almost disappeared. After a month, it was completely clear.

Try it yourself, but first a word of warning: no amount of creative imagery alone will cure you unless you change bad habits and take necessary action in other areas (e.g. diet, exercise, rest etc.) too.

 

©Feelinggoodallthetime, 27.3.2017

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Happiness

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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We all want to be happy, but what is happiness? And what makes us happy?

How happy are you? Give yourself a mark out of ten, where ten means blissfully happy in every way, and zero means totally miserable all the time.

Most people exist somewhere between 5-8, not totally happy but not miserable enough to do anything about it. Why? The problem is, many of us have adopted beliefs that make it hard to be happy.

What chance have you got if you believe you have to earn happiness or that it’s selfish or irresponsible to seek it?

Can happiness be learned or taught?

Some believe that some people are just born ‘the happy type’, but recent studies suggest that this is not entirely true. It seems that happiness can be taught.

We know, for example, that happy people tend to be hopeful about the future. They assume things will work out alright and don’t indulge in blame and self-pity if things go wrong. They don’t rely on money and ‘stuff’ to make them happy, but they know how to get the most out of it. They have a wide circle of friends and don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re able to laugh at life – and themselves.

All of the above traits can be learned, although there are opposing views on how we should go about it. Some believe that you can set happiness as a goal, just as you would work on your next career move, and work towards it. The argument goes something like this:

‘If you were totally in control of your life, healthy, free from worry, prosperous, had good family relationships and lots of friends, an enjoyable and fulfilling career, rewarding hobbies, social activities and fun, and were loved and respected by others, would you be happy? The obvious answer is yes. And since all these can be set as goals, planned and worked for systematically, it follows that happiness, too, can be tackled in this way.’

Try it. You’ll find it works – to some extent, depending on where you’re starting from, but you’ll find that you eventually hit an invisible barrier. Why?

  1. People who set impossible goals become frustrated by the gap between their aspirations and their attainments. Keep your sense of direction (aimlessness is a serious threat to contentment), but don’t be obsessed by it. Research has repeatedly shown that happiness is unrelated to wealth (once you have enough to feed, clothe and house yourself, each extra £, $ or € makes little difference), intelligence, educational attainment or age.
  2. Happiness can only exist in the here and now. It’s a fallacy to think that happiness will arrive when some future event takes place. ‘When…. then I’ll be happy,’ simply doesn’t work. Fill in the gap any way you like – ‘when I achieve all my goals,’ ‘when I make a million,’ ‘when I meet the man or woman of my dreams,’ and so on. Unless you already have the foundations of happiness in place, they are unlikely to make much difference.
  3. Goals anticipate and look to the future, but happiness can only exist in the here and now. Entertainer David Baddiel put it like this: ‘My idea of perfect happiness is not having to believe that happiness resides elsewhere.’

You will never be happy if your happiness depends on your achievements. Have a sense of purpose and goals to aim for, and enjoy the process. If you succeed – great! If you don’t, at least you’ve had fun trying.

To return to the question, ‘Can happiness be taught as a skill?’ – Yes it can. Happiness is a combination of attitude and emotion, and the key to changing attitudes and emotions is the I-T-I-A Formula (see below).

Happiness is an inner state.

You can’t buy happiness, nor sell, drink, drive or wear it. You can’t see, hear, smell, taste or touch it. You can’t go on holiday to it, or give it or receive it as a gift. In other words, it cannot be determined by factors external to yourself. Some live in poverty, yet are happy. Others (including many famous and successful people) are worth millions, but are not.

Applying the I-T-I-A Formula to happiness

I-T-I-A stands for Intention, Thinking, Imagination and Action.

Intention

Are you willing to be happy?  This may seem a trite question, but it’s not. Some would have to give up certain things if they became happy, such as sympathy from others and attention.

You are responsible for your happiness. How can it be any other way? If your happiness depended on the feelings, actions and words of others, how could you ever be truly happy, since you cannot control any of these things?

Thinking

  • What absolutely must happen in order for me to feel happy?
  • What would I prefer to happen for me to feel happy?
  • What would be nice, but not absolutely essential?

Your answers define your rules for happiness. Over zealous rules can destroy your chances of being happy.

  • Realise that happiness is not an absence of problems. Life is a school. Every event, every obstacle has something to teach you so look for the lesson. See problems as challenges that can be turned into opportunities and learning experiences.
  • Let go of the need to be right. Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy? It’s hard to be both.
  • Look on the bright side. Focus on  pleasant, happy things and count your blessings.
  • Happiness demands complete self-acceptance. If you’re not happy, this is the place to start. No amount of accomplishments and possessions can make up for a lack of self-acceptance.
  • Understand that happiness does not equal fun. Happy people certainly have fun, but happiness and fun are not the same. Fun activities help us temporarily forget our problems – but they do not bring permanent happiness, because the effect fades once the fun ends. Fun is what you feel during the activity; happiness is an on-going state of being experienced before and after. If you rely on fun to bring happiness, you’ll have an empty feeling once the party is over because you’re not addressing the real issues that bring the genuine thing.
  • Embrace change. Change is a natural and inevitable part of life. There’s a saying attributed to Helen Keller:

‘When the door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one which has been opened for us.’

Imagination

Imagine yourself surrounded with happiness, feeling happy, enjoying life, cheerful and contented no matter what is going on around you. Your unconscious will take this as an instruction to create happy feelings for you. Try it – it works!

Action

  • Mix with happy people. Happiness rubs off. So does unhappiness. It’s hard to be happy when surrounded by unhappy people, so mix with people who know how to enjoy themselves. Life is meant to be fun! Comedian Victor Borge described laughter as, ‘The shortest distance between two people.
  • Laugh loud and laugh often. The ability to laugh is a good indicator of mental health. It also alters your body chemistry – endorphins (the ‘happy hormones’) are released into the bloodstream bringing a feeling of well-being. When you’re happy, your body is relaxed, your facial expression changes and you laugh often. It also works in reverse. If you laugh often, it makes you feel better.
  • Smile often. Every time you pass a mirror or see yourself in a shop window, smile. Also, practise the ‘inner smile’ – the more you smile inwardly to yourself, the more you will experience a feeling of happiness. If nothing else, other people will wonder what you’re up to.
  • Do unto others… The happiest people enjoy helping others. Give – not just material things, but yourself. Make time to listen. Be cheerful (even if you’re having a bad day). Not only will you feel better, you’ll find others return your kindness.
  • Be here now.Living in the ‘here and now’ is one of the biggest steps you can take to happiness and peace of mind. How can you be happy if you continually wallow in the past, agonise over old mistakes, wishing you could relive parts of your life, and blaming yourself for wasted opportunities? Stop beating yourself up. Now is the only moment over which you have any control, so make the most of it. If your mind wanders to what might happen tomorrow, bring it back. And finally, remember the last line of ‘Gone With The Wind’ – ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

©David Lawrence Preston, 28.4.2016

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Raise your sights to a higher way of being

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One of the visitor attractions in the holiday town where I live is a balloon tethered to a 500 metre cable. Patrons enjoy a stunning panorama which extends for over twenty miles.

Imagine a balloon flight: the higher you rise, the further you see. Features on the ground, including all the things you fret and worry over, get smaller and lose their detail. If the balloon could rise even higher, they would disappear almost completely. Similarly, when you seek happiness and security in a higher way of thinking, your anxieties seem less significant.

How do you attain a higher way of thinking? The way is represented by the letters I-T-I-A.

  • Intention: Aspire to your highest potential. Direct your will. Keep your intentions pure and everything is achievable. The more you stay focussed, the more certain it is.
  • Think: Shake off the thinking patterns and beliefs that have constrained you, raise your thoughts to the underlying Intelligence that governs the universe and all our lives.
  • Imagine: Imagine yourself charged with spiritual energy, like a giant rechargeable battery absorbing power from the source as effortlessly as breathing. Imagine yourself putting it to good use in the service of your fellow beings.
  • Action: Be the master of your actions, making wise choices guided by your intuition. Act as if source energy is flowing through you and have faith in all that is good. When this becomes your natural way of being, your Inner Power is truly awakened.

Persevere

When you decide to change, you’ll come up against mental inertia – warring thoughts in your mind. Ignore them. There will probably be times when you feel tempted to go back to your old ways.

A friend recently said to me, ‘Yours are lovely values to have, but you can’t live that way.’ Why not? Did she mean that spiritual ideals somehow interfere with other priorities, such as the scramble for status and material success? Greed, envy and selfishness are all too common in today’s world: you don’t have to be a part of it.

No words can express how you feel once you have awakened the infinite power within you. All along your Inner Power had been lying dormant, and you didn’t realise it. But now you do. To quote Kahlil Gibran, ‘You are greater than you know, and all is well.’

‘Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace within your soul.’

From ‘Desiderata’ Max Ehrman

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 23.1.2017

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Transform yourself by the renewal of your mind

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Your self-esteem is a set of thoughts which manifest in attitudes, emotions and behaviours. If it needs a makeover, apply the I-T-I-A Formula. Remember: all four parts are necessary to effect permanent change.

Intention: Decide right now that you’ll treat yourself with love and respect, and accept only what is right for you.

Thinking: Monitor your self-talk, examine your beliefs, and use affirmations to re-align your thinking. Self-deprecating thoughts have nothing to sustain them other than our own habits.

Imagination: Create the person you want to be in your imagination, knowing that he/she will eventually become the reality.

Action: Let your intentions, thinking and imagination show in your behaviour.  If this feels uncomfortable at first, take it in small steps, ignore any discomfort, and above all persist. Consistent action based on right thinking always brings results.

Persistence and determination are key. Let nothing get in the way of your quest for confidence,  high self-esteem and inner peace. Stretch yourself a little every day. Each success, however small, brings encouragement..

©David Lawrence Preston, 16.1.2017

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Transform yourself by the renewal of your mind

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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Your self-image is a set of thoughts and mental images which manifest in attitudes, emotions and behaviours. If it needs a makeover, apply the I-T-I-A Formula. Remember: all four parts are necessary to effect permanent change.

Intention: Decide right now that you’ll treat yourself with love and respect, and accept only what is right for you.

Thinking: Monitor your self-talk, examine your beliefs, and use affirmations to re-align your thinking. Self-deprecating thoughts have nothing to sustain them other than our own habits.

Imagination: Create the person you want to be in your imagination, knowing that he/she will eventually become the reality.

Action: Let your intentions, thinking and imagination show in your behaviour.  If this feels uncomfortable at first, take it in small steps, ignore any discomfort, and above all persist. Consistent action based on right thinking always brings results.

Persistence and determination are key. Let nothing get in the way of your quest for high self-esteem and inner peace. Stretch yourself a little every day. Each success, however small, brings encouragement..

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 10.1.2017

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Intuitive problem solving

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Our innate intuition can be used for solving intractable problems. Relax, Simply ask your Superconscious a question and believe you’ll be given the right answer. You’ll know, because you’ll feel it throughout your body.

The best questions are those which presuppose a favourable outcome, such as:

  • What’s the best solution to this problem?
  • What can I do next?
  • What can I learn from this?
  • What else can I do that I haven’t already thought of?

The answer may come at any time or when you least expect, in a dream, a chance remark, or when chilled out. Be sure to act on it. If you don’t like the answer and ignore it, you’ll only make the problem worse!

Sleep on it

There’s plenty of evidence that the sleeping mind solves problems more efficiently than the waking mind. For example:

  • Most of Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Tristan and Isolde’ was dreamed, as was the second half of Richard Bach’s best-seller, ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ (the first part had been gathering dust on his shelf for eight years).
  • Elias Howe was given the means of perfecting the sewing machine in a dream.
  • Alfred Russel Wallace, a nineteenth century naturalist was in bed with a fever when he dreamed a theory of natural selection. He wrote to Charles Darwin, who borrowed the idea and published ‘The Origin of Species’ soon after.
  • Paul McCartney claims that the song ‘Yesterday’ came to him in a dream.

You can use this for your benefit. If you are grappling with a problem, write it down and read it through just before you go to sleep. Ask your Superconscious to work on it for you during the night. Keep a pen and pad at your bedside and. If an idea comes, write it down immediately. Many good ideas are lost if they are not recorded straight away.

Try it out

Geniuses stand out not just because they have brilliant ideas, but because they do something with them. Have you ever had a good idea and done nothing about it, only to discover subsequently that someone else thought of it too and made it a success? They trusted their inner guidance and acted on it – you didn’t!

Genius, as Albert Einstein said, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The composer Johannes Brahms concurred. ‘I wish to impress on you that my compositions are not the fruits of inspiration alone,’ he said, ‘but also severe, painstaking toil.’ Many outstanding ideas come to nothing because they are not acted upon.

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 12.12.2016

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Inspiration

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We receive inspiration from two main sources. The first is from within. It consists of creative thinking, remembering and ‘body intelligence’. For example, skilled mechanics know straight away why an engine won’t start and professional musicians can tune in to a piece of music and play along without necessarily rehearsing. In both cases the memory of how to do it is imprinted in their consciousness,

We also receive inspiration from without. It comes to us in the form of ideas that cannot be traced to our own experiences. Many geniuses believed that they were tuning in to a higher form of consciousness. Einstein, Louis Pasteur, Edison, Alexander Fleming, Mozart and Ludwig Van Beethoven believed they were tapping into a source of inspiration beyond their own minds and were merely channels through which ideas flowed. The Prophet Mohammed was illiterate, yet he made profound statements about science and the natural world centuries ahead of their time that turned out to be amazingly accurate.

Where did this come from? ‘It cannot be done by willpower,’ said the composer Johannes Brahms when asked from where his inspiration came. ‘When I feel the urge to compose, I begin by appealing directly to my maker. I immediately feel vibrations that thrill my whole being. In this exalted state, I see clearly what is obscure in my ordinary moods, then I feel capable of drawing inspiration from above.’

You are a channel

All the knowledge that ever was or will be already exists. We think we are expanding the boundaries of knowledge, but this is untrue – the knowledge is already there! We simply discover what has always been. The means of sending radio signals, e-mails and text messages, travelling by air and carrying out organ transplants existed before humans discovered them. We didn’t create the knowledge, we uncovered it.

To be the best channel you can, you must allow the inspiration to flow through you. Are you resisting by refusing to believe you have this power? Enter the silence through meditation and contemplation, then you are ready to receive spiritual ideas and inspiration from wherever it comes. Be calm and still. Be open to imaginative ideas. Be patient – the Superconscious cannot be hurried – maybe later – a fully formed solution presents itself.

You are no less a channel for universal ideas than Edison, Pasteur, Brahms and the rest – we all are. All it takes is self-belief and a little practice.

©David Lawrence Preston, 12.12.2016

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