This book is a Get Out of Jail Free card and a passport back into the playground.

The aim of this book is to set you free. But free from what? Free from neurosis. Free from the feeling that you have to obey authority. Free from emotional intimidation. Free from addiction. Free from inhibition.

The key to happiness, mental health and being the most that we can be is absolute and unconditional self-acceptance. The paradox is that many of our problems are caused by trying to improve ourselves, censor our thinking, make up for past misdeeds and struggling with our negative feelings whether of depression or aggression.

But if we consider ourselves in our entirety in this very moment, we know these things :

1. Anything we have done is in the past and cannot be changed, thus it is pointless to do anything else but accept it. No regrets or guilt.

2. While our actions can harm others, our thoughts and emotions, in and of themselves, never can. So we should accept them and allow them to be and go where they will. While emotions sometimes drive actions, those who completely accept their emotions and allow themselves to feel them fully, have more choice over how they act in the light of them.

Self-criticism never made anyone a better person. Anyone who does a “good deed” under pressure from their conscience or to gain the approval of others takes out the frustration involved in some other way. The basis for loving behaviour towards others is the ability to love ourselves. And loving ourselves unconditionally, means loving ourselves exactly as we are at this moment.

This might seem to be complacency, but in fact the natural activity of the individual is healthy growth, and what holds us back from it is fighting with those things we can’t change and the free thought and emotional experience which is the very substance of that growth.


How to Be Free is available as a free ebook from Smashwords, iBooks in some countries, Kobo and Barnes & Noble

The audiobook is available for free from iTunes and Google Play.

It is also available in paperback from Lulu or Amazon for $10 US, plus postage.

The ebook version currently has received 1,163 ***** out of ***** ratings on U.S. iBooks.

The audiobook version currently has received 128 ***** out of ***** ratings on U.S. iBooks and a 4.5 out of 5 average from 103 ratings on GooglePlay.

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Unlocking Love



Every act of unforced cooperation is a manifestation of love.

But sometimes we feel compelled to manifest non-cooperative behaviour - to compete with each other, to opt out or to boss others around.

How can we creatively respond to an unwillingness to participate in love?

It is no good to demand love. It cannot be conjured up by an act of will. If one of us has an incapacity for love, either generally or when in specific circumstances, their innate capacity for it has to be unlocked.

One mistake we can make is to read such an incapacity as critical information about ourselves. We may ask ourselves what is wrong with us that the other person does not show us love. But the incapacity lies with them and does not reflect on our worthiness.

But also we should not look on an incapacity for love in ourselves as evidence of our own unworthiness.

What is needed is the key to that lock. The question of worthiness is the lock itself. As long as we are asking why we are not worthy or trying to prove our worthiness our attention is being drawn towards our self and away from taking in and processing the stream of information from others which love requires.

Unconditional acceptance, i.e. unconditional love, is the key to the lock.

We are all worthy of love, so the worthiness question is irrelevant. What matters is not worthiness of love but capacity for love and this means relieving ourselves (or being relieved by others) of the need to prove our worthiness in any way.

Unconditional acceptance of others does not mean we have to do what they tell us to do. And it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t restrain them from hurting others when we can. What it does mean is that we don’t demand that they change and we don’t accuse them of being unworthy. Because they cannot open up their capacity for love through an act of will and to challenge them to prove their worthiness is only to strengthen the lock which holds them bound.