Initiation
Most of what blocks us from the Spirit is unconscious. A key role of the sponsor is to help me, the candidate, to discover my blind spots – my shadow – so that it can be integrated over time. This can only succeed if the sponsor is prepared to be vulnerable in the sense that she is willing to share her own ongoing shadow work…
Perseverance
To succeed, any transformation process must comprise roughly 20% insights and 80% practice. For this reason, the thrust of the PQ Programme is practice. Full commitment from the outset is required. Wisely accommodating ourselves (surrendering) to what is beyond our control, is the prerequisite for progress. Perseverance is the fuel that keeps us going. Resilience, – ever faster recovery from setbacks, – is the reward. Happiness, in the sense of the fulfilment of our full potential in alignment with our purpose, our passions, and deeply held values, is the outcome…
The Rest Test
It has been demonstrated that any person who practices PQ Mental Fitness daily for 40 days or more, experiences palpable benefits. The metric for PQ is that, for every negative thought or feeling we experience over a day, we have at least three positive ones. This is as true for our self talk as it is for our communication with others…
Stress
I state the following key principle of Positive Intelligence: All your distress is self-generated. To be more precise, all your distress in the forms of anxiety, disappointments, stress, anger, shame, guilt – all the unpleasant stuff that makes up your suffering – is generated by your own Saboteurs.
Shirzad Chamine, `Positive Intelligence´
Restlessness
When we look at what are referred to as `Saboteurs´ in the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Programme, what we are really seeing is human behaviours and thinking patterns, in and of themselves necessary for our development and survival as young human beings, which have crossed a tipping point whereby they become destructive, ultimately leading us to the opposite of our intended goals…
Photography
Like my seven brothers, I was keen and spent much of my time there on the river; sometimes for twelve hours or more on days after a night’s rain, eagerly practising the craft taught me in childhood by my father, who learnt it from his, etc. To my consternation, I was not as good, by far, as some other members of the family, and often felt under pressure to prove myself in the strange ways of unwritten family codes…
Meditation
I am in no doubt that my mind’s proclivity to wander has been the cause of much of the suffering I have generated throughout my life, for my self and others. The harm that has resulted from this suffering has had the greatest impact on those closest to me; harming those we hold most dear in life is one of the most cruel ironies of the human condition…
Entitlement
The second envelope got me curious. There had been several items of post from Corsica since my accident there on holiday in mid-July; invoices, medical records and confirmations of payment, all of which were required in the on-going process of recouping most of my co-payments for the hospital care provided there. That professional treatment for serious spinal injuries may indeed have saved my life; it certainly safeguarded my mobility – the ability to move my arms and legs, without which life would be very different today…
Surrender
All addictive patterns have in common the issue of control; the obsession with establishing, retaining, and losing control. The drinker steps into the pub `for one´ on the way home and finds herself still at the bar at midnight, the family at home long forgotten. The workaholic swears that he will move down a few gears after the current project is handed over, only to wonder, years later, what happened to such resolutions. What is required is the surrender to the impossibility of control. This is a bitter pill to swallow for anybody brought up to `get a grip´ on life and, when things get difficult, to `pull yourself up by your boot straps´.
