My Subjective Reality Experiment

I’ve been reading the latest blogs by Steve Pavlina (www.stevepavlina.com), a very popular personal development blogger. He’s talking about his 30-day trial into Subjective Reality. You have objective reality, where the universe exists and your consciousness arises within it, and then you have subjective reality, where your consciousness exists and that’s all. You create everything around you: the coffee that you buy at Starbucks, the annoying co-worker, the traffic jam, and even the ants crawling on the sidewalk. They are all creations of your consciousness.

It’s a radical departure from the way most people see life and live life. We have a collective belief that the world is a fixed framework and we are beings born into this environment. We claw and fight our way through life because, in objective reality, you don’t really control anything. The ways and whims of the world are forces beyond your command, and you simply do your best to deal and keep up. In objective reality there are divisions of people, schools of different thought, and “the other side”. You are separate from the world, merely existing, sometimes observing, sometimes responding, but never becoming one with the environment around you. How could you? It was here before you, and will be here when you are gone.

In subjective reality, all this changes. There was no world before your consciousness illuminated since you are the creator of your world. There is no traffic jam or annoying co-worker – these are reflections of you. As Steve explains, seeing life as subjective reality is like having a dream. You are both the dreamer and the creator of the dream, and all the characters in the dream are creations of you.

Objective and subjective reality are two perspectives in which to see life. There’s no way to really ascertain if one is the truth and the other a falsity. But when you have a choice of perspectives, it’s key to be able to see and experience all of them, because it enriches your life in unexpected ways.

I’ve been inspired by Steve to do my own experiment into subjective reality and live my life for 30 days with the constant reminder that everything I encounter is a reflection of me. This includes people, circumstances, events large and small, and so on – everything. I’m going to report on my discoveries about once per week and share my revelations or frustrations with you. I’m not sure what to expect since I, like most people, have been living life as though I am not in full control of my world. So, here goes…

08/10/2010: COCONUT JUICE FOR RECYCLING MAN

I just heard the recycling truck pull up, and, instead of ignoring the man who’s working hard to pick up my junk every two weeks and save it from the landfill like I usually do, I decided to bring him a cold can of fresh coconut juice. I gave him the drink and thanked him for working so hard. Was it weird to applaud the recycling man? Maybe. But in the end, it was me that I sent gratitude to, since he’s just a creation of myself. And I do like a cold coconut juice on a hot day.

08/09/2010: VINDICTIVE NEIGHBORS SUCK

My wife and I started a weekly community yoga class at our neighborhood clubhouse a few weeks ago. We went to the homeowners meeting, proposed the project and got approval to post signs around the complex. After the second class, a horribly vindictive and crabby neighbor decided to tear down our signs. We got very upset over this.

I finally ran into the petty thief, a resident of the community who spouted claims that we were defacing the neighborhood and sullying its beauty with our adverts. I countered back that we intended only to bring a healthy weekly activity to the community. Outwardly I beamed diplomacy and good motives. Inwardly I wanted to wring her neck.

For the next few days I replayed various scenarios in my head of how I could scare her just enough to pack her bags and move out of the complex. Her vindictiveness became mine and the cycle of inner aggression began to play out its ugly dance.

I was living in the objective world where she, a dirt bag, was separate from me and doing something to hinder me, hurt me, put sticks in my spokes. But when I switched on the subjective reality filter, then I saw that she IS me and represents a part of me that is vindictive, disrespectful, and petty. I wish this filter was only rose colored, but as it is, it reveals the ugly truth very quickly.

Since she is me, I couldn’t remain angry at her or lay voodoo curses on her every time I walked passed her house. It would be like insulting myself or wishing harm done to myself so I stopped very quickly. Then my wife and I sent silent prayers to her by saying “I’m sorry, I love you.” Sorry for the pain and suffering in her (in me) that gives rise to vindictive aggression, and love to hasten the necessary healing that needs to take place in her (in me).

I haven’t seen her again, but I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of interaction we’ll have this time.

08/08/2010: ATTACK OF THE ANTS

I know it makes some sense to see reflections of you in other people (recall the various proverbs – the eyes are the mirrors of the soul?) but would you be able to see yourself in non-human life forms, like ants?

We’ve been having an ant infestation lately and I’ve been the crazy ant killer. I crush them with glee when they crawl on my kitchen sink and I stomp them with delight when they cross my front patio. It’s a killing party.

The other morning, when I woke up and saw them attacking a little chunk of watermelon in my kitchen, I nearly exploded into a fury of ant termination when I reminded myself of my experiment. I asked myself, what part of me do the ants represent? As ridiculous as that sounds, I discovered an answer.

My wife Jaime and I talked about how the ants came because we didn’t always do the dishes right away and left them in the sink overnight. I’m clean but not a tidiness freak, so I’ll let things get out of hand once in a while. I realized then that the ants represented parts of me that I let get out of hand.

I realized that I could pay my bills more promptly. I realized that I could update my finances more regularly. I realized that I could stay off my computer more and be more focused and productive when I’m on it. I realized that when I get in a rut and start doing things out of routine and not out of passion, I let things slide. I realized that I always need to focus on expressing my deepest passions and truest nature, so that things don’t start to slide.

Within an hour, we had come up for a game plan for the kitchen, and life. We decided to do a better job of cleaning the dishes, and to begin an active strategy to find someone or some organization to help us market and distribute our creative products – our instructional DVDs, music CDs, both of our books, and our fitness and developmental workshops. Yesterday Jaime called a few production agencies, and we’re starting to take steps towards aligning our passions and our finances.

All from a few ants. It’s only been 48 hours, but I haven’t seen them back yet. Coincidence – or just a remnant of my self that’s been heard and met with compassion and understanding?

****************
I’ll follow up with more observations into my 30-day experiment with subjective reality next week. If you’d rather receive my blogs (since I’ll be sending out the next few weekly) by RSS feed, sign up for a feed in the top right corner of this site. Then send me an email and let me know you’re set up with an RSS reader.

How to Overcome Fear

Fear grows like an insidious virus, first scratching the surface of the polished veneer of your confidence like an innocent itch, then nestling deeper and deeper into your well of courage, until finally, it violently throttles your entire being, restlessly taunting you with nightmares of trainwrecks, snakes, and ghosts.

Or not.

Stopping the spread of fear happens in minute, small increments. Occasionally, you might be able to crack the glass ceiling by hurdling yourself upwards through adversity in one Herculean leap of faith – but more commonly, you’ll take it one step at a time. The changes will be small, barely noticeable, but will create long-lasting results.

The trick to stopping the spread of fear is to recognize the subtle masks that fear wears. Fear in our daily lives does not usually manifest itself as hooded terrorists with machine guns, rapists wielding machetes, or killer viruses that annihilate entire cities in a day. Fear makes its stealthy appearance through the back door with comments disguised as cynicism, sarcasm, and anger.
Perhaps you’ve been told on your birthday that “you’re only a few years from being over the hill.” Or the day after you were married, you were warned that “the honeymoon is now over.” Maybe you have kids now and recall your friends predicting the demise of your romantic life. The tone of cynicism and sarcasm is thick and pervading, and you probably waived off their nauseous comments with a polite smile or even a forced laugh.

Don’t let their heedless jeers sink in though. The moment you are bombarded with petty cynicism and sarcasm, you have a choice: accept the profanity or reject it. Societal standards make it permissable to be victims of thoughtless jokes without realizing that the actual force behind this low-level commentary is fear. It could be fear about growing old, losing physical capabilities, or never being able to experience again the glory days of youth. It could be fear about not being able to sustain a long term relationship, ending in divorce, or defiling your commitment with your wanderlust ways of bachelorhood. Regardless of what the fear is about, recognize that others may attempt to project their unspoken shadows unto you, subtlely taking you down with their sinking ship. Misery likes company.

You can stop fear when you are able to recognize the mask. Cynicism and sarcasm almost always reflect a deeper, hidden anxiety that spews out in random, uncontrolled bursts, like a scalding geyser blowing out  of a narrow fissure. The dramatic eruptions on the surface distract us from the mounting friction below.

Your course of action is non-action. To not react, respond, or partake in the game of cynicism and saracasm is to effectively reject it and reinforce your ability to safeguard your beliefs, your intentions, and your dreams. You become stronger, more confident, and courageous. These qualities do not call forth massive effort, but require you to develop greater awareness so that you can be non-reactive. Where do you encounter cynicism and sarcasm? Perhaps your workplace has a self-appointed comedian whose mission is to slay his colleagues with senseless verbal jabs. The media is also inundated with false alarms, phony pundits, and bogus claims. Look around you with your radar set for cynicism and sarcasm, and you’ll see that this seemingly benign and normal behavior is everywhere.

Anger is a step up in intensity from sarcasm and cynicism but still functions most of the time to hide a deeper fear. This is not the kind of anger that spontaneously erupts in self-preservation – a car swerving toward you, a threatening gesture made against your children, or a stalking figure following you in dark, deserted alley. This is the brewing, simmering kind, the type of anger that maliciously oozes out to incinerate happiness, optimism, and well-being.

Anger begets anger, and the angered becomes the perpetrator. The vengeful cycle is closed and the flames of battle spark while both parties completely miss the point. What is the point? Neither one has realized that the fuel for their anger is fear.

When you recognize that your anger, or another’s anger draws its strength from fear, you diminish the intensity of your rage. Sometimes your anger even  completely disappears. The key to transforming anger is understanding the underlying source of its fiery façade. Beneath the tantrum lies a smaller, frightened, and humbled inner kid, one who might have been picked last in gym class to be on the team, or saw the agonizing collapse of her parents’ marriage. Maybe it was the time she was told that she would amount to nothing, or her first kiss that ended in stony rejection.
Anger is a mask that fear wears. The next time you are faced with a belligerent imbecile, indignant and lewd, stop to wonder what he might be afraid of, not what he’s angry about. Wonder if he was hurt in some way, if his partner left him, if he just lost his job. Wonder if he had alcoholic parents, if he was abused as a child, if he grew up in a tough neighborhood. It doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong in your hunches; what matters is that you wonder. The more you wonder, the more you develop compassion. The more you embody compassion, the easier it is to accept fear. As you begin to accept fear, it transmutes all by itself and becomes courage. The transmutation of fear begins with understanding, and finishes with courage.

When you are able to do this with someone else, try it on yourself. While it is easy to point fingers, the conclusive test is whether or not you can see your own fear through your anger.
So stopping the spread of fear is not really about stopping anything. It’s about developing awareness of the different masks that fear wears, and then choosing non-action or compassion. Either way both paths are more efficient, use less energy, and transmute fear.

Find Alignment, Not Balance

My wife and I own and operate a yoga-fitness studio called Barefoot Sanctuary that operates out of the largest Whole Foods Market in Las Vegas. We are very lucky to partner and create a community studio space with them because we also have the opportunity to introduce very unique courses into the schedule that we wouldn’t be able to do at other studios. One of those classes is my Handstand Class.

You wouldn’t think that spending an hour on your hands would be an enticing fitness offering, but it’s become quite popular. I’ve had people from all walks, none of them acrobats, come and learn the art of inversion and staying on your hands.

Perhaps the growing success of the class is due to the benefit of getting blood to your head, or the feeling of increasing strength in your shoulders and back but I think the real draw is because it teaches you the actual meaning of finding balance in your life.

Finding balance is a common goal for anyone who is too stressed, too overworked, too tired, and too busy. There are many books and speakers who talk about how to find balance in your life and offer a multitude of tools to do so. Some work and some don’t, but the one commonality of all these tools is that they are all metaphors. They are ideas that you apply to your life by using analogies, symbols, and concepts.

When you learn to do a handstand, however, you don’t deal in concepts or metaphors. You either achieve a balanced state or you don’t. And when you don’t, you fall over. The feedback loop is instantaneous.

When I begin teaching handstands to someone who has never tried it before, I explain that learning to do handstands is not about finding balance, which kind of surprises most people. Learning to do handstands is actually about creating proper alignment.

Think of your body as being divided into three blocks. Imagine that the first block runs from your fingers to your shoulders, the second from your shoulders to your hips, and the last block from your hips to your toes. When you’re inverted in a handstand, your job is to align the blocks on top of each other.

Pretend you are five again and you are playing with a set of Lego blocks. If you put one block on top of the other but put it on the corner, then set the third block on top, again skewed on the corner, your structure might hold only if you secure it with rubber bands and nails. In other words, you’re able to build a tower but it requires additional energy and resources to make it stay.

Another note about balance – you can balance anything, regardless of its shape. Finding balance is really about finding the center of gravity of an object and manoeuvering it so that you place its center of gravity directly over its contact point on the ground. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, try to recall images of acrobats at a circus balancing spinning plates, chairs, or even other people. They are able to balance the object even if it is shaped unusually. (I’ve balanced an unfolded six-foot step ladder, a bicycle, chairs, and people on my chin.)

The lesson is that you can find balance in anything, but that doesn’t mean you want to. What you want to do, especially in proper handstand technique, is to align the body so that balance comes naturally and almost without effort. Then you are using your structure and alignment to maintain your position while using very little energy. You are strong and efficient.

In other words, learning to do a proper handstand is about aligning the three blocks by making sure that your legs are directly over your hips, your hips directly over your chest, your chest directly over your shoulders and your shoulders directly over your hands. It sounds simplistic and it is. It’s simple, but not easy.

It’s not easy at first because aligning all these body parts requires subtle contractions of muscles that you rarely use and stretching of other ligaments that you hardly ever stretch. Most people come into the class with enough strength to hold themselves upside down, but lack the subtle strength and flexibility to position their body in a straight vertical line.

When you finally achieve proper alignment, then finding balance is not really an issue. Since gravity works only in one direction, and if your body blocks are directly on top of each other, then your handstand will be balanced. It can’t and won’t go anywhere. For example, try to balance three wooden blocks when they’re stacked exactly on top of each other. There’s nothing to balance because the alignment makes it balanced.

So, back to the metaphor of life and the issue of finding balance. My suggestion is to stop finding balance in your life and to begin creating alignment instead. Just like the crazy circus acrobats, you can find balance even if your life is a whirlwind with areas that are well over-extended and others that are completely ignored. You can find balance in an out-of-balance lifestyle – it’s just that you’re going to have a work a lot harder to keep it there.

When you create alignment in your life, you begin by identifying your values. Once you know what your values are, you line up three things, just like your body: your thoughts, your actions, and your words.

Having a set of defined values is like gravity to the handstand – you have to know how to position your body relative to the force of gravity. Once you have identified your values, you now also know how to think, act, and speak to align with those values.

Again, the process is simple, but not easy. If you have a life that is chaotic and out of control, then evaluate your ability to follow through with what you say, do, or think. Maybe you don’t fulfill commitments, which breaks your alignment, and forces you to be out of balance. Maybe you smile outwardly at people and cuss inwardly at their incompetence.

Perhaps you do act with integrity but your life is still out of balance. Then consider if your values are yours truly, and if they are reflective of who you are now. Contemplate whether or not you are still living a life based on borrowed values from parents, social circles, or religion.
For example, one of my values is to help people. I remember writing this down on a piece of paper in grade four when we were asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. Since this is one of my core values, I make sure that my thoughts, actions, and words reflect this mission, which is why we have a yoga-fitness studio and I write on personal growth.
So you might not ever come to my handstand class or even try one on your own. I do recommend that you meditate on your values and evaluate your follow through. If you are aligned, then you end up being able to take on more and more work without exhausting yourself or working inefficiently. You experience abundant energy, daily passion for your life – and a sense of balance.

We Live In A World Of Trust

After 15 years of professional performing in the circus, I realize that we live in a world of trust. When I perform a high flying act, supported only by cables and carabiners, I trust that the equipment will work. When I tumble across the stage in a rapid succession of back handsprings, I trust that other artists on stage will move on time, and clear the space for me. Others trust me to catch them when I throw them into the air for a double back flip, or to correctly attach their safety lines to their harnesses 60 feet in the air. I trust myself when I light my poi on fire and spin it in rapid arcs around my body. Trust is as palpable and real as the show itself, the glue that holds together a thinly fabricated illusion of seamless choreography, characters, and story line. I am fascinated by how much we trust each other, how much we trust the machines and systems that run our lives, and how horribly denying it is to our spirit to not be able to see the bountiful sea of trust that surrounds us, bathes us, and carries us.

You don’t have to be an acrobat in a dangerous circus show to recognize that trust is everywhere. Consider, and be amazed by, the many and varied acts of trust you perform when you drive to work. First, you trust that your car will start the way it was designed – you expect that the technology inside your vehicle will work correctly, and not detonate in a massive fireball on your driveway. You calmly turn the key despite the fact that you are sitting only a few feet from a bathtub full of gasoline, and that this highly explosive fuel is forcefully funneled through a super heated engine block and deliberately ignited with an electric spark.

As you drive down the road, listening to the radio, observing the weather, reading billboards, checking voicemail, and sipping your morning coffee, be astonished it is not a regular occurrence that no one has yet jumped the yellow line, careening wildly into you in a head-on collision. Be joyful that your fellow comrades on their way to work also acknowledge that they each command a multi-ton weapon of encased metal and rubber, capable of snuffing out the life of any pedestrian nonchalantly meandering across the street – but most of the time, don’t.

And speaking of pedestrians, rejoice in the knowledge that you can cross the street because we all made an implicit agreement that red means stop, and green means go. After all, they are just random colors of the rainbow and don’t have any real meaning, except for the ones we give them.

So your successful arrival at work, or wherever you are going, depends on two things: first, that we give meaning to meaningless things, and second, that we agree to continuously agree to the meaning. What greater daily demonstration of trust is there than to see millions of people consciously stopping their vehicles of mass destruction when they see the color red? Think of the millions of lives that are saved every year by this collective nod.

And this is only the drive to work. Now look inwards and consider what happens within your body on a second-to-second basis. The miracle of life is the miracle of total, complete, and binding trust. Your lungs are expanding and contracting, your heart is beating and pumping, and your eyes are absorbing light patterns while your brain is expeditiously processing trillions of bytes of information. These occurrences happen thousands, if not millions of times a day under the veil of the autonomic nervous system, completely unconscious to your waking thoughts, dutifully performing their life supporting functions without so much of a complaint or gripe. You trust that when you wake in the morning, your blood will still be flowing through your arteries, and your intestinal tract will have processed enough of the late night cheesecake to provide energy for the start of your day. It’s a miracle to think that, at any point, this intricate fabric of interdependent systems can be so easily interrupted, and life as we know it will end.

Living is trusting and is the greatest testament that the values of trust are alive and well. The next time you hear someone, or perhaps yourself say, “I can’t trust…”, contemplate the millions of examples that occur every moment that are life supporting and not life taking. Then contemplate how simple it is to cut the thinly attached chords of trust with a benign act, like driving down the wrong side of the road, or throwing bags of trash out the window of your 10th story apartment. And why wouldn’t you? It’s faster than bringing garbage down the stairs, but you don’t because we’ve all agreed to the value of life, which is the value of trust.

You might be silently screaming that mistrust does exist and that horrible trespasses against our collective agreements do occur. People do get run over by cars, murders and wars happen, and hearts cease their vital beating. There is no doubt that the execution of the trust act is not total and all-pervading. Not everyone, or every system functions perfectly.

You may have been lied to, manipulated by, or transgressed upon somehow in the past. The sensation of boundaries crossed and opportunities stolen is weighty and sobering. It is not helpful to simply say that the past is the past because your thoughts happen in the present.

What is helpful then is to remark that your present moment is replete with miraculous illustrations of trust. The question, how to trust again, is also the question of how to live again. And living by being, not thinking, strategizing, doing, or analyzing, is the answer to living again.

Living by being is a daily practice of conscious observation. What are you observing? You are rediscovering that ordinary events that normally occur without so much of a thought are in fact stupendous examples of trust. Begin observing simple, routine acts with an open and curious mind.

When I am on stage and a fellow artist is quick enough to catch me from an accidental fall, or remembers to correctly attach my safety line to my harness, I know that we live in a world of trust. When I drive through an intersection and see all the cars stopped at their red light, or get to work without trying to dodge an oncoming truck, I know that we live in a world of trust. And when I wake in the morning and open my eyes to the sunrise or take a deep breath in, I know that we live in a world of trust.

I Went Homeless So You Don’t Have To

Every now and then I will do strange experiments to push my  boundaries of comfort further. Being an acrobat in the circus means that I attempt flips, handstands, and high falls to challenge my physical skills and grow as an athlete. Being an acrobat of the soul means that I challenge my values, belief systems, and automatic behaviors so that I grow as a human being.

(Watch the video interview about my experience by the Las Vegas Weekly now.)

Last December, on a chilly winter day, I decided to challenge a deeply rooted fear I had by spending 24 hours on the street homeless. I carried no credit cards, cash, I.D., cell phone, house keys, extra jackets, tissue papers, chapstick, iPod (what else do you usually leave the house with?)

I set off in the direction of downtown, carried by my own two feet, dressed in a tattered sweats, to challenge a fear (read: belief) that my failure as a businessman would lead to me being homeless.

I believed the equation: financial failure = homelessness. Do you believe this too?

I did and I needed to confront it. I chose to experience homelessness for 24 hours. Here are the highlights:
•    you can’t thumb a ride in Las Vegas if you look like a bum
•    panhandling is one of the most difficult things to do
•    I’m not a good panhandler; I made $2 in 24 hours
•    nothing costs less than a dollar, except for bananas at 7-11
•    it gets cold at night, even in Las Vegas
•    misery likes company – I never realized how many homeless people there are
•    people look at you with hate in their eyes when you beg
I literally walked for 12 of the 24 hours because no one would pick me up and I had no money for the bus. I also got kicked out of a public library, so sitting down in a quiet, warm place was not an option.

I ended up walking to the worst part of Las Vegas, the hidden, swept-under-the-rug part called “Tent Village” because of all the bums living in tents on the side of the road.

(Watch the video interview about my experience by the Las Vegas Weekly now.)

There I encountered hundreds of homeless men milling about, exchanging words about where to get the next meal, who’s handing out free socks, how many nights the local shelter lets you stay, and the best places to bum for money.

When I bumped into another group of men, the conversation was the same. Another group, same conversation.

That’s when it struck me.

I can never be homeless.

I don’t say that with an arrogant or pretentious intention. I say it because I simply don’t talk like a homeless person which is to say I don’t think like a homeless person.

And that was the kernel of wisdom of my exploration into my fear of financial failure. I realized that though I could fail in business, I could never become homeless. I just don’t have the belief that I would end up on the streets.

I do speak like a professional acrobat. While others are scared about heights, rapidly moving vehicles, and fire, I get enthused and excited.

I do speak like a professional marketer. While others are lamenting about the economy, I talk about new online marketing techniques, social networking, blogging, and computer technology.

But…

I don’t speak like a millionaire entrepreneur. While millionaires are busy talking about their next deal, strategizing on new partnerships, and planning an investment, I talk about covering my mortgage, putting gas in my car, and the 3 for 1 special on avocados at the store. I spend too much time talking like an average income producer.

What do you talk about?

Here are the 3 things you can do to benefit from my experience on the streets:

1. Write down everything you say in 1 day.
2. Listen to the conversations or language of someone you want to emulate (a business person, a great athlete, a professional speaker)
3. Have a conversation with a homeless person and listen to his dialogue.

If you notice, all these activities are simply about building awareness, since awareness is the main catalyst for change.
(Watch the video interview about my experience by the Las Vegas Weekly now.)

***
I would love to hear from you. I always respond to every email I receive personally, so this is what I want to learn from you:

What is one fear you’ve overcome and HOW did you do it?

Next Page »