I’m writing at a time when Tony Robbins, the well-known personal development guru is being slammed all over the internet for disparaging the #MeToo movement. A video has gone viral which was taken at one of his events that shows a woman standing up to him on his views. So in this article, I will be examining Tony Robbins, #metoo and asking if this is a new opportunity for compassion.
We don’t know exactly what was said just before the video that started the whole discussion but the clip begins with audience member, Nanine McCool explaining to Robbins that he might have misunderstood what the #metoo movement was all about. Robbins quickly interrupts her and explains what he thinks the movement is all about – people holding onto victimhood and trying to gain significance.
Misunderstanding?
So far in the conversation, you can just about put a case that he hasn’t fully understood what the movement is about and that he is asking people to not hold on to the victimhood mentality as it doesn’t get them anywhere. He does state firmly that he believes some people are using this movement to attack people to gain “a drug called significance to make yourself feel good”.
At one point in the video, Robbins physically pushes McCool back several feet and tells her not to push back to demonstrate his point that pushing back never works. Perhaps he has used this exercise successfully before before but in this context the towering man over the much smaller woman being pushed by him came across as intimidating and in a way demonstrating what the #metoo movement is about: powerful men and women using their physicality to overpower and intimidate women and men who are not as strong as them.
Even so far, you may characterise him as simply misunderstanding everything.
Victim/ Perpetrator Confusion?
Yet if you look at what he says next, there is no doubt that he believes the #metoo movement is bad. He explains that he knows powerful men, dozens of them apparently, who are not hiring well-qualified women over their male, less-qualified counterparts because the women are so attractive that they are seen as too much of a risk.
Amazing! Apart from the fact that he is basically describing illegal, discriminatory practices, he is confirming so much of what women already suspect – that we are judged on our looks and perhaps other factors such as fertility over and above whether or not we can actually do the job.
It is this statement of Robbins that is particularly offensive. It might also suggest that he himself has perpetrated some acts that he may not feel so comfortable with speaking up about. In fact, earlier in the video he tries to get the room on board with him by getting people to raise their hand if they have done something that they feel guilty about. I am personally not aware of any accusations against Robbins of any kind so this is purely a speculation based on his behaviour in this clip.
The Nature of Victimhood
Image: Shutterstock
I have personally never been drawn to his brand of personal development and his courses of any sort, although I did read one of his books years ago. I do recognise that in general, he seems to help a lot of people.
But in this article, I wish to discuss the earlier statements in the viral video with Nanine McCool – that he recommends that we do not stay in victimhood because I think there are many opportunities here to understand how to be more compassionate with each other.
When saying that people, shouldn’t choose victimhood, Robbins is talking about people who are victims of sexual assault and harassment. The woman who stood up to him, McCool, actually made a video on Youtube in which she described how she was sexually abused as a child. In fact, she demonstrates how much she has not stayed in victimhood because she is strong enough to have stood up to him.
But even if she was dwelling on things, does Robbins really suggest that as a person who was molested as a child that she should have immediately brushed it off and moved on? And that nobody should push back against child molesters and rapists because it doesn’t make us any safer?
The Shadow Self of Tony Robbins?
In the backlash against him, he has come out with something interesting that may be the key to not only understanding his behaviour that day but his whole philosophy. He said that he too was also molested as a child.
I think this may be the key to why he behaved in this way. I suddenly see a man in so much pain that he himself cannot process his own emotions. I haven’t said this publicly but part of the reason why I wrote The Genius Groove is that I saw a video with Tony Robbins in which he described how you shouldn’t dwell on your emotions and rise above them. This is the exact opposite of what my message is all about.
Facing the shadow
I have found over the years that unless you face these emotions when you are ready and strong enough to do so, they can have powerful effects on your life. We are actually a fabric of consciousness. I think that below the speed of light this consciousness can have charge and polarity. These are emotions and they are not some extraneous nebulous thing – they are who we are and they make up our very vibration. We all know from the law of attraction and sympathetic vibratory physics that like vibrations attract, so these vibrations are attracting what our lives are made up of.
So if we work on our emotions and truly resolve buried issues, from a vibrational perspective this will change the very fabric of who we are. But if you take Robbins’ advice you are just plastering over the cracks. It may work for a while but after some time your buried emotions will resurface.
Elevation and avoidance
Putting all this together I think perhaps Robbins is working from a place of severe avoidance of his own pain. He is telling everyone not to go into victimhood because he cannot connect to his own victimhood. He has learnt a strategy of not dealing with his emotions but elevating himself and pushing himself harder rather than facing those shadow aspects.
In a way, this reflects his whole career – to make a different ‘choice’, rather than face the shadow. His whole teachings can be seen in a new light of pushing himself into an elevated state in order to escape the pain of his own abuse. That might be why he reacted so badly because facing the true victimisation of people who have been abused and are standing up and discussing it, would be like facing himself and that is too painful. So perhaps that is why he interrupted McCool so quickly.
An opportunity for compassion
Image: Pixabay
In any case, it is a lesson for all of us that we need to truly understand each other. If someone has indeed been the victim of sexual assault, they are indeed a victim (at the 3D level in any case). They have had something done to them which they have no control over. It is up to them how they heal and it is is going to be different for everyone. Nobody can tell them that they need to get out of victimhood if they need more time to heal.
And if, because of our current changing attitudes, that person is emboldened to speak out against the perpetrator who has, after all, committed a crime, then we should support them, not slam the victim. Robbins is actually making the people accused of the assault and even the ones interviewing people for jobs into the victims. The victims of beautiful women trying to get a job and of being caught out for what they have actually done. Don’t forget we are speaking about the perpetrators of crimes here – job discrimination and sexual assault. Yet the actual victims of the crimes he shows no sympathy for in this clip.
I am glad that this has come to light for many reasons. Maybe Robbins will now actually take the time to understand the #metoo movement and has indeed pledged this. He has also modelled for us some of the prevailing attitudes that some people brush incidents of sexual assault under the carpet and blame the victim when they try and stand up.
I suspect also, as I outlined earlier, that due to his own abuse when he was a child he is avoiding facing his shadow emotions about this. Perhaps this is compounded by feeling that, as a man, he is unable to face his emotions about his abuse as many other men also feel unable to do.
The End of Ra Ra?
I think the way to move forward is not to vilify Robbins but to maybe understand where he might be coming from – his own emotional landscape and drives and how he is mirroring certain attitudes in our society. We need to make it safer for men and women to come forward and face when they have been sexually abused otherwise, they may not just want to put a cap on their own emotions but shut up anybody else who might trigger them.
Image: Shutterstock
Exploring emotions are the key to moving forward. So maybe this is the death of the Ra Ra when it means elevating your mood and attitude as an act of denial of emotional shadow. Papering over the cracks of your emotions and pretending they don’t exist is not going to work because, like with Robbins, they will eventually rise up to the surface to be looked at just as his emotional shadow has now.
I know this is a controversial topic and I appreciate respectful comments below.
There is a growing awareness of a discrepancy in the world – there are a few people who have the power and they keep the rest of us under control. Some people are becoming aware of other levels to the control such as alien or reptilian beings. Whatever your take on this, this concept can create fear. So this time we are going to be doing a Meditation on Integrating your Inner Lizzie.
The Point of no Return
In the year 2001, right after the 9/11 incident, I was visiting some friends. They had the TV on which was showing a memorial ceremony for the people who died in the event. My friend asked me if I could see ‘them’. He was referring to the interdimensional beings that were around the senior politicians of that time. Until that point, I had heard the concept that interdimensional beings were controlling our world leaders, but thought it was far-fetched.
But as I watched this memorial, my vision somehow shifted and suddenly I saw them. They were standing behind certain public figures and were psychically attached to them. They were tall and almost integrated into the humans that they followed.
I was stunned. Suddenly David Icke did not look like the nutter that everybody thought he was. I now literally could see what he was talking about. And so began a period of my life where I began to consume a lot of material about the controllers of the world. I avidly read the book by David Icke called ‘The Biggest Secret’ and learnt about The Money Masters and other aspects of what is known as conspiracy theories.
Intergalactic Tank Girl
A woman dressed up as the Tank Girl character at a Cosplay event
I began to feel that we were in a battle and we would need to literally fight interdimensional beings who secretly controlled our world and created perpetual wars. Like some Intergalactic Tank Girl, I felt I needed to ready myself as a warrior. Underneath all of this was a very real emotion – FEAR. Reading about the hidden controllers of the planet was making me fearful. You see this new paradigm I had fallen into was all about separation: them and us.
Integrating the Light Strand
One day that all changed. I was pondering to myself about the fact that we share our DNA with reptilian beings and whoosh something happened. I understood the unity. It was as if a light strand had plugged into place in my being. I realised that no matter what, we are all part of each other and every being is a part of the unconditional love that pervades the entire universe.
From that moment on I was no longer fearful and let go of the idea that I needed to be a Tank Girl warrior. I know there are very real issues going on in the world but starting with separation and perpetuating that stance isn’t going to help.We are all from the same source ultimately and it was with this consciousness that we need to move forward. It isn’t enough to have unity consciousness about things that you like and having it all go out the window for something that you don’t like.
The Human Game
Some years later I had a vision and I saw that just as humanity, as a collective, were descending from source and higher dimensions, a bit split off and it is this split that became our nemesis. We did this to ourselves because we are THAT powerful. We needed to create for ourselves the grit by which we will grow. The human race are not victims, they are more powerful than we can imagine. We are here playing a game to learn.
But we created that game out of love for ourselves to grow. It is hard to see that from a 3D perspective when all we see is suffering and death and I don’t mean to say that the pain should not be expressed at that.
But there is a big picture. Ultimately we will all go on to a different plane and we take our learnings from this incarnation.
So we have created a nemesis for ourselves from the fullness of our being as a human race.
Integrating your ‘Inner Lizzie’
But what can we do to alleviate the fear? Well, I have a process that I call Integrating the Inner Lizzie. I actually was requested to speak on this by one of my readers and we recently did an online meeting when a meditation spontaneously arose to heal the Inner Lizzie. It was quite powerful and I have noticed the different feeling I have afterwards.
So I am including it for you here for you to stream for free.
This was part of The Conscious Science Club which comes free for 12 months when you buy Simply Divine. If you are interested in more content like this then have a look at Simply Divine – an Easy guide to the Science of Spirituality.
What do you make of this week’s blog? Do you think this is all nonsense or do you think coming out of fear at the politics of the world is a good idea? Let me know in the comments below.
In this article we are going to be talking about Forgiveness. Is there something in your life that you just can’t seem to let go of? Has someone in your life really bothered you? You know you should forgive them but you just can’t forget or let go of what happened.
This happens to a lot of people – they know that forgiveness is something they should strive for but can’t quite get there which makes them feel even more guilty.
It’s no wonder, as the way in which we are taught to forgive makes it difficult. I think we are taught to forgive in a way that is all wrong; we are told we should forgive and forget and it feels that we are letting that person off the hook.
This also makes us feel that anybody can do anything to us and we will say it is OK. This can make us feel vulnerable to being attacked again in the same way by that person and that we will just let them off the hook.
It is healthy for us to have boundaries and personal integrity so the usual advice on forgiveness can cause conflict within us. So how can we get peace from the memory of the situation without feeling like we are allowing someone to get away with it?
First – you don’t need to forgive the person or be open to them do it again. What they did was not OK by you, you don’t want that to happen again.
Image:Shutterstock
If you change your perspective and realise that it is not the person that you need to let off the hook, but to understand the situation, then you can move towards healing within yourself. You need to understand and process why the situation has come into your life. Once you get that ‘aha’ moment then the inner shift can occur so that you can move on from the emotions.
In Simply Divine we discuss how the Black Hole Principle implies that we have aspects of our consciousness out of space and time beyond the speed of light. This is what is traditionally called the Higher Self.
This is the aspect of us that chooses our lives and everything that happens in it. The key to our healing is to move towards an understanding of why our Higher Self has introduced a particular incident and the healing journey that this has engendered.
What has been this gift in this?
Just asking the question ‘what has been this gift in this?’ can shift the entire feelings about a situation. Sometimes this type of work is so effective that the situation will not affect us anymore and we will feel much more free.
I have seen it many times, someone undergoes a spiritual awakening and the world becomes all sunshine and rainbows. They just can’t believe their luck and the new world that has opened up to them. They meet people who are psychic and who want a world filled with possibilities and beauty.
Image: Shutterstock
They explore community living, chakras, crystals, tarot. They pinch themselves that just a few months ago they were wondering if there was more to life and now here they are in New Age play land.
Making these new connections it suddenly seems possible that a new Earth could arrive very soon – a beautiful utopian land based on love and peace.
And them boom – life hits them in the face and they are pushed to the point of near disillusionment. They experience events which makes them question everything they have just learnt.
This can take the shape of three phases
1. Betrayal
Usually what happens first is that the oh-so-lovely spiritual people that our new age newbie has just encountered show themselves as they really are – people so keen to escape their issues that they have wandered into the fluffiness of the New Age.
But their emotional traumas remain and show up just as before. This is even more confusing for the newbie as people seemingly so full of love and light up front turn around and act in a vicious manner.
This feels to the newbie as even worse then the ‘normal’ world they thought they had left as at least people there were more upfront about being ruthless. This is a pretty common occurrence for some stepping on the spiritual path.
2. Life events blow up
Image:Shutterstock
Another very common occurrence is that shortly after waking up spiritually, life events occur in the person’s life that can bring them to their knees: divorce, job loss and more. This blow up can cause most people to turn their back on spiritual awaking yet it is often not possible. Once out of the box, it cannot be put back in.
Often people lose out on the financial income that they enjoyed before. Many people have immense spiritual skills but they can’t find a way for these skills to lead to financial support.
It seems that the worlds of the spiritual and that of the material are very far apart. They start to lose faith in their own spiritual journey and become disillusioned with it all as ‘airy fairy’ nonsense that is not practical. They don’t see how to keep their integrity and make money.
3. The Road to Integration
This is the Flipside of spirituality and it can be painful. But this doesn’t have to be the point when someone jacks in their journeying and exploration (not that it is possible anyway). Andrew Harvey speaks of undergoing the initiation of the light and then the initiation of the dark.
The truth is we need both to become fully integrated on the journey. We need the dark and the light, the conscious and the subconsciousness, the spiritual and the practical, the immaterial and the material, the matter and the antimatter. If you follow my work you will know what I mean by that last example.
Image: Shutterstock
If you can ride the storm through this initiation of the dark and understand it for what it is you will be able to become a more integrated and clearer person. You can exist in the realms of the dimensions as well as have a job if this is what you want.
You will be able to see a lot of the New Age types for who they often are – people escaping from childhood emotional traumas. This means you will have a more balanced view of people and of the world that will put you in better positions than the initial floaty escapism that characterises spiritual newbies.
I am not judging this phase either – I have totally been there myself – we all have. It just becomes very confusing and I hope this article helps people to realise they are not alone in having similar issues blow up in their face. They don’t have to completely reject their spirituality when this happens but can move forward in a more integrated way.
In truth it is your own subconscious emotions and shadow self that are exploding and this is what is reflecting in the world ‘out there’. This insight will help you to navigate some of the most difficult storms.
I have created an online course called Simply Divine which is designed to help you to navigate the shifts including the dark night of the soul and connect more deeply to spirit. To find out more about Simply Divine click here.
I have a problem with the Dalai Lama’s response to the Paris attacks in 2016. However, by examining his response we can actually learn a few spiritual principles so l am going to do that in this article.
A puzzling quote
In early 2016, after a violent incident in Paris that shook the world, the Dalai Lama was asked to give his opinion on how we should react in an interview with Murali Krishnan.
A lot of the interview covers the spiritual leader’s philosophies on peace, but on the incident in Paris he said,
“We cannot solve this problem only through praying. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. Humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to resolve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place”.
I was quite amazed by this quote, but it is not the first time I have suspected something surprising: the Dalai Lama may not be as spiritually connected as many people think.
Let’s examine this point by point:-
The Power of Prayer
At the beginning of this quote he says we cannot solve the problem by praying even though he is a Buddhist and believes in praying.
In this quote he seems to reveal a lack of understanding prayer and its power. Prayer is simply the focus on intention and consciousness. It is about harnessing universal forces.
In the situation in Paris, this was exactly the point where good intentions and shifts in consciousness were vital. Ancient Eastern religions have long taught that consciousness is fundamental to reality and as someone steeped in such religions the Dalai Lama should have known that it is only by a shift in consciousness that the 3-D level can follow suit.
He also reveals in this quote that he believes that when we pray it is to something external: a ‘God’ outside ourselves. Buddhism and many other spiritual philosophies emphasise the God within ourselves and our connection to that unity. Yet this Paris quote is very indicative of a belief in an anthropomorphic God who can reach in and solve our issues.
Facing the Shadow
Nowhere in this quote does he discuss that these incidents reflect the reflection our own collective emotional shadow. But of course if we are all linked, then the universe simply reflects the interior of our consciousness.
Now that this concept has entered mainstream culture through books like, ‘The Secret’, it is even more amazing that one of the world’s foremost spiritual leaders does not explain this principle especially in a moment when the world needs to hear this so badly.
Understanding the emotional reflection of the shadow is the basis for personal and collective evolution of consciousness. This was a massive opportunity with the world looking at him to discuss how we are projecting our shadow and that we are all connected and have God within us.
But instead he perpetuated the rather puzzling view that we are separate from God which I would have thought was the opposite of Buddhism.
Conclusions
To me these are not the words of a someone who feels connected to the God within as true force in the universe. We do not pray to something outside ourselves, we are all one and connected; we are all God.
Ultimately we create these events from a Higher level and as a projection of our emotional shadow. So why would we create suffering and death? In reality nothing and nobody ever truly dies (although the pain in the 3-D realm is not to be disrespected or ignored).
A more empowering teaching is that every soul that incarnates has already made a decision as to their exact mode and time of death and this is unfolding in a perfect way. There are higher dimensional reasons for everything that occurs in 3-D but these are sometimes difficult to understand from the 3-D perspective as we go through pain, horror and grief.
Focusing on a polarity such as peace, will just maintain polarity as peace is the opposite of conflict. It is only through the integration of the shadow that we can see the polarity clearly enough to enter into a centred state. A true master does not focus on polarity and opposite – war vs peace etc, but on clearing the emotional shadow on a personal level as this will also clear the collective consciousness.
Another questionable quote
I also question the following quote from the Tibetan leader.
‘Don’t let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace.’
This quote from the Dalai Lama is actually the opposite of good spiritual practice. I am not saying that people need to be knocked about by others, but true spirituality is increased by the knowledge that we are all one and therefore seemingly annoying behaviour in others is simply a mirror being held up to our own selves.
The annoying behaviour of others is a message that we, in our own higher wisdom, have created for a reason and our job is not to ignore it and hope it will go away (it will actually come back in a stronger form), but to understand the lessons and the reflections and to integrate them and move forward into deeper wisdom.
Peace is not created from ignoring the call of your soul but by understanding that the entire universe is connected and that the events that happen in your life are created in your own higher wisdom to bring the perfect loving lessons for your own soul growth.
It may not bring short term comfort but in the long run this is the true road to peace.
What’s next?
If you would like to know more about these topics and how knowledge of quantum physics and black hole cosmology can increase your understanding of your own emotional maturity therefore freeing you to follow your true path, consider exploring Simply Divine – an easy guide to the science of spirituality.
This will give you a 6 month journey of a deeper understanding of the universe that even the most celebrated spiritual leaders will not give you as they do not have the new science of black holes.
Though online tutorials and self reflective work plus monthly live hangouts with Dr Manjir you can transform your life using this deeper understanding and bring the power of the cosmos to your life. To find out more click here.
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