Follow the Loser

Follow the Loser

Why I like this loser

This week I read Robert Scheinfeld's latest offering called the Ultimate Key to Happiness.

We have written about his work before and many of you have read Busting Loose From The Money Game ... Mind blowing strategies for changing the rules of a game you can't win. Brilliant as that book was in describing the holographic nature of the universe his sub-title proved quite prophetic.

Robert didn't win the money game and narrowly avoided bankruptcy. He also went through a traumatic divorce and suffered what he described as two years of Murphy's Law. Oh, and he had eye surgery which went wrong and left his vision permanently impaired.

So, why on earth would I be urging you to take a look at his work?

His track record suggests he may not be the go to guy for advice, but the work which has emerged from his experience and the honesty with which he delivers it is really powerful. I did his on-line course The Ultimate Key to Freedom last year and got a lot from it and this book is a nice introduction to that body of work.

Emotions aren't Positive or Negative

The aspect of the work I really resonated with was the way he looked at emotions. He explains that emotions are "movements of energy in what he describes as Inner Space." He goes on "within the movement itself, whether it's slow, fast,very fast or storm-like, there's an infinite variety of expressions or 'signatures' that are unique and distinct...the vibrations have unique 'frequencies'."

When we apply a name to specific frequencies we then categorise them as good or bad. In other words these vibrational signatures are sorted into positive or negative emotions. Nearly all self help and new age teachings are based on "the unexamined fantasy" that 1. Negative emotions can be made to disappear, 2. Positive emotions can be made to remain, 3. The secret to happiness is to only experience positive emotions. 

Without going into too much detail Robert's discovery and experience of True Happiness is to see emotions in the raw state. A vibrational frequency, experienced as just that. No labeling or judging of the emotion, just the experience of the feeling. In his world there is no such thing as a positive or negative emotion.

"True Happiness is not about experiencing a limited number of emotions. It's about experiencing the full range of emotional movements in all their glory"

If you agree with his observation then I suggest you pick up a copy of his book.

If you disagree with his observation then I suggest you pick up a copy of his book.

Why do we label emotions?

If you look at the reason we give a name to a feeling, beyond the desire to communicate what we are feeling, it is ordinarily the starting point in a process which I believe is the root of most stress. By naming a feeling we turn it into an emotion and in that process automatically categorise it as something good or something bad.

We name the emotion as the first stage in an attempt to control our experience. If it feels bad and we name it as anger, grief, sadness or depression we will then scan our data banks for responses which will make it go away. Similarly if we feel something good we will attempt to create the circumstances which cause it to remain.

As Robert points out we spend our lives at war with negative emotions and seeking those elusive positive emotions. We attribute our current state of feeling to our external circumstances and quite naturally try to adjust those to perpetuate the positive and drive away the negative.

It is our constant battle to 'shape' our experience which puts us in opposition to what is actually happening. What is actually happening is usually called life. 

It is our opinion on how we 'should' be feeling which causes us stress.

I am sure you have noticed that it's a bloody big universe to organise and as soon as you get one part under control another thing pops up! A symptom of true spiritual awakening is thatyou start living on life's terms, not yours, which in his easily accessible way is what Robert communicates. Robert's secret to True Happiness lies in its definition of happiness which I would re-interpret as simply being alive.

Our unhappiness lies in our resistance to life.

With love

Go easy, tread lightly, stay free 

Bill