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How to Find Yourself through Your Perception of Others

Life

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October 10, 2014

How to Find Yourself through Your Perception of Others

“We meet ourselves time and time again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.” ~ Carl Jung

If we take any random person then pick five people in their life and interview them about said person we are bound to hear five different perceptions about them. One person may perceive them as funny, kind and warm-hearted while another person may see them as irresponsible, immature, and unintelligent.

So whose perception is the correct one?

One of the biggest key in the path of self-awareness is the knowledge that our perception of others has nothing to do with them and everything to do with us. We literally concoct our own perception about people that we meet based on our own relationship with ourselves and our own personality traits.

The ego, fearing attention being brought to it, tends to always look outside of itself for someone or something to “blame”, when in fact, it is only recognizing its own traits in other people.

For example, let’s say a person has never experienced the feeling of envy, how could they recognize this trait in another person if they have never experienced it? We can only recognize traits in other people that we also possess or at least have possessed, which means turning our attention outward and blaming or judging others is a pointless endeavor.

When we come to realize that our opinions and judgments of other people have nothing to do with them and everything to do with our own ego, we are then able to use every reaction we have towards others as an opportunity to bring light to an aspect of ourselves that needs healing.

“What angers us in another person is more often than not an unhealed aspect of ourselves. If we had already resolved that particular issue, we would not be irritated by its reflection back to us.” ~ Simon Fuller

Our reactions to other people are the keys that unlock the forming of an integral and authentic relationship with our self. If we pay close attention to who or what brings about a strong emotional reaction from us, we are able to utilize this to our advantage. Negative reactions indicate either one of two things.

One being that either we are attached to an idea or belief about the way things SHOULD be, or the way someone SHOULD behave which means we are trying to force our own agenda on to other people, when in fact, no one has to behave the way we think they should.

Anytime we hold people to our expectations of them instead of accepting them as they are, we are sitting in resistance of the present moment.

The other thing a negative emotional reaction can indicate is that there is an aspect of our self that we are not wanting to look at, so we are literally finding it in other people as a clue to us that we need to bring awareness to this trait in ourselves.

As Carl Jung said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

We may think that we are victims of circumstances, or that life is just randomly happening to us, when in actuality, our own unconscious is trying to make itself known to us through our external circumstances and through people that we meet.

When we start seeing our own self as the “problem” in every circumstance, we are then able to shed the light of awareness on all parts of our “shadow” self (or the part of our psyche that our ego tries to hide from others and sometimes even our self) which will consequently heal these traits in ourselves.

In order to truly heal a part of our self that we have become conditioned to hide from the world, we must start to practice 100% honesty with ourselves. If we are experiencing anger, we admit and allow our self to experience anger, when we experience fear, we identify the fear and only become aware of it.

It doesn’t mean we have to judge ourselves as good or bad because of the emotions, it only means that we are aware of it, and are then able to send unconditional love to these parts of ourselves.

Although, it may sound terrible to always see ourselves as the “problem” and always have to turn our hand and point the finger back at ourselves when we so badly want to point it at another person, it actually is the most empowering move we can make. When we see our self as the “problem” we automatically become our own solution.

If it is our own perception of the world and our relationship with ourselves that is causing us to see shortcomings in others, we become completely empowered to change the situation by merely healing the parts of ourselves that is identifying and resonating with the same “problem” in them.

When we start to see our self in everyone we meet, we automatically start forming an honest and authentic relationship with ourselves. In this honesty we are able to cultivate our own awareness, and consequently we become calmer, more confident and more accepting of every aspect of ourselves.

And when our relationship with ourselves is loving and accepting, we start not only seeing these same traits in other people, but we realize that things or people that used to bring about a strong negative reaction from us are now met with forgiveness and compassion.

We quite literally change and heal our relationships with others by changing and healing our relationship with ourselves.

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Blame game

Seven Ways to Practice Crazy Wisdom

Life
Wisdom

Gary Z McGee

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October 8, 2014

23

“Crazy wisdom is the philosophical worldview that recommends swimming against the tide, cheerfully seizing the short end of the stick, embracing insecurity, honoring paradox, courting the unexpected, celebrating the unfamiliar, shunning orthodoxy, volunteering for tasks nobody else wants or dares to do, and breaking taboos in order to destroy their power. It’s the wisdom of those who turn the tables on despair by lampooning it, and who neither seek authority nor submit to it. To enlarge the soul, light up the brain, and liberate the spirit.” ~ Tom Robbins

Do you ever feel like the little rebel inside you is being suppressed. Or that your inner revolutionary has been fooled into thinking that there’s no need for revolution. Or that your internal nonconformist has somehow conformed? Well, do not fear.

This article will be a breath of fresh air for each. It’s time to let your freak flag fly. Let your insurgent soul surge. Let your hidden ninja reveal itself in a puff of smoke. Don’t be serious, just be sincere.

So without further ado, here are seven ways you can practice crazy wisdom.

1.) Swim against the tide

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what this world needs are people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

Go against the norm. Toss a monkey wrench into the status quo machinery. Take the “monk” out of “monkey” and interrogate it to the nth degree. Watch it buckle and bend against your monkey holiness. Laugh with the whole of your heart, then shake it off and find another typicality to atypically topple with your own unique typology.

Swimming against the tide takes courage, but the joy gained from the disruption, especially from disrupting obsolete or unhealthy social structures, is worth the effort.

It’s always worth the initial fear involved, and you’ll find that the more you practice going against the tide, the more you’ll be capable of transforming fear into courage.

2.) Embrace insecurity

“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” ~ Helen Keller

Let yourself doubt. Let yourself crack open. The more you’re able to crack open, come back together, and then crack open again, the more you’ll be able to absorb the wisdom of the universe.

Practice defensive pessimism, a phenomenon in which people imagine worst-case scenarios in order to manage their anxiety. There is wisdom in uncertainty that the certain will never ascertain.

Security is for the fearful. Don’t be fearful, be fearless. Dance with your insecurity like it was your first true love and it’s the last dance you’ll ever dance. Being honest with what makes us insecure counter-intuitively makes us more secure. Like David McRaney wrote, “You can’t improve the things you love if you never allow them to be imperfect.” And since we can never attain perfection anyway, there will always be the need to embrace insecurity and uncertainty.

3.) Honor paradox

“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” ~ Bertrand Russell

We honor the paradox by giving it meaning, by being flexible and responsible with our own interpretation of it. At the end of the day, we are meaning-bringing creatures in an otherwise meaningless universe.

It seems like semantic gymnastics, but it’s not. It really just comes down to the fact that we are perceiving an infinite reality using finite faculties.

Because of this, paradox is inevitable. One of those paradoxes happens to be Meaning itself. Another one is Love. But what deliciously beautiful paradoxes they are. Reality itself is not a paradox, it is what it is. But Consciousness, and all the wonderful baggage that comes along with it, is a paradox.

I would even go as far as to say: namaste, the paradox within me honors the paradox within you.

4.) Court the unexpected

“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” ~ Tony Schwartz

Don’t suffer from the hell of expectation. Revel in the heaven of the unexpected instead. There’s a joy found in things not going according to plan that only those who don’t take things too seriously can feel. So don’t be self-serious. Be seized by the surprise.

Be clutched by the beautiful crux of the cosmos. When your plans get dashed, roll with it, learn from it, be it, in the moment. Courting the unexpected is daring the universe to bewilder you.

It’s tempting the Great Mystery into a cosmic tango. You might not know the steps, but so what. You’ll either figure it out or make a fool of yourself. Both can be equally fruitful. So grab the unexpected by the hand and give her a twirl. And it wouldn’t hurt you to do a couple of pirouettes in her honor.

Like Henry David Thoreau said, “None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

5.) Shun orthodoxy

“The priest is interested in the answers; the shaman is more interested in provoking you to ask the questions that will lead you into paradox and duality. The task of the shaman is not to pursue meaning but to create it, to bring the sacred to an otherwise profane and mundane reality. That takes a daily act of courage and a willingness to make mistakes.” ~ Alberto Villoldo

Slap with the truth all who claim to have achieved enlightenment. If they get angry or offended then they are not on the path toward enlightenment.

If they shrug it off and laugh and say “oh well, there is always more to learn,” then they are on the path toward enlightenment, and they understand that enlightenment is always a journey and never a destination.

Rather than live for a destination, live within a destiny. Shun all who claim to have all the answers, embrace those who ask sacred questions.

The orthodoxy is a blind ox burdened by the weight of parochialism and ancient “good” made uncouth by the spoils of time. It is facile and cursory, at best. Stiff-arm it into the corner.

Or, better yet, transform it into something profound by questioning it to the nth degree, mixing it up into mulch, and then watching it blossom into something beautiful, like when a flower blossoms from the muck and mire of manure.

6.) Volunteer for tasks nobody else dares to do

“There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.” ~ Ajahn Chah

Imagine all the tasks that people are afraid of doing for fear of seeming crazy. Then narrow those tasks down to the most important, whatever they might be, preferably the ones that make your heart sing, and then go do them.

Be proactive. Be the spark in the dried up kindling of the status quo, then fan the flames. Be the catalyst in their cauldron of catatonia, then stir the pot. Inform the uninformed. Forgive the unforgiven. Help the helpless.

Unroost all chickens that have come home to roost. No fear, just sincerity. Dive right into being an amoral agent within any immoral system and you may be surprised at how quickly it moralizes itself. As long as your volunteer work comes from a place of healthy intent then it will always be a sacred act.

7.) Break taboos in order to destroy their power

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.” ~ Aldous Huxley

Falling can be a sacred way of moving, if you allow it to be. Similarly, knocking people off pedestals and high-horses can be a sacred way of moving. When we can break taboos with joyous irreverence and gleeful derision, with healthy mockery and sincere ridicule, we free ourselves up to galvanize the world and help it to grow wings that can break through any perceived ceilings.

Break rules, especially bad ones. Shatter systems, especially outdated ones. Rewrite doctrines, especially dogmatic ones.

Tear down rubrics, especially entrenched ones. Like William Wallace said in Braveheart, “People don’t follow titles, they follow courage.” Follow courage and you’ll almost always end up with a healthier disposition. And even if you don’t, at least you had an adventure.

At least your life wasn’t just a law-abiding, rule-governing, title-honoring, order-obliging, boring waste of time that kept you a slave to an outdated system and only benefited the powers-that-be. Screw the powers-that-be, and their tertiary taboos.

Take the power back by having the courage to challenge their outdated rules. The next generation will thank you for it.

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Wise Man
Crazy Owl

10 Beautiful Life Lessons from Dalai Lama

Life

Garima Roy

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October 8, 2014

5

10 Beautiful Life Lessons from Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama has always been an inspiration to me. The essence of his teaching is to promote human values – self-discipline, forgiveness, empathy, happiness, peace and love.

Peaceful and disarming, Dalai Lama described himself as a “simple Buddhist monk.” And it is in that simplicity that his lessons emerge. Let’s discover together how his teachings and thoughts will change your life.

1) Love is the absence of judgment

Judgement serves no purpose in our lives. It blocks us from truth, from love, and keeps you stuck in the illusion of separation. Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations, we are all beads strung together on the same thread of love. In the absence of judgment, love is what remains.

2) My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Being kind and compassionate is at the core of all spiritual teachings and path. It’s something that everyone can cultivate by choice. Instead of spending your time criticizing others, work on being positive and compassionate.

Kindness gives a sense of well-being and connectedness that improves our own mental health. According to a research, whenever you are kind, your body rewards you with feel-good hormones and helps you stay healthy.

3) Positive and negative actions are determined by one’s own motivation. If the motivation is good, all actions become positive; if the motivation is wrong, all actions become negative.

Any action, whether the result is positive or negative, largely depends on motivation. If the motivation is sincere then the action can be positive, but if our motivation is not pure, even religion becomes smeared.

In this statement by Dalai Lama, motivation refers to a thought and thought determines your intention. So, keep your thoughts pure, always!

4) Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck

When things don’t go the way we planned or as we want them to, we tend to look within ourselves. We think about what we could have done differently – it helps us to realign our focus, learn from our past mistakes and without setbacks or a bumpy ride, you would never be able to appreciate the smooth ride.

When you overcome the fear for failure, you are prepared to face any challenges that come your way, and nothing is too difficult to handle. Remember, something better is in store for you!

5) We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves

Most of us live in this illusion that happiness and peace is derived from our external world, but the truth is if you are not at peace within, the outside world won’t make any difference to your state of mind.

To be at peace, you have to shift from the future to the here and now. Live in the present as that is all you have. Spend time to reflect and chase away the negative thoughts.

6) Sleep is the best meditation

Sleep is the time when we get in touch with our subconscious mind through our dreams. We travel to a completely different world and return back refreshed. All living beings indulge in sleeping and it is one of the most crucial activities for the well-being of our mind, body and soul.

Sleep deprivation is a huge culprit in negative moods, including anxiety and depression. Never compromise on your sleep!

7) The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred

It is easy to fall prey to negative emotions – anger, hatred, fear, jealousy etc. Anger is a corrosive emotion that harms your mental and physical health. It damages the nervous, cardiovascular and gut system.

Anger, if fed, can also lead to depression. In order to be free from anger and hatred, one requires a strong sense of self-determination, compassion and patience. Make a conscious choice to deal with the emotion and things that make you angry and focus on finding a solution – that would be a heroic accomplishment!

8) Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace

Thomas Gray said, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Many of us only use the first half of the sentence, “Ignorance is Bliss” to avoid getting into situations of complex nature.

Sometimes we ignore because it’s our own fault, out of fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace. Ignorance is the root cause of our piled up frustration which can show up disastrously on some occasion. To evolve and be at peace, one has to rise above the dirt (or adversity) and blossom (evolve) like a lotus.

9) It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view

Don’t lose hope if an event or situation is negative or unpleasant, look at the bright side of a situation and embrace what life throws at you. With this attitude, life doesn’t feel like a burden but an ever-learning adventure.

10) True spirituality is a mental attitude you can practice at any time

Spirituality is building a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. It is about embracing the interconnectedness of all things, and to awaken to the true nature of self. You can have a spiritual experience while listening to music, walking in the woods, watching the rising sun or whatever nourishes your soul. This keeps your mind, body and spirit healthy!

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Dalai Lama Art

Breaking Down Belief Systems and Finding Your True Self

Nikki Sapp

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October 7, 2014

7

Breaking Down Belief Systems and Finding Your True Self

“Start living as if you don’t know how to live. Nobody is there to teach you, no guidelines exist. No books exist which say how to do this, how to do that. You are just left alone on an island. Everything is available. Intelligence is within you, instinct is within you, intellect is within you, now start moving.” ~ Osho

Whether we realize it or not our entire identity is formed from the relationships we have with the world around us.

In fact, our perception that we even exist at all is dependent upon these relationships to people, places and things, in order to survive. For example, in relation to a tree I am a human, in relation to that man I am a daughter, in relation to that child I am a mom, in relation to that lady I am a friend, in relation to this dog I am its owner etc…

Our whole existence comes from who or what we are in relation to the things around us. With each one of these relationships comes a different personality.

We have the personality when we are with our family, we have the personality we are with our pet, we have our friend personality, we have our work personality, and we even have the personality of the voice in our head that is commentating on everything.

Going even further down the rabbit hole, within each one of these personalities we have preconceived notions about the way we should behave, the way others should behave and the way life in general should go.

The friend personality has its beliefs of what it means to be a friend, the employee personality behaves in accordance with its ideas about what it means to be an employee, the spouse personality has its own set of rules and regulations on what it means to be a spouse, and so on and so forth.

With all these different ideas, belief systems, and relationships that make up who we are, or at least who we think we are, how do we find out who we REALLY are?

How do we go about breaking down relationships into labels down to personalities down to belief systems all the way down to our lowest common denominator?

“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be, you can’t see how it is.” ~ Ram Dass

Before we can break ourselves down to this level we must first ask ourselves, “What IS our lowest common denominator?”

The lowest common denominator is us at our first level, our most authentic self. It is the part of us that has not one concept or preconceived anything about anything.

It has no thoughts, beliefs, ideas or judgments of how we should behave, or of how others should behave because it exists prior to all labels and concepts of what is “right”, “wrong”, “acceptable” or “unacceptable.”

It can never be upset or offended because it has no prior idea of how things should happen or how people should act. It is our pure consciousness. It is the awareness that literally is the observer of all the different personalities that show up in our day to day existence. Our lowest common denominator experiences life as it is in the present moment.

When we become in touch with our lowest common denominator we experience life as it is. We experience people and relationships as they are without getting caught up in the labels in our head of what we believe someone should be acting like.

One would dare to say, it is only when we get in touch with our lowest common denominator that we are actually truly living, because when we are not in touch with this pure awareness we are still operating from our thoughts about a situation instead of the situation itself.

To always be in our thoughts is to constantly be judging which means we are not present. The less we are truly present and living in the moment, the less we are experiencing life in its most authentic form. So now that we know WHAT it is, the question still remains, how do we find and connect with this part of ourselves?

“When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself” ~ Lao Tzu

In order to break down all our beliefs about life and people and become completely anchored in our field of pure awareness, we must turn our attention inward.

Once we become focused on what is going on inside of us, we are then able to confront every judgment, criticism, belief and idea head on.

It is only in this confrontation of ourselves that we are able to realize that every single one of our judgments of good/bad, right/wrong, acceptable/unacceptable is based on prior programming, which stems from how we were raised, or where we grew up or what books we read etc…

However, our lowest common denominator exists PRIOR to this programming. So whenever we find ourselves placing judgment on others or on the world we can be assured that we are not operating from lowest common denominator.

We must literally always point the finger back at ourselves anytime we find ourselves becoming frustrated, angry, offended because these emotions are always indicative that there is a preconceived belief of the way things SHOULD be, that is being triggered.

Once we become willing to confront these beliefs we are able to connect with a stream of inner stillness and silence that allows our authentic self to emerge.

Operating from our lowest common denominator won’t always be easy, and will definitely take practice at first, especially for those of us who have become very attached to all of their ideas of who they think they are or should be.

But when we are brave enough to confront ourselves and question every single belief down to the point that the false self cannot come up with even one more lie to try and make us believe in its validity, we are on the path to our authentic self.

Our authentic self gets to experience the present moment in its purest form, it gets to experience people and situations in their most raw and genuine way, the way they truly are before our thoughts step in with all their judgments and commentary on a situation.

When we start living this way we see the world through brand new eyes, through the eyes of a person who has no prior knowledge or judgment on anything, which means we start to live through our feelings and instincts and consequently the world becomes new and exciting all over again.

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Inner voice
Heng Sinith / AP via The Guardian)

4 Ways Not Being Irrational Can Make You a Better Person

Life

Gary Z McGee

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October 6, 2014

4

4 Ways Not Being Irrational Can Make You a Better Person

“All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.” ~ Thomas J. Watson

This article could list a helluva lot more than just four ways to be aware of irrationality –scarcity error, hindsight bias, outcome bias, groupthink- to name a few. But for the sake of limited space and your precious time, we’ll stick to these four for now.

By heeding the following perhaps you’ll be able to recognize your own cognitive errors sooner and you may even be able to change course before any permanent damage can be done in the future.

They can stretch your comfort zone, heighten your awareness, and potentially even make you a better person. But before we get to the four ways, I want you to NOT imagine a pink elephant. Got it? Good, you may now proceed.

1) Take things into consideration rather than believe in them

“There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.” ~ Daniel Dennett

“History,” writes Steven Novella, “is strewn with ideas that were intuitive and made sense at the time, but were also hopelessly wrong.”

Indeed: Flat-earthers, heliocentric believers, Jewish zombie cults, witch hunters, people who supported slavery; these were/are all symptoms of a self-aware species stuck in its adolescence, trying vainly to evolve past its infancy. The finite game of belief is a dangerous game.

It purports that we place all our eggs into a single basket, while ignoring all the other infinite baskets. This leads to fundamentalism, authoritarianism, oppression, dogmatic myopia, blind patriotism, tyranny and, worst of all, rampant ignorance toward what is healthy for human beings to thrive as an interdependent being in an interconnected cosmos.

In short, it prevents spirituality from flourishing. A far superior strategy for dealing with the quagmire of Truth is to simply take things into consideration using probability as our guide. Belief cripples thought, ties it up into tautological knots, and then leaves it starving in the middle of the Desert of Just Desserts.

Considering an idea rather than believing in it, on the other hand, mends thought, frees it from circular bondage, and saves it from the dearth of the desert. Skeptically considering the universe, rather than superficially pigeonholing it into a prepackaged truncated belief structure, liberates the soul by freeing us up to engage with the cosmos in an authentic and interdependent way.

And suddenly we are going from mine to ours, from insecure animal to fallible god, from finite player to infinite player, from small-picture thinking to big-picture thinking, from ego-centric thought to eco-centric thought, and beyond.

The diamond in the rough is that the more we can embrace the cosmos in this way, the more likely we are to have empathy, and thus the more likely we are to becoming more compassionate people.

2) Underestimate your knowledge rather than overestimate it

“Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.” ~ Carl Jung

Embrace your ignorance, or it will embarrass you. Realize that you are a fabulously fallible creature, first and foremost. The evolution that’s dangling from your back pocket like a monkey’s tail is riddled with error after error: carnal, cognitive and cosmic.

We are a fumbling, stumbling, clumsy ape that imagines it’s a flying, confident, graceful god. We all know that we’re prone to mistakes and imperfect, but we tend to ignore these facts and put forth an irrational confidence.

For example most of us irrationally believe that we’re excellent drivers, when in reality most of us are not even decent drivers. This is called the overconfidence effect: a cognitive bias in which someone believes subjectively that their judgments are better or more reliable than it objectively is.

The shocking thing is that experts actually suffer more from the overconfidence effect than lay people do. This is because experts are more certain with their knowledge than the layperson. Perhaps even this article is an aspect of my own overconfidence effect. *mind blown*

So knowing that we don’t know as much as we think we know is the first step toward attaining real knowledge. Acknowledging that we know less than we think we do, gets us closer to actually knowing something. This is because we then free ourselves up to learn more.

Even masters who have already mastered their art probably believe they know more than they actually know, and so the master who can admit this to himself is better able to truly engage beginner’s mind and continues to learn and perfect his mastery, with the understanding that his mastery will never be perfect.

3) Understand that if a billion people say something irrational, it is still irrational

“Public apathy is more powerful than public opinion. There’s more of it.” ~ Dr. Jim Boren

Peer pressure can warp common sense, and it usually does. This is why propaganda is so effective. A billion people saying the world is flat is just as irrational as one person saying the world is flat. It’s just more dangerous.

Similarly, if the majority of the people blindly believe in something irrational, it doesn’t make them correct. It just makes them irrational sheep.

If a thousand Pastafarians stormed the beaches declaring that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was coming to turn water into rum and hats into colanders, and we should all pay homage or boil for an eternity in a pot of hell, it doesn’t make their view any more rational than if one only one “crazy” person was preaching the same.

How is it possible that such irrational thinking can still plague our “evolved” species? Solomon Asch’s experiments on conformity have revealed the true nature of our herd-instinct. Sadly his research shows that people will often completely ignore concrete evidence in favor of conforming to popular opinion. Like climate change being man-made, for example.

But don’t feel bad if you’ve been taken by this particularly nasty cognitive bias, we all have. It turns out that it is actually an evolutionary survival strategy that is deeply rooted inside us all.

Imagine you’re out on a hunt with your fellow hunter-gatherer friends and suddenly everybody screams and runs away. Are you to stand there scratching your head wondering what their running from? Of course not, you’re going to run because you could be dead before you’re able to figure anything out.

So you see it was an evolutionary advantage. But as it stands today, this survival strategy is mostly just psychological baggage that we must take great care to guard against. In today’s day and age we can afford to be that guy who stays behind to figure it out, because we’re not in immediate danger. Indeed, we actually flourish even more by being that guy.

We guard against the herd-instinct by being skeptical and by questioning things to the nth degree while using the key to open-mindedness.

4) Understand that Control is a stubbornly persistent illusion

“The mediocre soul is incapable of transmigrations –the most supreme form of sport.” ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

Focus more on what you can control and worry less about what you cannot, because even what you can control is in some way, big or small, out of control (see #1). This doesn’t mean that you have zero control.

This just means that you have considerably less control than you think you do. It would behoove you to simply roll with this fact. There’s a healthy helping of humble pie at the end of the truth that slaps you.

This doesn’t get you off the hook for thinking or acting irrationally, mind you. Not in the least. Rather, it gets you off the pedestal that doesn’t even exist in the first place. It puts the cart back behind the horse where it belongs, so that we can allow the journey into the unknown to continue.

What the world needs right now isn’t a bunch of people who think they can walk on water. What the world needs right now is more people who are adept at swimming. This requires a sense of humility sharpened by the philosopher’s stone of skepticism.

At the end of the day, life is a giant ocean of small and large chaotic fluctuations that create the illusion of order. There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of this order, mind you.

It’s as much a tool that leverages us in an ever-changing reality as a hammer is a tool for hammering nails. But just because you have a hammer doesn’t mean that everything is a nail. It is our responsibility as rational beings to think rationally in an otherwise irrational world.

The most profound way we can take control of our lives is to realize that it is mostly out of our control and that people are mostly irrational. Indeed, enjoying the ride, I mean genuinely allowing the journey be the thing, is the ability to live and thrive in the tension between being both circumspect and adaptable, between being both skeptical and able to go with the flow.

We cope with adversity by embracing adversity, thereby transforming it into a sacred privilege that launches us into self-actualization and onto the path toward enlightenment.

5 Monkeys

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Pink elephant
Dennett quote
Intelligence
Real and irrational numbers
Spiral ground

Fractal Enlightenment