Giving up the DIY Attitude

One of my mentors, Marty Lotspeich, says, "You can do everything yourself, but you can't do it by yourself." Self work has to be reflected and tested against other people so that it doesn't become distorted and twisted.
 
I spent a few years in the Do-It-Yourself spiritual exploration mode. Although I did learn quite a lot, looking back at it now, I realize how much time I wasted and how skewed my perspective actually was. I knew about grounding techniques, but I had no clue how important they were. I wasn't able to differentiate body validation techniques from grounding techniques either. I was very stuck in my head and practiced energy dissolving techniques that were extremely inefficient.

Do-It-Yourself spiritual exploration is a tough road to follow. Do you subscribe to it? How easy are you making your learning process? Do you believe learning has to be hard work? Doing everything on your own will make it that much harder!

Some people have a strong attachment to the DIY attitude and partly this can be from pride or an unwillingness to spend money. You can have some very cool growth periods by yourself - and do congratulate yourself - many people are unwilling to even open this door to learning; however, learning from people that are masters in their field is a far more efficient way to build your tool box. Find a community of people to work with and your learning will be multiplied. I learned more in 3 months of working with others than in 3 years of trying to figure it out on my own!

Also, everyone has blind spots - areas that you're stuck in, but don't know about because the pattern or energy has been so ongoing that it just seems normal. Changing your perspective enough will open you up to your blind spots, but it helps tremendously to work with others in order to change the underlying issue; this is especially true if you know about your blind spot but don't have the tools to go about resolving the issue. Imagine having a community of people that can help you understand your blind spots and how to take action to resolve them!

So obviously, an excellent way to gain unconscious competence is to learn from people that already have it. Take a moment to appreciate the years and years of combined experience that you are able to benefit from; what took someone five or ten years to discover and master you can do in a matter of weeks or months. A single book can contain a lifetime of research and discoveries!  Learning with others multiplies your learning and lateral transfer of skills and keeps your perspective lucid and honest.

Some people take an entire lifetime to go through just a few growth periods. When you learn energy tools and work with other people to take those lateral next steps, which effect every domain of your life, you can move forward so much faster! If you are reading this then it is very likely that you can compress lifetimes of growth into a matter of months or even weeks! How cool is that?!
 
Watch out for limitation pictures. These are limiting ideas or pictures about reality that you have energized and believe in; should's, should not's, and cant's all fall into this category. Make sure you don't let other people's limitation pictures become yours! This website is full of my own limitation pictures. There are many "perfect pictures" on this website. Ideas of how to hone and perfect your development. The trouble with this kind of thinking, however, is that it conditions you to believe that you need to do things perfectly. Staying amused is OK. Playing is OK. Laughing and crying are OK. Creating unconsciously is OK - you can learn many lessons that way.

Make sure you recognize your own limitation pictures and know how to blow/destroy them. Debra Lynne Katz discusses techniques to destroy limitation pictures in her book You Are Psychic. I firmly believe that there are no actual limitations anywhere at anytime. Reality is a consensual hallucination. However, limitations can also be practical and useful. I use positive limitation pictures as guidelines. For example: learning from others is more efficient than figuring everything out myself, don't over exert myself exercising, getting drunk every night is unbalanced for me, I can do this much grounding before I need to take a break, and so on, are all examples of "positive" limitation pictures. They are limitation pictures that can help me recognize where I am and develop myself realistically.

What are your limitation pictures? Can you update your beliefs when they no longer serve you?

Do you believe that spiritual things should be free? Do you know if you have the karma to afford that kind of thinking or action in the real world? I am more than happy to pay money to psychics, healers, as well as brilliant and obscure teachers. I would much rather pay them with dollars than go into karmic debt with them. So imagine this limitation picture, that spiritual things should be free, is now annihilated in your mind by a nuclear bomb, and let that open your door to learning even further.

One of the worst limitation pictures people have about learning is the idea that it has to be difficult. Martial arts master Frankie Faires says: "Unfortunately, most people believe they have to try really hard to learn. Practice with the simple intent of learning and you will. Learning doesn't require more effort, only more intent." The idea that learning has to be "hard work" is just a kind of sub-conscious programming; it is a choice you make.

In truth, learning something is only as hard as you make it. Slice things at a level that you can handle and learning does not have to be difficult. Do you place a higher value on "hard work" or mastery?

As my friend Kristen Kam says, "rest requires discipline - the discipline to not over-exert yourself." Several of the ideas on this website are basically just re-programming, in detail, the following  grossly misguided American precepts: more is better, faster is better, hard work is valuable and commendable, a genius does everything himself, training in pain is good, spiritual things should be free, and learning has to be hard. These ideas are all completely ridiculous and can be replaced with far more useful and efficient ideas such as: slice what you can handle, go at your own pace, work smart - not hard, learn with others to multiply your learning, the SAID principle, honor your own karma, and learning can be easy.


Your ideas condition your perceptions and in turn your perceptions re-enforce those ideas. John C. Lilly poignantly says, "In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits."