Tag: Awareness

Fear of Being Duped By A Spiritual Teacher

Some people write or talk to me about their hesitancy or resistance to taking steps forward on their path of discovery.  One of my favorites is:

There is a fear of being duped by a Spiritual Teacher 

Fear of being mislead by a teacher. Fear of being duped and giving away a trust in myself. What is discernment, what is judgment? When am I doing which?

I find this reasoning kind of funny.   A person is using their fear to guide their thought process away from taking actions.   Why should we trust our fears?  Isn’t it usually our fears that more often mislead us in our thinking and actions?

Often this kind of “fearful thinking” is called skepticism, and often by people who claim to be skeptics.  However, in this case the fear is using this tool of skepticism to be fearful of something different, and keep other fears in place by preventing action.  A more skillful use of skepticism would be to apply it to these fearful thoughts.  Until you apply skepticism to your fears, fears will use that tool of skepticism against your own emotional well being.

To balance challenging your fears of a teacher, don’t go leaping in with both feet towards what any teacher tells you either.  It is reasonable to be skeptical of a Spiritual teacher, or even therapist, just don’t be fearful.  Take your time time getting to know them and see what they are like, and if it is a good fit for you.

You might find some good guidance on evaluating a Spiritual Teacher from Jack Kornfield’s book, “A Path With Heart.”

Chapter 16 is entitled:   You Can’t Do It Alone: Finding and Working with a Teacher

 

 

 

 

 

How Long Will It Take

“How long will it take?” they ask.

That’s often the question as one is working through their issues of limiting beliefs, fears, emotional reactions, or sabotaging behaviors.  Always the question, “How long will it take?”

It will take a certain number of hours.  You can put those hours in early and be done sooner, or you can do just a few minutes a day of change work and have it take many years.

It’s like learning to read, dance, fly an airplane, or play a musical instrument.  All of these things will take a certain number of hours before you reach a level.  If you want to go further and master more emotional skills and more of your beliefs, it will take more hours.  The critical way to measure how long it will take is by how many hours you spend practicing, not the days or weeks of the process.  If it takes 100 hours to break through a set of limiting beliefs you can do it in 5 weeks, or you can do it in 5 years.   Either way it will take you the same number of hours.

So to answer the question about, “How long will it take before I see the changes I want?”

The answer is a certain number of hours.

This is an excerpt.  Full post at How long will it take? 

 

 

Love as a Change Agent

Love is a great change agent.  When you are exposed to, and experience great love, your life has a tremendous chance to change.   In the experience of love your unhappiness from a limited perspective, and beliefs in fear and lies can not survive.

One of the challenges is that when you exposed to love, your ego will fight back. It will try to deny,  diminish, and distract you from what you feel.   Such is the nature of stories in the mind.  They don’t feed well on unconditional love and fear starving to death.

Love and Fear,,,, this is the battle ground within for the Spiritual Warrior.  It is a battle over one’s attention.  On one side is Love and all the expressions of Love.  On the other, is fear, and all the expressions of  fear.

Self awareness is a necessary trait of a warrior.  Being aware of his expressions  is how he recognizes which side he is on in each moment.

for practical steps and exercises on finding your way try the free sessions of the Self Mastery program. 

 

Having Things In Your Mind Under Control

I used to think I had things under control.  That is I believed I “knew” what was going on.  As I became more aware I realized that everything that I knew was just information that I had learned from other people.  I had unknowingly agreed with the ideas of other people about how the world worked, how people behaved, even what I was and what I wasn’t.

My next wave or realizations involved learning that what I knew wasn’t true.  This was humbling.  It was  also unsettling to realize that what I thought of the world and other people wasn’t true.  It was somewhat fearful to realize that the authorities that I looked to for direction and understanding of my world,,, didn’t always know what they were talking about.

Teachers didn’t know everything there was to know about life.  Professors of physics couldn’t explain why any particles were here, or what was the force driving the ones they could see.  Wake up in your adult years and learn that there may not be such a thing as gravity. Clergy weren’t always living a life of respect, love, and happiness so how could they guide others.

As I became more aware I noticed that more and more of the ideas in my own head weren’t true.  I had less to say because of this.

There was temptations to grab hold of a theology or philosophy for safety and claim it is what I believe in.  It will guide me.  But something within was holding out for Truth.

In the process of letting go of what I believed I knew that I knew less.  Over time I moved through the uncomfortable emotions that arise as we dissolve the chatter of internal dialog in the mind.   Embracing humility was liberating me from my Self Importance (ego).  There was freedom in not knowing.  What was a fearful process was becoming a quiet and peaceful mind.

For the spiritual warrior one of the challenges is to control the knowledge that is in their mind.  For ordinary men and women this doesn’t mean anything.  That is because knowledge and ideas run around in their mind uncontrolled and they don’t even notice.

 

This post on Having Things In Your Mind Under Control originally posted at:

https://www.toltecspirit.com/2010/07/under-control/

 

 

 

 

 

Fear and Power

My friend studied political science. He said politics was basically a scramble for power. But power is a need to control,,,, and a need to control is only necessary if you are afraid. So the scramble for power is really just a reaction to fear. If we really want to study political science we need to understand fear. Power is just the tail being wagged by the dog.

The irony here is that those that seek power often do so because they are powerless over their fear.

As a spiritual warrior,,, you will not develop real personal power until you develop awareness and win over your mind from fear.

 

 

The Law of Attraction Is A Myth

I don’t buy into the Law of Attraction. You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness. You only need one instance to prove a law invalid. Christ had his body beaten and crucified but it wasn’t something he attracted because he had it in his consciousness.  He was treated that way because of beliefs other people held in their consciousness

Nelson Mandela spent years confined to prison, but not because it reflected his consciousness.  He was held in prison because other people held in their consciousness beliefs of apartheid.  You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness.  Sometimes you are the recipient of what other people express from their  belief system.

If something is a law it operates all the time everywhere.  The law of gravity is a law because it applies to everything we know everywhere we can measure and test it.  If it only worked sometimes or in some places it wouldn’t be a law.   The same with the Law of Attraction.  It’s too inconsistent.  It’s only a theory that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.   It’s not a “Law.”  It’s a Myth of Attraction.  If it really worked a lot more people would have what the want.

Originally posted at The Law of Attraction is a Myth

Where you can find Guidance and Wisdom for the Spiritual Warrior based in the Four Agreements

Cleaning House and Cleaning Your Mind

It seems we spend more time cleaning our house than cleaning up our mind.  It’s nice to come home to a clean house.  But you don’t spend all your time there.  You spend a lot more time with your own mind than you do your house.  It makes sense then that you would spend some time making it a nice and enjoyable place to be.

For practical steps and exercises on cleaning up the fear based beliefs in your mind do the exercises in the Self Mastery course.

Cleaning Your House and Cleaning Your Mind

 

Addicted to Suffering

Are people in love with their suffering?

People are not in love with their suffering.  Rather I’d say that either it saddens them, or they hate it.  In either case their emotional reaction of hate and sadness to their suffering causes them to suffer more.

What is important to breaking this cycle is the awareness that our emotional reactions are not something that we control.  But this very idea that we are not in control,,,  this frightens people more.  So to avoid their fear they cling to the idea that it is reasonable or justified to hate or feel sad about their condition.  In effect they close themselves off to the truth out of fear of acknowledging something that is already happening.

 

Originally posted at Addicted to Suffering

Published at ToltecSpirit.com   Guidance based in the Four Agreements for  Spiritual Warriors seeking happiness and love.

 

What Happens When We Lose Control

I was listening to a group of people talking the other day.  In this particular group the tendency was to drink alcohol in a self abusive way.    They were mostly talking about what they do when they lose control of their emotions.

After a while someone asked me what I thought. I said,

“When we lose control,,, what do we lose control to?  
When we lose control,,, what is it that then has control?
When this “other thing” then has control,,,, where are we?

Where did we go and what are we doing  when this “other thing” has control of us?”

Things I think about.

This post originally published at  What happens when we Lose Control

Toltecspirit.com  a website with guidance for spiritual warriors based in the Four Agreements.