The first step in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous says: We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol––that our lives had become unmanageable.
Whether you know it or not, that is the most important of all the steps. And of life…
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If we took an inventory of your life… If I followed you around for a day, a week, a month… How many of your actions are planting seeds for the future you desire, how many are planting seeds to no results, or undesired results?
Most people plant no seeds. Some plant seeds but then forget about watering them, and the weeds or the dryness kills the seeds before they can even sprout.
Most people think that the world rotates around them, should play according to their rules, and their rules are: give it to me now, because I want it.
Manifestation, the law of attraction, mind movies, instant healing, the “bars”, incantation, shamanism, and thousands of fraudulent abusive modalities all capitalize on this warped world view to make it all right for you.
But they are lies, frauds, intentionally misleading you. And you are willing. It turns my stomach.
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Fear…
What is in your way of getting to abundance, to a life worth living?
People, normally, want some miracle potion, lotion, energy treatment, belief erasure, mind movies, vision boards, and many other things that they hope will give them abundance.
Or they are waiting to feel like doing something, maybe courage?
The other day someone posted a comment on my site. I expected it to be intentionally hurtful, and I treated it as such… But in the meantime I pushed it around in my thoughts and reconsidered.
It is a valid question… He asked: How do you know you are an empath?
Really, how do I know?
Now, the question could come from:
1. how do you know you have a special ability and therefore you know more than others? This was my original interpretation.
2. how does one know? Really? What clues one in that what they are feeling is not their own feelings, and not their imagination running wildly away with them? This second question is what I am going to attempt to answer in this post.
Occasionally I am struck with the sense that I have no one to talk to.
Some things, like should I do this, should I say yes or no, would be great for me to talk through.
Choice is: selecting freely, after consideration. Choice is when it is not your reasons that choose but you, yourself. But often it is not easy to choose… and a conversation helps.
Choice is selecting freely, after consideration…
That consideration is a conversation. Either with yourself, or with someone who is willing to be a sounding board.
Most people are not suitable to be a sounding board.
They either think that their ‘job’ is to fix your problems, or they want to sound smart, or they want to use you to talk about their stuff, or they are just… simply… not interested. Mostly in anything.
Also, if they are there in body but not in mind, they are not a sounding board.
The essence of a sounding board is the echo.
When the echo is distorted, the person had an opinion.
When there is no echo, the person wasn’t listening, they are off in their own thoughts.
If you are the subscriber of my podcasts, you’ll notice how many times I ask: are you there?
What is taking you out of the conversation if you are the listener?
In my experience, it is your overemphasis on yourself. Me, myself, and I. An about-me number higher than 30% makes you a very poor listener. And it forces the speaker, your conversation partner to change what they do, and have the conversation all about you.
That makes for a very poor podcast. One time, yes. Every time: it is boring for the listener.
For me: the experience of being sucked dry, giving me nothing in return.
I had a conversation partner for 14 years. It was perfect for 13 of those 14 years. Then during the pandemic, my partner fell in with the conspiracy theories. He started to view me as part of the liberal pedophile gang… I would laugh if it were funny. In the end we parted ways.
I miss talking to him.
I could discuss anything with him: he would provide the sounding board, and a few grunts here and there… And I would feel no need for another friend.
I probably didn’t give anything to him… I don’t even know if he had a need to be heard… It wasn’t a real friendship.
Real friendships are formed on the mutual need to be heard.
That doesn’t mean you have permission to be boring…
If you don’t have much to say, don’t talk. Be interested. And then if and when you have something to discuss, you can be heard.
You can be responsible for how you are heard. In essence, it is one of those ‘yours to do’ to be interesting or if you can’t… then be interested.
My friend wasn’t interesting. But for 13 of those 14 years he was interested. And I thrived on that interest.
I am normally the interesting party…
Like me, you can become playful, you can become entertaining, so they can actually stay with you, instead of going away into their own thoughts.
But you need to watch, like a hawk,
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This is a post from 2016 that is suddenly relevant again.
I woke up early this morning. I spent, it seems, the whole night with hair-raising dreams… so it was good to get up.
Got up and came to my computer and posted some 45 podcast episodes from 2-3 years ago.
I listened to a few of them, and I was dumbfounded how much better I was back then, how many more things I had to talk about then… intelligently, interestingly, engagingly.
So I started to look what the heck changed that I am so much duller nowadays.
What if without spirit you are just a thing? An object in a world of objects?
When I first read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, I didn’t know what to think. That was almost 11 years ago.
And today it hit me: he was pitting people with the spirit working in them against people, the masses, who live without the spirit working, the secondhanders, the self-sacrificing, selfless, the do-gooders, and the moochers and the looters.
She meant to wake up the masses… in my humble opinion unsuccessfully.
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Take care of what takes care of you?
There is a book out there that says “Choose Yourself”.
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What takes care of you… that you can take care of?
I have told you how enamored I am with the principle “take care of what takes care of you.”
What I don’t elaborate about in that article, is how do you know if something takes care of you or not. How do you know if you CAN take care of something or not?
Especially because many modalities ask you to stop thinking, for example. Can you do that?
Or they ask you to think positive… don’t even sin in your thoughts, feel different, be happy, be appreciative, and things like that.
Do you have the power to take care of those?
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“You can only kick with one foot at a time, Otherwise you fall on your arse.”
You can only pick one thing that you want out of life, and if you pick the wrong thing, you’ll never be successful.
…Joel Salatin said, “the worst thing in life is to get older and realize you got good at the wrong thing.”
You would think that the title is about multi-tasking. But it isn’t. It is a life that is un-integrated.
So what is an integrated life?
A life is like a symphonic orchestra.
Most people’s life sounds like the tuning the instruments phase of the orchestra: cacophony. Bad noise.
Only when the conductor shows up, raps his baton against the music sheets, silence, and music starts. All instruments read the same music sheets, all keep their eyes on the conductor… Integration happens.
An integrated life.
Yeah-yeah Sophie, but what is the music sheet? What should you organize your life around so you can live the integrated and therefore enjoyable life?
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