‘When we say we don’t have a second chance, there’s a very big variable in that and a very big grey area. There’s always the chance to evolve and grow, it’s whether we are able to hear it and to embrace that and to get the message that’s embedded in the experience. We generally are quite resistant to change. There’s a beautiful quote from my meditation teacher, ‘Suffering is proportional to our resistance to change. And happiness is proportional to our ability to embrace change.’

Tom Cronin is known as the King of Calm! But life has not always been this way, and it has taken him a lot of internal work to claim this title.

If you picture the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ you will picture his previous life. As a broker in finance his life was highly stimulating filled with not only the pressures of the job but the culture in the job which included lots of drugs, drinking, late nights and partying. So, these compounding layers of hyperstimulation eventually lead to him becoming a complete nervous wreck. He experienced nervous anxiety, panic attacks and insomnia which culminated into a deep dark depression and eventually a nervous breakdown.

This was a critical turning point, where it could be seen as a break down or break through moment. It was a phenomenal shift. He discovered meditation and eastern philosophy and really dove deep into the nature of the mind, the nervous system and the body and what it took to have optimal health. This meant mental and physical health where so much goes through the mind.

Tom has come to realise that anyone going through a breakdown or crisis moment there is nothing that is not supporting you, it is a deep evolutionary process. We can ask the question how is this guiding me? How is this helping me? How is this helping me to progress forward?

By nature, Tom is a Mr Fix-It? He did not realise he had such a big a problem until he hit this breakdown moment. He assumed he was capable and coping with this life, so the Universe had to make it bad enough for him to wake up and guide him forward. To make him realise his what he is here to do and what his full potential was.

He ignored it and was in a constant state of sensory pleasures and ego delights and eventually the Universe, which is a beautiful, guiding, maternal, clever force of intelligence that is always trying to support and help us, made it worse until he realised there was a problem. When he realised there was a problem that was when he started to look for solutions. Pain is actually an intelligent system to help us move forward and progress.

There is a chance there for all of us… A Rishi, a wise one… says ‘You do not need cataclysmic events but just tiny intuitive hints.’ It is this intuitive pre-emptive capacity to see that helps us to see more. Life is a constant meandering process, and it is our resistance to the meander that causes suffering.

This journey, this deep dive into what it all means inspired Tom to create the film The Portal which is available to watch here: https://entertheportal.com/

Tom says, ‘We are in a vast epoch of time that is an evolutionary sequence of realising the greater awareness and truth. Being free of the ignorance which is a by-product of suffering. We will eventually move into a time of greater consciousness, but we are not quite there yet.’ With two 19year olds Tom believes children are going through their own transformation quicker than we ever have. They get it more quickly.

We talk around the idea of nature vs nurture and Tom gives beautiful examples of how we can understand the whole chicken or the egg process. He believes maybe it is both. Souls choose their journey in accordance to previous experiences. There are 100 million people on the Calm app which was not there so long ago. We are seeing a vast rapid expansion of the mind for many in today’s time.

We talk about the idea of ‘practice’ and Tom describes Sadhana a daily routine to make the play of life better. Things like practicing journaling, yoga, meditation, eating well are all daily routines that help us to play the game of life at a better and more enhanced level.

As already stated, it was an immense suffering period during his breakdown with extreme anxiety, depression and panic attacks Tom explains that was a shift that caused him to look at what he was doing. The Universe divinely sent a documentary on a business operator meditating and this was his light bulb moment.

He researched many different forms of meditation and found the idea of transcending was going to become an essential part of his day. He explains how he allocated his time towards with 24 hours a day, 72 x 22 mins portion of time and like all of us to find fulfilment through an experience or an acquisition.

He realised what he was looking for in fulfilment in the wrong places was not being found and realised he had to look within. It wasn’t until he did the in-quiry to enquire and question inwardly, through the meditation experience to find truth, bliss and joy which he found was also innate.

Due to the process of enquiry a child will be raised to know what the McDonalds arches are before they understand their surname as opposed to in-quire.

We talk about spiritual capitalism. This is a time when spirituality meets Western culture and capitalism. In only the last 30-40 years have we seen this integrate into the household. It is a new phenomenon. They are not two separate things. Spirituality and money are not separate, it is really just expression and manifestation of formless into form.

A lot of us are carrying a deep code around lack and fear of not having enough. It is an amazing time to be in the world to see how careers and life purpose and spirituality is a new frontier that we are all trying to work out now.

We talk about how do we possibly put a price on the kind of work Tom does, understanding the consciousness and opening of our hearts, minds and souls? How do we value spirituality? And this work? What we are trying to do is to put a value on what we are offering. Tom explains his kind of service with his business coaching clients. A dentist, lawyer, consultant can do it, so in a sense he is packaging up in bundles of time and experience something that provides fulfilment and enhancement of life.

We talk about the idea of belonging and tribal culture and passing on tribal wisdom. We also have to acknowledge we are in a very different world explains Tom. We cannot rely on our own small tribe as it will limit our capacity to learn. We do not have individual tribes anymore, we have one tribe. So, we can outsource what we want to learn from other people. We are seeing a niching down of knowledge acquisition into a self-paced learning style in a global tribe which allows us to seek the information we are after.

We of course, talk Covid. There is a concentration of media to heighten a certain situation and for whatever reason that is happening is for each person to discern and work out. Tom describes his parents watching four different news channels. It was night after night after night that there was the repetition of the same story. Using sensational bold and bright news information with repetition of the fear and chaos and trauma. We are seeing a concentration of that information flow. This creates a mass formation which affects psychology based upon marketing and media. Who has the most money? Coca Cola spends $300m a year telling us theirs is the best.

Tom explains the power and frequency of love. The thing that is missing is the essence of being which is love which is something that already exists. If we look at the short amount of time that humans are on this planet using words and then to describe the power of what this four-letter word of love means. There is complexity. In the unbound and formless there is a chance to find the simplicity in the complexity.

Love is something we need to realise is the very essence of our being. Within that complexity is all sorts of a myriad of sensations and emotions that arise with different viewpoints. There are times for various responses in amongst all of this. There is a disconnect of what is inherently us and a disconnect and how we interact in the world.

His definition of Self Love is like the wave looking for the ocean. It’s not that we need to find love, we need to realise that we are love. Self-love is the awakening to the Self (the unbounded nature of your divine quality which is ultimately love). Love is Self and Self is love, the embodiment of love.

Tom’s work is incredible and he wanted to share his message with the world when he came out of finance. He wrote 6 books, created an app, ran retreats, online program taught workshops… so many ways he wanted to get his message out there. He got lured into the entrepreneurial world. He got carried away. The film was a big journey. It was a 9-year process getting it out to the world. Like ‘The Secret’ he wanted to get the message of The Portal out into millions of households. Here is the link to watch it:  www.entertheportal.com

It was his intention and passion to create this film for many years. He accepts he is also quite stubborn and finishing the project and fulfilling that commitment was also to honour and respect the investors to ensure it was completed.

To summarise this film it is the ability to free ourselves of suffering which comes through this portal into stillness into the state of realisation the awareness of being. It is within us all. The meditation Tom teaches is one of the portals and gateways to what is already inherently within us. This is where we access wisdom, love, creativity and adaptability. Tom’s suffering came from not knowing how to get to that point and this is what has inspired him to help so many people.

A quote from Maharishi, ‘All that we are is a result of what we have thought. The mind is everything, what we think we become.’

Tom explains the intention of the meditation. The mind is the architect of our life. We cannot build a building without the design. A field of formlessness and intelligence with no form and structure. The thought is the first initial extraction point and the most subtle form before it is manifested into form. We need to get more intentional with our thoughts which allows us to be more intentional with our life.

The daily rituals Tom practices include working on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual areas:

• Reading positive books to elevate and inspire
• Programs to learn and continue improving
• Spiritual meditation, yoga, breathwork
• Physical wellbeing and backing his immune and digestive system in an optimal state including saunas, gym, vitamins, using essential oils

His final message is wherever you are and whatever state you are in, it is changeable, and it is changeable for the better. And there are tools and guidance and systems that are here to help and support you. No matter what your experience keep asking how is this helping me, how is this supporting me, how is it part of my evolution as painful as this is? And being really open to listening in to the messages you get, either your own intuition or some other divine intervention.

The Universe is always here to support and guide and elevate and assist you. You came here in the manifestation of the divine to experience joy and delight and love of life. Try to find the lightness in living.

The dark night moments can be difficult and challenging and letting go is an ongoing process we will go through. Find support when you are and know that on the other side of that suffering and pain is the next level of being more awake, more aware, more loving, more gentle less attached and less conditioned by the past and programs.

Free 12 step guide from Tom – a practical process to reduce stress:
https://stillnessproject.com/faster-deeper-calm/

21 Day Meditation Program a very powerful ability to access these deep meditative experiences:
https://www.tomcronin.com/learn-meditation-online/

The Portal Film:
https://entertheportal.com/

His favourite quote is a Sanskrit quote that means:

Established in being, perform action. This means to find fulfilment first within the state of being and then perform action from a state of fulfilment. We go into action to express fulfilment.

Links to follow:
Website: https://www.tomcronin.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomcronin/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tomcroninmeditation/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tom_Cronin
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomcronin1/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/stillnessproject
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