Your Life is Unique – Stick with It

Apparently there’s a lot of interest in this 30-day inspiration trial. My various e-inboxes have been surging with messages expressing support and curiosity. Many of them have to do with the subjective reality aspect of this trial, so that’s what I’ll address in this Day 6 update.

Inception

Let me get this out of the way first. I finally saw the movie Inception last night. Honestly I thought it was good but not up to all the hype surrounding it.

I thought it would have been cooler if the dreams were like real lucid dreams, such that the conscious characters could wield more control over their environments, as in The Matrix but even more so.

I thought there were some interesting elements to it, like the totems, but I was a bit restless during some of the action sequences. Overall I’d give it a B+.

Death and Subjective Reality

After seeing Inception, several people asked me about the risk of committing suicide in connection with a subjective belief system. If you believe that reality is a dream world, will you want to kill yourself at some point in order to awaken from the dream?

Death may be the ultimate revealer of truth. But it may also be the ultimate false barrier. There’s no guarantee that after death, truth is revealed. The dream may simply continue on in a different form.

I’ve had nighttime dreams where I died and woke up, but it was a false awakening. The dream continued on, with me dreaming that I woke up in my bed, realized I’d been dreaming, and went on about my day. But then I woke up again for real…

Or did I?

Objectively speaking, death is inevitable, and it’s apparently a serious transition. Subjectively speaking, death is simply another belief border. It’s an unknown where one’s own beliefs must create the experience.

In the subjective sense, dying is like visiting a city you’ve never been to. Before this summer, I’d never visited Montreal. As I got closer to taking that trip, my beliefs filled in more and more of the details, so when I arrived there, the city manifested itself as a projection consistent with my beliefs. I never saw the whole city of course, only a small window into it, one which could simply have been a thought projection. I rather liked the simulation of Montreal. It was a cool place to dream up. I might dream it up again someday and flesh out more of the details.

Death is like visiting a new city. Your beliefs will fill in the details, and you’ll see something largely consistent with your expectations.

My reality includes many people who approach death slowly and cautiously. Instead of crossing over suddenly, they take years to cross that border. This part of my reality is a projection of my belief that death isn’t something I understand well enough to jump into haphazardly, so I must creep up on it very slowly. Hence lots of people in my reality take many years to transition, and they usually don’t want to go because they don’t feel ready to die yet. I don’t feel ready to die yet either.

If I were to shift my beliefs about death, such that dying quickly at my own hands appeared to be a wise choice, then my dream world would most likely manifest a major increase in suicides (or some other form of swift transitions), and people in general would take less time to cross over. But as long as my reality is largely doing the opposite, with so many people slowly creeping up on that border crossing, it’s because I’m still projecting my own cautious attitude towards death, and it would be very unlikely for me to dive into it impulsively.

So keep an eye out for an increase in mass suicides in this dream world. Until that happens there’s no cause for concern.

eBay Auction

After sharing yesterday that eBay delisted my consultation auction before it had a chance to finish, a number of people offered me alternative suggestions, most of which were ways I could work around eBay’s rules and essentially try again.

Objectively speaking, all of those are good suggestions, and I appreciate that people took the time to share them. But I have to decline those ideas because I’m on the subjective side now, and on that side, my interpretation of these events leads me down a different path.

Why did eBay delist my auction for a 60-minute consultation? Well, basically someone must have reported it as inappropriate, even though there are many similar auctions listed on the site. eBay then took it down because they’re playing it safe. Apparently they consider it too risky to list intangible items, but they only seem to take action when someone actively reports it.

As I interpret this reality as a dream world, a projection of my own thoughts, I have to ask what thoughts gave rise to these dream events. To me that’s rather obvious. This event tells me that some part of me is concerned about the path I’m going down. It feels I should play it safe. And if I don’t do so, it’s going to turn me in, so to speak, meaning that it may sabotage my progress and keep me from moving forward. In other words, it’s going to cut my 30-day trial short if it feels I’m going too far into the realm of the intangible and not staying grounded enough. This is the part of me that trusts the physical but not the intangible.

Now look at the proposed solutions that people suggested. Many of those solutions are ways of doing essentially the same thing and attempting to bypass the problem by working around eBay’s rules, sometimes in a sneaky way. I have to reject such solutions because objectively speaking, eBay has the right to set its own policy, and I’m not going to try to play games with them or jump through hoops to work with them. If they don’t want me to do business with them in the manner I’d prefer, that’s their choice, and I’ll honor that. No tricks or games.

Subjectively speaking, I’m saying that it doesn’t make sense for me to try to sneak past my own subconscious doubts. My subconscious has every right to object.

So I listen to this objection and say, “Yes, I hear you. There may be unforeseen risks ahead. Please continue to remain alert and watch out for them.”

On the objective side, I accept eBay’s warning, thank them for it, and let it go. This incident was simply the manifestation of a part of me that’s telling me to be cautious. It is a message to hear, not a problem to be solved.

This was a warning sign but not a roadblock, a yellow light but not a red one. The eBay listing didn’t cost me any money, and I actually saw a boost in web traffic due to the extra publicity over this event. Yesterday was my highest-traffic day in nearly 2 months. So despite the apparent setback, I actually came out ahead. I also like that this experiment has stimulated some cool discussion and many interesting suggestions, and I’ll bet that down the road we’ll see a number of people doing further experiments along these lines.

The objective world “problem” here is a solvable one. There are many workable solutions, such as using a different auction platform or finding another way to list the auction that would satisfy eBay’s requirements. So the message here is that there is a way to move forward without triggering any alarms; I just need to be careful about it.

Another aspect here is that I was perhaps a bit ignorant in listing my consultation on eBay. I hadn’t used eBay in almost a decade. If I’d been more savvy, I might have done the listing differently and made it work the first time. This part of the message tells me that there may be a learning curve here. The reason for caution is that I’m not that subjectively savvy yet, so I’m bound to make some mistakes.

Our dream eBay is right too. I’m entering new territory, leaving behind the solidity of what I know and entering into a world of intangible possibilities. There may be unforeseen challenges ahead, so it’s best to take it slow at first.

On the objective side, it would make sense to find a way to restart the auction. But this was a subjective experiment, not an objective one. In this case it’s all about the meaning of the events, not the events themselves. I see no strong subjective reason to restart the auction, so I’m not planning to do so. I believe I’ve received the message, and now the dream can proceed in some other direction.

Emotional Healing

The past few days have been very healing for me. I’ve been doing a lot of emotional processing on my own, and today I shared these experiences with Rachelle. I’m so very grateful for her love and support. I’m lucky to have such an angel in my life.

I expect to share much of this publicly soon. I feel emotionally ready to do that now, but my tanks are a bit empty, so I need to recharge first. It’s been taking me a while to make sense of all of this, what it all means, and in what form it would make sense to share it.

Subjectively speaking, there’s no need to share anything for the benefit of others. The reason to share is because it’s part of the healing process for the one doing the sharing. For me, writing can be an intensely cathartic experience. And the feedback on that writing can be very revealing as well.

Subjective Communication

One side effect I’m noticing with this experiment is that my communication is becoming much clearer. I’ve felt that lately, I’ve been doing a much better job of expressing the real me, and I’m doing a better job of listening to others.

In the objective world, we’re all separate and distinct individuals, but in the subjective world, we’re all a part of the same whole.

When I communicate from the subjective frame, I know that I’m really talking to myself. There are no separate and distinct individuals in the dream world. The notion of privacy in your own dream world is pure self-delusion. So I’m less inclined to hold back because I figure that the projections in my dream world with whom I communicate already know everything there is to know about me. Consequently, the only person I can possibly delude is myself.

Hence when I communicate, I monitor what’s coming out of me, and I ask myself, “Am I really speaking my truth?” Sometimes I catch myself succumbing to self-delusion.

You may have noticed a shift in my writing within the past week. That’s due to this experiment. I’m writing as if I’m talking to myself, and you already know everything there is to know about me because you’re a character within my dream world. I can’t hide anything from you, so what’s the point in trying?

Even on the objective side, I considered myself to be very open and honest. I don’t intentionally lie or mislead people. But the subjective side is peeling away layers where I may have been misleading myself without realizing it. It is causing me to be more truthful with myself first and foremost. It is the difference between writing an article for publication and writing in my own journal. I am no longer writing for the public; now I am simply journaling. And interestingly, my dream characters really seem to like that since the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive lately. Hmmm…

Also, I’m paying a lot more attention to the reactions my communications receive. On the objective side, it’s easy to give myself permission to dismiss certain reactions. If I don’t like a piece of feedback, I can say something like, “Well, that’s your opinion, but I don’t agree.” I don’t even have to respond at all; I can simply ignore it if I wish.

However, on the subjective side, I can’t get away with that. Every piece of feedback is a part of me expressing itself, so all of it matters, and none of it can be insignificant. If I dismiss something, it could mean that I’m suppressing a part of myself, which isn’t a healthy thing to do. I have to listen, listen, listen.

This has led me to feel much more responsible for the entire process of communication. I’ve especially seen this when I communicate with Rachelle. In the past few days, she and I have reached a deeper level of intimacy than ever before. There have been tears on both sides, but it has been amazing and beautiful. I am so in love with her that I don’t think I could go back to the objective way of communicating. I no longer doubt that she’s a part of me.

This is beginning to spread to other connections as well. Everything is going deeper, and it’s happened very quickly, so quickly that I’m stunned by it all. I expect that by the end of the 30 days, all of my relationships will be radically transformed — for the better I believe.

This might seem counter-intuitive at first glance. You might think that if you saw everyone as a dream character, you’d be less inclined to communicate at all. But I’m experiencing the opposite. Since everyone I see is a part of me, I’m becoming intensely curious about everyone.

As I walk around in public, I can really feel that I’m walking around in my own subconscious dream world. I keep staring at people and thinking, I wonder what part of me you represent. It’s an awesome experience to be at that level of awareness where there are no strangers. Everyone in my world is so beautiful and radiant.

When I converse with someone, even someone who appears to be a stranger at first glance, it’s possible to go very deep very quickly. I’m realizing that all the NPCs in this reality have some amazing depth to them, if only I care to look.

Getting to Know Your NPCs

When I was on the plane flying back from Santa Fe on Monday, I ended up sitting next to a 67-year old man. My initial thought was to greet him in a friendly manner as I always do with my seat mates; then maybe I’d do some reading or work on an article. That’s probably what I would have done if I’d been seeing reality through the objective lens. But since I was on the subjective side, my reaction was one of curiosity. Who is this dream character? What part of me does he represent? Why is he seated next to me on this dream flight? What can I learn from him?

As I sat down, he asked me, “So where’s home for you?” I told him that I was returning to Las Vegas. I asked him, “How about you?” He said he was traveling to Portland.

I could have easily allowed the polite chit chat die there and pulled out a book to read, but instead I let my curiosity lead me. After settling into my seat, I decided I wanted to learn more about this dream man and what he could teach me about myself. So I initiated a conversation with him. I started by asking what he did for a living.

He was a retired teacher but currently doing TV programming in Hong Kong. He also shared that he was a Seventh Day Adventist. For the entire flight we remained immersed in one-on-one conversation, interrupted only by the drink service. It definitely wasn’t a shallow conversation. I asked him all about his religious beliefs and practices, his values, and more. We talked about his relationship with his son, his recent financial challenges, and all sorts of topics.

I listened to him intently because in truth I was listening to a part of myself. I could not judge him in any way. When he talked of certain struggles, my objective reaction would have been to offer solutions or assistance. But this time I listened compassionately and tried to understand how and why I manifested this particular character, and in my mind I was saying to myself, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

I never asked him his name, nor did I give him mine. Do such labels even matter in a dream world? Not to me.

After the plane landed and we went our separate ways, I thought about how all of his thoughts and values and beliefs are all within me, and I learned some new truths about myself in the process. For example, I asked him about the connection between vegetarianism and Seventh Day Adventism, and I realized that the values he was expressing were my own. Yes, I value my health because I’m expressing a desire to become a clearer channel for the divine; I can see that. He was vegan too. Was that just a coincidence?

What I found most fascinating is that during our conversation, he’d occasionally begin some of his sentences with assumptions about my own beliefs and values, as if I were a Christian like him. And yet I never told him that I had any religion at all, nor did I express any particular beliefs.

At one point he asked if I was married, and at first I cringed, assuming that within his belief system, my current situation would have to be met with harsh judgment of some sort, especially after he told me that he and his wife get up at 4am and read the Bible for an hour every single day. Or maybe it would stop our pleasant conversation cold, and he’d freeze up. But I told him the truth about my situation, and I was amazed that it didn’t phase him at all.

I know that I haven’t fully crossed over to the subjective side. My thoughts and my language keep shifting back and forth between the subjective and objective lenses. It reminds me of when I spoke Franglais in Montreal. I’m still such a newbie at this. It may take a while for me to become competent on the subjective side. In the meantime I shall continue doing the best I can. Immersion is an excellent teacher.

This is an utterly fascinating experience. Thank you for sharing this dream world with me. I’m grateful for your presence here. I have so much to learn from you.

Learn how to make faster progress in your career, finances, relationships, habits, health, and more. See Steve at the Conscious Growth Workshop, October 29-31, 2010.

© 2010 by Steve Pavlina.

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Funny thing about the personal development field is that we are all told to believe in ourselves and we can achieve anything in life.  However, something I haven’t heard is ‘believing in others’.

According to the news, the world has gone completely mad and everybody is killing each other right left and centre.  If all you read was newspapers and all you watched was the news you would be led to believe that the majority of people in the world are evil.  Something I realised at an early age is that the bigger the disaster the more the newspapers would sell, the bigger the scandal the more the newspapers would sell, the bigger (insert doom and gloom adjective here) the more newspapers would sell.

I remember as a child watching the local TV station and I happened to be up until the station closed down at 12am or something like that, back when TV channels actually closed for the night, and there would be a little announcement from a pleasant man saying something like : ‘In the interests of safety please remember to switch off  your  TV and pull the plug out in case of a fire, as fire can kill’, I don’t think I got to sleep that night for fear of there being a fire.  That’s what it’s like with the news and newspapers, we are all so scared to leave our houses.

It’s time we started believing in the human race again.  We are a good bunch of people really and it’s only the very small minority who are evil, we have to keep reminding ourselves of this fact.  How many people have you known in your whole life who have turned out to be a murderer?  If you answered 1 to this question, and I am willing to bet most of us will have said ‘zero’, then a quick calculation will have shown you that a tiny tiny percentage of every single person you have known in your life have turned out to be evil monsters.  Take this percentage and apply it across the world.

I am not saying trust everyone you meet, but I would say give the benefit of the doubt before judging everyone as being evil monsters.  Yes, exercise caution and safety at all times, but in our day to day lives I think we should start believing in others again, start believing in the human race again.

A few hours ago, eBay removed my listing for a 60-minute phone consultation. The last time I checked, that auction had received dozens of bids and was up to $1000. There were still 2-1/2 days left in the auction, so I suspect the final price would have gone much higher.

I checked my email and saw that I’d received an automated message from eBay about it. Here’s the relevant snippet:

You recently listed the following listing:

120599874589 – 60-minute consultation with Steve Pavlina

Unfortunately, we had to remove your listing because the following information violates our policy:

60-minute phone consultation

The purpose of the eBay Web site is to enable members to buy and sell items from each other. Listings that do not offer an item for sale through the site, or that are designed for any other purpose, are not permitted. For example, listings for invisible or intangible items are not permitted. Buyers should be able to verify the existence of an item they bought when they receive it.

For more information on this eBay policy, please visit:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-no-item.html

You may need to take a tutorial. The next time you sell, you may be asked to take the tutorial, if it’s required. Once you’ve completed the tutorial successfully, please review your account status for any other possible concerns. If there are no other issues, you should be able to sell again.

I read that policy, but it didn’t seem to apply to what I was listing. There was mention of trying to sell intangibles like a “soul” and other crazy stuff that of course wouldn’t make sense.

So I contacted eBay to find out why they delisted it and to see what my options were.

The first person I connected with there wasn’t very helpful. I got nothing but stock replies, and then I was disconnected before I could get very far.

I tried again right away, and the next agent was much more helpful. He looked into it and explained that they don’t allow such listings. I gave him links to several similar listings on eBay, but he simply asked me to report them through their public flagging system if I felt they violated eBay’s terms. I’m not an eBay cop, so I’m not going to do that.

I also suggested other options like including an MP3 recording of the call and/or an autographed copy of my book, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.

If you go to eBay and do a search on “consultation,” you’ll find hundreds of results, including listings for phone consultations with no tangible products — the exact same form of service I was offering. One of my Facebook friends pointed out that eBay is inconsistent in enforcing this policy. The agent who was helping me also admitted as much.

I’m disappointed by this outcome, not because of the money but because eBay pulled the plug on my experiment. I was really curious about the outcome. A lot of other people were curious about it too. I would have preferred if they nuked it after the final bid, so we could have seen where it ended up. I think that would have been a cool piece of data to share with everyone.

This doesn’t seem like a good deal for eBay either. Other top bloggers were following my experiment, and in fact someone else already listed a similar consultation there, crediting me for the idea (his auction is still live). I imagine that if this experiment was a success — if they hadn’t delisted it, it’s fair to say that it already was a success — it could easily have resulted in thousands of dollars in extra revenue for eBay this year. (I think that’s a pretty modest estimate.)

On the other hand, I can understand why they may not want to list such items. It’s hard to verify the delivery of a phone or video consultation, and maybe they had problems with scammers in that category in the past.

The only real option they could offer me was to purchase classified advertising there, but I’m not interested in buying traditional advertising. I was using eBay for their auction service — I was obviously able to refer plenty of bidders to them.

So for all practical purposes, eBay appears to be a dead end for this sort of thing, at least for me.

I don’t see a need to assign this event any particular meaning. I’ll simply let it go and await the next wave of inspiration. As the saying goes… when one door closes, another door opens.

So where’s the open door now?

Learn how to make faster progress in your career, finances, relationships, habits, health, and more. See Steve at the Conscious Growth Workshop, October 29-31, 2010.

© 2010 by Steve Pavlina.

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Today is Day 5 of my 30-day trial of inspired living, as I explained in the previous post. If you missed that post, basically I’m testing what it’s like to live without thinking or planning ahead. I’m living in the moment and doing my best to act on inspiration whenever it comes to me, riding each wave for as long as it lasts. If I’m not feeling any strong inspiration, then in those moments I’ll take some downtime or catch up on routine tasks like email — and take the time to eat, shower, etc.

I’m not scheduling anything at all, unless the inspiration to schedule something hits me. I’m not using an alarm clock to wake up at any particular time, I’m not “planning” to exercise unless I’m inspired to do so, and I’m only eating meals if and when I’m inspired to eat.

I’m learning that hunger can be somewhat inspirational at times, but last night I skipped dinner entirely and went to bed hungry because I didn’t feel inspired to eat. I was too busy following other inspirations, so being hungry didn’t bother me much. By the end of the day, I was spent and collapsed into bed.

A Difficult Trial

What began in the spirit of fun and adventure is now becoming much more difficult. I’m realizing that this is shaping up to be the most challenging and intense 30-day trial I’ve ever done. How nice that this part of it shows up after I’ve already made a public commitment to it…

This trial isn’t about testing a new habit or altering my sleeping or eating patterns. It’s a 24/7 commitment. Part of me is surprised that I can even commit to this at all. I had to get my thinking to a whole different level just to say yes to this experiment.

Dealing with the unpredictability of what’s going to happen next is extremely unsettling. In order to make it through this, I have to let go of trying to control anything. I have to let go and trust.

I’m also seeing that in any given moment, I can be under the influence of multiple waves of inspiration at the same time. They don’t conveniently line up for linear processing. They arrive in complex layers sometimes. When there are multiple waves overlapping, I do my best to ride the strongest wave at the time.

Another pattern is that each wave has its own crests and troughs. Sometimes there’s a powerful impulse, but it’s too much to do all at once. After I catch and ride the initial wave, there’s a lull, and then another related wave shows up to move things further along.

Initially I figured that I couldn’t screw things up so badly with this trial that the damage would be irreparable. Now I’m having serious doubts about that. As I ponder what’s beginning to show up now, I can easily see a pathway where I could do some real “damage.” I could throw a lot of things out there that would make it impossible to ever return to my Day 1 equilibrium.

There are certain things that, once I put them out there, can’t be recalled. If I act on such impulses, my life will spin off in some new direction, and there will be no going back. An example was when I shared the story in the Meaning of Life: Intro article. There was no way to back away from that once it was posted. I don’t regret doing it, but I can never go back to what my life was like before I posted that.

At this point, I now expect that by Day 30, I’ll have probably done at least some things that will make it impossible to restore my life to essentially the same place it was in on Day 1. That’s pretty unsettling.

I now see that it’s going to take a lot of courage to continue, let alone complete, this trial. I know you probably don’t see evidence of that yet, but I imagine you’ll have a better grasp of what I mean by the end of the trial.

Subjective Reality

There’s another aspect to this trial that I haven’t mentioned yet. For me this trial is also a deeper exploration of the perspective of subjective reality. Subjective reality is the notion that consciousness is primary, that there’s only one consciousness, and that all of physical reality is essentially a dream world that arises within consciousness. I’ve shared articles about this concept years ago. If you care to learn more about it, see the Archives, and scan for the articles with “subjective reality” in the title.

At the last CGW, I spent much of the final two hours explaining how subjective reality works, along with some personal experiments that indicate it may in fact be a more accurate model of reality than the objective model (whereby the physical universe is primary and consciousness arises within it).

At one point, I asked the CGW attendees that if they had to pick one or the other, which model did they feel was probably the more accurate depiction of how reality actually works? Interestingly, the room was divided roughly 50-50, with half the people favoring the subjective model and half favoring the objective one.

That didn’t surprise me because I’ve been on the fence as to which model is likely to be more accurate. From a subjective standpoint, it makes perfect sense that the dream characters in my reality would reflect back to me a 50-50 split.

Well, after that CGW, I began thinking that I was ready to explore the subjective perspective in greater depth than ever before. I had largely stopped progressing down that path because quite honestly, it scared me. Things were beginning to get too strange too quickly. This perspective was bestowing me with more power than I felt ready for. For example, in less than a year (which was 2006-2007), I progressed from manifesting pennies to manifesting $50K. And to this day I can still create roughly $50K amounts with relative ease. I’ve also manifested lots of other good things in my life. All of my needs are well met, I enjoy an abundant life, and I’m genuinely happy with my existence. But this begs the question, “How deep does the rabbit hole really go?”

After a few years of stalling interspersed with some very gradual steps forward, I finally decided that as scary as it was, I needed to get moving in this direction once again. Within days some synchronicities began showing up. Some were personal, and others were more public and obvious. For example, right after I made this decision, the movie Inception showed up in my reality and began generating a lot of buzz. Several people began telling me to go see it, some claiming that it included elements of subjective reality. I almost went to see it last night, but I still haven’t seen it yet. Maybe today if the inspiration hits me. Before making this decision though, I’d never even heard of this movie.

Another thing that happened is that some TLC friends shared some subjective manifestation stories of their own with me, stuff that was beyond what I’d experimented with on my own. For example, Joe Vitale shared the story of Dr. Hew Len, a therapist who cured a hospital filled with mentally ill patients without ever seeing them. If you believe the story, this sort of healing is tough to explain objectively, but it makes perfect sense if reality is in fact a subjective dream world. If you want to learn more about this therapist, go read the article The World’s Most Unusual Therapist, or read Joe’s book Zero Limits. I’ve already started testing some of these ideas, and some curious results are beginning to show up. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to regard other human beings as separate and distinct from me now.

At present I’d say I’m now around 80-20 in the sense that I’m 80% certain that subjective reality is the more accurate model of how the universe actually works. Consequently, I’m beginning to loosen my grip on the objective side, and I’m beginning to do things that may seem risky from an objective standpoint, but subjectively they make perfect sense.

This trial is a good example. Objectively speaking, it’s a very risky thing to do. By acting impulsively for weeks on end without pausing to think things through, I could really screw up my life both personally and professionally. I could potentially do and say some things that have serious long-term consequences, not just for me, but for other people in my life.

However, from a subjective standpoint, this should actually be a much more sensible way to live. The notion of an “out there” is nothing but illusion, and it makes no sense to fear what may happen in a world that’s a projection anyway.

Needing to Know

I’m embarking on this trial because I really need to know. I can’t remain on the fence. I have to go down this pathway and see where it leads. It scares me to do so, but I’ll just take it one day at a time. If things get really screwed up along the way, I’m willing to accept those consequences. I’d be willing to sacrifice a lot in order to discovering some new truths (or old ones I’ve forgotten).

I think that deep down, part of me already knows that reality is subjective and that the whole objective model is pure delusion. But I can’t overcome my doubts by staring at them and pondering them. I have to push through the fear and doubt and resistance and see what really lies on the other side. Will it be a glorious new level of existence, or will it lead to chaos?

I strongly suspect it’s the former, but the only way I can really do this experiment properly is by being willing to accept the possibility that I may experience the latter.

Inner Processing

I’m still doing a lot of inner processing. If I feel inspired to share the details at some point, I’ll do so, even if it’s really difficult in the moment.

Last night I went to bed at 1:30am, and I woke up at 4:30am. Some very emotional stuff began coming up again, and I did little else but cry and sob till 6:15am. I’m still not sure if I’ll share the details about this publicly. It would probably stir up some drama if I did, but for now I’m not feeling the inspiration to write about it, at least not yet.

I am getting a glimpse of things to come. I may not be able to control it, but I can try to make sense of it along the way.

One thing I’m seeing is that I’m going to be pretty busy. Lots of energy is getting stirred up, and it’s leading to a lot of activity. I can’t separate the personal side from the professional side, so I don’t know in advance which part of my life I’ll be working on most. It feels like I’m working on both at the same time.

I made breakfast almost two hours ago, before I started writing this post, but it’s been sitting there uneaten this whole time. I’m pretty hungry, but I’ve had to follow this wave of inspiration to write because it was the stronger wave. Hopefully I can go eat once I post this. I’m also very thirsty. There’s a full glass of water next to me, but I’ve barely sipped it. I stuck with the writing wave until it reached its shoreline, even as my hunger and thirst increased along the way.

Learn how to make faster progress in your career, finances, relationships, habits, health, and more. See Steve at the Conscious Growth Workshop, October 29-31, 2010.

© 2010 by Steve Pavlina.

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I spent last week in Santa Fe, NM for a Transformational Leadership Council retreat. These TLC retreats are held twice a year, and this is the third one I’ve attended. It was also the largest, with about 80 members (out of a total of 114) present.

The atmosphere at TLC is like a big family reunion. It’s a place where people who are doing transformational work can come together to help and support each other both personally and professionally. Sometimes business deals happen, but the main focus isn’t transactional. It’s about caring for each other, supporting each other, and helping each other grow and improve.

We meditate together each day, we sing, we dance, and we do fun and sometimes silly activities. We share many laughs and hundreds of hugs. We help support those who are going through rough times. We share our best ideas on how to accelerate the healing of this planet.

We also pool our knowledge and skills to help each other in a spirit of cooperation. For example, at the January TLC retreat in Puerto Rico, I did a presentation on building web traffic. It was rewarding to see that six months later, a number of TLC members had already applied those ideas to reach more people with their positive messages.

On top of that, we do a lot of deep introspection. We push ourselves to grow as human beings, to become more aware and to recognize new truths, to become stronger and more courageous, to connect more deeply and to become more heart-centered, and to more fully step into our missions to help create a better world.

One of the most important elements is that we do this away from the public eye, sans fans and critics alike, so we can keep the energy very positive and loving but also honest and real.

For me, going to TLC is like taking a weeklong spa day for the heart and spirit.

Immersion

Imagine spending a week with 80 transformational leaders, many of whom are the top experts in the world at what they do. Some are fabulously wealthy. Some are deeply insightful and brilliant. Some are very loving and compassionate. Some are incredibly fearless.

You can informally walk up and ask anyone there about anything, and they’re happy to share their best ideas as if they’re your brothers and sisters.

Some of them have been doing this kind of work longer than I’ve been alive. They know all the best methods and processes and whatnots. They know the places where fear, denial, and falsehood love to hide.

Being at TLC is like going to a place where everyone has X-ray vision, so by default you end up walking around naked the whole time, even if you think you’re wearing clothes.

If you speak something other than your truth, you’ll get called on your B.S. But you don’t get judged for your foibles. You just receive more unconditional love and acceptance. The focus there isn’t on fixing ourselves or transcending what we believe to be our faults. It’s about integrating the various parts of ourselves into a complete whole.

The atmosphere at TLC is similar to what you’d find at CGW (especially on the third day of CGW). My ego would just love to credit the brilliant CGW content, but the content is only part of it, and arguably not the most important part. Many of the shifts have more to do with being around the energy of so many conscious people. It can be difficult to define or explain those shifts afterwards, but they’re extremely potent, and they can send one’s life spiraling off in new directions. Every CGW and TLC have had that kind of effect on me. In such an environment, much of the B.S. we tell ourselves simply burns away, and new truths finally have the chance to be seen and heard.

For example, when people at CGW see how their lives could be filled with so much more love and connection, they cannot return to doing soulless work on Monday morning; the utter foolishness of that approach is too obvious to ignore, so they quit that same week and quickly transition to a path with a heart. They finally see that on the heartless path, they were already living without that which mattered most to them, so there was nothing more to lose… and everything to gain… by letting it go.

TLC has a similar effect on me. It’s not really the content we share that’s the biggest element. The content does help, but the bigger shifts have to do with being bathed for several days in the positive energy we create. We could gather with no formal plan or structure, and it would still have a transformational effect. Great content just makes it that much better.

Many TLC members recognize that working on ourselves and working to create a better world are inherently the same thing. Healing the world is a journey of self-healing. We are teachers because we are lifelong students, and teaching is one of the fastest (and most intense) ways to learn.

That’s why I wrote 1000 articles and a book… and why I do workshops that turn out differently each time. By giving thoughts and ideas form and expression, I deepen my understanding of them. If I knew how an article was going to turn out before I started writing it, I wouldn’t need to write it. Everything I share and express is a growth experience for me; otherwise I delete it before it’s done and never post it.

Intensity

Every time I’ve gone to TLC, I’ve returned home feeling like a different person. At times the TLC experience can be like drinking from a fire hose. Occasionally I have to spend some time walking around by myself just to internally process the shifts that occur.

Before attending TLC this time, I was already in a really good place. I’d just finished an amazing Conscious Growth Workshop a couple days earlier, so I was still enjoying that post-workshop high, feeling incredibly grateful and happy and super motivated.

The first couple days of TLC were a bit of a letdown, energetically speaking. It usually takes a day or two for the energy at TLC to amp up, just as it does at CGW. It was great to reconnect with so many friends, but on Day 2 I started feeling bored and listless. By the next morning, I was actually feeling grumpy, and when I turned within to ask myself why, I realized that part of me felt that I really didn’t need a “vacation” right now and that I’d much rather be getting some real work done. Going to this particular TLC seemed like an unnecessary indulgence when I had so many other things to attend to, both personally and professionally. At this particular time, I didn’t want to be on a retreat. I wanted to be advancing. I was already renewed and energized when I got there.

But I still had several more days there, and I didn’t want to be fighting with myself the whole time, so I acknowledged and accepted that feeling and the message behind it, applying a process that was a blend of Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind method and Hale Dwoskin’s Sedona Method. (Both of them were at TLC.) This process took only minutes. In fact, I did it while taking a shower, so it didn’t even take any extra time.

Almost immediately, the grumpiness and boredom vanished, their message received. By realizing that I wanted to be active and productive rather than taking time off and restoring myself, I shifted my focus and saw that I could use TLC to get some actual work done and to make it a productive experience, instead of treating it like an unwanted break. This might seem obvious in retrospect, but it wasn’t obvious to me at the time.

With a better attitude, I launched into the third day of TLC with a lot more motivation and passion, and this energy carried me through the rest of the week. I spent many hours connecting with people I wanted to get to know better, and I deepened some existing connections. I picked up ideas for improving CGW, and I got advice for growing my business. I found several new potential joint-venture partners. I learned new methods and techniques.

I also shared a lot of advice to help others, especially with blogging and traffic building. And I recorded a few videos to help members promote their work.

And I had a lot more fun since I was congruent about wanting to be there.

I took the exercises seriously and worked a lot on myself too. It’s too much to explain in a blog post though. (That’s a B.S. excuse, but I’m hoping you’ll buy it for now while I do more inner work on it and build up the courage to share it.) Suffice it to say that I went through some huge emotional shifts related to my past. One morning I woke up in my hotel room, and all I could do was cry for about an hour, struck by some realizations I’d been repressing for most of my life. Pretty frakkin’ painful stuff. I’m still not sure I’m ready to deal with it yet, but I have to practice what I preach. Sometimes it annoys me that I teach courage.

There was another attendee who arrived later in the week, and her needs were practically the opposite of mine. She’d been on the road for a few weeks, and she was feeling worn down. She came to TLC for renewal and rejuvenation, and she got that.

Authenticity

One thing I love about TLC is that the people there are very authentic.

One thing I hate about TLC is that the people there are very authentic. (That isn’t a typo.)

As much as you might think you’d love it, hanging out with dozens of highly authentic people for a week is tougher than it sounds. That kind of experience shines a light on your own authenticity issues. You may even come to see that the pursuit of authenticity is yet another form of self-delusion.

Many people have asked me how on earth I can publicly share certain aspects of my life on my blog, such as I wrote about in the article Share Your Shame. The underlying assumption is that if people knew the real truth about you, you could be socially ostracized. Your friends and family would shun you. You’d be cut off, abandoned, and tossed aside for being unworthy. In the end you would receive less love.

But the truth is that the exact opposite happens. Initially there may be some tumult, but the long-term outlook is extremely positive.

When you learn to love and accept all parts of yourself, especially the parts you’d rather keep hidden, then you attract a lot more authentic love and support from others. Instead of being shunned, you’re welcomed and invited and included.

We all have these dark parts of ourselves that are difficult to accept and integrate. But your secrets aren’t secret at all. People can see right through you. They just aren’t telling you about it because they can see you aren’t ready to deal with it yet.

Your inner shame is far from unique. We all have similar issues. Only the details are different.

My friends in TLC have plenty of dirt on me. It’s not like it’s a secret.

They know I separated from my wife last year, that I went bankrupt, that I used to be a thief, that I’m into D/s, and so on. And it just isn’t a big deal. In fact, all that stuff is more like a badge of honor. During the awards ceremony one night, I joked that I was hoping to qualify for the most recent divorce award.

The truth, however, is that my issues just aren’t particularly striking or unique. It’s practically a truism that the people there have had to go through some serious challenges at one point or another, such as divorce, loss, addiction, financial scarcity, abuse, and more. It’s a pretty common pattern that a TLC member’s life has been a roller coaster of ups and downs, as opposed to smooth sailing all the way.

The stuff that really tugs at my heart is when these loving and compassionate people have to deal with things like the death of a spouse or a drug-addicted child. And they ultimately process those experiences in ways that allow them to become even more loving and compassionate, even though they have every reason to justify becoming resentful and bitter.

People sometimes ask me, “Is so and so the real deal?” And having met these people behind the scenes, I have to say yes again and again. These people pour their hearts and souls into their missions, and I respect and love them immensely. I feel honored to be included in this group.

The Challenge of Being in the Public Eye

One of the reasons TLC is so important is that doing this kind of work can be very challenging, especially when you’re in the public eye. The exposure to criticism can be brutal at times. It’s really helpful to have a group of supportive friends you can turn to, get bandaged up, and go back out into the world again.

These people aren’t superheroes. They’re very much human. When they take a beating, it hurts them and slows them down, but in the long run, it also makes them stronger and more compassionate.

I can’t say I’ve encountered anyone there who does this kind of work for the money. If such a person exists, I’ve never met him/her. Even the ones who teach about wealth and abundance seem to be primarily motivated by the love of the work and the desire to contribute. The truth is that it breaks their hearts when they see people suffering from lack, and they want to do what they can to alleviate suffering and spread more happiness and abundance.

I think if you got to know the people behind the scenes as I have, you’d feel immensely grateful for them. Even when they’re dealing with major personal and professional challenges, they just keep giving, giving, giving. Maybe their contributions aren’t perfect, but they do the best they can.

What you may not realize is that these people question everything they do. They question whether they should use certain Internet marketing techniques, or if the methods would be manipulative. They wonder about how they can help more people. They wonder how they can be more impactful on each person they connect with. They wonder about what to work on in themselves so that they may become better teachers.

For all the criticism they receive, they are their own harshest critics. If their critics actually knew the personal standards these people hold themselves to, it would make those critics cringe and say, “Whoa… go easy on yourself.”

Of course this is something I had to learn as well. I spent a good 10 minutes today casting unconditional love at Tony Robbins. He isn’t a TLC member, but it became clear to me that he too must be doing the best he can.

Inspiration

I realize this is a rambling article, perhaps a bit too stream of consciousness, so let me get to the wrap up portion.

This was a mind-blowing week, but one element in particular was especially mind-blowing.

About halfway through the week, Joe Vitale gave a talk on inspiration. I first met Joe and his wife Nerissa at the July TLC in 2009, so I’ve known them for about a year, but this is the first time I saw Joe speak. He was simply brilliant.

Joe and I have something in common in that we are both content machines. He’s authored 52 books, for instance, and he’s constantly giving birth to new products. I haven’t been working in this field as long as he has, but I’ve authored a respectable 1000 articles in less than 6 years, which is enough to fill about 25 books… not to mention getting one actual book published as well.

Joe explained how he creates his content, which I recognized as essentially the same approach I use. When an inspired idea comes to me, I act on it almost immediately. I know that I have about a 48-hour window — maximum — to write and publish that idea. Otherwise the energy is gone. Trying to create that same content later is possible, but it’s much more difficult and takes a lot longer.

The experience is like catching a wave. I might wake up one morning and get an idea for a new article, and I know I need to grab my laptop immediately and let it flow through me. In those situations I can write nearly as fast as I can type, without having to pause to think.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a real wave and what’s just a minor swell, but this calibration gets better with practice. When you catch the wave and stick with it, it has sufficient energy to carry you all the way through to completion of whatever it is you’re creating, as long as you’re willing to put most other things aside and stick to that wave like glue. Again, it’s like surfing. If you stick with the wave, you can ride it all the way to shore.

Well… as Joe continued to speak, I realized that he does something I don’t. He uses this same method for acting on business ideas in general. I haven’t been doing that. I only use it for content creation, and the vast majority of that content has been in the form of free articles.

Joe, however, also uses this method to conjure up new products, workshops, events, business deals, and so on.

That’s when I gave myself a mental slap upside the head.

Duh. Duh. Duh.

For some stupid reason, I’ve been managing the rest of my business in a much more left-brained fashion. I get inspired business ideas all the time, but instead of acting on them immediately and riding them like the time-sensitive waves they are, I toss the ideas into my inbox for later processing. Then perhaps a week later, I’ll consider each idea carefully and integrate it into my to-do list for future action. But by and large, by the time I get around to them, if ever, that wave of energy has long since dissipated, and trying to start those projects is like pulling teeth.

Consequently, the content creation aspect of my business has always been super easy for me. I know I’ll never run out of ideas there. But the rest of my business changes much more slowly. My website, for instance, has essentially the same design as it did 5 years ago.

Very quickly I got the idea to do a 30-day trial of acting on inspiration almost immediately whenever it hits me, whether it has to do with content creation or some other idea. I decided that I wasn’t going to wait, so I kicked it off while I was still at TLC. To be honest, I really don’t care about the exactitude of the 30-day stretch for this trial, but today was Day 4.

This is new territory for me, so it may entail some hidden risks. I know it works on the content side, but I can’t predict what will happen as I apply this to the rest of my life. In order to begin this trial, I had to remind myself that worst case, I probably can’t screw things up so badly in 30 days that I can’t repair the damage later if necessary. Because the potential benefits are so great, I’m willing to take this risk.

30 Days of Inspired Action

The same day I heard Joe’s talk (Friday), I was in my hotel room at around 8pm, and a stray thought popped into my head. I got the idea to put up an eBay auction for a 60-minute consultation, as I shared in my previous blog post. I began to ponder it, and my initial inclination was to jot down the idea and then consider it when I got back to Vegas the following week.

Then I stopped and smacked myself and said, “No… you have to catch this wave now and see where it takes you. Don’t just let it pass.”

So I dove into immediate action. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get with it, but I started by checking to see if my old eBay account was still good. I hadn’t logged in since March 2001, but the account was still there. I haven’t used eBay in a very long time, so it took me about 30 minutes to create the listing and make it live, something an experienced eBayer could have done in 10 minutes or less I’m sure. Then I spent another 20 minutes writing a quickie blog post about it, and that also fed to my Twitter and Facebook pages.

Imagine that. Less than an hour after getting the idea, it was already up and running. If I’d written it down instead of acting upon it immediately, I could have wasted that much time just pondering whether or not I should do it.

A few minutes later, I was Skyping with Erin, and I told her what I’d done. She loved it. Then she checked on the auction and told me I was already up to $51. I said, “You’re joking… it hasn’t even been up for 10 minutes yet.” But she wasn’t joking. By the time I went to bed, it had reached $132.50. The next morning it was at $425. Today it hit $1000, and there are still 3 days left till the auction closes. I can’t predict where it will end up.

If you want to see what it’s up to now, you can visit the auction page. The auction officially ends on Friday, July 30, at 9:28:29 PDT.

The next day I told Joe about this, and he loved it. I told other TLC members about it as well, and throughout the rest of the conference, people would check in with me to see how the auction was going. I think they were just as curious about it as I was.

One morning at breakfast a fellow TLCer asked me, “So what are you up to?” I started telling him what I’d been doing, and he said, “No no… I mean, ‘What are the bids up to?’”

Some people have asked me what this means. Does it mean I’m going to be doing paid coaching and consulting? Does it mean I’ll do more eBay auctions?

Honestly I have no idea. It’s not part of some grand plan. This was pure impulse. I’m simply going with the flow of an inspired idea and riding it to shore. I can’t say when the next wave will arrive or what it will look like.

This wasn’t even an idea with an intention behind it. I wasn’t intending to make money with it or anything. The motivation for this idea was sheer curiosity. I want to see what happens when I act on these sorts of ideas immediately, without trying to analyze or understand them first.

In order to be true to this 30-day trial, I can’t think and plan ahead. If I schedule a bunch of stuff in advance or try to plan things out, I’m at risk of not being able to ride those waves of inspiration when they come.

One thing I find very interesting is that from today through the rest of the trial, my calendar is completely blank. I don’t have a single scheduled appointment at all — no interviews, no meetings, nothing.

There are still some events coming up, including my son’s 7th birthday and some potential travel, but none of it is in the form of a fixed appointment, at least not yet.

I did have an appointment to meet with someone Wednesday morning, but it got bumped to today, so it’s already done with. And I would definitely say it was an inspired meeting.

I’m used to having a flexible schedule, but it’s pretty unusual to have such a huge block of time with no scheduled appointments. I should at least have a radio interview in there… or a workshop… or a scheduled phone call… or something. But no — it’s totally blank. Is that just a coincidence? I can’t say. But this is an ideal time for me to conduct such an experiment. I could even extend it well beyond the 30 days, especially since the next CGW is still 3+ months away.

A Sample Day

As a typical example of how things are going with this trial so far, I’ll share how today went. I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and immediately my mind was racing with thoughts of writing this blog post. I didn’t originally plan to blog about my TLC trip, but the inspiration was there, so I had to ride it. I went straight to my computer and started writing, which was effortless.

After 3 hours of writing, which passed in a blink, the phone rings. It’s Erin inviting me to go to breakfast with her. I realize that I’m starving and could use a break anyway, so I accept. While at breakfast, I got some inspired ideas related to our separation. Instead of pondering them and hashing them out a bit more, I shared them with her immediately. That turned out to be a wonderful thing, as it sent us down a path towards resolving some tricky practical aspects of our separation. Erin and I both leave happier, with a commitment to taking some specific actions that should make life easier for us both.

From breakfast I drove to Starbucks to meet with a British military intelligence officer. I didn’t have any particular need to meet with him other than the fact that he expressed interest, and my intuition gave it a green light. We ended up having a fascinating 2.5-hour conversation. I learned a lot that I didn’t know about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After a couple hours, the thought occurred that many of my readers might be interested in hearing what he had to say, so I asked him if he’d be up for an interview. He agreed. It turned out that doing an interview would be a win for him too because he’s about to enter a phase of writing and publishing his own ideas, including starting a blog.

By the time I got home, he’d already sent me some article links that we discussed. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but I quickly wrote up a forum post to keep riding that wave. I wanted to see if there was interest in such an interview and if people had specific questions. It looks like there is indeed interest, so I’ll compile some questions and send them off to him when I feel inspired to do so.

I wasn’t feeling any major waves of inspiration this afternoon, so I ate lunch, processed some communication, and handled a few minor tasks while watching the movie Pulp Fiction.

Lately I’ve been getting a number of synchronicities associated with the film Inception, which I haven’t seen yet. I thought maybe I’d go see it this evening, and I saw there was a 7pm show at the local IMAX, so I “planned” to hit that show. Whoops.

But around 6:30pm when I was thinking about leaving, I realized that I just didn’t feel inspired to go see the movie, at least not yet. I was starting to feel a mild pull in a different direction — oh yeah, I still wanted to finish up and post the blog entry I’d started in the morning. So I decided to skip the movie and go with the writing wave. You’re reading the result.

While I’m writing the final section of this post, I hear a text message come through on my cell phone, but I don’t check it till now. It’s Rachelle asking about Skyping tonight. That feels right, so as soon as I’ve posted this article, I’ll flow into that next. I haven’t had dinner yet, but I notice I’m not hungry.

There’s another IMAX showing of Inception at 10:20pm. If I go to that show, I’ll still have 30 minutes to Skype, but it would keep me up till 1am. I can’t predict whether I’ll see it tonight or not. I’ll have to wait and see if the energy of the moment is pulling me in that direction.

As I was typing the last sentence, my laptop tells me I’ve got 9 minutes of battery power left. Time to go plug it in.

This is going to be a very unusual 30 days. I have no idea how it will turn out. I can’t even say how much I’ll blog about it along the way — that too will depend on whether I’m inspired to do so.

In any event, you may see some rather erratic behavior from me in the coming weeks. I’m extending this trial across all areas of my life, both personally and professionally. It’s a 24/7 commitment with no breaks except those that occur naturally as the inspirational waves ebb.

I’m excited about this. It’s going to be an interesting 30 days to be sure. Wish me luck!

Learn how to make faster progress in your career, finances, relationships, habits, health, and more. See Steve at the Conscious Growth Workshop, October 29-31, 2010.

© 2010 by Steve Pavlina.

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