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Most of life you can live thoughtlessly.
What you call thinking is not… not thinking for the most part. It is having thoughts… outside of your conscious control.
In fact you are milling water… with no result: water doesn’t need milling.
Thoughtful doesn’t mean serious thinking either. It is a meditative-like state, where you allow things to be seen and influence you wider than you normally look.
In fact, when I observe myself, there is no LOOKING… there is almost only being present… like you would be just listening in to other people talking… talking about what interests you. You wouldn’t interrupt them, but from time to time you’d suggest, maybe, that they stay on topic.
Or stop arguing.
Or stop being right
Or give up preconceived notions.
Like a gentle moderator.
By nature I am a little tyrant… but I have learned that nothing new can come out of getting my way… I learned allowing.
What you call thinking is what a little tyrant does… never allowing anything new, anything different to disturb the status quo… living life in a deep ditch with no glimpse allowed to the wide open space around the ditch in case you don’t feel being right all the time.
Thoughtful is the opposite… inviting the wide open space to assert their view.
And yet, you can have some principles of how the exchange of views should go… to avoid it to be an event leading to nothing… like most debates you may watch on TV (youtube for me): no conclusion, no decision, just talk and talk and talk. Ugh.
I build my path in life in the thoughtful way now… I rarely do what I used to do all the time: tighten up with a rigid NO… lips pressed together, shoulders tight, neck tight.
And not like some people I observe that have no ideas of their own, and say yes to everything.
I have both styles represented in my students… so I have plenty of occasions to observe how it plays out… and neither extremes lead to the kinds of results the person actually would favor.
In my long life I have done programs where the slogan was: just say yes… Ugh.
I prefer to say: be thoughtful… allow some time for a desirable direction to emerge.
Where do I use thoughtfulness?
Wherever I’d like to advance.
Where is that for me?
Worldview is one… My innate attitude about seeing something that is beyond what I already see is ‘no way, I am not going there!!!’
But, as I am proof to it, you can act, consistently, differently than your innate personality. Benjamin Hardy says: personality is not permanent… but instead he should say: Personality is not a straitjacket… that would be raise the truth value of his statement from 10% to 70%.
Why not 100%? Because most people cling to the excuse of their personality for safety. The devil you know… the devil you don’t… however that saying goes. Those people won’t do well in my programs: my programs don’t do anything for you unless you are willing to change your ways…
So how do you be thoughtful? Practically…
In the beginning when I started teaching this work of returning to the Original Design, the design that can be read in our DNA, in that beginning I had a lot of meditation type calls.
Connecting to Source, Healing calls, calisthenics…
The calisthenic calls were my favorite: in calisthenics you were exercising your attention and move things at will.
Most people have attention as, like a perception organ, passive.
But attention is a power tool… like a vector. It is like a third arm. Its shoulder is in the back, just above the shoulder blades… and you can get a lot of fun stuff done with it, and a lot of useful stuff.
It, the attention vector, when not forced by cowardice or some other puny intent, is very agile, and is willing to sweep far and wide when you need aiding in making some decision, especially when your decision will alter your future in any significant way.
So, when I am thoughtful, I allow the attention to roam, and not get fixated by any darn thing… not by flashy object, not by my own ‘I know and you don’t… and I’ll tell you’ base nature. I allow the attention to be respectful, and not take sides.
Its job is info gathering… bringing it home to Mommy.
That’s me, the Mommy… lol. Not mummy yet…
It’s been a long road to hoe… to become thoughtful, and allow information to be brought to me, some of it is diametrically opposed to my own opinion.
I read books like that. I have coaches like that.
You can get what you need from a coach you basically don’t agree with on anything, but yet they give you what you need.
It is a great spiritual practice not to shut down when there is something about the other that bothers you. What they say, how they say it… just be able to hear what you need, and allow the rest. Allow it to be what it is, refrain from getting pulled into negating, arguing with it, just allow it to be.
Some people don’t even understand the word ‘allow it to be’. They argue with everything. Every pothole, every pebble on the road, the weather, all the regulations, the mask wearing, everything.
I also have a friend like that. She is also a great training for me: allow her to be the way she is… The seduction is great to try to change her, to argue. Sometimes I still fall into that trap… but I am getting better.
Why am I not only friends with people I agree with? Why don’t I hire coaches who are on the same side of the divide where I am? Why don’t I only read books that don’t try to challenge my worldview?
Because it is remaining in the ditch… and I was there long enough to know that it is no way to live. In the ditch.
One of my students just wrote an email to me to report after last nights Growth workshop where the assignment was to just look without the intention to see.
She wrote: Good morning Sophie. I started, yesterday, to say “I do not know what I am looking for. Let me see what I can see.” So a few things happened.
Yesterday after the workshop i ran to the bank to put money in before they closed. It was the day when the credit card gets paid and I put all my expenses on the credit card and then pay it off every month. I checked my bank and I still had 1000 left after everything was paid off. I remember always living and hoping that there would be no overdraft.
At the same time my client sent me a text and said “You are awesome.” I always ignored those texts in the past. But something happened. I looked and saw” here i am a single mother doing the hardest job possible raising kids and working and I have 1000 extra dollars in my bank. So I looked and saw hey I am awesome and i began to cry. I never in my life thought or told myself I was awesome. I only said “I am not good enough, have to do more and be more.” Then I saw I could live from that “I am nothing less than awesome.” Whatever awesome is. Lol.
Yeah… She allowed, congratulations, not her base nature, not at all, she is even more forceful than I am and that is saying something… lol.
And simply allowing she heard something that she would not have heard had she stayed in her ditch.
OK, this is the job… if you ever want to see different.
When I asked my students yesterday what worldview was, they all talked about thinking… But the word gives it way: it is how you SEE the world. Seeing comes first, at least in early childhood when your worldview develops, and words come second… the interpretation of what you saw.
And unless you learn to see, to really see, wordlessly, you are stuck with your worldview… and the life that your worldview allows.
A worldview is just another name for your ditch. Really.
Another ‘vehicle’ I have for my spiritual practice is the new Office Hours. We had our first yesterday, and the next one will be on Monday.
I have posted the audio on my mobile app.
If you don’t have my mobile app yet, you can get it through texting your email address to 315-509-2888. If all works as expected, you’ll get a response to download my app… either on the iphone or on the android phone.
Once installed, you log in with your cell phone number and a temporary pass code… all numbers. I recommend that you change that code… although I haven’t…
The replay of yesterday’s office hour is in the office hours ‘folder’ on the front page.
The app if full of stuff I should charge for… and full of stuff I do charge for.
You can listen to the audio while you do the dishes, walk the dog, or whatever you do that only uses your hands and your legs.
A virtual assistant is working on chopping up the audio to bite size chunks, so in the future, hopefully, all audios will be only 10-20 minutes long… easier to finish.
An alternative way to get my mobile app is through your email… the tricky part is that unless you enter your country code right, you’ll sh*t out of luck.
Go and try this second way… if you prefer
Get onto my mobile app for Free
