Want to get more? Grab less… The counter intuitive way to “do” life that works.
I once had a very good friend. We met in Landmark Education, and all we talked about is Landmark Education stuff… Landmark Education works through distinctions… and it is hard to explain what a distinction is, but I will give you examples, hopefully you can get it.
One distinction this friend of mine was in love with is “slow down.”
And another one, an outgrowth from there: “chew on it” or “chew”. I knew this guy for about seven years, and these were the distinctions that he spent all his time practicing and deepening. Exactly the opposite of what most people do.
Slowing down and chewing
Slowing down and chewing approaches life, ideas, projects, books, and movies from a place that is almost alien to the human who considers that understanding is all they need to do to get from one place to the next. And once they “understand” they will consider, maybe, remembering it. The effort it takes to understand interferes with grokking it 1 , getting it, with real learning.
Consider a situation when you are using a new software or a new smart phone: understanding won’t get you far: until your fingers do it automatically, without mistakes, you didn’t actually learn it.
And so is with most things, but in our hurry to consume more and more and more, to fill our lives to the brim, we stay on the surface, like a mosquito… We learn nothing, our lives are full with undigested experiences… just like our colon with putrefied, undigested food.
Life skimmed is putrid, toxic, and ultimately unsatisfying. You can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.
Just like your body that you abuse by eating a lot of empty calories, empty titillating tastes is left without energy, without pep, without a sense of well-being, your whole being isn’t nurtured by the skimmed stuff, the skimmed touch and go relationships, the life packed to its capacity… but ultimately missed.
So, this friend of mine of past, he spent years slowing himself down, and getting present to his food, his work, his friends, his thoughts, his family, his feeling…
I don’t know how he is doing, but when I compare him with all the people I know that hurry through life, I think he is vastly better off.
Life in the slow lane
He has real relationships. He has an experience of being alive. He can look and take his time to feel his way through the maze of obstacles life sets up for you when you want to find your life’s purpose.
He can look before he leaps, because he isn’t in a hurry to get somewhere else: he is where he is, he is never one foot here, one foot there.
I have recently fallen out of “no hurry” creative plane, and became very reactive. Why? How? It was a process, it was so slow, I only noticed it when I was already making mistakes left and right… with the inevitable cost mounting.
The moment I identified that I got into “hurry mode” I took on slowing down, and chewing.
Consciously, occasionally forcing myself.
I have noticed that hurry is uncoordinated, hurry is an enemy.
Almost anything can take you out of balance if you don’t pay attention.
My trigger happened on my birthday… Why? Because I was already vulnerable… Since then I lost 100 points of my vibration. How? I got pulled into the horizontal plane, where what others do matters to me.
It’s time to return to the vertical plane.
