Lies Your Ego Told You...
by Dian Nicholson
Your book is great...the Three Criteria are beautifully on the mark and undercut other attempts to wake people up to what they really need...congrats..."
- Jon Rappoport
"Lies Your Ego Told You can unlock the secret of a happy and rewarding life for you. Dian Nicholson gives you a definite method by which 'The Three Criteria' can open to you a vast reservoir of creative power -- power you have never suspected exists within you. Draw upon this truly amazing creative power to bring you the things in life you most desire. Success and purpose can be yours -- if you only stop and listen to the lies your ego told you."
~ Rev. Paul F. Daniele, Ph.D., D.D., P.C.,
President, the College of Metaphysical Studies
Clearwater FL
From the Introduction:
We all get our education in the School of Hard Knocks. No post-graduate degree can ever guarantee that we have control over anything in our lives, nor can money, position, prestige, or secular power. Most of us will use the adage that says, "Money can't buy you happiness," many times during the course of our lives, but the vast majority of us never walk our talk, and continue to pursue our happiness outside of ourselves, despite our platitudes.
In her book, "A Return to Love", Marianne Williamson states that there is no feeling worse than the one that makes us say, "Oh, God, I can't believe I did that".... unless it's "Oh, God, I can't believe I did that again." This reference alludes to a lesson from "A Course in Miracles" which simply cannot be disputed: " If a path leads to despair, turn around and walk the other way."
Makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is the fact that time after time, we humans get stuck in the same old traps, even when we know damned well we ought not to have gone there again. And with the results of our mistakes right in front of our eyes, we go out and do the same thing yet again, and keep wondering why the results don't change.
So what is it that keeps us doing dumb things, recycling dumb ideas until they're worn out, and holding on to them like they're made of pure gold?
It would appear that some errant flock of birds keeps eating the breadcrumbs we leave behind us, because we never seem to be able to retrace our steps to the point where we first chose to do those dumb things. That was the point at which things went wrong, and the point where we have to make a change so as to change the results we'll get in the future. And if we don't get back to square one and understand where we went wrong, obviously we won't be able to make things go better in the future.
What's the difference between good results and bad results? Choosing a course of action that works, instead of one that doesn't. So the ability to choose is paramount in our lives, since everything we do involves a choice, even how we brush our teeth or wipe our noses. How much more important are those choices which determine with whom we mate, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves? How much more crucial is it that we have a valid format for making our choices, some methodology which guarantees that we reduce the odds of yet another screwup to their absolute minimum?
The element of free will is the greatest gift life offers us, for with our choices we define to ourselves and to others exactly who we are. Free will is pointed out to us on page after page of the Bible and other religious writings. "Ask and ye shall receive," they say, but it's what is not said that is important: "Careful what you ask for...'cause you'll get it." We must not forget that before we ask for anything, we have to decide what to ask for. And that decision is based on information which may or may not be true. It's up to us to find out before we get in trouble, but few of us realize that any variation in the process, any lack of information, any mistakes about what is true and what is not, will bring less-than -perfect (and sometimes disastrous) results.
What a relief! I wasn't a lousy baker after all! I just needed a recipe. And then we'd see who could bake a fine cake!
The horrible judgements I had laid on my own head were now shown to be nothing more than misinformation, accumulated through assumptions I had made throughout my life; most had their genesis in childhood. The chief instigator had been the fact that I was an adoptee: I had always stupidly, albeit unconsciously, believed that if my biological mother hadn't fought to keep me, there must have been something wrong with me. Well, if I wasn't good enough for my own mother, who would I ever be good enough for? And if I could never be good enough, gee whiz, I guess I could never deserve the love and respect of others, either, now could I?
Boy, did I feel stupid. So much for genius-level I.Q. I felt like kicking myself around the block about seventeen times for wasting all that time being miserable, and especially for passing on my misery to everyone around me, all the while blaming everyone but myself for my victimization. But I realized that in order to solve a problem, you've first got to have a problem to solve; that is the essence of learning. And in that realization I saw for the first time what a gift our problems are, because without them, we'd never know the difference between happiness and sadness.
It would be easy to follow the route of so many authors who simply affirm to us that we are spirit, we are God's much-loved children, we are all part of a universe whose nature is pure light and love. That's what I heard in Sunday School, and it's nice to hear. But it's another thing to believe it, and yet another to know it. Our great human intellect requires a bit of proof; having bought into the loud messages screamed at us every day by "normal" society, we need a real jolt sometimes to realize that we've been buying into a great fat lie, and real tools to climb out of the mess we've adopted for ourselves. But in the midst of all our tribulation is always the seed of a greater form of existence, as I wrote in the following excerpt from my poem, "The Flame in the Dark":
how precious is the pain:
the spirit needs its trials
like the flower needs the rain.
Look beyond the anger in your heart
to find your pain,
and heal the wound where it began,
or pass it on again.
Look beyond the darkness in your mind
and see the Light:
You could not find the Flame of God
if everything were bright.
The darkness serves a purpose
well-designed by realms above,
and facing it will show you:
what you feared was only love."
End Excerpt
Softbound, 5.5 x 8.5, 95 pages