So what does it truly mean to be human? How can we evolve our minds and transcend the conditioned brain? Is internal peace possible without turning to religion?

Alan has spent the last 10 years on a personal journey to find out for himself, which resulted in the book  "the natural mind - waking up",  a personal deconstruction of the human condition, and the creation of a project to help others wake up. Welcome to the natural mind project.

 Welcome to the natural mind project.

The natural mind project is a different kind of organisation in that it isn't really an organisation at all! I would define it as a “loose network of like minded individuals.”

I set it up in early 2009, after spending the last five years writing “the natural mind – waking up” a three volume, 200 topic, 2000 page personal deconstruction of myself, humanity and the relationship we have to the planet, the universe, and the other species we share our home with.

After finishing the book, I put the philosophy into action – the natural mind project was born.

At the present time the natural mind project has but one “employee” and that is me. I am dedicating my life to helping people help themselves wake up, and at the same time doing work for the benefit of others, whilst maintaining a watchful eye on day to day problems that concern us all, offering help where it is needed, and giving advice where it is requested.

One of the main aims of the project is to help find a way to reduce the power of money especially on our basic needs.

The monetisation of food has had a profound effect on us. If I am hungry and I take an apple from a shop I will be arrested and charged with theft, after which I will be locked up (at the taxpayers expense) and duly given a meal and a drink! So you can see why some people don't mind being in jail. At least food, water, clothing, and shelter are taken care of, which, if you think about it, are the most important things to every human (even if they don't think they are)

Many people have tried to tackle this in the past, and have failed, but that is because people don't want to break through the money system, they like it. Until we all want to change and all wish to find a better way, I'm afraid our basic needs will remain firmly linked to the pursuit of money at any cost, and worldwide slavery to debt.

Talking of money, the project currently receives no external funding, and is financed solely by me, (barely), with a few royalties from the books, my therapeutic treatments in traditional thai massage, and a handful of donations from people who support my work. There are no plans to turn it into a charity, as in my thinking, a charity is one to many where the idea behind the project is many to many – human collaboration.

“So are there any real aims? It all sounds kind of vague” you say. Do I want to alleviate poverty and suffering the world over? In a word. No. Do I want all war to stop and no one to ever be cruel or hurtful ever again? In a word. No. Do I want us to be environmentally aware and put an end to global warming? Once again, you guessed it! No.

So what do I want? Well it's quite simple really, but it is a very hard concept for people to grasp. Wishing for peace, an end to suffering, no more pollution, murder, etc. is all external. External to me. You see, the only way the “world” will change is through the change in individuals. Not by campaigning for change or protesting for change.

Let me explain. I am a strict vegetarian. I do not eat any products derived from animals, nor wear any animal products. Now, I think that the world would be a more compassionate place if everyone stopped eating meat. So what do I do? Do I wave banners and try to change you? Do I protest at my local butchers? Do I hate you because you are a meat eater? No. I have made a shift in my mind which has the resulting action of me changing.

“Yes but that's just one of you changing” say you. “What difference does it make to the millions of animals who are killed every year?”

But let's look at this a different way shall we? If I say “I am concerned for the suffering of the animals, I will stop eating their flesh and wearing their skin,” have I not changed the world already? You see, we are always worried about the external. We always want to change someone else. But we are just assuming we are right all the time!

Just because I think it is cruel to kill hundreds of millions of chickens every year, you may not. You may say “man is a meat eater plain and simple” and I may disagree, but where does all this agreement and disagreement get us? Nowhere. The only way the chickens will survive is if I say, I will not eat chickens any more, and then leave it at that. We have made our choice. We have changed our internal world, and we have directly affected our external world. All in all, a good days work I would say!

But something in the back of our mind tells us it is not enough. We MUST go out and change other people. We must. But if I convince you to become vegetarian is that not the same conditioning process you went through as a child to become a meat eater?

We must come to it by ourselves, whatever it is. There is no use campaigning for weapons to be banned when the man who makes them has no intention of not making them! But when he sees for himself the horror caused by his work, becomes aware of himself, and commits to pursuing work that benefits his fellow man, the world will become a better place – instantaneously.

The problem lies with our view of time. We want everything to change now! Well, it is changing. Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every year. But we our viewing this change from our personal time. If we accept that the universe has been around a fair while, and so has this planet, and our species... Why do we expect that we will be able to see the change all at once. The world is full of trillions of small changes happening from moment to moment – some so slow, that we would have to live for a thousand years or more to notice them.

But we say “No! I see that the world is violent I wish it to be non-violent. So I stand up for peace, go to war for peace, lobby my government for peace... But as I have mentioned before, even having the word peace means there must be an opposite. No one thing without the other.

So should we help people change? Of course, but only when they come to us to ask for guidance. The rest is pure desire to get people to think the way we do – which is, at the root of it, conditioning. And that can't be a good thing if we want to evolve our minds as a species.

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