Friday, November 30, 2018

The illusion of smarts, the illusion of understanding. The pretense to know

That"s me on the picture, 19 years ago... Waiting to get wet on the USA side of Niagara Falls... A perfect example of becoming...
We, humans, negotiate our way in life... with circumstances, schedules, things, and other people. From cradle to grave... we could say, that is life... negotiating every step, winning some and losing some.

But here is the thing: the rules are not clear, not clean, and not overt.

You cannot be sure what constitutes winning, and what constitutes losing a step... in fact, most steps: you have no idea.

But, as society, as a race, we have trained ourselves to pretend: to look as if we knew... maybe even feel as if we knew.

The lower the intellectual capabilities of the individual, the bigger the pretense.

It seems to work: if you nod, if you don"t ask questions, if you look intelligent, people assume you understood, and you earn points, or at least don"t lose some... except when you scratch the surface, when the thing comes up in life, you can see that you didn"t understand, or what you understood is worthless.

If life were a supermarket, you walk away with a cartful of useless junk that creates the toxic landfills of your life.


If you are lucky, you play a big game poorly, if you are not lucky, you play a small game poorly.

My favorite example is Warren Buffet, for many years the richest person on the planet.

Until Charlie Munger, the ultimate second-hander showed up in his life, was playing a small game... he played in a small sandbox, with cheap stocks... Charlie"s contribution was to say: the risk with small stocks is the same as with big stocks... so why not play with bigger stocks... That remark lead to the big money... Warren Buffet proved Charlie Munger right.

Bill Gates started with a really big game... by force-feeding his operating system to every pc user, and kept it big through his reign at Microsoft.

Sam Walton had, from the getgo a big vision... a sort-of world domination Napoleonic vision... his virtual mentee, Jeff Bezos: ditto.

But this article isn"t going to be about the billionaires, per se, this article is really about knowledge and mis-knowledge.

About the culture of authority, and ignorance.


I teach. One person, a group, a whole audience.

I say what i say, and they get what they get.

I only know what they got from what they do, what they share, where the knew knowledge takes them.

I have come to the habit of asking private clients to tell me what they learned.

Why? so I can catch the misunderstandings.

Very few people ever ask clarifying questions... for reasons of their own. Asking intelligent questions is difficult, and so the questions don"t get asked.

I, for example, am slow on the uptake. I don"t put up any resistance, so I take and store what I get, even if it is delivered through a fireman"s hose... and then spend countless hours to regurgitate, chew, ruminate.

Trying to understand is a resistance...


...you won"t allow anything to get through that "filter", so you won"t know how much you missed, and you won"t know how much your filter mistakenly allowed through. In the starting point measurements I measure how much of what is said gets through to you, and that number is, on average, 1-3%... Your forceful desire to understand reduces the firehose to a trickle, that is what you have to work with.

This phenomenon is true whether you are a medical student, a medical doctor, a medical phD, or just a person who is sick...

It"s not what is being said... it is what is being heard that gives the substance of a conversation, a communication.


For example, an MRI scan can show all there is to see (the visible) but the treatment will come from the things the practitioner can see on the MRI, correctly or incorrectly.

All the tests diagnosis is based upon show an unproven theory of how things work... an inexact science used by people with different levels of filters and resistance to input, intellectual capabilities and willingness to work with the data.

Two months ago I fell on my wrist instead of my face...

My wrist, hand, lower arm, even my shoulder got messed up. Royally. I will never have full range of motion, or no pain on my left hand side... A 70 component complicated picture got reduced by the medical establishment to a 2 component picture... and obviously it has as much relationship to reality as a stick figure does to a human... Oh well.

This morning I called a one-time helper of mine to ask for a ride, instead I found out that she was diagnosed and treated for ovarian cancer. Her eyelashes are just growing back, so it"s a recent ordeal.

I muscle tested, and she never had cancer. She had something else...

Ovarian cancer is deadly...

If you are a cancer survivor, you never had cancer.


I know, who do I think I am to say that... I am the one who says that... that I who I am... I ask questions, and more questions, and even more questions... and get closer and closer to a fuller understanding of reality.
Life is negotiating curves and curve balls. Depending on the accuracy of your knowledge, you do better or you do worse.

Cancer, it feels to me, is a spiritual disease... but I am biased...


In Kabbalah I learned that cancer feels the space between you and you, between your precious "I", the pretend "I", the one you protect savagely, and the real you, who you judge mercilessly.

And cancer, an opportunistic pest, simply fills out that space nicely, until it destroys you.

This is such a seductive picture, that I have, it seems, become, for me, how I see the world.

Friends and family rallied around my one time helper... not typical of real cancer patients. She is loved and she is loving.

About 60% of cancer diagnosis is false positive.


What else it could be? I am not sure...

What should you do about cancer... or the threat of it?

Muscle test says that prevention is the word.

When you are willing to bring the two selves closer, reduce the gap, reduce the space... cancer won"t have a fun time filling you up.


But how, you cry?

If you remember, I participated in Landmark Education for 26 years. I observed many Landmark lower level leaders dying of cancer.

Why would that be?

Because when you can become a low level leader with just a little effort and little pretense, many can"t resist it. And now they made it to the dizzying high of seminar leader, for example, or introduction leader, and they can sit on their laurels.

I once had a friend in that position: through thirty or more delivery of the pitch to potential customers, she never bothered to memorize the script she was supposed to say. She was either reading it or winging it...

She was taken by cancer... she was a false king...

A man I knew, trained as an architect, chose to be a bureaucrat instead, with immense power to make or break people... Cancer took him... as it took his equally judgment loving wife. They were some distant relatives of mine, and they used their power, among others, to destroy my career.

Yeah, I would think that cancer is a spiritual disease... and therefore with proper mindset and a lot of effort you can prevent it.


Owning what owns you... your inner turbulence, the self-talk, the false prophets and false values...

One way I have found to it is my Second Phase Activators Course, still at 50% off till the end of the day. My activating about 100 emotional capacities you awaken your inner guidance system, which is dead or near dead for most living humans. I recommend buying the whole course, but if you can"t afford it now, try it on a payment plan... contact me for a personalized payment solution today... or whenever you see the value. Buying just a little bit of the course grandfathers you into the 50% off price... silly, I know, but I want you to have what you need.

Another, much more intense way is my Playground course, where you either stick, or you fall by the wayside...

Neither solutions is painless, or effortless.

One of my best selling products is called "Effortless Abundance"...

Nothing is effortless... and yet, when you are efforting, you produce the opposite of what you wanted.


Life is illogical like that...

No comments:

Post a Comment