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The Shift - Ten truths of profound mental health
There is a video of a child struggling with terror in the sea. He is crying and his arms are flailing. His face is contorted in fear. It looks, from the perspective of the camera, as though the child is drowning.
And then along comes another child who calmly, laughing even, grabs hold of the drowning child’s feet and places them on the sea bed. The drowning child is now standing up and the water barely reaches his thighs. He was never in any actual risk. And yet, in the perception of danger, in a mind lost in the belief of drowning, with behaviour responding to perception rather than reality, he could have drowned.
This is an apt metaphor for the struggle that is the nature of the human condition. The Struggle takes place when a mind and body create an experience of being that is completely out of alignment with reality.
In The Shift we explore how a mind lost in the fight with its own created reality settles into the profound presence, love and truth that is its sane state. It is the end the of the on-going attempt to secure a fragile sense of self by controlling emotions and experience, turning life into an on-going revelation of the thought-created nature of self and reality and of the unchanging truth of existence that is prior to thought. This is the truth of profound mental health.
REAL: The Inside-Out Guide
To Being Yourself
Be yourself’ they said.
‘I want to be’ I said. ‘But who am I?’
Have you ever noticed that what you think about who you are, how you should be, how well you are doing changes? This is because our idea of who we are is created in thought and it is the nature of thought to change. Looking at this more clearly takes us on a breath-taking exploration into what is real about us. We discover what is permanent, unchanging. And it is never what we think.
The first part of REAL looks at everything that cannot be true about who we are. It looks at what is transient, momentary and ever-changing such as our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, insecurities, habits, stress. These are all the things we can stop paying attention to because the only thing we know for sure about them is that they will change.
And this leaves us with one important question: who are we?
The second part of REAL explores what remains when our thought-created idea of self dissolves. It explores what is constant, what is always there regardless of transient thought and belief. By looking for the constant we get closer to the truth of us. When we live from this understanding, we have more freedom, integrity and wholeness than we had ever thought possible.
EASE: The Inside-Out Guide
to Getting real With Work
Imagine if we could remove from work all stress, exhaustion and insecurity.
Imagine if work became the expression of our deepest, most authentic self.
Imagine if it no longer looked as though anything depended on it.
Imagine if the idea of work disolved altogether and became the simple, sheer joy of living.
We don’t have to imagine it.
We can live it.
Because it is the truth of work.
Lived from understanding, work is simply the expression of the freedom, peace and happiness we know ourselves to be.
It is just that, somewhere along the way, we forgot who we were.
And so work started to look hard.
EASE explores the transformation of self, work, colleagues, performance, success and money as we come back in touch with reality.
HOME : The return to what you already are
This is a book about what we really are and what the world really is. What we are is Home. This is where what we really are always is.
And it is about the lived experience of not being Home. Of feeling alone, hopeless, scared, low, out of control, shameful, lacking. Lost.
And it is about how trying to find Home, from that place of lostness, makes the experience of lostness worse.
HOME is written to show that what we are is everything already.
GAME: Getting Real with the Play of Life
What would change if we realised that the self we think we are is not and has never been who we are?
What would fall away if we realised that reality, as it appears, is a spectacular state-of-the-art virtual reality, formed through the lens of the self?
This mini-book, GAME, lightheartedly explores the made up nature of self, the resulting apparent reality and love, freedom, peace and joy that the Game obscures.
WELL: Getting Real with Mental and Physical Health
Getting ‘real’ with mental and physical health is a very big subject.
It means exploring what is true and what this means for physical and mental health.
In her sixth book in the ‘Getting REAL series’, Clare Dimond, explores how a misunderstanding about what we are confuses the way physical and mental sensations are interpreted.
Believing that we are what we think we are and that we are (or should be) in control of the the body, thoughts, beliefs, moods, feelings, state and experience is the source of all suffering. It sets up a battle with what is and a personal story of self that has nothing to do with actual reality.
It sets up a search to secure the self identity that can last a lifetime and that can play out in the body and mind in the form of stress, hopelessness, resistance and exhaustion.
But if there is readiness, the search ends here in the realisation that what is being looked for in that search can never be found.
And when the rising up of symptoms and sensations prompts curiosity instead of the need to immediately retreat back into the ‘comfortable torture’ of the identity, then there is the possibility of something else.
There is the possibility of that search losing its life-and-death urgency and being seen for the beautiful, innocent misunderstanding it really is.
There is the possibility that all those symptoms and sensations tied into the attempt to secure the self, will find their home.
There is the possibility, finally, of the living in the freedom, peace and wellness that we really are.
SANE: Getting Real with Reality
Over the last 20 years, human capability, exploration and discovery has transformed beyond recognition.
Yet, in that same period, mental health seems to have gone in the opposite direction. Anti-depressant use has risen 400% in the US, three hundred million people suffer from anxiety and depression is now the number one cause of disability world-wide.
What is going on with this? How is it that the human race can create extraordinary life changing devices and technology and yet our mental health seems to be in free fall?
What if this is because we have it all wrong? What if we have been trying to find mental health, peacefulness, happiness, freedom and fulfilment in the places that continually prolong the search?
We’re going to look at an understanding that might be so diametrically opposed to how you view yourself and others that it might seem absolutely ridiculous.
There might be ideas in this book that you have never even contemplated before, that have never crossed your path.
Yet there is nothing new in this, nothing complicated and nothing radical. It is as old as time. It is as simple as waking up. It is as ever present, yet as often unnoticed, taken for granted, as life itself.
This is going to be a strange sort of book.
It’s a book about sanity, reality and delusion.
Much of it might well sound insane.
It’s not.
FREE : The Inside-Out Guide to Life, Unlimited
Many of us yearn for more freedom.
Many of us feel trapped or stuck.
And, as a result, we suffer. It looks like freedom depends on having more of what we think we need and less of what seems to be in the way.
So we try to create the perfect life or turn ourselves into the perfect person. But even when we have what we thought we needed and even when we have ditched what we thought was in the way, we still don’t feel free.
There just seems to be more to have and more to ditch. We still feel limited and trapped.
In FREE we explore why that is and what it actually means to live a life of no limits. FREE goes to the heart of some of the most embedded misunderstandings of our time and invites us to gain a whole new perspective on who we are and what we think we need.
We will realise that freedom is not what we think it is. And we are not the trapped individual we believe ourselves to be. This realisation opens up the space of intelligence, love and freedom that is our true nature.
This is life without limits.
This is freedom.
It's not you .... and it's not me
In this book we look at what is revealed in our responses to what other people say and do.
We explore how reality is always a projection from within and as such offers a continual space for healing and integrating the wounds and losses of our past.
Although on the surface it is about dating, the book is relevant to all relationships and interactions in which we feel vulnerable, in which there is potential for rejection and exclusion.
And it is about how, ultimately, these moments are the gateway to a profound freedom, stability and love that is beyond our wildest dreams…
“Just wanted to reach out and say how much I loved your new book - The Shift. It was great to read something so well expressed. Either I'm seeing things more clearly or you're writing it more clearly. Probably a bit of both!
Reading your book coincided with doing some one-to-one energy/body work with Helen Amery. So the timing was perfect in that sense. It feels like I've finally shifted out of my head and into my body. I didn't realise I was still gripping on in my mind. Suddenly my body feels more animated and alive.
What I love/hate about your approach is your insistence that the work is never done. Uncomfortable feelings will always come up and they're always worth moving towards and feeling into without an agenda. This 'not having an agenda' is still sometimes quite tricky for me. Who doesn't want to get rid of uncomfortable feelings, right? But I've now seen on multiple occasions the benefit of being with these feelings, allowing and accepting them.
In your book, your personal stories with the shower head and getting drenched by the jetski were brilliant. I think it's so useful to include stuff like this, especially for people who are relatively new to this exploration. This understanding is transformative but it's not a miracle solution - it doesn't take away life's ups and downs.
Initially, I definitely got into this for the spiritual bypass! I was looking for a way out, not a way through. You're brilliant at bringing to life the often trotted out phrase that the only way out is through. I like your commitment to this truth and the mature, loving way you communicate it. ”