Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Most people stop and are satisfied with the idea of a thing they want. They never do more, and they are surprised that life doesn’t work.
In this article I won’t talk about the fact that people are not willing to actually do anything much for what they want… it is widely known… so I’ll just assume that you know that, but that is not the only thing that’s missing.
I know it is not nice to be critical of one’s alma mater, but even Landmark Education (where I learned most of what I know) never went beyond that.
Landmark’s idea of inventing a possibility for yourself and for your life sounds sooo good, but is still a definition. Words. It is still just the idea of the possibility: no distinction.
I have seen Landmark or a Landmark seminar leader come close to distinguishing when a participant invented being loving with her partner only to discover that she was anything but…
Distinguishing something is more interested in what it isn’t, than what it is.
What is outside of it… While Landmark, even Werner Erhard was still in definition-land.
I know, I know, you have no idea what I am talking about.
Why? Because if you know English then it feels like you know what the words mean… And if you don’t you can always look it up in the dictionary. But that means you live in definition world, not precise, not powerful, because here are no boundaries, there is no real definition. It’s vague, a lot like brain fog. It is like a butter knife… and if you want a life you love and a life you live powerfully, you need a set of sharp knives with which to tell shit from Shinola, Shinola (a brand of shoe polish previously manufactured in the USA).
Before I came to the USA I did one transformational course. I did it in Hebrew. My Hebrew was almost entirely about my profession, architecture, so it took me until the last day of the 3-day course to grasp one concept. My first one, The one I am talking about now…
That distinction was ‘distinguishing’. Telling it apart…
The teacher was holding up a stick of chalk. He said: this is chalk. Then, in our imagination we first expanded the chalk to fill the entire Universe. He explained that without ‘no-chalk’ space, there is no chalk. Chalk becomes everything and nothing. What distinguishes the chalk is what is not chalk. What is outside of the chalk, not what is inside.
So when a few weeks later I had language issues in the USA, I turned to that chalk-no-chalk idea, and started, in earnest, distinguishing the concepts I was unfamiliar with.
I started with generosity.
Mostly with what may look like generosity but isn’t… Then all different ways we humans are that isn’t generous.
No judgment, no being the arbiter of the universe… just distinguishing. The more not-that I managed to see, the more I could BE that… generous.
I did the exact same process, over the years, with compassion, authenticity, dignity, loyalty, freedom, liberty, knowing, learning, connecting, attention, feeling, emotion, and other concepts I can’t now remember.
Unfortunately in any communication the listener has the power, not the speaker. And how you listen is what gives you what you hear.
I had an advantage over you:
I had difficulty understanding the language itself, not just the concept. So I managed to not listen through the filter: ‘I know’. I knew that I didn’t know. So I didn’t filter out anything, I didn’t resist anything, I followed the hands of the teacher and I saw what he saw: the world filled with chalk made the chalk disappear. Chalk can only exist if there is also not-chalk. By the way, the chalk is a stand-in for any concept, including love and happiness… or whatever you want. Unless it is distinguished by not-love, not-happiness, you can’t have it. It can’t exist and you can’t go for it.
In my programs, especially in my challenges, the goal is to distinguish the issues, what you aimed for and what you are replacing it with.
Entitlement. Hurry. Distractible. Arrogant. Controlling. Condescending. Talking without an idea of what you are saying.
Lots of these… one of these is your Achilles heel that always trips you up, so your health, your wealth, your love and your fulfillment have no chance to exist.
Only through removing all the ‘not that’ that you can get anywhere…
Most people have a million things like a pack-rat… and their lives don’t work. Other people have a handful of things and their lives work brilliantly.
The difference is the depth…
If you are in the habit of nodding. Checking things off your ‘skills to build’ list, because you did it once then you have a depth issue.
If you do my challenges one maybe two days a week, you will NOT get the results you are not going for. If your bandwidth is so narrow that it is fully used up by just doing the daily stuff… then there is not much hope for you to grow.
We could call you a simpleton… without the pejorative meaning. You are a simpleton…
I remember old computers could only do one thing. No walking and chewing gum at the same time. I remember the time when I could not walk and smoke at the same time. But humans are ‘designed’ to grow. To be able to do more… And I have.
Have you?
The challenges are living meditation exercises. Do your daily stuff and also give some attention to what the challenge is asking you to notice. Can’t do it? you may not be on the level… yet.
What should you do now?
What I recommend that you do is: go to the Testimonial Questions, copy the questions into a text app, and start answering the questions. It will cause some clarity, some self-awareness, and maybe you’ll see where you have dropped the ball, the ball that you can pick up again.
Here is the link https://yourvib.me/testimonial-questions
