Learning to Transcend Fears

Context. What is the purpose of the human experience?

Before moving on to the next topic, it is helpful to place ourselves within a context that offers a new way of looking at life, a new paradigm, one that allows us to be happier and to understand human beings. You don't have to agree with everything that follows, or believe any of it, because we are not talking about beliefs. All you need to do is verify in your own life the results of applying this information, to see whether they hold true for you.

If these inner results are happiness, peace, and harmony, then we will know that this information is true. If our external experiences in relationships, health, resources, and adaptation to our environment improve, then we will confirm that this information is wisdom.

The purpose of the human experience is to evolve, to develop our consciousness so that we may be filled with wisdom and love. All human beings, without exception, have come into the world to work on our spiritual development, sharing and participating in experiences with other human beings. Life is a remarkable educational process of the Universe; planet Earth is a “spiritual school,” and every experience we live through can be compared to an academic year.

Spiritual development is inner work, absolutely individual and personal. No one can do it for another person, but neither can it be done “without others.” In other words, we need interaction and experience with other people in order to build our own development, to get to know ourselves. Sometimes, instead of taking charge of our own development, we try to interfere with that of others; in those cases, instead of learning from others, we want to change them. All this accomplishes is to distort the educational process, or to try to distort it, and in doing so we complicate our own lives.

Only by understanding this can we effectively ask ourselves, “What does life want to teach us in each situation?”, since every situation is a lesson. Ultimately, it is about learning to transmute ignorance into wisdom.

When we notice that suffering is disappearing, that inner peace is becoming unshakable, and that our capacity to create, act, love, and serve is expressed without any condition or restriction, it means we have attained wisdom.

In order to lay the foundation for a new civilization that brings a greater level of satisfaction to all people, we must begin by bringing harmony to ourselves. To do so, it is essential to study the universal laws and apply the principles that lead to wisdom. We must bear in mind that we will truly reach wisdom only through constant practice and by discarding the theories and concepts that prove to be wrong. In this way, it will be possible to develop peace and harmony right where we are, through the lessons of daily life, since life is the best school and nature the best teacher.

All it takes to achieve efficiency is to stop resisting the perfect order of the Universe; mental inefficiency is necessary to discover, through saturation, that the Laws of the Universe exist. Once we have suffered enough, we are ready to understand the Laws. For the external struggle to cease, the internal one must cease first, and for that we must have accepted that everything that exists and everything that happens is perfect and necessary, because it has a purpose of love.

Studying and understanding why the things that exist and happen do so can lead us to recognize the Laws, which in turn make it possible to create a better future for humanity.

There are seven Laws of the Universe that govern all of its processes of creation, administration, and evolution. Of these seven, four are fundamental, since they control the development and evolution of the consciousness of the human species anywhere in the Universe. These four Laws form the lower triangle, while the Law of Evolution is the upper one, governing the lower triangle, also called the triangle of hell because it is the lowest part of the universal laws.

We will be within the Law when we love, enjoy, and value what we have. Everything that is within the Law works and flows on its own.

Everything that brings suffering, anguish, pain, or illness does so because we are going against the Laws, and through that we come to recognize them. The results we experience when we step outside the Laws allow us to recognize their existence. It is necessary to make mistakes in order to discover the Law. Mistakes are not the problem; the problem is not learning from them.

The Law is designed so that we ourselves make a change, not so that we try to change others.

As you can see in the following tables, the human experience is governed by four specific Laws.

In the tables above, on the right-hand side we see the effects of violating the Law. In the topic on the Laws of the Universe, we will also find an explanation of the benefits of not violating the Law.

It is important not to confuse the universal laws with human laws or with rules. The former are immutable and cannot be repealed; they originate in the wisdom of the Absolute or Divinity and are therefore absolute. They cannot be modified or negotiated, and disobeying them has a negative result, in the sense of being unpleasant, and also a positive one, in the sense of the learning it involves. That is why it is said that human beings do not actually create laws but rather establish rules; we call them human laws, but they are rules, because they can be repealed, are temporary, and are useful for a given moment.

We have come to planet Earth to develop the three inner virtues: Happiness, Inner Peace, and Love or Service to Others. This development brings excellent results in four areas: Relationships, Resources, Health, and Adaptation to the Environment:

The idea is to use these virtues to relate to the external world. Learning to be happy, to have peace, and to love is the true purpose that brought us human beings into the physical world of matter.

Happiness, peace, and love are principles of the divine essence; they have no polarity; they are immutable.

Learning to be happy:

• To learn to be happy, you only have to face everything you believe takes your happiness away.
• To be happy, you don't need anything external, only understanding and a particular mindset.
• Non-acceptance is the only cause of suffering; we must stop resisting reality.
• It is essential to stop working on others and to work solely and exclusively on yourself, changing within yourself whatever bothers you (the ego) so that it stops doing so.
• If there is suffering, only one question needs to be asked: “What am I not accepting?” The answer lies there.
• Everyone, without exception, has what they need to be happy; however, very few know how to be happy with what they have. Learning to have peace:
• Nothing and no one provides peace.
• Inner peace is the result of one's own spiritual development, not a gift.
• Managing peace requires several elements: clear and accurate information to understand that life is a process of love and that evil does not exist; the ability to manage one's own life energy; and training.
• If you lose your peace, ask yourself: “What am I resisting? What do I want to change? Who am I blaming?” Learning to love your neighbor as yourself:
• To do this, all you have to do is take part in activities or spend time with people whose behavior is very different from your own, so that you learn to love and respect them just as they are.
• Love cannot be offended; it is invulnerable, immutable, universal, and neutral.
• Love implies a total understanding of the Universe; it is a way of being and does not need an “object” onto which to project itself.
• Love is not a force, but a tool.
• Love is not a feeling.
• To love is to always give the best of yourself.
• If you’re feeling unmotivated, it’s best to ask yourself why you’re allowing this specific situation to limit your ability to serve, which in reality shouldn’t depend on external events. By developing the three inner virtues, you’ll achieve excellent external results in all four areas:
• In relationships.
• In resources.
• In health.
• In adapting to our environment. Five elements are present in the life experience of every human being: purpose, destiny, mission, function, and intention.

1. The Purpose

There is a purpose of love that brought us into the material world; it is the perfect goal of learning two things:

a) Being happy by yourself, that is, not depending on anything or anyone to enjoy inner peace and happiness.

b) Loving your neighbor as yourself, that is, respecting the rights of all beings in the Universe.

And how is this learned? Here we can see the perfection of the Absolute’s pedagogical design. To practice learning to be happy by oneself, we need to live in a certain place, with certain people and in circumstances in which everything happening around us is more or less aggressive. In this way we’ll realize that our problem isn’t caused by what happens around us, but by the way we relate to it, and by the rejection and resistance we set in motion.

As for the second part, loving your neighbor as yourself, it means respecting them just as they are, not trying to change them, and not resisting others. It is necessary to live in a place where the people around you think differently, have varied customs, and believe in different things. In this way, we will learn to love them as they are, without judging or condemning them. This is how the purpose of love is fulfilled; it is the true reason why we human beings are on planet Earth.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Master Jesus taught us this when he said, “Love your enemies”—who are not our enemies, but simply people who think differently.

Being happy means experiencing zero suffering in the face of whatever happens; and loving means offering zero resistance to others. Wisdom is equal to love, not to sentiment. A person who has love cares deeply about others but does not suffer; by contrast, a person who lacks wisdom but has kindness cares deeply about others but suffers enormously. Those who don’t care, the callous and the indifferent, have neither wisdom nor kindness.

2. Destiny

It is what we come to learn from the material world—learning to use the seven tools of love in order to have invulnerable peace. It is a great opportunity to learn what we lack.

We all bring into the world an unavoidable destiny, one of enormous value. Our culture teaches us to try to evade destiny instead of showing us how to make the most of it. The key to making the most of destiny is: "You have the ability to enjoy anything you do, because that ability is within you.".. However, if someone tells their child: "You always have to do what you like.", it will create an enormous block in them.

Destiny is a pedagogical design whose purpose is to allow human beings to verify and discover information that governs the Universe and its perfect order. It is therefore the best opportunity to transcend all of our human limitations. Instead of complaining about the difficulties life presents, we should take advantage of them as a great opportunity to transcend them; then they will disappear forever. If we don’t learn from difficulties, far from disappearing, they will become more complicated, persist, and become permanent.

3. The Mission

It consists of what we can teach in the material world. We should enjoy our mission intensely, whether or not it is part of our own function.

Mission allows us to recover a great deal of the vital energy invested in the exercise of learning to be happy. Mission is what has already been understood, what is already known; therefore, it can be used to serve others while enjoying ourselves intensely.

Both mission and destiny are represented in the personality: the latter through the belief system, and the former through understanding. As we transmute our ignorance into understanding and wisdom, we will have more and more mission and, therefore, more satisfaction.

4. The Function

It is what each person does to earn their livelihood; it consists of putting as much enthusiasm, joy, and love as possible into what you do, even if it isn't part of your mission.

We know that all living beings have a function within the order of the Universe. It takes wisdom to take it on with joy, with enthusiasm, with a full capacity for action and service. Function is not about “earning a living”; life is not “earned,” because it is a divine gift. What we earn is the sustenance of this biological entity, this body.

Thus, our sustenance is guaranteed as a result of our function. Those who are happy and enjoy what they do will always have an abundance of resources.

5. The Intention

It is what we want for ourselves or for others. Intention should be directed in such a way that it does not interfere with the destinies of others or try to evade our own destiny.

Intention is the most complex element for human beings today, because sentiment, the idea of goodness, and the other ideas that culture mistakenly passed on to us constantly lead us to try to interfere with the destinies of others. If we accepted that destiny is something extraordinary and not “bad,” that it is the best opportunity we have to fulfill what we came to do in the world, we would stop trying to change other people’s destinies.

When a child wants to become independent and the parents oppose it, how can we act so as not to interfere? We always want things to work our way. In this case, the parents feel it isn’t the right time because their child doesn’t have a stable job, for example, and they don’t want them to leave home. Our “I wants” are the cause of suffering. The “I want” is also called unconscious selfishness, because we want others to be happy doing what we want them to do.

What would be the wise and loving thing to do in this case? To tell the child: “For us, the most important thing is that you are happy and that you find your own path, so we respect your decision. Know that if you want to come back, the door will always be open.”

Ultimately, wisdom means having a clear sense of purpose, making the most of destiny, enjoying your mission, taking on your function, and managing the intention not to interfere with other people’s destinies, and it requires that all of this be practiced in thought, word, and deed.

Chapter 1. What Is Fear?

We’ll begin by saying that fear is a passion that makes us suffer over the possibility of something that hasn’t happened yet; it is an inner weakness or mental limitation. It is, therefore, an emotion that prevents us from accepting what is to come, limiting our minds and weakening our inner being.

Mental limitations cannot be eliminated—they cannot be “uninstalled”—unless we perform a deep mental cleansing. This is because they are part of our mental “memory banks.” What we actually do with them is deactivate them through the rise of vital energy, which allows us to use understanding, the tools of love. However, if a person becomes careless and lets their vital energy drop, the limitations and traumatic programs are activated again, and the person may fall into depression.

Depression is a mental state produced by various factors, but above all by a decline in vital energy that manifests as low spirits and, often, a total or partial loss of enthusiasm for life; in turn, this generates various processes that result in mental confusion, apathy, sadness, unease, nostalgia, anguish, discouragement, listlessness, despondency, and a desire to live no longer.

Mental limitations are deactivated as vital energy rises.

The following chart shows how fears—limitations—work. And in Chapter 7, we’ll clearly explain the difference between transcending (or deactivating) and eliminating (or clearing).

Understanding: Mental Limitations Are Deactivated

affect the whole; that is, if one’s vital energy increases, understanding and inner peace increase; this, in turn, allows one’s vital energy to rise further. Conversely, if vital energy decreases, understanding diminishes—mental limitations are activated—and inner peace diminishes. And this happens from any starting point; therefore, if a person’s mind is heavily contaminated—that is, if there is no understanding—it will fill with conflicts—their peace will diminish—and their vital energy will decline.

Vital energy is different from a belief system or defense system; it is what allows something to move or become active. Without energy, neither the body, nor the mental field, nor the spiritual part can function; but these are different energies. The body’s energy is called glucose and is found in the blood, while the energy that activates the mental field is called vital energy, which is a generic name.

Depression is not usually due to a single factor—the “why” remains open—but here it is suggested that vital energy must be increased for depression to disappear. Furthermore, pointing out a problem does not in itself provide a solution. That is why we might ask ourselves: “How can the vital energy of a depressed person be increased?” Although there is no simple solution at a given level, it is by raising the level of consciousness that a problem that could not be resolved at a previous level will be resolved. Section 1.3 addresses how to raise vital energy. Furthermore, it is through all of these topics together that we will see, in a global way, how to raise the level of consciousness, and of vital energy, in order to live happily and avoid needless pain.

The human being originates in three files, all of them perfect:

1. Genetic file (physical).
2. Mental archive, which holds different levels of information:

• The unconscious part, where the defense system is found.
• The conscious part, where the belief system is found.
• The spiritual part, that of understanding, which results from verifying the truth through experience.

1. Consciousness archive, which accumulates only the understanding of the truth of each life experience. The exercise or inner work needed to transcend fears takes place in the mental field. The mental field is made up of three levels; it is like a three-story building:

• The dark zone (of the unconscious field), where the defense system and the traumas are found. When we say “unconscious,” we mean that it is stored in memory banks to which we do not have voluntary access, but which are triggered automatically when an external event occurs with which the traumas are associated. In this zone, our vital energy is at a very low level.
• The twilight zone (of the conscious field), where the belief system is found, which we call the ego; that is, our conceptual, cultural, and learned limitations. It is conscious because it is stored in memory banks that we can access voluntarily. Here we experience a certain duality: some days we will feel enthusiastic and eager to do things, while on other days we may experience some degree of apathy or frustration.
• The zone of light (of the spiritual field), where truths and understanding are found. Here our vital energy rises and we use our higher mental faculties, so we see life as an opportunity to love and be happy, and we experience great inner peace; that is, we understand how the Universe works. We human beings move among these three “floors” depending on the level of energy we have at a given moment. We call the energy that allows us to move among the floors vital energy; it activates or deactivates any of the floors depending on whether it rises or falls.

1.1 What causes vital energy to drop?

In general, what causes vital energy to drop are internal conflicts of a sentimental or emotional nature, or fears. When the belief and defense systems are triggered by external situations associated with mental limitations, they cause an enormous drain on vital energy, which can in turn create an imbalance. If we consume vital energy at roughly the same rate at which we generate it, we can maintain a balance within the twilight zone.

If we maintain deep states of inner peace, we will begin to consume less energy than we generate; then our energy will rise into the zone of light and we will begin to experience mental clarity, which is why it is called the zone of illumination. Finally, if we consume more energy than we generate, we will fall into the dark, depressive zones.

When vital energy drops, all the limitations and traumatic programs are activated.

The biggest consumers of vital energy are found in the mental field: when the belief system is rigid, it leads a person to have a lot of ego, stress, anguish, or a lack of acceptance of external situations, as well as the automatic reactions of the traumas—the defense system of the reactive mind.

1.2 What can you do to deactivate traumas?

The way to deactivate traumas is to raise your vital energy enough that they cannot act. This is because energy activates a higher mental zone corresponding to understanding, and when understanding is at work, trauma is not.

1.3 How can you increase vital energy?

The first thing to do is to cleanse the mind—your own belief system—through mental reprogramming. There are no problems; everything that happens in the Universe is perfect and necessary and has a purpose of love. It is our inability to understand—and therefore to accept—something that produces the inner conflict that drains our vital energy. When we have wisdom, we accept the order of the Universe and feel at peace.

As our way of thinking reprograms the mind, the body also begins to obey what we think.

Second, we must act with serenity and not allow external situations to disturb our peace. If we can maintain serenity in the face of life, we will keep our vital energy high. It is necessary to cultivate inner peace and serenity.

Third, practice all the appropriate techniques for increasing energy:

1. Sleep well.
2. Eat properly.
3. Don't leave your mind idle. Worries are major drains on vital energy. To keep your mind from being idle, we suggest the schedule exercise: plan out the 24 hours of the day and keep your mind busy with what you are doing, leaving enough room for each activity and concentrating only on it and nothing else.
4. Practice relaxation regularly to release tension in the body and allow energy to flow.
5. Meditate while visualizing a great deal of light. Visit your “inner garden” and connect with your inner nature, illuminating it completely. Light does not allow darkness to manifest, so when we visualize light, the darkness in the mind disappears.
6. Spend time in nature. For example, visit the botanical garden and focus on the plants, their colors, their shapes, their details… And look at them up close; this transmutes our negative emotions.
7. Don't worry about what you can't change.
8. Let life flow; don’t resist it. Give up being the “control tower” for anything or anyone. Let each thing, each person, and yourself follow the rhythm of the Universe. When we start to worry, interfere, or control, we interrupt the rhythms the Universe has designed for each of us, we block what is meant to come, we avoid the experiences we need to live, and we drain our vital energy. There is no need to control; we simply need to observe and work on what needs to be worked on, and organize what needs to be organized.
9. Accept that everything that happens is perfect and has a purpose of love.
10. Don't suffer over anything or anyone, not even yourself.

As long as we have fears, anxieties, and little self-esteem, our vital energy will tend to stay at low levels.

Fear, like the other limitations of the personality, is a mental recording that prevents, or at least makes it harder, to accept new ideas or behaviors. To better understand what fear is, let’s explain where it comes from.

The genetic structure of the brain (its physical part) has three characteristics:

• The instinctive characteristic of the reptilian brain or paleoencephalon; this is where fear originates. This part of the brain is designed to manage survival through a binary defense system: flee or fight. For more evolved people, this reactive mind is an obstacle to transcending suffering, illness, and conflicts in relationships. The reptilian brain supports a part of the unconscious mind where psychological trauma is recorded, lodged, and developed, and this trauma determines most of the fears and phobias that make up the reactive mind. This is what sometimes causes human beings to behave like wild animals. This part also houses the survival instinct and all the automatic processes, such as breathing, the heartbeat, blood circulation, etc. Instinct has certain thresholds; when it recognizes that a threshold has been crossed in a given situation, it classifies it as a danger and generates a fear response, sending out a message that becomes embedded in the mind.
• The emotional characteristic of the mammalian brain or midbrain; this is where suffering originates. It is equipped with a limbic system that enables emotional development.
• The rational characteristic of the human brain —in the frontal region, the area of the third eye, — o telencephalon—is where stress originates. This part handles a process of understanding and analysis directly related to the development of the cerebral cortex; this allows human beings to acquire knowledge, develop societies, cultures, and technologies, as well as understand the laws that govern the Universe. Physiologically, it is possible to develop the rational mind so that it replaces or dominates the reactive mind, since the human brain has the ability to neurologically inhibit the impulses and reactions of the reptilian brain through the existing neural connection between the frontal region of the cerebral cortex —where the rational process takes place— and the paleoencephalon (reptilian brain), where the reactive process (fight or flight) is carried out and the series of physiological changes of somatization is produced. In the frontal region of the brain the mental part of reasoning is installed, and it comes to connect with understanding, which can free us from the limiting systems stored in the mind. We develop this fourth brain when we move up to the fourth mental level, which develops above the rational center; then the lower one disappears and the three higher ones remain: the sentimental, the rational, and the understanding. The sentimental, directed from the understanding, will handle only positive feelings, because negative ones originate in the instinctive part. Transcending mental limitations allows human beings to rise above the nature of the brain to give their mind the characteristic of understanding and reach the fourth behavior (love), which is characterized by the trinomial trust, -loyalty, -peace.

The mind is something entirely different from the brain; it is not physical like the brain. To understand this, we can use computers as an example: the brain would be the computer (the machine, the hardware), and the mind would be the software, the programs, or the CDs that can input information into the computer; or, conversely, they can record information that was already on the computer.

The mind is independent of the brain; it comes and goes, and installs itself on it. Without the brain, the mind cannot install itself, because you can have a CD, but you need a computer to record or read it.

Thought, then, would be like the computer's "mouse": the files (of the mind) remain closed unless we open or close them ourselves. If we open a love file, our thoughts will be filled with love.

Transcendence consists of developing the ability to inhibit the defense system of instinct, to free ourselves from it, and to become beings of peace through the process of understanding. The understanding part no longer stores the culture and knowledge of ignorance, but rather recognized truths, which we call wisdom. We gradually separate these truths from our beliefs—which are still unverified information. When we act from wisdom, it gives rise to behaviors that are respectful of others—voluntary, not automatic, behaviors that result in inner peace, happiness, and, on the outside, relationships of love.

All our limitations are in the mind. The idea being conveyed here is that we must clear the mind of both unconscious or irrational limitations (traumas, phobias, etc.) and conscious (rational) ones, which stem from culture and our belief system and make up the “archive of ignorance.” Trauma is not ignorance—since an ignorant person is someone who believes they know—but rather a defense that originates in instinct yet takes root in the mind.

To carry out both cleansings, we need to commit ourselves to two goals:

• Tune our minds to information of wisdom.
• Install that information in our minds; if it isn’t installed, it’s as if someone were given a book but never read it, so it would be of no use to them. Installing the information of love means uninstalling that of the ego. When we manage to consciously guide the process of the understanding mind, that is when—neurologically speaking—we can keep the unconscious and, to a certain extent, our instincts calm, because we no longer need them: thus, the supramental body quiets the instincts.

Chapter 2. How Do We Acquire Limitations?

Initially, a child’s mind is innocent. That is to say, it contains no information, and therefore accepts as true—without any possibility of rejecting it—everything that comes its way. This way of functioning occurs from the moment of conception until about four or five years of age and continues, without much challenge, until puberty; this is how personality is formed.

The innocent mind becomes filled with limitations because it accepts all the information it receives as true.

A child’s innocent mind begins to receive information about destiny from the very moment of conception; these first impressions will be imprinted on the unconscious mind. Later, the child will receive the impressions that originate in the behavior of their parents and others around them, and in their relationships with them. And, finally, the normative information of the culture. In this way, the child will achieve the corresponding level of intellectual development and will be enriched by the knowledge that study provides. Experiential programming will be complete by the end of adolescence and the beginning of adult life, although it will continue to evolve thereafter.

Information about destiny is encoded in a child's mind during the first years of life.

Once innocence is lost, the mind becomes filled with information that has not been verified by the individual, which we call a belief system or archive of ignorance. An ignorant person is defined as “someone who believes they know.” The belief system is necessary to enable individuals to develop the ability to transform their own personality until they reach a state of mental freedom or spiritual independence.

Beliefs block the mind from accepting new information.

Any unverified information that a person takes as true dangerously becomes a mental limitation or block to accepting new information or new behaviors; it also makes it harder to achieve inner peace, success in life, and satisfaction in relationships. It becomes more of a hindrance for the person who is searching for a new life.

Often, our beliefs prevent us from seeing the Universe as it truly is; they keep us from contemplating the beauty and perfection that exist in every event around us, as well as the purpose of love that governs the lives of human beings and everything that happens; therefore, beliefs limit our happiness.

Two elements drive the evolutionary process of the human being so that it does not stagnate:

1. On the physical level, pain: we start taking care of our bodies precisely when the pain becomes unmanageable.
2. At the spiritual level, suffering: we begin to take care of our spiritual development when suffering becomes unbearable. This leads us to search for the order of the Universe, so that we never again experience pain or suffering; that is, so that we can be completely free from any external situation. For this reason, limitations initially do not allow happiness, but they are necessary to reach happiness itself. From the age of 18, individuals have the possibility of modifying the structure of their personality if they verify that the information they hold at a given moment does not allow them to be happy and successful in life. Our upbringing contains both good things and limiting ones. They will then seek to acquire new information that gives them greater satisfaction; through it they will learn to clear their unconscious traumatic files and to reprogram their mind voluntarily, decoding false information and keeping the true, until they reach the full development of wisdom. When understanding replaces beliefs, the mind fills with wisdom. The difference between beliefs and understanding is that the former are unverified information, while understanding is the result of verifying the Law of the Universe, its truths, and the principle of love. Understanding is a verified truth that enables people to have excellent results in their lives. For mental information to be verified means that the individual has checked it against their own results of inner peace, success, and satisfaction in everything they do; in this way it becomes wisdom and forms the file of understanding of the truth. Wisdom makes it possible to attain inner peace and success in everything a person does. Any unverified information in our mind tends to become a limitation. Being educated is one thing, and having wisdom is another. If a person whose mind is crammed with data is unable to be happy or to love, what they have is a gigantic volume of ignorance. A person who is able to be happy and to love has wisdom even without formal education. We need mental clarity to identify a piece of knowledge and distinguish it from a truth, so that we do not get blocked. Adults can reprogram their mind at any time with new information and learn to be happy. We cannot go from innocence to wisdom without first passing through ignorance. For wisdom involves learning to decontaminate ourselves, and to do that we must first have become contaminated. This contamination comes from limiting belief systems, from the impositions of culture, and so on. The innocent mind is an uncontaminated mind and can express love.

For its part, the “wise or pure” mind is also a decontaminated mind and, likewise, can express love. But wisdom will always be superior to innocence, even though culture gives the latter a connotation of intrinsic goodness.

2.1 What makes a person reject new ideas or information?

Rejecting new information shows us the presence of previous information. A person may believe they know, but if they are suffering, it means their previous information is false. They will discover this through the results they obtain, until they reach the saturation point of suffering.

A person of wisdom never refuses to receive information, because they are willing to learn more and to verify the information they already have. After receiving the new information, they assess whether it offers them something new or, on the contrary, nothing new because they have already verified that it is of no use.

In both cases, the person is grateful for the information they have been given. After all, if they claimed that the information was false without having verified it, they would not have wisdom. The results we obtain show us clearly whether or not we have attained wisdom; if we do not have good results, we are still in ignorance. We need to have ignorance in order to do the work of clearing it; the problem is not recognizing it.

2.2 When is the mind ready to receive new ideas or information?

When the mind has had enough of the results of old information, when it has had its fill of suffering, it is ready to receive new information. When we recognize our false concepts and no longer need to suffer, we are able to take what we learn as opportunities to enjoy ourselves.

Here is an example in which what changes is the mental attitude, not the external situation:

We say to a person: “Look, you are in very good physical condition, and I think you could represent our country at the Olympic Games, and you might even win a gold medal; but of course, we will need to strengthen those abilities through training. So you are going to start a daily exercise routine and live in an orderly way to achieve that goal: winning the gold medal.” How will that person feel? If they have been evaluated and have what it takes, it is an opportunity for them; they feel motivated and strengthened.

On the other hand, if we say: “You have been found guilty of a crime and we are going to sentence you to hard labor. Your job is to train every day and follow a diet that we will impose on you.” It is the same thing, isn’t it? But in this case, they will not see it as an opportunity but as a punishment. So the person may do all of it, but they will be suffering; every time they do an exercise, they will say: “How unfortunate I am.”

That is exactly what happens with life. If we see it as an exercise to win the gold medal of love, we can enjoy the training; if we do not see it that way, we will suffer. What changes is not what is outside but what is inside; it is a mental matter. Inner change will come through understanding, and understanding is the result of traveling along the evolutionary path.

2.3 What are beliefs and learned limitations for?

Both beliefs and learned limitations serve to evaluate, to discover that what is false does not work. And if something does not work, it is because it is not grounded in truth. Some examples of this follow:

• Relationships don't work. We see this in conflicts between couples, between parents and children, between siblings, neighbors, coworkers… And we end up with fights, dramas, and wars.
• Health doesn't work. In reality, what causes illness? It is that we are determined to go against nature.
• The economy doesn't work and we have problems of scarcity, because we insist on interfering in the destinies of others, since we think we know what they need.
• We also have problems of placement. We insist on doing what we want, and not what corresponds to us according to the order of the Universe. Opposing the Law slows everything down; aligning ourselves with it speeds things up. Every place has two aspects: what we learn from it, on the one hand, and the function we are meant to serve in it, on the other. Therefore, ignorance—which is the same as saying the ego, our limitations—is necessary to verify that it is impossible to make falsehood work successfully. If a person has no problems with relationships, health, money, or placement, it means they have already found the truth. They have found it, but they cannot teach it to others, since that learning takes place within us; it is experiential. They can only provide others with the information so that they can verify it for themselves. The same truth, if we try to impose it on others, turns into ignorance. Trying to be right is a serious problem, and it means that our ego is interfering with our learning.

2.4 When are beliefs no longer necessary?

When a person is free, when they are filled with true information and have verified all the results, they no longer need to believe. The way to attain mastery is to keep verifying information, discarding what is false and keeping what is true: that is what spiritual development consists of.

Seeing error as something bad is ignorance; seeing it as an opportunity to learn something new, on the other hand, is wisdom.

Limitations are necessary for discovering the truth and developing wisdom.

Limitations are inevitable during the development of the personality, but we need to transcend them in order to be free. Ignorance is the bridge between innocence and wisdom and, like any bridge, it serves a purpose: it allows us to cross from one place to another; it is not a place to live but a place of passage. The bridge has value, but we must not stay on it; we must cross it. Ignorance is an inevitable state that we all need to overcome; therefore, it is neither good nor bad, it is simply necessary.

The mind encodes information without sorting it and fills with conceptual limitations and traumatic programs according to one's own mental sensitivity.

When we begin to work on ourselves, it is because we have already realized that the problem to be solved is not outside of us. The work we must do is pedagogical in nature and takes place within. We have also realized that the people around us, our environment, our circumstances, our country, our governments, everything that happens around us, is nothing more than a reflection of what lies within us, so that we can work on it. That is why a person with wisdom never works on what is outside, but on what is inside.

You could say there are three types of people:

1. Those who try to change their surroundings, without success.
2. Those who try to change their surroundings, and succeed. Both are ignorant.
3. And those who use their surroundings to bring about an inner change. These last ones have wisdom. A person with love and wisdom would never transform anything through violence; that is the role of an ignorant person, and it will only bring them pain and suffering. The proposal for transcending suffering and moving toward a higher level of spiritual development is to refuse to get involved in any attempt to change what is external. The ego is always interested in working on others; a person with wisdom, by contrast, is deeply interested in working on themselves in order to better serve others. We become a match for certain situations, more or less satisfying, according to our own decisions. As long as we try to change people, political, social, or economic structures, or environments; as long as we talk about injustices, crises, and problems, we are not working on ourselves. And as long as we do not work on ourselves, we have no chance of transcending or of serving others, because we will not know how. Most of us are full of good intentions but have zero wisdom. So when we try to serve others without wisdom, the words of the Master Jesus come true: “Blind guides of the blind, all fall into the abyss.”

2.5 How can we keep an innocent mind from acquiring limitations?

It is inevitable that an innocent mind will acquire limitations; it is part of the pedagogical design of the Universe. What we can do, however, is practice pedagogy by building a flexible mind.

Education is not merely the transmission of knowledge. It consists of teaching how to live, how to love, how to be happy, and how to use knowledge, technology, and all the tools that civilization gives us, and to use them with wisdom. Developing a flexible mind is education. Pedagogy, or education in love, can spare us unnecessary suffering.

2.6 How is it possible to be freed from destiny?

To achieve this, it is necessary to clear the conscious and unconscious mind, to uninstall destiny in order to install the mission, and to uninstall beliefs in order to install wisdom. This work is personal and individual; no one can do it for another person, and it is called spiritual development. Nor can it be done without others. In other words, we need interaction and experience with other people in order to know ourselves and build our own development.

The belief system that exists in the mind of every one of us, without exception, must be transformed through a process of understanding. To do this, the best exercise is to observe what makes you feel bad. What makes you feel bad, what you do not accept, what you reject, what causes you suffering and conflict, clearly shows you your mental limitations at the same time. Therein lies the wonderful opportunity for self-transformation, provided you give up trying to change the mirror outside of you. Breaking the mirror does not change your own image, and that is exactly what a person does when they try to change others or their environment. A person with wisdom, on the contrary, knows that the mirror is a tool that shows them what they need to change within themselves.

2.7 How do you clear the mind?

First, it is necessary to receive new information of wisdom. But to receive new information, you need to be a match for it, that is, to have suffered enough for the mind to be able to accept different information.

Next, you need to learn to reprogram the mind and train yourself in a process of uninstalling the previous “program.”

2.8 Science versus Wisdom

Studying, for example, the principles of physics that give rise to the law of gravity does not guarantee that a person will be happy. In the same way, studying the principles of the Laws of the Universe, which produce, for example, the states of violence the planet is experiencing right now, is not what frees us from suffering. What does is understanding that they are necessary. And to understand this, it is not essential to know how they actually come about; it is enough to be able to verify their internal result. If we accept them as necessary, they will not bring us suffering. If we see them as bad, however, as something to be fought against, they will bring us all kinds of conflicts.

The first result, called the one of wisdom, is easy to verify. The thing is, the ego stubbornly opposes it because it wants us to give it a physical justification, and in some cases there is one, but in others there isn’t. If we waited until we had physical verification of every event in the Universe, we could never be happy, because it will be quite a few thousand or million more years before science manages to discover all the mechanisms through which the Universe works, and we don’t need to wait all that time to be happy.

Science is mystical when it aligns with the Laws, but sometimes it does not behave that way, and it still has a long way to go to verify what philosophy already knows. The proposal, therefore, is: “Science is wonderful, but let us not expect it to free us from suffering; it is wisdom that will do so.” After all, science itself may or may not be wise.

Chapter 3. Conscious Limitations

By conscious limitation we mean everything that has been learned but not yet verified, such as culture, knowledge, concepts, ideology, habits, or rules. It is everything that keeps a person from accepting new information and behaviors in order to adopt a new, more harmonious way of living that brings greater happiness.

Any information that does not leave us at peace inside is a mental limitation.

In general, it can be said that anything a person has learned but has not yet verified for themselves has the potential to become a mental limitation, unless that person is aware of the difference between the truth and learned concepts, and is willing to practice voluntarily modifying their personality whenever they find that it does not bring them peace, happiness, and success in life.

It is inevitable to have beliefs, but to keep them from becoming a limitation, we must not take for granted anything that has not been verified. Beliefs are like crutches, which allow us to walk: “In my heart, I can feel a belief as truth, and it fills me with peace; in that case it would not be limiting, since my inner peace verifies the belief.” But later, when the truth is found, if it differs from the belief, the crutches must be set aside, because what matters is the truth, and it is now possible to walk without them, without the beliefs.

Most of the conceptual elements that make up culture and ancestral traditions become an obstacle to achieving inner peace and respect for the rights of all other living beings. It therefore becomes necessary to clear the mind of these concepts or beliefs to make way for ideas that come from love, wisdom, and an understanding of the perfect order of the Universe.

Conscious limitations tend to generate mental states of rigidity that show up as different forms of fanaticism, as well as strict habits, inflexible rules, severe punishments, rigorous discipline, uncompromising conduct, and aggressive behavior. All of these situations, which originate in a limited, conceptualized mind, end up provoking deep defensive reactions in other people that cause a great deal of suffering, illness, anguish, relationship conflicts, and destructive, painful wars. It is easy, then, to identify the true problem that human beings need to solve: how can we clear the mind of all ancestral limitations?

Conceptual intransigence generates defensive reactions and destructive conflicts.

It is important to recognize that culture, traditions, knowledge, concepts, habits, and different ideologies—as well as the norms that govern them—are necessary and play a significant role in human evolutionary processes. However, for people who are willing to embrace a fulfilling, happy life lived in peaceful coexistence with all other living beings, these traditional elements are a major limitation from which it is essential to break free.

Culture and ancestral traditions played a significant role in the past.

We call conscious limitations ignorant or ego—that is, “a person who believes they know.” In our minds, we have a belief system made up of conscious information that has not been verified. If we are unable to be happy with what we have, it is because our belief system does not accept what we have; it does not value it. No human being lacks what is necessary to be happy. As the Masters say: “Those who complain about what they have are on the path to losing what they need.”

We have three types of information in our minds:

1. The defense system, which is instinctive in origin—it stems from the survival instinct. The instinct sends a message to the unconscious when any of the thresholds of the five senses is exceeded. It is not the instinct that generates the traumatic reaction, but the mind.
2. The belief system, where our mental limitations reside—that is, all the information that has not been verified.
3. The information of truth—what we call understanding—because it is the result of verification through experience, and we know how to repeat it. Everything that leaves peace, harmony, and satisfaction is true—everything that flows, that can be done, that works well and is grounded in truth; therefore, that is the information of love. Love can never be a belief, because it is an understanding. A wise person is one who knows what they know and also knows what they do not know. The wise person is aware of what they still have to learn and does not confuse a belief with a truth; they know that what they know is applicable because they can always obtain from it the result they want, and not a different one. The wise person also has beliefs, but knows that they are not true. Information that has been received but not verified is not true. It has value—it may even be useful—but it is simply not true until it is verified.

3.1 Mental Cleansing

The exercise of mental cleansing consists of becoming peaceful beings in thought, word, and deed, in order to stop suffering. The problem begins in thought and ends in a mistaken action; therefore, it is necessary to correct it starting with thought, recognizing that the problem lies within oneself and not outside. Let us think from love so that what we say carries a message of love and what we do is an act of love; in this way, we will know that our mental limitation has already been cleansed. The Masters say: “Always think the best of everything that exists or happens, and you will be thinking correctly.”

Our mental attitude—the way we think—is an antidote to any pathogen, and to ensure that none appears in our lives, we need to use the universal antidote: love expressed in thought, word, and deed. We simply need to think the best—that which brings harmony, peace, and happiness. That is why the Masters of wisdom say: “There is no situation, no matter how difficult, that does not have a perfect purpose of love.”

In other words, there are no bad situations in and of themselves; every situation is necessary, since situations are great opportunities for spiritual development. There is no reason to think that there are negative elements or events, unless one has mental limitations. Actions themselves originate in thoughts; if one’s thoughts are pure, one is already well disposed for word and action.

Now that we have recognized that the problem lies within us, not outside—that is, the first step toward mental cleansing is to recognize that we have mental limitations in the form of conceptual or intellectual beliefs—let’s see how we can work on it.

Let’s observe some external situations we might disagree with, different behaviors that make us feel bad. This would be the second step: writing down every day what limitations we have—situations that bother us, things that offend us or make us feel bad…. There, the need to work on ourselves will become apparent. A person can observe whether they feel bad in the face of these behaviors: vulgarity, filth, discourtesy, clumsiness, laziness, failure to fulfill obligations, drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, aggression, infidelity, promiscuity, intransigence, rudeness, or fanaticism.

The exercise consists of gradually filling in your own “map” of limitations, noting down everything that makes you feel bad: something your boss, partner, or child said; a situation on the street; an act of aggression; a piece of news… These situations are neither good nor bad; they are neutral events—simply behaviors that differ from your own.

In a physical assault, for example, two different fields are involved: the physical, which may suffer an injury, and the mental, which is independent of the physical and depends on oneself. In the mental field, we are the ones who hurt ourselves with our way of thinking—not real mental harm, but it is always necessary to set loving action in motion and to know how to set boundaries, so as not to live with aggressive people, since physical aggression is in any case unacceptable.

If, for example, someone is walking down the street and trips over a curb, they will not automatically have a mental problem, because they consider it an accident, a moment of carelessness, and tell themselves, “Next time I’ll pay more attention.” But if, in the same situation, a distracted passerby bumps into them, they will get angry at the stranger because he was walking distractedly and left them sore: the physical harm is the same but, in addition, that person has caused themselves mental harm by thinking that the other person caused them pain and by interpreting the reason why they were pushed. In reality, the other person did not harm them; the fact that they came to meet that person and have that experience is something that lies within their own destiny and their conscious or unconscious decisions; therefore, the other person has nothing to do with it. It is our own mental limitations that do not allow us to accept behaviors different from our own.

We inflict mental harm on ourselves by interpreting what others do.

3.2 What should we learn when faced with a difficulty?

What we must learn are the seven tools of love, since whoever masters them will never again have a destiny to face. These seven tools are seven renunciations of the belief system, of mental limitation. If you are in a complicated situation and cannot set boundaries, the situation is one of destiny, and all that remains is to face it with the seven tools of love, which are:

1. Accept: give up trying to change others.
2. Act: give up attacking others.
3. Adapt: give up running away from the place that corresponds to you.
4. Be grateful: give up suffering over the difficulties that life presents. Accept that it is a necessary learning experience and be at peace. In this way, you begin to flow with life.
5. Take responsibility: give up blaming others. You choose your own destiny, so you need to take responsibility for your mistake—if you have attacked someone—and the other person needs to take responsibility for their annoyance. Annoyance is a mental limitation that keeps you from accepting an assessment different from your own.
6. Respect: give up criticizing others and interfering in their destinies. You have to find the value in any situation, no matter how different it may be; you have to evaluate it, but not judge or criticize it. For example, if a person needs a truck to transport 30 tons and is lent one that holds only five, they cannot say it’s a lousy truck, only that it is not useful for what they need to transport.
7. Value: give up complaining about what you have. And where are these tools kept? In a very valuable case called understanding. Understanding involves using all seven tools.

3.3 What is the root of the difficulty in accepting behaviors that differ from our own?

It lies in a personal limitation in understanding several things:

• That everything that happens is necessary and has a perfect purpose of love, even if it is different from what we expect.
• Everyone has the right to live their own experience, and there’s no reason to invalidate, judge, or attack them, or to feel bad about it; you just need to understand that that person’s experience may be different from your own. They are different experiences, neither good nor bad; both are necessary and important. It’s about recognizing the difference and evaluating it according to the importance each one holds. It’s as simple as comparing an orange to a banana: they’re different foods and nourish us in different ways. If you can see it this way, it means you’re seeing it with love. The flaw we see in another person shows us our own mental limitation in accepting behavior different from our own, or in understanding the pedagogical importance of the external event.

As long as we do not step out of the duality of good and evil, we will not be able to understand the principle of love that resides in the neutral.

Love is neither positive nor negative, but neutral. Understanding love means offering no resistance to anything; this means having no mental limitations, and it implies being able to accept everything as necessary.

3.4 Other Tools for Working with Limitations: Mistakes and Successes

A mistake is an opportunity to learn to accept, while getting something right is a verification of the truth. These definitions rule out any possibility of guilt or punishment; therefore, there is nothing to fear! It is about beginning to see the truth in reality, not about viewing reality as good or bad. In order to see the truth, we need to rid ourselves of mental limitations. Seeing the truth as the Masters present it means that:

There is no such thing as a culprit in the Universe, nor is there punishment; there is a relationship between mistake and learning.

We have the right to make mistakes so that we can learn, and we also have the right to get things right so that we can verify what we have learned. We make mistakes because we lack information or training, and that is equivalent to the need to learn.

3.4.1 What can be done when people make mistakes? And

when they get it right?

Handling mistakes or successes requires certain techniques of wisdom. If we don’t know them, we may make certain mistakes, which are only natural. Usually, when faced with another person’s mistake, we criticize them, attack them, and blame them (that is, we ask, “Who is to blame?”), and then we punish them (we ask, “What is the punishment?”). In this way, all we do is add another mistake to the first one. That is why human relationships present so many difficulties: because we do not learn from mistakes, but instead handle one mistake with another.

On the other hand, when others get something right, we usually make another mistake: that of strengthening the ego, that of competition. So we say, “You’re the best; there’s no one like you,” and, as a result, the person forms a false idea of what actually happened.

3.4.2 What would a wise way of handling a mistake look like?

We have seen that doing nothing in the face of a mistake is itself another mistake; we need to do something, but what would be the wise thing to do in this case? Obviously, first of all, we must not judge or condemn. We need to reflect:

We are learning to clear our minds of the false ideas that our culture has passed on to us; to let go of the idea of good and evil, of guilt and punishment, of winning or losing…

Human beings neither win nor lose; what really happens is that we learn, and we can improve from wherever we are on the path. Some people are behind us and others are ahead, but that doesn't make us better or worse; it simply means that some have walked farther and others less far.

All of us, without exception, are doing the same thing: we learn along the way. If you feel like a winner, it’s because you think everyone else is a loser; therefore, you’ve already made a mistake. And if you feel like a loser, it’s because you believe you’re inferior to others, so you’re making another mistake.

When faced with a mistake, we will ask ourselves:

1. What have I learned from what's happening in my life?
2. How can I improve? This means looking at yourself; it’s not a matter of comparing yourself to others. If a person compares themselves to others, the comparison can be of two kinds: a winning one or a losing one. If they look ahead, it is a losing comparison; and if they look back, it is a winning one.

In both cases, the person is mistaken. Because if they look back and feel like a winner, what does that make everyone else? Losers. And if they look ahead and feel like a loser, then it’s even more serious, because they’re looking at life through the limited concepts of their personality.

We must learn to see life with wisdom. The problem of human competition originates in this limiting concept: winning or losing. It’s advisable to break out of that rigid cultural mold and start seeing life for what it is: an opportunity to be happy and to love, wherever we are on the path. There will always be people ahead of us. Wonderful! We can learn from them. And there will always be people behind us. Wonderful! We can support them.

3.4.3 How can we know that we acted in truth in the face of another person's mistake?

person?

The first step is to get involved with that other person so they feel supported, so they don’t feel alone on the path, even if the mistake wasn’t yours. You should ask them, “What did we learn from the mistake?” rather than, “What did you learn from the mistake?” Because in reality, we both learn: the person who made the mistake needs to learn from it, and the person who didn’t make it but was affected by it or felt bad needs to learn not to be affected and not to blame the other.

The second step involves asking yourself what you can do to avoid making the same mistake again. This is the Universe's pedagogical purpose: to learn from mistakes.

3.4.4 How can we respond wisely to another person's success?

We respond wisely by saying “congratulations” or “well done” and by checking whether we have truly learned from the success or whether it was merely an apparent “coincidence.” From a success we learn that there is a correct way of doing things, as shown by the positive result, and whether we truly know how to repeat it.

Regardless of whether we make a mistake or get it right, we must always be willing to learn. This is what applying wisdom consists of; this is where mental flexibility lies. Anyone who is unwilling to learn something new is so because they believe they already know everything, and that is the ignorance of the ego.

We usually handle neither mistakes nor successes wisely, because we approach them from learned cultural concepts, and that leads to conflict. We say, for example, to a child, “You have to be the best”; this causes trauma and plants a false idea in their head, because it’s impossible to always come in first; on the contrary, there’s always someone ahead of you and always someone behind you. Wisdom would mean telling them, “You can be happy with who you are and with what you have.”

A successful person is someone who is always able to be happy with what they have and always has what they need to be happy; they are able to be happy on their own and to love their neighbor as themselves. Furthermore, they decide to always give their best, taking responsibility before the Universe, regardless of what is happening around them.

“We can improve” is very different from “you have to be the best.”

Improving means that no matter where you are, you can move forward. But being the best means there’s no one ahead of you, and that’s not usually true. We’re not talking about winners or losers: we can all enjoy ourselves, and we all have the opportunity to learn and improve.

3.4.5 How can we wisely handle a personal mistake or success?

If you are acting in truth and make a mistake, you should do the following:

1. Acknowledge the mistake. This is part of an exercise in humility: clearly saying, “I was wrong,” since the ego doesn’t like to say it.
2. Apologize to the other people who may have been affected by the mistake you made, even though it's not your fault that they were affected.
3. Ask yourself the following question: “What have I learned from my mistake, and what can I do to avoid making it again?” On the other hand, how do you handle a success of your own in truth?
4. By examining the tools of truth that are implicit in the satisfying result you obtained, in order to learn how successes are achieved.
5. By acting with humility, saying something like, “We can all learn this, and I want you to know that you can count on me.” From that moment on, you’ll be better able to act and serve others; that’s what success is for. You can serve because you’ve learned something.

3.4.6 How do we usually handle mistakes in our culture?

1. With blame. The parties accuse each other: “It’s your fault”; “No, it’s your fault”; and they try to force the other person to accept the point of view they believe they are right about. The result is conflict and suffering, because we seek punishment, a culprit, revenge—we want someone to pay—and we seek to set a precedent: “This can’t be allowed to stand.” This is a mistaken way of handling error. If we do not remove the idea of a culprit from our minds, we will not be able to express love. We must completely give up blaming anyone, for any reason. Violence is the result of blaming others, and it will not disappear as long as the idea of a culprit exists in our minds. It will only disappear when the idea of the disciple, the Master, and the opportunity to learn arises.
2. With aggression. The parties try to impose or forbid in order to control, punish, or take revenge on the other, and from there it moves into aggression. The result, once again, is conflict and suffering. Aggression originates first within us, and then it is directed at others, or else we turn it against ourselves; but it all comes from the belief that there is someone to blame. If we were able to value mistakes, then there would no longer be anyone to blame, only students learning from life; in that case there would be no aggression, just better teaching tools.

3.5 What is the right way to handle a disagreement?

First, try conciliation: in this way, both parties learn to give way and to establish new agreements that call for mental flexibility—that is, stepping out of one’s own rigid limitations—and, of course, the result will be peace and harmony. Conciliation means neutralizing conflicting extremes and bringing them to a neutral point of harmony.

Second, if the parties learn from each other but cannot reach an agreement, then each one must take their own path, in peace and harmony, without resentment, bitterness, or discomfort. Perhaps there was no agreement because of what we call incompatibility; that is, each person’s ideas are entirely valid, yet completely different. In that case, since we must not impose, force, or prohibit, if no agreement can be reached, the healthiest course is to set boundaries—but boundaries set out of love: we simply go down different paths, equally necessary and valuable.

Therefore, the right order is to first attempt conciliation and, only if that is not possible, to opt for setting boundaries.

3.6 How can we overcome conscious limitations?

When a person decides to change certain aspects of their life in order to be happier and have better relationships, they immediately realize that there are a number of mental limitations that make it difficult to achieve this goal. This is because every time they try to stay serene, talk calmly, look for solutions, and act with wisdom, they run into a series of internal reactions that make them lose their calm. As a result, they end up shouting, lashing out, blaming, and, of course, damaging their relationships, drifting away from people, and missing many opportunities for fulfillment.

We recognize our limitations through the internal reactions we experience when we try to be at peace.

Most of our reactions that are destructive to harmony originate in rigid mental concepts—that is, in those that do not allow us to accept other people’s behaviors, beliefs, roles, destinies, or customs. Other automatic reactions originate in unconscious mental recordings of a traumatic or phobic nature.

Destructive reactions originate in rigid beliefs and mental concepts.

To overcome conscious limitations of a conceptual-cultural origin, it is necessary to follow an appropriate sequence of actions. The following seven steps produce excellent results if a person practices them consciously:

1. Recognize what the difficulties are (personal destiny). Every difficulty has a learning purpose. The first mistake we make is to blame others or our surroundings for them. When life shows us that confronting what is external is useless, we make the second mistake: blaming ourselves for the failure, until we are saturated with suffering. And then comes the first right move, which is to think: “I don’t want to suffer anymore.” This decision leads us to the second right move, which is to look for new information.
2. Look for wisdom teachings, whether in books, people, or Masters. Through this information, you will be guided toward what is right for you. Wisdom teachings make it easier to understand that behind every “problem” there is really an opportunity to learn to be happy and to transcend mental limitations and conflicts in relationships.
3. Pinpoint exactly where the problem to overcome lies. It is in the mind itself. Every external circumstance is neutral. Duality—good/bad, ugly/beautiful, and so on—exists in our minds, and the problem to be resolved lies in our belief system.
4. Be willing to work to overcome limitations (concepts). And how? By using understanding—to know that everything that happens is necessary for the development of consciousness—feelings—to recognize our own virtues and flaws—and mental flexibility—to adapt to any situation and give up imposing our own beliefs. This work consists of setting an example, because words of peace will have no value if we keep attacking in thought, word, and deed, and of providing information to anyone who asks for it.
5. Verify the information internally and externally (through personal experience). What is in our minds is information, and it can be true (of love) or false (of ignorance). If it is true, the internal results will be happiness, peace, and love, and the external results will be satisfying in the four areas of relationships, resources, health, and adaptation to the environment. If, on the contrary, the information is false, the results will be fear, anguish, suffering, dissatisfaction, and so on. Truth is the information that allows a person to understand the perfect order of the Universe and to see the purpose of love behind any event.
6. Reprogram the mind voluntarily, through prayers and repetitive practices using true information, in order to deactivate limiting beliefs. Reprogramming consists of visualizing, thinking, and repeating, mentally or aloud, prayers or phrases of wisdom that will replace the old mental programs of suffering and lead us out of ignorance. These phrases might be, for example: “My peace is invulnerable”; “my serenity is unshakable”; “my happiness depends only on me.” Thought is the fundamental tool for programming the mind. The mind is programmed positively or negatively depending on the content of our thoughts. Therefore, it is necessary to do it with thoughts of love, and for those thoughts to be voluntary, directed, and sustained.
7. Train continually to develop self-confidence. That is, practice the exercise of imperturbability in the face of external circumstances, repeating a simple mental formula: “I will not allow anything to affect my inner peace.” The level of understanding we have in the mental field is what can free us from the false belief system and from the defense system, which is where traumas are found.

Chapter 4. Unconscious Limitations: Fears and Phobias

Unconscious limitations are associations between an external event and an involuntary internal reaction. The main ones are fears and phobias.

The human mind is divided into:

• The unconscious, where our deepest fears, traumas, and phobias reside, is the origin of a whole series of automatic, nonconscious reactions. Learned fears reside in the unconscious.
• The conscious mind, divided into two parts:
• The sentimental part, where ancestral cultural programs reside, associated with opposite feelings —such as good and y evil— that determine the human passions linked to fanaticism: sacrifice and intransigence, affection and hatred;
• The rational part, where analysis and understanding take place. On the other hand, as we said earlier, the human brain is made up of three parts:
• The paleoencephalon, or reptilian brain—the unconscious or reactive mind.
• The mesencephalon, or mammalian brain—the conscious mind.
• The telencephalon, the neomammalian or human brain, or the analytical conscious mind. The various mental processes corresponding to the information handled by each section of the mind are installed on these three “sections” of the brain. The most highly developed part of the brain (the telencephalon), located in the frontal region, governs the rational, analytical mind—the part that can verify information and turn it into an understanding of the truth. This means that understanding and truth can free us from all mental limitations, as well as from unconscious traumatic reactions, which enslave human beings with the unfortunate mental states of fear, suffering, and stress; these, in turn, generate all kinds of conflicts, aggression, violence, disease, wars, and destruction. Understanding and truth can indeed free us from the traumatic reactions of instinct. Trauma is defined as defensive information associated with the survival instinct (reptilian brain), which is automatically installed in the unconscious when the instinct perceives a situation that exceeds the normal threshold of any of the five senses—for example, a scream, a bright light, an extreme temperature, an unpleasant taste or smell…—.

The instinct then automatically sends a warning signal to the mind, which is evaluated as a danger to survival. In this way, the reactive programs of unconscious traumatic defense are created, one by one.

Trauma is an automatic survival program associated with the reptilian brain.

The set of traumas thus forms a reactive program in the mind that is triggered automatically by an external circumstance associated with any of the traumas already installed. Such automatic reactions abruptly pull the person out of their state of peace and generate all kinds of internal and external conflicts that wear down their vital energy, damage their relationships, and limit their chances of success in life; ultimately, they lead the person into states of depression and a life lacking harmony.

Reactive trauma programs are triggered automatically, generating all kinds of internal and external conflicts.

Most of the traumas acquired by each human being are very often directly related to conflicts between the parents (or to traumatic reactions caused by anyone close to the children, or by some event), but it must be said that not everything has to do with the parents; there are many other causes of trauma. In addition to what has already been mentioned, trauma can also result from the use of mistaken teaching methods, such as physical punishment, verbal abuse, threats, prohibitions, impositions, and aberrant overprotectiveness; the latter, in particular, causes traumas of insecurity and inability by preventing the child from having the experiences necessary to learn how to function healthily in their environment.

Many traumas are directly related to the parents and to mistaken teaching methods.

Traumas are acquired in seconds and stay with us for the rest of our lives, unless the person has had enough of the distress caused by their own traumatic reaction and voluntarily decides to work on clearing their unconscious of these limiting defensive programs of the primitive instinct.

Traumas are acquired in seconds and stay with us for the rest of our lives if we don't go through therapy.

Let’s remember that traumas are “imprinted” on the unconscious through the simple mechanism of instinct, which establishes a threshold for each of the five senses that determines whether or not a situation poses a danger to survival. But it’s also possible that a child may perceive that they are going through something they shouldn’t have to, such as sexual abuse, where their life is not necessarily in danger.

If the child perceives that such a danger does exist, the instinct sends a warning signal—instantly encoding the corresponding defense program—which triggers the physiological mechanisms for flight or fight. For example, consider an innocent child playing with a cockroach. If the scream, gestures, and reaction of disgust from the person pulling the child away from his play exceed the instinct’s thresholds—which will instantly encode in the child’s unconscious an association of danger with cockroaches—from that moment on, and for the rest of his life, the person will react in a traumatic way every time he sees a cockroach, without suspecting the true cause of his distress.

The thresholds of the five physical senses are not the same for everyone, since they are determined by genetic structures. Thus, one person may be traumatized by something that does not affect another. Some children are much more susceptible and delicate than others, and are traumatized more easily. Of course, we need to be careful about this. As we become more conscious, we also become less susceptible to trauma.

You may not even know you have a trauma until you face a situation in which you automatically react irrationally. For example, a person about to get into an elevator who suddenly feels a fear that paralyzes them and can't step into the car has no idea what is happening to them; they simply can't get into the elevator. If we don't know how to manage these reactions, they become very limiting. And sometimes we react against other people, defend ourselves, lash out… Many aspects of our bad temper that appear in us, terribly destructive and damaging to relationships, are traumatic in origin. That's why it's important to learn to clear those traumas.

Reactive behaviors stemming from the unconscious are extremely harmful, not only to relationships but also to health. For this reason, trauma can become a serious obstacle to almost everything in life, including success.

There are so many things we don't do just because we're afraid of them!

And sometimes we don't even know why we're afraid of them.

Shyness is another form of trauma, which works like this: you don't feel capable of saying something, you freeze up, and you don't know why.

To heal a trauma, it isn’t even necessary to know when it originated; let’s not go back that far—let’s look at it now. It doesn’t matter when the trauma occurred—that’s just a useless curiosity of the ego; all we need to do is clean it up. To use a metaphor, it’s as if someone brought you a dirty glass and you started asking: Who made it dirty? How did it get dirty? When?… All that is a waste of time; what you need to do is wash it.

It is very easy for adults to pass on their traumas to children; in children, these traumas manifest as irrational fears whose origins we cannot identify. Spiritual development consists of cleaning the mental field in both its aspects, conscious and unconscious, and thereby becoming invulnerable.

Trauma is not a belief; it is merely a defense.

Fear is trauma; it is not rational. Suffering is a false belief, and belief is rational.

What is happening to us? We don’t allow children to experience enough—even if the experiences are guided—for them to encode self-confidence; as a result, what they have is fear. We must allow children to break things, destroy things, explore, bump into things, fall down, get burned, and cut themselves enough; all within guided experiences at very low levels that are entirely manageable for them. If we don’t allow that, the child will face a serious risk in the future, because they won’t know how to interact with the world, due to their ignorance and lack of self-confidence—simply because they were yelled at and didn’t learn.

Trauma does not result, for example, from seeing a dead body, but rather from what we tell the child about what death means. Nor is trauma generated because a child hits his hand, but rather by what we say and do in response to the child who got hurt.

We already know how traumas are formed, and that it’s important not to pass them on to children. Every time, for example, we use an aggressive tone of voice, it means danger to the instinct; every time we make a gesture of disgust toward something, we are communicating through nonverbal language, and it’s quite likely that the trauma will be imprinted on the child.

Hearing is the first sense to function in the human experience. From the formation of the fetus, the ear encodes the sound of the mother’s heartbeat and the circulation of her blood. Thus, it is the most highly developed sense from the very beginning, and it is precisely through hearing that the brain, the mind, speech, and language in general are fundamentally encoded.

The origin of fears lies, as we have already said, in the reptilian brain, which encodes the defense system we call the survival instinct. Survival is necessary only as long as we are animals; once we move into the human realm, we no longer need survival, but coexistence. This means that at this point we cannot yet call ourselves human, but rather rational animals or talking bipeds. As long as someone maintains survival-instinct reactions, they are expressing themselves from the animal order; that is, they have not yet finished implementing what we call the human part. We must, therefore, finish “de-animalizing” ourselves.

Understanding is the only element of the mental field that can truly bring about a cleansing, and it is associated with the frontal region of the telencephalon, where reasoning is located. Understanding is capable of inhibiting the survival process; when this happens, it is because the person understands that they no longer need survival, but simply harmonious and peaceful coexistence with the Universe; they begin to relate to all beings and events harmoniously and without fear.

Every human event, whether pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable, has the same origin: thought. That is where the origin of both the problem and the solution lies.

Always think the best, say the right thing, and do what's necessary.

Chapter 5. Characteristics of the Basic Fears

Because traumas are defense programs, they are always associated with some kind of fear and with fundamental aspects of the survival instinct and natural selection. These deep fears have characteristics directly related to the instinctive traits of males, females, and offspring, and to the behavior of these different profiles within the Law of Nature. These traits are generated in the paleoencephalon, are related to fear, and are associated with unconscious trauma in the way described in the following table:

Traumas can be easily identified simply by observing mental disturbance, the loss of inner peace, and the limiting effects they have on the body. All of this is known as the psychosomatic reaction. We can recognize four major groups of traumas, associated with the four basic fears generated by the survival instinct. Within each group, specific psychosomatic reactions related to that group can be observed.

Thus, for example, the dominant male has fear of losing his position. Consider what happens in this regard in our world today: when a person reaches a high position in the economic sphere or within a hierarchy, they are afraid of losing it; the same thing happens in the wild. The fear of losing is the original source of the constant fight to stay in first place.

If we don't achieve first place, we fall into the category of the subordinate male, who has fear of confronting the first one, the dominant male, because he doesn't feel strong enough to defeat him and has no access to the females. The subordinate male ends up submitting to the dominant male.

Females, who are in charge of raising the young, depend on males to survive, so they have fear of abandonment. Their strategy is to beg dominant males for food and protection. For their part, the young have fear of dying because they are defenseless. Their basic response is to flee, since they do not know how to fight.

Most human beings have these four basic fears, which originate in the reptilian brain from the survival instinct. The only way to overcome them is through spiritual development.

5.1 The Fear of Losing

In the fear of commitment, also called “Don Juanism syndrome,” a person thinks that by making a commitment they lose their freedom, and they feel afraid of facing that commitment and, as a result, losing their freedom. The two fears are thus combined.

These tables have yet to be scientifically corroborated in all cases. It is known that any illness can have a psychological origin, and here traumas are linked with associated illnesses; this does not mean it is a sine qua non condition, as it must still be verified, but we can already observe in this work how the illnesses listed in the right-hand column develop.

5.2 The Fear of Confronting

Alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, and other situations of violence or aggression toward oneself are ways of escaping a reality that the person does not want to face. They therefore reject life; they are afraid to live, to face life. If the person does not go as far as suicide, they may instead reach saturation and manage to break free from these escape mechanisms.

5.3 The Fear of Being Abandoned

Love addictions stem from the fear of abandonment. Some people prefer mistreatment, aggression, or violence as long as they can feel that someone cares about them, so they don't feel alone. Some people also feel that they are important if others attack them. That is why a popular saying goes: “It’s terrible when people speak ill of you, but there is something worse: when they don’t speak of you at all.” Some people believe they have so little worth that no one even speaks ill of them.

The fear of abandonment, which is part of our selfishness but comes from the survival instinct, is linked to our attachments: we don’t let others live because of our fear of being abandoned; we cling to them, suffocate them, smother them, because we don’t want them to leave us. This is unconscious selfishness.

5.4 The Fear of Dying

As can be seen in the tables above, the psychosomatic reactions associated with traumas seriously harm individuals in their mental stability, their social relationships, and their ability to be of service, and, of course, severely limit their chances of success in life, in addition to the serious health problems they can cause.

To begin the process of freeing ourselves from instinctive fears and to transcend the traumatic reactions that limit our life experiences, it is important, first of all, to identify our personal traumas, and then to devote ourselves to the practice of transcending the limitations of the unconscious. These traumas can be identified by answering the questions in the following test:

The questions you answer with a “yes” help identify the traumas affecting you, according to the numbering shown in the tables on the previous pages, which corresponds to the four basic fears of the survival instinct.

By adding up all the "yes" answers, you will obtain a personal assessment of the levels of trauma present in the unconscious mind.

Personal evaluation:

1. From 1 to 15 “yes” answers: You need to begin exercises in acceptance and “de-traumatization.”
2. From 16 to 25: You need specific help to begin to “de-traumatize” yourself.
3. From 26 to 35: You urgently need to undergo mental cleansing therapy.
4. From 36 to 45: You need to check into a therapeutic rest home.
5. From 46 to 56: You need a straitjacket and total isolation. Clarifications: To clear the mind, you can’t quickly remove all the old information and replace it with new information; you have to do it little by little. New information keeps arriving and, in the meantime, the old information “complains, kicks and screams, protests, and rebels until it gives in…,” which is why it takes so long for the mind to assimilate new information. A child’s mind works forty times faster than an adult’s because it doesn’t have to go through the process of comparison. On the contrary, a child’s mind is clean. The main difficulty adults have in accepting new information is that we perform the mental exercise of comparing information: “Do I like it or not?”; “Do I find it logical or not?”; “Do I change it or not?”; “Do I accept it or not?” The process of comparing old information with new is what delays spiritual development. Trauma is an instinctive defense associated with fear. In the following table, we will see what psychosomatic reactions arise when there is fear. Our reactive, or unconscious, mind generates a series of problems within us.

Through spiritual development, we aim to disconnect the animal part that persists within us and connect with the part of ourselves that is human: understanding, loving, rational, and peaceful.

Fear, as a fundamental part of our defense system, is called a psychosomatic reaction in the physical realm: the effect of the mind on the body. Let us remember that the mind, as such, does not belong to the physical plane; what belongs to that plane is the brain. Let us also remember that each part of the brain houses a particular aspect of the mind. Psychosomatic effects can range from a mental blank or weak legs, through loss of voice, constipation, or stomachache, to rapid heartbeat, fainting, or paralysis.

Chapter 6. Cleansing the Unconscious Mind

Now that we have learned about the characteristics of trauma and its devastating consequences for our lives, it is easy to understand the need to transcend, once and for all, these survival-instinct defense characteristics in order to rise positively in spiritual development, be freed from fear, attain the full expression of love, and achieve resounding success in living peacefully and harmoniously with all beings in the Universe.

To cleanse the unconscious mind, we need to follow these steps:

1. Be overwhelmed by problems, conflicts, suffering, and failures.
2. Recognize the need to free yourself from traumatic programs.
3. Clearly identify the real cause of personal problems.
4. Learn the origin and the initial need for the trauma.
5. Understand why it is no longer necessary to defend yourself.
6. Completely renounce aggression.
7. Reprogram the rational mind regarding the four basic fears.
8. Gradually desensitize reactions (inhibition of instinct).
9. Constantly train yourself in the expression of love (transcendence).

6.1 Being Overwhelmed by Problems, Conflicts, Suffering, and Failures

The reactive effects of the unconscious can damage relationships, causing great suffering and inner conflict, and wiping out one's chances of success in life—all without the person even knowing it.

When someone experiences constant problems, conflicts, and failures, there comes a time when they say, “I don’t want to suffer anymore!” They will then look for information that will help them locate the true origin of their problems, which, as we know, lies in their personal destiny, their conceptual limitations, and their unconscious trauma.

Once a person is clear about what their problem is and where it comes from, they can begin working on solutions:

• First, they will understand the importance of making the most of their destiny.
• Then they will modify their belief system by cleansing their conscious conceptual mind.
• Finally, they will work to cleanse the trauma from their reactive mind. Below is the story of a Master’s evaluation of his disciples after asking them whether they have already suffered enough: One disciple says, “Master, I think I haven’t suffered enough yet, because it is precisely through suffering that I purify myself and develop my spirit.” Then the Master looks at him lovingly and says, “Of course; you may continue to suffer.” Another disciple says, “I think I have already suffered enough.” The Master asks him, “And how do you know?” He replies, “Because I’ve had it up to here. I’m tired of everything that goes on around me: people’s aggression, the disorder, society, the imbalance, the wars. I don’t want to know anything more about all that; I don’t want to suffer anymore.” Then the Master says to him, “You haven’t suffered enough yet; you need to keep suffering a little longer, until you give up trying to change what is outside and decide to work on your inner self.” At that moment, a third disciple raises his hand and says, “Master, I think I have already suffered enough.” “How do you know?” asks the Master, and the disciple answers, “For a very simple reason: because I live happily at all times, nothing that happens around me affects my inner peace, and I see every event as an opportunity to learn more and more to value what life has given me.” The Master tells him, “You no longer need to suffer.” What was happening was that the third disciple had already managed to get rid of the trauma. The first step is to reach the point of being overwhelmed by conflicts and suffering, and to be willing to work on yourself with appropriate information. That is why, if a person says, “Other people have to change,” it means they haven’t located the problem, since it cannot be solved in others.

6.2 Recognizing the Need to Free Yourself from Traumatic Programs

A person who has already worked on themselves and succeeded in modifying their beliefs, filling their conscious mind with an understanding of truth and love, may still notice automatic reactions arising within them that are hard to control despite their understanding. This unpleasant inner sensation, caused by the traumatic reaction, will allow them to recognize the presence of their primitive defense programs, still installed in their unconscious, as well as the need to free themselves from them in order to attain total inner peace.

Inner discomfort is the mechanism that allows us to recognize the need to free ourselves from trauma. Trying to work on the other person instead of on ourselves is of no use at all; the only thing it produces is an increase in conflict.

6.3 Clearly Determining the Real Cause of Personal Problems

Once a person has clearly recognized the real harm caused by their traumatic reactions—both on the physical and the social levels, along with the problems linked to the deterioration of personal relationships, which can seriously compromise their chances of achieving success in life—they can then have a clear idea of how to solve their personal problems.

Once the origin of reactive problems has been clearly determined, it is possible to begin the exercise for the definitive release of the old, traumatic, instinctive programs of self-defense; this will ultimately lead the person to eliminate the last stronghold of the unconscious ignorance where fear hides.

There are no collective problems; what exists is a “gathering” of personal problems. We can only solve our own problems and help others—with information, love, and service—to obtain the tools they need to solve theirs. It is important to be clear that there is only one problem to solve: the personal problem, which lies in both the conscious and the unconscious mind.

6.4 Understanding the Origin and Initial Need of the Trauma

In order to see trauma not as an insurmountable obstacle but as part of a temporary process of defense, it is essential for the person to understand the initial, transitory need for the instinctive defense programs that give rise to trauma. It is also indispensable that they be able to appreciate the importance of those programs among the mechanisms for sustaining life in the primary stages of evolution.

Seeing trauma as a temporary process of defense lets us know why it is no longer necessary.

6.5 Understanding Why It Is No Longer Necessary to Defend Yourself

The popular saying “The best defense is a good offense” stems from unconscious mental programs that generate automatic traumatic reactions to defend life in aggressive environments—that is, to intimidate a potential enemy.

To free yourself once and for all from reactive and traumatic programs of instinctive origin, it is essential to come to understand why, at a certain point, it is no longer necessary to defend yourself. This understanding, grounded in the principles of love that govern the Universe, lets us verify that defending ourselves is not necessary for survival; what is needed is to respect and serve, while being supported and respected by others at the same time. From applying this principle, the personal capacity for harmonious and peaceful coexistence with all other living beings in the Universe arises immediately.

Understanding that it is no longer necessary to defend yourself makes it possible to dismantle the traumatic system.

To eliminate or cleanse trauma, you need to declare yourself in a total state of peace and become a being of absolutely peaceful coexistence with all other beings in the Universe. This is achieved by applying the mastery techniques to this personal decision; that is: “Don’t tell anyone. It is enough to work on your inner peace; you can’t work on someone else’s. And if you already have inner peace, apply the mastery technique: ‘don’t let it show.’” People who don’t have information won’t understand how someone can be at peace in the face of something they call “a catastrophe,” a drama, or a tragedy.

6.6 Total Renunciation of Aggression

To free ourselves from fear and from traumatic defense programs, it is essential to renounce completely all forms of physical, verbal, and mental aggression. To do so, it is indispensable to understand that only a potential aggressor can be attacked, because there is a direct correspondence between defense and aggression.

When a person totally and definitively renounces any form of aggression—physical, verbal, and mental—they automatically become a being of peace, and as a result will never again encounter defense-aggression systems of any kind. This, in turn, will allow them to let go of their own instinctive systems of traumatic defense, because they understand not only that these systems are no longer necessary, but also that they are completely limiting for peace, relationships, success, health, and spiritual transcendence. Failing to respect others generates aggression, while not aggressing against anyone generates respect and peace.

To renounce aggression totally means opening the door to love and peaceful coexistence.

6.7 Reprogramming the Rational Mind

In order for the rational mind to be able to disconnect the automatic defense systems that originate in the reptilian brain, it must first be reprogrammed with information drawn from an understanding of love and truth, which govern the perfect order of the Universe.

This reprogramming exercise consists of thinking and visualizing phrases designed from an understanding of the principles of love and truth, and repeating them many times until the mind accepts them and installs them.

Reprogramming the mind switches off fear and behaviors of aggression and violence.

The mind will not install something that is not logical, something whose meaning is unclear; that will only serve as a formula for temporary isolation. But isolating the mind does not imply understanding; it merely sets the mind apart from a problem so that vital energy can rise and the area of mental understanding can be activated.

6.8 Gradual Desensitization of Reactions

Once a person has done the mental reprogramming exercises, they can begin the process of gradual desensitization of instinctive reactions. In this way they will not only clear their mind of psychological trauma but also inhibit the reactions of the defense instinct. Since traumas take on countless forms and types of reactions, it would take far too long to clear them one by one. For this reason, an abbreviated procedure is used, similar to the game of chess, where simply putting the king in “checkmate” automatically ends the game.

The procedure consists of the person discovering their four “traumatic kings” and then developing a desensitization table for each of them. In this way, they will deliver “checkmate” to the four defensive games of the instinct (see also the test presented earlier; its 56 questions refer to the traumas of the four types of fear).

For example, the king of the fear of losing can be linked to anger. When we fear losing something that is important to us, we feel anger, an urge to attack and even kill anyone in order to defend the object or person in question.

To do the work in these tables properly, it is sometimes necessary to get another person's help, because with some traumas it isn't possible to do it alone. You can ask someone you trust, saying: "You are going to be my 'therapist', and you will do exactly what makes me angry." In other words, you reach an agreement with that person so they act as a kind of "trainer." In this example, you tell the person: "Every time I come home, you will ask me, 'Where were you?' in a 'little tone' and with attitude." Since we are working on desensitization, the person in training will feel something inside, but should respond calmly: "I was running some errands; if you want to know exactly what they were, I'd be happy to sit down and tell you." How long do you need to stay at this desensitization step? Long enough that you feel nothing when you hear that "provocation." As long as you still feel discomfort, don't move on to the next step, because if you do it without having completed the previous one, the only result will be discouragement.

The tables have a little secret: they are designed to help the person gain self-confidence, which is why it is essential to start with small steps. If you succeed, you will gain self-confidence; but if you fail, your low self-esteem or your belief in your own incapacity will be strengthened. For this reason, it is not advisable to start with a high-intensity step, since when you fail, the trauma is reaffirmed. In short, we do not recommend moving on to the next step until desensitization has been achieved in the previous one. And so on. You know that a particular trauma has been desensitized when you no longer feel anything in response to the external event.

Once this has happened in the first step, you must reach an agreement with the other person to move on to the second step, which consists of telling lies. When you feel nothing upon hearing those lies, it is time to continue to the next step. Finally, the collaborating person has to steal something from the individual who is desensitizing their traumas; their wallet, for example, has disappeared. When the person manages to feel nothing in the face of an event like this, they will have succeeded in putting the king in “checkmate.”

The table requires us to do mental reprogramming every day, to visualize ourselves in total calm and hear ourselves say: “Nothing can affect my inner peace”; this is the time to revisit the reprogramming points. So, in the case of the fear of losing: “Nothing is mine, nothing belongs to me, nothing can upset me, what is meant for me is always with me, my peace is invulnerable…”

Sometimes, when people do this desensitization exercise, in a table of twenty steps, they say at the fifth step, “I’m jumping to step twenty,” because the mind accepts that there is nothing left to fear and the trauma is dismantled. However, even when this happens, you should not stop reprogramming, because sometimes the trauma is not dead but merely unconscious, and it wakes up later.

For example, the king of the fear of confrontation can be linked to a person’s shyness. Every time you need to say something, you freeze, your mind goes blank, and the words won’t come out. This is the case for those who are afraid of public speaking: they can read as many books as they like about self-esteem or about how to speak in public, and they can reprogram their minds every day; but when they stand in front of an audience, their minds go blank again. Desensitization is therefore necessary, since mental reprogramming alone is not enough. The process involves speaking, first, to an empty room; then to one trusted person who will listen; next, once the individual feels comfortable with that person, speaking in front of more people, and so on.

For its part, the king of the fear of abandonment can connect a person with jealousy, hatred, sadness, boredom, low self-esteem, etc.

As for the king of the fear of dying, it often connects with disgust, because the person assumes that some things are dangerous to their physical integrity; and also with attachments, hysteria, greed, rebelliousness, stinginess, stubbornness, or distrust.

To succeed in the desensitization process, it is very important that the order of the tables, the specific situations, the intensity of the reaction, and the number of steps required be established by the person who wishes to overcome their traumatic reactions. It is also essential that the tables be worked through from the lowest to the highest intensity, step by step.

A desensitization table does not work for a person who has not understood that trauma is only a false association; that is why it is the last step of the entire process. The understanding mind has grasped that the danger does not exist, but the instinct still holds the encoded information that this was something dangerous to it, that it represented a possibility of losing something; that is why desensitization is necessary.

6.9 Constant Training in the Expression of Love

For anyone working on gradual desensitization, it is extremely helpful to rely on the constant practice of expressing love—in thought, word, and deed. And in this way, destiny comes completely to an end. This exercise complements the entire sequence of the mental cleansing process and allows for the definitive transcendence of all our ancestral limitations.

Instead of thinking about the need to defend ourselves against something or someone, we will focus on the need to respect all living beings. As long as we are afraid, the trauma cannot be dismantled; and defense is a form of fear.

It is extremely important that words always convey a message of peace and wisdom. If you don't have anything appropriate to say, it's better to remain silent.

Another fundamental aspect is to develop, through mental reprogramming, the ability not to react, but simply to act effectively and calmly in the face of circumstances. Actions should be filled with joy, energy, and happiness; you should never do anything without giving it your best.

The constant expression of love consists of always thinking about what leaves peace and harmony within us; in other words, speaking only of what carries a message of hope, understanding, peace, acceptance, and harmony to those who listen to us. It also consists of always doing what is necessary—that is, without making the mistake of excess or deficiency—and, finally, of putting all our energy and enthusiasm into whatever we do, no matter how simple or complex it may be.

The constant expression of love eventually creates in us the habit of loving and being happy.

This last point is the simplest and at the same time the most powerful. A person who constantly maintains the expression of love in thought, word, and deed will work a miracle in their life, because they will cleanse the conceptual mind and the unconscious mind, completely transcend the limitations of the ego, and become a being entirely of love. This is so because ultimately we become the habit of being happy.

For all these reasons, someone who is absolutely happy has nothing left to learn, because that is why we came into this world: to be happy on our own. Our happiness and our peace do not depend on anything or anyone outside of ourselves. If someone waits for something to happen in order to be happy, they will be waiting for all eternity, because the only one who can make them happy is themselves.

Once we have learned this, the second lesson follows, which is directed outward: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That is to say, if someone is already happy, what can they offer their neighbor? Their peace, their happiness, their harmony. But if someone is not happy, what do they offer? Their sadness, their anguish, their depression, their frustration, their limitation. What good is that to their neighbor? It would be better to offer nothing at all.

The work always begins with ourselves. Learning to be happy and then loving our neighbors—that fulfills the two purposes that brought us to the physical plane.

First of all, we must develop the habit of being happy. Every morning, upon waking up, we should say this: “Today I intend to enjoy the day intensely, and whatever situation life has for me today, I will enjoy it.” If we wake up with this intention every day, our lives will be transformed immediately.

The following are some of the qualities that, when approached with understanding and acceptance, allow a person to live without fear if they understand that they always can.

In order to transcend our fears, we need to be willing to understand both extremes. Not only to understand them, but to accept them reconciles the duality at a point of love; that is, at a neutral point that equals “zero fear.” To live without fear means to live free from all suffering and also to live in love.

Fear does not allow the expression of love.

We are not born with trauma; trauma is acquired, as we have already said, through experiences that exceed our instinctive thresholds, and it can be transmitted from adults to the baby from the moment of conception. The mind establishes an association between the event and a danger, and instantly records it as trauma. To begin the process of clearing trauma, it is important to understand this phrase:

You don't have to defend yourself to live in peace. All you need to do is respect and serve in order to be happy.

Chapter 7. Mental Freedom and the Definitive Transcendence of Limitations

Freedom is a mental condition of the individual, characterized by the ability to be happy and to make and take responsibility for one's own decisions in everyday situations, without depending on anything or anyone to maintain inner peace.

A mentally free person is someone who can choose to be happy on their own.

Mental freedom makes us invulnerable to any negative external influence. It can be said that a clean mind is a free mind, one that cannot be offended; on the other hand, a mind contaminated with false information, traumas, and phobias generates unconscious reactions of fear, anguish, suffering, and stress, which enslave the mind and lead to deep states of depression, as well as a whole series of problems in living together, which in turn produce aggression, conflict, and failure in a person’s life.

Mental freedom is achieved when one succeeds in cleaning the mind of the contamination acquired during the development of the personality—contamination that is both conscious and unconscious.

The characteristics of mental freedom are:

• Inner serenity.
• Peace.
• Capacity for conscious action.
• The ability to voluntarily change one's thoughts, behaviors, concepts, and feelings; that is, the ability to voluntarily modify one's own personality and accept new ideas that can improve one's life and understanding.
• Satisfaction in relationships. There are two types of decisions, and both depend on you: right decisions, with satisfactory results—which originate in understanding—and wrong decisions (mistakes), with unsatisfactory results—which originate in ignorance. Error is an inevitable tool of evolution for learning what we need to learn; the path of error is the path of wisdom: the more mistakes we make, the more opportunities we have to learn, and thus we will walk the path happily, without blaming. In fact, a Master is one who has already made every possible mistake and learned from them. Not taking responsibility for one’s life is a mental vice that works like this: the individual makes decisions, and when things do not turn out as expected, they blame others for the results they get. Blaming another person is a conscious limitation.

It is essential to stop blaming anyone or anything for the decisions we make. If we blame, we limit our possibilities for liberation and happiness. As long as there is a culprit of any kind for you, even if you are the one blaming yourself, you will be completely mistaken in the process of love; you will be acting from a profound limitation. As long as someone blames, blames themselves, or takes offense, they are a danger to others and to themselves, because they will then be capable of attacking, fighting, or disrespecting others.

7.1 The Difference Between Transcending and Eliminating

The term transcend, unlike eliminate, means that a person achieves a new way of managing their thoughts, communication, behaviors, and relationships, which means enjoying a new life with much greater satisfaction. However, there is still a possibility of returning to previous thoughts, relationships, and behaviors if the person becomes careless in managing their energy.

Transcendence implies that something will no longer be used, since the limitations are deactivated, but they could eventually reappear. In contrast, cleansing or elimination implies that such limitations will no longer exist. When someone increases their vital energy, the limitations are deactivated; this means they have been transcended. But if that person later loses their vital energy, the limitations return and are reactivated, because they have not been eliminated.

Initially, on the mental level, we seek to transcend (deactivate) limitations, and then move on to eliminating them by cleaning the mind. On the spiritual level, however, nothing can be eliminated, because everything that exists and happens in the Universe is necessary. Thus, it is not possible to eliminate evil, ignorant people, corruption, or violence; these things can only be transcended.

“The outside”—that which is external to oneself—can be transcended, but not eliminated. “The inside,” on the other hand—our inner world—can be transcended through the use of vital energy, and it can also be eliminated as far as the ego (the belief system) and traumas (the defense system) are concerned. Finally, in the spiritual part there is nothing to cleanse, because it is pure, uncontaminated, and incapable of being contaminated—unlike the mind, which can be 100% contaminated.

To use an analogy, transcending is like moving to a different floor. As we develop spiritually, we transcend the lower floors and move up to the higher ones, but the lower floors aren’t eliminated. The term “eliminate” has to do with what happens within me; it is something I no longer need. The only things we need to eliminate are the belief system (the ego) and the defense system (the traumas).

Understanding, which is the spiritual part of the mental archive, can only be increased. It is necessary to manage understanding and vital energy simultaneously, since the two are directly related. Understanding is never lost; it is only disconnected. As for traumas, they too become disconnected even when they have not been eliminated.

To transcend is to stop acting or living at internal or external levels where limitations exist.

As long as a person has a body, the limiting characteristics of the mind and instinct will continue to exist, as will the possibility of an energy drop if they neglect or make mistakes in managing their thoughts, communication, behaviors, and the life cycles the body needs.

Limitations exist as long as we have a body, but we don't need to connect with them if we act with wisdom.

To prevent an internal drop in vital energy, it is necessary, first, to have cleared the mind of most of its learned limitations; and second, to be willing to train constantly in the harmonious management of thought, communication, behavior, relationships, and the attention the body requires, so that, through all of this, one is in optimal working order.

A person trained in expressing love in thought, word, and deed

is unlikely to suffer an internal drop in their vital energy.

7.2 What causes an energy slump?

The drastic drop in vital energy happens because we become careless in thought, word, and deed, and we start having negative thoughts instead of thinking about something loving and wise. And once we are immersed in darkness, we are unable to use understanding.

We must carefully watch our own thoughts, words, and actions. The darkness in our mind tunes into the programs of fear and ignorance. Every time we feel fear, every time we find ourselves filled with anguish, it is because our mind darkened in the face of some situation in which we lost vital energy. Fear is the equivalent of a lack of light.

Think the best, say what is fitting, and do what is necessary.

Energy must be used, but at the same time it is important not to waste it on suffering, conflicts, controversies, arguments, and the like.

A wise person does not try to resolve something when their energy is low, because they know they won’t get good results. To get them, they must first raise their energy and then look for the solution, not before; for there is no solution for a dark mind. Meditation, breathing, getting enough sleep, reading, exercise, changing the frequency your mind is tuned to… All of this increases vital energy.

Love in thought, word, and deed reduces the possibility of an energy drop to zero. Masters are more Masters because of the way they manage energy than because of the wisdom they hold; for if they did not know how to manage their energy, their mastery would go “down to the basement” and fall into darkness. Therefore, the proper way to manage energy is to watch over thought, word, and deed.

Conclusions

The main conclusions drawn from this review of the process of transcending fears are as follows:

• Fear originates in the instinctive characteristic of the reptilian brain, or paleoencephalon. The survival instinct is the instinct’s “fear.”
• Fear is a mental limitation that can be “deactivated” by raising vital energy. Trauma is the mind’s “fear.”
• Trauma makes an imaginary event real. Many of our traumatic reactions come from supposing, interpreting, or imagining from within our mental limitation.
• Wisdom frees us from suffering, not science or knowledge.
• Understanding is the fundamental tool for cleansing the mental field. Understanding frees us from trauma.
• The steps in the mental cleansing process are:
• “It shows” a lot: we attack, blame, judge, suffer, compete, complain…
• “It no longer shows,” because we accept that it is something we need to work on within ourselves without blaming others, but we still feel bad inside.
• Finally, we will stop experiencing the inner feeling of unease, and our peace will not be disturbed.
• Giving up self-defense and deciding to respect make trauma unnecessary. More practice than understanding is needed to disconnect one’s own defense programs.
• Any information that does not allow a person to be happy and successful in life is a mental limitation. There is nothing to believe; nothing should be taken as certain or as a given; you have to practice and verify in your own life whether this information works and produces satisfactory results. With this information we have three courses of action:

1. Store it in our library.
2. Carry it with us and teach it to everyone.
3. Make the information a part of ourselves, so that it becomes the way we act. Only in this last case will we achieve satisfactory results.

Training Exercises

What uses up the most vital energy for you?

Faced with the same situation, each person reacts differently, because we have different beliefs.

Assess which situations in your life experience consume the most vital energy: relationship conflicts? Problems at work? Aggressive reactions (physical, verbal, or in thought) from other people toward you, or from you toward others? Threats or manipulation? Physical illness? Financial hardship? Use of stimulants? Overwork? Worries? Addictions? Physical pain?

Learn to handle these situations by increasing your vital energy and reprogramming your mind with true information in harmony with the order of the Universe.

Exercise to Verify Your Inner Results

When we try to change our lives and decide to be happier and find peace, life puts us to the test, which is an opportunity for learning and verification.

• If, when faced with something, you react aggressively, suffer, or become afraid, it means you didn't pass the test; at that moment, you have to tell yourself, "Next time, I'll do better."
• If, when you face something, your inner limitations aren’t “triggered,” it means you passed the test. In other words, if you manage not to suffer and to maintain your peace and your capacity to serve, it means you have overcome that situation. Gaining wisdom isn’t about no longer having problems, but about learning to handle them, because every day we have the opportunity to “train.”

Reprogramming the Mind to “Remove” Traumas

Reprogramming the mind consists of repeating these phrases of wisdom until they become part of you:

• My peace is invulnerable, my serenity is permanent, and my happiness depends only on me.
• I will not allow anything to disturb my inner peace.
• Everything you do with love works out well. If you always do the same thing with the same attitude, you'll always get the same results. Therefore, change the information, change your attitude, and your results will change.