This is what it feels like when I meet most students: They arrive feeling somewhat insecure and they often lack confidence in their ability to live their lives as well as they might. I can agree with that assessment only in part because gaining consciousness does benefit us all.
What I cannot do is join others in feeling they are either broken or failing. Shrouded and lost maybe, but broken and failing? No.
To use one of the parables of Jesus as a reference, I only see people who are ‘hiding their light under a bushel.’ They are beautiful souls, executing the verb of creating problematic thinking that prevents them from realizing who they really are.
People’s thinking will generally be some form of comparative, problematic judgment that forms who they believe they are –hence their desire for change. By going through the experiences in the sessions, people begin to see thought for what it really is, and in doing so it loses its power.
We have to be someone, so our history helps form our thinking, and even the wisest spend their lives yinning and yanging back and forth between the thinking of their ego and the knowing of their soul. As I routinely say, we can’t have a path without having not-path.
This means enlightenment isn’t some state we achieve, it is the verb of ‘being without thinking.’ When we can see through our thinking we see it as nothing more than ill-informed, ephemeral theories about the world and ourselves.
Once people naturally realize that no one really knows anything for sure, judgment slips away and the natural confidence that all souls had as children emerges again.
We imagine that we feel better and gain confidence. In reality, we have always been fine. We are naturally buoyant in life, it is only our debilitating thoughts that appear to weigh us down. Confidence does not need to be acquired, it only needs to be uncovered. We can each do that by gaining a deeper understanding of how our thinking truly creates our reality.
It helps to motivate us if we have a sense of urgency. And we all like to think of our futures as brighter than today, right? Well then, we had better get as conscious as we can, as fast as we can.
We shouldn’t see the act of becoming more conscious as something daunting or difficult. Whether people do it alone or with someone like me, I’ve never seen anyone with a true guide who took longer than 10 hours before they started to see reality in a truly new way.
That said, we should not expect perfection. Mastering our view of reality takes a lifetime and more. After all, there can’t be a path without a not-path.
If we have trouble appreciating the value of such a change, we need only look back at how we responded or behaved in the past. Our previous actions and reactions were a reflection of our thinking at that time, and we can often find times where more clarity would have helped.
Equally so, our futures will be dictated by the thoughts we choose to think today. That fact immediately adds importance to the thoughts we’re having now.
How does a future happen? It flows forward. And which direction does it flow? It flows in the direction it intends to. And how is that direction determined? For a river it is through gravity, but for human beings it is our through our thinking. That is the principle all of our psychologies share.
If we are thinking negatively today, we greatly increase the odds of a negative day tomorrow. But if we choose to think the thoughts of someone who is strong, who is taking steps in some direction, then that is who we will become. The rest is just steps.
Along our way we must be on guard to avoid our thoughts from being diverted by fear or anger or desire. As compelling as each thing can be, rarely should they retain our focus.
By remaining centered on the present moment for our Self, and by not expecting perfection, we ensure that we are in as much control as the shores of reality will allow.
When it comes to storytelling, there are only so many ways in which characters and plot directions can mix. This means we often see the same essential story types in many unique and different forms.
Despite the existence of those forms, every now and again someone creates something classic. Something with themes so universal that the art can travel smoothly and easily through time. In this case I’m referring to a film that quite literally travels smoothly through time.
Pleasantville was made in pre-9/11 1998. Back then it was a more innocent story about women and their roles in society, the acceptance of people of colour, and it cast a bad light on oppression of all forms. It is an anti-conformity, pro-novelty and independence story.
Today everyone would think the story was about immigration or trans-gendered issues or race relations, which demonstrates how a Classic works in action. Even though it’s external context has changed, it remains just as relevant as when it was discussing the different issues that were being analyzed when the film was released. That ability to stay relevant by focusing on universal principles is what will allow this film to move through time as a Classic.
Even from just the film trailer, it’s easy to comprehend the fundamental plot about a brother and sister who end up trapped in a 1950’s TV show. Within that reality, no one knows any thought or feeling that doesn’t already exist within the scripts that they live out as literal and figurative black and white truths.
When the brother and sister introduce novelty and choice –and especially the variation in feelings those things cause– it’s shocking to everyone. But as other characters also engage in novelty –and the variable feelings that go with it– people begin to feel increasingly more alive. On screen, colour starts seeping into their previous black and white lives.
That premise is a great metaphor for how we will live out our identities. Most of us go to jobs we dislike, dress or behave in ways we don’t like, to please people we don’t like. We play a role in our families, and with our friends, and for our jobs. When things get difficult the range or motion for our identity can slowly be narrowed to the point of feeling more like a psychological straight-jacket.
This turns us into ego-based robots within our own lives, where we do everything unconsciously and we live by rote. We don’t want to function like slot cars or train sets. We are not fixed on some track, where we must only enact the same choices and over, all while we have internalized thought-wars in our heads about how we want change.
Like the people of Pleasantville, we must shake ourselves awake and recognize our flexibility. In watching the film again I felt like Toby Maguire. My course and this blog is nothing more than me shaking people awake. It is us that strangles the colour out of our lives. We are the ones that choose to repeat the same tones until our mind takes their existence for granted.
(Don’t watch this if you want to watch the movie, it contains a fairly small spoiler.)
For anyone who has never done it before, it is worth it to make efforts to break free of our habits –to make decisions that reflect our essence. Rather than cling to the security of what we know, we are better to leave our wombs of consistency.
We are better to escape by using our presence. Our resulting awareness will expose to us that it has always been us that was building our repetitive realities. We do that by continuing to think of the world and ourselves in the same consistent ways. But with that very same power, we can become conscious and choose instead to build ourselves entirely new realities.
Whether it is someone suddenly realizing they need to leave their job, or that they can live without someone and are getting divorced, or that they can move past their grief, or overcome a negative self-image –when we change our thoughts about who we are and what can happen, the world around us changes.
Consistency has a kind of inertia that compels us not to disrupt its predictability. But without free will, there is no actual life being lived. Yes, living in the moment without knowing what is next is a larger and more mysterious feeling than the narrow path of predictability can incite within us. But that is the point.
Yes, a more colourful life also means we experience greater intensities of fear and sadness and anger. But it also means we feel more awe, more joy and more love. This is why I most often hear from people, when they are literally so sick of their patterns that they will even consider novelty as a way out.
As scary as some new and larger reality may seem, I have yet to have anyone ask to go back to a life with less freedom or colour. That’s worth thinking about the next time any of us feels compelled to hide from life.
