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I have read Robert Fritz’s books… and took out one gem of each.
The oscillating structures from ‘The Path of Least Resistance’, I forgot what it was of ‘Creating’.
But the most valuable nugget was from the book ‘Corporate Tides’.
Even though it is about changing corporations, corporate culture, it felt more truthful about individuals to me.
It says, simply put, what some other sage said: When you want to change something, don’t deal with what you want to change. Instead build something you want to strengthen.
The quote is from the gas station attendant, ‘Socrates’ (one of my heroes, from The Journeys of Socrates). Likely the original came from Buckminster Fuller who died before the book came out is 1984.
In a later edition of the book ‘The Way of the Peaceful Warrior’ the saying got changed, and I think you’ll resonate with it more: To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
But beware: the tendency of homo sapiens to try to change what is is strong… even though it never worked, it can’t work.
Why do you need to be wise to even think of building instead of trying to change?
Because change doesn’t work.
Because the more things change the more they stay the same…
And if that is true, then you don’t want to change what you don’t want, you want to leave it alone, allow it to wither, and build something new.
Every single person has to deal with this myth of change… the change you resist, the change that is painful, feeling dangerous, life threatening.
And then there is no change… or at best there is the pretense of change.
I have been seeing this forever.
I see a space filled with ugliness where the Self should be… not a Self.
So how do you ACTUALLY do this switch-over, so you have something new, something you can like, stand for, and for everyone else it will feel like a change, but you’ll know: you didn’t change anything. You have something new.
I remember my mother’s face when she was trying to figure out who I was… because she didn’t know me. I was new. Not just different although I looked different.
Two sunrises are not just different, they are new every day. You can only compare them in your mind, but they only same things can be compared… In reality there is no such thing as change.
So the job is to build something new.
There are some conditions. You can only build something new in a completely empty space.
Completion, the process could lead to that… in fact if it were really completion it would lead to that.
Another word for what leads to an empty space where you can create something new is clearing… clearing anything and everything out of the space where you want to build. All past. All things, all ideas.
Possibility, the direction of the new, can only arise in that empty space.
You can only build from nothing. From something you can only rearrange the furniture, apple polish, but nothing new will come out of it: what was will be still the core, the root of what you built…
I have a client who may be willing to build a new self. I say new…because she has none. She has been pretending as long as she can remember… pretending to be good… pretending to be all versions of heroic.
So let’s see what she would need to do to create a functional Self.
The first thing she would need to do is get to nothing.
When I read her daily reports, what is cluttering the space is words… versions of right and versions of wrong. Equal quantity of either.
Even when she writes ‘not wrong’, it is still there…
In completion, in clearing what was there poof disappears.
No clutter.
The question is: can you deal with no thing?
If I had to teach meditation, the bulk of it would be to teach you to deal with no thing. Emptiness. Empty of thought, empty of emotions, empty of substance.
Not a place where homo sapiens likes to go.
There is a method, where people are confronted with all the stuff they carry.
A sensory deprivation tank, also known as a flotation tank or isolation tank, provides restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST). It is easy to go insane in a no sensory input environment, especially if your whole life is directed outward, like those who lie and pretend. If you look for the reward, the outcome to justify being alive. If you want love, be noticed, be appreciated, valued, etc. Meaning: you can’t give it to yourself because you don’t have a Self.
Hillel’s words don’t speak to you, because you don’t know what they mean:
If I am not for me: who is for me?
If I am only for myself, who am I?
And if not now: when?
And yeah, even if you look in your mind for everything, you live outward directed, for the effect… You don’t have a self, and you cannot be with the emptiness that is where your self should be.
But a homo sapiens is unable to completely clear the space…
In a way ‘clearing the space’ is change… So if we believe ‘Socrates’ and Buckminster Fuller, then we’ll need to find a way to instead of clearing, start building something now without attempting to change anything.
To start building a self… by listening keenly, feeling into it deeply, to hear, to feel what makes your spirit resonate. Vibrate.
I use books for that.
I find behaviors, attitudes, that I want for myself… I want to be like that. My whole inside resonates with that: I weep, I cry, I ache for it.
I am still building my Self. Self has no finished state… if it does… it is not Self. It is EGO.
I have been struggling, and I mean STRUGGLING with the idea of the kind of relationships that are family, friends, and therefore more important than me. I may tear up, I may find it amazing, but it is my mind that is responding, not the spirit. So I am deciding not to incorporate that into my invented Self. I am not really inspired by that, even though my MIND is very interested.
The root of the word ‘inspired’ is the word ‘spirit’… And there is an upliftment (is that a word?) because the spirit is only interested in flying. It is only interested in what helps it fly. If there isn’t that upliftment… then what you are thinking of doesn’t talk to the spirit, it talks to the mind or the EGO.
It takes time, it takes patience to build. Brick by tiny brick… mortar in between so it can stay. Don’t build a Franken-monster: you’ll hate yourself.
What clues you in is your body. The bodily feelings.
Your body talks… your mind overrides. I listen to my body, closely, in everything. And I bring trust to this relationship with my body. If my body says: no I say with my words ‘no’.
It is the mind that wants all the things YOU seem to want, not your body. Your body doesn’t need all those things. Doesn’t need relationships, love, and all the b.s. you are giving it.
- You seem to want a business, but your body says ‘no’ and wants you to walk instead.
- You seem to want to help someone, but you really just want to be well though of.
At this point this, pretense, duality, being split is your existence… You are not one.
Your shoulds give it away. The shoulds you document in the Reality Challenge.
The more you see them the more aware you become of your split existence.
When the voices get more scarce, you just suppressed them. It is a fixing, a changing, not real. Don’t kid yourself.
The more you pretend, the more forcefully you pretend, the worse life gets. The worse your health gets. And then you die.
No echo.
The only place you can do this… starting with getting to know yourself is the Reality Challenge.
Get to know yourselfPS: Why is it HORRIBLE to not have a self?
Because one of the main desires of any human is to become all they can become… self-realization. But if you don’t have a self, what you will realize, if you realize anything, is what you think other people want you to be… not what YOU want to be.
And the worst thing is to not be who you are, not be yourself.
