An Example of Guilt Creating Problems

Let’s take a hypothetical example of a person who’s overweight. How is guilt driving her to continue to be overweight?

Angie is (not real, necessarily, but most likely is because this is taken from a number of real life experiences–my own and others’) about 25 years old. She’s moderately overweight, and wants to lose weight.

She gets up in the morning and thinks she really should go to the gym. The gym is on the other side of town and Angie is tired and has to get her son, Steven, out of bed and off to school first.

She lays and stares at the ceiling until she realizes she’ll be late to work if she doesn’t get going. Some will say this means she is “lazy”. Others will be sympathetic.

But what Angie feels is ashamed. Another morning she didn’t get up and hit the gym. Another doughnut for breakfast. Another latte with light cream and some fake sugar so she can feel like she’s “trying”.

The problem here is that the guilt is making Angie punish herself. When she has the doughnut, she feels guilty. When she has the latte, she feels guilty, when she doesn’t hit the gym, she feels guilty… Guilt so fully permeates our culture that people often don’t even register it.

Many would at this point say, “She SHOULD feel guilty, because she’s overweight and she’s doing nothing to fix it.” But I will argue thus… she shouldn’t feel guilty, because that’s what’s making her punish herself by not taking steps to lose weight.

To make matters better, she also feels guilty about not being able to find a man. She bases the belief she can’t find a man on the fact that she is overweight. To her friends, she says out loud that it’s all the fault of the men of the world for being shallow. In her own subconscious mind, however, she feels shame that she is overweight, and thus when men show interest, she treats them badly. After all, men don’t like heavy women, right? So there must be something wrong with them if they do…

Whatever the reasons why we feel guilty, the guilt drives us to the same behaviors over and over again. If we can do actions without guilt, the irony is that those actions will fade away. They’ll cease on their own. Your immensely powerful subconscious mind KNOWS that doughnuts aren’t good for you. But it pushes you to eat them to punish yourself… until you stop beating yourself up for it.

One way you can do this is use the action as a blessing. Or, as Matt Khan would say it, do it with the highest possible intent. So if you eat a doughnut, put an intent to bless on every bite… “With every bite I take of this doughnut, may all the hungry in the world eat like Kings and Queens for the rest of their lives.” And also, claim it as the healthiest thing you can do. Sounds like nonsense, but it removes the guilt. The lack of guilt will make the behavior simply cease. You’ll start feeling a bit disgusted by doughnuts. They’ll lose their sweetness–or become too overly sweet. They’ll fall away naturally and easily. “This is the most loving thing I can do for my body,” feels silly at first, but after a while, when you see that it really works… you’ll look at your life and realize, you’re doing the healthiest things for your body naturally and easily.

That’s how it should work. It should be easy and natural. Guilt makes things hard. The idea that you will just keep doing it unless you feel guilty is actually the opposite of what really happens. A guilty person DESERVES punishment, don’t they? So you, all unknowing, punish yourself as Angie does by perpetuating bad and unhealthy behavior.

The Concept in a Nutshell

Your subconscious mind controls your behavior far more than your conscious mind does. It also controls your body language, which is (at MINIMUM) 55% of your communication. It’s incredibly important to understand the power of your subconscious mind. It is what helps you to drive “unconsciously” (as in a vehicle) once you’ve learned how. It’s what makes you WALK, and stop for a second and REALLY think, deeply, about how hard WALKING alone is… no other creature on this entire planet walks upright on two feet… and you do it as if it’s NOTHING at all… that’s the immense power of your subconscious mind. You can even walk on uneven ground. You can go up STAIRS… all with nary a concern.

So with this in mind… I started searching for the SIMPLEST way to reprogram the subconscious mind to do my bidding… and I learned that the mind is literally exactly like a computer. It’s binary…

The input into your mind is EMOTION. And there are, at the end of the day, only actually TWO emotions. Now, these can FEEL LIKE different things… but there are only really TWO in their “bottom line” form. You either feel punishment, or peace. Everything falls under one umbrella or the other.

Punishment has 4 facets, so it’s slightly complex…

1. The feeling that YOU should be punished (guilt).
2. The feeling that someone ELSE should be punished (revenge, justified anger, etc.)
3. The feeling that you or someone you love (or even strangers you care about) ARE being punished (despair, helplessness, grief, sorrow, etc.).
4. The FEAR that you, or someone you love (or even strangers you care about), WILL BE punished (fear, anxiety, trepidation, clinginess, etc.)

So here’s the FACT about your subconscious mind.. it already knows how to get you where you want to go. Finances are as simple as “more money in than out” at the end of the day when all is done and said… yet so few people can manage that… with a brain that is more than a TRILLION TIMES more powerful than the most powerful computers ever made-PUT TOGETHER… Now, think about that…

Okay. So… why doesn’t it do it?? Why can this incredible, indescribably powerful computer not make everyone rich as Bill Gates??

Because too many people hold PUNISHMENT around MONEY. And this binary mode makes the subconscious mind PUNISH THEM about money.

See, when you hold ANY of the 4 forms of punishment around an issue… your subconscious mind will punish YOU about it. It has no one else to punish (though sometimes it USES other people to punish you with–you might want revenge and be cruel to someone else, but that ultimately just hurts YOU).

So to get what you want in life, you have to practice SELF FORGIVENESS every moment humanly possible. Because from a subconscious mind standpoint, EVERYONE IS YOU. It cannot differentiate you from someone else the way that the conscious mind can (remember the saying “we are all one”? Well, now you UNDERSTAND IT).

Forgiveness of others, and asking forgiveness from others is the SLOWEST way to your goal… YOU FORGIVING YOU is the FASTEST way to make your subconscious mind suddenly SWITCH MODES and STOP PUNISHING YOU.

I know I harp on this constantly, but if you really want to “activate your attractiveness” and make your subconscious mind work FOR you… then the fastest and most certain route is SELF FORGIVENESS. Let go of ALL guilt (it does NOT make you a better person!!). And remember that ONLY by letting go of ALL punishment consciousness, will you help yourself or the people in your life. As long as you are punishing YOU, you will ALSO punish the people in your life (yelling, getting angry, pouting, withdrawing, clinging desperately… the ways are multitude, but they are all harmful to OTHERS, as well as you).

The kindest thing you can do for yourself and the whole world is to let go of ALL punishment consciousness/ thoughts.

Without Guilt, I’ll be Evil!

When teaching people about guilt, here’s something I run up against frequently… “If I don’t feel guilty about it, I’ll do it again.”

In truth, this is the opposite of what actually happens.

The teaching is that guilt helps us know what’s right from wrong, and that it prevents us from doing that terrible thing again. So if someone steals, and feels guilty, the common thought goes, they won’t ever steal again.

Yet here are two examples that show that this logic is horrifically, tragically, and even potentially fatally flawed…

The vast majority of the population of the world never once commit any form of murder. The major preponderance of people not only do not, but would not kill someone. Most can’t even bring themselves to kill animals. Yet they have no guilt around killing; since they’ve never killed, they feel no guilt. Simply and factually put, guilt has no bearing upon their continued, lifelong decision to not kill people. They are aware that killing is wrong and do not do it.

Conversely, addicts feel guilt about their addiction. The greater the guilt, the harder the addiction is to quit. Alcoholics get worse with time, not better… and what else gets worse with time? Their guilt. Smokers smoke more in time, not less–but feel more and more guilty. (Yes, I do appreciate that most will deny it, because admitting it is too painful; but the reality is that all addictions are diseases of guilt.)

The hard truth is that guilt does NOT prevent reenactment of the crime. Indeed, it drives a person to return again and again to the source of the guilt, for on a subconscious level, they feel like they deserve to be punished. Guilt is painful, and so the punishment is meted out through the apparently “uncontrollable” repetition of the behavior. Yelling at our children… drinking and hitting your wife… smoking… porn… these behaviors are self-punishment.

Some will then bring up the statement, “but these things bring pleasure,” at this point. Yes, they bring a sort of surface seeming pleasure. The challenge of the human is that we often don’t do things unless they bring us some sort of instant gratification… but what most are not understanding is that the real gratification here is actually the punishment itself. It feels “good” because it feels right, proper, and appropriate… the “pleasure” is the reward for punishing ourselves. It’s a peculiar mechanism, and the pleasure is also pain; a pain that grows more and more intense even as we are given short bursts of pleasure to incite us to continue the behavior.

Make no mistake, however; the behavior is self-punishment. It isn’t, on the other hand, consciously intended self-punishment. This is why I teach people to go into binary input mode of peace… to let go of ALL guilt, to forgive for EVERYTHING. Because the subconscious mind only understands your feeling that “punishment is wanted” OR your feeling that “peace is appropriate here”.

Going into binary input mode of peace around any issue will resolve that issue. The tools and methods for this are numerous, but I teach self-forgiveness and blessing because they are the fastest and easiest.

If you are a person who has been cheated on, for example, you may feel guilt because, “I shouldn’t have trusted him (her).” So you will go and find another cheater to trust. It will feel like such a wonderful relationship… until the cheating happens… and the guilt comes again… and so you find the same relationship over and over again. Always addicted to the cheater, always “so in love” with him or her.

Then comes the being addicted to no relationship at all. This is also punishment, but it feels like ‘protection’. This is how the subconscious mind fools the conscious mind into participating willingly with the compulsion for self-punishment.

The choice that you have isn’t what kind of person you’re going to get into a relationship with. The subconscious mind is going to control that and fool your conscious mind every single time. What you get to control is the choice to forgive… and when you forgive yourself, you send a new command to the subconscious mind… “Peace now, no more punishment” and that’s when miracles happen in your life.

Another person may be overweight. He loves his twinkies an every time he eats one, he feels guilty. He tells everyone he’s very happy being fat. It’s just the way things are… but he is actually eaten up with guilt inside. Thus is he is “compelled” to eat badly, to ignore exercise, to be “too tired” to get up and get his body moving. These are enforced onto his conscious mind, and no amount of will-power overcomes it. If he chooses to start forgiving himself, however, he will find himself compelled to begin exercising–and it will feel as natural, easy, and automatic as eating twinkies used to.

So the whole idea that guilt makes us never do it again is literally the opposite of what actually happens in life. It’s guilt that drives us, unwilling passengers of the subconscious mind’s attempts to punish us (as requested), into horrible and painful circumstances.

Guilt is dangerous. It’s the reason for addictions, it’s the reason for suicides, it’s the reason for divorce, it’s the reason behind almost every single ill of our society. Rape, murder, pedophilia…

To make matters even scarier, guilt is everywhere. It’s so much a part of our culture that we take no more notice of it than we do of air. “Well, you SHOULD feel guilty” is the most common statement around regarding guilt… yet there is zero awareness that this guilt in fact perpetuates and even often escalates the horrible behavior the person “should” feel guilty about. If we helped people forgive themselves, we would stop horrible behavior in its tracks. Cheaters could stop cheating, because they would no longer want to bring themselves heartache by hurting the people they love. Poverty could end when people quit feeling guilty around money and desiring things. Greed could end when people weren’t expected to feel like horrible monsters for natural desires for more in life. On and on the list goes. Pedophiles could cease to hurt children if they were helped to look at their own childhood pain and shame and guilt and let go of it. I dare suggest that even these “most vile” of criminals would be turned around entirely by understanding the mechanism of how guilt actually creates horrors, never delivers us from them.

I dare say that murderers know they did wrong, and it is this which drives them to do it again and again, or to hurt others and lash out in other ways.

Case Study: There is only Self-Forgiveness

So (possibly several) someone(s) who don’t belong anywhere in my life outside of an extremely limited sphere invaded my Facebook. I’ve been stalked before, and it felt scary and unsafe then. It feels scary and unsafe now, too.

Yes, going to a public place JUST to look at (and tattle upon) someone, and for no other reason (there’s no reason to be on MY Facebook page except, obviously, to snoop into MY life–or you’d be in some OTHER public place), is, by very definition, STALKING. Yes, you are a stalker. (Yes, I mean YOU, Mr. XYZ, and YOU, the supposed person who linked my FB page to him). Yes, it’s creepy, it’s threatening, and it’s not sane. You are not sane if you know my ex and you are here at my Facebook page. You are even less sane because you are running to tattle to him because you THINK you know anything at all about my life.

And that’s pretending that I believe his claims that “someone linked it” to him. But it’s okay, because this is an umbrella statement. My ex himself DEFINITELY doesn’t belong on my Facebook page.

But, everything happens for a reason. I teach about self-forgiveness, and that everything you can’t forgive, is about YOU. I detest snoopy stalkers. Yet in this case, what is it about this specific incident that I need to forgive myself for? Isn’t that the question of the hour?

As creepy and inappropriate as stalking me like this is, it has given me opportunity to look at how I don’t forgive ME in all of this.

So here you go. I did know that he’s like this. I couldn’t leave the room to go to the bathroom without, “Where are you going? What are you doing?” I couldn’t fart without him wanting to know why (because I had a build-up of gas in my rectum. happy now?).

I THOUGHT before I posted my comment, “What if he sees this? He’ll think it’s about him.” Then I made the same damned mistake I made since the day I met him… I gave the benefit of the doubt. Even knowing perfectly well that he’s literally obsessively snoopy… It’s like a turtle having a shell… I seem to be stupidly shocked every time I see it… WHOA, that turtle has a shell! Mr. XYZ is snoopy! Shocker! Mr. XYZ went so far as to tell me, on the record, in front of the police, that he doesn’t care how I feel. Yet it still surprises me that he would go on my FB knowing it would make me feel violated and invaded…

That’s not his fault. I want it to be his fault, because it’s human nature to do so. It’s my fault for being surprised by something, by going against my instinct that said, “You know he’s snoopy, you should expect him to be here”. That’s what I see as me having “done wrong”. And it’s a habitual pattern for me, the same way his snoopiness is for him. I keep giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who I know perfectly well doesn’t deserve it from me.

So, this is a lesson from my own life (embarrassing as it is) about how our unforgiveness of someone else is always really about US. This isn’t about him. He’s just being him. He is who he is. I posted something about someone else that I thought he would take personally… dismissing my intuition, dismissing what I know for a fact about him… dismissing my inner guidance because I was angry at some jackass that called me a b****. A so-called professional (gov. worker, no less).

Everything happens for a reason. I know I’ll stop feeling invaded at some point, but for now, I’m going to work on forgiving myself. This has brought up the many, many times when I assumed the best of him, to my own detriment. I still have a lot of forgiving myself to do. I thought he would never cheat (I was wrong). I thought he would never lie to steal taxes from me (I was wrong). I thought the best of someone, despite all evidence to the contrary. I even once saw that he had called another woman right after he and I had sex (his now fiance, which I didn’t know until I learned her name later). I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. And I didn’t do it once (shame on you), I did it over, and over, and over. And I’m still doing it, clearly.

For this, I must forgive myself. When that happens, I won’t have to forgive him, because that will come naturally and easily. Most of the time, I don’t hold this against myself. I had quit beating myself up over it… but then I did it again. Then I project (like most of us do). Now that I know what I know, I’m able to look at this event and find MY “fault” in it (what I blame myself for and feel guilty about, which giving benefit of the doubt to someone who doesn’t deserve it). I’m able to see how I blame myself for “not knowing better” (and in this case, I really DID know better). I’m able to forgive myself for trusting someone I KNOW I cannot, only because I now understand that “the only forgiveness is self-forgiveness”. This is another case in which I also feel like I shouldn’t feel guilty… then I feel guilty for feeling guilty for something I shouldn’t (sound familiar?).

And this time, I’m not making the same mistake. He won’t understand this post, not remotely. He’ll think it’s about him, rather than the fact that it’s about me, and it’s about the people I’m helping understand about how there’s no one to forgive but YOU. This time, though, I won’t be surprised when he thinks it’s all about him. 😉

 

This is a case study from my own experience. The purpose is so that you understand that I do the same darned things you do. We all do! I’m not preaching something to you that I don’t face, myself. I’m not asking you to forgive yourself while being unwilling to do it. I’m giving you this case study so that you realize that ALL unforgiveness of the other–even when it seems like they are “at fault” to you and others… still comes round to YOU. Even when you can justify to yourself and others your unforgiveness of someone else… if you want to live a HAPPY LIFE, you must look at how it comes, always, full circle in the end. It’s me I need to forgive here. Logically, I know I did nothing wrong. I posted on my FB page (that he has no business being on, nor does anyone who knows him) about someone else entirely. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I still feel guilty because I know how he is and “should have known better”. I should have assumed the turtle had a shell… so now I forgive myself for ignoring the turtle shell.

 

It always comes back to you. If you can’t forgive someone else, it means you need to find where/ how you don’t forgive you. Then your feelings of anger, denial, unsafeness, violation (or whatever they are) will dry up–and not until then.

 

If you like these feelings, hold onto your “right” to be angry at the other person. If you don’t like those feelings… look for the ways you aren’t forgiving yourself in the situation, and heal THAT. Then you won’t have to live in these ugly feelings anymore.

Why Can’t You Manifest What You Want?

This is probably the most plaintive, deepest cry I hear from people who are trying to change their lives… why, oh why, doesn’t it work?? This is especially the cry from people who have been trying to use “the Law of Attraction” to change their lives. The answer is not what you’ve been told before, I suspect.

It’s because there’s something in your life you haven’t forgiven yourself for. In any area that you seem “blocked”, there is unforgiveness.

Current teachings on manifestation teach “beliefs”, but they don’t understand the mechanism of belief that is the REAL problem. It’s like knowing to stop at a stop sign, but not understanding that the real reason isn’t because there’s a red sign there–it’s because of right-of-way.

Current teachings on manifestation teach about visualization and faith, which too often leaves people feeling more guilty and ashamed than before–and literally makes things far worse.

So let’s take an imaginary case study and dissect it.

We’ll call our case study Sue. Sue wants a relationship. For 6 months, she visualizes being with a man. Waking up in his arms, him making breakfast for her, etc. etc.

Sue examines her beliefs. She finds that she doesn’t believe she deserves a relationship. So she starts to affirm, “I deserve love from the man of my dreams”. She discovers that she deep-down believes that men aren’t safe. She affirms, “I am safe with the man of my dreams”.

It doesn’t work, 4 months slip by. Sue goes and asks, “Why can’t I manifest a relationship?” Someone tells her, “Because you don’t really believe you can have one!” Sue realizes they are right, and she starts trying to “really believe” she can have one. She’s dreadfully lonely. She looks at couples with longing. She feels guilty because, the reality of her situation is that she truly cannot BELIEVE that she can have a relationship. Men pay her no mind. She can’t get a single response from online dating.

Sue now feels angry, lost, guilty, AND still lonely… Her heart and life are full of pain. She now believes that, no only can’t she have a relationship, but it’s her fault because she couldn’t BELIEVE she deserves a relationship, and she couldn’t give up on desiring one every waking moment.

What’s happening here? Sue has done her best. She’s tired, she’s sad, she’s lonely, and now she has become suicidal. Her life feels meaningless because she has no one special to share it with. She can’t help these feelings, and all the “loa” people she has surrounded herself with are quick to tell her what she’s doing wrong. She’s not believing. She’s believing the wrong thing. She’s not accepting and embracing her total, stark, painful aloneness and being pleased by it. She should go dance with flowers and hug trees… So she does that, and now she’s dirty, sad, and suicidal…

Here’s what no one bothered to tell Sue… “Examine where you feel guilty in all of this, and just forgive yourself. Treat yourself with the same tenderness and compassion you would give a 5 year old. Would you tell a 5 year old, ‘You’re doing LOA wrong, you idiot!’? Of course you wouldn’t. So don’t do it to yourself. Forget about LOA for a while, and forget about manifesting for a while… what you really need is your own forgiveness.”

Here are Sue’s real problems, and what’s making it worse instead of better:

— Sue feels unworthy of love because she has done something she feels guilty about. Let’s say that in this case, she had sex before marriage and her religion forbids it. This makes her feel not good enough. It’s her guilt and shame that must be addressed, NOT the feeling that she’s not good enough nor her belief she’s unworthy… those are byproducts of her guilt and shame!

— Sue feels guilty for desiring something she believes she cannot have. She desires a relationship. Men ignore her. She thus feels like wanting a man is ruining her life. The guilt and shame here is what requires addressing.. the rest are byproducts of those. Men will pay her attention when her subconscious mind quits punishing her. This can ONLY happen when she forgives herself.

— Sue was molested as a child. She loved her father, and so her feelings are conflicted. She obeyed his demands for sexual gratification because she didn’t know any better; and because he was her father and so she wanted to please him. Because of these conflicting issues, Sue feels guilty. She feels like she should have known better, she should have done better, she shouldn’t have loved a man who abused her… and the problem here is not the beliefs, it’s the byproduct… her guilt and shame.

— Sue feels guilty now because, no matter how hard she tries, she cannot believe she’s in a relationship while her life is barren and lonely. She cannot FEEL immersed in love while her life is a photo-realistic example of complete isolation. She also feels guilty because she cannot love her life of desolation. She cannot be happy hugging trees and dancing with flowers because she has allergies and she hates dirt.

Everywhere along the way in life, we are given “you should do this, you shouldn’t do that”s. The real, true answer is to stop trying to manifest, and start seeking everything within you that you don’t forgive yourself for, and start forgiving it. Whether it’s real and literal and makes perfect sense like, ‘I cheated on an exam in high school, and it really was wrong” or whether it’s nonsensical and maybe plain ‘stupid’ like “I should have known better”, it doesn’t matter. Forgive yourself for EVERYTHING, and start with your greatest need or pain. If you’re trying to manifest love, but you feel “not good enough” because of skin conditions, weight conditions, past relationship failures, or anything else… forgive THOSE THINGS, and the peace will come naturally. Then will the relationship happen, because the beliefs will have just fallen away. Guilt holds beliefs in place like gorilla glue from hell.

You’ll not manifest while you feel guilt. That’s not to make you feel more guilty, either… that’s the exact opposite of what we want here!! That’s just information. That’s an invitation for you not to have yet one more thing to feel guilt about… but instead to help you to get to the heart of the matter and make some REAL change in your life at last.

Forgiveness is literally the key to everything. It’s the ONLY way out of anything. Of everything. Then your good will just flow to you, as naturally, as easily, as automatically as breathing. It will be effortless.

Forgiveness is your work, not visualizing. Not believing. Not finding and counter-affirming all your hidden, secret beliefs.

Forgive yourself. No matter how nonsensical the thing is that you hold against yourself.

How LOA Teachings are Harmful

Alright, so let’s get down to some nitty-gritty stuff here.

LOA teachings state, in essence, that you must feel completely as if you are rich when you are dirt poor. When you get an eviction notice, and you can’t feed your kids, you must “act as if” you were rich and “feel as if” you were living in a castle.

So here you have perfectly normal people who get an eviction notice and, guess what happens… they sit down and cry. They feel bad. They feel horrible. They can’t feed their child, and for some strange, bizarre, peculiar reason; it doesn’t make them feel rich. Now, as strange as that may sound, it’s really common! Yeah, people in bad situations feel bad. I know, right?? BIZARRE!

But… here’s the problem. If you do something that any sane, rational person with a brain would do and have a bad moment and think or feel something negative, it will mean destruction, disorder, and chaos to your desires, Zorg style!

Be a human being, feel what you actually feel, and that one moment of weakness will completely destroy the entire last year of any positive thoughts. And should you fail to FEEL AS IF you are the wealthiest person on Earth as you get that missive from your landlord, everything shall have been in vain… so guard your thoughts at every instant!

So what happens? We do like, you know, normal stuff. We feel bad. We bark at our kids when we’re exhausted. We stub our toes and scream profanity.

And what’s the answer to that? “Why, you ATTRACTED that! You bad person, you! You DESERVE it because you HAD A BAD THOUGHT that one time, in fifth grade!”

Oh, of course. Naturally. I should feel bad and wrong and guilty and ashamed because I ATTRACTED that! Great news, now I have something ELSE to feel guilty about–except I’m not ALLOWED to feel guilty or it will be destruction, disorder, and chaos! Yay!

I sometimes wonder if these people think before they speak. Really, I should “act as if” I’m rich when I have 2 cents in the bank and 5 in my pocket? And nobody can really explain this “act as if” thing when you have 2 cents in the bank and 5 in your pocket… “Just do what rich people do!” Oh, right, like buy myself a $500 dinner at an upscale restaurant? With what, my LOA vibes? Wa-wa-wa… hmm, didn’t you feel my vibes, man??

The number one factor that “sabotages” people is guilt. Guilt is meant to be a temporary, passing emotion intended for trespasses. But that isn’t how guilt is used in our society. It is as prevalent as air, and just as pervasive and invasive. Not that I have a problem with air–it’s marvelous! Guilt, however… guilt is a brutal master. It destroys lives. Everywhere you look, there are people stuck and in misery. This is the product of one of three forms of punishment (all are connected directly back to guilt): Feeling like you should be punished; feeling like you are being punished; or wanting someone else to be punished.

This is the dangerous side of guilt. Guilt should just say, “Let’s not do that again!” That’s its job. That’s its entire function. Bam, done.

But in our society, guilt sticks around. We are taught that we cannot have any sort of a life unless we feel guilty forever for even the most minor of transgressions–without guilt, we are told, we will do horrible things over and over again!

The bitter, fatal irony is that, if we hold onto our guilt or the desire to punish others; our subconscious mind invariably punishes us by making us do horrible things. We become the thing that we hate–often literally. People who loathe racism often become racists. People who hate rapists often end up being so brutal towards men that they destroy the minds and emotions of good, decent men.

The danger of LOA teachings is that they can in many cases catastrophically damage people to the point of suicidal thoughts and feelings. The person becomes so certain that they are a hopeless case because they just cannot feel GOOD when they feel bad, that they feel like they deserve and created every bad thing… which LOA folks would say is GOOD, GREAT even! Now they have “taken responsibility” and can change it by feeling everything they don’t actually feel! Isn’t that smashing?!

No, no it isn’t. It’s tragic, even horrifying.

To take responsibility means to move forward and fix things, without regard for how the thing happened. When the milk gets spilled, no time should be lost figuring out who’s at fault, who’s to blame, and why they should feel guilty. Time should be productively spent; finding paper towels and cleaning it up. Solutions, not blame.

And the solution shouldn’t include something impossible. “You clean that milk up with nothing but your nose!” That’s stupid, nonsensical, and defeatist. “You better feel GREAT when your body is in so much pain that you can’t move, OR ELSE you’ll be like that forever!” Do you have a brain in your head at all? That’s just plain, outright, outrageously stupid.

The answer is far simpler than all of that. The biggest problem with the LOA is that it flies in the face of how the human brain actually works, and that is literally dangerous for many people. The human brain has only two input modes, and it’s long past time that we start using them directly. All of the things that people teach with the “Law of Attraction” are intended to attempt a binary mode change in the brain. Many are successful… unfortunately, they are coupled with guilt-inducing teachings that negate them entirely.

Yes, you want to change your state into the positive as frequently as possible. That’s the best thing in the world to do. However, there are easy ways to do it, and you won’t explode the world if you have some anger or defeated feelings or pain every once in a while. It won’t create a tsunami and murder thousands of people if you do, either. I know, bizarre, yeah?

The LOA is a misunderstanding, and it’s one that has harmed more people that it has helped–outside of the people who have made millions of dollars selling false hope to desperate people who couldn’t afford it. It does seem to have helped them quite a bit…

Affirmations-You’re Doing it Wrong

There are many in the “success” teaching field who teach about affirmations. Yet time after time, you’ll see people disillusioned by them. Instinctively, we know they should work. “If you tell a lie often enough and keep repeating it, people will begin to believe it.” – Joseph Goebbels (Nazi)

And so it is that from the worst of criminals, we get the profoundest of truths about lies…

Here’s the problem, though. The current teachings on affirmations include, exclusively, “I am”. In fact, much is made of the saying, “I AM THAT I AM” and how it proves beyond all doubt that this means we are to affirm to ourselves (in various ways) according to the I AM principles (which vary, but all come back to “I am”).

That works. Eventually. If you’re dedicated enough. If you don’t get bored. If you don’t get sidetracked. If you have nearly superhuman skill in keeping yourself focused.

I don’t know about you, but my Superwoman costume has a few holes in it… I’m NOT that dedicated. I’m NOT that focused. I get sidetracked. I forget sometimes (I know, right? Who DOES that?!). I even, dare I say it out loud-so to speak- get bored with it. That’s right, I went there.

So, if I sat here and said, “I’m so wonderful, I’m so awesome, I’m so beautiful,” raise your hand if you would NOT grow bored. … … … What, no hands? For shame!

Of course you don’t want to sit there and listen to someone else regale you with how super duper they are. That’s boring! I don’t care who you are, that’s just plain boring (if not outright obnoxious and frustrating).

Your subconscious mind learned about you and the world from the word “you”. It didn’t learn about you and the world from the word “I”. In fact, it generally ignores sentences that start with the word “I”! But boy will it sit up and pay attention when it hears “you”. Even if you’re the one saying it…

So when you’re sitting there and you’re angry at someone, and you’re saying in your mind, “You’re a jerk!” guess who’s hearing that. The other person isn’t hearing it. They couldn’t care less. But your own subconscious mind hears it. Oh, indeed it does. And it believes that a person who just got cut off (you) deserves to be punished, and that the person who cut someone off (the other) deserves to be punished. The problem is that you’re thinking about punishment. It won’t be able to differentiate who to punish–and the only person it CAN punish is you.

This is why it’s so important to me to get the message out that affirmations should be done with YOU. YOU are so smart! YOU are so beautiful! YOU are so good with money!

See, if a woman wears a certain blue shirt one day and thinks she looks horrible in it, but gets 5 compliments that day on it, she will wear it again. I can almost guarantee it. Her own feeling of “ugh” about the shirt won’t sway her in the face of the other people saying it looks great. Because the impact of the “you” statement will be far, far greater than the impact of the “I” statement.

Why do people think it takes years of therapy or years of affirmations to overcome a statement from a parent that said, “You’ll never be a good veterinarian, you can’t focus well enough.”? Because it was a YOU statement. It was someone telling us about ourselves, and that’s how the subconscious mind makes decisions about “you” (itself).

We all think that our subconscious mind should outgrow that. At some point, our conscious mind starts to make distinctions between “me and you” and the word “I” becomes me, and the word “you” becomes someone else. So we assume that this has happened on the subconscious level, also. The reality is that it hasn’t, it doesn’t. It never will. We can work with the way things should be and what seems logical, or we can deal with what we’ve actually been given. And what we’ve actually been given is a subconscious mind that always takes the word you to mean it.

When you start doing affirmations, “I” affirmations get boring because we don’t care to hear about someone else. “You” affirmations not only work, but keep us better engaged because the subconscious mind sits up and pays attention–“Oh, how exciting, someone’s telling me about ME!” If you want to transform your life like the butterfly, use the word “you”.

Charlatans or Misguided Altruists?

The whole success through spiritual growth field has become a Thing. And it’s a quite lucrative Thing that people are cashing in on. Everywhere I went, I found people willing to offer me “new” breakthroughs in spiritual manifestation. I found rituals that promised beyond all doubt to make you rich–but if they didn’t, it was your own fault!

I also studied NLP, and teachers like Tony Robbins. He is by far my favorite, by the way. I adore the man, and love what he teaches. My only beef to pick with him is the same couple that I have to pick with all of the success field (spiritual or otherwise).

1. It all costs so much, and usually is just rehashed stuff. Now, Tony (again, no disrespect, I love him!) is extremely expensive. He’s priced way out of the range of homeless people or poor people. So either we don’t deserve help, or (like so many other people) he and other success teachers feel poor people just won’t be bothered. All lazy, don’tcha know!
2. It’s all really hard. You gotta be dedicated and you have to figure out some really complicated stuff. The explanations aren’t simple. And by the time you figure them out, you’ve already grown bored or exhausted.
3. Many “gurus” blame failure upon the student out of hand. I devotedly spent 40 days doing a chant of words I didn’t even understand the meaning of because it was a “traditional ritual” that was “guaranteed” to work. I did it faithfully and without missing a single day. Still nothing, but it was my fault because my “belief” wasn’t strong enough… if I believed I was rich, I wouldn’t need a ritual to make me rich, buddy!

Then, of course, there’s the fact that a lot of places really are selling snake oil fixes. I hate to besmirch the popular offerings, but The Secret failed mass numbers of people on a mass level because it was incomplete. Not only that, it was pretty much hoodoo. They were trying to sell us unicorns and fairies in a world of steam engines and outlaws.

Now, I’m not getting down on woo-woo people. I’m a woo-woo kind of person, myself. I believe in lots of woo-woo things. I won’t try to deny that. Herein lies the problem, however… woo-woo requires a few things that a lot of people simply don’t have. Listen, you can’t make a system work that you don’t believe in… and you can’t force belief into yourself. Trust me, I’ve tried, and so have billions of other people. It’s not like tacos, you can’t just shove a few extra in your mouth and hope it’ll fill you up. Faith is this intangible “something” and you either got it, or you ain’t… and I ain’t…

So that left me realizing that those of us who couldn’t have faith in a system that seemed silly needed something else. We need something concrete. No magical stuff. That’s when I found Tony, and he’s a pretty phenomenal programmer! He knows his stuff, boy howdy. And bless him, I will say this, there’s a LOT of stuff on the old YouTube that you can find and get a LOT of help from. That’s one of the main things I adore Tony for. YouTube videos of him have been a boon for me.

But the system is hard and slow. There has to be something else. So I finally stumbled upon a guy named Matt Khan, also on YouTube. And I listened to him and (dare I say it) religiously followed his instructions. He, also, is an amazing programmer! Bless his heart, though, he’s also a bit of a fruitcake. Which is okay, I’m a bit of a nutter, myself. No Judgment, okay… just that it’s hard to take seriously an incredible programmer who’s so far into the pasture that you wonder about him. People looking for serious help want concrete concepts.

More than that, I also realized that I had to know (if only for myself) WHY some of the teachings from Tony, who is so logical, worked… and yet some of the most woo-woo stuff on the planet also worked. Why? How?

I’m a bit odd, I guess. I believe both that we are spiritual beings, but I also believe beyond all doubt that the human mind is a computer. It’s my firm belief that all spiritual teachings have been trying to explain programming to us in the complete absence of any form of computerization. The many woo-woo teachings have been programming our minds to the best of their ability, but without the understanding granted by a computerized society.

Now that we have that… we’re in for a wild ride!

I’m going to give you woo-woo stuff, but I’m going to explain to you how that woo-woo stuff is really just disguised programming. Won’t that be fun! Please stay tuned…

And understand this. You likely have a different spiritual belief than I do. Even a contrary one. You may even, dare I say it, be an atheist or agnostic. I’m not here to talk to you about spiritual matters. I’m not going to tell you what to believe, and I ask the same respect from you.

I’m going to give you ways to program your mind. I’m deliberately leaving spirituality out of it. Listen, I don’t go to church when I want to buy a hammer. I don’t go to the grocery store when I need jeans. Come to me if you want help taking control of your Supercomputer. Don’t come to me if you have deep spiritual questions. Well, you can, but you should probably believe the same things I do, if you’re going to do that. On the other hand, if you want practical programming for your brain… come on in and stay a while.

The Power of Belief

We constantly hear from teachers of the day that everything wrong with our lives comes from our beliefs. I would argue that the problems come with something that is a byproduct of our beliefs.

The argument stands that, if you truly, deeply believe you’re poor, you can’t ever get rich. This is correct, but only to a degree. Of course we can stop ourselves with our beliefs, but the reality is that it’s not the belief itself that is the problem. It’s the guilt the belief creates in us that does it.

Let’s take the belief in poverty. A person who is poor is likely to spend money in ways that they don’t personally think are okay. Often, poor people handle money very… well… poorly. Not in every case, but the basic underlying concept still works here. They do something that they feel guilty about. Even if a poor person manages their money, they may feel guilty for not having more of it, or for not being able to give their children more, etc.

So this is the truth of what the problem is with belief… guilt.

Remember that your mind is binary. So let’s take the belief that you should be making more money so that  your children can have more. Now, the day comes to pay for groceries. You are forced to purchase poor quality food. Now there is guilt. Now you feel like you need to be punished. As a result, you continue to be unable to afford good food in order to punish yourself. Because little is more painful than not being able to feed your children healthy food (and don’t you deserve pain for such a crime?).

This sounds like circular logic, doesn’t it? It does, and that’s the thing that we refuse to look at honestly about our subconscious mind. This is the logic that it follows. It compels you to yell at your children, to punish you for yelling at your children. It compels you to overeat as a punishment for overeating.

A good part of the problem is that we have this idea of how things should work. How our minds should work. How our subconscious mind should be as logical as we assume our conscious minds are. And then we proceed on that basis. After all, it would be crazy to make yourself yell at your child, to hurt yourself for yelling at (and thus hurting) your child, wouldn’t it? Therefor, we assume that it isn’t the case.

Yet, in studying addicts, as an example… they are ridden by guilt constantly. They tell themselves that they are drinking or smoking to escape. Or they say it’s because it feels good. But, if you help them relinquish the guilt, they automatically and without discomfort, drop the behavior. The guilt no longer drives them to repeat a behavior that they didn’t want to do to begin with. A person doesn’t want to scream at or hit their loved one. They don’t want to waste money on something that makes them smell bad and seek out their addiction at any cost. They don’t want to lie, steal, and harm their families. But they DO, and then they try to justify behavior they can’t explain using their “logical” mind. The rest of us clearly understand that their explanation really isn’t remotely logical… but they cannot see that. They are invested in trying to explain away their behavior, and so they make the attempt.

Forgiveness is the answer because guilt makes you punish yourself if you hold onto it. Guilt is a message, “Let’s not do that again.” It’s intended to come AND GO, not remain and become part of your personality. This is why learning self-forgiveness is the master key to addictions, inexplicable behaviors, and “self sabotage”.

Your Binary Brain

A computer is programmed in its most basic form in 1s and 0s. Everything in computers begins with ones and zeroes and is then made more complex as you go up in programming. Fundamentally, computers are binary.

What we’re not taught is that our brain is a quantum, biological supercomputer that, like all computers, is binary in its fundamental nature. Every complexity arises from the basic programming elements–your brain’s ones and zeroes.

There are really only two inputs into your mind. These two inputs take many apparent complexities, but they can all be distilled back down into their most basic form… which is Punishment or Peace.

In essence, these two could be distilled even deeper, until you have life or death. To punish is to do harm, which is death. To be at peace is to embrace life, which is to live.

Every emotion human beings have can be traced back to either Punishment or Peace. These are the two essential, baseline inputs into your mighty subconscious mind.

Your mind is capable of tremendous things. It does these things without the input of the conscious mind for the most part, as well. Once a habit is established, the subconscious mind drives you typically without your permission. It will drive you to your work when you were headed to the mall. You might even end up turning around to go back, and then find yourself halfway home before you realize you missed your turn-again!

Think about this. You can walk up stairs (a miracle by itself) while talking on your cell phone and arguing with your spouse about money (doing math in your head while you walk and talk). In the meantime, you could be carrying bags, juggling your keys, and trying to unlock a door you can’t even see once you reach your front door. While doing this, your brain is hearing the dog barking 3 doors away and knowing it’s not a threat. You can even smile at the next door neighbor who’s sidling past because you sound upset and know he’s not a threat, either. These are all immensely complex actions, happening instantly and without you even considering them. They happen without your permission. You communicate to the man passing you without conscious thought, letting him know you’re safe without thinking, “I shall now tell my neighbor, with a smile, that I’m not going to hurt him.” It’s automatic–it’s an action of peace that doesn’t require your instruction.

The point that I am making here is that your subconscious knows and acts on your behalf. What must be fully understood is that it is always absolutely trying to give you what you want. Picture it like an eager child, eyes wide and hopeful, desiring nothing more than to make you happy. It will act on your behalf every second of every day.

 

How you program it is the basis of all of its actions. In coming blog posts, we’ll talk more about how your mind had been programmed, and how you can grasp control over that programming and alter your life forever.