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

One reason you have no peace inside… And how you could…

awarenessI just discovered that the version of the Freecell game is “forgiving”, i.e. you can go back more than one step… “start over again” without a penalty point.

This makes the game an even better modeling tool than it used to be.

I always suspected that the first step really decides the rest of the journey… but being a Quickstart… jumping-without-thinking-type-of-person, this would not have

What you are doing now is not working. You deserve better…

you deserve what you haveWhat kind of deserving is in that title?

Systemic? Extrinsic? Intrinsic?

  1. Systemic would be: you are on my site, you are reading this, therefore you must be a good person… also deserving?
  2. Extrinsic would be: you have provided me with a lot of value, but what you are doing isn’t getting you the results, the rewards you deserve…
  3. Intrinsic would be: you are a human… deserving a chance at a great life. Of course you need to earn it. Let me show you how to stop what you

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

Can you be crying and be unphased? Does the White Lotus cry?

the white lotus, the symbol of being unphasedCan you listen to insults to your family, your god, your country and be unphased?

Can you watch death and grieving and be unphased?

I am unphased 91% of the time. Very few things pull me out of the equilibrium, where I need to recover so I can return to being well and unphased. All of them I self-created, none of them are real.

I cry a lot. I feel people’s grief, I feel centuries old sadness, I feel the pain of not being allowed to grow, or even to live.

I am re-reading an book about the story of a family, the Levis, through 800 years

What happens if and when something turns you from spiritual flying to spiritual falling? How can you reverse it?

spiritual free fall after the holidaysAn interesting phenomenon: people who have never had any spiritual capacity activated, do better, fare better than “advanced” students.

Of course this is not true for everyone.

What is the difference, the crucial difference that I see?

It is whether they are in falling, whether they are flailing, or have hit bottom.

“Beginners” have hit bottom. They know it. There is no doubt about it. Unless they get that new spiritual capacity working, life will stay the same, and they will conine to feel alone, misunderstood, and rejected.

The “advanced” people,

Is Sophie enlightened? Has Sophie attained to whatever people attain to?

St Sophie, lolOften (too often!) people write to me telling me that I am not supposed to get angry, not supposed to be stingy, not supposed to be on thing or another… Why? Because enlightened means, according to them, forever joyful, forever happy, and rich, rich, rich.

So, what is the truth about enlightenment? Is there such a thing at all?

The answer depends on who you ask, but whoever you ask: they are speaking from Tree of Knowledge.

Why? Because if you say “I am enlightened” according to scriptures you are lying.
And if you say “I am not enlightened” you don’t know what you are talking about…

Enlightened is a tr

What can Columbo teach us after 30 years? In becoming an expanding human being…

What does Columbo can teach us after 30 years?Do you remember Columbo? The detective in his rumpled trench coat?

I watched all Columbo episodes I could while still in Hungary, it was that long ago.

In one of those episodes a person got suddenly thirsty and went out for a coke, during a movie in a cinema… And I don’t remember if he was killed, or he was set up…

I don’t remember, because the show was about subliminal messages spliced into the movies to increase coke drinking, etc.

The length of exposure is very brief, an it is in the mid

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

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