Author: Gary

What is the Mitote?

The Mitote (me-toe-tay) referred to in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz is a lot like blogs on the internet. People are pouring out the thoughts in their head and filling virtual cyberspace with opinions, ideas, rants, and their personal knowledge. It is an overwhelming volume of words that other people read, form opinions about and then write words about them in their blogs. Then more people read those opinions about opinions and write their opinion.Very seldom do any of these add any real value to one’s life. Even when good writing has a chance to have an impact, the reader isn’t likely to hold their attention and awareness with it long enough to have a real impact. Their undisciplined short attention is overwhelmed against the onslaught of more information and opinions to surf.

In the same way the mitote in the mind is like those layers of opinions. It is the cacophony of voices that make up the incessant thinking in your mind. The world of your imagination is filled with opinions, information, description, rants, judgments, and victimizations.

It has developed such a momentum that when you will your self to be still long enough and step back from them, you can’t help but notice them. You will likely be surprised at how loud those voices are. And usually right after that moment of awareness where you detach from the mitote and observe it, you form an opinion, or make a statement about what you observe.

And in that moment of forming an opinion or making a descriptive statement about the mitote, you have just lost your attention to the cacophony and contributed another layer.

Spiritual Journey

One of the common misconceptions is that your spiritual journey will be filled with angelic experiences.  Blissful openings of your heart, quiet epiphanies, and overwhelming moments of unconditional love inspire us to take action steps towards our personal freedom.  The assumption is that these experiences will eventually lead to enlightenment where you can sit in the lotus position and magically float three feet above the cushion below you.

Yes these beautiful loving experiences happen.  But they are not the only experiences to happen.  Very often your spiritual journey will be one humbling experience after another.  In those humbling experiences your self importance is exposed for the bloated self image that it is. Then your beliefs about your self and your self images are pierce by awareness and crushed by truth.  You are humbled when you realize that you had believed such illusions and lies for so long in your dreaming slumber without awareness.

If you journey further you realize that any early hopes of grandeur at enlightenment and mastery turn about 180 degrees.  You discover that humble service to your fellow human being in the manner of love and compassion is the life of the enlightened

Personal Power

There is often an interest to acquire more personal power.  This approach becomes a common trap in a spiritual warrior’s path.  The desire to gather personal power is often a compensating strategy for that feeling of not being powerful enough.

When you gain personal power based in this motivation your “I’m not powerful enough” story is being fed.  Gaining personal power becomes a remedy that doesn’t address the source of the problem, and can even makes it bigger.

Turn your attention to your desires, and the fears, beliefs, and self importance that spawn them and you will have a chance to become free.

How Long Does it Take to Master The Four Agreements

One of the larger problems with this process is managing the expectations of time. We imagine some finishing point or the mind wonders, “When will I be done?”

What we are really learning is how to live our life and how to express our selves with love and acceptance in every moment. That’s not something that you finish with. Expressing your self with love and acceptance is something that you keep going with.

Motivational Seminars

Motivational Seminars

I was talking with a client who has been working on my Self Mastery course and attended a couple of my events in the past year.  He’s done a number of self help and personal development things over the years so he has some experience.    He realized that what share is very different from those Motivational Seminars.

He doesn’t really care for those motivational seminars.  He said, “What they do is sell back to you your own dream.  They do get you excited and pumped up by believing in the possibility of the dream of your life that you hope for.  You provide your own dream and all the ingredients of hope, excitement, and motivation about your own dream.  You end up paying a lot of money when you are the one providing most of the material.

Spiritual Warrior

I use to be in awe of my fellow spiritual warriors.  I had the utmost respect for them.  There are very few people who have the courage to challenge their fears, judgments, and inner demons.

Spiritual Warriors still have my utmost respect.

However I am no longer hold them in awe.

I have come to realize that all those inner demons, fears, and that great big inner judge are not real.  They do exist, but they are not real.  They are creations of your imagination and only exist in the abstract.  The only power they have is from the faith you put in them.   They have no sustaining power of their own, or are any more real than a dream you had last night.  They exist only in the abstract imagination of the mind.

What you are really facing are projections of your imagination.  When put in that perspective, you realize that your inner demons are illusions.  Then it doesn’t take as much courage as I first assumed.

I still have the utmost respect for spiritual warriors that challenge the fears, judgments, and illusions in their mind.  However I no longer see it as taking extraordinary courage.    It’s really just a matter of common sense to rid your mind of these emotional drama making illusions.

Teachings of Miguel Ruiz

These are the words of don Miguel Ruiz. He is the author of the Four Agreements and The Mastery of Love. I don’t know which book they are from. Perhaps The Voice of Knowledge. The creator of this video didn’t seem to give a reference to the work. If these aren’t his exact words, then at least this is in alignment with his message.

These are the layers of the onion to be unraveled. To be free of your identity of the body. Then to be free of your identity of the mind. Then to be free to move beyond the Soul. To be life, the force that moves through all things. That is immortality. Life everlasting.

Advice

Bad Advice

Advice often comes from the Blind. People in emotional pain reach out, to anyone, even those that don’t know how to help. Although they try to help, and intend to help, they don’t. Sometimes they just make things worse.

In a forum someone wrote:

I am very miserbale and sometimes feel like giving up. What are some things that I can do to be happy. Do you know of any websites I could use?….ANYTHING
Are you happy?What makes you happy? — Miserable

One of the bits of advice they got back was:

Think about a warm puppy. Another person suggested to forget about your self for a while and focus on helping others.

Other bits were helpful, but too often people give advice that can’t be integrated. IF this person is really miserable then it is unlikely that they will be able to focus their attention on a warm puppy. They might think about a warm puppy, but jump to the fact that they want one but don’t have one. If a person doesn’t have the skill to focus their attention where they choose, then suggesting that they focus on something positive is not just a waste of time, but setting them up for failure. This will take them on a deeper downward spiral.
If a person is drowning, do you suggest to them that they try the breast stroke?

Then if a person is drowning in emotional suffering there are many good intentions, suggestions, and advice that don’t amount to a life raft or a helping hand. If you don’t have something that you know will help, then don’t throw anything that will help them sink further.

Self Mastery

Learning Self Mastery Skills takes Time

What does it take to learn the skills to master your attention, focusing your mind, beliefs, and your emotions?   These are all skills that lead to Self Mastery

In spite of what the inner judge expects, it will take some time.   How much time would you give your self to become good at playing a musical instrument?   Perhaps a year with hard work.  Even after that you would continue to improve on those skills for years afterwards.

The skills of mastering your mind and emotions deserves that same respect of time.

If this were just the knowledge that comes from reading or memorization then that would be a different matter.  But that isn’t the case.