A
Unique Exercise in Values
©Excerpt based on the book: The Uncommon
Path, O-Books, June 2009.
Mick Quinn's work is also published as
Poder Y
Gracia, Spain - June 2007.
MQ: The Second Insight offers a unique exercise. It helps you uncover concealed conditioning in
your values. Your values are essential
structures by which you make all important decisions. Consequently,
your values and the way in which they are arranged
greatly influence your future; therefore, they also
have a profound impact on the world around you and the
future of humanity.
The Second Insight also reveals a fascinating
relationship between values, intentions and destiny. Intention
is the aim or anticipated outcome of an action you are considering. Your
intention is the future un-manifested, where creativity
meets probability. The root of the word intention
is to lean forward; it
is the picture you hold in your mind of the many
possible outcomes of an action you are about to take.
evolutionary pointer: Your values guide your intentions to
fruition.
MQ: Therefore, if you have an objective to awaken,
it will be most effective when guided by a supportive
values structure. But, very often, the way in which
you are conditioned to arrange your values, is wholly
contrary to such a pure intention. If
you try to set forth your intentions to live with
courage and authenticity based on an inherited
arrangement of your values, those objectives will
recurrently flounder on the rocks of self-deceit and
denial.
evolutionary pointer: The liberated
life is the outcome of your intention to not just
be an automatic expression of the unhealthy-ego.
P: If I want to awaken to
Presence, autonomy, and communion, then it is unwise
to navigate by a decision-making process given to me
by a world that shows little evidence of that goal.
MQ: Correct! Though
you always mean well, inherited values and the way in
which they have been arranged for you are incapable of
supporting your purest aims to awaken your full
potential.
P: So inherited value spheres are arranged to support
conceptual-free-will. This arrangement of my values
simply doesn’t allow me to access
conscious-free-will.
MQ: This is true. You can’t awaken by just using
conceptual-free-will. The
goal, therefore, of the Second Insight
is to liberate you from the effects of hand-me-down
decision-making methods. With the help of a
ten-part exercise, which will be outlined in the tenth
chapter, you will examine your
life situations to find out what is important to you;
what you truly
value. In
doing so, you will realize the values you use
when making major decisions. This discovery also
allows you to see if these
essential guiding principles have
been set according to the limits of individual and
collective standards. Fortified with this clarity you
can then align your existing values with your
intention to live an awakened life. When the
arrangement of your values is capable of guiding your
pure intention to awaken, that is
the outcome.
P: What are some ways to
know if concealed conditioning is manipulating
my
values and value structures, hence limiting my ability
to access conscious-free-will?
MQ: If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the
following questions, it is likely that the
unhealthy-ego has somehow infiltrated the arrangement
of your values:
1) Do you experience
unreasonable fear and anxiety when faced
with big decisions?
2) Are your priorities
continually shifting, despite your best efforts
to focus?
3) Do you change your mind
about important choices you made in the past?
4) Do you often regret the
choices you made?
5) Do you put off major
decisions until the last minute?
6) Do you seem to poll
your peers to see what they think about your options?
7) Do you often engage in
lengthy deliberations over a multitude of scenarios?
8) Do you look for the
options that may provide the most predictable
outcomes?
9) In decision-making, do
you seek the most emotionally rewarding results?
10) Do you sometimes feel as if you have too many
choices?
11) Do you feel as if you have no choices at all?
12) Do you have great intentions, yet seem to
cycle in the same old habits and patterns?
13) Are you surrounded by a majority of people who
constantly change their minds?
P: So the Second Insight shows me how my values may have been
arranged by the
ego to suit its
ends—and
not mine? It also reveals how it is possible
that ‘my’ values have been crafted by the ego to
support conceptual -free-will and to refute
conscious-free-will?
MQ: That’s it. And this takes us to the
core of conceptual-free-will. When your values are selected
and organized according to the needs of the
culturally-created-self, they will certainly be
capable of creating a moderate or even a successful
material life and yet, they are hopelessly
inadequate in supporting an awakening.
evolutionary pointer: When the arrangement of your values
supports the clarity of your intention to awaken,
you will reclaim consciousness that would otherwise
be dissipated in struggling with conditioned
consequences in the future.
P: So the Second
Insight
stabilizes the conditions for awakening by
diluting the grip the unhealthy-ego has on my
choice-making process.
MQ: Yes. The Second Insight helps you to
transcend and include conceptual-free-will as part of
a new decision-making process. It does this by
allowing you to align your existing values with your desire to evolve so that you
can access conscious-free-will. Now you are capable of
making important decisions based not on the
conditioned restrictions of conceptual-free-will, but
on the liberated potential of conscious-free-will.
Subsequently, a newfound clarity emerges on previously
veiled opportunities to consciously co-create the
future.
P: To consciously co-create
the future together with other people?
MQ: Yes. So making awakened
choices becomes possible when your attention is
directed from the unhealthy-ego at the very moment of that decision, toward a value structure that
supports your intention to be free. Therefore, by
transcending and including the unhealthy-ego, you also
displace it as the primary director of your destiny.
evolutionary pointer: By generating,
identifying, and responding to awakened choices, the possibility of awakened living becomes a reality.
MQ: It is possible that you
will realize that up to this point in your life, the
outcomes of all your major decisions could never have
reached beyond the boundaries of conceptual-free-will.
Therefore, be humble and be gentle with yourself.
evolutionary pointer: Conceptual-free-will
masquerading as conscious-free-will cannot release
you from the plight of the past, no matter how hard
you try.
MQ: Discovering that perhaps the unhealthy-ego has imprisoned your values
also uncovers this tenet of the ego’s dharma: I freely choose my own experiences. The secret is that you don’t
know that those choices have always been inherently
limited by conceptual-free-will.
P: I see what
you mean. I choose my own experiences, which of course
are locked within the perimeters of
conceptual-free-will.
evolutionary pointer: When you are
unaware of your exclusive identification with the
ego and you say ‘my free will’, you are
generally referring to ego-based conceptual-free-will.
MQ: To support the limitations of conceptual-free-will, conditioning
segregates values into distinct and
concurrent groups related to various life domains such as:
Career, Home, Family, Relationships, Source of Income,
Spiritual Seeking, Hobbies and so on. Because you are
generally unaware of this arrangement, the
use of multiple sets of values to guide your choices,
within and
between each
of your life domains, is considered to be normal. For
instance, a working mother has different sets
of values associated with her spouse, her
extended family, her career, and her children.
Not only does each value
sphere have its own agenda, but each group also is
presided over by its own primary value. Because of
these multiple primary values, important decisions are
difficult to make and harder still to stand by. Can
you see the conflict that can arise at the times of
making important life decisions?
P: Yes, indeed.
©Excerpt based on the book: The Uncommon
Path, O-Books, June 2009.
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© 2008
Mick Quinn, All Rights Reserved
Mick
Quinn is the author of The
Uncommon Path and Poder Y Gracia
and the founder of Choice
for Enlightened Living Foundation. Mick's work
is quoted in The LA Times, Yahoo!, CNN
Living, and Woman's World. Gary
Renard, the best-selling (Hay
House) author said this book is "informative
and gripping". Raquel
Torrent
– Psychologist
and founder of the Spanish Integral Association
said, “Mick Quinn’s style is clear and direct -
like silence making music”. Mick lives in Utah
with wife Debora. For upcoming events visit: www.mickquinn.com
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