What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?

I measure 30 things about a person when they ask for their Starting Point Measurements.

They are all very relevant, but when it comes to the quality of your life, to your life satisfaction, your experience of your life... one could almost say, the level of your happiness depends on one thing.

The level of your happiness depends on one thing

The culture claims that to be happy, you have to have possession, you have to have success, you have to have comfort, safety, fulfillment, companionship, whatever, and, to some degree it may matter but not as much as the number, the measure, just one number told me why 99.99% of the people I have ever measured had a low life satisfaction, even though some had money, success, love even talent... seemingly everything you"d ever wanted.

There is a guy (Steve Siebold) whose entire business is to teach people how to have that number higher. He calls that phenomenon mental toughness.

The weird thing is: his TLB is high with 10. My TLB is 70...

I don"t know how to teach you to raise that number...

What is the meaning of TLB?

https://youtu.be/fc2zO0tJ50c

this little girl"s TLB, is 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwl0WksAiq8

this second little girl"s tlb is 1

What is the difference? the first girl, even though she perceives the seeming danger, stays put... the second runs away, returns, the fear is running her behavior. The beginnings of a future drama queen... I bet she fancies herself courageous...

To the degree that you can handle life, the ups and the downs, the unfulfilled expectations, the thwarted intentions, the "rejections", the restrictions, being told what to do,  the successes, the challenges, the hardships, the failures, the slights, the hurts, the pain, the obstacles, hunger, boredom, tediousness, worry, your own fear, your own bad habits... to the degree that you can handle it to the same degree you handle life.

The guy I am talking about teaches mental toughness... that is his expertise.

I don"t know how he teaches it, I just know the "slogans" he sends... I get them in my email. They are OK, but I don"t think they can ever change anything.

I train you through doing... facing what is not pleasant. But for you to be able to do it, you need to clean up your past. Your emotional short-circuits... misunderstandings, your drama-queen nature.

In my Playground program you have a year for you to learn to handle anything that life can throw at you.

You are starting at having no toughness. And your children will have even less. [note]You going to bat to "save" your child is a disfavor, a disservice to them. The mother who tries to protect the child from his father"s cruelty, the father who tries to protect the child from bullies, the parent who consoles the child, babies the child, who doesn"t let the child to toughen up is committing a selfish act that is against the child"s real interest... to be able to handle what life throws at him.
.
Instead you need to be like a coach: encourage them to rise above the abuse, the injustice, the misfortune... above all.
.
Of course, if you are a sissy yourself, you have no credibility with your child.
.
Also if you are intolerant with your child, you teach them that intolerance is a good thing... ugh.[/note]

The ability to allow what is, what we call reality to be... without the urge to fix it, change it, fight it, or lie about it.

TLB is a moment to moment ability.

Anything and everything you can"t deal with, can"t be with, cannot be neutral about is something that is, until you learn to deal with it, will be like the bad weather... that always rains on your parade.

Your parade is what you have planned your life to be. Smooth sailing into the sunset, full of love, comfort, riches, success, validation... whatnot... where people always keep their word to you, where you only learn about other people"s failures, but you don"t know how it feels. Where you win, and win and win, everything, all the time. People are there only to make you look good... in fact better than them.

So, you can see, that everything and everyone will always rain on your parade, because your unrealistic expectations are in the way.

Life is the way life is.

I have spoken about going, bodily, down the rapids... a river, a lot of water, noisily going down the mountain. That is life. It is not smooth sailing, it is full of rocks, and turns, and opportunities to let the water take you.

The water"s nature is to go around the rocks... but your nature is controlling... and what controlling does to you is resisting being taken wherever the water goes... resisting will as surely slam you into the rocks, as anything you can be sure of.

There is the fantasy: your parade... and then there is reality... the fast running rapid with the rocks.

As long as, and to the degree as you resist going with the flow, you get bloodied... and that is how life works in reality. Fantasy is nice... but don"t mistake it with reality, don"t even mistake it with what is possible... it is not.

• In reality people only care about themselves, and so do you.


• In reality people want to dominate... and so do you


• In reality people are forceful, violent, selfish, judgmental, cowardly, unjust, and so are you.


• They will want to win every argument. They will want to have you do their bidding, feel bad about yourself, and so do you.

Anything that you allow to be will allow you to be. Everything you resist persists.

In the rapid, if you can allow the water to take you, not like a victim, but as a graceful dancer who allows the music, their partner to lead, have enormous power with very little effort.

And resisting the water, resisting the speed, resisting the direction... by lying, by sideways moves, by avoiding domination, by trying to win... will surely slam you into boulders.

The most resistant soul correction is the Silent Partner. They have moves to avoid domination every moment of every day. They are the losers of Life... never in it.

Every Silent Partner I have ever attempted to teach, resisted it. They had talent that they never took to mastery. They argued, they resisted, they hated, they were stingy.

In my writeup I talk about a power they refuse to avail themselves to. The power of the soul... the triangle that can start moving when embraced with ego... The Silent Partner refuses to move.

I have been using my interactions with Silent Partner people to increase my own TLB, to make myself not resist them, not force them, allow them to be how they are, who they are, not having the opinion and attitude that what they do, who they are being is wrong. It"s OK if I don"t like it... that is being responsible for my opinion and attitude. Saying they are wrong is putting the onus, the responsibility for my happiness on them.

Allowing something that you see as wrong is the hardest thing a human is asked to do. I am right there with you. Unless you can own that YOU say that it"s wrong, and you saying doesn"t make IT wrong, you are stuck with it. Until you own what you can own... that you said that.

It is not a simple feat... it has stages, elements, parts, effects, ripples that unless you can allow them one by one, you will not succeed.

I am sitting here feeling grief, and it is like a huge boulder sitting on my chest. Obviously I am not allowing it, because it"s been sitting there for about an hour now... It is hard to breathe deeply, the boulder is heavy... feels like it will crush me if I don"t resist it.

All the voodoo meditators, new agers, massage therapists teach you about releasing the tension don"t apply here... you cannot breathe you out of resistance... you cannot do it through relaxing the muscles.

It has to be on the cognitive level, the seeing level.

So how could I see something other than what i see, that it"s wrong, it is sad, it shouldn"t be that all my efforts fail with these Silent Partner people?

Hm, just saying this made the boulder lighter... What did I say? I said what is actually happening in reality: I effort, and the efforts produce nothing... i.e. fail to produce. Good, it seems that looking at reality, what is actually happening, makes the boulder less heavy...

Let"s go a little bit deeper: all I have been doing, all my efforts thus far, failed to produce the result I intended.

I am like Sisyphus: I am doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result... hm. I am right in what I want... and the darn Silent Partner people are wrong, wrong, wrong... lol. I am smiling now... not laughing yet, but getting there.

They have the audacity to do what they want to do... and enjoy watching me sweat bullets... and they are winning. I wanted to win for them... ok, that is probably a lie... I wanted to win.

The boulder is now replaced with a very recognizable ego-pain in the chest bone... hah... so it has been, maybe, a battle of egos?

From the disappearance of any pain in my chest, I think I got it. It is not funny, but I can be with it... I can take ownership of my ego-behavior... forcing them so I can win.

Not pretty. Not what I"d really want... is it? A little more grief... now this is with myself. Droopy face... trying to get the soul"s sympathy... getting some nice-nice... as the two wolves embrace. Weeping a little.

Big sigh... blowing out the breath like a horse...

Is it gone? For now, for sure...

Can you do it? I have no idea!
Was this instructional? I have no idea!

We shall see... lol.

Let me measure my TLB after this "work" I did with myself. It is 75... I just earned 5 points... with a few minutes of expert work.

Ultimately this is the work I ask you to do in the Playground. Going to see what in reality you cannot be with, refuse to be with, refuse to not call wrong.

I designed the Playground to take you through situations that, like the rapid river, slam you into boulders. Upsets.

One of the most important tools is the 20-day learning challenge... it is part of the Playground.

If you are not participating in the challenge: you know you are not doing the work, so you can stop expecting ANY results in the Playground.

The other important tool is the Partner Calls... If you are not willing to see the movie of the incident, from the side, with every detail, until you see that in reality there is nothing wrong, if you don"t call a spade a spade, if you don"t see the forest for the trees, your behavior, your attitude, other people"s behavior, then you won"t get the results of the Playground.

The Playground is at least one year long. Because it takes a lot of looking before you can see... and see clearly, distinctly, accurately, and with courage.

I am re-writing the script of the "looking"... hoping that it will make you, that it will force you to see what you are lying about.

The Playground is now open for new participants

And I am ready to take on some new participants... So if you think you are willing to put your big toe into the water, you can.


Get your Starting Point MeasurementsThe Playground is broken up to six modules, so you don"t have to commit to the whole thing... neither the time, nor the money.

You do have access to the recordings of previous and ongoing Playgrounds.

You pay for the two live sessions, the personal feedback, the privilege to email me questions, the partner calls and the learning challenges you undertake.

And just like Chinese water torture, you"ll either allow the course to make a difference, or you won"t...

Chinese Water Torture?

People call it torture, because unless you allow it it feels like torture.

Is it the dripping water that is torture? No, it is your resistance to it.

If you can allow the dripping water, it cleanses you, it gives you a sense of time, it puts you in a meditative state: beautiful.

I have been using a sound device for health reasons. It is loud, and it works whether I use it day and night... but it works best if I use it around the clock.

Depending on my attitude, it is obnoxious, irritating, a pain... like Chinese torture... and it hurts in my belly and around my waist. I feel my resistance as I am trying on the attitude of resistance.

In the beginning I was contemplating using ear plugs so I can sleep. But little by little, I allowed the sound to just be... it had nothing to do with me.

Even today, when I need to connect deeply to Source because I am doing a Starting Point Measurements muscle testing, I need to consciously allow the sound so I can connect. If and when I resist anything, I cannot connect.

I am getting really good at not resisting.

I am sleeping better with it than without it... fall asleep faster... not resisting is a lot like resisting: when you resist something you have to suppress everything... when you let go, you let go of all resistance.

I am starting to see results everywhere. I have more fun, I have more joy, I am more able to keep my diet rules I made to keep myself well and in top form. I am walking more. There is an overall improvement in my life... the sound device has been training me.

Chinese water torture... that is my selling point... I wonder how many people groan when they hear that... lol.

Most of humanity is on level 1% with regards to their TLB. TLB measures to what degree you are able to be with what is, to what degree you deal with what life throws at you.

Chinese water torture breaks the people who cannot deal with adversity, pain, the ugly... it wouldn"t break me... like it wouldn"t break Wesley in the movie Princess Bride...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFo6iLDNzX0

Hey, unless your TLB goes higher, you"ll remain comfortable, and miserable. It"s OK with me. Is it OK with you?

In the Playground you can toughen up, so you can start living a life with more fun, more meaning, more results...


Get your Starting Point Measurements

What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?

I measure 30 things about a person when they ask for their Starting Point Measurements.

They are all very relevant, but when it comes to the quality of your life, to your life satisfaction, your experience of your life... one could almost say, the level of your happiness depends on one thing.

The level of your happiness depends on one thing

The culture claims that to be happy, you have to have possession, you have to have success, you have to have comfort, safety, fulfillment, companionship, whatever, and, to some degree it may matter but not as much as the number, the measure, just one number told me why 99.99% of the people I have ever measured had a low life satisfaction, even though some had money, success, love even talent... seemingly everything you"d ever wanted.

There is a guy (Steve Siebold) whose entire business is to teach people how to have that number higher. He calls that phenomenon mental toughness.

The weird thing is: his TLB is high with 10. My TLB is 70...

I don"t know how to teach you to raise that number...

What is the meaning of TLB?

https://youtu.be/fc2zO0tJ50c

this little girl"s TLB, is 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwl0WksAiq8

this second little girl"s tlb is 1

What is the difference? the first girl, even though she perceives the seeming danger, stays put... the second runs away, returns, the fear is running her behavior. The beginnings of a future drama queen... I bet she fancies herself courageous...

To the degree that you can handle life, the ups and the downs, the unfulfilled expectations, the thwarted intentions, the "rejections", the restrictions, being told what to do,  the successes, the challenges, the hardships, the failures, the slights, the hurts, the pain, the obstacles, hunger, boredom, tediousness, worry, your own fear, your own bad habits... to the degree that you can handle it to the same degree you handle life.

The guy I am talking about teaches mental toughness... that is his expertise.

I don"t know how he teaches it, I just know the "slogans" he sends... I get them in my email. They are OK, but I don"t think they can ever change anything.

I train you through doing... facing what is not pleasant. But for you to be able to do it, you need to clean up your past. Your emotional short-circuits... misunderstandings, your drama-queen nature.

In my Playground program you have a year for you to learn to handle anything that life can throw at you.

You are starting at having no toughness. And your children will have even less. [note]You going to bat to "save" your child is a disfavor, a disservice to them. The mother who tries to protect the child from his father"s cruelty, the father who tries to protect the child from bullies, the parent who consoles the child, babies the child, who doesn"t let the child to toughen up is committing a selfish act that is against the child"s real interest... to be able to handle what life throws at him.
.
Instead you need to be like a coach: encourage them to rise above the abuse, the injustice, the misfortune... above all.
.
Of course, if you are a sissy yourself, you have no credibility with your child.
.
Also if you are intolerant with your child, you teach them that intolerance is a good thing... ugh.[/note]

The ability to allow what is, what we call reality to be... without the urge to fix it, change it, fight it, or lie about it.

TLB is a moment to moment ability.

Anything and everything you can"t deal with, can"t be with, cannot be neutral about is something that is, until you learn to deal with it, will be like the bad weather... that always rains on your parade.

Your parade is what you have planned your life to be. Smooth sailing into the sunset, full of love, comfort, riches, success, validation... whatnot... where people always keep their word to you, where you only learn about other people"s failures, but you don"t know how it feels. Where you win, and win and win, everything, all the time. People are there only to make you look good... in fact better than them.

So, you can see, that everything and everyone will always rain on your parade, because your unrealistic expectations are in the way.

Life is the way life is.

I have spoken about going, bodily, down the rapids... a river, a lot of water, noisily going down the mountain. That is life. It is not smooth sailing, it is full of rocks, and turns, and opportunities to let the water take you.

The water"s nature is to go around the rocks... but your nature is controlling... and what controlling does to you is resisting being taken wherever the water goes... resisting will as surely slam you into the rocks, as anything you can be sure of.

There is the fantasy: your parade... and then there is reality... the fast running rapid with the rocks.

As long as, and to the degree as you resist going with the flow, you get bloodied... and that is how life works in reality. Fantasy is nice... but don"t mistake it with reality, don"t even mistake it with what is possible... it is not.

• In reality people only care about themselves, and so do you.


• In reality people want to dominate... and so do you


• In reality people are forceful, violent, selfish, judgmental, cowardly, unjust, and so are you.


• They will want to win every argument. They will want to have you do their bidding, feel bad about yourself, and so do you.

Anything that you allow to be will allow you to be. Everything you resist persists.

In the rapid, if you can allow the water to take you, not like a victim, but as a graceful dancer who allows the music, their partner to lead, have enormous power with very little effort.

And resisting the water, resisting the speed, resisting the direction... by lying, by sideways moves, by avoiding domination, by trying to win... will surely slam you into boulders.

The most resistant soul correction is the Silent Partner. They have moves to avoid domination every moment of every day. They are the losers of Life... never in it.

Every Silent Partner I have ever attempted to teach, resisted it. They had talent that they never took to mastery. They argued, they resisted, they hated, they were stingy.

In my writeup I talk about a power they refuse to avail themselves to. The power of the soul... the triangle that can start moving when embraced with ego... The Silent Partner refuses to move.

I have been using my interactions with Silent Partner people to increase my own TLB, to make myself not resist them, not force them, allow them to be how they are, who they are, not having the opinion and attitude that what they do, who they are being is wrong. It"s OK if I don"t like it... that is being responsible for my opinion and attitude. Saying they are wrong is putting the onus, the responsibility for my happiness on them.

Allowing something that you see as wrong is the hardest thing a human is asked to do. I am right there with you. Unless you can own that YOU say that it"s wrong, and you saying doesn"t make IT wrong, you are stuck with it. Until you own what you can own... that you said that.

It is not a simple feat... it has stages, elements, parts, effects, ripples that unless you can allow them one by one, you will not succeed.

I am sitting here feeling grief, and it is like a huge boulder sitting on my chest. Obviously I am not allowing it, because it"s been sitting there for about an hour now... It is hard to breathe deeply, the boulder is heavy... feels like it will crush me if I don"t resist it.

All the voodoo meditators, new agers, massage therapists teach you about releasing the tension don"t apply here... you cannot breathe you out of resistance... you cannot do it through relaxing the muscles.

It has to be on the cognitive level, the seeing level.

So how could I see something other than what i see, that it"s wrong, it is sad, it shouldn"t be that all my efforts fail with these Silent Partner people?

Hm, just saying this made the boulder lighter... What did I say? I said what is actually happening in reality: I effort, and the efforts produce nothing... i.e. fail to produce. Good, it seems that looking at reality, what is actually happening, makes the boulder less heavy...

Let"s go a little bit deeper: all I have been doing, all my efforts thus far, failed to produce the result I intended.

I am like Sisyphus: I am doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result... hm. I am right in what I want... and the darn Silent Partner people are wrong, wrong, wrong... lol. I am smiling now... not laughing yet, but getting there.

They have the audacity to do what they want to do... and enjoy watching me sweat bullets... and they are winning. I wanted to win for them... ok, that is probably a lie... I wanted to win.

The boulder is now replaced with a very recognizable ego-pain in the chest bone... hah... so it has been, maybe, a battle of egos?

From the disappearance of any pain in my chest, I think I got it. It is not funny, but I can be with it... I can take ownership of my ego-behavior... forcing them so I can win.

Not pretty. Not what I"d really want... is it? A little more grief... now this is with myself. Droopy face... trying to get the soul"s sympathy... getting some nice-nice... as the two wolves embrace. Weeping a little.

Big sigh... blowing out the breath like a horse...

Is it gone? For now, for sure...

Can you do it? I have no idea!
Was this instructional? I have no idea!

We shall see... lol.

Let me measure my TLB after this "work" I did with myself. It is 75... I just earned 5 points... with a few minutes of expert work.

Ultimately this is the work I ask you to do in the Playground. Going to see what in reality you cannot be with, refuse to be with, refuse to not call wrong.

I designed the Playground to take you through situations that, like the rapid river, slam you into boulders. Upsets.

One of the most important tools is the 20-day learning challenge... it is part of the Playground.

If you are not participating in the challenge: you know you are not doing the work, so you can stop expecting ANY results in the Playground.

The other important tool is the Partner Calls... If you are not willing to see the movie of the incident, from the side, with every detail, until you see that in reality there is nothing wrong, if you don"t call a spade a spade, if you don"t see the forest for the trees, your behavior, your attitude, other people"s behavior, then you won"t get the results of the Playground.

The Playground is at least one year long. Because it takes a lot of looking before you can see... and see clearly, distinctly, accurately, and with courage.

I am re-writing the script of the "looking"... hoping that it will make you, that it will force you to see what you are lying about.

The Playground is now open for new participants

And I am ready to take on some new participants... So if you think you are willing to put your big toe into the water, you can.


Get your Starting Point MeasurementsThe Playground is broken up to six modules, so you don"t have to commit to the whole thing... neither the time, nor the money.

You do have access to the recordings of previous and ongoing Playgrounds.

You pay for the two live sessions, the personal feedback, the privilege to email me questions, the partner calls and the learning challenges you undertake.

And just like Chinese water torture, you"ll either allow the course to make a difference, or you won"t...

Chinese Water Torture?

People call it torture, because unless you allow it it feels like torture.

Is it the dripping water that is torture? No, it is your resistance to it.

If you can allow the dripping water, it cleanses you, it gives you a sense of time, it puts you in a meditative state: beautiful.

I have been using a sound device for health reasons. It is loud, and it works whether I use it day and night... but it works best if I use it around the clock.

Depending on my attitude, it is obnoxious, irritating, a pain... like Chinese torture... and it hurts in my belly and around my waist. I feel my resistance as I am trying on the attitude of resistance.

In the beginning I was contemplating using ear plugs so I can sleep. But little by little, I allowed the sound to just be... it had nothing to do with me.

Even today, when I need to connect deeply to Source because I am doing a Starting Point Measurements muscle testing, I need to consciously allow the sound so I can connect. If and when I resist anything, I cannot connect.

I am getting really good at not resisting.

I am sleeping better with it than without it... fall asleep faster... not resisting is a lot like resisting: when you resist something you have to suppress everything... when you let go, you let go of all resistance.

I am starting to see results everywhere. I have more fun, I have more joy, I am more able to keep my diet rules I made to keep myself well and in top form. I am walking more. There is an overall improvement in my life... the sound device has been training me.

Chinese water torture... that is my selling point... I wonder how many people groan when they hear that... lol.

Most of humanity is on level 1% with regards to their TLB. TLB measures to what degree you are able to be with what is, to what degree you deal with what life throws at you.

Chinese water torture breaks the people who cannot deal with adversity, pain, the ugly... it wouldn"t break me... like it wouldn"t break Wesley in the movie Princess Bride...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFo6iLDNzX0

Hey, unless your TLB goes higher, you"ll remain comfortable, and miserable. It"s OK with me. Is it OK with you?

In the Playground you can toughen up, so you can start living a life with more fun, more meaning, more results...


Get your Starting Point Measurements

Why getting well is so difficult for us...

There is never a better time to experience what you experience, than right when you experience it.

This morning I was hit with a strong feeling of despair, loneliness.

I didn"t have time to hang out with it, I was in the middle of something. I wanted to shoo it away, and I also wanted to indulge in it.

But then I decided to just feel it, acknowledge it, and let it go. I paid attention to what it said... nodded, wept a little, and let it go.

Is this familiar to you? I didn"t think so. You don"t know who you are, and you don"t want to find out.
There are many reasons you don"t know yourself.
One of these reasons is that you resist your emotions.
Download the pdf version of this article at the end of the article

CLICK TO CONTINUE

Following a script or doing your way... what is predictable?

Why do I read my (and your) Rob Brezsny horoscope every Tuesday? Do I believe that they foretell the future?

I don"t.

But every horoscope, yours or mine, gives me a different vantage point to life, a filter, a frame, through which I can see what is not visible (for me) through my day-to-day frame...

The exact same thing was true about listening to the 67 steps by Tai Lopez.

On average I took a redirection of my vantage point five times a week for three years by the 67 steps. Plus 52 times a year by Rob Brezsny.

To change from where you look, you need to step back, tear away your eyes from how you are looking at things now, and consciously move your attention to a new place, a new frame, a new vantage point.

Most people are stuck with one way to look, in every area of life... like the 35 year old man who still whines that his daddy is mean to him.

Sayin "mean" is a fixed way of looking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySvAs5ppkRw

It is not that most people cannot change their vantage point: no. Most people are unwilling to do it.

Here is an example: I have a script to use (in the Playground course) to look at incidents in your life. Incidents that are unpleasant. Incidents that are accompanied with an unpleasant emotion. Resistance, fear, grief, anger... you have many of those unpleasant emotions.

This script takes you on a journey. Looking at the present, looking at different things in your past. It"s a journey that takes time, because you need to shift your attention many times during the journey... instead of getting stuck in a predictable view, like you have been, however old you are.

The script tells you what question to ask, where to look, what you should focus on in each vantage point, in a certain order. Exactly.

Most people try to do the script from memory, and, or course, get in stuck in their favorite and most ineffective view of life...

They use that view to justify how they are... lazy, self-righteous, stupid, abusive, exploitative, [note]exploitative: making use of a situation or treating others unfairly in order to gain an advantage or benefit.[/note] naive, demanding, dominating, angry, intolerant, using others, duping others, hapless, incompetent, cowardly, boastful, shifty.

Now, you need to remember that there is nothing wrong with being that way... yes, they are ugly, yes, but not wrong. Ugly is ugly, not wrong. These students cannot allow themselves to be that way, the the way they are, so they are stuck.

Anything that you allow to be, will allow you to be. [note]Notice that the law of attraction people say the opposite... If nothing else, this should tell you what they are up to: enslave you forever. Not that it is wrong... :-( by the way[/note]

You cannot move out of a behavior that you cannot allow, that you cannot own. Why? I am not sure why... just like I am not sure about a lot of why"s in reality, I am only sure that it is that way.

And while they are not able or not willing to allow, to own that thing about themselves, they also hate that about themselves.

Complicated? Hell yeah... You and everyone has layers upon layers of contradictory behaviors that if you can own, each, one at a time, you can really peel them away to find yourself.

Every psychological test addresses these layers, not the self. You are none of those layers, even if your behavior would suggest that you are.

Your Self, surprisingly, is an empty space... a space for everything. When nothing is fixed, when nothing fills that space, then everything is possible.

The layers, masquerading as self, are fixed, feel fixed, feel real... but they keep you stuck in behaviors you don"t like, behaviors that don"t get you what you want, don"t get you where you want to get to.

Like my student whose top layers of behavior is to be overly enthusiastic, overly dramatic, overly sweet... ugh. But what is underneath is hiding there... a second layer of forceful, wanting to win... And who knows how many layers below that is the Self... sigh... It takes work. It takes a process. done again and again.

In the process, especially the "script" addressing the incidents in the Playground, is an excellent way to highlight the layers, own them, and peel them away... Loving them, hating them, let them go. None of it is you.

If you are willing to let go, if you are willing to look, if you are willing to identify them accurately without explanation, without justification.

This process, on average, takes hours of looking before you can actually see. It is hard to do it in a call, in a conversation with someone. If you don"t do any of the work on your own, you"ll be only able to see what you have always seen... because that is the surface, the easy to see.

One of my students has asked me the favor of doing the process, daily and document them emails to me.

It"s a tad more than a normal email coaching... it buys her an hour of my time for about 5 cents on the dollar. But as an experiment it has shown me that it can be done... Yay.

She is one of the students who had been unwilling to follow the script, and therefore were stuck. She was stuck with fixing something that was never wrong. And then fixing it again, and again, and again, unsuccessfully.

You cannot fix what is not wrong... you can cover it up, explain it away, lie about it, hate it, pretend to laugh about it (that is her method, the laughter), but not fix it. Because only what is wrong can be fixed. And as usual, the fix is the next "wrong"... bigger, fatter, harder, more complicated that the thing that you tried to fix.

She has looked, so far, at two recent and two past incidents, but her "about-me" score has dropped from 99% to 50%. That is what I am talking about... lol.

Many, maybe most parents are always unhappy with their children.

The children don"t do what they are expected to do, make the parent proud, make the parent happy, make the parent feel good about themselves. Or prove to the parent that they, the parents, are smart, that they are good, that they are right, that they are powerful. Or prove to the parents that their genes are special... or that it was worth hanging in their with their spouses... the fruit is good.

So unhappy parents do all kinds of things to their children to express their dissatisfaction, or to assert their power, or to change them into something they can be happy about.

You can call these actions cruelty, violence, abuse. They are. No excuse.

The child isn"t allowed to be themselves. They don"t feel loved. They wait for the next abusive incident. They grow up to be like the parent: wretched, and they pass on the abuse.

You can"t fix the children, because there has never been anything wrong with them. There was never anything wrong with what they did. And, surprise, there was never anything wrong with what YOU did either, the parent.

It is not wrong to be stupid, violent, angry, unforgiving, intolerant, or any of the ugly things you do, any of the ugly things your parents did. There is nothing wrong with not loving or not liking your offspring. You can"t fix it. You have no control over what you feel.

You have control over what belongs to you: what you say and what you do and where you look from.

In the Playground we assert that what we see is what gives us what we say, what we see is what gives us our actions.

So we don"t try to work with what we say. Not even with what we do. We only look at what we see and attempt to influence it. Direct our attention. Take it through frames. If we are willing to look from those frames, what we see will change. Little by little. Slowly.

I have a real hard time identifying with you if you consider that keeping what you see as wrong is a benefit to you.

The "benefits" (we call them payoffs) are all ego-benefits, benefits to the dark wolf only, not to you, the person.

• Being right about what is wrong? A benefit? Really?


• Look good while you are cheating, stealing, duping, or lazing about? Are you kidding?


• Avoiding domination of your own word, of your soul, or anything you ever wanted... it it really worth it? A benefit?


• Immediately justifying, explaining your behavior... instead of owning it. Seeing that you did that. Seeing that it didn"t work... is that a real benefit to you to justify it so you can keep it? Long term?


• And forever declaring yourself as someone who can never cause anything, because you can"t... no matter what you do... because you are a victim of yourself, a victim of your "bad" character, a victim of your feelings, a victim of the world... even though by owning what you did you could be free to soar?

So I have a real hard time identifying with you. So much that if anything, this gives me the unpleasant times I need to deal with.

In yesterday"s article I said that I am a 70% TLB... Twitchy Little Bastard, who cannot leave things alone, cannot allow things to be the way they are.

Guilty as charged.

When I look at it, it makes me feel powerless that I can"t make a difference for you.

It takes me back to incidents (quite a few!) where I was accused with things I didn"t do, wasn"t guilty of, and the label was stuck on me... and obviously I am still fighting it.

There is no end to doing the peeling away the false selves, the labels you or other people put on you...

I"ll do this exercise now that I noticed something in the different vantage point I was looking from to write this article, strictly following the script, with the intention to see that there was never anything wrong in reality, even when I was accused of things i didn"t do.

Doctor heal thyself...

Law of Attraction vs. Victim Mentality... Choose!

I wrote this article back in 2007, when I was in Pam Ragland"s course...

I want to address the phenomenon of the "Law of Attraction" vs. "victim mentality" in today"s post.

Most of us interpret the Law of Attraction as a kind of "Cosmic Soup Kitchen" where you sit at a table, a waitperson comes and takes your order, and then you wait for your order to come.

Sometimes your order comes, sometimes it doesn"t. Sometimes you get something totally different, something that you didn"t want.

Some people"s order comes faster than yours, some others" slower, or never.

It all seems random, and capricious. Like the Universe is playing a game with you.

Frustrating to most, happy and great for some. It seems like there are chosen people, or lucky, and something invisible marks YOU as the one who should never get ahead, never get what you want.

You follow the instructions in The Secret, and still nothing.

You can taste the sweet success as you are playing it in your mind"s eye, over and over again. Still, Nothing.

I will turn to MY major source of wisdom, the Kabbalah, or the Book of Splendor (The Zohar).

Why? Because it has an answer that I have seen working, all the time.

The answer to this above dilemma is explained in the scene where Moses is leading the Israelites out of Egypt, they reach the shores of the Red Sea, and the Pharaoh"s army is in close pursuit, breathing down their neck.

The Israelites drop on their knees, and cry out to The Creator. A voice comes out of nowhere and says:

Why are you praying? Go into the water!

Moses and the Israelites start walking into the water, that gets deeper and deeper, until it reaches their chin. Then they walk some more, and the waters split, and they can walk across to the other side.When the Pharaoh"s army gets there, the waters already seal themselves, and the Israelites are safe.

Interesting story, but it is much more than a story. It is the key to activating the Law of Attraction: after you place your "order" in the "Cosmic Kitchen," you need to get into action with certainty, that what you ordered is a done deal.

That act of certainty and courage to go almost all the way is what finally activates the Law. Waiting won"t.

Now, I know that one of the missing pieces is really, really, really, courage. Or better with capitalized: Courage.

I have been of the opinion, after coaching thousands, that the world suffers from courage deficiency.

Courage deficiency is much like calcium deficiency... you cannot assimilate calcium if you don"t have Vitamin C, or if your stomach acid is too weak. And you will flush your calcium if you don"t have some other minerals... I can"t remember, maybe Magnesium?

The same is with Courage. What is taking up the space that Courage should occupy? I say: Fear. I say: mostly unidentified Fear. Because, at least some of us, idle, not acting courageously, don"t know we are afraid. We seem to be reasonable, justified by the economy, by lack of time, lack of knowledge, tiredness, feeling weak, we don"t know what to do, we don"t know how to do it, we don"t see we can win, it is hard... whatever.

If we knew we are afraid, we would at least have a choice about summoning courage...

In my absolutely favorite movie, "Defending Your Life" our hero, played by Albert Brooks, accidentally activates Courage, by seeing that he will spend of the rest of his lives without Julia, played by Merryl Streep, and that is so unbearable, that his courage kicks in, maybe the first time in his life. But it changes how things go from there... he gets what he always wished for, the girl of his dreams. By the way, he acts on the principle of the stick, from the carrot and stick... I do too. It is how to make me go to action, summon courage... yeah.

Now, we could all wait for a circumstance like that, or activate Courage by being a Powerful Manager (tm) in your own life.

Let"s return to the imagery I set up with Moses and the Red Sea: I had a realization today, that my MO (modus operandi) is such that I need to be thrown into the water, and THEN I "invent" swimming. Planning first and acting second  is not my MO.

But unfortunately, for the most part, there is no one to throw you into the water. So you need to do it yourself... So that is my / your next step, to become brilliant at that...

Because going into the water is not an event: every day, when you wake up, you need to do it again... just like the rooster needs to crow every dawn.

I call this being a Powerful Manager(tm) in your life: put yourself into a situation where it is either swim or sink... and then start swimming. The style of swimming won"t matter much: only that you swim.

Your instinct will kick in, and you will swim and "take it home" whatever you were going after. The Universal Law of Attraction activates itself with that courageous act of throwing yourself into the water.

What seems to be YOUR biggest stumbling block to activating The Law Of Attraction? Use the comment form to share

Law of Attraction vs. Victim Mentality... Choose!

I wrote this article back in 2007, when I was in Pam Ragland"s course...

I want to address the phenomenon of the "Law of Attraction" vs. "victim mentality" in today"s post.

Most of us interpret the Law of Attraction as a kind of "Cosmic Soup Kitchen" where you sit at a table, a waitperson comes and takes your order, and then you wait for your order to come.

Sometimes your order comes, sometimes it doesn"t. Sometimes you get something totally different, something that you didn"t want.

Some people"s order comes faster than yours, some others" slower, or never.

It all seems random, and capricious. Like the Universe is playing a game with you.

Frustrating to most, happy and great for some. It seems like there are chosen people, or lucky, and something invisible marks YOU as the one who should never get ahead, never get what you want.

You follow the instructions in The Secret, and still nothing.

You can taste the sweet success as you are playing it in your mind"s eye, over and over again. Still, Nothing.

I will turn to MY major source of wisdom, the Kabbalah, or the Book of Splendor (The Zohar).

Why? Because it has an answer that I have seen working, all the time.

The answer to this above dilemma is explained in the scene where Moses is leading the Israelites out of Egypt, they reach the shores of the Red Sea, and the Pharaoh"s army is in close pursuit, breathing down their neck.

The Israelites drop on their knees, and cry out to The Creator. A voice comes out of nowhere and says:

Why are you praying? Go into the water!

Moses and the Israelites start walking into the water, that gets deeper and deeper, until it reaches their chin. Then they walk some more, and the waters split, and they can walk across to the other side.When the Pharaoh"s army gets there, the waters already seal themselves, and the Israelites are safe.

Interesting story, but it is much more than a story. It is the key to activating the Law of Attraction: after you place your "order" in the "Cosmic Kitchen," you need to get into action with certainty, that what you ordered is a done deal.

That act of certainty and courage to go almost all the way is what finally activates the Law. Waiting won"t.

Now, I know that one of the missing pieces is really, really, really, courage. Or better with capitalized: Courage.

I have been of the opinion, after coaching thousands, that the world suffers from courage deficiency.

Courage deficiency is much like calcium deficiency... you cannot assimilate calcium if you don"t have Vitamin C, or if your stomach acid is too weak. And you will flush your calcium if you don"t have some other minerals... I can"t remember, maybe Magnesium?

The same is with Courage. What is taking up the space that Courage should occupy? I say: Fear. I say: mostly unidentified Fear. Because, at least some of us, idle, not acting courageously, don"t know we are afraid. We seem to be reasonable, justified by the economy, by lack of time, lack of knowledge, tiredness, feeling weak, we don"t know what to do, we don"t know how to do it, we don"t see we can win, it is hard... whatever.

If we knew we are afraid, we would at least have a choice about summoning courage...

In my absolutely favorite movie, "Defending Your Life" our hero, played by Albert Brooks, accidentally activates Courage, by seeing that he will spend of the rest of his lives without Julia, played by Merryl Streep, and that is so unbearable, that his courage kicks in, maybe the first time in his life. But it changes how things go from there... he gets what he always wished for, the girl of his dreams. By the way, he acts on the principle of the stick, from the carrot and stick... I do too. It is how to make me go to action, summon courage... yeah.

Now, we could all wait for a circumstance like that, or activate Courage by being a Powerful Manager (tm) in your own life.

Let"s return to the imagery I set up with Moses and the Red Sea: I had a realization today, that my MO (modus operandi) is such that I need to be thrown into the water, and THEN I "invent" swimming. Planning first and acting second  is not my MO.

But unfortunately, for the most part, there is no one to throw you into the water. So you need to do it yourself... So that is my / your next step, to become brilliant at that...

Because going into the water is not an event: every day, when you wake up, you need to do it again... just like the rooster needs to crow every dawn.

I call this being a Powerful Manager(tm) in your life: put yourself into a situation where it is either swim or sink... and then start swimming. The style of swimming won"t matter much: only that you swim.

Your instinct will kick in, and you will swim and "take it home" whatever you were going after. The Universal Law of Attraction activates itself with that courageous act of throwing yourself into the water.

What seems to be YOUR biggest stumbling block to activating The Law Of Attraction? Use the comment form to share

Carrot and Stick or how to win at promises you make to yourself

We all know this, it is too common to think that you don"t have it.

You find yourself attracted to some kind of project. Maybe a new habit, or an exercise regimen.

It feels like it is all yours, done deal, it is in the bag... and then you wake on one morning, maybe next day, and all the inspiration is gone, and you are back to being pedestrian plus ashamed, baffled, and deflated.

Our promises are this way, maybe they last a few days, a few weeks but the inspiration that brought them on disappears almost as fast as it comes, and into the same place, into thin air.

We all deal with this individually, but as someone who took it on myself to teach people how to raise their vibration and live a life on a higher level than before, I need to deal with this especially.

Because unless you can break this invisible yet powerful barrier through, you will never experience that you have grown, that your life has become meaningful.

Lots of coaching companies talk about your negative beliefs, but I don"t believe it is really negative beliefs that can be blamed.

Other companies have come up with inventing yourself as someone who can do all, be all... but their results are as short-lived as any, because who cares if you get a good 24 hours every time you do a course... life is lived outside of those 24 hours, and they hurt more in the contrast.

I have tested different approaches, and now I am ready to test yet another one. I"ll make it a course, but I"ll test some stuff out on free webinars as has been my habit for a few years now.

For most you you, the issue is: will you live like an expanding human being, will you start doing what expresses who you are in the world? Or will you just coast and whither away...

Carrot and stick is the code word for the new method.

Back in 2013-2014 I did ten free Stick and Carrot webinars.

This webinar talked about this whole idea of failed dreams, explored some of the reasons I knew about, and worked with one or two people on the calls to overcome it.

I was in touch with those one or two, to see if what we did on the call has overcome the forces that normally take you out of the game.

Attendance was free, but you needed to be on time. Latecomers were be removed, unless previously cleared. Only regular students could be cleared from being late.

Participation was mandatory, no lurkers.

OK. Enough rules. It was tough... I remember people revolting... Tough sh*t...

Here is the link to get access to the replays. Once you pay, you"ll get registered on the membership site where the recordings sit... You pay a dollar a webinar... I think it"s fair... Get the replays of the carrot and stick webinars.

At the worst you"ll see why you can"t ever keep your word, why you can"t be consistent and tenacious, why, if you continue the same way, you won"t amount to much.

You don"t take the stick seriously: you don"t experience the pain... Or some nasty stuff... like you are too good to have to work for your results. Or lying is as good as doing, having... or the world is your bitch... or some other nasty stuff.

The truth will set you free, but first, let"s hope, will piss you off.

Some of you won"t even get pissed of by the truth... you"ll get pissed off at me... If that"s you, maybe you shouldn"t stay a student...

Will you break for freedom?

...Or will you complain that "they" don"t allow you to be free? That you can"t...

Most mornings I get up when I wake up. But today, I got up to pee, weighed myself, and went back to bed. Something told me I have some thinking to do that would be impossible if I went about my day as usual.

So I went back to bed and allowed myself to see what wanted to be seen... I chose to surrender and see what Life wants. The trick is to feel the difference between the forceful "I want this" and the gentle "Life wants this" tugs. The most significant difference is the force... the second: I don"t remember wanting this... lol. So what Life wants is different from all the things I want. In a way, what Life wants doesn"t make sense.

What makes sense isn"t from Life. What makes sense isn"t true. What makes sense is not from the here and now: it is from the Tree of Knowledge.

Today"s article comes from a memory that surfaced in a dream earlier last night: Back in Hungary, back in 1977. I just won my first architectural competition and a sizeable cash prize. Winning happened in "violation" to my self-image as loser. The story I kept on telling myself and others.

Somehow I didn"t communicate it to the jury... In the competition I teamed up with a man who was and had been a winner... That was also a violation... Before this winning I always teamed up with the weak, so I could feel bigger, stronger, smarter... in comparison... the one eyed king in the land of the blind.

We won and my share of the winnings was enough money to buy my first car (used) and pay cash for it.

As soon as the results were announced, it was a national competition, I fell deadly ill. I remember the moment... the dread instead of elation.

Of course. Makes no sense, does it? Why would you feel dread instead of elation when you win?

Whenever you do something that can change your self-image profoundly, your dark wolf, the one that works feverishly to keep you the same, makes you sick.

Or sends you back to who you"d always been for yourself, by making you do a misstep, a blunder to return you to square one in the game of life. [note]Some of my students do this daily... Others occasionally.
.
A friend of mine, decided to apply for a job that would require of him to learn something and pass an exam. His dark wolf convinced him to study only three hours a day... so that is what he did. He failed his exam, three times, and is now out of the running. Back to square one.
.
His self-image is back where it had been... "I can"t learn anything"
.
What he cannot see is that he was duped. Just one hour more studying a day would have gotten him to pass the exam... But no, he is back to being a loser... like he has always been.
.
Loser is an interpretation... by the way. There are no losers in reality. In reality you may be measured by Life and found light... but it doesn"t make you a loser. There is always the next time.[/note]

This time the dark wolf made me bedridden with high fever. I don"t watch TV, so to pass the time and to avoid being with myself, I was reading a book in bed.

I read Aldous Huxley"s Brave New World. In English. I was already on shaky ground... I won something with my efforts.

In that somewhat altered state, while reading, I could see something new. I"d caught a second glimpse of something I saw nine years earlier in 1968.

I was sick at that time too... Not accidentally... I was laid up in the hospital with tonsil surgery that didn"t go well.

My father, whom I still love, came to visit me. He told me about the event of the day, the Prague Spring, an uprising, that the Hungarian army was sent to break down in neighbor country, Czechoslovakia. My brother was serving in that army at the time. My beloved older brother. I was mortified. I was 21, he was 23 at the time. I felt a stirring, and I felt a crack in my worldview... a worldview that until that point was unscathed. (socialistic, communistic worldview... of course. I lived in Soviet occupied Hungary, no sovereignty, the bigger dog gets the bone.)

Back to 1977 and Aldous Huxley"s Brave New World: I suddenly saw the world differently. (This is what is called worldview: how you see the world.) I saw that all freedom was denied to us, citizens of the socialist republic... that we were are all hoodwinked... that whatever that society claimed was for everyone wasn"t for anyone but for maybe a mighty few who were winning in that game.

I am not the hater type. I am not able to stay on my feet and be well when I see the ugly underbelly of the world of humans... So I fell depressed... every time the ugly showed itself through some crack of the fabric of the solid worldview: the Pollyanna. [note]I still to into mini depressions... they last anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours... A worldview always updates itself... I get to be able to deal with more and more, without being pulled out of equilibrium or homeostasis.[/note]

Depression, in my personal experience, is a sideways move.

A move away from equilibrium.  Where you can deal with what you see. When you can"t, when you, your brain, your psyche cannot accept what it sees, what it experiences, when your brain deems that reality is impossible to live in... it moves you to an altered state where you can"t see, can"t hear, only vegetate.

A vacation of sorts. A time out. Waiting out the brain to be able to catch up with reality or give birth to a new worldview... a worldview that you can handle, your brain can handle, whether the worldview is accurate or not.

If you are furious, then you are not depressed... [note]People join cults... leave cults... become alcoholic, workaholic, make drastic changes in order to avoid seeing the world that for them is impossible to live in.[/note]

I came out of the depression in 1977. From thereon I saw, more clearly, that I was on my own, that "if it is to be, it is up to me" whatever that "it" was... result, feeling, nurturing, support, action...

I stopped expecting from the world to give me, support me, love me, acknowledge me... "if it is to be, it is up to me" became my mantra.

That marked the beginning of the journey to where I am today.

Why am I sharing this with you?

What I am attempting to do in my work with you, is causing you to gradually move out of the collective hypnosis of civilization. The collective hypnosis of right and wrong, where anyone, parent, politician, guru, has the right to tell you how to be, where you are treated like a thing, where telling the truth gets you punished, where you should or shouldn"t... anything.

The collective hypnosis where your personal power is squashed, and everything you do or think comes from somewhere outside of you... Where nothing of you is yours. Where you don"t own anything, including your actions, your decisions, it is always because... never "I caused it". Where you make decisions, not a choice. Where you don"t have a Self... only a psychological self, the dark wolf masquerading as you.

I listen to the partner calls in my Playground, and see you struggle to get to the first glimpse, the one I got in 1968.

The partner calls are getting longer, because you are tiptoeing around telling the truth... It is a sign that the dark wolf feels threatened. It could be a sign for an approaching crack in your worldview.

You experienced parental abuse... and you dare not name it abuse. I hear: he was nasty to me... she didn"t love me. But what was really going on is abuse. Physical, psychological abuse. Enslavement.

Some rebelled, others succumbed. Most turned around and are dishing it out to others the treatment they suffered: making yourself win by making others feel like losers. Some make a part of them feel like a loser by encouraging the two wolves to fight... sick, I say.

You hear the words I say: there is nothing wrong in reality, ever, but it doesn"t match what you see, your worldview. The way things SEEM to you.

You translate it to the language of the collective hypnosis: I am OK. You are OK. but OK is just another word for "right"... still inside that hypnosis. There could be nothing wrong, and still no "right"... No OK.

That "I am OK" still blocks you from seeing reality, blocks you from seeing the ugly, the unproductive, the stupid, the evil in you or in the world.

Seeing what is, reality, is NOT making it right, it is being able to see that it is that way. And allowing it to be the way it is. Not as in resignation, powerlessness, but as in powerful. It is not wrong. It is merely what is.

Worldview is the sum total of what you see. There is nothing wrong in reality is a worldview... Two polar opposite worldviews won"t mesh, the parts don"t work together.

In the prevalent worldview things are either right or they are wrong... you should or should not... and everything is the same as everything else, except that not always. You stay on the surface and do the best you can with what you are dealt.

Your emotions come directly from the worldview: from what you see. Your mind names what you see, and the words create the emotions.

All emotions are marker feelings... but all words come from what you see. This is why incantations, affirmations don"t work: what you say in those comes from the mind, not from what you see. First you see, then you interpret what you see (words) and then you feel. If that is not what you learned, you were taught a lie.

If you want to change what you feel, you need to change what you see. You need to see, almost as many examples of things as it"s taken to create the "there is something wrong" worldview...

This is the work we do in the Partner calls. Or, in some cases, this is the work you should be doing... but don"t.

Worldview is created...

...you are born, without a worldview, into a world where everyone sees the world the same way: there is something wrong with me, there is something wrong with you, there is something wrong with the world.

This morning I received a "Starting Point Measurements" request from a person whose Facebook profile is full of memes that say all the things that are true about freedom, personal or societal, but say them by saying that something is wrong with how it is... as opposed to how it should be.

As long as you exchange (fix) one thing for something else that should be or shouldn"t be, you have the exact same worldview... the worldview of "something is wrong here, and it needs to be fixed." The worldview of humanity.

The French have a witty way to say that: The more things change the more they remain the same... The seed level, the worldview doesn"t change.

Your worldview. The worldview that doesn"t easily allow you to get a glimpse of reality. You can only see what"s happening through the filter that something wrong here... and its words and resulting bad feelings. You are miserable. By necessity. If you always should and shouldn"t, your life is miserable, and so are you. You only have one action available to you: fixing.

I listened to a sermon by Joel Osteen, celebrity pastor of the largest flock... oops, church in history... I am told.

What do you think he preaches? He tells you what you should and shouldn"t do... BECAUSE god needs you to do one thing and not another to be able to do the work only god can do...

Frank Kern, one of my mentors, suggests that I can learn from Joel Osteen who is really good at taking his large flock of sheep to where he wants them to be: miserable.

I wondered if I could use his techniques to take you to freedom? To reality where there is nothing wrong. Where you have power, personal power over yourself and your actions. Where you can hear what Life wants you to do, be, or have. Where you can fall in step with Life... that"s what heaven is, if you ask me.

I wonder if with Joel Osteen"s method I could make you want to hear the call for freedom... (shaking off the shackles... ) Or you would continue hearing what you have always heard: this is wrong and that is right. Or this should and that shouldn"t...

I wonder.

I had the my cataract of seeing wrong removed through lots of shorter or longer bouts of depression.

Is that the way it works by necessity? Muscle test (Source) says yes. At every stage you adjust through shorter or longer time-outs... we call depression.

Depression is not melancholy... Depression is not anger... Depression is not confusion...

Depression is a sign that the brain is considering getting stronger to handle the shock of being different from others, from all others... and the shock of connecting to something larger than yourself.

You may not go into depression... or you may. Either way, your brain may decide that you are not able, not willing to stand alone. That you want to remain angry, hurt, frustrated, an effect, instead of a cause.

Some of you will.

I am the happiest person I know. I find everything funny, even this... You will do what you will do... not what I"d prefer that you do. Remain the same or rise above it all, and start YOUR journey to freedom.

I know what allows me to grow, what I can use to grow.

I use ugly. I see ugly and I move away from it. I don"t deny it. I don"t whitewash it. I don"t call it OK. I move away from it.

I don"t say it"s wrong. I don"t want to fix it. I am grateful for ugly. Because ugly shows me which way to go. Away from it.

Happiness is accepting what is as what is... without wanting to change it, without saying no to it, without denying it. Accepting that ugly is ugly. Whether it is your behavior or someone else"s... Ugly is ugly. So what?

In the carrot and the stick analogy, it is the stick.

Ugly doesn"t have an opposite... Ugly is the guidance you get on the strait and narrow. The more willing you are to see ugly, the further you can go towards what you call happiness.

In the world of right and wrong, should and shouldn"t you cannot be happy. Why? Because life is full of "wrong" in the worldview that is all about right and wrong. How could you be happy any longer than for a few seconds?

You can do some useful looking at your machine... how carrot and stick makes you do what would work for you... or make you do what the machine, the dark wolf wants you to do. Self awareness... and some clarity, in my Carrot and Stick Course



Get your Starting Point Measurements

What is communication? Can you really learn it through a course?

I don"t offer a communication course... I have done Landmark"s courses, over and over, and then more. I have learned some moves, but did I really learn the art of communication? No, THAT I haven"t...

But it is time for me to learn it. Now or never. lol.

How do I know? Well, I just said so... but other than that: I am noticing some envy that is always a sign of aspiration, the secret yearning of the soul. I noticed it, and now I am going to act on it. So it"s time. Now or never. Or as they say it at weddings, according to movies: speak now or forever hold your peace... I am speaking.

Here is a clip from one of my favorite movies, The Guru, where that part of the wedding ceremony saves a lot of people from unhappiness... And it is also funny as hell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2x1MeWjJ3Y

OK, back to the topic: communication: how to learn it, how I plan to learn it.

One of the most inspiring stories I have ever read was the story of how, Benjamin Franklin, unschooled printer, became a good writer...

I read it in his autobiography.

Reading doesn"t teach, only doing does.

In essence, he picked a writing style he liked, and learned to copy it until he made it his. He learned distinctions of writing, for example perspicuity, the word I had to look up. It means that it is like a map that shows how you got to a conclusion, so others can follow you. I think I lack in that area.

This is the way animal children learn life... what to eat, what to avoid, how to move, how to hide, how to interact. From adults through observation, from others through modeling.

The ability to model largely depends on some factors: your humility and... your observation, largely on your perspicuity... here I am using a word I just learned...

• Your humility which is the reverse number of your "about-me" score, measured in my Starting Point Measurements.

Why do you need humility to learn and model? Because without humility you can"t even see it. Without humility you only have yourself as a resource, because your whole cone of vision is covered with yourself... So you have fool for a teacher.

• The second thing you need to be able to model is observation. Accurate observation. Seeing what comes first, what comes second, how one leads to the other... perspicuously... so when you follow it, like a map, you get to the same place. You need to leave home your own concerns... they mislead you, give you wrong answers.

If you interpret what you see: you are left again with your good idea... and you are not modeling, you are just going to do what you have always done and have been ineffective.

If you wanted to reproduce something you look at, you would have to do it step by tiny step... and again: lack of humility will prevent you from that.

The metaskill: seeing is needed here. Seeing that is the uninterpreted reality... and, of course, you can"t see it it is so covered up by meaning, and imagination, and interpretation, and ignorance... you can"t see it.

Yesterday I heard a student read the word "perpetration" several times as penetration. I didn"t know if I should cry or laugh. A woman with a college degree. I measured her about-me score: 100%.

A perfect score to not be able to learn anything, to live life by her own rules, and be bruised every step of the way.

So getting back to learning to write:

I have said before. If you envy someone, it is an indication to you that they are doing something that you would like to model. And the chances that you don"t yet know what they are doing is high...

Writing, on the internet, is scored by the number of the people who read your writing, and preferably comment.

I am attempting to learn from a course called Subconscious Selling. In chapter five he teaches how to sell with stories.

He uses Joel Osteen, the megachurch pastor, as an example.

I have listened to one of his sermons. I hated it, but his crowd loved it.

Just like Ben Franklin, I need to find a writer/speaker whose style I like, who I think is not in the selling business, whose readers are higher on the intelligence scale than Joel Osteen"s... and pick it apart and analyze, and duplicate HOW they write, just like Ben Franklin did hundreds of years ago.

People, as far as I can see it, so far, endear the reader, the listener, with something, something I don"t think I am giving in MY writing. Something akin to hope.

That is what Joel Osteen does. And if you have hope, you think you can, you think you will, and you feel happy... AND COME BACK FOR MORE!

I listened to Werner Erhard yesterday. An old audio, maybe 30 years old, on relationships. He was also selling hope, and another thing, I think, a sense, and illusion, that you are in the know of something that most people aren"t. That you are special, better than the masses. A feeling that everyone seems to want, ultimately a lie. But it sells.

You may ask why I am studying selling. After all I am famous for not selling.

But if you manage to think the thing through, every time you open your mouth, or put ink to paper, you are selling.

Selling yourself, your ideas, your services.

And if I look around, if you look at your results, you can see that you must be doing it poorly: you don"t produce the "sales" as you hoped you would. People rarely buy what you are selling, or in other cases you are selling a mirage, a promise that you are not prepared to fulfill. One way or another... you are doing it poorly or you are selling what causes you pain.

One thing is obvious: you don"t know how to sell... maybe because you are cowardly, or because you have some other preconceived notions about yourself, about selling, about others...

You may think selling is different from what you should be doing... and people should just buy your wares, listen to you, obey you, keep their promises to you, just because.

And they don"t...

The question no one knows what it means...

There is a question I ask my students to look for every time they pick apart incidents in their lives with the intention to get to beautiful reality where nothing is wrong.

The question is: Is there/was there an undelivered communication in that incident?

Every person, so far, thinks that talking about how they feel, what they like, what they want, how they are disappointed, how the other one is wrong, etc. is communication. Talking about a thing isn"t communication, it is just noise. Who cares... other people, like yourself, have a high about-me score and they only care about what they want.

Communication is an action. It works as surely as rearranging things with your hands. If it doesn"t, it isn"t communication.

If you look at my articles, I must be just like you: I write about what I want, and I am not connecting to the reader, unless they are already part of the small group who want what I want for them.

So I am not communicating either.

Some of the art or communication is to learn to write, to learn to speak, the language that tells them that I am speaking from their self-interest... the language of the reader/listener, so they can allow me to rearrange their molecules.

It should be obvious what it is, but it isn"t...

When I listened to the audios of the Personal Authority course, I heard that Personal Authority means: you make people want to do what you want them to do.

Read that again: to make people WANT to do what you want them to do. What you hear, and therefore do in life is want people to do what you want them to do, like a slave, like an employee. Be nice, keep their word, perform in life, leave you alone, etc.

Because you miss the first part: that unless people WANT to do what you want them to do, either they won"t do it, or will do it begrudgingly.

Begrudgingly means: they will hate IT and they will hate YOU.

People want to do what they want to do, not what you tell them to do.

Your job, my job, is to learn to COMMUNICATE such a way that they will feel it is them who want to do what I want them to do.

I have some unconscious competence in that, but because it is unconscious, it is hit or miss... mostly miss.

Because I am an empath, I can feel your attitude when you are doing what I have asked you to do, what I suggested that you do. You do it mostly dutifully, or "OK, I"ll try, but I can"t see that it will work for me..." tentatively, giving it a weak try.

So what I really want to learn is how to make you WANT TO DO what I want you to do... so you can live a life you love and live it powerfully.

Isn"t this what you"d love to know how to do? To have the world be putty in your hands, so they can have what they want and you can have what you want...

• The mother who has been angry, no, FURIOUS, that her daughter isn"t a high achiever in school and doesn"t make her proud.


• The bookkeeper who has been angry because his clients bring their receipts to him unorganized and it takes more time to organize the stuff than actually do the work he is paid for...


• The man whose wife wants every penny he has ever earned in the divorce settlement, and also wants him to be available to babysit when she wants to do something other than care for their four children

This lack of communication is present also in conversations with yourself... not just with others.

The young man, still in school, who can"t make himself do what he needs to do to get at least passing grades and feel good about himself. Or to  go to bed at decent times, eat to have energy, etc. Complete failure to communicate to himself with authority and power.

So what should you do with this information?

Try to find where you don"t communicate with authority and power... you"ll have plenty of areas... and consider that it"s something that you can learn... at least I hope...

For me it is a life or death issue. Why life or death? I like the New Hampshire state slogan: give me freedom or give me death! It is invented.

I respond best to a threat-like imagery, maybe exactly like you.

I"ll either learn this or will be forever without an echo, without people hearing and learning what I want them to know. A life without making a difference.

I checked if I really respond best to threat. I invented yesterday that my weekends will be my "domestic" days: I"ll do the dishes, I"ll clean, do the laundry, pick up stuff... on the weekends.

When I weigh what"s important to me, I want to prevent clutter, I want to prevent rodents, I want to prevent ugly. For me. I hate those things.

A beautiful organized home doesn"t resonate in my soul... while clutter does a "ehhhhh" there... So, just like you, I am more inspired by "fixing what"s wrong" than creating what"s right. I am intentionally using the Tree of Knowledge terms here... for your sake.

So my first step in this learning to sell will be finding the words that overtly or hidden have the idea of fixing what you don"t want, fixing what you know you don"t like.

Duality. The either or...

The selling points of religious leaders, like Joel Osteen. Positive thinking is attractive to people because it is the opposite of avoiding negative things, people, ideas.

People can recognize negativity... so they think eliminating them will lead them to a life of happiness. Of course it doesn"t... but hope is powerful, and it can be harnessed to make the "sale".

Same with the Law of Attraction: people are taught to do away with negative emotions... so their "vibrational frequency" can rise to the level of what they want.

Of course it doesn"t work at all...

Eliminating the seemingly opposite of something, the thing that is wrong, cements the worldview that there is something wrong with the world, with you, with the other.

But unless you put yourself squarely into the worldview of the other, they won"t hear you.

And I think this is what is in common disservice between Werner Erhard, Joel Osteen, and the countless new age "spiritual" teachers... Your worldview gets even more entrenched by listening to them, learning from them.

Your seed level from which you grow your life. Wretched.

As you can see, I have no idea how to sell the idea that will make you want to do what I want you to do... take apart your stories with the intention of getting to reality where nothing is wrong.

In my 20-day learning challenge, this is the challenge for me.

It will, probably, take more than 20 days to see what would work, what can work.

It will take as long as it will take. I have time.

What is communication? Can you really learn it through a course?

I don"t offer a communication course... I have done Landmark"s courses, over and over, and then more. I have learned some moves, but did I really learn the art of communication? No, THAT I haven"t...

But it is time for me to learn it. Now or never. lol.

How do I know? Well, I just said so... but other than that: I am noticing some envy that is always a sign of aspiration, the secret yearning of the soul. I noticed it, and now I am going to act on it. So it"s time. Now or never. Or as they say it at weddings, according to movies: speak now or forever hold your peace... I am speaking.

Here is a clip from one of my favorite movies, The Guru, where that part of the wedding ceremony saves a lot of people from unhappiness... And it is also funny as hell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2x1MeWjJ3Y

OK, back to the topic: communication: how to learn it, how I plan to learn it.

One of the most inspiring stories I have ever read was the story of how, Benjamin Franklin, unschooled printer, became a good writer...

I read it in his autobiography.

Reading doesn"t teach, only doing does.

In essence, he picked a writing style he liked, and learned to copy it until he made it his. He learned distinctions of writing, for example perspicuity, the word I had to look up. It means that it is like a map that shows how you got to a conclusion, so others can follow you. I think I lack in that area.

This is the way animal children learn life... what to eat, what to avoid, how to move, how to hide, how to interact. From adults through observation, from others through modeling.

The ability to model largely depends on some factors: your humility and... your observation, largely on your perspicuity... here I am using a word I just learned...

• Your humility which is the reverse number of your "about-me" score, measured in my Starting Point Measurements.

Why do you need humility to learn and model? Because without humility you can"t even see it. Without humility you only have yourself as a resource, because your whole cone of vision is covered with yourself... So you have fool for a teacher.

• The second thing you need to be able to model is observation. Accurate observation. Seeing what comes first, what comes second, how one leads to the other... perspicuously... so when you follow it, like a map, you get to the same place. You need to leave home your own concerns... they mislead you, give you wrong answers.

If you interpret what you see: you are left again with your good idea... and you are not modeling, you are just going to do what you have always done and have been ineffective.

If you wanted to reproduce something you look at, you would have to do it step by tiny step... and again: lack of humility will prevent you from that.

The metaskill: seeing is needed here. Seeing that is the uninterpreted reality... and, of course, you can"t see it it is so covered up by meaning, and imagination, and interpretation, and ignorance... you can"t see it.

Yesterday I heard a student read the word "perpetration" several times as penetration. I didn"t know if I should cry or laugh. A woman with a college degree. I measured her about-me score: 100%.

A perfect score to not be able to learn anything, to live life by her own rules, and be bruised every step of the way.

So getting back to learning to write:

I have said before. If you envy someone, it is an indication to you that they are doing something that you would like to model. And the chances that you don"t yet know what they are doing is high...

Writing, on the internet, is scored by the number of the people who read your writing, and preferably comment.

I am attempting to learn from a course called Subconscious Selling. In chapter five he teaches how to sell with stories.

He uses Joel Osteen, the megachurch pastor, as an example.

I have listened to one of his sermons. I hated it, but his crowd loved it.

Just like Ben Franklin, I need to find a writer/speaker whose style I like, who I think is not in the selling business, whose readers are higher on the intelligence scale than Joel Osteen"s... and pick it apart and analyze, and duplicate HOW they write, just like Ben Franklin did hundreds of years ago.

People, as far as I can see it, so far, endear the reader, the listener, with something, something I don"t think I am giving in MY writing. Something akin to hope.

That is what Joel Osteen does. And if you have hope, you think you can, you think you will, and you feel happy... AND COME BACK FOR MORE!

I listened to Werner Erhard yesterday. An old audio, maybe 30 years old, on relationships. He was also selling hope, and another thing, I think, a sense, and illusion, that you are in the know of something that most people aren"t. That you are special, better than the masses. A feeling that everyone seems to want, ultimately a lie. But it sells.

You may ask why I am studying selling. After all I am famous for not selling.

But if you manage to think the thing through, every time you open your mouth, or put ink to paper, you are selling.

Selling yourself, your ideas, your services.

And if I look around, if you look at your results, you can see that you must be doing it poorly: you don"t produce the "sales" as you hoped you would. People rarely buy what you are selling, or in other cases you are selling a mirage, a promise that you are not prepared to fulfill. One way or another... you are doing it poorly or you are selling what causes you pain.

One thing is obvious: you don"t know how to sell... maybe because you are cowardly, or because you have some other preconceived notions about yourself, about selling, about others...

You may think selling is different from what you should be doing... and people should just buy your wares, listen to you, obey you, keep their promises to you, just because.

And they don"t...

The question no one knows what it means...

There is a question I ask my students to look for every time they pick apart incidents in their lives with the intention to get to beautiful reality where nothing is wrong.

The question is: Is there/was there an undelivered communication in that incident?

Every person, so far, thinks that talking about how they feel, what they like, what they want, how they are disappointed, how the other one is wrong, etc. is communication. Talking about a thing isn"t communication, it is just noise. Who cares... other people, like yourself, have a high about-me score and they only care about what they want.

Communication is an action. It works as surely as rearranging things with your hands. If it doesn"t, it isn"t communication.

If you look at my articles, I must be just like you: I write about what I want, and I am not connecting to the reader, unless they are already part of the small group who want what I want for them.

So I am not communicating either.

Some of the art or communication is to learn to write, to learn to speak, the language that tells them that I am speaking from their self-interest... the language of the reader/listener, so they can allow me to rearrange their molecules.

It should be obvious what it is, but it isn"t...

When I listened to the audios of the Personal Authority course, I heard that Personal Authority means: you make people want to do what you want them to do.

Read that again: to make people WANT to do what you want them to do. What you hear, and therefore do in life is want people to do what you want them to do, like a slave, like an employee. Be nice, keep their word, perform in life, leave you alone, etc.

Because you miss the first part: that unless people WANT to do what you want them to do, either they won"t do it, or will do it begrudgingly.

Begrudgingly means: they will hate IT and they will hate YOU.

People want to do what they want to do, not what you tell them to do.

Your job, my job, is to learn to COMMUNICATE such a way that they will feel it is them who want to do what I want them to do.

I have some unconscious competence in that, but because it is unconscious, it is hit or miss... mostly miss.

Because I am an empath, I can feel your attitude when you are doing what I have asked you to do, what I suggested that you do. You do it mostly dutifully, or "OK, I"ll try, but I can"t see that it will work for me..." tentatively, giving it a weak try.

So what I really want to learn is how to make you WANT TO DO what I want you to do... so you can live a life you love and live it powerfully.

Isn"t this what you"d love to know how to do? To have the world be putty in your hands, so they can have what they want and you can have what you want...

• The mother who has been angry, no, FURIOUS, that her daughter isn"t a high achiever in school and doesn"t make her proud.


• The bookkeeper who has been angry because his clients bring their receipts to him unorganized and it takes more time to organize the stuff than actually do the work he is paid for...


• The man whose wife wants every penny he has ever earned in the divorce settlement, and also wants him to be available to babysit when she wants to do something other than care for their four children

This lack of communication is present also in conversations with yourself... not just with others.

The young man, still in school, who can"t make himself do what he needs to do to get at least passing grades and feel good about himself. Or to  go to bed at decent times, eat to have energy, etc. Complete failure to communicate to himself with authority and power.

So what should you do with this information?

Try to find where you don"t communicate with authority and power... you"ll have plenty of areas... and consider that it"s something that you can learn... at least I hope...

For me it is a life or death issue. Why life or death? I like the New Hampshire state slogan: give me freedom or give me death! It is invented.

I respond best to a threat-like imagery, maybe exactly like you.

I"ll either learn this or will be forever without an echo, without people hearing and learning what I want them to know. A life without making a difference.

I checked if I really respond best to threat. I invented yesterday that my weekends will be my "domestic" days: I"ll do the dishes, I"ll clean, do the laundry, pick up stuff... on the weekends.

When I weigh what"s important to me, I want to prevent clutter, I want to prevent rodents, I want to prevent ugly. For me. I hate those things.

A beautiful organized home doesn"t resonate in my soul... while clutter does a "ehhhhh" there... So, just like you, I am more inspired by "fixing what"s wrong" than creating what"s right. I am intentionally using the Tree of Knowledge terms here... for your sake.

So my first step in this learning to sell will be finding the words that overtly or hidden have the idea of fixing what you don"t want, fixing what you know you don"t like.

Duality. The either or...

The selling points of religious leaders, like Joel Osteen. Positive thinking is attractive to people because it is the opposite of avoiding negative things, people, ideas.

People can recognize negativity... so they think eliminating them will lead them to a life of happiness. Of course it doesn"t... but hope is powerful, and it can be harnessed to make the "sale".

Same with the Law of Attraction: people are taught to do away with negative emotions... so their "vibrational frequency" can rise to the level of what they want.

Of course it doesn"t work at all...

Eliminating the seemingly opposite of something, the thing that is wrong, cements the worldview that there is something wrong with the world, with you, with the other.

But unless you put yourself squarely into the worldview of the other, they won"t hear you.

And I think this is what is in common disservice between Werner Erhard, Joel Osteen, and the countless new age "spiritual" teachers... Your worldview gets even more entrenched by listening to them, learning from them.

Your seed level from which you grow your life. Wretched.

As you can see, I have no idea how to sell the idea that will make you want to do what I want you to do... take apart your stories with the intention of getting to reality where nothing is wrong.

In my 20-day learning challenge, this is the challenge for me.

It will, probably, take more than 20 days to see what would work, what can work.

It will take as long as it will take. I have time.