EXAMINE YOUR MOTIVES

What should I do?

Examine your motives.

You spend an inordinate amount of time wondering about what you should do. Every advice column gives examples of this, and exists because of your endless uncertainty. You resemble small, dithering, blind mice in this. Should I marry this one, or that one? Should I leave this one? Should I invite this one to my wedding? Should I cut this one off? Should I do this job? Should I retire?

A cage of circular arguments

On and on, round and round you go, a rat trapped in a cage of circular arguments. There are always plusses and minuses, pros and cons, so you spend your time weighing one against the other, looking for advice and opinions, always worried that you are going to miss out, you will lose, you will get it wrong. That is what animates you when you are wondering what you should do in any context.

Wondering what you should do is a form of fear. It’s a powerless way of trying to control an outcome. You are asking: what particular set of circumstances is most advantageous to myself?

Wondering what you should do is a way to perpetuate a status quo.

It is a way to be afraid of what might happen.

It is a way not to make a decision.

It is a way of trying to control the outcome.

So what are you saying? We should just make decisions recklessly, without carefully examining everything first?

Just that you don’t need to do that. That you could instead take a step up to the next level of thinking. As long as you are thinking about making good decisions, experience will present itself to you as binary choices with possible fearsome consequences. As long as you believe your decisions can be good or bad, so long will you be trying to protect yourself against bad ones.

Always begin within

You could also believe that it is not up to you to provide for yourself, that you are always provided for. You could give thanks for each way you are provided for. Whatever you pay attention to increases. It is law.

Instead of wondering, examine

The next time you find yourself wondering what you should do, instead of wasting time thinking of possible outcomes that favor yourself, examine your motives. Should I take this job? You will have a list of pros and cons, whether you wrote them down or not. But it would be so much better and easier for you if you armed yourself with honesty. Why do I want this job? Why don’t I want this job? Be brutally, relentlessly honest. I want this job for the money and the status. I don’t want this job because it depresses me to do it. Spend time with your motives; let them be known fully. Examine them fully. Release any fear.

Release any fear

Then, when you have examined your motives, own them: I am staying with him because I need the money. I am taking this job because I don’t think I can get a better one. I am afraid I won’t find anyone else. To own your motives is to be relentlessly honest. And if spending time with your motives doesn’t feel good, you can always lose them. Tell them to go.

But how will I make any decisions, if I have no motives? I would have no criteria to go on, no way to judge anything.

You decide to stop procuring for yourself. You change your messages. Instead of “What should I do?”, you could entertain:

I am always provided for

Thank you for all that I have

May all beings be as well-provided

Thank you for providing for me so well

Notice examples of good provenance, give thanks, enlarge, enjoy.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them

Albert Einstein

RELEASING FEARS

Fears: an archer steadies his bow to shoot

Each muscle is conditioned by practice

This is something you must practice. It cannot be an idea you admire once, and put by. This is your most powerful tool in the service of your own good. Each muscle is conditioned by practice. Whatever you practice must improve, in exact accordance to how much you practice. Whatever you focus upon, increases. It is law.

Invite it out, and then dismiss it

Practice releasing your fears one by one. First of all, acknowledge them. When next you feel that familiar stab of anxiety, that tensing of the stomach, that breath-shortening, that mental obsessiveness that accompanies a fear, ask yourself: fear of what? What am I afraid of here? Invite it out into the open, thank it for being here, and then dismiss it. Let this fear no longer have power over you. Let it go. De-energize it.

This will soon be your nature

Is it possible to imagine any different outcome than this fear? Of course it is. What is not possible that you could imagine? Go ahead and imagine three possible better outcomes than the one your fear uses. Do that now. Dismiss each fear that you ferret out of yourself by imagining different outcomes. This will soon become your nature.

When you release fear, you make yourself immune to the manipulations of others. Since it is you who chooses the outcome you want, the feelings you want, and the experiences you want, no other person can have power over you now. They have nothing that you want. You are free.

You are free

Can you see how your fears give away all your power? You have no power before a fear. It is up to you to choose: fear or power? No one else can do this for you. It cannot be a difficult choice, between nothing and everything. The price of choosing everything is to release all fears. Would you not start today?

Your being will continue to feel the effects of fear, as long as you still have the receptors for fear.

But why would you keep them, when you could as well release them?

Lose no time now in confronting and releasing all your fears. Root them all out. What power in broken habits!

May a miracle intervene here

$Fears: a beautiful fractal inviting infinity$

THE LITTLE WILLINGNESS

You take comfort in the fact that it is little, because you do not think you can give something big. You are afraid of being too much changed. You are still trying to protect yourself. You don’t yet realize that to give the little willingness is to give all.

Once the process has begun, it must be complete

This little willingness, how could it appear? It could come as an agreement to do something in a new way. You might tell yourself, just because she does not call, does not mean she is angry, or tired, or never going to call again, or any other projection. The next time she does not call, I will not project any outcome. I will tell myself, I do not know, and let all be well in its own time.

The little willingness might show itself in recognition of a pattern you have been held in. You might of a sudden realize, “This is when I usually would get angry, shout, or storm out.”

Hold onto that thought for the instant it takes not to act upon it. Do nothing.

See what presents

The little willingness might come in your asking

Loosen the beliefs that don’t serve me. Maybe I’m not even conscious of these beliefs, whatever. Help me gently to see them now. Let me be made new. Let me forget the past.

I want to be different

The little willingness might be seen in your finding ways to forgive others.

Help me to forgive this person that I’m always thinking about. Help me to see another way.

Help me to forgive

In quantum physics, once scientists had admitted the possibility of something existing, the science accommodated it, quickly conforming itself around the thought that already existed, and then they discovered.

Let me admit the possibility of seeing this situation, this person, differently. Let me at least admit that possibility could exist.

The little willingness might be manifest in me refusing a familiar ego reward. I might think, no, I refuse to let myself feel better by bashing another. I refuse to take pleasure in complaining. It might come in my recognizing ego’s delight in anger and blame, and my decision to thwart it.

I am willing to change

It is all your choice

SEEING MORE THAN BEFORE

Seeing more than before: I have driven this road to Arizona and back so many times. Is it possible for me to see a view I have not seen? a tree I did not notice before? a house? If I even think I have seen everything, that renders my brain incapable of seeing more than I did before.

That is an awesome power of the brain. That is a power to be respected and taken seriously.

The brain alone, by a command from you, can render you incapable of seeing more than you did before. These commands can be given purely randomly and out of an unconscious laziness.

I am bored with this trip. It is always the same.

But a mind so instructed will be faithful in the execution of such a straightforward command. You will not see anything new on the trip.

Your life is also a trip. Have you ever known people who never changed? They are angry about the same thing they were 30 years ago. Somewhere on their journey they made an unconscious decision, and gave their mind a program which it faithfully runs.

I always get the short end of the stick.

You have to look out for yourself first.

Some kinds of people are better than others.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

When people have absorbed these meta-messages, they become as travelers who think they have seen every twist and turn of the road, and whose minds now cannot render anything different. There may be scenes of extraordinary loveliness and power, but their minds have been instructed not to see them.

Thus do you create your experience.

Just never stop creating it. Many people create their experience once, a long time ago. They made decisions about experience, and then continue to have the exact same experiences endlessly. This only confirms the truth of their original program.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

Hamlet, II, ii

You do not have to live by the old programs. Every minute you are alive and awake, you can choose new ones. What power is this!

DARE TO BE: CHOOSING

You must dare to be

Dare to be. Dare to be. To be, you must dare. This is the same as saying, consciously choose. Every moment is a choice, whether you know it or not. If you are not aware of making choices, then you have chosen to be unaware, delegating choice away from your authority. This is also a choice. Maybe it is easier for you to believe you are helpless, and to take no responsibility in your life. That way, you can still have the release that comes from blaming someone else.

Dare to be; an orangutan in reflective mood

Who am I blaming?

The next time you hear yourself complaining about anything, ask yourself: who am I blaming? What am I refusing to take responsibility for? What is it that I don’t want to see? Become visible to me. There is nothing that I cannot accept.

If you are aware of not making choices, you will feel helpless, disempowered, and may spend a lot of time indulging blame, envy, jealousy, regret and so on. Realize that all this is just another way of choosing. You might feel angry that you can’t make the decisions you want to, that you haven’t got money, you haven’t got time, or you’ve got too much responsibility. But tell me what of anything in your present condition is not the result of some previous choice of yours.

$Dare to be; fractal exhibiting beauty in seeming randomness$

Nothing is random

Hold onto that for a minute. What of anything in your present condition is not the result of a previous choice of yours? Everything you are now living is the result of some previous choice. Nothing is random, everything is asked for, and given as asked.

All is given as asked

This is a very freeing thought. Once you have accepted that your attention to it created all of it, then the mind leaps very quickly to the exciting corollary: I could create something better.

I could create something better

I could create imperturbability, evenness, balance, all those names for what is lacking in our experience now, which is peace. If I have created all this without conscious thought, imagine what I might do now, with conscious thought.

How could I create these things?

By becoming them. Ask that every cell of your physical form be tuned into stillness. Let your physical apparatus be called to joy through particles of light in every cell.

Dare to be

Through particles of light in every cell

ATTACHMENT TO OUTCOMES

Only a powerless entity

Your attachment to outcomes is an excellent opportunity for ego to project fear and blame onto you. What is attachment to outcomes but a thinly veiled form of fear? Why do you care so much about the way a certain situation comes out? What is an outcome but a miniscule moment in eternity, soon to be superseded by other outcomes, and still others? Why are you so intent on seeing a particular one?

Only a powerless entity would be frightened of an outcome.

Is there a burr beneath your saddle?

Right now, think of a situation that has been bothering you, that you would say you wanted a solution to. What is there now that is a burr under your saddle?

Now bring this situation to full consciousness. Usually it is at the sides of your consciousness, nudging you along in the way your ego wants you to be: anxious, worried, and completely open to all forms of manipulation. Put this uncomfortable situation in the forefront of your mind and let it have its full sway over you. Experience the range of emotion that this situation calls forth in you. Experience the sway attachment to outcomes has over you.

It calls forth anger, hatred and blame. But underneath that is the fear. Fear is what feeds all these other devils. Fear is the fuel.

Fear is the fuel

Now confront that fear. Give it a name. Fear of being alone, fear of pain to a loved one, fear of losing someone, fear of being naked, isolated, or despised. Thank you for being here. Thank you for showing yourself. I have looked at you thoroughly, and I also know you by your fruits: anger, blame and hatred. Get you gone now. You have nothing good to offer me. Go away empty-handed, fear.

Leave my house now, fear

And remember as you send this fear away, that the outcome you are afraid of represents only a miniscule, meaningless fraction of all the possibilities in inifinity. Everything you can imagine does exist. Do you think you could imagine more than God?

There is an infinity of outcomes: choose

So instead of using your consciousness in the service of fear, which has nothing good to bring you, would you not rather spend it in the service of imagining beautiful outcomes, outcomes that inspire awe and wonder and love. Realize there is an infinity of what you call outcomes, and you can choose whichever you want.

Picture yourself in front of a massive shelf of books, and you take out a book called “Harmonious Family”, and think to yourself, I am going to read this book. And imagine what sorts of images and feelings were in it. You could stay and peruse that book as long as you wanted, bathing yourself in warm, visual images of how “harmonious family” could present to you.

Love the guiding principle

Let Me Maximize You

Transformational change: the least you need to know