I just distinguished something about humility: Humility and growth mindset are synonymous.

Lack of humility and fixed mindset are also synonymous.

From time to time I run experiments where I work with one student beyond what they pay for, to test out a methodology I hope will be instructive and will work for most students.

Most people have a fixed mindset.

What does fixed mindset have to do with skills?

Unfortunately a whole lot. Why unfortunately? Because if you have fixed mindset, you somehow, magically, think that skills are innate and you don’t have to learn them.

But neither knowledge, nor skills are innate: humans were designed to be shaped by their own actions primarily. That means: your genetic heritage counts about 10% of who you are, and 90% comes from environmental influences, including your own efforts, attitudes, and actions.

One will say: bummer. Another will say: thank god.

And both will be right…
Continue reading “I just distinguished something about humility: Humility and growth mindset are synonymous.”

Spiritual Practices to get you out of your prison

Spiritual Practices to get you out of your prison

98575990_24_news_la_346792cThis article is 15 months old. I can track how far I have come in 15 months… And can celebrate… it’s new freedom day for me…

Few people are intelligent.

Intelligence is a state where you can see the sameness, where you see that life has no boundaries.

Of course it seems as if there were boundaries, but it’s an illusion… cells have walls, but it is permeable, you have skin, but it is permeable, you are a human, but you are just like everything else, built of cells, like most every living being, have genes, like every living being, and your body performs chemical miracles, every living moment.

But most importantly, you live as if you were an island.
You are locked into I, and you are locked out of life.

All your fears are a result of living as if you were threatened, the I.

You don’t want your carefully preserved separateness upset, and you know that the work I ask you to do will. Why? because you are NOT intelligent.
Continue reading “Spiritual Practices to get you out of your prison”

Change vs. Becoming. Fixing vs. Becoming. The dead end paths

Change vs. Becoming. Fixing vs. Becoming. The dead end paths

The Mindset book is the perfect accompaniment to the Reclaim coaching program, and the From Upset To Communication course where we learn the fields inside which all of life plays out.

I have questions coming at me that shed light to misunderstanding of what this work is about. What the course is about. What the program is about.

I have asked for this type of questions. I have asked my student to share with me what they are getting, so I can see where they are off… where I was off… what it is that is misconstrued, misunderstood, or not understood in what I teach… It was a great idea, because unless I know what you got, I can’t help you.

It won’t be easy to share it, so please advance to me some compassion: I am walking on some uncharted territories.

1. You may feel, together with some of my students, that it is all about removing the upset, removing the disagreements, removing all confrontation, including how hard, how difficult it is to do something.

Hi Sophie,

I’ve re-listened the call and here’s what I got up to now about fields (if I got it 🙂 :
Fields are an energetic, dynamic space where you (need to) move/go intentionally-consciously so that you can communicate with someone who is already there so that communication flows/leads to a win-win outcome.

In other words, you adjust yourself and ‘switch’ fields according to ‘needs’/situation/circumstance no matter what your usual/’default’ field is (does something like default field exist)

And all that you can do when and if you develop such skills first? And these skills is what we learn in the course?

English is her second language, but here is my translation:

She is asking if the course is to teach you to manipulate yourself, until you can get to a place where your can have no strife… where you please the other person, so they don’t kill you… lol.

No. None of my work is about manipulating, or even changing yourself.

That is the forceful approach to life… the approach that cause wars, fracking, and presidents like Trump.

Strong-arming things, people, yourself.

What is underneath is this: There is something wrong. Something wrong with you, something wrong with me, something wrong with it.

So it is a fixing modality.

Whenever you fix something, the wrongness doesn’t go away, it is there, because it is the core of your being.

The action that takes you to Expanding Human Being is becoming.

The reason we use the worm to butterfly analogy, because no traces of the worm can be found in the butterfly, not physically, not emotionally, not spiritually.

Arrogance cannot be fixed: it will remain in every fixed form.
Forcefulness cannot be fixed: it will remain the core of every fixed form.

Becoming is like the seed needs to die to become a plant.

You cannot wrap your mind around it. It is beyond the mind.

I know people with a ton of knowledge but no distinctions.

Distinction is a new way of seeing the world. A becoming.

My job is to cause becoming through seeing the world differently. Through distinctions.

It is like balance: once you get it no one can take it away from you. But if you haven’t gotten it, you can’t get it through explanation, through reading; you have to go through the process of falling and stumbling until you get it.

This is the main reason that humility is the human capacity to all becoming. Humility means: willing to go through what it takes. And experience what there is to experience while going through it.

No jumps in becoming. The mind doesn’t help. Reading doesn’t help. Only going through does it.

2. The second way to miss this work is, I would call, coloring within the lines.

Here is a post inside our Reclaim program, that may help you to see if you belong to this second group:

I am really in an unfamiliar place. A place where the majority of my conscious time is going towards my plans. I honestly feel like I’m in school again. I’m saying this because I hope that my behavior is a reflection of a greater degree of humility.

Where Tai refers to some guy who says we have about 50,000 hours to get it all done, I pause. Now, I realize the number is relative, but it highlights the importance of staying with the pursuit. I surely don’t know how much time I have.

On another note, there’s something that is bugging me. Forgive me if I mess this up, but if humility is about the seeking of knowledge and not the getting of it, could it be that I and others are lacking the foundation for seeking? It occurred to me that I may not possess something necessary to be a great student. When you said to those of us in the Upset webinar that ‘you are not in the class,’ I was dumbfounded.

Then later, I got more of what you meant, but giving myself to something is mostly a foreign approach. Even as I am taking on about as much as I can, at this moment, I feel scarcity saying: hey, there’s only so much you can do in a day so…. I guess what I’m getting at is: maybe there are levels in the depth of humility that I can take on as I learn to manage my life better.

I even realized that sometimes I ask you questions that you refuse to answer, and rightfully so. However, I didn’t know that I was avoiding doing my own work. I’m not sure I know what questions are appropriate to ask you. Is there a guideline I can use so that I don’t ask you questions that are not for you to answer?

This second way of being off… is fear based.

Actually, even the first way is fear based, but the reaction to fear was different there: it was aggression. Here is hiding, cowering, trying, whimpering, backing away from what feels threatening, unpleasant, or a waste of time.

What you want to get is that intellect is not useful in becoming.

Intellect can be actually in the way.

I had the moment clearly when I got my first distinction. It was taught by Werner Erhard himself, and you could hear that he was struggling, intellectually, himself. You could hear that intellect was trying to take him off.

He was attempting to distinguish two. The number two.

The first distinction that alters the rest of life…

For Helen Keller, it was “Water” that created the birth of the paradigm: words. That words are a symbol, a stand-in, for a thing real, a piece of reality.

The moment she got that, she wanted to know the word that was saying: tree, house, me, you.

The movie “The Miracle Worker” (1962) does a great job at capturing the process, capturing the moment.

For me, the distinction “Two” became my “Water” when Werner held up one hand and said “Two”.

It was one hand. One hand. One hand and no second. One hand and in all around there was no hand… no second…

And when I got, hand and no hand make two. hand and everything else make two… I got distinction.

My “evolution”, my becoming became an unbroken path from there.

Now, was it easy to “get it”?

I don’t think so. I had to be there to have my mind blown. There was one other guy and myself who got it.

But that doesn’t mean YOU can’t get it. But you have to let your mind be blown.

That is humility in action. That is growth mindset in action. Becoming. Growing a set of new eyes.

Everything else is hoarding, fixing, explaining.

Change.

The more things change the more they stay the same…

PS: Becoming is rare. If you read the Mindset book, she documents the opposite… very generously.

Humans’ imagination in inventing false, fake becoming is inexhaustible.

And because people really would like to become, the fake becoming paths sell like hotcake. This is the secret the gurus, spiritual teachers, more money teachers, more love teachers, more time teachers capitalize on.

None of them teach you how to become, in fact they haven’t done the work themselves, they use the tone of voice, the right words that sound like they have become, but they are fooling you, fooling themselves.

And that’s why you feel like you should get a magic potion to turn your beggar into a prince or a princess. With no work.

If enlightenment is the way they describe, then it should descend on you…

But, between you and me, the “water” experience or my “two” experience could be called the real enlightenment… the starting point of an arduous and long journey, climbing up on the Tree of Life.

The Buddha didn’t do it. Osho didn’t do it. “Jesus” didn’t do it.

Enlightenment not considered the starting point is false gold. An insight.

And insights are worth a dime a dozen.

Can you conquer your laziness, your lack of action, your slacker nature… Your sissy nature?

Can you conquer your laziness, your lack of action, your slacker nature… Your sissy nature?

In this article we’ll go deep into what’s going on, inside you, that fails you… We’ll look at different schools of thought to do that. Understanding the inner dynamic is the first step towards success.

That, and knowing that every number in your Starting Point Measurements can be changed… Nothing is fixed. Not even your DNA.

If you look at yourself and your behavior, and then compare it with what you say, what you’ve said, there is rarely any similarity between the person who spoke and the person who acts.

It’s quite confusing.

If the mindpower people were correct, if their model were accurate, your actions would come from your thoughts.

But they don’t… Continue reading “Can you conquer your laziness, your lack of action, your slacker nature… Your sissy nature?”

Who are you being? What is your beingness?

Who are you being?  What is your beingness?

Your being is a paradigm and things show up consistent with your beingness, aka who you are being.

Your being is either a default being or something invented.

A being is always the result of some speaking, inside or outside.

I speak often about turning points in my life. Turning points are points in time where who you are changes… 1

One of them turning points, suddenly I remember, was in 1975. I just left a job where I was unhappy. Nothing new about that: I was happy only a few of the 17 years while I worked as an architect.

I made a decision based on a temporary emotion early that year, and went to a small firm with a good looking boss. I slept with him, and began a descent to a bad place. Really bad…

Continue reading “Who are you being? What is your beingness?”

The hidden dynamic of not-learning and what you can do about it

The hidden dynamic of not-learning and what you can do about it

If you haven’t read the article: “It’s hard but it is not hopeless… Filling the holes in your education” please go back and read it. And make sure you watch the video as well, all 10 minutes. Without that this article here will make absolutely no sense to you. This article builds on that article… like a house is built on a foundation. Clear? Now go back and read. Please.

This new course I am running on the fields of communication is probably more dramatic for me than for my students.

This is an experimental course, which means I am not teaching what I know, I am using the course to unfold aspects of the invisible. Things that cannot be seen from where I have been looking, or from where anyone is looking.

The second is rare, because the insight that comes from that is new in the world.

This is the kind of unfolding happened yesterday. Shook me to my core. Continue reading “The hidden dynamic of not-learning and what you can do about it”

The difference: on the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life?

The difference: on the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life?

What is the biggest difference between living on the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life?

Words are not the thing they symbolize. If you write “dog” that is not a dog, that is just ink on paper, or the idea of a dog.

A dog is physical. It had a beginning and an end, a birth and a death, and it even began before it was born.

It is the result of a physical process that takes time, takes ingredients, takes caring, takes doing.

You cannot go from the idea of a dog to dog, or the idea of death to death.

It is easy and fast, lightning fast, to have an idea. And it is easy to think that ideas are the thing they symbolize.

That happiness comes from words, or being comes from words, or health comes from words.

It is easy to be duped like that. Continue reading “The difference: on the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life?”

Why your brain doesn’t make you a winner… Or is your brain to blame?

Why your brain doesn’t make you a winner… Or is your brain to blame?

I just had one of the most productive Sunday Rant call 2 ever… and I just finished the third book in the Freak series, Think Like a Freak.

Because it is about thinking, and because it is about frames it is right up our alley at this point in time. Continue reading “Why your brain doesn’t make you a winner… Or is your brain to blame?”

How hard can it be? he said while grinding the gears

How hard can it be? he said while grinding the gears

Countries, people, soul corrections, have different attitudes to doing things. 3

Hungary (country), Finish What you Start (soul correction), England (country, ethnicity), especially, have an attitude of “How hard can it be?”

And they fancy themselves all-knowing, all-expert at everything.

My brother calls this the “do it yourself” culture.

And utter disrespect for people with experience, education, expertise. Or for skills, expertise, experience, and learning.

I worked as an architect in Hungary, for 11 years. Every client knew everything better. They considered me their guy who puts the stamp to their plan so they can get a building permit.

My brother was in a different profession, and his experience was the same: no humility, no sense of what it takes to actually be good at something, to see things fully. Continue reading “How hard can it be? he said while grinding the gears”

Why I was miserable for 17 years… I didn’t know until now

Why I was miserable for 17 years… I didn’t know until now

hey coach...As I said in a previous article, I am reading the book, The One Thing.

Most books, just like Tai says, are one-gold-nugget books. Tree of Knowledge. This one is full of gold nuggets. The One Thing book is a Tree of Life book

The nugget I discovered yesterday may be the most important thing I have missed, and I see others miss…

It is and have been in plain sight but at the same time it is invisible, like most new distinctions. Until you see it, you don’t…

The nugget, this new distinction, is the foundation for the Ben Jonson quote from Poor Richard’s Almanac: “He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master” 4

Continue reading “Why I was miserable for 17 years… I didn’t know until now”