David and Michelle

Session 3

The Why

Michelle:

Why shift perceptions? It changes everything, and there is a rippling effect of that for long term lasting benefits in each area of your life. I love those reasons to strive: why do this, why make this a priority? Why make this important?

David:

The interesting thing when we talk about changing perceptions, is that it isn't necessarily changing the perception as much as changing the interpretation of the perception.



Michelle:

Yes, that’s accurate. It's the interpretation, the meaning.



David:

What does it mean to us, and what we do bring to the situation? The mood that we're in will have a huge impact on how we interpret what's being seen. And I want to hit what you just said, the reason “why” is because we're creating, co-creating, our own life. It's our responsibility, and we want to create the life that we're happy with, that we can be proud of. Our story is not “why I didn't like my life and how I survived it”. There is no return department where we can say we want a do-over. I don't want to say it doesn't work that way because it can work that way, but why not have a fulfilling thing this time around?


Daily Check In


Michelle:

We want people to be able to get to be into their life and say that was a life well-lived, everyone. You can't wait to get to the end of your life before you check in, the check-in is daily. I won't say I'm perfect at it, but a large majority of the time I look at each day as it was a day well-lived. I celebrate the magic moments, I celebrate the shifts in the day that light me up, that expand me. The daily action step is to set up the day in a way you can look forward to it, know that this is going to be a day well-lived. What does that mean? For you and for me it might be different, but it's not even all the activities. To be honest, I haven't even left my house today. I've been on coaching call, getting my son ready to go to school and spending a little time with my husband.

After this, I’m picking my son up from school and getting some dinner, and we'll have some quality family time. I'll probably leave the house for 20 minutes to go pick up my son and come back, but it's what makes today well-lived even though it was a working day and an average, ordinary day. It’s the moments within the day, I've had a handful of really heart-touching people thanking me for helping them to see something a different way, giving it a different meaning or a different interpretation to open them up.

More Awareness Means More Joy

I was talking to one woman about who her bigger self is, and we started off by just exploring that and those qualities. She said, "Oh, I just love being helpful to others." I said,”Okay, great, but what does that give you?” She said, "It's so fulfilling, and I feel so connected and expansive. I'm a servant leader and it's humbling and uplifting." She gets all this doing what she likes to do, being a helper. But as we went deeper with it she had a moment where she said, “Oh my gosh, that's why I love this so much and to connect, that makes so much sense why I'm so driven to do this and something as simple as that.”

It creates this rippling effect in her life; there were multiple bigger things that came out of who her bigger, true self is and becoming conscious of that will and that she's a mother of three right and how that'll affect the kids. I love that, that what are we doing today to become more conscious and more aware of who we're being and what we're up to and enjoy it that much more.


Today Means Today


David:

When we ask, “What can I do today that will make this a day worth living?”, the first thing is the recognition that it can be today. I talk to people all the time who feel that their life won't start until they get their degree or promotion, they get married, they have a kid, all these reasons to keep putting it off.

I have a client who is an amazing artist; a staggeringly brilliant artist. He’s got many of these huge pieces, eight feet by six, and I keep trying to get him to sell them. They’re astounding, they’d knock your socks off. I just keep asking, “What can you do to sell a piece today?”, really trying to inspire him. I’ve said it repeatedly, “Sell a piece today. What can you do today?” He came to me about a week or so ago and said, "Can I get a two month extension on selling a piece today?" I said, “You're not understanding the concept, because if you think it's going to take you two months to be able to sell the piece today, you're not selling the piece today. You're busy getting ready for something.” I think a lot of us spend a lot of our time thinking that we’re not ready yet.


Today Means Right Now


That’s a very limiting belief because you are ready, right now. The only difference is when you quit listening to the part of you that says that we're all afraid. Truthfully, we're afraid we're wearing the wrong shoes, we're working at the wrong job, we're with the wrong person, we're eating the wrong food, we're going to bed at the wrong time or watching the wrong TV shows. We're being told all the time, you need this to fulfill your life, you need that to fulfill your life. You may think your car is a good car, but this is a better car. You may think that food or where you're shopping or where you're living is great, but the whole commercialism is about getting us to want more. We're conditioned to feel that we're not worthy until X exists, and X is something that we don't have whether it's a job or a relationship or a car or whatever the case may be.

You're ready right now for your next step. Your next step may not be the equivalent of a PhD, but you can live a life worthy of living today, first of all, by deciding you want to. And you get to determine what that means for you, you're the judge. It isn’t because somebody else is coming along to make sure you did it, it's not that Margaret or Fred is coming over because her job is to walk up and down the neighborhood and bang on the door and say, “Oh yeah, no, you didn't have a worthy day today. Sorry. Better luck tomorrow.”

At the end of the day, your last action step is to ask yourself questions. What were the moments of today that made it special? What were the moments of today that I feel the best about? Sometimes, feeling the best is when I do this, I feel a particular way. And that feeling is the gauge - not the doing. I know you well enough to know that when people are thanking you, that means something to you. It doesn’t mean something to you because you’re awesome, but because they feel they've moved into something they're proud of and it’s meaningful to you to see them living a better life.



Is This The Best You Can Do?

A guy misses a class in college, shows up a couple of days late because he's been sick, and missed turning in an assignment. He asks the professor, "Can I turn it in late?" The professor says, "Sure, give it to me by Friday." The guy brings the paper on Friday, gives it to the professor, and shows up a week later to get his grade. The professor looks at him, looks at his paper, says, "Is this the best you can do?"

 The student says “no”, so the professor tells him to work on it and bring it back later. He turns it in again, the professor has it for a week. The student comes in again, and again, the professor asks him, “Is this the best you can do?” Again and again it goes like this, and every time the professor just looks at it, looks at the student, says, "Is this the best you can do?" and hands it back. Finally, the student says, "Yes, that's the best I can do." And the professor says, "Good, then I'll read it."

Each day, throughout the day and at the end, we need to pay attention to those moments. And then, at the end, we gently ask ourself, "Is this the best I can do?" That's it. We don't beat ourselves up, but we look for ways we can do better. It's important, particularly in the beginning when people are new to doing this, that you don't overreach, don't shoot to be a saint. Don't shoot to be Lord Christ. Don't shoot to be Superman. Aim to be somebody that you can be. The student didn't take the paper and then cram for a month and actually get it perfect; he did it step by step by step and eventually got to a place where he could say “yeah, that's worthy of who I am. That's something I can present to you and say, ‘Yeah, that's the best I can do.’” There's a particularly famous artist whose name I can't remember, who was known to go into museums after his pieces were sold and on the wall and continue working on them.

There are some people who always feel they can do more. When the very first Star Wars movie came out, George Lucas had a very limited budget and didn't get to do some of the things that he wanted to do. But then a decade later he had huge amounts of money and this huge empire, so he went back and added a whole bunch of special effects to several of the first movies and made them even better.


Gentle Growth


Michelle:

That's a powerful shift, because we get through the day and it's so important to celebrate the magic moments, what made it great. I fall asleep quickly, but I often allow myself to fall asleep with basking in the great moments; It could be just the smile or special hug you got from your spouse or your child. But I like this, asking, “Is this the best that I can do?” If you're someone who values growth like me, and the subtleness of just a little tweak, or the idea that something could have been even better that question could be the difference that accelerates the growth that much more.

David:

Don't drive yourself nuts about this stuff, seriously. So many people enter kindergarten expecting to have a PhD by Christmas. The main thing is to become somebody who has done well with the gifts you've been given, but a lot of us forget to pay attention to the gifts we've been given. One of the things we want to make sure of when we’re asking ourself those questions is that we’re being gentle. We don't want to be saying, “Oh, I don't like the Ben Franklin method, something is wrong with me.”

What did I do that was good, and can I do more? What would happen if I did more? I love what you said about those moments, it could be as simple as a hug. We're not saying take on all the problems of the world, we're saying create a life experience moment by moment that you feel is worthy of who you are as a child of the divine, as an expression of the unified field, of unbounded awareness of something that has all possibilities within it. What experiences would you like to enjoy? Sometimes it's skiing down the mountain in record time, and sometimes it's just getting to the bottom even we fell 16 times. We can celebrate that, getting to the bottom and still being alive.

Michelle:

That was me running the New York City Marathon. It wasn't about the time, and thank goodness I didn't fall, but it was about being able to say, “I finished this. I said I was going to do it and I did it, and I had fun.”



David:

It’s becoming the person who can do that. There’s a mindset of, “Give me the promotion and raise, and then I’ll work harder.” It doesn’t work that way, we need to incentivize from within.

Truth and Purpose
Michelle:

Let’s celebrate what was great, the progress, what you've done. And then ask if there is something that can be even better. Be open to what was great, and what could be even better. I’m passionate about not backing away from the truth; for a lot of people truth feels very confrontational, they don't want to know the truth. When we really get honest with them, it feels like too much.


David:

How do we use all of the moments to our maximum advantage? We’re going to get into truth and purpose, and we’ll bounce back and forth between them, because there are a lot of things about truth and a lot of things about purpose that are intuitively connected. When we say, “How can I use this to my advantage?” the first thing that we need to know is what is an advantage to us?

When I was a teenager, I firmly believed that we were here to suffer because churches told you that's what you were here to do. I thought, well, if I'm going to suffer, I'm really going to enjoy it. I listened to incredibly depressing music, and my father would say, “I don't know about you, but that music really depresses me.” I loved that, I absolutely loved being depressed because I thought that's what my purpose was. Later I found that the purpose was joy, and now I don't enjoy being depressed because that is not my purpose. When we’re thinking about how to use something to our advantage, we need to consider what it is we're trying to accomplish, who it is we’re trying to become.

Addressing the Foibles
We're looking for the highlights of our day, what made the day worthy? We can stop there, but if we then want to ask, “What more can I do? How can I be better tomorrow, improve tomorrow? How can I be the best that I can tomorrow?” one of the things that we can do is look at the moments that embarrassed us or that we felt were wrong. We need to look at them only with the idea of, “How could I improve that?” Right then and there in that moment, going to sleep, run it through only this time get it right, how you would perceive to be right.

Ending with vengeance or a snide remark that shuts everybody up is not the right way to end it, because that goes back to ego and that's not about becoming a better you. If we're going to address our “foibles”, where we were embarrassed or we felt something wasn't our best moment today, we can look at it and say, “What would I have liked to have said? What would be the thing that makes me feel good in my heart? How could I have handled that?” Plan it right there, see it happening right there, see how you feel when it does that, and then leave it with that.



Truth is Energizing

Michelle:

It's never the event, it's the way you show up to it. You can feel good about the way you handled it because that is all that is within your control. I had something present earlier today and my mindset was “I will show up, I will get this done, I will get this handled. I am on top of this.” I want to emphasize this, the heart should feel that way. You show up with a caring heart and you can really filter the world. I've noticed this through wanting people to know that they matter, that was one of my old psychic wounds, feeling like I didn't matter. I've healed first by understanding I'm important, and then treating myself with love and respect.

As I've started mattering more to myself, the world started treating me more like I mattered. The way I coach is I build up people as a foundation: You matter. Life is not about suffering, you’ve got to find your joy. I’ve used this phrase before, but I love to ask people, “What lights you up?” because then we can set up your days where you’re doing those things that you want to really do deep down inside. Those things that light you up are what fill you with joy and expand you, and that really starts getting into your truth. When you're living aligned to that truth, that true self, it's energizing.

It doesn't really matter how long you're doing something, it becomes timeless because you're doing what you're meant to do. The opposite is when you know you're doing what you're not meant to do, you're forcing yourself to do it, and the time can be almost unbearable. That’s when we think, “Oh my God, what time is it? How long have I been doing this? When is this going to end?” That’s a terrible way to live your life, that is suffering. I think a lot of people miss the awareness that they're in charge of setting up their lives, more than they think, but they give their power away to, “I need to”, “I have to”, “I should”. They're conditioned that they don't have a choice, and we’re saying you have a choice at any given moment.

Where Showing Up Starts


David:

I know one of the things we like to do is prepare ourselves for these talks, with a prayer or meditation before we start. It helps us show up, and it can be done anywhere and for any length of time. I really love the way we each do that, and want to share that so other people know how to use it.

Michelle:

Dear Lord God, we just come before you and ask you to raise our awareness to truth, to live in this moment, to live in our presence, our power, the divine beings that you called us to be. For your truth, your wisdom, your guidance to flow through each and every cell in joy and love and peace and health and abundance; to be received deep into the hearts of people. Let it really resonate with what their truth is, who they really are, what are they being called to live, to be, to experience on this planet. Assure them that it's a safe question and a valued question, and let it be something that they give attention to. May David and I be an inspiration to bring out the best in people and have that be a rippling effect in their families and beyond. We're so truly grateful for this time together. Thank you for the guidance, for the wisdom and for all that is exactly the way it is and all that's coming to be, that it goes from glory to glory and it just keeps getting better and better. We honor you in everything we think say and do. Amen.

David:

Amen. I'm going to say mine, and give another one for people at home to use as well. I say “Dear Divine Mother” because my preference is to Divine Mother, but people can say Divine God, Divine Lord, whatever works for them.

“Dear Divine Mother, may we, Michelle and I, receive Thy Guidance and Wisdom and an act on it and give to people what they are ready to hear, what they need to hear, what will help them most to live a life that fully embodies all of the gifts and the glories that you have bestowed upon us, given us. May all of the people reading, hearing, seeing this information respond in a way that activates them to live a very fulfilling life of gratitude and joy and fullness. Thank you God and so it is. Amen.

Michelle:
So it is.

David:
There's a prayer that we used at various times in our life during traumatic events, times like my son's surgery when he had bone cancer. We did it for weeks in advance, and we call it Most Powerful Prayer. I'm going to give people the words, but I have a YouTube video that has some incredible quantum divine energies embibed in it. Listening to it a few times can really up your game. But basically, when we do a prayer or a meditation like this: we call upon that aspect of the divine in the name that warms our heart, which could be “Beloved”, “Dear One”, “Love”, “God”, “Mother”, “Father” or “Christ”, “Mother Mary”, “Blessed One”, whatever name is comfortable and warms your heart.

“Warming your heart” means you are activating a deep, heart-felt connection to the Divine.

Then you say, “May everyone involved in this situation [and then describe the situation; it could be “this upcoming surgery”, “the test that I'm going to be taking on Friday”, “this job interview”, whatever it is that we're concerned about], and then we add “on every level” because there are angels and others involved that we may or may not be aware of.


The more important the event is, the more specific you want to be. When we prayed this before my son’s surgery, we named everyone. Those who would be around for recovery, the anesthesiologist, those who cleaned the surgery room. We included the people who dealt with the prescriptions, providing the medicines; we went through the nurses who would be working with him to all the hospital staff to those who are involved in the billing of it, to those who are in accounting, to those who are purchasing the products that are being used, to the administrators at the hospital. We kept going on and on and named absolutely everybody, or so I thought. On the day of the surgery we were in the meditation room and I was lying down after a long meditation; security came in and asked what we were doing here. I realized then that I had forgotten to include hospital security! I laughed and said, “Oh yeah, thank you. And security too.” You want to name everybody that you can; this is where it can get really long, but if it’s something life transforming and significant, if we are looking at surgery, it's worth the time. If it's a short thing, maybe it’s just one or two people or maybe it's just the date and “my mother needs to be okay about this.”

“Dear beloved, may everyone involved in this test I'm going to take on Friday on every level, Professor Jones and his assistant Mr. Brown, and the janitor who cleans the classroom, etc., etc..”


Michelle:

I've done that for putting on an event; I'm calling in everybody and blessing them from the hotel staff to the parking lot attendant to the people who are preparing the food, and for the people coming even before they arrive. It's so powerful. I like the structure you're giving, like “Dear Beloved Divine”: speak to what lights you up, speak to what resonates. That's so important. For some reason, I lean towards “Lord God” and sometimes I wonder where that came from. I don't know, it’s just what I seem to call that through the years. But the point is to cover everyone involved in the situation on every level, because you’re right, there are so many levels of dimensions of what's going on. It’s beautiful to be conscious of everyone and every level, the seen and unseen, people who've passed, people who are here, people that may be contributing that I don’t know about. People that are energetically supporting me, loving me, looking out for me. I love that.


David:


After we’ve named everyone involved, we ask that they be open to receive and act on Thy Divine Guidance for the best possible outcome for everyone concerned. The best possible outcome can be specific, like “I get an A on the test” or “My body is disease free”, but I have to say from personal experience that simply saying, “The best possible outcome for all concerned” covers everything. We may be looking for a particular outcome, but we may not be aware of the benefits that could come from a different outcome. In the book about my son having cancer and healing it, the conclusion was that this is not something I would wish on anybody, but given what came out of it, it's not something I could say I regret having happened.


Tempered


David:

I don't know how they make swords in factories these days, but in the old days when they were made by blacksmiths the metal would be heated to extremely high temperatures to make it soft and malleable. Then they could hammer the sword into shape, and then as it would cool down they would heat it up again and again. Once it was shaped as they wanted it, they would get it red hot again and plunge it into room temperature water. The process is called quenching, and the purpose is to make the metal even stronger, invincible.

Of all the work that goes into making a sword, that one event takes it from extreme hot to cold to tempers it. That tempering is not necessarily the most exciting or pleasant part of the process, although maybe the sword looks forward to it, I don't know. But that makes a big difference in what the sword can be used for, is capable of. Many times in our lives we shy away from things that could be massively empowering for us. It might be as small as shying away from an argument, and while one doesn't have to greet an argument with hostility, standing up for who you are and allowing yourself to be present can be like that 'tempering”, strengthening to you.

I know I've dropped the ball sometimes in the past, and I suspect you have too, when somebody challenged me and I've said, “Yeah, I can't do this right now. I don’t feel prepared.” Some of those situations have been really life defining moments where I realized, “Never again. I can't do that again. I didn't honor who I was, who didn't honor the truth of the situation.”


The Truth of The Moment


Michelle:

Talking about staying present and speaking truthfully, something happened just a few days ago. I’ve mentioned I have an eight year old, and we raised him with believing in Santa Claus and all these magical things about Christmas. We have an Elf On The Shelf, it’s a doll with a neat story and it’s kind of a game for kids to wake up and see where the Elf has moved, what it’s done overnight. My husband was traveling and one night, out of nowhere, my son asked, "Are you and daddy the ones moving this elf around the house each night?" While I was trying to figure out where that question came from he asked, "Is Santa Claus real?"

It was this moment where I could have tried to salvage it and said, “Oh yeah, honey, of course Santa Claus is real and there's the magic in the elf.” I just really felt I had to be truthful, and I wanted to do it with a lot of compassion because these were childhood beliefs that we had helped instill. I almost didn't know what to say, but I thought, “Ok. We're going to be led right now.” I put him on my lap and told him that the intention of Santa Claus is real and that there is magic in Christmas. I reminded him of the goodness of everything, celebrating Jesus's birthday, and the many things that make Christmas so beautiful.

Stay Present in Truth

There was almost an uncomfortableness, one of those moments feeling like some of the childhood stuff is over, but I remember so vividly thinking that the truth wasn’t going to change anything for him. I told him we're still going to make it fun and magical, and there are a lot of people including mommy and daddy that help to make Christmas really great. It’s not just one person in a red suit with reindeer flying around the planet handing out the presents, there's a lot more to it. We talked about how Santa and those stories are created so children can celebrate and get all that fun and magic. I kept emphasizing that it's going to be even better now that we can tell you what Christmas is really about.

It turned into about a 20 minute conversation, and here's the takeaway: I was so glad I didn't gloss over it or push it off. I want him to be able to talk to me about anything, to create that safe space and know that we can always talk truth. He doesn't have to hear it from his friends first, or try to find answers on his own. When I asked where the questions came from, he said he was wondering how Santa Claus could get to all 50 states, all the families and all the kids in one night. It's those moments that you don't back away from, whether it’s your child asking about Santa or when your spouse says they’re not feeling as close to you as they’d like. We don't want to put up defenses or gloss over it, we want to talk and show up, and have these truth conversations. We want to say, “I can stay present to anything.”


Truth vs truth


David:

Let's talk about truths for a minute because you brought up Santa Claus, which is one of my favorite examples about truth. When we talk about Truth, capital T, that is something that never changes. There are those Truths that never change, but most of us function day-to-day with truths with a lower case “t”. We expect the sun is going to come up tomorrow, which has been going on for a long time, and we expect it to go on for a long time. But Truth is different in different states of consciousness, and the different states of consciousness that most of us know about are waking, dreaming and sleeping, but there are also those who meditate and experience transcendental consciousness or pure awareness, or whatever they want to call it.

What is true in that state of consciousness is measurably different, it's a different brainwave and blood chemistry. If you're in another room and hooked up to certain parameters, a scientist can tell by looking without looking at you whether you're awake or asleep or dreaming. There’s enough research on it now that meditating is a different physiological level of consciousness, and for those who meditate a lot there are even more levels. They get to different levels of vibration, Maharishi, talks in terms of seven states of consciousness, including God conscious and cosmic conscious.

Awareness and meditation remain through waking, dreaming and sleeping. It’s cosmic because it’s all-inclusive; God consciousness is where that stays the same, but perception becomes much more refined and we become aware of the most refined level of manifest creation, which is celestial. Then there is unity consciousness, where we come to realize that the unified field is all there is, and the rest is an illusion.

Truth Can’t Be Imposed

This is important, because you can't impose the truth from one state onto another. You could be having a dream every night about a tiger attacking you in your dream, and you know that before you go to bed.


You get a gun or you get a piece of steak, something to distract the tiger, and put it under your pillow and go to sleep. But whatever you put onto your pillow is not available to you in the dream because it's a completely different state, a completely different reality. The bed isn't there, the room isn't there.

When we talk about truths, we're still talking about those small “t” truths, but those things are good for let's say at least a century or two; those principles of life that it's better to be good than bad because when we're good, we're happier and when we're bad, we're not. Just a few minutes of doing something wrong can result in 20 years in prison.

Less Judgement, More Worthy Days

Divine Mother once described "sin" as “that which prevents you from getting what you want”, which is a very kind way of understanding sin. We've talked about moving from a Newtonian physics to quantum physics, and in Newtonian physics, everything will have a cause and a result; every action will have a reaction. If we do something “wrong”, the definition of wrong is we didn't get what we wanted. If we had gotten what I wanted, we wouldn't call it wrong. The answer to the test is wrong not because it was incorrect, but because you wanted the “A” and didn’t get it. This idea of “right” or “wrong” is something that we are passing judgment on, making a judgement call about.

One of the things we can do to have more of those days worthy of our truest self is to stop passing judgment on whether it's right or wrong and ask, “Is what I wanted to happen what happened?” If not, instead of thinking we did something wrong, what can we do to make that happen? There are those who believe that if you did something wrong, you should be punished; that is not truth. There are cultures in the world where if you do something wrong, they sit you down and remind you of how good you are, how kind you are, how special you are because that is what moves you to live that, to embody that.



Ongoing Criminality


When I was getting my master's degree, we were meeting with the people who were head of Maharishi’s School, which is the elementary school. They had a policy that basically when somebody did something wrong, they talked about how good the person was; only if they did it multiple times did they feel that they really needed to sit down with them because usually people will enjoy praise. When praised, the most common reaction is, “if you liked that, wait till you see this next thing.” Then they do something new to get praise and loving and positive attention. This whole idea of somebody did something bad and therefore we have to punish them creates ongoing criminality. That's just a revolving door, a prison system. What we want to teach them is that there is a better way to achieve whatever it is they're trying to achieve.

A lot of people are just trying to survive, trying to get through the day or life and then they get thrown in prison. Maybe they can't get a job and stole, maybe they’re emotionally wounded and physically hurt someone. We want to teach them is there's a better way to achieve what you were trying to achieve, and my personal belief is you do that by bringing love and compassion, patience and understanding. Instead of slapping them with a stick, which just teaches them to hide.



The Truth of Who We Are

Michelle:

It comes back to this truth: there's a truth of who we all are. I don't remember what tribe it was, but I heard a story about how when a woman is pregnant, the tribe creates what they call the soul song. They get a feel for who this child is even before it's born: all the great qualities like leadership and compassion, or whatever applies to what this child’s calling is. They sing that song multiple times in that child's life, on their birthday and when they get married and at other milestones, but they also sing it when the child has gotten off course or seems to have forgotten who they are. Even as adults, they are brought into the circle. The tribe doesn’t condemn them or punish them, they literally circle around them to remind that person who he or she really is.

This happened recently with my eight-year-old. He forgot his homework at school, I had given him this whole bottle of water and he didn't drink any of the water, he didn't eat his vegetables, it was one of those days with a lot of those moments, and all of a sudden he said, "I am such a bad boy." He was really emotional over a couple of little things, and I said, “No, you are not a bad boy. Yes, we could do a little bit better with drinking your water, eating the vegetables. And yes, we'll get a little bit better with making sure all the stuff you need is in your knapsack. But that does not make you a bad boy.”

When he left for school I was meditating because it hurt my heart that he got so upset and was seeing himself so wrong. Two minutes into meditation I got such a sense to remind him of who he is that I got out a piece of paper, wrote his name on top, and wrote out the top 12 things that he really is. Things like “he is loved and loving and loved unconditionally”. He is “God loving”, he is “kind to all”, he's “a great leader”, he's “a great student”, and I ended with “mommy and daddy's favorite little boy”.

When he came home, I told him to come here and got him really present. I said I wanted him to look at me, and listen, and hear me say who he really is. I read it to him and I could see he was absorbing some of those things more than others. Then I had him read it, and you could see he was really accepting some and others not so much, so I had him read it again this morning. And even this morning, he was more receptive to it.



The Truth of Who YOU Are

Michelle:

We’ve got to remind people who they are, and remind ourselves who we are and are not. It does no good to beat ourselves up, make ourselves wrong, condemn people, throw them in jail. We want to help them to wake up to their gifts, their talents, their strengths far better than we do now. I would say that's the large part of what we do as coaches: reminding people, building them up, bringing out their best strengths and what they're capable of doing, getting out of their own way.

This is an action step for those who are reading or listening to this. Get honest with yourself about your gifts, talents, strengths. How do you want to be known? When you think of things that aren’t seen as strengths, maybe you think you're a little short tempered, or you're shy, or you think you’re incompetent, just ask yourself what you can do today to make that a little bit better, improve on it a little bit. Who has the qualities that you really want you can view as a model? There are so many ways to never settle for who you think you are if it doesn't feel good. You can grow, change, and transform into a completely better version of you in the days, the weeks, the months, the years that you’re willing to do that.


It’s Ok to Show Yourself Compassion


David:

As part of that action step, allow yourself to be compassionate towards yourself. Don’t compare your worst qualities with someone else's best qualities. We’re all who we are. Everybody's good at something, and nobody's good at everything. We're in this society or we're a monk (and then I don't know how we're reading this book) or we're living in a cave somewhere, but wherever we are in the world, there are things we may be good at and things we are not good at or don’t even know how to do. For instance, I don't need to go fetch the water from the river, I can turn on the tap. That means I don’t need the stamina and strength to do that. I don’t need to know how to fix my plumbing. Sure, my father knew how, and showed me some stuff, but to be honest, I suck at it. But that’s ok; because I can hire someone. I don't need to know how to harvest food to be able to eat well, even though I admire those with a green thumb.


I don't need to know how to grow cotton or shear sheep or to sow or to knit.

We have the advantage of everything around us. When we're looking for our purpose, for our specialness, it's about what it is it that is unique to us. What is it that we can offer other people? Sometimes a kind heart is all that is needed, or just a little understanding or sympathy or compassion. Maybe we are a great speaker or writer, or we're a great motivator or a great supporter, or a great tuba player. Maybe we’re good at just sitting and listening. Whatever it is that we feel is a good life calling is absolutely fine.

Maybe you’re a good businessperson, maybe you’re a good assistant. I think a lot of people don't really appreciate that it takes a very special person to be able to stand in a factory and do something repetitive all day, every day, or collect other people’s garbage day in and day out. People should value those traits that enable people to do those jobs and remember that they add to the quality of virtually all of our lives. It makes a daily difference to virtually every single one of us. If you're a garbage collector, whether people tell you or not, you're making a huge difference in the world. If you're a dish washer in a restaurant, you're making as big a difference as the chef, because without the clean forks and plates, no one would be able to taste and appreciate the flavors the chef created.

You count too.

There’s Comfort In Your Own Lane

In Indian society they have a concept of Dharma, which is a caste system, different levels of life, based on purpose. Each one has a purpose. The first one is the Brahmans, and they’re the one that keeps the spiritual light on for the whole community, they connect to the inner side. Then there are the political leaders, the Kshatriya, who are warriors and kings but they're also the policemen, the firefighters, the ones responsible for the wellbeing of the entire society. Next are the merchants, the Vaishya, who have the shops and provide the goods for everyone else. Last is the Shudra, and they do the menial labor like growing crops and tending to animals. They're also the ones who clean the toilets, but the whole thing is that even though in some ways it's described as each one a higher level than the other one below it, those in the know realize they’re all of value and that each one contributes to the good of society, and that society as a whole only works because all four coexist.

There's an interesting line in the Bhagavad-Gita where Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, "Better is death in one's Dharma. The Dharma of another brings danger." It is dangerous to be in one caste and to try to do somebody else's; it's better to die in your own Dharma than to take on another Dharma. The reason is not because death is better, or one caste is better than another; it's because it’s important to be on our path; that’s where growth and advancement is fastest for us.

Forward Feels Good

It’s like the game Chutes and Ladders: as long as you're going forward, you're happy. Then something happens that makes you go backwards, and then you're unhappy because now you feel like you’re behind. When one is in their Dharma, when you're fulfilling your life's purpose, you're happily going forward. When you choose another Dharma, you're going the wrong way. That’s where those feelings of having to grind and push and do so many things we don’t want to do come from. My boss needs this, my somebody wants that from me, people are demanding things of me. There's some external thing outside that makes you feel uncomfortable, and you start to resent it because you know that's not who you are, that’s not where you’re supposed to be going.

There was a book years ago called The Peter Principal. The main idea was that people are promoted to their highest level of incompetency. When your good, when it’s comfortable, natural for you to do, you’re successful. Being successful, you get promoted. If you’re good at the next level, you get promoted again. Eventually, you reach a level that is not comfortable for you. Strain sets in, it’s unnatural for you, and you aren’t good at it. And you don’t enjoy it. But since you’re not good at it, you don’t succeed, you don’t get promoted. You get stuck there. You get stuck at the level you’re no good at. You get stuck in the wrong dharma.



Clarifying Big Truth and Little Truth

Michelle:

Let’s elaborate on the differences between truth with the capital T and the little t.

David:

Big “T” Truth is what's true for all times, in all places, regardless.



Michelle:

Universal, doesn’t change.



David:

Little “t” truth is something that is true for now, but may not be true at some point in the future. At this point in time, we live under a particular governmental structure. At this point in time, certain foods are considered to be healthy and other foods are considered not to be healthy. We live in a time where certain belief patterns govern our society, and many of them start with just a few people and then everybody else picked them up.

I'll give you an example: The drop-down menu for states when you fill out a form online. Your hands are on the keyboard, you're merrily typing away your first name, last name, address and city. When you get to the state, you have to take your hands off the keyboard. You have to switch to the mouse, scroll to your state. If you’re in Wyoming, you have to scroll down through 40 some odd states and territories, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, to get to Wyoming. It would have been infinitely easier to type the letters “WY” and move on. But somebody figured out somewhere along the way that the state drop-down menu was a cool feature, and then everybody else had to add it too just because they didn’t want someone to have a feature they didn’t. Some of the things that people pick up and choose to do, then force upon society aren't well intentioned or even well thought out, it’s just because somebody else is doing it. They don't wait to see if works, if it's a good thing, they just decide this is how it’s going to be now.

Why Do We Do Things The Hard Way?

In the United States, we all learn to type on a keyboard called the QWERTY keyboard; the first several letters in the upper left hand corner are Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The thing is, this keyboard was specifically designed to slow down your typing. When typewriters were first invented in the mid-1800s, they were all gears and pulleys, sticks and wires. People could move their fingers a lot faster than the wires could move and it would cause the machine to lock up. So they designed a keyboard so that requires you to reach with the weakest fingers and move them farthest while you type to slow you down to give the keys time to respond and reset without locking up. If you typed too fast, the keys would tangle into each other and get stuck. When I was a kid just banging keys on a regular typewriter, it was real easy to get keys tangles. So the keyboard was designed to force people to slow down.

In the early 1900’s, companies had secretarial pools. Now we have cubicles, but back then they had rows and rows of women sitting at typewriters, and their job all day long was to type paperwork. They didn't have copy machines, so they had to type copies of everything.

Someone, I think it might have been Andrew Carnegie, hired a man named Dvorak to do an effeciency study. Based on the QWERTY keyboard, Dvorak found that these women’s fingers moved the equivalent of 16 miles a day on the keyboard. He developed a keyboard that would only require their fingers to move one mile a day in the same eight hours of typing. He redesigned the home row, which is where we’re taught to rest our fingers when we’re typing, and put 90% of the most used characters in that row. With the his keyboard, you can type 90% of words without ever moving your fingers off the home row.

It’s been known for 80 or 100 years that there is a better keyboard, but schools still teach QWERTY. I took typing class three times and never learned to type. When I learned the Dvorak keyboard it was easy and intuitive. The Dvorak keyboard is available on most computers, you can change it with the click of a mouse when setting the language — just like you can change the time zone on your computer.


How Long Will This Be Important?
The point is that none of this is going to matter; in the not-very-distant future, we won't even need keyboards because we’ll speak to computers like they’ve been doing in Star Trek movies since the 1960s. When we look at small “t” truth, the way that we type is a small thing. The long-term outlook is that in all likelihood, eventually nobody will be typing anymore. We already have transcription services that are mostly if not completely computerized with only a little human checking. It’s an amazing capability and already widely available.

When we look at what is truth, the question is how long is this going to be important? We’ve talked about changing from a Newtonian physics to quantum physics universe, and as we change certain things that have been true will cease being true. This whole idea of cause and effect, the idea that we have to do X to get to Y, is going to start changing. We’re going to be able to create things more quickly


What Is true Today May Not Be True Tomorrow


Michelle:

When I grew up, I learned Pluto was a planet, and now it’s not. Now there are the eight big planets, and all the little dwarf planets. One day California may or may not be part of the United States if we drift off the way they talk like we might, or at least it will look different.

David:

The example of the time when you knew Pluto was a planet is great. When you were in school and they asked you if 13 years from now they're going to decide that it's not a planet, how would you have known that?

This is the whole point about small “t” truth is to function well, we need to be able to pay attention to it but we also need to be flexible enough that when it changes, we change. There are stories of people after the Civil War who never heard it ended, and for 20 or 30 years afterwards they continued to live like they were still in the Civil War. My father used the example of being in his 20s, and if you burned yourself you were supposed to put butter on it. Years later they discovered that putting oil on a burn makes it worse, and now we know to put aloe vera on a burn. But that may change at some point too.

We use the knowledge that we have at any given time, but when something changes our understanding, when that knowledge changes, we need to adjust.

There's a very entertaining little video about why people don't know what to eat; it shows the experts coming out every decade for five decades in a row, telling you that eggs are good and then eggs are not good. This food is good, and then it isn’t, and it constantly changes back and forth. When we're looking at truth, we need to remember that we make decisions based on what we perceive to be true. It is true in this country that if I don't stop for a red light, I can get in trouble; what if I go to a country where red means go? Then that truth is not a truth that serves me.

If It Has A Name, There Must Be A Form


David:

There is an idea in the Veda which says if it has a name, it has a form. When we think about Santa Claus and whether he exists or not, Santa Claus is known worldwide and one of the most recognizable beings on the planet. People know what Santa Claus looks like, you know all the qualities of Santa Claus. He has a big belly, he says "Ho, ho, ho." He's a Merry old soul, he's cheerful, he's generous. People can describe everything about Santa Claus, down to his belts and boots, and you're going to tell me he doesn't exist? Of course he does, absolutely. Now, whether that being that we know as Santa Claus and describe as Santa Claus is the one who shows up in your house every night is the question. Michelle, you're a mother, but you're also a wife and a sister and a daughter; you take on different names depending on the relationship of what's going on. Who do you think you've become when you're wrapping up his presents?

Michelle:

Absolutely. Santa Claus. Right. And that's why I said nothing is really going to change.


Different Roles, One Purpose, All Fun


David:

Yeah, your answer is absolutely perfect. The point that I want to is that we all take on different roles, and each of those roles is part of our purpose, but we can’t combine those roles. You can't take your role as a daughter and then impose that on your relationship with your son; you can't take your role as a sister and impose it on a relationship with a coworker or your boss. Each relationship, each aspect of our personality, has its own reality and it’s own place where it works. We will talk about certain things in certain situations, and then we're very careful not to talk about those exact same certain things in other situations. There are ways that we behave at work that we don't do at home, because there are different aspects to our life that are part of our truth. When we look at who we are and what our purpose is, we should recognize each of those roles, and the simplest and most fun way to say is we get time off; we aren’t every role all the time. We get to have fun. We get to enjoy our life. If our purpose doesn't have fun, we’re doing it wrong. We're taking it too seriously, which we've talked about before.

When we’re looking at and defining who we want to be, we want to be more than the best mother. We want to be more than the best spouse. We want to be the best us we can be in totality, and the best us we can be allows ourselves without strain, naturally, always striving for more joy in who we are and what we do.

Action Step

David:

You can't get it right if you're not willing to make a mistake, you have to allow yourself to practice. So many of us grew up watching rock bands and we were like, God, these guys are amazing! So you get a guitar or a set of drums, and after about 15 minutes say, “I'm not getting anywhere, I can't do what they're doing.” That isn’t necessarily true; maybe if you pursue it for a while longer, or have parents who make you take music lessons and practice, eventually you get better. Then you get to enjoy playing music and getting it right. I often wish I had learned to play when I was a kid, because I love music so much, but somehow I'm sure it's perfect that I never learned to play an instrument.

We look at somebody else getting it right, and we don’t know how long they’ve practiced or how many mistakes they made. Again, it's comparing our worst or our most undeveloped features with somebody who has mastered it. When we try to give the speech or write the letter or play the instrument and we haven’t mastered it, we need to be kind and compassionate to ourselves and allow ourselves to be able to make it better.

Defining “Better”

Doing better isn’t always reaching a peak; it goes back to what we talked about earlier. Sometimes it’s making it through the day, sometimes it means at the end of the day we can say, “I started on this project. I got a little bit done. I found out what doesn't work. I did something brave. I allowed myself to move in a direction where I stood up for who I want to be and now I know I can make it better.” It might take years of making it better before we’re fully who we want to be, but it’s the process that counts. And life improves once we start and keeps getting better.

We Get To Be Who We Want To Be


Michelle:

We get to be who we want to be, and who we're called to be. And that involves that small “t” truth, those outer world experiences that can change like eggs being bad for you and then good for you. But it’s also about what is going on inside of you and how are you relating to the universal truths, the big “T” as you said, that don't change through time. The big connection here is we're being called to heal what's going on inside of us so we can be freed, to raise our level of consciousness to that unity consciousness where there’s nothing blocking the view.

The more that we heal and move past the, as we said earlier, those ego stories and feelings and things that kinda keep us small and trapped in a world that… it doesn't feel good. I've always taught my clients that feelings — those are your indicators. If it darkens you, if it shrinks you, if it causes you to not feel good about yourself, that's your wake-up call, your warning flag, that you're not going in the direction of truth. You’re just not.


Interpreting the Situation


David:

That shrinking feeling can also come from not interpreting the situation fully, with full value. I regularly come across people who when somebody was trying to uplift them or appreciate them, what they heard, influenced by those belief patterns that happen along the way, instead of hearing encouragement they hear “I’m not good enough.” They shrink even though somebody is trying to tell them to step up or trying to help them step up. One of the things that we need to do when we talk about the truth is ask if our interpretation of the situation is true and real.

I read a book many years ago about problem solving, which made a big difference in my life, and at the end there was an outline to help ask the right questions: What's the problem? Is it real? How do you know it's real? And then it talked about outcomes, and there were more questions: What's the outcome that you want? Whose mind do you have to change to get this outcome? Sometimes the mind you need to change as your own. I completely concur that the shrinking feeling or the tension means you're going off track, but in order to change it we have to know, “Am I hearing that correctly?”

It’s a good time to get some other feedback, and nine times out of 10 you're going to be right. But that one time is the reason this is important. Maybe you're meant to be an opera singer yet when you get on stage you feel small. In that case it isn’t that you’re not meant to be there, it’s just that you haven’t grown into being on stage. Own it, and get there.

Primary Thoughts


Michelle:

Here's the way that I've addressed this with my clients: we have primary and secondary thoughts. The opera is a great analogy. You feel it, there's a calling, and you want to do it. That’s primary, what you can really tune into and it stays with you day after day.

I read a story years ago about a guy who wanted to become a veterinarian, knew he wanted to do this for years and years. Then on his first day in this veterinarian's position, they were spaying a cat and he got woozy and nauseous. He passed out and had to leave the room. It made him question, “Am I really cut out for this? Is this really a good thing?” Those are the same questions asked by the opera singer who goes on to the stage and then experiences stage fright. That isn’t the indicator of whether we’re on the right path. Your primary calling, that internal knowing-ness is the indicator. It has led you to that moment on the stage or in the vet’s office, and things will show up to stir up the fears, the doubts, the worries, the guilt.

I remember first time I ever did a speaking engagement about 20 years ago. I so wanted to do it even though I had no idea how to set it up or confirm people were showing up, and it was a free event. I just knew 50 people were going to show up, because so many had said they were. But nobody showed up. I mean, when I tell you nobody showed up, nobody showed up. I could have taken that to mean this is not meant to be, but we've got to be very careful with that. If it’s that deeper calling, that soul calling, it's going to stir up your stuff. It's going to heal your limitations to really get you to where it is that you want to go.

Work It Out

Regardless of what shows up, we want to find healthy ways to move through that. Instead of doubting his calling, the veterinarian did some things to prepare. He made sure he ate, made sure he was hydrated, and mentally prepared. He watched some videos to get a better idea of what to expect.

It’s like the old expression “throw the baby out with the bath water” because it wasn’t what we expected, but we’re meant to deal with that stuff so we can move past it. It’s part of the healing and growing.


David:

That’s exactly right, and those are excellent examples. I'm told there are planes of existence where we come in fully developed, full grown bodies; we don’t go through birth. But in this world, small “t” truth, we come in as babies who can't do certain things. It doesn’t mean we never will, it just means we have to grow and learn. So often we see these very young people who are amazing pianists or guitarists or singers at age three or five; they're amazing and they're not learning that new, that's definitely something they brought with them. Lucky them, because maybe it's all set out for them. But most of us in this day and age are meant for this exploratory process to create who we want to be and the way that we do it too.



Watch, Then Do

David:

Here's an interesting thing about writing: one of the ways they teach you to be a better writer is called copy editing. You find really great writing and spend a little time each day, half an hour or so, copying it. Not typing, but handwriting. You do this with writing of all genres, some days it’s comedy and others it’s Shakespeare, but you copy stuff to get a feel for what's good.

There was a study I heard of in the '80s about a sports team and they decided to do an experiment. I don’t remember the specific team or sport, but let’s say it was tennis. They broke the team into three groups, and one group did the two hours of practice every day that they'd been doing for years. The second group didn't ever pick up a racket, but for 45 minutes a day they watched videos of people getting it exactly right. The last group did a mixture of both. The teacher who was telling us about this study asked who we thought improved the most, and we said it was the last group who had both the practice and the videos. We were right: they improved by 95%. The group that came in second was the group who watched videos for 45 minutes a day, their improvement was in the 90’s too. The group that went out and did it every day, they only improved 60-some odd percent.

When we're looking at how we want to get better at what we want to do, how we create who we want to be, one of the things we can do is find examples of the behavior that we want to emulate. Who's the character in the movie that I want to be most like? We can start visualizing in our mind, and then automatically we start finding ourselves being that way, even towards ourselves.

Everybody Should Have An Amazing Life


David:

I keep mentioning “even towards ourselves” because I work with a lot of people who don’t feel their life is amazing. Everybody should have an amazing life. Each of us is amazing, and I firmly believe all of this: I firmly believe that everyone is here for a grand experience for their time here on earth. I firmly believe that we can have this amazing, incredible earth that we will be very proud to have contributed to. I firmly believe that we should all feel our life is worthy of who we are, and that we have done something good.

A lot of people feel that they have to sacrifice, that they have to sacrifice themselves, that they have to take care of everybody else first. They push themselves and aren’t as forgiving toward themselves as they are towards others. When we're talking about our purpose, I'm going to say it's more important to embody it than it is to teach it.

Do You See Yourself As Who You Are?

David:

For those who are reading or hearing this, I just want to encourage you to take care of yourself first. Not in a selfish way, but in a kind way. Stop beating yourself up, stop looking for the darkness within you, stop finding fault. Stop believing that what you believe about yourself is true, because it could be completely wrong.

My son took a personality test online, and the results were all these good things; you're good at this, and this, and this. But one of the interesting things it said about him was that everyone around him believes he’s incredibly courageous and brave. It said something like he thinks he’s only 15% while everyone else sees him as 85%, and he didn't get it. Here's a kid who hopped on a plane as a teenager and literally to flew around the world, moved to the other side of the world by himself, went to the base camp of Everest, went to all of these countries. He had all of these incredible adventures in Australia and Taiwan and China and Tibet. He went to Katmandu, and while he was there, the building next door caught fire. He's got pictures of the fire, I mean, he's just doing all of these amazing things and he has no idea that other people consider him brave. It’s not the story he tells himself, even though it’s true.


Be Happy
We want to be happy with ourselves because at the end of the day, what counts the most is what we’re presenting and experiencing. If we want to look at it this way, that's what we're offering the divine. My experiences of this life are my gift to you. If we think about it that way, we’re saying, “I saved 100 people, but I suffered my whole life to do it.” We get a pat on the head but we don't-



Michelle:

It's heavy, it's dark, it's hard, it's not fun. It comes back to Buddha, he used to think that in enlightenment came through sacrifice. He left his family, he became emaciated, and was on the brink of death. He began crying out and asking, “What is the answer?” The awareness finally arose that it's not through sacrifice; it's through love, it's through this compassion, it’s through living from truth. And the truth is, we're wired to feel good. That's your indicator.

If you're not feeling good, you're moving in the wrong direction. I don't mean getting drunk or taking drugs to feel good; that's a completely fabricated, numb yourself feeling good. Honoring and being authentic with what's going on inside of you is so important. Someone says, “I'm not in a marriage that feels good.” Well, were you a person that married somebody that you really loved? There are things that can be tweaked, maybe some things to be healed or cleansed. It’s like we talked about earlier with my old job, what can you appreciate? What can you find that you can start energizing those feel good energies?

The worst thing you can do is leave a job or relationship or a scenario out of anger or frustration, out of this is, “I’m done — this is over”. No, it's here. It's starting up. Your stuff to heal what's inside you leave only when you feel fully complete. Thank you. Thank you for this experience. Thank you for the way that it happened. Thank you. And you leave from you grew, you outgrew it. You're like, thank you, thank you for what it was. But then you transcend. You go into something even better. And that's really, I think one of the biggest takeaways that we want people to get here is there's these low energies, these low vibrations, the angers, the fears, the doubts, the worries, the guilt, all those things. They're not based in truth.

Those are the egos, that smaller self, and what we are really designed to do is heal what's showing up and to transcend into the love and joy, the peace and light, the happiness and health and abundance of it all.

The Takeaway

The clear message from both of us is that you are much more in charge of that than you may realize; we can set up your lives that way and when the lower stuff is showing up we can heal it and transcend it. We can look at it from different perspectives and give it different meanings, and find the ability to ask what is true? Is this a universal truth that is true for everyone? If it’s not, and you realize you’re in your own little made up world about it, let's look at it differently. Let's heal the perceptions and transcend it, get where it is that you really want to go because you deserve to be happy.

As we've said now multiple times, your life is not about sacrifice or suffering or living in lack and limitation. You're meant to honestly have it all, be abundant, be in that limitless energy. I say it all the time. We're meant to live light, we're meant to live loving and we're meant to live limitless. If your life is not reflecting that, we got some tweaking to do and we got some transcending to do, but you can get there, right? And we can get there and there's beauty there and we were right, both of us wanting this to be the pull on your heartstrings, speak to your soul level, that there's something more for you because you just deserve it. You really do.


Show Up, Evaluate, Shift


David:

Yes. And I want to really nail this home. The very first step is what we talked about earlier: show up. Just show up and then evaluate whatever it is that is going on in your life. Whether it’s marriage or work or whatever it is, just show up. You might show up and want a clean slate, but let’s evaluate what’s really going on. Because here's the thing: when we show up, we can evaluate, and when we evaluate we can make changes, shift things. We can start with finding a way to appreciate things, how to use them for your advantage. Because believe it or not, everything being presented to you actually is for your benefit. It's either to strengthen you, or to help you realize you need to change your interpretation of something. Maybe the situation doesn’t need to change, maybe you’re getting upset for no reason and that is exactly what we mean when we say getting in our own way. We're creating beliefs or patterns that don't serve us.



© David Adelson. All rights reserved.