The Only Real Change Necessary: from Fear to Love

Change seems to be the word for 2009! It’s about time we embrace the only constant in our lives. What a beautiful concept and yet how we fear it. Imagine if things didn’t change. How boring would life be? And yet the unknown scares us so.

It’s been said that there are only two real emotions, love and fear. All others issue from them. For instance, anger comes from fear of something. Happiness comes from love of something. If I approach life with love then change seems enjoyable and welcome. If I approach life with fear, then change is very stressful and I will try to resist it causing more stress.

We have a choice and, in my opinion, this is the only real choice we have. This is our Free Will, our choice to come from love or fear. All of our life experiences result from our choosing to respond to life from love or fear.

I must admit that in my earlier years, my conditioning steered me in the direction of choosing from fear. As time moved on, something in me noticed what these choices were doing to my life. I made a commitment to myself to start turning my life in a different direction by choosing to come from love rather than fear. That decision led me to the realization that Truth is more important than comfort. To face Truth rather than to seek comfort has become my choice from love. By living in Truth, being true to myself and others, by looking life squarely in the face and not hiding from the messages my body, my emotions and the world mirror back to me, I have found a comfort that is much deeper than the one I sought by avoiding fear.

This is a crucial time in the history of our lives. We are awakened enough to see what our choices do to not only the quality of our lives but to the survival of our planet. We can put an end to life, as we know it, by the push of a button. We can put a slow end to life on our planet by continuing to selfishly and ignorantly exhaust our resources. We can continue to live as if we were separate individuals with no need to care about the welfare of one another. We can go on thinking that our group is better than the others, that our nation is better and deserves more, that our religion is the only way and go to war over these beliefs. But I believe deep down we all know how foolish this is.

It is my wish that we all awaken from our illusion of separateness and drop our silly identifications, which are causing all our wars both internally and globally.

We are like leaves on a tree. Our source comes from the same place. Without that source, we cease to exist. Imagine leaves warring over their individual interpretations of God. The tree could care less about what each leaf thinks. The tree just loves it’s own leaves and equally, I’m sure. Imagine a leaf thinking it was so special and so much better than another. Imagine one branch trying to suck all the water and hoard it. Think of how the whole tree would suffer, if it could even accomplish that mission. The beauty of the tree is in its entirety. If the tree becomes sick, all the leaves suffer.

It’s time we wake up to the fact that we are all from the same source. It’s time we drop our selfishness and our sense of separateness. It’s time we embrace one another and act from love rather than from fear. Our survival is at stake.

The most important change we can make is to reorient our lives and embrace change with love. I recently read this quote in the newsletter of Namaste Publishing "....we will not only come to know and act on the dictum that we are our brother’s keeper, we will at last recognize that we are our brother. We are all made of the same spiritual essence."

Just say no to fear.
Your life depends upon it.

Thank You, I Love You

I've known for some time now that Love and Gratitude are the keys to living a life in flow. They now seem to me to be the solution to most of life's problems. Two small but powerful sentences, I love you and thank you are the Ho'oponopono prayer and promise. Whenever I see anything out of alignment with my joy or another's, I use this technique. I think of the situation and then hold the mantra Thank you, I love you in my mind. Whenever the image pops back into my mind of the disharmony, I counter it with love and gratitude, I love you, thank you. This is the cleansing technique used by the now famous therapist, Dr. Hew Len, on the inmates in the Hawaii State Hospital ward of the criminally insane. He never saw any one of the inmates individually. He sat in his office and reviewed their charts. Taking 100% responsibility for having created their wrongful deeds into his field of awareness, he cleansed himself. As a result, in four years, from 1983 to 1987, the inmates who had previously been shackled and heavily drugged, were released and the ward was eventually closed. (Google Joe Vitale's story of Ho'oponopono for a more complete version of this story).

I recently attended a Ho'oponopono workshop with Dr. Hew Len in Colorado, which cemented my resolve to use this mantra 24/7. I'm finding wonderful results for which I am immensely full of love and gratitude. As Dr. Hew Len says, "It is so simple that most people won't even be interested in trying it." The mind wants to complicate everything. But as is true with most things, the simpler it is, the more powerful.

Sunday, while on a drive to Napa Valley, I received a phone call from my friend and tai chi student, Renata. "I need some help," she said. "Allison (her one year old daughter) is keeping me up all night. She never sleeps through the night and I need my sleep. Do you have any suggestions on what I might do?" "Ah," I said, "This is a job for Ho'oponopono!" I told her to mantra Thank you, I love you and that I would do the same whenever I thought about them. "Okay," she agreed, "I'll do anything!" This morning, a day and a half later, Renata called with exhilaration in her voice. "Allison slept from 9 pm to 7 am. She's never done that!" I beamed with joy. These stories are becoming a regular thing with me. I'm so grateful about that! I love you!

ASKING THE UNIVERSE

While dining at my friend’s house recently, I expressed how happy I was that a family reunion to celebrate our mother's birthday went so smoothly and lovingly. I mentioned to my friend that I had concerns prior to the reunion because my mother and sister have had a long history of disharmony and suffering. My reluctance to go had heightened when I noticed my sister, who had come to my house two days prior to the reunion, was still harboring some resentment toward our mother. I told my friend that the night before going to our mother’s house, I informed my sister that if she still felt angry toward our mom that I would prefer to let her go alone and that I would celebrate next week with mom. Then upon retiring, I asked the Universe to bring about a cleansing between my mom and sister, (Ho'oponopono). Voila! the next morning, my sister (after having read from Byron Katie's book "Loving What Is") woke up with a realization that she could just drop the story and let it all go. My friend replied, “Jarl, that was you, you did that, not the Universe." I explained to her that I realize the Universe and I are one and the same, yet I prefer to say, “the Universe did it” so my ego does not attach to the “miracle” and trip out. This way I feel gratitude rather than pride. I was not quite sure that we were actually saying the same thing, although we kept saying the same thing, like, “You are the Universe, I am the Universe." So, for my own sake and for the sake of clarity, (a glass of wine or two had us all talking at once.) I would like to explain what I meant.

When I say, "the Universe and I are one and the same", I mean that, prior to and including the conditioning that I have gathered since birth, I am the Universe experiencing itself as a Jarl. This very unique conditioning which has layered itself upon the Truth of who I Am, has been so intriguing that I have become identified with it, as it. This identification as I see it, is a very necessary and unavoidable step in the process of awakening. In order to "Know Thyself", it is necessary to separate or step out of the Self to see the Self. This separation and subsequent reunion seems to me the purpose of life. I view life as the One Life Power individuating into seemingly separate entities, "us”, in order to experience itself. Our individual lives mirror that process in order to experience the Truth of who we are: the One Life Power having an experience of Itself.

We are two, the ego/conditioned self and the True Self, until we awaken to the Truth of our Oneness. The yin/yang symbol gives a visual image of this concept. The outer circle represents the whole, the Truth. The two equal sides represented by black and white with the opposite found within each side, demonstrates the existence of the polarities. In order to describe or label anything, we must have an opposite with which to compare. To have black, there must be white. To have male, there must be female. To have wrong, there must be right, to have goodness, there must be the bad, and on it goes. Within this polarity we live our lives and experience our preferences. I like this I don’t like that, etc. We become identified with these preferences as who we are. This identification, being polarized on one side or the other, is what causes our suffering. The True Self exists as the outer ring of the circle. That is, it encompasses the whole and resides in the balance, the curvy line in between, being aware of the poles and yet not identified with either, just enjoying the interplay. When we think something is bad or good, wrong or right, etc. we are polarized on one side or the other, out of balance, and out of Truth. I’m not saying this is wrong, it’s life as we live it, just not the Truth, not the whole picture.

When I see something as out of harmony, as I did my sister and mother, I’m seeing from my conditioned ego, which has its preferences and judgments. When what I see causes me suffering, I know I am out of alignment with Truth and coming from my ego. If I desire to see it from Truth and get out of the suffering, I ask the Universe, my True Self (Me) to align the ego-identified self (me) with Truth. That’s when the “miracle” happens and I see harmony, joy, love and peace.

I am the one who is asking and I am the one who is asked, and yet to acknowledge the two, the separation, brings me from ego-identification into the awareness of the ONE-ness. It works for me.

Two Tales

Neil, a friend and former student of mine, and I were discussing the lesson of a Zen/Taoist tale. Neither of us could remember the actual tale but the lesson was that happiness/contentment/peace was to be found within. Neil, in trying to recall it, described it like this: A man is discontent with his life so he keeps moving to different places in search of peace, only to find he's never satisfied. The ending alludes to the fact that his problem would never be solved by where he goes, because the problems are inside of him and can only be solved by his own awakening to the Truth. That no matter how hard he looked outwardly, he would still only find what he was looking for, within. I was searching my brain for the actual tale, which I have failed so far, but in the search I recalled this one and another favorite story of mine on a similar but slightly different theme.

The first one is about a traveller who wanders into the outskirts of a town and upon seeing an old man sitting along side the road, approaches him and asks, "What are the people like in this town?" The old man answers with a question, "Tell me, what were they like in the town from whence you came?" "They were rude and unfriendly and I really didn't like it there!" the traveller answers. "Oh," says the old man, "I"m afraid that's what you will find here, too." So the traveller sits down with the old man along side the road to think about where to go next. After a short while, along comes another traveller who approaches the old man with the same question. Again the old man answers, "What were the people like in the town from whence you came?" "Oh," answers the second traveller, "they were wonderfully friendly people. "Ah," says the old man, "that's just what they are like here!"

The second tale is a story about a man who has fallen out of love with his wife and goes to the minister of his church to ask for advice on what to do with his situation. He tells the minister that he no longer loves his wife and is suffering so because he doesn’t want to break up his family and yet since he doesn’t love her anymore, the only thing he can think of to do is divorce her.

“Oh,” says the minister, “the thing to do to solve the problem is to love her!” “But, that’s just it,” says the husband, “I don’t”. “Yes,” says the minister, “I know, that’s the problem. You don’t love her. You must love her to solve the problem.” The husband doesn’t understand. The minister explains, “You think love is a noun, something you find or fall into. But love is a verb. It is something you give or extend to another. If you start to extend love to her, you will begin to feel love for her again. What you give is what you feel. You started out loving her and so you felt love. If you want to solve your problem, go and give her love."

I remember the “aha” I experienced when I first heard that story. Love feels automatic at first as if we just “fall” into it. A little later, the ego steps in and starts to judge whether this person is worthy of our love. We begin to judge everything they do because we are projecting our own lack of self-love on the other. In Truth, there is nothing but love. Love is what we are. An enlightened being sees only the beloved in whomever they look upon. It is only the ego choosing to exclude. Of course, we have our personal preferences in terms of who shares our values and interests, but love, in the true sense of the word, does not leave a soul out.

Think of how wonderful we would all feel if we never stopped loving, if we just changed the nature of our relationships when they no longer fit our values or interests, but kept on loving and honoring the other. We all grow and change and sometimes in very different ways. Sometimes it is necessary to reactivate the love and renew the relationship. Sometimes it is necessary to let go of a relationship as it is, but keep the love.

Truth = What Is

Whatever is occurring in physical manifestation at any moment is “What is”. The way that we perceive and interpret what is occurring is what creates our experience of life. This unique spin is formulated by our conditioning. Our conditioning comes from the way our parents, teachers, and other authorities reacted to and taught us about life experiences. Their stories came from their parental and authority influences and so on…Many other factors may also contribute to the creation of our conditioning but the important point to realize is that we see through the filter of this conditioning and add our unique combination of interpretations to everything that happens in our lives. No matter how popular or accepted our point of view may be, it is still only our spin. To quote Shakespeare, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

We live in a self-created illusion, a story we tell ourselves and believe with all our hearts. This is what creates our suffering. It also gives us meaning, but we become slaves to this meaning. We hate in the name of our stories. We kill to uphold our stories. Our stories cause sickness and depression. Whichever way we see or spin "what is", whether we designate it good or bad, we are being manipulated and driven by our fears of losing or not getting our “cravings and aversions’, as the Buddha said. The degree to which we are attached to our stories is the extent to which we are not free. Dropping our stories can seem impossible or frightening. What would happen to us if we had no story? Would we still exist?

One way to begin to see through these filters of conditioning is to put our beliefs through an inquiry. A powerful inquiry which Byron Katie teaches in four questions, goes like this: 1) Is it true? 2) Can I absolutely know that it is true? 3) How do I react when I think that thought? 4) Who would I be without the thought? Eckhart Tolle says these questions of Byron Katie’s… “acts like a razor sharp sword that cuts through that illusion and enables you to know for yourself the timeless essence of your being. Joy, peace, and love emanate from it as your natural state.”

Imagine being free from the illusion and being in a state of joy, peace and love. Byron Katie says the only beliefs which we need to inquire about are the ones that cause us suffering. After doing her work for over ten years, I can attest to the fact that there IS something much greater than our stories and our beliefs. Our stories become increasingly boring and limiting as we begin to become free of them. After all, whose story do you want to live, the limited version of your conditioning which came from other’s beliefs around you or the expansive timeless essence of your being in your natural state, in which “joy, peace, and love emanate”? I’ll take the latter!