Getting Clear on the Nature of Perfection shook the foundations of how I approached my life in ways that helped me understand the challenges I face, and my responsibilities, in a profoundly different way. No woo-woo, no belief, just getting a firm grasp of what the sense of “perfect” is and what it points to in reality. Here we go!:
There’s a premise about being human and existence that permeates “modern” culture. There’s a perception that human beings and our way of Life are somehow “messed up,” to put it politely. We can look at the notion of original sin, or the ecological crisis, the corrupt political and financial systems, a fraudulent medical paradigm, poisonous foods, mind-numbing educational systems that medicate any children who can’t tolerate being in them, the Gulf Oil spill, the Fukushima disaster – and the list could go on for volumes – and we’d be convinced that “things are screwed up.”
What I’m going to tell you today will probably sound surprising. If you do more than accept or reject it, and actually grasp what the words point to in your reality, you will be able to use it to powerfully transform your Life.
All of the above situations are not the result of things being “messed up,” as we’ve been trained to believe. They are the result of the Nature of Perfection: All our results are PERFECT and there is no result or situation or person that actually exists that is not PERFECT.
Before I got hip to how our language has become intentionally distorted, if I had heard this I would have called B.S. on it right away, because my ideas of what perfect pointed to, like just about everybody that I have shared this with, were totally distorted. I didn’t know words actually point to realities. I just thought words “carried ideas.” Do not for a moment think that I’m going to hit you with some New Age woo-woo. I don’t do “woo-woo.”
Realizing that All Our Results Are Perfect Results has been one of the most liberating and clarifying revelations I’ve had in my Life. It called me to a new level of consciousness, groundedness and response-ability.
The nature of perfection, like so many other words we use, is the perfect opposite of the meaning that we give it in everyday use. Perfection is NOT “ideal,” or “the best” or “as I would like things to be.” Perfection comes from the Latin per- “completely, totally, globally” and fect- “made, done,” past tense of the verb facere, “to make, to do,” and -tio “action of.” Perfection points to the fact that everything is “made out of a totality, out of a completeness,” of things being “totally and globally made.”
Another way of saying this, to clarify further, is:
Every result is a total result.
I woke up to the Nature of Perfection one day as I was walking on the beach in one of my favorite places in Brazil. Since 2009 I had traveled and lived in five countries giving courses and working with individuals and small groups on how culture impacts our most intimate relationships, courses on accelerated learning and how to recover one’s health simply and rapidly. That experience was a source of quite unexpected learning for me.
As I transitioned from working as a Registered Nurse in critical care units in hospitals to giving workshops, I was surprised by the level of self-sabotage, stress and struggle in the lives of almost all the people I worked with. At first I felt a profound sense of frustration with the incoherence between clients’ stated commitments and what they actually did. As I saw the same phenomena in country after country, I was challenged to understand what was happening. Almost everyone consistently and insistently sabotaged their stated goals and desires in ways that were painful to witness, but even more painful for them to live through. They were their own worst enemy. I felt something was profoundly wrong. Many clients said they loved my work and insisted on keeping on studying with me and paying me, but they remained passive consumers and would NOT taken action on their own behalf.
From teaching deep relational and cultural dynamics I simplified and taught people how to accelerate and make their learning more dynamic and easy. Still, very few of them actually did anything with what I was teaching, beyond just taking the workshop as consumers, not creators. I started studying and researching learning, education, health.
As the years and the countries and cultures rolled by, I saw the same dynamics at play worldwide. Eventually I realized I’d seen these same dynamics before. Actually, they were quite familiar to me. I had just failed to associate what I was seeing now, while giving courses for “the normal public,” with what I had spent two decades experiencing almost daily as a Critical Care Nurse specializing in Trauma, Neuro-Trauma and neurological illnesses.
The coin dropped one day after years of asking myself, “Why won’t people learn?” and bumping my head against the frustration I felt in asking that question.
I reframed that question to get new insights: “What would be WISE in NOT learning and not following through on commitments?”
That sounds like a strange question, doesn’t it; to frame not learning and wisdom together? But coin dropped immediately for me, as soon as I reframed: my decades of work in Critical Care Medicine, and working with people struggling with health and, primarily, neurological illness and trauma, had made that clear. I had simply not considered that, in teaching, I was doing anything even remotely related to neurological medicine, but I was.
Neurology revealed why people weren’t learning:
Unhealthy bodies don’t invest in expensive-to-grow and expensive-to-maintain new neurons and new neural connections. Stressed out people with high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, can’t. High levels of cortisol are neuro-toxic. If you have high levels of stress and are struggling to maintain, your body will not stress you out further by growing more nerve cells and connections to maintain.
All of my students were stressed out. Almost all of them who were over thirty years-old, and many of those in their twenties, were already struggling with chronic health issues. As the years passed, I’d get news of new diagnoses: diabetes, auto-immune disorders, neurological problems, attention deficit disorder, digestive problems, obesity, etc. Our current way of life is devastating our health and, as a consequence, our intelligence.
I began to delve more deeply into the cellular requirements for both learning and health. I discovered something alarming: we are currently experiencing a worldwide explosion of obesity, diabetes, autism, auto-immune and neurological disorders. Although many people have not yet been diagnosed with these illnesses, there are very few people who are not being affected by some underlying, cellular disease process. No wonder people have a hard time following through on commitments!
I started teaching my course on health: Change Your Metabolism Transform Your Life. I, too, had suffered from some severe health problems that only grew worse as I applied the advice I had given patients for over twenty years as a nurse.
A lifetime of eating a mostly-vegetarian, macrobiotic diet didn’t help either. From 2001 to 2008 I struggled to recover my health. I ended up on the receiving end of critical care in 2008. It took over ten years of research to discover that with five very simple steps I could have restored my health at the outset of my problems in just a few months. So I taught those five steps.
Only there was a problem: each of those five steps contradicted most of the advice that I had dispensed for twenty years as a nurse and that we all get bombarded with, from our doctors to the television to “alternative medicine.” Implementing them would require a grounded understanding of the research and principles on which they were based and a capacity to think critically and coherently, and to study, on one’s own, the resources I introduced to people in my courses. For people in poor health, trained to only “get to the point,” that was a serious learning challenge. For most people it was insurmountable.
Learning requires making new neural connections. Stressed and unhealthy bodies don’t do that. Hardly anybody really had time for more deep reading, reflection and learning. The time they spent in a workshop was about all the time they had to dedicate to a topic. Aside from time, few people still have the capacity to read and reflect beyond the soundbite.
People who grew up watching hours of television daily develop a neurology that is profoundly programmable but is incapable of sustained and coherent reflection. Jane M. Healy Ph.D., in her work Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think and What We Can Do About It highlights how the neurological connections in modern brains have been radically altered in people exposed to and raised by hours of television daily, as compared to brains of people who were not.
Their minds are trained to respond to image and impression, rather than seeking out context and connection. At the time of publishing, 1990, Healy mentions how one of the neuroanatomists she interviewed said that, on studying brain tissue samples from children who had died, she could immediately and accurately identify brain samples from children from the U.S. microscopically: the neural complexity was radically less than children from any other part of the world. Now, twenty-five years later, I suspect that children in most “modern” countries are rapidly developing developmentally arrested neurologies like children in the United States.
Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television highlights how this alteration is inherent to television media:
I realized that there had been a strange change in the way people received information, and even more in the way they were experiencing and understanding the world. In one generation, out of hundreds of thousands in human evolution, America had become the first culture to have substituted secondary, mediated versions of experience for direct experience of the world. Interpretations and representations of the world were being accepted as experience, and the difference between the two was obscure to most of us. http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/four-arguments-for-the-elimination-of-television-zmaz78sozraw.aspx#ixzz3OReFRCuy
What I saw, traveling and teaching around the world, was how these dynamics impact people worldwide. People not only don’t think, they can’t. They can repeat and regurgitate whatever they’ve been told, even years later, like any good tape recorder, but they avoid self-led, higher level thinking as if it were painful.
The truth of the matter is: IT IS! Thinking is painful to an already-stressed-out person whose intelligence has been waylaid in the indoctrination centers we call “schools” and “universities.” Learning becomes another source of stress.
Go to the “spiritual” section of your local bookstore and “don’t think” is the mainstream as well as the “alternative” magic bullet. Now THAT is a great approach for marketing tyranny.
“Don’t think” is a New Age mantra that got implanted in the culture in the sixties.
Ignorance-as-spirituality has gone global. I have spent the last five years working with highly-instructed (instructed, not educated) people worldwide, so called professionals who, almost to a fault, demonstrated little capacity for higher-level, self-led learning, and profound difficulties in educating (literally ex-ducere- “to lead out) themselves in precisely what they were supposedly “specialists” in, but actually deeply-programmed in. Observing that in them challenged me to educate myself coherently and connectively, as well as to face my own challenges in doing so.
Deep programming, rather than a coherent, contextualized grasp of their field of endeavor, is precisely what it took for them to get their Ph.D.’s, M.D.’s, D.Ed’s, etc. I, myself, spent twenty years as a “highly-trained healthcare professional,” only to discover how flawed and almost inexistent my grasp of health was.
Whatever judgment and frustration I had about this was powerless to change lives. Initially, I tried to inspire a change by coaching, cajoling, encouraging and challenging my clients, to no avail. Although well-intentioned, this failed to address the biological, cellular reality underlying my clients’ difficulties.
It was a Catch-22:
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Unhealthy, overweight, stressed-out people can’t learn until they change the life habits that aggravate their health, keep their stress hormones way elevated, and cause generalized inflammation and toxicity in their whole bodies.
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People won’t change life habits, especially in ways that the medical system propagandizes them, their physicians and nurses against, unless they do some significant, self-led and self-responsible learning.
Can you see the catch?
Deep learning also takes time. People don’t have time.
I had spent over ten years doing a tremendous amount of research and discovered first-hand, time and time again, how five simple steps could restore people’s health. I repeatedly saw life-long health problems resolve in a few short weeks. People couldn’t believe how energized, focused and clear they felt after spending two weeks on retreat with me and learning how to integrate simple, quick, delicious steps to supporting their well-being.
Recently I showed a very close friend in his seventies, whom I hadn’t seen in five years, and who was overweight, with aching joints, and having a hard time following a conversation how to turn all that around. In six weeks he just lost 32 pounds (20 kilos) and is feeling sharper than he has in years. His joint pain has gone way down. Simple! But I had to feed him for that to be possible.
As wonderful as my discoveries were, they were of no use unless people would implement them. But I couldn’t get them to take that step fully, on their own, through 2-day workshops. People would pay handsomely for information and guidance, then do nothing with it!
I had spent four years taking all of my work to more and more basic levels, from deep relational and cultural dynamics now down to what to eat. It still wouldn’t make much difference in most participants’ lives aside from the fact that they enjoyed the workshops and had a good time. The difference that would really make a difference had to come from them and most of them weren’t in any kind of shape to make that difference!
I was walking along a beautiful beach in Brazil and four years into my “teaching journey.” “This is SCREWED UP! People aren’t learning!” I snorted and growled to myself, on the verge of tears. I couldn’t believe what was happening to people. My teachers had warned me decades before about the direction we were headed, but hearing them talk about it and seeing it first hand were two different things. I felt profound grief.
It was a beautiful morning with the sun coming out of the ocean, but I was stumped! I was frustrated with the whole damn “teaching” and “helping humanity” gambit. “These people can’t learn! They won’t do anything to help themselves!”
I didn’t have to keep on teaching. But I saw people suffering unnecessarily and blinded to possibilities of really living the Life they LOVE. People would ask me if I could help them. When I did, they would refuse to help themselves! I had answers. Simple, clear, practical steps that worked, perfectly in harmony with our biology and backed up by over a hundred and fifty years of medical and scientific research. I had answers for health, wealth and living in joyful, creative ways that I was implementing in my own life.
People would come up to me and say, “I want to live like you do. I want to learn languages as fast as you do. I want to be able to travel and make a living anywhere like you do.”
It’s EASY, I told them, but you still need to learn something and do something different than what you’ve done up til now.
I was enjoying a level of health I hadn’t experienced ever, even when I was in my twenties. I had spent over 25 years in modern healthcare and over 35 years studying Oriental health practices and medical philosphy without this understanding until I got severely ill, struggled for the better part of a decade to regain my health unsuccessfully and finally questioned the premises of what I thought health was. What I discovered about health and experienced in my own health and vitality simply amazed me.
I had simple, concrete, practical answers for learning super-fast, for living very, very rich and very, very simply. But none of these answers would benefit anybody who wasn’t prepared to actively learn and practice new skills.
I saw people suffering, complaining about suffering, asking for relief from suffering and, when given real options, insisting on continuing to suffer. It seemed crazy to me.
I had this hunch that I was failing to learn something, as well. My stress was down. I had plenty of time and my health was in good shape. I also needed to use the dynamic, self-led learning techniques I was teaching in my Awaken Your Natural Genius courses. I decided to track and pay attention to what I affirmed about what I was frustrated about and transform them into curious questions.
As I walked along that beach on a perfect morning I realized something. I had been frustrated for a long time. Where was I stuck?
I wanted to comprehend what was going on with people. I wanted to help people for real, not just entertain them, make some money and move on. I couldn’t be satisfied with that.
I wanted more than money from my students. I wanted wealth, real wealth, the kind that LIVES INSIDE OF US AND AMONG US and invites our children into their full human brilliance! I wanted to see people well and enjoying Life at a level of ease, fun, creativity and brilliance that they hadn’t imagined before and that is our natural human state. I wanted people to share further adventures in learning, living creatively and having amazing experiences together.
Health was just a first, essential step. It was, actually, quite simple. Awakening their Natural Genius was the next step, also simple, exciting and tons of fun, yet still basic. Comprehending and Integrating Relational Challenges makes it possible for us to actually enjoy our relationships instead of continually suffering through them and pretending that’s “normal.”
Learning how to identify and navigate Cultural Dynamics allows us to truly Live the Life we LOVE. That’s when the fun would start, building businesses together around the world, reinvigorating and caring for natural ecosystems, creating places to live so that people would be able to travel around the world from one home to another, with plenty of delicious food growing right there on land burgeoning with Life, living amazing adventures with people who were switched on and with time and income sources skillfully designed to live beyond “the next urgency or emergency.”
I wanted to grow communities where elders and wisdom-keepers would have healthy, bright, respectful apprentices with neurologies prepared to connect beyond “soundbites” and places where elders could live well, be loved and cherished amongst people who would carry their living treasures into new generations, and also put some money in their pockets so they could live well and feed their own families and loved ones and dedicate their time to sharing wisdom that is quickly being lost.
THAT is the vision that inspires my Offering.
So I began paying attention to how I approached things.
“Damn!!” I’d mumble to myself, “This is really SCREWED UP!”
Suddenly I noticed this attitude of mine: “This is really SCREWED UP!”
I noticed that this attitude toward Life has not only permeated my Life, it also permeates the entire culture. We’re programmed to believe that things are messed up! Original sin, the nightly news and on and on, we receive the non-stop message that things are not what they should be, that they’re totally out of hand and that we’re powerless to change anything real.
When I realized that “this is really screwed up” was one of my cultural and personal premises, I turned it into a question. I became curious about this:
“What if things were not messed up? What would they be?”
“Perfect!” I said, “If things weren’t messed up they’d be PERFECT!”
That’s when the coin dropped! I knew I was onto something. I already knew how the meanings we give the words we use every day are almost the opposite of their etymological sense, of what they speak to in reality and not just as an idea. I knew that the fect of per-fect meant “done” or “made.” “But what is per?” I wondered.
I rushed home, logged onto several online etymological dictionaries and looked it up: per means “completely, globally, totally.”
Something that is per-fect is done totally, is made completely, not as some preconceived idea I have of how it should be made, but as the consequence of everything that contributed to it being as it is!
As I realized what perfection points to in reality, I realized that the challenges that we face are not the result of ourselves or “the world” being “screwed up.” They are the result of something quite different that reveals an even greater challenge; that of evaluating and then effectively acting to address a challenge that is the consequence of a totality of influences:
Everything that IS, IS the way that it IS because of everything that contributes to it being that way.
It is NOT that way because it is “right” or “wrong” but rather because there is a totality of influences that generated that consequence.
Every challenge we face is the PERFECT result of all the factors contributing to it being as-it-is.
Every result we have ever gotten and will ever have is necessarily PERFECT.
The only way to obtain a different result is to PERFECT it, to generate it TOTALLY, to make it COMPLETELY.
Every person on the planet right now is the PERFECT consequence of everything that led that person to be that way right now.
If I want to get a DIFFERENT result than the PERFECT result I am getting right now, then I need to address everything making it that way now.
In other words,
Changes we desire only happen when they are PERFECTED, created TOTALLY.
If people not being able to learn was the perfect result of all of the factors affecting their health, their stress levels, their neurological conditioning and their use of their time, then the only way to make it possible for them to recover their health and to learn was to provide them with the perfect experience of health and learning with total support, with free time, away from stressful situations and gentle, one-on-one guidance into a more capable way of learning and living their learning.
Understanding that, I brought people to where I could nourish them with restorative, revitalizing food, reconnective and regenerative activity, profound and joyful relaxation and pleasure. I first invited friends with health problems to my home to learn and unlearn experientially in a gorgeous, naturally-restorative setting. After as few as three or four days, people noticed their attention was more relaxed, open and focused. They were learning in ways that they couldn’t before. After experiencing what was possible for them in two weeks the changes became permanent and lasting. I saw many life-long health problems resolve after less than a week eating a neuro-reconstructive diet. People experienced themselves and their own capacities in beautiful, new ways.
Before providing this complete experience, people who had studied with me for six months were unable to integrate what I had shown them, in their actuality. They, too, felt bad about that. But trying harder didn’t yield the results both they and I desired for them.
Through actually experiencing what I was teaching, change got integrated, bodily. They literally became that change. Experiencing a level of well-being that was totally unknown to them made them realize what was possible for them. Health and a creative approach to their lives became natural. Their commitment to healthy living was now rooted in their experience of well-being and not in some idea of what they “should” or “should not” be doing.
When we get Hip to the Nature of an Already-Perfect World in Reality, and not some fantasy idea of the world, we realize that all results are perfect results. They are the results of everything creating them.
What difference does this make?
Once I understood that all current results are perfect results, I also realized that if I desired a different result, that result would also have to be perfected. It wasn’t enough to hope for it, berate people or situations for not being the way I wished they were, because the only result we can get is, necessarily, perfect. It’s the consequence of everything that generates it. If I want to change it, I have to change everything necessary to make it different.
Instead of just spending lot of energy, I began to invest energy precisely and much more consciously. I stopped making anything or anybody wrong, including myself. Rather than trying to “change” situations I thought were “wrong,” or trying to change myself to have a “right attitude” toward people or situations I didn’t enjoy, I began to pay careful attention to all of the factors contributing to the current state of what I wanted to change, including my experience of it.
I began to see things precisely and in relationship to a totality of influences. I began to take action motivated by a conscious evaluation of circumstances and of my energy, capabilities and desires. I replaced my reactivity with attention and consequent activity. I began to evaluate circumstances in light of their perfection, instead of my like or dislike. I paid attention to what causes people to behave the way they do or situations to be as they are.
I began to ask questions:
Can I really change this situation? Can I really help this individual? At what cost? For what result? How? Where is my energy best applied? Does this situation that I call “a problem” truly need change by my intervention, or is the “problem” actually solving itself by transforming or undoing itself?
As we see navigate reality per-fect-ly we live consequently. We direct our energy with clarity and intention. We choose from desire connected to reality with capacity for coherent action. We begin to appreciate relationships and cycles.
Humanity, right now, is in a phase of a cycle. Living organisms go through growth cycles, not just individually, but societally and even globally. As I grasped perfection I began to appreciate current challenges and opportunities in a perspective rooted in Life Logic.
I began to see clearly what challenges I realistically and ethically desired to spend my life energy on, what I am capable of responding to, who I desire to work with, who inspires me and charges my energy, and who doesn’t. I began to see the Nature of things and people more clearly. I replaced hopeful fantasies with a realistic evaluation of the challenges of change and the capabilities, commitments and desires of those aspiring to engage together for a result and an adventure of creation.
I also began to appreciate perfectly the process of implementing change. If someone is in poor health, there’s no point in teaching a course on dynamic learning, or learning how to approach wealth more intelligently than just working harder. It’s pointless. The first step is restoring health. Dynamic learning then becomes possible. If someone wants to reorganize their financial lives and lifestyle, but has very little flexibility in their learning style, it would be pointless to disrupt their lifestyle before helping them be more playful with learning, creating and looking beyond their predefined views of what constitutes their wealth, possibilities and capacities.
Every one of our results is a perfect result.
The only way to obtain another is to perfect it.
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Roberta
Caro amico, it’s me who is grateful for your commentaries, each one adding, adorning, deepening, enriching with particulars, details, nuances; and is furthermore interesting both to comprehend through the lines and not comprehend all, leaving the door open for the debate, refining our listening, maintaining the embers burning.
Roberta
Caro amico, thank you very much indeed for your long reply. I’d like to apologize in advance if my English doesn’t allow both to express myself completely and understand You exactly. Nevertheless, we can always, at least try, to read and comprehend through the lines. I’m not sure if your question “Does the time that you “live” truly give you time for living?”… is a rhetorical one or is precisely a question. In this second eventuality, I don’t want to appear pretentious, but the answer is YES. Even in that mechanized epoch, that you exhaustively sounded out, we can always, may be at different levels, but always, say YES or NO. The fact that the word and the concept of kairòs has not been deliberately kept in our languages (a part for a wristwatch brand, a paradox!) that doesn’t mean that doesn’t exist in our intimate essential nature and experience. Telling in other words what I wrote you previously, I would rather write, that there are epoch and conditions more or less favorable respect the infinite potentialities and expressions of life’s experience, but all are opportunities to grow and develop. You talk about slaves. Who keeps a person slave? Nobody else that himself. At a certain level, this is no related to mechanization and technologization, is related to an intimate choice. I enormously enjoyed your telling about swimming in the river, the Current and the Counter-Current. It made me think at the attitude we could have when there is a big pain or sorrow. By refusing or fighting against it can only get stronger, by accepting it totally, immediately appears that it has inside all the solutions and relief. By swimming in the river, or by any other experience, the Book of Nature is there for us and is complete, and we all can read it. Human nature is extraordinary and as a sunflower turns always to the Sun, human nature soon or later turns to the joy, that is the essential nature of the Heart, our Sun. I am always grateful for your writings, that contribute to keep this joy high. Warmly, Roberta
Journeyman O
Cara Amica,
First of all, thank you for your commentaries and for taking the time to engage the dialogue, and your English is excellent. It is very gratifying that you connect with the intention behind my writing, which is reconnection with the Wisdom of Aliveness.
The questions I asked are rhetorical and only have value in the measure that we ask them for ourselves. If I answer yes or no, then the question no longer lives, but if I respond to the question by living it, instead of only answering it, then that question can expand my living.
“Does the time that I live truly give me time for living?” Anyone who knows me might say that I am one of the people who lives with the most time for living. Fine.
If I embrace that as a foregone conclusion, as some “achievement” that I have somehow “attained,” however, then I having nothing more to learn. But the reality that the question points to, as a JOURNEY INTO MASTERY, is far deeper than whatever I could pretend to be living or to already know. And there are questions within questions, right?
What is living? We have been trained to define things with words and ideas. We hear the question and we immediately come up with an answer. But if I live the question continuously, then I soon discover that whatever “mastery” I may have achieved in my life’s journey so far, the Invitation to Living is infinite and inexhaustible, and every moment can be a doorway to discovering new dimensions of really opening to living. If I allow the question to LIVE in me, then every day I bump against my hard edges, my defensiveness, my insecurities and all the ways that I would rather not embrace these and pretend that these are not part of living.
And it’s in those moments that the question brings me to the rub: Do I have time for living, for ALL of it? Am I willing to be a Beginner again, not because I hatch that up as some new way to pretend that I’m “advanced” and call myself a “Beginner,” but because I see the realities of my challenges, and am willing to embrace my realities, instead of pretending to be what I am not?
Because with honesty I can recognize many moments, throughout the day, that I am on auto-pilot. Other qualities are also possible, not ideal qualities, but real qualities. Qualities of attention and connection that live.
If I think that because I write these articles, that “being a teacher” has become some sort of identity, then I am finished. My Journey is only a memory. But if I come to Living as a Lover, as a Child, as a Parent, as a Gardener, as a Musician, as a Poet, and in all the Ways that all of us are endowed to Court and Love our Living, always eager to Live new dimensions of Loving, and Learning, and to Love new dimensions of Living, then I am always the Beginner. I am always prepared to start my first day beyond the shell of what I think I have Loved and Lived.
Yesterday’s attention is not enough for today’s challenges and invitations. Attention is only attention if it is fresh, if it is the FIRST Attention and dares to stay open.
Then my response to the Questions that truly matter in my Living, my Loving, and my Loving of Living, and Living of Loving, lead me to become the response NOW, and NOW, and NOW. Then the Qualities of Time, which escaped the labels, the measures and definitions we subject the Kronos to, are welcomed with my eyes, my ears, my tongue, my touch, my nose, my sense-ability. Then I can be Alive, now, and now, and now, and now, always ready to be free of what I am convinced I already know, and to receive Aliveness as She is: Always Inimitably Renewed, always in Flow, always with the Unspeakable Smile in Her Eyes, the Beauty with which even the Leaves of the Trees shake and turn colors, the pull that sends the Geese on tremendous Pilgrimages, and by which the Mountain melts into Rivers of Longing for the Ocean, and the Ocean sends Her Love in Clouds, and Thunder, and Waves of Rolling Storms, that the Mountain can Know Her, even from far away.
Then our questions LIVE, and we hand them like Sacred Gifts to those we Love, inviting them to come Join us on the Sacred Pilgrimage of living the Questions until our Living is our Answer from our Loving of Living, so that the Questions that Living awakens in us Live in us.
Then we know the Joy that has no contrary, because even the storms are embraced. We SEE what is at PLAY in LIVING. And in SEEING, and PLAYING, and LIVING, we LIVE to LOVE LIVING, and we LOVE to LIVE LOVING.
This is the Ceremony. When we SEE the Ceremony we KNOW that we cannot DO the Ceremony. We can participate. We can Offer and Receive. We can Celebrate even our Undoing because it is only in our Undoing, and the Undoing of all our answers, that Being discovers Becoming and we discover the Gifts that all of our Questions have Invited us to, would we but not close them with our answers, but leave them open like doorways to LIVING and LOVING. This is the Ceremony.
It is Beautiful to SEE you in the Ceremony!
O
Roberta
Caro amico, thank you very much for your precious, relevant and clever follow up. What you say is totally true. The point is that we are facing this reality, we don’t live that time, when Trivium and the Quadrivium were though, we are alive now and have to do our best always, not only even, but especially when conditions, environment surrounding are not favorable, on the contrary they are obstacle for our human and natural develop in intelligence, joy and sense. The relief comes from the awareness that we are all potentially able to re-discover how to Live. Many people already did. Your teachings leads to this. Thank you.
Roberta
Caro amico!
Thank you for all your articles that are amazingly interesting and perfect 🙂 the prefix per means also moving through a space and expanding, that tell us about the becoming. Perfect and perfectible. I ‘d like to underline that the disaster with television is dramatically increased from the moment “they” changed from analogue to digital system (in Italy 4 years ago), the last one is much more invasive since the hypnotic trance that induces is more deep and lasting than the previous. (Even if many people know it, most keep the TV at home). It seems to me that you are too categorical when you talk about the mantra “Don’t think” that comes from all those oriental books that overflow our bookshops… it seems rather an invitation to be vigilant on what happens in our minds, don’t chat about platitudes, avoid gossip, make a silent space not for the vacuum but for higher though. Your study and experience with nutrition is invaluable!!! Again, Thank you! Warmly, Roberta
Journeyman O
Cara amica, Thank you for your comment. As regards Oriental thought and “don’t think,” your comment is valid, but please notice that in the Western tradition, as well as the Hindu, Buddhist, and many Oriental traditions there is a long-standing tradition of very clear thinking and debate. This is not taught in the West, for many different reasons. In the Stone Doctor tradition I have been studying in since 1984 we say that we have two heads; the Intellect which labels, and the Spirit Mind which SEES, HEARS and MOVES, in sense-able reality.
Notice the religious imports to the West however criticize the so-called “rational mind” but this is precisely the mind which has been shut down since 1919, in the United States, and before, in many parts of Europe. The Trivium and the Quadrivium, as tools for coherent understanding of our world, were deliberately removed from public education so that a human who would be content to live his/her life as an accessory to industrial machines, and be convinced of his/her impotence to self-lead, self-guide, was manufactured.
So, yes, there is higher thought, as you say, many levels, as a matter of fact. But without the foundation from reality we are easily mystified into believing all kinds of literal non-sense.
To grasp this deeply requires a broad context for our human experience and our Natural Human Intelligence. We are naturally endowed with extraordinary capacities for learning and making profound sense of our world, at levels far beyond what most modern people’s imagination allows for. What is required is not more imagination, but a solid foundation grounding and awakening these natural capacities which have been overrun and overridden by the forced indoctrination we call “schooling” today.
Thank you for the comment re. “per.”
Also, yes, digital TV and most of present-day tech is profoundly trance-inducing, and very intentionally so. In that trance, we absorb a “narrative” while the sensory input is so overwhelming, and continually and rapidly-changing that we have no time to make any sense of it before we are already on to the next, disconnected sensory input.
I am delighted that you are finding the nutrition resources invaluable. When you apply them you will be amazed at what you experience. The words cannot describe it and many people have told me of very profound and rapid reversal of lifelong health issues. We are designed to THRIVE BRILLIANTLY!
Grazie Mile Roberta for your feedback! O
Journeyman O
Cara Roberta,
Rereading your comment I discover other nuances you pointed out that I can look at a little more deeply and learning something from when I do. Specifically your comment that
“”It seems to me that you are too categorical when you talk about the mantra “Don’t think” that comes from all those oriental books that overflow our bookshops… it seems rather an invitation to be vigilant on what happens in our minds, don’t chat about platitudes, avoid gossip, make a silent space not for the vacuum but for higher though.” “
Journeyman O
Cara Roberta,
The Trivium and Quadrivium are Tools of Attention for developing our Abilities to Respond to Reality, and not just whatever “ideas” we picked up second-hand. So is sitting quietly, becoming aware of breath, etc. We grow into what we pay attention to.
When you say “we don’t live that time” what you say is far richer and more revealing than you yourself might imagine. But you’d have to enter into your declarations with questions: What “time” do you live? Does the time that you “live” truly give you time for living? What other Time could you live in TODAY, in REALITY, not Fantasy?
Come up with questions of your own and, in the Beauty and Intimacy of your Attention Time will reveal Itself to you. We can get curious about the most fundamental elements of life we take for granted declaratively.
There is a Time that is Living, not Mechanical. So, yes, I understand when you tell me that you don’t live that time. Mechanical Time is Linear. It is the time of the Imperial Machine which wants to mine the time of everybody’s “life.” It moves from Past to Present.
Living Time is PREGNANT. Do You Know How She Becomes Pregnant? Time Births the Expression of All that which is Brought to Her with Lovingkindness, Attention and Care.
Our Attention and Care is not only a Matter of Time. Time itself is a Matter of our Attention and Care.
The Possibilities are Endless, My Friend. Living Time is Pregnant with Them. But the ones that come to fruition in Reality are Seeded by our Attention and our Abilities.
Living Time has ample Time for the Living.
Very Different.
The modern machine-human lives in a mechanized Time that is quantitative. How do such “humans” know what time it is? A MACHINE tells them. Their lives are lived under the Rule of Machines.
Human BEINGS live in a Time that is Qualitatively ALIVE. Every BEING lives in the same Quality of Living Time which is Precisely the Time of our Lives.
The Ancient Greeks speak of Kronos and Kairos.
To take these on as ideas is still sterile. To know Living Time one needs to spend one’s Time Living in the Time that’s actually Living, not under the rule of machine time.
Living Time is the Womb that all Shapes of Aliveness are Birthed into their Shaping in. Such a Womb could never be linear. Consider that. Nor could you put it under the rule of a machine.
It is the Time for Being and Becoming.
The Being that Becomes is the Being that was, UNDONE. The Undoing of its Being is its Becoming. That’s how we Became this Way: By Being Becoming Undone.
My traditional teachers did not teach me the Trivium or Quadrivium. They taught me SEEING, HEARING and MOVING. They showed me the POSSIBILITY of SEEING, HEARING and MOVING. Only on my own, with my Feet on the Land, could I discover the Nature of the Possibilities that are only Possible in the moment that I exercise my Abilities to make them Real. The Mountains taught me that. Living on EARTH in Remote Places taught me that, and I am still learning.
But the Trivium and Quadrivium are very useful tools that are present in Western culture. Their current absence today was very deliberate on the part of the totalitarianism of “managed and manufactured populations” and “global society” which has been the dominant praxis in “Western culture” since World Wars I and II and the ethos of making a “machine-human,” which is precisely what we have today. Then they gave them all wristwatches and time pieces, Syn-Chronizing the movements within Mass Hypnosis.
Perhaps the wristwatch was the first doorway into the Global Psychosis of Hollywoodian Culture. Everybody got sucked into a Time that was Illusory yet made real because all the machines said the same thing. The important thing was to start training people to go to machines to learn what’s “real.”
Just by that simple act one could seduce entire geographies of people into machine living. So Brilliant! My, my how skillfully they do hunt their prey! Beautiful. A Global Citizenry stumbling around in Mesmerica hypnotized, synchronized, all mutually-convincing each other of the absurdity and impossibility of Time for Living. HAHAHAHAHA.
Every secondary school and university tells students of “the importance of thinking critically.” That actually requires knowing the Trivium. “Thinking critically” is not just “being critical,” as some sort of mental attitude, or believing or disbelieving based on personal impressions. It requires knowing the differences by experiencing them, IN REALITY.
Critical thinking requires first-hand observation of Reality and the willingness to face and address Reality alone and together, regardless of whether we like it, or not. We do not learn this with any depth, method or elegance either today OR YESTERDAY. The Free free themselves. As Ezra Pound said, “A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him.”
In a culture of slaves efforts at “collaboration” and “cooperation” are thwarted by what people “believe” about the world and “how things should be done.” For almost two thousand years we have been led into a way of “life” where the Reality of Life itself no longer has much standing as our actual standard of reference.
Instead we have fractured societies composed of individualist-ic, but not individuated, collectivized, but not a community, of micro-fractured narcissistic, permanently-infantile, developmentally arrested persons confusedly seeking to fulfill expectations that were perfectly legitimate, yet unmet, at birth, in infancy, early childhood, and on and on. Those unmet expectations don’t just go away.
They grow and grow until we have to mine the world in order to fabricate substitutions for satisfactions whose reality is RELATIONAL. They are not satisfied by technological and verbal fakery, but these certainly ALMOST satisfy. Technology and substitution replace the genuine sense-ability of true relating.
Do not think that I am on some “mission to remedy this” or “turn this around.” That is not where I am coming from. I tried that and learned plenty in the process. This is a cycle within a cycle within cycles. It needs no remedy.
Nothing is WRONG. Much is VERY, VERY fucked-up. Even more is amazingly possible. In the Current there are Infinite Counter-Currents. The larger the Current, the more powerful the Counter-Currents. Swimming daily in the River has taught me this in ways that continue to daily surprise me.
To go against the Trend, contrary to our programmed impressions, has nothing to do with swimming AGAINST the Current. This is a fool’s errand. But when we swim IN the current and EXPLORE the Current eventually we discover Counter-Currents. The transition only requires us to be Care-FULL, yet Effort-LESS.
Wisdom is Way-Finding. To Find it you have to put yourself IN the Way of the River of it, the Reality of it, the Textures of it, the Intelligence, Directionality, Consequentiality and Intention of it.
Then we discover Reality. There is only One Reality. It is not monolithic, but textured. Swimming in a River and finding Counter-Currents is precisely what the Trivium shows us is possible. This is not the life of the multiple-choice question. We have to actually ENTER the REALITY of what it is that we would like to know about until we discover its Textures.
So you are very right: situations are not favorable at this phase of the Cycle. Since the situation is overwhelmingly NOT favorable, the Counter-Currents that ARE favorable have very unusual qualities that are EXCEEDINGLY favorable for us. To find them we have to dare enter the Current, rather than protect ourselves from it. But we don’t enter “on blind faith.” We enter with our Attention Full-On and to know its Qualities, neither “surrendering to it,” nor “resisting it.”
Part of the trap we are in is the deep programming to binary thinking. But the textures, nuances, and possibilities IN REALITY far surpass these clichés of hot/cold, up/down and the whole grid of binary oppositionality our so-called “minds” have been imprisoned in.
The River of Reality does not Flow in that grid. It flows in Reality. Which Reality? The RIVER’S Reality, which is the Reality of Desert, and Beaver, and Thunderstorms, Floods, Sunshine, and Rain. This is Reality. Reality is a River that Flows. To Flow from One Precise Direction to Another Precise Direction necessarily means that it also Flows in Every Possible Direction. Such is the Nature of FLOW.
To Swim in the River daily reveals to me my mental grid-making habits. Based on my swim yesterday, I enter the River in anticipation of swimming in what “I already know.” But that River is not this River today. It is marvelously strange yet real to discover this. In that contact something opens and is released. Same with the cold of the water as the weather moves through Autumn. Even that transition is woven of Currents and Counter-Currents.
It is not simply linear nor mechanical.
The map of the River today will no longer accurately reflect the River tonight. Reality Flows LIVES in Flow. Life is Water Logic.
Our Deep Programming is in the Binary Logic of Machines.
But the River still Flows, Cara Amica. The River is as Real Today with all its Textures and Nuances within which all favorabilities are more amply abundant than our small imaginings. I can tell you that from a lifetime of experience throwing myself into the Currents at PLAY.
Life Invites us to dive into the River and Discover It, not just “map it,” but to PLAY, to Love it and Know it, Celebrate and Flow it, until we Recognize ourselves in, and as, the River at Play.
We are in something very Big and very Beautiful. We have ALL been Invited to develop our Capacities to Navigate Currents, Counter-Currents, Swirls, Eddies, Riverbanks, Mud Puddles, and Textures at PLAY! We can ALL say YES to it.
Cara Amica, thank you for all of your brilliant commentaries and, most of all, the Brilliance of your BEING. I am glad we get to Play in the River together!
Dick Seely
Thank you for the great visit with you. I always enjoy them. I am staying with your healthy eating guidelines and feeling better while dropping some weight. Missing you good friend.
Journeyman O
Hello Dick!
I LOVE every single fraction of a moment I get to relish the wisdom, the intelligence and the love for living that just shimmers off of you right along with good laughs. Hey! I’m glad you’re feeling better. I forgot to ask you and Sharon to take a PICTURE of you two to compare with in three months. If you stick with the guidelines you WILL be surprised. And if you’d like to share them here (or not, it’s up to you) I’d be glad to host them, but I can assure you that you will have tales to tell and you will be surprised if you follow through 100% with the guidelines.
The most challenging part is overcoming those cravings for sugar/ sweets/ bread/ fruit for the first two weeks or so. Then your cells will switch back to metabolizing fat as their primary source of calories, which probably hasn’t happened since you were breastfeeding. You’ll see.
I look forward to you feeling more limber and spry ’cause I still have a lot of wisdom to “catch” from you out there in the Sacred Places. I’ll come see you on the way back. Having a beautiful time up here and sending you a big hug and lots of love always. O
Michael Ivan
I’d like to edit all those typos, but there’s no button for that. Perfect. I didn’t communicate exactly what I intended. I ignored an instinct to check and make sure that what I’d written matched what I intended to say. I kind of reactively just pushed Post Comment. In a way, that’s how I do everything.
Michael Ivan
I remember the class in humuahaca, but I only came to the one class. Learning French as you taught in Spanish. I can’t picture the girl’s face exactly, but what I remember most about humuaca was the slowness. The sun seemed to rise slower, the people moved slower, the country people from the mountain lands stood still. Probably the biggest impact for me there was one day in a market for those people who came not from humuaca but who walked for hours to have a little market. Some of the older ones sat there as if they’d been sitting there for centuries. There was this stillness… that stood out.
I get the wisdom in the view point that how we do anything is how we do everything, and of course its not universally true. But I do remember signing up for your course in early 2010. I did it trying to manage you my relationship with you, your upset, your expectations. And I was doing that with everyone in my life at the time. I wasn’t committed to the course, I was seducing people into my world and then trying to manage the expectations I’d created with them. It created a scenario where I got to see everyone else “reacting” and me being the skillful facilitator in the midst of conflict… conflict which I set up. A perfect reality for someone who wanted to play the role of hero, visionary hero. How I did that was more or less how I was doing everything. I can see how I even did it a year and a half later in Humuaca.
My response to a world I saw as crazy and uncaring… I’m going to change it, I’m going to recreate it, I’m going to be the hero… but I don’t really want to be a part of it, I don’t want to slow down and be with myself, I don’t want to slow down and be with regular people… The world I was life I was for myself through my choices was one which led to more craziness and uncaringness in the world around me. An interesting echosystem… perfect…
I was on the beach yesterday here in Thailand… it was late at night on the party street… A street full of drunk and almost dead old guys with hot young and not-so-hot not-so-young hookers and ladyboys… I walked to the water and saw a cockroach just on the edge of the surf. He was twitching a bit, not really struggling. Not fully alive. As if waiting to die. Probably already tossed about in the waves and sand for the last while. I looked at it as a wave came and the next. I thought about turning it over. But why? He’s almost gone anyway. I thought it was the least I could do. But if it wants to live, its going to have to get up and go on its own–or it will die anyway. I stood there watching for about half an hour. Trying to anticipate which wave would take him away. Some took him out towards the ocean a few feet, some washed him back ashore. He’d move a bit, but there wasn’t much life. I was ‘paying attention.’
What way am I like this cockroach? Waiting for the next wave to either save me or finish me? Several years letting go of being the hero… and letting go of getting people to play my game… and letting go of attachment to family being ‘together forever’ …and on and on…
I have a young man who has come to apprentice with me… I’d not sought him out. I’d not marketed or sold to him. I responded to his invitation and the felt welcome… I’ve been living through responding in this way. And I noticed how, even now I’ve been waiting… waiting for him to commit, waiting for him to initiate, waiting to respond. And… he’s been waiting for me. In many ways he’s mirroring me. The next day I thought he was quitting… and that night in a way, I quit on him. It was as if we’d both submitted to the waves.
It woke me up… as if being spit back onto the shore by a big wave, coughing up salt water and gasping for breath. I have time and space in my life now to create something different for myself. Not the compulsive, chaotic hero life from before. Not the intentionally life of ease, set adrift upon the waves, of the last four years… where I almost felt like I was waiting to see what life did with me.
I wanted to see what would happen to the cockroach. I didn’t want to leave without an ending. I wanted to either save him or kick him into the sea. But I walked away. And I’m moving with attention as I choose what’s next. What I know is that I feel most alive, most potent, most aligned when I am facilitating my work–when I am 100% in service to people who are 100% committed to facing themselves. That’s my starting point. But I want my WHOLE life to be like that. I want to be that many in ALL of my life. And I don’t want there to be a separation between who I am with my work and who I am in the world. I don’t want to uphold an image of being a ‘good’ man, and hide another part of my life. I want to be one integrated whole. Unapologetic. Honoring what is. Honoring the full reality that is ‘i’.
I want to there to be a difference between who I am with a client and who I am with everyone. I feel I’ll be more powerful with clients this way, and more powerful in everyday life and with myself.
My client the other day lamented in a moment of upset that he never picks the right teachers. I don’t know. I sense we choose the perfect teachers. And that we are the perfect students for those teachers. I know he’s been the perfect client/apprentice for me. And you’ve been a perfect teacher.
I don’t mean that in any woo woo new age way… but I sense that the very things that have us think someone we’ve drawn to us is not the right teacher or student for us, may be the very things that make them the perfect teacher or student.
Michael Ivan
Reposting my emailed comment for your online reply:
It seems that you’re giving diet too much credit/emphasis for why people don’t fully learn and follow through. maybe you’re just stressing the point to drive it home, or maybe you give it so much emphasis because it was such a big and hard-won insight on your journey… i appreciate that i don’t know a fraction of what you do about diet/neurology… but its enough that i can see some very big other factors (and i’m not referring to what’s in my blog comments). maybe you’re also saying that its SUCH a HUGE factor that when it is handled, everything else becomes so much easier… maybe that’s what you’re pointing at.
on another note…
i wonder if you give thought to compiling your blogs/articles/essays into a little paperback book you could take with you and pass out. to me it feels much more honoring for your message–something physical someone can slide into their pocket and ride in solitude, rather than digital where people are in a rush, have dozens of windows open, audios and videos going on and off, etc. not saying both formats aren’t a great thing. but would encourage you to set up with amazon which can print on demand for very cheap. i could imagine you offering one to the people you run into on your path.
and, thanks for holding that vision of places where elders and others can go and live simply in beauty and health and peace, and mingle and thrive… i support that vision.
i’m beginning to explore working with ‘vision holders.’ people who get/choose to be for their people the one who holds the vision. for example, the vision of all their people living in health, free and connected. who are thinking of more than themselves… and could be the ones to bring you numbers of their people… and who hold a bigger desire than their own health and freedom… for many people, parents for example, there’s bigger motivation when they’re identified with their role as the one for their people/children/family…
you might speak to those people… to the vision holders… to the ones who hold their people in their hearts… to the chiefs and chieftresses 😉
i’ve kind of forgotten over the last 5 years away from my istands… who i am to people (how they see me and what they come to me for). there’s plenty they probably shouldn’t come to me for… but there’s at least one thing i do really well… and its about seeing through the eyes of the heart, and being the one to hold that vision (not because one ‘should’ but only if one feels so called).
i’m seeing it more as ‘spiritual’ vision. not anything mystical. but metaphorically, STANDING is an act of spirit. we are inSPIRED when we see someone take a stand. to feel may be the ‘heart’ metaphorically. to stand is spiritual. again, not in any religious or mystical sense.
Journeyman O
Michael, thank you for your comments. It opens a space for the next offering. I will clarify the importance and interrelatedness of issues like health and neurology as we proceed. Life is not in this either/or model that we are conditioned to use. Living Systems differ from mechanical systems in that Living Systems have emergent properties: the nature of superior levels of organization in Living Systems reflect the nature of organization in component systems.We will lend some appreciation to these emergent dynamics in coming posts.
If a person's health does not allow for new, vital neurological connections to be made, "deep learning and follow-through" are pure fantasy. Deep learning, by the way, is NOT hearing something and being able to repeat it. "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue" is NOT deep learning. That's recording, and it's what the instructional system programs so deeply that, for most of us, it's automatic.
We think because we read or heard something and can repeat what was written or said, or hatch some opinion about it, that we "learned" something.
The article I wrote is an invitation. But it is only HALF of an invitation to making a difference in the Life of the reader. The other half requires YOUR invitation which is the invitation you make to everything in your life. How we do anything is how we do everything. If that means twenty windows with audio, video, e-mail, etc. Fine. I get that. That is a neurology responding to its world. I am not catering to that neurology unless it actually has the wherewithal and desire to self-transform and a willingness to invest time, attention and action for that transformation. If that person desires my help, that also requires an investment commensurate with my investment into that person. Simple.
The book recommendation is valuable and is in the works, as well as much more. I appreciate your perspective.
Your comment about the pitfalls of the website are germane but not limited to the web. Each of us decides how to invite our attention to what we pretend to pay attention to.
The Chinese say:
When the wise point to the moon the foolish examine the finger.
Let's say I read this article on Perfection. Great! What difference do I make with what I read? Reading can be passive or creative
There's a pointing to Perfection. How do I transform that pointing to something of value for me, even after writing it myself, for example? Am I just the "teacher" or am I the student (Latin "studium": application, care) of this teaching? Is it "my" teaching or is it Life's teaching?
Deep Freedom Now has a purpose and intention: Connecting with those who will actually SEE the moon.That was also the intention of my workshops. I met a few amazing individuals and an extraordinary number of highly-distracted individuals. Most, however, are distracted even in a one-on-one conversation. Not present.
I decided to work with the FULL ON in-person. My question, right now, is How can I meet more people who share similar values.
My work in helping people get more FULL ON, right now, is offered here, eventually in book format, podcasts, videos and online courses. I want to give people the steps to transform their lives and THEN work with them personally at a much more playful and dynamic level. In the meanwhile there's a foundation to establish. I will be offering online group courses and learning formats.
But ONE person who actually CATCHES the Moon that this finger points to... aaaaah... that is true pleasure.
I always think of that beautiful 9 year old girl who came to all my classes in Humahuaca. Do you remember her? Pure Attention. Excellence. 100%. I think of her and just the memory of the absolute superb of her presence invigorates me with JOY!
I think of my friend from Oz whom I met in Belgium and spent a week with: Pure Attention. Excellence. FULL-ON! Lovers of Life. Beloved People. With the Ozzie girl I was in a rough moment and not into pretending otherwise. It didn't matter. She saw where my finger pointed and saw the moon. Even now, five years later, she shows me periodically how her Life impacted me. THAT is thanks that means something to me, because it is thanks from connection to what my finger pointed out to her. My delight is not in pointing, it is in sharing the greater reality I'm still very much discovering new dimensions and delight in, with other individuals who dare EXCELLENCE. What their presence and excellence inspire in me is immeasurable joy!
My vision is for ten people who are FULL ON and up for collaborating and learning together. Ten. It seems like a little number but it is a huge number. Ten FULL ON INDIVIDUALS collaborating has a potential that I am WAY more interested in tending to and nurturing than "spreading some message."
Ten people of EXCELLENCE who care fully and 100% can make things REAL for many people, and each other, in a way that a million of people who are lukewarm, care-less and half-ass can't. My work here is dedicated to meeting and supporting those ten, or five, or three. Looking beyond the finger and SEEING. That vision is already coming alive, slowly, growing like a garden, like an Emergent Living System. It takes time, attention and care.
The picture will fill out as we go along. And eventually there will be a book. I've already got several hundred pages awaiting editing and organizing.
ONE STEP. ONE FULL STEP. THIS ONE! THIS ATTENTION! SIMPLE!
Tell me the differences YOU make for YOURSELF in noticing Perfection. What are the natures of those differences? Are they differences of opinion or differences of experience?
When we notice how we approach one thing we discover powerful clues to how we approach the rest of our lives.. How we do anything is how we do everything. Finger or Moon? We each decide.
Life reveals itself to me. What am I noticing? What do I invite my attention to?
Michael Ivan
I can relate to this deep frustration and desire to make a real difference, and not just profit from people’s willingness to pay money for a desired result. I’d rather enjoy a simple life of freedom than sacrifice for people who are unwilling to wake up to their reality and do the work to change it–or than profit by selling fantasies to asleep people who I know won’t create the results they desire. If I can just find a way to help people to fully wake up! This challenge excites me also, and I appreciate this article as a tool for awakening people.
It seems TV has worked perfectly: we have become perfect consumers. We see an advertisement showing a ‘perfect’ fantasy for our future. We feel the disparity between our reality and the fantasy that we want or think we ‘should’ have, and then follow the advertiser’s instructions like the good students we were trained to be: We pay for it. Having paid for the fantasy, we feel relief are now done. But the results don’t show up and we feel bad. Never mind, the next advertisement can have us feel better–we just need to pay again for the new solution. Living this fantasy can get expensive. But never mind that either–we can use a credit card. I can see the debt we have, the resulting stress we carry, the poor health we have and scarcity of time we have are all perfect results from being trained through television, advertisements and schooling. Our results are perfect! And woo woo spirituality fits right in as a way to not feel responsible for our role in these perfectly dismal results or for feeling responsible to our actively change and create the results we desire. Of course, there are more solutions we can buy: get rick quick schemes and business opportunities–all our problems can be solved if we learn to get rich! All we need to do is learn to sell more fantasies to our consumer family/friend/neighbors by manipulating the emotions of these entranced, stressed out, instruction-following consumers (just buy the course!) and changing our “limiting beliefs” about money to justify these manipulative actions and relieve the guilt we might feel by taking advantage of them (and there’s a course for that too!). So, there’s no problem here folks! We can always get more credit and buy another program/product/service. And as long as we keep hoping for that future fantasy and don’t stop believing, we can tolerate working ourselves to death to pay the debt. It’s all perfect!
Thanks for the wake up call.
Journeyman
Many people will not do what it takes to apply themselves to the learning and skill development necessary to become healthy, wealthy and savvy. There are very good reasons for that. All of our experiences reflect the qualities of our neurology and biological state.Most children are naturally healthy, wealthy and savvy, just as most of the rest of life well. Then they get shut down, humiliated, medicated. frustrated and aggravated. But that's not all. They get rewarded for shutting themselves down, sitting still, having the "right" answers (always someone else's answers) and not making contact with the world at large. So there's pleasure in self-sabotage and pain in self-affirmation.
Any child that adapts to that does so by laying down neural pathways to engage in "the appropriate behavior." We learn to "tone down" all of our natural capacities and settle for "adaptation." But we don't learn how to process information by verifying it with reality. We just learn to have ideas. Big ideas. Little Ideas. My ideas. Your ideas. Pretty little ideas and the prettier the better. No need for reality, no need for responsibility. Just think better thoughts or, better yet, don't think at all!
Deep neural imprinting to self-frustration, self-numbing and depressing all self-generated initiative makes a perfect "human resource."
There is a fascinating history and a tremendous, documented legacy of applied art and science for creating a compliant populace and it's chillingly explicit and lucid. A job so well done that, once we're imprinted, most of us will continue self-sabotage for the remainder of our lives. Between being our own best friend or our own worst enemy, in terms of our natural brilliance and vitality, we've gotten more external rewards for being our own enemy.
Here's Aldous Huxley's thought on the topic in a letter to George Orwell:
"Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. "
Aldous Huxley worked for British Intelligence and was at very high levels of the CIA's MK-Ultra program. His work, far from an objection to techno-tyranny, was actually a manual for how to implement it... and he did.
We can be indignant about this state of affairs. That's easy. But we also have plenty of ways of transforming ourselves. That's more challenging. That takes us back to the beginning. Will you or won't you take responsibility for your life? It's up to you. Free people free themselves. Slaves expect someone else to do it for them.
I have no objection to either. But I choose the company of those who WILL. Not many of those around. Every single one I've met, however, has been a delight for me.
If we exercise a kinky sense of curiosity and develop our capabilities, there's plenty of fun to be had in a world gone mad!
Thanks for your comments!