Why and how you got stuck?
- When you see that acting would make a positive difference, but you don’t act.
- When you see that if you did what you said you would do, you could… but you don’t do it.
- When you see that staying angry or right will cost you everything you ever wanted… but being angry or being right is soooo justified…!
What is it that counters you taking that action, when you don’t do what you see would be a good move?
What is winning when you are obviously losing?
Obviously, as always, the answer to those questions is under the hood.
Obviously, because above the hood you are losing. But under the hood, something or someone is winning…
Actually, precisely said: someone under the hood, something or someone has been winning consistently, and there are scarcely any wins, and only of the flash in the pan, temporary wins that give you bragging rights, but no lasting good.
Please don’t pretend to be surprised, when I reveal the perpetrator… because you have already known that, and you have chosen to give your life to him.
That mysterious, always winning him, is Ego.
The monkey on the top of the page has a dilemma: it can hold onto the banana and be trapped, or it can let go of the banana, and be on his merry way, sans banana.
There IS such a thing as mutually exclusive outcomes. Too bad… but reality is reality.
It is true that you can’t be happy as long as you are right.
It is true that you can’t be rich as long as you are right.
Right about what? you ask?
- Right about how you are, how it is, how they are.
- Right about your opinion, your prejudices, your interpretations about anything.
Right equals stuck.
Stuck in “I can’t”, stuck in “You are wrong”… stuck in “It is supposed to be easy”… “the color of my skin”… “they hate me”… etc.
You need to give up right (the banana) if you’ll ever amount to anything.
But, as I have hinted, Ego is not the problem. Ego is doing, suggesting YOU to do the thing that will keep you unchanged. It is YOU, who is pretending that YOU don’t have any say in the matter.
Shame on you.
How did this come up?
Some of you, some of my students, will pay me to help them pretend that they can’t…
That they can’t change. That they can’t do what they said they should do. That they can’t be happy, can’t be fulfilled, can’t be thin, can’t be successful.
And you can feel their glee all the way here… it’s so strong.
The best way to see the dynamic is to call the wins under the hood payoffs. And the cost, above the hood, cost. Simple enough for you?
Payoff is under, as in underhanded, under the table, illegitimate, illegal, hidden.
Let’s see what type of payoffs we have… in matters of the inner workings of a human, payoffs are not money… they are one or more of the following:
- you get to be right
- you get to look good
- you get to avoid domination
- you get to avoid losing
- you get to avoid being responsible
No matter which of the above is working, it is the ego that gets to be right, and YOU who loses. The ego gets to be right about something old, stale, and something not worth being right about. This type of right is a definite either/or type of right… someone has to be wrong when you are right like this.
- Example 1: Your mother gasped when you smeared her lipstick over your face… You made up that she meant you are horrible. Now, 60 years later, you are not willing to try to live as someone normal… after all your whole life is sitting on a foundation of “I am horrible” and it would be too much of a shakeup, and your mother would get off the hook… No way, you’ll do nothing that shakes that firm lie, that your mother is at fault.
- Example 2: Your mother asked you to look after your baby sister. There is suddenly and earthquake… You are trying to take your baby sister to the basement to protect her, but she is too heavy.You decide that you failed at being a superhero. That you are supposed to swoop down in cape and save everyone…The life you live now is the life of a superhero: you don’t prepare, because superheroes don’t prepare, they swoop. You have no skills, your knowledge of the world has no depth, because superheroes only need a cape.
You are always prepared to swoop in, and save… and then brag about it. We could say you have a superhero complex with nothing to support it. But you’ll brag. And brag. And brag. And lie. And lie.
If you have a choice for a real life, you’ll shirk it, because superheroes don’t have a real life… and then you die. Broke and broken.
- Example 3: You have an image to protect. An image of an good for nothing easygoing fellow… Doing work, efforting, burning the midnight oil don’t fit in… So you’ll lose your inheritance, put your staff out of a job, because protecting and maintaining the image, the under the hood image don’t fit with YOU above the hood doing the right thing. Oh well…
Now, the Ego won’t stop wanting You to lose.
But you are not your Ego. You are not like the ego suggests, you can be anything… really. You can learn new things, learn being differently, you can, gasp, become a winner in this game of life.
Winner means small consistent wins against Ego. Consistent, I said. I meant it.
You can win… but in 99% of cases I see, even paying money is to serve Ego… not you.
You, you don’t care about.
And now you see why humanity hasn’t evolved. The Ego, the opponent, didn’t get stronger. The You, the real you, didn’t get stronger. Because you can only get stronger with practice. And you have only been practicing losing to the ego.
And that, you are really good at.
That is, pretty much, the only thing you are good at.
Now, the capacity I call hierarchy can assist you in seeing that siding with the Ego will cost you, and give you a choice… Because, if you want to tell the truth, presently, you don’t have a choice. You have to do what the ego says. Even if it cost you everything you ever wanted. Everything.
Can I guarantee that with the hierarchy capacity you’ll make the right choices? No. Why? Because capacities don’t choose for you. They only shed light to choices you didn’t see without the capacities.
