Playing with Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Easy there, might be falling into more belief.

[UnbornTao]

Notice, are you looking for which beliefs to adopt?

That's what countless people are up to, especially in spiritual circles.

Whatever validates their worldview and theories and sounds good, they are all ears for. When presented with profound truths, however, they get bored and look somewhere else for entertainment.

Let's just move towards what's real rather than towards what's believed, wanted, preferred or valued. These two are not the same approach.

Edited November 23, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

You use excuses as a way to justify your behavior and make yourself "good" and right so that you can keep doing what you want.

They're a way to offload your own responsibility as they get you off the hook. Excuses are bullshit. 

Stop excusing yourself. Acknowledge what you do and what you don't do. This isn't to say that in a social context you should avoid apologizing, but acknowledge your flaws.

Edited November 24, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What's your approach to life?

Notice whether you play the game of life either in order to create what you want or in order to avoid loss. The latter is common. Avoiding loss is done in various ways:

1. Don't play any game; don't take anything up. Be complacent. The reasoning here is that, since I don't play, I can't lose.
2. Avoid completing anything. You can't lose if it is left unfinished.
3. Do it half-heartedly. "But I didn't really try" is another disposition to avoid loss.
4. Keep others from winning; you look like you've lost when others win. So you set out to sabotage their efforts so that you get to keep your position of relative safety -- since no one wins, you haven't lost, or so you think.
5. Play the nice guy/girl role; pretend to like everyone and be nice to everyone so that we can all reach an agreement that you haven't lost; it'd be rude for them to tell you that you've lost. 
6. Turn yourself into a game: become a problem so you become the game. Become sick, throw tantrums, destroy the game so that players have to stop playing in order to take care of you.
7. Adopt the judge's role: Play "the righteous judge." Since you aren't actively participating in life, producing the results that you want, you set out to destroy others' vitality and enthusiasm. Criticize, denigrate, disparage, blame, undermine, troll, judge, sabotage, act righteous, "debunk" so that your relative position is that of being good and "right" without having actively produced any result for yourself in your own life.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Reflect on these points as they're profound and likely applicable to your own life. 

Edited May 12, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Allow yourself to be the authority of your experience. You already are. 

[UnbornTao]

A sense that comes about as a result of our deep-seated self-doubt is that of trusting the veracity of other's communications, as opposed to ours which seem to have a hollow ring to it.

Edited November 30, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

When a situation interpreted as a problem is turned into, allowed, felt completely, your relationship towards it is changed such that now it can be reframed as an opportunity to look into.

Edited March 29, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Investigate the relationship between your unwillingness to being present with the experience of anxiety.

Edited November 30, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

It's Ralph all the way down.

Edited December 1, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Watching The Simpsons.

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Anger is generated by you in order to protect the hurt and vulnerable person that is behind the anger.

Being honest in this case would require letting yourself be the hurt and vulnerable person that you use the anger to protect.

Edited April 8, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

As a week-long exercise, stop judging altogether. Catch yourself whenever you do.

Edited March 6, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What roles do you take on in relation to others? What do you assume about yourself, and about the ways in which others should perceive you? "I have to be, play or show up as...

• feared, intimidating
• knowledgeable
• intelligent
• a problem
• stupid, dumb
• ignorant
• funny, comical, sarcastic
• loved
• liked
• admired
• cool
• macho
• righteous
• masculine
• feminine
• the princess
• innocent
• doormat 
• entertaining
• agreeable, approved of
• disagreeable
• ashamed
• doubtful, hesitant, reluctant
• charismatic
• vague, abstract
• mysterious, mystical
• spiritual, hippie, "enlightened", liberal 
• religious
• conservative
• withdrawn, aloof, uninterested, detached
• inquiring, skeptical
• apathetic
• overbearing, controlling, dominant
• disillusioned
• the rebel, "bad" 
• nice, good boy or girl
• the lone wolf
• seen, center of attention
• endearing
• vulnerable
• distant
• unexpected
• the victim
• cynical 
• crazy, "on edge", disconcerting
• timid"
• etc.

What you assume about yourself determines core aspects of your character and behavior. It founds your relationships.

Edited February 4 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Relatable. 

Entire sequence:

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What way am I being such that I seem to be stuck in this "place", situation or set of circumstances?

What way am I being:

... such that I'm coming at this (experience, event, person, object) the way I am (powerful, weak, afraid, brave, reserved, curious, confrontational, whatever)?

On another note, the following dynamic might be self-validating: I assume X about myself, act like X, so am perceived by others as X, which then validates my conviction that I'm indeed X.

Are you?

Edited March 10, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Try to shift towards the place where you are the source of, and cause in the matter in, your experience. This is hinting at the principle of responsibility. For example, be the source of your joy.

Contemplate what experiencing that would take.

Edited December 9, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

An inaccurate analogy related to enlightenment and how no method is direct.

Enlightenment is like:

• catching your shadow
• taking steps in order to arrive at where you now are
• building a bridge to get to where you are now
• an eye seeing itself
• biting your teeth

You can't find yourself within your experience, which is the only "place" we can look in, and at the same time you can become conscious of your nature.

Edited November 17, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Why do things always seem to or appear as? What's up with that? How come that, when looked closely at, things are less certain and fixed than initially thought?

I'm getting in touch with a sense of deep discomforting uncertainty that seems to lie at the heart of the human condition. This sense is factual; it may be felt as a background malady to be shunned, avoided, ignored.

Edited December 10, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Effectiveness seems to be increased to the degree to which you get yourself out of the way. 

Recognizing whenever one's actions get off-purpose and then immediately correcting requires paying careful attention to every step of the process.

Edited March 6, 2024 by UnbornTao