What is the “feat”, what is the accomplishment that will come from doing the Amish Horse Training Method faithfully and as it is meant to be done?
As it is meant to be done… this sentence has a rhythm, a music… and it is rare to see it happening.
Read the rest of the article
Reality and fiction, reality and fantasy, reality and dreaming are occasionally hard to tell apart.
I may dream that I am getting up and even getting to my office… only to discover that I am still in bed, under the covers… It felt so real
I am lucky it is only on cold morning… Some people spend their lives on the border of dreaming and living.
Some books are intentionally written in a way that the reader can’t tell if it is fantasy or a skillful telling what happened.
Two books come to mind most: Anastasia, The Ringing Cedars of Russia that sold tens of millions of copies. I have them, and read them. I enjoyed them. Well written fiction, although some of it is bad as far as fiction goes.
Humanity, especially women, took every word of the book for a fact, and there are groups, quasi religious, the Anastasiasts…
The other book is Dan Millman’s book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
It’s of the same genre… fantasy is mixed with reality… skillfully, I admit.
I enjoyed that book too… but I am going to rain on some parades…
Fantasy believed is not good for you.
The followup book to The Peaceful Warrior, The Journeys of Socrates. The white haired gas station attendant in the first book is called Socrates. This book is one of my favorite books I read once a year. It could be true, except it is 99% fiction. Beautiful, moving fiction, but fiction. A likely story.
The original book is 40% fiction. The interesting part is fiction… Almost believable…
Humanity wants to, desperately wants to live a life that is NOT reality bound. Jump to spirituality, fantasy…
…because, as Freud so astutely said:
‘Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures… There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.’
Freud doesn’t say it here, but all religion, all religious ideas, belong to what he calls ‘palliative measures’. I would say they are substitutive satisfactions, as a category.
So there are more than enough writers are willing to jump on the bandwagon, and create fiction that tread the netherworld between reality and fiction, providing the much needed ‘opium of the masses’, the crutches for the weak and weak willed, the flimsy, the ragdoll.
Yes. Reality is hard.
And no one can realistically promise that life will be easy. Instead the job of a self-respecting human, maybe you? is to get strong so they can meet life as equals.
Jim Rohn, famed coach said: ‘Don’t wish it was easier wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills. And don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom’.
Wishing won’t change anything, fantasizing won’t change anything.
I was taught early in my life that fantasizing
Read the rest of the article
You listen… approximately. And your life can be no better… you are at best approximately alive.
Your powers of distinguishing the relevant from the irrelevant, the worth listening to or the noise, the worth reading or the noise, the worth knowing or the noise are not even on a kindergartner level.
Why? Because you have all these amazing human abilities, but you don’t use them.
When I tell you to practice the Amish Horse Training Method, and I explain that the way it goes is that the Amish farmer ties the young horse in training to a pole next to a busy highway, and leaves it to deal with the noise of the highway for 30-60 days.
Read the rest of the article
Yoga is fashionable, it is an exercise for most. But yoga used to be a serious spiritual practice.
How and why? Yoga can give you superior control over your attention, over your body. Once you have control over what you can have control over, the next step is to recognize that you are neither your body, nor your thoughts, history, emotions, you are outside of all that: you are the Watcher. And you will recognize that the Watcher doesn’t participate in all the hubbub of the life… the Watcher observes it.
And that was the purpose of yoga, that has been completely dropped out.
But because context is decisive, without that context, none of the yoga practitioners can attain to that higher level of living, the living of a human being. Sad… but not irreversible.
Registering with the Yoga Alliance has many advantages for the yoga professional and offers more credibility to those who teach yoga. Their global registry acknowledges your training and knowledge and your ability as a yoga teacher. Being a member will also help when applying for a job, as being a member of the Yoga Alliance instills confidence and respect in your students. As a member of the Alliance, you will have achieved certain recognized standards, and those students who know of the Alliance respect its work and will seek out members as teachers. By using their designated registry marks – RYT or E-RYT after your name on business correspondence, business cards and advertising, your membership will be instantly recognizable.
The Alliance offers many networking opportunities, as the founders realize that in order to spread the word about the benefits of yoga, their members need to be able to communicate with others on a business level. The Yoga Alliance is very aware that those who run their own studios or those who are independent yoga teachers can become cut off from the main stream. Through their networking opportunities, yoga professionals can learn about opportunities for further education and interact with others on a professional level.
As many aspects of yoga are acknowledged by some in the medical community to help with weight loss, stress, high blood pressure and other medical conditions, having the designated registry mark RYT or E-RYT after your name, means you are more likely to be recommended by another health professional.
If you have a website you use for advertising purposes, those searching for a yoga teacher or studio in their area will also be more attracted to those with bona fide qualifications. By offering a link through to the Yoga Alliance website, the searcher will be given an in depth look at what the Alliance sets out to do, and be given salient information about the many benefits of practicing yoga themselves. It is a good selling point for those who have an established business and for those wishing to build clientele for a new yoga studio.
Registration fees with the Yoga Alliance are low, compared to the many benefits they offer.
Read the rest of the article
My students say that I am harsh. That I don’t see the best in people. That I’d catch more flies with honey…
Yeah, I know. Flies love honey… but I am looking to talk to people who aspire to go to the next level of human evolution, and those people are not flies. They are not scared away by reality: they know it will take taking a hard look at reality that is not pretty…
I am a realist. Rob Brezsny is an optimist… he has a lot of honey… yet, a realist finds the work in what he says, and loves it.
Rob Breszny writes: While walking in San Francisco, I passed the Pacific Heights Health Club. The sign out front said, “Birthday suits tailored here.” It was a witty reference to the idea that working out at a gym helps people get their naked bodies in good shape. I’d like to interpret the sign’s message in a different way, and apply it to you. The time is right for you to get back in touch with your raw, original self, and give it the care and the fuel and the treats it has been missing. Who did you start out to be? What does your soul’s blueprint say about who you must become? Home in on your source code and boost its signal.
I have been spending quite some time with the dead.
I am finding that when you die, your energy doesn’t die with you. So all the billions of people who ever lived are still represented here by their energies. Are they souls? No. Do they every ascend? No. They are not they… these are energies… something you can connect to, something that can commingle with your energy and wreak havoc.
This fact, the people who lived leave their energy behind, justifies my measurements that some of the most significant people who shaped humanity’s thinking actually never lived. They were constructs of many people. So they never died, never lived.
Jesus, Moses, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu… King David
Read the rest of the article
I first heard about ‘the spectrum’ from a classmate of mine, in 1997. She is, was an advocate for his brother with Asperger’s… which is a certain level of atypical brain syndrome. The mildest is dyslexia, and the spectrum goes all the way to full blown autism.
We have lost touch since, but she has helped me to understand some of the differences I experienced. Differences from others.
Read the rest of the article
What is the common error in many of the spiritual practices, an error that result in not what someone wanted from the practice, but instead forcing, or self-righteousness… neither of which are very spiritual?
I am learning a lot by observing Gurjieff at different stages of his journey, and through the different students he had.
If I am not mistaken, the mistake is made early on… in the intention.
I have learned different meditation techniques. What was in common with them is the desire to be free from the thoughts, and the harmful emotions.
It is the wrong start.
Read the rest of the article
The most important thing to know about procrastination is that it’s an avoidance tactic.
We all have it, it is a matter of degrees. Successful people, successful students avoid what they have to do, in this case doing their homework, less of the time. But just know: every time the idea of doing comes up: the idea of avoidance comes up too.
What is the difference between a student that chooses doing their homework and a student that chooses to do avoidance?
The difference is not so much in the moment, but in the students approach to life and studying in general.
Context is decisive, goes the saying. Context is the why of an activity.
Context answers the why would you do that? Why do you want it? To what end would you do it? What’s in it for you?
A good student has answered that question differently from the avoiding student.
A good student could have picked an goal, like getting educated, getting good grades to get into a good college, getting good grades to please my mother, learning to work my mind, etc. etc. etc.
A bad student considers learning useless, a waste of time, something that was imposed on them. They, potentially, consider liberty: doing what they want to do when they want to do it, and not doing what they don’t want to do… when they don’t want to do it, more important than freedom, what they ultimately crave. The freedom to be themselves.
Nietzsche, a famous German philosopher, called that behavior “infantile will to power”… which means, that when you do avoidance tactic, you are acting like a belligerent young child, maybe even a baby, crying for the bottle.
One of the most valued capacities for a human is maturity. Behaving and using your adult capacities… choosing, saying no, the ability to be with, and be effective in spite of negative emotions, pain, or bad thoughts.
And another invaluable capacity of an adult is to choose the context carefully, choose it to help them through the difficulties of dealing with unpleasant feelings, memories, and emotions, successfully, so they move forward in life.
The biological age of a person can be 70, but their behavior can alternate between 5 years old and 15 years old: I know, I have a client like that, lol.
Band-aid type solutions like the ones this following article teach are just that: band-aids.
As procrastination is part of being human, it is common to put off the tasks we are not fond of in order to do more pleasurable tasks.
Homework is one of the most common tasks that gets deferred. Although it seems impossible, it is possible to stop procrastinating homework assignments and have more time to spend doing more pleasant activities.
These simple steps can assist you in using your time more effectively.
First, ensure that you have a quiet, comfortable place to sit down and think. Ensuring that you have everything you need at hand to finish the task will eliminate unnecessary diversions.
Focusing on the task at hand without
Read the rest of the article
This article is not about The Healing Codes… this article is about you. About you not taking the time and the effort to even understand what it is that you are hearing.
Your ability to translate hearing to seeing is weak. Why? Probably because being complete and thorough in anything is a rare capacity in humans… You think you understand and leave it at that. You don’t ask questions because you think that asking questions will make others think that you are stupid.
And you are right… they may think that… because they live in the same warped moronic world view as you do.
But intelligent people ask clarifying questions. Intelligent people look up the meaning of words. Intelligent people do experiments and realize that what they are doing is not likely what they are supposed to do… so they ask questions.
Intelligence, real intelligence is rare.
Intelligence is a behavior…
Read the rest of the article
