Daring to be Yourself

A new section on the Trans4mind site created by Dr. Maurice Turmel, our Heart to Heart Coach… Dr Moe Unplugged!

If you suspect you were a victim of childhood religious indoctrination and even abuse you may find comfort here in this ongoing discourse: a place to rest, be affirmed, and furthermore to heal yourself and be free of the well orchestrated psychological tyranny perpetrated by orthodox religions.

“I remember when I was a choirboy, listening to the sermons, saying how I was basically sinful when at that age I’d never done anything wrong in my life. This was a Protestant church, who are worse than Catholics for the Hellfire and damnation routine. Well, the limit was when my mother was in the congregation, and the vicar was insulting her likewise. I didn’t know so well about myself but I knew she was a person of pure heart whose every act was loving just as much as Jesus. So I said enough is enough, and I never went back there. I was also into the “Plain Truth” fundamentalist bullshit at the time, receiving magazines from USA, and I chucked these all in the bin and felt a huge release and weight off my shoulders. It was the best thing I ever did. Then I got a book on Buddhism (fortunately an enlightened one, not a dogmatic one, because they can be as bad) and on the Cabbala, and found far more truth in these. The number one difference, they were empowering and talked of God within. Oddly enough, I’d always known that in my infancy… before the Sunday School crap and all that came after suppressed the spark of awareness that I had. I was lucky, I recovered at 12; most people never do.”

That’s my story and applies to many of my generation in UK, I suspect. In USA and many other countries it’s still going on, whatever the religion or sect or authority – it’s dogma that’s the culprit and there’s plenty of that even in the New Age movement. The real killer thing the religions do is (hypocritically of course) to invalidate a person for natural feelings. For example, without sexual lust there would be no procreation and no humans on Earth. Yet apparently we’re sinful for feeling lustful in our bodies, as though it isn’t a necessary part of the beautiful and spiritual process of love-making. That’s caused 1500 years of mass psychosis, not to mention a terrible time for women, since the Church identified sin with Eve’s temptation. Even now the Pope says sex is for procreation only, not for pleasure – a necessary sin that keeps humans pointed toward hell, without their redemption every Sunday at the hands of the powers that be.

Without wanting to do well competitively, to play and win at the games of life, the world would be back in the Stone Age, yet we’re told how our selfish ego is such a barrier to spiritual growth. A misconceived put down – personal growth is about transcending the ego, not weakening it, it’s already too weak and afraid, which is why it’s immaturely selfish and hateful. So yes, it’s not only the Church… New Agers can be hypocritical, dogmatic, religious suppressors too! All the while thinking they’re holier than thou.

We each need to discover our own truth, not have it dictated to us by authorities. Truth is inevitably simple but the network of defenses we erect to deny our own truth and the sophistication of the conditioning we receive to imprint the status quo – these are complex.

The full solution is something like the Insight Project, but anyone can make a lot of headway by applying some simple principles and disciplines. Firstly, to always be guided by Love, since love is the creative force, the intent, the quality, that is their essential nature. It always leads to truth, it IS truth. So whenever you act, ask “Am I doing this through love?” This is the best way to get in touch with inner guidance, to start to know your true self.

Secondly, be mindful before reacting emotionally. Take time to breathe, to get into the present moment – pull yourself in from attention trapped in the past and the future and be grounded and centered in your body. Here and now. Then respond, from love and not from fear.

And remember that communication is the solvent of problems. When in doubt, or you’re anxious, or you feel stranded: communicate. That means to express your feelings and safeguard your rights – but equally to ask questions and listen intently, not just to spout off yourself. So first, become mindful.

I think we should remember, though, another side of the coin of suffering from religious abuse and intolerant dogmatism. Imagine if we hadn’t had that influence that we perceived as a force bearing down upon us, or if we had just continued to accept it as many do, would we have made the same degree of learning and insights we have today? Or would we have lived “normal” conforming lives of barely conscious awareness. I’m not saying it’s the right or best way to go about it – we might have succumbed – but maybe by trying to point you in the opposite direction, to nothingness, the suppression actually served to align you correctly as you resisted its force, and fought back in the other direction, trying to get better answers to your questions, and indeed, seeking to express your inner knowing. Perhaps after all it had a rather dubious role in helping us realize our life purpose. I’m sure it did for me.

Dr. Gabriella Kortsch produces a wonderful radio show each week called Re-Wiring the Soul… “This is a show that aims at real talk about how to make a difference in your life. How to improve your life. How to better understand why you are the way you are and help yourself grow far beyond that. This means that we focus not only on your psyche, your mind, your emotions, and your body, but also on your spirit and your soul.”

The show’s archive contains many emminent leaders and researchers, healers and practitioners – a lot of fascinating material and Gabriella, who has a great mind herself, draws the best out of them. Last week Gabriella kindly asked me to appear on the show. I enjoyed it tremendously, I hope you will too…

Looking back to previous shows, the guests she interviews are a fascinating bunch. It’s well worth putting the show’s RSS feed into your newsreader or browser bookmarks.

Not having posted for ages, it may seem all is quiet on the Trans4mind front. In fact, it’s the opposite, I’ve just been too wrapped up in our new projects to step back and write about them…

Anna and Brad Swift of the Life On Purpose Institute have begun a free personal coaching service at Trans4mind, to answer a key question you have relating to purpose in your life, and to coach you through to greater clarity and motivation. Please do take advantage of the wisdom these two exceptional people have to offer.

A recent site addition is Maurice Turmel’s Conscious Evolution section, also described as “A Lightworker’s Guide to Personal Growth.” This combines fictional dialogue, the beautiful monochrome images of Monica Yakiwchuk, alongside appropriate philosophical writings by Maurice. It’s an inspiring and insightful read.

In the ezine, Cultivate Life! we have just commenced a 40-part series, ending in Autumn 2012, by Carolyn Evers. The series will then be widely released in Dec 2012 as a freely available ebook, so as many people as possible will understand how they can participate in the Ascension – the transformation of the human race to become guided by and one with Unconditional Love in nature and being. Whether or not things change dramatically at that specific date, or if a more gradual evolution occurs, Mankind needs a change of human nature to break the endless cycle of violence, greed, envy, abuse of power and short memories. This ongoing series is intended to be a helpful and insightful manual in that direction.

Later this year, Carolyn and friends are visiting France to uncover ancient manuscripts left behind by Mary Magdalene, and being local, Nicole and I will help with that in any way we can.

The biggest activity surrounds the Trans4mind Network- this is the expansion of Trans4mind into multiple languages, each hosted on its own domain and run by a Service Provider who we have selected and trained, so the result in each case is true to the Trans4mind brand and ethos. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the service providers who have come forward are an incredible bunch of people, with wide-ranging experience, abilities and talents to contribute, and organizing the network is turning out to be a delightful experience. Wallace Huey is the Network Director, and I keep an eye on things and also help with technical support for the service providers. We already cover a lot of the globe, as you can see on the Network page, and by a couple of years time I think everyone in the world will have access to good information and coaching to assist their personal growth. In many countries this kind of service is non-existent and the help Trans4mind can provide is much needed.

An Invitation
If you are fluent in another language other than English, have a good understanding of personal development and like working on the computer, and if your life purpose would be fulfilled by being of service in this way, we invite you to join our World Vision and participate by becoming a Trans4mind Service Provider in a language of your choice. Alternatively you may wish to become a contributor to an existing Trans4mind website in your native language. As the directors of Trans4mind, Wallace Huey and I will support you in doing this.

The Trans4mind vision is not about money; not about sleaze; not about dogma nor persuasion… the values behind very many sites on the Internet. Instead, Trans4mind is about Love.

Participation in the Network is about sharing a global vision of unity and peace. It’s a demonstration of universal values, of loving service for the benefit of Mankind. The aim is to help transform human consciousness and therefore the quality of life for millions of people, at this crucial stage in the evolution of our planet. That is the life purpose that Trans4mind service providers share. As you can imagine, it’s thrilling and a tremendous privilege to be working with such a great team of people, and if you feel inspired to contribute your energy and talents, you will be most welcome.

This new service was launched last week in Cultivate Life! and already we have about 100 members! This number is important as the members have fortunately chosen life challenges that range widely across those available, so that there are nearly always other members matching your top priority life challenge when you do a buddy search. And we have six Guides, to help members find resources at Trans4mind.

So now is a great time to start using the service: to meet interesting people and give each other mutual help and support. If possible, please upload a picture of yourself – it’s so much better to know what a member looks like!

The service has proved solid and reliable, thanks to the great work done by our programmer, Ken Ward. Nevertheless, we have refined the program quite a lot over the last week, based on user feedback. It’s easier and smoother to use. Remember, this is a safe and secure service: that has been our number one priority. Your email address is not made public and only becomes known to a member you have chosen to contact, and from that point on the emails between you are normal personal emails, totally separate from the Buddy Service. Plus – and you won’t find this anywhere else! – there are no promotions nor advertising connected with the service whatsoever.

The idea is to share experiences and ideas for moving forward – with the help of Trans4mind resources such as the Whole Person Handbook – and to support each other, to the point that you both master the life challenge you have in common, and share your insights with others if you wish. Hopefully then, as friends, you can move on to further challenges.

Imagine the value of being able to share what you are learning from all our Trans4mind resources and services with someone who is facing the same life challenges as yourself! And to support each other as you put your insights into practice!

Life is a duality: light and shadow go together, and all shades inbetween. An holistic philosophical approach to life integrates all colors and shades: God, soul, body-mind personality, culture and the Universe work together as a whole. An holistic model doesn’t exclude any of its parts – the wheel needs both hub and rim to turn, and the spokes inbetween.

On the other hand, a philosophical approach to life that negates one pole of an existing duality – a view that is compulsively transpersonal, for example, rejecting the personal – effectively separates: in this case the spiritual dimension rejects the body-mind and life as a human, as if one necessarily invalidates the other rather than complementing each other. Therefore, despite appearances, this is not an enlightened approach – half of life is missing from the model.

A fundamental mistake in much New Age philosophy is to nullify the Ego’s role, as if the Ego is some bad thing we need to eliminate, rather than our personal identity and face to the world, which may have weaknesses and strengths, and may be developed. Eckhart Tolle is one of those who influentially expounds this specific view of Ego, though it’s very common in the culture to equate Ego with egotistical selfishness, the product of a weak and afraid Ego. See this free PDF download: The Eckhart Effect.

The source of this PDF is the blog of Barry Goss & Heather Vale. They also published the following picture today. I don’t mean to depress you but it’s illuminating… funny but deeply sad too. Means I’m the Anti-Christ – with our site motto: “Minds, like parachutes, function better when open” – as people have told me several times over the years.

My recent article The Wheel of Life discussed the “high end” of personal growth – the transpersonal realm where a developed personality merges into the “higher self” of unbounded consciousness. This is a world of integration. The tools that The Insight Project provides are some of the best available for becoming aware of this spiritual dimension in your life and opening up your life to a whole new degree of potential.

I also emphasized in that article that although we have this spiritual dimension, that we may be aware of to a greater or lesser extent, nevertheless the foundation of our lives is the body-mind experience… we feel and express ourselves in the very solid, physical dimension of our life on Earth. This is a world of separation. Each of us is a unique player in the game of life and as a result of our experience, we learn: both positive learning (helpful skills, insightful knowledge) and negative learning (developing fears and limiting beliefs, for example). A few years on this planet and we can get into a right stew! I know I did. My attempt to sort out my personal life involved psychotherapy and I naturally wanted to pay back the help I received by helping others similarly: I became a psychotherapist.

It became apparent to me, however, that psychotherapy was focused too much on undoing the negative learning; there was an imbalance. We also need to make headway with our positive learning or we remain dependent on further therapy to continually dig us out of the next hole. We need tools for positive learning – indeed, simply having and using such tools makes the psychotherapy work largely unnecessary, except as a rescue stage for those new to personal growth.

It was this realization that first interested me in the personal development field. Following some years of experimentation and discovery, I became well grounded in “positive psychology” and had great results, both for myself and others I coached. This included mind development, taught by my mentor at that time, Gregory Mitchell. I developed further tools to fill gaps I perceived in the brilliant heritage that positive psychologists such as Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Eric Fromm and many others have left us. And I decided to devote my career to this direction – the Trans4mind website was born at this juncture, to share what I had learned… again, my “payback.”

The Character Strengths and Virtues handbook by the Values in Action Institute, represents an attempt on the part of the research community to identify and classify the positive psychological traits of human beings. This manual identifies six universal values that lead to increased happiness when practiced…

1. Wisdom and Knowledge: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective
2. Courage: bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality
3. Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence
4. Justice: citizenship, fairness, leadership
5. Temperance: forgiveness and mercy, humility, prudence, self control
6. Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality

These qualities are innate potentials in each of us and are developed naturally as the result of positive learning. Practical applications of positive psychology therefore help individuals to identify their strengths and further develop these virtues, to build and broaden their lives.

The way out is the way through – it’s not by denial or avoidance, it’s by acceptance and responsibility. The power of love, in other words, replacing fear. This is the way forward. But for most of us, we can use some support and guidance, to get our head above water and start to swim ahead – then we can approach dry land, walk, run and eventually learn to fly. The latter – ascending in the spiritual dimension – seems the trickiest bit, but actually it’s a continuation of the same path: that of ever-increasing mindfulness and integrative love.

The “foundation” course that Trans4mind provides, to help a person overcome their negative learning, to get on “dry land” and start to develop in a positive, empowering way, is the Start a New Life! home study course. The course comes with personal support from myself. It is firmly based in positive psychology and aims to uncover and nurture one’s innate qualities, and to make normal life much more fulfilling. The course aims to give you a real good start on the wonderful path of personal growth.

Start a New Life! is entirely a practical course and it works very well as the “Workbook” to accompany my paperback book, Daring to be Yourself, that was published in 2007. So now I give a copy of this book to new students of the course. The course and book complement each other: they have the same theoretical base and they are both intended to give you the motivation and courage to get “out of the rut” and start what is, in effect, a new life – a new you… the real you this time!

I’ve written quite a substantial new article, called The Wheel of Life, about the nature of Gnosis, our mysterious inner knowing. This has always been recognized by mystics and mystery schools but those who would rather we didn’t think but simply accept the version of things that we are told, have done their best to suppress the individual path of Gnosis for millennia. The article is directly influenced by the books of Timothy Freke and Peter Kingsley, who both have done wonderful work in validating the gnostic roots of ancient philosophers and pagan religions. Of course, my work with The Insight Project follows in the same Gnostic tradition: techniques to aid the individual in exposing inner truth, regardless of conventions of authority and dogma, and regardless of all that one has previously been taught and believed.

The article addresses an issue that most New Age writers, especially those promoting the “law of attraction,” don’t seem to understand: we may in essence be all One but we are also each and every one of us unique individuals on the earthly plane. And continue to be individuals in the middle – such as our Higher Self – as there are any levels of being in between humanity and Source. Each of us is a player in the game of life, and games by nature require opponents, opposites, competition, unknowns, time, goals, action, effort… all these kind of “unspiritual” things.

We have a personal involvement in the game of life, which is essential to our process of learning from experience and to achieving the purpose we are living here for. We are at cause to the degree we take responsibility and act on our intentions with integrity: in accordance with our beliefs and values. At the same time, our spiritual essence is doing its thing, waving it’s wand, à la Harry Potter. Attraction is happening, though calling it a law is misleading: there are no laws in the spiritual realm, there is only will (but intent is rarely pure). Taken together, we should embrace both our humanity and oneness in spirit.

Hope you enjoy the article!

Trans4mind (which is how we refer to the site now) has undergone a further major upgrade with changes too numerous to remember. Best you check it out. The aim has been clarity and simplicity, especially on the home page and also in the site navigation. The feedback we had was on the contrary: some people found access to our resources confusing and overwhelming, so we’ve done everything we could to address these issues. At the same time, Heart to Heart – and the 30 odd life challenges we’ve identified – is now 100% integrated into the site, as you’ll see.

I’m always looking for new quality free ebooks, videos and so on to add to the Trans4mind resources, and to get leads on exciting new thinkers in this field. Two new sites that have been very helpful in this regard are…

1. Free Personal Development Material
   A regularly updated listing by Lyman Reed of free personal development, self-help, spiritual, and business development related ebooks, audios, videos, and courses. He kindly featured Trans4mind’s ebooks the other day. Of course they’re just the tip of the iceberg of what we offer.
2. Steve Olson
   A blog “for people pursuing freedom.” Steve journals his discoveries and experiences on his personal path. He questions everything, which is what this game is about, and he comes to very intelligent conclusions. Definitely worth sticking on your RSS feed list, along with Lyman’s.

Wallace Huey and I worked non-stop when here was over here at Nevers – except for the odd soirée or five – and since then he has enjoyed a holiday with his family in Belfast. So no Heart to Heart Coaching Q&A this week after all – back to normal next week.

We hope you like the new magazine name: Cultivate Life! This was brought on by the market research Wallace has been doing, to try and make the site more accessible and easier to use. In the opinion of a number of interviewees, the organization of the site was not apparent and the language used was hard to understand. For example, most could not define “metamorphosis” or see it’s relevance to personal development. So we move on… “Cultivate Life!” connects with its byline, “Your free weekly toolkit – for planting seeds of success, abundance, love and joy.”

We found many people thought of Tools for Transformation as “Trans4mind,” the domain name since 1998. So we’ll stick to that. Please check out the home page of Trans4mind… you’ll see it has a new look and is much simpler and quick to load.

The menus are now based on your needs – in alignment with the life challenges we have discovered to be most common from the Heart to Heart Coaching service – rather than just listing dozens of information titles. The whole site is built on that foundation, and if you click on one of the life challenges in the top menus, you’ll see that an “entry page” turns up, with all the Free resources (with blue links) and Professional resources (with red links) related to that life challenge clearly differentiated.

It was not clear to many people before whether products were free or requiring payment – and some did not even realize that we at Trans4mind offer a range of our own courses and products, that include unlimited email support. I think the new set-up solves those issues and makes everything much clearer. I’m pretty sure you will find the new Trans4mind site, which is now organized around the Heart to Heart life challenges, a pretty amazing set of resources for you to look into.

Unfortunately we’ve had to axe the Forum – it was being ruined by spammers, and the need therefore to register (and the complicated manner of doing so) created an insurmountable barrier for many potential posters. Now you can simply email your experience and advice instead, directly from the link given in this magazine or at the Question & Answer page online, and your comments will be posted online. Look out for that facility in the Heart to Heart Coaching, returning in the next issue of Cultivate Life!

If you took the trouble to post on the old forum, your efforts won’t be wasted… as soon as possible your entries will be reposted on the corresponding Q&A web pages.

New partners
My wife Nicole has just ended her employment as the director of the local leisure center for children here in Nevers, France. She wishes now to focus on the French version of Trans4mind and enjoy the freedom of being self-employed. Wallace Huey, who has contributed immensely to the current state of the Trans4mind site, is now working full-time as co-developer of the English site. So the Trans4mind team now is three business partners: Wallace, Nicole and myself. After 10 years on my own this is a great relief for me, and I can’t imagine better people to be in partnership with.

En français
Over the coming months, Nicole will be putting up French versions of many of the existing Trans4mind materials as well as starting a new monthly magazine. Nicole would be most obliged if one or more of you good readers would be able to assist with the translations – we can’t afford a financial exchange but your payment would be the tremendous good you would be doing by helping to introduce these materials to the French-speaking public world-wide. Nicole will also welcome your article submissions in French. If you would like to help, please email Nicole.

The Trans4mind Ideas Competition
We received just three suggestions, and the prize-winners will receive a DVD of their choosing from Reality Films.

1. Antonella Celi suggested we look into the Vbook format for presenting the magazine. This is idea for multi-media presentations, including audio and video, pdf content and so on, and certainly stimulates ideas we could incorporate in the future. But not now. Still, delighted to receive the idea!

2. Dhara asks if we can have a section for Children – kids and teens - where they can post articles related to their upbringing, and cultivating proper a attitude towards life, its stages, the tests they will undergo and life’s varied experiences. Definitely something to think about and work on – if it rings a bell for you, please do submit materials along these lines.

3. Antonietta Francini pointed out the need that many Elders have for support… to motivate them to keep going, to share their wisdom and so on. The aged can feel left out of society or somehow useless, but in my experience, often the Elders have reached a stage of acceptance that enables them to learn deep lessons from their life – it would indeed be great if this wisdom could be shared for all generations to benefit from, rather as the Native Americans used to do.

   Antonietta suggested a variety of services for seniors, but the one that appeals most to me is something along the lines of Ken Jablonski’s A Letter of Love. As he states: “People worry about material things by leaving ‘wills’ but our hopes, faith and love are left to memories. Why not write a letter or make a video for your loved ones. If everyone just took the time to reflect our world would immediately grow in love and peace.” Again, if this idea rings a bell for you, please do submit your ‘letter of love’ for publication at Trans4mind.

You’ll find on many pages of the site a new Resource Navigator – it’s on the free resources page here for example. This is a panel of links corresponding to the 16 main topics we cover on the site – wellbeing, relationships, education, creativity, etc – making it easy to find the articles, quotes, ebooks, videos, courses and so on that provide appropriate resources for any of the topics. The links go red when visited, so it’s easy to see where you’ve been and what to choose from next, for a tour around the site or when you’re researching a topic.

To make the Navigator possible, we needed to categorize the Quotes and Videos pages. This has resulted in much more useable sections of the site – before they were a bit overwhelming – and I think the Quotes and Videos sections are really brilliant now! The ebooks and articles are also more accessible with this system, and some obscure parts of the site suddenly make an appearance in the Navigator for all to take advantage of.

Wallace has been recording conversations with friends of his in Ireland, and what a wonderful collection of people he has been talking to! You can listen online to these heart-warming conversations with Andrew McKibbin ~ Finding your life’s purpose; Annne Coffey ~ Healing and helping yourself; Bill O’Loughlin ~ Creating a marriage full of love and understanding; and Mike Costigan ~ What is Love?

The next project that Wallace and I will be producing is a book based on the character of Andrew McKibbin – “The Woodsman.” Wallace is the author; it will be published chapter by chapter online at trans4mind, with an accompanying audio version. Each audio will be about 5 minutes, corresponding to a chapter of the book in which the woodsman receives a visitor, as he lays awaiting death at the end of his life. His message will be about the spiritual wisdom inherent in nature that he has learned in his life and can now pass on. We hope Steve Wyse will be creating the music for the Woodsman recordings. He writes: “It’s funny… for many years I have had a spiritual guide around me who prefers to be called simply ‘The Woodsman.’ How could I possibly turn down this opportunity?”

Thankfully, we have a new online bookshop as the main distributor for my book. You can now buy it here: Daring to be Yourself. Unlike the previous online store, this is run by an enthusiast, Judy Mather, who owns the website ‘The Bookshelf of Oz,’ and she is keeping plenty of stock to provide a fast and efficient service to you, anywhere in the world.