Guided Meditation | Spiritual Inspiration | Self Help Advice |

Making the Shift

Robert Holden
shares six principles to help us embrace and accept the authentic self that
lies within

By Tammy Mastroberte

When
choosing a car to drive, most people opt for automatic transmission. After all,
it?s easier than a manual stick shift, and allows for somewhat of an ?auto
pilot? option. Once the car is in drive, we can forget about switching gears.
But once a person learns stick shift driving, changing gears becomes second
nature, and actually offers more power. The same is true when we make the
decision to shift our focus from the outer world to the one within ? each time we shift it becomes easier, and we not only step into our true power, but we also discover our true nature.

During Hay House?s ?I Can Do It Toronto? conference in March of
this year, best-selling author Robert Holden spoke about this inner shift,
which he explains in his book ?Shift

Happens! How to Live an Inspired Life . . . Starting Right Now!?
And the first step is self-acceptance.

?Our life is fundamentally a tale of two selves,? Holden told the
audience. One he calls the ?unconditioned self? or the ?original you,? and the
other is ?the learned self? or ego. ?The spiritual path or spiritual inquiry is
about understanding these two selves so we can learn to identify with the truth
of who we really are,? he explained.

While the book ?Shift Happens!? offers 50 principles on ?how to be
more of who you already are,? Holden focused on six of them during the 90-minute
session, starting with the shift from the ego to the soul.

PRINCIPLE 1: THE IDENTITY PRINCIPLE
?No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance,?

Holden explained as the basis for this principle. Shifting from
the learned self ? known as the ego, the separate self or the mask we put on to
navigate the physical world ? to the unconditional self can be a profound
experience that opens us to a whole new world.

?The unconditioned self is the original you before you began to
identify with a body; before you were issued a passport; before you began to think
about school grades, calories, mortgages, cholesterol and pensions,? Holden
said.?

Catholicism refers to it as the original blessing and Buddhism as
the original face, but in essence it is the true self. ?This self already
exists. It is awaiting your recognition and your acceptance.?

Our learned self is in constant preparation and has inner doubt.
It doubts love, happiness and peace exist here in the physical world, and feels
there is something missing. Because of this, it is in a constant search for
happiness, Holden told the audience. It leads us to focus on self-improvement because
it convinces us there is something wrong with us. As a trained psychologist,
Holden said his office was full of people who believed something was wrong with
them ? and his job was to confirm it, he joked. Using ?The Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders,? he would search for a diagnosis.

?I now refer to this book as ?the bible of wrongness,?? he said,
explaining that in 1968 the book contained only 92 pages, and in the latest edition
published in 1994, there are 886 pages of possible diagnosis.

?We are frightening ourselves by telling ourselves there is
something wrong with us,? he said, explaining the goal of healing is to
remember our wholeness. ?The final act of healing is to accept there is nothing
wrong with you. Yes, you may be suffering from psychology, but who you really
are is O.K. Yes, your personality may be auditioning for a part in high
anxiety, but who you are is still O.K.?

How do we remember there is nothing wrong with us? We practice
self-acceptance.

The unconditioned self knows this is the key to life, and that the
more we accept ourselves, the more every area of our lives improve, he said.

?Self-acceptance activates the law of attraction. When you accept
yourself, not only do you attract great things into your life, but you accept
them as well. You don?t repel them. You don?t test them, sabotage them or
overlook them. You welcome them. This is the passport into your own life,? Holden
said.

He shared the best way to practice self-acceptance is through a
daily spiritual practice. This can be anything that helps us meet our true selves,
and remember who we are. ?When we pray, chant, do yoga or meditate, it?s not to
change or improve ourselves, but to actually be ourselves.?

PRINCIPLE 2: THE SPIRITUALITY PRINCIPLE
Holden introduced this principle by pointing to the large number
of people who are describing themselves as spiritual, and the shrinking amount
of those seeking spirituality through a church or religion. With this principle,
he encouraged the audience to be open?about their spirituality and relationship to God.

?When you hide your spirituality, you lose yourself,? he
explained. ?I started my training as a psychologist and was studying
psychology. I never meant to get into God, but the clearer you become about
God, the more innocent you become about happiness, success, love, abundance and
everything else you truly want on the planet.?

Referring to what he calls ?The God Inquiry,? Holden explained
that in exploring our spiritual side we are looking to learn more about God.
This does not mean knowing more about religion, but actually learning more
about our unconditioned self. Avoiding this inquiry is actually avoiding the
deeper parts of ourselves where creativity, inspiration and grace exist.

?The inquiry into God is not an inquiry about something outside of
ourselves,? he stated. ?It?s an inquiry into who we most truly are.? One of the
inquiring questions he shared with the audience was: ?From 1 to 100 percent,
how much do I let God love me?? If the answer to this question is anything less
than 100 percent, there lies our spiritual work and spiritual opportunity, he
explained. And this is where the daily spiritual practice comes into play
again.

?Are you willing to let yourself be loved by creation . . . by
life itself? We will not allow ourselves to be loved if we continue to hold on
to an idea about ourselves that says there is something wrong with us,? he
noted.

For those wondering where to start with a spiritual practice, he
quoted a prayer from a Benedictine nun called the God Prayer. ?Dear God, show
me the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is. Amen,? he said. ?Start
by spending 15 minutes with that.?

PRINCIPLE 3: THE PSYCHOLOGY PRINCIPLE
This principle states: ?The world is not just a physical place.
It?s a choice,? said Holden, asking the audience if they had tried to change
the world recently, or maybe a partner, a child or a friend because they were
not happy with something about them???Imagine if we took that effort and put it into a spiritual
practice,? he said. ?When we change our mind about the world, then we can change
the world.?

To illustrate this, Holden shard three world views with the
audience: Determinism, Adaptation and Creation. Determinism sets us up to be
victims with no choice or role in the happenings of our life. With this view,
we are blaming the world for the way our life is, and we begin to think life is
against us.??We fall into this when we lose our cell phone, and we begin to
think life is against us,? Holden said.

Adaptation is a view that came into play just after the Second
World War. It gives us a choice. The belief here is that life happens, but we
can choose what happens next. ?This is where life happens and we respond, and
it?s the response that makes the difference,? he said.

?Cognitive schools of psychology flowered teaching this.? However,
the new view today is that of the physicist called Creation, which stems from
the belief that the world is the way it is because of how we have been in the
past, and how we are today. ?The world responds to our intentions and to our
thinking,? he said. ?The world is different when we show up in a different
way.?

With
this view of creation, we can make a difference. As part of our spiritual
practice, we can take a moment ? even 10 seconds ? to imagine the world we
would like to live in now, and hold that image. ?As we hold the image, we can consider,
?How would I be if I lived in this sort of world??? said Holden. ?This is how
we can go into our day in a different way.?

PRINCIPLE 4: THE RELATIONSHIP PRINCIPLE
By embracing the concept that every being in this physical world
is connected, we realize no matter who we are, we need to rely on the help of
others. ?If you are alive, you need help,? said Holden. ?The honest truth is there
is no such thing as independence. It?s a myth.??Introducing the concepts of D.I.P. (Dysfunctional Independent
Person) and H.I.P. (Healthy Independent Person) he illustrated how everyone needs
support in life. ?Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Superman had Lois Lane. Batman
had Robin. The great artists had muses. They were all helped,? he noted.

A D.I.P. believes they are self-made, and operates with a ?me
against the world? attitude. They suffer from B.M.S. (by myself syndrome) and are
hopeless at asking others for help. But it?s a lack of trust that holds D.I.P.s
back, Holden pointed out.

?The age of the independent person is over. The age of the
independent nation is over. We need to stop telling ourselves that independence
exists, and start to get excited about what exists on the other side of
independence, which is grace and inspiration. When we allow that to happen, all
of the sudden we start to trust again,? he said.

An exercise to help us become better receivers is to use the
affirmation every morning: ?Today, I
will receive. I will let myself receive
so I can give in a whole other
way, so that I can participate in a whole other way.? If we don?t allow ourselves to receive, all of
our giving will deplete us, he explained. By opening up to receive through relationships
with others, we open ourselves to a new level of grace and inspiration.

PRINCIPLE 5: THE HEALING PRINCIPLE
The secret to this principle lies in this statement: ?The world is
finished with your past if you have.? The only way to do this is to forgive.
This is what leads to true healing, according to Holden.??Anybody who has had a past knows what suffering is, and anybody
who has had a past deserves our compassion. All of us have had moments in our
life when we would not?recommend ?life? to anybody,? Holden noted.

?Plato said, ?Be kind because everybody is fighting a hard
battle.?? Holden believes there is only one way to survive our past, and that
is to practice the miracle of forgiveness. This helps us remember who we are, and
allows us to see everything differently. Forgiveness also helps us to live in
the present tense because without it, we can?t get past our history.

?We stay in the past because we are afraid the past was our best
chance for happiness. But what forgiveness is showing us, is the present moment
is always the best moment for happiness,? Holden said. ?Forgiveness is an angel
you pray to when you need a miracle in your life. It sets us free from fear,
guilt, anger and cynicism, so we can be the unconditioned self we truly are.?

If we hang on to the past, we continue to have complaints about
the present, and this will prevent us from truly showing up in both the present
and the future, because fear of the past repeating itself will remain. It is
forgiveness that can offer us a new beginning, and can reacquaint us with our unconditioned
self.

?Forgiveness gives you wings,? said
Holden. ?The most beautiful thing about it is that nobody benefits more from
forgiveness than the person who is doing the forgiving. When we really forgive,
we understand that the world is a state of mind, and we allow ourselves to be
helped by those unseen hands ? by life itself ? so that we can be who we are
meant to be.?

Offering the audience a prayer to help them
embrace forgiveness in their lives, Holden said: ?Dear God, I declare today a
day of Amnesty in which I gratefully volunteer to hand in all of my resentments
and grievances to you. Please help me to handle well all of the peace, love,
success and happiness that must inevitably follow. Amen.?

PRINCIPLE 6: THE GROWTH PRINCIPLE
?Some people go through life and others
grow through life. My question to you is, ?Are you still growing??? Holden
asked the audience. Similar to the learned self versus the unconditioned self,
this principle looks at reinvention versus authenticity. Instead of trying to change
ourselves, we should be trying to become ourselves, said Holden.?

?There is one voice within that says,
?We have to change ourselves. We have to reinvent ourselves. We have to change
ourselves into a new person.? But there is another voice saying, ?No, just be
who you are. Be more or who you are. Learn who you are and be more of that
person,?? Holden shared, using an image from the cover of a popular United
Kingdom magazine SHE from a couple of years ago featuring the headline ?325 Ways
to a Gorgeous New You.?

?Instead of trying to change ourselves,
we have to try and become ourselves,? he noted. ?If you think something is
missing in your life, it?s probably you ? more of you, more of your real self.?

While the ego self is always in waiting
mode telling us we are not ready yet, and that we need to be patient, the soul
is always ready to do the soul?s work, he said. The ego will never be ready to
do the soul?s work because it?s the soul?s job. And no matter what the ego may
tell us, it?s never too late.

?It?s never too late to be who we truly
are and to live from our heart. It?s never too late to heal and let go of the
past ? to make contact with reality, and to take an emotional risk and go for it,?
said Holden. ?It?s never too late to follow your joy. It?s never too late to
drop the defenses and play big in the world, and be a heart in this world. The
purpose of your life is not to escape from this world, it?s to be in this world
so that you can be the presence of love that you are truly here to be, and
because of that your family and friends and everybody on this planet will be
grateful that you were here.? ? ? EE

?

Source: http://tipsonyoga.com/?p=1239

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