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Excuses are a Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem: Unreality.

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The REAL ONES don’t need excuses.

An excuse is really just a reality deflection device that we use when:

1) We don’t want to accept some sort of feedback from life and GROW through it.

2) We don’t want to accept some truth or RESPONSIBILITY about ourselves and face its consequences.

The thing about excuses is that people who make them are only FOOLING THEMSELVES.

In the short-term, it stops them from having to face the unresolved SHAME that the situation they’re making excuses about is triggering.

In the long-term, it only perpetuates and DEEPENS the hold that this shame has over them.

If you can’t remember, it goes like this:

1. Shame sends people into hiding because they get TRICKED into believing there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with them.

2. They hide behind the mask of the ego and send certain ‘unacceptable’ parts of themselves down into the SHADOW TERRITORY.

3. When something happens that exposes the GAP between the unreality (ego) and the reality (the truth and the ‘hidden’ parts down in the shadow territory) then things get WEIRD.

Excuses are what happens when somebody is DESPERATE to avoid the truth about themselves and to defend all of the UNREAL ideas that stpp them accepting who they truly are.

The TRUTH is that in reality you don’t NEED excuses because when you’re being REAL you only have acceptance.

Why’s that important?

Because excuses are just the ego’s (futile) attempt to use unreality to defend unreality.

In other words, excuses are completely redundant – an attempt to uphold illusions with illusions to avoid short-term discomfort of EMBRACING and then DISSOLVING the shame that makes us want to hide in the first place.

Any time you find yourself or somebody caught up in an endless parade of:

“Yeah, but…”

“If only…”

“Cudda, wudda, shudda…”

Etc.

Then you can bet your bottom dollar it’s a form of RESISTANCE (to reality).

The REAL ONES don’t need excuses – they either ACCEPT the choices they made, EMBRACE the truth, or they OWN the screw up and take the lessons on board.

Step beyond JUDGEMENT (which is powerless without shame) and accept the truth:

WHAT’S REAL IS ALWAYS REAL.

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If You’re Scared to Say the Wrong Thing, You’ll Never Say the Right Thing.

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Growing real is the first step; expressing something real is the second.

How you choose to express you REALNESS is up to you:

-You can express it through your CREATIVE WORK.

-You can express it through the CHOICES you make about how to live a real life in an unreal world.

-You can express it through you BOUNDARIES and what you choose to say “No” to because you know your worth and so you live according to the holy mantra:

“GIMME SOMETHING REAL OR GTFO” (see Shadow Life – the second greatest book of all time).

What’s clear is that the more REAL you become, the more potency and power there will be behind your WORDS and ACTIONS and what they have to SAY to the world.

The reason for that is because – when you come from the REAL PLACE – your words and actions are beautifully ROOTED (in the truth) and so they can’t help but express something with a similar degree of force or potency.

A stumbling block that many people reach on this journey (of DEFRAGMENTING themelves and becomeing WHOLE again) is that they do the ‘inner work’ required to face themselves and start cultivating self-acceptance but that self-acceptance is still CONDITIONAL in that it is only expressed internally and not EXTERNALLY.

This doesn’t mean that you need to OVERSHARE every little thought, feeling, or vulnerability that floats across the debris of your stream of consciousness but it does mean that eventually – when the REAL, inner you meets the unreal, external world – you have a CHOICE to make.

Sometimes, for the sake of keeping the ‘peace’ in the short-term we decide to hide ourselves and what’s really going on long-term…

Sometimes, that’s fine because not every little detail of what we’re experiencing is interesting or relevant to the world (unless we’re SELF-OBSESSED which is just EGO).

Other times, we need to make the call and get over our fear of ROCKING THE BOAT by sharing or expressing who we really are.

There’s no point hiding something REAL because it will always come out in the end – you might as well CHOOSE your moment.

The only ‘right’ thing is the REAL one and if you fear saying or showing it to the world you’ll always feel like you’re UNREAL.

Unleash it.

I can help you help yourself grow real.

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When You Can Handle Your Own Disappointment and the Disapproval of Others You Can Do Anything.

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The quality of your life is about how REAL you let it be.

How real you let your life be is about how BLOCKED or UNBLOCKED you let yourself be based on your ASSUMPTIONS about yourself, the world, and reality itself.

The interesting thing is that – besides the physcial laws of this ‘ere planet we’ve found ourselves on – 99% of ‘blocks’ we perceive are ILLUSORY and ‘exist’ in our hearts and minds alone.

The blocks in our HEARTS exist because we’ve allowed ourselves to be DRIVEN by our unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, trauma, etc.) and instead of resolving it by FEELING it and allowing it to teach us what we need to learn to push through the next level of our IDENTITY we just kinda…FREEZE.

The blocks in our MIND exist BECAUSE of this unresolved ‘stuff’ – when we don’t want to face certain TRUTHS about who we are and what we’ve been through, we deem certain feelings and ideas as ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ and then shove them deep down in the SHADOWS of ourselves by keeping ourselves in a CONCEPTUAL MENTAL MATRIX that is designed to stop us facing certain TRUTHS (so we can hide the SHADOW and keep our EGO where it is).

Part of the CURE for this sickness is to start removing ourselves from the JUDGEMENT that locks us into this matrix by understanding how these BLOCKS are kept in place with our INTERNAL and EXTERNAL relationships to ourselves and the world

Internally – we start to FEAR our disappointment. Normally, in the form of ‘failure’, comparison to other imaginary spectres, or UNREAL standards and ‘shoulds’ that we created because of our shadow stuff.

Externally – we start to fear the DISAPPROVAL of others based on what we have JUDGED to be ‘unacceptable’ about us and shoved down into the SHADOWS (projection).

In genral, these two things – our own disappoinment in ourselves and the disapproval of others – BLOCK us from taking action and growing REAL in the world.

The way we deal with this is to COMMIT to UNCONDITIONAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE which means that we embrace who we are and keep LEARNING no matter what.

This is the way to stay REAL because if you accept yourself NO MATTER WHAT then nothing can shake you from internally or externally.

ARISE REAL ONE.

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Refuse to Feel ‘Guilty’ for Growin Real.

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The only people who don’t want you to grow real are people that are UNREAL.

This is because being REAL is about unblocking ourselves from the matrix of our own BS – such as self-limiting beliefs, unreal expectations of ourselves and others, emotionally-distored perspectives, attachments to opinions blah blah – so that we can simply MOVE and grow through our own edge and go deeper into a relationship with the TRUTH.

Unreal people have FRAGMENTED and divided themselves within themselves and so they have attached to all this BS and even gone so far as to think that they ARE the BS.

When they see somebody doing the INNER WORK to flip the script and put their WHOLENESS out into the world – instead of allowing the world to suppress them and to EXTINGUISH the torch of the human spirit – a couple of things happen:

1. They start to lash out because the REAL QUALITIES that are being expressed in the REAL ONE trigger their ‘Shadow Stuff‘ and all of the real qualities they’re trying to hide from themselves for the sake of their EGOs start calling to them from beneath the surface of themselves.

2. They will try and TEST the REAL ONE to see if they’re as real as they seem to think they are… This is weird when it first starts happening but it’s a good sign as it means the unreal have seen your realness and can’t quite believe it.

These ‘tests’ will be about trying to SHAKE you in some way – just believe in your REALNESS and refuse to waver (there’s nothing to ‘worry’ about anyway as all they can give you is UNREALITY).

3. They will try and make you feel GUILTY and to force you into certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving in the world (based on ROLES they want you to play so they can keep their unreality’s hold over them).

Here, they will tell you what you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ think/feel/do based – usually – on how it’s making them ‘feel’ (normally because they’re playing the VICTIM and trying to make you and them believe that somebody else is responsible for their emotional ‘stuff’).

You need to remember that all of this is just the WORLD trying to suck you back into its unreality.

Guilt is a useless emotion but reality is FOREVER.

Be unshakeable.

I can help you reach your goals and grow real.

 

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If Your ‘Confidence’ is Based On Feeling Superior It Can Always be Taken Away

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There’s a difference between REAL and unreal confidence.

REAL is about KNOWING you’re unshakeable because you’ve found a way to be ROOTED in yourself and reality and devoted yourself to some TRUTH about life that’s ‘higher’ than just your limited ideas about ‘You’.

When you’re rooted to the WHOLE in that way you understand who you are and what life is (and the connection between you and live itself) and nothing can ever take that away. Never.

It can’t be taken because it’s not DEPENDENT on anything – it’s just about acknowledging what’s already there, riding those REALITY WAVES, and trusting and believing (trust that life has your best interests at heart and belief in yourself and your ability to handle whatever happens).

This kind of real confidence, then, essentially comes from doing the INNER WORK, and cultivating UNCONDITIONAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE (see my book Shadow Life which is about this).

“Unconditional Self-Acceptance” just means that you accept yourself NO MATTER WHAT and that you commit to working with and growing through whatever life flings your way.

When you take the opposite path – i.e. the EGO PATH – then your confidence isn’t based on unconditional self-acceptance but CONDITIONAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE.

Whereas Unconditional Self-Acceptance comes from the INSIDE, Conditional Self-Acceptance comes from the outside.

Conditional Self-Acceptance (aka ‘Self-Esteem’) means that you’re feelings about yourself are DEPENDENT on the image you carry of yourself in the WORLD (even though the world isn’t real).

For most people, this shows up as feelings of ‘SUPERIORITY’ – for example, being able to see ourselves as being ‘better’ than other people in our group or surroundings because of some completely (usually) superficial and arbitrary quality or thing:

-Being the most handsome/beautiful/attractive

-Having more money/followers/likes

-Being the funniest/toughest/purest/whateverest

-Etc.

There’s nothing wrong with HEALTHY COMPETITION (Iron sharpens iron) but if you’re confidence only comes from external stuff it can NEVER last because CONDITIONS always change – somebody will always be more ‘superior’ eventually.

Step inside and stand on something REAL.

My coaching packages can help you find your real confidence.

 

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Everything You’ve Been Through Was to Prepare You to Be Real Right Now.

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There are many mysteries about this place (aka ‘The World’) but one thing’s for sure:

Everything that either happens to you or that you make happen is a TEST of your REALNESS.

We’re ALL real but we can spend a lot of our time forgetting it:

-Some will wake up to their REALNESS when they’re young (usually because of some trauma or some incident that causes them to DEVIATE from the unreal path society asked them to walk and get back into the REAL MODE).

-Some will wake up when they’re a bit older (either because they started asking QUESTIONS, because they went through a great LOSS of some kind, or because they had some kind of ‘spiritual’ experience that broke them out of their minds a little).

-Some NEVER wake up – even though their REALNESS calls to them from beneath the surface their whole lives long – because they don’t know how to LISTEN or because all of the NOISE in the head is so LOUD it drowns out any hint of ‘insanity’.

Regardless of if it does or doesn’t happen the immortal truth about ‘You’ is always the same:

WHAT’S REAL ABOUT YOU IS ALWAYS REAL AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

Everything you can want from life – the joy, the bliss, the creativity – it’s there waiting for you whenever you’re READY…. and the best thing is you don’t even have to DO anything except just allow yourself to be OPEN to yourself and the light you’ll find when you face your own DARKNESS.

Whoever, wherever, whatever you ARE, everything happens and can only happen when it’s READY to happen – whatever you’ve been through in life has just been a TRAINING GROUND for the moment in front of you RIGHT NOW.

All of the pain you might have endured; all of the doubts you might have had about yourself, the world, and reality; every moment of joy, every moment of release, every moment when you felt like you ‘got it’ and felt HIGH ON LIFE only for the world to creeep in again…

EVERYTHING you’ve been through has just been sent to you from the SHADOWS of yourself to CLEANSE and to TEACH you what you needed to know to be who you are RIGHT NOW.

The only CHOICE you need to make in the moment is this:

“Am I ready to be REAL or do I need to keep hiding?”

There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer.

 

If you’re ready to step into your realness get in touch with me about my life coaching packages.#

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Only Trust Them If They’re (At Least) A Little Crazy.

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It’s not the ‘crazy’ ones that you need to watch out for.

It’s the ones who think they’ve got all the answers and got it all ‘together’ that you need to watch out for.

The TRUTH is that all human beings are at least a LITTLE bit CRAZY because we all have chaos inside of ourselves, none of us know everything, and we’re all IMPERFECT in strange and BEAUTIFUL ways.

To be REAL and to be able to RELATE to others on the LEVEL then we need to ACCEPT ourselves unconditionally and that means embracing all of our darknesses and chaotic undercurrents – even if that might appear ‘CRAZY’ in the face of an UNREAL WORLD.

Being real is about ACCEPTING and EMBRACING the truth – beyond any ideas of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – and so that means that we know we’re on a journey of allowing those REALITY WAVES to purify us through the act of living which means bringing the darkness and irrationality that exists within us ALL up to the surface in service of life.

The BIG BALLS move is to go through this process as part of our personal JOURNEY of growing real by and doing the INNER WORK required to allow the darkness to come to light in the face of our own CONSCIOUS AWARENESS without judgement or duality.

The BAD BALLS move is to find a way to express what you’re LEARNING and going through on this journey out in the world around you with your CREATIVITY and the way that you use it to speak you truth in the world.

Or as we’ve said before – do this:

1. Live to uncover the truth.

2. Act on this truth (by sharing and living it).

To live in this real way means that you are not ‘OF’ the world – the world is just our COLLECTIVE ideas and limitations about life according to whatever TIME AND PLACE we find ourselves in but what is REAL about you is UNIVERSAL and TIMELESS.

When you come from that UNIVERSAL PLACE in a world defined by its time then, of course, you run the risk of seeming a little ‘crazy’ but that’s only because you’re not letting the prison bars stop you from being FREE.

If you meet somebody claiming they have it all together or doesn’t have any rawness or rough edges then RUN – not only are they hiding from yoou but they’re hiding from themselves.

GIMME SOMETHING REAL OR GTFO.

 

Get in touch with me about coaching if you want to bring your own ‘craziness’ to the surface.

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Your Emotions are Asking You to Either Accept Something You Don’t or to Enjoy Something You Do.

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The final lesson is always ACCEPTANCE.

Everything else you learn and go through is just putting you somewhere on the spectrum between learning that final truth or getting caught up in JUDGEMENT and holding yourself back from life.

Everything we do is either teaching us how to be more OPEN and to go deeper into life or it’s causing us to put up our defenses and to RESIST (so that we can keep the EGO in place and avoid having to face the SHADOW TERRITORY blah blah – see my book Shadow Life).

The EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE of your life – in general – is a reflection of your CAPACITY and WILLINGNESS to ACCEPT reality.

If you accept, then you feel ‘good’ because you’re open and there are no/less barriers between you and where life wants to take you.

If you resist, then you fell ‘bad’ because you’re closed and you place illusory barriers (ego ‘stuff’) between you and life and it will forever slip between your fingers.

It’s so easy to attribute a lot of mental health problems to physical or chemical causes but – in A LOT of cases – the ‘mental health crisis’ is just a SYMPTOM of being in an UNREAL world that is constantly trying to distract people and make them forget about what it means to be a living, breathing human being.

Depression, anxiety, restlessness, and a lot of other things are just symptoms of the FUNDAMENTAL problem which is that people are scared to be REAL, have been conditioned not to ACCEPT themselves, the world, and reality and so don’t LISTEN to what their emotions are asking them to ACCEPT.

Instead of LEARNING the lesson, they’re just given pills to pop or ‘talking therapies’ that make them go over and RE-IDENTIFY with the same stories and narratives that made them miserable in the first place.

Negative emotions that LINGER mean that you’re AVOIDING a lesson.

In general:

Depression – means that you have LOST TOUCH with your purpose and stopped MOVING so you feel trapped.

Anxiety – means that you’re putting an unreal version of yourself out into the world and getting FRICTION as feedback.

Shame, Guilt, and Trauma – mean you let the world stop you BELIEVING in yourself.

Etc.

If you don’t learn to ACCEPT reality you’ll always be UNREAL.

 

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Your Shadow is All of the Things, ‘Positive’ and ‘Negative’, that You’ve Denied About Yourself and Hidden Beneath the Surface of the Mask You Forgot that You’re Wearing.

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Your Shadow Life is the real life that emerges when you face the whole of yourself without judgement.â €
â €
Ever since Day One, you’ve been conditioned to be a version of yourself that has been deemed ‘acceptable’ by the world:â €
â €
-Maybe you got rewarded with applause and attention for being a “good boy” and helping Mummy carry the shopping or some other ‘useful’ thing.â €
â €
-Maybe you got rewarded with applause and attention for being a “good girl” and fluttering your eyelids and looking pretty.â €
â €
-Maybe it was singing and dancing like a lunatic that did it. â €
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-Maybe it was being passive and “well-behaved”.â €
â €
-Maybe it was getting good grades or being polite or just saying the right thing all the time.â €
â €
Whatever it is, the world has conditioned you at the level of your BEING:â €
â €
“Be this.”â €
â €
“Don’t be that.”â €
â €
“You SHOULD be this”.â €
â €
“You SHOULDN’T be that”.â €
â €
On and on it goes…an endless onslaught of bewildering and bewitching BULLSHIT that sends you hurtling into an unreal version of yourself that ends up building an unreal life for who you really are.â €
â €
The truth is that hardly any of us escape childhood truly ALIVE because we’ve all had this nonsense pumped into our psyches for as long as we can remember: with enough repetition we don’t just end up being HYPNOTISED by the world but we end up hypnotising ourselves to boot.â €
â €
We listen to the “Be this, be that” message so much that we send vital parts of ourselves into hiding by banishing them to the Shadow Territory.â €
â €
This wouldn’t be so tragic if it was just the ‘bad’ sides of ourselves that got sent down there (though even the ‘bad’ is real at some level because what is real is whole and the whole is good, bad, and beyond).â €
â €
Unfortunately, we end up sending our ‘good’ qualities down there too:â €
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-Our joy and spontaneity.â €
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-Our creativity.â €
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-Our ability to love without thinking.â €
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-Our capacity for INTIMACY.â €
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-Our true sex drive and passion.â €
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-Our compassion for others.â €
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-Our ability to live with curiosity.â €
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-Our lack of unreal fear.â €
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-Etc. Etc. Etc.â €
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The world doesn’t want you to be real because then you’ll be a threat to an unreal world.â €
â €
Face yourself anyway.

 

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This is the Sign You’ve Been Waiting For to Walk Away from the BS Thing that Keeps Holding You Back.

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Every so often, I like to remind people that a super power we all have is to say “NO”.

When you say “No” to something UNREAL then it frees you up to say “Yes” to the real stuff – your true values, your true intentions, your true purpose, and most importantly your TRUE SELF.

The problem for a lot of us is that we make a lot of the decisions about our lives and what we want to do with them based on an UNREAL IMAGE of ourselves:

-We don’t believe in ourselves so we CHOOSE jobs, relationships, or ‘friendships’ that aren’t healthy or satisfying.

-We don’t believe in the world so we think that we just have to follow our SOCIAL CONDITIONING and do what we’re TOLD.

-We don’t believe in reality so we don’t acknowledge that we can GROW REAL through a lot of our limitations (and when we can’t we can learn to ACCEPT and be more CREATIVE with these limitations).

When you make choices about your life from the UNREAL side of who you are (i.e. the EGO which is designed as a response to the Unholy Trinity of shame, guilt, and/or trauma and serves as a barrier to keep your SHADOW at bay – see Shadow Life: Freedom from Bs in an Unreal World) then what you get from life is equally UNREAL.

It’s pretty simple:

Unreal goes in -> Unreal comes out

Real goes in -> Real comes out

If you’re lucky enough to have something ‘bad’ happen or if you step up and do the WORK then you can start to go through the process of becoming aware of how the world you’ve CHOSEN is UNREAL:

Asleep -> Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action

If you stay ASLEEP you will feel the restless call of the void as your shadow calls to you from beneath the surface.

If you become AWARE you’ll start to feel frustrated at what you’ve CHOSEN for yourself.

If you start to ACCEPT you’ll understand why you made those choices and FORGIVE yourself.

If you accept you can start taking ACTION and the first step is to set the BOUNDARY by saying “NO” to the unreal stuff that doesn’t serve you.

Like anything, it’s a PROCESS – you might not just up and leave but you can CHECKOUT MENTALLY.

When you’ve done that the next step is to work on bringing the REAL STUFF and to keep walking.

No dramas, no stress, no malice.

 

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