Last May I got this note from The Grasshopper:

“Icebergs will melt when you smile naturally. What causes you to smile?”

What a spiritual practice smiling is. My friend, Howard talks about a “coat hanger” smile – the one you use for posed pictures. That’s not the smile I refer to.

Asking the question: “What causes you to smile?” is also an exercise in gratitude because whomever or whatever makes you smile gives you a gift that is worthy of a “thank you.”

Just notice how connected you feel the next time you smile. It’s a warm all over feeling that not only benefits you but those in your presence.

I would have to check with someone who knows more about this than I do, but it seems that there is a different energy with smiling than there is with laughter. Both are beneficial and it seems that smiling generates more inner warmth. It’s almost like laughter is yang energy and smiling is yin energy. Again, I’ll bow to someone with more expertise than I have, but it seems to be the case.

Notice when someone smiles how the twinkle comes to their eyes.

I remember having this conversation with my oldest son years ago. He has the most marvelous smile and it opens him every time he displays it. Smiles open everyone to more of life. It seems we see things with less critical consciousness when we smile.

There is more light radiating through us and from us when we smile. Also, notice the tranquility that accompanies a smile. It reminds me of another tidbit I received from The Grasshopper 2 years ago:

“The friendly face of tranquility smiles meekly without purpose.”

The mirthful mindset caused by smiling makes you more approachable and adds to your power of attraction. People are attracted to people who smile. Smiling also adds to your physical and mental well being.

I wouldn’t suggest practicing in the mirror because that will only get you an artificial countenance that has no substance behind it – sort of like a Ferrari with a Yugo engine.

Take a few moments each day and get curious about what makes you smile. It will have an effect similar to aerobic exercise – meaning the after effects continue even after the workout is over.

There is a Taoist tradition called the “Inner Smile” which is quite worthy to know about and practice. Just click on this link and learn this ancient technique used for health, happiness and longevity.

Ask yourself “What makes me smile?” at least once a day and notice how much better a prescription it is than an apple a day.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I’m thinking about re-titling my book in progress as THE PLAN. The working title currently is LIFE: IT’S YOUR MOVIE but I’m leaning towards THE PLAN.

What’s The Plan? The plan is some form of predestination, but not in the way we’ve been conditioned to that word. It’s more free-flowing and elastic than the traditional definition would lead us to believe.

“Why does this always happen to me?” is a question that suggests that there is patterning running behind the scenes that causes you to run into the same set of circumstances time and again. That’s part of the ego’s plan. That’s not THE PLAN.

“Why did this specific, unexpected, unexplainable, or unfortunate thing happen to me?” is a question whose answer brings you closer to the finding THE PLAN. The answer to this question is the plan for you could not unfold the way it is scripted unless “this specific thing” happened. This specific thing was not delivered by your ego. It is part of THE PLAN.

Who’s doing the scripting? Certainly not your ego. Your ego (bundles of conditioned, repetitive, patterned thoughts and behaviors) had nothing to do with your arrival on the planet or the plan for you. That’s because the ego wasn’t formed at your birth. But, the ego, once formed, stands in the way of your plan being fulfilled by blocking its entrance with its collection of outdated beliefs and conditioned thoughts and behaviors that keep you from being free to live according to plan.

THE PLAN is not for you to become identified with your role – a nurse, a mother, a spouse, a cowboy, a dancer, a fireman, a bubble gum factory worker. That would be the ego’s definition of predestination and it would lack any notion of free will. The Plan will happen through you in any role you freely choose.

THE PLAN remains hidden to us because of the stimulus/response conditioning that makes up the ego.

It may be helpful to know that the idea of free will has been bastardized over centuries of conditioning to mean determinism and willpower. It’s not that at all. Those are two tools of the ego that give you a false sense of who you are (role) and a false sense of progress, and they stand in the way of you finding THE PLAN.

Freewill does not exist in the customary way we think it does. We have been programmed to think we can will ourselves to do anything, and the evidence just doesn’t support that interpretation. The ego and its stimulus/response patterning stand in the way of real free will.

Authentic free will begins by recognizing that stimulus and response are acting as one integrated unit that puts us on automatic pilot. Once we become aware that they are separate components and take the time to create a space between the two of them, then authentic free will shows up. We finally realize we are no longer robots. The free choice we make when we put a wedge between stimulus and response allows THE PLAN to flow.

Out of that unconditioned awareness of free will, comes the directions to fulfill our plan.

Looking back often gives you a glimpse of the plan at work. How many times in your life have you noticed that something wonderful or fulfilling that you now experience could have never happened if something specific didn’t happen? Many times that something was not a pleasant experience, yet you, in retrospect, recognize it was a necessary step to get you to where you are now. You may have never consciously written that script but if it wasn’t written for you, you would have never arrived.

That event, unfortunate or otherwise, was the plan knocking on the door from the inside to be let out.

We don’t have the sensory perceptions necessary to recognize that a cornerstone to our future is being laid as a result of a misfortune or a trip down an unforeseen side road. That view can only come with retrospection.

What can come in the moment of misfortune or reality is the awareness to allow ourselves the humanness of our feelings and not ignore them. It’s valuable to delve deeply into a painful feeling (not the story) and feel it to its fullest. There may be tears and emotional aching. These are necessary components of the transition. This sensory exploration to the fullest is the fastest way to transmute the pain and eventually see it as an essential element for freeing THE PLAN.

Jerry Stocking, a gifted teacher, gives us an enlightening view on this transition. He says,

“The purpose of an emotion is to wash away the thoughts that are stuck in your head.”

As long as the thoughts stay in place, the pain remains and THE PLAN remains held at bay.

So who scripts THE PLAN?

Whomever you refer to as the creative force is the scriptwriter. You can call it call it God, Serendipity, Reality, Universal Consciousness, Divinity, Fate or whatever word works for you. The ego (the devil, if you like) constantly attempts to thwart the plan. If the ego allowed the plan to come through, that would mean its death and the demise of its controlling patterns.

THE PLAN is for you to discover authentic free will. When you get that wedge between stimulus and response, the floodgates open and THE PLAN comes pouring out. It doesn’t need you to shape it or control it or know in advance what it’s going to be. It just needs you to open the door so it can flow through your life.

THE PLAN will be discovered in your lifetime. If your ego has its way, you may not get it until seconds before you give up control at death, but it will come. If you want to speed up the process so you can discover the plan for you – your purpose in life, open up a gap between stimulus and response and find out what specifically was meant to flow through you. That’s THE PLAN.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

There are so many ceremonies we attend in our lifetime – weddings, funerals, graduations, baptisms, appointments, etc. The list goes on and on.

Having attended more than I can count, the memorable ones seem to share a common thread. The speaker or presenter takes the ceremony out of the ceremony. They make a pretty vanilla event into something that people can connect with on a human as well as a spiritual level.

Such was the case last night. My grandson celebrated his Confirmation. The meaning of Confirmation has changed in my lifetime from being “Soldiers of Christ” to metaphorically affixing your signature and giving approval to the decisions your parents made for you at Baptism.

The bishop who was presiding at the event stepped out of character and reached out and touched the Confirmation candidates where they live. He said, “I wonder how many of you have said, ‘this means I never have to go to church again.’ ” I wasn’t the only person who laughed aloud.

He reached past the rite and honed right in to where the receivers of his words live. It was unceremonial and quite effective in setting up his next point which was, “This is not an end but a new beginning for your commitment to your faith.”

This lead me to think of something The Grasshopper
communicated to me about 6 months ago:

“Faith is comprised of trust, not hope.”

When you have faith in something, hope is the antithesis of that which you have faith in. True faith is trusting that which you have faith in is in progress now. The minute you put hope in the mix, you have watered down your faith, and diminished your chances of fruition.

You have to trust someone or something for life to work its magic. People who are untrusting are more fearful than the average bear and stay within their cocoon. They live their life in the mind projected future which is the domain of hope.

I’ve quoted business consultant, Fernando Flores before regarding hope. He said:

“Hope is the raw material for losers.”

Trust is something that is with you now and builds confidence. Hope keeps you focused on the future and keeps the option of failure in the forefront of your mind.

This is not a lesson on positive thinking; nor is it about semantics. It’s an unceremonial way of looking at a concept that is a cornerstone of many peoples’ lives that just keeps them stuck.

Take the 7 day challenge and remove “hope” from your vocabulary and see if you sense a shift.

I grew up in Philadelphia, PA and there was a bank that used a slogan which underscores today’s blog post. The slogan was:

“Wishing won’t do it, saving will.”

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I never fully appreciated until last night how the concept of “My” is so painful.

I was watching the Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey webinar at Oprah.com last night and received an AH-HA moment. While waiting for the class to begin, they were showing footage of a woman who was discussing the end of a long marriage. Her husband left. She said she had been resisting the break-up for a long time and had finally found some peace with the situation by reading Tolle’s book, A NEW EARTH.

Then the program began. The discussion was about the ego and how it forms in us as little children when we associate a form – a person, place, or thing with the word “My.” It then becomes part of who we are. In the case of a child, the association with “my” could start with a toy. When the toy is taken away or lost, the child experiences having a piece of its identity taken away. This separation causes suffering.

Fast forward to being an adult. These associations become “my husband,” “my wife,” “my garden,” “my car,” and so on.

The word “my” also denotes ownership which is helpful in sorting out the neighborhood trash cans after a wind storm, but is less functional when discussing something which we have married our identity to.

The enlightening moment for me was how much emotional pain is associated to “my” when it is no longer “yours.” It reminded me of a phrase my mother used to use. She would say, “Children are only lent to you.” You could substitute anything from the temporary world of form in place of the word “children” in my Mom’s quote and have a spiritual mantra on which to meditate.

All forms are temporary and when we make them a part of who we think we are, we suffer.

I finally recognized the source of the pain that had been so prevalent in me for a long time. It came from the concept of “My.”

The structure of every ego contains this concept of ownership and the identification with persons, places and things as being mine.

This is not a treatise on eliminating “my” from the dictionary or our everyday language or to renounce your possessions. This is more of a signpost to recognize the workings of the ego. Recognize that it is a false identity pretending to be you. Every time you add another “my” to the ego’s collection, you strengthen it. Then every time a “my” says “goodbye” you suffer.

You are not your thoughts or collection of possessions. You are the witnessing presence that can observe the ego at work. Each time you notice, you create a little space for more of the real you to come in. This presence doesn’t require the universal cocktail known as “My-High” to feel alive.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Our thinking mind, the intellect, is a gift from the other-than-conscious part of our mind according to the late, Dr. Dave Dobson. The other-than -conscious part of our mind is where all the patterns live – patterns of thinking and behavior that have gotten formed and conditioned over the years. And Dave taught us all that patterns are purposeful – formed for a purpose – usually to get us through a period of our life.

Dave did not like the term “ego.” It was too Freudian for him. Yet, he would describe the ego in other terms – patterns that never grew up.

For example, smoking is a pattern that never grew up. After working with hundreds of thousands of smokers over the years, I can attest, with certainty, that the part of your mind that keeps you smoking is a pattern of behavior that never grew up. To a part of the smoker’s mind they are still “cool,” “one of the gang,” “like my older sister,” “tough guy,” “chic,” “independent,” “rebellious,” “debonair,” etc. You’ll never get a smoker’s intellect to agree with that because the intellect thinks it logically runs the show. The patterns run the show. The intellect is filled with the illusion of willpower and control. The illusion is sent from the patterned ego. The logic that goes along with willpower and control is, if you try hard enough, you can do anything or control anything consciously.

Dave also detested the word “try.” He would ask, “Did you ever see a deer try to stand up?” He said the deer was lying down, standing up, or somewhere along that continuum. He said we ascribed the word “try” to stages of doing something or not doing something. He said “try” is a word we learned to gain absolution. When being toilet trained, a child would learn that if they said, “I tried to make it to the bathroom, mommy,” mom would be a bit more lenient. He said “try” is a made up word that we have conditioned our mind to that has no effort attached to it. He liked the phrase, “make an effort” or the British axiom, “let’s give it a go.” According to Dave, they were grown up words that had activity associated with them. Try is something the intellect learned from the ego.

The intellect is the logician. The ego is the control freak. In tandem, they keep us stuck.

Just like you can’t correctly spell “phonics” phonetically, you cannot process reality intellectually. We just don’t have the equipment. That our senses are limited, is best stated by Lao Tzu in the ancient book, the Tao Te Ching when he says,

“The five colours blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavours dull the taste.”

The Grasshopper says,

“Your intellect will prove what it believes.”

Beliefs are patterns of thought, and the ones that aren’t working for you, never grew up. The intellect will justify your counter-productive patterns because it believes it’s under the control of the ego.

Perhaps a story will help explain how the ego keeps the intellect from being a free thinker. Pretend that you are on safari in a jungle. The guides (ego) want to control your behavior to keep you from roaming at night, so they lie to you and tell you there are ravenous lions in the area. Unbeknown to you they have recorded lion roars on a CD and have those sounds continuously playing on speakers strategically placed outside of the campsite. How likely are you to roam? Your best intellectual information tells you to stay put. It came from illusionary lions.

When Eckhart Tolle instructs us to “die before you die,” he is talking about the death of the ego. When the ego dies, the inspirations from the real you are no longer filtered through this veil of illusion and you get to use your intellect optimally.

Dave was accurate, the intellect is a gift.

The only question you have to ask is, do you want more fruitcakes or do you want something a bit more yummy?

The only decision you need to make is to observe your ego. Observing ego generated thoughts causes them to wither on the vine and drop away, making room for some new growth.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I read lots of marketing literature that is designed to walk you down a path with the ultimate goal of getting you to buy a product. Many times when you finally order the product there is some other fabulous offer that is paraded in front of you with some sort of “act now” lingo or you’ll never get this bundle of greatness again at this price. It’s marketing. It’s the scientific art of how to attract someone’s ego to a product or service. But wait, there’s more! Some do it better than others but the bottom line strategy is the same – hook the ego.

We market our products as well and the ego is also the target of our advertising. It’s the foot in the door. For example, many real estate agents will tell you that a house with a great kitchen being shown to a married couple is the foot in the door for the wife. Is that sexist? No, it’s real estate reality – hooking the ego.

Many products in the self-help arena are designed to get you something that you don’t have – confidence, power, control, wealth, health, etc. Some products are better than others but again, they are marketed to your ego. The ego gets you excited about the benefits you will receive by purchasing the product.

I have a product that is not for your ego. It’s a product that ignores your ego. In fact, your ego doesn’t want you to have this product. That’s because, if your ego allows this product into your awareness, it will begin to lose its hold on you. The product is self-acceptance. To use the marketing jargon, it’s a magic bullet!

Self-acceptance is to recognize the reality of you. The minute that happens, your personal reality begins to change. It doesn’t matter how you got to where you are. The fact is you are here – now. Accept yourself right now and a shift begins. The interesting aspect of this shift is that many things your ego wanted but couldn’t get in the past start showing up – automatically – without wanton desire. It’s the magic of self acceptance.

When you accept that you are not who you think you are – someone you made up and got comfortable with – a new you begins to emerge.

Self acceptance begins by recognizing that you are so much deeper than your thoughts and emotions. When this awareness begins to take hold, your ego begins to lose its grip on you.

Your ego is a conditioned, bunch of thoughts and patterned behaviors whose sole purpose is to keep you from finding out who you really are. It overloads you with a plethora of wants and desires that have the promise of a happy ending attached to them. The ego is a master of getting you to chase the horizon to get to the Promised Land that is always somewhere in the future. The real you is the awareness that observes the ego.

The foot in the door to the real you is to notice how the ego keeps you in place. If your ego has convinced you that you are not good enough, rich enough, skinny enough, smart enough, whatever enough, don’t fight with the conditioning. That’s what the ego wants you to do. Accept the reality of what the ego has presented, not the drama.

Let’s take being overweight as an example. The least productive thing you can do in that situation is to beat yourself up. Who’s doing the whipping? Your ego, of course. I had a lady tell me in a weight loss seminar one night, “My ass has gotten so big it has its own zip code.” Who made that announcement? Her ego. She made a judgement rather than sticking with the facts. The fact is that she was “X” amount of pounds from her recommended weight. The demeaning language to her body will never be long-term helpful. Yes, she may get herself to go on a diet with this methodology but her results will be short-lived. Then she berates herself some more and goes on another diet with the same yo-yo results.

Self acceptance is recognizing your situation without all the vitriol and histrionics. As I point out in my I LOVE MY BODY CD set, accepting yourself where you are is the springboard towards change. I am not suggesting that you say, “I’m a big fat load and that’s that.” That would be resignation and more of the ego. As Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Self acceptance is factual, not judgemental. Factual means 12 jurors could agree on it. 12 jurors couldn’t agree on “big fat load” but they could agree on being “X” amount of pounds over the recommended weight for your height and body shape.

The next step after non-judgemental recognition is appreciation. Appreciate that you are where you are now. It’s the only place you can be. That’s appreciating reality. Also, have an appreciation that to get where you are going, it’s totally necessary to know where you are now. Your appreciation of the facts helps you mentally triangulate. Jumping up and down and decrying that “this shouldn’t be happening” will delay any movement in the desired direction. Denial, non-acceptance, and non-appreciation are tools of the ego and it uses them to keep you cemented in place.

Choose to accept the reality in everything and you find the real you. The real you and reality are one. Self acceptance happens when you finally discover that your ego is the puppet show you’ve been passing off as you. Self acceptance is the pathway to change.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Prisons are full of innocent people – just ask them.

Their justifications didn’t work with the arresting police officer, the arraignment judge, the prosecutor, the jury of their 12 peers, and it’s not working on the guards or their fellow inmates – yet it continues – even in solitary confinement.

How guilty we are of making a case for staying in prison. The Grasshopper gave me this nip of nectar last week:

“You can’t justify your way out of jail; it’s against the law.”

Justifying unproductive behavior goes against the laws of reality and keeps you imprisoned.

This behavior is most evident in the “phantom” apology. It takes the shape of “I’m sorry but” or some form of “You made me do that.” How can you possibly be sorry for something you are about to justify? You remain incarcerated in your ego and shackled in the dark by denial. Have you noticed that no one is listening?

Therapy is full of people who pay other people to listen to their justifications. A valuable therapist will have none of that because it isn’t helpful. They have all too often witnessed the process of person after person putting another padlock of their self imposed prison by digging in their justified heels.

Here’s a get out of jail free card: Drop your justifications.

We act and then we justify. It’s a stimulus/response game our ego is a master at playing. When you say, “That’s just the way I am,” you are in justification jail. No one believes what you said simply because it’s not true. Your conditioning contributes to your behavior but it doesn’t mean you can’t be rehabilitated. But you’ll never get that opportunity when you defend, deny and justify.

If you don’t think you need rehabilitation, you just extend your sentence. If you’ve heard about your behavior from enough different people and you continue to ignore it, your ego has handcuffed you to the mindset that everybody else is wrong. That thing with feathers swimming on the lake and quacking is a duck. If you continue to duck reality, the only peaceful pond you’ll experience is on the other side of the bars.

You will often hear me say that recognition is the catalyst for change. Some people will recognize their destructive behavior but never change. That’s because justification won’t let them out of jail.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I got one of those long, tedious emails last night that I generally never read. They usually contain a long joke, a long dissertation, or the “pass this along or you will have bad luck” message. This is one my nephew passed along, so I read it. It was poorly written and could have come to the point about 5 minutes sooner but I waded through it.

One of the things in the story was that there really is no such thing as dark. It went on to explain that dark is the absence of light. Reminds me of a story . . .

I was taking a photography class many years ago and part of the class was developing our own film. You were encouraged to create a dark room in your home. I chose the laundry room in the basement. I sealed all the light from the door with masking tape and had a suitable dark room for developing. The next day, I did my radio talk show and told people about my make-shift darkroom. I then asked them, tongue and cheek, to send me all their burned out light bulbs for my darkroom. The next day, I had about 6 packages of burned out light bulbs from 6 different people. The scary part is, after reading their letters, many of them didn’t know I was kidding.

I was reading Chapter 2 of Eckhart Tolle‘s book A NEW EARTH and came across this:

“Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield.”

That prompted the following equations:

Yielding = acceptance = openness = light

Resisting = rejection = closed off = dark

Yielding is accepting and cooperating with reality and becoming open to the light of possibilities. Anything less than that causes suffering to continue.

Resisting has you defy and fight with reality which always has sad consequences.

When you resist, you are rejecting the inescapable truth that’s staring you in the face. Call it denial. You start to build a dense wall around yourself and close yourself off until there is only darkness.

But darkness doesn’t exist. It’s the absence of light.

Light is like water – it can find the smallest crack. Sometimes when we shroud ourselves in darkness, it only takes a glint of light to illuminate the way out.

We create our own darkness when we seal out the light of truth. The mirror has no agenda and it never lies. Take a good look today and find out which equation you are using and notice the results you’re getting.

Resist or Yield? We have that choice every time we bump into life’s dilemmas.

Now that you have this awareness, I wonder, are you going to let the light in or remain a victim of darkness?

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Many people can recite the famous quote delivered by President John F. Kennedy:

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

I watched a portion of the Oprah/Eckhart Tolle presentation on the web last night before I ran into technical difficulties. (You can view it in its entirety today at http://oprah.com). I had a quote similar to the JFK one pop into my mind after hearing Eckhart Tolle speak about awakening to your life’s purpose. It went like this:

“Ask not what you want from life – ask what life wants from you.”

Tolle’s message is, when you discover what life wants from you, you will unfold as effortlessly as a flower and blossom. Your life will be filled with more joy and ease and you will not be subject to the constant wanting of the ego.

He encourages you to ask, “What does life want from me?”

This little twist to the age old question of “What do I want?” opens up so many possibilities for us.

When we ask the question “What do I want?” we really reduce the answers to what the limited intellect and it’s patterned sidekick, the ego can come up with. That’s really an impoverished list. Our ego thrives on wanting, and its mission is to convince us that when we get what we want that life will be grand.

Following that reasoning, The Grasshopper hopped into my mind with this thought the other day:

“If a drunk wins the lottery, they’ll just get inebriated on a more expensive wine.”

Many people have convinced themselves that when I get “this” everything will be all right. The “this” is the wanting of the ego. The sad truth is that when the ego’s desire is fulfilled, the satisfaction lasts about as long as the lifespan of a fruit fly. Then it’s back to the rut and on to more wanting.

The ego is like the ancient soldier on the battlefield about to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. His vision is narrowed to his immediate area and his mission is survival. The general on top of the hill can see the entire array of options available to the warrior and can better formulate a strategy for victory.

“Life has more options than battle and survival.”

When you ask, “What does life want from me?” you open yourself to more choices and less wanting.

How will you recognize your life’s purpose? When you begin to notice the ease and mind quieting comfort that accompanies one of the many options presented.

So in your meditations take Eckhart Tolle’s suggestion and ask, “What does life want from me?” The answer will open your eyes to choices you may have never known existed.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

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Did you ever see those books called, Mad Libs that keep children from asking “Are we there yet?” on long car rides? The objective is to fill in the blanks that are left in certain parts of a prefabricated story with a certain word to make the story funny or more entertaining. The real fun begins when you read the story aloud and the laughter begins.

I was preparing for a worldwide class that’s being held tonight on the internet hosted by Oprah Winfrey and featuring spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. Part of our homework assignment was to read Chapter 1 of Tolle’s latest book, A NEW EARTH and find a favorite quote. I had already read the book but hadn’t selected a quote, so I went back and re-read Chapter 1 and found this gem:

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”

As I wrote it down, it became clear to me that any desired outcome could be substituted for the word “Good” and the adage remains just as profound. The framework of the quote acts as a cosmic Mad Lib. For example, you could substitute these words: “Happy,” “Joyous,” “Rich,” “Sexy,” “Insightful,” “Loving,” “Caring,” “Fulfilled,” etc. for the word “Good” and the source of emergence is always the same.

This is another way of saying the answer is always present and it’s within. We have been so conditioned to look outside for answers. The source is not out there. The source may lead you to something or someone out there that can assist you in your desired accomplishments but the spark always comes from the inside. If your car won’t start, you may ask someone for a jump. Sometimes we need a spark from someone else to restart our internal engine. A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle is like AAA for the spirit.

There is a psychological principle called, “Projection.” It’s when we project an unacceptable quality that we have on to another. We may say, “You are always so (fill in the blank).” Oftentimes, we are attributing our own subconscious behavior to another – making it about them rather than about us. We don’t recognize the behavior in ourselves – so we project it outside and assign it to another. We don’t recognize that all is within.

So the question is how do we get what we want to emerge and what we don’t want to melt and fade away? It’s a familiar answer – recognition.

Recognize that you already own the desired quality within. How you get this quality to come out to play is to interrupt and observe the internal conversation that says it’s not available to you. The observation of this repeated thought loop will cause it to lose its grip and, with practice, room will be made for this quality’s emergence. The same is true for a habit pattern that you want to outgrow. Train yourself to notice the pattern while it’s happening and observe it non-judgementally. Simply notice that you are engaged in a counter-productive internal conversation or outward behavior. Just the passive noticing will have the behavior show up less and less until you completely outgrow it.

So get curious about finding the (fill in the blank) that’s already within you and using your power of recognition to allow it to emerge. This practice will change your question of “Are we there yet?” to a statement of “We are arriving now.”

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301