TNR Happenings, March 31, 2025

The never-ending story of me: This theme and concept are explored in detail in Peter Ralston’s The Book of Not Knowing, spanning all 581 pages. Everything you experience, perceive, think, feel, or sense as the chatter (inner dialogue) is coming from a fabricated (and therefore not true) sense of a real self. It’s our beliefs and assumptions that we have picked up with living in our culture. We never examine whether our beliefs and assumptions are based on truth or merely on our upbringing. As a result, they get us in trouble over and over again. This self-identity feels familiar and comfortable, so it must originate from your inner sense of truth, honesty, and who you are at the core, right? It’s anything but, but it’s invisible and hard to trace or discern, and even harder to let go of. There are three primary inputs to this false self: internal dialogue, feelings and emotions, and thoughts. Your self mind/personality/false self are a conglomeration of masks and armor that you have invisibly agreed to over the years and now consider the real you. Your X was moved, and you are not aware of it. Everything you think, perceive, feel, etc., is now off course because of this.       

 

This self-identity/false-self is constantly reinforcing itself. That’s its job; it has no interest in truth or anything not relevant to reinforcing your self-identity. For example, let’s examine the feeling of inferiority. Are we speaking of smarts, looks, curves, athleticism, capability, etc.? You will consequently experience much struggle and drama in your life as a result. You can’t help it. It’s so exhausting to pretend you're adequate when, deep inside, you know you're not. You accept this decree as part of who you are: perfectionism, not sleeping at night, distractions, escapism, low levels of achievement, excessive activity, and little tangible accomplishment. You’ll live with a constant sense of shame or guilt as you compare yourself to others and will feel extremely limited in what you can do, and this will influence what you will ever attempt. Is this sounding vaguely familiar to anyone? You will likely spend your life feeling isolated, misunderstood, and underappreciated. This will infect all relationships in your life for the worse, and it’s not detected, just accepted as your unchangeable fate.

 

It’s interesting to note that cultural inventions (beliefs/assumptions/can’t question) rely on beliefs (religion/politics/medical care/science/culture/etc.) rather than practical experience. The more they rely on belief and faith, the more defensive people seem to become about it. For example, people would rather die than change course from traditional methods of disease treatment. Your traditional doctor says he can’t help you, and you accept this inability as The Word rather than finding someone who can remove the proverbial sword from the stone. The traditional doctor is not the arbiter of truth, yet people behave as if he were. 

 

When we find ourselves in unwanted circumstances, it comes down to manipulating external circumstances or blaming ourselves for our failures. We imagine that by giving our power away to a wizard (such as the government, doctor, spouse, family, politician, or drug), it allows us to be the child guided by a knowing parent. All is right, or is it? These are simplistic answers (take this pill for the rest of your life, and all will be fine) to elaborately constructed fabrications, as our self-identities cannot provide any insight about what is going on. The old layers of false self must fall away and be replaced by something more in line with truth, not ‘your’ truth. In regular society (world of appearance), you can get away with it until the 4 D’s expose you and bring you to your knees, not as punishment, but as a consequence.

 

Aside from influencing how we interpret data, our self-minds also suppress, edit, or omit information that has no significance to us. It decides; you don’t. That’s a scary thought! Anything outside of the known is resisted because it contains some element of threat to what you think is real. We distort, ignore, select, and essentially personalize all the information that we perceive or experience. We reconstruct our experiences to make them fit and cause us the least amount of contradiction and suffering. Below is an example that has happened dozens of times to everyone. 

 

You’re in a social circumstance where you look foolish or wrong, and as a result, you come away feeling awful. This can start to feel intolerable. No one wants a self-image that includes being inept, cowardly, or an idiot. As a result, you will re-tell the story to someone who will accept your lie until the story or experience is more bearable. Either you vilify the external circumstances or persons involved, or you say I’m to blame, or this always happens to me (victim). The storytelling becomes increasingly distant from the experience and begins to align with your pre-existing self-agenda and self-mind. If you look in Barnes & Noble, your story or experience has moved from the non-fiction section to fiction. Have you ever noticed, especially with the influence of keyboard courage or alcohol, how stories become more inflated and exaggerated? My bestie from where I grew up is blah, blah, blah. There is nobody to refute or fact-check the bullsh%#, so it continues to grow bigger and more untrue.   

 

During trainings and Head-to-Heads, I have encountered people whose minds are closed to any fragment of an idea that does not align with their beliefs and assumptions about what is true. My office is different. My technique is different. The people in this area are poor. All of my community is healthy. Against all logic (Don’t Do It!), they will protect their reality with everything they’ve got, even when doing so might make their lives better. Some will even accept death, poverty, atrophy, and intolerable relationships rather than cross themselves and seek solutions outside of what they know to be true.

 

Real talent is the ability to give up our ‘true’ stories that continually limit our capabilities and add suffering to our lives. The reward for navigating through all of this is a life beyond our beliefs and assumptions: transformation, reduced suffering and pain, more of your true self being expressed in your life, and not letting others’ false selves, ideas, and worldviews bother you or diminish your talents and dreams. Like water off a duck’s back, others’ opinions and expectations don’t get under your skin and frustrate you. This comes in handy, especially when it comes to healing. A practice member’s role is to participate or not, not to lecture you on what constitutes a just recommendation, an insurance-covered expense, or whether you are engaging in a cash grab.

 

Miracle Training