“Happy New Year!”
I hope you all had a lovely holiday season and that my party tips came in handy.
Today, I’ll share some thoughts on neurosis as a dream killer in my video blog (vblog), and then I’ll share some art and events from my holiday.
I’ll also inform you that I’ll be doing a presentation in Irvine, January 22, 6:30-8:30pm in Irvine, CA at Transformotion. This is CP4 Wayne Daniel and HLC3 Patty Pinto’s innovative and progressive fitness and wellness facility.
They hostl sorts of events. Vidya is doing a workshop on Healing the Mother Daughter wound, Saturday January 24th, 2-5pm and toward the end of the month, they are hosting an upcoming drum circle.
Patty shared with us her new drum! It’s beautifully hand-painted and was lovingly made by Cedar Mountain Drums.
Is Neurosis Killing Your Dreams?
“Neurosis” is a term commonly used among both medical, and lay people to describe a wide variety of symptoms, but is generally vaguely understood at large.
In my vlog today, I share examples of neurosis from both western and eastern sources of wisdom to better define neurosis as it relates to the topic of building our dreams.
To begin, I paraphrase Carl Jung, who felt that neurosis is a term to define (a wide variety of) symptoms resulting from not meeting the task before us. This task may be one that we are conscious of, such as knowing we need to get out of a key relationship, or this task may come by way of the soul.
When the soul is calling us to “dream bigger or dream anew”, we are often being called to transition into a new way of being or expressing ourselves. The calling of the soul is often “archetypal” – a big picture change.
For example, a woman may now have raised her children, and after 18 years in the home, kitchen, and playground, feels a deep urge to become a business woman, artist, athlete, teacher, musician, gardener, etc…
The more we ignore either voice within us (our ego’s or the soul’s), the more symptomatic we become, and usually, the more challenges we face in potentially key dream-building relationships; I share some of the common traits of neurosis or neurotic behavior below.
Joseph Campbell once stated in a lecture I was watching on DVD that “the neurotic individual is one who acts irresponsibly when they should be acting responsibly.”
I know from my own life experience that we all suffer such neurosis from time to time, and for a number of reasons.
I think the distinction applies at the point at which we realize our own “neurosis” is something we are avoiding to the degree that it is decreasing the quality of our relationship to ourselves and others. Naturally, this will impede anyone’s dream-building abilities.
In his book, “Dharma ARt”, Chogyam Trungpa defines neurosis from the perspective of the Buddhist tradition as:
NEUROSIS: That state of mind which fixates and holds onto things.
Chogyam Trungpa breaks neurosis into three categories:
1. Passion, which is gooey, too much glue.
2. Aggression, which is too sharp, too threatening, too rejecting.
3. Ignorance, which is a state of stupor that cannot discriminate left from right or black from white.
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During my vlog talk, I expand on each of these classifications to help better define them.
Culture
The kinds of challenges I’m addressing here, and that I address on most of my blogs are all both individual, and collective cultural challenges.
Referring again to Chogyam Trungpa and the definition of culture he shares (in the same book): Culture: A lot of people all behaving the same way.
I point out that the challenges we all face shouldn’t be avoided or drugged. They should be seen as opportunities for personal, professional and spiritual growth (enlightenment opportunities).
I share several resources I’ve created specifically to help people identify the sources of their neurosis and how to heal it for effective dream (life) building at the end of this blog.
Tips For Overcoming Dream-Negative Neurosis
There is no more essential principle in dream-creation than the A, B, C’s of dream-weaving, which are always expressed in the reverse order as:
1. Clarity: We must discuss, read, study, explore, and experience as necessary to gain clarity as to what our dream is, and how we will create it.
In my PPS Success Mastery program, I refer to our over-arching dream, or dream for our life as a “Legacy.”
PPS Success Mastery Lesson 1: How To Find and Life Your Legacy takes you into a detailed self assessment, and guides you step-by-step in the exploration of the ten essential components for building any legacy or dream.
2. Belief: Regardless of how much preparation we do, there is no guarantee that we will believe in ourselves.
There are many reasons people don’t believe in themselves, even when they have a clear plan, and most of them are linked to poor self-esteem. There is usually a “fear of” issue getting in the way.
A common example of this found in many Virgo’s (and intellectuals in general) is “over-analyzing”. This is an expression of a lack of trust in one’s own intelligence, instincts, or soul, and commonly leads to smart talk with little action…
In PPS Success Mastery Lesson 2. Self Management, I share many methods of enhancing your body-mind self-management.
I also share the science of “brain washing” and show you how to both defend yourself from it, and how to use it to actually “wash your brain of your own self-limiting mind viruses.”
3. Action: Taking action is yet another essential ingredient of effective dream-weaving. No matter how much “planning for, or belief in the dream of creating a healthier, more beautiful body you have, talking about it and watching others do it won’t change your body.”
To help people better organize their time and energy through effective use of both process and outcome goals, I designed PPS Success Mastery Program Lesson 3. Goal Setting.
There are many whose neurosis evolves into addiction, which I define as “any repeated action that does not produce the results you want.”
These are naturally more challenging cases, so I’ve created a special, more complex self-help audio/work book program titled The 1-2-3-4 For Overcoming Addiction, Obesity and Disease to help them.
Other resources I (always) suggest are:
1. The Last 4 Doctors You’ll Ever Need – mutlimedia ebook
2. How To Eat Move & Be Healthy – book
Highlights From My Holiday Vacation
I had a lovely vacation overall. I was very tired going into it after a long period of intensive program development, business activities, coaching, and teaching.
My biggest burning urge for my playtime was to paint, and I did a fair bit of it, which was awesome!
This is my most recent painting, which I’ve titled, “Self-Realization”. It shows an enlightened woman playing a didgeridoo; she represents the feminine soul-element (Anima) of a male (ego), which must be balance if enlightenment is to be experienced. She is facing a large bird, which symbolizes the World-Soul, or the consciousness in and of Nature as a Whole.
She is playing the didgeridoo as a symbolic expression of her awareness of LOGOS or “OM”, the primordial sound of Creation emerging (in and as vibration).
Through conscious use of mind and breath, she is creating “her world.” The bird (soul) represents “the capacity to create and become inherently present in and as self-consciousness.”
She is changing the weather through the use of her own (mind) vibration, as expressed as a tangible experience through both the music she is making, and the reality that it (she) creates from thought to thought or breath to breath.
The bird holds creation “in it’s wings” as “archetypes” or what Jung refers to as “empty forms.” Through embodiment (ego-soul relationship), we “invest in becoming what we aspire to become.
Therefore, we are given the natural impulse (form) of the Universe to fully express ourselves in and as “a mother, father, teacher, warrior, business person, pilot, care giver, etc., but how we fulfill that dream is uniquely up to us.
This is the domain of the ego and the choices made, which equals the experiences of the life lived.
The Soul-Bird’s yellow coloring exemplifies “the sun” principle or masculine principle, which is the counterbalance of the earth and moon (yin) principle.
The water in the Soul-Bird’s tail represents “THE WELL of CONSCIOUSNESS as well as the collective unconscious, from which our thoughts and judgments commonly arise as “projections”; beliefs we impose on what we see, feel, ourselves, and others.
Her message is that “by learning to control your “vibration”, you express only the thoughts and emotions that “serve you” and nurture your capacity to love and live fully.
She is sitting “outside creation”, symbolizing that she is in “meditation” or meditative awareness that “she is creating her dream”. Spiritually, this relates to the quality of the soul called “reflection”, and memory is what serves this function, for without memory, we have nothing to reflect upon.
The spiritual practice can only be fulfilled when we take our meditative awareness into live and live it fully.
In this form of spiritual practice, there is no need for a church, or even religion, for life is both church, and our actions are always “our religion”, stated or unstated. “Never judge a man (or woman) by the creed s/he professes, but by the life s/he leads.”
I hope you feel inspired to create art of your own. Art is a very powerful form of meditation, and healing when done without attachment to the outcome.
A Visit From Nature Photographer and Integral Life Coach Shane McDermott
Shane McDermott is a very successful, accomplished Nature Photographer. He is also an Integral Coach, who practices holistic integration using Ken Wilber’s integral coaching system. Shane has been a friend of mine for over 20 years, and was in the first class of my students to complete CHEK Level 4 training many years ago now.
Shane visited me this weekend, and gave me this beautiful photo he’d taken in nature. He is perfecting the method of printing on aluminum surfaces to make these beautiful, no-frame-needed, easy to hang photos of his beautiful photos.
To view Shane’s amazing photos or register for one of his workshops in nature photography visit his site: https://www.shanemcdermottphotography.com/
As is the usual practice for me, when I get together with friends, I like to paint with them. Shane had never tried painting before, so this was the day he lost his painter’s virginity!
I don’t know about you, but I was very impressed with Shane’s first painting! This guy is LOADED with artistic talent. Look at his photos on his web site and you’ll see ample evidence of this.
Snow In Heaven!
A few days ago, as I was driving up the long hill passage to my work house (at about 1500 ft. elevation), I was very surprised to see cars coming down the hill that were covered in fresh snow!
By the time I’d driven a couple miles up the hill, there was snow covering everything, and there were even kids riding toboggans down the hills in the local golf course. Vidya’s car was covered in snow and the wheel wells were packed, so I knew she drove through the thick of it coming in a few hours earlier than I arrived.
Our whole property was nicely “white”, but by the time I took this photo, it had melted up to the edge of Palomar Mountain, but you can still see the beautiful snow that is quite rare to have where we are, in the San Diego area. It was lovely!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog and video today and you feel inspired to resolve your neurosis.
I look forward to sharing more with you next week.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
