Afterword: Bad Training

N ow that you have been able to read and absorb Laarkmaa’s perspective on how we can heal ourselves, I would like to offer my perspective. We need to raise our consciousness in order to fulfill the many opportunities we have been given. I describe consciousness as people’s awareness of the world around them and what effect their actions have on others. We simply need to be more aware of how everything we do affects everyone and everything.

We all suffer from what I’ve been calling for many years “Bad Training,” and we have received it from a myriad of different sources. Bad Training can come from parents or grandparents, and generationally through our so-called ancestral lineage; it can come from our educational experiences; it can come from the societies and cultures in which we live. And let’s not forget religion, which has done so much damage to so many of us. Even under the guise of love, we still receive Bad Training. We have collected so many belief systems and rules about how we are to think and behave that we are sometimes unaware of exactly what is guiding our thoughts and our actions. It is our job to finally step away from all of that Bad Training, no matter where it came from.

Most of our Bad Training stems from listening to others tell us who we are, rather than simply listening to our own hearts, realizing that we truly do know Who We really Are. It is very important to listen to what Laarkmaa has said about how we as humans “speak” each other into being. We have listened to so many who have told us that we must do this or we must do that, often blindly taking their advice because we thought we had no other choice, or because we thought they knew more than we did. Often we choose to believe them simply because we love them or because we think they must love us. We never expect them to steer us in the wrong direction. We have been trained to believe that what an elder, a parent, a friend, a colleague, or a religious leader tells us must be the truth. Almost always we believe what they say without relying on our own intuition (First Sense) to show us the truth of Who We Are.

Bad Training can easily develop into hardened beliefs about ourselves that are simply not true. I see belief systems as a package of defenses that we collect to keep ourselves safe. It is easy to speak here about childhood coping mechanisms that we developed to protect ourselves because we knew that what we were being told as children did not match what we knew and remembered about the true reality. The coping mechanisms we develop provide us with a false sense of safety. As adults, we often don’t know or haven’t come to the understanding that the mechanisms we used to make ourselves feel safe as children simply won’t work as we move into adulthood.

We can also be part of the chain of continuing Bad Training without even realizing it. This is where judgment comes into play. Continuing to believe what we have been taught and to judge those who do not agree with us only perpetuates the problem. It is of utmost importance not to participate in the Bad Training of others, which means we have to be extremely careful in what we think, what we say, and how we say it, about all others with whom we come into contact.

After watching humanity for so many years, I have observed many patterns that create Bad Training. The point I want to make is that Bad Training is all about how others have tried to mold us into what they want us to be. They project onto us what they want themselves to be because they have listened to Bad Training and have not achieved realization of Who They really Are. Through Bad Training, people try to make us be like them, believing that if we are all alike, we will finally be safe. If we don’t develop into what they want, they try even harder to change us through applying more rules, more restrictions, and more controls. They attempt to force us to become what they want us to be simply because they cannot reach what they want within themselves.

Because we have all listened to so much Bad Training, rather than listening to the guidance of our hearts, we have forgotten how to love ourselves. We often project our fears, our beliefs, and our needs onto others because we cannot find or accept the love that naturally exists within us. This lack of ability to love ourselves is a direct reflection of all the Bad Training we have received. We need to be careful about how we speak others into reality through using judgment in order to be absolutely sure that we do not take part in perpetuating the syndrome of Bad Training.

It is now essential to finally and completely break the patterns and cycles of Bad Training. It is time to step away from all of the faulty belief systems about ourselves that have colored and molded us into something other than Who We truly Are.

Cullen Baird Smith