DEPROGRAM VICES, BUILD VIRTUES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Goodwill and peace!

At this juncture let me share notes about the deprogramming of vices and building of virtues as an essential lesson in the Path. These tasks are one and the same: you will advance in the Path by building virtues, and building virtues is a matter of deprogramming vices.

You see, a lot of people are not exactly evil, yet you see them existing here in 3rd Density or 3rd Dimension. If they aren’t evil, then they must be good people, and so they are saints. Wrong! Better listen to the late US President Abe Lincoln when he registered the observation that “a lot of people don’t have vices but they don’t have virtues either.”

Now, that’s a part of the human condition, nay the tragedy of human existence. One lives here, isn’t exactly evil and possesses probably nary a defect that is so gross as to be incapable of unlearning, yet nary a virtue either to be adjudged as worthy of being counted among the wisest and most sagely people. That’s why they are called folks: they do not at all stand above others as to be called ‘extraordinary’ precisely due to their virtues.

The building of strengths or virtues is incidentally making waves today among the most urgent traits that ought to be built within the worksphere. Many management consultancy groups offer team building lessons or ‘social technologies’ that include certain tools about how to deprogram a bad trait and replace it with a good one. Without realizing it, these experts or consultants are very close to what the spiritual masters have been working all along for eons now: of deprogramming vices and building virtues.

So, dear fellows in the Path, if you’d ask me a question whether it’s alright to employ such tools for your self-development, my response is a loud Yes. By all means, please go ahead and immerse yourself in those workshops offered by consulting groups, organized by your company or employer. Do not put attitudinal barriers into the said practices by saying “I will only participate here because I’m required to and because it will be good for my promotion.” Ride the tide, flow with the wind! For failing to do so, the result would be disastrous: your own anxiety disorder condition may be reinforced, rendering you one step backward in the Path.

But indeed, before everything else, there must be a constant realization within your part that you have a long list of bad traits or ‘vices’ that must be deprogrammed. Failure to engage in that recognition, and more so stubbornly believing that nothing’s wrong with you, that you’re near to perfect, would ruin your chances of progressing in the Path.

So, begin by recognizing what those defects are. It’s so simple a thing to do, and do it by fixing a schedule for the task. You can do it inside your church, a coffee shop, an eco-park, atop a mountain while you’re with fellow mountaineers, beside the sea, inside your home, or wherever you find yourself most comfortable. Your listing can begin by reflecting on your own observations about yourself. Then, you can proceed to the feedbacks coming from other people, such as when they remark that you always come to meetings late. If you are hard up in making self-reflections, then begin right away with the feedbacks from others.

Now, to ensure that your esteem won’t sag so badly as the long list of weaknesses might prove unbearable to your psyche, then come up with a list too of your strengths. Your simple task in life is to maintain those strengths and even possibly build them up even more. But don’t ever be shocked to find out that your weaknesses may end up longer than your strengths. Admit it, that’s life, that’s why we’re here in 3rd Dimension that is our school for learning.

After determining the list of traits, both for strengths and weaknesses, then begin a deprogramming schedule for the weaknesses. This task is no easy thing to do, and please don’t ever brag that in just a day they will be gone. Bragging itself is a vice, so if you are a braggart, list this down as a weakness. Many braggarts suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and need psychiatric help as a tool to deprogram the trait.

For optimal results, take one (1) month to deprogram a vice. If you meditate regularly, meditate on the vice for one (1) week, by asking yourself first why do you possess such a weakness. If you don’t meditate at all, then use prayer: before sleeping, ask your Guide or Guardian Angel to give you answers as to why you are, for instance, a braggart. The answer will come to you intuitively, mind you. For a yogi like me, the answers come in pictures, like some 1 megapixel photos, flashing before my eyes.

Now, do immediately meditate or pray, right after doing the diagnostic questioning, by deprogramming the vice. Here would be some tips to do, whichever of the following practices you wish to use:

• Meditation: Visualize the vice you possess. Be creative in your visualization. E.g consummate liar. You can visualize the trait as a huge, bad lizard that harms people. Deprogram it then by visualizing that the lizard will be neutralized, or killed. You can visualize an angel coming from higher space, coming down with an unsheathed sword of Light, and tearing down the lizard to pieces. Do the visualizations for a week.

• Prayer: Try to visualize your Guide or Guardian Angel standing in higher space in front of you, assuring you that He or She is around to help you. Do pray with a purple-colored candle, as this will help in the ‘healing’ process. Petition the Almighty I Am Presence, thru the help of your Guide, to deprogram the vice for you. Improvise on an invocation such as “My Guardian Angel will deprogram my tardiness for me,” and declare it seven (7) times. Then end with Amen.
After a week of meditation and/or prayer, observe the results. It would always be best to observe the results in the social sphere, in environments where people are around. Do this for the next three (3) weeks. See the results by noting the feedbacks from other people. If you used to be tardy and come to meeting late, and then your office mates will observe you changing the pattern, then indeed the vice has been quite deprogrammed. All you need to do is to sustain this new strength, then move on to the next deprogramming schedule.

For a vice to be effectively deprogrammed and the corresponding opposite—virtue—will be built, I would counsel strongly that you only take one trait at a time. Do not mix up two or more ‘evils’ and force a deprogramming of them altogether. Note the term ‘force’ there: you are indeed hurrying up too much by mixing up traits altogether. Remember that your Unconscious Mind, which is the repository of the traits, has its own complexity. It is best to get the cooperation of your Unconscious by working on a trait one at a time.

As to the observable or ‘visible vices’ such as smoking, licentious sex, gambiing, doping, and shopaholic behavior, do the same procedure. But assign a longer time frame for these ones. They may be caused by childhood fixations and traumas, so it may take a bit more time to deprogram them. I used to smoke a lot, and I found out from my own mother that it only took a short time to breast-feed me as I was lactose-sensitive (I had to be bottle-fed with soya milk). So, knowing my psychoanalysis fairly well, I realized that my smoking has a great deal to do with the breastfeeding deprivation, that smoking was compensatory for this unconscious lack of an essential maternal provision.

I kept on quitting smoking since young adult age, and only got to quit it in the late 1990s as I already suffered from the following by then: asthma, chronic tonsillitis/throat infections, sinusitis & allergic rhinitis. My ‘mother body’, nay Mother Nature was telling me to please quit smoking as this is a gross disrespect to my physical body that is the vehicle of my very soul. In 1993 I even underwent tonsillectomy, but despite this surgery I went back to smoking. Nicotine had a good way of keeping me awake and the habit made my astral body a bit thicker instantly, and I was getting to be more sensitive that year as my mystical awakening was fast unfolding…. Till I finally quit.

Do note that a lot of these vices were acquired via past life learning experiences, so it isn’t that easy to unlearn them and replace them with strengths. As to which lifetime did you acquire them, don’t worry about the matter too much. Leave that to your Inner Guide or Guides, who see you from a higher dimension. If in case that other people during those lives may have been involved in learning the bad attitude or trait, then add in the deprogramming a forgiveness of those people even if you don’t know who they were. Just trust that the message will reach God Almighty, and this can accelerate the healing process.

Successfully deprogramming vices one after the other and replacing them with corresponding virtues is like winning a war. It is in fact a war against your own Primal Self. Every time you win, you gain more merits in life and move ahead in the Path. Even in your career and/or business you will succeed all the more. Those who succeeded the most financially are, as per result of researches, precisely those people who have greater insights about their own weaknesses and strengths compared to others. Read thru Jim Dornan, Robert Kiyosaki and John Maxwell who are among top gurus of financial success today, and you will hear the same things as I tell you now: self-insight leads to greater financial success.

So Fellows in the Path, learn from the gurus of success. But most of all, do work out to practice those tools and turning yourselves into jewels of exemplary behavior. It can be done, believe it. Amen.

[Writ 11 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]