Feedback is a 13th floor (Tree of Life) phenomenon…
If someone mocks you, laugh with them. It is obvious that humans, on the current level of evolution, live in comparison. I am better, smarter, richer, etc. than you/others.
So they mock you, judge you, try to change you. Normal.
You allow your ego to resist: you suffer. You allow your ego to fight back: you suffer.
The best way to deal with it is to laugh with them, agree with them. It takes the wind out of their sail.
All pain, all suffering comes from from your resistance, is the feeling of your own resistance.
Anything not resisted may hurt like a sting, but the pain doesn’t last.
When you observe a dog, wounded, yelps, picks up the injured leg and keeps running.
And then you may observe him licking his injured leg… but no more yelping.
Only humans relate to pain on the 15th floor of their being, where it can be made perpetual and permanent.
This is the price we pay, and have been for millennia, for “eating from the fruit of the tree of good and evil”.
Why is the tree called that? The tree of good and evil?
Because it looks at the world from the 14th floor where you consider yourself the creator of the Universe and you call things evil or good, as if things actually really changed because you said so.
There is no good and there is no evil without someone saying so.
And saying so is the source of misery… human misery… that, maybe, isn’t necessary.
You can, I think, move back to the 13th floor of your being, and take life in stride.
Margoczi, who wrote the book Feelings, and the book Words, straddles the two worlds… and therefore it is easy to take it wrong.
The feelings, all nine categories of feelings, including the need for self-realization, are not word-based.
The phenomena he mentions and confuses people is the whole idea of the I… the I that can be too big for its britches.
On the 13th floor one’s I is realistic. Accurate.
Or if it isn’t, it is made accurate.
The fairy tales of “Babe” for example, the pig that thought he was a dog, is a fairy tale. But the reality of people who think they are geniuses runs in the billions.
The difference comes from a simple thing: animals live in reality. Humans, because of the damn words, can live in words, and in illusion.
How do people maintain their illusion, you ask? How can they? Doesn’t life teach them like life teaches a pig?
In my experience, the way humans can avoid reality is by limiting their exposure to feedback.
What do I mean?
Life teaches you through feedback. Not words, but by not doing what you intend for it to do.
So if you have an illusion that you are very smart… everything that you start to do that is unfamiliar, new, or requires you to be smart will be an opportunity for feedback. Telling you how smart you are, telling you where you need to change, grow, learn more, or be more persistent.
All means feedback.
Remember that I have included your feedback attitude in the starting point measures? Feedback is not just what I tell you, no, life’s feedback is what is the feedback I meant.
You can be wise, foolish, or evil with regards to feedback.
- Wise is someone who looks at the feedback and says: hm… I need to change this, and this and this… and maybe start with a beginner’s class before I attempt the PhD level…
- Foolish is someone who, when gets the same feedback, will say: I’ll do it again. I am sure I can succeed… no looking at the feedback… trying to force life to give you a different answer. You invalidate the feedback…
- Evil is someone who, when getting the same feedback, will say: Not true. And start beating up on themselves or on life… But more important: they will arrogantly stick with their opinion of themselves: I have the right to start on the PhD level, damn it. Or damn you. But shy away from doing… Evil is a misnomer… it is the people who’d rather shrink than find out where they stand.
I have all three types of students.
Feedback is hard on everybody… Hard because you were taught to live on the 14th and 15th floor of your being, where you are supposed to be different than you are. Where words you say, you think, others say, are overly important and hurt.
You resist. Not the feedback necessarily, but what it means on the 15th floor.
The ego lives on the 15th floor. The ego’s job is to maintain the illusion that you are supposed to be different than you are. That you are supposed to resist life…
Ego is a construct that serves the powers that be, not you.
All the cognitive biases are ego-based and serve only the powers that be, not you.
All your resistance comes from the ego, that says: this shouldn’t be. Life should be different than it is. I should be different than I am.
So ego misguides you, makes you ineffective, and makes you suffer.
All the stupid religions attempt methods to silence the ego, but even when they say: you are the child of god… they talk to the ego.
The woman who cursed me out… she didn’t know that she was trying to be different than she was, so the pain and suffering continues. Just looking at the pain and suffering differently: that they are there as a feedback, would immediately end them…
Because you cannot observe something and resist it at the same time.
Observation removes the ego. Resistance maintains it.
How does resistance manifest? It is, at the root of it, is saying: this shouldn’t be. And everything it says after that is more of the same.
This is wrong, this is evil, this is a mistake, this needs to be fixed, changed, denied, blah blah blah.
All on the 14th floor.
On the 13th floor resistance has no place. It would be unnatural. Because the 13th floor is the Tree of Life…
It is useful to imagine yourself as the ball in the pinball machine. All the pins are giving you feedback. What you do with the feedback will give you your life, not the pins, not the feedback. What YOU do.
On the 13th floor the journey is a lot of fun.
On the 15th floor the journey is suffering.
So, how do you get to sever the connection between feedback and the unreality of the higher floors?
Well, there are tricks, but tricks are tricks…
In today’s Feelings webinar I intend to explore this issue on how to sever the floors… how to sever the ego pain from feedback.
Why explore, why not teach? Good question.
I can’t teach what I don’t know… I am learning it with you.
You see, I have severed that connection, but not consciously… I didn’t know about the 13th floor until a few months ago.
So we are on a pathfinder mission together, my core group and me.
Together. For humanity’s sake, and for our sake.
If our natural state is to be happy, and it is, we’ll find the path… or die trying.
I am old. My death is coming closer and closer in time, so don’t delay. I won’t be around for too long. And the next teacher like me won’t likely be born in the next two thousand years…
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Bummer you say? Yeah, I agree.
Feel your feelings
