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Life Mastery's Friday Weekly Podcast:
"This is My Story, What is Yours? Part IV” Podcast"
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(length 10:47 minutes)
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This is Part VIII of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
So, how this “Face, Embrace and Replace” process works is that you first identify a belief or two about yourself or your life that you feel uncomfortable with. You can do this simply by just sitting down and spontaneously writing down whatever comes to your mind and as you do you will come up with a few uncomfortable beliefs.
Then, after that doing that, find a comfortable place where you can quietly be away from the distractions of life. Take a few deep, cleansing, relaxing, healing breaths, close your eyes, and then just sit there with one of the beliefs you are uncomfortable with.
This is the “Facing” phase of the process. By doing this, you are identifying the belief and taking ownership and responsibility for it.
Now comes the “Embracing” phase of the process where you allow whatever feelings that come up to come up around this belief. Just “embrace” these feelings that come up now—no matter how uncomfortable or negative they may be. Just sit and be with them for two to three minutes or so. If you wander, just come back to the focus of this exercise which is your feelings and not your “thinkings.”
Then after you have sat with your feelings for a bit, ask your self how you can change this belief. You are now entering the “Replace” phase. Then sit and “listen” to whatever impressions, thoughts, feelings or images that come up for you. Don’t be afraid of what you “hear” or “see” or “sense.” Just accept! Change is a challenge for almost everyone, but it is good!
Then ask for the courage to take the actions and make the changes in your life that need to be made in order for you “to be the change you wish to become!”
Yes, truthfully “facing” and identifying your beliefs is challenging and so is “embracing” the feelings that surround them, but the biggest challenge is “replacing” them. And to replace them you must have the courage “to be yourself.” This is the biggest and most important challenge you can possibly take on in your life, that is, to dare “to be your self!”
You can “be yourself!” You are not alone; but boy it is not easy to believe at first!
This is Part VIII of a twelve part blog.
This is Part VII of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
Life is a juxtaposition of opposites. The yin is looking for it’s yang to complete itself; the yang for it’s yin; the negative is looking for the positive; the positive for its negative; the feminine for the masculine; the masculine for the feminine; the ebb for the flow; the flow for the ebb; the in-breath for the out breath; the out-breath for the in-breath.
So, as we sort through all the dross of our beliefs, please understand that everything we unearth and experience is there solely to help us to climb higher upon our mountain of Self-Mastery. Our “opposites” are our “complements.”
Nothing is in our way! Everything is The Way! Your Way! The “High” Way!
So which way are you going? Which path are you taking—the High road or the low road?
One of the most valuable phrases and techniques that I have found on my path is: “Face, Embrace and Replace.”
Over twenty years ago, I had a spiritual reading with a man whose name I have lost and forgotten. In that reading he introduced me to this phrase and the “work” that goes along with actualizing it. I am eternally indebted to him for it. For it has given me the formula for how to look carefully at my belief systems and then how to transmute the dysfunctional ones into functional ones.
So, again, it all began with me not being comfortable in the roles my parents and friends were expecting me to play.
How about you, did you just accept the roles you were uncomfortable with anyhow and just try to make the “best of it?” Or did you totally deny that you had dreams and desires that were not being supported?
What roles are you presently playing that are not comfortable or true to who you are?
This is Part VII of a twelve part blog.
Life Mastery's Friday Weekly Podcast:
"This is My Story, What is Yours? Part III” Podcast"
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(length 9:29 minutes)
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This is Part VI of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
Actually, at this point it might be helpful for us to explore the etymology of the word “story.” It comes from the Greek and Latin and means “to inquire into” or “to examine.” So, as we explore our stories here, let’s really “inquire into” and “examine: honestly and thoroughly what beliefs we base our lives upon.
As Socrates once said:
The life unexamined is not worth living.
What we are exploring here is not simply a mental exercise, but it is a “life” exercise. This is about exercising your “life-giving” muscles. These “life-giving” muscles are your ability to choose, to create, to intend, to dream, to love, to laugh, to be free, to nourish yourself, to experience change, to honor and love yourself and others, to “be true” to yourself, to “know yourself” from the inside out and to experience the God/Goddess within you.
I suspect that one of the biggest false beliefs that I carried around for a very long time was the belief that “I was not good enough.” I was always overestimating others and underestimating myself. I might add at this point that this is the best way I have found to give away my power!
Now, let me be clear here I am not suggesting that you now go around overestimating yourself and underestimating others. That doesn’t work either. For some folks this is the belief/pattern that needs to be examined. It wasn’t the one I needed to examine, though. But we are all in this together and opposites do manage to find each other in order to balance each other out and find the “golden mean.”
We create our opposite in order to find the balance we seek and to help another find his or hers. It really is a neat Universe we live in! I’ll explain further.
This is Part II of a twelve part blog.
This is Part V of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
I knew that something was “wrong,” so to speak, when I was quite young. I always felt that I didn’t fit in anywhere—even before entering Kindergarten! My parents wanted me to be a “certain” way and my friends wanted me to be a “certain” way. But none of it was comfortable for me. No of it made sense. None of it fit! None of it was “certain” to me!
I’m not sure when the following question began to be a conscious one for me, but it seems that it was one that came up for me at a very early age, for it has stayed at the forefront of my awareness all my life and has been the primary determining factor in all my decisions in my life; it has been, in effect, my North Star: The question I am referring to is: What is the purpose of my Life! What is the meaning of Life?
I know that these are two questions, not one, but for me they were always one and the same—inseparable—two sides of the same coin! I could never get away from these questions. No matter how hard my ego/little self tried to distract me, these questions always appeared up-front and center-stage for me.
Yes, these questions were and are my North Star! Whenever I remembered to ask them of myself and then stopped long enough to listen to the answer I got and followed what I received, I would, as a result, find myself on my path and would be actualizing my purpose in my life and my life would have meaning.
Whenever I didn’t ask these questions and relegated them to the dust bin of obscurity and irrelevance in my life, I got myself in big trouble. Yes, they were always there in the forefront, but I, at times, looked away or down and missed what was right in front of me and what was most important.
This is Part V of a twelve part blog.
Life Mastery's Friday Weekly Podcast:
"This is My Story, What is Yours? Part II” Podcast"
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(length 10:14 minutes)
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This is Part IV of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
Thus, I discovered that I had to dig deep within to find the “bedrock” of my “being” and free myself from the quicksand of other people’s desires and expectations of me.
To do this I had to plumb the depths of my little self and navigate past all of its fears and insecurities and come up, instead, to land upon the solid ground of the shores of my Higher Self! There I could stand on the core foundation of who I really AM. There I could look at myself in the mirror and see who I really AM!
As I began to do this, I clearly realized, then and there, that I could no longer live in the shadow of my ego or of someone else’s expectations, but had to live in the Light of my Soul!
I am well aware that all of this is a lot easier said than done—but regardless this kind of brutally honest soul-searching is very, very necessary.
So, what I would like to share with you now is a bit of my story; how I originally wrote it, how I gradually began to read it over and rewrite it, how I eventually chucked the whole thing, and how I, now, no longer have a story, but just AM from moment to moment!
It’s all about “Being” and not about “doing.” A story “does;” a Life IS. I choose to BE who I AM and not to just “do.” I am a human “being” and not a human “doing.”
So, let’s explore this story a bit, perhaps it can help you to find or refine yours, as well!
So, let’s discover what it means “to live your life from the inside out,” to live your life seeing everything and everyone through the eyes and heart of your Soul rather than following a prepared, cookie-cutter script and being blind to and afraid of the possibilities that are you!
This is Part IV of a twelve part blog.
This is Part III of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.
In other words, I lived with beliefs and expectations that were limiting and that assumed that my life was not my own. I assumed that my life was just something that had already been scripted by others and that it was my responsibility to follow that script and then all would be well and safe!
But what I didn’t understand was that all the “stuff” that I didn’t want in my life was there simply because I didn’t realize that I was letting it be there. I was allowing it to be there because I believed, deep down inside, that life was not much more than tagging along on a prearranged plan, following orders, paying taxes, having a few beers and then dieing.
Parenthetically, I know that the above description of what I expected of life sounds rather morose and exaggerated, but it was pretty true to course considering what I was experiencing in my life. But, and this is a big BUT, there was also a part of me that knew that life was about joy, freedom and love.
But somehow my dysfunctional, old belief system had me accepting as true that I had to endure all this “sad” stuff so that as a reward for my penance I could occasionally be doled out a few of life’s pleasures and riches. Boy was I ever totally wrong about that belief!
I came to realize that I really had a poverty mentality: Life was a drag; Money was not easy to attain; I had little to offer others; I wasn’t really worthy; every thing was hard to come by! To attain anything, one had to work one’s tail off; nothing comes easy; it’s immoral to charge for my services; Money is the root of all evil; etc, etc, etc. My! What a litany of life-restricting negativity.
So, in time I came to realize that another’s person’s dreams were truly my nightmares!
And I also came to realize that there was no safety or security on the shifting sands of another’s’ expectations of me. Sound familiar?
This is Part III of a twelve part blog.
Life Mastery's Friday Weekly Podcast:
"This is My Story, What is Yours? Part I” Podcast"
Click Here to Download MP3/Audio
(length 8:30 minutes)
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This is Part II of a twelve part blog. Part I begins on 09/03/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous part.
But it was interesting that I really believed that the characters in the story that I had “bought into” were real, even though I wasn’t being “real” or honest with myself. Actually, I thought that these characters and scenarios were more real than I was.
In other words, I believed that these characters and scenarios had an existence separate from me and that they could influence and affect me no matter what I did or didn’t do. I thought I was powerless in the face of these all-knowing, all-mighty “external” forces.
But I didn’t realize that I created them all for me to learn from and that they did not have an existence separate from me. They were me! I created them. I gave them life. I perpetuated them because I chose to. I allowed them to remain in my life.
How I chose to view them determined how I experienced them! They were me. I was them! No one forced them on me, I invited them all in! They were mine! Period!
Whew! In other words, everything in my life was something that I had, in some way or another, chosen, consciously or unconsciously, to have there with me. This was my script/story and I had written/created it all—all the drama, pathos, comedy and tragedy! All of it!
It was all mine and no one else’s! So, I either was conscious about what I was doing and got something I really wanted or I was unconscious about what I wanted and got what I didn’t want or understand. So, no matter how you cut it, whether I was conscious or not, I had attracted and drawn it all into my life.
This is Part II of a twelve part blog.
This is Part I of a twelve part blog.
I have a story to tell and that story is my story. I once thought that I had my story “down,” so to speak, and that I was living my own life. But as I became more and more conscious and honest with my self, I realized that it was not really my story that I was living. It was someone else’s.
It turned out that as I examined what I was doing with my life, that really all I was doing was following the script that someone else wrote for me. Actually, as I got even more truthful with myself, I realized that I, somewhere deep inside me, believed that it was my responsibility to follow the script that was handed to me.
That was kind of dumb, I guess, but it took quite awhile to open up to the truth of the matter and to be genuinely honest with myself.
Actually, it took quite a bit of courage to look at my life candidly and realize that I was living a “lie.” I wasn’t living my life. I was living the expectations and dreams of my parents and of others. All of which were well-meaning, I might add, but very little of which were mine.
And, as a result of all this, I came to ask myself this all important question:
So, I finally I got around to realizing that my life Is My Story and no one else’s; and that I can change it, keep it the way it is, erase parts or all of it, create new scenes, characters and scenarios, whatever! It’s my play to write and re-write—“to play with,” so to speak!
What I want to be and do, I CAN be and do!! Really! I just have to discover and recover what it is that I want to be and then have the courage to claim it!
This is Part I of a twelve part blog.