Spirituality – The Quantum Corner

Shifting gears from WHEN to UNTIL

Years back I remember watching a documentary about the Hopi elders. The main idea that they were trying to get across to their own people and the world at large was the resounding message, “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.” They knew that great change was coming over the world there was nothing we could do to stop it. They also knew that nobody was coming to save us. They were absolutely right on both the global cultural scale but also down to the daily personal level. It is truly up to each and every one of us to determine the trajectory of our own lives.

We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.

-Hopi Elders

We have to face it. The majority of us are facing the harsh reality that we were raised by a generation with certain views that quite hold water anymore. Whether it be sexuality and gender, religion, political reform, or music, things have changed a lot and are still changing. The days of keeping the same position in a company for 25 years are also over. Now you have to be willing to work yourself out of a job to stay competitive. I’d say for about the past 100 years or so each new wave of humans has come up against challenges that their parents did not quite possess the mental wherewithal to coach them through effectively. Humans have seen wave after wave of technology and an explosion of information like has never been seen on the planet before. Just think about it. Electricity, the automobile and industrial revolution, airplanes and travel, spaceflight, the internet, smart phones, and the list goes on. If you pulled out an iPhone with the Google Earth app and zoomed in on your house from space 500 years ago they would either burn you at the stake or worship you as a god depending on your locale.

info overload In a world where knowledge is power it is extremely important to be at your own helm. While it is easy for a person to be dis-empowered by a lack of information, now it is just as easy to stand in front of so much information and so many choices that they are frozen stiff like a deer in headlights. Indecisiveness and procrastination are the new plagues of our generation. Everyone says they hate being bossed around by leaders, but the truth is nobody does anything until push comes to shove. Nobody can make up their damn mind. Then if they do happen to make their mind up, they still don’t get off their ass and DO anything about making a change in their life. THIS MEANS YOU! And ME. This is a WE problem. We all need to get off our asses and start putting effort into making the changes we know we need to make to increase our quality of life as a species.

I say it over and over. We need to be making these changes at the level of our lifestyle. Permanent changes. They have to be practiced on purpose until the critical mass of momentum is reached. This is how the subconscious mind adds the new behavioral pattern into it’s auto-pilot programming.

It’s not difficult, it just has to be DONE. Life is about the DOING, not about waiting for things to be done for you. Nobody is coming to save you, and nobody CAN save you. I don’t care whether you’re waiting for Jesus to come back and or if you’re waiting on some advanced alien race to come show us silly humans how we aught to be running the show. These religious and other mystical figures aren’t supposed to be worshiped and knelt down to, they’re supposed to be emulated. They are a template for you to follow if you want to grow up as a being. If you’re just sitting back, pointing your finger, and waiting for a savior of any kind you have already lost the game. Nobody can be saved by anyone else. It’s like cheating on your math homework in junior high. You might sneak by a few times but when the test comes and you aren’t prepared, you fail the test.

It has to start some place. It has to start some how. What better place than here. What better time than now. ALL HELL CAN’T STOP US NOW.

-Zack de la Rocha

We can’t be waiting for the right time. “WHEN” and “IF” are two of the most toxic and pathetic words to think about making life changes with. Most times you use the word, you’re making an excuse and implying it’s somebody else’s fault. You are putting yourself in a spot of weakness. Telling yourself the story in your head that you are a victim; not in control of your own life. Don’t be fooled by anyone who says they can save you without you putting any effort in. I like the Alan Watts quote, “Let me help you out of the water before you drown… said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree.” If you were in a car you would be stuck in PARK. Maybe neutral if you’re lucky, but definitely not in drive. How many of these have you said or overheard this week?

I’ll be happy when…

I’ll be able to accept my self for my own unique weirdness when…

I’ll start eating better when…

I’ll start exercising more often when…

I’ll start working on my marriage when…

I’ll be a better parent when…

I’ll stop smoking/drinking/(insert vice here) when…

I’ll start learning that new skill when…

I’ll ___ when ___.

Excuse Get real with yourself. Stop making excuses for why you aren’t the way you need to be in order to feel self confident. Telling yourself these stories in your head is the perfect recipe for depression. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things like depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and most chronic illness like obesity and diabetes are afflictions that you are just so unlucky to have fallen victim to. These are symptoms of a poor physical and mental habits that become ingrained into your damn soul. The consequence for inaction is suicide whether it be instant or in slow-motion. You have to put persistent effort into changing otherwise YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO GET ANY RESULTS and you are NEVER GOING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF when you are alone with your thoughts.

Circumstances? What are circumstances? Hell, I MAKE CIRCUMSTANCES! ATTACK! ATTACK!!!

-Napoleon Bonaparte

The better appropriate word to use when you are talking about making self change is “UNTIL.” The word UNTIL implies that you are going to persist for long enough to reach that critical mass where the subconscious mind takes over. It sounds so simple. How did I not think of this before. Why is this kind of philosophy not taught to children in schools from a young age? Sometimes the answers are so simple that we overlook them and we keep looking aimlessly while life slips away. Like my grandmother always said while my grandfather looked for something right in front of his face, “God damn it John, if it was a snake it would bite you!”

Start replacing the WHEN statements with UNTIL statements:

I’m going to run 5 miles every single day UNTIL I lose 50 pounds.

I’m going to do 500 sit-ups a day UNTIL I have a six pack.

I’m going to make 50 sales calls a day UNTIL I double my commissions.

I’m going to practice my instrument UNTIL I can play at a concert.

I’m going to cut sugar and meat UNTIL my pancreas comes back online.

lighthouse You get the picture. Start telling yourself these power statements when you wake up in the morning. Work like Arnold Schwarzenegger says with reps and sets of the desired behavior until you get the results you want. YOU WILL GET RESULTS WITH THE PROPER EFFORT. It is a damn law of the universe. You can overcome any obstacle in your life no matter how deep your depression or how bad of an alcoholic you are. $50K rehab programs and years of counseling are only as good as they are at making YOU help yourself. Retrain your body, mind, and spirit for balance and upward mobility. Don’t put bandaids on bullet wounds. Keep a daily journal that you fill with things you are thankful for, people you love and want to make proud of you, plans for how you are going to achieve goals. You can do it. From baby steps to big leaps.

Be the lighthouse showing others how to get out of the storm and safely to shore. That’s the meaning of life for me.

Evolving a little every day in every possible way.

Using the Power of Habit – Are You Doing It Wrong?

ThinkingMan_Rodin I read a lot of books. Most people don’t read these days which is a damn shame. OK, I’ll admit I went through a dry spell for a good block of time where I didn’t read anything that wasn’t force fed to me in Junior High and High School, but luckily for me I got back on the horse in college. I love to read books about psychology and thinking. I am a deep diver when I get into a topic of interest and this is both a blessing and a curse. I get fixated on whatever is in my cross-hairs. Always have, and this has pushed me into some pretty negative thought patterns in my day. I have inadvertently set a handful of bad habits this way which had to be undone later on. Most (close to all) of the unhappiness in my life, both past and present, has come from me not maintaining control of the voice in my head and allowing it to set bad habits in my way of thinking.

I talk about that “voice in your head” quite a bit because that voice in your head is what governs the way you perceive your personal reality. Your “reality” that you experience is 100% subjective. thinking-gorilla No two people share the same exact reality. Quantum physics even tells us that there isn’t even such a thing as a solid matter “Reality” with a capital R. There are only billions of “realities” (lower case r) rendered to each of us as we observe what is going on in our environment. Five honest people could witness the same car crash and give five completely different accounts to the police of how it played out. Each of them would believe their own account enough to pass a polygraph. So who’s right? We have to let the judge and jury decide. But wait, even their views are completely subjective.

You don’t attract what you WANT. Wants are intellectual in nature. Wants are in your conscious mind. You attract what you are in harmony with, what you ARE. And you ARE the sum total of your thoughts that become fixed in your subconscious mind.

-Bob Proctor

The fact is we usually have little to no control over anything that happens around us in our life. We can exert a certain amount of control over our physical surroundings and we can manipulate people around us to a certain degree with some effort (if your into that sort of thing), but there is only one thing you can control. That is the way you respond. Lets face it, SHIT HAPPENS and you get to deal with it. Your habits of thinking directly govern how you respond. How you respond to things and the story you tell yourself in your own head is what determines your quality of life.

Humans like all other animals are creatures of habit. But what exactly is a habit? Simply put, a habit is a usual way of behaving. Something that an organism does often in a regular and repeated way. Getting more into it, Merriam-Webster’s medical definition says a habit is “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary habit aristotle by frequent repetition or physiological exposure.” Our subconscious mind functions totally on habit.

When we DO or THINK anything repeatedly our subconscious mind literally takes in the program just like a computer and then acts it out automatically without any further conscious effort. This goes for anything that you repeat enough times whether it is beneficial or detrimental to your quality of life. This is why it is so important to become aware of our inner thought processes and conduct routine audits. It’s tough, but it’s so important if you want to make any sort of change to your lifestyle. Any change that you attempt to make in your way of living whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual HAS to be a change made at the subconscious level. You must make it a lifestyle change that you repeat for long enough to adequately “program” it into the subconscious mind. You must make it an automatic way of being otherwise you will go right back to the undesired state.

The chains of habit are often too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

-Warren Buffett

I like the way Earl Nightengale talks about the subconscious mind as a garden. The garden will grow any seed you plant in the fertile soil whether the plant be a medicinal herb or a deadly poison. The garden will return whatever you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. A garden will also go to weed and be eaten by intruders rather quickly if you don’t properly protect and tend it. This is why it is of utmost importance to make sure you are only planting what you WANT to see grow up tall and bear fruit. Only set habits that will be beneficial to our quality of life and lead to our physical, mental, and spiritual advancement. All three of these go hand in hand and they all work with the same universal habit force.

I was listening to a lecture last week that almost brought me to tears because of how beautifully the person talked about how we can grow up and set a habit of being more spiritual in our daily life. It wasn’t anything that I expected but it was so true. I don’t even know the man’s name that was speaking but it doesn’t matter. Even a bum on the street could have said it and it would be every bit as true. spirit evolve When something eloquently put rings true and resonates with your soul the source doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the value you gain from it.

What he said was that a person who is very spiritual is a person that you can’t even tell is spiritual. One that simply walks around balanced and knows who they are. Someone that doesn’t have to yell it from the tree tops. One that can simply walk from place to place and be peaceful; not in fear. Comfortable all the time because they know who they are. Balanced, all the time. Compassionate, all the time. Slow to anger, slow to be irritated, willing to listen. That is the evolution of spirituality in a human being. These are the kinds of habits that we should really be setting. Habits that help us grow up at the “being” level.

Have an amazing rest of the week and remember… keep evolving a little every day in every way.

Oh Grow Up!

We have all heard it… We have all SAID it… “Why don’t you GROW UP!” Perhaps you were even having one of those monumentally insightful (eyes rolling) conversations about somebody close to you in the 3rd person and uttered the phrase “If he/she would just grow up, they could stop struggling with ___ (insert character flaw here). thedude I don’t even have to have ever met you and I am certain that you are guilty. I certainly am. Although we may technically be right, at least from our point of view, how much thought have you actually put behind it? Have you ever really contemplated what it truly means to grow up?

Growing Up at the “Being” Level

When we in our culture use the phrase “growing up” what do we actually mean? We aren’t really talking about getting older per se. Although there is a tangible amount of wisdom and experience that comes with age, the amount of birthday candles on your cake isn’t exactly correlated to how “grown up” you are. There is a strong current that more or less sweeps us along through our younger years and then past adolescence before spilling us into the Gulf of Adulthood. It takes some folks longer to get down the river than others, but most make it at least floattrip to the gulf. After you’re a bonafide adult its on you. Because we all know of both 70 year old whiners and toddlers with the wisdom of an old soul.

I spent some time last summer with a group of these so-called responsible adults for a workshop in the mountains southwest of Washington D.C. One of our main topics of discussion every night was this theme of growing up, but growing up at the being level. We had the privilege of working intimately with NASA Physicist and Expert in consciousness research Tom Campbell who put a proper perspective on it for me.

What do I mean by the “being” level?

When I talk about myself at the “being” level, I am talking about the way that I “am” at the core. Not about the way that I act, but the way that I really am. Me at my being level is the sum of my talents, my values, my habits, my fears, my beliefs, my assumptions and my overall disposition. It’s how I conduct myself in my interpersonal relationships. My level of maturity at the being level that I bring into any given situation has to do with my INTENT. The conscious INTENT is the key to having those “aha” moments that lead to real personal growth. Each personal epiphany is like a little trophy letting you know you “grew up” a little bit. It has everything to do with the story you are telling yourself in your own head while you are “acting” out your daily behaviors.

Age doesn’t define maturity, some people will never grow up.

crossing Lets say I help an old lady cross a busy street. There are several possible intents that I could have while I was acting out the seemingly good deed. From a higher point of view, whether or not it was actually a good deed has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I helped anybody cross any street. It has to do with my “intent” and what I was thinking to myself at the time of the occurrence.

If I walked up and thought to myself “How stupid of her to be out here alone and vulnerable, now I of all people get stuck helping her.” Maybe I could have been thinking, “Hey, there goes an old lady who needs to cross the street… and there are a few other people around… and if they see me help this old lady they’ll really think I’m a swell guy.” I could even be thinking, “There goes an old lady who needs help, and I know that Jesus wants me to help people, so I aught to be a good boy and help her otherwise God will be mad.” All three of those show a low level of personal maturity at the “being” level.

Every human being is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.

-Miguel Angel Ruiz

The INTENT of a person who has a certain maturity of the “being” would have to do with a genuine caring and love. It has to do with stepping in whenever help is needed because deep in your touching soul you want to make her feel safe and it makes your heart warm to add value to other people’s lives. Not just your friends and family, but everybody you come into contact with is worthy of experiencing the best version of you. Life should be an art form where we leave every person we interact with in a better emotional state than they were in beforehand.

Having positive and constructive interactions with other people literally super charges our attitude and raises our vibrational/emotional state to a place where we find more and more opportunities for personal advancement. This coupled with a childlike open minded curiosity to keep learning new things is all the fuel you need to keep growing at the being level. This is the true meaning of spiritual growth. When spiritual growth is the only thing we get to take with us from this Earthly realm, the ability to learn and unlearn becomes a crucial skill. The speed and quality of our growth depends on how much we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and put real, honest effort into rooting out our fears, getting rid of bad habits, and shedding light on false beliefs and assumptions.

caterpillar Think about it, who are you anyways? Who are you really? You have a body, and a brain, and a mind, and your thoughts… but YOU are not any of those things. You are not your body any more than you are your Toyota. You are the consciousness that possesses and observes all of these things. We and our children accumulate these experiences through lifetimes here and there and everywhere gleaning the meaning and lessons taken to heart from each of these experiences over eons. Lets face it, wise men and women have been trying to WAKE US UP on this planet alone for thousands of years. Now it’s our responsibility to encourage each other to keep growing up with a genuine compassion, because we are all powerful beings waiting to be activated.

Know ye not that ye are gods?

Remember the plan. Evolving a little bit every day, in every possible way.