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Welcome to Mind Chatter #115, the June 1, 2003 Interim Report.
On June 16, you'll receive a full issue of Mind Chatter.
In this Interim Report, I want to share a few letters from Mind Chatter subscribers along with my responses. I share these letters because I get so much feedback from readers telling me that these questions and responses are very helpful
and that they clear up a lot of unanswered questions.
Please continue to let me know when something I have written about just doesn't make sense to you, or you think I'm just plain wrong or clearly out of my mind, or you just don't see how what I've said could possibly apply to YOUR
situation.
As I respond to these types of concerns, many people have significant "ah-ha's" about the principles I write about, and how they apply to real life.
But before I get to the letters, here is a shameless (but very important and utterly fascinating) commercial message...
I want to tell you how I can help you change your life, in a major way, in just five days. In fact, I guarantee you that I can do it.
If you've never attended a Centerpointe Retreat (or even if you have), I want to encourage you to attend this next one. We still have a few spots left, and being there could make a significant difference to you, I promise.
The next retreat is at Breitenbush Hot Springs, in Oregon. You'll arrive for dinner on June 30 and leave for home after breakfast on July 6. In between, your life will change forever.
Breitenbush is in an absolutely MAGNIFICENT spot, nestled in the Deschutes National Forest overlooking a crystal-clear glacial river thundering through majestic ancient forests from the slopes of a snowy volcano. The deep hot springs
provide steaming mineral water for hot tubs, saunas and natural pools, as well as heating the lodge where our meditations and meals happen. In the middle of a truly primeval forest, with endless paths through the woods, rippling streams
and rivers, natural hot spring pools, and a charming lodge, Breitenbush is an amazing place.
But the main attraction is the way your life will change at the retreat. If you have an issue in your life that you want to resolve, once and for all, or just want to take your life to the next level, attending this retreat WILL create a
real and lasting breakthrough for you.
For years I've advertised that these retreats deliver 6 months of growth in 5 days. Many people have told me that they got much MORE than 6 months of growth (some have said six YEARS), and quite a number of retreat junkies have told me
that Centerpointe retreats are THE best thing of this kind that they've attended, anywhere in the world.
And, we offer a full money-back guarantee to anyone who, at the end of the retreat, isn't 100% blown away by what happened for them, so there's no financial risk to you to attend. You can only benefit.
To find out more, click here:
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If you're even slightly interested, don't wait, though, because there are just a few spots left.
And, by the way, you don't need to be a Centerpointe participant to come.
Okay, one more quick item and we'll get down to business.
On Monday, June 2 at 6 PM Pacific time, we'll have the first conference call of the first of three 12-call telecourses, The Map of Reality Expander. I will cover, in-depth, information that will allow you, in a very practical way, to
understand how you create what is happening in your life now, and learn how to start creating the internal and external results and experience of life you really want.
Nearly 700 people have signed up for this course. We do have a limit for how many callers we can handle, but there are a few spots left. To learn more, you can listen to an on-line version of the free preview call I did a few weeks ago
describing these telecourses by clicking here:
http://www.centerpointe.com/life/preview/
In addition to describing the course, this call has some very valuable and practical content, so it's well worth listening to even if you don't want to sign up for the courses (and, what the heck, it's free). After listening, if you want
to participate, just follow the directions I'll give you at the end of the preview call describing how to enroll.
Okay, onward.
Here are three letters I've received recently, and my responses. I hope you find them helpful.
Dear Bill:
What is our relationship to our circumstances?
If we create our experience, then we can control this -- I'm learning
this first hand as a Level 4, 3rd CD user. But what is our relationship
to our circumstances which you have said are outside of or apart from
this experience? In other words, if we can control our experience
despite our circumstances, than are we truly separate from and in the
grips of our circumstances? Or do we create them as well?
This is important, so I would appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks so much.
Greg S.
Inner Circle Member
Greg,
Some things in your circumstances you have control over, and some you
do not. Even those things you do not have control over you have some
influence over, however. You can't totally control whether or not someone jostles you in a crowd, for instance, but you could do things to invite being jostled, in general, for instance by walking in a lot of crowds, or walking in a way
that invites jostling (not watching where you're going, being very aggressive in the way you walk, etc).
You totally control your response (or at least can, if you choose to) to anything and everything, and based on your beliefs,values, strategies, etc., you tend to draw certain people, situations, and things to you, and put yourself in
certain circumstances. But since there are 6 billion other people out there trying to make things happen their way, there is bound to be a clash between what you want to create and what others want to create. Since most people exercise
little if any control over what they create, but instead automatically create whatever their internal map of reality is set up to create, a person who does exercise creative control over their life has considerable influence on what
happens--but that influence is not total. If you are in control of your response, what happens is of much less consequence to you, because you can choose to be happy and peaceful regardless of what happens.
Be well.
Bill
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Here's another letter from one of my most regular and most thoughtful questioners, and my response:
Hello Mr. Harris. Thank you for creating such a wonderful tool for
personal growth. I am growing so fast that I spend most of my day
witnessing overwhelm. This is a good thing for me because I am at a
point where it is easier for me to deal with these moments. I know
that this moment is a gift from God and all I have to do is unwrap
the gift (witness the energy). You may remember me from a few weeks
ago--I asked about circular breathing with Holosync. I have since
altered my meditation to just 'watching the energy within my body
dance on it's own'. Taking the way the breathing during Holosync
reinforces the belief that nothing needs to be done in order to
integrate previously suppressed energy. On occasion, when I am
resisting to a higher degree I may use the breathing but only for a
few moments...when everything starts to move again, I go back to
witnessing.
My question is in regard to this moment of witnessing overwhelm
(during Holosync and in life). I want to know what part(s) of our
map of reality is changing when I am witnessing my overwhelm
(anxiety, shame, fear, anger, etc.) I recently read an article on
the different modalities of thought in your Mind Chatter article and
I became curious to know how this sequence is altered in the moment
of witnessing overwhelm. Are all of the different parts of the map
of reality changed in this moment of witnessing? Does witnessing
have the power to change all of the different parts of the map?
What parts does witnessing change and what parts does it not touch?
There is a part of me that feels that I have to DO something while I
am witnessing. Maybe this is the part of me that needs to take some
sort of action. If I just witnessed, and never took action, many
things would never change, right? How do I differentiate between
when to DO and when to WATCH?
Thanks in advance, Jody.
Jody,
Witnessing and doing are two completely different things. Witnessing
is just watching, without any agenda, with curiosity. When you watch,
the witness doesn't care what happens, it just wants to notice. In
fact, the doing is the problem, or I guess I should say your
IDENTIFICATION with the doing part of you is the problem. Your body
is made for doing, just as your mind is made for thinking (which is
its kind of doing).
But the part of you that just sits back and watches the thinking and
the doing, without caring about the content of it, is who you really
are. To this part of you, it's all perfect, just as it is. The
witness doesn't evaluate whether the thinking or the doing was right
or wrong. It just says, "Hmmm. Look at that. How interesting." To the
witness, everything is interesting.
So the doing/thinking part thinks it has to think or do, in just the
right way, or things aren't okay. The witness part knows whatever is going on is always okay, and just has fun watching. So when you slip into
identifying with the thinker/doer, you generally feel uneasy, since
the thinking or doing is never good enough, never exactly right. It
always seems as if there is more to do, or a better way to do it.
The irony is that when you watch, you become conscious
(identifying with doing and thinking, on the other hand, take you
into being unconscious), and when you watch with conscious awareness, what serves you continues, and what does not serve you falls away. When you identify with, and get caught up in, thinking/doing, you don't notice how you are creating
the stuff you don't want (you're not conscious, in other
words), and the parts that create what you don't want remain.
When you watch with awareness (which doesn't necessarily mean you stop
thinking or acting, just that you're watching the thinking and acting
happen instead of identifying the thinking and acting as being who you are), it becomes really hard to keep doing whatever does not serve you. When you watch, beliefs that create suffering, strategies that end with
feelings or results you don't want, values that do not serve you (and so on and so on), become really hard to continue, and they fall away.
The key is to let the doing and the thinking go on as usually, but
develop the part that just watches it all with curiosity, without any
agenda for what happens or doesn't happen, or what is "right" or "wrong"
about it. It's just like an audience watching a play, having fun,
curious to see what happens next.
Hope this helps.
Be well.
Bill
**
One more letter. In this one, from Duane V., my responses are inserted in between paragraphs of the letter I received.
Dear Bill
THE PERSONAL GROWTH (WEST VS EAST) PARADOX
Personal Growth teachers seem to me to fall into two main categories: those that advocate happiness, satisfaction & fulfillment is a by-product of rule based doing methodologies and those that say it comes from the suspend all beliefs and
learn to be methodology.
Bill's response: I'm not saying either. I'm advocating that you become conscious enough to see the potential consequences in each moment, and then act accordingly, based on the outcome you want. Living by rules falls apart whenever there
is no rule that applies, which is often. Suspending all beliefs (and I assume you mean what most spiritual/personal growth people refer to as getting rid of the ego) doesn't work, either, because it's not HAVING an ego (what I call your
internal map of reality) that's the problem, but thinking you ARE the ego. If you know the ego (the map) is just a map, you use it, but you know you are just having fun.
Have you read my book, Thresholds of the Mind? It goes into great detail on the main confusion you are having about this.
Duane: The doing crowd in the main say that happiness is a result of success, achievement, relationships, financial security and good health and that the way to obtain this happiness is by building a value set/belief system that is self
congruent and motivates you (via carrots & sticks) to both set goals and overcome the enevetable trials that one must overcome to achieve success with your reward being satisfaction & happiness. The roots of this philosophy in the main
come from and continue to be driven by the judea/christian traditions as well as the corporate training, wealth creation & personal growth sectors.
Bill: How about achieving whatever you want, challenging yourself in whatever way you want, but knowing it's all just a game, and having your happiness, inner peace, and satisfaction come from within, totally independent of what happens in
this outer arena. In this way of doing things, you're no more caught in the outer arena than if you were a character in a play. Whatever happens, you're having fun.
Duane: On the other hand the being crowd in the main say that the way to happiness is through complete surrender to What Is in the NOW, moment by moment and this requires the letting go of ego, desire, values, beliefs, resistance, time,
the past and the future. That in addition, to separate oneself from having one's own identity (ego), eg: I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts, I am not my body - I am happiness, The All, God etc..
Bill: The problem with desire is not in having it, but in being attached to it. The mind is a desire generating organ. That's what it does. If you think the desires are who you are, you will suffer, since all desires cannot be met, and
even when they are, it is temporary. I advocate watching your mind have desires, watching yourself achieve them (or, in some cases, fail to achieve them), and having fun either way--not being attached to the outcome, and having your sense
of satisfaction come from what happens outside of you.
Duane: This appears to be a much more fatalistic philosophy where it is assumed that What is - is God - is perfect and as such I am where I am meant to be, experiencing what I am meant to experience exactly when I am meant to experience it
- everything is perfect. The result of this letting go is perfect joy and perfect flow and worldly success follows as a natural consequence - if it is meant to be!
In this methodology, there is little room for focusing on goals, planning etc as the obvious danger is that to do so is to engender attachment to other than What Is by taking on a belief system designed to control the outcome. One of the
catch-cries of this methodology is "working on yourself doesn't work".
Bill: I hope you can see now that you can allow your mind to focus on goals, but not be attached to the outcome. The outer is just a game, and the inner is real. You don't have to renounce the outer to "be" and you don't have to be
attached to it to achieve.
Duane: It seems to me that at Centerpointe you appear to embrace both schools of thought. In your 9 principles you seem to me to have a bias towards the later methodology, however in the last 18 months of mindchatter & through this new
course it is clear you also embrace the former methodology too.
Some of the Paradoxical (paraphrased) statements you make are;
a. To be successful, you must model those that are successful
b. For everything we want to achieve, we must be prepared to pay the price
c. A key to success is focussing on the outcome desired - as though it has already occurred.
VS
d. All suffering comes from resistance to 'What Is'
e. Let everything be OK - Witnessing Technique.
f. The Universe is Neutral - There is no good or bad.
You have also said some things that are like a kind of bridge between the two paradoxes. EG:
g. Downgrade your attachments to preferences.
h. Measure yourself from how far you've come - not by your ideals
For me, ultimately I don't care about the methodology of getting to continual happiness, as long as I get there, however, I must say I'm exhausted by all the doing to get there. My feeling is that if one is able to master the being
methodology, the doing aspects may become a lot easier to achieve, if one can remain not attached to am outcome.
Bill: I hope I have cleared this up. The key is to let your mind do its thing, and learn how to focus it to get whatever you want in the external arena, but not be attached to the outcome. Have your happiness and inner peace be independent
of what happens around you. Your exhaustion comes from being attached to all the doing. Whatever you do, do it as a game, as fun. You also have not really learned how to focus your mind on what you want. When you do that well, you get the
outcome you want so easily, it's not exhausting at all. Paradoxically, you don't care if you get it (you don't suffer when you don't). Unconsciously, you are focusing on things you don't want, in an attempt to avoid them (which doesn't
work). Since this is going on out of your awareness, and you only see the part where you focus on the things you do want (which probably happens much less than the focusing on what you don't want), you don't see the conflict--which is
exhausting.
This is why it's so important to develop conscious awareness, so you don't have things going on unconsciously that are creating results you do not want.
You can always tell what's going on unconsciously by seeing what results a person is getting. If you're exhausted, there's a reason: you're fighting yourself. A part of you is conscious and knows what you want, and a part of you (a much
bigger part) is running on automatic, and that part is focused on something contrary to what the conscious part wants.
Duane: Is this what you are attempting to teach us, or am I completely off track? Is it a unresolvable and stressful paradox to both trying to live in the moment and also be focused on achieving an outcome - or is it that I just don't yet
understand?
Bill: To do both, which is not unresolvable, you have to be unattached to the achievement part. To do that, you have to develop that witness part of you, that just watches the achievement, without any agenda, and has fun with whatever
happens. The irony is, the more you develop the witness, the more conscious you are of the whole thing, and the more easily you focus on what you want, and the more easily what you want happens.
Best regards
Duane V.
Bill: You'll get it. Keep going. I certainly hope you're using Holosync, since that makes becoming more conscious MUCH easier and makes it happen much faster.
Be well.
Bill
***
That's it. I'll see you in two weeks for a full issue of Mind Chatter. If you found this issue helpful, please email it to every person you know.
Well, okay, then. How about to just a couple of people?
Be Well!
Centerpointe Research Institute
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