STOP!! by Henk & Nicholas


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In the first half of the 20th century there was a Russian mystic called Gudjieff. He was the teacher of P.D. Ouspensky who talks about him in his book The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.

In it, Ouspensky touches upon the topic of reincarnation.

Now let me be clear upfront that the intention of this article is not to discuss the existence or the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of reincarnation…

It’s just that Ouspensky’s take on it makes up a nice intro to the rest that this article is going to be about…

Anyway, in his book, Ouspensky poses that reincarnation is not what we’re often led to think it is…

He says that instead of being born as someone else, we’re rather reborn to relive the exact same life we’ve always lived… over and over and over again… until we make a significant choice at one particular moment to do something differently than we’ve done it life after life.

Kind of like the basic principle of the movie Groundhog Day… (which I think you should watch sometime if you can, in case you haven’t seen it).

Based on this take, Ouspensky says that hell on earth is living life the way you’ve always lived it, and heaven on earth is breaking free of your long-standing patterns.

And as you probably know, it can take an enormous amount of energy, passion, determination, and will to even see patterns… let alone break free from them.

So that’s actually the thing that we’re trying to help you with through our materials:

We want you to be able to see those patterns in your own life… and then provide you with the information and tools (or point you to the ones) that we think can help you break free from those patterns.

And in the context of this topic of breaking free and creating the life you really want, many times we’ve also mentioned the importance of recognizing your ‘passion’, and knowing what you want… or at least, having some kind of vision of what you want in order to have some sense of direction.

Passion is in fact the fuel that drives you forward in life… the passion to experience… the passion to create value… the passion to invent… the passion to build something that has a life of its own… the passion to do something remarkable with your life… whatever it is that feels important to you.

But what has become abundantly clear over time, is that for many people, the process of ‘creating’ or ‘attracting’ what they want comes to a halt at this point already… simply because they say they have no idea about what they want… or can’t decide on anything.

Fact is however, that they do know… at least when they turn deeper within themselves and are prepared to be honest with themselves…

The thing is that it’s usually covered up by a lot of subconscious patterns and mechanisms that are basically pulled over their eyes to blind them from it… although every now and then it makes itself apparent.

Let me tell you a quick story:

Back in high school, I remember some friends of mine came with these books where each page is a picture (usually some abstract collage of colors at first sight) that has another picture underneath it that you can’t readily see…

You’re supposed to hold the book at a certain distance from your face, and then pull it slowly away without focusing on the picture… sort of looking through the picture… and then suddenly the picture slows up.

I could never do it, except for some occasional instances of success… It could drive me crazy! I could try and find it, but it never worked…

And then at one point, for no reason whatsoever that I can remember, I picked up one of those books, opened it to one of the pictures, and without trying it all… there it was! The other picture behind it just appeared!

But even after that, I couldn’t do it on a consistent basis…

At first I thought the trick was sneaking up on the book as if I wasn’t interested. But that didn’t turn out to work consistently… Putting my eyes out of focus didn’t work either. Sometimes it just came to me, but usually it didn’t.

I can’t say I consistently and diligently practiced it though… It was just never that important to me…

And that’s the key point of what I’m trying to get across here! That’s the key to really discovering your passion!

You see, passion is kind of similar to those pictures I mentioned… You can’t always see it. But sometimes it’ll come to you… usually at the most unexpected or inconvenient moment…

It can come to you in the strangest, most unpredictable ways. You can be standing on the corner about to walk across the street… You can be turning in your sleep, dreaming… You can be in the shower, packing a suitcase, engaging in ‘number two’, cleaning out your closet… etc.

And it’ll always be like that, unless you make it truly important!

If you really want to use it to your advantage… if you want to tap into that enormous resource for anything you want to do… if you want fuel to power any intention you have… if that’s what you want…

… then you must make it really important to you!

In fact, you must make it so important that you’ll do anything to see it for what it is. It’s being interested in it… deeply and genuinely interested in it… that’ll give you the power to see.

“So how do you do I do that then?”, you’ll probably ask…

Well, I’ll let you in on a simple little trick to get yourself going in a moment… Just hear me out, because I need to clarify a few details first…

You see, the actual problem of ‘not knowing what it is’ or ‘not seeing it’ is caused by these subconscious patterns that I mentioned. And like I said above, it can take an enormous amount of energy and determination to even see those patterns… let alone break free from them.

It’s kind of a catch-22:

  • You try to see your adverse subconscious patterns, in order to be able to break free from them…
  • Your adverse subconscious patterns make up virtual ‘blinders’ and prevent you from seeing them…

So if you want things to change for you, you definitely need to get out of that rut…

And there’s one basic thing that you absolutely must be able to do to make that happen… It’s a basic trick that’ll put you back in the driver’s seat and take the steering wheel!

Here’s the thing:

The very frustration that most people are feeling about their lives and their inability to change it can only be addressed once they’re able to see how completely identified they are with their ‘pain’ of not being satisfied with the way things are.

As long as you are your pain… and you can’t create enough distance from it to step back and ‘see yourself being in pain’ instead… you can never get free of it.

The ‘pain’, or ‘exhaustion’, or ‘frustration’, or ‘overwhelm’, or whatever negative state you find yourself in, is usually a subconsciously driven defensive reaction to something you feel threatened by… and that thus takes you away from being consciously present in the moment.

It’s a subconscious pattern, and it’ll keep playing out as long as you don’t deal with it. And in order to deal with it and break free from it, you need to find out what you feel threatened by…

But that’s a next step. Let’s stick to the most essential thing first:

First you need to actually put yourself in the position to see those patterns for what they are. This means that you need to take a step back and observe yourself… and then look… see… and listen… to discover what you feel threatened by…

Or rather, to discover what part of you feels threatened.

If you do this, and you do it seriously… let me tell you what you’re likely to discover:

  • You’ll discover that the part of ‘you’ that feels threatened, is the ‘you’ who doesn’t want to be seen because he/she’s feeling so small…
  • It’s the ‘you’ who doesn’t feel he/she’s up to it…
  • It’s the ‘you’ who’s terrified of all the passion that you’ve got inside you that could blow you away in a flash!

And you know what?

Instead of ignoring that part like you’re told to do in many of the ‘positive thinking’ and ‘Law of Attraction’ schools of thought… that’s actually part of you that deserves more attention instead of less!

You can do that once you learn how to step back. I called it the ‘participant/observer’-method in an earlier article.

You need to take a step back into the ‘observer’ role, instead of getting caught up in the experience of the ‘participant’…

Because underneath that superficial take on your experience, you’ll find that there’s something really different going on.

You’ll discover that, no matter how you’re feeling at any particular point in time, whatever you’re doing, or whatever you’re afraid of doing… your passion is alive and well underneath, whatever it is that’s standing in the way…

It’s the connection with this passion that enables you to move through all of the inevitable external obstacles you’ll find in your way, which of course each come with their own set of internal obstacles to be overcome.

So to learn how to observe the form it takes at any particular point in time is one of the most essential things you can do… that you must do actually, if you want to put your creative power back into your own hands…

It’s actually one of the most empowering things you can ever do! If there’s any skill you need to learn to actively make a difference in yourself and in your life… this is it!

And to internalize this skill, here’s something you can practice:

Step 1:

First, whenever you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, resentful, ‘wrung out’, etc… just say to yourself: “See through it!”

That’s the first step…

Just see through it, and see what happens…

Step 2:

And secondly, just for three times a day… STOP. It’s as simple as that… You just STOP, whatever you’re doing.

Any time of the day is fine… any time at all. However, the best times for you to choose to STOP would be the times when for instance:

  • You feel completely consumed by something you’re doing…
  • You feel dreading or dreading the prospect of something you need to do…
  • You feel frustrated…
  • You feel overwhelmed…
  • You feel exhausted…
  • You feel ‘wrung out’…
  • You feel angry…
  • And so on…

Basically, whenever you feel identified with your moods…

And when you feel that, you just STOP!!

And then you look… listen… see…

This will not just enable you to ‘see through it’, as I mentioned above…

But more importantly, with practice, something amazing will happen:

  • You’ll see how absolutely consumed you are with your moods, thoughts, emotions…
  • You’ll see how they eat up your passion by filling the space with something else to do…
  • You’ll find out that there’s more passion than you’ve ever imagined underneath your moods… more than enough to fuel whatever it is that you want to do!
  • You’ll see that you’re not your emotions… not your feelings… not your thoughts… not your moods.
  • You’ll see that you’re the silence in between… something apart from them that is more alive than you can possibly imagine!

It’s taking this observer point of view that’ll enable you to see all this…

When I got more adept at this myself… I literally saw myself. And then I saw myself seeing myself. And then I saw that I was seeing myself seeing myself.

This may sound crazy, but it’s absolutely remarkable. It’s an experience of awesome clarity, where you see yourself as separate from ‘yourself’… or the ‘self’ that you think you are… the identity that you have in this world.

It’s a new dimension to your experience… a fourth dimension if you will… almost like a parallel universe to the one we live in.

This ‘observer’ point of view is the foundation for a completely new relationship to life.

  • You’ll see that any ‘pain’, ‘frustration’, ‘exhaustion’, ‘overwhelm’, whatever negative state that you may find yourself in… is nothing but a strategy… and certainly not a result.
  • You’ll see that it’s a defensive strategy that covers up the fact that you have a big hand in ‘creating’ your life…
  • You’ll see that it’s a subconscious defense mechanism blinding you from the truth that you may find hard to face, because it leaves no alternative but to take full responsibility…
  • In fact, you’ll see that it covers up the fear… and in many cases, the being ‘totally terrified’ of being ‘All You Can Be’.

In the words of Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It’s our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We’re all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Now that’s a revolution…

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