Source:  http://www.hectorcasanova.net/art/pain.jpg

Excruciating pain, yet I haven’t reached that emotional threshold…

It is my umpteenth attempt to get to grips with my life.  I do procrastinate.  I do associate more pain with looking for a job than abstaining from it.  Well, starting tomorrow… Right!

“Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute.”

The Force That Shapes Your Life

Anthony Robbins “Awaken the Giant Within”, Chapter 3, page 52

“Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humour and passion.” (Sir Thomas Browne)

What creates a hero, a heel, a criminal, a contributor?  What determines the difference in human actions?  Throughout my life, I have passionately sought the answer to these questions.  One thing is clear to me: human beings are not random creatures; everything we do, we do for a reason.  We may not be aware of the reason consciously, but there is undoubtedly a single driving force behind all human behaviour.  This force impacts every facet of our lives, from our relationships and finances to our bodies and brains.  What is this force that is controlling you even now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life?  PAIN and PLEASURE!  Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

So often I hear people talk about changes they want to make in their lives.  But they can’t get themselves to follow through.  They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and even angry with themselves because they know they need to take action, but they can’t get themselves to do it.  There is one elementary reason: they keep trying to change their behaviour, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it.

Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about.  Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine.  Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it.  Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?

Source: http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/demotivators-depressing-anti-motivational-posters/

After all, what is procrastination?  It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it.  Why not?  The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off.  Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done?  What happened?  You changed what you liked pain and pleasure to.  Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.

[that is, of course, just a story of my life]

“A man who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than necessary.” (Seneca)

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.  If you do that, you’re in control of your life.  If you don’t, life controls you.”  (Anthony Robbins)

[I love when the author quotes himself!  Well, I am being sarcastic]

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Marcus Aurelius)

“Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.”  (Lord Chesterfield)

Though we’d like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behaviour is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation.  Intellectually, we may believe that eating chocolate is bad for us, but we’ll still reach for it.  Why?  Because we’re not driven so much by what we intellectually know, but rather by what we’ve learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems.  It’s our neuro-associations – the associations we’ve established in our nervous systems – that determine what we’ll do.  Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions – the sensations that we link to our thoughts – are what truly drive us.

Many times we try to override the system.  For a while we stick to a diet; we’ve finally pushed ourselves over the edge because we have so much pain.  We will have solved the problem for the moment – but if we haven’t eliminated the cause of the problem, it will resurface.  Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behaviour and pleasure to our new behaviour, and condition it until it’s consistent.  Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.

“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”  (Michel De Montaigne)

 

Source: http://image.healthhaven.com/Pain.htm

Remember, too, that it’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain.  And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief – our sense of certainty – that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure.  We’re not driven by reality, but by our perception of reality.

“Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure… they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.”  (Jeremy Bentham)

Source: http://www.joyonthejob.info/transformingpainintopower/

Let’s make some changes right now

[I consider it my homework]

First, write down four actions that you need to take that you’ve been putting off.

Second, under each of these actions, write down the answer to the following questions:

-         Why haven’t I taken action?

-         In the past, what pain have I linked to taking this action?

Third, write down all the pleasure you’ve had in the past by indulging in this negative pattern?

Fourth, write down what it will cost you if you don’t change now.  What will happen if you don’t stop eating so much sugar and fat?  If you don’t stop smoking?  If you don’t make that phone call that you know you need to make?  If you don’t start consistently working out each day?  Be honest with yourself.  What’s it going to cost you over the next two, three, four, five years?  What’s it going to cost you emotionally?  What’s it going to cost you in terms of your self-image?  What will it cost you in your physical energy level?  What will it cost you in your feelings of self-esteem?  What will it cost you financially?  What will it cost you in your relationships with the people you care about most?  How does that make you feel?  Don’t just say, “It will cost me money: or “I will be fat.”  That’s not enough.  You’ve got to remember that what drives us is our emotions.  So get associated and use pain as your friend, one that can drive you to a new level success.

The final step is to write down all the pleasure you’ll receive by taking each of these actions right now.

Make a huge list that will drive you emotionally, that will really get you excited:

-         I’ll gain the feeling of really being in control of my life, of knowing that I’m in charge.

-         I’ll gain a new level of self-confidence.

-         I’ll gain physical vitality and health.  I’ll be able to strengthen all my relationships.

-         I’ll develop more willpower, which I can use in every other area of my life.

-         My life will better in all these ways now.

-         Over the next two, three, four, five years.

-         By taking this action, I will live my dream.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/technowannabe/562918256/

The only reason I have copied this test is that I want to keep this information.  Web-sites change, appear and disappear.  I did not create this test, so I give you the source of information and I hope you enjoy that web-site.

Source: http://www.personality-and-aptitude-career-tests.com/cube-personality-test.html

11 Questions to Discover Your Hidden Personality Areas Within 90 Seconds!

The Cube personality test is a quick mental exercise that lasts approximately 90 seconds, and can be used to tell a great deal about a person, by asking them to imagine a situation. The Cube personality test requires a working imagination, but most people can successfully complete the test. When the test is given, the person taking the test must respond to each question as quickly as possible, saying the first things that they think of. You can easily use the Cube personality test as a party trick, or to get to know your friends or spouse easier. This article contains the Cube personality test, as well as what the responses to the questions on the test means.

The Test

Picture an enormous white room. In this room, there is a cube.

1.) What color is the cube?

2.) What size is the cube?

3.) Where is it located in the room? Is it floating, or on the ground?

Next, imagine flowers inside of this room.

4.) Where are the flowers located?

5.) How large are the flowers?

Next, imagine a ladder inside of the white room.

6.) Where is the ladder?

7.) What size is the ladder?

Next, imagine a horse in the white room.

8.) Where is the horse?

9.) Name three personality characteristics of the horse (mean, funny, sad, happy, etc).

Lastly, imagine a rainstorm inside the white room.

10.) Where is the rainstorm located?

11.) How large is the rainstorm?

Interpretation of the Answers

Once you have asked someone these questions, be sure to make a mental note of their answers. You can now easily use the answers that they gave, to reveal a great amount about their personality. The white room represents our lives. Inside of this white room, there is a cube. This cube is a representation of our ego, or how we see ourselves. If your cube is small, it means that you have a small ego, you are humble. If your ego is large, it means that you might be “full of yourself”. A colored ego means that you hide who you really are from people. A white or clear cube means that you do not put a show on for others. If the cube is on the ground, it means that you are well grounded in your views, and “down to earth”. If the cube is floating, it means that your life is unstable and unpredictable.

The flowers in the room represent your family and friends. If there are a lot of flowers in the room, it means that you prefer to be surrounded by friends and family. If the flowers are only a few, it means that you prefer only a few close friends. If your flowers are near the cube, it means that you are close to your friends. If your flowers are further away, you prefer to keep a distance between your friends.

The ladder inside the room represents your life’s goals and ambition. A small ladder means that you do not have any goals, or that your goals in life are small. If your ladder is large, it means that your goals and expectations for yourself are set higher than average. If your ladder is far away from your cube, it means that right now you are not working on your goals. If your ladder is on top of your cube, it means that your goals and ambitions are controlling you.

The horse inside of the room is your spouse. The three characteristics of the horse apply to your spouse, or what you like to see in your spouse. If your horse is close to the cube, it means that you are close to your spouse. When you see a beautiful horse it shows your beautiful experience with your spouse.

The rainstorm inside of the room is life’s problems. If your thunderstorm is large, it means that your life is hectic. If the thunderstorm is near another object (for instance, the horse), it means that that object is causing problems in your life. If you see small thunderstorm that means you are currently not facing too many difficulties or at least ignoring them.

While fun, the Cube personality test tells us a lot about each other, and helps us to understand each other. Although perhaps not the most accurate personality test (you will likely read objections from critics as to the accuracy of it), it still gives you a funny way to measure personality of another person. The Cube personality test has no known scientific origins, and has not been independently validated. Regardless, it is still a fun way to spend a few minutes with your friends, studying their responses.

Source: http://www.livbit.com/article/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/rubikscube_lamp2.jpg

If you are curious, you can read a couple of posts that will follow – I have done this Cube Personality Test twice.  Strangely enough, both times it was fairly accurate.

It took me a while to pick the best idea for the post on March the 8^th, the International Women’s Day.  What do women cherish the most?  Careers?  Perhaps… But love is always the safe bet, so I decided to talk more about love and meaning of life because this is the most important thing for me.  And for the rest of the world?  That is for the rest of the world to decide.

From Katherine Woodward Thomas “Calling in “The One”

Are you frustrated by stymied relationships, missed connections, and the loneliness of the search for someone to spend the rest of your life with?  Are you ready, instead, to find “The One”?  In Calling in “The One”, Katherine Woodward Thomas shares her own personal experience to show women that in order to find the relationship that will last a lifetime, you have to be truly open and ready to create a loving, committed, romantic union.  Calling in “The One” shows you how.

Based on the Law of Attraction, which is the concept that we can only attract what we’re ready to receive, the provocative yet simple seven-week program in Calling in “The One” prepares you to bring forth the love you seek.  For each of the 49 days of Thomas’s thoughtful and life-affirming plan, there is a daily lesson, a corresponding practice, and instruction for putting that lesson into action in your life.  Meditation, visualization, and journaling exercises will gently lead you to recognize the obstacles on your path to love and provide ways to steer around them.  At the end of those 49 days, you will be in the ideal emotional state to go out into the world and find “The One”.

An inspirational approach that offers a radical new philosophy on relationships, Calling in “The One” is your guide to finding the love you seek.

From the Chapter 13 “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall”

Source: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/ny/3-11-fiction-mirror-1.jpg

An ordinary man behaves like a dog which, upon entering a hall of mirrors, barks at all the other dogs.  The sage, entering the hall of mirrors, sees only himself.”

Gurunathan

I no longer try to change outer things.  They are simply a reflection.  I change my inner perception and the outer reveals the beauty so long obscured by my own attitude.  I concentrate on my inner vision and find my outer view transformed.

Daily Word

Like attracts like.  Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes, the subconscious identically creates.

Brian Adams

A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world.  Everyone you meet is your mirror.

Ken Keyes Jr.

Page 84

We often have more faith in the act of assertion than we do in the Law of Attraction – trusting more in trying to make things happen by taking actions than we do in drawing things toward us and allowing them to happen.  This doing-ness could be called the masculine aspect of the creative process; that part that goes out and gets what it wants.  It is the hunter in all of us, both male and female.  The masculine creative principle is largely how our Western culture works.  It is the principle that we are most familiar with and the one that we trust in the most.

The feminine aspect of the creative principle, however, draws toward itself that which it is actively creating from within.  We often mistake this stillness as passive and static.  Women, who are usually cast in this inactive role, are often frustrated by the “sit and wait by the phone” thing.  However, this is a misunderstanding of the power of the feminine creative process, which conceives by cultivating a strong inner vision and then working internally to draw that vision in.  Feminine creative energy is like a barber role.  It alternates between the red and the white with no beginning and no end.  The internal vision is the magnet for the external condition and they dance fluidly and in harmony with one another constantly.

[…]

Many of us feel so desperate and driven to find love.  But the feeling of desperation is really a panicked response to inner belief that you will not get what you want.  This belief then causes an anxious ambition to have this not be so, and we start trying to push, manipulate, and cajole the events of our lives in reaction.  But there’s absolutely nothing you can do externally to prove that your own internal belief is wrong.  Because it’s neither right nor wrong.  It’s simply your belief.  As such, it has the power to magnetize that which does – and that which does not come into your life.

[…]

What can’t come through you, can’t come to you.  If you want to attract in the people, situations, and circumstances that support the manifestation of love in your life, then you must feel love, believe that it is possible for you, and claim it as your own.  Because we draw toward us that which is most compelling within us, believing with all your heart that you can and will have love is the single most important thing that you can do on this quest for fulfillment.

From Robert Greene “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Law 48 – Assume Formlessness

Page 419

Judgment

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack.  Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move.  Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed.  The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order.  Everything changes.

Source: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004//mt-2003/mt-mercury-map6-normal.jpg

In martial arts, it is important that strategy be unfathomable, that form be concealed, and that movements be unexpected, so that preparedness against them be impossible.  What enables a good general to win without fail is always having unfathomable wisdom and a modus operandi that leaves no tracks.  Only the formless cannot be affected.  Sages hide in unfathomability, so their feelings cannot be observed; they operate in formlessness, so their lines cannot be crossed.

The Book of the Huainan Masters, China, Second Century B.C.

Character Armor

To carry out the instinctual inhibition demanded by the modern world and to be able to cope with the energy stasis which results from this inhibition, the ego has to undergo a change.  The ego, i.e., that part of the person that is exposed to danger, becomes rigid, as we say, when it is continually subjected to the same or similar conflicts between need and a fear-inducing outer world.  It acquires in this process a chronic, automatically functioning mode of reaction, i.e., its “character”.  It is as if the affective personality armored itself, as the hard shell it develops were intended to deflect and weaken the blows of the outer world as well as the clamoring of the inner needs.  This armoring makes the person less sensitive to unpleasure, but also restricts his libidinal and aggressive motility and thus reduces his capacity for achievement and pleasure.  We say the ego has become less flexible and more rigid, and that the ability to regulate the energy economy depends on the extent of the armoring.

Wilhelm Reich, 1897 – 1957

Observance of the law

When you want to fight us, we don’t let you and you can’t find us.  But when we want t fight you, we make sure that you can’t get away and we hit you squarely…and wipe you out… The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

Mao Tse-Tung, 1893 – 1976

Keys to Power

The human animal is distinguished by its constant creation of forms.  Rarely expressing its emotions directly, it gives them form through language, or through socially acceptable rituals.  We cannot communicate our emotions without a form.

The forms that we create, however, change constantly – in fashion, in style, in all those human phenomena representing the mood of the moment.  We are constantly altering the forms we have inherited from previous generations, and these changes are signs of life and vitality.  Indeed, the things that don’t change, the forms that rigidify, come to look to us like death, and we destroy them.  The young show this most clearly: Uncomfortable with the forms that society imposes upon them, having no set identity, they play with their own characters, trying on a variety of masks and poses to express themselves.  This is the vitality that drives the motor of form, creating constant changes in style.

The powerful are often people who in their youth have shown immense creativity in expressing something new through a new form.  Society grants them power because it hungers for and rewards this sort of newness.  The problem comes later, when they often grow conservative and possessive.  They no longer dream of creating new forms; their habits congeal, and their rigidity makes them easy targets.  Everyone knows their next move.  Instead of demanding respect they elicit boredom: Get off the stage! We say, let someone else, someone younger, entertain us.  When locked in the past, the powerful look comical – they are overripe fruit, waiting to fall from the tree.

Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.  To be formless is not to be amorphous; everything has a form – it is impossible to avoid.  The formlessness of power is more like that of water, or mercury, taking the form of whatever is around it.  Changing constantly, it is never predictable.  The powerful are constantly creating form, and their power comes from the rapidity with which they can change.  Their formlessness is in the eye of the enemy who cannot see what they are up to and so has nothing solid to attack.  This is the premier pose of power: ungraspable, as elusive and swift as the god Mercury, who could take any form he pleased and this ability to wreak havoc on Mount Olympus.

Human creations evolve toward abstraction, toward being more mental and less material.  This evolution is clear in art, which, in this century, made the great discovery of abstraction and conceptualism; it can also be seen in politics, which over time have become less overtly violent, more complicated, indirect and cerebral.  Warfare and strategy too have followed this pattern.  Strategy began in the manipulation of armies on land, positioning them in ordered formations; on land, strategy is relatively two dimensional, and controlled by topography.  But all the great powers have eventually taken to sea, for commerce and colonization.  And to protect their trading lanes they have had to learn how to fight at sea.  Maritime warfare requires tremendous creativity and abstract thinking, since the lines are constantly shifting.  Naval captains distinguish themselves by their ability to adapt to the literal fluidity of the terrain and to confuse the enemy with an abstract, hard-to-anticipate form.  They are operating in a third dimension: the mind.

Image:

Mercury.  The winged messenger, god of commerce, patron saint of thieves, gamblers, and all those who deceive through swiftness.  The day Mercury was born he invented the lyre; by that evening he had stolen the cattle of Apollo.  He would scour the world, assuming whatever form he desired.  Like the liquid metal named after him, he embodies the elusive, the ungraspable – the power of formlessness.

Authority:

Therefore the consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Vitory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly… A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.

(Sun-tzu, fourth century B.C.)

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

People often argue about whether this world really exists, or is something like The Matrix movie.  It’s a very stupid thing to argue about.  All problems of this kind derive from the fact that people don’t understand the words they use.  Before discussing the subject, the first thing people ought to do is get to grips with the meaning of the word ‘exist’.  Then a lot of interesting things would become clear.  But people are rarely capable of correct thinking.

Of course, I don’t mean to say that all people are total idiots.  There are some among them whose intellect is almost the equal of a fox’s.  For instance, the Irish philosopher Berkeley.  He said that to exist means to be perceived and all objects exist only in perception.  You only have to think calmly about the subject for three minutes to realize that any other views on the matter are like the cult of Osiris or belief in the god Mithras.  In my view, this is the only true thought that has visited the Western mind in its long and funny history: all the Humes, Kants and Baudrillards are only embroidering the canvas of this great insight in a fussy satin stitch.

But where does an object exist when we turn away and stop seeing it?  After all, it doesn’t disappear, as children and Amazonian Indians think, does it?  Berkeley says that it exists in the perception of God.  But Cathars and Gnostics believe that it exists in the perception of the diabolical demiurge, and their arguments are no worse than Berkeley’s .  From their point of view, matter is an evil that shackles the spirit.  By the way, reading Stephen Hawking’s horror stories, I often used to think that if the Albigenses had had a radio telescope, they would have declared the Big Bang a cosmic photograph of Satan’s rebellion…  There is a middle way through this morass of idiocy – to believe that part of the world exists in the perception of God, and part in the perception of Devil.

What can I say to this?  From the point of view of us foxes, there never was any Big Bang, just as the Tower of Babel that Breughel painted never existed, even if there is a reproduction of the painting hanging in a room that you dream about.  And God and the Devil are simply reproductions that are dreamed by some people to hang in a room of the tower on the picture hanging on the wall in a room they dream about.  Berkeley assumed that perception has to have a subject, and so the coins that rolled under the cupboard and the socks that fell behind the bed were solemnly interred in the cranium of the Creator specially created for that purpose.  But how do we deal with the fact that Berkeley’s God, in whose perception we exist, Himself exists mostly in the abstract thinking of certain representatives of the endangered European race?  And he doesn’t exist at all in the consciousness of a Chinese peasant or a little bird which is unaware that it is God’s?  How do we deal with this if ‘to exist’ really does mean ‘to be perceived’?

We don’t, say the foxes.  Foxes have a fundamental answer to the fundamental question of philosophy, which is to forget this fundamental question.  There are no philosophical problems, there is only a suite of interconnected linguistic cul de sacs created by language’s inability to reflect the truth.

But it is better to run into one of these cul de sacs in the first paragraph, rather than after forty years of searching and five thousand pages of writing.  After Berkeley finally got the point the only thing he wrote about was the wonder-working properties of the tincture of bitumen that he’d come across in North America.  And as a result, ever since then he has been mocked by various philistines, who aren’t aware that in that distant time bitumen was produced in America from a plant called Jimson Weed, or Datura.

Religious hypocrites accuse us were-creatures of addling people’s brains and distorting the Image of God.  The people who say this have a rather poor idea of the Image of God, since they mould it after their own sanctimonious mugs.  In any case, talk of ‘distortion’ and; addling; is too judgemental; language like that shifts the question on to the emotional plane and prevents any understanding of the real nature of the matter, which is as follows (please pay close attention to the following paragraph – I have finally reached the most important point).

Since the existence of things consists in their perceptibility, any transformation can occur by two routes – either through the perception of transformation or the transformation of perception.

In honour of the great Irishman, I would like to call this rule Berkeley’s Law.  It is absolutely essential knowledge for all seekers of truth, gangsters and extortionists, marketing specialists and paedophiles who wish to remain at liberty.