The only way to affect real change: change the root cause

the three great mysteries of lifeThe Three Great Mysteries: air to a bird, water to a fish, mankind to himself
~ Hindu Proverb

We live in an age where, we could say, are poised to move our inquiry into areas where it could make a difference. Not yet… obviously.]

I say in every area of the mystery that we call life and Universe.

In health. In well-being. In climate change and caring for our planet. In evolution, genetics, and feeding all these people. In psychology. In human growth and self-actualization.

We are still on the surface, and everything you buy, everything you read, everything you can think is still not cause, and doing it won’t make a difference… except…

Some ideas, some theories are closer to the source than others. Continue reading “The only way to affect real change: change the root cause”

Weird is the necessary ingredient to getting a cult following

I spend some of my “entertainment credits” to shore up my cultural understanding of the country I live in, the United States. It is still study… it is still doing my work.

I read books you had to read in high school, and I find that they are really good books.
I watch shows that you watched, read nursery rhymes.

I am watching Twin Peaks.

It’s a cult classic, and I am learning a lot from it.

I learn that to be a cult movie, it has to be consistently weird. Like The Big Lebowski or really many of the Coen Brothers movies. The movie, Being John Malkovich.

But Twin Peaks takes it to a whole new level of weird. I am not talking of the surreal elements, those are just silly props. I am talking about people being themselves. Stupid, naive, self-centered, living in their made up universe… illustrations to “you live in a world of your own design”, having very little of your map of reality and reality have in common… all very funny and all very commonplace… but here made weird, so you can see it.

Through adding weirdness it is now clearly visible, that most things we watch have a soothing, unreal corrective lens on them, because I have a hunch that Twin Peaks’ representation of reality, the reality of human behavior, is closer to how it is.
Continue reading “Weird is the necessary ingredient to getting a cult following”

The Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars Of Eudaimonia

Plants are integratedThe Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars Of Eudaimonia

Eudamonia: the fulfilled life. The satisfying life. It’s a how… It’s about how much life you have in your years. Fulfilling the potential that you are.

It’s impossible to have “the Good Life” without Integration… but… 1

One of the hardest steps for students to complete in the 67 step coaching is the step about creating an integrated life.

Why? Because on the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, there is no such a thing as integration.

Continue reading “The Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars Of Eudaimonia”

Are you disappointed with yourself for not being higher minded, and achieving more in life?

be an empty spotFor years I’ve seen that humans, humanity, are stuck in a place where happiness is impossible, accomplishment is not predictable, and health is touch and go.

I’ve had big hopes, selfish hopes, that I will be the one to unstuck you.

Lots of other people have this hope… and the hopes remain hopes, because you have a vested interest to keep what keeps you stuck in place? If we knew what keeps you stuck, maybe we could unstuck you.

This article is an attempt to identify that one thing. The linchpin issue.
Continue reading “Are you disappointed with yourself for not being higher minded, and achieving more in life?”

When you don’t hurry, time doesn’t hurry either

there is no hurry on the creative plane... hurry and mistakes go togetherWhen you don’t hurry, time doesn’t hurry either. When you are prepared you can afford to not hurry

An article I wrote about IQ and your inability to see higher than 1 degree above your level, and about 5 degrees below your level fell on dead silence. Hm, interesting. It seems to have violated something unsaid, and got caught in the filter the mind mounts to stop disturbing news to enter your consciousness.

I shared this with the woman who drives me to do my errands on every Tuesday, and watched her emotions (remember, I am a True Empath!)… the emotions were “holding your breath, playing possum: I am not even here… Nobody home, I didn’t hear you…”

I pondered it until I saw it: we don’t like our bubble burst. We want our self-image to stay the way it is, so all of life can stay the same.

This, in spite of all the wants to be more, live more, do more, have more. In spite of the desire to raise your vibration. Why? Because it’s scary. It is scary to hear that our worst fears are true. Or maybe even worse than we feared them to be.
Continue reading “When you don’t hurry, time doesn’t hurry either”

You see only what the mind allows you to see

perspective-3This is a four years old article. I am rewriting it to include fixed mindset, the distinction from Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset.

When the mind takes over your perception you see what your mind wants to see.

We have all experienced how the mind tricks us into believing that something other than what’s happening is happening.

When you are dizzy, sea-sick or drunk: the room seems to be spinning. When someone tells you skinny is good, you start liking skinny. When someone tells you you are ugly, you start seeing ugly.

Here are some examples:

1. You are not allowed to see what your mind doesn’t allow you to see…

…this is why Japanese soldiers could not see, till the end, that they were beaten.

drowned-japanese-soldiersMore than that: Japanese soldiers enlisted into the Japanese navy, but never considered that they should learn to swim: the option that their vessel would sink never occurred to them: after all their emperor was invincible. They would not even make any moves to get a life preserver when they were under attack: their mind told them that nothing can, nothing could happen to them… and they died by drowning… victims of the mind hiding reality from them.

You are that Japanese soldier, you just don’t know it.
Continue reading “You see only what the mind allows you to see”

Smart people don’t have to look… Creativity is genetic… and other bullcrap from the Tree of Knowledge

I have started to put my old videos on my video site

I also listened to one… how you lose your creativity, how to get it back…

Continue reading “Smart people don’t have to look… Creativity is genetic… and other bullcrap from the Tree of Knowledge”

The counter-intuitive path. Teaching pigs to fly

if someone else did it, your can do it tooToday I am tired. I am in and out of bed, I need my rest.

Why am I so tired? I lead a session of the From Upset To Communication course/workshop, an experimental course with no curriculum, except my commitment to take you to a place of living in the flow.

It is possible. I did it. But not with what you already have.

People, maybe you, my students, hope that we can have a life like that, without some pain, maybe a lot of pain.

What is the pain about? Well, it is the pain of loss.
Continue reading “The counter-intuitive path. Teaching pigs to fly”

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, It's what you know for sure that just ain't so“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
~ from the movie “The Big Short”

Why is it that people don’t like this quote? Can you guess?

I see it all the time. People are quite certain that what they know is true, and are puzzled by the fact that they don’t feel good about themselves, about their place in the world, about their lives.

This includes smart people, and this includes people who are not that sophisticated.

We, as a species, are full of knowledge that just isn’t so. And when we build theories, actions, futures, arguments on those untruths, then things don’t work. Continue reading “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”