Four Steps To Freedom

Four Steps To Freedom

Written by Clint Baxley Published by

http://www.18mind.com/ Copyright 2007

Introduction This book is written in response to a long-standing feeling I've always had that something was inherently wrong with society. I always knew that somehow I was being programmed. It seemed to me that everything everybody was telling me just somehow didn't make sense. It didn't seem to have any logic to it. "Because I said so" was never a good answer for me. I've always been the one who tore apart everything to find out how it worked. When I was a kid I would take apart my bicycle and put back together again. This didn't work very well at first but eventually I got the hang of how to put it back together. There was something different about me. I just "knew" how to do it. No one ever really taught me. It was just something that I was born with. This "gift" made it easy to get along with "things" and made it very hard to get along with people. People didn't make sense. They just weren't put together right. The pieces didn't fit together, they never did anything predictable. What was wrong with people? What was wrong with me? Why did things always have to be so logical for me and never made any logical sense in regard to them? There were constantly making things that were important, not important and making things that were not important, important. Needless to say this was very, very confusing for a young boy to understand. I had some coping mechanisms. Once I had realized they were insane, I just did what made sense to me. This had others being completely perturbed around me, so I stayed away from them as much as possible. Next, sense "things" were so predictable I just spent a lot of time with "things". Books were things and authors had to make sense or they wouldn't get published. I was grounded a lot, from doing whatever I wanted, so I spent tons of time reading and playing with "things". I was also subjected to my fair share of "counseling". Eventually, though I had to try to fit into this society so I could live and have companionship. I did not do a very good job. So, I used drugs and alcohol to numb my angst. This didn't work. It just made it worse. I was introduced to positive thinking when I was about 15 and I was sick. There was a book in my room and I couldn't get out of bed. The book was Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking. This was the first thing that I read that ever really made any sense (besides repair manuals). It explained to me a new way of viewing the world that just might make it so I could live in the world. I didn't get the point at all. I thought it was all about how if you believed you could mow everybody over you could get what you wanted. Eventually this didn't work, because it required way too much effort to mow everybody over. They did not like it very much either. I spent about the next 20 or 25 years reading every psychology book or self-help book that I could get my hands on. I had them everywhere in my house. Day and night I read. I would go to the library and take 15 books home. I poured through them, science experiment after science experiment and statistic after statistic. None of it jived. None of it was predictable. Basically it was a big proof about how nobody knew anything. The more I studied it the more confused I became. It was completely subjective, and totally an opinion about what the test results meant. There were also no real useable solutions. All of the "solutions" were so subjective and rested so much upon the therapist's opinion that they were of little or no value to anyone. Unless you had a doctor's degree and wanted to collect money by keeping people confused for years. That actually is not a bad racket for making money, but it didn't do what I wanted. I wanted to genuinely understand people and help them out of their pain. It seemed to me if they knew so much they could make it easy. E=mc2 is an example of making it easy. 24 volumes on subjective minutiae does not seem like making it easy and accessible to me.

This book is meant to give you a practical, powerful, easy, and repeatable solution to the most common problems that people deal with. Once you have learned it you can do it to yourself and teach others how to do it. Once you have two or more people who can do it, you can then reinforce it in each other. Believe me, I've been practicing variations of it for years on myself and others and I still forget sometimes. But I forget less, and the need to practice it becomes less and less. My mental talk is now on a mission to prove this to me (why it feels the need to prove it to me I will never understand) therefore I now have a persistent reminder of these principals running all of the time. I have recovered from what is normally termed "chronic" depression. Not only was I susceptible to it, but I also took a drug called interferon that exacerbated the situation. Additionally, I suffered from chronic back and neck pain for twenty years, it was so bad that I would frequently wish myself dead rather than endure the pain for one more second. Twenty years. Today, I have periods of overwhelming joy that last for hours, for no reason. My back pain is so minimal I would consider it just normal "aches and pains". If you've read this far you are more than intelligent enough to handle this program, if you want to. That's a big if. I will show this method to people who are desperately seeking a solution and they will be instantly better on the one topic. But that's it. They'll never do any more about it, no more practicing. Just go right back to doing what they were doing. I'll see them and they'll tell me what a great guy I am, but they're just as depressed and confused as they were before. Some people, though, catch the significance of what I am going to show you. Those people heal themselves physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually and every other possible way. Please practice this until you're one of them and your life is beyond your wildest dreams. From that place you will be in a position to help everyone you know. Grace and joy will be so much a part of your life no matter what your situation. You will wonder what makes you so special to have all of this joy. If you don't believe me, practice the steps contained in this book a minimum of three times a day for one year and you will be one of the Four Steps’ greatest supporters. You will receive immediate payoffs making it easier to practice it forever; it will just become a natural part of your thinking.

Step One Notice Step one is to notice you are feeling something. (You are feeling something right now in response to this text) Notice what and where you feel it in your body. Is it in your arm? Is it in your stomach? Is it in your leg? Is it in your head? Does your bottom hurt? What does it feel like? Is it a deep pain? Is it pressure? Is it sharp? Is it dull? Is it just a general feeling of malaise? I would start by looking for frustration. The traffic light hasn't changed. The neighbor's dog is too loud. It's too hot. It's too cold. I'm sad. I'm bored. My spouse is no fun. My spouse is (fill in here). They are (fill in here). Common complaints pay off the best and are the easiest to find. Another part of the first step is to notice that you think something is wrong. Until we are perfectly enlightened beings, and we know it, something will seem wrong. We are trained to distinguish that there is something good and something bad, and something right and something wrong, but we are also trained to ignore the feelings in our bodies in response to these judgments. Here is one way we do this: "How are you doing today?" "I'm fine thank you. Life is just wonderful." These statements are the kind of things you hear. These attitudes are a socially acceptable way to deny everything about you. Our mind tells us "If you are actually feeling something, don't tell anybody about it because they might think you're weird.” “Just tell them you're fine." Here is another way: "I am (insert emotion here) all the time, so I need to express my emotions." "That way, I'm not suppressing them." "I can't do anything about it; I'm just an (insert emotion) person." "I was born that way." I'm doing a good job of expressing myself." "I should be proud of myself." "I have to feel this way because of what they did to me." There is an error in this type of thinking that will perpetuate itself forever. If you are having an emotion now, that is okay. But to do nothing about the cause is just to justify your emotion and hide its error, manipulation, and cost. This will make you a victim of your emotions. We hide our emotions so we don't have to change because it's the only way we know. We also think the other person is the cause of our emotions (you did this to me). We may also think it's assertive (I won't be a doormat). We may think it's a good way to get our way. Lots and lots of books have been written about this subject. They don't seem to me to do much good for people. I have seen books make it worse. People are still frustrated because they don't address the cause of their emotions and do not have a clear indicator of truth. Almost everyone (except for people who are quoted in books like the Bible) feels several of these in a day. If you think you don't feel one of these every day, your programming is playing tricks on you. Our mind may try to tell us we don't feel anything. This is our conditioning speaking. We were taught not to feel anything. If we feel too much stuff all the time, this too is our conditioning speaking. We were taught that showing our emotions would get us something. Until we are enlightened, and we fully know it, we will have something going on. Even if we pretend we don't feel something there is a cost to it in the body. We could just be feeling tense. Stress is a word that is used for this feeling. The cause of stress is under your control and has nothing to do with how

much you do in a day. I know that most people don't believe this statement, but do the practice for a year and you'll see how it can be true. All you have to do in this step is to notice that you feel something, somewhere in your body for real, and locate it. Here's a question that I use to find what it is for myself. What is it? This will usually elicit a response from my body. If not, I just scan my body mentally and I will usually find something there. Some of these things I thought I'd been feeling my whole life and they were just a normal part of being a human (one was just a black shadow in my vision). When subjected to the application of this program it was found that they could be released and the energy I was using to hold them in place would be restored to me. Feel it, name it, write it down and go to the next step.

Step Two Meme Here is the dictionary definition of meme. (meem) Pronunciation: \mēm\ 1. An idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture The concept of memes is a really cool one. They are little sentences that we operate our lives by. Most of the ones that I find can be broken down into just a few words. “Brush your teeth.” That's a meme. That sentence has more in it than what it appears to have. First, it tells you to do something. Second, it implies that it's good for you to do it. Third, it implies that it's good for everyone to do it. Forth, it has no time value. This implies doing it all the time or forever. Fifth, it can be transmitted easily between person-to-person. Sixth, it implies that you “should” pass it on to others. I’ll bet there was a lot more in that sentence than you first realized. Memes are like that. They look OK on the surface but when we get to the bottom of it we have accepted more than we realize. The time value of this meme alone is about 7 MILLION seconds in an average life. If you could get 10 people to do something in your favor that took 10 minutes a day for 40 years by passing a similar meme to them you would gain 87,600,000 seconds of time. That is 1000 days or 2.7 years. Now, if this meme is viral you could actually easily gain an entire lifetime from one meme. The most powerful meme today that I know of is “money has value”. If you were the one who was printing the money you would be the beneficiary of this meme. Now the brushing the teeth meme probably isn't going to hurt you. But, during your childhood you were subjected to thousands of these, some of them very harmful and limiting. Most of them are flat out false! Over and over and over again they are repeated to you. Even if you had some resistance they would be beaten into you. You don't have to physically beat it in. You just have to say it enough times to beat it in. There is another way that these things sneak into your mind. They are just understood, for example everyone is sad when something "bad" happens. Everybody's doing it and you just don't question it. "That's the way we do things around here." "It's just common sense." "You wouldn't be human if you didn't feel bad during (fill in blank)." Now these memes wouldn't be so bad, maybe, if we didn't actually believe that they were true. We take them on it as if they're part of us. We think “that's the way it's done around here.” We think it's just common sense. We think its "bad". Not only do we catch the virus, but we become the virus. Now WE are running around selling everybody this stuff because we now actually believe it. We never questioned it. It's too painful to question this. This would mean we were wrong. We don't like to be wrong. I'm going to inject a new word here; Ego. From now on let's refer to the ego as a software program that is running in your head and it's convincing you all the time that memes are you. The software program is made up of all the things that everybody told you. Some of these are generally called "values". These are things that you stand for. Pro-life, health and being nice are things that you stand for. I am going to start referring to these things as opinions. They are more like “de-values”. You actually attempt to define yourself as less than you actually are. The ego attempts to make you stand for them no matter what, it thinks they are life and death. If the ego really has you convinced, you will say "I am" pro-life, pro-health etc. "You" are not pro-whatever, pro-whatever is an idea that you hold in your mind, it is a teensy bit of an effect of who you are.

You are more like an idea that can create ideas than any one set of ideas. CHANGING ANY IDEA DOES NOT CHANGE WHO YOU ACTUALLY ARE IN ANY WAY. You are the creator of the idea, not just the idea. When an idea is created, rejected, neglected or accepted it has an effect. You are not just the effect. You are the cause of the effect. Here is the action involved in this step. Identify the meme that is connected to the emotion. It's easiest to start with ones that have a "should" in the statement. Here are some examples. This light should change. She should be nicer to me. I should not be sick. I shouldn't have quit my job. I should have more money. A major percentage of the memes will have a “should” statement in them. They're great to start with, because they are really obvious when you do the next couple steps. Some other words that are commonly found in memes are can't, must, have to and need. Here are some examples. I can't do it. I have to do this. I must have this. I need more money. So in this step, all that you do is hold the feeling from the first step in your mind and wait for the words to show up that are associated with the feeling. At first the ego will tell you there's nothing there but with persistence you will find there is always something there. Once you have identified the meme that is associated with the feeling and written it down you can move onto the next step.

Step Three Opinion When I was in third grade we took a test, all that you had to do was put a “T” or an “O” next to the sentence to indicate whether it was truth or an opinion. In this step we are not going to ask for existential, metaphysical, or religious definitions, just plain old third grade stuff. Just because it's plain old third grade stuff doesn't mean it's easy to do. Memes have a powerful component to them; they are taken as the truth. Not only are they taken us the truth, but they tell us something very bad will happen if we don't believe them. And obviously, as evidenced by the previous two steps, they have a negative emotional charge associated with them. So in our minds when we say "the light should change faster" what we are really saying is that it's the truth. We think it's the truth that the light should change faster. It SHOULD change faster and there is a corresponding emotional “charge” we throw at the light to underline our statement. The body thinks if it throws enough energy at the light it will make the “should” statement true. If you write this sentence down and really truly examine it. You will see that this is merely your opinion. The truth is, the light will change when the light changes, and not one second before. The truth is if it was green you wouldn't care. There is not a whole lot to say about this if you're honest with yourself. It's obvious that it's an opinion. Now there is something that is true to the statement and this is why we think the whole meme is true. It is true that you are thinking that the light should change faster. There is no doubting that you are thinking that the light should change faster. This is the trick the ego uses to get you to believe that the world is wrong, and thereby hold negative emotions and false ideas in place. I will rephrase this again because it is very important. It is true that you are feeling an emotion. It is true that you are thinking something should be different. It is true that the thought your thinking is making you feel the emotion. It is absolutely not true that the world should be different than it is. It is a physical impossibility for the world to be different than it is right now. Even more impossible is you are actually thinking that the past should be different than it is. You cannot even recognize what is going on until after it has already happened because it takes a fraction of a second to register in your brain. “SOMETHING SHOULD BE DIFFERENT” IS DEFINITELY NOT THE TRUTH. THE PAST CANNOT BE CHANGED. THE PAST DOES NOT EVEN EXIST. THE PAST AS YOU KNOW IT IS A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION. IT IS NOT HERE NOW EXCEPT AS A MEMORY. The first half of this step is to see that the meme is your opinion and not the truth. The second half of this step is pretty easy. Ask yourself the question, whose opinion is it? If you're sitting in the room all by yourself will be fairly obvious that it's your opinion. Lots of times you will see that it is your mother's opinion or your father's opinion. It could've been anybody's opinion, but now it's your opinion. You own it and all of its corresponding costs. If it's your opinion, and you own it, can't you change it? Of course you can, you just had no reason why until now. If this opinion causes you pain as evidenced by the first two steps, wouldn't it be wise to change it? Of course it would. Why would anyone in their right mind hold an opinion that hurts their body, uses up their mental faculties and is totally false? This mental activity is normal, but it is completely insane. It is not sane to think imaginary things that cause harm to your body. If you check in a mental institution they’ll tell you everyone is there

because they think things that aren’t true or they hurt themselves or both. The people in a mental institution are just doing it at a greater level than "normal" people are doing. There is an acceptable level of insanity in this world because nobody has made it easy for the layperson (or professional for that matter) to clearly identify an insane thought. We can't put everybody in the mental institution, so we give the rest of them drugs to cover up their insanity. (Again, unless they are writing Bibles about you, you will fit into this category to some degree) There is a saying from a course in miracles that really made this idea clear to me. “I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.” Once I understood that it was the thought that hurt and not the other person that hurt me or my body hurting me, my spiritual growth accelerated. My mind is clever at hiding this fact from me. Once you know the feeling, the meme, and are certain it's your opinion move on to the next step.

Step Four Flip If it is my opinion and I can change it, then what should I change it to? I found the answer to this question for me. It was most effective to pick the opposite statement of the one that hurt. I don't know why, but through experience I have found that the opposite brings joy and is usually true. I know through thousands of permeations of this; the flip has so much more truth it is not even comparable to the original statement. Take a second to imagine the ramifications of knowing whether a statement is true or false instantly. Even if the flip weren't true there is a major therapeutic benefit to bringing the opposite to neutralize the original thought. Because the opposite is been denied for so many years the acceptance of it brings in new realms of possibility that one was unable to consider before. Being able to consider the opposite gives you a 100% increase in your possibilities. The paradigm has been broken. The meme that once had a horrifying grip on your mind is now completely neutralized and proven false. Because the ego thinks it's such a big hotshot, it will refuse to hold a false idea once it has been proven false. The ego hates to be proven wrong and would rather die than have to admit fault. Once you tell it you know what it's doing, it realizes it can't trick you with that again and it would that rather die than hold a false idea. It's really hard to run around convincing people of something you absolutely know is false. Now, once we have flipped it, the ego does a couple of things pretty predictably. First, it is easier to get you to believe the old way than to switch all of your thoughts around in your mind to the new thought so what it will do is begin to try to convince you that the new thought is false. It will tell you: "That Clint guy doesn't know what he is talking about." "I read it in a book or saw on TV that what I'm thinking can't be true." "It can't be this easy." "We couldn't have been wrong all those years." "It has to be more difficult." "The new information is not valuable." "Big deal, one new idea, that won't change anything." Second, it will immediately bring up another false idea that feels bad to think about (OK money is gone, lets talk about health). The ego will almost always do one of these things fairly quickly. All we have to do to defend ourselves against the ego's tactics is to begin to make the new statement as true as possible. Here are some examples: Original: I should have more money now. Flip: I should not have more money now. Is it possible for you to have more money now than you actually have now? No. This is obviously an insane idea even though "everyone" is thinking it. Original: My parents should not have abused me. Flip: My parents should have abused me. It is over. So is it possible for them not to have abused you now? It is not possible, because you cannot undo the past. This is a toughie but this is the truth: who you think you are today is a result of how you responded to what they did. You had total control of your response the whole time! Who you think you are tomorrow is the result of how you are now responding to what they did to you. If you respond in the same way you will get the same you. If you respond in a new way, you will get something new. All of the pain you are feeling today is completely generated by your response in the past that you now carry into today. It is totally self-contained. When you talk to them you just flip your own switch for pain because of habit. The great thing about this past experience is that it gives you something big to practice on. If you overcome a big one like this you can overcome the smaller ones in everyday life more easily.

Original: People shouldn't lie to me. Flip: People should lie to me. In order to get the second sentence to be true for ourselves we have to let go of our opinion about it. I don't want people to lie to me is my opinion. The fact is at this time everyone is subject to lying at one time or another. It is completely insane to believe that nobody's ever going to lie to you again, ever. Since you will find about 300 lies that you're telling yourself in your 4 step process it is not likely that you will go a day without lying to someone else either. It would be awesome if people didn't ever lie, but it's not very realistic to expect that to happen right now just because I want it to be true. Original: People should eat health-food. Flip: People should not eat health-food. Mirror Image Original: People should not eat health-food. Flip: People should eat health-food. People should eat the food that they are eating now, anything else is an opinion. They might eat healthy food in the future, or they might not. My opinion about it doesn't change anything. The underlying belief in the first one is probably the goal of life is to live as long as possible. I don't know if that's the goal of life. Having emotional problems about people eating health-food is four times is bad for you as smoking cigarettes (for real). If your goal in life is to live longer, let go of the hang-up about what you and others eat. The underlying belief in the second example is that people should enjoy life. I don't know if that's the goal of life. I do know that enjoying life is fun. So I'm going to enjoy life more. Being upset about mine or someone else’s health is not enjoying life. Health food is probably good for you, so eating it wouldn't seem to be unreasonable. This last example hopefully has shown you that trying to have a rule about something causes you to feel bad. The problem is, there is no rule without an exception. The only rule that works in every circumstance is: the rule is there are no rules. I told a colleague about this and he countered with: the rule is God is the rule. Every single solitary circumstance is different. No two circumstances are identical. All rules will be broken (except for Gods of course). The underlying principle behind the flip is twofold. Resistance to anything is resistance to what is. You have to judge something in order to have resistance. The illusion is that we could possibly know what is good or bad. The only thing that we can hope to know is our opinion about it. Humans are not even capable of knowing the true from the false. There is no possible way for me to express the new world that you will see by practicing these methods, and having a support system in place that reinforces the thought process. We have created a company specifically designed to give you access to just this type of community. I urge you to get on the phone with one of the Spiritual Engineers from the company Insight22. On the following page you can read a little bit about who we are and what we are doing, written by one of the Spiritual Engineers from our company. Thank you for your time, and welcome to your whole new world of possibility. Clint Baxley Founder 18mind