Lester Levenson and the 7th step of releasing

On request, I'm reposting this here for everyone to use - from a recent post on my blog.

Below, I'll leave what comments I can, what I've learned from this tape material.

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I don’t know why, but you don’t find this 7th step of the releasing technique mentioned in the various Larry Crane and Hale Dwoskin work-ups.

Practically, it’s been around as a practice since time immemorial.

Here’s what Levenson said in a tape series called, “The Way”:

7. Make your behavior that which a Master would do. Whatever you do, do it successfully.
The more imperfectly we work, the lower down the scale we are.
The action required to go free is releasing all the obstruction.

A Master, as we’ve covered elsewhere, is someone who has already achieved a high state of enlightenment and self-knowledge. And there are more around on this planet than we consider. But that’s another essay I’ve already written.

For our use here, it is really that one sentence and the explanation I pulled from his tape – not an exact quote, but close.

People have often used others’ examples to compare and contrast their own lives with. Levenson is telling you to simply do what a Master would do.

Of course, you probably have heard that phrase, “What would Jesus do?” – which is completely applicable, just as “What would Buddha – or Lao Tse, or Confucius, or Muhammad, or any other major spiritual leader – do?”

The idea that comes to me, particularly in following Levenson’s example above, is that you always work for perfection in every single thing that you do. All actions are professional and give a much greater value than are asked for. Wallace Wattles covered that exact point in his “Science of Getting Rich.” Similarly Earl Nightingale covered similar points in his “Strangest Secret” recording.

And so very interesting was a point I first ran into from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” – where he quotes the psychologist William James – that all you have to do is to act the part and whatever you do will take the place of any feeling you are currently experiencing. Be brave, and you are. Laugh, and then you’ll certainly be merry.

So that gives us a very practical and pragmatic approach to life. Study up on the lives and teachings of these spiritual leaders – or any Master in any field – and you’ll see exactly how to approach life from that viewpoint.

Don’t assume their persona, be your self – but make your actions those a Master would do. In other words, take all this in advisement, but throw it away if it doesn’t let you be yourself.

Because you are already a Master, we are just working out how to let your inner light shine – aren’t we?

Try this for 30 days and you’ll start replacing habits you didn’t even know you had.

I can already see where I can get some improvement out of this – I hope you have as well.

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The point of this - and it is only as I see it, so just "take it for checking" - is that this gives a structure, and a way to give yourself the lessons you still feel you need in order your inner Master shine out.

Further, since I've been working with this, I've seen that you can study many other Masters (such as many of the self-help classics) and learn from there example. Of course, as you can and should compare their advice to what you consider perfection to be. And also, you move that concept of perfection ever higher, ever more complete. (Higher might be a misnomer, but it is a useful term for now.)

The point is that as we constantly work to release from our AGFLAP towards CAP, we should review those actions we and others take with our lives and adopt the most perfect approaches as we see them.

As you work with and towards greater perfection, life becomes easier, calmer, happier - everything Lester talked about. But the point is to seek this perfection more than you want the approval, security, or control (or separation or oneness) with the world. Lester's first point was originally to "want Freedom more than you want the World."

Those Masters who stopped short, who met with catastrophic ends - they simply didn't carry it on through.

So, I hope you take this offering in the spirit as it was presented. And share your understandings of this with the rest.