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I like to start my day with Reddit. Reddit is a site with lots of different threads and topic, and some days it can give you an insight you could never have anywhere else.
Today was one of those days.
The topic was Anti-choice, unless it’s my choice
And the choice or no-choice was abortion.
Anti-choice people who tell you, while they are having their own abortion that ya’all will burn in hell…
Or the anti-choice woman who had her 13 year old abort a pregnancy by another 13 year old… thank god.
Why am I sharing this? Because this is the life on the horizontal plane:
different, often diametrically opposing opinions, battling inside, battling outside, never any clarity, never any peace.
The horizontal plane is where your ‘personal reality’ almost completely pushes out real reality.
Your personal reality (aka the occurrence) is a combination of some of reality and a lot of opinions, commentaries, narrative as it is fashionable to say nowadays. Maybe centuries worth.
None of you is there. It’s most of ‘them’, the world, where word is cheap, and so it gushes out unmitigated, unthought through, undisciplined like water through a broken glass.
No rhyme, no reason, but most importantly: no self. No chance for self even.
When I visited Niagara Falls some 20 years ago, we were given a rain poncho so we don’t get mad UNDER the mighty Falls… Tons of water falling…
Yeah, that is how life feels in the personal reality… not of it is yours.
I have been formulating what it is I want to be known for for the last leg of my life.
And I have scarcely any of the ‘narrative’ in my personal reality: 7%.
7%. 93% reality.
Most people have it in the reverse… 7% reality, 93% narrative…
And because narrative is made up b.s., their lives with only 7% reality don’t work, can’t work, they can’t get from A to B because the map is wrong.
The narrative is about how life is, what works, what doesn’t, what’s right, what’s wrong, what should be and what shouldn’t. Often the same thing is both right and wrong… Getting an abortion is both right and wrong.
You can’t completely get rid of the narrative… if you want to live in the world.
Even a hermit, even a ‘survivalist’ has some narrative that made them choose the path they took.
What’s the worst thing in living on the horizontal plane, where most of what is in your head is narrative?
What is worst is that most things needed for life, especially for the good life are impossible on the horizontal plane.
Thinking, problem solving, constructive thinking, planning a life or anything requires data. Data from reality. Accurate data. And sometimes a lot of it.
Planning a business, deciding what you want your life to be, planning even a sales letter requires you to have lots of data, and scarcely any noise, or your ‘plan’ will be full of holes, or full of delusion.
The result of your planning will bring less than good results.
Here is an example:
You have created a new business to solve an epidemic of dry eye symptoms.
Dry eyes are hell, I have had it, my mother had it. Hurts, a very irritating condition.
Also, we humans judge another person by outward signs. If someone has sparkly eyes, we consider them a better, smarter person than if their eyes has no sparkle.
If you have dry eyes: your eyes do not sparkle.
Now, if you are the dry eyed person: would you go to a clinic that advertises bright eyes, or one that advertises that they do away with that pesky dryness?
People want to get rid of what they don’t want, and rarely can even guess what they will get.
So advertising a dry eye clinic will do well, advertising bright eyes will not catch the eyes of the afflicted.
But the narrative says: you need to give people what they want, and that will make you a desirable and RICH person…
I say: what makes you a RICH person is that you solve problems. Be a problem solver, said Zig Ziglar famously.
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want. And what do people want? They want to solve their problems.
An entrepreneur is a problem solver for others.
- So if you are an optometrist you solve the problem that people can’t see sharply. Can’t read, can’t drive, can’t watch TV.
- If you are a dry eye specialist, you solve the problem of the burning, itching, painful eyes.
The result people want is to solve the problem… they can’t see beyond it… so if you want to be successful you need to be a problem solver.
Zig Ziglar also said: The first step is to acknowledge the problem.
The biggest problem of the horizontal plane is that everything and its opposite seems to be a problem.
It pulls you in, and suddenly you have an opinion about everything, even if you have no business to have an opinion: it is none of your business.
But you participate and argue and say this and say that…
It lowers your vibration… it did it to three of my coaches… Ugh. It pulled them deeper into the muck and mire or the horizontal plane where they cannot be effective, cannot produce value, but especially cannot be happy and cannot love themselves and life.
The second biggest problem is in living on the horizontal plane is…
…that the narrative is trying to tell you that the way to have a better life is through more, better and different, not through solving problems, and not through new.
I fact it is impossible to have, create, even envision anything new on the horizontal plane.
So all you can do on the horizontal plane is rearrange your prejudices…
The Anna Karenina Principle, completely dense and nonsensical on the horizontal plane, suggests that you start getting rid of stuff. Prejudices, mainly. Story, mainly. Narrative, interpretation, a fixed point of view, whatever you consider knowledge.
All of it.
What?
Yeah… The Anna Karenina Principle takes one to the vertical plane… where there is scarcely any narrative, any story, any interpretation.
Where things are what they are, how they are, neither wrong, nor right.
Where the map is accurate, and you can see your way from A to B.
And where problems show up as an invitation to be solved, not wrong, not shouldn’t be.
I call the Anna Karenina Principle Prison Break.
An inside and outside cleansing… Strip away all that doesn’t have to be there… and be left with the workability of reality.
Sweet. Clearing the deck…
Of course, if you are proud of all the things you know then you can’t do it, won’t do it.
And you’ll be stuck in the misery of the horizontal plane.
What is the difference between a person on the horizontal plane and another on the vertical plane listening to a workshop?
The horizontal plane person is listening for what they can learn… additive…
The vertical plane person is listening for an insight that would bring some clarity into the still foggy picture they are working on.
The vertical plane person knows that some inside is missing (the problem) and without that piece the vision, the plan is not functional.
So they are like the dog who hears his name and nothing else.
So a vertical plane person filling their head with irrelevant information, they listing for a solution to their problem.
My hunch is: the higher the narrative in your personal reality the less you know what is your problem… Or alternatively, everything looks like a problem to you. And everything/nothing will look like it is worth doing, listening to, practicing…
Here is what you do on the vertical plane, for contrast:
I did a lot of listening yesterday and not a lick of work…
I heard about 3 hours worth of ‘lecturing’… And read a non-fiction book for another two hours.
- I ended up with one nugget that answered my problem: I don’t know other experts, I don’t even want to know other experts…
That one piece suggested one way to bridge that conundrum…
- And I saw another piece that pointed out another problem I didn’t know I had.
Was it worth five hours of my life to get those two pieces?
I say yes. It was a good day. It was a productive day. Even though I did not do anything… It is not all doing on the vertical plane.
If you thought you’ll get from A to B, from unclarity of what A is, what B is, to a solution in five hours, then you have a delusion problem: the narrative is mostly delusional.
If you thought that giving five hours to anything makes your life dull… then you weren’t listening FOR anything… and your life is already dull… You probably engage in excitement activities to make your life feel less dull… but you will never have a life that has meaning, purpose, and substance.
All horizontal plane problems…
Zig Ziglar said many useful things, but here is a jewel: it is your attitude, not your aptitude that decides your altitude in life.
Attitude is mostly a behavior suggested by the narrative on the horizontal plane.
Mine, on the vertical plane is: it takes as long as it takes. I a dog with a bone… I love problems. They make me come alive.
According to Robert Greene, he is one of the non-fiction authors I am reading:
Impatience is the biggest enemy of creativity and accomplishment.
I am impatient by nature… so my most important client is myself…
Now, if all of the above is true, and if you took it to heart, then what you would say: I want to get off the horizontal plane, the miserable place, and onto the vertical plane where things are clear and never wrong.
And yeah, you hopefully would say that.
So what can you do NOW that would be part of that process?
I recently taught the distinction Reality… and how it relates to personal reality…
And until you see how it all works, the big picture, all your activities will come from the narrative, and not from reality. Including your attempts to shed the narrative…
reality workshop and the last session of integrity
What is reality?Get the videoUltimately the work I am designing now to do, taking you to the Vertical Plane, aka the Promised Land, began in that session. If you buy it before Sunday, midnight, I’ll add a live session as a bonus… It effectively doubles the value of this offer.
