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

The many ways to be unhappy, the only way to be happy…

I mean this article to be the first installment in a series.

The underlying principle is the Anna Karenina principle

The Anna Karenina principle
The Anna Karenina principle is: good systems must meet simultaneously a number of requirements. All good systems are alike, bad systems are bad in their own way
Tolstoy said: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Aristotle said: success/failure: …it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult — to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue;
good/bad: …For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

But under the Anna Karenina principle there is an even deeper layer, the cause of the principle, and that is what we are interested in here. Continue reading “The many ways to be unhappy, the only way to be happy…”

The path to freedom and happiness in a world where neither freedom nor happiness are supported

I have gotten to a point in reading Freud’s book where I am now clear where what he says and what I know to be effective in facilitating happiness in humans.

Here is what is going on… psychologically, socially, and maybe even genetically, though that is too deep for my current understanding.

Humans are animals, with the same drives any animal has: the drive to procreate and the drive to aggression to everyone who seems to stand in their way.

Sounds simplistic, but it’s that simple.
Continue reading “The path to freedom and happiness in a world where neither freedom nor happiness are supported”

Sometimes it’s hard to see past the trouble in front of you

I heard this sentence in a Netflix film… and wrote it down quickly. ¹

Anything that threatens your well-being, anything that threatens your reputation, anything that threatens your self-image shows up as trouble, and fixates your view, in an ever narrowing way on the threat. And you stare at it, and see it with the exclusion of everything else.

The challenge is to just look, and allow the urge to do something, to run, to say something, to explain, justify, fix, to just be there…

When you can do that, when you can just look, you are able to bring conscious awareness to what you see.
Continue reading “Sometimes it’s hard to see past the trouble in front of you”

What you are doing now is not working. You deserve better…

What kind of deserving is in that title?

Systemic? Extrinsic? Intrinsic?

Systemic would be: you are on my site, you are reading this, therefore you must be a good person… also deserving?
Extrinsic would be: you have provided me with a lot of value, but what you are doing isn’t getting you the results, the rewards you deserve…
Intrinsic would be: you are a human… deserving a chance at a great life. Of course you need to earn it. Let me show you how to stop what you are doing and teach you a way that is going to work…

Of course I mean the third one. Intrinsically…

I don’t know you. But I know life… And I know that life is more unforgiving than I am.

Because, guess what, you have what you have deserved.

Don’t kill the messenger.

Now, if you want more, better, different than what you have, you need to deserve it. ²
Continue reading “What you are doing now is not working. You deserve better…”

Is a five year old running your life? Running it to the ground?

The knee jerk reaction is, universally, to want to fix what doesn’t work, what doesn’t please us.

“It’s wrong and it needs to be fixed.” you say…

This fixing thing has brought you more misery with every attempt to fix it. The more fixing you do the more unbearable life becomes, and the further the life you wanted to live has moved.

It’s not a mirage, it’s how it is. Not only seem that way. You get deeper into the bind all your fixings caused you.

But yet, every time you see something that doesn’t work as well as you’d like it, you have a new opportunity to fix it and go deeper into misery, or bring conscious awareness to it to see what you can see in the light of conscious awareness.

I will bring my example here. I’ll make it a business example, please indulge me.
Continue reading “Is a five year old running your life? Running it to the ground?”

67-step coaching… I am already loving it

I am getting feedback that the 67 steps program sounds like a get rich quick scheme. It is nothing of the kind. It’s not even about money! It is a deep spiritual inquiry and an education. The education you didn’t get from your parents, the education you didn’t get from school, and definitely not from living. In the right hand it’s like the magic wand… 67 times waved to get to a higher vibration, a higher awareness, a higher consciousness… on your way out of your unfulfilling life…

I am offering four weeks of free coaching to people who buy the 67 steps program through my link. Why am I doing this? Because the 67 steps program is a great way to have direction in the coaching. Otherwise the coaching devolves to complaining and advising… not my favorite kind of coaching. Also the 67 steps drives up stuff I would not be able to detect otherwise. So it is the best deal for me, and the best deal for you.

I have started to coach the 67 steps.

One person active, a few signed up but not active yet… so far, but I have already seen something worth talking about.

I’ve known this client for a few years now. He has made great strides, but has reached a plateau.

In his answers to the 67 steps questions was all cut from the same cloth: all ideas of how to fix something obvious.
Continue reading “67-step coaching… I am already loving it”

One big thinking mistake you’ve kept from early childhood, that is holding you back in life

When you were a little kid, the whole world looked quite magical. Food appeared out of nothing, people did big things, cakes, birthday gifts, all kinds of big things came out of nothing.

The child thinks that this is the nature of reality: big things from nothing.

No wonder the magical thinking modalities, like manifestation and “law of attraction” are so popular: most of you never changed your worldview: you still think that the nature of reality is to jump from one state to the other, create something from nothing…

This was also the secret of Sai Baba, whose whole fame and fortune came from his ability to do sleight of hand magic tricks. Millions fell for it.

But this is not how it happens in nature.

Actually change in nature is based on microscopic changes… 90% of them in the invisible domain, below the earth, inside the cells, where you can’t see it, can’t track it.
Continue reading “One big thinking mistake you’ve kept from early childhood, that is holding you back in life”

Step out of your mind and the noise in your head

Here’s an awareness exercise (meditation) that I particularly like for rejuvenating yourself with silence:

Sit up straight.

Close your eyes.

Take a few deep breaths to settle down. (if you know how to center yourself, you can do it first) Continue reading “Step out of your mind and the noise in your head”

Why, your chances to become worth a damn (dime?), are less than 2%?

First things first: the saying is “become worth a damn.” But a lot of people consider damn a curse word, so they say “become worth a dime”… Oh well, here you have it. Become worth a dime… lol.

Second: let me explain the picture: no teacher is worth a darn, unless the student is able to handle, utilize what the teacher teaches. And therein lies all the difficulty you are experiencing.

As you can, maybe, track, I am becoming obsessed with learning to learn… or more precisely said, teaching you to learn to learn…

Because you have been mislead.

Even MY parents tried to mislead ME… lol.

I was dyslexic, which, as a diagnosis, didn’t exist when I was a child, so they thought I was stupid. So they tried to make me memorize…
Continue reading “Why, your chances to become worth a damn (dime?), are less than 2%?”

How to become worth a damn?

Can someone who listens to an audio, watches a video, reads a book, or even comes to one of my workshops, change?

Long sentence, eh? The answer to this question is this: it depends.

NO input can cause change by itself. The change comes from trying to apply what you read to yourself. Even if the application is just answering one question that requires you to look.

I am finding, that the program I so love, the 67 steps, is completely and absolutely wasted on you, unless you do the looking it takes to answer the one or two or three questions that come with each session.

Why? Because looking, attempting to answer the question, causes a state change. ³ The state inside which you listen is: I agree, I like it, I knew that, interesting, etc. Narrow cone of vision. Sitting in what you already know… undisturbed, untested. Sitting in who you already know yourself to be… undisturbed, untested.

Attempting to look to answer the question from your own life is where the magic happens. When you have to widen your cone of vision to include what you never look at.

It is happening to me in spades. I am at segment 19… Continue reading “How to become worth a damn?”