Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctors, which show where I show you how bad states of mind, difficult life issues, aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 00:00:27 Greetings people. I hope you're feeling well and whatever problems you have, haven't been plaguing you too bad. But you know, when that happens, it's meaningful information being communicated to you, trying to wake you up about something. In fact, your problem is actually a solution to what well, that's what I'm going to tell you about today. In episode 45, I shared an exercise with emphasis on transforming the core qualities of a problem from negative to positive and using this to solve your issue. It's based on the idea that every human quality can be used either positively or negatively. In other words, consciously or unconsciously, for example, you can use your strength to stand up for your feelings or someone else's feelings, but you could also use it to abuse someone. So strength in itself is neither good, nor bad. It's neutral. It all depends on how you use it, how conscious you are of it in yourself.
Speaker 1 00:01:43 The same is true for every human quality. You can be emotional to share your true feelings, but you could also oppress someone with your emotions. You can be rational to figure out the correct answer to a question, but you could also be rational as a way to avoid your feelings. You can be intelligent to do good in the world or to do bad in the world or say, you're a cautious person. This can protect you from a lot of problems, but it could also cut you off from really experiencing life. The quality itself doesn't determine how it's used you do. And why is knowing this important, besides the obvious that if you're interested in growing, changing healing and transforming, you strive to be conscious of your process. There's another really interesting element here. This dual yin-yang nature of human qualities means that when we have a negative experience, either within ourselves or in relationship to another person or the world, the negative aspect, isn't the most important part.
Speaker 1 00:02:57 Of course it's sucks and you want to get rid of it, but it's only the negative expression of human quality. That quality when made conscious transforms into a positive expression, the quality is what's important, not its expression. In fact, the whole reason we have negative experiences is to push us to work on a certain quality in ourselves in order to transform it from unconscious to conscious. When you make it conscious, it becomes a liberating power. Getting fixated on the negative things in life is a real trap. It's seductive, and it takes strength and courage to not be sucked into it. If you only focus on what's bad, you miss what's actually happening, which is that something in you is trying to work its way into consciousness, but it's being blocked. And that's why it manifests as something negative. Not because it's intrinsically negative, get fixated on the process, not on its momentary negative manifestation.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 When you feel messed up by something like in a depressed mood, an anxious feeling, frustration, anger, or whatever, start with the idea that there's something right in what's happening. This is totally counter-intuitive, but it's a fact, your crap feeling is communicating an important message to you. It's trying to wake you up about something you're not aware of orient yourself toward hunting for the message, not toward just getting rid of your bad state of mind. The exercise focuses on befriending your problem because it's really a friend disguised as an enemy. It manifests as a negative force in order to upset your state of consciousness because your state of consciousness contains something that's marginalizing a part of yourself, and you're not aware of it causing you pain is how it tries to get you to focus on it. Otherwise you probably wouldn't even know it exists. And if you did, you'd probably just ignore it, which we all do most of the time, if I feel angry, hurt, or upset in some way, I don't try to make it go away.
Speaker 1 00:05:27 In fact, I amplify it so I can get a clear sense of what's going on in me. I dive into the experience and work to unfold its message. I continually ask myself, what's this want from me? What do I need to wake up about? And most importantly, what state of mind and body do I need to connect with in order to integrate this process? In other words, the solution, isn't a thought process per se. It's an experience I have to access a new feeling state in myself, understanding my process and the message in my problem comes after I experienced the solution. Not before. As I've said in previous episodes, the rule is experience first analysis. Second. Otherwise you fall into the common talk therapy trap of just sort of making up interpretations of your problem and prescribing solutions for yourself with no real way to vet them.
Speaker 1 00:06:30 You have to derive the answers from your real experience, not just from your or my or someone else's ideas, the exercises I teach, give you tools for doing this. Sometimes I use music to explore my process. I turn the amp up loud and play out my frustrations. I feel into the powerful bank of sound energy, and it helps me connect with the power in whatever's bothering me. Then I put down the guitar and embody the power by walking around the room, feeling it, I hunt for the positive element in it and discard the negative aspects. I asked myself, how can I use this oppressive energy as my own power to stand up for something I believe in music is just another way to amplify what I'm feeling to start the process. An incredible example of the idea that your problem contains its own solution. That your enemy is actually a friend is blues music, blues.
Speaker 1 00:07:39 Isn't just about complaining. Oh, woe is me. My woman left me. All I got is the bottle. That's only the first step. And when you have a problem, you have to start by saying, whoa, I feel like crap. If you pretend you don't or you avoid it, deny it or even just try to bliss it out. You actually feed it. You drive it further inside and make it more intractable because it's calling out for your attention. And the more you ignore it, the louder it screams sometimes powering through your crappy state of mind is the right thing to do. But oftentimes this is just a way to repress your process. It'll return because it's trying to get a message through after acknowledging the problem. The blues goes all the way into it. It dives in head first with full awareness, acceptance, and openness to the process.
Speaker 1 00:08:40 It doesn't disavow the pain. It embraces it, describes it in detail and sings and dances it out loud. This is the second step of working on a problem where you dive into it with your awareness and identify and amplify what's happening in detail, the various parts, thoughts, feelings, and conflicts. Then you follow and express your experiences in real time. At first, I was confused by the blues. I thought, wait a minute, the singer is saying he suffers every day, but the sound of the song feels like a party like BB King's every day I have the blues. How can he sing about such bad stuff and make you feel like dancing? It's crazy. Then it dawned on me. He's not running from his process. He's amplifying and unfolding it. And this in itself, transmutes it into something else. This is the third step where transformation occurs by amplifying your experiences and bringing them to consciousness.
Speaker 1 00:09:48 They unfold into something new. What began as your enemy turns out to be your ally processing. Your experience is the ultimate transformer at first, there's you, and there's your problem. And it's like two mortal enemies with nothing in common, ready to do combat. But as you enter the stream of your process, the boundaries between you and your problem dissolve what starts as a static condition of victim and victimizer you and your problem morphs into a process where everything becomes meaningful information, guiding you toward change and growth. That's the blues and that's process. Hmm. All this talk about blues really makes me feel like playing some slide guitar. So I'm going to go slide out for a minute back in a flash
Speaker 1 00:12:11 Whew. All right. The blues is the facts of life gives to you straight. See you next time. Stay aware. You can follow me on social media at doctors awake, and you can sign up on the mailing list at doctor's wake.com, where you'll receive discounts on private coaching events and merchandise, weekly personal growth tips, and lots more be well.
