When I look back at my life, I find that the way to get ahead in life, the way to amass knowledge, the way to grow is through wanting what you have… and more of it.
Curiosity, the word, means something different for different people.
The low vibration person looks outside of themselves for something pleasant to titillate them.
The high vibration person looks inside of themselves for something pleasant they already have experienced and they can have more of if they want to.
If you look at my life you may come away with the insight that if you sleep very little, and when you are awake you work, then you’ll be “whatever you say about me”.
I am nearly 70 years old. I slept an average five hours a night. Many years th
According to Kabbalistic wisdom, the soul is not active in any of us until a certain age. 12 for girls and 13 for boys.
The soul’s job is to cause character, the soul’s job is to help you find out who you are. The Self.
Many of you have not managed to distinguish and build a Self.
A Self is your “I” that is independent and defensible from other people’s opinion, and from even your own opinion of you when you make mistakes.
I know this is a mouthful, so let me elaborate:
First aspect of a strong self: You have a strong Self, and someone says you are stupid, or you are brilliant… and your Self doesn’t get shaken up by that. Doesn’t feel a
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine~Alan Turing
I watched yet another movie about Alan Turing and how his machine won the war against Nazi Germany.
I would not be around without him. And you would live a totally different life… The book (and the Amazon series) The Man in the High Castle approximates…
I am in awe. With what he did, with who he was, with genius winning, with goodness winning.
What is wrong with movies, TV series, that I can’t stomach… or barely?
I am talking about good stories. I am talking about shows with good or passable actors, good directing… And yet the show is scarcely enjoyable because the character doesn’t fit. the inner world of the character is off… tells a different story.
Like the serial killer in The Fall… more about it later.
I have been pondering this for the past few months when there are less and less stuff to watch, and I have less and less ambition to fill my day with work.
And finally I got it.
In fact some movie director lead me to it. He said: I prefer to let an actor do
There is not much in common. It is not talent. It is not ethnicity. Not personality. Not schooling. Not religious affiliation.
The one common characteristic I have found is books. People who become worth a damn are readers.
Even more importantly than being a reader: the most important commonality is when they started to read.
I just read in Wikipedia about Howard Zinn:
Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children. Zinn’s parents introduced him to literature by sending ten cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens’ collect
People who can’t tolerate negative, unpleasant, ambivalent feelings try to resist them, which is the surest way to make them permanent, or at least last.
What you resist persist… Carl Jung (1875-1961) says, and it is true. ((Psychologically speaking, resistance and resolution are at opposite poles. For resistance has fundamentally to do with not being able, or willing, to deal with the negative experiences in your life. And ultimately your happiness depends a lot more on handling—then letting go of—such adversities than it does, self-protectively, denying them, or fighting against them. In addition, so does (unwittingly) holding onto their associated feelings of hurt, sorrow, anxiety, or anger.
Jung was talking about his research into what he ca
Closed door, closed capacity: that is clear. No traffic is possible. Open, that is a whole other ball game: the door can be open anywhere from 1% to 100%
I activated the Unconditional Love capacity: the degree to which the intrinsic Self and the invented, the fake self can interact and bring peace, joy, fulfillment, creativity, curiosity to one’s life.
Watching people, I am more than certain that they think: I’ve done it…
But…
My capacity is 70% open… Not 100%. I have done this activation a 100 times. I have the activator in every glass of water I drink. And in five years I got to 70%.
Matsa, my very first student is at 50%.
And another old student of mine is at 10%.
What is the difference?
The frequency and the intensity of the activation
The willingness and aptness to act consistent with the new relationship between the selves
I watched this hour and a half long documentary on Sun Tzu’s lessons, and real historical wars America fought inside and outside of America.
I wept throughout.
I value, overall, human life. Even if it is the life of someone I don’t like, don’t respect, or who is the enemy.
So it was painful.
If you are one of those who doesn’t have the stomach for real life, who only wants to know about the nice things in life… You are stupid. Life is life, people are people, and life is war.
We are all born seeing ourselves as the center of the world. We don’t know we are the center of our world… we just don’t know there is any other vantage point to look from.
Most of us never learn it.
Like one of my students: every time I recommend anything, she answers: “I agree…”
She hasn’t crossed that threshold, that divide between infant and even toddler… absolutely and completely ignorant to the fact that using the personal vantage point is ineffective, because it is delusional.
This is also true if and when you can see that other people see things differently from how you see them, but your view is accurate and theirs is inaccurate.
If I see you as beautiful… will you see yourself as beautiful?
If I see you as magnificent, great, awesome… will you see yourself like I do?
Muscle test and my experience says: no.
The most beautiful women spend hours in front of the mirror staring at their imperfections… trying to hide them.
There are also beautiful women who can say: so what. They are in search of some other imperfection.
We know ourselves intimately, and rare is the person who can leave it alone… who can refrain bemoaning their faults, and stop trying to fix themselves while keeping up appearances.
The question came up because of my last article. I bet a lot of people thought I should have told the woman in the article