I don’t buy into the Law of Attraction. You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness. You only need one instance to prove a law invalid. Christ had his body beaten and crucified but it wasn’t something he attracted because he had it in his consciousness.  He was treated that way because of beliefs other people held in their consciousness

Nelson Mandela spent years confined to prison, but not because it reflected his consciousness.  He was held in prison because other people held in their consciousness beliefs of apartheid.  You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness.  Sometimes you are the recipient of what other people express from their  belief system.

If something is a law it operates all the time everywhere.  The law of gravity is a law because it applies to everything we know everywhere we can measure and test it.  If it only worked sometimes or in some places it wouldn’t be a law.   The same with the Law of Attraction.  It’s too inconsistent.  It’s only a theory that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.   It’s not a “Law.”  It’s a Myth of Attraction.  If it really worked a lot more people would have what the want.

Originally posted at The Law of Attraction is a Myth

Where you can find Guidance and Wisdom for the Spiritual Warrior based in the Four Agreements

How do make personal changes in your life?

Sometimes making changes in your beliefs, emotions, relationships, and elsewhere in your life is counter-intuitive.

When you are riding a bicycle,,, how do you turn the bike to the right?   You turn the handlebars to the left.    How do you change the negative thoughts in your head?   We’ll maybe you get the best results in a similar way.  Don’t try to push more positive ones on top of them.  Sometimes when you do you end up going in a negative direction.

Turning the handlebars to the right in order to turn the bike to the right makes logical sense if you aren’t aware of the other factors like the gyroscopic effect of precession.   Don’t know what you are doing when it comes to changing your beliefs or emotional reactions and you are likely to end up goring in the wrong direction.

The Self Mastery Course can help steer you in the right direction.  Some of the things might seem counter-intuitive, but they will make more sense when you have more awareness of how belief systems operate.

Originally posted at Making Personal Changes

ToltecSpirit.com, a resource for living by the Four Agreements.

The challenge is not to free your mind.

The challenge is to free your self from your mind.

This post by Gary van Warmerdam at http://www.toltecspirit.com/2010/02/free-your-mind/

Where you can find Wisdom of the Four Agreements for Spiritual Warriors

For practical steps and exercises to inventory and change your own beliefs/agreements there are exercises in the Self Mastery course.

Being a moral person has gotten confused by a lot of people to mean being right.   I don’t think it really means that.  Being moral person has more to do with being kind, compassionate, and respectful.

Living by the Four Agreements,,, why is it so hard?

We read the book the Four Agreements and feel better by the simple clarity it presents.  It tells us something about our self, other people, and the world that we have always known, but not been able to put into words.  With that clarity we have a sense of hope and excitement about changing our life and our relationships.  It is possible to end the drama of emotional suffering and be happy.

We take the next step and adopt the four agreements as principles and practices that we continually live by.  We are excited about the possibility, but then the reality sets in. Living our lives by the Four Agreements is challenging.  It can even appear impossible.  Why is it so hard when they are so simple?

We Make Endless Assumptions

It is because we have been practicing doing the exact opposite for almost our entire life.  From the time we were 2 or 3 years old we have been making assumptions.  We do it so continually we aren’t even aware how automatically we do it so often.

We Take Everything Personally

We also assume that we are the center of the world.  We assume that people do things because of us.   People react to what we say or do and we think it is about us. We aren’t aware that they have their own beliefs and interpretations that cause them to react.  This assumption blinds us to personalize everything to our own point of view.  We have done this for years and practiced it until we do it automatically.  We have become masters of taking things personally.

We don’t believe we do our best.

The judge in our mind has been hard at work telling us what to do for years.  It has been a constant reminder of what we should and shouldn’t do.  In our child hood we learned to follow it as a god like authority in our life.  We wouldn’t dare question what it tells us we should be.  Because our obedience to that inner judge we never feel like we are doing our best.

Living by the Four Agreements is a Life Changing Commitment

All of this, making assumptions, interpreting everything from our own personal point of view, and living by the voice of the inner judge is the exact opposite of the Four Agreements.  And we have been doing it for years.  Practicing it every day for years,,, the exact opposite of the Four Agreements.

When you decide to adopt the Four Agreements you are changing the course of so many of the habits of your life.  You will not make these changes in one day, or even one week.  However, if you work at it over time, you can make extraordinary changes in your life.

If you decide to adopt the Four Agreements as a means to change your relationships and your life, don’t do it for a day or a week.  Decide to do it a little bit each day for a year.  Then see how much you have changed.  To attempt to measure your results in a week, or a month is to make a gross error assumption in the magnitude of your undertaking.
For practical exercises in implementing the Four Agreements take advantage of the free sessions in the Self Mastery Audio Program.

This post originally posted at The Four Agreements by Gary van Warmerdam

So often we pretend to care about someone.  We convince our self that we are concerned for their happiness.  But when our emotions become a wave of reaction to them our own well being is now at stake.  When this happens our caring for them becomes unduly influenced to try and make our self feel better.   At this point our caring for them might more honestly be called selfishness.

For specific exercises for identifying and dissolving fear based beliefs based in the Four Agreements, begin with the free practices in the Self Mastery audio program.

The original  post located at What it means to Care For Someone

Socrates was in a devout pursuit of the Truth. His method was inquiry that usually took the form of questions.

He battled with the Sofists

soph·ist (s?f’?st) Pronunciation Key
n.
One skilled in elaborate and devious argumentation.
A scholar or thinker.
Sophist Any of a group of professional fifth-century B.C. Greek philosophers and teachers who speculated on theology, metaphysics, and the sciences, and who were later characterized by Plato as superficial manipulators of rhetoric and dialectic.

The Sophist seemed to espouse rhetoric of what is is to be good, better, and ideal. They would give you what you needed to know and all you had to do was believe them.   I would liken this to the people of today who write and speak about all the “good things you should be doing” even for your own happiness.

However, in their pursuit of the prettier picture and self image of success, they have sacrificed an honest inquiry for the Truth.

It is the difference between accepting what you are told is the truth, and finding out for your self.

The first approach is easier and can give a quick and easy peace of mind. However, it leaves you no peace in your soul. To find the truth for your self you sometimes have to scratch and claw your way with inquiry past all the illusions you hold. However the skills over your attention, discernment, and perception, will serve you well for all your remaining days and nights. It will make it difficult for any liar or sophist to betray you.  Even your own mind.

You may have found in my writing and audio that I am not inviting you to believe me. If you work with me individually, you will also find that I often don’t answer your quesitons directly. Instead I likely ask you a question in response to yours? This is is not to annoy anyone, but rather to invite them into a process of finding out for themselves, instead of putting their faith in the stories of someone else.

This article makes sens if you look at things from a scientific viewpoint.  However, the scientific viewpoint doesn’t account for how awareness, consciousness, and the penetrating force of LIfe impacts the brain.  If you don’t include consciousness as one of the parameters that you are observing you will miss the cause and believe erroneous conclusions.

Selflessness, Core Of All Major World Religions, Has Neuropsychological Connection

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2008) — All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. An MU study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain.

The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection. Researchers say the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies, health care or religion can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.

The rest of the article is at   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217124156.htm

This is like claiming that leaves create chlorophyll by ignoring the role of sunlight.    But understandable because these scientists haven’t yet figured out how to measure consciousness, and those other elements that affect matter.  But that’s not surprising when you consider that as far as they are concerned, those things don’t exist.    It’s kind of a Catch-22 where they will never see the impact from something because they have already concluded it isn’t there.   It is quite difficult to find something when you assume it doesn’t exist.

Lesson to be applied here:   Don’t Make Assumptions

For an intro on how you can affect your brain by focusing your attention start with this article from the Wall Street Journal.

http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/wsj_1-19-07_begley.html

“I’ll do better next time.”   It’s an optimistic thought.  However, without a good dose of healthy self reflection on what happened last time, we are likely to repeat the same mistake.

Doing better next time takes more than just a commitment to the idea and goal.  Without awareness of the lessons learned about the past, there is little chance that we will break free of these patterns.  Surprisingly most self help courses or advice doesn’t provide any tools, systems, or techniques for reviewing past patterns, learning from them, or making changes in our self based on what we find.  Most just rely on the hollow, but well intentioned, commitment.

Without awareness of the things you overlooked in your past choices and patterns of the past, you will miss those same things next time.  A committment, no matter how well intentioned probably won’t take you as far in doing better as awareness.

Do better next time,,,  reflect on past patterns and choices until you see where you went wrong.  Then reflect on your self until you can see why you missed those critical observations in those moments.  That will be a start.   What assumptions did you make, why and how did you make them?  When you can see how your mind projects assumptions in the moment and you can suspend your belief in them, that is awareness.  And that is when you will have an opportunity to make a better choice next time.

It is the season of politics and people are campaigning for your attention.  The news casters and pundits grasp for it too as they tell you their story of a story.  They sit in their arm chairs and rate the candidates speeches and delivery looking for signs of leadership.   Yet they are somehow oblivious to the fact that it is not the great speaker that makes for a wise leader but rather the quiet listener.

Suggested reading:  Good to Great by Jim Collins

The Jim Collins website