How to set your “North Star” to the path of Light

Please note: If you want to be send notifications of my new videos about “Carpet Work Facilitation,” you must sign up by clicking this link. Only if you sign up will you be sent notifications about new facilitation training videos. – Dmitri

There’s a weird thing about how people generally handle traumatic experiences.

They often don’t say, “Wow, I’m glad that weird aberration to my normal experience is over.”

Instead, they unconsciously say, “That bad thing must have happened to me for a reason.”

Then they’ll often conclude, “The reason that bad thing happened to me because I’m on a bad, dark path in life.”

Then that new belief — that they are essentially stuck on a dark path — makes healing difficult.

They start to expect (and even seek out) bad experiences, and ignore the opportunities for good ones.

“I’m on a dark path” easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In this new 6-minute video, I talk about how you can recognize when you’ve gotten on to a path of darkness, and how you can get off of it. I also share some examples of people making that shift

If you are interested in healing, you’ll almost certainly want to know the ideas I present in this video.

A heart-centered approach to integrity, accountability, and excellence

Too often we use “integrity” and “accountability” to beat ourselves up — or to beat up other people.

I think we can do better than that.

And after blowing my own word — right after teaching about accountability on a recent men’s weekend — I learned some great new stuff about integrity, accountability, and the state of your heart.

I’ve posted what I learned in the video above.

Integrity is an important tool for creating great things in your life. There’s no doubt about that.

But if you blow your integrity, you must know how to handle it so you can get back on track, feeling even better than before.

… And that’s where most of us fail.

When you blow your integrity, it’s not enough to “own” that you did it. It’s not enough to “get back into integrity” with other people.

You have to look at what happened in your heart when you didn’t keep your word.

In this video I share a new view of accountability that takes your heart into account… Because it does no good to “get back into integrity” with other people, if, deep inside, you’ve given up on yourself.

If you are at all interested in integrity and accountability, I really think you’ll want to watch this video.

P.S. Please share this video with anyone you think might appreciate it. I know it’s an issue a lot of people struggle with; hopefully this will help.

If you’d like to be updated when I post new articles and videos, sign up in the sidebar to the right.

Going beyond your “breaking point” and staying in the light


 

Here’s the transcript of this video if you’d prefer to read it…

Hi, this is Dmitri Bilgere, and I’d like to talk to you today, real briefly here, about a conclusion that I’ve seen in myself and in others, that we unconsciously draw.

…And when we draw this conclusion, everything goes off the rails.

I’ve been seeing it in myself, I’ve been seeing it in clients, I’ve been seeing it in other people. And I want to share it with you so that you can start to develop an awareness of when this is happening, and begin to make a choice about it, rather than having it be something that just occurs, and you are left with the aftermath of it.

“I have to step out of the light”

Now as you may have guessed from what I have written on the board here, the conclusion that people draw is “I have to step out of the light.”

Let me give you an example of this to show you what I mean, and to show you why this is so toxic. I’ll give you an example from my own life.

We all have longings

We all have longings of our hearts that are worth taking the time to get in touch with: they are great longings. And one of the longings that I have to be really a fountainhead of light, a source of light, a source of inspiration for people. To really encourage people to continue to step into goodness, to continue to step into virtue, to encourage them in believing that a better life is possible for them, and to go for it.

This is important to me, it gets me out of bed in the morning. I wake up in the morning, and that prospect, of being that kind of a light, it works for me. It moves me forward.

But life happens

So, what happens? Life happens. The other day I started the day with this intention, but, as the day was going by, I was noticing that nothing was working the way it was supposed to work. It seemed like everything was breaking.

  • My body wasn’t working the way it was supposed to — I felt lots of inflammation, and headache, and joint pain.
  • My relationship wasn’t working the way it was supposed to — Fawn wasn’t doing things the way I would like her to do things.
  • And other things just weren’t working out — even the car was breaking.

There’s a breaking point

There’s this way that things “stack up” in us. And it was “stacking up” in me.

So before my day went wonky, I was “I want to be a source for the Light. I really believe in goodness, and I’m in touch with it, and it’s all great.”

But as the day went on, I became “Oh, the car doesn’t work. Oh, I’m feeling really sore in my body. Oh, Fawn’s not doing what she said she’d do.” It was one thing after another.

And you can imagine what happened. They call it “reaching your breaking point,” but what’s really happening is we say, “in the face of this much stuff not going my way, I have to step out of the light.”

And we decide we have to step out of the light

So I want you to start asking yourself, what is the moment where you draw the conclusion that “Ok, at this point, I have to step out of the light”?

What that looks like for me is this: I say, “Okay, trust and faith are all well and good, but in this circumstance, where this many things haven’t gone my way, it’s time for me to go fix things.”

So I go into what I call “Mean Dad mode,” to really make people “straighten up and fly right.” Or I get into “fix it” mode, where I really double down on stress and pressure to “make it happen.”

Perhaps you can relate to this kind of thing. These are the kinds of actions we take AFTER we have decided that we have to step out of the light.

So, what I did was, I stopped for a moment. I turned and opened up, and said,

“Wow, I really see that in the face of enough things not going my way, I believe I have to step out of the light until I get things fixed.”

But the big question is, is that really true? When I turn to the light with that question, what do I see?

The question I’m always asking

It seems like I’m always asking, “When you turn to the light, is that really true?” Looking to an authority higher than your own mind is a core of my work.

So, in this case, when you turn back to your deepest inner knowing, the Light, God, Source, whatever you call it — is it really true that, under certain circumstances you are destined to have to step out of the light?

For me, I get this answer: No, it’s not true.

Seeing that I am not fated to step out of the light when enough things don’t go my way has opened a whole new door for me.

Now when I reach that point that I normally reach — where I start to decide that I have to step out of the light and fix things, and be in the darkness till I have things working again — I know, deep inside, that I have the option of staying in the light.
So my experience is different. Instead of being “I have to make this work,” It’s more like, “Wow, I don’t know what I’m going to be like staying in the light in this circumstance.”

  • I don’t know if I’m going to be more patient.
  • I don’t know if I’m going to have more forbearance.
  • I don’t know if I might be stronger with people, and be more demanding — but be demanding in a way that’s heart to heart with people.

I actually don’t know who I am on the other side of the decision to not step out of the light.

But I am certain of this: however I behave in the light will be better than how I’d behave out of it.

Because surprises happen when you stay in the light anyway. That’s even when miracles happen, because you are living your day in a completely new way.

Give it a try

I know this is a fast way to explain this, but I want to get these ideas across to you quickly, so you can start playing with them.

Here’s what I suggest:

Start keeping an eye out for where it is your “breaking point” is…

…And start to see that “breaking point” as the point where you lose heart and make the decision that you have to step out of the light.

Then ask your Inner Self of Something Higher, “Is it really true that I have to do that?”

If it’s not true, then stay with the light, and start to see what happens when you go even further with it. I think you’ll really be surprised by what’s possible.

Posts about related topics

Go for what you want by understanding your longings

How to get back in touch with the source of your motivation

If you want to be generous it’s good to be rich

The fundamental mistake that causes you to lose heart, and how to avoid it

How to get recharged when you are too worn out to get recharged


If you’re really going for the life you long for, you’re going to find that sometimes you’re worn out, out of juice, and unequal to the situation you find yourself in.

Too much is happening, and you’re emptied out. [Read more…]

Why “Do your best, then relax” doesn’t work, and what does

When I was a kid, I got hooked on a song from the Disney film “the Happiest Millionaire.”

It’s called “Fortuosity.”

In the movie, a happy-go-lucky guy dances around and sings about how “My philosophy is do your best, and leave the rest to fortuosity.”

The message of the song is simple: “Do the best you can, and have faith about everything else.”

http://youtu.be/k-mDrxLVuVU#t=1m20s

I remember I really loved that idea when I first heard the song.

But even as a kid I remember thinking, “How do I do that? How do I do my best and have faith about everything else?”

It’s a great deal — with a catch

It certainly sounds like a good bargain:

If you

  • do your best, then you
  • get permission to relax and have faith in the Divine (by whatever name you call it) to take care of the rest.

“Just do your best and leave the rest to fortuosity.”

But there’s that catch…

But it’s a deal with a catch… And the catch is this:

You rarely really know, with certainty, that you did your best.

And if you don’t really know that you did your best, the whole deal falls apart.

If you’re going to do your best so you can relax and have faith, you actually have to achieve “doing your best.”

And it turns out that asking yourself “Did I really do my best?” is a great way to drive yourself crazy … Because you can always find a way in which you probably could have done what you did even better.

Because you never really know you did your best, you don’t get to “just relax and trust.” You just get more tension as you strive to do your best “good enough,” so you can finally relax.

“The Deal” has it exactly backwards

The fundamental problem is this:

The deal that life offers isn’t “Do your best, and then you can relax and have faith about the rest.”

The actual deal is “Relax and have faith. Then you’ll be able to do your best.”

It’s a completely different approach… and it has a completely different result.

You can’t do your best from a poor state of mind

If you are feeling unsupported in life, alone, or afraid, you’ll inevitably set the bar for “doing your best” impossibly high. That’s because when you are upset you confuse doing “your best” with “doing everything so well that I finally feel safe in life, once and for all.”
Fundamentally what you’re saying is “I’ll be perfect, then I’ll be able to feel good inside.”

And that’s exactly backwards.

You have to care for your heart first

You need to say, “I’ll care for my heart first, so I feel good inside. Then I’ll discover what I’m moved to do in the external world.”

Once you’ve cared for your heart, you’ll

  • be in your best state of mind
  • be authentically you
  • feel faith, feel taken care of, and
  • feel in the current of Divine Love and Mercy.

And from that state, you won’t need to make any deals about “doing your best” so you can finally relax. You’ll automatically know when you need to strive, and when you can let go and relax.

The state of your heart = the state of your life

I know I’m always on about “caring for your heart first.” That’s because I want these posts to be a constant inspiration and reminder for you to look to and care for your self in every situation.

We live in a world that does not value taking care of your heart. I don’t have to tell you that. But if you really want to actually enjoy your life — not to mention live it well, and have the best chance of achieving what you care about — you have to be one of the people who goes against the crowd and who makes it a priority to care for the state of your heart.

As I’m fond of saying on this blog, “the state of your heart equals the state of your life.” Please take that seriously. It’s my hope that these posts help you start to see that every situation is one in which the state of your heart is important.

Many people go through life disconnected from their Source of Mercy, so they inflict merciless lives on themselves. Or, like in the case of “do your best, then you can relax,” they wait to achieve some sort of perfection before they open to Divine nurturance.

But the Source doesn’t say “perfect yourself then open to Love.” If anything, the Source says “open to Love and be perfected.” There is mercy for the hearts of those who look. I suggest you go to that mercy first.

Related Posts

The fundamental mistake of losing heart

How to get back in touch with your motivation

The “healing examples” video on the coaching page

Maybe you shouldn’t jump off a cliff

How to be the “empty cup” that calls forth compassion and healing

Self-Compassion: Healing’s Secret Ingredient

 

The fundamental mistake that causes you to lose heart, and how you can avoid it

There’s a Fundamental Mistake at the core of every loss of heart:

Believing that if you can’t see a way towards achieving your heart’s longing, it means that there is no way forward.

There you are, pursuing your heart’s longing. Perhaps it’s to find a great job, or to build a great relationship, or to lose weight and develop stellar fitness.

You’re buzzing along, but then something gets in the way.

There's no way forwardWhat “gets in the way” will vary. It may be that you’ve tried everything you can think of, but still can’t seem to land the job you want. Or it may be that you’ve tried “spicing things up” with your spouse, but your spouse hasn’t responded. Or it may be you tried dieting, but diet food all tastes like sawdust and is flat-out boring to eat.

You hit a problem that is in the way, and you can’t seem to get past it.

In the face of that problem, you make the Fundamental Mistake: On a subconscious level you conclude, “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works to bring me closer to achieving my heart’s longing. Therefore, there must not be a way forward.

And that’s the moment you lose heart. [Read more…]

How to be the ’empty cup’ that calls forth compassion and healing

As I’ve been preparing for this series of newsletters about compassion, I’ve been most surprised by two things —

First, by how hard it is to precisely define compassion in a way that really encompasses it — and

Second, by how well you can be guided in being compassionate by simple “do and don’t” -style rules.

Today I want to talk about the experience of compassion… And to give you the first surprising thing I’ve discovered about using compassion to bring healing to yourself and to others.

What is compassion?

Of course, I’m not in any way the first person to write about compassion — it’s a BIG subject. The Buddha said that “Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others.” Some have described it as an “emotional resonance.” I think of it as “feeling for” or “feeling with” someone as they are going through difficulty.

But rather than struggle with definitions, let’s talk instead about the sensation of compassion — where the “rubber hits the road” in your experience.

How do you know if you are feeling compassion, for yourself or for someone else?
Click here to read the rest of this entry