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I am re-reading a book I read years ago. Happiness is a Serious Issue
It has a truth value of 10%. Relative to other books, it’s high truth value.
Sometimes truth value is low because the author propagates deliberate lies, or personal misunderstanding.
Other times the author looks just on the surface, and hasn’t penetrated deeper layers of reality.
Most of the time the book reflects the current worldview… and of course the current worldview is and has been and probably will be for a long time, maybe forever, low truth value.
Not consistent with Life, with nature…
It’s personal reality: people make it and and then call it reality.
One of the things I can find out from books with low truth value is what is the current and dominant worldview… what they consider important and relevant and potent.
Unless I take the time to see what water my clients swim in, unaware of the water, I can’t connect with them where they are.
I am only a third of the way through the book at this time… it is slow going because I HATE non-fiction.
I don’t only read, I also watch University Professors lecture on youtube… ditto. Low truth value… and also tedious.
Everyone is dealing with the same issue I am dealing with: the stuff we teach doesn’t go through. Doesn’t create the wanted effect in the listener’s brain. It doesn’t take residence and make changes in the listener’s life. They may be able to repeat what we said, but that is worthless.
The more persuasive the speaker, I am noticing, the less the truth value or what they say.
What’s that about?
Why things heard don’t become part of the tapestry of the backdrop… the backdrop that contains your whole worldview… including your self-view?
The answer, I say, is that
the filter, your unconscious filter, doesn’t allow anything that doesn’t MATCH what’s already accepted in the backdrop to get through the filter.
If the filter doesn’t allow it through, then for you, it is as if it never existed.
I am sitting here half naked in the not humid air very early in the morning.
I hear a bird, probably a bluejay, caw-ing desperately, half complaining, half trying to rouse sympathy, maybe support.
I hear her pain. And I hear pain over the loss. My guess is that my resident raccoon has robbed her nest. And I hear her pain over the indifference of the other birds… She is alone, and she needs to fend for herself.
She just flew away, and it is now quiet… Everyone about themselves, everyone for themselves. That is how the world works. Birds know it.
Humans refuse to get it. Humans refuse to adjust their worldview to how it is.
They keep on having expectations and never learn. Expectations are the mother of misery.
The word ‘should’ is the visible part of an expectation… It should be this way, it shouldn’t be that way.
When you expect: you’ll either get or don’t get what you expected.
But no matter which way it turns out because even when you get what you expected, you are still miserable.
Why? Because when you expect something you rob yourself of the most essential ingredient of happiness: gratefulness.
Gratefulness comes when what you get is not expected. When it is a gift. When it is a surprise. And when you don’t take it for granted.
And gratitude, appreciation fills the empty space within… you know the emptiness you find when you look inside…
People who have everything are not happy. They are empty. Because only gratitude and appreciation fills the emptiness within. Not love, not stuff, not pleasure.
And of course I am not talking of fake gratitude… real gratitude.
The more expectations you have, justifiable or not, the less happy you’ll be, the more your life will be empty.
But shouldn’t you expect anything? I say you shouldn’t.
Expecting is arrogant… It is considering that you are above it all… and no matter how many times you think you are, hope you are, you aren’t above it all.
Life, nature, human nature, will always be above you.
The author suggests a few things you should expect. Among them ones I used to expect myself… and I was so profoundly miserable, people stayed away from me lest misery is contagious.
I expected to be loved by my parents, by my brothers, by my clients and I wasn’t.
Then I got lucky… even though to get this lucky break this luck I had to spend 10 grands, I was still very lucky. I could have spent those 10 grands on something that wouldn’t have made a difference for me.
I heard, in a class, that unless we have an overt agreement, we should not expect anything. Including that parents love their children.
Unless your parents made you an express promise: ‘I will love you no matter what!‘ you should not expect love. And when you get an expression of love, whatever expression, be grateful. Very grateful.
I expected love. I even knew, KNEW how it was going to look. And it didn’t come. Or when some goodish actions were made by my parents, I did not feel grateful. Instead I said: too little too late.
I was left with the experience of a wretched childhood… because that expectation set up a filter and I could only see what matched the filter: I am not getting what I want.
Looking back I got everything anyone can want: an education, roof over my head, nourishing meals, vacations, medical care, even my birthdays were celebrated.
In Fiddler on the Roof, Tuvia asks his wife if she loved him. She tells him she gave him children, she cooks for him, she takes car of his clothes… but he is not happy. He expects love to be expressed differently… and of course he is wretched. He fantasizes: If I were a rich man…
Expectation is another word for entitlement. And it destroys you inside, because you are not entitled to anything.
Even if the law of man says so… the law of reality dares to differ.
And as I said before: if you are entitled, even if you get what you say you are entitled to, your life is empty and you are empty. A shell of a person. Because nothing greater than yourself fills you up… even if you pretend that it does.
Words don’t fill you up if your word has to fight it out with other words already there.
The should and gratitude fight… and the should remains… unless.
If you have expectations, your word can’t have power. The expectations, the should effectively prevents the space for creation to get empty… so your words will be hollow and so will you. Hollow.
And your life.
And you’ll scramble for things to fill it up… because it shouldn’t be empty.
But all the time the power was yours to let go of the should. Let go of the ought to. Let go of the expectations… of taking things and people for granted…
And start BEING grateful for what is, what isn’t, what you have, and what you don’t.
So what should you do now.
As with any transformational work, the first thing to do is map out, and see every which way how your life is all expectations, how it fills it to the brim.
Expectation is the floor of your life… so you don’t have to hunt for it. Just notice… Because life water doesn’t exist for the fish until they jump out of it long enough to see it, expectation doesn’t exist for you until you look and see that indeed, your expect things, people, yourself to be different. You expect things work the way you expect them to work… and nothing seems to be working the way they are supposed to.
According to Werner Erhard, the father of transformation, is 91% of all the work that you’ll need to get done to start having transformation, seeing life differently, seeing yourself differently, so you can be grateful for everything.
So it is not instant. It is not even fast.
Insights are a dime a dozen. Real transformation, where you live a life YOU transformed, where the floor you walk on is different takes a lot of time.
If it is worth having the end result it is worth doing the work of mapping out and getting completely clear what makes the floor the floor, and what it has been costing you.
I get questions in email like this: my vibration is 100. What shall I do to raise it?
Your vibration is the truthful picture of your floor. Of your worldview. Do you think there is a ready process for changing it? Do you even know what is your worldview?
Most people have no idea, because that is the water they are swimming in, the floor they walk on.
It takes a lot of distinctions to see. Expectation, expectation kills gratitude, gratitude makes you repulsive to what you want are just three distinctions that can change the floor for you. If you are willing to spend the time and the energy to see.
In the Moneyroots workshop we mapped out these distinctions and two more: unless you drive your life you’ll always only be an effect/passenger, and outcome dependence.
All three will make money run from you.
I have done one Moneyroots workshop and I am of the mind to have at least one more. Looking at life through money has proven itself to be like looking through this new Webb telescope: the picture is more detailed and more obvious.
I am planning this next Moneyroots workshop for August 2nd, which is a Tuesday 2 pm my time.
Let’s see what’s under your money
