Descriptions:
Video Description
Is positive thinking a magic key or a quiet trap? Lyam Christopher begins this video with a confession that feels delightfully honest. He means to blow the popular version of positive thinking right out of the water, not because it has no power, but because most affirmations are secretly fighting against us. Say I am radiant light while carrying an old fear, and the two stories collide inside you, leaving the darker one standing.
Then he shows the path through. The trick is not to force brightness over the dark but to work with what is actually arising, like a gardener shaping what already grows. In his language, we often live in a jaded mode that says there is nothing new under the sun, while a wiser mode called Chokmah sees every moment as brand-new. Even a quiet day, seen that way, becomes an experience that has never happened before and will never happen again.
This is the true wonder of positive thinking: it never wages war against reality. Instead it accepts what is arriving, then lends a hand to help it become more beautiful. The practice is woven directly into the daily journal work found in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, where the student learns to notice the small inner stories that language keeps telling. In that noticing, the old spell of us-against-the-world loosens, and a calmer, more creative kind of power takes its place.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, this week we are talking about the power of positive thinking. So we’re going to get all positive here. And in this video, I think what I’m mainly going to do is blow positive thinking out of the water. Okay, well, not really, because what most people mean by positive thinking is not really that. And so hopefully we can establish through right view what positive thinking actually is. And then we can begin to talk about the power of positive thinking.
to get on board with it okay and then we can see why it’s so challenging in other words
if we try to employ positive thinking or we use affirmations somehow we end up booby trapping our
affirmations and so we end up producing a reality that we didn’t want it’s or we end up attracting
the very thing that we didn’t like why does that happen should be obvious i would think it is kind
of obvious, but I’m going to delve into why positive thinking doesn’t work. Okay. First of
all, I believe it does work, but you have to get on the right, into the right view of what positive
thinking is. Okay. All right. Here are some affirmations that will probably not work if we
try to use them. I am a radiant being filled with light and love. I think I got that from a movie
somewhere. And somehow you can tell maybe why that wouldn’t necessarily work. Okay. It sort of flies
in the face of what that person believes himself to be or herself to be at the moment. I am a
radiant being filled with light and love. And hopefully that radiant being filled with light
and love will push aside that horrible me that is existing right now. Oh yeah. So you can see
what’s happening now with why these affirmations don’t exactly work. Everything happens for a
reason. Okay. See, I like a lot of these affirmations actually, but in the hands of a
person who isn’t ready to use them, they don’t work. They end up backfiring. Okay. And so if you
are in a life of confusion, it doesn’t necessarily help to say everything happens for a reason.
One of the reasons that doesn’t work is because, well, that everything happens for a reason. Well,
that reasoning is simply not visible to me and it’s being kept beyond my grasp i can’t see it
i’m an outsider i’m i guess i’m not in on the joke of life you know that’s so if you say something
like this everything happens for a reason you might be affirming that you are not part of that
special enclave of people who know what the reason is okay so you can see how affirmation number two
here kind of pushes you out of those who are in the know it pushes pushes you out of that group
okay you might say that many affirmations have an implied main idea that is also invoked and that
what the thing that’s invoked that’s implied is often the opposite of what you are trying to get
why does this happen i’m not afraid of anything first of all um there’s an old bit of wisdom
from the new age movement that says uh don’t include any negatives in your affirmations
so don’t use any knots um so instead of saying i’m not afraid of anything it would be better to say
i am super brave or something like that uh yeah that would probably be better okay but that idea
of um that the subconscious doesn’t understand not is a bit silly okay uh yes try to remove the
negatives from your affirmations okay but um it if you do end up using an affirmation with a
negative this subconscious can understand that okay but there is a problem with the negatives
the nots and the i the won’ts and the nevers and like you know um yeah it’s best to focus on things
that you desire rather than things that you don’t desire so if you desire to be brave why would you
conjure up the idea of being afraid, okay?
So that’s the reason why we don’t include negatives,
but that doesn’t mean negatives don’t work.
I’m over it.
That’s, it’s so obvious, isn’t it?
Like if we, usually when somebody would say I’m over it,
they’re not over it.
And they’re trying to get to a point
where they’re over it without fully processing it, okay?
Doesn’t mean this affirmation won’t work,
but notice how these affirmations have to be,
There has to be an element of authenticity to them.
They have to represent something of reality, okay?
So yeah, saying something like I’m over it can actually work,
but how actually can it work?
Usually it’s not going to work the way somebody wants it to,
mainly because there’s a certain level of wisdom required
in order to understand what it means to be over something, okay?
or what it truly means to be not afraid okay because is it possible if you have a body not
to to not be afraid of anything what do you mean by that uh because the body is still going to
react out of fear yeah or it can still go into shock okay so what does one mean when one says
i’m not afraid of anything okay and who is this i i’m not afraid i am not afraid who’s i
And so in regard to who this I is, there’s a lot to be learned in that area before affirmations actually work in a proficient way, okay?
So before a magician becomes adept at using words to create reality, there’s a lot to be learned about some of these words, okay?
Especially the I pronoun and all the various personal pronouns, I, me, myself, mine, okay?
But also, there’s a very important verb that we need to learn something about,
which we’ll talk about in a bit.
I love and accept my body completely.
Lady Gaga says, I was born this way, and this is the way I am,
and so therefore, it’s okay, right?
And you’ll see people who are grotesquely overweight
trying to declare that this is healthy.
It is not healthy.
and of course they weren’t born that way either i have to say maybe i was born this way no you
weren’t born that you that’s become a thing for you because of an unhealthy lifestyle okay or
unhealthy microbiome yeah these things can be changed okay um if you’re having trouble changing
them you could acknowledge that and so um it’s okay to love and accept a body completely um
And that’s a pretty good affirmation, actually. But we need to get into the mindset of accepting
that there’s something unhealthy going on and say, oh, yes, in spite of the health problem here,
I still love and accept everything that’s happening right now. And I’m making positive
changes going forward to take care of myself and get into better shape or something like that.
so yeah you can make other affirmations about what you would actually then do about the current
state of your body but still even as you make those affirmations you have to have a certain
level of proficiency and wisdom in order to make those affirmations work for you in order to
reprogram your mind reprogram reality reprogram your behavior we reprogram your habits
uproot those behaviors and fears and subroutines that you don’t want anymore and establish the
ones that you supposedly want to be happening. I am free of the need to smoke. See, if you come
up with an affirmation like that, it’s nice and it can be effective in the hands of a person who’s
ready to use it, but at the same time, it tends to ignore a strong craving. It might be better to
say, I feel the craving and I still am free of smoking, something like that. Yeah, there’s all
kinds of ways of making it work for you while acknowledging that a reality is the way it is
right now, to accept the things the way they are, rather than try to pretend that they are something
else i’m inherently wealthy once again that’s a that’s a fantastic affirmation but it tends to
ignore what are we doing right now how do we feel right now okay um it might be better to express
puzzlement as to why one doesn’t feel wealthy right now okay or why why these you know financial
insecurities or something like that are currently coming up okay so um what i’m really getting at
here is there’s a lot of things to learn before affirmations can actually be used with any
proficiency okay and we’re going to talk about the kind of stuff the kind of training that you
have to do in order to make affirmations and incantations and magical phrases work for you
so positive thinking what we think it is uh is like uh optimism things are gonna things are just
fine. Things are just fine the way they are, right? Or things are very lovey-dovey, or I accept things
the way they are. See, all these things are perfectly fine. In fact, one of the hallmarks
of the adept is that whatever’s happening, it’s fine. I accept it. It doesn’t mean that if I’m
accepting reality the way it is, I’m accepting the discomfort of it. I, and I’m accepting that
this is the way it is. I’m looking at it very clearly. I accept that I have this desire to
make it become something else. The whole thing is accepted. Okay. You’re not just like, oh,
i’m okay being overweight right um or i’m a i’m okay having a drinking habit i accept that no no
no no it’s more like i accept that i’m currently addicted and i accept that i really want to not
be addicted anymore and that’s more that’s actually positive when you say yes to whatever’s happening
i acknowledge that this is happening and i acknowledge where i want to be i acknowledge
this desire. Positive thinking is not just painting everything rosy. It’s actually
accepting pain, saying yes to everything. That’s positive thinking. And what you’ll notice is that
positive thinking for most people is not that. It’s kind of whitewashing over everything or
putting on rose-colored glasses in order to try to repress the things that we don’t like.
and so positive thinking for many people is actually negative thinking okay so if i if i say
oh i accept that my friend has just died and it’s very healthy to say oh so-and-so is dead
how dare you say he’s dead he’s passed away don’t say he’s dead it’s like no he’s dead yeah so um
the body died um and try not to cover it well up with a euphemism of he’s passed on because i don’t
know if he’s passed on i don’t know what happens okay well at least say he’s gone from my life
because i’m never going to see him or her again right so negative thinking in reality is not just
painting everything in unpleasant tones and colors no negative thinking is merely againstism
it’s simply something against something else okay and it’s something comes up and something is
against it so this is positively coming at you and you are against it that there’s your negativity
okay so if something is coming up and it’s unpleasant it is always positive because it’s
happening it’s coming into existence now it’s emerging from negative existence into positive
existence okay it’s emerging from not existing to existing so whatever’s happening is always
positive and accepting that and going with it is being positive if you fight what’s happening
that is negative okay so much of what you see in regard to positive thinking is actually
anti-negative thinking it’s like i don’t like that i’m against that because i don’t like it
it’s the against-ism that’s the negativity okay if you see you know a dangerous intersection
and you would really like for a traffic light to be installed
or something like that, the danger that you see is positive.
It’s an opportunity to change it.
It’s always positive.
It’s like, oh, I see something happening.
This is an opportunity to do something.
Let’s move forward, make some change here.
We could dwell on what happened in the past, fine,
but only in regard to where we want to go, what needs to happen.
Because that’s reality.
We’re facing what happened, even though it’s in the past,
And it’s more important to focus on the present and perhaps the future as well, okay?
And we focus on the past mainly because we want to change the future, not because we
are, the interesting thing about dwelling on the past, dwelling on past hurt, we can
see how a tendency to fixate on past hurt has evolved, kind of getting us to unconsciously
develop a sort of resistance and protect ourselves, okay?
when we get more aware of that we don’t need to dwell in the past anymore we only dwell in the
past enough to make a plan to move forward and say okay this is where we want to go in the future
it’s not even to the point where you would say well we want to make a plan so that doesn’t happen
again no we want to make a plan so we get what we want so we get what we desire not to stave
something off necessarily okay but that’s not bad either you know to make a plan in the future
again something is not necessarily bad but just remember to be against anything is negative okay
kind of yeah kind of the tricky thing about when you meet an adept is that they’re not really
against anything they might say they are but really you know that’s just a matter of communicating
with you they’re really always just for the reality they want they’re always just focusing
on the reality that is ideal for them and for you and you’re just creating that constantly creating
that there’s your positivity okay that reality is emerging anyway and they’re just participating in
the creation of it co-creating as it’s called any attempt to fight or go against something that is
happening there is your negative thinking okay this is now you can see why affirmations backfire
because they tend to be negative even when they’re positive they tend to just basically get away from
things we don’t like. And many times the things that we think we want are really just things that
help us get away from what we don’t want. So if I want lots of money, well, why do I want a lot
of money? To get away from discomfort, to get away from uncertainty, to get away from debt.
Many people would say, well, I want that feeling of freedom. That’s a little better.
still it’s not really happiness yet in fact really we begin to see that money really doesn’t offer
happiness at all okay but that’s where that peace of mind is only beginning it’s like well i’m okay
i’m free and clear now something like that right that becomes a little closer to where the adept
lives but of course um an adept doesn’t really focus on the things that fight reality okay so
yeah an adept might have a lot of money but it doesn’t it’s not something that he would
necessarily try to achieve most likely they’re mainly just going to focus on making the reality
they want so toxic positivity is like againstism in disguise or uh yeah goals that are so lofty
that they create a sense of inadequacy yeah i can be a gold medal winning gold medal winning
athlete or something like that. It possibly, yeah. But it might be better to focus on what we
really want. I want to be a rock star, a world famous rock star. Really? Well, maybe you just
want the feeling of what it’s like to be a world famous rock star. Okay. And what is that feeling
exactly? Okay. Where you can walk around and exude charm and be attractive to people wherever you go.
to have that sort of freedom that you see when you see your favorite performer on stage
expressing themselves so uninhibitedly you want to be able to do that don’t you that’s what you
really want that’s what that is obtainable okay can everybody be super famous like that no but
the thing that that rock star or whatever it is it embodies for you take a closer look at what you
really want yeah being famous uh is uh not that desirable anyway if you talk to famous people
especially super famous people like i think it was madonna who once said i wouldn’t wish this
fame upon anyone and yet there is something about walking around in public and just being at ease
and feeling admired and feeling loved and feeling these are things that you can have okay and this
is the matter of developing that discernment what do i really want and so when i see something that
i think i want well what’s what is it i really want in that like you see this beautiful mansion
the reality of that mansion is a nightmare because it’s too much to take care of and yet when you
look but you look at what’s going on in that mansion you’re like well no no it’s it gives me
sense of security and there’s there’s a great deal of soulfulness and so whatever it is you want
about that particular atmosphere that you see there it’s like you can have that you can make
that now and you make it in your more humble environment it’s like oh i can have this i
remember going on vacation and i remember that there was a estate in a hotel which was really
nice but then I was looking at it analyzing the decor I was like this is all so simple the people
who set up this place they have a talent and I started to look at how they were doing it it’s
like I could do that and uh that was a wake-up call for me because uh when I went home I basically
started to restructure the house and set things up with a using my aesthetic senses and things
like that and it didn’t cost a lot of money there’s stuff that I could find even stuff that
was being discarded by the neighbors that’s like oh that would be perfect sitting in that corner
and so you know so eventually I started to develop a home environment that was aesthetically
appealing and I maintained it that way and it was a pleasure to do that and now going on vacation
is not that big a deal really because it’s nice to go to other environments that are novelty
because you don’t see them all the time fine but you can establish a vacation environment around
yourself all the time and it doesn’t have to involve you know super expensive stuff in fact
a lot of the super expensive stuff that you see around us nowadays was developed by artists who
were dirt poor. For instance, the loft style of apartments was established by people who just had
a very good aesthetic sense, who had the wisdom and the personal development to create their world
around them. And it created a whole aesthetic style, which is now very expensive, like the
industrial postmodern loft decor. So funny. Or what is it
now we have cottage core or which core aesthetic, and you
can spend a lot of money buying witchy things. The nice thing is
though, the witchy things are super easy to make. And they
are. Because they’re bait, they’re a lot of the stuff that
witches were famous for creating were based on a poor budget, based on a rural lifestyle,
things like that. So anyway, so if affirmations backfire on us, and we always seem to be against
what we don’t want, how do we get out of that? How do we stop being against what we don’t want?
And even when we strive for things, when we strive for things, what we’re telling ourselves is that
I don’t have that. And that sense of inadequacy for not having that is now maintaining this sense
of suffering and it being inadequate. I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough. I’m not good
enough. How do we just turn that off? Make it go away? Well, one of the ways to do that is
to notice the unsatisfactoriness, okay? The fear of something coming to get you like a debt
collector or you know or the unsatisfactoriness of not having something that you really want
let’s say not having a wife or something like that right when that suffering comes up it’s best to
be curious about it and if you establish right view right view basically says you are already
enlightened you are already completely at peace and so when suffering comes up it’s more a matter
of curiosity it’s like wow this is really intense this longing for something or this fear of
something how is it arising how is it coming up what’s going on here when you’re aware of how
these things work then you don’t get caught in the push and pull of them okay uh and if if you’re
not fighting something off or or if you’re not um bolstering a position of being in a position of
lack then you are free then truly to create the reality that you desire okay ultimately what this
means is being free of duality again that sense of you and where you want to be sets a gap between
you and it this gap of inadequacy okay or the sense of you and something threatening you it’s
also a gap and that’s something that’s going to close in close that gap and then get you because
going to come in and get you right that’s that duality um that is um then haunting you or your
mind is creating that duality okay which doesn’t doesn’t really exist okay everything is a seamless
whole okay but the nervous system creates a sense of me and not me in order to get you to
unconsciously either protect yourself or run after things okay you can see how these the sense of me
and not me has evolved because it then compulsively gets me to chase after things like food
or to run away from things, things that are scary and that I don’t want, okay? And the task then is
to wake up from that duality and just see that it’s not real. It’s being generated by the nervous
system in this sort of compulsive push and pull that we have evolved into. And now we have the
opportunity to wake up from it and when you are awake from that then when you create your own
incantations or affirmations or words that you use to sculpt reality you won’t do it in a way
that’s booby-trapped so that it actually instead of getting the reality that you want it actually
will reinforce the suffering you know so and adapt to someone who can create incantations
that do not reinforce that sense of inadequacy or sense of threat.
They basically only affirm what they want to be happening,
what they truly want to be happening.
And usually what that is, is to help someone else.
Once that sense of inadequacy is gone, or once that sense of threat is gone,
there isn’t really any me anymore to worry about.
and the only thing left to do is to help everybody including yourself it’s just to be um just to
always focus there’s the real positivity then you’re always going with what’s happening it’s
like oh this is emerging now oh let’s make it as beautiful as possible it’s kind of like you’re
gardening now something starts to sprout that’s like oh let’s we let’s see what we can do with
this that’s now happening okay another um attitude you can take is whenever suffering arises you can
see it as unnecessary okay but if it’s happening you have to um be curious about it’s like how is
this how is this suffering arising what am i not seeing here because if i’m suffering that means
i don’t have um a clear view of my own enlightenment which is already present but
somehow it’s being obscured how is it being obscured okay and when you can see how your
enlightenment is being obscured, you suffer less and less and less. Another helpful attitude
in order to be truly positive is to assume that there’s meaning and purpose everywhere,
okay? Even when there’s confusion, okay? So I can’t see it now, but I know there’s a reason
for this or there’s a purpose for this, okay? So it can be helpful to have the affirmation,
there’s a reason for everything okay but you have to have the right view in order to make that
affirmation work for you okay if you most people when they say there’s a reason for everything
will say it in a way that cuts them out of that reasoning process there’s a reason for everything
but i don’t know what it is and and then you feel that sense of inadequacy of not knowing okay
so if but if you have that curiosity it’s like there’s a reason for everything let’s find it
let’s see if we can see what that reason is then you’re off and running because then you’re now
you’re co-creating with reality there’s your positive energy and you can adopt the attitude
of this is the chaos i’ve been waiting for or i eat chaos for breakfast okay well that might not
work or it might work i don’t know if you sort of recognize that chaos does not exist okay or
you develop the right view of chaos like in other words the way the ancient greeks meant chaos chaos
simply meant formlessness okay usually when we say chaos nowadays we mean randomness and disorder
and uh is there any really such thing as disorder okay well if the order isn’t going the way you
want it to then you call it disorder is that right right might be better to say whenever you are
are tempted to say this is chaos it’s like no this is an order that is somehow either mysterious to
me i don’t see it or uh it’s an order it’s an order that’s contrary to the order that i appear
to want okay and then of course we look at it closely and say okay how can i go with this
instead of against it i can see this video might rub people the wrong way because what i’m proposing
is that the adept is someone who isn’t against anything so i’m not going to talk about how come
on Bina yet. What’s positive? Okay, so most people when they view the tree of life, they would say
that the right pillar is positive, and the left pillar is negative. Okay, that’s fine. But that
really is the exoteric view. That’s the uninitiated view. Okay. And or many people would say that the
right pillar is active, and the left pillar is passive. Okay, so in other words, everything
underneath hakmah there underneath numbers two four and seven there uh all the uh that’s the
sphere of the zodiac and then we have the sphere that has said which is jupiter and we have nitsak
which is venus those are all supposedly active principles and then on the other side we have
the sphere of saturn which is bina and we have mars and then we have a sphere of hode which is
mercury and those are passive okay and the active pillar is male and the passive pillar is female
things like that right um well no both of the pillars are reactive and the only truly active
pillar is the central one it’s a new way of looking at it okay which is the initiated way
of looking at it okay so that right hand pillar is somehow reacting it’s being proactive in in
response to something something has arisen and it’s saying we got to do something let’s go do
something but that’s really reactive okay and then once they once the plan is started people are like
oh my god you’re changing everything i no stop changing things and they go against you and then
that’s the passive pillar they’re reacting against you right so we’re thinking that um something
happens and then we take action and then people don’t like what we’re doing because we’re changing
the rules and they and they react against what we’re doing right and they are the passive ones
let’s say right uh no that’s not what’s happening the thing that’s arising is arising pretty much
from the middle pillar energies okay that’s the truly active force there okay and the problem is
when we think we’re doing positive thinking, we are actually being reactive and probably negative.
Something’s happening. We must do something against it that is negative, okay? And most of
the actions that we find ourselves doing are actually negative because they are simply trying
to stave off suffering or pain or something like that or discomfort and then when we achieve a
little bit of relief from just discomfort we think that’s happiness this is not happiness
happiness is basically uh going with what’s coming out of that central pillar with when
something is happening now we accept it and go with it and see what how we can help it become
something beautiful okay we don’t react against anything at all actually it can seem that way
of course you know something happens um and i think um an adept can even you know fight another
person can even end up you know even becoming a boxer or something like that but the really
cool thing is that when they’re in the boxing ring that person they are fighting isn’t really
their opponent. They’re not against them. It’s more like a dance. And because of that,
they can be deadly as fighters because there’s nothing personal. There’s nothing to fight
against. I guess judo would be a good example of that, using the opponent’s momentum against him
or her. So rather than fight against somebody who’s fighting you, you basically encourage
what’s happening with them it’s like they’re using their own momentum against them so to speak right
but that’s basically a way of going with what’s happening and not being offended or hurt or
against anything at all so anything anytime something triggers you to be against something
already you’re engaging in negative behavior it doesn’t mean you don’t fight but to be truly
positive would be to say whoa this is happening wow let’s see what we can make out of this
not how can we fight it and kill it and destroy it no it’s emerging it’s reality what are we
going to do about it how are we going to help it become something more desirable yeah it’s
quite a different attitude to take that is the real positive thinking and when you’re able to
do that, most of your magic then involves tuning into what’s happening and taking advantage of it
and making, helping it become something beautiful. So you can’t have whatever you want. You have to
basically constantly be responding in a go with the flow sort of way to whatever is arising right
now. And this is the real benefit of divination, okay? Like doing a tarot reading or doing
I Ching, doing I Ching divination or doing a geomantic divination. These are systems or ways
of tuning into what’s happening right now. They’re not necessarily ways of predicting the future.
They are tuning into what’s emerging right now, okay? But they’re tuning into right now
so intensely, let’s say, that it seems like you’re predicting the future because you’re
tuning in to the potentiality that exists or that is emerging right now before it becomes
full-blown, and then it seems like you’re predicting the future, okay, but really all
these things are about engaging with what’s happening now and then going with it to help
it become something beautiful, okay, and then you’re constantly doing that, and it seems
like you’re getting whatever you want as an adept let’s say but no the adept does not get whatever
he wants the adept is constantly tuning into whatever’s happening right now and helping it
become awesomely beautiful you know um helping helping it become truly itself truly authentic
things like that right all right and these uh hakma and bina so many of us are stuck in the bina
mode the this is the of the dark pillar of the tree of life which is normally regarded as the
passive pillar but we have to remember that both of the pillars are actually passive both of them
are actually reactive the only active pillar is the central one okay so bina is sort of the jaded
sphere bina is number three up there and opposite of bina is
hakama opposite does not mean against not necessarily okay uh and so most of us are in a
in a jaded state of mind where i’ve seen it all before this is a pattern that keeps repeating
itself there’s nothing new under the sun there it is again oh here we go again more of the same
right okay that’s actually not true okay it’s impossible to ever relive the same experience
again okay and so there’s another mindset that of hakma which regards everything as fresh and new
everything has emerged just from kether just now i’ve never seen this before even though i seem to
have seen it many times before no this is the first time it’s ever appeared in this way in
this particular instance on this particular day and everything is always new and this is what’s
what’s called beginner’s mind okay and then so with beginner’s mind um everything is fresh with
new possibilities. I’ve never seen this before. This is brand new. It’s like, even though you’ve
seen it before, you still, there’s a sense of surprise. Okay. When you combine Chokmah and
Bina, then you get this sense of sort of understanding of what’s happened before and
the freshness of discovering something completely new and completely full of new possibilities.
combining these two together gives a sense of sort of surfing reality bina is normally regarded as
the ocean the great ocean and uh akmal you could say is a um a captain who’s sailing a boat on that
ocean okay and the captain finds himself in the ocean it’s like wow what is this this is all new
and bina saying no no i’ve been here before i’ve this is a storm a storm is coming up but i’ve had
hundreds of storms before this is nothing new and you’re like i’ve never seen this before let’s see
what we can do but then of course the captain can tune into that knowledge of previous storms
and then but find a way of writing that better and better and better and you know and all kinds
of interesting stuff can come about okay so when we get this sense of surfing reality this is a
combination of the jaded mindset that’s seen it all before and the beginner’s mindset which where
everything is just happening for the first time always just happening for the first time everything
is fresh and new constantly okay and these two mindsets combined uh form wisdom and understanding
yeah and they and in the midst of them is the middle pillar where that’s simply where things
are coming up things are emerging straight out of the void one one mindset sees them as patterns
that have happened before the other mindset sees them as completely new both of these mindsets are
important but most of us are stuck in the jaded mindset of bina okay we need to develop more
hakama more beginner’s mind so how can we get to a point where affirmations and incantations
actually do serve us to help us create a better reality okay well it’s important to abstain from
doing affirmations for a while okay because we want to get a handle on how on what our language
is doing okay are the language that we’re using right now is emblematic of the thoughts that are
are going on in our mind and it’s also emblematic of the suffering that we are constantly generating
unconsciously so in order to get a handle on how our language is sort of destroying our reality
sabotaging our reality we we do various awareness exercises in the outer order okay in the outer
order that’s where we don’t really do magic yet we do lots of these awareness techniques to try
to become a magician to try to become a person who can use words to sculpt reality okay so in
order to learn that we have to scrutinize the language and one of those exercises we do in
order to scrutinize the language is to do a no judgment exercise it’s quite simple you spend
let’s say a particular period of time let’s say a month making as few judgments as possible
as you make as few negative judgments as possible well you make no negative judgments if you can do
it and as few positive ones as possible okay i think in the kabbalah magic book i have the
student do that in the journal okay but you can also extend this to your spoken words okay the
way i did this i remember i was living with somebody at the time and uh whenever one of us
made a negative judgment, we put a dollar into a jar. The dollar was a lot back then too. And
so we ended up like, you know, with, you know, a hundred dollars during the month or something
like that. Every time somebody, I made a negative judgment, I would put a tick mark and then I would
have to put a dollar into the jar or something like that. Right. Anytime I made a positive
judgment, I would make another tick mark, but I wouldn’t penalize myself for that. But both the
negative and positive judgments were a bit of a problem, okay? This was an amazing exercise
eventually, because once it was over, every time I made a judgment, I was aware of how powerful it
was, of how much it was defining what I thought my reality was. So it was a very important exercise
to do. And another way of doing the no judgment exercise is to focus on E prime. And this is
something that english professors do english composition professors sometimes they have their
students write in e prime some of you know what that is probably e prime essentially is avoiding
the verb to be in any of its forms am is are were was will be has been have been had been
um all of these uh the verb to be in several languages takes many different shapes it’s very
slippery verb because it keeps changing it’s an irregular verb uh but in e prime you do not use it
at all okay very challenging to do uh in spoken word okay easier to do in writing of course because
you can simply edit it out okay but of course whenever you say something is something you’re
making a judgment and you are basically saying reality is this way and if you get all these
is’s out of your language then all you can really say is reality seems to be this way or you might
use a more active verb okay instead of saying um it’s so it’s it is so foggy outside you might say
oh a fog has descended a fog has come down upon us a fog is drifting across the land something
like that right that’s more accurate that’s a more accurate way of describing things rather
than saying it’s so foggy and then suddenly your reality is fog okay interesting thing um this is
especially powerful in regard to yourself yeah so you wouldn’t say i’m tired am so you wouldn’t say
i am tired uh you would say i feel tired tiredness is arising in me okay um and so uh what you begin
to notice is that whatever you say whenever you make i am whenever you make i am statements
whatever you say you are inclined to become okay it’s almost like it sets if i say i am
so-and-so, it pretty much creates a center of gravity. And the way I define myself drifts into
that mode. And if I stop doing that, I am free. And if I stop doing that to reality, let’s say
it’s so foggy or it’s so dark, this is so depressing. When I get all those is’s out of
my language, I’m no longer putting a blanket on top of reality. I’m no longer telling reality
what it is. I’m just simply describing reality as it arises. So suddenly I am not creating reality
a particular way anymore in my perception. I’m simply acknowledging the way it is as it’s arising.
Okay. So if you’ve been paying attention, you can see why that’s so important because what the
adept really does is he tunes into reality the way it is arising and then basically worked with
that he doesn’t just react and say it is this way that’s the way of shutting everything down
it’s a stifling way that’s that’s basically negativity okay so once we get a handle on
is or all all the uses of the verb to be um it can be very fun and very powerful then to use
the word the word to be to define things in a particular way but you get wise about it okay
then you then you when it whenever you make i i am statements then you do it in a very powerful way
you don’t do it in a sort of dumb reactive way anymore and what happens is that in ritual
the i am statements now become much more powerful okay whereas before you didn’t realize how
powerful they were and now you know okay so e prime can be very important in that regard
i’m really only scratching the surface of the importance of that talking about this something
you have to try just hearing me talk about it ain’t going to do anything and of course the no
eye exercise that’s also important okay that um is simply one of the ways of dissolving that duality
that duality that causes so much suffering for us okay um in order to be able to work with
incantations and affirmations and and positive thinking that’s truly positive
you have to see through the duality that the nervous system creates okay one of the ways of
starting to see through it is to refuse to refer to yourself with the personal pronoun and now
interesting thing is the personal pronoun also changes is very tricky just like the verb to be
takes all these different forms is am are was were will be has been have been etc um
The pronoun I takes many different forms as well.
I, me, myself, mine, okay?
So not using that can also be pretty challenging.
I think it’s a little bit easier than E prime.
E prime is pretty difficult.
But you can get good at E prime relatively quickly
because the verb to be is something
you can develop a sense for.
and you can also get a sense
for the personal pronoun as well, okay?
Some people avoid using the personal pronoun
by writing emails or things like that
and they refer to themselves in the third person.
It’s a bit strange for the person you’re talking to, okay?
Another way of doing that is simply removing it.
You wouldn’t say, I saw your email yesterday.
You could just say, saw your email yesterday, okay?
That’s one way of saying, you know,
seeing your email happened yesterday.
So you’re not really saying that I saw the email.
There isn’t really a you anyway.
There’s just the seeing that’s happening, okay?
So you could just say, saw your email yesterday, okay?
And just leave the I out of it.
That already has a pretty profound effect.
So we refrain from using the personal pronoun
so that we dissolve the sense of duality.
And so we can see reality more clearly
or clear seeing of reality arises and with that clear seeing then there comes the ability to use
affirmations incantations and positive thinking in a truly positive go with the flow go with the
flow of reality sort of way okay so um for most people positive thinking is like this
my wings are not black they’re white something like that right i’m not in pain i’m actually in
uh i’m actually a radiant being filled with light and love full of joy and to put the blinders on
right when really it might be better to to adopt the reality it’s like no no i’m just going to
adopt positive thinking um this is what i really look like i i have lots of contrivances all around
me i have all these tools that i’m working with i have this tool of positive thinking
okay or i have these affirmation tools these incantation tools i have all these you know
bits of technology that i use as a human being they’re not me okay and uh and there’s really
not much to me actually perhaps i’m just all just technology there really isn’t anything there other
than the technology to keep the technology that keeps arising all these innovations that keep
coming up all right i don’t know that seems probably one of the most cryptic videos i’ve
done so far. But you can see there isn’t much to being the adept. It’s simply somebody who
has dissolved that sense of duality. And it’s somebody who has discovered the true positive
thinking. It’s simply the thinking that accepts what is emerging right now and then doesn’t fight
against it, but basically goes with it to try to create something desirable or beneficial
to human beings or something like that you know out of it okay and the ability to do that makes
you seem very powerful makes you seem like you are casting spells to get what you want
and but what you are doing in reality is acknowledging what’s happening and then
shaping it and defining it in ways that are helpful but i look forward to the questions
and comments so maybe i can clarify some more things for what that’s actually like
but one of the most important things i’ve said today is that in order to get into that sort of
beginner’s mind state of hakma there’s training to be done and a lot of that can be done with
the language because language is pretty much a lever that goes right into the thoughts and
the thoughts are all pretty much dualistic scenarios and it’s that duality that needs to
be seen through in order to really begin to work magically with reality with reality not against it
so in a nutshell positive thinking always works with reality never against it all right until next
time
Source: Lyam Christopher