Even though I have completed my 20-day learning challenge, I am still listening to Dr Popper’s videos.
In one of these videos he says something very important, that i really managed to connect to some of my own experiences only on the third hearing.
Here is what he says:
The speed of life robs us of our ability to fully experience, to fully feel.
He brings up the example of watching the news on TV: a report is about something that happened… by the time you are able to catch up your emotions to the news, the next report is on some celebration and happy music… then the scene changes again, and they report on some miners trapped in the mine after an explosion, but before you could even comprehend, internalize that tragedy, the scene changes again to the weather forecast, or some sports news.
The same thing is happening in books, in movies, TV shows… you never have a chance to just sit with what you heard, saw, experienced.
And, to my utter dismay, the same thing you do to another in the partner calls… you urge them on, not allow them to feel what they feel, to get to the bottom of the horror their life has been… If you are not like that: I am not talking about you.
And the results:
- you sleep fitfully, because your insides are trying to do the work you didn’t allow yourself to do while awake… and of course, a night is almost not enough… so you wake up tired, sluggish, and eventually you get sick.
- You multitask, to keep up with the seeming speed of life… but it is not life that sped up… not really. Life is still happening at life’s speed, but you are trying to keep up with others, so you have indigestion, in every meaning of the word.
- You never give yourself time to be alone, to look at things, you just pile up and pile up, and pile up.
The question has come up for me: why is it that since I have been giving myself more input, I have been writing less articles?
The answer to this question is deep in the invisible… it is invisible to us what the insides do with what you give them as “food for thought”.
- Some people are “researchers” and never have any output… only input, fully and wholly undigested.
- Some people start doing, speaking without having anything to say…
- Some people rush rush rush through life, in their heads… no respite, no rest for them anywhere
It seems that I go, re-listen, and connect the dots… I digest. I make it my own. I turn it into authentic Tree of Life stuff.
I just wrote an article in my healing blog where I am pondering what allows me to be in better health than people of the same age.
And looking at all the articles I have been seeing, that ask the same thing about the Okinawan centenarians, highest number of centenarian anywhere.
And they, the “scientists” and the researchers come up with a bunch of b.s., all politically correct, financially exploitable answers, that are all simple and wrong… As all fixing type of answers are. 1
What is in common: a man who is in the world, and of the world, with not an original thought in their head, not a moment to go deep and really ponder; is that they overtax their system, much like keeping their car run always at a high rpm… rotation per minute… wearing it out?
Most people that I observe have two modes: all out, fast, and all down… stopped.
I recommend meditative living
I recommend meditative living where 90% of your life is thoughtful, mindful, where you can run without losing your bearing, without heedless hurry… and where you can sleep allowing the brain to process, sort out, cleanse as it is supposed to. Be in the process of life, not in the supposed goal of the moment.
Neither too much and too intense input, nor too much and too intense output. No hurry in either direction.
No gluttony. No gulping down without fully experiencing. No drinking without thirst, no eating without appetite, no sex without full desire.
And no speaking without someone fully listening.
Chasing, desiring, yearning, rushing for… ugh… let others do that. Whether it is for power, for success, for lust, for being considered a hero, acceptance, for anything… it makes your life very short, and your death long and painful.
Project mode vs. process mode.
Life happens in process mode. Wide cone of vision, fully present, fully involved… glorious. Fully experienced. Whether you are thinking, singing, practicing your guitar, driving, presenting, presenting your husband with divorce papers, finding out that your spouse is fully evil (desire to receive for the self alone), that you’ve been a failure preventing yourself from fully digesting what happened in your life, etc.
Fully engaged.
The first “slogan” that attracted me to transformation was: “vision of a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out”
I didn’t know what it would take, I didn’t know how long it was going to take, but that was the first time in my life that anyone promised that I could be included… that there could be a world where I would not be left out.
In talking to my students, I find that this feeling, feeling left out, is part of everyone… Everyone feels left out. I always thought it was just me…
If nothing else, this can be the source of enormous compassion… and a source of seeing the world, other people as “us”…
As long as you continue seeing yourself as the only victim, the only one left out, the only one suffering (or the only one succeeding) you are in trouble, because now you cannot talk to people, you cannot share, you need to talk at them, and you are alone… not a good place to be.
We were all an inconvenience to out parents. We all disappointed them. We were all abused, one way or another.
We all thought that they were supposed to love us… and in that context: they all abandoned us, betrayed us, cheated us from our due: being loved the way we were.
I have yet to talk to a person who didn’t go through that traumatic realization that parents both love and don’t love, and that you are on your own… And that, maybe, is OK.
When you find out that love, liking, are not under the control of the will… and you either like someone, love someone, or not, you will see that even if people wanted you too, would love you to: you can’t make yourself love someone who you don’t love.
This was a very significant piece of knowledge in my own self-growth: finding out that my mother didn’t love me, and that was just what was so. It stripped away the scrambling to be loved… And allowed me to calm down, start living, and start loving myself.
It made me put my attention to where it could produce results… where I worked for something that wasn’t impossible.
This is a big big big secret very few people will ever tell you.
I found out myself, and then I heard it from that Hungarian psychologist. That’s it. The rest of the world still tells you you need to love… whether you do or you don’t.
If you are a parent, you either love your child or not, you have nothing to say in the matter. But you can be decent with them, be on their side, declare solidarity with them, even if you don’t love them. Treat them as a person, not as a thing that is supposed to make YOU happy, fit your picture of what you wanted, but as an individual who you love when you do, and not when you don’t.
If you refuse to accept life the way life is, refuse to accept reality the way reality is… you are guaranteed to have a lot of suffering in your life.
No matter what aspect of reality, no matter what aspect of life… this includes the speed of others… that is not life… life is what YOU live.
H. L. Mencken wrote that for every complex human problem, there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong. Government hiring as a solution to unemployment is such a case. … Mencken once observed, for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.So far every simple answer to problems of life has been proven to be wrong, whether it is health, productivity, relationship troubles, society, corruption, politics, or people being utterly incompetent in positions of power… or outside of it.
