Just Follow The Instructions
When I was a kid, there was a wonderful old hobby store in town called Harold’s Hobbies. My friends and I would ride our bikes to Harold’s whenever we had the chance. We would wander the aisles looking at everything hanging on each of the pegs and arranged neatly on the shelves.
At any given moment I think my friends and I had a more complete inventory in our heads than Tom had on his books. Tom was the owner of the store. He had taken over from his uncle, Harold, just before I moved to town. We thought he was really cool. Not just because he would let us call him Tom, but because he made some of the best built models we had even seen.
I loved to build models, mostly cars with the occasional plane thrown in for a change of pace. Initially I was in a hurry to have a finished product in hand, and I would not even bother with the instructions. I had a picture of what the car was supposed to look like on the outside of the box and a fairly good idea of how to make it look that way. I knew where the windows belonged. I knew where to put the dashboard and the seats and the bumpers. The engine parts where a bit more confusing, but if nobody opened the hood it didn’t really matter.
So after a few hours with the heavily orange scented “sniff-proof” glue and a couple of Testor’s finest colors I would have a finished model. Sure, it resembled what I had in mind, but it fell short of my expectations. I showed my model to Tom and asked how he got his ‘55 Chevy to look so perfect when mine looked more like a Picasso, and it was the same kit. It came down to the obvious; he took the time to do it right and followed the instructions. Not only the instructions included with the kit, but instructions he had picked up from reading books and talking to experienced builders.
I learned the importance of following instructions again later in life when I first discovered Avatar. I knew nothing about Avatar, but I was given a copy of the Avatar Journal. Inside I found a page devoted to The Compassion Exercise from ReSurfacing®. It is a cool little exercise that helps you to deal with your feelings toward others. I liked it. Something about it resonated with me and my feelings about the world. I applied a shortened version, all that I could recall, to people I came across while traveling to Colorado. It worked okay, but it fell short of my expectations.
However, a little later I took The Avatar Course and did the Compassion Exercise, this time as instructed. It worked sooo much better. I read the instructions, listened to the insights provided by my Avatar Master, and I took the time to do the exercise correctly. It changed from a cool little exercise to a powerful, viewpoint-shifting tool that I now use all the time.
This one exercise has proven to be very helpful to me, not only on the surface but under my hood as well. I’ve used it to reduce the amount of stress and anxiety in my life and, in conjunction with the rest of the Avatar exercises, it has helped me to become a much happier person.
So if you find yourself curious about the Avatar exercises, remember Tom’s advice, “Take your time and follow the instructions. Don’t hurry through it, and you’ll be surprised at what you’ve created.”Jim Becker has been an employee of Star’s Edge International since 1994.
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