Do you have free will? Free choice? What is the ego’s role in that?

genetic-jail-sentence

Genetic determinism ((Genetic determinism is the mechanism by which genes, along with environmental conditions, determine looks and behavior.)) and the ego’s role in it.

I could also have made the title: your horoscope and your ego’s role in it, or your soul correction and your ego’s role in it.

There is a lot of different ways people define ego, but what if the ego is none of those. Not what Freud called ego, not what gurus call ego.

What if the ego is simply the mechanism by which the Selfish Gene perpetuates itself… like an old dog that is un

The dangers of having empathy…

understandI saw something really important this morning.

One of my students is planning to build a business that he can do while working for a big corporation full time.

He knows what he wants to do. He knows why he wants to do it. He has the skills: he is good at it. If he gets a client: the client will be happy.

But… having a product, a service, is one thing. Selling it is another thing.

To sell anything doesn’t need you to be good at doing the service, or creating a good product.

Selling is a whole other business.

You either need a partner who can sel

Can you be selfish and generous at the same time?

desire for the self alone is the only evil there isI am reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. The genes that use humans as vehicles, and are only interested in procreation, and not in the life experience of the vehicle.

But, as I have said before, there are 160 intangible capacities, mostly dormant, in the human DNA. The ones that we are going to look at in this article are the capacities (genes) of generosity (altruism) and trust.

Trust and generosity seem to be at odds with the selfishness of the genes… but they don’t have to be.

The crucial decider… is that a word?, is whether the gene of envy is turned on, or

Learned Helplessness: 50% of humanity is a wuss, a sissy… a cry-baby. In 1945 it was 7%… In Jesus’ time it was 1%

lazy-vs-learned-helplessnessLearned helplessness, this is today’s topic. The opposite of “Bring it on…!” Your life depends on which is your dominant attitude.

Which attitude will get you what you want?

No contest, I hope, learned helplessness will get you more of the same.

50% of the world’s population behaves like they can’t handle it. It is learned helplessness… it is not innate. But it feels innate…

But it is, in reality, a reflex built and initiated by parents, religion, school, and politi

What makes soap operas addictive? What are YOU hooked on?

got-its-hooks-in-youVery “interesting” experience. I watched the first year of Dexter, and although I wanted to watch all episodes, the first year was not addictive.

But I had a premonition about the rest of the series.

Made up by skilled television writers, I knew it was going to be something dangerous to my well-being.

Unneeded complications, many different side-story lines, all dramatic and irrelevant, all stories I would not watch Netflix for. But all of these side-stories had a claw as sharp as the tiny hooks of burr… of v

Behavioral strategies vs. beingness strategies

dying to be lovedWe all want to be loved. It’s hardwired, because being loved is the surest way to be fed, as a child, get sex as an adult, be promoted or helped as an adult.

Its purpose is survival.

The organism wants to survive, desperately.

We don’t know what that love is, but we want it. And some of us want to earn it.

I just followed a link that introduced me to Chris Farley, a fat comedian, who died… because he could not live without that love. ((Chris Farley is the fat guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngdYG

More on joy, and how I am learning to have joy in my life

joy is an inside jobMy first foray, my first venture into joy or joyous is trying to figure out what joy is. After all we don’t know necessarily what words mean when it comes to feelings… do we. We, children, watch and learn… but in a world where what you see is a mask, what you see does not represent a feeling accurately, because the person isn’t feeling it, because the person is faking it, the looks don’t help.

My hunch is that joy is fabricated with the intention to cause craving for it, to cause an acute sense of the lack of it.

Actually, when I watch people who enjoy something, they

You don’t have to deserve something to be deserving

agnosticLet me ask you something: do you have to deserve a body? Did you have to deserve to be able to read?

No. Deserving is much more basic, and much more profound than that kind of deserving, which would equate the word with earning.

Earning is a mercantile world’s word: it measures your work, or your merchandise against the asking price… earning.

But deserving is different, regardless how crazy that word drove me when I was a kid. My kid brother whining that he deserved whatever he was whining about.

I didn’t think I deserved anything, so he asserting that he de

Cinematherapy: what does it do? It teaches you to feel.

FeelingsMovies with good actors do it better…

American actors are mostly useless, but it may be because American directors have no empathy? And yet some of the most missing feelings I got from American TV series I have watched through Netflix. I have recently learned family love, and being able to choose, ultimately, what is win-win… in a series I am watching now, Blue Bloods about a Irish family of cops in New York City. I also had a peek at something I didn’t know I wanted to feel: how religion is for people who have faith…

I don’t know if it is the actors or the di

As long as you are stuck, no new capacities will be working… Cinematherapy anyone?

Inside-Out-Study-Guide-683x1024Most people are stuck… movement is not possible. It can be total or it can be partial.

To see where you are stuck is difficult, because the cause, the stuck part can be several layers deep.

A skilled coach or therapist may fail to find the linchpin issue, because in the normal course of a therapy, it is talking, the words, that are masking it.

One of my students in the Reclaim program has chosen to work with the idea of inspiring movies. Using movies to unstuck pe