In search of quick transformation…

This is a long article, first showing what doesn’t work, why, and then it takes you to what does…

One of the things about humans is arrogance.

Arrogance is not what you think it is… arrogance is really an attitude where you assume superiority where you have none…

Which is, in an ordered universe… EVERYWHERE.

But you, in your arrogance, ignore that you were born into some already existing order… and you behave like you can do whatever you goddamn want… and expect that it is going to work. [note]You are even taught techniques for this by stupid or predatory teachers and the church.[/note]

My first experience in assisting (volunteering) in Landmark Education addressed this: When entering a room where something is going on, gently open the door, gently close it behind you, stop and listen until you are clear what is going on… so you can be APPROPRIATE to it. Until you fit in. Until you won’t disturb what is already going on.

If you look at human behavior, we are the species who barge in and attempt to impose our ideas, whims, fancies only to be slapped in the face.

Global warming. Deforestation. Declining health, declining life-satisfaction, eventual end of the brief dominance of humanity.

The state of humanity in the 21st century is utter confusion, utter blindness, no distinctions, everything is black and white, or gray: no shades, no precision.

But without distinctions you can’t change anything. If everything is the same as everything else, you are doomed to fail. But, good news, you can start with distinguishing just one sentence, and it will make all the difference

One of the main symptoms of arrogance, in my clients, is the lack of respect of process.

As an architect I know process, because of how buildings are built from foundation to the roof.

Every clients wants to start with the furniture… several levels above the foundation. They want to start with what sounds sexy.

But without a healthy, solid, and large foundation you are building on thin air… or a foundation that will collapse.

The clients that start out promising them fall deeper than they started are the example to that.

Here is the original article from 2011:

There are only a few rules I live by.

One of the most important and easiest to break is to “never speak from the Tree of Knowledge.”

The Tree of Knowledge is everything you already knew. Everything you learned from another as a mental construct, mind stuff, information.

What else is there? Experience.

You speak from the Tree of Life when what you are saying is your direct experience, right in the moment you are saying it. Not something that you remember, but something that is there, in the moment of speaking.

Tall order, but I’ve been doing really well with it.

But how do you get to real knowledge? After all Life is a repetitive dull stagnant pool for most of us… correct me if I am wrong, but only after you look… ok?

I use tools that allow me to poke the box. One tool is connecting (oh yeah? oh yeah, it’s a tool, it’s not the goal!). Another tool is playing Freecell, a computer card game. It’s been taking me to deep knowledge, but more that that: to linchpin distinctions that keep together this whole way of miserable life. Attack the linchpin and the whole construct falls apart.

Freecell is a lot like life. You can test every failings of the modern mind while you are playing freecell. Being reactive, having a narrow cone of vision, wanting to win, instead of wanting to play. Forcing, fear of failure, self-doubt, wanting to quit, giving up… and the list is endless, you know these well, I am sure.

One of them, a weakness of mine, is doing things out of order, expecting them to work. (linchpin alert!)

I started to pay attention because one of my students is going through a tough time. They lost loved ones in quick succession. I mean loved ones, not just family.

My mom died and I grieved for six weeks. And I had a bad and very limited relationship with her. Imagine if I had loved her!

This student isn’t giving themselves permission to grieve. Brave front, shoulds, social life, dancing at a show… all out of order, out of sequence.

This made me look.

You expect your leg pain (or any other pain, trouble, etc.) to go away from a healing session, from connecting, without doing the work that precedes healing of anything.

This must be the modern mind: after all you can go to a fast food joint and get a hamburger without ever having to think that the cow was born, fed, slaughtered, butchered, ground, made into patties, etc. etc. etc.

Hundreds of days, hundreds of tasks preceded that hamburger, that you didn’t have to do, but somebody did.

Life is not a jump. It is a lot like building, brick by brick. (linchpin alert!)

Sometimes you need to remove what’s there, demolish the building, even remove the foundation. Dig it up, use jackhammer if you must. Because you can’t build happiness and fulfillment on a foundation that was designed for misery. It won’t work.

You need to go backwards until you find solid foundation worth building on.

For many of you, the foundation you have needs to go!

• My lovely songwriter friend: grew up in a cult… the foundation is faulty. You can’t build a healthy life on it.
• My lovely musician friend: grew up adopted: unwanted and a throwaway: you can’t build a healthy life on that.
• My lovely British friend: grew up in a family of extreme abuse: the only escape he had is his self-righteous view of right and wrong. You can’t build a healthy life on that!
• And the list goes on and on and on.

I did that work, and you will need to do it too.

We are not building a palace of cards here, like in other gurus’ programs.

And we are not quite offering the immersion work either.  [note]The closest to immersion we go is in the Playground, and maybe the accountability programs.[/note] You can go and try one of those immersion works: but beware, they are quite cultish or they are cults.

The one that I used, Landmark, has gotten so tame and lame that there is not any crying in the sessions any more. It went all intellectual. Talking about grief isn’t. Talking about pain isn’t. Talking about anger isn’t. (linchpin)

You will need to re-experience the damage: but not from the middle of it. (linchpin)

I train you to create a distance. A distance between the feelings and the observer. Between the reality and the voices, the story, the interpretation.

The feelings will be real, but you, my friend, will be the observer. Feel the feelings, but there will be a buffer between you and you… so you can heal it. You’ll have distinctions that you can see when you are the observer… when you bi-locate: you are both in your body and outside of it observing everything.

You can’t heal a feeling by repeating it without a shift of the vantage point.

I healed my relationship with my abusive father through a sideway glance (linchpin)… and that is what you need to do.

Sideway glance is another way to express that you have a second point of view, that os the Observer.

First this step. FIRST!

Right after you master stepping back, and before you expect much results, physically, emotionally, financially, and in your relationships.

There is an order to things, and you can’t really violate the order.

I have always had a problem with order. I was part of an inventor team that created the “building a building from the top down.” But if you scratched the slogan: we still built the foundation first!

In my brain damage the capacity to do things step by step was fundamentally damaged.

I needed to rebuild it if I wanted any kind of life that works. I did. And now you can experience the benefits for yourself: I know how to guide you: I have to go through it every day, in business, and in playing freecell… yeah. Let’s play freecell, shall we?

But, how do you demolish the foundation without deep immersion, you ask?

My 2nd Phase Activators Course group is doing an experiment: we’ll see the results in a few weeks. We are going for the linchpin. [note]This course was in 2011[/note]

This is what we are doing: catch one action that returns you to the self-destructive, self-damaging, downward spiral way of being. Catch the trigger point, the linchpin.

It’s always a sentence. Not what happens, no, never. Not what you feel, no, never. It is words. ALWAYS.

It is an unconscious statement your mind says. It always says the same sentence. You almost never hear it, because the emotions and the reaction come so fast, you don’t have time to hear the sentence. This is the essence of OCCURRENCE. Occurrence is the feelings and the words all at the same time, as if there were no words. The words hide behind or under the feelings… Disguise. This is how the dark side gets to you…

My sentence was: I can’t and I never will… Meaning: no matter what I do, things won’t change, I won’t change, why bother.

The sentence is always a lie. It is an untruth. It always gets you off the hook. It always leaves you the victim.

But you have never really been a victim, victim is not real. You may have been beaten, raped, violated, made wrong, failed, left behind, abandoned. But none of those actions result, necessarily, in victim.

I have been pummeled by Mr. Tr. for weeks. My friend and myself infected with “blood sucking” attachments. My computers, my servers, my webinars break under the spikes of electricity. My energized water reduced to crap. It would be normal to feel like a victim.

But victim is resistance to what is happening. Victim is saying: this is wrong,  this shouldn’t be. Victim is handing all the power over to the perpetrator.

I have been choosing to be a blade of grass, I have been choosing to bring compassion to the events, and pity Mr. Tr..

Chop wood and carry water… chop it again, carry it again. Spilled, spoiled, damaged, broken? No problem. It’s all in a day’s work.

And when my body tightens up, when a moan comes up saying “No matter what I do…” I just chuckle, relax my body, and keep on chopping wood and carry water.

It takes practice to master it, but you will be surprised to find that a simple sentence distinguished and caught, laughed at will begin to unravel the foundation of your life, clear the ground for something beautiful to build.

I guarantee it. Especially if you

1. stay in a supportive community where others work on their sentence
2. connect deep and long to get guidance
3. get clear and publicly authentic about the sentence you intend to arrest.

We have frameworks for all those, but you can create your own group, do it inside another course of study, as long as you do it.

Until you do this work, you have to be a sleepwalker. But life lived sleeping is not worth living.

Read the original article: A life you love can be built at any age… if you keep some simple rules