Well I promised this was going to be a personal blog. It’s time to share some more about my story.
You may not have guessed this but I’m actually a very private person. I have my public face of course, which you see in class and on videos. But that doesn’t mean I share myself.
However, as a blogger and a public face for RPT, the new personal development technique, I am ready to share some more about myself.
My story really starts at age 27. But before I go there some thoughts on the early years. My parents are extremely religious, but in the hollow empty way of people who say their prayers and drag you to church, but have zero spirituality. They don’t actually believe in anything. Going to church was the punishment given to me when I misbehaved. The net effect of this was to scar me spiritually – I became an atheist at about age 12 and didn’t question my non-spirituality until age 27.
This isn’t my autobiography so we can fast forward through all the juicy bits. The key turning point in my life was finding out that I had a type of brain tumor called an acoustic neuroma. That was undoubtedly the scariest thing, and the best thing, that ever happened to me.
Prior to hitting rock bottom at age 27 (classic “Saturn returns”), I had been through a few pretty tough years with relationship and family problems. In fact I thought I had just started getting my shit together through personal development courses and counseling. That’s when I found out I had that tumor.
I had a hard time dealing with it at first because I was always the healthy one. At the law firm where I was a banking and finance attorney, I was laughed at for eat carrots when they had their weekly donut meetings. I did yoga, was vegetarian, bla bla.
The tumor was operable but the surgeons warned me it would lead to facial paralysis. Being vain (and single) I was obviously depressed about this. Cutting the story very short, I managed to come through the surgery without side effects, only to smash my face up in a bike accident 9 months later (and end up in the same neuro ward again). There was a life learning about vanity there somewhere…
I think the main thing to deal with when shit like that happens is the “Why is this happening to me?” I know how f*king cliche it is to say “I never thought this would happen to me” but the fact is at 27 you are still bulletproof, or meant to be.
If I have found wisdom from my journey it is this: shit happens. Not for any particular reason, life just is. In fact that should be the motto for Beingness: LIFE IS.
People – especially in the “new age” movement, spent lifetimes of navel gazing trying to work out the inherent meaning in why things happen. What is the message from god/angels/ancestors/my unconscious? Why did this happen? What do I have to learn?
The answer is life is, there is no meaning except the meaning you create.
There is no inherent meaning in anything. Don’t ask me “why did this happen to me?” because that immediately makes you a victim of something called Life. Literally stop asking this meaningless question, and instead ask “what can I make this mean.”
If you try to decipher the meaning of why shit happens to some people, you will never create anything for yourself. On the other hand if you can accept the Taoist perspective that shit just IS, you can create meaning. Life just throws shit at you and it’s entirely up to you what you make of it.
That’s where I got to in the end (keeping this story very short). I *decided* that my experience was going to be meaningful to me, and that I would get the most out of it. It was my choice. And I did succeed in creating a meaningful experience which has shaped my path over the last 10 years.
Meeting the other me
We all make choices but it’s very rare that we get to see what would have happened if we’d travelled the other road. (Like that movie Sliding Doors.)
I had a truly unique experience where I got to see the other “me” from the parallel universe in which I had not made this choice. I participated in an academic study of survivors of the same tumor. I went to a focus group of sad, screwed up people, who were bitter and depressed. I was the only one saying how much better life has been since the surgery. It was so interesting to actually get to meet the other me, the “what if” and to see the consequences of my choices. I know what would have happened to me if I’d allowed myself to be a victim of what happened, stuck in “why me.” I’ve literally met that other me, and I know how I would have ended up.
So all I can tell people is it doesn’t matter what shit gets thrown at you, whether its cancer or homelessness or bankruptcy. What does matter is how you choose to let it affect you. I’m more than living proof of “mind over matter.”
I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to create so much meaning from what happened to me, and end up helping so many people. Of course when I say “fortunate” I don’t mean lucky, because luck had nothing to do with it.
Well this has been a snapshot into my life, and my philosophy. Plenty more to come.
Blessings
Simon
WendyB 
Purdita Webster 
Anonymous 
Shane Marsh 
First off, you rock. Because I love the message ‘you make your own meaning’.
Secondly, there seems to be a contradiction between there being no inherent meaning in life’s lessons, and the vibrational causes of our problems.
With RPT we find the vibration / tone / cause of the problem, and by powerfully acknowledging it, heal people. That suggests to me that there IS inherent meaning in life’s lessons. Of course, I agree that it’s a choice to find that meaning… but isn’t it there all the time in life’s lessons?
Ben
[Reply]
simonrose Reply:
March 1st, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Ben, welcome back to our resident yogi intellectual.
I don’t see the contradiction you see.
On the one hand we have the laws of physics and on the other hand we have the human intellectual wank of “WHY WHY WHY?”. In a world with no humans, gravity would still work just fine, vibrations would exist, only the search for meaning would disappear.
I see the basis of RPT as you described being the Law of Vibration (everything has a vibration) and Law of Attraction (like vibration attracts like vibration).
What I *don’t* believe in is the way people interpret the Law of Cause and Effect.
Whereas the Laws of Vibration and Attraction are real and measurable in human terms, the Law of Cause and Effect is not. That’s why it has taken on a religious meaning like Karma, Sin, Heaven/Hell St Peter’s judgment, etc etc. These things are mere human constructs, pitiful attempts to create meaning in a meaningless world.
(Meaningless world doesn’t mean that there isn’t Attraction and Vibration. As i said, Life Happens. Shit Happens. Great stuff Happens. It just doesn’t always have a prior REASON.)
The simple fact is that we have no real human measure for why things happen. There is no proof of Cause and Effect in this spiritual sense. It’s much more likely that stuff just happens (vibrations attracting like vibrations) and we make up the meaning for it as we go.
S
[Reply]