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You can’t catch what you can’t see. And to recognize: you first need to catch it to see it.
And if you can’t see what is at the root of a problem, you can’t help the client with it.
It is 100% in the invisible. They themselves don’t know it. And even when they see it, unless they have the distinction (i.e. recognize it for what it is), it is as good as if they have never seen it.
Recognition and distinction go hand in hand. Distinction is not a name, not a word, not even a sentence. It is a phenomenon.
If you didn’t know that lightning has two components, the sight and the sound, and many kids don’t know, then the sound would scare you shitless.
But if you can recognize the lightning for what it is (distinction) then the boom will be expected. Maybe not as close, not as loud as it may be… but expected.
Last night I kept on hearing noises. And I could not fall asleep until I could recognize that it rained and the leaky roof, the dripping water made the noise.
You can see something a thousand times, and yet recognition will elude you. Why? Because the distinction, distinguishing is missing.
I managed to ‘cure’ myself of bipolar disease by managing my sleep habits.
How? I distinguished that when I oversleep, when I am too comfortable, I start to slip into depression. While if I stay up late, I start a manic phase…
So I am quite rigid about keeping my sleep schedule. And I also take Lithium Orotate every night. Just in case…
Just in case a client is slipping into depression…
Recognition is an intellectual feat… But you can refuse to recognize.
Why would you?
For the payoff.
Payoff is the under the table benefit. Illegitimate, immoral, desire to receive for the self alone ‘benefit’. Money paid in a brown bag. Bribe.
So what kind of payoff do you get, can you get when you refuse to recognize a pattern?
In the case of the client who I am having a meeting with today, it has a visible part: she is the ‘I am really trying but no matter what I do I cannot do it! I am not a match to it…‘ superwoman. And martyr.
Superman/superwoman/hero and martyr ALWAYS go together.
That is the visible part.
The invisible part, the one in the brown bag is: she doesn’t have to take responsibility for NEVER really putting enough energy into anything.
She has gotten away for many decades, with flashy pretense.
On one hand it is a payoff, yes, But on the other hand she has given up on everything that is worth living for, doing, having. everything.
So the longer this ‘game’ is afoot, the harder it is to tell the truth about it. Because the amount of pretense one would have to tell the truth about… in the past. It feels like a huge threat.
Another invisible part is OFTEN being holier than thou… judgmentalness. Feeling superior.
This invisible dynamic is called The Racket.
The racket got its name from racketeering… In racketeering there is a front. A legitimate business. And the nasty stuff happens in the back rooms.
Still exists. Organized crime it’s called in law enforcement circles.
Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a “racket”) to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit.
But every single person on the planet lives in a racket… It is part of the Human Condition.
It is a live machine. Imagine living alongside a giant squid. The squid tells you what to do… and your ‘job’ is to live your life for the benefit of the giant squid.
The squid, as all squids do, has many tentacles, arms.
You can dedicate your life to cut off those arms… and watch as they grow back.
Or you can live your life, without fanfare, aware of the tentacles. Aware of what the squid wants. And not do what the squid suggests you should do.
Following the squid’s suggestion is the way to become dinner.
The choice you need to make, hundred times a day, is to choose between the payoff and the cost. Whatever cost you can see.
Illness, misery, bad relationships, self-hate, no joy. No fun.
Occasionally I only catch an important but hard to detect aspect of the machine running.
I catch that I don’t find what’s happening funny. It is serious. It is life and death.
When I manage to see it, I crack up laughing.
Life is funny.
Being upset about what we are upset about is funny.
Being depressed, hopeless, is actually funny. And ARROGANT.
Saying: I can never… is funny. Who do you think you are? All seeing god?
So if and when you catch yourself being serious… you can be 100% sure that you are doing the machine’s bidding. The squid’s bidding. Not your own.
MY turning point
I used to be PERSONALLY OFFENDED when life didn’t go my way.
One day I caught the curved down mouth… I felt it. I felt it and saw the 3-year old me. And I caught that I had this WORLDVIEW that life should go my way. And it didn’t. And I was offended.
It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. And I laughed.
Ever since that, it wasn’t that long ago, about 10 years ago, I can catch the machine often before it goes into action. Muscletest says 91% of the time.
I notice some of the remaining 9%… Today google is the bottleneck for the internet. Today companies, their coders don’t know what they are doing. Blah blah blah.
And I feel personally offended. Because they should. They shouldn’t. And then I endeavor to take it to ‘it’s annoying!‘ and then I take it to ‘It is what it is‘
And then it is entirely up to me to do what I wanted to do, get what I wanted to get, and be OK. Not just OK… successful.
But when I don’t notice, I hurt myself… thankfully only occasionally.
But only if and when I am self-righteous… fancying that I DESERVE what I want… whatever that is.
And when I can catch that DESERVE bit, I can change it to ‘I can earn what I want’ and the machine is arrested.
That is the job: to arrest the machine, by catching it in the early stages.
In the Reality Challenge people’s job is to catch the many should shouldn’t moves of the squid, the machine.
And see that it is the machine, so slow down.
Some can’t see the should yet, it is hidden behind the don’t/isn’t statements.
Here are some examples from a participant:
you’re not good enough for that
you don’t know what you’re doing
I guess he didn’t want to work with me
you’re a fraud
behind all those factual sounding statements, there is a should.
You are not good enough for that says: you should be good enough. For that
You don’t know what you are doing… you should know. Lol.
I guess he didn’t want to work with me… but he should
You’re a fraud… you shouldn’t be
What you want to glean from this is that every arm of the squid uses a different disguise to hide that the squid is pulling the strings… and that you are the puppet.
So simply ‘knowing’ what the racket does, occasionally recognizing it, will leave you at the mercy of the squid.
And the squid suggests, of course, that 1. it doesn’t exist 2. it is enough to ‘understand’ that it’s there.
The Work is to bring it to life, and to stay aware. Alert. Alive. And uncompromising.
Now you see why literally no one does the work… And probably you won’t do it either.
To your own detriment.
