Why can’t you love yourself? Any idea what’s missing?

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Why can’t you love yourself? Any ideas what’s missing? Prepare to be shocked…

I woke up and it was almost 6 am. My plan is to get up between 3 and 5 am…

I wasn’t upset. I didn’t think I should have gotten up earlier.

The question here is to ask: who is driving my life? My shoulds or me?

Reactive…

The other day I was rushing to turn off the alarm and knocked a water pitcher off the counter. It broke and filled the kitchen floor with water. I did that with my hurrying. Obviously I gave my power to the alarm… I wasn’t driving my life, the alarm was.

Question: can you be upset with your Self?

Only if you can resolve who are the two entities that are at odds.

What happens when you finally take on the JOB to drive your own life is that the two selves become one. And when you do something that brings a consequence that you don’t like, which will happen, so be prepared, then you grit your teeth and take it.

Whenever you are upset, angry, etc. with the consequences… Whenever you blame another, or circumstances, like your lower nature, or your evil inclination, you are always running a racket.

Whaaat? Yeah.

The racket’s gears are oiled and moved forward by the desire to avoid responsibility.

Why? For some personal gain… temporary, but better-feeling than the pain of taking it on. Easier. Being off the hook.

So had I been dismayed, upset, self-flagellating about waking up so late… blaming the cup of tea I drank at 4 pm, or blaming the stomach ache, or blaming the temperature… you get the drift, I would be running the racket.

It’s interesting, and eventually boring to watch people doing this dance, pretending that they don’t know what they are doing.

Responsibility, taking it, is really simple and sober. And makes life simple too.

I did that. I also own it that I could have done a thousand different things. But I didn’t. I did what I did. Me, myself, and I. No one helped, no one and nothing else is to blame.

Now, what happens when you actually speak that way?

You have a choice.

If you don’t like the consequence, if it leads to where you’d rather not go again, you can actually choose to choose differently the next time.

There is always a next time… unless, of course, you die.

And that is the PATH of changing, growing, building a life you can love.

As long as the consequences are not that bad… you will not be willing to take full responsibility… and you’ll continue to choose blaming… aka avoiding responsibility altogether.

And, of course, will have two selves with mutually exclusive aspirations.

For example, one self wants to choose accomplishment, effort, a life of honor. The other self wants to choose the life of ease, and liberty: doing what you want to do when you want to do it, and not doing what you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it.

Integrity is the outcome of taking responsibility…

…of having one self… of driving your own actions… and like a good GPS… recalibrate. Often. And honestly.

PS: Soul correction

Soul correction is like a geographical map. You and your actions can be represented with a ball… Or another image: a pinball machine…

The ball’s nature, due to gravity, is to move in predictable ways, the path of least resistance.

The self… the lower self moves with the geography… the higher self, The Self uses some inner engine to move in a direction of a higher calling.

We all start out the same way… On one extreme you’ll find the Ben Franklins… on the other you’ll find most people.

Looking from the side, from the outside, you cannot see the invisible dynamic.

You cannot even see choosing… Selecting freely after consideration is the definition of choosing. But the DISTINCTION of choosing is that YOU, the driver chooses… regardless of anything, any and all reason.

Yesterday, I AGAIN got on a call with Spectrum. In spite of every promise I got from the six calls I had had before, I was still billed for services not wanted, not received… EVER.

So I was burning to hurt someone… lol. The rep was very polite, very professional, and said: it is all settled… And I told her: please forgive me if I don’t trust you… She was getting upset… but then return to calm and collected. I really wanted to yell at someone… but had no opportunity.

In that little story you can see, you can get a glimpse of my dark side, my evil inclination, my lower self… going out on its own wreaking havoc.

The two selves are not a team

Seeing that the two selves are not a team, that they pull in two different directions, and that the cohesion comes from responsibility is as old as two hours old…

I had never seen this, I had never taught it.

And because of this, even students of mine who say they want to drive their own lives, haven’t known what that really means… so it’s been just a vague undefined yearning.

We shall see if this changes with this new look at the inner invisible dynamic… or not.

Very likely this will take us to a new challenge… eventually.

The tip of the iceberg: the shoulds

Now… whether you got it or not, I am saying that every ‘should’ in any form is a sign of you not taking responsibility, or you not choosing. That is what you would have gotten from the Reality Challenge.

You’ve been blaming and playing the victim in every incident in your life… And have never taken the responsibility for anything… is what you would be getting in the Reframing Challenge.

Admittedly oftentimes taking responsibility is unpleasant. Painful. Takes a while to say: this is what is important to me… and allow the chips fall where the chips fall… with yourself.

Responsibility, integrity is between you and You. It is not a public thing… not even with me as the teacher. It is with yourself.

Sometimes conscience doesn’t side with what YOU want, what YOU hold as important, what you hold as YOUR standard and ideal.

I have this issue a lot more often than I like to have it… But because I have a higher level of integrity than anyone I know… I insist on being true to my Word… and not your word.

And because of that I love myself exactly as much of the time as the percentage level of my integrity: 70%.

Most people’s integrity is at or below 1%.

I used to be like you. Painfully hating myself.

After that almost going the ugly way phone conversation with Spectrum I had the familiar thoughts of killing myself. A reliable sign of self-hate…

Judging from the emails I get you have that as the floor… not as an exception.

If you knew that your self-love depends on your integrity, you would be more in action about that…

You would KILL your shoulds by completing them. You would KILL your upsets by completing them. And you would formulate WORD, who you want to be, much like Ben Franklin… but your own way.

Don’t be mistaken: completion is the secret word. Without completion the words of responsibility are cheap, flimsy, and don’t stick.

Completion is an ingredient, a step towards taking responsibility.

Almost every ex student, or ex client left incomplete and they still are.

In an upcoming workshop we’ll kick this whole idea of completion around… to see if we can find a way to GET COMPLETE and get access to responsibility.

The name of the workshop: Completion… the crucial step to self-love
Time: Thursday April 27, 12 noon.
Where: on the gotowebinar platform… a webinar.

Completion… the path to self-loveLooking back, previous courses, the Playground program, the From upset to communication course were both about completion… but didn’t get it right. We’ll take another stab at it next Thursday. Will we succeed? We shall see… won’t we?

PS: Kabbalah says that what generates the light you receive is the effort it takes to overcome the Dark Side and choose the other. The bigger the resistance the more light you get, just like in electricity.

The pull to dump my anger on the laps of the rep of Spectrum was huge… And it took all I had to not fully do that…

What’s your pull? Comment if you are courageous…