How to be a sacred Lotus, untouched by the rain, the suffering of others, the noise of others: what’s the secret of people that stay on the path and are happy?
What is the reason you are pulled into everything, that you are trying to help everyone, that you are a do-gooder?
I could have written this article about argumentative people, self-justifying people, people asking everyone to help them, angry people, etc. I just chose to write about do-gooders because it looks good… to you, but it kills you and your life exactly as all the other ways… OK?
When I ask people why they go out of their way to help people, they always have an answer. “I am good, I like people, I like to help.”
But the truth is deeper and uglier than that.
Selfless means just that. You have no self. You have no center. You are empty inside. You have no home to come home to.
How come you don’t have a center? Did you lose it at some point? Did someone take it away? Did “they” beat it out of you?
The truth is: You never had one. You only had peripheries, and that is the truth about you. Probably.
What is a center? A center is an organizing principle that makes sense of all the peripheries.
If you look at your peripheries it is a bunch of eclectic mish-mash. You do this, you think that, you like this, you dislike that. No rhyme and reason, no organizing principle. Mostly work at cross-purposes. [note]What is special about the lotus is that it has a strong center and a periphery that is removed, even physically, from the center. The periphery participates with life, the center of the lotus doesn’t. It just observes.[/note]
I used to be exactly like you: really. [note]Now, when I say no organizing principle, I actually lied, but I’ll get back to that later, please remind me if I don’t… It’s very important, but I don’t want to make a big detour now: it will make this whole article too confusing. OK?[/note] No center.
What would create a center for you?
Center is not a given. Center is created. By you. It is a design project. It is not “I have an idea…” and then you have a center. [note]And tomorrow you have a better idea, and then that will be your center. That is the pattern of homelessness, of being a vagrant…[/note]
Ideas are a dime a dozen, and are flimsy, unsuited to be a center. Unsuited to be an organizing principle.
My organizing principle was born in November 1992. I created it as part of my homework for a seminar.
The homework was this: find your major (principal) complaint in your life, turn it around (not change!) and make that your purpose.
My main complaint was that my life was like a roller coaster, like the life of a phoenix: I would crash and burn and then be reborn from the ashes: very exhausting. And I never amounted to anything. Never managed to “not crash” long enough to get anything of substance done.
I turned it around and created it as a purpose: The purpose of my life is “living on the edge, generating distinctions of transformation for humankind.”
You see, I didn’t change the reason I always crashed and burned, I accepted it as a modus operandi. I just created what it is for: instead of just doing it for its own sake, I snuck in a usefulness, a purpose to the whole thing.
Since then, my life has never been the same. It’s been still a long way to become who I am today, but there was a huge difference: now I had a center.
That center made me substantial. I was no longer the effect: I became the cause. And when something happened and it started out me feeling like the victim, when it started out me feeling that someone did something to me, I had a “home” to go to where I could re-interpret what was going on, given my life’s purpose, so it could all work together, seamlessly, like a symphony, all playing the same concerto. With time and practice my life got better and louder and more and more sounding like a concerto.
One of the centerpieces (did you hear I didn’t say “center”?) was another complaint: I felt unwanted. I felt that I was going to be “thrown out” or discarded at any moment.
It was born from an incident when I was two, and it stuck. And it was the default organizing principle of my life until I created something that I found inspiring and empowering.
A default organizing principle is something that you created in a moment of upset, it wasn’t designed by you to be happy, fulfilled, accomplished, healthy, etc… au contraire, the opposite is true.
Do-gooders I know share some version of my “centerpiece.” Some were adopted, i.e. given away by their real parents. Some didn’t feel they belonged, because they were small, not as sophisticated, not this, not that.
They try to earn their keep, try to earn belonging, being loved, being accepted.
Trying to earn your keep, as I used to call it, isn’t going to be a strong enough center. Why? Because it needs other people’s validation for it to be true. And other people have their own agendas.
You see, that whole “deal”: earning your keep, sounds like a business arrangement. And just like any other business deal, your value is now determined by others, not by you, and not by a higher authority.
To be a good leader you need to be a good follower.
To live a good life, you need to be a good leader for yourself: after all you have an army of servants: the ego, the soul, the body, the mind.
But if you have no leader, then, as a matter of course, all parts of you take over, and start leading your life, each their own agenda. Each part of you has a different agenda… the Soul, the Ego, the Body, the Mind… That is anarchy, no rhyme and reason to it, all pulling in a different direction.
You need to select a leader, a principle, and you become a follower to that. A servant to that. A disciple to that. [note]You could say: I’ll be a servant to Source. But do you know what Source wants? Who are you to know that? Source is so vast, how can you be so arrogant to know what Source wants… that is one of the issues with organized religion: it’s arrogant.[/note]
Then you will have the power and the reason to bring order to your aspects, to your troups and command them.
On the connection calls there is one thing we do every call: talk to our ego and our soul.
The talker, the you, is the boss. And the two aspects, the ego and the soul are the subordinates.
Your voice (when talking to your subordinates) needs to be that of authority.
I have asked for and gotten many emails with what people say (or would say) to their ego and their soul… and there is no authority there. Belying that there is not center. No organizing principle. No leader.
Creating the center is really design work, and we are not used to design anything. I am an architect: and I am better suited to designing, as it seems, because I have good design capability and 45 years of practice.
It is possible to do this design work in class, but so far my results with people have been a disgrace… not good… lol.
In the class where I invented mine, there were 175 participants and I was the only one who created something that was good enough to last beyond the class, good enough to become an organizing principle.
So, as you see, it is not easy. We haven’t been encouraged by our education, our parents, our teachers, our government to do any design work. [note]Not even architects… Just look at the buildings… yuck… Now, that was a nasty remark, Sophie… lol.[/note]
So what do I recommend that you do?
I recommend that you create something like this for your core, for your center, for your organizing principle:
I am like a lotus. It’s all good. All is well, all makes sense. It is all part of me doing my soul’s correction. My main and only job in life is to do the soul’s work, to earn the light, and do my best, so that by the end of this life the soul won’t have to come back in another person to do it again.
Everything that is happening is to give me opportunities to do my correction. Everything. My only job is really to notice and do…
In the 2nd Phase Activator class I give you the distinctions, the pieces, the clarity you will need. The attitude of the Lotus. And in the upcoming Soul Correction Class I will give you the specific moves of doing your soul correction, so you can be successful at it.
You first course will fill your tool box, then in the second you will develop the specific applications for the tools.
Just like in the Karate Kid.
We are doing the wax on, wax off phase now… We’ll get on the karate phase in the next course. OK?
But in the meantime your context and thus your organizing principle is shifting to I am like a lotus. It’s all good. All is well, all makes sense. It is all part of me doing my soul’s correction. My main and only job in life is to do the soul’s work, to earn the light, and do my best that by the end of this life the soul won’t have to come back in another person to do what I didn’t do.
Everything that is happening is to give me opportunities to do my correction. Everything. My only job is really to notice and do…
You’ll notice that suddenly you’ll make decisions from your new center. You will watch the world from your center. You’ll be impervious from your center.
This is what it takes to live a good life… and be the Sacred Lotus… to be impervious to the noise of life.
Read the original article: How To Be A Sacred Lotus: Stay On The Path And Are Happy?