Introduction
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most people are about as happy as they make
up their mind to be.” Looking around at most people today it’s obvious
they have yet to make up their minds. Happiness is a result of choice —
choosing how to effectively use the thoughts that flow in and out of your mind.
The thoughts you allow into your mind influences the perception of the world you
see around you. If you perceive a sullen, hostile and unhappy world, your mind
is full of sullen, hostile and unhappy thoughts. Change your thoughts and you
change your world!
Alternative thinking The prime purpose of this course is to help you understand that outside events
do not cause unhappiness in your life. What other people say or do cannot make
you unhappy. It’s your reaction to what they say or do that decides
whether you choose to feel happy or unhappy. Unhappiness is not something
created outside of you. Unhappiness comes from within. Unhappiness is a state of
mind — a dysfunctional way of thinking. Rotten thoughts produce rotten
results. This course is aimed at helping you overcome those habitual rotten
thoughts. Just as natural therapies provide alternative methods of healing the
body, the mind can undergo healing by adopting alternative methods of thinking.
A philosophy to live by This course presents a philosophy based on awareness, understanding and
acceptance — not only of yourself, but of your fellow man and the world around
you. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher (circa 550 BC), was a scientist, a sage,
and teacher who coined the word “philosopher,” which he defined as
“one who is attempting to find out.” In relation to this course, we are
attempting to find out what type of thinking is causing more unhappiness than
happiness in your life. Once this cause is discovered, steps can be taken to
modify its effects.
What is happiness? Happiness could be described as a state of mind induced by a higher state of
awareness — a natural state of mind arising from an understanding and
acceptance of life exactly as it is. The only reason happiness is not a natural
way of life for ninety-nine percent of the world’s population is that we have
allowed our ego to control and dominate our consciousness with attitudes that
demand the world should do exactly what we want and give us exactly what we
want. Our egos continuously distract us by demanding we satisfy the wants and needs of
its “outer” reality, rather than be satisfied with the abundance to
be found within our “inner” reality. We always have enough to make us happy if we just focus on enjoying what we do
have — and not habitually worry about what we don’t have.
Why so much unhappiness? Unhappiness arises from the more or less continual disappointment, frustration
and emotional tension we experience when life repeatedly serves up to us the
very things we do not want to accept.
Giving up the struggle Unhappiness is struggle, a continual pushing away of the things you don’t want
to accept in your life. Happiness, on the other hand, is simple acceptance! When
you arrive at that point in life where you can calmly accept the world and its
workings exactly as it is, you will have found that elusive peace of mind we
call happiness. The awakened person lives a life of simple acceptance — a
state of being in which the mind is totally unconcerned with judging people or
conditions. Once this higher state of awareness is able to be reached and
maintained, the desired level of happiness will follow.
Awareness, understanding and
acceptance The central theme of this course is mind renewal — helping you open your mind
to a greater reality than that currently accepted and understood by society at
large. Once upon a time the surface of the earth was considered to be flat — a
strongly held belief of those who professed to be in the know — the scholars
and leaders of the time. Exploration of the seas led to a change in those
beliefs, and a higher awareness as to the shape of our planet resulted in a
paradigm shift in attitudes and beliefs. Times change, and with them, the
beliefs of those times.
The nature of reality Reality — as perceived by the ego, is completely relative to one’s own
personally held attitudes and beliefs. We are limited in our understanding of
life by our ego’s individual perception and interpretation of the world around
us. The collective consciousness of those in the not too distant past, held that
ships would fall off the edge of the world if they sailed too far in one
direction. An illusionary perception that for a long time restricted man’s
quest for greater knowledge and understanding. Fearful attitudes and beliefs
hindered and limited man back then, just as they do today.
Overcoming the limitations of
perceived boundaries Columbus, Magellan and other explorers and visionaries, stretched and finally
broke through the illusionary boundaries of mankind’s limitations, in
particular its limiting system of beliefs. The citizens of those times learnt to
accept that there were no ship-devouring dragons lurking at sea, just as they
learnt to accept that the earth was round, not flat. Higher awareness led to
greater understanding, which in turn led to an acceptance that attitudes and
beliefs must be flexible and subject to change if man is to progress and
prosper.
Choose to change your reality Change your attitudes and beliefs and you change your reality. If your world
around you, your current reality — is not conducive to inner feelings of
happiness and contentment, then the solution is obvious. Make the choice for
change. A conscious shift in your attitudes and beliefs will take you into
higher levels of awareness where you can see what is, rather than what is not.
Happiness isn’t a reward,
it’s a way of life A veil of illusion, a mind-set created by your ego, prevents you from seeing
true reality. If your ego prompts you to doubt this, why do you seem destined to
have only occasional and elusive flashes of happiness and not constant long
lasting happiness? It’s largely because your past programming has you
believing happiness is something that has to be earned — a reward for
struggling — something that occasionally relieves the constant feeling of
unhappiness that clouds your perception of life.
An awakening It is hoped this course will awaken something inside you — an awareness that
helps you realize happiness in this life really is all about choice. Choose the
type of thoughts you regularly place in your mind, and you can find the
happiness and joy that always has been, and always will be, yours to
enjoy forever more.
Module One:
Mind
stretching exercises
DO YOU feel your chair moving? It really is a seething mass of movement.
Although these movements are too minuscule for you to feel, indeed there is
movement. The chair is nowhere near as solid as your eyes and conscious mind
tells you it is. The mass that makes up the chair is composed of molecules of
matter, which in turn are made up of atoms of matter. The atoms are made up of a
nucleus composed of neutrons and protons and orbiting electrons whirling around
at enormous speeds. Although the chair itself seems stable enough, its atomic
structure is vibrating with non-stop movement. The amazing thing is that each
atom is composed of more space than mass. If the atom were the size of a
football field, its nucleus would be no bigger than a pea, with its electrons
orbiting that pea from a distance equivalent to the fence line surrounding the
field. What fills the area between the pea and the fence? — apparently nothing
but empty space! Now consider for a moment the fact that your own body is made up of a similar
collection of rapidly-moving particles each separated by large volumes of space
and you will see the affinity between the chair and yourself. You and the chair
are both made of the same substance. The only differences between the chair and
yourself are in form and consciousness.
From the microcosm to the
macrocosm Now consider the marvelous harmony and balance of the solar system. From the
microcosm of electrons in orbit to the macrocosm of planets in orbit. The
electromagnetic energy that maintains constant motion and vibration within the
atom is the same energy keeping the planets in orbit around the sun. This same
energy maintains the solar system in its place within the greater macrocosm of
our home galaxy. This entire galaxy of some 1 billion stars is itself in a
whirling elliptical orbit around its own centre of gravity. Consider the
magnitude of this spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our solar system takes
240 million years to complete just one orbit around the centre of our galaxy.
Moving at the speed of light, a space ship leaving earth would take 25,000 of
our years just to reach the centre of our galaxy! Travelling from one side of
the galaxy to the other would take one hundred thousand years! Let’s stretch
the mind a little further. Let’s look at the immense distances involved here.
Distances so great we must talk in terms of light years, the distance light
travels in a year. Light travels at 300,000 km per second. That’s 186,000
miles per second, around 670 million miles per hour. The distance light travels
in one light year is six trillion miles (9,500,000,000,000 kilometers).
Take a large packed lunch For us to reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest bright star in our galaxy, we would
need enough food and reading material to last us four to five of our earth
years. (Note: Alpha Centauri is the brightest of the two pointer stars leading
to the Southern Cross). The nearest galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy and it’s
2,500,000 light years away. The strongest of man’s telescopes look out into
the farthest reaches of the known universe (10 billion light years away) and see
another 100 billion galaxies, each with at least 100 billion stars apiece!
Scientists estimate that there are more stars in the universe than there are
grains of sands on all the beaches of the world! If that’s difficult to
accept, remember that there is a finite limit to the number of beaches and
grains of sand, whereas the universe and the stars it contains is infinite.
So what? What has all that have to do with you? Simply this. The stuff that makes up this
mind-bending expanse of space, matter and energy is the very same stuff that you
and I are made of, and all of it is interconnected. The point being, you
are not some insignificant speck of cosmic dust, all alone in an uncaring, scary
and haphazard universe. You truly are connected to it all, just as everything is
connected to you. To think of this universe as some sort of accidental coming
together of matter, with no specific purpose, obviously seems to be at odds with
what appears to be a carefully-planned creational event—a magnificent
combination of harmony, symmetry, balance and purpose. You and I, and the
universe are one—and we, along with the universe, really do have a purpose.
Ego versus the world Now the ego, from its natural environment of fear and insecurity, looks around
at this wonder of balance and harmony and trembles. For ego sees itself as
something isolated and separate from the universe. It has no concept of unity
and oneness. Cowering behind its fortress of insecurity, it believes that not
only is it a case of “it” against the world, it fears the whole
universe is out to get it. The fears and insecurities of the ego’s world has
no term of reference within the higher state of awareness of your own true self.
Know your Self Do you want to live a solitary life of fear and insecurity shackled to the
habitual demands of the ego, or would you prefer to expand your mind and soar
into the unlimited universe that is your own true self? The choice, as always,
is yours. That is what this course is all about — choice. You have always had
the power to choose, and up until now, the majority of earth’s population have
chosen to go the way of the ego. Looking at the sorry record of man’s past
history, you’d have to agree this way has not served us very well at all.
Going “one out”—you against the world — is never going to work.
You may become “rich and successful,” but then the fearful ego
programs you to think it’s you against all those trying to take it from you
— the thieves, the Taxation department, the ex-spouse. Wouldn’t you prefer
to become rich and successful, live a happy life, and still be totally
unconcerned about losing it all? That’s what this course offers you. A new way
of thinking where you can have it all, keep it all or lose it all, and still be
happy with what’s left. Your self.
Module Two:
The
Fortress
INSTEAD of opening ourselves to others we isolate ourselves from the
greater unity that is humanity. Believing ourselves to be separated from the
infinite unity of the universe, we live lives bogged down by the restrictive
chains of insecurity. We lay in lonely retreat and isolation behind fortress
walls we’ve built ourselves. Each brick in the wall represents something we
have learned in the form of values, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and
convictions. Our deluded ego-mind spends a lifetime accumulating all this stuff,
which we use to reinforce and strengthen the walls around us in an attempt to
protect us from further hurt.
Imprisoning the Self Far from protecting ourselves, our fortresses do no more than imprison
us—mentally and spiritually. The walls themselves are made up of all our
insecurities and addictive programs of the ego.
Arguments reinforce the wall If anybody should threaten our tentative sense of security by daring to question
the validity of our walls we instantly retaliate. A fortress threatened is a
fortress defended. Unfortunately, it is the very act of defending our fortress
that strengthens and reinforces the attitudes and beliefs that make up the
walls. Should these be negative or positive attitudes, it matters not. The ego
demands they be protected at all costs.
Limitations of a closed mind As long as we are limited in our capacity to accept other people’s points of
view, we will tend to assume every conflict is a dispute between right and
wrong, and to feel that attack is the appropriate response to another’s
different opinion.
Insecurity demands attack Let’s imagine an argument between two people who follow different religions.
One has questioned the other’s religious beliefs. The fortress is the
storehouse of our meaning, and to threaten one part is to threaten it all. So
naturally, up go the defenses and a counter attack is launched as a diversionary
measure. Each then becomes concerned with resistance rather than understanding.
Open communication is unlikely as long as each is absorbed by the “need”
to focus on defending their fortress. Conceived through insecurity and fear, the
ego is only able to accept unconditionally, those messages that support and
reinforce its own interpretation of reality. Listening to another’s point of
view with an open mind is totally unacceptable to the ego’s set of standards.
Listening takes courage Listening with an open mind takes courage because it requires us to actually
entertain the attitudes and beliefs of the other person. We may even have to
change our point of view in response to what we are about to hear. The ego
considers listening a risky business because we are at risk of finding we were
wrong! Have you noticed how most people find it easier to talk to others than to listen
to them? This is because most people are more interested in telling you about
their view from their fortress than listening to you talking about the view from
yours. When we decide to really listen, we move outside our own fortress in order see
for ourselves the way things look from inside the fortress of another.
Afraid of change We are afraid to listen because we are afraid of change. What we hear might
cause us to change our minds, and to change our minds means we have to demolish
part of our fortress and rebuild with new ideas. The ego hates to be proven
wrong and will try its best to keep our mind closed. A certain amount of courage
is needed to admit we’ve got it wrong; to accept that another’s alternative
viewpoint is superior to our own. We must accept that our reality may not be the
only reality; that the experiences of others are valid and are worth listening
to.
Lower the drawbridge to trust Lowering the drawbridge of your fortress is a display of trust. What you are
saying in effect is, “I am putting my ego’s interests on hold. I am prepared to listen to you
first. I am going to entertain your ideas, your values, your ego needs.”
An invitation to open
communication This act of trust, the lowering of our defensive drawbridge, signals to the
other person your willingness to communicate openly and unconditionally. You
have given them one of the most precious gifts one can give to another. You have
acknowledged the value of the other’s perception of reality and the validity
of their collective life experience up until this point in time. You want to
hear what they have to say. You are prepared to enter their world and look at
their view of reality from the barred-up windows of their fortress. From this act of acceptance and a willingness to truly listen, the seeds of
understanding will sprout and grow.
Better
communication leads to understanding Ineffective communication in usually caused by a clash of egos, both insisting
all the right answers lay within the walls of their fortress. Later modules in
this course are aimed at finding ways to open up more effective lines of
communication and hopefully help diffuse conflicts before they erupt into full
scale siege warfare upon another’s fortress.
Module Three:
Limitations
of the Mind
WE HAVE not been taught how to effectively use the full capabilities of
our minds. We’ve been given instruction manuals for our cars, video recorders
and washing machines, but no manual on how to use our minds. We grow up relying
on our parents and other people to teach us. The trouble is, they weren’t
given a manual either. You only have to look at the state of the world today to
recognize that fact. Most of us live our lives not really knowing what we want
out of life, but we’re damn sure this isn’t it!
“There’s got to be a
better way to live” Your parents and their parents and their parents before them probably said the
same thing. But your parents taught you the same mistakes their parents taught
them! Someone, somewhere, at sometime—simply lost the plot, and the same
habitual mistakes have been handed down generation after generation. Are you
going to teach the next generation the very same mistakes, or are you ready to
make a change for the better?
Know better and you’ll do
better It’s a simple premise. Once we know better, we can do better. The majority of
us run around bleating how life is seemingly just one problem after another, not
realizing that the only problem we have in life is the ineffectual way in which
we utilize the creative power of our mind.
We’ve been taught to make
ourselves UN-happy Although this may not be apparent to you at this stage, by the time you complete
this course you may see some truth in this statement. Almost every single
technique that others have told us would bring us happiness, only serve to
reinforce the thoughts, the feelings and behaviors that habitually bring us the
exact opposite—unhappiness.
It’s time for a change In case you haven’t noticed, the world is changing and now is the time for you
to change too. The old ways in which we were taught to be happy just do not
work! They didn’t work in the past and they don’t work now. Unless we see
and accept this point, we cannot possibly progress.
Conscious and sub-conscious
mind Every human being has a mind, and in the mind of each human is a large portion
that is constantly influencing our thoughts and behaviour—the subconscious. In
most instances, we are completely oblivious to how much influence this
subconscious part of the mind really has on us. We can use the analogy of an
iceberg to illustrate. Only one eighth of the iceberg’s mass is visible to the
human eye. The other seven-eighths is sub-merged, hidden from sight beneath the
surface of the ocean. Our subconscious can be compared to the hidden section of
the iceberg. The subconscious mind is the much greater part of our mind. It is
the seat of all our memories, all our past experiences, and indeed of all that
we have ever learned. It is said by some that each individual subconscious mind
is part of a much greater network called Universal Mind. Carl Jung, the Swiss
Psychiatrist, referred to it as the Collective Unconscious.
The conscious mind The conscious mind is the part of the mind which thinks, feels, and acts in the
present. It’s the part of the mind I’m using to write these words, and
it’s the part of the mind you’re using to read and understand these words.
The conscious mind is the seat of the ego personality.
The subconscious mind When you are said to act un-consciously, you are actually reacting to lessons of
the past—stored memories filed away in the filing cabinets or hard disks of
the subconscious mind. Many of us have driven our cars to work through hazardous peak-hour traffic
while on automatic pilot. We go through the motions of indicating, turning,
braking, stopping at traffic lights etc, while all the time our conscious mind
is focused on a conversation we are having with our front seat passenger. It’s
this same subconscious mind which automatically directs our driving that a
hypnotherapist addresses when he guides you into the altered state of hypnosis. When we talk about mind, we are not referring to the brain. The brain doesn’t
do our thinking; its job is to interpret the messages received from the mind and
convert them via electrical impulses into action. The brain is the physiological
link between the conscious and subconscious minds and the rest of our body.
It’s the electronic switchboard, the central processing unit that responds to
the incoming thought impulses of the mind.
Hypnosis and the power of
suggestion. An all important revelation that hypnosis has provided for us is that the
subconscious mind responds instantly and totally to suggestion. Even under a
light state of hypnosis, a person will respond to the suggestions placed in his
subconscious by the hypnotist. This is because the hyp-notist has taken over the
role of the person’s ever-critical conscious mind. He does this by giving
suggestions to the conscious mind. He suggests the body is so relaxed that the
conscious mind might as well relax right along with it. He suggests the
conscious mind takes a break. He suggests the eyes will close and the
subject’s conscious mind goes to “sleep.” The conscious part of the
mind, the ego-mind, is the gatekeeper to the subconscious, and once it is
distracted in this manner, the greater powers of the subconscious may be
directly spoken to by the hypnotist. Here then is the greater power of the human
being—his subconscious mind. Here is where thoughts are transformed into
things!
How suggestion affects the
subconscious When the hypercritical conscious mind is asleep, as in the hypnotized person,
the subconscious seizes onto every suggestion offered and immediately interprets
each suggestion as relative truth. The subconscious unreservedly accepts any
suggestion given and the only reason all our thoughts are not turned into
physical reality is that they are not faithful convictions of the conscious mind
and therefore are not given to the subconscious. In other words, they are not an
accepted part of the person’s belief system.
The gatekeeper The conscious ego-mind, being hyper-critical, simply rejects thoughts that do
not agree with its limited belief system. Here is where the ego has overstepped
the mark in its role as servant. Its range of limiting beliefs constantly
suggests to your subconscious that you wish to live a limited lifestyle. It
stands at the gateway to your subconscious—an overzealous bouncer who rejects
any thoughts that do not conform to its “in-house” rules. When you
allow yourself to be ruled by your ego, you place yourself under its hypnotic
influence. It has you in a permanent state of self-hypnosis, where every
addictive thought from the lower levels of consciousness, becomes a
self-limiting suggestion which, when allowed to pass through to your
subconscious, results in limited and addictive behaviour.
Mind only does what it’s
told to do Every time the person who is trying to give up smoking says to himself or
others, “Boy, it’s hard to quit smoking,” he simply allows the
conscious ego-mind to place another negative suggestion into his powerful
subconscious mind. The role of the subconscious is not to criticize this obvious
defeatist attitude—it simply hears and obeys. It says to itself, “The
boss says it’s hard to quit, so let’s make it so.”
Suggested tiredness To understand how subtle, yet powerful self-suggestion is, consider the effect
of a person yawning in front of you. The suggestion implied is tiredness. The
ego, because yawns and tiredness fit into its belief system, suspends criticism,
believes the implication and allows the suggestion to pass through to the
subconscious, which yawns an obedient reply.
A walk on the wild side Self-suggestion allows Hindu “holy men”
to walk on hot coals in bare
feet and even drive metal spikes through their flesh without pain or bleeding.
Self-suggestion allows pain-free childbirth, teeth extracted without anaesthetic
and martial arts exponents to smash bricks with their head. The regular success
of medical placebos are another example of the power of self-suggestion.
Self-worth and the power of
suggestion Society’s belief system tells us our worthiness lies in our contributions to
society. For example, if you have a job and pay taxes you are worthy. So the
person who loses his job or doesn’t have a job, might say to himself,
“I’m redundant—I’m useless—I’m worthless”. When such
statements are backed up with intense emotion, which they usually are in such
cases, the effects upon the highly suggestible subconscious is dramatic. Others
will try to convince him otherwise, but the damage has already been done. The
suggestion that he is worthless has been implanted in the subconscious, where,
reinforced by the ego’s belief system, it is believed and stored as absolute
truth! Self-hypnosis, induced by the ego, is as easy and as debilitating as
that!
The creative power of the
mind The mind really does have power over matter and we create our material world of
reality every second of every waking day by the thoughts we create. The power of
creative suggestion enables the Hindu initiate to drive a metal spike through
his body without feeling pain or allowing blood to flow. He adopts a light
trance-like mental state of relaxation, suggests to the subconscious that this
is absolutely possible, and the mind, reinforced by the emotion of his strong
religious beliefs, tells the body to make it so. His mind runs a program of
learned beliefs and attitudes (inner creativity) and these thoughts are
projected outward and made manifest in the physical world of external reality.
You are limited only by your
thoughts We are so completely hypnotized by the conditioning of an ego-driven society
that we have become desensitized to the intuitive promptings of the higher
subconscious mind. We listen only to the insistent directives of the ego’s
lower levels of conscious mind. That which seems to be illogical and impossible
within the confines of our limited belief systems, is an accepted matter of fact
to the Hindu “holy man.” We limit ourselves and our natural capacity
for happiness only by our limited attitudes and beliefs.
Why be limited by fear, when
fear is only a thought? Judgment, criticism, jealousy, envy, hate, cynicism, anger—all emotions such
as these are fearful emotions of the limiting ego mind. It is a belief in these
and other similarly negative emotions that keep you locked in darkness inside
the insecure ego’s fortress of fear.
Let go of the
past Limited thinking has created all the unhappiness in your life in times past and
is creating all your unhappiness in the present. Are you going to allow this
unhappiness to continue into all your tomorrows, or are you going to make a
choice for a change—right here, right now? It’s time to discard completely
all the negative and restrictive concepts of your past conditioning. Begin now!
Forget those disruptions of the past. Learn the lessons they presented, yes, but
let go of all guilt, anger and other negative emotions that tie you to the past.
By continually blaming the past and re-examining mistakes, you only serve to
reinforce the limiting and addictive programing that has led you into a life of
dissatisfaction and unhappiness. You are the only person with the power to
change your life. Start now with a renewing of your mind.
Module Four:
Cause
and Effect
WHEN trying to understand why we do the things we do, particular
attention should be given to the universally known theory of Cause and Effect.
Psychologists and Counselors are well versed in this theory and for their
purposes refer to it as Stimulus and Response. Newton’s Third Law of Motion
has its basis in the law of Cause and Effect. His studies showed that for every
force or action produced in the universe, there must be an equal and opposite
reaction. Cause a stone to be thrown into a still pond and it’s effect will be
a series of ripples radiating outwards across the surface of the pond dispersing
energy in an equal and opposite reaction.
Stress results in conflict
(cause and effect) Whenever our egos bring us into conflict with another we will most likely be
acting out yet another cause and effect scenario. If fact, just about everything
that happens to us has its basis in cause and effect. The personality, the
egotistical make-up of a person, will play a large part in determining that
person’s reaction to a certain situation and its cause or stimulus. The
response, or effect, is directly linked to the perceived nature and strength of
the stimulus. Throw a large stone into a pond and the immediate effect is large
ripples. Throw in a small stone and we get small ripples. If we allow ourselves
to be placed in a situation that cause powerful amounts of stress to build
within us, the resultant release of that stress will be equally powerful.
Domestic conflict A critical comment by a wife,
(stimulus) may evoke an angry retort
(response) from a stressed-out husband, resulting in a typical domestic
squabble. The cause (critical comment) and the effect (angry retort)
is
usually associated with a particular environmental influence and habitual
programable attitudes. In this case it may be stress brought on at the
husband’s place of work, reinforced at home by his attitudes towards his
wife’s critical comment. The husband reacts habitually and this leads to the
addictive behaviour — domestic conflict.
A conditioned reflex action
(a re-action) Most of the time, when we react to one isolated incident, we are in fact
reacting through the combined strength of a lifetime of learned attitudes. The
husband may have been conditioned to react as he did because of attitudes he
learnt from his father. For example he may have often heard his father say such
things as, “After a hard day at work, a man should not be criticized and
humiliated in the sanctuary of his own home.” His mind-set tells him his
home is his castle. We have all been exposed to such addictive demands during the course of our
lives, and it is important we learn to become aware of, and modify, our own set
of limiting attitudes if we are ever to find peace and comfort in our lives.
Learning to modify our attitudes and responses will play a major part in future
modules of this Course in Happiness.
Marital discord All too often couples will blame problems and issues as the cause of repetitive
marital discord. Problems and issues do not cause marital discord—these things
are only the symptoms, the effects of insecure thinking. The major causes of
relationship conflict are ineffective and restricting attitudes. Once a couple
become aware of which ineffective attitudes (cause) produce highly
emotional responses and hostile behaviour (effects), they can take steps
to modify their behaviour by not only adopting more acceptable attitudes, but by
consciously choosing a more positive and constructive response. (See modules
13, 14, 15)
Entrenched behaviour The continual backwards and forwards action of cause and effect relationships
can become habitually entrenched into our behaviour unless we find some way to
intervene and stop this seemingly endless process. Sometimes disagreements
resemble those protracted, drawn-out tennis rallies where the ball is slammed
from one side of the court to the other — an emotional free-for-all with each
“competitor” striving to gain the upper hand.
Introduction of the mediating
response
 Somewhere along the path between cause and effect, a mediator must be introduced
to intervene and diffuse the situation before it erupts into outright conflict.
Counselors describe this type of intervention as the introduction of a mediating
response. You’ve probably heard of a mediator being called in to sort out
differences of opinions between a building company and the Builders’ Union. A
mediator is a go-between, someone who attempts to smooth the troubled waters
between the warring parties. A prepared course of action in response to
conflict, is called a mediating response. (See modules 13, 14, 15)
How understanding encourages
stress-free behaviour An understanding of the Cause and Effect relationship between people, their
attitudes and their environments is a vital element toward understanding human
behaviour. Once you are able to understand the cause and effects relationships
between you, your environment and other people—you are better able to
anticipate undesirable emotional reactions such as stress, anger, jealousy,
embarrassment, and other restrictions of the ego.
The addictive
demands of the ego The addictive and demanding attitudes of the lower mind — the ego — are
largely responsible for the lack of happiness in people’s lives. Choosing to
apply suitable mediating responses to these addictive demands will greatly
assist you in your pursuit of happiness.
Module Five:
Fight or Flight
THOUSANDS of years ago, survival was the name of the game for early man.
In a dangerous and uncertain world, man had to be equipped with some sort of
survival kit in order to keep one jump ahead of hungry sabre-toothed tigers and
other nasty predators. And so early man was supplied with an inbuilt survival
mechanism. It was activated instinctively, and its effectiveness was dependent
upon the reactions and reflexes of the human about to be set upon.
Warning! . . . warning! When confronted by a hungry tiger, you had to react automatically. You can’t
reason with tigers, so meaningful dialogue was out. And if the only weapons you
have are sticks and stones, there is no future in a stand-up fight. What we have
here is one very stressful situation, and while you’re under such great
anxiety and stress, you have to make a life or death decision. Do you stand and
fight or take flight in the opposite direction?
Red alert—send out the
troops! Around about this time the nervous systems of the body are on red alert and
things are really jumpin’. In response to the emotional shock of being
confronted by a tiger, the limbic system of your brain sends out signals which
travel through the thalmic region and triggers the release of extra hormones
into the bloodstream. This in turn activates the adrenal glands which sit on top
of each kidney. The adrenal glands respond to stress and fear by squirting large
amounts of adrenaline into your bloodstream. The adrenaline causes your heart
rate to go up, your lungs to take in extra oxygen, tense your muscles, increase
blood sugar and many other things to prepare you for a fight or flight reaction.
Enter civilized man These fight or flight programs would have been a great help in helping our
prehistoric ancestors survive in a perilous environment, but as mankind
progressed and civilization took man out of the jungles into villages, towns and
cities, the need for survival no longer depended on the fight or flight
mechanisms of primitive man. Unfortunately, the programming that instigated the
fight or flight reactions in primitive man remains in the psyche of modern man.
Obviously, if you are crossing a street and a bus is bearing down on you, these
instinctive mechanisms that cause instant unthinking reactions are still very
handy to have on board. By and large however, the fight or flight reaction to
modern day stressors are more a hindrance than a benefit.
A world full of
“tigers” Our present day emotional programming is no different to that of a fearful,
primitive man, and this fearful programming makes us perceive other people and
the conditions of the world around us, as threats. Animals are no longer a
threat, but the world is full of people masquerading as tigers who, according to
our insecure egos, are obviously out to get us — to devour us, metaphorically
speaking. Illogical in context to today’s modern society, but perfectly
reasonable to the fearful reasoning of the ego — our throw-back link to
prehistoric man. Genetically speaking, our cells are made of the same material
as primitive man, and it would appear the DNA make-up of modern man still
contains the cellular memory of the primitive.
An evolving consciousness Fortunately for us, our knowledge and conscious awareness has evolved and grown,
and within that knowledge is the awareness that unlike other life forms on this
planet, we have a consciousness that allows us to choose how we wish to think
and behave. We may act like automated robots sometimes, but underneath it all we
do have choice! We can continue to let outdated programming run our lives or we
can choose to replace ineffective thinking with positive, progressive thinking.
What causes stress? Stress is a product of our own imagination. Because of our perceived separation
from everybody and every other thing in the universe, we feel vulnerable and
alone. It’s us against the world—or at least that’s what our ego
programming will have us believe. This constant feeling of insecurity fuels the
addictive demands of the fortress which tells us to be always ready to fight or
run from these perceived threats to our security. Contrary to popular opinion,
stress is not caused from events that happens to us “out there” in
the outside world. Stress is caused by how we react to those outside events, and
that reaction is in the form of illogical thinking, the self-talk of the ego
manipulating the inner world of our mind.
“They should do it my
way” Our faulty programming demands that people and circumstances adhere strictly to
our views on how things should be in order for us to feel comfortable. It’s
when the inevitable happens, when the world doesn’t follow the rules (the
should’s of the ego), that the unreleased energy (stress) created
by our instinctive fight or flight program, finds itself stored up inside with
nowhere to go.
Repressed energy Stress is bottled up or repressed emotional energy. When confronted by a hungry
tiger, this energy is usually released and used up as we fight the tiger or run
away from it. We have no tigers in our environment so we allow the ego to make
them up. Our modern day tigers can be as diverse as rude salespeople, critical
managers, red traffic lights, disobedient teenagers, and even disagreeable
television commercials. Our natural instinct is to lash out at these threats to
our peace and security, but our learned attitudes, those handed down from
generation to generation, tell us that it is not the right thing to do. We must
hold our emotions in and put up a brave face. Psycho-emotional energy is
repressed and we cause ourselves to suffer mental and emotional anguish. Some of
us break under the strain and we explode with an aggressive outpouring of
repressed energy. Continual repression often results in a complete mental
breakdown.
Let’s now look at how Personality and Attitudes influence our
behaviour.
Module Six:
Personality and
Attitudes
HOW WE perceive
ourselves and others around us is a reflection of our own mental and emotional
outlook on life. This philosophical outlook on life is formed by our individual
personality and attitudes. Our inherent nature, sometimes referred to as
personality, is something we are born with. As babies we come into this world
endowed with some of the genetic make up of our parents. Besides causing us to
physically resemble our parents, these inherited genes also tend to
instinctively influence our behaviour as we grow up. Some believe these
inherited traits stay with us for the rest of our lives, giving rise to the
often quoted saying, “Like father, like son”. (Note: Character traits
can cause a person to act a certain way — but not always!)
Learned attitudes
As individuals, with a free
will and free mind, we are able to influence our behaviour by educating our
mind. We do this by the introduction, learning and nurturing of attitudes. The
manner in which we are brought up, our nurturing, will cause the ego to shape
our own unique attitudes to life and to the people around us.
Whereas part of your
personality is somewhat predetermined by inherited genetic traits, your
attitudes are shaped largely by an ongoing series of learning experiences.
If at aged three, you placed
your hand within the flames of a fire, you would probably develop and
nurture a wary, but useful attitude to all types of naked flames for the rest of
your life. This process of continuous
learning will shape, influence, and re-shape your attitudes and perceptions of
life. Certain events in our life, and the behaviour of people close to us, will
influence our cognitive (mental) processes — the way we think, as well as our
emotional make-up — how we feel, act and react to these people and events. Our
attitudes also determine how we perceive ourselves and our role in society. The
particular format of our nurturing background will influence the self-image we
have of ourselves, and the self-evaluation of our being.
Reactions rather than
responses Our learned attitudes also
affect the ways we respond to various stimuli such as crisis, confrontation and
the like. It’s during these times of stress, that our response may not always
be the appropriate response to the stimulus. Nine times out of ten we habitually
and emotionally react rather than responsibly respond. It is important to note
that although ego personality and attitudes both influence our behaviour, it’s
our attitudes which act as the controlling manager.
We tend to act in accordance
with our programed attitudes in times of crisis.
How attitudes are acquired
As mentioned, an attitude is
a learned set of values and responses which influence our pattern of behaviour.
Attitudes can be formed via conscious awareness of what we see, touch, hear,
smell and taste, or subconsciously formed as it filters through from stored
memories of events which may have happened in our formative childhood years.
Group reinforcement
Attitudes can also be formed
as a result of close social contact with an individual (partner) or group
(family, church, school or work place). Where a personal need base is
reinforced and supported by the individual or the group, attitudes take on a
substantial and entrenched influence over one’s behaviour.
Attitudes CAN be changed
It is important to remember
that all learned and strongly entrenched behaviors can be changed and reduced in
strength by the introduction of new and powerful information. This new
information, if reinforced by repetition, can bring a total turnaround to
learned beliefs, attitudes — and subsequent behaviour.
Whereas personality traits
are established from birth and remain virtually static throughout life,
attitudes are continuously taken on board as one grows and travels through life.
Thankfully for all concerned, attitudes can and do change, and it is the
bringing about of a positive change in one’s attitudes than can enhance the
level of contentment and satisfaction within a person’s life experience.
Behaviour—why we do what we
do The way a person behaves is
directly linked to that person’s nature or ego personality, together with his
learned set of values or attitudes to life. A person’s behaviour is usually a
projection of the “needs” of his personality type. Each ego
personality has different wants and desires, and whether these addictive needs
are met or not, determines to a large degree, how happy the ego feels about
life’s direction, which is then reflected in the person’s behaviour. Whereas
personality reflects something of the instinctual nature of a person, his
attitudes and beliefs reflect the type of nurturing environment within which the
person learns and experiences life. The relationship between a person’s
attitudes, individual personality and the various environments they find
themselves in, has a direct bearing on that person’s ultimate behavioral
patterns.
Ego gratification
The bottom line in relation
to all types of behaviour, is the ego’s need for gratification and rewards in
relation to the amount of emotional and mental desires (addictive demands)
projected
by the individual’s lower levels of consciousness. Whether our needs and
desires are acceptable to society or not, the gratification of those “needs”
are what currently drives us as insecure, but slowly awakening human beings.
Modifying those
ego driven needs The task before each of us is
to reach a higher awareness that allows us to still the “needs” (addictive
demands) of the ego. From a base of peace and understanding we are then able
to choose more positive responses to life’s unending stream of challenges and
opportunities.
Module Seven:
Needs—Essential
or Addictive?
MAN’S behaviour is generally determined by his ego’s desire to
satisfy his personal “needs.” These so-called needs fall within the
broad categories of physiological needs, mental needs, emotional needs, and
social needs. When a psychologist or professional counselor talks about a
person’s needs, they are referring to the ego’s emotionally driven desires
or wants — in other words, what the ego feels it “needs” in
order to be happy.
Physiological needs When a man dying of thirst in the desert expresses a need for water, he is
talking of a genuine lower order need, a physiological need, the fulfillment of
which is essential for his survival.
Mental needs These are needs where gratification would come from mental challenge and
creative pursuits such as career, hobbies and personal development.
Emotional needs Emotional needs are those which when gratified, make us feel good about
ourselves. Most people in the western world are continuously searching for more
and more ways to fulfil their desires and wants in the quest for enhanced states
of emotional well-being. The drug and alcohol problem is an example of how these
emotional “feel-good” desires can and do, become addictive.
Social needs Social needs refer to the personality’s desire for friendship and
companionship. The nature and strength of these social needs vary in strength
from person to person, as do the other needs just mentioned. A little further
along in our course, we will be looking at how physiological, mental, emotional
and social needs vary in different people because of their differences in
personality make-up.
Spiritual needs Ever since man first stared in wonder at the star-filled night sky, he has
needed to know “why?” What is the purpose of it all? And where does
he fit into the overall scheme of things? Perhaps it is because of this need to
understand and a need to belong that man continues to search for meaning.
Unfortunately he continues to search in areas that cannot supply the answers. He
thinks to himself, “If only—if only I could find that perfect partner,
get that promotion or win that lottery, then I can be happy. When I’m happy,
perhaps things will start to make some sense.”
The ever-present critic A still, quiet voice suggests he look towards his spiritual needs before all the
others, but that is constantly suppressed by the put-downs of the critical ego.
“Come off it”, says the critic, “all that spiritual stuff is too
airy-fairy. Get real, life’s too short to waste time on that rubbish.”
Lower order needs Lower order needs are physiological in nature, and refer to man’s basic needs
for food, water and shelter. These are genuine instinctual needs and must be met
if a person is to exist for any period of time on this planet. Other general
needs of a lower order nature might include such things as a safe and secure
environment providing freedom from threat (a cave), and some sort of
covering for the body (a bear skin). Modern man would see these needs as
having a home and a secure job to pay for the home and clothing.
Middle order needs It would be safe to say that a need for love, belonging and acceptance would be
needs the majority of the world’s population can relate to. Are these
essential for survival? No, but they sure are nice to have around. Behavioral
Scientists describe these needs as “middle order needs.”
Upper-middle and higher order
needs Then comes upper-middle order needs, listed as esteem, prestige, status,
achievement and recognition, followed by higher order needs such as knowledge
and beauty — and at the top of the list — self-realization, the fulfillment
of one’s purpose in life.
“Donkey” wants and
desires are not necessarily “needs” So if most of our lower to middle order needs are being met and satisfied, why
then, are we not happy? To get a stubborn donkey to move, a tasty carrot tied to
a stick is dangled in front of his eyes. He wants that carrot. He is so focused
on his desire for the carrot, that he is unaware of being manipulated and
fooled. Does he need the carrot? Probably not, but blinded by his addiction to
carrots, he cannot see the trickery being played out upon him. Sitting on his
back, the rider of the donkey simply steers and guides the donkey by moving the
carrot to the left or right, at all times keeping the prize just out of reach in
order to maintain control.
Be aware of the masquerade A lot of us are like the donkey. We allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking
we need a constant supply of “carrots” in order to be happy. Our
wants and desires masquerade as “needs” that the ego tells us we must
have in order to be happy. The guy on top of the donkey makes sure the donkey sees only the carrot.
Likewise, when the ego is in charge, you are aware only of what the ego allows
you to be aware of. The rider programs the donkey. The donkey has little choice
because it operates essentially from lower order needs. You are not a donkey and
you do have choice. The programs that run through your mind are entirely your
choice. Are they programs of an addictive and demanding nature, or are they
programs of awareness, understanding and acceptance?
“I need my needs to be
met” Having addressed all the various needs man apparently requires in order to find
some level of inner comfort, is it any wonder most of us are unhappy? It’s a
pretty tall order — to have all these various needs met at all times, under
all circumstances, to our complete satisfaction. Yet we demand that this is what should happen in order for us to be happy.
Where do all these needs and
demands originate? The one thing that separates us, the human race, from all the other species on
this planet is our conscious awareness. We are aware of our sense of self —
our body and our mind. We have a mind that thinks. It perceives, analyzes,
reasons, rationalizes, and evaluates. We have a personality, and the driving
force behind that personality is the ego. The ego is in the driver’s seat, and
that’s where all of our problems start. The ego sees itself as your personal
chauffeur and bodyguard. It wants to steer you through life by following its own
outdated and obsolete roadmap. What was intended to be our servant has in many
ways become our jailer. The ego has built up an emotional mechanism of defense
that we will refer to throughout this course as the Fortress. It was meant to
protect us from the world “out there,” but it has become a prison
which keeps us from experiencing higher states of awareness.
A cave with a view Initially the ego was created by us to look after our lower order needs. We
needed something to look out for those predatory tigers and other threats to our
survival. We were spiritual beings learning how to live in a physical world and
we needed someone to watch our back. The ego did its job so well that we
foolishly began to rely upon its judgment more and more. It told us that as very
important beings we needed more than the basic lower order needs. What about a
bigger cave, with no leaks and a better view of the volcanoes? No harm in
wanting a few extra luxuries, right? And so it began. Ask not what your ego can
do for your credit card, but what your credit card can do for your ego.
The lower levels of
consciousness Our conscious mind, our ego, operates on three lower levels of consciousness.
These lower levels of consciousness are geared around the acquisition of what
the ego suggests you need and should have if you are ever to be happy. These
three carrots of illusionary happiness are based on the ego’s needs for Security,
Sensations and Power.
Addictive programming These wants and desires, masquerading as needs, were programmed into your
consciousness way back in early childhood and have since become an habitual way
of life for you. If you use a habit often enough it becomes an addiction.
The
Security
level We talked earlier about lower order needs. These needs for food, shelter and
freedom from threat are equated with your personal security. This level of
awareness has you preoccupied with a continual struggle with the outside world
in order to feel secure. Because the ego sees us as isolated and separated from
the universe, we have constant feelings of insecurity and operate from this
level of awareness whenever we feel threatened.
The
Sensory
level This level has us believing happiness can be found in more and more pleasurable
activities and sensations. For many people, sex appeals as the most pleasurable
of all sensations. Others pursue the addictive sensations provided by alcohol,
tobacco, food or drugs.
The
Power
level When your consciousness is focused on this level, you are concerned with
dominating people and circumstances to increase your prestige, wealth and pride.
Manipulation and control of others is high on the list of priorities when you
operate from the Power level.
Your right to choose As a child you seemed to have no other choice but to operate from these lower
levels of consciousness, but now as an adult, you stand empowered through a
greater awareness of the world around you, to exercise your power of choice. The
problems you encountered at aged two are in the past, yet you are addictively
and unconsciously still playing out the methods you used back then. These
obsolete solutions deprive you of the opportunity to fully experience and enjoy
your life the way it was meant to be.
If there is no lack, there
can be no need For a need to exist it goes without saying that a lack of some sort exists. In
other words a need emerges in re-sponse to a perceived lack — i.e. some sort
of deprivation or deficiency. So if we could conceive of a situation in which
there is no lack, it follows there would be no need. In third-world countries and war-torn states, there are times when even lower
order needs are difficult to meet. Sadly, a definite lack exists for people in
these localities, but for most of us in the western world, fulfillment of
man’s lower order needs are an accepted part of life. Think of a life of
abundance, where needs are made redundant and obsolete. Enter happiness, for
what you think is what you become.
A move to higher
consciousness The only real need you have right now is the need to learn how to redirect your
energies from trying to change the world around you, to changing your inner
programming. The more you learn to move away from these negatively addictive
lower levels of thinking and accept people and life without imposing your ego
demands, the sooner you will experience the freedom of a happier life.
Module Eight:
Labels and
Self-worth
HAVE you ever noticed how often we tend to label other people by their
actions? A little girl throws a tantrum and Mum labels her “a naughty
girl”. Little Johnny spills cordial on the carpet and Dad calls him a
“clumsy idiot”. We label people as winners, losers, lucky, unlucky,
achievers, failures, heroes, cowards, go-getters or bums. When something goes
wrong in our lives, we’re only to ready to stick a label on ourselves, such as
“I’m a bad father.” But such labels are illogical. There may be times
when a father reacts with unskillful behaviour, such as yelling at a teenage
daughter when she comes home late at night, but such behaviour cannot make a
father “bad.” He simply hasn’t learned the skills needed to handle
such a situation. The ego-mind with its critical self-talk is only too willing
to exploit any emotional situation and convert it into an avenue for self-doubt.
We pin labels to ourselves and even allow others to pin their labels upon us.
Labels are not
facts—they’re only opinions Name-calling labels are not facts. They’re simply opinions. Someone might say,
“You’re always so clumsy.” You might even believe it yourself. But
think about it. Always clumsy? It’s an illogical statement, because you
can’t do clumsy things while you’re sound asleep at night, can you?
What you do can’t make you
who you are! Let’s say I hypnotize you into believing you are a duck. You can flap your
arms, waddle around quacking loudly, but no matter how long you waddle and
quack, your behaviour cannot possibly turn you into a duck!
What you do cannot turn you
into a label Failing cannot turn you into a failure, no matter how often you fail. You
can’t be a failure, any more than you can be a duck. What you do is one thing,
and who you are is another. Learn to become aware and alert to the ego’s
illogical self-talk and it’s habitual practice of sticking labels on yourself
and others. When you recognize a label, pause and ask yourself if it’s based
on fact, or opinions and generalizations. When you look in a mirror, you see a
human being. That is a fact. A “good” or “bad” human being
is an opinion.
Raise your level of conscious
awareness All opinionated judgements or labels are products of the ego’s lower levels of
consciousness. The ego’s awareness is focused solely on its levels of security, sensory and
power consciousness. If you feel afraid (security level), the ego will
label you a coward. If you feel the need to habitually smoke (sensory level),
the ego will label you weak-willed. If you yell at your teenage daughter
(power
level), the ego will label you a control-freak. It’s the addictive demands
of the ego that has you reacting from these lower levels of consciousness, and
it is also the ego that then berates you through its self-talk and labeling.
According to the ego, you’re a loser whichever way you turn.
Beware the “Scales
of Worth” The Scales of Worth look like the Scales of Justice, but there’s no justice
about them, because they are used to weigh up your worth as a person. Who
operates the Scales of Worth? Our old sparring partner, the ego. And what does
it use as a measuring weight? — labels! These scales have you sitting in one
measuring pan, with the sum total of all your labels counterbalancing the other
pan. The ego has many weapons of self destruction within its fortress of
insecurity, and the Scales of Worth is one of its favorites.
Why let labels make you an
emotional yo-yo? Call yourself a name or let someone else do it for you and you’ll find
yourself sitting on one pan of the Scales of Worth. On the other pan is your
self-created, self-destructive labels and the labels others have piled upon you.
Opinionated judgements galore. The more you allow the ego to control your
thoughts, the more labels it eagerly weighs you down with. Do a good deed for
someone, and you label yourself, or rather your ego labels yourself, “a
good person,” and up you go in worth. You make a mistake, the ego lets you
label yourself “stupid,” and down you go in worth. Make an error of
judgement while playing sport on the weekend and a spectator calls you “an
idiot” and down you go in worth. Your boss praises your work on Monday,
and up you go again.
Insecurity is big business Insecurity is big business — just ask the Insurance companies. And opinions
are the tools of the Insecurity Trade. If you were to believe your worth
is to be found in your opinions, and those of others, then you’ll never find
balance and peace of mind. Because according to opinions, one minute you’re
worth more, the next minute you’re worth less.
Even “good” labels
will make you insecure If you should achieve praise and rewards from your peers, the Scales of Worth
propels you skywards. You feel worthwhile. The trouble now is, you must keep on
achieving and receiving praise, otherwise you don’t stay up on your “high.”
Your ego fears the drop — you become insecure. Do you strive to be seen as a
“good” person — a worthwhile person?
You may get assurances from others that you are, but its hard to be convinced.
That’s because there is no real way of measuring a person’s “worth.” The labels you seem so concerned about are imaginary. They’re only thoughts,
and you can’t weigh thoughts. You can’t measure out 500 grams of self-worth.
You can’t sit for an exam and get marks for your worth. There is no measure
— there are only opinions!
Opinions play into the hands
of the ego Here’s where the ego rubs its hands in glee. Ego knows it’s impossible to
prove your worth and the more you struggle to prove yourself, the more insecure,
tense and anxious you become. It’s impossible to prove your worth, because
labels and the Scales of Worth do not exist. Like every other imagined plaything
of the ego, labels are illusions. Labels —“good” labels or “bad”
labels — are opinions, and labels, especially the opinionated labels of an
insecure ego, have no basis in fact.
The belief that worth must be
earned The endless merry-go-round of setting and reaching goals in order to make
yourself worthy leaves you stressed, uneasy and dissatisfied. You set yourself
goals that will bring you worth. The moment you reach it, it loses its lustre and becomes worthless. You then
need another high, and so you head off for the next goal, and the next and the
next. The addictive demands of the ego will have you believing you must have the
approval of others in order to feel worthy, that you must achieve to be deemed
worthy.
Competition and the need
to rate Does your insecure ego have you forever demanding more good marks, more
reassurance, and more success as evidence of your self worth? And do you find
yourself feeling anxious if these things are not achieved? This is the ego’s
Rating Game at work. It will have you believing your worth is rated by the
things you’ve achieved or collected. This attitude takes the pleasure out of
whatever it is you do and only makes you feel anxious. Some people enjoy the fun and challenge of competition, but for some it becomes
a serious matter of worth. These people can’t bear to lose or achieve less
than others. When viewed from the ego’s lower level of consciousness, that
means loss of self-worth!
The “need” for
approval Do you worry about what others think of you? Do you go out of your way to please
people so they will like you? Do you strive for perfection so no one can
criticize you? Or do you avoid doing something new in case you fail? If your
life is ruled by your concerns of what others are thinking about you, you have
fallen for another of the ego’s traps — the need for approval. Some people
like themselves only if other people like them. Their need for approval has them
depending on others for their good feelings about themselves. This is a very
stressful way to live. For these people, life is great as long as there is
someone there to pat them on the back and tell them what a wonderful person they
are. But what happens when those people are no longer around? Circumstances
change, people come and go.
The only person you can
depend upon Here’s the crunch! There is only one person who knows exactly the words you
want to hear and when you want to hear them. There’s only one person you can
always count on to be there for you, and that person is YOU! The day you are able to peel off all the labels of insecurity you and others
have used to limit your potential, is the day you find your real freedom. The
only person walking this planet today upon whom you can safely and securely rely
for total acceptance and approval is YOU. Show me a person who looks to the
outside world to feel good about themselves and I’ll show you a person
habitually hooked on the addictive programming of the ego.
Approval of others as a
preferential bonus Give yourself your own pats on the back, your own approval. Having accepted
yourself, and feeling good about yourself, any approval received from others
then become a bonus, not a need. You’ve put yourself in a more comfortable
position. A position where you might prefer others approve of you, but you no
longer have to demand and depend on their approval in order for you to feel good
about yourself. Don’t be addictively hooked on gaining their approval —
simply choose to make it a preference, something to be added on and enjoyed
along with your own self-acceptance.
The “need” for
love and acceptance Some people need the love and acceptance of a partner to feel complete and
worthwhile. At times, in their eagerness to be loved they bend over backwards to
please their partner. They then begin to lose track of themselves as a person.
They have yet to learn that by accepting and loving themselves first, they can
give love freely without the urgent need of getting love back in return.
Addictive demands for love can pressure partners into stressful reactions
(cause and effect). The stress which they feel and react to, defeats
the purpose — which is for one partner to feel loved and the other to be loved
in return.
When love walks out the door Some people believe they are worthy only while being loved by another. Then when
that love is taken away, their self-worth goes right along with it. They
depended on their partner for their good feelings about themselves. There are
two lots of faulty thinking here. The first is that you gain worth from another
person’s love — and the second is you lose worth when they no longer love
you. There is no need to suffer the perceived double loss of your partner and
your self-image. When you learn the skills to identify the difference between
self-worth and self-acceptance you are well on the way to a more enjoyable way
of living — both with yourself and others.
The old
“Carrot and Donkey Game” Like the man on the donkey’s back dangling carrots on a string, the ego will
have you have desiring and chasing labels that will proclaim you “worthy”
in your eyes and those of others. The labels are “carrots” of
self-worth. Don’t fall for the ego’s old trick of dangling “labels of
worth” in front of your lower mind in order to manipulate and control your
behaviour. Choose freedom instead.
Module Nine:
Levels of Lower
Consciousness
THERE is nothing right or wrong, good or bad about any particular
level of consciousness. In terms of awareness, where you are right now in your
development is where you are meant to be at this point in time. However, the
fact that you are undertaking this course in personal advancement, indicates the
time is ripe for you to move forward into higher levels of awareness and
understanding. To prepare yourself for where you’re going, you need to know
where you’ve been — for to know is to understand.
Insecurity and the fearful ego To gain some insight into what makes you feel secure, you need to look at what
makes you feel insecure. Insecurity is the foundation stone upon which the ego
builds its Fortress of Fear. Insecurity is spelt f-e-a-r. This fear
is a direct result of our ego’s feelings of isolation and separation from the
outside world. Remember how secure you felt as a child when wrapped in the
comforting arms of your mother? She cared for you. She engendered a sense of
safety and security whenever she was close to you. Remember that traumatic first
day at school? Separation from mum had you feeling insecure and afraid. But then you found a
bunch of kids to play with. No more isolation — you felt a little more secure. The ego has made sure we have carried similar feelings of childhood insecurity
right throughout our lives, because this allows it to dangle the carrot of
security in front of us — which enables it to constantly maintain control.
“Give me the boy until he
is seven, and I will give you the
(programmed) man” Your feelings of insecurity are due to your ego’s emotional programming which
you picked up from addicted people before you were mentally and physically
mature. Parents, relatives, teachers—each may have helped instill in you the
emotional response of fearful insecurity when placed in any challenging
situation. Here are a few addictive programs you may be familiar with; “Hit first, ask
questions later”. . . “It’s a dog eat dog world out there”. . .
“It’s every man for himself”. . . “You’ve gotta look out for number
one”. . . “The best form of defense is attack” . . .“All the world loves
a winner.”
Futurizing or pasturizing Insecurity has many of us killing off the enjoyment of living in the present by
constantly worrying about the future. We worry about the future based on events
that happened in the past. “I should build a nest egg for my future. Uncle
Bill didn’t and look what happened to him.” We’re so caught up in
looking forwards and backwards that we fail to recognize the enjoyment to be had
right here, right now.
THE
SECURITY
LEVEL The Security level is on the top floor of your ego fortress, and it’s a very
lonely level of consciousness. When you get caught up with struggling to obtain
what you feel to be your security needs, you are more isolated from people than
on any other level. When you allow yourself to be preoccupied with security
you’ll tend to unconsciously view other people as a means to help you become
more secure. That special person you need to be with becomes your living
security blanket. Other people are seen through the fearful eyes of the ego as
protagonists with whom you must struggle and fight because they threaten your
level of security.
THE
SENSORY
LEVEL The next level down in the fortress is the Sensory level. Suppose your
consciousness runs a program instigating a desire for sensuous sex. If your
sexual desire is fulfilled, the effect on your consciousness is an experience of
short-term pleasure. You have successfully fulfilled a lower order need,
generated by the demands and programming of the Sensory level of lower
consciousness. However, if sexual pleasure is denied, the ego may trot out the emotions of
discouragement and rejection — addictive emotions from the Security level. Or
perhaps you experience resentment and anger — addictions from the Power level
of lower consciousness.
THE
POWER
LEVEL The third level in the fortress. When operating on the Power level of
consciousness, the ego mind demands that there’s a special way the world
should be and a special way that people should act. It furnishes reasons why you
are “right” and the other person is “wrong.” At the Power
level, the ego promotes and projects a “me versus them” mentality
which it considers to be in your own best interest if you wish to maintain
control.
The criticism trigger Power level thinking prompts you to react angrily if someone should criticize
you. When you are able to operate from a higher level of consciousness, the ego
is stilled and you are able to choose a preferred response. It’s much more
fulfilling to be loved and accepted than to be “right.” Arguing at
every opportunity in order to convince people of your superiority simply means
you are running the ego’s addictive programming from the Power level of lower
consciousness.
The manipulator When you can love a person only when he or she is able to act in a fashion that
fits your addictive programming, you are treating that person as an object to be
manipulated. You are operating from the Power level of consciousness.
Irritation and
resentment Irritation surfaces when we feel another person lets us down in one way or
another — they’re running late and don’t phone, they overdress or
underdress, or they don’t follow your rules of etiquette. Resentment surfaces
when we try to explain our thoughts and feelings to someone and they don’t
seem to be interested. Both irritation and resentment reactions are caused by
addictive programming from the ego’s Power level of lower consciousness.
Module Ten:
“Shoulds” are
Addictive Demands
HER FACE was red with anger as she screamed at her son. “You
shouldn’t talk to me like that. I’m your mother and demand a little more
respect.” Her son retorted just as angrily, “Well you shouldn’t blame me for
everything that happens around here.” The clash of egos has resulted
in the old “should” game of offense and defense. We all play the Game of
Shoulds from time to time — both against ourselves and against others, who “should”
behave just as we want them to behave!
We believe things should be
done our way A should is an addictive demand. An addictive demand is an emotion driven
expectation of how a person or situation “should” or “should
not” be. It’s an attitude or belief that is deeply imbedded in the lower
levels of our consciousness and is something the ego tells us we must have
to be happy. We have been conditioned from a very early age to believe that any
attack upon our fortress is ample justification for us to trot out our list of
shoulds, should nots, musts, must nots, oughts and ought nots. And why wait for
an attack? These addictions are so much a part of our mind-set that any little
thing can trigger them off. Just like the person who reacts to stress by
reaching for a cigarette, we react by digging into our bag of shoulds in an
equally addictive manner, regardless of our emotional state.
Addictions of lower awareness Shoulds, or addictive demands, have their source in any one of the lower three
levels of our ego mind. These three levels of awareness comprise the Security
level, the Sensory level and the Power level. These three lower
levels of ego awareness were discussed in Module 9 of the course, so for the
moment, let’s focus on the more readily recognizable “shoulds.” Not
all shoulds are of a negative nature. We have the benefits of our instinctive
shoulds such as, “I should not put my hand in the fire,” and “I
should focus my attention on the road when driving,” etc. These are
obviously useful shoulds that help us navigate our way through life. It’s the negative shoulds that put pressure and anxiety into our lives that we
need to address.
The pressure shoulds Pressure shoulds are demands you place on yourself or on others demanding that
they behave according to your rules. These rules on behaviour are the result of
all your years of learned attitudes. They are tied to your personality type, and
they are rigid and unbending. To your way of thinking, they are absolutely
sensible, logical and fair. So fair in fact, its hard for you to believe anyone
else can possibly live by a different set of rules! (Further discussions on
personality types are covered in module 19 of this course).
A selective deafness When other people don’t follow your rules, your ego mind is focused only on
what should be happening rather than what is happening and how to come to grips
with it. You are simply unable to hear another’s reasoning if it conflicts
with your perception of how things should be done. Whenever there is an obvious gap between your attitudes
(or rules of your
mind), and those of the world around you, you build pressure upon yourself.
You create internal stress. The bigger the gap, the greater the stress. You get
irritated, frustrated, uptight, bitter and sometimes downright angry. You should, they should, and I should are demands of the ego — expectations
created within your fortress and hurled out against the world outside. It really
is a battle! Your inner perceptions of how things should be versus
the reality of the world outside. If things don’t measure up to your ideas of
how things should be, you battle all the harder. The strange thing is, your ego
has you believing you can actually win!
The Method of Choice Whenever a pressure should (the addictive demands of your ego) pops into
your mind, you are free at all times to choose how you wish to let
it affect you emotionally. You can habitually react just as you’ve always done
in the past, which probably caused stress and conflict, or you can consciously
choose to break the habits of your past by applying the Method of Choice.
How to take the pressure off The
Method of Choice is the most effective way to reduce the
stress and pressure created by your addictive and demanding shoulds. You calmly
choose to convert your addictions into preferences. Let’s look at some examples;
“He shouldn’t yell at me like that.” This can be converted into a
preference; “I would prefer he didn’t yell at me like that.” In
this instance the person doing the yelling was running a program stored in his
ego’s Power level of consciousness. The person being yelled at could have
reacted through her Security level of consciousness. She might have let her ego
tell her that he shouldn’t threaten her sense of security and she should yell
right back. Instead, she raised her level of conscious awareness and
thoughtfully responded with a logical preference. It’s logical to prefer
people don’t yell at you. It’s illogical to expect that yelling back will
change the way the person treats you. By accepting the way people are, and
simply preferring they were different, diffuses the pressures of the should and
helps you maintain a more peaceful outlook on life. We will expand on The
Method of Choice later on with module fifteen in the course.
The power
struggle Here is another example; “My Mother should listen to me,” sobs the
teenage daughter. This can be converted to; “It would be nice if Mum would
listen me.” If both mother and daughter are of the same personality type,
they are probably operating through their Power level of consciousness. Both
trying to assert control. However, the daughter can choose to rise above the
Game of Shoulds and relieve the pressure and anxiety by choosing a mediating
preference. Anxious pressure or stress-free acceptance — the choice is always
yours.
Module Eleven:
Programmed
Unhappiness
BEFORE we can create happiness in our lives we need to understand what
causes unhappiness. We are now approaching that part of the course where we ask
you to take one step back from the character you are playing in this stage play
called Life. I would like you to allow yourself to become an observer of your
thoughts and your subsequent behaviour. You do this by becoming a silent witness
to the dictatorial role your ego plays in your life. It entails a subtle raising
of your conscious awareness which enables you to identify the addictive demands
(causes)
that trigger the irrational thoughts and behaviors (effects) that result
in your unhappiness.
Resistance to change From here on in, new information will crop up that will seriously question the
reliability of the ego, and you can expect it (ego) to put up some sort
of a struggle as it tries to justify your current attitudes. And remember, your
interest in this course indicates your current attitudes and beliefs have not
proved to be effective in your endeavors to find happiness, and these are the
very same attitudes that the ego will so vigorously defend. The ego fears
change, and we are going to offer information that could result in a change of
mind-set in connection with your past programming. I am not saying you should follow all the advice in this course in order to be
happy. That’s just asking you to replace one set of shoulds for another set of
shoulds. What I’m offering is a series of sensible and workable alternatives
to the current batch of addictive demands the ego has used to control and
manipulate your life up until now.
What causes unhappiness? A four months old baby is an expert at being happy. Being happy is a natural
state for someone so young. Among the very few things that makes babies unhappy
is a dirty nappy (diaper), an empty stomach, or a lack of nurturing from
Mum. For a gurgling baby, happiness is a state of being. For an adult, happiness
becomes a state of mind. What caused the difference? The formation of attitudes
and beliefs. In a four-months old baby, very little attitudinal development has
had time to take shape. We spoke earlier about Attitudes and Personality —
Nature and Nurture — Cause and Effect. All have a direct bearing on our state
of mind, and our subsequent levels of happiness.
GIGO — garbage in, garbage
out Computer buffs, and in particular, computer programmers, recognize the validity
of the above sub-heading. Put a rubbish program into a computer and you’ll get
rubbish results. The human mind can be compared to a computer — our very own
biological computer. If we run faulty mental and emotional programming through
our minds, we can expect faulty behaviour as a result.
It’s what we put in them
that makes the difference Put lead-free petrol in a car that requires leaded-petrol only, and you’ll end
up being very unhappy with that car’s performance. There may be nothing wrong
with the car, just as there may be nothing wrong with the computer or your mind.
Poor output is simply the result of poor input.
How to identify faulty
programming Listen to your inner self-talk. Be alert to dialogue such as, “If only I
could win the lottery, find the perfect partner, or lose some weight, then I
would be happy.” What you are really saying is that unless these things
happen to you in the future, you can never be happy. This sort of thinking is a
form of self-hypnosis. Hypnotism is nothing more than suggestion, and the
statement above suggests that until these objectives are achieved, you are
destined to remain unhappy.
What’s wrong with hoping? Your ego may lend credibility to “if only”
statements by saying there
is nothing wrong in wishing and hoping — but that’s its way of disguising
another should. “We should be able to wish and hope — there’s no harm
in it,” says ego. And thus by justifying this particular innocuous should,
it becomes easier to justify every other should that is conceived in the lower
levels of your ego consciousness.
Just another addictive demand You need to realize that “if only” statements are addictive programs
of the ego and it’s these very common and habitual patterns of thinking that
have held you back from finding the elusive bluebird of happiness. Do you see
how easy it is for the ego to justify these seemingly innocent patterns of
thinking? When the ego is in charge, you are aware only of what the ego permits
you to be aware of. By selective programming, your ego chooses exactly what will
be projected on the screen of your conscious awareness. It’s time for a
change. It’s time you made those programming choices from a higher state of
consciousness than you have in the past.
Monitoring your thoughts In earlier talks on stress and Cause and Effect, we emphasized how important it
was to have a means of mediating between the natural progression of a cause and
its effect. Every behaviour, and every emotion is preceded by a thought, and
it’s the nature of these thoughts that we need to address. We know that
stinkin’ thinkin’ results in stinkin’ type behaviour, and so we must come
up with ways of monitoring our thoughts and interceding with a mediator in
response to any trigger that may set off addictive programming. We can’t
change deeply entrenched programming overnight, but we can change our immediate
reaction to their habitual triggers.
Less reaction
— more awareness In time, modified responses, in the form of preferences, will lead to a
lessening of addictive demands and you will find the need to modify your
thoughts and attitudes becoming less and less. Eventually you will find the
observer, your higher level of conscious awareness, will do more and more of
your thinking and your ego will be doing less and less. Thought observation is
covered next in module twelve.
Module Twelve:
Observing your
Thoughts
WHERE do negative thoughts come from? The same place as positive
thoughts — our conscious mind. Unfortunately we have allowed our conscious
mind to developed habits of undisciplined thinking, and very often whenever any
discipline at all is present, it’s aimed at maintaining negative thinking. Our
ego-mind plays with our emotions like a yo-yo. One minute we’re happy and
entertaining happy thoughts—the next a shadow crosses the face of our sun and
we wallow in a muddy pool of unhappy thoughts. Someone may pay us a compliment
and we feel important and vain. Another castigates us and we entertain thoughts
of resentment and bitterness. Always we wait for someone to pull our strings to
determine what thoughts we will accept and which we will reject. We thus becomes
victims of every wind that blows and every shower of rain that falls, and the
tone of our lives is determined by countless sets of circumstances over which we
appear to have no control.
The observer Let’s get back to where thoughts come from. We have a conscious mind that is
creating a never-ending stream of thoughts, but is it we who create the
thoughts? Are we our conscious mind or are we something far greater? If you
carefully analyze the process of thought, you will discover it is not you who
thinks at all, but rather it is you who observes thoughts as they
flit across the screen of your consciousness. It’s as if the real
you occupied a still and detached position in the very recesses of your being,
from which you observe a purely mental world that consists entirely of thoughts.
These thoughts parade across your consciousness in a never ending procession,
following one after another unceasingly. Some you select and add to, others you
reject and send on their way. But the plain and honest fact is that it is
not you who sets the stream of thoughts in motion. If you doubt this,
try to stop them!
Demands of the mind You will find that concerted effort may stem, but not completely stop your
thinking, for the essence of being is observation, contemplation, and choice. In
a state of meditation you may be able to slow down the stream of thoughts and
examine each thought as it’s presented to you, but still they come, these
thoughts from out of nowhere, exhibiting themselves upon your consciousness,
demanding that you establish a position where you must accept some while
rejecting others.
Exercising choice in a drama
called life Let’s look at a novelist who sits down behind a word processor to write a
novel. By his actions he is putting himself in a position of someone who is
going to write a story, then he observes the thoughts and ideas that flit across
his consciousness. He rejects idea after idea until along comes an idea that
appeals to him. He takes this idea and runs it on the screen of his awareness
and decides to accept it. Let’s say the idea is of a man lost overboard at
sea. How can he be saved? “Washed up on an island,” says one of many
ideas. Now instead of just being in a position to write a novel, he is in a
position of writing a story of a man who is washed up on a desert island. He
wonders how the man will survive there, and so the stream of thoughts flow, and
he accepts one. Now he’s writing about a man thought of as a god by a
superstitious tribe of natives on the island.
Choosing from an assembly
line of thoughts And so the story grows as each new idea is added to the last. At no time does he
“think them up.” His entire story, once assembled and written, is
simply evidence of the thousands of choices he has made from the countless
number of thoughts streaming through his mind. He has not thought up a thing. He
has simply observed and exercised choice. His story tells you what
he has accepted; nothing will ever tell you of the hundreds of thousands of
ideas and thoughts he has rejected.
We are authors of our own
life story Like the novelist who writes a story, each of us write our own script to life by
choosing which thoughts to accept and which thoughts to reject. Each of our
lives is a scripted drama, penned by the silent contemplative author who dwells
within the still point of our being, an author who does nothing more than make
choices. And eventually, when the time is right, each of these choices is made
manifest in our physical world.
We are what we believe we are We are today living testimonies to the choices we have made from the thoughts
that have streamed through our minds since we first saw the light of day. We are
literally products of the thoughts we have chosen to accept. We are what we
believe we are.
Observe from the still point Find yourself some space for some quiet time with the Self. Relax and still your
mind. Deliberately watch your thoughts as they cross your consciousness. Briefly
examine and note them then let them go. Neither accept nor reject them. Notice
how each thought follows one upon the other in an endless stream of traffic. Now
ask yourself, “Who is it that observes this?” You’ll then
realize that it’s not you who thinks at all; you’re the one who observes and
decides, that’s all. At this still, centered point of consciousness, you reach
a higher level of awareness where you become the observer, where
even thoughts are things to be observed. It is a place of complete calm and
quiet, a place of absolute sureness, a place of communion with the Universal
Mind.
Who is the real you? Don’t confuse what you seem to be with what you really are. What you seem to
be is but the barest fraction of what you really are. Drop the labels. Refuse to
think of yourself as a name, as an occupation, as a person with a history who
lives in a certain town in a certain country at a certain point in time. Refuse
to accept these limitations; they are illusions belonging only to the outer
realities of this world. All this is what you seem to be. Instead,
turn your thoughts within to the real you. Ask yourself, “Who is this that
observes?” One day you will find the answer, and on that day you will set
yourself free.
Module Thirteen:
The Peaceful Pause
MODULE twelve told us how we selectively choose from the endless
stream of thoughts projected by the conscious mind — the ego mind. Some of the
various thoughts that flow through our consciousness include sad thoughts, happy
thoughts, humorous thoughts, angry thoughts, degrading thoughts and hopefully
one or two inspiring thoughts. At all times we’re responsible for which
thoughts we choose to accept and act upon, and which thoughts we choose to
reject. Thousands of thoughts each hour flit through the recesses of our mind,
and upon examination, we will find that a large percentage of them are
repetitive and habitual in nature.
Selective choices — one at
a time Our reactions and behaviour toward certain events and people, are influenced by
the type of programs we choose to run through our consciousness. As mentioned
previously, if our programming is not up to scratch, our reactions and behaviour
will reflect these shortcomings. Until we are able to rectify all faulty
programing that has a negative influence on our thoughts and behaviors, we must
make a conscious effort to choose responsible mediating responses to each
singular emotional event — as they arise, one at a time!
Are you a reactionary? Free will and free mind provides the freedom for us to choose what we want to
think and how we want to behave. When somebody insults you, you are solely
responsible for how you choose to respond. If you decide to operate from the
Power level of lower consciousness, you may choose to feel angry — you’ll
then react and behave accordingly. The result will probably be an addictively
programmed slanging match with insult after insult being hurled back and forth
ad infinitum.
A reminder Let’s revise our earlier discussions on the Fight or Flight syndrome. You may
remember that our instinctual programming, inherited from our prehistorical
past, conditioned us to react to threats in an automatic and habitual manner.
Certain thoughts and emotions triggered the typical stressful reaction, which
was a rush of adrenalin into the bloodstream, resulting in increased blood
sugar, faster breathing and heart rate, with muscles tensed in preparation for a
fight or to take flight. All happen in a split second. Instantaneous reactions
to a perceived threat. To the ego, an insult is a perceived threat.
The Peaceful Pause—press
the pause button An insult is hurled in your direction. Let’s imagine it is recorded on your
mind’s internal video tape. See the incident on the video screen of your
consciousness. Press the pause button to stop the action just after the insult
was delivered. Examine the feelings, i.e.— the emotions you feel in response
to the insult. Use your faculties of higher awareness to recognize the addictive
demands this emotion has triggered.
Program download The ego may run an addictive response such as,
“She shouldn’t call me
stupid, because if she does it makes me (labels me) a bad parent.” You may
then be able to identify from which level of lower consciousness this programmed
addiction was downloaded. In this instance you’re reacting from a program in
your Power level of consciousness and the feeling that triggered your Fight or
Flight reaction was a perceived loss of prestige. Your programming demands that
others see you as a “good parent.” According to the ego, being a
“good parent” is a label of worth — a badge of prestige, and one the
ego wears with pride! Anyone who attacks your label of worth is perceived as a
threat by the ego and must be repelled or attacked in return.
The Three Steps of
the Peaceful Pause
Step One:
AWARENESS An open awareness of the emotional content of the addictive programming is the
first step in initiating the Peaceful Pause — our preferred mediating
response. The simple, but important act of raising your awareness has instantly
placed you into a higher level of consciousness.
Step Two:
UNDERSTANDING Awareness enables you to recognize which of the lower levels of consciousness
the addiction has sprung from. You are now in a better position to understand
why you are feeling the emotions you are feeling.
Step Three:
ACCEPTANCE From this elevated level of conscious awareness you are now able to witness the
drama from the position of the observer. By taking one step back from the drama,
you can calmly recognize the power struggle initiated by the faulty ego
programming in play. You are able to compassionately accept the addictive
programming of your provocateur, and at the same time accept your own ego’s
emotional reaction. You are now in a position to calmly re-program your
addictions into a preference. We will explore ways of doing this in the upcoming
module on the Method of Choice.
Recognizing the error of your
ways To be a proficient keyboard operator you require speed, dexterity and spelling
skills. An effective operator does not have to be perfect typesetter, few of us
are, but occasionally an incorrect key is struck. A consciously aware typesetter
is automatically able to recognize a mistake, momentarily pause, carry out a
quick correction, and carry on with typesetting in a calm and peaceful manner.
Choose a
preferred mediating response So it is with effective mediating responses. Practice in applying the Peaceful
Pause to any emotional situation will eventually result in automatic and
positive responses instead of the previously negative and addictive reactions of
the past.
Module Fourteen:
Preferential
Programming
WE’VE seen how, by practicing the three steps of the Peaceful Pause,
we are able, from a level of higher awareness, to calmly choose a moderate
mediating response in preference to an addictive reaction of the ego. In order
to live a reasonably happy and stress-free life, we must be able to detach
ourselves from the negative emotional reactions normally attached to the ego’s
addictive programming.
Let’s get real The world will never be, what we perceive our perfect world to be. If we
continue to demand that it must be so, we will be forever chasing that elusive
bluebird of happiness. Each time the world fails to fit neatly into our personal
model of how things should be, each time someone or something triggers one of
our demands, our minds automatically create some form of unhappiness — usually
in the form of negative emotions.
Upgrade your programs Personal growth involves some sort of upgrading of our programming so our
addictive negative demands can be neutralized — not necessarily by positive
demands, but by emotionally neutral programming — by preferences.
We can define a preference as:— “a desire that does not make us feel
upset or unhappy even if it is not satisfied.” This upgrading to
preferential choice is not all that difficult. In fact, over the course of your
lifetime you have already converted many an addictive demand into a preference.
Think of all the things in the past you would have liked things to be different,
but have learnt to accept. Mum making you eat vegetables, pimply adolescence, a
friend calling at late hours, your neighbor mowing his lawn, paying more taxes
than you would like. You would obviously have preferred these things never came
up, but when they did, you accepted their inevitability and moved on with your
life. A preference will never make you upset. Whenever you feel the need to say to
someone, “You make me angry,” you have relinquished your power and
placed it in the hands of someone else. You’ve let yourself become their
victim. So the question is; how can you empower yourself to consciously create
an inner happiness that doesn’t demand others be different from the way they
are? The answer: Convert an addictive demand to a preference, and you
regain your power to feel good.
The serenity and acceptance
of choice Preferences helps you develop “the serenity to accept the things you cannot
change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the
difference.” The Method of Choice teaches you to accept things and people exactly as they
are. You don’t have to repress negative emotions, you simply accept your
feelings, understand, then choose — anxiety or relaxed acceptance.
The feeling is
the key The key is to identify the feeling that causes the addictive reactions.
Here is a list of just some of the negative feelings that can trigger your
addictive behaviors. You can feel . . .
guilty |
angry |
resentful |
frustrated |
humiliated |
criticized |
betrayed |
threatened |
ashamed |
irritated |
manipulated |
abandoned |
embarrassed |
anxious |
defensive |
pressured |
insulted |
belittled |
inadequate |
jealous |
Any one of the above feelings can be triggered by a label you pin on yourself
or by labels pinned on you by others. For instance, if your partner labels you
“selfish,”
you may react addictively with feelings of guilt. The label has you relating to
the lower level of Security consciousness. Your ego will have you agreeing with
the label, and your thoughts will turn to learned memories of the past, where
you were told you were selfish if you did not share with others. Up pops guilt!
Different personality
“needs” If you shift to a higher level of awareness, you will be able to neutralize such
negative emotional reactions by noting that your partner is operating from their
level of Power consciousness, where the ego’s need to manipulate others is
demanding you conform to the other’s “should.” In this case, your partner, because of their personality type, may need to have
regular social outings, and so ego runs their addictive programming which
demands you “should” go out together. If you have a different
personality type, you may find quiet nights at home together more enjoyable.
Lack of understanding creates
conflict If you allow personality egos to clash here, nothing will be resolved, because
its almost impossible for two differing personalities to understand each other
when both are running different addictive demands from different levels of lower
consciousness.
An opportunity presents
itself By labeling you as selfish, your partner has provided you with an opportunity
for you to learn how to raise your level of awareness and introduce preferential
programming that will neutralize your negative feeling of guilt, and create a
more conducive environment for understanding. Your partner’s ego has attacked,
and so the Fight or Flight syndrome has come into effect. This requires you to
introduce effective measures that will neutralize the inner stress created by
the insecure programming of the lower ego mind. You need to learn how to shake
off the negative feelings that block you from seeing things from the perspective
of others.
Exercising your mind We now enter the practical phase of our course where we take up pen and paper
and practice the step-by-step preferential Method of Choice. This is a practical
exercise that teaches you how to perceive yourself and others from a higher
level of awareness. Eventually you will no longer need pen and paper to apply
the Method of Choice. It will become second nature to you. You’ll learn to
mentally replace negative programs with preferential programming that leads you
to higher levels of inner comfort and happiness.
Module Fifteen:
The Method of
Choice
WHENEVER you make yourself emotionally upset, take up the position of
the observer—stand back from the situation and identify the negative emotion
causing your discomfort. If you listen to your inner self-talk, you will
recognize four distinct groups of addictive thinking, which, when linked
together, form the faulty programming being down-loaded from the ego mind.
1. The Feeling:
What you’re emotionally
feeling inside. Something’s happened that stirred up
certain thoughts and feelings (programs) from your subconscious
memory bank.
2. The Should: The ego’s self-talk could be
saying:—
“they shouldn’t say or do those things to me”,
3. The Because: “because if they do”,
4. The Label:
“it makes me (labels me). .
. . . .” (stupid, careless, guilty, etc.)
Reprogramming — Renewing
your mind Learning how to reprogram all your addictive demands is going to take a little
time. After all, these programs that control your behaviour are the results of a
lifetime of learning. The ego will tell you reprogramming is too complicated,
but with a little persistence and deter-mination you can and will master
the process.
Introducing your own
mediating response To neutralize the negative feelings that surface, you
(initially) write
down the complete addictive sequence, then rewrite it from a more aware and less
emotional aspect. What you are learning to do is to counsel yourself, and
introduce a preferred mediating response to every negative reaction triggered by
an addictive demand. Eventually you will be able to do away with the pen and
paper and automatically mediate from a state of higher awareness.
Choose to be calm, rather
than stressed From a higher state of awareness you are now able to see things in their true
perspective and the feeling is truly liberating. You may even smile to yourself
when you realize how selectively blind you’ve been. Up until now, these
addictions have severely restricted your enjoyment of life, but now you can
revel in your newfound sense of freedom. In situations where you once felt
stress, you now feel a sense of calm acceptance. You learn to break habits that
have continuously kept you in a state of unhappy ignorance all these years, and
boy, does it feel good!
You’ll see things from a
higher perspective The bigger picture comes together when you are able to stand back and take an
unemotional look at things. Once you’ve shaken off the negative emotions that
block your ability to see things clearly, you’ll know straight away the best
thing to do. You become calm and relaxed — and in control. You’ll feel and
experience an incredible sense of relief when you finally begin to understand.
At that point you’ll know at once that your life will never be the same again.
Let’s see how it works We’ll start with an example of a mother who has just had an argument with her
teenage daughter. The conflict left the mother feeling criticized, hurt and
angry, and she wants to neutralize these negative emotions and upgrade them to a
more acceptable level of understanding. She removes herself from the scene and
takes up pen and paper and completes the following exercise.
Step one: Identify the feelings:—
e.g., criticized, hurt and angry.
Step two: Write out the addiction in sentence
form:— (a) My daughter should not criticize me, (addictive should) (b) because if she does, (c) it makes me a poor parent and a failure. (label of insecurity)
Step three: Convert to preferential
programming. (a) I would prefer she didn’t criticize me, (preferential choice) (b) but if she does, (c) it can’t make me a poor parent or a failure. (label is neutralized)
Step four: Explain why:— It simply means she’s going through a stage that will pass, and I
don’t like being criticized,
Step five:
What you will do or say:— and I will patiently accept her behaviour, because I know this stage will pass.
Step six:
Review and examine your
renewed feelings:— Relaxed, aware, understanding and accepting.
You will be quite surprised at how calm you can feel just by changing your
attitude in such a constructive and undemanding way.
Summary of the
Method of Choice The first step is to be aware of the negative feelings that surfaced from
somewhere in the ego’s lower levels of your security, sensory or power
consciousness. The second step is to recognize the addictive should and the label of
insecurity your ego has triggered. Remember, it’s your own labels that create
the hurt, not what someone else says or does to you. The third step is to neutralize the should, the because and the label
with a preferential choice. You convert this trio into a preference. “I would
prefer—OR—it would be nice—if she didn’t criticize me”. This
preference eases the pressure the addictive should and the insecure label has
placed upon you. The fourth step is to calmly explain to your more aware self what it
really means. In this case the daughter wasn’t allowed out, and the mother
felt insecure when criticized. The fifth step, is a rational plan of action — what you will do or say,
free of any emotional attachment whatsoever. The sixth step is to experience the renewed feelings — relaxed, aware,
understanding and accepting.
Method of
Choice Worksheet The left-hand column below shows an example of the six steps
involved in the Method of Choice.
The right-hand column is for you to fill in whenever
you experience negative feelings. Of course you can't be expected to
fill in a form when you're involved in a face to face encounter with
someone, but after the event, when you have had time to calm down and
realise you could have handled the situation better, sit down and
allow yourself to become aware of the feelings that surfaced, then
complete the rest of the form. Print out a
copy of this form and complete the exercise below.
|
1. Identify the Feelings.
2. Write out the addictive programming.
a. She should not criticize me b.
because if she does, c.
it makes me a bad parent (the label)
3. Convert to Preferential Programming.
a. I prefer she did not criticize me, b. but if she does, c.
it cannot make me a bad parent.
4. Explain what it really means.
It really means she's going through a stage that
teenagers go through, and I dislike being criticized.
5. Your plan of action.
6. Review your new feelings.
Calm, relaxed, accepting.
|
1. Identify the Feelings.
2. Write out the addictive programming.
a. ..................................................... b. ..................................................... c. .....................................................
3. Convert to Preferential Programming.
a. ...................................................... b.
...................................................... c. ......................................................
4. Explain what it really means.
It really means ................................ .......................................................... ..........................................................
5. Your plan of action.
...........................................................
6. Review your new feelings.
|
Module Sixteen:
Convert Demands to
Preferences
WE’VE learnt that by converting your addictive demands into
preferences, you can relieve the tension that builds up in your gut or solar
plexus area. It’s this tension that manifests as those very familiar negative
feelings we all know only too well. All negative feelings or emotions are preceded by negative thoughts of lower
consciousness. The thoughts always create the feelings! Change the thoughts and you can change
the feelings. Let’s repeat the list of negative feelings we itemised in Module
14:
guilty |
angry |
resentful |
frustrated |
humiliated |
criticized |
betrayed |
threatened |
ashamed |
irritated |
manipulated |
abandoned |
embarrassed |
anxious |
defensive |
pressured |
insulted |
belittled |
inadequate |
jealous |
Each of these emotions are effects caused or triggered by negative
programming—your addictive shoulds. The downloading of these negative
programs are caused by an outside event—possibly a squabble with a family
member. Can you see the repetitive nature of cause and effect at work here?
Unless you are able to convert your should into a preference you
will find yourself involved in an ongoing chain reaction of cause and effect
scenarios. So working backwards from our negative feelings, we can locate the source or
cause. We can then see it was the illogical self-criticizing label resulting
from your addictive "should" that caused the reaction.
Labels of the
insecure ego Below is a list of just a few of the typical type of labels many people place
upon themselves and others. The ego will disdainfully proclaim I am:—
a failure |
inadequate |
stupid |
unimportant |
dumb |
incapeable |
worthless |
insensitive |
overbearing |
uncaring |
immature |
hopeless |
irresponsible |
selfish |
disloyal |
inferior |
unwanted |
incompetent |
a disgrace |
a drunk |
We will now run through a few typical addictive demands and
their conversion through preferential programming.
A wife with a husband who drinks . . . 1.
(Feeling) Hurt, stressed, guilty. 2.
(The should, because and label) He should not drink, because if he
does, it makes me responsible for what he’s doing to himself. 3. (Preference) I prefer he didn’t drink, but if he does, it cannot
make me responsible for what he’s doing to himself. 4. (Explanation)
It really means that he’s made his choice. It’s his
responsibility to make his own choices just like everyone else. 5.
(Action plan—e.g. write an affirmation) e.g. I am not
responsible for his behaviour. 6. (Revised feeling) Self-acceptance. No more feelings of hurt, guilt or
stress remain.
A nervous person speaking in front of a group . . . 1.
(Feeling) Anxious, worried, vulnerable. 2.
(The should, because and label) These people should like me, because
if they don’t, it makes me inadequate, an idiot and a hopeless fool. 3. (Preference) I would prefer these people like me, but if they don’t,
it can’t make me inadequate, an idiot, or a hopeless fool. 4.
(Explanation) It really means that it’s difficult to please
everyone. 5. (Action plan) Visualize a competent performance. 6. (Revised feeling)
Relief. Self-acceptance. Less anxious.
If there is still some anxiety left, do some more
re-programming . . . 1. (Feeling) Anxious. 2. (The should, because and label)
I should live up to their
expectations, because if I don’t, it makes me incompetent and inferior. 3. (Preference) I would like to live up to their expectations of me, but
if I don’t, it can’t make me incompetent or inferior. 4.
(Explanation) It really means I don’t know what they expect of me.
Even if I did, I’ve still got to be me! 5. (Action plan) I will say what I want to say! 6. (Revised feeling)
More comfortable with a lessening of inner anxiety.
Self-acceptance.
Relationship conflict . . . 1.
(Feeling) Putdown, resentful, angry. 2. (The should, because and label)
He should listen and discuss the
situation with me, because if he doesn’t, it makes me unimportant, incapable and
ignored. 3. (Preference) I prefer he listened and discussed the situation with me,
but if he doesn’t, it can’t make me unimportant, incapable or ignored. 4. (Explanation)
It really means that his personality needs differ from
mine and we both need to learn how to understand those differences. 5. (Action plan) I will learn the skills required to communicate with his
personality type. (See module 19) 6. (Revised feeling)
Accepting of self and partner, calmer outlook
through higher awareness.
Annoyed when a neighbor neglects to return borrowed
goods . . . 1. (Feeling) Annoyance. 2. (The should, because and label)
She should return what she borrowed,
because if she doesn’t, it makes me taken for granted. 3.
(Preference) I prefer she returns what she borrows, but if she
doesn’t, it can’t make me taken for granted. 4. (Explanation)
It probably means that she is the forgetful type. 5. (Action plan)
I want it back so I’ll just go and ask for it. 6. (Revised feelings) Her annoyance is converted to a “so what”
acceptance, and a positive plan of action.
Module Seventeen:
Identifying
Addictive Programming
These are some examples of the addictive programs stored in the subconscious.
Each is triggered into activation by an insecure ego reacting through lower
levels of consciousness.
Addictions of the
Security
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the Label 1. embarrassed, belittled:— He
shouldn't say
I'm too old, because if he does,
it makes me old and useless. 2. miserable, worthless:— I
shouldn't
be fat, because if I am, it makes me unacceptable. 3. harassed, inferior:—
They shouldn't laugh at me, because if they do,
it makes me a dummy. 4. alarmed, afraid:—
There should be less crime, because if there isn't,
I'll be a victim. 5. jealous, unimportant:— She
shouldn't
flirt with men, because if she does,
it makes me insufficient. 6. useless, discredited:— The
boss shouldn't be impatient with me, because if he is,
it makes me an unorganised person. 7. inept, anxious:—
I should save more money, because if I don't,
it makes me be a spendthrift. 8. small, irrelevant:—
He shouldn't talk down to me, because if he does,
it makes me insignificant. 9. unattractive, unwanted:— I
should be married by
now, because if I'm not,
it makes me an old maid. 10. afraid, imobilized:—
I shouldn't be afraid, because if I am, it makes me a coward. 11. envious, inadequate:— I
should
have a better car than him, because if I don't
it makes me second-rate and a failure. 12. empty, unfulfilled:—
I should have a baby by now, because if I don't,
it makes me inadequate.
Addictions of the
Sensory
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the Label 1. belittled, embarrassed:— She
should hug me more,
because if she doesn't,
it makes me unloveable. 2. pressured, doubtful:— I
should
have sex to please my partner, because if I don't,
it makes me frigid. 3. inadequate, invalidated:— I should have a drink with
the boys, because if I don't,
it makes me an unmasculine wimp. 4. guilty, devalued:—
He shouldn't tell me to eat less, because if he does,
it makes me a glutton. 5. rejected, unloved:—
The kids should kiss me goodnight, because if they don't,
it makes me a bad parent. 6. unworthy, inadequate:— I
should be able to
maintain an erection, because if I can't,
it makes me incomplete as a man. 7. intimidated, ridiculed:— They
should
enjoy my taste in music, because if they don't,
it makes me a nerd. 8. rejected, crushed:—
She should like me, because if she doesn't,
it makes me unloveable. 9. annoyed, defensive:— She
shouldn't mind me drinking, because if she does,
it makes me a drunk. 10. guilty, shamed:—
I shouldn't buy more clothes, because if I do,
it makes me an uncontrollable a shop-a-holic.
Addictions of the
Power
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the
Label 1. deficient, bitter:—
He shouldn't yell at me, because if he does,
it makes me an idiot. 2. devastated, vulnerable:— We should win the
game, because if we don't,
it makes us losers. 3. depressed, discouraged:— I
should pass the test,
because if I don't,
it makes me a failure. 4. dejected, useless:—
I should get a job, because if I don't, it makes
me a bum. 5. jealous, resentful:—
She shouldn't flaunt her success, because if she does,
it makes me unsuccessful. 6. discredited, ignored:— The
kids should do as I say, because if they don't,
it makes me incapable. 7. frustrated, indignant:—
She shouldn't cry when we argue, because if she does,
it makes me uncaring. 8. flustered, irritated:—
They shouldn't beep their car horns at me, because if they do,
it makes me inadequate. 9. offended, inadequate:— I
should
be given a raise, because if I'm not,
it makes me unacceptable. 10. ashamed, belittled:—
The police shouldn't book me, because if they do,
it makes me a poor driver. 11. vanquished, mediocre:— I
shouldn't lose
at chess, because if I do,
it makes me inferior. 12. invalidated, irrelevant:— They
should
listen to me, because if they don't,
it makes me unimportant.
Whenever you pause to identify your feelings, you will
have the opportunity to become aware of the attitude that created the feelings.
Remember, emotional feelings always follow the thoughts that create them. By
learning to associate which thoughts create which feelings, you will be in a
better position to understand where your bouts of unhappiness spring from.
Remember, you need only drop the thought, and the associated feeling will
dissipate. Learn to manage your thoughts and you'll be better able to maintain
control over your emotions, your feelings and your levels of happiness.
Module Eighteen:
Looking behind the
Mask
FREEDOM of choice is your most valuable
traveling companion on your path to Higher Consciousness. Consider this. A year
contains 31,536,000 seconds. Every second of every day the world around you
offers you an opportunity to grow in consciousness. How you benefit from these
thirty-one million opportunities is entirely up to you.
Let’s examine one such opportunity. Let’s suppose you choose to annoy
yourself when someone asks you to repeat something you just said. Your ego jumps
to the Power level by introducing the thought that if the person had given you
enough of his attention and realised the importance of your words, he would have
been able to hear you clearly the first time.
Be aware of your
Inner talk Your indignant inner talk will tell you that it is important that the other
person learnt to respect you enough to pay attention when you speak. You then
show your irritation in order to help him develop better habits of attention.
Higher awareness will tell you that your irritation is a sure sign of an
addiction from the Power Level of Consciousness. Such an addiction threatens to
alienate yourself from the other person.
Practice
Compassion However, if you were honest with yourself, you would realise that all of us from
time to time ask people to repeat what they have said, including yourself. If
you were able to see this person in such a compassionate light, you would
clearly see that this person is just like you. Understanding instead of
irritation would surface as you accept the fact that you yourself have often
asked people to repeat things. So by choosing to respond from the level of
Unconditional Love you would feel no irritation, and simply repeat the
information asked for. You love and serve an awakening being by doing what he or
she asks of you. If someone asks you to repeat something, you repeat it. From a
compassionate level, you are able to see him as someone who is here to help you
become aware of your addictions and help you become free of them.
Going
with the Flow The individual with a higher consciousness is one who is most flexible to
life’s predicaments. This is a person who avoids fixed, rigid patterns of
behaviour. This is someone who flows with life’s situations rather than become
bogged down by addictive irritations. It takes two people to have an ego battle,
but it takes only one of them to create the peace and love that higher
consciousness brings. It’s time once and for all, to admit that trying to
manipulate people and events via the lower levels of Security,
Sensation and
Power just do
not work for you. It’s time to let go of the old ways of thinking and
behaving. It’s time to emotionally accept the unacceptable - to accept that
which the ego perceives as unacceptable.
Review
the day's "feelings" Look back over the day’s happenings and reflect upon the feelings experienced
during the course of your daily activities. Seek to identify those times in the
day when your ego downloaded addictive programming. This is those times when
separating emotions surfaced. Emotions such as anger, anxiety, resentment, envy,
jealousy etc. Pinpoint and identify those addictive demands by using the
Three
Way Diagnostic Formula presented further on in this Module.
Elsewhere on this site you'll find a
Worksheet
to Pinpoint your Addictive Demands. You may make alterations to the text by
going to the File Menu and choosing "EDIT". Print out a few copies and
fill them in whenever you have experienced a particularly emotional event
earlier in the day. Be completely honest with yourself. Accept sole
responsibility for all feelings created. They are, after all, YOUR feelings,
brought on by YOUR thoughts. No one else is to blame.
Accept
Responsibility Completing the Worksheet on a regular basis will help remind you that’s your
addictive demands that cause all your suffering - not other people, not outside
event. It's YOU . . . your ego and your
addictive demands.
Reviewing your
Addictive Demands 1. Identify the Separating Emotion Write down a short, concise description of the feeling/s your addictive
programming created. These are your separating emotions . . . those emotions
that reinforce the ego’s fearful beliefs that you are all alone in some great
expanse of universal animosity.
I created the feeling of:
..................................(e.g.:
embarrassment)................................
Here are just a few of the separating emotions you may have felt:
fear |
embarrassment |
anger |
anxiety |
guilt |
sadness |
frustration |
loneliness |
resentment |
annoyance |
rage |
isolation |
shame |
betrayal |
desperation |
unworthiness |
disappointment |
hostility |
irrelevance |
inferiority |
agitation |
jealousy |
disgrace |
rejection |
inferiority |
repulsion |
exploitation |
outrage |
powerlessness |
abandonment |
2. Identify the Addictive Demand: (Your inner need - what your ego wanted at the time)
because my programming demands:
.......................(e.g.: that I am not belittled in front of others)................................
The Three Way
Diagnostic Formula How would you feel if your demand was satisfied? How would you see yourself? What sort of inner dialogue would you have about yourself?
Here’s how to identify your subconscious inner need:
1. “My inner need is to feel............(e.g.:
respected).......................”
2. “My inner need is to see myself as...........(e.g.:
competent)................”
3. “My inner need is
to hear inside that I’m.........(e.g.:
acceptable)..........”
"Feel
Good" Needs Identifying these inner needs enables you to raise your awareness and see that
your addictions are simply ineffective, unskillful ways of achieving those
“feel good” needs your ego craves. Feelings such as security, self-esteem,
approval etc, etc.
Here are a few examples:- Your ego wants to
feel, or see itself as,
or think about itself as being . . .
confident |
competent |
intelligent |
reliable |
acceptable |
complete |
responsible |
confident |
happy |
dependable |
safe |
respected |
loveable |
sexy |
athletic |
strong |
beautiful |
loyal |
comfortable |
relaxed |
worthy |
secure |
fulfilled |
handsome |
It's important that you become consciously aware
of your ego’s desire to simply “feel good” about itself. Behind everything
you do is your subconscious wish to feel, see yourself, or think about yourself
as “safe”, or “acceptable” or “good enough”. The purpose of this
module is to help you become aware of what level of consciousness your ego was
operating from when the emotional feelings such as anger, indignation, jealousy
etc, surfaced from within.
Reprogramming Once you train yourself to become aware of each bout of addictive behaviour, you
are in a position to reprogram your mind with more beneficial, positive
programming. For example, let’s say you make a mistake while carrying out your daily work
activities. The ego, demanding to be seen as perfect, will come down on itself.
You may hear inner talk that is self-denigrating. Because the ego desperately
seeks self approval as well as approval from others, it will try its best to
make you feel bad about yourself with “put-down” talk such as, “I’m
stupid. I’m always making silly mistakes”. To counter its demand that you
don’t make mistakes, simply rephrase negative inner talk with, “I’m OK.
I’m human. We all make mistakes. It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s how we
learn and grow. I don’t have to reject myself if I make a mistake”. The idea
is not to repress the various emotions from rising, but rather to accept that
your current levels of faulty programming result from years of fearful,
unskillful patterns of thought, and to then, in an act of compassion for self,
simply let it go!
Reprogram
rather than Repress Replay the “mistake scene” in your mind and really get in touch with the
emotional suffering your addictive programming caused. Now generate the
determination to rid yourself of such defeatist programming once and for all!
The most effective means to do this is to reprogram faulty programs as and when
you become aware of them.
The Three Steps to Reprogramming:
1. Explore the Emotional Suffering Mentally recreate the event. Pause, take a deep breath, relax and tune in to the
feelings you experienced at the moment the addictive programming downloaded. See
who, and what is involved. When and where did it happen? In most instances,
addictive demands are triggered by common events reoccurring over and over
again. By anticipating these events and becoming aware of the circumstances that
create the events, you are in a better position to undertake effective and
skillful reprogramming.
So to continue with your insightful evaluation of a particular addiction . . .
why did you react as you did? What emotions did you experience? What words were
going through your mind? What is it, outside of yourself, that you blame for
creating those emotions?
2. Pinpoint the Addiction. How did you want things to be? What should have been done that wasn’t done?
What demands of the ego were not being met? What should others have done? How do
you feel about yourself as you review the event?
Pinpoint your principal addictive demand by asking yourself, “What am I
addictively demanding? What do I think I need to have in order to feel good
about myself?”
3. Accept that the only thing
you can change is yourself. Can you see how faulty programming has repeated itself time and time again
throughout the pages of your life? Are you fed up with reacting like a
preprogrammed robot? Have you had enough? Are you willing to let go of beliefs
that anchor and hold you back from reaching your unlimited potential? A
determined intention to change is required and this determination must come from
the heart. Be courageous. Get in touch with the fear inside. Be brave enough and
honest enough to identify the basic insecurity that underlies the addictive
demand. Determine to change all that - not by effort and struggle, but by a
release. Here is the “secret” path to peace - release. Demanding things be
different didn’t work for you in the past, and most likely won’t work for
you in the future. Decide for change NOW. Right here in the NOW moment. All you
need do is to let go of all your demands of how things should be - how
they should have been in the past, how they should be now, and
how they should be in the future. It’s all a waste of energy. Just
let people and things be. Visualise yourself responding to similar future situations with a positive
response. A response of acceptance. Accept the situation as a learning
experience and let it go. The only thing you need to change is yourself. Allow
yourself to respond to life’s sticky situations from a higher level of
consciousness rather than the negative habitual reactions of the past.
Develop the ability to laugh at yourself whenever
addictive programming makes its presence felt. Humour is a great leveller. It
can transform previously unacceptable situations into events of learning and
growth. Be compassionate with yourself. For instance, if you identify
programming that demands others should approve of you, then simply affirm
quietly to yourself, “I don’t need the approval of others - I’m perfectly
OK as I am”. Replay the scene, re-experience the
emotions, and while in that emotional state, repeat the reprogramming phrase
three times quietly to yourself.
Lower
Levels of Consciousness Let’s remind ourselves once again of the ego’s lower levels of consciousness
as outlined in an earlier module of this course.
1. The Security Level This level has you focused on food, shelter or whatever you equate with personal
security. This level of addictive programming forces your consciousness to be
dominated by your continuous battle to get “enough” from the world in order
to feel secure.
2. The Sensory Level This level has you concerned with finding happiness in life by providing
yourself with an ongoing supply of pleasurable sensations and activities via
sex, food, chemicals, alcohol, food, music, clothes, etc.
3. The Power Level When your consciousness is aligned with this level, you find yourself concerned
with dominating people and circumstances in order to increase your prestige,
wealth, and pride. This level involves countless other subtle forms of
manipulation and control.
The Alternative When you finally realise that adhering to the three lower levels of
consciousness creates nothing but more suffering and more despair, it’s time
to look seriously at the alternative... unconditional love.
The
Level of Unconditional Love We’re not talking about romantic love. Unconditional Love is the type of love
that allows you to emotionally accept the unacceptable. Here is your ticket to a
fulfilling and happy life . . . Acceptance.
Unconditional love is the complete and utter acceptance of what is! It has
nothing at all to do with doing - striving to do things and be all
things for all people - it has everything to do with just being - being
at one with all things.
The pathway to inner peace is so beautifully simple. Inner peace is yours when
you totally and unconditionally accept the world of things and people as they
are, and allow everything and everyone to be . . . to just be. The most loving
thing you can do for another person is to unconditionally accept them as they
are. And the best way to learn how to accept others is to learn how to love and
accept yourself . . . totally and unconditionally.
It's easier to pinpoint addictive programming by identifying the
specific emotional feelings that are tied in with the drama. You avoid focusing
on your real pain when you simply generalise the feelings. Citing general terms
such as feeling “unhappy”, “tense” or “insecure” keeps you from
zeroing in on what is really happening inside you. This is where you must put
aside your ego. Learn to delve deeper than a generality such as “feeling
tense”, or “feeling insecure”. Which attitude stored in your program files
caused you to feel tense? What belief is underpinning your feeling of
insecurity? For example, could the tenseness be caused by a subconscious recall
of a painful childhood incident? Or is it much closer to the surface? Is the
tenseness caused by a threat to your position of power? Perhaps something
happened at your place of employment that caused you to feel threatened? You
must be brutally honest with yourself. Look for the ineffective programming that
is the cause of your symptomatic feeling.
Who, What, When, Where and
Why? To help compile all the relevant facts about a news story, investigative
journalists ask a series of who, what, when, where and why questions. You can do
the same when investigating your addictive behaviour. Ask yourself who is
involved? What did they do or say? When did this occur? Where was the drama
played out? Why were you affected, etc, etc. Every addictive demand is fueled by
an ego-driven want or inner need. If it’s a need for Security, the ego wants
to feel safe. If it’s a Sensory need, it wants to be stroked, either literally
or figuratively. If it’s a Power need it wants to be in control.
The answer is just below the surface Let’s say your surface desire is to go to the movies with your partner. You
might addictively demand that your partner see the benefits in going to the
movies just as you do. Your partner declines and you might feel angry. From the
Power Level your rational mind could have you reacting with blaming statements
like, “You never want to go anywhere with me. You’re so boring”. The mask
you are wearing says, “I’m not a stick-in-the-mud like you”, but under the
surface, what your ego really needs is to feel close to your partner. Your ego
interprets your partner’s decision as a rejection of you and your
acceptability. You are running an addiction from your Security Level of
Consciousness.
What are you REALLY after? Ask yourself what emotional experience you think you could create for yourself
by getting what you want? What is it that you are really after? How would you
feel if you had your demand satisfied? How would you see yourself? What would
you hear inside about yourself? Become your own psychoanalyst and scrape under
the surface desire to uncover the inner ego need.
In regard to the movie scenario just mentioned, you might state honestly to
yourself;
1. My inner need is to feel................(e.g.: Wanted).........................................
2. My inner need is to see myself as..........(e.g.:
Attractive)......................
3. My inner need is to hear inside that I’m........(e.g.:
Acceptable)......
Always remember that it is the Addictive Demand, the thoughts you download from
your mind’s memory banks, that creates the emotion, not the event itself. Be
aware also, that the logical mind will try its level best to divert your
awareness away from your addictive programming. It will do this by protesting
that you have the right to react with aggression towards anyone who would
threaten your sense of “worthiness”. Please remember that although we wear
the outer mask of confidence to the world at large, years and years of
unskillful inner programming has the majority of us believing we are “not
enough”. We spend the whole of our waking lives trying to earn the stamp of
approval from our parents, siblings, teachers, partners and peers. The sad thing
is that they spent their whole lives trying to do the very same thing, as did
the generation before them and the generation before them.
Learning the life skills that enables you to identify the faulty programming of
the ego mind, eventually leads you to the understanding that addictive demands
are simply your ego’s ineffective and unskillful way of getting what we all
seek in life, which is peace, security, abundance and acceptance - acceptance of
ourselves - by ourselves - and by others.
An
Exercise in Pinpointing your Addictive Demands
Let’s use the example of a workplace
drama. A co-worker points out to you that you failed to complete a
particular job on time, causing a cancellation of the order and a loss
of revenue. This all takes place in front of other co-workers. You
react by raising your voice, blaming unacceptable work loads and time
restrictions as the cause, and storm off in an angry rage.
In this scenario, you reacted unconsciously and downloaded
disfunctional addictive programming rather than responding from a
higher level of consciousness.
Identify the addictive programming and
write down your answers on the dotted lines.
I created the feelings of
........................................................................................................................................... (Identify and write down the emotional feeling.
when my co-worker
...........................................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................................... (Describe the ego’s interpretation of the drama and associated
beliefs)
Because my programming demands
...........................................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................................... (Specify what your ego really wants)
What Level of Consciousness created this
drama? Was it the Security Level, The Sensory Level, The Power Level
or the Unconditional Love Level?
..........................................................................................................................................
|
Module Sixteen:
Convert Demands to
Preferences
WE’VE learnt that by converting your addictive demands into
preferences, you can relieve the tension that builds up in your gut or solar
plexus area. It’s this tension that manifests as those very familiar negative
feelings we all know only too well.
All negative feelings or emotions are preceded by negative thoughts of lower
consciousness.
The thoughts always create the feelings! Change the thoughts and you can change
the feelings. Let’s repeat the list of negative feelings we itemised in Module
14:
guilty |
angry |
resentful |
frustrated |
humiliated |
criticized |
betrayed |
threatened |
ashamed |
irritated |
manipulated |
abandoned |
embarrassed |
anxious |
defensive |
pressured |
insulted |
belittled |
inadequate |
jealous |
Each of these emotions are effects caused or triggered by negative
programming—your addictive shoulds. The downloading of these negative
programs are caused by an outside event—possibly a squabble with a family
member. Can you see the repetitive nature of cause and effect at work here?
Unless you are able to convert your should into a preference you
will find yourself involved in an ongoing chain reaction of cause and effect
scenarios.
So working backwards from our negative feelings, we can locate the source or
cause. We can then see it was the illogical self-criticizing label resulting
from your addictive "should" that caused the reaction.
Labels of the
insecure ego
Below is a list of just a few of the typical type of labels many people place
upon themselves and others.
The ego will disdainfully proclaim I am:—
a failure |
inadequate |
stupid |
unimportant |
dumb |
incapeable |
worthless |
insensitive |
overbearing |
uncaring |
immature |
hopeless |
irresponsible |
selfish |
disloyal |
inferior |
unwanted |
incompetent |
a disgrace |
a drunk |
We will now run through a few typical addictive demands and
their conversion through preferential programming.
A wife with a husband who drinks . . .
1. (Feeling) Hurt, stressed, guilty.
2. (The should, because and label) He should not drink, because if he
does, it makes me
responsible for what he’s doing to himself.
3. (Preference) I prefer he didn’t drink, but if he does, it cannot
make me responsible for what
he’s doing to himself.
4. (Explanation) It really means that he’s made his choice. It’s his
responsibility to make his
own choices just like everyone else.
5. (Action plan—e.g. write an affirmation) e.g. I am not
responsible for his behaviour.
6. (Revised feeling) Self-acceptance. No more feelings of hurt, guilt or
stress remain.
A nervous person speaking in front of a group . . .
1. (Feeling) Anxious, worried, vulnerable.
2. (The should, because and label) These people should like me, because
if they don’t, it
makes me inadequate, an idiot and a hopeless fool.
3. (Preference) I would prefer these people like me, but if they don’t,
it can’t make me
inadequate, an idiot, or a hopeless fool.
4. (Explanation) It really means that it’s difficult to please
everyone.
5. (Action plan) Visualize a competent performance.
6. (Revised feeling) Relief. Self-acceptance. Less anxious.
If there is still some anxiety left, do some more
re-programming . . .
1. (Feeling) Anxious.
2. (The should, because and label) I should live up to their
expectations, because if I don’t,
it makes me incompetent and inferior.
3. (Preference) I would like to live up to their expectations of me, but
if I don’t, it can’t make
me incompetent or inferior.
4. (Explanation) It really means I don’t know what they expect of me.
Even if I did, I’ve still
got to be me!
5. (Action plan) I will say what I want to say!
6. (Revised feeling) More comfortable with a lessening of inner anxiety.
Self-acceptance.
Relationship conflict . . .
1. (Feeling) Putdown, resentful, angry.
2. (The should, because and label) He should listen and discuss the
situation with me, because
if he doesn’t, it makes me unimportant, incapable and
ignored.
3. (Preference) I prefer he listened and discussed the situation with me,
but if he doesn’t, it
can’t make me unimportant, incapable or ignored.
4. (Explanation) It really means that his personality needs differ from
mine and we both need
to learn how to understand those differences.
5. (Action plan) I will learn the skills required to communicate with his
personality type.
(See module 19)
6. (Revised feeling) Accepting of self and partner, calmer outlook
through higher awareness.
Annoyed when a neighbour neglects to return borrowed
goods . . .
1. (Feeling) Annoyance.
2. (The should, because and label) She should return what she borrowed,
because if she
doesn’t, it makes me taken for granted.
3. (Preference) I prefer she returns what she borrows, but if she
doesn’t, it can’t make me
taken for granted.
4. (Explanation) It probably means that she is the forgetful type.
5. (Action plan) I want it back so I’ll just go and ask for it.
6. (Revised feelings) Her annoyance is converted to a “so what”
acceptance, and a positive
plan of action.
Module Seventeen:
Identifying
Addictive Programming
These are some examples of the addictive programs stored in the subconscious.
Each is triggered into activation by an insecure ego reacting through lower
levels of consciousness.
Addictions of the Security
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the Label
1. embarrassed, belittled:— He shouldn't say
I'm too old, because if he does,
it makes me old and useless.
2. miserable, worthless:— I shouldn't
be fat, because if I am, it makes me unacceptable.
3. harassed, inferior:—
They shouldn't laugh at me, because if they do,
it makes me a dummy.
4. alarmed, afraid:—
There should be less crime, because if there isn't,
I'll be a victim.
5. jealous, unimportant:— She shouldn't
flirt with men, because if she does,
it makes me insufficient.
6. useless, discredited:— The
boss shouldn't be impatient with me, because if he is,
it makes me an unorganised person.
7. inept, anxious:—
I should save more money, because if I don't,
it makes me be a spendthrift.
8. small, irrelevant:—
He shouldn't talk down to me, because if he does,
it makes me insignificant.
9. unattractive, unwanted:— I should be married by
now, because if I'm not,
it makes me an old maid.
10. afraid, imobilized:—
I shouldn't be afraid, because if I am, it makes me a coward.
11. envious, inadequate:— I should
have a better car than him, because if I don't
it makes me second-rate and a failure.
12. empty, unfulfilled:—
I should have a baby by now, because if I don't,
it makes me inadequate.
Addictions of the Sensory
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the Label
1. belittled, embarrassed:— She should hug me more,
because if she doesn't,
it makes me unloveable.
2. pressured, doubtful:— I should
have sex to please my partner, because if I don't,
it makes me frigid.
3. inadequate, invalidated:— I should have a drink with
the boys, because if I don't,
it makes me an unmasculine wimp.
4. guilty, devalued:—
He shouldn't tell me to eat less, because if he does,
it makes me a glutton.
5. rejected, unloved:—
The kids should kiss me goodnight, because if they don't,
it makes me a bad parent.
6. unworthy, inadequate:— I should be able to
maintain an erection, because if I can't,
it makes me incomplete as a man.
7. intimidated, ridiculed:— They should
enjoy my taste in music, because if they don't,
it makes me a nerd.
8. rejected, crushed:—
She should like me, because if she doesn't,
it makes me unloveable.
9. annoyed, defensive:— She
shouldn't mind me drinking, because if she does,
it makes me a drunk.
10. guilty, shamed:—
I shouldn't buy more clothes, because if I do,
it makes me an uncontrollable a shop-a-holic.
Addictions of the Power
Level
The feelings
The Addictive Programming — the Should and the
Label
1. deficient, bitter:—
He shouldn't yell at me, because if he does,
it makes me an idiot.
2. devastated, vulnerable:— We should win the
game, because if we don't,
it makes us losers.
3. depressed, discouraged:— I should pass the test,
because if I don't,
it makes me a failure.
4. dejected, useless:—
I should get a job, because if I don't, it makes
me a bum.
5. jealous, resentful:—
She shouldn't flaunt her success, because if she does,
it makes me unsuccessful.
6. discredited, ignored:— The
kids should do as I say, because if they don't,
it makes me incapable.
7. frustrated, indignant:—
She shouldn't cry when we argue, because if she does,
it makes me uncaring.
8. flustered, irritated:—
They shouldn't beep their car horns at me, because if they do,
it makes me inadequate.
9. offended, inadequate:— I should
be given a raise, because if I'm not,
it makes me unacceptable.
10. ashamed, belittled:—
The police shouldn't book me, because if they do,
it makes me a poor driver.
11. vanquished, mediocre:— I shouldn't lose
at chess, because if I do,
it makes me inferior.
12. invalidated, irrelevant:— They should
listen to me, because if they don't,
it makes me unimportant.
Whenever you pause to identify your feelings, you will
have the opportunity to become aware of the attitude that created the feelings.
Remember, emotional feelings always follow the thoughts that create them. By
learning to associate which thoughts create which feelings, you will be in a
better position to understand where your bouts of unhappiness spring from.
Remember, you need only drop the thought, and the associated feeling will
dissipate. Learn to manage your thoughts and you'll be better able to maintain
control over your emotions, your feelings and your levels of happiness.
Module Eighteen:
Looking behind the
Mask
FREEDOM of choice is your most valuable
traveling companion on your path to Higher Consciousness. Consider this. A year
contains 31,536,000 seconds. Every second of every day the world around you
offers you an opportunity to grow in consciousness. How you benefit from these
thirty-one million opportunities is entirely up to you.
Let’s examine one such opportunity. Let’s suppose you choose to annoy
yourself when someone asks you to repeat something you just said. Your ego jumps
to the Power level by introducing the thought that if the person had given you
enough of his attention and realised the importance of your words, he would have
been able to hear you clearly the first time.
Be aware of your
Inner talk
Your indignant inner talk will tell you that it is important that the other
person learnt to respect you enough to pay attention when you speak. You then
show your irritation in order to help him develop better habits of attention.
Higher awareness will tell you that your irritation is a sure sign of an
addiction from the Power Level of Consciousness. Such an addiction threatens to
alienate yourself from the other person.
Practice
Compassion
However, if you were honest with yourself, you would realise that all of us from
time to time ask people to repeat what they have said, including yourself. If
you were able to see this person in such a compassionate light, you would
clearly see that this person is just like you. Understanding instead of
irritation would surface as you accept the fact that you yourself have often
asked people to repeat things. So by choosing to respond from the level of
Unconditional Love you would feel no irritation, and simply repeat the
information asked for. You love and serve an awakening being by doing what he or
she asks of you. If someone asks you to repeat something, you repeat it. From a
compassionate level, you are able to see him as someone who is here to help you
become aware of your addictions and help you become free of them.
Going
with the Flow
The individual with a higher consciousness is one who is most flexible to
life’s predicaments. This is a person who avoids fixed, rigid patterns of
behaviour. This is someone who flows with life’s situations rather than become
bogged down by addictive irritations. It takes two people to have an ego battle,
but it takes only one of them to create the peace and love that higher
consciousness brings. It’s time once and for all, to admit that trying to
manipulate people and events via the lower levels of Security,
Sensation and Power just do
not work for you. It’s time to let go of the old ways of thinking and
behaving. It’s time to emotionally accept the unacceptable - to accept that
which the ego perceives as unacceptable.
Review
the day's "feelings"
Look back over the day’s happenings and reflect upon the feelings experienced
during the course of your daily activities. Seek to identify those times in the
day when your ego downloaded addictive programming. This is those times when
separating emotions surfaced. Emotions such as anger, anxiety, resentment, envy,
jealousy etc. Pinpoint and identify those addictive demands by using the Three
Way Diagnostic Formula presented further on in this Module.
Elsewhere on this site you'll find a Worksheet
to Pinpoint your Addictive Demands. You may make alterations to the text by
going to the File Menu and choosing "EDIT". Print out a few copies and
fill them in whenever you have experienced a particularly emotional event
earlier in the day. Be completely honest with yourself. Accept sole
responsibility for all feelings created. They are, after all, YOUR feelings,
brought on by YOUR thoughts. No one else is to blame.
Accept
Responsibility
Completing the Worksheet on a regular basis will help remind you that’s your
addictive demands that cause all your suffering - not other people, not outside
event. It's YOU . . . your ego and your
addictive demands.
Reviewing your
Addictive Demands
1. Identify the Separating Emotion
Write down a short, concise description of the feeling/s your addictive
programming created. These are your separating emotions . . . those emotions
that reinforce the ego’s fearful beliefs that you are all alone in some great
expanse of universal animosity.
I created the feeling of:
..................................(e.g.: embarrassment)................................
Here are just a few of the separating emotions you may have felt:
fear |
embarrassment |
anger |
anxiety |
guilt |
sadness |
frustration |
loneliness |
resentment |
annoyance |
rage |
isolation |
shame |
betrayal |
desperation |
unworthiness |
disappointment |
hostility |
irrelevance |
inferiority |
agitation |
jealousy |
disgrace |
rejection |
inferiority |
repulsion |
exploitation |
outrage |
powerlessness |
abandonment |
2. Identify the Addictive Demand:
(Your inner need - what your ego wanted at the time)
because my programming demands:
.......................(e.g.: that I am not belittled in front of others)................................
The Three Way
Diagnostic Formula
How would you feel if your demand was satisfied?
How would you see yourself?
What sort of inner dialogue would you have about yourself?
Here’s how to identify your subconscious inner need:
1. “My inner need is to feel............(e.g.: respected).......................”
2. “My inner need is to see myself as...........(e.g.: competent)................”
3. “My inner need is to hear inside that I’m.........(e.g.:
acceptable)..........”
"Feel
Good" Needs
Identifying these inner needs enables you to raise your awareness and see that
your addictions are simply ineffective, unskillful ways of achieving those
“feel good” needs your ego craves. Feelings such as security, self-esteem,
approval etc, etc.
Here are a few examples:-
Your ego wants to feel, or see itself as,
or think about itself as being . . .
confident |
competent |
intelligent |
reliable |
acceptable |
complete |
responsible |
confident |
happy |
dependable |
safe |
respected |
loveable |
sexy |
athletic |
strong |
beautiful |
loyal |
comfortable |
relaxed |
worthy |
secure |
fulfilled |
handsome |
It's important that you become consciously aware
of your ego’s desire to simply “feel good” about itself. Behind everything
you do is your subconscious wish to feel, see yourself, or think about yourself
as “safe”, or “acceptable” or “good enough”. The purpose of this
module is to help you become aware of what level of consciousness your ego was
operating from when the emotional feelings such as anger, indignation, jealousy
etc, surfaced from within.
Reprogramming
Once you train yourself to become aware of each bout of addictive behaviour, you
are in a position to reprogram your mind with more beneficial, positive
programming.
For example, let’s say you make a mistake while carrying out your daily work
activities. The ego, demanding to be seen as perfect, will come down on itself.
You may hear inner talk that is self-denigrating. Because the ego desperately
seeks self approval as well as approval from others, it will try its best to
make you feel bad about yourself with “put-down” talk such as, “I’m
stupid. I’m always making silly mistakes”. To counter its demand that you
don’t make mistakes, simply rephrase negative inner talk with, “I’m OK.
I’m human. We all make mistakes. It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s how we
learn and grow. I don’t have to reject myself if I make a mistake”. The idea
is not to repress the various emotions from rising, but rather to accept that
your current levels of faulty programming result from years of fearful,
unskillful patterns of thought, and to then, in an act of compassion for self,
simply let it go!
Reprogram
rather than Repress
Replay the “mistake scene” in your mind and really get in touch with the
emotional suffering your addictive programming caused. Now generate the
determination to rid yourself of such defeatist programming once and for all!
The most effective means to do this is to reprogram faulty programs as and when
you become aware of them.
The Three Steps to Reprogramming:
1. Explore the Emotional Suffering
Mentally recreate the event. Pause, take a deep breath, relax and tune in to the
feelings you experienced at the moment the addictive programming downloaded. See
who, and what is involved. When and where did it happen? In most instances,
addictive demands are triggered by common events reoccurring over and over
again. By anticipating these events and becoming aware of the circumstances that
create the events, you are in a better position to undertake effective and
skillful reprogramming.
So to continue with your insightful evaluation of a particular addiction . . .
why did you react as you did? What emotions did you experience? What words were
going through your mind? What is it, outside of yourself, that you blame for
creating those emotions?
2. Pinpoint the Addiction.
How did you want things to be? What should have been done that wasn’t done?
What demands of the ego were not being met? What should others have done? How do
you feel about yourself as you review the event?
Pinpoint your principal addictive demand by asking yourself, “What am I
addictively demanding? What do I think I need to have in order to feel good
about myself?”
3. Accept that the only thing
you can change is yourself.
Can you see how faulty programming has repeated itself time and time again
throughout the pages of your life? Are you fed up with reacting like a
preprogrammed robot? Have you had enough? Are you willing to let go of beliefs
that anchor and hold you back from reaching your unlimited potential? A
determined intention to change is required and this determination must come from
the heart. Be courageous. Get in touch with the fear inside. Be brave enough and
honest enough to identify the basic insecurity that underlies the addictive
demand. Determine to change all that - not by effort and struggle, but by a
release. Here is the “secret” path to peace - release. Demanding things be
different didn’t work for you in the past, and most likely won’t work for
you in the future. Decide for change NOW. Right here in the NOW moment. All you
need do is to let go of all your demands of how things should be - how
they should have been in the past, how they should be now, and
how they should be in the future. It’s all a waste of energy. Just
let people and things be.
Visualise yourself responding to similar future situations with a positive
response. A response of acceptance. Accept the situation as a learning
experience and let it go. The only thing you need to change is yourself. Allow
yourself to respond to life’s sticky situations from a higher level of
consciousness rather than the negative habitual reactions of the past.
Develop the ability to laugh at yourself whenever
addictive programming makes its presence felt. Humour is a great leveller. It
can transform previously unacceptable situations into events of learning and
growth. Be compassionate with yourself. For instance, if you identify
programming that demands others should approve of you, then simply affirm
quietly to yourself, “I don’t need the approval of others - I’m perfectly
OK as I am”. Replay the scene, re-experience the
emotions, and while in that emotional state, repeat the reprogramming phrase
three times quietly to yourself.
Lower
Levels of Consciousness
Let’s remind ourselves once again of the ego’s lower levels of consciousness
as outlined in an earlier module of this course.
1. The Security Level
This level has you focused on food, shelter or whatever you equate with personal
security. This level of addictive programming forces your consciousness to be
dominated by your continuous battle to get “enough” from the world in order
to feel secure.
2. The Sensory Level
This level has you concerned with finding happiness in life by providing
yourself with an ongoing supply of pleasurable sensations and activities via
sex, food, chemicals, alcohol, food, music, clothes, etc.
3. The Power Level
When your consciousness is aligned with this level, you find yourself concerned
with dominating people and circumstances in order to increase your prestige,
wealth, and pride. This level involves countless other subtle forms of
manipulation and control.
The Alternative
When you finally realise that adhering to the three lower levels of
consciousness creates nothing but more suffering and more despair, it’s time
to look seriously at the alternative... unconditional love.
The
Level of Unconditional Love
We’re not talking about romantic love. Unconditional Love is the type of love
that allows you to emotionally accept the unacceptable. Here is your ticket to a
fulfilling and happy life . . . Acceptance.
Unconditional love is the complete and utter acceptance of what is! It has
nothing at all to do with doing - striving to do things and be all
things for all people - it has everything to do with just being - being
at one with all things.
The pathway to inner peace is so beautifully simple. Inner peace is yours when
you totally and unconditionally accept the world of things and people as they
are, and allow everything and everyone to be . . . to just be. The most loving
thing you can do for another person is to unconditionally accept them as they
are. And the best way to learn how to accept others is to learn how to love and
accept yourself . . . totally and unconditionally.
It's easier to pinpoint addictive programming by identifying the
specific emotional feelings that are tied in with the drama. You avoid focusing
on your real pain when you simply generalise the feelings. Citing general terms
such as feeling “unhappy”, “tense” or “insecure” keeps you from
zeroing in on what is really happening inside you. This is where you must put
aside your ego. Learn to delve deeper than a generality such as “feeling
tense”, or “feeling insecure”. Which attitude stored in your program files
caused you to feel tense? What belief is underpinning your feeling of
insecurity? For example, could the tenseness be caused by a subconscious recall
of a painful childhood incident? Or is it much closer to the surface? Is the
tenseness caused by a threat to your position of power? Perhaps something
happened at your place of employment that caused you to feel threatened? You
must be brutally honest with yourself. Look for the ineffective programming that
is the cause of your symptomatic feeling.
Who, What, When, Where and
Why?
To help compile all the relevant facts about a news story, investigative
journalists ask a series of who, what, when, where and why questions. You can do
the same when investigating your addictive behaviour. Ask yourself who is
involved? What did they do or say? When did this occur? Where was the drama
played out? Why were you affected, etc, etc. Every addictive demand is fueled by
an ego-driven want or inner need. If it’s a need for Security, the ego wants
to feel safe. If it’s a Sensory need, it wants to be stroked, either literally
or figuratively. If it’s a Power need it wants to be in control.
The answer is just below the surface
Let’s say your surface desire is to go to the movies with your partner. You
might addictively demand that your partner see the benefits in going to the
movies just as you do. Your partner declines and you might feel angry. From the
Power Level your rational mind could have you reacting with blaming statements
like, “You never want to go anywhere with me. You’re so boring”. The mask
you are wearing says, “I’m not a stick-in-the-mud like you”, but under the
surface, what your ego really needs is to feel close to your partner. Your ego
interprets your partner’s decision as a rejection of you and your
acceptability. You are running an addiction from your Security Level of
Consciousness.
What are you REALLY after?
Ask yourself what emotional experience you think you could create for yourself
by getting what you want? What is it that you are really after? How would you
feel if you had your demand satisfied? How would you see yourself? What would
you hear inside about yourself? Become your own psychoanalyst and scrape under
the surface desire to uncover the inner ego need.
In regard to the movie scenario just mentioned, you might state honestly to
yourself;
1. My inner need is to feel................(e.g.: Wanted).........................................
2. My inner need is to see myself as..........(e.g.: Attractive)......................
3. My inner need is to hear inside that I’m........(e.g.: Acceptable)......
Always remember that it is the Addictive Demand, the thoughts you download from
your mind’s memory banks, that creates the emotion, not the event itself. Be
aware also, that the logical mind will try its level best to divert your
awareness away from your addictive programming. It will do this by protesting
that you have the right to react with aggression towards anyone who would
threaten your sense of “worthiness”. Please remember that although we wear
the outer mask of confidence to the world at large, years and years of
unskillful inner programming has the majority of us believing we are “not
enough”. We spend the whole of our waking lives trying to earn the stamp of
approval from our parents, siblings, teachers, partners and peers. The sad thing
is that they spent their whole lives trying to do the very same thing, as did
the generation before them and the generation before them.
Learning the life skills that enables you to identify the faulty programming of
the ego mind, eventually leads you to the understanding that addictive demands
are simply your ego’s ineffective and unskillful way of getting what we all
seek in life, which is peace, security, abundance and acceptance - acceptance of
ourselves - by ourselves - and by others.
An
Exercise in
Pinpointing your Addictive Demands
Let’s use the example of a workplace
drama. A co-worker points out to you that you failed to complete a
particular job on time, causing a cancellation of the order and a loss
of revenue. This all takes place in front of other co-workers. You
react by raising your voice, blaming unacceptable work loads and time
restrictions as the cause, and storm off in an angry rage.
In this scenario, you reacted unconsciously and downloaded
disfunctional addictive programming rather than responding from a
higher level of consciousness.
Identify the addictive programming and
write down your answers on the dotted lines.
I created the feelings of
...........................................................................................................................................
(Identify and write down the emotional feeling.
when my co-worker
...........................................................................................................................................
...........................................................................................................................................
(Describe the ego’s interpretation of the drama and associated
beliefs)
Because my programming demands
...........................................................................................................................................
...........................................................................................................................................
(Specify what your ego really wants)
What Level of Consciousness created this
drama? Was it the Security Level, The Sensory Level, The Power Level
or the Unconditional Love Level?
..........................................................................................................................................
|
Awareness of our addictive
programming empowers us and helps us let it go. Don’t try to reject or
suppress the programming. Simply Understand its level of
origin, Accept it and let it go. Eventually the ego, as a
result of a prolonged period of rehabilitation, will eventually release its
demands and the addiction is able to be transformed into energy of a more
productive nature.
I have prepared a full
page Worksheet that you can print out and use to help you identify your
addictive programming.
Worksheet:
Identifying Addictive Demands
Awareness:
Mentally recreate the event. Tune into the feelings. Who and what is involved?
When and where did it happen? Why did you react as you did? What emotions did
you experience? What words were going through your mind?
Understanding: How did you want things to be? What
should have been done that wasn't done?
What ego demands were not being met? What should others have done? What
do you feel, see and hear about yourself? What were you demanding in order to
feel good about yourself?
Acceptance: Replay the scene and this time visualise
yourself responding with an attitude of compassionate and passive detachment.
You are not your ego and you are not
your programming.
Compassionately accept the faulty programming of a frightened ego and
choose to let it go.
Seek your own honest answers to
these ego revealing questions:
Q1. How would I feel if my demand
was
satisfied?.......................................................
Q2. How would I see
myself?.....................................................................................
Q3. What sort of inner dialogue would I have about
myself?.................................
After analysing the answers to the above questions you may be able to reveal
inner needs your subconscious has repressed and hidden behind your mask. Look
behind the surface need. Dig deep to find the hidden need.
1. My inner need is to feel.......................................................
2. My inner need is to see myself
as.......................................................3. My inner need is to hear inside
that I am.......................................................................................................
You are responsible for what you
think, what you feel, what you say and what you do. You create it all.
I created the feelings of
.......................................................................................
(Identify and write down the emotional feeling)
when
................................................................................................................
(Describe the ego’s interpretation of the drama and associated beliefs)
because my programming demands
........................................................................................................
(Specify what your ego really wants)
Q. What Level of Consciousness created this
drama?
Was it the:
Security Level
The Sensory Level
The Power Level
Unconditional Love Level?
Awareness
of our addictive programming empowers us and helps us let it go. Don’t try to
reject or suppress the programming. Simply Understand its level
of origin, Accept it and let it go. Eventually the ego will
release its demands and the addiction is able to be transformed into energy of a
more positive and productive nature.
Module Nineteen:
Emotional
Clearance
WE BASE our sense of happiness on our feelings. If you feel
good, you believe yourself to be happy. If you don't feel good, you believe
yourself to be unhappy. We think we have to achieve something, acquire
something, or be in a certain relationship in order to be happy. We don't need
any of these things to be happy - we just need to understand the relationship
between our feelings and our beliefs. With a higher level of awareness we can
experience happiness and fulfillment completely unrelated to achievements,
possessions, or relationships.
Believing that something or someone made us feel "bad"
gives rise to the concept of victimization. To see yourself as a victim places
the responsibility for our feelings onto someone or something other than
yourself. The problem with this perception is that if we deny responsibility for
creating our feelings, we are unable to change and create different feelings of
a more positive nature.
Your ideas and beliefs about who you are, wrapped in the emotional charge of
those ideas and beliefs, create your reality - your every day experience of
life. Thoughts require a creative charge of emotion before they can affect your
reality. So you may change your ideas of who you are, but until they are wrapped
in the emotion of truth, you cannot change your perceived reality.
Feelings are heart driven, and it's in the heart centre where we will locate our
compassion. Feelings of love are not held in the brain. We may think with our
brain about how we feel, but the feeling itself is held within our heart.
Therefore many of us are now going to have to learn to express ourselves in a
completely different way, learning to open up to love and think with our heart -
not our head. It's time to let go of the idea that logic holds the key to life
and realize that without the ability to express our feelings, we are denying our
humanness. Logic is an extremely attractive attribute when one is trying
to solve a problem, but logic should have nothing to do with personal
expression. Therefore, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, logic
has to be replaced by feelings. Emotions are what make us human, so we must
learn to feel rather than think our way out of the third dimension.
An emotional adventure
You are here to have an emotional adventure - to learn to embrace all emotion
without judging any of it.Your mind can grasp intellectual ideas, but it is in
the FEELING where the transformation takes place.A lifetime of conditioning has
us believing that events happen because we are powerless beings. If the event is
perceived as "bad", we will be struck down with a barrage of negative
emotions. The event is then blamed for causing the effects - negative feelings
such as anger, resentment or depression.
These ongoing dilemmas (of our own creation), have us believing life is one
never-ending struggle to survive. Although we may externally struggle with
different circumstances and situations, the emotional feelings associated with
them are always the same - frustration, resentment, anger, depression, etc.,
etc. It's like falling into quicksand, and the only way we know to extricate
ourselves is to struggle. What we find is that the more we struggle to get out,
the deeper we sink.
There is an inverse relationship between struggling with a problem and
understanding the problem. To understand how the emotional system really works
allows the resolution of problems without struggle.
Clearing emotional blocks
When you find yourself face to face with powerful emotions, such as anger,
jealousy or fear, it takes courage to willingly experience them fully. However,
these emotions need acknowledgment. They need to be felt and acknowledged; for
in order to go beyond them we must go through them.
Emotional clearance requires people to find the courage to embrace their
emotional blocks; dissolving them before they impact on the body and adversely
affect physical well-being.
Be Guided by your Feelings
When you feel a negative emotion about any subject whatsoever, it indicates that
you have a negative belief about it stored in your subconscious. Through
listening to your feelings, you can bring into consciousness the belief
connected to the feeling. Feelings and your intuition are your built-in guidance
system. Trust what you FEEL. Your feelings are a better indicator of truth than
your minds, which can be led off in many directions, pursuing this theory or
that, but which are disconnected from the direct EXPERIENCE of truth. There are
only two true emotions that you can experience and feel - the emotions of Love
and/or Fear. All other emotions are satellite emotions gravitating towards love
or fear.
When you combine the focus of your intellectual mind with the impulses that are
given to you by your feelings, you cannot help but expand who you are. Feelings
are the directions of your soul, and you can use your intellectual mind as a
tool to focus your thought on your direction. If all your focussed thoughts
followed your inner feelings, your life would be abundant and joyful beyond all
imagining.
Challenging the emotion
Become aware of your fears. Beneath every fear is pain. It is easier to become
angry with someone else, or yourself, or the world, than to feel this pain.
Simply recognizing when you are angry is only half the story. You must go to the
root of the emotion, which is a part of yourself that you do not know about, or
a part of which you are too frightened or ashamed to acknowledge.
Learn to become aware of how your body feels when certain fears arise, and what
thoughts fill your mind. You will then be able to see it as an old acquaintance
with whom you have a disagreement. The disagreement being that you do not want
to feel the way you are feeling, so you push it away. This is where challenging
your emotion comes in.
Challenging an emotion – which is really challenging the part of yourself
where the emotion originates, is not a declaration of war. It is a clear
statement of your intention. For example, you may affirm, “I challenge
this emotion. I no longer want it in my energy system” . Challenging an
emotion is the decision to utilise your free will to change an aspect of
yourself you no longer want in your life.
No matter how you do it, challenging the part of yourself that you want to
change is at the heart of spiritual growth.You cannot be a spiritually evolved
person and an emotionally unevolved person at the same time.
The first time you challenge your anger, fear, or jealously, it will not
disappear.You must challenge it again, again and again. Eventually, it will
loose its power over you, and you will regain your power.
Understanding duality
It's important to know why you do what you do. We live in a world of duality.
Our experience of life is dualistic, meaning that we are unable to appreciate
any particular quality without the knowledge of the opposite polarity. For
example, up/down, in/out, coming/going, hot/cold, space/solid. Duality implies a
world of happiness and unhappiness, tension and relaxation, pleasure and pain.
We need to acknowledge, in some effective way, the so-called negative component
to any experience. Even with the person we love the most, we will experience
periods of alienation and loneliness. But all too often we resist our experience
of the negative. It's easy enough to see why we do this . . . pain hurts. So we
push the negative feeling down and pretend it doesn't matter.
However, when we resist our inner experience of the negative . . . when we
repress our emotions through fear of pain . . . we prevent that experience from
reaching a balanced conclusion. By fully experiencing the feelings connected to
an event, we complete the duality cycle. Having done so, the necessary lesson is
learnt, and the energy that was the feeling is transmuted . . . that is,
transformed into potential energy to be released back into the universe for
other creative purposes.
We've become so adapt to resisting that we've lost the capacity to experience
that which we came here to experience. Resistance means we are depriving
ourselves of necessary lessons in life. Pushing away and struggling against
emotive feelings causes inner imbalance, an imbalance that requires correction
if we are to learn and progress. We need to openly experience each feeling as it
surfaces, and then let it go without judgment. We have to consciously develop
the capacity for feeling - and if resistance rises, we need to examine the
reasons for the resistance. This is the essence of Emotional Clearance.
Identifying the demands of your ego
The never-ending needs of an insecure ego demands that certain events happen a
certain way and that people behave in a certain manner. If events and people
fail to meet these expectations the addictive programming of our mind causes the
brain to send emotional impulses through the autonomous nervous system resulting
in negative feelings such as anger, suspicion, resentment, jealousy etc, etc.
The Addictive Worksheet: At times like these, you need
to bring your addictive worksheet into play. (See Module 22 - Rehabilitating the
Addictive Ego). You do this by first focusing on the incident that upset you.
Then identify the emotion. This will allow you to pinpoint your specific
addictive demand.
For instance, you may find yourself acting like a sullen spoilt brat - jealousy
is the emotion that surfaces, because the addictive programming of your insecure
ego demands that another person should not attract so much attention to
themselves (e.g. - by dancing so much better than you on the dance floor).
So let's see how your worksheet looks with the above information filled in . . .
"I created the feeling of jealousy when Peter danced at the wedding because
my ego programming demands that other people should not show off (their ability
to dance better than me.)”
This can be followed by:
"I created the feeling of resentment when people applauded Peter because my
ego programming demands that my father should have paid for dancing lessons when
I was a younger.”
In the above examples, by being completely honest with yourself, you have been
able to pinpoint each addictive demand that was downloaded from your
subconscious. With this honesty comes the ability to accept the fact that you
are human. Now, rather than berating yourself, you can let the emotion go,
thanking it for the insight it has provided as to the addictive beliefs you hold
within your subconscious mind. You can now understand yourself better. You are
aware of the origins of your negative feelings. You can now see where your
thinking needs to be modified . . . where certain beliefs need to be changed . .
. where painful emotions need to be released.
Accepting responsibility
Once this higher awareness tunes in, you've made progress. You've been able to
recognise, accept and embrace the negative feelings of jealousy and resentment
rather than suppress them. If you are able to see that part of your negative
reaction is due to repressed past memories concerning your father, you have made
a giant leap forward in your development.
Furthermore, if you can accept that the feelings of resentment are of your own
making, and accept sole responsibility for your self-created pain, you have
become an alchemist of the soul, a self-healer. You have been able to transmute
painful emotional energy from fear to love.
Always remember - fear that is not released, must manifest as an experience -
for what we fear, we empower. The entire episode described above was made
manifest because of the repressed painful memory of father not paying for
dancing lessons. Sooner or later that resentment, stored as psycho-emotional
energy within the body, must be released into the physical world in the form of
a created experience. Had you not been able to do the clearing work, recognising
and releasing the emotion through acceptance and understanding, you would have
had to undergo a similar situation at some other time in your future. It would
be re-created again and again until you learned to transmute the energy through
loving acceptance and understanding.
To master the Alchemy of the Soul, you first need to to learn which thoughts and
which beliefs produce which emotions. Doing this enables you to change your
thoughts and beliefs, and if you desire, to change your emotions about any
particular situation.
During times of discord, examine the pain, the negative feeling, and ask
yourself, "What is it that I need to know?"
Be easy on yourself. When those feelings get stirred up inside of you and it
seems as if they want to steam roller you, say to yourself, "These
feelings are my teachers. I will not be afraid of them. They have something to
show me, and I will learn. I will change. I am flexible. I am courageous. I am
committed to myself." Be easy on yourself.
Avoid judging some emotions as bad, and others as good. They are all of the same
energy, the same power; although you may prefer some more than others. A higher
awareness enables you to choose which emotions to hold (loving) and which to let
go (fearful). This awareness leads to a clarity of thinking and a better
understanding of yourself, your loved ones, and the world around you.
Health problems of one kind or another suggest the person involved is not giving
attention to some of their emotions. Physical dis-ease is an indication of a
mind which is not at ease, which usually indicates suppressed feelings. Their
body is trying to heal their mind by alerting them to this fact. Higher
awareness will identify the beliefs and thoughts the person may prefer to change
in order to produce perfect health.
A reason for everything
Everything that exists in this world does so for a reason. Each has a rightful
place in the scheme of things. Humanity exists for a reason. Our thoughts exist
for a reason . . . our emotions exist for a reason. To deny their validity is to
deny our birthright. Like all living things, emotions need attention. Give your
emotions the attention they deserve, then let them go. Feelings are created in
order to be experienced, not suppressed. The energy that is the feeling will no
go away. Energy cannot be destroyed - it can only be transformed. Your emotional
energy needs to be addressed, expressed, and transformed. To deny the expression
of your feelings will only cause dis-stress and dis-ease.
You cannot love yourself and hate your emotions. Your emotions reflect what you
believe. Learn how to use emotions to create what you want instead of what you
don't want. Emotion is essential to creative manifestation on the earth plane.
Understand how your emotions function. To do so will increase your understanding
of yourself, your life, and how you manifest the reality of your own world.
You have the power to choose which emotions you want to experience. You do this
by choosing your thoughts. You choose the events in your life in order to
experience their associated emotions. Life is a game of learning. Each move you
make on the gameboard creates selected experiences in order to feel then
transmute the associated emotions. The trick is to remember to transmute the
emotions - letting them go after the event has past and the lesson learnt.
Validating your Emotions
Choose an emotion: It can be negative or positive. For three
minutes experience that emotion totally. Allow any thoughts that accompany that
emotion to come forward. Speak them out aloud. Pay particular attention to the
thoughts that accompany that emotion. Pay attention to the beliefs that are
causing you to feel that emotion. Remember that beliefs are nothing more than
habitual thoughts. They are nothing more than the pattern of how you have been
choosing to think. For every thought there is an alternate thought - for every
feeling there is an alternate feeling. As a free-will being you have the right
to choose which thoughts and which beliefs you will allow to influence your
life.
Watch the clock: At the end of three minutes switch to another
emotion. The process involves experiencing three different emotions for three
minutes each.
Conclude with a positive affirmation: At the end of the
validation process, formulate a loving affirmation while focusing on a preferred
emotion. Let's say you focus on Compassion. You may then affirm vocally, "From
this moment on I choose to experience only positive thoughts of a loving and
accepting nature".
Transmutation - Turning Fear into
Love
1. Take responsibility: Become aware of the fact that you
created the situation you find yourself in. Nobody else. Be aware that the
situation and the accompanying pain are your creations. Understand the feeling
and you transmute the pain through accepting responsibility. In this fashion you
are not striving for the change outside, but change through the acceptance and
acknowledgment inside.
2. Align the Judgment: When everything is acknowledged without
judgment - i.e., aligned - then you are in the knowledge of the greater self.
Understand the role each person has played and bless them all for their part in
creating the situation - a situation purposely created in order to find the
pearl of wisdom within. You can identify the purpose for which spirit has
created a situation by being aware of the feeling, the emotion it engenders.
Working backwards from recognising the feeling, we get a picture of the thoughts
that accompanied the feeling. The thoughts, the internal dialogue, will pinpoint
the addictive program - the attitude, the belief that you need to understand and
embrace and then let go. The lesson has been learned.
3. Feel the feeling and surrender: Admit the feelings are a
part of yourself at the ego level. Then, as far as possible, communicate those
feelings verbally in whatever way you choose. (Expressing your feelings is
better than creating a thought-form out of all proportion to the event
transpired). Accept the lesson in the situation and surrender. It is easier to
let go when you understand the people involved with you have been part of the
co-creation for their own reasons, their own lessons. When you surrender, the
feeling, masked by the resistance of pain, is suddenly revealed as a neutral
energy which is then allowed to move from the solar plexus (emotional body) to
the heart (astral body - neutral zone) then to the crown for re-disbursement
into the universe.
Module Twenty:
Compassion
EACH SOUL in this universe is playing the Polarity
Integration Game in order to achieve spiritual evolution and eventual reunion
with the Divine Creator - the Source - All That Is. Compassion is the goal of
the game. Compassion is the integration point, the middle point of the two
opposites. When the soul reaches true compassion, it feels acceptance for both
sides, judging nothing as inherently good or bad. Achieving compassion or
integration means that a soul sees the value in both the Light and the Dark, and
chooses to have both in balanced portions, as part of itself.
Honour the role others play for your benefit
Look beyond the behavior of abusive people to the higher perspective. Remember
that they are simply a soul playing a role for you. You are in the controversy
to learn how not to allow them to take your energy by being abusive. They are in
the role to learn that abusive behavior will not get their need for attention
met. Therefore, they must find a more balanced way to attain the attention they
need and deserve. Compassion is experienced only when all judgments have been
released.
Develop your capacity to
Release others from blame
The normal third dimensional mind-set says that
life is something over which we have no control. But this is not correct,
because every single event that happens to us is of our own making. Therefore,
when something happens that appears unexpected, or to be the result of someone
else's actions, we have to give it careful attention, because consciously or
unconsciously, we actually create our reality one hundred percent.
Nothing happens arbitrarily or without a reason and everything
is a result of our own thought patterns. When we cast blame on any other person
for what occurs to us, it shows that we are in denial about this. But nobody
does anything to us; we do it to ourselves. And the reason that all those
sometimes dreadful and horrific events take place in life, is because they
support the lessons we have come here to learn.
Truly, there is no such thing as an accident and no one is to
blame for anything. Once we accept this principle, then forgiveness can take
place. Only then can we look at all those accidental happenings and acknowledge
that not only did we create them, they actually had something to teach us.
It is time to take the blame off those members of our Soul
Family who have contributed to these lessons, and instead thank them and bless
them for giving us the opportunity to learn. Without these experiences we would
never know how it feels to be hurt and therefore, never understand the
compassion which comes finally as a direct result.
It is often difficult to accept that being on the receiving
end of hurtful or traumatic circumstances is our own fault, but the issues is
not of who is to blame, but rather of what lesson can we learn from the event
itself. Each of us descends into this third dimension to experience certain
things, and we take the decision on what these will be before we are born. And
as obtuse as it may appear to be, we quite often agree to undergo traumatic
situations.
Collectively, we are here to evaluate and experience
negativity. On a Soul level, we want to understand what the opposite of love and
compassion is all about, so we agree to set up situations from which we can
learn the difference. The problem however, is that most of us have gone through
so many painful experiences that we now carry enormous loads of trauma in the
memory cells of our body. Trauma which is added upon with each subsequent
lifetime. This traumatic memory is what we subconsciously fear we will have to
encounter if we go too deeply within, and that thought leads us to suppress, at
great cost, these painful memories. Therefore, it is completely understandable
that when it comes time to let them go, which means allowing these memories to
come into consciousness, we are terrified to do so.
This is where you need to release others from blame. When you
wear the mask of an aggrieved victim, you are attempting to manipulate and
control others through the Power Level of Lower Consciousness. By playing the
role of victim, you seek to control other egos through an emotionally-charged
guilt trip. An overload of excess baggage labeled “judgment” is meant to be
carried by any person who accepts the role of “perpetrator” in this drama.
By releasing from blame not only ourselves for past unkind acts, but all those
many members of our Soul Family who have judged us, misunderstood us, abused and
rejected us, we get free of the pain forever. When we release blame, the energy
which was the pain is transmuted or transformed into compassion and love. These
acts of release directly contribute to lifting our spirits and lightening the
load of excess baggage accumulated over many lifetimes.
Happiness is a result of acceptance. Those who operate from a higher level of
consciousness such as total acceptance of all things, sometimes seem to have an
easier time accepting their circumstances, their environment, themselves and
others. They are not given to long-winded inner dialogue of judgment and blame.
They can shrug their shoulders and carry on, accepting what is. This is what
creates the avenue for the experience of happiness.
This does not mean that if you accept a negative situation that you will be
happy with that negative situation. However, when you accept a negative
situation you then allow yourself the choice and the freedom to choose to
experience an alternate reality.
Without acceptance you have a tendency to be in denial. If you are not accepting
it, you are denying it. If you are denying it, there is nothing you can do about
it. You are not in a place of empowerment. You are not in a position to choose
anything else. When you come to a point of acceptance, that does not mean "I
like this," it means, "I understand and accept that this is a
negative situation and I choose love instead of this,"
Acceptance is an act of compassion. Developing compassion for yourself and
others is a big part of your evolutionary progression towards enlightenment. How
do you develop a habit of compassion? The following seven step Formula for
Compassion will help.
The Formula for
Compassion . . .
Step One: ASPECT
Q: “What is the aspect of myself this person is reflecting back to me?”
Try to see and understand the aspect of yourself that the other person is
reflecting back to you. They are your mirror, reflecting an aspect of yourself
through their behavior. This step calls for brutal self-honesty, but it's well
worth the effort.
Sometimes, instead of reflecting an aspect of your behavior, they are reflecting
something you judge. An example would be someone who steals from you. You may
not be a thief, but you may be judging theft or people who are thieves.
Step Two: GIFT
Q: “What is the gift this person is giving me by playing their role?”
Ask for help so you can see and understand the gift the other person is giving
you by playing their role.
Step Three: ACCEPTANCE
Q: “Can I accept the role that this person has played, along with their
actions, to help me learn this lesson?”
Acceptance is one of the four elements of unconditional love. Acceptance is part
of compassion and is unconditional love in action. This also includes acceptance
of who the person is, without judgment. You will find that if you are having a
hard time with this step you can clear it by remembering they are a soul in a
body, just like you, and you are helping each other with a lesson.
Step Four: ALLOWANCE
Q: “Can I allow myself to let go of my anger towards this person who
played the role to help me learn the lesson?”
Allowance is also one of the four elements of unconditional love. Allowance is
part of compassion and is unconditional love in action. This includes allowing
the person to be who they are and to follow their chosen path, regardless of how
you feel about it.
By the time you’ve reached this step, you’ll find it very easy to let go of
anger towards the person, because you are feeling the gratitude and compassion
that comes from seeing the pain they suffered in playing their role for you.
On another note: Allowance is easier to do when we let go of needing to control
someone's behavior or choices for their own good. We tend to control people out
of fear that their actions will hurt them/and or us. If we understand that
everything has a value, then we can begin to release our need to control because
we understand that there will be a value in each and every outcome.
Step Five: RELEASE
Q: “Can I release this person from blame?”
This one is easy when you understand that you are not a victim. On the contrary,
you are an active participant in a contract and lesson that you helped set up.
Taking responsibility for your part in the contract enables you to release the
other person from blame for the role they played to help you learn the lesson
you wanted to learn. You understand that just as you are not a victim, nor are
they a villain. And remember, it is much harder to play the role of a villain
than it is to play the role of a hero.
Releasing someone from blame is different to forgiving them. Forgiving someone
is what we do when we feel they have sinned against us, as in being victimized.
Release is the key element in the Formula. The release is created by your
compassion for the other person.
Step Six: KINDNESS
Q: “Now that I have released this person, can I be kind to him/her, and if
so, how can I do it and when will I do it?”
At this point you may be feeling the intensity of the release through the heart.
The degree of the feeling differs according to the emotional intensity of the
issue. The more emotionally charged the issue, the more intense the release.
By now you will be filled with gratitude and compassion after reaching this step
and your only thought is how to make amends and thank the other person/s.
Now that you are feeling gratitude and compassion, by releasing the other person
from blame and anger, you realize you can be kind to them. You are now ready for
completion.
Step Seven: COMPLETION
The two parts of Completion are:
a) How will you show your kindness, and
b) When you will do it?
You will find this step to be quite emotional. Higher understanding fills you
with gratitude and compassion and your only thought is how to make amends and
thank them. This is quite an empowering feeling.
Having released the other person from blame you can now be kind and loving
toward them, functioning as you are from a level of gratitude and compassion . .
. otherwise known as a state of Grace. It's not necessary for the other person
to understand how you reached this state of grace, all you need do is thank
them. Let them know you have learnt a valuable lesson as a result of their
interaction, and thank them for helping you to gain a better understanding of
who and what you are.
Don't try to explain the above process of transformation. They have their own
path to tread and may not yet be ready to understand your viewpoint. Those that
are controlled by the demands of the ego usually become defensive when higher
truths are presented without invitation. If there is distance between you,
either physical or emotional, you could write to them or phone them. If they are
in close contact you can thank them personally. All you need do is thank them
for helping you understand more about yourself. This will suffice for the time
being.
The energy that was the negative emotion is now transformed and available for
redistribution to the universe for other creative purposes.
Live a life of Allowance
You are here to create a life of joy, nothing more, nothing less. Find that
which gives you joy and do it - and allow all others to be exactly as they are,
and give that gift to yourself too! Allow yourself to be who and what you are in
each moment and allow others to be who and what they are.
Love is the total and complete acceptance of what is. Allowance via
compassionate understanding is love in its simplest definition.
Module Twenty-one:
Self-acceptance
REMEMBER our previous discussions in module eight about the Scales of
Worth?
If you allow the ego to restrict your awareness to the lower levels of
consciousness, you will find yourself constantly looking for messages of
self-worth from exterior sources. If someone labels you “beautiful,”
up goes your worth based on programming from your Security level of
consciousness. During a clash of egos, someone operating from their Power level
of consciousness may label you “fat” and down goes your worth based
on programs of insecurity downloaded from your Security level of consciousness.
The temporary nature of
self-esteem
People with high levels of self-esteem feel good about themselves, but so do
people with ample self-acceptance. What is the difference between self-esteem
and self-acceptance? The crucial difference is where the good feelings come
from! Self-esteem is generated from outside influences. Your ego creates
self-esteem from the approval you think you need from others. Self-acceptance
comes from within. You manufacture and confirm your very own self-acceptance by
giving yourself your very own seal of approval.
Co-dependancy
If you depend on outside influences for your supply of good feelings about
yourself, you depend on others for approval. If the others are also seeking
approval from you and other outside sources, you have a co-dependant
relationship in progress. This type of approval is conditional. For others to
approve of you, you should and must do well in school, sports, career and family
enterprises. To keep your self-esteem up, your ego needs at least one person,
preferably more, to constantly praise you, reassure you and give you
encouragement.
The see-saw effect of the
Scales of Worth
Gain the social approval so eagerly sought by the ego, and up goes your worth,
and with it your so-called self-esteem. Lose that all-important social approval
and your worth falls — and with it your self-esteem. You’re stuck on the
Scales of Worth and at the mercy of the manipulative egos of others. The
insecure personality who feels separate and alone in the universe desperately
needs the approval of others in order to feel a sense of belonging.
Self-esteem is based on a sense of security the ego derives from unpredictable
outside sources — a false sense of security. It’s so unpredictable that
anxiety is generated whenever that oh-so-fickle approval is in short supply.
Approval is gained only if your attitudes and behaviour match the addictive
programming of the egos around you. Whenever you look within and generate your
own good feelings about yourself you create your own inner security. The
hopelessness many of our unemployed young people feel today is partly created by
the lack of approval unemployment generates within the collective ego
consciousness of a society programmed into believing “worthiness” is
related to gainful employment.
Breaking free from lower
consciousness
Once you are able to repeatedly break away from the addictive programming of the
lower levels of consciousness, the need for approval from others will be
replaced by the inner confidence that unconditional self-acceptance provides.
With self-acceptance you’re free to enjoy the company of others without
worrying what they may think of you. The inner strength self-acceptance affords,
means you can be in the company of others as they run their addictive demands,
and calmly accept them instead of being upset by them.
Others become your mirror
Once you achieve a higher awareness of the programming run by other personality
types, acceptance of them and their addictive demands become a reflection of
your acceptance of your own inner self. From a state of preferential choice, you
can prefer that others like and respect you, but if they don’t it can’t
label you worthless, because your own inner security is created by your
acceptance of who and what you really are.
Solutions for our youth
Parents and teachers who are concerned about a youngster’s low self-esteem do
what they can to raise it. They offer praise and encouragement, and recruit
others to do the same. However, these outside sources leave the youngster still
dependent on the outside world for feeling good about themselves — and we know
from experience the outside world may not always be so obliging. Youngsters need
to learn self-reliance — and self-reliance is derived from self-acceptance,
which is directly created through a deliverance from the demanding shoulds of
the addictively negative programming of the ego-mind.
Happiness is
your birthright —
not a privilege to be granted or
denied by the ego
Whilst in our mother’s womb we were happy and content. We brought happiness
and contentment with us into this world, but we allowed the outside influences
of an insecure society to delude and deny us our birthright. We were responsible
for losing our grip on happiness, and it is we who are solely responsible for
regaining our God-given gifts. That happy, secure and contented child stills
remains. If you can learn to gently dismantle the fortress of insecurity that
blocks your view of true perception, you can once more step into the lightness
of being that is your rightful inheritance. The only thing that restrains you
from liberation is your ego’s fear of change. It knows a sincere intent for
change will created a shift in awareness that will forever free you of its
control. Live your life as it was originally intended — joyful and free from
fear. Throw of the ego’s shackles of shoulds. Reprogram its negative addictive
demands into positive preferences for a happy and fulfilled tomorrow. "Be
not conformed to the things of this world, but be transformed by a
renewing of your mind!"
This is the final module of A
Course in Happiness. I hope you have
gained some insights that will be of assistance as you journey through this
learning adventure called life.
Remember, what you think is what you will become. What you
fill your mind with is what will fill your life. The choice, as always, is
yours.
John Davies
Questions
commonly asked by students
seeking Higher Awareness
Q. How can I overcome the ever present discontent I feel inside?
A. A strong intent for change is necessary. You must be willing to
be still, to listen, to observe and learn something new.
Q. Why do so many people resist new ideas and settle for the life they
have, no matter how miserable it may be?
A. They resist leaving their prison, their self-made fortress of
insecurity. They resist because they subconsciously fear the new world outside
may be even worse. For these people, there is a frightening gap between the old
and the new. Like the ancients who thought the world was flat, their fearful,
conditioned minds project anxious imaginings of what the new world is like. It
takes courage to sail a course towards the edge of the known world. Sadly, for
most people, a change in attitudes is, in their minds, just not worth the risk.
For these it is safer to stay with the herd and ridicule the few who dare to
seek their freedom in the new world.
Q. How can I find and cultivate truth?
A. Start with the right frame of mind. You must have an open mind
and be receptive to new ideas. In this way you prepare the ground for the seeds
of awareness. To sprout and reach maturity, each seed must fall on fertile, not
rocky ground.
Q. I can’t seem to control my anger. What can I do about it?
A. You can understand it. Anger flares when something threatens
our fortress — the pretentious image we have of ourselves. If you drop the
image your ego has of yourself, you can’t feel threatened. You become
indifferent.
Q. What are the meanings of heaven and hell?
A. Hell is not a place — it's a condition of ignorance — of
being unaware. Hatred is hell. So is anger, jealousy, resentment and fear.
Heaven is a condition of love. Love is heaven. So is peace, compassion and
understanding. By exercising the free will of the mind, you choose the
conditions through which you experience life. Heaven or hell — it’s your
call!
Q. How can I be happy?
A. The ache of loneliness, isolation and separation will disappear
once you learn to shed your ego and perceive reality from the higher perspective
of your true self.
Q. I suffer from a constant feeling of loneliness, even when I’m with
a crowd of people.
Why is that?
A. The insecure ego is attached to the false sense of security one
temporarily gains by the noise and excitement of a crowd. But as the crowd and
the excitement fades away, so too does one’s sense of security. The awakening
person finds security in the inner world of their own true self, a place of
serene strength where loneliness is unknown.
Q. I feel trapped. Is there any way out?
A. The way out of your emotional distress cannot be found by
physical or intellectual means. Stop struggling and still the mind. Human
thought frantically thrashes around in the jungle of despair in a vain attempt
to find a way out. Higher awareness stands quietly on a hilltop overlooking the
seemingly inescapable jungle, from where it always sees a clear and easy way
out.
Q. I’m reasonable intelligent. Why can’t I see the truth more
clearly?
A. A mentally mature person is not necessarily an aware person.
Even someone on the lowest step of spiritual awareness is more advanced than
someone on the highest step of intellectual maturity. For the mentally mature
person to step into higher consciousness, he has to rid himself of limiting and
addictive mental programming in order to make room for greater insight.
Q. What is it that prevents us from living lives of contentment?
A. Contentment is denied us by negative mind-sets resulting from
inner insecurity. We must stop looking outside ourselves for a sense of
security. Our insecurity fuels negative thinking, which then fosters even more
insecurity. We need to become aware of negatively addictive thinking before we
can break free from our state of unhappiness.
Q. Are you sure this mind renewal stuff is practical for this day and
age?
A. Nothing else is more practical! Look at the condition of
the world around you. It’s filled with anxiety, disillusionment, sorrow and
illness of all sorts. Is this a practical way to live?
Q. With so much crime reported in the news, how can I feel anything but
insecure?
A. Think back to our discussion on hypnosis and suggestion. The
media tends to focus only on negative activities within society and all but
ignores the positive. Constant suggestions of fear implanted into your
subconscious by negative media attention has you believing in a world to be
feared, a world gone crazy. Be aware of negative suggestion and negative
mind-sets. Step back and observe how exposure to pessimistic thinking can
severely limit your enjoyment of the here and now.
Q. I’m trying to change the limiting beliefs of the mind, but it’s
difficult.
Is there a quick way to achieve change?
A. The journey to self-discovery presents many challenges, each
with its own set of lessons to be learned. The more you learn, the easier the
journey becomes. Patience and persistence will reap their own rewards.
Q. What causes the pain we feel when we lose out in the game of love?
A. Such a loss brings us face to face with our own inner
emptiness. The bare bones of your insecurity are exposed, leaving you feeling
unloved, unwanted and unworthy. Awareness will tell you such a “love”
was merely a bandage used to cover up the wound of insecurity you’ve carried
for so long. Understanding this will heal you, acceptance will calm you, and
awareness will re-direct you.
Q. I always seem to be in a state of constant anxiety. How can I change
this?
A. A man may suffer anxiety while having a frightening nightmare,
but when he wakes up, where is the anxiety? It was all illusionary — images of
the mind. Try to see that anxious suffering in your daylight hours is also
imaginary — faulty programming played out in the theatre of your lower ego
mind. To escape the daily nightmare, wake up from your self induced hypnotic
state.
Q. Whenever I lash out in anger I behave like a fool. I feel ashamed
afterwards.
What’s the answer?
A. A man hypnotized into believing he is a fool will act like one.
What happens when he snaps out of the trance? Should he feel ashamed? No — not
if he sees his foolish behaviour was caused by a false sense of identity. He
doesn’t condemn his behaviour, he understands it.
Q. How will I know if I’m running an addictive program?
A. Take a note of what words or actions trigger feelings of anger,
fear, resentment or jealousy. Your reactions will indicate which area of your
fortress the ego is guarding. If you feel jealousy, your security level
perceives a threat. If someone or something threatens to take away an object
you’ve become attached to, addictive programming demands you jealousy guard
your ego’s possession. Your lower mind downloads defensive thoughts, the “fight
or flight” reflex kicks in, and you find yourself thinking and behaving in
a totally irrational, but habitually predictable manner. Such is the limiting
and insecure nature of the ego.
Q. I’m often annoyed by the senseless behaviour of my family and
friends. The course tells me the problems stem from my annoyance, not their
behaviour. How can I remind myself of this?
A. Don’t expect people to behave any better than they do given
their present level of understanding. A child of five cannot be expected to
behave live a child of ten. The same with adults. No one can possibly behave
beyond their current level of understanding. Your problem is in assuming they
should and could behave better. Accept them as they are and your annoyance will
disappear.
Q. I’ve come this far in life with my present attitudes. Why should I
change now? I’m happy enough.
A. Because you are not really happy — not if you are still
manipulated by you ego mind. Beyond your pretenses and behind your mask you
sense your own emptiness. You can kid yourself, but you can’t kid your
irritability, your insecurity, your bouts of anger or depression. Be willing to
accept the truth and settle for nothing less.
Q. I’ve tried to break my bad habits and failed. What went wrong?
A. Most people fail because the self trying to break the habit is
the same self that’s trapped by it—the insecure false self—the ego. By
raising your consciousness to a higher level of awareness, you are able to
understand the insecurity that caused the habit to form in the first place. When
man discovers his true self, the secure higher self, he also breaks the habit.
Q. How will I know when my ego is running an addictive program?
A. When something happens that automatically triggers feelings of
anger, jealousy, embarrassment, fear and the like, you’ll know you’re in the
grip of an addictive demand.
Q. Why do people wear masks?
A. It’s their way of hiding their pain underneath. The pain may
be a fear of rejection, a fear of not being accepted by others, or a fear of
feeling inadequately equipped to cope with life. It’s an unconscious act of
self-deception acted out by the ego. It sets out to deceive others, but
eventually it has us deceiving ourselves. Rather than preventing someone else
from seeing your pain, you are actually hiding your own pain from yourself. Each
mask serves a different purpose. For instance an angry mask says, “Don’t
mess with me,” and is very effective in keeping people at arm’s length,
but also keeps you from the very thing you long for; intimacy. Little children
don’t feel a need to wear masks. They have yet to be conditioned by the
collective ego of an insecure society. The number of masks you wear reflects the
amount of conditioning and addictive programming to which your ego has subjected
you over the years.
Q. My girlfriend broke off with me because she said I didn’t meet her
needs.
What does that mean?
A. It means she will flit from one relationship to another in a
fruitless search for happiness, because the world outside of her, and that
includes the entire male population, will never fully satisfy her ego’s list
of addictive demands — that which she and others describe as “needs.”
The divorce courts are full of people blaming each other for “unmet
needs.” When people realize what they really “need” in life is
self awareness, self understanding and an unconditional acceptance of themselves
and their partner, divorce lawyers will become redundant.
Q. My friends say I’m a fool to be taking all this stuff seriously.
Am I?
A. Depends if you want to accept their attempt at labeling you.
Notice how eager we are to reject, argue and deny any new idea that threatens
our fortress — that illusionary structure of insecurity that represents our
personal collection of opinions, beliefs and attitudes. We convince ourselves we
argue because we already know the truth, although honest reflection will reveal
the exact opposite. Because our artificiality's are threatened with exposure we
ridicule and deny anyone who rocks the ego’s boat. Are your friends genuinely
concerned for you, or are their negative comments a reflection of their own
inner insecurities? The seeker of truth must often stand alone, persisting in
spite of conflicting attitudes. To find freedom, one must prefer integrity to
popularity, advancement to stagnation.
Q. Why shouldn’t we be entitled to our opinions?
A. Why settle for opinions? Why not seek the truth? People adopt
certain opinions in an attempt to feel secure, but soon find defending their
opinions only creates anxiety. Drop opinions and seek truth instead. What's the
difference between opinions and truth? When you really see a truth about life,
you feel an inner knowing and a sense of relief rather than anxiety.
Q. Why do people take drugs?
A. It’s impossible to know what goes on in the mind of an
individual, but if a person strongly rejects an aspect of himself or the world
outside him, he may wish to escape that aspect by the quickest means at his
disposal — alcohol or drugs. Unfortunately he is escaping from one illusion
into another. An unhappy person sees an unhappy world. By artificially altering
their state of awareness, they temporarily leave unhappiness behind, only to
find it’s still there waiting for them when they come out of it. Like the
persona masks depicted on the cover sheet of this course, they exchange one mask
for another, with neither mask representing their true self. The one sure way
out is to alter one’s awareness by natural means — a renewing of the mind.
Replacing old patterns of thinking with the new. Procedures in A Course in
Happiness can assist in this process.
Q. How can a change of beliefs bring us happiness?
A. The current belief system, to which most of us still subscribe,
encourages us to project what we’ve learned in the past onto the future,
ensuring that our future will be just like our past. This insecure compulsion or
need to control and predict the future, makes it virtually impossible for us to
experience peace and happiness in the present moment. However, you can’t feel
guilty about the past and fear the future if you concentrate your full attention
on living completely in the present moment. Let go of all attachments to the
past and any anticipation of the future. Live for the present.
Q. How can I break a habit?
A. Rebellion against lower levels of consciousness is a start.
When you are finally fed up with the pain and struggles of lower level thinking,
you decide not to live like that any more. If everything you have tried in the
past fails to break the habit, you dare to try a new way. By learning to
understand how and why habits are formed, your increased awareness breaks the
habit.
Q. My constant companion is depression. What causes it?
A. Depression descends when you catch a sudden insight into the
emptiness of your ego-controlled life. A fleeting glimpse that it’s all an
act, and depression sets in. You must be willing to see through the ego’s
pretensions of having a purposeful life. A business, a career, a modern home are
all nice to have, but if you try to use exterior successes to find your true
self, you will continually fail and fall into depression.
Q. Could you explain the main principle of Taoism?
A. Tao is an ancient Chinese philosophy that observes life as a
series of natural and spontaneous events. Accept these changing events —
don’t resist them or wish things were differen t— that only creates anxiety.
Allow the natural flow of things. Let reality be as it is — reality. Be like a
pebble carried effortlessly along in the stream of life. Tao points out,
“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do
anything but be yourself."
Q. I keep trying to change my thinking, but I easily get discouraged.
Is this normal?
A. Perfectly normal. The ego and those close to you will
occasionally get you off track. Old doubts and feelings which you thought were
far behind you, will suddenly loom up again. Discouragement fleetingly sets in
as you silently dread that maybe this whole awareness thing is just an
idealistic fantasy. Such periods are normal, so expect them to come. Watch and
learn. Persistence is the name of the game.
Q. What causes so many people to be skeptical about change?
A. Many people fear that by giving up their habitual behaviour,
beliefs and opinions, they will lose control of their lives. Their limiting
attitude is, “Better the devil you know that the one you don’t.” People
undergo transformation only when the time is right for them. Each of us are at
different levels of development — accept them as they are and focus on your
own development.
Q. Why is there so much injustice in the world?
A. Ego man’s idea of justice is getting what he wants. If his
addictive demands are satisfied, that’s justice. If denied, he calls it
injustice. Mankind has suffered endless conflict between people and nations and
will continue to do so until addictive demands give way to higher levels of
awareness.
Q. The Course often mentions detachment. Could you explain this process
please?
A. Let’s suppose a woman pushes in front of you at the grocery
check-out. Your conditioned ego will resent this intrusion and run programmed
attitudes of “she shouldn’t be so rude” etc. Your anxiety levels
rise as your addictive programming prompts you to react in a negative and
habitual way. Now if you are unaware of this programmed demand, you will react
from the power level of lower consciousness. You’ll either verbally lash out
at the perpetrator, or suppress the urge and suffer stress instead. But let’s
say you were able to pause and observe your stressful reaction. You’ll realize
the stress is an effect caused by the ego’s programming. This is detached
awareness in action. You were able to step back from the drama, see yourself
acting out an habitual reaction, and observe the resentment objectively. You
prefer she hadn’t pushed in, but from a level of higher awareness you calmly
accept her behavior and silently thank her for the lesson in detachment and the
opportunity it provided for your self-advancement. You learn to see the
resentment as not being a part of your real self, but an addiction of the
habitually conditioned ego self.
Q. Why do people say hurtful things?
A. What causes you to feel hurt? Your hurt feelings are not the
result of what people say or do — you feel hurt because they have not behaved
as your ego demands they should behave.
Let go of your demands, then people can behave in any way they like while you
remain at peace.
Q. How would you explain the principles of detachment and observation?
A. When you go to the movies, you start out by sitting and
watching as a passive, detached observer. You’re there just to watch the show.
You can watch people laugh, cry and even die on screen, and it’s up to you
whether you choose to become emotionally involved or not. If you choose to
sympathize with any pain you witness, you’ve identified with a character
you’re watching. This involvement suggests to your subconscious that the
character’s pain is your pain and so memories of similar pain from your past
is downloaded into your lower consciousness. Emotions rise up and you may even
cry. You have allowed yourself to become involved in the drama rather than
remain detached. That’s your choice. However, if you remind yourself that what
you are witnessing is simply an act, higher awareness enables you to calmly
watch and enjoy the performance without becoming an integral part of it. The ego
may wish to judge the rights or wrongs portrayed on the screen, but higher
awareness reminds you it’s all an act put on for your benefit — so observe
and try to learn something from it. If you continue to apply these principles
throughout the everyday performance we call “Life,” a peaceful
acceptance of everything around you will result. The choice is up to you. How
you exercise this freedom of choice every day of your life determines your level
of peace and contentment within.
Q. What is the single, most productive step we can take in our search
for happiness?
A. Self-awakening. To awaken, we must first suspect that we are
part of a sleeping society — a society oblivious to the fact that there is
another form of consciousness — a fully-awakened state. We cannot do anything
for ourselves until we are awake to what we do against ourselves. However, be
prepared for strong resistance from the ego in the form of doubt and
discouragement. Observe your resistance. That in itself weakens it. This
awareness then facilitates greater receptivity for higher truths.
Q. How can I adopt a peaceful pause when I’m worked up and ready to
explode?
A. Keep reminding yourself that it’s all a soap opera. A script
writer may want an actor to deliver his lines a certain way, but the actor may
prefer to do it in a way that feels more comfortable for him. Why follow your
ego’s script? Pause and question its validity. Perhaps your next line can be
delivered in a more effective and acceptable manner. Remember — it’s
supposed to be a melodrama. If it starts to feel too serious, re-write addictive
lines into preferential throw-aways. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the
emotional passion of the play. Keep reminding yourself that our interpersonal
relationships are just parts we play on the cosmic stage of life.
Q. Like most people, I enjoy the pleasurable sensations of sex.
Does that mean I have to give it up?
A. Enjoy it by all means, but don’t depend on sex to bring you
happiness. Notice how fleeting feelings of pleasurable sensations are followed
by longer periods of frustration and discontent. Sensing the impermanent nature
of sensory pleasure, we know we must soon search around for another source of
artificial stimulation. Sensory addictions are like starving junk-yard dogs,
requiring constant feeding to keep them happy.
Q. As a businessman, I can’t see the sense in being indifferent to
results, especially at the cash register. What’s wrong with being successful?
A. Enjoy your successes by all means. Be as active as you like in
your business, but do it to earn a living, never for gratification of the ego.
When you choose a preference instead of an ego-driven demand
for a particular result, you’ll find yourself enjoying your business dealings
free of stress and anxiety.
Q. I do feel anxious about the outcome of certain business deals, but
that’s normal isn’t it?
A. So called success makes ego-man feel good, while so
called failure achieves the opposite. A focused concern on results is
what keeps you anxious, but with preferential programming, you don’t need
exterior successes to make you feel good. You can enjoy your work and your life,
regardless of results. Anxiety is in the mind, but so is peace. Which will you
choose?
Q. Why aren’t more people adopting these methods of mind renewal?
A. No one can be convinced of anything new until they inwardly
perceive that it is true. We can read, reflect and talk about it all we like,
but the final proof is in living it — internal witness. Then we don’t just
believe, we know it to be true. Once we know, really know, even if everyone on
earth disagreed, we would still stand secure upon our foundation of internal
illumination.
Q. I’m unhappy with my family. They’re inconsiderate. They don’t
appreciate me.
How can I change them?
A. Change yourself!
Q. No matter how hard I try to forget the past, I can’t. What’s the
key?
A. Stop trying. If you’re struggling to escape past pain
you’re using the wrong set of keys. Pushing painful memories away by
suppression or denial is the ego’s way of doing things. Just allow the
thoughts to be and observe them without emotional involvement, just like
watching a movie. The ego’s demand that you should feel pain from past events
is nullified as soon as you become aware of the habitual patterns of your
thinking. A raised awareness facilitates an understanding of the lessons
provided by past events, and a peaceful acceptance will follow.
Q. Isn’t it logical to assume everyone would prefer to be happy
rather than sad?
Surely there’s nothing new about having a preference.
A. There’s nothing unusual about preferring one thing over
another, but having preferences apply to every part of your life is
new. And learning to convert every demand to a preference requires persistent
application of the Method of Choice and its preferential programming
techniques. We learn to accept that in the game of life we win some and lose
some, and so we adopt the attitude of, “let’s see how the game flows if
we play it this way rather than the way we’ve always played it.”
Q. I suffer from regular bouts of depression. Can this course help me?
A. Medical science can treat the effects of depression but can do
little about its main cause — your thoughts. Successful treatment of
depression includes an understanding of the thoughts that cause depression. The Method
of Choice offers a hands-on practical means of working on negative feelings
and identifying the programming that created the feelings. With practice,
thoughts that result in depression can be worked on and corrected by replacing
addictive programming with preferential programming.
Q. What’s the difference between thinking about yourself and
self-observation?
A. Self-observation involves passive detachment. Emotion is put to
one side. You judge nothing as good or bad, pleasurable or painful. You simply
watch the show without emotional involvement. Observe the addictive programming
and let the fears, depression or passion pass through you without personalizing
it — without owning it. Thinking about yourself and owning your emotions is
like wrestling with a tiger. Self-observation is like quietly watching the tiger
walk on by.
Q. I’m attracted to a person who doesn’t care for me. How can I
relieve my inner pain?
A. Love is not attraction or craving. It may well be your craving
is not based on the actual qualities of the person, but rather on your
idealistic perception of them. They may represent something your ego says you “need,”
such as strength, security or affection. So your attraction is a need in you
which you mistakenly assume is a reality to be found in them. Look within
yourself for these qualities. Once developed and nurtured, you’re free to open
yourself to a love on which there are no strings attached.
Q. My life seems to be one of constant rejection, pain and frustration.
How can I change it all around?
A. The greatest tool you have at your disposal, is the empowerment
you feel when you really know and understand that you are free to choose the
thoughts you put in your mind, and by changing these thoughts, you can change
your experience of life. It’s not people or outside events that cause our
pain, but rather the thoughts and attitudes we have towards people and the world
outside of us. There are two ways of looking at the world, and each requires a
totally different believe system.
Q. How can I help others wake up? What’s my responsibility?
A. Never take responsibility for another’s mistaken view of
reality. All are at different levels of development and each is receptive only
to the lessons they are ready to hear and to learn. If another person refuses to
learn the lesson presented, that’s their responsibility. You may wish to pass
on what knowledge you’ve learned, but remember this; never give more than they
can understand and appreciate at their current level.
Q. It’s difficult to drop the mask. How can I stop pretending to be
someone I’m not?
A. Put it down to maturity. A child might imitate Luke
Skywalker or Batman, but at maturity he finds no pleasure in
artificial roles. He yearns for his real self. With greater awareness and
growing dissatisfaction, the awakened man drops the role of dynamic-man,
intellectual-man, or famous-man. As he loses interest in acting out
these shallow roles, his inner frustrations begin to fade. Try to see that you
are acting. This awareness causes the masks, and indeed the whole facade that is
the fortress, to slowly crumble and fall away.
Q. What do you say to the pessimist who believes mankind will never
change his ways?
A. Accept him as he is, shake the dust from your sandals and move
on. A pessimist refuses to face the facts of mankind’s delusions, including
his own, because he secretly fears there is no cure.
Q. How can I feel safe in what appears to be a very unsafe world?
A. Notice how constant negative media exposure has conditioned us
as a society, to accept an unsafe world as being a relative truth. Every
newspaper and television report in every country in the world reinforces the
collective ego’s belief that we live in an unsafe world. Repetitive negative
suggestion has made us a hypnotized society, with a collective insecure ego
placing fear in the only place it can become real — our minds. How can you
feel safe? Wake yourself from your ego-induced trance and regain your freedom of
choice — choose to think for yourself.
Q. Some of the lyrics to songs carry negative messages. Can these be
considered as subtle suggestions that influence our subconscious?
A. If reinforced by repetitious playing as they usually are, yes,
they can have a subtle influence. Consider some of the restrictive messages we
innocently allow the subconscious to take on board when we examine the lines of
a few of our old favorites.
“I can’t live if living is without you”
“You are the sunshine of my life”
“You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you”
“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world”
This is just a small sample of the mindless negativity we innocently submit
ourselves to on a daily basis via addictive programming in musical lyrics.
Q. My Priority Need Profile points to strong ego needs for regular
social contact. My involvement with social activities springs from a love of
people, wanting to help them and be with them. but lately I feel burdened by all
these various activities yet still feel a need to press on. Why?
A. Your frenetic involvement is your ego’s way of distracting
you from your inner uncertainty. You simply don’t know what else to do with
yourself. Step back from the social merry-go-round and ask yourself if you
really want this hectic kind of life. An honest answer may produce a tremendous
feeling of relief. By ridding yourself of such distractions, you will be free to
accept yourself as you are, rather than depend on the approval of others to make
you feel good about yourself. Driven demands of an insecure ego are a far cry
from a genuine interest in other people.
Q. How can I find my true self?
A. When you look behind the mask of everything you imagine and
believe yourself to be, there you will be.
Q. Can any real good come out of emotional pain and suffering?
A. It can if you don’t allow addictive programming to dull your
awareness. You can begin by understanding that everything that happens to you
— no matter how painful — can be turned into a positive learning experience,
if you would but raise your level of awareness and seek the pearl of wisdom each
experience presents. Live and learn as the saying goes.
Q. I resent what my partner did to me. I wont forgive and forget,
because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. Holding a grudge stops me
from making the same mistakes doesn’t it?
A. Quite the opposite. Resentments cause you to place your focus
on the past rather than on the present. You’ll make the same mistakes over and
over again if you allow yourself to be distracted by your painful memories.
You’ll continue to stumble into potholes because you’re thinking about your
past problems instead of focusing on where you’re going in the present. Focus
on pain and you create even more pain. Forget the past and start being happy
today. Drop the thought and you’ll end the pain. Freedom from the burden of
resentment is always just one dropped thought away.
Q. Why is so hard just to be myself?
A. Most of us spend a great deal of energy keeping our “act”
together. We assume that if others like us with our masks on, they’ll stop
liking us if we take the mask off. Our ego, because of it’s basic sense of
insecurity, constantly prompts us to keep the act together, making it impossible
for us to change. When you learn to understand your true nature and accept your
true self, you’ll find that how other people respond to you has absolutely no
influence over your own sense of mental and emotional well-being.
Q. Why do some people push themselves so hard?
A. It has to do with an imaginary picture they have of themselves.
For instance the Driver identifies himself as a go-getter, an achiever,
someone who gets things done. Having set himself up as being such a person, his
ego frantically seeks to bring about exterior results to prove it. But whatever
the results, it can never be proved, because this is not his real self at all
— it’s only an artificial, imaginary mental picture. He can instantly break
this driven, habitual pattern by dropping the false image he has of himself. An
awakened man is not emotionally enmeshed with imaginings and exterior tasks. He
handles his business life with ease and efficiency. Nothing bothers him,
especially the addictive demands of his false ego self.
Q. But if you don’t set goals, how can your life have any sense of
direction?
A. Maybe the purpose of life is something entirely different from
what you think it is. Have you ever considered that possibility? Let’s say you
set a goal. Many anxious moments follow as you struggle to achieve this goal.
Let’s say you succeed. Result? A slap on the back, and a temporary “feel
good” high. But what if you fail? The ego labels you a failure. Result? A
“feel bad” low. No problems — the ego runs the program, “If at
first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” You then mechanically repeat
the same stressful process all over again. Ask yourself, “Does this make
any sense? Is this the way to find happiness?”
Q. But you just can’t drift through life—can you?
A. Who says you can’t? Where is it written? Perhaps a confused
society will say you can’t. A society riddled with stress, anxiety, high-blood
pressure, heart attacks and suicide. This is the society that says you must, you
should, and you ought to try to do better! A hypnotized society, mechanically
obeying the deluded suggestions of a fearful, insecure collective ego.
Q. Why does my partner always have to disagree with my point of view?
A. Perception. Each person perceives the world of things and
people through their ego’s filter of personal or relative truth. When they
disagree they’re comparing what’s being said with all their old attitudinal
programming and belief systems. If it doesn’t match their perception of
what’s right and wrong, a closed and conditioned mind will simply shut it out.
The opposite to a disagreeable attitude is an understanding attitude. An
understanding attitude involves putting aside old demands of the ego and its
past programming and look for the new in what is being said. If a person’s
limited view from their fortress is under threat, a disagreeable or
argumentative stance is adopted as a form of defense. The ego’s insecurity
compels us to argue, whereas a view from higher awareness allows us to feel
comfortable with opposing views. We can listen non-judgementally and accept
other opinions with tolerance and understanding. Always look for the truth in
what others are saying rather than what you are disagreeing with. Aim for a
meeting of minds, rather than look for any perceived weakness in what the other
is saying.
Q. Is there a purpose to life?
A. Investigate all varieties of spiritual and philosophical
teachings, and although they may vary in interpretation and form, all agree on
one essential truth; Man’s task in life is to awaken to his true identity.
Full stop!
Q. What steps can I take to speed my self-acceptance and advancement?
A. (1) Constantly remind yourself that nothing stands in your way
but your own conditioned mind. (2) Observe yourself with the intention of seeing
yourself as you actually are, not as you imagine yourself to be. (3) Read books
by authors who have themselves found the way. (4) Dare to think in new ways. (5)
Learn to calm the mind by practicing meditation. (6) Apply these mind-renewing
principles into your daily life and use every event as a source of
self-understanding and self-development. Always remember that while changes in
exterior behavior is commendable, they are not the same thing as inner
transformation. (7) Approach all of the above with a sincere positive intent.
Q. After a very messy divorce, the person who vowed to
love me forever now hates me.
What went wrong?
A. When our “needs” are satisfied by another, we feel “love”—
and when they are not satisfied, but actually denied, we are likely to feel
hate. What we call love in relationships such as these, is really the ego’s
illusion of love, which covers up the hate we feel about our own sense of
incompleteness. Take away the band-aid that covered up our wounded self, and out
pours the hate we hoped our “love” would suppress.
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