I experienced this first hand when writing this book where concerns about reaching out to others for help seemed irrelevant when I was thinking about how much I want everyone to get the messages in this book. My concern for others negated false concern for my own ego because I was no longer primarily in my ego.
Now consider this…
If transcending your fears means getting outside yourself and placing your concern on contributing to others, does this mean you become dependent on other people in order to transcend your fears? It would seem then we need others, or a cause outside of ourselves, to fulfill the need of contribution, which is what this entire section is about. Yet, what about the idea of self-empowerment where one can find inner peace just within themselves? What about the idea of not depending on others for happiness, but finding it from within?
This still idea of fulfilling oneself is true from a certain perspective. Only we as individuals can take responsibility for our own happiness. In this way, we’re independent. Our feelings are self-made choices.
However, just because it’s your choice to breathe, you still “depend” on trees for oxygen, and they depend on you for carbon dioxide. This isn’t a co-dependent relationship, which is unhealthy. It’s an inter-dependent relationship. It’s the way of nature. Self-fulfillment is both true and false.
But Derek… I don’t need anyone else to be happy. I can be independent from other people even though I may depend on nature. I can live in the woods alone as a hermit and probably find a way to be content.
Yes mind, we may not need others to generate a feeling of happiness. Yet fulfillment is something different than happiness. Some joys are off limits, “unchoosable,” if you will, without other people. Without other people, how can one experience the love of holding their child in their arms? How can one know the joy of giving a helping hand to someone in need? How can one feel the immense satisfaction of laying on their death bed, knowing their impact will live on after they’re gone through the lives that they’ve touched? Can anyone choose to experience these joys without “depending” on others to share these experiences with? You may live without another, but to live fully depends on sharing your life with others.
The second villager took more than her share, and it was through this act that she became extraordinarily generous. It was through her receiving more that she was able to give more.
Was there any wrongdoing in what she did? With a limitless supply, how could she be greedy? What could she rob from anyone else if the river has a limitless supply?
Remember the question, what is the source of the giving? It’s the river of Limitless Supply. It’s the endless resources that you can draw upon in this world. It’s the abundant supply of food, water, energy, assistance, knowledge, and more available to all of us so that no person ever needs to be without. It’s perhaps something beyond even all of this.
When you’re drawing from this limitless source, it’s easy to practice “giving and receiving.” Yet if you’re drawing from a source of scarce supply, then the natural tendency is to “give and take.” The thinking is that there’s only so much to go around, so it’s best to not to give too much for risk of losing too much. This feeling of being in a state of scarcity leads to one “doing” the game of “give and take.”
The simplest way to enter into a state of true giving is to draw from a source of abundance. To be in abundance is to effortlessly “do” the game of “give and receive.”
But Derek… this only makes sense in the hypothetical fantasy world you’ve created. Anyone can make up a story that talks about a river of limitless supply. Anyone can make up a story about abundance and say there’s enough to go around for everyone. Anyone can delude themselves with fantasies… just ask me! That’s what I do best. Yet you can’t say this is reality when clearly there isn’t enough to go around. If you give away all your food, you’d starve. We’ve said it ourselves that this would be unwise! Just look at how many people don’t have enough. We live in a zero sum world. All you have to do is look at the “haves” and “have nots” to see it’s true.
Thank you for sharing, mind. I appreciate you playing the “what is” game. It’s true that there are some that have and others that don’t. This is reality, but what’s a possibility? Let’s play “what could be.” Even in a drought, we live in a world that’s two-thirds water. Creative minds have discovered ways to make undrinkable water drinkable. Creative minds have developed sources of energy that take from a limitless supply of the sun rather than the limited supply of the Earth. What else could be possible?
But Derek… even if we can have enough food, water, and shelter for everyone, the Earth can’t support too many people. We may end up with overpopulation. Disease may break out, and then we may have even more people suffer and die. This is what could be.
Thank you for sharing, mind. I appreciate you giving me “what could be.” I’m grateful you remind me that we must be considerate to balancing many factors and appreciate what the Earth can handle. Consider this: those who’ve played the game of abundance, the game of “almost anything is possible,” have found solutions to our world’s seemingly impossible problems that those who played the game of scarcity could never imagine. Those who’ve played the game of scarcity felt safer in the short-term, but ended up with more suffering in the long-term. So shall we play the game of scarcity or the game of abundance?
But Derek… you know this isn’t my choice to make of whether we play the game of scarcity or abundance. I do as you command. What game would you like me to play?
Thank you for reminding me, mind, that now I have a choice. Do I play the game of scarcity or the game of abundance?
So now you have a choice – Will you play the game of scarcity or abundance?
How To Stop BSing Yourself
Now you know the game of “giving and receiving.”
Is this a game you wish to play, or do you want to play the game of “give and take?”
If you wish to play the game of true giving, the game of “giving and receiving,” then…
You should always be open to receiving more so you can give more, true?
You must always be willing to receive what others wish you to have, correct?
You would always choose to give reception instead of rejection to what’s given to you, right?
Bullshit.
If you’ve bought into the idea that “I must always be a good receiver,” then you’ve bought into the same bullshit that says “I must always breathe to live.” If you didn’t catch the word “always” and went along with it, you’ve bought into the BS that something is good or bad outside of context.
Remember, when someone tries to give you something, or you try to give yourself something, you have a choice – to give reception or give rejection.
In as much as many people need to learn to be better receivers, they also need to learn to be better “rejectors.”
Someone says, “You’re an idiot! You’re unworthy of anything! You’re stupid, ugly, you smell bad, and no one likes you!”
Do you ever find yourself giving reception to that if someone says it to you?
Do you ever find yourself giving reception to that if you say it to yourself?
In other words, do you buy into it and say it’s true for you? If you’re in any way offended or triggered by the harsh words and labels of others, it means you have received them on some level.
You can hear a crazy person on the street say, “You’re stupid” and laugh it off. It’s just the projections of a crazy person. Then you hear a friend say “You’re stupid!” and it ruins your whole day, you cry yourself to sleep that night, and it takes three years of therapy to fully get over.
To receive those things means you have given up choice in what others, or you, wish to label yourself.
Do you ever do something stupid, and instead of saying, “What I did was stupid” decide to say to yourself, “I’m stupid?”
If so, you’ve bought into
the bullshit that you are your actions. Instead of receiving lessons from your mistakes, you gave rejection to the lessons and instead gave reception to an identity from those mistakes. In other words, instead of going “What can I learn from this?” you asked “Who can I BE from this?”
What can I learn from this? I did something stupid… so I won’t make that mistake again.
Who can I be from this? I did something stupid… so this must mean I’m stupid.
You can choose either question, but you may not choose the answer your brain gives you. If you choose to ask, “What’s wrong with me?” then your brain will come up with answers for you.
What’s wrong with me? Well gee… let me count the ways. I don’t look nearly as good as my friends, I can’t stop binge watching Netflix while my life passes me by, and when that person just waved I waved back like a dumbass not realizing they were waving at the person behind me so now I’m just going to pretend to scratch my head but they totally know what I did and I can’t even hide it because I’m an idiot and everyone hates me.
You choose to ask the question, but you can’t always choose the answer. Much like I can choose to eat doughnuts all day and not exercise, but I can’t choose not to let my body turn to shit by this choice. Choose to ask better quality questions if you want to receive better quality answers.
I see this self-labeling based on actions even among those who are very intelligent and do a lot of personal development. They say to themselves, I must take responsibility, so I will blame myself.
However, this self-blame and identification with one’s actions is what I call “false personal responsibility” or “pseudo-personal responsibility.”
When someone makes a mistake and goes, “Oh gee, I’m an idiot!” they’re not taking personal responsibility. If someone is an idiot, they’re not, in their mind, responsible for the idiotic things they do. They can subconsciously go, “It’s OK to keep doing idiotic things because I am an idiot, after all. No one can really blame a stupid person for doing stupid things. That would be like blaming a wild animal for doing as a wild animal does and attacking people.”
It’s essentially saying, “This is just the way I am! I can’t help myself! I can’t choose otherwise!” By blaming their identity, they’ve removed responsibility. They don’t have to stop doing stupid things if they’re “stupid” because now they’re just living up to their identity.
If you ever tell yourself, “I’m hopeless. I’m unworthy. I’m stupid. I’m a failure. I’m unlovable. I’m undatable,” then you’ve excused yourself of your choices. You’ve given your choices over to an identity that YOU chose to create!
The mind game is this: “What I do determines who I am. I can’t choose who I am, and therefore I’m not responsible for what I do. I have no choice in my actions because my identity decides for me.”
Ab. So. Lute. Bull. Shit.
It’s common in our world to think what you have and what you do defines who you are. But being is the source of your doing which determines what you have. The order is Be, Do, Have – not Have, Do, Be. At least, from one perspective. You should know by now that it’s rarely just one way.
What you do is a reflection of who you’re choosing to be at any given moment in time. To confuse what you do with who you are is mistaking the reflection of a person in the mirror for the real person. A brain trick. An illusion. Like being in a house of mirrors at a carnival and losing site of what’s real and what’s just a reflection.
The brain doesn’t know that what it’s seeing is a reflection and not the real deal. It says, “But I can prove I’m an idiot, unworthy, and unlovable! Look at all the stupid things I do. Look at how no one cares about me. Look at how I fail myself and others. Look. Look. Look!! It’s right there! I can see it’s real!!” All the while, your silly little brain doesn’t know it’s looking at reflections and mistaking them for reality.
Yet if you were to reach out and try to touch the person you see in the mirror, you’d hit a barrier. You can’t actually feel the person because they’re not real, but rather just a reflection. If you were to break this mirror, you’d realize it was just an illusion. It was just bullshit.
Are you willing to break through your bullshit to see it’s just an illusion? Or do you want to let your brain deceive you without questioning it?
Why would You play this game of mirrors? Well, think about it… how else can You see Yourself from the outside? How else can You see Yourself from the front, back, sides, top, and bottom? How else can You explore Yourself from the outside looking in without having something reflecting You back to Yourself?
What if All of this is just a game of You reflecting You back to Yourself to see what could not be seen from within You?
What if Others outside of you are just reflections of what is within Yourself?
What if you’ve forgotten that you’re in a house of mirrors, and the whole time you’re confusing reflections for reality? Wouldn’t you be confused? Wouldn’t you need to test what you see by touching the illusion to discover, “Oh yes! I forgot… I’m just playing the game of mirrors!”
If you’re in a house of mirrors and realize you’re in a house of mirrors, then it just simply becomes a game, an amusement, an experience. A part of you knows that the illusions are just illusions. Even with this knowing that you’re looking at illusions, you may get confused, but isn’t it OK that you get lost and confused temporarily, because, eventually, you’ll find your way out of the game? Eventually you’ll look back and go, “Well, wasn’t that fun?”
A reflection isn’t real, and neither is a projection. This means you can choose to reject the projections others and you put on yourself.
You can reject, “You’re an idiot” when someone says it to you or when you say it to yourself.
Or, like watching a movie from a projector, you can suspend reality and go along with the projections. Let yourself get lost in it for the enjoyment of it, all the while you know deep inside it’s just a movie. Just a projection on a screen. You can safely return to “reality” without being lost forever in what was just a game you wanted to experience for a moment.
This means you can receive the projection, “You’re a great person!” should you choose to play along with that. You can choose to receive or reject whatever projections you want, but don’t confuse them for reality. They’re just a projection that you’re playing along with like playing along with a movie you see. You may laugh, cry, and experience all the emotions watching this movie… but still you know what you see isn’t really “real.”
Rejection is just the other side of the coin of reception. You must reject many things in order to receive one thing. In other words, whenever you say “yes” to something, you’re saying “no” to many other things in that moment.
Remember that it’s all just for a moment. To say yes to an inhale is not to “reject” exhaling… except for that moment. To say “no” to helping a friend because you have something else important to do isn’t to “reject” helping friends forever, just for that moment. To charge significant money for a service isn’t to “reject” charity forever, just for that moment.
Yet you must remember this when you feel like “no” means rejecting something outright. Have you ever thought, “They told me ‘no,’ so they’re rejecting me.” “I asked them out on a date, I asked them for a favor, I asked them to buy my product, and they told me no so this means I’m being rejected.”
Those in sales have learned a “no” may be nothing more than a “not now” or “I don’t know enough yet.” Taken too far, some sales people can be pushy, but then again, sometimes people need to be pushed to get through their own bullshit.
Genesis, to generate or create what you desire, is “to know/no.” Knowing allows you to choose “yes” to what you’d like to create. “Noing” allows you to choose to give rejection by saying “no” to what interferes with your creation.
If you believe that rejection is bad and take “no”
as equaling long-standing rejection, then you’ll now have an avoidance to saying “no.” You’ll “reject rejection” if you will. This makes it impossible to effectively make wise choices. It makes it impossible to reject an old game in favor of a new game.
Whether it shows up as difficulty telling people “no” to their requests, difficulty telling yourself “no” to temptations you face, difficulty rejecting the clothes that pile up in your closet even though you haven’t worn that one shirt in like 17 years, or anything else, the avoidance of rejection leads to an accumulation of bullshit that’s long overdue for being tossed out, or isn’t worthy of taking in to begin with.
But Derek… I’m confused. I thought it’s not about rejection, but integration. I thought it’s not about making yourself or others wrong, but adding something else to it. You know I love logic. I can’t see the logic of saying you must learn to reject, and yet earlier saying it’s not about rejection but integration.
Thank you for sharing, mind. I can appreciate your confusion. It doesn’t seem totally logical, does it? Yet remember we’re only playing games of perception. I can look at one side of a door and say it’s white, and another person looks at the other side of the door and says it’s black. We’re both right… because it’s a door that’s been painted two different colors. Integration means to not “reject rejection.” This is logical, right?
If you’ve been telling yourself any excuse like, “I can’t because I don’t have enough money,” this is the game you’ve chosen for a moment. You can choose to reject this “what is” game, your old story, and receive the “what could be” game, a new story.
Is there a way to play both games of “what is” and “what could be” without rejecting either? A way to not make it either/or but rather both? Perhaps you may discover a way to “play both” by the end of this book…
When someone comes to me with their bullshit, as a loving and caring true friend, I can reject their bullshit and give them truth. Give them something else to consider. I don’t have to receive anyone else’s bullshit, and I don’t have to receive my own mind’s bullshit either. Our minds may attempt to give us BS, it’s our choice whether or not to receive it.
Break Through Your BS_Uncover Your Brain's Blind Spots and Unleash Your Inner Greatness Page 16