Prime Path 04:
Side Path 01
The "Not Working" Ideas
Well, here we are.
Pilgrim, you have branched over to the side coaching concerning the ideas:
Something Is Not Working
Most People's Lives Don't Work
This leads to a tricky conversation. These ideas need to be handled with a degree of finesse and delicacy.
On the one hand, I need to present these ideas so that we can work with them effectively.
You need to be clear about the fact that, if you want to live your life to the full, you can't simply be what everybody else is being, and do what everybody else is doing. You're going to have to rise above the mass of people.
We need to get clear about the preceding points because, for a human being, seeking to show up at a higher level of functionality, and with a better life direction, is not an easy task.
The problem is, human beings have an innate tendency to conform. In accord with this, you might have a concern that, if you "rise above" the mass of people, you might be lonely and isolated.
These are valid concerns, but they don't change the underlying truth: if you want to live your life to the full, you are going to have to find a way to rise above the mass of people, because most people's lives don't work. Regardless of any negative interpretation that you attach to this fact, it's a fact. It's just the way it is.
Also, living one's life to the full is not a well-charted path. It's the "road less traveled", so to speak. Because so few people are living their lives to the full, it's not obvious how to accomplish it. (Thus, the need for effective coaching.)
The hard truth is, speaking metaphorically, if you want to live your life to the full, you're going to have to find a way to be a person of light in a mostly dark world, that is, a world in which something is not working, and a world in which most people's lives don't work.
You see, in almost all of the other coaching out there, these hard truths are left out. Ignoring this reality is fatal to effective coaching, and that's one reason there is so little effective coaching going on out there in the world. (And that lack of effective coaching, in turn, is a big reason so few people are living lives of the highest quality.)
On the other hand, it's not useful to get bogged down in the tragedy of it all. Now, by and large, more or less, things out there in the world of people are pretty darn fucked up. But having that fact occur as a shocking, ugly, depressing truth, and wallowing around in a "make wrong" way of thinking, isn't going to get us anywhere.
Now, as you will discover, SkyVillage is not about value judgments, that is, "bad" and "wrong" and such. This is coaching, and in coaching, we focus on what works in order to produce results.
But there's a problem.
The problem with trying to steer clear of value judgments is we are interacting by using the English language. You see, we have been trained from birth to interpret this language such that, in our automatic, mechanical, unconscious interpretation of it, it is overwhelmingly laden and encumbered with value judgments. (I assume this is true of all human language, by the way.)
That makes it problematic to discuss this problem in terms of what works rather than in terms of value judgments.
Let's look at an example.
Suppose I point out that a substantial portion of the population is obese, and that this condition is interfering with the quality of their lives.
Well, you and I have been trained to consider obesity as being bad and wrong. And then, having labeled obesity as bad and wrong, well, that pretty much ends our consideration of it. That's how we've been trained to use language, and that's now we have been trained to think.
But instead of languaging, and thinking, "obesity is bad and wrong", how about we say it like this:
In terms of generating a life of the highest quality, obesity doesn't work.
Can you see how expressing a condition such as obesity in terms of whether it works is a more effective expression than making a person who is obese bad and wrong?
If we let our tendency to encumber our thinking with value judgments run wild, then the entire discussion regarding the negative state of human affairs becomes some sort of boo-hoo weepy-weep tragic "isn't it awful" affair--or some sort of exercise in condemnation and fault-finding--and when that happens, then things get stuck.
Look, I am not cold and emotionless about the ways in which people's lives are being diminished--not at all. But, you see, the reason that we as a species tend to be stuck in darkness is because of the way that the automatic imposition of value judgments corrupts our ability to take a cold, clear look at the situation.
This is why I'm not going to recite statistics and other stuff that proves my point: that things aren't working, and that most people's lives don't work. I could write that up--in fact, I've already done it, twice--but I'm not going to put those pages in.
They're too fucking gloomy, for one thing. And for another, in SkyVillage, statistics about the world of people are irrelevant. We're concerned with the quality of your life, and not with saving the world.
OK. That's enough of that. We have a lot more ground to cover, so let's move on.
I have one more page in this side conversation, concerning a scene from the movie "The Matrix." It's optional, but entertaining. If you'd like to check it out, click here.
Otherwise, we're done here. Click here to return to the Prime Path where you left it.
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