I got a rather strange e-mail this morning. A journalist wanted to know if I still enjoy sex!

At first I thought it was a come-on. But apparently when I was 17 and fighting the British government for my legal right to be naughty (aka for the age of consent to be made equal for everyone) Madonna’s pal and one-time lover* Sandra Bernhard was asked what she thought of my campaign.

Bernhard’s (typically cutting) response: “he’s gonna fight for it and then he’ll have it and go ‘I fought for this?!’”.

Hence the journo’s curiosity.

So, for the record, it just keeps getting better…

* allegedly

All you need is love… love is all you need.

Happy Christmas everyone!

This time last year I ordered a case of wine from Virgin Wines. It was a present for someone; the specific case they’d asked for.

A few weeks later I received another case. Apparently the small print on their website says that by placing an order you’re also signing up to their wine club – which essentially means they’ll choose more wine for you and keep delivering it until you say stop.

So I said stop.

A few weeks later… more wine arrived. I e-mailed them, forwarding my confirmation to show I’d already cancelled. They apologised, offered a refund and said they’d send someone to collect the wine.

A few weeks later… more wine arrived. They also hadn’t refunded me from the last time. So I sent a slightly rougher e-mail and they sent a slightly more profuse apology, offering another refund and another man to come collect the wine.

Guess what? Another case arrived a few weeks later!

This time I didn’t sign for it so the driver had to take it back. I contacted Virgin and they sent another apology and another promise…

… and four months later I still haven’t got the full refunds.

Are they drunk on their own wine or what?

UPDATE: It’s kinda cool having a well-read blog! As a customer you can hang around for a year… as a blogger you get action within 12 hours, even so close to Christmas. My refunds have been done. I’m at peace with the Virgins.

One of the great myths bestowed on us from the last century is that we each have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. It began with Freud and it’s become an increasingly popular belief ever since, especially with hypnosists and NLP people.

I attended a training recently where a prominent teacher explained how he’d told a metaphorical story to a female client, and “she didn’t get it, but her unconscious got it”.

Is it really useful to create an entity of someone’s thoughts and act as if that’s seperate from the person themselves?

Sometimes it is. But often these teachers fail to communicate that the conscious/unconscious distinction is a metaphor – a useful way to think about thinking. We don’t really have two minds. We aren’t really separate from our thoughts.

You can pay attention and be aware of your heart, and it continues to beat even when you’re not paying attention. That doesn’t mean you have a conscious heart and an unconscious heart. It’s just that we’re designed to focus our attention differently at different times, and we’re capable of running processes in the background too.

I’m pretty sure I only have one mind. I’m aware of (conscious of) some of my thoughts and not aware of (unconscious of) others, but it’s all the same mind.

I don’t have “an unconscious” – and nor do you.

It’s much easier to run your own brain when you drop the labels and feel into the experience instead. Conscious/unconscious is a useful metaphor sometimes, and it has major limitations too. It’s a map, not the territory. I suggest people remember that it’s a metaphor and only use it when it’s useful.

I’m so grateful to the brave Peter Oborne for standing up against the wicked Jewish lobby and telling it like it is.

His documentary on Channel Four last night – made by “Hardcash” productions, ironically – was so insightful; now I’ve seen the light.

Now I know that traitorous Zionists are secretly funding a massive campaign on behalf of a foreign government, and they’re officially “the most powerful lobby in Britain”.

Having worked in Parliament, I always thought it was the advertising lobby that had the most reach – endlessly sending me gifts while I was there (always returned); always offering nights out and tickets for whatever was on.

But it’s obvious now you think about it. It’s the nasty Zionist influence that makes our government back Israel to the hilt. That’s why we joined America, Canada, Australia and 15 other countries in firmly rejecting the Goldstone report (we didn’t), and why our Foreign Secretary didn’t speak out against Israel’s actions in Gaza (he did).

It’s why BBC News journalists have to be so pro-Israel all the time (haha), and why someone like Jeremy Bowen could never be accused of partiality against Israel (the BBC Trust found he was). It’s why Jon Snow from Channel Four News may have great ties but he’d never deny with disdain the deaths of so many Israeli civilians.

It’s why The Independent and especially The Guardian cower in fear and never conflate news and anti-Israel opinion, and of course never censor the debate (yeah right).

Of course, it’s all obvious now. Those big-noses are running the country and they’re controlling everything!

I’m so glad Peter showed us his bloody montage: dead children – Jews eating dinner – more blood – Israel flag – dead bodies – Jews eating dinner… money, Israel flag, dead bodies, Israel flag… because it showed he had no agenda, obviously. It showed that he wasn’t pandering to sick stereotypes either.

Did I dream this bizarre program or was it really on last night?

Oborne’s essential message was that since he couldn’t find any evidence of a conspiracy, that proves it is a very deep conspiracy. Because nobody could tell him about it, that proves it exists. A typical example of his special brand of logic was when he said the Honest Reporting news agency isn’t based in Britain (it is) but in Israel (it isn’t). So off he went to Jerusalem, probably with his crucifix at the ready, where he was politely told that the office isn’t there. This seemed to prove something sinister to him: it’s a virtual organisation, he told us knowingly, as if that’s odd for a website. Nudge nudge, wink wink. (I happen to know that the head of Honest Reporting, Simon Plosker, was in London the whole time this was going on… and I am pretty sure Oborne knew this too.)

The message most people will remember is that Oborne went over to Israel to track down a group of evasive Jews who remote-control our politicians and media. It’s shitty journalism. It panders to the worst kind of prejudice.

At a time when anti-semitic violence is on the rise, Oborne’s crass conspiracy theory will make money for him and Hardcash – and it will put more Jewish lives at risk.

–

A quick note to the synaptically-challenged. Please don’t tell me that criticising Israel doesn’t make you anti-semitic. That straw man argument has been used over and over by people who think they’re being cleverer than they ever could be. I’ve heard it enough times now. The idea that there are two teams, two tribes, is hopeless. But more hopeless is the idea of moral equivalence: that Channel Four broadcast a Dispatches documentary about terrorist mosques so now they must also broadcast one about traitorous Jews. Stand up for what you believe, if you believe anything; don’t hide behind vagueness and idealistic views of theoretical pacifism. Of course Israel isn’t perfect. Who could be perfect in these conditions? The solution is good communication and dialog – it’s never to fuel the flames of hate, which is what Peter Oborne did last night.

Robert Holden circulated this today, and I’m sharing it with you too because I think it tells a simple truth very well.

After living 16 years, 5,844 days, on the spiritual path.
After sitting for over 5,000 hours in meditation.
After reading 1,000 brilliant books on success, happiness and love.
After listening to 500 healing CDs.
After attending 250 self-development workshops.
After benefiting from 200 therapy sessions.
After praying on my knees more than 100 times.
After going on twenty-five retreats.
After enduring 10 fasts.
After suffering 5 colonic irrigations.
After trying to forgive mum and dad more than once …
I finally got the key to happiness:
Just RELAX!

See also: The Ways of Happiness

Sesame Street is 40 today. And someone has made this video bleeping out certain words from one of the songs.

We’re so used to bleeps being used to block out ‘naughty’ words, it’s funny what a few bleeps can do.

What do you imagine he’s talking about?

The Home Secretary has sacked his advisor, Professor David Nutt, for disagreeing with him on drugs policy.

Is this what modern politics is about? Paying someone to echo what you already believe and sacking them if they deviate from “the message”.

It seems like a weird kind of prostitution to me.

Of course Nutt was right to tell the truth about the scientific evidence, even if it doesn’t support the government’s current policy.

The Home Secretary is being more paranoid than any stoner I’ve known. And more irresponsible too.

What will the next government advisor say, if he/she wants to stay in the job for more than five minutes? What about advisors on other issues, and in other departments?

Paying someone to give you honest and informed advice is one of the smartest things anyone can do. Listening to what they say is a good idea too.

I’m in the middle of Robert Holden’s 8-week happiness course – a series of meditations on joy and happiness.

It’s wonderful. Robert is one of the most authentically happy people I’ve ever met, as well as being a great teacher and facilitator.

I love having conversations about happiness. From children to great grandparents, I think we can learn about happiness from everyone.

One of the most interesting things is what we call paradigms of happiness. How do people think about happiness?

Most people seem to think about it as something that has to be earned or deserved. If I work hard, then I can enjoy the weekend. If my kids are happy, then I’ll be happy. (Otherwise I suck and must be miserable.)

Others think about it as something they (can) achieve. They seek bigger experiences, wilder adventures, more stuff, better stuff. If I seduce a supermodel and go on a road trip across America, then I’ll be happy. (Otherwise I suck and must be miserable.)

Some people see happiness as something they already have. It’s like a possession. The trouble with a possession is someone might take it away, so these people tend to guard their happiness and insure against its loss.

If you’ve ever been to a self-improvement event, you’ll have met people for whom happiness has become a journey or even a quest. If they could just find the right map and ignore the distractions, eventually they’d get there. But who has the right map? You can almost hear these people shouting inside their head ‘JUST TELL ME WHERE THE DAMN HAPPINESS IS AND THEN I’LL GO THERE’. Usually they’re looking for the latest sat nav gadget, in whatever form that takes – another book, another workshop… they are usually less and less happy as they learn more and more ways to become happy.

A few people think about happiness as a choice. They decide to be happy. They might take practical steps too – learning techniques to focus their mind; eating in ways that give them constant energy; avoiding people who bring them down, etc. – and if they do, by aligning their attention and intention, they will probably feel good more often than not. This pretty much works; a lot of happy people do it this way.

But the paradigm I like best is the most simple of all. It’s the genuine realisation that you are happy. It’s the knowledge that happiness is your essence; your core. And when you pay attention to your essence rather than the distractions of everyday life, happiness is always there, because you are happy.

Michael Neill has a lovely story about a bowl of cloudy water, kinda muddy water. How would you make it clear? Shake it? Boil it? Sieve it? Add chemicals? None of them really work that great. The best way we’ve found is to let the bowl settle. Let the water stand for a while. And what you’ll notice is the gunk starts to separate itself, because the natural state of water is clear. And the natural state of you is happy.

Beautiful.

It’s too easy though, right? So we go back on the journey, back to earning our happiness, back to defending it.

And yet every authentically happy person I’ve ever met has had the same message: you can’t become happy, you can only be happy.

Have a great day!

When I wrote Can NLP Be What It Has Become?, the reaction was really positive. Most people agreed that NLP has lost its way and many republished the article on their own blogs and websites. Even Bandler’s UK promoter republished it.

To the few who disagreed, and who think standards in NLP are good enough, here’s a reminder of why they’re not.

George is a practitioner approved by not just one… not just two… but at least three professional-sounding organisations in the UK, including the British Board of NLP. He’s apparently a great hypnotist and you can trust him as your therapist.

George is also a cat.

Yes, a cat.

Read the full story on the BBC website.