I’ve written before about my friend Barrett who’s back in jail again. I don’t know how many times this makes, but it’s quite a few. Barrett’s friends and family (he has many friends and an extended, supportive family) ask, “Why?” Barrett isn’t dumb, and knows that the behavior that cause him to end up in the hoosegow again (and again, and again) could easily be modified. He also claims to “hate” jail. So what’s up?
The answer is simple. At some level jail is a payoff for Barrett. He’s getting what works for him. So he continues to do it, even though if you were to broach the subject with him he’d adamantly deny it.
I see this dynamic replicated over and over again with friends who are in prison. The payoff for them is that they end up free of responsibility, or out of a relationship that feels uncomfortable at some level to them, or away from having to deal with the pressures of competing in a large marketplace, or happy to be a “big fish in a small pond” – or countless other things. Paid off? Yes. Satisfied? No.
And, it’s not just people in prison – all of us participate in continued dysfunctional behaviors because there’s a payoff lurking in the background. I hate being fat (I am) but still find myself going to “all you can eat” places, or ordering the fried shrimp instead of a salad. What’s the payoff? Emotional obesity.
At twenty-six my friend Donna has already lost her mother and two grandparents to cancer. It really scares her that she might be predisposed to the disease herself. She thinks about this as she tears open her second package of cigarettes for the day.
As you think about these little stories – do you notice a pattern present in your own life? Whenever we do things that on some level we don’t want to do, and know isn’t helpful to our “big picture goals” – we’re getting a payoff – not the one we consciously want, but the one that is dominant for us. The behavior we choose creates the results we get. Things don’t “happen” to us. We choose the behavior, the behavior begets results. Simple as that.
Changing this dynamic in our life can be hard. We can start behaving in positive ways, leading to the result of getting what we want, or on a more subtle level, we can stop behaving in ways that interfere with us having what we want. If we didn’t perceive a particular behavior serving some purpose for us, at some level, conscious or un-conscious, we wouldn’t do it.
Why on earth would we continue to do things that hurt us? Why do we continue in relationships that provide no real satisfaction, or jobs that make us miserable, or any number of other things that don’t allow us to manifest our ultimate potential? Because those things work.
In some cases it’s as simple as the “I need attention” syndrome. We enjoy being the victim, getting people to feel sorry for us and recognize how hard we have it (although we are creating that “hard” every step of the way). The subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate between “good attention” and “bad attention”. All attention is good attention. In the context of prisons, people can do things so they get awards and certificates, or get extracted from their cells by a group of guards. Attention is attention. Sometimes the latter is easier and more expedient than the former. There’s some status among inmates in being a prison troublemaker. Again, pay value.
The most obvious and easily measured payoffs are, predictably, monetary. That’s the primary reason we go to work every day, when we would rather be home or doing something else. We value money, so we are willing to make sacrifices in order to get it. Sometimes, even more powerful payoffs are non-monetary. Psychological income, for example, can take the form of acceptance, approval, praise, love, companionship, greed, punishment or fulfillment.
One of the great needs humans have is to “be right”. If I have an internal map of reality or worldview that I am not OK, or not deserving, or not (insert whatever you think here) enough of something – there is a serious effort on the part of my consciousness to reconcile my inner and outer world. To validate, as it were, my belief about whatever negative perception I hold (or conversely, positive perception, it works the same way). The payoff is seeing, “Aha…I really am, loveable, un-loveable, worthy, etc., etc.”
A lot of people grew up with someone telling them what they couldn’t do, or what they couldn’t accomplish, or how they weren’t worth anything – or worse, no one told them those things, but the message was reinforced by parents who were too busy with their own lives to deal with their kids (message; you’re not important). So we look for all the ways we can validate that belief about ourselves in our world. How can I make myself be “not important” – thus right in my belief about myself? Doesn’t take long to find behaviors that will reinforce that belief with results.
Another prison example – so many guys I know, think that if only they weren’t in prison what a great father, husband or provider they would be. Then, they get out and find out how hard it is to be a great father, or a great husband and how hard it is to be a provider – and rather than admit that, like everyone else, all they can do is try to achieve the image they have in their minds of being Ward Cleever or Dr. Huxtable, and do their best – it’s just not easy. Rather than recognizing who they imagine themselves to be isn’t who they are (at least not without some serious work, effort and patience) – it’s easier to go back to prison for some stupid little thing, blame the “system” – and rest assured in their minds that they would be great at whatever, if only the system wasn’t screwed up. The payoff is that their view of themselves remains intact, although there’s now no way to test it.
Ditto people who have relationships with prisoners or people who are on long military deployments – as long as they are away in prison or on an aircraft carrier for six months, one can live a fantasy life about how wonderful their spouse or significant other is, how when you are finally together all will be bliss – because “he/she completes me…” Then they come home and the reality doesn’t match up with the belief or the image and there can be hell to pay – with the usual result being one or other party creates a behavior or situation allowing them to opt out.
Every behavior has a payoff. Even the most destructive behaviors have a payoff. If you did not perceive the behavior in question to generate some value to you, you would not do it. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you've got to stop "paying yourself off" for doing it.
Find and control the payoffs, because you can't stop a behavior until you recognize what you are gaining from it. Payoffs can be as simple as money gained by going to work to psychological payoffs of acceptance, approval, praise, love or companionship. It is possible that you are feeding off unhealthy, addictive and imprisoning payoffs, such as self-punishment or distorted self-importance.
Be alert to the possibility that your behavior is controlled by fear of rejection. It's easier not to change. Try something new or put yourself on the line. Also consider if your need for immediate gratification creates an appetite for a small payoff now rather than a large payoff later.
As is so often the case, turn on the lights and the bogeyman disappears. Once we start to get conscious about what our payoffs are, and evaluate how helpful they are in terms of our stated goals and objectives – we can address the ones that really don’t serve us well. We are shaping our own behavior by the payoffs we are getting in life. Think a bit today about what in your life isn’t working, but keeps cropping up over and over again. Or, in the life of someone else you know…either way. And if you want feedback, post a comment. Happy to respond.
The Etymological Dictionary defines an iconoclast is a “breaker or destroyer of images” from the Late Greek word eikonoklastes. Later, an iconoclast was viewed as “one who attacks orthodox beliefs or institutions.” Today, iconoclasts like perceive things differently than other people - or maybe we just like to be annoying. Either way. This difference in perception plays out in our ideas, worldview and metaphysics - and in how we manage our fears and shadow self. It works well for me.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
We Create our Own Experience...
I can’t harp on this enough…and at risk of sounding like a broken record I’ll state it again…You cannot dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is. If you don't like your job, you are accountable. If you are overweight, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. You are creating the situations you are in and the emotions that flow from those situations.
The bottom line for me comes from the perhaps irrational idea that I think people want to be happy – contrary to all experience, I still think this is mostly true (although I see people wallowing in dysfunction to the degree that they must get some “pay value” from it.)
The unknown is scary. For many of us, we like the familiar – the reasons for this can be numerous – much of it comes from how we are raised, and what doesn’t trace its roots to that – comes from our need as humans to “look good” and that means not looking like we’re surprised, or at a loss for words or actions, or are “out of control…” So we’d rather be safe and miserable (or at least a little miserable) than take real risks, even though they may not be very BIG risks, and be happy. So we continue creating misery.
In another blog Responsibility as Empowerment I wrote extensively about taking responsibility…
Saying that you create your own experience is very different from saying you are to blame for every feeling or behavior you have. When you get that you own your experience, you have created it, this is not about blame but rather about personal power. If someone or something outside of you is the cause of how you feel or behave, you are powerless -- a victim. If you, or at least your unconscious processes, are at cause, you have power and can do something to change your experience of the situation to one that is happier and more peaceful.
Previously I wrote,
Every choice you make — including the thoughts you think — has consequences. When you choose the behavior or thought, you choose the consequences. If you choose to stay with a destructive partner, then you choose the consequences of pain and suffering. If you choose thoughts contaminated with anger and bitterness, then you will create an experience of alienation and hostility. When you start choosing the right behavior and thoughts — which will take a lot of discipline — you'll get the right consequences.
One of the hard things about understanding that we create our own experience is asking for what we want. That seems to be so hard for many people – for many, they have created the map (See my blog on maps – Principle 4) that they are unworthy of getting what they want or that for one reason or another they don’t deserve the good things in life other people get. “Other people have nice lives…not me…” Listen up because this is important - When we’re not clear on what we want, when we can’t really articulate what we need from relationships – or from work, or from our kids, or any other “other” in our life, we leave ourselves open to getting what we get, which may not be what we want. If anything, we get ambiguity. What fun is that?
Know what you want and tell people. Then the choice whether they meet your needs is theirs, and the choice whether you stay in a relationship with someone or something that doesn’t meet your needs is yours. Perfect.
There’s a big payoff in playing the role of victim, or using past events to build excuses. The downside is that it guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else. Whether the cards you've been dealt are good or bad, you're in charge of yourself now.
There is a cost to this philosophy – no longer can you go around saying, “you made me feel bad", "sad", "angry” or anything else. No one has the power to make me feel anything (unless you give it to them, and then you make that choice). So, you become responsible for how you feel. Not everyone is happy about that. On the upside, you become in charge of your life. The captain of your own ship. Are you ready for a change? How cool is that…
The bottom line for me comes from the perhaps irrational idea that I think people want to be happy – contrary to all experience, I still think this is mostly true (although I see people wallowing in dysfunction to the degree that they must get some “pay value” from it.)
The unknown is scary. For many of us, we like the familiar – the reasons for this can be numerous – much of it comes from how we are raised, and what doesn’t trace its roots to that – comes from our need as humans to “look good” and that means not looking like we’re surprised, or at a loss for words or actions, or are “out of control…” So we’d rather be safe and miserable (or at least a little miserable) than take real risks, even though they may not be very BIG risks, and be happy. So we continue creating misery.
In another blog Responsibility as Empowerment I wrote extensively about taking responsibility…
Saying that you create your own experience is very different from saying you are to blame for every feeling or behavior you have. When you get that you own your experience, you have created it, this is not about blame but rather about personal power. If someone or something outside of you is the cause of how you feel or behave, you are powerless -- a victim. If you, or at least your unconscious processes, are at cause, you have power and can do something to change your experience of the situation to one that is happier and more peaceful.
Previously I wrote,
“You can live in a world where other people or events cause you to feel the way you feel, but there is a high price. The price is that you will feel bad a great deal of the time. Or, you can choose to totally take responsibility for every feeling you have and every behavior you have. Having done so, you suddenly are at the "cause" end of the cause and effect process, where you can choose how you feel and how you behave.”If you are making a choice to feel something or to behave in a certain way, you can of course just make the right choice: to feel something that feels good or to behave in a way that has the greatest chance of having a good outcome. But what do you do with all those feelings and behaviors that seem to come unbidden, automatically? Since for most people, even those who are "advanced" seekers of consciousness, the majority of feelings and behaviors fall into this category, this is a very important question.
Every choice you make — including the thoughts you think — has consequences. When you choose the behavior or thought, you choose the consequences. If you choose to stay with a destructive partner, then you choose the consequences of pain and suffering. If you choose thoughts contaminated with anger and bitterness, then you will create an experience of alienation and hostility. When you start choosing the right behavior and thoughts — which will take a lot of discipline — you'll get the right consequences.
One of the hard things about understanding that we create our own experience is asking for what we want. That seems to be so hard for many people – for many, they have created the map (See my blog on maps – Principle 4) that they are unworthy of getting what they want or that for one reason or another they don’t deserve the good things in life other people get. “Other people have nice lives…not me…” Listen up because this is important - When we’re not clear on what we want, when we can’t really articulate what we need from relationships – or from work, or from our kids, or any other “other” in our life, we leave ourselves open to getting what we get, which may not be what we want. If anything, we get ambiguity. What fun is that?
Know what you want and tell people. Then the choice whether they meet your needs is theirs, and the choice whether you stay in a relationship with someone or something that doesn’t meet your needs is yours. Perfect.
There’s a big payoff in playing the role of victim, or using past events to build excuses. The downside is that it guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else. Whether the cards you've been dealt are good or bad, you're in charge of yourself now.
There is a cost to this philosophy – no longer can you go around saying, “you made me feel bad", "sad", "angry” or anything else. No one has the power to make me feel anything (unless you give it to them, and then you make that choice). So, you become responsible for how you feel. Not everyone is happy about that. On the upside, you become in charge of your life. The captain of your own ship. Are you ready for a change? How cool is that…
Friday, September 17, 2010
Are you someone who "gets it"?
You either get it or you don't. Become one of those who gets it.
So how do you identify people who “get it”? It's easy to tell these people apart. Their lives are successful, they understand how things work and have a strategy to create the results they want. Simple?
Yes and no. Knowledge is easy to come by – it comes from experience, which all of us have. But some of us have the un-resourceful habit of taking that experience and ignoring or seriously discounting it. We don’t listen – we’re so busy thinking that we’re right, or worrying about whether we’re right or not, or how cool we look, or a host of other things, that we don’t pay attention to where we’re going. Small wonder we run into walls all the time.
Right now I have a friend, Barrett, who’s in the county jail. Maybe for the 10th time. He was running a successful painting business after getting out of prison for a five year parole violation. The original charge, robbery, was back in the late ‘80’s and he’s been doing what inmates call “the installment plan” ever since. Barrett’s an addict with cross addictions – which means that in addition to drugs, his addictive personality has other addictions he uses to “compensate” when drugs aren’t available…the primary one is relationships.
Barrett gets addicted to being in love. Not addicted to love, or loving people – but addicted to being in love. There’s a difference and an important distinction. That means that no matter how dysfunctional or toxic his relationship(s) may be, he’s addicted to that feeling of “she’s the only one for me…” All that wouldn’t be so bad, except Barrett has come control issues, some anger, and tends to attract women with similar dynamics. Mix the two together and the potential for emotional messes is inevitable. We’ve had the talk – several times.
“It’s not a matter of “if” you end up back in Jail, Barrett, it’s a matter of “when..” No worries – Barrett keeps doing what Barrett does, and ends up in jail, again, and again. You can’t push your girlfriend around (especially when you’re 6’4” and have a history of violence), even if she starts it, or pushes first. Is that really news to anyone? Well, apparently it’s news to Barrett – each an every time it happens.
Barrett is a great example of a person who doesn’t get it. I know hundreds of these stories. Sometimes, they’re about me. The only thing I can say in my favor is that I’m aware of the dynamic in myself, and working on being more fully conscious about it.
So who doesn’t get it? Anyone who keeps getting the same thing they don’t want over and over. Whether it’s ending up in prison, or hooked up with lame boyfriends or girlfriends, or stuck in dead-end jobs or life situations. There’s nothing outside of you creating this stuff – you’re creating it – and you need to get it. Those who don't get it are stumbling along looking puzzled, and can be found complaining that they never seem to get a break, or everyone’s out to get them, or whatever…
I offer this material because I would love to see you start living, rather than just existing. I would love to see you start either creating what you want, or recognizing that what you have is what you created, and then move to refine your process of “creation” so it’s more satisfying to you.
Some “wisdom facts” that help with this understanding…
How well do you know yourself? How well do you know your own mental operating system? Can you identify fairly quickly what you value? Can you identify at a core level of your programming, whether or not you think the Universe is a great place out to support your highest good, or a dark, scary place out to thwart you at every step? These contrasting belief models are very significant to how you will experience your life, and whether or not you will be effective at creating the results you want…
You must do what it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to "get it." You need to operate with the information and skills that are necessary to win. Be prepared, tune in, find out how the game is played and play by the rules (or at least be real clear on what the rules are, and don’t complain if you choose to violate them and all of a sudden figure out there are consequences.) That’s not really a lot to ask. Is it?
Got questions?
So how do you identify people who “get it”? It's easy to tell these people apart. Their lives are successful, they understand how things work and have a strategy to create the results they want. Simple?
Yes and no. Knowledge is easy to come by – it comes from experience, which all of us have. But some of us have the un-resourceful habit of taking that experience and ignoring or seriously discounting it. We don’t listen – we’re so busy thinking that we’re right, or worrying about whether we’re right or not, or how cool we look, or a host of other things, that we don’t pay attention to where we’re going. Small wonder we run into walls all the time.
Right now I have a friend, Barrett, who’s in the county jail. Maybe for the 10th time. He was running a successful painting business after getting out of prison for a five year parole violation. The original charge, robbery, was back in the late ‘80’s and he’s been doing what inmates call “the installment plan” ever since. Barrett’s an addict with cross addictions – which means that in addition to drugs, his addictive personality has other addictions he uses to “compensate” when drugs aren’t available…the primary one is relationships.
Barrett gets addicted to being in love. Not addicted to love, or loving people – but addicted to being in love. There’s a difference and an important distinction. That means that no matter how dysfunctional or toxic his relationship(s) may be, he’s addicted to that feeling of “she’s the only one for me…” All that wouldn’t be so bad, except Barrett has come control issues, some anger, and tends to attract women with similar dynamics. Mix the two together and the potential for emotional messes is inevitable. We’ve had the talk – several times.
“It’s not a matter of “if” you end up back in Jail, Barrett, it’s a matter of “when..” No worries – Barrett keeps doing what Barrett does, and ends up in jail, again, and again. You can’t push your girlfriend around (especially when you’re 6’4” and have a history of violence), even if she starts it, or pushes first. Is that really news to anyone? Well, apparently it’s news to Barrett – each an every time it happens.
Barrett is a great example of a person who doesn’t get it. I know hundreds of these stories. Sometimes, they’re about me. The only thing I can say in my favor is that I’m aware of the dynamic in myself, and working on being more fully conscious about it.
So who doesn’t get it? Anyone who keeps getting the same thing they don’t want over and over. Whether it’s ending up in prison, or hooked up with lame boyfriends or girlfriends, or stuck in dead-end jobs or life situations. There’s nothing outside of you creating this stuff – you’re creating it – and you need to get it. Those who don't get it are stumbling along looking puzzled, and can be found complaining that they never seem to get a break, or everyone’s out to get them, or whatever…
I offer this material because I would love to see you start living, rather than just existing. I would love to see you start either creating what you want, or recognizing that what you have is what you created, and then move to refine your process of “creation” so it’s more satisfying to you.
Some “wisdom facts” that help with this understanding…
Fact 1. “There ain’t no Santa Clause, Elvis is way dead…” If your life is going to get better around here, it is because you make it better. “Pray to God but row for the shore…” Doesn’t matter if you are in prison, or running your own business, or whatever external circumstance you have – your life can still be satisfying. When you make your happiness contingent on the craziness of other people – you’re asking for trouble. Be a person who gets that…Unless you won the sperm lottery and came into the world as a ridiculously endowed trust-fund baby, you either need to learn the system or get used to being a “have not”. And, I don’t only mean this in terms of money – I hear “have not” stories every day from people with all kinds of situations – some of whom are actually quite well off. Amazing.
Fact 2. Before your life can go in the right direction, you have to pull your head out and some going in the wrong direction…Hello…..
Fact 3. You don’t have to stick your hand in your blender to know it’s not the best idea to put your hand in blenders. Other people get into drama – you don’t have to jump in with both feet. If you do jump in, be aware that you can drown too. It’s not rocket science. The rip-tide of overwhelm is real, and can quickly suck you right down.
Fact 4. Become conscious – make a plan and work the plan. Life is not a dress rehearsal.
How well do you know yourself? How well do you know your own mental operating system? Can you identify fairly quickly what you value? Can you identify at a core level of your programming, whether or not you think the Universe is a great place out to support your highest good, or a dark, scary place out to thwart you at every step? These contrasting belief models are very significant to how you will experience your life, and whether or not you will be effective at creating the results you want…
You must do what it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to "get it." You need to operate with the information and skills that are necessary to win. Be prepared, tune in, find out how the game is played and play by the rules (or at least be real clear on what the rules are, and don’t complain if you choose to violate them and all of a sudden figure out there are consequences.) That’s not really a lot to ask. Is it?
Got questions?
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Introduction to the 10 Life Laws...
For the past few days I have written about the Nine Principles of Conscious Living, originally put together by Bill Harris from the Centerpointe Institute. Over the past almost ten years, I have found that my understanding of those principles has deepened – and that I have achieved a degree of “fluency” in using the Principles to move through moments of being caught in anxiety, fear or indecision.
If we can reach the point where, when we’re feeling stuck – we can stop and ask ourselves, “What’s really happening here?” and try to move beyond our habitual inclination to think, “What SHOULD be happening here…” – (which isn’t helpful) – remembering to step outside of ourselves and use our “witness perspective”, the Principles provide a great reference point. These are wonderful tools or filters through which to see our experience of the world. That doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily the right tools, or perfect tools in every circumstance – but they are tools and my goal is to provide as many tools as possible. I have confidence that you know the tools best to use for your particular situation.
Back in late 2001 (or there abouts) when I started thinking about the role of a Life Coach seriously, I enrolled in a Coaching Training program run by Dr. Phil McGraw. I liked Phil’s simple wisdom, and ability to create quick moments of insight – and subsequent “break through moments” for people. This material, the 10 Life Laws, came from a very helpful book called Life Strategies – I loved the material and incorporated it into some classes I was teaching at the time.
Life Law #1 – You either get it or you don’t.
Life Law #2 – You create your own experience.
Life Law #3 – People do what works.
Life Law #4 – You can not change what you do not acknowledge.
Life Law #5 – Life Rewards Action.
Life Law #6 – There is no reality, only perception
Life Law #7 – Life is Managed, it’s not cured.
Life Law #8 – We teach people how to treat us.
Life Law #9 – There is power in forgiveness.
Life Law #10 – You have to name it before you can claim it.
Over the next couple of weeks I want to explore each of these “life laws” in some detail. I think these are a nice compliment to the Conscious Living Principles, and although there is some overlap – these have a slightly different flavor. I hope that you find them as helpful as I have over the past few years.
If we can reach the point where, when we’re feeling stuck – we can stop and ask ourselves, “What’s really happening here?” and try to move beyond our habitual inclination to think, “What SHOULD be happening here…” – (which isn’t helpful) – remembering to step outside of ourselves and use our “witness perspective”, the Principles provide a great reference point. These are wonderful tools or filters through which to see our experience of the world. That doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily the right tools, or perfect tools in every circumstance – but they are tools and my goal is to provide as many tools as possible. I have confidence that you know the tools best to use for your particular situation.
Back in late 2001 (or there abouts) when I started thinking about the role of a Life Coach seriously, I enrolled in a Coaching Training program run by Dr. Phil McGraw. I liked Phil’s simple wisdom, and ability to create quick moments of insight – and subsequent “break through moments” for people. This material, the 10 Life Laws, came from a very helpful book called Life Strategies – I loved the material and incorporated it into some classes I was teaching at the time.
Life Law #1 – You either get it or you don’t.
Life Law #2 – You create your own experience.
Life Law #3 – People do what works.
Life Law #4 – You can not change what you do not acknowledge.
Life Law #5 – Life Rewards Action.
Life Law #6 – There is no reality, only perception
Life Law #7 – Life is Managed, it’s not cured.
Life Law #8 – We teach people how to treat us.
Life Law #9 – There is power in forgiveness.
Life Law #10 – You have to name it before you can claim it.
Over the next couple of weeks I want to explore each of these “life laws” in some detail. I think these are a nice compliment to the Conscious Living Principles, and although there is some overlap – these have a slightly different flavor. I hope that you find them as helpful as I have over the past few years.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
That's pretty much what you'll find here too...
I have loved this story for years...and it has made an amazing difference in my life.
A long time ago, a man rode into a small town on horseback. He came up to the first person he saw, an old man sitting on his porch, and asked,Do we even begin to grasp how much our own filters and worldview colors our present reality? What would our life look like if we did?
“What are the people like here in this town?”
The old man leaned back on his chair, looked off into the distance, and said,
“Well stranger, what were they like where you lived before?”
The traveler said, “Those folks were the meanest, angriest, lying, cheating folks you’d ever want to meet. Why do you think I packed up and left?”
“That’s pretty much what you’ll find here too,” said the old man, “ya’ might want to keep ridin’.”
The first rider left, and not ten minutes later another man rode up and asked the same question,
“What are the people like here in this town?”
Again, the man leaned back in his chair, looked out from under his hat towards the hazy mountain range in the distance, and asked,
“Well stranger, what were they like where you lived before?”
The traveler said, “Well, they were about as good as you’d ever expect to find anywhere, kind-hearted, good-natured, friendly, and generous. To tell you the truth, I hated to leave.”
The old man smiled and said, “That’s pretty much what you’ll find here too. You’ll love it here.”
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Principle 9 - The Neutral Universe
There is a Zen story of a great enlightened master who, upon hearing of his own master's death, began to cry uncontrollably. His followers were shocked to see him cry. "Why are you crying? You're enlightened. You're supposed to be beyond suffering. What will people think?"
He composed himself as best he could, and turning to them he said, "What can I do? My eyes are crying. They are so sad that they will never again see this teacher I loved so much."
The Bible tells a similar story about Jesus, (John 11:35). Short and simply put. “Jesus wept.”
Sorrow upon experiencing loss is a normal part of being human - even if we are an "enlightened" Master and supposedly not subject to desires and attachments and the suffering they can create. The "Four Noble Truths" of Buddhism point out that all life involves suffering, that suffering is caused by desire, or attachment, and that suffering can be ended by giving up attachment (the fourth Nobel Truth is the method of doing so).
The Four Nobel Truths are based on an obvious, often overlooked, but fundamental reality of human existence: all things exist "in time" and eventually pass away. It's pretty obvious that not getting what you want (or getting what you don't want) involves suffering, but it's equally true that getting what you want involves suffering. Why? Because the thing you wanted is, like everything else, transitory. This month you're Employee of the Month, but next month you aren't. You love playing with your baby daughter, but she will grow up. You are alive now, but someday you will die.
I vividly remember having my own awakening experience around this idea – I bought an especially delicious ice cream cone – and while I was eating the sweet and creamy ice cream off the top of the cone, I was in heaven. But when I'd eaten about half the ice cream, the realization hit me that this wonderful experience was going to end. While I certainly enjoyed the rest, the experience was definitely tainted by the fact that I knew the experience would soon be over. Even in the midst of my pleasure, I suffered.
The fact is, being overly attached to particular outcomes (like the ice cream cone lasting forever) causes pain and suffering. And yet, we are trained to believe that happiness is tied to specific events or, especially in our culture, to specific things. All around us are messages that connect positive emotions to things we do and own. The children playing with this year's hot toys are happy. The couple standing beside their new car are in love. The extended family sitting around the dinner table eating canned pasta sauce are united in their humor and affection. The women just given the diamond engagement ring is young and beautiful.
Because we live in a mass culture where meaning is centralized, we are used to having others interpret our lives for us. We have become passive observers of our own experience, waiting for other people to tell us what it means. Outside influences direct our attention to what we should care about and what we should strive for so often that the truth of our own power escapes us.
You Are The Author And The Artist
I want to suggest another idea. It's not original with me. It is basic to the transformational mystical teachings of most cultures (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Zen, Native American, Sufi, and others). Instead of believing that there is an absolute value and meaning to reality, a "reality code" that young people learn to decipher, I want you to consider an alternative view:
As a conscious human being you give your world, and each event that happens, any and all the meaning it has. In Landmark Education human beings are referred to as “meaning making machines”. It’s just what we do.
There is no intrinsic meaning to anything. In most cases, we did not consciously choose these meanings we give to things. Rather, they were taught to us, according to the conventions of our culture and our family, when we were too small to know any better. The great news is that we could consciously choose these meanings if we wanted to, and that, in fact, is just what people who are continually happy and peaceful have learned to do.
This means, of course, that you are the creator of your own reality. In contrast to how you may have been conditioned to think, you assign meaning and significance (for most people, based on unconscious programming) to what happens to you and then, based on that meaning, choose (again, usually unconsciously) what your response will be.
This principle has a corollary: you will be able to make wise and resourceful choices to the extent that you live consciously rather than unconsciously. If you have become an automatic response mechanism, unthinkingly adopting those responses chosen for you by your cultural, societal, family, and species background, then your inner journey will be stalled. Your individuality and creativity will remain stillborn. What is more, you will spend a lot of time suffering.
If, on the other hand, you are able to wake up and become more aware of what moves and motivates you, you will see that you have picked up the paintbrush; you are painting the shapes of your feelings on that blank canvas. Because you are the artist and the author, you can paint anything you like. What you are painting is as ephemeral as anything else in life, but the lines your draw, the shapes you form, and the colors you choose are what give your life meaning. While we are all influenced by the cultural and personal settings in which we live, some people are able to become independent artists who can express the dictates of their own heart, and some become proponents of schools run by others.
The implications of living this way as a conscious being are staggering. Here is one of them: since you create the world you inhabit, pain and suffering really can be optional. Only when you acknowledge your role in your life – and understand your own power - is there the possibility of improving your situation or creating a different story. If you see yourself as a passive character who is acted upon by (and then reacts to) external forces you can neither understand nor control, then you become a helpless victim.
Along with this idea of self-agency comes another one. What is, is. You have some ability to change what is, but there are real limits to what you can do. Your power instead comes from how you respond to what is, not from misguided attempts to control what is. How things are for you is to a great extent the product of how you feel about what is happening - and how you feel is the result of the meaning you have placed on what is happening.
And most of the time, if you are living with conscious awareness, you will be happy and peaceful because you have consciously placed a meaning on what it happening that creates happiness and inner peace.
It is a very interesting exercise to stop whenever you feel other than happy and peaceful and ask yourself what meaning you have placed on the people or events that seem to be causing your suffering, and then to consider what meaning you could give things that would allow you to be happy. Are you so attached to a meaning that causes suffering that you are unwilling to let it go and change it to one that creates happiness and peace? If so, that is your choice, but do realize that it is a choice, not something thrust upon you.
This new meaning (the one leading to happiness) is no more real or intrinsic to the situation than the first meaning (the one leading to suffering). This is, again, because nothing has any intrinsic meaning. But if you're going to place a meaning on what is happening, which would you want, the happiness meaning, or the unhappiness meaning? It's your choice, though most people don't realize it's a choice.
This whole discussion, and the idea that you could really choose to be happy and peaceful, may sound very utopian and unrealistic to you. Becoming conscious enough to notice when you are suffering, to notice what meaning you have placed on a situation, and to consciously change that meaning, does not come easily. However, you need to know that it is very doable. Future blogs will include some more skills and techniques to achieve this end.
When I first bring up this idea, that nothing has any intrinsic meaning, people often think I'm saying life is "meaningless." That's not at all what I'm saying. Whatever meaning your life has now, you created it, whether you consciously realize it or not. The people and situations of your life did not come pre-packaged with meaning. You placed these meanings on things in your life, based on programming you for the most part did not choose. If you're ecstatically happy with your life and the meanings all the things in it have for you, terrific. If not, you could give everything in your life any meaning you want, at any time. Chalk all this up to “cool stuff to think about…” or maybe to try today. Keep me posted on how it’s working for you.
He composed himself as best he could, and turning to them he said, "What can I do? My eyes are crying. They are so sad that they will never again see this teacher I loved so much."
The Bible tells a similar story about Jesus, (John 11:35). Short and simply put. “Jesus wept.”
Sorrow upon experiencing loss is a normal part of being human - even if we are an "enlightened" Master and supposedly not subject to desires and attachments and the suffering they can create. The "Four Noble Truths" of Buddhism point out that all life involves suffering, that suffering is caused by desire, or attachment, and that suffering can be ended by giving up attachment (the fourth Nobel Truth is the method of doing so).
The Four Nobel Truths are based on an obvious, often overlooked, but fundamental reality of human existence: all things exist "in time" and eventually pass away. It's pretty obvious that not getting what you want (or getting what you don't want) involves suffering, but it's equally true that getting what you want involves suffering. Why? Because the thing you wanted is, like everything else, transitory. This month you're Employee of the Month, but next month you aren't. You love playing with your baby daughter, but she will grow up. You are alive now, but someday you will die.
I vividly remember having my own awakening experience around this idea – I bought an especially delicious ice cream cone – and while I was eating the sweet and creamy ice cream off the top of the cone, I was in heaven. But when I'd eaten about half the ice cream, the realization hit me that this wonderful experience was going to end. While I certainly enjoyed the rest, the experience was definitely tainted by the fact that I knew the experience would soon be over. Even in the midst of my pleasure, I suffered.
The fact is, being overly attached to particular outcomes (like the ice cream cone lasting forever) causes pain and suffering. And yet, we are trained to believe that happiness is tied to specific events or, especially in our culture, to specific things. All around us are messages that connect positive emotions to things we do and own. The children playing with this year's hot toys are happy. The couple standing beside their new car are in love. The extended family sitting around the dinner table eating canned pasta sauce are united in their humor and affection. The women just given the diamond engagement ring is young and beautiful.
Because we live in a mass culture where meaning is centralized, we are used to having others interpret our lives for us. We have become passive observers of our own experience, waiting for other people to tell us what it means. Outside influences direct our attention to what we should care about and what we should strive for so often that the truth of our own power escapes us.
You Are The Author And The Artist
I want to suggest another idea. It's not original with me. It is basic to the transformational mystical teachings of most cultures (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Zen, Native American, Sufi, and others). Instead of believing that there is an absolute value and meaning to reality, a "reality code" that young people learn to decipher, I want you to consider an alternative view:
As a conscious human being you give your world, and each event that happens, any and all the meaning it has. In Landmark Education human beings are referred to as “meaning making machines”. It’s just what we do.
There is no intrinsic meaning to anything. In most cases, we did not consciously choose these meanings we give to things. Rather, they were taught to us, according to the conventions of our culture and our family, when we were too small to know any better. The great news is that we could consciously choose these meanings if we wanted to, and that, in fact, is just what people who are continually happy and peaceful have learned to do.
This means, of course, that you are the creator of your own reality. In contrast to how you may have been conditioned to think, you assign meaning and significance (for most people, based on unconscious programming) to what happens to you and then, based on that meaning, choose (again, usually unconsciously) what your response will be.
This principle has a corollary: you will be able to make wise and resourceful choices to the extent that you live consciously rather than unconsciously. If you have become an automatic response mechanism, unthinkingly adopting those responses chosen for you by your cultural, societal, family, and species background, then your inner journey will be stalled. Your individuality and creativity will remain stillborn. What is more, you will spend a lot of time suffering.
If, on the other hand, you are able to wake up and become more aware of what moves and motivates you, you will see that you have picked up the paintbrush; you are painting the shapes of your feelings on that blank canvas. Because you are the artist and the author, you can paint anything you like. What you are painting is as ephemeral as anything else in life, but the lines your draw, the shapes you form, and the colors you choose are what give your life meaning. While we are all influenced by the cultural and personal settings in which we live, some people are able to become independent artists who can express the dictates of their own heart, and some become proponents of schools run by others.
The implications of living this way as a conscious being are staggering. Here is one of them: since you create the world you inhabit, pain and suffering really can be optional. Only when you acknowledge your role in your life – and understand your own power - is there the possibility of improving your situation or creating a different story. If you see yourself as a passive character who is acted upon by (and then reacts to) external forces you can neither understand nor control, then you become a helpless victim.
Along with this idea of self-agency comes another one. What is, is. You have some ability to change what is, but there are real limits to what you can do. Your power instead comes from how you respond to what is, not from misguided attempts to control what is. How things are for you is to a great extent the product of how you feel about what is happening - and how you feel is the result of the meaning you have placed on what is happening.
And most of the time, if you are living with conscious awareness, you will be happy and peaceful because you have consciously placed a meaning on what it happening that creates happiness and inner peace.
It is a very interesting exercise to stop whenever you feel other than happy and peaceful and ask yourself what meaning you have placed on the people or events that seem to be causing your suffering, and then to consider what meaning you could give things that would allow you to be happy. Are you so attached to a meaning that causes suffering that you are unwilling to let it go and change it to one that creates happiness and peace? If so, that is your choice, but do realize that it is a choice, not something thrust upon you.
This new meaning (the one leading to happiness) is no more real or intrinsic to the situation than the first meaning (the one leading to suffering). This is, again, because nothing has any intrinsic meaning. But if you're going to place a meaning on what is happening, which would you want, the happiness meaning, or the unhappiness meaning? It's your choice, though most people don't realize it's a choice.
This whole discussion, and the idea that you could really choose to be happy and peaceful, may sound very utopian and unrealistic to you. Becoming conscious enough to notice when you are suffering, to notice what meaning you have placed on a situation, and to consciously change that meaning, does not come easily. However, you need to know that it is very doable. Future blogs will include some more skills and techniques to achieve this end.
When I first bring up this idea, that nothing has any intrinsic meaning, people often think I'm saying life is "meaningless." That's not at all what I'm saying. Whatever meaning your life has now, you created it, whether you consciously realize it or not. The people and situations of your life did not come pre-packaged with meaning. You placed these meanings on things in your life, based on programming you for the most part did not choose. If you're ecstatically happy with your life and the meanings all the things in it have for you, terrific. If not, you could give everything in your life any meaning you want, at any time. Chalk all this up to “cool stuff to think about…” or maybe to try today. Keep me posted on how it’s working for you.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Principle 8 - Good/Bad Generalizations
It’s not news by this time that I am of the opinion that it is not necessary to live a life that contains suffering, and that there are definite ways to change your life from one containing suffering to one where you are happy and at least the majority of the time. Everyone is going to have moments of frustration, anger, annoyance, or a host of other potentially negative feelings, but our goal is to cultivate a life where those are definite exceptions rather than our “default setting” for life.
Also, no news to anyone that in my humble opinion, the way achieve a life of minimal (or at least greatly reduced) suffering is to cultivate the ability to let whatever happens be okay and to not resist "what is."
As I had to clarify in a conversation with Jason, one of my brightest prison buddies, this doesn't mean you're okay with injustice and suffering or don't do anything about them. It means you emotionally accept things the way they are and do not resist what is. Then, take what action you feel is appropriate in any given situation. You’re just not caught in the “this shouldn’t have happened” cycle.
Resisting what is - isn’t the same as deciding you want to change what is, and the difference is one of attachment to the outcome. The person who is attached to the outcome suffers if they do not get the outcome they want, whereas the happy, peaceful person prefers the outcome they want but are not attached to it. If the outcome they get is not what they wanted, they remain just as happy and peaceful as they were to begin with. Their happiness comes from within, and is not dependent on what goes on around them. Our inner state doesn’t depend on circumstances. Any circumstances.
Many people are not only unhappy as a result of what goes on in their life outside them, but are unhappy because of what goes on inside. These people aren’t happy with who they are. At the same time, their inside unhappiness helps create outside conditions that give them something to resist in their outer life. This is one way in which people "create their own universe." Unfortunately, this universe is not a happy one. On the other hand, you can always create a new one, at any time.
Based on our early life interactions with our primary care-givers, we all develop generalization about who we are and what our relationship is to the rest of the world. These generalizations (part of our "map" of reality) divide different aspects of ourselves, and qualities we may have, into two categories, those that we think are "good", or acceptable, and those we think are "bad" or unacceptable.
We don't choose these beliefs. We soak them up from our primary care-givers, our teachers, our religious traditions (this is a big one, even if you’re not religious) and from other influences (friends, relatives, the media, etc.) when we're too small to know any better. These beliefs become core components of the way we see ourselves, other people, and the world. Can you imagine that a whole religious system says you're born "bad" and in sin? Really, born that way? That strange and extremely unhelpful religious philosophy goes a long way in screwing up a lot of people.
This is critically important to your happiness, for two reasons. First, the brain is a goal seeking mechanism, and a very powerful one. Your brain can make whatever you put into it come true in your life. And second, because human beings have a powerful need for consistency between what they believe to be true and what really is true. As has been said, many people would much rather be right than be happy.
This means that regardless of how much what you believe is not representative of how things really are, or how much your beliefs result in misery for you, you will arrange to be right about them by creating the circumstances that seem to confirm that what you believe is true.
This is compounded by the fact that many of these beliefs, since they involve something about you being "bad", "defective", "not okay", "broken", "unacceptable", and so one, are too painful to hold in your conscious awareness and are therefore repressed into your unconscious mind, where they affect you all the time, but are out of sight. This means they are not available for conscious examination and change. That’s a scary thought in itself.
The other common way we deal with these parts of ourselves we think are unacceptable is to project them onto others (this results in extreme emotional reactions to others who exhibit the characteristics we believe are "bad" or unacceptable about us).
In many ways, emotional healing involves "unlearning" these old generalizations and making new, healthier ones. In reality, there is nothing about any of us that is innately bad. Since whatever you deeply believe comes true in reality, you could make a conscious choice to believe whatever would create a happy and peaceful life for yourself. Most people, however never take the reins and do this, instead adopting the victim posture made so popular in the last few decades.
Most people evaluate beliefs by whether or not they are "true" or "false." If it's "true" it's worth believing, if it's "false" it isn't. In my opinion, this true/false distinction is not useful, despite the fact that it seems so obvious. The useful way to evaluate beliefs is by whether they are resourceful or non-resourceful for you –(or helpful or non-helpful if you like) - by whether they create happiness and peace, or something else. Since whatever you deeply believe comes true, the only resourceful beliefs are those that contain an outcome you want.
The big secret is that you can CHOOSE what you want to believe -- you don't have to believe what seems true based on past experience.
I started a weight management program a few weeks ago designed by Jon Gabriel The Gabriel Method. Wonderful stuff and I have found it very helpful for me. In one of his introductory CD’s he talked about the number of people who have problems with their parents and how they were raised. Jon said that while he didn’t know, or especially care, whether reincarnation was “true” or not, he chose to believe that we picked the parents we were born to, and thus whatever happened to us as children was a lesson that we were somehow destined to learn. Whatever happened to us wasn’t a bad thing, but a foundation for lessons we needed to learn for our emotional, psychological and spiritual evolution. That’s a great example of a resourceful belief.
The first step is to find out what your un-resourceful beliefs are. One way to begin to do this is to complete the following sentences:
I am _______. People are _______. The world is _________.
What you want to identify are the things you say to yourself when you're really down about things, when you're feeling the worst. We are NOT looking for what you learned in self-help books -- those things you think you SHOULD believe about yourself. We are not looking for "I am one with everything." "The world is filled with abundance." "People are basically good." We're looking for what you really do believe about yourself, and say to yourself, about yourself, when things look darkest -- things like "I'm never going to be a success. No one will ever love me. There's something wrong with me. I can't seem to do anything right. People will take advantage of you if you don't watch them very carefully. Men always leave me in the end. No one cares about me. The world is dangerous and chaotic." And so on. You know, those things you say when you are really down about everything. These statements are big clues to what these negative core beliefs are.
One of my personal favorites to identify is our view on work…our belief that work somehow needs to be bad or unpleasant. Along the lines of the bumper sticker “I Owe, I Owe, so off to work I go…” Can you see how that’s a mindset that may keep you from ever doing something that both pays the bills and is enormously fun or enjoyable? Is it any wonder that you have had trouble “following your passion?” Another one is our view on money…the topic of another blog.
The second way to determine what these beliefs are is to look at what is happening in your life. Since what you believe manifests in reality, you can tell what a person's beliefs are just by looking at the results they get in their life. If you are having trouble sustaining a close or intimate relationships, somewhere there is a core belief about yourself and others that is manifesting this result in your life. If you are having trouble with prosperity, or health, or any other issue, you must have a belief about that subject that is manifesting in what actually happens to you.
When you look at other people who are getting better results, you can be sure the difference is that they have different, and more empowering, core beliefs on that subject.
These core beliefs are like our internal operating system – there are lots of individual applications (using a computer analogy here), but all have to reside within the frame work of a central operating system – MAC’s OS10, Vista, Windows 7, etc. Each “hosts” the applications we use daily in different ways. Does your operating system tell the applications you use that the world is a dangerous place out to “get” you, or a place of wonder and excitement out to “support” you in your dreams and endeavors?
Once you know what the various core beliefs you have are (and we're concerned with the negative beliefs here -- the positive ones, those that are giving you the results you want, don't need attention), the next step is to decide what would a more empowering, resourceful belief be?
Once you know this, you can begin to install the new way of thinking about yourself. Upgrade the old operating system to something more helpful…
To do this, you have to start telling yourself this new belief over and over, and wiping the old one out of your mind whenever it pops up. The only reason the old one seems true is that you have focused on it so much, which makes it play out in reality, which of course makes you focus on it more, which makes it play out...
Focus on this new belief. Do it while meditating, driving, cooking, shopping, etc., etc. It will bring up old and uncomfortable feelings as you focus on it, so be prepared for that -- the old belief will fight for its life. Don't let that bother you. Just keep focusing on what you want. Create a Technicolor movie of you getting just what you want, and feeling happy and satisfied by it -- the more vivid, the better. In addition to playing the movie during meditation, play it right before you go to sleep and right after waking up.
Most people who have had a significant (negative) emotional experience focus on what they don't want (ie, a repetition of the significant emotional experience, such as abandonment). They have a rule: "avoid "x" at all costs!" When you notice yourself focusing on what you do not want, change the focus to what you do want. Since your mind doesn't know when you focus on something that you do not want it (it always takes whatever you focus on as an instruction to go get something and bring it to you). To change your focus, which has been on automatic for a long time, takes practice, since the old way is on automatic. Allow yourself to go through the learning curve, which may take a while. Be patient with yourself. As Hyrum W. Smith, founder of the Franklin Institute says, “Results take time to measure.”
As I mentioned earlier, beliefs come true because we need consistency between what we believe and reality, and we will do anything to create this consistency. We create this consistency in 3 ways.
1) We get attracted to people and situations that confirm that the belief is true (ie, if you believe no one will ever really love you, you somehow feel this magical attraction to men/women who will leave, even though consciously you have no information about this aspect of who they are);
2) We hallucinate that the belief is true even if it isn't (i.e., you interpret behaviors potential partners may have as meaning they will leave, are leaving, have left, etc., even if that is not what it really means). In other words, we put a meaning on whatever happens that causes it to confirm, in our mind, that the belief is true; Landmark Education teaches us that we humans are “meaning making machines”. I agree.
3) we act in such a way that people finally comply and act in the way we feared they would act (you fear they will leave, and the ways you act because of that fear, finally cause the person to leave).
With all three, you get to be right about what you believe. But as they say, it's better to be happy than right.
This process of changing core beliefs can take several years to complete. Just identifying your core beliefs can take some time. Let it be okay that it takes time. Take it one step and one day at a time. Meditation greatly speeds up this process, because it helps you become more conscious and aware of what you are creating, and it takes the emotional charge off things in your life and allows you to look at things from a more dispassionate perspective (see the previous principle about being the “witness”).
However long this process takes, it is worth undertaking. What we're talking about here is the difference between being an unconscious automatic response mechanism. living out beliefs that create suffering, and a conscious being who chooses what to believe based on the kind of world they want to live in and therefore creates a life that is happy, peaceful, full of stimulating creativity, and well worth living.
You are already REALLY GOOD at creating what you believe and focus on. You may have not yet quite come to terms with the fact that ANYTHING you focus on and believe can happen for you. Most of what we focus on we did not choose. It was chosen for us when we were small and it runs on automatic. This is why I often refer to most people as being, for the most part, automatic response mechanisms. Now all you have to do is consciously change that focus to what you want and (since you're already good at getting what you focus on) you'll get it. Simple. Really.
Once these unconscious generalizations about yourself have become conscious and have been changed to what you choose for yourself, you are free.
Also, no news to anyone that in my humble opinion, the way achieve a life of minimal (or at least greatly reduced) suffering is to cultivate the ability to let whatever happens be okay and to not resist "what is."
As I had to clarify in a conversation with Jason, one of my brightest prison buddies, this doesn't mean you're okay with injustice and suffering or don't do anything about them. It means you emotionally accept things the way they are and do not resist what is. Then, take what action you feel is appropriate in any given situation. You’re just not caught in the “this shouldn’t have happened” cycle.
Resisting what is - isn’t the same as deciding you want to change what is, and the difference is one of attachment to the outcome. The person who is attached to the outcome suffers if they do not get the outcome they want, whereas the happy, peaceful person prefers the outcome they want but are not attached to it. If the outcome they get is not what they wanted, they remain just as happy and peaceful as they were to begin with. Their happiness comes from within, and is not dependent on what goes on around them. Our inner state doesn’t depend on circumstances. Any circumstances.
Many people are not only unhappy as a result of what goes on in their life outside them, but are unhappy because of what goes on inside. These people aren’t happy with who they are. At the same time, their inside unhappiness helps create outside conditions that give them something to resist in their outer life. This is one way in which people "create their own universe." Unfortunately, this universe is not a happy one. On the other hand, you can always create a new one, at any time.
Based on our early life interactions with our primary care-givers, we all develop generalization about who we are and what our relationship is to the rest of the world. These generalizations (part of our "map" of reality) divide different aspects of ourselves, and qualities we may have, into two categories, those that we think are "good", or acceptable, and those we think are "bad" or unacceptable.
We don't choose these beliefs. We soak them up from our primary care-givers, our teachers, our religious traditions (this is a big one, even if you’re not religious) and from other influences (friends, relatives, the media, etc.) when we're too small to know any better. These beliefs become core components of the way we see ourselves, other people, and the world. Can you imagine that a whole religious system says you're born "bad" and in sin? Really, born that way? That strange and extremely unhelpful religious philosophy goes a long way in screwing up a lot of people.
This is critically important to your happiness, for two reasons. First, the brain is a goal seeking mechanism, and a very powerful one. Your brain can make whatever you put into it come true in your life. And second, because human beings have a powerful need for consistency between what they believe to be true and what really is true. As has been said, many people would much rather be right than be happy.
This means that regardless of how much what you believe is not representative of how things really are, or how much your beliefs result in misery for you, you will arrange to be right about them by creating the circumstances that seem to confirm that what you believe is true.
This is compounded by the fact that many of these beliefs, since they involve something about you being "bad", "defective", "not okay", "broken", "unacceptable", and so one, are too painful to hold in your conscious awareness and are therefore repressed into your unconscious mind, where they affect you all the time, but are out of sight. This means they are not available for conscious examination and change. That’s a scary thought in itself.
The other common way we deal with these parts of ourselves we think are unacceptable is to project them onto others (this results in extreme emotional reactions to others who exhibit the characteristics we believe are "bad" or unacceptable about us).
In many ways, emotional healing involves "unlearning" these old generalizations and making new, healthier ones. In reality, there is nothing about any of us that is innately bad. Since whatever you deeply believe comes true in reality, you could make a conscious choice to believe whatever would create a happy and peaceful life for yourself. Most people, however never take the reins and do this, instead adopting the victim posture made so popular in the last few decades.
Most people evaluate beliefs by whether or not they are "true" or "false." If it's "true" it's worth believing, if it's "false" it isn't. In my opinion, this true/false distinction is not useful, despite the fact that it seems so obvious. The useful way to evaluate beliefs is by whether they are resourceful or non-resourceful for you –(or helpful or non-helpful if you like) - by whether they create happiness and peace, or something else. Since whatever you deeply believe comes true, the only resourceful beliefs are those that contain an outcome you want.
The big secret is that you can CHOOSE what you want to believe -- you don't have to believe what seems true based on past experience.
I started a weight management program a few weeks ago designed by Jon Gabriel The Gabriel Method. Wonderful stuff and I have found it very helpful for me. In one of his introductory CD’s he talked about the number of people who have problems with their parents and how they were raised. Jon said that while he didn’t know, or especially care, whether reincarnation was “true” or not, he chose to believe that we picked the parents we were born to, and thus whatever happened to us as children was a lesson that we were somehow destined to learn. Whatever happened to us wasn’t a bad thing, but a foundation for lessons we needed to learn for our emotional, psychological and spiritual evolution. That’s a great example of a resourceful belief.
The first step is to find out what your un-resourceful beliefs are. One way to begin to do this is to complete the following sentences:
I am _______. People are _______. The world is _________.
What you want to identify are the things you say to yourself when you're really down about things, when you're feeling the worst. We are NOT looking for what you learned in self-help books -- those things you think you SHOULD believe about yourself. We are not looking for "I am one with everything." "The world is filled with abundance." "People are basically good." We're looking for what you really do believe about yourself, and say to yourself, about yourself, when things look darkest -- things like "I'm never going to be a success. No one will ever love me. There's something wrong with me. I can't seem to do anything right. People will take advantage of you if you don't watch them very carefully. Men always leave me in the end. No one cares about me. The world is dangerous and chaotic." And so on. You know, those things you say when you are really down about everything. These statements are big clues to what these negative core beliefs are.
One of my personal favorites to identify is our view on work…our belief that work somehow needs to be bad or unpleasant. Along the lines of the bumper sticker “I Owe, I Owe, so off to work I go…” Can you see how that’s a mindset that may keep you from ever doing something that both pays the bills and is enormously fun or enjoyable? Is it any wonder that you have had trouble “following your passion?” Another one is our view on money…the topic of another blog.
The second way to determine what these beliefs are is to look at what is happening in your life. Since what you believe manifests in reality, you can tell what a person's beliefs are just by looking at the results they get in their life. If you are having trouble sustaining a close or intimate relationships, somewhere there is a core belief about yourself and others that is manifesting this result in your life. If you are having trouble with prosperity, or health, or any other issue, you must have a belief about that subject that is manifesting in what actually happens to you.
When you look at other people who are getting better results, you can be sure the difference is that they have different, and more empowering, core beliefs on that subject.
These core beliefs are like our internal operating system – there are lots of individual applications (using a computer analogy here), but all have to reside within the frame work of a central operating system – MAC’s OS10, Vista, Windows 7, etc. Each “hosts” the applications we use daily in different ways. Does your operating system tell the applications you use that the world is a dangerous place out to “get” you, or a place of wonder and excitement out to “support” you in your dreams and endeavors?
Once you know what the various core beliefs you have are (and we're concerned with the negative beliefs here -- the positive ones, those that are giving you the results you want, don't need attention), the next step is to decide what would a more empowering, resourceful belief be?
Once you know this, you can begin to install the new way of thinking about yourself. Upgrade the old operating system to something more helpful…
To do this, you have to start telling yourself this new belief over and over, and wiping the old one out of your mind whenever it pops up. The only reason the old one seems true is that you have focused on it so much, which makes it play out in reality, which of course makes you focus on it more, which makes it play out...
Focus on this new belief. Do it while meditating, driving, cooking, shopping, etc., etc. It will bring up old and uncomfortable feelings as you focus on it, so be prepared for that -- the old belief will fight for its life. Don't let that bother you. Just keep focusing on what you want. Create a Technicolor movie of you getting just what you want, and feeling happy and satisfied by it -- the more vivid, the better. In addition to playing the movie during meditation, play it right before you go to sleep and right after waking up.
Most people who have had a significant (negative) emotional experience focus on what they don't want (ie, a repetition of the significant emotional experience, such as abandonment). They have a rule: "avoid "x" at all costs!" When you notice yourself focusing on what you do not want, change the focus to what you do want. Since your mind doesn't know when you focus on something that you do not want it (it always takes whatever you focus on as an instruction to go get something and bring it to you). To change your focus, which has been on automatic for a long time, takes practice, since the old way is on automatic. Allow yourself to go through the learning curve, which may take a while. Be patient with yourself. As Hyrum W. Smith, founder of the Franklin Institute says, “Results take time to measure.”
As I mentioned earlier, beliefs come true because we need consistency between what we believe and reality, and we will do anything to create this consistency. We create this consistency in 3 ways.
1) We get attracted to people and situations that confirm that the belief is true (ie, if you believe no one will ever really love you, you somehow feel this magical attraction to men/women who will leave, even though consciously you have no information about this aspect of who they are);
2) We hallucinate that the belief is true even if it isn't (i.e., you interpret behaviors potential partners may have as meaning they will leave, are leaving, have left, etc., even if that is not what it really means). In other words, we put a meaning on whatever happens that causes it to confirm, in our mind, that the belief is true; Landmark Education teaches us that we humans are “meaning making machines”. I agree.
3) we act in such a way that people finally comply and act in the way we feared they would act (you fear they will leave, and the ways you act because of that fear, finally cause the person to leave).
With all three, you get to be right about what you believe. But as they say, it's better to be happy than right.
This process of changing core beliefs can take several years to complete. Just identifying your core beliefs can take some time. Let it be okay that it takes time. Take it one step and one day at a time. Meditation greatly speeds up this process, because it helps you become more conscious and aware of what you are creating, and it takes the emotional charge off things in your life and allows you to look at things from a more dispassionate perspective (see the previous principle about being the “witness”).
However long this process takes, it is worth undertaking. What we're talking about here is the difference between being an unconscious automatic response mechanism. living out beliefs that create suffering, and a conscious being who chooses what to believe based on the kind of world they want to live in and therefore creates a life that is happy, peaceful, full of stimulating creativity, and well worth living.
You are already REALLY GOOD at creating what you believe and focus on. You may have not yet quite come to terms with the fact that ANYTHING you focus on and believe can happen for you. Most of what we focus on we did not choose. It was chosen for us when we were small and it runs on automatic. This is why I often refer to most people as being, for the most part, automatic response mechanisms. Now all you have to do is consciously change that focus to what you want and (since you're already good at getting what you focus on) you'll get it. Simple. Really.
Once these unconscious generalizations about yourself have become conscious and have been changed to what you choose for yourself, you are free.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Principle 7 - The Principle of Witnessing
Every day I talk (or write) to a lot of people about the stuff going on in their lives. The best feedback I have learned to give is to simply "watch what is happening -- watch with curiosity."
I have practiced my own “witness meditation” for some time and found it to be very beneficial in recognizing that I am not my thoughts, and I can emotionally separate myself from them when I find them going in a direction I do not find helpful or resourceful. That happens a lot.
Being the witness, the watcher, the observer, has been a part of meditative practice for centuries, but what exactly this really means is not often explained in a way that makes down to earth practical sense.
Resistance (to what is happening) is at the bottom of this understanding. If you are experiencing discomfort, resistance is at the bottom of it, not, however much you want it to be, whatever is actually happening. The external situation is triggering something in your map system and you are manifesting a pre-conditioned response.
If you are experiencing any emotional or psychological discomfort, it's because somewhere, on some level, there is resistance. Get used to that. To adopt a position of power, one in which you have control over your destiny, you must take full responsibility for whatever response you are creating to whatever is happening, to whatever stimuli you are faced with. If you cannot acknowledge that you are creating your response to everything that happens to you, you are helpless, a victim of your environment. Not a resourceful way to live.
Only when you take responsibility is there a possibility of doing something about your situation or creating something different. The main source, then, of both personal power and peace of mind is taking all responsibility for what happens (notice I didn't say "blame," I said "responsibility").
So, first, you must acknowledge that whatever is YOUR response. It comes from you, from who you are. Life provides the stimulus, you provide the response." Sometimes this response comes from an unconscious part of you, one you have little or no control over (or so it seems), but it nonetheless comes from you (rather from some force outside of you, regardless of the appearance).
Why would you create a negative response? Because a part of you is in resistance to whatever is happening. What, then, is happening, and why would you resist it?
Here's the answer: Some part of you is trying to reorganize, to change, but you associate keeping that part the way it is with your safety in the world and, at least unconsciously, you don't feel safe letting the change happen. That’s the simple and straightforward truth.
Perhaps you have stayed very self-contained since you were a small child, not letting anyone get close to you because, in your family, it wasn't safe to get close. But now something in your life is breaking up the old pattern and creating a new ability to be close, intimate, and connected with others. Consciously you may want this, but since letting go of the old defense mechanism feels unsafe to that "inner child" part, you resist. The more important this old way of being seems essential to your safety to that unconscious part of you, the greater the resistance will be. And the greater the resistance, the greater the discomfort, the greater the suffering.
Whatever the discomfort, whatever the upheaval, whatever the issue, some part of you -- some inner strategy that you associate with safety -- is trying to grow and evolve, and another part of you is not willing to let go. Psychologists call this state being “conflicted”. Ever feel like that? Can I hear an “Amen!”?
What can you do? Some people (those for whom resistance is a major tool in their survival arsenal, as is occasionally the case with me, at least around selective topics) just want to quit trying to change or grow – and give up. Here is where the concept of watching, witnessing, of being the observer, comes into play.
First of all, remember that the discomfort is not necessary. It is only there because of your resistance. It is NOT there because life is unfair -- or because of the situation you are in, or because of a host of other reasons. It is there because you don't feel safe changing and are therefore resisting the change.
Some very wise people (I like to call them Masters, and there are all kinds of them), over many centuries of slogging through their own personal mental, emotional, and spiritual change process, have discovered that if you can dissociate yourself to some degree from what is happening, if you can just step back and watch, the resistance diminishes and allows the change to take place -- without the discomfort.
Eureka! How totally cool is THAT!
All personal change approaches that actually work or are effective involve the creation of a greater awareness of what is happening, based on the fundamental principle that you can only continue behaviors and feelings that are self-destructive if you do them unconsciously -- without awareness. Most of us have very elaborate strategies designed to keep us unaware -- but there is a very simple way to defeat them.
If you step back the next time you are feeling any kind of discomfort and say to yourself "There I am, feeling angry" (or whatever) and then just notice yourself being angry. Any feeling you have will be a sensation in your body, so just notice where in your body you feel it. Notice if it stays the same or changes, if it stays in one place or moves around. Be curious. Pretend you are a scientist who has been searching the Amazon jungle for 20 years for a certain butterfly, and finally...here it is! How carefully and curiously would you watch? Bring that amount of curiosity to bear on whatever is happening for you in that moment. Be the watcher…
Notice that you cannot be a stuck in your suffering very effectively if a part of you is watching. If you are curious and watching, it becomes harder and harder to resist. Curiosity is on the opposite side of the fence from resistance, and without resistance you cannot create suffering. Once you are successfully watching, it becomes very obvious that you could make another choice of how to respond to whatever is happening.
One of the amazing things that happens if you practice this technique, is that this "watcher" becomes more and more prominent, more easy to summon when needed, and soon becomes a constant companion. This is the real beginnings of what mystics call "expanded awareness." From this point, expanded awareness grows even greater, to include an increased sense of connection with the rest of the universe -- but it begins with the simple ability to reserve a small part of you that just watches yourself and whatever is happening with detachment and curiosity.
The real answer to the question of what to do when you are resisting, but the resistance is unconscious, is to just watch. Stop fighting with yourself and just notice what is happening. Distress and discomfort fall away when you.
So if resistance is your middle name, please take very seriously the simple instruction to "watch with curiosity." It takes some practice and some will-power because the habit of resisting is deeply ingrained and very much an automatic response, but after some practice it will become an effortless part of you, your own personal "Prince of Peace" who will help you through any situation you encounter.
In any situation where you are uncomfortable, not matter what it is; you are resisting whatever is going on. To the degree you do that, you suffer. If you can step aside and watch yourself have whatever reaction you are having, you will find that there are other choices of how to respond, at which point you can pick the one you would like to have, rather than just be an automatic response mechanism who suffers every time a certain trigger happens. People who are spoken of as having "higher consciousness" or "expanded awareness" are those who have mastered this principle of witnessing. You can do it, too. Start practicing TODAY.
I have practiced my own “witness meditation” for some time and found it to be very beneficial in recognizing that I am not my thoughts, and I can emotionally separate myself from them when I find them going in a direction I do not find helpful or resourceful. That happens a lot.
Being the witness, the watcher, the observer, has been a part of meditative practice for centuries, but what exactly this really means is not often explained in a way that makes down to earth practical sense.
Resistance (to what is happening) is at the bottom of this understanding. If you are experiencing discomfort, resistance is at the bottom of it, not, however much you want it to be, whatever is actually happening. The external situation is triggering something in your map system and you are manifesting a pre-conditioned response.
If you are experiencing any emotional or psychological discomfort, it's because somewhere, on some level, there is resistance. Get used to that. To adopt a position of power, one in which you have control over your destiny, you must take full responsibility for whatever response you are creating to whatever is happening, to whatever stimuli you are faced with. If you cannot acknowledge that you are creating your response to everything that happens to you, you are helpless, a victim of your environment. Not a resourceful way to live.
Only when you take responsibility is there a possibility of doing something about your situation or creating something different. The main source, then, of both personal power and peace of mind is taking all responsibility for what happens (notice I didn't say "blame," I said "responsibility").
So, first, you must acknowledge that whatever is YOUR response. It comes from you, from who you are. Life provides the stimulus, you provide the response." Sometimes this response comes from an unconscious part of you, one you have little or no control over (or so it seems), but it nonetheless comes from you (rather from some force outside of you, regardless of the appearance).
Why would you create a negative response? Because a part of you is in resistance to whatever is happening. What, then, is happening, and why would you resist it?
Here's the answer: Some part of you is trying to reorganize, to change, but you associate keeping that part the way it is with your safety in the world and, at least unconsciously, you don't feel safe letting the change happen. That’s the simple and straightforward truth.
Perhaps you have stayed very self-contained since you were a small child, not letting anyone get close to you because, in your family, it wasn't safe to get close. But now something in your life is breaking up the old pattern and creating a new ability to be close, intimate, and connected with others. Consciously you may want this, but since letting go of the old defense mechanism feels unsafe to that "inner child" part, you resist. The more important this old way of being seems essential to your safety to that unconscious part of you, the greater the resistance will be. And the greater the resistance, the greater the discomfort, the greater the suffering.
Whatever the discomfort, whatever the upheaval, whatever the issue, some part of you -- some inner strategy that you associate with safety -- is trying to grow and evolve, and another part of you is not willing to let go. Psychologists call this state being “conflicted”. Ever feel like that? Can I hear an “Amen!”?
What can you do? Some people (those for whom resistance is a major tool in their survival arsenal, as is occasionally the case with me, at least around selective topics) just want to quit trying to change or grow – and give up. Here is where the concept of watching, witnessing, of being the observer, comes into play.
First of all, remember that the discomfort is not necessary. It is only there because of your resistance. It is NOT there because life is unfair -- or because of the situation you are in, or because of a host of other reasons. It is there because you don't feel safe changing and are therefore resisting the change.
Some very wise people (I like to call them Masters, and there are all kinds of them), over many centuries of slogging through their own personal mental, emotional, and spiritual change process, have discovered that if you can dissociate yourself to some degree from what is happening, if you can just step back and watch, the resistance diminishes and allows the change to take place -- without the discomfort.
Eureka! How totally cool is THAT!
All personal change approaches that actually work or are effective involve the creation of a greater awareness of what is happening, based on the fundamental principle that you can only continue behaviors and feelings that are self-destructive if you do them unconsciously -- without awareness. Most of us have very elaborate strategies designed to keep us unaware -- but there is a very simple way to defeat them.
If you step back the next time you are feeling any kind of discomfort and say to yourself "There I am, feeling angry" (or whatever) and then just notice yourself being angry. Any feeling you have will be a sensation in your body, so just notice where in your body you feel it. Notice if it stays the same or changes, if it stays in one place or moves around. Be curious. Pretend you are a scientist who has been searching the Amazon jungle for 20 years for a certain butterfly, and finally...here it is! How carefully and curiously would you watch? Bring that amount of curiosity to bear on whatever is happening for you in that moment. Be the watcher…
Notice that you cannot be a stuck in your suffering very effectively if a part of you is watching. If you are curious and watching, it becomes harder and harder to resist. Curiosity is on the opposite side of the fence from resistance, and without resistance you cannot create suffering. Once you are successfully watching, it becomes very obvious that you could make another choice of how to respond to whatever is happening.
One of the amazing things that happens if you practice this technique, is that this "watcher" becomes more and more prominent, more easy to summon when needed, and soon becomes a constant companion. This is the real beginnings of what mystics call "expanded awareness." From this point, expanded awareness grows even greater, to include an increased sense of connection with the rest of the universe -- but it begins with the simple ability to reserve a small part of you that just watches yourself and whatever is happening with detachment and curiosity.
The real answer to the question of what to do when you are resisting, but the resistance is unconscious, is to just watch. Stop fighting with yourself and just notice what is happening. Distress and discomfort fall away when you.
So if resistance is your middle name, please take very seriously the simple instruction to "watch with curiosity." It takes some practice and some will-power because the habit of resisting is deeply ingrained and very much an automatic response, but after some practice it will become an effortless part of you, your own personal "Prince of Peace" who will help you through any situation you encounter.
In any situation where you are uncomfortable, not matter what it is; you are resisting whatever is going on. To the degree you do that, you suffer. If you can step aside and watch yourself have whatever reaction you are having, you will find that there are other choices of how to respond, at which point you can pick the one you would like to have, rather than just be an automatic response mechanism who suffers every time a certain trigger happens. People who are spoken of as having "higher consciousness" or "expanded awareness" are those who have mastered this principle of witnessing. You can do it, too. Start practicing TODAY.
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