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The goal of this article is to show you why you haven’t been able to grow, and how to unstuck yourself: a new methodology.
The size of your projects is the size of your life. Your New Year’s resolution is a project. big or small shows the size of your life.
If you are not working on it, it is not a project. For it to be a project, you need to work on it. Otherwise it is just a fantasy.
The size of the people your project helps is the size of your world.
Giving away money that you didn’t earn isn’t a project.
Yesterday we had the 3-wishes workshop. It’s a fun little exercise. But we didn’t do it for fun. Most fun exercises have hidden huge learnings: about you, about the size of your world and the size of your life.
What does it have to do with a New year resolution? Patience, I’ll make them connect later. First you want to look at the ingredients… there are no jumps in reality, and when you jump, you do that in your imagination, and your results will be also in your imagination, not in reality… How is that for a learning, learning why your New Year Resolutions haven’t panned out thus far… You did jumps in it.
Projects are like building a ladder and climbing it to the fulfillment… not a jump.
In the 3 wishes exercise you are given a chance to help the world. Throw money at it and see if it makes any difference.
So the exercise shows me the size of your world and the size of your life… and the size of your generosity.
Why do I care about generosity?
Because generosity will make the life you have enjoyable, worthwhile, fulfilling, and all the good stuff.
Hah… right?
Generosity is not what everyone things it is: generosity is: giving, in fact, generosity without existential courage is just pretense.
Existential courage is not a phrase that is thrown around much at this time, it has become part of the invisible reality.
What does it mean?
Let me first show what it doesn’t mean… or how it looks when there is no existential courage, and why, for generosity, one needs it.
My assistant’s mother is out of town. She called her son to ask two favors: to pick up two time sensitive things for her.
First he said ‘no’, but then he looked, and he invented a context in which he has a benefit, and for that benefit’s sake he called her back and picked up those two things.
What he didn’t see is that he is only willing to do what is good for him. That his self-interest is the strongest driver in his machine.
That doing something that cost him little but is important to another is something to say no to.
Why? Pay attention, this is the answer why you need existential courage for generosity!
If your concern for yourself is very strong, if you live in scarcity, in perpetual danger of losing what you are concerned about, you will not willingly take your eyes off your concern.
And having your eyes firmly glued to what you are afraid to lose, will not allow you to see the other, see the world, see the future, see anything else other than that one thing.
The size of your life will be that ‘project’: protect what you say keeps you you. You’ll see, maybe, a foot beyond your foot that is nailed to the floor, to use a visual representation of what I am talking about.
And your whole life is dancing in a circle around that nail in the foot… not more.
You may have an honest desire to live a life you love, blah blah blah… but for that you need to leave the nail, and go where you can get that life.
So you can’t be generous, because for generosity you need to take your attention off your foot (your concern) to see that there is a need that you can fulfill long enough to actually see it.
You won’t care about anything or anyone, because to care you need to see that another’s need is important, and for that you need to take your attention off your self-concern long enough to see it.
You won’t love, because love is caring what the other person needs.
You won’t listen, because listening is caring about what someone says.
You can’t be creative, because creativity is seeing a need and finding a solution to it. And for that you need to take your attention off your self-concern… and you won’t do that…
Unless, of course, you summon existential courage.
Existential courage feels like you put yourself in mortal danger… because taking your attention off your self-concern feels like putting yourself in mortal danger, exposing yourself to annihilation.
So what is that self-concern I am talking about, the self-concern that keeps your life small, and prevents you from experiencing all those things that make life life, that make life worth living?
What part of you is concerned?
Your soul is never concerned.
Your body is only concerned when the threat is physical, and the self-concern has no physical component.
Your brain is on the side of your body.
Your Self is not concerned… but you probably never have created a Self… so your Self is not concerned.
What is concerned is the Ego.
Energetically, the Ego is a triangle. A triangle that has equal size sides. It sits on one of its sides, very stable, immovable…
The soul is, energetically, a same kind of triangle, equal sides, but it stands, precariously, on one of its points.
The soul is only interested in change. The ego is only interested in staying the same.
Only when the two manage to intertwine is there any movements… Because the ego has the energy, the soul has the desire to move. Together they form a wheel-like structure, and together they can go far… accomplish much… and fear nothing.
The ego, alone, is the nail in your foot, your self-concern.
The soul, alone, is that teetering flimsy talker… that also never goes anywhere.
To connect the two you need to make them meet, and hug. and that takes existential courage.
So what are the moves of the ego? What is it concerned about?
Here are the moves I have managed to prove in the field. I learned them, originally, from Landmark Education:
The ego is concerned about
Being right
Avoiding being wrong
Making another wrong
Looking good
Avoiding looking bad
Winning
Avoiding losing
Dominating
Avoiding domination
Justifying/explaining
Invalidating another
Avoiding responsibility, avoiding being cause in anything
The soul wants you to have a good life.
Adventure
money
health
love
affinity
aliveness
fulfillment
but without the energy of the Ego, it is impotent. Because to get any and all of those good things, you need to take off your eyes of your self-concern, we can also call ego-concerns, and move the nail out of your foot.
Remember I said above: the ego wants you to stay the same. And every New Year Resolution is about change.
YOU making change…
How much tolerance, do you think, the Ego has for that?
Hey, it’s easy to tell.
If you fulfill on your resolution, then the soul and the ego have already formed a unit.
If you abandon the resolution, then the timing will tell you how much tolerance the Ego has… for change.
In the 3-wishes exercise it is also easy to see:
The strongest ego participants want to donate trillions of dollars for causes.
The weakest ego participants just stay close to home, deal with manageable amount of money to donate to causes.
and of course like in anything, there are a lot in between.
People with almost unbearable tension between their soul and ego can and could get wings to do great things… but they are short on courage. Existential, and otherwise.
They suffer from that tension.
If they can make that suffering conscious, they have a chance for their ego and their soul make a wheel… that can take them anywhere, make their world big, make their lives big.
In my experience people with a should machine are disadvantaged behind people with a shouldn’t machine.
I have a shouldn’t machine. For me nothing is a should… what ‘motors’ me is the shouldn’t…
The hate of the undesirable is stronger in me… and my desire number is very low. I need to motivate myself by the things I don’t want.
I don’t want to be sick,
I don’t want to be unable to work
I don’t want poverty and scarcity
I don’t want to be abandoned by people I give my love to
I don’t want to feel empty and hollow
I don’t want to feel puny and insignificant
All of those are soul desires in reverse.
And just like airplanes, one can be pushed or pulled… propeller planes are pulled… jets are pushed.
My soul and my ego managed to form a wheel… back in 1985. From that point on it wasn’t a question of ‘whether’ I’d amount to anything, whether I’ll achieve a life I can love. No, it was a question of when.
And living in the ‘not yet’ on the way is what life is about.
When you arrive, it is empty… and the soul and the ego separate again.
Unless there is something to go for, they have no affinity to hold them together.
But a project, a single project is not a strong motivator, not a strong ‘glue’ for the ego and the soul to partner up.
It has to be bigger.
In my work we create context, a larger future, that is big enough for that hug to happen.
I teach that in the ‘Instant Coherence Workshop’ and don’t be mistaken: it is a skill that is difficult to attain. It takes correct guidance, and countless hours of practice for you to create a context that is going to be strong enough for those two to hug.
I have been practicing with my core students, and it is slow going.
But without an empowering context YOU created, your life will remain the same… or even get worse.
If you buy the recorded workshop before midnight tonight, I’ll throw in a live workshop, or two if needed.
Why? Because it is so important. And I care. Too much… I say. And I care, too little about money… I say.
Learn to cause the soul and the ego to hug
