It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the "F Word" here - Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same, and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it.
Bob: Hey guys. Welcome back to the Alive and Free Podcast. This week, we get to tackle the Truth Method. Now this is the name that we trademarked for our approach, particularly helping people with addictions and depression and stuff, but I want to tackle it from a slightly different perspective to help you guys understand how powerful the truth can be in your life. So we're going to get scriptural for a minute. If you don’t like scriptures, particularly the New Testament, that's totally cool. [0:01:00.9] You can skip ahead. The main phrase that we're using from Jesus is the phrase that sparked this line of thinking in me many, many years ago. And the phrase he says is "The truth shall make you free." But what I want to do is I'm going to read something. So we get some context. So, here's Jesus. He's already like, the woman taken in adultery - beautiful, beautiful experience. Even if it didn't happen historically it is a beautiful experience. So let's not argue about the historisity of it. As an experience in itself, there's much to be learned from it. But we go down. He's basically… the woman was taken to him in adultery - that whole episode happens and he's there in the temple area, teaching. So there he is teaching and it gets to a point about verse 30 when they're like, even, and I'm reading in the New International Version because I kind of like the languaging better, but whatever version you want to use, but even as he spoke, many believed in it. Now who's believing it? These aren't like Greeks and everybody else. These are Jews that are believing in him. So to these Jews, who believed in him, something in his words was really sparking people, sparking something in people. [0:02:04.8] To them he said, look, if you just hold on to my teaching, then you really are my disciples. The word disciple is a Latin root. It means literally learner, like a person who learns from somebody else. In other words, you can follow somebody all you want, but if you learn from them, you're not really a disciple. Discipline is that which enables learning. It's not spanking and all the other stuff. It's just whatever enables learning. Anyway… side note. So you really are my disciples. Okay. Then, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Hold on. Pause, folks. What he's saying here is that his teachings are the truth but if you will hold on to them, they will help you to know the truth and that the truth itself is what will set you free. That idea just racked my thinking. Now they couldn’t grasp it, these Jews. They were brought up in such a different way and so then they're like looking at him and probably the political climate being what it was at the time, the Romans in occupation and everything else, they're looking at him like, "Dude - we're Abraham's descendants. We have never been slaves of anyone. [0:03:07.2] How can you say that we'll be set free? You can't set me free if I'm free already." Remember, these are the people that are believing him. So they're confused. It's not necessarily combative, though it kind of gets that way a little bit further. Because he starts to talk about being a slave to sin, but then they get hung up on Abraham and then they're just mincing words here, and they're missing the point. Because again, it's not the teachings that are the truth. It's what the teachings lead you to. And then, they talked about the finger. That words are nothing but a finger pointing to the moon, and so the words are the teachings. We get here, and I describe it one way and you describe it another way, and we're bickering about whose finger is pointing better and about who has the better polished nails and cuticles and all this other stuff. So we sit here, arguing about fingers, when we're missing the moonlight entirely. We're not even looking at the moon because we're busy comparing fingers. [0:04:01.7] Right? Stop giving me the finger, guys. Sorry - joke. Anyway… so this is what is happening with teachings in Das Buddhism, in Taosim, Laozi in Tae Te Ching, he said, look, "The road you're talking about is not the road that you're walking on." The road you're talking about is an idea, it's just an idea; they're words coming out of your mouth. It's the not the same thing as the road you're walking on. You say "road," a certain idea comes to your mind, but if you actually stood and looked down at the asphalt beneath your feet and examined the little particles of rocks there and the amount of tar and the texture and the shape, you would see that what you think a road is has nothing, or very little, to do with what actually a road is. The road you're talking about is not the road you're walking on. It's not the teachings. The teachings are just meant to get you to finally experience the road or the Tao, which would be the way. Right? Jesus is teaching this, and he's like, if you just hold on to my teachings, then you'll really be learning something and you'll finally learn the truth, and the truth will set you free.
[0:05:04.3] This sparked an idea in my mind because I was like, what is reality? I just want to know the truth. If I'm an addict, I want to know if I'm an addict. If I'm doomed to go to hell, just let me know the truth so I can like get on with my life. If this, if that. Like what is real versus what is it that we're all saying is real but it's not actually real? I just want to know the truth. And what I discovered was that the clearer I get on what is actually real - I'm going to give you a couple of examples today to help you kind of wrap your head around this - but what I get out of it is actually real. In fact, I'm going to make a note right here so I don’t forget a couple of these that are coming to mind. If I discover what's actually real, then it actually frees me. There's literally a sense of freedom that wells up in me because I'm no longer stuck. You see, where does stuck come from? Opposite of freedom would be a slave. A slave is someone who doesn’t have control over their own life. They must do what they're going to do in life. [0:06:01.7] They have to do it. They give very, very little effort. They do the bare minimum amount of work because they're a slave to it. It's not their own doing. But when someone has the option and the free will and the possibility and opportunity to go do something of their own free will, and they're not a slave to their thoughts or sin, as Jesus mentions, or any other things or their emotions, then maybe you get more than the bare minimum out of it. Maybe it's not maximum output yet, but maybe you get more than the bare minimum out of it. And if you examine your life, doesn’t that actually happen? I mean, think about it - when you're actually like excited about something, don’t you put in a whole lot of effort, that's like not even paid for, especially when you're starting a business? All kinds of stuff. Because you're excited about it. It's your thing. So here we are, going through this, and I realize, look, I just want to know what is real versus what's not real. And I just want to know what's real so I can deal with it and move on, even if it's disappointing. I'll deal with it. But I'd rather do that than constantly be disillusioned, constantly get my hopes up and then have my hopes shattered. [0:07:04.4] Constantly have a story in my head about what's going to happen and then have that fall away. I just want to be in touch with what's true and what's real, and get past all of these lies and these assumptions and these conclusions and these beliefs that I've been holding for a long time. Because Jesus said, "The truth will set you free." And frankly, I was at such a desperate point in my life that I was like look, I'm willing to go on anything at this point because I got nothing. So I'm willing to test anything.
So here I was looking for the truth. I looked for the truth. I looked for the truth. I looked for the truth, in the hopes that it'll set me free. Alright. Let's give a couple of examples. The first example, I'm going to give a shout out to Erin Pheil, I don’t remember how she pronounces her last name because I don’t think she ever told me. She runs the MindFix Group, and one time she gave this example, which I think is a perfect, beautiful example of how behavior can change the moment that truth is realized, and how it doesn’t have to take a long time. [0:08:00.9] And how if you can just understand the real truth, which maybe we'll get to here in a little bit, then suddenly what is possible, not just becomes like what, not just increases, but it might even become probable and even like guaranteed sometimes. So the example she gave is: Look - Santa Claus. When you were a kid, did you believe in Santa Claus, and if you're a kid listening to this, my apologies, sorry. Did you believe in Santa Claus as a kid? Most people answer, "yes," at least in the United States, you know, maybe in other countries it's different. Yeah. Did you ever leave out milk and cookies for Santa Claus? Yeah. Some people did. Did you write letters to him? Yeah, yeah. Did you get presents from Santa Claus? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. At what point, how long after you realized that Santa Claus wasn’t real did you stop leaving out cookies for him, and they pause. Because they're like, uhhhh…I mean, maybe the family did it, just to keep up the ruse for the kids, but if it were up to them, they wouldn’t have done it. [0:09:00.9] And they're like, well, I mean, like right away really. Exactly. What changed? Well, I just discovered the truth. Exactly. Once you see the truth, it frees you to change your behavior, to change your thoughts, to change your emotions and all kinds of other things. But it's recognizing the truth; in this case, your parents actually tell you what they've been doing. Okay? It's the same thing otherwise.
So then another example she gives is a mug. If you have a mug that's red and you're sitting there. You're looking at it. It's your favorite mug. It's a red mug and what not, and someone comes up and they're like, dude that's a white mug. Like, "No, it's not. It's a red mug. I've had it for a long time. It's a red mug." "No, no, it's a white mug." "No, it's a red mug." "Well, how do you know it's a red mug? "Well, it's been red the whole time. I bought it." "Well, yeah, but I could show you it's white." "Oh, right! How are you going to show me that this mug is white?" "Do you want to see?" "Well, yeah. I mean, I guess." So you go over and they peel off this very thin film that's been around the mug for a long time. [0:10:01.4] You didn't even see it there. It was very cleverly hidden, just a little thin, like, I don't know, Saran Wrap or something, and underneath it, you see white. They just peel it back a little bit and then they push it back down. And in that moment, you recognize - "Holy cow! My whole life I thought this was a red mug when in reality, it's white." Now, your thoughts and feelings immediately change. You can't unsee that because you saw the truth. The truth set you free of believing that the thing was red. All your friends can tell you, "Dude, that's a nice red mug." "Yeah, I know. I know it's white too." And so on and so forth. Your thoughts and beliefs change the moment you see and perceive directly, in and of yourself, the truth.
Same thing happens with addiction. You believe that you are a certain way. The second that you perceive the truth, not make believe a truth about you, not pretend that you're something else - like a lot of people who are doing affirmations and declarations, as much as they really help you feel good, I mean, they're powerful experiences, but you're, like you're not seeing this as a truth in your mind. [0:11:02.7] You're just kind of like conjuring some emotion, which is a good skill to be able to do, but they're sitting there trying to beat this new idea into their head, but they haven't seen it. They haven't seen themselves as the strong one. And so what happens is - well, they revert because they doubt it. But the second you see it, you can't take that away. So everything about the truth that set you free is not just the truth that someone taught you, but it's the truth that you can directly perceive from your own firsthand experience. If someone taught you about God - great - it may all be true. But until you perceive it directly in some way, shape, or form, the power that it has in your life is going to be limited. To the degree that you can perceive it, more power it will have in your life. If someone teaches you about what is right and wrong in society - great. Until you start to see that in and of yourself, don’t hit your sister - wonderful, great - until you start to see that hitting your sister makes her like steal your toys and melt them in the fire in the backyard or whatever it is (no, that didn't happen to me; I made it up. [0:12:01.1] My sisters are not culpable there). The second that you can perceive the truth, then all of the sudden, your behaviors can change.
If you, or someone you know, is looking to drop the F Bomb of Freedom in your life, whether that's from addiction or depression and anxiety or just anything that's making you feel flat out stuck, but you have no clue how to shake it and just want help doing it, head on over to LiberateaMan.com and book a call, where we can look at your unique situation and give you the roadmap you've been missing.
So awhile back I was dealing with business, you know - there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the world. In the United States, it's a big thing with a lot of people starting their own small side businesses or regular businesses. I had a part-time job. I was starting a side business. I'm struggling with this idea of deserving money. Now, why wouldn’t I deserve money? Because of the root issue underneath it, guys. [0:13:00.3] Like, people look at addiction and they're like, "Yeah, that's the only problem in my life." Right. Pornography was not the only problem in my life. That was a symptom of the problem. It was the way I was coping with the problem. The real problem underneath was causing me to go to pornography and making bad money decisions and not being able to simply do like a service for someone and ask them for money, because I believed I didn't deserve it or it was mean or it was rude or whatever else. So, I'm sitting there going like, "I don’t deserve. I don’t deserve this. Like, maybe I don’t deserve to be paid for what I do, or maybe I should lower my prices so that I am paid less for what I do," and I started looking at this. I was like, "What is deserving? Like is it a thing? Can I cut somebody open and find deserving in them? No. Can I like find it somewhere on the planet and take it out to lunch? No. So what is it? It's just an idea in my head. If I have money in my bank account, do I deserve it? Does it matter? Like, it's in my bank account. The reality is the money is there whether I deserve it or not. [0:14:00.2] So I deserve everything I got or I don’t deserve any of it, but I still got it and I might as well move past it. And what is deserving anyway?" This was my thought process.
What does it mean to deserve something? Do the people who make Fidget Spinners deserve to be paid as much as they do? Do they? The ones who sell them, pretending that they're some healing magic trick for like great things, and I'm not saying they're not, but I'm just saying… Do they deserve that? What about it has anything to do with deserving? If I'm looking at it and I can see that a Fidget Spinner - and I have like a buck or three bucks or however much they're worth, and I look at three bucks and I go, "Yeah, I'll take a Fidget Spinner for that much," and I trade, what does it have to do with them? It doesn’t have anything to do with them. If they're honestly offering something, it's just an offer. I don’t have to take it. It has nothing to do with them deserving to be paid for it. It's just an offer. If I like the offer, I'll pay for it; if not, I won't. And I know there are nefarious people in the world that are getting paid tons and tons of money, but they're offering stuff and people are paying them for it, paying them to like get them like really, really unhealthy with the things that they eat, paying them to get them hopped up and addicted to different types of news media and other types of things, paying them to like tell them how bad the world is on stuff, and paying people for all kinds of stuff that is not conducive to a good life. [0:15:14.1] Do they deserve to be paid the money? Does it have anything to do with deserving? It only has to do with this - if what they're offering is good, and I like it, I'll pay them for it. So I was looking at that and suddenly I like was able to let go of deserving, and all of the sudden, my ability to just simply go like, "Yeah. This is what I'm offering. This is what our services are, and if you like it, let's go, and if it's a good fit," and boom - suddenly people paid." Nothing changed in the situation, but the truth dawned on me. And so what do I mean by the truth, guys? We live in a world of words and the words are not the truth. The road you're walking on is not the same as the road you're talking about. And too often, we believe that the words we say are reality, but the truth is different. [0:16:02.3] The truth can make your problems really tiny. A guy who's looking at pornography - what's the truth? There are flashing lights on a screen and he is looking at them and doing certain physical things to make himself feel tons better for a short period of time, and none of his problems have gone away. It hasn't solved anything, none of his challenges, nothing is actually attacking him, and after that, he starts to attack himself and make himself feel bad because he looked at some lights on a screen and he started to work his body in a certain way. Now, I'm not poo-pooing religious belief systems. As I've mentioned before, my wife and I attend church every Sunday. We're not poo-pooing that at all. But the truth of the matter is - he has some thoughts that make him create a negative chemistry inside of his system that poisons him worse and make it so that he's more prone to go back to the behavior of staring at flashing lights on a screen and you know, doing some stuff. Period. End of statement. That's it. [0:17:01.0] At the same time, birds are chirping and dogs are pooping on the lawn and it's not getting picked up, and the sun is shining and other people are making millions of dollars on Wall Street, and maybe somebody's getting shot at in other country with a rifle, and you know, the earth is having like tremors and earthquakes here and there and there are waves and hurricanes happening, and fruit is growing on a tree in Hawaii and all kinds of stuff is happening. And in fact, inside of that guy's life, what's the truth?
I asked a guy the other day, "What is the cumulative total of time that you spend looking at pornography?" I think I mentioned this on the other episode. Cumulative total of time you spend looking at porn. We worked it out. He said, "1000 hours." He's like, "Well, it's been about 10 years and I spend a couple of hours every week, you know, looking at it and I'm kind of stuck in this. It's been about 10 years, so 1000 hours." I was like, "Sweet. How old are you?" We did the math. It was less than a half of a percent of his life. He's probably been on the toilet longer than he's been looking at porn. He's probably been sleeping, definitely been sleeping, longer than he's been looking at porn. [0:18:00.9] He's probably eaten, been eating, longer than he's been looking at porn. He's probably played in sports and other games in his life and been outside, frolicking around in the outdoors, longer than he's looked at porn. But he wants to identify himself and his problems by half of a percent of his life, and say, "That's me." When the other 99.5% of his life is being discarded. Why? Just because of a decision he made. This is not the truth. The truth of who you are, that's the deepest truth to discover, and we work really hard to make people, to make our clients, feel that and to give them the tools to be able to discover it by direct perception, and not by making up stories. But even the truth of your situation and circumstances, man - work is really stressful. Is it? Or did you have 10 stressful minutes that you milked all day long? What's the truth, and what is happening right now? Is anybody actually stressing you or are you just sitting on the couch, making up thoughts, trying to create a stressful situation inside your own life, when in reality nothing is happening? [0:19:00.8] What's the truth? There are so many different levels to this, and the reality is - once you get in tune with the truth, it starts to set you free, and the deeper level of truth you can experience, the more freedom you can find, which is why in Eastern traditions, when they talk about liberation and ultimate freedom, truth, itself, is the same thing. They talk about discovering the ultimate reality, and when you do that, liberation, Mukti, true freedom and enlightenment happen at the same time. Because you cannot see one without having the other happen. So the deeper levels of truth is what we're after.
Now, so, what do you take away from this? Today, as you're going through your life and you're looking at things and you're trying to figure stuff out, let's just have you, for a second, ask like, "Well, what's really going on? What are the facts?" Just the facts. I'm not saying you're not having an emotion, but make sure that the fact is - I'm experiencing an emotion. Right? But what else is happening? What physically is happening in the world? What is really going on? [0:20:02.1] And if you can make it as absurd as possible, you can start to see that your problems are really made up in your own head. And as soon as you can stop making up problems, you have to stop making up solutions. So that's - you can stop making up solutions. That's a wrap for today. Next time we're going to talk about skydiving, taking the leap. And you know, what that means to encounter the unknown and how to do that and what that's going to do for you in your life. So, we'll talk next time. Have a good one, guys.
And that's it for today's Alive and Free Podcast. If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from, and while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you, and plus, it's just nice to be nice.
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