The Wall, The Ladder, and Your Life’s Purpose

Originally posted 2010-12-11 10:25:59.

How do you get Guidance from The Soul?

Many people walk around with an immense amount of knowledge.

Yet, in their professional life, they jump from one thing to the other. They’re directionless because they zigzag.

They go to this direction and then they go to that direction and they go in the third direction and then they return to the first one, and on and on it goes. Continue reading “The Wall, The Ladder, and Your Life’s Purpose”

What is MY Tikkun? Tikkun is your soul correction. Kabbalah

Originally posted 2008-09-16 11:30:07.

Tikkun is soul correction.

Why does the soul need correction?

Because the original vessel that became the souls of humanity was created for pure receiving. And although it was ‘infected’ with the desire to receive for the sake of sharing, its base and original nature is desire to receive for the self alone.

Each soul correction aka Tikkun has a different way of desire to receive for the self alone…

With that said: your Tikkun is your soul correction.

My tikkun, my soul-correction is ‘Forget Thyself.’ That is #34. You get to the soul correction number through adding up the individual digits of your date of birth. It will be a two digit number…

Ultimately, we could guess that soul correction is a Kabbalistic numerology guided phenomenon. Continue reading “What is MY Tikkun? Tikkun is your soul correction. Kabbalah”

Beyond the horizontal, beyond ambition, beyond desire…

climbing jacob's ladderI am re-reading Atlas Shrugged.

When the first two times I read it, I knew it was very important. but an essential aspect was missing for me. An aspect I just got a week or so ago.

This aspect, the difference between ambition and desire, that goes, hand in hand, with the word pairs, producer vs second hander, vertical plane vs horizontal plane. Continue reading “Beyond the horizontal, beyond ambition, beyond desire…”

Your brain can help you become an Expanding Human Being

tools and techniques for self developmentSummary: Most of us don’t know who we really are. We don’t know what we really want. We don’t know where to start, what to do to become an expanding human being.

Here is an exercise that can be really helpful. With it you could start exercising the faculties that will lead you to clarity about who you are and what you want… eventually.

‘The most complex problems can be stripped to their essence through unemotional critical thinking. Successful problem solvers simplify complex problems while seeking kindergarten solutions’ ~ Steve Siebold

The complex problem I have been struggling with is how to teach people to start using their faculties. How to start using their brain for what it is really good for. Doing that instead of searching for answers outside of them, or in their minds. Instead of asking questions from others and never actually think.

A simple solution showed up in a conversation with a client today.

First time client, totally immersed in the current culture (politically correct). When asked to share about himself he said he gave blood every two weeks and helped out with the high school in his town.

Typical outward directed focus. Selfless. He didn’t say anything about himself. What he said though said that he wasn’t an independent thinker. Or a thinker at all.

I shared with him about my collapsed dreams with Amazon. I shared how I learned a lesson. He praised me for being tough. Then I shared with him that I had thoughts of suicide. He said that he thought I was stronger than that.

thought-policeIn Christianity, especially in Catholicism, even the thought of a sin is a sin.

So Christians are commanded to avoid thoughts of sin. Thus they avoid thoughts of anything worth thinking about. They avoid knowing themselves.

I told him that because I was able to tell the difference between my thoughts and my actions for me there was no harm in thinking through any action, any reaction. No harm thinking about suicide. No harm thinking about the aftermath, etc. Or no harm thinking where my current actions in life are leading me… even if it is a horrible place. The more I can see it the better for me. I said that thinking ‘bad thoughts’ was actually a useful exercise.

Both Christianity and Positive Thinking

That both Christianity and Positive Thinking rob people of choosing for themselves. Rob them of being able tell apples from oranges, their thoughts from their actions.

That not being willing (or able) to be in the presence of unpleasant or ‘sinful’ thoughts and ideas render them ready preys for the powers that be, for the marketeers, for everyone and anyone who want to exploit them.

When you cannot tell the difference between your thoughts and your actions, you have to act on every urge. you are a puppet on the string for your urges.

When you see an advertising for a chocolate cake… you need to have it. When you see the picture of a half naked woman, you need to do what the urge tells you to do: you are not in the driver’s seat, you are not the boss.

You cannot just be… and live your life, drive your life where you want it to go.

And that’s when it hit me”

If you cannot separate your thoughts from your actions, you’ll never make good decisions either.

If I asked you to imagine situations where the decision can be confronting. Where the decisions would be revealing, ugly, or ethically challenging. Where you would really look what decisions you could make. You would feel into what decision you like, what decisions you dislike. What decisions you would entertain. What decisions you would be too cowardly to make, fearing the consequences.

If you were willing to contemplate the question, then, through these ‘mental imaginings’ you could actually start growing. You could start getting some self-knowledge. And you could start telling apart yourself from others. What others told you and what you feel, what you think. Your own judgment. And thus you could exercise your brain, exercise your thinking, use your mental tools. Review your moral values, awaken your self-awareness.

You would access the thinking functions of the brain instead of the limited storage device mind.

My story

Until the age of about 40 I was largely a mystery to myself, because I didn’t know what I liked, what I disliked. I couldn’t tell.

I didn’t know what were my preferences, because I was cut off from my feelings. Because I was an empath I felt too much. I felt everything and the opposite.

I couldn’t tell my feelings from ‘not-my’ feelings.

For me the only way to avoid confusion and maybe even schizophrenia, was to not feel. To suppress ALL feelings. To live entirely for the mental pursuits, for intellectual pleasures. And outside of that be an automaton.

At exactly 40 I was refused admittance to a week-long course, because of my inability to tell the difference between thought and action.

Each thought occurred to me as an action in and of itself. And I needed to be able to tell them apart, and become clear.

This is just a thought… this is an action.

Sometimes the thought was totally independent, not resulting in anything, not resulting in an action…

Until that point I was thinking of every thought as action. For example,
  • Thoughts of violence (considered an action) would make me a murderer… and yet I never murdered anyone.
  • Thoughts of suicide sent me to the emergency room thinking I needed help.

You may have different thoughts.

  • Delusion of grandeur is a result of thoughts and is an illness itself.
  • Thinking yourself kind when you are really nasty is a confusion similar to this.
  • Thinking yourself stuck but there is no stuck in reality is a confusion similar to this.

Since that realization at age 40 I have been pulling myself up by my bootstraps. My power became distinguishing, aka telling apart. Slowly but surely, telling things apart. Not being the ‘for you everything is the same as everything else except not always‘. I started to become able to tell apples from oranges, myself from others, actions from thoughts. And started getting to know me, my machine, my desires, my urges, my aspirations that have taken me to where I am.

distinguishing thought from actionsI want this for you. I want you to get clear distinction between thought and action

The exercise, putting yourself mentally in situations where you can test your mettle, is simple, but not easy.

Your tools of imaginings are rusty. Your imagination is weak. And you may find yourself squeamish. Hesitant. Unwilling. Scared. Pretending. You may try to outsmart the game by hiding, outrunning, outsmarting the issues, but never actually facing them.

You can get the hang of the game. And you’ll get better at it.

But bewares: You’ll do this game like you do everything else. That means most of you will quit before you start. Another half will quit after tying it once. And one or two in a hundred will hang in there, and grow.

How you do anything is how you do everything. This will only change you if you recognize your how… and consciously counter it.

It could become a mode of meditation. A meditation where you imagine up situations, and imagine yourself in them, and go back and forth and test different choices, different actions… Thus start getting to know yourself.

This is what Tai calls armchair meditation in step 54 (‘Chess-like Assiduity and armchair meditation)

What situations would you imagine? Any… the world and the internet offers up so many situations to imagine yourself in. 24 hours a day would not be enough if you wanted to play with them all.

Here are some thought starters:

What would you do if you were one of the relatives of the lost Malaysian airline plane? What would you do if your boy friend/husband got ill and he were a nasty patient? Or what would you do if you swallowed your wedding ring? What would you do if you found out you had cancer? (This last one is sorely missing for my clients who refuse to take care of themselves)

Look at the scenarios through your own eyes. Then switch and look at them from outside. Then switch again and look at them from the eyes of another person in the story, or outside of the story.

In my pondering about suicide looking at the fact through your (the client’s) eyes was a really educational experience. It helped that some celebrity’s girl friend just committed suicide. I could see being plastered on social media. It felt like being naked in public.

Do it, it’s amazing!

PsychodramaExpect a growth spurt once you figure this out

Expect a growth spurt once you figure this out, once you get the hang of it. And expect lots of fun. Much like in a psychodrama class… Psychodrama on steroid.

Spend as much time with each situation as you need, until you get clear what the ‘real’ you would do in that situation.

My series of challenges are an excellent place to first dip your toes in, and then expand your immersion.

The best is to start with the Reality Challenge. It is designed to help you distinguish between thought and action. Priceless.

PS: Another article with specific exercises is already lined up for you.

I have the ascension process. ready. but can you hack it?

I woke up with a question this morning:

Have I succeeded to create a system that can put a human onto the path of becoming a human being?

The answer was ‘yes but’. And the proverbial search for the needle in the haystack began. Continue reading “I have the ascension process. ready. but can you hack it?”

Everyone thinks they are smarter than you… but why?

Everyone thinks they are smarter than you… but why? And how can you avoid that trap so you can start having some results in your life?

I came to my computer this morning not having an idea what article to write.

So I started to watch a few videos on youtube I lined up, after I saw that one of my students learned ‘precession‘ from one of the videos I published, while it went way over my head.

Time to recap…

So I watched the video, and muscletested. It tested ‘not true’ for me. One of my favorite people, (an evolutionary event in humanity’s history, according to Buckminster Fuller…) Marshall Thurber. Zero truth value. Wow… let me watch a few more Marshall Thurber videos…

So I did. It’s about 8 am now, and I have been at it for almost three hours.

I learned a lot.

Here are some of the things I learned: Continue reading “Everyone thinks they are smarter than you… but why?”

How To Be A Sacred Lotus: Unfrazzled And Happy?

How to be a sacred Lotus, untouched by the rain, the suffering of others, the noise of others: what’s the secret of people that stay on the path and are happy?

Untouched by hunger, cold, lack of food… anything.

What is the reason you are pulled into everything, that you are trying to help everyone, that you are a do-gooder? Continue reading “How To Be A Sacred Lotus: Unfrazzled And Happy?”

Filters… or where are you listening from?

Where does the truth I say come from? Stream of consciousness.

I write the largest chunks of surprising truths that way. Something triggers it, and there it comes. Quick, let me get to the computer!

I read Kathryn’s comment on the Worry article, and something clicked. Continue reading “Filters… or where are you listening from?”

Too many choices leave you high and dry. Confused and stuck

Clarity is power… Unclarity traps you. Makes you stuck.

I have lived in three countries.

I was pretty in the first country. And I was normal in the second. And I have been mostly exotic and ugly in the third.

Because what you are most used to, what is like what you saw as a child is what is pleasing to you. Even though philosophers have defined beauty through and through… and yet.

Why am I writing about this now? Continue reading “Too many choices leave you high and dry. Confused and stuck”

You don’t like me? Want only positive guidance?

I am reading many books, many articles.

They all say that my life could be better, would be better if I just looked at the bright side of things.

But that… looking at only the bright side of things, actually leads to a boring, inauthentic life.

What makes good good is the contrast… No bad? Not looking at it? there suddenly isn’t good either… only boring, dull, dead. And you can’t sleep… Continue reading “You don’t like me? Want only positive guidance?”