The final thread

I want to leave you with two pieces of advice.

The first piece of advice is don’t wait until you’re ready. You’ll never be ready. It is never a good time. I don’t care how many times you face the demons, the next one is just as scary.

Secondly, go only as fast as you can. This is an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary process. Enjoy the process. Every time you face the truth, it’s another experience of joy. Stop and appreciate it, enjoy it. Every time you heal your fear through love, you feel a little lighter and freer. Stop and enjoy it.

Feel good about the progress you’re making rather than bad about how far you have to go yet. There’s a difference there. It’s kind of like, if you keep doing it daily, tenaciously, lovingly, truthfully, open-heartedly, then it happens. It just does. We can trust it. It’s kind of like when you walk by a mirror and you see yourself, you my see you need a haircut, my hair has really grown. You didn’t notice it, but it was happening all the time. Well occasionally, you walk by a mirror and you look at yourself and say, I really am walking closer to my path. I really am living more to who I thought I was and that is a most glorious feeling! That’s not too big of an adjective to describe it either.

I’m closing this thread with one last simple quote and although it specifically addresses women, I feel it applies to all humanity.  

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her. 

– Adrienne Rich

Thank you for reading my blog. New topic coming soon.

Deathbed regrets

To live your life through programming and recycling the drama; and maybe if you’re really lucky, on your deathbed, you’ll wake-up. On your deathbed, you look at it and say, “Boy, if only I hadn’t let this person, or this career, or these obligations, or this disease, or this lifestyle, or you fill in the blank. If only I hadn’t let them rule my life.

This process that I’m talking about does take courage. It really does. It takes heroics in some cases. But the interesting thing is, is that you have courage. You have heroics in you. We all do. And ordinary people, when they’re faced with the big trial, the big challenges, the big losses, the big moral dilemmas, they find out what kind of courage they have. And it’s often through crisis and only through tragedy that we get to find that out. What I’m talking about is to realize that consciously, and drawing on it consciously. And, it does take that kind of courage. Do you know what else it takes? It takes suffering too.

The interesting thing about suffering is that it doesn’t hurt. It’s like God said in Romans 8:18, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  Sure life may include suffering, but knowing this, we can dance through it. That’s the interesting thing about suffering—when you really turn and look at it, suffering doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t even hurt.

I think great line by Herman Hesse, “…love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.” And again, what the alternative to suffering? More drama, recycling, more screwing it up and fixing it, and more neurosis.

I think of another great line from Carl Jung--Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. How’s that! That’s what they are. Legitimate suffering takes you somewhere. Suffering is pain with movement, pain with meaning and neurosis is a substitute for that. That’s why a lot of us are neurotic. But, it’s worth it.

I talk a lot about pain and suffering. I get a little tired of it myself, if you want to know the truth. And, what the other part of that is, is that there’s a lot of joy out there. You know, it can be a really great life.

When you’re moving in the direction of who you are, you realize that. You’re alive, you’re not tired, you’re not muddle-headed in the day. You don’t need a cup of coffee in the morning to wake up. In fact, you’re blown away by the amount of energy you have. You work is easier and you are blown away at how good at it you are. And, as you are unfolding yourself, you’re connecting with various parts of yourself; you’re blown away at who you are! You’re really great. What a wonderful revelation that is.

Why is it so terrifying?

When you look, you see connections. You see, I think one of the things we are doing right now is we are connecting the left and right brain. We are seeing that logic and science can only take us so far. We are reconnecting with the intuitive.

Another thing we’re doing is that we are making connects of what happened to us when we were three-years-old and how we’re acting now. That’s some people didn’t do before. We’re making connections of what we spray under our arm and the ozone layer in Antarctica. People never did this before.

We’re making connections between East and West. We could no longer look at each other to see the differences any more and so when we saw the connection, what happened? The walls came a tumbling down. And it happens in fits and sparks; but, it’s happening. And it’s exciting! It’s the responsibly that we all have.

We talk about facing the truth, and when we talk about healing fear with love, and we talk about looking at who we really are and moving step-by-step towards it; it’s exciting on one hand and on the other hand, it is terrifying. It seems like a big responsibility. We have known the feeling. We just want to go back to sleep again. It was easier then in some ways, but, we can’t. We can’t go back to sleep. And so, we face it.

I had a woman one time I was talking about this and she said, “I’m facing it. I’m facing it already, and to my left I see guillotine and to my right, I see a firing squad, and straight ahead, I see a noose.” You know what? I sympathize with that. But what’s the alternative? To stay stuck.

It's a crazy world out there!

What we have is a generation of people who are working on themselves. Have you noticed this? In unprecedented ways: in seminars, through therapy, though church, though things like this. And we have resistance to that. 

In fact, I went to a wedding some years’ ago and sat next to a woman who was in her late 60s or early 70s and we were talking a little about the wedding and she said, “I don’t get it.” She asked, “What’s going on here? Why is everybody in therapy? We didn’t need any therapy when I was a kid.” She said, “Why is everybody drugging up their childhood? Let it lay.” She asked, “What is it with these women? What do they want? Why don’t they stay home with their kids where they belong? She asked, “Who let the homosexuals out of the closet?” She then asked, “What do the animal rights people want?” She said, “Every time I look around, I see a starving kid on the television. The world’s going to hell.” And you know for her, the world is going to hell. For me, it’s going in the other direction.

Because what we are doing as a society is exactly appropriate for the observing consciousness. We’re looking at it! We are as a society conducting a fearless moral inventory and we’re drugging it up. All the humanity, all the poverty, all the problems, all of the ugliness, we are holding it up and as is the want of human beings, we’ve gone way too far. But we’re doing it and for that I think we can only be grateful.

There have been people observing for a long time. The poets, the Saints, the philosophers; this is nothing terribly new. What is new is the scope of it. What is new is that it is more of a mass consciousness; particularly in our society and other societies throughout the world. And what happens when you observe? Well, what happens when you observe is you start to see connections. And what are connections? Love. And that’s what I see as the next level of consciousness.

Check back tomorrow for some more shocking comments.

The evolution of consciousness

So of the next few minutes, let’s look at the evolution of consciousness and where we’re at as individuals and where we’re at as a society and as a species and how it all relates; to do that we need to go back to our early days. I’m talking about our very early days, like as we first borne as human beings. You know when we thing back, our evolution as humanity as been as series of awakenings. Humanity as a species has constantly woken up to new ways of using its mind. 

To look at this, let’s go back starting at the dawn of time. Now the interesting thing is about the evolution of humanity is that it recapitulates our own individual evolution, and the comparison to undifferentiated consciousness in early human beings is the infant. Infants are not self-conscience. Often when you walk an infant by a mirror they don’t look at themselves. When they go in their little diaper, they don’t worry about it. As long as their needs are being met, life is one blissful pleasant moment. And since that time that is how we lived.

Just as an infant is related to the undifferentiated, this next level of conscienceless is referred to as “dream consciousness” or “magic consciousness”; past and present and future is all melded as a infants as it does for two, three, and four-year-olds. Little kids, when they play super hero, they really think they’re flying over the tree. They really experience it that way. If you’re little daughter breaks a cookie jar and blames her doll, that’s a real experience for her. She’s not trying to get over on you with it. So that’s “dream consciousness”

Now we move to the next level of consciousness. This is when we begin to settle down into communities and begin moving from all hunters and scavengers to adding making and forming agricultural communities. 

Now, what do you have to wake up to in order to be a farmer? Time; past, present and future. You have to realize that when I plant this now, I’m going to able to harvest it nine months from now. 

Now the three and four year-olds, have really no huge concept of time. You can tell them, “We’re going to plan a Disneyland next summer.” What do they ask? “When are going to Disneyland?” The next day, what to they ask? “Are we going today?” The next day, same thing. “Are we going today?” They really don’t have a good grasp on time. It takes awhile to get that. 

But when we got time, that was quite a revelation to us. And so, we were able to build societies, and we did. We built great societies. We built societies like the Egyptian societies, Greece, and Rome. And these are societies where basically superstition ruled. If there was a flood, it was because the gods were angry. Basically we were ruled by a big soap opera in the sky. And that’s how it worked for a long time. 

Until the next level of consciousness, I’ll refer to as rational consciousness. Rational consciousness happen with Jesus came on the scene. And what we realized at this point, is we basically woke up to our left brain. We woke up to logic. We woke up to science. And we realized that the world is not ruled by superstition. 

The world is not ruled by the last virgin we sacrificed or how angry the gods are. But, that the world is ruled by natural laws; and not only that, but we can have some control over these natural laws, we can use these natural laws. And, that was quite a revelation that freed us from superstition. Now, looking at that one waking up what it allowed us to do.

First of all, we were able to develop machinery. Machinery that freed us from drudgery. We were able to develop mass communication, books. What did that do? That one single thing for the evolution of consciences? Suddenly people could see things, to hear things that happened outside of their five square miles where they grew up. 

We develop medicine which basically doubled our life span. It was 200 hundred years ago the life span was 35 and 100 years ago it was 47. Now it’s roughly double that. What does that single fact do for the evolution of consciousness? 

What do people do in the last half of their lives? Well, if they’re lucky they develop some power of observation! They teach what they learn to the younger generations. And that sped us up even more.

So we then move in to the next level of consciousness and may I say also that when I talk about the evolution of consciousness, I make it sound like it some lock step process; it’s not. 

More descriptions soon.

Overview of commitment

Step four in self-empowerment is commitment. And commitment means taking the self-empowerment process to the streets. It means actively focusing your mind on the truth at every moment or at least every moment you remember to and the more you do it, the more you remember to. It means holding your commitments up to inspection as you are living them. It means hauling your doubts up front and center to find out what they have to tell you. It means keeping your commitments alive by continuously and adjusting them to your deepening levels of self-awareness. And when you see that one isn’t alive anymore, tell the truth about it, to yourself and to others and do it lovingly. And truth that if you do that, that everybody involved is served even if you can’t see it in the short term. So, that’s self-empowerment.

Step one-  Self-awareness

Step two-  Truth

Step three-Love

Step four-  Commitment

In its simplest expression, self-empowerment is the process of moving from living your life though unconscious programming and more of your life thought conscious choice. In other words, think about it. Self-empowerment is the evolution of your own consciousness. As such, it is a journey, not a destination. Maybe a more appealing way to look at it that it is a journey where every step is a destination; a destination where you have the distinct pleasure of meeting a new part of yourself; destination where you get to stop and celebrate and rest before mustering up your strength move on.

It’s a beautiful process and it gets even more beautiful when you look around and see that it a process that doesn’t end with us. In fact, it seems that the evolution of consciousness is not only taking place within us a individuals, but it’s also taking place within humanity as a species. As a species we’re moving from unconscious programming to living more through conscious choice. It’s a most fascinating concept, the evolution of consciousness.

Let’s follow this more in the next segment.

Recaping truth and love

Let’s look at step two, truth. Truth as we’ve look at it in this series is far more than honesty and accuracy, it is a force, a force that leads us step-by-step to our own self-empowerment. Every moment life offers us an opportunity to either tell the truth or not tell the truth. To see it, all we have to do is look. If we tell the truth, we get to take another step towards our self-empowerment. If we don’t tell the truth, we get to recycle the drama which we will continue to do until we do tell the truth. We can recycle certain dramas our whole life if we are tenacious enough about staying unconscious about it. 

Why do we stay unconscious? Simple…fear. Sometimes it’s the screaming terror variety. But more often it’s simply the numb fear of someone who has spent their entire life alone and neglected in a cell; which in a very real since what we do when we live in fear. In fact, that’s our definition of fear—separation. So, fear keeps us from facing and telling the truth. 

Now how do we overcome fear? The way we overcome fear is love, step three in the path of self-empowerment. Love is connectedness. Connectedness heals separation. That’s why I say love heals fear. So, love, like truth is a force and like truth, it is a force much bigger than the everyday definition. Love heals fear. Really think about that.

When you see your connection to other people, when you love them, you are automatically more trusting and confident, less suspicious, less hostile, less fearful. When you feel connected to your work, when you love your work, it is a joy and you are a master. When you see your connection to the world at large, to the general flow of life, when you, indeed, love life, you feel safe and secure. Your life has meaning beyond yourself. When you connect to yourself, when you love yourself, you come home. To borrow from T.S. Elliott, you see the place as if for the first time. That’s step three in self-empowerment--love.

Reviewing the four steps of self-empowerment

Let’s take a quick glance back at all four steps of self-empowerment and how they fit together. The first step as you recall, is self-awareness with its two component parts: self-responsibility and the observing consciousness. Let’s look at self-responsibility. When you are self-responsible, you know, you understand to the deepest parts of yourself that nothing and nobody controls you, but you. It may seem that they do. But a big part of lives lesson is looking closely and seeing that they don’t. And that’s where the second part of self-awareness comes in, observing consciousness. 

The observing consciousness is the vantage point from which you can see your thoughts instead of be our thoughts. You can see your emotions instead of be your emotions. You can see your actions instead of be your actions. And when you see these things objectively, if you will, then you can see options as well. And when you have options, you can choose. You can move though living your life though unconsciousness programming to living your life though consciousness choice.

The self-awareness process then is seeing thought the observing consciousness and acting through self-responsibility. Those two things together make up the engine of self-empowerment. And seeing, or the observing consciousness, is inextricable tied to acting. Remember? Consciousness is optional, but once your consciousness action is mandatory. So that’s self-awareness, the first step in self-empowerment.

Check out next post for the followup.

Living your life through conscience choice

Let’s take a couple of minutes to do an exercise that will help you. Look at a commitment in your life; think of one now. Your commitment to your job, for instance, or to not have another child, to your marriage, to playing the piano, to losing 30 pounds, to making $100K/yr, to caring for your aging parents, to being a conservative, to traveling the world. 

Are you committed out of conscience choice in this moment? Is this commitment serving the truth for you? Is it taking you where you’re going right now, in this moment? If so, great! You have a commitment that is alive. If you’re not sure, great too! Because, now you get to look at it. Let’s do that right now.

This exercise will take about five minutes. And like most of the exercises we’ve done takes place mostly in your head. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a paper and pen in case you want to write your insights down.

Start by bringing into your mind a commitment that you’re not so sure about. We’re going to look at that commitment for a moment. I will ask you a series of five questions. Between each question, you have 60 seconds to look at it, to think about it, to bring the truth into consciousness. Give each question at least 60 seconds. Even if you think you know the answer already, just keep looking. Is there anything else you’re missing? On the other hand, if you need more than sixty seconds, just come back to it as you prepare to move on.

Now just relax. Empty your hands. Sit or lay back. Take a breath. Bring the commitment in question to the front of your mind. Look at it. Open yourself to really looking at the truth about it. Now follow this commitment into the future. Where does it lead? What will things look like one year from now if you keep this commitment? What will it look like five years from now? Twenty years from now? How will it look? Take at least 60 seconds and look at it. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and slowly.

Question two. How does your commitment feel?  Check out your body. When you think of your commitment, do you feel warm? Serene? Relaxed? Or do you feel stress? Fear? Anxiety? These feelings may be subtle. Take at least 60 seconds to check them out.

Question three. Imagine breaking your commitment. Do you feel a loss? A sadness? Or a liberation? Exhilaration? Or a little of both? Which is stronger? Look at it from different angles. Take at least sixty seconds.

Question four. If no one else would be affected by you decision, what would you do? This is not to say you shouldn’t think about other people, but simply that you need to get beyond other people to get in touch with yourself. So again, if no one else will be affected by your decision, what would you do? Take at least sixty seconds and look at it.

Question five. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve kept this commitment your whole life. Are you at peace with this decision? Or do you wish you had the courage and tell the truth about it and release yourself from it? Look at it from your deathbed. Take at least sixty seconds.

I hope that this exercise has brought some clarity to your decision about making one of the most important commitments of your life. Chances are, however, if it’s a particularly complex commitment or one that you are particularly ambivalent about it, chances are that you’ve just begun to look at it. Keep looking. Write about it in your journal. Talk to people you trust about it. Try therapy. Pray. If you keep looking, then you will know what to do; probably sooner than you think. Then all you have to do is do it. Use this process for all the important commitments of your life. 

So, that our look at commitment, step four in the path of self-empowerment. Remember, self-empowerment is the process of living your life your way. It’s your path back to yourself. It’s the process of not living your life through unconscious programming. It’s the process of moving from living your life through unconscious programming to living your life through conscience choice.

Consciously keeping commitments

So the goal obviously is to get up-to-date on the truth behind all of your commitments; to stop playing them out unconsciously, to regularly hold them up to light of day of consciousness, of attention and see if they’re still alive in the present moment. If they are, great! Recommit and bring them back to living breathing life. If they’re not, adjust them so that they do come alive. And if that doesn’t work, abandon them. 

If you’re not sure, well then, just look more closely and you’ll see. That’s the process. Through constant simple observation; moment by moment by moment, your commitments stay alive. They have integrity. And you know what else? You do to.

You have the integrity of somebody who is living their life their way. It shows and what power it has! People are attracted to it. Integrity is riveting. Do you know people with integrity? If you do then you know what magnetism and charisma they have. You know what I’m talking about. 

And, beyond all that stuff—integrity, keeping your commitments conscious and alive is just flat out an easier and more productive way to live. It’s less complicated. You don’t get bogged down in so many ridiculous dramas. You get out of bad situations quickly and cleanly. The situations you decide to stay in are richer and more rewarding because you’re there by choice. You’re there with your eyes open. This is the result of keeping your commitments conscious and alive through simple observation.

Closer examination of commitment

Now, when you start looking at your commitments very closely, before you make them, two results will take place. One is you’ll make fewer commitments because you’re paying more attention to them. Two is that the commitments you do make will be stronger. Why? Because as you’ll see, as you do this more and more that the only appropriate commitments are commitments based on the basic principals of life. Not commitments that based on details or outcomes.

Let me give you a couple of quick examples if what I’m talking about. This is the difference between a commitment based on a life principal and a commitment that is based on a specific outcome.

First, I promise to love you for better or for worse. Instead of I promise to love you for better or for worse, live close to your mother in Seattle, we’ll have three kids together and here’s how we’ll split the money if it doesn’t work out. Do you hear the difference between the commitment based on principal and a commitment based on a specific detail or outcome?

Here’s another one. I am committed to being of service to my customers. Instead of I am committed to coming out with two new projects over the next three months. Hear the difference?

Here’s another one. I am committed to creating value to myself and my organization. Instead of I’m commitment to being the best in my field within three years.

Now, as you read this and as you relate it to your own life, you may be noticing that we’re getting to something here and we are. And that is in fact the only things we can ever really commit to and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’ll never ever change our mind are the basic principals of life, such as self-awareness, truth and love in all of their many glorious manifestations.

In a since everything every thing else is just a detail. And the details are not just apt to change, I can guarantee you that they will. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make any plans or even set goals. Goals are great. Activate them. As long as we remember that a goal has one purpose and one purpose only and that is to lead you to your next step. One step and one step only. At that point, you look around again and see what you see. You observe, you pay attention. Do you still want it? Should you adjust it a little here? Tilt it a little there?

Now, there’s a beauty to this because in one since goals can help us keep our commitments specific, focused and tangible. They can help us work with our commitments on a daily basis. And on the other hand, they can keep our commitment alive and dynamic so they don’t calcify and turn into just another prison.

Let me sum it up. Commitments are truth in action. And remember, the truth faced courageously and told lovingly create commitments that may not take you where you thought you were going, but they will take you somewhere better—every time. You can count on it.

Blasé truth

So, the overriding commitment is to the truth, as to who you really are and another way to look at it that we want the detachment from goals or outcomes. But, we still want commitment to who we are. So, we’re looking for commitment without attachment. But commitment without attachment, commitment to the truth, commitment to your true self without attachment whatever the outcome may be and that might look like blasé and the truth is, it is. I don’t know where I’m going to be later. But I know one thing, I’ll be more of who I am in the process and that’s what matters to me. I don’t care. I am totally blasé about it, the outcome.

In the process of viewing life in from a detached vantage point you try to determine what is more true in your personal nature. To your true self as you know it at this point and as you’ve seen it through your past history and that’s the choice you take.

As we’ve seen commitments only work, if there are based on solid self-awareness. What does this mean in daily practice? It’s simple. It means thinking, attention, observation.  It means thinking long and hard before you even make a commitment; before you even think about making a commitment. It makes making commitments a serious thing. 

In other words, before you get caught up in the heat of the moment and start wanting to make a promise whether it’s to return someone’s phone call or love them forever, just stop and remind yourself of a very simple fact and that is that times change. It’s really quite a great thought. Times change. Remind yourself that life is not about painting some picture of some ideal future then spend the rest of your life trying to crowbar yourself into it. 

Life is for growth, for stretching, for exploring, for growing, for unfolding, turning toward the sun and blossoming. And you don’t know what that’s going to look like in advance. You just don’t know.

How to know which way to go

If you are viewing life from a detached vantage point as perhaps an author might writing about a third person about your viewing yourself in the third person. It would seem to me that sure, you can see all the author things available to you and which courses you may pursue, but you become so detached that they’re perhaps could be a problem with saying, well, in a 100 years or 200 years what does it all matter?

I have these three choices and take either one of these three options and at this point I can determine which of the three options are better. Each will lead down a different road and what’s if for me to say which of the three roads I should take? Each one is an adventure, so why should I worry about it at all at this point. So then you become fall back into a fatalist type attitude towards things. So sure, you can see these choices. They may appear very clear to you or you come very detached from it, but then you have sort of blasé attitude towards things.

Let me just tell you how I see what I just described. When I see roads diverge and I don’t know which ones which to to take, my goal, if you will, is to take the one that is most truly me. So my overriding goal (also, I don’t have a five year goal for instance). I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years except one thing. I know in five years, I’ll be more Sheila Stewart than I am right now. I don’t know where that’s going to take me. So in some ways we need to detach from hard fast goals, because goals can stop us from letting ourselves unfold. And it can stop us from letting a new depth of self-awareness show us what’s really true.

So what do you do when you don't know what to do?

If you viewing life from a detached vantage point as perhaps an author might writing about a third person about your viewing yourself in the third person. It would seem to me that sure you can see all the author things available to you and which courses you may pursue, but you become so detached that they’re perhaps could be a problem with saying, well, in a 100 years or 200 years what does it all matter? 

Let's say that I have these three choices and take either one of these three options and at this point I can't determine which of the three options are better. Each will lead down a different road and what’s if for me to say which of the three roads I should take? Each one is an adventure, so why should I worry about it at all at this point. So then you begin to fall back into a fatalist type attitude towards things. So sure, you can see these choices. They may appear very clear to you or you come very detached from it, but then you have sort of blasé attitude towards things.

Let me just tell you how I see what I just described. When I see roads diverge and I don’t know which ones which, my goal, if you will, is to take the one that is most truly me. So my overriding goal (also, I don’t have a five year goal for instance). I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years except one thing. I know in five years, I’ll be more Sheila Stewart than I am right now. I don’t know where that’s going to take me. So in some ways we need to detach from hard fast goals, because goals can stop us from letting ourselves unfold. And it can stop us from letting a new depth of self-awareness show us what’s really true.

A further point is that when you follow the path of self-awareness and you follow the path of self-empowerment, it may not get you where you thought you were going, but it will get you someplace better.

Commitments do change

Some common concerns and observations about commitments:

Probably the reason we take issue with the word commitment in our society is because we equate it with “no change”. Sometimes it seems like when I talk people I’ve known look like they actually reject commitment, but they are probably more committed in many ways than people I know who do not make changes and appear to be very commitment oriented. This is such a different perspective. And I think what it means is we must release ourselves from some grand plan and grand scheme for our lives. And again, stop trying to change ourselves and mold ourselves into what we think we ought to be and just keep our commitment to the truth whatever it may be. And the truth will lead you what is right for you and it may not look like anything where you think you are going.

A lot of concerns is the fear of the unknown. They are a lot of things I’d like to commit to and say okay I don’t like my job; I want out of it, but I’m in a situation where financially I have someone to support and so on and so forth. Okay I’m going to go by the truth. I’m going to go by what I really want to do in life and what’s going to give me self-fulfillment and all those things, but I want a guarantee that I do that and I pursue it the fullest that I’m going to be okay and not out on the street in a year because I thought that was there to take care of me. So how you do get past that fear?

If you want a guarantee I’ll give it to you. Follow the truth and you’ll be okay. I guarantee it. If it doesn’t work, I’ll give you your money back. You know, there are a lot of things we can doubt in this world. We can doubt whether or not the comma goes inside outside the quotation marks. We can doubt sacrum, but never doubt the power of truth and love. It always works every time; leading saints agree.

I want address fear again because I think sometimes can be very much afraid of change if we look at the entire picture at one time and you want change about so quickly in your life, if you begin to look at it and break it down to a step-by-step process of you as an individual can handle. Some people can handle a lot of change quickly. They have that element of courage already. Others can’t, and if you break it down to a step-by-step process that fits your own individual needs it doesn’t have to happen overnight; simply inch by inch.

Sex in the road

Okay, I've been on a little break, but I did a video blog this week.
Enjoy!

Dried up and hollow committments

So how do we extricate ourselves? Well, there are a couple of ways to do it. One way is to, first of all, commit in your own mind to what you know the new truth to be. On those dark nights when you’re wondering about it, when your fears are engulfing you, remind yourself of why you are doing it. Remind yourself of the truth. Remind yourself that you’re moving in the direction of being more who you are.

Next, tell the truth to the other person. Tell the truth in the since that, if you were lying to them, cop to it. If you weren’t lying to them, say that you know that when I promised this, I meant it. I was kidding myself as much as I was kidding you.

I can’t do this anymore. That’s what we do when we tell the truth. I can’t do this anymore. The other thing we do when we tell the truth is bring them in on it. Don’t go in with some final verdict. If you’re having trouble with your marriage, ask. Let them know that you’re feeling like the commitment is gone. You’re feeling like the love’s gone, what do you think? Instead of saying, “I want a divorce, I’m out of here.” When you go in with the final decision then there’s no negotiating, there’s no room to move.

You find when you go in and involve other people in the truth or involve other people in the decision is that you have an outcome of what is better than expected. That’s the interesting thing about the truth.

The truth will not always lead you where you think you’re going. But the good news is, it will lead you somewhere better.

Breaking commitment lovingly and consciously

As you can see, it really doesn’t pay to ignore a commitment you realize is no longer true for you. The only appropriate choice when you realize that is to extricate yourself from that commitment, to break it. 

Now, I realize that there’s a serious problem with this, and that is commitments generally involve other people, and let’s face it, what looks like pursuing your self-awareness and your own truth for your life to yourself can look to other people like flakiness or worse yet, down right betrayal. 

Nobody said this was going to be easy. But take heart, ultimately, if you really following your truth and your truth is based on self-awareness and you’re telling the truth lovingly then everyone around you will benefit. It may not look like it to you at the time and it may not look like it to them at the time. But that will be the outcome. 

Think about it and you’ll see that it’s true. In the long, run staying with the commitment that is dry and hollow causes far more pain for everyone involved than breaking it consciously and lovingly ever could. But still that’s not to say that it will ever be easy.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about specific ways to apply consciousness in your life

Outcome #3

That’s outcome #1 and outcome #2. Not too great, but either of them are far superior than outcome #3

Here’s Outcome #3

You’re a strong person. A particularly strong person; self-disciplined. You know life is a struggle. It’s suppose to be, and one of the things that makes it worse is all these people in this world who can’t hunker down and deal with it. They’re never satisfied. Sure your job is tough, but you have a family to support, you have commitments to keep, you can gut it out. Your dad did. His dad did. Besides, beginning a high school teacher wouldn’t be such a day at the beach either. 

So that’s how you think about all this. Those are your judgments about it. And you hold on to your judgments like a bulldog. You are like a dedicator in your own mind. No descending thoughts will be heard. And, they’re not. And you just keep on trudging; doing, as you put it, the best you can. And slowly, you don’t even really notice it, but you begin to wither. You begin to deaden, but what fortitude you have! You never give up! You’re like an old dog with a bone. And even though you hardly notice anymore, the years are rolling along too. Like old man river.

And you also without noticing are just getting sicker or number or maybe drunker. And if you’re really, really lucky you’ll live long enough to retire. 

So that’s outcome #3.

Outcome #2

Here is it. You slowly, steadily, move from merely disliking your job to hating your job. Every flaw takes on gargantuas Technicolor proportions. You start seeing all of the evidence of your industry is corrupt; that your company can’t be trusted; that your boss is out to get you. You start seeing all the people around you as being frauds and sell-outs. Brick by brick the walls go up. Only this time, you’re doing the building; busy as a bee. People start persecuting you, or at least, that’s how you see it. And it seems that you’re constantly broiled in some conflict or other. It’s getting harder and harder for your bosses and coworkers to support you.

Every night you go home with a new story with your spouse and family. They eat it up. They can’t believe the jerks you work with. They can’t believe what you have to go through. And they fuel your fire.

Now, at this point, if your company is at least semi-conscience this is about the time you get kicked out for your insufferable negativity. More likely, however, you’re boss and co-workers adjust themselves to you; the poor unwitting things. 

And you, you with the grim determination of a brick layer continue to separate yourself. Day after day, after day, after week, after month, goes by. And one day, after you’ve managed to work yourself into an uncontrollable froth, you create some wild and unconscious drama and storm out in a blaze of self-righteousness. 

Well, at least you got what you needed. You have unnecessarily poisoned yourself and number of perfectly nice people in the process, but at least you’re out. Now you can be a high school teacher.

That’s outcome #1 and outcome #2. Not too great, but either of them are far superior than outcome #3.

Outcome #3 tomorrow.

Outcome #1

You used to be good at your job, but lately, you don’t know. You just can’t seem to concentrate. The work you had to do just really doesn’t interest you. People come at you with problems and crisis and you try to get excited, but it’s a act. And at some level, people always know when it’s an act. And you have that sick feeling that you’re not fooling anybody. 

You’re distracted for hours at a time. Procrastinating on work that is important. You tell yourself, you’ll get caught up this weekend. But when the weekend comes you stare at your briefcase. You can’t even bring yourself to get near it. And it stares back all weekend long. You don’t know what’s wrong with you. You have no energy. Nothing excites you all you want to do is sleep. You go to the doctors, but they find nothing. 

At work, thinks just get worse. Eventually, it become quite obvious that it’s be a long time since you’ve come up with a good idea. In fact, what you’ve become more know for are your mistakes and generally messing up everything you touch. Brick by brick the walls are going up.

You’re bosses talk to you, give you action plans and warnings. Your co-workers begin to distance themselves. This is how it always happens you to you. You tell yourself, you’ve never been able to exceed in anything. You’ve be worthless along. It amazing that you’ve able to fool these people this long. By now, you’ve lost all hope, all caring, you can’t even bring yourself to try. Let the enviable happen, you think to yourself. The sooner, the better. And it does. You’re fired. And carried out by some poor perplexed manager for feeling vaguely guilty for having failed to motive you.

Well, cheer up. It’s over! Now, you can be a high school teacher. At least, maybe after a few years of good therapy. That’s outcome number #1.

Tomorrow, we'll look at another outcome to this scenario.

Life is full of compromises

Follow this post as a setup to the different outcomes we may see here. Over the next three days, we'll exam each of them. It may feel weird, but just hang with me here.

Let’s say, you don’t like your job, but you can’t bring yourself to leave it. You’re a manager in a hard driving company, you do it well, everybody likes you, but over the past year or so, you’ve come to the realization that all you really want to do is teach high school. The mere thought of it excites you. You daydream about it. You’ve always wanted to teach. And, hey; you’ve been around the block a few times with jobs. You know yourself a little better now and at this point you don’t have many doubts that teaching is exactly where you ought to be. Now, this realization is turning out to be a big problem for you. In fact, you wish you could just shake it from your mind.

There’s nothing wrong with your job. You do it well. It’s secure; your prospects are good. Besides, you’ve made commitments. It’s hard you know? You’re making good money. Certainly a whole lot more than you’d make if you started over as a high school teacher. And truth be told, you’re kind of use to that money. And you’re family is kind of use to that money. And you kind of need it to keep the monthly beast fed.

Why can’t you just relax and leave well enough alone? Life if full of compromises, maybe you should have been a high school teacher, but not you’re 20 years into your career and it’s way too late to be thinking about that now. So, just be an adult and forget about it. 

Well, you can forget about it, or at least try. Just don’t look at it anymore. That’s always an option when you have a commitment that you begin to realize that it’s no longer serving you, but you’re not willing to break it. 

Just forget about it. Go unconscious, again. If you choose this option, one of three things will happen:

Outcome #1 I'll discuss tomorrow.

What happens if your doubts are stronger than your commitment?

Today we are looking at dynamic opposites of the commitment. We’re going to talk what if maybe, just maybe that your doubts are stronger than your commitment. Then what happens?

So that’s all well and good. But what happens when you have doubt about a commitment and when you look at it, you see that your doubts are stronger than your commitment? That your commitment isn’t alive for you, and further, you don’t really want it to be. What do you do then? 

Well, what you do then is begin the process of breaking your commitment. I hear you gasp! But, it happens! And sometimes it ought to happen. Whether it’s a job, a career, a friendship, a marriage, sometimes, yes, sometimes the truth is best served for all concerned if the commitment ends.

This thought, this very thought scares us. It scares us because we try to build our lives on commitments. They are the foundation under our feet, so we want to think of the them as being unshakable. 

But they are shakable. And appropriately enough, we can’t expect to lead increasingly conscious empowered lives if we are forever bound in commitments that we made we were at a lesser level of consciousness. Why that would be almost as bad as spending your life in a career you hate just because you decided to major in when you were seventeen. Positively unthinkable! Except it happens everyday.

We do find ourselves entwined in commitments that no longer sever us. Let’s not pretend that this is not true or that is it somehow legitimate. Because if we do that, then we are not able to approach the whole situation consciously. And you know what that means, if we can’t approach it consciously then we have to approach it unconsciously.

You know what I mean. It’s the way the world works. If we’re not allowed to do what we have to do overtly, we’ll do it covertly. We’ll bring on a crisis from the sidelines. We’ll force the commitment to end. All the while looking like a mere victim of circumstances, even strangely enough to ourselves. All because, once again, we refuse to face the truth consciously; or we’re afraid to be the one to tell it, just so we don’t have to take responsibility. Just so we don’t have to be bad or wrong. 

Tomorrow, I will give you an example of what I’m talking about.

Fantasy land again, easier, but no less valuable

Let’s say, just between you and me about your fantasy about the sweet young thing wasn’t just entirely demolished? You know what I mean? What do you do then? You know what do to then—you look at it! That’s what we always do. And you see that your fantasy got you in touch with something you needed to see.

For instance, maybe your fantasy showed you that you’re a little board in your sex life. That’s could be a new avenue of self-awareness for you. That’s new level of truth that you  know about yourself now. Now, what do you do with it? 

What do you do when you’re in an alive committed relationship and you learn something new about yourself? Well, if you want it to remain an alive committed relationship, you share what you learned about your partner. And so, you go to your partner and you confide that you’d like a little more excitement in the bedroom. 

Now, this may not be easy to do, but remember, you understand the power of truth. You understand that sometimes takes courage and have courage, and you believe that if you tell the truth lovingly, things always works out for the best. Remind yourself of this. And, once you do it, once you face your partner, once you tell the truth, a couple of things might happen.

Chances are good that you mate feels the exact same way. He or she, too, has noticed that you’ve gotten into a rut and now that the truth has been told, you can look at it together and do something with it; resulting, quite possibility in a whole new level of excitement and intimacy in your relationship.

Or maybe you’ll find out that your partner feels differently than you do. Maybe they’re perfectly satisfied. Maybe they’re not willing to go as far as you’d like. What do you do then? Well, you look at that—together. And thought the power of truth and love, you come to an understanding, a compromise. You’re a little dissatisfied here; they’re a little dissatisfied there; and both of you a perfectly satisfied with the whole. See what I mean? 

You’re quite clear that compromises you’re making are acceptable and on balance and you have a wonderful thing going. This is the process, this is how commitments stay alive; not by ignoring doubts, not by hiding from them, but by bringing them up quickly and courageously and through truth and love, actually using them to take you a step closer to yourself. 

It’s a paradox. Doubts, viewed consciously are what actually keep your commitments dynamic and growing. Doubts, viewed consciously are what actually keep your commitments from becoming splintered and fractured.

Tomorrow we will look at dynamic opposite of the commitment. We’re going to talk what if maybe, just maybe that your doubts are stronger than your commitment. Then what happens?