Tag: Impeccability

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/

 

 

 

 

 

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

For the Love of Christ

The evangelists stopped by my door this morning.  They brought their bibles and were sharing the message of Christ.   They were two nice ladies so I spent a few minutes with them.  We got to talking about love and one woman said, “That’s what we should do.  We should love more.”

Saying that, “We should love more,” implies that we aren’t loving enough. It’s kind of an indirect way of putting your self, or someone else down for not doing what they were supposed to do.  I don’t think that was Christ’s message.

His was more like. I love you just the way you are.

A Word about Truth

Words aren’t the truth.  Words are symbolic meanings for something real or abstract.  Words are not truth so there is no sense in investing any faith in them.

But if you listen carefully to honest people you might find kernels of truth within the packaging of their words.

Be Impeccable with your Word

In the book The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz offers the suggestion, “Be Impeccable with your Word.”    Some people interpret this to mean, “keep your word.”   It doesn’t.  Impeccability is not that simple.   For starters, being impeccable with your word has more to do with expressing your self in the direction of truth and love.  Other aspects are of significance, but this interpretation is most important.

It is important to use your word carefully. The way you express your self will impact your life, and others.  You have to be aware of what you say, and how you express your self to do this.  One of the results of impeccability is that you will say only what you mean, and you will mean what you say.   From the outside this appears to mean “keep your word.”

When the meaning of “Be Impeccable with your Word”  is taught as “keep your word” it is because one of two reasons.  First, the person leading the teaching is not familiar with the more important expression of truth and love.   The second happens when the person leading the group has an attachment to controlling the behavior or actions of others.

If you subscribe to the idea that impeccability is really about keeping your agreements, then you subject your self to possible harm and abuse unnecessarily.  Very possibly you end up using these four agreements to inflict emotional suffering on your self instead of freeing your self from it the way they were designed to do.

Suppose that you make the agreement to get married.  You make a big commitment to love, honor, and respect another for all the days of your life.  But perhaps after months or years together, the person you are married to changes.  Perhaps they become abusive.  Perhaps they are emotionally withdrawn, involved in addictions, or have an affair.

At a certain point you become tired of being abused and you want to end the relationship.  But by now you have this new spiritually enlightening agreement to Be Impeccable.  You think the agreement means that you can’t change your agreements.  With that interpretation you use the idea of impeccability to remain in a relationship that is abusive and disrespectful to your self.   This is not being kind and loving to your self.  This is not expressing love towards your self.  You are breaking the more important meaning of impeccability.

Besides, if you are in a relationship and your partner is disrespectful, unkind, and abusive, they have already broken the relationship contract.  They have not kept their side of the marriage agreement.  If someone is abusive to you, you do not have to keep your agreement to stay with them.  Staying with them all the days of your life was made within the context of love, honor, and respect in the relationship.  If they can not hold up their end of the agreement, then the agreement is broken.  You are free to go.  If you try to keep your half even when they have broken their half, that is not being honest and truthful about what has happened and therefore not impeccable.

Of course the two of you can each work on your half of how you treat each other.  It is very common to have lapses.   If your partner has lapses, but they have remorse, and they make an honest effort to improve, it can be worthwhile to work through the challenges.  However, it is very subjective to each person how much patience to have with someone.  No one can make that decision for you.

If and when you decide to end that relationship, you do it because of the love you have for your self.  You love your self so much that you want to be happy.  You also abide by the truth that you deserve to be happy.  With that impeccable expression of your love, you break your agreement to stay with the person abusing you.   In this case it is completely impeccable to break your previous  promises .

To be impeccable does not mean that you live your life according to the agreements you made in the past.  Practicing impeccability is just as much about freeing your self from the fear based and self limiting agreements of your past.
For exercies and practices in mastering the Four Agreements download and listen to the Self Mastery audio sessions.

Original post located at Be Impeccable with Your Word

Humility

There’s a tube down his throat to help him breathe.  The tube comes out of his neck and his breath bypasses his mouth.  They call it a trachea.   The doctors had to do it.  The infection had gotten so bad that his airway had almost swollen closed.  The previous set of doctors had dismissed the periodic coughing episodes as unimportant.  Now it was close to closing off his breathing.  The coughing had gotten worse and difficulty breathing couldn’t be dismissed anymore.

Phlegm builds up in his throat and trachea tube every hour or two.  It starts gurgling in his throat.  His body convulses in a coughing gag reflex effort to clear his airway.

We tell the nurse who calls the respiratory therapist.  The respiratory therapist puts a tube deep down his trachea and sucks out the phlegm.  She puts it down so far that it touches is internals.  It makes him heave a cough that lifts his whole upper body.  It looks like torture.  Not being able to breath normally.  Not even being able to clear one’s own throat.  Not being able to help him do something so simple that we all do so naturally all the time.  So easy to take your breath for granted when it comes so easily most of the time.

With the trachea tube in his throat bypassing his vocal cords he can’t talk.  He tries to write some words but that is difficult.  The farm equipment accident injured his left hand years ago.  That coupled with years of arthritis makes small hand manipulations difficult and his letters sloppy.  The morphine he’s on for the pain tends to make his mind fuzzy so he misspells words.   With sloppy writing and fuzzy spelling it is difficult to understand what he’s trying to write.   He’s beyond frustrated that he can’t tell us the simplest things that he wants… needs.  No way to clearly tell us what would make him more comfortable.

I can’t make him breathe easier.  I can’t make his fear go away that is a reflex from choking and gagging while the phlegm blocks his throat.  I can’t clear his throat.  I can’t make the infection in his throat go away that started this cascading of events and discomforts.  I can’t go back in time and change what transpired to have my dad end up in this hospital bed.

I’m not powerless and I don’t feel victimized.  There are simply things that I can do, and others that I don’t have power over. I’m not frustrated or angry.  I’m just aware that I don’t control the bodily functions, immune system, or emotions, of another human being.

I think knowing what you can’t change, and accepting it falls into the category of humility.  It’s not a joy in itself.  However it is far more peaceful than fighting what you can not change.  Life is a big place and respecting the forces of it is part of being impeccable. Death is one of those forces on the human body to respect.  Doing so can teach you a lot about savoring the moments of your life.  Little moments like breathing, or being able to speak and ask for what you want.

I don’t think those folks who proclaim, “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” ever sat with their dad through the challenges of old age and a body with ailing health.

Humility isn’t about following the overly optimistic positive side of your personality to think you can create and change anything in life.  Nor is it about falling into the negative side of self importance and feeling victimized about life either.  Humility has to do with transcending both sides of self importance all together: the aspect that says you are helpless, and the aspect that says you can accomplish anything you can dream.  There is a middle way.

In the west our mind is so apt to put things into categories of being a winner or a loser,,, a success or a failure.   These are the dual images of self importance to avoid.  When you practice humility, you are no longer trapped by either of those limiting roles or labels.