Lesson 21

Make sure to complete your four everyday exercises along with the class today where we will explore perspective.

Find a quiet spot, get still and think about how you believe the world/everyone sees you. Think about any thoughts of fear, guilt, insecurity and any sort of just not measuring up that you believe anyone has ever thought about you. Take your journal/notebook and write these thoughts down in detail. 

These thoughts in your head may even look a little like the room in the picture above but maybe they are bright and beautiful like the sight through the open door. If they are like the sight through the door, you probably don't really even need this course but if you feel more like the inside of the house, then you are in the right spot. 

Now, if you took the time to sift through all the thoughts of failure and never measuring up, it's time to move to the next step. 

Imagine for a moment that every person on earth is gone and you are the only one left. Think about this really hard and allow yourself to feel what that would feel like. Would you immediately feel alone? What would that feel like to you? After you take that moment to let this digest, I want you to do one more thing. Read back over your list of all the ways that you feel like you have failed. In this world where you are alone you could shout it to the treetops and no one would hear. Is there one thing on that list that would matter if there were no one here to witness your falling short? Aren't most of your feelings of falling short dependent on having a witness? If there were no one there to witness, would we still feel the need to twist, turn and try to manipulate ourselves to make us more palatable to others?

Let me remind you that you do not have access to other's perceptions. So, when you assume that you know how another person sees you, you are only exchanging your own perception (the only one you can readily access) with theirs. It's not so much that you know how they probably see you but that it's how you see yourself and you assume they have the same impression and you project your belief onto them. The story you tell yourself about others is really just your own story or what you believe your story is.

Without the ability to see things firsthand from someone else's perspective we can only substitute our own perspective for how they may see a thing. Remember that when we battle someone else there is a good chance we are only doing battle with ourselves. Stop fighting your own self and be who you are. It wouldn't matter who you are if no one was here to witness and it doesn't matter when they are. We need only to win ourselves over. When we do, those old visions of lack will be transformed to riches beyond measure. You only see as you know so all you have to do is know something better.

Now you can have all your people back and hopefully you will see them in a different way. You have not suffered alone with a broken perspective. It happens to all of us but maybe now you have shifted yours.

Go forth in your day and shine.