Fire walking the second time

Yes, yes, once was not enough, I had to do it again. In my previous post, I wrote about my first encounter of Tony Robbins and my very negative first impression of the jumping guru. I developed disrespect from the first sight. Later I was forced to pay attention to his ways as my intention to do the fire walk was firm. I came to a conclusion that I need to follow what he says otherwise I either escape the challenge or burn myself. Consequently, I started to jump when was told to jump, I did the airplane pose when I was ordered to do so, I became reluctantly diligent. However, after the fire walk, my approach to Tony Robbins changed dramatically. I showed up early on the next day and was prepared to listen carefully. This time Tony was a little subdued, still exuberant and enthusiastic. This time, I had a different attitude, though. I stopped disapproving and started to pay attention. The messages were simple. This was not an exercise for intellectuals, and there were over 1000 people there. The message had to reach all of us.  For me, it was the first encounter with NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming. It was not called that way during the seminar, but it was clearly a crash course - NLP for dummies. The NLP methods are very powerful and often have the bad reputation as they are often used to manipulate people. Some salespeople love it. I do not like its manipulation powers, but NLP used without any hidden meanings is fantastic. I got hooked and with time did many courses to become an NLP master practitioner. 

The question asked by LECH and kvd related to my previous post was: could one get hurt as a result of such a  walk? I was asking myself the same question. My experience was that I felt as if I was walking on something rather cool. Was it a hoax? Part of NLP is hypnosis, and Tony can put big groups of people under hypnosis, I believe. Could one walk on fire without a psychological buildup? In India fire walking is done with much less hype than in Australia, I believe, maybe different methods are used to put people in a kind of a trance? I think that one needs to be prepared for the walk one way or another. What is important for me in the whole exercise is that I was able to win over my fear. It had great motivational value to me.

After the fire walk weekend, I started to read Tony’s book – Awaken the Power Within. I studied it; I did all the exercises from the book. As the result, I got the Australian driving license after many years of delaying it, lost some weight and applied for a job that I thought was beyond me. My application surprised the high management, but I got the job! As Tony advised – if you want something – ask for it! They can only say no, but there is also the second option. So simple and it works, I wonder why it is so easy to forget such good lessons. Another advice that stayed in my mind – if you want to achieve anything important – take massive action! Writing this post is proving very useful for me, I am reminding myself things that may make a difference in my life today. I took massive action recently at bridge, and this is bringing positive results already. Hmm…

As I had those doubts about the real temperature of burning coals, when the next opportunity arose to do the walk again, I took it. This time, Tony Robbins sponsored three young men from Youth Off the Streets under the care of Father Riley. My husband and I were supposed to support the three boys, so we walked on fire again. It was not such a profound experience as the first time, for several reasons, but I was able to observe more of what was happening around me. I saw people walking away from the fire paths without doing the walk. Looking at their faces was powerfully telling the story of how damaging it can be to drop your dreams and positive intentions.

In the bathroom where people were washing their feet after the walk, I started to chat with a girl who also walked the second time. One can get addicted to this challenge. She said – I did not burn myself, this time, the first time I had blisters for some days. For me, it was a confirmation that the coals are really hot and this made the walk legitimate. I exclaimed happily – really?? You burnt yourself ??? this is fantastic! She knew what I meant and said smiling – thank you very much, this is really nice of you to be happy about my misfortune!