ArticlesThe Ultimate Freedom
by Terri Ann Laws
Ultimate freedom is something that bubbles up from inside when we finally manage to let go of fear, hurt, guilt, jealousy and resentment. Easier said than done I hear you say? The best way to learn to let go of all of those in one fell swoop is to let go of rationalizations, justifications, explanations and judgments - because these are all closer to our free will, and far easier to consciously choose to let go of. Plus these are the root cause of those in the first list.
See nothing as ’better’ or ’worse’ than anything else. See no one as ’good’ or ’bad’, and know that every human being is always doing what he or she thinks is the best choice or the only choice available to them. Be as an excited child experiencing everything for the first time with no understanding of right or wrong. Want things to be as they are, and want what you have. Enjoy that which is already yours.
With trust and innocence, just free fall. Have no ego. Never justify or defend yourself and allow all and any opinions on earth. Be fascinated not irritated. Never try to be important. Never try hard to please. Never try to be more or less than what you are. Just slowly and steadily improve something a little bit each day and keep growing, for whatever is not growing is dying.
You are a child of the universe and you have a right to be here and you owe nobody anything. Relax and just exist in peace in whatever space you feel like. For as you try to be what you think others expect you to be, you make yourself uncomfortable or nervous which makes them uncomfortable or nervous.
Find your happy space and stay in it. If you do this, you will radiate positive energy and that will put others into a happy space too. Life is really great when everyone around you is in a positive happy space. You have already felt every negative feeling, and thought every negative thought. There is no reason to re-experience them again. You’ve been there and done that and got the T shirt.
You have pondered, rationalized and reasoned all the sad, bad and painful things on earth and discovered that such pondering, rationalizing and reasoning failed to make even the slightest improvement on any of it. All it did was make you feel worse and multiply the original negativity and hurt. Every time you run the mental movie, you feel all those feelings again. What on earth for?
Step out of darkness and despair and step into light and joy and humor. Just do it. ’Justice’ is darkness’ greatest trick and trap. Believing that an injustice has been done causes us to think, feel and nurture darkness. In the name of good things like honesty, integrity and love, we soak ourselves in hatred and condemnation, hating and condemning those who hated and condemned! Isn’t this ridiculous?
As we think about or discuss all these dark things were accusing others of doing, the darkness and negativity is in fact right then living and growing in us. In that very process we are creating it and spreading it. The suffering and dis-ease is happening in us, not the accused perpetrator. We make ourselves dark and miserable by contemplating evil, and all in the name of justice.
Do not chase after the poisonous snake that bites you and do not take up arms against the soldier or rush out with your stick against the lion to avenge the buck. Attempting to fight evil with evil only causes us to cultivate evil within ourselves. This will make us sick and angry and depressed and filled with despair and indignation - which will do us far more damage than the original offence. And it lasts so very much longer.
People are only actors on your stage. All you have of them is the pictures your eyes take and the recordings your ears take. Your brain my assign whatever meanings it likes according to your choice. You live with your choice whatever that may be. Your experience of life is created by the meanings you choose to assign to the people and events you encounter. Your feelings, thoughts and actions come from your meanings.
When we see people in a bad light for whatever reason, we will be sending them signals of dislike or intolerance. We can sense each others signals of dislike or intolerance, and we respond accordingly. So others will respond negatively to you in response to your negative signals. This is how we create our own environment and others responses to us. We teach people how to treat us.
Choose to offer acceptance, non judgment, love, light and humor to everyone - deserving or not - and you will give yourself the biggest gift life can possible offer. Love the world and it loves you back. Create the kind of stage you want to live and play in. It is entirely within your ability and control. This world is your playground, your practice field, your stage, and you can create whatever life you so desire.
The Enemy Lies Within
by Terri Ann Laws
I asked the Guru
Why is it that I am the one who suffers when others have wronged me? Surely the guilty one, the perpetrator should be the one to suffer all the torment and pain? I can find neither justice nor comfort for my hurt and anger. Now even my friends and loved ones are beginning to turn from me.
And he replied
The enemy lies within. Your struggle with mankind is an illusion. You will conquer your enemy by learning all there is to know about him. He exists within the walls of your own castle.
Your castle is made up of your understanding, thoughts, memories, words, actions and achievements, also your feelings, opinions, your relationships and your body. This is the monument that is you, which you present to the world. The world reacts to you according to the way that you present yourself to it.
What is the point of making a hostile plundering against life when we are all part of each other’s experience? If I selfishly take for myself, I alienate myself physically and emotionally. People are a part of my environment. If I hurt people I hurt my environment. I have to live in my environment and therefore I hurt myself.
I am a part of everyone I ever meet or know and they are a part of me because once I know them, they exist in my experience. They can never leave. It is not given to man to remove any part of his memory. People are only actors on my stage and it is I who assign them each a roll of importance or insignificance according to my choice. If I hate them, the image of them and their deeds in my head hurts me. The hate and the consequential pain grows in me, not in them.
Whatever I do against them, no matter how justified, collects on my karma. We cannot justify ourselves. If we could, then there would be no police, no courts of law and no prisons, for every man can explain with good reasons for doing the things he does. We do not have the capacity to be fair because we will always judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions. We cannot select our own jury because we will select all those who are kindly disposed towards us. Therefor only those whom we have wronged can justify us – if they will. Only we can justify those who have wronged us – if we will.
But why should we?
Because we only hurt ourselves if we don’t. When we accuse others and find them guilty of doing us wrong, we multiply the damage that they have done to us. Every time we re-play the movie, we hurt all over again. We reaffirm, practice and entrench the bad. Do not chase after the poisonous snake that bites you. Rather take immediate steps to get the poison out. If a bee stings you, do you plot hatred and revenge against it for many months? Do you seek to have that particular bee punished? The enemy exists only in our interpretation and understanding. Bad things happen by the hand of fate, the hand of nature and the hand of man. This does not make them enemies.
The only real enemy lies within.
Perhaps you have unwittingly punished your friends and loved ones by attempting to extract comfort and compassion from them for yourself in your hour of grief. Perhaps you have brought them all your poison when you should have been bringing them your joy and your love. This too carries its own consequences. It is obvious that they would soon grow weary of you. Wouldn’t you? How can you expect them to be good company for you when you have been such dismal company for them? Surely if I want happiness in my life I must first be willing to give it before I can expect to receive it.
I see my error now. What shall I do?
Practice divine compassion, detachment and freedom from selfishness and ego. Recover quickly from wrongs and bare no grudge or malice. Always be of good cheer and see the funny side of everything so that you may practice laughter and joy, for this is indeed the best medicine. Find endless delight in the most ordinary things and go through life like a fascinated tourist with plenty a joyful story to tell. This will earn for you all the love and comfort you need.
I have found the enemy, he lies within and I will kill him with kindness.
A Whole Lot More Going On
By Terri Ann Laws
Appeared in ANLP magazine (Rapport) November 2002
A whole lot more going on
There is always a whole lot more going on that we somehow miss completely. Someone walked into the room and no one noticed. Even though this person had to walk in between people to find a seat, people moved unconsciously to let him through without pausing in their conversation. One or two more walked in equally un-noticed. Another person walked in and everyone stopped talking and looked at the new arrival for a second. I looked at all the people in the room and realized they were not the least bit conscious of what they had all just collectively done.
Another time a group of us were watching TV. In the movie, this man comes out of nowhere and challenges the much loved hero saying the hero is a coward and must prove he is not a coward by winning a sword fight against the challenger. I noticed everyone watching breathless, fearing for their hero’s life and reputation. This is very interesting, as I’ll now point out.
A few important and blatantly obvious facts totally escape the absorbed movie watchers. Namely …
Firstly, who the hell gave the challenger the right to challenge?
Who says the challenger’s opinion of whether the hero is a coward or not is valid? Especially since we all agree - those watching from the lounge and those in the movie - that the hero is indeed a star hero.
Who gives the challenger the permission to speak at all, let alone challenge the hero?
Why does everyone suddenly fear for their hero hoping and praying he wins this dual he ‘cant’ get out of’ (??), and hoping he does not get hurt or beaten when all they need to do is wipe out the challenger immediately with no thought or question?
This is only TV you might say. But no, it is life. Some people assume the right to do whatever they like, and very few people seem to question it. Can someone else’s reasoning snatch our minds and run away with them? Are we all so brainwashed and programmed we are not ABLE to see the ‘whole lot going on’? Are our minds weak and pliable so anyone can take control of our thinking anytime they choose? And can we take control of anyone else’s thinking any time we choose?
Any good stage hypnotist will tell you ‘Yes’. This is the truth. We take control of other people’s hearts and minds all the time, but most of us are seldom aware of what we are doing. Some people do this on purpose, and some actually practice and learn how to do it specifically. You can too. Nothing stops us, except ourselves. There are no rules or laws against it. Some of us have strong, very strong internal blocks that forbid us to even believe that this is possible, let alone use it to our advantage, or protect ourselves against it.
We see the evidence all around us all the time, and even fall victim often, but the obvious seems to continuously escape us. We learn ‘about’ it all and marvel at how true it is, but somehow it doesn’t seem to really sink in to a place where we become conscious, and I mean really conscious of it happening when it happens. And it does happen. Even those of us who think we are so proactive might be shocked if someone videotaped us responding in some situations.
A long distance coach driver once shouted at all of us passengers and told us to sit down and if we stood up he would throw us off the bus. We whispered our outrage to each other secretly, but not one commuter had the guts to stand up and do what we all should have done. We all should have stood up and said, “How dare you!”
People run on emotions. And then we deny it. It can be embarrassing and difficult to look at. You can make people miserable and then make a lot of money selling them happiness. The more miserable you make them, the more money you can make out of selling them happiness. You can fill them with guilt and then sell them forgiveness. You can make them feel hopelessly inadequate and then sell them specialness. Religions do this. You can tell them they are sinners and fill them with fear of hell and then sell them tickets to heaven.
People only know what’s going on because they hear about it from other people. That’s the only way they know anything. They read books, watch the TV, listen to the radio, read the papers and listen to each other. You can tell them there is a lot of crime and then sell them security. You can tell them some other country is against us and sell them patriotism. Then they’ll rush out and fight wars, killing thousands of enemies (innocent people) and come home heroes. You can tell them jobs are scarce and people are getting laid off and retrenched by the hundreds, and they’ll all work very much harder and appreciate being allowed to work for whatever is the current wage. Who questions TV? It is the news isn’t it? It is the facts isn’t it? What if it wasn’t? Who would know? Would you?
How pliable and malleable the human mind is. How easily we can become weak and frightened and fragile. How easily we can become strong and powerful and downright dangerous. All it takes is words. With the right words to trigger the really strong values and emotions and you can create a revolution, a riot. People individually or in huge masses can be brought to laughter or tears, ecstasy or misery with just a few strings of clever words spoken masterfully with passion and conviction. Tell the masses how your little baby girl died in your arms and everyone will be moved to tears – and there doesn’t need to be a shred of truth in it.
In fact, truth has nothing to do with it. Emotion has everything to do with it. Truth only means you believe it. If they don’t believe it, it’s not the truth and that’s all there is to it. There is no other meaning for the word ‘truth’ really. If everyone believes it, then it’s the truth. How many of you actually saw with your own eyes any of the things they tell you on the news? How many of you actually saw those starving children in Ethiopia? I have some Ethiopian friends who tell me it’s all a lot of cods wallop. They say those conditions existed in a tiny little part while 90% of the country was poor and thin, but fine and healthy. Who should I believe? How do any of us know who to believe or what to believe?
Just like the bees in the hive, it is by following each other on blind, mindless faith that we create our society and the idea of safety, the idea of nations, culture, truth, right/wrong, belonging and every other idea. We thrive on ideas and we feed each other ideas all the time. These ideas are the facts we build our lives on, our dreams on, our country on, and why not? If it feels good, it’s working. If it feels bad, it isn’t. What else is there?
Unnecessary Suspicions
I wonder what it must feel like, and be like, to live in suspicion and judgement and fear all the time? It must be really hard work making sure people and circumstance don’t get the better of you. Personally, I’m sure I have better things to do with my time and energy, like laugh, love, play, experiment, experience, investigate and expand my being human.
I teach NLP and charge half what everyone else does. Someone asked me what is wrong with my self-esteem. Someone had told them that you get what you’re worth and your self-esteem can be measured by your paycheck. I told them that when I was first learning, I struggled so much to find the money to go on all the courses, and many of the people I knew earned so little they could never afford the trainings they so desperately wanted and needed. So the ‘happy and well paid’ are able to get even happier and better paid, while those at the bottom find it so terribly difficult to get themselves up to a higher place. My heart is in sharing what I know and sharing all that I have learned with those who need it most, not necessarily with those who can afford to boost my self esteem.
I wonder, what does it do a person to carry all that fear and suspicion around in their minds and bodies? Imagine living in fear all the time trying to get as much as you can, worrying about what people think of you, expecting people to do you in and rip you off, violate your claims to importance, and take your precious things away? What kind of quality of life is that?
If I valued all the things I create and write and own so much that I lived in fear of losing them, I’d sooner give them all away. I own the mountains, the moon, the sun, the sea, the beach and every thing I see. No one can take it away from me unless they lock me up in a dark room, and even then, I could see it all in my mind. I also own my ability to create again. I live on the earth and it cannot go away and leave me behind. I live amongst all the beautiful people on it, and no one can take them all away. I walk out the house, and there they always are, there everything always is. As long as I am alive, what could I possibly lose?
I was married to paraplegic once, a wonderful man. When I left him, he got together with friends and organized the best and most expensive lawyer in the town. When I told him he could have everything, our business, the house, the car, all the furniture, our pensions, saving, investments and anything else I’ve forgotten to mention, he was visibly shocked. You see, his friends all told him what ‘woman do’ in a divorce, how they take everything and demand unreasonable amounts of maintenance etc.. and so he thought best to prepare himself for the slaughter. All I wanted was my kids, my clothes and my freedom. I even offered him my diamond engagement ring back, which he grabbed without question. We are still friends to this day.
When I first began my training company, the training staff (or more accurately, team members) I hired asked to draw up contracts. They were so afraid of being ripped of or taken for a ride and wanted stuff in black and white. I told them to collect the money themselves and deposit into the bank account and give me a cheque for my share. They thought I must be mentally unstable to trust them so explicitly. Then they fretted about copywriting the course material that I wrote. I told them they could have it and leave and start up in competition with me if they wanted to, because if I didn’t earn their loyalty and love, and if working with me wasn’t fun, enriching and enjoyable, then obviously they should leave. They were stunned and delighted and we worked happily together for years after that.
I intend to experience so much more of life and of planet earth. I intend to experience being human and I suspect there is very much more to it than I have as yet encountered. I want and need to run free and play and laugh and experiment and find out what else there is to learn and do and accomplish. I cannot afford to be afraid of anything or I’d lock myself up behind security and wait in fear for 50 years to die, hoping no one hurts me or takes away my trivial trinkets in the meantime, knowing full well that when I die, I leave them behind anyway.
By Terri Ann Laws
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