During the summer of 1966 I ran into a girl I knew from elementary school. Turns out she applied and was accepted to the same school I was going to start in that September.
We were having a chat. I remember thinking to myself: Compared to her I know everything… why am I going to school?
We both graduated. I am sure she still thinks she knows everything. My experience is that I know less and less as time goes by.
Whether you can identify with my 19 year old person, or my 69 year old person, and to what degree will be important, so jot it down.
This article is about the inner workings of a human… that if you get it wrong, the price you pay for the error is your life.
Is a human like a assembled faucet? When it drips you have to replace the whole thing?
I energize my water in a 5 gallon (20 liter) plastic containers with a spigot.
The spigot is replaceable, but I am not strong enough to unscrew it. I have the replacement spigot… I bought it a year ago, but is still sitting on my kitchen counter. I still need to be mindful that the old spigot, which is just another word for water tap… still drips.
This is probably the most shocking sentence in the whole 67 step program.
I literally don’t know anyone who lives that way.
People try to succeed, try a diet, try this and try that… while their plane crashes in every area.
So what is the difference between who are like that, who are on their way to become that kind of person, and others who never ever land their plane on the landing strip?
One type of memes that you honor as the truth are called a seemings. It is that way… but if you can change the saying: “It seems to me that…” then it becomes a seeming.
Why turn something into a seeming?
Saying “It seems to me” starts turning on the capacity of responsibility.
Responsibility, the way the capacity sees it, is a privilege. It is a way to look at the world where your power is intact, and you have access to it. Access means: you can feel it, you can use it. Power for what? Power to be well, power to change something, move something, create something.
When you say “It seems to me” you suddenly take responsibility, to start the process, by saying th
For decades one of my sore spots was that people refused to serve me, even though I paid them.
I remember saying to myself: my money is not good enough for you? and wept.
I had no idea how I “accomplished” that… in 20/20 hindsight it is still a little spotty.
What wasn’t clear to me, never even occurred to me, how my attitude effected the service provider. My “To what degree you think of yourself:” starting point measure was, at the time, 70%. From my behavior I would have guessed it was higher.
Mainly I overrode what they said. I argued, I knew better, I acted with contempt…
What I didn’t know then is that being a service provider needs to be a win, or no service.
Oh no! This video software that used to work doesn’t work any more. I cried out… This can happen to anyone. Technology changes so rapidly, keeping pace with it is both expensive and time consuming.
Sometimes there is an upgrade. Nowadays upgrades cost money… or the software developer simply abandoned you… and you are stranded with a software that doesn’t work any more.
I have been teaching what I teach for seven years. Teach people a world view that has been tested and true, and includes the invisible. This world view is sharply different from the accepted norms… but it works, instead of just being a nice theory like what psychologists and philosophers teach. Or even Landmark Educati
We throw about big words, and we pretend that we know them. Even “scientists” just pretend. If they didn’t, they would be explaining, clarifying the words, but they don’t.
In the Starting Point Measurements the vocabulary number is what indicates this. I originally intended to call this clarity, but then I decided that if it refers to words, then maybe it can be instructive.
It hasn’t been.
So this article will be, mostly, about words.
Whenever we say conscious awareness, we are talking about words. No words, no conscious awareness.
Whatever you don’t have words for, whatever you mislabel, whatever you just have feelings or emotions about, no accurate words… are not conscious awareness.
I have 2-3 conversations a day with my students, conversations that should be made public.
Here is one from today:
Him: Wow. I realized on yesterday’s call that there are memes and voices when I am on the call and they are disturbing me to get things more than I am doing. Or disturbing me t
This week has been a success for Life, and a disaster financially. Everyone was spending their money on turkey, I guess.
So I am going to announce some sales for this coming week. I’ll make them good… so you’ll buy.
Now, about the successes that lead me to a huge insight.
All that people do is guided by memes, and they think they decided to do it. And you think they decided to do it from the goodness of their heart, from the badness of their heart, whatever seem to be the case. But in fact they never decided anything… It is the memes that are doing the deciding.
This is a totally different way to look at people, at life, and at what’s happening.
I had an interesting unintended experiment this afternoon.
I have a loud burr coffee grinding machine.
I was ready to make some coffee (I drink cold dripped coffee) and ground the coffee beans while I was doing something else.
I found out that I am much better ignoring memes than ignoring loud noises. I could not hear myself thinking. I was making mistakes… I pondered what I was doing…
This gave me an opportunity to put myself in your shoes. What it must be like to be living in the constant jarring noise of the memes…