I woke up this morning. I said the date, out loud, in Hungarian (my last dream before waking up was in Hungarian) and the sound of the words took me to a soul-searching.
I said (in Hungarian), Happy New Year Miss Benshitta… and it hit me, that I would be an old maid, a spinster in Hungary… ugh… would it have forced me to get married and become swallowed up by another’s life?
Had I stayed in Hungary… I probably would have continued working as an architect. I probably would have never done the steps that would have taken me through all the steps one has to take to reach and walk a different path.
I would be unfulfilled, and probably dead.
One of the last things I did in Hungary before I left was establishing and organizing the Hungarian chapter of Servas, and international traveling organization.
The members offer friendship, accommodation, and being part of a family for a few days while they travel.
I had lots of Servas travelers stay with me, in spite of the small size of my apartment. I drove them around, showed them what they could not see, and it was a lot of fun.
I also traveled with Servas, and stayed with countless hosts in Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, England, and Scotland.
Organizing the opportunity for people to meet, just slightly out of the ordinary behavior, got me into trouble, and got the government to pull my passport. My response to that was to leave Hungary for good.
You can’t see ahead on the path, you can only see the next step to take
Had I stayed in Hungary I probably would not have been able to do all the things that got me where I am today, being able to work with people on what is the truth about all the lies we have been fed.
The life that can cause you to expand the most is full of wrong turns, bad experiences, where you need to become more, to pull yourself out of the ditch you walked into.
I spent 30 years making wrong turns. No, make it 60 years… And the stuff I have overcome, the stuff I have seen…!
There is a distinction here that I’d like to teach you:
“just in case” vs “just in time”
The mind, society, gurus, are teaching you the stuff you learn, so you know it. Just in case you need it down the line…
What you really need is the stuff you need to know exactly at that moment, so you can create the next moment from it being now in the right direction: up.
The amount of knowledge that is available “just in case” is billions of pages. The amount of knowledge you need is a few words. The right words that allow you to see the next step…
I’ll give you an examples from my life:
- In 1966 I took an online course on programming. I got stuck in the first homework… something was wrong in what I did, and I could not figure out what it was. I posted my issue on the students forum, but no one gave me a straight answer: my question was so elementary, my misunderstanding was so basic, no one thought of addressing that. I redid the class three times, and the third time I finally figured it out.
- Marketers use a service that automatically sends an email to a person who buys something. It is called an autoresponder. I first had an issue setting one up for my business in 2003. I had the same issue: some basic misunderstanding. I went to seminars, I spent close to 50 grands before I found the mistake I made. No teacher would sit down with me for 2 minutes and look, with me, what was the basic issue I was stopped by.
They were teaching, instead, “in case you already got through the hump…” stuff, useless to me.
Now, you could easily say that I was stupid, and no one can help a stupid person, and you may be right. But, maybe, just maybe, if you are not moving in the right direction, if you don’t enjoy your life, if you think you should be always up, always happy, etc. then you also have a basic stumbling block, that unless someone doesn’t say “Oh, he/she is stupid, no one can help them” you will be stuck forever.
I believe that “someone” is me, because
- I don’t think you are stuck because you are stupid… it is because there is something you can’t see, or don’t know.
- I love digging and finding that one thing (it is mostly one thing that keeps the whole life stuck) that if it could get cleared, your life would start moving.
Now, if you are still in the learning mode of “just in case I need it” we may not have anything to do with each other: you are not ready.
But when the inner pressure, the tension between your soul and your mind becomes near unbearable, then you’ll know where to go.
I love the joke where the guy takes his car to a mechanic. The mechanic turns the car on, listens to it coughing and sneezing, opens the hood, takes out a hammer and hits something under the hood and you can hear that the car suddenly running smoothly.
He turns to the car’s owner and say: “that will be 500.” “500? for one hit with a hammer?” “Oh, you want an itemized bill? No problem. $1 for the hammer hit, and $499 for knowing where to hit.”
Another mechanic would have taken the car apart, spent days with it, and maybe or maybe not find the cause of the problem. Just like it happened to my truck back in New Jersey: after they spent a week and 2400 dollars on it, I took it to its first trip only to have the engine block crack after about 20 miles…
You want the kind of mechanic with the one hit with the hammer… hit the right spot. Don’t you? I wish I had a life mechanic like that. For my health, my digestion, my weight, my success… yeah, that’s the type of mechanic I need… I wish there were any to be found…
My chiropractor friend comes to mind who had a car accident some 18 months ago. Since then he had two operations, and hundreds of hours of massage, and injecting into his hand, and light therapy, and acupuncture… and his hand is still hurting.
I bet he would not mind paying five hundred dollars for the hammer hit… would you agree?
In matters energetic, in matters emotions, in matters of inner tension, in matters that can be felt, I am unbeatable. My problem is the hammer: the hammer is in YOUR hand. I find the problem, and you need to act on the new knowledge.
That’s how it works in “real life”. No one can fix you, or your life but you. I can only point you to the right direction… while I make you stronger, free-er with my energetic tools. But the rest, my friend, is really your job.
I know this is becoming a long article… what’s the point?
It is your mind that asks that question… the mind that wants answers without having to see anything new.
If you can see the point, then you have enough freedom from the mind to become my student. How is that for an answer?
In the meantime: Happy New Year.
Don’t hesitate to sign up to the Carrot and Stick webinar: one registration gives you access to all the webinars. There we’ll explore the different ways that might work to keep you on target and become a truly Expanding Human Being, doing the things you are now not doing.
Money, health, relationships… it doesn’t matter where you want a change and not working towards it. Bring it to the calls and let’s experiment.
If you didn’t see the point in this article, you are not ready.
The original article was published January 1, 2004
you pronounce those eating/health stuff as a true guru… where do you get that knowledge from? I was hesitating whether to put your comment to spam, because these are exactly the type of pronouncements that I am fighting against. And no matter how much compliment is in the rest of the comment, I am still cringing from it.
Please speak from personal experience, in a way that everyone can tell whether you are speaking tree of life or tree of knowledge, aka bs.
Your eating/health issues are not yours. They are everybody elses that you work with. Work on letting them go. And know that it’s ok/normal for the body to be uncomfortable in doing so.
Your articles/work is very powerful. I get ur energy even thru your pages and speaking. Thank you for being so open.
Sophie – Thank you for this article. It really hit home. For some reason, I cried through most of it. I don’t know what that’s all about, but I hope we can dig into it in the coaching.
perfect. I had you in mind when I wrote it… so you got it. wonderful.