Teaming up with your future self: don't cheat yourself!

Teaming up with your future self is in manifestation terms learning to rely and trust your hidden resources, those events of providence that reward commitment. This text, partly by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, says it:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." 

Rational people don't typically do this, or rather you and I, when we are behaving rationally don't naturally do this because it is an affront to our sense of cause and effect. Cause and effect is something that we learn early, and most of the time it is a good thing. Learning about cause and effect keeps us out of lots of trouble. "That hot stove is going to burn my hand if I touch it." Cutting the line between cause and effect causes a cognitive dissonance. To get from point A to point D, one will logically need to go through points B and C.

This is a short-sighted view of how things work, however. When we gauge our future worth on how we generate worth or value today, we have not taken into account all of the ways in which providence will help if we are willing to step over the line of rationality and take a leap of faith.  When we set goals instead of create vision, we do so in error because we haven't taken into the account the accelerating effect that faith in a vision will have.

Any economist will tell you that looking into the future is impossible, but we can in certain ways forecast what an investment today will be worth in 5 or 10 years, but using the Net Present Value formula, that gives us an idea of the effect time has on value. In the same way, if you are counting on a 1:1 value ratio between what you are able to accomplish today and what you will be able to accomplish over the course of ten years of vision-driven living, you are vastly underestimating all of the wonderful things that you can accomplish.

Goal-setting is good, but goal-setting at its best is a practice of our instrumental intelligence. Vision is based on our intuitive intelligence. They are both important, but mistaking goal-setting for vision writing is forgetting the accelerator of providence. It is a pessimistic and small version of your future self, and is quite simply inaccurate.

Team up with your future self by employing your ability to create a vision based on what you would love. It sounds like a leap of faith, but in actuality it is a much more accurate way of moving yourself towards that which you would love. Love is the greatest power we know, and failing to use it to your advantage is akin to rowing instead of sailing.

Don't say no!

Haha! Don't say no, right?

Your conscious mind is awake, receives information, makes decisions, counts, catalogues, keeps the trains of your life on time, changes and re-arranges things. There are parts of your identity that are stored there also: the things you choose, the conclusions that you make. Awake, vigilant: the watcher and controller.

The other parts of your mind are the things that are pre-verbal, things that get shoved into the corners and fall off the edges, the books and letters that fall of the nightstand and end up on the floor. Sedimentary remnants of conversations that get forgotten. Pictures imprinted on your 3 year-old mind that somehow are there but aren't there. All the things you are but don't know you are. The ether part of you.

Your conscious mind is like the striated muscle tissue in your body: it is controlled at will, rests when you rest, is awake when you are awake. It does things, plans things, grabs things. Opens cans of worms, buries hatchets, carries grudges.

Your subconscious is like the smooth muscle tissue of your heart and digestive tract. Working all the time, a stranger in your body, but a very real part of you. It runs barefoot through the cold wet nighttime grass when your conscious mind, the scout-master, sleeps. It runs to make secret rendezvous with the contiguous ether of the universe: the other unconscious minds that are also out floating, flying, and soaring.

Conscious mind: facts. Subconscious mind: truth.

They do work together, however.  You imprint images on the subconscious mind all the time, and it is the subconscious mind that tells the real truth about who you are by operating in the field of formless substance that is the not-yet-created. This field is the field of genius where all things are possible. When you get your conscious mind and subconscious minds working together, the sky is the limit for what you are able to manifest. But to activate the subconscious mind in this way, your conscious mind needs to learn the language of yes, because the subconscious mind, in all its free capriciousness and complete innocence only knows yes.

It's not magic, not sorcery, not rocket science. Just the way to manifest that which you would love.

Tool-making

I was never good in shop class (sløyd på norsk) in high school, but one of my friends who was told me something that I have never forgotten, and which at the time was pretty mind-blowing for me. We were standing in the workshop area, amid fearsome looking table-saws (the one that would remove a couple of Denny Sapp's fingers a few months later) and a couple of friendlier looking machines like a drill-press. My friend told me that the first thing you have to do is make your tools. Hmm. Aren't these machines the tools? No.

The first part of the job is to make the tools. Same with living a vision-driven life. Learning how to make tools based on design will also presuppose that you are able to discard things that are not effective tools. There is wisdom and good help around every corner now, and if you read something that lives in you in a positive and intriguing way, it is good to have some principles about what to do with it.  If these short bursts of wisdom are in accordance with your core visions and values, then do by all means appropriate this for use. You may just hang on to that tool until you pass it along to someone else who needs it later.

You may want to have a template for making tools, which should come from your vision-statement. For me a tool has to be

1. Functional to its application.
2. Simple.
3. Fun to use.
4. Imparts wisdom as well as functionality. 

Acquiring the tools you need while on your way is a great thing. Saves time, and the tools made from the things you encounter are made for you at the moment you need them.  

Mastery vs Perfection

Mastery vs. perfection. Reality vs. fantasy, if you like.

Mastery is the reality of showing up, refusing to quit, keeping moving and committing to learning constantly. The Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying "When you lose, don't lose the lesson." If you are moving, breathing, committing to honoring your soul's contract of creativity and service, you are succeeding, regardless of the appearances of the result you have achieved.

Perfection is a fantasy concept at best. Obsession with perfection is the quickest way to kill all that that is beautiful and spontaneous.  It is handing over your creative autonomy to another person, or worse, to a memory of a teacher, a parent, a spouse, a boss, who evoked in you a reaction of fear and resentment. Striving to improve is a wonderful instinct, but it so often comes wrapped in an unhealthy habit of constantly pushing the goal further away. It is fine and admirable to strive continually, but once it descends into being a neurotic habit of denying yourself the feelings of mastery, it's a loser.

Mastery begets mastery. Are you aware of all of the things you master every day? It is incredible. Standing on two legs! Language! All of the complex and wonderful things you do. These are incredibly complex activities to master, but you have most likely been doing it for so long you don't think about it. But you should think about it, and acknowledge you mastery.  Feel it? Let that feeling of mastery inform your current set of challenges, and carry you on towards an ever-increasing sense of mastery. This learning will take place as long as you don't give up. You can change directions, change goals, but giving up is the surest way to lose.

The people around you don't want your perfection. Competency, probably, but not perfection. Perfection is a lie, a rabbit hole, a trap that you will be stuck in before you are aware of it. Don't go there.

Mastery is alive, situation-relevant, lovely.

Creating value vs trading time for money

It's in the math, really. Trading time for money is a 1:1 proposition. Sounds fair, though, sort of, doesn't it? One to one ratio: equal, balanced, leaves nothing behind itself. The problem of course is that the perfect equilibrium, the serenity, the silence, is where the trace of your humanity should be. The zero that is the end of that equation is what is left for you, and left of you.

There is no line of work that is in itself a waste or a virtue. It all has to do with the amount of creativity used and the value created in doing the work. Sometimes we can best create value by simply being kind, being of service, extending ourselves for someone else. Value in turn will create more value, and you, having created the value will reap the benefits of having participated in the great adventure of being human.  You are the multiplier of value. Your experience and personality and presence is of incredible value. You are important, and you will experience greater and greater levels of gratitude and joy if you turn up the volume on this part of you.

Exchanging time for money is the opposite of creating value. Of course, you should be paid for your work. Money is a form of compressed energy that is the natural consequence of the creative cycle. But an even exchange of time for money is a waste of your creative energy, and if we stay in those situations long enough, we forget the physical and emotional joy of creating value. This has nothing to do with what kind of work you are doing. If that work is in harmony with your core vision and values, in other words, with who you really are, then you are in the right place for the time being, and will be replenished by filling your every role with greatness. But if the situation is one that because of the combination of the situation and what you are bringing to it, you are unable to create value, then you should probably make some changes.

And it is not just about your work life, either. Try an experiment: the next time you are out in public, start looking for ways to create value, to being a human multiplier of value. In your mind, see it happening. It is surprising how good it feels to have the right and responsibility to be a multiplier.

Don't start by quitting your job. Start by getting clear about your core visions and values. Don't have a vision statement written? Get in touch with me!

Feeling stupid? Congratulations! You are on the verge of something great.

Feeling stupid is vastly underrated.

I should clarify: stupid isn't a feeling. Stupid is a perjorative description of someone being dull, dimwitted, etc. The latin roots are the same that give us the English word stupor. Dazed. You can feel angry, sad, happy, but you can't feel stupid. "Seeing the sun go down over the mountains makes me feel: happy, sad, angry." Stupid? No. You attach feelings when you perceive a judgment of being stupid. Being called stupid. Stupid isn't a state of being, it is an opinion. Weaker still.

Since stupid is a state of being and not a feeling, to be conscious of being stupid is a great thing once you take the feelings out of it.  Being conscious of having an information deficit is one of the greatest gifts you can be given. Take the feelings out of it; they are mental state that you apply to someone else's opinion of you. Not needed.

Awareness of information or skill deficit is a great resource. Not knowing is being in the dark. Knowing is the biggest step in filling in the deficit, even though it may take a little while to be conscious enough to turn the feelings into something productive.

You can do it if you don't get freaked out and quit.

stumbling blocks into building blocks: point zero

It is pretty amazing to think that the things that we perceive as blocking our way to progress are often the very thing that hold for us the most potential for growth.

Seeing the stumbling block for what it really is, or being willing to be willing to see it in another way is where we start.

I was married once before and the period when that marriage was in free-fall, leading up to the divorce and the period of re-orienting afterwards was something I experienced as being painful and confusing. A swamp of bitterness. I will be the first one to admit that regardless of the situation I was in, I made regrettable decisions, and a lot of it falls on me. Of all the things I learned, the one that has stayed with me the most and given me the most help, was that no matter how rough things felt, my inability to see and embrace the situation for what it really was was my greatest stumbling block. Not the ended marriage, not the fights and the screaming, not the period of rootlessness that followed, not the nightmares, not the anxiety, but not getting the clue that I had all that I needed right in front of me, but just hadn't decided to wrap my arms around that difficult situation and say: I am going to wrestle you until you tell me your name, give me your wisdom.

The next part of it was my being,  who I was, and who I was willing to be in relationship to that painful situation. I had done so much whining about how terrible things were. One day on the phone I was talking to a friend of mine whose response to my tearful and repetitive question "what should I do?" was "stop being an asshole." He was right, actually, although at the time I felt really insulted. I was making a tremendous deal out of being confused, and I had scripted a complete identity for myself that was defined by this stumbling block. And this way of defining myself brought me illness and poverty because when people looked at me, all they saw was this identity that I had created, newly divorced, bitter, afraid, crazy.

Had I known then how to redesign my operating system, that pulse of identity that we all have and either works for us or against us, and turn its frequency to one of gratitude and happiness, alot would have been different.

Of course, I wouldn't have acquired the mastery through the subsequent period of nonsense, for which I'm grateful, but, well, you know.