The Mindset book is the perfect accompaniment to the Reclaim coaching program, and the From Upset To Communication course where we learn the fields inside which all of life plays out.
I have questions coming at me that shed light to misunderstanding of what this work is about. What the course is about. What the program is about.
I have asked for this type of questions. I have asked my student to share with me what they are getting, so I can see where they are off… where I was off… what it is that is misconstrued, misunderstood, or not understood in what I teach… It was a great idea, because unless I know what you got, I can’t help you.
It won’t be easy to share it, so please advance to me some compassion: I am walking on some uncharted territories.
1. You may feel, together with some of my students, that it is all about removing the upset, removing the disagreements, removing all confrontation, including how hard, how difficult it is to do something.
Hi Sophie,
I’ve re-listened the call and here’s what I got up to now about fields (if I got it 🙂 :
Fields are an energetic, dynamic space where you (need to) move/go intentionally-consciously so that you can communicate with someone who is already there so that communication flows/leads to a win-win outcome.In other words, you adjust yourself and ‘switch’ fields according to ‘needs’/situation/circumstance no matter what your usual/’default’ field is (does something like default field exist)
And all that you can do when and if you develop such skills first? And these skills is what we learn in the course?
English is her second language, but here is my translation:
She is asking if the course is to teach you to manipulate yourself, until you can get to a place where your can have no strife… where you please the other person, so they don’t kill you… lol.
No. None of my work is about manipulating, or even changing yourself.
That is the forceful approach to life… the approach that cause wars, fracking, and presidents like Trump.
Strong-arming things, people, yourself.
What is underneath is this: There is something wrong. Something wrong with you, something wrong with me, something wrong with it.
So it is a fixing modality.
Whenever you fix something, the wrongness doesn’t go away, it is there, because it is the core of your being.
The action that takes you to Expanding Human Being is becoming.
The reason we use the worm to butterfly analogy, because no traces of the worm can be found in the butterfly, not physically, not emotionally, not spiritually.
Arrogance cannot be fixed: it will remain in every fixed form.
Forcefulness cannot be fixed: it will remain the core of every fixed form.
Becoming is like the seed needs to die to become a plant.
You cannot wrap your mind around it. It is beyond the mind.
I know people with a ton of knowledge but no distinctions.
Distinction is a new way of seeing the world. A becoming.
My job is to cause becoming through seeing the world differently. Through distinctions.
It is like balance: once you get it no one can take it away from you. But if you haven’t gotten it, you can’t get it through explanation, through reading; you have to go through the process of falling and stumbling until you get it.
This is the main reason that humility is the human capacity to all becoming. Humility means: willing to go through what it takes. And experience what there is to experience while going through it.
No jumps in becoming. The mind doesn’t help. Reading doesn’t help. Only going through does it.
2. The second way to miss this work is, I would call, coloring within the lines.
Here is a post inside our Reclaim program, that may help you to see if you belong to this second group:
I am really in an unfamiliar place. A place where the majority of my conscious time is going towards my plans. I honestly feel like I’m in school again. I’m saying this because I hope that my behavior is a reflection of a greater degree of humility.
Where Tai refers to some guy who says we have about 50,000 hours to get it all done, I pause. Now, I realize the number is relative, but it highlights the importance of staying with the pursuit. I surely don’t know how much time I have.
On another note, there’s something that is bugging me. Forgive me if I mess this up, but if humility is about the seeking of knowledge and not the getting of it, could it be that I and others are lacking the foundation for seeking? It occurred to me that I may not possess something necessary to be a great student. When you said to those of us in the Upset webinar that ‘you are not in the class,’ I was dumbfounded.
Then later, I got more of what you meant, but giving myself to something is mostly a foreign approach. Even as I am taking on about as much as I can, at this moment, I feel scarcity saying: hey, there’s only so much you can do in a day so…. I guess what I’m getting at is: maybe there are levels in the depth of humility that I can take on as I learn to manage my life better.
I even realized that sometimes I ask you questions that you refuse to answer, and rightfully so. However, I didn’t know that I was avoiding doing my own work. I’m not sure I know what questions are appropriate to ask you. Is there a guideline I can use so that I don’t ask you questions that are not for you to answer?
This second way of being off… is fear based.
Actually, even the first way is fear based, but the reaction to fear was different there: it was aggression. Here is hiding, cowering, trying, whimpering, backing away from what feels threatening, unpleasant, or a waste of time.
What you want to get is that intellect is not useful in becoming.
Intellect can be actually in the way.
I had the moment clearly when I got my first distinction. It was taught by Werner Erhard himself, and you could hear that he was struggling, intellectually, himself. You could hear that intellect was trying to take him off.
He was attempting to distinguish two. The number two.
The first distinction that alters the rest of life…
For Helen Keller, it was “Water” that created the birth of the paradigm: words. That words are a symbol, a stand-in, for a thing real, a piece of reality.
The moment she got that, she wanted to know the word that was saying: tree, house, me, you.
The movie “The Miracle Worker” (1962) does a great job at capturing the process, capturing the moment.
For me, the distinction “Two” became my “Water” when Werner held up one hand and said “Two”.
It was one hand. One hand. One hand and no second. One hand and in all around there was no hand… no second…
And when I got, hand and no hand make two. hand and everything else make two… I got distinction.
My “evolution”, my becoming became an unbroken path from there.
Now, was it easy to “get it”?
I don’t think so. I had to be there to have my mind blown. There was one other guy and myself who got it.
But that doesn’t mean YOU can’t get it. But you have to let your mind be blown.
That is humility in action. That is growth mindset in action. Becoming. Growing a set of new eyes.
Everything else is hoarding, fixing, explaining.
Change.
The more things change the more they stay the same…
PS: Becoming is rare. If you read the Mindset book, she documents the opposite… very generously.
Humans’ imagination in inventing false, fake becoming is inexhaustible.
And because people really would like to become, the fake becoming paths sell like hotcake. This is the secret the gurus, spiritual teachers, more money teachers, more love teachers, more time teachers capitalize on.
None of them teach you how to become, in fact they haven’t done the work themselves, they use the tone of voice, the right words that sound like they have become, but they are fooling you, fooling themselves.
And that’s why you feel like you should get a magic potion to turn your beggar into a prince or a princess. With no work.
If enlightenment is the way they describe, then it should descend on you…
But, between you and me, the “water” experience or my “two” experience could be called the real enlightenment… the starting point of an arduous and long journey, climbing up on the Tree of Life.
The Buddha didn’t do it. Osho didn’t do it. “Jesus” didn’t do it.
Enlightenment not considered the starting point is false gold. An insight.
And insights are worth a dime a dozen.
