As you know, I have been learning the difference between information and transformation the hard way…
Even though I have “known” this difference already ten years ago (I have a video of myself to prove it,) even the knowledge of that isn’t transformation.
Transformation is when your actions are consistent with the new knowledge, consistently.
My basic training is architecture, and my five year training, plus the two years to do all the calculations (a second graduate degree), it was all about doing, very little about knowing.
I had classmates who knew all the formulas, but couldn’t solve the problems. I could solve all the problems, if someone gave me the formulas, which I consistently and stubbornly refused to memorize.
So when I got into the “real” world after I quit architecture back in 1988, I was in for a nasty surprise: no one was teaching much of anything hands-on… and I absolutely cannot learn anything without it.
But there is a difference between teaching it that way, and expecting YOU to put in the hand-on part, even though they are explaining, and telling you how, and talking about how…
I, somehow, have a brain that doesn’t have a bridge between the about and the how. Between the words and the doing. A Maginot line, much like the wall that is causing all the hubbub and the government shutdown.
My Maginot Line is very very effective.
It even comes with a definite reluctance to feel stupid… again.
Oh, you didn’t know. The pathway from information to transformation is “paved” with an utter sense of worthlessness, a threat of loss, an utter sense of stupidity… until you get to the other side of it. Oh, and fear.
No line of sight, no hope, no hints that you are on the right path…
Transformation, alas, is much like pregnancy: you are either pregnant or you are not. No one can be a little bit pregnant.
So I am learning from both side of the “fence”: I am learning to cause transformation, and I am learning to cross the Valley of the Shadow of Death… the no man’s land that separates theory from doing.
But “god” loves me, and doing this simultaneously, I am given glimpses of myself and what is missing.
Because something is still missing, if transformation didn’t happen… It is the theory of strait and narrow… again, you cannot get through the narrow opening unless you shed, yet another layer of obtuseness, or misconception, or selfishness, or evil inclination.
Remember, the evil inclinations are six ways to have, six ways to have desire to receive for the self alone:
- 1. wanting to look good/avoiding to look bad/causing another to look bad
- 2. being right/avoid being wrong/make another wrong
- 3. winning/avoid losing/cause another to lose
- 4. dominate/avoid domination
- 5. justify self/invalidate another
- 6. avoid being responsible
In my Playground Program I attempt to train you till you can get your transformation.
Why Playground? all of life is the playground for children. the playground is where you can learn how to live effectively, what it feels like to be bullied, to fall, to make mistakes. Invaluable, and most of us never really spent enough time on the playground of life, and never really learned, viscerally, what life is like.
We learned from our verbose and inane parents who themselves didn’t know, or simply pouted rules they were given… so none of us really had any competent mentors, caring mentors, mentors who really knew what they were talking about. Harry Potter had many mentors… with “mentors” like our parents, teachers, gurus, he would have been dead by the age of 14~15, for sure.
Staying with the Harry Potter analogy: the school was a transformational vehicle where the little kids with potential learned to DO the work, not know about, talk about the work… or they would have never become wizards and witches.
Oh, if you have never read those six or seven, can’t remember how many Harry Potter books, instead you watched the movies, or shun the idea altogether, you are probably a delusional pompous fool, and most likely there is nothing I can do to penetrate your defenses, so you become a human being worth your salt.
Your personal Maginot Line is as wide as the Sahara, and there is nothing I can do to bridge it.
Can you quickly read those books? Of course… but the fact that you haven’t is still a strong indication that you aren’t interested in becoming a human being, a value recognizer, a person who desires to receive for the sake of sharing… You are, most likely, stuck in desire to receive for the self alone. Damn the consequences…
So, in my work, I am doing things that are consistent with this insight that information makes no difference:
unless you achieve transformation you have learned nothing.
And try to remember the principle: yesterday’s transformation is today’s arrogance. Or as baseball great, Babe Ruth said it, poignantly: yesterday’s home runs don’t win the game today.
How I have been doing from the beginning is this: I teach in workshop style: interacting with each participant.
But I have learned the hard way: unless you do it yourself, our interactions won’t take you to transformation. Maybe the other participants listening in… but alas, people hardly ever listen: everyone is busy in their mind doing what they think about… not listening to someone’s struggle working it out for themselves. Over the decades I got about 90% of what I get from other people’s struggles, and only 10% from any other source.
Why don’t my participants listen? Because of their desire to receive for the self alone. Listening would mean a certain level of humility and maybe (just maybe) a certain level of caring about another participant: seeing themselves in their person.
Of course this is so rare, I can point out the two people who occasionally listen… but later on it almost always turned out that they listened to other people struggling so they can feel superior to them. Or to steal their efforts. Nothing as noble as caring… 🙁
So I have added another “wrinkle” to my programs: now I pair people up, and make them practice getting to doing, getting to transformation together.
They talk weekly, and record the call, so I can track what is going on in those conversation, and I give feedback.
Sometimes I get really lucky and can see deeper into the dynamic than other times.
Yesterday I listened in to a conversation between two really “pristine” desire to receive for the self alone soul correction participants.
Silent Partner, and Finish what you start.
And to boot, I had a long conversation with a “Removing Hatred” soul correction person earlier in the day.
I had my pink color glasses, almost surgically removed: none of those people understand the role of circuitry, the role of flow, the role of giving… giving occurs to them as the opposite of what they want: get and take and take and take.
In every area of their lives…
- Giving to Life? No
- Giving to, investing energy in what you want? No
- Giving your energy so you can produce something? No
Desire to receive for the self alone is a mindset rooted in scarcity. Fixed mindset.
- In scarcity what separates two sides of any interaction is the word “or”.
- In abundance, desire to receive for the sake of sharing, those exact two sides are connected with the word “and”.
- For the scarcity person, things are right OR wrong, true OR false
- They are either giving or receiving: one is good, the other is bad
- They can’t/won’t share, because sharing is an abundance activity
- They even have an “or” between their two selves: they are willing to kill one for the other… starve one for the other… neglect one self for the other self’s desire to receive for only itself.
There is no resolution… no common ground, one must lose for the other to win. And their life is a cruel roller coaster: one must be up for the other to be down, and vice versa.
For an abundance person, who has an “and” between their two selves, instead of a roller coaster, it is a gentle dance: one self leads one moment, the other self next… no jerking, no pushing, no forcing, no dominating, no shoulds and no shouldn’ts.
The two selves are a team and they feel like a team, act like a team. Grace and ease. Harmony. Affinity. Peace.
A person dominated by their “desire to receive for the self alone” lower self, there is no value, not in others, not in life. The only value they see is what they can take, a value for themselves: immediate and pleasurable.
I’ll be harsh for a moment here, just hear what I am saying. Cringe but hear it.
- A person dominated by their “desire to receive for the self alone” is like a serial killer: they have to take a life to fulfill the craving, the hunger for the experience.
- The time between two incidents is getting shorter and shorter.
- They cannot allow seeing another human as a person, because they don’t want to deal with guilt, they don’t want it to limit their taking.
- But if you cannot see a person as a person, then you cannot see value. You cannot allow any intrinsic value to inspire you: you need to shut yourself up to them. This is even true if you are a motivational speaker, or a spiritual teacher of sorts: your words don’t touch your soul… you are all about what you want for yourself.
This is the reason for the low vibrational readings of gurus and teachers: they are mouthpieces: what they say doesn’t come from who they are. You are attracted to them because they are just like you, just pretend to be better and better at pretending than you.
The authors of the bible had to give human characteristics to god, the creator, or whatever you want to call that main character of “the book”, so the people can related to “him” because he is just like them: speaking of two sides of the mouth: asking others to be “good,” while they are being “bad”.
Now, after all this doom and gloom, if I am about causing transformation, what can I tell you that could make a difference for you?
The three pictures to the rescue:
Picture 1: it is either you or me. Better me… or you’ll dominate me, win over me, make me look bad, make me wrong.
Picture 2: I’ll battle it out with you, but I’ll put you out of balance first, so I can still win more often than not
Picture 3: It is you and me… I embrace you and take you with me, wherever I go, and we both win. We both look good, We are both right, and none dominates the other.
I take my fear with me… I take my “I don’t want to” with me… I take my tiredness with me… my pain too. We go everywhere together.
- Most people live the life of picture 1. Living in the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Some of my students live the life of picture 2: it is still mostly horrible, but they are onto something… but have not cross the Rubicon, or the way I called it before, the Maginot Line of defense.
In one of my articles I say that you need to integrate your life around your lowest self, the one that is all about desire to receive for the self alone.
Everyone wants to integrate around their highest… but it is entirely impossible.
So what is integration?
Integration is simply putting and “and” between the parts. Wherever it would naturally feel right to put a “or”, you just put the “and”. Integration means: creating one from parts… a unit.
Let’s use lazy as an example: I am lazy. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to have a good time, watch youtube videos all day. Damn homework, damn my promises…
You can hear the thinly veiled “or”. good time or homework. good time of doing anything. good time or keeping your promises…
Clear? Don’t continue reading until it is! look how it plays out in YOUR life…
You can, maybe, hear the defiant tone of voice, even though it is in writing. It is resistant, it is belligerent… very young. You can’t make me… this is not to other people, this is addressed to the other self, the one that wants to do the homework, do something, keep the promises.
Clear? Don’t continue reading until it is! look how it plays out in YOUR life…
OK… crucial point: put an “and” between the two selves: I am lazy and I want to do my homework. I just want good time, and I also care about becoming worth a damn. I just want to watch youtube videos, and I also want to spend my time usefully.
You just entered the phase of a dance: the two selves move in sync… together, coupled… and alternately they do homework and laze about… easy peasy.
The quantity of which is immaterial, the crucial transformation is in the “and” and the “together.”
- I am afraid and I can summon courage.
- I am tired and I can do one more thing
- I want to win and I can help you win too
- I want it all, and I can share… no big deal.
The two triangles (I call them soul and ego there) rolling down the hill, together, getting life done… lived to the fullest.
I will either find the video where I teach this, or will do a webinar on it… soon.
PS: Not all my students are on the verge of transformation… But for the sake of one, whose main “desire to receive for the self alone” expresses itself in being judgmental… I have been observing myself. True to form, the two triangles, I often judge first and assess second. Judgment is saying: right/wrong, good/bad… where I am always right or good… and what I am judging is good or bad… but I am the judge.
Assessment is like looking at what is real… what is NOT an opinion, what doesn’t put me into the judge’s seat, but at most into the assessor’s seat, the one who measures. So assessment looks at the other, the event, the thing on a scale… and no numbers are good or bad necessarily: four is not always better than five…
When you can make your two selves do the dance, the two triangles, then you can become a happy person. Yay.
PPS: It is Days of Power today. Of course I don’t want to do it. I just want to chill… damn the cavalry… lol. I don’t want to do it and I will… I cannot see how it is better than chilling… I will see it when I am done… The sky will be open only till midnight tonight… so get it while the sky is open.
If and until you are purely desire to receive for the self alone, you have a vessel to receive energy, light, benevolence that is limited by the size of the cup… finite.
Once you embrace and integrate your being, your vessel becomes a channel, a pipe, that continuously draws lights from where the light comes from. You never really run out of light… listlessness is a sign that you have… and that desire to receive for the self alone is dominating your being.
I hardly ever need to go, for myself, to the Days of Power energy. And then again, from time to time I get stuck in desire to receive for the self alone… I call it self-concern, health, money, or significance. Luckily it is very occasional, and because I know this, I can turn it around in minutes.
It’s all in a day’s work…
