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You want to know what is your soul’s purpose so you can start to live the life of your dreams. You are waiting to do the right thing… but there is a problem.
If and when the right thing comes along, will you be ready for it?
It has taken me 60 years to become ready to do what I do, and although most things are not as complicated and demanding as returning humanity to the Original Design, most things require you to know how to do quite a few things.
The question you should be asking yourself:
why am I waiting to do the right thing while I am missing doing the thing I am doing right.
Most people, when they retire, can sport one or two skills they have… and if you get fired, or laid off… what the heck are you going to do? Or if the ‘right thing’ came along, what skills do you have to actually be able to do it?
I have two small groups of four people each that I train. Interestingly the two groups bounce off each other, and I never have to wonder what we are going to do next (I don’t have a lesson plan: I allow what they don’t know to drive the course of study).
In the last few weeks both groups arrived to the same question: what is the most missing, the most painfully missing ‘thing’ that if it were there, it would really make a difference.
If you said it’s an attitude, you are right on the money. If you said skill: you are right on the money. This is an attitude that is also a skill.
Without this one particular attitude no one can go far. And if, by mistake they succeed, their success is short lived.
Is it optimism? Is it gratitude? Appreciation? No and no and no.
Although those attitudes are important, you can be successful without them.
The attitude I see most missing is the attitude that is the highest of all attitudes and skills: the ability to learn from what you are doing, whether you are doing it right or while you are making mistakes.
I could even say: hearing what you are saying as you are hearing it… It’s actually the same skill.
Why is that a rare attitude? Because it requires a faculty that is rare. I have seen it most often in classical musicians: especially players of instruments where the two hands have different positions.
You remember the exercise that most people can’t do: draw circles around their stomachs and tap their heads at the same time? Most people can’t walk and chew gum… at least not able to pay attention to both. The best most people can do is quickly oscillate between the two locations.
Why would this be an important skill for anything, you ask, and if I were you, I would be puzzled too. Aren’t we here to raise our vibration? You ask, and we are. Except this is the most missing skill you could set out to master.
Having your awareness at two places at once, fully. I call it bi-location.
I know, that word is used for something else: but maybe it isn’t something else: let’s see.
The distance between the two places doesn’t matter. They can be side-by-side, or they can be miles away.
If you can put your awareness at something either in the past, or far away: you are in the Clematis state: not suited for life.
If you cannot control your awareness and it’s all over the place: then you are not suited for life: you have no power, you cause nothing: you are at the mercy of the winds.
The art is to be both where you are and at the same time at a different place.
What is the purpose of that? There are many, let me talk about two of them in this article:
- driftwood
- skill building
The name driftwood comes from an analogy.
Imagine yourself being a wooden log half-immersed in some river, surrounded with debris and other drifting wood. Your eye level is about three inches above the water level, and you can’t see far:
the other stuff around you is blocking your view
Even if you were the only driftwood, the slightest breeze would ruffle the waters enough that you wouldn’t be able to see far.
Driftwood is the state where we are reactive. Our vantage point for life is being too close to what’s happening, so we are stuck in the one perspective, which is the death of us, the death of our relationships, the death of our health, the death of our life.
No matter what perspective you have on what’s happening, if you are too close to it, your perspective is very limited.
I often use the analogy of driving the car with your attention glued to the hood of the car.
You are concerned that the hood is OK, that the hood doesn’t pop open. So you drive with your attention on the hood.
You run red lights, you plow into pedestrians, you forget to turn when the road turns.
Most of you live this way, most of the time. You may not drive this way (although the guy that drives me to do errands drives this way all the time. After driving the same route for the past five months he still doesn’t know where to turn, and there are six turns altogether… lol.)
You may not miss a thing, but you miss the context.
Or you are stuck with just one context: your internal conversation that is given by some concern, always.
The weather is wasted on you. The birds are wasted on you. Life is wasted on you: you can’t see it from where you are looking.
Love is wasted on you. Opportunities are wasted on you. Books, literature, music, art, are wasted on you.
If you had the capacity to bi-locate you would be able to experience yourself in more than one way, look from behind your eye balls, and at the same time look from above, look from the side, look from the other person’s point of view. You would be equipped to live a bigger life with the people in your life.
In the Sunday Calisthenics calls this is the skill we are working with: very beginner level. And I bet none of the participants ever take the exercise to their lives. They stop building the skill the moment they get off the call… and that takes us to the next topic: skill building.
Skill Building
Conscious skill building is alien to people. Why? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Lol…
The reason skill building is alien to you because you can’t build a skill with the vantage point of the driftwood. If you are only in the middle of what you are doing, and you can’t see yourself from the outside of it as well, seeing yourself doing what you are doing, you can’t build skills consciously.Why is that? Here is the main reason:
You are too close to your life, to what you are doing!
When you are too close to what you are doing then getting it done, and getting going is your main concern. Or your paycheck. Or your boss’s acknowledgment. Or your co-workers… but that concern keeps you from putting enough energy into what you are doing so it would matter.
When you can lift your awareness away from what you are doing, observing what you are doing, you can see that elements of what you are doing are skills: useful here, but useful in thousands of other places.
You are able to be 100% in the movement you are making, while with the wide cone of vision of the outside awareness, you can also see the context.
Let say your assignment is to walk across the balance beam. You may have seen it in gymnastics with 100-lb preteen girls… lol.
When I asked my students where their attention was, all of them said that their attention was getting to the other side of the beam. I made the distance smaller: I asked them to stand up and make a step forward with their right foot.
Now, where did you have your attention? On the right foot, they all said.
I asked: what makes it possible for you to lift your right foot and swing it ahead? They said: the left leg… But even after that they could not see that having their awareness on the leg that needs to be planted securely, no matter how many more steps they have to take, is the secret of the whole exercise.
Their driftwood perspective concern, to move their right leg, prevents them from building a portable skill, a skill that will take them far in their life.
The ability to see that unless they put all their power behind the leg they stand on, they will, probably, never get to the end of the beam.
The attitude that this shows is crucial to all of life, but especially to raising your vibration, raising your station in life, raising your happiness.
Having the proper distance and the right attitude will surely make a winner of you in life.
As long as you are willing to put in the effort.
And that brings us to the second reason: being willing to work for what you want. Of course, most people aren’t… But often the reason for that is their driftwood vantage point.
A number of years ago I did a 6-month training program that was, seemingly, only benefiting Landmark Education. (ILP)
I could have viewed my training as providing free labor on one hand, being worthwhile only if I succeed at becoming a class leader. I hear that the attitude hasn’t changed… and the only reason for that is people don’t have the distinction: skill building.
That 6-month killer program built enough skills for me that
- I can lead a live class, a webinar, a teleseminar.
- I can stand in front of hundreds of people and be with every single person in the crowd.
Did I have to go through hell to get that skill? Oh yeah. I had been mortally afraid of people. I knew, requiring no evidence, that they wouldn’t like me. I knew that I didn’t belong. And I knew that they wouldn’t want me.
But I was willing to stand up there, time after time, trembling, but do what I was doing, looking out of my eye to meet the eye of someone out there… until it became a skill.
It’s the skill of being afraid and doing it anyway. It’s the skill of staying present in the face of overwhelming anxiety. And it’s the skill of considering what I am there for more important than running back to safety.
Could I use more skill building in this arena? Hell yeah!
- But it is the same skill that you need to write article after article!
- To lead training classes that don’t work, week after week.
- To be willing to tweak the method of teaching until someone gets something…
Stand up and deliver, change, stand up and deliver again. Same skill! I built it for no money! I paid for it only with my effort, and my ability to see the program from two vantage points at the same time. Being in it, and looking at it from the outside to see what skills I am building.
What are the other things I did in my life with the intention of building a skill?
I played the violin and I played the classical guitar each for five years, till I achieved excellence.
I learned and practiced pantomime for two years. In pantomime you need a superior handle and control of each muscle of your body, and you need to be able to know which muscle and how to control it. As a result today I can release your neck, shoulder, or spine with just my mind… How is that for a skill.
I learned and practiced giving massages for more than ten years. I know people intimately. I know how to create trust and intimacy. And I learned and now I know how to turn around most anything.
Recently I have practiced feeling all 44 Bach Flower Energies (the energies of the Bach Flower Remedies) and the feelings associated with them. This was the most unpleasant skill building I have ever done, but as a result you now have the Heaven on Earth Energy Bundle.
I have been using Freecell to practice splitting my attention, to allowing Source to move my hand, and to overcome my impulsive, jumping-into-stuff-without-looking nature. Today I can watch a movie with subtitles, play Freecell, while I am connected to Source.
I have watched two TV series several times, and learned the inner workings of psyche that I had no idea about. I have also developed the skill to know how guidance works and to follow it without hesitation: not an easy skill to acquire.
How are YOU going to build some skills? Start where you are… just add the second vantage point and…
The capacity of bilocation is called ‘Driftwood‘.
I have an activator… but I see that I probably have to create an Avatar State Version of it…
Email me or comment below if you are interested in the Avatar State version. Just the idea that you cannot build skills without me would drive me nuts…
I can only do practical things with the mind. Not much magic. One way I learned to get out of the left (Analytical) side of my brain was with the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain course. It really works.
Here’s some theory: “Betty Edwards has used the terms L-Mode and R-Mode to designate two ways of knowing and seeing – the verbal, analytic mode and the visual, perceptual mode – no matter where they are located in the individual brain. You are probably aware of these different characteristics. L-mode is a step-by-step style of thinking, using words, numbers and other symbols. L-mode strings things out in sequences, like words in a sentence. R-mode on the other hand, uses visual information and processes, not step-by-step, but all at once, like recognizing the face of a friend.” http://www.drawright.com/
I took the week-long workshop. I had to draw the entire room and everything in it. This is what I said to myself: “I can’t draw this…I’ll just draw this.” That was the shift…from thinking about to not thinking about.
For me, not thinking is the best thing that I have ever learned. I kind of learned it for drawing, and you are teaching me to do it for life. Wonderful.
This is very funny, Christine B. And congratulations on poking the box. You may learn something that you can teach all of us. xoxo
I was not able to find a time slot last week for my daily 1hr workout, so I decided to be smart and do it in the evenings at my boyfriends house. Well, guess how well that went over?
Fast forward to this week, I’ve added my workout back on my list. So, feeling guilty, and like I was wasting time, I decided to connect while I was walking on the treadmill. Worked great yesterday, although my true observation is that I was so focused on my tangerine spot, that walking seemed to become mechanical. Today, I did the same thing for a while, then I thought (first error), let me see if I can tri-locate. So, I attempted to stay connected, walk, and read. The good news is, I’m not too hurt, can still walk, and it will only take 1/2 hour to re-read those chapters! LOL
There are those that won’t ever try anything, and then there are some who try everything!
Hello Sophie,
It´s time to build some skills and control (if not eradicate or at least understand its origins) some strong,ugly character flaws.
I´ve just bought the Heaven on Earth . I have joined only one of your connections and it went really bad for me. it felt like it was the first day in a new school and restarting classes after really long time. i felt frustrated i didn´t do well my ¨homework¨ before joining and had no idea what to do. Than i got disconnected and by the time i reconnected the connection was almost done. i will try to connect on an early connections because the 9:00-10:00 pm connections are too late here (3 am Spain hour)..
Michelle, you are in luck: I just scheduled Wednesdays a connection call at 3 pm: that will be 9 pm your time, I hope that is not too late.
And thank you for not giving up on yourself. It shows what kind of person you are, congratulations.