Love Me, Love Yourself

THIS BOOK IS A GUIDE TO ALL WHO HAVE ALWAYS
WANTED TO HAVE ECSTATIC RELATIONSHIPS

The purpose of the handbook is to provide an explanation of the Integrity Tone Scale "to enable you to understand it and then use it with ease."

The handbook is also published by Vern Black and Associates and can be purchased by sending check or money order for $5 plus $1 for postage (plus sales tax where applicable) to: Vern Black, 4875 - 17th Street, San Francisco, CA 94117.

Dedicated to you, the person who is intending to create ecstatic relationships! Thank You!

From birth onward we have experiences that inhibit our willingness to love ourselves and others. We develop patterns of behavior that cause upsets with those who are closest to us. In this book, Dr. Vern Black offers a concrete solution to the age old problem of making relationships work!

After nine years of conducting over 10,000 hours of personal counselling, Dr. Black's book offers a tested, practical formula for realizing an ecstatic, joyous, and fulfilling relationship with yourself, and with the world around you.

Dr. Black earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from San Francisco State University and was awarded his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Ohio Christian College. He is known as one of the leading innovators of counselling and training techniques. In 1973, he worked with Werner Erhard, founder of est (Erhard Seminars Training). Werner acknowledges Vern for his numerous contributions, many of which became part of est as it's known today.

The material in this book combines information from Dr. Black's Awareness Counselling Technique (ACT) with the Integrity Training Program. The ACT has proven to be an effective means of empowering individuals to find more joy and fulfillment in their lives. The process used is ingenious. In his research, Dr. Black discovered that there are basically 16 different "Points of View" that people adopt. Throughout the counselling, individuals learn how to shift their "Point of View" regarding all aspects of life. The Integrity Training teaches them how to "choose," or at least notice, which of the 16 available "Points of View" they have chosen. Being at conscious "choice" with one's Point of View is equivalent to having more freedom, which inevitably brings more joy and fulfillment to life.

Not knowing the elements that go into an ecstatic relationship is the principal reason why people don't have them. This book spells out very clearly and precisely what these elements are and how you can use them in your own life.

We, the people whom he has so lovingly served, have had our lives profoundly touched by Dr. Black. We trust that this book will be an enlightening experience in the art of developing better relationships and love for yourself.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book cannot become a book without the support and love of the many, many persons in the life of the author who actively contribute themselves, their time and their talents. I am truly blessed with people who constantly demonstrate love and devotion, not only to me but to themselves. I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge many of them who have made it possible for you to read this book. If you know any of these people, or ever meet them, thank them.

My utmost gratitude and love goes to Werner Erhard for answering questions about life long before I could even ask the questions; for inviting me to be on his staff at a time when great breakthrough could occur for me; and for giving me so lovingly what he wants to give everyone: themselves.

I want to thank Randy Weled for introducing me to Mary Markham and for his ongoing demonstration that relationships can be ecstatic.

Dan Obst's skills and abilities as an editor contributed to the several rewrites of this book in ways that I cannot adequately acknowledge. He gave the book most of its final organization and continuity. He told me the parts that I needed to delete and the places I had, through my being saturated with the materials, left out altogether. By the time this book is published, it will have been because of his energies and love for all of you.

For the second time I am privileged to acknowledge Ruth Zablotsky for editing an entire book for me. She has provided me with the circumstances out of which I could experience wholeness, completeness and soundness with my written word; I have experienced the Integrity of my work. Without a doubt she has more ability in spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, proper word choice and an overall perfect use of the English language than anyone I have ever met.

I want to thank Millicent Alna Stewart Black and Ralph Martin Black, my parents, for giving me everything they had, in the most appropriate childhood environment; my brothers and sisters for the experiences that molded my character; and my teachers who did everything they knew to teach me something; Shel Lichter for being a friend and a genius; Sarah Phoenix who, through her editing and rewriting, gave me more courage than anyone else to continue to write this book; Paula Heegaard who laboriously went over my manuscript for clarity; Ray T. Hollaway, Jr. as my friend and associate, for his artwork on the "Yin-Yang" illustration and for contributing countless hours of his time and talent discussing ideas and being a sounding board for me in developing many of the ideas here; Peter Bakst for the ongoing organization of my life and business which gave me the freedom to write this book; Dennis Stevenson who continually reminds me that I do make a contribution; Terry Cole-Whittaker Ministries for the eight areas of goal setting in Chapter 7; and George Black, my brother, who through his enormous love for everyone, lets us all know that we are perfect, just the way we are.

Lastly, I want to thank all the members of the Awareness Counselling Network, Counsellors and Clients alike, and all my friends, for training me to be the person I am, especially those who have cared for me enough to stay in my life.

Chapter 1: Integrity Tone Scale
Chapter 2: States of Integrity
Chapter 3: Tell the Truth
Chapter 4: Go for Results
Chapter 5: Maintain Freedom of Choice
Chapter 6: Keep Your Agreements
Chapter 7: Make Goals
Chapter 8: Communicate Everything Germane
Chapter 9: Be On Purpose
Chapter 10: Make Everything an Opportunity to Enhance
Chapter 11: Be Devoted
Chapter 12: Be Committed
Chapter 13: Where Love and Sex Come In
Chapter 14: Conclusion

How to make your "Needs" lists
How to create family members being responsible
About the author
"Vern Black and Associates"

(Note: This is the table of contents as written in the source document. A generated, hyperlinked Table of Contents is provided at the top of this HTML file.)

FOREWORD

This book is what the Ten Commandments would have been had they come down off Mt. Tamalpais, Marin County, California, in the twentieth century! Relax everyone.... "Love Me? Love Yourself" is not an attempt to rewrite the Ten Commandments; however, it will serve as a modern day guide to creating ecstatic relationships with each other. That is my belief. In this book you will be introduced to a concept know as the "Ten Commendments." The"TEN COMMENDMENTS" are ten positive statements (thus we call them commendments rather than commandments) that clarify HOW TO create an ecstatic relationship with yourself before you extend that relationship to others. The Ten Commendments are the directives on what to do to move up the Integrity Tone Scale, which is discussed at length later in this book. If you hold them in mind, and are willing to create them in your life, you can genuinely expect to have your relationships with others be whole, complete, sound and boundlessly free. In short, be ecstatic! You can use these Commendments in teaching, living, loving, working and thus experience being transformed. The first step, is to take a close look at ourselves.

INTRODUCTION

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

Each of us is already in a potentially ecstatic relationship. It is also the most primary, powerful and only permament one we will ever have. It is the relationship we have with ourselves. This relationship includes all our emotions, attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and points of view as they occur inside us. Everything we feel, think, know, sense and do in the privacy of our own thoughts constitutes the relationship with ourself.

The most fundamental aspect of our having ecstatic relationships with others is that we must FIRST have a good and working relationship with OURSELF! Only then can we even begin to look for relationships that will work with others. You are the only one responsible for your relationship with yourself. The surest way to destroy your relationship with another is to lose sight of this fact. You'll vigorously assert that your partner needs counselling as soon as your relationship with yourself is "out." You'll be absolutely certain that the other person is causing your upset when it is actually you creating it. Your partner NEVER has anything to do with what you go through in your relationship with yourself, but you'll surely want to blame it on them!

It is very difficult to determine where your relationship with yourself leaves off and your relationship with another begins. Keep in mind that EVERYTHING you think, feel, etc. about that other person is still operating in the relationship you have with yourself.

THE MIND AND THE BEING (STRANGE BEDFELLOWS)

In all of us there are two forces working at all times: our Being and our Mind. However, they are often in competition with one another. The mind is like a computer, but more complex. It is a computer file of programs of every moment of our existence. The Being is the unmanifested state of our existence. It is that part of us that simply just "IS," sometimes referred to as our "soul," "spirit" or "essence." The Being's only way of manifesting anything on this planet is to use the body -- specifically, to use our thought processor, the mind.

The sole purpose of the mind is to survive itself. The mind's major function is to enable the Being, working through the Body, to relate to the material universe. It is, therefore, obvious that the mind is going to do whatever it can to stop any activity it considers threatening to its own survival. At times we get so involved with our confused mental states that we allow them to overwhelm us. Hence, we become the victims of our own negativity, upsets, and unwanted circumstances. The truth is, WE are creating those circumstances in our mind, WE are responsible.

Minds collect pieces of information, store and retrieve them in an ongoing effort to survive. They judge each new situation by a past experience. This process can create many problems for us. What was good or bad in the past, becomes the mind's criterion for what is good or bad in the present. Our response to life is directed by re-runs, conditioned from past experiences. The result is, we experience very little freedom with regard to

viewing life as it "IS" in present time. What is really going on is that we are viewing life (reality as it is now), based on what "WAS." Since the mind's point of view is not based in the present, we are "out of synch" with reality. We find ourselves resisting much of life because it appears threatening. Therefore, we become a prisoner locked inside the mind's sphere of influence.

Inasmuch as the Being is unmanifested, it is indestructible. Consequently, the Being is not in survival. Some attributes of the Being are trust, faith, ecstasy, total freedom, liberty, joy, and serenity. The Being is all knowing, powerful and perfect. We all have these experiences from time to time. What we're experiencing is our Being at play. Our Being is in perfect harmony with life (reality) as it is right "NOW." This is the experience of being in present time and liking it the way it is. There is no conflict, we are at peace.

It is theorized that we are born into life in the state of pure Being. As we are programmed and influenced by our environment, the Mind's ability to influence thought develops to the point at which we only occasionally experience moments of Being. But alas, there is a way out! -- an escape plan from the negative trappings of the mind -- a road map which will provide accurate instructions on how to find and maintain the state of Being. The way is called the "Integrity Tone Scale" and it includes the "Ten Commendments," which are stepping stones to freedom, liberty, faith and trust.

CHAPTER 1: INTEGRITY TONE SCALE

Welcome to the Integrity Tone Scale (hereafter referred to as "ITS," "The Chart," "The Tone Scale," or simply "The Scale." Webster defines "Tone" as "a particular quality, disposition, spirit, character or tenor" and "Scale" as "a succession or progression of steps or degrees." If you look to the right, you'll get your first glance of the Tone Scale. Notice it doesn't make much sense, but as you read through this book you'll find it becomes an effective tool for making your life work the way YOU want it to.

INTEGRITY TONE SCALE

STATE OF INTEGRITY	EMOTION	ATTITUDE	POINT OF VIEW	APPARENT RESULTANT	COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND
Empower / Source	Serenity of Beingness Ecstasy Joy	Serenity Games Action Compassion	Faith Trust	Liberty Commitment	BE COMMITTED Expand Responsibility Increase Integrity Empower Others
Abundance	Exhilaration Aesthetic	Gratefulness Cherishing Ardor Enchantment	Welcome	Devotion	BE DEVOTED Economize Study for Even More Results Strengthen the Abundance
Normal	Enthusiasm Cheerfulness	Enthusiasm Admiration Cheerfulness	Opportunity	Enhancement	MAKE EVERYTHING AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE Strengthen Positive Results Adjust for any Diminished Results
Emergency	Empathy Strong Interest	Amusement Liking Satisfaction Expectation	Challenge	Cooperation	BE ON PURPOSE Promote Focus on Details Prepare for Expanded Activity Demonstrate Full Integrity
Danger	Wonder Caution Mild Interest Concern Mild Anxiety	Hope Curiosity	Enticement	Discovery	COMMUNICATE EVERYTHING GERMANE Recognize Important Communications and Deliver Immediately Demonstrate Behavior of Integrity
Non-Existence	Contentment	Impartiality Unconcern Indifference	Neutral	Independence	MAKE GOALS Make a Goal Locate Channels of Communications Communicate to Make Yourself Known Find Out What is Needed or Wanted Start Doing It
Detriment / Responsible	Disinterest Guilt Embarrassment Boredom	Disappointment Disinterest Reluctance Self-Consciousness Feeling Wrong Bored	Obligation	Agreement	KEEP YOUR AGREEMENTS Clean Up Damage from Broken Agreements Reestablish Trust - Make Amends Let Your Valuableness Begin to Serve Others
Uncertainty	Frustration Confusion	Annoyance Vexation Exasperation	Infringement	Evasion Deflection	MAINTAIN FREEDOM OF CHOICE Choose
Adversary #1	Antagonism Hostility Pain	Defiance Shock Outrage Reasonableness	Attack	Suppression	GO FOR RESULTS Recognize it's You Opposing Results Stop Having to be Right Produce the Result
#2	Anger Hate	Arrogance Conceit Contempt	Insult	Domination
Disloyalty #1	Resentment No Sympathy Unexpressed Resentment Covert Hostility	Humiliation Resentment Petulance Sullenness Suspicion	Conspiracy	Stealth	TELL THE TRUTH Decide to Stop Pretending Tell the Truth Develop Trust Imagine a Result
#2	Fear Despair Terror	Apprehension Fear Dread Worry	Threat	Protection
#3	Numb Sympathy Propitiation	Loneliness Yearning Sympathy Propitiation Despondency Numbness	Trap	Rescue
#4	Grief Undeserving Self-Abasement Victim Hopeless	Grief Remorse No Help No Hope	Burden	Consolation
#5	Apathy	Apathy	Overwhelm	Succumb
#6	Useless Doing Failure Pity Regret Accountable Blame Shame Controlling Bodies Protecting Bodies Worshipping Bodies Sacrifice Hiding Being Objects Being Nothing Can't Hide Total Failure	Ruin Self Pay Blame Shame Condemned Greed Jealous Malice Anguish Nothing	Betrayal	Revenge

The Tone Scale is a road map to the mind, a road map of where you're at, where you're playing in the various aspects of your mind and how to get to other, more exciting places.

Ross Todd, an Awareness Counsellor, once shared an approach he had to its understanding. If you look at a map of the city streets of San Francisco and are located on California Street at Battery, and want to go to Grant Street, you will find you must walk west on California Street and cross streets named Sansome, Montgomery and Kearny to get there. You can't get to Grant from Battery on California without crossing these streets first.

A map allows us to locate ourselves somewhere on a grid. No matter where we are standing, we can look up at a street sign to find our present location. Then, when we transfer that location to the map, we know where we are relative to everything else. We can then locate a second point, somewhere we want to go. Now, the map becomes really useful -- it shows us how to get to this second point from the first.

There are other uses for a map. Let's say you arrive at Grant Street and there is a phone booth on the corner with the phone ringing. You step in and answer the phone. The caller tells you that their experience of San Francisco is that it's flat; there are row upon row of small houses and almost no lawns or trees. That is what they're seeing from where they are. What you see, from Grant Street are steep hills, tall skyscraper buildings and no houses at all. To reconcile this apparent disagreement, you take out your maps and locate each other's position. The caller is out in the residential area of San Francisco called "The Avenues" and has never been Downtown. You have never been to the Avenues. With the map, you can easily reconcile your very different points of view about San Francisco. You can easily understand why there would be disagreement, given the different locations on the map.

If you want to have a point of view similar to the caller, you can travel to the coordinates on the map where he is located and look for yourself.

We each have different grid coordinates on the Tone Scale for everything in our lives. With regards to your life, the Tone Scale becomes a map. By using it, you can locate where you are in your mind (your Point of View) by referring to the Tone Scale. You'll notice that with each Point of View on the scale, there is a corresponding set of Emotions and Attitudes (see Tone Scale). You'll also notice that with each Point of View there is an Apparent Resultant. The Apparent Resultant is what the mind perceives as the proper action or direction to be taken as a result of the emotions, attitudes, and Point of View. For example, let's look at money. If your Point of View about money on the Scale is "Burden," you would be in Disloyalty Band #4. The corresponding emotions would be grief, undeserving, self-abasement, victim and hopeless. Automatically you will adopt the attitudes of grief, remorse, no help and no hope. The mind's solution (Apparent Resultant) to this combination of Emotions, Attitudes and Point of View is Consolation. That is, your mind will demonstrate Consolation as the result of being in Disloyalty Band #4. It should be noted, that demonstrating Consolation will not get you out of the State of Integrity known as Disloyalty and you'll remain burdened.

It is the last column on the Tone Scale, "Commendment to Expand," that will give you the "formula" to move up the tone scale. By exercising the directives in the Commendment to Expand column, you will move up into the next State of Integrity. Just as you must cross Sansome, Montgomery and Kearny to get to Grant Street, you must also cross Adversary, Uncertainty and Detriment/Responsible to get to Non-Existence on the Integrity Tone Scale. The Scale is a map of how we think, more specifically, a map of how our mind is laid out.

By learning to use the Commendments on the Scale, you will develop the ability to experience more freedom of choice with how you live your life.

If you are talking to someone about money, and their coordinates on the chart are very different from yours, you may have a difficult time relating to each other or they "just won't understand how you feel." This will make communication and understanding what each other is going through very difficult at times.

In summary, the Integrity Tone Scale can be used to locate your experience and another's experience of any given situation and assist you in changing that experience at choice. Keep this overview in mind, and later we'll explore the columns of the Scale in detail.

Naturally there are some neighborhoods that are prettier, safer and more fun than others. The same is true for the Tone Scale. The purpose of this book is to empower you to have the choice of where you want to be on the Scale.

At any given point in time you are somewhere on the map (The Tone Scale) which is most easily determined by looking under the column "Point of View." For example, you are driving your car and you have a flat tire. You are going to have a point of view about that. Whatever your point of view is on the tone scale all of the corresponding emotions, attitudes, and apparent resultant will follow suit; this is certain. Should you choose to change your point of view, guess what? You can!

How to change your point of view will be a lot easier to understand after hearing my Flat Tire story. I suggest to the reader that you follow along with the Scale. This story is about 16 people. Each of these 16 people owns a car and each has experienced having a flat tire on their on their car. These 16 people have been brought together in a room to discuss their experience of the flat tire.

The first person in this group was at Disloyalty Band #6 and expresses feeling betrayed by the flat tire. At the the time of the flat tire, they felt their life depended on getting to their destination. They perceived the flat tire as ruining their life. They say to the group that maybe the flat tire didn't betray them, but it created a set of circumstances that naturally made them feel betrayed and want to seek revenge for that betrayal. (Refer to The Scale, Disloyalty Band #6.)

The next person's reaction to the tire is different. They were at Disloyalty Band #5 and felt totally overwhelmed by the flat tire. When the tire went flat and they pulled off the road to park the car, they say all they could do was stand there and stare at it. They succumbed to it. They gave up.

Another person in the group says they were immediately burdened (Disloyalty Band #4) by this flat tire. They stood next to their car and sobbed. They felt victimized and hopeless. They could only think of being consoled.

The next person expresses having felt trapped out there on the freeway -- alone, despondent, numb, wanting to be rescued (Disloyalty Band #3).

The fifth person says they were threatened by this situation (Disloyalty Band #2). They felt terror and fear about changing the tire, as well as worry about getting to their scheduled appointment on time. They were preoccupied with the thought of finding protection from the situation.

Still another, when asked about their experience of the flat tire, explains, in great detail, how it is a conspiracy (Disloyalty Band #1). They recount how flat tires are obviously created by the tire manufacturing companies of the world, just to force us into buying new tires. This person's experience is steeped in resentment, suspicion and covert hostility. Stealth, or being sneaky, is their solution to it.

The next person feels insulted by this flat tire (Adversary Band #2). They are filled with hatred and anger at the flat and their solution was to try to dominate the situation by blocking traffic in order to get someone to stop and help them out.

Another person says they felt attacked by the flat tire (Adversary Band #1) and said they went right into open hostility, banging on the car, outraged by it all. Their solution was to attempt to suppress the car back into working.

The ninth person's experience of this flat tire was one of infringement, annoyance and vexation (Uncertainty). In short, they say they were frustrated by it and confused as to what to do next. Their response was to leave the car sitting right there and walk off.

The next person expresses they felt obligated to fix the tire (Detriment/Responsible). They felt very embarrassed about having a flat tire, as if the flat were their fault. This person feels they should not get a flat tire. Therefore, they felt "wrong" for getting one. While being overrun with feelings of guilt and embarrassment about being out there on the highway, they nevertheless fixed the tire.

The next person feels neutral (Non-Existence). The flat didn't evoke any feeling, one way or another. This person says they just felt independent of and indifferent about the whole situation.

The twelfth person says they were enticed by this flat tire (Danger). They felt mild interest, concern and a little bit of curiosity about what kind of discovery they could make in getting this flat tire fixed.

The next person says that fixing a flat tire was quite a challenge (Emergency). It was interesting. They felt it would be fun to jump out there and see if they could change that flat tire without getting their clothes dirty. They wanted to find out if they could change it

in less than two minutes. They saw it as a wonderful challenge, a chance to cooperate with themselves in getting a task done.

The next person expresses having felt even more excited (Normal). Enthusiastic! This person actually saw the flat as an opportunity. This was the perfect chance to buy new tires. They were glad to be reminded that their car had tires and that it was a good time to get four new ones to make the car look well and ride safely. They accepted the situation and felt great about it!

The fifteenth person in the room says they welcomed this flat tire (Abundance). They felt that this tire going flat so completely contributed to their experience, at that moment, that they were exhilarated. They were grateful for this experience coming to them at precisely that time.

The last person in the group says they were liberated by the flat tire (Empower/Source). For them it was an exciting experience to get out of their car and change a flat tire, never having done it before. They made it a game, going right into action, creating insight after insight while changing it. They marveled at the nature of tires. They marveled at how they work. They were totally in awe of how jacks can hold a car up off the ground, defying the law of gravity. They felt tremendous joy and compassion for all the people who had been involved with making the car in the first place, the people who put the tires on it, the person who had put gas in it that morning. They felt ecstatic about all the people who contributed to their life experience.

These sixteen people have shared their experiences of having a flat tire. Now, the question is, did that flat tire DO anything to these people? Did the flat tire give them their experience? Can a flat tire betray, burden, or attack? NO! That flat tire was simply doing what an inanimate object, called a flat tire, does -- sitting there, on the car, being quite flat, doing nothing else but that. Each of these sixteen people added their

experience to the flat tire. This addition to their experience of a life situation is called: POINT OF VIEW.

Notice how YOUR point of view is being added to each of your life situations. Notice how much this influences everything in your life. The situation itself cannot give you the experience. It simply is a situation that occurs and YOU put all the drama into it. Point of View is defined as: "the point in space from which you view something." These sixteen people each had a point of view about their experience of the flat tire that they made up according to how they were feeling at that time. You have the ability to do the same thing everywhere in your life.

Whatever is familiar or can be made comfortable, whatever you have affinity for, are in communication with, and/or have an understanding about, is going to be very safe and non-threatening for you. You'll come from a very high point of view, possibly opportunity, all quite naturally. Whereas you will use the things that are unknown, unfamiliar, not understandable or those you don't have a liking for, to drive yourself right down into Disloyalty believing that the circumstances did it to you.

When you're feeling loved and supported, where is that experience occurring? Has someone done something that made you feel that way? Did someone remove your lid to pour "experience" into your body like fruit punch into a glass? Even if someone is right next to you, doing wonderful things that seem to create a sense of support, are THEY that experience of support? Did they give it to you? The answer is NO! What you think and feel -- your experience -- YOU create within yourself. They did what they did, and YOU felt it was support or love, but the feeling occurs inside yourself.

Your point of view dictates, and even creates, your entire experience. For instance, your partner can continually do concrete things that all YOUR friends agree are very supportive. If YOU, though, are not creating an experience called "support" inside yourself, your partner's actions are futile. You will not FEEL supported no matter what anyone else does until you create an experience of "I feel supported" for YOURSELF. People are DOING things all around you everyday. Your experience is not their action, but your reaction, your point of view, about what they are doing. Since the only place any experience, including feeling supported, occurs is inside you, the only reason it would not occur is because you're not creating it.

It works the other way, too. What can you do when your partner complains that they don't FEEL you are supporting them? NOTHING! You can't give anyone the EXPERIENCE of support. You could do more things that support but that still would not ever get them to "feel" support. The more your partner creates an internal experience for themselves of being supported, the more they will feel supported by your actions.

This whole subject of "experience" is so important and hard to grasp that I'd like to elaborate on it further by explaining what I call my THREE UNIVERSES concept.

There are three distinct and differing universes of experience occurring continuously:

Perhaps the clearest way to see these three universes in action is to use an example. Observe how distinctly different these universes are, though they are all occcurring around the same interaction. In this instance, the interaction is a condition known as "help."

A teenager I once knew picked the apples off a huge apple tree for a vacationing, neighboring couple named Mr. and Mrs. Brown. It took him several hours to pick all the apples, put them in bushel baskets and carry them to the neighbors' back porch. He was very proud of himself for being so helpful and expected the Browns would be pleased and excited about the good job he'd done in their absence.

When Mr. and Mrs. Brown returned, Mrs. Brown was pleased and excited. She had dreaded dragging out the ladder and picking all the apples herself. Mr. Brown, however, was outraged. In his point of view, the teenager had trespassed in their yard during their absence and picked the apples without their permission. He was also absolutely certain that the teenager had stolen some of the apples. Mr. Brown did not feel "helped" at all while Mrs. Brown felt the teenager had been very helpful and considerate.

Webster's definition of help is: "to aid or assist; to be of use." The teenager had seen a way to be of assistance to the Browns and had completed a useful task for them. In the Third Universe of Experience, the world of agreement, definitions and facts, the teenager HAD helped the Browns. Yet, in the First and Second Universes of Experience, each person, in turn, had their own separate cosmos of feelings and experiences. It is this Universe, totally private and separate from the control of anyone else, that constitutes what we call "our experience."

In my example, the teenager had his own world in which to privately feel and experience his being of help. He felt that he had helped the Browns. He felt he had been of some assistance.

Mrs. Brown, within HER Universe of Experience, felt that the boy had helped her. She was willing to create the condition called "help" in her personal, private Universe of Experience. She, therefore, felt helped by the teenager's actions in picking the apples.

Mr. Brown, on the other hand, was unwilling to create a condition called "help" regarding the boy picking his apples. In his personal and private Universe of Experience, he did not feel helped by the teenager's actions in picking the apples.

My question to you, the reader, then is, "Does help exist?" Yes, as a word in the dictionary with a very real definition; it exists in the Third Universe.

Can anyone help you? Yes, but only by definition; THEY CANNOT GIVE YOU THAT EXPERIENCE.

"Can anyone help you and have you not feel helped?" Yes. The boy helped Mr. Brown but he surely didn't experience it as help. When you can see that help is only a word with a definition, totally separate from your experience of it, someone can help you and you may not feel it.

"Can you experience help without your permission?" No. If you don't give your permission or consent, you will not be in a mind-set to willingly create the experience of feeling help.

Ultimately then, "Can anyone help YOU?" No. They can go through certain movements that, by definition and agreement, look like help. They can even be intending to help you, but YOU are the only one who can put the EXPERIENCE of help inside you.

Take a good long look at those "odious" conditions creating upset in your life and relationships -- jealousy, betrayal, fear, loneliness. Where are those experiences occurring? That's right! Inside of you, by your own creation and with your whole-hearted permission!

CHAPTER 2: STATES OF INTEGRITY

STATES OF INTEGRITY

Each one of us has a State of Integrity which is characterized by our Point of View about everything in life. It is an indicator of how aware and conscious we are willing to be. It's how much trust we are willing to have. It's how much truth we are willing to tell about how life really is. Our State of Integrity also indicates how much freedom we are willing to have. Webster defines "State" as, "Condition of being with regard to a set of circumstances," and "Integrity" as, "The state of being unimpaired: soundness, wholeness, completeness, unity; adherence to YOUR code, system or way; true to self."

In the Universe, change is assured! No one is permanently locked into one position. As our level of integrity rises, we gradually allow ourselves to experience more trust, truth and freedom. A person with a low level of integrity does not experience trust, truth or freedom. He sees life from a viewpoint of being a victim of it. Life is all being done TO him. He doesn't think he has any responsibility for his experience of life and is, in fact, miserable and barely surviving life's "travail." On the other hand, a person with a higher level of integrity, as illustrated on the Tone Scale, is happier, feels competent and looks to the future, confidently. He is playing IN-life, feeling responsible for how he experiences his life.

integrity has very little flexibility as he is confined to a set of limited viewpoints from which to experience life. Little or no freedom is experienced long enough for it to be maintained.

There are ten States of Integrity. You can be in any one of them, regarding any specific area of your life. For example, you could be in Disloyalty regarding sex and in Normal regarding money or vice versa. It is suggested that you make a list of ALL the areas of your life, and then determine for yourself your State of Integrity for each item.

Check your Point of View to determine which State you are in. You will probably notice that your integrity levels are scattered all over the chart. You will also notice that most of them cluster in the same State. This State is the one you are able to maintain with full understanding, comprehension and integrity. It is called your "Native" State of Integrity. This is the one to which you have expanded and in which you operate most of the time; this State represents the highest level you can maintain. It represents the degree to which you are playing IN life rather than AT it. It indicates how well you are equipped to get from life what you want.

We think linearly (can only think of one thing at a time). How we relate to a specific item, or hold it in mind, i.e., our Point of View, will determine our State of Integrity at that moment. For example, if your "Native" State of Integrity is Normal and you lose your

job, you may feel betrayed and find yourself in Disloyalty. That doesn't mean your "Native" State is no longer Normal. It simply means that as long as you have the viewpoint of being betrayed, you will be in Disloyalty. Our State of Integrity on the many other subjects in our life, not being held in mind, will not be demonstrated. Potentially, we exist in all the States of Integrity simultaneously, but we will most often demonstrate our "Native" State. What follows, is an explanation of each column of the Tone Scale.

THE EMOTION COLUMN

There is a consistent pattern of emotional responses as people rise from lower to higher States of Integrity. They move through certain emotional gradients, or stages, that always occur in the same unvarying order. The emotions are placed on the Tone Scale in their precise gradation. They are placed to reflect exactly how much freedom each has in relation to the others and at which level of integrity they are demonstrated. For example, fear occurs at a higher level of integrity than grief. Covert hostility occurs at an even higher level of integrity than fear or grief. The emotion at the bottom of the scale, "Regret," has no freedom of expression for creating love, health and happiness. An emotion at the upper end of the Scale, "Cheerfulness," has enormous Freedom of expression for creating love, health and happiness.

An important point to make at the outset of this discussion is that NONE OF THE EMOTIONS ARE BAD! That bears repeating. None of the emotions are bad! They may not FEEL good, but they are not bad. Bad is a judgment that we humans have come up with out of thin air and we add it to things. Mother Nature does not do this thing called judging. Mother Nature does not hold hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, as bad. They just ARE. We humans add this thing called a judgment to what simply is. To make any of the emotions, attitudes or points of view good or bad, puts you at the effect of that emotion. The question to ask yourself is, "Am I having the emotion or is

it having me?" For example, to cause enthusiasm in your life, to be enthusiastic, is wonderful. To be at the effect of enthusiasm is being unable to turn it off or being afraid to be without it. This is when it is running you. You have no control. This is just as awful as being at the effect of failure, jealousy or fear.

Another noteworthy point about emotions is that we all have them. They are subjectively experienced. Emotion is defined as a "psychic and physical reaction subjectively experienced as strong feeling and physiologically involving changes." Emotions fall into a wide range and go from grim to great. Emotions are not always obvious. Sometimes they are expressed and sometimes they are hidden. For instance, take anger or hate: when they are not expressed, and are held inside, they become covert hostility or resentment. The emotion of "numb" is very often the emotion a person is experiencing when they say they aren't feeling anything. By observing and knowing the basic characteristics of each emotion, we can, within a very short period of time, understand someone's, or our own, frame of mind and know the State of Integrity being experienced.

This column of the emotions has also been referred to as "Degrees of Freedom." A person who is having the emotion of "Fear" has a great deal less freedom of movement, a great deal less freedom of creativity, a great deal less freedom to experience love, health, happiness and full self-expression than someone who is feeling "Contentment" or "Strong Interest." The emotions nearest the bottom have no freedom at all, while the emotions nearest the top have a great deal of freedom.

With this information we now have a way of classifying the many attitudes we have about life. This leads us to the next column called Attitude.

THE ATTITUDE COLUMN

An attitude is the mental position we hold about a fact or state. On the ITS, attitudes correspond to specific emotions. For example, in Adversary Band 2 on the chart the emotions are anger and hate. The attitudes that coexist with Adversary are arrogance, conceit and contempt. These attitudes and emotions go hand in hand. While we cannot change our emotions, we CAN change our attitudes. We have the freedom to change our attitude and when we change our attitude, the associated emotions will change also. For example, if you are feeling the emotions of "Victim" and "Undeserving" your attitude must be one of "No Hope." To feel "Strong Interest" you must change your attitude from "No Hope" to "Amusement," and the emotion of "Strong Interest" will automatically occur.

THE POINT OF VIEW COLUMN

This column describes how we view or hold circumstances. It is how we see life itself. For example, the 16 people in the flat tire story in Chapter 1 each represented a different point of view about that flat tire.

How we view a situation comes out of the context in which we hold our experience of life. This context is established, by each one of us, for ourselves, by the point of view we choose. Webster defines "Point of View" as "a position from which something is considered or evaluated: standpoint." It is important to remember, however, we CHOOSE our Point of View.

When we hold a Point of View at the bottom of the Tone Scale, while there we cannot experience Points of View higher on the chart. Furthermore, Points of View at the lower bands of the chart are much more limited in scope than those in the upper bands. Let's take a problem situation and use it as an example. A "problem" is defined as two opposing forces happening at the same time.

Let's call it "intention/counter-intention." For example, your intention is to buy a house. You go to the bank and apply for a loan. The bank turns down your application. It would appear that the bank is providing the counter-intention. The bank's refusal to loan you money becomes the "problem." The truth is the bank wants you to buy the house -- that's how they make THEIR money. For whatever reason, the bank simply isn't willing to loan you the money, but that doesn't mean you can't get the house.

If your State of Integrity about this situation is at Disloyalty Band 6 you will see the bank's decision as a betrayal. The "Point of View" of Betrayal arises when you have given very private information, told them secrets, intimate details of your life and, now, they have thrown it back into your face. They have invalidated your life completely or made all of it seem silly and cheap. This is the Point of View that says you have given everything you have and it's all been useless. If you move up the Scale, other Points of View you might hold are overwhelm, burden, trap, threat or conspiracy. From any of these Points of View (all in Disloyalty), your response will be to walk out of the bank utterly defeated, drop your intention and not solve the problem.

If you view the problem as an insult or an attack (Adversary), your response will probably be to demand to speak to the highest ranking officer in the bank. Then, in spelling out your rights to get the loan, you'll antagonize them sufficiently to get yourself thrown out of the bank, obstructing your intention.

If you view the problem as an infringement (Uncertainty) you will become so frustrated that you will throw up your hands and quit, evading your intention.

On the other hand, if it is truly your intention to own the house, you will find out what the bank didn't like and see if you can correct it or you will keep going to

If you view the problem as an infringement (Uncertainty) you will become so frustrated that you will throw up your hands and quit, evading your intention.

On the other hand, if it is truly your intention to own the house, you will find out what the bank didn't like and see if you can correct it or you will keep going to

other banks until you get the money. This is the viewpoint present at obligation or above (Detriment/Responsible). When you heard what the bank said and responded to their decision from a viewpoint of overwhelm, conspiracy, trap, attack or infringement, your Point of View stopped you. Inside yourself, you accepted and agreed with what the bank said and then turned your attention to demonstrating a Point of View rather than owning a house. You provided your own counter-intention; the bank simply made a decision. Given your Point of View, you "bought" the bank's decision. This is a clear example of how our viewpoints limit us. ANY COUNTERINTENTION WE EXPERIENCE EXISTS ONLY WITHIN US, AS DOES OUR INTENTION. They exist simultaneously within our own minds.

At Non-Existence and above on the chart, a very critical shift takes place. There is no longer any observable counter-intention. When that happens, the circumstances are no longer viewed as a problem. There are no longer any problems! Instead life is seen as neutral, soon to be a challenge or opportunity.

THE APPARENT RESULTANT COLUMN

The words in this column describe the resultant behavior, in a given State of Integrity associated with the emotions, attitudes and points of view. For example, if you see yourself in the emotion known as "failure," have the attitude of "ruin," and feel "betrayed," your mind's "knee jerk reaction" will be to convince you that the only behavior (Apparent Resultant) is "revenge." But it is important to note that it's only an illusion. It's what your mind sees as the only solution to that particular set of circumstances. Your mind is making up the solution to satisfy its purpose of keeping you at the bottom of the chart. Revenge is not a solution, an answer or in any way a help to you. In fact, if you give in to revenge, you insure your continued residency in Disloyalty Band #6.

Each State of Integrity's associated emotions, attitudes and points of view mold the degree and kind of freedom we use in drawing conclusions. In the State of Uncertainty we see something as a frustration, an annoyance and an infringement, our AUTOMATIC behavior (the Apparent Resultant) will be to evade, deflect or avoid that situation. We won't see it any other way. We will be convinced (by our mind) that this exact action is required. Notice, however, evading a problem certainly doesn't solve it. With this information in mind, it becomes much easier to understand why people behave so differently in the exact same circumstance.

The words in this column describe your behavior as you attempt to execute a "false solution" -- based on, or according to, your point of view of circumstances. It is also what you assume everyone else is doing around you. A person in Uncertainty, for example, will not allow himself to behave in a way that is more or less expanded than "evasion and deflection." Since that's all he is comfortable with or willing to have for himself, that's all he is willing to let someone else have. How you interpret other people's actions when you are doing something will give you the clue to the State of Integrity in which YOU are. For example, in Disloyalty Band 1 your Point of View is "Conspiracy" about something; what you will be doing is "Stealth" or "Being Sneaky." How you will know is by noticing that you are interpreting the actions of the people around you as being "Sneaky," whether they are or not. And they may be. But that's only a coincidence. Remember, you are the one adding your Point of View. If you are in "Adversary," feeling attacked or insulted, what you will be doing is "Suppressing" or "Dominating." You will interpret the actions of the people around you as dominating or suppressing, whether they are or not. And they may be. But that's only a coincidence.

This Apparent Resultant column is also how we experience love for ourselves and others. Let us define love as "one's willingness to support and be supported." The words in the Apparent Resultant column describe the exact way and to what degree someone is willing to support and be supported, to express love and experience love. This may seem absurd, but it is possible for another to demonstrate love by trying to dominate. If another is only up to the level of domination (Adversary), that will be the maximum level of integrity that they are able to demonstrate when they want to show love. Everything above that on the chart is too frightening. The truth is they are demonstrating love at the highest level they can manage. Hence, two lovers both at Adversary would demonstrate their love by either Domination or Suppression.

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND COLUMN--THE TEN COMMENDMENTS

The last column of the chart outlines the steps necessary to expand to the next levels. They are very often also referred to as the "Formula" to move up the Scale. These formulas will be discussed in great detail at the end of each chapter on the States of Integrity. The topmost line (printed in upper case) is the "Commendment" for that state followed by details about it. A Commendment is a positive statement for each State of Integrity. It represents the formula to expand to the next level. For example, in Disloyalty the Commendment is "Tell the Truth." What happens when you tell the truth is that you move out of Disloyalty. One cannot satisfy this Commendment and remain in Disloyalty. The same is true for all the Commendments. As you satisfy each one, you will have accomplished all that's necessary to no longer be at the effect (you're making something bigger or more powerful than yourself) and you will automatically go up the chart. The details of each Commendment follow the Commendment and will provide easy steps to expand upward.

One of the rules that seems to operate with this material is that anytime a formula for any state is dropped or omitted, the "penalty" is you will drop two States of Integrity. If you are not very careful, you will continue to drop to the bottom. For example, if you are in Abundance, and omit the part of the formula instructing you to "economize," you will drop down to Emergency and so on.

HOW TO USE THE CHART

It is important to note at the outset that, in the process of determining where a person is on the chart, your own State of Integrity will affect your observation. If you are in Normal, you will see that person as an opportunity, as enhancing you no matter where they are coming from or what they are doing. If you are in Emergency, you will see that person as a challenge, no matter where they are coming from or what they are doing. If, however, you drop to a lower State of Integrity, e.g., Uncertainty, you will see that person as an infringement no matter where they are coming from or what they are doing. You will evade and deflect them. It now becomes easier to see that observing someone from a lower State of Integrity introduces a higher possibility for error; in Uncertainty, you'd be observing them only to avoid them, not to discover the truth. Therefore, it is necessary in using this chart to observe your own attitudes and emotions. First, get in touch with what you are feeling. Then, for accuracy, it is important to keep your own State of Integrity as high as possible.

In observing your behavior and others', it's important to know that observing does not mean finding fault with, judging, evaluating, criticizing, making wrong or trying to change. It simply means noticing. The key here is in observing your own attitudes and emotions and telling the truth about your observation. Once you have determined your own State of Integrity you will know if you have the elevation that produces the ability necessary to begin to observe others.

HOW TO GET A BINGO

To determine where someone is on the chart, it is now only necessary to observe them. You should immediately be able to notice their State of Integrity, by remembering to notice the "key word" for that state given at the beginning of each chapter. You should be able to notice their Emotion, Attitude or Point of View. And, if you look very carefully, sometimes you can even determine their behavior under the Apparent Resultant column -- the hardest aspect to determine.

Having found at least one of the above to be obvious or predominant, look for its associated aspects. These will be the emotions, attitudes, States of Integrity, Points of View or behavior located between the same set of horizontal lines on the chart. For example, if you observed someone to be angry, the associated attitudes would be arrogance, conceit and contempt, and one may be more predominant than another. The associated State of Integrity is Adversary. The associated Point of View is Insult, and the Apparent Resultant associated with Anger is Domination. It's also possible to go into the "Commendment to Expand" column and notice that what is always associated with Anger is the overwhelming need to be right, which produces no results.

In confirming the associated aspects, keep referring to the chart to see what should be there. If you find that it isn't matching up the way it's supposed to, that this Angry person doesn't have the associated attitudes or Point of View listed on the chart, look further to see if you have picked the wrong emotion. If, in observing this apparently angry person, you find their attitude is one of Reasonableness (offering reason after reason after justification for their actions), or that their Point of View is Attack and they are trying to suppress someone or something, you can conclude their emotion is actually hostility.

When you can observe an emotion, an attitude, the point of view, the State of Integrity and the resultant behavior all in the same State of Integrity (between the same two horizontal lines) you will have gotten a "bingo."

Getting a "bingo" allows you to go back to the information written about that specific State of Integrity and know more about the person than their analyst. You'll know all that is going on in their experience right now. You'll know what they consider "beneath" them and you'll know what they hold as intimidating. You'll know how much they trust themselves and how much you ought to trust them. I'm not suggesting that you distrust people; I personally trust everyone. It simply feels better for me, in the pit of my stomach, to trust everyone. BUT, I trust them to do exactly what their State of Integrity dictates. By knowing where someone is on the chart, I know exactly how to relate to them for maximum integrity and well-being for both of us. Also, being a Counsellor, I need to know which process or exercise to give to a client to enable them to trust themselves more and to move up the Chart. Knowing their exact State of Integrity lets me know what to do next.

You can assist your friends in having more integrity in their lives. By knowing exactly where they are on the chart, you can refer to the "Commendment To Expand" column and suggest those formulas as a way for them to expand to have more freedom to express love, health and happiness.

CHAPTER 3: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DISLOYALTY:
TELL THE TRUTH

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DISLOYALTY:

TELL THE TRUTH

Key Word: Pretend

Disloyalty is the state where you are not aware. You are not fully conscious of your mind's games. You are at the effect of the Mind and not experiencing the Being -there is no freedom. Throughout the multiple bands of Disloyalty you'll demonstrate pretense. You will believe in false cause: you'll believe that one thing is responsible for causing another when it didn't. For example, when you are late for an appointment, you disclaim responsibility. You may say that heavy traffic made you late, when in fact you were late AND there was heavy traffic. People in Disloyalty cannot be relied upon to keep their word. You may not do what you say you are going to do. For example, you may promise a favor to someone and simply not do it. You may run into an acquaintance and say "I'll call you for lunch" and then never take the initiative to get together. You will know one thing, that you don't trust yourself or others. You'll also have great difficulty with the truth. Granted, the truth may creep in once in a while; however, when in disloyalty, you're sure to distort it. For example, if you take home $1500 per month, but consistently spend $2000 per month, you're not telling yourself the truth about how much money you have to spend. If your credit cards are over your allowed limit, and you have financial problems, you're in Disloyalty with money.

When you're in Disloyalty you won't feel supported by your mate, friends, job and country. You'll resent them for not supporting you. And you are not supporting anything in this state. If you do support, you're doing it with great pretense, and are likely to withdraw support on a whim. In Disloyalty you will experience burden, threat, trap, and overwhelm.

If this seems all too familiar to you, don't feel badly, you're not alone. Approximately 80% of the world's population operates in Disloyalty as its "native" state. If you are willing to concede to experiencing the qualities of Disloyalty, you've already taken the first step for expanding out of this state and that is telling the truth.

Where's the "truth" when you look at all too many neighbors who you insist have everything you want and don't have? They have mate relationships with people who are gorgeous, personable, generous, dynamic and maybe even rich. Their jobs are careers, not demanding of their time or energy. They are their own boss, making their own hours and getting four times the money you earn. They are well-known and loved for their successes. In their spare time, they are dancing in a local production that looks like it'll get national television coverage. They've got two degrees and are invited to all the right parties. If you're like most people I know, you'd like to knock the wind out of those neighbors' sails! The reason for this is because their having so much causes you to notice that you don't have so much. That's the truth! But the truth is supposed to set you free. What appears to look like the truth about your neighbors, certainly appears a long way from setting you free.

What are the facts or reality about others enjoying an advantage over you? What makes you think that someone else's getting something you don't have is so terrible? Simple. They got it and you didn't! They got what they got and YOU GOT SOMETHING ELSE. And even though you got something else you like to pretend that you got nothing.

PRETENDING is saying something doesn't exist when you know it does or that something isn't real when you know it is. Of course, you can also pretend that a thing does exist or is real when it isn't. To pretend, you must know the truth, but set out, as Webster states it, "to give a false appearance or claim falsely."

When you are pretending, and Commendment One is all about stopping the pretense, you cannot trust yourself to BE qualified for an ecstatic relationship. You cannot trust yourself to DO those things necessary to create an ecstatic relationship. You cannot HAVE what it takes to create what you want. Pretending produces a lack of self-trust that bars you from creating any ecstatic relationship.

Clients of mine have demonstrated an ability to pretend so convincingly that they thoroughly believe their own pretense. They pretend that the reason they don't have an ecstatic relationship is that there is no one available. Or, that relationship would take more time to create than they have. They pretend that the reason they were late for their appointment with me was that their alarm clock didn't go off; the freeway was jammed; or there was an accident. They pretend they don't see they are late, all the while justifying the lateness by telling me about the parking space they had the devil of a time finding. They pretend there is no such thing as an ecstatic relationship while they tell me about the hardships they are putting themselves through just to find that perfect person.

The truth is they were late AND their alarm clock didn't go off; the freeway was jammed; or there was an accident. They put the blame outside, on circumstances. I often point out, if there had been a million dollars waiting for them to claim, and all they needed was to be "on time," I'm certain they would have been on time no matter what else was going on in the universe. But there wasn't a million dollars and they were late. Rather than simply admit they did not put enough intention into getting to their appointment on time, they pretend to me,

and everyone else (until even they believe it), that it was the fault of the traffic or their alarm clock. What they then create is no trust in themselves to BE, DO or HAVE what they want. Consequently, they have just disqualified themselves from having an ecstatic relationship.

After a year of counselling, a client told me: "I used to pretend that I had problems. I pretended that things were bad and that I was simply born unlucky. I pretended that I couldn't have a good relationship. That I was one of those people that just didn't run into the right people. I wasn't good-looking enough. I wasn't fun enough. I wasn't smart enough. There was nothing I could do. So, I wouldn't try. I'd just sit back and watch everyone else and be jealous. I felt I was boring and without talent, a person who just went to work and came home and stayed depressed all the time. My parents were like that and I figured it had just rubbed off on me.

"Telling the truth changed this. I am the way I am or things are the way they are in my life because I make them that way. It was hard to tell the truth. I didn't want to have a good relationship if I had to work to get it. I didn't trust myself at all and couldn't figure out how to start."

This "how-can-I-trust-myself-when-I-don't" loop is totally self-serving. You can learn to trust yourself by simply doing it! There comes a point when that part of you which is inherently whole, complete and sound--your BEING--gets to be seen by you. Your BEING doesn't have to DO anything or HAVE anything to be perfect. It simply IS perfect. This is the part of you that knows when you are not telling the truth. Your BEING knows you could be better, knows you could be more ecstatic. It is your BEING that keeps you going towards perfection right through all your mind's most convincing pretenses. TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU PLAY AT PRETENSE IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS TELLING THE TRUTH.

Here are seven favorite pretenses that most people use, most of the time. They block the creation of ecstatic relationships, first with oneself, then with others.

THE PRETENSE OF JEALOUSY

Jealousy is being consumed by wanting what someone else has that you don't; putting your attention on wanting what someone else has that you don't, all the while believing, or more accurately pretending that that gives them some advantage over you. This is a great way to avoid putting your attention on what you DO have. As soon as you've granted them the advantage, you've just destroyed your own self-worth. Jealousy is a pretense (lie) because you've taken your attention off your own talents and abilities and riveted your attention on anothers talents and abilities. You're putting your attention in the wrong place.

Everyone has expertise in something. One type of expertise is not any better than another -- just as one ingredient in a cake is no better than another. Is an egg, flour? Is flour, sugar? Is milk, water? Can you create a cake without all the ingredients? We, humans, make long lists of "better than" ingredients and attribute them all to other people. The truth is their abilities are not "better than," only different. If someone else has a skill, ability or great relationship that makes them shine, it is far easier to put your attention on jealousy than to notice your own abilities. There is

always a positive quality under all that jealousy, but you won't see it until you quit pretending and start looking for it.

Jealousy will never clear up by looking outside yourself. You can't make jealousy disappear by trying to change the other person or by adopting martyrdom or "remaking" yourself for someone else. These things simply keep your attention further away from telling the truth about your qualities. They keep your mind busily engaged in pretending.

"TELLING THE TRUTH" IS RECOGNIZING THAT YOUR ATTENTION IS IN THE WRONG PLACE. It is also recognizing that you have just given up your relationship in favor of an attitude called "jealousy." You've disappeared into the fog of pretense in your mind. You have stated that your mind's chattering pretense is far more important to you than your relationship. You have CHOSEN to create a condition called "jealousy," RATHER than create an ecstatic relationship.

You can't be jealous and
be in a relationship
that is whole, complete and sound.

THE PRETENSE OF FAILURE

Failure means "not producing an expected result." THAT IS ALL IT MEANS! Yet most of you react to failure as if your life were at stake. If failure killed, no one would make it past diapers!

Not producing an expected result is JUST THAT. "Failure" is a judgment you make about yourself that you funereally drape around the simple fact (truth) that a result you expected to produce didn't get produced. Failure, by definition, is about the RESULT not happening and you are redefining it to mean YOU are not happening.

You cannot BE a failure. Yes, you can NOT produce an expected result, but that is ONLY what you did not DO. It is not a statement of who you ARE. Or, ARE NOT. When you insist that you ARE what you DO (or don't do), you're pretending. You are not telling the truth. As soon as you create this pretense, it automatically puts you in a condition of feeling worthless. To tell the simple truth, "I did not produce that result," enhances your sense of worth and creates the freedom to choose the next result to produce, or NOT produce.

[PRETENSE OF] Blame

Humans are never at a loss for thinking up new and different ways for temporary relief from being responsible. Blame is a favorite temporary reliever.

Blame goes like this: According to you, things are as they are because someone else made them that way. You had nothing to do with it. You don't like it. It's being done TO you and, what's more, you want someone or something else to stop it!

Blame only occurs in the First Universe of Experience, the one of your personal and private world. When you experience blame, it exists only in your mind. You are holding a viewpoint so narrow that it conveniently blinds you to your responsibility in the matter. When you blame, you've taken reality and then dressed it up with your judgment of it. This judgment is a lie you tell yourself about reality. Your attention is focused on blaming, not on what is fact. You are seeing your judgment, not reality.

Your mate leaves dirty dishes in the sink and you don't like it. You're in the blame pretense and think those dishes have been left there just to get you. After all, it isn't the first time. You aren't the least bit willing to wash them yourself. Furthermore, you want them washed immediately AND by your mate. You waggle your your accusing finger at the other person and milk the blame pretense for all it's worth.

The truth is your mate left dirty dishes in the sink. That is all that happened. The blame pretense is all that YOU added, in your mind, to the fact that the dishes didn't get washed. If dirty dishes irritate you, wash them and eliminate your irritation. When you won't be responsible for eliminating things you say irritate

you, look again. Are the dirty dishes in the sink an irritation in and of themselves or are you in your blame pretense creating a betrayal that demands revenge? If you are at blame you'll see the dishes as a betrayal that you feel must be avenged -- AND it all happened in your head, not in the sink. Blame is futile for two reasons: one, the irritation remains, i.e., the dishes aren't done; two, you experience the dishes not being done as a betrayal. Your mate may very well be out doing your laundry, buying your food or even on the way home to surprise you with a gift.

BLAME IS USED TO EXCUSE AND JUSTIFY IRRESPONSIBILITY. In our society there is the implication that if we are responsible for something AND that something "goes wrong," we are to blame. The truth is that blame has absolutely nothing to do with responsibility. Werner Erhard once explained responsibility to me as follows:

Nowhere in that definition does the word "blame" get mentioned. A responsible person is simply one who recognizes their part in bringing about all the circumstances that surround them as well as their reactions to those circumstances. In fact, blame is the opposite end of the pole. Blame is a pretense used by those who are not willing to be responsible.

If the dirty dishes in the sink are really THE irritation, wash them and produce the result of no more irritation. If your viewpoint is that the dirty dishes are a betrayal, turn to the Integrity Tone Scale; find "blame." Put the "Commendment to Expand" column to use; and make a giant step forward to that perfect relationship. We will explain later in this chapter how to use the formula.

[PRETENSE OF] Loneliness

When you are "lonely," you are pretending you're the only one in the world and very few people are good enough to be included in your life, OR you're not good enough to be included in your own life or in another's life.

How many times have you been in a room full of people with your best friend, mate or lover and felt lonely?

Loneliness is the result of putting all your attention on yourself and closing out everyone else because you believe they're not good enough or you're not good enough. The only way you can be with others and still feel lonely is to hold the point of view that none of those people (or yourself) can be let into your life. You are refusing to open up your heart. Loneliness is a pretense (lie) because you are not better or worse than anyone else.

Loneliness is a very aggressive sport. You have to work really hard, all the time, to keep all those people out of your experience. Lonely people aggressively pursue "trapping" a prospective "good enough" prey simply in the vain hope that this person will "rescue" them from all of life's hardships.

If you're at a party and you've made a choice to not talk, you feel very much a part of the group while knowing you simply don't feel like talking at the moment. When you're at choice to not talk to anyone that night, everyone is in your world with you and they are part of your experience even though you're not talking. Your feelings and experience have nothing to do with the other people. What you feel, your experience, comes out of YOUR DECISIONS ABOUT HOW YOU ARE GOING TO SEE THINGS.

THE PRETENSE OF VICTIM

This pretense is all about what the whole world is doing to you. All of your attention goes to proving "they" have tied your hands. Because of "them" you don't have anything you want, can't do anything you want, can't be anything you want. It's all such a burden. Victims seek partners who are good at giving consolation. At victim, people aren't seen to love you except when they are consoling you, so for heaven's sake, you can't give up playing the victim or you'll never experience love again!

Victim is one of the most popular and most loved pretenses. Here you are blaming yourself. It is, at the least, a step closer to the truth to blame yourself rather than others, but it will still block your having ecstatic relationships.

Are you a victim to the world or is that the lie you tell to secure the only form of love (consolation) you currently choose to say exists?

THE PRETENSE OF FEAR

There is not a person I know who is not afraid of something, and most people are afraid of a lot. Fears are lies when you allow them to keep you from having love, health, happiness and full self-expression in your life. Notice I said YOU ALLOW. The only place fear exists is between your two ears. The startling truth is that fear has never stopped you from doing anything. You USED fear to stop yourself. Fear has never barricaded your door and prevented you from leaving your house to look for that job. Fear never made your phone receiver weigh four hundred pounds so you couldn't lift it to make that date. Fear never stopped you from meeting someone new at

a party. Fear is a fantasy creature you made up inside your head to take the blame when you don't have the courage to do something or the willingness to admit that you can't.

Left to your own devices, you will gravitate towards fear and her twin sister, worry. It's inconceivable for most of us that life could be without something to worry about or to fear. Here, you never go into a relationship telling the truth because you have so much to protect. The only point of view you can have, when you are coming from fear and worry, is that everything in life is a "threat." The only reaction you can have to "threat" is to seek "protection." Here, you will do anything to get away from, or be protected from, that threat. There is no way you can "tell the truth" under these circumstances. It certainly isn't possible to have an ecstatic relationship if you are afraid of it, threatened by it and want to be protected from it, while trying to make the relationship work.

THE PRETENSE OF SOUL MATE

A more esoteric way of not telling the truth is looking for a soul mate. A soul mate is someone you think is either a twin soul to yours or has the necessary other half to yours. The belief here is that both of you will only feel complete after you find each other. A SOUL MATE RELATIONSHIP IS AN EXCUSE TO NOT WORK ON BEING WHOLE YOURSELF.

Rather than putting your attention on becoming whole yourself, you hold on to the notion that it requires someone else. All your time goes into looking for that perfect other person.

In the world outside of mathematics, two halves do not make a whole. Two halves remain two halves. You can't have two people coming together looking to make themselves whole and make the relationship become whole. In order to have an ecstatic relationship, when you come into a relationship you must already be whole, complete and sound, and be with someone else who already knows they are whole, complete and sound. This way neither of you NEEDS each other. You may want nothing more in this world than to be with a particular person for the rest of your life, but you cannot have an ecstatic relationship and NEED that person there. If you are not already whole, complete and sound, ACCORDING TO YOUR EXPERIENCE OF YOU, when you enter into a relationship, you'll remain unsatisfied. In your attempt to get complete, you will try to grab from the other person what you think you need. This is a depleting experience for both persons.

On the other hand, it's a very high experience to see that person on the pillow next to you in the morning, hear them tell you how much they love you, and know you didn't have to do anything to get them to say it.

COMMENDMENT #1: TELL THE TRUTH

Now that we have defined the State of Disloyalty and discussed its devious qualities (the pretenses of Jealousy, Failure, Blame, Loneliness, Victim, Fear and Soul Mate) Commendment #1 will provide you with a tested and proven formula of action that will empower you to shift your Point of View so that you may move up the Tone Scale and begin to experience more freedom. However, it will only work IF YOU USE IT.

To begin the process, you must first DECIDE to stop pretending. Stop pretending that other people and circumstances are keeping you from having happiness. When you decide to tell the truth, you are acknowledging to yourself that you haven't been. You are telling the truth, perhaps for the first time! You don't even have to believe it. Just say it. Just for a second. For example, "I decide to trust myself to eat sensibly." Just by saying that, you begin the process of trusting yourself and stopping the pretense. Unfortunately, making a decision once isn't enough. Until you are able to tell the truth all the time, keep deciding and redeciding.

Pretending is saying something exists or doesn't exist when the opposite is true. This very fundamental changing of the truth must be stopped before any advancement can be made in telling the truth. Tell the truth about your circumstances as they are at the moment they occur. How is your life working and in what ways isn't it working? Telling the truth is just recognizing the cold hard facts about the way it really is, no making believe. Remember the earlier example: if you are making $1500 per month and you are spending $2000 per month, know that you are not telling the truth about how much you have to spend.

When it comes to relationship, humans often appear to know less about the truth, about what is in accord with fact and reality, than in any other area in their lives. What's worse, it seems almost impossible to tell the truth about a relationship while in one. As soon as we get into a relationship, we become emotional and reactive. In my experience it is nearly impossibile to create anything from a position of reactiveness and emotionalism. The only way you can have ecstatic relationships is to be able to MENTALLY stand outside of them while in them.

Telling the truth does not mean spilling your guts so that someone else will be responsible for you. It only means telling the truth. It is a popular and current misconception in the awareness movement that there is some sacred virtue in "sharing" everything that is going on in your mind, even when that will only result in upsetting someone. Much of what goes on in your mind is pretense. It's an addition or distortion of what actually is. To SHARE your mind's PRETENSE is not "telling the truth." When you DO tell the truth, there is always a way to say it that will not cause upset.

Telling the truth is knowing what is and what isn't, whether you like it or not. Ecstatic relationships will not happen without your willingness to be totally responsible for your actions, find out the truth and tell it. Here is a little exercise to demonstrate an example of what the truth is, whether you like it or not. Stand up from the chair you are sitting in and run as hard as you can towards the farthest wall. Sooner or later, depending on the size of the room, and how fast you run, you'll crash into the wall and fall to the floor. The truth is, you have the FREEDOM to run as hard as you want, and as far as you want, until you get to the wall. Then, whether you like it or not, the wall will stop you even if you feel that the wall should not be there or that you should have superhuman capabilities and be able to run through it. The truth is, the wall exists, just as truth exists, and determines, respectively, how far you can run in your room or the way in which you can play in life.

In relationships, we deny the truth because there is something there we don't like. It's the same as not wanting walls to be where they are. As surely as gravity will make you fall to the floor after you hit the wall, not telling the truth about your relationships will eliminate all possibilities of having an ecstatic one.

If you've ever baked a cake from a mix, you know it comes with all the ingredients pre-packaged and a spectacular picture of how your cake will turn out, if you follow the prescribed directions conveniently printed on the back of the box! No mess, no fuss, no failure and the picture inspires great trust.

So far, walking the aisles of life's supermarket, I've not discovered a pre-packaged cake mix for ecstatic relationships! You have to start from scratch with a recipe handed down from grandmother. You already have a sense that you can't create the perfect cake without all the ingredients in the bowl as the first step. So gather all your ingredients and put them in your bowl.

The recipe now says, "Mix them all together till the lumps disappear into a creamy liquid." Okay, that you can do. Then the recipe says to pour the liquid in a pan and put it in a preheated oven. That was relatively simple, but now what?

There is something that occurs between pouring the liquid in the pan and the time the cake comes out of the oven. Your recipe card, blurred and smudged with time and use, doesn't have a beautiful picture of the final result. You have to TRUST that your cake will do what cakes do in ovens in order to recreate the picture on the pre-mix box. You were able to mix all those ingredients together, pour the mixture in a pan and put it in the oven simply because you TRUSTED YOUR ABILITY to have the mixture become an edible cake. Without trust in yourself, you never would have pulled the mixing bowl out of your cupboard.

The same is true in your relationship with yourself and others. By your reading this book, you've already pulled your bowl out of the cupboard. Take these Ten Commendments, all the ingredients for an ecstatic relationship, put them in your bowl of life and trust that you can make it come out picture-perfect.

When you are willing to tell the truth, you are ready to create that ecstatic relationship. You have put trust in place as the foundation upon which everything else is built. Everytime you tell the truth about how your circumstances really are, you will be giving yourself the experience that you are a little more trustworthy. Make a game out of it and find as many such items as you can. A wonderful exercise is to make a list of all the decisions you make to trust yourself as you go through your day. Take a sheet of paper and write down all these decisions. Decide to get up at seven o'clock. Write down your decision. Trust yourself to do it. Get up at seven o'clock. Decide to brush your teeth. Write down your decision. Trust yourself to do it. Brush your teeth. Developing trust in yourself is critical to your moving up the scale and to being able to create that perfect relationship.

Imagine what it would be like to produce your perfect relationship. Imagine the changes you'd need to make, down to the finest detail. Your ability to imagine something more than you currently believe you could have, creates it coming towards you. You cannot create what you are unwilling to imagine, to picture as possible. Would you bake a cake if your imagination held no image of a cake? No, you wouldn't even dream a thing called "cake" existed, or that it was even possible.

IN SUMMARY: A WORD ABOUT SELF-WORTH

Leave one ingredient out of your cake and it will taste like your relationship feels when you leave out one of the commendments. Leave more ingredients out and a cake connoisseur will consider your cake worthless. Leave things that you value out of your relationship with yourself or others, and your opinion of your own worth, what you deserve, will dwindle accordingly. If you do not tell the truth, you will not feel you are worthy of a relationship with your own self or anyone else.

To begin the process towards having high self-worth you need only do one thing: TELL THE TRUTH!!

You build self-worth, bit by bit, simply by being or doing what you say you must be or do to feel powerful. Self-worth is only what you make it up to be. You have a sense of your own worth when you do the things that you say must be done to have it. Perhaps you say that staying awake from 9AM to 9PM is what you need to do to have self-worth. If you stay awake from 9AM to 9PM, you will experience self-worth. Great! Perhaps someone else has to make a lot of money to feel self-worth. Other people have other things they think they must be, do or have. You do what you say is necessary and let others do what they define as necessary. If you start with staying awake by your definition, you will soon become powerful enough to do anything else you choose. Saying you must have a million dollars to have self-worth when you are currently unemployed is a pretense that damages your self-worth. Saying you must have five job interviews this week, and doing just that, will create selfworth. Just like the commendments, self-worth is a progression that builds upon itself.

CHAPTER 4: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF ADVERSARY:
GO FOR RESULTS

CHAPTER 4

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF ADVERSARY:
GO FOR RESULTS

Key Word: Opposition

The step up from Disloyalty to Adversary is, without a doubt, the largest single step that is taken anywhere in this journey from the bottom of the chart up to the top (Empower/Source). It's also the one that requires the most courage. When you've come out of Disloyalty you have decided to stop pretending and to trust yourself. You've finally decided to come out of your mental fog of pretense.

Disloyalty to Adversary is coming out of unconsciousness to consciousness. It is coming out of pretending and into defending. It will feel like the biggest chance you have ever taken because you are now willing to openly oppose in order to get what you feel you deserve. Opposition that is covert or hidden is always Disloyalty. Adversary is out in the open, it holds the potential for great confrontations. Notice on the Tone Scale, hostility, anger and hate are actually all higher than Disloyalty. They all have more freedom than any of the emotions in Disloyalty. Adversary is the state of insisting on the virtue of your position.

You can trust yourself in adversary to "build a case" often out of nothing and then blast someone with it. Your strategy is to surprise.

With persons in Adversary you will often hear them say, "It's the principle of the thing." Yes, there are principles, but that's not why an Adversary is doing something. They are quoting a principle just to prove how right they can be.

If you are in a relationship while in Adversary you will generate counter- and cross-flows to your purpose. Your intention is to use communication to produce effects, never understanding. Results can be achieved, but soon decay. You'll never have certainty of a result.

When we have moved up to Adversary, we have one viewpoint and we have to protect it. We are certain that our survival depends on it. When someone expresses a different point of view, we have to say thay are wrong. We oppose and resist their viewpoint no matter what it is because we only have the capacity for one viewpoint at a time. In Adversary, it doesn't matter what the viewpoint is because we will change our position as quickly as necessary to stay in opposition.

The important thing about Adversary is that people will oppose and defend right out in the open with all of the associated attitudes and emotions that are on the chart, i.e., defiance, shock, outrage, arrogance and conceit. It is interesting to note that when a disloyal person gets angry they move UP...to Adversary.

Most people feel that anger, hate and antagonism are so bad that they do not feel safe exhibiting such emotions. Instead, they stay in Disloyalty, pretending they don't even have those feelings and emotions. People are terrified of coming up through this particular State since they fear society will make them wrong, beat them up physically or in some way penalize them for being so extroverted. Since you've just gotten out of your mental fog (Disloyalty) and have replaced it with anger, your reaction is to look good, save face, be technical (nittpick), reasonable or even downright nasty in order to be right. You're into getting and defending your rights and truly believe this is what you need to do. If you don't play for results at this level, you'll find yourself stuck in Adversary and dropping back into Disloyalty. What happens is the deterioration of your self-worth; hence, you'll return to pretending.

John came to the door of my apartment building for his scheduled counselling appointment and rang the door bell. Not getting a response, he tried again. Not getting a response the second time, he got angry and went off muttering.

Mary came to the door of my apartment building three hours later for her scheduled appointment and rang the bell. Not getting a response, she tried again. Not getting a response the second time, she rang the manager's apartment and got a response from him. She explained to him that I was not answering my bell and that didn't make sense to her. She asked if he would check to see if I were there. He came to my apartment door, and we all discovered that my bell was out of order.

My client, John, chose to create an adversarial position. He went away feeling he didn't get what he deserved. He felt his rights had been taken away. What's more, he felt insulted and attacked because the doorbell had dominated him by suppressing his right to his appointment. John felt something was owed to him that wasn't forthcoming. If he chose to keep his attention riveted on anger for very long, he would begin to feel he wanted to burn my building down or rearrange my face. In short, John created being stuck in anger.

Mary, on the other hand, focused her attention on playing for results. If it had occurred to her to feel angry, her attention didn't stay at anger, but with the result she wanted. Consequently, she succeeded in producing her result. She got her session and went away feeling satisfied, on purpose and successful. John's actions were in vain because all his attention was on his anger and he was unwilling to play for results.

Webster defines "right" as: "something to which one has a just claim." Notice the polarity, the defensiveness, the arrogance, conceit and contempt implicit in that definition. Webster goes on to say: "the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled." THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT BARRIER TO PRODUCING RESULTS IN A RELATIONSHIP IS YOUR BELIEF THAT YOU HAVE RIGHTS IN THAT RELATIONSHIP.

Rights are your knowing how you want things to be and wanting to make them stay that way. Rights are an attempt to keep things under your control. When anyone presents a differing idea that appears to threaten your rights, your reaction will be to stop them. But where do rights come from?

Each of us has NEEDS which determine our whole perspective on everything. The entire game called life is governed by all you think about the way things are or are not. Your needs are set by what you believe in and don't believe in. These needs define what makes up a safe, working and ecstatic world for you.

We humans all have "needs." You have a need for food, air and water to keep your bodies alive. You also have a need for love, support and appreciation to keep your emotional bodies alive, to have well-being. The "needs" each of you has determine the specifics about what you must do or how you must conduct yourself in order to get this love, support and appreciation. Each person is quite different but you have one thing in common. We MUST each recognize our "needs," seek them out, and then maintain them on a day-to-day basis to maintain our well-being.

Needs are like finger prints. They are exact, unique to each of you and permanent; needs do not change. It is my belief that your needs have been the same all your life. I don't believe that your needs change, even with the passing of time, growing from child to adult, the exposure to other people, the fact that your minds re never quiet, that you are always sponging things into yourselves and that your perceptions change all the time. Your needs are what make up your unique personality.

There are a few reasons why it looks as though your needs change. The first is the wording you use to describe them. When you first discover a need it is usually worded in very general terms. "I need to be loved." As you communicate that to others you find they do not understand what you want and you never get "to be loved." Then you find it necessary to refine the wording of your needs if you hope to ever get them. You either reduce them to only "expectations" or "wants," or reword them to make them more precise and more communicable. You change the wording. Your need now is "to be held." Upon putting this out to others you find yourself being held by lots of friends but still don't feel that you are getting "to be loved." You change the wording again. Your need now is "to be held by someone who turns you on sexually." That is what was really underneath your original need "to be loved" and now it is clear.

Another reason why it looks as though your needs change is because you can only see a very few of the total of them at a time. If you can imagine a stack of plates with each plate representing a need, the "top plate" will be the one pressing you to be satisfied next. When the "top plate need" is satisfied it goes back down into the stack and the next "top plate need" will take center stage, make its presence known and press you, either consciously or subliminally (depending on where you are on the ITS), demanding that it be satisfied.

Sometimes you are aware of the next "top plate need" and sometimes you are not; that awareness is what determines where you are on the ITS. For example, if you're unconscious of the "top plate need" (and therefore most of them) you are operating in Disloyalty. If there's a "top plate need" that you're aware of and it's not being met, you'll demand it as if it were your right, thus placing yourself in Adversary. If the "top plate need" is being satisfied -- or said another way, the "top plate need" is not overwhelming you -- you'll probably be at contentment on the chart. If the whole stack is not very high, you'll probably move up to enthusiasm. And if all of them are being satisfied, you'll move up to ecstasy.

If you're in a relationship for a long period of time, you will have the experience that your needs and the needs of your partner appear to change. This is only because as the "top plate needs" are satisfied they UNCOVER the next need right under them that was always there. You are recognizing that the more needs you can satisfy the more freedom you give yourself, and the closer you bring yourself to ecstasy.

There are three different degrees of "needs" in a relationship. They are "needs," "expectations," and "wants." The most acute is called a "need." Webster defines "need" as, "a physiological or psychological requirement for the well-being of an organism." Therefore, it is something that MUST be constantly happening for you or you will experience some degree of upset, however minor.

The second degree of need is called an "expectation." Webster defines "expectation" as, "looking forward to the probable occurrence of." It is something that is not as necessary as a need, but it is something that can produce an upset without any notice, if it is not achieved eventually.

The third degree of need, and by far the weakest, is called a "want." Webster defines it as, "desiring or wishing for." For our purposes here it is something that you wish for, but you will not become upset if you never get it. Its only purpose is to give others an idea of your desires.

To create an ecstatic relationship it is my belief that it is essential that you first know your "needs" and then the "needs" of your mate or partner. Your next step SHOULD BE to sit down and write out two lists, "Ideal Mate," and "Life in General." Each list will be made up of "needs," "expectations," and "wants." Do these lists whether you are in a relationship currently or not. Please look for additional directions on how to prepare these lists in the Appendices.

Your needs belong on the specific, correct list for you. If you spend enough time looking at it, each need will fall into its exact, right place. The ideal mate relationship can happen only when your Ideal Mate Needs list is exact, COMPLETE and being satisfied. Remember, your list will be very different from anyone else's. This is one place you can be absolutely certain you are a unique individual. Put needs on the "Ideal Mate" list ONLY if your "ideal mate" is the only person who can give you those needs. Otherwise, put them on the "Life In General" list and look for them elsewhere where they may be more easily available. Also, if you've looked at them carefully enough and put them on the right list, your needs will not shift from one list to another.

When the "Ideal Mate" and the "Life In General" lists are complete, you will be prepared to compare lists with your mate or prospective mate to see if you can agree on supporting each other in getting all your needs.

Sit down with the other person in a private environment and take turns discussing an item on each list. Whether you can go on to create an ecstatic relationship or not will be determined as you find out if you are in alignment on each item, and if you are both willing to

co-create each other's needs. It's important that you each come from a full experience of CHOOSING that each of you gets ALL your "needs." If a "need" exists that requires something of either of you that the other is not willing to "go along with" or give aid in insuring that it is satisfied, and it's impossible to satisfy that need otherwise, there is a barrier produced that automatically stops you from having an ecstatic relationship together. There is no longer a basis from which to create an ecstatic relationship. The only way a relationship can be ecstatic is if it is founded on agreement and alignment on each other's needs and a willingness on each person's part to support the other in getting their needs.

If you are committed to continuing your relationship you can move your needs closer and closer until you find the place where you both can agree that that's what you need. When you are in a relationship and can't seem to come to any agreement on your needs because they seem to be diametrically opposed, the next step is to discuss them. When you put out your need followed by the correlating need from your mate and they seem to be diametrically opposed, look deeper. See if there isn't a more precise way of stating that same need that will not be quite so much at odds with the other person. Also, look to see what hearing their needs brings up to your mind that you now should include in your list. For example, if your need is "to keep my home impeccably clean," and your mates correlating need is "to never pick up a scrub brush or broom in their life," all is not lost. You can both have your needs met by hiring a cleaning person.

We don't fall in love with people, we fall in love with our needs. Find a person who supplies the greatest number of your needs and that's the person to commit yourself to for life.

What makes it difficult to get over a recent divorce is that the stack of needs that WERE being satisfied now resurface in the stack as NOT being satisfied; this creates incredible chaos and a dramatic loss of State of Integrity for as long as it takes to begin to get those needs satisfied once again.

Needs, by their very nature, indeed by definition, are a driving force in our lives and can limit us severely. The purpose of Awareness Counselling and the Integrity Training is to dissolve your being at the effect of your needs, not to dissolve the needs. Looking to dissolve your "needs" should not become the goal. Discovering, identifying, not being at the effect of them AND getting them satisfied, are the prerequisites for well-being.

When you find yourself demanding your rights, being upset with those closest to you and in some emotional pain, immediately look to see what "need" is not being satisfied.

What keeps you from having an ecstatic relationship, when you are in Adversary, is that your attention is again in the wrong place. All your attention is on your "needs" and PREFERRING THEM to a relationship.

When a need is not being satisfied, and you are aware of it, it becomes the object of all your attention. When it becomes all consuming you become the effect of that particular need. Further, if YOU are not doing what's necessary to get the need satisfied for yourself, or for some reason see it outside your control, you will begin demanding that others become responsible for you and that they get the need for you. It's at this point that your "needs" are turned into rights and you begin demanding them from others. All of your attention is now centered on what you think are your rights instead of taking responsibility for seeing that your needs are satisfied. You've placed yourself in Adversary.

When a need is not being satisfied, and you are NOT aware of it, it will manifest physically. Addictions and arthritis are a need for love. Back problems are a need for support. Cancer is a need to make a major contribution to a group whether that group is small (e.g., immediate family) or large (society as a whole). Skin - problems are a need for more security. The diseases of the body are signals as to what needs are not being satisfied.

The truth is you don't have any rights in a relationship. You have "needs" that will be seen as rights when they are not satisfied.

In relationships, rights are about having it your way with no exception AND with no consideration for the other person. You are willing to play the relationship game only as long as you can have it your way. Period! Tremendous energy goes into collecting reasons and justifications to uphold your having it the way you want it. But while you're doing that you'll not be able to move up to a higher State of Integrity.

It is not wrong to feel right about your needs. No matter what they are, if they are comfortable and natural for you, they are right for you. A problem is created only when you are impassioned to justify or defend their rightness with others, instead of just living and enjoying them. It isn't even wrong to NOT accept someone else's needs. Being very clear about what is right for you is called certainty. Having to defend what is right for you, or attacking someone else for what they hold as right for them, is being more interested in rights than in the result of getting your own needs satisfied. This is true even if you are being attacked by others for what you consider as your needs.

As long as your attention is on your rights, you'll spend all your time DEMANDING them. And what's worse, you'll demand that your partner get them for you. In so doing, you'll just sabotage the relationship. You'll get angry the moment things don't go your way and close down any possibility of getting a result in that relationship. You declare war!

"You SHOULD do your own dishes....You HAVE to pick up your hair off the bathroom floor.... It's your PLACE to take out the garbage.... It's my RIGHT to have sex as often as I want it."

When you're trying to be right notice where all your attention and energy are focused. They are focused on making others into who they have to be, according to you. It makes life very interesting. What is created is a battleground and a continuous tug of war. Both of you are driven to get the other person to conform to the way you need it. Both of you will oppose everything that happens until you get your own needs satisfied.

When you are fighting for your rights you must not know your needs, or you are not getting them satisfied and feel your hands are tied.

You miss a significant fact when protecting your rights and all you can think about is having it your way. What you aren't able to notice is the other person wants to do things for you that are over and above what you are being right about getting, and you are not giving them the opportunity to contribute them to you. You might never have dreamed the things wanting to be done that far outweigh your demands. You won't even see them, much less let them in. Let me tell you a perfect example of this.

A friend and business associate of mine once came to me to join the Counsellors Training Program. Before our first meeting took place, I had decided I would be willing to reduce the tuition 50% because of our relationship. Much to my surprise, he came into our first meeting defending his right to a "deal" on the tuition. With his attention on defending his rights, he not only told me he had a right to a reduction, but was very demanding about how much the reduction should be. He was so reasonable that he even developed a case as to how limited MY rights were in charging him that much in the first place. I gave this friend exactly what he demanded as his right, a 25% reduction.

Focused on defending his rights, my friend limited what - he got out of our meeting. He put a parameter around what could happen in our relationship, thereby destroying spontaneous action, creativity, new ideas. This is conscious opposition. Going for rights, by its very nature, is limiting. It must be nose to nose and someone must lose.

What most people don't notice, in the game of protecting their rights, is their heavy investment in continuing the game. One important function in winning, here, is to survive the game, keep playing no matter what....say anything, do anything, but keep the game going. Resist and be reasonable. This is also a very delicate game. I've watched people verbally beat up their partner, unmercifully, just to the point of near "death" and then stop. The table gets turned. The partner gets to do the same thing back. Both of them stop precisely at the right moment to assure that they don't "kill" each other or the game. What would happen if they "went too far"? The game would be over! The relationship would be ended!

Relationships built on being right are the most delicately balanced relationships of all. You have to oppose, dominate, insult and attack as if your life depended on it, but not so much that you destroy the other person. To win the game by destroying the other person is to lose the game itself!

RESIST is what we do when we think we have rights. Resistance creates what you're resisting simply because you are unwilling to take your attention off your notion of rights and put it somewhere else. Pain is a classic example of resisting your experience. We are at pain in exact ratio to our level of resistance to anything. If there is no resistance to the experience, there is also no pain. No resistance to the experience is what's happening when a person walks over burning coals or lies on a bed of sharp nails. Pain is not occurring because resistance doesn't exist for that person in that moment.

The next time you are having pain in your relationship, locate YOUR resistance, shift your attention elsewhere and see what happens to that pain!

Reasonableness is the condition of using reasons to be right. Webster defines reason as, "a statement offered in explanation or justification." If explanation is the purpose of giving reasons, this instance can lead to a result. However, if you're giving reasons or being reasonable, to justify your actions, then you are trying to be right. Results cannot occur out of being reasonable in this manner.

Reason is also defined as, "a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense." Using reasons or reasonableness as a form of defense automatically sets you up in a position of having certain rights that you feel are being violated or being jeopardized. You are going for protection, defense of your rights, and not for a result.

REASONABLENESS is the fuel for the fire of your rationalizations and justifications about your rights. It's all about defending a position. All of which is the antithesis of getting your needs satisfied or producing any other results.

"WHY?" questions when asked by an adversarial person are always hostile acts, not only because they are virtually unanswerable but when asked by an Adversary are meant to divert your attention; moreover, their "why" is asking you to give an explanation of the moral and ethical reasons for your actions.

"Why didn't you call me last night?" The adversarial questioner is only interested in letting you know they think you were wrong for not calling. Your answer -even if it's the one they want to hear -- is relatively immaterial to them, unless it can be used to further drive home how "wrong" you are.

The moment you open your mouth to answer a "why" question for this adversarial person, you immediately place yourself in the position of having to defend yourself. The other person wants only to be right, and if you proceed to engage them AT ALL in this debate of reasonableness you will fall off the cliff's edge into adversary with them.

The word "why" is where a question can change from desiring an answer to attacking. Continued asking of "why" is clearly a hostile act designed to divert your attention to defending yourself. When you ask a "why" question, you put the other person's back against the wall. The odds are very high you don't want an answer, but want to be right.

The question is asked, "What time does the sun come up tomorrow?" If the person answering replies with, "Why", the questioner has been effectively diverted to a response like:

"Well, I wanted to get as early a start as possible on my drive to the mountains."

Notice, the person asking is now into explanation and never got an answer to what time the sun came up.

Adversarial people love "why" questions, and hate everything else, especially "what" questions.

Ask a "what" question, if you are genuinely interested in an answer. The word "what" asks for information, clarification or understanding. A "what" question supports the conversation, you and the other person in getting a result.

"Well, I wanted to hear from you and felt you didn't care about me when you didn't call."

"I do care about you very much.
Would you like to go to a movie with me Thursday?"

A result has been produced and you both feel great about yourselves and your relationship.

"How" questions are the subtlest form of "make wrong" for the Adversarial type. They will ask "how" not really wanting an answer but desiring only to dominate and suppress. For example, "How am I supposed to be able to work for a living AND still have time to go out on dates with you?" Or, "How can I make enough money to support your habits?" Or, "How am I supposed to know you wanted me to wash your car?" Or, "How come you never give me...."

"How" is not always Adversarial. "How" doesn't ask for a moral or ethical explanation. But it does ask for an explanation that technically isn't possible to give. If you asked me, "How do you ride a bike?" I would give you the following explanation: "You straddle the bike, put your feet on the pedals, hands on the handle bars and start pedaling."

As someone who doesn't know how to ride a bike, that explanation still doesn't tell you HOW to do it. It tells you WHAT to do to ride the bike and the rest is up to you. When you actually ride the bike you'll know "how" it's done but still will not be able to answer the question, "How do you ride a bike?"

COMMENDMENT #2: GO FOR RESULTS

The first step to move out of Adversary is to recognize it's YOU opposing results. Result is defined by Webster as, "something obtained by calculation or investigation." No matter what it looks like, recognize that YOU -- not someone else -- are the one who is opposing getting what you want. The opposition is yours. Your actions, your reasonableness, your points of view, your emotions, your attitudes and your activities are the very things keeping you from getting your desired results; no one else is blocking you. My client, Mary, from the example earlier in this chapter, was willing to investigate if there were any way to still get her appointment with me, and got the result she wanted. She was going for results. John was not willing to investigate. He was not going for a result.

Stop having to be right. Stop thinking you have all the answers. Ask "what" questions and not "why" questions. Have certainty of your positions and drop all need to defend that certainty or your positions.

At this level of experience, called Adversary (refer to the ITS) you either produce results or you give reasons (justifications). Notice which one you're known for. Perhaps right this minute you can test yourself by noticing what your response is to what you are reading! If you'll shift your attention to producing results every time you feel a need to be right or defend yourself, you will be on your way to expanded freedom and ecstatic relationships.

When you are in the midst of your next argument, see if you can stop having to be right. See if you can stop it and apologize for being in it.

When in Adversary, the result that is being resisted must be confronted, brought out into the open, and again made the center of the discussion. If you and your mate are cleaning up the house so you can go on vacation and you find yourselves fighting about who is doing the most work, stop the fight. Remind yourselves that your purpose is to go on vacation -- THAT is the desired result. Both of you take a look at what work needs to be done and work together to get it finished. Then, you can go on your vacation.

When you KNOW there is going to be a result from everything that happens around you, you'll be able to drop all the rights you ever thought you needed. Not only will the results you want get produced, but results you never dreamed of will be produced.

CHAPTER 5: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF UNCERTAINTY:
MAINTAIN FREEDOM OF CHOICE

CHAPTER 5

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF UNCERTAINTY:
MAINTAIN FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Key Word: Confused

As soon as a person is willing to stop defending his position and move on, he is presented with a lot more alternatives. If you put down the telescope (or, said another way, the tunnel vision) and take a look, you will find that there are numerous choices to be made in any given situation, at any given time. A person who has just come out of Adversary will have a lot of difficulty choosing which choice is right since in the past he has had only one viewpoint. All he knows from Adversary is to be right, to make sure he made the right choice. That is what will paralyze his ability to even make a choice. Now there is frustration, confusion and uncertainty and the notion that none of the alternatives is right. There is the belief that if he chooses one of the alternatives then he has lost all of the others. The question he is plagued by is, "What if I choose the wrong one?" A person in Uncertainty does not know that you don't kill off all of the alternatives when you choose. Choosing is simply choosing. You just choose one of the alternatives and go for it. If, somewhere along the path, you discover that it is not the direction you want to be going in, you simply drop what you have chosen and pick a different route.

In Uncertainty you may experience success and "failure" -- alternately. The temptation is to allow temporary "failure" to lead to total invalidation. If one aspect of a complex project does not work out, the temptation will be to drop the whole project.

People in Uncertainty look for someone else to make their lives work. In Uncertainty (or below) you cannot have a satisfying relationship with yourself or others. People in Disloyalty pretend. People in Adversary oppose

and people in Uncertainty are confused. It is not possible to have a worthwhile, nurturing or satisfying relationship if you are pretending, opposing or not choosing to have it.

When you feel confused, annoyed and frustrated your freedom of choice has been taken away. Your point of view is that everything is an infringement. You resolve this by avoiding it and going elsewhere. You are in the State of Integrity of Uncertainty.

Choice is like breath itself, and you'll do anything to have it, even destroy what you already have! It is very important to know you have freedom of choice.

To play tennis, you need someone on the other side of the net who is willing and able to hit the ball back to you so you get another chance at it. As long as they can keep getting the ball back to you, you are challenged and enjoy it no matter how great you get at the game. You have complete freedom of choice dashing around that court returning the ball. You can even choose, after a particularly spectacular return, to not want the other person to get the ball back to you so you can be called the winner.

What would happen to your freedom of choice, sense of fun, challenge and enjoyment if you could somehow get the other person to hit the ball back just exactly as, and where, you told them to every time? You would feel your freedom of choice had been taken out of the game. The whole game would lose its challenge and you wouldn't feel it was fun or enjoyable anymore. The same is true for relationships. To stifle freedom of choice in your partner or yourself ruins the fun, challenge and enjoyment of the relationship.

One of the fundamental elements of an ecstatic relation- . ship is that you both must always maintain freedom of choice. If that freedom of choice is lost, taken away, or allowed to remain unused ecstatic relationship will be ruined.

The moment you feel deprived of something, it will seem that getting whatever it is, is all that is important. The truth is THAT THING is not what is important. What has become all consuming is getting back your sense of CHOICE. You will pursue seeing people that you don't even want to see, just to prove to yourself that you still have your freedom of choice. I will say again, choice is like breath itself, and you'll do anything to have it, even destroy what you already have. I'm sure you have already experienced the proof of this in your life.

You know how it is. Get into a relationship and suddenly it's just the two of you to the exclusion of everyone else. The very first thing you both do is give up your CHOICE to continue seeing old friends and doing what you enjoy with them. In your new relationship, neither of you trusts the other to be with old friends and still want the new relationship. At this level of non-trust, the first conclusion (solution) is to attempt to take choice out of the picture. It's not surprising that it doesn't take long before one or the other of you is chafing at lack of a sense of choice and your eye starts roving wistfully or wishfully after someone else.

More than anything else in your mate relationship, you'll want to have "access" to each other 100% of the time. This is simply because you'll be quite upset if you feel there is something going on in the other person's life from which you are being barred and about which you don't have freedom of choice. No matter what it is, you want to have the freedom to be included in all parts of their life. Notice that your upset has to do with your sense of freedom of choice being denied, not with the fact of what is actually happening. You don't really want to go sit at the bowling alley for

three hours with your mate's friends, but you want to be free to choose not to do it.

If you are in a relationship, and you're not living together, sooner or later you'll say, "What did you do last night?" What if they went out and did something that is none of your business or which they know will plainly upset you? What do they say to you? What has happened to their freedom of choice when you pose that question?

Everyone has their own habit patterns, goals, desires and lifestyle. Trying to change someone by taking away their choice to be the way they are only leads to a hell of a lot of resentment. Yet, all too often, what is the first thing you do for someone when you're in love? You opt for changing them -- a habit here, a goal there, just a little rearrangement of their "lifestyle" to accommodate love. Then you wonder what happened to the relationship! If you toss out or take away freedom of choice in the name of love, do you really think the relationship will still work? Is it ecstasy to wake up in the morning, look at your mate and feel they are only there because you have cleverly manipulated their staying?

Creating an ecstatic relationship is continuing to allow your mate complete freedom of choice. Give them what is important to them, especially the choice to be exactly the way they are. Then in the morning when you roll over and see them beside you, you know they are there because they WANT to be with you. That is ecstasy.

A common way that freedom of choice is eliminated is by assuming and demanding within a relationship. If you have a wife, know that she always maintains her freedom of choice to NOT cook and clean your house. If you have a husband, know that he always maintains his freedom of choice to NOT go to the office or mow the lawn. It is only when you are freely choosing to cook or go to the office that you can really enjoy cooking or going to the office. The moment it is a demand or an assumption,

freedom of choice is taken away and resentment replaces it. When both of you can GIVE freedom of choice, you will GET freedom of choice.

If you are not exercising your freedom of choice, you will live your life feeling as though the other person is "calling all the shots." You will not be deciding your own direction in life. You will not be living your own life. You will only be reacting to what your partner wants, or worse, to what you think they want.

The freedom of choice is always yours. What you will do, however, is dream up reasons why you can't make that choice. Webster defines "freedom" as, "an absence of constraint." There is an "absence of constraint" inside you where choosing occurs. Freedom, or constraint, can only happen if you let it happen. No one can constrain your choices other than yourself. Choose anything and know you can choose again and again. You have the freedom to make ANY choice, about anything, at anytime.

Freedom occurs in your head. Your mind creates an illusion that not having the ability means not having the freedom. The stops, barriers and constraints all happen in your mind. If a 400 pound orangutan were sitting on your chest, your ability to stand up would be somewhat hampered. However, the orangutan didn't take away your freedom to choose. You are still free to make that choice. The orangutan has simply made your ABILITY to stand up somewhat difficult! Most people think that lacking ability is lacking freedom, that the two are one and the same. Not true!

Frequently, people use their lack of ability as an excuse not to exercise the freedom of choice they always have. A poor person will contend that freedom only exists for the rich. The mind's purpose for this illusion is to avoid exercising freedom of choice and to take us down to fear instead. Prisoners of war have maintained an experience of freedom within themselves despite their bodies being imprisoned and tortured. Freedom is only an experience in your head, so choose it!

When you enter into a relationship without your FREEDOM to choose, you give up your ABILITY to choose. You forget that you have it. You quit looking for it. The truth is, you've developed your own lifestyle long before meeting this other person and coming together is not a reason to end your freedom to choose. GIVE YOURSELF A LOT OF FREEDOM IN A RELATIONSHIP. ENRICH YOUR RELATIONSHIP BY BRINGING ALL THE WAYS YOU ARE UNIQUELY YOU INTO THE RELATIONSHIP RATHER THAN REMAKING YOURSELF OR ANOTHER.

It's important to have your own private time alone, to be creative with yourself. The urge to merge, if unceasingly followed, leads to resentment and relationship mush. Take time alone to meditate, go out with a friend, walk in the park, fly a kite or do whatever suits you. Take time out of the relationship. This may be a radical idea for you, but it is what some have called the "only escape clause" and I call "freedom." This is time for you to be totally you and still be in that wonderful,

ecstatic relationship you've created. Built-in time alone simply reaffirms your freedom of choice in being with the other person and creates joy in being together.

Within relationships, you still maintain your freedom to have your upsets, standards, idiosyncrasies and unshared memories, be it mental or physical. Now I know all of you who are pursuing "awareness" will find this next statement uncomfortable. It is not "bad" to have upsets. In order to stay out of trouble with your upset, however, you need to draw the line at not enrolling others in it.

Do not enroll each other, or anybody else for that matter, in your upsets. Remember, when you're upset you're resisting something the way it is. You want it changed. In all likelihood, you'll want the person you love to be enrolled in your upset. The next time this happens, stop for a minute, sit down and look at what is going on with you. What are you trying to change that won't change? Conversely, what has changed that you did not want to change? One of these two will be the source of your upset, NOT the other person.

You are upset about something that won't change or that changed without your agreement and it is YOUR upset. Enrolling others in your upset very conveniently puts your attention in the wrong place. Rather than handle your feelings about the changed or unchanged, you focus on the upset, itself. Your attention then goes into getting others to join you or affirm you in your upset. No result is produced by enrolling others in your upset EXCEPT THE CREATION OF MORE UPSET! Next time you are in upset, locate the source of what's changed or won't change and handle that. Don't enroll others in your upset. If it is a persistent upset, simply let go of it by shifting your attention elsewhere. Upset will resolve itself when you focus on producing a result rather than fixating on the upset.

You cannot make choices for your mate by insisting they choose what you want. When you demand that the other person not have sex with other people, you have taken away their freedom of choice. If it is very clear to you that you do not want your mate having sex with others, make sure you pick a mate who is also CHOOSING it that way.

What happens if you roll over early in the morning, touch your mate and they turn away? Do you instantly feel rejected? The truth is that your partner has simply exercised their freedom of choice to sleep a little longer rather than snuggle. Try to take away their freedom of choice and you're liable to find you won't get another chance to snuggle with them in the future! It is quite all right that they choose not to snuggle at that moment, you may very soon want to make a similar choice.

"You always have the freedom of choice to have sex with your mate. It's wise to have the good sense to ask for it as often as you know they will CHOOSE to deliver."

The minute freedom of choice is given up, or taken away, you will slide down the Integrity Tone Scale. It will happen so quickly you won't notice your freedom of choice has been lost. All of a sudden your confusion will give way to taking up a position, generally the one you land on immediately after losing your freedom of choice. If that position is Adversary, you will center your attention on justifications, rationalizations and reasons all in an attempt to win or be right. You may slip further down the scale into pretense, into not telling the truth. You might focus attention on being afraid, being worried, needing to protect yourself or going for revenge.

COMMENDMENT #3: MAINTAIN FREEDOM OF CHOICE
THE FORMULA TO EXPAND OUT OF UNCERTAINTY

The key is to develop your ability to choose. It is not a matter of WHAT you choose. It is only important THAT you choose. It is knowing that your life can go the way you choose it to go that gives you the freedom to move up to Detriment/Responsible.

Once, as an exercise for a client to get out of Uncertainty, I asked her to go home and for the next week play the "I Choose" game. Her instructions were to mentally put the words "I Choose" in front of every action she did as well as actions she already intended, such as brush her teeth, open the door or drink a glass of tea. She came back the next week with the following story. When she had gotten home that night she went to her desk which, for months, had continued to collect letters, bills, magazine articles, flyers and several other projects. She sat down at her desk and look ed at the papers. It was so overwhelming to her that she found herself saying, "I choose to NOT do this work tonight." She got up and went to the kitchen and made herself some dinner.

During dinner she felt great. The piles of papers didn't weigh on her mind. She had chosen to NOT do them. The change was so wonderful, by the time she finished dinner she found herself WANTING to get back to those papers and get them done. She felt so much better for having made a choice that it no longer felt overwhelming. In fact, she felt excited about seeing how much of it she could get done that evening. It wasn't the choice she made that got the work done. She had decided to NOT do the work. The fact that she MADE a choice is what freed her to change her point of view and get all of her work done that night.

Until you have an experience of freedom of choice, you can only imagine it. Until you have that experience, you will think that the circumstances around you are running your life. When you feel this to be the case, feel your freedom of choice is lost, you'll do anything to prove that circumstances have no control whatsoever over you. All your attention will go to regaining your ability to choose.

A friend of mine once called up very upset after her husband came home from a consciousness expansion weekend with his beard shaved off. She had been married to this man for 6 years and he had worn a beard the entire time. In fact she had never known him without a beard.

"I don't know him anymore," she cried into the phone. "Not only that, I don't even like his face. I'm really upset! I know about all this process bullshit... and I'm still upset. I've been told to not resist the experience, go through the pain, and all that awareness stuff, but I'm still upset." I said, "Mimi, you feel you lost your freedom of choice. That's what you're upset about. You feel badly because you didn't have any choice in his having shaved his beard. You have a relationship that is full, complete and has always included a beard. He went away, and came back without his beard. You don't feel you were consulted in the matter." She said, "I know he's the same person. I know he has the freedom to shave his beard any time he wants. I don't want to get in the way of his shaving his beard, but I am so upset." I said, "You are upset because it looks like he took choice away from you in the relationship. You liked him with a beard. That's who you know. He changed himself, it's as if he came back painted green." All Mimi needed, to be able to drop her upset, was to regain her sense of having choice in her relationship.

A week later when I was giving this as an example, someone asked me, "What if her husband asked her if he could shave his beard and she refused. And he exercised his choice and shaved it anyway?" My answer was that everyone has freedom of choice. The husband's got freedom of choice to shave his beard. The wife's got freedom of choice to divorce him. They each know the other has freedom of choice. He can shave his beard knowing that she has the freedom to leave. He has to weigh it out. Is exercising his choice to shave his beard more important than the risk he would be taking of his wife exercising her choice to go back home to mother? You compare one thing against another and decide your priority. If he had brought up the matter of his shaving his beard before he took any action, freedom of choice would have been open for them both. They would have had the chance to see their real choice was in being together and the beard would never have become an issue.

CHAPTER 6: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DETRIMENT/RESPONSIBLE:
KEEP YOUR AGREEMENTS

CHAPTER 6

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DETRIMENT/RESPONSIBLE:
KEEP YOUR AGREEMENTS

Key Word: Guilty

Detriment is the first and lowest condition in which a person can actually experience trust. People below this particular State do not experience trust. This is where your predominant sense of a person is their guilt; their diminished, damaged or impaired self-worth. That's what will bring out the key word, "Guilty." Coming out of Disloyalty, the decision was made to trust. The damaged self-worth was cultivated through the opposition phase of Adversary and elevated through the choosing in Uncertainty. The person here is responsible for his actions, but he will continue to create damage.

Detriment is the State in which you become very aware that to move upwards requires that you clean up all of your perpetrations (misdeeds) and all of the damage you have created. Clean up all the areas of your life where you have created diminished self-worth for yourself and others. Clean up all of the times you have damaged or diminished someone else's magnificence. Clean up all broken agreements. Clean up all of the things you have done that you consider bad or harmful. Until you do, your life will not expand beyond this point. It is my experience that Detriment and the states above include only a very small percentage of the population. Take a win if you are experiencing guilt in your life; you are willing to be responsible.

People in Detriment/Responsible are exactly that -- they are responsible AND they will mess it all up again. You can depend on them to feel obligated to make agreements with you. They are quite reliable in making lots of agreements. In fact, that is the cause of their eventual downfall. They will make so many agreements that sooner or later they will start breaking them. Then they will

feel wrong, guilty and embarrassed for what they've done. They will then set out to clean up the damage. People in Detriment/Responsible are reliable and then unreliable. They make agreements, keep them and then break them; keep some but not others. They will, however, clean up any damage that has been created by their having broken the agreement. You can depend on a person in Detriment to maintain a relationship with you. If you are in a relationship with someone who is not at least taking the initiative to maintain the workability of that relationship, then look for that person to be below the State of Detriment. This vicious cycle of making agreements and breaking them will continue until they consciously stop making agreements that they can't or won't keep.

I once watched a very crippled old woman walking through the rain to our neighborhood store for groceries. She was frail and feeble and walked at a snail's pace, getting soaked in the rain. Later that day, I saw a tiny girl fall down and badly skin her knee.

With surprise, it occurred to me that rain and gravity are immutable. They don't heed considerations such as an old woman catching pneumonia or the adorability of the little girl being hurt. Rain and gravity simply exist outside the realm of control and considerations.

I began to wonder about the immutability of rain and gravity. What force works at that level? What creates being born and keeps the heart beating? What it is that causes the sun to rise at exactly the predicted time without variation? Clearly, there is a set of cosmic agreements, NATURAL LAWS, which operate beyond our control and without consideration of circumstances. All around us, the world of cosmic agreement works naturally and perfectly. Natural Laws are truths that are reliable, dependable, consistent, constant, factual, observable and measurable.

I realized that these are agreements that have already been made for us and cannot be changed. They are laws of the Universe, the forces that keep the whole planet together! We, mistakenly, think we can change them, improve on them and even ignore them at whim. We often think we are a universe separate from these agreements with a vote as to how Natural Law will work. This idea is a significant misconception.

Agreements made between two people, or even between you and yourself, operate on the same level as gravity and rain. Once you have made an agreement, it aligns with the pre-existing and immutable world of Natural Laws and moves in accordance with them without regard for your considerations, reasons, justifications or desires to the contrary!

As soon as we humans enter the picture with something called "our experience," truth, factual truth, flies out the window. I hear my colleagues talk about "the truth of my experience" as though it were the same truth as Natural Law. Yet, as soon as "experience" enters, watch how quickly things cloud up till they have no resemblance to the truth. Here is an everyday incidence of this that makes it easy to see why we don't have relationships that work simply due to the lack of attention given to the immutable nature of agreements.

My good friend, Rosemarie, phoned one day saying, "Vern, let's go to lunch! Right now. Can you?" It just so happened that I had the time and inclination, so I replied, "Sure, come right on over and we'll leave from here." Rosemarie said, "I'll be right over!"

Now, Rosemarie lived four blocks from me and I'd walked to her house many times in five minutes. The "truth of my experience" was that she'd be at my door in five minutes, so being who I am, I was ready to walk out the door in five minutes. Well, fifteen minutes went by before Rosemarie rang my bell. When I opened the door I spluttered out, "Where have you been?"

Rosemarie naturally responded with, "What are you talking about? I've just come from my apartment to have lunch with you." The "truth of her experience" was that she had "come right over" just as she said she would. Before she could leave her apartment, she had to put the milk away, turn on the answering machine, get her keys, put on her coat, wait for the elevator and run the obstacle course of her nosy manager's attention.

Notice, we had both been telling the "truth of our own experience," but the relationship wasn't working. My "truth" was that Rosemarie was late and I felt an agreement had been broken. This was a very different "truth" than Rosemarie's. At this point, I certainly did not feel that the "truth" was setting me free and realized that I needed to look further to find FACTUAL truth.

In "telling the truth" all things must be considered. Coming from the "truth of your experience" adds emotions, viewpoints, attitudes and beliefs to factual truth. I took the fact of our conversation's words, added my experience and determined THAT to be the "truth." I expected Rosemarie to walk four blocks in the same time span I do and assumed she would leave the instant she put down the phone. I didn't take into account the various tasks that were part of Rosemarie's experience of leave-taking. I took my experience of leaving my house and walking to hers as the "truth" and proceeded to make up an agreement based on my "truth." She would arrive in five minutes. In fact, that was NOT what her words said. Rosemarie stated she'd be right over. When she did not arrive in the five minutes I had made up as our agreement, I was angry and unhappy. I felt trust had been damaged. Rosemarie, on the other hand, was feeling just fine. Notice that I was "killing" our relationship out of my involvement in the "truth of my experience" which, in fact, created my not telling the truth!

What would it have taken to make an agreement between Rosemarie and myself that avoided distortion and upset? Clearly basing the agreement in factual truth, truth which occurs outside the realm of human experience and

cannot be categorically distorted by the "truth" of individual experience. To avoid upset, we needed to make our agreement based on a clock and how many minutes it would be before Rosemarie arrived. In this way, the truth of our agreement would have been factually set and no upset or pretending could occur. There would have been nothing for either of us to be UN-truthful about in keeping our clear and factual agreement.

In order for me to make an agreement with Rosemarie that I will not get upset with, one that is "truthful," it must come from the place where truth lives. In other words, it must occur OUTSIDE the human experience so we humans can't distort it. We should have used a clock and agreed on how many minutes it would have been before she could get to my place. That way there would have been nothing for either of us to be UN-truthful about.

Take the truth into account when making agreements. I don't think you'd make an agreement with someone to step from the top of your building to the top of the building across the street. It's clear to you that that activity defies laws known to you. You'd break your neck. Why then are you so eager to make agreements that defy other laws? I believe it's because you don't see them nor do you know their CONSEQUENCES.

Violate any natural law and it must reduce itself to its basic element. Violate the natural law of gravity and what you get is falling down. Walk out into the rain and you'll get wet. Break agreements and what you will get is, disharmony, at best, or no relationships at all, at worst.

Natural laws are agreements that you have already made by simply being born and some of them you still pretend to know nothing about.

MAKING an agreement is as real as having a baby; both of them have entity. They both have a life force all their own. They are real and separate from you as soon as you create them. YOU HAVE AS MUCH RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR AGREEMENT'S GROWTH AND MATURATION AS YOU DO FOR A CHILD THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT INTO THIS WORLD. Make an agreement, state that something is a certain way, and it is so!

Imagine what it would be like if you had the ability to create a new planet and agreed to do so. You had seven days, and since you are a beginner, you were told exact ly what you needed to do. The first step was to create a gaseous state. The second step was to create a lot of heat. The third step was to hold it in your hands and compress it until it became solid, and so forth, until you had brought life to your new planet.

What would happen if somewhere in those steps you decided to drop the project (break the agreement) and walk away? What you would have created, instead of a new planet, is something like the "Bermuda Triangle" where things disappear, or a mysterious hot spot in space or a "half-baked" planet, uninhabitable by any living thing.

When you make an agreement, forces are set in motion with some goal intended. When you break the agreement, it is like walking away from a partially made planet. The natural forces you have set in motion will continue to some logical end, without your direction. Your responsibility in the matter, however, continues. Inasmuch as you were the creator of those forces, you are as responsible for where they go after you abandon them as you were for having created them in the first place. Can you imagine what it would be like being the guardian of a half-baked planet forever? Ignorance is not bliss!

An agreement is a living thing. When you BREAK an agreement you are killing a living thing. Something in the world of natural laws, as real as a baby in our world, is destroyed when you break an agreement. There is no way either of them can ever be brought back. When you break an agreement, what you have attempted to do is cease to create something that may no longer be your privilege. In natural law you don't have the privilege -- without serious repercussion -- to cease to create the movement you set up after making an agreement any more than you have the privilege to cease to create your child's existence.

I'm convinced, when you break an agreement, you alter the course of life very dramatically. The repercussions to broken agreements are so dire, intense and impactful, that if you knew what you were doing, you'd never break your agreements.

Telling someone you will meet them on the corner is an agreement. You have created "harmony of opinion." To then not meet them, to break your agreement, is no different than deciding to stop making that new planet. You have set forces in motion, even if they are not on as grand a scale as making a new planet. When you set such forces in motion and then turn your back on them, they will come back and kick you in your butt. The person you were to meet will look at you with less respect, have an experience of damaged trust with you, "cancel your vote," get angry or perhaps even set out to help you ruin your reputation.

What you cease to create when you break an agreement is something very much under your control: your self-worth.

When you set your alarm clock for your morning wake-up, it is for the time you have decided it is best for you to get up. In this example, you have set your alarm clock for 7:00 in the morning. When it rings, watch how you turn it off and begin to concoct all of the reasons why it was a stupid idea to have set it for that time in the first place. If you don't get up, you have just broken your first agreement of the day. Setting your clock the night before was an agreement with yourself to start your day at 7:00. Hit the snooze button, reset it, or turn it off, and if that was not part of your existing agreement, you just broke an agreement with yourself. Something as small as that will set you up to undermine all the areas of your life. You will use this to kill your self-worth, your trust level and your relationships. Not answering your alarm in the morning precludes your ability to have a sound, full, complete relationship with yourself or another person. If you can't trust yourself to turn off your alarm clock and get up in the morning, you will not trust yourself to have a relationship with anyone that is at all meaningful. It's the little agreements that you break with YOURSELF that keep you out of ecstatic relationships.

What goes out the window when you break an agreement is TRUST in yourself. You have just proven to yourself that you cannot be counted on to keep your word.

What keeps you from manifesting your goals in life is not keeping your word. Everytime you break an agreement you add more evidence to the idea that you cannot be trusted and don't deserve having what you say you want. Each broken agreement gives you more of your untrustworthiness to think about. Until you keep all your agreements and have nothing outstanding that can come up to remind you of how inadequate you are, you will not have enough trust in yourself to manifest your goals much less find or maintain an ecstatic relationship.

When you break an agreement, you blind yourself to other people's broken agreements. To the degree to which you break your agreements, you set yourself up in a condition where you have to allow yourself to get taken by someone else. If you break an agreement with someone and they let it pass, the next thing you'll do is get someone else to sabotage you or you will do it yourself! If you are keeping your agreements and your relationships are still a mess it's because other people make agreements with you, break them and you don't do anything about cleaning them up. Or what's worse, you say it's okay! And, of course, do nothing to clean it up. Further, you will make new agreements on top of the old broken agreements. To do that is a Disloyal act on your part. Because you know of their history of broken agreements, you are PRETENDING they will keep this new agreement. If YOU are breaking agreements, you have to excuse other people who break agreements. Excuse people who have broken agreements with you and you continue to create unwholesome entanglements that disqualify both of you from any possibility of ecstatic relationships with ANYONE, including yourself.

Break an agreement and in that instant, you destroy the relationship. Having a broken agreement in a relationship, you destroy its wholeness, completeness and soundness. The relationship cannot proceed until the broken agreement has been cleared and trust restored. Your only goal at this time should be to INSTANTLY repair and re* establish the trust in the relationship! While you have damaged trust in a relationship all your attention will be drawn to what is NOT working in that relationship. You cannot, therefore, be in present time or in harmony with that person until trust has been re-established.

To CHANGE AN AGREEMENT with someone the first step is to ask them to change it. You don't just announce your intention to not keep your agreement. For example, you have a date to go to the movies with a friend on Saturday night. On Thursday, you get a phone call from your mother who is flying in on Saturday afternoon for the weekend and would like to spend the weekend with you. You'd like to see your mother, but already have an agreement to go bowling with your friend. While still on the phone with your mother, tell her you have already made plans. Tell her you need to make a call to see if those plans can be changed before you can make a new agreement with her. Your next step is to phone your friend.

In changing the agreement with your friend, it means staying in harmony of opinion while doing it. Both of you must agree to change the agreement. In other words, you discuss it. You ASK if it would be okay with them for you to not go to the movies so you could spend some time with your mother.

Your friend now has the option of keeping the agreement as it was or changing it with you. If they are unwilling to change the agreement, for whatever reasons they have, the agreement still exists. You are now left with two options: keep that agreement or break it. My experience has been, that if you give people choice, ask them for the change rather than ANNOUNCE the change, they will most likely comply with your request.

Based on the outcome of the conversation with your friend, you can now call your mother back and tell her if you're free to make a new agreement with her for Saturday evening.

Changing an agreement is maintaining the essence of agreement, the harmony of opinion, from the point where agreement has disappeared to a new agreement. In the example of creating a new planet, if, after you started the project, you decided you'd rather create and provide food for all the starving people in India, it would be

necessary to change your original agreement into the new one. It would mean first looking at where you were in the planet project. If you were still at the point of bringing together the hot gases, your responsibility would be to disseminate the hot gases in such a way as to be beneficial to all living beings. Once you have disseminated the hot gases, you have taken your project back to the zero point, thereby satisfying all your responsibilities to that project. You have cleared yourself of the first project. There is nothing in motion that you must attend to, maintain, develop or otherwise parent. You have operated with harmony and are now free to begin the new project for the starving people.

COMMENDMENT #4: KEEP YOUR AGREEMENTS

The first step to move out of Detriment/Responsible is to clean up the damage from all your broken agreements. This means you take responsibility for bringing about, as much as possible, the condition which would have been the case had you not caused the damage in the first place. If you damaged property, clean or replace it. If you damaged someone's feelings, apologize. If you didn't pay a bill, paying it is cleaning up the damage. If you didn't make a phone call, making the phone call is cleaning up the damage. If you missed an appointment with someone, calling them and apologizing for your unconsciousness is as much as can be done to clean up the damage.

Forces were set in motion when you made the agreement. When you break it you are still responsible for the damage that is created as the forces continue on to their logical end. Whatever repercussions have been, or will be, are your responsibility to clean up before you can go ahead.

The second step to move out of Detriment/Responsible is to re-establish the damaged trust. When you broke the agreement, you became untrustworthy. If you didn't pay your bills, you have demonstrated that you can't be trusted to pay your bills. If you didn't make a phone call, you have demonstrated that you can't be trusted to make a phone call. In essence, you can be trusted to do OTHER THAN what you say you will do. What is destroyed when you break an agreement is TRUST and you have just given yourself a very real experience that you cannot be counted on to keep your word. It is, therefore, very important to re-establish trust within yourself and demonstrate that to the other person, or you won't be able to move to any State of Integrity above Detriment. You won't let yourself! Trust needs to be earned and, after it has once been damaged, it becomes even harder to reestablish.

Re-establishing trust is important so that you and others will know you can be relied upon to do what you say.

Re-establishing trust is done by making an extraordinary gesture. Do something you haven't done or wouldn't ordinarily do in that relationship to enhance it. Do something that gives YOU (the perpetrator) the experience that trust has been re-established. If you gave a dozen cookies the last time, that's now a part of that relationship. Each subsequent gesture must be extraordinary; something you've never done before. This event, or extraordinary gesture, is known as an "amenment." For many years I used the word "amendment" (with a "d") until I discovered it comes from a very negative point of view (implying that correction and improvement are still required) and was reinforcing the notion that the damage had not yet been cleaned up. This negative point of view when just using the word was frequently the only reason why people stayed in the "clean-it-up, mess-it-up" syndrome. I discovered that by replacing "amendment" with "amenment" (a word which I made up) it truly supported people in replacing their negative point of view with a

positive one. This has made all the difference in the world as to whether people moved up the chart or stayed in Detriment.

Webster defines "amen" as: a word "used to express solemn agreement or hearty approval." "Amen" + "ment" then means: "the act of confirming your hearty approval and agreement." You want the relationship set back in order, improved in its situation and having the potential for being perfect again.

To re-establish trust, YOU, as the perpetrator, determine the event or gesture you will make for the other person. Do some investigating to determine what that person considers valuable. It's appropriate to ask them for suggestions. It's important that this gesture IMMEDIATELY demonstrates, and brings about the experience of, re-establishment of the trust. Remember, your relationship is dead during the time between the breaking of the agreement and the completion of the "amenment." It is stuck in "disappointment" or below. For you, it's important that this gesture be an act of confirming your hearty approval and agreement that you are setting the relationship back in order. Until you do, neither of you can experience trust for the other, and you may lose the relationship altogether.

When your "amenment" has been delivered you will have demonstrated your trustworthiness and set the relationship back in order. Acknowledge your trustworthiness and let everyone know you can be trusted.

When you have the relationship back in order, the third step to move out of Detriment/Responsible is to sit down and list your valuablenesses. The first ten are the hardest. List every time you did something that made someone feel better. List every instance where you left a situation better than you found it, e.g., picked up litter on the street. When you've done this, you will have an experience of being a valuable person. If you do this and still don't have the experience of being a valuable person, go back and check to see what broken agreements you have not yet cleaned up. The natural thing to do when you experience being a valuable person is to begin to serve others. You'll automatically shift your point of view from yourself to others and their well-being. We feel so good within ourselves that the only next step is to volunteer ourselves to others who could benefit from our time, talents or goods.

You'll discover that just by existing you make a contribution to others around you. You will know that your word can again be given and those around you will believe in you. The sense of valuableness that comes with having all your relationships at this level is most rewarding. It creates within yourself a sense of selfworth and dignity that is the basis on which you can build a perfect relationship.

When the condition of continued broken agreements exists, consequence agreements should be made. A consequence agreement is made in addition to the agreement. It might look like this:

A consequence agreement should be so severe, in the eyes of the person making it, that they won't even consider breaking the initial agreement no matter how strong the temptation. The purpose of the consequence agreement is to force your mind, with all its reasonableness, so far into the background that it no longer has a command vote over you.

If John Smith, in the above example, breaks his agreement to lose weight and forfeits his $1000 consequence, an enormous amount of trust has been damaged in their relationship. Mary, very likely, is not experiencing that trust has been re-established even after John has apologized and given her the thousand dollars to spend.

Trust seems to be re-established on an overall, larger basis, but not in the area of John's losing weight: the area of the broken agreement. The conclusion she has to draw is that John is in pretense with that area of agreement-making, and that it is a disloyal act on her part to make any more agreements that she knows he can't /won't keep.

A mate relationship is when two people want to create all of life's activities together. What about agreements, then, that must be made in a mate relationship or it can't continue to be a mate relationship, BUT, as in the example above, have become impossible to make?

It's critically important to only make agreements that CAN be kept. John and Mary could change four pounds a week to two pounds a week.

Fourthly and lastly, if it's crucial to their relationship that John lose weight at the rate of four pounds a week and it has been established that he either isn't doing it or can't do it, their next step is to stop creating a mate relationship and change it into a friendship.

Mary and John could eventually have trust again in the area of John's losing weight and it can only come with time. It means that John declares his intention (but can't make an agreement to that effect) to lose weight and then over a period of time follows through with that intention. Mary will experience this as it happens and some time later be able to again trust John's agreements in the area of losing weight.

When you KEEP AN AGREEMENT things of great wonder come to you as if you had support from sources much higher than yourself. Keeping an agreement is being in alignment with natural laws. It is keeping your word. It's the passport to new discoveries, satisfaction in life, abundance, joy and ecstatic relationships.

We are all tuned into each other at a very high level. We actually know what is going on with each other. It isn't conscious. We can't talk about it. But we do operate our lives out of knowing it. The preciseness and perfection of whom we pick as friends and enemies profoundly demonstrate that we set the course of our lives directly out of the way we keep our agreements. A Swiss watch doesn't operate any more perfectly. The drama of our life is evidence that agreements occur at a very high level.

CHAPTER 7: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF NON-EXISTENCE:
MAKE GOALS

CHAPTER 7

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF NON-EXISTENCE:
MAKE GOALS

Key Word: Goal-Less

Non-Existence means to exist with no contribution. It's the state of not putting anything positive or negative into the universe -- a zero point. You are no longer a liability to yourself or others, but you are also not yet an asset. When you have cleaned up all damage in your life, re-established trust and are experiencing your valuableness, you will soon begin to feel goalless. You will not know exactly where you want to go.

Let's say you've had a goal to go to Hawaii for three years now and haven't ever made it. In fact, now that you look at it, you have lots of goals that never seem to get any further than writing them down.

Imagine yourself standing on the white line in the middle of a two lane deserted highway. You can see this highway stretching, flat, straight out into the distance. Rising up on the horizon, in the distance, as you look down the highway, is a mountain. Let the highway represent life and the mountain represent your goal; a goal is "an objective or end," according to Webster.

Sitting beside this highway and pretending you want to go to Hawaii (or have an ecstatic relationship) and doing nothing about getting it, is not telling the truth. You will never get to your goal.

goal certainly won't get you anywhere. Coming to agreement with yourself that you do, in fact, want to reach your goals is the first step towards getting onto the highway of life.

Once on the highway, you can make life interesting by taking the next step: set goals. Exactly what "mountain" do you want to climb and what are all the steps in getting to it?

If life were easy, all you'd need to do is start out and and you would sooner or later reach your goal. However, humans prefer life to be interesting, not easy. In fact, if the world doesn't provide barriers to your reaching your goals, you'll add your own just for the excitement.

Difficulty in attaining any goal is what makes it exciting. Football is an interesting sport and will serve as a good example. There are eleven of the biggest men that can be found facing eleven other men who are just as big and want to run over them. Half of the men are told they are supposed to take a little ball and run through the other half of the men and get the ball to the far end of the field. The first eleven men are told they are supposed to stop them from doing that, and if they do a very good job of it they will be given the opportunity to fight their way back to the opposite end. All of the men agree to play it this way and enjoy running into each other and making great piles of bodies on the ground. The object of the game seems to be to get the little ball to the other end of the field even though it seems very likely you could get killed trying to do that. But that's the fun! If there were no one else on the field none of those big men would enjoy running at breakneck speed down that field. It's only when it seems impossible that they get excited about even trying to reach their goal.

For life to be interesting and satisfying, you need a specific measurable goal you want to reach, such as your "mountain." The goal is what moves the football players to storm through their opponents. That is their main reason for being out there.

The next important factor in going for a goal is recognizing there will be barriers, limited barriers that provide the challenge and the excitement. The football players wouldn't be playing football if it weren't for the challenge they encounter in getting the ball down the field. However, if the barriers to getting the ball down the field became so insurmountable that they considered it impossible, if someone erected a cement wall on the fifty yard line, they'd quit. The game would be over.

A PLAN to get around the barriers is THE important element necessary to reaching your goals. The football players have worked out, in advance, intricate plans as to how to trick their opponents into running in the wrong direction so they can get by them and on to the goal.

Before setting out on the highway of life towards your goal, you must make your plans. To do that you must schedule time. You couldn't expect a baby to be born the instant you thought of it; the same is true for any other objective or end. It takes time and you need to plan for it. Put aside an hour a week to do nothing but look at and plan your goals for the future. It will be the most rewarding hour of your week.

It is suggested that you do a page of goals for each of the following: the current month, one list each for the next three consecutive months, the next six months grouped together, the next calendar year, the next 3 years grouped together, then 6 years, 10 years, and then life. In subsequent weeks, during the hour you've put aside for your goals, go back over them and regularly expand and update them.

To maintain harmony or balance in goal setting, it is important to include all the areas of your life. There are eight areas to look at and they are:

In preparing these lists, be sure to include all your needs from your "needs" lists. Also as you prepare them, look towards including three aspects: "to be", "to do", and "to have".

If you ignore any one of the above areas, your attention will immediately go to the one area that has been dropped out, taking away from your life the pleasure and fulfillment that is otherwise possible. When one or more of these is not being actualized, an imbalance is created in your life that will have you feeling out-integrity, off-center, off-purpose and unfulfilled.

After listing your goals, the next step is to create PROJECT SHEETS. Take a sheet of paper (see illustration below) and at the top write the name you have given to the project. For example, your project name could be simply, "Hawaii." Under that write the goal towards which this project is directed. For example, your goal is, "To go to Hawaii next summer." Then write down under that goal what you see will be the "Last Step" for you to experience reaching that goal. The "Last Step" might be to set foot on Hawaiian soil. Then you write down under that the words "To Do." Brainstorm and then list under "To Do," all tasks needed to complete this project (even if a full page is necessary). For example, call the travel agent, get someone to house-sit, buy new luggage, write list of things for the house-sitter to do while you're gone, stop the paper delivery, hold all mail at the post office, etc. These "tasks" have all been listed in a column. They are simply written down as they come into your mind. There is no sequence or order of importance. The next step is to give each of them some priority. On the right hand edge of the page, on the same line with the words "To Do," write "Complete By." Now go down the page and put actual dates as to when you think the task should be completed. After they have all been given a date, pick every task off the project sheet and put it on your calendar. Your planning stage is now complete. All that is necessary for you now to reach your goal is to DO every task as they appear on your calendar.

ILLUSTRATION OF A PROJECT SHEET:

COMMENDMENT #5: MAKE GOALS

The second step to find/have that ecstatic relationship, after doing your project sheet, is to "Locate Channels of Communications." Some channels of communication would be the newspaper personal section, friends, attending parties, joining a church, dating service agencies and being friendly to people you see at the supermarket.

The third step to find/have that ecstatic relationship is to communicate who you are and what you want to the persons who need to know. To reach the goal of finding a person with whom to enjoy an ecstatic relationship, it's necessary to tell people that's what you want. This sounds awfully simple, but if you look in your life for a goal that you've had for a long time and you still don't have it, notice if you have communicated your intention to others. Somehow, we hold it that everyone is supposed to come to us and know what we want.

The fourth step to find/have this ecstatic relationship is to find out what is needed or wanted to get to your goal. What is "needed or wanted" in preparing for this ideal mate relationship is knowing your "Needs" lists, as discussed in Chapter 4. In the Appendices are the directions on how to make your lists. If you haven't done them, do them now. You will not allow yourself to move up the tone scale, regarding relationship, without them.

The fifth step to find/have this ecstatic relationship is to go into action; i.e., DO SOMETHING with all these good ideas!

To Do:	Complete By:
--call the Travel Agent	March 1st
--get someone to house-sit	February 1st
--buy new luggage	February 15th
--make list for house-sitter	January 20th
--stop paper delivery	April 15th
--put hold on mail delivery at PO	April 15th
--make list of things to take along	March 15th
--buy new things to take along	April 1st

CHAPTER 8: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DANGER:
COMMUNICATE EVERYTHING GERMANE

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DANGER:
COMMUNICATE EVERYTHING GERMANE

Key Word: Risk

Immediately after achieving a goal -- buying a new car, getting a new job, buying a new house, getting married or graduating from college -- you enter into a condition of Danger. You've stepped into a totally new condition, one that is unfamiliar to you where there is liability to injury, damage or loss. Your emotions of mild anxiety and concern are tempered with hope and curiosity. Your point of view of enticement will lead you to new discoveries. However, there is risk associated with buying a new car or house, acquiring a diploma or degree. The new territory that you enter into can be damaging to you, if you don't stay conscious. In knowing that there are unsafe or detrimental elements in all new activities or relationships, you need to put your attention on understanding every little detail, while still enjoying the new activity or relationship. In relationships of any kind, it is important to communicate openly, clearly and actively.

Germane is defined by Webster as, 1: closely akin; 2: being at once relevant and appropriate; PERTINENT; FITTING. Synonym is "relevant."

Communication is a flow of ideas. You can communicate or by waving your hand. You could also do it by sending a letter in the mail or by not sending in your rent check. You can laugh, cry, be bored or enthusiastic and you are still communicating. You can make non-verbal sounds, create the smell of home-baked bread or give bread to eat and you are communicating.

How do you know what's relevant, what's germane to communicate in a relationship? How do you know when to say something and when to keep your mouth shut? What contributes to the relationship and what debilitates the relationship? It's actually very simple. Ask yourself, does it enrich the relationship? Look for the "integrity of the relationship", the wholeness, completeness and soundness. This is the first commendment that requires you to include the other commendments. The commendments before this have stood by themselves. In order to define, describe or explain what wholeness, completeness and soundness are, you have to bring in all the other commendments.

It is germane when it complies with and supports all the other commendments, even those yet to come.

This commendment is the one that sets the stage for most other activity and it is the one that ties everything together.

Remember the "highway of life" analogy of going for a "goal" in the last chapter? Also, in that chapter you did a "project sheet" on your goals. One of the Tasks, for example, on this sheet to get on this "highway of life" should have been to get into a car. Now that you are in a car and on your way, what is germane to communicate? What if you don't like how the other person is driving? What is germane to say and what is complaining? How do you get it from being just a subjective gripe to an objective communication? You do it by checking the other commendments:

1--If the person says one thing and does something else, they are pretending and in violation of commendment number one.

2--If the person is defending their rights, rather than going for the intended results they are in violation of commendment number two.

3--If the person is annoyed and is avoiding you, they are in violation of commendment number three.

4--If the person is not keeping agreements that have been made, such as observing the speed laws, or driving carefully and courteously, they are in violation of commendment number four.

5--If a goal that you are going for doesn't seem to be attainable because of the person's driving, they are in violation of commendment number five.

If none of the above commendments is being violated, it is your own subjective stuff and you can assume it is not germane to the integrity of the relationship and you can put your comments in your pocket. You can then begin to look at which of the commendments YOU are violating. When any one of the commendments goes out, it will immediately feel like something negative has just entered the relationship. It is, therefore, important to become very clear about the other commendments and how they play into this one so you know what to communicate.

You'll not be able to communicate anything germane to the integrity of your relationship with someone else, if you're not already communicating everything that is germane to the integrity of your relationship with yourself. Also, for you not to follow all of the commendments is a violation of the integrity of the relationship.

Everything that comes to your mind, does not need to be communicated. You don't communicate to get a reaction, to cause jealousy, to restrict freedom or anything that causes the other person to be less able to have all the commendments in place and working. Most "awareness junkies" think that what this means is share everything. "Spill your guts." Give the other person everything. Not only is that distasteful and encumbering on the freedom and well-being of the other person, but it is time consuming. Why run drivel on the person whom you say you love? As we continue through the next commendments, you will know exactly what is germane to communicate in your relationship. Again, the key is to look at whether what you are about to say conflicts at all with any of the commendments.

The previous chapter was about making goals. In order to set goals you had to find out what was needed and wanted. The commendment here is about communicating what you found out. We humans act, in relationship, as if we've known the other person forever and know everything about them. And yet it's a new relationship every day. It's essential that you communicate to your partner your "needs," "expectations," and "wants" for the relationship. And you must stay in constant communication about the "needs." Anything short of that and you are really entering into a relationship with your own mental pictures and not the other person.

There's a process in the Awareness Counselling called "THE FOUR MAGIC QUESTIONS." It's a marvelous process to keep your relationship clear of all "withholds." A "withhold" is a communication, that if withheld, could be potentially damaging to the relationship.

THE "FOUR MAGIC QUESTIONS" ARE:

If you want to run this process on each other in your relationship it is very simple:

D--One person asks the first question, gets a response, acknowledges that response with a simple "Thank You." NOTHING ELSE! NO DISCUSSION, NO REBUTTALS!
You'll get your chance in a few minutes.

E--The same person asks question number two in the same manner; and so forth, through the four questions; repeat the process (all four questions) five times.

F--After every set of five, SWITCH ROLES asking and responding to the four questions.

G--Keep alternating until both of you are able to honestly say to the questions:
1) "nothing"
2) "nothing"
3) "no"
4) "no"

COMMENDMENT #6: COMMUNICATE EVERYTHING GERMANE
THE FORMULA TO EXPAND OUT OF DANGER

The first step to expand out of the State of Integrity of Danger is to recognize important communications and deliver them immediately. In the area of a new mate relationship, or marriage, there are numerous occurrences that require some kind of communication to keep each person from destroying the relationship simply out of not knowing what is going on. When the honeymoon is over the relationship begins to look different, or perhaps it happens the other way around. However, at this very critical time in the relationship, communicate even those things that would normally seem very obvious to eliminate any possible misconception. If after you have been married for three months you decide to take up bowling, don't just rush out and do it without first reassuring your partner that you are taking up bowling because you want more recreation and it's not because you want to get away from them. That IS the first thing they'll think!

The second step to expand upward from Danger, is to demonstrate behavior OF Integrity -- more than just behavior WITH Integrity, but behavior that IS Integrity. In this state, there is concern and anxiety, along with the sense of risk, that this adventure may have been a bad idea after all. While all this is going on, you must stay with the highest level of Integrity you know. It's not the time to "cut corners," to try to get away with things or to let anything slip by you that could be troublesome later. Make it a conscious move to keep your behavior consistent with your word.

Directly handling all the elements of Danger that come up, and having behavior of Integrity, will certainly move you into satisfaction in your relationship.

CHAPTER 9: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF EMERGENCY:
BE ON PURPOSE

Key Word: Urgent

This state is called Emergency to draw your attention to the real potential for an emergency if any actions other than what's called for in the "formulas to expand" are attempted.

When you have the situation or relationship cleared of all the detrimental or dangerous elements and have moved out of Danger, a great sense of urgency will come over you. You will experience amusement, liking and, for the first time, satisfaction. Your Point of View is that life is a challenge and you'll find yourself willing to cooperate. Therefore, the key word is "urgent," which means "calling for immediate action."

"Urgency" is defined as "a force or impulse that impels or constrains." When this great sense of urgency comes over you, these new feelings are so strong, pressing you into action, you will want to act immediately to relieve them. To do that without a clear sense of your purpose in life, is to act rashly and without any sense of proper direction.

To get to this chapter, using an earlier analogy, you had to stop sitting beside the highway pretending to be striving for the perfect relationship. You had to give up refusing to be picked up by passing motorists because none of them had the right kind of car to take you towards that relationship. You found that you couldn't go for the perfect relationship or expect to get it while trying to avoid it. You found that as soon as you were willing to make and keep the agreement that you wanted a perfect relationship, you were on the highway. Once you were on the highway, your next thought was to face the mountain (your goal) and get clear on all the details

necessary to get to it. In order to prepare yourself for proper movement, it was necessary then to communicate everything germane, everything pertinent to reaching your goal.

At this point, on our climb up the tone scale, not much actual movement has occurred towards experiencing an ecstatic relationship. It's only been preparation. To initiate action that is not just random you must have a purpose, "an action that is in the process of happening." In the "highway of life" analogy, we are now going to let the highway represent purpose, the action in process of happening; synonyms for purpose are resolution, determination, intention. Intention is defined further as a determination to act in a certain way. This is a marshalling of your forces, lining them up so that your actions are in alignment with your purpose and goals. It's your intention that keeps you on purpose and keeps you from breaking your agreements. It is your "determination to act in a certain way."

Let's add an example: your goal is to become an Awareness Counsellor, make $900 a week, work only 30 hours, and be your own boss. That's your objective, your goal. What is happening if you only make $500 even after you said your intention has been to make the $900? Did you really only intend the $500 because that's what you got?

I have found that most humans will only intend up to the level of what they "need" and then quit. "Need" has been defined as "to want urgently; to require." It is something that MUST be happening RIGHT NOW. In the example above, you only NEEDED $500, got it and quit.

Or, humans just get lazy, go off purpose and then CAN'T intend toward a goal. You lose your determination to "act in a certain way." You'll do this until the need becomes great enough to put yourself back on purpose (the highway). In the example, you went off purpose and only made $500.

To have an ecstatic relationship, know your life purpose and stay on it. Then life is effortless, it goes your way and is joyful. To stray off purpose, you can intend forever and you'll not move towards that goal. You'll be caught in the briar patch beside the highway. If you are intending goals that are not coming to pass, look to see if what you're intending is on purpose or not, look to see if you're intending only up to your level of need. or if you are pretending to be intending.

You've always known your life purpose. It's a little like what you've always wanted to be when you grew up, but were too embarrassed to say. Know exactly your life purpose. It is the heart of your own relationship. This is the action central for your life and the life of your relationship. It makes any relationship powerful. It gives each person in the relationship some degree of certainty as to where each other is, now, and can be depended on to be tomorrow. This is what is known as "knowing" the other person.

Without knowing your life purpose you cannot ask anyone else to support you. There is no goal that is worthwhile or reachable, that can be achieved without knowing your purpose. What's worse is you cannot experience satisfaction in your life until you know your exact life purpose and are willing to demonstrate to everyone your intention to be on that purpose.

Everything in your life is on purpose for you right now. Even if your life looks terrible, it is on purpose for you RIGHT NOW. The cold hard truth of the matter is, you are on your "highway" whether you notice it or not. That comes with the game called "life." It's only your point of view that it is terrible. It's only terrible when you do not know how it is taking you where you want to go.

TO FIND YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE, look for what you do the best. Look for what you enjoy the most and wish someone would pay you to do. Look for some way to serve others that you know would be a contribution. This is very important! Look until you find what is positive in your life. It is definitely there, so keep looking until you see it. It must be about operating at your HIGHEST LEVEL OF CONTRIBUTION, where you and your special talents can produce the most results. For you to do less is off purpose and creates enormous repercussions. It will result in what everyone calls disease or illness in our physical and/or emotional bodies.

"All illness, physical and emotional, is created when you refuse to serve others at your maximum capacity."

EXERCISE TO FIND YOUR LIFE PURPOSE:

PURPOSE IN A RELATIONSHIP

A relationship becomes a relationship only after it has a purpose. Otherwise, it's just two people "doing their thing" together with their attention still on themselves. The purpose of your relationship is actually a synthesis of both of your own purposes. When you put the two purposes together, it's like music -- a chord will be sounded, and you'll hear it. It won't be a mystery.

Your purpose in a relationship cannot be to "make the relationship work." This comes from the point of view that it isn't working already. Of course it's working already, you just want it different than it is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with operating at your highest level of contribution.

When a relationship has a purpose it's like a team of horses which are harnessed together. It gives you alignment so that you can go down the road together completing useful tasks. Since you both are willingly, even eagerly, choosing this "harness," it isn't a harness that excludes, restricts or confines, but one that gives freedom and happiness. Being on purpose is so exciting for both of you that you do not want to be going any other way.

The purpose of your relationship must include both of your individual purposes, be bigger than your relationship and outside of it. This creates a third point of view that you both can "live" with. Otherwise the day-to-day activities become everything to you: whether the laundry got done or didn't get done; the shoes in the middle of the floor; the fireplace that didn't get cleaned; the incinerator that isn't working. They become the biggest items in your life. It takes super-human capabilities to get exhilarated about a garbage disposal that isn't working. It is a lot easier to get exhilarated about the things we create with another in life, the things we aspire to in our relationship.

If anything is the determining factor as to whether two people should be together in a relationship that desires to be whole, complete and sound it would be the "purpose." It is the purpose, when understood, that determines whether two people belong together or not. Two persons could have very different occupations and individual purposes and still have a supportive and workable purpose for the relationship.

Two very close friends of mine are married, have different occupations and purposes, but their purpose in the relationship still supports each of them and insures the relationship. George's occupation is athletic coach. His purpose in life is "to teach people to play." Jill's occupation is Awareness Counsellor. Her purpose in life is "to empower people to self-love." The purpose for their relationship then became "to support growth and development in ourselves and other people." She can now do her Awareness Counselling four nights a week and George won't get upset because they both know she is on purpose. George, on the other hand, can now go out playing basketball four nights a week and Jill won't get upset because they both know he is on purpose. They come together each evening after their respective work/play and feel really good about themselves. Before knowing the purpose of their relationship, each would get upset every time the other would go off to be on their own life's purpose. Now, they each know that the other is "supporting growth and development in other people." This would be true for any two persons who have very different occupations. The executive and the housewife can very easily have as their purpose "to assist people to find their greatness," and DO very different things all day, but do them in the context of their purpose. In the evening when they are together, they can now share the wonderful wins they have had with their "assisting people to find their greatness" instead of entangling themselves with the details of executive budget planning and kitchen appliances that don't work.

To emphasize the importance of having a purpose in your relationship, imagine a triangle where the two of you occupy two of the angles and the third part of the triangle is your purpose. All three of you need to be present and in your respective places. The minute either of you doesn't have a purpose of your own, or you are off purpose, the whole game will collapse. At the same time, the minute you don't have a purpose for your relationship, or either of you is off that purpose, the whole game will collapse. This happens because your attention is on each other or yourself. My experience of the human condition is that when your attention is solely on yourself, you will destroy each other.

When you know, and are on your life's purpose, it is its own reward. It is erroneous to think that ecstasy comes from others brightening up, being happy, etc. These are not prerequisites to your ecstasy. You're already there. The reward of being on purpose is so great, nothing else is necessary. Relationships will not flounder if you know and live your exact life purpose. It provides all the direction necessary.

Your relationship must be on your life's purpose or you will need to destroy it.

"You can't counsel or assist anyone and have it be anything more than waving your point of view, without knowing their life purpose."

This is where support and cooperation begin. Not before. This is where support of the other person begins. This is the first step into experiencing that the two of you are not isolated anymore. Support by definition means to undercarry. Undercarry doesn't mean hold up. It isn't stationary. It is very, very active. If you say you support me I will expect activity. Support without activity is like toast without butter.

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN HAVING MONEY?

One thing to remember about the nature of purpose is that it is not attainable. Goals are attainable, but not a purpose.

The pioneers of this country were all faced daily with survival. In their having such a common purpose, to survive and create a new life, they could align themselves much more easily than we do today because of our diverse purposes.

Even though the Ten Commendments are an attribute of, or directly related to, the Ten States of Integrity, it doesn't mean that when you have your attention on a particular commendment you are also in that State of Integrity. It doesn't mean that you are experiencing any of the satisfaction that comes when you have a purpose. It is very possible to have a purpose in your relationship and then promptly set out to pretend about it, betray it, oppose it, stay confused about it, and so forth.

Purposes don't change; they evolve. When it looks as if you have to go of purpose to do the very thing that you have heretofore been doing ON purpose, it's time to restate your purpose. That's not changing it, that's becoming more in alignment with what it has always been. It evolves; we either are conscious of it or we're not.

COMMENDMENT #7: BE ON PURPOSE

Webster defines "Promote" as "to help bring into being: launch." Another synonym is "advance." In your relationship you "launch" it into being. Put consciousness into seeing that it is advanced into more and more reality of its existence.

Imagine, for example, the details that must be involved when NASA decides to launch a man or woman into space. There must be millions of details to have this event occur. Fortunately there aren't as many details necessary in creating a new relationship -- putting your man or woman into orbit, as it were. But, it is just as important to pay attention to all the details around the two of you. Develop your ability to see even more details. Watch everything you do. Take full ownership of all activities in the relationship. In other words, be willing to create the relationship "as if" you were responsible for all of it.

The third step to move out of Emergency is to PLAN for reaching your goal. This means trust yourself and know that if you've done all the steps, you WILL have a relationship. If you're doing all the steps and HAVE a relationship, KNOW that it IS beginning to work.

The fourth step to move out of Emergency is to demonstrate full integrity. Even more so here than in Danger, it is critical that you behave with integrity. It is imperative here that you make it a conscious move to keep your behavior consistent with your word. For example, while you're promoting your relationship to others, you can't find yourself in public having a "knock-down-dragout" fight.

assist	promote	enroll
facilitate	empower	expand
support	prepare	enable
serve	enhance	liberate
stimulate	organize	guide
validate	strengthen	refine
acknowledge	cause	influence
discover	inspire*	elevate

CHAPTER 10: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF NORMAL:
MAKE EVERYTHING AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE

Key Word: Enhance

It is very hard for me to imagine any relationship where there are not instances when lies are told; when rights seem to be violated; when choice is taken away; when agreements are broken; when goals are blunted or destroyed; when communication is thwarted and when the purpose is lost. Just recall a time when either you or your mate were very sick in bed and you'll be in touch with human frailty. Given that I am also in this event called life, it is much easier for me to imagine that these very items are what make it almost impossible for us to have working satisfying relationships with each other, until we discover how to put all this into proper perspective. It seems imperative then that something else, very necessary to an ecstatic relationship, be included.

Sometimes it looks like it's magic that makes a joyful relationship. At times it looks like it's the things other people have -- education, money, friends, loving parents -- or, if not that, it looks like it's because of what they do. They got all the right breaks. It was just all handed to them. I apologize if this disillusions you, but, being a counsellor for years, I can tell you that what people have or do, does not a perfect relationship make. There isn't even any magic involved. People who think the perfect relationship comes from what we HAVE or what we DO, or that there is magic involved, are the ones who are coming for sessions with me. They have their problems, too, and most significantly, one of them is thinking just this way. People who have perfect relationships KNOW HOW TO PICK UP THEIR ATTENTION AND PUT IT ON SOMETHING ELSE.

If YOU choose to make everything an opportunity to en= hance, you will not be a victim of your circumstances any more. No matter what circumstances you are in, YOU have the freedom to make EVERYTHING an opportunity to enhance or the freedom to continue to believe that the circumstances make your mind up for you.

This seems to be the first rung of the ladder where we are truly creative beings. People who have ecstatic relationships are holding in mind a sense of value about themselves, a sense of what's possible (what they know it can be like), and have the tools available to make it happen. Most people sit around in a negative condition simply not knowing what tools are available and, as a result, become too depressed to find out.

After knowing one's valuableness, knowing what it can be like, and knowing what tools are available to each of us, it is then vitally important to have the WILLINGNESS to change one's point of view.

Knowing this commendment and all the ones before it, you know the simplest thing that can be done to stop an argument is to just drop it. That is possible. What you feel, however, when you are in an argument, is that to drop it would be to lose something essential to your well-being and overall survival.

The question to be asking yourself in the middle of this argument is, "How can I drop this and turn this into a win for both of us?" This is where your willingness comes in. You need to be willing to lose everything and still change your point of view. Change it from negative to positive. It's the willingness to come to, and then maintain, the point of view of enhancement.

When you adopt the point of view that everything is an opportunity to enhance, you dissolve all separateness between yourself and others because "admiration" is introduced here for the first time. You admire someone because they are like you and you are like them. Admire

someone and watch how the differences between you disappear or how the differences actually enhance the relationship.

When you hold the point of view that everything is an opportunity, and have the attitude of admiration, you will both experience your sense of individuality, as well as simultaneously NOT have any experience of separateness with another. Now when you find their towel on the bathroom floor, it is equivalent to finding your own. It doesn't matter to you that it is theirs. If you don't want it there you simply pick it up and enjoy doing it to enhance the other person and the relationship. Remember, if your partner is also following these commendments, they will most likely be somewhere else, doing something for you, and seeing it as an opportunity, too. If they're not following these commendments and in fact have broken an agreement by leaving their towel on the floor, it doesn't change the fact that you can still be in a relationship that you experience as enhancing. Handling the broken agreement then is a very separate issue to your experiencing opportunity and is best handled by staying in "normal."

I don't want to leave the towel incident behind without saying something more, however. If they always seem to leave the towel on the bathroom floor and it bothers you, communicate that to them in a straight forward, clear statement. You're not doing this to get them to do it, but to let them know that it bothered you. That's germane to the integrity of the relationship. It might

not change anything, but it could. And you can go right on holding it as an opportunity to enhance the relationship.

Two actor friends of mine, Joseph and Chris, both found out at the same time that a particular person at a party they were attending was a famous, wealthy producer. Joseph was so excited about just meeting a well-known producer that all he could do was make "small" talk. He wasn't remembering the definition of enhance, "to make greater, as in value, desirability or attractiveness." He wasn't coming from the point of view of "opportunity."

Chris, on the other hand, had it in his mind that he would "leave the condition greater than he found it," for all concerned. He was there "urging the situation on" to great-er-ness. He wasn't going for a job, per se. He was going for doing something with the moment, that, when the moment was gone, would have culminated in something greater for all. He left the situation in a greater condition than when he went into it. As a result, he got a business card, an interview and, the next day, a nice role in a play.

Take any situation and simply look at how you can create it having greater value than when you walked into it. What can you do to make it more whole, complete and sound than you found it? What's essential here is coming from that place where you know what you want is for each and every second to be greater than the last one. You know you are going to make it a more positive, a more wonderful, a more exciting place than it was a minute before no matter whether it's an upset or a flat tire. What you want is to take this otherwise awful situation and bring something out of it that is wonderful.

There is no such thing as AN opportunity. It doesn't knock. Opportunity just is. It exists only in your head. It is the point of view, the condition, you create to come FROM. You can't look for it. You can't even say that things are opportunities, really. You can only accurately say that you are experiencing opportunity about something. You can't even say that the things that occur are opportunities. They just are things. Anyone else who sees them may not have called them opportunities at all. It all depends on one's point of view at the time.

The producer example above was not an opportunity according to Joseph, but was an opportunity according to Chris. Joseph was coming from a "flat" place, being a a nice guy. Chris, on the other hand, held it as an opportunity. He wanted the departure to be a greater moment than when they met and he created exactly that.

You can create "greater than" every time, simply because you say so. You say that this instance is going to be greater than, and each successive instance is greater than the preceding one without thinking that there has to be a result out there. Do not get caught in thinking a result is the opportunity. The opportunity is already going on when you are making everything greater. That's the opportunity, the condition out of which everything emanates. For Chris, getting the job is just an example of the "great-er-ness" that came out of his making everything an opportunity to enhance.

COMMENDMENT #8: MAKE EVERYTHING AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE

When a relationship is operating in "Normal" everything is working. All it takes to put it in "Abundance" is doing more of the same. For example, if your partner is already satisfying all your "needs" on your "needs list, and then announces that they are going to satisfy a couple extra special ones, you'll immediately experience going into abundance.

The only other step for upward movement is to be aware and adjust for any unconsciousness in your relationship.

CHAPTER 11: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF ABUNDANCE:
BE DEVOTED

CHAPTER 11

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF ABUNDANCE:
BE DEVOTED

Key Word: Devoted

Abundance is like being on a natural high. You feel as though you are flying and have more energy than you have ways of using it. Even when you are physically exhausted at the end of the day, it feels good. There's a clarity, a peaceful feeling, an exuberance coming from within you. It feels like being bigger than your skin. You seem to have no limitations on what you can be, do or have. You feel free and have no barriers. The laws of the universe all seem to be working just for you. You feel grateful for everything around you and cherish people for being who they are. Instead of feeling as though you have to get a job to make a living, you're very clear that you can take a walk in the park and come up with an idea that can be converted into a million dollars. There isn't any limitation as to what you can do or what you can have. Your experience of trusting yourself is such that you can relax and let it happen.

Abundance means great, plenty, more than enough. Everything is working remarkably well. Remember, however, it's not HOW MUCH you do or have, it's the condition in which you exist while doing or having it, that makes it the State of Integrity of Abundance.

In our society about the only time you get to see devotion is when there is some kind of dependency. A child depends on adults to survive. Invalids depend on others to survive. I once knew an elderly man who devoted himself to nursing his invalid, arthritic wife for over ten years, before she died. He was completely devoted to his wife's health and well-being. This is observable, and yet it can be an illusion. We don't know HIS experience

of taking care of his wife. It LOOKS like he was devoted. Given how few people ever get to devotion, it's more likely that he was experiencing trap, burden or obligation and it only looked like devotion.

This man was creating for himself an experience that could be anywhere in the human experience: trapped, burdened, suppressed, obligated, or grateful, and WE make it look like devotion -- with or without his intention to have it look that way. We have no way of knowing, of determining absolutely, short of asking him, whether he was devoted to his wife or not.

People can be devoted to their work, to an idea, to an achievement, to religion, or to God, when they can't or won't be devoted to themselves or other people. In order to experience devotion you must experience 1008 trust. You can trust in God and religion one hundred percent, even if it's only because you have been told you must. You can trust in your work, an idea or an achievement, but in your experience of yourself and others, trust seems to disappear altogether.

Trust is defined as, "assured reliance on the character of." More than any other, this commendment exposes the need to have all the previous ones in place before it can even exist. "Assured reliance on the character of" can only be there when you know yourself very, very well and trust yourself absolutely -- 1008 -- knowing what you can expect of yourself.

This experience of absolute trust of yourself is so whole, so complete, so sound, so stable, so pleasant, so sure, so "nothing left out" that all you can do is feel grateful. Grateful that everything is exactly the way it is. Grateful for your experience of yourself because you can be trusted. Grateful that you are around to experience you. Put someone in your environment who can also be devoted and your life will be filled with enchantment. Put someone in your environment who CANNOT keep the other commendments and you will make it impossible for you to continue to have a relationship with

yourself of total trust. If you have such people around, you won't trust yourself to be providing yourself with the environment that best supports the true nature of your relationship with yourself. You've just damaged trust with yourself. To damage trust at all must drop you out of devotion. Remember, this is the place of trusting yourself, 100%.

To experience devotion, first to yourself and then to another, you must know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can be counted on to keep your word, and that you will ALWAYS keep all of the previous eight commendments.

Do you suppose you can experience devotion in your relationship with yourself if you crowd yourself with people who violate the previous eight commendments? Hardly! Surround yourself with these kinds of people and you will chip away at your ability to trust yourself, chip away at the pillar called devotion. You'll never be able to feel devotion for yourself or for someone else if you chip away even the smallest piece of your own trust level.

If you are existing in a condition where you trust yourself to hold a universe that is as expanded as this, all you want is more of the same. When it includes someone else, it means actively pursuing a condition that is so much beyond "normal" that you have to cultivate and create it. You have to extend yourself to bring out of nothing the condition that holds that amount of trust.

Having the eight previous commendments in place is its own reward. It elevates you to a condition where you so totally trust yourself that you will not lie. You will not get at all positional or defensive. You will choose in every situation. You will make agreements and keep them. You will make goals. You will communicate everything germane. You are on purpose. You make everything an opportunity to enhance. You are now existing out of a condition that is great, plenty, more than enough. Things, experiences and excitement, come to you just by existing in this particular state.

Webster defines "devote" as, "to give over wholly and purposefully" and "to center the attention or activities of oneself." I want to add the two words, that are implied, "on another," so the definition reads, "to center the attention or activities of oneself on another."

Imagine, if you will for a minute, what it would be like to "give yourself over wholly" to someone who told lies. How much trust could you be experiencing for yourself? This degree of violation of your trust puts you out of devotion and back into telling lies yourself.

Imagine what it would be like to "give yourself over wholly" to another who would rather be right than go for a result in your relationship. Can you see it would always be about jockeying for position and would soon collapse?

Imagine what it would be like to trust someone 100% who avoided you and the issues in your relationship. Where could the devotion exist?

Imagine what it would be like to "give yourself over wholly" to another who did not keep their agreements. Where is your trust level now?

What would it look like to give yourself over to someone who wouldn't or couldn't make goals? What would that do for your direction in life, or for your trust level in being able to get to a goal?

Notice the trouble you'd be getting yourself into if you "centered the attention or activities of yourself on another" and had them not willing to "communicate everything germane to the integrity of the relationship." The mystery would be profound.

Look at where you'd be if you "gave yourself over wholly" to someone who didn't have a purpose or wouldn't stay on the one they had.

Imagine what it would be like to "give yourself over wholly" to someone who couldn't ever see things as an opportunity to enhance.

From this, I think it is easy to see that if the previous eight commendments are not all in place, there is no way that devotion can exist.

Before we go one sentence further, remember, you are "the other" person to your partner and everyone else. Go back and reread the above several paragraphs, holding yourself in mind as "the other" person.

THE EXPERIENCE OF DEVOTION

People who themselves experience devotion, who do not then devote themselves to others, do so because of a genuine fear of being violated. Take a look. All eight of the previous commendments must be in place for devotion to exist. Therefore, I must conclude, there are about as many people on the planet who are qualified to be experiencing devotion as there are penguins in Peru.

A perfect relationship is then, in fact, extremely rare. So, if you are experiencing devotion, and haven't been able to find someone to share it with, stop beating yourself up for being inadequate. Notice there aren't many applicants for the position.

When you are devoted, not only will you not feel jealous when your mate goes out with someone else, but if you know that is something they'd really enjoy, you'd arrange it. You won't have any fears about their not coming back, you'll know that nothing will happen except that which is positive. When you're devoted, you won't feel that their seeing someone else is damaging to the relationship. When you both have all nine of the commendments in place you will know each other, and what you are creating, to such a degree that you will welcome anything in the relationship. Neither of you can do anything in this relationship except enhance it, because that's how you both hold it in mind. This is devotion. You would do anything. Not only would you pick up their towel from the bathroom floor, but you would look for hair too, just to make your partner look good and be happy. This is about ardor, passion and aesthetics (attunement with beauty). When you are playing in devotion, you are in attunement with beauty. You look at the other person and see beauty. You know that when they look at you they see beauty because you can observe it. You're coming from aesthetics. This is where you start actively looking to see what you can do.

The experience now is wonderful. It feels like it's supposed to happen just the way it did and you know it. You feel detached from it, yet you are clear you're the principal character in the play. You are generating this activity and even if you were to be queried on it, you wouldn't have the foggiest notion as to how to explain how you got it all there.

When you create a goal and then reach it and your experience is only one of satisfaction, two things seem to be obvious:

You only get to experience devotion when you put a goal out there that requires some pretty fancy foot work on your part to get to it. When you reach it you will then experience gratefulness. It's how much you trusted yourself to put out an outrageous goal in the first place. It's how much you trusted yourself at each step along the way to stay with it. It's how much you trusted yourself to have it when it was there.

This is the experience of great, plenty, more than enough. If you want to experience that, you must be willing to embrace everyone. I'm talking about physically, emotionally and mentally embracing people. Not just hugging, but embracing people, giving yourself the privilege of ardor, aesthetics and abundance. You welcome anything into the relationship, no matter what.

Devotion is holding the other person in your thoughts at all times; considering them in everything that you do and/or don't do; knowing you'll not do anything that will endanger the relationship or each other; looking to see that they are supported in extraordinary ways; and knowing that you are the one who will do it to the fullest extent of your capabilities with no energy held back.

To be devoted: "to give over wholly or purposefully." In a relationship, devotion could be seen as holding another in your thoughts at all times and considering them in everything you do and/or don't do. You know you will not do anything that would endanger the relationship or each other. You will look to see that they are supported in extraordinary ways and know that you will support them to the full extent of your capabilities with no energy held back.

COMMENDMENT #9: BE DEVOTED

To maintain the experience of devotion and expand to "Empower/Source" it's important to be economical in the use of all your assets. Your experience of

Flat - Love Me, Love Yourself

Vern Black

Table of Contents

Love Me, Love Yourself

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

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Page 7

Page 8

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Page 9

Page 10

CONTENTS

Page 11

FOREWORD

Page 12

INTRODUCTION

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

Page 13

THE MIND AND THE BEING (STRANGE BEDFELLOWS)

Page 14

Page 15

CHAPTER 1: INTEGRITY TONE SCALE

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INTEGRITY TONE SCALE

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CHAPTER 2: STATES OF INTEGRITY

Page 30

STATES OF INTEGRITY

Page 31

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THE EMOTION COLUMN

Page 33

Page 34

THE ATTITUDE COLUMN

THE POINT OF VIEW COLUMN

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Page 37

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THE APPARENT RESULTANT COLUMN

Page 39

Page 40

COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND COLUMN--THE TEN COMMENDMENTS

Page 41

HOW TO USE THE CHART

Page 42

HOW TO GET A BINGO

Page 43

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CHAPTER 3: COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DISLOYALTY:TELL THE TRUTH

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COMMENDMENT TO EXPAND OUT OF DISLOYALTY:

TELL THE TRUTH

Key Word: Pretend

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