Playing With Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Leadership is composed of the following:

• integrity, the ability to keep one's word and agreements, even if tacit, and specially with oneself
• being committed to something bigger than yourself
• taking a stand; being the cause in the matter, holding oneself as responsible for bringing about the imagined vision

Edited April 7 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
• withdrawn, aloof, uninterested, detached
• inquiring, skeptical
• apathetic
• overbearing, controlling, dominant
• disillusioned
• the rebel
• nice
• the lone wolf
• seen, center of attention
• endearing
• vulnerable
• unexpected
• the victim
• cynical 
• crazy, "on edge", disconcerting
• timid"
• etc.

What you assume about yourself determines core aspects of your persona, behavior and manipulation strategies. It is foundational to your relating with others.

Edited April 7 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 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 method is indirect. It's 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

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

Edited April 7 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 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Communication is based on authentic experience. Without a real experience to get across, what are you going to do? Contrast that with everything else that passes for communication -- looking to produce an effect on conditions, which is in reality manipulating.

I do something (condition) to produce a result (effect). A very concrete example of manipulation: I speak eloquently about a cosmology that I hold (condition) so that you get impressed by how intelligent I am (effect). Don't limit the communication to the example/s given.

For communication to occur, I simply get across an experience of mine as it is, so that you listen to (experience) it. Listening, on the other hand, demands having an experience that's foreign to you, as it is not yours but another's.

Edited December 11, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Keep track of the purpose for the interaction during the whole process.

Edited December 11, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Don't blame your condition on newly invented causes. This is done to offload personal responsibility. The one experiencing your experience is you. Better not to wait around for someone else to resolve it for you.

There's a tendency of coming up with novel and fancy crises as of late. Many of them are not real but are narratives.

Edited March 10 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Are you your self?

[UnbornTao]

Is love a function of accepting what is?

When it comes to others, is it about accepting what they are wholesale?

[UnbornTao]

You say you are happy when things go your way. 

Is that happiness?

Can you be happy irrespective of circumstances, whether they go your way or not?

Edited December 13, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Social constructs 

Edited January 10 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Throughout our lives, we've been addicted to distraction and to seeking pleasure.

Being by yourself, free from distraction, and throwing yourself completely into your experience, is going to eventually lead you to dramatic emotional reactions given that every aspect of it has to be confronted in such a practice. 

As a culture, we tend to go the other direction, that of acquisition and distraction, adding to what's assumed to be there. But what's there? What is the nature of our condition? What do we live as and for?

Why this drive to avoid any deep confrontation with one's experience? Why the resistance to meditating? Why do we find meditation difficult? Could it in some way boil down to not liking one's life?

You may suspect to be existentially lonely and this would be a crushing revelation, discover hidden pain, or something else entirely. Have a look.

Edited yesterday at 01:09 AM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Etymology of Cruel.

from Latin crudelis, from crudus:

1. marked by the primitive, gross, or elemental or by uncultivated simplicity or vulgarity
2. existing in a natural state and unaltered by cooking or processing
3. rough or inexpert in plan or execution
4. lacking a covering, glossing, or concealing element : OBVIOUS
5. tabulated without being broken down into classes
6. archaic : UNRIPE, IMMATURE

crude

noun

• a substance in its natural unprocessed state

---

Definitions number one, two and four are eye-opening, as well as the definition of the noun crude.

Edited March 29 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Presuming that listening has occurred when it hasn't is a trap.

Edited March 10 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Your actions aren't caused by your way of being. Your way of being and your actions arise together. 

Edited December 19, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

"The masses have never thirsted after the truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

— Gustave Le Bon.

 

"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions.

Edited March 1 by UnbornTao