In several blog posts lately we’ve referenced The Wizard of Oz (and The Scarecrow Syndrome in a recent email) because it’s such a metaphor-rich movie that clearly defines various personalities and, the big metaphor, journeys we all go through.

At the end of the movie, when Dorothy is lamenting over how her friends all got given “tokens” of their knowledge, or courage, or heart, she says, “I don’t suppose there’s anything in that black bag for me”.

No, there wasn’t. But there was something else…

As the “wizard” prepares to fly her home in a balloon, and Dorothy runs off to save one more living creature (her dog, Toto), the balloon leaves without her, and Dorothy figures she’s stuck.

But alas! Glinda the Good Witch of the North comes swooping in to save the day, and says:

“You’ve always had the power within you! Just click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home!'”

Riiiiiiiight! Always had the power within her! Been there all along!

What’s the truth?

= = = = Continued = = = =

The truth is, while she had a seed of truth within her (as we all have seeds of truth about the true nature of our spirits), Dorothy needed to go through a tough journey of trials and tribulations before she had learned and experienced enough to use that power, just like we must go through the journey of life before uncovering our spiritual power.

It doesn’t matter whether we think we “know” about our spiritual side or not; we come here to experience life on the physical realm, and to uncover the puzzle as we go, not to just become “enlightened” or “evolved” into our spiritual selves as some teachers would have you believe.

Heck, if you want to be a spiritual being living a spiritual experience, you’ll get there soon enough… here, on earth, the idea is to partake in, well, earthly sorta things.

As our good friend — the soon to be editor of our upcoming Renegade Money Guide — said:

“… c’mon, as much as I acknowledge the spiritual side of our true nature, we incarnated for a good freakin’ reason — to experience what we can’t in the non-physical and to live in a world of contrast (that may or may not exist in the other dimensions)...”

Glinda, you see, tends to look at a life in a rose-colored “love and light” kinda way… everything is perfect, there’s nothing to be improved, there’s nothing to strive for… you have it all.

On one level, that’s great. Maybe even inspirational in small doses. On another, it keeps you stuck in a rut. If taken to the extreme, it just doesn’t work in our day-to-day realities on this planet.

Just imagine if Dorothy had decided NOT to go on her journey, but to stay in Munchkinland, because she had all the power she needed within her and figured she had nothing to learn, nothing to improve.

Well, she never would have been able to help the Scarecrow uncover his brainy tendencies, or the Tin Man uncover his heart, or the Lion uncover his courage. She wouldn’t have been able to save the land from not one, but TWO wicked witches (the dark thoughts that hold so many of us back), or helped the “wizard” find his way home.

A few weeks ago, a woman named Angel (seriously) wrote to us to ask us to help her raise the consciousness of the planet by getting together enough people to send out good thoughts.

Angel (our Glinda) assumes that, because our community is called “Life Without Limits”, we’re woo-woo thinkers like her, floating around in a magic positive bubble of good thoughts, just like Glinda assumed Dorothy had the power to tap her heels and fly home all along.

But in fact, groundedness in the real world is always required to achieve the exceptional.  Walking the Yellow Brick Road, and fighting off the poppy fields and the witches and the flying monkeys, are what prepare you to make a real difference, in your life and others’.

While it’s true that you’ve always had all the brains, the heart, and the courage you ever needed — buried somewhere beneath the surface — not everybody has accessed that in their own selves.

You see, the way we look at enlightenment is it’s something that comes and goes, like the ebb and flow of the tide, the rising and setting of the sun, the opening and closing of the flowers — the way all of nature operates.

You might experience an enlightened moment while walking on the beach, sitting in your garden, meditating, or even doing repetitive tasks like the dishes. But then it’s back to hustle and bustle, and the “unenlightened” moments that make up most of our days.

And while you’re experiencing momentary enlightenment, somebody else is not. When they’re connected with their source, you’re not. We all move through life with different patterns, at different paces, and experience different amplitudes and frequencies of existence.

Being tuned into the “All Good, All The Time” radio station doesn’t mean everyone else is listening to the same show; so it’s fine when you’re by yourself, but does you very little good when trying to connect with other people (something we feel is very important for physical beings on a physical planet).

In other words, pretending “it’s all good” all the time won’t make the “other people” who are brainless smarter, the heartless more compassionate, or the cowards braver, any more than you’ll appear brainier, braver or more loving in their eyes.

That’s because tapping your heels together doesn’t solve all the problems… it’s the journey down the Yellow Brick Road, through adversity and challenges, that enable you to be able to discover what you’re truly made of.

A couple of synchronistic things happened last week. First, a former partner posted a blog post about how you should only do things that feel good if you want to manifest what you want.

This is what he wrote:

“1. If it feels good, do it.

2. If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.

That’s it. Yes it is true there is nothing more to this process of creation than that.

Since most of you don’t buy into this, let’s look at some examples:

You are on the phone or in a meeting and you don’t feel good about it.  Leave it.”

Ummm… yeah, try that tactic, just as it stands in black and white without any adaptation around common-sense usage out in the real world, and let us know how it goes.

Then our associate Tom Murasso posted an article on Facebook, asking “What is Truth?” It was a well-researched and well-written piece talking about how people search for evidence to support what they’ve decided to believe, and call that “truth”… but how do we know if it really is truth?

Of course, we commented on how in metaphysical terms it may be hard to define a hard-and-fast “truth” while we’re in the physical realm, but in physical terms it’s much easier to apply research and say, “This is truth; this is fact; this is what’s really happening at this point in time.”

But a lot of Glindas came out of the woodwork to post their feel-good comments, which mainly revolved around the opposite school of thought.

See, Glinda says, “Your reality is what you believe to be true, and your truth is what feels right for you, and that’s all that matters.”

One of the commenters even went so far as to say, “Truth should not be confused with fact.” As in, who cares if “your truth”, your beliefs, or your perception of “the way it is” are founded or unfounded, logical or ridiculous, sane or insane?

Intelligent people, of course, know that’s just a way of justifying excuses for stupid behavior, and that truth IS the same as fact or reality, regardless of perception.

Vic Johnson, a well-known motivational speaker and online entrepreneur, said this to Heather in an interview:

“See, belief is simply defined as this; a belief is something that you accept as true or real. It doesn’t mean it’s true, it doesn’t mean it’s real, it just means you accept it as true or real. And when you accept it as true or real, you act on it as if it’s true or real.”

So the person hanging onto the belief that “my truth, and my perception of reality, is the only truth that matters, whether it’s fact or not” is afraid of the true reality that might be out there… and afraid to find out that their perception might be wrong.

Intention always trumps perception… so if someone did something, or intended something, it doesn’t matter what you THINK they did or didn’t do — it only matters what really happened.

And yes, Virginia, there IS a real reality (at least how we humans define reality, which is how the physical plane is set up to operate).

Yes, we understand that the whole physical reality we live in is an illusion of sorts to our spiritual selves — but we’re only concerned with HOW our physical selves have agreed to define reality, which is:

re-al-i-ty [ree-AL-i-tee]
–noun, plural -ties for 3, 5–7.
1.     the state or quality of being real.
2.     resemblance to what is real.
3.     a real thing or fact.
4.     real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs: the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality.
5.     Philosophy.
a.     something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
b.     something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.
6.     something that is real.
7.     something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.

See, Glinda’s view of reality is skewed. There’s no such thing as “All Good All The Time” because The Law of Polarity says that our physical plane is made up of opposites. Those dualities are actually non-dual in nature, because they need each other to exist, but they’re opposites nonetheless.

Glinda only wants to exist in the spiritual world where all is one — again, noble to a degree, but not practical in the physical world.

Angel, of course, isn’t the only “Glinda” in our lives. We know several life coaches who take this same kind of “cheerleading”, “all is good”, “you’re perfect as you are” approach.

Well, what good is that?

What kind of coaching can you get — what kind of growth can you experience — if you believe you’re already perfect, physically as well as spiritually?

Steve Keough, our Coaching Director at LWL Coaching, is anything but a Glinda. He knows how to help people get real-world results, not do airy-fairy feel-good exercises.

He knows that we’re on the physical plane to achieve as much as we can in the physical world, and if we didn’t want to do that, we wouldn’t even be here — we’d still be hanging out in Spiritland (just like Dorothy would have still been hanging out in Munchkinland).

To meet Steve and find out what a real-world, grounded life coach can do for you, visit LWL Coaching.

Your Partners in the Quest For
Living a Life Without Limits,

(( Life Design Consultants,
Agents of Higher Learning &
Catalysts For Change ))

Filed under: 7-Minute Round-Up