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Most people have no usable knowledge, knowledge that would take them from A to B.
The kind of knowledge that is useful everywhere, that acts like the foundation, so they can have an experience of standing on two feet. Two feet to feel grounded, to feel powerful, to feel that they can do anything.
Religion used to give that, the sense of who I am. Something you are certain. And nothing can change that. Nothing can dislodge that.
And then, to that foundation, one can attach other things. It is like a life-raft, you can grow it…
Mine was that I was a Jew.
I was never taught religion, god, or anything. No prayers, no synagogue, no Jewish food even. No candles, no fasts. And yet. I knew it and that was my rock. Or to stay with the picture I painted above, my life-raft. It was like having a home. Having a mother whose skirt I could cling to. Having an identity. Knowing who I am.
In more advanced terms: It was my context. The context of my life.
I learned the alphabet as a Jew. And I learned reading as a Jew. I did everything as a Jew. And not for the grades, not for accolades, not for anything other than that I was a Jew.
I moved countries as a Jew. I took homelessness, starving, abuse, bravely as a Jew.
And as a Jew I was, of course, going to be the best at everything I do… because context is decisive.
So because I had my rock, because I had my life-raft, it’s been difficult to impossible to teach people who have nothing.
People who have not an identity, not a steady context, other than their racket… their complaint about life. Not a good life-raft. Seeking one, but not finding.
Yesterday I looked at it again, while I was leading the Soul correction Workshop, and saw that I can help people, however old they are, to decide on a life-raft… inside my programs.
Instead of each concept, each idea, each distinction coming at them as a different storm, one is Ian, the other is Bertha… and each managing to cause untold misery, because without a life-raft, without a context each is unexpected, each is separate and unrelated, each can destroy you.
If I taught simply good living, I would, for example, set as a context to:
the best life-raft to have is to have ‘foresight’.
Attain mastery in that, and all of life will become organized around that core concept, and you’ll be safe and prosperous, and maybe even happy.
Why? Because everything done with foresight is due to be successful, and everything done without is due to cause misery. Like filling swamps with dirt and building entire neighborhood, entire cities on top, like it happened in Florida.
Those are the cities that were destroyed.
Foresight would have prevented all that.
But foresight is not something today’s humanity, feeling so smug and secure, will think they need…
So they don’t have it, they don’t practice it.
If you look at what is happening in the world, Putin and his megalomania, Trump and the republican horde, the mousy democrats, the ad hoc decisions… and that is just the area of life we can all see through the media…
But as it is in the macro so it is in the micro. As it is above so it is below.
No foresight, no effective action, no possible happiness.
So yesterday, in the Soul correction workshop I explained every participant that their best bet is to pick a distinction (mine is Jew) and become masterful at it. And have it as their context for life. For their life, for politics, for everything.
We looked, I muscletested, and that was that.
Is it a life-purpose?
Everyone says you should have a purpose to your life. But purpose sounds daunting… so people look in their soul correction for purpose, and can’t see it.
Because they are looking for something to love. That loving that thing will tell them all they need to know, so they can be happy.
But that is not how it works. Setting something that you want as your life’s glue… what holds it together, will lead only to a life of ‘not yet’ and misery.
When I look at famously successful people, they even misspeak… They say: I wanted to be wealthy… but when I look at what guided them, what made them successful, it wasn’t wanting to be that, it is mastering that… like a concept.
Just look at the famously successful people you know, and see that it is not wanting to be whatever, it is being whatever… knowing, using, having that whatever as the context of their life.
You could try calling it meaning, but meaning comes after… while context comes before.
Is it a meaning?
Steve Jobs’ life was about creativity. Mastering it, living by it, allowing it to be the life-raft. Creativity is living at risk. Anything that looks creative isn’t… unless it is a being on the edge of the known, risking falling off into the unknown.
Disney, ditto. Picasso, ditto. Salvador Dali… you’ll find most people who created something lasting and new: they tied their life to creativity.
So you can pick and choose THE context you want as your life-raft… the ‘what’ and if you are lucky you’ll get to a place where you can also pick a ‘how’.
In yesterday’s workshop we picked the what… One of the participants also has picked a how: excellence.
The what and the how
Jew has both the what and the how. The what is ‘to the benefit of Life’ and the how is ‘fearless’. Undauntable and undaunted. Did I make that up? No. I looked at my heroes and I saw that. Anything less than that and I would not be able to love myself.
If you read my articles, daily, you can see that the concepts, the distinctions, the invisible dynamics I talk about are many.
And I ask you to practice each… And the result, unless you have a context inside which you do that, is going to be hodge podge, no movement, no growth, nothing worth writing home about.
And as most people, you relate to everything like it is ‘school’, and you related to school as something that you had to. Right?
School… how does that fit in here?
School didn’t have a context, or if it did, you are famous and successful… What could be the context of school? My favorite context for school is ‘playground’. Playground is a space where you can test yourself and grow yourself and test out ways so you can find yourself. There are things to play on, play with, and there are others to play with, play on, fight with, compete with. Find out who you are, find out your strengths, find out your weaknesses, find out what you miss so you can learn it, add it, practice it, master it.
That is not how you had school, right? You did school to get through. You did school for the grades. For the teacher, for the parent, for companionship… But not for a playground to become all you can become… did you?
And then you read my articles, do my courses the same way. And guess what, school wasn’t useful to you, and my classes are neither.
So it would be smart to change your game, and pick a context that can be an organizing principle for life, including my classes.
How to pick your context, your organizing principle?
If you want to pick the ‘right’ context, you are hosed. You can’t. You need to use the iterative method: you pick something close, and it doesn’t work for all of life… then you make a correction and pick something that is more likely would… and you do this until you find the perfect fit…
It’s easier to do it if you have me to muscletest it for you. But you are not in a hurry, are you? Your job, initially, is to test your brand spanking new context. And be happy with it, or do an iteration. don’t know the word? Look it up, don’t wait for me to wipe your nose…
This, picking an organizing principle, picking an ‘I am’ is the major element of integrity. Without this life cannot work.
It is said that without integrity nothing works. But why? Because without an organizing principle, without knowing who you are, your life can’t work…
Integrity… is it possible to have integrity without an organizing principle?
Integrity and the organizing principle are like the snake that bites its tail… a full circle. Complete. Perfect. Whole. And starts making sense.
But, of course, given that you are starting as an adult, you need guidance for how to do it. Your word has no power, yet, and your foresight, your clarity, your being guided by what you said is missing, maybe completely missing.
In the upcoming Integrity Live workshop I’ll introduce the concept, I’ll help you pick your ‘starting wheels’, and we’ll look what it will take to actually drive your new organizing principle.
It can be the major move that puts you on the map for living a life you love and live it powerfully.
And even though we just touched on this yesterday in the Soul correction workshop, one person has already had a breakthrough… just from that little bit.
Introduction to Living with Integrity: and organizing principle
The session that is scheduled for October 8, Saturday, 2-5 pm.
If you already have the recorded workshop, you get $10 refund once you register. I’ll do it manually… for you.
Let’s create an organizing principleIn a world of no integrity you’ll be the crown jewels… Once you learn how to live your organizing principle, your life-raft.
