7 Cups for the Searching Soul

By The 7 Cups Community

This book is designed to transform your life by changing the way you view yourself and the world. It draws on proven research, healing traditions, and what we learned at 7 Cups, the world’s largest emotional support system.

This book will change your life by:

-Exposing the truth about how the world actually works.

-Helping you understand and break free from the traps that keep you stuck.

-Teaching you how and why you, your behaviors, and relationships make sense.

-Empowering you to move through worry and fear to the life your heart desires.

-Showing you how caring for others connects you to a deeper, stronger, and more nourishing life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The 7 Cups Community
• Release date: Jan 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310091452

The 7 Cups Community

7 Cups is an online community that offers the world's largest emotional support system.

Book preview

7 CUPS FOR THE SEARCHING SOUL

The 7 Cups Community

Copyright © 2016 by 7 Cups and Cultivation Press

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Work is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (International): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

7 Cups of Tea, by Lu Tong (795 - 835 CE)

The first cup kisses away my thirst,

and my loneliness is quelled by the second.

The third gives insight worthy of ancient scrolls,

and the fourth exiles my troubles.

My body becomes lighter with the fifth,

and the sixth sends word from immortals.

But the seventh—oh the seventh cup—

if I drink you, a wind will hurry my wings

toward the sacred island.

Translated by Christopher Nelson

Welcome

Part I: The Infection - Denial and Distraction

Chapter 1: A Story

Chapter 2: Denial

Chapter 3: Distractions

Chapter 4: Problems

Part II: The Antidote - 7 Cups

Chapter 5: A Place for You

Chapter 6: Cup 1: Open: Share What is on Your Heart

Chapter 7: Cup 2: Attune: Attune to Love

Chapter 8: Cup 3: Practice: Practice Skills to Increase Calm

Chapter 9: Cup 4: Live: Sleep, Eat, and Exercise Well

Chapter 10: Cup 5: Accept: Accept What Life Brings You

Chapter 11: Cup 6: Care: Care for Others that Need Support

Chapter 12: Cup 7: Commit: Live According to What is Important

Closing Note

Welcome!

Really glad you started this book. We’ve been working hard on it. Get yourself a hot cup of coffee or tea, a pen, and a notebook. Find a good spot to sit and get comfortable. We have lots to talk about.

This book covers some challenging terrain. Some of the information is simple and easy. Other parts are a little bit more complicated. They take some time to navigate. For these parts, you’ll need to pause and consider the points. You’ll need to think about your own life and reflect. This isn’t the kind of book that you want to rush through. It isn’t a race. There is no prize for getting done quickly.

Some of the items that we are going to talk about can be considered hard items. They make most people feel uncomfortable, because we are breaking the rules a little bit. There are set on and agreed upon ways of seeing things. Some of these agreed upon ways are not accurate. They wrongfully make some of us feel bad about ourselves. We don’t even consciously consider them. They just kind of sneak in under our radar. We are going to bring them to your awareness and talk through them with you. We don’t want you to have to continue to carry a burden that you can drop beside you.

We will also provide you with the understanding and skills you need to move through worry and fear to the life your heart desires. We will teach you how to face and overcome problems so you can unlock the hidden gifts they contain. Finally, we will share a secret with you about how to tap into the nourishing power of love by caring for other people around you.

For now, however, just a couple more thoughts for you personally before we get started. True, we do not know you personally, but we’ve been thinking quite a bit about the readers of this book and though we do not know you, we likely have a pretty good idea of who you are. That being the case, there are some things we need to tell you right up front.

We believe in you. Maybe you don’t see your potential, maybe you hide your promise, or maybe you make life more difficult than it needs to be. It doesn’t matter. We still believe in you. You can grow through these challenges and get to the other side. We’ve seen lots and lots of people just like you do it. We believe you can do it too.

We are not interested in judging you. Your life makes sense. You make sense in the larger story of your life. You might not believe this right now, but we do. You made the best decisions you knew to make. We all have regrets. Some of these regrets are our fault. Many are not. Remember, hindsight is 20/20. We do what we do with what we have. We’d ask you to let go of the past now and consider the start of this book an opportunity to make a fresh start moving forward. Stop and think about that for a second. A fresh start. You starting fresh now. A new chapter. The next page. A brand new direction.

Realize that personal growth is not easy. It isn’t a straight line. Growth is challenging. It comes in fits and starts. You’ll struggle, you’ll have hard times, and sometimes things won’t make sense. This has nothing to do with you. This is just life. This is how it is.

Many people like to pretend life is crystal clear. It isn’t (and it isn’t clear for them either). Life is often confusing and feeling unsure is pretty normal. This is what it feels like to be human. And, because you are human, you are going to make lots of mistakes. You won’t stay on the path. You’ll get lost. You’ll get distracted. That’s okay. When this happens, just brush yourself off and make your way back to the path. Don’t spend any time beating yourself up. Just pick yourself up and take that next step forward. The path is always there. It is always waiting for you.

That’s it. Those are the three main items we wanted to tell you before you get started. Oh, one last piece, you can also find a community of fellow travelers at 7cups.com. We’ve been walking this path for a while and you would be more than welcome to join us!

- The 7 Cups Community

Part I

The Infection - Denial and Distraction

Chapter 1

A Story

I want to open this book with the story of what happened on the planet Ancora. This story occurs at a time of crisis - a terrible virus was sweeping through the population. This virus attacked the brain, leaving the person in a trance-like state, while the body still functioned. Here on Earth, we would call them zombie like.

The truth is that the virus had always existed within the population of Ancora. It was hard to see it because it was so closely linked with its hosts. It took the Ancorans thousands of years to understand what they were fighting against. Scientists, through a series of fortunate accidents, were eventually able to discover and then pinpoint that the virus thrived when the mind was in a state of fear.

Wanting very much to be free from the virus, the wealthy people on Ancora immediately began using their resources to control their fear. They built thick walls around their homes and made their lives untouchable. Gradually, their culture changed and became built on proving that they could do everything themselves and needed no one. In time, they even agreed that social interactions should be limited because they were so unpredictable. When someone tried to speak from the heart, others withdrew from them.

Finally, a clever person figured out how to better manage fear through the use of pain-reducing devices. It didn’t take long before each wealthy Ancoran had a hand-held device that could release calming chemicals into the brain at the first sign of anxiety. Ancorans carried them everywhere, using them nonchalantly on the street, at work or at school, anytime they needed relief. It seemed like the perfect solution.

There was only one problem: it didn’t work.

The virus wasn’t being controlled - it was growing at an even faster rate. The devices only masked the problem. The more people tried to escape their pain and fear, the more sensitive they became to the smallest disruptions in their day and so the virus continued to spread.

What a conundrum. The scientists couldn’t make sense of all the evidence they had in front of them. Up to this point, they had been working tirelessly to bring relief to the wealthy parts of Ancora. When all of their theories seemed to fail, they began to broaden their scope and look at what was happening in the poorer, less-developed parts of Ancora. These people could not afford the pain-relieving devices or other luxuries. Shockingly, the scientists found that the virus showed no growth in these areas.

There was another group that the scientists also noticed. These were people who were living in the developed parts of the world, but didn’t quite fit in with the cultural norms. For some, they had endured so much pain or fear in their lives, that the devices could not numb their experience. If they had overcome the problems in their lives, they were admired and seen as spiritual leaders. If they were still suffering, they were dismissed as hurt or mentally ill and further isolated from society. What all of these Ancorans shared was that they had escaped the spread of the virus.

The real breakthrough for Ancora came from a scientist raised in the humblest of places, one of the poorest countries on the planet. He had risen through the global scientific ranks with his talent and fortitude and this scientist was able to see the puzzle from a unique perspective. He developed a simple theory that, while fear triggers the virus, the only cure was true human care and compassion. He was able to show that in places where human need persisted, among the poor and hurting, people had no choice but to care for one another and provide for each other's needs. This, he suggested, was why the virus was not able to grow in those parts of the world. The scientist was able to show something truly astounding: in the direst situations, where the virus was expected to thrive, the virus was nearly eradicated when neighbors reached out to each other with care.

This theory lined up with the experience of those who had endured and overcome great trials and losses in the developed world as well, who seemed so much more hearty and able to resist the virus. It also explained why the wealthy Ancorans, using their riches to become more distant from each other every day, were experiencing such an unprecedented outbreak of the disease. They had convinced themselves that they had no need; that they should not depend on others. It threatened everything about them, about what they believed, to realize that need was the pathway to healing.

Avoiding fear, it turned out, only created more fear and trying