Actions and Meanings

One thing I have control over is the actions I take.  One thing I don’t necessarily have control over is how other feel over those actions.  There is a distinction between what happened and how you feel about what happened.  Yet often times we collapse them into one.

I’m 17 years old.  I’m in high school.  I’m walking into town with one of my best friends at the time.  He tells me about some girl he’s getting with.  He tells me all these things he’s doing in his life.  Now he used to do this a lot.  Sometimes it would come off to me as a bit silly since he would have some funny stories but I knew it was never personal and I knew it was always something I could laugh about with him.  One day he did the exact same thing except for whatever reason after he spoke I felt grossed out by him.  I felt he was putting me down.  I felt he was trying to make himself feel better around me.  I felt he was disrespecting me.  Now all that happened was he told me all these things he was up to.  For whatever reason I was very upset that day and all I could see was based on how I felt instead of what was so.  And instead of laughing it off his funny stories or being his cheerleader I got angry with him for him trying to put me down and try to make me feel worse about myself.

I’m 18 years old.  I’m at the library with who at that time was the girl of my dreams.  It’s 3 in the morning.  After about two months of us hanging out she tells me I’m not the one.  What happened is she had no interest in me anymore.  How I felt was sad, angry, disgusted, and a deep feeling of betrayal.  Then I made that mean she hurt me, she was sociopathic, she wasn’t compassionate, and that she betrayed me.  Now did any of that actually happen.  No.  But I just happened to feel that way and instead of seeing what happened as literally for what is, I saw things based on the emotions I was feeling at the time.  I allowed things to occur for me based on how I felt, not what was so.

What to take from these two completely different events is that I never understood why I kept feeling betrayed, disgusted, and put-down by people.  What I didn’t realize was it had nothing to do with what people were doing or saying.  The actions in itself were just what was so.  What I was reacting to was my own emotions that happened to be there when the actions took place and would interpret those actions based on how I felt and wasn’t able to hear the other persons intentions because it didn’t fit with how I felt.  Once I realize that I had no control over certain emotions I may have but just became aware that I happened to on rare occasion have these emotions I was able to see things for what they really were.  I was able to listen to people for what they were saying, not about what I was feeling and thinking about what they were saying.  It was like listening to people truly for the first time.  Also people putting me down, betraying me, disgusting me, that went away for me.  The emotion comes up but it’s just a feeling that happens to be there and the sky also happens to be blue.  Another thing that came out of this was to be to fully accept when other people would react towards me and be okay they weren’t able to take apart what was so and what they felt was so was real at that moment.  To come from a place of compassion and empathy instead of making the person wrong for how they felt (which they had no control over) and coming from a place of confusion and anger and complaining about how could you think like this (instead of just being okay that at this moment that is how they happen to think because that’s how they happen to feel), and being completely okay that someone may not be able to make the distinction between what happened and about what happened (which is only human).

While it’s a function of human beings to mix these two up being aware of the meanings one puts onto actions based on feelings and the actions themselves is something that with an initial intention to become aware when one is doing this, it’s possible that many things can open up that one may never have seen before because one was able to have the courage to look beyond their own filters, emotions, and righteousness/arrogance that how they felt is so is real and that one’s interoperation may not be the right interoperation just a possible one out of many.  And that all one really knows is what is is and what isn’t isn’t and to take things for what they are and what they are not.

Shaping the Reality of Disease through Language

Just how language creates context for one’s life such as through here: http://schleien.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/actions-speak-louder-than-words/

Language also can create how disease occurs to oneself:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/16/books/books-of-the-times-shaping-the-reality-of-aids-through-language.html

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Actions speak louder than words yet words do matter.  Words create a context for actions to exist in.  When actions don’t match with the declaration of one’s speaking, the words itself lose their power and they become just words.  The lack of integrity gives one little power with their words.  On the contrary, when actions do match with words, then one has the opportunity to be their word and have their life work the way they say it.  The lack of integrity creates a loss of power over what one wants in their life with themselves and with other people.  It changes the way people relate to themselves, people relate to other people, and how other people relate to them.

 

Often times when people say they want something, they really don’t.  What they want is to feel comfortable.  Often times getting what a person “says” they want may compromise a belief system or compromise a habit that is based in the past.

 

For instance I know a guy who used to feel that people thought he was weird.  Now I wouldn’t doubt that at one moment in time someone called him weird.  So he took a word and turned it into an is.  And that’s how people destroy their lives.  They turn words into actual things.  Or they may come up with thoughts such as, “my mother doesn’t love me”, “people don’t listen to me”, “girls don’t like me”, “i’m inferior”, “i’m superior”, “my music will never get heard”, “i’m lazy”, “i’m driven”, etc.

 

Now these ways of how one sees themself (i.e. weird), the world (people don’t listen to me), and ways of being (lazy) is often shaped by their past.  These limits either put on by oneself or by others sometime in the past we let these words often times shape who we are.

 

So for instance maybe I see myself as lazy and not only do I see myself that way but also feel I am.  So therefore when if it takes me doing something where I really need to work at it, go to conferences, network, fly to China to sign some deal, whatever it may be, I may not do it because…well I’m too lazy for that.

 

Or maybe I’m a busy person and can never find enough time.  Or maybe I’m one of those people who doesn’t ever have enough money.  Or maybe it’s I’d do it but my ideas wouldn’t be heard anyway.

 

All these statements are statements with the based attached to it.  It’s all past based communications.  There’s no creation here only an acknowledgment of what was so in the past thereby bringing the past into the present and almost probably as well into the future.

 

So why not create?  How about creating a job.  In a time where I know people who can’t find work, I’ve found 2 jobs in the past 3 days.  It just took me being completely out there, unreasonable, and totally out of my comfort zone to do it.

 

Why not create what you want.  How about create a record deal?  How many people say they want a record deal but just play in some places and don’t really sell much merchandise or how many people say they want a record deal but only play at coffee shops, or how many people say they want a record deal and just record a demo and mail it into record labels hoping for the best.  Declaring you want a record deal in this case would be a lie.  Your actions don’t match.  Your actions would match with, I’d like a record deal but I’ll just hope it happens or another way of saying that would be “a record deal sounds nice but I’ll stack the odds against me because everyone else i know does that too”.

 

It’s also the guy who says he wants a girlfriend but then never walks out of the house.  Maybe he doesn’t because he thinks girls hate him, or that he’s weird, or that he doesn’t have enough money to buy a girl a drink, or that he doesn’t have the confidence to say hello.

 

Everyone is going to have reasons that automatically come up for them on why they can’t or shouldn’t do something.  But they’re only reasons.  When one sees they aren’t real and probably based on something was in the past or just happens to come up for you automatically then one has some choice in the matter of what to do about it.

 

Example:

 

I was talking to this girl last week who said she felt stuck.  She tells me she loves sex and that her boyfriend just wasn’t crazy enough.  She said that’s a really important thing for her and that she felt the only way to be happy was to cheat on her boyfriend and she still didn’t feel great about that.  So she felt her only options were to lie to her boyfriend and be out of integrity with him or not lie to her boyfriend and be unfulfilled in the relationship.  The context for how she related to her boyfriend was that she was attached to the fact that they would be married in the future and that he was the only guy for her and that she loved him EXCEPT for the fact that he wasn’t good enough in bed.

 

You can’t change people but what one does have some power over is what they do with the circumstances in their life.

 

Now what if this girl was to create?  It sounded like to me (and of course this is just how it sounded TO ME and not necessarily how she saw it) that she wanted a great boyfriend who she could settle down with who could fulfill her needs and be happy with and not feel the need to lie to him.  She did tell me she prefers to be monogamous.  So in this case she could create the possibility for herself the possibility of an amazing boyfriend who can keep up with her in bed.  So you make this a game.  Now play!

 

The Complaint

 

This way of seeing things top down and seeing the end-game is a way to have one’s actions be meaningful and with intention and purpose.  The purpose is to win this game and it won’t just be going through the motions with the same complaint.  Now the first appropriate action to get rid of this complaint.  But there are payoffs and costs to having this complaint for her stay into being.

 

On one hand she can get rid of her complaint.  Understanding you can’t change people she can break up with her boyfriend and find a guy who fulfills her needs and who she can have a relationship with.

 

Now her current situation where she stays with her boyfriend and has different sexual encounters and is complaining about not having exactly what she wants does have some payoffs for herself. Does she really want to be fulfilled.  When she says she does she’s really just lying to herself.  She’d rather be RIGHT than be FULFILLED.  For instance things she feels right about is that

 

1. This guy is the only guy for me

2. I will marry this guy and that is how it SHOULD look

 

So to be right about her story in her head about how this guy is the only guy for her and continuously needing to justify it as well as being right about how her future SHOULD look than it will keep her complaint into being.  Her payoff is she gets to be right about the things she feels right about.

 

But what’s the cost?  She loses vitality, happiness, and affinity in this situation.  She throws out joy, throws out full self-expression, all just to be right.

 

So for this girl to get what she wants she would need to:

 

1. GIVE UP being right about and justifying her story about this guy is the only guy for me

2. GIVE UP being right about knowing exactly how something SHOULD look.

 

I know for me I can have all the ideals of how something will look like but often times that can be the biggest limitation to actually getting what I want.  You can get what you want and not know how it will look like exactly.

 

Reasons

She may have all the reasons in the world why not to do this too.  Perhaps she feels she doesn’t have the courage to do it, or she feels she can’t go on if she does this, or she feels she’ll never find the one if she does this, or maybe he’s rich and she wouldn’t have the money to do the things she wants if she breaks up with him, or she won’t be happy if she breaks up with him.  All those reasons are just reasons and don’t become real unless that’s what you create.  If you don’t get what I mean by that refer to above where I talk about “creating”.

 

So if you are playing the game, “I will be unhappy when I break up with my boyfriend” or “I will not have the money” and you play to win.  Then guess what, you’ll end up with exactly what you wanted.  Or you could “breakup with this guy and find another guy to be happy with” or “breakup with this guy and have the money to do the things I love” then if you play to win those games then it may take getting another job, starting a business, doing a service for some extra cash.  Now of course this would mean GIVING UP HOW IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE or perhaps the REASON you feel you can’t be happy is because you compare every guy to the guy you were dating in the past.  So to be happy with another guy you’d have to GIVE UP COMPARING and seeing things for what they are what they are not.  Comparing someone to someone else in the past will keep bringing up the same issues with different people probably looking differently a bit different either time come up.  All past based.  The reasons will never stop you.  It’s always you stopping yourself by not choosing what you want and letting your reasons choose for you.

 

For things I love to do whether it be my business, recording the album I currently am working on, doings things I love to do for probably 90% of those things I either didn’t have the MONEY or the TIME.

 

Starting a hedge fund I didn’t have the money.  Running my hedge fund I certainly don’t have the time.  Recording an album which may cost me $3,000 I definitely don’t have the money or the time.  When I was dating a girl who lived 3 and a half hours away from me and making a commitment to myself to see her every weekend I certainly didn’t have the time to do that.  But the thing is I did all of this anyway.  I just made the time or I made the money or found another way to do something without money getting in the way.  I had to put myself in a lot of high anxiety situations, I had to be uncomfortable a lot, I had to go out of my way to do things that weren’t the norm.  But by doing so I am able to commit to the things I want the most and the purpose I put to my life which I create so much meaning and intention to in areas that I want…seeing the end game keeps me focuses and motivated.

 

Now sometimes I slip up.  I can slip up real bad.  I’m just as human as anyone else on this earth.  I’ve been broken up with before, I’ve had huge disappointments, I’ve been upset before, I’ve had things definitely not turn out the way I wanted them to be, I’ve had real tremendous breakdowns with things I wanted to get accomplished.  But by seeing the big picture those breakdowns have always created real breakthroughs in my life.  By disappearing the complaint it naturally uncovers a blind spot I may have never seen before.  But without taking action, all I get is a bunch of thoughts of how to do something instead of just doing it and I get thoughts but not what I want.  When I stop seeing the end game, things for me feel pointless.  The emptiness and meaninglessness of my life takes over.  Having a completely purposeless life will be just going through the motions.  It’s no fun but some people think that’s all it can ever be.  They won’t consider the possibility of another way of thinking, a radical way of thinking.

 

You know how profound is it when you’re cool, down, and hip and your life doesn’t work any better.  Or you constantly try to come off as smart or attractive and your life still doesn’t work any better.  You try to keep it all together, put on whatever front you think looks the best even if it means not getting exactly what you want just because you need to look good.  Perhaps it’s apologizing to somebody that you want to be close with or perhaps it’s not telling that girl how beautiful you think she is because your scared of being embarrassed.  When I realized how small the game of looking good or the game of how well can I keep it all together it just stopped being interested.  When I travel 3 and a half hours to see a girl I am really interested in, I had a friend say it was dumb and that I was letting her have the upperhand.  No there was no upper hand and everything was mutual he just thought it looked bad and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.  When I go out of my way to make something happen there will always be people telling me it isn’t possible.  Eric it’s just not possible.  When I first created the idea of Energy Independence Day which is something the Pickens Plan uses to help forward their agenda. The first person I ever spoke to about it he told me I shouldn’t waste my time and told me it wasn’t possible.  When I was in Omaha, Nebraska and I saw this beautiful girl smoking a cigarette on the street it looked really bad to me because I was so embarrassed to just leave my friends to talk to her. I felt very vulnerable being all by myself in the situation and not having my friends to back me up.  Not only that I was totally scared she’d reject me because in middle school I had been rejected all the time by girls.  All these fears were certainly based in the past but I still felt them.  If she rejected me right in front of my friends that would have looked horrible but I did it anyway.  It ended up working out in that situation but certainly that’s not the point.  It doesn’t always.  And what happened between us after that is completely irrelevant.

 

When I used to try to look good for everybody and keep it all together it was always a way to try to compensate for something.  I don’t remember exactly what I thought or what I was even trying to compensate for but what I do remember is that I could never compensate enough for whatever I was trying to compensate for.  When I started caring more about the things I truly wanted, looking good, winning, all of that stuff that I guess most people I knew cared about just really stopped being interesting, it just was all really pointless to me.  When I had this huge intrinsic shift in myself and also realizing I wasted the first 19 years of my life it felt like I was just suddenly a fish let into the ocean and was living in a fish bowl my whole life.  But not only that I always felt the fish bowl was all that there was.   When I broke throughout the sadness and despair of feeling like I had wasted my life it was completely freeing.  It was also very overwhelming to me.  What does it mean to not have these limits on myself anymore.  What does it mean for me that I’m not attached to my identity or point of view.  All these new possibilities that became possible in my life that at one time weren’t possible based on how life, the people in my life, and myself occurred to me and having a past suddenly not influencing what I was doing in my life, it really was completely overwhelming.  I had plenty of instant breakdowns at the beginning, I had plenty of crap I needed to clean up with people, and had a problem of too many choices.  To this day there are no words in the English language that give access to truly understanding this remarkable transformational experience.  All I can do is speak to the results the ever come out of this experience.

Authenticity

I have found the core of human all human beings is simply beautiful.  Deep down there are so much that defines us of who we are as human beings.  The differences we see on the surface are simply run by trying to look good or avoid looking bad, constraints from the past coming up, feelings of domination or trying to avoid being dominated against, and our stories about how the world works and then reacting to those, our belief systems, and our stories about other people and ourselves in relation to those other people.   When people are freed from that what is left is a state of nothingness which everything becomes possible.

When you get to the core of another human being a space of nothingness is created.  There’s no past, nobody is better or worse, there’s only complete openness and full acceptance for who someone is and who they are not.  And not acceptance for who you think someone is or who you think someone is not which is only a story but yet full acceptance who someone is being in that moment, and accepting it is just that way and not having any meaning or reasons why. It’s just that its just that way.  You become 100% responsible for this space and the other person is 100% responsible for that space.  50-50 doesn’t work.  It’s 100-100.

This space is pure and beautiful.  The space of full acceptance is love.  And not the feelings of love, which may often times come up, but love itself.  Being open to allowing yourself to be loved and having the opportunity to allow someone to love you and loving somebody else.

Now one may think well I see its possible for some people but all people?  Yes all people.  From my experience I’ve never experience one human being who wasn’t beautiful at the core of themselves.

Racist people, Disturbed people, Violent People

In the right space all of this disappears.  100% of the time there’s something in the way of themselves that causes this to happen.  When people see what’s in the way for what they are, the violence, the racism, the prejudice, and often times even mental and physical illnesses disappear in an instant.  It’s an experience for people of being let out of jail and not even knowing they were in jail.

The experience of this kind of authenticity the experience of sharing this with another person or a group of people or within oneself is a wonderful experience.  Experiencing it within oneself and having trouble having other people experience that around you can often be frustrating.  But when it is shared between people or groups of people the nothingness is rich.  When it appears in the most unlikely circumstances it’s a wonderful surprise.  When you know how to source it at anytime, it’s an amazing feat of human potential being unleashed.

Committed to Life

It started while I was at the Daily Show.  My friend was telling me about how he had died for a few seconds and then started breathing again and how much he valued life in a way that he never did before.  Then tonight while seeing OAR at Madison Square Garden I thought to myself how after they were singing the song “Black Rock” that if I died right now, I’d be happy.  Now I did say that as a figure of speech.
Fast forward a few hours later…
I’m on my way home in the car and I see a sign for I-95.  What I didn’t see was it said South.  So I’m driving at 70mph as I had accelerated to pass a car that was going dangerously slow.  Then I realized the sign said South so I turned my steering wheel.  In that moment I saw the concrete divider.  But there was no going back.  My gut instinct told me to turn back.  If I had listened to my gut, I certainly would have crashed head on into the divider.  I stayed with the turn.  My car lost total control, spun sideways and I missed the concrete by inches.  During the moment of the squealing of the tires, I thought this could be it.  Thought maybe I’d wake up in a hospital or maybe not.  I had turned my wheel at the right time, skidded the right way, there just so happened to be no car coming in the other lane (which was rare with all the traffic that night).  It all worked out perfectly and avoided death and a messy accident at the very least.  Hitting a piece of concrete head first at 70mph (while accelerating) would not have been pretty.

In that moment I was also content.  Knowing if I died, I was okay with it.  I had no fear and I knew that I would have died happy and having lived a life of rich satisfaction and fulfillment.  I also was committed to not dying and didn’t give in when the little voice in my head said “this is it”.  I didn’t give in.  After it was all over and got onto the highway, I was in shock for about 1 second and then just started crying.  I was so satisfied in that moment, so glad to be alive and that I would have the opportunity to wake up tomorrow and do whatever I ended up doing.  Satisfied to still be here.

Landmark Education vs The Cult of Landmark Education

For people who have friends, co-workers, or family members who have taken the Landmark Forum and who have not take the course itself, a common question one will ask is “Is Landmark a Cult”.

The short answer is no it’s not. (There are plenty of reports of organizations who investigate cults as their main purpose as an organization  who have not only said it wasn’t a cult but said how great of an education it was)

The vast majority of graduates have seen tangible results and those results get larger and larger over time.    There are some people who take the Forum get what they wanted to get out of it and then continue to see anymore results because all they wanted was what they came in for.  That’s just as valid and nothing wrong with that.  Then there are a minority of people who get some things, don’t fully “get it”, and either never get it.  If these graduates take the Advanced Course which is about creating a future as opposed to the Forum clearing out your past, then those graduates always get it during the Advanced Course.

Statistically that works out to 95% of graduates having it be incredibly effective for them in regards to what they wanted for themselves.

A Quick Comparison of General Results between Landmark and Cults

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#1
- Landmark brings you closer to family and friends
- Cults isolate you from society and loved ones

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#2
- Landmark doesn’t tell you to believe in anything, follow anything, practice anything, or how you should or shouldn’t live your life.  They come up with different frameworks to see things in different ways that give one some choice in        things they may have thought they had no choice about, allowing them to create breakthroughs in any areas their life that’s important to them in very short periods of time
- Cults have something they believe in, practice, or have a way of living their life.  Cults contain dogma or a system of how to live life.

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#3
- Landmark employees are not allowed to own more than a certain % of the company.  This allows nobody to take full control of the organization and make it about them instead of the people who take their education
- Cults exploit the people who come to them to benefit some cause or individual

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#4
- Landmark puts all profits after the meager salaries made by employees back into the company to grow it and allow it to be offered to more people.  They charge as little as possible and even give free and partial scholarships to people who can’t afford it.  If you took all courses through Landmark you wouldn’t be able to spend more than a few thousand annually.  Landmark could make much more in profit yet they choose not to so more people can afford it.  If you aren’t completely satisfied after day one of the Forum they give you a full refund.
- Cults often times try to take all your money or as much as they can possibly take from you

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$5
- Landmark empowers you to live powerfully after taking the Forum or any other course they offer so you don’t have to keep coming back for more.  Once you do the Forum, that’s it.  You get what you are supposed to get and never need to come back to get the same thing over and over again.  They push you back into the world and tell you to not come back.  They “teach a man to fish”.
- Cults want you to become reliant on them for your satisfaction and make you addicted to them to validate your life.  Consider what Scientologists would do without their church and reading materials.  Consider what the Westboro Baptist Church would do without their church.  Consider what a cult with a leader would do if they didn’t have a leader anymore.

–

So if Landmark isn’t a cult, then what do you mean by the cult of Landmark Education?

Now there are some graduates who I have noticed (just my perception, not necessarily true) who start “believing” in Landmark and stay around Landmark as a way to give them meaning and validation in their lives.  They become “dogmatic” about Landmark and use it to feel they are somewhat more better or that their “beliefs in Landmark are the right beliefs and everyone else has the wrong beliefs” which in turn leads them to feeling negative about people who haven’t done the Landmark Forum and then hang around only with Landmark Graduates and “isolate themselves from people who haven’t done it, often times with loved ones and people they care about”.  They become “fanatics” yet nothing in their life shifts.  They base their whole life on an initial shift in their life and then use having gone through the Forum as a validation process for their future.  Essentially they fall into the trap of being stuck in their past.  When in reality they still have not many tangible results to speak of and expect their life to be just the way they want it and rationalize to themselves that it is.

Here’s reality:  Doing the Landmark Forum doesn’t take work.  But life out of the Landmark Forum begins AFTER taking the Forum.  It takes work, it takes effort, and while it is intrinsically instilled, there’s a clear distinction between having “gotten it” and then “living it having gotten it”.

If Nelson Mandela had a clear stand for the removal of  apartheid government and then decided to stop being a stand for it and instead of sourcing it consistently until he got the results just wrote about it, preached it, and nothing changed.  Well that’s the distinction.

Yes having the Forum and having the Advance Course under your belt are incredibly powerful.  Whether you use it in your life and develop those muscles is really up to you.  Sitting there and expecting things around you to shift is really fooling yourself  and having the experience keeps the validation into persistence.  Essentially one resists the fact that Transformation doesn’t create the results and instead won’t accept that having a Transformation allows results to come out of that.

The people who resist that and rationalize Landmark in this way is what I mean by the cult of Landmark as often times these people have less education, money, fruitful relationships, because they rationalize everything philosophically.

They turn Landmark into a philosophy or a way of living which then makes it inauthentic because it becomes a system.  As soon as it becomes a system or a method it undermines Landmark which doesn’t have a system or method.  It becomes just as fake as “power of positive thinking” or “the secret” or “being charming to get laid”.

I think it’s only natural at times, atleast it has been for me to become “dogmatic” and “isolating” about Landmark.  When that happens I’m literally being inauthentic about Landmark and what I’m doing undermines what Landmark is all about in the first place.  I know I am someone who naturally becomes passionate about things I love and when I’m not careful I turn my passion into dogmatism.  When I notice I’m doing that I call myself out on it as it’s very limiting upon myself, often times me being the last person who gets that.

The intention of this post is to clean up how I’ve been inauthentic about Landmark in the past.  Because sometimes I can come off as cultish about it, but that’s not Landmark that’s me.  Whenever anyone notices I’m doing that I invite you to call me out on that.  Through that, I stop becoming annoying to you and then by you calling me out on it, I don’t limit myself to a “system”.

So it Landmark a cult?

It’s as much of a cult as:

People who love Warren Buffett so much they nod their heads at everything they say, his company is certainly not a cult.
Famous researchers who become their research and anything different they take as an insult, the research in itself is just research and it is not a cult.
A Christian saying Christianity is the only way to find God.  Christianity in itself isn’t a cult and as a Jew I have found some wonderful insights from that religion.
Someone practicing Zen who believes that “clearing your mind” is the only way to being grounded, and living in NYC becomes hard and living in a monastery is the only way to be happy.  When that happens, Zen is a constraint.

So no Landmark isn’t a cult.  It can come off to people as being one, very true! It has.  There’s a difference between “being a stand for someone else” and “pressuring someone to do something”.  When someone whose never done the work stops feeling empowered around a graduate and instead feels they have no space and are pressured then the experience becomes uncomfortable and cult-like.  Even me as a graduate, I experience that from time to time and I’ll let the other person to simply knock it off.

So that’s the difference.  Landmark Education is in my mind a wonderful program and out of the thousands of programs that are offered around the world that give people a personal transformation in their lives and create breakthrough results, Landmark has a track record of it happening in the fastest amount of time.  That’s what’s so.  It works for everyone, that’s what so.  When it doesn’t work, they did it their own way.  That’s what’s so.  Everyone’s experience is different but share the same results of getting what they wanted out of it, that’s what so.

Whether one rationalizes their transformation or lives it is up to the individual.

Just because I have eyes doesn’t mean I have to open them.  I could simply keep them closed and write a novel about eyesight, what it is, and how it works.

–The views and opinions expressed here are mine solely and not the views of Landmark Education.  In no way are any of my remarks necessarily true or a representation of the company.  If anyone would like to question a legal issue in the context of Libel,  Malice towards Landmark Education, or anything else, please contact Eric Schleien, my cell phone number is in the company’s database.

Jersey and NYC

Last night I went to Jersey to see a buddy of mine.  We went down to Le Poisson Rouge for the night in NYC.  After coming back to Jersey, a drive that should have been 40 minutes max to get back home took close to three hours.

On the way home made a wrong turn and ended up in some industrial complex in Jersey which was like a maze and it was hard to find a way out.  Once getting out of there and back onto the highway, someone on their motorcyle fatally crashed on the upper level of the George Washington bridge while I was on there and was delayed and had to be re-routed to get back onto I-95.  On the way back onto the highway, it seemed to me traffic randomly stopped moving, again.  So I called 1010 wins to see what was up and if anyone had a report and while I was telling them about the stalled traffic I realized that the only car not moving was the one in front of me so while I’m on the phone I pull around and notice the drive has his eyes closed and his head is drooping down so told them what happened and then immediately called 911.
After that more traffic and then roughly three hours later I was home.

New Producer

Found a new producer for my music today.  He’s worked with Santana and Whitney Houston and he’s a very down to earth and focused.  Looking forward to working with him.

Giving Something Up Through Communication

Life changing moments can sometimes happen in the least expecting ways.  Tonight was one of those.  For a long time I always had a fear of people leaving me and a fear that I wasn’t good enough for someone else.  Often times this would show up through communication as a question with the question being “Am I alright?”  Now everyone has these unanswerable questions that one asks in an underlying context through communication whether it is verbal or not.  I had noticed that this question often came up when being intimate with another girl.

Tonight was a night where that happened.  Who the girl is, where it was, and the details are irrlevant.  What is relevant is what happened and what opened up through communication.  When I got to her place and we started making out she didn’t want to go past that.  This has happened to me before and while I have always been okay with it, I always used to feel like something wasn’t right and tried to fix something because in my mind there was something wrong, something wrong with me.  Realizing there was nothing wrong was a huge thing for me a while back and all that happened was what happened and would stop making it significant.  This time I took it a step further.  I noticed my emotions feeling “there’s something wrong” and instead of just realizing it was completely meaningless I decided to express what was going on and give it up verbally this time.  I find it amazing how verbalizing what one is giving up creates closeness and washes away resistance.

So I told her this has happened in my past and while I know it’s just how I feel that I have always felt rejected when this happened and wanted to know what she was present to when she told me she wasn’t into it anymore.  She said she could only talk from personal experience and gave me a quick rundown.  She said when you’re hot you’re hot and when you’re not you’re not.  She goes you’re a guy — you’re always hot.  She goes I was hot and now I’m not.  She said biologically for whatever reason it feels right for me to want to know you better to go further with you and she said and as a guy how well you know someone probably doesn’t matter too much on how much pleasure you’ll get from this.

The more we talked and went into the biology of it all the more close we became.  We spent the rest of the night laying with each other and it ended up being a really great night.  Realizing what happened and not only giving up my story but this time realizing that my story about what happened was potentially creating resistance with a connection not only did the story go away for me which was irreleavant but what went away for me was the resistance in the context of what happened and that created a realm of communication that opened up where we were able to speak from a place of nothing and for the rest of the night while this person had no knowledge of a completely new model for communication from nothing where one creates instead of the old model of communication that most of the world inherits I was able to bring her into that model of communication by creating space for her to step into that new model.  With that the rest of the night was created through our speaking instead of being described and talked about.

Also important to realize is that giving up something in a relationship to be close is fine but verbalizing it in order to get something then becomes a strategy which then one becomes stuck again in inauthentic communication.

Vulnerability

Being vulnerable with people is an authentic way of expressing yourself and letting people into your world allowing for a deep connection with someone else.  Vulnerability allows for love, re-kindles relationships and friendships, and gives space for the other person to be vulnerable and show him or herself with you.

So what is vulnerability?

To start it’s important to understand what it is not:

Vulnerability is not talking about how your life sucks or how apology after apology or being self-deprecating in order to get something or to manipulate a situation. That’s a way of being of seeking one’s validation and that will close people off to you and if you are a guy girls will run in the other direction and completely turn off and shut down to you.  With a friendship that may re-kindle a friendship but the dynamics of the friendship will often times be one-sided, manipulative, and abusive.

Example:

So let’s say you are in a relationship and things go sour and you one night go to your girlfriend and then this happens:

You: “Hey how’s it going?”
Her: “Good?”
You: “So listen, we can make this better, we can make this work, sorry for everything, I’m so stupid sometimes.”

now an example of being vulnerable in this same situation would be:

You: “Hey you know I’m really nervous right now and you don’t have to respond to any of this but I want you to know that every time I see you everything fades away.  I love when you do that little smirk and there’s this thing too where when you are watching movies with me and you randomly tackle me, I like that too.  I think you are such a great girl and I just wanted to let you know that.”
Her:  Awww, that’s so sweet I had no idea you ever thought all that about me, man I feel that way about you too and even have little butterflys right now.

(Intense Makeout session)

or maybe she would say.

Her: Well thanks but I’m not interested anymore.
You: I got that.

or maybe she’d say nothing and just walk away.

Saying something like that, there’s no hidden agenda, it’s just saying how you feel without knowing the response or even asking for one.

Never being vulnerable would be never showing yourself.  Think of the guy whose always an asshole or the girl whose a complete bitch to everyone.  In both cases, these people may constantly go for what they want, have lots of friends, date lots of woman or men.

But how many really close friends do these people have?
Probably not many.

How many relationships as opposed to one night stands do you think people who are always this way of being have?

Probably 0, unless the girl is really insecure and constantly needs to be validated herself who will keep coming back again and again.

So being vulnerable is coming from a place of nothing: no pre-meditation, no planning, no resisting the other person or yourself, not being analytical, and being grounded, in your body, and completely in the zone while not letting emotions or any tension break you.  Coming from the heart.  That’s vulnerability.

If you are trying to be vulnerable you’re being needy.  Being vulnerable isn’t something one does as a strategy they do it because that’s the communication one choses to make.  Being vulnerable in order to get something will come off as a lie because it is one.  Even if the other person can’t sense it through words, that strong deep connection, the connection you get like you feel you are being magnetically drawn to the other person — that will be non-existant in a case like that.

That is vulnerability.