Jul 3, 20155 min read

Healing is Listening - Part 2

Updated: Oct 27, 2022

Be Honest - Improve Your Life Experience

I was watching a 2013 TED talk yesterday, where the presenter was discussing ways of shifting people’s consciousness regarding the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual) community. His fundamental formula was Listen, Learn, and Love. He used these three steps in terms of how one would change the way they related to the LGBT community. In the Enhances Awareness Program we use the same process, but more in terms of how you improve the nature of your own life experience.

The EAP Process

There are four steps to the process in how the program delivers this sort of change. The first step, Being Honest, relates to the ‘Listen’ component referred to above. In order to change anything you have to be able to identify what state something is in to start off with, and only then can strategies be developed for how to institute change. In terms of human consciousness, that act of being honest, of identifying where one is at in their consciousness was in the past called confession. Confession has taken many forms throughout its history. It became an integral part of the Christian model. The apostle James said, “Confess your faults one to another”. Eventually the church used it as a tool for control and as a revenue raising strategy. The fact was, confession was all about the needs of the one confessing and not the confessor. The importance of confession was further clarified by the apostle Paul when he wrote, “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”. In other words, when the heart is filled with compassion it naturally aligns with justice (helping those in need). When one is able to be honest with their truth through confession, then the compassionate state of the heart becomes a constant, it is sustainable. The act of confession means that the person confessing (being honest) gets to hear the truth of their reality up to three times. The first time is when they mentally review their life reality prior to speaking it. The second time is when they hear it as they speak it, and if their confessor can be successful in active listening, the person gets to hear it a third time.

How Does That Serve You?

In a healthy model of confession there is no judgement, only awareness of what has occurred. This is expanded in two ways. Firstly there are the consequences of your choices, which manifest as your reality. Secondly, there is the enquiry of how this serves you? Traditionally, confession resulted in you being judged as good or bad, right or wrong, with an associated punishment or penance depending on verdict. In this model being honest results in you becoming clear about whether your choices served you or not. Does it leave you in a state of stillness or a state of suffering? Do you get to experience life with health, clarity, happiness and freedom? Or do your choices result in illness, confusion, sadness and continually living life small?

The Enhances Awareness Program assists people in being more fully honest, by having them self-evaluate the current state of who they are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They then clarify their observation by providing evidence for how each element shows up in their life. Typically we observe that people either understate their reality or overstate it. The majority of people have no clear idea of their reality. A statistical analysis of the self-evaluation gives people a visual orientation about their truth. Confession is about becoming clear how the imbalance of how you function physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually doesn’t serve you. You don’t need to be punished, that has happened for long enough. What you need is guidance in how to bring your life back into balance. As was discussed in the prior blog, the three things responsible for the imbalance were, ignorance, avoidance and attachment. Listening, learning and loving are the remedies. Listening (or becoming aware) is about being honest, the first step of the EAP process. Learning is about being informed and being strategic. Learning helps to over come avoidance. Loving is expressed through service and is the remedy for attachment. The evidence of balance is the absence of suffering in one’s life. Suffering is replaced by stillness, the natural consequence of being aware.

Our Story

Those things that we identify through our confession as being not serving arise from certain beliefs that we harbour about ourselves, often referred to as our story. This story has become so ingrained in our psyche that it taints every thought, feeling, sense or desire that we engage. It is so all-consuming that objectivity (awareness) is almost impossible. It would appear that the program of our formative years is most responsible for the creation and compounding of our story. Part of our need to be honest included being able to confess to our story. This is an integral part of the EAP process and part of being honest. Being aware of our story means we can come free of our story. The more we are free of our story the more we can stay in awareness. The more we maintain a consciousness of awareness the more we stay in stillness. The more we experience stillness, the more our lives are filled with love, health and happiness. The more we are abundantly blessed, fulfilled and are able to make a real difference in the world.

Take A Moment To Consider

Anytime we fail to speak the truth we give more power to our story and ultimately more opportunity for suffering. Over the next fortnight I want to challenge you to keep a penance jar for every time you don’t speak the truth. The penance will be a gold coin, and maybe at the end of the fortnight you can give the money you deposited into the jar to your favourite charity. This might include the following…