Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop on Saturday.  I did not come
expecting an epiphany, but there it was.

The course has been helping, in ways that are dramatic when I read my
journal, but they seem subtle at the time.  My relationship with my husband
has changed a lot, and again, I wasn’t expecting that.  There are a lot of
little changes in areas I haven’t been “working on,” which has really
surprised me.

This is a difficult time for me, and the course has been a lifeline.  I am
so grateful for it.

J______

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Hi Gary

Your course is the best thing I’ve ever done , its changed my life . The awareness has given me a split second of time to react in , something i never had before .

Thank you Alan

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Gary,

Well, this course is about the only thing that has really helped me. I’ve gone through my share in life, and am still facing struggles today. I’ve tried counseling, marriage counseling, drug therapy, and the results either never came or didn’t last.

This unique approach to separating yourself from these false agreements we’ve developed over the years, and playing the role of observer has allowed me to keep my reactions to situations level and clear.

Practicing the principles allow the new actions to become automatic, while still being able to recognize when the judge or victim are in control. I really appreciate the time and effort you have spent to master these techniques and to make these principles available to people.

Sincerely,

Greg Denver CO

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Gary,

I have looked for a long time for someone who would do more than describe the water to a drowning man and am very happy to have found you website . I have listened to both the sessions and the smaller podcasts and – perhaps because I am ready to face certain things and make the necessary changes – have enjoyed them and benefited immediately.

I’ve heard it said that when the student is ready the teacher will appear – little did I imagine finding it on the internet! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to make this material available.

Adam

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Dear Gary,

This has been such a productive journey for me since February this year. I have managed to clean up many false agreements and beliefs. Your program is truly beneficial. I admire the work you have done to formulate the step by step sessions. This is a fact, not flattery!

As I have been going through this process, I find myself telling others about it and recommending your website.

A. G. Vancouver, Canada

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____________________________________

Mr. Van Warmerdam,

I wanted to thank you for the session on failures and success (from the Advanced Series). I watched a movie today with a scene of two people talking about failures, and I just sort of laughed because I had just listened to the session.

Anyway, This morning something else very interesting happened. My mind had a chance to go to jealousy and fear. At first it did and I believed I was upset.

Then I saw something very interesting. I was skiing down a steep slope and about to hit a rock when I suddenly skied around the rock and then around another one. These rocks, I believe, were my fear I kept running into and tumbling over. This time though, I continued to ski around them.

It was a very exciting picture, and I suddenly felt a little more aware and a more like an observer watching myself ski.

Thanks again, Ben H.

______________________________

I’ve just listened to sessions 6 and finally I am beginning to trust

the process :-)

Thank-you.

I think up till now I was getting bogged down by the vastness of all this – I could see all the things I was doing and it just seemed too much to change it all – I didn’t know where to begin and I judged myself for that, but this session spoke to everything that has been going on in my head. Knowing that at this point I don’t have to change it, that I just have to accept it is a really freeing feeling.

Up till now I haven’t been able to really describe what I was beginning to feel – but it seems to be that over the last week a tension has been building – and now I see that I think that tension is coming from the fact that I see how I want things to be and that doesn’t fit with how things are – the tension has been building because I have been judging myself for not being able to get on top of this and solve it all at once, and now knowing that I’m where I should be in the process I can feel that I can begin to let the tension go.

Although I “knew” that before – I now feel like I’m really beginning to “know” it ….. if you know what I mean :-)

It sounds strange but just knowing that at this point I can accept that I have a big judge and some not very helpful core beliefs but that I don’t have to “fix it” yet is like having a weight lifted.

Once again thank-you for your wisdom and patience.

Antoinette P.

I hope you are well.
I thought I’d give you an update on how things are going.

Gratitude has become an integral part of my life now and is such a powerful yet simple tool. I thank you so much for introducing the practice of gratitude into my life. Recently I have been reading a lot of material by Guy Finley and have found that it echoes of what you teach.

Realizing that we are not our thoughts was a major shock for me and really made me start asking the question: ‘Who am I?’ It was while I was contemplating this that I remembered the Free Session in the audio course you offer called ‘The Attention’. I couldn’t believe it, all my questions were answered….I had listened to it many times before but this time it made so much more sense. I realized that I have created so many different false selves that I have mistaken them for actually being the real me, but they are not the real me.

I was really excited when this awareness came to me but then I became scared….fear and anxiety kicked in big time. Since then the false self seems to have become louder and I think that this is because I am challenging its existence and it doesn’t want to die. I know that the false self is not real but it does appear to be so much of the time because of the emotions I feel, especially anxiety. It feels that I haven’t moved forward but I know this is also the trick of the false self.

I am confident that with my commitment and persistence with this process of self-awareness I shall succeed….it is inevitable.

Again, thank you Gary for the wisdom that you offer.

Peace and love to you.

M in the UK.

Dear M.
A big part of figuring out what you are involves figuring out who you are not. Notice that I say “what you are” and not “who you are.” That’s because “who you are” is very much a function of the false self.

It is astute of you to notice that the false self is playing this trick of telling you that you are not moving forward. The interpretations the false self makes of emotions is usually that you are moving backwards or getting worse.

Keep in mind that our emotions are real feelings, but the interpretations we make about them are not facts. In the beginning the assumptions we make about emotions are usually incorrect because the come from the false self, or what we can call ego mind. he truth is often about 180 degrees from what the false self thinks it is.

I agree with your assessment that the fear that you are feeling is the fear that the false self is generating. It is afraid of being found out and losing control of the Authentic You. I allude to this in a couple of my podcasts. I think it is on the podcast about on Overcoming Fear.

It is kind of amazing that the false self has an emotional reaction to being found out and then tricks us into thinking it is our emotion. It then gives us a false interpretation of what is causing “our” emotion. We believe the thoughts that aren’t our own about emotions that aren’t our own. This is a very clever trick and one that requires a good deal of self awareness to slip out of.

The journey to discover what you really are is mostly about discovering what you are not. When you dissolve all the illusions about your self, only the Truth is left.

About your commitment to succeed, be wary here. The idea or ideal of “success” can also be a trick of the false self. This is particularly true if we hold beliefs about failure in relation to our definition of success. When we use terms like success in this process we are often getting set up for some type of false self judgment about measuring progress and failure.

It would be wise to clearly understand what you have defined the symbolic word success to mean.

If you define success as love, peace, happiness, joy, compassion, and Truth, then yes, continue to use the word success. But if this is what you mean, then why not use these symbolic words instead.
By the way, in your quest to sort out all this false self stuff from the authentic you it might be helpful to be aware that only the False Self asks the question, “Who am I?” The authentic self doesn’t bother with such questions.

Gary

Personal growth and cultivating happiness is not linear.  It can often come in an epiphany in the most ordinary of moments.

The following is feedback from a course subscriber in Japan.

Dear Gary,

This time, I want to report about my recent progress in the process!  (Sorry, this one is very long!)

During last two weeks, I was keeping in my mind your words in your e-mail “Just practice enjoying your life” & “Pace yourself”, ’cause deep inside, I felt that they contained something very very important to me.  I wondered why I was always struggling with things, but I couldn’t find out how I was creating that state.  (For example, when I’m going to do the Toltec practices which I decided to do everyday, it often takes a long time before I actually start, ’cause I spend much time and energy in resisting, judging, feeling sick or somehow hurried, and worrying too much.  However, once started, it’s really fun for me to do them.)

One afternoon, I was making a long affirmation script for myself, for I wanted one for me.  After writing halfway, words stopped coming up and I felt a little bit tired.  Then, the judging mind started off, like “Complete it right now, otherwise you cannot do other activities planned!!”, “You lack self-control, effort and will!” and “You are failure who cannot do things properly!”, etc.  I felt totally sick, actually got pain in center of my chest, and thought “Why can’t I do things like others do?”, fully in the Victim-mode. Usually, I used to proceed to the next reaction stage, “Rebel-mode”, but this time, I remembered your talk on Session 11, and I asked myself “Who on earth is “Others”??”

Then, I remembered scenes from my childhood, where my parents were severely scolding me and accusing me of being slow, not doing things as they liked, unwilling to help them in their timing and being selfish… “You are stubborn, bad girl, You lack will power, patience and effort etc.”  They were the person who were proud of always being in time, being able to strictly follow their plans and complete things once they decided, no matter how hard time it takes.  And I remembered how sad and worthless I felt those days, almost like I was the worst child in the world who had no ability to do things properly, and then, I realized “I myself are saying completely the same things to myself now!?”  I went totally blank with my mouth wide open.

After a while, I decided to stop writing, went to the kitchen and made coffee, pondering about the matter.  I remembered various scenes from my school days, and saw the process of how I lost trust in myself almost completely.  I was a child who was very uncomfortable in structural settings like schedules or rules.  And here in Japan, according to my observation, it is very important for people to read and follow the “Air” in situations or groups, which seems to be made up with people’s beliefs and expectations on how one should behave in a particular situation.

If someone act differently, the person usually get accused of being selfish, making waves and destroying the sense of “Harmony” in the group, and sometimes the person get excluded from the group’s sense of “Unity” or ” Circleness?” (This part is very difficult to translate into English!).

Anyway, It was very often that, when just having fun with friends (in most cases, with boys), I somehow succeeded to end up with breaking some rules or supposed atmosphere in situations unintentionally, got severe reprimand for being a bad, selfish child who ignores adult’s advises or being out of “Girls-Should-Behave-Like-This” lines.

I saw that, as I grew older, I got more and more afraid of behaving out of situation and doing “Wrong” things, and even developed the very strong, exaggerated beliefs like “If I enjoy myself, I become alone”, “There is something wrong with me and I cannot see that myself” or “I am the only person on the planet who don’t know how the world works.”  (By the way, I got the reason why I get so tense and tired when I travel abroad – I’m so afraid of being accused of behaving out of the social codes of the countries, which I don’t know!!)  I remembered, in my pre-teen years, how eagerly I made effort to get approved as a good girl, and when my classmates teased me that I was pretending to be good, how I felt like I was a hypocrite…(In those days, I was actually the favorite child of the teachers.)

And in my teenage years, at this time in turn, how I rebelled my teachers and parents in order not to lose friendship of my classmates, or stopped doing things which, in less controlling situations, I loved to do, to maintain my false sense of integrity, ….. , and afterwards when I was alone, how harshly I judged myself for being bad and incapable, and how terribly I worried about being alone in the classroom or not being loved by boys due to my “lack of Femininity”…..

After pondering and remembering like this about an hour, I noticed that I had a feeling like energy pulled, in my belly, towards back to the desk.  This feeling was totally new for me, and I decided to experiment with it.  So, I went back to my desk, sat and added several sentences to the affirmation script. Then, the words stopped coming again, I detached from it, and followed that impulse in my belly, and did next thing like taking care of my cat, then next, to next.  I fully enjoyed cooking dinner, eating and chatting with my husband, without worrying about not having enough time for myself.

After easily going back and forth between my desk and other places in my house, what I found at the end of the day was that, all the things I intended to do or needed to do were completed effortlessly, including my affirmation script!!  And, usually I have the sense of heaviness and tiredness by the end of days, but on that day, my body remained light!  I thought, “Wow, I can function like this!  I don’t need to know in advance how a day takes course.  It may be a very simple thing, “Just follow my natural flow of energy.”  And I didn’t know about this for all my life!!”

However, the next thing I did was missing the feeling of “Accomplishment”.  I recognized how I was addicted to my “I DID IT, in spite of all the obstacles on my way”-stories, and thought about how I attended to my Toltec practices.  Here in Japan, many people (including me!) loves the story concerning learning attitudes like this:  “To truly learn something, one must first be fitted into “Forms” or “Patterns” which have been cultivated by the ancestors for a long time.  And, a limited number of excellent people, who endured the long, hard process of struggling with the “Forms”, can finally grow out of them, achieving the person’s freedom and balance with his potential ability blossomed, as crystallization of his blood, sweat and tears on the way.”  (I think this attitude is frequently seen in areas of martial arts or traditional arts.)  And the attitude of enjoying the process of learning is often regarded as lack of seriousness, concentration or guts.

However, I noticed that it might also be possible for me to first embrace the ability inside me, and to stay relaxed and enjoy the process unfolding in its way, slowly and gradually into full blossom.  And, this one may be much more fun, easier and lighter!!

Even though I often fall back to my old habits and each time I must remind myself of new ways, realizing these things was a huge release for me.  I felt as if one of the thickest and tightest invisible chains around my chest split off into pieces, and actually I feel I’m now breathing easier and deeper than before.  (I have a slight symptom of asthma for recent few years.)  And, it became a bit easier to find out my limiting beliefs and agreements during days.

Thank you very much for your time reading this, and thanks again for your insight and help in your message and audio course sessions!!

Sincerely, Y. F. in Japan

From Steven and his wife M.

I don’t know where to begin in telling you how the audio sessions have helped us.

Just as a sort of stream of consciousness narrative I will say that when the Emotions audio session arrived it changed our lives more than years and years of counseling. Sometimes Marina has felt overwhelmed by emotions. I haven’t felt overwhelmed by them but have become quite proficient at hiding them, denying them and pretending I’m not affected by them.

Your analogy about the emotions being the feelings when your hand is on a stove and the emotions are not the problem. The problem has more to do with the stories we are telling ourselves. Whew, that had been so unconscious for us and yet when you said it, it was self-obvious. Of course by knowing that, it doesn’t stop the stories, but it is such a ray of light on the process.

After being more and more aware of the stories, to get the Archetype audio session in which we deconstruct some common themes in the stories, that is just awesome.

We both like the way your audio sessions are practical, down to earth and easy to understand, which is rare. Marina and I have found that many teachers end up having said, after you boil down all their flowery words “forgive and be happy” or something like that. Yet if we could do that we wouldn’t need a course or a therapist. Your course has practical step by step exercises that can be applied in a progressive way.

The way I found your website was by putting these search words in Google: “How to change your beliefs”, as I had come to realize that beliefs were creating my world to a large extent. Another website that I have found interesting information on is:
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/. He talks about experiencing life as a pure consciousness experience without an identity mediating between us and what we see, hear, taste, smell or feel.

Our flight leaves on Monday to India and we won’t be back for a month, so thanks again for allowing us to take the sessions with us.

We feel very lucky to have found your website.

Steven and M.

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The sessions that Steven is referring to are part of the mp3 Self Mastery Audio course.

Dear Gary,

I would like to say a big THANK YOU for creating a website that offers such a wealth of wisdom. I am truly grateful for this and feel blessed!!

I have had problems with social anxiety and depression for the last few years. Having tried different methods to help me rediscover my real Self the only one that had a real positive impact was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The main teaching of this therapy was to change my core beliefs. It is for this reason that I really felt an attraction to your teachings as changing core beliefs plays a very big role.

I signed up for the free course a few weeks ago and have been practicing the gratitude and abdication of power processes. I would like to share with you my experiences of practicing these processes and how they have impacted my life.

The gratitude process has really opened my eyes to how simple it is to turn our attention to a state of appreciation…..there is always something to be grateful for!!! I can see how this process alone is soooooooo powerful in the long run. You mentioned that you actually live your life continually in a state of gratitude and i have made this one of my goals. When I am appreciating things I feel so happy and blessed, to be like this 24/7 must be just wonderful!!

I love your explanation of how our core beliefs are like a house that we have constructed over time. In the past I have tried to use affirmations in my quest for happiness but have now realized that the reason they do not work is because they are just like changing the color of the walls in our house of beliefs…..the walls are still there and have to be taken apart for any big changes to take place.

The abdication of power process has also had a very profound effect on me. When I was practicing CBT I began to realize that it was my interpretation of external events that were causing my negative emotions via my core beliefs. For example, I would walk into a crowded place like a bar and start to feel very anxious and when I saw people smiling or laughing I would interpret it as if those people were laughing and joking at me.

This resulted in me having high intensity panic attacks. The abdication of power made me see this whole scenario in a new light. Even though my anxious symptoms did decrease by continued exposure to these situations I hadn’t realized that I was actually abdicating my power over my emotional responses. Using the previous example of the bar, with CBT I would look to see if there was any evidence to support my belief that these people were laughing at me or ridiculing me. I found that there was actually no evidence to support my beliefs which made them dissipate but I still believed that external things controlled my emotions……if someone said I was funny I would take that as a compliment and feel happy, if someone said I was boring I would take that as an insult and feel down.

I desire to be happy regardless of what is going on outside of myself.
The abdication of power process has made me realize that it is down to our internal agreements\core beliefs of the external event that produces the emotions. It is here that I have also brought in the gratitude process. When I have found myself in situations where I am abdicating power and feeling negative emotion, as you advise, I first accept it and acknowledge it for the lie that it is but then I also show gratitude for the emotion because I know I have created it, no one else has, and that I can create positive emotions as well…..THE POWER IS MINE!!!

I have also been using the process of gratitude in meditation.

So Gary, I would again like to say thank you for offering these practical sessions to help us realize that we are all creators and that the power lies within us, not outside.

There are many others out there that share THIS TRUTH but you show us how to experience this truth using simple processes. BLESS YOU!!

Peace and love.

Mandeep
United Kingdom