Does evil exist? (or “The Science of Duality”?)

Does evil actually exist?

Can we really truly say that a person, or thing, or idea is “Evil?”

Please take 10 seconds to think about that. Are paedophiles evil? Was Hitler / Stalin / Mao / Pol Pot evil? What about ideas? Can a concept like communism / fascism be called evil?

One thing that’s immediately clear is that the meaning of the word evil is relative. Perhaps Hitler called Stalin evil, and vice versa.

A new psychology book (published June 2011) argues that evil doesn’t exist. Rather it is a symptom of a deeper problem, ultimately caused by trauma.

Today I’m going to explain this psychological theory about evil in more detail. But first I want to make some more general comments about good and evil, and about the relationship between symptoms and trauma.

This will help you to understand how RPT works and how you can easily and safely heal yourself.

The nature of Duality

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June 21, 2011 by in RPT theory and teachings, Thoughts For the Day
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How free is your country really?

How Free Are You?

Over the last 2 days I’ve discussed my historical observations about the biology of terror (click here for article one and here for two).

Today I’d like you to take it a step further and think creatively.  It is not my intention to sound like a radical or conspiracy theorist. I am merely an “outside the box” thinker and I ask you to engage in some free thinking with me.  The subject is “how free am I?”

I’m going to share my own thoughts about the status of freedom in so-called “Western democracies.” I’m also going to introduce you a new idea -the relationship between technology and persecution. Yes, your shiny new iPad is part of the problem!

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June 1, 2011 by in Financial freedom / Lifestyle design, RPT theory and teachings
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The biology of terror

In yesterday’s blog, I shared a little of my family history (refugees and Holocaust survivors) and discussed the interesting issue of how our survival instincts allow us to accept persecution.

Today I wish to further clarify this issue of the biology of persecution, and to share more of my thoughts as I toured the Torture Museum in Budapest.  Finally I want to raise the question of how free are you really?

Biology of persecution

It might sound counter-intuitive to read that our survival instincts can get us killed.

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May 31, 2011 by in Financial freedom / Lifestyle design, RPT theory and teachings
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Freedom lost: Why governments take our freedom and why we let them

Today we visited the “Terror Museum” in Budapest.  It’s housed in the former offices and torture headquarters of the Fascist Party (WWII) and the Hungarian communist “KGB” (1945-1990).

As half my family are Hungarian refugees (the other half are Polish refugees), I came to Budapest to explore my roots and see whether ancestral memories or trauma would be stirred up by my visit.

I did end up getting “all fired up” but I don’t think it was anything to do with ancestral trauma. What upsets me is government invasion into our lives and the fact that people allow it to happen.

Today’s blog is about my own (blinkered and biased) view of recent history, including the torture and murder of my grandparent’s family, and why we allow this to happen.  In my view there must be something in our psychology that creates this, and I believe that tools like RPT can help us to understand – and ultimately change – human behavior.

A brief biased history of freedom lost

From my perspective, the history of government invasion into civil liberties is generally a step-by-step approach.  Overnight military uprisings are very rare; these things take years to develop as the government entrenches its power.

Rather than overnight uprisings, the history of persecution could be described as a series of unfortunate events. (Author Lemony Snicket would surely agree.)

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May 30, 2011 by in Financial freedom / Lifestyle design, Thoughts For the Day
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Re-financing your road to freedom (Tim Ferriss lifestyle design)

Regular readers of my blog know that I write in glowing terms about my “lifestyle guru” Tim Ferriss.  I’ve been promising for a long time to write about the principles of his brilliant text, 4 Hour Work Week.   (See e.g. this article last year on speaking your truth)

Though I don’t usually write whilst I’m in the middle of teaching a course, I felt inspired to write a peace about the Tim Ferriss approach to financial freedom.

Four Hour Work Week (“4HWW”) is a brilliant book about lifestyle design – how to build your road to freedom. It covers about 10 distinct and important subjects like email management, delegation, outsourcing, Pareto optimization and so on.  I could write a blog about each of them, but today I want to write about a subject that will be as beneficial to you as it was to me – finance.

Tim’s insight is very simple and for most people revolutionary.  He observes that most people are stuck in an “asset mentality” in which they count the number of dollars (/Euro/Pounds/etc) in their bank account and compare that to what their dreams would cost.  For instance they think “dream house, car and lifestyle cost $2 million, there fore I cannot retire until I have $2 million in the bank account.”

Most people I know are stuck in some variation of this thought pattern. I keep hearing people saying “I can’t afford to do X…”  where “X” is the cost of buying a particular lifestyle.

So what’s the Tim Ferriss approach to “Lifestyle Design”?

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May 26, 2011 by in Financial freedom / Lifestyle design
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Update from Ukraine – wonderful news about our courses

Greetings from Ukraine where we are teaching in a wonderful healing spa “sanitarium” near Kiev.  This is truly the most fantastic venue, set inside a beautiful forest surrounded by a lake.  After cold and noisy Moscow, this is heaven indeed.

I’m logging on to send this quick update because I know many of you are wondering how the courses are going, and indeed how we are since I’ve been too busy teaching to blog regularly.

These have been my first courses for 6 months – since Dubai in December.  After teaching several RPT courses per month in 2009-10, it was strange to go so long without teaching.  As you probably know we spent this time away from RPT, setting up a new home and life in Vanuatu and working on other projects including a healing clinic.

Like a good wine, it feels like RPT really matured during this time. Perhaps this is due to my rest, perhaps it’s due to research and reading, and perhaps it’s due to the effort of the 20+ other RPT teachers who have continued to teach RPT whilst my attention was diverted.  In any case, I’m just thrilled to see how RPT has developed and to watch the new 2011 courses unfold.

The new 2011 technique is somehow (without any particular effort on my part) much simpler and easier than before.  It’s still fresh and I’m still trying to put my finger on it. What I know for sure is that:

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May 22, 2011 by in Thoughts For the Day
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Announcement: New Level 3 course dates (UK and USA)

Friends,

Evette and I are excited to announce our our first set of Level 3 course dates for 2011.   A big thanks to the 100 people who filled in our recent survey, it was a huge help to get your feedback.

As a result of your feedback we will be sticking with Los Angeles as a venue instead of moving it to Denver as I’d planned.  I concede that that’s an easier venue for the majority of people. Apologies to the wonderful and vocal Denver crowd (Val has done great work there).  Our LA team (Suzanna and Lina) are checking out a range of venues and we’ll confirm it here soon.  The dates are fixed though – we’ll find a venue to suit the dates.

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May 12, 2011 by in Thoughts For the Day

Personal update: Greetings from Moscow

Greetings from Moscow!

Evette and I landed safe and sound here on Monday after a long but uneventful 3 day trip from Vanuatu.  The 30 hour stretch from Brisbane to Moscow via Heathrow was the longest single plane trip I’ve ever done. It was fine though and jetlag hasn’t been a major issue this time. I have not needed to use Ben Ralston’s instant cure for jetlag (10 minutes of yoga whilst standing on your head!).

Our promoter Dmitry and his assistant Olga gave us a nice tour of the Kremlin and central Moscow yesterday.  I can report that St Basil’s (that’s the image to the left) is very pretty, but nothing like that photo in the middle of the day.  Probably at night it really comes out.

I do have an interesting little travel anecdote to share.

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May 11, 2011 by in Personal update
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Do you believe in Divine Intervention (Great video!)

We’ve had lots of discussions on this blog about whether there’s such a think as divine intervention. Maybe this video will settle something? (probably not!) This was sent to me today by our Russian promoter Dmitry who joked that it might convince me of something!

If nothing else, it’s a brilliant video. So enjoy, and promise not to drive like some of these characters this Easter!

best wishes
Simon
ps comments welcome

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April 24, 2011 by in Thoughts For the Day

Personal update: Happy Easter Break & Love from Vanuatu!

Hi everyone!

We’ve been so deep in ideas and philosophy on this blog lately that I haven’t done a personal update for ages. I did promise the blog would be more fun and more personal this year.

Just letting you all know that I’ve taken a break from blogging over Easter. We have been very busy with social engagements (i.e. going to the beach!), and the fact is I work 7 days a week, between my day jobs and RPT, so it’s great to take a break.

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April 22, 2011 by in Personal update
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