To this end Peter has studied an eclectic range of sciences and disciplines. He has excelled at producing wealth from doing what he loves, beginning at age ten with a childhood business and culminating in financial freedom before age 30. Since that time he has created and instituted a programme for large numbers of chronically unemployed people, connecting them with their inspiration and guiding them out of desperation with simple tools and techniques that brings their hearts desire into reality, step by step.

Peter’s focus is on creating a steady shift in the way people live that enables them to live according to their heart in a world that offers more and more abundance brought about by the increasing choices available to us as individuals. His tools to help bring this about permit people to connect with their core desires and own them in a way that serves the greater whole, reducing and even eliminating guilt and fear that holds many people back and empowering their talents and gifts to bring about fulfillment through bold and soulful action. His main tool for awakening inspiration is having fun which opens hearts and calms minds, enabling our deepest wisdom to speak. He is quoted as saying, “if you learn to laugh at yourself, you’ll always have something to laugh at.” You can find him being sometimes silly and sometimes wise on facebook.

“Peter’s work is truly magnificent and will certainly impact the lives of millions throughout the world.” – Dr. John F. Demartini, Bestselling author of The Breakthrough Experience – A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation. Star of “The Secret.”

Teaching and speaking has always been a passion for Peter and from humble beginnings as a child, teaching adults how to play chess he has lectured to thousands both in Australia and overseas. A broad field of knowledge and an unquenchable curiosity and understanding of the pattern that underlies all things enables Peter to refine the wisdom and understanding of people from all walks of life. His teaching career encompasses teaching meditation, breathing techniques, hypnosis, quantum physics, accelerated learning, speed reading, macro economics, neurology, chess, vocational guidance, purpose coaching, sales, marketing, presentation skills and endurance techniques.

Peter coaches people in empowering themselves using their own lives as the catalyst to do so. He uses his vast knowledge of Universal Principles to awaken his clients to the pattern that their life reveals to them. Specifically Peter guides his clients to expose their deepest purpose in life and coaches them to undertake an ongoing Mission to fulfill that Purpose. His experience in mentoring and spiritual guidance permits the client to uncover deep and transformative meaning in their experience and to empower themselves to have an effect beyond the scope of their own life.

“Thank you for the instrumental role you played in helping me find the initiative to align a majorly significant part of my life. The wake up call in your programs is a gift everyone deserves!”
- Grant Campbell, “Raw Aussie Athlete” (Ultra marathon runner)

The commitment that Peter brings to his work brings about deep and lasting change in individuals through challenging them to connect to their own truth by humbling themselves to the real power that lies within them and using it to become who they really are by endeavoring to fulfill and make real their heart’s desire.

“Peter is a friend and mentor and someone that possesses great genius. Few are as dedicated to understanding what drives the universe and what part we play. From manifesting your dreams to understanding the essence of life, you will be hard pressed to find someone as dedicated and genuine with sharing his research and findings. There are no mistakes you have come across him, make use of the wisdom and tools he has.”                                          – Rowan Burn (Entrepreneur)

In the journey to awaken Purpose and Power there are clear levels that are progressed through and knowing these levels can be of great assistance in making the journey. The path from pain and ignorance to joy and bliss can be arduous and often assistance from well meaning guides who may have forgotten what the path is like can be useless, and the journey must be taken in our own unique way.

Many people think you are either on Purpose or not and that’s that, but it is not that simple, you can be more or less on Purpose and in various stages of realizing your Purpose. Of the eight levels of Purpose Realization I have identified, the first four levels tend to be the tough ones where you do all the work for little return and the last four levels tend to be the wonderful and amazing ones where you enter flow and things just seem to work for you, often with little effort at all.

We tend to get caught up in one level or another at various points of our lives yet when we are able to reach and maintain the 7th and 8th levels, life is truly wonderful.

Level 1: RESPONSIBILITY

At this level, people who may otherwise feel purposeless begin to get a sense of a deeper meaning to life and begin to assume greater power. They do this by assuming more and more responsbility for the situation they are in, whatever it may be and often no matter how tough it is to take such responsibility.  They move from making excuses to taking responsibility and eventually within this level they begin taking small but significant steps to makes changes in their own lives.

This level is often reached when people hit rock bottom in some area. Perhaps their relationships, vocation or finances are in disarray. When one’s life chronically lacks order a decision needs to be made as to whether or not something will be done. This decision point will result in the power that comes with responsibility or otherwise will result in the waste and degradation that comes with avoiding responsibility.

Level 2: ORDER

Once responsibility is taken to a certain degree a natural desire to bring order to one’s life beings to arise. Generally the most disordered or out of control area becomes the first target and it is often dealt with with ruthless efficiency. If rock bottom was recently hit, it quickly becomes clear that things have to change and these changes will generally reflect changes internal within the individual.

If health is a concern there may be major changes in diet that while they used to seem impossible to consider or undertake, are now easy and almost seem effortless. If finance has been a major problem action will be taken to get it sorted out, sometimes it may just be a case of becoming honest with oneself about the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps a circle of friends may change or a relationship may end or one may begin. If there is stress or tension in the family, changes may be undertaken to free the person of restraints and poor communication. Jobs may change, careers begun or let go of. Education may be undertaken and perhaps even a decision to connect with something larger than oneself on a spiritual level may take place.

This is a level of great activity and upheaval but although it may seem chaotic it is the beginning of getting ones life truly in order.

Level 3: RESILIENCE

At this level a new found strength is realized. It is often a strength that has been refined through ordering ones life but has not been felt until now because this strength was being spent regularly whilst getting life in order. At this level you come to rely upon your self more and more and not upon circumstances. You become more self sufficient and more aware that you have the power to change situations that do not suit your growth and development.

This is the level at which a more profound awareness of the inner self begins to develop. A sense begins to come about, or perhaps to reawaken, that the individual exists beyond the circumstances and conditions of their life. Setbacks no longer deter the person as they once would have and these setbacks instead become a tool with which to realize strength and determination. Setbacks can then also serve to clarify vision.

Level 4: CHALLENGES

At this level setbacks seem to convert into challenges. What this means is that ones personal perspective changes significantly, they are able to see beyond the face of problems that present themselves and pierce the illusion they present. Instead of judging situations or events as bad one becomes more capable of seeing them more clearly than before and can seize opportunities buried in otherwise trying circumstances.

At this level we have the chance to move from merely reacting to situations to taking purposeful action in situations. This is a significant turning point and leads to the wonderful experiences that follow in later levels.

Level 5: RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE

At level 5 the unusual and wonderful begins to occur. Once you have taken responsibility, created more order in your life and have endured setbacks long enough to be able to see them as challenges and then even as opportunities things begin to shift powerfully. At this stage people begin to experience otherwise unexplainable awarenesses. They may be doing anything at all and suddenly get an overwhelming sense that they are in the right place at the right time. It may be for no particular reason and in fact may seem to be triggered by nothing at all.

This pervasive sense of ‘rightness’ comes about from within and cannot be associated with very much at all that is going on outside of the person. This level is the beginning of being truly self directed, of being active rather than reactive. It is the basis of using authentic power rather than manipulative force. From this level we are able to move higher with much more ease and certainty. From here we will from time to time revisit the lower levels but it will always be with a greater sense of certainty and true and calm power that comes from within.

Level 6: TRANSPARENCY

When we reach level 6 there is less and less reluctance to hide anything from others. It becomes easier to make statements of fact about situations and about oneself without having to judge or fear being judged. This level will often lead us to dip into lower levels temporarily to ‘clean up’ situations that would otherwise hold us back. It becomes easier to be honest with oneself and with others that we deem worthy of our truth.

This level sees a firming of ones power due to a much greater self awareness and acceptance. There is often a leveling on the more extreme aspects of personality. Reactions are less dramatic and relationships become easier and more constant. This constancy comes from the relationship to oneself which becomes routinely calmer and more reliable. There is a deep connection within that comes from less hiding of the parts of oneself from oneself and from others.

Level 7: REALIZATION

At this level, the work done in the previous levels really bears fruit. Achieving order in ones life, trust in ones inner self and honesty with oneself enables an awareness to develop that is unavailable to the vast majority of people. Reaching this level can happen quite suddenly and when it does happen it is a singularly wonderful experience.

It is described as being able to see the vast tapestry of ones life and every trial and tribulation, every difficulty as an amazing blessing that brought you to this point of unparalleled awareness. It is an awakening that brings deep gratitude and inspiration that drives one forward to share the overwhelming gifts one has received. All manner of hurts can be dissolved in an instant and there are long periods of quiet in the mind coupled with spontaneous heart openings.

When it is first experienced it is often so powerful that many people feel they have completed their Purpose, yet this wonderful experience is only the beginning and it can be had many many times at deeper and deeper levels. Having reached this level we have the power and certainty to go into the lower levels and heal ourselves further and assist others. However the greatest benefit of reaching this level is that it is the doorway to the final stage…

Level 8: SURRENDER

At this stage words are often useless. Some idea of the experience can be understood by imagining having all your barriers to being loved gently peeled away in a caring and nurturing manner. Tears often come because there is no need to worry anymore. Fear of death is dissolved, sometimes permanently. Some experience a feeling of being underwater in a beautiful blue ocean made from tears of joy. Some feel that their chest is being opened and a warm current of joy and bliss is being poured through it like a massive waterfall cascading into ones normal life and transforming everything that it comes in contact with. Some feel fear but move forward anyway because they know it is time to allow their fear to be washed away. Forgiveness is something that comes without being asked for, it is simply there because it was never not there.

There are many ways to describe level 8 but the one thing that is constant is the feeling of surrendering to something greater than oneself, something that all at once loves you unconditionally and powerfully and gently. It is this surrender, this giving up of our control that enables us to direct real power because it is from the source of all true power. At this level our inner voice lets us know that it truly loves us because we are made of its love.

When we reach this level we can explore all of the other levels with a sense of adventure and excitement and though we may sometimes lose touch with the source of our true power we will always find it easier to return to our power. Every time we return to that which loves us endlessly it becomes even easier to return. Each time we descend into the lower levels from level 8 we are better able to take that loving power with us and use it to transform hardships with relative grace and ease. We become enrolled in a never ending journey of travelling into boundless love and spreading that love widely.

Final Words

Writing this article was profoundly moving for me. I realize that it gives the reader a good idea of why I do the work that I do. I am grateful to those who have read this far and my gratitude overflows for those who choose to take this journey to realize their Purpose by making their Purpose real.

If you would like to do a Purpose Profile you can get a complimentary Purpose Profile Assessment on our website and answer some basic questions that will help you reflect on where you are at right now and how on Purpose you really are. Your answers will come through to me if you wish to send them and I will respond and give you a brief assessment at the very least. If you would like to receive our articles by email click here to submit your email, you retain control over your own details, we don’t even see them.

I wish you a joyful journey into boundless love and the overflowing generosity that comes of it.

Peter Hagerty – Purpose Coach

Receive a complimentary audio programme that delivers enormous benefits to your life and the lives of those around you…

There are some simple things that make all the difference, they’re often called secrets. My work revolves around discovering, refining and making available those ’secrets’ or ‘leverage points’ that create incredible growth and change in people’s lives with minimal effort. The closer I can draw you to effortless effort, where everything just seems to work and luck or serendipity becomes a daily occurrence, the more fulfilled I am in my own life. I love it. If you benefit from anything I make you aware of, please let me know so I can share the joy.

There is a simple exercise that I teach people that makes almost all of their life easier and more enjoyable. It involves observing people at a deep level by appreciating them at their core. You could call it a form of meditation, or a rapport building exercise, a sales technique, a relationship enhancer, a centering process, a self empowerment visualization and a few other things. Generally it leaves those who practice it feeling deeply connected with others, overflowing with both compassion and genuine power. I love it, I do it often and it takes only a few seconds once you know how to do it.

It is one of those exercises that does so many things that it is hard to put it in a box. In my opinion it is simply an exercise that gets you deeply connected with yourself to the point of being able to approach every aspect of your life in a way is authentic and infused with integrity. The students of mine that use it frequently report that it:

> calms and clears the mind
> makes you more productive in your work
> enhances connection with family, friends, customers, romantic partners and more
> it even makes you more charming because it promotes deep caring and interest in others
> improves health because it de-stresses people, often in moments
> increases intuition and connection with something greater than ourselves
> saves money due to more consideration being taken during purchases

It is such a simple process that took me years to develop and though I have introduced it to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, I have never recorded it until now. I would like to provide a copy to you on a complimentary basis. I ask in return that you allow me to email you in a few days asking how you feel about the process and what benefits you may have obtained from it. This will in turn assist others who receive coaching from me. If you share this information with me it will help refine the process and create benefits for others around the world. If you do benefit, please share this page and/or the file with others and ask them to give me feedback.

To receive a downloadable mp3 audio file of the process, enter your details below to receive an email confirmation and be directed to the download location.

Who wants to have fun? I do. Try saying the word ‘fun’ while frowning. It is hard but if you really try and push yourself, you can do it. Now stop doing that and see what happens. You might be smiling right now. The still silent voice in you wants a few simple things for you, it wants you to do what fully engages you and makes your heart expand in such a way that you know you can never be tired of what you are doing.

The call that comes from deep within wants you to have joy and bliss and adventure and excitement. It wants you to let go of the drama you think you have to have and live the adventure you would love to have. It is all about attitude. So often we are told that we need to change our attitude and there are numerous disciplines for doing so.

Create an ‘anchor’, force yourself to smile to be happy. To be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic. Fake it until you make it. Seriously people, what a crock. It is really tough to do this stuff. I want you to take the easy way. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a challenge to disengage from guilt tripping yourself into inflicting pain so that you can gain. If you don’t know what creating an ‘anchor’ is, no need to worry we won’t be learning about it here. In fact don’t create an anchor to trigger happy thoughts, don’t make yourself happy, don’t act enthusiastic and especially don’t fake it. Being authentic is blissful and it is much easier than most people think.

Getting to this state of authentic bliss starts with seeking what you love. The single greatest test of what you love is this, is it fun? Now, fun is a funny thing. It comes in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of varieties. Most people think there are only a few kinds of fun. There’s the happy, laughing, celebrating kind and then there’s the guilty pleasure kind and then there’s the bedroom kind and then there’s the kind where you win something or other. That’s pretty much it right? What about the others?

I want to ask you to broaden your definition of fun. Think of these as fun if you can… stretching in the morning, sleeping in, waking up with someone special or waking up and having the bed all to yourself, squeezing oranges for orange juice and seeing the juice drip into the glass, seeing the sunlight shine through the window, the satisfying feeling of tying your shoelaces nice and tight, having a choice of what to wear, the excellent feeling you get when you get paid, the feeling of spending money, the feeling of receiving a package in the mail, having a friend make fun of you, being there for a friend, seeing your family or successfully avoiding them, getting that job you wanted, taking on challenges in that job, learning something fascinating, accepting how little you really know, being part of something larger that expands you, solving a problem, getting carried away with telling a story, watching someone really lose it and be ok about it and the list goes on. Frankly, fun can be had with so much more than we think. One lady I know discovered that the most fun she had was when she was vacuuming the floor. This became a meditation and her whole life began to shift as her heart opened. Maybe I will tell you the full story of the vacuuming lady later, but know this, as I recall it I have tears in my eyes and I love it. It is bliss. It is fun.

What about the things that are not fun? Sometimes what we see as a drama today will be remembered as an adventure tomorrow. The sooner you are able to see your dramas as adventures the more enjoyable your life will be. This is the beginning of wisdom, we see life as an adventure to be lived and loved. It can be done. The secret is to step into the unknown, but not too far, to leave our old self behind but bring our wisdom with us. One of my mentors used to say, the only thing they cannot take away from you is your wisdom and your love, he seemed to bring it up whenever we had a conversation. I imagine that he saw what was going to happen in my life, I held onto those words as I lost a fortune and gained deeper experience of the depths of my heart.

We have wisdom in us, we all do. Sometimes we ignore it, sometimes we pay attention to it. Some would say that when we have ‘bad things’ happen that it means that we ignored our own wisdom. Everyone has their own criteria for what a ‘bad thing’ or a mistake actually is. Years later a bad thing or the most horrific mistake may seem like the best thing in the world. From my personal life, I always planned on having two children and I was very clear about it. To cut a long story short, I simply cannot imagine life without my third daughter. Among many things, she teaches me how to simply go for what you want. She shows me that I actually can handle more joy than the massive amounts that the first two girls have given me.

The wisdom we have in us, that still quiet knowing that whispers the truth despite our delusions seems to have understanding well beyond what we can imagine. It leads us down paths that may or may not seem the best or the safest or the most healthy at the time but which in the end often seem wondrous.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” –Shakespeare, Hamlet

One of the few things you can be certain of is that there is much beyond your understanding. To argue points of philosophy with people over what should or should not work in your life or their life or how they should live or not live does not seem to yield reliable outcomes. We can lament the sorry state of the world until the cows come home but there will always be different ways of looking at things. Those cows I mentioned will be gladly devoured by some and revered as sacred by others. So it is my intention to keep this all very simple.

My intention is to help guide you toward your own inner wisdom that seems to want you to engage inactivities that you think are meaningful and that you feel fulfilled by. The point is this, following only your head or only your heart just doesn’t seem to cut it. After years of working with hundreds of people on bringing their inspiration into the real world, after doing it myself, I have found that you need both. If this sounds incredibly basic to you, as though everyone knows that, fantastic! When the rubber hits the road this kind of clarity of understanding does not always come into the real world. If needing both your head and your heart does not seem like something you can accomplish, perhaps you would benefit from doing a Purpose Profile.

In my practice I coach people to delve into who they really are and what they really want. It’s the core principle of my work because frustrated desires cause innumerable difficulties in people’s lives. Invariably I end up dealing with the ways that people are lying to themselves about what they want.

All in all people are nowhere near as honest as they think they are. When they cannot make sense of their lives it is generally because they have gone unconscious about the true nature of their motivations.

There’s the woman who thinks she doesn’t love her husband anymore because the passion is gone, but when she identifies with her real desires she realizes that she too wants to run a business and provide service to people. When she lets go of the limitations she believed she had to accept and actively chooses to tone down being a housewife and go into business, suddenly the passion returns.

Then there’s the female executive who can’t respect her husband because he’s an artist who makes little money, she builds up resentment toward him because she is providing the lifestyle that he is so addicted to. When she let’s go of the belief that she has to provide that lifestyle and stops believing her fears that he is only with her for that lifestyle she can see that he would be happy just as long as he was with her.

The most destructive lies we tell ourselves are about how big a compromise we have to make in order to get what we really want. At the core of it we all have some basic desires that are universal, we fulfill them in different ways of course but ultimately we all want to be safe, secure and free to express who we are and be loved for it.

Do yourself a favour and stop lying about whether you can or can’t fulfill your desires. You can, otherwise you would not have them. You may not be able to fulfill them in the way you first concoct but there is always a way. Sometimes our impossible desires are there to make us grow. Perhaps it is impossible for us, as we are, to fulfill our desires but perhaps our real desire is to become more than we are.

Who will you have to become to have what your heart wants? The truth is you can be whatever you want. The lie is that you have to do it in a predictable and acceptable way. If you want to be a movie star, perhaps your real desire is to be welcomed by lots of people who really love you. If you want to be a successful business person, perhaps your real desire is to employ people and contribute to their lives by giving them direction.

There are a myriad of ways to get what you want once you connect to the real core and essence of what it is. This is because the form is often not what we first expect. I always thought I wanted to be a adventure novelist but what I really wanted was to inspire people to make their lives an adventure of self discovery. If I had tried to do this through being a novelist I would have been doomed to failure, but doing it as a coach is incredibly fulfilling.

Once these emotions are processed to a good enough degree, it is possible to simply surrender to what could be called a higher plane or higher vibration. This is done with the simplest of all methods. Dealing with emotions is complex and time consuming, different emotions require different strategies and different intensities require different degrees of focus and some require other people and some require solitude. The complexity is never ending. Once we process this to a certain degree though we can use the simplest method of all to connect to the core self.

The method is simply this… listen to yourself, rest in yourself and surrender to the greater version of you that is really you. This is simply vibrating at a higher frequency by choice. If you think this is too difficult or too complicated you are set to do some more of the work to deal with the so called lower emotions. You can contact me about this if you have questions. If it feels natural and easy to listen to yourself, go do it.

The dream world is so enticing and alluring, anything can happen there, the imagination is the only limit. I see you, I know you’ve been there. The star of your own adventure, loved and adored by all. Perhaps one day I’ll get to be your sidekick!

Fantasies and dreams are the beginning of creating meaning in our lives. Our latent desires begin to become real there, but it is only the beginning. What better way to drift off to sleep at night than to wonder at what might be, at what stimulating and fulfilling experiences we might have. Trusting that they could happen is so relaxing and reassuring. Some of the best affirmations I ever did involved actively dreaming about what I would love to happen as I surrendered to sleep. If I could really feel it in my body it often meant it was driven by my heart.

Dreaming about it and fantasizing is so much more rewarding if you take some action during the day. If you “dare to dream them into being,” your fantasies become so much more rewarding. Taking steps toward making them real makes them so much more real in your mind. Though the Law of Attraction is a little passe these days, of course it is a valid Law that has an effect. Though the idea that you can make things happen with simple thought is a little ludicrous, focussing on what you want and feeling in your body and heart makes a big difference, hopefully a difference big enough to bring about action.

“My heart holds the dream . . . . My mind holds the picture . . . . My body holds the action . . . . and inspiration is my fuel . . . ” – Faith Anderson

Consider your most heartfelt dreams could be dreamed into being if you dream them often enough to believe them and take action on them. Choose your favourite desire, the one that most engages your mind and opens your heart, the one that makes you feel both powerful and calm. Focus on it and choose to pursue it not for what you will get but who you will become. Imagine this greater self and take a hold of that and never let go. It’s who you are.

If this appeals to you, it probably indicates that you have an unquenched desire to do something significant. You may want to make a massive difference in your world so that you know you will have something to be proud of, even though you know it didn’t come from you, only through you.

I realize now that the last few years have been spent creating a system to guide latent Bold Souls through the kinds of challenges they might experience when they begin trying to make a massive difference in their world. Working with many people on refining their Purpose has shown me that embarking on a journey to your core can be arduous. It is so often idealized as a perfect journey of ease and grace but those who have been through it have often forgotten the experience. Like a woman who experiences childbirth and swears that she will never do that again, only to espouse a deep desire for more children perhaps less than a year later.

The journey I undertook was unexpected and adventurous. They say adventure is hard to distinguish from drama when you’re in the middle of it, but in hindsight you relish it. In fact I believe I may have said that just now. The end result is that I have adopted philosophies from all walks of life, spiritual traditions and texts, myths and legends and from my own direct unequivocal experience.

Subjecting myself to my own methods proved that they worked, not because I am so clever, they work because they are based in principles well beyond my power to change or influence. My learning came thick and fast when I surrendered to the process and this only happened when I realized that real soulful boldness gives you everything you want and the cost seems high but is incredibly low. You just have to let go of the things you think you want and embrace what you really want. When it comes to letting go of what you think you want, it seems that the universe is unfair and has a sick and twisted sense of humor. Once you let go, you wonder why you ever held on.

This may all sound like a load of codswallop but if you feel there is something you would like to bring to the world even though you don’t know what it is, and you know there will be trials and you feel it any way, you are probably a latent Bold Soul. If this is you, reply to this post.

19th to 21st March 2010
plus regroup on 18th of April

Know the Secrets of Courageous Men

It’s time to discover where your true self and your life is truly taking you. Become empowered by humbling yourself to your deep inner truth, that which cannot be denied or taken for granted.

Be Challenged by other empowered men to raise your standards and your clarity and determination to bring your life to new heights of excellence. The masculine grows through challenge.

“Thank you for helping me find the initiative to align a majorly significant part of my life. Keep bringing your amazing talents to the people. The wake up call in your programs is a gift everyone deserves!”  -       Grant Campbell (The Raw Aussie Athlete, Ultra Marathon Runner) http://bit.ly/5omfaX

The Awakening Warrior Weekend is carried out in 12 Stages. Stages 1-10 are carried out over a two day period and Stages 11-12 involve taking your lessons into your every day life.

Stage 1: Take Stock – Get honest with your strengths and weaknesses, success and failures.

Stage 2: Call to Action – Be challenged to declare what you have always known you wanted to achieve.

Stage 3: Reluctance and Resistance – Explore how you sabotage your own efforts and give into difficulties unnecessarily.

Stage 4: Hearing the Call – Reflective exercises to tune into what your heart and soul want for your life.

Stage 5: Committing to Your Truest Desire – Aid one another in tuning into what you deeply desire beyond all superficial distractions.

Stage 6: Threshold Challenge – Undertake a seemingly impossible physical challenge to refine your deepest desire and prove you have what it takes to explore your authentic self.

Stage 7: Awakening Warrior – Confront your fears, learn to channel your power, free yourself from your past.

Stage 8: Supreme Ordeal – Undertake a unique and sacred challenge that will test you physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and awaken you to such a degree that will prove you have been asleep your whole life.

Stage 9: Rest and Reflection – Recuperate after your Supreme Ordeal and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

Stage 10: Preparation for Entering the World – Settle on individual challenges to take into the world over the next 30 days. Become part of a system of accountability that will ensure you begin growing into the man you are meant to become.

Stage 11: Challenges and Setbacks – Apply what you have learned to your real life. This is where what you have learned makes a real difference to your real world.

Stage 12: Review and Forward Planning – Create structures and systems of feedback so that you can continue to grow as a man through out your life.

In the weekend we employ the use of:

• Meditation
• Sitting in Circle (Giving and Receiving Feedback from other Insightful Men)
• Physical Challenges – Going beyond your limits and working your edge. All physical challenges are tailored to the health and fitness levels of participants.
• Mental Challenges – Focussing Techniques and Presence Exercises
• Emotional Challenges – Expressing and managing your emotions in healing and powerful ways
• Spiritual Challenges – Tuning into your own personal truth

Do not choose to be one of the worlds many directionless and disempowered men. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly robbed boys of their opportunities to do what they need to in order to step into manhood.

• Awaken natural and effortless confidence.
• Face the tests of the world without flinching.
• Uncover your unique gift to the world.
• Conquer fear and hesitation.
• Honour both yourself and other men
• Honour women.
• Determine your true direction in life and undertake it.

During the weekend participants will undergo many challenges to connect them with their real power and put them in touch with the invisible power of the masculine that wants to:

• Make an authentic difference in the world.
• Inspire women.
• Produce real value and service to others.
• Uphold high standards of conduct and behaviour to serve our children.
• Refine and empower other men.
• Live honestly and with integrity.
• Be respected in life and honoured in death.

Many of the practices on this weekend are secret and reflect the deep nature of this work. They all work together to serve adult males into awakening and integrating the energy of the True Warrior.

The True Warrior uses his energy boldly and confidently to ensure that the welfare of future generations is assured through:

• Serving the world from deep within his core.
• Letting go of fears and doubts as his life continues to expand.
• Consistently conquering challenges that the world tests him with.
• Knowing his purpose and refining and testing it always.
• Service that creates wealth for himself and those he cares for.
• Standing up for standards of conduct from himself and from others.
• Keeping his life ordered and disciplined so that he may reap the rewards of such efforts and pass them onto future generations.

Date: 8pm Friday 22nd January to 5pm Sunday 24th January 2010

Place: Imago Forest Farm, 550 Mt Royal Rd, Carrowbrook, NSW

Click here to find out more about Imago Forest Farm

Provisions: All food provided. You may be responsible for bringing your own tent or a friend with a tent to share.

Please fill out the application form below to register your interest.

Life is not difficult, life is easy. Life is bliss and joy and endless celebration. What is difficult is resisting life. Not going with the flow sees the flow of the universe turned against you, or rather it sees you turning against the flow of the universe. Imagine having all of creation against you. Some of us don’t have to imagine, for some of us this has happened. For some of this is happening. Many of us even believe that life isn’t meant to be easy when in truth it is saying no to life that is difficult.

This book is about saying yes. It is about saying yes to who you really are. It is about reclaiming your own integrity and deep natural sense of empowerment. This is an ambitious book, but it is not as ambitious as the secret desires of your own precious heart.

There is a massive lie being told worldwide. This lie says that we are here to suffer, that we are somehow guilty of something, sometime, somewhere, somehow and that as a result we deserve to be punished. Some religions even try to convince us of this. If only we act normal enough and have normal enough desires and don’t rock the boat we might be ok. The world is full of weird people who act normal. After working with hundreds, thousands of people and having them pour out their deepest, darkest secrets and most embarrassing fears it is clear that we all have some things in common.

For the most part we fear that we are not subscribing to a pattern or mould that we are supposed to fit into and are being punished for not fitting into it. What’s more we are supposed to know what the pattern or mould actually is and the fact that we don’t is a reason for self condemnation and evidence that we do not fit the mould. We try to trust sources outside of ourselves and ignore the only authority that truly counts, our own deep truth.

Journeying into your own deep truth will be an adventure. It is the ultimate life experience, to choose to more fully live life in each and every moment. To delve into the darkest depths of our own soul and face the demon guardians of our own creation that block the way and then to finally emerge victorious. Then to heroically take it one step further and share the treasures we have found there with the world, enriching all about us who wonder what it is that we have that they haven’t. All the while we stand as a shining example of the bounty to be found within.

This book is a guide, a set of clues as to what you will find. It is not a poetic story that will reveal it’s secrets once you have discovered them for yourself. It is not designed to make the author seem wonderfully clever after you have completed parts of your own journey because the author knew what was in store all along and gave unfathomable clues all the way through. It is not a pretense at helping you. This book is an actual guide. It is a manual. It is the result of years of painstaking effort at refining methods for explaining the mystical realms of a truly adventurous ‘heart wide open’ life. It is the product of working with the most experienced and qualified mystics and the most uneducated and otherwise misguided of our society and everyone in between.
I have written this book so that it can be understood, again and again and again.

Scott Peck said that once the fact that life is difficult is understood and accepted, it no longer matters. This is because understanding this requires that we surrender to life, and then life is easy. Logically this does not make a whole lot of sense but if life is ruled by logic, it is often a logic well beyond our understanding.

Acceptable Conditions

Remember Lester Burnham? He is the main character of that wonderful movie, “American Beauty.” At the beginning of the movie it is obvious that Lester is not a happy man. He does all the right things, he has a stable job, he doesn’t challenge his wife or confront his teenage daughter too much. He is nice. He is also desperately unhappy. Early in the movie in an internal monologue he says, “I have lost something, I‘m not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated, but you know what, it’s never too late to get it back.”

There are so many people out there who believe that life is about achieving what could be called, “Acceptable Conditions,” as though getting to the point where you want for little is the entire point of your life. It is as though we actually think that there will be an end to our wanting. Perhaps at some future time we will have happy hearts because we have the things that our head decided would make us happy.

If you have never had great riches, great sex, a hot body, the latest sports car, are you really qualified to decide on whether or not these things will make you happy? You would be the least qualified person to ask. There is no intention to disparage these things, for some people this will bring happiness, for most though, they will bring emptiness and with good reason. But more on that later, there is a deep value in that feeling of emptiness that should not be dismissed.

Let’s not neglect Lester Burnham. He had all the right things, all the right ingredients for happiness except perhaps for joy. We have all had experiences of joy in our life, if not I implore you to read on. Joy is something that is hard to get a hold of. There is no guarantee of joy, you can have all the right things like Lester Burnham, you can behave how you are told you are supposed to and still, no joy. If this was your life you could easily be accused of not having gratitude, not having an appreciation for the riches of what is laid out before you. If all the riches of the world do not stir your heart, do not implore you to expand and take a chance at really opening yourself up and feeling life pulsing through your veins then perhaps you are an ungrateful wretch. However gratitude cannot be forced, it must be chosen and it can only come from something that feels as though it is within you. When felt deeply enough it grows and soon you will feel it all around you and in time all things will give you joy, but you do not get to decide how you will get to this joy.

Wasted Wisdom

Words of wisdom are often wasted. Take this statement that is so often bandied around, “The answers you seek lie within.” To whoever said that, thanks so much, it’s useless. If the answers are within, why am I listening to you? Honestly to those who know this to be true, it is redundant, completely unnecessary, not required and self-evident. If you don’t know this to be the truth then looking within is not something you will understand nor see the benefit of, so what is the point of telling you to look within? Just say thanks for wasting 3 seconds of my life reading this useless advice, then move on.

What’s more, if you know how valuable it is to look within there will come a time when you forget, and even if someone tells you to look within you are unlikely to hear it. Chances are you will assume you already know this little tidbit and will ignore the reminder. At this point you should probably get your tarot cards read, your I-Ching thrown, coffee cup read, runes analyzed and they will all say the same thing. Wait for it, they will all say in one form or another… look within.
What is the way out of this predicament? Well, it seems life has a magic formula to help you understand. If you don’t look within it will take everything away from you so that you have no choice. Sounds promising huh? Well guess what, there is another way but unfortunately if I tell you right now, you will either not understand or assume you know it. So I am going to use the rest of this book to take everything away from you that stops you from understanding. You have permission to dislike, perhaps even hate, me, I am used to it.

Let’s get started.

Moods and Mistakes

What constitutes life for most people is really nothing more than a waiting game. We wait for circumstances to be right so that we can start living and then on our death bed we lament lost opportunities and wish we had taken more chances. Elderly people have an unexpected perspective on mistakes, they generally wish they had made more. They wish they had really lived. To live is to risk, to live is to breathe fully and deeply and experience all the emotions that arise. To live is to cry and let it feel as if your body is being pulled apart by the gut wrenching sobs and go through it until you come to the still quiet place inside, look around, wonder what you were crying about and then go and party.

“Our moods do not know themselves.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we are sad we often think we will not ever know happiness and when we are deeply connected with someone we feel we will not ever feel alone. It is as though our moods make us ignorant of the broader experience of life, it’s ebb and flow and sudden turns, reversals of fortune and strokes of good luck.

The solution is not to try and stop this flow, it is inevitable. This may sound incredible but it is possible to experience joy in any moment and under any circumstance. All sorts of horrors may spring to mind and you may, this moment, doubt what I have said. It is all about perspective. In my consulting practice it is very common, in fact commonplace that after a few sessions my clients, many of whom have extraordinary turmoil in their outer lives, report not knowing quite how they are feeling and only stating that they like it and want more. They have described it as an inner peace, as energy spilling over, as love, as good humour, as sweet sadness, as deep certainty, as being in the flow of life and many others things all of which are talking about one indescribable state.
This is the sort of state that is generally only attainable with years of meditation or stoic focus on one’s spiritual path. The process that I will describe in the coming pages is one that makes use of all the things in your life. Good and bad, wanted and unwanted. Everything that is happening in your life is already attempting to wake you up to a greater life. There is a destiny within you that is calling you to expand yourself and those around you.

This expansion can take any form at all. It could mean better health or more attractiveness or acceptance of your body. It could mean handling your money better or stepping up into serving the world in a way that means you will earn more. It could mean meeting new people or reacquainting yourself with otherwise forgotten friends. It could mean deeper connection with your family, starting a family or perhaps forming a family like bond with some of your friends. It could mean taking on employment that is more meaningful to you regardless of what the salary is.

It could mean doing a job that was once tortuous and feeling joy in the humble service you provide. It could mean learning something that you’ve always wanted to. It could mean attaining a truer connection with yourself or something bigger than yourself such as the Universe, Mother Earth, your community, city or country or whatever you might call God.

Ultimately when you discover what it is that you secretly desire, your whole perspective is likely to change. Sometimes there is some pain, at this point but it is a welcome pain a little like stretching in the morning. If you think about it, stretching after you wake up has some pain attached to it but it is so expected and accepted that it hardly registers as pain at all. This is the part where things begin to become strange and unusual. This is an exciting stage because it means that the status quo of your life is about to evolve and either be cast aside or so elegantly built upon that your life simply cannot stay the same.

At this time all things can change. Many will stay the same and some may not change much and simply be enhanced. The level of drama that will occur here is determined by how much you have been ignoring your own truth until now. If you have been compressing and strangling your heartfelt desires then you can expect some upheaval and if you know why it is happening you will not have much issue with it. In fact you are likely to love it. If you have been relatively true to yourself you will know that adventure is afoot and you may find yourself smiling at these words. If on the other hand you feel fear, I ask you if obeying that fear means shutting down on yourself.

“Contrasting Urges”

Life is full of paradoxes. It is true that ‘fortune favours the bold’ but on the other hand fools rush in where angels fear to tread. These contradictions, when put simply, serve as advice to use discernment. Sometimes one form of behavior is suitable and sometimes another.

You have two basic contrasting urges in your life. The first urge is the urge for comfort. You want life to be safe and to work for you and not bruise you or upset you. The second urge is the desire to grow. You want life to be adventurous and fulfilling, you want to get somewhere, you don’t want things to be the same all the time.

Your purpose is not comfort. Comfort is a reward for following your purpose and comfort comes in many forms. Sometimes what was once a comfort is a prison. For instance you may want to buy a motorized massage chair and upon having it you love and enjoy it. It is a wonderful thing, yet as time passes so does your enjoyment of it. It becomes old, perhaps you want the new model but you are stuck with this one and after all it doesn’t make your life exciting does it? Perhaps you have spent too much time in that chair and instead you dream of sitting precariously on a ski lift instead. The call of adventure beckons. When you answer it and take your chances and grow well beyond your limits in one way or another, suddenly the comfort of the massage chair is sweet once again.

“A boat is safe in the harbor. But this is not the purpose of a boat.” – Paulo Coelho

There is no one answer, both comfort and challenge are part of life. In fact many people say that life has no meaning. It is empty and meaningless and it has only the meaning that we ourselves give it. We can theorize and philosophize forever and a day and no one will be any the wiser. After all is said and done there will be a desire stirring in your heart and there will be resistance in your head when it comes to fulfilling it. This resistance will usually represent itself in your thoughts and your feelings and if you pay too much attention to them, the desire in your heart will be drowned out by ‘respectable logic.’

Usually the mundane obscures the magical. Most people’s lives are truly examples that life is perhaps empty and meaningless. They have lost something and they don’t know how to get it back. Something is missing and they don’t know what it is. They try to figure it out and find reasons why they should do this or that but nothing quenches that thirst or satisfies that hunger… because it is a hunger to be irrational, to be ludicrous and break the bonds of what is expected or safe and go for something that the heart wants. Why does the heart want it? Simply because it wants it. The heart is not all that interested in logic, it is interested in growth. The mind may scream it is meaningless and pointless but the heart wants what it wants and beckons you to go where it will lead you.

Most people are not even aware that there is a whispering heart patiently guiding you through the noise of your mind and the din from the outside world. They go to work to make money to feed and clothe themselves so that they can go to work. It is empty and meaningless and they do what’s right and produce offspring to be trained into walking that treadmill because that’s what you do and that’s who we are.

Common Everyday Drudgery

If you are lucky, you will have a passion. If you are like most you will have only duty and obligation and the empty solace taken from the belief that you will be rewarded one day. Meanwhile there are others who go about an otherwise ordinary existence with joy in their heart. They are few and far between these days.

Many people out there have acquired material things thinking they would make them happy only to discover it is a never ending treadmill that ultimately gets you nowhere. Others having taken the spiritual path find themselves isolated from the world and unable to effect it in any way that makes a difference, that holds meaning for them. Their wise words are heeded in churches, mosques, temple and ashrams but don’t make it into common every day practice.

Common everyday people listen to words of wisdom and may even share them with their neighbours, family and friends but when it comes to acting upon it in their own lives it usually takes a crisis to bring out the best in them. The courageous ones are the ones who decide to act it out in their lives on a daily basis. The heroic ones act it out from one second to the next.

The materialistic types commonly have effectiveness in the world but an absence of meaning. The spiritual types commonly have an abundance of meaning and little effectiveness. These are broad generalizations and are true only to an extent but it’s a great extent because being deeply in touch with oneself and using it to effect the world in a deeply meaningful way is an incredibly rare thing.

Wake Up Calls

A wake up call is a message from your outer world that is trying to get you to notice something. It can be anything from a sense of déjà vu to an overdue notice from the phone company or at worst it could be something tragic. The outside world challenges you so that you can refine your life and live more purposefully.

We are getting wake up calls all the time. They can be either soft and quiet words of advice coming from within or they can be dramatic and perhaps even fatal. A client of mine was having a wonderful time creating plans for her business and was obsessed with the possibilities of this and that and spent enormous amounts of time ruminating about what could be. Luckily she received a wake up call that told her that it was time to get her feet on the ground and take some action. There had been hints such as some money issues and some minor conflicts and these were not heeded. So she drew a wake up call to her in the form of a bus, and it nearly killed her.

She was attending a coaching programme with me the next day and I sensed something was up the moment I saw her. I asked her if she had a rude shock and being used to receiving pertinent but otherwise unexpected questions from me she confessed her general state of obliviousness by sharing it with the group and told us about the bus. It truly had nearly been the end of the line for her.

The way it works it this, life wants you to be conscious and grow. It wants you to be looked after and grow. It wants you to be challenged and grow. So if you push yourself too hard it will serve you and make you sick and force you to stay in bed and admit your humanity. If you stay in bed too long it will bring bills to motivate you to get your behind into gear and do something for other people so they will pay you and enable you to pay others who do things for you, such as provide electricity.

These wake up calls are there to keep us going toward our goal, even if we don’t know what it is. This idea is so intricate and mysterious that examining it properly involves looking at all of life and it’s myriad patterns but there is one simple key to unraveling it all. It is so simple that were I to mention it now it would seem silly and inconsequential, so I am going to employ my flare for the dramatic and say ‘stay tuned.’ For the moment suffice it to say, life wants you awake and pay attention. It wants you enjoying the comforts that life has to offer and exploring the opportunities it lays before you.

“Pay attention or pay with pain.”
- Unknown

The Living Dream

What if you were an actor in a play? What if you were only pretending to be here and had chosen to forget that it wasn’t all there was? When we go to a movie we choose to believe for a little while that what is on the screen is the reality we are experiencing or witnessing. Isn’t it fun to get completely caught up in a movie and forget yourself? This ability helps life to be exciting. Getting lost in the reality of life is what makes it interesting. However staying lost can make it painful and then it is as though life uses increasingly serious methods to wake you up.

“You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
- Edgar Allen Poe

There will be more on this later in the book. It is important to consider that a lot of your life is made up, it is pretend. I want to make the point though that while many philosophers and some spiritual teachers will tell you that ‘all is Illusion’ and that ‘things are not real’ they are missing an important point. If we are in a dream, if it is all pretend, if it is only illusion, then what is the purpose of this living dream? Simply because it is a dream within a dream does not mean it has no value. This dream that we are all having is important and valid. How do you know this to be true? If it weren’t valid you would not be doing it.

“Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.” – Richard Bach

Death and Dying

Is it enough for you to watch Dead Poet’s Society once in a while, shout “Seize the Day!” or it’s Latin equivalent, “Carpe Diem!” getting all excited about your grand plans and then going to bed that night and forgetting your firm but momentary resolve to do something significant? Have you ever had a grand intention and then let yourself forget about it, because it is just too hard to get out of bed or make that tough phone call or ask that wonderful person who makes your heart stir to go on a date? Each time you do this you are dying a little, your life force gets sapped away every time you make a promise to your own heart and don’t fulfill it.

There is something about life that we all try to deny. Life ends. One day you will curl up and die. If you die well you will die doing something you love or being around people you love or both. Personally I would prefer to go out while teaching people about how to experience true joy and share it with each other and see my kids and preferably grand children in the audience. You know what, I would rather my kids and their kids were out there doing something deeply meaningful and completely in the moment. It brings tears to my eyes to imagine that they might be providing service to someone with joy in their heart at simply being of service. This may not be your purpose though. Yours could be making billions of dollars and appreciating all the comforts the world has to offer. Yours might be to be humble and sweep the streets, it could be to enable women to experience their true beauty or accept their inner doubts. It could be anything.

“What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.” – The Dalai Lama

If you live your life as though you are afraid to die, you are already dead. This does not mean you should go and do such crazy things that ensure you will end up dead anyway. Sometimes making the most of life is about facing death, sometimes it is about protecting yourself, sometimes it is about caring for people and sometimes it is about telling people to get out of your life.

If you think you know what life is about you are probably just about to be proven wrong.

Life is contradiction. The flow of life is pure joy. When you are in the flow you wonder if you could ever be outside of it, when you are out of it you wonder if that flow and that joy every really existed. To those who like to theorize about the joy of life, everything is merely an illusion to be dismissed, a temptation not to be indulged. When you are truly in the flow of life, every moment is worth an eternity. If you have enough of those moments you get to recognize the thin path back to that state. Then when you are in that state you can be productive, more than ever before. You can bring that joy inside into a form that can be shared with others.

Questions

This first chapter is coming to an end. I have talked about how life is for many people and I have alluded to the fact that it doesn’t have to be that way. To get there from here you have to take some steps and ask yourself some tough questions, questions that the mind has enough trouble with so that it needs to turn to your heart. Yes, that’s right, ask your mind hard questions so that it has trouble answering them and has no choice but to tune into your heart.

“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?” – Charles Schulz

Ask yourself this. Are you really happy? Are you so happy that the question seems silly? Do you only think you are happy? Did you come up with lots of reasons why you are happy or do you just simply know it? Do you find yourself bubbling over with joy or calm yet feel composed and powerful? Do you feel bliss at every breath? Do these questions irritate you? Do you cry and laugh because it is beautiful?

Is life drudgery? Do you avoid enormous parts of your life? Do you waste a lot of energy convincing yourself that everything is ok? Do you live in never ending hope that is never fulfilled? Is there a part of you that can’t wait until it is all over?

Are you prepared to sacrifice some of your comforts in order to really live life? Do you want to break out of a self imposed prison but don’t know how? If your life did not change would you begin to die inside?

Are you relatively happy but know that there is always more joy to be had? Are you determined to live your life to the fullest with courage in your heart and presence of mind?

“The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.” -Dr. John F. Demartini

What is the one question that you would be willing to spend your entire life trying to answer even if you knew you could never answer it? What exploration of life are you here to undertake? What way of being or doing or having is it your mission to discover?