Thanks for the fantastic response to my blog post that offered my initial thoughts on how reality “occurs” for us. I’ve never received so many responses so quickly on a post. Although I suspect I will be pondering this issue for a long time to come, because there has been so much interest in this topic I thought I’d bring you up to date on my current thinking.
I’m currently on vacation in Florida with my wife Shelly and two daughters, Blake and Brittany. Britt came from St. Louis where she is a junior at Washington University and Blake flew in from the Solomon Islands where she had been island-hopping in the South Pacific and surfing. Nothing makes me happier than being with my three girls. Even though I’m allowing myself to get some much-needed rest, my mind won’t stop thinking about the subject of last week’s blog post.
I still have as many questions as answers, but because so many of you said you were interested in my thought processes as I struggled with the distinction, “how things occur for us,” I thought I’d devote my Christmas post to a quick recap of my thoughts since last week.
We always create a meaning for the events we confront; that meaning then becomes how the events occur for us. We then think how events occur for us is an accurate description of reality. It is not. It is merely the meaning we have placed over reality. It is the filter through which we view reality and it determines how we actually experience reality.
For example, imagine you get fired from a job. That event either can occur for you as a terrible catastrophe or as an amazing opportunity. Your behavior and feelings from then on will be determined by how the event occurs for you—not by the event itself.
Another good example of how the same person or event can occur differently for different people is Shelly’s dad who just turned 90. Most of the family is upset around him when he’s telling people what to do and getting annoyed at almost anything they do. At those times he occurs to most of the family as a controlling, irritating, cranky person. He used to occur that way for me also. But after years of practice, his behavior finally has no meaning to me. He says what he says (such as telling me “how to drive” or giving me detailed directions on how to get to a place I’ve driven to at least 100 times) and I respond, “Thanks dad. Okay.”
The nature of a situation, apart from any prior beliefs, can have an important effect on how something occurs for us. For example, at his 90th birthday party the other evening he was happy, loving, grateful for the people who attended, appreciative for the party, and nothing seemed to bother him throughout the evening. How people occurred for him that evening was different from how they usually occurred for him.
What determines the meanings we create? Every old meaning we have ever created (old beliefs) affects every new meaning we create, although certain beliefs can have a greater influence than others at any given moment. For example, the belief People can’t be trusted would affect how you feel about and how you deal with all people; the belief John is out to get me would have a significant impact on how John occurs for you and relatively little on how other people occur for you.
Cultural beliefs and organizational beliefs also are relevant, such as It’s important to respect our elders in Asian countries and The best way to make money is our industry is having better design/lower prices/more distribution outlets/etc. in various companies.
I think the meanings we create about people and events as an adult are formed instantaneously and automatically. The moment you sense something in reality (through one or more of your five senses), you silently ask yourself: What does this mean? And the answer you give yourself is the meaning you have created, which then becomes how that “something in reality” occurs for you.
Why do we do that? Here’s my hypothesis: Because we usually experience ourselves as a creation (and not as the creator/consciousness) whose survival is always at stake, we need to know if what we are encountering is “for us” or “against us,” conducive to our survival or inimical to our survival.
My thoughts above are one possible description of how and why things occur for us the way they do. I think it is possible, however, to interrupt this automatic meaning-creating process and give “no meaning” to what we are confronting in reality. Consciously making real that the person or event has no inherent meaning removes (or does it minimize?) the filter you’ve placed over the reality in front of you. I think this is what people mean when they advise “living in the moment” and not the past or the future (which is the realm of beliefs, conditionings, and expectations).
Because our need for meaning stems from experiencing ourselves as a creation whose survival is always at stake, one very good way to eliminate our need for meaning is to experience ourselves as the creator of that creation.
One way to make it easier to make real for yourself that the “reality” you are confronting has no inherent meaning is to use the Who Am I Really? (WAIR?) Process to distinguish yourself as the creator of the meaning and not the sum total of the meanings.
After using that Process you can notice the meaning you’ve just automatically created and then make a critical distinction between yourself as the creator of the meaning and the creation experiencing the meaning.
Your ability to distinguish yourself as the creator/consciousness also can be enhanced by using the WAIR? Process repeatedly, so that you get used to making and then experiencing that distinction. (That is why I strongly recommend you use that Process after eliminating each belief on our various belief-elimination programs.)
But the question still remains: Is it possible to transcend all your beliefs and really live as if you are the creator and the reality you are interacting with has no inherent meaning under all circumstances, or can we do that only under some circumstances? And if only under some circumstances, what are they? At the moment, I’m not sure.
Perhaps the best way to summarize how I see this issue at the moment is by updating something I wrote last week:
Our behavior and feelings are determined primarily by how things occur for us, which ultimately seems to be nothing more than the meaning we are giving any particular person or situation at the moment. Moreover, we seem to be predisposed to automatically create a given meaning by all of our prior beliefs and conditionings. However, by making a distinction between ourselves as the creator and ourselves as the creation for whom something is occurring, and by recognizing that the “reality” we are confronting has no inherent meaning, I think we can change how that reality occurs for us under certain circumstances. And I think we can train ourselves to do it more effectively, more often.
Stay tuned. More to come.
I really appreciate all your contributions this past week. I got some real valuable insights from your blog comments. I’m looking forward to hearing from you during the next couple of weeks as I pursue this investigation. I’m really interested in what you think about the phenomenon of “occurring” and the blog posts describing my journey.
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish Happy Holidays to all of you from all of us at the Lefkoe Institute: Shelly, Karen, Rodney, Liz, and myself. It’s been a very exciting year for us. It took us 24 years for 13,000 people to experience our work and in this past year alone we had over 100,0000 people visit our web site and 39,000 eliminate at least one belief. Our goal is to have at least 200,000 people experience the Lefkoe Belief Process and the WAIR? Process by this time next year.
All of us wish you a wonderful year filled with new and exciting possibilities.
If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.
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Hi Morty,
Your comments make sense and my challenge is how do we stay “in the moment” moment to moment so that events and our prior labeling don’t dictate our responses?
Many spiritual practices such as prayer treatments (SOM), Abraham-Hicks, and Ho’Oponopono etc. suggest we make statements that allow us to return to the state of creation. The challenge I’ve had is that I seem to only get so far with these process while others have extreme success. That is very frustrating and seems to me that there are limiting beliefs that could be cleared.
I wonder if there is a way to learn the Lefkoe method and clean oneself in the moment? Wouldn’t it be ideal if we can become independent and clean away on ourselves. Many processes like EFT, Yuen and Matrix Energetics teach you to do this however, from my perspective, and I acknowledge my thinking/beliefs, one needs to achieve a certain level of mastery in order to do this work on yourslef. Maybe that’s a belief however Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, seems to make a great case for achieving mastery (10,000 hours of practice) in order to get into the flow and stay there.
I wonder if there are a certain set of core beliefs one would have to adopt in order to either 1) use a process to clear our stuff in the moment or 2) contiunually use a process and stick with it until gaol achieved.
Have you ever tried to “install” beliefs with the Lefkoe method? Maybe this would allow us to experience ourselfs as the creator.
Thank you for your work and you have an excpetional family! I’m prioviledged to be working with Shelly.
PS.
To add to my last point when i said
” i have heared many times that all is interconnected, i believe this, but at the same time this means that the opposite polarity must be there, that things are also seperate, as there are definatly different objects in our realities that clearly look, feel, smell and sound different !” my reason for saying that was to emphisize the fact that although our perspective is compleatly related to our reality / occourance, at the same time, our perspective and experiance are also two different things, so there is a possibility for these things to be influenced seperatly
Ian
England
i would like to hear further explanation on what you mean around this process of what we experiance as you think about it more over the coming weeks, it is interesting too see that you are looking for a way to control or change how things occour to us from a fresh point of view. Do you somehow see, that what does occour to us is compleatly seperate from our own perspective on a situation? i have heared many times that all is interconnected, i believe this, but at the same time this means that the opposite polarity must be there, that thing are also seperate, as there are definatly different objects in our realities that clearly look, feel, smell and sound different !
Could it be that there is a way that we can change what showes up / occoures in our life that has nothing to do with our perspective?
Some food for thourght, cant wait to see where you go with this !
Ian
England
Dear Morty,
First of all; I am really touched by the vulnerability you show by publishing your thoughts over this process., without knowing what the outcome will be.
And then that is strength at the same time! (Thank you for this inspirational learning moment too!)
What an interesting and important blog item!!
I have two comments/thoughts of which (I hope) may help your thinking
1) Moving along with your thoughts I think an important key lies in how our unconsciousness works or ….can ‘facilitate’ our consciousness. As this ‘making a distinction between creation and creator’ seems to be a rather conscious process, I think we could benefit from knowing how we can ‘transfer’ a ‘clean’ way of thinking ((non)judging/add no meaning) into an unconscious process. For there are the foundations of fight and flight responses that we need in order to survive. This is just a thought of me. ☺
Unfortunately I am not a scientist; otherwise I would do the research.
2) As for “Consciously making real that the person or event has no inherent meaning” (the interruption of this automatic meaning-creating process) I want to add the following; having a peripheral vision helps me (and people I coach) to be in the moment and to observe events or persons with minimal to none thinking/giving meaning (judging/stereo-typing etc.) So what if we could use all our senses (or train them or direct them) to absorb events and persons in a peripheral way? Like using a soft/peripheral gaze when watching or listening with ‘peripheral ears’ May be new/additional events may not lead to new limiting beliefs?
Just two (sepearate) thoughts I had.
Warm regards,
Lianne
(Netherlands)
Hi Morty,
Really enjoy reading your thoughts on this. Your example of your interaction with Shelly’s dad highlight the core of your method. That the occurance or the meaning of his behaviors are assigned by each family members. None of the family member has “THE” meaning, just “A” meaning.
You asked if it is “possible to transcend all your beliefs…” My feeling is yes and no. Technically yes, but I believe there are limits. If a person can totally transcend all beliefs, then one can assign meaning or value to all things. Two huge problems arise. First if there is no limits, that I can assign any value and meaning I choose to how things happen to me, then can I also assign any value and meaning I choose to how things happen to others? Can I justify ethnic cleansing in order to create a better race?
The second problem is how we view life and death. Is there no inherent value in life? If there is no inherent value, then why should we try to prolong and enrich our lives?
I find this discussion very interesting. However, I fail to see what you are struggling with, Morty? This idea of “occurance” is the same as what you have been teaching. I look forward to your next post.
I basically agree with you Morty.
I think the key factor is in a persons basic beliefs around how life works, and their role in it.
If we think that we are at cause in our own life, then we can see how we can choose our beliefs, perceptions and interpretations, thus our feelings and actions.
If we believe that we are subject to everything that we are involved in, we will have a hard time seeing that we can do anything with our perceptions, feelings and actions. We will see emotions as automatic reactions that we can’t change. Thus we also become subject to the emotions.
Everything that occurs, just IS, with no predetermined interpretation, feeling or reaction, that’s all us.
WHat dos this mean (lol)? you said
What determines the meanings we create? Every old meaning we have ever created (old beliefs) affects every new meaning we create,
Old meanings should not affect the new meaning unless you dont get rid of them. And isnt that what the lfecoe method does. It releases old limiting meanings (or beliefs) so we can choose a better meaning about something. There for maybe those negative meanings could help us because we know we dont want them so we let them go and give them no meaning then choose a better more posituive meaning. Pretty simple.
Hi Morty,
Thanks for the update concern your thinking about how we are responsible how we experience something by the meaning we assign to it. An old Chinese proverb points out how untrustworthy our perceptions are. In short, the proverb asserts assigning meaning is not productive. Christianity teaches worrying is unproductive. The thinking there is Christians are heirs to immeasurable wealth and health, and that everything here is temporary. The future is bright and eternal; therefore, Christians of all people can afford to be “cool” as opposed to emotionally “hot.” In short, there is a lot of evidence that you are on the right track. However I believe based on my experiences and the experiences of others that unless a person sees that the future as desirable and unalterable; it is highly unlikely they will have any consistency in being able to keep “cool” during situations that test emotions. Why because any other perception involves the idea of loss and so people get anxious concerning deprivation. So it is natural then to want to determine whether an event will lead to lack because if eternity is not desirable or guaranteed than what happens becomes more important because everything is finite. Stated differently if a person’s frame of reference is everything is available only in measured amounts, and no one knows for certain the amount it creates mental and emotional tension.
Sir strong thought Life is requried for the belief elimination.Salim
Excellent example & explanation Pls. continue with UR thought write more or personally If U can E-Mail UR thoughts to me I’ll apprecite that. Thks. salimlalani0502@yahoo.com
Morty,
I look at this whole “occuring” issue in this way:
1) First it is important to keep the language simple. I substitute “occurs” with “experience” and then it makes all the sense to me. Only accidents and misfortune occur or “happen” to you, everything else you experience or “go through”. The word “occurs” is also very passive compared to “experience” where you have more latitude for creating and shaping.
2) With that language simplification, I can think of a great analogy to why we experience things differently. Suppose I were traveling from Chicago to New York and I had a choice of tools or methods of travel – on foot, on horseback, in a wagon, in a car, on a bicycle, on a train, on a plane, etc. I can take the highways or I can take the backroads. I can have a companion with me or I can be alone. My choice of “tool” will determine how I will experience this journey. If another person were taking the same journey but a different “tool” or method, then that person would describe a very different experience. Another example is – imagine you are walking down a street and a kid on a roller blade passes you by going down the same street and in the same direction. Your experience of this street will be very different from that of the kid on roller blades.
3) In a similar way, we all have mental and emotional tools we carry with ourselves and use them to interact with and interpret events and situations as they unfold. If two people have the same mental and emotional tools they will have the same viewpoints, same interests, and similar interpretations.
4) So, the key to good experiences (occurences) is to select and nurture the right mental and emotional tools. This is where I see the value of Lefkoe method in rooting out the wrong tools. My assumption is that elimination of wrong tools will automatically bring up the right tools. This assumption could be questionable. That is why I suspect a combination of Lefkoe method (to eliminate the wrong tools) could be combined with a positive imagery or auto-suggestion method (to nurture or develop the right tools).
5) I did not go into the details of what right or wrong tools are, or, whether they are even right or wrong or just different. That would be beyond the scope of this blog. But it ultimately boils down to belief systems and values that Morty has emphasized for so long.