Mattering is a feeling. Nothing matters and everything matters.
But if you don’t feel your life matters, then you’ll live consistent with that…
Some mornings it is hard to write an article.
Ultimately, when I examine the possible causes, I find that I am scattered. My attention flits, and it is looking for more reasons to flit (flitting: Move quickly in an apparently random or purposeless manner).
I am sure you recognize yourself.
Once every two-three months I lose control over my life…
I tell you what it feels like to me: it feels like I have so much to say. To so many people… It masquerades as a rich life, but the truth is it is surface, and it produces no dent in the world: it makes absolutely no difference.
- It may feel to you, that you have nothing to give…
- or it may feel like no matter what you do, it won’t make a difference.
- Or like this: who are you kidding?
If one of these is where you spend most of your life, I guarantee you that your life doesn’t amount to much.
And because the core desire of any human is to matter, to have their lives matter…
…living life in a way that makes you not matter is a horrible price to pay for fleeting pleasures, like browsing, like watching tons of videos, or being on social media.
For me my life falling apart begins with a thought of ‘I did that’ or ‘I discovered that’ or ‘I found out, I realized…’ some exciting thing, but for you it has a specific starting point.
For me, this morning, it began in a conversation I had yesterday with a student of mine, where I mistakenly suggested that he starts site 10-15 minutes a day, eyes closed, to re-orient himself to look at what people want, what people need.
I did that… and to my horror, it was a mistake. It was a distraction.
I hope he’ll read this article, and get back to me fast, before he gets hooked on being distracted… again.
Like I’ve gotten hooked for half a day.
I have a lot of experiments going on at any one time.
I call everything I do an experiment. You probably call them projects…
In the normal course of events, these experiments don’t get messy. They are plates that are quietly spinning. And when I get a minute I give one a little energy. Two to ten energy injections total every day. And the plates this way keep on spinning.
Instead of what the people I observe: they either forget about projects they started, or they get too deep with them and forget everything else.
Here are some of my plates, some of my ongoing projects
- the microscopic mites project. Seven years… it’s in maintenance phase.
- Like restoring myself to a higher level of health than I have had in my twenty’s… This has morphed into staying alive for a little bit more
- The communication course I am working on.
- Like the selling off my stuff to make it easier for my landlord after my passing.
- Keeping my ‘communication group’ interested by posting new stuff.
And on and on and on.
And some desire traps of my own…
The art is to be able to take care of the necessary…
…the elements that will result in a life worth living, and have room, tolerance, and limits on the desire traps that will prevent you/me from living a life worth living, if they get out of hand.
In Daniel Amen’s book, ‘Change your brain, change your life’, the two brain issues. The two brains creating the ADD type inability to focus their attention. Or where they get stuck in one mode and can’t shift out of it.
The art is to not go too deep, and at the same time not stay too close to the surface.
The art is to be able to shift in and out of ‘plates’ so all of life can be attended to.
I say it’s an art, because it needs to be graceful, and it needs to be learned.
Without practice, without mindfulness it is chunky, and it destroys life by either of the two brain issues.
The art is to shift between plates, even though
- Without spending large enough chunks of time absorbed in what you are doing, you’ll never get anything worthwhile done.
- Without being able to shift out and move to another topic, you’ll suffer two consequences:
- you’ll never see if what you are doing is actually going in the right direction for you
2. you’ll never get all your plates spinning… all the plates you need for a life that works on all four cylinders.
Before you start a new plate, look if it is worth the time and the effort.
For example I started a Facebook group on the Keto diet… another one on sleeping. I now have 140 or so members, and am starting to see that I can derive no benefit for my WHOLE LIFE from either.
Sometimes you can’t see it unless you invest a little bit of your time in the thing…
The question is always: is it (in life) where you want to move your WHOLE LIFE?
Most opportunities, money, social, information, business… will not move your WHOLE LIFE, and therefore they are distractions: they use up energy that could be used to move your WHOLE LIFE towards the good life.
I observe two coaches I used to have. I still see them every week… ahem… their recordings.
One of them creates a new project and gives himself over to it wholly… His main business, his health, his relationships suffer… because now he relates to them, the main things, as distraction… Ugh. His vibration is dropping like a stone too. Don’t be like him.
I experiment a lot, but I don’t undertake experiments past the point where I see that they don’t align with my whole life purpose.
It takes practice to say a calm and firm ‘no’ to a pet experiment.
There are no failed experiments, only experiments that are run too long… where you went unconscious.
The most missing capacity is this ability to shift. To do things consciously, purposefully, seeing the big picture. Where you look if you are on the right track, and if you find you aren’t… shift.
I have a list: ‘what to do when there is nothing to do.’ Today the list is:
- Practice Hebrew on Duolingo
- Stretch,
- Listen to an audio,
- Attending to my less important websites,
- Staying in touch with the tiny circle of people I want to stay in touch with.
- Look out the window and rest your eyes on the trees, the sky, the birds.
- Read the book I am reading while resting
- Watch a Netflix series I am currently watching: recreation
An unexamined life is a life that is not moving to where you want to move your life to. Your WHOLE LIFE.
I would guess that the DNA capacity underneath is ‘Seeing the Big Picture’. To the degree you see and act on seeing the big picture, your life is worth living or it isn’t.
One of my students didn’t come to a session she paid for. She spent five hours on the phone with her separated husband. Obviously she didn’t even look if the big picture and thus didn’t see that she was wasting her life.
Another student is doing pushups. He is not doing the actions from the course he paid for. Alas, he obviously haven’t even considered that there is a big picture… or he would be looking. He has been doing a version of this for 10 years that I know, probably all his life.
While a third person is in a demanding graduate program. She comes to class when she can. She does the exercises between session. Her life is starting to be worth living. Her secret goes back to a few years ago when she spent a few months to keep your Sight capacity active. She is reaping the benefits now.
My mother’s soul correction was ‘Long range vision’. She could not, would not look at the future to see if what she is creating with her actions would make her life worth living… That is also an aspect of the Big Picture… Things exist in time.
Your ability to see the big picture and act on it is on a scale. 1-100…
Without being able to spin multiple plates, your life will NEVER move, and you will never experience that you matter, that your life matters.
And that is not a good life… so don’t get stuck there.
So what can you do? In my experience keeping The Sight capacity alive, after I turn it on for you, is needed for 99 out of a 100 people.
If you go from project to project. If you go gung ho… forgetting about anything else. Or if you don’t do anything… and still expect your life to move. Or if you are like a butterfly spending no effort on the parts of your life that need moving… You probably cannot see the big picture. Maybe you probably don’t even know that there is a big picture. You may have a sense of doom and anxiety about the future… but you don’t know what to do about it.
The one student who was generous to share what she did to keep The Sight capacity alive, did elaborate collages on certain topics for months.
Another person is a visual artist, a painter, and she used the capacity to juggle painting and marketing activities… and the capacity is still active.
A third person was in graduate school, and I have no information what she did, although she was perusing my 53 invisibles program intensively in the time when I kept on turning the capacity on every other day or so.
Why would perusing the 53 invisibles keep the capacity of the Sight on?
Almost anything that you do intending to see will do that. But unfortunately most people stop at understanding… and never go to seeing.
She did. And it worked.
A long program is ideal… Integrity. Instant Coherence. Communication. The Playground. The 67 steps.
Without looking you are operating on the level of mind… cut off from reality.
Don’t buy it unless you know how you’ll keep it alive!
