Point of convergence

Our weekly homework required us to focus on kindness combined with the Master Key Lesson of harmony and happiness.

I was on a country road, driving back home from some business functions. I was deep in my taught while listening to my playlist. The road was quiet, blue sky, sun reflecting on the snow covered fields. I had a new song on repeat…and it just happened. I realized I was in a space of bliss. “Really this is part of my work” did I tell myself. Meeting and being around kind people, enjoying the beauty of nature, listening to the music I want, smiling at drivers coming the other way.

All those attributes converged into one state of being, one of happiness. It’s one thing to read about it, meditate on it but actually realizing that you are not only in the midst of it but the catalyst for it and you are anchored in the heart of it, is just magical.

Deep sense of gratitude

The song just put everything together for me as I was grateful for everything and that life is about shining your light unto the world, serving others in a deliberate and mindful way. That deeper sense of meaning is my driving force, it’s time to “belt it out strong”

The song: Cover your tracks by A boy and his Kyte.

Heart, flesh out your webs
The past that was tangled will unwrap & shed
Soul, sing out your songs
Clear out your throat. Belt it out strong

This week is week 13 of my Master Key Experience [ MKE ] journey which is exactly half way into the whole process. It is the perfect to pause and reflect on what happened and how the experience fit in the greater scheme of my life and goals.

Being a plant based chef who’s passion is about marrying great taste with healthy food, my first decision in my creative process is always put health first. I’m all about educating or re-educating your palate.  Some of my coined phrases are

Your palate should be refined not your food™.

Health is an acquired taste™

When honing your skills as a chef, the foundation is marrying the 5 basic flavor profile of sweet, salty, sour, savory, bitter. Since we all have different palate the easiest way for giant food companies to please as many people in order to maximize sales is to pack a punch of salt, sugar and fat and voila you’re addicted.

Don’t believe me :-)…read this

While they may taste great, recipes created by TV celebrity chefs have more calories, saturated fat, and total fat than the average ready-made meal you find in supermarkets in the U.K., according to a study in the British Medical Journal. These pre-cooked, packaged meals are sold in the refrigerator section of most U.K. supermarkets and can be heated in minutes. Soure: Health.com

And that just restaurants. At the bottom of that food chain are the fast food companies.

That is the shortcut, it works for them (low cost & bigger market share) and it fools your brain & taste buds in thinking this is actually good. We know the long term consequences. At the base of this problem is people’s refusal to EXPAND and GROW their actual palate (taste buds)

At this point you might be wondering what’s the link between food and the Master Key Experience. Here it is. It dawned on me while making my famous chocolate. After I finish poring into molds I can’t help but scrape the bowl and finish myself that delicious leftover, and every single time I get the same reaction despite having done it countless of time. Darn this is good, my eyes roll like it’s the first time every time.

The moment of truth

This is where it hit me. Oh my Gosh! this is exactly my experience with the MKE. Every time I step into the readings, the exercises, the works it hits me every single time how incredible the process is. How well the recipe is crafted. It taste so good to my mind & soul but not by trickery, or shiny object fallacy.  It comes from the daily grinding & repetition of an ever growing sets of skills and habits that you don’t even realize they are changing your life until “out of nowhere” results, opportunities, people start appearing on your path that are in perfect harmony with your dreams and goals.

Folks forget the shiny object syndrome. There is no magic bullet, the work is  mastering the mind first, using it to its full capacity, APPLY the knowledge. Use MKE recipe and learn to GROW and EXPAND your mind and results. When planting cucumber seeds, you’ll be very disappointed if you want tomatoes. In fact you wouldn’t even think to expect that. Yet out of life we expect “X” results while planting the seeds of “Y”. It truly is that SIMPLE….no didn’t mean or say easy, I meant & said simple 🙂

Honors where honors are due

Mark, I gotta tell you man, you’re a master chef of the mind. As you often say and it rubbed on me, knowledge doesn’t apply itself. Instead of promising the moon on 15 minutes a weeks. You lay it out as it is. Hard work but not the type of work we’re use to think of in our western world. The MKE recipe is incredibly effective. You’ve balance every component without any trickery or shortcuts.

If you are reading this and are not on the course, I strongly encourage you to get on the waiting list now for the next session coming in fall 2018. Unless you have no interest in growing and being more. It really doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, where you’re at in your life or what you do. If you want to be more this is the starting point.

Having my “printer” head fixed

My head is spinning in so many directions right now but in a good way. Even if I’m not 100% in tune with all the exercises, I do know I’m more time than not in the spirit and energy of the Master key Process. I’m noticing more and find it easier to find the smallest things to be grateful for.

In the same week I got two hints on how big the payoff could be when in the right frame of mind. The first one I must admit I was not in a good mood when it happened. About 18 months ago I bought a new printer, middle of the range not a trow away one but not too expensive either. To my surprise it just died on me. Looked up the error code, hmm not good…board failure. Made a few phone calls and eventually ended up with the company’s tech support.

By that time I was not in a happy mood as I bought the brand I swore 20 years ago I would never buy again and there I was, 6 months pass the warranty period with a dead printer. It is not in my nature to lash out at people and take my frustration on others so I took several deep breath, answered patiently all the questions I was asked. The visual I was keeping in my mind though was a new printer for free.

Hold and behold conversation goes well and suddenly I realize he’s shipping me a new unit. Wait a minute how much will it cost me I reply…nothing he said, just return the old unit….but but what about….we’ll pay for shipping too before i can even ask. Oh that’s amazing I reply..

Moral of the story, fill your warranty cards and be nice :-). You just never know if and when people will get out of their way or “box” to fulfill your vision.

Follow your guts… and the truck

On a lighter note I had to return a unit of a leased product I stopped using ( pre-paid mail again 🙂 but I had to use a specific carrier I rarely use. So I remembered where the warehouse was but also had errands to do which made me take a different route to get there. To my surprise I cross path with the courier truck  even slowed down to let him turn where he was turning. That was the moment where I listen to my gut and instead of continuing and going to my next stop, i turn around and park beside hi. Get out of the car and ask him if he can take that package. No problem sir, this is the new depot site and I’m picking up everything for the day.

Talk about jaw drop. I love it that subby has no concept of size cuz for me I thought I had just won the jackpot. I purposefully reveled in the feeling of synchronicity and a job well done moving along in an effortless and resistless manner doing what I had to do. I mean seriously, what are the odds of that.

I kept expanding of the feeling of what happened and extrapolate it to bigger things.

The law of dual thoughts live, unrehearsed, unscripted. Sheer beauty!

The Joy of Persistence

It is with a greater sense of inner peace and confidence that I have marched into this week. Bering more focus and more determined has actually given me  more energy coming from a greater sense of clarity. It is becoming easier to take the appropriate step to move faster in the direction of a bigger and greater version of myself

I am tempted to say I don’t why but I really have just said it, but this week 11 has been so far, for me,  the most pivotal in solidifying the whole Master Key Experience. It creates the space between though and action that allows me to take action based on the greater vision but yet still pay closer attention to the smaller details.

It is even clearer to me the subtleties of what true persistence is. It’ not enough to work hard and it still not enough to work smart either. One’s motivation has to be grounded in something bigger, something that will ignite our passion. A burning desire coming from a very well articulated major purpose which is itself rooted in the service to others.

Rome was built by the persistence layering of bricks day by day, hour by hour and so is our live.

I will certainly keep honing those 4 habits.

Or do I?

I had a funny reaction when I made the Haanel exercise of visualizing a flower from seed to bloom. As the title of my post reveals, my reaction was …really I have other things to visualize than a flower. Yes I’ll stop in a park to take in the beauty or immerse myself in the smell but in my head…next!

My brain immediately jumped instead where I was the seed and I saw my roots take hold and grow. Each root was a section of my DMP, my PPN’s then the right thoughts with the right action that lead to branches…as within so without. Each branch was the perfect manifestation of those thoughts and action all the way up to the leaves

It was EPIC!. more fun and more “practical for me”

Listen to the voice

Reason behind the Madness II

Of course I knew Mark was right but this week I could see it, feel it, integrate it. My body gave me the Ha Ha moment while I was driving back home after a successful meeting with a new distributor in my organization. The blue rectangles were everywhere. The links between all the parts of the course were big as a pipeline. Ba Bam!, For a moment, I was one with my future self.

Maybe the fact that I:

• Listened for my affirmations with music for hours while driving around (over 3 hours total)
• Looked at my shapes in my car
• Actively looking at shapes and colors
• Repeated ad hoc “Do it Now”…” I will be what I will to be”, while listening to the affirmation, looking at the shapes, colors etc

…might have help a tiny bit. You think so. Yeahh!. As Mark would say, knowledge does not apply itself. Gotta do the work buddy.

Flashback

But the week had not started this way. On Wednesday I finally gave in and open the TV. After all I work hard and what’s in a freakin hour of TV anyway. I can’t take one more reading or 1 more blog post 1 more of anything. I need the break and I’m takin it! 🙂

Of course that didn’t help anything because like taking that sweet treat when you know you shouldn’t of the exercise you’re not doing while you know better, in the end it’s just the pleasure trap. Short term gain for no future gain. A disconnect between the present and future self.

Ba Bammm!!

And then it dawn on me, those wonderful neuropeptides (quick explaination). Those miraculous brain chemicals that drive us all. They are wonders of human nature because they make us reliable, predictable and consistent well oiled machine.

Remember scroll II;  I love the sun because it shows me the way but I love the night because it shows me the stars. Can’t hate those peptides for the undesired results because they’re also the anchors of our good habits. So unless consciously redirected, subby is always in control and most of our behaviors are derived from habits that are themselves directed by the neural pathways that crave and are fed those chemicals. Make no mistakes. We’re all addicts to these neuropeptides and trying to modify a specific behavior doesn’t go without a fight [resistance].

First part of the week…Withdrawal, craving, succumb to the ritual (habit), then of course feel bad about it. Sounds like the addiction cycle to me.

Last part of the week, immerse myself in the new habits…different feelings, different outcomes.

Furthermore it’s not really about the TV. I rationalize it by not having cable, no netflix etc. I haven’t watch news in years, everything I watch is commercial free so it’s like “clean eating” lol. Since the old blueprint has “Hard Work” wired into it, those peptides are fighting tooth & nails to keep their share and allowing myself to stream a few shows or movies is my way of feeling in control and in balance.

Two Peas in a Pod

But those are 2 peas in a pod. Work Hard…Escape….Work hard again…Instead of Work Hard, rejuvenate, think, plan, work better, get bigger results…etc. That’s why one of my PPN is Liberty and “Delegate” is embedded in my DMP to support that PPN.

On a bright note it is a very good thing that my preferred sport team is having an atrocious year. I had already decided that’s what I was going to give up but now ALL OF IT!.You’re brutal man…but I love you and so it is. I believe in what you’re teaching and how you do it, so I must surrender to the process if I want the results I am aiming for.

I love seeing the connections mapping themselves out in my brain between each components of the Master Key Experience. This week’s addition the Law of Forgiveness, is such a perfect example. Continue reading MKE Week 7 – Forgiveness, the foundation for a happy life

A reason to the madness

The Master Key Experience is truly a total package. While I’ve taken the road less traveled, self discovery and personal growth has always been my underlying drive to reach my potential. While most of this material is not new to me, what comes to mind are Mark’s words, “there is a reason for the madness” (of the course that is). Frankly I can see what he means and why it is so important to follow the instructions, do the exercises, the reading, the writing. “Neurons that fire together, wire together” and we’re in the business of firing new neural pathways to move beyond ding the same thing and expecting different results as Albert Einstein would say. Continue reading MKE Week 4 – I’m in “Busy-Ness”

This week several concept or even just works keeps coming to mind on a consistent basis. Subby (love the nickname) guardian at the gate, cement, habits and while doing my “sit still exercise” the image popped in my head. Continue reading MKE Week 2 – Subby, Meet Baba Yaga

I have always been fascinated by etymology, the roots and origin of words. Since my native tongue is French while living a life exclusively in English I often have a better incentive than most to look things up. While I got the gist of what serendipity is, I did the exercise of looking it it up since I felt that it should be the underlying canvas of my first post in my exciting journey with the Master Key Experience. Continue reading MKE Week 1 – Serendipity