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I’m trying to piece together a few puzzle pieces. I’m in the process of working this out, so let’s go for a wander and see where it leads us.

Piece one: A trial of fear polarity at the start of the year

I spent 30 days practicing the use of fear polarity. For quite a while I feared using this polarity since there’s a lot of baggage associated with it; it seems kind of ‘evil’. But eventually I decided that it would be useful to try as an experiment. It wasn’t going to be a permanent change, and I’d learn something in the process.

Learn I did. I essentially adopted the attitude that my desire was the #1 most important thing, and that I would conquer anything that got in my way. This had the immediate effect of clearing a layer of mental fog. Before, I would have an intention and then worry about what other people would think of it. My power would disperse before I could get started. Now, my intention was all that mattered, and any objection was an obstacle to overcome, not something that could diminish my determination. I felt like I had laser-focus on what I wanted and my intellect sprang into action in a way it hadn’t for a long time. At the same time, I felt much greater inner peace – I’d overcome a large amount of inner conflict in one fell swoop.

The surprising part was that I didn’t turn overtly evil. I still knew that harming people would make me feel bad and that it would create opposition to my intention. Therefore, it was a simply logical not to do so.

I left the trial enjoying the results of a number of great intentions, my motorbike amongst them.

Piece two: I am the only intender

After the fear polarity trial, my intensity dropped off. I still wasn’t comfortable with fear polarity long-term, but I hadn’t figured out how to use love polarity, so I sat in the middle for awhile. Then I discovered an interesting belief which filled in some gaps in the puzzle.

In Steve’s “True Nature of Reality” podcast, he describes subjective reality. Basically, it’s a model of reality centered around you, but “you” the conscious container of reality, not “you” the person. (Yes, it can be quite confusing. Check out the podcast for clarification). In this model of reality, there’s only one consciousness with intentions, and that’s yours.

That’s significant, because I’ve noticed a pattern. I observe intentions in other people that conflict with my desires, and then hold those intentions myself by thinking about them. I might think of an intention, and then think “Oh, but so-and-so will react badly if I do that” and thereby cancel my intention, even though it’s something I truly wanted.

By adopting the view that I am the only intender, I take responsibility for all of my intentions. Now, if I notice an intention that’s contrary to my desires, no matter where I perceive it to be coming from, it’s my responsibility to shift my intention back to my desire.

I tested this mindset today, and it worked. I was able to have a far more productive and enjoyable day than I would otherwise have had.

This mindset is more compatible with love polarity than the “only my desires matter” mindset of fear polarity. But it still results in giving my desires a place of high importance. And that makes me uneasy. Doesn’t that make me selfish? Isn’t selfishness morally wrong?

In which we go to the heart of the matter

The problem: this mindset works. Very well. There must be some validity to it, some deep truth behind it. But at the same time it places huge importance on my desires. Which seems selfish, and selfishness is wrong, right?

I have a bunch of thoughts on this

The first is, desire is the path to happiness. When you’re moving towards what you want, you’re happy. When everything’s going wrong and you’re moving away from what you want, you’re unhappy.

I should mention that desire, as I use it here, is distinct from impulsive craving. An easy way to distinguish between the two is to check how you would view your desire from the perspective of the future, after the thing that you desired has passed. For instance, I did a trial of polyphasic sleep several years ago. In the beginning, I anticipated it excitedly. During the trial, I enjoyed the challenge of it. Looking back on it, I look back with fondness. Completing the trial has created lasting happiness for me, and I’m glad that it was a part of my life (even if it wasn’t successful by an objective standard).

By contrast, a craving is essentially a desire with shallow, impulsive and conflicted motives. You might anticipate it and enjoy it, but afterwards you experience guilt and regret.

We can distinguish between desire and craving. Following desire leads to happiness. So why do I think I have to deny it? Because I don’t trust it. Logically, I don’t think I’ll have a desire to harm another person, but the possibility’s still there. If I allowed myself absolute freedom to pursue my desires, what would happen?

Another thought

Good deeds performed because we feel we should do them are not as beneficial as good deeds performed out of our own free will. In other words, giving our desires freedom is the only way to actually do good, because truly good acts can only arise out of our heartfelt desire to do good.

Which all leads to…

The thing that’s keeping me from following my desire: fear of my own darkness. Fear of what I will actually find if I take a deep, long look into my desires. Fear of what will happen if I unleash this potential, because it’s sitting right there.

I’m noticing that fear unravelling already. I’m becoming more convinced of the innate goodness in everyone. That maybe what we call evil comes from a source other than what I suspected.

And the theme that I’m being drawn to is to trust in my own innate goodness. To give myself permission to take a look and see what I really want. And to go after it without restraint.

This is getting interesting. Join me?

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I was having real trouble writing a blog post tonight. I had some ideas but the post itself didn’t want to be written. Eventually I had the good sense to get up and flail my arms and legs around wildly. But it wasn’t all wild flailing, at least at first, and that’s what I want to talk about in this post.

The non-wild-flailing bit

When I started my Shiva Nata session tonight, I was being very careful. I was just learning a new leg pattern and I was trying to get it right. But! (I recalled) Dance of Shiva is about getting it wrong! So I doubled my speed and went full tilt at it.

This is where things get interesting

It was pretty messy. But it was a lot more fun. And I thought,

“Sometimes you just have to dive in and do things at full steam without checking if you’re doing it right. No second guessing yourself.”

I should know this. I’ve been doing Aikido for five years now, and the magic always happens not when you’re analysing your technique, but when you’re going at it intensely and just watching, silently, what you do and what happens when you do it.

This might tell us something about how we learn best

Not by critically watching ourselves, but by jumping in there and doing it. If you blog, just write something. You can analyse it and decide what to tweak later. If you’re starting a business, just create your website and start talking to people. Dive in without a care for how much you’ll mess up. You will. You know you will. But that’s not the point.

The point is that when you act like this, you act naturally. When you stuff it up, it’s because you’ve found something to improve in your natural behaviour, not because you should have spent an extra hour second-guessing your course of action. But when you’ve done this for a while, where will that lead?

You’ll do your thing naturally, at full steam, and you won’t miss a beat. You’ll be fully engaged with it, giving it your all, and creating amazing things in the process.

Won’t that be something?

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Committing to posting three times a week on set days has been an interesting experience for me. Previously I’d post only occasionally, when the urge to write coincided with some free time. Now I’m regularly writing three posts a week – almost always posted within a few hours of midnight on the night the post is due. So what’s happening with my motivation? Let’s start with a quick diversion into some thoughts on fear.

Ways of dealing with fear

I was thinking about methods for dealing with fear earlier, and I’ve been trying to synthesise two ideas. The first is the “feel the fear and do it anyway” school of thought. Pushing through the fear to overcome it.

The second is the method that Havi teaches – your fear is there to protect you and it will tell you why if you ask it. You don’t want to bulldoze through your fear because you created it and it’s a part of you. Instead, listen to it and dissolve it with compassion.

What I’ve noticed is that I’m only able to apply Havi’s method – talking to fear – when I’m determined to do the thing that I fear. It’s like once the intent is there, the fear shows up clearly, and I’m able to meet it and work with it compassionately.

If I’m not determined to do the thing that I fear, the fear lies in hiding, and I’m not able to do anything about it. It’s only when I’m determined to do the thing that I’m able to make progress.

And back to blog posting

When I have the determination to write a post, and to write it right Now, everything falls into place. When it’s late at night and I’ve promised a post by midnight, the right mindset comes forward and the words flow. Until that determination is present, I’m fuzzy and unproductive.

Conclusion: Determination is the key that makes things happen. Compassion is how you go about it so you don’t beat yourself up along the way.

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Have you ever heard about a belief or a new way of looking at things, and thought it would be great if you could adopt that perspective? And then, despite your enthusiasm, watched as the changes failed to materialise?

Say, for example, that you read about the principle of oneness, and you would love to relate to people from a position of togetherness rather than separation and conflict. But despite being convinced of the value of the principle, your shift in your actual behaviour and experience is very slow, if noticeable at all.

I’d like to introduce an analogy from the software development world to illustrate this situation. In software development, there are many high-level principles of good software design and construction. An example is the “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (or DRY) principle. It suggests, quite logically, that if you avoid duplicating information in your program, and you want to change something, you’ll only have to change it in one place. If you don’t follow this principle and you want to make a change, you’ll have to make the change in many places. There will be a high chance you’ll miss one of those places and by doing so, introduce a defect into your program. That’s a quick and simple summary of the DRY principle.

Now imagine that you’re a software developer. You’ve been writing code for a spiffy project and you’ve just learnt about this principle. You see it’s immediate beauty and elegance, and you are impressed. But your code is still the same as it was before you learnt about this principle (ie. messy). If you don’t get into your code and refactor it, little will change. You might write new code of a higher quality, but the improvement will be swamped under the mass of old, messy code.

What does this mean for belief installation? To install a new belief, it’s not enough to familiarise yourself with the belief itself. You have to engage with your messy code, your habits and everyday behaviours, your patterns of thinking and acting. Start by examining what you’re actually thinking and doing. Does it mesh with the belief or perspective you’re trying to install? If not, how does it disagree? How could you shift and change your patterns of thought and action to align with the new belief?

At this level, things aren’t as neat and tidy (at least, not when you begin). But here, at the coalface, is where the change happens.

Are you awake or are you dreaming? When I seriously consider that I might be in a dream right now, I become intently aware of my experience. I wake up a bit. If this is a dream right now, that’s really interesting! Particularly to be aware that I’m dreaming while I’m dreaming. I don’t experience many lucid dreams at all. I wonder what strange things I could try out that I couldn’t do normally?

If this isn’t a dream, what is it? What is it really? How does it work? I think I know what’s going on, but maybe I’m blundering through it half asleep?

The point of this question is not to determine whether you are in the middle of a lucid dream or not (though it’s awesome if it can do that for you). The deeper purpose is to look more closely at reality and question it. Not in a philosophical way, but in a concrete, right-here-and-now kind of way. What is this that I’m experiencing right now and how does it all work?

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Steve’s post on problem solving. His basic premise is that life’s problems aren’t there to make things difficult for you, they’re there to help you grow. I have a habit of trying to avoid facing my problems, or of trying to get them out of the way so that I have a nice, clean, problem-free slate.

There stands the dilemma: there will always be problems, and if I hold a mindset that doesn’t engage with them and work with them as a matter of course, I’ll be doomed to continually experience the same problems, and feel perpetually frustrated about my situation.

I’ve thought about it, and I think there are two main attitudes we can take towards life’s problems: resentment and gratitude. Let’s explore each of these mindsets.

Resentment

When we resent problems, we wish they weren’t there in the first place. We might, at best, grudgingly accept that they’re here, and gather the energy to get off our ass and fix them so that we can go back to being comfortable again.

This attitude is not very effective though. We build up some energy to get things fixed, then sink back down into comfort and lethargy. There’s no chance to build momentum. We’re fighting against life’s problems instead of working with them. They’ll always be a thorn in our side, and we won’t make much progress if we hold this mindset.

Gratitude

The alternative mindset is gratitude. Instead of seeing problems as, well, problems, we look at the positive side. By solving problems, we start to engage with life. We’re more involved and more alive. By solving problems, we stop avoiding and start walking the path to what we really, truly want, and we become stronger along the way.

This mindset requires a huge step up in energy. Instead of occasionally getting the energy together to fix things up, we continually operate at this level.

Being willing to face and work through our problems allows us to do truly amazing things. Just about any desirable goal is going to present obstacles along the path, and we simply can’t reach our goals unless we can work through these.

With this mindset, we are working with life, not against it. We see that life gives us these challenges to broaden our horizons, to help us become stronger, and so that we can live the bold and adventurous life that we truly want to live. Life is not about getting rid of problems and vegging out. It’s about taking initiative, setting our own course, following it and really Living Fully along the way.

This shift, from resentment to gratitude, is a quantum leap. Before it, the world is against us. After it, we understand how the world works and why. We accept the challenge and summon the energy to begin engaging with our problems instead of running and hiding from them.

What do we do about all this?

Well, that’s quite a challenging question (a healthy challenge ). I’m going to throw some ideas out there, and we’ll see how they turn out.

I reckon a viewpoint shift comes first. First you need to see the benefits of solving a problem. But that’s not enough, because at that stage you’re still trying to get rid of the problem. You need to be grateful that you ever got the problem in the first place. I have, posted on the wall above my desk, this affirmation:

“I feel only gratitude for the challenges that life presents to me.”

I’m hoping that by continually reminding myself of this mindset, I’ll be able to notice when I’m resenting problems, and look at the situation from a different angle.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have some awesome tricks for getting out of resentment? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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I’ve been thinking about how I go about blogging. Recently, I’ve used the following method: Pick something that I don’t quite understand, but that I’d like to explore. Journal about it, then turn that journal article into a blog post.

That might be fine for a personal log book, but I don’t think it allows me to communicate as well as I could. I’m now leaning towards a different approach: blogging to share something interesting that I already have worked out. This way, I’d be doing the journaling first, and separately. Then, I would write the blog post with the intention of sharing what I had learnt in a more easily digestible manner.

Separating the research and the sharing would give me the space to begin with an intention that’s entirely about the effect on you, my reader. What new point of view would I like to show you? In what way could I inspire you? I’d be out of my own self-centred headspace and really interacting with others.

I think this could work out to be pretty cool.

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Today I’ve been pulling together the things I’ve been writing about motivation and safety, as well as bringing in some more ideas about fear, how we interact with it and move past it. Also the lightworker and darkworker paths. Lots of little pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Right now I’m at the stage of sorting the pieces and trying to find some sort of higher structure that they fit together under. I’m starting to see what could come out of it. Perhaps a short guide: how to figure out what you want, feel motivated and do the thing when there’s fear along the way.

Topics it could cover:

• How to get started (aka. figuring out what you want)
• Tapping into an energy source (the whole love or fear polarity thing)
• Dealing with fear when you encounter it
• Debugging beliefs (creating a non-scary reality for ourselves)

At the moment this material is very similar to Steve’s and Havi’s. I’m really doing this to learn their mindsets and techniques, and figure out how they fit together. I’m still figuring this stuff out myself, but assuming I go on to make an ebook or something, would you be interested? What sort of things would you like it to cover?

You’re working on something and you’ve got great energy, you’re feeling really motivated. Quite possibly, you’re consciously using a polarity. Then you hit some thought that throws you off, way off. One moment you were feeling blissfully creative, the next you’re feeling stuck. From there, it’s easy to stay stuck all day obsessing over why you lost your nice feelings of creativity. How do you get out of the stuck and back to feeling creative?

This is a problem I often encounter when I start to gain momentum. This morning I was thinking about how I was going to systemise my freelancing business so that I would be prepared in case I received more work than I could handle. I was feeling great and creating an excellent system to handle that situation when I hit the thought of how much I would benefit from it personally. My motivation disappeared, and it’s taken me most of the day to get it back.

The trick, I think, is not to take the fall too seriously. You’ve just discovered a thought that’s not aligned with what you want. Try this line of thought on for size: “Oops, I didn’t mean to do that. I must have found something I don’t want! What was that thing? Ooh, thinking about that feels bad. What would be its opposite? That feels better. Let’s go with that!”

Why does this work?

In truth, a fluctuation in your feelings or motivation is not a problem. You might have experienced this on a smaller scale by holding a number of different thoughts in order to select the one that feels best to you. When you do this, a bad feeling is not disaster, it just means that thought is not the one for you. The stuck-ness happens when you take it seriously. As soon as you start obsessing over the stuck feeling, thinking about how good you were feeling before and how bad you feel now, you reinforce and perpetuate the stuck feeling.

You are not your feelings. When you accidentally create one you don’t like, you’re still safe. You still have the freedom to switch your focus to what you want and create some new, more pleasant feelings. You don’t have to struggle to regain control of your vibration. You never lost it. You always have that power, and you can choose to use it constructively when you recognise that you’re in a negative cycle.

In retrospect, I could have flipped my situtation around this morning. “Oops, wrong perspective! Instead of thinking about the benefits for myself, what will my business system do for my clients? They’ll get better, more predictable service, etc, etc, etc“. I would be back on track.

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It’s become clear to me today that I’m living within a belief system in which I do not feel safe. I have plenty of fears, and they tend to paralyse me rather than spur me into action. It also became clear that I have a choice between two options to deal with this. I can either stop resisting the not-safe-ness and embrace it, or I can change my beliefs so that I feel safe.

Embracing the fear

Ceasing resistance and embracing my feeling of not being safe means to make the conscious choice to be motivated by fear. That is, the fear of something would motivate me to take action to overcome that fear and fulfil my desires, in a dominating, conquering kind of way. I did an experiment where I tested this mindset near the start of this year. The full write-up is a story for another day, but in summary, I was amazed at how much my productivity and happiness increased when I stopped resisting and started working with this form of motivation.

I had a new insight into this mindset today. I’d been concerned that if I went down this path (being motivated by fear rather than love), my actions would become selfish to the point of harming others – I’d become “evil”. However, I now think this concern is less strongly founded than I originally thought. It wouldn’t be intelligent to act malevolently because whatever my motivation, I still understand oneness. I know that I’ll be happiest creating situations in which I share my happiness with others, not in which I gain at someone else’s loss. I want to be surrounded by happy people, no matter whether the motivation is selfish or selfless.

From that line of reasoning, I think that actions that would be labelled evil don’t necessarily spring from either polarity. Instead, they come from an ignorance of oneness. If we are aware that we are all one (or even on a practical level that we’re affected by what we put out into our environment), then it’s not intelligent to act evilly.

Shifting beliefs

That’s a brief look at my first option, of exploring fear polarity more deeply. However, at this point in time, I choose to explore the other option: shifting my beliefs (or my perspective of reality) so that I feel safe. This is just the start of the process for me, but I did come up with some beliefs and perspective shifts to begin with:

1. There is only the present moment. Any memory I bring up is just a memory that I’m connecting to in the present moment. Any predictions of the future, good or bad, are just thoughts that I’m creating in this moment. This belief helps greatly with ‘what ifs’. I can simply return my focus to the present moment and recall that I’m just creating a scenario in my head. Right now, as these thoughts of disaster play through my head, I am fine, and I am not under threat.
2. My vibration creates reality. This belief is helpful because it means that I have a degree of control. If I’m experiencing something that I don’t like, I brought about the situation (or “attracted it” or put myself into it). By the same power I have the choice to not create it in the future. I’m not a victim of my circumstances.
3. Shifting my vibration is a skill that I can learn and become better at. I include this one because I’m not great at it yet, so I need to remind myself that I can get better.

Closing thoughts

The past six months or so have been comparable to the Star Trek analogy from this article. Before this time, I was like the captain of a star ship who thought he was a lowly ensign, so didn’t offer much input into where the ship travelled. Then he realised that he was captain and started playing with the controls, only he didn’t know how anything worked. He’s currently figuring everything out by trial and error, so the result is lots of uncomfortable lurching. With a bit of practice, hopefully the ride will smooth out a little and we can have some fun before engineering decide to upgrade the thrusters and the learning process starts over again.

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