Higher Learning
What did you get out of school? More importantly, what didn't you get out of school? Did you learn how to be more creative, how to solve problems, how to develop your own talents and abilities, how to have workable relationships, how to think for your self, how to manage your money, how to live spiritually? Do you know what your purpose is in life? Few of us learned that in school. Whether you are a high school dropout or a Ph.D, this is a chance to learn all the most important things about life that you never learned in school. Stop comparing yourself with others, and learn how to live the life you were meant to live — now.
This is the basic outline of the course:- Lesson 1: What you didn't learn in school
- Lesson 2: Think it through
- Lesson 3: Finding your own way
- Lesson 4: Being your authentic self
- Lesson 5: Being in relationships
- Lesson 6: Money, money, money
- Lesson 7: Purpose, goals, and success
- Lesson 8: Spirituality
- Lesson 9: Being prepared for the future
The goals are to:
- ease the transition from being in school to being out in the "real world"
- think for your self, and recognize what is right, good, and true for you
- validate your own creative ideas, goals, and purposes
- understand the nature of problems, and how to get past them
- take control of your life, your thoughts, feelings, and desires
- learn about relationships, money, work, and spirituality.
Lesson 1: What you didn't learn in school
Introduction
1. A Complete 180
2. The "Real World"
3. How You Are in the World
Exercise One
4. Everything Is About You
5. Stop Comparing Yourself With Others
Exercise Two
6. Believe in Yourself
7. You Could Be Magnificence
8. Learning What is Right, Good, and True for You
9. How to Be, Do, and Have What You Truly Want in Your Life
Exercise Three
10. Take Control of Your Life
Introduction
Welcome to Higher Learning. Almost everyone has been through an educational experience that has largely stifled their true creativity, inner self, sense of purpose, or self-directedness. Instead of learning how to be true to who we are, we have been programmed, indoctrinated, and made to rely upon the thinking of others — authority figures — for our answers.
It is very likely that you did not learn the most important things in life, in school. And, most of us do not learn them on our own, either. The most important thing to learn in life is how to know what is right, good, and true for you — within your self. This is entirely different from relying upon external authorities for all your answers, guidance, and direction. It is connecting with your own inner knowingness, purpose, intuition, and creative flow — which formal education suppresses, discounts, or ignores.
How well you do in life is not a matter of how well you did in school. You would be amazed at the large number of self-made millionaires who did poorly in school. The thing they did learn in their lives was to think for themselves — to think differently, not the way everyone else does. That is something we all need to do, regardless of our education or aspirations.
Note: The purpose of the course is to make you think, to be more self-aware, to gain perspective, and to learn how to apply universally applicable principles to situations in your own life. What's different about these courses is that there is no "fluff" or stories about other people, no facts to memorize or "top ten" ways to make everything in your life perfect. Be aware, your comfort zone will be challenged. For some, the material may seem like common sense, something you already know but have yet to practice. For others, the realizations you make will be profoundly transformational. As in life, you decide its value to you.
1. A Complete 180
You will probably forget most of what you learned in school. It doesn't matter if that's because it is irrelevant in your everyday life, your memory fades, the information becomes obsolete, or you find things in the "real world" are different from what you once thought. If you're like many people, what you were taught in school probably never meant all that much to you in the first place.
For most people, getting out of school and being in the "real world" is a complete 180 — the opposite of everything they learned, or were taught or told.
The most important things in life are not in the curriculum. Teachers may be good-intentioned people with much information, but they often know very little about how to live their own lives, and even less about how you should live yours. Yet, if you react by doing the opposite of what you are taught and told — or rebel — your life is not necessarily any more easy, successful, or fulfilling.
Welcome to the real world, where:
- being cool or popular doesn't get you anywhere in the job market
- getting a job often requires experience, which you don't get in school
- working by yourself to solve problems is usually replaced by teamwork
- knowing enough to get a job doesn't mean you will ever get anywhere meaningful in life
- partying has absolutely no value, no matter how much fun it may be
- casual sex does not add anything to your life; it makes you less
- the ability to have sex does not mean you know anything whatsoever about parenting
- developing a personality and ego, and fitting in, is the opposite of truly being your self
- most adults don't have a clue what they are doing on this planet
- if you do not think of the future, your future will be extremely disappointing
- failing at Life is not an option, or an elective course.
If you do what the majority does, you will be overweight, drink, have casual sex, spend more than you earn, have children you do not know how to properly raise, fail to question spurious authority, live without any true sense of purpose, have relationships that do not work, enjoy your addictions, and live in denial — telling yourself that things that hurt you are actually good for you.
By the time you reach adulthood, after countless hours of mind numbing academic programming and television programming, you may think that what is good for you is irrelevant, and what is bad for you is just fine. You may believe that what feels good is good. And you might not know what was right, good, and true for you if you tripped over it. Even as an adult, you are misled by your society, your leaders, authorities and experts, peers, family, and "friends." You are encouraged by endless advertisements to imagine that the impulses you give in to are right and good, when the opposite is true. In this way, every wrong and negativity and evil is catered to and profited from in our society, including war, disease, addiction, and ignorance. School does not remove ignorance; it merely piles countless bits of information on top of it, to hide ignorance.
Unless you learn what it truly means to stand on your own feet, live as your authentic self, and know what is right, good, and true within you, your life — like those of people you see every day — will be a lie. It will not be true to who you are, or your highest purposes in living.
Your grades in school mean less than you can imagine, regardless of the fact that getting good grades and doing well on exams may have been a goal of your formal education. Grades and exams that test your knowledge of facts don't prove your intelligence, creativity, initiative, or ability to succeed at what matters most to you, in the real world.
Grades in school are largely a measure of how well you are programmed, and how accepted you are in the academic system. They are not a measure of whether you know what is right, good, and true for you in your life. They are not an indication of whether you will be happy in life, wealthy, loving, at peace, or fulfilled in your life.
All the things you learn in school are irrelevant to your knowing what is ultimately right, good, and true for you — or living your life that way.
So, welcome to the real world.
2. The "Real World"
As Tom Peters, the management guru says, there isn't anything wrong with your education if all you are going to do in life is assemble Model A Fords, because that is what education is designed for — to make you just another cog in the wheel, lacking in original thought or true creativity. He observes, getting a perfect 4.0 grade average is only evidence that a person has learned to sell out, and believe and do exactly what they are told.
The academic curriculum is society's agenda, designed to make you think like everyone else in your class. Your education probably has nothing whatsoever to do with your purpose in life — what you are here for. It is a generic indoctrination and programming to think like everyone else, to be like everyone else, and to be assimilated in your society like everyone else. Realize, this is everything you need to step out of — not accept or embrace — to truly be your self, and to fulfill your own true purposes in living.
Life is about self-referral, finding your own answers within you; school is about obeying authority, and repeating answers provided to you by others.
Your formal education trains you to accept the status quo, the way things are as the way they should be. But, things are very often different from what you have been taught or told, or learned from peers. The first thing you need to learn in the "real world" is to understand the consequences of your choices and actions, and learn to make choices that are right, good, and true for you. That is very different from what you may have learned in school, which was merely how to do or say what someone else expected from you.
Think about it. Were you conditioned to feel like a failure if you got a low or failing grade in school? Were your grades or degrees your source of self-worth or success? Have you ever heard, "Do we need to know this for the exam?" Formal education is about passing down information to be memorized so as to fit in with what your teachers (or board of education) expect you to know, so that you can prove that you think like them. This has very little or nothing to do with what you truly need to know to be happy and fulfilled in life.
People go through their daily lives knowing the minimum they need to know to get by. They know how to provide for some of their needs, how to satisfy some of their desires, what interests them, and how to do their job. Beyond that, people ignore or forget what they have been formally taught. Whatever they do not need to know or use in daily life, they don't bother trying to keep up on. Over time, people know less and less of what they learned in school; some grow in experience and knowledge out in the "real world," to make up for it. Others do not.
In any case, the process of learning does not begin or end with your formal education. You are learning at each and every moment, waking, dreaming, and sleeping. You are never not learning. In terms of your formal education, it doesn't matter whether you attended public or private school; the result is generally the same, conformity to a social agenda at the cost of your individuality and free thinking. It is time away from school that allows you to decide the meaning of what you have been taught or told, to gain perspective and insight. Unfortunately, people merely tend to reinforce their programming when they are on their own, rather than truly thinking for themselves.
The questions to ask yourself are:
- do you see what you are learning in the moment, in terms of what you feel is right and true for you?
- are you allowing yourself to undergo a process of unlearning what is no longer useful to you?
- are you really learning, progressing, succeeding, or are you stuck in or limited by various forms of self-negating thoughts, feelings, or behaviors?
Have you learned how to find meaning in what you learn, how to continue learning throughout your life, and how you relate to what you are learning? Do you know how to relate everything you experience to who you are?
3. How You Are in the World
Until you really know who you are, how you are in the world will not be true to who you really are. There are countless people parading around being something other than what they are, or who they are. How can that be? Doesn't everyone think for themselves and act for themselves? Don't we all have free will? Doesn't everyone do what they want to do?
No, not even close to that. Most people live life unconsciously, out of habit, emotional reactions, programming, conditioning, and indoctrination. They seldom — sometimes never — truly think for themselves, reject the popular programming or thinking, step out of the popular social conditioning, behavior, or enculturation. Very simply, most people do not have any idea who they really are; they live their lives as society and others expect or demand or influence them to be.
How would you know if you were living a programmed, meaningless, mindless existence? How would you know if you were conformed to the world-at-large? When you stop and really look, you know. Do you have a tattoo? Do you pride yourself on the beer or wine you drink? Do you use drugs? Do you have casual, meaningless sex? Do you believe what you see on the news, or believe authority figures just because they are in a position of power? When was the last time you had a truly free, creative, original idea — and we don't mean running around on the beach naked — but something that made a difference in someone's life, something completely unique from everything you had been taught or told?
We are going to present a different idea of what it means to be your self. The basic idea is: the less you know your self, the more you act like what is "not you"; and the more you know your self, the less you act like what is not you. Of course, everyone thinks they are acting like themselves, and thinks they know themselves. After all, if you don't know yourself, who does?
And, that is the point. If you do not know and act as your true self, your authentic self, then no one else knows you or can truly relate to you either. They only relate to what is not you, the same way you do. Do you really know your self? Or do you feel as though you might have lost your self, or your way? Do you relate to everything and everyone from a position of ego, rather than your authentic self? Do you care what everyone — or anyone — thinks about you? Have you been molded or shaped by the world-at-large; are you in a role that isn't quite "you"? Are you defined by the labels you wear? Has your life taken on the most shallow or superficial dimensions? Are you living in your own little world, where you have things the way you like, and exclude all the rest of the world — or reality — from your private world? How small is your world, the one you inhabit?
Exercise One: This is an exercise in awareness. Allow yourself some time to be with the following questions. Sit with them, and be aware of the thoughts, feelings, and desires that come into your awareness.
Questions: In what ways have you conformed to the world? In what ways have you rebelled? How do you know when you are acting in a way that is true to who you really are? Have you found your self, or lost your self, in this life?
Is sitting quietly — with your self — the last thing you would ever want to do? Does it feel as if you are losing your life, wasting time, or failing to have fun if you just quietly let yourself be? What is your world like inside you? Usually, the way you are in the outer world is the way you are within you. Most people are filled up with the world outside them. They have internalized the outer world and taken that to be their inner reality. And, that is a definition of failure in life: failing to be your true self.
The idea is to take who you are inside, in the highest sense — free from all of the conditioning, programming, and delusions of the world-at-large — and express that, outside you. So that your outer life becomes a full and complete expression of who you are within you.
That is how to be in the world and not be of the world.
Learn how to do that one thing — living life from the core of your inner being, your true self — and you will take care of how you are in the world, how you are in relation to your self, others, your work, your purpose, your creative expression, your spirituality, and your contribution to the world.
Realize, there is nothing holding you back outside of you; all that is holding you back are the things of the outer world that you have mistakenly taken into you, which you have allowed to get in the way of being who you truly are. And, you can let go of all of those things, because they are not you. Truly understand this, and you will know that you can let go of or get past anything that is not in accordance with your highest purpose in living, and live authentically.
4. Everything Is About You
Everything in your life is about you. We don't mean this in an egotistical way, but everything in your life really is about you. Whether you believe you are the cause or merely the observer of the conditions or events in your life, you remain the conscious witness to, interpreter of, and assigner of meaning to everything you experience. Everything has meaning to the extent that you give it meaning. And, everyone experiences, gives meaning to, and makes decisions about "reality" differently.
There is a way to relate to everyone and everything that truly works for you, and endless ways that do not . The way that works is to be conscious of how you relate to everyone and everything, and see what you are learning, choosing, accepting, rejecting, experiencing or feeling within you. Many people deal with life unconsciously, in a self-defeating way, for example by rejecting or resenting anything that does not conform to their expectations, or by relying upon habit. Being more aware allows more choices, freedom, and understanding.
You might not know it from the way you are taught in school, but the way you see things matters. The way school is taught, a young person often "learns" that everything else matters but them. Many young people seek to end their lives by suicide, because they have mistakenly "learned" that they don't matter, it doesn't even matter if they live. Their "education" has marginalized them, dehumanized them, or disaffected them; it makes them feel less. They yearn to tell their own story, and to have the world listen.
You really do matter. Your life matters. Everything in your life is about you — the story you wish to tell with your life. So, in everything you experience, everything you see, hear, feel, or do, ask your self, "What does this really have to do with who I am?" In what way does this help me to know who I am, to know what I want, or to know how to have what I want in my life? In what way does what I experience reflect something in me?
You can even do this with subjects you learn in school. What does history, math, biology, chemistry, geography, literature, social studies, or anything really have to do with you? Everything is information, organized into stories. Every subject you learn is something that another person has experienced — in a way that differs from how others may have experienced it before then. Everything you experience in education, in life, in relationships, in work, is someone telling their story — or you telling your own story. Your own vision is supposed to take shape in the world. To one person, math simply means balancing their check book, to another it explains the motion of all the stars in the universe, to another it reveals how a business works, and to another it gives perspective on a secure financial future. It might mean something entirely different to you.
You can do this awareness exercise with a rock, a tree, a person you know, a relative, a public figure, a lesson in school, or any subject. Look at it, and ask yourself what in you parallels what you are seeing or learning outside you. What are you learning about yourself in what you are looking at? In what way does it allow more freedom or creativity, or sense of connection?
It is not information which you are given or memorize that matters; it is the inner realization you have as to what things mean to you. And everyone is different. Ten people can be standing near each other with identical cameras, taking the same picture of the Grand Canyon, and yet every picture is unique — even if they look the same. The law states that each person's picture is unique, and each person is entitled to all rights over their own picture. Every picture tells a unique story.
Life is like that. Education is supposed to be like that. You are sitting there with so many others who are taking in the same picture, the same information. And yet, everyone takes something different and unique from it. The way the educational system works, the teacher is only concerned to see if everyone has taken the "same" picture; that's what tests are for. But, in reality, no two people take the same picture. It is not possible.
In the educational system, who you are does not matter as much as the fact that you show you have the same information as everyone else. In life, who you are matters far more than proving you have the same information as everyone else. In life, you can be as creative as you want to be in every picture you take, and your "picture" really doesn't need to look like anyone else's. You get to tell your own story.
5. Stop Comparing Yourself With Others
It is a common tendency to compare yourself with others. You may do this either to gain some perspective on yourself, or more likely, to see how you measure up to them. This is limiting in itself, but more so if you have strong programming to conform to other individuals, to be like them, or to be accepted by them.
Peer pressure is one of the most self-limiting forms of conditioning. If you "sell out" or try to "measure up" to others, you may receive the rather dubious reward of becoming just like them. But, somewhere in the process you lose your self, your inner-directedness, your own purpose, and your own self-validation. The true measure by which you can determine your worth — and the value of your creative self-expression — has nothing to do with comparison or conformity, and everything to do with simply honoring the highest within you.
Each person has unique channels of creative energy open to them; everyone has different and varied expressions of creativity and intelligence. So, forget everyone else, and everyone else's abilities, and look within. Draw from within your self, and have the courage to be your self regardless of others. Unfold your own talents and abilities.
Fear of criticism or disapproval is an example of negative conditioning which is learned as you are growing up and trying to fit into the world. You are shaped by others' ideas, attitudes, and beliefs — and their pressures to conform. You give in to fear, or internalize externally-derived programming.
Insecurities or inhibitions indicate a fear of: risk-taking, failure, rejection, disapproval, or change. Such guarded reactions indicate a lack of familiarity with the process of creative change or your own true inner creative strengths. Rather, you need to be open to change, and act on what is progressive and right.
When we are young, we conform so as to get approval, and learn to "behave" so well that we may continue to conform within narrow boundaries, even when it is not necessary or appropriate as an adult. This is often done subconsciously, automatically, habitually, throughout life. Emotional reactions such as fear, guilt, or resentment continue to lock us into the same old self-limiting behaviors.
Learn to see and recognize fear for what it is: it is just a feeling, emotion, negative conditioning, or habitual reaction. It isn't a free choice; it isn't true to who you are; it isn't the way you need to live your life, and it must not override the choice to do what you know to be right.
If you value what others say more than what you know to be right within you, your inner self is diminished. Then, other people have their way with you. Face your fears, doubts, and insecurities, and do what is right anyway. You have to develop free self-expression.
The things that hold you back — doubts or fears — are what you leave behind when you accept and allow creative change. From this process of creative growth comes greater security, creative freedom, and empowerment within your self.
Exercise Two: This is an exercise in awareness. Allow yourself some time to be with the following questions. Sit with them, and be aware of the thoughts, feelings, and desires that come into your awareness.
Questions: Think of a time when you compared yourself with another person. What does it feel like in your body, when you do this? In what ways have you felt insecure, sought approval, or given in to feelings of worry, doubt, or fear? What does criticism or judgment by others feel like in your body?
Now think of a time when you did not care what others thought of you, or how others saw you, when you just did what you felt was right for you. How did that feel in your body? Think of how it feels to be creative, free, self-confident, and what better choices you can make that way.
Getting past insecurities or inhibitions doesn't mean giving up your conscience or what you know to be right. There is nothing "creative" in feeling free to do what is not right or good. You have to overcome the self-negating emotional nature of insecurities — not give in to them. Only then can you do what is right.
You overcome insecurity by finding the courage to act, by breaking out of the trap of fear and self-doubt, by doing what you know to be right. Creativity means leaving behind the "safety" of familiarity, for the relative uncertainties of something new or unknown in your experience. What you stand to gain is something more than what you started out with.
6. Believe in Yourself
If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.
Is there a difference between where you are and where you want to be in your life, now? How about the future? How do you see yourself and your life five years from now, ten ...? How will your life be different? What is going to happen that will make your life be that way in the future?
Do you believe in yourself enough, enough to take real steps in the "real world" to make a difference in your life? What steps do you need to take to have the life you really want? Are you taking them?
The simple truth is, if you believed in yourself, you would take whatever steps were necessary — whatever steps you could — to move into the experience of life that you want, now and in the future. What holds most people back is self-doubt, or fear.
Who doubted you in your life, who made you feel that you couldn't be, do, or have what you want in life? Whose voice do you hear when you think about risking being true to your own self? Are you still listening to someone else's voice (or programming) rather than listening to the greater truth within you?
What you could do — what you could be — is so much more than you might believe.
Believing in your self requires you to know who you are, first. You have to know your authentic self, which is entirely different from that ego-based personality which gratifies itself in every way. The odds are you mistake self-gratification (which is really ego gratification), for being true to your self. They are actually the opposite.
Many people today have an overly inflated, egotistical sense of their importance. As children, they are told how great they are, how special, how good everything is that they do — and no one is allowed to criticize them. They lack any real perspective on themselves, and instead have a well-fed ego.
You might pursue many things that you imagine fall into the category of "being your self." Things such as your personal favorites on your iPod, having a custom ring tone on your cell phone, wearing a certain style of clothing, having tattoos that mean something special to you, having a pet you love, binging on your favorite foods or drink, and so on.
When you think about it, how many of the things that you might imagine are "being true to who you are," are really not about you at all? You might imagine a certain song is about you, or a tattoo must be about you and who you really are. But, that isn't necessarily the case. The things we commemorate in our lives are most often about others — the influence others have on us — rather than an expression from within our selves.
What in your life is an expression from within your true self — not your ego, emotions, desires, beliefs, attitudes, enculturation, or popular trends or fashions? What in your life expresses who you truly are, from within you, rather than being something you are latching onto outside of you?
If you truly believed in your self, you would find little or no need for tattoos to remind you of who you imagine you are or who others expect you to be; you would have little need for casual sex, but would feel deserving of true love; you would need little or no reassurance from your society, which is really nothing more than programming and conditioning.
If you truly knew who you were, you would have such a profound belief in your self that nothing of the outer world would negatively affect you. This doesn't mean living in denial, living in illusions, or having an enormous ego. It simply means knowing, respecting, and honoring who you truly are on the deepest level of your being — who you already are, within you.
Who you are, and who you need to believe you are, is more wonderful, original, creative, wise, and loving than you can imagine — and it is not imaginary, it is real. Who you believe you are must rise to that level of self-realization, or your life will remain a sad commentary on the lowest expectations and most self-negating beliefs you have about yourself, courtesy of the society in which you live.
You need to know, deeply, on a level that nothing and no one can take away from you or deny you, that you could be magnificence. And learn to live your life from there.
7. You Could Be Magnificence
How do you see yourself?
Maybe the world has made you doubt your self. The truth is, you are already successful. More than you know.
You could be magnificence. Unless you know that — really know that, within you, deeply in your soul or inner being — you may live your life with inner conflict, pain, fear, uncertainty, or despair.
Even Mother Teresa had difficulty with this in her life. She once declared that "there is nothing but emptiness and darkness" within her, in her soul. And she despaired that there might not be a God or heaven after all. She stated that she, personally, did not have faith. Yet, she did her best to live her life in support of whatever goodness and light she could find, in people she did not even know.
So, what are you to do with your life? No one is asking you to be another Mother Teresa, but you nevertheless will face the same challenges as to how to live your life either aligned with the Light, or accepting of darkness. We all have those choices to make in our lives, daily, in relation to our selves and in relation to others.
Most people are merely programmed in their lives by everything outside them, rather than having true awareness and true freedom of choice. The media give you wrong messages constantly, repeatedly, and most people believe them. For example, credit card companies have television ads showing people being very happy spending money on their credit cards, and the company declares that this is "living in the moment," and "being free." The truth is, most young people become enslaved to debt by their credit cards — regardless of the New Age programming messages they are exposed to which inform them otherwise.
In fact, you are programmed continuously in this society, especially in the media, but also in your interactions with others. Other people reinforce your programming, as well as your self-defeating behavior.
You give permission to everything to be the way it is, by your lack of awareness. Your lack of awareness is your consent to have things be the way they are. Your lack of awareness basically gives your mind over to others, to other forces in society, seen and unseen. That isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a fact of life.
Question authority. Don't just accept what anyone says, especially those in positions of power and authority. Know what it means to think for your self. Know what it means to be more aware. Awareness gives you the power of choice. Awareness is consciousness, and consciousness is the basis of spirituality, or the ability to make choices in accordance with the highest good.
Of course, spirituality is excluded from almost all public education, and science is promoted as some kind of answer to everything. It is not. The fact is you are a spiritual being, you are far more than the physical body that science declares you to be. You are a being of consciousness, power, wisdom, love, and goodness — qualities that appear to be most lacking in science. Do not allow yourself to be limited in your perspective on who you truly are by the limited view of science, or its rejection of anything it cannot measure with its instruments.
Realize, the subjects you learned in school took the place of learning about who you truly are, and uncovering your true potential. Your true spiritual awareness and your inner spiritual being were ignored, suppressed, or denied, and replaced by a total reliance upon external authority. This is a chance to come back to your higher self, your essential wholeness, your greater awareness, your innate understanding, and your inner wisdom.
Regardless of the messages you may have gotten in life until now, now is your opportunity to look at your true potential. See your potential for greatness. And realize that it only takes your being true to who you are, to bring out this greatness in you.
8. Learning What is Right, Good, and True for You
In our society, people are increasingly out of touch with who they really are, what they really need, what they truly think and feel, and what is right, good, and true. They see no wrong in what is wrong, or they rationalize, justify, or excuse it. They cheat in relationships, in school, in work, in business, in sports, on their taxes, and so on. They run red lights, drink and drive, and have every kind of addiction imaginable.
They do what is not best for themselves or others, and fail to self-correct. Gradually, they no longer respond to the inner voice of conscience which tells them what is right. They excuse the consequences of their behavior with statements like "it's all good," or blame their addictions on genetic predisposition — with no sense of personal responsibility. Over time, people lose sense of what is right, good, or true for them.
Do you know what is right, good, and true for you? How do you know? How do you know what isn't? Have you heard the phrase, "it's all good"? Contrary to popular belief, "it" isn't all good, all right, or all true. And it isn't all "fun."
Fun is not the criteria for what is right, good, or true. And, contrary to popular belief, neither is passion. Passion is emotional excitement or ego investment, neither of which is a reliable indicator of what is right for you. Passion is getting excited about whatever you are doing, while purpose is finding what has the most meaning and true creative expression for you, in accordance with a greater good. What is right is not always easy or fun; it means listening to that quiet voice that speaks within you.
Learn to attune to and listen to your inner voice. Practice self-referral; see how you feel about the choices and actions you take. Then, learn to perceive how others receive your thoughts, feelings, intentions, body language, energy, will, desires, and behavior. The idea isn't to merely act as others may wish you to act, but to be aware of and responsible in relation to how you affect others. And then choose to do so in only the most progressive, supportive, loving, and good way.
You may come to realize, over time, that the more you listen to what is right, good, and true within you, the more you act that way towards others. You develop self-confidence grounded in who you really are, not in terms of ego.
Exercise Three: This is an exercise in awareness. Allow yourself some time to be with the following questions. Sit with them, and be aware of the thoughts, feelings, and desires that come into your awareness.
Questions: Think of a time when you might have felt you knew something, but were really just being overly intellectual, emotional, upset, angry, or afraid. What does it feel like in your body, when your quiet center is displaced from truth? What does truth feel like to you? In what ways have you grasped for something outside of you — to "rely" upon — without checking within you to see what was right for you?
We are seeking to be more conscious, aware, free from habitual behavior, free from reactiveness, free to be who we truly are, in the moment. It is all to easy to move through the world on a path of least resistance, doing what is fun, ego-emotionally supportive, materialistic, or selfish. Many people do just that, and they feel their lives "work." Others believe "it is all good," and fail to discern what takes them higher as opposed to what only holds the illusion of taking them higher, while it makes them less: less aware, less spiritual, less giving, less honest with themselves. We are not talking about how to be mindless or habitual, or run on automatic, with very little awareness. It is essential to learn to discern what is right, good, and true for you from what is not.
Be aware that social support systems do not help you to know what is right for you. The educational system rarely prepares young people for the world they live in; required subjects are often irrelevant to success in life. How many people need to use a protractor or algebra at work, or need to know the date of the Spanish-American War for a job application? The financial system has resulted in Americans having, on average, negative (less than zero) savings. The legal system creates more and more crimes; they are committed, and more and more people are punished or imprisoned. The medical system has cataloged more and more diseases, while more people get more sick or unhealthy all the time — half of all Americans now take daily medications.
It would not be unfair to observe that these systems are not really solutions; they are the problem. Even traditional religion has come into question, as fanatical believers evidence their total lack of spirituality in favor of political agendas, hate, intolerance, war, and a completely illusory, egotistical, self-righteous superiority.
Perhaps you may come to realize that what is right, good, and true is not written in a book, some words to be mindlessly obeyed or interpreted to the advantage of a particular segment of society. But, rather, what is right, good, and true is written in our hearts, and we need to follow that, even more.
9. How to Be, Do, and Have What You Truly Want in Your Life
There is a natural flow to life, a flow of situations and opportunities unfolding. Young people especially often feel this flow, and feel the need to open to it and move with it. Unfortunately, the educational system tends to forcibly remove young people from the flow of their own lives — it does not put them into the flow. This is why 40% of young people drop out before finishing high school. They can feel it stifling them, blocking the flow of their life, frustrating them, filling them with so much crap they learn in high school, that, as Paul Simon wrote, "it's a wonder [they] can think at all."
Are you settling for a life in which you feel less than what you truly are, have less than what you truly want, lack a sense of purpose, or can't seem to find a lasting, fulfilling relationship? Perhaps you are living more from a place of ego, emotion, desire, and social programming than your true self. That's what most people do.
This may surprise you, but the way to be, do, and have what you want in life is not to seek instant gratification of your desires. That is not "living in the moment," or being "free," but living in bondage to your ego, programming, social conditioning, addictions, and delusions. And, it doesn't matter how many other people share those illusions, or have the same programming; that doesn't make living life in a state of denial and delusion any more real or good.
If you don't know who you really are, you can't know how to have what you really want. Instead, all you want to be, do, and have is what your ego — your false, inflated, illusory, worldly identity — wants. And none of that is ultimately true to you, who you really are.
The only way to be, do, and have what you truly want in life, is to learn what it means to be true to your self, to know and live as your authentic self. Your true or authentic self has nothing whatsoever to do with your ego; they are entirely different. Yet, your culture, your family, friends, peers, partners, and society in general encourage ego — not authenticity.
Ego is about desire, materialism, emotionalism, addictiveness, ambition, selfishness, and gratification. It has no long-term perspective, no sense of what is right or good or true, no conscience, no connection with a greater reality. Ego lives in fantasy and delusion. And, most people, most of the time, identify with their ego; they think they are their ego; they have little or no sense of their true, inner, spiritual self.
Are you living from a place of ego, or authentic self? Do you seek the approval of others, or do you seek to do what you feel is right, good, and true for you — within you? What is your measure of what is right for you? Is it the extent to which it provides some kind of immediate gratification, pleasure, or excitement? Or is it the extent to which it feels to be aligned with your inner self, on a deeper and truer level of being?
Learn what it means to be true to who you are, and do not let anyone or anything get in the way of that. Hold on to the dream in your heart — your highest aspiration for living — and never give up. Never give in, never give up. And you will succeed beyond your dreams. Of course, "never give up" doesn't mean being obsessive about things; have a balanced perspective, and a sense of what really matters.
Some things are worth pursuing 100% to completion, such as a long-term relationship; others may not be, such as gathering information on the Internet. Consider the "80-20 Rule": you often accomplish 80% of a given project, purpose, or goal, with the first 20% of your effort. And it takes the remaining 80% of your effort to accomplish the final 20%. As you come closer to the end, you have to deal with all the things you have been unable or unwilling to resolve previously; some get dealt with, and some may not. Learn to value your time and energy. Decide what is worth your time and energy, what is producing results, what is giving you what you are really looking for.
A large part of having what you want in your life experience is saying No to what you don't want to waste your time or your life on.
10. Take Control of Your Life
If we have given up control in our lives to others — including the authority figures in government, law, medicine, religion, science, education, and so on — we have to learn to take back control. The place to begin is within us, in our own thinking, choices, and behavior. This is where our true education begins.
There are three main areas of life or life expression: physical expression, mental expression, and spiritual expression. If you disregard any of the main areas of life, life may be less than fulfilling. Self, relationships, work, creativity, and spirituality are not separate, but integral. And, contrary to popular opinion, emotion is not a true form of life expression, but rather tends to take the place of real thinking, purpose, creativity, or spiritual awareness. Emotionalism tends to form the basis of the most self-limiting or self-destructive patterns of behavior; but we'll get to that, later.
Did you know that there is a "place" from which you create your life, a place from which you make choices, a place from which you act? There is. And that "place" can either be within your true inner being — your authentic self — or somewhere else, such as a place of ego, emotion, conditioning, or programming. You may find that the only choices, actions, behavior and life experience which ultimately means anything to you — which is truly rewarding and fulfilling — must come from your true inner self, and nowhere else. Not anywhere else "inside" you or anywhere else outside of you.
For many people, it is easier to do wrong in this world than to do right. The world — for example, through mass media and peer pressure — encourages their failing, their weakness, their giving in to their lower instincts, ego, and emotion.
It is easier to mindlessly act out of habit, programming, conditioning, and indoctrination than it is to actually think for your self, listen to your conscience, and do what you know to be right, good, and true, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Peer pressure, family pressure, social pressure, and so on are not a worthy replacement or compensation for giving up your own true inner being. Other people (and the world-at-large) are happy to exert influence, power, or control over you, if you prefer not to honor your true self, or follow your inner guidance.
People get their vision from television, their news from government spokespersons, and their desires from media programming. They forsake inner wisdom, consciousness, and conscience. Their vision gets so narrow, so programmed and indoctrinated, that they imagine they are living a "good" life just as long as they can get their favorite beer or cheap gas.
People have little or no idea how their thinking, beliefs, desires, and emotions are shaped (or controlled) by forces outside themselves. They are not aware of how misled, misinformed, and misguided they may be. Or they don't really care. They want what they want, in their own lives, and do not really care all that much about what is happening to others. They are conditioned to live in fear, in survival mode, a step ahead of bankruptcy, a step away from terrorist acts, a step away from an endless stream of diseases. A step away from their true selves, and conscience.
This is a chance to learn how to take back control of your own life, your mind, your emotions, your desires, your purposes, your finances, and your own success. You didn't learn all this in school. But you can learn it here.
Learning to act from your center promotes well-being. By well-being, we mean a balanced, whole, complete life, with health, good nutrition, exercise, meditation or other spiritual practice, financial health, a sense of purpose, and work that is aligned with your sense of purpose, truly loving relationships, creative expression, and a quality of consciousness or awareness that provides you with the information, direction, guidance, and confidence you need to be successful at what you truly want to do.
Contrast this way to live with the typical experience of getting out of school with no sense of purpose or a job that has nothing to do with who you really are; living in a state of financial indebtedness; having a lack of proper nutrition and exercise; having little spiritual realization or personal spiritual practice; having relationships that are about hooking up or "connecting" via technology, rather than heart to heart; acquiescing to popular programming and cultural values; relying upon authorities for your answers, and not really having the ability to solve your own problems.
You are supposed to be able to stand on your own. Being complacent, accepting of and harmonious with the way things are, conforming, never drawing upon your true creative self, is not success but failure. Every choice you make really does matter; it either brings you closer to reality, truth, and good, or it separates you even more. Be aware of the choices you make, and why you are making them.
Realize, the only true success in life is being true to your self, making choices that are true to you. Nothing else can truly take the place of that. Worldly ambitions divorced from this spiritual principle are not steps to success but ultimate ruin.
In every thing you desire, meditate deeply on why you want it, what purpose it will serve, whether it will free you or trap you, whether it will make you more or less, and what makes it right, good, or true for you. Let true awareness and inner conscience be your guide.