F**k It Therapy

by John C. Parkin

  I am grateful that I can write about things that mean a lot to me, and enrich my life in a way that people understand.

  I am grateful that more of you have the opportunity to experience real magic by doing something so simple: just saying ‘thanks.’

  I am grateful for this wonderful place where I’m writing. I am grateful for this trusty laptop. I am grateful for the miracle of boiled water in the kettle over there. I am grateful for these legs that will get me over to that kettle. I am grateful for the wondrous taste of Earl Grey tea. I am grateful for the invention of sugar. I am grateful for the delicate china cup I am about to use.

  I am grateful for everything I am. And I am grateful for everything you are.

  For what you have just received, may the Lord make you truly grateful.

  1 A rather impolite and familiar way of saying it’s time to leave one place for another.

  MIND IT

  Mindfulness. More of you will know what mindfulness is than when I wrote the first F**k It book seven years ago. The art of mindfulness is a beautiful one. But it’s not easy to write about – I tried for years.

  And the best way I’ve come up with is through a character I’ve created: a character who finds beauty in the ordinary, who finds enlightenment in the everyday; a character called Bob the Buddha.

  We’re releasing a whole range of stuff around Bob the Buddha soon (or, if you’re reading this after we’ve released it, that should read: And you can experience more of Bob the Buddha by going to www.bobthebuddha.com). But here’s a glimpse into the wonderful world of Bob the Buddha.

  Bob Has Heard of the Buddha but Doesn’t Know He Is One

  Bob vaguely remembers learning about Buddha and Buddhism at school a long time ago. He remembers that the Buddha became enlightened when he was sitting under a tree.

  Bob likes sitting under trees, too.

  He remembers his teacher asked them to try some meditation by thinking about nothing. He remembers it being very difficult to think about nothing.

  The truth is – and the best of the Buddhists would confirm this – that the Buddha was no god… and anyone can become enlightened and become a Buddha.

  Though Bob doesn’t know it, he’s a Buddha (that’s why I’m calling him ‘Bob the Buddha,’ but he doesn’t know that either). And you can be, too. We’re going to take a peek at Bob’s life: what he gets up to, what he thinks about, and find out how utterly simple it is to ‘wake up’ (as Buddhists would call it), become enlightened, and be happy to put your name in the following gap: _____ the Buddha.

  Something Bob Is Very Good at (but Wouldn’t Know How to Name)

  Bob is very good at bringing his attention to what he’s doing.

  He doesn’t do it all the time. Like every other human being, he spends a good deal of time daydreaming, thinking about the past or the future, or worrying about whether something might or might not happen.

  But, over the years, he’s become more and more used to simply being present to what’s going on. His experiences in sitting still for a while occasionally have taught him that he doesn’t have to get so involved in what’s going on, either around him or inside him.

  Different people call this process of ‘being present’ different things. The Buddhists call it ‘mindfulness.’ This is clear: we instantly know what we mean when we say we’re being mindful. But when we look into the word itself, it creates some difficulties (for me, at least). Our normal conscious state is to have our mind full of things, especially as adults. The process of ‘mindfulness,’ as intended by the Buddhists, is to clear the mind of the normal chatter by bringing your attention onto solely what is happening here, now. And by bringing your attention into the present, the mind often does clear, slow down, and become less ‘full.’ So, not really mindful at all.

  Bob Likes to Do the Dishes

  Though Bob now owns a dishwasher (a machine, not a person, that is), he stills enjoys doing the dishes.

  Of all the good things you can say about a dishwasher (again, the machine, we’re coming on to the person soon), it’s not so good with a whole range of necessary kitchen implements: sharp knives (it blunts them), fine wineglasses (it scratches them), and large pots and pans (it has trouble accommodating them).

  Bob enjoys everything about the process of doing the dishes. He organizes everything well, so that the pots are sitting there on the counter filled with warm soapy water loosening the grease while he gets on with other things. He likes to feel his hands in the hot water.

  He wipes and scrubs and rinses. He doesn’t think about other things, like what he’s going to do when he finishes the ‘job.’ He concentrates on what he’s doing: wiping, scrubbing, and rinsing. He enjoys the process of getting things clean.

  Even though he knows that tomorrow they’ll be dirty again, and need cleaning again, he enjoys this process. Maybe he enjoys it precisely because it is a circular process. Most people like to aim to achieve something, work hard doing it, and then appreciate when it is done and ready for them to reap the benefits. But housework is circular and continuous. You have to enjoy the process rather than simply the end product.

  So, in the suds of the kitchen sink, Bob finds his life message, his Zen master. This Le Creuset Master doesn’t allow Bob to think about the end product, only the process. If Bob’s attention wanders, the Master whips him back to attention, in the form of the transitory nature of the final product (the short-lived clean pot).

  And, though Bob doesn’t know it, there’s a long tradition in Buddhism of doing the dishes mindfully. The Buddha himself, it is said, had just finished a heavy bout of dish washing, before he sat under the Bodhi tree. And Buddhist scholars have strained over the question as to whether this chore was a necessary precursor to the whole waking-up thing.

  What’s good about doing the dishes as a mindful exercise is that you’d be hard-pushed to find a more mundane, menial, regular, relentless task in your life.

  Because we so readily switch off in the face off this task (in the form of listening to the radio or daydreaming), it’s the greatest opportunity to switch on, and thus wake up in the face of true reality.

  In this one ‘task’ alone, you might well look down into the mucky water and see the reflection of the Buddha staring back at you.

  Bob Likes It When It Really Rains

  Bob’s always likes it when it really rains. Some of his strongest childhood memories are of watching raindrops falling down panes of glass, or listening to the rain on the roof of the family caravan, or splashing around in puddles in his bright red Wellington boots.

  Now, he enjoys darting into store doorways, pulling his collar close, suddenly sharing something with other people: a kind of Blitz spirit in the face of a harmless and regular meteorological phenomenon. And he loves it: the chance for a break from the routine and the schedule.

  He likes driving, too, in the driving rain. Maybe, he wonders, driving rain was so-named simply because its such good fun to drive in. Bob drives slowly in rain – it’s a great reason to exaggerate his usually careful, conscientious driving techniques.

  Rain, especially big unavoidable rain, like many other things in his life, makes Bob feel cozy. Bob enjoys this cozy feeling. He gets it whenever he’s really in touch with the suchness of life. Rain bounces him out of any thought patterns he’s indulged in and reminds him of what’s going on around him. And, when he makes that jump from the mind’s constructions into the stuff of the material world around him, he feels good and cozy.

  That’s Bob the Buddha. I hope you enjoyed meeting him. And I hope he’s helped convey the idea of ‘mindfulness’ and the magic that it can help create in your life.

  Or, rather, for mindfulness is such an ordinary thing really, the way being mindful can allow you to see the beauty, the magic, the miracles, the divine, in the most ordinary things.

  It’s very, very simple really: the magic is there if only you care to look.

  LOVE IT

  When you’re relaxed,
in neutral and simply being mindful to the present moment, you will, after some time, find that you start to love things – not ‘things’ in terms of the things you can buy in stores or online, nor things in terms of the things that you normally ‘love’, such as people and your parents and kids, but just things. Everything. No discrimination here. Once you’re neutral around stuff, you seem to start loving the stuff (that’s magic in itself), even the dodgy stuff – though that’s clearly more difficult. But look at the times when you faced very difficult things, very difficult times. Now, this doesn’t always happen, but it often does: when you emerge out of the other end of a difficult patch, you see what it has given you; you see that where you are now wouldn’t have been possible without experiencing it; you see that, in a peculiar way, it was ‘perfect.’ Not always but often. You might put other words and explanations to it: you may conclude that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ it’s ‘part of God’s plan,’ that ‘everything is perfect.’ But it’s just enough to see once we’re in the better position of having come through something very difficult, that it had its purpose.

  To Love It is to feel that, but in the present, not just in retrospect. ‘Retrospect’ is a lovely word, isn’t it? To Love It is to Love It when you introspect (look at yourself), extrospect (look around you) when you nowaspect (look in the now). I like making up words very much. I vow to write my next book only in made-up words. But words made up of other words that you vaguely recognize. Though I’ve just realized at least one genius got there first: ‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe’1 (Google that, it’ll be fun). Scrub that, I hereby vow to write my next book only in words that are not made up, and have been used before. I will focus instead in putting those unoriginal words together in a new and original order. People will be astonished by the heights of originality I scale in the way I put those entirely unoriginal words together.

  I Love It a lot. I love reality just as it is, as it unfolds before me. And that feeling of Loving It is heightened when I’m relaxed: when I’ve said F**k It to the things that are bugging me, stressing me, upsetting me. Not that I don’t love being bugged, stressed, and upset. It’s just hard. I say F**k It. I Relax It. I Love It. Then when the bugging, stressing, and upsetting return, I’m more likely to be Loving It.

  Incidentally, speaking of things that bug me, is it just me, or does McDonald’s tagline of ‘I’m lovin’ it’ really bug you, too? You do have to wonder when a major corporation tries to put words in the mouths of the public. I suppose they can’t legally force-feed us with their food, so they try the next best thing: force-feeding us with our response to their food.

  I can’t help but hear it being uttered through gritted teeth. Like a suit from McDonald’s head office is holding a cattle stunner against your head, while another suit feeds you another Big Mac and asks, ‘So how is it, Joooohhhhnnnn?’ (They’d say ‘John’ like that, believe me.) And my eyes would dart toward the other suit with the cattle stunner pressing against my temple. And he would wink at me, and I’d say, through gritted teeth, ‘I’m lovin’ it.’

  I hate the way they now put nutritional information everywhere on the basis that people probably won’t really read the details – they’ll just assume that if McDonald’s can display the nutritional contents so prominently, then their food can’t be THAT unhealthy.

  I hate the way McDonald’s lorries, in the UK at least, look like Ben & Jerry’s ads these days. Suddenly McDonald’s is sourcing everything from local farms, and loving the cows who are fed on lovingly watered grass, before they ask them how life is. ‘Mooooo,’ say the cows, ‘We’re lovin’ it,’ before they get hit with the stun gun anyway.

  It’s not just the cows that are being sacrificed for McDonald’s bottom line. It’s our judgment, too. We’re zombies, walking slowly to the front of the line to order our meal deals:

  ‘Please tell me stuff that makes me feel okay, in these health-conscious, locally sourced, environment-aware times, so I can eat the same old shit that I’ve been addicted to for years… I know it’s basically the same nutritionally poor, but rich-in-fat-and-sugar concoction that it was when I was a kid, but I like it, and I just pray that you can make up any old nonsense to salve my conscience, okay?’

  I’d prefer it if they were just straight with us: ‘Sure we know most of this stuff is no good for you. But don’t we make it tasty, eh? Especially after you’ve had a couple of beers or a shake that bursts your eardrums as you try to suck it up the straw. And have you seen the prices? You can’t buy a salad leaf in a posh deli for the price of one of our hamburgers. Go on, treat yourself. You can have a salad tomorrow.’

  In fact, I reckon just that line would transform McDonald’s fortunes:

  McDonald’s. Salad’s for tomorrow.

  That’s why I’m more likely to go into a ‘Heart Attack Café’ than a McDonald’s. At least I know what I’m dealing with.

  ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ I am, actually. I love seeing how things are. I love looking into the window of McDonald’s and wondering. I don’t go in. But I wonder. Then I wander some more. I love wandering and I love wondering. I love city places, and everything in the city places. I love the things people do in city places. And I love country places, and everything in the country places. I love the things animals and people do in country places. Places, people, animals, buildings, trees, generosity, and selfishness. It’s all life.

  And I, for one, Love It.

  1 From ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll (in case you’re not Wi-Fi-ed up at the moment or can’t be bothered to look it up).

  BREATHE IT

  Breathing has become an essential part of our F**k It Retreats in Italy. We don’t let anyone join us unless they can breathe. So please don’t even bother inquiring unless you’re confident that you’re breathing.

  Okay, breathing. Isn’t it great? Breathing in. Breathing out. Actually, Gaia’s the expert on breathing (she’s even got certificates), so let me hand over to her now.

  Hi, Gaia here. Can I start by saying how lucky I am to have a husband like John. Wow! What a man he is! Boy, every day I just thank my lucky stars that I’m married to such a man.

  Actually, that was still me.

  Here’s Gaia:

  So, breathing: most holistic practices have some breathing component, and that says something about breathing. Basically, some really cool guys in India a few thousand years ago realized that your emotional patterns are connected to your breathing patterns: so when you feel peaceful, you breathe in a certain way, which is different from the way you breathe when you fill in a spreadsheet, which is different again from how you breathe when you’re in love. And so they realized that if you do it the other way around – i.e., change the way you breathe – you can actually change the way you feel.

  The other aspect of breathing is that it’s the only automatic function of the body you can easily change at will. So you can ask anyone to breathe faster, or slower, or to hold their breath, and they’re able to. (Ask them to do the same with their heart rate and see how they look at you.) So as we grow up, because breathing is connected to emotions and is easily controllable, we start creating breathing patterns connected to emotions, which eventually become fixed. As our great friend (and great breath master) Dan Brule points out: ‘Your breathing patterns become like a fingerprint, unique to you.’ So, by working with your breathing, you can work with your way of being, and you can shift patterns quickly and deeply. What I see in everyone is that the way a person breathes represents the way they live. Reading someone’s breathing can tell you practically everything about him or her, and gives great potential for working with them.

  Of course, the breathing we use and teach is in true F**k It style, and is inspired by a technique called Breathwork, which funnily enough isn’t at all about work. What we do isn’t a breathing exercise as such, it is a way to open fully and let go fully using breathing. (For this we have to give thanks to some magic experimental guys, including Stan
Grof and Leonard Orr who, in the ‘60s, made this a therapy. And I need to give thanks to the great woman, Jane Okondo, who originally taught me.)

  It’s based on a surprisingly simple technique of inhaling fully on the in-breath and letting go fully on the out-breath, without holding on to pauses. Just try five of those breaths: deep full in-breath, short, relaxed letting go out-breath – no pauses. Simple stuff, it seems. But, as usual, in simplicity is depth, too. As most of us tend not to live fully (represented by the energy of the full in-breath), and are unable to let go (the totally relaxed letting go out-breath), this breathing immediately brings up most of the issues we want to unblock – and the possibility of moving beyond them. It is amazing to discover you can just breathe in the face of anything, instead of stopping and getting swamped by events, thoughts, and judgments. So breathing becomes a great way of saying F**k It: F**k It, just breathe.

  Life comes up with its stuff, you breathe, you embrace, you keep breathing, you move on; it’s just stuff. Then you touch on the miraculous simplicity of life. There’s nothing fancy about miracles, they are all there is. But most of the time we can’t see that, and we go on looking for miracles somewhere else while it’s all happening under our noses. So, we get people to breathe and ‘see.’

  If you can’t join us for some of our sessions, there is something you can do on an everyday basis: breathe. No, not just the in-and-out stuff. ‘Choose’ to breathe: normal simple breaths but breathe. Whatever is going on, F**k It, you can breathe. When things hit you: breathe, and breathe more, till you aren’t moving from fear, but from curiosity. When you’re confused: breathe, and breathe more till you’re happy to make time so you don’t rush into a solution just for the sake of getting out of discomfort. When you need to do something big and new, breathe and breathe more, till you’re fully present to the great thing you’re doing, and actually excited more than scared. If you need to find out what you really feel about something, breathe and breathe more, your feelings will certainly show up (then all you need to do is not ignore them). And certainly, if you’re having sex, breathe a lot.