In a lot of posts as well as in our teaching, we talk about Process. It seems that not everyone, even amongst our older students, really understand what this process is, though, and how it works.

Here's a definition of "process", for those who like such things:
Sequence of interdependent and linked procedures which, at every stage, consume one or more resources (employee time, energy, machines, money) to convert inputs (data, material, parts, etc.) into outputs. These outputs then serve as inputs for the next stage until a known goal or end result is reached.

Simples said, a process is a way to get from A to B.

Now there is process (small letters) like gets used in business and mechanics, and there is your Process (capital letter), by which we mean your meta-Process, your spiritual path. You'll notice that a path, like a process, is also a way to get from A to B. So you could say that your spiritual path IS your process.

Many people think of a spiritual path a little bit like this:

A clear and straight path lined with pretty flowers that takes you from this normal physical world off into the clouds. Although it is a very pretty picture, there are some problems with it. Most importantly, no spiritual path should lead you away from the physical world and "up there somewhere". You chose to have a physical body, a physical life. The point of a spiritual process is never to just live in the clouds and ignore the world (see the wiki entry on MIRL). That's escapism, not spirituality. Another problem with this picture is that it's unrealistic. Any of you who have gotten serious about your Process know that it's hard work sometimes, that you can get stuck or off-track or even slide backwards. It's not a nice straight road.

In reality, it looks more like this:

It's a maze, you're trying to get somewhere but you're not sure where, how or what. There are times when you feel like you're going in circles or run into a dead end, or everything looks the same and you've no idea if you're making progress or not.

Most people spend their entire lives doing either this:


Or this:


What all of you are doing at the moment is this:

You're trying to navigate the maze together with a bunch of friends, and with a map. Sometimes it's still confusing, and you're not always sure where to go, but at least you're not alone, you can share your experiences and brainstorm and ask for help, and you have guidance in the form of your teachers and courses. What Angel and I are working on, and what each of you can help us with, is to fill in the blank spots on the map and to add arrows on where to go.

This is why we are called elf-PATH: we teach a Path (a Process) that helps you get to spiritual Awakening in a way that is True (sincere, honest, it scans) and in Harmony with the world and the universe. And because we think it's important, we try to teach this Process in a way that is as Easy as we know how to make it, Light (see Angel's explanation here), and Fun.

And if you do it right, if you walk your spiritual path and move through your process, you can come out of your life like this:

Celebrating a fun experience where you had a great time with friends, exploring your self and the world. Which is what you're here for.

*

There are some questions you should always be asking yourself at any point in your Process, or you are certain to get horribly lost and off track:

* 1: Where am I at?
* 2: Where do I want to go?
* 3: What's the best way to get there?
* 4: Am I doing that?
* (5: What are my roadblocks likely to be?)

This is a useful representation:

You may want to print it and tape it to a wall.

*

Think of it like going on a trip. To make sure your trip works out the way you want it to, you go to google maps. Go ahead, try it. Pull up Google maps and hit "Get Directions".

1: Now, you want to go somewhere. The very first thing you should know, logically, is "Where am I?" If you don't know where you are now, how are you going to know where to go? In google, this might be your country, home town or street. Fill in "A".
-- In your meta Process, "Where am I?" includes questions such as "Am I happy with my life? Am I getting what I want out of it? Is this where I want to be?" If you can answer an honest "yes" to that, if you wake up perfectly happy every morning and there is nothing about your life that you would like to see changed... then you're done. You're wasting your time here. If your answer is "no", if you are not happy where you are right now, then you should probably get moving.

2: The next obvious question is Where do I want to go? In google, you want to fill in "B". Pick something, anything. You will notice that google isn't fussy about the details. You don't need to know the exact street number for it to give you directions; a town, country or even a general direction works already.
-- What do you want? I've asked people this question many times, and a lot of times, whether they're early or far in their process, they'll blink at me and say "Um...I don't know. I'm just going." Well, ok. Then I'm not surprised you're not arriving where you want to. We start teaching people the importance of this step in Intro Course already. One problem with the meta-process is that often, you don't know where you want to go. Your whole life people have been telling you that you shouldn't leave town, or that you should go to piano classes while you would actually much rather play baseball. So it takes a little digging inside and looking outside of your normal scope.

3: If you at least have some indication of where you are and where you want to go, you can Get Directions. When you have some directions, you can get started. It doesn't matter at this point if you got step 2 "right". What matters is that you get a general direction, an idea.
-- A lot of what Elfpath does is offer you those directions. We're not telling you where to go (step 2), we're telling you how to get wherever it is that you want to go (step 3), in the easiest, lightest and most fun way we can offer. Sometimes during the Process, your goals change. You start realizing that you have more options, that you were chasing your father's dream instead of your own, or simply that you'd feel happier doing something else. If that is the case, you need to adjust your travel plan.

4. If you've set out on your trip, following your directions, you'll want to check now and then if you're still going in that direction.
-- This is a step a lot of people miss, assuming that they know where they are and where they want to go. They get into a pattern, a routine, and forget to check if the steps they are taking are still the best way to get to their goals or not. This is also the step that people forget when they are complaining that their process isn't working. "Well!" they say, "I know where I am and I hate it here. I know where I want to go. And you've told me the way to get there. But I'm not getting any closer! It's not working! I'm frustrated, I feel like I'm stupid, incompetent and like you gave me the wrong directions! It's not fair!" Well... are you FOLLOWING the directions? You've got a process, but are you doing it? This ties in with my previous post on Discipline.

(5. This step is a bit like putting the traffic radio on. It's helpful to get warnings of places where they are working on the road, where there's a traffic jam, or where there are known to be dangerous killer bears on the road - before you get there. Then you can take a detour, or come prepared. A great help in this is the experience of your teachers and fellow students who have already gone where you are trying to go. They can tell you what to watch for, and how to prepare for it.)

If you can ask yourself these simple questions regularly, your process will become a whole lot easier.

Your Process is entirely personal. We have exercises and ideas for you, techniques and disciplines, but how fast you go and how you go about it is entirely up to you. Everyone goes at their own speed, which seems to be determined by many things. Who you are inside, how driven you are, what you came to this life to do and what experience you bring with you, what your life has been like so far, how much you are willing to pay attention, how much inertia you have, how supportive your environment is, how you deal with fears, if you're willing to listen and change ...

Some problems are very common, almost everyone runs into them at some point. We take those problems, and try to discover what is causing them and how to prevent them, or else how to solve them as best as possible. A feeling of loneliness is very common once you realize most people are children emotionally. So is resistance to your changing by your environment. Your classmates are incredibly useful with this part of the Process, because they are going through the same thing, and will often give you suggestions, or offer a sympathetic ear.

Some problems will be more specific to you, not everyone has those. They may depend on your supertype or any of the things listed above. Common obstacles on your path are stubbornness, laziness, lack of discipline, aloofing, refusing to change, self-bashing, not being willing to take direction, clinging to things from your past.... Not everyone will have all of those, but most will have some. How you deal with it again depends on you - but for these as well we try to device easy steps to get through it.

A lot of this is still work in progress, simply because we are trying to do something that the world hasn't done before - at least not for a very long time. There isn't a picture perfect map of the maze we're walking through, there isn't some book with all the Answers that Angel or I have (as far as I'm aware, no one else has it either. I have not seen any groups online or offline who are doing what we do, or getting the results we are). What we do have is a lot of experience, intuitive abilities, and the will to make it work. With each generation of students, the process gets more refined and easier. This is why we are making posts like this publicly, so that you can all give us your feedback, your questions and observations. They'll help, both your own process and that of those who come after you.

---
Mel, I know it's probably not quite finished, but would you post here what you've got so far on our Columbus metaphor (either words, drawings or both)? I think it would really help clear things up for people.


*

Angel has made some posts lately about the process, and how to make it work better. I imagine that especially for white and yellow belt, it either makes no sense at all and sounds like random theory spinning, OR it seems simple and like something you can just go do by yourself. I'd like to correct both ideas.

The New Age religion has taught people that you can be spiritually advanced by calming your thoughts a lot and by thinking in certain ways. Phrases like "Do no harm" and "You are an eternal being" and "Love is everything" and the like. The point is not whether this is true or not. It's whether it is helpful to you in your process. You can give a 10 year old a really sophisticated mathematical formula (say, E=MC2), and you can probably get them to memorize it and repeat it back to you. This does not mean they understand physics, or how energy works. And learning the simple formula will probably not help them very much in their lives. If anything, it will probably confuse them, clutter their minds with facts rather than with understanding, and they will most likely use it not at all, or in the wrong situations. If after 10 years of intense study of mathematics and physics, they come to the same conclusion that E=MC2, and can honestly say "Wow, that is beautifully simple, I understand how it works and why it is written that way and when it applies and when not,".... THEN it is useful to them.

This is also why we teach process, not "truths". Truths and formulas are of no use to you if you have not addressed the problems you have inside, gained an awareness of your inner and outer surroundings, trained yourself with practical methods to build meta-muscles, and grown up. So be very careful that you do not end up parroting ideas without the awareness, understanding and skills to back it up.

The same reasoning applies if you think that some of our recent posts are too complicated or sound like babbling and chaotic theories. Imagine that same 10 year old listening to Einstein and his colleagues about their latest theoretical ideas. It would probably sound like a heap of nonsense to them. And that's ok.

If something is over your head and you don't understand it, ask. Come with specific, detailed questions of the parts you do not understand and just post them. Maybe we will be able to explain. And if it sounds like nonsense, if it seems stupid or too chaotic and unfinished - then don't worry about it, like a young student wouldn't worry too much about trying to understand long complicated math formulas. But don't read it, memorize it and tell yourself you are done.

Focus on your Process. Do the exercises you've been given by your teachers, and try to do your best at them. If they're confusing or it's not working quite the way you think it should, get your teachers to help you. And ignore the rest as something meant for older students and for your teachers.

*

"But it's not going FAST enough! Other people are doing better!!"

We use a Belt system much like the one used in martial arts, to indicate where someone is in their Process. This tells you not only what you can expect from people, but it also tells you what your own next step in the process is. It gives you something to work towards. Your belt level says a lot about your maturity, and determines how you get treated by your teachers. When you are new, your teachers will be very patient, explain things, walk you through problems in detail. When you get a little further ahead, you're expected to do some things on your own, but you can still ask for help all the time. When you're getting to the really high levels... you get taken seriously as an adult. And it's expected that you show the behavior and attitudes of an adult - if you don't, it'll be addressed to an adult. You see the same pattern in society: if a child breaks something, or loses his temper, it's not a problem. If a teen does so, he'll get talked to much more strongly. If an adult does the same, there are more severe consequences. In the same way, adults have more responsibilities and are held to them more strictly than children.

As a very, very rough sketch of what our belt levels stand for:
* White: Willing to learn
* Yellow: Gutmuck, inner focus
* Orange: Counselling, outer focus
* Green: Heart & :Love
* Blue: Discipline & Focus
* Brown: Responsibility, Power
* Black: Mastered the basics.
You can find detailed descriptions on our wiki.

Exactly because everyone goes at a different speed, you will often find others with lower belts suddenly making a growth spurt and racing right past you. Or you will find older students with higher belts stuck there for months on end with no obvious growth. I've often seen students get frustrated when their classmates are going faster than them and getting higher belts.

This is silly.

You should measure yourself against yourself, not against someone else. Given how different all of you are, it makes no sense to say "I am doing worse than [x] person". How do you know? How can you tell how difficult it is for them, and make some sort of qualitative judgment on who is doing better? For that matter, what is "better"? Is getting a higher belt in a minimum amount of time "better"? That's a dangerous way of thinking, because before you know it, you think of higher belts as "better" people. They're not. They're just more advanced in the meta, further along their path, more skilled and experienced.

If you need to compare yourself to anyone, compare to where YOU were a month ago, half a year ago, two years ago. Did you make progress? Would you want to go back to where you were then? Did you gain things that made your life easier/happier/more meaningful? I'll say it again. Your Process is personal. If you're hiking up the Himalaya and your classmate is taking a plane to Paris, can you say "You covered more miles than I did, I'm doing it wrong!" or "You are higher up in the air, clearly you're better!" And even if they get to Paris before you get to the top of Himalayas... so what? Are those really things you can compare?

"But what if I am hiking up the Himalayas and someone else is doing the same, and they're climbing right past me?! What if someone started a year later at Elfpath than I did, and they're three belts higher?!" That happens. Maybe you took a really long break. Maybe you're pausing every step you make and they're moving on steadily. Maybe they have stronger muscles than you. Deal with it. It's not them you're comparing yourself to, it's you.

*

EXAMPLE.

I'm going to get specific here, since it has come up recently, and I know a lot of you are struggling with it.

Casadei has been making incredible progress lately, and it has made a lot of people jealous and frustrated. You've seen her be one of our Intermediate students, a Yellow Belt and not a particularly active or gifted one at that. And suddenly in just a few weeks, she's a Blue Belt heading for Black. She walked into our workshop, and from the start Angel gave her a lot of personal attention, and told everyone she was special and more gifted than any of them. Some of you who have been students with us for longer went to the same workshop - and didn't get that treatment. You didn't suddenly jump three belt levels, you weren't treated as long lost family, you didn't get all the personal time and praise. It's been difficult for a lot of you. You wanted that attention too, you wanted to make that progress too.

You know me well enough by now to know that if I give someone a belt, it is because I am convinced that they really are at that level, and have the skills, knowledge and maturity to back it up. Cas has not been given anything for free. She has not been given chances that other people have not. She has worked at it, very hard and with lots of discipline. She has worked through a lot of inner garbage, faced more and bigger demons in just a few weeks than most of you have been willing to look at in over a year. We give people chances all the time. Whether they take that chance and work with it is up to them. Many of you have been pushed the exact same way she has... and have wimped out. You've said "Naaaah, that's too hard." or "I'm going to run away for a few months" or "I feel like whining about it" or "I'm not going to give up that piece of drama!" Ok. No problem, that's your choice. But then you don't get to complain that others who do take the chances they're offered are going faster.

What you need to understand is that everyone is different. We don't come into this lifetime with identical skill sets. We haven't all followed the same path between lives, and we may not be made of the same stuff. Everyone brings with them the experiences and growth from previous lives and between-lives, so you do not start out at the same place when you get born. Mozart naturally had a lot more potential for music than, say, Churchill, so it is only normal that Mozart learned about music faster, was already amazing when he was 5, and went on to become an amazing, world famous musician. Some people are gifted. Some souls are older. You do not look at the prodigies and geniuses and tell yourself "Clearly I'm screwing up! I am being treated unfairly! My teachers aren't doing it right because I'm not up there yet!" This is self-destructive.

Maybe in a previous lifetime, you were better at the meta than Cas. Maybe she got stuck somewhere back then, and maybe you really grabbed all your chances and went for it. Maybe in a next lifetime, it'll be the other way around. It doesn't matter. You are in this lifetime for a purpose, and it is YOUR purpose. It's not hers. It's not mine. You are here for you. You don't need to achieve the same things - and in fact you shouldn't. You should achieve the things you came here to achieve. If you came here to experience a child-like joy, then the drive and focus and discipline that Cas has been showing would be very detrimental to your process.

That said, what Cas has done is not just because she was born super genius Mozart. It's for the largest part because she has worked, she's dealt, she's jumped in and struggled until she came out the other side, and then jumped into the next. You can do all of those things, I've taught you the tools. It's up to you if you want to use them.

*

Cas, I'd like to ask you to post here with an explanation of how your process has worked for you. Just a month or so ago, when you first came to the workshop, you were a Yellow Belt, lower in ranked than most others at the workshop. Now you're on par with Enelya and on your way to becoming our first Black Belt (if she doesn't beat you to it). That means you've run through the Process much faster than almost anyone else, and have a unique view on how the different levels work, where you get stuck at, how you can tell you're growing, what you need to do for it, what things change in your process when you get further ahead, etc.

Katt, I'd also like your perspective. You've gone slower than most people here, even though you've been with us from the very start. But you've stuck with it, you've struggled on when you could have given up, you had dedication to your process... and it's paying off. You're making the differences you've been wanting to see in yourself, and gaining the maturity (and level) you need. I think you could give people a lot of insight into your process, and help them see their current complaints as relative.

Luna, could you give us a few words on how your choice for Child-path has worked out with respect to this topic? I know a lot of people used to really look down on Child-path, saying "This is stupid, it's for the babies, the idiots, the ones who can't do better". You've been single-handedly showing them different, but you had the same ideas when you started. How did you go from "Have to have the BEST!! path!" to "I'm choosing the path that feels right to ME."?

"Katt, I'd also like your perspective. You've gone slower than most people here, even though you've been with us from the very start. But you've stuck with it, you've struggled on when you could have given up, you had dedication to your process... and it's paying off. You're making the differences you've been wanting to see in yourself, and gaining the maturity (and level) you need. I think you could give people a lot of insight into your process, and help them see their current complaints as relative."

ive thought for a few days how best to answer this. I stick with this because I need it, and I wont go into why right now.

i havent gone slower because i *wanted* to; i wanted to go at the same speed everyone else in my group seemed to going, i wanted to be equal, and for the longest time didnt understand why i *wasnt* equal. i think i had spent far too many years enduring emotional blackmail from my husb and relatives, and had far too much self sabotage going on to actually be able to see things clearly enough, not to mention that i had cut myself off so thoroughly from feeling, that i was a numb, cardboard shell.

everyone here is taught the same tools, is given the same keys. its up to you to take them seriously, to really dig into your soul so you can understand your deepest, most fundamental self. in understanding yourself and who you really are, you will also be able to understand others who dont have these keys, or are not making good use of the keys if they do have them. And what i had been doing for so long as part of my ongoing self sabotage, is not making good use of these keys.

last year about the time of the shift, something began shifting in me, too. it didnt happen overnight, it has really only been just the month of january 2011 that i have actually started feeling confident and sure enough of myself that this change in me has become obvious to others.

about a month and a half ago, i was thinking about something that had happened in probably 2003 or thereabouts. I had bought a lottery ticket for the megamoney game, it was a new game, and the next drawing would be the second one ever for that game. I kept thinking over and over: “why not me? Why not me win this? Someone will win, why not me? Im as deserving as anyone else.” and everytime I thought about it, I felt a strong conviction, a very in power firmness of attitude without poor me, without self-bashing wishy-washy-ness. And when the drawing was held, I had won around $430.00.

as I thought about this, I realised what had changed in me then was the energy I was holding . I was holding a positive, strong energy that wasnt backing down. I dont think id ever felt it before then, and for some reason, it went away shortly after I won that money, and I couldnt seem to find it again.

one thing i had the most difficulty with was "whining" and "poor me." i could not figure out how to stop it, couldnt understand what the problem was, what sort of thought processes kept leading me back to whining. All I could seem to focus on in my life was where things went wrong; all the oppression, suppression, and depression; what I should have said, did, but didnt, and why. If I didnt know why, I questioned myself about it til I figured it out. And in the back of my mind was always that refrain: “damn, I suck. I should just lay down and die, lay down and fucking die.”

Til that moment when I realised that what I was missing when I tried to get that energy, that attitude back, was that I was still letting the tiny little voice in my head that still wanted me to believe I was worthless, that everyone should just go ahead of me, wipe their feet on me, and stand on me to reach something I have as much right to as they do, why dont I just lay down and die already, pipe up with its whiny poor me bullshit. So I shot that motherfucker dead. He doesnt bother me anymore. I should have done it over a year ago, but I suppose I wasnt quite ready; didnt yet fully understand.

I do now.