By Lazaris

An excerpt from the personal growth recording, Inner Peace by Lazaris:

Note: In Part I, Lazaris discussed the beauty and necessity of achieving inner peace, and the "blockbuster" emotions -- anger, hurt, self-pity and fear -- which prevent our achieving it. In this part, he turns to the "bugaboo" emotions, the ones we overlook or don't understand, and explores how to work with them and what to put in their place to create the inner peace we want.

The Bugaboo Emotions

We want to move on now and look at those "bugaboo" emotions - the subtle, yet damaging and even destructive bugaboos that you deal with.

Anxiety

What is anxiety? Anxiety is a combination of any one of four things. First of all, anxiety is unidentified anger, hurt, self-pity, or fear. When you feel any one of those blockbusters, but refuse to identify it as such, then it's anxiety.

The second thing that anxiety is, is expected error. You expect to make a mistake; you expect to do it wrong. It is also anticipated rejection or humiliation. And finally it is misplaced trust.

Now, you know you should trust yourself. But that has been watered down to the point that when in doubt, and not knowing what to say, you say, "Oh, you just need to trust yourself more. I'm sure that will fix everything." Basically, it's just a way of saying, "I don't have the foggiest idea of what's going on. And since I never admit failure, I'm going to tell you to trust yourself." So it has become a throwaway term, a throwaway concept.

There are four conditions which must be met in order to be a potentially trusting situation. If you try to trust yourself when it's not a trust situation, you're going to feel anxiety. To be a trust situation there must be a positive and a negative eventuality. Secondly, that positive and negative has to be decided sometime in the future. The third condition, and the most critical, is that the potential harm from the negative that may result has to be more harmful than the potential benefit will be beneficial. And the fourth condition is that you have to honestly expect the positive.

Worry

Similarly, worry is four distinctive things. One: It is anticipated anger. Guilt is anger that you feel you do not have a right to have. Depression is anger that you think you're going to get in trouble for. Worry is anger that you anticipate.

The second quality of worry is the obligatory worry you have as a way to prove that you are not taking your life for granted. "I'm so worried that things will go wrong. I'm so worried that things will screw up. It's my way of showing God/Goddess/All That Is that I care." You don't want to look cocky or arrogant. You don't want to look like you're taking it for granted and like you expect to create your own reality. When you worry in this way, you give a very conflicting message to your Unconscious Mind, which reads literally what you feel. Therefore, all of your programming and super-duper techniques go spiralling down the tube. You program with the belief and attitude that it's going to work, and then you worry, which says, "I don't think it's going to." And then you wonder what your reality is going to be like.

The third component of worry is a lack of deservability. "I don't deserve the reality I have. To compensate, I'll worry." The perspective here is that God/Goddess/All That Is loves you. Your Higher Self loves you. Your Soul loves you. But you don't. The arrogance is that you know better: "They're fools to love me. I know better. I'm not lovable. I refuse to love myself." You have a certain obligation to love yourself. You can't keep playing the game that you don't in order to manipulate them into doing something for you. ...

Finally, worry is a fear of losing control in the unknown. ... So, worry is any one, or a combination, of those factors, and is distinctive from anxiety.

Confusion

Confusion isn't really an emotion. There are also four things that confusion is:

First of all, confusion is overmagnified emotion. It is emotion that is so large you can't identify it, like looking at a drop of water under a high-powered microscope. "Oh, my God, what's that?" It can also be a whole number of emotions that you're feeling, and therefore you are truly overwhelmed by the size and the magnitude.

Confusion also may be a denial of feeling. Those who don't want to feel or ever admit having a feeling will finally agree: "Okay, I'm confused."

Thirdly, confusion is the "innocent face" of victimhood and martyrhood. It's that innocent mask of: "I'm being hurtful? Surely you jest." It's the confusion that comes in there when you've been caught.

Confusion is also a refusal to be real, and a steadfast stubbornness to be shallow, to cling to the past.

Doubt

Doubt is one of the most destructive of the bugaboo emotions. Doubt is a lack of trust as opposed to misplaced trust. When you should trust yourself but can't, that's doubt. Where you attempt to trust yourself when you should not trust, that's anxiety. They're quite different feelings, and it's important to know that distinction.

Secondly, doubt is supporting the negative ego. In a reality where you know you create it, where you have dominion, where you are the creator of all things through your thought, to doubt yourself is to support the negative ego. Doubt is one of its greatest crowbars.

Thirdly, and perhaps most strangely, doubt is domination. Doubt produces the sense that "I must manipulate in order to create my reality. I must have power to control other people. I must get God/Goddess/All That Is to take care of me through weakness, supporting my negative ego in its contentions, living in a world that is scary. I must know all the contingencies before I dare step out into the world. I must take, and I must blame." Doubt supports every one of the contingencies of domination, and none of the contingencies of dominion. There is no sense of creating reality as a power, an ability. Doubt is the desire to dominate without really saying so.

Finally, doubt is an attempt not to be responsible. We stress that because there is no way you cannot be responsible. You lie to yourself. "I avoided responsibility." Where? You postponed responsibility. You can't avoid responsibility.

So these are the four bugaboos. When you're not sure whether it's anxiety, confusion, or doubt that's going on with you, the first thing to do is to see if you can delineate. Also, try to identify if it is a blockbuster rather than a bugaboo that's going on. If it is a major blockbuster, then move it to that level and deal with it. If it's not, then look at the payoffs. We'll give you a running start on that one.

The Tonics

There are four critical payoffs that are going to be operative, plus you may add for spice a few of your own: One is going to be for the purposes of self-pity, the part of you that wants to feel sorry for yourself and wants to use that as a manipulation. Another is clearly going to be the part that wants to dominate, that wants to opt for domination rather than dominion. Thirdly, the part that wants to convince you that you don't deserve to be happy, that you don't deserve the very best. Finally, the part of you that wants to prove that metaphysics doesn't work, that you don't really create your own reality. You can use the truth I create my own reality to create a reality that looks ostensibly like you have nothing to do with it, that it is all "happening to you."

If you look at these payoffs and see what you're really doing here, then you can release these bugaboos and replace them.

For anxiety, the key tonic is dominion. If you're feeling anxiety to the point where you're just so anxious you can't possibly sort out whether it is an unidentified emotion or whether you're trusting at the wrong time, then the tonic is dominion. If you will feed yourself dominion, absorb it into your system, that will stop anxiety. Then you can sort out what specifically is producing it, and you can handle it.

Worry also has an overall tonic, and it is gratitude. If you will start feeling grateful for what you have created and what you have been given, the worry will stop like a rainstorm. It will stop and a clearing will occur for long enough for you to grab hold and to get back on top of yourself.

To the specific areas ...

Worry that is anticipated anger: Your anger is like a reservoir and what you're doing is oozing out anger. You don't want the flood gates of anger to open up and destroy your reality, so you siphon it off through worry. The way to handle this particular activity is to bring the anger into the current time. Express it through one of the means, and you're done.

If it is obligatory worry: The key here is that what you're really trying to do is show that you are grateful. Why not just feel grateful instead?

To the extent that your worrying is tied in to your lack of deservability, we suggest you opt for willingness. "Look, it doesn't matter whether I deserve to have this or not. I'm WILLING to have it. I'm WILLING to create it." Allow yourself to move in that direction. Once you start generating from that position, what happens is that you start feeling deserving. The other way is to ask and find out what you have done that is so unforgivable. That's what your lack of deserving comes from. That will eradicate the lack of deservability, and thus eliminate the need for worry.

Finally, if your worry is connected to that sense of the unknown, surrender. Surrender to your own Higher Consciousness and to God/Goddess/All That Is. "I don't know how to control the situation." Don't try. Surrender and trust, and there won't be worry.

Confusion: The overall tonic is gaining perspective. Back off to get a better view of it. There's no problem too big to run from. Although you face your fears by going toward them, back away from them to gain perspective. If it is the magnification, take each emotion you feel and handle it separately. If it's a matter of refusing to feel, then start feeling anything. Some people are so numb to any emotion. Those people who are so totally numb will eventually do something to make themselves feel -- either being so hurtful to other people that they will finally feel what they are doing, or hurt themselves through excruciating situations because "at least I'm feeling now."

If you are dealing with numbness as a mask for self-pity, switch it to the blockbuster it is and start dealing with it. To the extent that it is wanting to remain shallow, confront that. This is where the mirror technique can work very clearly. Sit down in front of the mirror and look at the person there. Spend about five minutes really studying that face as though you want to remember it for a lifetime. Then talk to that person about how shallow and unreal, how totally connected to the past they are. Start feeling what that feels like. That will burst you through it. Maybe you won't be the deepest, most feeling person on the planet, but you will begin. And there won't be any need to use confusion for the purpose of remaining shallow.

With doubt, develop trust. The tonic to doubt is self-confidence. As you are doubting yourself, develop that self-confidence and the doubt will be gone.

If the doubt is there to support the ego, then admit it. Face the truth. Bust that negative ego. See where it really wants to take you. See that it is your enemy and that it is attempting to destroy you. Your negative ego is not your friend. We say that quite frequently.

To the extent that doubt is your desire to dominate, move toward dominion. Admit the truth, recognize it, acknowledge it, forgive yourself for holding so desperately to domination, and change it.

To the extent that doubt is an attempt not to be responsible, perhaps just let yourself in on how you plan to do that. Lay out your strategy for never being responsible. Then maybe you'll realize you can't. You're going to be responsible, so why not do it consciously? Why not do it powerfully? That can reduce and eliminate doubt.

Work primarily with dominion and gratitude. Put yourself in perspective. Take yourself a little more lightly and feel that confidence within yourself. These are the four major tonics to these particular bugaboos. It'll work.

It's not enough to release, however. You have to replace.

You can dig out all your anxiety, and all your worry or doubt, and all your confusion, but if you don't put anything in its place, then it's going to fill back in with exactly what was there before.

So, what you do fill it in with? You fill it in with love, trust, expectancy, and enthusiasm.

Love

You hear these things a lot: "Your problem is you don't love yourself enough. Love yourself more." You read books: how to, how to, how to. There's always a chapter on self-love. And you read it, and what it basically says is: "People don't love themselves enough. To be happy they should love themselves more. So do that."

End of chapter. Next chapter. You look back for the pages that must have stuck together. No one really bothers to tell you how to feel self-love. They'll tell you beautiful phrases ...

We are talking about loving yourself, but also about loving others. This is part of what you need to fill in to have that inner peace.

Basically, love is a function. It is something you learn how to do. At one time you did automatically do it. But you talked yourself out of it. To support a negative ego, you convinced yourself that humanity was unloving. Now it's time for humanity as a whole to start realizing, "Hey, we can love." But you need to know how. There are ways, things to do, functions.

Those functions specifically are: To give. To respond, to be responsible. To respect. To know. To have humility. Now humility doesn't mean groveling around on your hands and knees. Humility is the sense that each moment is brand new, that just because things went that way before, they don't have to go that way again. "I am open and willing to have each moment be brand new." The sixth element of love is courage, and the seventh is to care for someone or something.

We say giving, but to what end? It's not giving just to give. It's giving in order to provide something. Here again, there are seven particular things that can be provided:

Giving to produce security, pleasure, honesty, vulnerability and trust. Giving in order to produce caring and intimacy. Giving in order to reduce the fear of loss. Giving with these specific purposes in mind is a loving act.

And if you are responsible toward yourself and another in order to give security, pleasure and so on -- if you respect that person so as to produce security, pleasure, trust -- if you have that sense of humility to produce these qualities and care so as to produce these seven qualities, then that is how to be loving. That is the first factor: In order to have that inner peace, you need to love yourself and others.

Trust

You need to trust. It's not just a hit-or-miss kind of thing. Trust is based upon the limited selves: your physicalness, your mentalness, your emotionalness, and your psychicness. If you look at it that way, you don't have to rely upon a psychic flash that it's all going to work out. Look to all of the trust: what your body, your intellect, your feelings and your intuition say. Put them all together, and out of that combination comes an exponential that is the basis of trust. You can practice trusting yourself. What does your mind say? What does your body say? What does your psyche say? You can try it on inconsequential situations. Practice on what's going to come in the mail today, on what a friend will be wearing for dinner. What happens here is that your Higher Consciousness will become involved when you start working with it. You see, your Higher Consciousness sort of sits up there and looks down at you: "How are they doing? Oh, they're doing all right. They're kind of standing still. They're staying out of trouble." The Higher Consciousness will interfere to clear up that trust, but you've got to start using it.

Expectancy

Californians are going to have more trouble with this than other people because they have been so brainwashed in the hype of expectancy. "Expect a miracle" is a wonderful concept. But when it's on every bumper sticker, it has no meaning any longer. It's become so much a part of the PR that you haven't really thought about what it really means to expect something. Often what it means is a bravado, a bullying: "If I say it loud enough, somebody will hear it and give it to me." Often it is used to calm people.

A lot of you have been taught not to expect: "Don't expect it to work out, because you might be disappointed." So, what you do is lower your expectations. In truth, you either diminish your expectations by some childhood experience, or you are so hyped-up in it that it has lost its meaning.

Expectancy is a marvelously wonderful thing, and we suggest always expect the best. Then it is more likely to happen. If perchance it does not, you are in a much stronger place to handle your disappointment.

Expectancy alone isn't going to produce it. But having high expectations is going to make it more likely to happen, and it prolongs your joy. Let yourself feel that sense of honest expectation -- not the hype and not the denial -- but the sense of honest expectation.

Enthusiasm

With the love, trust and expectancy, you're on the way to enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is, first of all, a happiness, feeling happy, which is being harmonious with the now. It is being harmonious with the way your reality is right now. That's a state of being. Enthusiasm involves that state of being, but also involves a state of doing. There must be action associated with this happiness for it to become enthusiasm.

It combines a sense of happiness along with humility. Again, humility is that sense that each moment can be brand new.

The third component is hope. Hope is also very much confused: "Cross your fingers, take a deep breath, and hope to God it works out." Hope as some kind of blind faith. We're not talking about that. What we mean by hope is that you look at your current reality, and in it you see the gems of the future. You see the possibilities of what can be out of what you are right now. That's what hope really is.

You combine happiness, humility, and hope, and then act upon it. Do something with it. That's enthusiasm. That's what true enthusiasm is about. ...

As you will allow yourself to feel the love for yourself and others, trust yourself and those significant others, have high expectation and grand enthusiasm, you will know inner peace. You will feel that sense of inner peace. It is a quiet solidness in the core that radiates out into great activity, great involvement, great productivity. An interesting factor here is that these four components that are necessary to replace the bugaboos are the most powerful motivators you have. As metaphysicians, they are the four most powerful tools you have. It is curious here that each of the four has -- by your ego individually and by the collective unconscious societally -- been watered down. Allow yourself to see that, and understand that, and start developing them for yourself.

We've talked about trust so many times as being an important key, an important tool. As spiritual beings, it is there as one of the most important tools you've got to establish dominion.

Really love in a way that you can identify, and not just identify as a warm, toasty feeling. And as we talk together then, to share, to grow, to laugh together, to be a friend with you, you can open up to being loved as well as loving.

When you open up and starting loving yourself enough, then you will open up and let us love you. Love is the most powerful tool, but you have to do it and be it, and let it be done to you to have its full impact. It's not just a hug you squeeze hard with. It's really opening and letting these things happen.

Let yourself explore your bugaboos. Work with them to open that door to inner peace. Once you've opened that door and feel the confidence of knowing that you can continuously reduce these bugaboos to non-existence, filling the void and having that inner peace, you can be that spark that you want to be. You can be that inspiration that you are.

With love and peace ...

Lazaris

By Lazaris

The Two Major Focuses of Every Lifetime ...

When Lazaris has spoken of Life Focuses he has always said that people have seven of them in every lifetime, varying from person to person and from lifetime to lifetime, depending upon what they want to be doing any particular time. There are two focuses, however, that are part of every lifetime we have: Learning To Have Fun and Learning To Consciously Create Success. This excerpt from Lazaris Interviews: Book II (out of print) is about these two, which are always part of every incarnation.

Learning To Have Fun

"What is the purpose of life? ... What is my task? Why am I here? ... Why am I physical? What is my mission?"

You are haunted by this desire to know. Deep within your brain stirs the thought that if you just knew the answer to one of these questions, then everything else would make sense. Your heart echoes with feelings that a satisfactory answer would make everything ... absolutely everything ... all right.

Your purpose, your mission, your task -- or, as we prefer to say, your focus -- can be stated with disarming ease. The prime reason you are here: To learn to have fun.

Yes. That's it. You are here to learn to have fun! You have created a physical form and a physical world to put it in. You have created all of your reality to give yourself the opportunity to learn -- to learn to have fun.

The critics and detractors pounce upon that statement as proof of the shallowness and hedonism of the New Age. They either get angry at the apparent lack of social responsibility, or they dismiss the idea as the emptyheaded "fad philosophy" of this yuppie "sport" called the New Age.

Many who consider themselves part of the alternative spirituality of the New Age want the purpose, the task, the mission to be more serious or to at least sound more spiritual. Missions should be loftier. A purpose of connecting with your Higher Self or becoming one with the Source sounds much more reasonable. It sounds much more valuable and viable.

At first glance, these criticisms seem to have merit. Upon further investigation the kind of fun we are talking about, the kind of fun you are attempting to learn, is valuable and totally viable. We are talking about the kind of fun derived from accomplishing the lessons you have selected to experience and fulfilling the destinies you have chosen to explore. Your spiritual focus -- your spirituality -- is all about your living, breathing, loving, embracing relationship with God/Goddess/All That Is. This is what learning to have fun is all about.

Which is going to be more fun? Both of them will "get you there," but which is going to be more fun? Everyone, regardless of their spirituality or their claimed lack of it, has the same purpose, task, mission, the same focus: Learning to have fun.

Certainly the desire to reach a heaven, whether it is a literal place or a state of mind, is a desire to have fun. Certainly a desire to connect with your Higher Self or with the Source is a desire to have fun -- a postponed desire perhaps, but still a desire to have fun. For the Christian, certainly being on the right side of the rapture is a goal of having fun. No matter how much struggle you think is required -- no matter how painful the path you decide you must have, the goal, the culmination of your learning, is to reach a state of peace. Peace. That's fun!
There are four keys to understanding this primary focus.
First, learn. The focus is not just "to have fun" -- it's to learn. It is: To learn to have fun. Learning means recognizing and acknowledging that you are the creator of all the possibilities, probabilities, and actualities of your reality. It involves figuring out what you did "right" and "wrong." Learning to have fun means being responsible for what "works" in your life. It means figuring out the "why's" and the "how's" of reality creation so that the fun you have is the fun you know you created. It is self-generated fun. You never have to wonder if it will last, because you create it -- you are the source of the fun, then the happiness, and finally the joy you are having in your life.

Second, define. Define fun continuously. Fun is not static. Being fluid, it always changes. When you were six, you had very distinct ideas of what a fun day was all about. Now those same ideas would seem ridiculous. Your current concepts of fun are unique. As you unfold your future, your current pictures of fun will also change. It is vital that you define and redefine what you mean by "fun" and what you mean by having it.

Third, balance. Despite the parental "tape-loops" inside your head mumbling something about beds that you must sleep in and cakes you cannot eat, it is important to balance. It is up to you to choose and decide not only what's fun, but when it's fun. For some, a "pizza and a six-pack" may not only sound like a fun idea -- at the time, it might be the essence of fun! Yet, at another time it would be the antithesis. It is up to you to balance the long-term fun and the short-term pleasures. It is up to you to distinguish among the inner-child's, adolescent's, young-adult's, and the spiritual adult's sense of: "What's fun?"

Learning to have fun is not just about being at the right place at the right time, knowing where the best parties are on a Friday night, or about knowing the right people. It is about learning, defining, and balancing self-generated fun. It is about creating your own reality and being positively responsible for that creation.

Fourth, deserve. The final key to understanding the prime focus of having fun is also the major blockage to its fulfillment.

You can learn, define, and even balance what is fun for you. You can process and program. You can work with a myriad of techniques. You can be responsible and enjoy the power implicit within that responsibility. You can learn and work through the psychological and metaphysical obstacles that separate you from the reality you ask for.

However, if you don't think you deserve, all the above are intellectual exercises fast becoming exercises in frustration and futility. The lack of deserving permeates your beliefs and attitudes, your thoughts and feelings, and your choices and decisions. You do not feel you deserve. A primary focus that seems easy enough to accomplish has just been moved out of reach. Because it is beyond your belief and therefore your choice, "you can't get there from here."
There are several powerful reasons why deserving is outside the belief-choice matrix.
1. You were taught. You were taught by parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, and peers that you do not deserve -- especially you do not deserve to have fun. These sources of learning were not necessarily ill-intentioned. Much of what they taught you was what they learned and what they thought would "protect" you from a world they didn't understand and therefore a world that seemed to be "the enemy." They did not want you to get your hopes up and have them dashed. They did not want you to get hurt, so they taught you that you did not deserve. Sometimes, they were ill-intentioned. Out of jealousy, possessiveness, and fear, some did intend to imprison you in their limitations. Whichever, you were taught, and you can "un-teach" yourself now.
2. You are haunted by angers, hurts, and resentments of the past. Separate from what you were innocently or maliciously taught, many are followed by the specter of the past. As a child you were so angry you wished your mother was dead. You numbed your hurt with hate. You harnessed the anguish with resentment. Lonely, you punished yourself. You decided you did not deserve to be happy. Ever! You still live by that decision. You are haunted by the past.
3. You feel guilty. The guilt you may feel can be sourced in fact and fantasy, or it can be unsourced in the belief that you are guilty just by being alive. Perhaps you were taught; perhaps you were conditioned. Now you feel guilty. According to you, you do not deserve. The possibility of happiness, the possibility of having fun, is frightening. It is a threat. This is where your lack of deserving lies if you find yourself feeling guilty when things go wrong and even worse -- guiltier -- when things go right. Are you constantly apologizing for being here -- for being alive?
4. You are caught in a "catch-22" of deserving. You come to realize that the lack of deserving is the problem. You are eloquent and articulate about all the reasons you don't deserve. You have even worked at relearning what the inner-child erroneously learned. You have released the haunting angers, hurts, resentments, and you have freed yourself from guilt. Yet you still don't feel you deserve. Why?

Because, you tell yourself, if you deserved, you'd have figured it out long ago! You say you don't deserve because you still feel undeserving. You continue by telling yourself that if you were a person who was meant to feel deserving, you would have done it already. Wrapped in a negative ego of, "I'd hate to admit it," you are caught in a "catch-22" reality.

Often, there is a feeling of foolishness: "I should already know this. I should already have done this." Believe us, you will only feel more foolish to wait even another month. If you feel foolish now, how much more foolish are you going to feel a year from now?

Admit your foolishness and your embarrassment. Break the "catch- 22" by realizing you are not alone. Everyone feels the lack of deserving. It is part of your human condition. It is part of what you are learning through the lens, through the focus, of learning to have fun.
5. You are depressed. Depression is anger that you fear you will get in trouble for having. Many who are depressed in their marriages or relationships are often angry, but fear reprisals should they talk about it. Many who dread going to work because their jobs depress them are really saying they are angry, but actualization carries intolerable consequences. The anger that seeds depression can build over many months or many years, or it can come from quick and sudden change. One of the ways you suppress -- repress -- depress -- that anger is by denying fun. You deny it by refusing it, or by choosing to believe that it is outside the realms of possibility or probability. Either way, it is beyond your reach.
6. You lack perfection. You have made mistakes, and you have not forgiven yourself. Perhaps you are waiting for others to forgive you or to apologize to you. Perhaps you have decided that you are unforgivable. Whatever you tell yourself, you have concluded that you do not deserve to have fun. Erroneously, you have decided that you can have fun once you are perfect, and not before. Since you already have made a mistake, you are doomed. If you can discover the arrogance rather than feel the self-pity of this position, you can be free of it.
7. You decided you do not love "good enough." Like the lack of deserving you were taught, many of you have concluded that you simply do not love "good enough." In many situations, the Human Potential Movement and the ensuing metaphysics have fostered that conditioning. Many have decided that humankind as well as they, individually, have a fatal flaw -- an original sin of sorts -- of an inability to love. Because they can't love, or can't love "good enough," they do not deserve anything -- especially, they do not deserve to have fun. Nor, according to them, does anyone else.

We realize we have not offered concrete solutions and resolutions to these obstacles to your deserving. Knowing what stops you -- knowing the hurdles and where they are -- can be the first step in finding your own solutions.

Having fun is not the glib and shallow concept so many want to think it is. It sounds simple enough, yet your reality belies that suspected simplicity. After so many lifetimes, fun and learning how to have it seem as elusive as ever.

Having fun involves learning to create your reality, defining the means and the ends you wish to achieve and acquire, balancing the future and the present against the backdrop of the past, and most of all it involves allowing yourself to feel, and then be, deserving.
Learning To Consciously Create Success

The other essential purpose, mission, or task -- or, as we call it, focus -- is as important and as illusive as the first. The second focus: To learn to consciously create success.

You see, it is not just about being successful. It is about learning. It is about being conscious. It is about defining exactly what success is for you.

Conscious creation of reality is how you function. Conscious creation of success is where you focus.

We do not want to examine the entire arena of creating success. That has been done. The bookshelves of your reality are replete with the "how-to's" of success.

We want to plant seeds of consideration to help you more clearly understand what success really is for you, and how to more concretely be able to consciously create it for yourself. To begin, we must look at what success isn't. Many of you don't really know what success is. It is one of those concepts that you are supposed to "just know." Potential humiliation overrules curiosity. Without clear understanding you continuously seek and never find success.

In lieu of clarity you accept the consensus reality definitions thinking that success means greater intelligence, more deserving, and "better than." You assume success entails competing with others and conquering scarcity. Success is concomitant with perfection in action and intention.

Initially, this sounds acceptable -- even preferable. In time, you realize that you are not meeting these standards. No matter how intelligent you are, there are those who are smarter. You don't feel deserving. No matter how persuasive you are, no matter how many others you convince, you cannot convince yourself that you deserve -- that you really deserve. No matter how tightly you hold on to your "better thans," they keep slipping through your fingers. Competing and conquering are not only exhaustive, they're boring. You are not perfect. You are not perfect. No, you're not.

To stop the erosion, you simplify your consensus reality definitions. Success means having more and better than, being more and better than, doing more and better than. Success means more ... !

Shuddering at the prospect of failure, you take a deep breath, you steel yourself, and you dive in again. Rather than realizing that the definitions are incorrect, you try again to make them work for you. Some will spend their whole lives on this merry-go-round reaching for a brass ring that isn't there. Never was, never will be.

"Um-pa-pa, Um-pa-pa." There is no end. What success you do create feels like a fluke that can be snatched away at any moment. As much as failure is painful, success is more frightening. There is not real success on the merry-go-round.

Some reluctantly get off the carousel by being knocked off with the hard edge of failure. They judge, punish, and conclude that they are no good. They feel and are convinced that they "blew it - - it's too late."

Then there are those who are forced off the carousel by getting caught in the soft voice of self-delusion or by getting lost in the mirrored maze of grandeur. They convince themselves that they have met the criteria. The euphoria is eventually replaced with the haunting hollowness: "Is this all there is?"

A few, a very few, consciously climb off the merry-go-round by releasing the consensus reality definitions. Admitting that they do not know what success is, they then search for new meaning and create their own definitions of success -- of their success.

The most effective way to define success in a way that the definition can be your definition, is to lay forth the core -- the backbone -- the backbone of what success is. The skeleton of success is just that: a skeleton. You must give it life by adding the flesh and blood, the muscle and nerve, and the thinking and feeling of success. You must breathe life into these pieces of the puzzle called success.

Not surprisingly, there are seven basic components to being successful. You all know these seven pieces of the puzzle. Often, you just don't know how they fit together.

1. First is power. The most elegant definition of power is the ability and the willingness to act. Power, in truth, has nothing to do with intimidation, control, or manipulation. It has nothing to do with the desire or the attempts to overpower.

"Power" has become a euphemism for fear. When you confront a scary person you often call them powerful. When you encounter a powerful person you often call them scary! Very strange.

True power is being both able and willing to choose and decide, and to act on those choices and decisions. It is being able and willing to think and feel and act on those thoughts and emotions. It is being able and willing to admit to having attitudes (opinions, evaluations, and discernments) and beliefs and then acting consciously on those attitudes and beliefs.

2. The second puzzle piece is creativity and productivity. Creativity is generating and stimulating conception and perception in yourself and/or in others. Creativity is not defined by career or label. The artist and the non-artist, by whatever definition, are creative if they generate and stimulate conception and perception.

Levels of productivity are measured by the amount you learn about yourself. Whatever you are doing, if you learn a great deal about you and who you are, then it is productive. If you learn little or nothing, then it is nonproductive. Productivity is a quality, not a quantity.

3. Then there is awareness, and there is aliveness. Many look for lofty esoteric meanings for these two concepts. In their search they lose sight of success. To be aware, concisely, means knowing you have impact. Some believe that it is impossible to have impact on each other. Yet others will concede and deal with impact. Whether they are supposed to have it or not, they actually do have impact on the people around them. Regardless, everyone agrees that you have impact, at least on yourself. When you know this -- really know this -- you become aware.

When you combine four very special ingredients, something very special happens. You create the synergy of aliveness. Synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and in this case the aliveness is more than just equal parts of love, trust, expectancy, and enthusiasm.

To become really alive it is important to combine the flexibility and fluidity of love with the fragility and rigidity of trust. Then it is vital to stir in the wonder of expectancy and the sparkle of enthusiasm. Mix well. Be alive.

4. Happiness is the fulfillment of your needs. Joy is the fulfillment of your preferences. Enjoyment is the elegance with which you do both.

5. Many make the mistake of assuming that success means having resources. In truth, success means having access to resources. There are those who have money, but no real access to it or to what it can buy them. They do not experience success. Others have loads of access to money as their only resource. They often experience limited or shallow success. The truly successful person will have expansive access to physical and metaphysical resources. Success is within the grasp of anyone who can close their eyes, alter their state of consciousness, visualize, and manifest in their reality. If you are willing, each of you has unlimited potentials for success.

6. Critical to being successful: the willingness to adventure.

In your "old age" world you learn to be a warrior. You learn to confront, to battle, to conquer, and you dominate. In the "New Age" world you can learn to be an adventurer. You can learn to encounter, to understand, to befriend, and to transmute with dominion. Consciously created success involves - integrally involves -- being willing to adventure in your reality and in your world.

7. Dominion is an attitude and a belief. Dominion is a point of view. When you are willing to co-create your success with God/Goddess/All That Is rather than expecting someone to do it for you, you are on your way. When you are willing to stretch and reach for the future rather than grovel in the past, you begin to feel the excitement and the wonder of dominion. when you are able to see and demonstrate that first your world -- and then the world-at-large -- is a friendly place ready to support you rather than out to get you, then you have dominion.

With dominion, you have the final piece of the puzzle called success.

The secret of being successful -- of learning to be successful? Begin by owning each of the seven puzzle pieces as an attitude first. Feel. Feel powerful, creative/productive, aware/alive. Feel happiness and joy in an enjoying way. Feel that you have access to resources, a willingness to adventure. Feel dominion.

Do not expect to be successful first and then to have the feeling. Feel it first. Feel it first.

Do not aim at being successful. Do not make success the bull's eye of your target. Don't "shoot for success." Ironically, the secret to consciously creating success is not to make it the central target of your desire, expectation, or imagination. Rather, accomplish the means. Aim to be powerful, creative/productive, etc. Aim at the means and allow the ends to follow.

Don't shoot for the ends. Accomplish the means, The ends will follow.

With love and peace ... LAZARIS