"Moving On"

by Patrick Quanten MD

Everyday I hear people say, "I am moving on. I am leaving this behind." I try hard to believe them, but I see the majority of them struggle with what I perceive to be the same problems they have vowed to leave behind. Yet, these are sincere people. They wouldn't lie, not to themselves, not to anyone else. Some of them even "know" a lot about the realities of Life and yet their want and determination does not seem to match their actions. What is going wrong - if that is the right word?

Moving on seems to have something to do with "movement". When we are on the move, we are "moving on". Sure. And as Life moves on all the time - it never stands still - we are constantly moving on. So it can't be a problem of inertia, it must be a problem of relative movement. Just as a boat can do ten knots, the speed measured in relation to the water, it can be standing still, as measured as its relative position to the coastline, when it is held back by an opposing tide of ten knots. Maybe most of us are on the move and yet standing still in a similar way.

As things are changing all the time we are constantly moving as measured in relation to time and space. We are all getting older every second of our lives, but we think we are the same as we were yesterday. Sometimes we even think we are still the same person as we were on our wedding day! Others can tell you for definite that we are not. From the inside there doesn't seem to be any change, just as there isn't in your position on the sea in the scenario mentioned above as seen from within the boat. Seen from the position of a water droplet, however, you are moving all the time. Although the water in the river never stops flowing, the river doesn't change position.

Does our constantly moving necessarily result in a change?

A tethered animal may be walking all the time but is not going to move beyond the boundaries of its rope, no matter how much walking it does. Are we all tethered animals?

What is it that keeps humans in one and the same place? What is it that restricts our movements? What are those pins to which we are so attached?

The things that stop us from going beyond our boundaries make us exclaim "I can't do that!" or "I'm not allowed to do that!" We all have them. We grow up with boundaries set for us by society, represented by people like parents, teachers, police, religious leaders, doctors, and so on. Each time someone points out the edge of acceptability, a big stalk is driven into our pasture. The limits of where we are allowed to roam are set out by authorities, people and organisations that we have given the power to limit our lives. Without those limitations life would certainly be chaotic and unmanageable. At least, that's what they tell us!

If you don't fence the herd in you can never be sure where it will go next, what it will do next. Wild animals can freely roam the land, doing what they need to do and being only limited by their own experiences of danger and hunger. They seem to be doing well without the limitations of electric fences around their lives. However, this means that nobody has control over their movements and if someone wants and needs that control than they will have to put up those fences. The nature of the beast is such that it will not willingly accept the fences and the restrained, and it will certainly try and break out. This can be overcome by convincing the animal that the fence is there, not to keep them in, but to protect them from horrible dangers on the outside. It keeps the enemy out, rather than keeping you in.

A prison erected for your own safety has become your home. You are under house arrest because it is much better for you and I, as the prison warden, offer my services freely, out of the kindness of my heart, to protect and look after you. You, of course, don't know if the world outside your fences actually is as dangerous as you have been told, because you have never been there. It would be foolish to go there and find out for yourself, as you may never return alive or may get badly damaged. Or not. But who is brave enough to go and find out? What's more, how many people have returned to tell the story? Very few. Surely, that confirms your biggest fears.

Would anybody return to hell once they have found Paradise?

Would anybody return to prison once they have freed themselves?

So, inside you continue to live being afraid of the dangers that surround you. Yet, the truth will never be known to you unless you step over the fence and explore the outside yourself.

What keeps you locked in is Fear.

You stay where you are because you are too afraid of the unknown. As long as the unknown remains the unknown you cannot have an understanding of it. Consequently, your fear will remain.

Living amongst alligators or snakes, learning their behaviour, makes them less fearsome. We all accept the environment we grow up in as "normal" and find it a lot less scary than the environment someone else has grown up in. A Lap will find it difficult to survive in Kenya, and vice a versa. City dwellers and country folk are not likely to happily swap places. The dangers of the back streets of a large city are totally different from those of the millionaire's palaces. Not being able to understand sows the seeds of fear and anguish about the unknown. And the only way to really understand is to push your fear aside and walk right into the unknown.

Face your fear and do it!

But what is preventing us from doing just that is the power of "experts". We have handed power to a few individuals who we believe have more knowledge than we have and are therefore relied upon to advise us as to what is the best action to take. How do we know these experts know more than we do? Because they told us so! Medical specialists, for example, surely know more than you do, don't they? I am not disputing that, but I wonder what they have been dedicating their time to whilst studying to become such an expert. In this case, the medical training is focused on knowing all there is to know about illness and disease. How am I going to benefit from that when all I am interested in is health, which they do not study at all?

Well, the medical specialist will now tell me what the dangers are out there, in the world I know nothing about. They will tell me about all the horrible things that can happen to me, if I don't listen to them. They erect a fence around my world for my own protection, not to keep me imprisoned but to keep me safe. And I listen. When my life then starts to become worse, rather than better, they will tell me that the outside dangers are getting stronger and coming closer all the time, and they advise me to stay even closer, to listen to them even more. And my world gets smaller and smaller. And boy am I scared!

My fear grows. Their control over my life grows. My freedom diminishes rapidly, for my own good, as Nature is becoming more and more unfriendly, dangerous and aggressive. So they say.

Will I go in search of someone who knows a thing or two about health? Not likely. And if I did, where would I find such a person? Not likely within the confines of the corral, fenced in by the medical authority.

You will have to travel abroad.

You will have to be brave and leave the well-known and familiar surroundings of your "safe place" and go into the unknown, described by the experts as the unprivileged, chaotic and primitive world, to find out for yourself. The main trouble with this is that there are no guided tours! Once you leave you are on your own, and that is scary.

If you hurry back after sticking your nose over the fence the experts are all too ready to tell you "told you so" and to parade you in front of the masses as "proof" that their vision is the only correct one. Of course they wouldn't find a successful renegade as those wouldn't dream of coming back, and if they did return because they would like to tell others about the wonderful world outside the fence they would soon be disgraced, quartered and hung out to dry by authorities protecting their stronghold on the flock.

The reality is that people who do climb over the fence and seriously wander into the thick forest that has frightened them so much, invariably find others appearing into their lives lending them a helping hand and showing them the ropes of the Brave New World.

Wherever one roams, one is never alone.

"Moving On" is the essential travel guide into the Brave New World.

We all shape our life around the beliefs we hold. Specifically the ones that restrict our lives are of a I can't or I should ... but nature. Every time we use a "reason", excuse, of this sort we deny ourselves an opportunity. I can't stops you from even contemplating the issue. It stops you from trying out the experience and learning the reality of it, rather than the emotive description you are living by now.

I can't do a parachute jump, stops you from finding out what it is like, what feels good and what feels bad about it. It doesn't actually mean that you are incapable of parachute jumping. If the plane was on fire and the only way to escape a certain death was to jump, would you parachute out of the plane? Only if you were more scared of fire than of parachuting.

I should put my children and spouse before myself all the time, but I get so tired, shows that you know the rule as drummed into you by society. You also know from your own experience that it doesn't always work out that way. However, you are too scared to dump the rule that is no longer working for you because of what society may say about you. They may single you out as an example and you may have to walk around with a star pinned to your coat as a sign of you not belonging to the same society anymore. So you know that the way forward is to try harder; not to change the rule, not to be singled out.

Our whole life is filled with restrictions and obstacles stopping us from experiencing the freedom of our own choice. To choose what one really wants to do is guided by the beliefs of one's own vulnerability, weaknesses and limitations. The world exists on focusing on the said restrictions of the individual's life, not the strengths. The only time we are shown examples of "strength" is when the authorities show us how well someone can do when he/she adheres to the rules of the system. Success stories of cancer survivalists invariably include effective treatments by very clever specialists. The fact that there are a hundred of such success stories outside the medical system for every one inside it is totally lost to the average human being, as those stories have been carefully removed from the public domain. They never existed in the first place or they were just freaks of nature. Whichever way, not worth talking about, because we don't want to give the people false hope!

Successfully turning your world around, changing it from a disaster area of disease or emotional turmoil to a life of health and happiness, has always a lot to do with "moving on". The proper way.

Real moving on is about ripping out the best part of the restricting constraints and allowing yourself to drift into a new realm. Yet, all most people do when they have stumbled and fallen over is to pick themselves up, dust themselves down, say they are now going to move on and start walking the same old trodden paths. Initially their renewed energy will help them to delude themselves into thinking that it will be different this time, but soon the same old cracks will start to appear. The reason is that they haven't changed their beliefs. They are on the move but they are not moving away from any of their tightly held beliefs. They will re-experience the same thing almost in the same way until they finally, hopefully, realise that that particular "knowledge" is no longer working for them. By dropping the belief they can truly "move on".

The combined weight of your experiences is generally called "your baggage". That is because you are dragging it along with you wherever you go in life. Once you have dropped your baggage, or part of it, you travel lighter, faster and more freely. Your baggage will no longer hold you back. What if you found later on that you needed something from the baggage you have dropped? Wouldn't you be lost without it? Not really, as the knowledge that you no longer have it will spur you on to find a new way of handling the situation. The new way, because it is designed on a new spot in your life and at a new time, will actually be more appropriate than the old one could ever be. Coping strategies work best at the moment when they were designed.

How to travel light.

How can you drop your baggage just like that? Is it possible to leave behind all your beliefs? Surely you must believe in something on your travel through life.

As a matter of fact we don't drop all our baggage all at the same time. As we go through life we only look at what we are carrying when we have fallen over or when we realise that we are walking very slowly. In other words we would look at what was holding us back and then decide to drop that particular part of our luggage.

If you find that your inability to fully trust a woman relates back to your feelings of fear and anger at your mother leaving you all alone, then open your life up to new experiences by no longer blaming your mother. Some people need to almost personally "rewrite" history before they can feel fully cleansed; others need to symbolically shed their negative feelings; whilst others still will find that the realisation of what was holding them back is enough to set them free. How you do it, doesn't matter as long as you free yourself.

Even if you did not know what it was that is holding you back, you can still ditch it. The only thing you need to do is to become aware that certain things said or done almost invariably annoy you, anger you, frustrate you, make you jealous. Instead of concentrating on avoiding contact with the offending word or deed, you might want to concentrate on your reaction to it. Start with stopping the negative feeling developing within you. Learn not to feel those things, which is completely different from not expressing them. You have to make sure, through your conscious awareness, that you no longer allow the negative feelings themselves to develop, irrespective of why you have become "allergic" to them.

People say that they can't help the way they feel. The truth is, you can. A feeling comes from within yourself. It is entirely yours, and momentarily. You have created it as a reaction to the immediate situation. That means you can chose to create any kind of feeling at any given time. Why do you choose a negative and destructive feeling? People will say, I don't know - I have no control over it - It just happens. Learn to become aware of your feelings in relation to the situation. Notice how they are born, how they develop and grow and how they emerge in full bloom. Now you are ready to manipulate and change any kind of feeling that starts to come up. Now you can nip the negative thoughts and sensations in the bud. Now you can stop feeling "bad" about anything you like and choose to feel good. You have just disconnected yourself from part of your luggage!

These processes need to be repeated all throughout life if we are to be truly "moving on". The number of restrictions far outweighs the length of the journey we are currently undertaking. Dropping your baggage is a way of living that has no end to it, but making it a habit surely will make it easier each time you need to do it.

"Moving on" is so much easier when you travel light.

August 2004