Become all you can become? Why? How? Aren’t you already all you can become?
Yesterday I spent about four hours listening to Jordan Peterson. The material I listened to was a truth value of 30%… not bad.
In some ways Jordan Peterson, the teacher, and I, the teacher, deal with the same things: people don’t see why they should learn.
Many reasons, I see, but one of them is fundamental, and also invisible, meaning it is an invisible part of reality, the part that is below the sea level of the iceberg. It’s not hidden, as one of my students says… although Werner calls the process that makes it visible “unconcealing” suggesting that it is concealed, which is another word for hidden.
According to Kabbalah, 90% of reality is also hidden, so maybe I should call it hidden… but I prefer invisible… sue me if you don’t like it.
Anyway, back to the fundamental dynamic that is hidden from plain view: there is no future… so the mind, human or animal alike, fills the future with visions/memories of the past… These are the things that can happen, because these are the things that have happened.
And in some aspects this is accurate: the past, on the scale of history, definitely repeats itself, wars, depression, global warming, ice ages.
On the personal level, though, this is not necessarily so, unless you help it along. And until you know how it works, you do help it along.
You will be, unchanged, in your future, and that unchanged person does the same stupid things… and the result will be the same, or often worse than the previous ten times.
What is the operative, active part that makes life repeat the past? Is it really the picture we set up, that may happen, and we embellish it, like we embellish our vision boards or mind movies?
No, it is the “us” that we carry over, and the same person will, without fail, create the same mayhem, the same havoc, the same empty life, the same disappointments, the same miserable existence it has been creating forever.
This is the reason vision boards and mind movies don’t really work, that prayers don’t heal, and just by having nice memes won’t make you an appreciative person.
You, inside and outside, have to change, if you want a different future, different from your past.
But what people teach about changing is all in the visible… and unless you penetrate the invisible, the dynamic forces that are under the sea level, you won’t be able to change, no matter how much you pretend that you have.
In Sling Blade, when asked if he will kill again, the convicted double murderer answers: “I reckon I have no reason to kill.” That is when you know that when he will have, when he will see a reason, he will. He will kill.
And so do three quarters of released inmates in the United States: they didn’t change in jail or prison, so as soon as the they reckon they have a reason, they will do it again… this time probably worse than before…
So obviously we don’t really know what makes one want to change and then change, or we would do it: who we are now is much less than who we could be, and we have much less life, therefore, than we could have.
The vision board people are digging around the right backyard… but they are still not hitting on paydirt…
Vision boards make you focus on what you want to have, what you want to do, not on who you want to be.
We have very few distinctions in the domain of being.
Our feelings, our emotions, are in no way any indicators… and our vocabulary is so poor in accuracy, no wonder we are bumbling idiots thinking we are geniuses. We are judgmental as*holes pointing the finger at other people’s shortcomings, while not seeing our own. We are complaining that people don’t respond well to our intention to dominate them… lol.
And your self-awareness is so low, that you don’t see who you are being. You can’t catch what you can’t see. You can’t do much with what you can’t name… accurately. And therefore changing who you are is nearly impossible to you.
Tragic, I say, because who you are is not all you can be… In fact, if we want to translate who you can be and who you are to something measurable, though it isn’t, my students, on average, is about 3%, which largely coincides, or correlates, or equal to their average integrity.
Integrity is a number that expresses to what degree you are true to your self… And in this calculation, the “your self” is who you can become.
The Self Marianne Williamson must be talking about when she says: “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, 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 won’t 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’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
She isn’t talking about your current, actual self… the one that does the things you do today, the one that wastes half of the time you have, every day, on unimportant, unproductive things… leaking away your Life Force.
No, she talks about the Self that you can become. The Self you fancy yourself already to be… only to find out that you are fantasizing.
I haven’t done Jordan Peterson’s Self Authoring program, and if it were up to his sales pitch, I would never do. So I don’t know if it is any good.
If you are adventurous AND generous, you can buy the program in a two for one sale, one for yourself, and one for me, for about 30 bucks…
So given that i don’t exactly know what he is teaching, I will tell you what I think might work… And with that said: there is nothing, literally nothing that works across the board.
I learned one method in Landmark Education, that done properly can produce lasting changes for 30% of the people who use it. 1
Taught the way it is taught, it can only produce 10% lasting results… the difference is a slight modification of language… and that is all it takes.
Then with proper followup, I called “putting legs under that future”, the results for those that applied themselves, produced a 50% result.
If you pay attention, I emphasize “for those who applied themselves”.
People have a lot of reason not to apply themselves. They feel they get more out of their misery than from becoming self sufficient, glorious human beings.
People with domination/avoid domination issues primarily are prone to this avoidance.
They avoid all kinds of domination, especially their soul’s domination, their word’s domination. why are they the way they are? Now, that I don’t know.
There are many different ways one can avoid changing, learning, transformation, the good life.
I have started to make a list yesterday… here it is. Can you pick your favorite ways to avoid?
Deflect
Sideways
Beating yourself up
Stay 100% about yourself
Waiting for god
Argue
Not own
Turn around and teach back…
Make things a rule
So the way to grow is to set up a beingness slightly higher, slightly bigger than you are. I say slightly, because if the gap feels unbridgeable, then you will not be able to see any results any time soon, and you’ll get discouraged.
What I am personally working on, for example, is the beingness of self-sufficiency. I have been working on this for about two years… ever since I discovered that I have a racket of being needy.
I say: I am the kind of person who does everything that is in my power to provide myself with what I need, materially, and emotionally. If that includes asking for something… then I ask. I make the other person feel good about doing what I asked them to do.
And when I notice some wrinkle, I attempt to add it.
It takes for me to look at my limitations differently, and reduce my limitations, if that is what it takes. And add, for example, physical abilities, so I am less limited physically. Work more, so I am less limited financially. Learn new ways of offering my products as well.
Slow going. And yet it is worth it.
When you keep your attention on the process, the glorious future is just the backdrop. Backdrop, the context is decisive.
The backdrop depends on where you place your eyes on the past-present-future continuum.
Most people put their eyes to point A on the picture… and their experience is: I am not there… and maybe I’ll never be… so they quit, deflect, move sideways, argue, etc.
I choose to place my eyes to the future accomplishment (point B on the picture to the left) looking from there at my bumbling successes and failures. I am already there, but the behavior, the thinking, the emotions need to catch up. It is nurturing. And it is effective.
It takes a big paradigm shift from looking at your efforts from point A, and say: not yet, not yet… thinking that up until you reach your destination, it is a waste of time… or it’s wrong.
When you were a child asking “are we there yet?” you already showed your tendency to only value the destination, and none of the journey. So you have had a lot of practice to look from the “not yet” perspective.
But like old dogs can be taught new tricks, you can learn this… unless… unless avoidance promises you more goodies…
In the racket process we compare the goodies you get from regenerating your misery with the cost of it on your life.
There is a magic moment when you can start to see that the goodies are in no way a good deal: having a good life would be. And that is the moment when you are willing to even contemplate to start working on becoming all you can become.
PS: I taught the art of creating a context in the Brilliance at Will course… I will do that again, teach it in the Playground… as a test, now that I know more.
- Only 10% of all participants even attempt to use the process, by the way… So we are talking about 30% of the 10%… a whopping 3%.
