Podcast: Play in new window | Download
You can follow me down the rabbit hole. You can do it… The only question is: will you think it worth your while?
I know I have said it before, lots of times, but I will say it again, but slightly differently this time. So bear with me: the reward will be unbelievable!
When something isn’t working, there is something you don’t know.
Said in another way:
When something isn’t working (the way you expected it to work), you can be sure that there is something you don’t know or can’t see.
Unfortunately to you, when you hear this sentence, you will never think about your mindset. You’ll never think that your thinking is wrong. That your life philosophy is wrong.
And even if you did… if you were the one in a million… you probably would not, necessarily, see what you can’t see.
And what you can’t see now is the answer to your prayers.
Let me teach you through a real case study
I had a Health Consultation session yesterday with a woman who could not take it any more and quit her job.
I suggested that had she waited until after our call, she would not have quit.
Quitting your job is a serious step, especially if you don’t have another job waiting. Quitting anything because you can’t take it any more is the same thing.
Acting impulsively, having no plan, doing none of the work any change needs is the hallmark of a life that is heading down the path of losing the war.
I read Sun Tzu, the Chinese General, who wrote the thesis: The Art of War.
I was given that book, first, in 1987 as part of a training I took. Then I was definitely not ready for it: I could not appreciate it. I was way over my head. And planning was and still is my weakest ‘conation’… I don’t have an innate need to plan. Instead I have an innate need to jump, head first, into anything. Much like this woman.
I have matured a lot since 1987. And learned a lot about planning. How to plan, what to look at, how to look at what I am looking at.
To ask questions. And to allow the questions to just hang in there… directing my attention.
Instead of trying to answer…
Most people ask questions that demand an answer. They ask the question and look for the answer.
That is not an intelligent behavior: most of life is not simple enough to make good and fulfilling in the simple question and answer paradigm.
Most of life is in the ‘unfolding’ paradigm, which means: life is in layers. Top layer visible, several layers below you need to uncover, you need to ‘unconceal’.
But the power is in the deeper layers, not on the top.
Unintelligent people asks top layer questions, and are always wrong, regardless of the topic.
Intelligence is hard to come by. It takes work.
It is not that some people were born intelligent, others not… it is more a behavior pattern than anything.
To become intelligent, one must go beyond the surface, beyond the knee jerk reactions of the mind. One must go beyond the mind. One must look and question with all their selves… and that behavior is what is hard to come by.
The behavior of settling for mind-stuff is rampant, and the secret of why humanity hasn’t evolved to the level that is possible by its DNA is here: we live in the let’s settle for mind-stuff age. And humanity has lived here for two hundred thousand years… at least.
Even most scientists live there, even most philosophers live there… and to my knowledge, every spiritual teacher lives there. ‘Cheap closure now‘ is the name of the behavior.
Working with me will force you to go, with me, to the deeper layers.
Working with me will not do YOUR work of going deeper. You have to acquire a taste for it, a need for it, a passion for it.
But you cannot live the good life without it.
The good life is an all around good life: health, wealth, love and happiness.
It is impossible to live the good life without going deeper.
Tai’s 67 steps goes one, and occasionally two layers deep. The real juice comes from layers below those two. Nevertheless, the habit, the taste for looking, the taste for pondering. You can get some of the guidance on how to look in the 67 steps, especially when you get me as your guide, as your coach.
Some people have an affinity for the depths. Others have no affinity. Everybody can learn to swim, but not everyone enjoys it, and most don’t want to learn to swim.
But if you knew that all you ever wanted is below the surface of the ocean and unless you can swim and dive you can only have a sub-standard life, a life you won’t call happy… wouldn’t you want to learn to swim? And wouldn’t you want to learn to love it?
I really can’t answer it for you. We shall see.
In the What’s the Truth About You workshops we go one layer deep, maybe, occasionally, even two layers deep.
I am restricting it to paying students, so the lookie loos won’t come.
The layers below the surface tell a different story: each layer tells a different story and most of it is not pretty.
Let’s look at the layers of the woman who quit her job. She is a teacher, and has been for ten years. It is a very hard job, because children are not taught at home to want to learn, to direct their attention. Most children grow up without any boundaries, and they are like wild animals. Out of control.
So here they are, in school. Taught by people who were brought up the same way.
When the teachers look at their day, the only part they are attracted to is talking to the other teachers. or the long summers. Not teaching.
So classroom time is a struggle, and break time is chatting.
That is the working life of a teacher. Not different from their life when they were a student.
The cycle repeats itself.
Now, here we are… most of you can see this, even though this is already one level deep. How? I am already explaining the why of the situation.
Now, if you were locked into a situation like this, and even though you are not a school teacher, you probably are locked into a situation at work, with your own family, you can’t see any way out of, do you?
No problem can be solved on the level of consciousness that created it, said Einstein, one of the rare people who took the time to go beyond appearances.
Consciousness is the currency of intelligence. Not what the IQ measures, the IQ is interested in your ability to navigate the surface. Mind-stuff… human stuff… this level of evolution.
The problem of a school teacher is created on that level: children need to go to school and they need teachers.
There is a curriculum, and a teacher’s job is to DELIVER the curriculum. But it’s a struggle, and it’s unrewarding. Too much work for too little satisfaction.
Obvious, right? The problem is the children. Or the curriculum. Or the system.
But the problem cannot be solved on that level.
Like rookie chess players who know the rules of moving the chess pieces. That is the top layer. They may even learn some strategies.
But they cannot see the layers that, in chess, are the different outcomes of the different moves.
A master can.
I am a master of the layers: I have invested not only the ten dark years… so far 30 dark years…
I am not complaining, I loved every minute of it.
So what layers are below that school scenario that forced my client to quit her job?
I have seen two layers.
1. I found that she goes to battle without preparing for battle. Un-energized and unarmed.
She drinks some tea for breakfast, eats some thin soup for lunch, and eats her hearty meals after she gets home.
Instead of knowing she is going to battle where she will need herself to be solid, resilient. Where she needs mental and physical toughness. Instead of that she wants to eat how she wants to eat, not how she would eat if she knew that without hearty nutrients she will be in shambles by 11 am…
2. She shared that the best times of being is school is talking to the other teachers.
But… but even if she ate as intelligent people would, she would need alone time. She would need pulling herself together time, centering herself time, which is impossible if she talks to other flimsy, reactive, complaining, uncentered ‘teachers’ like herself.
Now, I hope you can start seeing that even just one level deeper, just one additional level deeper, you can start seeing some moves, some actions, that would make the intolerable job tolerable, or maybe even enjoyable.
Going to teach is going to battle… need to be solid, resilient, mentally tough…
Using the breaks to center herself and maintain the solid, resilient, mentally tough level, instead of frazzling herself through chats with other teachers who can’t see how harmful their chatters are to their whole life.
There are some good movies out there about teachers who made a difference. Not many. Why?
Because being a teacher is a solution to a problem that cannot be solved on the level it was created.
But if you watch any of those movies, what you will see is the preparation, the solidity, the withdrawing from chatter… there is a lot more to being a good teacher…
Here are three of my favorites:
Freedom writers
To Sir, With Love
The Knights of The South Bronx
Attention kept on the job: doing the job of setting boundaries, inspiring to learn, respecting the child…
I have found that most of us give lip service to ‘seeing the best in people’ especially when it comes to our own children, or children in our care.
We just want to do what we want to do when we want to do it, and the darn children are in the way.
And this is how our children grow up, and this is how they are treated in school. No wonder humanity isn’t, hasn’t evolved.
I don’t teach children. I attempt to teach the effects of that childhood that resulted in you being ignorant, not knowledgeable, uncontrollable, unhappy, unfulfilled, and miserable.
Did I ever say I wanted to do this? lol…
Because unless you start asking the question: am I being a match to life?
Have I done my preparation, my own work to be a match to life? or am I doing what fritters my powers, disperses my time and energy so no matter what life throws at me, I am not a match to it?
And these are the questions that direct your attention… so you can look at the stuff that make things not work, when they don’t work.
When something isn’t working, there is something you don’t know.
So now you can know. And once you know… at least two levels deep, then you can do something about it.
And if you are still stupid and try to attack, try to manage, try to solve the things on the same level where they were created… then now you know you are acting stupid. At least now you know…
The 67 step coaching can take you deeper and establish a habit of going deeper.
Don’t want to, don’t like to? You are stuck with the unworkability. You are stuck with the life that can only get better by going deeper.
Get deeper with the 67 steps
