The other day it occurred to me that the Precious ‘I’ I have been talking about is just another name for vanity.

But vanity is a loaded word, while Precious ‘I’ has some compassion in it, it can be measured, everyone can relate to it, so it is less denied out of hand.

Because when you want to see yourself, be self-aware, you want to avoid the words that condemn.

Or in some cases using those words is your m.o., modus operandi, to keep it up, because you make it sound that you have nothing to say in the matter.

And having something to say in the matter is all the magic you need: you can tweak it, understand it, sympathize with it, and win.

When it comes to the Precious ‘I’, to know that the stronger it is the higher the about-me number goes, and the less of reality you see, and also the more reactive you are, because everything feels, looks, and sounds personal… that when the Precious ‘I’ is strong, then you’ll have disdain when you need to do something… it feels below you. Yeah, the Precious ‘I’ that you protect so fervently is also a merciless jailer, a slave master… I’d rather live without.

So what is it? I am talking about it as if I were sure you know what I am talking about, and you probably don’t.

OK, here it goes: You have a picture of yourself at the highest, and you say ‘I am that’. Not the normal, not the low, not the ever changing. No. The highest.

And then life, people, others, start to treat you not like that. Because you stopped the movie and froze the frame, and called it you, life didn’t get the memo.

So they relate to you how you are, ever changing.

But that is insulting. To your vanity. So you argue, you justify, you strategize, you connive, manipulate, and do all that happy horse sh!t to influence how people see you.

Most people who don’t do much of anything talk a lot, and talk as if they did that great thing… and they are lying. They are trying to bring your attention to that one moment of brilliance that is the picture they hold as their Precious ‘I’.

I had a friend who did one great thing as a realtor, and then for decades nothing much. In her whole behavior that great thing’s image is frozen…

So yesterday I talked to a few people, watched a few videos, and participated on one zoom call.

There was a whole many examples of Precious ‘I’s, some attractive, some stomach churning.

Stomach churning? If and when someone ‘flinging’ their Precious ‘I’ on you, you feel like they are flinging sh!t on you.

On the zoom call the facilitator of the call condescended to everyone, behaved like a benevolent/malevolent queen. Waves of ‘grandeur’ came through… meaning: I am a peon, and I should be proud I can be on that call.

For clarification: I am the paying customer. The facilitator is an employee of the company, but the moment you put her in a role, she will play it to the T… finally she gets the respect she deserves… for what? Not much there, trust me. About-me score: 91%

The special guest who was hired to be a coach for the paying clients was relatively gracious, he had some credits to his name, but his most important protected ‘asset’ was his looks. You cannot be authentic, yourself, if you have anything to protect. Because what you are trying to protect is your precious ‘I’.

One of the paying participants in this multi-coach coaching program (Profit Pirates) has been somber, and not smiling.

I know her a little… I sold her an unused and fully paid program I didn’t need… She saved thousands of dollars: I sold it to her for what I paid for it when it was on special. So she has been ‘benevolent’ with me. Not grateful, royally benevolent.

She said once: you are an interesting woman. We are on the two extremes of thinking politically, so I was glad she didn’t quite approve of me.

Her about-me score is 91%. She is both ‘beautiful’, ‘thin’, ‘smart’, and having all those attributes, she is offended by life that it doesn’t recognize her brilliance.

I recognize the sentiment… so don’t be mistaken, I have been there… and I remember how bad it feels.

The coaching group, at this point I think 87 people, 95% extreme right politically, also have a precious ‘I’.

They are right, and they are ‘in the know’, and they will win.

Pit that against the videos I watched yesterday, including Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World. His name pronounced like the word ‘soul’.

He is a 90 year old Black economist, philosopher, scientist and more importantly a thinker.

He got me when he answered the question: ‘you were a Marxist… what happened?’ he answered ‘the facts’.

I grew up in Hungary to parents who were members of the ‘Communist’ party… And I lived and breathed Marxism.

My father was a renown Economy professor with many books. I wasn’t allowed to pass my ‘communist political economy’ class back in 1973. I am not sure if the professor hated my father, or I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that political economy where all rules of life were violated. Either way, I didn’t get my MBA degree because of that on credit.

Four years later I laid in bed with high fever, sick with sinus infection, reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. At the point where John, the naturally born man kills himself in the book, I had a sudden moment of clarity: Communism was a beautiful idea, but it didn’t work for anyone. Not for people advocating it, and not for the people who lived in it. It just didn’t work.

This is the same as Thomas Sowell saw… It changed everything for me… and as soon as I could, I left Hungary… there was no integrity for me to live there. I wanted to have a business… because that is the natural order of things. Of Life.

But when I look at the bunch of bozos on the far right, they do not know anything about life, they have no respect, and they are smug about what they stand for.

And when I look at the left, I see the same smugness… but what they stand for stands against life even more, because they have no faith in life, so they ‘support’ it and destroy its strength.

So they have nothing to be smug about.

I have shown you many different ways a high ‘about-me’ score and the Precious ‘I’ is extremely harmful for life and for you personally.

So what can you do?

I recommend self-awareness… Without self-awareness there can’t be humility, and you won’t even feel the need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

So how do you grow your self-awareness?

By getting out of your mind, and into reality…

Into your body. Feel yourself, see what the eyes see not what the mind says it saw, hear what there is to hear, touch, taste, without labeling it.

Ease into it… and let me lead you on a journey that can be new and unfamiliar… just because you haven’t seen it, haven’t felt it, haven’t heard it, because you have been living in the cave of your mind.

It is a one hour long ‘meditation’ type session, closed eyes, in theta brain wave state… so you are out of your mind.

That’s the goal, to get you out of your mind.

It’s on Saturday. One session in the morning, one session early evening.

It’s free. If enough people are interested, then I’ll teach it in a course, the Inner Authority course.

You don’t have to come on Saturday to be in the course, but I bet it can be useful if you do.

Come and step out of your mind

Read the original article: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?