THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

APRIL 29, 2006. Here is another backgrounder for my upcoming tele-workshop, THE TRANSFORMATIONS. May 8,15,22. Ten days until the first session. Get in on the live calls. Click on the link above for details.
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HERE ARE SOME KEY FIRST PRINCIPLES.

Transformation involves the fulfillment of desires. Without that, all transformation is temporary and fades away.

Transformation isn't about waiting around for something to happen.

It isn't about "putting yourself in a receptive state and then getting "what the universe wants to give you."

It isn't about passivity.

There is a widespread confusion here. Many people associate proactive energy with aggression AGAINST someone, and therefore they drift over into the opposite camp, which teaches a person to wait, to be still, to do nothing, to receive.

Proactive energy is necessary. It's good. It works. It's healthy.

There is also widespread confusion about the word "desire." Some people (who consider themselves spiritual) think desire implies money, sex, houses, cars, jewelry and the like.

On the other hand, people who want material things think desire, in the context of transformation, is all about ethereal goals such as enlightenment, salvation, Oneness, and the like.

Both groups are wrong. Desire is desire. It spans an enormous and varied territory. To compartmentalize desire is to set oneself up for defeat.

When people practice the exercises I teach in my workshops, they soon find out that they desire all sorts of different things and futures. This is a liberating discovery.

Transformation isn't about becoming something other than what you truly are. It isn't about "leaving your personality behind." It's about moving more and more into the core of what you are. This doesn't feel strange. It feels good.

Transformation is about becoming more powerful. Using more power. Radiating more power. It's about manifesting what you desire with greater intensity.

Arcane symbols and ceremonies created by someone else have nothing to do with transformation.

With these principles in your possession, you have a stripped-down understanding that leaves behind a great, great deal of useless baggage.

Join me in the workshop and begin to practice techniques that actually help you being about transformation.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefaknews.com




THE MECHANICAL VERSUS THE CREATIVE

APRIL 27, 2006. Newsflash. Life on planet Earth is pretty bizarre.

I always wanted to read a philosophic tract that started that way.

The creative abundant ecstasy is waiting for us all, but some crazy people are trying to block the gate.

Meanwhile, many of us, who would like to get those lunatics out of the way, are still brainwashing ourselves into believing that even with widespread freedom, we would dedicate ourselves to mechanical systems of thought and action.

It's a deep jones, an addiction born out of a pretense of ignorance.

"I want to deal with things that work, that have established patterns, that give you B from A every time, even if the payoff is pain. At least I know what to expect."

And it's true, once you begin to create in a conscious way, you enter into unpatterned territory.

Which brings us to the subject of esthetics, which most people think has to do with art. But esthetics is everywhere. It's in the bathroom and the car and the church and the market and the city and the meadows and the sky.

Designing a painting is like designing a future. If a person has an unshakable faith in the traditional patterns, he will copy what he already knows. He'll move from pillar to pillar and lay down what he has been taught. You can give him the Bill of Rights or a fat inheritance or a winning lottery ticket, and he'll build the Taj Mahal all over again.

Why? Because he has no faith in himself. He thinks the past is present and the great things need to be repeated.

If you scrape the dust and grime off a cog that has been part of an old machine, he'll buy the shiny cog again, even though he already bought it.

If it has an inexorable pattern, he wants it. Steam engine, radio, TV, computer.

If it doesn't, if it's patternless, he's back in the cave, anxiously retreating from the new innovation called fire burning up the logs.

DO YOU WANT TO CREATE OR DON'T YOU?

That's the question, instead of “to be or not to be.”

There are too many people on the fence.

They want to create if the result magically resembles closely something they've already seen. But if the outcome might be new, they're atwitter with fear. What will other people think? Will they scoff? Suppose the roof caves in or a rain of frogs occurs?

Do you see what I’m getting at here? I’m describing the make-break point, where a person makes a choice. He either opts for something he knows well, and sticks to it over and over, or he decides to manifest something that wasn’t there before.

What keeps most people from being creative? They are glued to a mechanical interpretation of reality. They think in terms of a pattern or a system, in which A gives birth to B and B gives birth to C, endlessly, every time.

Existence has beaten them into thinking that anything worthwhile has a repeatable cause-and-effect system. And they believe that’s all there is.

This belief is so strong they have no understanding of the creative process. It’s a mystery to them. It doesn’t make sense to them.

Well, planet Earth is at a crossroad. At least in the industrial and technological nations, many people have enough time and space to evolve. If they want to. They can take a step across the threshold. And that evolution is all about the creative process.

If that is shunted aside and put on the shelf, what is left is the MAZE.

In the maze, people just go around and around on the same paths, never finding exits. They keep remembering they have been there before. They think that must be what life is all about: getting used to repetition.

Whether we like it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, this is what we are dealing with. We can choose the maze, or we can choose the creative process.

If you look at the subjects of my recent and upcoming workshops, and if you look at the descriptions of the products on my home page, you’ll see that they are all devoted to crossing the threshold. They are devoted to fleshing out and working with the creative process.

No matter where you look in the world, you find philosophies that ultimately rely on pattern. It may be uplifting pattern or boring pattern or inexplicable pattern, but it’s pattern. It’s about a set version of reality. Whereas, once you let creative process in the door, everything is up for grabs. The future, the present, and even the past are flexible and malleable.

At first glance, this flexibility may seem confusing, because we tend to base our ideas and beliefs on what we think is bedrock. The bedrock forms a very familiar point of view. We only look at things THIS way or THAT way, and from there we know how to proceed. But the downside is, we stay in the maze. We walk the same paths. We always come back to the same view of what’s possible and what’s not. What’s allowable and what’s not.

It’s a prison of our own making.

The person who is devoted to pattern and system and repetition doesn’t recognize he’s in the maze. He just keeps walking. At best, he has faith that somehow something new and startling and pleasurable will appear out of the blue.

And when the latest DVD player or telephone or car comes on the market, he convinces himself that “the new and startling thing” has indeed arrived, that this is what novelty and innovation are all about--- and that’s ALL they’re about.

A better glass of beer. A better car. A better computer. A better TV series. A better scandal in the news. A better job in the same company. A better vacation this year.

If that’s what a person is counting on, he’s also unconsciously counting on some disease to take hold of his body along the line, so he won’t have to worry about the settling-in boredom that is capturing his mind. He can use up all of his time working with doctors and drugs and hospitals.

You see, when a person is devoted to repetition and pattern, the string eventually plays out. He has to admit life is not turning out the way he hoped it would. The promise of the New isn’t really working. He is becoming bored more easily. Despite himself, he is seeing through the illusion of the New faster and faster.

But at that point, he doesn’t have the energy or the courage or the power of desire to take the second path: the path of creative process.

You know those TV ads that say, “The sale is almost over. Time is running out. Act now.” Well, that might be the ad for entering into the creative process.

Because everything else runs downhill into nowhere land.

It doesn’t matter whether your neighbors or friends or family or colleagues are going downhill. You don’t have to. You can trigger a different switch. You don’t have to buy conventional wisdom about your life. You can strike out into new territory.

I can’t emphasize too strongly how important this make-break point is. You can opt for the mechanical and the seemingly reliable, and take the consequences, or you can explore the creative process and all it offers.

This May, the 8th, the 15th, and the 22nd, I’ll be doing my latest tele-workshop, THE TRANSFORMATIONS. I hope you’ll join me. It’s about you, your future, and the Great Possibilities.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com