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Good morning, good morning – good afternoon.
If I say it’s morning…
Thank-you for taking some time for me today.
I’d like to talk about some of the realizations that I’ve had over the last 20 years.
And by the way, this month is the 20-year anniversary of Avatar®.
According to some, if you have enough information,
everything in the physical universe is predictable by the physical laws of cause and effect.
But when you add awareness to the universe, all bets are off.
Nothing disturbs the direction of events as much as an increase in awareness.
Now one of the realizations that I had in the 80’s was that I was thoroughly indoctrinated –
by other people,
who were thoroughly indoctrinated by earlier people,
who were thoroughly indoctrinated by still earlier people.
Time seemed to be the only thing changing.
It’s remarkable to realize that people all have the same number of minutes in an hour,
and everybody is doing something every minute of that hour.
Something…
And most of my minutes were taken up by emotional habits,
indoctrination, waiting, or reacting to some pressing priority.
And I got to thinking that the real fortune of life was how many minutes I had to spend.
And it was costing me a minute every minute just to hang around.
Did I really want to spend my minutes on some mentally indoctrinated program
that was being passed generation to generation like some flu epidemic?
My consciousness, particularly the intellectual part,
seemed to be this great pile of facts and beliefs and theories,
and they were pouring off the end of a conveyor belt that reached back into eternity;
cause and effect, over and over.
One afternoon in our dining room, floating in the green slime of a sensory deprivation tank
- I’m sure you’ve heard about that -
I discovered a thought that hadn’t come off of the conveyor belt.
It didn’t have any precedent.
Want to know what that thought was?
“I am.”
“I am.”
Now where the heck did that come from?
I mean, it wasn’t Egyptian, it wasn’t Greek, it wasn’t Roman;
and there was no concatenation of beliefs that stretched back into Asia or China.
And it wasn’t “I am” because I’ve been brought up as an “I am-ist”.
There were no earlier, similar traumatic events;
no incidents of alien brainwashing.
I am.
I mean, there it was, just totally independent of anything that happened before.
I am.
A primary – a source thought.
Whew. I really felt like I got my money’s worth for that minute.
I am.
Avra knocked on the hatch and said, “I’m home, honey.”
I opened the hatch and stood up,
green slime clinging to me so I looked a little bit like ‘swamp thing’.
“You know what, Avra? I am.”
She cleaned off a little place on my cheek and gave me a kiss.
“Of course you are, honey.”
“No, no, I mean I really am. I used to be ‘because’, but now I am.”
She raised one eyebrow.
“I used to be because of what was, but now I am what I am.
You know, like Popeye the Sailor Man –
‘I am what I am and that’s all that I am, I’m Popeye the Sailor…’”
She didn’t say anything,
which you have to admit is unusual for a woman.
Just kidding…
Well to keep everyone from thinking I was crazy
I needed to bring a few ‘because’ people over to the ‘I am’ side –
and I needed a quicker way of doing it than 6 weeks of pickling in a brine solution.
And that’s the short story behind Avatar.
What happened is that I moved from being a secondary to the past to being a primary for the future.
I woke up as source.
And I realized I could intentionally choose to believe anything I wanted,
and in one way or another the world would cooperate with me.
There was a new sense of personal responsibility that I was acting out of my own choice,
rather than reacting to pressures from the world, or from the past.
Now to some, personal responsibility is frightening; to me it was a cornucopia of grace.
And I don’t mean to imply that I started manifesting gold bars or a pink Cadillac,
but what I could do is feel what it would be like to own gold bars and a pink Cadillac.
In other words I could preview the experience.
And if I liked the preview, and fixed some attention on it,
put some effort into it, the universe cooperated to make it real.
Wow – that’s interesting.
I was no longer working against the universe I was in alignment with it.
Reality was adjusting to my beliefs.
Now it was a slow-moving process rather than a “poof”.
But that was a good thing, because I have short spells of thinking about things
that I wouldn’t particularly want to become a reality.
So the universe gave me a little time to be certain before it started transforming. Good planning…
And I began to notice how many different and contradictory beliefs there were in the world.
The ‘because’ people were digging through the past for evidence
to determine whether or not they should accept a belief.
I was more interested in where a belief was going.
You know, where would it take me?
I’d throw on a belief, you know, work it around ‘til I was fairly certain,
and see what experience it led me toward.
And if I didn’t prefer the experience,
I’d discreate it and throw on another belief, and head for a different experience.
Now you see why I needed company?
Some of the ‘because’ people kept yelling at me about “truth, truth” –
which I have no problem with, because I’ve made up plenty of truth.
For the record, that was a joke…
Did you ever notice that what you believe about truth
generally has more influence on you than the truth itself?
Facts don’t last long.
You’ve probably all heard the expression, “it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you make of it.”
That’s because the facts are whipping by; they happen and they’re gone.
The only history that factual events enjoy are the beliefs that people have made about them.
And if you’re anything like me, you can remember all sorts of details about factual events –
whether they happened or not.
And as long as you’re making up your own beliefs about the facts,
my philosophy is you might as well have a positive attitude.
Attitude is sort of a forward-leaning belief.
It determines what you’re going to make of what happens to you next.
I decided whatever happens next, I’m going to make the best of it.
I mean, why would you make the worst of anything?
Don’t answer that…
As long as you make the best of what happens,
it passes and it doesn’t follow you for the rest of eternity.
Work as hard as you can, chances are good that you’ll succeed –
but if you don’t, or if something unexpected comes up, make the best of it.
If you keep your head and experience your way through tough times,
you’re going to come out better for having survived the lesson.
You’re going to have more compassion for others when they are visited by suffering.
You’re going to learn to stand straight when trouble threatens.
You’re going to have more appreciation for the things that you took for granted.
You’re going to awaken to something that is more valuable
and enduring than anything you could lose.
After all, what did you bring into the universe?
I mean, even your bones and flesh were borrowed from your mother,
who borrowed them from her mother, who borrowed them from…
You see?
So any attitude that you have toward what happened in the past is useless.
If you want to believe that everything that happened to you in the past was terrible, painful, unfair
– ok.
But don’t let that become your attitude toward the future,
or everything that is yet to happen to you will be interpreted as terrible, painful, and unfair.
It’s not what happens to you, it’s what you make of it.
What you believe about events has a longer influence on your life than the events themselves.
So I began coaxing people to live deliberately.
How much of what you believe are beliefs you’d like to have?
I mean, it’s a fair question.
Once in a while you have to ask yourself, why do I want to believe this?
What experience does this belief create?
And the story of your life, the account book of how you spent your minutes,
is going to reflect your beliefs – not the events that happened to you.
So you can be as pessimistic as you like about everything that occurred up to 1/1000th of a second ago.
Just be optimistic about what’s going to happen next.
I mean, you don’t have to change anything about the past
as long as you can change your beliefs about what is going to happen next.
How much are you going to let the past influence what happens next?
What’s your belief about that?
That forward-leaning belief is your life’s primary.
If your backward-leaning beliefs are that you’ve been abused, abandoned, and unloved;
or cheated, mistreated and heartbroken;
or assaulted, beaten, and maimed;
or manipulated, exploited, and betrayed ---
ok, aren’t you glad that it’s over with?
You can believe anything you want about something that no one knows about for sure, like the future.
And your belief, I believe, increases the chances for it turning out the way you believe.
I mean, what the worst thing that could happen to you is
that you’ll be wrong, disappointed, and do the Discouragement Drill;
big darn deal.
Now let me talk about the world.
There’s got to be more to it than just making yourself happy,
otherwise we could all rely on Prozac and Librium.
Last Saturday when you began the Pro Course, the first sentence that you read in the Introduction says,
“Creating an Enlightened Planetary Civilization® is an ambitious task.”
I don’t believe many of you would disagree with that.
What obstacles are we looking at?
War, crime, drugs, greed, insanity,
toxic foods, epidemics, pollution,
over-population, starvation – I’ll stop there.
Not to mention man-made and natural disasters.
So it’s not difficult to see that mankind is on a dangerous road.
And I’ll tell you why that bothers me.
Most good people have a tender spot for unborn generations;
it’s why wise old men plant fruit trees that they’ll never see bear fruit,
at least not in their current body.
There’s a strong instinct to protect our offspring,
even those who will not draw their first breath until long after our names
are just a memory on a weathered headstone.
The higher self knows that it has lived before, and that it will undoubtedly have future lives.
So it’s long-range wisdom to use the bodies that we temporarily inhabit
to steer civilization toward better days.
How many of you would agree that if nothing changes
the world we’re living in is headed for troubled times?
Yeah.
If mankind does not spiritually evolve rapidly,
at least more rapidly than it has over the last 10 millennia, it will not see another 10 millennia.
If nothing changes the world we are living in is headed for truly troubling times –
if nothing changes.
Someday your current life is going to be a page in history;
my life is going to be a page in history;
Avatar is going to be a page in history.
And maybe it will read from some burned-out radioactive ruin something like this:
“Around the beginning of the 21st century
there was a movement that involved a few hundred thousand people from different countries,
who came together to create an enlightened planetary civilization.
They failed.”
Or maybe it will read, from the bridge of a starship, something like this:
“The current generations of mankind, sprinkled among the planets of the Milky Way,
express their gratitude to the 21st century Wizards
who laid the foundation for an enlightened planetary civilization.”
I like that one better.
Anyway, the heart of the story is that either way it turns out, it will be us reading it.
And the last realization I’m going to tell you about has been unfolding for 15 years.
It actually began during the first Professional Course.
At the time the world was going through some of it’s darker moments of stupidity and insanity.
I was discouraged,
and contemplating whether or not to give up, drop out, and go live on some beach.
I had a pretty good nest egg, and I knew about this little beach house in Costa Rica.
I agonized over what I should do; one man, one lifetime, how do you awaken a numb world?
Even prophets have moments of doubt and despair.
So when I walked up on stage at the Harley Hotel to give a talk to the Professional Course students
I was at a crossroads.
In the late 18th century during the reign of terror that marked the French Revolution,
some 40,000 people were sentenced to the guillotine.
It became a popular public attraction to gather and watch
a line of people marched up to the guillotine and be beheaded.
And one day the Chief Judge of the Revolutionary Council was headed into the palace
to issue the 50 or 60 death warrants that he had handed out daily for almost 2 years,
and sitting on the palace steps was a young girl selling chestnuts.
She caught the judge’s eye and gave him a smile that melted his heart.
He bought her chestnuts, and that day in July 1794, the reign of terror ended.
Now, history will give you lots of reasons why the chief judge began issuing reprieves
and refused to sign any more death warrants.
But I’ll tell you, it wasn’t the chestnuts, it was the young girl’s smile.
And I know, because it happened to me 15 years ago when I walked into the Harley Ballroom.
The smiles in the front row triggered a realization that kept me going forward.
It was a very simple realization, but a very profound one.
I realized I wasn’t the only one.
Our destinies are linked by very long chains.
And that’s what your hearts still tell me.
We don’t have to work alone,
that’s a comforting message.
You’re not alone, you don’t have to do it all by yourself.
And part of that realization is that after we do our job of awakening,
there will be another able generation to complete the next stage
of creating an enlightened planetary civilization.
Our task is to lay the foundation and get the show started.
And surely, after that realization the Avatar Network
began to transform into the aligned team that it is today.
There’s an African proverb which Hillary Clinton recently borrowed.
It says, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Our version of that is, “It takes a sangha to create an enlightened planetary civilization.”
So, you never know what a smile can do.
Some of the happiest moments you will ever experience will be found in a smile –
on someone else’s face.
So how do we do it?
How do we tackle this task that some would say only a madman would even consider?
Let me read you some excerpts from the Wizard’s Pack.
“Today the majority of civilizations in their economic eras are in the decline, collapse, and decay.
Managing civilization through this critical period of transformation
and into the dawn of a contemplative era is the mission of Wizards.
Many of you will find the undertaking of this task is the fulfillment of an ancient agreement.
Every successful civilization has been the result of a core group of visionaries
that have laid the foundation and drafted the blueprint for the future.
These are really the individuals who get the show on the road. They are resourceful, often unconventional.
The immediate service they render to the earth is to awaken others,
and perhaps in the yet to be revealed scope of things,
these others will deliver unto the universe an enlightened planetary civilization.”
You are the people who know where you’re going; not many do.
And what you are doing matters.
I choose to believe that we can do it. I embrace Winston Churchill’s words:
“We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire.”
And if you think you can’t make a difference, let me tell you about trim tabs.
Buckminster Fuller, he popularized the expression “trim tab factor”
to describe a small effort at the right time and place,
that creates a major social change in the direction of cultural drift.
Like the little girl smiling at the chief judge; like the butterfly that sets off a chain of events.
Let me illustrate it.
Oil tankers are huge ships, and are about as unmanageable when it comes to steering as, well -
- a society.
Oil tankers are often more than 450 meters long,
and they can carry over 250,000 tons of crude oil.
And some tankers are so long that the crew use bicycles to travel from one end of the boat to the other.
The main rudders on these ships can weigh over 100 tons,
and it’s completely impossible by any mechanical means to turn these huge rudders
against the flow of the current that rushes down the side of a moving ship.
So how do they steer?
Well, on the trailing edge of the main rudder is a small rudder that weighs only about 100 pounds,
and it’s called a trim tab.
And when the 100 pound trim tab is turned into the rushing current of water,
it uses the force of the water to push the 100-ton rudder in the opposite direction.
How many of you weigh at least 100 pounds?
I believe the Avatar network is a trim tab,
and that we can create major social change by turning into the current of world apathy.
When everyone is feeling that it’s hopeless, and that nothing can be done to steer the world,
along comes a team of ‘trim tab Avatars’
contributing to the creation of an enlightened planetary civilization.
Wow.
You know, lazy people hate me.
I don’t care.
The purpose of existence is not to spend our minutes resting;
the purpose is to evolve qualities that will advance the race spiritually.
Qualities like kindness, service to others,
efforts that ease suffering,
help, love, reassurance, instruction.
Now the ‘because’ people are trying to control things that they don’t know how to control.
They’re trying to steer with 100-ton rudders. They’re trying to control other people’s behavior.
They’re trying to control the natural environment.
And frankly, they aren’t doing a very good job.
Avatar Wizards could do better.
Wizards influence with living examples,
with wise persuasion, and with compassionate instruction.
How do you turn a civilization that is headed for dangerous shoals?
You make more Avatars, Masters, and Wizards.
That’s the task that has fallen to our shift.
And I can see a channel toward a better future.
It’s a narrow channel, but I think if you take a quiet moment you will see it, too.
We can leverage our trim tab influence on society because
we are aligned in our task and we know where we’re going.
Creating an enlightened civilization is an ambitious task –
it’s not an impossible one.
Now I hope when you write your memoirs,
becoming a Wizard is one of the things you will talk about.
And if you can block out 13 days in your account of minutes,
I’ll see you there.