Authority

There’s no greater lie than authority:

No greater lie if you believe that someone else is the authority. And no greater lie if you pretend that you ARE the authority.

Authority is an illusion. Like all illusions, it is bound to collapse at some time. And like all illusions, it is a zero-sum game: You gain from an illusion today what you will lose through it in the future.

Example:

Some parents pretend to be an authority for their child. This works well when the child is little and actually believes that the parents are infallible. However, once the child grows up, one of two things will happen. The child will either recognize that the parents are actually just moral humans, with all kinds of flaws and problems and issues of themselves, and will be utterly disappointed or even angry. Or the child will continue to cling to the belief that his or her parents’ ways are the only right ways in this world, and thus be limited in life and suffer a lot of pain and disappointment from that.

And the exact same thing applies to teachers:

Yes, teachers can gain control over students by assuming the role of an authority. However, a teacher choosing this method is ultimately crippling his or her students for the sake of having control over them. It is a selfish method, and once the students leave school, they might very well look back at the teacher and realize that, when seen from the context of outside the school, he or she is actually not a better human being than anyone else. (In fact, if you look at the private lives of most teachers, you probably wouldn’t want to exchange roles with them.)

The truth is, that no one is an authority for anyone else. All you can be for another person is a TOOL:

You can temporarily be their guide for one section of their way. And even there, you are not the absolute authority in the sense of showing them “the only way”.

There are many other ways, and there are many other guides, and you can consider yourself honored by having the chance to be used as guide at this moment.

Dale Carnegie: Transmuting Sexuality (from “Think And Grow Rich”)

Many people who have read “Think And Grow Rich” have been wondering:

That the hell does Dale Carnegie mean when he speaks about the “transmutation of sexuality”?

Carnegie explains that young people often loose energy through their sexuality that they could otherwise use to infuse their business, their growth and their power to create.

All kinds of theories have evolved out of that statement, mostly boiling down to the idea, that orgasm or, in males, particularly ejaculation would somehow “drain” the body of energy, and that one therefore would be more creative if one abstained from physical intimacy.

But I don’t think this is what Carnegie was talking about.

I think this is a classical case of a misunderstanding that is based in the zeitgeist difference between the time when the book was written and today.

Today, when we say “sexuality”, we mean the physical act of copulation. But in Carnegie’s days, “sexuality” was just the general area of the “affairs between men and women”.

So what I think he means is:

Do not invest your sense of self in romances. Do not chase after members of the opposite sex, believing that they will make you happy. Do not “fall in love”, as they call it… because that is just an outlet for the power of the ego.

The ego is the force within you that seeks to fulfill itself. It is ultimately an illusion, because there is nothing “out there” that actually can make you happy — the happiness is already inside of you, and so all attempts of the ego to find it outside are futile. BUT… as long as you’re still living that illusion, you might as well channel its force into a direction that gives you a long-term benefit.

As long as you feel “incomplete” and as though you need to “get somewhere” in order to “complete yourself”, you can either let this illusion carry you into chasing after members of the opposite sex — OR you can channel it into the drive to create more and more wealth.

And all Carnegie is telling us:

If you’re driven by the ego anyway, then you might as well us that drive to build your wealth, rather than to chase romantic flings. The flings will pass. But the wealth — be it in the form of material wealth, social connections or in the form of acquired knowledge and experience — will stay with you and be an asset for you for the rest of your life.

Why Being Humble Works

Humans inherently want to bring everybody back onto the same level: If you are above them, they pull you down. And if you are below them, they pull you up.

That means whenever you try to impress somebody all comes from the place up superiority people abound to react would resistance to you. Super instance when, in traffic, you behave very dominantly, then most people will give you a hard time. If, On the other hand, you behave in a very humble way, then people will response to you with kindness.

In other words:

When you show humility then other people are biologically programmed to help you.

So when the police officer stops you because you were driving too fast then you have two options of behavior: you can either defend and justify yourself. In this case, because you are trying to bring yourself into an authority position, the police officer is bout to pull you back down and give you resistance. On the other hand, if you react with humility and even put yourself down for your behavior (“Oh yes, you are absolutely right. I was driving way to fast. I was negligent. I should have been more careful. I absolutely deserve that you give me a speeding ticket.”) then the officer is much more likely to have the desire to help you and let you of the hook.

This is what Jesus meant by “turn the other cheek” or when he talked about humbling yourself by always choosing the lowest chair…

This is not about being meek — it is about being effective.

The Human Mind — Too Simple for Nature?

The human mind is not capable of processing Nature as it is — at least not through thought.

You can see that when you compare Nature with our cities:

In cities, you see rectangles and straight lines everywhere. In Nature, however, simple, abstract forms like that almost don’t exist. Nature’s forms are more complex — and the fact that we humans, who came out of Nature ourselves, choose to use simpler forms in the structures we build in our own artificial environments shows that Nature’s forms are simply TOO complex for us… or, to be more exact: too complex for our thinking.

Thought is linear, but Nature (the Universe) is an infinite interconnected complexity. So whenever humans process Reality though thought, they reduce it. Whenever you reduce Reality, you end up with a lie. And whenever you base your behavior on a lie, you will suffer.

What You See Is What You Create

There is no such thing as “the world without you”. You are the creator of everything that you see. Because where does this world go when you go to sleep or when you die?

It disappears because it is only your conscience which it can appear in. Now you don’t have to say but when I sleep, the things in the real world continue to go on, don’t they?

But the only reason that you can know that is that you have an awake experience of that instance. You get up the next morning and read the newspaper about what happened during the night.

If you didn’t get up in the morning, and you didn’t learn about what “happened during the night”, then the world would not have continued. This is hard to understand for many people because we are used to the idea that there is this “objective world” that we are just observing.

But Physics in the 21st Century has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an “objective reality, and there is no such thing as “just observing”. The moment you observe a particle in quantum physics, you automatically change it’s reality.

The act of observing creates reality. And to make this easier to understand, imagine a tree falling in the forest and nobody hears it. Does it make a sound? And yes, it does cause reverberation in the air.

But it does not make a sound because sound is perception. And for perception there needs to be a perspective in conscience. And if there are no ears anywhere and there is no brain anywhere to process the stimulus, the reverberations in the air will never be perceived as a sound.

They will have no meaning. And so it is with you and the world: only by perceiving it, you give it a meaning. And only by that you actually create that which you call “the world” or “reality”.

So everything you perceive as “out there” is actually “in here”. If you perceive the world to be unfair, for example, then it is you who is creating this. It is the way you choose to perceive things.

Change the way you perceive and your world will change. For whatever you see in “the world”, you are responsible, and only 100%.

“What If” Can Suck — “What Is” Is Always Perfect

The present moment is always perfect as it is. You don’t need to know the purpose of it — as long as you go with it, it will turn out for your benefit each and every time.

Example: I purchased an expensive transformer to use an expensive U.S. kitchen machine here in Germany. I paid a lot of money to ship both the transformer and the kitchen machine to Germany — and then, after both worked great for a couple of times, the transformer suddenly blew and stopped working. For a moment I thought that this “shouldn’t have happened”, I imagined all the money I had spend to be lost and all the other reasons why this event was “wrong”. Then I surrendered to reality, jumped back into the present moment and did what felt right: I opened the transformer to see if I can fix it. And indeed, I found the problem, got out my soldering iron that I hadn’t used in years — and when I was done, the transformer was working again. Not only did I gain the positive experience of having fixed something that is broken, which gave me more confidence in my skills and in myself in general. While doing the repair, I also had a great new idea which I wouldn’t have had otherwise. So the transformer blowing was exactly what I had needed.

Another example is that, when I was searching for a vacation home in Los Angeles on the internet, the one house that I liked the most was already booked. When I went there, however, I discovered that that very house would have been on one of the busiest streets in the neighborhood, which I could not have known even from Google Street View and all the other tools that I had used in my research. As it turned out, the house that I chose instead was a much better fit for me, and my stay there has also been the cause for many new friendships and experiences which would not have happened had I gotten that house I originally wanted. So, my not getting the house I wanted was exactly the thing I needed. It was perfect.

Now, the mind will interfere at this point and say, “Well, that’s all nice and logical… but WHAT IF you hadn’t found a better house? WHAT IF you could not have repaired the transformer and would have to buy a new one and lose a lot of money in the process?”. The fact is: The mind can always create scenarios that are “imperfect”. In fact, the mind can ONLY create scenarios that are imperfect. The reason for that is, that the universe, on the one hand, is all-encompassing. Whatever happens in the universe is part of the greater whole. Nothing happens in isolation, and so anything that happens is in harmony with everything else. There are no contradictions in the universe, because everything is part of everything else. The human mind, however, can only grasp tiny fractions of the totality of this universe. It can never imagine the whole “machine” of the universe as a whole, but always just a tiny, tiny isolated part inside of it. And so, since it can only imagine fragments in isolation, when it does so, it automatically disconnects them from the greater whole that they are part of, with the result that the perfection is destroyed.

The bottom line is:

“What If” is mind-made, and thus is always imperfect (even if we don’t recognize that yet). “What Is”, on the other hand, is the reality of the universe as a whole — and that is always perfect (even if we don’t recognize that yet).

“What If” can suck. “What Is” is perfect. Always.

Lottery Winners End Up Broke And The Hungry Don’t Get Fed – Here’s Why:

Life is about fitness — about becoming your truest self, that which is aligned with the Universe.

Life constantly is providing impulses designed to mold you into that state of perfection. In other words: Everything life throws at you is designed to be a new challenge for you, a new lesson you can learn from and that will make you stronger.

All weakness comes from lack of self-love. As long as you feel you need more money, a better body or a certain relationship, you are chasing an illusion that is distracting you from your lack of self-love.

This is why, when you by some coincidence get what you hoped for (e.g. you win the lottery or a woman returns your affection), you will soon feel empty again. Because by having your illusion fulfilled, you see that it is, in fact, NOT the “key” that you were looking for that would “make you happy”. You will see that the emptiness is still there. And so, in the end, you will feel even hostile to that which you originally wanted so badly, because you feel “let down” by it.

This means:

The universe is giving you that empty feeling inside so that you will adapt your beliefs to reality. It is giving you pain in order to mold you into alignment with the truth. The pain is the friction between your beliefs and reality, and all that is needed for you to lose that pain is to adapt and go with the flow.

Whenever you try to force the Universe to give you some thing that you believe will make you happy, you are trying to get yourself off the hook. You are trying to lose the pain without adapting to life. You are trying to lose the friction and yet keep your edges. And that doesn’t work.

So whenever you think you need more money, your pain is NOT about the money.
Whenever you think you need healthier body, your pain is NOT about the body.
And whenever you think you need a relationship, your pain is NOT about the relationship.

Your pain, in every case, is always about an inner belief, which always comes down to lack of self-love.

Your job is to open your eyes to that belief, so you can release it.

The result will be that, now, you are in alignment with reality again.

And the thing you originally wanted will then fall in your lap by itself.

EXAMPLE:

You are feeling pain. The truth is, that this pain is coming from a lack of self-love, or a limiting belief such as “I am not good enough”. However, you believe that the pain comes from the fact that you don’t have a relationship. And so, you will pursue that relationship, because you believe you need it in order to feel whole again.

In reality, the reason that you do not have that relationship is that you are carrying the limiting belief. For instance, because you are carrying the belief “I am not good enough”, you are unconsciously sabotaging any opportunity to get that relationship that you think you need. In other words: You are not getting the relationship in spite of needing it — you are not getting it, precisely BECAUSE you feel you need it.

Even if, through chance or through violence or manipulation, you do manage to get the relationship you wanted, you will soon end up experiencing that empty feeling again, because the relationship was only the symbol for the self-love you were looking for. And once you have that in your hands, you will notice that the relationship, even though you saw it as the symbol for the self-love you were seeking, is NOT the self-love itself. And so, you will be disappointed, lose interest, and possibly even turn bitter towards the person you once expected to “make you happy”.

The only way to achieve your goal, is to see what your real goal is:

To lose the pain.

And the pain you will lose the very second you lose the friction with reality — which is the belief that is limiting your self-love. So in this example, you will lose the pain by losing the belief “I am not good enough”.

In other words:

You lose the pain the very moment when you let go of needing the relationship in order to feel complete and deserving of self-love.

As long as you hold on to the belief that you can only feel self-love once you have the relationship, you are making the relationship into the very OBSTACLE to self-love. This is because, by thinking you “need” or “lack” the relationship, you are thinking you cannot love yourself UNTIL you have that relationship.

It works like this:

1. You don’t love yourself, because you hold a limiting belief.

2. You recognize the unhappiness, but you don’t see the limiting belief that is causing it.

3. You ask yourself, “What the hell is wrong with me, why am I feeling empty like that?”. And so your mind (which has no clue about the limiting belief and really doesn’t know) makes up a plausible explanation, and it rationalizes: “It must be because I don’t have X. Everyone else has X, and I don’t — so that must be the cause of my unhappiness” (or something along those lines).

And then you begin to pursue X, because you belive it is the cause for your unhappiness.

But the truth is:

The condition of not having X is not the cause for your unhappiness. Your unhappiness was there long before your mind came up with the idea, that it could be there because of that condition. Your mind just made a guess — and because the mind always guesses the cause for your unhappiness to be outside of yourself, the thing you guess to be the cause of your unhappiness never is.

And because you now have a rationalization for your unhappiness (“it is because I don’t have X”), you now hold on to your unhappiness EVEN MORE than before. After all, you now have a solid reason for being unhappy!

In reality, of course, the condition of not having X has NOTHING TO DO with your unhappiness. X is just some random reason that your mind grabbed in order to have an explanation for that which it couldn’t explain. It was just the one that your mind deemed to be the most plausible explanation for your unhappiness. But that unhappiness, that inner emptiness, was there long before your mind ever came up with the thought “I need X”. In fact, your mind only came up with the thought “I need X”, because that emptiness was there in the first place. Had there been no empty feeling, you wouldn’t have felt like you needed anything! You would just feel content with the way everything is!

So that is the state of unconsciousness:

You have no clue what is missing, and you’re running around like mad to find it outside of yourself, while in reality, it is inside of yourself.

That pain of unconsciousness will dissolve as soon as you become conscious and recognize the true cause of your unhappiness:

The fact that you’re withholding love from yourself by holding on to a limiting belief.

See that belief, see that it is false — and your unhappiness will dissolve.

You will then no longer think you “need” X, because now you will feel complete, whether you have X or not. Because you feel complete, you are now acting like a fully realized human being again, without imposing limitations onto your reality. And because you are now no longer self-sabotaging yourself and no longer chasing illusions, anything that you truly want in your life will be there for the taking.

If you “need” something to feel whole, you are unconscious. If you are unconscious, you are not in alignment with the universe. And if you are not in alignment with the universe, the universe will not give you what you believe you want, so that the pain of not getting it will open your eyes to the illusion you are trapping yourself in.

The universe is applying pressure in order to mold you into a form that is in alignment with reality, and that can be with reality without effort and without pain. As long as you cling to a thought or a belief that is not in alignment with reality, and thus not true, the pain will persist and grow — until you finally let go.

Content Is Dead (or: Why You Can Make Money Even Though You Give Away Your Best Content For Free)

Content is king, right?

Content is the thing that makes your customers give you money in exchange, isn’t it?

Not necessarily.

At some point in the relationship between you and your customers, they no longer buy from you because of the content, but because they want more of YOU.

In other words: They don’t buy content anymore — they now buy affiliation.

Example:

Eben Pagan usually gives away his very best stuff for free. But people still buy his commercial products, simply because the trust he has created makes them want more of him.

Ryan Deiss just did an almost-free webinar on Facebook marketing. The webinar went for 3h+, and covered so much content that it could have easily passed as a $297 product. (Mind you, not because the content actually has that value to people, in terms of actually making them earn back those $297 with the knowledge acquired… Most people don’t actually use the content. Most just buy the product because of the fear of missing out on something new. And, for compensating that fear, $297 is a fair price.)

Ryan, too, created a lot of trust with this webinar. And when he now offers an advanced product on the same topic that actually does cost $297, many people will buy it.

Why?

Well, for most people it certainly won’t be because they actually applied all of the techniques Ryan gave away for free. It’s not like they will have implemented 100% of the free content and now need further instructions to go even further. No. Most of the people who will buy the advanced course will not have implemented even 10% of the free content. The reason they buy it is…

1) the fear of missing out,

2) a little bit of reciprocity and,

3) wanting the relationship between them and Ryan to become closer.

In fact, motivations 2) and 3) are one and the same: People want to give back, BECAUSE they cherish the association with a high-value person, and they want MORE of it, and they want more EXCLUSIVITY for it.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Your backend product’s value goes beyond its content. Even if you teach nothing new, and just repeat the same content that you gave away for free “for everybody”, the fact that, now, you’re repeating it to an exclusive circle that has paid you money to do so is a value in and of itself. A value that does not lie in the words you speak, but in the progressed relationship.

The fact that the customer has paid you money makes him feel “more worthy”. He now isn’t just a recipient of free content (a “leecher”). Instead, he has now become part of the group. He has now contributed something of his own, which is a drive just as powerful in humans as wanting to get something (if not more powerful!).

Look at children: Yes, they do love to “get” something. But what they love even more (and what they start doing even earlier) is to help others. They teach. They assist. They please. And they do it because it gives them pleasure, and because it makes them feel “included”.

So allowing your customers to pay you for more of your attention and a more exclusive access to you actually increases the value for them. The content, then, is only the pretense, the “reason why” on the rational level. But it’s not the actual value. The actual value is the relationship that the customer wants to nourish and deepen, and that he wants to contribute to.

This is counter-intuitive… because most marketers believe, that the value of their back-end product lies in its content alone. Of course, there must be a little bit of additional content — not that this additional content would constitute the value of the backend product, but it is necessary to give the logical mind a “reason why” to invest in this back-end product (if you bluntly say, “Well, folks, I’m just gonna repeat what I’ve already given you for free, but I’m gonna do so only for those who contribute and pay me money… So what you’re paying for is not the content, but to feel special and included”, then the customer’s logical mind will kick in and say, “This guy is treating me like the emotion-driven, naked ape that I am. I’ve been trying so hard to cover this up and to prentend as though I was a cold and rational being that’s only interested in measurable results. If I accept his offer, this would threaten my whole sense of self.”, and thus his or her ego will prevent him from buying).

So you do need to create a little bit of extra content — but that is only the decoy for the logical mind. It’s not the REAL value. And it’s not the real motivation why your customer is buying. The “reason”, yes — but not the motivation.

So you can give away 95% of your content for free. And then, when you sell the remaining 5% plus a more personal and more exclusive recap of the other 95%, people will buy it. People will not only buy it, but they will also pay a higher price to buy it.

The result:

In the end, you make more money by giving more away.

UPDATE: Think about what a child wants from a cool uncle Joe. Does it want “more wisdom from uncle Joe”. No. A child that likes uncle Joe doesn’t care about the particular bits of wisdom at all. It cares about “becoming like uncle Joe”, and “spending time with uncle Joe”.

The same thing happens as soon as you turn into a leader in your customer’s head. Because leadership utilizes the same “circuits” in the brain that govern the relationship between child and parents. Think “fatherland”. Think “founding fathers”. And so, once you become their “leader” in a certain field, their focus becomes less about the content you have to offer and more about the “father-son”/”uncle-nephew” relationship.

Is Your Mind Crippling You?

Through the mind, the world is growing smaller every day.

Most people think of the mind as the thing that allows you to grow and mature.

The opposite is true:

The mind is not making you grow, it is making you become more and more limited over time.

The mind works like in Kafka’s fable with the mouse that’s walking through a maze with the walls turning tighter and tighter:

With every new experience, the mind begins to label it as either good or bad. You touch something very cold – the mind says “that’s pain” and translates that into an aversion against touching cold surfaces, that you will carry on throughout your whole life without even being conscious of it.

And the same goes for things that the mind labels as “good”. You do something and others laugh about it or praise you for it, and you’ll unconsciously seek to replicate that reaction for the rest of your life. This way, that which is you becomes narrowed down with each new experience by the mind… and what’s left is a “robot”, that is 100% conditioned by past experiences, by attachments and aversions.

That’s why the mouse in Kafka’s fable experiences “the world [is] growing smaller every day”.

But the mind is NOT you.

The mind is just a watchdog gone berzerk. A tool, originally designed to serve you, mutated into the overlord, now using you as the tool.

But isn’t the mind that which allows you to grow and learn?

In fact, it is not. When you learn to walk, you don’t control the experience with your mind. You can’t “will yourself” to walking. You just try by instinct. You make mistakes (even though your mind doesn’t want to make them — the fact that you’re always making them while learning something new shows you that the mind, indeed, is not in control of the learning process at all). And you slowly get better.

The brain circuits involved in learning — for walking, for speech, for piano playing, and so on — are NOT the frontal parts of the brain that give rise to the thinking mind. They are specialized circuits for motor control, for speech, for vision, and so on. And that means, once you have learned to do something, you can do it without thinking. In fact, that is the very definition of the word “mastery”: To unconsciously do the right thing at the right time without having to think about it. And when you look at the real masters like artists or athletes, you will find, that in their peak performances, their mind goes totally blank. They are in the “zone” — which is another word for inner stillness, for freedom from the thinking mind.

Michael Jackson said: “The job of the artist is to get out of the way of the music”. But his words do not only apply to artists. Because, just as correct would be the generalized version:

“The job of your mind is to get out of the way of growth, performance and fulfillment”.

How Would You Live Your Life If You Knew It Was Just A Dream?

Consciousness in life can be compared to consciousness of dreaming. And by doing so, you’ll discover what it takes to have a great life:

Imagine you have a lucid dream. That means, you know that you’re dreaming.

Imagine now, in that dream, someone comes to you all agitated telling you, “We’ve gotta save the rainforest! This is urgent!”. How would you react?

Since you would know that this is just a dream, you wouldn’t freak out and take it all serious. You’d just smile in a relaxed way. And you might answer either “No, I’m enjoying myself here in this wonderful dream”, or you’d say “Oh yes, cool, this could be fun”.

In any way, you wouldn’t engage in the project because you thought it was serious. You wouldn’t do it because “the matter demanded it”. And you wouldn’t do it to add meaning and importance to your dream or to yourself. If you would do it, you’d just do it because it is fun — and you wouldn’t really care about “results”. Because this is just a dream, after all!

And real life is the same:

Real life, just like the dream, is experienced in your own consciousness.

This consciousness is a limited one, if you are so deeply immersed in the dream that you do not realize that it is not real, but just a dream appearing in or on that which you are.

And if you, however, realize, that nothing truly is “serious”, and that it’s all a dream and that you’re going to awake at some point anyway, then you…

- wouldn’t try to hold on to anything within the dream nor would you try to hold on to the dream itself (why hold on to a dream, if you know it’s going to be over and forgotten soon anyway)

- wouldn’t take anything within the dream seriously, nor the dream itself

- wouldn’t feel good or bad about your dream or derive any sense of self from how great or how depressing it is, because you knew that it’s just a creation of your unconsciousness which came out of nothing and will again dissolve into nothing soon

- would only ever do the things that are fun to do for you in that dream (and drop anything as soon as it becomes boring)

- wouldn’t focus on any results in the dream (you might still go in the direction of a goal within your dream, but you would only do so if the process itself was fun to you, and you would have no problem abandoning the process the very moment it becomes boring… and you would feel no “remorse” for doing so and would not think that you “wasted valuable dreaming-time”)

- wouldn’t compare yourself to other people in your dream… and thus wouldn’t feel any motivation to strive for status, fame or approval of others, for you would know that all the “others” are just the supporting cast created by your very own consciousness, which is the director of the entire dream (why bother trying to impress someone whom you have hired to play the role of the unimpressed in your own movie?)

- would recognize that the “other people” are not really “other people”, but expressions of yourself as the consciousness that has created this (dream-)world… and thus, you would be unable to feel hate or aversion towards anyone. You would have the inner knowing, that everyone is always just playing the exact role that you are giving them to play, and they always do it 100% perfectly

- would never seek fault or blame in anyone or anything, and would never question what is happening… for you would know, that a) it’s just a dream, and not serious anyway and b) neither you nor the other characters in the dream have any control over what is happing

These are the lessons that come to my mind when I compare life to a dream.

Anyone can think of some more?