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Are you climbing the tree of life or are you stuck?
If you think that learning what is written in a book, said in a video, in a lecture, you never learn.
Those words, those happenings, those pictures are only food for thought, and if you are not capable for independent thought, contemplation, then no your kind of learning, no reading, no books, no videos, no classes can and will help you in anything.
Is it that you can’t? Source says: no. You can’t. And you won’t.
The question is: why?
Hate me as much as you want. Call me a bore. Call me repetitive.
It is because…
It is because you want to be right about your interpretation of what was done to you when you were three. You repeat the incident, you get the same result over and over, to prove that you’ve been right.
And that is why you can’t and won’t do any thinking, if you don’t. And that is why you are wasting your time reading my articles, coming to my classes, unless and until you are willing to let go of the self-righteous behavior regarding that first incident.
Some of the people I have been working with for a decade haven’t… Haven’t let go of their original emotionally immature decision they made. When they were three. 30-40-50-60 years ago.
You are both trying to fix it, and trying to prove it, and in that confusion you get off the hook, and you never have to be responsible for anything, including that you did that to yourself.
I have a student who is, right now, doing the work of the 67 steps.
One sentence is repeating, in every step, and repeating in each step several times.
‘I have never looked at it that way before‘
That is the sentence that separates the learners from the non-learners. Almost.
The learners look at it that other way, with the author, and then see what the author sees. What they had never seen.
The non-learners look at what the author says as the author’s view that they don’t share. Words they need to learn to be able to repeat.
The difference between the 1000 and the eight billion is that. That ‘are you willing to look from the same place the author looks from?‘ issue.
And, of course, the author can be anyone. It can be Bonnie in the Friday podcast. It can be someone who is on the group call with you. Or it can be me. And it can be the president…
The question is: are you willing and able to look and see from their point of view.
Charlie Munger says that unless you can argue your opponent’s view better than they can, you don’t have the right to your opinion…
If you are stuck in a ditch, and most people are, this is your way out. Your ONLY way out.
The more you can do it, the more opinions you can look from, the more vantage points, the more out of the ditch you are.
Of course for that you need to overcome your natural or unnatural distrust, reluctance, resistance, and desire to be right. Of course… or you won’t do it. that is where the ‘able’ part comes in.
The students that never move never do. They don’t think it is their job to overcome whatever is in their way. They are waiting for Godot, they are waiting for a miracle, they are waiting for an energy or me to do it for them.
Or they can’t… Simply can’t.
Getting out of the ditch, climbing the tree of life, is a do it yourself thing… No one can do it for you. and no one can carry you and you’d be there. While you climb each step takes giving up something, each step takes arming yourself with something. But YOU are doing it. Maybe with help… Maybe being guided about what you need to give up, or what tool you need for this next step, but ultimately you are doing it.
- You may need to suspend a deep belief that if you allow anything or anyone to dominate you, even for a moment, you’ll be dead.
- Or allow yourself to be wrong, and others to shine.
- Or give up for a moment that just because it has never happened, it can’t happen now.
- And maybe consider that behind the ugliest, scariest, most disturbing moment is the light… so if you run from the ugly, you run from the light.
When you run from the ugly, when you run from the frightening, you run from the light
Of course those self-concerns don’t die like living things would… they are like vampires… re-animate after you though you killed them.
Bonnie, my podcast partner has had a breakthrough in allowing. Her decision age three was that the way to survive life is to avoid domination… at all cost.
But reading is domination. The words, the author are attempting to dominate you. So she avoided it by not understanding, or by allowing her attention to wonder, or by arguing the words.
But when she decided to accept guidance from me, a big step, she also allowed herself to read… And to her surprise: she enjoyed it. She rejoiced.
But did it last? No. She is now avoiding reading… Afraid that she wouldn’t be able to read… just like before.
I’d laugh if it were funny. But it is the vampire effect… The vampire that won’t die. The vampire that sucks your aliveness and sends you back into the ditch.
Unless she consciously GENERATES allowing: allowing guidance, allowing trust, allowing self-trust, the vampire will win. Guaranteed.
And this is everybody at every strata of life. Even yours truly has to GENERATE.
What do I have to GENERATE?
What do I have to GENERATE tirelessly, the thing I often forget for long stretches of time?
I have to GENERATE that I don’t know.
Arrogance is that you think you know… and you don’t.
If you think you already know you won’t be eager to learn, because what is there to learn?
I spent the last hour with listening to an audio that filled me with regret. Regret that I didn’t know.
And like T. Harv Eker likes to say: When something isn’t working well, there is something you don’t know.
Sometimes that something is a spiritual thing. Other times is a ‘how’. And it can be a ‘what’ as well.
For me, with my arrogant soul correction, it was a spiritual thing this time. I saw that I haven’t been looking from the point of view of the visitor, the seeker, the potential client.
The guy on the audio said:
People don’t get naked with someone they are not comfortable with.
And to do the work with me, the work of climbing the tree of life, one has to get naked…
But how do I get people to get comfortable with me and with the climbing?
I suddenly see why ‘other’ teachers use that soft soothing fake voice. Why other teachers opt not to be ruthlessly compassionate.
Once someone is comfortable with me they are OK with my ruthlessly compassionate style… And I do have a few people who are, thank god.
And many who could… if I just allowed them.
I am not sure, but maybe the Inner Path exercises can help with that.
They are from Dr. Popper, famed and popular Hungarian psychologist. Everyone may need to start with the five basic exercises…
Why? Because even if you are on some level of personal inner development, you can still get better. The better you get the better your life gets. It’s that simple.
For decades I had to scramble to find exercises like these, and I paid through my nose for them… Tens of thousands of dollars. Why? Because I didn’t know there were already exercises like these. Because they were in Hungarian. Darn.
And even today when I was looking for an English language book of exercises, I didn’t find any…
You can now have these exercises for nothing. Or for a little donation… or a big donation if you are enthusiastic like some of my students are.
I have put the first five exercises, still in rough translation, on the site. They are here https://yourvib.me/first-five
If you have been feeling like a loser then the problem was that you didn’t have the basic skills that these exercises teach you.
It is like you have been trying to eat broth with chopsticks… Not an effective way to eat soup.
So rejoice. With these new skills you’ll be able to do the specific spiritual exercises you haven’t been able to do before.
- Focusing of thinking;
- Development of the will;
- Self-control in the expression of emotions and moods;
- Attitude towards positives;
- Impartiality of judgment and the ability to change perspectives for the sake of objectivity.
If you’d like to participate in this project, support me and my partners in the work it takes, you can. You can contribute your help. You can contribute money. And you can share it with other people. Yeah, that last one would really help.
Here is the link to do any or all of that. And you can also get the audiobook, the source of the exercises, and the rough translation of the whole book in pdf format… all in the ‘shopping cart’ below.
Become part of this movement
