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.
I consider a book or a movie really good, if it gives me pause.
What I really mean: it gives me a question that I can ponder, maybe even decades. Or until the insight comes.
Obviously, if you have been reading my stuff long enough, you know that I believe that to find the path, you need to evaluate and analyze the mis-steps, the mistakes. To know good, you need to know evil.
One of this puzzle pieces fell into place today.
The movie is about Genghis Khan, the starting point of the the 300 year old invasion, plundering, and decimating of Russia, China, and Europe.
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 am working on starting the Soul Correction Coaching Program again… Both individual and group coaching. I am also thinking of writing a “book” on Soul Correction
Since I ran it last time, I managed to learn a lot. One of the things that I learned that people want your time and attention more than what you are selling… or what you think is the best you can give.
The joke in which the guy takes his car to the auto mechanic because the engine runs unevenly. The mechanic looks at it, ask him to add some gas, and then takes out a big hammer, and gently taps a spot under the hood. The engine suddenly is running smoothly.
The guy asks for the bill, and it’s 500 dollars. The guy, upset, yells… Five hundred dollars for five minute work? Oh, you want a detailed bill… here you go: Five minutes troubleshooting: $1, Knowing where to tap with the hammer: $499.
Sometimes I sit on a topic for days before I have the courage to write an article about it.
Why do I need courage, you ask? Because some topics go so much against the current power structure, that you can get ostracized, killed, deported… and only when one is clear and willing to take on those punishments, that one will be willing to open their mouths.
One such historical figure was Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph. He was a Rabbinic sage. There is always one rabbinic sage in any generation in an area… he was active in Jerusalem. A rabbinic sage is a thought leader.
Rabbi Akiva was connected to source. He connected deeply and long. But he taught from the knowledge of the world.
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.
Landmark Education was born in 1991. With its name change it also, appropriately, introduced a “new technology”.
