Welcome to Simply Consciousness…. I am honored today to have the opportunity to interview Stillness Project founder Tom Cronin. Tom previously worked as a bonds and inflation swaps broker for 26 years. Highly stressed, he turned to meditation for help. It not only helped, it transformed his life.
Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?
I spent 26 years in finance markets as one of Sydney’s leading bond and swap brokers. I discovered meditation in the early stages of my career, when the anxiety and chaos I was experiencing had hit a crisis point, and it completely transformed my world, both personally and professionally. As founder of The Stillness Project, a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit in stillness daily, I am passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people’s lives.
My ongoing work in transformational leadership and cultivating inner peace through meditation takes me around the world hosting retreats, mentoring, presenting keynote talks, teaching and creating The Portal film-book experience, all part of my commitment to the current planetary shift.
What is your definition of consciousness?
Consciousness is a level awareness of yourself and the world around you. A sunflower has consciousness as it engages with its environment, tracking the suns movements through the day, a pet dog has consciousness as it is delighted when the owner returns home or aggressive when a stranger comes to the front door. Likewise we have degrees of awareness or consciousness as we move through our life expanded and developing our level of inner world and outer world.
How did your awareness process start?
Awareness really starts at birth as we interact and digest information from the world we engage in. This develops over time as we grow up – however we can expand and speed up the process through techniques like mediation. This happened to me when I learnt to transcend in meditation in 1996 when I was 29 years old.
What are you the most aware of in your daily life?
I’d like to be most aware of my Higher Self, the non-changing Divine essence and essential nature of who I am. Although often I forget this and I’m not aware and slip into ignorance. ?
What was the deepest internal change that you have personally experienced from transforming your consciousness and how it did impact your life in both spiritual and practical ways?
Through the art of transcending in meditation I started to become aware of an inner state of divine unconditional love and light. I realized it was always there only sometimes it was masked or smothered by lots of activity on a mental and emotional level.
Once I became more established and aware of this it changed a lot of how I lived in the world. I still had desires but they weren’t that strong, overpowering addictive hunger for more all the time. This was a big shift that happened in my life.
What is the best advice, words of wisdom that you would like to share with our readers about the importance of becoming more conscious?
Becoming more conscious frees us from the roller-coaster ride of pleasure and pain in life. Life will constantly change, it may not meet our expectation many times and most of us are at the mercy of this change that see us being thrown around emotionally. Moksha is the freedom from the binding effect of life that liberates us emotionally and helps us sustain a deep inner peace (most of the time).
Please inspire us by telling us about your current project or projects?
My biggest project that I am working on right now is the launch of The Portal film and book. This has been 7 years in the making and it is now being released in cinemas and bookstores around the world. This film and book explore 6 stories that have all been through intense struggles and crisis and found a better version of their life through the power of meditation. You can find out more about this by going to http://www.entertheportal.com/
What is the biggest problem in the world today?
Lack of awareness of about our inner world, that deep stillness, where wisdom and truth exists.