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The main principle of life: The Anna Karenina Principle… the invisible thread that ties it all together
Here is another illustration of the main principle of life: The Anna Karenina Principle… the strait and narrow
I have been using Freecell as a self training tool.
Slow going, because sight, going from not seeing to being clear of what you are seeing is not a simple, one-step process… and playing Freecell well needs you to have the sight… or shall I say Sight?
Today I even saw that it uses many of the principles, or better said: obeys many of the principles I write about.
Many card games in casinos ban card counters… because they have an advantage over everyone else… even over the house.
There are not many card-counters, because people cannot see what they should count and why.
They can’t see that there are 52 cards in a pack, and once a card is used, it is not available any more.
I used to play bridge, a highly competitive card game. I played and I was a beginner card counter. And as such, I played quite well, better than the not card counters.
Most people make decisions from their feelings, or from what they want, but a card counter sees a lot of reality, the what’s so.. And makes his decisions on the knowable reality…
When I measure the new measure in the Starting Point Measurements: to what degree you base your life on your emotions, people, inevitably, measure in the high 90’s… whereas a card counter would measure below 10%.
One of the difficulties of being human is the problem of plenty.
Plenty is like a forest. You see the trees, too many to count, but you cannot see the forest.
Forest is the organizing principle of the trees.
Unless you can see the underlying principle or principles, you are clueless.
You can get lost in the forest, because you can’t recognize the clues.
I am reading Kipling’s Jungle Book, and it is a great illustration of how we see and how we don’t see.
As a child you read the books, and get all busy, imagination and all, with all the different talking animals, their adventures, their arguments.
Some of you may watch the movies, because why read… it’s the same, isn’t it? Or listen to the audio recording of the book.
And what happens? You get stuck on the surface level of life, on the level of the trees, the level of the young boy who plays with toy soldiers.
You don’t even suspect a deeper layer of book.
Even when I point it out to you: truth when you repeat them become a lie… your brain hasn’t learned to go deep, seek connections, see the ocean in a drop of water.
And until you do, your vibration will be low. or it will jump around between low and not so low. because you are lacking the eyes to see, and you lack the desire to look.
And the life on the surface is actually boring. If something has to happen for you to not be bored, then you are both bored and boring.
So how do you start developing your ability to see layers, to see connections?
I will share, with you how it began for me.
It was October 1956. One morning I woke up and my father was gone… and I could hear guns shooting from the city below.
My little brother, three years old, was jumping up and down. Excitedly, shouting, War, war, war!
Then there was suddenly no food. My mother and brother went to get handouts at the Austrian Embassy a few blocks from where we lived. Rice, pasta, packaged goods… so we didn’t starve to death.
My older brother, 11 years old then, stood in line at a bakery about a mile from our house, but all the bread was gone before his turn came.
- Then two thugs took a shot at me through the window…
- Someone painted, nightly, skull and leg bones on the front door. My brother and I went down at the crack of dawn to scrub it off every morning.
- Then it was all over. The Russian army came in tanks. I remember watching them pass in front of the house on their way to the Prime Minister’s house. His wife gave birth in the tank, I found out later.
Let’s jump to the summer after.
I was standing in the attic. The heat trapped under the roof, hot as hell, reading the secret government document on the happenings the previous October. Pictures of men hanging from lamp poles. Men killed after careful examination of their penises. If they were circumcised. If he was, they hanged him!
For some reason this sequence of events allowed me a glimpse into the forest.
The forest that is the nature of humans. That’s when it all began for me.
From then on everything happened on at least to different levels, the surface, and the deep level, where it made sense.
The Playground, my flagship program, taught people first to see the reality of the surface level, and then, for those who were willing to follow, the deep layer, the layer of the forest.
Even going to the first reality layer is very liberating. But the deep layer brought a whole new level of understanding. The understanding, seeing the dynamic.
You first learn to see and recognize the deep dynamic. and then, hopefully, you are able to see it without someone pointing it out. You become like a tracker, a Houdini, an escape artist.
What does being a Houdini mean?
That means that I can drop you in any dense forest and you’ll find your way out…
By dense forest, I really mean any life situation. Life is full of situations that are reactivating, confusing, infuriating, intimidating, and deadly.
And unless you can make sense of it, on the level of ‘forest’ the situation, (the trees) eat your life. You get stuck in the trees.
And the situation in question can be now. Or it can be something that happened in the past.
We all have something happen in the past. Most likely the story where you invented why you are doomed, forever, with no chance to be happy, rich, loved, important, or worthy.
We distinguish the laws of the Jungle, the laws of Life. The laws that people violate, people who have no laws. People who are well-meaning monkeys at best…
A good preparation for this is reading the two Jungle Books…
This is the way to read: read and then ponder. Look for the deeper connections. Look for the same in your life, in human life, in history. after every half page or so.
For most of you, that is the main missing skill that you should use in the 20-day skill learning challenge.
What do you need? A book. Spend 45 minutes a day. 15 minutes of actual reading, and 30 of actual looking.
By the end of the 20 days, you’ll know what I meant. some will know sooner than others.
OK, let me repeat the 20 day challenge definition.
One of the “skills” you need to acquire if you want to live a life of success, is the skill or learning, and learning fast.
Just 20 hours is enough to become “reasonably good” at any skill.
1. Deconstruct the skill – Break the skill down into its most basic parts. Which parts are necessary for hitting the goal you have? (i.e. if your goal is to sing a song in Korean, you can primarily focus on pronunciation, not learning a bunch of vocabulary)
2. Learn enough to self correct – Learn enough to realize when you’re making mistakes.
3. Remove barriers to practice – Turn off your phone, unplug the TV. Put your guitar, piano, language book in the middle of your room, not behind your stack of dirty laundry.
4. Practice for at least 20 hours – Commit to 20 hours from the start. You’re going to be frustrated at times, so committing beforehand will help you push through the frustration.
I have learned all the money making trades, and more with this exact technique…
even though I wasn’t conscious of that fact until I watched Josh Kaufman’s TED talk…
Leaning skills opens you up to see what you like, what is a good fit, which thing you want to learn next.
It also helps you get to an acceptable level with the skills I teach.
Warning: watching my videos won’t count into the 20 hours: you actually need to practice.
If you practice a grand total of five minutes a day, and do it not deliberately, you’ll never get there.
The learning needs to be deliberate, and intense enough to count.
I don’t know anyone who learned an instrument, a language, driving a car in five minute increments… do you? And yet that is what passes for practice in your world… oh, and watching videos… reading.
You need to organize your life to have a chunk of time daily, or five days a week… and you’ll get the hang of it…
You won’t become an expert, unless you’ll see that becoming an expert, and adept is what you want, and then you’ll continue past the 20 hours…
Register for the challenge. We’ll have a webinar to help you find a useful skill to learn… or a fun skill… or anything worth learning, worth playing with, worth experimenting with.
If you don’t register, you won’t be invited to the webinar.
I myself have two things in mind… for myself. Shaking in my boots… lol. Scary as hell… but also exciting.
You need to register to participate.
OK, let me close this article/invitation with a Marianne Williamson quote:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
How could Leonardo da Vinci not have painted? How could Shakespeare not have written? In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke tells a young writer to write only if he has to. We are to do what there is a deep psychological and emotional imperative for us to do. That’s our point of power, the source of our brilliance. Our power is not rationally or willfully called forth. It’s a divine dispensation, an act of grace.
It should inspire you, scare you, and make you ponder. What if it is true? What is the dynamic, the inner dynamic of fear?
Will you have the courage to take one tiny step? Learn one skill in 20 days? Or you are so resigned (dead) that you won’t go for it.
