3 Reasons I Can’t Promise You 4 (or 7 or 10) Steps To Finding: Abundance, Love, Happiness, Peace â
Are any of you wary of articles from people on the web labeled as experts or life coaches who are promoting and promising solutions through (€#€) simple steps? €The 7 steps to success in anything you do€; €the 4 simple solutions for lasting happiness€; €the 10 things that keep you depressed, and what to do about them€ And so on€¦
These articles are very popular; know why? Because they get people's attention right from the get go. These articles grab attention and they get read. They hit us where we are most vulnerable: our fears and our desires to control outcomes.
If you're like me, I imagine you have found yourself taken in by such articles €" or, more accurately, you have found yourself taken in by your own inner wish that it could indeed be that simple. Like me you've probably found yourself hoping that perhaps this time, this expert might just have the answer €¦and then Voila!, life will be good and under control at last! Haven't you ever been there?
When I honestly look at times I have found myself reading articles that promised simplified steps to my life's deepest challenges, it has always been times where I was feeling particularly vulnerable (and, come to think of it, most often at a doctor's office when I'm more anxious about my health €¦and where these kinds of magazine articles seem to be especially present, interestingly enough). At times like these, those €how to€ tittles sure grab the mind's attention, don't they?
Every time I have been in some anxious state or discomfort that seeks a solution, my ever-seeking mind scurries out in hopes of coming back with the grand prize: e.g., €Here you go Ronda: the 7 simple steps, the 4 clear ways, the 10 easy reasons,€¦€ And invariably after having read the article promising the answer I am seeking, I've put it back down and thought: €Huh? What did I just get out of this article? Anything real at all? All it did was restate the obvious and hand out a few superficial (€like DUH€) self-evident steps.€
Oh, skimming these articles may have soothed my anxiety by making me feel less €alone with my issue€ for a moment (and perhaps that's what these articles really help to serve anyway) but they surely didn't give me anything I could actually take and put into use to change my life! Has they ever yours €" really?
In my experience, these articles that promote linear steps and strategies to answer life challenges leave me feeling duped and a bit silly for having read them in the first place. You too?
~ ~
OK so here's my quandary. I too am known as an expert; one who helps heal, awaken and transform lives. I am known as a spiritual teacher and author on the subject of spiritual awakening, self-healing and self-realization. But I won't give you a panned set of coaching strategies. I can't: They are not true and would be of no use to you even if I could.
The reason I titled this article €3 Reasons I Can't Give You 4 (or 7 or 10) Steps To Finding: Abundance, Love, Happiness, Peace €¦or Anything Else€ started as just my impish way for making a point by a teasing irony at using €the 3 reason€. (Well that, and perhaps to get your attention a bit too)!
So what makes this article any different from those I am critiquing? Mainly this: I'm not going to promise or promote or pretend to offer you any solutions€¦ at least not on the level that the security-seeking mind so much desires: Steps, Strategies €¦Solutions!
There are no: €7-steps, 3-reasons, 8 ways€ to solve anything of real value or importance in your or my life!! Why not?
Because life's deepest questions and problems are not meant to be solved€¦they are not meant to be solved in the way we commonly regard as solution. (What?)
Our questions and struggles are here to be lived through; they're here to open us up to the inner doorways of Seeing, remembering, awakening. €¦Our deep life-questions are to be lived as self-evolving pathways to a deepening awareness, a greater presence of heart, and a maturing ability to live on the frontier of our life, where it's genius happens!
When we discover the art of consciously living in our questions, they show us how to fall in love with the creative unknown moment of now -- which is the only place where anything is ever-resolving €¦.and the only life that we ever live. (Boy! Our ego-mind hates that last sentence!)
So let's go further and see if the mind will just zzzzzzz-off for a bit here:
There are no steps that will solve our deeper questions of life, because steps will not lead to the perceptual place where the real solutions may be seen €" and realized.
The true solutions to life's deepest riddles €" yours and mine €" are found when we learn how to consciously (€eyes wide open€) be in our own riddles as €worthy teachers€ leading and awakening us to our life's own unique genius and way. These life riddles are the Doorways to our own amazing mystery. €¦And it is in the genius of our mystery that we will find joy, abundance, inner peace, and the realization of authentic being.
{Stay with the wave of this writing right here if you please will. To do so, it's really helpful about now (if not earlier) to drop the linear mind from being €the reader€. (It can't follow this anyway, though it always thinks that it can (smile). Listen instead from (what I sometimes refer to as) €soft ears€ It's a kind of listening that is similar to looking through eyes in a soft gaze so you can grasp a larger peripheral visioning €¦As you read this article, listen if you can find it, from a place inside of you that is more spacious than duality €" a place that simply longs for something more than steps €" something that longs for truth's freedom.}
Here's what I'd love to share with anyone who is feeling vulnerable, desperate for answers, yet seeking something real, lasting, true€¦.
When we seek outside of ourselves for €answers€ -- when the ego-self is the seeker -- when we seek a clear pathway we hope to accomplish or < i>secure down something for ourselves, then we have just cut ourselves off from what it takes to ever find and know the very thing we seek.
Here's why: finding one's truth isn't a destination at all. It is not something we achieve.
Truth is an ever-moving way of being on the waves of each moment.
Look and see with me:
If we look for a moment into the intellectual mind (look into your own mind and how it works) €¦ we will notice that it has a built-in desire to find discreet steps and strategies that can be employed in order to solve or answer life's questions and challenges (aka to protect from perceived threat).
It is the ego-self that needs and seeks: €6 steps, 8 ways, 3 reasons to achieve €" anything. That is the ego's nature. And there is nothing wrong with the ego's nature€¦ Darned good thing we have one, or the saber tooth tiger would have won a long time ago. The ego is great in it's right places. Finding and knowing your truth is not one of those!
When we unconsciously, unknowingly and prematurely stop our perceptual awareness at the place of the ego-self with it's natural €neediness€ to seek to control our happiness, our abundance, our self acceptance etc., then we can never truly find or fully know these qualities we seek in our life. That is the irony of it all!
We can never find or experience: abiding happiness, true abundance, self-love, meaningful connection, etc from a neediness of mind, because the need itself keeps us from the perceptual shift in awareness that is required to bring us to their realization.
I know this may sound like a Zen riddle. In a way it is. It is a Zen riddle to the linear thinking mind €¦.
These articles are very popular; know why? Because they get people's attention right from the get go. These articles grab attention and they get read. They hit us where we are most vulnerable: our fears and our desires to control outcomes.
If you're like me, I imagine you have found yourself taken in by such articles €" or, more accurately, you have found yourself taken in by your own inner wish that it could indeed be that simple. Like me you've probably found yourself hoping that perhaps this time, this expert might just have the answer €¦and then Voila!, life will be good and under control at last! Haven't you ever been there?
When I honestly look at times I have found myself reading articles that promised simplified steps to my life's deepest challenges, it has always been times where I was feeling particularly vulnerable (and, come to think of it, most often at a doctor's office when I'm more anxious about my health €¦and where these kinds of magazine articles seem to be especially present, interestingly enough). At times like these, those €how to€ tittles sure grab the mind's attention, don't they?
Every time I have been in some anxious state or discomfort that seeks a solution, my ever-seeking mind scurries out in hopes of coming back with the grand prize: e.g., €Here you go Ronda: the 7 simple steps, the 4 clear ways, the 10 easy reasons,€¦€ And invariably after having read the article promising the answer I am seeking, I've put it back down and thought: €Huh? What did I just get out of this article? Anything real at all? All it did was restate the obvious and hand out a few superficial (€like DUH€) self-evident steps.€
Oh, skimming these articles may have soothed my anxiety by making me feel less €alone with my issue€ for a moment (and perhaps that's what these articles really help to serve anyway) but they surely didn't give me anything I could actually take and put into use to change my life! Has they ever yours €" really?
In my experience, these articles that promote linear steps and strategies to answer life challenges leave me feeling duped and a bit silly for having read them in the first place. You too?
~ ~
OK so here's my quandary. I too am known as an expert; one who helps heal, awaken and transform lives. I am known as a spiritual teacher and author on the subject of spiritual awakening, self-healing and self-realization. But I won't give you a panned set of coaching strategies. I can't: They are not true and would be of no use to you even if I could.
The reason I titled this article €3 Reasons I Can't Give You 4 (or 7 or 10) Steps To Finding: Abundance, Love, Happiness, Peace €¦or Anything Else€ started as just my impish way for making a point by a teasing irony at using €the 3 reason€. (Well that, and perhaps to get your attention a bit too)!
So what makes this article any different from those I am critiquing? Mainly this: I'm not going to promise or promote or pretend to offer you any solutions€¦ at least not on the level that the security-seeking mind so much desires: Steps, Strategies €¦Solutions!
There are no: €7-steps, 3-reasons, 8 ways€ to solve anything of real value or importance in your or my life!! Why not?
Because life's deepest questions and problems are not meant to be solved€¦they are not meant to be solved in the way we commonly regard as solution. (What?)
Our questions and struggles are here to be lived through; they're here to open us up to the inner doorways of Seeing, remembering, awakening. €¦Our deep life-questions are to be lived as self-evolving pathways to a deepening awareness, a greater presence of heart, and a maturing ability to live on the frontier of our life, where it's genius happens!
When we discover the art of consciously living in our questions, they show us how to fall in love with the creative unknown moment of now -- which is the only place where anything is ever-resolving €¦.and the only life that we ever live. (Boy! Our ego-mind hates that last sentence!)
So let's go further and see if the mind will just zzzzzzz-off for a bit here:
There are no steps that will solve our deeper questions of life, because steps will not lead to the perceptual place where the real solutions may be seen €" and realized.
The true solutions to life's deepest riddles €" yours and mine €" are found when we learn how to consciously (€eyes wide open€) be in our own riddles as €worthy teachers€ leading and awakening us to our life's own unique genius and way. These life riddles are the Doorways to our own amazing mystery. €¦And it is in the genius of our mystery that we will find joy, abundance, inner peace, and the realization of authentic being.
{Stay with the wave of this writing right here if you please will. To do so, it's really helpful about now (if not earlier) to drop the linear mind from being €the reader€. (It can't follow this anyway, though it always thinks that it can (smile). Listen instead from (what I sometimes refer to as) €soft ears€ It's a kind of listening that is similar to looking through eyes in a soft gaze so you can grasp a larger peripheral visioning €¦As you read this article, listen if you can find it, from a place inside of you that is more spacious than duality €" a place that simply longs for something more than steps €" something that longs for truth's freedom.}
Here's what I'd love to share with anyone who is feeling vulnerable, desperate for answers, yet seeking something real, lasting, true€¦.
When we seek outside of ourselves for €answers€ -- when the ego-self is the seeker -- when we seek a clear pathway we hope to accomplish or < i>secure down something for ourselves, then we have just cut ourselves off from what it takes to ever find and know the very thing we seek.
Here's why: finding one's truth isn't a destination at all. It is not something we achieve.
Truth is an ever-moving way of being on the waves of each moment.
Look and see with me:
If we look for a moment into the intellectual mind (look into your own mind and how it works) €¦ we will notice that it has a built-in desire to find discreet steps and strategies that can be employed in order to solve or answer life's questions and challenges (aka to protect from perceived threat).
It is the ego-self that needs and seeks: €6 steps, 8 ways, 3 reasons to achieve €" anything. That is the ego's nature. And there is nothing wrong with the ego's nature€¦ Darned good thing we have one, or the saber tooth tiger would have won a long time ago. The ego is great in it's right places. Finding and knowing your truth is not one of those!
When we unconsciously, unknowingly and prematurely stop our perceptual awareness at the place of the ego-self with it's natural €neediness€ to seek to control our happiness, our abundance, our self acceptance etc., then we can never truly find or fully know these qualities we seek in our life. That is the irony of it all!
We can never find or experience: abiding happiness, true abundance, self-love, meaningful connection, etc from a neediness of mind, because the need itself keeps us from the perceptual shift in awareness that is required to bring us to their realization.
I know this may sound like a Zen riddle. In a way it is. It is a Zen riddle to the linear thinking mind €¦.
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