I once knew a woman in Landmark Education who helped me in many ways after I arrived to Syracuse 19 years ago.

She was “senior” to me both in age and in her job in Landmark… and yet often I coached her through some low times. She had a job inside which she struggled.

She once shared with me how ecstatic it felt to her when the cards fly off the board in the online version of the solitaire computer game, Freecell.

I play Freecell whenever I need to think something through, or when I want to discipline myself to pay attention to an audio or video. And I play Freecell as a tool to get guidance… some magical thinking there… but I don’t mind.

So this morning when this woman came to memory, I recalled her enthusiasm, how enthralled she was with the magic of the cards flying off without her having to do anything further…

We all have that magical, childlike wish to have life be that way. Some more, some less.

The more you have the desire: my guess is that the more you chase it… And whatever you chase tends to run from you.

I have students who have been seriously underachieving in life, even though they could produce with what they know and what they have learned… but the desire for the “cards to fly off the board” is so strong that they hadn’t, until recently, considered getting good at anything.

What made the difference for them was an audio series I gifted them, where they learned about ways to be considered an authority, a way to get respect, a way to get others to want to do what you want them to do. And they found out that one of the most important things about a beingness of authority is competence. When you are good at what you are talking about… when you are good at what you do.

And suddenly my students redirected their desire, the energy of that desire, to becoming competent.

Of course having lived their lives craving the results and none of the work, there is a learning curve. And we shall see how much energy is in the desire for competence: how far it can take them in the journey, but even a half competence is vastly superior to most people who live on the planet: utterly and completely incompetent, just know enough to barely survive.

This woman never caught the desire for competence: she died never having tasted its sweet fruit, still dreaming of the cards flying off the board… like magic.

Her example, I feel, describes all of us: we all have a desire that we are unwilling to work towards, unwilling to learn how to get fulfilled. It feels like other people should just give it to us…

Yesterday I had a health consultation with one of my student… and we had time to chat.

I praised him for how he is in my program. I gave him exactly what I have learned he desired… and his reaction to it was “meh”.
My deepest unfulfilled desire is to be loved, to be lovable… but when someone tells me they love me, I am “meh”, just like my student.
When your desire is seemingly fulfilled… you barely notice.

Why? Because this desire is destined to be unfulfilled… it is the grease of your machine you live inside of. You, me, everyone.

The machine’s job is to be a carrot and stick machine… until it crashes your life… and then you wake up from the trance and rebuild.

I have a friend I’ve known for 12 years now. In the 12 years we’ve known each other, he never learned anything useful: he has kept his eyes on the prize: the cards flying… He has bought countless of programs, some are very expensive, and kept on dreaming.

A few years ago he started to redirect some of that energy to learning… but what he was learning was essentially still of the magical knowledge kind: stock trading.

And recently, after having lost all his savings, and all his credit, he smartened up, and he is now learning something that if he manages to learn it, he may be able to rebuild his life that has been destroyed by that dream of the flying cards.

I could see that the desire for the flying cards can be a stand-in for the desire for respect, for significance, for importance, for fame, for love, for being taken care of, for being considered, for being allowed to earn of keep what you earned. For being heard, for the freedom to choose, for being seen as good enough, for belonging… the myriads of ways people power the machine that eats up their lives.

You may call it something, you may consciously think you want something, desire something, but it is quite elusive, the machine is not very wiling to let you see what it is exactly that powers it.

I have been trying to pinpoint it for people, because it is useful to know what the lubricant and the power is….

After all, if you knew exactly what you want, you would be able to give it to yourself…

In some way I have done that. I have been giving myself the love I didn’t have as a child. I have been giving myself the compassion I hoped to elicit with complaining most of my life. I have been giving myself the expert acknowledgment of my courage, of my diligence, of my commitment, of my relative competence, that I can’t get from others, didn’t get from my parents, and I have been getting more and more peaceful and contented with who I am.

And yet, the darn machine threatens to kick in with visions of the “flying cards” , and unless I get really exacting with what is the trigger that starts the destructive cycle of the machine, I am not safe, I have not power in influencing my life.

One of the destructive cycles I have is around money.

Remember, the flying cards stands for the vision of the “done deal”… in my case financial success, or financial independence.

Something happens, intended or not intended, and I feel that I am on the right track, that if I just continue what I am doing, it is a done deal… and the cards will fly off, and I am home free. Financially.

Then I do something to screw it up. Mostly I say something.

• Some 25 years ago I made up an ad that made me a rich woman… temporarily… Then I babbled about it, and suddenly I didn’t make any money at all.
• A number of years ago I made a lot of money promoting someone else’s product on google… I made money hand over fist… then I said something and they kicked me out of the affiliate program.
• A few years later I was promoting something else… and ditto… same thing happened.

• Then came my Amazon stint: sold my energy remedies on Amazon… they sold like hotcakes, and then I said something…
• Last year I lost a big chunk of my income… same machine…

Now, if I look, it wasn’t making the money that was the trigger. It was the vision of the flying cards, that I am home free that made me cocky and run my mouth like a moron, that triggered the machine.

I teach this whole cyclical machine concept in my Level2 course. I ran quite a few small workshops to build up to it, to increase my skills to see through the words people say.

One 3-hour workshop is an excellent way to see what might be your particular, unique way you run your machine. In this 3-hour workshop we also look at the ways your soul correction and your “flying cards” connect…

People who hang out with me a lot, whether they are friends or students, find themselves starting to be able to control the cycle… eventually… so they can have a life that is going upwards instead of what is “normal”, downwards.

Offer:

If you want to learn more about this whole invisible dynamic, even if you are in my Playground, then buy the 3-hour workshop (it was part of my Soul Correction workshop).

I will teach this invisible dynamic on the Playground, but on the Playground I don’t have as much time as in a specific workshop to take you from no idea to being clear of what is your machine like, what triggers it and how you end up feeling when it completes its cycle. So if you can study up on it, ahead of time, your chances to get clear are increasing.

Get access to the 3-hour workshop recording

Read the original article: The allure of the flying playing cards, the allure of winning