 People-pleasing I think is laid on so thick where you're trying to act and react and really play the part of The good citizen the good neighbor the good parent the good child the good relative, you know, we have these we want to Be polite we want to be Sweet and kind and yet there's something running underneath where it feels like we're holding up some kind of a mask Where sometimes we don't always feel like the mask that we're wearing that we were supposed to we should be wearing a mask But we don't have feelings congruent with that mask And at some point we start to question. Why do I have to keep wearing a mask? Can't I just be spontaneously authentic with my feelings just as they're coming and Let them come up and maybe that would be more healing than trying to act as I should act behave as I should behave and even feel as I should feel and People will take that even with the course those those don't jump ahead to the manual for teachers Okay, trusting honest Gentle tolerant, you know generous generous generosity open-minded And then they feel like okay, I'm gonna have to act like that all the time or Jesus is not going to be pleased Because he's got it in his manual. These are the characteristics of the teacher of God He said he's training me to be a miracle worker and a teacher of God So I gotta live up to the standards in the back of the book, but I don't feel that way always I don't feel in that state of mind that frame of mind So people pleasing in the end It's not just pleasing other people, but the people that you believe that you are you have been you're trying to live up to a people standard of of a personality self and It's very much of a strain when your emotions and your state of mind Doesn't meet the standard of the ideal person that you think you believe you should be It's like the face that you put on to the whole world and when your emotions don't match that face There's tremendous internal conflict and Jesus even addresses this in the text and he says you you cannot just change the form change the behavior When emotionally Psychologically, you're not there, you know, that's that will generate a split in the mind and the split he's saying is already there So you cannot pretend your way back to the kingdom of heaven a lot of times people will Tell me this phrase fake it till you make it, but I have never taught fake it till you make it. I'm more spontaneous Be spontaneous and authentic until You have a purification where everything comes into integrity But don't think you have to fake it till you make it. Don't judge yourself as faking it you know, just be authentic and let the emotions come up whatever they are and Then you've got something to work with you know, you can actually get into prayer You can get into your mind and take a look at that So people pleasing that's why we have our two guidelines No private thoughts and no people pleasing because we're trying to encourage in our community and for those that are practicing the teachings To become much more authentic and I always say it takes much more energy From your mind to get into repression and denial Then it does to not get into that and you have that same energy of mind available for healing that you are pulling away from the repression and denial and It's a bit frightening because it's like well if I Quit hiding my emotions and I start getting in touch with them and Openly talking about them that that's going to rock the boat In fact, it may rock the boat so much that the boat might tip over and take on water And that's the fear as you start to step away from people pleasing is that if I make such a radical change That it will disrupt My life and the lives of others around me so much that it's not going to be worth it. It is worth it I've watched these emotional storms come up that have been repressed and denied for many decades and You go through some rough waters But you come sailing through when you become authentic and you you start to allow those emotions up my life has been kind of used in kind of a role model or a demonstration or or even an Example of the possibilities because I had to face the same Issues that we're all talking about and go through the same trials temptations struggles Challenges that everyone you know the ego is just the ego and in order to transcend it and you first much to expose it And when you bring this darkness up into awareness, it is it's not a pretty sight One of the first things I had to do was to to judge My reactions to the darkness as it was coming up as I I've cried a lot. I just cried for years and years and years Crying and crying because it was almost like I was mourning. I was grieving I was facing all this darkness as was coming up into awareness instead of Sticking with the denial and repression that came before That which is why I was so shy so lonely so isolated because I was underneath I was very repressed and That was underneath all that denial and loneliness and isolation But I had to go through a purging to to bring it up. That's really what our community is about to Where it's it's not meant to be anything unique or special It's just a way of demonstrating the practice of the principles Because like I've been saying within your own mind as you perceive yourself as a person. There's a lot of psychic conflicts that go on frequently When you join with someone in a marriage or partnership or you're coupled with them you then have a Community of two which is a very tiny community. Nevertheless, it's extremely intense and 50 over 50 percent of those little communities break up Because the intensity is so strong Then when you have more than two three four five six fifteen twenty thirty whatever I Tell the statistics at over eighty five percent of groups spiritual groups break up So you go from 50 over 50 percent for the tiny little two and and then when you add numbers The chances of success go down down down not that actually there's any success to staying together in bodies But but you have to go through an emotional purge and a healing and it's just more difficult the more people that are involved because there's the temptation for ego flare-ups and sabotage and getting Kind of a torpedoed The chances go higher There and therefore Also, there's a great potential and opportunity for healing With that high temptation for sabotage because if you can be carried beyond that and you can rise up and forgive And release the judgments and the hurts and the grievances and the attack thoughts Then that's you're coming to true success, which is innocence, which is the state of mind of pure innocence