Each of us lives in our own self-prescribed little boxes defined by our ideas, beliefs and boundaries.  Each decision we make is made with the assumption it will provide comfort and safety and be the best option for our well being. Some of these decisions are made by default out of habit and due to very old constructs and ways of seeing the world.

One of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself, is to step off the merry-go-round and take a look at the boxes you live in to see if they’re still serving you (or if you’re bold – if they ever have). If they are, but you’re feeling stifled and confined, why not stir things up a bit by changing your routine or the people you spend time with.

If you see that the boxes are no longer working, make some new choices that break down those walls. Start by saying yes to new ideas and new ways of being and doing things and no to things that aren’t working.

It’s rejuvenating to open windows and doors and let fresh air and energy into your life. Taking down walls is far more radical, but the result is the same: life becomes more magical when the dimension of the unpredictable and mysterious is let in. You become teachable and open to the new and unknown and ready to receive the many gifts on the other side of those walls.

When you start saying yes to the whole that life has to offer rather than restricting the flow by your need for control, your world expands and unforeseen possibilities appear out of nowhere. It is then that we realize how much we were missing living inside of our small boxes with our endless filters refracting and distorting what was right in front of us, engaging instead with only our projections.

This is the world of delusion where many people reside because they truly believe that a constructed, controlled world is better (read safer) than the real world. It is a reactive, survivalist stance that instigates this limiting viewpoint, typically based on a deeply wounding heartbreak or disillusionment. I’m not suggesting that the need for withdrawing from the world and licking one’s wounds isn’t worthwhile, when needed. Rather, it’s when this temporary retreat becomes a habitual way of living that a refuge becomes a prison. The longer one resides there, the more difficult it becomes to leave, requiring something of a catalytic event to change things.

I have experienced all different degrees of walls coming down in my own life, some imposed by people and events outside of me and others initiated by me. Either way, it ain’t always easy to move out of our comfort zones, but it is almost always for the best.

Saying yes is another way of putting down our weapons of resistance and greeting what shows up in our lives with open arms. I used to joke with people that I’d rather raise my hand and volunteer for life’s lessons and tests than wait around until I hearing a loud banging on my door telling me I’ve been drafted.  What that means is that saying yes is akin to showing the universe that you’d like to take your medicine the easy way, not by having to be forced.

I know, sometimes the most direct route can be rough, but it’s usually so much less dramatic and time consuming. Go right up to your fears and issues and meet them halfway and ask them what they need from you. If you turn your back and run, they will follow you around making your life miserable. Plus, the idea of them is far more terrifying than the reality. I’ve found when I walk right up to the things in my life I’d rather avoid, they are so much smaller and easier to deal with than I expected.  I’ve also noticed that when I’m willing to face my demons, I score some pretty nice karmic points and I become aware of how life seems to be on my side a bit more and even conspiring to help me out.

Becoming aware of the boxes we’ve created can be done in a number of ways. One of my favorites and one I’ve used with my clients, is to look at the things we say we always do or never do. Start there and that will show you all kinds of things about yourself. These are the boundaries that we’ve erected around us. Look at them and see if they make sense anymore. Watch your habitual ways of thinking and behaving. Chances are there are some areas that really need updating.

If you feel stuck, it is up to you to see how small your world is and do whatever you can to break down the walls and live a bigger, more expansive life.

Saying yes works well if you need to push through your resistance to the unknown.

Saying no works well if you need to stop people pleasing and accommodating others’ needs instead of your own.

Only you know which one will shift things in your life.

While looking through my computer files recently, I came upon a very powerful perspective on spiritual teachers which I resonate with completely. I hesitated to post it here because when I copied it into a file I neglected to cite the author (a rare lapse for me).

Anyway, it is worth sharing, so I will risk posting it without citation. If I had to guess, I would say the author might be Jed McKenna, the author of three brutally honest books on enlightenment. Or I may have copied it from one of the thousands of websites I’ve visited in the past few years. Regardless, perhaps someone will recognize it and set the record straight.

In the meantime, I pass on these words of wisdom…may they bring clarity to your journey and return your trust where it belongs: back to yourself.

There is nothing glamorous about the process of awakening. People who awaken do not become famous spiritual teachers. They do not build fancy organizations. They live for the most part unnoticed by all by a few students who recognize their freedom and authority.

Teachers who are valued by the world tend to teach at a very superficial level. For the world rewards tangible outcomes and effects, and spiritual accomplishments tend to be intangible.

One who masters the mind is not valued by society. He may be the most powerful being alive, but you will not find him in a position of power. In truth, even if such a position were offered to him, he would not take it. Such a person is not concerned with the manipulation of outer events.

A teacher cannot tell you want to do or what not to do, for the responsibility for both doing and undoing belongs to you. All the teacher can do is encourage you to take that responsibility here and now.

Teachers who tell you what to do or what not to do are betraying their spiritual immaturity. A wise teacher asks good questions, but she gives very little advice.

We all have aspects of ourselves and the world that we cannot see. We are simply too close to it. Instead, we construct stories about “the way it is” and reel with shock when those stories get shattered or undone.

These blind spots must serve a purpose. I suspect they keep us moving forward, making decisions and taking risks that would be impossible without some suspension of disbelief. We need to trust in the people and the world around us to some degree or we would become frozen and paralyzed with fear.

We operate from the safety zone of our carefully constructed stories. We need these stories to make sense out of the seeming chaos of the world. Not that the world is by it’s nature chaotic, but rather as humans our vision is too small most of the time to see the big picture, which is all about order and flow.

In our myopic dance through life, we grab onto whatever view serves us on that part of the journey. Our lives are always about what we put our attention on, to the exclusion of everything else. This allows us to immerse ourselves completely in an experience, a relationship, a situation. Inevitably, this intense focus blocks us from seeing other viewpoints or perspectives, such that we actually become blind to them, and are often shocked when either someone points them out to us or something changes and we can see what before was truly invisible to us.

Once the blinders come off and what was invisible is now visible, we may question our inability to see what is truly obvious to us now. It is akin to waking up or shifting from a distorted lens to a clear one.

Sometimes this shift in perception can be quite a shock to the system. Depending on the depth and scope of the blindness, it may take days, weeks, months or even years to adjust to a different viewpoint.

If you really believed in something and found out you’d been lied to, your entire sense of trust has been badly shaken. Trust is not easily cultivated, especially after it’s been trampled.

It is here that we can stand back for a moment and ask ourselves, were we truly unaware of all the factors when we walked into a situation or relationship, or did we see things, but choose instead to ignore them, hoping they might disappear or change. Did we in fact decide to see only what we wanted to see?

What is the lesson here? Is it what I said earlier about blind spots allowing us to suspend our disbelief?

Think about it. Would we ever do anything if we could see the whole picture before we engaged with it?

How much truth can we handle? Most of us cling onto our ignorance is bliss equation for dear life. Perhaps for good reason. We want to think we have some control over our lives and our stories.

If our illusions are stripped away too quickly the delicate balance between chaos and order would be disrupted, leaving us feeling unmoored and adrift. Our illusions are like filters that regulate and titrate the inflow of the truth in doses that are manageable. Without those filters, the feeling of chaos would be overwhelming and if too severe, might result in what is called a psychotic break, rendering us unable to engage with in the world at large.

The other extreme, of course, is resisting change completely. In that case, we seal ourselves tightly into a very small world that we are able to control. We reduce our range of experiences to that which does not threaten the status quo. This keeps us in a perpetual state of vigilance, for we are afraid of losing what we have and must dedicate our energy to protecting it at all costs.

The best pathway is to strike a balance in between…to stay fluid and flexible and open to change so that when it comes, we can welcome it, rather than be jolted or blown apart by it.

We need to trust in life. Too much disillusionment and disappointment can make us bitter and cynical. In spite of so many of my own illusions falling away in recent years, I still trust in the goodness of life and in the magic of possibilities. Sometimes I use my stories and visions to propel me forward–they are a nothing more than a vehicle–and when it’s time to exit, I let them go.

In the meantime, I try and enjoy the ride.

How do you like to learn your life lessons? The easy way or the hard way? Didn’t know you had a choice? That’s the beauty of the gift of free will we’re given—we always have a choice.

Welcoming, inviting, allowing, and embracing life lessons is certainly the easier way to go. Running away, ignoring, resisting and fighting the lessons that occur are going to ensure that we’re in for a rough ride.

We hold most of the cards (more on that later) that determine whether our path is one of joy or suffering. Now I’m not knocking suffering. It’s an incredible teacher, but we don’t have to get a degree in it.

The key is to volunteer or sign up for the lessons, rather than make them pursue us. A life lesson that has been avoided is no fun. By the time it has become painful, quite a bit of time has passed, and the intensity of the lesson has built up way beyond our comfort level, such that in order to get our attention, its approach is rather more akin to a two by four or bulldozer rather than a nicely paced challenge.

Far better to meet this thing halfway and invite it in for tea rather than wait until it breaks our door down. Whether we like it or not, these lessons are coming one way or another.

What the Soul needs, the Soul gets. Period. And if necessary, it will use the override button to circumvent whatever dalliance or detour or distraction that has led us astray from our path.

Typically, this avoidance occurs when we listen to the mind instead of to our intuition. The fact that the mind is often referred to affectionately as the drunk money is no accident—if left to its own devices, it behaves in a way that is clearly not sober or sane. In fact, following the path the mind takes is like following a raving lunatic without a map. After exhausting yourself going around in circles and endless dead ends, the only place you’ll end up is either back where you started or even worse, lost.

Better to stop moving and check in with a more reliable source: your intuition. We’ve all been given this incredible internal guidance system, but sadly, most of us don’t trust it enough to cultivate it or learn how to use it. This creates all kinds of problems because listening to our intuition is the only reliable way to hear what our Soul wants. It is an internal system of checks and balances that allows us to sort through the massive quantities of information presented to us at any given time and to discern what to put our attention on. Without that, we are walking around with no sense of direction or purpose, just wandering aimlessly in a state of constant reaction to what we encounter.

In order to significantly reduce suffering in our lives, we have to learn to establish clear boundaries around ourselves to eliminate lots of meaningless stimulation and distractions and then determine from that what our Soul needs for growth and expansion. This is a more proactive way of living, in which we move toward our lessons rather than away from them. It saves a lot of time and trouble and heartache.

I see the mind as a rebellious teenager that constantly tries to find clever ways to get into the driver’s seat of our lives. The only way to deal with it’s juvenile antics is to be firm, direct, and most importantly, consistent when you are reminding it that it’s place is in the backseat or even the passenger seat, but never in the driver’s seat. No, that seat is reserved for the Soul or as some people refer to it, the Higher Self, the part of us that has a map and can see the bigger picture and knows the best route to take us where we need to go.

So take a moment and scan your life right now. Do you have a vague awareness that there are some things that need your attention? Do yourself a favor and address them right now before what is a gentle easy lesson becomes a brutal difficult one.

If you’re in the middle of a painful lesson right now, don’t beat yourself up. We all have blind spots and issues we sweep under the rug. We all have lessons that have required varying degrees of pain before we were willing to learn them. Do what you can to finish the lesson, recover and restore balance into your life again, and then comfort yourself with the idea that this type of thing can be avoided in the future.

Because while life may very well be a game, one thing it’s not is a game of chance. As I said earlier, we hold most of the cards. The rest is influenced by other factors, including, but not limited to, other people’s free will, laws of physicality, past actions and intentions, subconscious scripts, not to mention the Almighty Dealer. However, with that said, we do have a say in how it goes. The first step is acknowledging that fact in the present moment, and then working from there to minimize future suffering and to evolve to a place where some of those other factors can be addressed, thereby increasing our odds not of winning, but rather enjoying the game.

The fear of being alone is what causes most people to enter into or remain in bad relationships. Fear, being the poor adviser that it is, leads to poor choices. It tends to keep company with scarcity and evokes the flight or fight response regularly. The energy associated with it is downright toxic.

What starts as simple enjoyment of the way we feel when our partner is around, can, when coupled with fear, move into attachment and even addiction, in which we feel tremendous suffering when they aren’t.

Essentially, when our well being is dependent on another person, we become enslaved to him or her. Take it another step further and you might even say our very survival is dependent on the relationship.

I call this type of relationship, the “save me from being alone relationship” in which one or both parties will literally put up with anything as long as they are assured they can hang onto the relationship.

People become each other’s life preservers.

Typically, my observation is that in most of these over-the-top co-dependent relationships one person plays the role of savior or master and the other plays the role of saved or slave. The person saved from being alone becomes indebted to the one who is doing the saving and is willing to do anything to repay this debt and please their savior.

The savior or master, on the other hand, holds all the cards and is in a position of power in the relationship. They call most of the shots and tend to exert great control over the relationship. There is a sado-masochistic dynamic at work here as well.

The slave is held hostage by the fear of being alone and the master uses this need as leverage against the slave. Both the controller and the controlled are each happy with this arrangement, because each is getting what they need.

This dynamic works until the master gets bored or the slave gets tired of being controlled or when either one or the other or both finds a new master or slave.

To break the spell or enchantment may require cult member style deprogramming as the fear and survival needs that created this dynamic may be buried so deep in the subconscious that neither party may even be aware what is at play in their relationship. Bringing the nature of the relationship into conscious awareness is one step on the road to healing.

But this begs the question: what does fear have to do with love?

Absolutely nothing.

Love doesn’t take hostages; fear does.

Love isn’t about control; fear is.

Love isn’t worried about the future; fear is.

Love is without conditions and restraints. Love is about freedom.

Fear has its own agenda, and that is to make sure you survive.

But life is not about mere survival. It’s about growth and learning and living…really living.

No one can save us from being alone.

We’re all alone. We’re born alone. We die alone.

Holding on tightly suffocates what’s near and dear.

Is that what we want to be doing?

Self-betrayal is an art, perfected over a number of decades of living. It is rooted in our early years, when our identity was branded by a well-trained team of branding specialists: beginning with our parents and extended family and expanding out to include teachers, neighbors, parents of friends, and sometimes even the occasional stranger. Add to that our exposure to books, movies, television, music, advertising, etc., by the time we reach adulthood, we are pretty much saturated with a dense package of pre-digested, socially approved, morally acceptable behavioral codes. Our thoughts and emotions and actions have been molded and formed to fit into the society and culture we live in – conformity being the norm, individuality essentially being snuffed out.

So is it any wonder that when we get to be adults, particularly in mid-life–when most of us discover we’ve been sold a bills of goods–we conclude that life doesn’t really make sense? For many of us, it’s as if we’re awakening from a long Rip Van Winkle nap, stirred by agitating feelings of restless discontent, in which we finally admit our disillusion with the course our lives have taken.

How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get ourselves out of the mess we’ve made? And why is it so difficult to change?

Habits. Of thinking. Of feeling. Of behaving. Deeply rooted, heavily ingrained, full blown habits keep us in a perpetual cycle from which we feel little hope of escape. Endless numbers of personal growth teachers and self-help books and seminars promise us relief from our misery, but ask anyone who has tried this form of transformation and they will more than likely tell you, that they are still, many years and thousands of dollars later, a victim of their own unhappiness. In spite of their best efforts, the emptiness persists, as do the longing and frustration with life.

Why? Because most of us still believe that our restlessness and unhappiness can be addressed from the outside. We think buying the right book, taking the right workshop, or spending time with the right teacher will fix our problem.

But we’ve got it all wrong. The answer isn’t outside of us. It’s inside of us. That’s where the whole thing began, and we will spin our wheels forever unless we shift our attention to where the problem lies.

Which brings me back to the subject of self-betrayal. In the midst of our very best intentions to improve or change or fix ourselves, we continually fail, and we do immeasurable harm to mind, body and spirit.

We are fine just the way we are. We don’t need to be improved or changed or fixed. That will only makes things worse. What we need is to stop the madness. We need to stop lying to ourselves. We need to step off the merry-go-round and take a good hard look at how things work. Think of your being as a toxic waste dump that needs to be cleaned up. All the people in your life that you have given permission to access your life and your thoughts and feelings and beliefs have dumped their stuff there, and now the only way to find out where you are in all that mess is to get rid of it. Piece by piece. It’s not yours. It’s not you. There is a genuine whole person in there somewhere, and the only way to get to it is to extract the lies and untruths until you hit something that feels real.

If this feels like too big a jump then test out what I’m saying by observing your thoughts and feelings for a few days. Notice how much your feelings are influenced heavily by other people’s opinions and behaviors….in fact, notice how you actually pin your well being onto whether or not you get approval or attention from others or not.

Another approach is to notice any thoughts that come up that make you feel bad about yourself. Watch them and then ask yourself where they came from. Are these opinions you imagine other people would think about you? If so, you will do yourself a tremendous favor by asking them to leave.

Consider your negative thoughts as you would unwanted house guests. Don’t ask them to move in. Acknowledge them and then tell them to be on their way. You have no room for them any longer.

Our minds have been contaminated by the thoughts, opinions, and beliefs of others. We let other people vote on our lives all the time. We ask them what they think we should say, do and even think. This gives them permission to enter into our heads and take up residence there. As soon as we invite voting in, we are no longer listening and following our own path. We are at the mercy of the contingency outside of us.

No wonder we feel so lost and confused and cut off from ourselves.

The way back is to reconnect with ourselves by getting quiet and learning to discern between the noise of the crowd and the voice of our soul. Intuition is our internal guidance system. It is the light that guides us through the darkness. Without it we are doomed to a life of random chaos. With it, we can begin to find our footing in an authentic world devoid of lies and betrayal.

Shakespeare said it well when he wrote, “To thine own self be true.” Christ, too, reminded us by telling us that the kingdom of God is within.

It’s up to you which path you want to take. The next time you feel depressed or without hope, take a good hard look at what thoughts are running through your mind at the time. Chances are they will be something that you picked up from someone else.

Negative thoughts are contagious and they spread. Treat them like juvenile delinquents that repeatedly jump into the driver’s seat of your car. Tell them in no uncertain terms, that you’re in charge. Then wait for them to get out, get behind the wheel and drive!

Procrastination is an insidious disease. We can become stuck in the thick mud of inertia, unable to move forward for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Projects lay collecting dust, abandoned and neglected, lifeless and without hope. We can see them everyday without even acknowledging them, until finally we don’t remember why we ever felt excited about those things. We become disconnected from our passion, because it’s easier; life is less complicated that way, we tell ourselves. Passion is messy and it stirs up too many feelings. I’m just fine the way I am, thank you very much.

But the truth is we’re not fine. Not at all. Because an essential part of who we are has been locked away. Our pilot light is a mere flicker of what it once was. We’re operating at a diminished capacity and don’t even realize it until something jars us awake, a song, a play, a movie, a painting, a poem or some powerful trauma occurs and helps us to regain our sight. We’ve joined the living dead and coming back to life can be quite a shock, especially when we realize what we’ve been missing, how much we’ve given up. Comfort has replaced passion. It is much easier to meet our obligations and then, once met, put our attention on relaxing and forgetting about those obligations. An unending circle of monotony lulls us into a zoned out place where we are simply existing and not living.

There’s a big gap between surviving and thriving. Many of us, once past the fear of surviving, get stuck there on a kind of plateau; tired from the exertion required to deal with the wolves at the door, we want to rest awhile and enjoy the fruits of our labors. The illusion of security, at not having to struggle to survive, makes us complacent and we resist the challenge of working toward the next level.

Survival makes you sharp; it gives you an edge and keeps you awake to opportunity. Take that away and the energy kicks down a few notches, the engine idles instead of revs, life becomes a slow burn. We try and minimize the ups and downs, by minimizing the risks, lest we upset the comfort level we’ve worked so hard to achieve.

Moving around the obstacles of distraction in order to get to the real stuff takes tremendous focus. Our minds jump around randomly landing on idea after idea, magnetically pulling us this way and that. We have to repel that magnetic pull with an energy that is even stronger. So often it is much easier to simply give in to the whims of our minds. Leading takes strength and motivation. Following only takes surrender. Surrender is a good thing, but shouldn’t be done unconsciously. Following the random thoughts our minds spit out to wherever they lead, results in a life of chaos and a deep sense of unrest.

To move to the next level creatively, we need to get in touch with our passion; we need to fall in love again with our dreams. Love will move us forward with far less effort than discipline alone. We don’t want to feel that it is all work. If we’re not enjoying the process, then we shouldn’t be doing it. Repetition, habit, commitment are necessary to build strength and momentum toward our dreams. The process is heart of it. The feeling of accomplishment is its own reward, but that will pass and we must begin the work again. The work itself has to be its own reward or there is the danger of being seduced by the trappings of success, which when you look at it, is simply another plateau of escape in which you run the risk of drifting away again.

Then there are our inner demons, whose sole job is to fill us with self-doubt and make us ask questions like, “Who am I to think I have anything worthwhile to say?” or “What difference does it make if I do this or not?” or “This is no good.” or “I don’t have time.” or “Nobody gives a shit.” There’s nothing worse than allowing these demons get the upper hand. You’ve got to shut them out and disarm them by acknowledging them and doing your stuff anyway.

Great things have been accomplished in spite of these creepy, dark parasites lurking in the shadows of our psyches. Teach them to heel and they will get out of your way. Just don’t ever let them get the upper hand or they’ll knock you out of the ring for days. Sometimes you can outsmart them by indulging them completely. If you’re having a particularly bad day, quit, give up, say you’re never writing another word, painting another stroke or playing another note. Go to bed, watch television, play computer games, but don’t do anything creative. Protest, sulk, complain. The next day, you’ll be surprised to discover that after a day of complete rebellion, you can get up with enough energy to complete a mountain of work.

The demons of self-doubt need to be dealt with just as you would children or pets. Set limitations and boundaries and keep them in their place. Denying they exist will only make them stronger. Face them and let them know that you know they want your attention, but you are busy now and have to put your attention elsewhere.

What about beautiful days, outings with friends, and other seductive attractions? How do we handle those? With discretion. We need to meet our commitment first, then we can play. Our lives should be balanced enough to accommodate a healthy mix of work and pleasure. There are always exceptions, of course. But beware of the tendency to make too many exceptions and sabotage your progress. Then, you’ll be right back where you started.

A bit of a razor’s edge, to be sure.

The deeper I enter into my spiritual life, the more I encounter the psychological issues that keep me in bondage. When I frame my emotions, thoughts, beliefs and experiences through the lens of my core wounds and the key relationships in my life, I allow myself to navigate into the shadow aspects of my life, without which there would be no hope for happiness or freedom.

My core wound (as is many people’s) is connected with issues of neglect, abandonment, and feelings of overall unworthiness. When I brush up against any of these issues in my day-to-day life, they inevitably trigger very old ingrained reactions. The driving force of my life and my capabilities as a communicator were all defined by my need for first, understanding and second, attention. That’s right, attention. Had I not been ignored and neglected by self-absorbed, overwhelmed parents, I would never had the need to become articulate and self-sufficient, and filled with an unquenchable thirst to understand the deeper meaning of life.

The irony at middle-age is to realize that for years, I’ve continued to attract people into my life that maintained this pattern of neglect and indifference, to further agitate my feelings of being unnoticed and unseen until it has nearly driven me mad, but it’s also pushed me to develop my communication skills even further, to build a life around those skills so that my human need to be heard was finally met.

Beneath the surface of this need for attention has always been the greater need for meaning. My passion for this has defined my life since I was fifteen and even now, at forty-six, shows no sign of waning. These two drives when partnered could have manifested into incredible opportunity for me to step into a role of leadership. Luckily for me, my need for attention is not fed by crowds and adoration and admiration. Quite the contrary. Some other force, more subtle and less defined is tempering this type of overly visible and overly public display. No, it is much more anchored in my personal relationships. There is the dilemma, but also the opening.

Getting to know yourself and your core psychological issues and how they’ve shaped your life is the foundation upon which any real spiritual growth is built. The two simply cannot be separated. They are intertwined and dependent on each other as lungs are to drawing a breath.

That’s not to say that you should get caught up in analyzing them every spare moment, but rather getting acquainted with them, observing them, seeing when you have strong feelings or thoughts or reactions to something, watching for the triggers that come up. As you get to know yourself, this won’t seem so strange or overwhelming; it will become second nature, and part of your daily experience. Over time, you will actually begin to notice that you are evolving and growing and stretching in ways you never conceived possible. The more you are willing to invite these unconscious parts of yourself to the surface to be explored, the more insights will come, and instead of feeling as though you’re living in a small world defined by your past, you will begin to experience a world that transcends all boxes; the possibilities that once seem limited will, from this perspective, seem endless.

An evolving life is an exciting life. Growth means movement and movement means growth. Something as simple as deciding to pay attention to yourself can change everything. It opens unseen doors that you never even knew existed. Your ability to comprehend even the most complex situations begins to expand. Your capacity to accomplish what before seemed to take huge amounts of effort, now seems to move into a rhythm of effortlessness. What becomes apparent is that our entire struggle has been caused by our unconsciousness, and we alone can change it.

photo by Julian Fann

My father gave me books on higher consciousness when I was fifteen. I didn’t see it as unusual at the time. He was engaged in his own search, living away from our family, and thought I might want to tag along.

Whatever his reasons, this introduction to the ways of the mind and spirit, set into motion a pattern that would shape my adult life. Unlike many of my teenage friends, I rarely trekked the path to God-like oblivion using mind bending drugs. Instead, I looked for answers in books with titles like Be Here Now, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, and in places like Boulder, Santa Fe, and Big Sur. I attended workshops and conferences, joined salons and support groups. I listened to channels, talked with psychics, got Rolphed, visited acupuncturists, ingested herbs, took yoga classes, meditated, went to India, and did est.

My thirst was unquenchable. My cravings unstoppable. Whenever the restless urge hit me, I would pack up my belongings, quit my job, and essentially turn my life upside-down–in order to seek out a new and hopefully better experience. Like an addict in need of a fix, I wanted something to fill up the burning hole in my psyche. But nothing worked.

The journey seemed never-ending. Where one path ended, another began. When one teacher’s message grew stale, there was always another one waiting to take his place.

Marriage and the birth of my first child only intensified my restlessness. My husband, an adventure-seeker himself, was a perfect companion. My son simply adapted to his arrival into a rootless life. Our family became drifters on the New Age Highway. It looked as though we would never settle down or focus on a real career.

Then we hit bottom: we joined a religious cult.

At the time, I thought I’d found The Answer. Years of fruitless effort culminated into my arrival one warm fall evening at an innocent-looking adult education class at a local community college. It was called “Soul Travel”. The teacher had a Ph.D. after his name and the course description revealed nothing more than an opportunity to learn how to have an out-of body experience. Right up my alley.

I have to admit, I was a little wary when at the beginning of the first class, the instructor starting handing out books with ethereal-looking people on the cover and unrecognizable words throughout the text. Then he asked us to chant and told us stories of beings that existed on “other” planes. My gut reaction was to run away from there. Many people did. But for some reason I stayed.

Six weeks later, my husband and I became members of an eastern-based international spiritual group. I devoured all the books, practiced daily contemplation, chanted and attended local member groups. All of my questions had found a home.

Before long though, my whole world became framed with the cult’s viewpoint of the world and I became blind to other ideas. Eventually, my family relocated to the Midwest to work at the groups’ headquarters. We ate, slept and breathed the teachings. We focused our inner thoughts on our teacher, the leader of the organization. His framed picture adorned our bedroom wall.

Neither my husband’s family nor mine considered this unusual behavior. They had watched on the sidelines for years as we dabbled in new experiences and saw nothing to get alarmed about. This was compounded by the fact that the group we joined resembled corporate America more than a robe-wearing cult. On the outside, the membership looked just like everyday, ordinary people. They weren’t sequestered into a guarded compound. They lived in neighborhoods among non-members. They walked, talked and went to work like everyone else. In fact, nothing about their behavior indicated that they belonged to a fringe religious group. They were masters at this type of deception. A quick glimpse on the inside for anyone who ventured to look would have revealed that they were leading highly delusion lives, in which they believed they were among the chosen few on a journey that would end their cycle of rebirth here on earth and begin their journey to higher planes of existence.

This group was selling was quite a bag of goods. Life everlasting. Freedom from suffering. A special place in the spiritual hierarchy of the universe. Lucky for them, some of us were foolish enough to buy it.

Three years into it when we finally discovered they were lying, and that the founder had committed numerous acts of plagiarism and deception, it didn’t really surprise us. We simply packed our bags and left.

The good news is that the day I walked away from that group, I realized that I was free of my obsession. The enlightenment game finally had ended and the work of my real spiritual journey had begun.

To be continued…

photo by Julian Fann

Look closely at the word belief. Hidden inside the word between the l and the f is the word “lie”. I never noticed this until a few days ago, and I realized that it was no accident. There is so much inherent in the word belief that connects it directly with the word lie. A belief is something we trust in without having the experience to back it up. It is something that we come to because we are told it is true by someone or something outside of ourselves. Compare that with a direct experience and you will see they are as different as night is to day.

Knowledge a close cousin to belief, only in that we can gain knowledge from books, movies, lectures, workshops, and conversations with others. Knowledge is useful, but it is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom is gained solely through direct experience. Wisdom is what we learn from our experiences. Wisdom takes the knowledge we have gained and applies it to our experience.

Experience + Knowledge = Wisdom.

It doesn’t matter which comes first, the experience or the knowledge, what matters is that the two when combined create wisdom. Knowledge without experience remains nothing more than an intellectual concept. You can think about it, reflect on it, but if you have no reference for it in your personal experience, you cannot “know” it on a deep experiential level, which is what allows you to learn and grow from it. No amount of knowledge is a substitute for wisdom.

Experience without some knowledge to explain it or frame it in a certain context, remains nothing more than just an experience. Again, you cannot learn from it without the knowledge that will allow you to see how it relates to your other experiences or to life as a whole. No amount of experience is a substitute for wisdom.

Where does belief fit in? It doesn’t. Belief is something you would only put your trust in if you haven’t discovered the deeper level of wisdom that knowledge, plus experience bring. Once you discover this, you will never be satisfied with belief alone again.

It’s quite simple. There is a huge difference between eating a meal and deciding it’s good and being told a meal is good by someone else. Add to that the knowledge about the ingredients in the meal, it’s nutritional benefits and then suddenly you have the wisdom of knowing that this meal not only creates a pleasant experience, but that it is also good for your body.

There is a huge difference between believing that UFOs are real and actually seeing one. There is a huge difference between believing in God and having a direct experience of the presence of God working in your life.

A belief can always be changed, manipulated, distorted, etc. But no one can take away your experience. It’s yours and yours alone.