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Recipe for Relationships in the 21st Century:
Ingredient
#3: Freedom
What is freedom? Good question.
A movie we recently saw summed
it up for us as "that out of the park home run over the fence, reach for the stars, bigger than life" kind of feeling we get when we're just being ourselves - and it's alright just because.
So how do we create that feeling of freedom in our relationships with others? Another good question. Although easier to
write and talk about than to integrate into our behavior, the answer is probably already on the tip of your tongue. Right?
If you're anything like us (and
you probably are since we're all in this relationship thing together) you undoubtedly spend a good
part of your day dealing with the demands and reactions of others. But how often do we honestly allow ourselves to say "no" or just become aware that we're putting the requests or demands of others ahead of our own needs.
There are some fairly fancy
words for this, but suffice it to say that most of us bleed off a lot of our energy in the pursuit of making others happy. We're not suggesting that you tell your boss or your aunt Sarah or your spouse to take a flying leap.
To the contrary, much like
you'd balance on a log while crossing a fast moving stream, we must all learn how to assert what's important to us without dishonoring the other person with whom we're in relationship.
Some logs are skinnier than
others, but with awareness and practice we can make a self empowering stand for ourselves, while at the same time respecting the ability of others to do the same thing.
Imagine being in a relationship with another human being who
is trying their hand at the same sort of self care. The result can create true miracles. Suddenly, we don't feel blamed because we no longer have a reason to blame others.
We feel safe because we're able to share ourselves honestly and hopefully listen to others while they're doing the same. We are getting a real taste of "being" who we are and eliciting the support of others to follow our lead.
As we've said in previous columns, most of us didn't experience
this kind of role modeling when we were growing up. Therefore, it entails learning some new behavior dictated by a strong desire to live/be in life more fully. Once we realize and experience our ability to express and "care for" ourselves emotionally, even before we witness the same in others, we will feel a
freedom that is unparalleled.
see the child in others and
set yourself free
What you see in people determines how you'll respond.
Most people allow the attitudes, actions and feelings of others to determine their response.
If
you allow your responses to be determined by another, you're robbing yourself of your personal
freedom. You automatically prevent yourself from doing what's truly in your heart. If you're not getting
what you want in your relationships it may be because you're allowing others to determine how you think, feel and react.
You
may believe that you don't have a choice, that others make you respond the way you do because of the way they are. What a confining
thought! If you think this way, your only alternative is to attack, withdraw, or concede when there's conflict.
Consider
that you do have a choice. You can choose how you think, feel, perceive things and therefore, how you react. In this way you have absolute control of your experience because you choose your experience. You have just set yourself free.
If you're challenged with disharmony, your automatic reaction may be to mirror that disharmony
in some way. You may automatically begin to give back what has been given to you. If someone has shut off their
love, you may respond by also shutting off your love.
If
the other initiates with love, you may also respond with love. In both cases you're the respondent. Your reactions have been determined by someone else. Much of your happiness is determined by your willingness to take charge of how you think, feel and react.
What
another person thinks, feels and does is their responsibility. If you don't like what they do, you don't have to respond in kind.
When another acts with anger, blame, withdrawal, abruptness, or some other negative response it's always because they're in conflict within themselves. They're allowing their internal conflict to take expression outwardly.
Most
of the time it has nothing whatever to do with you. Most often they're responding to a pattern of thought and behavior that they've probably been acting out for a long time.
Usually negative patterns of behavior originate in childhood.
Some
unresolved childhood conflict has unconsciously been carried forward into adult experience. The wounded child within them has taken over and they react automatically. They may not look for or see another way of reacting. They may be responding in the only way
they know.
The next time you're challenged with "wounded child" behavior from another, consider that you have a choice. You can choose to respond with your own wounded child behavior, or you can choose to respond to things differently.
See
the wounded child within the other person. Tell yourself that their negativity has nothing to do with you. Tell yourself that beneath their defenses they're probably afraid and hurt. See their fear and hurt.
Though
they may not even admit it to themselves, all they really want is your love.
Try this. Don't react. Slow down. See
the person as though they were about 4 years old. See their actions as a frustrated attempt to get what they want or a misguided attempt to get love.
You
may respond with quiet words. You may respond by withdrawing for a time. You may respond by allowing the person
to vent their feelings. Be careful here not to expose yourself to too much negativity.
You may respond with
a disciplinary action. You may respond by leaving the relationship. You may respond with a common sense discussion
when the time is right. You'll respond non-verbally by a touch, a look, or a small act of kindness.
No
matter what your response, if it's backed with genuine love, compassion and desire for the highest good, love and good will be reflected back to you.
You may find that an appropriate response
for you may be to withdraw for a time so you can center yourself, especially if you've been wounded. It's essential for you to always honor the wounded child within yourself.
Those
hurt, angry, frustrated feelings shouldn't be repressed. If they are, they'll automatically come back to you possibly with poor health or counterproductive
actions.
If you have negative feelings from the interchange, take responsibility for those feelings. You may have to temporarily set your feelings aside for a time while you deal with the situation. But later bring the feelings out for yourself to examine.
Ask
yourself what memories from your childhood might possibly be activated. What conflicting memories have been triggered by this event? Once you see why you feel the way you do, you have more
choices.
You
can choose to deal with those feelings from old memories separately. Don't bring your past into your present.
When you slow down, think things through and respond with love and wisdom, you're more likely to create something that you can feel proud of and will not only raise the quality of everyone's life, but raise your own self-esteem.
 
10 steps to Freedom from Emotional
Eating
By Nancy Mehegan,
Consumer
Sacred Hunger.com
Nancy Mehegan
is the Author of Eighth Mountain, a poet and client of "The Aliveness Experience" at Sacredhunger.com.
Nancy states
that the aliveness journey led her from dissatisfaction, deadeningly boring jobs, low energy and confusion, into a new life of aliveness; one of radical self-care and daring - into a life lived "In Flow".
When we journey into the "Void",
the truth we discover may be that we really want to quit the awful job, the dead relationship, yell and scream and dance and do anything
other than shovel food and feelings into our body and soul.
I am a binge eater and overeater. I suffered through years of calorie counting and 'yo-yo' dieting, with little success. I frantically ate chocolate truffles when I wasn't hungry. I was overweight and ashamed. One day I luckily stumbled upon Sacredhunger.com. Created by a recovered bulimic, author ("Living Binge-Free", "Beyond the Food Game") and psychotherapist, Jane Latimer, this innovative model approaches overeating from a new perspective.
They talk about 'aliveness'
and feelings and tuning into our bodies, not about calorie counting.
This incredible online curriculum
(teleclasses and emailed lessons) gave me my first
freedom from bingeing.
Through the gateway of the wound
When we go beyond calorie-counting we take a journey into the place where some of the 'yucky' feelings are. But it's exactly in this place, 'through the gateway of the wound' that we can enter to travel beyond the overeating and bingeing symptoms, to re-emerge into the incredible aliveness and joy trapped in the eating patterns.
The following are the steps that led me out of the nightmare of binge-eating:
10 Steps to Freedom from Emotional
Eating
1. Love yourself
I learned to love myself even when I binge; to love the overweight me. This was hard!
When we embrace our negativity (shame, guilt, fear, anger and grief and fat), we're in essence creating for ourselves a new reality.
It doesn't matter how much shame, guilt, or fear we experience. It doesn't matter what we've done. We know that we're lovable deep down underneath all the 'garbage'.
2. Give
up perfectionism
Welcome to an 'imperfect world'. What is an ideal body or weight? Who is to say? I learned to see life more as a spiral or zig-zag, not a straight line. Life is more fluid
now. Sometimes I still binge, although rarely and I accept this part of me that binges. I focus more on becoming aware of my hopes and dreams.
3. Break out of the "Being-Nice" trap
Oooh. This was a 'big' one.
How many 'jolly' fat people are crying inside? I used to be the 'nicest' person you'd ever encounter. You could be violating my boundaries, stepping on my shoes and insulting me, but I'd always be sweetly smiling. Afterwards I might binge. I'm learning the difference between being nice and genuine caring. It's a fine line. If any of the following feelings are familiar you may be caught in the snares of "the being-nice trap":
"Feeling extraordinarily dry,
fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged, muzzled, unaroused... Feeling frightened, halt or weak, without inspiration, without animation, without soulfulness, without meaning, shame-bearing, chronically fuming, volatile, stuck, uncreative, compressed, crazed... not insistent on one's own tempo, to be self-conscious...
A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving..." Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
4. Find alternative means of coping
Sharing problems, dialoguing,
journal writing, communicating with Self, dreamwork, reflecting and meditating. I drive near a forest nearby and tune into nature, let my mind rest from dwelling on problems, try to feel some joy...
5. Nurture yourself in new ways
I give myself what I need. I sleep when I'm tired, eat when I'm hungry, love when I feel empty. I enjoy my solitude when I need to be alone and I share with others when I need to express myself.
6. Be open to Intimacy
I allowed others into my life.
I trusted. This is what I really 'craved'. It's much more fulfilling that the extra cupcake. Yes, it's scary sometimes. But I meditate more, keep a journal, dialogue with the scared part of me, experiment. I did grief work. I became more sensitive to people. I became more aware of who was capable of being 'there' for me.
7. Find your Boundaries
Flamenco dancers... True Boundaries exist as we learn to "focus" our awareness on our core. We learn to protect our core from outside influence and distraction, we grow our boundaries. Don't think of a boundary as a "line" around you defining your space. Think of it as a field of power.
To help you understand this concept, think of the image of the flamenco dancer. Think of the kind of intense, deep passion that flamenco dancers express and how "contained" the flamenco dancer is.
That containment allows for
the direct focusing of her passion. It isn't loosely falling all over the place. It isn't scattered and directionless. It isn't being nice and pretty. It isn't,
what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls, sanitized. The dancer doesn't stop in the middle to answer an irrelevant question, or become
distracted by the details of who is in the audience and who isn't. She's utterly self-contained and focused.
8. Connect
We learn to disconnect in a number of ways. The most popular and acceptable way is we live from our heads, not our hearts. We learn to put our feelings aside and relate through our mental functioning. We numb out. We become "nice." We focus on others for the purpose of losing touch with ourselves. We sabotage our truth in order to be accepted and fit in.
Today I notice when I'm disconnecting. I also know how I connect: Meditation, going into the woods and nature, being kind to myself and others.
9. "Fall into Heart"
Instead of bingeing, find
your safety resources, (a safe place, people you can trust and call when you feel bad ) and begin to FEEL the feelings instead of stuffing them with food. Fragmentation is the experience of our disconnected, disjointed and splintered selves. It's an out-of-control feeling, the feelings underneath the bingeing. It's difficult but a blessing. This is where the raw stuff is, where the work is. Journal, dialogue, begin to work with
the feelings. I was taught techniques to navigate fragmentation.
10. Stop thinking about Food and LIVE!
As we heal, we're less obsessed
with food and calorie counting. We take small steps to begin to feel our passions, what excites us and we begin to follow our inner callings. Food compulsions fall away as an issue, naturally and we move into our fierce
aliveness.
Exercise
What will true recovery look like?
This exercise will help you
get in touch with what you want out of recovery.
With pen & paper in hand,
sit in a comfortable chair. Relax, be still and quiet. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and continue to do so until you're very relaxed. While in this deep and quiet space, feel into a typical day of your present life. What activities occupy your time? What
thoughts? What feelings? What is the general pace of your life? The overall feeling?
Now get specific. Ask yourself
the following questions and jot the answers down. It's very important to remain in a passive, serene state of mind while you do this. Don't lose your connection with this deep place.
- How much time to I spend on enjoyable activities?
- What are these activities?
- What feelings occupy most of my time?
- What thoughts occupy most of my time?
- What activities occupy most of my time?
- How much time is spent bingeing?
- What types of activities do I now do to help me cope with stress, conflicts, difficult emotions?
- How much time is allotted for growth and development?
- How much time do I spend alone, with others?
- Is this time enjoyable? Fulfilling?
- How much time is spent on activities that challenge and excite?
- What are these activities?
- How many of my day's activities
would I rather not be doing?
When you've finished answering
the above questions, again be still and quiet & let yourself feel into the quality of your life at present.
Now imagine yourself at a
Future Time. Repeat and ask the same questions. Notice the differences...
Now ask for guidance. I like
to ask my Inner Self, "What do I need to do at this point in time to help myself make this future life a reality?" Be still and wait. Your answer may come in any
form - a feeling, a flash of knowing, a visual symbol, a sensation; or it may come from the outside, at a later date - a statement a friend
or therapist might make, an event that alters your way of perceiving. Remain open. The answer will come.
Jane Latimer
Free Will To The Rescue - By Dave Czach
Today's
society and your private world are the results of free will. We have arrived
here today thru intention, ignorance or abuse. Some people understand and use free will daily. Some people completely deny it. And other people simply mock it and complain it "doesn't work."
Free will gives
you the power of choice. You always have a choice. You can choose the same behavior or path you usually select. Or you can create a new
result. For example, if someone calls you a "loser," do you have a knee-jerk reaction of anger? If so, your behavior was on auto-pilot allowing a pre-programmed, subconscious trigger to surface. Completely bypassing
your consciousness.
Next time, practice conscious thinking and use your free will to choose your interpretation of the event and your subsequent action.
Take a second to take a deep breath to help raise your consciousness. Then decide if the "loser" statement is valid or not.
If invalid, let it roll off your back.
Remembering
that most negative opinions are simply people's expressions of something they don't like about themselves. If the "loser" statement holds some truth - or is dead-on accurate - control your emotions. Don't become angry. Allow the trigger to surface. And release the trigger.
The rise of negative triggers is a blessing in disguise. By using your free
will and taking a second to raise your consciousness, you can identify a mental or emotional block. By asking the right
questions within, you'll be able to release the emotions of the trigger and experience growth in your personal and/or spiritual journey.
In the end, the quality of your life depends
on daily usage of your free will to raise your consciousness and positively control your life. In doing so, you can shine brightly as intended.
Free Freedom - to taste hidden
fruits - By veepandi
An
individual life has three dimensions individual, society and nature.
A
self-centered individual’s life primarily depends on him/her.
His/her dynamic relations with society and nature
will nourish all the three dimensions.
Attainment of self-centeredindividual is a process from childhood till the stage of self-centered individual is reached. The ultimate end of this process is to experience GOD.
If that process is interrupted by negative components of possessiveness of patrons [parents, teachers and other similar persons] the stage of
self-centered individual will never be reached. Then the primary dependence of that individual will become non-individual. He/she will
exert undue pressures on others throughout his/her life for psychological or/and material comforts.
When such non-self
dependent individuals dominate in a society, an individual will have no control over undue pressures exerted on him/her by others. Every individual in such a society is exposed to this danger of simultaneous exerting and exerted
undue pressures outside his/her control.
In view of muting
of individual self-controls, these undue pressures will irreversibly go on increasing causing either bursting of the society or partial dissipation of excess energy on soft
targets. Humans become robots with a continuous reprogramming [in proportion to the cunning
level] to acquire skills/opportunities to occupy a safe seat in terms of power and wealth.
Fruits of creative
and original life is lost and forgotten/destroyed. No wonder heritage preservation becomes selective and commercial. Preservation
of ancient wisdom undergoes partial damage and distortion. Disharmony and insecurity dominates.
Insecure feelings will dominate forcing the individuals to pursue security as primary goals. Salvation rests with those individuals trying to regain/retain self center.
To get out of this vicious circle, one must stop
robot behavior to understand simultaneous exerting and exerted undue pressures outside his/her control and scope for acquiring primary self-control. A study of possessiveness will help this process.
Possessiveness in relationships will enslave both the possessor and possessed. Both will be denied the freedom of primary self-control.
A mental slavery to relationships, power and wealth is incompatible with the freedom of primary self-control.
In spite of any possible security arrangements a human life has probability to get terminated at any time. Obsession with termination will mar the joy of the present.
Our life will be
terminated qualitatively once we start living as human robots.
A truly free creative original self-centered life can taste hidden fruits. Both the taste and fruits are beyond description of words, the only near substitute being GOD.
Freedom, now or never - by Thomas B. Anderson
Introduction
Throughout the past 30 years, a few atheist / libertarian / objectivist individuals in the US
and worldwide, have gained the yet best, factual understandings of the dynamics of human civilization and the main reasons for its worst problems.
For
almost 30 years, their unique perspectives revealed to them the urgency of working to replace the lethal principles of a traditional
civilization - the fundaments of authority, self-deception, blind faith, apathy, manipulation and death - with principles of a new, matured human civilization; a civilization whose foundations are built on the creation
of values, self-responsibility and genuine freedom from all force and authority.
Until now,
those individuals seem to have failed to reach their goal in time, making the implementation of a much faster, much more efficient strategy for reaching that goal, necessary. Necessary, for a secure, free civilization to rise; also necessary for the survival of humanity with its current freedom.
This publication will start the implementation
of that strategy. It answers, exactly, the questions of why, what, how and who. It's logical evidence will reveal why this
point in time may be the last chance to establish and maintain world-wide freedom for everyone.
It'll
demonstrate what problems exist, which don't only undermine the freedom and
lives of whole populations, but constantly, artificially diminish the life and potential of almost every individual on this
planet.
It'll
then describe how individuals world-wide can and must immediately work to overcome these problems for themselves
- fast and easy - to be able to ultimately achieve the goal of individual freedom globally and that of immediate self-survival personally.
Chapter 1: Fall of
the World Trade Center
Analog metaphors
The
rise of the Nazis and the resulting holocaust is the ultimate metaphor for the destruction inflicted upon societies by political
leaders. Third-reich fascism stands as the ultimate example for destruction of criminal governments, depending on 3000 year
old systems that support obedience to authority.
The holocaust
demonstrates how politicians can rise through power by regulating the institutions, structures and businesses of a nation, manipulating a non-thinking, reality evading populace
into becoming mass-murders of an innocent minority.
The fall
of the World Trade Center is the ultimate metaphor for the destruction inflicted upon the most productive individuals in society
through the envious hate against capitalism and the related freedoms that it delivers a modern society.
Religious fundamentalism stands as the ultimate example of the call for force against the
rights of the individual and the hard-earned, self-built values of capitalism. It demonstrates forever the destructiveness of all religions, governments, social movements and philosophies which advocate the use of force against individual values, especially free-market values, for any so-called higher causes.
Furthermore,
that attack epitomizes how capitalism - according to the original definition of the term, the first and only system based
entirely on individual voluntary free choice and rights of the individual, free of rationalized force for any "higher causes" - is being brought to its knees.
Throughout history and present, that happened less through obvious violent
attacks. Much worse, force-backed governments and bureaucrats are restricting:
- financial freedom
- business freedom
- freedom of scientific
research
- individual freedoms of property and privacy
Much worse, religious leaders and followers of all religions including catholicism, unjustly enforce their traditions and religious laws - at the cost of:
- individual freedom
- business freedom
- even the freedom
of life-saving science
Much worse, those groups of "socialists" and "environmentalists" who advocate violence and regulatory
force against free capitalism and private businesses owned by individuals, serve as the
necessary "public" fundament for the crimes of religious and political systems that undermine happiness and freedom of every human being, every individual on this planet.
What more do both the holocaust and the fall of the World Trade Center have
in common? As long as human perspectives rest on authority, irrationality and the support of force for higher causes, both events can repeat at any time. But the present situation is even worse and more urgent than that.
The concept of the
Nuclear-Decision Threshold
The rapid progress of a civilization depends on continuity. At the current rate of technological progress,
it can't be stopped. If the advancement of science and technology would be stopped, civilization and its technology would
gradually but fast fall back into a dark age. Not only can there be no guarantee for religious / government killings to stop in an irrational civilization.
If the problems of irrationality and force for higher causes aren't solved, as progress continues, advanced technology will become available to irrational and force advocating groups, governments, leaders, eventually destroying present civilization through the rise of totalitarian
government / religious control.
Therefore, protection even with the best military remedies will ultimately be a vanity operation.
A civilization based on authority, religion and the use of force for higher causes, is incurable. Personal and global problems within that civilization can't be solved.
The only remedy is to leave that civilization behind, abandoning all authorities, religions and abandoning the support for their force and control.
The Nuclear-Decision
Threshold is the point at which energy, knowledgeand technology have advanced to where sufficient, man-made energy
(e.g., nuclear energy) can be generated to physically destroy all life
on the planet.
From that point, all civilizations must follow 1 of 2 courses:
(1)
Proceed in an irrational, altruistic, Platonistic philosophical system in which initiatory force compels others to support mystical "higher" causes that feed the bogus livelihoods of neocheaters. Such systems will eventually lead either to all-out
nuclear warfare[ 9 ] or to a retreat into an anti-technological Dark Ages in which most knowledge and technology are lost.
In either case, most of the world's population will die and civilization will perish because of meaningless
mysticism being manipulated to give false power and bogus livelihoods to the value destroyers.
(2) Proceed in (or change to) a rational, business-like, Aristotelian philosophical system in which initiatory force plays no role. Such a system allows civilization
to safely advance beyond the Nuclear-Decision Threshold.
Thus,
any civilization advancing significantly beyond that threshold would by nature exist within a rational Aristotelian/Neo-Tech
society. That in turn would mean a free-market business society from which
initiatory force is eradicated as non-competitive, impotent and immoral.
In any such advanced society, all forms of mysticism would by nature have been discredited and discarded
as stupid and destructive. Such a business-minded society would be free of politicians,
theologians, neocheaters, coercive governments and other usurpers and parasites.
Actions would be based on reality-oriented logic exercised by free individuals
harmoniously, competitively living in accord with their rational best interests.
[...]
For our own civilization
to advance significantly beyond our current Nuclear-Decision Threshold would require a shift from the current Platonistic/altruistic
philosophical base to a Aristotelian/Neo-Tech philosophical base [Re: Table 51 in Concept 116, Neo-Tech Reference Encyclopedia].
Chapter 2: Fatalities
of organized Religion
An essential part
of gaining a wide-scope perspective on the present civilization, is to fully understand the nature of religious/god beliefs. Dr. Julian Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind delivers the understandings of the root of religion. Quoted from www.neo-tech.com/discovery/nt3.html:
Dr. Jaynes discovered that until
3000 years ago essentially all human beings were void of consciousness.[ 2 ] Man along with all other primates functioned
by mimicked or learned reactions.
But, because
of his much larger, more complex brain, man was able to develop a coherent language beginning about 8000 B.C. He was then
guided by audio hallucinations. Those hallucinations evolved in the right hemisphere of the brain and were "heard" as communications
or instructions in the left hemisphere of the brain (the bicameral or two-chamber mind).
...
In effect, human
beings were super-intelligent but automatically reacting animals who could communicate by talking. That communication enabled
human beings to cooperate closely to build societies, even thriving civilizations.
Still,
like all other animals, man functioned almost entirely by an automatic guidance system that was void of consciousness - until
about 1000 B.C. when he was forced to invent consciousness to survive in the collapsing bicameral civilizations. ...
Today, man's
survival still depends on his choice of beneficially following his own consciousness or destructively following the voices
of external "authorities".
[...]
* Except for schizophrenics, people today
no longer hallucinate the voices that guided bicameral man. Yet, most people are at least partly influenced and are sometimes
driven by the remnants of the bicameral mind as they seek, to varying degrees, automatic guidance from the mystical "voices"
of others - from the commanding voices of false external "authorities".
[...]
* Religions and governments are rooted in the nonconscious bicameral mind that is obedient to the "voices" of external "authorities"
- obedient to the voice of "God", gods, rulers and leaders.
[...]
* Essentially all religious and most political ideas today survive through those vestiges of the obsolete bicameral mind. The bicameral mind seeks
omniscient truth and automatic guidance from external "authorities" such as political or spiritual leaders - or other "authoritarian"
sources such as manifested in idols, astrologers, gurus.
Likewise, politicians,
lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, doctors, journalists and TV anchormen become "authoritarian voices".
Religion, a remnant of man's historical dependence on external guidance, became a destructive force, as some learned to instrumentalize
it smartly for their own goals.
These people,
the Neocheaters, use the urge for authority and guidance to further their own goals. Neocheaters become authorities by proclaiming
their own so-called "higher causes", using the fundament of established traditions and beliefs - such as religion - to control people.
Relentlessly,
they must establish social systems backed by force and threats. By rationalizing force, they control societies by support
of the majority. Relentlessly, they must attack the productive, the free, the good. Only
by demonizing their own victims, they are able to control and drain them.
By condemning human emotions, sex and happiness, and by inventing the original sin to create
false guilt, christianity has once brought down humanity into the dark ages - hundreds of years of unnecessary suffering and
being drained by a selected few manipulative leaders. See: www.neo-tech.com/advantages/advantage33.html
Similarly, islamistic leaders are draining and controlling populaces for hundreds of years through oppression
of women, happiness, individuality and individual opinions. Using the tools of every religion, selfless sacrifice and altruism, they manipulate mystic followers into giving their life for holy wars. Enforcing their
oppressive religious laws, they still keep billions of individuals locked down in the dark ages.
Similarly,
by condemning the values of progress and science, today's christian fundamentalism and the religious right in western countries seek to attack, regulate and then drain the most important new science of the 21st century: Biotechnology.
They use their own arbitrary higher cause, christian "ethic", to exert force against individuals and their organizations and
companies, banning cloning, stem-cell and other research as well as life-saving drugs and treatments, causing unnecessary
suffering.
Death is an everyday companion of people who accept an unfree society
full of afterlife delusions. Conscious people in a free and rational society, however, never have to accept the death-is-inevitable
dogmas.
Only conscious
beings can understand the concept of evolution and their own biological origin. Only consciousness can grasp and then control
the laws of nature. Wherever oppression and self-deceptions do not exist, the progress of science naturally exists, as shown
since the end of the dark ages.
Many people agree
that science could be eventually sophisticated enough to understand and control all biological processes of life. Without
the rise of religions and their kings, without the dark ages, today's science would long have gone beyond that point. With oppression and mystic
beliefs eliminated, free science would quickly rise to solve all "insolvable" problems of the dark past.
Equally, with acceptance of scientific reality and rejection of all mystic non-reality, with the need for a
mystic afterlife eliminated, the destructive manipulations of all religions world-wide would perish.
See: New Perspectives on Unlimited Longevity, secretcodes.org/life/index.html
Chapter 3: Initiation of Force - The Problem
The Problem All force of the state hurts the individual. With no right, all forced regulations and bureaucracy of governments restrict the freedoms
of the individual for higher causes. Governments and religions share the same origin.
They arose from man's historical dependency on authority.
Everyone who unnecessarily acknowledges and supports that authority in the modern world, helps those neocheaters in power to drain and oppress the innocent and most valuable - but ultimately drain and oppress essentially any individual.
The only legitimate function of government is the protection of its citizens from force and fraud. All
other functions, regulations, enforced traditions and social norms, are tools implemented by force that only serve those in
power. None of them generate any net benefit for society or individuals.
The destruction of violent murderous groups is obvious. However, the force of the state and its institutions
destroys slowly and silently, killing ten thousands, while making many millions suffer. Systems of such armed bureaucracies
can work unnoticed in their own countries.
However, their
slow, steady destruction is obvious when used against other countries. Measures such as the unjustified enforcing of trade
restrictions and embargos in foreign countries work much like the futile drug war, much like the regulations of small businesses.
They create problems
where none exist. They create chaos, poverty and suffering that leads to broad opposition in foreign societies, delivering
totalitarian governments all the tools needed to broadly escalate conflicts and oppression.
Using rationalized force to fight poverty hurts the poorest the most. Taking half of the capital of all individuals and businesses by force through taxation and mandatory
government programs leads to a continual, artificial inflation. In a free economy, prices
for everything, including everyday goods, would drop sharply, leading to much more prosperity even for the poorest in society.
Using rationalized force to fight job loss and to implement "social justice" creates
mass unemployment and economic decline. Regulating companies and employment terms - private, volitional contracts - leads
to increasing control of business, and mostly small business, while big business can handle such regulations and its costs through capital and
corruption-creating government alliance.
Without government-imposed
minimum wages, small businesses could rise, competitively employing masses of people at minimum costs, while remaining financially
profitable. Without business regulations, an army of small businesses could rise, growing fast and steadily, continually improving
economy, standards of living, and income for their employees.
Using rationalized
force to implement public compulsion schooling destroys the potential of our children, their freedom,
their potential for long-term happiness. It destroys the minds of tomorrow's geniuses of society. Furthermore, education in an inefficient, uncompetitive government
schooling system drives the majority of children toward frustration, laziness, and criminality.
Using rationalized force to wage a war against drugs
creates unnecessary suffering and masses of new drug victims. More than 50% of the today's prisoners in the US are political
prisoners, indicted for the personal use of substances labeled illegal by the government.
"Protecting people from themselves" is a "higher cause", used as a prime tool for imposing regulations that give governments increasing
control. Trading and consuming harmful drugs are not objective crimes, at least as long as they don't involve force or fraud. They
are victimless crimes. Criminalizing substances inevitably only leads to higher prices. When drug prices skyrocket, drug trade
becomes highly profitable, and the creation of new addicts becomes a major source of income for existing addicts.
Similarly any ideas that are called socialist, cause net harm and destruction whenever regulation,
force, threat of force, or fraudulent manipulations must be applied for that idea to work. (Ref.: An in-depth look at socialism, secretcodes.org/social.html)
Using rationalized force to "protect the consumers" from making the wrong choices
for themselves, by regulating and restricting free businesses, ultimately inflicts the most
of all destruction upon individuals and causes death. Quoted from www.neo-tech.com/advantages/advantage90.html:
Consider, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): That bureaucracy has been responsible for the premature death of many thousands of people through its arbitrary, forced banning of such life-saving, free-choice discoveries as the cyclamate artificial sweetener. The palatable cyclamates effectively replaced
the deadly poison of sugar to reduce caloric/carbohydrate intake, obesity ailments, diabetes, heart-attack deaths for millions
of people.
Such FDA value destructions serve only to satisfy some value-destroying bureaucrat's need to feel important, to feel unearned power through destruction of human lives and values.
Also, the arbitrary banning or controlling of life-saving products such as non-toxic pesticides, herbicides, food preservatives and additives, new drugs and medicines
has caused death and suffering on massive scales. In addition, FDA regulations on drug research and marketing retard or prevent
the development of many life-benefitting, life-saving drugs, medicines, and devices while increasing research and development
costs to prohibitive levels.
Effective cancer
cures, for example, would certainly have been developed years ago if research and business were
free from regulations and controls. For, such freedom allows aggressive individuals and companies to openly pursue the full profit and achievement potential in discovering and marketing effective
cures for cancer, AIDS, and other diseases.
Even more important, FDA regulations
block the required risk taking, incentive, and business freedom required for rapid development
of human biological immortality. [Re: See Neo-Tech V]
The blocking of human progress
along with mass suffering and death are the natural results of government force. And government agencies are the instruments
of such force. The essences of agencies such as the BATF, EPA, FDA, FTC, INS, IRS, OSHA, and the SEC are always destructive
and their intentions are never good.
Such agencies
costing billions of dollars each year serve only to harm productive individuals and society. Indeed, those life-depriving
agencies are subtle death machines that are directly and indirectly responsible for more suffering and deaths than all wars of history. (Wars are also government sponsored.)
Throughout history
most governments with their use of force, fraud, and coercion begin as "legalized" protection rackets and always end as destructive
engines of crime and death. Such governments operate under the rationalizations of protection, altruism, the social "good",
and "higher" causes.
Agencies such as the EPA and FDA often carry out their destruction
through dishonest assertions. They assert, for example, that DDT or cyclamates might be "bad" for the ecology or cause cancer
in animals. Then they expand their power with a job-creating bureaucracy to control or ban such substances.
Usually those
agencies hide their dishonesties with non sequitur "facts". They often manufacture unscientific data developed from spurious
research to "prove", for example, that use of cyclamates might cause cancer in humans: Research on feeding megadoses of cyclamate
diet sweetener to rats indicated that humans could experience bladder irritation or even tumors if they drank the equivalent
of 700 bottles of diet soft drinks per day over an extended period of time.
When, in fact,
that amount of water alone (to say nothing of the immediately fatal amounts of sugar in
less than 100 bottles of non-diet soda) would fatally break down the kidneys in human beings.
Still, the FDA used those non-sequitur, rat-feeding data to assert that cyclamates can be cancer-producing
in human beings. The FDA then demanded that the producers prove that cyclamates do not cause cancer.
Since a negative
cannot be proven, the government neocheaters subsequently used their dishonest, non-sequitur data to ban the sale of cyclamates
without any scientific evidence of harm to a single human being. At the same time, those neocheaters purposely ignored the wide-ranging, beneficial, life-saving effects of that artificial sweetener.
The
FDA, EPA, or any other government agency never honestly attempts to prove their assertions. Rather, those agencies demand that the producers disprove their assertions. Their demands
to disprove assertions or accusations contradict the concepts of honesty, objective law, and justice.
Indeed, to demand
proof of a negative undermines honesty by shifting the burden of proof away from the source making accusations (the neocheaters) to
their victims (the value producers).
Without
the burden-of-proof standard, government and religious neocheaters avoid the responsibility to prove their assertions and accusations. Without the burden-of-proof standard, neocheaters are not accountable to honesty. Without that accountability to honesty, professional mystics and neocheaters can continue to usurp power and bogus livelihoods through fraud, deception, and force.
Theists use that same arbitrary, anti-intellectual standard in asserting
the existence of God. Unable to back their assertions with proof, they expect nonbelievers to prove that God does not exist. But that proving-a-negative ploy is intellectually untenable and undermines the protector of honesty, which is: the burden of proof always rests on the one making an assertion or accusation.
Chapter 4: Establishment of Objective Law -- The Solution What is objective law? Objective law is a principle that exists independently
from any philosophy or political position. It represents the only principle universally applicable to fairly judge any action.
Only objective law works by prohibiting the initiation of force, thereby
protecting all rights of the individual, each and every right, while at the same time making it impossible for anyone to abuse any rights to restrict rights of others. It is based on the Constitution of the Universe (Quoted
from www.neo-tech.com/advantages/advantage83.html):
The Constitution
Article 1: No person, group of persons, or government may initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against the person or property of any individual.
Article 2:
Force may be morally and legally used only in defense against those who violate Article 1.
Article
3: No exception shall ever exist to Articles 1 & 2. The Neo-Tech Constitution rests on six axioms:
1. Values exist only relative to life.
2. Whatever benefits
a living organism is a value to that organism. Whatever harms a living organism is a disvalue to that organism.
3.
The basic value against which all values are measured is the conscious individual.
4. Morals
relate only to conscious individuals.
5. Immoral actions arise from individuals
choosing to harm others through force, fraud, deception, coercion - or from individuals choosing to usurp, attack, or destroy values earned by others.
6. Moral actions arise
from individuals choosing to benefit others by competitively producing values for them. How would the Neo-Tech Constitution be enforced?
Through
(2) organized ostracizing systems ...
Effective ostracisation is a much more powerful mechanism for justice, restitution, and deterrent than any form of force. And the severest, fully integrated ostracisation
can eventually deliver capital punishment through suicide. Initiation of force includes the use of:
-
violence
-
compulsion
-
regulation
-
theft
-
fraud
-
- direct or legislative, by any individual or any group, for any other reasons than immediate self-defense of an individual, group, or population from force as defined above
Unjustified are also all victimless crimes, actions that are criminalized by governments (and religions) for higher causes, but which do not harm any individual. Victimless "crimes" which do not depend on force and fraud
against others, include:
-
-
any sexual actions between consenting adults
-
opting out of any government "duties", including
taxes, public insurances, and public schooling
-
From on an objective
viewpoint, real crimes and victimless crimes are easy to distinguish. While many parts of the civil law are designed to protect and financially compensate the direct victim of a de-facto crime, most if not all parts of penal law are designed to enforce
political policies and regulations, violations of which never hurt any real persons, groups or businesses.
They are designed
to give an "authority" the power to prosecute an individual with means of force. Any such actions are immoral, as even in response to crimes, the only moral
use of force is to enforce compensation of victims and future protection/self-defense.
Moreover, there are no natural duties, such as the arbitrary, state imposed "duties"
of military service, taxes, or mandatory registration with various government offices. Individuals only carry self-responsibility for themselves and their own, volitional actions, including speech, and the results.
Implementation
of the solution
"The oppressor has nothing more than the power you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you if you do not provide them yourselves?
How can he have so many arms to beat you with if he
does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own?
How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had not cooperation from you?"
-- Etienne de la Boétie, A Discourse of Voluntary
Servitude
To gain freedom, you need a safety net - by Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D.
When
I talk to people about moving to career freedom and becoming a free spirit, I sometimes get the question: "Does this mean I should give up my job and move to Montana?" Or
people ask: "Should I quit my job to start a business?"
Imagine that you decide to walk across a room on a high wire. You probably have no desire to do this, but suppose you believed there was a secure net under you. You can fall anytime, with no harm done. Would you be more comfortable taking the risk?
Would you have fun dancing on the wire, perhaps trying out some daring moves?
Or think of driving down a narrow driveway, with a steep drop-off on one side. With a guard
rail in place, you can drive faster than you would otherwise.
When you're contemplating a life change, I recommend moving very, very slowly. Ask lots of questions. Do your research and then do more research. Take trial
steps and weigh the consequences. And, most important, create your safety net.
Recently I attended a teleclass about business
start-ups. One caller told us, "I sold all my possessions and moved 2,000 miles, to a city where I knew nobody. In just a
few months, I had a profitable business, a great place to live and some wonderful new friends."
Fortunately the class leader intervened: "I want to give you full credit for making that
move," he said, "but not everyone can, or should, do that." He was right.
In
her book, The Cinderella Complex, Colette Dowling describes a fortyish woman who takes a leave of absence from
her teaching job to seek a career as a film director in Los Angeles. To make ends meet, the woman sells her house and takes
a day job as a tax preparer.
Months
later, she realizes she hates her day job more than she ever hated her teaching job. She also realizes that she needs 20 years to become a film director and she'll be 60 when she gets her first job. Los Angeles is a city of youth. The woman
returned to her teaching job.
A long time ago,
I read a similar story about a physician who sold a partnership in a thriving practice to try an acting career in New York.
He too returned, but was forced to accept a lesser role in the medical community.
What happened?
By not investigating thoroughly and by cutting out their safety nets, these people actually lost freedom. "But maybe they were glad they had experimented, even
if they lost," you might say.
We'll never know.
Psychologists teach us about a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance, or buyers' remorse. When we've invested heavily and taken risks, we avoid admitting we've made a mistake, especially when we aren't in a position to reverse the circumstances.
We try to find reasons to justify our decision: "I don't really hate the house, do I?" I recommend creating the safety net early, before embarking on the risky adventure, if at all possible. Marianne consulted me about starting a business. I asked how long she could survive on her
savings. "A year," she replied. "Maybe a little longer."
"Some businesses take awhile to get off the ground," I reminded her. "You may need more than a year. Or you may discover you hate the business, or some uncontrollable event has made your business obsolete
or unmarketable."
" I thought about all that," said Marianne" and I can always take a job at X Company. I've worked there before
and they said they will make a place for me."
" I' d plan the other way around," I said to Marianne. "Operate from a position of strength. Take the day job, or part-time job, first.
Imagine, 6 months down the road, that you fear the business is growing too slowly. You may have a personal emergency that calls for cash. Now you're in a one-down,
weak position. You really need a job.
" Better," I
continued, "to take a job right at the start of your business. If your profits soar, you're in a very strong position to bid farewell to your day job. You can use the extra cash to grow your business faster, have some fun or save
for the next crisis. In other words, you'll be free." Sometimes you have no choice. If you're laid off, or otherwise
unable to continue your career, you may have to find a way to start a business or move to a new city before you can
get a safety net in place. Ideally, you can plan a net before you encounter a crisis, but that isn't always possible.
People
do get taken by surprise. I know people who were astonished to find themselves too burned out to continue their
careers. Some even fought the evidence. In those circumstances, safety nets may have to be custom-made, using more than a little creativity. But they can and should, be found.
In summary, safety net allows you to find freedom and more important, keep freedom. Design a safety net before you choreograph the high-wire act and you'll honor your commitment to be a free spirit.
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freedom
Full freedom functions only when
rights are balanced with responsibilities and choice is balanced with conscience. The most potent power to put an end to internal and external wars is the human conscience.
Freedom
is a precious gift which promises an experience of liberation and a feeling of no limits as if the earth, the skies and the seas are at one's service!
The
concepts of freedom and liberty have fascinated human beings. One of the
greatest aspirations in the world today is to be free. People
want the freedom to lead a life of purpose, to select freely a lifestyle in which they & their
children can grow healthily and can flourish through the work of their hands, heads and hearts.
They want
to do and go as they please and to enjoy social, political and economic rights and privileges.
In short, they want the freedom to choose, to risk and to succeed!
Full
freedom functions only when rights are balanced with responsibilities and choice is balanced with conscience. There can't be the experience of freedom, individually or collectively, if attention and effort are focused only on rights and choice. When rights
and choice are misunderstood or misused, debts are incurred mentally, physically, spiritually, socially, economically, politically
and so on.
To safeguard
freedom, individuals must not excuse, as an example, the following sentiment
and the actions resulting from it:
A little greed, a little aggression, a little anger is necessary to keep people or things in their place.
Such a
compromise, beginning as a trace of violation, quickly multiplies; other wrong sentiments and actions are then justified.
Harmful or negative thoughts, words, or actions produce equal reactions, as do beneficial and positive sentiments and actions. In other words, what is sown is reaped. That's the natural law of action known as the Law
of Karma. It means that, individually or collectively, positively or negatively, accounts will be settled and debts incurred will be paid.
One
of the key functions of a government, an institution, or any system which has taken the responsibility to serve is to safeguard, promote and guarantee freedom
at 3 levels:
- within the individual, which includes a wide range of physical and mental dimensions from preventing
torture, pain, or suffering to encouraging self-actualization and self-expression
- within groups, societies, or countries, which is demonstrated thru justice and equality in assuring human rights
- within nature,
which means total respect for natural laws, which are constant and unshakable and which ensure
nature's right to an unpolluted life
As trustees
of the precious gift of freedom and
in reaction to violations of freedom, we continue to sense
the imperative to liberate peoples and states from the "iron chains of oppression."
Yet, even
with independence, individuals remain bound to their own "iron chains" of lust,
anger, attachment, ego, greed and violence. They continue to "do battle" internally,
w/in their own minds and it's from that battlefield that all wars are born.
Thus, there needs to be freedom from complications and confusion within the mind, intellect and heart of human beings. Such battles may be experienced in the forms of wasteful or negative thinking influenced by the "iron chains."
Even if
one were to conquer gross anger, there may continue to be subtle feelings of hostility, revenge, or ill will which must be examined, understood and let go. Each one's nature is unique.
However,
to adopt easiness, lightness and mercy in consciousness, attitude and outlook is proactive and the means to be free from
the influence of negative personality traits.
Ultimate freedom is liberation from bondages created from acting in the consciousness of the body - out of attachments to the self and its senses; to others; and to worldly possessions. Liberation is releasing oneself from such attachments.
That doesn't
suggest one wouldn't be loving and loving. On the contrary, having become more independent within, one's outside demeanor would reflect a less dependent and more loving nature.
Self-transformation begins the process of world transformation. The world will not be free
from war and injustice until individuals themselves are set free. The most potent power to put an end to internal and external wars and to set souls free - is the human conscience. Any act of freedom, when aligned with the human conscience, is liberating, empowering and ennobling.
"The
declaration [of Human Rights] was based on the conviction that man must have freedom in order
to develop his personality to the full & have his dignity respected."
Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt,
180th Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly,
December, 1948
Stuck in the Curse Cycle
An interview with Pastor Larry Huch, author of a book on breaking free
from family curses.
How did you start believing in family curses?
Several years after I became a Christian, I was pastoring
my second church in Australia. Even though I was born again and a pastor and had overcome a life of drug addiction, drug smuggling and violence, I had an ongoing problem with anger.
Anything could set me off and I'd yell and cuss at
my wife and child. And one day, when my son was 2 or 3, I got angry and shoved him against the wall. The moment I saw him bounce off the wall, I remembered bouncing off the wall when I was
a kid.
The words came to me: "Like father, like son." I was
behaving just like my father. I was acting out the same things in my family that he did to us.
God had saved me from the drugs, but the underlying anger was still there, the hidden thing nobody knew. This was a family curse that landed on me - as it says in the Scripture, the
iniquity of the father is passed down to the 3rd and 4th generation.
Is this different
from negative behavior we learn from our parents or from a genetic predisposition?
It's the same thing. Some call these patterns a physical
inheritance. I believe that there's a spiritual inheritance from one generation to the next.
We inherit
negative patterns just as we inherit red, hair, freckles, and blue eyes.
- When children are illegitimate, their own children
will probably be illegitimate.
- When inmates get out of prison, 85% of them will be
back in 3 years and their children and their grandchildren will go to prison too.
- Drug addicts pass on drug addiction. It's not because they're bad people. It's not because they make a decision to take drugs.
There's a transfer in the spirit realm, a spiritual
inheritance.
And I want to emphasize
that it's not their fault. These are all due to a spiritual curse.
When you read
the Scripture, you see it all over. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Jesus is talking about the spiritual bondage that's on
us without him.
You're still yoked to this
thing. You can't stop the spirit of the sin from passing to your children.
Oprah writes
about this in her magazine, that one of the reasons she didn't want to get married and have children is she saw through her
whole family the repeating of negative things from grandmother to mother to daughter.
You mention the Kennedys in your book.
Do you believe in the “Kennedy curse”?
Right when I
started writing my book "Free At Last," John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash and every magazine - Time, Newsweek,
People - had on its cover "The Kennedy Curse."
We wonder why it is that
so many people in that family die prematurely or get into trouble? It's not because they're bad people or anything like that.
This is a spiritual curse. If I could get to one of the heads of the Kennedy family and they could agree that this is a spiritual
transfer and realize that the power of God can break it, this family could be set free forever.
It's
not just a Christian thing. Many religions and cultures believe in curses. In Italy you can have a curse put on your family. Australian aborigines, Africa tribes and Native Americans know
you can put a curse on someone.
I've been asked by several
countries in Africa to come and teach how to break the curse. There can be a curse on a nation. A group of pastors in Ireland
have said "This will stop our wars." I've been invited to the Middle East, to Israel in April to teach there. People hate each other and they don't know why.
How can you break a
family curse?
First, understand that this is in your family. It could be divorce, illegitimacy, suicide. One woman I counseled had 5 aunts who committed suicide in the last 50 years. The first step is to recognize that the destructive patterns exist.
Then, be
aware that you're not a bad person; this is something you've inherited.
Know that God loves you. He isn't mad at you. Say "I come in agreement with you that this negative spirit is broken and in its place I receive the positive." If there's anger you receive peace; if there's addiction you receive freedom.
When a vessel is empty,
it has to be filled up. So many people do things to rid themselves of bad habits. But they don't replace it with God. They don't understand that we're clay vessels that hold the spirit of life.
We go to marriage
counseling, to smoking programs. We get rid of the bad, but we don't know to now fill it with a positive spirit. That negative spirit sees your vessel is empty and it comes back in. We end up 7 times worse than we were before.
It's like losing
weight - people gain it all back plus 20 pounds more. Because you need to replace it with peace and joy and love and belief in your future - all the good things that God's spirit has for you. You have to see yourself the way God sees you.
I pump people up with their possibilities, with their destinies. We look
at the problem, rather than the size of the problem. When Israel saw Goliath, they were afraid because of his size. But David wasn't and he could overcome the giant.
Start saying,
today is going to be a great day; I'm a winner, not a loser. I know it sounds corny, but to break
a curse you're filling your vessel up w/what God wants for you.
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No
one can be free who refuses to see what actually lives within him. This is why Real self-healing
begins with truthful self-seeing. There is no other order, no other way.
Consciousness of any unwanted condition in us must precede its correction, just as the rising
sun dismisses the fear hiding in the darkness of night. This is why we must learn that anything in us that doesn't want us to see the truth about our actual unenlightened condition is itself a part of what is punishing us. We can learn to do much better!
“The medicine is bitter, but it heals,” said the late great author Vernon Howard when it comes to seeing the truth of our lives. If we would heal the hidden hurt in us then we must learn that the initial bitterness of self-truthfulness is the front-runner of our ultimate spiritual betterment.
Our
work is to concede to the bright prescription of Higher Self-Honesty regardless of how it “tastes” to us in those
moments when we see ourselves as we are.
Here now are 9
eye-opening facts about areas in our lives where we've chosen not to see what must be seen... If we would be free. Choose in favor of your freedom. Choose to see!
- We close our eyes to the
fact that the imaginary value we have placed upon our life only holds up for as long as others don’t disturb our dreams.
- We close our eyes to the
fact that wherever we go and regardless of whom we meet, we still seem to run into the same conflicts and experience the same negativities.
- We close our eyes to the
fact that what we call being sorry for our bad behavior really just means that we don’t want to be bothered anymore
by those who have been troubled by our unpleasant manifestations.
- We close our eyes to the
fact we blame others for what we call their selfish insistence that we serve their interests when the real pain in such moments is but our own resentment over our cowardly inability to just say “No.”
- We close our eyes to the
fact that in spite of all of the pain it causes us and others, we still believe that we know what it means to be a “winner” in life.
- We close our eyes to the
fact that just because we have mastered hiding some character fault of ours doesn’t mean that it has stopped hurting those around us who can't avoid being subjected to it.
- We close our eyes to the
fact that we would rather have the company of known liars and betrayers than have to go thru our life by ourselves.
- We close our eyes to the
fact that we will only inconvenience ourselves (especially when it comes to answering the
need of others) as a means of avoiding what we see as being a greater pain: their complaints!
- We close our eyes to the
fact that crying for ourselves out of self-pity doesn’t change one thing about the nature of the self that is the secret source of all these tears.
For extra swift
healing study these feeling friendly guides with the intention of welcoming their light. Remember that our work is to see ourselves thru the eyes of truth and then leave truth to take care of the rest.
- Guy Finley
Freeing Ourselves From The Downward
Spirals Of Life - By W. Bradford Swift
Some people call
them vicious circles or cycles. I prefer to think of them as downward spirals of life. Those periods that we can all become trapped in like the whirlpool of water as it drains from the tub. If we're not careful and mindful these downward spirals can suck the life right out of us.
Here are a few simple
and effective steps you can use to free yourself of such
life sucking periods.
1. NOTICE THE SPIRAL YOU'RE IN
As is so often true awareness is the first step to intervention. Much of the power of a downward spiral comes from our continuing to be unaware of the direction of our life.
Like a whirlpool,
a downward spiral's power picks up strength and speed the longer we're in it; so it follows that the sooner we become aware we're trapped in a downward spiral, the easier it'll be to change the direction of our life. It's often helpful to remember a downward spiral reversed becomes a spiral of fulfillment.
2. ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE FULLY PRESENT TO YOUR LIFE
When you 1st notice you're in a downward spiral, the tendency
is to quickly retreat in an effort to free yourself. This initial reaction is often based
in fear and may only exasperate the spiral. Instead, take time to notice what's happening from a detached position.
Witness your life
by stepping outside of it for awhile. One simple way to do this is to imagine you're in a movie theater reviewing the "Story
of My Life" movie. Watch and Observe.
3. CONSCIOUSLY RELEASE
THE THOUGHTS and EMOTIONS
As you begin to "Dismantle" the downward spiral, be sure you release and
let go of the disempowering thoughts and emotions. You might envision a large bottomless trash can in front of you into which you toss each thought and each emotion attached to the thought or you can write it all down then burn the paper, thus releasing their hold on you.
4.
RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO INDULGE
Don't get sucked in to the drama of the movie.
There's no point to watching the movie over and over. This will only suck you in further down the spiral. Observe and Move
On.
5. COMMIT TO CHANGING DIRECTIONS
Make a conscious choice to change the direction of your spiral. You may write down your choice as a declaration or share it with a friend, loved one or your
coach. Draw a line in the sand.
6. KNOW THE MAKE UP OF A DOWNWARD
SPIRAL
Knowing the basic elements that is the composition of a downward spiral
will make it easier to change it's directions. Downward spirals are composed of "molecules of meaning" which can be further broken down to fear and lack based thoughts and emotions. This includes such things as doubt, worry, shoulding on yourself, jealousy, anger, fear, frustration, etc.
All of these come together
to effect who you think you are (i.e., loser , failure, unlovable, etc.) which then determines the actions you take and what you say out loud to yourself. All of which then
determines what you have, as in the results with which you measure your life.
7.
USE THE LAW OF ATTRACION TO CHANGE THE SPIRAL'S DIRECTION
The Law of Attraction states that "Like attracts
Like." So just like fear and lack based thoughts will attract more similar thoughts, the same is true of love and abundance based thoughts. Changing your thoughts and your emotions and you change the direction of the downward spiral.
8. PRACTICE PATIENCE and PERSISTANCE
Remember you didn't get into
the downward spiral overnight, so don't expect refusing direction to take place in an instance. Just asit takes time to stop a car and put it into reverse, it'll take time
before you'll see the evidence that your downward spiral has become a spiral fulfillment. In the meantime continue to affirm and trust that it's so.
9. BEGIN TO GATHER EVIDENCE FOR THE TURNAROUND
As you continue the turnaround process begin to look for physical evidence that
the process is working. Start with the mindset that the evidence is there already and your job is to find it like a detector,
rather than wondering whether there is any or not.
10. DEBRIEF,
DECLARE THE ACCOMPLISHMENT and CELEBRATE
At some point you'll know beyond
a shadow of a doubt that the turnaround is complete. Before moving on take a few minutes to acknowledge what you've learned from the experience, declare to yourself the accomplishment and celebrate it. You've made major progress along your purposeful path. "Celebrate, Celebrate. Dance to the Music."
With the forthcoming inauguration this January, the nation will be
closely watching to see how the President Elect will respond to the advice, influence, and criticism of his advisors, cabinet
members, media, and other political leaders as he takes office.
According to new research in the December 2008 issue of the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, being in a high power position may protect people from being influenced, creating a psychological environment where they are comfortable relying on their own attitudes, insights, expressions, and intentions.
The research was led by Adam Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan
Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Ill., in collaboration with Joe Magee of New York University; Deborah Gruenfeld of Stanford University; Jennifer Whitson of
the University of Texas at Austin; and Katie Liljenquist of Brigham Young University.
"Although power is often perceived as the capacity to influence others, this research examines whether power protects people from influence," said Galinsky. "Our findings indicate that the powerful will generate creative ideas that are less influenced by others, be more likely to express attitudes that don't necessarily conform to prevailing peer pressure, and be more willing to counter with opposing views or statements in a discussion or argument."
Through a series of five experiments, the researchers sought to find
whether the powerful are immune to influence in various situations.
In two of their studies, the researchers explored the effect of power on creativity. For example, in one experiment individuals took part in a marketing exercise and were asked to create novel
names for a number of different product types.
To give them some guidance in the task, they were shown examples
of the kinds of names typically found for each product, but they were asked not to copy any aspects of the examples provided.
The problem for creativity is that examples typically place boundaries on imagination.
The high-power individuals generated more novel responses, or ones that did not reflect attributes of the examples, suggesting that their
creative thinking was less constrained than the thinking of low-power individuals.
Another experiment tested susceptibility to conformity pressure from peers among participants with high or low power. When participants completed a task that most people disliked, low-power and baseline participants' opinions of the task were influenced by a bogus feedback sheet displaying that ostensible previous participants had greatly enjoyed
the task.
By comparison, high-power participants expressed dissatisfaction with the task, resisting the supposedly favorable opinions expressed by others. High-power participants, in other words, did not conform to what they believed others were thinking. As Joe Magee said in describing this study, "High-power people's attitudes do not change with the wind."
In another study, high-power individuals negotiated based on their deeply held values about cooperation and competition. Low-power individuals were more likely to be influenced by the behavior of their opponents. The research also suggests that power, by leading people to express their underlying attitudes and thoughts uninfluenced by others, reveals rather than makes the person.
Magee mentioned the relevance to President Elect Barack Obama. "Our
research suggests that people may not need to worry too much about power corrupting Obama," he said. "His newfound power might enable the change he desires rather than that power changing him instead. This is contrary to what most people think: that the longer he works in Washington the more he will be influenced by the same old ways of doing things."
"Although power is often thought of as a pernicious force that corrupts people who possess it, it is the protection from situational influence that helps powerful individuals surmount social obstacles and express the seemingly unpopular ideas of today that transform into the ideals of tomorrow," Galinsky concluded.
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