Sacred Cows

Thank You Jesus Christ for Creating The Way of Your Word!

What are you going to do about it then?

Dear Lyn,
Again I've tried to avoid you and all the psycho drama you are trapped in. I got out my book again and the next chapter was written for you too. I told you everything there was to know about me and still you prefer to make up some more psychodrama to live and pursue instead. So now I'll write you again knowing you will never read this or find it. But I need to get it out of me...

The next Chapter was about "Sacred Cows" - - the excuse we make up for not being real. Oh I'll exercise, grow, learn teach or whatever "AFTER" I finish this that or the other thing... Some crap "sacred cow" that we use as an excuse for avoiding our own truth. People love saying how they can't reach and achieve UNTIL something else is finished. Oh what the hell, I'll stand here and hurt my sore arm some more scanning this in for you... no big deal if you learn, it's worth it - - for Ciera's sake if nothing else...

Yes of course I know you're suffering... no one looks God's Gifts in the face and says "oh not good enough" without suffering... I mean everything you told me about seeking, asking for, pursuing was exactly what I am doing. . . NOW, not tomorrow, not after grad-school or after the bank account is big enough - - BUT NOW. It's all here NOW. Wondering why you are not here too?? Oh HELL I Don't I know... maybe tomorrow is better for saving the world . . . there will be more people then, less Earth, less Trees, Less birds, and Fish and Forests . . . as if you care . . .

Oh well So I got it all out . . . Ok Jaclyn so Leave me alone or use th phone. . . THANK GOD, yes I Love You Dearest Loving Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, and here's the book chapter for you.
Namaste'
eric



Sacred Cows
You can prepare yourself for your journey to the Upper World by ridding yourself of limiting beliefs about love, power, money, and health, such as: "I'm not good enough," "I don't deserve it," "Soul retrieval won't work for me," or "I'm too burdened by responsibility to change." Other versions are: "When the kids grow up, I'll change," "I'll practice yoga when I have more time," or "When I have enough money, I won't work so hard-and I'll eat better, too."

We hold on to these limiting beliefs, or "sacred cows," because we think that they'll provide us with security, but in reality they prevent us from achieving the one thing that will allow us to experience the magic of the world. We convince ourselves that if we get rid of the sacred cow, then we'll have nothing left. In other words, we think it's better to hang on to what little we've got than to have nothing at all: Better a bad relationship than no relationship; better a bad job than no job. For example, one of my sacred cows used to be my fear of not being able to support my children. I kept telling myself, "When my children are grown, then I'll dedicate myself more fully to my calling as a writer and a healer, but for now, I have to do the responsible thing and work at the university." One day when my children were still little, I left the university and headed into the Amazon. It was on this trip that my mentor asked, "Alberto, do you want to live like an eagle or like a chicken?"

Of course I didn't want to live like a chicken! But there's a lot to be said for having the security of regular feedings in a chicken coop, as well as for the barbed wire that keeps out the fox. It's the barnyard equivalent of the corporate job with a retirement plan, or in my case, a university teaching position with a regular salary. But I also knew that many of us leave the chicken coop only to remain stuck on the ground of the barnyard-that is, we look longingly back at the coop, lacking the courage to take off and fly.

I had to face the fact that if I wanted to soar with the eagles, then I had to make some changes in my life. I had to give up the security of a teaching position to pursue my studies in the Amazon. At the time, I was one of the youngest members of the university's faculty, and I had a promising future in academia ahead of me. My decision meant sacrificing everyone's expectations of me, along with all the ones I had for myself.

However, after a few challenging years, my new career took off, and I was able to provide for my family with abundance. I no longer taught at the university, but I began lecturing around the world. My sacred cow had been hindering my ability to experience true success.

Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs
A sacred cow is the last thing that you want to lose or give up, and it might be something that you think absolutely must be maintained. For instance, I was once called in to consult with a company because its founder felt that the business was stagnating. He told me that he was willing to change any- and everything to improve the situation.

Well, after meeting with all his managers, I discovered that he was what had to be changed! The managers knew that the company was in trouble, but they were afraid to tell the boss about their difficulties with his management ideas. The company's founder was the sacred cow that had to be sacrificed in order to make any significant change.

I broke the news to the president: He had to fire himself. He ended up promoting himself to the board of directors and relinquishing day-to-day operations to a new generation. After that, the company began to flourish, and the employees were happier and thus more creative and productive. And the founder was able to return to the big-picture thinking and strategic planning that he'd always loved. He felt more fruitful and was rewarded with the joys of business partnership for the first time in his working life.

You see, a sacred cow is the limiting belief that we confuse with reality. It's always the one thing that we don't have the time, money, health, or courage to do, yet we must be willing to attempt in order to become whole. It's the thing that keeps us doing what we've always done for much longer than we should, even when we know it's wrong. As a client once told me, "My job is a nightmare, but I need the sleep." Even though he hated going to work, this man clung to his position, choosing to sleepwalk through life rather than risk exploring what it would be like to sacrifice this sacred cow and plunge into the unknown. Yet even though the risks are often enormous, the risks of sleepwalking through life are even greater.

When we cling to our limiting beliefs, illness or hardship may result. An acquaintance of mine who's a university professor kept telling me that when his retirement plan was fully funded, he'd finally do the things he wanted to do. Unfortunately, before that could happen, he died of a heart attack. The lesson here is that you can't always wait: You have to let go of your limiting beliefs so that you can journey to your destiny.

Of course this is easier to say than to actually do. I'm reminded of an old Indian story about a group of parrots who are in a cage at the palace of a sultan. An old bird tells the others (who were born in captivity) about the blue skies and how delicious the mangoes are when you eat them from the treetops, and how great it is to soar free beneath the clouds. One day, the bird-keeper accidentally leaves the cage open, and the storytelling bird says, "Go, my friends. Go and fly. Greet the treetops for me." One by one, all of the parrots fly out of the cage-except the one who talked them into it. This old bird just wasn't willing to sacrifice safety for freedom.

Limiting beliefs are always held as dogma. For example, the Italian astronomer Galileo was brought before the Inquisition in the 17th century as a heretic for supporting Copernicus's theory that the earth orbits around the sun, which was directly in conflict with the teachings of the time. This poor astronomer was criticized by a world that didn't know its proper place in the heavens, so he abandoned his investigations of the movement of celestial bodies for years after he was reprimanded by the Church. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to go back to his calling, defending it even before the Pope.

Galileo had to sacrifice the sacred cow that claimed our planet was the center of the universe, with the sun and stars spinning around it nightly. Even though he was kept under confinement for challenging this belief, by staying true to his destiny in the face of overwhelming danger he made discoveries that forever changed the course of science. Galileo's ideas were held to be false at the time-yet today they're universally accepted, and schoolchildren everywhere learn about him and his discoveries.

Just like Galileo, if you want to scale the highest heights, you must do so even in the face of rigid dogma and adversity. Your friends and family won't believe that you're leaving the job, career, or relationship they consider perfect for you-they'll think that you're following a fool's call. Yet answering your calling means that you only answer to one person's opinions: yours.

The Call of Destiny
It's possible that you may receive a calling to a destiny that even you'd rather ignore. It's tempting to say, "I'm not ready to do this yet-I'll do it at some other time. I'm comfortable now." But when you don't respond to a calling, you risk the wrath of heaven.

In the story of Jonah and the whale, for instance, God calls to the poor shopkeeper and says, "I want you to go to Nineveh." And Jonah responds, "No, I just want to have a simple life. I want to be a shopkeeper, and I want to be around my children and my grandchildren." Jonah ignores his calling, gets on a ship, and sets off in the opposite direction from Nineveh. A huge storm rises, and the sailors know that someone has incurred the wrath of God. Crestfallen, Jonah admits to his fellow seafarers that he's the one who has done so. To save themselves, his shipmates throw Jonah overboard, and he's then swallowed by a whale that transports him in its belly to the shores of Nineveh anyway.

While in the belly of the whale, Jonah recognizes that his calling is to spread the word of God. When the humble shopkeeper is regurgitated by the whale in Nineveh, he then begins to teach-but he had to go through immense hardship before accepting this calling. Jonah's story teaches us that if we don't respond to our destiny of our own free will, we're going to be taken there anyway.

The call of destiny is an otherworldly one. It's not a menu choice between chicken and fish-it's a force entirely beyond our control. But we do still have the choice: Do we respond to the call of destiny on our own, or do we wait until an illness or personal crisis compels us to stop what we're doing and follow our destiny?

For many years I wanted to avoid my own calling. Every time I told myself, "I just want to have an ordinary job and a regular life," circumstances would conspire to bring me back to teaching and healing-I'd get sick, or the career I'd planned for myself wouldn't work out. I discovered the old adage that said, "If you want to see God laugh, make plans."

Accepting my own calling was always fraught with challenges-I had to face many fears and difficulties. For instance, after my first book, The Realms of Healing, was published, my co-author and I were chastised by the ethics committee of the American Psychological Association for promoting primitive "superstitions." Many of my colleagues believed that I was wasting my time studying "unconventional" healing, and even my own mother would ask me when I was planning to get a job. In the end, none of this mattered: I had to listen to my calling.

As you can tell, the call to your destiny doesn't always come in the way you expect it. For example, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt grew up in highly privileged circumstances and lived a life of success before being struck down with polio at the age of 39. But it was only after he was stricken with the disease that he embraced his destiny and achieved greatness on the world's stage. Aside from becoming one of our most effective and long-serving Presidents, Roosevelt also put in place a grassroots campaign that funded the discovery of a vaccine for polio, which stopped transmission of the disease that crippled him and was then terrorizing the country. Roosevelt didn't succumb to the belief that because he was disabled, he was powerless; to the contrary, he set in motion a healing that was far greater than his own personal illness. Roosevelt took a crippling condition and turned it into a healing crusade for others, transforming him from a man of privilege to a man of destiny.

There are many other such stories of people facing extraordinary obstacles and overcoming them, or of turning challenges into opportunities. Just think of Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind, yet overcame her handicaps to learn how to read and communicate, and eventually became the first deaf and blind student to graduate from an American university. She went on to tour the country, inspiring thousands of deaf people to learn to communicate at a time when people with such disabilities were considered mentally ill.

Great individuals show us that we can sacrifice our limiting beliefs to change the nature of the quest from mere survival to destiny. So, what is your destiny? Is it getting accustomed to your limitations, or is it to change the world? The way of the healer has always been to discard limiting beliefs and turn them into sources of strength and inspiration. When you sacrifice your sacred cows, you no longer have any excuses that you can give to Spirit. There's no longer a disability to surmount before you can be of service to the world, or a child to rear before you can become a writer. There is only the resounding yes that you say to life.

Exercise: Identifying Your Sacred Cows
In this exercise, you'll identify and shed some of those limiting beliefs that keep you from living your destiny. You'll do this for each of the four strands that are woven into your momentum tunnel: your love relationships, power, money and career, and health. For each strand, fill in the blanks in the following sentence:

When I ____, then I will be able to _____. Be as specific as possible, and be honest.

Here are some examples of answers you might come up with:
1. Love relationships
When I find the right relationship, then I will be able to:
- be happy
- be fulfilled
- stop feeling lonely
- feel lovable

2. Power (psychological and emotional strength)
When I get over my anger at my mother, then I will be able to:
- accept my daughter as she is
- be more in touch with my femininity
- have confidence
- be open to meeting a man

3. Money and career
When I find the right job, then I will be able to:
- learn to meditate and practice it daily
- be more peaceful and contented
- travel
- become an accomplished chef

4. Health
When I'm not suffering from chronic fatigue, then I will be able to:
- exercise regularly
- learn to cook healthy meals
- deal with my unhappiness
- become active and fit

Look back at your answers. The first blank in the sentence is the sacred cow, the limiting belief that keeps you from advancing in life, while the second blank is the journey that you must be willing to embark on, whether or not the first blank occurs.

Despite the simplicity of the exercise, this tool is very revealing of your limiting beliefs. Since you have a whole herd of sacred cows, this exercise should be repeated often, delving deeper each time to reveal your most deep-seated beliefs. Used rigorously, this exercise will provide a doorway to your destiny.