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When I participated in Landmark Education I was always in a seminar. For 26 years. A seminar is a 13-14 week long, 10 session program.
A good seminar leader would advise the participants to put all their lives inside the seminar.
What the heck does that mean?
It is simple, and you can do it.
This is what it means: you consider everything that is happening in your life is happening because of the seminar. Good, bad, indifferent… it is happening as a direct result of you being in the seminar.
For me this was easier than for others. Why? Because I had the distinction ‘context’, the backdrop, against it is all happening.
Normally, it was me and the seminar leader who did that mental switch… the rest tried to fit the seminar into their lives, unsuccessfully.
Result for others: not much. Flash in the pan… if any. Much like church for Christians. Part time…
It seems to me, that unless you choose carefully your ‘backdrop’, the main context of your life, you’ll be stuck in menial, mundane, and miserable.
Backdrop is called that, because the example I teach it through is a photography studio:
In the foreground: a man and a woman is sitting on a park bench. And then add and then change the backdrop. Miraculously the whole story changes.
- Night sky: date.
- High noon park: lunch break.
- Cemetery: someone died.
Now, it is easy to see it in a photo studio… but how does it work in your life?
…and what does it have to do with a seminar or course?
People have no idea that they have power to invent, I repeat INVENT a backdrop.
Saying that the seminar is the backdrop is an invention. There is no backdrop in reality: reality is empty and meaningless… other than the meaning YOU give it… or the meaning you buy into.
Backdrop is all words. 100%.
Many courses teach you to put an affirmation there: I am a winner, I am beautiful, I am skinny, I am rich.
They sound like a good backdrop, but it’s not true. It is a lie.
Now that affirmation is in the backdrop, and shows clearly that you are not that. Your being a loser, ugly, fat, and poor shows up against that backdrop and feels really awful. Worse than before.
How? Why? Because they are lies. All of them.
If it is an affirmation, then it’s a lie.
But what if you want to be a winner, want to be beautiful, skinny or rich? What do you do then?
Well, it is very tempting to put some version of those words in the backdrop, but it is not going to work.
Why? How? WTF?
Unless you attend first to the default backdrop, the new one will cover it up, like makeup… but whatever is covered will have the power.
So your most important ‘job’, if you EVER want a life different than what you are having, is to reveal, examine, appreciate, validate, and own the backdrop a.k.a. the machine
There are as many default backdrops as many people on the planet. So it is individual work, that is why I can’t have a course with more than 6-7 people at a time. That is why Landmark Education and other large programs are ineffective.
You need a lot of one-on-one time (not a moneymaker) and you need someone who has so much training, they won’t put their own stuff into the session. Or won’t rush it.
The backdrop has three parts:
- what you said about yourself and about the world (you could call it a dominant belief)
- what you said you should do to conquer it (I call it the dominant belief’s therefore)
- your doom… the inevitable consequence, like a black hole, that you are desperately trying to avoid… and thus always fall into.
The energy of part two and three are like an attachment dominating your life.
‘Other’ teachers try to deal with part one… but it never budges. It cannot be fixed, because only what’s real can be fixed, and part one is a lie. But it is wedged into the backdrop… and so are part two and three.
That is your default backdrop.
That is your machine. Your machine to keep you the same. Survival machine. We call it ego, but it’s just a name… ego may not be real, but the machine is. Very real.
I am going to illustrate the three parts. The first ‘illustration’ is a student of mine, who hasn’t been able to become all she wants to become, because until this morning I could not see her machine clearly. It happens… unfortunately.
But if it makes you feel better: other teachers don’t even know where to look…
A student’s story, a student’s machine
So, here is her story: When she was about four, her younger sister did something wrong. Her father beat up the sister and then sent her packing… Later in that afternoon, the father sent the four year old to find the sister and bring her home.
She did.
So this is what happened for her.
–She experienced herself powerless. She said that she is powerless. That no matter what she did, she could not help her sister.
So that was part one.
–Part two: how did she decide to conquer this feeling of powerlessness for the rest of her life? What is the dominant belief’s therefore? I am powerless, therefore I’ll do this every time I feel powerless?
She decided to be belligerent. To resist. It gave her a sense of power: ‘at least I can say no, at least I won’t go to the slaughter house myself, I’ll need to be dragged.’
And she is still doing it. Every day, every hour, whenever she feels powerless, whenever anyone tells her what to do, whether it is on the internet or in person, she resists, she is belligerent.
–Part three: What is the doom? The doom is annihilation. Death. Being beaten to pulp.
If you look closely, this is the ‘engine’ of the machine. What you most fear.
In her case, everything looks like being taken to slaughter, so she resists.
Unless she gets clear that this is what she is doing, she can’t really EVER get to a place where she can be fulfilled, easy to deal with, or god forbid, happy, healthy, and wealthy.
And, of course, she isn’t any of those, Not happy. Neither healthy. Not wealthy. Not accomplished, Neither fulfilled.
OK, my story. My machine
I was an unwanted child. Maybe I just felt unwanted. Maybe I made it up. Who knows. That is what happened.
–Part 1: I made up that I am on borrowed time, that they can get rid of me (kill me) any time.
–Part 2: I made up some behaviors to conquer this: I a on borrowed time, therefore I am going to, instead of waiting for the doom, invite it. I am going to rock the boat. I am going to be trouble. I am going to disturb people with the truth. I’ll live on the edge… This way I retain some semblance of control over my life…
–Part 3: My doom is of course death, getting killed, getting thrown out. Especially when I like what I am doing, when I want to live… when I, by mistake, imagine a future I’d like. Any area of life, any area at all.
So, how does that play out in reality?
As soon as I make money, as soon as I see that I can have what I want, as soon as I like something, I do something to FORCE to be thrown out.
But even when I don’t, I so expect it!
This morning I thought it was Saturday. I looked at who was in today’s workshop, and was horrified to discover that more than half of the participants weren’t registered.
I set up the webinar and no one showed.
I experienced the cold touch of death… for a little while.
Then I discovered that it was Friday, not Saturday.
But this accidental incident gave me a fresh glimpse into the machine…
Now, let’s return to backdrop.
The machine is your default backdrop. You live your life against that backdrop, but it is below your conscious awareness. Like a mind parasite.
You can’t manage anything that you can’t see. You can’t do anything about it: it will win every time.
Me, being in the course I am leading, put my whole life into this course, made it my backdrop, and lo and behold, every week I see parts of the invisible, that is next for both the people in the course, and myself.
All my courses are unscripted. The content comes from what gets driven up between the sessions…
Now, how does it work when YOU put your life inside the course?
Everything that happens that day, every thought, every feeling, every conversation has the course as the backdrop, so it looks feels, sounds different that normally.
When you manage to hold the context, when you manage to hold the idea that your life happens inside the backdrop, you start to see yourself, and your actions differently, because you start to see your machine, in the case of this course.
- If we had the communication course, all would show up in the context of communication.
- If we had the ‘love’ course, all would show up in the context of love, no love, using, taking others for granted.
- If we had the ‘money’ course, all would show up in the context of value: providing it, increasing it, earning it, lacking it
I am sure that this is hard.
But this is reality, and this is what works.
You can continue doing what doesn’t work, or start doing what does.
I’ll have the workshop this Saturday at 11 am my time. That is Eastern Standard Time. 4 pm in the British Isles. 5 pm in most of Europe, 8 am in California.
Schedule three hours. Make sure you have a working microphone.
You won’t need a camera. You’ll need some paper to take notes on. And water to hydrate.
Backdrop… what is keeping you hostage?
