We each want to be unique, special, one of a kind. At the same time we want to be able to pigeonhole ourselves, so we can know how we are, so we can know what to eat, or what to pursue in life.
In this series of Osho talks he examines stories from different ancient cultures. This is an excellent companion to what I teach. Enjoy!
ONCE, WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER
IN ALL BROTHERLINESS,
PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM.
BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM,
‘TELL US, DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?’HE WAS SURPRISED AT THE QUESTION,
AND REPLIED, ‘HOW SHOULD I KNOW?’BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY..
THERE WERE TWO FRIENDS OF THE KING,
AND BOTH WERE PROVED GUILTY OF A CRIME.SINCE HE LOVED THEM THE KING WANTED TO SHOW THEM MERCY,
BUT HE COULD NOT
Whoever thought that the well-meaning positive thinking will become a prison and a sentence to a ‘no joy life’ for most who become a “practitioner” of it, about 80% of humanity at this time.
Whether you know it or not, your powers of comprehension depend on your powers of distinguishing.
In the old est training, the trainers came to the room on the first day blasting: “for you everything is the same as everything else…” and they were as accurate as accurate they would be today: you can’t tell your ass from your elbow.
This is true for everybody, including yours truly… the dif
What you are, instead alive, is a walking dead, resigned, and settled for the little that, it seems, life has to offer. To you. You see others, seemingly happy, seemingly alive, and you feel regret, shame, and envy.
Your heart, where rain forests and colorful birds, and life used to live, is devastated. The lush rain forests gone, the birds gone, life: gone.
Your ups and downs are tiny, not like a roller coaster. They are about money, or noise, or that you are fat, or skinny, or that you are aging. Irrelevant circumstances.
Maybe it is about someone being sick, maybe dying… but that is also a circumstance.
I have a student whose company moves earth. That is their business. Parking lots, roads, leveling the ground.
Unless you have a clear picture, a clear and accurate mental representation of what a job entails, you can’t bid successfully on it: you may lose your shirt if your mental representation was off. ((The doctor’s mental representation of the state of my injured ear was neither clear nor accurate, and therefore his suggestions to me were way off the mark. This was the topic of my article yesterday…))
Some ten years ago I learned a valuable way of looking at making life meaningful, or living a meaningful life. The teacher suggested that we pick a horizon, a direction, and then look what’s blocking the way of getting there.
Since then I saw that even seeing the horizon is blocked… Blocked by seven boulders, lined up one behind the other, blocking your view, blocking your movement.
So, in my coaching practice, when I ask people to set a direction, and they can’t see any, I am inclined to suggest that they choose the direction: living a meaningful live, or a fulfilled life… without specifying what it is.
I lead a workshop on Sunday. I had knowledge, I had strategy. I executed it. It was sloppy. What was missing?
I didn’t know. But “god” works in mysterious ways, the book I am reading has an answer that shows me what has been missing for me on Sunday and all my life.
The book, Peak, the new science of expertise, calls it Mental Representation.
Mental Representation is being able to see the finished product in your mind’s eye, and also see the process getting there, so you can anticipate missteps, and can correct, given that you
This may be the most important article you read this year, this decade… because this article may inspire you to become a professional at living, instead of remaining a rank amateur… aka bumbling idiot.
You have two options. You need to choose. You need to choose the option that has the lower cost to your reproductive success if it turns out to be wrong.
Now, I suspect, that almost none of us think about cost in terms of reproductive success, but according to evolutionary psychology, you are a mere vehicle to your genes, your genes are only inte
If you go about it the same way you have always gone, you’ll get the same results: not much.
I just got an insight I want to share.
There are all kinds of valid sayings that, as it turns out, only tell half truths.
If you do what you have always done… you’ll get what you have always gotten. Meaning: do something different.
But when you do something different, you get the same dismal result.
So what they are missing is the how.
The how, interestingly, points to your beingness. To your approach, not only to the task, but to life.
Because, please don’t forget, how you do anything is how you