Sunday’s Focus

Reflect on magic. What magical thing happened to you recently? What is the most magical thing that has happened to you in the last year? In your life? Which of your friends is the most magical?

Sunday’s Concepts

Empathy will open the door for you to have the clarity and grandeur of the mystic and the world altering talents of the alchemist. My intention is for you to revel in the magnificence of your life, function at a higher level of awareness, and beneficially impact your world.

Subjugate your subconscious mind and then subjugate your conscious mind. Bend them to the will of the higher-level awareness that exists beyond your current realities.

To do this, become a mystic and an alchemist. See the pieces and arrange them differently, better, more loving and kind, feed people, offer tools to help.

Opening to the mystic majesty of your life requires lowering your resistance, removing obstacles, and reducing drag. Continually explore your limiting ranges and expand your tolerance for healthy discomfort.

I will give you the ten enigmas to enter the land of the mystics and the world of alchemy. These are the keys to the realm. Over the next few weeks, we will explore them more fully. For now, review them and allow them to waft into your higher awareness and begin to awaken it.

Monday’s Focus

Feel into the possibility that magic, alchemy, and mysticism can become your new reality. What limiting thoughts pop into your mind first? How might you devalue them?

Monday’s Concepts

#1 – Decide that powerful personal growth is more important than all the things that cement you in your habits, beliefs, and limiting patterns. Let your decision be the foundation for your life.

The decision must be rooted in your heart and soul. It must inhabit your center. Your Hara must align with it. The thoughts, feelings, and sensations that accompany your decision must pull you toward your optimal balance point.

As a budding alchemist and mystic, you will use empathy to deeply connect with others and your environment. Your empathy will highlight previously unseen opportunities and dramatically increase your awareness.

As a business owner or leader, your foundational decision to be an alchemist and mystic will underlie the principals of your company. Every choice you make will route through those principals. Years ago, I was a vendor for Patagonia. The owner, Yvon Chouinard, made a decision that the company would only use organic cotton. He determined that using non-organic cotton was contrary to the principals of being an environmentally conscious company.

At the time, organic cotton was a novelty accounting for less than 1% of the cotton market. With Patagonia leading the way, organic cotton is now over 20% of the market and still growing. Over 50% of companies that sell cotton products are now offering organic choices.

Patagonia changed the landscape of the outdoor industry. Yvon and his people used the magic of alchemy to change the world by creating a new reality. The new reality they created was that a company of their size could make a stand and completely eliminate conventionally grown cotton.

Tuesday’s Focus

Reflect on your intentions and the decisions they require. Which of the things you value most feel like they have taken root and become a foundational part of who you are? Which of those meet your decision to prioritize powerful personal growth and which get in the way?

Tuesday’s Concepts

#2 – Take personal responsibility for every aspect of your life. Empower yourself by all means necessary, stop blaming others, and accept that success is an internally fueled journey.

I made a commitment to myself to wash and put all the dishes I use during the day in the drying rack. As I leaned a cookie sheet against the rack, it touched a bag of birdseed on the counter. The seed bag fell over and a cascade of bird seed rained down on the carpet. My initial reaction was to blame Kelly for leaving an unsealed bag of bird seed on the counter. My next reaction was to realize that I had knocked it over and that I could have taken it to the garage where it lives.

My underlying intention (keeping up with the dishes) is to maintain an organized and Spartan/Zen living space. The seed on the counter was counter to that intention. I could have moved it as soon as I saw it. If I had moved it before I started the dishes, I would not have knocked it over.

If I want to be successful as a Zen Spartan, it is up to me to maintain my awareness and a vigilance for opportunities. I will have to develop new habits and improved belief systems that elevate my game.

As I do, my awareness will increase and bring me a greater understanding of and empathy for my environment and the people in it. Deepening my empathy will highlight new opportunities for magic and alchemy. The magic and alchemy will fuel the development of higher or more subtle awareness.

Wednesday’s Focus

When do you typically have success taking personal responsibility? Where do you still fall into blame, demand, and expectation?

Wednesday’s Concepts

#3 – Become more aware. Deconstruct sensory input, develop a whole-body practice, and feel your zones and edges as degrees of Being.

As you’ve read in previous weeks, I’ve been exploring the challenges I feel when I run. Yesterday, I ran 24 miles and I have been averaging 40-50 miles a week. I’ve had lots of opportunities to explore why running doesn’t feel effortless. As I run, I feel what running feels like in as many parts of my physical body as possible and in as many aspects of my other bodies as I am able. As I feel (somatically experience), I am gaining knowledge about how running influences my systems and how my bodies and components influence my running.

As I acquire information, I question my beliefs about running, aerobic fitness, balance, tolerance, determination, gravity, momentum, pain, effort, fluidity, playfulness, fulfillment, and my limiting patterns. I question how the knowledge I am discovering jives with my existing beliefs. I play and test alternatives. I explore new ways of running and new ways of maintaining fluid balance as I run. I evaluate, looking for new intelligence about how my bodies resist running.

I feel for the qualities of discomfort at my edges. I feel, as deeply as I can, what is going on in each of my bodies and how I might be limiting myself. I am using increased subtle awareness to explore how I can run more effortlessly.

Under it all, I am using the knowledge that I gain to understand how I can live more fully, fluidly, and effortlessly. I want to live seamlessly within my environment. I want to use running as a testing ground for eliminating any boundaries between my environment, others, and me.

Pure empathy is feeling everything without separation. Empathy removes the border between where I stop and something else starts. It is a cessation of the boundary between me and not me. When I can remove all distinction and the judgment, fear, and limits that go with boundaries, I become my environment. What I do becomes universal. I change and the world changes simultaneously.

Thursday’s Focus

Begin to explore what it might feel like to effortlessly take personal responsibility. Take responsible action as if it wasn’t a choice. Flow into your commitments like Shalane Flanagan running downhill.

Thursday’s Concepts

#4 – Question your values. Identify your habitual beliefs, set hierarchical intentions, and devalue drama.

Going back to the Patagonia Organic Cotton Initiative in Wednesday’s Concepts, Patagonia had been using conventionally grown cotton for 20 years. It was ingrained in the business. They had established resources, systemized product flows, and excellent profit margins. The employees had habituated to conventional cotton. It was familiar and had been very successful.

Yvon Chouinard questioned those values and habitual beliefs. He reaffirmed that being an environmentally conscious company was more important than maintaining the status quo and more important than profit margins. He made a decision without drama and the company adjusted to the requirements of organic cotton. They entrained with the affirmed values and started looking for solutions.

They incentivized existing conventional cotton farmers to switch to organic. They started a company selling organic cotton tees wholesale to other (competing) companies to help create momentum for organic and they told the organic story to their customers to create a healthy demand.

And Patagonia didn’t stop with cotton. They spent years developing new wetsuit and surfboard technologies that are less environmentally toxic. Patagonia gives 1% of sales or 10% of pre-tax profits (whichever is greater) to support environmental causes worldwide. The list goes on. They make clothing and change the world while doing it.

As a human, Yvon Chouinard had empathy for the planet and the people impacted by the chemicals used to grow conventional cotton. He embraced his empathy and used it to increase his awareness and perception. That increased perception highlighted the benefits and value in organic cotton. He alchemized the clothing industry using the heightened awareness brought on by his empathy and acquired knowledge. He is a mystic.

Friday’s Focus

Which of your current values could you reconsider? Which ones feel like they are hardwired into who you are? What fears do you have that inhibit your ability to change everything about you?

Friday’s Concepts

#5 – Increasingly tolerate healthy discomfort. Acknowledge that growth requires discomfort, expand your capacity to expand, and use the actuality of the moment to diffuse pain. Let your expansion elevate your awareness.

Back to the story of the birdseed from Wednesday’s Concepts.

I didn’t tell Kelly about the spill (well, until she proofreads this). I scooped up what I could, vacuumed up the rest, ziplocked the bag and put it in the garage.

One of the many benefits of taking personal responsibility is that the energy generated from the spill stayed in my system. My initial frustration and desire to blame brought up lots of emotion. My subconscious mind told me I should instruct Kelly on the proper and correct way to handle bird seed. I felt it in my body as uncomfortable tension. My head and upper chest felt inflated. If I had unloaded on Kelly about leaving it on the counter, I would have unloaded all that energy.

Maintaining my composure (composite energy), triggered my system into an adaptation response. It started looking for ways to expand my capacity so that the increased level of energy was tolerable.

The experience gained in the sequence taught or reconfirmed for my systems a way of being that had long term benefit. The self-empathy brought an increased level of awareness. Those new levels of awareness will give me the capacity to be more empathetic and self-empathetic in the future. Increased empathy will further increase my levels of awareness. At some point, I will enter a new realm of awareness that surpasses my current level.

Saturday’s Focus

Pay attention to the desire to diffuse the energy of frustration and blame. Get to know the aspects of your being that want to lash out. What beliefs does that part of you hold?

Saturday’s Concepts

#6 – Diffuse Internally. Advance your physical practice, learn to rotate your energy, and continually soften, absorb, and confirm.

As it was, I tolerated the discomfort (frustration and recrimination) and took personal responsibility. As I conceded that I could have done a better job putting things away, I felt a sense of relief and a feeling of conclusion. My energy body realized the curtain had come down on the drama and absorbed all the energy flowing through my physical, mental, and emotional bodies. Spilling a bag of seeds germinated into revitalization, invigoration, and rejuvenation.

One of the ways my body absorbed the energy was self-appreciation. I allowed that I was proud of myself for handling (pun intended) the spill the way I did. I confirmed mentally and emotionally that I aligned with my intentions. I allowed the energy of frustration to transform to satisfaction and fulfillment. As I did, I felt myself soften.

The better I get at this, the more I appreciate the feeling of softened fulfillment. It is more potent than any intoxicant I have tried. It is also more powerful and long lasting than any spiritual experience I have had. Self-appreciation is the catalyst that initiates fulfillment and softening.

Self-appreciation connects me to the higher levels of awareness that exist beyond my limiting patterns. Enthusiastically loving my self connects me to the higher awareness within and allows me to connect to the higher awareness of everything.

Active self-appreciation opens the door for empathy, which opens the door to alchemy and leads to the realm of the mystics.

Keys 7-10 next week!

Higher Consciousness

Step 1 – You will feel or have felt your higher state of consciousness in those actions and experiences that are incredibly fulfilling, things in your life that resonate deeply.

Step 2 – Explore the things where you feel large upwelling of energy. That feeling is an expansion of your consciousness. Let’s call it Higher Consciousness.

Step 3 – One of the principals of the Change Militia content is to make your subconscious energies conscious. When you begin to connect to those energies in a balanced way with all your bodies they become so fulfilling that the quality of the energy changes.

Step 4 – The transition from subconscious to conscious to deeply connected will change your perception of the energy.

Step 5 – Move consciously and increase your presence. Expand your connection and awareness. Begin to explore how you can perceive and feel your world more fully.

Step 6 – Balance and expand your awareness by increasing the presence and connection in your non-dominant bodies.

Step 7 – Begin to empathetically multi-task. Feel your primary connection and then begin to add other aspects in your environment.

Step 8 – Continue to deepen your connection with each of the elements around you and continue to incorporate elements farther and farther away.

Step 9 – The quickest way into this is to let down your defenses, let go of your limiting beliefs and patterns.

Step 10 – Feel yourself expand into your higher consciousness by passionately vitalizing or enlivening the sensations you feel.

* This is not a mental process, you can’t think yourself into higher consciousness. Higher Consciousness is emotional and energetic.

Why it Matters – This practice is the fundamental training to be supernatural, an alchemist and a mystic. With it, you will experience every aspect of your life more fully.

Everyday Usability – This practice will help you increase the intimacy, connection, and collaboration of every expression you make. It will increase your empathy and your ability to connect deeply.

Progression – After you can identify the feelings of higher consciousness, the passionate expansion of your being, bring it into every situation you are in to deepen your influence, connection, presence, and awareness.