ALL FOR NOTHING

ALL (F)OR NOTHING



There’s nothing to get – and I hope you get it.
Colin Hayes


There once was a man who hated the sound of his own footsteps and the sight of his own shadow. He hit on a plan: he would run away from them. So he ran, and he ran, and he ran….but still his footsteps stayed there and his shadow followed him close behind. So he decided to run faster in order to get away from them. He ran faster, and faster, and faster…but still his footsteps were there and his shadow stuck by him. Day after day, week after week, year after year, he ran faster and faster, but still his footsteps and his shadow dogged him.

One day he dropped dead, which was a pity

Because all he had ever needed to do was –

Step into the shade

And

Sit down
Colin Hayes


When I first went into business, my partner and I decided to be “Generalists”. It came from a realisation that, in a world of increasing specialisation, experts were getting to know more and more about less and less. I figured they’d soon know everything about nothing, and that was not for me. I was happy to know less and less about more and more, even if l I finished up knowing nothing about everything. “I” considers himself to have been remarkably successful.

When you give up everything, you get it all.

There are two ways to get everything. One is to get something, then hang on to that while you get something else, then something else, and so on ad infinitum. That's what most of us do. In our search for satisfaction we grasp for more, for bigger, for better.The only problems with this plan are -- 1) That we keep dropping things we've got while reaching for something else; and 2) We realise we're not going to live long enough to get it all. So, in the face of the dwindling possibility of ultimate satisfaction we settle for gratification.

There is another way -- to give up everything until you have nothing. Nothing is a codename for infinite possibility. When you have Nothing, there is infinite space for whatever you need to show up, whenever you need it and you can be serenely content while you're not at it. That sounds to me like Abundance.

It's a paradox isn't it? To get whatever you want, you have to give up what you've got.

We're relucatant to do that because we believe in Scarcity and Lack. We're emotionally attached to the idea of a limited universe.

There's a very good reason why it won't work -- WANT. We think that if we don't want something, we won't get it. We think that the harder we want something, the more likely we are to get it. Could it be that the reverse is true? Could it be that the Wanting is the problem? Could it be that the Wanting becomes so addictive that it becomes an end unto itself? We want the Wanting, and that's what we've got? We never think to remove the Wanting, remove the desire, and create space for whatever to show up.

We say "It's either all or nothing", and we believe in that, as if the two ideas are mutually exclusive. But what if they're not? What if "All" and "Nothing" are two perceptions of the same thing -- unlimited possibility?

So let me re-state the paradox -- To get what you want you must give it all up, including the wanting.

And the rich young ruler went away disappointed (remember the one about a camel getting through the "eye of the needle"?)

BLAME or RESPONSIBILITY

Blame implies the existence of a conscious intent.

Responsibility implies involvement.

Blame is assigned to someone/thing else. Even when I declare "I blame myself", there is a Blamer and a Blamed -- probably "I" and "Me". It is a weapon of punishment and control.

Blame is an attempt to avoid responsibility.

Responsibility is something you accept and creatively engage with.

Blame is a one-way, dead-end cul-de-sac to anger and depression.

Responsibility is an open freeway to freedom.

BELIEFS

Beliefs are bridges over what you don't know.

Every belief is based on no direct experience.

When you know something from direct experience, belief is no longer necessary.

Living according to beliefs (P.S. they're not even yours, you know --- you adopted them Nth-hand from others) is like going to a lavish restaurant and eating the menu instead of the meal.

39 THINGS I'VE LEARNT THE HARD WAY (and still counting)

* There is no free lunch.

* It's all an illusion; we pretend it's real until we get carried away by our own pretense.

* Whatever we resist persists.

* My resentments cost me my freedom. I can't have both.

* A fool and my money are soon elected.

* We can choose our friends, but not our rellies. There is a reason for that.

* Good communication isn't hard: there are only 3 rules:-

1. Say what is.
2. Put it where it is (ie. in a context)
3. Engage the listener.
   

* Never lick either a steak knife or the lid of a can you've just opened.

* Anyone who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter cannot be trusted. Pay attention.

* God has a sense of humour.

* God has no sense of humour. She takes you very literally at your word.

* When people say "I was only joking", they were telling you their truth: they just don't want to own up to it.

* Existence is an infinity of "This and that......and...." No possibility is excluded. Nothing is judged.

"Either this.........or that......." is an artifice created by the human mind that just wants to be right about its concepts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions.

* The purpose of life is life itself, just as it is.

* Your face and body after age 20 are all your own work.

* Keep trying new things. The Ark was built by a lone amateur. The Titanic was built by a bunch of highly qualified pros.

* There is no meaning -- we make that up. And it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything.

* A victim's life doesn't work, but most people take it up as a lifetime occupation.

* What is -- is. What ain't -- ain't. Everything else is just so much blah-blah-blah. Most people think the blah-blah-blah is somehow important.

* When "what-is" becomes more important than "what-ain't", suffering ceases.

* The only cause of suffering is addiction.

* This, too, will pass.

* There are no limits to the human capacity for stupidity.

* Given enough time and space, everything comes back to now/here.

* Never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

* What your life is about is up to you. Quit looking elsewhere for "the answer".

* "The answer" is you, and your experience right now. You just forgot what the question was.

* Never, ever, ever, say anything to a woman that even remotely hints that she might be pregnant, unless you can actually see a baby emerging from her at that moment.

* It's all about Balance. Nature balances itself.

* There are consequences to everything, including every attempt to manipulate the consequences.

* The more things change, the more they stay the same.

* When something changes, it's component elements remain the same; the same shit just got moved around a bit, that's all. We don't need change; we need transformation.

* Women are mean and men are stupid.

* Boys.....never, ever hit a girl. No matter how painfully they taunt you, girls have universal moral immunity, and they know it.

* There is a universe of difference between Knowledge and Wisdom, Sympathy and Empathy, Quitting and Surrender, Believing and Knowing.

* A judge called Pilate asked one of his prisoners "You talk about Truth; what is Truth?" The other bloke just looked at him, without a flicker of attitude. Pilate was left carrying his own baggage. He couldn't handle it.

* The longer the explanation, the bigger the lie.

* My emotions are my responsibility, no-one else's. Your feelings are yours; share them by all means, but don't dump them on anyone else.

* What others think of me is none of my business.

MIRACLES?

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying "There are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

I find both to be true -- Everything is a miracle, AND nothing is a miracle.

The best way I can explain this paradox is by saying "Everything is a miracle; and it doesn't mean anything that everything is a miracle -- there's nothing miraculous about that".

Seeing everything as a miracle returns me to my childhood, when everything was indeed fresh, and new and a constant source of wonder and awe, proper subjects for an insatiable curiosity and quest for experience. To be curious for experience is to know the heart of God. No one thing is any more or less important than any other. It's all a miracle.

And none of it is a miracle. It is what it is -- life. The purpose of life is life itself. If none of it is miraculous or important, then we cannot get hooked up on it. We are free. We can move on in gratitude. When we get hooked up in any way, we hit the pause button on life. And it's OK to experience that, too.

The great thing about this life is that we cannot fail. It's not an exam to be passed -- it's an experience to be had. An un-judged experience of Now is the timeless Prize.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU RESIST

Am I missing something?

This from Amanda Blair's column in yesterday's Adelaide Sunday Mail headlined "BIAS CUTS BOTH WAYS" --

.......52 year-old doctor, Tracie O'Keefe. At 15, as a young male, she began taking hormones and at 21 she had gender reassignment surgery.
Tracie had always known she was female, but nature had dished out the wrong set of genitals.
Some 30 years later she is living with her long term partner, Katrina Fox in a lesbian relationship....."

Oh hello!?? Now that is having a bet each way.

But I digress.....

Columnist Amanda went on to report Tracie's bitch about being discriminated against by the organizers of a function for "lesbian raised females" who've refused her admission on the grounds that the function was only for lesbians raised as females from birth. Amanda went on to express surprise that people who had experienced so much discrimination in their lives should themselves turn out to be arch discriminators.

Which planet did this lady just arrive from?

I don't remember now who introduced me to this concept, but I call it the Topdog/Underdog syndrome. In any social interaction, the chances are better than even that one party will assume the position of Topdog ("I'm doing this for your own good!"); and the other will assume the posture of Underdog ("Yes sir, thank you sir, three bags full sir"). Then will come a time when the Underdog becomes Topdog, either with that person or with someone else. When that happens, watch that Underdog become a meaner, more savage, devious Topdog than his/her previous tormentors ever were!! Listen around you. It's going on all the time. Haven't you ever looked at someone whose family you know and noticed "She does her mother better than her mother!"

There are many unalterable Laws of Life in this weird
realm we live in. Here are three of them --

• What you resist -- persists
• You BECOME what you resist
• You already ARE what you resist, and what you resist will keep showing up in your face until you say "yes" to your ownership of it.

But we don't cop to it. We're afraid that, by saying "Yes, I am that way sometimes", we'll become the victim of it. The reverse is true. By denying it, we're perpetuating it and the dominance of it over out well-being. By saying "yes" to what we don't like, we give ourselves freedom to choose -- we give ourselves author-ity in the matter.

EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS

FEAR

Fear is an emotional reaction to a perceived departure from your emotional attachment to the way you think things ought to be. The severity of the attachment determines the debilitating severity of the resulting Fear.

ANGER

Complaint, with the volume turned up.

An extreme emotional attachment to the way you think things ought to be, and a reactive resistance to your perception of a departure from that.

REMORSE

An emotional attachment to the way you think you ought to be, and a reactive awareness of your departure from that ideal.

-------------------

Because these conditions were never reasoned into in the first place, they cannot be reasoned out of. The way out is intuitive/emotional. This is not about change: this is about transformation.

A goose was once raised in a large bottle. As it grew, however, it became too large for the bottle. Question:- How do you get the goose out, without damaging either the goose or the bottle? Answer:- The goose is out. It was never in in the first place -- that was a lie.

For peace of no-mind, all attachments must be dropped. Let 'em go (and don't get attached to getting unattached!)

DEFINITION & INFINITION

When we define something we give it boundaries and limits, so that it will fit into a pigeonhole of "understanding".

When a boundary is drawn around anything, we are then able to discriminate between that which "it is" and that which "it is not". Discrimination is a comfort to the scared Mind, ever fearful of not-knowing and not-being-in-control. An illusion of Certainty arises from the inevitable judging of Right from Wrong, Good from Bad, Safe from Dangerous.

The end results are Polarity, Position-ality and Right-eousness. Our growth has got stuck in an endless loop of feedback.

Infinition, on the other hand, is the antithesis of Definition. There are no boundaries, no limits. No pigeonholes, no "understanding". Infinition opens to the possibility of Wisdom. Infinition is satisfied to experience the experience, rather than waste time trying to understand it. e.g. As a lad, I could have read and understood all the books in the world about Balance, but I still would not have been able to ride a bike. To do that, I had to get on it and go for a ride. To live life, all you have to do is get on and go for the ride. Experiencing is the prize; understanding is the booby-prize. That is Wisdom

In Infinition, there is no judgmental discrimination: only simple Awareness. Innocence (I-know- sense). No criticism; nothing to get defensive about. There is Openness to Possibiility.

Infinition is a context. It allows Definition to exist -- unmolested. The Infinite is always greater than the Finite.

OPINIONS

We all have opinions on just about everything; and we treasure those opinions more highly than life itself.

Do you want to know how important your opinions really are? Here is a simple test you can do to find out.......

.......One night, preferably moonless, go to a secluded place in the open, look up at the stars, and give them your opinions on anything and everything. Really put them out there! Go for broke (hence the advice to go somewhere isolated, otherwise the neighbours might call 000.)

Give it all you've got -- loud and passionate.

When you're finally done, watch very carefully and observe how much the universe around you moves as a result of your opinions.

Get the message.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

And it is also true that there is a magic about you for which the universe will move.

But it doesn't lie anywhere near your beliefs, concepts or opinions -- or anyone else's either.

GROUPS

Selfishness prevails over altruism within any group.

But altruistic groups, sooner or later, prevail over selfish groups.

Everything else is just so much opinion.

HAPPINESS

Happiness is that which remains after suffering is dropped. Happiness is the absence of Unhappiness.

Like the sun on a cloudy day, Happiness may be obscured from time to time, but it never goes away. It is available, whenever we're ready to change our point of view.

Why are we so reluctant to drop our suffering and experience happiness? What is the payoff supposed to be for withholding from our own happiness and wellbeing?

Hmmmmm?

Who do we think we're controlling by being unhappy?

Sit on that and ponder awhile.

PARDON ME, BUT .............

When you Pardon someone,
It's an act of arrogance and control -- lightyears away from Forgiveness.

Forgiving is LETTING GO
Pardoning is HANGING ON. A connection of obligation remains. There's an element of control ("Do it again and I'll bust your balls!")

Do you want to be free?

Then STOP.......stop........stop...........
Just...........let.........go.

When Forgivness happens (and it's often an act of grace) baggage is dropped forever. The one most blessed is the Forgiver.

Two celibate monks were travelling from one village to another. They came across a swift stream, where there was a woman waiting on the bank, fearful of the depth and the current. She begged the monks to carry her across.
The elder of the two picked her up, and the three made their way safely to the other side, where the woman thanked them profusely and went her separate way.
For the next mile the two monks travelled in silence, but the youger monk was in turmoil. Finally he could contain himself no longer. "You should not have done that," he railed upon the elder monk. "We are celibates. We are forbidden from touching women. You have been tainted. The abbott will be furious when he finds out!"
The elder monk turned to his companion and replied calmly, "She asked for a lift. I gave her a lift, and put her down a mile back. How come you're still carrying her?"

Forgiveness is not an occasional act: it is a permanent way of being in this world.

TO BE HONEST WITH YOU.....

Have you ever heard a statement prefaced by "Well, to be honest with you....."

Have you ever heard your self say it?

When you hear that one next time -- be aware.......
(There's a lie lurking nearby.)

YOU'RE A LONG TIME DEAD

I remembered that old saying just a day or two ago -- You're a long time dead....
Well, no time at all really.
Maybe it's a good time to take time (while you still have time) to experience whatever takes your fancy,
while "you" is still alive.

THINK FOR YOURSELF

Think for yourself.

There are no right or wrong answers; no right or wrong turnings --
Only Experience, being experienced.
The question is, are you home for the experience, or out on the world's longest lunch-hour?

John Lennon wrote in "Beautiful Boy" -- "Life is what's happening while you're making other plans."


To think for yourself is to be free of those who seek to influence your choices.

Life serves up a smorgasbord of experience, with an invitation to be conscious and present for the feast.

No need to dress up: come as you are.

PEACE

The polar opposite of Peace is Apathy.

(Apathy is an overwhelming mixture of fear and resentment in disguise. )

In a condition of Apathy, nothing is possible. In a state of Peace, anything is possible.

Peace is the abiding state of all creation. Other stuff may obscure it from view, but cannot destroy it, any more than a cloud can destroy the sun. Peace is at peace with all things as they are -- even conflict.

A Japanese master once gave a pupil a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal and asked him to draw his concept of Peace. For half an hour the pupil laboured diligently and finally handed his master back the paper. On it was a drawing of a serene mountain lake, with the mountains, the trees and tufts of woolly cloud floating in a sunny sky perfectly reflected in the unruffled surface of the lake.

The master nodded his appreciation, then took another sheet of paper and stick of charcoal. For less than a minute the charcoal flew and swirled vigorously, then stopped abruptly. The master handed his paper to the pupil.

On it was a crude representation of a thundering waterfall. On the face of the cliff at the very edge of the boiling cataract he saw a tiny bush, clinging for life in a niche in the rocks. In the fronds of this precarious perch a bird had built its nest. On the edge of the nest the bird was feeding morsels of food it had brought back to its chicks, who were eating greedily.

The pupil looked up inquiringly at his master. "That is Peace," the master said quietly. "What you drew me was Stagnation."

Peace is the presence of God. Silence is the language of God; everything else is just static. Find the silence behind the static, and be at Peace. Find the Peace that is at peace with the existence of war, and be at peace.

Peace is with you: go in Peace.

SOME THINGS JUST TAKE TIME

SOME THINGS JUST TAKE TIME

Well, in this realm of the senses, they do. In the world we now exist, the idea of time has been created to mark off the distance between perceived beginning and ending points into more or less equal parts. I’m thinking of the time between sunrise and sunset -- the time between one revolution of the earth and the next, the time between one circuit around our sun and the next.

Time is an idea we have adopted to help us manage living in this plane. And look at the plethora of instruments we’ve invented to keep track of these imaginary markers! Look at our dependence on them, and the authority we give them over our lives! We even pay king's ransoms for certain of these "timepieces", when all they do is mark "time". A cheap watch from your local mall does just as well.

But if we take a few steps back and see our existence in the space of infinity, time becomes irrelevant. In Infinity there is no beginning, and no ending. There are no marker points to measure off from or to.

Time is an appearance; a fiction. Time is useful, up to a point. Until we realise that it doesn’t exist.

Then where are we?

Where we always have been -- in Eternity.

There is a misconception widely abroad that Eternity is waiting some time in the future. Not so. Eternity is -- where it has always been and will always be -- here and now.

All we have is NOW.

How long is a “now” moment? No time at all. Now is eternal; it never ends.

“I” would like to spend more time here/now, in no time at all. Trouble is, “I” starts to think about it and – bang – “I” is out of now.

The good news is that the Not-I never leaves the Now. “That-which-I-truly-am” and “now” are one, and remain so regardless of what else is going on. All we have to do is remember that.

“Oh, my God, what time is it?”

Now.

WHAT'S THE MATTER?

Everything matters.

Nothing matters.

Both are true. It depends on your point of view.

Now we find that even what is termed "gross matter" is just an illusion -- particles of organised thought that stand still long enough for me to notice them, then go on their merry way being nothing to me, and something else to somebody else.

Nothing matters.

So what's the matter?

WITHOLDING OUR WELLBEING

Some people spread happiness wherever they go; others spread happiness whenever they go.

Oscar Wilde

Is there such a thing as “evil” in the world?

Yes, there is. I didn’t say if it was good or bad, right or wrong, but is there “evil”?

Yes. It is evil to withhold our wellbeing. It is the denial of Life itself. “Evil” is “Live” in reverse.

Withholding your wellbeing is like driving down the highway in low gear, engine revving, with your head stuck in the rear-view mirror and the handbrake full on. No wonder you get a rough ride!

Why do you do that?

To manipulate, dominate and control someone or something.

But how much cheese is it getting you?

It was 10 am and I was driving to location for a day’s shooting on a children’s TV series, cutting it fine for time. Driving along the busy Esplanade skirting the Perth CBD, the less-than-healthy vehicle I was driving started to play up: the battery stopped charging, the water temperature gauge shot right off the end, and some terrible noises emanated from under the bonnet.

Now, one of the things I have not “got” is motor cars. What I don’t know about cars would fill a mechanics manual. I was immediately gripped by long-familiar feelings of Fear and Inadequacy ….. Fear because I’m running late and there is nowhere on this busy arterial road to stop, and Inadequacy because I don’t know the first thing about motors. Up ahead, the traffic lights suddenly turned as red as my face, and then I started to really panic: I’m now stuck in a long carpark with no chance of making it to a side turnoff.

I pulled up, then suddenly remembered something I’d heard Colin Hayes say many times over – “We withhold our wellbeing to try to manipulate, dominate and control a situation.” I got it – I saw the joke! And the joke was ME! Getting into a stew of Fear and Inadequacy wasn’t helping one little bit. Whether the car made it to location in time and in one piece was now entirely out of my hands; it either would or it would not. I was making myself feel Fearful and Inadequate to manipulate, dominate and control a clapped-out LandRover!! The Landy was supposed to think “Oh, poor Barrie; he doesn’t know anything about motor cars. I’d better get him to location on time!”

Absurd? Of course it is. But don’t we do this kind of absurdity all the time? Fear and Inadequacy are my favourites – I’m addicted to them. What are your addictions? What are the negative emotions you turn to by default in any situation you’re not happy with?

Imagine -- you have a row with your partner over breakfast. You leave for work and get caught up in the day’s events and you forget all about the row. You’re going great! Come knockoff time, you get in your car, drive home, park the car, walk to the front door, and with your hand on the doorknob you suddenly remember the row you had that morning. You change instantly from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll, a shrivelled prune of anger and righteousness. Why?

To manipulate, dominate and control your partner.

How well does that work for you? Not much? Why do it then? Because, once upon a time, it DID work, or at least you thought it did …………..

You were lying in your crib, a tiny baby. You had become aware of your body and physical feelings of hunger, thirst and wind and nappy discomfort. You were not yet conscious of this awareness because you did not yet have language for it. But you were aware that you had certain physical needs that had to be met, and that you could not meet them for yourself. You were aware that you needed these people you later came to know as Mum and Dad to supply them for you. One day these people were not right there when one of your needs arose. A thought popped which, if you’d had language at the time, might have been something like “Oh, shit! What happens if they’ve left me and don’t come back?” A feeling of insecurity we’ll call Anxiety quickly followed the thought, and you started to grizzle a bit. Mum, who had been waiting for you to wake up, came into your room and the emergency was over. Bingo! Cheese!

The next time this thought popped and Anxiety followed, you grizzled. Bingo! There she appeared. One time, however, Mum was out hanging wet nappies on the line. When you grizzled and felt anxious, nothing happened. The feeling of insecurity intensified, so you started to cry. Suddenly, there she was, come to see what was wrong with you. It worked! Bingo – cheese! So next time you felt hungry or thirsty or uncomfortable, you cut the preliminaries and went straight to feeling anxiety and putting on a bit of a turn. Hey presto – Mum or Dad appeared. Attention! Cheese!

After a while, however, Mum and Dad got to know your grizzles and wails, and which ones were real and which were bunged on. For the most part they stopped responding as quickly as you liked. Now it is important to realise that every one of your turns was classified by your mind as “Essential to My Survival” – (THEY STILL ARE!!) So you started getting into your insecurity feelings and poured it on, powered by your feelings of anxiety, worry, annoyance, fear, outrage, panic……. And sometimes it seemed to get you what you wanted – attention.

But, even when you got it, did the attention bring you lasting happiness?

I’ll say it again because it’s really important that you get this – Every cause of discomfort to your mind is classified by it as a threat to Survival. Your Mind cannot differentiate between a real and present threat, and a perceived threat from the past: it reacts in exactly the same way and with the same intensity. You are wired up like a stimulus/response robot. This is most important if you are to have some compassion for yourself, and in this respect you need all the compassion you can give yourself.

In the very first instance this removing of wellbeing and getting into suffering was real, but it soon became largely all an act to get the attention your Survive-Above-All-Else mind told you that you had to have. But after a while of that, you had done the act so often that you forgot this denial of wellbeing was just an act and you once again took it to be for real. In other words, you no longer had these thoughts and feelings – they had you, and they've been leading you on a most un-merry dance ever since!!

Now of course, most of us no longer need someone else to feed us and wipe our bottoms. But because the human mind is what it is, whenever we feel our security being threatened we react more or less as we did back then in the cradle. We may have learnt in the interim to suppress the raw feelings, or disguise them as something else more benign; we may have learnt from our primary caregivers sneaky, more sophisticated strategies for getting our way, but at the bottom of all our suffering is a deliberate (if unconscious) withholding of our wellbeing in order to manipulate someone or something else into giving us what we want, when we want it, the way we want it.....Give me what I want, or I'll suffer, and it will be all your fault!..... Unfortunately it rarely works to our satisfaction, and even when it does get us what we think we want, we’re not satisfied because we know we manipulated in order to get it. The cheese was removed from that tunnel long ago, but we keep going down there as if we have no choice.

This is the essence of the Third Tunnel – addictively returning to outmoded, ineffective strategies when our equilibrium is threatened or our addictions to particular sensations are not fulfilled. Isn’t that a good definition of insanity? Most of the time we are not aware of the fact that we’re doing it (or It is doing us, actually – It being the default condition we’ve created for ourselves), and because just about everyone else is doing It, too, we don’t see anything very odd about it. It’s almost as if there’s a tacit agreement between us that, although our strategies for improving our lives are not working, we’ll tell ourselves and each other that they ARE, and go on bumping, spluttering, belching and lurching through each day in the vain hope that the cheese will be down here somewhere (maybe when we die and go to Heaven!)

We’re told, especially by priests and politicians, that this is the way life is meant to be, and if we’re really good and don’t complain too much, there is another life waiting for us if we just follow the Instructions, and a very much worse one if we don’t!

And when we meet some authentic spirit who is direct, free of pretence, open and without guile, we feel mightily uncomfortable and even threatened in their presence, especially when they don’t react as they “should” to our manipulative games.

What is it that is so threatening about freedom of spirit? Why do so few people choose to be free?

To withhold your wellbeing is silly; to withhold your grandness is tragic.

What negative feelings keep you in bondage? What positive feelings are you so addicted to that you’ll sell out on your integrity and freedom to get them?

Every feeling you want is available to you, without selling yourself out.

GETTING AUTHENTIC

A couple of days ago. I was in two quite distinct minds about an issue at work that involved most of the staff, and I had to make a decision that could not please everyone. I called a meeting with one of my colleagues and another manager. I knew my colleague's position; it was quite unequivocal.
The other manager, as it turned out, took the opposite view. Suddenly and silently my colleague did a 180 degree U-turn under the table and came up beside her. I wasn't surprised; he is her boyfriend.

*************

A master was meditating one evening when a stranger entered his house, demanding the solid-gold begging bowl that had been given him by the king in gratitude for his sage advice.

The master asked “Why do you need it?” “I don’t,” replied the stranger, “but I am a robber – the best in the land. It is what I do.” He was expecting a lecture on the evils of thievery, but the master said to him simply, “I see. Well, keep stealing, but be aware,” and returned to his meditation.

Some nights later, the stranger again burst into his home, livid with frustration. “You have messed up my life!” he roared. “Last night I broke into the king’s chamber. There before me lay all the riches of the treasury. I reached out to touch some of it and your words came back to me – ‘Keep stealing, but Be Aware’. I froze. I couldn’t go through with it. I am no longer a thief!”

Oh, how we steal from ourselves on a daily basis!

Keep stealing, but become aware.
Thank you Colin Hayes

Let’s look at the basic assumption that you are a fundamentally nice person – a genuine, truthful, valid, authorised, reliable and trustworthy person. I’m not insinuating that you’re not, I’m simply inviting you to question your own assumption that you are. If you continue to assume what you’ve always assumed, nothing is going to change.

Here’s a question for you –

How do you know when you’re lying, if you’re a habitual liar and don’t know it?

You’d swear sincerely that you are honest. But what if you’re mistaken about that?

How can you test your assumptions (in this case about your authenticity)? By doing something you’ve probably never done before – by assuming for a while that, as a human being, you are often NOT authentic, possibly more often than you realise. Change your point of view, and then notice everything that comes up for you while you’re standing in that different perspective.

What’s the point of challenging your assumption of authenticity? Well, apart from the considerable entertainment value, it is fundamentally futile to work on your relationships, your health, your finances, your career, or just about anything else of yours if you are unconsciously duplicitous and deceitful, and deceiving yourself about that too.

Just as an experiment, sit in this possibility for a while -- a helluva lot of what we’re up to each day is about looking good, to others and ourselves. We don’t really mean a lot of the “polite” things we say automatically (e.g. “How are you?”, or “Have a nice day.”) and sometimes we know we don’t mean it. We don’t always believe the things we say we believe in, and we know that. Sometimes we switch to a diametrically opposite opinion in public in order to “get along”. We regularly swap around our hierarchy of values to suit the occasion and the company we’re in at the time, excusing our duplicity to ourselves with the tag of Pragmatism. We apologise without feeling at all apologetic. We go out of our way to be “nice” to people we really don’t like, because we want their approval. We make promises we know we may not deliver on, kidding ourselves that feeling guilty about it afterwards will be enough recompense. We’re afraid to express our fears, doubts and misgivings for fear of not looking strong. We withhold a truth for fear of hurting another person’s feelings. And so it goes on…………… We are so inured to being disloyal to ourselves that we hardly notice it any more, and when we do, we tell ourselves that “It doesn’t matter. It’s trivial. It’s not hurting anyone.”

It is, you know – it’s hurting you.

If you are inauthentic about your disloyalties to yourself, don’t be surprised when others are disloyal to you. In fact, be surprised if they’re not, sooner or later. Inauthenticity attracts inauthenticity. If you cannot cop to your dishonesties, you are a pushover for anyone else who can get at you through the bits you won’t look at. How else do you think our kids learn so early where, when and how to push their parents’ “hot” buttons? How do con-men find their victims so easily? By Implicit Invitation. It’s almost like we wear a neon sign over our head saying “Dishonest, vulnerable Victim here: come and get it!”

And if you want something from someone, you are totally at their mercy. All they have to do is look as if they might withdraw their approval from you, and you will flip over faster than a politician’s promise.

At a deeper level, our inauthenticity is the root cause of our insecurity, and all the separating emotions that emanate from that. If we were totally authentic, we would no longer feel vulnerable.

How are duplicity, disloyalty to yourself and inauthenticity possible? How did they come about?

THE ILLUSION OF DUALITY

We talk often about the importance of “being true to ourselves”. How can you be true to yourself if there is only one of “you”? How can you talk to yourself if there is only one of you? Who is talking; who is listening? How can you deceive yourself if there is only one of you?

We live in a dual-verse, a sub-section of the uni-verse. Everything has its opposite. Everything we claim we “are” has its opposite in us. To the extent that an opposite remains unacknowledged or disallowed, we are affected by it without our knowing it.

I strongly suggest that you look at that last paragraph again, put this down, and just BE with that for a while. Let it be.

The Law of Opposites is a Law of Life. Like another Law of Life, the Law of Gravity, it doesn’t give a hoot whether you believe it or not -- it just IS. Like gravity, when you are aware of its existence, it can be very useful to you, e.g. it keeps you grounded: but if you don’t know about it or fail to take it into account, it can do you a lot of damage, e.g. if you’re up a ladder and lean out too far, the ground comes up relentlessly hard and fast!

Have you ever experienced someone you thought you knew really well suddenly do something quite “out of character”? Of course you have. The only reason you could be taken by surprise, is that you have not heard of, or you’ve forgotten the duality/duplicity of human nature. The same applies to you. Have you ever broken a promise? Of course you have. How come? Because the bit of you that broke the promise has said “I didn’t have the microphone when you promised that one!”

I call this aspect of myself “I/Me Pty. Ltd.”

We used to play a game in Inward Adventure called the I/Me Statue Game. Anne Ameling would call out the word “I”, and we would feel into that and assume for ourselves a posture that expressed that feeling. Then she would call out the word “Me”, and we would feel into that and assume another posture that expressed that feeling. So the game went on for 15-20 minutes, alternating between “I” and “Me”, enabling each of us to get a first-hand experience of the difference between the two entities. You might like to try it for yourself now. Go on, give yourself a treat.

The Law of Duality has its good uses. Duality is an illusion that enables us stand outside of our self and look at who we are. Duality enables us to look at ourselves in a mirror image. If you really don’t know what unacknowledged parts of you remain undiscovered, look at the qualities of those people who show up in your face and whom you judge as “bad”, or “good”. Those qualities exist in you: they must, otherwise you could not recognise them. You are looking at yourself. Those people are mirroring something for you that you need to see about yourself. How neat is that? Be grateful to them.

When you acknowledge and say “Yes” to your duality, and the duality of everyone around you, you are more likely to see things as they are, and less likely to be vulnerable to surprise attack

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