The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Friday, January 02, 2009

101 Almost Ready

Is anyone familiar with a woman named Byron Katie? She was recommended to me as someone who can help people find the core of love and acceptance in their lives. A spiritual teacher who seems to have experienced a spontaneous awakening similar to but more "balanced" than that which Jed McKenna seems to have gone through, she is extraordinarily humane and warm. Her entire teaching seems to flow out of four questions to ask yourself regarding a problem or conflict:

1) Is it true?

2) Can you be absolutely certain it is true?

3) How do you feel when you think about this?

4) Who would you be without this observation or reaction?

And then there is a fifth part, the "turnaround," where you scramble the pronouns and see how things look and feel from the other person's perspective.

Note that this is another version of the "who am I" or "what is true" questions that will take one so reliably to the core of being. As you strip away your reactions and labels, what remains is a circle without a circumference, or a mass condensed to the point that it's...well, a point. With no spacial reality. The quality of non-attachment flows out of this effortlessly, because there is nothing to really attach to.

At any rate, one of her CD courses, "Loving What Is," is in my car player right now, and I listen to it on the road. Good, tough stuff. I think that most of us are like James Tyberius Kirk: "I need my pain." Like an artist "needs" their neurotic tendencies to create. Or a comedian "needs" her depression to be funny. It's all so sad. We don't need these things, but our egos sure as hell do: we can define ourselves by pushing against such obstacles.

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By the way...probably by next Monday, there will finally be a sign-up button for the 101 program on this page. This is for Beta testing, and believe me, that is an honest assessment of where we are. We will have the first ten lessons tucked away and ready to go, and will create the others on the "fly". All the information will be there, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are problems. You guys are going to help me debug.

All I ask is that you post questions and observations here or on the 101 Forum, which you will be guided toward. There are other aspects of the program that just can't be polished without feedback. That's one of the problems with knowing this material well: I sometimes forget what needs to be explained. So...the train is about to leave the station.

What is the 101 program? A complete body-mind health system designed to put you in better control of your life in ten minutes a day for 101 days. It is designed to put your feet on the path to three goals simultaneously:

1) A career you love, or to learn to love your current career.

2) A strong, healthy, energetic body that you yourself would be attracted to.

3) Finding your soulmate, or increasing the love and intimacy in your current relationship.

Three simple goals as inter-related as Red, Yellow, and Blue. Each deeply affects the others.

1) A happy career means supporting yourself and family with integrity. More joy in your current career means a reduction in lifestress, and probable improved performance. This frees health and energy that can then jump-start your physical program, and give you more joy to share with your loved ones, as well as a deeper connection to community.

2) A healthy, fit body can be attained in under two hours a week. WAY under, if you're smart and disciplined. Most of fitness is regularity: just moving your butt six days a week. The Tibetans will provide BASIC fitness across a healthy range in an hour a week. But you can add Tabata-style training using clubbells or Kettlebells to take your fitness to a whole 'nother level. This investment of 90-120 minutes a week can change your life. It will give you energy for your career and family, make you a better role model for your kids, and polish the gift you give to your lover.

3) Loving and accepting yourself more deeply, with a nurturing discipline and a no-bullshit approach to your own lies and evasions, as well as walking your life path with genuine integrity, will send out the strangest "vibrations" you've ever experienced. You will start attracting people you never knew knew you existed. When you broadcast who and what you are to the world with an open, loving heart--while remaining emotionally safe and in integrity with your deepest values--you are on the path to finding the love you genuinely crave, without "settling". You also develop the ability to connect with co-workers and customers more deeply, as well as your own creativity. This feeds beautifully back into your motivations to work out and protect your only vehicle in this world.

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We're about to take this game up a notch. Hope you'll come along for the ride.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

count me in...vew

Mike R said...

Hey Steve,

> 1) Is it true?
> 2) Can you be absolutely certain it is true?

Well, as any Philosophy 101 student will tell you, the only thing that one is omniscient about and can not be wrong about is the experience that one is experiencing. Now, _that_ experience could be fake (Matrix, hallucination, etc) but the experience _of_ the experience can not be fake, if you see the distinction. And from this it follows that we exist because as good old Descartes tells us;

But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No. If I convinced myself of something [or thought anything at all] then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."

> probably by next Monday, there will finally be a sign-up button for the 101 program on this page.<

Good. I've been looking forward to that for a while. I'm curious how I'll do.

> or on the 101 Forum,

Is that going to be in the same place as the Five Minute Miracle Forum, or someplace new?

Sidenote: I saw The Wrestler and Benjamin Button over the New Years break. Two really great films that gave me yet another shot in the arm about realizing my potential.

The Wrestler is the best film I've seen about someone who sacrifices the rest of his life for his professional career I've seen since All That Jazz. The two actually have a lot in common now that I think about it in that both performers gave up everything for their mental image of himself as a Wrestler/Dancer, and not even the risk of death was enough to let either one let his ego go.

Benjamin Button was probably the best film I've seen on aging. I have a little (OK, HUGE) fear of death and seeing Brad Pitt face his death from young age really got to me. Seeing the aging process in reverse was a fresh way of showing its inevitability. And that inevitability produces a large ticking sound if we think about it which can give each and every one of us all the prodding we need to do what we want with our lives now. Not tomorrow, but now, now now. Great flick.

Josh Jasper said...

I'm interested in the 101 program as well.

Angelle Haney Gullett said...

I think I'm coming along for the ride ...

Anonymous said...

can i say HALLELUJAH! :) I did my pre-101 preparation and everything! lol