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Seeds of Agenda: What’s In It For You?
Rav Ashlag, founder of The Kabbalah Centre, said that ego-less sharing is almost impossible.
When a person wants to change and transform themselves, they will never do it unless they gets something out of it.
The energy needed for the sharing and caring must come from their ego.
There is a paradox, no doubt. On one hand giving and sharing and caring sounds like it’s not selfish. On the other hand, without a selfish motive, no one will ever share. Mother Theresa, or anyone! But if the giving is selfish, the rewards are all ego-rewards, short term high, long term low…
But here is a move that will surprise you: when you acknowledge your initial selfish motives, the rewards of your giving are longer lasting. But when you think you are doing it out of the goodness of your hearts, there will be a short-circuit at some point in the process.
So, how do you do it? Be ruthlessly straight with yourself and find and acknowledge the ego root, the seed of agenda, in your “generous” behavior. Say, out-loud what’s in it for you.
For example I always say why I teach, that I won’t do anything that I don’t enjoy, that I only want students that I like and want to work with because I love myself… I never pose as a giver, I always position myself as the one who gets more out of each transaction that what I put into it.
Ever since I’ve been doing this, about a decade, the Light has been generous with me, my health have been much better, I sleep better, feel better, and life is working a lot better for me…
That acknowledgment transforms that same very seed into a seed of selflessness. How is that for an unexpected move… and paradox?
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The last “evil inclination” to go
Rabbi Akiva was a great sage of Rabbinical Studies and had lots of students, around 24 thousand. They all studied, and followed the rules, and practiced, etc.
Regardless, when the great plague came, all 24 thousand students died except five, among them Shimon Bar Yohai, the author of The Zohar, the main written book of Kabbalah.
Why would all those students die, and why the five. The legend says that Rabbi Akiva went through rigorous self-examination after this plague, and came to the conclusion that it was his fault: he did not squarely base all his teaching on the most fundamental (and hardest) principle: “love your neighbor as yourself”.
It is hard to define exactly what this “love your neighbor as yourself” is, because it is so missing from today’s culture.
What is it? respect? willingness to support another?
I am no sage, so I am going to give you a few recent examples I have experienced.
Why this is important? Because when you are violating this principle, you are disconnected from the 99%. When you are disconnected: your life goes darker. When you are disconnected: the things you desire move away from you. Is that good enough reason?
OK, here is something that happened last week:
Two revered friends of mine, business partners, teach stuff on the internet through webinars. So far so good, right?
They are both extraordinarily talented people. One has a more pleasant voice and a more pleasing way of stringing words together though.
You may expect, but in order to make a living with webinars, you need to sell them… 🙂
Half the people like the sharpness of one of these guys, the other half gets enchanted by the oratory capabilites of the other.
The other night I was at one of these “pitch” webinars and noticed the orator’s attitude of extreme beligerance. I picture him in my mind reclining in his chair, and lazily pumping out oh, yeah, hell yeah… constantly interrupting sharpie…
I sent a private message asking”are you drunk?”
“I wish” was the answer
“you do sound drunk…” I replied.
“so much for being encouraging” he retorted.
“well, you sound drunk, snap out of it” I commanded…
It took him a minute or two, but he eventually came around and became part of the presentation, instead of hindering it.
OK, I hope is visible and plain that the attitude of orator was: I do this better, i speak much better than you, I should be doing this, not you…
This, clearly, is disrespectful and diminishing for his partner… so it is violating the principle “love your neighbor as yourself”
Would you have noticed? Would you have known what is happening? Or would you have just gotten, below your conscious level of thought, that there is something off… and that you should not listen to sharpie… that he is no good? I think so.
What am I trying to say? That it is so ingrained in most of us that it is an “either you or me” world, that it would have not occurred as a disconnect from the divine…
The first level of any transformation is awareness.
I used to gossip. I still do, occasionally. I now catch myself fast, but only after the word is out of my mouth.
Gossip is designed to climb on another’s ruined reputation higher… but it is a mirage… everyone who listens feels that you are compensating for something lacking in you.
Since I have stopped to be constantly condescending, proud, gossipy, and comparing myself to others, my luck has increased, my fortune is coming, my health is better, because I disconnect less and less from where it all comes from, the 99%
Hate… why not to hate? How to have enough reason?
I just came back from my chiropractor.
As is my practice, I took my outer clothing, including my shoes in the waiting room and then ready to go to the room with the tables. I hadn’t seen the receptionist in a while so started to walk around in my socks while talking to her, only to step into a cold wet puddle on the carpet.
“Oogh, I just stepped into my wet spot!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I hate that?” She said…
…and this is what this blogpost is about.
You don’t care what comes out of your mouth.
But what comes out of your mouth is even more important that what goes into your mouth. There is a whole billion dollar health food industry capitalizing on your concern of what goes into your mouth.
It’s time to start thinking like you are not a machine that cares about its fuel and fuel pump and exhaust.
You are a vibrational being and what comes out of your mouth makes you who you are… in this example a cringing, resisting, little clot of ailment complaining that the world isn’t going his way.
You can work to fix just one “hate” with months or years worth of healthfood, vitamins, superfood, working out, meditations, what have you… it is so powerful.
So stop it.
First use different words that feel better, like “it is not quite pleasant…”, or “it doesn’t quite agree with me…”
and then you’ll be able to just laugh… like I do.
It’s taken me a year or two to get here, but I tell you, it feels great.
In addition, I have been well. Wow.
Freedom
I went to sleep at 4:30 am last night. I was reading a book that was fascinating, riveting, and I could not put it down until it came to some conclusion. Then I got up at 8:30 this morning to finish it. The conclusion was even more stunning than the whole book.
The book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a documentary thriller about viruses that come out of the African rain forests and kill people, like aids, like ebola and its different strains.
The book says that the viruses that are on the border of alive/not alive are millions or billions of years old parasites and that their behavior is entirely selfish and they come up as a reaction to the elimination of the rain forests and the overpopulation of the planet by human parasites.
I nodded as I read it. Human beings, like viruses, like parasites, only care about their host a little bit, but for the most part they only care about themselves. They use their environment to make more of themselves, whether that destroys the host or not.
I don’t have a TV, but from time to time, when I am forced to check my yahoo mail online, I am exposed to the “news.” I always regret that I watched any of it, it is all very depressing.
Yesterday I saw the story of this mother of a 13-year old with Hodgkins sarcoma, who didn’t want “traditional” (aka money hungry, it is good for my doctors’ pocket book) medicine, and now the police force is after him. And hearing the tone of voice of the anchorwoman who completely agreed with the judge that she didn’t have the right to decide, blah, blah, blah.
Jim Humble discovered a new use for an old substance, sodium chlorite, the cheap desinfector that has been used for ages to clean floors, walls, water, but after his unusual inspiration can be used to kill parasites, bad bacteria, fungus like candida albicans and viruses inside your body and even inside your cells. He calls his activated sodium chlorite the “miracle mineral supplement” because if he called it anything else, he would get killed. Literally. He is also forced to live out of the country.
So what the heck am I trying to say, and why is the title of this post “Freedom?”
Good question. Let’s get to it.
Freedom. Here is what the dictionary has to say
1: the quality or state of being free: as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care>
d: ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom>
e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom>
f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a: a political right b: franchise, privilege
synonyms freedom, liberty, license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion. freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated <freedom of the press>. liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion <the released prisoner had difficulty adjusting to his new liberty>. license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom <freedom without responsibility may degenerate into license>.
In my mind freedom is a lot less complicated. You can have or lack freedom from something, and you can have or lack freedom for something that you want.
One of human beings’ slavery is wanting and desiring for the self alone. In that regard we are a lot like the virus that has 7 protein molecules, no brain, no signs of aliveness without a host. I we talked and I told you that you behave like a virus: your whole life is about getting what you want and you don’t care about anyone else, you would be very offended. Right? But chances are that I would be right, very high percentage of the time, to a very high degree.
You see, I think that human beings evolved to have the three levels of brain, and free will, to be a lot more intelligent than we are at this point of human development. I have read that Kabbalah says that there is a need for only 10 human beings reach the level of consciousness concurrently (I mean living at the same time, arriving there and being there at the same time) for a critical mass where all of humanity suddenly evolves, in spite of themselves, to the higher consciousness where live isn’t about “what’s in it for me” but about “what’s in it for you”.
And in spite of the fact that hundreds of spiritual teachers, gurus, disciplines are around, there hasn’t been any time in human history that there were ten individuals at the same time who arrived to this level. Because this level is really like being pregnant: you can’t be a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, somewhat pregnant. You are either pregnant or you aren’t.
But as long as human beings aren’t even interested in the “symptoms” of being a slave to selfishness, there is hardly any chance for us to get to that level.
According to Kabbalah we have some 240 years to straighten out our acts by out own volition, or method number two, the learning through suffering enters the picture, where you either learn or you perish.
Some 2,000 years ago there was a famous Kabbalist, Rabbi Akiva who had 25 thousand students. Many of those studies day and night, and were thought to be on a high level of connection, a high level of consciousness.
But when a deadly plague came, like the Black Plague, or the Aids epidemic, only five of them survived. Rabbi Akiva had a rude awakening: he realized that all the knowledge in the world doesn’t elevate you, unless you base your whole life on the basis of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Which is what’s missing… and with it freedom is missing, and slavery reigns “supreme.”