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Positive THINKING, negative THINKING… listen up: it is not all about THINKING!
Instead, it is deciding where to look, and where to go.
Don’t look backwards unless you are planning to go that way (Thoureau).
Or if you are climbing a rock… don’t look down. You can look after you are safe… but not during the climb.
This has been my mantra for many decades. With it I avoided law suits, blaming, vengeance, and probably depression.
But I didn’t realize that I didn’t see the law that is underneath that saying: that the direction you are looking is the direction you are moving. And to my dismay, many times I was looking at the past, at the abyss, instead of turning away from it and CLIMB.
It seems that it is part of being human to be fascinated with threat, to try staring down the abyss… and not knowing that that is exactly the activity we should not do.
I’d never distinguished that… until today.
And because the bad stuff is like a magnet, you need to learn to direct your attention to what would light you up… away from the magnet.
I have been teaching this, but have never before had a context inside which it is obvious that without this you are hosed. Without being the master of your attention, you are a slave to it whatever moves it.
Today I discovered that people (including me) don’t get that the direction their inner eyes look is the direction they are moving.
Their life, their mood, all follows the eyes…
The eyes here are a stand-in for the attention. And more often than not, the attention and the intention go in the same direction.
What do I mean?
Quite simple, really. If you stare into the abyss, into ugly, into evil, it takes over your life.
If you look at how horrible you have been, or incompetent, or stupid, or whatever is your RACKET, your feet will continue the direction your eyes are going, and you will, no surprise, continue being horrible, incompetent, stupid, or whatever is your RACKET.
Positive thinking is a misnomer…
…if you want good things in your life. It has nothing to do with thinking… it has everything to do with looking, seeing, attention.
Four things knocked me conscious of this today:
1. an unsuccessful attempt at completion in the Completion Challenge.
2. today’s Monday Morning Memo
3. a successful attempt at completion of another student
4. another successful attempt at completion by a third student in the Skill Building Challenge
Homo sapiens have an unfortunate tendency to look where they are afraid. And keep looking there.
And then keep doing what perpetuates that fear… never quite understanding that it is them and their attention that does it.
Here is what one of the successful students did:
It was mother’s day yesterday. So she looked at her relationship with her mother, how she wasn’t who she could have been. How her mother confronted her. How she hung out with her mother when she was dying. All said, all heart wrenchingly horrible.
And then she TURNED AROUND, turned her attention on who she can be based on what she learned from her mother, how she can love her mother, and make something of her life. Be inspired by her mother,
And that is the ‘formula’ that is the foundation of creating new. Creating possibility, possibility she can now live.
And the second one:
He set out to learn to write stories that sell.
This is not the first time. In fact he has never actually learned anything… why? Because his face was facing all the past failures, and the fear of failure, the fear of investing work in something that won’t work.
But this time around he is looking at where he wants to go: where he can write stories that sell… the future.
And he found a book that has examples…
So if you are paying attention, the key is turning around.
Not just your face, but your whole body, so you can move in the direction of a future… a future you intend.
And just a little piece here more:
Not a future that fixes you, or fixes the past. No a brand spanking new future…
You don’t have to see everything… In fact, it is not necessary to see anything. It is enough to smell the breeze that comes from that future… Feel it on your face… refreshing, soothing, promising, like a lover’s hand on your brow.
So it is obviously not attempting to think ‘POSITIVELY’ about something, as the positive thinkers think, but it is actually looking in the direction of something that IS positive, regardless of how you think about, and direct your steps towards it.
One of the ways to be whole and complete where no part is missing (the state) manifests is that you feel you have a choice. that you feel a gentle invitation from some future, an invitation that is as gentle as a breeze… and the ‘bad stuff’ that anchors others, or that has anchored you, seem to have fallen away.
I SEEM to be a negative thinker… Why? Because I talk a lot about what is in that direction. What you are going away from.
The role of the feet
I never turn my feet in that direction though… My feet are solidly in the direction that I want to move to…
Even though for a while I did move in the direction of death… poverty, and suffering.
When I realized that, I turned my FEET around… and started to move in the direction up and away from what I didn’t want.
What does it take, if you have been habitually focusing on what’s wrong with you, and pretending that you are good, smart, whatever?
PRETENDING keeps anchored and your feet in the direction of what you pretend NOT TO BE.
You think that pretending to be good will make you move in the direction of good? No. Because to pretend you need to look and face what you pretend not to be.
Whether it is selfish, or worthless, or weak, or powerless, or a beach ball on the open sea… if and when I look at your feet, that is the direction they face.
And another clue:
if and when I ask where you are heading, you have no idea… you may have some inane generalities, but you have no direction in the ‘other’ direction… only the pretense.
You can pick a what, a where, a who as the direction… and turn SQUARE towards it.
I was observing myself yesterday in this course creators’ workshop. I could see how I was at some distinct point turning my FEET, and started really looking what it would take to build a course where most people will do what there is to do, and produce the results they can produce with what I give them.
You may have pockets, areas of life where you don’t think you can. Where you think that ‘no matter what I do it won’t make a difference’ like, it seems, I have been.
Maybe I won’t get the result my ambition wants, but you’ll get the result you want… and that should be enough for me.
- You want harmonious relationships?
- You want to be productive and feel productive?
- Maybe you want to feel talented and do what that talent can produce?
- Or you want to finally be your own person and stand on your two feet?
- And more and more and more.
Yeah… If my methodology can lead you to what YOU want, that is what I want for you.
And that my own sky high ambitions border the impossible? It is still driving me, so it is all good.
Suddenly the saying ‘reach for the stars and reach the moon’ or however the saying goes, it now makes sense…
I do have a Messiah complex, don’t I? lol.
There is a Landmark Education saying: Everything can be resolved in communication.
But I’d like to take it further: life lives in communication.
You can’t see what your eyes see without words. So therefore getting more skillful in communication is, maybe, the key to the kingdom. What kingdom? The kingdom of heaven on earth. Your personal heaven.
So if you looked and could see, everything I have ever taught somewhat successfully had something to do with communication.
Yesterday in that course I did the first steps to design a course, a Communication Course, the one I have been promising for about six years.
What was holding me back is that I thought a course like that needed to be like a Landmark Education course, and of course I don’t have the skills or the desire to do that. Or the stamina…
But given that I have been teaching pieces of that… I suddenly saw, that I can do it. And that it’s good.
And now I feel like ‘god’ when ‘he’ said: ‘it is all good’… in the Bible.
Remember that I am an atheist… so I don’t mean that literally.
Anyway, the part of the ‘big’ course we’ll be working on next is the field of communication…
While the four challenges are working on earlier steps.
The Reality Challenge is working on the voices… together with the listening…
My specialty is to teach in very small groups. 2-3-4-5 people… Does it work? Luckily I have no ambition to make big bucks… so it works for me.
And it can work for you… if you are willing. If you stop pretending long enough, so you can turn your feet around.
The Fields course is a combination of workshop and individual work… work on your own with my supervision.
It is not easy to learn. It is probably the hardest part of communication, because all of it, every single aspect of it is in the invisible realm… not visible, not audible… and yet all depends on it.
All sessions will be on Thursdays… at 12 noon my time. The work of the course gets done between the sessions… and most of it during the weekend after the group sessions.
The price I am setting won’t cover all the live sessions… so make sure you have some money in your budget to pay for more live session… If you don’t, don’t sign up.
Let’s learn to control the fields inside we communicate
