IS IT TRUE? 

It’s a funny thing.   We all want guarantees and all guarantess really, at their very core have one question that needs to be answered.

Is it true?

The acutal definition of a guarantee is to “provide a formal assurance or promise, especially that certain conditions shall be fulfilled relating to a product, service, or transaction”

I get so frustrated FOR [as opposed to frustrated at] new members who are looking for the catch or who identify a sentence they don’t agree with as they embark on the greatest adventure on the planet, bar none.   I know what lies, really, on the other side of six months of dedication.    Specifically for each person?  No, of course not.

My frustration gets stopped in it’s tracks because I’ve always been blessed with the ability to “remember when” …and I remember when I first picked up the Master Key System back in the mid-90s and the real battle going on between my ears. OMG!  Raging debate.

I had already decided to read the document as it was laid out…study the lesson for a week daily before moving on…and repeating that for 24 weeks.  The first lesson brought up the “need” for a guarantee.

I wanted to know that if I dedicated myself for 24 weeks for an hour to an hour and a half a day that there would be a pay-off…that it would work for me…that things would change and I’d have control over what changed.  At least that is what I “thought” I wanted, a guarantee.  This “feeling” we get, the feeling I had about wanting some kind of guarantee was just me trying to find a way to not do the work.

And that’s not the whole truth.  The whole truth is that I just was not a finisher, I was impatient and I was terrified; virtually crippled with low-self esteem.   I wanted results BEFORE I did the work … that is what a guarantee is.  Think of it this way.  Every diet, every single diet ever written out works.  The question is never if they will work, the real question is will I stay with it every day.   Are some healthier ways to eat?  Sure.  But that is not the point.  The success or failure of a diet is the execution, not the diet.

IRONY

I’d be remiss if I did not share with you how unhappy, scared and discontent I was when I embarked on this solo adventure.   Like most people I had filled my life with little dramas like money and relationship challenges so I didn’t have to think or even feel the discontent.  And, with a couple close friends, I’d vent or whine or wish things to be different.

So I’m reading this document, week 1, and suddenly I’m siezed with wanting assurances.  How ironic!   In essence …this life I am discontent with …is something I am not willing to give up …not even give up 90 minutes a day …of the very thing I’m venting, whining or wishing was different!   I’ve come to love irony…it’s been the gateway to humor for me…thank goodness.

Turns out I made a promise to myself to finish…so I keep reading daily and wanting to know what everyone mired in the momentum of mediocrity wants to know….

Will it work for me?   Is what I am reading true?   Will there be a pay-off?

Around day four I realize I am full of crap.   Totally.   I’m questioning Haanel and a few statements in Lesson One…but somehow they seem, my questions, bogus.   One passage keeps popping into my mind….

Master Key System: 1-35 A majority of mankind lives in the world without; few have found the world within, and yet it is the world within that makes the world without; it is therefore creative and everything which you find in your world without has been created by you in the world within

And there it was, in my face.   A simple decision needed to be made.   It would take two years for me to fully understand the wisdom in that one passage but it gave me enough at the time to grow up.   At least begin to grow up.

The decision?

Was I responsible for all the condtions in my life?   Had they all be created in my mind?

BANG!   It hit me.

I’m not looking for guarantees….I’m not asking “is this true” about the simple 4000 year old concepts here….what was I doing?   Hiding from personal responsibility.

That hurt and yet, really, there was an immense freedom felt simultaneously.

From Socrates to Emerson to Plato to Allen to Hill to Buddha to Master Teacher was this same thought … It was not guarantees I wanted….it was not assurances….it was not wanting to know if this document was true….nope..

It was me not wanting to take responsibility for the conditions in my life.

And when I did…yeah, it hurt but it carried with it the potential for immense power and that liberated me…amped up my commitment.

See, even on the embryonic state I was in I could see that if I had created the conditions, captured the hostages in my life…then it meant I was creative.

I remember, clearly, weeping like a 5 year old that day.

Why?

Free of the bondage of self…free at last from defending a life that I wanted to change.

Free of all the BS out there that wanted me to believe that something extrenal would make it all better.

Free to begin to think for myself.

Scared?  Sometimes I was.

Lonely?   Sure…once we see the truth of being and the “cement” and mini-dramas we set up not longer hold our interest there were moments of lonliness …breaking from the sheep, the “copies of copies” is not a choice once we accept the simple truth that we are our decisions and our decisions are based on what we think.

My advice about what to think?   Never.

My advice about thinking?   Do it

The passport to the life we want is a creative adventure.

Taking personal responsibilty for all the condtions in our lives, where we like them or not should be celebrated, not denied or berated.   By fully  embracing the idea that we created all of them that confirms we are creative…and means by changing our thinking, we can create a different outcome, different life….we can penertrate new worlds, meet interesting people and open ourselves up to discovery.

It was never a question of whether or not the world within creates the world without…and wanting to know “if it was true” … it was simply a question of laying down my ego and defensiveness, laughing at myself for hanging on to what I did not want, taking a deep breathe and stepping into the unknown…

believe

mark januszewski