Mass Density

Carolyn shares her experience on the 7 day Spiritual Intensive she took with me to Teotihuacan Mexico.   She discovers what it is like to shed fear based self judgments from her childhood and embrace the experience of unconditional love.  It’s no longer an intellectual idea that she reads about in books. It is a tangible way of living life that is now a very real possibility for her life.

pod35-Spiritual Journey Interview (29 min)

She discovered that the journey wasn’t about the place, the mythology, or the history.  The important focus of the journey was her and the process for transforming the emotional quality of her life.

You can find out more about these spiritual  journeys and retreats on my events page.

Dear Gary I have a question,

I understand that an agreement can be changed regarding an emotional reaction.  But, people do move to California for better weather, or move away from Los Angeles to get away from traffic, or in your case, you said that there are people you just don’t want to have lunch with anymore.  To me, these are preferences.  I’m not sure how you would distinguish a preference from an emotional reaction.  It’s the emotional reaction that causes the preference?

Thank you JJS

Hi, JJS,

Yes circumstances and our preferences for certain circumstances make a difference but there is another factor that we have to consider.  That there are beliefs in our mind that are playing a part as well and that is something we can change.

At the other extreme we can take Nelson Mandela who was unjustly imprisoned for 27 years.  He walks out with no bitterness and no sense of victimization or hate.  He forgives his captors as if he never judged them to begin with.  His emotional state contradicts his circumstances.   So what is really causing his emotional state to be in such a way?  It is not his circumstances.  So what is it?  I propose that it is the interpretations in our mind that we believe in,, or don’t believe in.   If we can find these beliefs in our mind, and change them, then we can change our emotional state without having to change other people, or even our self.

So I have avoided the question.  Where and when are our emotions caused by our beliefs and where and when are they being determined by our circumstances.   The only way to find out is to honestly and ruthlessly challenge the beliefs and see where  our emotions shift.  When they do not, then perhaps we are dealing with a circumstance issue.  But we can not be sure that is the case until we have removed any possible beliefs that are interfering.   In summary, what I am saying is that I can not answer the question for you.  You have to discover it for your self.

Happy Hunting,

Gary

In response to one of the free exercises in the Self Mastery course.

The Inception of an Idea.  The idea that ideas are alive has been around a long time.  Careful observation reveals that  ideas, thoughts, and beliefs behave as if they are alive in the mind.  When ideas grow and link together with other ideas they become big stories and can have multiple points of view and tangents.  Large story ideas intertwined with emotion act more like dreams.  There are daydreams when we are awake, and dreams in our mind when we are asleep.  The key to changing these ideas, stories, dreams, and the emotions they carry is for the dreamer to wake up.

Life of an Idea from Inception. mp3  34 min

Richard Dawkins term for ideas that live like parasites in the mind and have a life of their own is meme.   I suggest watching this video first.

This video from Dan Dennett on Memes and dangerous ideas that direct their host to kill the hosts of other meme’s is worth watching.

Scientist and author Richard Dawkins published “The Selfish Gene” in 1976.    Some background is provided here on this Wikipedia page.

Topics covered in this podcast include, ideas the the mind, how they act as parasites, references to the movie Inception, how ideas spread, have a life of their own, go viral, how our ideas control what we do.  Our mind is a host of ideas.