If It Isn't Broken, Why Fix It?

"In truth, there is nothing wrong ... anywhere, and all is exactly as it should be in God's creation. And yet people are suffering and dying painful deaths, while war, sickness and poverty still cover an enormous percentage of the planet. How do we resolve this seemingly irresolvable paradox?"

This book really has more to do with discovering your own explanation of the above than reading anyone else's. Rather, we offer a set of simple heuristic approaches to discovering your own solutions and applying these for yourself.

I have come to discover that actual originality and true creativity are hard to claim, but to the best of my knowledge all that is presented is original. Perhaps, it may be best viewed as a creative editing of a lifetime's exposure to the wisdom of the world.

Books abound offering explanations for all of the more profound and perplexing issues of life. These may even offer useful insights and possibly reasonable explanations. The question is – Are they your insights? If they aren't then they will have little likelihood of having more than just a fleeting value in your life.

As Werner Erhard commented, "Understanding is the booby prize." If you only understand something and stop there as if that was it, you never really get to apply it in your life. This happens to be the single greatest challenge to people who are seeking solutions in their lives today. The proverbial coin has not yet dropped into their experience, only into their awareness. As a result, it does not get applied in their life.

For example, I remember in high school reading poems and having a sense of the structural design and general meaning of the poem. It was only when I got to university that I began to understand what the poem was about through the richness and texture of words, sounds, images, and rhymes. It was as if I had discovered new levels of meaning ... the coin had just dropped. The poem took on personal meaning for me. I had made it my own through experiencing different levels of understanding.

How can heuristics help us to discover deeper meanings in our lives? Is this really a gift? How can this improve our lives?

Go back to the quotation at the beginning of this chapter and read it again. It is an interesting paradox that "Everything is exactly as it should be in God's creation, and yet people are suffering and dying painful deaths, while war, sickness and poverty still cover an enormous percentage of the planet."

So how do you explore this paradox from a heuristic viewpoint?

We must first be prepared to take a heuristic idea (just one at a time), and live it "as if true" for us, for at least a few weeks, (three to six weeks). Only then can we say with any real basis in actual application, what our true experience of this heuristic is and has been.

I encourage you to do just that, and to live your life with your heuristic "as if true" for the three to six week period. Longer is usually better than shorter, but at least you will have a sense of how to explore from a heuristic viewpoint.

While it is a simple approach the results can be quite profound. There is a heuristic exercise in the appendix if you would like a guideline on how to evaluate your experience.

Discovering ... Discovery

"Most people live their lives according to rules and dogma they have internalized from the culture, family, friends, religion, school system, etc. Is that a good way to live your life? Possibly for some it may be. However, as a strategy of living, it is limited, because it is not an approach that supports growth, creativity, and discovery. It does not permit the exploration, investigation, or experience of new ideas, or beliefs if they may run counter to the rules, dogma, culture or religion."

As a student I searched for a philosophy of life that was robust enough to withstand continual interrogation and questioning. I did not particularly enjoy having my most recent set of beliefs about life and how to live it shot down by a better, more compelling system of beliefs.

During the first week of my freshman year of university, I sat in the student lounge, listening to the discussions taking place among the senior students regarding some of the larger questions of life. I found it incredibly stimulating and profoundly intriguing to listen to everyone who shared an opinion about their own beliefs.

Some were in direct opposition to each other, but the spirit of discovery lifted each beyond the limitations of being right and propelled the group toward a higher truth. I was so excited I could not sleep that night.

Later in the year, I took a philosophy course, and was stuck at a particular place in my quest. At the end of class I went up to the professor to ask him about it. I said, "Excuse me Professor, I am being driven crazy by a question I can't seem to find an answer to." He paused briefly, as he was gathering up his notes, looked at me directly, and simply replied, "Good." Then he turned and walked out of the room. I was left to work it out for myself rather than subvert the heuristic process of discovery.

Definition: Heuristic

• Encouraging discovery of solutions: relating to or using a method of teaching that encourages learners to discover solutions for themselves.

• May involve trial and error: using or arrived at by a process of trial and error rather than set rules.

• Able to change: can describe a computer software program that modifies itself in response to the varying conditions it encounters.

• Experience-based exploratory techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery.

• A way to grow that does not involve rigid dogmatic, black-and-white requirements.

So here, in the form of a heuristic approach, we have a method that can allow us to approach all issues in our lives, no matter how challenging they may seem at the onset. It does not ask you to believe anything, or to buy into anything. It simply suggests you "check it out," to observe and see where it leads, "as if" it were true. If it has value for you, either within a very specific focus, or offers a different perspective on a broader challenge, it is doing its job.

There is no guarantee anything suggested herein is going to work for YOU. They are powerful ideas that have worked for me and many others, and have been found helpful and empowering by clients in my counseling practice, workshops and seminars.

Try it and see if it works for you. This is the heuristic approach. No dogma, no rules, no doctrines. It's simply an opportunity to see if this approach holds value for you and if your life is more empowered as a result.

The Simple Reality

"Our universal truth, now evident, is that we are co-creators in the universe. It is the alignment of our intention and the application of our "free" will and choice, aligned with that of the Source that forms the very core of all our creation. It is this uniquely creative conscious choice that is at the very heart of things ... and is the simple truth, as well."

How would your life be different if you truly held that, "we are all the universe, connected through spirit, manifest through energy, moved through light, linked through Love ... and we are just waking up to the true nature of our creative potential." (JS) It is not necessary to fully understand or to believe this statement in order to begin to check it out, or to begin to explore its effect on your life by applying it "as if true." You are using it then as a heuristic device to study and discover its value for you directly.

To simplify this process even further, try breaking the overall statement into simpler statements. For example, "Our universal truth, now evident, is that we are co-creators in the universe," may be the statement we choose to check against our experiences.

Its actual value lies not so much in believing it as in exploring its meaning and capability of generating new outcomes and solutions in our lives. Does it work for you as a way of living or a way of being and doing? Is it worth holding onto? Does it warrant further checking out as an idea?

Simply put, if this heuristic works for you in a way that improves your life or makes life better for you and leads to greater happiness, maybe it is a useful and productive way of experiencing things within and around you.

If something works for you and makes your life happier, healthier and more whole, it really doesn't matter how or why it works. It only matters that it works for you!

The chapters that follow are a goldmine for your heuristic exploration. Take nothing for granted. Above all do not get lulled into skipping the heuristic analysis. Each chapter's contents represent information I gathered and developed as part of my life process. It works for me, but the test is, whether it works for you. If something in particular jumps out at you, it is something you should particularly check out, as if true, to see if it works for you. If it doesn't, let it go and move on.

(For Heuristic Exploration)

Freedom of Choice

"We may all have the potential for free will, but we do not all have equal freedom, or equal freedom to choose. The primary instrument of choosing, our will, is anything but free. The tragic truth is that, in most cases, the will is so enslaved by our systems of belief that it may take lifetimes to set it free."

The notion that we are all equally free and all have an equal capacity to choose disregards the extreme degree to which our will is entangled in our conscious and unconscious perceptions, beliefs, culture and ego. If this were not the case, it would be relatively easy for all of us to view reality in pretty much the same way. "What is, is simply ... what it is."

Our inability to accept the reality of "what is," exactly as it is, has led to the formation of an alternative to reality, based on a set of beliefs which pretend to hide the more frightening aspects of our reality. This gives rise to limiting mental constructs, such as the ego construct which provides the bedrock of our enslavement.

This bedrock is not only pervasive but forms the very basis of our culture of belief, and I refer to this as our ego's "conspiracy" because it is hidden. It controls us. We have no idea it is even happening, much less who the major players are. We don't know its agenda, how it works, or why it is even there. It pretends to hide all that frightens us in our world and purports to protect us from these jagged fears that lie just beneath the surface of our consciousness. In fact, beneath just about every belief we hold, lies a fear we have yet to accept. Fear is the very core of our ego's conspiracy!

It is incredibly limiting to live within the experiential confines of our fear and anxiety. We eventually become so limited that our will and our freedom of choice become enslaved by what we were/are unwilling and, as yet, unable to accept.

Let me repeat that. It is incredibly limiting to live within the experiential confines of our fear and anxiety. We eventually become so limited that our will and our freedom of choice become enslaved by what we were and are unwilling and, as yet, unable to accept. Thus, any situation which threatens us and generates fear and anxiety is either repressed or rendered unconscious. If there is enough dissonance, it becomes necessary for an alternate set of beliefs to be created and imposed on the actual reality in order to counteract this anxiety experience.

For example, if as a child we witness a tragic event which traumatizes, we may need to repress the experience or move it out of our conscious mind entirely. However, if it becomes too difficult, we may be forced to create a set of beliefs or use existing beliefs to explain it. For example, the belief that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment by God, for the evils of America, was linked to everything from legalized abortion to Ellen DeGeneres.

Thus, we are not only enslaved by our limiting beliefs and what we cannot accept as reality, but we are also forced to operate on a set of beliefs that do not reflect the actual objective reality. It generates an illusion of reality rather than an actual experience of truth. This is, of course, a type of hiding and denial which, along with repression and other defense mechanisms, represent the first line of defense against anxiety and fear and are the primary tools of the ego. In fact, it becomes one of the earliest stages of our personal ego and can begin in the womb, at birth, or in the first few years of life. It will remain in control of our life, decision making and motivation, supposedly protecting us from fear until the conspiracy against our truth is revealed. As A Course in Miracles proclaims, "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

(For Heuristic Exploration)

Beliefs vs Knowing

"In the realm of time and space, the rational ego mind contains only beliefs. All beliefs are simply useful constructs and abstractions, not a true reality, but illusionary maps about reality. They are not themselves real, but rather our best guess about what reality is ... or more to the point, what we need it to be. Our beliefs determine how we perceive a reality, and they stand as the mediator between actual reality and our experience of that reality."

What we experience is defined by what we believe. It reflects the whole role of our perception in our experience of reality. Thus, the more distorted our belief systems, the more distorted our perceptions. As our perception of reality grows more distorted, the more skewed our experience of reality becomes, and the further it exists from an objective reality.

A belief is the secondary or less immediate condition of abstraction in relation to a reality and believing is a necessary condition to sustain the illusion of reality. A belief is to be distinguished from knowing, which bears a real one-to-one relationship with an objective reality.

Knowing is the more immediate condition of being in relation to a reality. It is the experience of being one with the reality, without an intermediary stage of self-consciousness, perception or abstraction wherein there is a need to define, explain, order, organize, structure and understand it. Reality simply "is what is, as it is."

For most, there is only the perception of reality, which is to say that they exist in a world of illusion, filtered through the lens of their belief systems. They are not in touch with their direct knowing experience.

Until we are able to live in our knowing we are required to continue to explore and create beliefs which can serve to expand our perception of reality, and in so doing permit us to expand one step closer to reality.

So what has this difference between beliefs and knowing to do with anything? Simply put, it has everything to do with our experience of our own life. If we believe that we are a victim, based on experiences in our life and on the lives of our parents and other family members, it can be quite challenging to turn that belief into something positive. At this point, we have come to see a huge amount of evidence to support our belief, right?

It would take being willing to try another way. To dare to take some risks based on a different belief structure, at least in the beginning. Then, if it turns out to empower your life, it is experienced as a knowing, and no longer just a new belief. "I embrace all that supports my success in all things; I release all that would not fully support my empowerment." These are heuristic affirmations for you to check out and see if, over time, your life experience improves. When they are combined with adopting the new world view, that is to say, living your life as if the affirmations were true, then things slowly begin to change in your favor.

Now, it isn't necessary to process each individual belief. Maybe this has value at first, as we initially check out the value of some of our personal beliefs. Economy suggests there may be a better way once we are clear on the productivity of transforming our beliefs. A simple way to do this is to group beliefs into appropriate groups or categories.

Beliefs can be organized according to category. It is quite possible to organize them broadly into five key areas. For example:

Career: Beliefs about Status, Success, Failure, Survival, Self-Worth, and your future

Health: Beliefs about Energy, Wellness, Illness, Vitality, Weight, and your well-being

Finance: Beliefs about Money, Prosperity, Lack, Wealth, Loss, and its impact on you

Development: Beliefs about Personal, Social, Spiritual, Religious status quo

Relationships: Beliefs about Family, Partners, Friends, Society, and their value to you

These categories can be broken down still further into three areas. For example: Survival related beliefs, Well-Being related beliefs, and Power related beliefs. It is recommended at this point that you identify some of your basic level beliefs as specifically as you can. You can always group them later.