Entropy78 - you might benefit from reading the beginning of a book Tom is working on. He posted part of it here on the forum:
Primal Male / Primal Female -- a glimpse into a future book
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7805&p=66690&hilit= ... man#p66690
As for your divorce situation try to come to every decision and event from a place of "other" and not from your ego - a place of "self." You will be surprised at how much you think you are being the calm reasonable one where it is really about control. Control is fear coming from your ego.
Learn to live gracefully with uncertainty.
If you start to make your decisions from a place of love it will positively affect every one around you.
Here is something from TOM:
First let’s look at the concept of having a story. Having a story is a dialog that you have basically about yourself. It’s the beliefs you have about yourself; it’s the expectations you have about yourself. Things will happen - the way other people treat you, the way you will treat other people. All these things are beliefs and expectations. And just from the fact that it’s really about you. Your story is a story you make up about you, and it explains you. And generally, your story explains things like why you’re right and everybody else is wrong. But it does more than that. It is your running analysis and attitudes about what happens to you, and what has happened to you in life, and what’s likely to happen to you in life. I think that’s what’s called, “self focused.”
Just the fact that you have a story means that your world centers about you at the center. You say, “This is my story.” And that’s the problem. Because if you see life through a lens of your own story, then you’re seeing life through the lens of your ego. Your ego is generated by your fear. So if we think of your story that way, it is basically your fear, your beliefs, and your ego, that come together and makes a story about you. And that creates beliefs and expectations about the future. Then one can see why that doesn’t generally work for you and won’t get you very far. If you have such a story, then you will probably make that story come true. You will do, and say, and be, in a way that shows that you are self-focused. And that it is about you, and about your story, and how they’re going to fit in your story. You meet somebody and it’s, “How are they going to fit into my story?” If you have that kind of approach, then you are not going to do anything to fix the problem that’s really meaningful. You fix the problem not by coming at it from a self-focused viewpoint, but by coming at it from the viewpoint of love and caring. And you shift your focus from you and “your story” to other people. Try to understand their story and let your story go. Let, “their story” be the focus of your interest not “your story.” That’s the idea about “stories.”
When you say, “We all have our stories.” That’s because most of us, (ninety nine point nine, nine, nine percent of the population - almost all of us,) have a lot of ego and a lot of fear. And we go through life basically interacting with people by being nudged, by being pushed to do things, by being certain ways, by interpreting data in certain ways, and by coming to conclusions based on that ego and fear. And as long as we come at life from that direction, we will generally be dissatisfied and be unhappy. Life just won’t seem to work for us. There are always all these problems. As soon as we seem to get one problem solved, another problem jumps up to take its place. And that is because you are creating problems because of the way you are approaching life.
A lot of times people ask me for advice. “How should I do this?” “My girlfriend’s doing that.” “Now what should I do?” and so on. And I like to avoid giving people advice. I don’t like to be in that role of “advice giver.” Because what I find out is that people are looking for something to “do.” Something that will fix their life, or make life be some way they think is better, or make life in some way that is better for them. That’s what they want to do. And as long as they approach it that way, whatever I tell them is not going to work. It’s because they’re not really looking for a real solution. They’re looking for, (you know we talk about “paper tigers” aren’t real tigers,) a paper solution. They’re looking for a way to “feel” better but not a way to actually “be” better. What you have to change is yourself at the being level.
They don’t come to me and say, “Tom, how can I be better? How can I be a better person?” That’s not their problem. They’re focused on their story which is, “Tom, my girlfriend is doing this or that, or my wife, or my boss, or just life in general. And they’re doing all these things that upset me and make me unhappy. What can I do about fixing them; fixing my life?” They don’t focus on fixing themselves. It’s always about what they can change in the outside world to make them happier. And they want me to give them a prescription of something “to do”; whereas the real solution is really something “to be.” They have to change who they are. Often they’re people who go from one advice giver to the next. They’re asking everybody, “What do you think?” They’re reading all the books. They’re going to the courses, and the workshops, and reading things on the Internet. Because they’re looking for the right prescription of what to do - how to fix life to make it better. And it just doesn’t work like that. They should be trying to figure out how to fix themselves. Because if they could fix themselves and get rid of that fear and ego, then suddenly their life is a life of joy. It’s a life of positive things not negative things.
Much more here:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=8483&p=75380#p75380
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