New Inspiration for Third Ways in Conscious Living
“Third Ways” has yet another amazing meaning as the next level of transformation per Gay Hendricks’ “Conscious Living: How to Create a Live of Your Own Design” book.
Conscious Living is the latest heart-centered coaching method that I’ve read about. With this post, I’m adding it to my canon of Technologies of the Mind. It is Gay Hendrik’s authentic journey of self-discovery and evolution as a therapist and life coach.
The “third way” is the the third level of transformation that Hendicks identifies. It is perhaps fortuitous that I read about it when my “thirdways.net” came up for renewal at GoDaddy. This eery coincidence gives me inspiration to continue blogging on the site after a bit of a hiatus.
In Hendricks’ taxonomy of transformation the first level the we’ve known is the Newtonian level (in an interesting analogy to physics). Newtonian self-improvement is what many have been learning from Napoleon Hill, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wallace Wattles, Mary Morrissey, and may other transformation teachers based on the Law of Attraction. At this level we visualize our dreams, say affirmations, and take action to attract the life we would love.
The next level is the Einsteinian level, where you identify and transform what life coach Mary Morrisey calls your paradigms. The obstacle is the way. This is also the therapists perspective. But Morrisey and her master coach Kirsten Wells are decidedly bent on “therapy light”, an Occam’s razor of therapy in which it is enough to just be aware of the paradigm, not deeply examine it.
Hendrick’s third way is where life starts to just flow because you are focusing on what you want and you are releasing your paradigms and you’re able to operate without undue attachment or push. Therefore most the time what happens is what you’re focusing on and when it doesn’t you let whatever happens be okay.
Finally, here’s a more thorough book review of Hendrick’s Conscious Living book.
What to Do When the Shadow Falls?
Traveling on twin journeys of Dream Building and Meditating, I’ve noticed a keener awareness of the inner world of the mind. From living on a higher frequency of gratitude and flow, we get habituated to the way we love to feel so that later, when we’re inwardly ruminating on whatever seems wrong in the world, we notice our thoughts have changed from positive to negative.
Today, I noticed something else. While walking, I felt a sense of disquiet steal over me. Nothing specific, except that instead of enjoying another beautiful spring day, part of me was expecting something to go wrong even if just in my own mind. Soon I found myself remembering reasons I should feel bad, and from there descending into more negative thinking.
Later, I told myself to be happy and grateful to be able to notice negative thinking before it begins. Increased awareness is always good, yes?
Here’s my question: Can anyone relate to this idea of feeling the shadow fall? And what can we do to clear the shadow immediately and not even start down the road of negative thinking, self-doubt, or resentment?
Technologies of the Mind
Three technologies for mindfulness and personal growth have served me well over the years:
- Holosync and the 9 Principles of Conscious Living
- The Sedona method: Releasing
- Dream Building and Brave Thinking
What are They?
Holosync is a “brain wave entrainment” technology. By listening to the Holosync soundtrack, people can effortlessly fall into a consciousness-enhancing meditative state in which they experience higher self-awareness. Bill Harris, the inventor of Holosync, also teaches Nine Principles of Conscious Living. Of the nine, “witnessing” (aka being self-aware) and “let whatever happens be ok” are core. By using Holosync and following Harris’s principles, one can gradually feel better and learn to choose the thoughts and beliefs most resourceful for achieving one’s goals in life.
The Sedona Method (and the book) teach us to release attachment or resistance to feelings, the need to change things, or our need for security, approval, separation, and control. This relates to the Buddhist idea that all suffering comes from resistance. To the Eastern philosophers, even becoming attached to something good can cause suffering. One can use Sedona to help in letting whatever happens be ok.
Dream Building and Brave Thinking is a set of intellectual and spiritual practices taught by Mary Morrissey’s Life Mastery Institute. It helps one manifest the life one would love. We are taught to apply the Law of Attraction (or visualization) in blueprinting our dreams, overcome limiting beliefs or paradigms, and build dreams through action.
Mindfulness
The three technologies and associated practices all revolve around mindfulness, or awareness. With awareness comes the possibility of taking greater conscious control of our choices in life, down to the very thoughts we think. And in this way, I find the three technologies complementary.
The kind of awareness you get from Holosync, or other meditation disciplines, can be empowering in itself. Bill Harris believes that once we can actually watch how a belief or behavior is playing out in the mind to manifest unwanted results, it will just fall away.
The Sedona method gives one a way to move to deeper levels of awareness – not by digging up the past as in psychoanalysis, but by peeling the mental onion to expose core feelings of lacking security, approval, separation, or control that may underlie surface feelings, like excessive frustration over some petty incident.
In Dream Building, Mary Morrissey advises us to “notice what we’re noticing” and to “notice our longing and discontent.” Therein we can discover attributes of the life we would love. We also become aware when a thought or feeling is expansive (taking us toward what we want) or contractive (discouraging us from taking action, or dreaming bigger).
Putting Them Together
Could there be a contradiction between active dream building and achieving a state of enlightenment wherein we’ve released any sense of resistance or attachment? Bill Harris calls this the double bind: Life deals unwanted circumstances and changes we try to overcome in order to feel better, but these efforts in themselves could create suffering. Harris suggests: “Play Hamlet, don’t be Hamlet.”
In the Sedona method, it seems everything is to be released. The Sedona syllogism goes: “Can you welcome this feeling? Can you release it? When?” No matter how bad the feeling, we can say we learned from it and release it. No matter how good the feeling, we could release it now and still be able to get it back later.
Morrissey argues much the same as Harris. Dream Building requires a high level of participation. But we should not be “Type A” about it. Don’t be overly attached to specific ways and means. Instead, hold dreams and goals in an open hand: “In a universe of infinite possibility, there are infinite ways to fulfill a dream and it can be easy. Let it be this or something better still.”
Bottom Line
I’ve just scratched the surface in this post. Soon, I hope to go deeper into each technology of the mind and the many interesting topics raised. In the meantime, you can use the links under “What are They?” to learn about the technologies, to try them, or to buy them.
The White Magic of the Infinite Mind
You often hear advocates of the New Thought such as Mary Morrissey say that we have access to the Universal Mind, to an infinite consciousness.
If so, that is not through any mechanism that science yet understands. The metaphysical part of Morrissey’s teaching (aka the “woo woo” stuff 🙂 seems like mysticism or fantasy. Something that the wise should not believe. Or should they?
On a coaching call this December for a Brave Thinking course that I’m enrolled in with Morrissey, she took us through an exercise: Four times we were asked to pick one of three numbers. At the end of the exercise we were given four statements corresponding to the numbers we had picked. It was later revealed to us that those 12 statements (from which each of us had selected four) themselves came from a list of 18 statements in the book “The Optimist Creed.”
Mary said that our subconscious has access to the infinite mind, and it would guide each of us in selecting the right four numbers. Indeed, my following four statements seem thematically connected in an amazing way. Take a look.
- I promise to talk about health, happiness, and prosperity in all conversations I’m having.
- I promise to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.
- I promise to wear a cheerful expression it all times and to give a smile to every living creature I meet.
- I promise to live in the faith that the whole world is on my side so long as I am true to the best that is in me.
Isn’t it beautiful how these statements build on each other?
Did this just happen randomly? Was it inevitable that any 4 of the 12 used would seem to have a powerful relationship with each other? Was it a accident? Or do I actually have access to an infinite mind that actually exists and knew about these 4 statements?
I could try to compare three lists of statements: 18 in all, the 12 offered, and the 4 I picked. But would I even want to do this analysis? Or would looking behind the magician’s curtain only spoil the serendipity I found?
Magic it’s one of those things it works best when you believe in it. If this is white magic, let it be true.