YOU ARE THE PROJECTIONISTA "Classic" Look at the Avatar Course by Richard Westlake Picture yourself in a dark room. The only thing you can see is a projection screen, a screen whose display includes everything you can sense. The projected images are all that you perceive as real. In fact, you believe yourself to be one of the projected images. Where do the images come from? Is there a projector that controls them, a projectionist who decides what to show, an audience who is watching this "movie" that is your life? How can you know, when all that you can know (apparently) is the screen images? And what will happen to you when the "movie" ends? Turn your back on the screen! Where did the images go? Who created them, who watched them, who was acting on them, and who finally turned away from them? You did, right? You're the projectionist, the audience, the script writer, the film-maker...it's your creation! How would it be if you could live that way-as the self-aware creator of your own life? Able to re-write your script and make this "movie of your life" into a self-crafted work of art?
Almost as soon as humankind figured out how to say "why?" we've known that there's far more to existence than what we sense as "physical reality." Call it the paranormal, the metaphysical, the divine, but it's that which can't be explained by science or "natural laws." Plato may have described the situation best in THE REPUBLIC where he wrote of "men dwelling in a cavern...fettered from childhood, able to look for ward only...(with) the light from a fire burning at a distance behind them..." and unable to see anything but shadows cast in the firelight. In his description, those shadows were all that these "prisoners" could know as reality. Plato used this "Analogy of the Cave" to describe the limits of our own vision. The reality that we see, he suggests, bears the same resemblance to the Reality behind it all, as those shadows in the firelight bear to the world outside the cave. Somehow his analogy fits our world of "couch potatoes" disturbingly well.
What is it that keeps us from seeing "the Reality behind it all" -- and how can we break loose to see that Reality? Indisputably, there IS some thing senior to the known and acknowledged structure of the universe. How can we reach for it, perceive it, learn of its nature? Countless answers have been proposed--most of them contradictory. Some say there is nothing beyond this universe. Others say we can never know, or that "God alone knows," or the like. The most promising (and yet frustrating) answer is: this transcendent reality can be reached only by way of a transcendent experience -- an experience that brings your awareness beyond the limits we perceive, that brings your viewpoint outside of the world we know. The experience has been called revelation, enlightenment, awakening, satori, bliss, nirvana. The way to reach it has been described, as well: "Turn your back on the world of illusions...Open your inner eye...Ye must be born again." But the description is not the experience, the map is not the territory; you still have to get there yourself! The Avatar course is a transcendent experience.
The Avatar course is based on the fact that your beliefs will cause you to create or attract the characteristics, situations and experiences of your life. Beliefs are the most powerful of the mental constructs that we use to control our lives-they're the "fetters" that keep us watching those shadow pictures in Plato's cave. We establish our limits and limitations with our beliefs; we us them to "filter" our perceptions of a' that happens around us; we use our beliefs to define our world. What happens when one lets go of these beliefs? As Harry Palmer, the author of the Avatar course, puts it: "...All thought processes stop, and one becomes fully aware of existence without creating any reaction or response to it. Awareness moves beyond the scope of daily concerns, slips time and definition and realizes itself as the descriptionless SOURCE from which all things, real or imagined, have their beginnings. This is the transcendental experience, the divine ground..." Even more remarkable is that at this "source beingness" level of awareness you can change your life, your experiences, and the world about you simply by re-directing your awareness through new filters of your own creation. You can choose, and choose again...whenever, wherever. It's your creation!
In a nutshell, Avatar leads you to manage creation from outside -- from the creator's perspective, behind the scenes of reality. You learn, by actual practice, to recognize the beliefs that you're using to create or hold on to situation, to "discreate" them so that they no longer exist, and to create the reality that you prefer. This is done on rundowns that permit the actual restructuring of personal, as well as interpersonal, reality. This approach can afford you the greatest results in personal improvement, as well as working subtle but far-ranging benefits in your relationships, your personal life, and the world about you. You're able to re-engineer your existence, rather than "just learn to live with it." The unique perspective of Avatar places it at the merging point of belief and experience, of the spiritual and material aspects of existence. It is, philosophy, what the sought-after "unified field theory" would be to physics. For the seeker-after-truth, Avatar is the end of the search; for the explorer, it's the beginning of the adventure! The Avatar course is intense, efficient and more fun that you're likely to think possible. It's usually taught in eight consecutive ten-hour days; think of it as a week-long vacation from the "you" that you've been being. Avatar isn't about shared traumas, or shared threats, or being pounded day-by-day with an avalanche of new ideas. You learn by doing, at your own pace, without indoctrination or "group-think" intimidation. There's no premium for "spilling your guts" to a facilitator or to fellow students. You decide.
Avatar is a good choice if: * You are interested in an accelerated pace of growth. * You are willing to take responsibility for managing your own beliefs, and through them, your own reality. * You are ready to become the knowing SOURCE of your own life -- with no more excuses, no more blame. After completing Avatar, your world will be a reflection of yourself.
And, what of "Plato's Cave" once you've finished Avatar? You're the projectionist, the script-writer, the director, the star; what you project is your choice. You're free to experience your life as it has been, from the same viewpoint - - and equally free to change your viewpoint and thus create a different life for yourself. How far can you go? You decide, and you can un-decide and re-decide as well. After all, it is your creation. You are the one. Richard Westlake delivers Avatar in the Washington, D.C. area (301-840-5795). |