Last Wednesday I interviewed my mentor, legendary business coach and internet entrepreneur Mike Jay, for my community.
It was an odd experience – something close to the peak experience of my career, actually – but the call didn’t start out well. I was very nervous and Mike was a bit rambly – it was 10pm in the Philippines where he is based, and and he’d had a long day. However, we both warmed up after a while and it was still vintage Mike Jay (how bad can it get? The man is a genius). Download the complete recording of the 1-hour call here.
The most important conversation occurred for me in the last 10 minutes of the call. This conversation rocked my world, and has caused some deep changes in myself and in how I relate to my clients.
I have extracted this 8 min. audio segment here:
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or else download here.
Here is what I got (a very personal report, with some embarrassing moments…)
What I realized (as Mike states on the audio) is that the idea that everyone wants to become financially independent (by creating, say, a passive-income internet business, which is still the fastest way IMHO), this idea is a Blank Slate Operating System (or BSOS) idea. [BSOS is our leading cultural paradigm or value system, see the Resource section for details]
That this idea is one of — if not the – fundamental ideas of BSOS: the every “red-blooded American” wants, can, and should become a successful entrepreneur and enjoy a “life of ease”. Some 19th century authors even talk about it as a moral imperative, that earning money equates to goodness.
That this idea is the cause of the fact that we are one of most entrepreneurial nations in the world (from our very roots e.g. Alexis de Tocqueville); but also (arguably) the most neurotic — Mother Teresa: “The United States is the most lonely country in the world” [I believe I got this from Gerald Jampolski who knew her well but need to verify the quote].
My personal obsession with this idea originating from Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s Your money or your life – that I read 20 years ago – a very powerful book that I review in the article What is Lifestyle Design.
That this has been a major thread through my life, culminating in the current moment in which I have created one, maybe two training programs designed to do just that (create financial independence for people).
Not realizing that this was really just my trip… ouch.
Part of my confusion in this stemming from the fact that almost anyone if asked directly “do you want to be financially independent” will answer Yes… but if they answer Yes but aren’t actually willing to make the sacrifices, work the long hours and single-focus that such a thing entails in most cases, at God knows what sacrifices to one’s family life and soul-condition, well then the real (authentic) answer is actually No (they would actually rather be with their family, tend their garden or paint… and that is Ok!)…
And more importantly that this doesn’t entirely fit for me either: that being an entrepreneur (and especially an internet entrepreneur) is it’s own trip, requiring committment and sacrifices that I myself am ambivalent about, resulting in a great deal of sub-optimization happening over here… as I have a pretty strong personality component (motivational system) that wants nothing more than to float around all day in what I call “play of consciousness” (particularly with regards to transformational work in community, which is my second major life thread)… and/or maybe even like many of my friends in the integral movement who are working so hard and diligently to evolve the world to some higher level of consciousness… which is a wonderful thing, but lacking the key perspective that they are doing this because it turns them on (versus some great historical destiny of which they are the appointed guardians, that is going to save the world… take anything that Karl Marx has written and do a global search-and-replace of a few key terms and you will have a perfect textbook of Evolutionary Enlightenment)…
My point not being to knock evolutionary enlightenment or any other integrally-inspired modality, my point is that without the understanding of human differences and motivational profiles that FLOS brings, and the deep conditioning that all of us are subject to, this is all just talk, “all sound and fury signifying nothing”…
A humbling day for me with regards to Lifestyle Design School and The WordPress Workshop, but in a good way, because I can proceed with more caution and self-awareness, both in my work with others and myself.
So, a question for you:
Do you want to become financially independent? (Share your thoughts below!)
Mike had replied to this earlier with this sweet little story (read this, it’s good):
Mike says:
…i was standing there on the curb of the street panting, after having run a few miles in the bogota streets a little more than 10 years ago…the sun was coming up and it was quiet with the exception of some whistling that was around the corner from me…
bogota was rich with smells of breakfast and the day was dawning beautifully…
i was still panting…
“buenos dias…”
as i turned around to catch a glimpse of this happy diminutive character pushing a broom in the street…
“buenos dias senor” i said back with a bad american accent…
“como estas” said the older man, whose face was wrinkled and brown but effervescent…
I said good, do you speak english…?
“a little senor…
I said, “cuantos tiempo haces esta trabajo…(as he was a street sweeper)
“como mas o menos, trenta anos, senor”
“that’s a long time to sweep streets…
si senor, i have swept almost all the streets in Bogota it seems, he said in spanish…
I tried to say in spanish, have you tried any other kinds of work…
he said, no, he loved sweeping streets, the air was always the freshest in the mornings…and even when it rained…it was still good to be out in the fresh air…
—-we talked awhile, me in my bad spanish and him in his bad english…and i learned a lesson that day…
happiness, productivity, performance, even success have nothing to do with money, or accomplishment noted by others, or for that matter…greatness…
happiness came from being, doing, having and becoming engaged in what brings you to contribute in such a way that you feel a part of world, and in his small way, the enlightened street sweeper taught me more about happiness and contentment, and the joy of making a contribution, however small…than all the gurus I had ever met…
Nope. I don’t want to be financially independent, I love doing things with my day that I can SEE and touch, and especially where I can see and speak to the people I’ve helped. I get bored VERY quickly when I don’t have enough to do. I would fill my time with volunteer work if I did end up financially independent, and my needs and issues in life would be just the same as they are now, plus I’d have all the guilt of having to choose how much I shared and didn’t share of my wealth. So someone else can just as well have the money. I also just am not sure I believe in passive income. I feel that we in the US already get far more than our share of resources for the amount of real value we create, and I want to be part of a sustainable economy.
I am between jobs, building a new home by hand, and enjoying a break, but will be job hunting seriously in the next month to three months. In my ideal world, I would like to find work that allowed me to work about 35-40 hours a week, to have my taxes and reasonably priced health benefits for my whole family managed by an “employer” to reduce my paperwork burden. My job would be flexible enough to allow me to take time off easily to attend appointments and activities as needed for my children or myself, making up those hours either by working some hours from home, or being able to work at odd hours if I had a week where I had a sick child, etc. I would have 2 weeks of paid vacation a year, one around Christmas time and one in spring or summer to take a trip with my family, and paid time off for major holidays. It would be work that involved being of direct assistance to people, or where the product of my work was visible and the use to people clear. It would be working with people I trusted and liked towards goals I believed in, and I would speak with and see the people I was working with regularly, either in person or by teleconference. The pay would be enough to pay my bills and have a little bit if fun money to go out to dinner or buy gifts for my children or pay a car repair bill – about $15-20 an hour, which is far less than my most recent job, and far more than most of the jobs I think I would love pay. It will be a really fun project to see what I end up doing next.
Hey Tori, this is inspiring, thanks for the clarity of your vision!
xo Marc
Yes, I do want to be financially independent and I’m willing to do what I need to do to get there. I have a deep understanding that I have to be living my passion to do it, because doing anything else for money just sucks my soul dry. I know, I’ve tried it, having been in corporate America for over 20 years. I am living and teaching my passion – law of attraction. This is my answer to those eternal questions: what would you do if you could do anything in the world? and what would you do even if you never got paid for it? Right now, I’m not getting paid much at all. But I believe there is a need for what I teach, and I love what I do and I think my passion will carry me. I know it takes work, but when you love what you do, it just doesn’t feel like ‘work’.
I am using law of attraction to bring me the lifestyle I want with EASE and JOY. I refuse to affirm that it takes sacrifice and long, arduous hours. Sacrifice is not part of my belief system. The hours I work can be long, but I am almost always in a flow state when I’m working on my biz and I love every minute. Truly. It is obvious to me that you can only be successful doing work you love. The price to our souls is just too high to do anything else. And you are right: we, as people, can’t and won’t sustain an activity that is painful or unrewarding. So why even try? You have to find your joy, your connection, your passion so that you are filled with energy and enthusiasm for developing your biz. And doing your biz should feel like play.
Lorna
The Law of Attraction Teacher
Good for you, Lorna!
But let me share with you — if I may — a perspective from Flawless Living… something that I have found to be true for me in developing a successful internet business.
“Creative tension”, defined as the gap betweeen what we have and what we want, is a good thing to the extent that it pushes us forward, drives us to create, reach out, get feedback, adjust our offer. It should not be so high that we regress, nor so low that we become complacent or blind to the feedback that we are getting. Or else keep on plowing ahead alone, when what may be required is collaboration
It’s probable that this tension is genetically programmed into us.
I am not saying that this tension cannot become, at a certain level of development or maturation, a joyful thing. But for most of us it’s a long journey to get there… a long journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding and compassion (for ourselves and for others)
Very often when we feel we “want” something — even undeniably positive things, like ease and joy — we are actually in some kind of ego-battle around that that is actually coming from a lack of self-acceptance. And this ego-battle actually sub-optimizes the system (takes away both happiness and success)
Add to that that often what we “want” is really just conditioning.. we are SO conditioned that it can be very difficult to tell sometimes what is authentic and what is not. We receive, I forget the number, something like 12,000 advertising impressions a day telling us what we should want.. and even from the personal development industry and the internet! Not all of these messages are helful
I myself am just coming to terms with these ideas, sensing dimly some powerful truths there, but not always sure where to go with them. How much of what I want (or think I want) is pure conditioning, how much is passion expressing itself, how much is just ego-battle…
If any of this speaks to you, you may want to consider doing the flawless living workshop in a few weeks, http://integralwealthsystem.com/ws
What you are calling ‘creative tension’, Abraham (the primary teacher of law of attraction) calls ‘contrast’. Contrast is the space between what we have and what we want. There is always contrast, because desire is endless. It is through desire that the Universe expands. No matter how much we have, we will always desire something – whether it is peace of mind, or serenity, or just more stuff. Genetically programmed, maybe, but everything has it (desire) – the Universe, to expand; cells – to thrive and reproduce; plants – to grow or go dormant as they are doing now. Yes, a lot of what we want is imposed on us by our culture, but we acquire things and we learn that we didn’t really want that. It is a process . . . Wanting, acquiring, desiring are all spiritual qualities, too. But our passion is what sustains us when we think about it. We feel joy, we feel happy. When we think of wanting or having stuff imposed by others, usually we feel a lessening of anxiety – they won’t hate me because my breath will be fresh, or they won’t talk about my dandruff on my shoulders, or if I’m driving the ‘right car’, I’ll be accepted. There is not much joy in any of this – only a hope to be found OK. Real passion is easy to determine – joy is the measure.
Yes, well-said!
You know, Lorna, I resonate with what you are saying, and I appreciate your passion, which will stand you in good stead. As a successful internet entrepreneur, however, trying to teach the skills to others, it worries me when you say things like “doing your biz should feel like play”, “I refuse to work long hours”, “sacrifice is not part of my belief system”, while at the same time saying you are not making much money. Do you know for a fact that it’s possible to run a business that always (or mostly) feels like play, that never requires “grunge work” or working outside of your passion, that won’t sometimes require painful choices? How long are you willing to work in this paradigm exclusively (LOA), and are you willing to take on developmental paradigms and success models that have actually been proven to be effective for wealth generation (if that is your goal)?
I don’t know the answer Lorna, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t throw out a little challenge. Wealth generation, and particularly passive income generation, is a very complex thing, I would not advise to go into with a single prspective on things.
And on a different but related topic, running a coaching business has its own skills and success requirements… quite a few people teach this type of thing (besides Mike Jay of course who is one of the nations highest paid coaches), my personal favorite is David Steele and http://www.buildingyouridealpractice.com/ (has integrity and great content). Also see the interview with George Kao in the member’s area (about using social media to develop a coaching practice).
I DO KNOW for a fact that it is possible to run a business that feels mostly like play. I’ve done it before and I know many others who do it. I don’t say it never requires grunge work, but I say when you love your business, you do that work and all else required with some measure of joy because you see the end result and resonate with the joy there. Remember the quote by Mother Teresa? She said, paraphrasing – “I would never go to an anti-war rally, but I will attend your peace rally.” Here is another example, an old story: Three guys are doing the same task. Each is asked what he is doing. The first one says he is breaking rocks. The second one says he is working hard to support his family. The third one says he is building a cathedral. The event could look exactly the same – what is different is the energy in it and the intention for it. Grunge work may be required, but it doesn’t feel like grunge. Choices may have to be made, but they don’t have to be painful. Anticipating ‘painful’ choices is to expect lack or disagreement. Why go there? Why not anticipate joyful, aligned choices?
I believe strongly that law of attraction is the highest and most spiritual teaching that we have access to today, and it resonates with me deeply in my whole being as the truth. So, no, I’m not likely to give it up. As far as success teachings go, I’ve seen folks do lots of hard work and beat themselves up and push and push and force themselves thru ‘willpower’ to do things with which they are not aligned, and I’ve seen suffering and pain with very little success happen. Success teachings leave out alignment with a higher energy. With all due respect, I haven’t seen much success come from success principles.
Why am I not making a lot of money yet? Your question was implied – and I’m fine with it. In law of attraction, we learn we get what we believe and expect, so we have to look at our beliefs. I’ve looked deeply at mine and done a lot of work to release the ones that don’t serve me. The short answer is that I have had (putting it in the past tense) some fears about visibility, (ironic since I’m putting this all out here) and fears about losing my friends if I’m too successful. I also recently realized that in some ways I’m living my grandmother’s life, and I realized I can love her without recreating her experiences in my life. That was a big revelation for me and cleared up a number of issues I was looking at.
I work on my biz very long hours, 24-7, just about. But it is joy. And I say it is not ‘work’ because it is what I’d be doing even if there was no chance of making a living from it. There is a learning curve, yes, but I see it as just something I choose to do – not something that is struggle, difficult, complicated, or any of those intimidating ideas. I choose to reframe things in terms of possibility, not limits. This is my cathedral.
I’m enjoying our exchange here; I hope you are, too. I will look at the link you provided.
Something else. I am giving you a fair amount of unsolicited advice (coaching) so I hope you will forgive me… please understand I am just coaching myself (isn’t all feedback ultimately about oneself). So much of our “wanting” language — even the cleanest language and said with the best of intentions — actually is hiding a lack of self-acceptance, an internal battle fought around feeling that the current reality is actually NOT ok, or that things ought to be different… and this is real profound ego work to start to look at this, as this problem that can often be solved through enlarging of one’s perspective on things, and also through dialoue with others and understanding that we all suffer in our unique ways. As you say, LOA addresses this, but not in a way that I find fully satisfactory, and I am beginning to think that understanding this is actual THE key to happiness, success and wealth generation.
I appreciate you being willing to engage at this level – I love the discussion and the expansion that takes place in me from that. You and I come from different paradigms; yours resonates with you and makes me cringe a bit, mine resonates with me and doesn’t fit well with you . . .
I disagree that ‘so much of our ‘wanting’ language is hiding a lack of self acceptance . . . and this is real profound ego work to start to look at this’. My paradigm says wanting is fine, and it is just a matter of (gently and easily) refining what you want. At a core level, I reject language of violence (‘an internal battle’) and language of suffering (‘we all suffer in our unique ways’). Perhaps we don’t all suffer. Why should those who suffer project that on all?
I believe and KNOW that we get what we believe and what we reinforce in our minds. Why would I want to embrace a paradigm of battle, of suffering, that talks about hard work and sacrifice and tells me my ego needs work? To me, this sounds like judeo-christian guilt in new age terms. That is what I left. Law of attraction is about aligning with Spirit within you (first) and then following your heart. It also has a VERY STRONG foundation of “I’m OK, just as I am ( and deserving of my good.)” Which doesn’t mean we are finished developing – we say, I’m OK and I’m choosing to grow further in this way. We let it be a choice, we let it be easy. The key word here is ‘let’. When you decide, intend, choose, or believe – whichever word you like – the experience you want to have, then you experience that. It absolutely works. Consistently. This is the observer effect in quantum physics. And while there is some disagreement among some physicists, many are finding the observer effect has vast implications for us on the macro level. One example is the fact that all medical experiments have to be double-blind to eliminate the effects of intention and expectation.
Lorna,
you are very passionate and very eloquent, and this is attractive. Thanks for sharing!
I want to add a few things to a very rich conversation.
But first a disclaimer to what I am saying below — if it works for you Lorna, I am very happy for you, and pariticularly with the passion and eloquence you are demonstrating… obviously you have found something that aligns well with you. Also you are clearly in your passion point around this and in flow.. which is the goal of the exericise is it not
I personally have some difficulty relating to the reality of a system that promises an end to human suffering.. and particularly through a change of attitude. Happiness (and success) have so many components and is so such a richly layered pursuit. For me to attempt to do anything like what LOA proposes (change my attitude and get happy) occurs to me as an exercise in frustration… and therefore not strategic for me in terms of the goals I am seeking (happiness and success).
Which is not to say that it cannot work, or that it does not have value. Indeed I think of it as a high spiritual calling.. just perhaps not for everyone.
Which is also not to say that we must go back to previous paradigms, that are even worse… sacrifice and suffering and so forth. That is not what I am proposing.
And secondly.. I used to think of myself as someone with a very strong internal compass, who knew exactly what he wanted. Well, I was wrong. I was too conditioned to really know what I wanted deeply, and have been unraveling that.
Which goes back to my previous comment. “wanting”, “desire”, “intending”, “joyful” etc… of course these are inherently healthy and beneficial things, but much more multi-layered and complex than I am getting from Esther Hicks. For example — for some people getting drunk may be “joyful” (at least until the next morning), while others may have a pure desire for an expensive car, one that they cannot immediately afford.. should they buy it anyway?
Perhaps I am over-complicating things… but that is how my mind works
And again none of this to depreciate Esther Hicks or what she says. Just perhaps adding an additional layer of complexity / discernment… for those who are attracted to such things
.
OMG, I wrote a two page answer to you and seem to have lost it. I will try to hit the highlights again here:
Marc, if you “changed” your attitude with the goal of feeling more joy, and you felt only frustration, you obviously did not do something right. Yet, if you changed your attitude and actually felt more joy, you would have succeeded, and it would have worked for you. My suggestion is that perhaps you did not actually change your attitude, or perhaps you were going for too big a change in too short a time. I would suggest staying open to the possibility that it works. Using law of attraction effectively has a lot of nuance in it.
In your second paragraph, you refer to law of attraction as a system that promises to end all human suffering. Marc, I’ve read almost everything every written about law of attraction and I’ve never seen this mentioned, much less promised, anywhere, by any author, ever. Law of attraction says you can have a better life, you can have more control over your life and you can have less struggle and less suffering, but there is no promise to end all suffering. Law of attraction can reduce PERSONAL suffering, but this is a teaching about free will and choice. There are some people who are choosing war and dissention, and they are free to choose that for as long as they want. And because we ALL have free will, and because law of attraction is a LAW of nature, they attract people of the same consciousness who are willing to experience the same thing. My PERSONAL use of law of attraction can, however, keep peace in my little world and can keep ME out of harm’s way. I cannot use law of attraction to manipulate another – not even toward peace.
In regard to the person who thinks getting drunk is joyful . . .This is a person who is not in touch with his greater self. Nothing that has repercussions in the morning is truly joyful. Real happiness does not include self destruction. Getting drunk, i.e. oblivious to all self responsibility, is the behavior of someone who wants to escape, not have fun. Getting drunk often has elements of remorse, embarrassment, shame, lack of integrity and regret. Not joyful, any of them. If a person is choosing oblivion or hiding behind behavior for which he takes no responsibility, I would ask him what is he really wanting. Usually, he would be wanting something like acceptance, or to be part of the group, or to ease a pain, or to release stress. There are ways to accomplish all those feelings and maintain self respect, too. Nobody ‘wants’ to feel the things I listed above, so we would work on how to access the feelings he really wants – self respect, self esteem, belonging, confidence, etc. Then, presumably, the need for self-destruction would stop.
In regard to thinking of yourself as a person who knows what he wants . . . Our wants and desires change all the time, and law of attraction does not respond to the current desire, but to the dominant one. They may not be the same. Here is a sort of long example.
Suppose there is a college student in his 20’s who wants a red Ferrari. His friend has one and he wants one, too. That’s cultural conditioning. Suppose also that his friend was born with a trust fund, and he is working his way through school with the goal of filling his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. But he wants this red Ferrari! I would ask him to start to look at the experience he expects to have or the feelings he wants from having this Ferrari. He might want excitement, speed, to look good to the opposite sex, to look cool, confidence. And he might also want to distinguish himself in school and be a doctor. So that person, if he were consciously using law of attraction, would distill down what he really wants and then look for ways to have those feelings without buying the car. Maybe the excitement can be found just by hanging out with the friend or riding in his friend’s car. Maybe he can find ways to look cool that are compatible with being able to pay his tuition.
Or suppose our potential M.D., looks into his heart and finds he really has a passion for a red Ferrari. Suppose he looks in his heart and finds that the Ferrari has captured his imagination in a way that medicine never can. He might make the choice to work around them; perhaps become a Ferrari mechanic, or maybe he chooses to learn something that he can consult about in terms of Ferraris. He might find that he has a whole new career ahead of him that he never imagined. On reflection he might find that he only went into medicine to please his parents and there was no joy there for him. There are a lot of ways he could meet his passion for driving a Ferrari without having to own one.
So maybe this guy doesn’t get his Ferrari in his 20s and now he’s in his 40’s. He still wants the Ferrari. Yet he has small children, a dog and a mortgage. His biggest desire is to spend time with his kids and he still wants this red Ferrari. When he looks in his heart he finds that the Ferrari is incompatible with spending time with his children, it’s incompatible with taking the dong to the park and it’s incompatible with paying his mortgage. But he realizes that Ferrari will give him a feeling of escape, or a feeling of youth, or a feeling of excitement that he’s longing for. So he finds ways to bring those feelings into his life without the Ferrari. He may take a vacation by himself for the escape. To feel younger he might join a gym or dye his hair and mustache LOL, or find other more creative ways to meet his desired feelings at while at the same time meeting his desire to feel good about himself while meeting his responsibilities of paying the mortgage and spending time with his children.
My apologies for the length of this.
hi Marc and Lorna,
I am really in this myself both personally now and as a healer, generally through my work with clients – I do not actually want to think myself out of depression or suffering i realise
because i believe from my experience that, however much i may want to resist the experience of the pain of ‘depression’ or ‘feeling low’, or ‘entering the barren winter of my heart’: it is exactly that, a valuable season, a cycle of my soul that has much to teach me, and gives me a rich vein of experience to share/offer to others who may need it on their own journey
Life is suffering is one of the four noble truths of buddhism for a reason (doesn’t mean everyone will subscribe to that outlook/belief as we can see here)
“The reason it is a noble truth is because of wot suffering inspires in us in response to the experience and witness of it: seeing suffering in ourselves and others, we resolve to comprehend it, meet it and bring it to an end” (quoting George kinder in Money Maturity)
So for me there is gr8 value in going into the darkness, for it births the light, but our western culture is afraid of the dark and not much tolerance for raw pain- we are conditioned to want a pill for everything and to make it go away
I need to value the dark depths and reconcile myself to the reality that I am both dark and light, suffering and joy, there is much to learn from the multivariate paradox that makes up me (and indeed, you, and many others who undertake the journey)
My biggest challenge is to accept me as I am, I am constantly wanting to be someone I’m not, probably cos i dont value me enough… dont get me wrong, i know with my head and my intellectual/spiritual understanding that i have great value, that there is the equivalent of acres of diamonds within me, yet i am undoing/working through accessing that ‘knowing’ at a felt sense, feeling level (i do not mean emotional, i mean deep feeling and i perceive a difference)
now i could call this difficulty or challenge i have to reconcile me to me ‘my ego work’ or i can call it play: doesnt make much difference to the reality of it as it plays out for me over this past year or two, genuine, full all-embracing self acceptance is not automatic, for me (and quite a few others i notice) and no matter how much i work with LOA or various other methods, i am still here, or with this, still developing a different relationship to it, i no longer need to beat myself up over it….(as i do that enuf anyway
but its still part of the melange, the mix that i experience flowing thru me..
LOA is limited for me, in my humble experience (i have been familiar with it for 3 years now) because it doesn’t help me with my genuine deep blocks: wot I have incarnated to undo – my karmic baggage- it does however help me improve my attitude toward myself, unless I use it in my native intra-punitive way that us high acceptance INFP’s like to do (habit you know, takes some practice and attention to change:)
We INFP’s are the self flagellators of the old catholic church re-incarnated…
FLOS tells me I don’t have to change,
and that is a gr8 gift to one who has spent the vast majority of her adult life “working on herself”
oh the sigh of relief, i dont actually have to change; even if it is intrinsic to my nature to be self critical or ‘intra-punitive’ or whatever you want to call it, and sure i can search for other names for this but it is still what it is, and calling it by a different name might sound better, but i suspect i will still find a neater more unconscious way to do the same ole shit with myself, cos thats wot i do…
and apparently it may well be a waste of my energy to try and change it
But wen it comes to this particular aspect of my type/intrinsic nature
It (not changing) doesn’t sound like gr8 news
i mean who doesnt want to change something thats obviously crap to experience?
on the other hand,
i’ve spend years, alot of energy, time and money
trying to do exactly that- change myself
at last a system, an operating system no less, comes along that says i dont have to change- spend my energy in design, instead:
designing my unique path/way to create both success and happiness
(it has been my pattern to be happy at the expense of ‘success’ even defining success at its most minimal: getting ones overheads taken care of in the general run of living ones purpose…)
So I am currently experiencing a little stuckness-
stuck,
Seeing the futility of wishing I were different
But not yet having worked out how to utilise this intra-punitive thing in my design to actually benefit me
of course, it could be an illusion that i am stuck,
i could simply need to rest a while
before the insight will come unexpectedly and alight on my shoulder whilst i am washing up or picking up poo after the local horses…
in the past, i havent always allowed myself to rest when i needed to….
even here Abrahams stuff actually helps, cos it tells me to stop resisting,
stop resisting being stuck,
theres a value in it, if it causes me to rest for example
at the same time
i recognise i often resist resting cos it will mean allowing feelings thats i’m reluctant to feel to the surface- after all isn’t that the drive behind alot of the futile busyness of our western culture? keep us so busy we dont have to feel alot of the stuff that makes us uncomfortable
yet as we used to say in the rebirthing community:
what you dont feel, you cant heal
what i cant/wont feel, remains separate; gets projected onto other…
has me, instead of me having it….
I agree that depression and sadness can teach us a lot about ourselves, but there is no need to wallow in it – and many do. There is a time to learn and let it go. Reliving the past and rehashing the past – which is where emotional pain comes from – is not LIVING in the NOW. It is not moving forward. Suffering can bring compassion, and if we are lucky, it brings understanding. In no way do I advocate ignoring or squashing our feelings. On the contrary, law of attraction invites you to examine all your feelings, understand which thoughts or beliefs bring them on, and then CHOOSE the feelings and experiences you want to have. You are free to continue choosing suffering if you want. But it is a choice. And you can choose joy if you want it.
If you feel you have to “work on yourself,” you will always have to do that just because you have decided that you’ll never be OK as you are. As long as you are “trying to change yourself” and feeling dissatisfied, you will find more to be dissatisfied abut. That is how law of attraction works – you get what you focus on. You are determined to look and find problems to correct, even if there are none there. That is your paradigm. And that becomes the reality that you experience.
You seem to have a defeatist attitude – “that’s wot i do . . .” You say calling it “ego work” or “play” doesn’t make a difference. Although it does! And you identify as a self-flagellator and a victim of past karma. You are using law of attraction to bring you consistently what you already believe. Let yourself open to a new paradigm and you can have a different experience.
Law of attraction is not so much about changing yourself – it is a spiritual teaching that affirms that you are OK just as you are – law of attraction is about making new choices and then moving yourself, emotionally, into them. You seem to have made up your mind not to make a new choice – and to suffer. You’ve convinced yourself of your lack of power and of the hopelessness of your situation.
So you are experiencing ‘stuck’. If you are searching for success, can you remember a time you were successful at something? Can you remember a time you were genuinely happy AND successful? Maybe in grade school, maybe something small only you knew about – like having a plant grow from a seed you planted. Wallow in that feeling and you will bring more success to you. And without having to make do with minimal needs met. That doesn’t sound like happiness or success, to me.
If you find that you are willing to shift, I am available for personal coaching. I can guide you to find a new level of joy.
Lorna, wow, you are quite a writer
. I like your blog btw.
I feel that I am coming to the end of the usefulness of this conversation for me, but what I have realized for myself, something you have helped me clarify (and also something that Rachel is referring to above) is that self-understanding and self-acceptance is at the core of all work of personal transformation, and also ultimately of wealth generation, if that is one’s goal. That is the message of FLOS (Flawless Living Operating System). THat is also perhaps the message of LOA, if you say so I will take your word for it, but I experience LOA as just another system providing a toolkit for how to change oneself. I want to be happy and successful without changing myself! All that you propose occurs to me as way too much work — albeit yes, a wonderful idea and perhaps actionable by some, and inspiring for many (even those who don’t entirely align like me and Rachel), at the limit even a high spiritual calling. Even Jesus said “Everything is possible for him who believes” [Mark 9:23], so LOA reflects a deep human truth.
And secondly.. Rachel seems to have discovered some profound truths about herself in the last few years, she sounds quite ok to me (immersed in her natural developmental process), I would hesitate to label her attitude defeatist, or anything other than perfect…
An observation of a quality, “defeatist”, is not a judgment. It is perfect for her and she is ‘perfect’ having arrived at that point in her growth. That is her expression of who she is and where she is. It is only a problem if it is no longer serving her, giving her the experience she wants. Not having known Rachel other than in these posts, I have no idea what her journey has been. I can only observe what I see, read and feel here.
We are all perfect exactly where, and as, we are. And if it is not where we want to be, giving us the experiences we want to be having – like self-respect and self-esteem, we can choose to change and grow.
Lorna,
i am bemused as to what makes you think i am reliving and rehashing the past? i mean how would you know? I am in fact being incredibly present and making a profound shift akin to having trust in the unseen and the invisible as i cross the ‘abyss’ of my own personal and ancestral ‘darkness’
and although i confess above to experiencing a feeling of ‘stuckness’ i also very clearly leave plenty of space to ‘allow’ that i may indeed not be stuck at all, i may need to rest, or allow myself to feel feelings that havent been easy for me to feel before now
further how dare you assert that i have a ‘defeatist’ attitude?
even Abraham’s teaching refers to the fact that no-one can know what is a downstream thought for anyone else: and what you seem to fail to recognise is that my new found acceptance of who i am, my new found recognition of myself is way more downstream than the previous ‘resisting’ thoughts, which were in fact ‘pretending’ i was something i wasnt and the effort they required to keep them in place definately put them in the upstream …
and actually, for your information calling it ‘ego work’ or ‘play’ may make a difference for YOU but in my meaning making system, work and play are intimately entwined and therefore inseperable, so much so that my work IS play and my play is often work, so my point remains, it is wot it is, and YOU can call it what you want
thank you for the offer of coaching, but i do not feel a lifting of my heart at the prospect: you have displayed admirably that you can teach LOA exactly as Hicks teaches it; but i have not witnessed you share much from your own experience – i dont need another Hicks in my life- i have three very adequate, eloquent and useful books on my shelf…
wot i am interested in is people/teachers who are willing to stand up and share their journey, from their own experience, from their own vulnerability:
for me the power of self disclosure, particularly when it involves someone making themselves vulnerable thru sharing that they are human and experience the WHOLE range and gamut of human feelings, contexts, happenings and thoughts
is what gives me juice, inspires me on my own journey and engenders a sense of empathy
and in case you didnt recognise, my sharing in the previous post was me making myself vulnerable
fyi what you interpret as me identifying myself as a victim of past karma,is for me accepting i am a survivor; big difference
i am choosing to accept the pain i feel/experience, rather than resist it
i know from past experience it will shift and i can choose to think kind thoughts about myself to aid/speed that shift: from my experience of life, pain is inevitable, suffering is not…
Rachel
I came to the opinion that you are reliving and rehashing the past, and that you have a defeatist attitude, by carefully reading what you wrote, and on re-reading it, my opinion stands. The languaging you use, quoting you here: “I do not actually want to think myself out of depression or suffering . . .,” ”life is suffering is one of the four noble truths,” “I am constantly wanting to be somebody that I’m not,” “my genuine deep blocks: wot I have incarnated to undo – my karmic baggage,” “unless I use it in my native intra-punitive way,” “We INFP’s are the self flagellators.” And in this email, “as i cross the ‘abyss’ of my own personal and ancestral ‘darkness’ . . .”
Not much of this is hopeful or positive. In nearly every sentence, you affirm (and reinforce) some degree of misery and suffering. That tells me you have not chosen to let it go yet. And while you said that you are allowing yourself to feel feelings you haven’t before and to accept that maybe you just need rest, I observe that you don’t give nearly the space to anticipating your positive change as you do to accepting, and resigning yourself, to your conviction that life is suffering. Your language to describe suffering is poetic and clever; your language to describe your anticipated growth is flat. That tells me volumes about what you think and believe, and about what you are attracting, and therefore about what your future experience is likely to be.
I grant that I may not have been as tactful as you may have liked, and for that I apologize. You may have moved up the emotional scale considerably from where you were. I can’t tell; I don’t know you and don’t know anything about you. I can only tell where you are and where you are, with all due respect, does not seem to be bringing you much joy. I have become very sensitive to energies since I’ve been teaching law of attraction and everything about your post left me feeling down, depressed, resigned, and feeling like I was in a space of frustratedly trying to explain or justify why this is the human condition. Nothing in my own world feels like this – these feelings were elicited in me from reading your post. That is not blame, of course, that is just recognition of a less-than-desired feeling and recognizing the origin of it.
You take umbrage at the word ‘defeatist.’ That is fine. Just don’t let the point be wasted that you are putting out a very strong vibe that you can call what ever you want. And yes, if that is what you choose, and if that ‘lifts your heart,” have at it. But nothing in your post sounded even remotely happy to me. At the end of this one, you actually mange to sound a bit more hopeful. You are ‘perfect’ as Marc pointed out, and exactly where you choose to be in your growth. My point is: don’t forget it is a choice.
I appreciate you passion in holding your position, even while I question your veracity. ‘Work’ and ‘play’, both the words themselves and the concepts we associate with them have different vibrations, even when they are the exact same experience or task, and how we think of them, and how we describe them, both to ourselves and to others, significantly affects the inner experience we have doing that task. This isn’t merely my opinion, it is findings resulting from neurological research on mood and perception.
And I want to make two points of correction: I don’t teach law of attraction ‘exactly’ as the Hicks teach it – while I am totally aligned with the principles as they teach them, my approach differs significantly in the emphasis I put on understanding how you are creating what you are currently experiencing because in understanding that, you get a handle on how to shift it and create something that you really want. It also differs in that I include other teachers of law of attraction, and readings from psychology and quantum physics, to deepen and enrich my clients’ experience. The second point is that I shared quite a bit about my personal experience above, and in fact, everything I write is based solely on my personal experience. There is a time and place to share deeper, but a blog comment box is not it. I share openly in my discussion groups, ebooks and teleclasses, all, by the way, no charge.
My journey has been long and painful, with lots of death, periods of abuse and various minor frustrations, difficulties and setbacks. I don’t dwell on it. I don’t bring it up in a conversation in a comment box with someone I don’t know. I don’t wave the martyr flag. This is for two reasons: shit happens. This is life and things happen. The point is to get over it. And I’m over the things that happened. I don’t have a need to review, repeat, remind myself and others what happened. I choose not to wallow in those feelings. The second reason, related to this is, Caroline Myss has observed that people tend to bond and relate to each other through their emotional wounds. This is stagnating to growth. I choose not to do it. I don’t want whiney, victimized, backward-looking people around me and I choose not to be one. You get what you think most about. I choose to think about what I am creating now. “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” and suffering comes from not letting go and moving forward. Here is a rhetorical question: are people only perceived as ‘sharing from their own experience’ when they are recounting pain? Is that the only time they are perceived as ‘fully human’ to you?
I ask this because, for about an hour now, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that you want to feel empathy with a teacher, you want to see their vulnerability and hear some painful self-disclosure. With all due respect, that’s just weird to me. I’m asking myself what attracts me to a great teacher. For me, it is a feeling of admiration and respect, a feeling of wanting to be like them, a quality that they have that I’d like to learn – usually someone I perceive as wise, centered and grounded, and of the highest integrity. I never look for empathy with them; I look to respect them. I guess I just trust that everyone is ‘human’ and ‘vulnerable’ – I don’t need for them to prove it to me. Again, I don’t choose to relate to people by their wounds; I much prefer to relate to their triumphs and their joys.
“I want to know can you sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide, fade or fix it”
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
I asked for teachers who share their experience and from their experience- i was not asking people to share their wounds, unless they care to do so to illustrate a learning point
I actually connect with people thru presence, theirs and mine: i dont tend to connect when i am being lectured at, which is what this begins to feel like and i am bored by being ‘told’ i am this or that in your opinion
the school of coaching i come from has taught me to respect people’s meaning making systems and to respect that THEY have the answers to their own life challenges within them, that can be surfaced thru the coaching relationship facilitating greater self awareness and insight: whilst it allows for me to call them on their shit if it seems they are bullshitting themselves with stories it also teaches me a deep respect for peoples journeys and their right to do it the way they need to do it
I care not for tact either: i was merely pointing out you are in no position to judge me on my journey or where i’m at having no idea where I’ve been or where I’m headed
I shared my original post because i was moved to share a small piece of insight around my current journey: that insight included understanding of where LOA is helpful to me in my experience of the journey thru life, and where it falls short.
contrary to what you may be picking up from my words above, i am in my own way greatly enjoying the experience of walking through Mordor: it is a necessary journey for me at this stage; something i need to do to bring forth my Purpose
I am engaging in the journey from Matter to Spirit consciously: I came from Spirit to Matter when i incarnated, and contrary to many peoples beliefs it was not just a matter of being born and finding myself fully here: it has taken me a good 40 years to get fully here, grounded, embodied, able and willing to embrace the hand i’ve been dealt. Great cause for celebration
Now I am fully here, in my body and based, i am going from Matter to Spirit (see http://www.grahamemartin.com for gr8 resources for this journey): this entails, for me consciously working up the levels (some people call these chakras) from Base to Crown: the first three levels working with the ‘outer’ material plane, the last three dealing with the ‘invisible world behind the eyes’ (spirit) as Caroline Myss refers to it, and the Heart, the bridge between the two.
At the Heart one encounters the Abyss: the heart is the bridge from the world of matter to the world of Spirit: many fall at the heart, because they didnt understand the necessity for building a strong base before they attempted to traverse the Abyss: one’s personal darkness, woundedness, limitations and blocks
all of these can be overcome with patience and due diligence, inner and outer work: this is the work of the soul: in short, thru walking thru Mordor with the clear intent to fulfil ones purpose and trust in the invisible
or we fall because we dont respect our journey and understand what it takes: if we start out crossing the Abyss on a bridge, then before we are half way across the bridge will disappear, because we are being asked to trust in the invisible, in spirit
(there are too, predators in the Psyche who would prevent us from finding our true freedom: the story of Blue Beard as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes illustrates this beautifully)
I am currently crossing the Abyss, step by precarious step: i am discovering within me resources i didnt know i had, pain, i have not been able to allow myself to feel, light and dark in equal measure, beauty and rawness, scars and compassion.
For me, it is not an overnight journey, or even over a month… it may take years, so what? it is what is is and it is a journey that must be done: it requires me to venture into the desert of the psyche and to value every drop of water i am blessed with… i care not for whether you are right and i am wrong: my only question of relevance is: what nourishes me here, in this space/place?
I am finally learning to Respect my journey
I am connecting with La Que Sabe- the One Who Knows within me
Rachel
I respect your journey and your path; more so if it actually gets you where you want to go. There is no judgment here. I am merely observing the attention, passion and intensity you bring to something you say you don’t want. I am your mirror.
Whishing you progress on your journey,
Warmly,
Lorna