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Turning things around… creating a turning point

I have a potential turning point for how I teach and what I teach… I saw it yesterday.

It’s a potential turning point, because I am not sure I can do it. After all I would be teaching something I did not learn myself. So I don’t even know if it is teachable. But at least now I understand what is going on. Why the results are sporadic.

I’ll explain later, after the story… but let’s start with a story, OK?

I’ve been cooking regularly since I was eight or nine years old. Don’t remember the age, I only remember what I screwed up then. So I am a veteran when it comes to cooking.

Something happened a few weeks ago.

I learned a new word.

Aromatics. I knew this word from Organic Chemistry… Yes, I went to school, and yes I learned what they taught. Didn’t you?

Onion, garlic, celery, even carrots… spices, herbs. All aromatics.

Aromatics refer to vegetables and herbs that add flavor and aroma to a dish. When cooked together, these ingredients help create layers of flavor in your food.

Just like with everything, food can be looked at from many different aspects. These aspects are called, at least in this work, DISTINCTIONS.

Aromatics is a distinction. The common denominator, what they all share, is that they release an AROMA when they are cooked.

Aroma is a distinctive, typically but not necessarily a pleasant smell, while in combination it is heavenly

You can look at cuisines through their use of aromatics. You can estimate the sophistication of the country and its culture through that.

Today, instead of learning to cook, learning to use aromatics, people go to a different country’s restaurant… Almost every country’s ‘cuisine’ is boring, flat, hard to enjoy more often than once a week.

Chinese, Tai, Indian… all dishes taste the same after a while.

My cooking, on the other hand, just because of that one distinction, has become explosively more enjoyable over the past few weeks.

Aromatics are like musical notes. You can create pentatone (boring) music with it, or you can create symphonies, musicals, rousing songs of love and loss…

Same with words…

Same with facial expressions…

Or the alphabet… 26 letters, millions of words and combinations.

Information… all the raw material you can work with.

The difference between a five star chef and you is simply the chef has distinctions. At best you can smell and taste the difference between something well prepared or not… But most of you can’t even have that much distinction, let alone doing what the chef does.

Same in every area. Music, literature, acting. No distinctions.

You may have a kitchen without ingredients. You may have access to many ingredients, but don’t have any distinctions of cooking, you’ll put ketchup on everything, or follow a recipe. Repeat the words…

This is what has been happening in my classes: you repeat the words. but there is no substance behind the words. nothing landed, nothing is useful, they are just words.

How you do anything is how you do everything. You are boring and you are bored… Skin deep.

Now, about the turning point.

Yesterday I found out that the raw material I provide isn’t made useful knowledge by you.

Just like raw materials in the kitchen, you need to process information to make it ‘haute cuisine’, really good food. And unfortunately it is the job of the cook, not the job of the person who sells the raw materials, in my case information.

You may think you can cook, but you learned to make the dish, not cooking.

Unless you know and are masterful at the basic techniques of cooking, you are not a chef, You have not mastered distinctions.

I challenged one of my students  to learn to cook. She misunderstood. She thought I said: be able to prepare some food for yourself.

No, I said: learn to cook.

I recommend that she starts with just onions and garlic… and takes that to mastery…

It can take months, years to mastery.

But once you have ONE distinction, you are well on your way. now you know what you are driving at. Until then… you have no idea.

You can’t work on everything and hope that you’ll end up with distinctions!

But how you do anything is how you do everything… like a puddle.

Alas, you have never been taught to ‘cook’ information into enjoyable and useful ‘dishes’… and if I ever want to make a difference, I may have to teach you myself.

The name of the activity is called, I think, critical thinking. Not because it accepts or rejects the information, as one would think from the word ‘critical’.  It is more like critical because if it is missing, the information isn’t processed.

My articles, my videos, my courses. Chunks of raw pieces. not useful.

So I am now embarking on learning how to teach what I do, instinctively. I was born able to do this processing information. So I never had to learn it.

I integrated every piece of new information. But it is not common. It is a thinking skill.

None of my students have it. It is the number one skill to achieve anything in any area of life. And my hunch is: those who have it don’t think that others don’t.

I found a pdf on critical thinking… But my intention is to teach it, like I was taught the letters… the teacher was holding my hand holding the pencil as WE made the circles over and over, to form the letter o.

Creating a muscle-memory-like phenomenon, when no thinking is needed for knowing or doing.

I may still write my regular articles, but my main effort will be to teach (at least a handful of people) the minimum of critical thinking so they can actually benefit from what they see and hear.

We’ll start with the idea of sideways view. So far no one is understanding what it is, it is just senseless information. Not useful.

The result: people cannot get out of their own way… and get into reality. Meaning: they remain in their minds where nothing is real…

Is there a DNA capacity that if it is not on, you can’t do it?

Not specifically. But in my experience, you need to be willing to feel stupid, a beginner, and stop trying to prove that you are smart, or anything that you normally try to prove.

It is counterproductive… works against allowing the brain muscles to learn to do what they have never done.

Do I have anything that makes being willing easier? Yes. The Big Bundle. It is an energy audio that you play directly into the ears. The energy makes Consciousness aware that what is going on is important. It makes the brain aware that something unusual is happening. So the brain can tell the muscles to stop fighting, and for the fear and anxiety to go away.

I use it, on my ears, about ten hours a day. Whenever I can.

Get the Big BundlePS: here is the video that created the distinction for me