Reality, Merely an Illusion

It's Monday, and I'm recovering and glowing from an amazing weekend. Landmark Advanced Education which is the second course in the three course curriculum. And it's almost impossible to describe the course and how it is so transforming because it's experiential learning versus intellectual learning. As such, most of it doesn't translate well in description. Most participants find it very difficult to describe the education and most people, on the other side of that discussion find it difficult and confusing to hear about. Put simply, the Landmark Curriculum is the stuff of leadership and life mastery. One of their tag lines, "Live Powerfully and Live a Life You Love" is no joke - it's truly possible when you deconstruct yourself down to bare bones and share the experience with others. I still get cross about at how they market and package the education (sometimes it has a revival tent flavor) but it's worth getting past that to get the benefit.

So today, I am not the same person I was on Friday - don't think I can ever view the world and my place in it in the same way I always have. Wouldn't want to. I loved it when Randy, the leader said, "people are aching to be authentic." Isn't that the truth??!

Much of the forum was spent in creating distinctions between what is real and what are thoughts that live in language. It's an important concept if you want to be effective, because much of what drives our behavior is because we fail to distinguish  between what is real and what is not. I know, I'm getting cerebral here but really it's pretty basic. Most everything we do is in direct response to how events present themselves to us - there is little questioning - something happens, we barely filter it, we act. And, even when we do filter the event, our test of reality is often flawed. To elevate action it becomes necessary to have tools where you can recognize what's real from what's not, honor feelings but not be driven by them (be able to set them to the side) and create new possibilities and outcomes. The bad part about describing this to you in this way is that you can't get it intellectually - you have to learn it organically in the "soup" of the course, suspending belief and surrendering to the possibility that you've lived your life like you're in an unconscious pod (think that movie, The Matrix), driven by unreality.

And if you think these concepts are airy-fairy or cultish, then consider the words of Albert Einstein:"

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

He also said:

 “Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.”

Laughing because at the beginning of this journey I told you all to come and rescue me - to do an intervention if I fell hook, line and sinker into the beliefs of Landmark. I'm wondering now why I even ventured into the first course if I was so convinced I would be altered in a negative way. What is it about us that makes us so fearful of looking at things in new and different ways? It can't be because the way things currently exist are so wonderful or we wouldn't be hopeful about something different, a new way of being. Maybe it's because we have a sense our brains are fragile and malleable and we are naturally protective about what we let in - guarding the mental portal, worried we will go mad if we know too much, resigned to a myopic view of the world but suspecting there is something else, a nagging feeling there is a discussion we should be part of, if we were braver.

I'm brave. My fellow students at the seminar were brave. We were all ripe to figure this out - how to live powerfully and live a life we could love. (Hint: you can't do it alone)

All for today. I've got some mountains to move and I'm full of thoughts and possibilities. You who know me, know I'm an independent, critical thinker. Those of you who don't, probably have a sense of it from this blog. I'll go out on a limb here and say, with passion, I hope for this transformation for each of you - that there is not one person in this world who wouldn't benefit from Landmark Education. It should be the "How To Thrive As a Human Being" user's manual that each of us are given when we enter this existence. Challenge today is giving thought to taking the courses.

Peace,
Sarah