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. [00:27.6]
Bob: Welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast. Today, let's talk about something that is, I've probably mentioned it a few times, but I think it's going to be a really, really profound exploration for anybody who's looking as a parent, trying to figure out how to raise their kids, who is a person who feels stuck in their life because they feel like there's so many rules on the outside and whatnot. And what do we want, we're going to look at is rules themselves. Particularly, how to graduate from or transcend the whole process of being ruled, okay. So, to start out, I want to first recognize that there are basically two different kinds of rules that we're dealing with, okay. The first kind of rules are rules that we put in place because it's like game rules, right? You get on a game; everybody agrees to the rules because that allows the game to play. Have you ever been in a game where somebody didn't like the rules or they had their own house rules and they kept playing different than you? How did that go? [01:34.1]
You know, especially people that are really resistant to the rules or complain about them all the time or complain about the way things are going. They're not, they're just not as fun to play with. Doesn't mean that they're bad people, but at a certain point, you or me will probably get fed up with playing them, playing with them unless they're like family and it's required or something else like that, but it doesn't necessarily make it a pleasant experience. So, this first kind of rules are rules that you're going to find everywhere on the planet. They are a trap. There are traffic rules. There are rules inside of schools, rules inside of classrooms and schools. Rules inside of each home on the, on the planet. Every parent makes a set of rules for their kids and so on. There are rules everywhere and a great many of them, not all, but a great many of them are simply in place just so that everybody, their process rules, right. Just so that everything works smoothly so that everything runs better. [02:32.6]
Now to transcend this kind of rules, meaning to stop being the guy that's always, or the girl, sorry, ladies, who is always being trampled by these rules or running into them and feeling like nobody lets you do what you want. The way to do that as the same way that you would do it. If you were going to play a game. And I don't mean just board games, if you're going to go play soccer, there's a set of rules there, right? The rules are in place so that everybody's like, cool, now we know what we're doing. Now we can throw ourselves into the game and just have a good time, have a really good time. And the reason there are umpires and the reason there are referees and other people that are busy throwing flags and blowing whistles is because they're trying to make sure that everybody plays by the same rules. Because it's quite often that humans just by nature, who don't like to be limited, who don't like to be put in a box or who are so fixated on winning that we think that if we lose, it means something about us, which is very common. [03:32.7]
We tend to bend the rules or break them. I remember growing up as a kid, my dad used to play UNO. He's gonna, he's gonna love me dearly for sharing this, I'm sure. My dad used to play UNO with us and other card games, but UNO was the one that I remember the most and we'd sit there and he would deal out the cards and then he would do things and he would win all the time. And then we would play some other card games and dad always won. Now, I don't have tons of recollection of him like dancing around winning but I remember at one point in time, we caught him with the wrong card sticking out of his sleeve or in his hand, or we caught him putting an extra card back or something and, and he just sort of laughed it off, whatever. And then he started saying this phrase, growing up, “if you ain't cheating, you, ain't trying.” As if the whole goal of the game was to see if you could slip one by the other people and guarantee your success by cheating the game. Now that you know, some people enjoy that that's a game in its own, right to see if they can get away with cheating. And yet it does the original game somehow gets tarnished by that. People don't appreciate it. People don't like being cheated. People don't like the fact that they've adopted all the rules and then somebody else hasn't. And so, there's a lot of animosity and emotion that can come out of that. In our case, it was just a little bit of a joke that stayed around way, way longer than my dad probably wanted it to where if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying is what he said. [04:59.8]
Well, this happens inside of sporting events. It happens inside of major games. People throw the games; people dope up on steroids in Olympic games and they find all kinds of different ways to rig the game in their favor because they believe that winning means something about them. Now, why am I talking about this on a podcast around addiction and around feeling alive and free? Why would I be talking about rules? Well, because freedom often feels like it doesn't exist when you're being closed in and hampered by the rules. So, what would happen if you could transcend all of these rules or make it so that these rules no longer affect you in any sort of negative way. You can obey them, if needed. You can disregard them, if there are no longer pertinent and so on and so forth. [05:47.1]
So, get this, in this case, we were looking around the world. And part of the problem is that people believe that who they are and what they're worth is highly dependent on the outside circumstances in the world. Now last week we talked about levels of freedom and that would be a level two. That would be people who are looking for control of outside circumstances. And people who are trying to prevent others from that because they're not free in themselves when somebody else breaks a rule or breaks an expectation or, or crosses a boundary line. See this works even in relationships, oh, he crossed that's my boundary. He can't do that. Or she can't do that, that's my boundary line. We put rules in place to try and control again. The other person, it's still a level, two freedom and attempt to control the outside environment so that on the inside you feel free. Nothing wrong with controlling the outside environment, but you might as well do it while you're free instead of waiting for the, the environment to change, to get free. [06:43.0]
And so, in this case, we're looking at level two rules. Now what's the way to transcend this? When someone puts a set of rules on you, the way to transcend it is the way that you do it with a game. You adopt all the rules as if they're your own. You just like, these are the rules of the road. You don't even think about it. You just look for the speed limit sign and off you go. Yeah, sure, maybe you push it a little bit. And then there's police officers and then you get mad or whatever else happens. But if you really just adopt the rules as their own, BOOM! You have a, you just have a joyous time. You can play the game of driving and traffic. You can play the board game of monopoly. You can play soccer and football and table tennis and pickleball. You can play card games with people. You can play the game of conversation because you've adopted the rule. What this person doesn't like to talk about that that's awesome. Sweet, no big deal. [07:34.0]
When you've adopted the rules of the situation for yourself, all the rules are your rules. Suddenly all of your resistance to that situation goes away and you can throw yourself into it and there's a total level of freedom in it. The resistance to the way things are, is the source of a lot of suffering. So, this first layer of rules, this first kind of rules, the make everything run better rules. These are rules that you actually, that they can no longer affect you the minute you adopt them as your own. It sounds counterintuitive. But Bob, I don't want people putting rules on me. Well, yeah, but you're saying that from the standpoint of a person who hasn't been willing to adopt those rules. Well, but I don't like those rules. Again, if you've actually adopted the rules, you wouldn't feel that way. If you're like, okay, fine. I recognize there's nothing I can change about this situation. Sweet. All right. This is how the situation is. That's go. It's only when you're stopping and going, it should be different. That's where the struggle is. [08:36.5]
Let me give you just a tidbit of wisdom, Shall I? That is this. It isn't different. Life is simply the way it is at this moment. So, you can sit there and say, it should be different or it shouldn't be different. And all you're doing is talking about life, you're changing it. One bit. The only thing you're changing is how you feel. Do you want to feel great? Or do you want to feel miserable? I'm guessing that if you're intelligent enough to be listening to podcasts at all, or this podcast or alive and have managed to survive this far, that you want to feel wonderful. I'm guessing that if you're listening to a podcast around alive and free, that you probably want to feel really alive and really free. And that comes from, instead of sitting there saying things should be different. Accepting that things simply are the way they are. And those are the rules of any given situation. That car pulled in front of me. He shouldn't have pulled in front of me. You saying that does not change where the car is. The rules of the situation are the cars right there. Cool. What do I do to adapt? [09:43.4]
Now, many times you do this on the road. Anyway, someone pulls in front, you changed lanes, you slowed down you, whatever. Only when you're late, oh, this should be different, and then you start blaming other people when you didn't leave early enough to get there. I've done that. So, the rules of the situation, you can adopt them when you can truly see that what is happening is simply what is happening. It's neither good, nor not good. It's neither bad nor not bad. It's simply what's happening. Those are the rules of the situation. If you can accept that and adopt them as your own, all of your suffering around what other people are imposing on, you just vanish completely, because those are the rules of the situation. [10:21.6]
With a parent, yeah. This is the way that when I tell my kids about the rules of the house, I tell them these rules, acknowledging that, yeah, this is just the way we want the house run right now, when you're on your own, you don't have to live this way. And we may change our minds in a month or two, if we decide it's not working. So right now, this is just the situation. I don't tell these rules to the kids as if there are some dictates from on high and as if we're we're on the moral high ground, because we set these rules, it's just what we want to happen in the house. And so, in that vein, they I'm communicating it to them in a way so, they understand this is just the situation right now. And it's okay, these are the rules in place. That's all. You're just going to have to live by these when you're living in this house and when you're done, you know, it's not required. It's fine. [11:02.5]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [11:31.1]
Now, what's that other set of rules then? Well, the other side of the equation are rules that step into the terrain of morality. Now I know this is dicey situation. I know all of you listening to this in some form or another, have a set of codifying concepts around what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. You know, what's appropriate, what's inappropriate. And all of these little rules in your mind about what's okay and what's not okay are actually only meant to be placeholders. Did you know that? See when our kids were growing up and I think I've mentioned this before, and I'll mention it here again, because I think it bears repeating. [12:14.1]
At some point in time, we got across the road with him. Well, at first, they can't walk. So, crossing the road means mom and dad have to pick them up and carry it. That's just the nature of it. They're completely clueless about everything and we're doing it all for them. At a certain point, they develop the ability to walk, now they want to cross the road. And so, we put a rule in place and the rule in place was when you're crossing the road, you need to hold mommy or daddy's hand. Now holding mom and dad's hand has nothing to do with crossing a road. To cross a road successfully, you don't require any of that. A snail can cross a road successfully and it doesn't require holding my hand to do it. Okay. Crossing a road doesn't require holding my hand at all. But that's the rule we put in place. It's not related to the actual activity, but it's in place. Why? Well, because if I don't have them do that, they may go in and out. They may never cross. They may dawdle in the middle of it and then they might get hit by a truck. All right. Or they may wander off somewhere and we want to make sure that they're close to us because we don't want them just getting excited about every little thing. [13:17.0]
So then along the way, what happens? Well, now they're capable and they recognize it and they can cross the road without holding my hand. But we say, okay, stop. I want you to look both ways before you cross. Now, is it really required to look both ways to cross the road? Does the snail have to look both ways to cross the road? No, it doesn't, tt doesn't at all. Now to cross the road safely, maybe, but most of you, I would wager have a general sense of whether there's a car coming as you're approaching a road, you don't need to stop at the curb, look both left and then right and then left again and then start walking. No, no, you just walk and you're aware, but the kids haven't learned that yet. So, we give them the rule that they need to look both ways. You notice that rule replaced the other one. And then finally, they're at a point where we know that they're not going to get hit by a car and they can cross the road, you know, on their own quite successfully and so, they just ask permission now. Now does asking permission require, I mean, is that required to cross the road? No, it doesn't. It isn't. No, it is not required for us to snail, to ask permission, to be able to successfully cross a road. I know I'm using the snail thing, but I'm just talking about existence and that's the dumbest example I can give. Okay. [14:33.4]
Existence does not require that a snail ask permission in order to successfully cross a road. It doesn't even know what a road is, but it can still cross it successfully. So that's not required either, but we have that in place because we want to know where the kids are and we want to just double check and make sure they're good. And then finally it's yeah. Can I go to so-and-so's house? And we know there are roads along the way, and then they go. And so, it goes pretty soon, they don't need to ask permission to go anywhere. All of these rules were in place for a period of time and tell they develop the ability and the perception to operate better with regard to the road. Until they have the ability to walk, well, we're going to have to do it for them. Until they have the perception of where the car is and whether it's safe or not safe, we want it, we have a rule in place just to safeguard that, but once they've developed the perception, they don't need the rule anymore. [15:30.6]
See morality was put in place has been around for a long time. These kinds of rules about what is right and what is wrong have been around for a long-time, millennia. Every religious tradition has a certain set of rules, some of them conflict with each other here and there, but those rules were put in place because people lacked perception. They lack to the ability to really directly perceive what was real and what was needed in any given situation. They were caught up in their stories about it. They're caught up in their emotions about it. They're caught up in their own little root issues in their own head. They're caught up in an inability to see what's really going on. They're in lack of con they're in confusion or lack of information. And so, as a result, a set of rules and guidelines was put in place to generally guide the population. But every single moral you can think of has an exception. Every single rule you put down around what not to do has an exception, even in holy scriptures. God impregnated another man's wife in the New Testament. Now you may say, well, that's, God's prerogative, whatever. I'm not, it doesn't matter one way or another. That was in the scripture, it happened. [16:42.1]
Abraham lied on several occasions about his wife being his sister and we sort of justify and go well, yeah, well, you know, they are related in some way, but the reality is he totally fibbed in order to save his life and in order to manage the situation at hand. Huge armies have gone and slaughtered, not just men, but women and children and cattle, if the Israelites are going around, slaughtering other people. So, all of these things that we're talking about are that are heinous, they're not. Incest happened with Judah and Tamar to a certain extent, right. She dressed up like a prostitute, totally misrepresented herself, disguised herself and deceived him so that they could have intercourse so that she could have a child because well, her husband had died and she hadn't had any children and nobody had given her way to a new husband as according to the law or the rules or the morals were there. And so, she took matters into her own hands, yada yada, when she's called on the carpet for it and she shows him Judah's signet ring. All of a sudden, he says, she's more righteous than I am. She's not condemned for the action that she did. Every moral that we have in place, every rule that's there as good as they are, as guidelines and as needed as they are for toddlers, who can't yet figure out how to walk or cross the road safely. [18:00.1]
At a certain point, they have to be transcended because every situation requires not a rule, but a perception. So, most people, when we grow up, we're busy, memorizing all the rules. What's right. What's not right. Mom, he did this, this he's not allowed to do this, or she's not supposed to do that. We're memorizing it because we get rewarded for obeying the rules. Not just rewarded by life itself for safety and for what the rules are intended for, but rewarded by parents. So, we build up an unhealthy attachment to rules and we don't develop perception. When we say something is good or something is bad. What do we mean by that? Well, we mean, I liked that it happened in that situation or I'm comfortable that it happens in that situation. Most often, we don't mean did it resolve that one single situation? We mean, did it match what I believe to be goodness. And that's where we run into trouble. Because every situation you're going to be presented with in life is going to present you with different information, different data points, different requirements. And a lot of times the rules will be helpful. They're great places to start. [19:12.6]
But if you are blind and you're just swinging blind, throwing your rules around chances are you're going to run into something and it's going to be painful because you didn't understand the situation well enough. What's needed to transcend this level of tyranny of rules is to develop your perception. Sadly, this is not something that is worked on anywhere that I know of in the world, except in certain little pockets, it's not in public education. We're not training people to perceive we're training them to think those are two separate things. You can't think without having had some perception, but you can think a lot about tiny perceptions. You can run a million thoughts as soon as you've had a few little data points. We're not teaching people to expand their ability to perceive most of the time, we're teaching them to expand their ability, to think about what has been perceived. And that creates problem areas where we create theories and ideas that are not founded on direct perception, but are founded upon thoughts, which were founded on thoughts, which were founded on thoughts, which are founded on thoughts so, we have a telephone tank tag game going from, I once saw this thing in the world that must mean this, which must mean this, which must mean this, which must mean this. And nobody's gone back to perceive the original thing. [20:31.9]
So, if you really want to no longer be tyrannized by all this sense of that's right, that's wrong, that's good, that's bad, that's appropriate, that's inappropriate. What you need to work on is your ability to perceive. And as a parent, I would consider it my duty to help my children perceive what's real rather than give them rules. Oh, he's hurt. Say, you're sorry. Saying, sorry, doesn't fix a wound. Never has never in the history of humanity, has it fixed a wound. But oh, he's hurt. Well, go figure out what, where he's hurt. Go figure out what happened. Go figure out what you can do to help it. Well, he doesn't want my help. Well, that's important to know. When you did that, he didn't want your help. That's important to know. I still want you to sit with him, even if he doesn't want your help until it's better. But even there I'm training my children to pay attention to what's real instead of make up some rule about, well, if I say, sorry, I said, I'm sorry, how many of you have had that happen? Either, you've said it, I did. Or you or someone else around you has said it. How many times do I have to say, I'm sorry? Gosh, because you have some rule in your head that if you say, sorry, they're supposed to forgive you and you're supposed to be off the hook. That's not real. That's a rule made up for children at first to try and help them see that they should pay attention when something they've done has caused injury or harm, but then it's gone off the rails. And it's used just as a story in its own, right to where companies and presidents and CEOs are getting on and making public apologies for stuff that they've done. Instead of changing what they've done, instead of resolving the situation. Many times, the public apology is all that's ever done, and nothing else has changed because we've trained ourselves with the rule that you say, you're sorry, when you did something wrong, instead of you pay attention and you get in touch with your humanity and you act like a human being in a situation and you fix things if there's a struggle. [22:21.7]
So, when we're wrapping up this discussion or this conversation around the tyranny of rules and how to transcend the tyranny of rules, the first set of rules, the ones that just make things run better, those ones you had to, you just adopt, except that that's the way the situation is running. The second set, the ones that are around judgment. That's good. That's bad. That's right. That's wrong. That's appropriate. That's inappropriate. That's okay. That's not okay. Those ones to transcend that you yourself have to learn to perceive better. And when you perceive better, you'll likely note that someone else's rules are also happening, that's part of the situation. Oh, that's a person having, having some trouble. Let me look and see what's there and see how I can help. Your compassion will grow. Your love will grow. And your perception of what's real will grow, which will fill you with joy in a totally different way. [23:15.4]
So, start to work on your perception. Start to ask yourself in any given situation, what is actually happening right now and what would be needed to get the result I'm after? Instead of asking yourself, is this right? Is this wrong? A better question would be, is it working or is it not working? That will help you start to perceive the situation and finally transcend the rules in your life that are getting in the way of your success. [23:41.4]
And that's it for todays “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. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [23:59.6]
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