Tapping In to Your Infinite Potential with Dr. Robert Pope

In this Episode

• [01:22]Robert starts things off by discussing double binds. He then explains what muscle testing is for listeners who may not be familiar with the term.
• [04:58]What is the superconscious?
• [07:59]Stephan returns to the subject of a double bind, encouraging Robert to clarify it for listeners. Robert then digs into the topic of people being willing to fail.
• [11:22]Robert discusses the muscle tests that come after the first round, which are future-oriented questions such as “I look forward failing/not failing.”
• [14:02]Stephan takes a moment to rephrase what Robert has been saying to clarify it for listeners.
• [14:55]What’s the solution to the mythology of struggle that Robert and Stephan have been talking about?
• [18:05]Robert describes the fascinating phenomenon that occurs when his clients manage to switch on for all of his questions. He then discusses how he helps his clients make corrections to their beliefs.
• [22:31]Most people think of themselves as their thoughts and feelings, Stephan points out, and explains why this is problematic. Robert then expands on what Stephan has been saying.
• [24:16]Robert talks about why he moves his fingers in a circular pattern.
• [26:08]Robert discusses GEOTRAN, in which he was certified as an instructor in 1990.
• [28:38]If you were free of the concern for failing, what would be possible? Robert discusses the possibilities, and explains the role that GEOTRAN can play.
• [31:17]How many concerns do you need to go through with GEOTRAN?
• [34:15]Robert walks us through a mental exercise involving imaginary ice cream cones to illustrate the difference between deciding and choosing.
• [39:38]Stephan and Robert discuss the fact that life happens for us, not to us.
• [42:00]Our concerns are miscreations by our consciousness, Robert explains, and realizing this can help us see the difference between reality and illusion.
• [44:36]Stephan talks about contrary evidence, which is a powerful tool in interviewing. Robert then expands on this and returns to talking about the roles of double binds and concerns for failing in his life.
• [50:00]Robert’s job is to see people fully and then speak to that, he explains. He and Stephan point out that when you see someone differently, they show up differently.
• [51:52]Robert shares a story about Ephraim Olschewski’s son to illustrate the concept of either creating or complaining.
• [57:57]Robert talks about an upcoming event he has with Ephraim, which you can learn more about by contacting Robert through his website.

Jump to Links and Resources

Transcript

‏‏Do you want access to more power, more clarity, and greater consciousness? Are you sick of the struggle and the hustle to get ahead in life? Do you wanna know the difference between deciding and choosing your destiny? If you want your life determined not by your concerns and considerations but by your greater purpose, then this episode is for you. I have Dr. Robert Pope with us, he’s a healer, a minister, a transformational coach, creator of The Transperative Method, he’s also a great friend. This is Episode 113, welcome to the show, Robert. It’s great to have you on the show.

‏‏Thank you, Stephan. It’s an honor to be with you today.

‏‏Let’s talk about Double Binds because why not?

‏‏Yes. Double Binds. Let me set why I can explain what I mean by a Double Bind. I do a lot of coaching and I work with a lot of clients and I use muscle testing and I use some work that deals with consciousness and reintegration. Frankly, what I’m finding is when I’m working with someone, they have a concern that just doesn’t go away. When I test into it, what we see is that somehow the concern for being a failure, for example, that’s a concern most people have at some point in time in their life. I find that they’re okay when I check into it, I’m okay failing actually is switched on for most people. I’m talking about a muscle test response. Switched on means that there’s power around that statement for them. “I’m okay being a failure.” When it comes down to being willing to be a failure, it’s switched off.

‏‏Hold on a second. We better step back for a second because some people aren’t familiar with the concept of muscle testing. We did cover that in one episode with Christian Mickelsen. That was a pretty recent episode but if folks who are listening did not hear that episode, they won’t know anything about muscle testing probably. Why don’t you first explain muscle testing?

‏‏Let me see if I can take something that’s pretty esoteric on one level but becoming more and more common if I make sense of it. My background is chiropractic and I use muscle response testing as a way of testing the strength of the muscle as it interacts with the body across joints in relationship to nutritional components to consciousness components. When I’m dealing with consciousness, you can take a strong indicator muscle, any major muscle will work. Frequently when I’m doing a demonstration, I’ll use lateral deltoids. That’s the muscle that if you put your arm right out to your side and hold it horizontally, withhold your arm in that position. I can apply slight pressure towards the wrist, then straight in a downward vector, and ask people to hold. That muscle will generally be really strong. They’ll hold and be able to resist my pressure. Then I challenge that with the thought or a statement like, “I’m okay being a failure.” If that’s true for them, that muscle will stay strong and there will be no change in my ability to push it down. If it’s not true for that person, that muscle will temporarily show weakness. As I press on the arm down by the wrist, the muscle goes down, just drops down, it loses power. When it stays on, I call it “switched on,” when it goes weak, I call it “switched off.” Like a circuitry phenomenon. When something’s switched on, there’s power that flows through the circuit, when something’s switched off, there less power or no power that’s flowing through the circuit.

‏‏This is a way to access what’s going on at the subconscious or unconscious level.

‏‏Yeah, absolutely. Is that fascinating? We can actually communicate with the intelligence that’s more than what the conscious mind will tell us.

‏‏That’s something like 6% or less of our mind is the conscious mind and the rest is the unconscious mind. I forget the exact statistic.

‏‏There’s probably a debate on how much but if I spice a bit, it’s high as six.

‏‏Great. The majority, the vast majority, is the unconscious mind.

‏‏Yeah. The unconscious goes to the subconscious and also what I refer to as the superconscious.

‏‏What’s that?

‏‏The superconscious is where we tap into our higher self. That’s the realm of the spirit for the most part where truth and absolute truth are accessed at the level of mind.

‏‏Like accessing your inner being.

‏‏Yeah, your higher inner being. And then there’s the subconscious which seems to be the level of consciousness that operates in months on this level, the body systems, for example. Your autonomic nervous system, for the most part, is the subconscious system. Because there’s so much that’s going on and/or managing to the century and put on the mind all the time that we don’t need to be conscious of. It’s too overwhelming to what we’re actually aware of at the moment.

‏‏Yeah. There is this episode that I recorded towards the beginning of Get Yourself Optimized, it was in the first 10 or so episodes, I think. Bill Donius was my guest. We learned how to tap into our right brain creativity by using non-dominant handwriting. It’s somewhat related since we’re talking about accessing a part of the brain that is not usually easily accessible. What you’re talking about is something at a much deeper level than that perhaps but that was such a fascinating episode where you could write with your, let’s say you’re right-handed, you write with your left hand and by quieting the mind and reducing the chatter and not verbalizing in your inner voice, you would start writing and it would come from the right side of your brain and then you would come up with completely different answers to problems, your to-do list will be completely different. There is this exercise where you figure out what your totem animal is, the animal that you most resonate with or relate to and it can be totally different, it was for me, I did my dominant hand and came up with zebra and then I switched and it was a whale, completely different. It felt so much more right and true. I thought about, yeah, I would never have said verbally a whale but now, thinking about it, it really does resonate.

The left brain seems to be the programming of the egoic thought system. Where the right brain seems to be in touch more to the holistic.

‏‏Yeah. One of the ways that I look at that is in the world of programming. The left brain seems to be the programming of the egoic thought system, part of the mind that’s egoic. Where the right brain seems to be in touch more to the holistic. The difference is the holistic brain concludes all things where the egoic brain thinks separately, and the left brain seems much more connected to the world of separation versus the right brain which is more holistic in that realm. When I look in the Double Binds, I want to find out where the Double Bind actually exists in the individual’s program.

‏‏Just to go back again to frame this for our listeners. A Double Bind is where you’re basically trapped into a paradigm where you have conflicting thoughts about it or something?

‏‏You just have different perspectives. You’re actually stuck, it leaves you stuck in a concern that doesn’t resolve.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏For example, we were talking about the fear and the concern for failing. Entrepreneurs and human beings all over the world have this concern for failure, some have mastered it and some have not. This is just a simple one: when we look at it, we go from the position of the identity or the ego, the ego within my opinion is created in a moment of belief that there’s something wrong here. In the first moment when I get a sense that there’s something wrong with me or the world. And the identity then is instantaneously created to survive that thought, there’s something wrong here. We call that the identity. That’s who we are, that’s who we are for ourselves most all the time until we get present to maybe that there’s a higher self that’s truer than the one that we’ve been operating as. At the level of the identity, because it’s born in separation, born in the fear of something’s wrong, I’m okay failing is like a construct of the identity. But when we get I’m okay not failing and I test that side of the equation, if you will, the program, it’s weak. It’s okay failing, it’s okay to be in a state of homeostasis, the normal, biological, physiological state of being, surviving. I’m okay failing is like ground level for us. When we get into the willingness, I’m willing to fail, it’s switched off in a Double Bind. But we’re not okay not failing and we’re not willing to fail. When I check the other side of the will domain, it’s like I’m willing to not fail is switched off. It just spins between okay failing and willing to fail and willing to not fail. It just never gets out of the failure domain, so to speak. How do we get out of this is different than most of our natural tendencies because we want to typically dominate failure.

‏‏Let me just recap this for a second. Basically asking, “Stephan, you’re okay with failing?” or something like that and then…

‏‏I’m okay with failing is the way I’ll have you state it.

‏‏I would say, and you did the muscle test on me, “I’m okay failing.” And you’d see if I test strong or weak.

‏‏It would be strong.

‏‏We’d have me do the opposite, I’m okay not failing.

‏‏That would be weak.

‏‏That would probably be weak. I am willing to fail would be another test, right?

‏‏Yeah. It will be the third test and it would test weak.

‏‏Then, I am willing to not fail.

‏‏Would be strong.

‏‏But how do you know without testing me?

‏‏You don’t.

‏‏So you’re guessing that would be what the test might show.

‏‏That would be how it typically would show up in a Double Bind.

‏‏Okay. Is there another test after I’m willing?

‏‏Yes. Now we’d look into the future domain. So it’s I look forward to failing, I look forward to not failing.

‏‏I look forward to failing, I look forward to not failing.

‏‏Then I go one level deeper which is the world of choice.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏I choose to fail and I choose to not fail would be the other.

‏‏I choose to fail and I choose to not fail. You said, “I choose to not fail,” how is that different from I choose not to fail? Or is that the same?

I actually have power to deal with failing when I can choose it.

‏‏For example, it’s again how it occurs to someone. If I’m in the moment of failing and I can choose failing, there is continuity there. I actually have power to deal with failing when I can choose it. But if I’m failing and I don’t have power to choose failing, and I try to dominate it by not failing, I go into fighting the concept like failure. The more I fight a concept like failure, the more I’m stuck with the concept. Eventually, we’re going to come to see that failing is a concept. It’s not real. If I sent you on a scavenger hunt, I want you to go out to the world and bring me back an ounce of failure, you couldn’t do it.

‏‏Yeah, true.

‏‏It just doesn’t exist in the world, it exists in language but it doesn’t exist in reality.

‏‏It’s so arbitrary. When do you consider yourself to have failed?

‏‏Yeah, exactly.

‏‏Powerful. These concepts, these constructs are holding us back in so many areas of our lives. These are limiting beliefs that keep us stuck.

‏‏Yeah. If we believe that failure is real, and we’re only okay failing but we’re not willing to fail, then we spent our whole life trying not to fail.

‏‏How’s that work out for people?

‏‏It pretty much is the definition of struggle. The experience is one of upset when life doesn’t seem to be going the way you think it should go. Like whatever the task I’m up to. If it’s not turning out the way I think it should turn out, I immediately go to I’m failing then I’m a failure because that’s what failures do, they fail.

‏‏Right. So then we got this horrible label which we take into identity and then in order to be congruent with our identity, we set ourselves up for self-sabotage unconsciously.

‏‏Yeah. Because being a failure is home-based for the identity and being a failure and being not a failure, being a failure is one world, and being not a failure actually would exist in a different state of being. Failing is the act of one of those two things.

‏‏Let me just make sure I get this. We set ourselves up to struggle because we have this belief system that says that the struggle is real, that we have to struggle in order to not fail but we set ourselves up for not being at ease and flow and then we have this other belief system that hustles is the way to go. It’s like Gary Vaynerchuk saying, “I got to hustle, I got to hustle, I got to hustle 18 hour days,” all that sort of nonsense in order to get into abundance but that’s not really true. But we make it true for ourselves because we believe it and then we get a really sucky life.

‏‏That’s pretty much it.

‏‏We want to break out of that. That doesn’t sound like fun.

‏‏No, it doesn’t really. Does it?

‏‏What’s the solution?

‏‏The interesting thing was, from an integrated point of view, since I’m okay failing, I already know that because I do it all the time. But if I’m not willing to do it, then when I fail, I go into resistance. If I could switch on I’m willing to fail, when I’m failing it would be a completely different experience that if when I’m failing it’s being not willing to fail. Does that make sense?

‏‏Kind of. You lost me.

‏‏Let’s say you’re failing and you’re not willing to fail, you generally go into a struggle. At least in the moment, in the mind, because the concept arises. But if I’m willing to fail and I can look forward to failing, and I could choose failing, in the moment of failing I could meet failure with a different construct. I could maybe meet it with love and acceptance and inquiry.

‏‏Instead of resistance.

‏‏Instead of resistance. Now, the other thing is, if I’m okay to not fail and if I could get maybe that I’m failing, I could switch over to I’m okay not failing and now it’s switched on, I’d have power in the not failing piece. And then if I’m not willing to not fail and I could look forward to not failing and I could choose not failing, if all those were switched on, it really wouldn’t energetically be problematic for me.

‏‏If I have power in all those different options or possibilities, then I have what Deepak Chopra would call ‘infinite possibilities,’ we are infinite possibilities. But if we believe that we are in a Double Bind or we just have this construct that makes…

‏‏We’re just programmed into it.

‏‏We don’t have access. Without even consciously realizing it, we just don’t have access to all these possibilities, then we’re stuck.

If I can stand struggle, and try to dominate the world so I never fail, then ego wins.

‏‏Right. You could say if the level of mind where the programs run exist, that somehow the programs for success is in flow got corrupted and the corruption of those programs has left us what we’re stuck with which is the struggle and dramatic and problematic, suffering domain we call life until we’re free of it. But the program system of the ego is really just built inside of these Double Binds. That’s what runs the drama. It keeps the energy to the ego flowing. Because if I can stand struggle, and try to dominate the world so I never fail, then ego wins.

‏‏You’re so significant because you’re just making things happen, you’re making the world spin essentially but you’re not, you just believe that because you’re struggling and you’re getting some reward out of it, just not really conscious of it.

‏‏It’s fascinating. When I used to go through this whole process with the clients and we get all of the components of this matrix switched on, so to speak, like I’m okay failing, okay not failing, going to fail, really not fail, looking forward to failing, looking forward to not failing, choosing failing, choosing not failing for example, when all that is switched on, then this concern for failure all of a sudden begins to disappear because if you got power, either way it goes, what does it matter? There’s nothing to really manage from the prospect of a concern.

‏‏It’s just information. Okay, that didn’t work or I didn’t get that new deal with the prospect or whatever, I didn’t get the raise that I was asking for, it’s just information, it’s not failing.

‏‏Right, exactly.

‏‏You talked about how we test for it but you haven’t explained yet how you make those faulty beliefs go away, how do you make those corrections.

‏‏The funny thing about beliefs, you can’t really make them go away, you can get they’re not real and they begin to disappear. You get they’re not true. One of my teachers, maybe your listeners are familiar with The Work of Byron Katie.

‏‏She’s been on the show. Amazing episode.

‏‏The Work of Byron Katie.

‏‏The turnaround, the four questions; so, so powerful.

‏‏Can you hear I’m willing and I look forward to in the matrix is two components of the number six turnaround in her work? If you’re familiar with her work, though. I met Katie in 1996 and I just fell in love with The Work, I think I listened to everything and attended everything when she was in our area for the next several years and it’s just something that’s been alive inside of my coaching and my healing work for a very, very long time. The inquiry is one of the ways that we can shift this thing, but I learned that technology, back in the late 80s, was an instructor for a company called Circles of Life in a technology called Geotran. Geotran is a geometric numeric language that seems to interact or communicate with the information fields with the programming fields have the individual.

‏‏Tell me more about that.

‏‏That’s fascinating. I know, how do I take that one into it. Let’s assume that my body and my brain are the product of consciousness or the product of mind, not the other way around.

‏‏Okay, say that one more time. Just make sure we get this one.

It’s not the body and the brain that causes and creates consciousness.

‏‏Let’s assume that the body and the brain are products of mind and consciousness. It’s not the body and the brain that causes and creates consciousness. The mind is entrapped in the brain, in the head, but the brain exists within the mind. The mind is a vibratory field that has components of information, has components of reality, has components of knowledge, and has components of energy. To try and make it a little more simple, imagine that for you, there’s a particular information field that holds the patterns for you, the programming of who you are. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake referred to the organizing field of form of body as more of a genetic field. We have those fields, information fields, programming fields, how we name them doesn’t really matter, they just got to get that they’re part of what we are. The Geotran is a language that actually interacts and we can use it to correct misinformation and the programming fields for human consciousness. It’s a geometric numeric language. It speaks directly to the field, it’s not integrating or not actually operating through the brain because the brain distorts a lot of this stuff, but we correct the level of field and the brain can interpret the field information more accurately. I think the brain is an interface between mind and form or how it translates mind into our sensory domain.

‏‏Yeah. Because we tend to think, I think, correct me if I’m wrong but I think most people think of themselves as their thoughts and their feelings. Because we’re in this construct of I am my thoughts and feelings, then we don’t differentiate our mind for our brain, we don’t differentiate our consciousness from our body. But we need to in order to get to this higher level of consciousness because we are not our thoughts and feelings.

‏‏We’re not even our bodies. Who we are isn’t even our bodies. It’s just the point of locus for our awareness of this moment. But if we saw that the body was a fact, not cause, the mind was more causal and the body’s a fact, then we can work on the level of mind which is level of field, in a way, and we can make corrections in the level of field and then the body will manifest those corrections with greater ease. This is wh at the Geotran was really powerful in doing is it corrects the misinformation for level of field and then it allows for new possibility or new options at the level of form. Just by coating the field so that I’m okay not failing is integrated, switched on, there’s power now available for there. It doesn’t mean you’re going to operate from there. When it’s switched on, it means you have access to it now. It’s switched off, you don’t have access to it.

‏‏I’ve seen you do this thing where you move your fingers in circular patterns or whatever.

‏‏That’s a geometric pattern.

‏‏You’re adjusting the field.

‏‏It’s actually a code. The geometry that I’m using is a right-hand clockwise circle for the most parts, sometimes there are lines and left-hand clockwise circles but the geometric pattern over the specific location in the energy field of the body with the number sequence makes up the language of that system.

‏‏For somebody who’s never seen this before and they see you spinning your finger around and saying some numbers or whatever, they’ll think wow, that is really weird. But then you test the person with the muscle testing and now they have access to that power, you can’t argue with the results.

‏‏It is. I know it’s cool. My friends refer to it as my voodoo, my wizardry, my friend says, “Oh yeah, he’s a wizard. That’s how I explain it.” But it’s really a test of technology that anyone can learn. You can do some research online, Geotran, and a program called Gems of Excellence. Maybe you can find some teachers who are doing that, if you have some questions or want to know more, you can contact me, you’ll get that information at the end of today.

‏‏Yeah. With Geotran, this is something that you learned in the ‘80s and you’ve been practicing for decades now, people can learn it themselves but they could also get practitioners such as yourself and have you work or their practitioner works on them to open up those channels of access.

This is something that just is very much a part of who I am.

‏‏I was certified as an instructor in 1990 and taught quite regularly for about seven years nationally. This is something that just is very much a part of who I am and I’ve integrated it into all my healing practices and my coaching domain now.

‏‏The person doesn’t even need to know what you’re doing, don’t even need to be conscious that you’re doing it. You can just do your thing and then they get the results.

‏‏Yeah. In a way. There’s a way to interact with the individual you’re integrating with so that they’re participating that’s inside of what it is they’re wanting to have integrated for their life when they do this. The Double Bind just became a very small piece of looking at this domain where people will seem to get stuck in patterns even though they integrated for something in their life, the Double Bind seems to been something that I had never seen before. It was about five or seven years ago that I discovered it for me and applied this particular, this is my creation. It was like a combination of the inquiry work that Katie does and kinesiology work, consciousness work and the Geotran. It’s all put together and in this pretty little package that I’m doing, I’m using as really a cornerstone for the kind of work that I do.

‏‏That’s so insightful for people to go through this process with you, learn that they don’t have access to power in the opposite of these things, they’re okay with failing which might seem weird to their conscious mind but they’re not okay with not failing and that would probably be a surprise to their conscious mind.

‏‏That is the big surprise because what seems to be happening is spend all their time in trying to not fail, but then what by law of attractions seems to keep occurring over and over again is failure. Something that occurs over and over again in life and we keep surviving it is only because we’re okay with it.

‏‏We’re getting something out of it.

‏‏Totally, we’re getting something out of it. We could be right that failure is real, for one.

‏‏We get to be significant.

‏‏We definitely get to be significant. If we get that not failing and failing have the same energetic potentiality, would it even matter if we failed or not? It’s like the concern for failing can disappear. If you were free of the concern for failing, what would be possible?

‏‏That’s like Katie’s question. If this thought didn’t exist, what would life be like?

‏‏Exactly. It’s exactly the same thing.

‏‏Such a powerful thing.

‏‏The difference is we actually get it integrated. I did Katie’s work for years but it didn’t integrate until I started adding the Geotran with it. Then I integrated, all of a sudden it was dramatically different experience for me and my clients. I think when you’re working with Katie personally, because her energy field is so clear in such a high level of consciousness, and if you ever done any work with Dr. David Hawkins on Map of Consciousness and the Level of Consciousness.

‏‏I haven’t, no.

‏‏If you ever seen that work, it’s brilliant. But you see because of level of consciousness, there’s a lot of power in that level in that field. Her energy field, her presence actually does integration of the people she’s working with at those levels. Sometimes if I’m just doing the work on my own and I’m not in the presence of someone of that magnitude, I can get the intellectual awareness but it doesn’t necessarily switch over and have the integrated level of field yet. It may take time before there’s been enough repetition in my life of that awareness before it, now it feels like it’s integrated at the level of field.

‏‏You could get it intellectually but you don’t really get it. For example, to hear this idea that God or the divine is not a belief but an experience. Sounds good intellectually but you don’t really get it until you actually have an experience of the divine, like some sort of awakening event.

the purpose of the Geotran is to integrate at the level of fields so we have actually energetic access.

‏‏It is very much like that. Again, the purpose of the Geotran is to integrate at the level of fields so we have actually energetic access, we’ve actually been practicing that thought for months or years. It starts to show up, like instantaneously available to me with some power. The speed at which we seem to transform has gone up dramatically, is another way of saying it.

‏‏Do you need to do multiple sessions with this Geotran to make sure that is sticks?

‏‏For that concern?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏No, just once.

‏‏How many concerns do you have to go through because the one about failure, there must be thousands or crazy number?

‏‏I have been playing with this for years and years and I’m surprised that we survived at all because we are so wrapped up in these Double Binds. There are literally thousands and tens of thousands, I’m sure. But the thing that I’m watching is when we do integrative work at the level of field, the integration is available for everyone. Because what you do to one, you do unto all. It’s because we’re all connected in the same field. But without conscious decision making, without being somewhat knowing that who you are is the one who gets to choose, powerfully if I’m going to be okay failing and not failing and then willing to fail and not fail, we may still just keep running the well-grooved patterns from the past without any awareness. The reason we do the individual work is because once somebody sees for themselves something’s that’s been switched off, switched on, and they see what’s available out of that, they’re in a position now to choose.

‏‏Let’s differentiate choosing from deciding. Because we talked about decision making but you’ve been talking about choosing so much. You don’t really talk about deciding.

‏‏In this case, you could say decide would work also. Because to decide is to cut off. But I’ll give you the distinction.

‏‏Yeah, that would be great.

‏‏Is that what you’re asking for?

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Okay. In the world of choice, there is to choose freely. One can choose based on concerns and considerations, reasons. Mostly in the world of a decision, what we’re doing is the concerns and considerations come into play. For example, if I’m trying to decide if I’m going to go to New York for my vacation or if I’m going to go to Hawaii for a vacation. I may put on board all the pros and cons for both locations and then ponder into that, and then based on the concerns and considerations, decide. But ultimately what happens is you see that the concerns and the considerations actually do the choosing in a decision because it really does cut off the other options. The word decide has the same suffix as pesticide, homicide, and suicide, meaning to kill off something. When in a decision, we kill off the other options but it’s done by the concerns and the considerations. In a choice where you choose freely, because you say so, like when I choose freely, I’m doing that purely because I say so after or over above and beyond or outside of the concerns and the considerations.

Mostly in the world of a decision, what we’re doing is the concerns and considerations come into play. Share on X

‏‏Okay. This is a little hard to get for people to wrap their heads around, I think. You have this little exercise that you have people do where you hold out two hypothetical ice cream cones. Can you walk us through this one?

‏‏This is the demonstration that I saw when I was attending the Landmark Forum and it was just brilliant. I just want to give credit to the Landmark Educational System and their forum for this piece. For example, I have a vanilla ice cream cone and I have a chocolate ice cream cone. I’m asking you, Stephan, I’m going to ask you to choose.

‏‏Just imagine you’re holding out both to me.

‏‏Chocolate or vanilla, choose. You would tell me to choose.

‏‏Chocolate.

‏‏Okay. Why did you choose chocolate?

‏‏Because I like the flavor of it better. It’s tastier and I probably have some really old childhood memories of chocolate ice cream that I’m connecting with at an unconscious level.

‏‏That would be clearly a decision. The reason it’s a decision is because the reasons for selecting chocolate over vanilla is it tastes good, you have memories from the past, etc.

‏‏I have reasons, therefore it’s a decision and I killed off the other options and you asked me to choose and I didn’t choose, I decided.

‏‏You decided. Let’s try one more time. Chocolate, vanilla, choose.

‏‏Vanilla.

‏‏Okay. Did you choose vanilla because?

‏‏Because I didn’t want to decide on the chocolate.

‏‏That’s another decision. That’s another reason. Yeah, well, it is. It’s not a free choice because it’s wrapped up inside of some reason or concern, consideration. Let’s try one more time. Chocolate, vanilla choose.

‏‏Chocolate.

‏‏Okay. Do you choose chocolate because?

‏‏I don’t know. I was just being random? I’m not going to win this choose game, pretty clearly.

To choose freely is to just choose because you say so.

‏‏Randomness is still a concern or a reason.

‏‏I selected that option because I saw the Double Bind there that I’m like, okay, either way I can’t win this one. If I select the vanilla then I made a decision to do the opposite of what I would normally have decided to do, so that’s still a decision.

‏‏Yeah. It is. One more time. Remember, to choose freely is to just choose because you say so. For no reason. One more time. Chocolate, vanilla, choose.

‏‏Chocolate.

‏‏Did you choose chocolate because?

‏‏I don’t have a because. I just chose it.

‏‏Yeah. Exactly. That’s a choice.

‏‏If I really analyzed it, I probably would have come up with some reasons.

‏‏But we want to get on the other side of this. The reason for this, life doesn’t come at you like chocolate, vanilla, choose. Not always. It’s like mother, no mother. You’re adopted, is that correct?

‏‏No, I was in a foster home for three years.

‏‏You were in a foster home.

‏‏Okay. Mother, the mother that you didn’t know very well. That’s the only one you had. The only birth mother you had, there’s not another choice.

‏‏I knew her, of course, because I did have access to her but she, with her mental illness, was not able to care for me.

‏‏Okay. Mother, choose. That’s the only mother you have. You had stepmothers, anyway.

‏‏I had a stepmother and a foster mother.

‏‏But this is the only birthmother. There wasn’t another choice. It’s raining, choose. Life just is. Where you don’t choose life the way it is where you’re going to struggle.

‏‏Because you’re a victim of circumstance, instead of being the shaper of your own destiny.

‏‏You think circumstances are real.

‏‏We create our own reality. Circumstances happen because we believe in a certain reality or path forward or backward and the universe conspires to make that reality happen for us.

‏‏We create our own reality.

‏‏It’s all that. But life is showing up. The sun shining, that’s what there is to choose. The sun shines and it’s raining, then there is to choose rain.

‏‏And then what we do with that is how we experience that, our beliefs around that, the meaning we give it is how we end up turning that circumstance into suffering or into joy.

‏‏Yes. Somewhere in between, If we just get to neutral for the most of us, that would be a big win out of suffering to neutral, that would be a huge win. My wife left me, then all there is to choose is my wife leaving me. But if I choose it, I can be at peace with it, but if I can’t choose it, then I have to go into war with it, in a way. I have to try to justify it or dominate it or fix it or change it or whatever maybe, and it puts it in a completely different context than if I just choose it, and then I can create something new. Maybe I need to create something new with my wife who left me, for example. Anything’s possible but this is the different domain, we need to play in.

‏‏We’re in resistance so much of the time unnecessarily because of the stories we make up about this being something we didn’t choose, something that happened to us, instead of for us.

‏‏Yup. Yeah, exactly. The more we do this kind of coaching and training and consciousness work, the more we come into the awareness that life actually is for us.

‏‏Doesn’t happen to us, happens for us.

‏‏I say it this way, when I got really clear, I spend my time telling myself that I need to live life more powerfully or more openly or more that I was living life. And then I got some clarity and I realized the life was living me.

‏‏What does that mean?

‏‏What that means for me is that I am a product of life, I’m not independent of life, I am one with life.

‏‏You are an expression of life.

‏‏I am an expression of life.

‏‏I am an expression of life. It’s a different expression than maybe the trees version but it’s still life. When I got that life was living me, when I thought I was living life and I was independent, I was into a thought system that actually is an opposition to life itself which therefore the experience of life with struggle, difficult, something I had to dominate, to control. When I got present to I am life and life is living me, and life operates in the way I operate with life is through intention, through creation, not through control and domination. Control and domination is the source of all of our pains and suffering, all of it, because in control and domination, we’re always in resistance. And resistance shows up in our body systems as pain and suffering, disease, dysfunction.

‏‏Yeah. Because there’s incongruence.

‏‏Total. We’re actually arguing the very thing we are. That’s pretty much a definition of hell.

‏‏Yup, and disease, or lack of ease. It’s all a matter of perspective. If we were to change our perspective, open our perspective, we have so many more options available to us, infinite possibilities, but instead, we feel like we have to decide instead of choosing that we are in Double Binds all the time, that we are a victim of circumstance.

‏‏If we could get to the place where we saw that our concerns are created by our own consciousness, in other words, I would say they are miscreation of our consciousness, and we can actually, by bringing love and acceptance to the thing that we’re afraid of, the thing that we don’t want, the moment we can bring full love and acceptance to that, it begins to disappear if it’s not real. We’ll start to see the difference between what is real and what’s illusory. In all of the struggles and illusions.

‏‏What does love and acceptance look like towards these beliefs?

‏‏Allowance.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏For me it’s allowance. For failure, for example, we’ll take that one. I could accept the thing that I call failure, I could just accept that, choose it, to be willing to experience it as it really is. What I come to find that all the suffering around failure in my life was because I wasn’t willing to experience failure for what it was. I only experience resisting failure.

‏‏What it is is just information or it’s a gift or it’s an opportunity for awakening.

‏‏That’s one way of looking at it. Ultimately, all it was was judgment.

‏‏Okay, sure.

‏‏Something happened and I said it was failure.

‏‏We’re judging so much of the time. We judge each other, we judge ourselves, we judge the environments and reality, God. Everything open to judgment for us, 24/7.

Without judgment, everybody returns to peace enjoying freedom.

‏‏It’s clear I’m an expert on judgment. I have been doing it for a very, very long time. This is really the core of what Byron Katie’s work is, she had her epiphany and she remembered hearing the thought don’t judge, and then she realized that’s all I do is judge. I judge everything all the time, that all I do. We take our judgments, our mind, and we put it on paper, we do the work. Her work is judge and write it down, ask more questions, turn it around. Because we’re doing it anyway, we just want to stop the mind long enough to inquire whether it’s real or true or not, get the impact of the judgment, or the belief in the judgment. But experience what it would be like,  partially what it would be like without that judgment and watch the freedom. Without it, everybody returns to peace enjoying freedom. That’s just really where it ends up all the time.

‏‏That just reminds me of such a powerful exercise when you’re interviewing people. I learned about contrary evidence years and years and years ago. My interviewing technique changed drastically because of this. When you realize you’re starting to paint a picture about the person that you’re interviewing, you then start looking for contrary evidences. Like wow, this person seems a little bit scattered, or this person seems like they might be a little unreliable or whatever. You start asking for evidence to the contrary of this judgment, this picture that you’re drawing for yourself. Tell me about a time where you… And then you ask for the opposite of what you were thinking. Oh, this person seems like they maybe not that diligent. Tell me about a time where your diligence completely saved a project or helps your employer in a real bind. So powerful. You end up with a much fuller picture of the candidate instead of your characterizations. Because when we characterize, we put people in a box and we create that reality of who they are because we’re just in this movie theatre experiencing life in our projections of everybody and we only see a very two-dimensional view of each person, we don’t see their full expression. When we characterize, we collapse that down, that full expression into just a very two-dimensional view of the thing that we are looking for. Our reticular activating systems in our brains are finely tuned to find that thing, find the truth in that thing because we’re looking for it.

‏‏That’s brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that insight. I think over the years I got really present too that I’m all these things. I got really honest. When I share this with my clients as a boy scout, we learn the scouts are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, curious, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Then I go, God, I am that! I could find all the times I’m not kind, I’m not trustworthy. I can find the opposite to all of those particular ways of being.

‏‏Because we are all of those things.

‏‏I am all of those. The beauty of that was to get that those were still concepts within a larger construct that allowed for that. When I could bring love and acceptance to all of that, that which was true remained that which was fault begins to disappear. By bringing love and acceptance to everything, the truth remains, that which is illusion disappears. It’s the same thing as you shine light, you shine light at something that’s real and it illuminates, you shine light on the shadow at something that’s not real and shadow disappears. It’s the same phenomenon, in essence. That’s why in Katie’s work, she said over and over again. She says, “You don’t get to drop these beliefs.” If you could have, you would have a long time ago. But she says, “It’s not your job, it’s truth’s job.” Because when you know the truth, the truth sets you free. Didn’t say Robert set you free or Stephan set you free, it’s truth that sets you free. For me, it was the quickest bang upside the head moments. It’s not my job, it’s not my job. I just got to keep clear of that. When I look into the places where I’m stuck in patterns that repeat over and over again, the patterns that I’m repeating over and over again even though I know better are always stuck in some form of a Double Bind. Either it’s my personal experience or my projected experience. The projected side of it would look like I’m okay with you failing, I’m okay with you not failing, I’m willing for you to fail, I’m willing for you to not fail. Sometimes I would find the Double Bind in the projected side, but not on the personal side, but there would be a Double Bind in it somewhere. When it gets really clear and all of a sudden the concern for failing, my failing, and your failing go away, I stop seeing you as failing or not failing. It’s no longer a filter I’m looking through or listening through. I see you more accurately who you are, I don’t reinforce the belief that failure is real anymore, and therefore it stops being anything between me and another or me and myself, so to speak.

‏‏When you drop that fake construct of somebody failing, failure in general, but in the way that we view the other. You can also eliminate this desire to change the other because it’s not my job to change the other person. If it’s my partner and my partner is doing something that annoys me or I think through my judgment is not appropriate or whatever, first of all, that’s none of my business, and second, it’s not my job to try and fix the other person because there’s nothing to fix.

My job is to see them differently than I have been seeing.

‏‏My job is to not see that. My job is to see them differently than I have been seeing.

‏‏See their fuller expression as much as we can instead of that characterization.

‏‏Yeah. How do I look beyond who I’ve been seeing them as the image that I imagine that I’ve made up in my virtual reality in my head? Who are they really and then speak to that and connect and communicate with that one and when I’m doing that, that one starts to manifest in my life, it’s the best part about it. I just see them differently and they change.

‏‏They show up differently.

‏‏Magic! Exactly do.

‏‏This wisdom of the ages that if you want to change the world, change yourself. If you want to change the other person, change yourself because when you change you affect the field and the field is affecting all of us, everyone around us.

‏‏It does change it. It’s like a dance with my sweetheart. In my marriage, I’m going to dance with Jill. If I have an awakening or epiphany or I see something new I change the dance. I change the dance step that I’ve been leading with. The partnership dance changes, it has to because that’s the nature of the relationship. When those things happen and she sees something differently, and she has a new awareness, a new level operation, and her dance changes, our relationship changes, and it just naturally is a part of it.

‏‏Beautiful. You shared a story with me that really resonated and I remember. Ephraim, who was on this show and is a mutual friend of ours, the Ephraim episode is amazing, by the way. That one, listeners, is all about intentionality. If you could recap for our listeners, Robert, the story you shared with me about Ephraim talking to his son in the car about the iPad.

‏‏His son, Max. Here was a great one. Ephraim was sharing with me the distinction, are you a complainer or a creator. He was teaching his son, I think Max is five now, five or six, and they were in the car and they were driving from the home, they were going over to the gym. He exercised in the kitchen, he would come and they had their iPads, they could sit in the place for the kids to play while the parents are exercising. They were just playing their iPads. They were on their way, they’re probably halfway, a little further than halfway there and Max realized he had forgotten his iPad and he just went into a meltdown. He was just in this big upset because now he can’t do what he was going to do. He can’t play with his iPad when they’re exercising. He says, “Dad we got to go!” and they didn’t have the time frame when they had the schedule to go back home, get the iPad and go exercise and come back, they just didn’t work in the time frame. He says, “We can’t go home, we don’t have time to do that.” But Max just kept being in his big upset. Ephraim turns to his son Max, he says, “Max, are you a creator or you’re a complainer? Which one are you?”

‏‏Are you creating or are you complaining?

If you really watch human beings, they’re either creating or they’re complaining.

‏‏“Are you creating or complaining?” He said it like that. Max goes, “I’m the creator,” and he says, “Okay, what would you like to create?” Max stopped for a while, he couldn’t really come up with something right off the bat. Ephraim told me, he said he had his iPhone and he was just holding it up in the air, not particularly in Max’s face but just holding it up where Max could see it if he was looking. All of a sudden, Max, it dawned on him, he had this thought, “Dad, can I borrow your iPhone? Because it would do the same thing the iPad will do.” For him, while he was there, just a smaller version. Ephraim says, “Yes, you can use my phone.” At that moment, Max got present to he could create something. He could create using Dad’s iPhone and that moved him into a completely different construct in his life. If you really watch human beings, they’re either creating or they’re complaining. We do. There’s a moment maybe in between there where we’re actually just sharing information or something but we either create or complain. He is just teaching his kids, you have a choice.

‏‏At five years old, that’s just amazing. I was at the gym with my personal trainer doing a workout and my trainer was talking about this tape that was wrapped around the bar that made it hard for my trainer to use the T-Rex straps and he was just talking about how this is so rude for them to leave the tape up and he didn’t do anything about it and I didn’t really bring him to his attention but then the next session, he’s talking about it again. I’m like, okay, I need to use this. I said, “Hey Steve. Are you are creating or are you complaining?” That stuck with him because he thought about it for a minute and he had that epiphany just probably like Max, five-year-old Max. He’s like, “Wow.” Eventually, he came with an X-ACTO Knife another session and cut it away. He thanked me for bringing that distinction to his awareness. Powerful.

‏‏Yeah, it’s really powerful. We just sometimes don’t realize that we have that other side of the coin to play with, we can move into creation. We stay in complaints because there are payoffs in complaints. We’re not really always present but we really get off on being right about it. There’s a lot of juice in being right.

‏‏There is and there is nothing but pain in it too because being right, you’re either in righteousness or you’re in a state of love. Can’t really be both, I’m right and loving at the same time.

‏‏In that moment, you can’t be right about the complaint and be happy. That’s all there is to it. No, I’d rather be right than happy in those moments. That’s really fascinating but when we wake up to that, we get present to, wait a minute, I can actually give up my complaint and I could go into action and actually create something that I want that works for me. That’s the work, that’s all of this consciousness work, is about having your life work.

‏‏That’s going to be amazing when you do.

‏‏I’m just saying that when we can identify where these Double Binds are, we can do this beautiful clearing process, just really get present to it, bring love and acceptance to all the different pieces of it, it’ll let relax and let go the complaint, the concerns seem to just start to disappear and they can move into creative ways that we’d never even knew possible. Life just starts to be this magical ride that I would call it a miraculous ride where there’s so much love and understanding and acceptance that becomes available. At that moment, we attract the things that we want and they seem to show up with such grace and ease and synchronicity and there is just this beautiful, beautiful domain that’s available to all of us. It’s really available to everyone. We can get access, start getting responsible to the places where we’re stuck, take responsibility on and do this, do the inquiry work, do the Double Bind inquiry and do whatever it takes to get it cleaned up. People get really stuck and they want to get free of it, but there are people who know how to get you unstuck and I know I’m willing to assist people who really want to move through that kind of stuff. One of the great joys that I get to do is just really help people.

‏‏You work with folks individually, you also do events. You have an event coming up with Ephraim, so to speak.

‏‏There’s an event in January, the third week in January and I think right now we’re in San Diego area. Four-day intensive where we’re going to look at this world and see where people get stuck, do this Double Bind clearing, get people freed up, get them in to created intentionally clear, get them present to the encounter intentions that are running already in their life that don’t have a life work, that they could be present to that so they could disconnect from those old intentions that don’t work.

‏‏Amazing. That’s going to be so incredible. For folks who are interested in attending that event, where would they go, the website or how would they contact you?

‏‏They can contact me through my website which is transperative.com.

‏‏Is that also for one on one coaching with you, that’s how they would contact you?

‏‏They can connect with me that way, yes. There’s a place you can link to it through an email and I’ll get you, I’ll connect with you that way. This actual recording you’re listening to is going to happen after an event we’re doing in September. There’s a link on the page that we’ll update for the new dates, if it still says September, it’s because we just haven’t updated to the January when you click on, but my intention is to have that correct by the time that you do, but if you get the old, just know that the next would be updated as soon as we get clear about it in all the exact times and locations.

‏‏That’s awesome. I’m sure it’s going to be an amazing event. I have attended events that you and Ephraim have presented at before and they’ve been life-changing for me.

‏‏Super. One of the greatest gifts in my life to actually be with you and be with the people in these kinds of moments because it is so transformative and see the lights come on and people gain access to hidden depths of power that they didn’t know about. All it was was some barrier that’s in the way, some false construct, some barrier to love that hadn’t been identified and cleaned and moved away. When that happens, I don’t know if any experience is more fulfilling for me. It’s what my life is for and what’s it about and it’s such a different dimensional experience than when I was just doing basic chiropractic work through the majority of my career as a doctor, to do this level, and to do it with groups is one of the most thrilling and fulfilling things that I have ever done.

‏‏You’re changing the world.

My promise to my clients is they could live a life free of concerns and I’m certain that that’s possible.

‏‏One Double Bind at a time. One concern at a time. My promise to my clients is they could live a life free of concerns and I’m certain that that’s possible.

‏‏But there are only tens of thousands of concerns to work through per person.

‏‏Absolutely. It’s like you’d be surprised how many we have in common, or how many of them are just the babies of the big concern. Once you hit the big concern handled, the babies seem to handle themselves. It’s kind of a generational thing. You get the mother of all of them and the other ones just disappear for the most part. Once you see it for what it is and what it isn’t, then it never has to run your life ever again.

‏‏Life becomes even more miraculous.

‏‏It does. It really is. I have my way, we’d all experience heaven on Earth, we’d do it very, very quickly.

‏‏Sign me up.

‏‏Sign yourself up.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏You know I would do that. This has been really great today, Stephan. Thank you for inviting me.

‏‏Thank you. This has been just a beautiful, amazing conversation. I really appreciate you, I appreciate our friendship, I appreciate you sharing your wisdom and awareness and gifts with my audience, so thank you so, so much, Robert.

‏‏You’re so welcome and I’m so honored. And thank you, and till next time.

‏‏Listeners, I don’t know if you’re driving or whatever but stay safe, don’t try and take notes while you’re driving and check out getyourselfoptimized.com when you’re in a safe place to explore all these amazing resources. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, we’ll talk to you on the next episode of Get Yourself Optimized.

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