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Below that it’s discontent. This is true in any area. Health, wealth, love and fulfillment (aka work).
It seems that most of life can be lived somewhat safely without consciousness. Consciousness is activated with a type of thinking. Thinking things out, deeply. Without that kind of thinking there is no consciousness.
Animals get on quite well without thinking things out, without consciousness. And for millions of years they are still around, more or less.
The big difference between humans and animals is that animals don’t have an abundance of choice… every animal lives more or less the same. While humans have big gaps between groups of people… something to aspire to or envy.
Therefore the largest segment of humanity is always and chronically suffers with discontent. When they compare themselves to others, others always seem to have what they want.
How? Why? it is not clear. That is all in the invisible for the casual observer.
In this article I reveal the difference between the folks, the few who are fulfilled, and the many who are not.
Back to thinking, back to consciousness…
Thinking, the kind of thinking that activates consciousness doesn’t really exist in the animal kingdom, and surprisingly doesn’t really exist in humanity… in spite of the fact that a human could think… except that they don’t. Or not very long… and not very well.
The thinking I am talking about is the thinking when you have your premises… the data you start with. You want to do something with the original data: you want to choose. You want to come to a choice. For that you need consideration. You need to process, in your brain, the possible outcomes, the possible consequences, and finally come to a choice. An action you consider to the highest benefit.
Here are a few ‘though experiments’ for the kind of thinking I am talking about.
- If I leave the unwashed dishes in the sink… and there is food on the dishes (premise 1)… and they get wet (premise 2)… mold will grow on the food (premise 2) and the mold will plug up the sink, block the flow, and I won’t be able to drain my sink (consequence). I choose not to leave the unwashed dishes in the sink…
- If I buy this course… and I just look it over… and I find that a lot is missing from my foundation (premise 1) and unless I learn the missing stuff I won’t be able to benefit from the course (premise 2), so I start learning the missing stuff (premise 3)… and then learn the new course, eventually I’ll learn what I originally bought and I’ll get my money’s worth. (consequence). Therefore I choose to brush up on the missing stuff… and then study the course I bought.
Without effective and skillful thinking your life if full of trouble.
The above examples are too hard to think out for most people, and you can see that people almost never think things through to the conclusion, they wing life.
When you climb a mountain… or want to get good at a game (cards, chess, etc.) you cannot see when you start that the mountain climbing and the games have moves that you cannot even consider as part of your thinking… Even if I say to you: there are moves, patterns, that once you learn them you’ll start to become masterful… You won’t believe me.
You can’t think that because you have never experienced it. And you are stuck in gear one or two of your vehicle… and cannot think that there are gears above it… You see other people doing things fast, elegantly, masterfully, but you have no idea what is in between, so you say things like: ‘they are talented and I am not‘. Add the mournful tone of voice… I heard that exact sentiment on Thursday from one of my students who has never even gone to gear two…
Even people who are talented in some area need to go through the gears… and if they will amount to much, they do.
I once had a student whose parents were musicians. Good ones. He had talent to music. But he never amounted to much because he relied on his talent only… and I just checked on Facebook, he is still stuck in gear one.
I am not talented in anything.
When I was nine years old I participated in some competition and I won a book as a prize. Then my family, we went on vacation. I took the book. Turns out I didn’t look but there was another companion book. But I didn’t have it.
The book was mathematics… And it was written like an encyclopedia… every entry had links to other entries.
I followed every link, and consequently I went through the whole book quite a few times. It was like a trip around the world. Enjoyable, fascinating, and habit-forming.
The only time and the only topic where I didn’t do it was my learned profession: architecture: architecture books and articles have pictures and whole layouts and my dyslexia really got in the way. So until today I am wholly and completely uneducated, and ignorant in the area of architecture. I could do it, but I didn’t know much about it.
For me, to be able to read, I have to close one eye, and have to fixate my head, turn my cone of vision very narrow… or I can’t read… So magazines are out…
Now, back to that book and the habit I started when I was nine: going deep. Doing what is fascinating, all the way to the end.
That habit is what lifted me from certain insignificance.
I didn’t know, didn’t choose what to go deep in… so I did many things a few steps in… I got to third gear in many different things, photography, pantomime, music, crafts, languages, psychology, business, article writing, desktop publishing, and probably more.
As you see I went deep enough that I was already in gear three… a gear further than most people.
I went deeper in only one area: distinguishing the human condition. I am in gear four in that.
In this article I want you to see that you do life in gear one or in gear two… some not even in gear… and it is not satisfying and not fulfilling.
And I want you to see that you want to know ahead of time what is the use, instead of considering everything useful until it isn’t.
One of my students has some inclination towards business coaching. But she refuses to get into even gear two about knowing business… She wants to go wide instead of deep. She wants to be in gear one in all aspects of business… and wing it. Have good ideas for her clients. And fake it.
I also know a coach who is like that… and has been now for about 20 years. Faking it. Talk the talk but not walk the walk because he can’t.
He is in gear two in everything that he talks about. He talks a good talk, but can’t do it.
I watch him and I can ‘feel’ that he is in the middle of realizing it… thus his vibration has dropped to 70. We’ll see if he actually starts doing something so he can get himself to at least third gear so there is some integrity and authenticity… and fulfillment to his activity.
Here is how I didn’t… when I was at the same place…
I was sick and hospitalized when I was in the third year of my architecture school studies.
The third year was a crucial year in many respects. In the actual practice of building, the invisible part of architecture.
I missed it. I didn’t even get into first gear in that invisible part.
Plus, I didn’t realize it fully until I had my degree and I had been employed for a year or two.
The incompetence was like a brain eating bacteria… eating away at my brain, at my happiness.
Eventually I left architecture, even though, looking back, I could have caught up, even without the internet, in a few months, and be whole and complete again. But I couldn’t see it. It felt like a birth defect: incurable. I still get dizzy, foggy, and disoriented when I think of any of the stuff that I didn’t learn but would still think about… the essence of building.
When I look at my students, the main reason they are not happy is because they remained in gear one or two in the activity where they make their living.
And guess what: they bring the same attitude to doing The Work: they never go deep. They don’t have the trust that there is life beyond them hills… to put it poetically.
They never experienced the thrill of breaking through any of the invisible barriers… so they don’t know there is life and more life beyond them.
I got lucky. I was on vacation and I only had one book to read… so I read it several hours every day. It was endless fun. Not like scrolling on website, more like following links… burrowing deeper and deeper where the tasty bits are.
There is a saying: once you go black you never go back, or something like that. It is definitely true about going deep.
The surface has all the tasteless or just edible parts of anything. Anything. Whether it is exercise, or sex, or knowledge, or skill. Simply everything.
This article, it will sound weird, came from me playing Freecell not quite paying attention.
In gear one you will have about 70% games won. In gear two: about 82%. Then in gear three about 87%… But it is starting to become fun. You are starting to see patterns, and patterns are exquisite fun… toe-curling. I think for everyone.
The people who you look at and admire, because they are on top of something… they are most likely in gear three, and some of them are in gear four.
Gear four is still fun…if the person doesn’t get all puffed up with conceit. Conceit is what prevents fun on that level. Some of the people I listened to have gone through the conceit of gear four… and went past it, and now they are having fun again.
So what do I recommend?
I recommend that you pick something to sink your teeth into. Like I sunk my teeth into that book at age nine.
And churn it and churn it and churn it and then churn it more…
I have that student who has some interest in being a business coach. I recommended that she takes on learning and getting masterful at making business plans.
It is wide enough and deep enough, that if she is willing to do it, in spite of the fact that she thinks she can do it already, she can get into gear two, gear three… just for the experience of it.
Making a business plan is like a microcosm of business… It is as essential for business as what I missed in third year in architecture school.
If she does it and manages to get to do it in third gear, she will be good, she will be useful, she will know what she knows and she won’t need to wing anything, won’t need to lie, won’t need to fake anything. It will make an honest women of her… lol…
I need to know a person well enough for me to give them the ‘perfect’ burrowing hole, so to say.
But beware: if you pick something that has immediate benefits, immediate payoff, you picked the wrong thing. You need to pick something that pays off only much much later…
One other student has never got into even first gear. His stop comes from wanting everything he does produce an instant result. Like sex. Like drinking. Like eating.
And of course he is unhappy. Unless and until he can let go of wanting the instant result, he won’t ever leave the launching pad…
I have two students who have had enough experience in gear one, and maybe enough trust in my word to start ramping up to second gear. Both are doing (or could be doing it) in the area of training people. Designing the training and doing the training.
Don’t forget, your ego doesn’t like you to do anything you are not good at… and of course you are not good at what you are starting to learn. If you are any good… ego will get you stuck there… And you’ll be like the coach whose vibration dropped to 70… windbag hiding that he can’t do it.
It is mandatory that you can see your root level issue for any change.
What you think about yourself, what you ‘KNOW’ about yourself is not true… It is just not true.
It is a distorted self-image… never accurate.
You are either conceited (backdrop type2) or you think yourself not enough.
Either way your behavior has been run by that backdrop… and got you stuck with no fulfillment.
In the Moneyroots workshop we get to the root… often in just one session, more often in two or three… The real roots are trying to hide.
Once we get to the roots we can start building a future for you that has a different root… and start empowering that new root.
Some students don’t understand that… and are trying to fix the original roots… So you see, it takes some intelligence to get the methodology…
You can’t fix the original roots. They are not wrong, therefore they cannot be fixed. But whatever they say, the roots, are not true. Not about you, not about life.
Anyway…
Here is the link to buy
Get to the roots of thingsYou can buy just the recording if you can’t make it don’t want to expose yourself…
PS: No gear is like PE…
