To BE or not to BE

On a walk the other day I suddenly felt totally powerful and completely in the moment. It was an awesome feeling of power. I suddenly realized I was totally there, without all of my garbage. It was what some call the Still Point, a moment of BEING where you recognize yourself as an immortal spirit who cannot be harmed.

As soon as I tried to figure out why and how it happened, the state went away. I’m sure almost everyone has experienced a state of being like this, if only for a moment.

In my study of philosophy and metaphysics, I concluded that becoming enlightened would take lifetimes of evolvement. I understood that it was really, really hard, and that in order to BE in such a powerful way, you had to meditate and study and you probably were never going to make it.

Then, on a simple walk, I was there for several minutes. How does this happen?

I have no idea! Not even people like Ekhart Tolle can explain it.

But the fact that I attained it doing something as mundane as walking tells me that this condition – more properly, this state of being – must be natural. In those moments I felt more than just a human being walking around in a body. For those few moments I was connected to my soul.

The way to BEing in such a profound way probably cannot be through the mind, otherwise some genius over the past 6 millennia would have figured out how to do it. In an interview recorded before he died, the master martial artist Bruce Lee basically said that one way to spiritual enlightenment was through the discipline of martial arts. It’s interesting that I attained this state for a few moments while engaging in physical activity.

Being vs. Doing

There is a big difference between being and doing. There’s an entire segment of marketing devoted to selling stuff using the Law of Attraction. A lot of people have listened to Esther Hicks and her series of channeled lectures, and have tried to use the LOA to manifest. Courses and seminars and coaching are offered, and people are making money selling them. But almost all of these courses are doing it backwards. Marketers are using action steps before creating the state of BEing that will lead to manifestation. Esther Hicks calls this state of BEing the “alignment of thought to the goal.”

To illustrate this idea, let's take the example of the successful businessman, Biff Bifferson, who made a million dollars in his widget business. Biff is not your typical marketer, who is only interested in manipulating emotions to sell something. Biff knows he is really on to something that could change the world. He has written a formula for success! And now he wants to share it.

He's written down every step he took, right down to the last detail. He's really excited to teach you how to do it too, so he creates a seminar and explains everything you need to do to be successful. Step 1, step 2, etc., here's exactly how to do it. But Biff is genuinely puzzled when only a few have limited success, and the rest fail.

Biff thinks that there is some magic in his action steps, not understanding that he can't teach you the personal alignment of thought and intent that lead to his success; he can only teach you the actions he took based on that personal alignment. And that is the key to why any self-help or marketing technique will only work for a few.

There are probably a few in the audience at Biff's marketing seminar who think just like Biff; for them, his program will be easy because they are already aligned to it. But what about the others? They will fail, it's as simple as that.

No matter how good the program, if what you are trying to do doesn't feel right to you, then you won't do it. Either that, or you will attempt to bull your way through and try to force it. But that's like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

The same applies to self-improvement books and seminars. Eckhart Tolle found enlightenment, but how many people who have read his books or attended his seminars have done so? How many who have read “Think and Grow Rich” have actually gotten rich? I've never read that book myself, but I know some mighty poor people who have.

Neale Donald Walsch discovered his personal epiphany, homeless, on a park bench. But he did it by hitting “rock bottom.”

Eckhart Tolle made a quantum leap into being as well, after also hitting rock bottom.

The “rock bottom” approach is unteachable, and who would want to go there? Sure you are now in the Light, but how did you get there from that pit of darkness?

Personal enlightenment is just that: personal to you, not anyone else, no matter how successful they appear to be. The action steps and the processes don't work until you understand that what you want is coming from the spiritual aspect of you, and that whatever you are doing physically in incidental. That is, you may be doing a walking meditation, or engaged in a martial arts discipline, or you may chant a mantra. But these things have absolutely nothing to do with the state of BEing you desire.

The Manifestation Trap

The manifestation game can be a trap. One day as I was “creating my reality” through thought, my wife was outside gardening. I went outside and she said, “You aren't interested in me anymore, and I don't know what to do.” And then she started crying.

I was shocked. Jenny is the love of my life, but I was so busy “creating through thought” that I lost sight of the important things. And the most important thing is love. Love is a state of being I create with Jenny, but I had forgotten that it is the foundation of my life.

The same thing happened with a friend of mine who got heavy into Buddhism. One day he came over and he was literally a different person. He was so much into Buddhism that his wife almost left him. He seemed very distant, in his own world.

I think this is what happens to a lot of people when they seriously embark on “enlightenment.” Sometimes you get so into the process you forget about what makes the process worthwhile.

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