Why is it that you can't tell if somebody is smart or not? You can't tell you are smart... or not either. It is because in the dark all cats are gray

One of the most surprising thing in the world of humans is that humans can't tell if they are smart or not. This error leads to lives that are not fulfilled. Lives that are filled with fear, trepidation, or on the other extreme: boasting and disappointment.

This is a horrible thing. Do you know what is the worst thing about me for me?

I bet you would not be able to guess, so I'll share it with you.

I expect you to be smart.

Why? Because the 'rule' is that people see themselves in others applies on every level of vibration. Every level of intelligence.

Intelligent people expect others to be intelligent. Stupid people expect people to be stupid like them.

So I expect you to be smart, intelligent. I really do. And I am always surprised when I find out that you are not.

In my world smart means: quick and accurate on the uptake. See with your own eyes. Understand and be able to see things for what they are, without me pointing it out.

But every time what I find out is that you managed to fool me.

You are slow, you don't look, you look in the mind to see things you have never heard of. You don't, you can't think. Yes, you are still an empty yet crowded canvas.

I may fill your canvas up today, but by tomorrow it all disappears. Completely.

I am pondering this, asking all kinds of questions of Source: I'll need to deal with this issue, so I can become effective.

But how? What can I do about it?

The first thing I am finding out is that the speed of the uptake is more dependent on your life, your use of your brain, than your innate intelligence. Also dependent on what you can see. Environmental influences (like the people you live with and their habits), your personal behavior, your attitude (like what's important to you) , your level of curiosity.

You are, as a rule, mentally slothful fancying yourself smart.

The second thing I find out: you have no idea how slow you are. Why? Slow and dull.

You have these two selves... one of them is totally delusional... that self fancies itself creative...

One of the ways you express your 'creativity' is by making up all kinds of usernames and passwords... and, of course, you forget them as soon as you made them up. Just like you forget everything you promise, every new context or principle... You wipe yourself clean of everything except what your self-concern says.

If you forget your passwords... just please know that it is 90% certain that you are dull witted, and fancy yourself creative.

OK... I'll stop ranting... A is A. You are pea-brained... maybe even pee-brained. Now what? What am I going to do so that I can take you to the promised land?

Obviously, I am going to attempt to answer my own question in this article...

I just watched two episodes of a Korean series where most people were dimwitted.

Dimwitted is just another word for 'not very smart'... but it is a good word because you can see that something is dimmed... as in 'it is dark here... you can't see much'.

I like this word, dimwitted, because it is more accurate than most. A dimmer goes through a whole range of less light...

Here is how it is every time you see something:

You see what you see. That is the 'reality, the what happened'. Then you add to it your 'meaning' or  your 'interpretation' of it.

And then you say that that is what happened, that is what you saw. The sum total of the what happened and what you said about it.

In this work we call that occurrence. In other disciplines they may call it something else...

You cannot change something if you don't know what causes it...

Thoreau thought misplaced value was the cause: We feel a void in our lives, and we attempt to fill it with things like money, possessions, and accolades.

I say that the truth is deeper than that.

'The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so

the necessary may speak.' - Hans Hoffman

Things are never how the mass of men want them to be. Not the way they want to feel, not what they want to do and not what they want to have.

Money is never enough. Time is never enough... Fun is never fun enough. Not enough love. Not enough respect. You feel it is not enough of anything.

I watch people... two days before the next 'pay' comes in, they barely have enough money to eat.

The other day I talked to two women, an 80 year old and a 95 year old. By that age, it seems, you appreciate when you feel halfway decent. I am only 75... and I already do.

But most people aren't that old, and they, you, are dissatisfied. Always. With everything.

You planned, you expected what you planned to come to fruition, and it hasn't... or it came with a shadow side.

Unavoidable.

If you wanted to know what is the difference between happy and unhappy people, it is not what happens to you, it is not what or how much you have, it is not how much success or failures you have.

It is your expectations.

Bad teachers, the media, teach us to expect the best. To be ecstatic when things turn out the way they are supposed to. No one teaches us, or our children, what to do, how to feel, when things turn out the way they normally turn out... disappointing.

To boot, there are programs after programs that people flock to, that teach that you can get exactly what you want... by wishing it... imposing your wish on your thoughts. Matching its vibration. Desiring... strongly... and get caught in the desire trap.

One of my students sent me a playful email:

You are so mean to me

That's right. YOU. The imaginary Sophie in my head. :)

So yesterday...I'm at my Sunday book club meeting. The room is full of what you would call California people...healers, actresses, aura readers, people-who travel to India every chance they get.

The subject turned to creating wealth. I asked if anyone had read The Science of Getting Rich. None had. I pulled out my trusty Kindle and read a few paragraphs of the first chapter where Wattles talks about the right to be rich.

The response was.. 'That's great. But all you really have to do is the Shreem Brzee.'

Me. 'Never heard of it.'

She: 'It's a wealth mantra. Superb spiritual technology. Just repeat as many times as humanly possible throughout the day... and at night, bolster it with 'ho'oponopono' as many times as possible. You will attract the most amazing results.'  According to the Dr Pillai center: Chant Shreem Brzee at least 108 times a day for 45 days with Faith and see what manifests in your life!

Sophie in my head: 'I will kick your ass if you even THINK about going down this road.'

The hogwash of manifestation, the energy of sound b.s. is attractive to people who aren't interested in actually 'earning' their money, working for it: they want it to fall out of the sky.

If these theories were any accurate, we would live in a different world.

But reality is the way reality is... and you can't create something from nothing.

The way the world works is the way the world works.

You need to work for what you want...

First, You need to know what you want

And second: You need to do the right actions the right way to get what you want.

This is called this earning...

Paradigms explain why you don't see, don't hear what is right in front of you.

Paradigms are, like the ancient Kabbalists presented it, like the Tree Of Life.

From every branch you can look down and see everything... and you can look up and see nothing... or better said: you see yourself reflected.

Werner Erhard used a different geometric model... concentric spheres. Your sphere includes the smaller spheres, seamlessly. The upper border of your sphere seems to be endlessly reflect all the lower paradigms.

The boundary between paradigms is a one-way mirror... like a curtain with reflective surface.

Now, why is this both interesting and important to you if you want to evolve as a human?

We, in common parlance call is growing, but it is really evolving... YOU don't become bigger, what you see becomes bigger. And because what you see gives you your Lebensraum, your playground, your dance floor, the more you see the more you can do, the bigger your world becomes. And the less cluttered, the less disturbing, the less troublesome at the same time.

The less you bump into other people, the less conflicts you have.

Imagine trying to dance on a very small dance floor with thousands of others... Their sweating, their flourishes, their noise... ugh.

But if you can enlarge the dance floor and each couple can have their own space, the conflicts are decimated, and the possible fun of dancing increases by ten-fold.

There are many different ways paradigms can be defined by their content.

In my classes we are working on a 3-tier model.

The busy dance floor is on the level of the systemic. Slow/fast, good/bad, nice/nasty. The paradigm of hate.

Everything there is either one thing or another thing.

Maddening. And feels entirely dangerous. The competition is fierce. Everything threatens you with annihilation, pain, shame, being left behind.

Eight billion people crowd this paradigm, while only one thousand live in the next one... with occasional brief visits from the lower paradigm.

The visitors stay for an hour, a day, maybe two... and are amazed how much space they have. How free they feel, how joyful it is to not be trapped in the tiny crowded space... But they don't quite know what made them able to cross the barrier, so they unwittingly walk back to the crowd.

At least that has happened to two of my students... Both clueless in a way...

One is also a private coaching client, so yesterday we kicked this ball around.

I never know what lands and germinates in a client's soul, so I was pleasantly surprised that the private call landed for this client, and she started to explore the bigger paradigm.

She is a smart cookie. She added the 67 steps to her practice, one step a day, and by serendipity the step lined up for her could be really heard to confirm what we talked about, be heard in the higher paradigm.

You see, in the systemic paradigm the thinking is that things should be instant. Change, growth, transformation, understanding... everything.

Here are a few examples of what 'SHOULD BE' instant in the systemic paradigm:

Healing... instant...

Knowledge... instant.

Except that nothing is instant in reality. But looking at anything from the systemic paradigm, you can only see the start point and the end point, and nothing in between.

So in that paradigm you cannot see process. You are blind to it.

There is nothing between being right or being wrong. Nothing between good and bad. Nothing between important and nothing. Worthless. Useless. Weak. Cowardly.

So in the systemic paradigm you may make weak 'I am trying' moves to grow, but then you abandon it: it didn't happen in a day or two......

Are You Jinxing Your Success By Sharing About It?

There is a curious phenomenon, that sounds really counter intuitive. It also sounds counter to the teachings of teachers that teach how to become prosperous, etc.

The phenomenon is as follows:

You have a little bit of success. So quickly you tell everyone about it. You write home about it. You celebrate. Then you watch as it dissipates, fizzles out, goes away. Flash in the pan.

I have been observing it now for 37 years. The pull of sharing of a success even if it is just a step in the right direction is irresistible. I have learned that it is a death sentence, and yet I still make the same mistake, and it stops the flow, every time, no fail.

In this article I intend to trigger a flow of Source energy, Source clarification why this is happening, so I can understand and stop bringing this on myself, and that I can teach you how to avoid it as well.

By the way, if you ever wondered why I write so many articles, you got your answer just now: I activate the guidance energy this way, instead of just sitting in my bed and waiting for guidance. And just so you know: the Tangerine Spot is active as I am writing this. So I can receive the guidance.

One of my favorite stories from the Bible is the story of the Israelites reaching the Reed Sea on their escape from Egypt. This is not a typo. I meant to type Reed Sea. Watch the documentary if you can 'The Exodus Decoded'

So there they are, the Israelites, on the shore of this body of water, and they can hear the Pharaoh's army getting closer and closer. There is no time to go around the water, they need help. So they pray. And suddenly they hear a voice:

Why are you praying? Jump!

So one brave soul, named Nachshon jumps into the water and starts wading towards the deep... The water is up to his neck, and then the water parts. The Israelites rush through onto the other side. The Pharaoh's army comes right on their heels... but the waters close again, swallowing the army, men, horses, carriages and all.

The Israelites watch this from safety on the other side.

What is the moral of this story? It is quite simple, but not practiced today:

If you want Source to do something for you, begin it. Get into it so it's up to your neck. Start swimming. Then the channels of light will open and you'll be able to finish what you started and get to the other side.

Goethe said it this way:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

This is exactly what I do, as you see, with my writing. I have a question, and I don't have an answer. I start writing about it, and the answers start to flow. Easy as pie. You should try it. Open your mouth and watch brilliance flow.

If you carefully observe what just happened, you'll see that a big chunk of the answer to the question has already come with the story above.

What was the big chunk, you ask?

The chunk that answered the question: what activates the flow of light? And the answer was: facing the problem, and jumping right into it. Which is the answer to half of the question that I asked in the beginning. The question was, if I may remind you, why talking about successes seem to stop the flow of light.

Why talking about successes seems to stop the flow of light.

You see, when you look at your partial successes, talk about them, brag about them, celebrate them, takes you out of the water, takes you out of swimming. Now you are experiencing the glow of the thought... and are not in action any more.

It is as if the Israelites, upon arriving to the shores of the big water, turned around and appreciated and celebrated the distance they covered in one night, broke out the champagne and invited some guests to celebrate.

Should you trust yourself and only yourself? This is the question that keeps coming up... demanding an answer.

But the answer, of course, is not a simple yes or no.

So let's look what could be the factors that decide if, for you, trusting yourself would be a yes or a no.

I got curious and queried google with the exact search phrase 'should you trust yourself?'

More than a trillion pages... I should have expected that but didn't...

When I looked at trends... and there I found another surprise. Interest in that question hasn't changed much in the past 20 years...

I guess people are looking where they have always looked for the truth... and haven't been questioning themselves more now than before.

Now, I am looking at this question as a coach and a teacher.

Some of my students or clients pay me, handsomely, but don't trust really anything I say. So they get off the call with me and then return to what they think is right...

So if you have a fantastic winning track record of having chosen the right things to do, the right things to follow, that is a really good way to be: I recommend that you continue to trust yourself. I also recommend that you don't pay me a cent ever again.

If you haven't has a fantastic winning track record of having chosen the right things to do. If your track record relegated you to a so-so, mediocre, substandard and below your abilities in life: I recommend that whatever you'll decide on your own will continue that trend: your choices will keep you the same.

You over-value yourself, and undervalue others.

That is one issue.

The other issue, and it may even be bigger is this:

The limited perspective of the human mind...

But a more accurate expression would be: the limited perspective of the human condition.

The limited perspective of the judgmental mind. This is the mind that looks at the world on the level of systemic judgment. The binary.

And in that perspective things are either right, or they are wrong and need to be fixed.

Things, people, situations, yourself. How people relate to you. Who you are. How you are. What you do.

All looked at through the lens of the binary, and it's either right or wrong. And if it is right: nothing needs to be done. If it is wrong then it needs to be fixed.

No need to grow, no need for beauty, truth, goodness... and truthfully beauty, truth, goodness can't exist for you, can't even be seen through the filter... or if you can see anything, there are no shades of gray, no colors, no dimensions other than right or wrong.

But it is not just the words.

I catch you suddenly not want to say the word 'wrong', because you think it's the word. But it's not the word: it is the perspective, the paradigm you live in, the binary! And no matter what words you use, it won't shift, your filter can't suddenly become three dimensional on its own.

Enlightenment is needed.

An upgrade of the perspective,

Where stupid, for example, isn't wrong.

Where not belonging is not wrong.

And where not being good enough is not wrong

And where even losing, pain, death, illness, hunger, even killing are not wrong. They are not on the pendulum of right and wrong... not even on the pendulum's path... they are just what they are, losing, pain, etc.

If you can't wrap your mind around what I am saying: it is normal. The binary mind doesn't know about the third dimension, just like the caterpillar doesn't know about flying. It can't. Can't even see it. Can't even fathom it. It is at most a dream. A nightmare.

The tools

Yesterday I found out that even my tools are received in the binary, caterpillar state, and therefore they are not used as tools,

There is consciousness and then there is Consciousness.

The two aren't the same... and it can be confusing.

The one with the lower case 'c' is a technical term. Technical from inside the brain. It says: the gray matter of the brain is processing... and generating heat. I write about it in another article, and the concept comes from computing, and I learned about it in this book

The one with the upper case 'c', Consciousness would be better called 'The Witness', or 'The Observer'.

This aspect of a human in uninvolved, un-entangled in the drama of a human, or the drama of humanity.

I am an atheist, have always been. But if someone asked me what is a personal god like, I would say it is like that Witness, it is like that Observer.

Does Consciousness care about you?

Uninvolved, unentangled doesn't mean that Consciousness, The Witness doesn't care. It does. But it has been waylaid... ignored, dissed, so in most people it is inert. It is, in these people like a satellite of a planet...

Its job would be to see everything and to inform the brain about what can be seen from a satellite's position. Satnav is what the Brits call the GPS. In some way it is like that GPS... that Satnav... Other ways... and ...

that is the function I am most interested right now, is the ability of Consciousness to 'ping' the brain and wake it up from its slumber that something needs its attention.

It can be a health issue. It can be a request to allow the person to see something without the filters the mind has set up. A request for the brain to allow the person to 'change their minds'.

You see, at some point, early on, every person had something happen that set their mind on a filter that ultimately takes the person to pursue protecting themselves from something that is not forthcoming.

What? Yeah...

Normally this happens at age three. Something happens and the undeveloped brain or the toddler makes a binding decision or two.

Life is dangerous.

Life is unfair.

They don't love me.

I am not allowed to do anything.

If I am not good they will beat me and it will hurt.

If I trust I'll be strapped down and killed.

These are my students' original decisions.

No proof, no evidence to the contrary has made any dent in their view of life: they cannot change their minds. The mind is rigid. Inflexible.

Consciousness' job would be to allow the person to look through Consciousness' eyes and actually see the unemotional, uncolored, unfiltered, MEANINGLESS reality. That nothing has meaning unless you give it... that meaning isn't innate to things, to happenings, and therefore flexible.

In my younger years I practiced making up meanings that were likely stories. I learned that that is what real creativity may be...

It originated in a Saturday Seminar Series I participated in back in 1986. In it Werner interviewed a famous Nobel prize winning physicist in that Seminar Series. He just came from interviewing applicants to his graduate level classes. He was shaking his head. He said: they didn't learn Physics the way I learned Physics. I invented Physics for myself... they learned it from someone else...

The way he interviewed the applicants was simple. He wasn't interested in how much Physics they 'knew'... He was interested in how creative they were, how flexible.

So he asked them: why are you wearing the clothes you are wearing? It the applicant didn't make up a story, they weren't suitable for his course. They used no creativity, they saw no need for creativity.

He said that unless you can make up a thousand likely stories about the same thing, you are not using your creativity.

So I have been practicing since 1986...

You see, muscle testing,

Egomind? Well, it is just a name... even though it seems that we do have an ego, and we do have a mind.

So let's see: neither you can find if you cut a person open.

But if you had a sensitive enough instrument, like a true empath, and if you knew what you are looking for, you would find that there is a very strong energy over the chest in the shape of a triangle sitting on one of its sides.

A triangle that has its peak smack at your throat... I call that energy the ego. It is entirely fear based. Not cowardly, mind you.

Cowardice is more in the stomach, and it is a weak energy... not even strong enough to make you run. It is more like a little kid covering their face and eyes hoping that they become invisible that way.

The mind can also be located with this same sensitive enough instrument.

It is in the brain.

If you wear a headset, or if you want to park your sunglasses on the top of your head: the mind is where the sunglasses sit. That is the area that becomes active when a person is engaging with their minds: looking there for something...

They are mostly looking for what they have no idea about, hoping that it's there... lol...

In a way people use their minds as if the mind were google, or god.

The less people actually know the more they look in their minds. They don't know that they don't know. And they, I think, don't know that to know they either need to learn it, or they need to puzzle it out... They are not willing for either.

The combination of these two energies is what I'll call egomind.

And the most important characteristic of the egomind is that they want to keep on showing the same picture of you, the same picture of the world, even though the only constant in the universe, is change.

It is a lot like when hackers of video surveillance devices loop the video...

...to show no change, so the burglar can go in and the security guard wouldn't see him. No change, no change, no change.

Now, why am I sharing this with you?

Groaning...

Because you don't even know that this is happening.

And thus far I haven't been able to retrain your egomind to allow for the scenario, either the world or your self-image to change when it could change.

Transformation is causing what you see to change... mostly with words.

What changes is what you see.

And because what you see is what tells you to do, this is major.

If you want to be able to have a life that is fundamentally different from what you have now, you need to allow what you see to be new...

Unless you do allow it to change, you'll continue doing what you have always done... and have the life that you have always had... even if you forcefully change something about your behavior.

The more things change the more they remain the same.

This is true for everything, your self-image, your actions, everything.

So far my students are not able to see any change...

I think it is a looped video... the egomind...

I can tell my life story through the transformations I have had.

Some of these transformations were caused by some book, or video, or someone saying something.

Most of them were caused by me looking through a new 'window'... a new distinction.

And when you look through a new 'window', you will see that the world different...

...if your egomind is flexible enough to allow it.

Rigidity of the egomind keeps showing you the same picture, even though everything has changed.

So the question is: how do you reduce the rigidity so you can actually start seeing what is there, instead of what you have always seen?

I looked on google,

What can you and what can't you control yet you are trying to...

I am not sure where it came from. It is definitely not part of my heritage...

My hunch that it came from the Peeping Tom myth... also called Christianity. Are you hating me yet?

In that myth the guy in the sky doesn't only judge your behavior, he also judges your thoughts.

And even having an unclean thought is a sin... How controlling, how evil, how unfair. Reminds me of the alt-right... judging you for the color of your skin.

You have absolutely no control over your thoughts, because you don't think them consciously. Your thoughts THINK YOU!

Same with your emotions...

You have zero control over your emotions. You haven't caused them, so you can't, cannot uncause them, you cannot change them... at least not directly.

It is true that all emotions respond to words... because they were created by those unconscious thoughts that think you. Yes, words. Even if you didn't hear the words, you can surmise what they could be.

I used to play this with my mates: What must I have said that I feel this way? Absolutely correctly the question should have been: What thought must have thought me that I feel this way?

For example I woke up this morning. A good night sleep, the temperature is just heavenly. And then the thought came: it is my birthday. And then other thought were rushing in: I received no gifts, nobody loves me... Not even Helen... 

I felt disappointed... I caught it, and then I chuckled.

That 'nobody loves me' is mighty familiar, albeit I haven't heard it for a while.

A few years ago I got a little video of my high school graduation. There I am walking the hallowed corridors of the school. I am beautiful (according to my taste, lol) and somber. No, not somber, I can't find the word. I am wearing the demeanor of 'nobody loves me'. I can't find that video... sorry.

It is very funny and it is very sad.

First off: who gives a flying fig? Second: it was probably not even accurate. Given that no living human can actually love, I should have said: nobody fancies me... and then I would have known it was a lie... And I would have known that I didn't care.

And it is the same today.

I have now gotten birthday wishes from the countries that are already awake... In this land, America, people are either sleeping or ... we shall see...

You saw where that sentence wanted to go, didn't you?

Why would, anyone in their right mind want to think something that makes them sad? Unless some inner mechanism prefers them to be off the hook, and miserable?

You can only MANAGE your thoughts and your emotions.

Managing means: you nudge them a little to where you'd prefer them to go. Being a pragmatist.

My 'who gives a flying fig' does just that. It goes toe to toe with the 'nobody loves me'... and it poof! weakens the sadness.

I have this theory that you cannot feel someone else's love, only your own. At least I have never felt it. If I could feel it it would matter whether they love me or not.

But ultimately the only kind of love people can feel on the level of vibration is the kind of love that is in 'I love ice cream!' or 'I love fried chicken!' where nothing belongs to the beloved: it is all about the lover. And it is the enjoyment they get from consuming the beloved... Ugh. Thank you but no thank you!

The moment I RECOVER from that automatic thought, I am free to think whatever I want... So I am going to think now: If it is to be, it is up to me!

If I am to have a happy birthday, it is entirely up to me.

I'll bring my happiness to it, and won't want anything from others, from life, from anything.

On another note...

If you have watched what I do for longer than a minute, you know that my whole work is to find a process that can enable an ordinary homo sapiens to evolve into a human being, the next evolutionary state for the species.

This work has, so far, taken me 35 years, and I am not done. It is possible, but something is missing, but what?

Every week I find something that unless it's taught, people can't follow the instructions, and cannot get to where they are instructed to go.

My biggest beef with Landmark Education and its teaching was, all those 26 years of my participating with them, was that there was a real unbridged gap between the possibility people saw and its realization.

Since then I discovered that it is not only Landmark, it is every course, every company, every teacher... everyone... Even my own programs produce unbridgable gaps between where people are and them achieving what they wanted, what they bought the program to achieve.

My last podcast conversation with Bonnie in our regular Friday podcast call made it crystal clear: we are not prepared, we humans, to get from A to B. We don't know how.

Partially worldview is to blame.

For whatever reason we think that information can be turned into action and successful results. If not instantly, but readily.

If you asked high achievers how they did it, they would tell you a whole different story.

They spent weeks, months, maybe even years to work on the very first phase of any accomplishment: defining what they wanted to do and why.

In an older article of mine I take people to the idea that every single project, including turning information into successful actions has stages that are not taught.

It is not taught, and there is no support system, people, who would know that it is necessary and unavoidable.

No matter the size of the project, by the way. It can be as small as playing a Freecell game, writing a business plan, writing a mission and purpose statement... or as big as building out a whole business.

I set up my Hero Program to facilitate that... and thus far no one has used it properly for building anything...

So far the idea that it should be instant and effortless has been winning... and of course leaving my students and clients ineffective and never really building anything.

No skills, no transferable skills, not a project. Nothing is getting built.

You groan to yourself: 'I don't know how' and you are right: you don't. You never learned it. The how of everything is the same...

You would learn THAT on something that you do from beginning to completion, consciously. You just learned the skill of doing something from idea to realization.

It is a skill. You are not born with it. And hundreds of skills are needed to become a producer.

It is a transferable skill: now you can build ANYTHING... using this skill.

But you need to have one full experience... and you need to stay conscious while you are doing it, conscious that you are building a skill.

You have many skills, but you don't know you have them. So they are unconscious. And unconscious skills are not transferable... Not real skills.

I am taking Bonnie through the beginnings of building a project on the podcast... and seemingly she understands that it is a skill that she is building in addition to the project. Seemingly.

Skills are neither built nor learned. Skills are observed as skills... while used. Unless they are observed and seen as a skill, they aren't.

One of my students is writing business plans for others. Is that a skill? No, it uses many skills.

What are the skills she is using and therefore DEVELOPING? Developing... that is the word.

If you asked her, she has no idea.

A number of years ago I bought a home study program, and then I did the live course. It was a super fast reading method, PhotoReading. In that you look behind the pages, flip them one page per second, and voila, you've read the book. Truth be told there are other steps, but this was the step I had a problem with.

I didn't trust it. I didn't believe that the brain, or whatever it was doing it, would actually see something I don't consciously see.

Hell, it was a long time ago... I just looked it up and I did the course in 2007.

Because I didn't trust the method I didn't really use it. If you don't trust something you either won't do it, or you won't do it properly. So I never got proof positive that it works.

Now, fast forward 15 years. I play Freecell... and lately I have been playing poorly. I have been violating all the principles I had discovered that made me a good player.

The main issue was that I didn't look before I leaped.

Why? I guess when life is hectic, and it's been somewhat hectic, it is hard to really slow down and trust that slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

If you start a project, any project where the end result depends highly on the first few steps, then looking first to see what would be the best first steps is mandatory.

In essence you need to see that the first steps don't render the game/project unwinnable.

Unwittingly I ran a whole two weeks of losing streak. Losing more games than I won... Before my track record was almost 100% winning.

So this morning I had an idea to test the brain the Photoreading way: I allowed my eyes to scan the eight columns of card without making any conscious effort to see what is in front A of me. And then I waited to be 'told' what to play. And the game was won.

I did it again, and again to test it, and again the game was won.

So what exactly happens in the invisible, in the other than conscious realm?

Surprisingly, at least to me, the eyes see everything. And they communicate it to the brain... unless.

Unless what?

If you want to consciously see what you are looking at, the mind kicks in.

The mind seems to be a filtering/storage unit in the brain... maybe it is a function not a location, although when people are looking in the mind, I feel it always at the same place in the head... so I am not sure.

Anyway, when you look consciously, then you look through the mind, and the filters kick in.

The filters that block anything they have a program to not to allow through.

For example, back in 2007 in was still too important to me to be smart. So using my other than conscious brain to read offended my self-concern to consider myself smart. So I just could not do the Photoreading.

Same thing happened with the scanning of The Zohar... that I learned around the same time in the Kabbalah Centre. It offended my self-concern.

In the 15 years since I have given up the importance of being smart, somewhat, so now I could just scan the cards and not resist. Not need to involve my mind... and render the activity not effective.

Now, why is this, maybe, relevant to you, maybe even important?

When you read my articles, watch my workshops, or are live at one of my workshops, you almost certainly listen through your self-concern. Your doom. The agenda. The fear.

So your filters are very active and you get to hear only a little bit of what is going on, and you probably also hear it distorted.

Yesterday we had a potentially breakthrough session. And yet the highest 'landing' rate was 10%. And two students had a 1% landing rate.

Landing rate measures how much of what was said actually got through the filters.

What hijacked the potentially breakthrough ideas i...