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At the moment I have one (1) student who is actually doing the work the way the work was meant to be done.
It sounds meager result… but it is all I ever wanted… really.
If you have one student who actually does what you teach, you can tell if what you teach works or not. Or tweak what you teach to accommodate the difficulties they experience. And watch if the changes you made will make the results match what you intended to accomplish.
What do the rest of the people do?
I mean the students in the same program? I am not sure. Apple polishing? Feeble attempts to fake me?
Humans live this fake, apple polishing lives, thinking that life should respond to their feeble attempts, to their intention, to their desire, or whatever the heck they were taught should change reality to what they want reality to be.
This, humanity, humans, include the millions of writers who dish out advice… Millions!
Nothing gets done, nothing get changed, because of this delusional relationship to reality.
If the delusion disappeared what we would see is a new humanity. A new evolutionary stage for humanity.
In this article I will attempt to flash out the sticky point, and share what this one student is doing. I’ll also share what I have done.
You probably will read this article exactly the same way as you read everything… If you consider everything a trick, a move, a way to fake reality… then you’ll read what I write here the same way. Because how you do anything is how you do everything.
If you read everything saying: it is easy for you, but not for me… I am old, young, uneducated, too smart, too stupid, too good for this, I already know, I am already god… pick yours… that is what you’ll say while you read it.
All of these ways of reading are the tip of the iceberg of your delusional self.
During passing out from purely animal stage, humans invented or taught language, and language created a delusional self.
What is delusion?
according to the dictionary, delusion is an idiosyncratic (personal) belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
Delusion is like a distorting lens or mirror you place between you and reality, and then proceed to call it reality.
It is essentially a lie. And it is a conscious lie at that. Some aspect of you, some part of you knows you are lying.
The lying part is your delusional self.
I prefer to use delusional self, not ego, not even your ‘precious I’ because the phrase, delusional self, spells out, that it is an aspect of you, it is delusional, and it is willfully so.
- There is the natural self, the self that knows, sees, hears reality and is willing to act consistent with reality.
- And then there is this bully of a self, the delusional self, that steals the show.
It is loud, it is domineering, and it acts only according to what it wants. what it says it should be. and it acts like any bully would: beats the natural self up for being the way it is. Beats it up for being normal. for wanting to learn. For wanting to work towards things. It calls this natural self a sissy… or stupid, or whatever…
And this way keeps you stuck, miserable, and acting in many fake, calculated ways to get your way.
The imaginary world created by the delusional self is rich, unreal, and full of trapdoors, land mines, and sound and fury. Like any stage.
Because this imaginary world is personal. One of the difficult things is to unmask it. The natural Self, in cooperation with Consciousness, needs to work on finding out the moves and the deceptions of the Delusional Self. Finding out the moves if you ever want to live a life that even approaches the a good life in health, wealth, love and fulfillment.
The inner world of every human is like an Enchanted Forest.
Everything masquerades as something else… shapeshifters, magical animals, imagined dangers…
This is probably one of the reasons Einstein said that if you want your children to be intelligent, you have to let them read plenty of fairy tales…
Reading the fairy tales gives you a vocabulary for the elements of the Enchanted Forest and can give you the way out of that forest.
For example, if your natural self is a dummy, naive, unsuspecting, generous to a fault, then your life will be lived out without any chance for happiness.
I used to be like that… naive, thinking the best of others, accommodating.
The problem is not so much what you do with other humans…
Because how you do anything is how you do everything, the attitude you bring to other people is, has to be the same as what you bring to your inner world…
We know your fairy tales. We know that you are the innocent Little Red Riding Hood, or the gingerbread man, or the frog that mounts the scorpion to get to the other shore.
The ‘job’, the work, of the natural self is to ignore the machinations of the Delusional Self, ignore its loud voice or its seductive siren song, and interact with reality the way reality is… To curtail the moves of the Delusional Self that wants to tell the natural self that reality SHOULD BE, or maybe IS different.
The ultimate intention of the Delusional Self is to get you off the hook…
The ultimate intention of the Delusional Self, I think, is to get you off the hook. To not be responsible for Self. To get things you didn’t earn. To avoid domination. And to look virtuous without being virtuous.
This way of being, off the hook, is the opposite of what makes anyone happy, fulfilled, or even healthy.
How this came about I don’t claim to know. But it is here, it is everyone, and each individual needs to do work to get out of the Enchanted Forest.
Why? Because the Enchanted Forest kills the human spirit… while it pretends to foster it.
Because the Enchanted Forest feeds you pictures instead of food. Feeds you sex instead of love. Feeds you money instead of fulfillment and a sense of doing things that are right.
What most gurus do is making the Enchanted Forest more comfortable, thus these gurus are on the side of death. The death of humanity.
I heard this sentence in a movie yesterday:
‘Our job is meaningless if all we can do is breathe quietly as if we’re dead’
Yeah, that’s why.
Is causing the evolution of one student enough? Yes, if he is the first person who proves that the methodology of getting out of the Enchanted Forest is effective and gets you out.
I got out of the Enchanted Forest. But never really documented it… It took me three decades.
Oh, one more thing: a question: I can see how deep and how treacherous is YOUR Enchanted Forest in your Starting Point Measurements?
I can, based on those numbers, can you also tell your chances of getting out of it, if you actually put in the work?
Then why, oh why would I take students that won’t do the work? Because I am planting a tree under which I will never sit. My hope is that my methodology will survive me, will be dug up by someone, and used… or not.
But every idea is here to stay…
I have no hopes to be the ‘mother’ or ‘grandmother’ of new humanity… with the handful of students I have… lol.
But… you ask stammeringly, how can you be happy with just a handful of students? Your question comes from the Enchanted Forest of your own.
Reality is what reality is. Some 20 years ago I had a party, but it snowed. One person showed up. A coach of mine suggested that I stop worrying about the people who didn’t come, and start loving the one who came.
I have been able to live like that. That party with that coaching was, I say, the first step I took to walk out of the Enchanted Forest.
30% hydration. Working on it now. Thanks, Sophie.
OK Barbara. good luck.
you and everybody should start with getting your cell hydration up to 30%
Yes, I know it’s going to be hard work, that the Self is buried deep. Thank you, Sophie, for helping me get to this place where I’ve finally gotten a glimpse. There’s no turning back now. With your help, I am ready. Is the Playground where I should begin?
LEAVE the Enchanted Forest?? I mean, all the years of my life I have searched for it, longed for it, considered myself a failure, unworthy, flawed for not finding it and living happily ever after there. Looking for the way out was a non-thought, an absurdity. Until now. Now. I. See. It. I have clamored for a place where I would rot. It fits that my favorite childhood book was a collection of fairy tales which I kept for my own children–the passing down of the holy grail. Holy shit. Well, actually it did hold answers, but I noticed those neither in the fairy tales nor in real life. I’ve been too busy wanting to be Cinderella. Now the work to find a way to get out. Thank you, Sophie. I’m glad your party was your first step walking out.
Nice post, Barbara. Now comes the hard part: seeing things for what they are… not easy. I am all for you, but you won’t be able to do it alone.