Jennifer,

It is a beautiful thing to realize that indeed you were led here and that reality is true for me as well. Who or what led us I have heard called by many names, God, The Universe, Devine Intelligence. I came here in search of peace and serenity. One of the jewels of wisdom I found in Gary and Linda’s latest video on the Serenty Prayer is that serenity can’t be obtained without trust in The Universe or trust in Devine Intelligence. In my journey trust always requires me to choose courage instead of fear, love instead of fear. In my case love for myself. I am worthy of love and I have great gifts of love locked behind my fear that have yet to challenge. So here I am challenging my fears to share the love and courage I feel for you and your journey.

Lift your face to sun, feel the warmth wash over you, and soak in the courage to trust the wisdom that led you here knows your fears and knows that it is already inside you choose love.

With my love and courage,

Doug

Hi Jennifer,
It’s wonderful to see you here in the Life School. Is it possible the thought that you can’t afford the Life School Membership is coming from fear?
There may be many reasons it appears you can’t afford it….however, I would like to support you in considering the possibility you could find a way to afford remaining a part of something you are finding so valuable.
Love,
Kristen

Hi Jen,are you open to doing an experiment with me? If so, what physical sensations do you notice feeling in your throat, chest or stomache area?
Love, Kristen

Jennifer, Sundar;

At the top of the each page of the Life School website you will see a link to The Authentic Power Guidelines. The guidelines are an amazing tool to help us explore ourselves and discover in a deeper way what a life with more authentic power is. I have found it powerful to read and re-read them throughout my day (everyday)to help remind me of my intention to break free from my hurtful thoughts and actions. As I was again re-reading the guidelines this morning and the words just spoke to me about this thread we have been sharing together with Kristen and the three of us.

One guideline for living a life filled with authentic power, a life where my spiritual growth is my top priority is: Courage – stretching myself beyond the limited perspectives of the frightened parts of my personality.

Believe me that I had to get past my own “I cannot afford” fears. Telling myself that “I cannot afford” was a limiting perspective for me. It was a huge step for me to comprehend that my “I cannot afford” was just that, a perspective, my perspective. For me a frightened perspective. As long as I held that perspective I was limited, held back, frozen. Through something inside me I found a brief moment of a new perspective, a moment where I stepped out of that fearful perspective and found another perspective that let me just see that saying and believing “I cannot afford” was just that, LIMITING. I am finding it a little hard to describe but Gary has a great analogy of being swept down a river as being the fear “I cannot afford” perspective, and climbing out of the river and standing on a bridge over the same river as the new perspective. Being out of the river lets me see myself in the river being swept.

That is what it felt like for me, I could see myself saying “I cannot afford” but at that moment and from that new perspective I could make a responsible choice what “I”, the loving me really wanted. In that moment of decision all the noise of my fear was turned down and I could choose what path I really wanted my life to follow. Absolutely it took my courage, that is why it is a choice. For me, the decision about spending the money was in that moment a choice between love, following this calling to love in my soul, and fear, remaining limited and frustrated in my life.

I made the decision to spend the money and to take a step into the unknown. When I told my wife what I had decided she said “can we afford that”? Oh my, must I make this decision yet again? And the answer was yes I had to make that decision to spend the money again and again. And trust me my fear jumped up again and again to second guess me saying “are you sure you are not making a mistake”. It takes Courage to face a fear and live authentically and to trust The Universe that it will deal with the details that our fear-filled thoughts cannot see or understand. It has been for me an “Un-limiting Perspective” and it feels so freeing and wonderful.

See if you can find a different perspective and let us know what you experienced. Just know the Universe never judges us, it just keeps bringing us opportunities to see ourselves and to grow.

With all my loving perspective,

Doug

Dear Doug,

My second question to Gary during the Authentic Power Course was: So, we are expected to become emotionally aware, choose responsibly, develop authentic power by aligning our personality with our soul. What is the fundamental reason for all this? Is it because it is a game played by God or the Universe, or is there any other deeper reason?

Again, Gary’s response meant everything to me. He said: Sundar, if you find out the answer, let me know.

From my experience I know very well that a common reaction to the above response by Gary would be something like, “Really! Gary doesn’t know the answer!! What is this?” That is the reaction to be expected on the part of anyone who has not understood the role of theories. ‘Theory’ is unfortunately a term that has been misunderstood and misused the most.

To avoid too many details here, I will try to illustrate what I mean with one example. One of the postulates (namely assumptions) in Dalton’s atomic theory is that atoms of elements combine together in a unique, whole number ratio to form a compound. Although Dalton could not directly see such atoms, he postulated the above in 1808 in order to make sense of, understand, explain certain chemical facts – the existence in Nature of elements, compounds and mixtures, and the existence in Nature of certain laws obeyed during chemical reactions.

The questions that immediately arise are: Why would atoms want to combine together? Even if they do so for some reason, how do they combine together? Is there a special glue that Nature uses to stick them together?

Dalton had no answers. But, it was obvious that in order to make sense of the above facts, he was forced to make the above assumption. The function of a theory is to help us make sense of the relevant facts. That is all. The assumptions in the theory themselves might raise deeper questions, but it is important to know that the answers are not within the purview of that theory. If those questions could be answered, then the assumptions would have been correspondingly more fundamental. In the 1850’s thermodynamic theory provided the answer to the above ‘why’ question and the first quarter of the 20th century provided the answer to the above ‘how’ question with the help of quantum theory. Every theory has its own starting points (which are its postulates) and anything deeper than that is not within the purview of that theory.

Similarly, in what I consider Gary’s extremely powerful theory to explain what life is all about there are certain fundamental assumptions (such as the soul deciding to bring certain lp’s and fp’s in the given lifetime, etc.) and these might raise certain questions for which there might be no answer yet. But, that is perfectly okay. What is really important is: How well do these assumptions explain the facts that these are meant to explain? In my opinion, Gary’s theory is a total success!

It meant everything to me to know from Gary himself the answer to my above question. Although I find it beneficial sometimes to look at it as a game played by the Universe, it does not matter, and my major focus is on the fundamental ideas of Gary’s in order to understand, appreciate and apply them in life.

These were the two questions that I asked during the Authentic Power Course. I will discuss in the next post how the Universe continued to play its role.

With love and trust,
Sundar

Dear Doug,

I must add that one of the important highlights of the Life School opportunity for me is a chance to develop a gradual understanding of the terms “vulnerable” and “vulnerability”. I had no clue as to the correct usage of these terms from a multi-sensory-perception point of view, although I knew their dictionary meanings. Thanks to Linda and Gary and that live call on vulnerability! It started the ball rolling for me, mainly in terms of the discussions in the vulnerability thread. I think I now have a much better understanding and am able to attempt to understand their usage in various contexts in the media, etc. More importantly, I am able to try to interpret the usage from a multi-sensory-perception point of view.

As you might have noticed from my posts, understanding terms as precisely as possible is something I consider very important. My first question during the Authentic Power Course arose along these lines. To refer to two opposite types of parts making up the human emotional system, why love and fear? Why not love and a term that is directly the opposite of love? As I said in an earlier post in this thread, Gary’s response was so important and critical to me and meant everything to me. In my humble opinion, this has to do with developing the right perception and nothing to do with frightened parts. I think (multi-sensory) perception is as important as love.

With love and trust,
Sundar

Dear Sundar,

I cherish life examples. I experience deeper clarity and clarity of meaning through both my life’s experiences and observing and hearing about the life experiences of others. Most of my interactions with the spiritual partners I have come to know through my association with The Seat of The Soul involve each of us sharing our life experiences and then attempting to relate our thoughts, actions, and emotions back to what we are learning about creating authentic versus external power. It occurs to me the Universe has precisely created my Physical Reality and in turn a Life School for me because my experiences in life are such wonderful teachers.

Words are for me rich but often limiting. A picture is worth a thousand words and for me an experience is worth a thousand times a thousand words. In one of my earlier post on vulnerability I shared my experience of sharing with my wife about my addiction to pornography. In that moment it was my most rich contribution to finding the meaning of being vulnerable. Like experiments are to the scientific method I find recalling and sharing life experiences and reflecting on the meaning of these experiences supportive of my growth and progress.

You posted earlier that your major focus was on the fundamental ideas of Gary’s in order to understand, appreciate and apply them to life. I would love to learn from your examples of how you are applying Gary’s ideas to your life and what deep meaning they are unlocking for you. I believe this deep sharing is a big part of spiritual partnership.

With love,

Doug