Month: August 2018

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A Beginner’s Mind Makes Everything Possible

Johnny Sanchez invincible
Photo: Johnny Sanchez

 

Ever notice when you first do something, you’re really good at it? Whether it’s playing a game or trying a new skill, that first time often is our best.

It happens so often we call it “beginner’s luck.”

But it’s not really “luck” at all. It’s innocence.

Such a mind state is so powerful, it can even upset the seasoned players’ balance. The beginner has no stories/beliefs standing between her and virtuoso performance. No contrary thoughts, no fears, no expectations.

She’s innocent.

She doesn’t know any better. And that’s a good thing.

In a short time, however, her performance settles into the mean. She becomes a common mortal. Which is what she expects, of course. As do those around her.

(This is not a Christian writing, but we’re going to pluck a few stories from The Bible. You’ve been forewarned. 🙂 )

There’s a reason Jesus suggested¹ that in order for people to experience virtuoso performance in all they do and to have all they desire (e.g. enter the kingdom of heaven) they have to adopt a beginner’s mind (be like a child).

A mind dominated by positive expectations, to the exclusion of all else creates realities consistent with that: positive outcomes, to the exclusion of all else. A mind in a state of bliss is even better: it is open to all potentials consistent with All That Is, which leans or has a predisposition for “value fulfillment”.

You are All That Is. So cultivating a beginner’s mind brings you in concert with your essence, thus enabling you to achieve that which your stories may say is impossible.

Of course, cultivating a beginner’s mind is harder than “a camel passing through a needle” as Jesus² would say, because a “rich man’s” mind ( i.e. a worldly person, steeped in modern society’s stories of what’s possible, and more specifically what’s not) tends towards pessimism, frustration, “can’t be done”, cynicism, negativity and a whole host of other disempowering stories.

But even a common mortal faced with significant urgency can accomplish “the impossible”. A common mortal also can break through “truth” born of dominantly held societal beliefs and become, even if only for an instant, invincible.

All it takes is for one common mortal to unwaveringly believe and the entire world will bend to her bidding. Then she becomes a Buddha. Then anything is possible. For she has become a child.

The master knows after the 10,000th time, she is still a beginner.

Do you?

 

¹The actual verse: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (https://biblehub.com/matthew/18-3.htm)
²Again, the actual verse: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (https://biblehub.com/mark/10-25.htm)
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Your Invincibility Is As Close As Your Attention

Jeremy Perkins invincible
Photo: Jeremy Perkins

Invincibility is yours. And it’s closer than you think.

That’s a trick statement because “thinking” is what keeps you from experiencing your invincibility.

“Thinking” is also the key to getting your invincibility back.

When we use the word “invincibility”, we’re being literal, not metaphorical…

Your attention creates your life experience. We’re being literal here too. A person not used to looking at life that way, or a person who believes only science has all the answers, might be confronted by this literally accurate statement.

But there is no evidence to the contrary.

Give all your attention to what you see and you create more life experience consistent with that. Put your attention in the moment of becoming, however, and you tap into your real leverage. Your seat of power, creation and invincibility.

Your own life overflows with evidence demonstrating that your attention on life creates your life experience. People ascribe these examples to random chance, luck, or coincidence only because they infrequently notice them: they only notice them when they’re particularly stand out-ish.

So it seems such events are few and far between.

But when a person deliberately taps into the moment of becoming they realize these kinds of events are not random. Instead, they are happening all the time. In fact, there is never a time when they are not happening.

You just can’t see it happening because you’re not aware of the evidence. Or you dismiss them thanks to science. Science of course calls such experiences confirmation bias. Categorizing these events as “confirmation bias” keeps you feeling vulnerable.

Become aware of the evidence, however, and you discover evidence everywhere. Doubt turns to belief, belief to knowing.

Before you know it, life shifts.

The subjective point of consciousness (a human being) and the seeming object reality (the person’s life experience) merge in the person’s awareness. The two were never separate to begin with, but dominant beliefs create the experience of separation.

Over time though, what we’re describing soothes such beliefs and life experience transforms.

Before long the person recognizes he is ongoingly creating life experience in a perfect, self-perpetuating loop. Attention creates life experience and “attending” to life experience creates more life experience. Ad infinitum…

Literally.

That’s when life becomes fun, a game of sorts. The objective: perpetual joy, flow and fun.

Of course, you can’t be joyful if you’re not getting everything you want. It’s only natural then that you get that too: Everything you want. And more.

When you get to the point where life experience is an ongoing, deliberate creation born of your attention to what you’re wanting, and you see evidence of what you’re wanting coming to you day by day, or better, moment by moment, something extraordinary happens…

You realize no one and no thing has influence on your life experience.

But you.

That is invincibility. That is what you knew before you came here.

Invincibility: It’s closer than you think, because it’s a by-product of thinking.

 

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Better Is Born Of Fear and Lack

ales-krivec improvement PF blog
Photo: Ales Krivec

Racists are in Portland today demonstrating their hatred with tacit support of our presidential administration. Joining them are the anti-fascists hell-bent on making sure racists know they aren’t welcome in America.

Free speech is the name of the game in the US and it’s a good thing. Even when things such as this erupt.

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Photo: Mike Bivins on twitter

Protesting sounds romantic.

But protests accomplished little. The real action is in the moment of becoming.

But consider the wonder these events offer.

So many people asking for a better way – improvement over current conditions. No matter what side you’re looking at, everyone is asking for improvement. At the very least, everyone at this event has that in common. Even the cops.

But there’s a lot more they have in common.

They share frustration. They share anger.  They share disagreement. They feel woefully disempowered and insecure. Anyone who tries to take the freedom of another is feeling insecurity and fear.

Shortage consciousness.

Portland protest
Protesters in Portland standing against racism (photo: DSA Portland on twitter)

A shifting is being born of all this tension, insecurity and strife. Out of all this there must be something new that emerges.

Nobody can stop forward movement. In a couple decades the United States will be mostly brown.

Those fearing that future may feel the justice of a comeuppance on the horizon. But we know no such thing will come. Diversity doesn’t seek vengeance. And “Diverse” is another name for All That Is.

Be encouraged by all this strife we’re seeing. It always gets worse before it gets better.

How worse it’s going to get is irrelevant. Because the worse it gets, the bigger the better that follows.

And that’s what we’re focusing on.

 

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Stand Out Results Presuppose Stand Out Awareness

ANTOINE BUSSY MOMTENT OF BECOMMING FB

How do virtuosos in anything consistently produce virtuosity?

Some will say “training” or “a good coach” or “luck”. Some may say they were born with it. Often, these standouts will say similar things. Even they don’t understand it.

Some are so bewildered and guilty-feeling in their sense of unworthiness for such success they fall into coping behaviors – sex, drugs, alcohol, porn or worse.

That’s another story.

Training, a good coach, luck…These are reasonable explanations. But there is a better, more consistent and accurate answer that applies to everyone.

That’s right, the same thing differentiating those who do achieve stand out accomplishments can differentiate you as a stand out too.

But first, a short departure….

Everyone knows about gravity. We know, for example, that it existed before its scientific “discovery”. In other words, long before science called it “gravity”, gravity was functioning as well as it functions today.

Now, generally speaking, gravity cannot be seen. Seems like it can be felt, but the feeling of gravity is the effect of gravity. It is not gravity itself.

“Wind” is similar. It can’t be seen. But its effects can be. Like gravity, it too functioned perfectly, thank you very much, before science, or whoever, discovered, then called it “wind.”

Keep this in mind as you read further.

Will Smith Beyonce Usain Bolt Jim Carrey Conor McGregor
Exceptional stand outs

What differentiates stand outs from everyone else is how much time these people spend in “the moment of becoming”, that moment which, like gravity and wind, cannot be seen.

Yet it is no less real.

The moment of becoming is where all points of consciousness exist. It is that no-space, no-time “location” where conscious awareness (another uable-to-be-seen) gives direction to equally unseen “forces”. Those forces eventually coalesce or accrete into co-inciding (i.e. coincidental) objects, events and circumstances desired and expected by the point of consciousness consistently holding its said direction.

Now, the points of consciousness we call “human” aren’t particularly good at giving “consistently held direction” to these unseen forces.  They don’t quite understand what “consistently held” means in this context, nor do they understand indicators meant to help with “consistently holding.”

But like most things about humans and other points of consciousness, there is great diversity. Diversity which includes instances of human that are practiced or at least determinedly focused on “consistently holding”. As a result, they exhibit virtuosity in their chosen fields – applying it to maintaining super stardom in entertainment, achieving excellent physical prowess, magnificent wealth, or…becoming president.

So few humans reach stand out levels. Yet every human can achieve such outstanding results as it applies to his or her or their specific interests and values.

Instead of one or two “superstars” among a large group of “ordinary” folks, the world can be a place where the ordinary is superstardom.

The Buddha* once said “The only difference between a common mortal and a Buddha is one knows he is a Buddha, the other does not.”

It could be added that common mortals also don’t understand their place in time in space. Which is to say they don’t understand their place actually being outside time and space…in the moment of becoming.

But you (or anyone) can quickly and easily come into this knowing.

The results can be as astonishing as the realization itself.

Outstanding results have more to do with what happens outside time and space than is commonly acknowledged. Harness that awareness and you become irresistible in your chosen field.

 

 

*The self-proclaimed original Buddha, Nichiren Daishonin (1222-1282).
Photo credits: Beyonce: By Nat Ch Villa – Derived from: File:Beyonce – Montreal 2013 (3).jpgOriginal source: Flickr: [1], CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27724621 | Will smith By Walmart Stores – Will Smith at the 2011 Walmart Shareholders Meeting, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16269945 | Jim Carrey By Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12271892 |  Colin mcgreggor By Andrius Petrucenia on Flickr (Original version)UCinternational (Crop) – Originally posted to Flickr as “UFC 189 World Tour Aldo vs. McGregor London 2015″Cropped by UCinternational, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45736487
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How to end up with the rest of the sheep

ROBERT COLINS LESS WORK
Photo: Robert Colins

Greater effort doesn’t mean faster (or better) results.

Higher-order refinement aka mastery, in any field, has more to do with what you don’t do than what you do.

Take martial arts for example. At the highest, most esoteric levels, ability comes through stripping away all effort, thereby allowing a soft, gentle…yes…childlike…approach.

In those rarefied skill levels, a perfectly placed step, outstretched hand or flexed knee are more devastating than a full-out punch or kick.

Such devastation isn’t possible unless you are trained not to resist the natural order of things. That training never involves hard work. It always involves play.

Devastating ability is not a product of what the budoka is doing, it is a product of what she is not doing (thinking, trying to make something happen, resisting, anticipating). For in the absence of all that doing she is present to higher-order intelligence, that which has already decided the battle and orchestrates events, including her moves, toward that end.

The same is the case with all things. Life is recursive. Meaning: in every instance, large or small, you will find the same life lessons repeated over and over.

You don’t need a 15th degree black belt to develop then apply this mastery in your life. What you do need is a willingness to go against the grain of “common” wisdom.

You can lead a sheep to wisdom, but you can’t make it think

You’ve likely heard all this before. In the same way you have heard how to get fit, succeed in life, break a habit or form a new one.

We all have knowledge.

But a lot of us are still overweight, still struggling to find success (however you define that), chewing our nails, addicted to masturbation or porn or both, or wanting to go to bed every night before 11 p.m. but still ending up awake at 1 a.m.

Knowledge is useless unless it is applied in a framework capable of producing mastery. Being caught up in the way everyone else is doing it rarely leads to mastery or success. Instead, you end up with the rest of the sheep.

This guy got it. And this guy, in the realm of finding a job.

Both followed their inspiration, not what everyone else was doing. Both got extraordinary results.

Both stories tell of events no one could orchestrate – seemingly random (it’s not random) single events, dovetailing with others leading to the outcome both desired.

You’re no different. What you want is already yours. What’s holding back the having of it?

Perhaps it’s the stories you’re telling yourself – more in your actions than in your words – which perpetuate the same results everyone else is getting.

Follow your internal guidance and the world becomes your oyster.

But first, you gotta figure out how to hear. Hint: It starts with play.

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Hard work is common but unnecessary

ANT ROZETSKY HARD WORK FB.jpg

We’ve been told to work hard. But the very successful don’t become successful through hard work. Even though they too fall into this mythical power of “working hard.”

Work-hard believers point to people like Michael Jordan, Ray Kroc, Thomas Edison and the like, as people who worked hard to get their rewards.

But all of these people, including other very successful people aren’t working very hard. What they are doing is doing the thing that lights their fire.

That’s what keeps a person willing to work all day and night. They aren’t doing that because they want the end goal. They are focused in the now, engaged in a seeming unlimited source of energy born of the connection with their passion and their focus.

In that, they find the delicious experience of flow.

Combat soldiers in the heat of battle get the same experience. They are so focused in the now, their reflexes, attention and abilities are heightened. And they can continue that way for long periods.

This connection is nothing more than the feeling one gets when the human being and its “larger self” are in direct communication. Whether you’re shooting hoops, planning and executing on a business strategy, exploring the limits of electricity, or trying to stay alive when others are trying to kill you, the connection and the indicator of that connection are the same: an intoxicating feeling of aliveness.

But you don’t have to go to Fallujah, create a massive company, or invent a new technology to have this experience. This experience is available to all. And no matter what happens when one’s alive, everyone gets it after death.

But you don’t have to wait to die to have it either.

The great thing is, tapping into it now, while you’re still alive, creates a life experience unparalleled by anything else.

And it’s guaranteed that if you can relax into it, and soothe your indoctrination that hard work is the key to success, you get all you want.

Hard work: unnecessary.