I watched Glass last night. I walked away astounded. You should see it.
(There are no spoilers here)
Glass is M Night Shyamalan‘s latest movie. It is the final piece of a trilogy chronicling superheroes’ origins. Unbreakable was part one. Split is part two.
Shyamalan made his name famous with stunning plot twists in his early films. His most successful back then being Sixth Sense.
Later his name got associated with crap. That’s what he produced in the middle of his career. He got lost, producing flop after flop.
Somewhere in there, though, he made Unbreakable. It showed Shyamalan still had something to say. In Glass, he said it.
Shyamalan told Rolling Stone Disney heads dampened Unbreakable’s box office success billing it as a “spooky thriller”. It was not that. It’s a superhero movie. But nothing like DC or Marvel movies with all that action and mayhem. Unbreakable is subtle. It reaches into your soul. Using no special effects, it makes its superhero real.
Like you.
Had Shyamalan had his way, Unbreakable would have done much better. He wanted it billed a comic book movie.
I saw Unbreakable seven times. It calls to me. It calls to all of us. Can you hear it?
It describes how I feel about humanity: humanity itself is unbreakable, untouched by life’s circumstances. I know humanity is far more than its circumstances and far more than human. Every one of us are creating everything we’re experiencing, including each other. And we are doing that ongoingly and co-creatively.
That’s Shyamalan’s message too. It runs all the way through Split and spurts out in glorious form at Glass‘ finale. Far from making “spooky thrillers”, Shyamalan is speaking to all of us. What is he saying? You are unique, shine your life. Create the reality you want. The Universe actively supports you.
I know this because he says as much in the Rolling Stone article. He spoke it plainly again on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show.
If you read what I tend to write, I usually write from my broader “we” perspective. I also write a lot about experiences I have in my life. Experiences exactly like Shyamalan told Colbert. Such experiences happen today more than ever. I don’t dismiss them as coincidence because they aren’t.
I know through 30-plus years practicing what I know –– first through meditation, amplified through esoteric martial arts, then briefly through Christianity and followed by 10 years practice with Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism. Then again through esoteric martial arts and more meditation before aligning with Abraham for the last 10 years. All this background and experiential evidence, told in my writing, convinces me this is how life works. I share my experiences knowing others want clarity I have.
That’s why I resonate with Shyamalan’s movies. He’s sharing what he knows. What I know. And he’s doing it in a beautiful cinematic way.
Which brings me back to Glass. And to you.
Glass‘ grand message is: you’re special. The Universe knows it. And it wants to show you how special you are. But you have to live your authentic life. You have to stop worrying about what others might think about you or how you look.
And though a lot of forces try –– and often succeed –– in convincing you otherwise, everything you want, including a future matching your wildest dreams you already have. And you can make them real. Starting today.
You only have to believe.
· · ·
“Belief” is action. It is born from faith and leads to “knowing”. First a person has to not believe, but want to. That’s faith. “Wanting to believe absent proof”.
Faith tested, births belief if the teaching is accurate. If one persists, the faithful’s life experience rewards faith with corroborating evidence. Guidance and support from someone who demonstrates the teaching’s efficacy through their life experience is crucial. Their experience helps you see evidence you’d otherwise miss. With their help faith turns to believing, which is “intellectual understanding born of evidence”.
Belief isn’t the same as knowing. Knowing is becoming the teaching. It is borne from so much evidence in one’s own life experience, that life experience and the teaching become one.
“I can ride a bike, although I’ve never done so.” That’s faith.
“I can ride a bike because I understand the steps to doing so, even though I’ve never actually done it. I see others doing it. They can. So can I. Teach me.” That’s belief.
“I ride bikes. I do it all the time.” That’s knowing.
As a child, I knew I was the center of the universe. All points of consciousness are the center of the universe. But like nearly all of us, I let my parents and my life experience at the time convince me otherwise. I lost the knowing. I became a common mortal.
I lost knowing I create the world around me. Life experience mirrored that belief. My life got chaotic and disorganized. My parents divorced. My mom forced me to relocate. In this new place I was teased and ridiculed for how I spoke and behaved. I was assaulted and threatened and robbed.
But my Broader Perspective kept sending signals, calling me back to my knowing. I heard these. But everyday reality had me dismiss them as coincidence, fleeting or random events back then.
Me in the Marines.
In my 20s, as a US Marine, surrounded by toxic masculinity and the ever-present possibility of combat, I fit in with the guys. Be normal. Which is to say be ignorant of my knowing.
I avoided my gender-neutrality, my transamory and my spiritual clarity. I traded my authenticity for the Marines’ Esprit de Corps, and everything else it meant to be a Marine.
There were cracks though. Through them my Broader Perspective reached me. As did my authenticity. I had dalliances. Spent late nights in gay bars. I fantasized. I met and befriended transgender women. And yearning for spirituality continued.
One night, fed up with life as it was, the young Christian me woke up. It was 3 a.m. in the Barracks at Camp Pendleton, California. Filled with loneliness, despair and an internal existential conflict, I challenged the Christian God. I said if he didn’t show himself or evidence of himself by sunrise, I wasn’t believing in Christianity anymore. I lit a candle and prayed.
Reveille came. The candle long burnt out. No sign.
I kept my promise.
About a year later I was walking through streets on Okinawa. Living in Japan had been a childhood dream. Being there fulfilled another dream: training alongside the founder of the Bujinkan. Little did I know though, being in Japan sowed seeds that were the end of my Marine Corps identity.
A black car careened off the road onto the sidewalk. It came to a screeching stop right in front of me. Its black windows reflected my surroundings rather than allowing me to see who was inside. A door on the far side flung open. Out of the car came a beautiful older Japanese woman. She ran around the car and nearly collided with me.
She looked me in the eye. “You want to go to a buddhist meeting?”
I said yes.
Buddhism brought more meditation. Chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, studying the sutras and paying attention to my external reality was the first time in a long time I felt the knowing I felt as a child.
More cracks surfaced while working as an electric utility executive, then as an Intel Corporation manager. Authenticity’s voice got louder.
Then one day I realized I had enough of jobs. I had enough of compromising who I was to fit in…
Twelve years later, here I am. Tuned into my Broader Perspective. Seeing continual signs in my life experience that all people are gifted and glorious and reality creators.
Super human in other words.
Super heroes in Shyamalan’s words.
Abraham once told me in front of over a thousand others in the room: “There’s a reason you chose to come here as a human instead of a clump of dirt.”
We humans are special. We are above human, aka super human. This is what Shyamalan makes films about. This is what I write about. And that’s what resonated so deeply with me after watching Glass last night.
Shyamalan and I are of the same stream. Abraham once told me we humans are not so much individuals, separated from everything and everyone else, as we are a stream of consciousness composed of many others sharing our life experiences and we sharing theirs. I know this now. Which is why I usually refer to me as “we”.
What “we” are includes who others are.
I know this. Shyamalan knows this. In Glass, Shyamalan shares what we know. Go watch Glass. You may come to know too.
Everyone is born with unique talents. That includes you.
You also come with tendencies. Tendencies leaning toward expressing those talents. Feeling those tendencies then following them will change your life.
It is not possible to come to earth with no passions, skills, strengths or direction. Are you feeling like you have none of these? Are you bored about life? Feel stuck in a rut? The problem isn’t what you’re doing. It’s how you’re thinking.
You brought everything with you needed to live your greatest life ever. Living your greatest life ever includes consistent happiness.
Happiness is an emotion you conjure deliberately. When you don’t, it comes and goes.
Here’s the secret to living your greatest life ever: Be happy first. Then everything you want comes easily.
There’s a reason you feel bored or tired or sad or unfulfilled. It’s saying “How you are thinking right now needs to change if you want what you want.”
· · ·
Ask someone “what is the purpose of emotions?” You won’t get the answer you just got. Yet it is the key to everything you want.
Not many people know you can become happy in a few seconds no matter what is happening. Not knowing this, happiness is fleeting.
But happiness can be permanent. Learning to conjure happiness is all it takes.
“How do you conjure it?” you ask.
We’ll get to that. But first, let’s spend some time exploring why being happy first gets you all you want.
Happiness is the key to everything. It’s more than just an emotion. (photo: Artem Bali)
Happy matters…a lot
What if you had two options:
Option A:
Work your ass off. Struggle. Scramble to network and contact. Try to find people you need on your side. Then, some time later….through all kinds of trials and struggles…you make it. Whatever “it” is for you.
It’s a great story to tell. “War wounds” galore. Maybe your marriage failed along the way. Or you have a substance abuse problem. Or you developed an anxiety disorder in the process.
Sure you might be rich. But you might not be. And if you are, you might lose it. A lot of successful people fear losing their success.
That’s not being happy.
Option B:
Be happy first. Tap into your Broader Perspective so you can feel your tendencies. Then learn to follow them.
This way, happiness comes in two or three minutes instead of after you make it. At that point, you have what you want: you’re happy.
But it doesn’t end there.
The right people, the right timing, the right resources, the right events all happen with little effort on your part. Day after day, what you want starts happening.
You’re getting what you’re wanting. Struggle, stress and anxiety free.
Along the way, your connection to Broader Perspective grows. You lose fears, including the fear of death. Anxiety goes away. Worry does too. You realize you’re eternal. Life becomes fun. And happiness becomes permanent.
To us, the choice is clear. Option B happens exactly like this. Here’s why that is, and why happiness matters.
Photo: Hans Vivek
Happiness more than an emotion. It serves a critical purpose. It tells you when your life condition matches your Broader Perspective’s condition.
Your Broader Perspective is the you you are projecting yourself from, into this physical reality. You’re “here” on earth. But you’re also “there” in the timeless, spacious present we call the “moment of becoming“.
The moment you decide you want something, you have it in the spacious present. But you don’t get what you want in physical reality as quickly. Why? Because things happen slower here. That’s a good thing.
How many times have you said, for example, something like “I wish my boss would die, that bastard!” or “I wish I never married my husband!” or “I wish you were never born”?
It’s a good thing you don’t immediately get what you want.
Things don’t have to happen as slow as they do either. They can happen faster. What’s slowing them up? We’re going to tell you.
Photo: Frederik de Wit
You have Broader Perspective. It knows all potential outcomes. It knows All That Is. It knows everything you want. It has everything you want. It knows how you can have all you want.
What would that part of you feel? Wouldn’t it be happy, excited, free, joyful and fulfilled?
Your Broader Perspective is you. So is the you here on Earth. When you’re feeling happy, excited, free, joyful and fulfilled, you see the world the same way your Broader Perspective sees it. Seeing the world that way tunes you to your Broader Perspective.
When you’re in tune, you’re able to hear messages it’s sending you. Messages leading you to what you want.
That you can feel happiness (or not happy) is how you tell if you’re tuned to your Broader Perspective. When you’re happy, you’re in tune. When you’re not, you’re not in tune.
The less in tune you are, the less you can hear your messages. Life is harder when you can’t hear your messages. That’s why being happy first is so important. It tells you when the communication channel between you and you is open.
So happiness must be something you can conjure at will. Otherwise you couldn’t hear what you’re sending. It’s important because it tells you you and the broader you are in synch. When you’re in synch, you can hear the messages. Follow them and you get what you want.
Back to the question: “how do you conjure happiness”?
The answer is: by learning to think deliberately.
· · ·
How you think is important.
Yet hardly anyone teaches “how to think” in school or anywhere else.
You can learn how to think critically. Or how to think like an engineer. Or a lawyer. That instruction teaches how to be productive in a given field.
But hardly anyone is teaching how to think so you can be happyin life.
Here are practical steps on how to think.
Think your way to happiness
Photo: Aaron Huber
Usually people think happiness happens when something they want happens.
I get a new car. I’m happy!
I get a raise. I’m happy!
I had a great time last night. I was happy!
When I meet the guy of my dreams, I’ll be happy!
Happiness does happen that way. But only when people don’t know what you’re reading.
As we wrote above, happiness can be a permanent condition. It’s actually supposed to be that way. Meaning, it can happen in sucky situations too. It all depends on how you think. Not what is happening.
Let’s say you’re at work. You’re bored to death. Or maybe you didn’t get that promotion. Maybe you discovered you make less than your equally-skilled peers. Maybe you’re losing your job.
Your boredom, disappointment, anger or fear is not happiness. That means you’re not tuned into your Broader Perspective. You’re not deliberately thinking.
But you can be tuned in. And you can be happy now. How?
Think of something positive long enough until happiness shows up. It’s that simple.
So you’re in your office. Something’s happening. You feel negative.
Turn your attention to something that pleases you. The clothes you’re wearing, for example. Perhaps they are some of your favorite clothes. Think about how much you like those clothes. How well they fit, how good you look in them. Think about the compliment you got on the bus on the way to work.
It would go like this:
I really like how I look in this
I like how I feel in this
These clothes make me look (hot, professional, skinny, etc)
I look (hot, professional, skinny, etc)
I like looking (hot, professional, skinny, etc)
I like feeling (hot, professional, skinny, etc)
You could do this about a coworker or a person in your office you might have special feelings for. Think about how much you like that person. Think about how much you like talking with them, how they make you laugh maybe. Think specific thoughts about them like the ones above:
I’m so glad so-and-so is in my life
I’m eager to see how this might turn out
It was cool so-and-so said hi to me
I feel like I’m back in high school
It’s fun to have a crush!
Maybe you really like the way you have your office organized. Think about how much you like organization. Think about how good that feels to you. Think about how good it feels to you to turn a messy desk into an organized one. Think specific thoughts about it like the ones above:
I really like being organized
I like having everything in their place
It feels good to be organized
I feel best when my space is ordered
It’s nice to see clutter turn to order
Your thinking doesn’t have to be monumental. It only needs to trigger positive feelings. How and why this happens is too detailed for this piece. We’ll describe the mechanics another time.
Photo: Oleg Ivanov
While thinking these thoughts, pay attention to your feelings. First you feel boredom, disappointment, anger or fear. But as you think on purpose, you’ll feel different. It might be pleasure or mirth. It might be satisfaction. It might be relief. It might be self admiration. It may be pride. Or humor. Or love.
All these emotions tell you you’ve moved from boredom, disappointment, anger or fear, which is not happiness, to something closer to happiness.
These things you’re thinking about are in your current situation. If they weren’t, you couldn’t think about them. When thinking about them, you’re experiencing them. Even though they aren’t in your physical experience.
So turn your attention to them. Not whatever you’re experiencing. You mood will improve.
The moment you notice your mood improve, turn your thinking to that. Acknowledge what you just did. You changed how you’re feeling without changing your situation. Note how much better you’re feeling now. It feels better than you felt just a few moments ago. Congratulate yourself. Say, “Wow, in just a few seconds, I changed my experience from X (negative emotion) to Y (better feelings). That’s pretty neat!” Come up with five or six other thoughts:
This is new and exciting.
Hmm, I like how this feels
I like that I can do this.
I feel a whole lot better
Wow, now I’m feeling even better!
In a few thoughts, you’ll find yourself thinking different, but related, thoughts:
I wonder how far this can go?
Could it be this easy?
This is actually kind of fun!
As you stay on that track, you might feel or hear your thoughts change. Notice them change to other pleasing things. For example, you might find yourself thinking about the sex you had last night. Focus on that and you’ll find yourself feeling other….er…sensations :-).
Keep it up and your feelings will get increasingly positive. And yet, your conditions haven’t changed.
Practice with obvious things until you’re good at it. Then move to less obvious thought topics:
Think about how cool it is that you woke up today.
Or that your body functions mostly without your attention.
Or that you really like the color of your house.
Or that the sun comes up every day
Or that there is plenty of air to breathe
So now you changed your reality. You were feeling negative. Now you’re happy. You’ve also created a new physicalreality. Your positive emotions come with physical experiences. A smile on your face, a lighter disposition. You may even see the difference.
But there are changes happening you can’t see. Not at first. Your entire life experience is changing. It is tuning into experiences leading to what you’re wanting. Not just one of those things either. All of them.
In other words, you’re not doing this to feel good. You’re doing this to feel messages your broader perspective constantly sends you. This is where your impulses come in.
Photo: Tim Foster
As you gain more thinking skill something else happens: You get an impulse to do something. It will be subtle. It will be more feeling than words. It might feel like “go to the bathroom”, for example.
Let’s say that’s it. You get the sense to go to the bathroom. You may not have the biological urge to go. So it may make no logical sense. But when you get it, go.
When you do, you might bump into the person you were thinking about. Or you might get a text from your partner. Or a call from someone you’ve been wanting to hear from. You might run into a co-worker who says, “I was just thinking about you.” and offer you something unexpected and surprising.
When that happens, you’ve gotten exactly what we described in the beginning of this post: Things happening with little effort on your part. The only action you took was following your impulse to go to the bathroom.
This is Option B brought to life.
· · ·
You want to practice this until you do it automatically. In the same way you think now. Look at your thoughts. They probably come and go on their own. That’s practiced. You’re not thinking on purpose.
That can change.
The more you practice, the more you’ll get “hunches” or “impulses”. Of course, as you practice, you’ll get what look like false impulses. You’ll take action and it will seem nothing beneficial happened. These are actually true. Something beneficial did happen.
For example, say you went to the bathroom and nothing happened. But something did happen. Feel, then act. Notice how you’re feeling and thinking. You might be thinking “this was dumb”, or “I look like an idiot”.
Those thoughts are telling you something. They are saying “you think what people think about you is more important than getting what you want”. Why else would you care about how you look? Embarrassment is an emotion triggered by this belief. If you’re feeling embarrassment or stupid, you’ve cut off communication between you and you.
Now hear this: You wouldn’t have known this thought is keeping you from hearing your messages if “nothing happened”, right? So somethinghappened:you got clear about something you needed to know to get what you want.
When you feel an impulse after tuning into Broader Perspective, either:
A. Take action immediately. Go talk to that person, go to the bathroom, take a nap or whatever. Then see what happens. If something happens that feels like nothing, refer to this post about “false” results.
B. Wait. Take no action until the feeling to act is so persistent you must follow it. THEN act as in point A above.
At first, you might have a hard time feeling impulses. Getting used to telling the difference between an impulse and a random thought takes practice.
Mindfulness, i.e. paying attention will allow permanent happiness. (Photo: Lesly Juarez)
Can you see how this practice turns your life into an amazing adventure? At first, you’ll get a lot of “false” results. But those “false” results aren’t false. Again we describe that paradox here.
Keep going and life fills in with subjects and interests and people matching your passions, skills, strengths and desires. You’re now following your tendencies and they are leading you to all you’re wanting.
But…
Doing this process once or twice it’s not enough. You’ll feel good for a moment. But your old habit (automatic thinking) will return. This is why people who try these things end up failing. They don’t apply themselves enough.
Want to get everything you want and live happily ever after? Repeat these steps over and over. For how long? Until thinking this way is as natural as the way you think now.
Then you’ll become your Broader Perspective. Then you have it all, including lasting happiness.
Trusting your intuition promises an extraordinary life.
That’s because your intuition knows how to lead you effortlessly to everything you’re wanting. When your intuition delivers what you’re wanting, everyone else gets what they’re wanting too.
In this post, we’re going to describe how to develop trust in your intuition, so you too can get everything you want. And be extraordinarily happy in the process. We’ll do that by telling the true story of how Perry got an open relationship in his marriage. Even though his wife didn’t want one. At first.
Perry got this (and a happy marriage) by trusting his intuition. Not by sneaking around, or trying to have a direct conversation with his wife about what he wanted.
Everything you’re wanting, everyone else wants too. Because when you get what you want, so does everyone else. That is, if you let your intuition give it to you, instead of trying to do it yourself.
Trust: It’s Built On Proof Of Trustworthiness
Someone we respected at the time had smart words about whether a person is worthy of your trust.
“Trust is consistent performance over time,” they said. Meaning, a person’s behavior over time demonstrates their trustworthiness. Not their say-so or their promises.
Same is true with your intuition. If you let it, your intuition will prove its trustworthiness over time. As your trust increases, your intuition’s demonstrations grow more dependable and noteworthy.
Before long, you’re living an extraordinary life.
Having trust is crucial. Trust comes from proof your intuition is trustworthy.
Having trust is crucial. Whether you trust it or not, your intuition is accurate 100 percent of the time. That means whatever you’re wanting, your intuition knows how you can have it. And it can lead you to it.
Making your dreams happen without your intuition’s help is hard. And no fun. It takes longer and you sacrifice more. When making dreams happen you miss out on wonderful synchronicities. Synchronicities allowing you to get what you want while allowing others what they want.
That’s the delightful path. The other path makes you bitter, frustrated and defensive about any success you’ve eeked out.
Learning to trust is a never-ending, always evolving and a “getting better all the time” process. The more you trust your intuition, the more consistent evidence you receive. Before long, results you produce are obvious and consistent. It becomes difficult to remember a time when you didn’t trust it.
When you are wishy-washy about how your intuition works, you get wishy-washy results. Let’s say you think or believe intuition is at best random and or at worst some kind of force acting against you. In that case, you’re going to get results consistent with those beliefs.
Science and other well-meaning perspectives at best caution following intuiton. Harvard Business Review, for example, puts it plain: Don’t Trust Your Gut. “Intuition is a fickle and undependable guide—it is as likely to lead to disaster as to success.” the article cautions. On the other hand, the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests it’s more complicated than that. WEF says intuition can be trusted, but works better when balanced with understanding how it works.
The problem is, both organizations, and science in general, say intuition is a brain mechanism. In defining it that way, they have missed the mark. Intuition comes from beyond the brain. By calming brain activity, through meditation for example, one discovers a deeper source of knowledge and awareness, one that can be trusted: One’s broader perspective.
Broader perspective is intuition. It is reliable, but you have to learn how to hear it. And, it functions in a particular way. Through it you create reality. If you believe your intuition is a random voice in your head, it will give you guidance consistent with that.
Intuition fulfills what you believe.
(Photo: Rohan Makhecha)
So how do you develop trust in your intuition? Become sensitive enough to tell the difference between it and not it. Then follow its guidance. Generally, you become sensitive by testing.
But here’s the thing: you can’t test and be invested in the outcome. Especially if your investment is contrary to what you’re wanting.
· · ·
Let’s say you want a million dollars, but you don’t believe you can get a million dollars. Your intuition is going to lead you to what you believe: not getting the money.
So start with things you don’t have an investment in. Start with something simple. Something you believe you can have. A choice parking spot or meeting a friend “coincidentally” for example. These are light, fun outcomes to start with.
Unless you think those things are “just coincidence”. If that’s you, you have to start with a different test. Something not tainted by your I-already-know-this awareness.
Your intuition delivers. Every time. But it only delivers what you believe. (Photo: Nick Karvounis)
No matter what you use to test your intuition, early on, some outcomes will always be “false”. But even “false” outcomes are teaching moments. So they’re actually “true”. It’s important you understand this.
For example, you might treat the process too seriously. Making it a serious process creates too much resistance. Your intuition is sending you spot-on guidance. But you can’t receive it because, in your seriousness, you’re blocking the receiving. How that works is explainable but would make this already long piece longer. Just know one reason for a “false” outcome could be you’re being too serious about the results.
Being too serious leads to confusing results. Especially if you aren’t aware of what’s happening. You’ll get results. But they will be “false”. So you’ll think the process isn’t working. But these results show the process working. They’re trying tell you: you’re doing something that’s blocking getting what you want.
“False” results also allow you to see old beliefs that are contrary to what you want. “Intuition is BS” or “Is this coincidence?”, or “I can’t do this” are examples of such beliefs. Recognizing these thoughts and beliefs are part of the trust-development path. How can you do something about them, if you’re unaware of them?
So every result you get is “positive”. It leads you to the result you’re wanting, or, it’s highlights something preventing results you want. Can you see how “false” results would then be “true” even though they are “false”?
Recapping: trusting intuition requires knowing what you want. It requires knowing what you want is possible and being light about its arrival. Knowing “false” results are actually, not “false” is also crucial.
Letting Intuition Do The Work
Perry’s life stories show how he gets what he wants by following his intuition. We’ve recently shared stories of his wife doing the same.
We’ll continue sharing these stories because we know real life stories are better than theory. But your real life experience is an even better teacher. It’s easy to dismiss Perry’s experiences as coincidence. Or as a cool thing that happened to him. It’s another thing when it happens to you.
Photo: The Roaming Platypus
Even so, here’s how Perry’s trust in his intuition got him what he wanted. With little effort on his part.
This isn’t a process to get what you’re wanting at the expense of another person. No one on the planet is being “used” by another. It doesn’t work that way.
How it does work is, while you get what you’re wanting, others get what they’re wanting too. The world (and the All That Is) is large enough to give everyone what they’re wanting at the same time. Even if what you’re wanting is something another doesn’t.
Perry and Bridget have been together for five years now. Perry didn’t marry Bridget for the reasons most people do. He knew his path lies in being free to explore all relationships which come his way. We know, this doesn’t sit well for many people in today’s society. Especially in the US. Old erroneous beliefs about human life still shape many cultures. Questions of “ethics” “morality” and “propriety” dictate people’s perspective.
Perry knows one relationship can’t meet everything a person is wanting. Society’s encouragement of “death do us part” isn’t about a wholesome vow of love and commitment. It’s about insecure people trying to control other people’s behavior. So they feel less insecure. But that’s another story.
So we understand if you disagree with the “open marriage” part of this story. Think about it as “something someone wants, but is afraid to get it. If they did, someone dear to them would be angry if they got it”, ok?
Perry married his wife because he knew it was the best thing for his wife at the time. He knew giving that to his wife required putting some things on hold. He also knew exploring relationship alongside Bridget would bring “more” to him. Bridget would benefit too.
But when they tied the knot, they agreed their vows would not be “until death do us part”. Instead, their vows ended with “for now”. Meaning “let’s see how this goes day by day, with no real long-term commitment about anything.”
At first, Bridget wasn’t too excited about that.
Throughout these five years, many people have come into Perry’s life experience. Not all those potential relationships had to do with sex or intimacy. Many did though.
Perry didn’t act on these opportunities. He was too focused on his relationship, his projects and spiritual growth.
Bridget too was learning a lot too. She had a lot of disempowering beliefs. Beliefs that were operating under her conscious awareness. They were shaping her behavior and dictating her life experiences. Many of these beliefs did not make Bridget an ideal partner. A lot of them she inherited from her relatives and past relationships.
These realizations weren’t always eye-opening, positive and wonderful experiences. Many surfaced in ugly, angry fights. Fights over small things. Which became big things when these little things triggered her old beliefs.
Photo: Jason Wong
One day a new guy friend asked Perry about his marriage. He couldn’t understand how Perry could be transamorous and yet married to a woman who isn’t transgender. A lot of people don’t understand this.
Perry described his marriage, including the “for now” clause. He also shared his desire for an “open” kind of relationship. For now, he said, he was working with Bridget in a mutually beneficial relationship. One where Bridget’s desire for monogamy, born out of her personal insecurities, took priority.
His friend said “you should introduce Bridget to someone she might want to be with. That would allow her to open up to you doing the same.”
It was logical advice. But it felt like manipulation to Perry. And he was right. It’s what anyone who doesn’t trust their intuition would do: try to control circumstances to get what they want. Including living a double-life behind their partner’s back.
Perry is not like that. Instead, he let his intuition do the work. Not was it better than being sneaky or conniving, it was more fun. What happened over the next two years proved that.
· · ·
For reasons too many to go into, Bridget has been an insecure person most of her life. She learned to manage that insecurity by controlling other people and circumstances. Control to an extreme degree. Knowing this, Perry couldn’t have a rational, productive conversation about an open marriage. He brought it up a couple of times. But even in counseling it sparked a firestorm.
So, instead of talking about it, Perry acted as if he already had one.
Now hold up. It’s not what you think.
He thought about what it would be like having an open relationship. He even explained to others that he was in one. But he never behaved in a way contrary to his commitment to his wife.
He would, for example, tell people how free it was to be in an open relationship. He would add, that neither he nor Bridget actually acted on the freedom. They didn’t need to, he said. Just knowing that was available freed both of them from the pressure of monogamy. In being free, he said, they didn’t have to act.
Being free was the key.
In other words, Perry thought and related to others as if he already had what he wanted. He didn’t act on it. Even when he had opportunity to. Why? He was too busy with his life, his projects, his spiritual path. So there was no inconsistency between his behavior and his marriage in terms of intimate behavior. Just in his words and thoughts (beliefs).
That’s when interesting things started happening.
Providence aka Intuition, All That Is and the Universe Step In
Bridget already had at least one friend who was in a polyamorous relationship. But more people started showing up in her life in them too. Her new friend Claire was in a relationship with a guy who was unwilling to be monogamous. Claire struggled with the idea. And with insecurities she felt around her partner being with other women. She talked a lot about it with Bridget. In time, Claire started seeing other guys, as she became more comfortable with it. She actually started enjoying it!
Of course, all this she shared with Bridget as girlfriends are wont to do.
Then Bridget’s best friend started talking about being in an open relationship. We’ll call her Nancy.
Perry and Nancy had a private conversation about all this one day. Nancy knew Perry was producing remarkable results in his life. Including changes in his relationship with Bridget. Changes that were causing Bridget to change too, which Nancy noticed and appreciated.
So she wanted some advice.
Nancy is married. Like a lot of marriages, Nancy’s marriage is touch and go. Sometimes when one of the two wants to touch, the other wants to go! Neither Nancy or her husband thought they were getting what they wanted. Like Bridget, both were insecure. Their marriage reflected all that insecurity. It was not satisfying for either party.
After talking with Perry, Nancy began her own positively focused lifestyle. This changed her. With the changes, her husband became more insecure. Long story short, Nancy and her husband eventually opened their marriage. Turned out her husband already was seeing someone else.
Today, they’re still sorting out the details. Both are dating other people. Nancy dates a few men, finding great satisfaction and empowerment in that.
Witnessing her friends’ experiences effected Bridget’s insecurities and fears. As friends shared their enjoyment, her fears and insecurities started going away.
Meanwhile, Perry reconnected with an old flame, who is transgender. This person agreed to do a photo shoot with Perry. There was nothing inappropriate going on between Perry and this person. But the energy between them was obvious.
Perry told Bridget about this person, including showing Bridget a picture of her. Bridget said she was beautiful. There was not an ounce of insecurity in her voice or demeanor.
Perry noticed this. But said nothing about it.
In the past, Bridget would have given Perry the third degree about the photo shoot meeting. She’d joke (not so jokingly) about his “date”. Or she would tease him (with a tinge of sarcasm) about his “new girlfriend” he would be “spending the day with.” But this time, she was easy about his plans.
No sarcasm. No jokes.
Was Perry surprised by these changes? Nope. He knew his broader perspective was orchestrating events not only in Bridget’s life. But also the lives of her friends’ and their relationships. Everyone was getting what they want. Including Perry.
Life will surprise and delight you. If you let it. (Photo: Andre Guerra)
Four months later, Perry scheduled a meeting with this transgender person about another photo shoot. Bridget knew about the meeting.
The day of the meeting, as Perry was getting ready to go, Bridget walked up to him.
“Have a great time,” she said. She meant it too. “Feel free to do whatever pleases you dear. I love you.”
What she meant was, Perry was free to have an intimate experience with his friend, if that’s what he wanted to do. In other words, Perry and Bridget had just walked into an open relationship.
Of course, Perry felt this coming. He saw the signs leading up to it. Bridget’s friend, her neighbor, her best friend’s experiences eased Bridget’s concerns. So Perry didn’t have to have some tense, uncomfortable conversation. Instead, he found himself one day in exactly what he wanted with a loving and supportive partner to boot.
Since then, Bridget has made extraordinary progress in her own positively focused lifestyle. She’s turning into a different person than who Perry first met. Perry has too. So has Nancy. Bridget has even explored with her own dalliance. With Perry’s blessings.
When you learn to trust and follow your intuition, not only does your life benefit. So do the lives of those around you. You get what you want, with little effort on your part. All this is available when you are positively focused.
How To Let Your Intuition Convince You
Perry has been doing this positively focused lifestyle for a while. Starting to learn to trust your intuition? Don’t start with opening your relationship.
Start with small things.
Before Perry’s story we were talking about “false” outcomes being as important as “true” results. Both offer valuable insights. What insights do “true” results offer? Clues showing you how intuition works so you can trust it.
Let’s say you’re using your intuition to guide you to a parking spot. You lightly set your intention. When you get where you’re going, you envision an open parking spot near your destination will be waiting.
Then you get ready to go. You’re positively focused, paying attention to all the great things about your life. Maybe you’ve practiced this process for several weeks. So you’re in a really good mood, and have been for a while.
So when you arrive, not only is there a parking spot. You have “rock star” parking: the parking space right in front of the store. Elation!
It works!
What proof! You recognize the co-incidence of your intent and the realization of it.
Or…
You arrive and you don’t get a space. It’s crowded and it takes you a while to park.
Either way, what happens next is important.
You want to note what happened. You also want to note how you felt through the process. Get your journal ready and answer these questions:
How was I feeling right before I acted? Positive? Ornery? Frustrated? Calm?
Did I feel anything about my intention? Optimistic? Eager? Positive? Or doubtful, worried, silly, embarrassed or disbelieving?
Did I get any kind of confirmation that I would fulfill this intention? Was there a shiver in the spine or goosebumps at any point along the way?
How was the “intensity” of the confirmation (if one was received)? Was it light and passing? Or was it a feeling that wouldn’t end? Did it (the intensity) remain steady? Or did it increase over time?
If I did receive confirmation, was there a difference in how it felt? For example, was it more a feeling and less of “words in my head” or vice versa?
Where was the feeling? Was it “high” in my head? Or was it “deep” in my head? Or was it in my stomach? Or was it all over?
With these questions, you can start pinpointing what the process feels like along the way. With practice, you learn the language your intuition speaks.
What if you’re experiencing negative emotion like frustration?
Frustration, disbelief, or any other negative emotions are positive. They tell you there are beliefs you hold working against you. If you didn’t feel them, how would you know you had such beliefs?
So negative emotions aren’t what people think they are. In every case, they are helpful. They tell you whether you’re 100 percent on track with your intention. Or not.
So when you feel a negative emotion, you want to examine your beliefs. There will be a thought in your head expressing the belief. “This is all bullshit” is a thought telling you you have a belief that goes “this doesn’t work” or “I don’t believe this”. It sometimes is accompanied by anger, indignation, feeling critical, impatient, belligerent, or judgmental.
Embarrassment or shame is something a person might feel when trying something for the first time. Embarrassment shows you believe other people’s opinions about what you’re doing are more important than getting what you want.
When you identify the belief, write it down.
Then use this process to soothe that belief over time. Your beliefs determine what you get. So negative emotion is a gift: it points to beliefs preventing you from getting what you want. Remember, intuition leads you to what you believe. Not what you want.
Let’s say you didn’t get the parking spot, and you don’t have a negative feeling. The “false” result offers insight to other potential sticking points. One may be something you’re doing (or not doing) that the “false” outcome is pointing to.
As we said before, you might be too invested in the outcome. You might be putting forth too much effort (action). Or, you might not have refined your intuitional listening.
For example, in a particular exercise Perry is doing these days, he gets four choices. Only one of them is “true”. The exercise helps refine his intuitional listening. Here’s a picture of the exercise platform with one of his test outcomes.
Sometimes, during this game, he will feel two communications offering two different choices simultaneously. Sometimes both are “true”. One being “true” now…the next being “true” in the next trial. Here intuition is sending answers to two different trials.* It feels like mixed messages. But it’s actually two messages delivered at the same time.
Your intuition operates outside of time and space. It’s sending you information all the time. Your job is learn to cull what you’re wanting from the constant information stream.
Humans are used to linear time. Learning to trust intuition means unlearning one’s familiarity with that. And the idea that everything happens in a single file, one-moment-after-another process.
“False” outcomes also help ease your focuse on results, causing you to enjoy the journey more. The outcome is not the goal: the connection to your inner knowing is. That’s the goal. Not the outcome.
(We needed to repeat that because it’s really, really important).
Relaxing into the journey is the goal. Not the outcome.
The cool thing is, when you’re focused on the real goal, the happy side effects (“true” results) come easily. And delightfully.
Like Perry’s open relationship.
Get good at hearing your intuition. Master focusing on the connection between you and you, which is the “true” result you’re wanting. Then more and more evidence, i.e. “true” outcomes, will pile up.
One day you’ll realize you are trusting your intuition. Because evidence in your life experience is so plentiful you can’t help but trust. Then you’re on your way.
*You can download and play this game yourself here.
Bonus content:
This is Perry. I’ve received A ton of amazing insight since my Inner Being and I wrote this post, over a year ago. Continue this journey with me. Read my newest post, published yesterday,which offers a great follow up.
A key habit leading to all someone could possibly want, aka a dream life, aka all one could love, is the ability to hear, then immediately follow one’s intuition.
Develop this habit. You will, without fail, live an effortless life.
Intuition gets a bad rap. That’s because you usually can’t distinguish it from random voices born of sloppy thinking.
Given too much attention these voices mask one’s “still quiet voice”. One’s unerring intuition.
Intuition is unerring.
It always leads you to what you’re wanting.
A example from Perry’s life some time ago illustrates.
· · ·
One day Perry wanted to meet people eligible for a project. He wanted to meet positive, conversational, open and kind people. People unafraid of talk with strangers.
That’s how much he prepared. He thought casually about who he wanted to meet, then let the thoughts go. His daily habit framework practice of tuning into his intuition already produced enough evidence indicating trust in the process works. Results he wanted already happened in the timeless, spaceless “moment of becoming”.
Now it was time to rendezvous with his desire.
One morning, after documenting dreams for later examination, he prepped for a trip to the optometrist. Be broke his glasses a few days ago. They needed fixing.
The broken glasses that began the journey (Photo: Perry)
Perry’s intuition first told him to go straight to the place he bought his glasses. It is about seven miles away. He had success with repairs before there. As he was about to leave, he got another intuitive message. It said go to this eyeglass place near his house.
Your intuition will rarely give you straight-line instructions. Leading you directly to what you want is never fun. A meandering path is more fun. That’s because on the way to what you’re wanting, your intuition shows you things you’ve forgotten you asked for. There are a lot of those things.
Often a person thinks their intuition errs when they follow it and don’t get what they want. Two things are happening when that happens. One, the person isn’t aware they are getting more than just the thing they want. So they think the journey’s a waste. Second, the lack of awareness causes them to quit too soon. They don’t follow their intuitional cues far enough. So they don’t get to the “big surprise” that is receiving what they want.
Perry knows following his cues to the end is key.
How do you know when you’ve gotten to the end? If you haven’t gotten what you want, you aren’t there.
· · ·
Other people’s desires and opportunities are part of the mix too. You are co-creating physical reality with everything else in it. Perry knows this too.
So it was no surprise when, the very next moment after receiving an intuition to go to the shop nearby, his wife said, “Aren’t you going to go to [the eyeglass] shop right by our house before you drive all that way to [the other repair shop]?”
Perry took what his wife was saying as confirmation of his intuition’s instructions. He drove to the nearby shop.
It was closed.
Perry took a picture to send to his wife. Often Bridget will make a suggestion that is not very helpful. She means well. But she also harbors a belief that people need her. She gets a lot of self-worth from that belief.
The problem is, often she acts from that belief, giving suggestions that are unhelpful. She’d be better off letting people figure things out on their own. The people would be better off too.
Next, Perry drove across town. That place was open. On the way traffic was nonexistent, which is unusual for the time of day on a weekday.
Unbeknownst to humans (and rarely acknowledged by even those “new age” believers) a delay such as the one Perry took to go to the nearby shop is purposeful. Delays sometimes allow circumstances to line up in optimally-fulfilling ways.
Everyone’s intuition operates the same. It’s another reason people mistake intuition as being wrong: they’re expecting straight-line-to-results and that is never the case.
Perry didn’t consciously acknowledge this. But had the delay, and what happened next not happened, the rest of the day would not have happened the way it had.
He enjoyed the drive across town. It was a hot summer mid-day, free of rush-hour traffic. Driving with the sunroof open and the windows down contributed to Perry’s already joyful mood.
When he arrived at the repair shop, Perry got “rock star parking”: directly in front of the shop’s front door. It was the only parking spot open on the busy street.
He went inside and played around while waiting for his turn. A pretty, effusively-happy, and helpful blonde greeted him. Their pleasant exchange was one more indicator of the day Perry was having.
After examining Perry’s broken glasses, the woman told him she thought they could be fixed. Perry was happy to hear that. But then, the other person behind the counter said Perry had a special kind of glasses. He would need to go through the shop where he bought them to have them fixed.
Perry mentioned the name of the shop that sold him his glasses. The blonde woman look up the closest branch. It was in a popular part of town. Not that far in fact.
But just far enough to enjoy another sunlit drive.
Photo: Justin Luebke
In no hurry, Perry arrived and the desk person welcomed him. Perry, feeling equally warm, explained his day so far. Then showed the person his glasses. The desk person examined his glasses. Then told Perry he would contact him the next day.
After that, Perry decided to head to a coffee shop. He loves working out of the house. Two were nearby. For a moment, he thought through his options. Then felt for what his intuition wanted him to do.
He drove to that coffee shop. Parked, went inside and ordered a specialty drink, which the barista prepared expertly. It cost $4.
When he turned to find a place to sit, a woman looked up just as he looked her way. They locked eyes and she smiled at each other.
“I’m going to sit next to you because of that great smile you gave me,” Perry said boldly. It was exactly the thing to say, offered by his intuition.
The woman welcomed him over.
“I love talking to strangers,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to pick you up or anything.”
At that, the woman launched into a lengthy explanation. She described how few people are willing to make eye contact or even smile to strangers anymore.
“So I make a point of doing that,” She said. “It’s fun talking with people.”
Now here’s what we wrote at the beginning of this story:
…Perry wanted to meet … positive, conversational, open and kind people. People unafraid of talk with strangers.
Perry and this person, whose name is Joy (we’re not making that up!), had a long wonderful conversation about a number of things. As they were talking, another woman sat down next to Perry and settled in.
This person, Suzanne, soon joined the conversation. Turned out Suzanne was new to town. Both Suzanne and Joy were looking for new career opportunities. Exactly the kind of people Perry wanted to meet.
Could it be more obvious how this day unfolded?
Perry set up 1:1 appointments with both women.
But that’s not the end of the story.
As Perry later left the coffee shop and arrived at his car, four one-dollar bills blew into his feet. Four dollars: exactly how much his drink cost.
How’s that for evidence the world is on your side?
This is not an uncommon day for Perry. Life is supposed to be like this for everyone. All that is necessary is a practice which reduces stories having you believe such experiences are random, coincident events, or that they can’t happen as a consistent feature of your life.
In time evidence big and small will be so plentiful proving to you the universe is friendly to your desires and wants you to fulfill them, you’ll start seeing the world different too.
Leverage that comes from your broader perspective makes living sweet.
When someone discovers how invincible they are, it’s impossible to live any other way. And, there’s no ceiling limiting how great life can get.
By leverage we mean having life do things for you, instead of you having to do it all yourself.
That doesn’t mean sitting in bed thinking positive thoughts will bring everything to you. You’re in a physical reality.
You have to do things.
It does mean lightly indicating what you’re wanting. Then watching as life puts the pieces together. At the right time along the way, you get an impulse to act. Following that impulse is your “doing”. Your doing doesn’t make anything happen. It’s all happened already.
Your “doing” puts you in the perfect place, in time and space to receive what you’re wanting.
Summarizing: figure out what you want. Life will coordinate circumstances. When they’re ready, life will tell you to act. Your acting doesn’t make it happen. The impulse to act is an invitation. It’s saying: “do this now”. Your action puts you in the right place at the right time. There, you receive what you want.
Life always works this way for everyone. So why doesn’t it look that way for everyone? Why doen’t it occur that way for everyone?
Three reasons:
Hardly anyone realizes they have broader perspective.
Hardly anyone does what they need to to see life through that.
Too many people try to make what they want happen, instead of letting life do it.
Photo: Cristian Newman
So what is this “broader perspective”?
“Human” is a projection. It’s an experience you are projecting into yourself. The experience is the best way to know what and who you are. That’s why you’re experiencing this experience.
Everything in your experience is also your projection. You perceive into existence other people, circumstances, even your body. Existence looks like an “objective reality”. So much so, you think it’s separate from you. That’s because you organize your physical senses too. That way they experience the projection as objective, separate reality.
Your senses can’t see the projection any other way.
Your senses are part of the projection.
“Behind” your physical senses, you have another set of “senses”. These are not constrained like your physical senses. Yet, they correspond with them. You see, hear, smell, taste, touch through these “nonphysical” senses. The same way you do with physical ones.
Seeing life through these senses, is “broader perspective”.
The more you see life through them, the more curious you get. You start understanding how much creative control you have.
Ever had a dream feel real as f*ck? How could it have “felt” real, if you didn’t have senses capable of perceiving in that nonphysical place? Dreams are not hallucinations. They’re as real as you and us.
Science claims dreams are “all in the head”. Science is a big stumbling block. It prevents people from having real leverage.
Science is real though. It has validity and purpose. But science is in no way the final arbiter of what is “real” and “not real”. And, nonphysical reality informs science like it does with everything else in physical reality.
If it weren’t for nonphysical reality, there would be no physical reality. And no science.
A person deciding for themselves what is real and not real finds they are the final arbiter. And of course they are. They are the ones doing the projecting.
· · ·
A projector has to have a place to stand and also something on which to project. It has to have something to project too.
You “stand” in the spacious now. The spacious now is outside time and space. It is not bound by what science calls “the laws of physics”.
Neither are you, by the way. Your body is. You’re not.
Your body is part of the projection. You are broader perspective.
We also call the spacious present “nonphysical” reality. Nonphysical reality is “where” you, the projector stands.
You are also the projector screen. So all that you experience is “inside you”. That’s why you can perceive it. There is a lot “outside” you too, out there in nonphysical reality. But it is irrelevant to you, until you expand yourself enough so that it becomes you. And thus relevant.
So you’re the projector and you’re also the projector screen. What is it you are projecting? Everything that you are. Primarily you are projecting a consistent stream of values comprising your essence. You fulfilled some. Others are in the process. Many more your birth nearly every moment.
Everything that is you is being projected by you out into your real life. It is being projected into you and perceived through physical senses you organized. That way it looks separate from you. That way you can observe it “objectively”.
Until you’re done doing that.
All this is happening so you can become more self-aware.
Realizing this is also “broader perspective”. It is one of many insights that come with seeing your life extraordinarily. When you realize your broader perspective, insights like this come naturally. These insights aren’t available when you don’t have broader perspective.
The broader perspective you have, the more clearly you perceive your projection. The more of your projection you perceive, the greater understanding you have.
Understanding of what? Everything.
Put differently: the less you know about what you’re doing in this thing called life, the more “ordinary” life looks.
Joy, ecstasy, wonder, freedom, invincibility result from living from broader perspective.
Life is extraordinary.
It feels that way when you “see” differently.
“Broader perspective” lets you see “all” that you are. But it’s limited by what you’re capable of realizing. The more you live your life from this perspective though, the more capable you become.
This has immense practical benefit.
So much so, it’s a wonder so few live this way. Broader perspective’s leverage is so great, it looks magical.
But it’s not. We call this leverage.
It’s how life is for one who gets it.
Take Perry’s recent experience.
· · ·
Now, Perry has been at this for many years. He is getting better and better seeing life through his broader perspective. So he sees more examples of extraordinary happening, nearly every moment.
Everything is possible in and through your broader perspective.
Perry’s ambitions reflect that statement.
One of Perry’s ambitions is evolving capitalism out of existence. He has realized better system for resource management and distribution. He knows it’s possible because he’s seen it.
So he focuses his energies in this direction.
One way this energy focus shows up is hiring talent through the “gig economy”. Perry met a wonderful animation team on an online gig economy match-making service. This team already created two animated videos describing Perry’s economic idea. He has plans for ten more videos. Perry wants this same team to create the other eight.
Like many online services, this gig economy match-making service takes a part of the sales that happen on its website. They also discourage members from offering and accepting payments “off community.”
Paying someone else for brokering an initial transaction is great. But when you’re planning to buy a lot more, that transaction fee can add up. Especially at $1500 a video on average.
So one day this Spring, while contemplating his animated video library, Perry got an idea.
“It would be great,” It said. “If I could work with this team directly rather than through this community. I’d save all those fees on the next 10 videos.”
“And,” The thought continued. “Since I’m wanting to do so many, maybe the team would give me a volume discount!”
Perry loved this idea. It came and went in a flash. Three minutes tops. He felt good thinking it. He didn’t think it was impossible. But he knew the community discouraged this. So, instead of taking action, he sat with it.
Fast forward to October. Perry’s ramping up the next videos, preparing the scripts. One day he gets the impulse to send a message to this team via the community. Here’s the conversation that happened:
Perry had no idea what the guy was going to send via email. But Perry sent his email address. The next day the following conversation happened via email:
Of course this was a great turn out. But notice what happened here. Perry didn’t have to do anything to get what he wanted. Life coordinated it all for him. Then sent an impulse when it was all ready.
This is leverage.
It is available to everyone.
· · ·
If you dismiss this as “coincidence” you’re doing yourself a disservice. Dismissing it as coincidence denies (for you) your broader perspective. In denying your broader perspective, you obscure your perception. You relegate yourself to having to make it all happen.
That sucks.
We want to write “you cut yourself off from your broader perspective”, but that can’t happen. Your broader perspective is you. You can’t cut “you” off.
But you can create a reality wherein you do not perceive your broader perspective as real. That’s what you do when you dismiss such events as “coincidence” or “random chance”, or “confirmation bias”. When you do dismiss them, you get a life experience reflecting your dismissals. In other words, life looks comprised of events that seem random or chance or coincidence. Not within your control.
But it’s all in your control. The moment you adopt your broader perspective.
Like Perry.
And remember: there is no upper limit on anything about this.
Life can be, a continual, moment-by-moment experience of getting everything you want.
Perry is getting there. He has done this work for a long time. Today he is seeing events like this happening all over. But he’s wanting to get to the point where he’s seeing them continuously.
He’s close.
Photo: Gaetan-Meyer
Anything you can think of wanting you can have. You are creating your life experience. That’s the purpose of it. To realize how much say you have.
There is only one relationship giving you everything you want. The relationship between your ordinary conscious experience and your broader perspective. Attend to that. Everything else is attended to for you.
Gradually realizing that you are invincible is intoxicating. Realizing you can have anything you want is intoxicating. Realizing you can be anything, or do anything frees you from limitation.
But when you do do whatever you want, when you do get what you want, and when you become what you want….that just can’t be described in words.
It’s easy sometimes to get frustrated in a marriage or partnership.
Relationships can also be a perfect blend of constant wonder and delight.
Which one you get –– frustration or wonder and delight –– depends on your perception.
Often, disagreements and frustration, for both parties, happen when one person tries to control the other’s behavior. In most cases “trying to control” is not an intentional, malicious act. The person doesn’t want to control the other. They just want to be happy.
Controlling behavior happens when a person feels insecure. They tries to soothe the insecurity through controlling their partner’s actions. Inadequacy, feeling out of control, insecure, shame, embarrassment, or righteous indignation can all trigger “controlling” behavior.
The person tries to control conditions they think are causing the feeling. “Conditions” usually mean their partner.
The problem is conditions aren’t triggering the emotions. Their beliefs about the conditions are.
You’ll notice when a controlling person succeeds, they aren’t happy for long. The controlled person isn’t either. So controlling spawns future dissatisfaction leading to…you guessed it: more need to control.
It’s a vicious cycle. A cycle that leaves people feeling alone. Even in relationship.
A negative vicious cycle spirals out of control in some relationships. Leaving people feeling alone. Even though they’re not. (photo: Thought Catalog)
Trying to control another person’s behavior so you feel better backfires sooner or later. Sometimes a lot sooner.
People aren’t stupid. They can tell when a person is trying to control them.
Put more accurately, every human knows they came to express inherent freedoms. No one wants someone telling them what to do.
Including children.
Including very young children.
But especially grown mature, aware people.
· · ·
The easiest way to get what you want in relationship is to let your spouse do whatever they are wanting. Observing that, be happy with the fact that they’re doing that instead of what you want.
Even better: want to get what you’re wanting from your spouse? Then change what you’re wanting to what your spouse is already doing.
Voila! You’re now getting what you’re wanting.
We can hear the eye-rolls….
But there is wisdom here.
Change what you want from your partner to wanting what your partner is already doing. You will find peace. You’ll stop controlling. Your partner gets to do what they want. Everyone gets happy.
Can you say you feel good when you’re controlling your partner against their will?
We thought not.
Photo: Obayda
The problem is your perception, not the conditions. A long-term practice learning to seeing your partner’s positive aspects can transform them. It can recreate your partner without your partner changing.
An example from Perry’s marriage is apt:
One day, Perry’s wife, Bridget, began practicing meditation. She meditated before, but it was sporadic and thus not very effective. After witnessing Perry’s results, Bridget began meditating in earnest.
She supplemented her practice with other approaches. The combination revealed how easy it is to get what she wants. Especially doesn’t try to get anything.
Getting what she wanted required letting go of controlling her husband. Six months passed with the task undone. Yet Bridget had to experience conditions she wanted to control as perfect. With no regard for changing him or the situation.
Some days later, after consistent practice, Bridget found herself more relaxed. Then, one day, she got an intuition that the task she’s wanting Perry to do was about to resolve in a delightful way. Her intuition encouraged her to prepare to be surprised…
Around the same time, Perry, received his own impulse: it said “now is about the time to do (the task)”.
Perry knows that, before taking any action on an impulse, it’s best to let it grow to where it is impossible to ignore. So he allowed this impulse to sit in his awareness with nothing more than a casual acknowledgement of it.
Days passed. Then a week.
During that time Bridget received more impulses. They excited her. Later she told Perry she wanted to tell him what was happening, but knew if she did, she’d muck up the process. So she kept it all to herself.
Meanwhile, Perry kept receiving more and more impulses.
Until one day, Perry felt overcome with wanting to do this task.
He told Bridget he was going to do it the next day.
Bridget, as you can imagine, delighted to hear this. What made that it extra sweet was she knew it was going to happen and her excitement was building the whole time.
· · ·
These days, such things happen often in Perry and Bridget’s relationship. It’s no surprise the two of them continue to practice the work. The evidence for them is overwhelming.
The work works.
Now there’s nothing wrong with getting excited about outcomes like this. Realize this kind of thing happens all the time and the excitement gives way to expectation. Expectation is the sweet spot. It prepares perception to perceive and appreciate more such events.
For Bridget, it was a profound demonstration. It showed she can create any reality. Including one in which she can influence her partner’s behavior!
life will surprise and delight you. If you let it. (Photo: Andre Guerra)
Everyone has this ability.
It is as natural as breathing. Everyone brings it with them when they come into physical reality.
Exercising this natural ability requires gradually releasing beliefs obscuring this ability. There’s great freedom in exercising it. You can let everyone else in your life off the hook for what happens in your life.
Instead, you can watch everything you’re wanting come into your experience. Not from action. But from your subtle attention to what you’re wanting. A positive outlook and expecting that everything is always working out for you helps too.
So here are the steps to getting what you want out of your spouse (or anyone):
Photo: Sharon Mccutcheon
First discover your own autonomy.
Learn to identify then soothe beliefs that spawn controlling behavior.
You do that by examining your belief constellations. Or by creating new, more empowering ones that will replace your old ones.
Meditation, therapy, bibliotherapy and journaling are all effective was of examining beliefs. Another way: Pay attention to your negative feelings. They always lead you back to a flawed premise or belief.
Family dinners for many are less about food and more about sharing love. But other people just don’t get it. And they don’t have to. (Photo: Pablo Merchan Montes)
Let’s say your family always dined together at the dinner table. You gained a lot from that experience. Now as an adult, your partner prefers eating while watching tv. Or he or she prefers a quick bite over formal dinner.
Let’s say your family always dined together at the dinner table. You gained a lot from that experience. Now as an adult, your partner prefers eating while watching tv. Or he or she prefers a quick bite over formal dinner.
It annoys you when he or she declines your offer to a formal dinner every night. As a result you feel negative emotion –– insecurity, frustration, sadness, wistful. So you get angry. Where’s that coming from? A well-practiced belief. Some possible examples:
“My partner doesn’t love me”
“I married a selfish person”
“I can never get what I want”
“There’s no love here”
But you aren’t aware of the belief. You just know you’re mad. Then you say something you usually wouldn’t, hoping your partner will give you what you’re wanting.
Notice the beliefs don’t describe your partner or your relationship. They describe what you’re thinking about your partner or your relationship.
Rather than reacting from your anger. Look at the feeling.
Ask yourself: “Why it is important for me to repeat that experience as an adult?”
Then ask, “Why am I trying to cajole that experience out of someone who doesn’t share my past experience?”
Have a journal handy to help you probe the answer.
Your partner isn’t there to recreate your past family dynamics. Your partner is there to enjoy his life. Like you. Berating or shaming your partner to do something they don’t want to never works. You’ll be resentful you had to force them. And you’re going to lose in the long run.
You’ll be amazed how a consistent positive focus can change your life.
Next: Practice increasing your focus on your partner’s positive aspects.
This is easy.
After all, you married (or partnered) with this person. At one point these were front and center. Again, meditation, book reading, therapy and journaling can assist here.
We do not suggest talking to a friend. Friends sympathize with what you’re going through. They don’t have your best interest at heart. Friends often like to commiserate.
Commiserating is not helpful.
A hyper-focus on your partner’s “weak points” or “areas of development” makes them shine bright.
Focus on those and before long that’s all you see. Then your love turns to resentment. While your partner becomes a scoundrel …when viewed from your negative belief constellations.
Any focus practiced becomes habitual.
So practicing focusing on another’s positive aspects can become habitual too.
Start by keeping a list of everything positive you already know about them. Then begin noticing things beyond what you already know. Write them down in a journal. Acknowledge their existence. Notice, as you practice this, how your mood about the person changes. The more positive aspects pile up, the less negative you begin feeling about the person.
When you’re comfortable, start acknowledging things they do that are positive. No matter how insignificant, share your appreciation to the person. Do it face to face or in a text or handwritten note.
Tip: You’re not manipulating. You’re not trying to change your partner. You’re not even trying to change you. You’re changing how you feel about them.
You got into a relationship with this person for good reasons. Remember? (photo: Toa Heftiba)
Next: Develop a practice which re-acquaints you with the massively beneficial and wonderful things about your relationship.
It’s easy to get caught up complaining and lose sight not only of gifts your partner brings, but also gifts you two together create.
The same process above can help you develop a chronic habit of relationship appreciation.
Note the positive aspects being with this person creates. Write them down. In time, share them with your partner. Don’t worry if they don’t feel the same way you’re beginning to. Remember, this is not about them.
Then, after at least 60 days, pick something light and easy, that you would prefer your partner to do. (Don’t try this too early, you’ll re-energize your old habits and beliefs.)
Say to yourself, very lightly, with hardly any focus on it, what that is. Say it in a positive, almost nonchalant tone. Like: “wouldn’t it be nice if Alphonso took out the garbage this week?”.
Then, after thinking this statement once, drop it. Drop it completely from your consciousness. Try to obliterate it from your mind, as if it never came up.
If you’ve done everything up to this point each day, then one day, not next week, Alphonso will take out the garbage. You might even receive an pre-intuitive impulse that something is up. Like Bridget did.
Resist the temptation to say anything to Alphonso. Keep it all to yourself.
You’ll be surprised and delighted, but don’t show it. Instead savor the experience.
But do make note of this in your journal!
· · ·
This is a practice. It may or may not happen over night.
It may not happen in the first year. But there is no rush because you are eternal. And, nothing is wrong with Alphonso not taking out the garbage anyway!
Practice this. You’ll be astonished. Become clear about what’s in your belief constellation. Shift your focus to positive aspects of your relationship, and your partner/spouse. In time you will discover you’re in a pretty awesome relationship. And your partner/spouse is awesome too.
Keep it up and pretty soon you’ll want to explore other ways your beliefs create your reality.
The most convincing proof is personal life experience. When what you’re reading here, happens in your life, things “get real”. You can’t help feeling impervious to misfortune and negative situations.
You’ll come to believe your invincibility.
That will radically change your partnership or marriage. It will leave you living more and more in constant wonder and delight.
But for many others…we’d say the majority of people…sticking to your guns is not enough.
That’s because people who want to be great, sometimes believe theyaren’t.
You can’t be great if you don’t think you are.
So when we write: “…stick to your guns,…”, we’re referring to a mindset, not the action you’re taking.
Both action and mindset are crucial though. They work together.
But it’s easy for them to work against each other. And this is our point: For most people they do work against each other.
Take Perry for example.
· · ·
For decades he held many disempowering beliefs.
All beliefs like beliefs like themselves. So Perry’s early beliefs, spawned similar ones. Before long he had a collection of similarly disempowering beliefs.
We like to call this collection a belief constellation. They resemble billions of stars on a clear night. Like a constellation, they connect, forming a picture.
That picture is one’s reality.
Belief constellations resemble pictures painted in the sky by connecting stars. In the same way celestial patterns form objects, your beliefs form your reality. (Photo: Frederik de Wit)
Belief constellations are tightly woven. It’s hard to find the originating belief. One of Perry’s earliest disempowering beliefs, in this life time, for example, was “I’m an oddball and alone.”
Usually Perry was on his own. His parents were often aloof. His brothers were doing their own things. When the three brothers were together, the younger and older brothers often teased him.
It didn’t matter if it was playful, or malicious. Perry, a serious young boy, took these experiences as seriously as everything else, interpreting them to mean he was alone. And vulnerable. And insecure.
Life always reflects one’s mood through life experiences and situations. Not surprisingly, Perry found more and more “evidence” supporting his insecurity:
He got into a fight with a neighbor boy, which he lost. He was shot at by another young boy armed with a gun. A neighbor’s dog chased him up a tree. A nasty bike accident left him permanently scarred.
Then his parents divorced.
Of course, plenty life experiences reflected Perry’s invulnerability too.
But you can only see evidence for your predominant beliefs. Young Perry’s dominant belief was “I’m vulnerable”.
· · ·
The earlier in life a belief is formed, the more time it has to accumulate like beliefs. Over time, belief constellations become “the way life is”.
By then, most don’t have objective access to the beliefs. They don’t question the “what is”-ness of their interpretations which have hardened into beliefs.
They just believe life is this way.
Remember thought: while life reflects evidence consistent with that, it simultaneously contains evidence to the contrary.
That means, one’s life experience, no matter how dour, can change.
The problem is, humans (a) have a hard time accepting this. (b) They are unwilling to exert enough psychological persistence making change permanent. So, (c) they miss evidence confirming life has changed.
Summarizing:
One’s mindset created from interpreting experience, spawns more confirming experiences. (“mindset” is another word for “belief constellation”)
The mindset recedes into the background becoming “the way life is”.
One’s actions – their physical behavior, but also their thought behavior – shapes to their experiences.
One acts consistent with their “in the background” beliefs.
If a person believes blacks are scary and sees a black person at a stop light crossing the street in front of her at night, of course she is going to lock her car doors.
Belief constellations are so powerful they create your reality and dictate your behavior. (Photo by Gijis Coolen)
The point of all this is, stick to your guns and live authentically. But be sure your beliefs match your authenticity. Beliefs that your authenticity is wrong, bad, or unworthy of expression, generate internal conflict.
That will show up in your life experience, making life “harder” than it needs to be.
· · ·
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Such life experiences are showing you your inner reality. That’s good.
You could say that’s what physical life is about. Life experience is dazzling. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the dazzle and forget you’re shaping your life experiences.
Every human comes standing in their invincibility. Until they accept others’ beliefs or get “educated”. Which is not all that educational.
In time, they forget the world responds to them. It’s not the other way around.
Some people (maybe you?) get it sooner. They end up being remarkable.
Their authenticity will not allow circumstances to dictate belief. They are here to change worlds. Not just this world, all worlds.
Fewer of these people are willing to compromise their authenticity these days. They have something to say. And they’re saying it.
Maybe you are one of these people.
· · ·
If you are, your life experience awaits your expression. No pressure though.
You may see these circumstances for what they are. Your perfect design. In this life.
Or maybe not.
The great news is, there are plenty of lifetimes. Between those lifetimes, you remind yourself what you really are. But you don’t have to die to remember. And you don’t need more than one life time to make your mark.
Death: a doorway through which you pass. Then you remember what you are. (Photo: Rhodi Alers)
So here is the best way to get at beliefs that may have receded into the “what is”-ness of your life: Don’t worry about old beliefs! Instead, create new empowering ones.
Of course they’re going to feel fake to you. All beliefs do at first.
But the nature of belief is the nature of belief. Meaning: hold that fake-feeling belief long enough. It will fade into your background and become “what is” for you. That belief also will accumulate like ones. A new belief constellation will be born.
Your life experience will reflect that constellation. Just like your old beliefs.
The road ahead that is your life is being designed by you. What reality are you going to create for you and the world? (Photo: Yoal Desurmont)
At that point, you’ll begin believing what once was a fake belief.
The following example is helpful.
Five years ago, Perry met his now wife. As with all love, in the beginning, it was great.
The more time passed however, the more his wife began reflecting back to Perry his beliefs about being in relationships. Of course, Perry’s wife has her own belief constellation born of her own lifetime experiences.
Perry’s relationship gradually became a living hell for Perry. And for his wife. As marriages often do. That’s why so many end.
But Perry knows he is the common denominator in his life experience. No matter where he goes, he’s there, creating his experience via his beliefs. So Perry decided he had had enough.
He put this reality creation business to the test.
And so he began treating his wife differently.
As far as he was concerned, his wife had no responsibility for Perry’s life experience or their relationship. Not even responsibility for her own behavior!
There are a lot of details we’re skipping for brevity.
Life experience shapes to beliefs on an exponential curve. So at first, Perry didn’t notice much happening.
For the firstthree years.
He just had to accept something was happening. Even though he couldn’t see it. And indeed something was.
In the fourth year, his wife started changing. On her own, she began taking classes, then she began meditating. Then she began listening to uplifting speakers. Then she started reading books by those speakers.
Emboldened by these results, Perry doubled down on his commitment. And his wife became easier and easier to be with.
Their relationship changed too.
In fact, Perry’s wife had changed for the better so much, even her parents mentioned how lighter and happier she had become.
· · ·
You have more power than you may know. You can change other people’s behavior.
But you have to be persistent in the face of no apparent evidence.
So, here are the steps to making old beliefs irrelevant in your life.
First, start by allowing yourself to recognize things in your life that are contrary to beliefs you have. If you believe that life doesn’t shape to your beliefs, note how your life behaves exactly that way. By showing you a random-generated life experience that appears objectively separate from your beliefs.
Noted, deliberately take a moment and reflect on that. Write about it in your journal. Ponder the evidence your life has just shown you that matches your beliefs.
Then note when life doesn’t. Remember: life always does both. Maybe you’ll think about something happening –– your friend calling for example –– and your friend will call.
You’re wanting to realize that life is full of evidence for any belief.
Which it is.
Any life experience is available, bounded only by your beliefs.
Take your time. Allow many examples like this.
Then, write down a thought consistent with a belief you want to have. Start with something easy.
Say, for example, you want to be an actor, but you believe you’re not talented enough. Starting with the thought “I can be an actor” is going to create too much internal conflict.
You can live your dream life. It’s never too late. You just have to synch your beliefs and your desire. (Photo: Avel Chuklanov)
Instead, you might create the thought “I really like acting”. That thought has nothing to do with becoming a successful actor.
But it’s in the potential belief constellation of being a successful actor. Pretty much all successful actors like acting.
Next, think that thought for a little while, a few minutes. You’ll start feeling good while thinking it. You might start thinking thoughts similar to it.
You might think “I liked acting as a child”.
“I always wanted to be an actor”.
“Acting is so a part of who I am”.
At this point, you might feel happy thinking. Or encouraged. Or enthusiastic. Or empowered. When you get to that point, try to forget about the thought completely.
Then, over some period of time, you will be inspired to take action. To the best of your ability, follow every inspiration you get.
Talk to a stranger. Go to a movie. Enroll in an acting class….
When you take an action inspired in this way, you have begun the process that ends in life experiences inconsistent with your previous beliefs and consistent with your new ones.
When that happens, revel in it. Journal about it. Acknowledge it.
You are on the way to becoming the actor you’re wanting to be. While old beliefs are on their way to irrelevancy.
We come full circle to the original story that prompted this one.
For now you must stick to your guns, repeating this process. Do that and you create the unshakable mindset. And the life it accompanies.
What you want is what the world wants. Your authenticity. Give the world what it wants and you change it.
Like many before him, he is giving the mainstream world a thing or two to think about. And making it better in the process.
In case you don’t know, Kaepernick is the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who in 2016 began kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racism, social inequality and police brutality.
He left the 49ers to become a free agent. But the NFL believed him a pariah because, like many big institutions, they can’t handle the truth. Or more simply, they can’t handle losing money in the short term because the peanut gallery can’t handle the truth. And big institutions get rich by catering to the peanut gallery.
Nike was in a similar situation. According to anonymous sources quoted by this New York Times Article, Nike was considering ending their relationship with the controversial, non-playing football player.
Now, as you probably know, all that reversed.
The company is now charting record “brand engagement” as a result of getting behind Kaepernick’s cause, according to their CEO. Particularly among the urban demographic, a coveted target for the athletic brand.
But this story is about Kaepernick as an example to would-be iconoclasts.
There is no value in you playing small and going along with the crowd.
There is every value in being your authentic self, no matter how much ire that authenticity will draw in the short term.
If you stick to your guns, you will prevail. And the world will be forever changed for the better as a result. You came to change the world in your own way great or small.
Going with the crowd is not world-changing.
For two years, Kaepernick withstood criticism from many institutions. Including the nation’s highest political office. Now his rise as a national civil rights icon with a massive brand backing him, is testament to what any human being willing to stand in their authenticity can do.
Individuals change the world. Not groups.
At this point, there is barely a limit on what is possible for the former quarterback. His platform has expanded dramatically. It is reported he now has a book deal, speaking tour and is developing a comedy series.
Kaepernick’s example isn’t the only one.
Shepard Fairey’s name should be no surprise. If it is, his artwork isn’t.
As a young skateboarder and graffiti artist, he roamed the country posting stickers, posters and flyers on virtually anything and everything, before creating a poster for the Obama presidential campaign.
That poster made him famous.
The iconic Obama Poster
But what some don’t know is in the midst of all that election fame, Shepard was in the toughest year of his life. He was being sued by municipalities for his history as a graffiti artist. But what was even more scary was the Associated Press filed a massive lawsuit against the artist. A lawsuit that could bankrupt the artist, his family and end his career.
Just like Kaepernick however, Fairey stuck to his path, lived his authentic life creating beautiful and compelling critiques of political figures disguised as art. Even though, as he describes it, he weathered some of the greatest challenges during that entire time.
· · ·
You must not underestimate the value of your authentic expression.
The more radical the better. But you also must not underestimate the value negative attention brings to your cause.
If you allow your fears of rejection or “crucifixion” by the “mob” that is mainstream society or a subsection thereof to intimidate you, you are bound to give up your authentic voice in favor of….what?
Social acceptance? Money? Reputation? Is social acceptance, money and reputation really on par with the potential to change the world?
Besides, when you’ve done what you came to do, you will have all the acceptance, money and reputation you can handle. And then some.
You have an authentic voice. You came into the world equipped to make it a better place. That better place doesn’t happen when you’re going along with the mainstream.
It only happens when you speak your authenticity. The more radical the better.
If Shepard Fairey can do it….By Fuzheado – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Now we know a lot of people talk about “living authentically”. Rarely if ever do these people explain how to do that. We’re going to.
How to live your authentic life:
First, realize this process will not happen over night. But know that, no matter how old you are, or how little time in life you think you have, you have plenty of time to accomplish this. Perry is 54 years old and just getting started, for example.
No one is too old.
So you start by releasing the idea that time is a factor. Or age. Or any current situation. None of that has any relevance.
Second, you must screw on knowing that your voice is valid. We use the phrase “screw on” purposefully. Threads on a screw have great holding power. They will hold under great stress. Your knowing your voice is valid comes from within. It comes from your connection with the source of the “sound” of your voice.
The stronger your connection with that source, the more invincible you will feel. Silence, meditation, long walks in nature are great processes reconnecting you with your source. Do that regularly. We recommend this process for getting in tune with your source.
Third, reorganize your priorities. Your voice’s strength must be nurtured. That takes time. What gets you through the time it takes for your voice to be ready is how freaking great it feels being in touch with your authenticity. Again, this process is golden.
Perry quit his job at Intel to pursue his value-based priorities. We don’t recommend this. He has a supportive wife. You don’t have to quit your day job. But at least put it in perspective.
For example, in some places around the world, up to 50 percent of people work bullshit jobs. That means you’re probably doing something for money that represents a compromise, or perhaps many compromises, on your values. It’s time your values retake the priority high ground.
That’s because your voice lurks within your values.
Fourth, start doing some serious introspection. The best place Perry has found to reconnect with his voice is his childhood. He asked some time ago “what did I really want to be when I grew up?”
Look at what you liked to do as a child. What inspired you? What did you dream about? How did you see the world? The fantasy world of your childhood often holds within it your voice’s small timbre, waiting for you to crank the volume.
Another place to look: your reaction to the world around you. This is tricky though. If you’ve lived, even a little while, on the planet, you likely have taken on stories which cause knee-jerk emotional reactions that fill you will injustice, a sense of unfairness and moral outrage.
Those areas can be where your voice is lurking. But they could also be ingrained knee-jerk reactions you’ve taken on from society. These kinds of reactions tend to cut you off from your voice. So you have to be discerning as you observe how you react to the world around you.
Once you’ve found your voice, you need to practice delivering it. So get started expressing your voice to yourself at first. Not to others. We offer this for several reasons.
First, you’re not ready for the potential onslaught from the peanut gallery trying to kill your originality before it’s mature enough to survive such attacks. Second, you need time to figure out how best to express yourself. Is it with film? Poetry? Writing? News commentary? Podcasting? Walking across the United States? Interviewing homeless people?
There are endless numbers of ways to express yourself. Somewhere in there is your niche. You’ll find it if you dedicate time to discovering it.
Meanwhile, in the self-discovery, you’ll have fun. And, when you’re ready to tell the world, you’ll have an impressive amount of content ready-made to share. Not all of it will be brilliant, but it doesn’t have to be.
Photo by Francesco Mazzoli
Next: Practice, practice practice.
Follow your impulses. Do things you think are crazy. Sure, quit your job if you really know that’s what you want to do. Just realize quitting your job isn’t required to find your voice, or express it. At least not at first.
Refine your voice, explore things. You’re on a wild goose chase for the co-inciding events and circumstances which delight you and thus indicate you’re on your path. Take all this as the greatest adventure of your life and it will be that.
And if you keep at it, you will come to the same sense of steadiness, of invincibility we’re sure are embodied by two words, which actually are a name: Colin Kaepernick.
Attacks on what you’re doing tell you you are on your path.
Everyone who accomplished something great did so facing massive criticism. Some harsher than others.
If you are crucified by the mainstream, congratulations. You are in good great company. Those who changed the world for the better are rarely liked.
That is, until their deed is done.
Facebook and Apple are not the kinds of “world changing” we’re talking about.
Changing humanity’s trajectory, significantly improving fundamental societal structures, and heralding in a new relationship between human beings –– these are the kinds of accomplishments we’re talking about.
When you’re up to something that significant you’re bound to attract those who hate what you are doing, those jealous of what you’re doing, those who fear what you’re doing.
You’re equally bound to attract those who love what you’re doing.
But if you’re up to something significant, you must remain true to what you’re doing and not let either the adoration or the hate beguile you you. For hate can easily turn to adoration and adoration turns to hate just as easily.
Humans are capricious.
Most of them would rather go along with the crowd. Most of them fear being ostracized by that crowd. And most of them also criticize that very same crowd.
Abraham calls the crowd “the peanut gallery”. Their opinion matters so little it’s not worth peanuts to such a one standing in their invincibility.
When you’re doing something significant, you’re likely to be alone in your pursuit. Something else Abraham says: It’s lonely on the leading edge. In the silence of that leading edgeness however, you discover life mastery.
· · ·
For those who know their invincibility, the peanut gallery’s opinion matters not one whit.
While it’s been often mis-attributed to Mahatma Ghandi, the homily, which more likely comes from union leader Nicholas Klein, still paints a compelling picture:
You’re first ignored
Then you are laughed at
Then they try to abuse you
Then they enshrine monuments to you
So many would-be world-changers give up when people ignore them. Or when they are laughed at. Many who get through those phases, give up when abuse shows up. The very few who continue reach the promise land of dreams fulfilled.
Glory goes to those who fulfill dreams. Not to those who just dream them.
In today’s connected world, no human can deliberately plan events such that their voice rises above the noise.
But when allied with All That Is, providence steps in, orchestrating on behalf of the connected individual, events which seem like lucky breaks or coincidence.
More often, though, the best, divinely-inspired events look like bad luck. Horrible luck even.
Here is what separates those who are enshrined from those who go unrecognized.
The enshrined understand their enemy’s true value.
Antagonism serves the iconoclast well. For ridicule, abuse, negative attention and opposition all amplify their message.
Recently, Perry was a guest on a Facebook Live event. Actually, he was the main course, as the audience was furious at things he had said recently. They were looking for their pound of flesh. Two pounds really.
What was billed as a discussion could have been described as an ambush had Perry not already known what was going to happen. The host and her audience attacked and ridiculed and laughed at Perry, his lifestyle, his beliefs. They tried to take him to task for his perspective on the transgender community.
But Perry is invincible. There is no task a mob can take him to because Perry has clarity. He doesn’t need agreement from the peanut gallery, which is often ignorant and lost in the what-is-ness of life.
Interestingly, while many of the loudest voices pilloried him during the show, some less vocal people heard what he was saying. Their experience will dramatically change their lives.
Though they will not be able to connect their participation in that event with life changes they will experience, the experiences will none the less offer opportunities otherwise not available.
Those who don’t understand you are going to ignore you. Those threatened by your authenticity are going to attack you. Then those who were ignoring you will join in the attack. Or they will watch from the sidelines. If you look like them, if they think you are part of their tribe they are going to try to force you to conform to their ideas of proper tribe behavior.
Very few tribes are as insecure and therefore fearful of change than the tribe known as “black people”.
But if you can continue, despite attempts to get you to conform to others’ opinion of how you should be, you will, over time, shape the world to your divinely-inspired opinion.
And you will discover how powerful you are. And how invincible you are.
Colin Kaepernick would not be where he is were he not shunned by the NFL and other major institutions including the Republican Party the casual racists and the rest of the peanut gallery.
People who have changed society or the world did so amidst harsh rebukes. Harsh rebukes are what people offer when they don’t understand.
For the world-changer, it’s best to let the peanut gallery do what it does best: assist in their own special way in your success.
Recognize attacks are part of the path and you win.
Maybe self-improvement, self-analysis, or therapy impels your reading.
We read for different reasons. The most powerful reading is that which inspires you to more. The new. The not known before.
Same goes for watching and listening too.
Nothing beats the feeling of a well-orchestrated new bit of information. Particularly information which draws from you delight, surprise and –– most important –– new awareness. The experience can pack a wonderfully fulfilling punch.
There’s no value in regurgitation.
Abraham of the Abraham-Hicks celebrity duo asserts with accuracy that there is no value in a person putting attention on something that has been. Looking at “what is” –– aka daily reality –– is even worse if the “what is” you’re looking at is something you’d rather not see as part of your “what is.”
Don’t like that there is so much division in the US? Don’t like the ever-present cis–het-white-male-hegemony? Abraham’s suggestion: stop paying so much attention to those subjects in your life. Regurgitation, they say, is reading or watching something that makes you feel anger, frustration, rage, for example, then talking, blogging, complaining, or sharing on social media about it. They say humans are chronic in their regurgitation habit.
Because of it, they perpetuate and prolong situations and experiences that otherwise would disappear.
Humans are socially conditioned regurgitators. It’s upon which television makes most of its money. The internet too.
Your regurgitation is making people rich, while making you miserable.
While they are socially conditioned to, humans are not, by nature, regurgitators. By nature you are innovators. All life is. Humans take what is and expand upon it, thereby making something new. Sex is a wonderful example. That intimate creative act, produces something heretofore unknown in the universe –– a unique individual –– from the known –– two extant individuals.
I’ve arrived!!! I am unique, I come through the extant! (Photo: Alex Hockett)
It’s the same with all life’s endeavors. Everything is derivative of everything else weaving a tapestry of artistic expression physically made real.
The best of everything else though, is that which hasn’t come before, yet spawns from the is-ness of what is.
The greatest frontier awaits your discovery
A fantastically vast undiscovered frontier exists in the act of turning off your devices. Instead of surfing social media, or the news, consider the deeply inspirational, awe-inspiring act of surfing your inner reality.
There is no better time than today to explore this world. Because the topsy-turvy world you live in owes itself to this inner reality.
Despite what science has to say about it, there is far more of interest “in there” behind your eyeballs than anything available in front of them. Including on the Internet.
Vast opportunity exists in this realm, where your eyes are useless and yet you’re able to see. In this no-place you find the origin of every place. Remain in the inquiry long enough and you might discover the extraordinary.
You.
Because at the bottom of it all, the ruckus of the phenomenal world springs from your perception. An “I get it” born of directly experiencing the accuracy of the previous statement uncovers answers to all life’s problems.
That should come as no surprise because you are the common denominator of every single problem you face.
You can’t know this just from reading words. You know it when your life experience demonstrates it to you.
Perry’s* life experience demonstrates this near-constantly. For when you tap into this inner frontier, your life experience will verify the new perspectives you discover. Perry’s many demonstrations include disappearing a bully in elementary school, effortlessly achieving his childhood dreams of living in Japan and receiving his black belt in the Bujinkan, realizing his dream job at a major high-tech company, causing large sums of money to effortlessly show up in his life experience, and transforming his marriage into the perfection that it is. Perry’s life reflects for him (and his wife) tectonic shifts breaking into his physical reality to verify inner frontier explorations he began many years ago. But intensified over the last five or six.
And Perry is just getting started.
The penchant to ravenously consume digital information is your surrogate for what your you really wants you to do to your inner space. There are no limits to rewards realized from time invested exploring you, from the inside.
Your you already knows this.
And that’s why you and everyone else consumes so much digital information. It’s a mass-nail biting reflex to a latent awareness eager to be born within you. People bite their nails as an habitual reflex to something happening just below their conscious awareness. There are many habits among humans just like this.
Oh! The diversity!
There is great diversity on your planet and more being born every moment. (Photo: Jorge Saavedra)
Physical life always reflects inner life, what we call non-physical life experience. All humans want to realize consistency between what they experience in the physical world, and what they are experiencing in the non-physical one. The consistency already exists. There is no deviation between what his happening in the physical world and what is happening in non-physical.
But to realize the consistency is another matter. Nearly all 7-plus billion humans are oblivious to this consistency, says Seth, Abraham and many other nonphysical “guides” focused here with you. This obliviousness is wholly responsible for human insecurity. Which is why so much insecurity exists. From the office of your president, all the way down to the houseless on the street.
Yes, every human who has resolved their obliviousness has found invincibility. Freedom from insecurity. Freedom from fear of death. And more.
No exceptions.
It only takes a moment to get the resolution underway
Within thirty days of the proper activity, you can receive a clear, no-bullshit indication that your non-physical life experience is where all the action is, and where all the action in front of your eyeballs comes from. From there, there’s no going back. Meaning: once you breach this frontier, you are bound to discover more and more revealing to you the limitless nature of your non-physical, perceptual awareness.
When that happens, life takes on a different timbre.
Life becomes what it has always been underneath the anxiety, stress and “hurry up” nature of what Seth calls the “assembly line time” of ordinary consciousness.
In this new awareness, life becomes the delightful, easy, pleasurable romp through time and space that you knew it would be before you chose to come into physical life as human.
And while this can happen in a flash of insight, it’s far more fun for it to happen gradually. That way you can savor every blink of the eye-opening that is awakening.
There is a vast perspective you miss out on when you’re exclusively focused on ordinary consciousness, using that to look out on ordinary life experience and regurgitating what is.
Broaden your perspective to include that life area you may currently believe to be pseudoscientific, or “woo”, and you’ll find yourself blown away by what life –– your life –– will show you.
The self-discovery alone is worth it.
But more than that is realizing your life experience is 100 percent your creation.
If that last statement is accurate –– and there is no evidence disputing that –– who wouldn’t want to find that out?
We think everyone would.
How to begin
It’s simple. But because you’ve practiced (through habit) not doing this, it will feel uncomfortable at first. Humans tend to call things hard, when what’s really happening is the thing they’re calling hard is uncomfortable or something they’re unfamiliar with.
Discovery is in the uncomfortable.
So here’s how to get started.
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Contrary to what some might say, quitting your devices cold turkey is not the way to go. Neither is coming at this from the perspective that digital absorption is something one must “detox” from.
It’s far better to think of this approach as a pleasurable vacation. An adventure. Or an exciting exploration you’re about to begin. One key (to all of life) is to start gradually and in a spirit of play.
Now that your attitude is in the right place, you can take physical action. Here are some wonderful steps.
It’s not a life long commitment. And the benefits exceed a marital one. (Photo: Mark Duffel)
The commitment
Start by making a commitment that you’re going to do this for at least 30 days. In these thirty days, you’re going to immerse yourself, for a non-consecutive hour or two a day, in an activity series that has nothing to do with the digital world.
The process
Every day you’re going to do the following:
A. Each morning when you awake, you’re going to consciously take inventory of your surroundings, giving appreciation for the conditions in which you find yourself. You’re going to say out loud statements reflecting what you observe in this condition of appreciation.
The monologue will go thusly:
“I love how wonderful the day is. I love how good I feel. I really like this weather. I really love the feel of my clothes. I appreciate my bed. I appreciate my blankets. I appreciate my pillows…”
When you’ve just about had your fill of that experience, stop. If you get to the point where you’re struggling to figure out what to say, stop. This is not work. And you’re not applying effort. Nor are you being evaluated. It should be effortless and playful.
B. Rise from your bed. Take care of your personal (morning) business. Then, grab a notebook and writing gear. You’re then to write down a list of all the positive aspects of your life at the moment of your writing.
The objective of both A and B is to evoke from you an emotional response. A feeling of satisfaction or positive disposition about your life experience is what you’re reaching for.
Continue with your morning. Then…
C. Take a lunch. We mean actually take a real lunch. Outside the office, in the open air, alone. While you’re out there, set aside at least half of your lunch period and take a walk in nature. Say to yourself aloud or to yourself statements reflecting the wonderful things you are seeing in the world around you. You are focusing on positive aspects of your surroundings. Alternatively, take a more powerful approach to this step: while walking, acknowledge how your Inner Being (the you inside you) is constantly attending to you, loving you, appreciating you, rooting for you, supporting you and guiding you. Run a loop of these statements throughout your walk.
It is important that every time you are expressing yourself through these steps, that you mean what you are saying. Don’t just say the statements. You have to believe what you are saying.
When lunch is over, go about your afternoon.
D. Prior to bed, but not so close that you’re too tired, do the following: Reflect upon the day, think about all the great things that happened and that you enjoyed. Think about the positive aspects of the day. Be creative. Think of more than the obvious. For example, the sun rising is a positive aspect. So is bird song. So is plenty of air to breathe. So are the people who contribute to your life, such as those generations of human who came before you, who invented things you enjoy today. Get it?
When you have reached the point where you’re working at thinking of something, stop.
Follow these instructions to the letter and before day 30 an unmistakable event will happen which will demonstrate to you, in no uncertain terms, that you are progressing.
Here’s an example from a client’s experience:
He was doing part-time work at an expo, manning a table for a friend. He had a goal to achieve a certain amount of income each day. This table-manning gig was getting him part-way there, but he needed a bit more work. While at the expo, another friend called with an urgent task. If he could complete it, he’d be paid far more than his daily quota.
The task was to find a woman this other guy needed to talk with urgently. The conversation would save a business deal. But the guy needing to have the conversation couldn’t find the woman anywhere.
But our client, let’s call him Josh, was hesitant. He didn’t want to lose the income from the table-manning gig. And he had no idea who this woman was or where she was. So at first he said no.
Josh had been doing a more detailed version of the above instructions. So when he had the impulse to call the guy back and tell him yes, he followed it. The guy gave Josh the woman’s name. That’s all the guy had. Josh had a friend replace him at the table and got to work.
He found the woman’s address. That’s when he received another impulse: that if he left for that address right now, the woman would be there.
So he left.
He arrived and knocked on the door. Nothing.
Knocked again. Nothing.
Knocked again. Hard.
Nothing.
Hmm, he thought. He started walking away. When he got halfway back to his car, he got another impulse: turn around.
When he did, there was the woman standing on the porch.
Josh walked up to the woman while dialing the number of the guy who desperately needed to speak with her.
“Are you XYZ?” Josh asked.
“Yes,” She said.
He handed her his phone. “This call is for you.”
The rest of the story is history. Josh was a skeptic at first. He didn’t trust that Perry could show him how to eliminate nearly all his life challenges. Now he knows what we know. And his life is gradually becoming a delightful romp.
Josh doesn’t have a problem requiring a respite from digital content consumption. You don’t either. What Josh wanted was a way to feel invincible in his life experience. It is what every human craves.
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We don’t think a “detox” from a digital indulgence is necessary. Nothing is going wrong on your planet. But we do believe one can use such an experience to benefit from far more than more balance between real life and digital life.
Digital device balance will naturally be restored when you’ve discovered your inner world’s majesty. For then you’ve soothed that which has been nagging you.
The digital world pales in comparison to what awaits behind your eyeballs. When you realize that, your seeming habitual fascination with internet information –– like nail biting –– will fall away.
You can have it all. We’re offering this bit of information for that purpose.
The most powerful reading is that which inspires you to more. The new. The not known before. It’s one of the reasons you’re so drawn to social media via your devices. The inner world holds so much of that, not having direct access to it is a life barely lived.
*We are Perry’s nonphysical Inner Being expressing ourselves through the experiences and examples of Perry’s life.
