Seven Fundamentals
SEVEN FUNDAMENTALS OF THE MASTER SECRET From the book "Wellness: Just a State of Mind? by Eldon Taylor, Ph.D.
The first fundamental is you, the absolutely awesome and incredible you. Not the you of self-doubt, not the you that fears rejection or failure, not the you that questions your abilities, but the real you. Those other you's are not you. They are synthetic you's built upon limited and false notions of who you are and what you may become. For most of us those false notions originate as we mature. In our very early attempts to achieve acceptance, we often trade off our real selves. The Desire to be loved is so strong that many of us give up love or respect for ourselves to obtain security. That trade-off never works, because what we are insecure about in the first place exists within ourselves. The usual response, however, is to find some wise person, guru, or mentor to solve our problems, to show us the way. Consequently the last place we search for serenity, fulfillment, and happiness is within. we are all too often too involved in our out-there search to look within ourselves.
Happiness is a state of mind. The kingdom is within. The real you is a higher you, a higher power that resides within you or is available to you whenever you ask or seek. The fact is, it is your birthright to manifest the glory of the incredible you. You absolutely have the power and ability to experience all the bounties of life, to experience many literal miracles in your life -- for you yourself are a miracle, and all that you are or can ever be is a gift.
So the first fundamental is you. The power resides within you. No one else can do it for you. Your thoughts are reflections of your expectations. What has been sown in your subconscious mind is what you reap. Doubt produces failure, fear yields anger, and belief in limitation is the greatest of all self-fulfilling prophecies.
For eons the sages have advised the development of mind power. All things seem possible for the person who somehow masters this feat. History bears witness to the techniques and teachings that aim solely at controlling the mind to find the higher self within. From yoga to hypnosis, the objective is always first to contact the power within. Some seekers have been successful in contacting that power, but most have met with only partial success. Why? It isn't because the theory is in error or even because the method is necessarily flawed. It is because only you can do it for you. for most seekers, the years of training, the time-consuming rituals, and the rigorous effort ultimately have sufficiently discouraged them, and their attempts have ended in just another failure.
The exploration of the ultimate frontier, the human mind, has changed all of this Today you can tap your own unlimited potential, creating productive realizations of your real self-- the self that you know is inside of you, the self that can succeed and is entitled to joy and happiness. And you can do that in an almost effortless way.
The Asclepiads of ancient Greece altered the subconscious language of those whose lives were shallow or incomplete or missing health and happiness by offering experiences that taught the inherent truth: you are what you think yourself to be. Healing and wholeness were restored in Asclepiad centers through realizations that emerged from the language of the subconscious -- usually dreams.
Fundamental 2
The second fundamental is that thoughts are things. The thoughts we have reveal the beliefs we have about ourselves.
Listen to how we talk to ourselves. Is the language from the inside reflecting optimism, or is it filled with negative and self-limiting ideas? Is luck merely happenstance, or is it mental preparedness meeting opportunity? One of the most successful men in America asks every potential executive this question: Are you a lucky person? If the answer is no, the self-fulfulling prophecy is most definitely true, as least regarding advancement in this executive's empire. So I ask you again: do you consider yourself to be a lucky or an unlucky person? Do you expect good in your life? Do you expect your children to succeed? Your spouse to bring joy to your relationship? Your boss to recognize your efforts? Your fellow workers to admire and respect you? Your neighbors to love you? The guy in traffic to slow down and let you in? Or do you really expect him to flip you off?
What you expect is what you get. Science refers to this phenomenon as the Pygmalion effect. It is a fact: if you expect the worst, you get it. And some of us must love it because we keep on getting it. Oh, we may complain about it, we may yell and scream when it happens, but what do most of us do about it? Most of us speak and act as though there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. After all, isn't life full of "normal" events that produce "normal" responses? Isn't it normal to become angry for being cut off in five o'clock traffic? Isn't it normal to become fearful when the boss speaks harshly? Isn't it normal to be frustrated with a child's lack of respect or self-responsibility? Isn't it normal to become stuck or just fed up?
Such reactions may be normal, but are they appropriate or conductive to happiness? Has anger ever produced a peaceful sense of harmony within you? Has it ever solved a problem or led to anything other than more anger, guilt, and feelings of being out of control? Such reactions may be normal, but another word for normal is average, which can be defined as the best of the worst and the worst of the best. Neither end of this definition is the highest best of who you really are.
You are your thoughts. You manifest your thoughts, your subconscious beliefs, in everything you experience. Do you believe you deserve happiness, wholeness, and success? You must truly know at all levels of your being that all good things are yours in order for them ever to be yours. You create your own realities. Events are not pivotal points in your life, you are the pivotal point in your life. When your thoughts are in agreement with your desires, your desires will magically materialize.
Fundamental 3
The third fundamental is to forgive and let go. That idea may be a bit startling at first, but think about it for a minute. Do you consider yourself to be a victim? A victim of your circumstances? Or are you willing to assume responsibility for who you are? As I stated earlier, there are two ways to be tied up. One is to be tied, literally, by someone else, and the other is to tie yourself, figuratively, by refusing to let go of beliefs that limit your expression of the whole and complete being you are. In other words, as long as you shift responsibility by blaming someone or something for who and what you are, you remove from yourself the power to be anything other than partial and incomplete.
All behavior is the result of choice. Sometimes our choices are made at an unconscious or a subconscious level. For example, we choose to avoid conflict by repressing our true feelings. Later our true feelings become so strong that we can no longer suppress them, and some small incident triggers an overkill response. That is a reactive model - we have lost control. When we assume responsibility for every aspect of our lives, we get in touch with our deepest fears and feelings. The power we gain over our former, reactive behavior provides us with the ability to respond appropriately to all stimuli. That is a proactive model-- we are always in control.
The idea was offered earlier that the highest act of consciousness is inhibition of animal stimulus-response conditioning. When we accept responsibility for our every thought and action, we empower ourselves by performing the highest act of consciousness: inhibiting the natural stimulus-response reaction. But that means we no longer have anyone to blame.
In fact, as long as we blame, we effectively eliminate our ability to grow, to be in control, or to experience peace, balance, and harmony. Power to grow resides in forgiveness. Forgiving and letting go will set us free. Forgiving everyone, including ourselves, provides the opportunity to become more than we have been, which for many is but a mere shadow of our real selves. And the irony is that most of us know that we are much more than we have acted our our lives to be.
Fundamental 4
The most powerful force in the world is love. Love cancels fear. Fear is the only obstacle that must be overcome in order for all of our experiences to take on new dimensions of meaning and joy. This love is not romantic love between but the unconditional love that we give our children. We ar all children in some relative state of development, learning how to live in joy and happiness. When we truly understand this truth, it becomes easy to forgive another for acts that are selfish and self-centered -- and forgive ourselves as well. "Above all else, respect thyself," said Pythagoras. To love others, we must first love ourselves. We cannot pour from an empty container.
Contemporary studies of behavioral dysfunctions ranging from learning difficulties to criminal activity indicate one common denominator: low self-esteem. Low self-esteem grows out of fear of rejection -- rejection by a loved one, an employer, a stranger, anyone who might laugh at our efforts or who would misunderstand or disapprove. On the other hand, high self-esteem grows our of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is self-love. Self-esteem comes from self-love. We cannot love anyone unless we love ourselves.
Most addictions are the result of low self-esteem and the manner in which we choose to cope with our fears of rejection. Once we get past the inability to love ourselves, we find the ability to love everyone in an unconditional way. That unconditional love does not mean that we necessarily approve of everything everyone says or does, only that we have sense enough to assume responsibility to chang what we can change and let be what we cannot change.
When our attitude is one of love, the world fills our lives with others who live the same way. We really do attract others into our lives, almost as if we were mental and behavioral magnets. Suddenly our attitude of love attracts the right people and the right circumstances into our lives, and then the joy, the happiness, and the success we have always been entitled to flourishes.
Loving thoughts breed loving thoughts breed sinister thoughts. When we desire to be miserable, the last person we seek company with is the one who is happy. The opposite is equally true. Love is indeed the peace that passeth understanding. Love is the creative force of life -- and joy, happiness, success, balance, and harmony are its natural fruits.
Fundamental 5
The fifth fundamental is that acceptance is mastery. Loving unconditionally suggests accepting others as they are. Furthermore, loving unconditionally suggests accepting yourself as a whole and complete being on the journey of learning we call life.
Acceptance, love, and forgiveness are as necessarily interrelated as each side of a triangle is to the triangle as a whole. Acceptance is the natural process we knew as children. When light faded into night, each of us accepted that this was the way it worked, and we learned to live accordingly. As we grew older, we began to manipulate our world by means of electricity. Some things in the world can and even should be manipulated to our benefit -- turning the dark into a bright space by flipping a light switch may be one of them. But there are other elements in our environment over which we have absolutely no control, nor should we. Attempting to change other people into what we what them to be by manipulating them is what many of us have spent our lives doing.
The best way in which each of us can influence our environment is by example. When we accept other people for who and what they are, we have taken the first step toward accepting ourselves and contributing to the improvement of any condition or situation. Krishnamurti once stated that "you are the world." When we reflect peace and joy from and inner level of being, the world mirrors it back to us. When we judge, condemn, hate, lust, and so on, the world shows us these qualities. The world is a mirror, for the principal function of the world is to provide us the opportunity to learn.
What we resist, we often become. What we like least in another is almost always a reflection something in ourselves. When we love and accept ourselves, we love and accept others. Each individual who comes into our lives is a teacher. Each has something to contribute to our learning. We in turn have something to contribute to their learning. When viewed from this perspective, our every transaction with another individual transcends the limitations of manipulation.
The fifth fundamental has been called the Golden Rule. Treat others as though they were you, and treat them according to the best you there is. Then the rest just happens. What goes out is what you get back. Just as the story in the Bible of the prodigal son teaches us that God has already accepted and forgiven us, so this fundamental suggests that for many of us the least of our brothers and sisters has been ourselves. Accepting and loving ourselves provides the ability to accept and love others, just as accepting and loving others provides the ability to accept and love ourselves.
Acceptance is grace, for acceptance cannot exist without forgiveness and love. With this perspective as the mandate of our experience, we empower ourselves and the world around us. we see clearly that every experience in our lives has occurred to teach us. We can choose to learn quickly and advance, or we can choose to stick around to receive another of those not-so-favored experience until we do learn. Acceptance will accelerate our personal growth and deeply enrich the quality of every experience.
Thus we all can choose to examine each experience for the good. Just as easily as we can complain and flail about, we can say to ourselves, "I can't wait to find the good in this experience."
This thinking is not crazy of Pollyanna-like. Purely practical logic teaches us that becoming angry or stressful has not and does not produce happiness or joy. As a matter of fact, anger or stress only produces more anger or stress - to say nothing of the toxins such negatives generate in our bodies to slowly poison us.
Fundamental 6
Martin Luther King once said, "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." He went on to say that this mutually related network of reality is the fabric of the human condition.
The sixth fundamental, the, is interdependence, the principle that each of us is an aspect of the whole. Each of us invites respect or disrespect according to what we give others, all others. Down through the ages this concept has been given many labels, including the popular label karma. It is called reciprocity. What we sow is indeed what we reap.
Interdependence means individually assuming responsibility for any condition that is contrary to the quality of humanness in its highest form and then acting to produce, out to the condition or situation, balance and harmony for all. That is not to say that we take up causes and then shove them down someone else's throat. It is to say that we can work in harmony through example and right action to produce and environment that is loving and nurturing for all.
Many people operate in a codependent manner. Their method of assuming responsibility is to manipulate others by placing blame, finding fault, or assuming a contractual posture that goes like this: "If I do this, will you...?" or, "If you love me, you would..." and so on. Codependence is manipulating another person to provide you with security, sensation, and power. If someone else cannot live or function without you, then your self-worth has been validated -- and vice versa. A codependent is a victim, a victim both of his or her surroundings and of other people. The need to control another person is a classic symptom of codependency. Codependency grows out of insecurity. All insecurities are eternally oriented. The codependent sees stimuli through the lens of expectation. Expectation is a contract that goes like this: " I will behave this way, if you behave this way;" or, "If yo behave that way, I will behave that way." The fear of unfulfilled expectations gives rise to internal conflict.
Happiness is a state of being. It exists moment to moment in the eternal now. If happiness doesn't exist, conflict takes its place, even if the conflict is only the difference between what we think we should be experiencing and we are experiencing. In other words, when we have what we desire, we experience joy. Furthermore, when what we experience is unconditional, as opposed to contractual, then we experience only joy.
Insecurity fuels fear, and fear is a very creative force. What we fear most is therefore very often what we create as our experience. Instead of accepting what is, we project what might be or lament what might have been. We are responsible only for ourselves individually. We must be whole before any event in our lives will be.
Live in the now, for now is really all there ever is. Avoid manufacturing illusions. Where you are is where you are, and that will change only if you do. You, not others, are responsible for your happiness. You are the world!
Fundamental 7
The seventh fundamental is the culmination of all the fundamentals of success. That culminating principle is this: Do It not! This is a world of action, not procrastination. For anything to change, you must do the changing. Nothing happens until you make it happen. Only you can do it for you. So do it now.
Most desires for improvements and alternatives for action are relegated to tomorrow and tomorrow never comes. if you want success, you must act. Success will not just happen. An excellent definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting a different outcome. To get off the pat that has never provided happiness, harmony, prosperity, success, peace, or balance, you must get off the path. You must do something different. Not to do so is insane.
Do it now. Each day do what you can to produce the desired objective, and do it with enthusiasm. Realize that you are in charge and the fruits of your efforts today will be the food of your being sooner than you might think.
If the world was a world of theory, then none of us would be here. Nothing is this world stands still or waits. No action is inaction. Not to act when an opportunity presents itself is to choose to pass on the opportunity, regardless of its nature. Not to know is one thing; to know and then to do nothing is another. To know but then to fail to do is really a voice that says, "I am already happy with everything; I'm perfect." More power to you if this is so.
If it isn't, then when opportunity knocks, open the door, and be willing to meet opportunity with preparedness. You will soon discover that you are the luckiest person in the world. If you seize every opportunity with a positive expression of joy and a commitment to improve every day in some way, then luck and joy are all that will ever knock.
Do not put off until tomorrow what can be enjoyed today. Follow the Seven Fundamentals, and wisdom will show you the way. You will know what is in your best interest, and if you act, your best interest will be realized. Trust yourself, believe in the incredible you, power your thoughts with desire, accept, forgive, love, let go, and the secret of success will yield its unlimited cornucopia of joy.
Do it and do it now!