I first signed up to do the full Avatar Course in 1995. On the second day of the ReSurfacing playshop, we did an exercise called Goal Setting. The objective was to determine a Right-For-You Goal. Until this point, I had floated through the playshop, fully experiencing and allowing myself to slip easily into every experience. This seemingly simple exercise stopped me right in my tracks and evoked a wall of defenses that made me want to run screaming from the house.
I was experiencing a particularly bleak period in my life at that point. I had decided not to follow my career as a chemist all over the country. We were settled in an area that did not appear to present any opportunities to me. I believed that I was only qualified to be an environmental chemist and would never find another job without additional training. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and I was seven months pregnant.
The expected results of this exercise are, “a life plan that one can begin to follow deliberately.” Well, that sounded perfect for me...until I got to the questions. Where do I want to be in the next year? Hopefully, not on the street. Where do I want to be in 20 years? I couldn’t even imagine that. What would I really like to do and what goals have I given up on? What difference did it make? They were impossible. One of the Avatar instructors tried to help me release my limiting beliefs and allow myself to dream once more. If I could do anything I wanted and couldn’t fail, what would I do? I couldn’t even bear to think about it, because I knew it was not reality.
That set the stage for an on-again, off-again experience of the first section of The Avatar Course. As long as I could go off and hide in the exercises that I considered to be play, I was fine. But when it was time to confront some of my limitations, my defenses went up. I felt like our local air force base under Condition Bravo. No one was allowed in, and I did not want to come out.
I bailed out of the course, vowing never to return. I nurtured a new belief that Avatar was brainwashing for rich people. “This kind of money to feel like that? No way, I am too smart for that!” I was too smart for my own good. I told our Avatar instructor that I created just fine, thank you. I did consciously create my experience, and I was aware of that.
This was true in many ways. I had been raised with metaphysical philosophies from the time I was very young. I knew all the buzzwords. And I could consciously create many things. They just didn’t always turn out how I hoped, and I couldn’t always get rid of them. I knew that I had created the situation I was currently in. But I believed I needed more training to create anything better. I was also certain that I could not get into the kinds of schools that would really interest me. What a limited sense of reality I had back then!
When my life had just about bottomed out, I returned to Avatar and completed the course. I was finally ready to admit that I didn’t have all the answers. I permitted myself to be vulnerable enough to let myself in and get to know just what made me tick. My experience was vastly different. I emerged as a butterfly, able to soar, with a new perception of everything. This time I knew that I simply had to choose what to focus my attention on, and I could create it. My Right-For-You Goal list was filled with things I had always wanted to do but never believed I could.
I went on to The Avatar Master Course for an even deeper experience of the Avatar Materials. I delivered Avatar in two states and wrote two books. One was released in December. The other comes out this November. Ever since childhood, I dreamed of being a wildlife biologist and going back to college to study what I loved. Now, I am working as one and just began a Master’s degree program in wildlife biology. My life has become the answers to those questions that made me want to run away five years earlier.
Avatar was the catalyst that turned my life around. The Masters that I came to know lovingly assisted me through the fears, the joy, the tears, and the triumph. And now, whether I am offering Avatar reviews or simply discussing the course, that Goal Setting (see page 20) exercise is one that I recommend to everyone. The key for me was in deeply understanding that I am more that this identity and that I cannot be harmed by allowing myself to fully experience my own self and everything that I encounter. What will your key be? Isn’t it time to find out?
Kristin Madden, Albuquerque, New Mexico
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