Welcome to My Mindfulness: Join Me

Welcome to the first phase of the MINDFUL IMAGINATION EXPERIENCE story. Let's have some fun.

Get your FREE PDF Introduction HERE!

Introducing my BRAND NEW online course available for you to buy. What's it all about? I hear you ask, well, you know, I didn't actually hear it but I did sort of hear something in my mind, perhaps it was you my dear reader; perhaps it was my imagination.

But that is exactly the point.

Sing:

Step One - a FREE pdf outline of me and what I offer, available to download by subscribing to my mail list.

Step Two - pay just $56 (roughly £43)) and you will get a whole course made up of 4 parts from 6 documents. You have an intro, then you have a meditation, then you have a hero, then you have a painting, then you have a framework and then you have a farewell. 

Step Three - tell your friends that you can put your life in order and step towards success by using mindfulness to access and build your imagination. 

Step Four - also tell them that inspiration is all around you, you see it at bus stops, on walls, on the television and in magazines. 

Step Five - believe in yourself and make your dreams come true.

2020 has been a bit shit, so I have spent a good few months re-designing my live show into an online course in order to kick off this idea that you have the power in your hands to change your life. 

The power is truly in your hands. We are told of our limitations in order to limit us; but we truly have an enormous amount of energy and imagination if we step back and believe in what we can do. The truth is, you already do a lot of it instinctively. 

My course is about Mindful Meditation, and I have made that modern and relevant to our techno-driven and busy lives. It is about giving yourself some time to just be YOU, and filter out all the distractions just for a small amount of time.

Many years ago I used to smoke cigarettes. During that time I would stop whatever I was doing and sit down, or find a place to stand quietly, and smoke. It took about five minutes to smoke a cigarette. I allowed myself that time to stop and smoke.

Yet, when I stopped smoking, rightly so I should say, I also stopped giving myself a break. 

It is important not to smoke, I am not advocating lighting up at all; but it is important to give yourself a window of time to stop and re-focus. Now I use music, and in my course I will show you how it can benefit you and how it works. You cancel out distractions and give yourself a little break when you need it. It is wonderful!

My mental health has seriously suffered over the years, in part due to my lack of understanding of it; mindfulness has given me a far deeper and more balanced understanding of who I am. In recent months, as Covid has driven the news and our lives, mental health has suffered again both personally and around the globe. I want to share what I have learned and how it has helped me, and I honestly believe that my health would be worse this year had it not been that I studied mindfulness prior to the lockdown experience. 

So I present to you: 

Here's what I would like you to do. Click on this link PDF FREEBIE IS HERE and then sign up to my mailing list. You are then part of this revolution. Welcome. 

Stay tuned. Here's some messages. The following are affiliated links and I will be paid should you click; it's just stuff that I like. 

The current political chaos in the Western world has really highlighted to me how out of control we are when it comes to making decisions in our lives. Yet I want to remind you all how it works:

If you don't agree with your voted leader, vote against them; rally against them; shout from the rooftops; enter into discussions and don't be afraid to make a stand for what you believe in. This world has enough hate in it, so don't add anymore. Hate is not destabilised by adding more hate but it is dissipated by adding love. Just as you would add a dash of fresh water to a dry cup of sand. Hate is dry, it is born of fear and a barren mind; by reminding them how barren their world is just adds further hate, it adds more heat and that makes it drier. Instead, add love, add some water and some freshness to the scenario. Add a balanced antidote to each cracked part and let the water sink in silently, allow it to flow through each crack and reach deep into the wound. Love is the answer just as water is the answer. 

Finally for this episode I would like to add a sprinkling of nonsense in  the form of a poem I have written. I am a member of the Mid Kent Stanza group, which is run in the UK by The Poetry Society. We regularly meet, currently online of course, and offer ideas and tips on each others work. It is because of this wonderful group of poets that I have been published in magazines and on websites. Check out some of mine at The Ekphrastic Review

I consider myself an okay poet and humbled to have been published. I also write shows and plays and books and the art of writing is what I love doing; I love writing these blogs as much as I love making my videos on Youtube. So I gift you a poem, followed by a link to me being weird on film. Call it a calling card, because my new course is not about being just mindful, it is about you being the true you that you are in your heart and if that person is a little weird, then aren't we all?

Enjoy; peace; love.

My voice is like a marked deer

A rabid hound my tongue

When i cry no-one notices

When i scream it is the shot of a gun

I am done

Twitter = @28thraves - - - - Instagram = @28zacthrav

Zac Thraves is a writer and performer from the UK.

Why Do We Misreport Our Emotions?

 Disclaimer - this blog contains affiliated links for which I will receive a small sum; call it supporting an artist who needs to fund his imagination

I will soon be sharing with you some very cool stuff, a brand new course designed to help you meditate and come to terms with your emotions in our noisy and modern world. 

The world is still noisy, it was even when we were in lockdown; we still had rolling news and updates and social media and negative reporting and it was, still is, too much.

My course will help you to deal with all of that and give you some great tips on using arts to meditate and to listen to your emotions. Listening to them helps you react to them which ultimately helps you to deal with them in a positive way, regardless of the emotion. 

What I don't do is lock them up; ignore them or wish to slay them. My emotions are not a monster or a dark serpent or anything like that. Yes, they are sometimes bad, but they are not criminal and I do not hide from that part of me anymore.

If you want to find out more please follow me on Twitter @28thraves or on Insta, @28zacthrav. I am keeping my course entirely personal and it will be for you. It will also be fun, and you will come away from it feeling ready to stand tall and recognise that you are unique, and you can boss your world. 

We are all heroes. 

So why do we misreport our emotions? It's a question I have pondered for some time now and one that I can't say I have a real handle on. I try to think of us as this:

• a collection of thoughts and feelings
• whizzing about our psyche at lightening speed
• some good and some bad
• some judgemental and some pure love
• clashing and bashing like atoms
• some may explode 
• and all this, our unique personal universe, encased in a body

And then once we filter all of this through our mind and sort it like the postal service sorts letters we place a selection of thoughts into an order, analyse them, and decide which ones to issue out of the body and which ones to leave, store or discard.

We are reporters of our minds.

It's actually quite weird when you break it down, but at the same time it makes sense. Our minds are a bit like that sentence, a sequence of words that sound odd but right. 

We become our own censors; like Trump's censorship code for the internet or back in old Hollywood when they tried to convict so-called Communists. In the UK we had censorship on TV and definitely no sex. You can't have sex that's disgusting!

The trouble with that is the ideas of the censorship distributes throughout our society and into our psyches and then it becomes something that we do to ourselves. We are actively censoring our thoughts and becoming our own thought-police. That is what leads us to misreport our emotions because we decide which of our emotions are right and which are wrong.

What if I told you that all of your thoughts are right, how would that make you feel?

Sex? What's wrong with sex, I mean we need to do for the human race to survive, why are we so prudish?

Suicide? What's wrong with thinking about suicide? 

Self-harm? What's wrong with thinking about self-harm?

Thinking about those are not an issue nor are they wrong; even the act of doing is not wrong. What is wrong is society's reaction to those acts and to people who have done it. We collectively make it wrong which then pushes them deeper into our minds where it can grow into a snarling monster; like Medusa in a lair or the Kraken from the deep. These monsters of myth are our monsters...our emotions, made large.

For example, when a thought comes to our minds about harming it is instantly pushed away and the language used to push it away is that we are bad, that we shouldn't think that, it's disgusting; all those people you would hurt, that's so ungrateful; guilt.

All those hateful words are actually worse than the thought of self-harm; and could lead to the act happening with more force, or worse, with fatal results.

Here's one that gets me (after the harming and suicide thoughts):

I want to make $3000 per month doing something I love.

Now, when I write that or say it to myself I feel bad, because then I think that's greedy; I'm not worth that; I don't have anything to offer; who would listen to me; you should be ashamed of yourself. Rich people are monsters, that is so selfish.

?

It is exactly the same thought process for me to want to succeed as it is to want to die. That is true for me anyway. You can argue that success is great, it gives drive, it's a target. Yet those monsters still appear for me when I think of making money. Because I have been conditioned to think like that in the same way I have been conditioned to thinking that self-harm, or just having depression in general, is a bad thing. 

The conditioning is there from childhood, through school and into working life. And the silly thing is that it is not the fault of parents or teachers, because they too have been conditioned to think like that. It's a problem in parts of society. 

Someone has to change the thinking of the greater society and that someone could be you and I. We can all start to take that step to thinking differently by changing our language, understanding that we are emotional and that we have powerful imaginations that change the world and give us enough to sustain a life. There's nothing wrong for me to want to survive and the only way to survive our current world is through earning money. I chose to survive, and my survival story is in my current book (ad above), and with that I want to survive having a life where I can reduce the stress and succeed by producing something that I feel passionate about. 

Is this not right?

You can do that too. Start to think outside the box, because the box is not of your design. There is only one person who can change your world, and that is you. By each of us doing this individually we can shape a new way of thinking. If you think about changing all of society you may go...WOAH, that's too big!

But actually, if we just focus on ourselves and change our thinking, and share and talk and open up, then gradually it can all change. All of it, forever. 

Just a thought.

I hope you enjoy my fortnightly blogs. Please do follow me on social media and keep a look out for my course which will be downloadable worldwide soon. I want to help us all take a step to a better world.

I recently finished reading this book by Dr Pippa Grange and found it incredibly helpful in giving tips on how to overcome fear. We can all be trapped by fear, mainly for me it is failure and self-worth. Her words and the stories she told of real people overcoming their fears were inspirational, and I do recommend a read of her book. The link is a UK one, I am sure it is also on Amazon.com. Search it out. 

Covid, Mindfulness and Depression; a Personal Story

The following stemmed from a recent conversation over Skype with my father. He lives in South Africa, and we were discussing the pandemic, you know, moaning about the state of his government and the UK government, and the differences between the two. We came to a conclusion that South Africa seem to be responding with more urgency and confidence than the bumbling lot who currently sit in Number 10, Downing Street. However, with all the fear and worry, we sort of fell on a notion:

Can Covid-19 be a friend?

It is a serious illness and sadly many people have died; yet my father and I sort of felt that this is something we are going to have to learn to adapt to and live with, like we do now with the Flu. So I made a list: 

Good things that have come out of the Covid-19 pandemic:

• natures re-set
• no more kissing and hugging everyone you meet
• less traffic
• people avoid you in the street
• internet has no borders
• we are all in this together
• I get to look like Zorro!

Of all those, the one I have not missed is the hugging and kissing everyone; why we had to do this in the first place has always been questionable. Personally it has always been awkward, and thankfully now not socially acceptable. If this ever comes back then I will consider becoming a recluse because I never know if it one on the cheek or two or three and, frankly, I don't care. I don't need to hug every old friend or family member, let's just say hello to each other and get on with it.

What do you think? Is there anything about the pandemic that you think has been good or am I just delusional?

By the way, I do not intend to offend anyone who has lost friends and family to this horrible illness, I send you my thoughts and wishes. By trying to find some positive in an awful situation, I think we can better honour the memory of those who have died. 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. Marianne Williamson

 The statement above is perfect for the message I am continuing to put out there. Our light is our fear, our darkness is what keeps us in fear. My book, The Self-Harming Pacifist, is my account of an episode in my life where I was going through serious depression and harm. Yet I concluded with myself that I was sick of feeling guilt and shame over having these emotions. Why should I feel guilt and shame as that only exacerbates the whole thing and makes it worse?

Society does not accept depression, anxiety or any other kind of behaviour that is not seen as normal. Is that right? I harmed myself on countless occasions and I was seen as weird, crazy, mad, at crisis level. I dd not hurt anyone else, only me, just me, I was not beating anyone up or aiming a gun at anyone. Yet I was the mad one. Apparently its fine to start a fight in a pub or fire a pistol at passers-by. 

I am convinced that we can change how we view depression by changing our culture and our reaction to those who have depression. The fact that cases of depression and anxiety are increasing is down to our culture, and not to a 'snow-flake' generation. We are all unique and emotional individuals who react in different ways to different scenarios...and that is exactly how it should be.

Being sad is not wrong; just as being happy is not wrong. The more serious sadness is not wrong, and the fact that we see it as wrong and have to diagnose people with drugs to get over it means that when you feel it, you also feel the guilt, the shame and the fear. Which makes it all worse.

We need to re-think this. I am not a doctor, or a psychologist, but I come from experience and the experience I had was not good; the drugs I had were not good; the mindfulness I learnt and became involved in has shown me a new way of thinking and finally given me an acceptance that I am good. Even when I feel depressed, I am good and that removes some of the depressions power. 

I have a course, coming online soon, that uses the arts to make you feel better about your emotions and anxieties. There is a really cool meditation technique and some ideas to get your life on track and make a positive step forward. It is called The Mindful Imagination Experience, and it will soon be available.

Watch this space. Be kind to yourself and to each other. We can change the world with love.

Making Friends with Your Darkness - Mindful Imagination Experience

Welcome to the Mindful Imagination Experience. 

It is in the darkness that you truly see yourself. The monster that I walked into that night was of my own creation. I am the monster and the light. I am the hero and darkness. We are one, two are the same and Jekyll and Hyde is real. It is your ego and your imagination. The darkness makes us stronger, it makes the light shine brighter. Know your darkness and learn to balance with it. That way you can create a golden light. 

We all need friends don't we? Start with yourself. 

The darkness I am talking about is my depression; the night I walked into was my fear. I had fear of the past, fear of the present and fear of the future. I feared that I did not have a future. It was one September night over 10 years ago that I walked into the pitch black and faced that fear. I am still here; the fear has subsided.

Fear is the enemy of an empath. What is the usual response to someone who feels the need to commit suicide? It is fear, where it should be compassion. This is fuelled by our modern society and the norms that we have been indoctrinated into. To personally feel suicidal is not a problem except to society, in fact it could be argued that it is a perfectly natural human response to an emotional reaction to the world. We all feel we want to give up at times. It is how we deal with it that creates the problem. By using fear to challenge suicide, we escalate the emotion and make it worse. It is akin to making drugs illegal and pushing them underground, they become something mythical. They become a bigger monster than they actually are. Our society and its need to control and make everyone the same, creates fear of human emotion. 

Being kind to your fears and worries, listening to them and allowing them a bit of space to breathe can help to give them less power. By burying them deep, you push them into some unknown internal space where darkness only grows. Keep those feelings out and they are washed with light, given more time to be shone upon and then the darkness fades. You cannot stop the bad emotions, but you can choose how to respond to them. 

Ultimately your life is in your hands. The myth about suicide or self-harm is that it is an 'in-the-moment' decision, it is not. In fact most are brought to that decision through a series of events and their cloud of negative darkness drives them to one conclusion. It happens over time and it doesn't have to happen. Being scared is not something to be scared of; if you can help and show empathy, or a hint of understanding, that is way more important and can rectify a situation far greater than someone who drags you to the doctor for pills, or who thinks you are mad.

   

Society created madness to control the people it couldn't control; the risk-takers; the questioners; the dreamers; the flyers. 

Just by showing love to a person, and what does that cost, you can change a life. Love is not sex or drama or lust; love is compassion for another person. You can love and not be in love, do not confuse the two; two men can love each other and it is not sexual. They are two men who are compassionate and caring of each other's needs. Empathy is an arm around the shoulder. 

We can change the world through love. All it takes is a little imagination, a lot of determination and plenty of belief. If we channeled the energy of the darkness that we see, you know all the hate and anti-this and that and all the isms that float around, that can be turned to light and given greater power for the greater good. 

You fight hate with love the same way you douse fire with water. Love is calm; love is quiet; love is listening and trying to understand. Hate is none of those things. 

Therefore I ask you that when you head out to work or to a friends house or to the shops, place yourself in a zone of love and see what happens. If you believe in it, and believe that you are surrounded by it, the universe will start to open doors for you that you never realised could be opened up. Do it.

I recently watched a beautiful film on Bluray that I wholly recommend, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Tom Hanks is superb as the late Mister Rogers, who entertained children for four decades in the US. Here was a man who was empathic, supportive, understanding, philosophical and mindful of anyone. He taught many children lessons on life and spoke about the things adults find difficult to approach. He is an inspiration, and I find it quite strange that I have seen this movie at this time in my life. 

Being a child of the United Kingdom I did not know of Mister Rogers or his impact. His television show is weirdly similar to my show on Mindful Imagination and his lessons echo the message I am trying to put out there. Watching this movie has inspired me to push my show and online experience further and how I can get it out there during this pandemic. 

A great film, I cannot recommend it enough.

5 Ways to Create Order - a Mindful Imagination Experience

 

Welcome to the Mindful Imagination Experience...

Empaths trying to find order in their world. 

We all have heroes. Fact. Perhaps you think otherwise, but just for fun, why not attempt to discover who your heroes are. 

Sometimes you hear the question asked where you invite five people to dinner, who do you invite? Trying to think about people who you admire, trust, aspire to, or agree with is difficult; there are some who have achieved great things but who also have pretty sordid deeds done in the background. A popular choice, in the UK anyway, is Winston Churchill; yet here is a figure who while worshipped for his leadership during World War 2, also has some despicable acts to his name before that. Heroes have flaws and perhaps that is what draws us towards heroes. 

Let's take another hero and this time from comics, Batman. Now he may roam the streets at night clearing up the serious crime that takes place in a violent Gotham City, but he is hardly a figure of heroism. Here is a man in costume, much like his villains, and a man who is haunted by his past. He treads a thin line between being on the side of the law or being sent straight to Arkham Asylum himself.

Heroes have flaws; that's why we are drawn to them.

You are a hero yourself, you are the hero of your story and your flaws, which could be depression, anxiety, panic attacks, thoughts of suicide, self-harm...tick any boxes you like, they make you the hero that you are.

We are all in different worlds, our own universes. I see the world different to you and you see the world different to your partner, sister or best friend. We all see it in different shapes and colours and smells and we react in the way we need to; the best you can be is the hero for your world. Your anxiety, emotion, darkness, empathy, is your heroic strength. 

We are not taught that by anyone. So I challenge you to see those powers that you have in a positive way, no matter what it may be that you are thinking; it is you, it makes your hero a full-blooded, well-rounded and strong hero for your life. You are your hero in your story. In true hero style, you need to kick ass! This world does not hand out cards easily, but I strongly believe that the universe has ideas for us that we can grab; it is noticing and acting on those opportunities that single us all out. Trust in yourself, and act on the hero inside you. In short, take a risk to achieve the end result. 

I have a new book out, called The Self-Harming Pacifist. In it I try to make sense of my world, and how I have come around to being in a place where I am not ashamed to be feeling the emotions that I feel, but I try to tell myself that they are my strengths. I have been in the middle of a fog of anti-depressants and I hated it; I want to be in a kaleidoscope of the universe, and to do that I have to accept that some days will be darker than others. My strength is my knowledge that I can overcome that.

In a change to this blog and in my own small way to support BLM, I am always wanting to expand and change and move forward and learn; I recently re-discovered on a USB stick: Paul Simon's... 

Recorded in 1985 in Johannesburg at the height of Apartheid, Paul Simon was criticised for appearing to support the racist government where he was actually supporting the traditional music of Africa. It is a great album, with some wonderful tracks such as Gumboots, Diamonds on the Soul of Her Shoes and Homeless. Seek it out.

Paul Simon clearly has a love of African music and this helped to bring its magic and mystery to a Western audience. The album was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic and still stands as a beautiful experience. The music is powerful, most definitely when traditional African rhythms and tones are used, especially acapella. I also love the lyrics, the beautiful oddity from Gumboots and the story of You Can Call Me Al. It is a wonderful album from a time when listening to an album was a treat, start to finish; also from a time when the ills of the world were very much in the news and it felt as if we would all pull together to try and make change. I want to change how we view depression; I also want to be in a society where racism is not even mentioned, because it does not exist. We seem to be a long way from that, and further back than we were in the 80's. 

Borders are out of date. There are no borders in the web and there should be none now. We have regressed as a society and this has been driven by fear, by anger and by weak news outlets powered by right wing thinkers. If the West creates the problems in the Middle East, and then sells a lifestyle of freedom and reward, why the hell would those persecuted by a corrupt and violent government not want to come here? The West perpetuates the problem, sells a solution, and then uses those 'immigrants' to champion fear and hate back at home. Thus fuels racism, separatism, sexism, white supremacy, and extreme right paranoia. 

Is that democracy?

5 Ways to Create Order

No Borders.

No Fear.

No Competition, but a willingness to continue to develop and support each other.

No guilt. We feel what we feel, so the fuck what?!

No More Corruption. It's not the corporates who are the problem, it's not the tax dodgers and it's not the immigrants; it's the people in power, and most of them are men and most of them are white. What does that say? 

In my humble opinion. 

So what am I learning on my journey to an almost enlightened state on my emotions? First, that fear and hate have no place in a world; second, that we should not be made to feel bad if we feel bad, it is natural; third, that our world of fear, you know, the one with racism and the such, also fears people who have suicidal thoughts enough to lock them up or drug them...that's not right. Fear can be overcome, and history, myths and fables tell us that the one person who overcomes fear is a hero.

Go be you hero. 

Mindfulness Imagination Fayre 7: How We View Depression is Wrong

 

Welcome to Mindfulness Imagination Fayre 7, which has seen so far through this pandemic and I hope is offering glimpses of light in the darkness. 

I want to talk about darkness. 

When depression is discussed, either at home or in a surgery or on some talk show, it is seen as something that is wrong in our society and wrong in people who 'suffer' it. You go to the doctor and you are prescribed pills to remove the symptoms of depression. You talk to your partner and fear creeps in about what you could do, how low could you go. Expert psychologists and learned mental condition experts repeat the dangers of depression, the stresses and strains that it puts on the person and the immediate family; how it upsets work/life balance, puts your life on hold. 

Depression is wrong. We are frequently reminded.

I have a theory, purely based on my own experience with my depression and how I now use mindfulness to come to terms with it, that my depression is not wrong, it is a part of me that I don't want to lose.

I am beginning to think that the dark stuff and the emotions that the dark generates are just as important to me as a whole as the light. I may have to go through periods when I consider suicide or harm, where I struggle to find meaning and energy, but I am more aware now that those are periods of my life and not my whole life. They are windows of black just as night must come after each day. By recognising that this is but some brief episode, its power is not so strong. It does not pull me in like a suffocating black hole like it used to. 

In my own crass and pop culture way I liken it to the end of Return of the Jedi when Luke must face off with his father *SPOILER ALERT*. He has to channel his anger and make it good, in that he uses the power of the dark side to over come the demons and then return to the light. He used that energy for good, turning the dark into light. 

Is there not something in that for us? You know, me and you who have depression or perhaps we have something else. Perhaps we have a deep emotional connection to the world around us and it makes us feel sad and happy in the extreme. I believe that behaviour that does not suit our society is where many of these so-called mental disorders generate from. Some who have bi-polar have extreme behaviour, such as shopping sprees, and when it happens they are told it is the wrong way to behave and they must do something about it to never allow it to happen again. I think that is making the behaviour worse. 

When we are young behaviour is excused because we haven't matured. When we are old behaviour is excused because we are eccentric. When we are in the middle we must all behave exactly the same way or risk being classed as mentally ill. Is that right? Am I missing the point?

We are all rich and emotional human beings who react to different scenarios in different ways based on the unique way that we think. 

I cry at the end of E.T. I feel that emotion and when I hear the music I well -up. I acknowledge that I have acute emotions that mean I take offence easily, or get upset in an argument easily, and tend to feel guilt very easily. I don't want to take pills because I feel that anymore. I want to understand that it is ok for me to feel that and not be a burden on others. It is that guilt that sends us crashing, it is the reaction caused by judgement that de-presses us, that is the problem. Finely tuned emotional people are not.

So I ask if there is another way to how we view depression? Because the current mode is not working. Is it so wrong to feel something, however strong that feeling is?

Zac Thraves is a mindful practitioner, writer and performer.         Mindful Imagination Fayre is a show that is on hold and will soon be an online course. 

My book, The Self-Harming Pacifist, is coming soon. 

SPIKED IMAGINATION SERIES:

How to Focus instead of Anger - We are Heroes

We are all HEROES. 

I don't mean that we all have to wear boxer shorts over our tights, or that we have to flap around in colourful capes or carry special weapons like shields. But in essence we are all heroes. We are all on our own journey of discovery.

My name is Zac, and I am a mindful practitioner, writer and performer and I have depression. Sometimes it is very strong, sometimes it is mild, sometimes it would seem to not even be there at all. Yet it hums away in the background, perhaps recharging it's battery for the next round, until...

DING DING

...we fall into the next scrape between good and evil.

 

 The things that I have learnt over the years I have collated into a book, which I will soon publish online. In the meantime, my Mindful Imagination Fayre posts are designed to give a little hint, a pointer, hopefully shine a light of hope in the darkness for those of you who have to live with the illness that is depression; an umbrella term that holds many symptoms. 

If you are able to hold in there, and for me transcendental meditation has been key to my awakening from the darkness, then I would class you as a hero. But I want you to remember one thing, you have to do this, no-one can do it for you. There are no hero stories out there where the hero gets someone else to achieve their goals. Like Ben Kenobi said in The Empire Strikes Back, 'if you face him you must do it alone, I cannot be with you'. 

Face the fear, and defeat your demons. It takes bravery and it takes time, but you are worth it, aren't you? 

I want to go over anger, which is like a deep pea-souper that overwhelms the senses. Picture those old images of Victorian London awash with cloud hanging just above the cobbled streets. That is an image of anger. When you can't see clearly, you can't focus on what lies ahead. You walk blindly into situations with no control over your reaction or the reactions of others. Anger is blind and that is why I am always amazed at how angry drivers are. It would seem that every day on my commute to work I encounter at least 1 angry driver, who not only puts the life of the people around them at risk, but also their own. What is so important that they do that they need to terrorise the streets? 

I'm sure this happens everywhere, and while this may be a little off-topic rant (see my video linked below), I feel it worthy of inclusion as anger is a deep emotion that erupts from something inside that has not been dealt with. 

Mindfulness gives you space to see yourself in a non-judgemental way; by meditating you gift yourself a little time to allow that process to unfold. 

In my workshops and shows (soon to be online), I offer some modern meditations that cater for the busy lives and trends of our time. It is not about sitting in the locus position and humming, it is about channeling in to you and listening to your heart and soul. It sounds simple, and I wish it was. 

I also wish I was infallible and practiced what I preach, but I am human and humans fall into patterns of behaviour learnt way back. Humans make mistakes, and I make mistakes because I am human. You know what? That's called life and I refuse to allow it to manifest into a stick to beat myself with. Another thing I have learnt after years of self-harm. 

Angry drivers make mistakes and if any drivers are reading this who drive 2 feet away from the car in front or over take at any given opportunity I want to say this: unless you are a doctor or fire officer or police officer or brain surgeon or heart surgeon, what's the rush? Ditch the anger, put some music on and chill. You will feel better, the journey will take as long as it takes and traffic is not something you can control, so don't try to. Focus on what is important and use that energy from your anger to change your world, perhaps change the world, do something positive with it instead of putting fear and hate into others. 

No-one likes a tailgater.

My video here gives you an insight into my Fayre, my world, my ideas and where I  come from. After years of worrying that I am odd, eccentric, quirky or not quite ready for this world I have come to one conclusion: I am me, I am Zac Thraves and this is my world. 

My Books - 

Mindful Imagination Fayre 6 - Our Power of Imagination and Mindfulness

Over the last few years learning how to cope with my mental health, learning and appreciating Mindfulness, and then understanding how important my imagination is towards problem solving and dealing with the emotions that I feel, I have seen the important role that the arts play in our mental wellbeing and in coming to terms with the fears and barriers that we face.

I am a writer and performer, and part of my journey is to share to the world my show, entitled Mindful Imagination Fayre, where I sing and do silly stuff all in the name of promoting the benefits of mindful meditation and how it can unlock the power of your imagination.

You see, we are all SUPERHEROES.

We all have a power inside of us yet the majority of us do not know how to use it; have forgotten, or have had it taken from us. It's like having your opinion taken away, or discounted, or ridiculed; you lose some freedom and are placed in a nice little box. There you are kept and protected and forced into a false idea of what life is. It's all a mirage; a concept to keep control. 

It's time to fall down the rabbit hole and open your eyes...

So far I have mentioned three works of art in an explanation of mental wellbeing and imagination...

Alice in Wonderland - The Matrix - Superhero comics

...and we are surrounded by a variety of art works, from poetry to painting, that contain emotion, challenge, fear, unrest, beauty, love and joy. All the emotions that we feel on a daily basis. 

Being human is not easy, so why should we feel bad when we have those 'off' days? There is a false sense of happiness that floats around our minds, most likely fuelled by Facebook, Instagram and Tik-Tok, that is almost queasy and uneasy. I do not include Twitter in that concept, as Twitter is designed to be more opinionated and informative, albeit perhaps not quite so angry. However, Twitter is a platform for unleashing emotion, rather than just expressing how wonderful your life is, which seems to be the facade created by the other three social platforms. But, like all art, you don't have to view it or like it or take it further.

Picture yourself in a gallery with some of the finest works of art hanging on the wall; you saunter past and see something you like, great; then you see something you don't like and take a closer look at what that piece of crap is...oh, it's a Botticelli. Then you feel like an idiot because Botticelli is a renowned Renaissance painter and you should know better. 

Hang on there, while some may appreciate his work it does not mean that everyone has to. Some people like Eastenders, not everyone. In the great scheme of things, they are the same. What I'm trying to say to you is we have freedom to choose what we like and what we don't without judgement. You know you, you can't like everything and most certainly not because someone has told you too. For the record, I'm no fan of Eastenders but Venus and Mars, below, by Botticelli, is not bad; if you like that sort of thing. 

The power lies inside you. Our soul and energy and life are all played out in paintings and films and poems and stories. Every story handed down to us is a parable to how we can live a fulfilling life. Think of fairy stories, fables, (and I don't mean Disney versions where the princess finds her prince, I mean the proper fables). Every picture tells a story, and every story, within your mind, creates a picture; that is your power. If you believe in that then you have the power to believe in your imagination and picture the very thing it is that you wish to achieve. 

Picture it - Set the intention - allow it it come into fruition

There are a wide variety of art works that help us to understand our environment, as well as our emotions. We often feel sadness, anger and fear; and this is just as healthy as feeling happiness, love and confidence. Rather than feeling betrayed by our bad thoughts we can learn to live with them, and subsequently reduce the power they have. Mindful meditation is a very useful tool in learning to handle those powerful negative emotions that can charge us up and send us down pathways we wouldn't ordinarily take. 

TIP:

Just by listening to a favourite piece of music, you are, in essence, meditating. My go to is the theme to Moonraker. What's yours?

     

My role is to make meditation achievable to everyone. Western society tends to see meditation as the domain of the hippies or the weak. Time after time people who meditate are depicted as fools. Yet the real fools are the ones who work themselves into a grave. Meditation is beneficial not just to your mental health, but also to your physical health; it can also unlock a part of your brain that sends you to another way of thinking. I am still learning and trying to rid myself of destructive and constricting ways of thinking adapted by a self-serving society to which I am not seeing any real benefit. 

If something doesn't work, change it.

So here I am setting out my stall. Picture a fayre in a beautiful English village with the sun shining and music playing. Each stall offers an art form, each art form offers a way to meditate, to find yourself, to love yourself and to reach inside your heart and try to let you know what it is that you really, really want to do with your life. 

My Mindful Imagination Fayre is an interactive show, currently online with Youtube videos but soon to be live. There's some music, some fun, some stories and some realisation. You can also meditate and do it so easily you would wonder why you never did it before; but then again maybe you have without even knowing it. 

You have that power in you to achieve what you want. Start with belief, and let your imagination unlock.

Zac Thraves is a writer and performer. His series of short novels, under the banner Spiked Imagination, are available exclusively via Amazon for Kindle. 

To book Zac for his show or a talk please email and he will get back to you tout suit. 

Mindfulness Imagination 5; Phenomenology & Mindfulness

Phenomenology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty built on Heidegger's philosophy about the study of things. 

Yet while Satre used it as a jumping off point for Existentialism, Merleau-Ponty ran with the idea and created a treatise that tried to understand humans existence with things, our relationship with things. Unlike Heidegger and Satre, who considered all thought to stem from an adult brain, Merleau-Ponty went along the lines that this was created from childhood, from the womb onward. In effect we are born into an existence of feeling and interaction with the world around us.

This may seem like common sense to say, but think about your own interaction with your world. 

For instance, when your hand touches a pencil do you notice that your hand is touching a pencil? Note, that it is also true that the pencil touches your hand. Yet we do not try to notice the emotion of the pencil touching you. You could ask, what does it feel like for a pencil to be touched by human skin? 

Unlike Existentialism, which makes things real in your immediate reality, phenomenology notices that everything is around us waiting to interact with us; to have an experience with us. 

This is in tune with my ideas to the teachings of mindfulness and how it boosts the imagination in all of us. Because everything is there waiting for you to experience, you just need the belief and imagination to make it so.

Imagine sitting in a cafe and putting a cup of lovely sweet coffee to your lips and then thinking how it feels to be sipping that coffee, not only from your lips point of view, but from your mouth, throat, stomach; and then from the point of view of the cup, or the liquid which you pour into you. That coffee went from a growing bean to a grain of coffee pieced together with other grains to create a blended cup of beans in liquid form. It goes from one living thing to another.

 

Mindfulness

By using mindful meditation you can interpret and understand your own unique experience with the wider world. In essence, all of our worlds are different. We may see the same object but we interpret them differently; the same with news and events, notice on news reels that two different eye witnesses will record the same event with differences. We all have our own ways of seeing and interpreting, and there is nothing wrong with that.

By meditating, and using my technique on meditation by losing yourself in music, you can hear your inner self speaking to you and telling you your truths. You can access a higher plane, dimension if you like, and see why you interpret things in certain ways and where that ideology has come from. 

We are free, if we choose to be; free of our thoughts, our actions and our restrictions. Freedom can be scary which is why things are put into place to block that freedom. Such as self imposed time restrictions. I guess in choosing those then we accept that it is a choice we have made. By understanding yourself and why you see and think the way that you do is a step towards mental freedom. 

 

 My depression and anxiety is an outcome to the restrictions and fears that I have placed on myself by my interpretation of events, conversations and interactions that I have had through my life. I still find it hard to accept that at times, and maybe it is impossible to accept it fully as it goes way back in my life; but I can try and having a mindful approach to the world is my way of trying to make MY WORLD a better place.

I have been reading the excellent book by Sarah Bakewell - At the Existential Cafe, Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails.

Mindfulness Imagination Pt 4

Shops are open. Theatres and cinemas are shut. The economy is what matters; the lives of  many do not.

As I have been in lockdown much of my time has been spent working on my one-man show detailing how to be mindful and how to open the power of your imagination. In that time I have learned to play a couple of tunes on the guitar, and written copious words on the importance of meditation to unlock your creativity and ease your anxiety. 

Arts, in my view, play a huge part in how we see our worlds. I mean, you look at one piece and you don't like it, another does and has a different view. Each and every work of art, be it a painting, a film, a book, a play, music, means something different to each and every one of us.

Shopping does not do that; or maybe it does. In my view queuing to join the mayhem which is Primark is not my idea of a fun day. It's my idea of a second wave of corona.

But we all have freedom to do what it is that we like. And this is actually true. I stumbled across a very good book by Sarah Bakewell called, At the Existential Cafe.

 

While reading it, I was reminded of my own discovery of Jean-Paul Sartre many years ago, where I read and understood how freedom was the burden that we all face. Yet, now reading it through eyes that are over ten years older, I saw how it linked in with everything that I am trying to do now, and how it added greater depth to the message I am delivering out. Because Mindfulness, Existentialism and Imagination are all linked.

Sartre wrote that EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE and in this he is meaning, for me, that we are born without knowledge, but we have the freedom to then choose the paths that we wish to take. This is entirely the idea behind using the power of your imagination in order to achieve the goals that you wish for; it adds more meaning to the idea that we can achieve our dreams. We are not born on to a set path that is created by those before us, we are on our own journey and can change whatever we wish. We have the freedom to choose.

He writes, you might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. 

This is later explored in his book Being and Nothingness, where he writes about the philosophical idea that we are never who we want to be because we always want for more, based on how we think others are perceiving us. I guess we never reach perfection, because there is no such thing as perfection.

I scribbled this into a sketch after the very same conversation with my dad last week - 

If you ever reach your idea of perfection, all you have done is moved the bar up a notch to give you another few rungs to climb.

I saw daylight when I read Sarah Bakwell's book yesterday, it started to fill in the gaps that I felt were missing in my workshops and writings. It adds credence to what I am trying to say and all of that has been in the background of my knowledge from when I first studied philosophy all those years ago and felt that Sartre was important to me, I just didn't get why.

Now I know. Or, at least, I think I know. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along.

Freedom is our burden as a species. An acorn can become nothing but an oak; a stone remains a stone whether it is a brick or not. We, humankind, can be more or less anything that we want to be. The only stumbling block is our fears and our misconceptions that we are taught; we are more or less taught our limitations rather than our talents. Our freedom is our responsibility, and in this time, right now, with everything going on, we need to expect and move for change.

We have the power in all of us; all you have to do is imagine it, focus on what it is you want to do, meditate on it being done; you then set yourself on a path that enables doors open to make it happen. If we each did that, collectively we can change this world for the better.

For a brief idea on mediation, check out one of my videos here-

Stay safe; peace and love to wash the world clean. 

Zac Thraves is a mindfulness practitioner; writer and performer

Everything Matters

June 4th 2020

half of the world is in turmoil, and because of that I feel it inappropriate to share my mindfulness journey or tips on meditation. Instead I feel that I should remain silent, to a degree, to remain positive that an outcome will occur that satisfies those brave protesters and that change will happen soon.

We, and I am speaking as a UK citizen, are limited daily by a corrupt government who silence media and deal in lies; the USA, the land of the free, appears to have the same and it has led to violence not seen in years. This is a pivotal moment, and all in the middle of a pandemic that neither country has got a hold of. 

The disgusting behavior of the police in the US is rightly being reported globally. It is a disgrace, something that J R Ballard or Ray Bradbury would have written hoping it remained fiction. It is not fiction, it is a democracy fast becoming a dictatorship.

Britain be warned because we are dangerously close to a similar fight.

We must stay true; stay safe; stay strong and stay kind. Hate is only fuelled by hate.