Take Off from Within

Hah! How’s that for an image of our minds?

First: Get a jumping monkey. Then make him mad. Then drunk. Then get a scorpion to bite him.

That little mad, drunk, jumping, scorpion-stung monkey running your life these days?

If so, time to get it tamed, eh? :)

EVERY single teacher we profile says the SAME thing on this subject.

I like to repeat these because repetition is the mother of genius. So, here we go:

Marcus Aurelius (see Notes on Meditations): “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Another Stoic philosopher, Epictetus (see Notes on Enchiridion): “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”

Eckhart Tolle (see Notes on A New Earth): “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about the situation.”

Shakespeare (Hamlet): “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Viktor Frankl (see Notes on Man’s Search for Meaning): “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We’ve GOTTA (!!!) get this idea.

It’s literally the key that unlocks the door to happiness. The moment we live from the understanding that NOTHING outside us has ANY power over us, we’re free. We’re free to choose our response. And THAT is true power.

Of course, it’s *really* easy to keep on blaming everything outside ourselves but it’s time to build some new habits.

Next time you find yourself distressed by anything, take a moment and ask yourself if there’s a more empowered way to respond. Make it a game. Alchemize every challenge into an opportunity to embrace life, grow, and expand into an abiding state of joy.

Love that.

We’re all just taking the next step in our journey of self-discovery. When we *really* appreciate that, we can ease up on our judgments, become a lot more playful and a lot more fun to be around!

Seale continues: “The discerning mind will first of all have kindness for itself, and then it cannot be unkind to anyone either in thought or act.”

Amen.

Let’s develop that kindness for ourselves and project that light into the world! :)

Do you complain a lot? Do you criticize and blame a lot, too?

Icky.

Be careful because there’s something weird that goes on when you do that.

Not only are you just NOT pleasant to be around (which will repel people from supporting you in the way you’d like in and of itself), but there’s something else going on. Call it the Law of Attraction or whatever you want (and see all my Notes on Abraham-Hicks for more), but know that you attract that which you think about most of the time.

So, if you don’t want all the stuff you’re complaining about, STOP making it such a big part of your consciousness!!!

Start talking about the beauty you see and the wonderful people and events in your life and groove your brain to THAT tune. And see more of that goodness show up in your life! :)

Ah, worrying about what other people think of us.

If there’s one guaranteed way to make sure we feel up and down and up and down, this might be the PERFECT way to get there: Just make sure that your well-being is totally tied to what other people think of you! :)

And, if you want an equally fool proof way to feel great, get independent of the good or bad opinion of others. Just be you. All of you. Release all the restrictions. Become independent of the opinions of others and go ahead and rock your life.

Terry Cole Whitaker wrote a book called, “What You Think of Me Is None of My Business.” Hah. That’s classic. Imagine living with THAT attitude. (Then do it. :)

Marcus Aurelius says: “The approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.” In other words, why in the world would I care what someone thinks of me when they don’t even like THEMSELVES?!?! That’s INSANE.

The fact is that you can be the SAME EXACT person one day to the next day and get two TOTALLY different responses from the same person. Why is that? Because their opinion of you says more about THEM than it does about YOU. If they’re having a great day and are rested and feeling the mojo, then you’ll prolly look great in their eyes and get treated nicely, complimented and all that jazz. If, on the other hand, they’re feeling cranky, didn’t get a good night sleep, are stressed at work, whatever, guess what? They might just be a little pissy toward you. And, ultimately, that has nothing to do with you.

So, remember that what people think of you is none of your business, get independent of the good or bad opinion of others and enjoy authentically being your radiant self. :)

Amen. Do you embrace your spiritual heritage?!?

As Wayne Dyer says, we’re not human beings having a spiritual experience, we’re spiritual beings having a human experience.

Let’s become more and more aware of our divine heritage and live from that place of knowing!

Powerful. You want to make a positive impact on the world?!? Awesome. Me, too.

But do you find yourself constantly talking about the suffering in the world? If so, go grab a mirror and ask if there is some stuff within YOURSELF that really needs to be addressed that you’re projecting into the world.

As Byron Katie says (see Notes on Loving What Is): “Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise.”

Yes, the world’s got challenges and yes, it’s our natural calling to want to shine our light brightly to inspire and empower those around us. AND, the world’s more amazing than it’s EVER been. BY FAR. If we’re caught up exclusively in all the negative stuff, that’s a really good sign we might be projecting our own issues.

You can only see that which you are and you can only give that which you have. So, if you REALLY want to give, know (!) that the way to truly serve is to discover the kingdom of heaven with you and live from a deep place of integration and power. Fun. :)

Maxwell Maltz says something similar in his great book Psycho-Cybernetics (see Notes): “It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.”

We talk about hypnotism a bit in the Note on Psycho-Cybernetics. It’s pretty amazing. You can take a champion weight lifter and, under hypnosis, convince him that he’s not strong enough to pick up a pencil and voilà! The pencil is way too heavy to life.

Applied kinesiology is another way to look at the subtle impacts of hypnosis. Someone’s strength will drop simply by saying, “I hate myself” or imagining a time when they felt frightened. Conversely, if you say, “I LOVE MYSELF!” and imagine a time when you felt most confident, loved and radiantly alive, you will, in that moment, gain strength. Amazing.

Our mind works in mysterious (!) ways and we wanna be diligent in programming ourselves consciously, yo! :)

You eat every day? Me, too. We wouldn’t live long without food, eh? Miss a day or two or three and, unless you’re consciously fasting and chillaxing, you’re gonna get lethargic and fatigued. Go a little longer and you’re gonna start getting all Gandhi-emaciated like. Keep on going and, well, you’re dead.

So, our bodies need food. Pretty simple. Well, NEWSFLASH: so do our SOULS! Sure, our physical bodies will continue to cruise around and go through the motions of daily life, but if we don’t feed our souls, our soul-body’s gonna get all emaciated and weak and light-headed. Thankfully, our soul doesn’t just die from starvation, so we can always nurse it back to life!

How? Soak yourself in inspiration—from quiet time reading and meditating and journaling, to time in nature, with your loved ones and simply soaking in the beauty that is our life with a sense of love and appreciation from moment to moment to moment.

What do YOU do to feed your soul? Time to go on a shopping spree for some more yummy nutritious soul goodness?!? Get on that! :)

Genius.

This is a focus of Dan Millman’s philosophy (see Notes) which is influenced by David Reynolds’ Constructive Living (see Notes).

The essence? Accept your feelings.

Then ask the question: “Now what needs to be done?”

Then, of course, just do it.

You’re action and feelings go together! If you’re feeling down, accept it then just do what needs to be done!!!! (And you’ll find the negative clouds pass by. Trust me. Try it. :)

Brilliant…

Are you replaying some event from your past again and again and again? And finding yourself either totally incapacitated or just not quite flowing as strongly as you could?

First, we need to get over ourselves. :)

As Rumi says, there’s nothing worse than “this pretense of perfection.”

There are NO perfect human beings and, hate to break it to you, you aren’t gonna be the first. :)

When we embrace this FACT, we can LAUGH at ourselves. And, OMG, as a recovering need-to-be-perfect-or-else dood, I can speak to the joy and the freedom that comes by letting that go.

AND, know that the only reason we experience mini-failures is because we’re challenging ourselves. We’re playing at our edges. We have standards that we care about. That’s GREAT! We just need to learn to EMBRACE the oopses rather than dwell on them.

As I learn how to teach effectively, sometimes I’m *really* on and, well, sometimes I’m not. The other day in class I had one of those brain freeze moments (you know, where everything goes blank and then a gremlin comes on the air and says: “Wow. You sure are getting ready to *really* bomb this one. Go you!”). Yikes.

Anyhoo, recovered and had an OK class but what was cool was that not only didn’t I beat myself up, I kinda laughed, totally realized it’s all part of the process and remembered the SWEET Michael Jordan commercial where he says: “I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Made me think about my favorite athletes and the fact that when they have a 4-19 shooting night or shoot 3 over par or whatever, they DON’T dwell on it. Imagine a professional athlete replaying their WORST performance in their mind OVER and OVER and OVER again. Not gonna happen. (Or they won’t be a pro much longer.) They “Let it be.”

And THAT is one of the primary reasons why they rock. How about you? Have you had an off-day/night lately that you need to “let be”? Now a good time to let it go? Sweet. :)

We talk about this theme a fair amount as well.

Emerson (see Notes) tells us that nature is not capricious—she doesn’t play games—and that you’d only have the desire if you had the ability to manifest it. Goethe tells us that the desire foreshadows our abilities.

We’ve just gotta KNOW that a heartfelt desire is God’s will. It’s our job to sober up and to tame the monkey in our minds long enough to get out of our own way, walk after the spirit and shine!