Can you remember a time when you weren’t searching?
Can you remember a time in your life when you didn’t have some aching, longing feeling going on in the background?
The feeling may have ebbed and flowed. Been stronger and weaker, even for years at a time. But you always knew from the depths of your being, that you have a connection with the infinite… a connection that seems broken or lost.
Sound familiar? Have you had the feeling, however faint, that the entire purpose of this life is re-connecting to that inner heaven, that source of your being, the I Am that Am?
When you think about it, the great fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is a lot like our search for Being.
You know instinctively that you are pristine, beautiful, marvelous beyond any measure. You know that. A lot of things complicate admitting that fact.
You made the (unconscious) decision long ago to cut ties with the I of you. That was the very first time you began to beat yourself up. And it began the downward spiral of lack and limitation.
Having the illusion of splitting away from the I, how can one ever forgive oneself? Have you noticed, when you get into beating yourself up, you find even more to beat yourself up about? It’s the phenomenon of “lint collects lint.”
Even though you are the grandest, most glorious being in the Universe, you can’t see it through the fault-finding ego.
The ego is much like the wicked witch in Snow White.
The wicked witch makes our life miserable. The wicked witch haunts us day and night whispering into our ear, making us nervous, scared, and ever suffering.
The witch is constantly telling us we’re not good enough, we don’t deserve, we’ll never amount to anything …
We know the witch is out for our demise. So, we escape to the deep, dark forest. We wander around the forest looking for the way back home to the infinite, eternal, unlimited Being that we faintly remember ourselves to be.
As we wander around aimlessly, we come upon a band of seven dwarfs. They seem a friendly sort and agree to take us in, to help us and show us the way. The dwarfs have funny names. There’s Sappy. And Teary. There’s Shaky. There’s Sweaty. There’s Boily. And there’s Puffy.
Oh yes, that’s only six. There is one more dwarf quite larger in size than the others. The name of that dwarf is Cloudy. Cloudy is the dwarf most of us humans hang out with all the time. Cloudy makes us forget all about our search for our real Self, we parted with so long ago. Cloudy even makes us forget about Cloudy.
Cloudy makes us forget just about everything.
The other dwarfs are really nice. They’re comforting. They’re all a little different. We like to hang out with them because they give us something to do. They keep us occupied. They make us feel like we’re doing something, like we’re getting somewhere.
We like them all. Sappy is a special friend because when we hang out with Sappy, we don’t have to do anything at all. We can just lie there motionless and do nothing for endless thousands of years. Sappy doesn’t mind at all. Sappy likes hanging out and doing absolutely nothing.
Sometimes, we feel bad. We feel sad. Something’s missing but we don’t remember what it is. We have this empty feeling. Can somebody please help us? When we feel like that, Teary always shows up and hangs out with us.
Teary comforts us, reassures us. For periods of time, we’ve hung out with Teary for thousands of years. Teary doesn’t seem to be able to make us happy, but Teary gives us something to do.
We don’t like Shaky. Shaky makes us…well, shake. Shaky makes us feel really out of control. We don’t know where to turn next when we’re hanging out with Shaky. We’re at our wit’s end. We don’t know what to do. We know we’re in danger—that’s what Shaky tells us— but we don’t know what to do about it.
Shaky comes and goes. Shaky can be really loud and sometimes makes us even more scared. Shaky tells us that the wicked witch is coming to take us back, stick us in the oven and cook us for all eternity.
We’re glad we have Teary when Shaky comes around. And sometimes we go find Sappy, lie down and sleep for a few centuries ‘til Shaky goes away.
Sweaty is a fun dwarf. Sweaty makes us forget all about the wicked witch and about the long lost…uh…uh See? Right now, we can’t even remember. Long lost what? Forget about it. Let’s just have some fun.
All we can think about is being with Sweaty and having some fun. What a great party it is, when we hang out with good, old Sweaty.
Sweaty is one of those dwarfs that wears on you though. Hanging out with Sweaty is fun while it lasts, but suddenly the fun ends and some other dwarf comes along. Often, it’s our pal Sappy.
Sometimes, though, Boily comes along. We like Boily. We like Boily a lot. Boily lets us blow off some steam. Boily shows us how to work up noise inside that feels like the atomic bomb is about to blow off in our head.
Boily is fascinating, but sometimes Boily scares us. We have the urge to do crazy things when we’re with Boily. We have a strong urge to hurt the others.
We yell at them. We curse them. We throw things at them. Sappy hides out. Teary is terrified and wails loudly. Shaky shakes worse than ever, but doesn’t know what else to do.
And boy do we feel justified. They deserve it. We don’t remember why, but they sure do deserve our wrath.
Sometimes after we hang out with Boily, we have to go back and hang out with Sappy or even Teary. They forgive us though.
We feel bad after hanging out with Boily. Sometimes when we’re really scared about what we did when we were hanging out with Boily, we hang out with Shaky.
Then there’s Puffy. We love Puffy. Puffy lets us get away with anything we like. It doesn’t matter.
Nobody can touch us when we’re with Puffy. We can do anything when we’re with Puffy. We can tell lies because nobody knows any better than we do. They’re all stupid.
Puffy lives way up on the hill. When we hang out with Puffy, we can look down at all those other poor, pathetic, wretched dwarfs. They don’t know what they’re doing. But Puffy knows and we know. We know everything.
One day a terrible thing happened. For no apparent reason, Puffy shoved us down the hill. We tumbled head over heels bouncing over rocks and tree stumps and limbs. It hurt. It was just awful.
We went flying by Boily, who reached out and tried desperately to catch us. We flew by Sweaty who didn’t even notice us.
Finally, we slammed hard into the bottom of the hill. Teary was there waiting for us. We knew we could count on Teary. And there was Sappy.
We just lied there on the cold, rocky ground with Teary and Sappy for endless long centuries, how many we can’t even count.
One bright morning, we opened our eyes. There he was. A king. He looked at us. And rode off swiftly on his great, white stallion.
After that, we saw the king ride by on his great white stallion every once in a while. We wondered where the king lived. Somehow, we thought we knew that king.
Some distant memory kept coming back to us.
As we thought more and more about the sight of that radiant king, we began to spend less and less time with the dwarfs. At first, they would hang out with us all the time, but we kindly asked them to leave.
The dwarfs had dominated our lives for so long, we didn’t know how we could live without them. But we kept thinking about the magnificent king on the great, white stallion. It became easier to turn our thoughts away from the dwarfs.
We longed to see the king again. The dwarfs held less and less attraction for us.
Sappy no longer seemed to interest us. Teary lost its allure. Shaky held less and less sway over us. The mere thought of the great king, and Shaky would leave immediately.
Sweaty was fun to be with, but we no longer had time for Sweaty. We invited Sweaty to leave, so we could turn our gaze back on the radiant king.
More and more, Boily seemed so weak to us. We let Boily go on his way. We no longer needed Boily.
And Puffy. What a fake. We saw the king! The king was real. Puffy would show up often. Puffy knew we saw the king and wanted to praise us. But we knew Puffy as a fraud and were no longer interested in Puffy’s games.
One day, three knights rode into our encampment. They said they were looking for us. We thought that odd. But we joined them.
We felt much different with the knights, than we did hanging out with the dwarfs. Why these knights were huge in size, powerful in their demeanor, and it was very comfortable being with them.
The knights would come along every so often. They would let us ride with them. They would show us the king’s mighty castle where they lived.
We kept (almost) remembering… we know that king from somewhere. It seems like we’ve seen that king before.
We liked being with the knights. They were so much happier than the dwarfs. We began to hang out more and more with the knights. They were good to us, and we began to feel their power rubbing off on us.
We would leave the dwarfs behind, and we would ride out and meet the three knights on the hillside overlooking the castle.
One day as we were hanging out with the three knights on the hill, we were startled when the castle gates suddenly swung open. Out came the radiant king with his flowing white robes, his great, white stallion galloping toward us. We rode fearlessly toward the king.
Were we finally going to meet the king? We got closer and closer. All at once, Cloudy was there with us. Cloudy, such a large dwarf, began to shrink right before our eyes.
As we rode closer and closer to meeting the king, Cloudy shrunk more and more. Now he looked more like the dwarf we had heard about called Wispy. Soon enough Wispy was gone too.
And now we were face-to-face with the king. And we looked at him, in total shock. We were overcome by the most stunning feeling we ever had.
There is the king! The king we remember we left so long ago.
At first, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. But now we knew. We were looking right into the face of our very own Self.
We’ve been that king all along. We had fallen asleep and gone under the spell of Cloudy. Now we were awake, and we saw clearly.
The king is me. I am the king. I Am.
The only reason we’re here is to remember the true, grand and glorious Being that we are. To wake yourself up, join us for the 7-Day Lester’s Way 25th Anniversary Retreat in Sedona, AZ (March 19 – 25).
Love,
The Release Technique Team
