Hello
Hello, I am John and I call myself The Mind Walker. I have some autistic tendencies and this has given me a different way of thinking and an incentive to find out what makes me the same and different from most other people. I have spent many decades of being fascinated with the human mind and searching for reliable and meaningful information, exploring lots of psychologies and philosophies, and seeking enlightenment. Over time I have been taught and found a number of significant answers to simple-seeming questions.
Why do we feel the way we do, when feelings are often so uncomfortable?
How do we reach out to that which is most important to us when we don't always find it easy to know what we want?
How do we recognise, yet alone follow, a path that represents our highest values?
How do we get on in a world full of doubters and challenges?
How can I escape and move beyond my past and my present limitations?
I call myself The Mind Walker because I spend so much of my time exploring the landscape of the human mind. For me, that is where the most exciting unknowns are. And, the more I explore the more I am able to help and guide others through my coaching, teaching, and therapy sessions. Because I have walked through the landscape of the mind I know about trauma and anxiety. I know about fear and depression. I know about aspiration and bliss. I know about remorse and forgiveness. I know about learning from life and the rewards for seeking alignment with it. I know about truth and awareness. I know about habits and how to change them. I know about love and I know a thing or two about how to use all this to our own advantage.
Through these web pages I intend to share just a fraction of my insights, observations, and knowledge with fellow seekers in life. If you do some of your own exploring here you will find different ideas and areas to be interested in. My web pages have been and remain a work in progress that will continue to evolve as I continue to walk the paths of the human mind, both the well-travelled and the less well-travelled.
One Story Behind My Work
There is a way that we humans naturally tend to go about our lives that can lead to us becoming wiser and more developed as individual people as we grow. At times in our lives this development is faster and at times it is slower. At times most of us consciously choose to enhance this development and at times it happens whether we want it to or not.
My web pages explore the idea that whatever personal choices we make, whatever personal attributes we have, whatever personal circumstances we find ourselves in, the basic way that we progress is the same.
By identifying the three basic steps or phases that we each follow every time we learn more about life, we can enhance our personal progression. It does not matter what path or paths we follow in life, the basic way that we progress is the same. We might consciously or uncosciously choose a spiritual path, or an academic path, or a professional path, or a path of service, or a hedonistic path, or some combination of these or other paths. Each of us will acquire learning and experience through the things that we choose to do and the ways that we choose to be. I suggest that our learning follows a cycle of three basic steps, which I will introduce in a few moments.
In these web pages you can discover more about the three phases of deeper learning and how to benefit from your own increasing knowledge and also how to work on a number of common challenges that we may face in modern-day life.
The Challenge of Life? A Context for Life-Long Learning
Think about this statement: The vital single most important truth about life is its reality.
Whatever your religious or philosophical background, whatever you hold as your life purpose or context, whatever your spiritual viewpoint, the one thing that influences your whole life is the reality of your physical body and the reality of your personal surroundings. Even if you believe that physical reality is basically an illusion, as long as you are a human being in a human body your primary task in life is to recognise the reality of your condition. If you fail to recognise that reality, through choice or illness, then your ability to continue living as a human in a human body will inevitably become reduced.
When we aspire to spiritual growth, or self-development, or to become mature, or choose to join in with or lead society in any of the multitudinous roles available to us, we do that within the context of dealing with reality and engaging with it. It is important that not only do we recognise and learn to discern reality from falsehood but that we take action in our lives.
Simply through existing in it, life continually challenges us to test our innermost self against the truth of the reality that we find ourselves in.
Interestingly, many philosophies teach us that the more we recognise and embrace reality, the more enlightened and deeply spiritually mature we can become. There are different ways to describe this life-long learning but I maintain that a very simple model of this cycle of personal growth comprises the following three simple phases or steps:
"Every positive change--every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness--involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception." - Dan Millman, 21st century philosopher