Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

Circuitry. What you give and what you get back?

I am a Kiva lender. I circulate about 400-500 dollars, lend it, and lend it again. $25 a clip.

Kiva has been looking for find an angle to have more people be inspired to lend money.

After I lent another $25 from my seed money (I haven’t added any new money to Kiva for years now!) a video popped up.

In it an Indian woman shares that her fields were mortgaged and it was near impossible for her to make a living. Then she got a Kiva loan, got herself cows.

The cows give her five liters of milk a day she can sell.

This allows her to make a good living, and she has paid off the mortgage on her lands.

I started to cry.
Continue reading “Circuitry. What you give and what you get back?”

Are you a Seeker? Restless, anxious, never quite there?

There is a deep human need to make our lives controllable. To be in control. To be certain. To be safe.

And there is this deep human need to see more, be more, feel more, have more, experience more.

They point to opposing directions, and they tend to jerk you back and forth.

It’s an oscillating structure.

Like every oscillating structure, the tension between the two extremes cannot be resolved, there is no ess… the battle will continue as long as… let me address that later.
Continue reading “Are you a Seeker? Restless, anxious, never quite there?”

What you don’t know that you don’t know is making you fail

I used to lead introductions to the Landmark Education Forum.

There is a part in the introduction where you attempt to distinguish for people that most of what’s knowable for a human: you don’t know. Moreover: you don’t know what you don’t know.

Then you ask a simple question: Can you give me an example of what you don’t know that you don’t know?
Continue reading “What you don’t know that you don’t know is making you fail”

Self-coaching demonstrated

Hm, it seems that “Source” or my inner guidance, or soul, or whatever is doing this guidance thing… is intent for me to have integrity: speak from experiential truth.

So it seems from the few “trips” it’s been sending me.

In the area of health, it is telling me to make dietary mistakes… so I can be authentic in saying things to my clients and students that are doing things that hurt them.
As soon as I get what I was supposed to get… I am taken to the next “trip”.

Continue reading “Self-coaching demonstrated”

Stress, pressure, and overwhelm… no wonder you are tired!

It was 9 am, and I was already tired… No, correction: exhausted.

So I went back to bed, really curious what was the reason.

I asked and muscletested questions…

I noticed that I was not breathing deeply: in fact I could not. The breath would not go through.

So I doubled up on the question: what is the cause of this inability to take a deep breath? Health, concerns, each individually, and all said no.

Then I asked: feeling under pressure… stress.

And yes, that was it.
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The path is very narrow. Strait and narrow?

You can’t have it both ways… and you have to have it both ways

The West, the culture of the West is forcing. Forceful. Goal oriented. Mercantile.

No one is interested in the process, only in the result.

Western people are unhappy, and don’t even know the meaning of joy. Continue reading “The path is very narrow. Strait and narrow?”

Goals, path, intentionality, agenda, forcefulness, and Zen

I had an interesting insight this morning. I woke up with the wicked vertigo back… I moved my neck the wrong way in exercise class… And I didn’t experience the despair, and the urgent desire to fix it. Or will it away. I observed it, and the secondary symptoms that go with it.

I live a goal-less life.

I don’t get frustrated, I don’t get excited, I don’t push, I don’t force, I don’t rush. I don’t do things for a reason either.

I do what I do. Some are creative. Some are response. Some are maintenance of stuff. I read, I cook, I try to move my body, I reflect a lot. I notice the birds. I notice the trees. It’s very Zen.
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Can you become astute? And if you can… how?

This article deals with what it is that you need to become astute, or even just to become a candidate for me to activate astute as a DNA capacity for you…

One of the invaluable benefits I gained from the 67 steps is the idea to consider getting tired in the noonish hours a signal that it is time to lie down and read.

This midday break disrupts the societal pull to do the useful, the purposeful, the goal-oriented stuff… that makes us dull, dutiful, and lopsided… boring.

I have a timer that turns on the light in my bedroom at 5:30 am and then turns it off at 7 am. I wake up and get up during that time. Why such range? Why don’t I use a sound alarm that scares the light out of me?
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Cognitive biases, blind spots, a sticky point and a “remedy”

We are all born seeing ourselves as the center of the world. We don’t know we are the center of our world… we just don’t know there is any other vantage point to look from.

Most of us never learn it.

Like one of my students: every time I recommend anything, she answers: “I agree…”

She hasn’t crossed that threshold, that divide between infant and even toddler… absolutely and completely ignorant to the fact that using the personal vantage point is ineffective, because it is delusional.

This is also true if and when you can see that other people see things differently from how you see them, but your view is accurate and theirs is inaccurate.

Same delusional, baby-view of the world. Continue reading “Cognitive biases, blind spots, a sticky point and a “remedy””

The big mystery of how to receive for the sake of sharing and get money for you

You receive lasting Light only if your desire is a desire to receive for the sake of sharing, not a desire to receive for the self alone… But the big mystery of how the heck you can desire to receive for the sake of sharing. Some people have found a way… but not THE way…

Life, and desiring is a lot like walking the tight rope. You lean either way too much and you fall off.

I have had a lot of experience falling off, both sides. So I know.

The secret of walking without falling is

awareness of where you are leaning… not easy.
conscious ability to direct your attention
wide cone of vision
certainty… some call it faith.

Continue reading “The big mystery of how to receive for the sake of sharing and get money for you”