The Philosopher's Answer

Here is a great parable to demonstrate the principle of perception.

The Philosophers Answer

The story is told of a philosopher who stood at the gate of an ancient city greeting travelers as they entered. One of them questioned him: "What kind of people live in your city?"
The philosopher met the question with a counter question: "What kind of people lived in the city from whence you came?"
"Oh they were very bad people." Answered the traveler. "Cruel, deceitful, devil worshipping."
"That is the kind of people who live in this city,," declared the philosopher.
Another traveler came by and asked the same question, to which the philosopher replied:"What kind of people lived in the city from whence you came?"
"OH they were very good people, answered the second traveler, kind and truthful, and God loving."
The philosopher replied, "That's the kind of people who live in this city."



Perception is, in a nutshell, our beliefs based on our experience. The way we perceive the present day world is based on how our world has been in the past, and the meanings we put on those experiences are based on that perception.

There is no right or wrong in perception. Perception simply is! It is made up of either illusion or reality. Illusion is defined as anything that is temporary in nature, that was thought up by man, and had a perception placed on it. When two people agree on this illusion, it then becomes their reality.

Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires. This is especially important to remember in the way we perceive others.
When ever we judge anyone negatively, we are really judging those aspects in ourselves. It is impossible to see something in someone else unless we perceive it in ourselves on some level of experience. "What we resists persist"

Perception is a mirror not a fact. What we look at is our state of mind, reflected outward.

Taken from the Rapid Eye Life Skills Manual.

Who Is The Master?

I heard a great quote yesterday. I cannot remember who said it or the exact wording but it went something like this: Have mastery over yourself and you master the situation. The idea was that if you have mastery over your feelings and reactions in the situation you have a lot more influence over the out come. In reality we all have very little control over others or situations however we have a lot influence. One of the ways to have the most influence is to master our own feelings and reactions to people and situations. In fact we want to no longer react but respond. Responding is different in that we consider the consequences of our action or attitude and then choose it instead of just going with what the same old thing that comes up for us. When we are mastering ourselves then we can change the old pattern and it then invites the other person to choose a different response. Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. Lets vow this week to choose a simple situation we want to change and choose a different response and see what happens. If you like the effect then stay with it if you don't then just choose a different response.

Here are some ideas:

Choose trust instead of suspicion
Choose patience instead of anger
Choose acceptance instead of judgement
Choose love instead of hate
Choose forgiveness instead of holding a grudge

Just observe what happens next and see if you like it!

The Secret To Successful Resolutions

As everyone is diving into their resolutions these last couple weeks I want to address tips on creating success this year.
The real secret to creating positive change is.......aligning the conscious and unconscious mind to the same goal. When you are no longer experiencing resistance from the unconscious mind then change is much much easier. So why does our unconscious mind resist positive change? Our unconscious mind is very set in what has worked in the past and sticking with it. So when we come up with all these wonderful ideas about how to improve our lives and start moving in that direction sometimes the unconscious mind becomes uncomfortable with where we are going and what is going to happen. It is much like trying a new wonderful food for a very, very, very picky eater. They are anxious and resistant to trying something new and would rather stay with something they are familiar with even if everyone around them is telling them that it is the best food ever. They just won't take the chance.
The techniques I use like hypnosis, Rapid Eye and EFT are perfect tools for helping align the conscious goals with the unconscious mind.
You can also use at home self hypnosis, visualisation, positive affirmations and EFT.
When you use these tools it is important that you build up the positive goal in your mind very vividly. Use all of your senses to experience the realization of the goal... such as hearing what you will hear, seeing what you will see, touching something if that applies and any other way you can bring it all to life in your mind.

Some EFT statements you can use would be like:

Even though I have failed every time in the past I now forgive myself for the past and change my direction to success now.
Even though I may be afraid to succeed on some level I choose to move forward and trust my self and embrace change.
Even though I am not quite ready to succeed yet I choose to get ready and let go of the fear and resistant now.

Happy New Year to all and blessings in success this year.

Liesl

Meet The Robinson's

This weeks post will be about a movie I watched this week with my kids. We rented a Disney movie called "Meet The Robinson's". The message in the movie was so profound that I just had to share it. If you don't want to have movie given away then you should probably stop reading now.
The story line was built on a boy who was left at an orphanage as a baby and his struggle to overcome such a devastating blow. His roommate also plays a important part in the plot. In fact it is really the roommates lesson that hit me so hard. This young boy faces a set back in a baseball game where he makes a big mistake of falling sleep in the outfield and they loose the game as result. He is told by a time traveling older self to " hold onto" these negative feelings and allow them to fester and let hate fuel his actions from now on. As a result he chooses to blame his roommate for his falling asleep in the outfield and sets out to ruin his life. There is alot of time travel in the movie and at the end the main character tells his roommate that he messed up his own life and that it wasn't his fault. The roommate then says another profound statement. It is something like this... Lets see... take responsibility for my own life or blame you.... I choose BLAME YOU! This statement spells our so plainly what so many of us do that have been victimized. We choose to "Hold onto" the pain and hurt as this boy did. I found it quite profound that when this roommate reveled himself to the main character he still had the baseball uniform on that he was wearing as a kid on that terrible day.. wow how powerful that he had refused to change these way to small and terribly dirty clothes as a way of holding onto the pain and suffering he had endured. In the end of the movie the main character returns to the past and wakes up his roommate in the outfield and as a result he catches the winning ball, changing his life. There was an alternate ending on the DVD that I preferred though. The main Character takes the roommate back in time and he wakes himself up and changes own destiny. He then says ... wow all this hate and suffering and all I had to do was wake myself up..

Are you ready to wake yourself up?

Faith... acting as if.

We are the creators of our worlds. We get to the choose the foundation we build our life upon. Universal truth is self evident. IF you wonder if what you perceive is truth go inside and ask yourself, " Does this acknowledge and support the magnificent being that I am ?"
Faith is the exercise of the " Act as if" principle. In other words, we become what we act. Acting is a great professions and we pay highly those who become really adept at it for our entertainment. Consider for a moment that we are all actors on our perceptual stage. WE act out our perception of who we think we are constantly. When we perceive ourselves a s inadequate, Foolish, or unworthy, we tend to " act as if" and model those qualities, becoming more inadequate, foolish, and unworthy. Since we are always completely faithful to our performance, We become what we act, thereby fulfilling our perception of ourselves. What's more, we even have the faith to create scripting for other actors to play with us. That is, we perceive how others will act for us, too. We are literally creating our won world around us with our perception and faith. It is true that whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it will achieve." Taken from Rapid Eye Life Skills Manual.

When I first started to understand this principle I looked back on my life to find expamples of how this might of worked for me. I was reminded of on time when I was a teenager and my mother wanted me to attend a dance. I was resistent as I was quite shy and was sure that no one would want to dance with me. I finally gave into her pushing and attended. I spent the whole night standing against the wall with my arms folded and a scawl on my face. Of course no one was brave enough to ask this angry girl to dance. I went home and informed my mother that I was right and she was wrong. I had fulfilled my own prophecy with my own behavior. If I had acting differently at this dance I am sure that I would of been asked to dance. However I just could not adjust yet my belief about who I was and what I deserved in life. I have often looked back on this very obvious situation and reminded myself that I still have the same amount of power in my life to create negative or postiive experiences.

Being Grateful For The Future

Last weeks theme was being grateful for the past lessons learned, this week is looking to the future and painting a positive picture of it in our minds. Expressing gratitude for the future that has not come yet but that we hope for gives it more strength. It moves it from wish full thinking to wish fulfillment.

What to do: Make a list of exactly you want in your future. Not what you think is possible but what you truly want and desire.

Create statements in present tense expressing gratitude for those gifts and situations.

Express those statements out loud.

Use EFT on any that do not sound true to you to release any blocks you might have to creating this positive future.

Being Grateful For The Past

I have taken a little break from my blog but have found some time to start focusing on this important thing again. I choose today the topic of gratitude as we are entering the month of November and the holiday season. We typically look at our lives and our families at this time finding that which we are thankful for. I would like to share a quote from the Rapid Eye Life Skills Manual about shifting our view of negative past events into some form of gratitude.

" It is impossible to change the events of the past. We can however, change the way we feel about those events. Those people who seemed to bring us pain and hardship were our teachers presenting us with challenges that helped us to grow."

The past holds for most of us painful and difficult events. Our growth and healing comes when we are able to grow out of the pain and suffering and learn the lessons those challenges have to teach us. When we shift our reaction to the past then our present becomes free to create positive instead of negative from the past. We then release the power the past has on us. We step into our own power in the present and become awake and aware of our true potential and life path. Grateful for the lessons learned and looking forward to the future.

If you are ready to let go of some of your past make a list of the events you would like to let go of and use EFT on each of those events and all of the aspects of those events. In your EFT add in a statement of gratitude for the lessons learned and the opportunity to let go of the negative feelings and beliefs from this event.
You can learn more about EFT at : www.emofree.com