Ian Dowling | Thinking out loud

"Awakening" at least for me is just the beginning, an exciting new beginning but a beginning none the less. Its easy to allow the ego to jump into the driver seat when we have some form of Spiritual awakening but its only an opportunity to start fresh and see the the world anew.

We don't have to take our thoughts personally and hang on to them, just like the way we don't take music personally and hang on to it if we do not like it.

You know that energy of water spinning when you stir water in a bucket? You know the way it pulls everything towards it, the center stay the center and the focus of energy pulls everything to the middle. Well what if the present moment is like that and all we need to do is focus so much on this moment that everything can be drawn towards this center. I don't mean sitting and not taking action but our thoughts being so focused here, now in this moment that our thought only change when a more important thought comes and we don't need to go against the flow looking for unnecessary thoughts.

Thanks for listening :-)

iantdowling@gmail.com

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I love quotes and I thought I would start a serious of episodes where I discuss quotes I like. 

This week its a quote from Plato 

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another

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I haven't made one of these Podcasts for a long time. I started doing Standup Comedy and my attention has been there but I want to start posting these ideas/brain dumps again as I feel like its important to share anything that could potentially be positive for even one person out there. 

The analogy of Surfing in relation to life I think is a good one because often the biggest question in my mind is whether we have control over our life or is the Universe/God of whatever you call the thing that created us in control. 

But when we look at life using the analogy of surfing it atleast for me makes more sense because when surfing we have no control over what the wave does or where it goes or when it comes but if we decide to take that wave we then have the choice of what  decisions we make on that wave, what move or turn we do etc. And if or when that wave smashes us we have the choice of being angry or upset or just shaking it off and paddling back out for the next one. Life seems to be like this if we except that opportunities come unexpectedly but when they come we then have the choice of how we respond to it.

I'm on Instagram @dowling_ian

Thanks for listening :-) 

We have never actually had certainty in life and we never will except its just more obvious now than before. We have never had a guarantee that the sun will rise each day or that we will even wake up today, but we just take it for granted. Maybe nature needs to recover just like a muscle needs to recover after a workout. Maybe we should not choose a side to trust 100% during this Coronavirus chaos, maybe we should listen to all the sides and see what feels true to us. In this podcast I am talking about all these things and I hope you enjoy 😊

"Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down." ( author unknown)

We can always find light in every area of darkness although we can not remove darkness from a room we can only fill it with light. Its similar in life when we are in the middle of a dark period of life we can not expel the negative energy but we can radiate as much positive energy as possible which in turn lights the world around us.

Today I just wanted to touch on a couple helpful activities such as Gratitude journaling to help deal with the stress.

On today's podcast I offer the possibility of using Logic as a Spiritual practice. When we get used to incorporating “Spiritual” practices into our life such as meditation, visualization etc it becomes easy to rule out using basic techniques such as Logically thinking about our exact current situation in this very moment and often when we do this we realize that our stresses are based on the thought of something possibly happening. It can be a great mindfulness practice to step out of stress and the feeling of anxiety.

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In this podcast my girlfriend Linsy joins me to share a valuable and easily actionable technique to implement into our visualization/meditation practice.

Before meditating together one morning this week Linsy asked me about my practice and I described how I spend a couple minutes before or after meditating visualizing goals such as a successful podcast, flying my family from Ireland to Australia for Christmas and other material goals. Linsy then shared her visualization technique of meditating on the desired feelings associated with goals or situations and this instantly resonated with me. 

When we consider and focus on the feelings associated with our goals, not only do we attract what we need to bring those feelings and achieve our goals, we can also feel if our goals are aligned with what will truly serve us. 

I hope you enjoy the podcast and please help us reach more ears by subscribing or leaving a review :-) 

Wishing you an awesome weekend!!!!

What if maybe setbacks are a necessary part of any process whether that be a Fitness plan, a new healthy eating plan, a spiritual journey where we feel like we are going backwards when we feel old patterns arising or maybe setbacks in career form.

In this podcast I give the analogy of climbing Mt Everest because when climbing a mountain with this altitude it requires first timers to constantly retreat to Base Camp after reaching each check point to allow the body to acclimate to the altitude. 

If you are anything like me you have definitely been overwhelmed at some point when trying to decide what not to listen to and what not to read but when you hear "your" truth or read "your" truth its instantly recognizable, more like a remembering.

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Feel free to email any comments to iantdowling@gmail.com 

Maybe when we don't know whats next or what we should be or even who we think we are............. maybe we open up the opportunity to real magic and synchronicity  because we give over control to the Universe or whatever you want to call it to provide us with our next opportunity. Im not saying to stay still and take no action, quite the opposite but Im saying that when we have this openness to the idea that we can change direction and be flexible with our goals then we can end up finding ourselves in situations even better than we could have imagined with our brains.

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If you like to create but get impatient waiting for the creative juices to flow there is some practical steps we can take to jump start the flow. 

What if all the inspiration we are waiting for is also waiting for us and all we have to do is put pen to paper or paint brush to canvas or voice to record and do that routinely and after we clear the mind with the first bit of rubbish that comes out then we can trust over time that the creative ideas we want will always come as long as we take that action and let it flow where it wants to go.

I think Its so exciting for the world how spiritual practices such as Yoga and Meditation are after becoming completely mainstream and I think its awesome that its now normal to have a pro active spiritual ritual in daily life like Meditation or Yoga or whatever it is for you. 

As we work on our own self awareness or we suddenly encounter increased self awareness through a spontaneous awakening after a certain life event the highs can be followed by anxiety and unknown negative feelings as we become the observer of our thoughts like never before and at first ( maybe for years even ) we think we are going in the opposite direction and going backwards as we were not even aware of most of our thoughts in the past and now our own monkey mind is in full view every hour of every day as it seem like we cant stop the constant stream of useless thoughts.

In today's podcast I talk about observing these thoughts and instead of being angry or frustrated at our selves we can use it as an opportunity to learn greater compassion for others as it becomes more clear then we all experience the monkey mind that is always going going going.  

So often we look back at so called failures and regret the path we took which led us there but that path was the right path at that time. 

Recently my friend and his girlfriend were took a detour to avoid Forrest fires on the East coast of Australia only to be told by officials to turn back and go a different way which added 4 hours to their drive. They were annoyed at wasting 4 hours on this so called wrong path but that path was the right path while they were on it and only in hindsight did it become the wrong path. Often we look at our so called failed relationships and careers like this and be think we wasted years on the wrong path but we need to remember that these so called wrong paths are part of this infinite journey that we are on and so they were absolutely the right path and now this path we are currently on is also the right path.

I hope you enjoy the episode :-) xx