Happy Tuesday to You!
Penny and I had a great trip to Las Vegas where I presented a one-day workshop on Scientific Shoulder Training as a pre-conference workshop.
By the way, my new Scientific Shoulder Training correspondence course is at the duplicators now (!) and will be available to you very soon. It comes with three DVD’s and a comprehensive, well-illustrated manual, and I’m very excited to finally have it done so you can all enjoy and benefit from the many unique and useful holistic methods I share.
If you’d like to be notified of the early bird special purchase package pricing, please contact the CHEK Institute and put yourself on the notification list.
After I finished the pre-conference workshop, I gave two lectures each day of the conference and people seemed to really enjoy my holistic approach to back, knee and shoulder pain challenges.
There were lots of new people who hadn’t been exposed to my work yet there, so it was a good chance to share with prospective CHEK students.
Fortunately, the hotel had a decent gym and a spa with a steam room and a sauna so I could enjoy some good exercise and post workout meditations in the heat.
My tai-chi sessions were between buildings on the concrete since time was limited and there was a serious lack of biological life to interact with in the area; Las Vegas is like a comparatively flat Times Square in NYC!
We drove home Saturday evening and though we got home late, we enjoyed a day off together at the house Sunday. It was lovely to see Penny rest. She works very hard and I love seeing her nurture herself.
I also took yesterday off so I could honor my own needs for rest. I’m working on a cool new rock formation in my zen rock garden. I also drew a new piece of art, which I’ll share below.
THE DRAGON OF MIND
I drew this picture of The Dragon of Mind yesterday.
I was inspired to finish it after listening to a recorded lecture by Arnold Patent titled, The Law Of The Universe and Mastery Over Money, which Vidya kindly shared with me.
Arnold Patent has a few books and I highly recommend his beautiful, simple teachings. They are totally congruent with the message I share in the PPS Success Mastery Program lessons.
David Siegel, MD defines mind as: an embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.
This is not only the case of our individual ego-mind, but is an accurate definition for all minds.
All minds that can be known are part of The One Mind, which we know of as the Universe.
If we look at the issue of Universal Mind from a Taoist perspective, then we may perceive the Universal Mind as The Dragon.
In the Chinese cosmology story of creation, it is said that THE DRAGON is the source of ALL, and that THE DRAGON’s favorite hobby is breathing new universes into being.
When it does, it always creates two dragons to manage it. One is the dragon of yin, and the other the dragon of yang.
THE DRAGON knows that they are equal to each other in every way as far as their creative potential goes, but they are just different enough (as male and female) to have different views and experiences on most any topic.
THE DRAGON says to it’s new children and the universe he creates in and of them, you two can rest when you learn to get along with each other.
In this very short story is the truth of how our ego-minds work.
Every thought has the power to create a universe of experience within, and around us. The thought is the first phase of creation.
To the degree that we believe our thoughts, we draw from THE DRAGON’s Unconditional Love, which is pure Potential.
Patent describes belief as “how we process potential and convert it into energy.”
He says, “efforting (struggling) is wrestling with the natural flow of the universe.”
It is this very “efforting” that THE DRAGON was referring to when telling the little dragons that “they can rest (from the task of managing their universe) when they can get along.
Paton beautifully states, “you know you wanted something when it occurs in your life.”
Surely, many will refute such a statement with such comments as, “come on, don’t try and tell me that I wanted to be abused by others!”
Patent reminds us that much of what we “choose” is the result of our unconscious processes, which emerge largely from our (parental, social, and cultural) conditioning.
In my 1-2-3-4 For Overcoming Addiction, Obesity and Disease audio/workbook program, I clearly describe the stages we all progress through as we learn to love. They are:
1. Sex and violence loving
2. Conditional loving
3. Empathetic and compassionate loving
4. Unconditional Love.
The secret to growing through each of these stages so we can become aware of the ultimate gift of (THE DRAGONS’s) Unconditional Love is “awareness”.
Awareness emerges when we become aware that our thought-actions produced something other than we wanted to experience in our life.
Even after many years of practicing, I still find myself becoming aware that consciously or unconsciously, I’ve created something other than what I wanted.
Though the ego-mind naturally wants to avoid taking responsibility for its 50% of every co-creative relationship, I know that the only person I can trust to become more aware and dream better is myself.
I must be brave enough to embrace the truth Arnold Patent shares when he says, “you know you wanted something because it happens in your life”.
As I’ve aged and become more wise, I’ve found that one of the most common causes of “unwanted experiences” is wanting and trying to do too much relative to what can realistically be done with the available time, energy, resources, and willingness that I (authentically) have.
I’ve come to see that when I’m still and inquire within myself honestly, even though I can’t always pin point the source of my desires for some of the experiences I’d prefer not to repeat, I can accept that there must have been something I wanted to learn that attracted the experience to me.
With that knowledge, instead of getting lost in the blame game, I can cultivate more acute awareness as to the power of my thoughts, words and deeds.
From that place, I can be more conscious as I interact with others. I can also be more aware of what rises from my unconscious mind, be it desires, fears, beliefs that may no longer work optimally, etc.
With this mindset, I feel I’m more able to grow and learn.
It is a lifetime practice.
If we look honestly at our lives and meditate on our experiences, we can usually find what it was that we wanted to learn.
Yet, it is only through awareness of our power to choose differently, to upgrade our beliefs to those more congruent with our current dream that we learn to work with THE DRAGON (the universe) instead of against the natural flow of cosmic unfolding.
Today, I’ll be practicing awareness of what comes into my life. I’ll celebrate the gifts, be they gifts of ease and flow, or gifts of resistance.
I know that feedback is the breakfast of champions and if we understand how THE DRAGON works, we can gain plenty of feedback from our own awareness of what we create within ourselves, and in relationship to other persons, places and things.
I invite you to join me in this important practice.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
