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Awakening the Fire Within: Relationship, Leadership & Self-Esteem

by Lyse Lebeau and Duart Maclean

168 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-0010; ISBN 1-4120-5115-0; US$17.60, C$21.95, EUR15.00, £10.50

Relationship, Leadership & Self-Esteem presents techniques and approaches that have positive impacts on our lives. It describes the principal unconscious beliefs and patterns that undermine our lives, and how to transform them.

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About the Book

About the Author

Excerpts

Catalogue Information

About the Book

This book integrates psychological, spiritual and pragmatic approaches to the mastery of life. It focuses on relationship, leadership and self-esteem. We know that what motivates our thoughts, feelings, words and actions is less than 10% at the level of the conscious mind. The driving forces in our lives do not exist at the surface of our minds, where we make our every day, 'conscious' decisions. What truly moves us lies buried deep within and we must become familiar with that shadowy underworld from where our real choices and actions are being motivated.

In order to get into our personal 'underworld', where the real work must be done, we must go far beyond intellectualism, positive thinking, and 're-programming'. We have found that the practices of yoga, ranging from breathwork and postures to meditation and self-enquiry, are the most effective means of diving deep within the unconscious. As we follow the paths of yoga to the depths of the ocean of our own existence, we inevitably encounter the many shadowy forms of the unconscious lurking below the surface. It is by encountering, embracing and then releasing these submerged thought-forms and undigested feelings and sensations, that we will ultimately attain our 'pearl of great price', Self-realization.

This book emphasizes the use of the breath as a potent means for exploring and clearing the unconscious. When integrated with an ability to recognize and understand how our negative, self-defeating 'patterns' operate, progress can be remarkably rapid and enduring.

Finally, particular attention is given to the use of 'action' as a means to self-knowledge, self-healing and self-transformation. It is in the heat of action that we actually discover how we are put together and identify where we are weak and where we are strong. Breaking through our resignation and stepping out onto the playing field of life is accomplished in the field of action, where leadership resides.

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About the Authors

Lyse Lebeau began her studies in healing and transformation in 1981, beginning with Zen meditation and rebirthing. During the past twenty years more than 2,000 people have attended her 30-hour seminar, 'Open Heart: Expansion in Relationships and Self-awareness'. Lyse and Duart co-lead a ten-week course of empowerment called, The Leadership Program. She has also trained over 300 professional rebirthers, committed individuals who have put themselves through an intensive program of 'conscious-connected-breathing' Rebirthing is a powerful tool for healing at every level: physical, emotional and mental. Rebirthers trained by Lyse are skilled in identifying patterns of self-sabotage and can communicate this knowledge to their clients in a way that liberates them from these negative, self-defeating thought-forms.

Duart Maclean has been practising and teaching meditation, yoga and self-enquiry since 1971. He was originally trained as a teacher of the scientifically validated Transcendental Meditation technique and later developed his skills in hatha yoga and rebirthing. He also encourages students to practise the ancient method of self-enquiry, as taught by the modern sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi. For five years he was national manager (Canada) of the global Hunger Project, where he developed skills in leadership. Duart has travelled extensively and visited India twice. He writes on Indian philosophy and its practical application to daily life.

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Excerpts

Negative patterns are unconscious mental/emotional constructs that are rooted in painful experiences, given mass by buried emotions and designed to protect us from further pain. They are survival strategies acted out mechanically in the face of certain categories of experience which the mind has determined are threatening. When they are triggered by an incident we 'go unconscious', so to speak, and react blindly to the situation at hand in a predetermined way. Until we become conscious of our patterns and clear them, they will be recycled by the mind repetitively and endlessly.

Pg 20

Failure to live our life from internal choice rather than apparent external pressure puts us in fundamental conflict with ourselves. For the most part, the mid-life crisis is spiritual rather than biological in nature.

Pg 22

If we deny our underlying and existential feeling of guilt, then the tendency will be to project it onto others. In this case, the guilt pattern manifests as the question, 'Who's to blame?' when things go wrong or break down. Guilt is easily projected onto others, not only individuals but whole communities. Blaming the office scapegoat for problems at work is an example of assigning individual guilt, whereas genocide is a projection of our personal guilt, in concert with the personal guilt of others, onto a collective 'them' determined by race, colour, creed, etc.

Pg 34

The mind will not easily recognise that the oppression it so much resents is its own fabrication. It believes, and wants to believe, that the source of repression is coming from other minds, i.e., him, her, them, or external circumstances, fate, if you will. Thus, the mind projects the resentment building up inside onto other people and situations, turning its wrath upon them. This is the 'revenge pattern': it is a destructive, irresponsible and highly effective form of self-sabotage.

Pg 39

We devote our lives to understanding the world, God, the cosmos, atomic and subatomic realms etc. but very few of us make a serious effort at self-understanding. We ask endless questions about the nature of things, but we never question the questioner. Who is this questioner who wants to know about God and the universe? If we are ignorant about ourselves, then how can we be sure of our knowledge of anything else? Unless we know the subject, how can we claim to know the object?

Pg 98

Transformational communication inspires the asking of deeper questions, the deepest question of all being, 'Who or what or whence am I?' It pushes us to press through our unconsciousness and examine our own conditioning. It also challenges us to examine our beliefs about the nature of reality, assumptions we have unconsciously adopted from our families, teachers and milieu, including the popular media. Furthermore, it leaves the receiver of the communication squarely at the centre of his universe and one hundred per cent responsible for his own experience.

Pg 145

Since we identify environment as something 'other' than ourselves, it is easy to fall into an adversarial relationship with our surroundings. Our environment becomes something to exploit, control, dominate, guard against, be afraid of, resist, manipulate, exhaust and, if necessary, destroy. Such a primitive and adversarial way of relating to environment is rooted in ignorance: an ignorance not of our surroundings per se, but of ourselves.

Pg 168

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Catalogue Information

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