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Phoenix
Rising: At the retreat recently, you told us not to
forget that we have control of our lives and, if they were
not what we wanted, to change them. This involves making different
choices than we are currently making, which brings up a number
of different questions.
Sometimes our spiritual, emotional/mental and
physical needs clash. (For example, “I worked all day
and I’m too tired to go to toning.”) How can we
be more aware that these various needs are valid and be sure
that we are making choices that best serve our ultimate purpose
for being here?
Samuel: It’s
important to remember that, when you are aware of something,
the lesson itself is almost ended. When you realize that “this
was really hard,” or “this is a conflict,”
or “I’m too tired to do this,” that indicates
an important awareness. That awareness is about what does
and does not work for you, which is what I was repeatedly
going for at the retreat. So, in a really good way, that very
question is saying that you’re right in line with the
message at the retreat, and I’m glad of that.
The answer is not going to be new, which
will disappoint some people. Nevertheless, what you do every
day is based on the priorities you have in your life. And
that is true even for minor decisions such as choosing what
cereal you are going to eat. What cereal do you eat, Paula?
A gluten-free, low-sugar one.
Why do you make that choice? Because it’s
important not to be in pain?
That’s one thing, and sugar is not good
for me, so I try to keep it out of my diet.
It’s a choice, and you’re making
that choice because your greater vision is to be vibrantly
alive and feeling good, keeping your good health and not tearing
down your body. And there is fear as well—not wanting
the pain and the symptoms that are created with the type of
condition [celiac disease] that you’re dealing with.
And really, every decision you make is a
version of that. “What cereal are you eating these days?”
could just as well be “What work are you choosing?”
“Why do you go to work every day?” “What is
your occupation?” “What car are you going to get?”
It seems as though there must be a hierarchy of choices, but
the fact is, all of your choices are based on two things:
what you’re getting paid for the choice, and what you’re
having to sacrifice to make it.
What in the financial world is called the cost-benefit
ratio.
Yes, exactly. That’s what it is. Let’s
say that you are unhappy with your car, which is really unable
to do more than take you around town, and also gas has become
exceedingly expensive, and so you want to get a new car. But
you’ve not seen anything you really like, and the old
one is still getting you where you want to go. You’re
making a choice based on whether it is worth the effort to
get something you may not enjoy any more than the one you
have now, and you are afraid that you might not be able to
pay for it.
Another example has to do with relationships:
“I want to get out of this relationship. It’s not
feeding me. It’s very hard for me. I’m very stressed
all of the time”—all of those negatives, negatives,
negatives. “But what it does offer me is financial security,
and so I am prostituting my day-to-day happiness, because
I am getting something I want much more—the benefit of
financial security.” You do that all the time.
You make the choices you make because it’s
to your benefit to do so. And always the question is, “How
in the world does that benefit me?” Now, that was also
a carefully chosen phrase: How in the world does this benefit
me? If you think it doesn’t—that it’s harmful
and painful, and you’re unhappy and in a rut you can’t
get out of—there is something in there that is feeding
a belief that is important to you. And, as always, you need
to get down to the belief to be able to move on. Being able
to recognize that “I have a choice,” being able
to recognize that “I’m not happy with what I’m
doing”—any level of recognition—is going to
open a very needed doorway into the answer, because when you
ask the question you have the answer already.
What you want to look at is what’s
important to you. If you say that what’s important to
you is doing what it is you’re here to do, you need to
take a look at that and determine whether that is really true.
You need to ask yourself, “Based on where I spend my
time and what it is I do, what really is important to me?”
People don’t like time journals, but it’s the fastest,
easiest way to see where your time is going. When you’re
able to see what it is that really takes your time and your
focus, you need to ask, “Is this really what I want?”
And that leads back to what I was speaking about a few moments
ago.
If you find that your time is actually
being spent in positive, life-affirming, spiritual-growth
activities, and you’ve examined that question and looked
at your patterns, if you want to know how to better choose
more of those good things, only then does what I’m about
to say come into play. This is phase two: why is it you do
not believe that everything you do is spiritual? Why are you
still dealing with the dichotomy that says there are these
things that are in the world, and there are these things that
are spiritual?
I will tell you why it is you’re doing
that. You’re doing that because of sabotage and fear—although
not necessarily in that order. Fear often comes before sabotage,
because sometimes sabotage is a subconscious reaction to the
fear that’s unrealized, so it works in both directions.
I don’t often speak about laziness, but it’s a vitality-sucking
disease. It’s a symptom of fear and it’s a function
of sabotage. Why?
We retreat into laziness as an avoidance behavior.
And laziness way too often, in this work
anyway, shows up as justification: “I’m taking care
of myself. I’m giving myself what I need.” If you
are giving yourself what you need but don’t like to think
that you need it, then you should work on that too, and change
what you’re doing with that.
So sabotage and fear are connected to just
pure laziness. I don’t particularly like to dwell on
that, but the fact of it is there are going to be some who
read this who sort of tuck their little tails between their
legs, because they realize that I’m speaking directly
to them, because it really is a problem. And that is connected
to a whole other set of things, which is the way you’re
taking care of your physical health and your energy levels,
and what you can do to help raise your energy, what you can
be doing to have better health. A lot of laziness is because
you don’t have the energy you need to do something, because
you have spent it all on things that you don’t really
care about all that much, or because you haven’t given
it to your physical being that needs some attention. So it
can flow that way as well.
You make the point that everything we do is
spiritual.
Let me clarify before you go on. It’s
that everything is spiritual, and as a result everything you
do is. Now, that’s a very large view; it’s sort
of like saying everything is energy.
At the retreat you encouraged us to get ourselves
in gear and apply ourselves more to the work. And the question
that might come up here is, “Well, yes, but how do I
draw the line? I have my own needs to take care of in order
to be up to do the work.”
Do you want me to answer for a Guardian,
or do you want me to answer for somebody spiritually awake,
or somebody who’s not awake at all? You see, there’s
a different answer for each of those.
For a Guardian.
I know you think that as a Guardian you’re
supposed to live a normal life, but I can guarantee that you
have never had a normal life. You see things, think things,
do things differently. You are here to bring about this change.
That is what your life is about, and the risk you’ve
agreed to take is getting mired in the human stuff. When that
happens, it is understandable, but not truly acceptable.
Now, do you know what the problem is with
what I’ve just said? That answer is based on what looks
like your future, and accommodating the patterns of the past.
Those patterns are that ego disempowers; free will wins. In
looking at the future, by any standards, your world is standing
at the edge of making decisions that—big picture—that
will literally eradicate life as you know it, or—small
picture—will bring about profound changes that cause
even greater loss than is going on right now—and to such
an extent that your planet’s life force might not last
as long as your allotted time here. Now, I’m being dramatic,
but not inaccurate. And I’m not talking about things
like global warming, which is profound, or the human contribution
to the loss of species of plants and animals and all other
manner of energy. I’m talking about powerful human beings
choosing to misuse power.
That means that if you’re going to
talk to me about “I’m having so much difficulty
with the people I work with!” I’m going to say,
“Figure out how it feeds you to keep doing that, realize
you’re sabotaging yourself with these situations, and
get over it!” Don’t rely on what your brain tells
you. Try relying more on what your heart tells you. Try not
to get caught in the trap of the dramatic human experience.
Try to separate yourself, see yourself not so much as a part
of the team, but more as an administrator of the team. Guardians
are examples, way-showers, explorers, not particularly happy
doing what everyone else is doing. Guardians are leaders (hopefully)
not followers (hopefully); are a part of mass consciousness
but not of mass consciousness.
I often say to somebody, or a group, that
they are being too human, that everything they do in the world
is spiritual, and that you’re going to look different—even
sort of odd maybe—to the rest of the world. You’ve
got to realize that your spiritual perspective or function
within something as simple as driving down the road and going
to buy groceries separates you. Get used to that. It’s
all right that your spiritual perspective or function separates
you. To function in this world, you’ve got to buy groceries,
and you’ve got to get from one place to another in one
way or another, so stop trying so hard to fit in so that you
can be a good example in all of the low places, as opposed
to all of the high ones. Realize that you’re not here
to be the best “good ol’ boy” there is. You’re
here to lead, to be an example—to open doors—and
sometimes that means slashing through the jungle to get there.
You’re not a Sherpa; you’re an explorer! And when
you judge how you’re doing by what everyone else in the
world is doing, well, that’s being lazy. It’s not
being what you are.
The fear that causes all that to come about
is that you’re not going to perfectly live up to what
you are, so it’s better to keep the standard low. The
fact is, there are times in which you are not going to live
up to what you are, but the idea is that you keep adding to
your storehouse of information so that you don’t keep
having constant resistance to what you are. And as you do
that, you have longer times of that—forgive me, it’s
a risky word—“perfect” behavior—no division,
no question as to what your vision is, no question as to what
feeds you—because you’re not here to feed out of
the troughs with everyone else, you’re here to be fed
by stardust. You’re here to be energized by light, and
if by now in your life you’re not, get over it. Retrain
yourself.
You have a beautiful dog—well, you
have a couple of beautiful dogs—but one of them is a
tripod, right?
Kind of, yes. Now he’s a one-eyed tripod.
He’s got that hip that really gives
him trouble, and there’s only so much that he can do,
and yes, he just had an eye removed as well. So here’s
a one-eyed, bum-hipped dog, and it’s just so heart-breaking
to be around him, isn’t it, because he just sits and
stares in the corner and wishes that he had his body back
together, and you can tell that he’s just so miserable:
Life ended for him when he lost the eye, and when he did not
have a hip that functioned properly.
No.
Very wrong, because he retrained. Angus
says, “Well, I can’t do it this way, so what can
I do? All right, I can do this, so let’s start working
at it.” Is he still bumping into walls?
No, actually he isn’t. Every once in a
while we’ll hear a little clunk, but for the most part
he’s adjusted to not having an eye on one side.
Does he still put himself into situations
that hurt his bad hip?
No, and when he’s gone far enough on a
walk, somehow he recognizes that he’s reached his limit,
and instead of continuing on with us, he turns around and
he goes home.
Now, you see, that’s a beautiful example
of retraining yourself to do what works. You’ve got a
lifetime of trying so hard to be one of the boys, or girls,
or dogs, and it’s not working. Do something else. Retrain.
What it brings up for me is what I call my “yes
but” routine.
[Laughing] I hear a lot of the “yes
buts.” “But I’m different! My circumstances
are unique, and you don’t know about this part.”
There’s a couple of things that strike
me about that. One is that sometimes people don’t think
that they have choices, or they don’t even look for the
choices. Why would someone who was, for example, in a job
that doesn’t have a lot of financial rewards, but working
very hard and consequently feeling overwhelmed and stressed
out, why would they stay there? What would be the payoff in
a situation like that?
Yes, there are situations in which people
don’t even think they have choices. They don’t even
see the options in their lives, or that they made choices
that got them where they are. And the key word in there isn’t
choices, it’s people. That’s a mass-consciousness
response, and an understandable one, and when a Guardian comes
out with a response like that, there’s an earthquake
somewhere in Indonesia—that’s a joke, meaning that
it’s earth-shaking—because Guardians are not “people.”
Don’t believe in the costume, even though it’s a
good one and the work that is being done in it is very important.
The very first thing I said was that you
have the answer when you ask the specific question. When somebody
says to me, particularly in a one-to-one session, “Why
is—and fill in the blank—not working?” my reply
always, always is “You tell me. Tell me why.” If
you can train yourself to look, recognize and mentally—or
verbally, if it helps—specify the choice that you have
in front of you, you are going to give yourself a very important
doorway to information.
This is going to sound like I’m shifting
off the subject, but I’m not. You know that I have said
that if you are not sure what you need to do, flip a coin.
And when you flip the coin and find that you want to say,
“All right, two out of three,” you’re telling
yourself what it is you really want. When you know that there
is action that must be taken—and in case someone doesn’t
realize it, that means a choice—even something as outrageously
simple and yet effective as flipping the coin gives you the
technology that will help you see what you really want. From
there you can go to “What’s the payoff? What’s
behind it? What’s the cost-benefit ratio?”
You know the story of the ugly duckling,
that the duckling was different but it did everything it could
to fit in. It tried as hard as it could, yet all of the other
ducklings caught on and said, “You are not like us. We
should separate from you. You’re just odd.”
That duckling had a choice: do absolutely
everything it could to behave like a duck, and begin making
more duck friends, and focus on being the best duck it could,
or recognize that “being made fun of all of the time
isn’t something I want to keep on doing. I’d rather
not be with these ducks than be with them.”
Not being with the other ducks meant it
had more time by itself, and it realized that maybe it had
some skills that were worthwhile. One of them was nice, long
walks in nature, and on one of those walks, the little duckling
came to a pond and saw two of the most incredibly beautiful
white ducks it had ever seen. It leapt into the water and
paddled over as quickly as it could, and those two beautiful
ducks looked at it, and said, “Well, how did you get
lost?” And the little duck said, “Lost? I’m
not lost. I know just where I am. The farm’s over that
way, and the other ducks are over there.” And they said,
“Ducks? You’re not a duck. You’re a swan. You
are one of us. Don’t go back there. Come with us.”
Your spirit asks you to let go of everything familiar, comfortable,
safe—maybe you’re not miserable, maybe you’re
perfectly happy—and it asks you not to be a duck, to
find what you really are instead. Now, when that duck made
the determination “I’m not a duck,” and swam
off with the swans, in what ways did his life change?
He was able to align himself with a whole different
purpose.
Very good.
He could start being good at what he was instead
of trying to be good at what he wasn’t.
Well, he also fit in so he had examples of how
a swan behaves.
Now don’t you just know that that little
swanling . . .
Cygnet.
Cygnet. What a nice word. That cygnet wandered
off into nature, looking around on its own, having been rejected
or made uncomfortable by the duck world. He said to himself,
“How am I going to eat? Where can I safely swim and still
be me?” and all of the things that ducks think they’re
going to have to do to make it in the world. The key for this
particular cygnet was to keep going until it found its own.
Hint: that’s why Phoenix is here, so
you can find your own with activities and socials and education.
It teaches you how to be that swan you really are.
But in trying so hard to fit in and be a duck,
that duck may have acquired a little duck wife, and a little
duck mortgage, and all of these things that accumulated while
it attempted to fit in. It might realize it’s a swan,
but it still has all these attachments to the duck world that
it’s responsible for. How does it deal with that?
It must ask, “What is worth the most
to me?” You see, the ducks have been saying, “If
you go wandering off on your own, you’re not going to
be able to eat, not be able to play. You’re going to
lose all these important things in your life. If you aren’t
going to be one of us, you’re going to be left out and
alone and unhappy.” You’re going to be caught in
a cycle of financial problems and health problems—all
of the things that the world dumps on you so that everybody
can be the same, because not standing out is safe. Don’t
think about it, just do it. This should make you happy. Don’t
expect more, because nobody else has ever had that.
That cygnet realized—and this is the
important part—that a duck life is not fulfilling. It
is acceptable and even workable, but not fulfilling. There
must be more. And that awareness allows it to look at itself
from the inside out—just like at the retreat—allows
itself to, slowly but surely, strengthen by releasing what
is not needed and doesn’t feed it, and focusing on what
is needed and does feed it. So when the time comes that it
is faced with the most beautiful opportunity anyone could
ever imagine, that opportunity is recognized and it is not
stuck—mired—and it can actually take advantage of
it.
So what about that cygnet that had so bought
into being a duck that it had a duck marriage and a duck mortgage
and duck children? Am I suggesting that it is responsible,
it is wise, to just simply drop it all, turn around, and march
off?
Is there duck karma?
Exactly! Don’t you have a compact with
duckdom? And that’s where a disentangling needs to happen.
At the retreat, I also spoke about simplifying: “Don’t
live your life having your stuff make all of your decisions
for you.”
I am sitting here in this living room that
is lovely—it’s really lovely. There are all kinds
of things that need care. There is a very old vase over there,
very fine Chinese porcelain. There once were two of them,
but one of them broke. If the stuff ran the people, that would
be an irritation, a heartbreak, an opportunity to be angry.
If you run the stuff, you’ll miss it, but it’s just
stuff.
A little aside here: It amazes me how secure
so many people feel because they have a lot of stuff. The
fact of it is, if you’re spending so much of your life
caring for all of that investment, all of that beauty, you
may well miss some of the most fulfilling opportunities that
come by. “Sorry. I’m off here polishing silver today.
I’ve got to polish all day.” You’ve got to
ask yourself why? Why?
I think one example you gave at the retreat
was “I don’t just want clothes to keep me dry and
warm, I want designer clothes that are beautiful.” But
those come with a price, and the price is that sometimes you
spend all of your time making the money to buy those things
and take care of them.
And you justify it by saying, “Well,
in my business, I must have . . .” So have
a specific number of good suits or good shoes, but you don’t
need forty if four will do. And if you do need the forty,
then it’s very important that you realize that you’re
giving something up in order to have that forty. Is it worth
the exchange?
Can you be giving up being the Guardian you
came here to be?
You can. And, you see, that’s what
left some people at the retreat rather shaken, some a bit
irritated, aware of a resistance. But the resistance came
from the idea that “My investment in this belief, or
this vase, or this person, or this dog, is so high, I cannot
just give it away. I cannot just get rid of it. I’ve
got to hold on to it.” However, I do have to say that
the majority of retreat participants felt prodded into saying
“I’m going to take action and it’s going to
help.”
You’re talking about attachment to stuff,
but there are things that consume us that have to do with
compacts and making choices with those compacts. How do you
deal with that?
I will promise you that you do not have
in your life—you, as a Guardian who has made a choice
to come into this world—you do not have a compact that
holds you back. You may have made personal choices, you may
have made lifestyle choices, you have made “I like to
be needed so I will make you need me” choices that cause
you to believe that you are held back by that compact, but
as a Guardian you do not have a compact in your life that
was set up to hold on to your leg and not let you go.
They’re commitments rather than compacts?
Yes. You have made karmic decisions that
probably need to be cleaned up. Is your question about how
you clean them up?
Yes, is there general advice about doing that?
The general advice is all in the first hour
of this interview.
Let’s say you’ve got this huge
house, and you have these choices in front of you. It’s
not unusual, when people retire, to move into a smaller place—isn’t
that correct? They don’t want the responsibilities of
that big investment, and they don’t have growing children,
so now they just need a couple of guest rooms. That’s
pretty typical.
Why do some people find that decision so
hard? One reason is that they don’t think of themselves
as retired and ready to simplify. Another one is that they
have invested so much in a huge mortgage and got such a relief
from finally paying it off that the idea of letting it go
is unappealing. Another reason can be that there is a large
sentimental investment in it, or because they believe they
will be judged harshly by their family for doing so. Another
reason might be that they want to keep it for their children,
whether their children want it or not.
There is a multitude of reasons for not
making a change that in any other circumstance would be considered
freeing and good, but, you see, it’s not about selling
the house. It’s about letting go in order to have what
you really want. If what you really want is that house, in
spite of the problems, then you’re going to have to give
up other things in order to keep it.
I know of people who have given up the idea
of being married. I know people who have given up what looked
to be well-paying, challenging jobs. I know people who have
given up . . . and that list can continue.
Is giving up the house going to be what makes you happy? No,
but being without the weight will. But if you don’t mind
the burden because you’ve got to keep your clutches in
that house for any one of a hundred reasons that really have
nothing to do with what you’re here to do, that have
nothing to do with honoring compacts, or whatever, and have
everything to do with what you think you should have—sometimes
because of expectations; sometimes because of a sense of entitlement;
sometimes just not really thinking it through—you’re
making sure that you have what you really want.
As a Guardian, when you are able to look
at your life and see what it tells you that you really want,
but what you really want isn’t allowing you to do and
be what you’re here to do with ease, you are going to
have a lot of self-judgment, disappointment, frustration in
life, and you’re going to feel overburdened and in pain.
Your physical world, your mental, your emotional worlds are
all going to reflect that decision. You’re not going
to be able to trust yourself, so of course that means you’re
not going to be able to trust others. It just goes on and
on and on.
Your responsibility as a Guardian is to
do what you are here to do. Now, here is where I’m going
to throw in a big wrench. Who says that what you’re here
to do cannot be accomplished in that house? If it can, stay
there. But if it can’t, you’re making a big mistake
to stay there. And that goes right back to the beginning:
What are your priorities? What are the choices you’re
making? What are they connected to? And even when it comes
to the duck wife, love does not say, “Here is the financial
statement. You must stay in this life that is killing you
because it is making me happy.” Love says, “How
can we negotiate so that we’re both able to get what
we want?” A lot of amazingly strong and good relationships
are amongst Guardians that are coupled with non-Guardians,
and they function because of that negotiated compromise.
You know, we have a question about buying into
the illusion, because when you’re a Guardian, having
something in your head that keeps pushing on you seems to
be a sure fire signal that it’s time to sit down and
say, “What’s going on? What’s behind this?”
Doing that means that you’re functioning
in a way that honors what you are. The problem is, so many
aren’t.
You mentioned at the retreat that the
world is holding its breath and that fire is purifying the
planet, and that over the next six months we’re looking
at the building of tomorrow.
Guardians initiate and become examples by
putting their actions into mass consciousness’s Lake
of the Known. The world is in chaos right now, but that energy
can go two ways. It can be used for creation or it can cause
havoc. The Law of Extremes is profoundly in action, so much
so that even children are realizing things are not right.
They might be experiencing it—depending upon their age—as
feeling dissatisfied. The world is waiting for an answer to
be dropped in its lap, for God to intervene and make things
right, for any big outside power to intervene. Your churches
in America are preaching that these are the end times because
of this and this and this, and the Islamic fundamentalists,
who are violently pushing for reform, are saying, “These
are the times the prophet referred to. This is the time in
the world in which those who are godly take action.”
In many different cultures this time is being interpreted
as “We need a savior.”
And they’re waiting, and they are looking
for those who every day—or maybe only once a week, or
maybe only once a month—say with meaning, “I am
a function of Christ Consciousness in this world, ready to
become the savior of the world.” The world is waiting.
It has been going through a trial. It has been going through
purification. It has seared out of their lives so much of
life’s frivolous activities and brought them to the basic
day-to-day survival, and the nine-tenths of the world that
are not you—western culture—realize that something
big has to happen to make things change. And you are the model
for that change. And that’s the scary part.
So at a practical level, as a Guardian, I should
look at my life and say, “Well, my job’s running
pretty well, but this whole thing with my family is really
chaotic and really stressful, so what can I do to make it
better?” Is that the kind of leadership that’s needed?
Yes. The way that you function in your day-to-day
experience is the only thing that’s going to change the
day-to-day experience for the rest of the world. It’s
not raising your hands up above your head and shooting flames
of power out into the universe, and burning off the smog and
pollution and giving the planet another chance. It’s
not that. Remember, I have said that this is not the time
of miracles. That’s not to say they don’t happen,
but where you are right now, they can always be written off.
In your heart you know this was an absolute miracle, but the
person right next to you says, “No, that’s the consequence
of . . . “ It’s not the miracles.
It’s not creating stardust to make people change; it’s
when you become that stardust that you show the change is
possible.
And that is what you were focusing on at the
retreat?
Yes.
So find those places of havoc in your life and
take care of them.
Absolutely. The retreat was turning on a
light in a dark room, and if you remember my illustration,
there were people there who say, “I prefer the darkness.
I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to know this.
It’s too hard. It’s too much. No.”
Do we literally, as you said, only have six
months?
Right now, there are some frightening directions
mankind can go; some highly destructive consequences can come
out of specifically planned actions. It’s premeditated
destruction, not only with weapons, but with assaults on belief
structures, which is, by the way, how Guardians are going
to feel it most. But along with the apparent breakdown of
things such as the definition of governmental power, the way
that one society sees another—genocide is what I’m
referring to there—or biological warfare by terrorists,
there will also be the breakdown of long-standing, even if
not trusted, alliances. The next six months, physically, mentally,
and spiritually, are either going to be how things end—or
maybe I should say why things end—or they’re going
to raise up some pivotal examples of getting that ass into
Jerusalem. [Samuel is making reference to his teaching at
the April first-Sunday meeting in Lexington.]
At what point in all of this can Guardians best
apply energy?
Any time, the sooner the better. It’s
not one of those “let’s get together and have a
Harmonic Convergence and have everyone thinking together.”
It’s right now make changes in your life that can get
that ball rolling, because what you do changes your world
in ways that, very obviously, not a whole lot of Guardians
recognize occur on a global scale. But you’ve got to
start recognizing it on a global scale. It’s the only
reason you should bother watching the news or reading the
newspaper: to see how what you’re thinking shows up in
the world.
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