Dreams For Peace

In the early 1990s I did a lot of reading on the power of encouragement and wrote extensively about it.  I thought, at that time,  that you could create absolute unity and harmony in an environment when you used its power.   For the most part that is true.   Then I started experiencing some situations where people started to use negative power against me that seemed to arise from their jealousy.      What I found was that when I tried to ignore the power abuse, and use encouragement with them, that the abuse just got worse, at times unbearable.

What I have now come to realize is that people who abuse power out of jealousy become so animalistic, that is, that they so lose their humanity, that they just only think about how to use their power to advance their aims which usually has a lot to do with greed.     The only solution that one can have with that kind of power is justice, not encouragement.   Encouragement keeps their animalistic greedy self fueled, whereas, justice completely keeps the animal ego in check.     The problem that much of us have is that justice is not often available.  It seems to be almost non-existent in most parts of the world.

In order to deal with the abuse of power I tried coping with it by keeping myself invisible,  but that only made me miserable and since I already had become a target of certain leaders,  they already had a huge fear of me.   Their solution for me was to use power against me, which I am sure was like a drug for them, something like a narcotic.   What I needed was justice, but when I went looking for it, I found that they also controlled all of the avenues of  taking one’s case to a higher body.

So what I found was that, in the end, they had to use power to get rid of me.     If you are in an abusive relationship, where power is operating all the time, and the other is getting high off the animalistic state, then it seems to me that the solution is to get out of the relationship in whatever way you can and then to seek justice.    Justice usually does not exist in today’s world, but leaving the relationship allows you to develop yourself somewhere else.

We seem to be entering into a stage of humanity’s evolution where justice is going to be a more powerful force and where common people can have recourse to it, but it has only begun to poke its head out of the sand.

There is a huge difference between the kind of nightmare you have in your dreams at night and a real life nightmare, but both of them share at least one common trait; you want to get out of them as quickly as you can.

What I realized today was that I have been making the mistake of getting mixed up in someone else’s nightmare to try to protect the people that they are hurting.  A lot of people live things like the loss of a father or having an absent father or an abusive one, for instance, and the experience becomes like a waking nightmare.    As their lives are lived they replace the fear and horror with a certain amount of coping mechanisms.     Often the coping mechanisms involve seeking undue attention, power, and abandoning relationships with others.   They can become very effective at the type of management that requires firing others because the firing gives them a power fix and also keeps relationships distant so that the possibility of pain and hurt do not enter.   It seems to me that they don’t really want to be involved in the type of management that believes that people can learn and grow because a more supportive management style  involves the possibility of hurt and pain.

What I realized today is that I have been trying to get involved in their nightmare so that I can protect others from the nightmares that they are causing, but the results are always that they turn on me and find ways to use their power against me.     Today I finally get it that to step into my real life  positive dreams that I need to let them have their own nightmare and stay out of it.

They have their nightmare which stems from their loss,  but by using their power against others and creating intrigues and allowing them,  they avoid the pain of it.   Getting involved with them to protect others who are victims of their nightmare just allows them to see you are a traitor and then do treachery against you.

So today I am staying out of their nightmares and getting into my own posiitve dreams.

Last night I went to a wonderful meeting in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah which is part of Malaysia on the island of Borneo.    It was a devotional gathering on the theme of life after death.    The host was this extraordinary women who is a principal of a school of about 1400 students.    It also coincided with Earth Hour so we had the meeting by candle light.  Now you may not think it is unusual to have a meeting by candlelight, but in the tropics you need a ceiling fan or a/c to keep a room cool, but they tend to blow out the candles.   We turned off the fan and then began to pray, listen to inspiring music, and read from various inspired writings.

When it was finished, one of the men there said it would be nice to have a discussion about the topic and then because I had just given a meeting about dreams and another one on becoming your true self, they asked me if would talk.   I just responded by suggesting that we each  honour someone who had passed on and name their qualities.   So everyone began to tell a story about someone in the next world and it was quite amazing.    I recounted my mother-in-law’s courage to give us consent to get married. After the sharing  several people told me that this was the first time that they had talked about the person since the death.

Then they asked me about what dreams of people who have passed on means.   I told them that I was thankful for having listened to so many dreams in this category and that I had basically found that there are two types of life after dreams that I hear.   The first one is a kind of consolation dream or vision.   In this type of dream the person who has passed on comes back to the dreamer and says that they are really happy and things are fine.   Of course this type of dream takes on many forms but it has the purpose of giving consolation to the dreamer so that they won’t have to hang onto the grief for so long.         As human beings it is our connections with others  that is most precious to us so losing someone is often a great trauma.   When they visit in a dream it is a measure of consolation that seems to be out of the mercy of God.

The other type of dream from the next world seems to come later in the process and has more to do with guidance.    Last night one of women said that she was visited by her father in a dream while she was in a small time in Indonesia trying to make some connections with the local people.  The father told her in the dream,”Do what I did.”   Since her father was a Chinese doctor and she had studied naturopathy, she began to collect a lot of healthy foods and educate people on health.     Then she became really connected to the people.

So when I have a meeting like this, some people will say that they have never dreamt of people on the other side.  I tell them that you only get dreams that you need.   If you don’t have someone paying you a visit from the other side, it is nothing to worry about.   Your guidance is coming in a different way.

Two nights ago I had a dream where I was going downhill in a sort of half walk, half- run trot about the speed of a camel, and as I approached the bottom a group of about 4 children around the age of 10 or 11 went racing up the hill full of energy and life.

The speed I was running in the dream was about the same that I had done in real life the day before at Cherating Beach in Malaysia after I had been surfing the day before for a few hours in water that had a really strong current which made paddling and walking a real effort.

So when I woke up after the dream and prepared to go out and a do a run I was already feeling tired and depressed, but I also realized that the boys in the dream were symbols for how I needed to be.    When I went out running yesterday,  my first moments were really stiff and extremely slow, but as the run progressed I started to become aware of the dream and the boys’ enthusiasm and energy.     So then I gradually began to act as if I were those boys by feeling what it would be like to be them and so the run turned out to be the best one that I had had in a couple of years.  I went 5 k further than the planned 10k and I also felt more energetic the whole day long.

Lucid dreaming is the ability to change a dreaming while you are dreaming it by being aware that you are dreaming and then doing some kind of intervention to change the outcome to a more positive one.   I am not a big fan of lucid dreaming because I like to see the whole dream and get its entire message before I start intervening in it.    I like to analyze a dream and its symbols and then change the negatives to positives when I am awake.

The steps are first to be dissociated from the negative feelings as if you are stepping back from the dream and looking at without emotion.   If you write the dream down, it can help the detaching process so that whatever is negative does not continue to act on you.   After you have seen the negative emotions and figured out the patterns and principles, then they can be replaced with positive ones that solve the dream.     Finally you try on the positives by being associated into the energy.

Here is the sequence.

1.  Leave the negative feelings that you have associated into in the dream by becoming dissociated through the process of analysis.   It is like stepping out of the negative emotions and looking at them.

2.  From a dissociated point of view, you analyze the negative feelings and symbols until you get their meaning.

3.  Maintaining a dissociated view, you figure out the solution by figuring out the correct principles and positive energies.

4.  Try on the positive solutions in an associated form to see if they work.   If they do, then you just allow them to act in your life by giving them a direction and then they usually do more than you would have expected.   If the feelings do not work well, then you can just back to figuring out a better solution.

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out a solution to a dream,  but if you can remember the negative feelings and the patterns that they generate, then when the same feeling appears in real life during the day, you can stop and begin to try on some new feelings that my work better.    It was really interesting for me to just try on the enthusiasm and energy of a 10 year because it really got me out of rut.

Last summer I had a dream where I was in Brazil having a lot of difficulties and then toward the end of the dream I found myself in a patch of oregon grape plants which I started eating.  So, after I woke up,  I immediately looked up the healing properities  of oregon grape and found that it was exactly what I needed.   When I think about the dream and that it would just give me the healing herb that I needed, I feel pretty astonished, but the dream illustrates a basic principle of healing.  Healing is both spiritual and physical and so when I analyze the dream,  I find that it requires that I learn the spiritual part, which is how to deal with the difficulties, and then also accept the need for physical healing which comes in the form of the oregon grape bush.

In the 1990s is was very popular to treat depression as only a physical problem which needed a drug to remedy.   There is no doubt, and the research bears this out, that thousands of people were helped by the drugs to relieve the symptoms of the depression.   It allows you to forget the conditions that brought on the depression or the triggers that stimulated its presence, and then maintain a higher level of enthusiasm about your life.    It is exactly the same as if I were to only take the oregon grape and not deal with the difficulties that happened to me in Brazil.   I am going to get some healing from the herbs, but the next time that the same type of difficulties come up, my emotions are automatically going to start reacting in a way that will lead my body to the weakness that needs more oregon grape.  This is the logic of illness.

The healing requires both doing the spiritual work and the physical work.  Most of us want to forget the depressing circumstances that caused us so much stress so we will go for the physical healing only.  Indeed, the culture builds it right in to expressions like “I really need a drink” after having had a difficult time at work.    But since the dream world is interested in both your spiritual growth and your physical well being,  it is going to give you both messages.   Spiritual growth is always going to take up much more of the dream space because developing virtue is the purpose of our lives.    Our bodies do not survive the planet, but our spirits do.

Every time a person takes a drink or smokes a joint to relieve the symptoms of daily life then he stops the spiritual growth process in favor of the forgetting process.    In all of the dream meetings that I have done I have never been to a meeting where at least one person has not asked me.  “What does it mean if I can remember my dreams?”       So I think that the best way to answer the question is to ask the person,  “What is it that you are trying so hard to forget?”

I am certain that a huge number of physicians prescribed ant-depressants and then used the research to support themselves because the process of remembering the conditions that caused so much stress and then the body and mind to fail,  is truly depressing.    It is much easier for a doctor to prescribe a physical remedy and then tell his patient to forget the problems that he is having and it is also more lucrative for the doctor.

The key is to realize that if you are having some difficulties in your life,  that your dream life is going to help you resolve them.   Most of the information will be spiritual and sometimes you will get physical remedies or suggestions.   The difficulties are the gifts because they lead to the development of new capacities.   They never go away by themselves or with a drug.

The big question for all of us is,  “WHAT AM I TRYING SO HARD TO FORGET?”

This post is primarily for Shane, my son-in-law, who is a personal trainer. He uses a lot of interesting exercise programs like intu-flow and kettlebells that can keep you fit and playing for a long time.    Since Shane and I have had numerous conversations about how sport and fitness training can be combined with spiritual change work,  I decided to share a simple procedure that may be helpful.

When I do spiritual change work with myself,  I first go inside and ask myself what is the worst issue I am facing.   Some people start out by trying to find out what they want to develop first, but I find that the negative energy is much more instructive than what my mind might conjure up.  Some of the things that we want without starting out with our issues are just not good for us.  I trust my negative emotions.

What is nice about intu-flow is that it takes you through a series of exercises that work all of the joints in your body.   When you do the intu-flow program,  you can make a mental note while doing it about which movements have the most pain associated with them.   It could be your hips, neck, or knees, for instance.   This is step #1.

Step #2 is to go back to the movement hold the negative stress for a short period and feel what negative emotion is most associated with it.   Here are some choices.  Fear, anxiety, sadness,  anger, frustration, disappointment, guilt, shame,  hurt, envy, jealousy, hatred.

Step #3 is to ask yourself what issue the negative emotion is connected to in your self.  For instance, if you feel sadness, then you may have an issue in your life about loss.   If could be loss of a parent, a child, a country, a job, an ability, or opportunities.   If you feel fear,  it will hold you from going very far with the exercise routines as well as some aspect of your life.

Step #4 is identify the energy that you would like to replace the issue with.   If you have sadness or are depressed, then you probably are looking for enthusiasm and a positive future.

One of the things I like about Intu-flow is that Scott tells you to not push the pain too much.  Why this is important is that when you deal with an issue,  you can do a lot more damage by going too fast into it to try to solve it. I like to think that the issues in my life are like novels that keep revealing new things with each chapter; so when you do the issues work,  try to find a little more information  with each new exercise session.    What you should find happening is that joints begin to loosen more with each new revelation.   This happens because when the negative emotion no longer needs to be there, it just goes away.    It doesn’t happen all at once because the spiritual teachings are too complex to be known all at once.    The exercise brings them out.

You don’t have to be doing a program in a fitness center to work the transformation.   If you play tennis, squash, volleyball, soccer or you run, bike, swim, or hike,  there will be parts of the experience that stimulate the negative emotions.   You can do the same procedure as above with any sport.   Step #1 is to identify the worst part of my game and what is the feeling I get.   Every time I play I can improve that part by loosening some of the negative energy and then it will allow for new patterns to being emerging.

You can think of transformation work as a gentle process.  At anytime that the emotions become too strong inside of you, you can just back off like you do in intu-flow.   And at some point you may just realize that you would like go for professional help and that would be excellent.

In one of my last posts I wrote about the four elements, earth, wind, fire, and water as they relate to dreams.  In this post the focus is on transportation.   The purpose of the four elements is to give you an indication of what kinds of qualities that you can be working on to improve your character and hence, have a much stronger true identity.   Traveling in a dream gives you some indications about how to move from the place you are at now to the destination that your true self desires.     It is important to emphasize, before discussing the symbols of travel, that there is a difference between having a destination set by your ego versus a goal that originates from your true self.    If you don’t get the distinction, you miss the whole point of dream study.    If you are from North America,  the cultural thought of submitting to a higher self or higher authority may just be something that you really resist.   US culture was founded on the idea that you can’t trust people who have a lot of power because they tend to use it for their own selfish purposes.  What this translates to in personal development is that you should be able to have the freedom to go after whatever goal you are seeking as long as it doesn’t harm anyone.     So a large percentage of the population pursue goals that have almost nothing to do with what their true selves want.  Sex becomes more important than relationships and money is more important than service, for instance.   The difficult concept for those of us of American origin is the idea of submission.   In spiritual terms this is known as surrendering the will of your ego to the will of the Creator, and in personal transformation work it is about pursuing goals of your true or higher self instead of abasing yourself with egomania.

Having grown up American, I have to say that when I learned how to do this process it was a huge turning point in being able to do my own changework because it helped me to have a lot more clarity about which direction my dreams were pointing to.    The symbols around traveling help to clarify the difference between the ego and the true self very elegantly so they are worth attending to.   If you have read my other postings, you might have already learned that when you have negative emotions in a dream, it gives you information about your ego, whereas positive ones point you in the direction of your true self.    Here are some of the common symbols people have around transportation.

Cars:  In most cultures cars are the chief means of transport to get you to your destinations in your daily life.  There are exceptions, but generally we use cars to get us to work, to shop, to transport our children to their activities, and to do recreation.   It is a symbol connected closely to our daily experiences.  There are exceptions because we also use cars for holidays, but they are more likely to come into play when you have an issue around getting somewhere on a day to day basis.   A car is closer to home than, for instance, traveling in a plane so when a car is in your dream, it often brings up issues of getting to short term progress rather than long term.    Often people, who might be driving, are in the passenger seat when a car is out of control.   This  is an indicator that they need to take more control in their lives.   A crash can signify either trying to get somewhere too fast, not showing enough care, or that someone else is leading you in a dangerous way.

Planes:  Planes travel in the air which in symbolic terms have more to do with going after a longer term goal because they are further away from home.   Oftentimes the issue with a plane is that of running out of gas. This is because when you start a project you may have a great deal of enthusiasm, but then burn out after awhile.  You need a way to sustain enthusiasm despite setbacks and difficulties.  Not being able to get off the ground is a problem of not having enthusiasm in the first place, whereas a mid air crash might be having too much enthusiasm that is not balanced with wisdom and care.    Flying on your own is different than flying on a plane and has a more to do with the benefits of freedom as opposed to getting from one place to another in your life.

Boats:   Being in water on a boat shows you issues related to working together as a group to reach a goal as in the metaphor we are all in the same boat.   If you are rowing a boat alone, but it is a positive experience it can mean that you are doing your part to make the group function and reach the goal.   A sinking ship may signify that something is wrong with the way the group is being lead.

Bicycles:  Bicycles differ from cars in that you get to where you want to go through your own efforts, so if you have a positive dream on a bike it could mean that the dream is asking you to make stronger daily efforts.   Racing down a mountain on a bike out of control means that you probably need to develop skills along with your courage.

Motorcycle:  A motorcycle is a vehicle that manuevers a lot easier than a car and has a lot more openness to it so a dream with a motorcycle may be that you need to have a free feeling while dealing with your goals and also the able to manuever much quicker.

Trekking:  Taking a trek has a lot to do with the quality of determination and the wilingness to commit over the long term to reach a goal.    The general rule is that the longer the journey the more determination is needed, while a short journey needs a lot of enthusiasm and courage.

This is something of an adventure story. You see back in the early 80s I was studying with one of the great mentors in my life, Dr. Daniel Jordan, who had created a model of education called Anisa. In the Anisa Model we believed that human beings have unlimited potentialities and that we should combine a strong philosophy of education with the best that science had to offer in terms of research. In October of 1982 Dr Jordan died which was quite untimely for me since I was just beginning my study and collaboration with him. I thought that I would be working with him for a long time, but suddenly it was over. He was gone. By the spring of 1983 it was clear that the project at the university would not be supported, so many of us began looking around for other places to implement Anisa.

We ended up receiving a job offer on a First Nations reserve outside of Edmonton, Canada so in July of 1983 we left our country, the USA, and set out. A few weeks ago I started doing the math and realized that it had been 25 years since we had lived in the US. When I went to study with Dr. Jordan in 1980, I had hoped that I would be able to move to Latin America afterwards. It was always my dream to leave the US and live abroad. Now we are 25 years forward from when we left the US, having spent 16 of them in Canada, 6 in Brazil, and now we are on our 4th year in Malaysia.

Here is my story. I was really reluctant to leave California because I loved working on the model and loved the San Diego area. When I arrived in Alberta, I thought that where we were living was an armpit, but then I ended up really loving the work and loving the Cree Reserve so I again became reluctant to leave. Then my eldest daughter, Erika, decided that she wanted to go to the Maxwell International Baha’i School on Vancouver Island so when we inquired about jobs, we got them. We ended up being on the Island for 9 years and God knows the story. I was reluctant to leave. So He gave me an easy way. We were fired or restructured out. After a year of hanging out on the Island receiving unemployment insurance, we set out for the next leg on the journey, Brazil. This really is a story of reluctance.

I guess you know what I am going to say now. Brazil is so much a part of me that I often still dream in Portuguese. I thought that when I moved to Brazil that this would be it. I am just going to stay there for the rest of my life. Well, about 6 years on, the school decided to move in a different direction than the one we were in, so they asked us to leave. I think that is a really nice way to say it. Brazil has a way of stealing your heart so when we received a job offer in Asia after hanging out in Vancouver running along the seawall and going to parks with our granddaughter, Isa, for a year, I was really reluctant. I didn’t really think that Asia would be a nice place to live. How could I have been so wrong?

Really, sometimes I don’t get it with myself. I love to go on all kinds of adventures, but I am really reluctant to leave where I am. If God decides to grant me another 25 years, I think I am going to have to work on my issue of reluctance because I have had 25 wonderful years of adventure and I am just only beginning to meet a small fraction of the rest of the world.

Baha’u’llah has repeatedly exhorted us to regard the world as one country and mankind as one family. I’d like to think of moving around in the world as if I were moving from one state to another in the US visiting family, but I see that I still have a long way to go to get to His ideal.

Happy 25th to us.

Baby Fiona was born today.   She is the third in her family,  like her grandfather.  That would be me.   Her parents named her Zaynab in between what people will call her and her family name.   Zaynab is an historical figure in the history of the Baha’i Faith. She was a village young maiden, who during the time when the newly born Faith of the Bab was being attacked by the Persian government’s army in the area of Zanjan, she decided that she would join the fight to defend her Faith.   In those days women were not allowed to be combative soldiers so she dressed herself in men’s clothing and joined the ranks.   She became so fearsome that even the very sound of her voice raised in a battle cry would cause the Persian soldiers to flee the battlefield.   Such was her courage.  Such will be your courage, Fiona Zaynab.

As a third child Fiona Zaynab, you will have some definite advantages.   Although Erika and Chris will have high expectations for you, the fact that there are already two others in the family will give you a certain amount of freedom because they just can’t watch over three the way they watch over two.   It is a place for your independent mind, for choosing the road less traveled.   Being a third child just seems to allow you go your own way, at least it did for me because I always felt a lot of support from the other family members that it was ok to try to do something different.   I see you in the first few moments in this new world that you has been born into and then imagine all of the great experiences you will have in doing that for which you have been created, all of the support you will have to be exactly who you are,  and all of the history of those family members who have preceded you, ones that you or I have never even known.

Your grandmother and I were a bit surprised when your mother and father decided to have you, the number three child, because much of the world these days rarely goes past two and a country of over a billion has even stopped at one.   But the threes have a special gift.  You are both in your family and free from it at the same time.  You will be free from convention and ready to explore all that is wondrous and new.     You will crave the unexplored parts of life even as an addict craves his drugs.   It is already so apparent in your complete tranquility, Fiona.  You are surrounded in love and support and this will set you free.

I leave you with a prayer for the first days of your life, Fiona, and long for our first of many adventures together.   “O Thou most glorious Lord! Make this little maidservant of thine blessed and happy; cause her to be cherished at the threshold of thy oneness, and let her drink deep from the cup of Thy love so she may be filled with rapture and ecstacy and diffuse sweet scented fragrances….”

Abdu’l Baha

“One day I had a dream that a giant mutant worm tried to eat me. When I was sleeping I heard a noise outside.  I went outside and couldn’t see the giant worm.  It was right behind me.  It tried to eat me, but when I turned back, I woke up because I was so scared.”

Understanding dreams is the same as reading a book, only instead of narrative, the language of the dream is metaphor.   It is helpful to know the child who is being described in the dream because it adds the kind of detail that the dream doesn’t fully give,  but it is not totally necessary.    When you can read the metaphor, you can understand the meaning of the dream.   You can also read what is known in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) as submodalities such as size, color, shape, speed, distortion, loudness, texture, pressure, etc..

Since children live in a land of giants, that is, everyone is much bigger than they are, many of their fears are registered by the submodality of size.  In this dream,  an animal that normally lives underground and is very small is transformed into huge proportions.    This is what makes the animal so fearful.   If it were small and in the ground doing what it does best, it would be creating air in the soil.    A positive worm helps by making the solid earth have more air.   It puts space between the particles in the soil so it isn’t so compact.   In the metaphorical world, the world of non-physical reality,  soil or earth represents some of the qualities that teachers love most such as perseverance,  responsibility, and reliability.    What happens to many children is that under the pressure to perform their earth like qualities, they become extremely compact and then they have a hard time achieving excellence.    The way a positive worm helps is to make things much lighter by giving more air.   In the metaphorical world this is something like having a sense of humour.   So you can say that a positive worm can dig into places where people are feeling compact because of pressure and then make them feel light.  Laughing makes it easier for them to achieve because they get a lot looser.

A negative worm is someone who makes his way into a person’s space and then makes them feel bad about themselves.   You can see from the drawing above that the child and the worm are drawn together which means that the child has become the negative worm that is ruining other people’s lives rather than helping them.   If the two were drawn apart from each other, you could assume that the worm was someone else.  But this child has really become a worm and now the worm is even going to get him.

Fortunately he wakes up when he sees that the worm is about to get him.     What I told the child was he needed to stop being a worm and start being more positive with others.   He could even start telling more jokes to make people happier.   It wasn’t a shock to him that he was a negative worm.  He knew it.  By turning around and seeing himself as a negative worm it woke him so that he could start to become positive.

Reading a metaphor:  To read a metaphor you simply ask yourself,  “What is a …..?”  Then you start differentiating the elements of the metaphor.   After you have analyzed the elements, then you can begin making equivalents with the non-material world.    Most living things have a positive and negative side such as a shark can either be frightening or it can be a metaphor for biting into new things.

The metaphor of sleeping means being asleep in your life or being unaware of his positive self.  He was so busy being a giant worm that he couldn’t recognize who he was.   But now he knows that he doesn’t have to be the worm, that he can be positive and do helpful things with others especially making them laugh.

I learn a great deal of life lessons by watching sports so when I stayed glued to the TV for nearly two during the Olympics,  there was one moment that struck me.  The finals in the men’s basketball game was between the USA and Spain.    Spain played a magnificent game and made it close during the whole contest, but in the end they lost to the US team.   When the game was over Kobe Bryant, one of the US stars, hugged the star of the other team, Pau Gasol.    It was a great moment that two rivals could at the end of hard fought competition embrace.   Outside of the Olympics the two play for the same professional team, the Los Angeles Lakers, so they no doubt already have a great friendship.   But when you see players from the opposite teams hugging each other at the end of a game,  you have to believe that we have been through a huge transformation without being aware of it.

There is the mandatory handshake of course, for sportsmanship, but an embrace is a kind of recognition, that though we are rivals and the competition is intense, in the end we respect and admire each other.   When the decathlon and heptathlon events are completed after two full days of competing,  all of the athletes embrace and then take a victory lap together around the field.   There is the gold medal winner,  which is what the world wants to see, but there is also a great feeling of love between the athletes that transcends the old boundaries.    We don’t choose our countries of birth,  but we do have a choice about embracing change and knocking down old beliefs and old patterns.

So when you find the worst thing about yourself, you can be change it into the very best quality,  by first believing that it is possible.   Who would have believed in the 19th Century that a descendant of a slave would be the most recognized person in China, Kobe Bryant.   And who could have also believed that a white person would embrace him as a brother?   It has happened and we have lived to see it.   If a descendant of a slave can rise to be the most recognized person in a country of 1 billion people,  then what can we do?

It is a staggering question?

I am just one of those persons who was born under the sign of Taurus that can get really stubborn about certain things. On the bad side I can become extremely stuck by being determined to accomplish something that is largely a waste of time like trying to change the mind of a leader. However, it is with the same tenacity that I have found that a great many things about personal change that people used to believe just are not true. One of the problems about doing change work is what seems to me to be a certain “arrogance” in the culture of scientists. I just think that there are a whole host of mental problems that psychologists and psychiatrists have not yet found out how to transform very well, but instead of admitting that the techniques and procedures have not yet been discovered to deal with them, they are often put into categories as unchangeable and then given drugs to fix the symptoms. And when new techniques are offered, the scientific world is quick to reject them because of the loss of an economic advantage or worse an advantage of power.

In the process of doing change work I have found some things to be very helpful so I am including them here hoping that others also find them helpful.

The Sequence

in listening to over 10,000 dreams from people of all ages and then assisting others to make changes I have found that the transformation of a really bad quality like a huge fear into a very positive ones like courage or honesty follows a very sequential pattern.

Step One: Negative times Negative

Most people that I have dealt with want to change the worst negative energy that they have because of having carried it around for so long and not being able to do much about it. People usually don’t ask to change something that is a small annoyance. We only really go after change when the negative energy has severe consequences attached like the break up of a marriage. It is much better to go after change on a daily basis because there is so much positive energy that can be made manifest in our lives.

What I have learned is that each positive quality carries with it a negative opposite that remains firmly fixed in the ego even to the extent of becoming part of one’s identity. When we have carried negative energy around for a long time and given up on changing it, then we start describing it in ways that are part of our character. People say some really silly things like “I am not one of those people who are adventurous”, and then they become excluded from a whole host of experiences or “I could never just walk up to a total stranger and start a conversation.” When it is ready to change to a positive quality, it first announces itself as formidable force. In a dream it is often like a nightmare or something extremely negative like being shot and killed. In real life the fear presents the consequences in actual occurrences like missing opportunities because of shying away from them. Most people, often supported by psychology, stop the process of change even before it begins by believing that the energy is unchangeable or part of a set of genetic predispositions that you can’t do anything about. It is like fate or destiny that you have this terrible curse.

The big key to moving forward from the all negative stage is the belief that as soon as any positive progress is made even if it is only understanding, it is a positive change. If you start out at 100% negative, but then get an understanding that makes it 99% negative, then the transformation has already begun to occur even though in the real world nothing has really moved. Just imagine that you could make a 1% change everyday on an issue that you have been carrying for 50 years. That means it will only take 3.333 months to have a brand new quality. I think that maybe what has blocked psychologists and doctors is that they are not capable of seeing the changes happening in the inner world before they appear in the outer world. Persisting with the change work is probably the single most valuable ability because the 1% each day gives you new energy and new teachings that are gradually incorporating into new patterns of energy that are positive.

Step 2 Negative and Positive Together

Somewhere along the process what happens is that your life begins to change in a positive direction that is producing fruits in the outer world. Maybe you can speak with the neighbors now. However, you may only be about 50% into the completion cycle. The dreams you have will be partially negative and partially positive. They tell you to start acting outwardly and keep persevering inwardly. It would be like being able to speak the member of your church, but still have a difficult time relating to people of other faiths because of some fear or mistrust.  Your inner self will want you to keep persevering until you get to a completion of a cycle of energy,  so it is important that once you have made significant progress to keep going.   Negative energy is persistent and insistent.   It will not stop asking for change and it will not stop making you feel bad until you change.  So at this stage it is important to keep adding.

Step 3: Positive times Positive

At this point you have done all of your change work for that particular quality so now you can apply it freely in service to your family and community and are ready to move onto a new quality. Since very few people ever get to this stage, there isn’t much written about it. When you have positive dreams that don’t have negative aspects to them, they give you the message to act on the energy in the outer world, whereas in stage one when you have a nightmare, outer action is not appropriate. In overcoming shyness this would be like being able to travel the whole world and meet people from all walks of life with ease and comfort.    If you get to this stage,  it means that the pattern has become so integrated into your character that you often forget that you ever had the issue.    Later on the quality will reappear at a higher level, but now you are ready to do positive things with the new energy.

Step 4: Physical correlates

When you are involved in a change process, the body will have stress reactions that cause illness. When your body is under stress because of a fear for a long period of time, it ends up becoming ill and giving up. So when you first start the change process from a negative ego state to a positive quality, you will probably already have some illness connected with the ego. If you get physical assistance, like medication or supplements, it is important to realize that the medication will only temporarily take away the stress. If you have a negative mental pattern that is enduring, a drug won’t take it away over the long term. The physical support can be helpful because it can keep you in the process of changing, but physical cures themselves do not change a negative pattern of energy. Alcohol is a good example. You may feel looser and more social by drinking and even more relaxed, but when the alcohol leaves the body, the same mental pattern will take over again. Alcohol is a good way to stop the process of growth, but some form of physical support may be useful if you desire change.

The best results with herbs and remedies seem to come to me right after I have made a change even if the change is small. I think that what happens is that as the mental patterns change from negative to positive, then the body relaxes from the stress and is more open to healing.

It is 8:00 am, the starting time for the track and field meet, in Shah Alam with 8 international schools, over 500 athletes. I am excited and extremely nervous. Nervous because in my head I see the judgmental eyes of my colleagues ready to pounce on my mistakes. They have always been supportive of me and others, but the thought of something going wrong has a way of growing inside of me and it frazzles my nerves. And then it happens. The equipment for the high jump pit has not arrived because the driver has lost his way. In track and field planning, timing the events in your organizational mind ahead of time is everything, and now the events are 20 minutes behind schedule. The only strategy left is to wait patiently, but with each tick of the clock the eyes of judgment grow inside and with it increased tension and energy drain.

As the day wears on the meet becomes a series of mistakes and successes. The 1500 meter races and the 4 x 400 meter relays seem to drag into eternity, but all of my predictions about the timing of events are right on except the high jump. At the end of the day we finish early, the overall purpose has been achieved, and the athletes are excited.

As I reflect on that day and other events that I have planned including my daily classes, I am struck by the reality that however much planning and organization I put into an event such as foreseeing possible problems and having solutions for them, there are always things that happen that are unpredicted. It seems to me that when I am the chief organizer of an event that I need to have two capacities that greatly support each other. One is to be a meticulous planner where I have an excellent sense of how the event is going to flow, and the other is to be able to solve problems instantly on the field in time so that the flow continues. It is easy enough to predict some of the variables in a track meet in a tropical country. We know that there will be dehydrated athletes, for instance, so I can plan a strategy for taking care of them. I also know now that in the third world local officials may have to answer to a different set of rules than in the western world, so I now can plan for that variable. But as controlling as I am of variables I still need to be able to embrace the uncertainty of the day in the present tense. I need to have the ability to deal with things as they arise on the day.

In planning ahead of time for an event or an organizational scheme the strategy that works best for me is to look into the future, see the purpose of the event, and then lay down a scheme based upon my own past experience and the experience of others. Going back and forth from the future to the past in collaboration with others works extremely well.

The other capability, which is the ability to solve problems in the present tense, seems to first and foremost require an openness to believing that where things go astray in the present is where the new personal and social growth is. Being in the present tense fully allows me to see what is happening and adjust to the current reality, and then see where the new learning is. If you have the first capability, which is being able to plan ahead of time, but are not good at the second one, being present, then you will either not do the events again in the future or be so obsessive about the planning and perfecting everything that everyone around you gets turned off.

Being present seems to allow me to embrace the uncertainty as if it were destined to happen so that I could learn from it. It also seems to replace anxiety with the feelings of wonder and awe so that I can both feel great about the event and also grow from the lessons learned.

This coming year I am planning a huge swim meet for the same set of international schools so having never organized a swim event of this magnitude, I think I will embrace the wonder and awe instead of the anxiety. What a day it is already!!!!!