Articles about Avatar

At this page you will find a collection of articles about the Avatar training. Some of the articles have been published before in the Avatar Journal and Harry Palmer has written most of these. For a still larger collection of articles about Avatar we refer to Avatar Overdrive.

• What is Avatar?

About beliefs, realities, experiences and created truths. A philosophical interview with Harry Palmer, the founder of the Avatar training.

• Avatar: Practical and Mystical

Avatar: Will it work for me? As long as you are willing to go down the path that leads to greater honesty with yourself, the Avatar tools will work for you. After you have successfully mastered the Avatar tools, you can use them to open the doors to the inner mysteries.

• What do I really want out of life?

How can I become happy? By achieving more? By giving up everything? Or is it about time for a better question? An article by Harry Palmer that will wake you up from the illusions by which you are living. 

What is Avatar^®

Perspective went directly to the source and interviewed Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar Materials.

Perspective: I suspect the question you are asked most often is: "What is Avatar?" So, what is Avatar?

Harry: Avatar is about every reality that is, was or will be. I know that's not very descriptive, but it is the truest statement I can make. Avatar deals with creation, which I define as anything that has definition or limits in space, time or awareness. That covers the universe and everything in it. Since most people are not really ready to engage Avatar at such an all-encompassing level, I usually talk about beliefs. People have an instinctive recognition that what they believe has a consequence in their lives. The principle dilemma of existence is what to believe. That's the philosophic abyss that confronts everyone. That's the abyss called, "I don't know." It's dangerous not to know. At the edge of this abyss are the shops of the belief peddlers. Some shops are lavish and hallowed with histories. Some are Volkswagen buses driven by cult recruiters. Everybody is selling a program and a one-way pass to the land of truth on the other side of the abyss. There are thousands of bridges across the abyss, and each one leads to a slightly different reality. What is different about Avatar is that the program is blank, and the pass is round trip!

Perspective: It sounds like taking a belief out for a test drive.

Harry: That's good, and there's no fuss about returning it. People pretty much experience what they believe - even though sometimes they don't believe they believe it. The difficulty for some is in distinguishing between what they believe and what they pretend to believe. They are not always the same.

Perspective: Are you saying that we don't always know what we believe or experience what we say we believe?

Harry: That's right. And that is the flaw in positive thinking. You can stick signs on every mirror in the house saying, "I'm happy to be me," and chant it for a half-hour before every meal and still not experience it. The reason it won't take you across the abyss into an experience is because you are already across experiencing something else. Maybe you came on the ticket, "Nothing really make me happy." That is the real belief that is underlying and motivating all of the positive assertion.

Perspective: So how do I discover what I really believe? What ticket did I purchase at the belief bazaar?

Harry: The easiest way is to work backwards from what you're experiencing unhappiness, you can be pretty certain that your leap of faith across the abyss was on a belief that you were going to be unhappy. When you find the real belief, you can use the Avatar techniques to change it. When you do, what you are experiencing will change. Until you find the real belief, you're "believing over," and what you are experiencing is only superficially affected.

Perspective: That's a good point. I have seen a lot of people do a workshop or a seminar and add a new coat of belief to their lives. It doesn't really affect the way they act for very long. This brings me to another question. What is the difference between belief and truth?

Harry: Sometimes the border between belief and truth is a little hazy, particularly when we are dealing with qualities that are not purely physical. There is usually some agreement in regard to empirical events. For instance, the tree falls. No question in anyone's mind. The tree was standing and now it's toppled over. We can measure where it fell, how strong the trunk wood was, how old it was, etc. No one has to take any of this on faith. You can go and kick the tree. It's a truth. The tree has fallen. But now ask, "Why did the tree fall?" Now we are confronted by what to believe. It was old and rotten. The wind blew it over. It was an act of God. It was a sign. That type of tree is always toppling over. It was a malicious spirit. It was pollution in the air. It was a thinning of the ozone layer. It was an earth tremor. These are all beliefs. Of course, once you believe one you will find the evidence. The wind was blowing at 36.5 miles per hour and created a load factor that exceeded the strength of the tree. And you say, "oh, sure, and why didn't every tree fall or why did the wind reach 36.5 miles per hour just before the tree fell?" Solar temperatures caused an atmospheric imbalance between the ocean and the land. And you say, "Okay, and why did that happen?" If you happen to feel a little perverse, just keep pushing for a more fundamental why and eventually you will reach our abyss, which could just as well be called, "I don't know." It is at this "I don't know" that the whole concatenation of beliefs begins as to why the tree toppled over. As long as we make the concatenation long enough that no one runs off into the abyss, we have a "scientific" technology that explains why trees topple over.

Perspective: So why did the tree topple over?

Harry: Honest answer? I don't know. But you see, not knowing is dangerous. Fear arises. Fear motivates explanation. So let's say I pushed the tree over so I could make a point. I did it deliberately.

Perspective: And the point?

Harry: The point is that around this singular event of a tree falling over, a whole belief-generated reality can develop. A reality with winds and stress factors and solar thermal, etc. Anyone experiencing within this reality finds the same beliefs at the foundation of the reality. Of course, there are equally plausible alternate realities. For instance, soil moisture and root rot. The interesting thing is that the people experiencing the soil moisture/root rot reality can easily see that the reality of the wind/stress factor people is a belief system. They're not always so discerning about their own reality. Down deep inside of us is this sad little guy who clearly sees that everybody else's reality is based on belief. He's trapped in his own truth. He's backing away from the abyss and explaining as fast as he can. When he permits himself to see his own reality he will discover illumination.

Perspective: That is an insightful metaphor. I guess my next question is why would I want to, to use your word, discreate my reality?

Harry: You don't have to. It's not the intention of Avatar to destroy your reality or what you believe. Avatar is about reminding people that they were once and can be again the source of their reality and may - that's a key word - conclude their association with one reality and move on to another. We are seldom, if ever, locked into a reality that we can't change.

Perspective: So in Avatar it's up to the person to decide whether or not to change?

Harry: Absolutely. The only reason we choose to change is because as we grow more experienced; there is a desire for our realities to become more reflective of our new wisdom. You don't have to complete every problem in an arithmetic book before you move on to algebra. There comes a point when you get it. These numbers and these functions produce these results. Got it! Time to move on. What? You say I've go to spend 16 more weeks doing arithmetic problems? No way! I've got Avatar and I'm out of here!

Perspective: And arithmetic is a belief system?

Harry: Yes. And so is algebra. So is every reality when viewed externally. But that doesn't mean you can't submerge yourself in a reality and learn the foundational beliefs and play the reality to your heart's delight. Just don't get so stuck that for the rest of your life all you do are arithmetic problems.

Perspective: I can't help thinking of the expression, "one-trick pony".

Harry: Exactly! The purpose of using Avatar is so that your life doesn't turn into a one-trick pony life.

Perspective: I think we all can relate to the idea that we've learned what we need to know from certain problems and events in our lives, and now it's time to move on. Why Avatar?

Harry: Are you asking me to create a belief system? Okay. Let's believe that creating and experiencing reality is only one of many potentials possessed by life. And let's believe that when we conclude our exploration of these realities, we awaken to new potentials.

Perspective: That sounds like a truth to me.

Harry: Good. Then we can let it serve as truth until we are satisfied that we have learned what we need to know and are ready to go on. When we reach that point, Avatar will reappear.

Perspective: That's interesting. Are you suggesting that the reason for Avatar's appearance at this time is because a lot of us are ready to move on?

Harry: Yes. I think a lot of people are ready to assume responsibility for their own, as well as for civilization's, deliberate evolution. As life evolves it becomes more integrative and less defined. The opposite direction, where life becomes more separate, solid and defined, is decay. Evolution and decay can be confused.

Perspective: Something else occurred to me while we were talking - maybe it's just a belief. I mean of course it's a belief. How do we go on talking? It's all belief, right? I just got that!

Harry: No problem. Let's just entertain each other and believe we're discovering truth.

Perspective: Okay, I'm willing to believe that - I'll deliberately believe that! Oh, I just understood the title of your book! Anyway, where was I? Oh, what occurs to me is that the beliefs that are supported by the body's senses are more solid and real but then seem to fade in certainty toward the edges of our sensory envelope. Is that right? Are we pushing the envelope of our own reality?

Harry: That is a good way to look at a reality. There's an old story about a farmer who places a budding pumpkin in a jug. As the pumpkin grows, it fills the jug and can't grow any larger. The jug is the limit of what we can experience. When the jug is broken our reality expands.

Perspective: Seems like I remember reading an article by you in the Avatar Journal called "The Unlimited Self."

Harry: That's right.

Perspective: Okay, then I've got another question. If your reality just keeps growing, how do you ever get out of it to create a new reality? How do you get back across the abyss? Aren't you just adding to and changing the reality every time you break the jug?

Harry: You are right. There really isn't an exit out there at the limit of a reality-bubble. From the inside, every reality appears to be infinite. The return ticket in this infinite reality is located exactly right where you are, and it is validated by fully experiencing - notice I did not say thinking or believing - fully experiencing yourself as source of the creation. Now, I'm not talking about blame. I'm talking about power and ability. As source of the reality, you can turn it on and off. When it's on, it's infinite. When it's off, you're back home. Thinking, figuring, believing, etc., are tools for exploring a reality. They will not turn it off. Only experiencing a reality fully will turn it off.

Perspective: Is that possible - to experience a reality fully?

Harry: Yes it is, but it is an ability that needs to be understood and developed. Many people have experiencing confused with recording or judgments or emotions. All of these are really efforts not to experience what is. Some people mistake experiencing for thinking or remembering. Everything gets categorized. Some people have experiencing confused with believing or imagining, some with suffering - it's a very misunderstood concept.

Perspective: How would you explain experiencing?

Harry: It's actually a more fundamental phenomenon than language or understanding. It's something an Avatar Master can lead you to in a short period of time, but there's not a lot he or she can say about it - at least not a lot that is helpful as far as introducing you to experience. I guess the best thing I can say about it is that experience is the other half of reality.

Perspective: I know you have invited people to feel you. Do you mean to experience you?

Harry: Yes.

Perspective: When I feel you, I get that there is something beyond all the should's and ought-to's and qualifications and classifications that dominate our lives.

Harry: Yes.

Perspective: Actually you do feel quite good. Why is that?

Harry: What feels good is the action of experiencing. When I invite someone to feel me, for a moment they drop their fixed ideas and beliefs about themselves and reconnect with their own sensation of being alive and sovereign. That feels good. It's sort of an incomprehensible, sublingual connection. It crashes when we try to understand or explain it. When we feel, we share a definitionlessness 'am'.

Perspective: Definitionlessness 'am'?

Harry: The source of I am.

Perspective: I have a sense of this. It actually feels sacred or religious. Are we dealing with God here?

Harry: Perhaps, or maybe just another explanation.

Perspective: I've got one last question for you. Let me ask it and get it out of the way. There's a lot of money involved with Avatar - 30,000 graduates at $2,000 each - that's $60 million dollars. Where does that money go? Who gets it?

Harry: It is a lot of money, but you have to remember to divide it amount the 2000 or so offices that deliver Avatar, the 30 or so countries that collect taxes, the expenses of operation a worldwide network, etc. Then you will begin to wonder how we manage on so little. Money, power and sex tend to be the most aberrant subjects in our current civilization. I think that is because they have the most lies asserted about them. It takes a little digging to find out what a person really believes about these subjects. Our view of money, by the way, is that it is an energy and a medium that permits us to rapidly and enjoyably create an enlightened planetary civilization. Beyond that, it's not really of much concern.

Perspective: It has become obvious to me from talking with you and with some other Avatars that money is a means of accomplishing your objective rather than the objective itself.

Harry: That's our belief.

Perspective: Why did you decide to share Avatar with the world?

Harry: I think it had something to do with perceived need.

Avatar^® ReSurfacing^® and Stars Edge International^® are registered trademarks of Star's Edge International. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 1996, 1999, 2003 by Star's Edge Inc. All rights reserved. 

Avatar^®: Practical & Mystical

by Harry Palmer

As long as you are willing to go down the path that leads to greater honesty with yourself, the Avatar tools will work for you.

For anyone who is encountering the subject of Avatar for the first time, Avatar is a nine-day self-empowerment training delivered by an Avatar Master. The Avatar tools are a synergy of exercises, drills, and procedures that when properly understood and used increase your ability to live deliberately. They are remarkably effective and efficient tools for taking control of your life. If you need to identify and resolve a self-sabotaging belief or behavior, the Avatar tools can help. If you want to create a harmonious relationship, or achieve success, or just reach a pleasant state of joy and contentment, the Avatar tools can help you. They are also effective for removing grief and stress from your life, restoring health, and achieving peace of mind. Living deliberately means to operate as a creative source - at least within the confines of a certain domain of reality. A creative source acts deliberately out of its own inner determination; it is responsible.

There are many domains of reality, and each contains many levels of creative source. What you can create, control, or change through your own efforts and willpower determines the size of the reality domain in which you can operate as a creative source. Not all creative sources are equal. The evidence that the Avatar tools are working for you is that certain things that you could not previously create, control, or change through your effort and willpower alone, you now can. In other words, within the reality domain that you are experiencing, you have moved to a higher level of creative source. You have acquired or recovered a greater ability to live deliberately. This happens when some resisted experience, or inability, or behavior that was holding you back is removed or positively changed. You move beyond your former limitations. The size of your reality domain increases, and along with it, your influence, your opportunities, and your confidence increase. Your power as a creative source increases.

These are expected results of the Avatar training. Students who feel they have not achieved these results by the end of the second section of the three-section course are entitled to a full refund.

Practical Questions

Most of the people who sign up with a Master for the Avatar training have the immediate goal of improving their lives. Friendly intercourse and intellectual curiosity may be important factors in their decision, but the strongest factor is usually, "Will it work for me?" You want to be happier. You might feel that there is something keeping you from happiness. The "something" may be specific in your mind, or more likely it is something vague and indiscernible, some stress or invisible pressure. These are often the things that you mistakenly believe that you must learn to live with. These barriers to true happiness are tucked away in your mind, carefully avoided, but their destructive effect on your life keeps showing up.

So the immediate question in many minds is, "Will it work for me?"

This is not always a question that an Avatar Master can answer. Showing someone how to use a tool, even when the presentation includes many hours of drilling and exercises, will not always turn out a successful or motivated craftsman. Verifying that the tools work for others is not really the answer to; "Will it work for me?"

The real answer to this question is a question in reply, "How honest with yourself are you willing to become?" How vulnerable will you let yourself become? The reason this is asked is that the real causes of your unhappiness, whatever they may be, and the causes of your failures, whatever they may be, are buried beneath blankets of your own resistance. And while an Avatar Master can guide you, can create a safe, compassionate space, in the end it is your willingness to be vulnerable that dissolves the blankets of resistance. Then the true causes of your unhappiness are revealed, and you can put the Avatar tools to work for you. As long as you are willing to go down the path that leads to greater honesty with yourself, the Avatar tools will work for you.

Mystical Questions

After you have successfully mastered the Avatar tools, you can use the tools to reshape or change personal realities. Abilities are recovered. Limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs are discreated. Life goals are discovered. In a sense, you square your life away. Fixed attention is liberated and your awareness expands; the mind relaxes. And within the mental quiet, more distant questions arise - mystical questions about life and death. Who am I that thinks? Why am I? What is my purpose? What is the purpose of anything? What will become of me when I die? These questions are doors to the inner mysteries.

One of the inner mysteries revealed in the quiet mind Avatar state is that there is a gentle urging or intention underlying the unfolding of life. It is like some divine cosmic order that quietly, compassionately whispers the perfect suggestions to you at exactly the right time. But it does not impose its will; it is not insistent; it does not command. In all likelihood it has not been heard, or if it was it was ignored. Very few people understand this universal inner Tao. For most it has been lost in the din of thoughts. Many people have intuitive flashes, but even these flashes come with strong doubts.

So beyond material success and happiness, in the here and now moments free of mind, new priorities unfold. What is really important? Which of my actions are of consequence and which actions are trivial? Why am I so concerned with impermanent things? These are questions found along the p path of self-honesty. They do not merely elicit answers; they create moments of sudden intuitive understanding-epiphanies. Certain qualities start to evolve in your life: serenity, compassion, and consideration for others. The experience of a transcendent moment and a realization of your own connection to source are mystical but unquestionably real experiences of your Avatar training. If you've got the courage to try it, you're in for a wonderful trip.

Avatar^® ReSurfacing^® and Stars Edge International^® are registered trademarks of Star's Edge International. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2004 by Star's Edge Inc. All rights reserved. 

What Do I Really Want Out Of Life?

by Harry Palmer, author of The Avatar^® Materials.

Real satisfaction... cannot be acquired by achievements or possessions. Real satisfaction... cannot be acquired by embracing a doctrine of renunciation.

"What do I really want out of life?" is the bonus question for the discouragedly successful. It waits in the darkness for its cue - a moment of self-honesty - and then it slips through the curtains of consciousness and steals the show. It comes up on the day the new car loses its shine or the applause loses its meaning or the ashram loses its glitter. It stalks the early morning hours of fitful sleepers. What do I really want out of life?

Have you ever desired something - an object, or recognition, or a special relationship - and discovered that the pleasure of actually having it was disappointing? This is a special kind of disappointment. You're not disappointed by failing to obtain your desire; you're disappointed with the prize.

Most people console themselves by setting the goal a little higher. They say to themselves, "It wasn't a Porsche I really wanted. What I really wanted was a Lamborghini." "It wasn't a million dollars, it was ten million dollars." "It wasn't a fifty foot yacht; it was a hundred foot yacht." This leads to the twisted wisdom: How much would it take to make me happy?

The answer, a little more. A little more - it's a sedative answer. It lulls the disappointment back to sleep and reaffirms the old guilt that one isn't striving hard enough or isn't living up to one's potential. A crazed society offers solace, "Try harder. You'll do better next time."

This plants the seed of anxiety in your mind, and "next time" is a reminder that time is running out. The pressure is on. You need to get it and get it soon. But what? Not this, not that. Maybe power. Maybe if you were president of your own company...

Can you sense the panic? Work harder. Get your statistics up. Stay motivated. Imitate the affluent. Get passionate. Remain focused; learn to ignore distractions. Study marketing. Create demand. Destroy the competition; business is business. One night you wake up to ring-ring. It's not the phone. It's your self-honesty bell. Is this really what I want out of life?

You need an answer and you need it right now. Where do you turn?

"I feel your pain," offers some new-age guru who sells you the advice: total renunciation, give it all up, want nothing. Trust. So you wrestle the mind to stillness. You surrender. Love everyone. You suffer ego-death. BE HERE NOW. The pain goes away, but so does your common sense. While you are trusting serenely, you are robbed, your dog is poisoned and your house is burned. While you are loving everyone, your spouse files for a divorce.

Ah, but you understand, it must be your karma - a test of your faith. Uh-huh, stupid man talking. You achieve spiritual wisdom for whom? How long can you play solitaire? How long can you rationalize the suffering of humanity? So you spread the word, this is how it is, honor your guru, save the world, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. The honesty bell rings again. Is this really what I want out of life?

The idea that life is about acquiring possessions leads to disappointment. Real satisfaction (despite TV commercials) cannot be acquired by achievements or possessions. The idea that life is about surrendering your desires leads to disappointment. Real satisfaction (despite your guru's righteous insistence) cannot be acquired by embracing a doctrine of renunciation.

Test them, only if you must.

Achievement pulls you one way; surrender pulls you the other. Your heart and mind divide. Conflict. So you compromise. The word for this compromise is unhappy. The prognosis is a deepening mental depression terminating in socially adjusted unawareness. No kidding, you go crazy. Advertising and holy books medicate your contradiction with false promises until... ring-ring. (It's for you.)

Avatar is not anti-achievement nor anti-spiritual nor anti-compromise, but it does dispel the illusions that any of these is a path to real satisfaction.

The path to achieving real satisfaction in life is an honest, heads up exploration of your beings and the beliefs from which your doubts and answers arise. Who are you being and what do you believe?

The prize - and it is simple and singular - is waking up to who you really are and learning to live deliberately. When you know, the answer is, there is no question.

Fully alive, fully awake, this is what I really want out of life.

That's Avatar. If it's not number one on your wish list, ... ring, ring.

Avatar Doesn't Offer You Answers,
It Offers You The Tools
To Find Your Answers.

Avatar^® ReSurfacing^® and Stars Edge International^® are registered trademarks of Star's Edge International. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 1996, 1999, 2003 by Star's Edge Inc. All rights reserved.