This month, I had the honour of attending Dr. David R. Hawkins‘ last lecture. It was incredible. I was moved to tears on a number of occassions. The subject was, “Love” and that was a perfect and very powerful note to end on. Because, really, “all you need is love”. As long as you are working on your capacity to be loving then you are doing the greatest work that world could ever need.

As a devoted follower I am very familiar with his work and I’ve listened to lectures from many years ago. This lecture didn’t offer anything new as far as content. But, he’s not really about the content, anyway. His words are extremely important for helping the mind to shift but this event was pretty much just our last chance to be in the same room as him. And what a room it was. So much incredible loving energy.

In the lecture portion someone read out the slides point by point about love and lovingness. Then Susan would stop and ask him questions to clarify the points. Susan is his wife who always sits up on stage with him to either help with muscle-testing or to repeat something that he wasn’t able to hear on his own. As he’s gotten older and less physically able to hear and speak as he has in the past, she’s taken on more of the role of fascilitator in lectures and question periods. Doc is in his mid-eighties and his health is not that great. He couldn’t stand unassisted, he couldn’t hear anyone except Susan (I also have this with my hearing-impaired girlfriend. She needs her hearing-aid with everyone but me.) and the lights also impaired his vision. These two were also being very cute as they talked and gushed about how much they love each other. They showed a DVD of photos of their life and opened themselves up to the audience more than they’ve done before. I could tell the audience was very appreciative.

The main focus for the lecture was, Be Lovingness. That’s all. Just be it. And everything you do and say and think and feel will come from a place of Love. Over and over this was reiterated in various different ways.

For the second half of the day, I stood in line for 2 hours to ask a question, but in the hour that they did the Q & A the line barely moved. It was nice chatting to the people in line though. I was being a bit shy and spent most of the time reading my book but a few forward people got me talking. It was a bit frustrating listening to the questions and non-questions from the people who made it up on stage. But, then as I mentioned to the people around me, it was a great chance to practise being loving and to surrender negativity. We laughed.

In the past, like 10 years ago, when Doc first started doing lectures the questions were generally applicable to every else in one way or another and it was interesting to hear what answers came from the various inquiries. These days, all sorts of spiritual zealots know about how amazing he is and most people who went up on stage would ask him for a blessing. It seemed a little selfish, if you ask me. They were taking up the time of 3000 people so that they could get a personal blessing from this Master. One person kept asking him to send her back into the silence like he did the last time she saw him. He was quite frustrated by the questions and by not being able to see or hear them properly. Other questions that kept coming up were either about a personal need (health, school, work) or some vague question like, “how to I get rid of doubt” or “tell me how to overcome obstacles to God”. He’s say, “what doubt?”, “what obstacles?” Again, the best part about the Q & A was letting it be what it was and surrendering my own frustration. There were some good questions. But, I don’t actually remember them. It’s entirely possible that some of the questions and answers resonated with a large portion of the audience. To me, it was just one long gong-show. One of the most entertaining parts was when Doc called a 40-something victim of childhood abuse that she was lazy for not resolving her issues with the trauma by now. He certainly has a way with words. But, he clarified that forgiveness takes a split second and if she hasn’t forgiven her abuser by now then she’s simply choosing not to.

After the questions they did testimonials. Which was actually quite good. It gave Doc a chance to check out and to come in and out to hear the stories and their expressions of gratitude for everything he’s done. And for the audience, it was nice to hear all the positive experiences his work has had on people. Lots of love. Then at one point Doc hit the wall and couldn’t sit there anymore. This began the ending of the lecture, the most incredible part of the whole day, his blessing to the audience.

He stood up, as did everyone else and said his blessing, then returned to his wheelchair with Susan close by as bagpipes came out and onto the stage. He loves the bagpipes and he said they calibrate at 500, the level of Love. I was pretty much bawling my eyes out the whole time. The energy of Love that was emanating from the stage and the whole event center was overwhelming. I gladly took it all in. I didn’t feel sad or even particularly joyful, the tears just kept streaming. It was simply a consequence of being in the presence of such love. It was beautiful. Music played and Doc poured out his love to us. He stood up for one final goodbye. And then he was gone.

I was left reeling and totally blissed out from the experience. I didn’t want to go home (to my friends place where I was staying). So I went for a scenic drive through the mountains, saw some incredible views, and wound around intense turns on a beautiful mountain road. I was heading towards Sedona but by the time I got there it was dark. I saw the beautiful surroundings and then darkness. So I hit the highway and headed home. Amazing amazing day. I was tired, but so so happy. I look forward to always be striving for lovingness in everything I do. Thank you Dr. Hawkins.

Present moment awareness is essentially the key to all aspects of personal development, spirituality, happiness, joy, creativity, you name it. And, lately I’ve been discovering the magic of being in the moment for getting shit done. Even things as simple as doing the dishes, tidying up the house, and, of course, sitting down to write a blog entry like I’m doing right now.

Starting is definitely a huge block to being productive and Leo Babauta at ZenHabits.net (the modern cultural use of Zen that I, too am appropriating) wrote an awesome post about How To Start.

I’m noticing that what’s working for me is focused attention to the moment. First, we decide in our minds that something needs to be done. More often than not our minds are telling us that 100 things need to be done. So there’s no shortage of decisions of the “what” that needs to be done.

When I’m being fully present I can no longer ignore that the dishes are piling up. Sure, I also need to write and work and, and, and… But, this is where surrender comes into play. I choose one single task. My intelligent mind will rate the importance of the tasks and sometimes another task IS more important than doing the dishes depending on time constraints. After the decision is made, then comes the hard part. Ha, well, it’s actually not hard at all, but it does take practice: I Need Do Nothing. I surrender. Whatever it takes for me to surrender that’s what it takes to get into the present moment and stay there. A simple thought where I say, “surrender”, is what works for me right now. Given the opportunity, the mind will always take you onto another task and BAM there goes your productivity. If the task is doing dishes, simply do that. Feel the water on your hands, smell the soap, watch the suds and hear the birds out the window, garbage truck in the alley or buzzing of your fridge. You can even incorporate taste if you want to but there’s no need to put anything into your mouth, just taste your tongue.

Use all of your senses to help you focused on the moment. The mind will be doing all sorts of funny things: having imaginary conversations about something deemed important, remembering conversations from the recent past or telling you there’s other things that need to be done RIGHT NOW. Let the thoughts come, you can’t stop them and you never will stop them from coming that’s the mind’s job and it does it very well. Just pay attention and then surrender them. I’ve even come up with a mental shorthand for myself. Whenever I’m having an imaginary conversation with someone in my head I notice it for what it is, say to myself, “I.C.” (imaginary conversation), then simply, “Surrender”. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. If I have to I’ll repeat it again 5 seconds later.

This surrendering that I’m talking about is linked to what I was expressing in the article You Need Do Nothing. When I’m doing the dishes my mind wants to work. My mind feels proud of itself for being such a hard worker and it never wants to stop. It feels that if it stops working then nothing will get done. That’s the paradox. By getting your mind to stop working, by enforcing a break, you will be more productive. Do Nothing and the dishes get done. Your body already knows how to do dishes. There’s no need to figure out a plan for the future of clean dishes. There’s no need to evaluate the past of previous times when the dishes got done. In the Now everything is done. That’s present moment productivity.

Eckhart Tolle says a lot of great things about this. I’ve read The Power of Now about 5 times and every time I read it I get more and more from it. In A New Earth he expresses the purpose of being in the moment beautifully:

Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention. Your doing then becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world. This means there is quality in what you do, even in the most simple action, like turning pages in the phone book or walking across the room. (p. 265)

Trust yourself. Let the dishes be the most important task for that moment. Focus on the doing of the task. Stay in the moment and pay attention to how the world unfolds before you. Amazingly you’ll find that more and more it will unfold exactly the way you want it to. And the bonus points are that you get to experience the joy of every single moment as you feel the earth beneath your feet, the sun shining in your eyes and the clink of glasses as you purposefully wash each dish and put it away. Now that is inner peace.

I’ve always had a yearning for improvement. As a kid I read Anthony Robbins personal development books and various others along the way (eg. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Strangely though, I don’t know that I actually improved myself. I certainly wasn’t successful according to society’s standards. I went to University and did nothing with that education. Then I went to a Trade School and didn’t follow up with that either. I still loved reading personal development books, but I never achieved the financial success that all these books said would come. The best I got out of it was a certain level of contentment and positivity. I suppose I tended to use my new skills to simply make myself feel happy rather than making myself financially successful. Everyone describes me as laid back and easy going.

After the end of rather tumultuous relationship with a highly ambitious person, my yearning for improvement took a different direction. It became spiritual. There are a variety of factors that led me down this path. I think one of the most important factors is our current state of society. More and more people are going on a spiritual journey and there is so much information out there. New and interesting blogs and books are becoming extremely popular. This popularity means that average Internet surfers, like myself, really easily stumble upon life changing literature.

Funnily enough, one of the first doors to my new journey was the video, “The Secret”. It has its flaws and before watching it I believed that what we thought about we could manifest, but the new idea that I’d never considered before was that focusing on negativity makes that manifest, as well. It lit a fire in me and I wanted to know more.

That was nearly three years ago. I believe that when we’re ready for certain ideas and material then they will be presented to us. Three years ago, I needed something simple and visual that I mostly already knew to be true to be presented to me to get moving on this path. Along the way, I discovered the power of Love and learned about the ego and subjectivity and even God. I came upon some books that simply did not make any sense to me and returned them to the library pretty much unread. Since then those same books have revealled incredible truths to me. What once was practically jibberish is now blowing my mind.

Please allow me to share some of what I’m experiencing on my journey to enlightenment. I hope that what you read will inspire you on your personal journey.