Awareness, as I’ve said before, is your best shot at a solution to life’s problems–at least those problems that have a solution. With enough awareness, you either see how you’re creating a problem, or you see that there’s nothing you can do about it. Both are valuable.
There are certain problems you can’t do anything about. There’s no way to change the fact that everything in this world is impermanent and will eventually come to an end or fall apart. You also can’t escape from the web of cause and effect that you’re a part of. The solution, if you want to call it that, is to stop making these things into problems. In other words, stop resisting what cannot be resisted.
You can, however, avoid or minimize some of the problems of life, and awareness is the key to doing this. If you’re aware, you can exercise choice regarding the way you enter into and engage the world of cause and effect. Though you can’t control everything raining down on you from the world of cause and effect, you can exercise enough control to substantially improve your life.
There are two ways to approach life: you can live automatically, on autopilot, or consciously, with awareness. Unfortunately, nearly all people live with little awareness, on autopilot. What’s more, if you’re living on autopilot, you won’t even know you’re on autopilot, unless someone tells you. That’s why they call it autopilot.
Identifying the areas where you’re operating unconsciously is one of the benefits of having a teacher. The teacher is like a mirror, showing you what you can’t see for yourself, about yourself. Even a teacher needs a teacher.
Of course, whether you live on autopilot or with awareness isn’t an either/or proposition. There’s a huge spectrum of possibilities between living unconsciously and living with awareness, and each person is somewhere between these two–hopefully developing toward greater awareness. I described this developmental process in detail in the first dozen or so posts on this blog. You might consider reading those posts if you haven’t already done so. They are important, and it’s fascinating information.
The process of becoming more aware can continue to almost infinite levels–or it can stop somewhere along the way. The process pauses periodically to allow you to integrate the latest bit of awareness you’ve gained. Each new gain in awareness changes your perception of reality, and of who you are, and this new perspective takes some getting used to (think of a child going off to school for the first time, or when you went off to college).
Whatever amount of awareness you have, you use it to navigate your life. As long as you can navigate with a reasonable amount of success with the awareness you already have, and as long as your environment remains relatively stable (in other words, doesn’t make any out-of-the-ordinary demands on you that require you to become more aware), you’ll likely stay at your current level of awareness.
As long as what you’re doing works, you’ll keep doing it.
If something significant changes, however, your awareness might need to expand in a way that allows you to deal with the change. If it doesn’t, you’ll be handicapped in certain ways. Most mental and emotional dysfunctions are the result of incomplete developmental shifts.
Some people purposely seek change and put themselves in situations that require an ongoing expansion of awareness. They continually try new things. They take in new ideas. They read. They take classes and seminars. They meditate. They spend time with new and different people. They put themselves in challenging and novel situations. All these things can stimulate the development of additional awareness.
On the other hand, some people do everything they can to limit the amount of change they experience, or the amount of new information or novel experiences they have. For these people (in fact, for most people), development levels off at a certain point–unless something beyond their control causes a significant change to their environment.
As awareness expands, you see more. You watch, you might say, from a higher spot on the mountain. Your perspective grows. For instance, you take into account a longer span of time as you look at life. When you’re young, you’re more in the moment, but as awareness expands you gain a longer-term view. You plan more and delay gratification. You’re more likely to see the effects of the past on your life, and how what you do now will affect the future. Ultimately you might come to see your place in the ongoing flow of life in terms of, and from the perspective of, eons of time–or even infinite time.
As awareness expands you gain the ability to take increasingly larger, broader perspectives. At first, you may see only your own perspective, not even realizing that other people even have a different perspective. As your awareness expands, though, you begin to see the perspectives of others, first of those in your own family, then your peer group, then the perspective of other groups (”them”).
If you continue to develop (a big “if”), your perspective eventually takes in that of all people, then expands further to include all living things. It might eventually expand beyond that of living things. It might even expand beyond the perspective of a limited separate self looking out on a separate world and separate others.
As awareness expands, you more clearly see the web of cause and effect, how it affects you, and how you affect it. You see, for instance, the potential stream of effects that flow from the thoughts and other internal representations you make, from your actions, from what you believe, and from previously unexamined basic premises about reality.
You also see a similar flow of effects from others, and from events originating in the non-living world. You may see that what you thought was solid reality is just an effect that begins with certain premises you always thought were solidly true, but actually aren’t.
To see all of this, though, you have to learn how to observe certain things that most people are unaware of. Much of my teaching is about how to gain (and direct) this awareness. I’ve often said that I do two things: I offer a tool that dramatically expands awareness (Holosync), and then show you where to direct that awareness to give you the greatest amount of control over your life.
An infant first becomes aware of his own existence as something or someone separate from the rest of the world. He then becomes aware of his body and it’s movements and sensory experiences. Eventually he becomes aware of his emotions, and then, hopefully, his thoughts and beliefs.
In many ways, however, the amount of awareness most people have of these basics is just the tip of the iceberg. Most people are aware that they have thoughts and emotions, but only consciously experience them now and then. It is extremely rare for a human being to be aware of how he creates his feelings, or of the effects of his thoughts.
It is even more rare for a person to be aware of the premises that underlie the reality he creates in each moment (or even that he is creating such a reality). Even fewer people see how their thoughts, actions, and basic premises affect the ongoing flow of cause and effect, and the complexity of how cause and effect affects them.
Why are your thoughts, internal representations, actions, beliefs, and premises so important? Because these things generate nearly all of your experience of life. Your internal cognitive processes, and particularly your internal representations and beliefs, create how you feel, how you behave, which people and situations you attract or become attracted to, and what the things going on ”out there” mean (or at least what you think they mean).
These four outcomes make up most, if not all, of your experience of life. If you can become aware of how you create them, you gain a tremendous amount of choice over what happens in your life. Why? Because awareness creates choice.
If you’re not aware of how you create your life, you’ll do it automatically. The part of you that creates your experience of life operates continuously, whether you’re aware of it or not. If you’re unaware, it will create your life on autopilot, and you’ll get whatever you’ve been programmed (mostly during your childhood) to create.
In other words, your past will determine your present, for better or worse.
For this reason, it’s very important that you become aware of the ongoing stream of internal pictures you make and the thoughts you think–and the effects they create. Ninety-nine percent of this happens outside your awareness, but it’s the raw material that creates your experience of life.
If you watch carefully enough, you’ll see exactly how these usually unconscious events generate your feelings and other internal states. If you aren’t willing to learn how to watch this stuff, though–and all of it continues to happen automatically (as it does for all but a tiny percentage of people)–your feelings will continue to “just happen”.
Then, because your internal states generate your behavior, your awareness of (and choice over) how you create your internal states gives you choice over your behavior. You’ll stop behaving in ways you later regret. You’ll also stop failing to do what you know you want to do, or know you should do.
With a wider, more aware perspective, you’ll see the consequences of your thoughts, internal pictures, and actions. And, in clearly seeing this, those things you’re doing that don’t serve you will fall away.
Why? Because you can’t do something that doesn’t serve you and do it with awareness. You can do something over and over (in fact, for your entire life) if you do it without awareness–which is what most people do. You can’t, however, do something that isn’t resourceful with awareness and keep doing it.
I want to be very clear, though, that awareness of how you do something isn’t the same as knowing that you do it. You probably know that you do all kinds of things that aren’t good for you. You may even know why you do them. You may have noticed, though, that knowing this has not helped you to stop doing those things.
Awareness, in this case, means actually seeing what you do inside that generates the outcome, as you do it, and making the connection between what you do and what is created when you do it. Doing this requires quite a bit of awareness, which is why the awareness created by Holosync is so valuable.
It’s also crucial that you become aware of what you believe, because most of what happens in your life flows from something you believe. A belief is something you think is true. When you look at beliefs more closely, though, you see that believing involves a kind of faulty, circular logic.
Look at it this way. Why do you believe that something is true? That’s right–because you have “evidence”. This assumes, though, that “having evidence” is a good way to determine whether or not something is true. It seems like common sense, but is it?
Here’s the problem: no matter what you believe, you’ll automatically generate evidence that it’s true. In other words, you’ll find a way to convince yourself that anything you believe is ”true”. You could just as easily say that the whole idea of ”true” is faulty, since whatever you believe will create its own evidence. Believe something, and you’ll accumulate evidence that you’re right. Meanwhile, someone else is busy accumulating evidence that the opposite belief is also true.
How do you create this evidence? There are three ways. First, you unconsciously attract people and situations that help you accumulate evidence that you’re right, as if you had some sort of psychic radar. By deciding what to believe, you’re deciding what kinds of people and situations you’ll attract or be attracted to–those who will help you be “right” about what you believe.
If you believe that the world is full of assholes (for instance), you’ll attract the perfect people and situations to help you prove that you’re right. Believe that you can do anything, and you’ll attract the people and situations that will allow you to be right about that. Whatever you believe, you’ll recruit people to help you prove it, and you’ll find yourself drawn to situations tailor-made to help you prove that you’re ”right”.
The second way you prove the “truth” of whatever you believe is by interpreting what is happening in a way that makes it seem that you’re right. Out of all the possible interpretations in any situation, you’ll pick the one that supports your belief, and reject the others.
And finally, you’ll act in a way that makes what you believe come true.
And, since this is all going on outside your awareness, you won’t even know you’re doing it! If you’re unaware of this process and how it works (which almost everyone is), you’ll do it unconsciously, and it will look like all the things you believe really are true.
All you’ve done, though, is selectively (and unconsciously) select people and situations that allow you to be right (while avoiding the people and situations that would contradict what you believe), select the interpretation of what is happening that allows you to be right, and act in a way that causes you to be right.
Had you selected different people and situations, picked a different interpretation, or acted in a different way, you would have generated a different set of ”evidence”, and something else would have appeared to be true. So what seems to be ”true” is just whatever appears that way, based on something you do.
So, becoming aware of your beliefs, and observing how they generate the people, situations, and outcomes in your life, is pretty important, don’t you think?
Or, you can just unconsciously keep believing whatever you already believe, and keep unconsciously generating whatever outcomes those beliefs create.
There are several more internal processes you use to create your experience of life, but if you learn to observe these basics, you’ll probably figure out the rest (or, I can teach them to you). Watch these basics with awareness and you become a remarkable person, one other people will marvel at. You’ll see things about “reality” that will completely change your view of life, the universe, and your place in it. And, you’ll discover that a lot of what you thought was true is complete delusion.
There is a price to pay to achieve this kind of mastery, however. What you’re setting out to become aware of is very illusive. It zooms by very quickly, and in the beginning it’s quite outside your awareness. You won’t be good at it right away. Like anything else worth mastering, it takes practice and persistence to become aware of how you create your reality.
Are you willing to pay this price?
If you aren’t, that’s fine. If that’s the case, be content with the amount of control you have right now over your life, because it isn’t going to get any better unless you become more aware.
If you are willing, and you keep practicing, a whole new world will open up for you, and most of the problems of life will fall away.
You’ll be left with the two “givens” I’ve told you about: that everything is impermanent, and that there’s no escape from cause and effect. You’re just going to have to let go regarding the problem of impermanence. You can either surrender, or fight, and since it’s a fight you can’t win, fighting just creates suffering, for you and for others. You might as well fight against breathing, or circulating your blood.
As for cause and effect, though you can’t escape from it, you can, if you’re aware, see the potential consequences of your internal processes and your actions. With this awareness, you can choose to a much greater degree which effects you’re willing to experience.
How, then, do you pay the price to have this awareness? My first suggestion would be to commit yourself to meditating daily with Holosync. Holosync isn’t the only way to create the necessary awareness, but it’s the best (and fastest) way I’ve found.
Second, spend some time each day observing your internal pictures and internal dialog, and noticing how they directly create your internal states. You might, for instance, get into bed each night and spend five or ten minutes recalling one or two significant experiences from your day. Rewind your memory tape and see if you can determine what you said to yourself and what pictures you made, and how these things created the internal states you experienced at the time.
Or, think about someone you have strong feelings about, either positive or negative. Notice the internal representations you make, and the feelings that follow from them.
You might also pick another time to practice during the day, so that you spend ten to twenty minutes a day, divided into at least two sessions, observing your internal representations. Keep in mind that at first you might not be very good at it. If you keep practicing, however, even if it’s hard at first, you’ll get better at it. Eventually you won’t be able to make internal representations that don’t serve you without seeing yourself do it. Once you see that you’re doing it (see, not know), you won’t be able to keep doing it.
Here’s something else you can do. Notice if there’s a result you don’t like that keeps happening in your life. Perhaps you never seem to get the respect you think you deserve. Maybe you keep getting stuck in a lousy job. Perhaps your relationships don’t work out and you keep ending up alone. Maybe you keep losing your money when you invest.
Whatever it is, consider that you might have an underlying core belief about yourself, other people, or the world that causes you to 1) attract the perfect people and situations to help you prove you’re right, 2) choose from all possible choices the one interpretation that make it seem that you’re right, even if there are other possibilities, and 3) act in ways that cause you to be right about what you believe.
Once you figure out what the belief is, instead of trying to get rid of it or change it, watch yourself prove that it’s true. Go into the next situation knowing that you’re going to prove that you’re right, and watch to see how you do it. Become incredibly curious to find out how you do it. Watch your internal representations. Observe what meanings you place on what happens. Watch how you make decisions about what to do, and with whom. Watch your actions.
Become fascinated to discover how you arrange to be right. If what you’re proving doesn’t serve you, watching in this way will make it impossible to continue. You will lose all enthusiasm and motivation to keep going, and the belief (and the outcomes it creates) will fall away.
Finally, if you want to go much more deeply into how what you do on an unconscious level creates your reality, consider taking my Life Principles Integration Process online courses. Just go to www.centerpointe.com/change to read about these courses (and to enroll), or go to www.centerpointe.com/life/preview to listen to a free preview lesson.
You can’t control everything in life, but you can control enough of it to allow yourself to create an amazing, fulfilling life that contains most of what you want. You’ll even figure out how to turn what you didn’t want, when it happens, into an opportunity. Sometimes you even end up with more than you thought possible.
That’s what happen to me, and it can happen to you, too.
***
Before I let you go, I have two Five Star recommendations for you, one highly entertaining and the other highly educational.
The first is about my good friend Stuart Davis. Stuart is totally crazy–but in the best possible way. He’s also one of the most talented people on this planet, and I really mean that (I can’t speak for other planets, but Stuart probably can).
Stuart is a super-talented indie-rock musician and composer (he has, I believe, 14 or 15 albums), an hysterically funny comedian, a talented writer, a social commentator in the same vein (the jugular vein, I believe), as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, and a very talented visual artist.
I wanted to alert you to the fact that Stuart has a new TV show on HDNet. I have an advanced copy of the first six shows, and they are FUNNY IRREVERENT FUNNY THOUGHTFUL BIZARRE OUT-THERE FUNNY (if you know what I mean). Really funny. I strongly suggest that you watch this show! Here is a press release about it:
Zen Buddhist-indie rocker Stuart Davis is launching a new comedy series: Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll. Season One of this ground-breaking TV show debuts April 26 on HDNet across the U.S. and Canada. Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll is written, directed, and hosted by Stuart Davis, and features edgy humor from the open-hearted maniac. Each episode follows Stuart performing stand up comedy, news, sketches, and his acclaimed music. A twisted mind and a sensitive soul, David has made a career out of parsing tricky topics, and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll finds this ‘Punk Monk’ at his multi-faceted best.
“We are excited to welcome Stuart Davis and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll to HDNet. Stuart is one of a kind, and we are thrilled he is on HDNet.” –Marc Cuban, President of HDNet
Davis has studied his heroes (Ricky Gervais, Amy Sedaris, Jon Stewert), but is finding a unique voice with his ’spiritual’ brand of comedy. SGR&R is a delirious dive into life’s Mysteries through the mind of a Cosmo-centric comedian. It’s no wonder Davis has become known as the Twisted Mystic.
“Without exaggeration, Stuart Davis is one of the most fascinating and exceptional songwriters in modern music.” –San Jose Metro
While Davis is a happily hyphenated artist (writer-director-actor-comedian-songwriter), he’s first known for his music. The sound track to Season One of SGR&R (’Songs From The TV Series’) is being released simultaneously with the debut of the TV show. The first single, Twisted Mystery, hits radio in April and is also featured on Showtime in the series I Can’t Believe I’m Still Single. Davis will be touring nationally through the summer to promote the TV series and the new collection of pop songs.
So mark April 26 on your calendar and watch Stuart make fun of everything you hold near and dear. You can also learn more, and see clips of Stuart (and other bizarre stuff), at www.sexgodrocknroll.com.
***
My second recommendation is of a completely different nature. If you have kids, and you want them to excel at school and at life, check out Supercamp. My friend Bobbi DePorter, a fellow-member of Jack Canfield’s Transformational Leadership Council, started Supercamp many years ago, and it is the premier learning and life-skills experience for young people.
If your son or daughter would benefit from state-of-the-art methods for studying, problem-solving, relationship success, or could use more self-esteem, better grades, more confidence, more motivation, and the opportunity to learn and internalize the keys to life success, take a look at Supercamp.
About fifteen ago (before I knew Bobbi DePorter), I sent my daughter, Brisa, to Supercamp. She was already a good student, but after Supercamp she became unstoppable. Eventually she became a National Merit Scholar and was offered two full-ride scholarships (to Lewis and Clark College and Scripps College), and was also admitted to two prestigeous Ivy League colleges. Brisa will turn 25 in June, and I still see evidence of what she learned at Supercamp. I highly recommend this incredible program.
You can watch a great 6-minute video on their home page (upper right-hand corner) at www.supercamp.com. If you have a school-age son or daughter (or grandchild), please go watch it.
You can also listen to a longer teleseminar at www.supercamp.com/supercamp_teleseminar.html. It’s called “Teen Success in Challenging Times/Practical Tips on How You Can Help Your Teen”.
Finally, please share this blog post with people you care about.
Be well.
I agree with your staff! Good post especially when you listen to part 1 and part 2. It offers more clarity. I was beginning to think you were loosing your edge!! Smile
What a strange species we human beings are. We can know that we are doing something that is dysfunctional and not serving us well yet, without awareness, we still continue to do it. What other animal does that? The key really is nurturing and expanding our awareness.
Can knowing too much, on an intellectual level, actually thwart the nurturing of our awareness in that we get frustrated with ourselves while trying to watch and grow our awareness? Not sure if I worded that properly but I hope you get what I mean. I’d be grateful for any input.
I have consumed, like many of you, an amazing amount of self help info in the past year and on an intellectual level I have it but I also know that’s not what it’s all about. Can we try too hard?
Hi Bill and thank you for the continued help and support you give all of us.
It seems that everywhere I look there is a new brainwave entrainment program popping up claiming to be the best and claiming to go deeper than Holosync’s deepest level.
I see risk in that/this. I also see people such as channelers/healers claiming to activate all of your DNA with the use of crystals that they say goes far beyond any audio entrainment. I see that these all have to do with awareness and developing it.
You’ve said in the support materials there’s reason why you stretch the program out to the length that it is. I guess I just want to be enlightened super fast and it would only be another way of not dealing. Thanks I think I may have just cleared up an issue, but am open to hearing what you have to say!
This is dead on and very inspiring. I might ad that the “awareness” that you are speaking of is the “pure witness” or the “original face” that the mystics speak of, and that in addition to being able to free us from our karmic knots and negative conditioning, can fill us with the translucent luminosity and compassion of our one true Self, that is in fact unborn and undying. It is in this “true” self that all our patterns, the manifest universe, and time itself arise moment to moment to moment…
Bill, I have been studying Buddhism and they speak a lot about mindfulness, in your interpretation, would you say that awareness and Buddhist mindfulness are the same ? What would be the difference ?
Thanks and love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: I’m not sure what the party line definitions are for Buddhists, but I would say that awareness, as I am using the term, and mindfulness are the same. Technically, awareness is the background out of which everything comes–pure awareness without content. Mindfullness (or awareness as I am using the term) is awareness of SOMETHING, which is a little bit different.
Hello,really love your blogs and LPIP course,although ive got a hard time gaining that awareness, usally iam more like oh,I feel bad,I know its me doing it but dont know why or how Iam doing it..really hard to change focus and stay there.Besides I got 2Questions, which arent exactly about the topic, but I thnk many people would like to know too.
1)Will you do anymore Retreats?I totally regret not attaining the lastone in 08.
2)You talked quite a bit about life and death, and that life is a drama and everyone/thing is god and hes doing a sort of Play.Now, i dont doubt it, it actually makes alot of sense, but what is his “endgame?”seeing it for the entire humanity or world, for an individual I could see some targets like happiness,challenge,enlightment, but not sure what he’s hoping for worldwide.Like everyone is successful and happy and there will be another big bang since well, there is nothing left to do?
Thanks
Markus
FROM BILL: If you are having a feeling, it is created by the internal representations you make–mostly the internal pictures and internal dialog. If it is a bad feeling, you are making internal representations of what you don’t want. Observe your internal representations, and the direct connection between them and how you feel.
Right now I have no plans to do any retreats. Genpo Roshi and I, however, might do some 5-7 days workshops that will be, I guess, retreats.
When the Hindus say that everything is god, they mean something different. You are making up a god, “out there” who has some sort of plan for things, and that everything is going somewhere, for some reason. What the Hindus mean (and other mystic ways of looking at human existence) is that there is one thing, one event, and if you want to call it god, you can, but it isn’t a separate entity sitting on a cloud making decisions about what will or should happen. They are saying that it’s one organic whole, and it constantly changes.
Your role (you, as in Markus) could be likened to a wave vis a vis the ocean. The wave isn’t really a separate thing–it’s just a part of the ocean. “Wave” as a separate “thing” is just an idea. There’s just the ocean, and it “waves.”
A very famous Hindu saint once said {and many of you aren’t going to like this, because you’ll misinterpret it as being negative) that “Life is a meaningless energy, going nowhere, for no reason.” What he meant was that meanings are added to anything, from the outside. Nothing intrinsically means anything. There is also no goal, nowhere in particular that things are “going”.
Things are just going, but not to any particular place. And, as there is no meaning in anything, in an intrinsic sense, there is also no reason for anything (the “reason” for something is just another meaning). The universe just “is,” and it keeps “ising” along, doing whatever it does. It doesn’t need a reason, or a purpose, or a goal, though it’s fun and interesting to add these things, which your mind naturally does.
The more awake you are, the more you see that YOU add these meanings (with enough awareness, you see yourself adding them, all the time), which gives you choice about what kind of a universe you create out of your mind (the Hindus and Buddhists call this illusion created by the mind “maya”–look it up on Wikipedia). The awakened person sees those meanings for what they really are: made up, but handy. Believing that they are “reality” is delusional, and part of awakening is seeing through this delusion (not rejecting it, but seeing through it).
Bill,
On the whole 2012 subject, I can tell you are very against the end of the world idea being true. And I’m not saying it is, but there is so much hype around it and so many people say there is so much evidence for it, that there *must* be something bigger at work here. If you have the time, I would appreciate a response from you on this. Sorry to keep milking this subject, there is just so much energy given to this idea, I don’t believe it can all be summed up the the Mayan Calendar ending on the winter solstice of 2012. It could be that Earth is just reaching a peak in trying to defend itself against what humanity does to it, but I feel that something different will happen in 2012.
-N-tymes
FROM BILL: What’s at work here is silly magical thinking. People have periodically been saying the world was going to come to an end for thousands of years. Someday it will. It won’t be in 2012. You’ll be gone long before the world ends.
I have two more Bill, (but they are linked) One regarding purpose and one about maps for the separate self.
Awareness gives us choice and by using it (or having it, or seeing that we are it, I am not sure which verb would describe it better) we can see how our internal representations create our feelings.
Now, when we start a spiritual search is because we are looking for an “answer” to the problem of life. If for some reason we have a profound spiritual experience, we achieve that….. for a while. But then we come back and see that we will always be human (as long as we are) and experience resistance, fear and suffering (even if a lot of personal development teachers want us to disown it).
Still we can apply our awareness to change our internal state must of the time (but not always, am I right ?) and achieve many things in life. However there is this feeling that there really isn’t a “purpose” in life, it’s more like a game of the Self, being seen through every beings eyes.
This is true from the Self’s perspective, but as a human being I ask: Don’t you have a need for a purpose, even if the Self knows it’s just a game ?
What do you DO when the feeling of lack of purpose arises ? I see how you can change your internal representations for many things, but we would be fooling ourselves by creating the internal representation of having a purpose when we KNOW there isn’t one.
(strangely after writing this, something came to me, it made it clear that there is no purpose…. and that’s OK. But the feeling didn’t change because I made an internal representation, it was something else…… OMG !! it was awareness itself that changed it…. Thank you Bill)
Anyway, I guess this is an integration that comes over time and the felling of being ok with not having a purpose may remain or not, so still I ask you, when you wake up everyday, is your motivation always there ? or do you use your awareness to create it, even if you know is just a game ?
Finally I wanted to ask your opinion about spiral dynamics. I have been kind of confused in trying to integrate the relative again, I felt like navigating the world without a map, and frankly we need one, otherwise I think we’ll be stuck in a flatland (to quote Wilber). Boomeritis could be a good description.
It’s amazing to discover the transcendent, but unless we have a sort of unified moral compass to help us make decisions (since from the transcendent there are no preferences), even if many people have this experience of oneness and there isn’t a unified conceptual framework to hold it (a new paradigm you might say), I don’t think is going to be of much use.
Awareness is great for an individual, using it we can go through life getting must of what we want. We can realize that all (or none) beliefs are true. It liberates us. But don’t you think we need some kind of unification, instead of just having everybody believing whatever they want and getting it ? From my research I think SD is a good and very helpful map. Do you agree or have any other suggestions ?
All the love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: What I said about purpose is there is no purpose intrinsic to existence. All purpose is added by the mind. In other words, you get to CHOOSE your purpose (if you are aware), or it happens automatically if you aren’t aware. Most people live a script that was created in their mind during their childhood, based on the experiences they had and what they had to do in order to deal with being in their family (see the third course in my Life Principles Integration Process onlines course series for an in-depth look at how this happens). That script becomes the person’s “purpose” and operates automatically. Or, with enough awareness, you can drop the script and live intentionally, with choice.
As for having a map, yes, a map is useful. The only drawback to a map is if you think the map is what it represents (as when you think that your idea of your self is who you are, instead of just being a map of who you are). Spiral Dynamics is a great system, but it only deals with values. I happen to like Ken Wilber’s more robust developmental map because it deals with values, spirituality, sense of self, and many other “lines” of development–it’s a map that covers much more territory.
Bill, from what you have said it seems like you don’t believe in reincarnation or life after death, as in an afterlife or continuation of the soul. Or have I misinterpret you? Genpo seems to believe in reincarnation since he talks about “in my next life” etc in his book Big Mind Big Heart… or is that just one or several of his voices believing it? You often talk about the awakened mind as if it’s a homogeneous thing, like all awakened people have the same perspective. Is this so? I’ve been thinking a lot about life and death lately because of this. If there is no life after death, if I as wave not ocean is gone forever when my physical body dies, then I’d like to embrace that fact as best I can.
I guess no one really knows until we do die (unless we are just gone then, then we don’t know then either), but I’d like to know how an enlightened person or the enlightened people see it.
FROM BILL: Do you get your beliefs from others? Or from your own experience? Just wondering.
How strange that a person would say that they’ve been using your product for 8 years and found tremendous benefit from it, and then in the same breath turn around and suggest that your teachings are ‘useless’? Your teachings and product go hand in hand. I would have to ‘respectfully’ suggest that that poster’s comments were useless.
Oops, perhaps the word useless was the wrong word. I meant it in a paradoxical sense that the things we do to end pain and suffering are as useful as they are useless… in a similar way you said there aren’t any solutions though you call the Holosync program a solution. I know what you mean, and you know what you mean. I actually learned the word useless from you in another post. Sorry, didn’t mean to get into the game of black and white, but there you have it. Intrinsically, I’m in a situation where the going around and around of it all is making me dizzy. Guess its time to jump off that pole!
Kind regards,
Lewi
Dear Bill,
I follow your blog with great interest and I am considering signing up for Holosync based on your information and premise of being able to reach a higher level of awareness, so that I can learn how to stop doing the things that don’t serve me well. However I have a few concerns that I am hoping you could address to solve the conflict in me that is preventing me from progressing from where I am now.
Basically I have identified it as fear. Fear of losing what I love. I fear that if I progress to a higher level of awareness that I might lose the people that I love, because we might grow apart.
So even though I would like some things to stay as they are, there are things with me and my life that I would like to improve, a drive I have had since my early teens, but I feel I am stuck now in my personal development, as I don’t seem to be progressing anymore and I therefore think I need help from something more advanced than myself, like Holosync to take me to a higher level. However the fear of change, of losing my loved ones, of what will happen, is keeping me back and preventing me from moving forward. And just to be clear, it’s not my family, who is holding me back, it’s me, myself.
I also have this belief that if something good happens, an equal amount of bad must happen as well, like yin and yang, there must be a balance, I can’t just have good things happening in my life, there are bound to be bad things happening as well to equalize and balance out the good things. So my belief says that if I start earning more money and become more successful, maybe someone close to me will get sick, or worse than that, and I can’t bear the thought of that, and then I tell myself, I would rather stay in the current situation, where money is hard earned, but at least my family is intact, well and happy.
But it still bothers me because I feel I could do much better as a person, professionally, financially and also feel we deserve more money for the kind of services we offer in our company. But the fear of bad things happening in return is keeping me back. How can I get rid of/dissolve my fears, negative beliefs and thoughts. Can Holosync help me with this and do you think there is a risk of losing what I love and treasure, if I choose to ignore my fears and try Holosync?
Many thanks for your kind attention.
FROM BILL: When you become more aware, what doesn’t serve you falls away. What does serve you remains. How could that be a problem?
Good and bad are IDEAS we add to reality. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad. This idea that if something good happens to you something bad has to happen to someone else just isn’t true. All ideas exist in polarities–good is defined in terms of bad and bad in terms of good. They are one thing. They go together. You can’t have one without the other and you can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other. But, as I said, they are just concepts, ideas. This means that you can’t have good ideas about something without there being corresponding bad ideas–the good you attribute to something only exists in relation to a possible bad thing. But you’re just adding these ideas to something that is intrinsically neutral. Nothing you see is bad–or good. Stop living in the world of good and bad and you’re free. That takes awareness, and that’s what Holosync gives you.
You’ve said yourself it’s unresourceful to base one’s beliefs on one’s experiences. I’m attempting to monitor you and absorb your resourceful beliefs since you have come further in your development than I have. But don’t worry, I am very opinionated and don’t swallow everything you say blindly no matter where I am in my evolution. I’m just tasting what you have to share. I’m also asking out of simple curiosity, but understand if it was a too personal question. And as I said, at the end of the day, can anyone alive really know anything about ”being dead” or having died physically and ”survived” it – since we are living? I doubt it.
Bless your big heart and brilliant mind. I’ve learnt a lot of valuable stuff from you through the years I’ve been with Centerpointe.
FROM BILL: I’ve never said that it’s unresourceful to base your beliefs on experiences. Personally, I think all beliefs–ALL–should be doubted. Whatever you believe is where you’re stuck. If you’re going to believe something, though, at least get it from some kind of person experimentation, not just what someone else says (no matter how much you admire the other person). Find out everything for yourself, especially regarding spiritual matters. And then doubt it.
By the way, I spoke to Genpo Roshi today and mentioned that someone had cited him at believing in reincarnation. He said he’d never definitively said either way what he thinks/ (He’s busy doubting, I suspect.)
Hello,
thanks for your Answers, I appreciate it, you nearly answered every comment, which shows great support.Now, yes I know what you mean by internal Representations and how they affect the state, but its something else to apply em. I started working with kate, and a huge//old belief of me is I cant do a mistake.Besides Iam just in a 1Month course in College again where we work in a Lab and iam always nervous BEFORE I even started that I dont screw it up or look like an idiot. Does that mean that I should go in the Lab curious with the thought, ok, now Ill watch myself “cant making a mistake” and keep my Focus on that while working?
Thanks,
Markus
P.S. Do you offer private coachings aswell, or is your time schedule too busy.(sorry if my english isnt perfect).
Besides, would be great if you offer longer WS//1Retreat, you could also use it as PR, like last Retreat because your interests changed to smaller WS like 1-2 days.
FROM BILL: Knowing what I mean by internal representations and how they affect your state is almost useless. What is useful is WATCHING them, to see HOW you create your state. And, yes, watching to see how you make yourself nervous would be huge for you. You’re doing it. Don’t you want to find out how? If being nervous in that situation doesn’t serve you, seeing your self create feeling that way will cause it to fall away. You can’t do something that doesn’t serve you AND do it with awareness.
All of you! Stop trying to get rid of what you think is bad or inappropriate and start watching yourself create it. That’s what sets things right. Trying to get rid of this or that is what creates the problem in the first place.
Hi Bill,
I just watched my 5 yr old have a little temper tantrum, I gave him no attention at all but merely watched him and it was amazing how quick the tantrum dissipated after initially becoming more intense.
I know when my teenagers were that age I would have probably jumped in and reacted or tried to cajole them out of it and it would have taken a lot longer to reach a peaceful outcome.
Anxiety has always been my dysfunctional tool of choice so is it natural for it to intensify initially when I endeavour to merely watch it? And the more I try to continue just watching it the less strength it will have? At the moment I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster with it.
FROM BILL: What you want to do is to watch to see how you are “doing anxiety.” You create the anxiety by making certain internal representations. Watch yourself do it, and you’ll find it difficult to continue. You can also watch the feeling in your body, but the internal representations are what creates it. I’d watch both.
Thanks Bill. I totally get that I create the anxiety and even coming to that realisation was totally empowering because if I create it then it is within my control. I have always shunned medication, even when my anxiety attacks were at their peak, because I just knew instinctly that there was something in me doing it even though I was living a totally unconscious life. Since beginning to wake up just over a year ago and then starting Holosync, it really has been a rollercoaster but I wouldn’t turn the clock back even if I could. My hubby and I began this new journey together and I guess he sees a difference in me since using Holosync because he has begun to use it too so thanks again.
FROM BILL: Make sure, though, that you get my point: watch HOW you do it is the key. Knowing that you do it is the booby prize.
Only just got back to read your reply, Bill. Of course you are right regarding thee difference between belief and observation, thank you for clarifying this is very useful.
Thanks Bill, After descending from a transcendent experience of emptiness the world of form came back with a blast. I had been having this very very intense feelings, a lot of fear and anxiety.
After reading your (and many others) material I understood how this is part of the chaos and reorganization process, knowing that the system is reorganizing to a higher perspective I just tried to step out of the way and let it happen. I was very aware of the body feelings but couldn’t really see the internal representations, so I just let the energy run, sometimes it was so hard I started to shake all over the place.
In my attempts to re-owning the separate self I notice that I felt myself as being mainly in the center of my chest, or between the eyes.
Well, after reading your oneness isn’t metaphysical articles, there was another shift.
Now is like not having a center, or that the center is everywhere, It is kind of taking a backward step and being back in the witness position again. But now the awareness is greater, there is a very heightened awareness of the realm of mind, whereas before it was almost only the awareness of emptiness. That was amazing and breath taking, but with very little awareness of cause and effect…. very dangerous.
Now the experience is not that intense, is not like being in direct contact with the divine all the time, is a more relaxed and aware state. Kind of being aware of the background AND the foreground. Like living in two worlds at the same time. Also I noticed how fear dropped dramatically.
The separate self feels a lot like an actor and the world as a play, but I can see the stream of consequences much more than before. If I had to put it in words, all I can think of is…. freedom.
I also see that when there is a strong emotion, the self tends to contract and the center comes back to the body, but it doesn’t take much time to SEE that happening, and then it spreads again.
I wander if your experience has been anything like this and the practices you make for when this moments of self contraction appear. Do you still loose the awareness of emptiness and/or form sometimes ?
I still meditate traditionally daily (I completed awakening prologue before big mind) I think I heard you say that you don’t meditate anymore, can you share the kind of practice you do now ?
I value a lot the privilege of having contact with a great teacher like you are.
Thanks and love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: Your insights are right on.
The transcendent hits you over the head at first, but once you integrate it, it is more “normal”. The newness of it really smacks you at first though. You description of your center being everywhere is exactly the way I describe it. Remember that the separate self is your idea of who you are, so I’m not sure that you’re feeling the separate self when you feel your body. You’e feeling your organism, you might say, which is not the same as the separate self (which, as I said, is a mental phenomenon).
I still meditate, but not as regularly as I used to. I just don’t feel the “inspirational dissatisfaction” that drives a person to do a lot of meditation in order to get somehwere. I would say that everything I do now is meditation. Though I like to sit in meditation, I no longer need to be silent and still outside to be silent and still inside. I carry it with me into activity all the time.
It seems that holosync makes it much easier for one to live on autopilot and hence makes it much easier to learn. For instance once I learn some sort of skill–neurological training or other advanced breath training–it seems easy for me to just intend, for instance, to go to the center of my being and to have whatever integrated learning I’ve gained to automatically kick in. However I am also learning about dependent origination and as a consiquence I’m learning that there’s a lot more going on that I believe when I’m in the state when I figure that I’ve got things mastered, and in this regard it helps to be aware of what holosync is doing to help me learn so that I can control the process. For instance if I learn a manifestation technique and it works for a while, when it stops working I’ll be upset until I find another technique which is better and lasts a bit longer until it runs out and this level’s carma often repeats again. However when I’m aware I notice that I go much deeper into the techniques I learn and can have them work longer because I better understand what’s really going on, and in some cases the techniques don’t stop working because they become part of my autopilot such that I’m more and more readily automatically manifesting without worrying about it (which is the biggest upsell for me). I find that with law of attraction it’s much easier to see how dependent origination happens to create my life when I’m aware of what’s going on, and even if one is unaware the results one achieves when using holosync seems to surpass the results of others not using the technology, however it seems that the true benefit of holosync use comes from our engaging with whatever we’re doing (whether working on something while listening to holosync or perceiving our expanded capacities and how this unfolds when in daily life) rather than looking for the right technique to somehow match up with holosync and help me create nervana as persuant to a perscription from you or something; although this surely isn’t the case, I am very much interested in anything you might offer in this regard.
What I’m getting at is that it seems that awareness works differently respective of whether you’re using the technology or not, and I’m wondering if you could comment on this. Also might your posts have different effects on non-holosync users as they’re dealing with a different awareness? Might non-holosync users gain a lot of ahaha moments from what you’re doing here, because your holosync and increased awareness helps you to taylor-make what your posts are presenting as to trigger what the person needs? Sorry for being so dense about this but it’s a complicated subject. I don’t want to get into magical thinking here however it does seem like a lot of what happens with holosync is magic, and I’m trying to draw a healthy line here between what’s really going on with dependent origination etc and fantasy built up from some deficiency which is trying to balance.
FROM BILL: Holosync makes it MORE difficult to live on autopilot. Living on autopilot is living unconsciously, without awareness. Holosync INCREASES awareness.
Cool Bill, I see what you mean, of course the separate self can’t be “felt”, because it doesn’t exist in reality, it would be like “feeling” the number 3, or feeling a word, or any other concept. The separate self can only be “thought”.
Thanks Bill, that made it even clearer.
I have another one. I also think I heard you say that “enlightened people” are aware even in dreaming or deep sleep.
Do you mean “conscious dreaming”, the kind of dreaming in which you are aware you are sleep and can control your dreams ? It reminds me of Don Juan’s teachings. It sounds like a cool consciousness experiment, I’ve tried it but haven’t made it.
What about dreamless sleep ? I heard Adi da saying it was kind of like death. Just awareness with no phenomena arising. I haven’t been conscious of that either.
Does it happen to you ? What do the transitions between states feel like ?
I really love experimenting with states, but the funny thing is that the Self is beyond (or behind) ANY experience. Experiences are objects, no matter how grandiose, they come and go. I think sometimes people get confused and think that the real Self is an “experience” they are looking for, but that would be making it into an “object”. It’s like trying to make emptiness into a permanent “something”
I guess that’s why sages say that everybody is already 100% enlightened. Is just that we forget when we get into the game and confuse ourselves (the witness) with that which is being witness (the experiences). And we look for “enlightenment” as if it was another experience, not realizing that the real Self is ALWAYS watching it’s creation from infinite perspectives. At least I see it that way, do you agree ?
Thanks a lot Bill, you are like “development oil” to all of us.
Love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: Quite often an awakened person is aware during sleep–as you said, awareness without content. I wouldn’t worry too much about this sort of thing. Though it happens, it’s a departure from what is most important.
You’re having an experience of the “real self” right now. It’s just that your IDEA of the real self isn’t the same as what the idea represents, just as your idea of a cup isn’t a cup. Whatever is happening for you IS the real self. Enlightenment is ordinary.
This is the first video I’ve seen of Bill in a while. To be blunt I’m a bit surprised. When listening to advise from other people I’m the kind of person that wants those giving the advice to “Walk the Talk” so to speak. IE: I’m not going to a Dr. who’s 50 lbs overweight and smokes a cigar. That being said. I beleive Bill’s been too busy working on the business and NOT paying enough attention to himself. Bill, you look pale, defininetly overweight, your eyes look glossy and you don’t look healthy. You can’t spend all of your time on the business and helping others and neglect yourself or you could wind up like some other Guru’s who pass way before thier time because they always had to help someone else. Really! Take a look in the mirror and work on Numero Uno!
FROM BILL: It must be the lighting. I’m going to fire the lighting technician, my make up person, my wardrobe consultant, my video coach, my publicist, my valet, my personal shopper, and the dog groomer.
Don’t worry, I’m quite healthy, and not overweight. But what difference does it make? Many Hindu gurus are big tubs of lard, but they are AWAKE. Waking up isn’t a health plan, though doing what it takes to be healthy is a good idea. I can whip out 70 or so pushups any time, my resting pulse rate is 58, and my blood pressure is 120 over 68. Don’t worry about me.
Bill, if I may offer some ole’ world verbage in response to people concerned with your physical appearance…
“And why behold you the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3
FROM BILL: Besides, I’m incredibly attractive.
bill what are your thoughts on attachment theory? do you think a person can be happy, fulfilled and healthy in constant isolation from other people? i am watching watching watching. there is a strong voice in me that thinks nothing will change and i won’t ever experience intimacy or friendship or fun (the damaged one). i am aware of repeating my story now, but i have the most boring life imaginable. have been able to fool myself (as a survival trick) into feeling okay with it at times and being grateful for what i have (still am). but to be really honest with myself, not sharing life with others, never having fun and laughing and connecting with others, never being validated and feeling loved by anyone is TOUGH as hell. i keep watching with curiosity. try to notice when i am in resistance wanting to change things and make them go away. i’ll keep listening to holosync daily. i should speak from voices and do spring forest qigong too, that would help. but too depressed right now. holosync is too important to skip though. i am trying to tell myself “bill was a really angry narcissist and look at him now – i can do it too” – but it’s really hard to believe anything is ever going to change.
i am just very curious what you think on attachment theory. according to it we are all in need of love and attachment. without it we wither away like an infant without touch and affection, end up dysfunctional like me. and that is exactly how i feel. like i am dying slowly (which we all are, but i am talking emotionally and energetically).
“we are whole in ourselves” is how the saying goes. but we are also humans with biological needs built into us as a survival mechanism. we are tribal people built to seek out the company of like-minded others. i have tried reaching out so many times, i take initiative, am an upbeat interesting person and have also been careful and let others seek me out, being patient. nothing works. this is i know due to my past and current internal map of reality – i am creating this for myself unconsciously.
like you said, without love and some attachments life is dry. really really dry if i may add.
another thing worries me. you have said that in order to take that leap off the 100ft pole we must first have succeeded in our lives, got what we wanted etc. THEN we can start to doubt it, because we’ve tried everything. that depresses me because if i first have to achieve all that, that will take me a long time to get to that point when everything in my life is different (or so i expect), and by that time i might be 80. i rather just start doubting now. i am already bitter and see that nothing external is going to bring me happiness. i just know that it would be HELPFUL to have close friends and a loving partner. because love does heal. i give myself a lot of love everyday. i look myself in the eye in the mirror and i tell myself i am good enough and that i love myself and i give myself soothing. i even touch myself lovingly, stroking my forehead and holding my own hand. but it’s not enough. i need touch. exchange of smiles. someone who knows and gets me and vice versa. some human life, some warmth. yet i know that even if i do find a loving partner and friends, that won’t save me. nothing will. so can i please change the rules and start doubting now, bill?
FROM BILL: I think attachment theory is valid. If you do not bond with your parents, particularly your mother, or if you do but lose him/her in some way, it is traumatic, and you will probably have trouble attaching to other people. That is, as long as you do it unconsciously.
I don’t have time here to go into this subject in depth, but when you feel isolated or depressed, you are DOING SOMETHING inside in order to feel this way. You learned to do it as a result of the trauma I just mentioned. As long as you remain unaware of how you do it, you will keep doing it. In order to do something about it you have to observe the internal processes that create these feelings (and the resulting behaviors) and notice exactly HOW you do them.
What are the internal representations you make that lead to feeling isolated, afraid of connection, depressed, etc.? What beliefs are involved (if you believe you are alone and isolated, you will figure out how to prove that you are right)? And so forth.
The past does create the present, IF you are unconscious, because you will continue to automcatically create outcomes similar to those you experienced growing up (your mind will focus on them, and as a result find a way to make them happen). Watch to see how you do these things and if what you observe does not serve you it will fall away. I do NOT mean if you KNOW that you do them. You must actually watch the creative process that goes on in your mind, as it happens, as see the direct consequences (feelings, behaviors, the people and situations you attract or become attracted to, etc.). I have written several blog posts about this, and an entire 6-month online course (www.centerpointe.com/life).
I recently discovered that my awareness was expanded and I had less resistance to the changes holosync is creating when I meditated raised up slightly and wearing leather eye cover..even a little light in the room when I meditate and I start to squint and hold alot of tension in my face, so this fixes the problem whether I be outside or inside.
Another key technique for me that seems to decrease resistance has been keeping my eyes open in the darkness and gently focusing my gaze upwards towards my anja or in between my eyebrows mayb a little higher; do this and focus on the breath whoosing past the rims of the nostrils to recenter when you get caught up in useless thought, also focus your attention on your chakra’s in a left-right ascending pattern holding awareness there for about 10 slow steady breaths each.
So that is center left foot, right foot, backsior de knee left-right(or both), under belly-button three finger widths, solar plexus at ‘V’ in ribcage center of body, then heart chakra to find this place your hand fingers togethre flat letting your pinky finger touch the solar plexus area, your thumb will be pointing to the heart chakra. Next is the throat chakra about halfway on neck I believe, the anja point is in between the brows a little higher. Then theres the crown chakra at the center of the top head.
Again, in doing this throughout my meditations I have more smoothly been able to handle the quantam leaps of awareness Holosync has been bringing out in me.
I feel very humbled by the turn of events that led me to holosync and my experiences with it up until now presently. I know I am fortunate to have found this instrument of transformation and a teacher possesing such great wisdom teaching ability as Bill; he continues to layout this complex understanding of accepting and acting out of mindful awareness in a way that is transformative in itself. I think he is aware that by teaching his understanding based on his level awareness to all of us he sets an example and an underlying truth that shows all of us that by teaching a great deal of what discoveries and paradigm shifts we experience as our awareness continues to grow we can gain a deeper understanding of the complexy of that awareness, and a better integration of it as well: not to mention the satisfaction of leaving behind a legacy.
I am sorry if this post has been different than others I feel that what I have to say could help a few of those using holosync out their and their experience with it has led to lots of chaos & upheaval to get through it much much easier.
I wish you well Bill and would like to leave you with 2 very important questions I eaglerly await for anwer:
They are..
1.) I have a slight, I think ‘addiction’ but not negative addiction (although some might think so) to various strains of cannabis sativa or marijuana. The plant itself is remarkable and the ‘high’ to uplifting to restrain myself from without..I guess my question is will this ‘drug’ dissipate the awareness holosync gives me?
and..
2. Thanks for the recommendation on Stuart Davis I hadn’t heard of him before this post and was glad I decided to follow the link because man is this guy shamboogalishishly funny. If I may I’d like to give a shout out about another teacher who’s work really is up in my top 2 as being the most beneficial to me in my identity and belief system work..the understanding of being a man and my path in life. Wheras Bill Harris’s stuff is my institution for awareness and development, DYD, is where a go for a success model. Google it or David Deangelo inc for more information. He goes under another guide ‘Eben Pagean’ and has programs of a different genre..marketing,money management, success in business ect. I havn’t seen these. But DYD Inc. although it is marketed as a ’success with woman, building attraction, becoming more attractive’ program it is helpful in many other areas. Genius pieces of work and the guest speakers are CHARACTERS. One more little helpful tip on decreasing upheaval and dealing with chaos and tension in the body brought on by holosync
Take up the advice in ‘management of evolutionary change’ and start doing yoga regularly. Take a class, get a dvd and stick with it. But that is not the tip this is: get a swiss or fitness ball and research, get a dvd,book,personal trainer and perform the different exercises atleast 3 times and week to get a better meditative posture or whatever you do this will make you better at it really. I urge everyone to take advantages of these tools and incorporate them into your routine if you want more vitality.
Be well.(lol)
~k.Wade
Thanks Bill love your work and kind heart {and your lifestyle!} I hope soon to be able and afford your Life Integrations online courses as I’m sure that it’s literally going to be a life-changer.
I also think you are attractive Bill
You know how I see it know ? and I’ll try to be very soft here….. IT’S ALL BULL SHIT !
Enlightenment is bull shit, seeking is bull shit, non seeking is bull shit, happiness is bull shit, sadness is bull shit.
IT IS ALL MADE UP
We took this ONE thing, shopped it up into pieces and now are banging our heads to see how it all goes together.
All meanings, problems, maps, solutions, feelings and emotions are completely made up. We look for enlightenment so we can be free… but we created the prison in the first place !! our beliefs led us to make up a God or a purpose. But basically nothing means anything, there’s nothing to look for, the mind made it up with all this beliefs we inherited.
It’s like peeling a veil away and see that all suffering and joy are self created. Its an amazing surrender to what is.
But what is, is whatever we make it to be.
The experience of the transcendent is amazing, but it’s just an experience, is not “enlightenment” because “enlightenment” is also made up.
Of course there are certain “rules” in the universe, basically cause and effect. And the best way to explain it is that we tend to attract whatever we focus on, and that this focus creates our feelings, behaviors and outcomes.
And the only thing that prevent us form that focus is not feeling safe, we focus on the things we don’t want because we feel like we need to watch for them so we can avoid them. But that’s all mind bull shit.
Minds are amazing tools, but they can become terrible suffering creating machines if they are let loose and are not watched. The irony is that there is no one to control it. But they can be controlled to a certain extend I believe.
In essence, it’s all one big cosmic joke.
A very beautiful and funny joke if you ask me.
So tell me Bill, do you ever see it this way, or you think I’m throwing the baby out with the bath water ?
I’ve said it before and repeat it again, you are the coolest my friend.
Love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: IT might all be made up, but it’s fun (or at least it can be) to make it up.
I would just like to make a comment about awarness and how I was able . to let go and let what ever happens be ok . Paying attention to you physical body behavior,thouhts,intrenal talk was easy for me because I hear voices all the time. Doctors have tried to get me to take medication for years, but I knew bette. My family has a history of trying to quite the voices. Holosync has cleaned alot of that mind chatter out. I know the ego is still there and wants to be fed. I am through the use of holosync am seeing that the ego is willing to work with anything if it thinks it will cause suffering,and a millions of other situations that cause it. I have learned to trick it like the carrot dangeling just out of reach. This has worke f=very well. I must say that for ten years I was a prisoner in my home,head,life It was so bad that my children left home early, just to get away from the madness. In 2005 I was given the book the secret, that led me to Bill Harris. I now own a new home,new car, went from making 969 dollors a month to making almost 150.000 a year. Working with people that suffer with the same dificulty I was having. Hospice Care for the mentaly Ill. I take work with people who or months days and hours from death and most of them live years longer or leave this world with a smile of knowing that gives the families releif. They think I am some kind of witch, or magic touch ability for healing, but it not its awarness awakening. Death is as difficult as birth we come here screaming, leave here scared and you don’t have to. If every time somthing bad happened someone would come along and offered to go trough that for you. If your like me. I would say are you kidding me I sure as hell would) Therei is someone else who will do it (its in the shadows thoes dark places were so afraid of its waiting with anxious anticipation to do just that. When you let whatever happens be ok the shadows take it awaw forever.
This one was scary to me, for as a little child I had this reoccuring dream of death wher I was in a room with no windows or doors no escape. with Holosync I was able to see that I did not need doors or windows to escape the mind. and that was all it was. It reminded me of my on line course when bill harris said that some we develope this internal map of reality to try feel safe ( I said I am not a child anymore) I don’t need to feel afraid of the boggie man anymore and the shadows disapeared just gone like that. I realized what he meant if it doeen’t serve you it melts away. (I love3 comedy and I created this story about me being rich and servents waiting on me hand and foot (when they would no longer serve me I would fire them and hire some one else) it works very well with any situation.
well i think this post is pretty true once im out of an upheaveal stage as i call it then awareness really shines throw u acatully loose neagative moods and thank you bill for making my extremly hard life 80 per cent better if had to put a number on it ps the echart tolle course a while ago u did was awsome and really sold me on holosync. richard mc caul n ireland
Dear Bill,
While reading this blog and shortly after it listening to additional material from you that came with Awakening Level 4, something struck me. 1 of the key things I came to realize is how becoming aware of what you do and CONSCIOUSLY changing your behavior seems to be a key factor in getting a better life. E.g. at the beginning of the year I got a great insight and hugely increased my awareness of life. The big shock and the big problem then was: “Now what? What do I do next?” I got frightened by this insight and was almost scared to do anything (because I knew that it was going to have an impact on my future). And it took me 3 months to realize that there was no need to be scared because every important choice that I will be taking from now on will be made with awareness. And coming back to 1 of your key principles: we can’t do anything that harms us if we do it with awareness, right?!
And that’s when it all fitted together: whatever I choose now will be GOOD for me as long as I do it with awareness. And I can tell you that it has driven a lot of changes in my life in the past few months (decluttering probably being the biggest one of it all, to make room for more awareness).
Kurt.
PS: 1 thing I have to share is that I was reading a book by Marc Allen a few weeks before I stumbled upon Centerpointe talking about “Ask and you shall receive”. I clearly remembered asking for a teacher. It took me months though to realize that you were the teacher I asked for. “Ask and you shall receive. Not ask and you shall receive only if you’re worthy”. My favourite quote ever since. So thank you for the journey you have put me on.
Can you do a post regarding holosync and how it increases our awareness of suttle energies? I’ve heard you speak of this before, however it’s unclear whether you’re talking about some sort of suttle awareness that everyone has but doesn’t tap into or a suttle astral plane or other-worldly suttle shokti body or mystical weirdness. I know that I’m in touch with other planes however I am also very aware that I am creating alternate planes of existence that cannot hold what I perceive on this plane, and I know that it is holosync use which makes this duel world of reality and imagination possible as existing at once within the mind; basically this is a complex cognitive process rather than something mystical, and the holosync helps unfold these parts of the map for those who are interested (I assume). You speak in one of your courses about how we can float up above our timeline–like the city lights seen from an airplane–and then do work to go back and eliminate negative charges, because we’re using a different way of cognizing things based on using different metaprograms to filter our experience of the world. I imagine that these suttle energy planes are the same, in that we can access them as we access the part of us which fascilitates timeline healing, however they lie in a concrete use of energy and thought mixed together to create real-world results. What I mean is that there really is no material suttle body that most people will experience, however by pre-supposing certain things by way of Neural Linguistic Programming and other devices we can cause suttle aspects of our reality to manifest. Holosync doesn’t do all of this, however I suspect that what holosync does do is fascilitate the extra flexable nature needed for the full value of NLP etc to be realized.
I used to believe that the idea of God was made up until I survived two open heart surgeries. And now I “know” that God is real and God is as real as you and me, and every sentient being that can reflect consciousness in the gleam of their eye. Trust me when I say I lost my ego during my ordeal and learned that the idea of an ego is as illusory as the Easter Bunny.
Too many people spend way too much time explaining away the existence of God, rather than simply allowing the mind of God to guide them. I did this for years. We have the potential to inherit the mind of God. When I chose to inherit God’s mind, I transcended all the constructs of the human mind regarding enlightenment instantly. And this is after meditating for 22 years.
Be careful in assuming you know anything about the existence of God, or rather being definitive on the “subject” until you know your true self. I’m not talking about a perceived identity of your self.
In the creation of the universe light energy goes with dark energy. This is as old an understanding as Lao Tzu regarded the Tao.
However, there are forces at work like gravity, though appearing to be causal and neutral in a supposed direction, the reality is that light energy culminates at the highest concentrated core of light and consciousness. If you are having trouble understanding the mind of God, realize that it is the promise of increase that is the direction. I’m talking about expansion in all directions. The Kingdom of God is within you and all around you. Its actually quite simple to grasp.
As sure as you and I are intelligent, so does the intelligence of God prevail. Whether you believe in a big bang, or a thought uttered to spark life into an endless void of space, giving life to a single hydrogen atom to become the suns of this physical domain, and every atom born within each, exploding atoms into new life and expansion to allow our form to manifest. This is a never ending occurrence. And if you want to live forever you can, But you must choose to do so and believe it in order to accomplish it. There’s more at work here than mere gravity.
Jesus Christ conquered death because He believed it. Faith without doubt. Unless you believe it can never be.
I, a mere human, entered an operating room accompanied by a surgeon and nurse practitioners. They displaced the energy of my heart, an energy that is 60 times greater than the electro-magnetic field emitted by the human brain, and the breath that fills my lungs by redirecting the cellular plasma of my body, and the oxygen necessary to sustain life, the spirit through machines being powered by electricity. Even my consciousness was guided to what one of my anesthesiologists described as; “100 levels deep of known consciousness.”
Our cells are alive and operate on intelligence. Our cells know what to do because they are encoded with an intelligent design to bring forth consciousness. So on this day, and on another day, I overcame death with the help of a handful of human beings, going about their business as usual with the aid of technological devices powered by electricity. Yet, I still remained like Lazarus. You see, I became one with the electricty.
You want to talk about Big Mind? Try open heart surgery.
So tell me, do you really think that any human being in their limited perceptions of things, pre-occupied with mental constructs and the illusory perceptions of their true existence, or enlightenment can truly know the mind of God or of the super-natural abilities of Christ?
I know because I went way beyond my perceived sense of self. And I’m still here to tell you a bout it. Its so simple really, it amazes me now how mentally ill the human race has become regarding the denial of and turning away of God.
Now we all think we can go it alone, and do it all ourselves, so we construct new ways of explaining away our existence, and call ourselves “transcendent” or whatever. Our conscious minds are but “pea brains”.
Because of my experience I know in my heart of hearts that not only did Jesus of Nazareth rise from the dead, but he was able to do so because he is the culmination of the Living God of Consciousness. God manifest in human form to show us how, and to reconnect us with eternal life lost to the grave. And what He said is… “You must believe.” There’s no doubt in my mind about this. Not to mention that He visited me and annointed me personally, literally lifted me out of my bed in the summer of 07′, lit a candle inside of my shadow body, and told me “Once this candle is lit, it will never go out.” This experience was as real as my open heart surgery and I have the scars to prove it.
Yes, of course some will explain this away, and attempt to reason my subjective experiences as Christic visions, and auditory hallucinations, and blah, blah, blah while they slowly bring themselves to their knees in exhaustion, as they face their own mortality– all the while learning how to give up the ghost.
I can guarantee every person reading this blog post, that when you are on your death bed, YOU WILL cry out for God.
Make no mistake about it. There is an intelligence that precludes it all. As sure as you can read the words on this page and discern them that you are viewing over wires that operate on electricity.
God is not a complex being. God is all things seemingly devoid of form, and at the same time all forms. Forms that are given names. Forms that inherited the word. The word being the ability to communicate the idea of God in the first place, and thus… the mind of God! Hello? Are you conscious? Are you awake?
There isn’t a single human being alive today who can explain away what I experienced or label away anything I’ve said here as my “map of reality”.
No one knows what the all inclusive map of reality is. Only an all knowing, all seeing, discerning conscious mind can do that. To me only the mind of God can truly know. God is simply dreaming us, this world, this universe, and everything in it. Only God is conscious. To God, consciousness is a misnomer.
I highly recommend that everyone here open their heart and mind to the possibility of a living God. As sure as you and I are intelligent, so does the intelligence of God prevail. Regardless if you lose your perceived sense of identity at death. God knows who you are, always has, even the number of hairs on your head, and knew this before the universe ever went “big bang”!
Lewi,
Dude, it’s going to be ok.
FROM BILL: Except when it isn’t.
What do you think of the awareness that created and programmed the autopilot in the beginning?
What about the huge amount of awareness that it takes to maintain this autopilot in a functional state? I think that if we were to comprehend the vastly complex artificial intelligence system (or God or whatever) that maintains the illusion of creation that we would be in a constant state of awe and wonder at how it all keeps going; instead we like to complain about how life is a problem and “if it weren’t for that…”.
Is awareness something that is an active thing, like my becoming aware of how the matrix works and figuring out the paths to take such that I can reprogram it, or is it more of a passive let-it-happen sort of thing, like when I become aware that it’s a sunny day outside and my mood automatically shifts without my having to do anything to it. Perhaps the witness is a combination of these?
Does awareness work independent of belief or, in other words, once when enough people become aware will we recognize that there is a higher intelligence orchestrating this whole thing regardless of whether we want to or not? It seems that no matter what happens some people will fight it, even if they’re beating their heads against a wall or whipping a dead horse for exercize. Even if the presence of god is all around someone at their time of death offering salvation, the person would rather remain in a hellish existence than accept the guift. It seems to me that even though some of us continue to do harmful things to ourselves, and even though we know that our increasing our awareness on these things would help, we will cling to our ignorence and stay in the shadows. Will awareness fix all of this, and if so how’s it going for you? Am I beating a godamm dead horse again? I think that I’m exercizing though!
Hi Bill, it was great to meet you at the retreat in 2005 in Pennsylvania. I am working on increasing my level of awareness, through Holosync and watching my internal state. I am able to achieve a lower level of anxiety through watching, and I also feel more in control. But I still have a “not okay” feeling that remains. (I’m not going to say “I want to get rid of it” because you will remind me that that is what created the problem in the first place!
) However, my question is, does further use of Holosync tip the scales towards a complete feeling of okayness?
FROM BILL: Watch to see how you create the feeling of not-okayness. What do you say to yourself? What internal pictures do you make? What beliefs do you entertain. Watch until you see exactly how you create the feeling (you do know that you’re doing it, right?). Feelings are just the effect of internal processes. They don’t mean anything–they certainly don’t mean that you ARE not-okay. In fact, nothing in God’s green earth “means” anything. You decide that. Watch until you’re clear about how you create the feeling. Since it doesn’t benefit you, you’ll stop doing it.
Bill Harris I just want you to know how much I appreciate everything you do and the person you are. I look forward to the day we meet. It’ll be a good day.
Bill are you aware of the work of Ray Kurzweil ? This is an amazing guy who predicted the fall of the iron curtain, internet, the discovery of the human genome and many other things, truly remarkable.
He is predicting that in about 20 years we will reverse engineer the brain, that means that we could actually find out exactly how it works and how it programs our body to age and deteriorate, then we will be able to stop that process and regenerate any damaged organs. Basically he says that we could live forever. He just wrote a book about it with a physician called TRANSCEND: Nine Steps To Living Well Forever
Of course this sounds insane, but I guess it also sounded insane when someone propose that we could get to the moon.
I don’t think this means that we can stop impermanence, because even if we live forever everything would still keep changing.
I was wandering what are your thoughts regarding this, would you want to live forever ?
PS. The video about NAD rocks !
All the love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: I do know about Ray Kurzweil. Since there is no separate self, why worry about living forever, though?
Hi Bill,
I just watch your video about suffering from NAD (new agers disease) It was very good and I found it very funny too. Unfortunatelly for me I have the opposite of NAD. I think I am a reverse new ager. Meaning that new agers , political correctness and “spiritual people” trigger me in a negative way . Just the word spiritual is a turn off for me. Dont get me wrong I have had experiences of the transcendent ( as most people have I believe) while meditating with holocync , doing big mind or just being in nature. I think good art wether is music, painting or architecture can give you a glimse of the transcendent too but I still hate it when new agers make a big deal about spirituallity , etc specially when they use big words and try to sound all esoteric.
I also hate the Californian political correctness , specifically when somebody I meet asks me ” Oh you have an accent , where are you from?? ” in a very tentative way that sounds all patronizing to me instead of just asking right upfront.
Spiritual people trigger me too. or some of them . People like Genpo Roshi dont because they sound authentic to me , however other people like byron katie etc do trigger me . when they sound all out there and so ” loving and enlighten”
It makes me want to put those people in some situations to see if they can really keep their cool.
As I meditate with holocync though my shadows regarding this things have diminish a lot . I honestly believe that those things and people trigger me half of what they used too.
My conscious approach to prayer(I dont care to which God), meditation , yoga , big mind , western psicology etc. has always being a practical one. if it helps me to be happier, mentally and emotionally healthy and effective in the world I am all for it. But I dont do it to be cool or sophisticated.
That was my conscious approach , obviosly there was something else under the surface , something that I want to include and transcend.
Carlos
FROM BILL: Whatever triggers you is a shadow, so you might want to look into the shadows you have around spirituality and New Age-ism. I get it, though, I am working on the New Age shadow myself!
Bill,
Thanks to your NAD video I think I spotted one that is very painful to admit.
Sometimes I feel comfort when I see other people suffering. I can’t believe I am saying this but I gotta say it’s true, it is very subtle though, and it goes by very fast, but it does happen. Even with people that are close to me !
It’s painful cause I like to be seen as a warmhearted person, actually afraid of causing pain to others.
How would you address this ? What am I dis-owning ?
All the love,
Santiago
FROM BILL: I can’t say, but one clue would be to ask yourself what it is that bothers you or triggers you in these people? Another way to look at it would be to ask yourself what quality you are exhibiting, but in a dysfunctional way? Cruelty, perhaps? Have you disowned your own cruelty? Lack of compassion? When you own what seems like the very worst of qualities, they mature into something that is beneficial to you and to others.
Just a comment regarding the last post. I totally get what you’re saying about feeling comfort at times when someone else is suffering. I have found this in myself too and I choose to interpret that it’s comforting because we realise that we’re not the only one suffering, we’re all human and when we realise the suffering in others we see in them what is in us too and it is so easy to turn that feeling to one of empathy.
My husband and I began this awakening process together and I have noticed with us that when he is suffering or in the grip of his ego, my ego feels a little comfort in the fact that his progress is not moving faster than mine and I would also say vice versa. I am trying to just observe this when it happens and hopefully it will dissolve. There are times when we are a help to each other and other times when we are more of a hindrance
but the more aware we become, hopefully the easier it will get.
I have also noticed that I am so much more aware of people suffering, there are a lot less happy people out there than unhappy people. At times I feel I am now too aware of others suffering and wonder can this be detrimental to my own progress? Should I put more of my attention on the happy people until I reach a happier place within myself?
FROM BILL: A couple of comments. First, I would give up trying to stop doing things that you think are wrong or bad. Whatever you are feeling about the success or lack thereof in others, just observe it, WITHOUT adding your evaluation of whether it’s bad or good. It isn’t good or bad. Whether it’s good or bad is a decision you’ve made, but not a reality. If you watch, including seeing the consequences–but without adding a good/bad judgement to it–whatever isn’t resourceful will fall away all by itself.
Second, I take issue with the phrase “in the grip of the ego.” The ego is your idea of yourself, the internal map you’ve made of who you are. It’s a collection of ideas about you, kind of like a caricature of yourself (a caricature is a sketch of you, leaving out most of what you actually look like). But the main point is that your idea of you can’t DO anything, and you can’t be in the grip of it, any more than you could be in the grip of the border between the US and Canada, or the number 3–or any other idea. When you say “you” are in the grip of your ego you’re saying that your idea of yourself (”you”) is in the grip of your idea of yourself. It doesn’t make any sense at all. The truth is, there is no you. You is a mental construct. The solution to all of this is to just watch, with no agenda, noticing what happens and noticing the consequences.
Bill,
Seems like you need to give the Dalai Lama a call: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meditation-on-demand&sc=WR_20090527
“Elaborating, he shared a confidence with the audience, telling the audience of scientists that meditating was hard work for him (even though he meditates for 4 hours every morning), and that if neuroscientists were able to find a way to put electrodes in his brain and provide him with the same outcome as he gets from meditating, he would be an enthusiastic volunteer.”
FROM BILL: I’m on it. In fact, if everyone reading this writes to the Dalai Lama to tell him about Holosync, maybe he’ll actually be curious enough to look into it.
Thanks Bill. I’ve got to keep on practicing, just observing without adding judgement either way. When I talked about being in the grip of the ego I meant letting the dysfunctional behavior of choice,i.e. anxiety anger etc., take over. Still working on those childhood issues with good and bad etc.
I have been listening to disc #2 off Awakening level 1 for almost 8 weeks now and feel a little reluctant to move to the next disc as I have been experiencing quite a bit of resistance since starting this one. Would you recommend staying with this disc until the resistance eases?
Thanks again
Michaela
FROM BILL: You’ll know when to move on.
When you’re “in the grip” of dysfunction, let it be okay and just watch. The more clearly you can watch HOW you do it, and see the direct consequences–but without trying to stop–the faster everything will sort itself out. Just watch and let whatever is happening be okay.
Thanks Bill. I think I needed to see that sentence ‘ without trying to stop”. I’ll keep on watching.
Bill,
“….while feelings happen, there is no feeler”
How do I know I am feeling the feelings then?
There must be somebody or something there doing the observing, separate from the feeling itself, that knows that it is occurring.
Emma
FROM BILL: Then show it to me. Knowing does not need a knower, anymore than feeling needs a feeler or doing needs a doer. You assignment is to find that doer and show it to me. Look for it until you’ve found it. You’ll find what every other human who has looked for it has found–it’s not there.
Never mind my question. I followed the wrong link from my email and the most recent post is all about this very question.
Do you have the Dalai Lama’s email then? Or is he a friend of yours on Facebook?
Seriously, I’d be happy to do that, just need to know the way to get in touch with him.
Kurt
FROM BILL: His Holiness and I have lunch every third Tuesday, unless one of us has a prior commitment. If that happens, we bowl in the same league on Thursdays (he has a wicked hook).
hi bill how do i become aware with out holosyc
FROM BILL: Why do it without Holosync, when Holosync so greatly accelerates the process? Any awareness or mindfulness method will do it, but it often takes decades of many hours a day.
Is Bill Harris on Facebook?
I hope!
The CD’s are AMAZING!
FROM BILL: Nope. I don’t do Facebook.
Hi Bill I have a question about all the e-mails about the next big thing. I love the on-line course. Holosync, Hypnosis, life coaching affilate programs etc,etc,etc. I want it all but now I am so inendated with information that I don’t know which way to turn. Every thing you reccomend to me looks so exciting and effortless, but I was crying out of control on the way to work the other morning. because there is not more of me with more money and more time and less sleep and more more more. now I am such a mess that holosync dosen’t work and on-line Expander course dosen’t work. Jack Canfield, BoB proctor,Lisa Emenez,John Rohn. Vic Johnson. All I wanted was to be an affilate with Bill Harris,because the hospice work I do has me inside and not meeting many people. I want it so bad to have a breakthrough so bad I haved stalled out. I feel insane with need to find a cure for my mentally Ill son, now I am mentally Ill how do I find a way out of this one. Witnessing zombie. Thanks
Hi again Bill. Well just writing it all down seamed to make things feel lighter. I just don’t know what to choose. Please let me work for you. I’ll do anything. Just to be a part of you orgiznation. I took the witness prespective and now I want it all and I think about it all the time. I will do it because money Is no longer the focus of my journey. Be Well your self. Alemenia by the way how often do you up date your blog it seams like awhile now.
Hi Bill. I first of all would like to thank you so much. I am finishing level 3 awakening. before I make this statment I would like to clarify that I do not take medication. I get lots of sleep and for all intensive purposes think I am more aware of my connectivness sence I have been using Holosync and taking your on-line course. I have even hand written all the lessons, questions etc or the courses. because I am unable to download the homework my computer is needy.Ha! Ha! my one big question has always been to be able to see my connectivness to the whole. I am with Bob Proctor when he said “THE MAIN THING IS TO KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.” and beleive me I have been playing my part. ok I am beating around the bush, because I pray that this is a point of enlightment. Real enlightment, because it feels like it. really! I know the law of gravity and several others to be true as I understand them. and I have always beleived that two solid objects can not occupy the same space at the same ,until the other day. this simi truck drove thru the passenger side of my car thru my daughter and we both looked at each and and ask the same question ‘DID YOU SEE THAT” it happend again with my grandson in the passenger side this time but he did not see what I saw. I have come to beleive that I am now able to see my connectedness to the whole and that nothing is real until the mind makes it so. It has also happend to me and this man got very mad and frightened at what we both experienced. How can this be explained, my grandmother says that its a sign of my empending death. I completly disagree. I am so happy. Thanks Alemenia