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Truth and Consequences

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

In an old parlor game called Truth or Consequences, on your turn you had to choose between telling the truth or accepting the consequences.  This was a game of risk.  Someone else got to ask a question to which you had to answer with the truth.  If you didn’t want to risk the truth, you could choose to take the consequences.  Of course, you got no advance notice of what the consequences would be.  You might have to go outside and howl at the moon or kiss the person next to you.  Since either answering the question or performing the consequence would put you in an uncomfortable spot, you were likely to end up embarrassed.  The relationship between truth and consequences was always either-or.

Life often feels as risky as the old game.  Sometimes we can see a direct correlation between a choice and result, but often events seem random.  Accidents happen.  The unforeseen takes us by surprise.  Yet it’s hard to be satisfied with non-answers.  There had to be a cause.  Surely there were clues.  There must be reasons why.

One of the conundrums of wanting to know the cause-and-effect of some things is that we then have to accept that all things are governed by the same laws.

If, as Newton stated in his Third Law of Motion, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” then everything that happens in our lives is a result of something that came before.  Do our personal lives conform to Newton’s Laws?  Or are we playing Truth or Consequences.

Facts vs. Truth

First, we want to discover the facts – and so things get interesting right from the start.  Many things in life are factual and irrefutable, such as the diameter of the earth and the speed of light.  If the sun’s shining, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

But do The Facts necessarily equal The Truth?

Some things, such as mathematical equations, can be identified in purely scientific terms.  Most things, especially living things, develop around a subjective backbone.  The Facts filter through our perceptions, beliefs, cultural norms, etc, and influence our Truth.

No matter how determinedly we try to stay neutral about an event (or a relationship or a situation), we can never be totally objective.  (I’ve been practicing neutrality regarding weather for years, and I never complain, but I still chill when my body cools and I still sweat when I get hot.  Because my body reacts to temperature, I am subjectively more or less comfortable.)   We’re human.  We process things with our bodies, our minds and our emotions.  We see things through our personal set of filters.  We draw conclusions.  We care how things turn out.

And because we care, we influence the result.  Our thoughts and emotions become contributing factors that affect The Truth.

For example, say you have a challenging relationship with your mother.  Perhaps she criticizes or complains about something(s) that matters to you – your taste in clothes, the person you’ve chosen as a life partner, your profession, what you feed your kids, etc.  Such criticism has been going on for so long you can hear it coming before she opens her mouth.

If you were to compile a list titled The Facts, it might look something like this:

  • She’s controlling.
  • She doesn’t want me competing with her.
  • She thinks she’s the only one who knows anything.
  • I’ll always be her “baby.”
  • She twists everything I say.

If you’re self-aware enough to admit you add to the problem, you might include:

  • I always get defensive.
  • I’m always primed for an argument.
  • We don’t seem to speak the same language.

For everything on the list, you can come up with Facts to substantiate your points.  But your mother can use equally specific Facts to justify her behavior.

So, here you are, with examples, reasons, perceptions, convictions, beliefs, etc.  Where, in this mess of Facts is the Truth?

The Truth is in the Consequences

One way to understand a situation is to tease apart the end result until you find the component parts.

Assuming the universe operates in a logical, consistent manner, true processes will always be replicable.  Mix the right proportions of hydrogen and oxygen and you’ll get water.  Every time.  Mix the right combination of resentment and contempt and you’ll get war.  Every time.  It’s just that in human interactions, the “right combination” means different things in different situations, depending on different criteria (such as the differences in personalities).  Still, if you have water, you know you can break it down into hydrogen and oxygen.  If you have war, you can break it down into resentment and contempt (with any number of additional elements thrown in for good measure).

Every situation can be reversed engineered to discover the component parts.  When people are involved, the components usually consist of a core belief and an central emotion, and here lies The Truth of the situation.  Consider the following possible combinations:

  • Being alone might result from the combination of the belief that, “I’m not welcome,” and the emotion of insecurity.
  • Not enough money might result from the combination of the belief that, “Money is evil,” and the emotion of aversion.
  • An aching back might result from the combination of the belief that, “It all rests on my shoulders,” and the emotion of doubt.

Let’s see if we can find a reasonable Truth of  the conflicted relationship I used as an example.  A relationship involves more than one entity (even your relationship with yourself), but the only part you directly influence is your own.  So even though your primary frustration may arise from your mother’s behaviors, it’s important to look first at what you bring into the conflict.

Perhaps you get defensive because you believe some variation of, “I’m not good enough.”  Quite a number of emotions could be central to such a belief:  resentment, self-doubt, defensiveness, contempt, yearning, misery, envy, etc.

Perhaps you believe some variation of, “She’s a bitch.”  Your central emotion might be hate, contempt, disdain, rebellion, anger, asperity, etc.

Whatever you believe and whatever you feel, you bring your own subjective energy to every encounter with your mother.  Your energy is one of the contributing elements.   Of course, her energy also contributes, but as in any chemical formula, if you change one element – or even the quantity of one of the elements – you get an entirely different compound.

Create the Consequences You Want

To produce different consequences, you have to change the Truth.  To change The Truth, change the energy.  To change the energy, make different choices.

(How’s that for a scientific formula?)

You don’t need to go searching for The Old Truth before you adopt A New Truth.  The Truth is what you feel and what you believe.  Without knowing precisely which emotion you’ve been radiating, you can choose the one(s) you want to exude instead.  Without deciphering the exact belief contributing to your past results, you can adopt a new belief that will serve you better.

Let’s get specific:

Say you want to change the fact that you’re alone.    Choose an emotion that radiates confident, welcoming energy, such as humor, pleasure or enjoyment.  Internalize the belief that will become the backbone of your new reality:  “I’m surrounded by people who like me.”  “I like others and others like me.”  “I eagerly respond to invitations to participate.

Say you want to increase your prosperity.  Choose which empowering emotion will best support your decision – love, enthusiasm, joy, exuberance, delight, gratitude, generosity.  And choose which belief will break any paradigms of scarcity:  “I happily welcome financial abundance.”  “I love money and money loves me.”

Say you want to heal an aching back.  Choose an emotion that infuses you with confidence – calmness, resilience, assurance, humor.  Find a belief that frees you of any sense of burden:  “I trust my family to have the strength and ingenuity to take care of themselves.”  “I am surrounded by partners, and I receive their love and support.”

Any shift in perception is a new choice which moves you into a different energy field.  To check this out, try a little experiment.  First, think of some recent event in which you felt delighted, happy or excited.  Review it a time or two in your mind, then notice what’s going on in your body.  How does your face feel?  Your hands?  Your shoulders?  Your stomach?  Now remember a recent situation in which you felt angry, annoyed or resentful.  Replay that incident in your mind a couple of times and pay attention to what happens to your body.  What changes in your face, your hands, your shoulders, your stomach?  Now switch back to the enjoyable situation.  If you had a scowl did it switch to a smile?  If your hands clenched, did they relax?  Etc.

Energy radiates in every direction.  It impacts other people and influences situations in much the same way it affects your body.  If you bring harsh, angry, disgruntled energy into a situation, that negative energy bombards others.  If you bring cheerful, confident, welcoming energy, that positive energy relaxes others.

Because energy, either negative and positive, affects the subjective response of everything it encounters, it changes The Truth as seen by all participants.

Let’s return again to my example of a conflicted mother-child relationship.  The decision to inject peace and acceptance into every encounter with your mother changes your subjective truth.  You see yourself through a different lens; you see her through a different lens.  This changes the energy between the two of you and that changes the energy of the situation.  Your peaceful, accepting energy permeates her energy field and changes her subjective Truth.  It’s like placing a new filter over the lens through which she views your encounters.  These changes in Truth change the Consequences.

Once you know how the two Truths of emotion and belief produce your Consequences, you can adopt the formula into all aspects of your life:

Positive energy creates Positive Truth produces Positive Consequences.

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Attraction and Detraction

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Law of Attraction.  It’s been going around for a long while, with such catch phrases as:  “Thought precedes action.”  “You are what you think about.”  “Anything the human mind can perceive it can achieve.”

Almost everything I’ve ever read about this law considers thoughts to be the magnetic force.  The more focused the thought, the more magnetic power it has.  If you think about money (or health, or love, or happiness), and you give it your full attention, it will come to you.

Philosophically, I accept this principle.  But in my experience, thoughts are only a part of the power.  Actions and emotions are equally necessary.  You must bring thoughts, actions and emotions into congruence, and any misalignment can skew the result.

Aligning the Law of Attraction

Say, for instance, you want to loose weight.  You know the key actions – eat better and exercise more.  In addition to acting appropriately to your goal, you decide to think yourself thin.  So you put together an affirmation, “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight.”  And you repeat this affirmation all the time:  when you’re building a healthy salad for lunch, when you’re jogging on the treadmill, when you’re walking toward the mall from the far distant corner of the parking lot, when you’re taking a shower.

So far, so good.  You’re solid with two pieces of the formula – but your ideal weight stays stubbornly out of reach.  Time to bring in supporting emotions.  Love is probably the strongest healing energy, so you decide to love your body, love your thinness, love yourself as a thin person.  You also decide to enthusiastically enjoy being your ideal weight.  With this inclusion of supporting emotional energy, you might find the weight peeling away.

Or you might not.  And if not, you’re blocking it.  The block might be an action – perhaps you’re still taking in more calories than you’re burning.  It might be an emotion – perhaps you’re impatient, investing in expectation, comparing yourself to others, or holding some other kind of judgment.  Or it might be a thought.  Affirmations in and of themselves are not magic.  Just repeating what you want to be might not get you where you want to go.  If you carry a belief that contradicts what you want, you may be investing as much in the Law of Detraction as in the Law of Attraction.

Beliefs are extremely powerful.  They’re like fences, like boxes.  They hold you in, they limit your progress, they establish boundaries beyond which you cannot go.  To break past them, you must dismantle them.

An exercise I find both helpful and powerful is to write out your intention statement or affirmation, use the word “but” as a conjunction, and create a compound sentence with whatever comes up after the “but.”  For example, “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but keeping weight off has always been a struggle for me.”  Repeat at least ten times, letting other fears, objections, past experiences, and beliefs come to the surface:  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but I can’t resist dessert.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but when I was young and tiny I felt insignificant.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but it won’t last.”

Once you have your list of “buts,” sort them and start to dissolve them.  Most such barriers fall into one of three categories.

  • Some reflect the present, your current situation.  Reframe those and use new affirmations to embed a new belief in your subconscious:  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and thin is my new reality.  I am and I will be.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and I easily resist dessert – even Key Lime Pie.”
  • Some are rooted in the past, old experiences or deeply-rooted beliefs about yourself.  For those, explore the story that supports the belief:  Were you insignificant?  Was your thin stature the reason?  Use logic to help you disengage from a story that probably had no basis to begin with.  For increased power, extend love and compassion to the child or adolescent you used to be, who adopted those beliefs.  Again, a new affirmation can strengthen your revised thinking.  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and I add significant value in every situation.”
  • Some project into the future.  For those, identify the strongest emotional energy that will help you create the future to your liking.  Any partner or creator emotions will support and sustain future results.  Consider the creative power of something such as, “With delight and trust, I celebrate my idea weight every day.

Recognizing the time zone of your “buts” will help you identify the most effective ways to dissolve them.

The above suggestions are starting points.  Sometimes the first removal exercises work like magic.  Sometimes, however, other forces interfere with The Law of Attraction at a deeper level.

The Law of Detraction

The comparison of The Law of Attraction with magnetism works beautifully if you think of your desire as a magnet and what you want as iron filings.  Just increase the intensity of your desire, and you will pull more “filings” toward you.  But if what you want is another “magnet” you’ll run into the properties of polarization.

Consider magnets:  Each has a positive and a negative pole.  The only way two can connect is through opposite poles.  If they both present the same polarity, they repel each other.

In metaphysical terms this could be called The Law of Detraction:  Misaligned energies repel each other.  You have to be appropriately aligned with what you want in order to attract it.  Otherwise, your energy and the energy of what you want repel each other.  What you want must be as eager to connect with you as you are eager to connect with it.

It’s been my observation that in most cases what you want wants you.  (When what you want is human, however, that person brings a full range of human complexities into the equation so attraction is also more complex.)  If you want money, money wants you.  If you want health, health wants you.  If you want peace, peace wants you.  Very simple.

If you aren’t attracting what you want, if it isn’t responding eagerly and positively to your “attraction,” you can safely assume something is out of alignment.  Since you are the chooser, since you are the person with free agency, you alone have the potential to find the misalignment and repair in.

The Law of Detraction kicks into action any time you operate from Interpreter mode.  Every judgmental emotion interferes with attraction.  Every thought, belief, assumption, expectation or story that mires you in struggle or limitation disrupts the polarity of your energy.  Every action that doesn’t support what you want deters the positive action you desire.  This detraction  occurs whether you are the generator of the disruptive energy, or whether you assign the interference to your intention.

For example, Shelley* wanted to switch jobs to one that’s truer for her.  She set the following intention:  “With enthusiasm and joy, I relish my new job.  What I bring to my work is accepted and respected by others.”  She practiced generating feelings of enthusiasm and joy from within.  She’d worked through layers of uncertainty about the economy and her competition and her own ability to perform at higher levels.  She sent out a bunch of resumes and responded to some ads, and for weeks nothing moved.  One day, in frustration, she said, “What more can I do?  Maybe my ideal job doesn’t exist.”

I suggested we take a closer look at her perception of what was going on.  Did the job not exist?  Or did she believe, it didn’t exist?  She realized she’d never worked at a job she truly enjoyed.  She always made do, took whatever came along, settled.  I asked her to consider whether she would emit different energy if she unconditionally believed this idea job existed –  instead of believing it didn’t.  Since she had done her own inner work on this (when she affirmed enthusiasm and joy, it was real), I invited her to shift the focus of her intention statement from her own energy to the energy of the job:  “My idea job exists and it wants me.  It welcomes me, and we do beautiful work together.”  Within a week she had an interview, and a week later she had a job offer.

Here’s a set of simple questions to assess whether you’ve got Attraction or Detraction most at work with one of your intentions:

  • Are you getting what you want?  (Is your intention clearly stated?  It is true for you?)
  • Have you aligned your own thoughts, actions and emotions and thereby dismantled any barriers?
  • Are you giving your intention sufficient attention by reinforcing your aligned thoughts, actions and emotions?  (In other words, are you sticking with the program?)

If you answer yes to these three questions and what you want is still not opening up for you, take a serious look at your energetic relationship with what you want:

  • Accept that the object of your intention wants you as much as you want it.
  • Convey to the object of your intention that you want to be equal partners.
  • Ask it what it wants from you.
  • Do your best to provide what it wants.
  • Receive its best in return.

Edward* is doing this with his violin.  To Edward, the first two steps were already givens.  Then he asked his violin what it wanted from him, and it suddenly occurred to him to disregard his chin rest.  So he did, and removing that physical barrier between his body and the violin immediately changed his relationship with his instrument.  Since then he’s connecting with his violin more as a partner than a possession, and his musicianship has moved to a whole new level.

When you accept what you want as a partner at this energetic level, I suspect you will experience The Law of Attraction in surprising new ways.
*  Not their real names

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What’s True for You

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

As I’ve worked with intentions, my own and those of others, I’ve found the following to be a good rule of thumb:

Choose what’s true for you, and be willing to be true to it.

Of course, this may raise the challenging question: “How do I know what’s true for me?”

For the following discussion, I’ll be referring often to my Modes of Mastery Model and the Emotions list

It’s important to note that someone in VICTIM mode can’t even ask that question. People in VICTIM mode are more likely to want safety than Best Good.

INTERPRETER mode also thwarts this question. If you’re focused on validation, keeping score, weighing the odds, what’s not right, making your point, reasons why not, blame, or any other form of struggle, you will have no energy left to look within. The stories you’ve generated to justify, explain, reclaim, rationalize or validate will distort your perspectives of the world, of your relationships with others, and of especially yourself. You can ask, “What’s true for me?” but you will not be able to discern the answer.

Allowing What’s True for You

When you move from INTERPRETER mode to OBSERVER mode, everything changes. When you achieve neutrality, your view of what’s possible suddenly expands and moves from black-and-white to full-spectrum color. Now when you ask what’s true for you, you can attune to the indicators.

People are most likely to choose something that’s not true for them when operating from VICTIM or INTERPRETER mode. It’s all about possibilities – or lack of them.

In VICTIM mode, things range from the total darkness of no hope to the dark gray of no more. The emotions of INTERPRETER mode range from grim dark gray to the light gray of merely frustrating. The darker emotions (violence, hostility, anxiety, grief) create the most struggle and keep the possibilities most restricted. The lighter INTERPRETER emotions (pride, devotion, relief, desire) allow enough illumination to move from not possible to difficult. The world is still restricted to black and white, however, while you are a full-color person.

In OBSERVER mode, your options become much brighter. Any neutral choice will be more true for you than those struggling for air from the muck of disappointment, embarrassment, smugness, shame – or any other emotion derived solely from your interpretation of past experiences.

Because OBSERVER mode emotions have the power of neutrality, any intention set from this mode will be true for you in a calm, neutral way. Deriving contentment and comfort from your choices now becomes possible.

When you operate from PARTNER mode, you enter the world of color, and every intention you set will take you more and more strongly toward your deepest truth. This is a realm of more risk, more challenge and more growth. The path is tougher, the gains greater, the service fuller, and the results more exhilarating. You may, on occasion, experience emotions from INTERPRETER mode. Observe them, identify them, acknowledge your investment in them, and replace them with emotions from PARTNER mode.

Creating What’s True for You

CREATOR mode is full spectrum, full density, living color. When you are attuned to CREATOR emotions, every intention you set, every choice you make will be true for you.

Most people rarely connect with what is true for them. Most people operate from VICTIM or INTERPRETER modes most of the time. VICTIM mode produces pain and suffering. Any intentions set or any choices made from VICTIM mode will also produce pain and suffering, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you. INTERPRETER mode produces struggle. Any intentions set or any choices made from INTERPRETER mode will also produce struggle, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you.

Likewise, since OBSERVER emotions produce calm, any intentions you set or choices you make from neutrality will produce calm, and that calm indicates increasing alignment with what’s true for you.

PARTNER emotions produce opportunity

(A word of caution here: “opportunity” can mean different things in different circumstances. Bernard Madoff lured people into his Ponzi scheme with an “opportunity,” but the emotions that motivated his victims were probably those of INTERPRETER mode. They may have been motivated by acquisition emotions: greed, ambition, desire, envy, gloating, yearning, lust. Or they might have been motivated by anxiety emotions, particularly concerning lack: defensiveness, dread, frustration, impatience, insecurity.)

When we look at opportunity from the PARTNER perspective, consider the expansion value of attraction, confidence, gratitude, harmony, willingness and tenacity. Practitioners of PARTNER mode know their part includes effort, focus, attention, respect for both the challenge and the other participants.

Your Best Good is Always True for You

CREATOR mode produces Best Good, and your best good always connects most strongly to your truest truth.

People persist in situations that are not true for them for many reasons, including:

· One or more of their values keeps them where they are.
· The unknown is too frightening.
· They lack confidence in their abilities.
· They defer to the values and expectations of others.
· They believe they’ll win out if they just try harder.
· They can’t see any other possibilities.
· They doubt their abilities.

Since I have experienced most of the above reasons, I can personally testify that choosing or persisting in any situation that is not true for you, for whatever reason, costs more than it’s worth.

By observing your emotions, you can recognize the extent to which you are connected to what’s true for you. By observing and acknowledging your results, you can recognize the extent to which a past choice was aligned with your truth. By observing current results, you will receive early-warning signals when a choice is not true for you.

Early warning signals can include physical ailments, losing things, forgetting things, accidents, persistent troublesome situations, conflicts with others. The first signal may be mild: a simple cold, a stubbed toe, spilled milk, feelings of annoyance. If you ignore the first signal, the second will be stronger: a sore throat, a sprained ankle, a clogged drain, increasingly frequent arguments. The more you ignore the signals, the harder your soul will work to get your attention. The ultimate penalty for persisting along a false course is death.

Please, please, please do not assume that all normal frustrations and set-backs of life indicate soul-level mis-alignment. Please do not judge yourself or others by a cold or a sprained ankle or a clogged drain. Accidents happen. I do, however, urge you to be willing to observe your own life; be willing to listen for the ways your soul speaks to you.

So now let’s look at ways to recognize whether the intention you want to set is true for you.

· True choices draw you to them; you do not have to push into them.
· True choices help you connect to PARTNER and CREATOR emotions.
· True choices supply you with the courage to face your fears and doubts.
· True choices resonate with your soul.
· True choices serve others.

Finally, I’d like to touch on the second half of my opening statement: be willing to be true to the choices you make.

Personal growth is an extremely uneven process. Sometimes it feels like a long slow slog, sometimes the learning curve rises in a breath-taking sweep. Sometimes periods of steady growth can be marked by obvious gains. Sometimes there are fallow periods of absorbing, nurturing and rejuvenation. Because of this variance in your own personal growth patterns, you may sometimes feel impatient or frustrated.

Stay True During Fallow Season

During a slow slog or times when your momentum feel stalled, you may set an aggressive intention in an effort to “get the show on the road.” You may not be mentally ready, emotionally connected or sufficiently prepared to be true to such an intention. At such times it’s possible to set out in a true direction yet make an un-true choice. I have lots of experience with this one.

For instance, when I chose to become a writer, that was true for me. When I chose to write romance novels, I chose quickly and from self-doubt (I thought it would be easy), and my choice was not true for me. I continued along that path for fifteen years, and it was all struggle.

On the other hand, during that struggle, when I began teaching writing, that was true for me. I grew, I served, I had fun, and happiness was my way. Many of my students have become successful authors, and I observed that those writers who succeeded were those for whom the intention was true for them, and they were true to it.

To be true to an intention requires you to make a couple of important decisions first.

· Be willing to know yourself.
· Be willing to release any fears, doubts and false beliefs.
· Make sure your value system is yours and not someone else’s.
· Be willing to listen to your heart.

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#57. Questions on Creating

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

(I am a life coach.  If you would like personal help in applying the principles I explore in this blog to your own life, please contact me through my web site.)

Here’s a metaphysical question for you: If we create the good, do we also create the bad?

I’ve been revisiting this question for years, and it keeps taking additional forms:

· Does the Law of Attraction apply equally in both directions?

· If I assume I create my own reality, must I also assume that everyone else creates their own reality at all times?

· What if the reality I create conflicts with the reality you create? Whose reality wins?

· What are the factors that determine the creation?

· Are all factors within my control? If not, which are and which aren’t? And who controls the rest?

· Why would anyone ever create anything bad for themselves?

Perhaps similar questions have occurred to you.

One Way to Look at It

The more I’ve worked with the model illustrated by the Diamond of Mastery, the more I can see the ways in which we all contribute to our results. This doesn’t, of course, answer the questions of either accidents or Karma – I can’t guess why some people are born “defective” or “handicapped” when most people are born “whole” or “normal.” I can’t see that accidents are necessarily “caused,” even though the aphorism “There are no accidents” is popular in some circles.

However, let’s take a look at how we influence outcomes by the ways in which we do or do not access our personal power.

The way I’ve described the Diamond of Mastery is a simple diamond shape, divided into five horizontal sections, with CREATOR at the top and VICTIM at the bottom.

Today I’d like to explore it from a different direction. Imagine it on its side, like two triangles pointing at each other, wide on the outside edges and narrow in the middle, and divided into five vertical sections. VICTIM mode is on the left, CREATOR mode on the right. OBSERVER mode is the narrow section in the middle, flanked by INTERPRETER and PARTNER modes. If this were a scale, the two outside sections – VICTIM and OBSERVER – would be equivalent, and so would INTERPRETER and PARTNER modes.

The Balance of Power

Almost everyone has some experience with the power of VICTIM mode: the panic and helplessness. Perhaps the helplessness is a condition of life, such as slavery or incapacity or starvation. For most of us, it’s relatively fleeting, such as the flare of anger in an argument or the drop of the stomach at receiving a letter from the IRS. To whatever degree, you probably know the huge power and intensity of such emotions.

At the other side of the scale, the power of CREATOR mode is just as intense. Yes, peace is as robust as anger, love as concentrated as hate, and joy as compelling as resentment.

Most people operate at INTERPETER mode most of the time, and therefore most people are in one kind of struggle or another most of the time. Frustration, ambition, annoyance, boredom, confusion, certainty, irritation, loneliness, want, disappointment, smugness and regret – these are the everyday emotions that provide the “passion” of normal life. By comparison, the PARTNER emotions of cheerfulness, fondness, respect, trust, gratitude and cooperation can seem pretty bland.

Certainly such sedate emotions do not encourage drama. Instead, they release the stories that keep the mind in struggle and the body in stress. But they are not bland, they are not passionless, and they are not impotent. Rather, they have the energy equal to, and sometimes greater than, the emotions of struggle and difficulty.

Using the Diamond of Mastery as a model, perhaps we can find some answers to the questions I posed at the beginning of this article.

Does the Law of Attraction apply equally in both directions?

Well, what is the Law of Attraction? The generally accepted description seems to be that what we think about we attract, that results follow thought. I agree up to a point.  Thoughts don’t happen in a vacuum. If they’re not fueled by emotion, they’re certainly sustained by it. Without emotions to keep them in motion, thoughts lose power pretty quickly. So, if emotions fuel thoughts, and thoughts create results, then it’s the combination of thought and emotion that attracts – and that combination must apply equally to attracting good or bad.

For instance, the emotions of PARTNER mode keep cooperative thoughts in motion. If you evoke and emit confidence, you attract confident results: you trust yourself, you’re more comfortable with other people, you reinforce your confidence with stories of past successes, and you experience more assurance of your own skills and abilities. If you evoke and emit harmony, you attract harmonious results: your interactions with other people are friendlier and your efforts move along more smoothly.

Conversely, if you feel uneasy, that uneasiness can only survive if you fuel it with thought:  with stories of how unprepared you are, or how other people will react, or whether you can pull it off. The more you replay the possible disasters in your mind, the more the uneasiness grows. You’re more likely to say the wrong thing, perceive other people’s reactions as evidence of your insufficiency, or do something that proves you were right to worry. In other words, you attract what you dread. You feel more inadequate, which perpetuates your uneasiness, which reinforces the story that you can’t.

So, the law of attraction does seem to work in both directions.

If I assume I create my own reality, must I also assume that everyone else creates their own reality at all times?

This question is a bit trickier, since it tends to open the door to judgment. As soon as we assume everyone creates their reality at all times, then if they receive a result that seems “bad,” it’s easy to conclude they did something to deserve it. Maybe you can see some cause and effect in an illness of your own – you got sick because you didn’t take care of yourself, or illness is your favorite coping mechanism. Does that mean every similar illness has the same cause for every person who experiences it? Of course not.

Or perhaps you can see some cause and effect (beyond the economy) in your own loss of a job – the job wasn’t true for you, or you held resentment against your boss. Does that mean every job loss has the same ingredients? Of course not.

And even if there are some elements of attraction in most personal challenges, what about such human travails as birth defects, racial conflicts, famines, natural disasters, wars, genocides, etc. Could we possibly assume every victim is a metaphysical perpetrator of their own situation? Not as far as I can see.

It’s impossible for one person to understand the inner workings of another person’s psyche. As stated in ancient texts, only God can know what’s in someone’s heart. But if you form such conclusions about other people, your judgments will affect you. They will mire you in the quicksand of INTERPRETER mode, delivering struggle, conflict and difficulty.

What if the reality I create conflicts with the reality you create? Whose reality wins?

Visualize two football teams. The stadium is filled with fans of both teams. Before the game, both teams and all the fans pray for their side to win. If the teams are evenly matched, equally prepared, both have clear intentions to win, and neither is burdened by antagonism, which wins?

Well, the one who scores the most points. But does some supernatural force help the “best” team win? Does one side create or attract a win while the other creates or attracts a loss?

To bring it closer to home, say we’re both cruising a crowded parking log, and we’re both looking for a parking space. Say a space opens up, and you get it, and I have to continue looking. Are you better at creating your reality than I am? Or are you more favored by the universe?

So far I’ve found two answers to this questions that satisfy me. (You may not find any value in either of them.)

First, no two people want something with the same intensity. I first noticed this when I was teaching writing, and many of my students were much more “successful” in their results than I was – meaning they got published faster and published more books. Just listening to them and watching them work, I knew they wanted it more than I did.

Second, what’s true for one person isn’t true for another person. Writing romance novels was never true for me. Teaching was – and is – true for me. The more finely we’re attuned to what’s true for us, the stronger our creative power will be.

What are the factors that determine the creation?

I’ve identified two factors of creation I believe to be essential.

· What you want to create has to be true for you, and by this I mean congruent with who you are and supported by your integrity.

· Your emotions, thoughts, and actions must form a unified whole and be aligned with what you want to create.

There may be factors you have identified that I have not. If so, I invite you to share them with me.

Are all factors within my control? If not, which are and which aren’t? And who controls the rest?

Well, the two factors I just named are certainly within your control. But I often wonder about people who live in constrained, perhaps deadly, situations – the famines of Africa, the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, the violence of Nuevo Loredo, the ravages of Haiti. The stories of survivors and those who transcend incline me to believe the same factors apply even in appalling conditions. The book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl describes his power to influence his reality in a Nazi concentration camp. I highly recommend it.

Why would anyone ever create anything bad for themselves?

The hardest thing I’ve ever done is to watch someone I care about self destruct. Having no power to change his outcome, I could only observe while self-doubt, disappointment, insecurity, worry, regret and misery took their toll. This person did not consciously chose to quit trying, and he never overtly took his frustration and resentment out on any one else. He did not intentionally create bad for himself. But he did believe he had no choice, that the circumstances of his life were beyond his control. Therefore, he never learned to access his own power. When bad things happened – whether he “attracted” them or not – he accepted them as his lot. From my perspective, he died from his willingness to accept illness and incapacity. But as an observer, I couldn’t know what was in his heart, and even now I can only guess.

Everyone has the ability to create, to attract, to partner, to synergize, to manifest.

Everyone also has the ability to destroy, reject, to engage in battle or warfare, to deny.

For every way we give up our power, there is a way to increase power at the opposite end of the scale.

For every means by which we access power, there is an opposite means to let it seep away.

It’s all possible, and it’s all a choice. To choose in favor of your own personal power tips the balance toward your best good.

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