The speed of the genius.

I know that deep down; all of us have access to source of deep genius. The consistency with which we allow ourselves to access it determines whether we decide we’re a “creative person” or not. Since childhood I’ve written: short stories, not so short stories, poetry (and after getting hooked on hip-hop as a teenager) rap lyrics – literally by the bucket load. I remember every year or two throwing out a shoe box full paper because id covered everything from exercise books to receipts with abstract lyrics scribbled on every single sheaf – all long before I’d ever performed live or shared began sharing my output with another person.

Years later after doing probably a couple of hundred performances and releasing a few CDs I reached a point of frustration – culminating in a decision at the beginning of this year to leave it all alone for awhile and see what other outlets I could find. The main reason was the seeming complexity of releasing music – it wasn’t just writing and recording any more but mixing, mastering, artwork, searching for distribution and trying to time it all right and maximise the exposure and blah blah blah. My entrepreneurial and organisational brain had started to grow and it was seriously dominating the arty part.

What I’ve realised lately is that many artists (of various kinds) take the whole thing way too seriously – underground hip-hop heads are no exception. For many people I know, the whole process is incredibly precious, their art is their life and things have to be just right. Of course, like anything we do, our attitude towards what we create reflects our general attitude towards life. I realise now how much my perfectionism and obsession with doing things ‘right’ has cost me in terms of enjoyment and how much its limited what I’ve chosen to share with the outside world.

Since blogging and since learning to take myself a little more lightly this year I decided to start writing and recording music again with a different attitude – in the same way I do with a blog.

I don’t agonise over these things, I simply write them down when I get an idea, do a very cursory edit to make sure its not complete gibberish and then bung it on the web in the hope that you’ll want to read it. Why should music be any different?

Today I downloaded some recent work by Buck 65 – an artist that I really enjoy. His recent project “dirt bike” is 3 full length mixes of demo type material released for free over a 3 month period and mixed on a cheap pair of headphones. I’ve been listening to it today and I reckon its some of his best work. I guess like everything else it helps to know WHY we’re doing something – my new reason for writing lyrics is simple – it’s an attempt to share some of what flows out of my head and on to the page with other people. So in that spirit please check out some of this new stuff I’ve recorded in the last 48 hours. I’ll attempt to link it here and on MySpace too – id also recommend
that my artistic friends out there do themselves the favour of lightening up a little – as long as something captures your essence, and its honest – then its good art!

BOLLOCKS! EMBED NOT WORKING – ILL PUT THE TRACK UP SOON – FOR NOW TRY THE MYSPACE

 

What are your values?

I haven’t blogged for a couple weeks and i gotta say im loving life right now. I’ve been more consistently happy lately than i ever have in my life previously. A big part of that is because i’m more congruent with my values than i have ever been before. Values, are essentially the feelings or states that you most want to experience on a regular basis. The thing is, you can (and should) set big goals and commit to them to get your life moving in the way you want, but this may not necessarily make you happy unless you fully understand why you want to achieve those goals in the first place. In other words you may aim to earn 1 million dollars – thats fine – but what is the feeling you’re wanting to achieve? Is it security? Freedom? Success? We choose our goals based on the feelings we think achieving those goals will give us. Its still important to have the goals, but if we make a list of our values and internalise it and live by those values in order of importance then we will be experiencing the feelings we want here and now.

The quickest way to clear this up is to write down what you believe your values are at present, i would start with the top 5 or 10. Remember these are the states or feelings you want to experience the most regularly – examples would be words like : growth, integrity, power, happiness, joy, health, etc.. Once you have a list you need to read over it carefully, ask yourself questions about each one –
eg “Why is growth so important to me? Is it more important than happiness? What does this value giv e me? What does it cost me?”
My old values list was:

1. Growth
2. Adventure
3. Connection
4. Freedom
5. Success
6. Comfort
7. Health
8. Fun
9. Happiness
10. Creativity

When i scrutinised it i realised that these values weren’t all that they could be – for instance i asked myself “what does having comfort as one of my values cost me?” it costed me a lot, prevented me from doing certain activities and from taking risks. I then asked myself –“if i was really the person i aspire to be – what would my values be, and in what order?”
After some serious thought, i made a new list, and i juggled the order of the values into what i belive would most empower me to be the person i want to be if i live by them from now on.
I ended up with:

1. Health & Vitality
2. Love & Connection
3. Peace
4. Creativity
5. Contribution
6. Gratitude
7. Growth
8. Humour & Fun
9. Enthusiasm & Passion
10. Intelligence & Wisdom
11. Integrity
12. Joy & Happiness
13. Excellence

For those of you who don’t do this sort of thing often it may seem weird and you may not see the benefit of this exercise. The main thing i gained from this is from checking in with myself and learning what i don’t want to compromise – health is my number one value – because i need it to live the life i want, that means i wont compromise it just to have fun or in the name of one of my other values (or anything else for that matter). The simple act of writing them down does change something internally, however to really live by these values, to memorise them and pin them up in your office will give you a strength of character and deep sense of congruence with who you are that you may never have felt before.

This exercise has been pretty much directly lifted from Tony Robbins book “Awaken the Giant Within” – its a big read but i definitely recommend it if your wanting to create lasting improvements in your li

ARE YOU ON PURPOSE?

Recently I remapped out my life goals across all the major areas using a system I pinched (and modified) from Dr John Demartini. This time when I wrote them out I stretched myself a little further in terms of what I could envision and I was sure to attach a powerful “reason why” to each one.

I must’ve done something right because almost instantly I felt a surge in my sense of purpose – a big boost in adrenalin and a sense that I was back on track – and had an important mission to fulfil. I believe that a strong sense of purpose is one of the things that can elevate a ‘good’ life into a GREAT life. I also believe that we choose our purpose (although events may transpire that influence us to choose) and that we can add purpose to our lives at will just by envisioning a bigger picture and by choosing goals that on some level make a contribution to society.

I just watched UFC 104 – Lyoto “the dragon” Machida defended his light heavyweight title against Mauricio ‘shogun’ Rua. For those not familiar with the UFC (ultimate fighting championship) it’s a US -based mixed martial arts organization that has become extremely popular worldwide and that I have become fairly addicted to watching. Lyoto Machida has been pretty much unstoppable and was recently crowned the light heavyweight champ.

 Somehow he just managed to defend his title in a controversial decision that left me wondering how you retain your sense of purpose once your major goal has been achieved. The only way forwards (as I see it) is to set some new, bigger goals and/or attach a new sense of purpose to what already exists. Given two people of equal or similar ability the person with the greater sense of drive and clarity of vision will always achieve a greater result. More on my seven folders goal setting method later.

Are you a VIP?

I developed an interest in Buddhism and meditation about twelve years ago after finally graduating from my teen fascination with magic and pagan mythology. Id practiced various forms of meditation by myself over the years but had never really achieved much of a shift of consciousness – at least not compared to experiments with mushrooms, LSD and other psychoactive substances that I investigated (fairly thoroughly) whilst I was growing up. In 2001 I re-enrolled at University and began a Bachelor or Arts degree. Due to not getting into the multimedia course I’d wanted to do, I ended up majoring in comparative religion and began with all of the subjects relating to eastern philosophy, mysticism and Buddhism. It’s fair to say I had a reasonable grounding in my theoretical understanding of various meditational styles and although I experimented with different practices I promised myself that one day I would do a ten day Vipassana (or insight meditation) retreat.

Earlier this year (after a couple of cancellations) I went on my first Vipassana retreat and I must say I found it to be as challenging and rewarding an experience as anything I’ve undertaken.

The first thing people said to me when I mentioned what I was doing over New Years (my retreat went from 27^th Dec 2008 – 11^th Jan 2009) was “Oh really? As if you could keep your mouth shut for ten days!” I found this interesting, because even though I am an undeniably talkative person I never really doubted my ability to simply ‘not-talk’. I suppose it’s fair enough though; other people only ever see me in a social setting and I’m the only one who gets to see me when I’m alone so on a lot of levels I suppose I’m the only one that really, really knows me.

The first day of Vipassana is really just about turning up and checking in, to the Woori Yallock meditation centre which is called Dhamma Aloka. I was a little apprehensive, I guess I knew I was about to do something I’d never done before and I was also wondering about the food – I knew there were only two meals a day and I wasn’t thrilled about the idea! That night there was a basic housekeeping meeting (after you get rid of all your trinkets, mobile phones, wallets and jewellery and so on) after which point – no more speaking!

This is followed by a 2 hr meditation session, where we were introduce to the basic technique of “Ana Panna”  – concentration meditation whereby you simply focus on and observe the nature of the breath.

The first real day (1 of 10) began at 4am the next morning; we stayed in basic but functional brick bungalows and were awoken by the bell – it was still dark and the stars were out and to be honest I was pretty excited about the whole thing. Fast forward about 8 hours and I had done (or attempted) more meditation than I’d ever done in my life – the first day for me simply showed me how much the mind wanders. I would focus on the breathing, stay focused for maybe for or five breaths then realised I had begun to daydream about my worldly goals, about an episode of The Mighty Boosh or more often than not, about boobs. This practice continues for the first four days – at points I would
experience deep and abiding peace and calmness, and a sense of love for myself and everything else – at other points (quite often in fact) id become frustrated and very, very bored. I began to learn a lot about myself by noticing how I reacted to simple thoughts and mental statements and could already begin to see patterns of behaviour more clearly.

From there on in we were introduced to the actual Vipassana technique – a method whereby you gradually scan the body and observe any sensations or feelings that may be arising. By this stage of the game (you’ve been watching your breath for 4 days straight) the mind is particularly focused and sensitive – I remember feeling the breath at the base of my nostrils and being able to feel every pore and hair as though they were the size of massive trees. After the Vipassana technique had been unveiled I remember thinking “is that it?” On some level I’d wanted some esoteric and magical technique that would quickly transform me into an enlightened being or whatever. After practising the observational technique for a few hours though, a lot of shit began to happen. I couldn’t sleep that night at all, I just had image after image flashing before my eyes, I could remember in perfect visual clarity conversations I’d had at age four, friends I hadn’t spoke to for years and all manner of auditory and visual hallucinations began to surface. I purposely haven’t touched on the discourses (which are played on video each night) because the theory is definitely best absorbed whilst practicing the technique – one thing I began to understand though was the description of Vipassana as a kind of spiritual surgery in which a wound is opened up and all of the shit and pus is released from the wound in order for it to properly heal. I remember sitting on the hill during one of the rest breaks, staring out over the beautiful hills and valleys in the surrounding area and feeling genuinely miserable – as though hundreds of tonnes of all my accumulated negative shit were pouring out of me  all the while accompanied by a mixture of visuals and auditory. Based on my experiences with other tools such as NET (neuro emotional technique) I instinctively felt that I was releasing attachments to old experiences and freeing myself from a lifetimes worth of conditioning.  Once i began to open up to the process it got easier, and I was able to go deeper and deeper into it without resisting the sensations or feelings that arose and just let them go. By the last day I was sad to be leaving, I could see how people spend months and years of their lives working on this method and despite having two particularly tough days during which I really, really wanted to piss off home back to my laptop and other forms of sensory stimulation I knew I had grown as a person. I still practise meditation regularly (although nowhere near the two hours a day recommended to sustain the depth of the practice) and I would heartily recommend a Vipassana retreat for anyone wanting to truly get to know themselves on a deeper level. Oh yeah and the food was amazing! It turns out two meals of vegan food per day is enough – as long as you’re meditating your arse off!

btw ive added a link to dhamma.org (the website for vipassana anywhere in the world) so you can get the proper info if your interested..

FRIENDSHIP 2.0

 

 

I gave in and copped an iphone about 4 months ago and it really has had an impact on my online and social habits. I’m the kinda person who already had about 7 or 8 MySpace pages, a couple of facebooks and numerous other types of profile that you may or may not be familiar with. These have arisen partly because of various music ventures I’ve had over the last couple of years and partly because I have a lot of different personas and have struggled to reintegrate them (its like an online version of the united states of Tara, which you probably don’t watch anyway).

Usually when I read about studies into this stuff it’s focussed on poor old gen Y and how they’re all becoming socially dysfunctional and barely able to sit still for more than the length of a viral video of two cats fighting with subtitles (or whatever). The fact is that the average teenager would have access to a much greater social sphere than their parents. Lately I’ve noticed a two distinct classes emerging amongst my friends –those who remote access the net (from iphones or whatever) and update social networks regularly and those who still use the internet regularly but only from home and therefore are a lot less regular with their updates.

To look at the negative side of it – we are becoming addicted to communication – no question. For someone who practices a bit of meditation and spends just a little time each day quieting the mind – it seems obvious that all this stuff does create more mental noise and chatter. On the other hand, I’ve never felt so connected – I have deep and meaningful back and forths with people in other time zones, I write these blogs and link them to facebook and feel like I am on the verge of integrating all this crazy stuff together which will allow me to reach a shitload more people with very minimal effort and effectively gives me the chance to be my own publishing company, television network, record label and radio show – all rolled into one.

I’m curious to see new etiquettes evolve – and physical boundaries continue to dissolve – many people consider their online communities to be just as real as their physical ones.  Is it rude to check your facebook whilst dining with friends? Will we actually need phones (with phone numbers) once everyone has portable internet – I mean couldn’t I just facebook or IM you?

Then there’s the marketing/networking. I go thru a bizarre cycle on facebook where everyone offers me to join their band page and their business page, which I invariably do then go delete it a day later because I stand all this crap. I have life-coaches, rappers and all manner of other individuals and collectives spamming me on the daily and to be fair – I’m interested in a lot of it – but there are also a lot of people missing the mark – kids pasting their new CD on every last MySpace page and still wondering my no-one gives a fuck.

All in all, I’m well up for a brave new world – but if you want to gain the maximum benefits (sounds like I’m selling insurance) you’re going to need to adapt to it pretty quickly. I definitely don’t claim to be a master of this stuff – but I’ve decided recently that I am going to become a student of it.

Feel  free to post links to any sites or articles about social networking and what’s on the horizon too..

MOODY MUCH?

When I first started my coaching studies something I found odd was the way other coaches would speak about emotions, moods and behaviours. For example I would hear someone say “he’s doing anxiety” or “doing overwhelm”. It almost reminded me of the way we talk about drugs “he was doing a lot of ecstasy” or “she used to do coke.”

What’s most interesting about this language is that its implies a choice – if you “do” a lot of anger – then its a program your running just like your would on your computer. The challenging aspect of this language is that it forces you to take responsibility for your moods, attitudes and behaviours because you’re admitting that you create them yourself. So often our language dictates our thoughts and behaviours.

 I was chatting with a friend the other day discussing “moods”. I realised in the way he was speaking that for him, a mood was simply something that happens – like weather. The implication is his language was that he was just a victim of whatever mood might turn up on his doorstep.

Earlier this year I did a Vipassana retreat, a ten day silent meditation course where you simply sit and observe your thoughts and emotions for hours on end; it’s not exactly easy, but the process leads to a massive increase in your self awareness. One of the things I saw pretty quickly is that the mind is extremely fickle, swinging from bliss one moment, to boredom or sadness and back in a very brief period of time.

It is usually when we become attached to a specific emotion or mood that we get “stuck” there. This emotion or mental program is something that we’ve gotten good at running with practise to the point we dont even realise we’re doing it anymore.

 So if cracking the shits or having a sulk worked for you as a 5 year old, it may well be a strategy your still running today. The key is to interupt the pattern and consciously ask yourself if its getting you the result you actually want.The art of putting yourself in a constructive state of mind has to be one of the keys to living a happy and successful existence.

 I don’t claim to have mastered this fully by any means, but through conscious practice over the last couple of years (which I’ve increased since doing Vipassana and becoming a coach) I’ve definitely become a happier person and a more effective human being. I’d definitely recommend listening to Tony Robbins tapes for helping with this sort of thing – I downloaded “get the edge” off the internet (I already told you I’m pro – piracy right?) and have been getting wicked results from running these tapes in the morning before I go to work. Don’t let the cheesiness phase you – Robbins is THE man

Magick v Manifestation.

“just a regular night in then, alex?”

When I was a kid I was intrigued by magic. Not stage magic with rabbits and hats and card tricks and so on. The art of making things happen by choice. Aleister Crowley called it “Magick” which he defined as “love under will”.  This is what I ganked from Wikipedia:

“”Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.”

By this logic, intentionally becoming rich, or losing or gaining weight or in fact causing anything to happen on purpose – is magick. The way I see it, consciously creating our own state of being and being fully aware of our thoughts and sensations is the ultimate act of magick.

If you stop to think about it, the fact that everything is composed of tiny particles vibrating at different rates creating an actual, tangible physical realm is pretty full on – compared to that, creating our lives around us the way we want them to be shouldn’t be all that hard right?

The problem with words is they acquire different meanings and labels over time. The idea of Magick is for many people frightening or unbelievable, yet they themselves would have witness things that would have been impossible for previous generations.

I occasionally picture going back into time (not 1986), and be able to show someone from the dark ages an ipod, or a skateboard or a photograph of Tokyo, or Marilyn Manson. How would i explain my life, which includes things like; facebook, hip-hop culture, NLP, call centres and the UFC?

When looking at it like that, how could anything be impossible?

PIRATES OR PAWNS?

So I’m currently reading a book (lent to me by my mate Wayne Lotek) called The Pirates Dilemma.

The subheading reads “how youth culture is reinventing capitalism” and I must say it’s a stimulating read even if the author does draws a few tenuous conclusions here and there.  The book looks at how youth movements like punk, hip-hop, pirate radio, file sharing and gamer culture have impacted on global consciousness as well as marketing, business, copyright law and freedom of expression.

There are some very cool ideas in the book – and the idea that ‘piracy’ – in the form of unauthorised use of intellectual and physical property (like sampling or graffiti for example) and in creatively seizing access to the means of production eventually impacts on the mainstream and shapes the way that we think, create and do business.

 There are some especially cool references in the book to historical events like Max Headroom jamming the TV airwaves in the eighties, Madonna’s website getting hacked after she took an aggressive stance on people pirating her music in 2003 and LL Cool J sneaking a FUBU hat into a Gap TV ad and sending the “for us by us” brand sales through the roof.

Despite having spent a fair amount of time at university (I studied things like comparative religion, Chinese language, media and journalism whilst listening to thousands of hours of rap music) I never developed an easily communicable political manifesto – something that has  led to very strange debates about capitalism when I’m at parties with lefty uni students who think we should all become socialists and wear recycled clothes and seem not to realise that they, themselves are the ultimate products of the system they seem to despise.

 The communication problem occurs because my own understanding of capitalism is cobbled together from my exposure to Jay Z, Tony Robbins, Richard Branson and Tibetan Buddhism -> I see it as a potentially empowering system and very much believe that we create our own world and that we live in a realm of abundance and wealth – if only we have the nous to see it and value ourselves enough to take charge of it.  

My hero’s have ranged from Bronx golden era Hip-Hoppers throwing street parties with stolen lamppost electricity to computer hackers to audacious entrepreneurs who began armed with nothing but ideas; to blame the system just seems weak when we have everything we need right here at our fingertips -> I guess my philosophy isn’t to hate the player OR the game – its simply that if we want to win, then we have to learn how to play and how to play well.

In the words of Jay –Z “ I’m not a business-man, I’m a business, man.”

http://thepiratesdilemma.com/punk-capitalism/excerpt-from-chapter-1-punk-capitalism

oh btw. does anyone out there remember when this happened??? amazing!

The power of intention.

I made the colossal mistake of drinking not one, but two cans of V at work today. For most people working in a call centre this is considered pretty normal but I have learned that someone who is hyper-active, easily overstimulated and has a high speed metabolism best leave the stuff alone.

Time moves fast. Well, that may not be true metaphysically speaking – its known by everyone from quantum physicians to Buddhist monks that time is an illusion – but psychological time (as Eckhart Tolle calls it) seems to be travelling along fairly quickly from my particular vantage point right now.

I began Certificate IV in life coaching in February this year and by April was visualizing myself in a role within Salesforce (the company I was working in as a telemarketer) that could utilise my newly developing coaching and mentoring skills. Fast forward to August this year and I was in that exact position, taking on the role of Sales Coach on the National Australia Bank outbound sales campaign in the same company.  

For some time I’ve been a firm believer in the power of intention. I first dabbled with the occult in my mid-teens, fascinated by the idea of using ritual and visualisation to make things happen.  Now that we live in the era of “The Secret” perhaps one of the most successful commercialisations of a spiritual principle to date, it almost seems clichéd to be writing about the law of attraction.

The fact is though, that we create our own realities already. Each and every moment we are reinventing ourselves and setting fresh destinies in motion simply by believing what we believe and nowhere is this more true than in our work lives. Throughout my late teens and twenties I perceived my employers as oppressive enemies who took advantage of my need for money and took great pleasure in “keeping me down”  - in fact I saw work as being a barrier to me achieving my goals in life.

I now see this as an extremely skewed perception, conditioning I some how picked up from generations of working class ancestors who had it a lot tougher than I ever had and who had few choices in life but work hard and struggle. In addition to this I’d created an identity for myself as an anti-social rebel who hated ‘the system’ and could only ‘keep it real’ by living on the fringes of society and being broke.

If we accept that our beliefs create our world – then the beliefs I held really weren’t helping me much at all. I gradually learned that a belief is simply a feeling of certainty around what something means (see Tony Robbins et al) and decided to adopt some better more empowering ones.

I think that might be the single hardest part of the whole process of growth, recognising that our thoughts are what shapes us and taking on the noble challenge of reprogramming how we process our world and what we choose to believe.  I decided (after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad) that Sales would be the gateway to me becoming a brilliant entrepreneur and that my bosses and co-workers would not only accept my talents but would go so far as to nurture and encourage them. The unsurprising thing is this is exactly what has happened for me.  As a result of being coached, visualising and “acting as if” my situation in one area of my life very quickly began to reassemble
in the way I decided it ought to be. By no means do I swan through every day thinking that life is perfect, but the more I practice being grateful for what I do have and designing the way i want things to be the more it seems to become real.

Mic Check.. One.. Two..

Its been a helluva journey so far. What i’m finding is its increasingly difficult to sum myself up in a couple of sentences. Do i start with what i do? Do i talk about the things i aspire to do but aren’t quite living up to? Or do i create yet another profile – a portrayal of how i would like to be perceived – launched out here into virtual space in an attempt to fulfil the same egoic need that has me updating my facebook status every 3 hours on my iphone (yep i bought one).

My interests are fairly varied, although they do seem to tie together in a strangely synergistic way. I work at Sales Force, an outbound call centre – as a Sales Coach, and the purpose of my role as i see it is to help people achieve their full potential (ostensibly as salespeople) and therefore help the company increase its profitability.

For about the last 18 years my dream was to be a rapper – a dream that i have realised to a certain degree, i won and lost numerous mc battles in australia and beyond and have done maybe 200+ shows over the last 5 or 6 years, and i still perform to this day – albeit less often and in a more theatrical type way. I’ve also been interested in personal development, the occult,eastern philosophy, martial arts spirituality, the  law of attraction, psychology, human behaviour, and more recently sales, marketing, social networking, branding, capitalism and communication.

I read the book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ and my desire to become an entrepreneur lead me to get a job in sales – something i became quite skilled at with practice. I did a course in Life Coaching earlier this year, something i was initially cynical about, and still occaisionally wonder what have i gotten myself into – however overall i have experienced huge growth as a person from my involvement in the process of being coached and coaching others and am developing ways to use my newfound skills for the benefit of myself and others.

So. I decided to start this page for what purpose? Parlty because i’ve always wanted to be a writer. Partly to share a few gems of wisdom i may have picked up (or wholesale pinched from other people. And partly to make some kind of a contribution, on some level at all. Also because i cant sleep and something tells me i need to write. So stay tuned. For those of you who may have read my other blogs – this is where its at from here on in.

Peace

Gary “Gart” Newton (aka Dragonfly)