Common Sense Wisdom Based in the Four Agreements
A personal development program or Spiritual Teacher doesn’t empower individuals. No program or person can “empower” someone. People already have extraordinary personal power. It’s just that people typically expend their extraordinary power on ordinary activities and limiting fear based beliefs.
A Teacher doesn’t empower you. A Teacher or process assists you in clearing away the fears, illusions, and beliefs that have trapped your personal power. Thereby making it free for you to use.
In the beginning was the word.
Shortly there after came misinterpretation, assumptions, and misunderstandings.
Then came the chaos.
Beyond the Opinions of Right and Wrong is Heaven
Judgment Day Is When You Judge Your Self For the Last Time
In the Mystery schools around the world there are similar themes of a Judgment Day. Often it is interpreted to mean the end of the world. Perhaps it means something else.
In Egypt the story is told in hieroglyphics of the pharaoh on the day of his last judgment. He stands before the 40 judges and his heart is weighed against a feather on a balance scale. If his heart is lighter than a feather he may pass through and enjoy the paradise of the next life with Isis and Osiris.
In the Christian Mystery school there is a similar view of being born again. After being born again the world will be completely brand new. If we studied the mythologies around the world we would find similar themes. So often this theme is interpreted as meaning that the body has to die in order to live in the “next world”. So often this is a mistake. Rumi writes of this world when he says, “There is a field out beyond right and wrong. I will meet you there.”
The Last Judgment is when you judge yourself for the last time. From that moment forward your life begins brand new. You will no longer see yourself or the world the same way. You no longer look to see if someone is right or wrong, or to be right or wrong. Your mind is once again child like in its purity. The way it was before it learned to judge itself with ideas of being bad or good.
Childlike does not mean being innocent. We have garnered too much experience for that. It does mean that we are wise. Wisdom is in that field beyond the knowledge of right and wrong. In that field the heart flourishes because it is not busy with being right or afraid of being wrong. Wisdom is the awareness that love and compassion are the only righteous answers. Wisdom is the field where Rumi stands waiting for us.
On the practical side, when we go to deal with our inner voice of judgment, we find that it can be a tricky force. To stop our judgments we must be come aware of them in order to change them. As soon as we notice ourselves in judgment, we tell ourselves we shouldn’t do that. And what do you know, our inner judge has judged us for our judgments. The inner judge then just might go further and judge ourselves for judging ourselves for our judgments. The inner judge, as ridiculous as it is, can stack these up until we forget how it started.
My favored approach to dealing with this judge of nonsensical logic is to laugh. Seriously, laugh. Try it. When you really see the silly nature of the inner judge, it’s hard not to. Don’t take your judgments, or yourself, too seriously. Instead, be child like and laugh. This will bring you closer to being born into a brand new world. Like a child, without the weight of judgments your heart will be lighter than a feather.
If you are not choosing your emotions, then what is?
Free Will and the Personal Power to Choose
Is there such a thing as freewill? Do each of us have freewill? First, let’s clarify it. Free will: the ability to consciously choose. Just for fun, let’s conduct a quick inventory and see what happens. Did you choose to have breakfast? Did you choose to take a shower this morning? Or, did this stuff just kind of happen automatically, and later in the morning you found yourself at work? Ever done that, get to work and didn’t really remember driving there? Did you consciously choose the way to work or did you take the same route you always take? Do you remember consciously choosing every lane change?
If you exercised choice in even just some of these then you must have it. If you didn’t, maybe you have it, but just aren’t using it.
Now it gets a little tougher. How do you feel about your day? Has something got you upset or stressed? Are you joyful and grateful all the time? Take a quick inventory of the emotional states you have gone through today, or even this week. Did you consciously choose any of them? Did you choose all of them? Be ruthlessly honest with yourself here. If you were cut off on the freeway by one of those unconscious drivers, how did you react? Did you choose your reaction? Could you have chosen or was your reaction already there before there was a chance to choose? There are a lot of questions, but take your time.
Now lets try something different. Think about what you are most grateful for in your life. Think about it long and hard. Now, how does it make you feel? Allow yourself to focus on this and as you do let the gratitude grow in your body. Settle on this for a few minutes and you may find yourself in a place of great gratitude, a wonderful emotion.
If you did the exercise you found that you have conscious choice over your emotions. So you do have free will with your emotions. Now the really tough questions. How often do you consciously choose how you feel? Do remember to choose when someone is pushing your buttons? Do you choose while driving your car, at the grocery store, with your family? If you did the exercise you know an emotional state is just a choice.
One of my biggest heroes is Nelson Mandela. Why? After decades in prison, when he was released, he embraced his captors. He had compassion for them. His will was so strong that he won over any emotional reaction. When we exercise our freewill we make it strong, just like a muscle. If he can do it after a near life time in prison, for sure, we can do it in our relatively comfortable world.
There is much in the world that we can not change. But we can choose how we feel. If we have difficulty changing our emotional state, it may be we have let the muscles of our freewill grow weak through neglect.
One other question to ponder: If we aren’t choosing how we feel, then whom are we leaving that choice up to?
We search and yearn for something to fulfill us but what is it?
It was years ago, and I was sitting with a couple warriors and a man who was attending a power journey. He seemed to be a very happy man and had his life very well in order. He was quite wealthy and contributed his money to different organizations and charities. He enjoyed doing so.
He sat about and wondered what he should do with his life. He seemingly had it all. At the time I did not have the awareness and clarity that I do now. At the time I saw a very nice man doing very well, very generous, and that had his life in a nice order. What I didn’t notice was that he was still looking. He was wondering what he should do, or create. What I didn’t notice was that he was not satisfied and fulfilled.
If I were to see that man today, I know what I would recommend to him. I would suggest to him that he express and experience all the love from his heart. When you experience all your love coming out of your heart you stop searching. You have found what you are looking for.
The greatest gift you will ever experience is the Love you express.
Power of Prayer to Strengthen Your Connection to Life
Growing up a in a Catholic family and being highly skeptical I didn’t appreciate prayer much. To say that I rebelled would be more accurate. What I found with prayer is that the power is not in the words. The words are just a mechanism with which we can direct our attention and intent.
Prayer can be a powerful force. It is so because we put our intent behind it. We focus our attention, our emotion, and our personal intent in the direction of our desire. Our prayers are also in the direction of Love. This aligns us with the natural intent of Life and furthers the strength of our Word. Miguel Ruiz was generous to provide us with an intent for our lives that helped guide us to our integrity and love. He took that expression of Life and put it into words as cleanly as he possibly could. He called it the Circle of Fire prayer. The depth of meaning and way of life that it has guided me to has been revealed over years.
Today, is the day of the Lord, when the Divinity returns to us.
When living our Free Will, and with all the Power of our Spirit,
We decide to live our lives in free Communion with God,
With no Expectations.
We will live our lives with Gratitude, Love, Loyalty and Justice,
Beginning with Ourselves,
And continuing with our Brothers and Sisters.
We will respect all Creations as the Symbol or our Love communion
With the One who Created us.
To the Eternal Happiness of Humanity.
from Prayers, a book by don Miguel Ruiz
A Toltec is an Artist, their expression their paint, Life thier canvas.
Becoming, and Being a Life Coach or Spiritual Teacher
The word “teacher” has seemed quite inadequate to me for some time now. So I have taken up finding a better term for what I do. As a starting point I looked at the definitions of Teacher.
In many spiritual traditions the term Master is used. In the definition of master it refers to a person’s skill and proficiency as an artist or craftsman. There is also a reference to a religious leader. (I’ll refrain from using this one as religion often clouds things up by putting rules and definition boxes on the Divine.)
So, here is my dilemma. I don’t like either of them as so many assumptions are already projected on to such titles.. I could use term teacher or master just to simplify things for people, they certainly apply. But as I will explain further on, I feel they fall short of the clarity that I am seeking. I could also use Nagual, Shaman, Witness, or Dream Master. In my world of understanding, these are far more accurate, but to people who do not share my experience, and therefore perception, these terms are probably vague and confusing. For some people, the usage is more confusing than clarifying. And this is an attempt to keep it simple, and in terms of common sense. I often use Life Coach these days because it is more acceptable to people although it doesn’t really say what I do.
Let me share an interpretation of the term, master and we might see how other people might not see it this way. A master is someone who has proficiency and skillfulness of their art or craft. Well, in one point of view, we are creators of our life, or dream as referred to in Toltec mythology. Let’s say that our life dream is made up of everything that we think, feel, say, interpret, and do. It is highly unlikely that anyone has created a life identical to our own. In the world of billions of creators, each person’s life dream is an original work. It is also not likely that someone could duplicate such a life, even given all sorts of insights. If you consider identical twins, they don’t create their life the same way. Not even close.
So each of us is a creator of a personal dream, a work of art in the expression of our life and each creation could never be duplicated. I’d say that this is a kind of mastery, a creation that we may not have previously considered to be a work of art.
Now people may disagree and say that it’s not really mastery if it is filled with fear, judgments, jealousy, and all kinds of drama. We’ll I think that there are some great examples of artistry that are filled with drama. Take for example a play by Shakespeare. Macbeth is filled with drama and it is an incredible work of art. Any performer in one of those roles, that plays it well, is certainly a master. Now, what if people have been playing these dramatic roles so well for so long that they are completely immersed in the character? They do this in their life as their personality?
They are so practiced at playing the role of fear, judgments, anger, sadness, etc., that they do it every day without any second guessing. This is truly an amazing feat. We might call mastery in the way they dream their life. Completely unaware of choice, but a mastery just the same. If we look at how people live their lives and see it as roles they practice and play every day, then we see that everyone is a master. Their life dream is different from every other person. Some people are masters of drama, fear, anger, jealousy while some are masters of love, happiness and fun. But most people have some combination of the two. Whatever their life dream, it is an original work of art, a masterpiece. Therefore, everyone is a master. Perhaps it is clearer that what these words mean to me are completely different from what they mean to other people.
About that word “teacher”
Teacher: one who teaches: one who’s occupation is to instruct. ( this definition didn’t help very much) So I went further.
Teach: to instruct by precept, example, or experience. (this one has a chance but we will clarify.)
For starters there is not enough emphasis on the part where there needs to be someone there learning/growing in order for teaching to be happening. If there is a teacher alone in the forest and no one is there learning, is he teaching? But I digress. Here’s my point. If we teach by example, or experience, then isn’t how we live our life a teaching? If we scream at our employees or co-workers, or children, then we are teaching by example. And they are learning by experience. If we shame our children they are learning by experiencing us. If we elevate their emotions and have them embrace happiness, then that is what we are teaching. If we respect people, then that is what people are experiencing. And that is what is being taught. We are teaching whenever we are sharing our expressions with others, and they experience our expressions. People learn by experiencing someone else’s expressions.
I see everyone sharing their opinion, emotions, and attitudes. In doing so, they are teaching others. Where ever people are experiencing another’s dream, there is a chance for learning. People don’t have to be in front of a class to be teaching. Parents teach children, brothers teach sisters, school kids teach each other on the play ground. Children teach parents and teachers as well, just through experiencing each others attitudes, actions, and personal dream of life. In this same fashion adults teach other whenever they interact. So, by this perspective, I see everyone as a teacher. Each person is teaching other people their own life dream through every expression. Each person is sharing their viewpoints, opinions, emotions, and attitudes that they have mastered in their personal dream. Of course most of this is all done without any awareness that this is what is happening.
So, the way I see it, everyone is a master of their life dream and each person is sharing their mastery to everyone they interact with. So everyone is also a teacher to others of how to dream. Whether we are aware that we are masters and teachers or not, does not change the dynamic. Some interact with awareness and others not.
There are many masters.
If there is something that you wish to master, then one of the fastest ways to learn is to study with someone who has mastered what you desire to learn; provided that they will teach you. If you want to master the violin, study someone who is a master of the violin. If you want to master sculpting, study with a master sculptor.
If you desire to master love and happiness, study with someone who is masterful in their love happiness.
If you would like your children to be happy, then practice being happy yourself, for they will be learning from you, just by them observing and interacting with you.
We are all learning from each other, and we are all teaching each other, whether we are aware that we are doing it or not. The thing to keep in mind is that it is all much easier and faster with awareness.
How to become a Master?
I’ve recently had many inquiries from individuals wishing to teach the Toltec work. The questions vary in range, and include issues of marketing themselves, and the various institutions associated with don Miguel’s work. The extrinsic logistical issues are not that important compared to the intrinsic qualities of a person’s personal dream. You can only really share what is in your personal dream.
In guiding others, I came to a realization that I could not teach what I was not able to do for myself. By the same token, I chose to study with people who had mastered what I wanted to learn. They could teach me how they were living. I did not need a better intellectual definition of “impeccability”. It was much more valuable to spend time with someone who was really impeccable, and learn about how they viewed the world and lived their life.
If you were going to climb Mt. Everest, would you hire a guide that had not been there before? If you want to consider yourself a guide, and you can not get yourself to the mountain top of Unconditional Love, don’t expect others to follow.
Consider the journey out of hell. Would you allow someone to guide you who has not found the way out themselves? If you wanted to live a life of unconditional love, would you study with someone who wasn’t able to live it themselves? If you are considering being a teacher, you must be willing to be humbled with accepting what you have not yet mastered. If not, you will eventually become an obstacle to your students.
As a teacher, If you want to teach Impeccability, then live your life that way.
If you want to assist others in dreaming a life of Joy and Love in every moment, then do it yourself. Notice the definition above about teacher where it uses the word “example”. If you don’t know the way, and you want to get there yourself, hire a qualified guide. It is possible to figure it out on your own. A few have done it, but it can be much easier and faster with a guide. Personally, I can not fathom passing through challenges I have encountered without guidance.
The Toltec Route
People who have just read don Miguel’s books, contact me and ask about being a teacher. They want to become one. The whole idea is a little funny to me. It is like asking one of those mountain guides; “How do you become a guide on Everest.” I imagine that you dedicate your life to the process for starters, and then you add a lot of patience for your own process as it takes some years. At least that is what I’ve seen the best teachers do.
Some people have done a great deal of inner work in their life, and it is not too far to stretch to understand this way of teaching. Just in the way some climbers have a great deal of experience before attempting Everest. Some have even ascended the same Mountain, but by a different route. Meaning, they have already mastered unconditional love, and are happy in their life, and all their relationships. Then it is just a matter of becoming familiar with the Toltec route up the mountain, and gaining the experience guiding others along this route. With each person, the time, effort, and process will vary. No two climbers ever step in the same place.
But for those that show up, and have never climbed a mountain, I am at a loss for words to describe the journey that they will undertake to become a master of reaching the mountain of Unconditional Love. But I have no doubt that the journey will be worth it. It is an epic feat.
Do I need to wait for Mastery to teach?
Don’t assume that because you are not a master of happiness or love, that you don’t have something worthwhile to share, or have no right being a teacher. I don’t think I wrote that up there. And if I did write it, it would just be my personal opinion anyway. And nothing that others necessarily are required to live by. ( just keeping this all in perspective here. This whole thing that I’ve written here is just a viewpoint from my personal dream. No one else need live by my words. They are their own master artist. Keep this in mind as we go. )
As we journey one of the interesting avenues that we can explore is sharing our new found awareness, tools, love, and support with others. If this is in the role of a “teacher”, then so be it. When we consider some of the reasons why we teach, one of the most elegant is that it provides us an opportunity to practice the unconditional love that we seek to master. Then share your love in whatever forms you wish. But it doesn’t have to be as a “Spiritual Teacher”. I know people who have incredible personal dreams, and have no desire to teach in a formal setting. They do it as school teachers, office managers, executives, doctors, and secretaries. Without “trying”, without making an effort, just by their everyday interactions of being themselves, the people around them are affected by their presence. Their teaching is in how they live their life, and they don’t have the need to tell anyone they are doing it. This can be just as valuable to transforming the world. When you are living in a more abundant state of happiness, other people around you will be affected, and most of them may not even know it.
A Beginners Trap
What to be aware of as we share the way we dream life with others is the quality of what we are sharing. Too often a beginning teacher will trap themselves in an image of what they believe a teacher should be. They often feel like they should always have the answers, or “be” a certain way. With these kinds of ideas, they limit their behavior, and thereby sacrifice their personal freedom in order to be what they believe a “spiritual teacher” is “supposed to be”. This is a very fast and effective way for a teacher to fall into misery. And a good gate to pass through as we continue mastering unconditional love for ourselves. As I said earlier, this teaching route can be humbling.
What is embodied by those great teachers is their humility. In their humbleness they act to serve their students. They are not there for the accolades or praise from their students, they are there because they enjoy serving them. And what they are serving them is their love. As a teacher, you become the servant, placing the student’s needs ahead of your own. You operate based on what is best for them, and their freedom. And not, based on what you think would be best for them. This is a very fine line that becomes clearer through experience, practice, and time.
In the early years of teaching, as your mastery is still growing you may encounter individuals that have more unconditional love and happiness in their dream than your own. They are seeking, but what you have to offer, they already mastered for themselves. A person may also grow to this level through working with you. At this point perhaps they have outgrown you as a teacher. At this point, this student is best served by sending them on to a teacher that has more to share. This level of service to your students is truly a gesture of humility. There is a lot of that humility to be found on this teaching route.
Responsibility to the Student
There is an aspect of teaching that is profoundly important to me, yet is rarely talked about. It has to do with the responsibility that a teacher has to a student. Students will often put the teacher on a pedestal. They assume that the teacher knows something that they don’t, and then rely on the teacher’s guidance. Whether the teacher realizes it or not, people will make an authority figure out of him or her. By doing so, the student puts their faith, or personal power, in the words of their teacher. This is not necessarily bad. If a person is in a high degree of hell, and they need help to get out of it, they are often better off listening to someone who has moved past those demons, than to the judge and victim in their own mind.
When a student puts their trust in a teacher, the teacher then has a great responsibility to the student. The teacher is in service to the student. But, this does not mean that the teacher is responsible for the student. The student remains always responsible for their own choices, actions, and results of their actions.
In the beginning of my time as a teacher, I did not appreciate the level of responsibility that students put in my hand. In one manner I did, because I was aware of my own process and don Miguel’s guidance. On the other hand, I was naïve of how much faith my students would put in what I said. As I became more aware of people’s willingness to put their faith in me (something that I didn’t really consider the impact of early on) I became more careful of my instructions and guidance.
Through my experience with don Miguel I became aware of how a dedicated Spiritual pursuit will bring change to your life. In the way you view the world, feel emotionally, what career changes might be incurred, relationships, and everything else.
The integration of these changes in ones life can be challenging. They often take time. If rushed, they become sources of drama that interfere with our creation of happiness. When the integration of change becomes more a source of suffering than a source of happiness, we are moving too fast. I often find myself instructing them to have patience in accepting things the way they are,,, and never to hurry up. The price of too much change too fast, is too high.
Don Miguel’s has often said, “We are not in a hurry, and there is no time to waste.”
As a teacher, these words have a profoundly deeper meaning when I consider my responsibility to my students.
One of the greatest lessons I learned from don Miguel had to do with Power. Through an experience I had with him, I discovered what an extraordinary connection he had with Intent ( Spirit, Power). I was quite impressed. I didn’t understand it very well, but I knew it was big. What I immediately began to wonder was why he didn’t do more with it. Why not do big acts of power all the time? It could have an incredible impact on people to shift the whole dream of their life.
As I journeyed into this question about don Miguel, I saw the amount of refrain he had in the use of Power. What I then saw was behind this motivation of refrain. I saw that don Miguel had no desire to change anyone, or their life. He only loved and accepted people just the way that they are. His love was/is, so unconditional, that he loves people just the way that they are. In that unconditional love, there is no desire or need to change anybody. This is when I saw the real nature of don Miguel. I understood what unconditional love was. It means not needing to change anyone, and that includes yourself. This realization became much more powerful to me than any act of power could have performed. His unconditional love was more powerful than any Ceremony, or act of Power or change could ever be. He loved me just the way that I was. I didn’t have to try to be anything any more. I was lovable. I was good enough just the way that I was. He loved me no matter what I was. And in his reflection, I began to love myself just the way that I was. No conditions.
For me, to love unconditionally became the most powerful act of transformation. It transformed me and my entire personal dream.
And the irony is, that it came to me through someone who didn’t have a need to change me. He was teaching by example. It was simple. He was just living it, and wasn’t even doing anything to bring attention to how he loved me.
To me, Unconditional Love is at the heart of what a teacher has a responsibility to impart to those he or she is responsible to. It may be the only thing they have a responsibility to.
In my quest to find a better term than teacher, I have not come up with one. So, by default I will use the term teacher. However, I don’t know anyone who isn’t a teacher of their own dream. What I teach is about my personal dream. It is quite a bit different than it used to be, thanks to don Miguel. I will continue to share my dream. The words that I use to describe my dream will change, but the essence of my practice and mastery will continue to be Unconditional Love.
__________updated note. Someone proposed that I use the word “un-teacher” since I am essentially guiding people to unlearn all their reasons and excuses not to love. I liked it, but in using it I’ll keep having to explain all this again.
Be still and you can perceive the infinite in a moment
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein.
Take a moment for a Thought Experiment: Imagine no Time
Take some time reading through this, and then use your imagination for an exercise.
Imagine that this moment is the only one that exists. After all the future is just an assumption isn’t? The past is nothing more now than assumptions in your mind about what happened. Someone else will have a different set of assumptions about the past according to their point of view. Let all those assumptions go.
Imagining that this is the only moment that exists requires us to remove from our imagination any concept that life is going anywhere. Or, that this moment actually was produced anywhere. To imagine this moment without time requires us to let go of any story of how we got to this point. It is willing ourselves to erase our own personal history, as well as, any that we have placed on the world.
You can imagine yourself being in an experience with no beginning and no end. Let go of any notion of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years or lifetimes past or future.
When you touch this moment without the overlay of future or past projected on it, you find a feeling of being in all eternity. You are in eternity because you are in all time. This is so because you have not spliced yourself into today, and alienated yourself from tomorrow, or your past. We allow them to merge when we remove the artificial dividers that we placed between them with our imagination. In actuality, they have always been merged, but we have not noticed as our attention has been focused on its division through our projection of the concepts of time.
The idea of eternity is a concept also. It doesn’t exist either except in our imagination. If we remove this artificial construct, then we move closer again to what is Real. Each time we remove these concepts of knowledge that trap our attention, we move closer to what is Real. What is real is what exists when we remove the projections of our imagination. What we might call our assumptions.
Time and the words of time, days, lifetimes, minutes are used to describe that which has no name. In a crude way, they are words that describe the flow of the planets through the solar system. The idea of being late, being ahead of our time, behind the times, on time, in a hurry: these are concepts we sometimes live by or have our lives ruled by, but they only exist in imagination. The judge and victim in our mind use these concepts to tell stories about what we should be and when we should be it. In this way “time” becomes a tyrant that rules our mind. But it is not “time” that rules our mind, it is our knowledge and agreements about time that our judge and victim use against our happiness. In this way, we become slaves to knowledge, knowledge of time.
The present moment has no knowledge. Nor does it need any to be experienced. Practice sitting in the stillness of the moment, letting all descriptions go, letting all knowledge go. Even letting go of the trapping idea that it is a silly way to spend your “limited amount of time”. Practice being in stillness, and perhaps, you will find there all the time in the world. If you don’t practice you won’t ever find it.
Finding the stillness in the mind, may take some practice. But practicing once in a while, will make it easier. If you find it difficult, it may be because you have certain limiting beliefs about time. Living in this timeless way, is actually a natural way of living. Watch any young child. You see that they behave quite differently before being domesticated with the beliefs and agreements about time.
Now Imagine being in this moment, focus your attention on what you are experiencing in this moment. Let go of any knowledge you have of the past, or thinking of the future. Be still, and in the stillness, experience that you are.
Happiness it is such a simple thing. Yet in the realm of emotions, simple does not mean easily attainable. Particularly as we have been taught to be rewarded for a more complex intellect. All our effort to get good grades in school and be successful, has largely been an effort to think more complexly. This includes having a lot of serious opinions. Thus pushing away being simply happy. In our complex opinions , we get lost in emotions of frustration, anger, sadness, jealousy, and…. well,,,, you have the idea. We are no longer just happy.
If you are to change our emotional state then it seems that a shift in attitude would be in order. After all, if we are in a different emotional state, a different attitude is present. But if we are to change our attitude, then perhaps it would be easy to start with changing an opinion. Now switching sides on an opinion, that can sometimes be tough. I don’t know too many people who just up and switch political parties. So lets start with shifting our opinions on things that have less emotional investment. And then we can build from there. Once you are able to shift your opinions you will find it easier to shift your emotions.
What can you find in your inventory of opinions that you could let go of, or change? For instance, an opinion about the weather. How tough would that be? Try it. When you notice an emotional reaction to the weather, see what the opinion is and just as an experiment, decide to not believe your own opinion.
Then maybe try it about what someone else is wearing. Continue practicing on these little ones. Then, maybe work up to what your opinion is about someone else. Then, maybe don’t believe the opinions you have about yourself. Try it just as an experiment.
You might try these shifts with other people. Where you might instinctively disagree with someone, catch it, and just for practice, agree with them. You don’t need to do this in cases that are critical to your life just things about the weather, politics, fashion, or a sporting event.
You might find that after a while that your attitude about the weather has changed. And your attitude towards other people has changed. You might also find that how you treat yourself has changed. What will sneak up on you though, is more of a simple feeling of happiness.
When I entered into the process of transforming my personal dream, I did so to be happy, no matter what. I soon stumbled upon a man who was happy, don Miguel. What I found out about him was that he rarely had an opinion in his head. I found that he is a very simple man. He has the capacity to be complexly brilliant, no doubt about that. He use to be a medical doctor. But he prefers to be simply happy instead. I think this is a brilliant decision, but that is just my opinion.
Here is another trick to help you let go of opinions.
Whenever possible and appropriate try the following. When someone asks you for your opinion, let your response be, “I don’t know.” You might also do this even when you have a ready opinion to share. Doing this then will be even more helpful in letting go of your opinions.
One of the ways we are often asked for our opinion is by people first giving us theirs, and then they ask us to agree with them (or sometimes disagree with them). This is a perfect time for “I don’t know.” You may find that tossing the conversation back in their court will take off some of their surprise and possible discomfort. A simple way to do this is to ask them a question in return such as: “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about it. What do you think about it?” or “I don’t know. But can tell me how you came up with your point of view on the issue.”
If we practice letting go of our opinions we will find we have changed quite a bit. With out our opinions, we let go of the attitude of being right. We also let go of the attitude of others being wrong. We also don’t need to carry around all those justifications to prove those points of view. In this way life is becoming simpler. If we let go of our well justified and defended complex opinions, certainly we will change. But perhaps this is what will make us simply happy.
The Greater Our Sense of Responsibility, the Greater our Personal Power
Throughout history humans have tried to place responsibility for their unhappiness outside of themselves. Most societies have long held the assumption that the ruling body needs to change in order for the human condition to change. This method has been tried unsuccessfully by hundreds of generations, each in turn trying to impose their particular form of “illumination.” Despite these efforts the human condition remains largely unchanged – societies filled with conflict and fear, and individuals suffering in pain. These conditions have become so familiar that it’s hard to recognize the pervasive levels of fear and the consequential suffering that we accept as a fact of life.
To put the responsibility of your happiness outside of yourself, places all the power over your own happiness in someone else’s hands. We commonly give this power to friends, lovers, family members, political institutions, and other organizations. Along with this power we set up certain expectations of those we have empowered. This is a perfect set up for disappointment, frustration, and all the emotions of suffering. It is the recipe for a broken heart.
When we take responsibility for our own happiness we relieve others of the burden of our expectations. They are then free to be what they want to be, without the fear that they will be punished emotionally or made to feel guilty for letting us down. We can accept people as they are, not as we “need” them to be in order to hold our shell of happiness. We can love them as they are, and don’t need them to be anything else. Taking responsibility for your own happiness leads you to unconditional love.
The journey to take complete responsibility for your own happiness requires that you take responsibility for all your emotions. This is an act of power that the victim mind makes to become a Warrior of the Spirit. After this, the Warrior never blames anyone for their own emotions. The Warrior knows that he or she is completely responsible for every emotion in their life. With that responsibility comes the personal power to win over the emotions of fear that cause suffering and choose love. When a Warrior recovers enough personal power, he or she, has the keys to unconditional love.
The truth is that you are completely responsible for your life. So often we forfeit the power of this responsibility through acts without awareness. A simple off hand comment such as, “He makes me so mad,” is such a simple way to give up this power. It is like casting a magical spell with the power of your word to give someone else control over your own emotions. This is black magic we use against ourselves when we are not aware of our actions.
Recovering your personal power is not an intellectual exercise. It requires action in changing your words, your habits, and your point of view. With enough personal power you can change your whole dream. You can change your dream to one of Heaven of earth. You are responsible for everything in your dream, and that gives you the power to change it.