Articles

The Path of Daring - Transcript
31 January 2005

The following is a transcript of the opening few minutes of one of John's 'Path of Daring' seminars (see Training Topics Number 4) at the Sydney Mind, Body and Spirit conference in 2001. It was kindly transcripted for John by Bridget Auger of Seth Walks.

"The reason I put this workshop together is because I found through my own experiences that unless we do something and actually put ourselves into an experience that very often we may avoid in our lives, we actually don't get to learn and change and grow. It's experience that is the teacher and having realised that myself and then taken on to the spiritual path to try and understand what's going on in us and around us I've often heard it said that the greatest teacher is by example, by example, by example; and I've certainly found that to be true. In the earlier days of my life I learned to be very insecure and self conscious and I was an introverted extrovert, but until the age of 19 I didn't know there was any extrovert about me. I was just an introvert and I found that life kept presenting me with opportunities to break through that to come out of that. It's not the way I would have thought of it at the time but I kept finding myself in situations where the opportunity kept facing me saying come on, be more confident, be more expressive, be more daring, more alive, and I discovered a part of me that was so conditioned to think in doubt and fear and self consciousness and worry that it would try to stop me taking moments of opportunity that would allow me to grow and to discover things in myself and express qualities of myself into my life that I hadn't done before that moment.

"So when I found myself in the beginning of my entertainment career I, looking back on it now, know that I entered into my own what I would call mystery school of life because I wasn't aware enough at the time to know that I was stepping into the school that I most needed to be in in order to overcome all of my doubts and fears and limited self consciousness and self image. So for every night of my life for seventeen years I had to face all the fears you can possibly imagine that you can try and convince yourself into the fears of "my god will I get it right?" and "supposing I forget my words", and "what if I miss the timing in the tracks?" and "what if the audience don't like me?" and "supposing something goes wrong" and "what if there's a television crew in?" and "I really want to do well for them" - and all of the kind of things that go round in your head. Do you all recognise that? So that I would call 'The Tester' or the tempter-inner, and I believe it's part of our own conscious awareness that we've actually trained to test us but unfortunately we're not taught that at school so we learned how to be self conscious - I believe it is something we learn, it's not something we're born with, we learn how to be self conscious and if we're unfortunate we can spend our whole life living in a self created cage. And it's painful. And I spent the first 27 years of my life there. Becoming an entertainer allowed me the opportunity to discover that it's possible to step out and beyond your own doubts and fears. So the most challenging thing that I learnt in all of that is you actually don't get to step beyond your fears unless you actually do something. And it's very easy to think you're doing something just because you're thinking you're doing something, but it's another thing altogether to jump into your life and take a risk and to be daring. And daring takes commitment, it takes courage, it takes guts so obviously you all feel like you want to make that step today. Is that true?

" "Er, well", (interpretation of audience reponse). See that's what The Tester in us does immediately it says "oh my god, what is this guy going to ask us to do?" What I've realised in my work now as I travel around the world is we all have a different yardstick for what daring is. Everyone of us has a completely different framework in what daring is in our lives so for some people to go do a bungee jump there's nothing daring in it whatsoever for me it would frighten the life out of me so a completely different yardstick cos I don't like that feeling of ooeer you know when you lose control on your gut level feeling. But nevertheless, having said that what I do in my life now is I go and get as close as I dare to things like that just to see what it's like. I haven't done the bungee jump yet but I've done the parachute which is probably equally as disturbing when you jump so what I'm finding in my own life is that there is a little self in us if you like the little personality free will self that basically is not who we really are but it is who we've heard we are, and we've heard it so often from our parents and our peers and society and cultural beliefs and cultural behaviour patterns that we behave as if it's real. So I say that most of us behave as if our personality is the sum total of who we are and yet at the same time there's a greater force within us that's saying let me out, let me out, and every time you find yourself in a position where there's a moment of opportunity where you could take that step that the little personality and all of it's habits in you say "uuu you'd better not - I'd really like to but uuu what if...?". So what we do is we hold our self back again. Now what I've found in that is every time you hold yourself back it doesn't get easier next time - it gets harder! and for most of us where that point starts is just actually developing the confidence to express yourself in a group with a bunch of strangers. Would you agree? Trying to agree and trying not to agree all at the same time (interpretation of audience reponse). So if I give you a measure of how powerful this self consciousness is that we've learnt because when we enter into self consciousness it affects our energy level. So what kind of affect would you say it has on you if you're feeling very self conscious? What happens to your energy level?

"It's low. Your energy level goes low. You feel blocked.

"What happens in you physically? What do you notice about your physical experience of yourself when you're feeling very self conscious? It should be easy cos you can feel it in the room right now.

"Your adrenalin increases in you, (repeating an audience member's reply). Do some of you feel a decrease? Nervousness. How does that feel in you? How many of you feel that adrenalin and that nervousness when I ask you to speak in this group? So that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us but what it does mean is that's your classroom and that's where you will hold yourself back in your life as long as you let the thoughts and the feelings and the beliefs and the attitudes that you are in this moment entertaining yourself with they will rule your life. Now you have to ask yourself, do I want to live the rest of my life doing this to me every time I find myself in this kind of a situation? Do you? Not really. If there were another way that you could choose to be if it were a choice, how would you prefer to feel when you're sitting in a situation like this? Or in a situation like this where you're going for an interview? How would you like to feel? Comfortable. Ok. What we have to be aware of is (that) we're capable of making ourselves extremely uncomfortable and we get so consumed in that sense of discomfort that we become unconscious of what's actually happening around us. We become so conscious of what's happening in us that we kind of get sucked into it. It's like pulling the plug out of the bath when everything goes 'schllll', what do you do if you get sucked into this vortex and you kind of get stuck there - life goes on hold for that moment so if you're going for an interview for example and you allow your mind to get carried off on this tangent where it talks you into this emotional disturbance and physical self conciousness then you can blow your opportunity to get the job because there's someone in front of you waiting for you to be very comfortable and very confident and at ease and convincing them that you're an ok kind of person, and you're sitting there going (timid voice) "I'd really like this job and I really think I could do well for your company". And our self consciousness overrides and the self consciousness speaks, so I've found it's extremely important for us to be aware of the fact that we are capable of much more than we actually have been taught to believe we are capable of in order for us to realise (that) what we are capable of means we need to be willing to first take a good look at the way we think about ourselves already and then be willing to make changes if we can see that it's necessary to do.

"So I would say the first step in change is recognising any situation where you find yourself talking yourself into self consciousness 'cos you know immediately that you start to do that you run the risk of losing your confidence and your vitality. If you do that you don't only affect you but you affect your environment and those in it. It's what the Yogi's call karma. Cause and effect. And some of the great spiritual teachers say you only have to think a thing and it's done. So we need to understand cause and effect about daring to be alive. And I think it's very sad in the travels that I've done around the world to see how few of us dare to take our life and really go for it. And most of that's based on the fact that we have a belief system that's been handed down culturally that says "I can only be alive and happy and confident if...", so let's hear what's some of your 'if's'... ? - "I could be alive and happy and confident if..."

Transcript Ends.

Post a comment or question about this article on the John Christian Seminars.com Discussion Forum.

Updated 15th June 2008

Latest Articles
Intuitive Soul Readings
Intuitive Readings with a Difference
Walking the path
Call it Charisma
Forum Two Review: Charisma
Full archived listing of all articles