I get my inspiration where I can get it… so this article was inspired by a short article on Medium…
1. Two young fish are swimming in the lake and they pass by an older fish that is swimming the opposite way. The older fish nods at them in greeting, and says, “Morning, boys. How is the water?” The two young fish swim on for a while, then one of them looks over at the other and asks ‘What the hell is water?’
OK, that is one story about water… and self-awareness.
2. The second story comes from a book I haven’t read and probably won’t. But the question is fascinating:
Why doesn’t water taste like anything?
According to psychophysicist Mark Changizi, water tastes like nothing because evolutionarily, its lack of taste made it easier for us to taste anything harmful that might be tainting it. Bacteria from a rotting dead animal upstream could spell death for a human that ingested it, and flavorless water makes it easier for us to taste it.
3. And here is the third story: what I really want to write this article about:
To us, most of life is tasteless. We aren’t consciously aware of what happens around us because most of it isn’t a threat.
Day after day, you tell the same stories, get upset by the same stuff, eat and drink the same stuff… feel the same way. Eat the same things… No need to get aware.
But the moment something changes, outside, inside, you are paying attention. Something has tainted the water. And if things go bad, you are programmed to pay attention, to wake up awareness, so you’ll do what you need to do so you stay alive and well.
As you know I go to exercise classes of old people. The emphasis is on balance and leg strength: to keep us out of nursing homes. The city pays for it… I guess it is expensive to keep a whole lot of old people to take care of.
In one of these classes, half of the people need canes to walk. The other class: no canes, no difficulty. Same town, different class of people.
I have been walking to the “canes class” for 3 years, and everybody there loves me. I bring levity, fun, laughter to the exercises.
I decided to go to the other class as well… joined a couple with car… I don’t drive… There I am new, I am not wanted, I am the oddball… different. Something has tainted the water… for me and for them. I am considering not going any more. I don’t feel welcome.
But… but… had I had the brains, the smarts, to start silently, unobtrusively, and then, little by little become myself, my disruptive, raucous, joyfully exuberant self… eventually I could be myself and be, maybe liked for it. Or not. They would not be, then, maybe, up in arms about me and my behavior.
Why am I sharing about the exercise classes? What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?
The price of tea in China, in MY world, is what is relevant to raise your vibration, to take you to the Promised Land.
The Promised Land? Hell yeah… it has been many thousands years overdue.
You see Moses took the Israelites out of slavery (Egypt), made them walk around in circles in the desert for 40 years… and yet, the Promised Land turned out not so much Milk and Honey Canaan… the people came through all those years of slavery and 40 years in the desert unscathed… with completely untouched “desire for the self alone”. Low vibration.
And we, humanity, got even worse in this regard in those thousands of years since then.
It has happened gradually, so we could not feel that the water was tainted… we kept drinking the “water”… and we keep drinking that.
It is time to wake up. I can’t and don’t endeavor to wake up everybody, not even every person who reads this article. I want to wake up my students in my Playground.
What? Why? How? Gasp…
This past 10 days have been hellish for me.
I realized that the water is tainted… and nobody notices.
The Playground is a year long program to separate you from your “favorite=fixed” way of being, from being a victim. From being an effect. From being a limp dick: useless.
To my despair, the partner calls where people are supposed to do the work on this separation, have devolved into storytelling contests: the person whose story is the most dramatic wins.
Not what I invented.
I recall in the Landmark Forum, on the third day of the three-day program, the same thing happens. The participants are gleefully sharing their drama, and the fervor peaks after the main meal of the day. People come back from the meal, excited, turned on, and when the leader comes on, he doesn’t even have to ask the participants to share, immediately 10-20 hands go up.
And the victim-fest is ready to begin… except that the leader drops the bomb: he invalidates the first person’s share almost immediately. The class is stunned, but then, they must have decided that it was only about that person, so the hands go up… and the same thing repeats itself with another one or two people…
The leader declares that all those stories MEAN NOTHING. That LIFE IS EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS.
My job, right now, is to duplicate that throwing the bomb, in my own program, The Playground.
The goal is the same: wake people up that the water is tainted.
All of your life comes out the meaning you placed on things that happened, whether you were the star in those stories or just an observer, it’s immaterial.
You live out of that meaning as if it were the TRUE MEANING… and therefore… you say, you can’t be free, you can’t be smart, you can’t shut up, you can’t be yourself…
If life is empty and meaningless, and it is, then your story is empty and meaningless.
YOU give meaning, but that doesn’t mean the thing HAS that meaning.
No, Life is empty and meaningless, and your stories mean no thing.
You are not condemned to be X, you are not Y, you will not be always Z, life is not Q, and people are not A.
- The dude who invented the story that unless everyone likes him he is bad, wrong, won’t have to live from that meaning any more. It didn’t mean it then, and doesn’t mean it now.
- The woman who invented that the way she is supposed to be is this self-sacrificing tragic heroine if she wants to be considered at all. She can let go of that… that invention wasn’t even valid then… after all life is empty and meaningless.
- The woman who ate up everything in sight in fear that there won’t be food… can stop eating and getting so fat that she cannot fit through the door… There is plenty. And those extra tons on her frame damage her self-esteem and her health.
- The guy who at age 3 locked himself into the car at 45 degree temperature in Turkey (that is 113 degrees Fahrenheit), wasn’t delivered an evaluation by god: you will never amount to anything, you are nothing… That wasn’t true then, and isn’t true today.
All of the meanings you made up in your originating story were made by an upset 2-3-4-5 year old… not true, not astute. The story didn’t mean that about you or the world.
Life, your stories, are empty and meaningless.
But because you have been telling the same story to yourself and anyone who asks, forever, you cannot taste that the water is tainted by those meanings… so you don’t even stop to look, to taste, to smell.
One of the things that happened to humanity, is that their sense of smell and their sense of taste, their cone of vision are gradually diminishing… and humans are left without their perception organs to guide them to happiness, joy, fulfillment, and away from slavery, hurt, and ineffective living.
Diminished perception? No awareness of the environment, no self-awareness are the result.
And unless I manage to find the bomb to drop, you’ll continue telling the same story, and like the Israelites, you will remain the same.
Yesterday I got a request to create a remedy with the Bach energy: “No matter what I do: lying to get away with not doing, not giving, with stinginess. A big middle finger to the world. I won’t give you wood, even if you give me heat. haha.”
I can do that… but…
But unless YOU change your mind about all the meanings you put on your early stories, it is not going to work. The meaning is hidden… it is in the foundation, the underground part of the story.
Yesterday I talked to a student who, when she was maybe five, was sent, like four of her sisters before her, to learn the piano… like any self-respecting Southern belle was supposed to some 60 years ago.
She went to the piano teacher, but refused to touch the piano.
My guess is this: the underlying, the hidden meaning she was fighting is this: unless you are doing what I (put authority person here) told you to do, you are no good. Her life has been alternating between doing dutifully what she is told, and doing the opposite… literally nothing gets done that SHE says she would do. She is no authority in her story. She is always the victim.
This unless seems to be a keyword… there are more keywords, but this unless is in the meaning of most stories.
70% of humanity suffers from a meaning that makes one lie… saying “No matter what I do: lying to get away with not doing, not giving, with stinginess. A big middle finger to the world. I won’t give you wood, even if you give me heat. haha.”
It takes, probably, higher self-awareness, to taste the water of that saying, and taste that it tastes funny.
Your best bet, if you want some increased awareness, and with that a bigger chance at living in heaven on earth, is to find out which Bach energy is dominating you… Unless you do, you’ll do the popular shotgun method: a little bit of this and a little bit of that, ending exactly where you have been… but hundreds of dollars lighter.
And if you get your Bach Profile, finding out which Bach energy is dominating you, before Monday December 16 7 am ET, I’ll invite you to a webinar on how to release this monster and start having some power in your life. After the deadline, you’ll have to pay for the webinar… at least $25.
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