My Mea Culpa …
I was a young’un when Carlos Santana released his version of the Clarence “Sonny” Henry song … “Evil Ways” in 1969 on his debut album “Santana” with the band of the same name. Yet I got it, I understood what Clarence had written about and Carlos was singing about … if you want things to be different you’ve got to change your ways … do something different!
Now I know something about how to organize myself so that what I got back then makes sense, instead of just “understanding“ it.
Folks come from around the world to the programs I run. Other folks watch from the comfort of their homes or offices … in real time via my simulcasts or on the videos we release … what I do with those that show up wherever I am in the world doing what I do. And now it seems I owe them all … a deep apology!
Mea culpa … I am sorry!!!
What am I sorry for? Well, most of all for unintentionally misleading them about what it is that I’m doing with them.
Indulge me for a moment more …
I don’t come from any “spiritual lineage in the sense of the modern day gurus out there, or the “spiritual teachers“ offering their wisdom about enlightenment or whatever.
I do have a lineage of sorts, having studied intensely with my own teacher, Roye Fraser, for seven years … dang near every week, two or three days a week for all those years. And then remaining close to him for the next thirteen until he passed away … learning from him and absorbing what I could of his hard earned wisdom.
BUT …
My training with Roye was unlike anything that resembled “Spiritual Teaching“ or New Age Thinking as most folks have come to think about them … or experience them either as far as I can tell.
What differentiated what I learned with and from Roye as simple …
Roye taught me to stand on my own … to have my own views, to figure out for myself how the world was and worked, and what to do to build a life that was uniquely my own!
There were no rules, or formulas, or rituals to practice … no early morning meditation, or energy transmissions, or anything of that sort … just hard, disciplined, prolonged work to GET “IT!” as he used to say.
There was no commitment to a group or community per se (although there was an informal group of us having our individual experieinces with Roye of course) … everyone was on their own, but it was not every man, woman or child out for themselves (just one of the paradoxs of a true Fourth Way system).
There was really only yourself … and the way.
Roye was a guide, pointing endlessly to a possibily … i.e.: finding one’s self.
Most of what I did in the process of learning with Roye was giving up what I had come to believe is true … about myself, about others, about the world that contained us … about the nature of the cosmos itself …
In my language today I refer to the process of giving up and surrendering to truth, or things as they are, as getting over it … and my students are often at the other end of me barking, Get Over “IT!”
My first confession …
My first confession is that I have nothing and no particular common “WAY” to offer anyone … except for a process that points to a “WAY” you yourself must find or invent … a unique WAY to find yourself.
This is the Fourth Way … finding one’s self by trial and error … but not alone.
This is the path of the individual … the “Western Way” as Joseph Campbell pointed out.
Unlike the traditions of the Orient, or the Eastern Way in the West the seminal and sacred way is the way of the individual, not the collective.
In the West no one submits to anyone or anything other than themselves … so much more difficult than pledging allegiance to a teacher, guru or master of one sort or another.
The Fourth Way … or The Way of the Individual is a lonely path compared to sitting in meditation in an ashram or dojo. Yet it has it’s benefits as well.
When you “arrive” via a Fourth Way path you know without question where you are going, and where you have arrived when you get there … i.e.: to yourself, not to an immersion in a system or a collective.
Now this may or may not be of interest to you … no way for me to know really (except for those of you I have met … and who have demonstrated that this way is the WAY for them).
My second confession …
My knowledge is NOT passed on from a lineage, or from one teacher to a disciple, or a master to a student … DESPITE MY YEARS SITTING AT THE KNEE OF A MASTER LEARNING … HE DID NOT TEACH ME WHAT I KNOW!!!
What Roye offered was only an opening to find out for myself what was possible … and held the space for me to explore whilst I did.
This WAY … what Roye called the “Generative Imprint Model” and what I call the “MythoSelf Process” is a Fourth Way … a way of holding a sacred space intact for others until they can hold that space intact for themselves.
That’s all … Nothing More and Nothing Less.
While this is enough … offer others the gift of nothing so they can find for themselves what is truly possible for them and they alone … it has been so often corrupted and co-opted …
I find myself in the challenging position of having to apologize here for the confusion that has occurred via my own communication over the years as I came to the fullness of appreciating the “NOTHING” that I was seeking, and presenting what I now recognize others heard as seeking “SOMETHING” instead.
My third confession …
There is NOTHING to learn, NOTHING to get, NOTHING you need … and that is all I have to offer … NOTHING MORE and NOTHING LESS.
This statement is reasonably confusing unto itself, but there is really no other more direct or powerful to say it. What I can do to help clear up the confusion is say it differently maybe …
You have to change you way if you want to have the experience of YOUR life.
Literally, you must become someone anew … let go of your current view of the world and begin to consider the world as you have never done so before.
This includes first and foremost the way you know yourself to be … and then everyone you know as well … and finally everything that you ever thought of as you have must shift for you to come to have YOUR life.
You must surrender yourself … to yourself … and to truth, i.e.: the world as “IT” is … NOT as you hope, wish, desire or pray for “IT” to be.
YOU HOLD THE WORLD AS “IT” IS … YET “IT” IS WHAT “IT” IS … DESPITE YOUR DESPERATION FOR “IT” TO BE ANOTHER WAY!”
When you come to … “the entirety of your experience is a projection you create and manifest as “IT” becomes what you intend for “IT” to be you become free to have the experience of YOUR life” (NOT the experience imposed and impressed upon you).
Somehow along the way folks who have trained with me came to think they were adding something onto or into the life they already had … as opposed to having to give up the life they have to get the one that’s waiting for them.
I saw this painfully this past weekend when I ran the most recent MythoSelf Professional Training module with a group in New Jersey.
Even folks that have been around training with me for years and should know better are stuck in what I did and was doing in 1999!!!
MEA CULPA … it is my cup … and I apologize to you profusely for the confusion!!!
Now you must let go … give it up … GET OVER “IT!” … and move past what you thought you learned with me and into what I have now learned myself if you want to GET “IT” …
Truly, it was painful to watch … and we must set a new direction …
My only pledge is that I’ll start with me, ’cause there’s no where else to begin.
Letting go of the way you know the world and coming to know the world as “IT” is … that’s all I have to offer … ‘far as I can tell there is NOTHING MORE and NOTHING LESS … but as I said, this is enough.
SCHOOL’S OUT … time to find your own WAY …
“No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks …”
If you’ve got the fever, and you’re interested in coming along for the ride … stay tuned … it’s only gonna get hotter now that summer’s here!
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
P.S. – My apologies to those who been around a long time … especially those who’ve been around the longest … Something Wicked This Way Comes* and the old must go out to make room for the new or we may all get lost in the promise of living out our fantasies, instead of coming to and finding the truth ourselves.
