Further Emergence with John Dalton

Controlled Suffering


How to gently grow into your best life.
Back in the late 80’s I was involved in some pretty intense personal development trainings. They were great and I learned a lot about myself.

Over the course of a weekend, people would drop layers and layers of old baggage and have dramatic transformations. They would truly change and it seemed impossible they would ever revert to the way they had been before.
Yet, a month later when we all met up again, it was obvious how much they had reverted.

It is common knowledge that most people who win the lottery, are back where they were financially within a few years.

Why does this happen?

I have seen this dynamic happen in my own life and the people I do one-to-one work with. It starts with our inner landscape.

Let us say that in my inner landscape, I have a mountain of shame to the north. To the south, I have the marshes of regret. To the east, are the hills of self-esteem, and to the west, I have the fiery pits of righteous anger.

The structure of my mind prioritizes orientation over content. It prioritizes knowing where everything is over what everything is.
So it prioritizes where my inner mountain is over what it is – a mountain of shame.

Knowing where everything is allows me to stay sane. It is subtle and unnoticed for the most part, like how you are oriented right now as you read these words. Without thinking about it you know where you are. Regardless of where you are, you know how you got there and where you are in relation to your surroundings, both big and small.

This prioritization of orientation over content comes into force if I change my inner landscape too drastically.

If I go through a cathartic experience and I manage to get rid of my mountain of shame, the change can be so disorienting to my inner landscape that my mind will recreate the mountain of shame very quickly.

This is not because I want the shame but because the disorientation is too disturbing.

It would be like leaving your house, going to the end of your street, and discovering that what was a T-junction is now a crossroads with a 10 storey building on each corner and all this had changed overnight!
Can you imagine how disorienting that would be?

When we make a drastic change on the inside, whether good or bad, the pull to return to the way we were before is intense because if we become too disoriented on the inside we run the risk of losing our mind.

The same principle applies to smaller changes and the effects can be more subtle.

I have a friend, for example, who has a pattern of chaos leading up to going on holiday. The days before going on holiday are always stressful and fraught. Things go wrong, wheels fall off, literally, unexpected bills appear, and then disappear.

In their inner landscape, they have a valley of unrelenting hard work. There is a holiday island but it can only be reached by a hazardous and punishing path. The chaos they go through leading up to the holidays keep them sane.
Not happy – sane.

I know another person who got their dream job. It was such a drastic change for them that within the first week of the new job, they scratched their car, three times, in three different situations. They were also unexpectedly verbally attacked by a sibling at a family gathering.

The dream job was too disorienting to their inner landscape so the car scratching and verbal attack were their system trying to reorient itself with something familiar, in this case, misery.

What to do?
The first is to accept that it is not personal. The part of your mind that is concerned with structure doesn’t necessarily want you to be miserable.
It doesn’t want you to be happy either.
It doesn’t care one way or the other.
It is only concerned with the structure of your identity and that your identity doesn’t change too drastically and collapse.

Once you accept that you can game the system in what feels counterintuitive but allows you to change more quickly without setting of the alarms.
Instead of the chaos happening to you, you create a little bit of controlled chaos to soothe the part of your mind concerned with structure.

This will be different for everyone and requires a certain amount of self knowledge. It starts with seeing the pattern if there is one. Like my friend and the holidays.
Or being willing to look into how you feel about something great on the horizon. Like the person starting the new job.

If you can get a sense of what inner structure is being triggered you can take appropriate action.

The principle is you happen to it, rather than it happening to you.

In the example of my friend – knowing their holidays are looming they can actively do things to soothe the inner structure of the need for a hazardous and punishing path – just not so much.
A sort of hazardous and punishing path – lite.
They might work late in the days leading up to their holiday,
or do their taxes,
or clean out cupboards they have been meaning to,
or go to the gym if they have been putting it off.
Any activity they would consider as mildly miserable will do the trick.
A bit of controlled suffering to stave off a big reset.

The same will work for the person starting the new job. They will need to first acknowledge that behind the feeling of elation, at securing the new job, is an anxiety. This is not easy to do as it doesn’t make sense but if they can see it they can get ahead of it. They can actively engage in some controlled suffering to make the transition into the new job, and more significantly the altered identity, more gentle.

Practicing controlled suffering stops the yo-yo pattern of dramatic change followed by crushing reversion because it allows you to grow gently and over time, like most things in nature do.

Practicing controlled suffering is like the rain that over time erodes the mountain.

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Photo by Tyler Sakil on Unsplash

1 year ago | [YT] | 1

Further Emergence with John Dalton

Go deeper – an invitation.

You are very sensitive to other people. 
Wonderful – go deeper.
You are very intuitive. 
Lovely – go deeper.
You resonate with the tarot and use it for everything.
Great – go deeper.
You are in touch with the other side. 
Fantastic – go deeper. 
You resonate with astrology and use it all the time. 
Excellent – go deeper. 
You remember your past lives. 
Marvellous – go deeper.
You can see auras. 
Brilliant – go deeper. 
You work with your angels. 
Lovely – go deeper. 
You channel ascended masters. 
Wonderful – go deeper.
You have found your Guru. 
Brilliant – go deeper.
You see dead people. 
Marvellous – go deeper. 
You are in contact with extraterrestrials. 
That is great – go deeper. 
You can astral travel. 
Excellent – go deeper.
You can see fairies. 
Fantastic – go deeper. 
You go deep with plant medicine. 
Lovely – go deeper.
You work with your spirit guides. 
Brilliant – go deeper.
You receive guidance from your higher self. 
That is great – go deeper.
Go deeper, and go deeper, and go deeper 
until you drop out the bottom of it all 
into the source of it all.
Go deeper until you are in the mystery 
then go deeper.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

Further Emergence with John Dalton

Death is stalking me


I read the Carlos Castaneda books in the late 80’s.
Interesting and wild and different.

A refreshing break from the Indian gurus and Zen masters I was inhaling at the time. The same dynamic of master and student but coming out of a wildly different culture. Carlos was the student and Don Juan was his master.

There was talk of feathers of the eagle, of being a warrior, of adjusting the shine of your eyes to change reality, and of death stalking you all your life.

Nowadays it’s hip with the Sedona crew to talk about Shamanic death and how we go through many of them in this life and how they are liberating and not to resist.

I’m not so sure.

I’ve been here before.

Death stalked me through the summer of 96. It circled around me and my little family as we chirped along oblivious — my little girl in her stroller and my lovely wife by my side.

When it struck, the speed and intensity were blinding.

When it was done, nothing was left.

Shamanic death sounds exotic and cool — it wasn’t.

Physical death, the death of a loved one, is laden with completion native to the process. Like birth, there is an unstoppableness to the process.

This Shamanic death has none of that luxury.
It is laced with insecurity and a sickening parade of roads not taken.
My complicit hand is ever present to wave and point and gut-punch — never letting me forget my part, my actions, and inactions, and worst of all my unconsciousness. The unconsciousness I no longer have.

Now death is stalking me again.

A realisation that is at once thrilling and terrifying.
Last time I didn’t see it coming. This time I can.

It whispers,

“I am the end of things and the beginning of freedom.
All the things you have been stressing to maintain,

I am the end of them — your marriage, your job, your, house, your body — let me lump it all together and tie it up with a pretty bow for you — your illusion of security.

For as long as you want security you will never be truly free
because you will always be trying to hang on to something.

Look at old people, they know.

They spent their whole life trying to hang on to something that is, in the end, always taken away.
You feel my breath close at hand and you can’t help yourself knowing it is the breath of freedom.”

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 6

Further Emergence with John Dalton

Expansions In The Mystery


New discoveries in my distance work.

As you know, my one-to-one work is a bit unconventional, to say the least. I do my best to explain it, but it’s not easy to put into words—it often sounds unbelievable, even to me.

Over time, as I have done more long-distance work, things have evolved in surprising ways. So, I thought it was time to update you on some of the new developments.

But first, let me quickly walk you through what a typical one-to-one session looks like. People come to me for all sorts of reasons—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

For example, right now, I am working with someone recovering from trauma that occurred 15 years ago, which left them with persistent physical symptoms. Another person is slowly piecing their life back together after overwhelming grief. I am also working with someone dealing with post-surgery complications, while another is navigating the challenging balance between a deep spiritual calling and the high-energy dynamics of corporate life. Then, there is someone dealing with chronic pain, and another healing from the devastating effects of childhood sexual abuse.

Sessions usually begin with a conversation, where the person tells me about their situation or how their week has gone. After that, they lie down, and I begin working with their system behind the scenes. This involves pulling back from ordinary existence and meeting them in the mystery, supporting their system in whatever way it needs. We finish with more discussion.

The location doesn’t matter. While physically we may be in different places, in the mystery, we are right beside each other. For me, there’s no difference between working with someone remotely or in person.

Now, as remarkable as my standard sessions are, what has been happening over the past year has been even more extraordinary.


Shipping Container Radiation


I happened to mention to someone I work with in Australia—let’s call him Frank—that I usually clear my drinking water before I consume it. Naturally, Frank was curious and asked how I did this. I explained that I change the molecular structure of the impurities in the water, transforming them into something my system can benefit from.

I picked up this method based on Raymon Grace’s work. So, thanks, Raymon!

Frank then asked if I could do something similar with a shipping container he had bought a few years back. asure.
(...)

To read the complete original blog post with nice formatting go here www.furtheremergence.com/expansions-in-the-mystery…}

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

Further Emergence with John Dalton

Steering your little boat
{to read the original blog post with nice formatting go here - www.furtheremergence.com/steering-your-little-boat…}

On the off chance our thoughts do actually influence the world, can we let go of our need to be right about a coming apocalypse?

I have a friend who is very concerned about the decline in driving standards over the last 10 years. They have adult children who are all good drivers but remain unprotected from “crazy” drivers.

My friend regularly watches real-life traffic accidents captured by CCTV and dashboard cameras and passes these videos on to their family in the hopes it will prepare them for whatever they might meet, “out there.”

From my perspective, this is a lot of evidence gathering to substantiate a future I don’t think my friend wants. I understand the concern and the pull to gather evidence, we are hard-wired for it biologically.

Our nervous systems are designed to look for threats on the horizon – assess problems, real or imagined and work out possible solutions. The weighting in favor of the negative outcome is heavy. This is one of the reasons why it takes five positive news stories to counteract one negative news story.

Watching the news to stay informed – assess problems and work out possible solutions – actually creates a heightened state of anxiety and leads us to feel like there is no hope for, well, anything.

Thankfully we are more than our biology. We have a divine spark expressing itself within us and that spark is the powerhouse of our lives.

For me navigating these difficult waters is always a balance of on the one hand, facing the apparent chaos and uncertainty, and the overwhelming sense of powerlessness it evokes, and on the other hand, behaving as if I am the creator of my reality, that my thoughts matter, and letting go of my need to be right.

And that last part is the hardest to do, because if like me you a sensitive soul, you probably see things that other people don’t. You see connections. You question the narrative.

All of which is great but it can leave you wanting to be proved right and unfortunately, the things we want to be proved right about are often catastrophic.

For example, if you had been concerned about the Y2K bug at the turn of the century, and you had amassed a lot of very good evidence that the effects of the Y2K bug were going to be devastating to the world.

Then on New Year’s Eve 1999, you met a wizard and they gave you a choice, you could make the devastating effects of the Y2K bug disappear but no one would know you had been right all along,

or the Y2K bug would happen with all its devastating consequences and everyone would know you had predicted it and been right all the time. You would be like Michael Burry who predicted the 2008 financial crash.

Which comes back to the question, do you want to be right or do you want to have the future you would prefer?

I live as if I have that choice every moment. I stay aware of the news. I have a good sense of what is true and what is not, but my main focus is on what kind of future I want to happen and that is the direction I keep steering my little boat towards.

Steering my boat toward the future I want could be easier for me because I have a very strong reference point in Northern Ireland. When I was growing up in the 1970s, there was horrific violence going on in Northern Ireland all the time.

Every night on the news was a new terror. Shell shocked people recounting how they had lost a loved one in the most horrible ways. And all this happening roughly 100 miles away from where I lived.

To this day, I am still traumatised by what I saw on the news at that time.

The situation was so tense it was like living with a powder keg that could explode at any time and envelop the whole island of Ireland.

The situation seemed hopeless, the issues that led to the violence were so complex and deep-rooted it seemed almost impossible that things would ever change.

Faced with that seeming impossibility, and the subsequent feeling of powerlessness that came with it, all I could do was steer my little boat in the direction of a future I wanted which was the naive idea that there could be peace in Northern Ireland.

I steered my little boat away from the news, and my fearful thoughts, and the heartache I felt for the people, and I gently steered it toward peace in Northern Ireland.

It took 20 years, but remarkably peace came to Northern Ireland in 1998.

In the years before it happened there were plenty of people who had lots of very well-informed and well-thought-out reasons why there would never be peace in Northern Ireland.

The question would have been the same for them.
Did they want to be right? = neverending violence in northern Ireland,
or did they want a happier future? = peace in Northern Ireland.

I think of my life as a little boat because it helps remind me of my small and limited perspective, and it also engenders affection. When I add the word ‘little’ in relation to myself, I feel more kindness towards myself, my little body, my little perspective, my little mind, my little heart steering my little boat.

Whether I am actually changing my reality remains to be seen. What I am changing is how I feel on the inside. When I think the world is chaos ruled by forces I have no control over, I feel terrible.

Whereas, when I think my thoughts affect my reality and by steering my thoughts in a particular direction I can influence my reality to go in the direction I want, I feel great. I feel engaged and involved and empowered.

2 years ago | [YT] | 6