David and Michelle
Session 2
Session 2
L-O-V-E
Michelle:
First we talked about faith, let's see what feels most optimal today. When you tune in, what do you feel?
David:
I get that we should talk about love.
Michelle:
That was the one I thought, too! Of course, it was. Of course, it is.
David:
Of course, so that's where it's safe, of course. So I think the thing to bring out about love right off the bat is love is infinitely more powerful than any of us give it credit for, and love can always be a solution in every situation.
Regardless of How You Feel…
David:
There is this divine thing that we made, and it says, "You know, regardless of how you feel now you are loved. You are loved by your Creator and so many on earth. Receive that love now. Let that love heal you and embrace you. Regardless of your problem, love is the answer. Fill yourself with love. Ask for God's blessings, then throw love like a bomb at your problem over and over until it melts away." But I always picture it like a water balloon, other than a bomb.
Sometimes the Problem Is Not the Problem
But you just saturate the problem. And one of the things about the problem is, sometimes it's not the problem that's the problem, sometimes it's our understanding or relationship to something that is the problem.
The Many Levels of Love
Love exists on many levels. There's the personal, I love Mary, my husband, my wife, my children, my uncles, my teachers. There's some universal love that we may have for humanity or being a well-wisher of the world. We may love animals or plants. We may have a love in our heart for the divine, for all created. There's all different aspects of love, and we want to explore our relationship to all of them, and how to further them so that we can be living a life filled with love, and through that lot of just spontaneous gratitude and more love in every moment.
Michelle:
I certainly want to talk about the relationship to ourselves, right? And being loved, the unconditional aspects of it. Because what I sense, and what many people experience, is conditional love. But when we become constant, consistent, we are the same no matter what is going on in the outer world circumstance, then we become unconditional, which is quite rare.
Love Is NOT a Reaction
Michelle:
I think a lot of people think of love in terms of how they feel, "If they treat me this way, then I feel this. Or if they say this, then that's how I fall in love. Or if he's these things, and she's those things, that's a match made in heaven." But the real measure is how deeply can we love someone that we have nothing in common with?
Love Does Not Withdraw
David:
There was a trend that the way that you would get children to behave was effectively when they were doing the wrong thing, you would withdraw your love from them. You withdrew your attention and you withdrew your love until they came along, and that is doing nothing but teaching conditional love. The damage that can do is huge because people learn conditional love, and it meant that if you did something wrong, you can’t be loved.
What Can Be Wrong When Done from Love?
David:
Somebody can be coming home from work and pick flowers for the other person, and then find out that the other person had planted the flowers to win a prize in the garden show. Things like that that can happen, where we act out of love but the end result is minor inconvenience, annoyance, or fury; that doesn’t change the intention, that it was done out of love.
David:
One of the biggest areas that I've had to focus on, and still work on regularly, is that I learned from one of my parents to hate myself. I've been told many times, "You've never been here before. You're a stranger in a strange land. You don't get how they do things here at all." One of the things that staggered me the most when I first got here is that people will hurt you in the name of love, "I'm doing this for your own good. You need to learn." And that is such a hugely foreign concept to me because you don't go up and yell at your flowers to grow taller, why would you do that? It's just the nature of time, and there's no one to blame.
Love Bombs
David:
One of the first things that we want to do, some of the first exercises we want to explore, is within ourselves. Find some love and throw it, again, as a water balloon, as a bomb, and throw it at ourselves, within ourselves, at any of those areas that cause us strife, cause us tension, that we don't like about ourselves, that we pass judgment on.
Truth Techniques
Michelle:
One of the healing techniques I use has become known as the truth techniques. When someone's angry, sad, upset, anxious, or experiencing any emotion that doesn't feel good, there's a sensation that goes along with it. Those are the sensations that most people attempt to push down, and the first step of that is find it and welcome it. So if it's tension in your heart and your heart feels hurting, broken, or pressure, as opposed to wanting to numb yourself or push it away, welcome it. Thank it, wrap it in light, wrap it in love. If we embrace it, then we can honestly erase it. If we resist it, it'll persist.
Scary Love
Michelle:
I love that, when we throw water bomb balloons at it, and we bathe it in light, we bathe in love. Love is a very light energy; When we feel in love, we feel so lit up, I always kind say light and love together because it helps people understand. Because I think sometimes there are kind of darker loves, or the threatening type of love. I coached a person many years ago who had huge trust issues, and when we got to the root of what caused it, it was his father. When he was young, maybe seven or so years old, his father made him climb to the top of this very high ladder and the little boy was so scared. The father kept saying, "Jump, I'll catch you. Jump, I'll catch you." He was scared to do it, but he finally believed, "Okay, Daddy's going to catch me." But when he jumped, daddy did not catch him. His father backed up and let him fall, and honestly, really hurt himself. The lesson was, "I wanted to teach you at a young age that you cannot rely on people." And the father, I’m sure, his intention was not for his son to be hurt but to save him from being hurt by others down the line. But that one thing caused so much damage.
People Who Are Hurt Tend to Hurt People
David:
When you describe the father stepping away, my compassion goes out to the father as well, what is it that happened in his life to feel that? To feel that this was an important, and significant, and powerful lesson that his son should learn? What was the disappointment? What broke his heart? What hurt him? And that may be coming down from generations.
Liquid Love
David:
Each of us have things, our parents had things. A lot of it is misinterpretation like we talked about in the previous section. When we talk about the situation that we're looking to solve with love, it's not always the situation itself that needs to be resolved. Sometimes it's our relationship to the situation. When we're throwing these love balloons at it, we want to include not only the situation, "My so-and-so is mad at me, my husband, wife, kid, whatever is mad at me, my boss," but we also want to throw it on my relationship to the person, and me so that I'm the voice of reason. I'm the same loving, welcoming, person saying, "Oh yes, I see there's room for growth here." We want every aspect of it to be just drenched in liquid love.
What Color Is Love?
David:
We can see it as colored light, as golden light, we could see it as green because the heart chakra is said to be green. Maybe somebody else wants to use blue because they like blue, there's all the colors of the rainbow. What nourishes you? You know, Valentine's Day is full of red hearts, so maybe somebody else may see it as red, and red has the earth chakra. Whatever works for you, whatever makes you melt, is the color of love.
Come Right In
David:
When we welcome in and allow it, it's like opening the door to whatever is coming. Could be the wind is coming in, could be a friend is coming in. We're allowing the river to flow as it were, but when we resist, we put up a wall. As soon as we put up a wall, there is an edge, and as soon as there's an edge, we're out of unity and wholeness. There’s something else that exists that, at some point in time, we need to open up and allow our awareness to be comfortable with. That's inevitable, and we don't want a backlog of 300 armories filled with things we've resisted over the course of this lifetime, or many lifetimes for those who get it. What we want is we want to be able to flow in the world, moment by moment, fearlessly, in love and in gratitude because truth be told, we never left Eden. We only think we did. But the divine didn't kick us out of Eden, it just said, "By the way, have you looked over here? There's other cool things, you know? It's a big universe to explore, and it's all for you."
Heaven On Earth
David:
There are people in this moment who have managed to embrace love and acceptance so much that they are living in heaven on earth; they may be living in poverty or they may be wealthy, that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with unbounded flow of love for all, that understanding that this is all here for us, and to be in constant connection, communion, with the divine, with unboundedness, with our own higher self, our own expanded awareness at the same time as aware of all of the individualities that exist, all of which have their own purpose and their own path. We get to enjoy it, or we get to not mind it.
Judgement is For Ego
David:
But you know that saying that, don't judge someone else until you walk a mile or however in their shoes. And because we haven't, there's no advantage for us to be passing judgment. The only reason to do it is to boost her own ego, and that's not a valid reason when you could be giving love and expanding your own experience of divine love and grace.
Love is Not a Weakness
Michelle:
Here's my little joke: I've been coaching almost two decades, and I can assure you that no one's ever come to me and said, "Michelle, help me to feel bad, help me to struggle, help me to be feeling unloved." That's never happened! We want to feel love, we want to feel good. Period. So many people don't, and they justify not feeling good, not being loving.
One of the biggest things is I hear is, "Well, if I just love them, they're going to walk all over me. They're going to treat me like a doormat." I'm here to tell you that is not what happens, ever. When you show up in love, you are literally more powerful. You're not weaker, right? You don't have the need to defend your energy or defend yourself. The people who say, "Let me pull my love away to teach you something," say that from weakness, from fear, which makes you much weaker as a person, as a being. When you show up and honestly stand in love, you become the love that you want to experience. You're being the leader, you're being the person who finds the light in the dark room. Not only do people not walk all over you, there's a level of respect, they say, "Oh, thank God one of us had some wisdom here, some brains not to react to things the way you do."
Love is The Easy Choice
The other thing I hear people say is, "Well, that's just hard. Who does that?" First of all, it's the easier way to be. What is hard is anger and resentments, and fears and doubts, overwhelms and anxieties. That is what is hard on this planet. Showing up and being love, centers and grounds you, connects you to the divine. I could tell you, the years before I learned this, especially a couple of decades ago, the times that I disliked myself the most is when I showed up in anger, and I said things that I regretted.
The Dysfunction Stops Here
Michelle:
A mindset that has helped me is, "The dysfunction stops with me." I didn't grow up in a family that knew to do that or model that. I saw a lot of physical anger, fighting, yelling and screaming. I didn't want a model that, I didn't know that consciously until many years later. But regardless of your past, you get to choose who you want to be. It’s a process, nobody does it perfectly at first. You and I been on this path for decades, we evolve over time. But the fact is that you can see that the end result is you want to be unconditionally loving. Period. That's what unconditional is.
Just Start
David:
I really want to reiterate that. We've been doing this for a long time, and we skinned our knees a few times. We tripped going down the stairs or the door closed in our face, and we had the different experiences as we were growing. I just really want to encourage people, wherever you are now is the perfect place to start. Start where you are now, and move, and have a vision.
The Ultimate Beauty Regimen
David:
We know that it is in fact harder to be upset and unloving because you can measure your physiology; when you're stressing or freaking out, your physiology is off the charts in a negative way. When you're calm, and life is good, your physiology is more in harmony. So when we say it’s harder to be angry and resentful and upset, it literally requires more energy and it ages us more. If you're looking for a beauty regimen, love yourself. Seriously. Just start with something easy, "I love my eyes." Spend five minutes loving your eyes, your nose, your lips, your shoulders, your knees, whatever it is. We have an expression I've been using for decades, which is love what you hate. Anything that you hate, if you can bring it around to love, changes everything.
How is What You’re Doing Working For You?
David:
My mother was, very powerful and dynamic, and she was very progressive. She was always on marches for civil rights back in the 60s, or for Vietnam War, for anything that was unkind towards people. Yet in her own life, she would get angry and hostile with people who didn't agree with her in a world where most people did not agree with her. Because of that, there were times where her circle of friends got very, very, very small. But once she realized that wasn't the way to do it, and she turned everything around. My younger sister, who got to spend the last many months with my mother, said she just let go of everything, and the only thing that was left for the last many months of my mother's life was just the love. She let go of all the reasons to be upset at people, and instead just chose to love what was being presented in each moment, or at least not mind, but just to love and appreciate everything as it was presented. And it's fabulous to enjoy life.
Look For Something You Like
David:
We’re often told that we won't be good enough until we get this lipstick, or this car, or this job, or this position, or this title, or live in this area and it reminds me of the Jim Carrey quote. He says, “I hope everyone gets rich and famous and gets everything they want so they’ll realize that’s not the answer.” None of those things will give you the fulfillment that unbounded unconditional love will give you, as consistently, more full-time. Love, and consciousness, and appreciation of the divine, and an unfailing and ever-flowing eternal fullness is the answer. And love is a perfectly wonderful, double-wide French doors opening to it. To do that, all you have to do is look for something that you like in everything, especially the things you don’t like.
Another True Story
Michelle:
There’s an expression I like that says, “love the unlovable.” At the end of 1999, I was working a corporate job, and I despised this job because it wore me down. I worked for a very large telecommunications company, and my thoughts were constantly "I don't even know how this company's functioning. It's so crazy. There's so much red tape, and politics, and I mean every day." I mean, it was causing me agitation inside my body.
I was working with this spiritual mentor, this beautiful man, who said, "You've got to love what you don't love. You got to love the unlovable." And I asked, "Well, how do I do that? Love this company, love who I work with, love it?" He said, "Well, start with appreciation." And I thought, "Appreciation? I don't appreciate half the people I work with, the company is terrible, they treat us awful." I had all these stories.
He said, "Look at what that's doing to you. You don't sleep well at night. You're unhappy. It's hurting your relationships. It's hurting your physical being. It's not allowing you to move forward. You're so caught up in the problem." Through months of working with him, I began understanding that I was hurting myself and I was willing to find appreciation. I went into this meditation, and it was a great technique for every single person.
Love the Unlovable
How do you love what you hate, or love the unlovable? As he told me, you start with appreciation. I worked in a department of about 50 people, so in my mind I started with the person that I liked the most, Jennifer was her name. I remember pulling her up in my mind, and just appreciating her, and appreciating the friendship, who she was, her skill set. I did that with every single person, every peer that I worked with. I went through the management team, and then I did it with the company. I started to appreciate things like, "Wow, they were the original, and they connect the world, and they're known as one of the leaders and the pioneers." I found all this appreciation where I couldn't find any of it. It was probably 90 minutes, it didn't take me that much longer than that.
I did that over a long weekend, and went back into work on a Tuesday. I worked in what I called the little mouse trap; it was this huge floor with all these cubicles, and I had to wind around to get to my desk. There was no good light, just was one little port hole, and the rest was fluorescent lighting. As soon as I walked in the door, I thought it was different, and I thought, "Wow, they painted. It's actually brighter in here." Then I started thinking wow, people are in an extra good mood. The girl I sat next to, Jennifer, came over and we talked about our weekends and I said, "Can you believe that they painted? It's still gray, but it's like four shades lighter and it looks so much better in here." She looked at me, and she said, "What are you talking about? You think that they painted?" I said, "Jennifer, it's so much brighter in here."
I got up, and I literally had to walk over to the walls. As I examined the walls, and she was right; they were not freshly painted walls. Now I’m thinking, "What is going on?" I didn't know if I was going crazy, and I called that mentor that told him, "Okay, I am freaking out right now. This place seems so much different to me. People seem nicer. I walked in, I thought they'd painted the walls of our department. They didn't." And he said, "Here's what I can tell you, Michelle. Depressed people see the world darker. You took off a bunch of layers, you took off all this anger, and resentment.”
That was insane to me that I shifted something inside, and the world looked different. People responded to me differently. That's why love heals everything. We become love and we emanate that out to the universe. Everything that's in those darker, fear-based, angry, full of resentment areas: we walk into the dark room, but we're the light, and we transform the darkness. The world is just a mirror for what you have going on inside of you, and as you shift you on the inside, as you fill up with this love, you also allow yourself to fill up with the goodness, the power, the abundance, the health, the vitality, all that's good. Honestly, I call it the power of God.
The World is As We Are
David:
There's a Vedic expression, which is, "The world is as we are." And that's why we talk about the first thing to love is you. If there is some aspect of you that you are not comfortable with, are not happy with, that you don't love, then that is the same ability that lets you see flaws and problems in the world. It’s based within you, and when you allow yourself to be that totality and wholeness of unconditional love, then that becomes the lens you see through.
You used the phrase before about the people that become the leaders, that light up the room. These are the lighthouses, that people gravitate to. The interesting is they are absolutely full of love, and don't walk all over you. They will share their intimate problems with you because you can help them, even if all you do is listen, even if all you do is give them a couple of moments. I work with people helping them grow in this gift and the ability to do that, and inevitably, people start coming up and saying, "Strangers are coming up to me on the street and sharing really deep details about their lives and they act like they know me," and they do. Because people are looking for someone who will accept them as they are. Heart Over Mind The first thing is to recognize is that the heart knows how to love, but the mind knows how to criticize. We have the mind, the intellect, and the ego; the mind is that which absorbs the experiences, the intellect is that which discerns. We want discernment because we want to be able to know truth versus non truth and know, "This is worth doing. This is not worth doing." The challenge in the world today is that we're being presented with a whole bunch of information, the basis of which is very shallow, and we're being taught that these are deep concerns, when in fact they're not deep concerns.
Ego Is Not Your Friend
David:
It is not a deep concern whether you have the latest greatest iPhone. If you have a phone and you can talk to people, you're better than a huge percentage of the world's population in terms of quality of life on some levels. The object is not to be better than everyone else, the object is to let the divine love flow through you and enjoy the experience that you're here to experience. We're not here to build up our ego; ego is not on your side. Ego is not necessarily your friend because it is the guard between you and your unbounded self, and we want the ego to grow to unboundedness. Until ego starts having that experience of growing to unboundedness, it wants to build. The difference between the small self-ego, and the unbounded, universal ego is that the universal ego doesn't have any problems while the small self-ego says, "I've got the better car. I've got better a spouse. I've got the better job. I've got the better whatever.” What we want to understand is it's not a contest. There was a bumper sticker years ago that said, "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." Anytime I saw it, I was like, "No!"
Here’s What You Really Want
What we really want is to have the best possible experience that we can have in this moment, and the best possible experience we can have in every moment. I know you know Christian Mickelsen, and one of the things that he presents is, "All fears are fears of feelings." He has a process very similar to what you talked about of the peace process where we find the feeling that's disruptive and we allow it. He doesn't use the term welcome it, but we just notice it and then we work our way through it in whatever way.
But the thing is also that all our desires are for feelings. The reason we want the car, the spouse, the job, the status, is how it will make us feel. That is why one of the quickest ways people manifest what they want is they put together a vision board. They put on images of them at the beach or sky diving or whatever it is they want to do, but one of the things that you can add to create the life that you want is imagine how you will feel when you get it and do that for five minutes. Five minutes feeling how you will feel when you get what you are shooting for, and that can take off. Just FIVE Minutes? Divine mother once said to me that five minutes of doing that, imagining those feelings, is the equivalent of a thousand hours of working towards your goal. It is a very powerful technique, to feel how you want to feel. No one doing this exercise is going to sit down and say, "I want to feel bad. What would it be like if I were in this horrible situation?" They all want to imagine, "How will I feel in the new car? How will I feel eating at this restaurant? How will I feel with this amount of money in the bank?"
We want these experiences in the world, but we don't want them at the cost of others and we don't want them if we're not fully present. If there's some part of us that we're resenting or blocking or hating or not allowing in, then that part of us is not allowing us to enjoy. Let’s say I'm going to take this person that I adore to this very exquisite, and we'll say expensive, restaurant, and yet when we go in, we feel inadequate in that we don't know which silverware to use. We're not used to that level. What is the likelihood that we're going to get maximum enjoyment from that experience even though it's quote, "What we want"? We're going to be there, and we're going to be sitting there blocking who we are, blocking our natural flow because we're worried if we pick up the wrong thing or if we spill something or if we drop something we don’t belong there. If we just go in with the attitude of total acceptance of ourselves, it's a very different experience. We don't use the energy to even bring up the worry thoughts.
Ego is Self-Conscious
Michelle: I do believe most people have the experience that ego is not our friend. I had an experience, and I can even tell you the exact date: March 28th, 2019. I was struggling with my ego, in short. I had been feeling so super great and in love and loving my life, the world, everything. And then my husband's father who was very, very close to me passed. He was like a father to me, and I went into such a funk about it; I was sad and almost in a depressed energy with my own feelings and watching my husband and his family have a really difficult time emotionally. I was in a very deep meditation, and I felt like I couldn't get myself out of this funk. The ego was holding on so strong, and I started yelling at it, "What do you want for me? Enough!" I was just pissed. And when I really settled myself down, the message that I got was, "I'm looking after you. I want what's only best for you." I realized my ego was so self-conscious, only thinking about me. It's self-centered on me. I was holding onto all this sadness as a way of proving that I really cared, it was a way of expressing "Oh my God, this man meant so much to me, I can’t just bounce back," and then I moved to, "Okay, that's over. That's done with." That felt wrong in my energy, but when I realized, "Wait a second, I'm actually making myself sad and staying stuck in sadness to prove that I care, that I loved him” I could let it go.
What You Resist Persists
It's a society belief that if you love somebody so much, you stay depressed for weeks, months. When I started looking at all that, and I moved beyond the story with that outer truth technique, I got out of the story that was around me. It was then that I realized the best thing I could do was love him more, love me more, this unconditional love that we're talking about. It released the sadness, and it also released fighting my ego, calling my ego someone or something that's not serving me and making it wrong and pushing it away. It hit me right then: Whatever you resist, persists. I've been resisting my ego my whole life, fighting the ego. The world calls it evil, the enemy, the devil, and I realized, "Oh my God, we're meant to love it. We're meant to love that ego."
As I loved it, as I welcomed it, and now it’s more childlike. "What do you want? What are you wanting?" So, if you're saying, "Oh, it wants to win all the toys or get all the marbles," and you ask, "What do you want from that?" Maybe it’s to prove that I'm smart, or I'm a leader, or I'm significant and capable. So I reassure it, I talk to it and say, "Yes, you are smart. You are a leader. You are capable. And we're going to put spirit in charge, right? We're not going to make it all about us, me and you, ego, right? We're going to make it about a win-win." As I've learned to do this, nine months or something into this, it's like the fight has left. That's where the fight was. That's where the resistance was. Truth Compass I started saying ego is my truth compass. Truth be told, ego is my best friend and knows me better than anybody, is looking out for me. As that happens and there's a transformation of welcoming what it's wanting to communicate, it helps me pause and not be reactive. You need a little space to discern what is most optimal versus just reacting. Just 30 seconds, a minute, a pause to tune in and calm down. It’s a loving thing to do for yourself for the people that you're in relationship with. It’s transformed the quality of my life.
The Purpose of Ego
David:
I can imagine that it would. The thing is, ego has a purpose, and we have survived as a species and individually because of ego. Ego does want to take care of us, and we honor that and appreciate that just as you're talking about. I don't want to fight the ego, what I want to do is expand the ego. I want to expand the ego just as you said, to include spirituality, to include universality, to appreciate that the ego has gotten me here, but now there's something bigger that we can do. It is ego that protects us, but when we add that quality of universality, of spirituality, to our individual ego then it happens just as you said: it stops being about us. It's still about our experiences, but now we can be appreciating, and we come to the world with gratitude. Now we come to the world with, "This is my play, how can I help? What can we do to help others?"
Love Is Strong in Right, Weak in Wrong
When we go back to that old mindset, "If I become loving, they're going to walk all over me." No, they're not. First, love is more powerful, and secondly, love makes one strong in right and weak in wrong. We want to be able to very freely be loving, and when we become accepting of others, they start to champion us. Even if somebody starts to come up against us, the crowd will say, "You're missing the point. You're not getting what's being presented here. What's being offered is love, sit down and let's help you get through whatever this is." We want to be as helpful to people as possible, recognize that when what we aren’t experiencing what we want, we can move into the field where that begins to weigh less and less and then eventually the weight of it evaporates and we just don't mind. We don't do it by beating ourselves up, or our egos, or the environment, or the situation.
Start With A Stubbed Toe
One of the interesting things that occurred to me years ago was that when you stub your toe or hit yourself with a hammer, one of first things that people do is say a four letter word that's an expletive. That, truth be told, is not what you want to experience in that moment. What you actually want to experience when you hurt yourself, what is instinctive, is lap of a loving mother. "Oh no, no, it's no big deal. Here, have a candy and you're good," a kiss and a band aid. We can change our responses, even if we're going with a gut reaction and don't feel we have time; we can create the habit to say, "Oh, my foot. Love, love that this happened. Love, thank you that this karma is over and love this area so that it can heal now." Cancer is a direct embodiment of self-criticism or self-doubt, one or the other, or in many cases both, and look how rampant it is. That alone is telling us that there's some emotional component that's not in flow and not in tune with what we're capable of being. Love is Anti-Aging There was a wonderful lecture that I was at years and years ago by brilliant doctor, and he was talking about why we age. He did all this research on this type of cells and that type of cells, and how long they last and everything. The conclusion that he made was that on the level of the physiology, there's no reason that we should age, so why do we age? Because we think we should. We think we're supposed to age. We think we’re supposed to be stressed, that we're supposed to get mad when we're in a traffic jam. We think when things don't go our way, we're supposed to curse. We think if we don't get something, we're supposed to stomp our feet and have a tantrum.
We Do What Works For Us
One year we were at a Thanksgiving gathering, several families together, a neighborhood thing. It was mostly adults but there were a couple of kids, and one of them was a girl who was about six years old at the time. All of the sudden she just starts having this major meltdown tantrum: screaming, wanting whatever it was that she wanted, to the point that every adult stopped talking to see what was going on. She was just screaming and yelling about one particular thing, and I looked at her for a couple of minutes while she was doing this and finally said, "Does this [screaming and yelling] work for you?" She stopped screaming immediately, completely lit up in the biggest smile ever, shook her head and went, "Yeah, it works all the time," and then went right back to screaming.
Her mother was standing right next to me. Somehow this was what her daughter was taught, that this is how she gets what she wants in life. Not that she does something loving or kind, but by throwing a fit. Six months later I saw her have another tantrum and her mother was still teaching that it was working for her.
Retrain the Behavior
Michelle:
I have an eight-year-old; I get these ages and different stages and occasionally he had a massive meltdown. My response was to teach, "No benefit to that. You don't get what you want acting that way." I know this, and I understand I want to enterprise the emotions that are going to best serve him. When he is loving, when he is kind, when he is helpful, that's where he gets, "That's who you are.” He gets the praise, he gets the attention. I've retrained that behavior because you see it in children especially.
I have a girlfriend who has a set of twins, three weeks old. We were just at a party over the weekend, and she was talking about how one of them has learned to scream for whatever she needs: a diaper change, being fed or held. It’s how we survive in this world when we're little, right? It's this, "Oh, I cry, I yell, I scream." That’s the only communication, so you've got to retrain the brain that that is not the best strategy to get what you want. David: It’s appropriate at three weeks, not necessarily appropriate at six, and it's certainly not appropriate at 60.
Michelle:
Exactly.
Allow It Does Not Mean Act on It
David:
At eight years old when somebody is having this meltdown, we can appreciate that they’re feeling frustrated and feeling blocked, and the importance of allowing yourself to have those feelings. That's part of who you are. It's an imbalance, something we don't need to block, but we also don't need to act on it or bring that into the world as a way of getting what we want. We have to accept, “Ok, that's part of me”, learn to accept the unpleasant aspects of ourselves because once we accept it, it's so much easier to change it. What Kind of Attention Do You Want?
David:
I met somebody who grew up in a very refined household; I want to say he was in his late thirties or forties when I was talking to him, and I had met him 20 years before that. I honestly believe this person was physically incapable of raising his voice. He had grown up in a very refined, settled family and I don't know what his family did, but he had a very soft, soothing mannerism about him. If he was putting out a fire, he would be talking calmly, unlike my Italian family would. They'd be very animated and loud, and that's fine too. We’re not saying that one is better than the other, we're just saying “who do you want to be?” We can be the person who has a tantrum and we will get a lot of attention by having the tantrum, but is that the kind of attention that we want and would we rather have love and respect and appreciation? Fear Does Not Equal Respect There's a huge misconception that respecting someone means we have a certain amount of fear for them. There's a big tradition which talks about fear of God, and that is as gross a misunderstanding and translation of anything that ever came out. When I was in fifth or sixth grade, we were playing wiffle ball in my neighborhood, and one of the kids playing was the older brother of one of my close friends. He slid into third base, sprained his ankle, and he was in excruciating pain. He was terrified to go home. He said, "If I go home, my father will whip me with a belt," and he was truly afraid of being hurt by his father for being hurt. That thought hurts my heart, because when we're hurt, God wants us to call on God. Our parents and those others who love us want to be there to support us. When we're hurting because someone died, the first thing that happens is all of the family and the friends come from far away and rush in to fill the void of emptiness, to fill it with love and support so that those people don't feel so lost. We want to be in a world where love is the answer, where it's not that we're afraid of God. Instead we want to be able to say, "God, I can't tie my shoelaces, a little help here." Whatever it is that we need, the divine loves us, and from the divine side, they're not separate from us and they love to help us. Mistakes Are Opportunities For MORE Love When a child makes mistakes, a truly loving parent is in a position to appreciate that because it gives them the chance to show them more love. That’s when the child will sit down and pay attention to you and listen, when they need to be comforted or need help with a problem. Otherwise, they're off on their own exploring the world and having a great time, and you still love them but you miss those opportunities where they get to be close to you and you get to just enjoy the love and to be a parent. When we talk about being a parent, it's not about, "I'm being a parent and being responsible," it's about, "I'm being a parent, and getting to love my child is what being a parent truly is." It's having those moments of unconditional love and acceptance of your offspring. Love vs Fear Michelle:
I think so often we get so fearful. My baby was about a year and a half old, still a tiny, little guy. I can remember he would get so frustrated, it was probably something like he couldn’t get the little block in the hole or something like that, but that was his world back then. He only did it a few times, but I remember he went up to the wall, and he started hitting his head on the wall and my gut reaction was, "Oh my God." I just held him and loved him and said, "Baby, baby. Oh, oh, sweetheart." He’s crying and flailing, and I just wrapped him in my arms in love and kissed him. I remember saying, "Oh, baby, we never hurt ourselves. No, no. That's not a good idea." And I remember the emotion of the love calmed him down. I didn't yell at him, didn’t say, "Stop it! What are you doing?" That might have startled him into stopping, but it wouldn’t have shifted the behavior.
He did it just two other times, and I really believe what stopped that pattern is love; I remember meditating on that, and thinking, "If this happens again, love him even more." Not to act horrified but remind him that he is smart and that we always treat ourselves with kindness and love. Honestly, I feel like it stopped that behavior because I just flooded him with love, like you said earlier, almost like water balloons of love. You just flood them with love, wrap them in love in such a way that it just stops that behavior. Just Listen With Love Now that he’s eight, when I see him starting to get upset or frustrated, I say, "Mommy's here, come for a hug." and he comes running over. It’s exactly what you said, the more that we can just love them up. It calms him down every single time, and it's like he looks for me to crawl into my lap; it is beautiful, and I love it. Don't we want that as adults?
I'll say this lovingly because I know my husband, for many years, would be playing problem solver when I was upset. He’s talking about scenarios and solutions, and I'm like, "Shut up and hold me." I had to kind of teach him to do that, and probably not in the most loving way. When we’re hurting, we don't want to hear another point of view, we want to be able to say, “This is what I'm feeling. Just hug me. Just hold me.” He’s really great at it now. It’s so important that we are embracing people and holding them. It’s that expression we’ve mentioned, “embrace to erase”. Welcoming what has shown up, staying present to people's emotional upsets in love, is one of the greatest gifts that you can pass on to them.
Frustration Is Real, But…
David:
In his “Autobiography of a Yogi”, Yogananda talks about how for the first two years of his life he cried the whole time. He had great sympathy for his parents, who had to put up with that. He cried because he remembered what he should be able to do but at before two years old, his body wouldn't do it. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He couldn't eat by himself, and so he was upset, and as he said, he felt so bad for his parents because there wasn’t anything they could do. And then, at a certain age, he just stopped and moved on from there. Frustration is real, it can happen if we're impatient, if we want something to happen sooner than it seems to be flowing. That’s what traffic jams are all about: I want to get somewhere. Half the time, it's not that big a deal when we get there. Half the time, it's someone else wants us to be there at a certain time and not necessarily that we want to be there. What we want to do is take those moments, and in every moment remember to ask, “What's being presented? Who do I want to be, and what do I want to experience?”
Humor Is a Diffusor
David:
I'm a very big fan of a comedian named Jim Gaffigan. He’s very family-oriented, which I like a lot. The first thing I ever saw him on was a Comedy Central special that he did, I want to say in '02 or '03, and it was a little half hour set, which means really 20 minutes with commercials. He ended by telling this story about driving in New York, being in a traffic jam with traffic completely stopped. Nobody moving, cars everywhere, people blowing their horns and getting upset. He said he's sitting there, and all of the sudden the guy in the car behind him gets out and starts to approach his car. Jim knows the guy is angry and start a fight with him. Jim says, "But what am I going to say? He can see there's a car in front of me, and there's a car in front of them. I can't do anything. Yelling at me isn't going to do it.” So he asks himself, “Who do you want to be in this moment? What do you want to experience?” Being a comedian, he likes to enjoy his life, so Jim decides if this guy's going to come and pick a fight, “we're going to fight what I want to fight about”. So the guy comes up, knocks on the window, and Jim rolls it down. Before the guy gets to say a word, Jim says, "Where's my shirt?" And the guy goes, "What?" And Jim yells, "Where's my shirt? I told you that you could borrow it. I did not say you could have it. I want my shirt back." The guy kind of backed away a little bit, and Jim went on a little bit more about wanting his shirt back right away, and he'd better get it now or else. The guy finally went and got back in his car and closed the door. The thing about it is this: maybe there was a more loving way, like rolling down the window and saying, "Man, it's a hot day, and boy, can you believe this traffic?" Maybe there's a loving way to approach it, but personally, I think humor counts a lot. I remember a line in a Peanuts cartoon from years ago where Lucy is screaming at Linus about something, a little four-frame thing. Whatever she's yelling about, he just comes back completely loving and appreciating her and he says, "You know, I see your point completely and boy, you're really good at expressing yourself." Whatever it is, he's very loving, and she with arms mid-raised and ready to continue with her tantrum goes, "Ah!" and walks away. He said something about "My loving words have soothed the savage beast.” There are so many times when things come up that all we have to do is think about how we want to respond to it. We get to choose.
A Little About Empaths
For someone who is an empath, it’s not as easy for them to choose because they pick up on what the person's presenting and present it right back to them. I want to address this because empathic people are often very kind, compassionate people, and they find themselves doing what you talked about earlier, which was not being happy with how they handled a situation. Empathic people are very sensitive to what is being presented, so if someone comes up yelling at them, very often empathic people have no option because they're overwhelmed by this person's emotions and don't feel as in control as they could be so they respond in a similar way.
There is special help, and people who teach programs to help empathic people survive. There's a woman who writes about being an empath and doing well in the world. There are flower essences that can help shield them against things that are presented because we want that ability, especially as compassionate people, to be in a position to change what's being presented, and it's very often quite hard for those people. The reason that’s important to address is because if someone reading this is like that, the first thing to do is to recognize it's not me that's causing the problem, it's the fact that I'm an empathic person, and if I don't want to be this anymore, then we make the choice. “Who do I want to be? What do I want to experience?” To strengthen myself to become more invincible, when anger or upset is being presented, to just let it wrap around us. There's something called the Meissner effect.
The Meissner effect says that, when you have something, I believe it's incoherence, when you have something that is completely coherent, and you have an outside influence coming to it, that the coherence itself will protect it, and the waves just wrap around it and continue on. Whereas normally, if you don't have the Meissner effect, it just will plow right through. Basically, if you see a sphere, and someone else doesn't, when the Meissner effect is not there, they see all these arrows just going straight through nothing. With the Meissner effect, they wrap around it like a river wraps around the rock, just go around it. We're strong oaks that are anchored in who we are, who we want to be, what we want to present. Our life is an offering to the world, an offering to those that we love, an offering to God. We were given certain things, and what do we want to do with them? Far too many people, failing to recognize that or feeling overwhelmed with what's being presented in the world, throw it away. Suicide is the epitome of throwing it away.
There Is Help!
We’re not unsympathetic, we truly get that certain things can be incredibly overwhelming, and we're not passing judgment one way or the other. But we do want to say that if someone needs help, please get it. If you don’t know where, there are places and resources to find help. The first thing is what is the problem? What are you experiencing? You may need help just to figure that out, but then we can ask, “What's the light switch solution?” It doesn’t have to be agonizing, I've literally developed hundreds of products. Many techniques, things healers use. There are coaches, medications, there’s shamans. The first thing to do is to identify the core thing and then, as we’ve talked about, learn to love it.
The second thing is to find out if its an imbalance more than something like a problem. I mentioned before that my mother had really, really, I mean critical PMS in a world where there were no women gynecologists and where men just said it was all in your mind. She ended up in the hospital twice trying to commit suicide because it was so overwhelming, and they're telling her it's all in her mind, and it wasn't. It's zinc and a couple of other supplements that now you can get over the counter in the health food section, and those symptoms disappear overnight. It's completely gone.
That is so often the case: The problem is not being able to hold our own and not loving ourselves enough, and not having enough internal integrity to not care.
Solutions on Every Level
Michelle:
There are five what I call levels of light, there are solutions that exist on each level. For something happening on a physical level, like a broken leg, you go to a doctor to get your broken bone set in a cast. And then there's the mental, the emotional level.
The Physical Level
David:
I lived in a tiny community in Iowa, and they opened an Ayurvedic clinic. We’d been there a few times, and one day one of the nurses walked up with her arm in a cast. We said, “Wow, what’s the Ayurvedic remedy for a broken arm?” She said, “You massage it with sesame oil until it doesn't hurt anymore, and it's fine.” I have gotten great results from Ayurvedic remedies, but that could take years. So she just stopped in for the six weeks, popped it in a cast. Michelle:
Sometimes better strategies, right? You want to look at all the options and a cast versus massaging it with sesame oil that could take years is an obvious choice.
The Mental/Emotional Level
Michelle:
That was the perfect example for the physical level. Now, say you got into a car accident, and you really messed up your body's structure. Now there’s the mental and emotional, and that's so much where we're causing our problems and our pain. I always say, think of the brain, and that's where the pain gets generated. It's what we're doing on the inside, on the mental and the emotional level. The coaching, the training, the different types of techniques to move through your emotional and mental pain is level two.
The Chemical Level
Michelle:
Some people, knowingly or not, have created a chemistry in their body that is so out of whack, They've been abusing alcohol or drugs, and of the best things for that is a detox to get the chemical environment in optimal forms. People who have cancer, so often their bodies are so acidic, from mental, emotional toxins. And a detox will help with that as well.
The Environmental Level
Michelle:
For a lot of people, many of the people that they're spending time with are very toxic, or they work in a physically toxic environment. Years ago, so many people were working with things that were truly poisonous, various different pesticides and different types of oils and chemicals, and your physical environment can play a huge part. The Spiritual Level Michelle:
I really want to point out there are these five levels: physical, mental, emotional, chemical, environment, and spiritual. It’s important to discern at what level, if you will, the problem, the challenge, the issue, the experience is showing up and what's most optimal based on what level it’s appearing. Sometimes it's multiple things, it could be one or two or all of them at one time.
I really want to give people a framework on how to start finding that solution, because there truly is so much help out there, and David and I can be great resources for you. We stay consistent with the identity of how we see ourselves; if we think we're weak, and we're a victim, and stuff is always happening to us, that's going to cause us to feel very weak and get into those overwhelmed energies.
The opposite, which is what I love to teach people, is no matter what is happening in the outer world, you see yourself bigger than it, feel yourself as on top of it. Literally, that shift alone helps to minimize the overwhelm that most people can feel. One of the things that I say often is, “If God be for me, who dare be against me?” There's that child of God energy that says, "Okay, nothing is too big for me. God will never give me more than I can handle." It’s a very empowering mindset to come from, right from the beginning, that you don't put a label on your scenario and making it bigger than you because, truth be told, there's nothing on this planet that's bigger than you. There’s nothing on this planet that is going to present itself to you that you can't handle. When you get in the identity that grows you, that resourcefulness is always there for you.
Are You Coming?
David:
I had a friend, actually I heard him lecture and talked to him afterwards, does that make him a friend? Anyway, it was a small lecture, only 20 or 30 people. If I remember correctly, his parents died and he inherited some money. He went on a trip around the world, and ended up, among other places, in Australia. While he was there, somebody came up and said, "Oh, we're having this protest for this thing. Do you want to come and do it?" And he said, "Sure."
So, he went, and they actually beat the protesters violently. He had never had that happen to him before, and he felt completely violated and basically, his faith in everything was shattered. He was just incredulous, thinking “This is not the way that you treat people”. He ran off into the woods somewhere and came across some small area of water. He sat there, crying and trying to compose himself and trying to make sense out of his universe, what he had just experienced and what he believed the world was like. Suddenly, he comes to realize that there's a guy standing not that far from him, and when he notices the other guy, the other guy turns and starts to walk away. He looks back at my friend and says, "You coming?" But he doesn't say it out loud, he doesn't say it in English. He says it in my friend's head. My friend says, "Okay,” and he follows him. The guy led them to a group of Aborigines, families, the whole tribe, and he spent six months with them. He said he learned about how powerful people were, because he said every morning they got up, and they just started walking together in the same direction.
That’s what they did everyday: got up, walked all day, and eventually they'd camp at night. The next day, they got up and he walked with them; they did it for six months, and he said they never crossed a road. He went back afterwards, knowing where he started from, and he said there is nowhere in that part of Australia where you could walk every day for six months, morning till night, and not cross the road. That does not exist, and yet that's what they did. They taught him all kinds of things, and he had some big adventure with a kangaroo where he was wrestling the kangaroo and saw all of the stars and all of the universe in the kangaroo’s eyes and himself; all of these amazing experiences. When he came back, he said you can't tell people. He said you realize how powerful humans are, but you can't tell people in the U.S. how powerful they are. They will be terrified because we are way, way, way, way, way more powerful than we know. When we think we won't be given something that we can't handle, the reason we're given those things is to take off the costumes so that we stop playing small. It's a gift for us to realize how strong and how influential and how loving we can be. It's amazing when we think of it, but a small group of people can change the destiny of humanity. We think about how great Greece was when Pythagoras and Socrates and all of these people lived, but when we think of all of the famous people who changed the direction of time, it was less than 50 people out of the population of something like a million. Think about this: we all have that level of power intrinsically within us, but only a few are willing to wake up, step up, and be the embodiment of who that can be. What will the world look like when we all rise up to that level, when we all lead with love, and we all lead with purity? When we're all healthy and detoxed, we're not making mistakes, and we're all here to fully enjoy and to have the life that we want to have? That's amazing because it's all in harmony, and that's an incredible world worth aspiring to and worth living in.
Examples, Not Exceptions
Michelle:
Absolutely. It definitely is, and I believe that the great leaders of history, their lives are meant to be an example, not the exception. Even Jesus himself; some people thought, "Oh, these great leaders, they're on such pedestals." And the Bible says, "Greater works are in thee than there was in me," meaning than there was even in Jesus himself. We are meant to be that loving, that powerful. I know of times where I’ve been scared of my own power, but as again, I embrace that, as I welcome that, as I ask to be shown what that is and to be led and to open up to all the aspects of me, it's very exciting actually. This is Normal David:
It is, and one of the things that so many of the great teachers, Yogananda and Lord Christ and Mohammad and all of those people said: they all that they said was, “this is what's normal”. What I'm presenting to you is who you should all be and aspire to. They never said, "Put me on a pedestal but don’t believe you can get up here.” They all said, "No, the kingdom of heaven is within. It's within you. It's here for you. Heal yourselves. You can do this." This is why we really want to encourage people to choose who you want to be. One of my favorite quotes is something I first saw on a TM poster back in the '70s. "Everyone is one's own responsibility. Choose who you want to be." Not being very bright at the time I thought that meant whether you want to be a fireman or a cop. Michelle:
Choose your being-ness, not so much your career or occupation, yeah.
David:
I realized later, it means choose who you want to be on every level, again this idea of, in each moment, who do you want to be? We talked last time about being the co-creator on all the levels, and when we choose who we want to be, each of us can be amazing. We don't have to be famous; we don't have to be the way that most of us think of leaders. We don't need to be a President or a Pharaoh or a Saint. We can create a wonderful life for ourselves and for those that are dear to us being who we truly want to be on all levels: being spiritual, being enlightened, whatever that means to us, higher states of consciousness. Being kind, including being loving, including being compassionate.
Because I Want To Be There’s a story about an enlightened cobbler in a small village in the Alps, and somebody comes up to him and says, "You're enlightened. You could be anything you want to be. Why are you a cobbler in a small town?" His reply is, "Because I can be anything I want to be. And I want to be a cobbler in a small town." Greatness doesn't mean you suddenly have to become a public figure; it doesn't mean you now have to lead rallies or become a politician or become a church person or become any certain thing. All it means is you allow yourself the power of who you are and just radiate that light.
We work with helping people embrace and grow in that power, and what we always tell people is that if you grow enough, you will have an influence on people many miles away. They may not ever hear you or see you or talk to you, that's a completely separate thing. It's when we get up and we're right thinking, we influence those around us to right thinking.
Small Things, Big Results
They did some research on TM® and meditation in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, but it had all been done on the individual. In 1974, they found that when a certain percentage of the people in a particular population started meditating, the crime rate went down. It was a very small fraction of the people that had started meditating, that again just being that light within themselves and everyone. There are many things that accomplish that: prayer, intention, wishing well of your neighbors.
Choose Your Day
There's a joke about a prayer that goes like this: "God, so far, so good. I haven't pissed anybody off today, and I haven't gotten angry. Everything is going good. I haven't made any mistakes. But I'm about to open my eyes and get out of bed. If you could help me for the rest of the day, that would be great." That’s funny, but it is perfectly fine. Each day we can intend that our day be "Let this be a day of ..." and then always shoot for the highest. Why? Because why not? Let this be a day where I bless someone. Let this be a day filled with laughter for me and for others. Let this be a day filled with love. Let this be a day that I appreciate or that I'm grateful. And it can be different each day, different each week.
Lessons From Ben
David:
Ben Franklin was obviously a brilliant man, even when he was young. He would go and meet these other really smart people, but apparently, he presented his ideas in not the best way; the term we would use today is “obnoxious”. Finally, an older and wiser person who cared about him came and said, "Look Ben, you're brilliant, but if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to drive everybody away. You need to do things better". He ended up being an ambassador to foreign countries, that’s how good he got at doing this. He says in his autobiography that he realized that there were 13 qualities that he wanted to embody. I don’t remember them all, but some of them were clear thinking, kindness, don't cause fights, organization. Each week, he would pick one of these different things to work on, and he did it the opposite way that I would recommend. If he made a mistake, did the wrong thing, he put a little black dot in his book.
Michelle:
Oh yeah I would do the opposite. Celebrate the progress.
David:
Right. Like, "today I made it through. Only twice did I do XYZ. It was great. 12 hours I did fine.”
I would celebrate the wins, but he did it the other way. He had these 13 traits that he would go through, and he would just focus on one for the week; for that week he would let the other ones go, not worry about those until it was their week. Just in that moment, this is what he would do. And so 13 weeks, that means that the whole cycle would repeat four times in the course of a year. He did this for two years, and by the end of two years he felt he had really mastered most of them although he said even in his seventies, he was still struggling with organization. I think many of us can relate to that. But the point is that he picked something, and we can pick something each day, or by the week, and pick a positive thing.
What would we like to experience today? We would like to experience being generous. We would like to experience receiving the grace of the divine, receiving abundance, receiving prosperity. Receiving health, being helpful to someone, being kind. Doing something nice for people, seeing how many people today I can make smile or get to laugh. We can pick these things that we want to experience today.
It’s Ok Not to Be Noble
I'm all about the noble things, but there's nothing wrong with saying, "I want to eat a really good meal." I want to have a great time with my friends. I want to listen to wonderful music. I'd like to learn to dance. I'd like to learn the piano. I'd like to become a better version of the me that I see. Again, we want to get out of what you referenced before, this story about who we are. Whoever wrote the story to this point, it's something that we take over. It's our responsibility, and our choice, to become the coauthor of who we want to be now. We can shoot for the moon, and reach it, but we don't have to aim for that. I will tell you without any hesitation that there is a lot of behavior that I had in the past that I am not proud of, but it was what I learned. What I am proud of is how I've managed to become something that I now feel is a life worth living. Like we have said so many times, the important thing is to start. Honor
I feel I now honor the human aspect of myself, the divine aspect of myself, what my spiritual teachers have taught me, what my parents have taught me about compassion for the world. I didn’t necessarily start at this place, but I've become somebody that I feel good about being. That isn't to say that I didn't break a bowl last week at 3:00 AM when I went down to get a cup of water and move something by mistake, because things happen. Put It Into Practice Michelle:
We talked about action steps and actionable items, what are some practices that have really supported you to step into and be more of who it is that you really want to be?
Intention First
David:
The very first thing is always the intention, because it has within it the acceptance and the allowing that I can do this. I may not be this yet, but I can become it. I have been very devotional my whole life and there was a time, maybe 10, 15 years ago that I was having this divine connection that I'd been having for a long time, it was doing some really good work with people. That’s about the time I remember hearing that the greatest accomplishment of the saint is their own life. It's not any particular miracle, it's living a particular quality of life. I remember thinking at the time that my aspiration would be to live a life worthy of being called a saint, which is not the same as the ego thing where it’s about a title. It's "I want to live a life that is that kind, and that in attunement with flow, and that generous," I really focused on that for a long time. And then I was talking to somebody in a very deep, sincere conversation and they said, "Well as far as I'm concerned, you're a saint". And it just was like, “Check. Done. Now I can go on and do something else.”
It was just something that I felt that living a life of that quality... worthy of that name was something that I would feel good about. But maybe what we want to feel good about is being a great parent, or being a great icon of influence in our field of whatever we do. Whether it's business or a teacher or whatever. Or maybe it's just being somebody that's uplifting other people.
But as soon as you have the intention, and you allow that you; the fact that you have it means you can fulfill it. That's a hugely powerful thing to move you in the right direction and to open your eyes to that which will allow that to come forward because there are tools and techniques everywhere. There are so many things we can look up online, we can go to the library or a bookstore, or just talk to friends. Once we have the intention, we have the target. “Well begun is half done.” And then within that, there are a number of techniques we can give.
Call On the Divine
We talked about how we do a prayer clearing, where we start by a moment of silence, and I recommend gratitude as a good way to open your heart and connect to the divine. Then we call on the divine, in the name that warms our heart in that moment. And then we ask for whatever it is we need or want: “Let me find…” “Show me how to…” “Help me be the person that is…” “Help me love myself, help me forgive myself, help me do something that the divine would be proud of.” “Help me do something that would be beneficial to my parents, my family, my grandparents, my heritage, my culture, my city, my town.”
We can certainly do it with the ego in mind, but we can also do it without necessarily needing it to be known. In my experience, the people who truly serve and become famous, become famous as part of their service. Not the other way around. There are services that they're willing to step up to and assume a leadership role, because they're willing to do that as part of their service. But when you approach them and say something about it, they just brush it off. That's not doing it for the position or recognition. They're not here for their ego, they’re here for accomplishing what they're here to do. We simply ask for what it is that we want, the experiences that we want. Since we're talking about love, we ask for unconditional love of myself, unconditional love and appreciation of thy divine creation. Let me find something to love, something to appreciate in everything.
I Need A Miracle, Not A Spider
David:
I used to have all these books about King David, you know, from David and Goliath. I don't know where these stories came from, they could’ve been made up. I don't remember, I was too young to consider looking for their sources, I just read the stories.
There was one way before he's King. He's still a kid, and he's fighting in some battle, and he's talking to God. He says, "Yeah, I get everything except I don't get spiders.” He said that about some other bug I don’t remember too, “I don't know why these are here. It doesn't make sense to me". Later he's being chased by guards, hides in a cave, and a spider spins a web across the opening of the cave. The guards are looking for him, and one of them starts to go in this cave, and the other guy says, "Can't be in that one. There's a spider web completely covering the opening”. So they go onto the next one. David says, "Okay, got why spider’s web”. Then he's trapped behind something and can't get out, because the guards are in front of the door sleeping. This other bug, whatever it was that he didn't think made sense bit one of them, and the sleeping guard moved his leg when he got bit. David could then get out, and he goes, "Oh, okay. So I guess everything does happen for a reason".
Divine Perfection
Michelle:
I remember that story. "Okay God, I need a miracle", and, "Oh you send a spider?” What a great concept though, let's emphasize that and supercharge it. Everything has a purpose and everything is in divine perfection if we can look at it that way. So many times, when something happens people label it: “It's such a nightmare, this is the worst thing that could've ever happened to me". In those types of scenarios, if you look for the blessing in that and look at it as "This happened to me to grow me, to expand who I am, to see a different perspective here". When we embrace it, it may take years or decades but eventually we see why that particular thing happened in your life.
Even The Worst Things Have a Good Purpose
My best example is probably one of the worst things that happened in my life. I was never really into drugs, but all my high school friends who went away to college tried coke. The summer after our freshman year we come back from college, and all the high school friends get together. They're all asking, "How is it that you never did coke, you didn't try that?" I would just say, "It’s not my thing.” We went to a party, and someone had brought coke, and everyone was saying, "Take Michelle, she's never tried it". I started to feel really pressured, kind of felt like I got forced into doing this coke, so I finally did one little line of it. We went out to the car, and then here come the cops. It was really in the wrong place at the wrong time, and here I am getting arrested for coke. I get pulled down to the police station, and it's this nightmare. In the end, since I didn't have a record they let me go, but at 18 years old I had to pay a $3,000 fine. Go back like 25 years, that was so much money for me. I was so mad; it ruined friendships for me, and I used to ask, "Why did that happen?" It was one of those things I couldn't make peace with. But here's what it vowed in me: That I would never do drugs. Never. Fast forward 13 years later, and I'm in a really awful time in my life. I had gone through a divorce, I was living at home with my grandfather, working a job I didn't like, and I was really sinking emotionally. I started going to a therapist who diagnosed me as being clinically depressed, and prescribed Prozac. I was so desperate, I actually took it. I filled the prescription and somewhere around the fifth day of taking Prozac, I started saying, "Oh great job, Michelle. You've gotten to the point that you need drugs to feel good". I'm in this beat-myself-up mode, and then when I heard myself say "drugs", it was this awakening: You said you would never do drugs. I told myself, “This is not who you are.” I got so mad that I literally got up, took the prescription bottle, and flushed them down the toilet. The next day I actually called the therapist and fired her. "I don't need this as a way to get better. There's got to be a better solution than this". It didn't even hit me at first, but years later I'm telling somebody this story and they asked, "What do you think gave you that perspective that you don't do drugs and this is not what you're going to do?" And I thought, "Wow, that's a good question. Where did that come from?" I realized it was because I got busted my freshman year of college for drugs, even though at the time I didn’t see the purpose.
That did change the course of my life, because suppose I didn't have that, and I went on to get addicted to Prozac or other little ways of feeling good that didn't really serve me. And it’s like the spider example, "Wow! Okay God really had a purpose for that". That purpose is always there: Who have you become? What have you learned from that? How have you grown? How did that benefit you? Everything has this really divine purpose if we're looking for it.
The Event Is How You Define It
David:
There's a study that somebody did once, they asked people, "What was the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life?" And then they asked what the best thing was, and for some whopping percentage, I want to say it was something like 83%, it was the same event.
My son was diagnosed with cancer when he was 13, we went through this whole thing for the better part of a year. I wrote a book about it afterwards, Beyond Angels, which is currently being revised, but at the end, at the conclusion, I said, "I would never wish this on anyone. But on the other hand, I can't say I wish it had not happened," because there was much growth and so many amazing things that happened during that unfoldment.
Even A Dead Dog Has Teeth Like Pearls
There's a story from India, and Maharishi put it in The Science of Being and Art of Living. There's this man in the town who never allows himself to see anything bad, so a mischievous man decides he's going to find something really horrible and then point it out to him. He finds this dead dog in an alley, rotting and covered with flies, and he invites this wise man to dinner. He walks him down the alley, points out the dog and says, "Oh, look at this dead rotting dog. What a horror to come across in the street". And the wise man says, "But look at his clean white teeth, how they sparkle like pearls".
I love what Maharishi goes on to say, he says, "If we choose not to ignore it, we can find some good in everything in the kingdom of God”. He says in every given moment there are more things between heaven and earth to enjoy than you could possibly ever have time to enjoy. Where is the time to find fault with things, including ourselves? So many good things going on in yourself. No matter how painful something going on might be for you, there is someone that is blessed by you being here. You have no idea what's coming ahead in your life. You may be somebody who doesn’t feel or doesn’t appear to be doing anything significant, but then when you're 83 you write a poem that becomes of national significance for centuries to come.
The World May Not Be Ready For You
So many people are in their fifties and sixties when they hit their stride; some of that's just waiting for the world to catch up to who they are, and during that time, they're not recognizing that they're trying to fit into a world that hasn’t yet grown into them. So many people here have so many gifts, especially among the younger people that will be coming to fruition in the coming decades. They don't realize it here, and they're trying to fit in with the world that, truth be told, doesn't deserve to be fit into. We want the heaven on earth. We want that for people, and it's now plausible. It's now attainable with technology, the spiritual programs that are now available, the training, the education that can be presented in the world that people should look for. What gifts can they offer? If they're not appreciated today, they will be. Just trust that they will be. My mother used to try to tell me how to live my life after I started meditating and became a TM teacher. For 30 years, she kept telling me what I was doing was wrong. She finally stopped, because I wasn't listening anyway, and then a decade later she apologized. She said, "I can't believe…” My birth had been predicted to her and her mother, (this is in Awaken To Who You Are) so she knew things were going on. But my mother finally said, "Please forgive me. I can't believe that I have the audacity to try to tell you how to do what you were here to do".
I mentioned this because there are so many people who will have access to this who are here to do things great and small, that will make a significant impact in the lives of … Well, There are people here who are going to make an impact on the lives of ants. In the world of ants, and there are an awful lot of ants in the world. They're going to do something that will change something about the quality of things, or the quality of people, or something. These are not small things even though they may appear to be.
Become Every Day
Michelle:
I remember reading this thing on bees; the impact of bees, and beekeepers. Something I wouldn't have probably put much attention on but the beauty in that, right? Is it called the butterfly effect? They talk about how a butterfly flapping its wings in Thailand can affect the wind patterns here in California. Everything has an effect, and we should never underestimate the profound effect of one person. In the book Power vs. Force by Dr. David Hawkins, they talk about the Map of Consciousness, and one person raising his level of consciousness to a level of peace. If you look at that, what's called the Map of Consciousness, one person at level 600 helps to counter balance the energies of 10 million people. Below what he calls 200, which is that level of courage, are these kind of darker, heavier energies, and as the water rises, all the ships come up. Some person makes a massive difference, and we're here to live a life that we love. We're talking about love like, "we've got to live that life that we love and that lights us up and we feel good about". And I loved what you had said, about Ben Franklin: the top 13 qualities, that you have or you want to step into even more and become. Become more every day because even small, little shifts moves you towards the goals that you want to create.
Just One Degree
Michelle:
Let’s say someone hits a golf ball and they hit it just one degree off. When it starts off, it doesn't look like much, but one degree over a distance or period of time ends up in an entirely different destination. That one-degree shift that doesn’t seem like much is the difference that really can make all the difference. Since daily we get to choose who we want to be, that one-degree matters. That's probably one of the things I do best is meditate every single day, more than anything for those moments to remember and feel more of that true self of who I am. That love, light, joy, peace, happiness, healthy abundance are an innate part of me. I wear little angel wings as a ring, and every time I put my ring it on it's a reminder that, "I am light, I am love, I am limitless." They're just identities. I wear a gold coin to remind me I’m light, and prosperous, and abundant. It’s all those things, little reminders, or the difference that can make the difference, and the emphasis is to find ways that you can feel good about you, and who you're being. You are more in charge of the experiences you're having than you might realize. To energize that, to be more of who it is that you want to be, is really what I hear both of us saying.
Technique
David:
We’ve talked about just starting where you are, and one technique is to look in the mirror and say, “I love you”, even if at first you have counter noise in your head about it. You just look in the mirror and say, "I love you". If you can find a particular aspect of yourself to love, so much the better but even if you can’t yet, just say, "I love you". If you're like a lot of us, you may immediately react with, “Yeah, I'm just saying that, but I don't believe it.” That’s just background noise, keep it up anyway. Do it every day, every time you use the restroom or look in the rear view mirror. Say, "I love you," at least seven times and receive it, and eventually the noise goes away. I made a placard that just said, "Love yourself. Respect yourself. Trust yourself". Just to remind myself to do that. We all think, "Oh, but I don't believe it at first". It doesn't matter; the exercise works if you keep doing it. Anybody can start with that. You who are reading this or hearing this, we're talking about you. You can become something, not simply on the level of ego, but on the level of heart, that you can be immensely proud of.
Michelle:
What really allows you to feel so good about yourself is who are you being today? Who are you being... not so much, "yeah, you can get self esteem of what you accomplish or what you did," but it's more so by the being-ness, right? When we really beat ourselves up, it's because we didn't like who we were being, we didn't like the way we showed up in a moment or the way we handled that. That's where so much of the regret comes from.
David:
Yeah. So, in every moment today, who do you want to be, and what do you want to experience?
Michelle:
Great question.
David:
Just keep coming back to that.
Session 2.3
Now, You Try It
David:
When we talk about blessing what we hate, loving what we hate, we want to give you an exercise that you can do starting right now. You can do it one of two ways, or both. As you go through your day, every time something irks you, annoys you, bothers you, seems to get in your way, seems to stop you from where you're going, upsets you, riles you, in any way causes you to go into some form of violent unhappiness: stop and notice what is causing that and immediately find something about it that you like or appreciate. Find some worthiness in it.
We can make a list. Michelle said she spent about 90 minutes clearing out her workplace and the people in it, and then noticed a very dramatic change; we can do something like that where we just imagine our day and just notice all the times we just get a little peeved or something inconveniences us. It’s very important to recognize that inconvenience is not suffering: Getting caught in a traffic jam may be frustrating, and for some people it makes their blood pressure go up and they’re flustered and get a headache, but the reality is that's not suffering. There are these videos on YouTube where you can go and watch these people in third world, living in really abject poverty and in poor health. reading the complaints of first world problems. When you see that you realize is how ludicrous and silly it is, and how foolish we look complaining and whining and about things that are really either insignificant or are in truth, a hidden blessing.
As you go through your day, look at those things that in any way throw us out of center, throw us into some level of non-happiness. A good example is the clock, it could be that you’re always behind and saying, "Oh my God, if there weren't clocks everything would be fine," then what we want to do is find something that we like about clocks. "We like it when the clock says it's time to go home from work. We like it when we can get to a movie on time because we have a clock to get us there.” We like it because clocks allow us to coordinate our activity with our friends and our family. "We'll see you at two, and we’ll eat at four." We find something that we appreciate it.
There's a Zig Ziglar story about one woman who absolutely hated everything about her job, detested it. He only had a couple minutes with her and he said, "Give me one thing that you like about it. One thing that you appreciate." She struggled, and finally said, "No, there isn't anything. I can't find anything." And he said, "How about the fact that they pay you, and what you can do with that money?" When you’re upset that you can’t find a parking spot, appreciate that you have a car.
Something to recognize is that at the same time, other people appear to be getting in our way. If it weren't for these other people, we wouldn't have the shopping mall. We wouldn't have the places that we're going to because they don't build libraries and they don't build movie theaters if nobody will come, so if we choose to live in a society where we have the advantages of wonderful places to go to get to groceries, to go to pick up bananas or band aids or Kleenex or toilet paper around the clock, then we can appreciate that we are part of a society that allows many people access to the same things that we want. Ask yourself throughout the day, "What is it about this that we can turn to our advantage? That we can like that we can admire?"
And then from there start leaning into that a little bit so that we see more and more and more love. So that's an exercise that we can start doing right now to start moving to blessing and bringing the light into welcoming and embracing more and more the things that scare you, the things that upset you, the things that deter you. Look at it from other people's vantage point. Look at it. "Why is this here? Why is this here? What's the advantage?" Again, remember the spider and the other bug that we talked about earlier.
And remember, sometimes miracles come in the form of a spider.
© David Adelson. All rights reserved.