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I was a pack rat most of my life. It’s not a pretty way to be, not a good match to ‘high vibration’ but it was a fact… I was a pack rat.
I had a really difficult time to throw anything away, be it a box, a plastic bag, a newsletter, a piece of clothing… So my apartment is still filled to the brim with stuff I don’t use, and will never use.
When I want to clean my closets, I learned that my slogan needs to be: have I worn this in the past year? and if not, give it away or throw it away. But it is hard to throw away stuff. I spent good money to buy it.
I have tons of clothes, some expensive. Clothes I’ve never worn.
My world, the view of the world had been colored by scarcity, by lack.
Poverty. Not getting what I want, and it’d been a definite hindrance. Like you, I could list here the good reasons why my view was the way my view was, that I was a middle child, that I was homeless for a while, that my brothers got all the goodies and I got all the beating, that … list your own reasons…
You either have your reasons, or you have your results… Results like an uncluttered house that is only as big as you and your daily activities need it to be. I have 4 bedrooms… I don’t use three for anything other than to store stuff.
Today I could probably afford to replace everything I really need right away… all the stuff money can buy. It’s not that I have a lot of money, it’s that I don’t need much.
When I fantasize about abundance, I don’t see closets full, or anything full. I see wide spaces… Harmony. Mostly nature.
My innate nature, my real nature is minimalistic.
Even my health is best when I eat like a poor person. Every little indulgence harms my health: I pay a price with my health.
Last night I woke up several times from a long dream.
I was on a trip, and all kinds of unopened packages of clothing were there. When it was time to pack to go home, I tried to put those packages, not my own clothes, into my suitcase, even though it was obvious to me that I’d never need those things. But I could not bear to leave them.
But then there was no room for the clothes I wear every day.
And then, in a dramatic moment, I dumped all that stuff from the suitcase. Experienced the pain of saying ‘no’, and even left most of the stuff I’d brought with me to the trip behind.
It was a gesture that said: you can do more with less. Including what is in your brain.
This dream, I say, was a reaction to the conversation during my office hours on how to get more knowledge, and how to consolidate it.
In the area of knowledge I am not a pack rat. I allow my brain to pick and choose what to keep, what to pursue, and what to prune. I ask the brain to be the boss in that. We have built a trust relationship, so I don’t have to force the brain’s to get what I want. I trust my brain.
Pruning is the brain’s version of cleaning my closets.
Somehow the brain knows what to keep and what to chuck. And if accidentally the brain cleans something out that would be needed: that is what google is for.
I am very dyslexic. I used to memorize the map of every city, every country I ever lived in. Otherwise I don’t know my left from my right, from North from South. I get lost in a jiffy.
Occasionally I check if I can even recall the neighborhood where I lived for 30 years, the street names and such. And no, not really, the brain has already pruned it so it is now vague, dreamlike.
I have a friend, older than me. She recounts all her friends and relatives and their stories occasionally to me… I think she is trying to remember who she is.
When I watch her, she has never made room for anything new, she religiously protects her ‘knowledge’, including her conspiracy theories about Covid, and the governor, politics, because her identity is vested in that knowledge.
I am lucky, my identity is not vested in some knowledge, though it still seems to be vested in stuff…
My heat has been off for two days now, and the landlord isn’t in a hurry to have it fixed. He wants me out, and I understand, he wants to sell the house. I have lived here for 19 years, going on 20, and I don’t want to move. I don’t want to throw all that stuff away, I don’t want to spend my few remaining years cleaning a house…
If I ever leave, if I am ever forced to leave, I’ll move with two suitcases and my computers. I won’t even take my books. And won’t take all the courses I wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on over the years. I haven’t cracked any of them open for more than 10 years.
If I ever have to leave I’ll restart somewhere where my environment will be much like my brain: I’ll keep what I need. Science: I’ll keep. History: I’ll keep. Math: I’ll keep. Principles of building something: I’ll keep. Knowing human nature: I’ll keep. But most everything else is just stuff.
My brain is trained to keep what is of value, and discard the rest.
I learn fast. I hear 70% of what is being said, and then I retain 90% of what my brain deems valuable from that.
My students: they hear 1-10% and then retain 1%.
I have been teaching something I learned from someone: I don’t remember who, maybe Charlie Munger. He said that in order for things you hear to become useful, they need to be able to connect and attach to a latticework of basic knowledge.
Most people don’t have a latticework of basic knowledge. I do. Why?
I was a good student in all my 21 years of organized education. High grades.
Why was I a good student? because I was curious. I was interested. It is fun to learn new things.
So therefore I have a fine latticework that new knowledge can adhere to. In the brain you call the connections synapses.
Most people, almost everyone I know, have no or only sparse latticework… a beam here and a beam there.
Why? Low curiosity, I say, but the jury is still out on that.
None of my students is sufficiently curious to actually learn something. You didn’t learn it unless you can teach it. You didn’t learn it unless you use it. And you only learn through use… correct use. Enough use for the knowledge to set down roots.
So what is blocking curiosity? It has to be something I don’t have, I think.
One of the things that is missing for people is to see to what end… at what final result they are aiming.
Unless something is good for something other than itself, it feels useless.
So for me learning’s ‘to what end’ was to satisfy my adventurous curiosity. Many ways you can satisfy it, by the way, learning, reading, researching.
Curiosity is life itself… without curiosity you are dead.
We could say that the level of your curiosity significantly influences the level of your vibration, and therefore the quality of your life.
Can you whip up your curiosity? I think so.
There is another element: how much you think life and what is going on is about you… your about-me score.
My about-me score is low. 3%-7% depending on how exposed I feel. When I am in public, my curiosity drops: it is replaced by some concern of how I look to others.
My one-time coach, Troy, demanded that we use camera on his coaching calls… and thus, effectively diminished, for me, the value of his teaching.
The first few sessions, when I wasn’t on camera, I had the freedom to just hear fully what was said. I learned a lot. After he was enforcing this camera thing, I learned nothing. Not a thing.
One day I got on his call, and directed the camera to the ceiling… and I myself set at my other computer, so I just listened. I learned an awful lot: I could turn around and even teach what he taught.
So from this I can clearly see the connection between self-concern and curiosity.
If curiosity is the engine that gets the stuff in and makes it appear useful to you, then even a small concern for self makes that curiosity engine stall…
So, to reiterate, the two factors are: 1. have a big enough ‘to what end’ that is important to you, important enough to get you curious 2. drop the self-concern.
One of the reasons I insist on people re-listening their courses in their own time is that then, re-listening, they may have less self-concern.
This doesn’t work for everyone: some people are concerned about themselves 24/7… and can’t just let go of that.
In the future, before I take someone into my higher level programs, I’ll muscletest if they can let go of the self-concern… and if they can’t, I won’t take them.
Why? Because they won’t be able to get what they need to get… the self-concern will block it effectively.
What should you do if you want to get abundance?
or if it is not abundance you want, but a life you love and you can live powerfully?
Your life, the quality of your life, your results entirely depend on your actions. Not on your attitude, not on the strength of your character, not on how good you are to others, but on your actions, even though your attitude, the strength of your character will give you your how.
Of course whether you’ll do something will depend on your attitude, your character, on how good you are to others… but ultimately it is your actions that create your life.
Unfortunately you will only do what you will do.
So what decides what you will do?
The answer is stupid simple: your actions will always be matching what you see.
How and how much you see the world, yourself, everything.
And this is where letting go of self-concern is mandatory: as long as you are concerned about yourself, that is what will occupy most of your visual field, and your actions will be about you… Protecting you. Protecting the image you want the world to see.
You will not take powerful actions in reality, because you cannot even see reality: your self-concern is blocking the view.
My self-concern blocks me from throwing things out.
Luckily I don’t seem to be blocked from many other things… I’ll keep on observing myself.
You, on the other hand, are a different case… your self-concern blocks nearly every action, nearly everything that needs to get done.
My landlord has ordered a new furnace… Never would have happened without me putting my self-concern aside and tell him it is his job to provide heat with the apartment… that was the action… and I am proud of it.
In the Amish Horse Training Method we deal with what to do with the constant mind chatter. The self-concern is talking. It shoulds on you. In that course you learn not to pay attention to all the shoulds.
But how to put aside self-concern we have never addressed that in any of my courses.
So maybe it is time for a new course where we can address this abundantly. To look at your self-concern and how it takes over your field of vision, and what to do so you can get your eyes to see…
