I planned to have a series of coaching sessions to test the “itch” method. I made room for 10 people… would have been happy with 8, got one person, someone who knows me well, and in addition I have done the process with her already…
I bet you would be disappointed, and your mind would go crazy on you, if this happened to you… am I right? Me? I am amused, I am curious, I am happy. Not pretend happy, just happy.
Landmark Education was born in 1991. With its name change it also, appropriately, introduced a “new technology”.
The new technology was based on an earlier statement or assertion: that who you are in the present is given by the future you are living into.
It was also said like this: What gives you who you are in the present moment is the future you are living into.
But, although they were illustrating this assertion with a story 1 , what they meant was this: what gives your being and consequently your actions in the present moment is who you invented yourself to be.
Let’s say you invent yourself to be a winner… what give your being and consequently your actions in the present, that no matter what you do, you’ll at least end up landing on your feet… and that makes you, automatically, a winner. And some of the time you’ll win more than just your safety or your life… you may win some stuff, some arguments, etc. Continue reading “Stepping up to the plate”
A good 20 years ago I had lunch with a famous seminar leader from Landmark Education. We had a long history, and she shared with me how unhappy she was, and how ready she was to quit leading seminars for Landmark Education.
I was quite dumbfounded… she was the best in the country, the most effective…
She said: “We teach people to be more effective, and many use the technology to be more effectively dupe people, abuse people, exploit people, make the world a worse place than it would be if they were not equipped with what we teach them.”
I didn’t have an answer for her… but I was pondering that myself for the past 20 years.
White lotus grows out of mud… and creates beauty out of it. Peacocks eat poisonous berries and create beautiful plumage out of it… This article is about how to be like the white lotus, how to be like a peacock where life, and the circumstances don’t beat you down.
So, how to be like that, unbreakable
the song, Unbreakable, is exactly the opposite of what I am teaching in this article. That whole song is imagining a perfect world with a perfect “another” where they do all the things they are supposed to do so you can feel good, so you can feel loved…
The perfect prescription for unhappiness, fear, anxiety, disappointment, frustration… because people are the way they are. Because people aren’t even willing to be the perfect person for you, because it feels like a straight jacket. If you look in your own heart: you aren’t willing… and yet you expect others to abide by your standards… ugh… ugly.
Unflappable… loving life the way it is?
There is a long long answer, and there is a short answer.
I will give you the short answer first:
learn that there is nothing wrong and nothing to fix.
learn that the horizontal way of living where everything depends on people and their opinion of you, you become like them… and you are vulnerable and a slave to their opinion, to their beck and call, and you’ll be, with tiny breaks, miserable, till you die.
There is a movie by the Indian film maker, M Night Shyamalan, starred Bruce Willis. In that movie there are two characters:
no matter what happens, he comes out of it unscathed – The Unbreakable
no matter what happens, he is broken to pieces, shatters.
If you pay attention to the unbreakable character of Bruce Willis…
…what you’ll see is a certain flowing with his environment, a conscious awareness. He feels his way through life… and that obviously gives him an edge. It is as if he walked in a bubble, and the bubble would walk with him.
Is that a story, or is that actually possible for a mere mortal? Don’t try to remember all the stuff others have told you: I want you to empty your mind of preconceived notions, and have no prejudice, either way.
Cultures where the “floor” isn’t that things should be different, that there are things right and there are things wrong, where making a mistake is just making a mistake, are much more intelligent. Far East culture is that, a certain acceptance and allowing of what is to be what is.
People’s average IQ as measured by the IQ tests is noticeably higher than in cultures like America, regardless of color or race… it is the culture of wrong, should and shouldn’t that makes people less intelligent.
The other aspect is significant in Western culture and much less present in the Far East culture is taking things personally.
I am addressing cultures where the difference in base attitude, the attitude to life, is most different.
In the Western culture, where I live, people want the world and the circumstances to change as a condition of their happiness, productivity, actions.
When people think what they want, and I have asked, no one said: I would like to be happy, fulfilled, productive, and well, regardless what life metes out to me.
The idea that you can choose your attitude and that will, in turn empower you or disempower you, is alien to the Western culture: the dominant emotions are fear, trepidation, anxiety, and frustration.
This is not true, or not yet true (things are changing!) in Far East cultures.
The emotions that are dominant, determine your experience of life. Fear, trepidation, anxiety, and frustration will reduce your coherence, your intelligence, your accuracy, your results by far. And it is double “whammy”: both your experience and your results effect your circumstances… which means those emotions are unhappiness makers.
But it is possible to create a personal bubble of “there is nothing wrong here” and remove the triggers that create the emotions, and live, largely, in a Western society as if it were a Far Eastern, and be happy, fulfilled, content, effective, productive, kind, available, and become untouchable, unbreakable, impervious to the negative influences of the culture.
How do you become unbreakable?
You need to realize that wrong is a comparison: you arbitrarily determined what should be, and you call that right. But it is your personal take, and arrogant.
It is also a pedestrian way of relating to the world: where everything and everyone seem to be in the way, blocking YOU from getting what you want, getting where you want to go, and it feels entirely personal.
A person who needs life to be easy for them to feel well is a weakling, and his or her kind will be eliminated in the evolutionary near future.
The person who is able and willing to be strong and empowered in the face that life is: random, and impersonal, is the specimen whose seed will be the basis of the next evolutionary step.
The future depends on the individual, not on the masses. The number of people that can master their nature and their attitudes are few… and the future (and the present) is theirs.
Because they can be well, present, happy, productive, intelligent, and kind in the face of whatever life throws at them.
I got a really great question yesterday from a student.
He asks: Is it possible to be with what you can’t accept, killing, rape, and such? And how do you do it without jeopardizing your personal values, your personal integrity, and at the same time still be able to be happy and not be mired in the dark energies of hatred?
This is a really great question. After all isn’t the world REALLY divided to right and wrong? Good or bad? And wouldn’t it put you on the side of bad and wrong if you accepted what you don’t agree with, what you don’t like, what you abhor?
The answer to the question, as almost always, is hidden in the question.
If you didn’t ask… “Know Enough For what?!” then you can consider that you are trapped, at the moment, by the question in the title.
That was the purpose of the title, by the way. To trap you.
While you read your article, to get the most out of it, allow yourself to find yourself in my experience, instead of agree or not agree… OK?
Every person with a mind (that is every person alive!) moves back and forth on a continuum (scale) of knowing enough or not knowing enough… Some days you feel you know everything, on others you feel you know nothing. Continue reading “Do you know enough?”
Imagine yourself driving down the road and you want to change lanes to the right. You look in the rear view mirror and you look in your side mirrors to make sure there are no cars. Yet there is a blind spot and you aren’t 100% sure it’s safe to move over. So you lean a bit forward – you lean a little to the right and it looks good. You check out the lane next to you from both angles. Then, signal flashing you speed up and start to steer right and just as you do – HONK!!!!
There, in your blind spot, is a car that you were about to roll right into. WHEW!
Heart racing you slow down a bit, steer back to your lane and let the car pass. Then going through the check again – check the mirrors, lean forward, lean to the right, This Time throwing a glance over your shoulder and when you are certain you’ve seen the road clearly, you switch lanes so you can arrive at your destination.
WHAT IF – you are going through your life and not seeing all the perspectives? What if?
Warning: this article is a stream of consciousness article, and you need to read it like a poem, or it probably won’t make a lot of sense. On the other hand it is very important to read, if you want a chance at having the rest of your life not a continuation of the life you have had… That predictable download spiral.
When your whole life experience is that others are more loved, more supported, more appreciated
I had a dream last night that rocked my world. Not in a good way… by the way.
Well, that didn’t turn out the way I imagined.
