Evolution, or upsetting the apple cart. Do we have the strength in the face of ego, and society demanding that we stay the same?
Upsetting the apple cart… the standing order of things. In your case: what you can and can’t do, have and feel. The misery, the pretense, the must, and the ought to… This is what today’s article is about.
Can you feel the ego squirming? Good… keep one eye on the ego… Please.
I have just started to read the first book Tai Lopez has on his 100 book recommended list.
This one is right up my alley, because it is about the genes and their role in the evolution.
If you imagine the DNA as a 300 page book, a gene is a few lines in it.
But those few lines make you behave differently than if you didn’t have them.
Each gene that is turned on makes you choose what you eat, how you walk, who you mate with, and what you read.
Major simplification, but I think it will do for now.
You can only imagine how many genes there are in a 300 page book. And if they all talk, it’s noisy. And they do… but there are dominant genes… loud and forceful.
There are also other influencers, not in the DNA, that vie for your attention.
In the normal course of events, your life is pretty predetermined, because your reactions to life’s puzzles, and your behavior, your attitude are no listening to the few loudest members of your team… and we could say, that to have a life different than what you have, even a little bit different, is going to be a challenge.
The status quo, supported by the ego, is very insistent, and fights for dominance, even if the status quo is that you are miserable, unfulfilled, unloved, and lonely.
Lots of gurus say, that you have a dominant belief, and that it blocks you from having it all.
And it does seem that way.
But what if that is not how it is? Then all the work you do or have done, to disappear the dominant beliefs is going to make no difference: your life will stay the same: you miserable, lonely, unfulfilled.
As you may see, I am in the evolution business… causing it… causing you to change your life by activating different capacities, which, maybe, could be called genes… I have no idea. But my feeling is that they are a few lines of code, each, that are suppressed by the billions of other lines, that dominate your being.
So far, it is clear that people who were born with more capacities turned on, will keep new ones on easier… unless… we’ll get to that unless later in this article.
Because, it seems, ego isn’t interested in evolution. Ego needs to be managed, ego needs to taken, very gradually, into any change, or it will stop you in your tracks.
Ego is not interested in change… and evolution involves change.
And ego is not interested in you being happy, or fulfilled, or anything like that… unless you continue to be happy, fulfilled, etc.
Ego is the “stay that way” element of your machine… The old boys’ club of your internal political organization.
Most of the time ego filters out information, anything and everything, that would upset your apple cart. It’s like a censor.
So, even you want a different life, you can’t see that you can, and you can’t see how, because… well, you can’t see it.
But most importantly, you can’t see where you are at. Your mental picture of where you are is skewed towards you staying the same.
I am this way, this is what happened to me… are dead giveaways that you are supposed to be the way you are… maybe you weren’t born that way.
But we each remember times when we jumped out of bed, excited that it’s a new day, excited that we had no idea what will happen.
So we weren’t born the way we are now… But we became this way.
The process how you became this way is like a picture with more blank areas, that areas that are filled in.
It is the water we swim in, it is the air we breathe: it is there, but we can’t see it.
Transformation is a modality… a modality of lifting the fog… showing you a glimpse of a blank area of that picture of how you became the way you are, and how you are.
Like in movies, in criminal movies mainly, they show glimpses of what happens that the main character can’t see. So you, the viewer don’t stay in the fog like our detective does…
Depending on your personality, on your age, on many factors, seeing what you got a glimpse of, will either make a difference or it won’t.
I am going to share three examples, plus mine… so four examples.
A. Student one experiences powerlessness in her life. We could say that her life story is that things were done to her, and she didn’t feel she had the power to do anything. Paralyzed.We discovered that the powerlessness came and was proven true by the internal conversation, that says: “no matter what I do… it won’t change anything, it won’t matter, or I’ll get into trouble.”You see that the internal conversation will make her1. argue that she can’t
2. argue that it’s dangerous
3. argue that it isn’t worth itResult: everything that matters in life remains unattended to… to prove that she is powerless.
Now, if you manage to see that this is a machine, and it works this way, you have two ways to see it.
1. oh, I see it here… but that’s it
2. oh, I see, it’s like the color exercise… I can go and root it out everywhere. And everywhere I can see it, I’ll have a choice to say “I see that powerless wants to call the shot… but I’ll call the shot this time” and do the thing that “powerless” is trying to stop her from doing… or succumb to “powerless” and continue to be unhappy and unfulfilled.So far she is choosing to honor powerless… 🙁
B. This person is not a student, he is not a client, because he has never let me in.Hey, seldom it happens.But I do have insights from our myriad of emails, and his lots of purchases.He has dreams of success. But his experience of himself oscillates between being a loser (he was told over and over that he was a loser. His history is there to prove that he is a loser.) and knowing all he needs to know.
The ego will tell everyone that they know everything they need to know. It tells me too.
In his case, it will prevent him to learn anything new. It will prevent him to be open to anything new. It will prevent him to get a glimpse of what is the water he swims in…
He is painfully aware of being a loser, but he can’t see that “knowing it all” keeps him cemented to it. Literally and figuratively.
Ignorant people resist learning anything new. It’s like a catch 22: You are stuck where you are, ignorance.
Ego is doing it.
When I turn on humility, the capacity, the capacity that allows you to learn, to be curious, to grow, it turns of instantly.
Ego wants you to stay the way you are, and any new knowledge is a threat to the status quo.
C. This student is a Chinese American. As with all Chinese, being born a girl is a big disappointment to the parent. I am not Chinese, so I don’t get it, but it’s been this way for thousands of years in China.So the setup is the same for most Chinese women, but the decision they make about themselves may differ. She, this student, as a baby, decided that she was a mistake. And if you are a mistake, you try to become less glaring of a mistake, so in her case, she became obedient, meek, dutiful… all against her grain: she is a forceful person by nature.She behaved “the right way”, she wears her hair in the right way, she married because that was the right way, she had two children because that is the right way, she is bringing them up the right way… and she is unfulfilled, unexpressed, and unhappy.She saw “I am a mistake and I need to fix it” as her machine, and she started to look through her life, and see it everywhere. Meaning: she really saw it, distinguished it, like the color in the color exercise, nonverbally, intelligently.
She is now designing herself a life, and a process, where she extricates herself from the life situation she got herself into, because it was the right thing.We’ll see if she will see that bringing up her children the right way needs to be attended to… urgently, as well.
D. My example: I was unwanted as a child. My mother didn’t want any more children from my father, who was quite a bully. But I was becoming a fact: four months in utero.So I was also a mistake. But my decision was different from my Chinese student’s… my decision was: I am on borrowed time. It makes no sense to build anything permanent: I’ll be found out and thrown out, there is nothing I can do about it.The story of my life is a story of no permanence. I have never bought a couch, I have never had a living room, I have never had a dining table.I now have one chair, and one bed that I use. If I invite someone to eat with me, we would eat on our lap… that is how I eat. Or standing.
Whenever I consider investing in something, building something, creating something, I have an internal struggle, and I almost always choose short term projects.Day to day living.
In my case, in my experience, the machine doesn’t go away. It needs to be managed. Diligently.
When I get comfortable, the next thing I know it got triggered, and I am back to having nothing… no health, no wealth, no happiness, no fulfillment.
But I have been studying this machine, and I am getting better at managing it.
I have created a 90-day plan to zenify my house. I have NEVER created a 90-day plan. It is inconsistent with my machine.
I am pushing the envelope. Maybe for the first time in my life.
Ego is fighting back. Yesterday, after I declared the project, it gave me heart pain… I felt I was dying.
Transformation, winning in a life that is run by your machine, is a job for the skillful, the humble, for the diligent.
But it is worth it.
I remember my blind and deaf friend’s excitement when she saw a sliver of life… her hand and handbag… after having been sightless, completely, for 30 years.
Yeah, this is how it feels. Exciting, and scary.
In my personal experience, unless the glimpses are received with some humility, they won’t make a difference.
And when your main issue is arrogance, an overriding arrogance, you won’t be able to use what you saw to change.
Because that arrogance comes from the ego, and its purpose is to keep you the same: loser, powerless, a mistake, a victim… whoever you are, already.
