Expressing The Observation

John Thomas “Kooz” Kuczmarski
Expressing the Observation 1

John Thomas “Kooz” Kuczmarski Expressing the Observation 2
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United
States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ or send a
letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
©2007 by John Kooz and Validate Your Life
A Division of John Kuczmarski Publishing

430 West Roslyn Place
Chicago, IL 60614
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electric or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher and author. Any inclusions of quotations for a review must be verified by publisher and
author.
BOOK ENDS PUBLISHING is a registered trademark of Book Ends Publishing.
Kuczmarski, John T.
Expressing the Observation: Cultivating your Inner Voice through the Dissolution of Struggle and the Mastery of
Connection
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is not available.
This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative
material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold, shared, and/or transmitted with the understanding
that the author and publisher are engaged in rendering medical, health, or any kind of professional services in the
book. The reader should consult his or her homeopathic, holistic healer.
Although the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise,
which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any contents of this book, the
author is interested in sharing his advice, wisdom, and guidance to generate communion of happiness to any reader
or writer.
Visit us online at http://www.validatelife.com.

Contents at a Glance
Chapter 1: Anchoring to the Environment and Removing Struggle
Chapter 2: Removing Struggle with the Perception
Chapter 3: Emotional Authenticity: Sea Semester
Chapter 4: Acting Versus Procession (Thinking verse Doing)
Chapter 5: The Renaissance is Now
Chapter 6: Elevating to Higher Mental Wavelength
Chapter 7: Clarity, Chance, Authenticity and Originality
Chapter 8: The Mastery of Myopia and Connecting with People
Chapter 9: The Delicate Human Body and Alternative Looks
Chapter 10: Representation and Identity, Time’s Milieu, Evocate Uprooting
Table of Contents
Expressing the Observation.............................................................................................2
Chapter 1: Anchoring to the Environment and Removing Struggle...........................2
Communicating the Observations...............................................................................2
Passions unite Soul........................................................................................................4
Norman Geisler on Truth.............................................................................................5
Anchors of the Environment........................................................................................6
Lost in the Woods and Being Found Again..............................................................8
The 15-Minute Segment.............................................................................................8
Exercise......................................................................................................................8
Everything in a Day...................................................................................................8
Closing........................................................................................................................8
Past, Present, Future, and Choices (Protons & Electrons – Very Cool)..................9
Images..........................................................................................................................11
Acknowledging the Need............................................................................................12
Chapter 2: Removing Struggle with the Perception....................................................14
Don’t Personalize, Synchronize.................................................................................15
Chapter 3: Emotional Authenticity: Sea Semester......................................................17
Grand Consummation................................................................................................26
Communicating to the Source....................................................................................27
Harnessing the Reaction the Authentic Source: Childhood Mind.........................28
Chapter 4: Acting Versus Procession (Thinking verse Doing)...................................35
Accessing the Voice.....................................................................................................36
School or Training...................................................................................................37
Wild or Domesticated...............................................................................................37
Chapter 5: The Renaissance is Now..............................................................................45
Perpetuating Inner Child by Transcending Normal...............................................47
Dismantle Global Generalizations.............................................................................48
Transcending Experience...........................................................................................49
Chapter 6: Elevating to Higher Mental Wavelength...................................................51
Omnipresent School: Curse or Cure?.......................................................................54
How it works: Harnessing the Emotions..................................................................55
Chapter 7: Clarity, Chance, Authenticity and Originality.........................................57
Clarities of Comfort....................................................................................................57
Balancing the Dance of Chance.................................................................................60
Authenticity and Originality......................................................................................64
Chapter 8: The Mastery of Myopia and Connecting with People..............................67
The Shiva of Parenting...............................................................................................68
The Intertwining Paths of Life...................................................................................69
Myopia and Awareness...............................................................................................70
Time and place for Excessive Myopia.....................................................................72
Time and place for Excessive Awareness................................................................72
Kuczmarski / Expressing Observation 2
The Harmonious Synthesis of Myopic Awareness.................................................73
Chapter 9: The Delicate Human Body and Alternative Looks...................................74

Beauty of the Circulatory System..............................................................................74
Trips to the Dentist: the Delicate Human Body.......................................................75
Autism: New Outlook.................................................................................................76
Dance of Verisimilitudes.............................................................................................78
Sabotage.......................................................................................................................78
Chapter 10: Representation and Identity, Time’s Milieu, Evocate Uprooting.........81
Representation and Identity.......................................................................................81
Self-Consciousness and Detail Adjustment: Whale-Watching...............................82
Time’s Milieu...............................................................................................................83
Evocative Uprooting...................................................................................................86
About the Book
This book is less theoretical, involving more real-time, personal examples of changes and
updates and experiences to tie in ideas, instructions, advice and guides for anchoring to the
environment, accessing your voice, elevating to different mental planes, understanding
awareness and myopia and truly connecting with and representing our identity.
Expressing the Observation

Cultivating your Inner Voice through the Dissolution of Struggle and the Mastery of Connection
By John Kuczmarski
Chapter 1: Anchoring to the Environment and Removing Struggle

Communicating the Observations
When we storm ourselves with the capacity to connect with our own verisimilitudes via
force, we not only deny the organic capacity of ingenuity, but limit ourselves to a captivation
glance of certainty. By proportionally making certain things that we must do and want to do, we
ignite our capacity to invigorate the soul with wisdom. One of the ways our wisdom can be
blocked or stymied is when we allow extraneous variables to accumulate in our mind.
Extraneous variables would fall under the category of chitchat, weather conversation, or simple
dialogue things that we would normally say to people, but hesitate to do so. For the longest time,
just from observing, having a small discussion, or hanging out with a person, I would cultivate
all of these insights to their personality simply because I naturally thoroughly examined and
introduced myself to a person’s spirituality via their psychology tendencies, body language, and
emotional expressions.
However, because of lack of motivation, reason, or because of hesitation aroused and
stymied by fear, I would share those insights, and then didn’t know what to do with them. My
ultra-sensitivity to picking up other areas of people’s strengths and personality became a curse
that caused loads of mental “traffic” where my own thoughts were obfuscated, and congestion
replaced the former lucidity. Eventually, however, I found a system by discovering – through
hours of trial-and-error, overwhelming frustration and enormous “to-do” lists of things to say to
people – to transform sensitivity to other people’s personality into a gift. Many people interpret
and have insights to other people, but to me (possibly to other people) it felt like an overload.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t take the overload and would become heavy, weighed down
upon, and limited by the burden. Soon, I realized the lucid power of not only saying the things to
help the other person get insights into themselves – expanding their potential – but for the sake
of my own sanity and clarity.
Because even if someone’s insight to you is a little off or wrong, -- for example if they
say, “you are really funny”, but you are, in actuality, “quite serious” – this very interaction allows
an opportunity to define your personality more concretely. The ability to ignite the potential of
the soul invigorates our purpose and we can learn more about the poignancy of the soul’s
connection to personality by making comparisons and associations with compliments or
acknowledgements that are congruent to our personality (a compliment that you are very formal
if you always wear tuxedoes) or a comment that is perpendicular, or the opposite to what you
normally subscribe your personality to be. Such a situation would be (to say you are gregarious
if you are, in reality, quite taciturn). So from the standpoint of clarifying other’s conceptions and
perceptions of their own personality, saying my “people comments” was very significant. After
all, people have begun to realize that mirrors may not reflect our “actual” image; we must
discover who we really are. If that is the case, how do we know how we really appear to others?
If the spurious mirror-image affect is true, then such a situation where we describe “what we
see’ to others is definitely opportunistic for cultivating an awareness of the world’s perception of
us, instead of the mirror’s flashback residual image.
In addition to having almost a philanthropic effect on a person’s concrete and crystallized
understanding of themselves, saying things that I observed or noticed allowed my mind to
maintain mental fluidity, which allowed my thinking process to never be stymied or thwarted by
something that obfuscated the clarity of my cognition. By making these subtle social changes –
saying things, especially about others’ personality, when I observed them, instead of queuing
them up, which produced incredible mental burdens – I produced positively permanent plastic
(transformative) changes in my mind, allowing me to incorporate and instigate more provocative
and prolific examples of knowledge into my understanding.
Passions unite Soul

Our passions unite our soul, but they do not limit our capacity for knowledge. When we
embrace the fervency of compassionate power we allow ourselves to be, simultaneously, the
most human, humble, and down-to-earth and the most centered and focused. We can expand our
compassionate power by grounding ourselves after generating stability. When we quickly glance
around at our surroundings to observe the colors of the room, other people, general moods and
the emotions of what others are feeling, we tap into the environmental source. The
environmental source is an incredibly rejuvenating resource because it provides our mind with
knowledge about outlets.
Outlets – conduits for creative expression – can be our survival path, depending on how
deeply involved in our art we are. People who simply get business projects in at the deadline
have little concern about the artistic and creative impact – the qualitative results – of their piece.
But the chef who spends weeks and months crafting his recipes, the teacher who spends a year’s
sabbatical preparing and devoting his time to the creation of one single class, the personal trainer
who studies and gets a PhD in physiology not because he or she is interested in muscles and
skeletal systems personally, but to enrich the lives of their clients are all people who tap into the
environmental source for creative outlets. Creativity can swarm inside of your causing alarm
and problems if it doesn’t have a release. You can become powerless to excessive, energetic
creativity, but by tapping into the environmental source, your compassionate and creative
reservoir become devices and tools.
We want to avoid looking at our mind, and our compassionate and creative reservoirs as
mere tools, as simple containers for passion or knowledge. Instead, we should invigorate our
lives so that we generate an inner knowing of how we operate on a creative and compassionate
level. Because they are two of the most potent forces in the human spectrum, compassion and
creativity can generate a great deal of powerful unknown. Unknown leads to fear, because lack
of understanding generates concern. It is certainly true that much of what we fear in other or in
the world is a manifestation – a projection – of what we see in ourselves, what lurks beneath our
psychological currents that we are unsure of. The ability to create certainty by getting things
done purely for the sake of accomplishment generates truth and knowledge towards our
innerness because we then know how to create personalizing sources of truth. Thoreau says,
“The best reward for getting a good thing done is getting it done.” If you can truly find a
passion, a pursuit, that generates self-reward out of the accomplishment (without a rat-like
system of positive and negative reinforcement), you have found a life passion, vocation, or
hobby. Check your emotional response, if you feel extremely nourished, genuine and simply
accomplished after finishing some of your tasks, not to get them out of the way, but like those
tasks generated a fulfilling and satiating reaction simply from its accomplishment, you must
pursue more of those opportunities – they are golden. I remember feeling accomplished like that
after biking, swimming, and writing. Those activities nourished and clarified me and were
something I enjoyed the process of, the affects of as much as the sense of accomplishment.
Things like finishing some school papers didn’t generate this accomplishment because I made
my goal to get it done, finished. This is an ideal goal, but limiting, because it denies significance
of the process of achieving that goal. I soon transformed this method of thinking into, simply,
the idea that I should create papers that I loved writing and find tasks that explored the process.
By delving into the process of things you awaken outlets that allow access to your compassionate
and creative potentials. Have the end result in mind by truly loving the process because we will
arrive at truth.
Norman Geisler on Truth
Norman Geisler affirms that truth is “not intentions…not that which feels good…not that
which is existentially relevant…not that which works…not that which coheres” (Geisler 32).
Comprehensiveness is a test for truth not a definition. Intentions and cohesion are wrong ways
of going about it because truth corresponds to reality. Bad news can certainly make us feel bad,
but very extremely embedded in truth. Kierkegaard said truth is subjectivity, relevant to our
existence of life, and the nature of truth is more objective, while the application of truth can be
applied to our lives. Geisler argues that “truth is that which works” is too myopic; instead,
people should emphasize how truth corresponds to the way things are. 7+4= 11 and the Cactus
thorns were sharp are truths and they “worked”, but they are truths not because they “work”, but
because they correspond to the way things are. Geisler believes truth is correspondence: “telling
it like it is”. This idea would not necessarily be desirable, cohesive, comprehensive, feeling
good, or relevant, but it implies sincere truth. Truth is certainly hard to generate when many
people are afraid of its resolute stability because it is 1) undeniably and 2) may bode something
unfortunate. Facing truth and interacting with truth on a daily basis, however, invigorates our
life in the long run (even if some of the truth is unfavorable) because we won’t be living in a
counterfeit bubble with superficial sensations but will authentically feel and access our true
reactions, our true being, our illuminating essence. That is when our life really begins.
Geisler also gives his reasons for why the Biblical God is the only true God. He cites
passages from the Bible that support the idea that the true god is pure actuality, infinity,
immutability, eternality, and oneness, can think, can feel, and has a will, and is moral perfection.
That was indirect because you can’t use the source that is designed to support God as a
reference! That is defining a word with the word itself; very unhelpful. Then when he is
discussing pantheism, he says that pantheists simply believe in a God that is in all and contains
all things. He never gives a reason why this is wrong, but simply states that the fact of the matter
is based on a single God who is alone. No logic in his argument, simply the statement of one
fact and then the statement of his idea, there is no proving or anything, very un-put-together
argument. It actually isn’t an argument, just a weak assemblage of facts, if it can even be called
that.
Anchors of the Environment
The Weather has a profound effect on me, despite the fact that I try to make myself
comfortable, invigorated, and alive wherever I go and wherever I am. Regardless of this (at
times, seemingly futile) attempt at maintaining restorative and vivacious powers of energy, in
any environment – arctic or archaic; tropical or turbulent – I feel noticeably more charged when
the sun is out shining, radiating a blue sky, with warm unnoticeable, weather. Even though it is
remarkably challenging, maintaining that internal emotional, mental, and spiritual climate of
tropical and serenity allows us to not only survive, but maintain invigoration and fluidity in any
environment. And just imagine how, when we are not going against the grain, and surviving in
an actual tropical environment (when our internal representation matches up with the external
environment) and we aren’t going against the grain by a simulation, how majestic our experience
will be! But, it shouldn’t be perceived that creating an internally simulated environment of
warmth and nourishment is delusional.
This is not the case at all, this is transforming the glass half full/ glass half empty
pessimistic/optimistic thinking test into a reference of the glass all the way full or all the way
empty. You fill your cup to the top (in a positive sense, with the capacity to allow new things to
enter, without it overflowing by giving and taking, relinquishing and harnessing information) by
embracing the cultivation of an authentic internal environment, allowing you to maintain
invigoration in any environment. Residing in an external environment that is not very suitable or
sometimes has harsh conditions, is the profound test for this (this is what I did for my college
years, which have been, and will be, and are fantastic sources of ingenuity and bountiful
authenticity) ability to craft a compatible and invigorating environment wherever you go. Such a
“test” allow you to survive as a complete entity, never grasping on to external attachments with
too much hesitation, habitual tendency or provocation.
We should challenge ourselves to not only survive in demanding and difficult
environments, but to thrive, prosper, and realize our greatness in any context, despite the external
challenges that may be presented. When we acknowledge our connection with profound sources
of wisdom internally, we can cast off anchors and find items of the environment that make us
very complete people. “Items of the environment” could be a sunset that always rejuvenates you
(which can be seen anywhere), a certain type of food, calling a certain person, or anything that
allows us to take our environmental bearings, eradicate ‘disorientation” and replace

disfigurement with profound ingenuity and clarity of purpose. Casting of “items of
environmental” anchors are one of the many ways to habituate and invigorate yourself with any
environmental climate – intimidating , opened, closed, alive, dull, or capacious with opportunity.
Let’s learn to cast of these anchors and move on when we need to, in order to continue not
grasping, but seizing the plethora of opportunities that permeate our poignant lives!
Lost in the Woods and Being Found Again
There is a statistic that says that people who become lost or stranded in the woods die not
of starvation or lack of resource (they are surrounded by utilities of nature to aid their survival)
but by sheer panic and the pressure of survival. By making sure we don’t create a panic and
apply necessary pressure to ourselves in an unnatural, daunting, or frightening conversation, we
must ensure that we find elements of continuity to anchor ourselves to the environment and
anchor ourselves to confidence.
The 15-Minute Segment
One thing I use to ensure that I am productive in an unfamiliar environment is to, every
15 minutes, examine what I have done. More effectively, I examine what needs to be
accomplished and break the task up into a series of 15-minutes tasks. This way I know my time
is always going towards something, and I never have to fear that time is slipping away under my
nose, because I am maintaining awareness of its passing. Utilizing time is an incredibly poignant
and essential element to understanding ourselves.
Exercise
Exercise is another incredibly environmental anchor because if I can exercise in an area
and navigate an atmosphere, work up a sweat, and clear my mind. I already feel incredibly
connected with the environment that I have gotten physical exertion in, so doing so in a
completely new, surreal environment transforms that surrealness into a much more comfortable
and tangible atmosphere.

Everything in a Day
Finally, another environmental anchor is to cast of the idea of getting everything
accomplished in a day. Understanding that everything happens in a day, endows you with
incredible time-away freedom. This sentient time becomes a mechanism to work with, instead of
being an intangible, unmanageable medium
Closing
Remember people get lost in the words and can’t survive because of fear and pressure
NOT because of limited supply of resources. We mustn’t allow pressure (in this case, biological
pressure to survive) or fear to limit our utilization of the environment. In high school I got so
nervous before cross country meets that I would be shaking. This only caused me to run poorly,
where before, being relaxed, I would have surged ahead. The connection with being lost in the
woods is distinctly similar. Let’s love life to its fullest and access verisimilitudes!
Past, Present, Future, and Choices (Protons & Electrons – Very Cool)
The past and the future are the same. They are separated by a barrier called the present.
The present does not matter for it simply defines the future and leads the trail of the past. The
past is what is most important to you in the present because the past is what can be reflected on
and remembered - it is the trail of YOUR life. The present therefore does not matter at all. It is
the empty vibrating space in an atom between the proton nucleus and the electrons. The space
does not make up the atom, the protons and electrons do.
And yet it is what defines the atom - gives it a reality. Just as the present is what gives
the past and future reality. But the atom, just like the present state of mind - is nothingness. And
yet it is everything because it defines the future and marks the trail of the past. We, human
beings should think of our lives as we do of the atom, only in terms of the past and future (or
protons and neutrons). Scientists, chemists , biologists, scholars - none of them spend time
analyzing or counting, weighing, or measuring, the nature or composition of the space, the empty
space between the protons and neutrons, and yet it is what gives the atom mass, gives it a
circumference, a shape, a reality. They do not study this part of the atom because it does not help
them in understanding the atom at all. Scientists are trying to be psychics - they try to predict the
future - they attempt to determine outcomes of reactions before they occur. The also try to
understand why things happened the way that they did - why mixing NaCl with Mg+ produces
MgCl, why things bond together why things didn’t bond, why things dissolved, why things
dissipated, why they became a homogenous mixture why they became a heterogeneous mixture,
why things simply did not react. To predict these things, the chemists, and scientists need not
focus on the void of space between the electrons and neutrons (the present in following the
analogy), instead they analyze count, weigh, and measure the protons and neutrons. This
analogy is identical to they one oft the past present and future. The past and future are the
electrons, while the present is simply the empty voi8d that gives the past and present, or the
atom, reality.
Similarly, predictions of the future and understandings of the past can be deduced be
analyzing the past and future - counting reoccurrences, noticing patterns, weighing importance of
historical events, rulers, movements, etc. One gains absolutely nothing from studying the empty
void between the past and future, just as scientists gain nothing know knowledge in studying or
analyzing the void of space that gives an atom its mass, so that is not simply pure energy. Pure
energy is protons and neutrons and the past and future. This knowledge of the past and future,
and the null void that is meaningless, but gives us a reality, thus, making things completely
meaningful, can be used in every possible situation of life. One can use it to make choices,
understand the past, predict the future, comprehend the make-up of the past and future, know
yourself better, decide big decisions that require the knowledge of where you are going, and who
you relate with.
One can use it to make choices. In making choices one must recall the past. Not your
past present, but the path the trail that you left moving from the past to the future. Ones past
present would be the thoughts or actions that you had in the present, but were not in advance
toward the future leading the trail of the past. The atom is nothing but energy, but mixed in with
that nothingness space it is given the quality of matter - something that has weight, density, and
measurements. Many of these atoms produce elements which have weight, texture, brilliance,
hue, sound, sweetness, sour taste, texture, and smell or scent. All of those attributes, those of
matter, are the attributes of the present.
Once one understands that there is no present, everything is simply your min, or energy,
leading to the future from the past, all sufferings of the present are wiped away. One realizes that
there are no sufferings because there are no bad feelings, just feelings that run through you, your
reactions to the present. And it is these reactions to the present’s linear sensory reality that define
the future and create the past. It is good and fine for one to accept reality for what it is, but one
must not accept for reality’s sake for then one looses sight of what is real.
We, like the mass of the atom, are just energy - pure energy mixed in with that
nothingness space, yielding matter and reality.
All of life’s sufferings and problems are relieved by understanding this concept. If one
has a pertinent problem or a suffering, a broken limb, all suffering is gone when one realizes that
that broken limb is not real. All sensory pains are ceased by acknowledging and accepting the
source of the pain. There is no coldness because being cold is simply the body’s reaction the
temperature of the air, accepting the air for what it is causes you to not be cold.
You however have a choice to make a path or not to. One could, and many do, realize
that the past and future are meaningless because they are just energy -thoughts, and the only time
thoughts can be accessed is in the present. The present's purpose is to interact with the past and
future, to relate it. Every step forward is the movement of relation to the stationary foot to the
animate future. Maya, is the reality the veil over our eyes, it is the ever-changing, never repeated
array of forms. It is ignorance. It is illusion. It is the fog that blinds us from Brahman. Brahman
is the nothingness; Brahman is where the past and future collide. Brahman is enlightenment. It
is the knowing of the past and future and that the present is meaningless and painless. The
convergence of these to entities, Maya and Brahman, or ignorance and enlightenment is known
as Shiva. If one can combine these two entities one realizes they can do truly anything in the
present because they accept it, but know its falseness and illusions.
Therefore, one cannot do anything they wish in the present, morally, because it reflects
the past and leads to the future. Love is the connection of Maya and Brahman it is Shiva. It is
what allows one to accept the beauties of the present reality, but to know that they are illusions.
There can be a harmony between the two just as there is a harmony between everything.
Images
An image is something that you project and it is what others see. The body is constantly
changing, constantly metamorphisizing. One's facial features are assumed to be static and non-
changing, but in reality they are simply energy, combined with nothingness to form atoms, and
atoms to form elements. So your physical appearance IS your mental appearance. Your physical
appearance is your mental appearance because your brain is what controls the energy, which all
of your body is. If you KNOW you are fat then you will project an image of being fat, other
brains will pick up on that projection and interpret it the way you perceive it. Remember the
only thing present about the present, or the only reality in the present is thoughts, or ideas or
feelings. All of the physical or sensory features should thought of as a mask or protection layer
for the ideas or feelings running through one. The cloak of physical, sensory interpretations
should be thought of as completely inexistent because it is. Matter is just that nothingness matter
mixed in with energy, remember. The only thing that makes matter is the repelling of protons
and electrons. Pure energy is truly the underlying composition of everything. So people who
seem to be beautiful are those that know that they are beautiful because the thought of knowing
that one is beautiful, is a thought or feeling in the brain. Thoughts and feelings in the brain are,
again, the only existing thing in the present. One’s physical appearance is inexistent, it is
completely irrelevant. One’s physical size, weight, texture, smell, etc is all the shroud of reality.
If one smells bad it is because something with their energy, or there thoughts and feelings is bad.
This knowledge is so useful because when one realizes that one’s physical appearance, one’s
strength, one’s speed are manifestations of thoughts (the only type of energy), they can simply
change the style of their thinking and through this change their world view.
The only thing real is energy-SO-the only type of energy useful is energy that we can
activate manage, observe, and control or manipulate-SO-this type of energy is thoughts. One’s
thoughts are the only things that can be truly changed, they are they only thing that is seen, it is
the only thing that can be heard, smelt, or felt, because it is sense of the mind.
Beauty or ugliness is all a thought, and since physical appearances are manifestations of
thoughts, any thought that you have will be presented or represented in some way through the
senses. Extrasensory perception and clairvoyance is simply picking up on those energy thoughts
directly or through some other inlet of reality.
Acknowledging the Need
It is crucially important to acknowledge exactly what we need, desire, crave, and actually
have. The ability to make this discernment separates us from calculating an awakening situation
that allows you to truly acknowledge your soul. Having confidence in precisely things that you
consider to be poignant provide incredible sources of connection. By ensuring that get our
authentic needs, desires, and passions, we, consequentially, provide a meaningful poignancy for
them to arrive. One of my passions, needs, drives and motivations is surfing. I need, crave, and
consider surfing a bare-bones necessity because of the mental clarity that arises from it. Being a
sport that requires no surfing manual whatsoever, nor any form of guide, you simply must enter
the ocean and learn maneuvers, balance, the processes of catching waves and learning turns all
on your own.
The individuality of this sport cultivates incredible ingenuity and clarity. By crafting a
style that is completely your own within such dynamic and artistically wild “medium” as the
ocean, you become incredibly mentally clear and free from physically taking part in such an act.
This just goes to show the power of the mind body connection as well because we create
incredibly certainties of our own truth by making certain that we express ourselves in a way that
has the most style possible. Our capacity to understand that we are incredible people that are
capable of being our own “king”, “captain”, or mentor if we trust in our own advice, and craft
your own style to stick by. Surfing is the ultimate example of crafting your individualized style
because you have no other option but to create your own style – it is part of the process.
However, this is not the case with all situations, in some areas it is much more common and
much easier to adopt a simple generic protocol that appears to work for some people but may not
be an ideal fit for you.
Chapter 2: Removing Struggle with the Perception

For the longest time I felt as thought students and the professor in classes I would take
where ganging up on me. I felt as thought the comments they said were specifically catered to
offend, cripple, or dismantle me. If this was the case, maybe it was because they thought I was
very informed on the topic and wanted to make certain I talked more by provoking me, or it
could have been jealousy of knowledge on a subject and a kind of “gang up on the chess master”
approach, or it could have been simple maliciousness. Most likely, neither of these were the case
and it was simply my perception. Because a psychotic – a state I certainly was not interesting in
attaining – is describes as someone who can’t connect with others and, simultaneously, thinks
everyone else is “insane”, when, in reality, it is their perception.
After all, it’s not nature verse nurture that gives us these interpretations of both, it is our
genetic predisposition to something and how we are raised. If we have a genetic tendency for
alcoholism and are raised living on a brewery, the chances of actually becoming an alcoholic are
much higher than if you were born, “nurtured” on a rural plantation in a dry county. If we
associate ourselves with an environment that provokes a certain tendency and/or predisposition,
we will obviously have a greater tendency to live our genetic “prophecy”.
The more I put myself in environments where I thought I was being tacitly berated or
challenged by the professor and or the class – namely, classrooms – the more this probably was
exacerbated because ultimately I wanted to talk, tell stores, share facts, divulge into wisdom and
create compelling certainties from combinations of facts, stories, and wisdom from travels,
writing, and abstract thinking. This was problematic because the professor seemed to be
focusing on the situation rather than the presentation of the material. Soon, like some kind of
mental sunglasses were clipped on, shielding me from the blinding sun, instead of squinting and
becoming strained by the brightness of the class I switched my agenda. I simply decided to
cogently get points across and then say to myself that the class could say whatever they wanted.
I would never be prohibiting the class from saying anything, but the difference would be that I
didn’t have the compulsion to argue or sway people to my beliefs or ideas about the text or
material we were reading, just to cogently express the bullet point-list of ideas I had crafted with
conviction. If it was an English class, I simply would say the insights I had from reading,
Hamlet, for example; a political science class, I would, for example, state my belief on the war
situation.
Don’t Personalize, Synchronize
Another thing that always happened to me was that I took things tremendously personally
in class. If a teacher or student said Plato was remarkably good at linguistic speaking and at
philosophy, I would automatically assume he was talking about me, when there were six or seven
people present in the class that such a comment could have easily indirectly referred to. This
thinking is great until the professor says something like, “The dinosaurs became extinct partially
because of their savagery”. If you continue to take every comment personally, you’ll interpret
this as an insult saying you are barbarically living in the past! Eventually, I realized the profound
liberation in glancing around and plugging in concepts, or verbally speaking to someone, to plug
in something, this makes the classroom more connected and liberates you from the sensation of
overwhelming over-personalization!
This synchronizes you with the rest of the class and instantly integrates you to the
interconnected web of reverence and respect of humanity because you become selfless and are a
conduit for knowledge, compliments, and benevolent exchange, engendering solutions and
creativity. Let’s embrace such change and ignite ourselves with passionate clarity to reverberate
the acoustic compassion of authentic truths that we cultivate, share, and learn from others, with
others, by others, or from our own soul. Our own soul has the capacity to go beyond boundaries
– to break our normal limits and to wrestle and comprehend the inexplicable. Let’s have faith in
such a profoundly expansive entity to ensure the cohesion and incredible resilience of the
authentic stimulation inherent in our active escalation of flexibility and essential certainty!
Creating enlightenment by tapping into the inner voice, contemporary essence awareness, and
remarkably connection of the soul!
Writing and speaking what we truly believe in – ideas that we came up with and crafted
on our known – is truly going into and then stepping out of our mental caves. Such an
association of looking into the cave allows us to magnify a situation so that we learn to see only
what we need. By looking back into my cave (after wearing sunglasses outside of it), I realized
what was bothering me about the situation – I was trying to have a right and wrong agenda and I
would always have to be personally verifying things other students said. If, for example, they
said that Hamlet was a generous character (using the English example) and I didn’t believe that I
would have to “correct them”. Not only was this right/wrong agenda incredibly draining upon
me, but it was outrageously draining and totalitarian on other people. By simply switching my
agenda to conveying my insights and points, I was liberated to enjoy the situation instead of
being some kind of situational guard dog. This liberated my mind from a flight/fight fear of
predation to compliment the other students (whereas before I had felt berated and needed to
attack them or defend myself), and it simply allowed my mind to be temporally more free. By
not needing to “fend off” “wrong” comments and praise “right” ones, I wasn’t exhausting
myself. Most importantly, my mind could be used for more resourceful things like saying
complimentary comments, rather than hounding after the adoption of my ideas like some kind of
vigilant tyrant.
Chapter 3: Emotional Authenticity: Sea Semester

An acute example of me expressing my opinion of an educational environment occurred
on a Sea Semester trip I experienced. The Sea semester excursion was advertised, and my
perception of it, was that it was to be an incredibly fun, alive, “cruise-like” experience. This was
not the case, showing me, quite bluntly and painfully, the necessity of verifying the reality of
perceptions. Instead of this grand cruise-like experience it was more like a slave ship. We were
forced to live in cramped 5-foot by 3-foot “cubbies” which would act as a makeshift storage for
all of our belongings for six weeks and as a makeshift bed. It was only a “makeshift” storage
device because we had to sleep with and on top of our belongings because of the limited space,
its pathetically small size for having 6 weeks worth of survival gear, the fact that you couldn’t
fully extend your body (having walls on each side), and only having a small drape separating
your ship from the outside world made the situation very “slave-like”. To enhance the slave-like
affect, we had to wear shackle-like “harnesses” that covered our hips, torso, and shoulders, and
while these chain-like harnesses were made out of nylon, the three to four connecting buckles
made these so-called protective devices seem like clinking and clanking shackles that Jacob
Marley from the X-mas carol, or real slaves being transported to America wore. It was a
remarkably distorting experience because I have these real visions of students marching in single
file, all wearing their shackles, up this ladder to go up and swab the deck. I couldn’t handle this.
The Guatemalan state bird – Quetzal – is a symbol of freedom and wealth. Wealth,
because its feathers and jade were the most sought after trade commodities, and freedom because
it would simply die in captivity – it couldn’t be contained. I am not saying that I am a symbol of
this Guatemalan national bird (I certainly don’t have expensive feathers decorating my body),
but I am saying that I certainly can relate to its fervent reluctance that is more of an incapacity (it
doesn’t have a choice, freedom or death in captivity, essentially, suicide) to be contained when I
was on the that ship. It wasn’t as though I was remember the series of Social Studies reading I
had learned in grade school about the slaves, and was making a message for them, or something,
I actually felt treated like a slave. We could only eat meals at certain times and couldn’t get food
anytime else. We could only sleep at certain times, too. I know in the Korean P.O.W camps,
Koreans tortured the prisoners in a mind-controlling game of torment to get them to confess their
knowledge by allowing them to sleep 4 hours a night, stand the other 20 hours, and constantly
interrupt their savory 4-hour bout of sleep. I felt their pain after surviving a mere 4 weeks from
that slave ship. We actually had 4-hour sleep shifts which could fall anywhere throughout the
day, mid-afternoon, early morning, dusk, so our minds and biorhythms (my melatonin was going
crazy) were being mutilated. Forced to do manual labor (hoisting sail lines), sleep in cubby-
sized squashed spaces, wear shackles, and eat and sleep on a predefined system, it wasn’t as
though I was losing my identity, I felt like my humanity was being shattered, something far more
severe – I felt as though I was becoming, because I had been treated like one, an animalistic,
barbaric slave that had done something wrong. There weren’t demerits or some kind of
punishment system, but the cruise was anything but savory.
I had originally went on board because I loved the ocean, and there I was, shackled,
under constant physical surveillance and control (even though there were three entrances and
exits to the cabin, we could only use one of them), and such insane regimen, I thought I would
implode with the conforming intolerant, totalitarian-like control around. Even the little things,
like deciding when you can eat, made me realize how much liberation is involved in such a
simple, seemingly, innocent and pointless choice. After a week and half, I craved the immense
freedom it seemed to decide when and where you would eat dinner. When I had to eat when
everyone else did, or risk going hungry, I felt even more like a machine that was being force-fed
“fuel”, manufacturing seafaring output to work towards removing the cogs in the mechanized
nautical vessel.
In the first few days many people became nauseas and sea-sick, they said because of the
movement of the boat (the one natural experience that wasn’t controlled or regimented on the
vessel) but it had to be, primarily, because of the insanely prisoner-like regimen of captivity,
when we thought we were going to be out on the water. I couldn’t’ believe how Hellish that
experience was ( especially for a person who swims, runs, gets exercise, writes, and eats food on
my own schedule) because the structure wasn’t helping me get things done, which I do normally.
Being incredibly prolific on my own, but somewhat stymied around other people, aside, of
course, from becoming more aware of how I react with other people, I couldn’t handle this
regimen, which was all moving towards the habilitating of the ship, because it felt like a
dictatorship. Even though it had a purpose – to ensure the ship functioned – the methods in
which such manufacturing of crew energy was immensely manipulative. The setting and striking
of the sails, with no wind, and the seemingly absence of movement in the ship, had become
absurd. It seemed like we were setting the sails (which never seemed to blow in the right
direction) just for the sake of exercise. I felt like the crew was a bunch of monkeys dancing and
hopping around, doodling on maps, and cranking the steering wheel occasionally, but the
majority of the time leaving the wheel “guide the boat” rotating and gyrating back and forth,
providing no direction whatsoever. Ironically, I had studied spider monkeys from land, while
they frolicked up in trees, in Mexico the earlier summer for a month. It seemed that now, I had
endeavored a new experience, simply living and attempting to survive with a group of “crew-
monkeys” on the ship. I don’t have anything against monkeys, and am not putting myself up on
a pedestal, but I am just saying that I couldn’t believe how randomly imprecise the crew
members were.
We had to do this routine check of the engine room where we measured the fluids, took
temperature readings of the turbines, and other various fuel and oil level checks, but I was
shocked at how imprecise everything was. Comparing the idea of a floatable piece of word,
being pushed across the surface of the water by the random and wavering and direction and
unpredictable speed of the wind, with the precision, accuracy and computerized connection to an
airplane was a stark and frightening contrast. After having seen the videos on shore (with the
intention of teaching us fire on ship, sinking ship, and man-overboard drills) that showed Live
footage (real actual videotape) of a ship running aground an ship sinking because two people
were attached to it (do to some harness and wires), I felt tremendously safe on board the ship for
a number of reasons. First, the chances of running aground were dramatically increased by the
monkey-see monkey-do imprecision of the navigation, the fact that we were using a map from
1995 – an 8-year old map – and only one – when there should have been four – depth-sounders
to measure and navigate the sea bottom. We learned on shore, during the oceanography
component (which, essentially, the ship was designed for, it was science ship with the agenda of
oceanography; a wind-driven ship sailing around the Caribbean with the purpose of conducting
oceanographic experiments) that islands can well-up via geological “hot spots” in a few years, so
the map, which was supposed to show water depth, could be haphazardly outdated, jeopardizing
the entire safety of the boat. The harness, in addition to being an incredible physical and
emotionally depleting burden of control and domination, was dangerous because of the live
footage of the ship running aground when two people died because they couldn’t disconnect
themselves with the boat, and went down with it. The idea of being harnessed, strapped in, to a
137-foot sinking 2-masted schooner is tragically frightening. Because of these very plausible
reasons, I felt remarkably unsafe on the boat, but hesitated, before telling anyone my concerns.
This period of hesitation was hastily and brusquely ruptured a week and a-half into the
sail when 3 students, the third mate, and myself were set striking and furling a sail. We were out
on the bowsprit – the front most point of the boat, a projection that projects outward and has not
actual “boat”, woodwork and whatnot underneath it – dangling in this precarious situation, with
harnesses on, trying to furl (tie down) the jib sol’ (sail). In this precarious situation this one
student couldn’t tie her knot – a slipper reef knot – and because she was the closest to the boat,
she was thwarting our reentrance to the boat, jeopardizing our safety. After trying to remind her
how to retie it, eventually, the third mate reached over and said, “God, I can’t watch this
anymore”, retied the knot for her, so we all could reenter the boat.
For some psychological reason, that phrase, coupled with the high tensions out on the
bowsprit made me realize I can’t watch this boat continue floating and traveling on the ocean in
such a haphazard, dangerous fashion – I became instantaneously committed to and genuinely
practicing authentic communication. This shows you the powerful psychological, emotional,
and physiological impact of language on person’s entire disposition – hearing those words, “God,
I can’t take this anymore” from an authority figure (the third mate) empowered me to not only
express my concerns but become appalled at how long I had hesitated to express them. The very
program had planted the validity of my seeds of concern, and now, was causing me to examine
their harvest. I immediately talked to the captain and said how unsafe I felt on the ship, pointing
out, incessantly, the 8-year old map and the single depth sounder, and the dangerous (even
though their intention was safety) harnesses. After discussing this approach more carefully, I
realized that maybe I had unintentionally questioned his authority because he immediately
ordered me to not discuss the incident on deck, but down below in the sealed-off captains
quarters. In other words, it immediately became an “adult” conversation.
I discussed how, sure, the map was adjusted for variation (true north) after the 8-year
span, but nothing could compensate the inaccurate “depth markings”. I was relentless because I
had not other option – to call parents, leave the boat -- a change had to be produced. I was
shocked at how imprecisely we measured our speed (with a log that dangled behind the boat) as
our primary source of total traveled distance. I had been an A+ nautical science student on show,
too, the Captain new this, and I knew it – my thinking made perfect sense to me, and probably,
frighteningly enough for him, had some validity in his eyes, despite the traditions he had
followed all of his seafaring days. And tradition and heritage is what we talked about for the
next 5 hours!
After that the captain looked severely stressed out, which, maybe through some
schadenfreude (German for laughing at misfortune), but more likely because it showed he was
thinking stuff out. When he looked calm and collected, I was eerily unsure about what kind of
conclusion he had arranged – whatever it was, the decision had not involved my choice, he had
decided, like some inanimate object -- something I certainly am not, especially when I realize I
shouldn’t hesitate in communicating myself on board the ship – had covertly crafted a plan for
me. Eventually, the talks subsided, I was told to stay down below after my 40 hour bout of no
sleep (which was due to simultaneously feeling concerned about my safety on the boat, and the
excitement from what seemed like being on a gigantic surfboard with 24 intellectual, talented,
extremely cool students) and two days later, this impromptu, unplanned stop in the Bahamas was
announced. All of us were excited because we would get the opportunity to explore and
experience new soil – which was, according to the Maritime studies component, the purpose of
travel – to share with others who didn’t have the opportunity to travel, experiences and
interpretations from the other lands. Of course, the best method of relating to a new, unknown
environment, is actually stepping out, traveling there, and making your own interpretations,
instead of having to interpret and translate some one else’s perception – which, to you, is,
essentially, a second-hand, as opposed to a primary, source. But it held true that many of the
things I pointed out – the poor navigational depth sounding and the quickness of new islands
welling up, and the purpose of travel – I had learned from the SEA program itself and protested
when they began to remarkably contradict themselves. After landing in the Bahamas, our
anticipation to get off the cramped, slave boat, and explore a new country – step on the terrain of
a new world – was brusquely severed when the captain said, “Okay, no one else is getting off the
boat. John, this is your ticket back to Chicago”. And he pretty much forced me to get off the boat
and wait in the airport for seven hours!
Now, I was in shock with a heterogeneous mixture of grasping and liberation at the idea
of having to leave such an awesome “gigantic surfboard” and 24 of the coolest, most talented,
and profoundly intellectual students I had ever seen, but simultaneously being freed of the
policy-driven shackles, physical shackles, and chains of the brutally slave-like regimen of the
Corwith Cramer. Because of this, there was no way I was going to wait in the airport for that
long, so I left my bags, and the chief scientist, who was waiting with me, and started walking
towards the ocean. The chief scientist caught up with me in a cab, and rolled with me saying that
we needed to go back to the airport, but I put my hands in a “prayer” position (to not have my
thinking be derailed) and, determined to get to the ocean, kept marching forward. Eventually,
the 30-year chief scientist was out and about walking with we, and we couldn’t decide to go to
the ocean (my choice) or back to the airport (her choice), so I suggested walking around in
circles. And there I was, walking around in physical and psychological circles of indecision with
a 30-year old chief scientist on the side of a Bahamian highway! Eventually, we conciliated to
get in a cab-van go to the ocean, then return to the airport. One thing I noticed once we hit land,
was how much remarkably older the chief scientist looked ,with her purse, clothes, and make-up
(on the boat, I had felt, everyone (especially the chief scientist) looked and acted much younger –
around 14 or 15 years old, sometimes 12. But on land, the image took over and everything and
every person seemed more daunting and elderly. Maybe this was because of my age-old
relationship with the historical sea, which has experienced so many violent storms, tossed waves,
calm smooth-as-glass winds, bloody naval battles, and starry, moonless nights, that made me feel
more rooted, older, and stronger. But the contrast was shocking on shore. Eventually we drove
around with the intention to drive to the ocean, but stopped at this office building for about 30
minutes to speak (and I wasn’t sure what the hold up was, but was talking about how surfing was
more important than eating) then headed in the direction of the ocean, but stopped at the hospital.
I protested, “What the heck is going on here! I thought we were going to the ocean”. The thirty-
year old chief scientist told me, “John, we are going to the hospital because you have been acting
irrational”. Now, I had no idea what could happen in the medical corridors of the hospital with a
“chain of command” procedure. Even though there is usually some kind of diagnosis and
questioning, I feared the chief scientist would use her authority to pass me off to a doctor who
would pass me off to a nurse, who would pass me off to a security guard, who, at that time,
would just be following orders to bind me in a straight jacket and pump me full of drugs or
something! So we both raised our voices, I said, “No I am not going in there!” She said, “Yes,
you are!” Then I had to physically remove her hand from the lock, slide open the door, and
bolted out of the van and was running around the Bahamas for the next 3-4 hours. During that
time I met a director, after going away from the civilized part of the Bahamas (where the famous
Atlantis hotel, with a waterslide was, which I had actually visited, but certainly didn’t recognize,
when I was a kid. I asked a person when I had gotten into a very industrial shipping area with
metalwork being done on boats, which way to the docks, and she pointed back towards the hotel
area and said almost as an omen, to “go back that way, that is better for me”. But the journey
was awesome.
During this mini-Odyssey on the new soil, while all my friends were back on the ship, I,
an Odysseus just having escaped the wicked cave of the Cyclops, found an island that bore two
surfboards in the distance. I crossed this bridge and saw two people aiming cameras at the
surfboards, which were propped up against an RV. When I asked them what they were doing,
they said this was a “hot set“ and were shooting a surfing movie. I saw people layering the
ground with leaves, to help create the mood of the scene, while, as I was told, the actor drove
around the mini-island. Eventually the director showed up, a big talkative, controlling and
gregarious fellow, showed up angered. He said you can’t be here (I had, unintentionally snuck in
around the fence in an attempt to get to the ocean) and I protested that my captain (whom I now
dubbed “Bin Laden” instead of “Binh Lee” because of his tyrannical torts and methods) had just
kicked me off the ship and you’re kicking me off the island. Where should I go?” I said, “Can’t
I just borrow a surfboard, you’re a surfer, you know how awesome it is!” He said no and called
for security to pick me up.
A very burly, Neanderthal-like African American security guard glided up and asked me
with much intimidation and anger in his face: “You don’t want trouble do you?” I immediately
said, “No” and was soon forced into a van (feeling like I was now being kidnapped after just
being enslaved) and was driven to the perimeter of the “hot set” back on the main island with a
resounding slam of a chain-linked gate fence in front of me. It felt like I was in prison, peering
through the chinks in the fence. But aside from being denied the ability to use the surfboards, I
was shocked at the timing of such prohibition. Right when I found the ideal place (with
beautifully breaking waves of a crystal clear beach break) with boards, on a private island,
opposition arose. It seems like if you pause and ponder that something is too good to be true,
sometimes you are prevented from experiencing that entity and it, in actuality, truly becomes too
good to be true. I ended up finding my way back to the boat, after stopping at a man doing
carpentry on an abandoned looking building. I shouted up to him, because he was on the second
floor, “What are you working on?!”
He informed me that he was working on building and starting a restaurant and I told him
if I stuck around (in a very “Holden Caulfield-like” way) that I would definitely apply for work.
I knew people from the other boat (the Tahitian cruise track) were planning to wait tables after
their cruise was over, and, even though my cruise had ended unexpectedly early, the idea of
working in the Bahamas was captivating and intriguing. So instead of dodging and burying the
idea I investigated some French restaurants, asking about employee requirements and experience
necessities, and eventually found my way back to the boat. Surprisingly , I was greeted by a
gentleman in a golf cart, who referred to me as “Big John” to escort me back to the boat. It was
as though I had been exiled and chased out like a rebellious, lunatic crook and was now being
readmitted to the docks as though I was a VIP guest of honor! It was the weirdest thing back on
the boat because everyone simply ate their dinner (at the normal time, of course), acted
completely normal, and being 1 foot away from new soil, an entirely new country, had never left
the boat. They kept doing lookout and watch outs – completely meaningless now that we were
docked – as though they were marionette minions (like the team mind-controlled under in the
move, “Fight Club”) with know will -- or awareness of the surroundings – of their own.
I ended up flying back to Chicago the next day, after delaying the cruise a day, causing an
unplanned stop in the Bahamas, walking around in circles with a 30-year old woman scientist,
meeting a surf-video director, being shackled and enslaved, and having a riveting and viciously
charged conversation with the captain of my ship! IT was an adventurous like no other, and I
such splendid travel, with suspense, personal intrigue, personal danger, fear, liberation, and
finally, joy, could never be replicated in anything other than a magnificent story of tragedy,
freedom, authority, and truth. Telling this as a fictitious story would simply be too risky because
of its outrageous circumstances. The difference between my sea semester experience and such a
potent story is that it took place in reality – with more tragic authority, freedom, and truth that
could ever be imagined by any storyteller!

*****
After that Sea Semester I was charged up, here is the beginning of a letter I planned to
write to the Dean of my school (someone I would never consider talking to before the sea
semester experience because of sheer intimidation!):
Dear Ms. Mcleod,
I wanted to inform you of some of the events that occurred on board the S191-Cramer
cruise around the Caribbean. Basically, in a nutshell, I was very simply concerned for my safety
on board the ship. I felt that I was put in dangerous situations and circumstances the
jeopardized my safety on boat the sailing vessel.
On board the Cramer I was put under section "Safety" section of "Vessel Operations".
I am not criticizing the methods, procedures, nor guidelines that were used to conduct life on
board the Cramer, nor the crews' (captain, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd mate, etc) application of these
guidelines, but I am simply stating some facts and reactions, which I thought to be rational, to
some of the events regarding the boat life of the Corwith Cramer, S191.
I never finished it, but this shows how charged up I was about the incident in terms of
legal policy (something I usually never choose to interact with). By the emotional and
experiential impact was the most life-altering because I had never approached (and reprimanded,
unbelievable!) an authority figure like that, but doing so was a necessity for my survival. It
became the ultimate example of turning lemons into lemonade and connecting to the source of
the experience not as a hardship, but as an incredibly intrepid, trying, and challenging
experience.
I have recently realized that I tell people my Seas semester story because when my father
picked me up at the airport, he said he hadn’t met this one person (the Dean of the program), and
I transcribed that to meet who I really was, so I told him the story of the ship, captain, and depth
sounders.
Ever since them I have associated that story with introducing myself to other people, but
that is not the case! In fact, the story is incredibly invigorating and alive, full of purpose, but
people can certainly get to know me other ways as well. Let’s continue to embrace the power
and potential for connecting with other people by continuing to share our experiences,
adventures, and travels, but recognize that our enthusiasm or splinter of compassion reveals our
true identity of authenticity to people. Embracing the realistic certainty of love allows us to
follow our heart because we will be guided by the strongest force imaginable.
Grand Consummation
The people in the woods survival example died because they became caught up in
emotions, where the emotions of panic, dear, and doubt, prevented them from taking action and
utilizing their surroundings to build a fort, find berries, and do whatever necessary to survive. I
removed struggle in the classroom by changing my perception, realizing the importance of
communicating my messages (but not needing to influence or persuade people), and the
poignancy of not taking things personally. On the ship, I freed myself from the physical,
emotional, and psychological bonds of slavery, regimen, conformity, and commands by
communicating my emotions. The bottom-line here : the poignancy of emotions coupled with
communication. In the classroom, the communication of messages aroused emotions, by
communicating with myself to not take it personally, but to distribute the perceptions of
compliment and/or insult with the rest of the class relinquished the exhausting shackles of feeling
emotionally obligated to prove myself. Also, by communicating my thoughts and emotions, I
was doing myself a favor – clearing and digesting my mind – not for the sake of sharing
knowledge and insight, I was doing three things: connecting myself to my fellow humans more
authentically, clearing my mind, and allowing them an opportunity for real discussion of my
thoughts, reactions, and ideas. The ship example is the most lucid: expressing and being
authentic with my emotions by communicating them to who should hear them (I normally
communicated with my parents) the captain, I quickly caused changes, that, at the time may have
seemed unfair or brusque or covert (with the phone calls), but ultimately placed me into an
emotionally more adaptive, generative, and comfortable area. This is true for every
circumstance, communicating to yourself to not take classroom comments personally fixates you
in a welcoming emotional environment instead of a battle, calming your fears, places you in a
safer emotional environment if your in the woods, and expressing your emotions in the case of
the ship gets you off the boat. Let’s continue to fervently, lucidly, and creatively communicate
our emotions – through humor, directness, conviction, and most importantly, authenticity -- so
that we don’t become subjects of them, but use their energy to impassion and rejuvenate our
soul!
Communicating to the Source

It is incredibly important to communicate to the source of our ingenuity and not connect
an overly-sophisticated resemblance and expectation to people with authority . For the longest
time I looked at authority figures as unapproachable. If I had a problem with an authority figure,
I would be forced to talk to someone else about the person in authority because I created an “out
of bounds” area where I only felt like I could receive commands from authority figures never
question, and certainly never argue with them. This crippled my relationship in the classroom
and left me with a myopic uncertainty about how to go about even asking questions to authority
figures about assignments, etc. and whatnot. This all changed after the SEA semester where I
had no choice but to talk to the captain about my concerns of safety, and this situation proved to
be remarkably awakening because of the expedient, direct, and hastily manner in which the thing
was resolved. By grounding ourselves to a point of religion to understand certainty of purpose,
we can unite our authentic verisimilitudes and understand the necessity of personal
comprehension. When we truly completely understand our internal motivations – an incredibly
complex concept – we can rejuvenate our soul by carrying out the necessary predilections for
things that vitalize our soul. We must understand why we spend hours wasting our life away
watching television, eating junk food, and engaging in frustrating loops and embrace the
certainty of purpose inherent in our capacity for love. Loving thyself will allow your patterns
and vivacious habits to only by authentically rejuvenating because they will synchronize with the
verisimilitudes of the soul! By targeting the teacher, the authority figure, the boss, we do
ourselves a huge favor because we are honest to ourselves, don’t dwindle in commiseration
(whining about stuff) and take the quickest route to producing a change that will remedy the
problem that irritates you. It takes courage and confidence, but we must make certain we have
authentic outlets for communication or risk going around in meaningless circles: take a deep
breath; go to the source and say what you must say after planning it out! Love life to its fullest!
Harnessing the Reaction the Authentic Source: Childhood Mind
In a book called Free Play in a chapter called “Childhood’s End”, Steven Nachmanovitch
quotes Rollo May’s poem regarding the crucial need to preserve the creative and artistic voice:
“The creative artist and poet and saint must fight the actual (as opposed to ideal) gods of our
society – the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success, and exploitative
power. These are the ‘idols’ of society that are worshipped by multitudes of people”
These gods of exploitation, materialism, and apathy destroy and debilitate our very
essence by denying our capacity to associate with the core of our existence. The core of our
existence is never a turbulent, convoluted, confusion place but a psychological and spiritual
location of placid serenity. We can harness this center only by severing the deifying ties that so
many members of society have with the “actualized gods” and create a poignant connection with
the innovate mind of our childhood voice.
In the same book Nachmanovitch gives a metaphorical example of how education seems
to examine children as a Lockeian tabula rasa, and erase the “children’s from-the-top-down
knowledge and try to fill them instead with simplistic bottoms-up knowledge” (p.116). The
author uses the example of a young student solving the problem of 3-5 and the teacher tells them
that such numbers (negative integers) aren’t supposed to be taught in third grade. Are the school
standards limiting our potential to adaptively learn? Does education limit those curious and
eager to stimulate their brains or subdue this passion for discovery. Nachmanovitch responds
“The adventures, difficulties, and even suffering inherent in growing up can serve to develop or
educe our original voice, but more often they bury it”. The educational practices many times
suffocate this ingenuity by blandly routing it through congested, generic forms of instruction.
The student brilliantly responds with an artistically ingenious description of negative numbers:
“It’s like looking at your reflection in a pool of water. It goes as far down as you go up”. I could
not conjure up such a vividly imaginative and clarifying description that is not only didactic (it
succinctly and efficiently defines the nature of negative numbers) but accessible on a wide
variety of age levels (a definition useful to youthful and elderly) if I did not consult my
childhood voice. Nachmanovitch says this description “is the original mind in action, the purest
form of Zen”. This connection, no doubt, produces brilliant images provoking clarity without
the long-winded rants of the adult ego. This simple description from the third-grade student
illustrates the efficiency, eloquence, and intellectual capacity for creativity of the childhood
voice. It is a voice that imperiously supersedes and dominates over the lesser “voices” of
materialism, power exploitation, and apathetic indifference because of its pristine connection to
the soul.
The voice of the child is very similar to the ingenuity of a talented actor because an actor
uses his or her feelings to convey a piece poignantly just as a child naturally does – they use their
own feelings. And, with acting, it is the raw, pure expression of the thespian’s own feelings that
make a piece or part so magnificent and recognizable to the emotional spectrum of the audience.
This impassionate nature of the actor that wins Oscars is so highly praised because of the
emotionally congruent expression of the childhood voice within the aged actor. This authentic
expression causes the audience to share a moment of mutual understanding and relate to the actor
with emotions of their own. This voice of clarity, conviction and congruency must not be
destroyed. Unfortunately, as Nachmanovitch points out this goal only exists in the ideal
educational world: “Ideally, schools exist to preserve and regenerate learning and the arts, to give
children the tools with which they may create the future. More often than naught however,
schools, “produce uniform, media-minded grown-ups to feed the marketplace with workers, with
managers, and with consumers” (p. 116). This Orwellian interpretation of schools appears
similar to brain-washing or something, but the manufacturing of generic marketplace drones is
usually the output of schools. This, to our chagrin, logically makes sense: when a standardized
and generically structured environment rifles individuals through a four-year program that is
dead-bolted and formulaically pinioned into the generational output of alumni, graduates, and
“educated” individuals, you can only expect a bulk supply of “educated” clones. The “educated”
is in quotations because it implies the “actual” (like the Gods of exploitation, apathy, and
materialism) static and unshaping pattern of mutating young students into adults by slapping
information into their “unawakened” minds, when, in reality, the highest caliber of awareness
and alertness intrinsically resides in the very cognitive patterns most educations try to dispel: the
creative thinking of a child.
“Schools can nurture creativity in children, but they also destroy it, and all too often do.”
I remember one time I was returning to an old girlfriend’s house, whom of which I, for
quite awhile, felt deeply in love with, and encountered some very strange behavior on the home
front. She and her family had moved out and new residents had already begun to move in.
When I introduced myself to the new residents, in kind of an awkward situation, where I said I
knew the former residents, they congenially said “Hello”, but then seemed to put up this wall
severing me from their abode. Now, of course it was private property, but I wanted to just go see
the old room of the girlfriend to kind of put mental and psychological closure to my relationship
with her. But when I tried to do this by “using the restroom”, they said none of them worked and
shoved me off. Now, only had gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before, but clearly, this was a
situation where they seemed to be purposely keeping stuff from me – it felt like, because they
picked up that I wanted to see the room. So I ended up trying to peek in the that window and
they came screaming after me saying “what are you doing”, I picked up their blatant hostility
(which was merited in some ways because technically I was on their private property) and said I
didn’t want to cause trouble nor trespass. I ended up going back that night, simply to alleviate
my idiosyncratic way to “let go” of the experience and was only on their property for a good 10
seconds and peaked in the window, barely seeing stuff with the blinds semi-drawn, but it was
practical response contradicting my intuitive, almost unexplainable endeavor, which produce
very odd results, no doubt.
The problem with form of education is the production of mundane subdued creativity.
Instead of investigating every interesting thing in life, we become routed into isolated patterns of
what’s “supposed” to be meaningful, what is supposed to be proper, and most dangerously, what
is supposed to be expected of the common adult. The problematic structure with this
conformism is that it recursively supports itself: if someone tries to deny the system, they are
looked at as a late-blooming rebellious “teenager mind” that is unwilling to accept the “realities”
of the adult world. Well, the typical world of adulthood remains to be the murder of reality
because we are taught to forget some of the most import values like curiosity, passion, and
artistic thinking, and told to discard “improper” or “immature” personality traits such as
gregariousness, spontaneity, and inquisition.
This exclusion and misconstrued interpretation of the fundamental elements of the
individuality of the humankind makes words like “immature” very dangerous to the spirit of the
child because such a label implies so much intellectually-biased and negative weight to a
passionate spirit that it almost inevitably causes it to collapse into the mundane conformity that
most educations aim to emulate. When you label someone as “immature” you provoke a number
of things. First, you cause them to consider anything creative and artistic as childish, and that
such childish is wrong and improper. This illustrates a perfect example of “label being libel”; the
label debilitates and vilifies in the same method, producing detrimentally incapacitating affects,
as an actual disparagement or insult.

So, when someone labels (libels) someone or you as “immature”, don’t fight it, because
then you get caught in the trap of appearing as a “late-blooming teen rebellious mind unwilling
to commit to the obligations of adulthood”. Instead, embrace it and respond, “Yes, it is immature
and childish”. Then we have commenced the journey, heading in the direction of ingenuity and
realistic clarity, not the denial of obfuscation. Denial or avoidance of the fact that most adult
views (sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, having imbalanced exercise and health routine) are
in fact obfuscating, or producing confusion and doubt, is the primary device that perpetuates
such a debilitating and crippling ideology.
The problem with most schools is that the attendees from them are either 1) completely
clueless about the process of deactivating their stimulating childhood voice; or 2) lack the
capacity and/or the motivation to avoid the destruction our most innately dynamic and
authentically nourishing gift. The promotion of self-nourishment, automatically helps to
dismantle the disaggregating affects of generic education by causing us to examine our soul and
personality form an evocatively personalized view, not through the incriminating eyes of society.
Nachmanovitch warns that “sooner or later our wings get clipped. The real world created by
grown-ups comes to bear down upon growing children, molding them into progressively more
predictable members of society”.
This is not suggesting that being unpredictable and capricious will deter one from the
captivating process of dismantling the childhood voice, but to examine the critically fallacious
process of “growing up”. Nachmanovitch points out that children are molded precisely when
their minds are growing up. Growth, naturally, has to be a time of trial-and-error, questioning,
and mysterious “pieces of the puzzle” (as opposed to finished product) and this is the precise
stage when stagnant suggestions of the adult “mold” of conformity are simultaneously most
viciously encroached and most widely sought after. It is simply the general mental framework
and not the specific, confining mindset of the adult “grown-up” that the burgeoning childhood
mind seeks after. Unfortunately, the tactful system of “maturity” (aka crippling and suffocated
the creative ingenuity of the child) makes the most prevalently available mental framework the
“adult one”, as opposed to the actor, the artist, the inspirational speaker, or the creative thinker.
How do we get around this seemingly infallible system producing unwavering fallibility
in the confinement, not expansion, of our minds? We must find a profession, environment, and
group that adopts a perception of the world that is not only aware of the confining, beleaguered
mental “prescriptions” encroached by the typical adult world, but fervently fights for the
preservation of the passionate ingenuity of the childhood mind, and the cultivation of that
spiritually-aligned intellectual strength. We mustn’t simply look as the childhood mind as a
subliminal asset, but we must fight to preserve it, cultivate it, and express it every moment we
get. Furthermore, we should aim to cultivate moments where its expression will have an impact
– positive or negative – because the mere existence (be it banned, controversial, or appraised) of
such a forgotten and nearly-extinct voice of guidance is the first step to instigating a change
where the childhood voice is embraced and constructively nourished in schools.
But, as Nachmanovitch cogently illustrates, it is not just the schools that produce this
“devolutionary” concept of the mind: “our newest and most powerful educational institutions,
television and pop music, are even more thorough than school in inculcating mass-produced
conformity” (117). The “idiot box” effect – where television and radio turn their audience into
zombie-like followers, worshipping for conformist cultural norm – transcribes its global message
of stagnant invariability with a captivating molding, not educating, of the mind. Nachmanovitch
says that peopled end up being a kind of food to be “gobbled up by the system” (117). So the
consumers become consumed, just as revolutions consume those who started them. During the
French revolution and the Reign of Terror in 1789 the instigators, Danton, Marat, and
Robespierre all meet incredibly brutally deaths, just as the consumers of the marketplace meet
their crippling end with the subdued normalcy of their, now, blandly unconstructive minds.
Furthermore, Nachmanovitch points out that the scariest result of this mass-produced
conformity system is the deteriorating of the creatively, brilliant mind: “The simplicity,
intelligence, and power of the mind at play become homogenized into complexity, conformity,
and weakness” (117). This system not only conforms but blurs and normalizes the artistic
creativity of the mind at play, the childhood mind. We must dismantle this conformity by
avoiding the temptation to surrender to such a debilitating system; we have to use our wings to
avoid them from being clipped. However, in this pursuit of the creative expansion of the
childhood mind, we must not, like Icarus, fly to high or to close to the sun, or we risk
plummeting into being creative to boast, and not for some crucial purpose, like communicating
sincerity.
We don’t want to undergo neutron-like collapse or implosion of such inspirational
imagination, where direction and creativity become muddled into doubt and conformity. This is
not saying to limit the childhood mind but to ensure that we don’t soar with creativity simply for
the sake of spiting the “adult norm” because this would draw unnecessary deteriorating attention.
Instead, lets harness every element of the creative craft of the Zen-like originality of the
childhood mind. The ancient Taoist master, Lao Tzu, tells us in his Tao to Ching (Book of the
Way) to “stop trying to control. / let go of fixed plans and concepts, / and the world will govern
itself” (57). This self-governance is more like self-construction, when the relinquishment of
fixed plans and concepts unhinders the natural brilliance, creativity, and free-flowing intelligence
of childhood voice, ensuring a not a denial, but a celebration of individual compassion,
awareness, and eclectic thinking. Let’s create a congregation of peace and serenity by allowing
the naturalistic growth of the childhood mind to stimulate the soul on an authentic level, allowing
us to embrace the monumental practice of soaring with creative gusto. However, we must stop
looking for, or patiently waiting for, the “allowing” the “permission” of opportunistic for
creative, child-like ingenious expression because of their scarcity and actually create the space
and the time for those expression.

Chapter 4: Acting Versus Procession (Thinking verse Doing)

We must transcribe our process from thinking to doing so that we don’t have purging
bouts of air, of child-hood expression, but -- like the authentic and ingenious, talented actor, who
gets swept up in the moment and believes the reality the stage or the scene – completely absorb
this generative and uplifting capacity of the childhood voice not as an occasional luxury of
expression but as fundamental conduit that must defended and artistically nurtured to its
compassionate potential. Yet, how can we embrace action and conviction when, as
Nachmanovitch points out, “every bit of our culture is school” (117); this confining conforming
system.
Indeed, the omnipresence of the conformity system is very frightening: “education,
business, media, politics, and above all the family, the very institutions that might be the
instruments for expanding human expressiveness, collude to induce conformism” (117). We
must make changes so that these institutions that compose our society nurture the free play,
childhood voice, not destroy and reduce to “keep things going on a humdrum level”. This
humdrum level is precisely the indifference that kills the childhood voice because its goal is the
complete opposite of free play: by aiming a standard level, a humdrum level, the ambition of
normalcy of most of these institutions slaughter the most enunciating element of the childhood
voice: the capacity to think outside the norm, outside the box. That characteristic is what
allowed Einstein’s, Edison’s, Joyce’s, and many of the other great minds to thrive. They couldn’t
have invented those scientific advancements or innovative writing techniques without avoiding
the humdrum level, embracing the childhood mind, and thinking outside the box.
Preserving this brilliant childhood mind is so crucial, but must be accomplished by
changing the goals of institutions to evoke expansive, unique thinking, and not to subdue it. I
remember a creative second grade teacher, Ms. Willig, who taught my classmates and I words
like “Jubilant”, conducted “Travels to other countries” (complete with passports) in the
classroom, and read Roald Dahl out loud with different voices. Her creativity allowed me to
access my suppressed childhood voice and write some of the greatest creative writing stories at
such a young age. And yet, despite the incredibly nurturing, uplifting, and teaching that enriched
the soul, this teacher was asked to leave because of methods “to substandard”. We have to
abolish “standard” or risk the abolishment of our creative soul. The solution, obviously, is not to
eradicate business, educational, political, and media-based institutions but to change their norms
to seek out people like Ms. Willig and promote the cultivation of the childhood voice.
Only when this childhood voice has been liberated can one have a base that is
individualized and creative enough to transform hatred into compassion, fear into love,
incrimination into laud, pain into laughter, and liability into poignant humor. The childhood
voice, like the Tao, “can’t be…honored or brought into disgrace. / It gives itself up continually. /
That is why it endures” (56). Let’s not only endure, but further the evocation of this magnificent
gift of childhood voice.
Accessing the Voice

“Creative perceptions seem extraordinary or special to us”, according to Nachmanovitch,
because we base our reality on common, everyday assumptions. When we wake up, we expect
our toothbrush to be where we left it, and certain people to say “Morning” to us, and basically,
our day is permeated with “tacit assumptions [that] we come to take for granted after
innumerable subtle learning experiences in daily life” (117). All of those subtle learning
experiences make up our reality. If we can do something spontaneous or not take those
assumptions for granted, we can change our perceptive lens and instantly see new, most often,
very insightful and creative perceptions on things. Travel, brainstorming, trying something new,
all of those things are aids that help us cultivate creative perceptions instead of dragging through
life’s tacit assumptions.
Nachmanovitch recalls a story where a man on a train discovers he’s sitting next to
Picasso and begins talking about how modern art doesn’t faithfully represent reality. Picasso
asks him, “what does represent reality?” and the man show’s Picasso a wallet-sized photo of his
wife and says, “that’s what my wife really looks like”. Picasso, with his creative perception of
the world, rotates and examines the photo and creatively and wittily responds, “She’s very small
and flat!” The man’s tacit assumptions had to have been given a jolt because his wife is three-
dimensional and is larger than a 2 by 2 inches! Instead of allowing the presence of a “humdrum”
level expressiveness and tacit assumptions of reality, let’s strive to question our perceptive
assumptions and embrace the creative and extraordinary outlooks by using the childhood voice.
School or Training
Nachmanovitch commonly refers to the difference between training and education.
“Training is for the purpose of passing on specific information necessary to perform a
specialized activity” (118). Unfortunately, this training is misconceived as education and
teachers “train” students, “stuffing a passive person full of preconceived knowledge” (118). I
have actually very rarely had a teacher who educates, “to draw out or evoke that which is latent;
education then means drawing out the person’s latent capacities for understanding and
living” (118). We must embrace, seek out, or, most effectively, create a learning environment
that understands the concept of education, and the crucial distinction between “educe” and
“train”. Training certainly has a useful place, but, all too often, training becomes the norm for
the sake of keeping things on the “humdrum” level and continuing the conformist machine. If
you want to learn a craft, specialty, or specific technology, sign up for a training tutorial, but if
you want to educe your natural strengths, seek out the rare learning environment that knows what
education means.
Wild or Domesticated
Nachmanovitch uses the example of a wild field filled with varieties of plants, bugs, and
tiny animals. This natural field – unhindered by a debilitating system -- shows balance and
adaptability of nature in all seasons. In contrast, a domesticated field is never diverse and
adaptive. “Domesticated animals and plants are genetically uniform because they are bred for a
purpose”. The first example represents diversity, while the second, domesticated, example
represents “monoculture”. Monoculture, according to biologists is the “conformity taught by the

big school (culture) that surrounds us. Monoculture leads, invariably, to a loss of options, which
leads to instability” (118). If you want to produce a corn or wheat harvest, obviously, you will
plant a domesticated field, but people are not crops. This is not the Matrix, where human beings
are harvested. We are never supposed to be immersed in a cash crop of domesticity.
In the November 12, 2004 article of “When I was 8” by Margy Rochlin, Tom Hanks
expresses how his wild (undomesticated) upbringing, where he was raised like wolves, led to the
production of his scintillating acting talent. Tom Hanks’s childhood was a creativity and
inspirational generator where he and he and his brothers emotionally liberated themselves and
watched television: “with all that freedom, it was an extremely fertile time. Inspiration came
almost completely through popular culture. Television was huge. We watched television while
we played on the couch with little army men or astronauts.” (p. 8). From astronauts to free-reign
time with no restrictions, the nurturing environment of liberation shaped the creative base for
Hanks’s acting career.
When his dad got remarried, his parents tried to put rules on him and his brothers, but
Hanks says “You couldn’t take three kids – essentially feral wolf-boys – who’d been raising
themselves, for good or bad, and take that freedom away. We’d gone through very formative
years where we’d say “Oh, I can do this myself!” It was like trying to take a nomadic tribe and
put them in a house in the suburbs. Quite frankly, it fell apart very quickly.” (p.8). This taste of
freedom wasn’t barbaric, but producing authenticity. He also experienced it riding the four hour
bus every Christmas from his home to Northern California: “It was like traveling along in a
peaceful cocoon. It fueled the imagination” (p. 8) His common freedom earlier on was what
provided him with the tools of inspiration, dynamism, and pure freedom to be the award-winning
actor.
Just like the freedom that was once experienced by Tom Hanks and his siblings was
liberated it couldn’t be brought back into domesticity; they had been set loose on the field and
weren’t, at any cost, returning. Domestication would have killed Hanks, and if it weren’t for his
undomesticated, wild upbringing, amazing works like “Big”, “Forest Gump”, “Saving Private
Ryan”, and “Philadelphia” to name a small few, would never have been possible.
Domestication is the sedative that conforms and narrows our alternatives. This narrowing
of options quickly leads to instability because a domesticated individual cannot adapt. When you
decide to build a house, for example, you have a variety of mediums (wood, plaster, adobe,
cement) to choose from and wild variety of designs (1-story, 2-story, lean-to, “on stilts” etc).
Because of the versatility you can create an abode that will survive any environment – heavy
rains, intense heat or cold, or tropical environment, mountainous, seaside, etc. Just imagine if
you always had to build the exact same house, with the exact same materials. Such overly-
conforming domestication would make half of the places in the world that provide happy habitats
for people, uninhabitable! The same goes for speciation, the number two causes of extinction
are extreme specialization and localized distribution. Extreme specialization (doesn’t that sound
like “training?) where a species survives on a very limited food supply (only eating June beetles,
for example) or small temperature range (a tropical environment from 80°-81°F, for example)
makes extinction very likely because if the only food source is taken out, or the temperature
fluctuates a degree, the species will be wiped out. Localized distribution is where an entire
species is located in a small area. A natural disaster are drastic change in that environment would
wipe out the entire species. Domestication produces localized distribution and extreme
specialization because it uniformly breeds and manufactures people to be specialized (like the
species who can only feed on a June beetle) in a single area like computers, networking, or
engineering and if jobs aren’t’ available in that field, they will vocationally become extinct.
Domestication commonly causes people to be very localized in their environment and very rarely
leave a home base.
This shows us not for only the preservation of creativity and diversity, we must examine
the source of Domestication, and eradicate it completely, to save our soul from becoming extinct!
Instead of educing people to adapt to a variety of environments with tactful and wise versatility,
domestication creates a pretense for being locked into a pattern for life! This monoculture,
produced by domestication abominates learning. “The exploratory spirit thrives on variety and
free play – but many of our institutions manage to kill it by putting it into small boxes” (118).
This absurd compartmentalization of boxes cripples the brilliance of people by binding and
blinding the creativity of the soul. Something as alive and creative as the all-compassionate soul
can’t be institutionalized in the normal sense, and it certainly can’t be compartmentalized into
boxes. This is a very hot topic.
Being compartmentalized fragments, our innately cohesive creativity degenerates our
once vivacious spirit to a disparate wreckage. Sometimes the very areas of academia or specific
professions obliterate the spirit because of there overspecialization: “We confront a proliferation
of disciplines and ‘zoologies’, most of which function primarily to protect their own professional
turf” (119). A certain specialization is crucial to handle a large endeavor or specific activity, but
the barriers between these specialties should prevent learning, but enhance it by organizing a
specialized body of knowledge. Many times these disciplines and 'zoologies' limit expansive
learning, myopically preventing growth for the sake of protecting that turf. Protecting
professional turf! That is such an absurd, but, unfortunately, widely practiced phenomenon.
Instead of relating to other bodies of knowledge and specialties, becoming an enlivened,
interconnected being, we remain compartmentalized in an overly-domesticated and myopic
infrastructure. That framework is so myopic because people sever the connections with other
disciplines for the sake of preserving their own. This is simply intellectual greediness that leads
to the limitation of the intellect, not he growth of it. A discipline should organize information so
that it can be accessed and connected to other areas, not confine it.
“We fragment learning at the expense of the richness and flexibility that should be
inherent in a living body of knowledge” (118). As Nachmanovitch points out, we are living
bodies of knowledge, not databases, static computers, or card catalogs. We have the capacity to
not only store knowledge, but to choose how to store it, how to connect it with other knowledge
webs, what to apply our knowledge towards, and to develop an emotional response and
relationship to that knowledge. Computers, databases, and card catalogs only store knowledge,
but we continue to be fascinated wit the idea of having a computer-like brain! Stop this myopic
thinking and let’s be fascinated with a human-like brain that can interconnect, emotional
respond, and intuitively branch out from a single fact that would normally be a fragmented
archive in a static database. We must use our creativity and emotional free play or we deny the
existence and versatility of our own humanity, and degrade ourselves to be static computers.
The Risk of Creative Raw Power

Nachmanovitch says “’like a god’ means that the listener feels he is in the presence of a
raw creative power” (118). This raw creative power is rare in the business world because,
according to Nachmanovitch, of an inherent Catch-22: you need skill to express inspiration, but
many times people get rapped up in the skills and can’t express the inspirational idea. This is
common in many contexts like if you see “an artist to have stupendous technical prowess, to be
able to amaze…with dazzling virtuosity…but there is something missing” (119). This missing
element is the lack of inspiration, where you are “Wowed” and impressed by the initial flair of
skill, but feel somewhat vacant. The vacancy, the lack of inspiration, is a common occurrence in
the business world, where “the values of society that considers the product more important than
the process”, are commonplace (120). When somebody focuses on the product, only, you can
almost always bet on the effect having initial impression, but the subsequent lack of creative
gusto that is inherent in “an unsophisticated performance that may be full of wrong notes, or a
piece of a child-song, or performance by a street musician in which we are moved to tears,
immobilized with a palpable feeling of awe” (119). This palpable feeling of awe was
experienced by people watching this one dramatic performance as described by Sarah Bernhardt
in the late 19th century:
“The audience / became witness to a phenomenon / of a character speaking ideas not
words / and speaking them in the white heat of creation - / that is, form and content, logic and
inspiration -- / as though the thoughts were being written / for the first time on this earth.” (Sarah
Bernhardt 1844-1923).
The white heat of creation, where the person is mentally connecting ideas out loud is pure
creativity in its raw form, and certainly seems like a white electric heat of creationism. You
know if you’ve experienced such god-like natural inspiration. I remember seeing one public
speaker pull ideas out from thin air, as if he were a magician, and connect them to a general
concept with such mastery that the ideas almost fused, creating sparks in your mind.
This exceptional form of inspiration is very rare because it produces emotions that are, at
times, uncomfortable: “The professionalism of technique and the flesh of dexterity are more
comfortable to be around than raw creative power” (120). When we go to a circus, movie, or
other organized form of entertainment we receive that vacant awe, but it lacks the inspiration.
Seeing truly raw creative power is so uncomfortable because it almost automatically engenders
powerful emotions of fear, awe, compassion, sentimental relation, or deep poignancy that could
be life-changing. That’s exactly the problem, people are afraid of changing their lives because
they are over-reliant on the domestication of their compartmentalized support structure.
By not taking the risk and surviving entirely on domestication, they suffer from localized
distribution and extreme specialization, and can’t afford to be moved by inspiration and raw
creativity. Well, not affording to be moved by such elemental forces of life is simultaneously
affording to neglect your true individuality, your intrinsic truths, which are only evoked and
experienced by an incredibly moving experience. Your intrinsic truths are not a list of 7-10
meaningful things like beauty, truth, love, and freedom. Instead they are a cosmic, unspoken
connection to that source of creativity. Your intrinsic truths can be described, but only accessed
by you, because it is your own relationship with yourself. This is not saying your inner truths are
secretive, but, rather, subjective. It would be describing color to a blind person. You can only
describe something, like an intrinsic truth, to another person with the inner voice experiences,
and knowledge base that they possess, so if they have a huge amount of inner voice experiences
and a large knowledge base the details of your description to them can be very comprehensive.
Similarly, the larger the problem they have, the more invigorated your solution and advice will
most likely be. Your intrinsic truth is the culmination of exactly that: your contemporary
essence, inner voice experiences, and knowledge base. Because no one has experienced the exact
same experiences or has the exact same contemporary essence as you, you can only define your
intrinsic truths with as much overlap of contemporary essence, inner voice experiences, or
knowledge base that exists in the other person.
If your intrinsic truth is something equivalent to a spiritual connection with creativity, and
you try to describe that to a person who is devoutly Episcopalian, for example, you will have to
use the a common jargon, and depict your intrinsic truth as “a Ten Commandments for Pious
Devotion to Jesus Christ”. This is catering your language for the other person, and is not meant
to deceive, but effectively communicate. The huge differences in connotation of the same root
intrinsic truth, spiritual connection with creativity, merely points out the difficulty in
communicating intrinsic truths.
Because people are more comfortable with technical flash of skill (which can be
extremely impressive, but may lack that inspirational evocation of the spirit where we are moved
to tears), rather than raw creativity, “our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more
highly than it rewards original creators”. It is simply more easy to judge and remain comfortable
with skill-based display compared to the emotionally unquantifiable expression of creativity.
Creativity, also, is more rare because it never can ensure a guarantee: “What’s wanted is a sure
thing, the assurance that we are getting a product whose value has been ratified by the
authorities. None of this can be specific a priori if we are dealing with creativity”. When
Beethoven and Bach were composing, the most outrageous results in terms of desirability of
their work arose. The boring and insipid Battle Symphony, Nachmanovitch points out, was the
most popular symphony of Beethoven’s at the time and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos couldn’t
land him a profession at a job application. Similarly, “In 1988, Van Gogh, who could not sell a
painting in his lifetime, sold, as a dead man, two paintings, for fifty million dollars apiece” (121).
“When an artist changes and develops over the years, as is natural to any creative person,
such change is met by howls of protest from the marketers”. This reluctance to change occurs
because 1) of the fear of stepping out of one’s domesticated compartment and producing a
change that could rupture their lifestyle, possibly resulting in “extinction” or 2) because society
is so focused on the product and not the process. It is common to see the artist, teacher, guru, or
anyone with inspiration who “starts with something extraordinary, becomes a star, and then their
gift is either frozen or perverted” (121). This perversion or freezing process occurs because of
the limited opening in society. With the confining walls and groundwork of domestication and
deification of the gods of materialism, apathy, and power exploitation, their only exists a small
window for “appropriate creativity”, when “appropriate” should never be applied to creativity.
Unfortunately almost any inspirational person is plagued by the questions, “is it good enough”
and “is it commercial enough”, or, is it creative enough, but “toned down enough”, says
Nachmanovitch. Additionally, Virginia Woolf points out that material circumstances, like
barking dogs, interrupting people, the need for a sustainable financial situation, and health,
distract the writer so that “especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction and
discouragement” is experience by the young writer (122). Distractions and discouragement
could be examined as something that makes the writer more resilient, hardened by a challenging
environment, but, ultimately it is one of the many factors that makes creativity so extraordinary
and rare.
So just to recap, the creative inspirationalist is faced with the apathy, confusion, and
conformity of normal, distractions and discouragement, domestication, societal reluctance to
interact with raw creative power, the wavering success of inspiration, a general lenience toward
skill instead of inspiration, and the unquantifiable nature of creativity. The things going against
creativity seem to be omnipresent! How the heck could any innovator, creator, artist overcome
such adversaries, such daunting opponents? Nachmanovitch says “a sense of humor, a sense of
style, and a certain amount of stubbornness” all help to be part of the artistic arsenal to combat
the opponents of normalized skill, fear of creativity, and distracting domestication (123). If you
joke about something that is overwhelming you, you can transform anger and tragedy and
frustration into a casual laugh. Humor is such a powerful skill! Style is ultimate weapon, the
common denominator, against fighting conformity, normalcy, and discouragement, because if

you develop your own way of doing things you automatically aren’t conforming or being
normal, and if you have faith in and trust that personal style of yours, you are well on your way
to becoming a creative person. Finally, just to cope with the times that seem unbearable,
stubbornness always can come in and save the day.
Einstein pointed out that he “only began to wonder about space and time when [he] was
already grown up” when other grown ups had expedited their growth and avoided that childhood
insight that allowed Einstein to question, explore, and ultimately discover unfathomed truths of
the universe. We must strive to keep this richly artistic childhood voice of free play alive.
Viriginia’s morose outlook on writing, that “probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it
was conceived” (122), is not something I agree with, because there have been written some truly
amazing books, but is something I can relate to because of the many variables working against
creativity. Well, we must embraces those defiant factors and bend with them to elicit our natural
creative calling and provoke soundness in our inspirational expression.
Chapter 5: The Renaissance is Now

As you learned from the last chapter, the raw energy of creativity can be daunting, un-
channeled and frightening, but “when we fear the power of the life force we become stuck in the
dull round of conventional responses. The frozen state of apathy, conformism, and confusion is
normative, but must not be taken as normal”. Nachmanovitch, as usual, is saying a lot hear.
When we fear the very energy that can invigorate and impassion our lives, we end up, indirectly,
choosing to immerse ourselves in apathy, conformism and confusion because those states are
qualities of being normal. Just the fact that those pretty negative states – apathy, conformism,
and confusion – are associated with “normal”, should make you want to be anything but normal!
We have to embrace that raw energy power, and become aware of it by asking ourselves how we
can avoid making tacit assumptions that causes us to slip into ritual and technicalities, instead of
creativity. We can access that raw creative force by avoiding the tacit assumptions and by
realizing that “every gets cavities or colds, but that does not make them normal or desirable…
creative living, or the life of a creator, seems to leap into the unknown only because ‘normal life’
is rigid and traumatized” (122). If we take the steps remove the rigidity of fear of creativity,
apathy, conformity, and confusion from our “normal life”, by eliminating tacit assumptions, we
instantly have creativity almost injected into our life, and then the inspirational ingenuity
becomes normal.
Yet many people are quickly deterred form this process of accessing emotional and
inspirational ingenuity because of the risk in the not being successful. This newly injected
creativity could produce new inventions that make us successful, but they first must cross the
“Wasteland of Doubt”.
"The Wasteland of Doubt" is the confrontation, the plagued dispositions, and the calamity
that you will experience trying to get people to witness and accept your creativity. This is not
you being a used car salesman selling a car. No, it is you trying your best to focus on the present
and create scenarios that nourish your creativity amidst a sea of opposition. People have to
question and doubt new ideas at first or else everyone would be producing them and we would
have a massively chaotic surplus of creativity, which could easily wreak havoc. The easiest
ticket through others' opposition is success. If your are successful -- financially, politically,
socially, or culturally, for example -- people will much more easily be interested in objectively
listening to your creative ideas. The problem here is the same thing with the experience loop --
you need experience to get hired, but can't get experience without having been hired. Similarly,
you can't be recognized as successful without, first, having success, which you may need to
become successful. The trick is to just dive in and wing it while trying your best. Once your
through the "Wasteland of Doubt", connecting ideas to the present will be much less of a burden,
and more of joy!
Authenticating what state we are in, what time period we are in, what resources we have,
and what people are around us is the crucial element to producing creativity. Teddy Roosevelt
said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”. This is perfect advice for
authenticating your physical, social, temporal, or resourceful state. And Nachmanovitch talks
about how he always meets artists who “wished they could have lived in the Renaissance”, but
the Renaissance is now! In every time period that was considered a Golden age or High point of
art, like the Enlightenment, those people didn’t know it was a time of artistic or intellectual
enlightenment.
They always questioned and doubted themselves, just as modern artists do, just as van
Gogh did, when he never sold any paintings, but became one of greatest painters ever. The
message here is never to wish that you’re in another place, another time, or with different people,
because you have to be careful about what you wish for, that wish has its own baggage, too. “In
the Renaissance artists viewed themselves as the degenerate descendants of ancient Greece; and
the Greeks saw themselves as degenerate descendants of a long-gone Golden Age (probably
Cretan)” (122). That’s what’s so fascinating about creatively successful movements, people took
a risk and trusted in their own inner voice. There is never a sign around or some kind of
barometer that measure “Chances of being creatively successful”, or some kind of “creativity
gauge” or indicator. No, the only way the Renaissance was ever the Renaissance, or the Golden
Age was every the Golden Age, was because people embraced their inner voice and moved
beyond the rigid confinements of normalcy.
Nachmanovitch says we suppress our creativity, “we suppress, deny, rationalize, and
forget the muse’s messages, because we are told that the voice of inner knowing is not
real” (122). Well, inner knowing is the only way to ever reach a profound peak, a high point,
like the Renaissance of Greek Golden Age. All of those incredibly rich and artistically prolific
time periods only existed because people took the risk in trusting the voice that is usually
frowned upon – the inner voice. If everyone trusted in their inner voice, we would, truly be
living in a heaven on earth where every moment was the high point of a Golden Age of the Now.
That just shows you the amazing power of the inner voice. It has the power to make the
Renaissance now
Perpetuating Inner Child by Transcending Normal

Nachmanovitch points out that society doesn’t really exist. He says, “We have been
talking as though there were something called “society” that defends itself against creativity by
all the means we’ve mentioned above: education, specialization, fear of the new, fear of raw
creative power. There is no such thing as society…” (123). Well, Nachmanovitch’s statement
about how some force (that we have been, apparently, erroneously calling ‘society’) is defending
itself from creativity, making creativity rare, suffocating ingenuity is true. There actually exists a
crippling and debilitating force that impedes and stymies creativity, and saying that the blockade
is “society” is somewhat of a misdirected accusation because the real culprit is people: “There
are only people doing their imperfect best at their imperfect jobs”. This sounds somewhat
pessimistic of existential, but it is true: people create those institutions, educations, media
centers, and ultimately, society. So the best way to create room for creativity is to transcend the
normal by communicating, quite simply, with people! This is not calling for an act of rebellion
because there is no institution or organization to rebel against, it is simply calling for the creative
interaction, using humor, style, and stubbornness with people, fellow humans. Cultivating the
context of creativity automatically creates a subtle, positive shift in the environment (institution,
society, or whatever), which leads to making space, providing ground for artistic expression.
One form of art, no doubt, is acting. Stanislavski, the father of “method acting” or
modern acting says that through his technique he provides “ control over the phenomenon of
inspiration” and actors learn to “enrich the ground” (Joshua Logan). Talk about making space
for creativity, the system of method acting, which revolves around the concept of enrich
creativity, not only makes space for inspiration, but enriches and enlivens the very space of the
inspirational person. Yet despite all the magnificent tools of expression and methods to cultivate
inspirational creativity, as Nachmanovitch pointed out, we all became tired, hardened, at times,
defeated by “the limits of is and is not, with the limits of what can and cannot be”, and basically
by the toil of experience. Nachmanovitch says “we learned what if feels like to be betrayed for
the first time, the second time, the third time, when our innocence gets stripped away, and we
jump from innocence to experience” (124). This shift, unfortunately, moves aware from the
nurturing and expression of creativity. The crippling affect of this experience is something
Nachmanovitch says is inevitable: “we cannot avoid childhood’s end; the free play of
imagination creates illusions, and illusions bump into reality and get disillusioned. Getting
disillusioned, presumably, is a fine thing, the essence of learning; but it hurts” (125).
So after we are betrayed or unrecognized or discarded multiple times, we have to, for the
sake of our own integrity, ease up a bit. And in this easing up process, it seems, we have time to
glance at the toil we just underwent, and from that observation, become experienced. That
experience, marks the transition from unlimited free play imagination to limited creativity:
“innocence and free play of imagination and desire collide with reality”. When this collision
occurs we begin creating the global principles of is, am, and are. We define men, women, things,
people globally. “Men are…..smart, stupid, jocks, from mars” Women are….objects, art,
beautiful, dim-witted, smart, from Venus”. She is…humorous, cruel”. This mandated global
principles create walls and mini-obstacles for our once free-flowing creative, child-like free play.
But making such global principles are instinctive to prevent us from hurting ourselves when we
are constantly betrayed or unacknowledged. Well, just as their were some weapons to overcome
an external defense against creativity, there exist some obstacles created by internal limitations.
Dismantle Global Generalizations
First is simply dismantling these global principles. Try being aware when you mumble to
yourself, “Men are stupid” or “The boss is cruel’ or anything unjustly globalized and generalized,
like that. Catch yourself saying that and balance out the generalization and make it specific.
Instead say “That plumber seemed somewhat dim-witted taking about legal matters, but I am
sure he is brilliant with the mechanics of plumbing and piping” or “The manager has a very strict
regimen, places a huge emphasis on detail, and has swift repercussions if you don’t heed his
advice or suggestions”. Specifying these global principles makes the mental “road block” a
small rock, instead of a fallen tree truck causing a creativity detour on the highway of inspiration.
Practice dismantling global generalizations by making them specific, and you’ll see how you
have much more access to your creativity because you won’t be scoffing things off with an
“experience” scorn. Additionally, you will have a more genuine relationship with people
because you won’t be negatively labeling a diverse and complex person with a single negating
stamp. This just shows how by removing generalized labels you free your own mental creativity
and simultaneously remove limitations from others!
Transcending Experience
To avoid stopping our creative juices from flowing when we experience the pain of
disillusionment, which occurs, if your recall, when your free play imagination (which sometimes
provoke illusions) collides with reality, we need to transcend experience. Nachmanovitch warns
us that “If you think you could have avoided disenchantment of childhood’s end by having had
some advantage – a more enlightened education, more money or other material benefits, a great
teacher – talk to someone who has those advantages, and you will find that they bump into just
as much disillusionment because the fundamental blockages are not external but part of us, part
of life” (125).
This notion, at first, makes us realize that we can’t get around this ending of childhood’s
creativity. Eventually, we will run into obstacles created by hardened experiences in reality. But
this quote also shows us the universality of creativity; how it is common vein that vibrates
through everyone at the same frequency and is limited by the same obstacles, regardless of
education, socio-economic status, access to teachers, wealth, or upbringing. How empowering is
that? Incredibly. We know that this common vibe of creative expression is suppressed or
difficult to access regardless of all external factors. If someone is labeled as creative or
ingenious, it is never because of luck, upbringing, inheritance, or natural gifts (all of those
apparent assets have their limitations), it is always because of hard-earned awareness and
cultivation.
At the beginning of a chapter, Nachmanovitch described a child’s drawing of trees and
how brilliant creativity of such a design. Nachmanovitch says, “the difference between the
child’s drawings and the childlike drawing of Picasso resides not only in Picasso’s impeccable
mastery of craft, but in the fact that Picasso had actually grown up, undergone hard experience,
and transcended it” (125). This power of this statement resonates on so many levels. First, it
illustrates the Picasso understood the dichotomy between product and process, skill and
creativity, and mastered both ends of the spectrum. Secondly, and most importantly, it shows
that he didn’t fight that inevitable childhood’s end. Instead he embraced it, endured some rough
experiences and tough times, but then returned to that childhood creativity, by listening to his
inner voice, and transcended the obstacles preventing him from accessing it. By transcending
difficult experiences we end up in the enriching and enlightened state of having a plethora of
experiences to captivate and ground our full-fledged access to raw creativity. It is being the
wizened, experienced adult, but with the creativity and inspirational imagination of a child: a true
mastery of one of the grandest spectrums in all of life is the capacity to be at free play, having a
childlike voice, and be creative while having undergone life-changing experiences.
Where most people would normally be disgruntled and cantankerous after daunting and
trying challenges, calamities, and experiences, the true master of creative expressionism,
transcends the toil of those experiences, keeps the wisdom learned from them, and ties it al
together with child-like curiosity and inspirational expression! We have to ensure that our voice
is intact by transcending experience, dismantling global generalizations, and recognizing how
some people fear, some are enrapt in awe, and others try to domesticate raw creative power. We
must choose the wild over the monoculture setting and ensure that we are being educated instead
of excessively trained to access the authentic source of our childhood voice!
Chapter 6: Elevating to Higher Mental Wavelength

When we allow ourselves to create a certainty, this epicenter of stability instantiates
something tangible and from that stability we can build with creative gusto, so such growth
originates with our ability to allow ourselves to create certainty – truths. I remember seeing this
one interview with Michael Richards, or Kramer (or at least that’s how everyone knows him,
through that Seinfeld character) for this philanthropic, giving charity ordeal and he was the most
taciturn, non-moving, philosophical, almost solemn person I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe
that this was the wild, erratic, and explosive Cosmo Kramer seen on Seinfeld. In character he is
the most wild, zany, spontaneously erratic person who always looks like he has to go to the
bathroom with all this stutter movements, but in person he is the complete opposite! This just
shows how the character may be, and usually is performed best, when it is an element of
ourselves that we normally don’t display. Kramer created truths for himself by having such an
incredibly grounded, stoic, philosophical personality in real-life life, and that truth provided the
stability to call upon his full creative acting arsenal to create and perpetuate the wildly unique
character, Cosmo Kramer.
He could not have built the ingeniously hysterical character of Cramer, if he didn’t have
such grounded reasoning in his logic and lifestyle. When people don’t have a grounded certainty
and try to act an exotic role or step outside of their personality “box” (comfort zone) the efforts
look contrived and forced. Because Kramer has such originality, this is certainly not the case.
Dyer also points out that “Everything vibrates, has its own vibratory frequency.” This is
true. Professional performers, business executives, top athletes, financial wheeler-dealers, all
have different frequencies. They way their brain operates are at different wavelengths. A
writer’s brain that is in the writing zone could be a low frequency, producing qualitative work,
word by word, or a fast frequency, punching keys out at 90 words per minute. Compare an
accountant, assiduously typing and retyping numbers into a calculator, and a deep sea scuba
diver, surveying the ocean depths. These frequencies would be remarkably different, but both
empowering with a source of nourishing escalation permeate their lives.

An Italian Renaissance poet named Pico Della Mirandola wrote about, in a piece called
“Oration on the Dignity of Man”, our ability to jump to the energy level of beast or transcend
that lower frequency and elevate to that of a god: “To you is granted the power of degrading
yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in
your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine." (Mirandola). We
must tap into our energetic frequency to alleviate ourselves from the problematic position of
animalistic tendencies and acquire the intellect and judgment of divinity by adjusting our
frequency to a higher level.
Whether the frequency is slow or fast, high or low, everyone thing has its unique
vibration and as long as we respect our own vibration, we will not denigrate our capacity and not
deteriorate the essence of our evocative energy. Sometimes our frequency reflects our
evolutionary position. Zukav points out, “a soul that is new to the human experience, for
example, a soul that has evolved from the animal kingdom and is beginning its journey of human
evolution, although there are very few of them at this point, begins within a certain frequency
range, and for its own protection incarnates into a limited sphere of human life (Zukav 168).
I realized that one grounded certainty for visiting family (as wild and sometimes
unfaithful as this sound, although it produces the most faith) is to think of my parents as the
parents of a close girlfriend and my younger brothers, really as older brothers. This could easily
appear to be unnecessarily deceiving myself, but the it makes the experience, in contrast,
incredibly more real and vivid. When I think of my parents as parents of a girlfriend, I become
sensitized to them and take the time with them much more seriously – I don’t squalor the time
because it’s “with my folks who are always around”. Well, that is not the case because my
parents, unfortunately, as much is it cripples my heart, aren’t going to be around forever, so I
should cherish everyone warm laugh, poignant conversation, and meaningful moment I get to
spend with them regardless if it is a trip to the grocery store or a dinner party, thinking of them as
parents of a girlfriend makes the time with them much more manageable, uplifting, and poignant.
Also, with my brothers, it sometimes feels like my brothers are older and wiser because I always
talk FAR more than they do (when its just us five, I don’t know how much they talk at school),
and they always say things that have a deeply uplifting impact in my life.
I remember seeing my brother, James, dart his head around in the classroom to observe
everything and when I tried this trick, it changed my experience of the classroom! They always
seem to provide me with incredibly empowering tactics, points, and motivating ideas for life and
I should look at them as older brothers, so that I not only respect that capacity of them to provide
amazing advice, knowledge, and wisdom, but also, so to savor the moments (which are now,
unfortunately, sparse due to us being different colleges and high schools) with them as well.
This tremendously uplifts the experience and doesn’t create an illusion of my brothers and
parents, but simply provides and interface that offers the most poignant time. You could say that
no interface is the best form of contact, and there is a time and place for that, but usually, it just
develops into a fight, or a waste of time, so picturing parents as parents of girlfriends and
brothers as older makes the experience not something I get bogged down by, but something
incredibly uplifting, unique!
If you have ever seen the move, “Rainman”, you see how difficult it is for autistic people
to move, travel, and be “normal” and not missing jeopardy and wheel of fortune. My
grandmother watched wheel of fortune religiously, but she does not need to create a routine out
of it to maintain her connection with truth. She is inevitably focused in on creating a reservoir of
strength and poignancy. People’s wavelengths can, for example, operate on very different
frequencies. When I run, for example, I get into a zone where my mental activity and energy
gets distributed throughout my body (specifically my les and my torso, depending on how cold,
or to catalyze perspiration if it is very warm). This causes my mental patterns to slow to a long,
wide frequency, where the wavelength is enormous but the frequency is very low. The
oscillation (distance up and down) would be someone flat-lined too.
When I am making creative connections with verbal communications, or writing, my
mental energy frequency is very fast with a high frequency and short wavelength. Different
mental wavelengths are better for different kinds of communication. Maybe a higher oscillation
(taller wavelength) would be better for spiritual incitement, while the high frequency, short
wavelength, would obviously be more ideal for Web of Words communication, and the wide
wavelength, slow frequency would be perfect for kinesthetic connection. To attune ourselves to
these forms of mental energy we don’t need to lead an ascetic life, austerely focusing only on
this awareness of energy, such an attempt would cause tremendous problems for us because the
mental energy frequency is something that should center us as a helpful reminder. When I was
shocked that the ship I was on was using an out-dated navigational system, my mental energy
went into a very high frequency and I consulted with the captain regarding this seemingly
frightening situation. Maybe the variations in mental wavelengths could be utilized to help us
better understand autistic people with their strange mannerisms.
Omnipresent School: Curse or Cure?

Nachmanovitch points out that when we become “gobbled up by the system”,
For the longest time, I have been plagued, irritated and annoyed by my negative reactions to
things. There was even a time – as inhuman as this sounds – when I avoided even positive
emotional expression. I would stifle laughs and smother smiles. This subduing of our emotions
– negative or positive – not only denies our humanity, but incorrigibly denies are capacity to
share from a genuine source. When we can’t externally express our emotions, this external
restriction and suffocation has a debilitating and negative impact on our entire internal emotional
construct. We, in a sense, deny as much internal “breathing room” as we limit external
expression – the two are tied together. The epitome of this restricting and stifling emotional
experience occurred during class. For fear that the teacher would read (via body language) my
negative emotional response such as boredom, disagreement, or apathy.
I would mute over my entire emotional spectrum to conceal my emotional thoughts from
the professor. This, in turn, muted over my capacity to express positive emotions. For this
reason I am a strong believer in not having positive or negative emotions. Why make such a
black-and-white comparison? Why create a dichotomy at all? Instead of delaying my emotional

response by filtering my emotions through a framework to decide if they’re positive or negative,
one day in class I just harnessed my reaction. When I would normally mumble to myself or
lower my head if I disagreed with something, I validated and embraced my response. I could
feel my face responding to the reaction: sneering, scoffing, frowning, eye-rolling, etc. naturally.
As a result, I slimmed down my interface from inner thoughts to the outside world and could
respond much more quickly, cogently, and relevantly. Embracing your reaction, trusting it, and
harnessing is very challenging and requires heroic courage. It is much easier to simply lay back
and allow your emotions to accumulate, bottle up, and then release them in some other
misdirected outlet, but let’s face it, people are sensitive; we must relate to and express our
emotions as they occur. An example of the most perverted form of not harnessing our emotions
is the catastrophic Columbine shootings. While it may appear that those belligerent, murderous
students were “harnessing” their emotions by killing people, they were doing anything but
harnessing, but acting in confusion through a misdirected outlet. Harnessing your emotions
occurs in the moment and is never residual accumulation of emotions. The most extreme form of
not harnessing and having emotions accumulate is the outrageously bloody and sickening
Columbine shootings.
How it works: Harnessing the Emotions

You can only harness you emotions if your brain is operating at fast wavelength. This is
immensely crucial: you can only harness your emotions and relate to your environment in real-
time if you have your brain at an ideal wavelength. What I mean by wavelength is that activity is
stimulating your brain. Practice trying to mentally “pull” all of your energy up through your
spine to your skull as though it was being siphoned upward through your neck. You have more
sensitivity to your facial response, deliberation when you speak, and focus. You have a greater
grasp on the energy of your mind when you operate at this higher wavelength. It takes effort
though, you can easily let your attention droop and lose that high wavelength. You may be
shocked (I was) at the “twitchiness” of your facial expressions.

Elevating your mind so you feel your body charged with energy can be a stressful feeling
because you certainly aren’t relaxing, it is almost like self-inducing a subtle flight/fight response,
but your focused is increased and you only use your body’s health natural mechanisms (not
eternal drugs). This movement to higher alertness, or wavelength, is the first step to harnessing
your emotions. Trusting your reactions is the second and final step because moving to the more
alert wavelength automatically almost creates a sensitivity to respond with sincerity. You may
feel very vulnerable, because you are. But that is the only way to truly relate your emotional
response to a conversational setting: admit that it makes you vulnerable. This vulnerability is
what actors have to go through to play an amazingly emotional part, comedians have to be
vulnerable communicating their ideas on stage, writers must be vulnerable to express their true
thoughts. Vulnerability, no doubt, is one of the necessary elements – a step – on the way to
success. Because you can’t be successful staying home at bed. No, you have to put yourself out
there and take the risk to let people get to know the real you. This is the best way to engage your
liberating soul and develop an imaginative potential for connecting to the stagnant and eclectic
certainties that personalize our essence rather than debilitate it!
Chapter 7: Clarity, Chance, Authenticity and Originality
Clarities of Comfort
When we act out stuff, we can sometimes summarize the elements that provoke. When
we communicate, we should instinctively use adjectives that you use to describe the other
person. This way, a dialogue of understanding is created and one discerns the pragmatic
certainty by establishing an epiphany. When we create such an epiphany, we allow ourselves to
alert the majesty that resides on our soul. For the longest time I would constantly wait for
support from other people. Eventually, I found that such support would not come because of the
situation associated with the support. It didn't make sense, I would wait around and bide time
until someone supported me or gave me the connection to a social party, gathering or other
connection. I became overly-reliant on other people. I began to focus in on what was creative
and what was poignant to my own regimen. By ascertaining the creativity that allows for a
certainty of purpose, we can unite our goals and unify our spirit to be creative individuals. When
we use adjectives that we perceive in the other person, we instinctively create a compassionate
arena for exchange. Such exchange can completely certify our source of wisdom and rejuvenate
our soul to a profound level of clarity. The clarity that arises from this allows us to focus on the
clarity that creates an epiphany of the soul. I remember one time I switched two posters on my
college dorm room. Because of this minute shift, all of my mental thinking in that room was also
distorted. I became overly conscious of what was going on in the room and the room became a
negatively impacting environment, instead of a nurturing home-like sanctuary. I soon realized
that my mind typically reflects my room, so that if I create a compassionate endeavor to uplift
my environment, I also uplift my own mind.
During this time, no doubt, a lot was going on in my life and my room reflect this,
however, I began to certify my strengths by creating a source of individuality that permeates my
soul and allows me to uplift my compassionate engagements to the stimulating development of
imagination and formulaically prescribe myself to an environment. Additionally, for the longest
time, I was uncertain if I was to make sure that my soul was best applied through a mathematical
science, or through, a pragmatic certainty of a focused existence and authentically dynamic
prosperity for change, that allows one to listen to the sound of their own harmonious gestures.
The ability to learn about an environment brings about a capacity to nourish our soul and
enliven our spirit to a tremendous example of rejuvenating clarity. For example, during the day, I
mostly start the day off with a run, then class, then end up creating a pattern of going around to
other offices and checking in on the absolute crucial necessities that allow me to authenticate my
envisioning prosperity of choice, poignancy and enlivening. When we illuminate our existence,
instead of deny our capacity for growth, we allow the adventurous path we call life to inspire
amazing certainties of poignancy. Normally, we are fragmented by others contrasting

perspectives or opinions. However, we should aim to create an uplifting gesture that souls the
soul and embalms the mind with clarity. This clarity can rejuvenate our soul to a generative and
uplifting capacity that provides expansion, liberation, and creative engagement. We can nurture
our paramount lifestyle of facilitating growth, pacification, reconciliation and summarize our
existence.
For the longest time, I was drawn, quite logically, to places that left a mental impact on
me. But I soon realized that such places usually required a huge amount of mental exertion,
which was fine on occasion, but by making sure that we uplifted our soul, first, we could arrange
for the certainty of purpose to arrive. Also, I became aware of how quickly the sensitized body,
mind, and emotional context adapts. For example, I would bike everyday for a week -- seven
days -- and I would look and feel as though I had been biking for days. Similarly, if I had been
typing or writing every day for a week, I would then end up creating a certainty that would
acknowledge the strength of using the keyboard and communicating through a computer.
Eventually, I began to get a glimpse, amidst all of this training and adaptation, to what was truly
important. I seriously feel like people are making fun of me about going to Mexico and talking
about spider monkey and Howler monkey trails.
I began to realize that Mexico was a heaven. It was also a hell, but being out in the
Jungle, studying those monkeys is something I could return to as a scientist. I could finish up
school moving towards biology and create a home back in the jungle. this would be my work.
Religion was also a consideration for me in college. By allowing ourselves to create a certainty
of truth, we can eliminate problems that arise from an epiphany based on illogical reason
because, we then, satisfy and nurture the soul. Talking is very important for me because it allows
me to create an authentic relationship to the passionate certainty of the individual. When we
energize, nurture, and create a compassionate source of certainty from out soul, we can liberate
our individuality to a level of certainty that originates the elemental value of the soul. We end up
grounding ourselves and creating a certainty of truth that not only provides focus, but clarifies
our existence.
I loved that Jungle and whenever things are rough in the present, I always think of
switching to be out in another area -- I should look at other journals to see if I am in bliss there.
Most certainly, I usually am not. Happiness does not arise from an external location or place, but
from an area compassionate zeal that allows us to create a rejuvenating certainty of purpose.
This purpose illuminates our existence to a new level of clarity that provides us with the
compassionate certainty that we must be able to clarify our own agenda of epiphanies. When we
engage our knowing and realizations, we can learn to create certainties of the soul. This
certainties allow us to exude confidence because authenticity will permeate our mental,
emotional, and spiritual system. We must learn to create a compassionate existence based on
clarity, certainty and comfort!
I am normally extremely perturbed by drug usage. How people use drugs as a cliché,
which provides them with social comfort, but, in reality, such a situation redefines their soul to
something crippled, generic and disparate. When you use drugs at all, especially to mimic some
“cool” person you create a messy pastiche of your personality and become a gluey conglomerate
of uncertainty. When we allow ourselves to drift into this kind of confidence via conformity we
endanger our individualized spirit and blunt our intellect. An identified and actualized spirit
comes form a sharp non-conforming mind. Let’s avoid stepping into a situation where we
conform for the sake of identity and consult our own reservoirs of ingenuity to cultivate a
nourishing existence of compassion that originates from our creative sense of spirit. Let’s honor
this creative spirit by nurturing it with not generic acts, but personalized and customized acts of
our self to create an exuberant expression of clarity! Allowing ourselves to relinquish
conformity creates a compassionate ideal of clarity which provokes a certainty based on creative
nourishment that exhilarates the soul and enlivens the spirit. Love life to the fullest!
Balancing the Dance of Chance

The sentences we use in life can have a profoundly lasting effect on our message. I
remember when I was going through a huge period of change during my Junior year of high
school I became excessively focused on the external as opposed to the internal. I would examine
the Feng Shui of my room, examine which colors would go best where, and put an enormous
amount of time into the places where various posters and objects would go best in my room after
completely taking everything down, including my mattress and wiping the slate clean. I
remember being in that class wanting to say "Changing with change is the changeless state", but
instead said "You should empty your cup".
I was the one who incredibly emptied my cup. But when I should've been focusing on
internal cultivation, I completely chucked all of my internal stability and knowledge and
connection out the window. Maybe it was because I didn't have enough external anchors and the
entire process of was internalized, but I became excessively focused on the outside. It was like I
didn't internalize or externalize anything. Dr. Phil discusses three different people that have
various loci of control: internalizers, externalizers, and chancers. Internalizers always think
everything is because of them. If they do poorly on a test, it is their fault, if they do well, it is
because of their poor study habits. Externalizers everything, failure or success to an external
factor. They ran the red light because someone else was distracting them (an internalizer would
say they were distracted).
Finally, a chancer doesn't relate themselves to the equation at all. They believe some
mystical force of fate, destiny, or luck drives consequences and reactions. They ran the red light
not because of their distraction, or someone else distracting them (externalizer), but simple bad
luck.. Basically, I became a pure chancer, when I had never based anything on fate or chance; I
usually scoffed at those things. I enjoy being pragmatic and rational. Also, I began hanging out
with a girl I did not like at all. Like the thinking about fate wasn't something that was congruent
with my logic (or just logic, in general), I began hanging out with people that I didn't like just for
the sake of change.
If I saw a sign on the road that said change is good, I would change the direction I was
walking and change my planned destination. During this time I used an entirely different diction
of communication. The imperative sentence, implying a command, was never really used by me,
but after it, I began giving advice as though I were a "know it all" and could share such words of
intense meaning. I began saying a lot more of "You should do...", "You must access...", etc,
while ceasing interrogatory sentences that end in question marks. Not including exclamatory
sentences (that end in an exclamation point, hence the name "exclamation") or declarative
sentences (which state or declare a point), which I continued to use and didn't change my
relationship with, altering your usage of interrogation and imperative sentences makes an
enormous difference.
By altering the types of sentences I chose to communicate to many more imperative,
many people were threatened by me, considering me to be boasting and broadcasting messages
that I knew little about. My shift from a balanced internal role to a purely external role produced
magnanimous changes in my life. I began to read people much more but focused in on creating
abstract art and trying to decide where it would look most ideal in my room. I spend hours with
this aesthetic configurations but look back at them now as an incredible waste of time. What did
it matter that the color of my bed sheet was blue or yellow? I began to apply all of this irrelevant
meaning to color and waste a large amount of my time focusing in on aesthetic externals.
But what if colors could have meaning? Red usually means angry or impassioned, if we
see a cartoon character's face become flustered. Green is associated with assertion (going in
"stop-and-go") or feelings of nausea in the human physiology. It is true that different colors hint
at different messages, but spending hours and hours on something, in actuality, quite trivial, can
be very problematic for someone as time-conscious as I was. I remember before this massive
shift, most of the furniture and many of my posters were black. It was a very grounded,
masculine room. Something that made me feel very connected and peaceful. It wasn't morose or
dark, but simply, grounding. I kept things in the same place. I used my room. It wasn't some
artistic thing to look at, it was a gigantic appliance to get things done, to do homework, make
phone calls, get sleep, center myself, read, and store papers and books. I suddenly became
focused in on the superficial, the surface to make my room look extremely artistic and centered,
instead of using it as an appliance. I thought that everything else in my old life was wrong,
when, in reality, it was right on. Much of the black office furniture my mother had bought me
(probably with the intention to keep me grounded and focused) I thought was purchased to
contain me -- restrict my potential -- rather than provide security and protection.
In addition to the aesthetics of my room, my sentence choices, and my emphasis on
externalization, my eating habits changed. I -- like how I wanted my room to superficially and
aesthetically, appear peaceful and useful, rather than using it for a useful, peaceful purpose --
lacked focus on what foods would nourish me and ate whatever looked good. I had never eaten
candy bars before (maybe, literally, once per year) and I suddenly began spending all of this
money on candy bars. Let's face it, eating healthily -- salads, fruits and vegetables, no fried
foods or snacks -- is very boring, stale, and bland. But when you exercise and cleanse your body
of toxins, you can actually change your experience with sweets, junk food, and candy to have
those feel lacking nutrients, bland, and boring, because you will be focusing on the affect of that
food, not the initial taste. You will taste the protein, the fiber, the richness of the vitamins and
minerals and not by into the illusion that these foods are bland, when they are really extremely
nourishing and intensely physiologically exciting. The affect will be extremely nourishing.
I experimented with missing meals, with eating candy, with living off, primarily, peanut
butter. Before I had solely eaten foods that would aid me internally, a lasting purpose rather than
superficial taste which only had an affect on about 1% of the immensely complex digestive
process involving myriad proteases, acids, and enzymes that break down and absorb food in the
stomach, and small and large intestines. When I previously took into account what my body
need for nutritional nourishment -- protein for muscles, salads for energy and fiber and health -- I
began focusing in only in the taste of foods. I would eat half of something and then switch to
something "tastier". Now, granted, maybe I jumped to this extreme because my previous eating
lifestyle had been completely eating healthy foods and I wanted to jump to the junk food end of
the spectrum, but once you're healthy, you like staying healthy. After I get back from a run, I
don't want to eat a greasy pizza, because my body feels so efficient; such a meal would feel
extremely contradicting to my tastes at the time and my metabolism.

My reading changed, too -- dramatically. I began to read in a scattered, skimming,
searching form. I would "browse" through books by almost closing my eyes in a book store,
picking a random one off the shelf, and then opening the book not to the table of contents and the
first few pages, but the middle of the middle, in the middle of a paragraph, and read a sentence or
two, then move onto the next paragraph. In short, it became very erratic and unproductive. I
began excessively "searching" for meaning and trying to find the right shade of "green" in grass.
In reality, however, I needed to grow my own grass. My brain would be operating to fast with
worry and nervousness and change that there was no way I could relate to entire messages (let
alone chapters) of an author because I was so focused in on myself. I began reading
psychological books on analysis of cursive writing to see if, when I wrote during certain
emotional periods my cursive looked more "loopy", "condensed", or "slanted". This analysis
was sparked by my pre-calculus teaching who commented on my writing, and because, maybe I
asked him what the lowest grade he gave (which was usually a "C") and I didn't discuss my
nervousness of passing the class with my dad. In a sense, I analyzed everything way too deeply.
Instead of using my room, I had to make it look useful. Instead of eating nutritious food, I
became excessively selective about it and spent so much time making decisions that I would be
starving, and eat a candy bar to satisfy my hunger.
It was like I was aware of the Matrix, a superficial world created to harness you senses, but
chose to "go back in", concealing my awareness of its superficiality because of the pleasures of
it.
Well, pleasures certainly don't make you happy, and when I was eating food for
nourishment, using my room for a purpose, rather than to simply "look at", and having a
balanced relationship with my internal/external worlds, I was experiencing cultivation of
happiness through an equally distributed dance of emotions, reason, and pragmatic, logical
decision-making.
I had done everything right in my life -- eating nutritiously, reading books properly, doing
homework on time, and hanging out with good friends -- that I didn't know what it was like to be
bad. Well, I, and most other people, be "good" for a reason -- it is more fun. Trust me. it is not
fun barfing up food because you're so nausea after eating 5 candy bars because you forgot about
meals, or finding yourself at a rowdy party with few people you know, drugs being passed
around, and movies of, literally dead people being played on TV, or struggling to get a paper in at
3:00 am because you procrastinated for so long. Being "good" is more fun than being "bad"
because being good focuses on the consequences down the line, instead of the immediate effect.
Being "bad" can leave you in a fix if you don't project into the future where you'll end up and
where you want to end up. If it be a career decision, or something as simple as choosing not to
eat a cheeseburger because of indigestion, you will be exponentially more happier if you make
the "good" decisions that are well-thought out about the right things like physiological effects,
mood, and peace of mind. Thinking about everything, however, can leave you in paralyzed fix,
as well. Learn how to balance pragmatism and certainty with being equally internalized,
externalized, and chancing, and create an opinion of truth that is fortuitously complete and
nourishing.
 Focusing on charkas, auras, too much heat, like Kundalini dude, needed to exercise, saw
“auras” at plays, crazy sensory stuff, not enough thinking and/or too much thinking
(result = poor decisions or paralysis)
 Eating less gave me less energy, harder to focus; I am an athletic, active person, I need to
eat a lot.
Authenticity and Originality
The differences between being authentic and being original are commonly misconstrued
and used in the wrong context. The necessity of distinguishing each of these characteristics is
vital to embracing them. Authenticity refers to something that is uniquely tied to your core
individuality – your soul. Its affects are, by nature, empowering. If you give a speech on a topic
that is deeply meaningful to you, and deliver it with such vehement enunciation, impassioned
eloquence, and sincere commitment that your very soul seems to be in your words, you are being
authentic. That speech could be about arithmetic, or a common bird, or a current event; it
needn’t be new or different.
As long as you are ecstatic about math, ornithology (bird watching), or current events and
display that passion with sincere vehemence, you are being authentic. Authenticity is tied totally
to your self. If some writing, speech, words, or anything authentic in one context, then it is
universally authentic. In other words, there needn’t be some kind of environmental or external
prerequisite or precedent for authenticity to exist. If sincerely connect your words, expression,
and/or communication with your soul, it is authentic, regardless of its societal acceptance,
appearance, or relationship externally
Originality refers to the existence of other things in the world relative to your invention.
If something already exists then it is not original. If you develop a new kind of car wheel, that
automatically re-inflates itself when popped, and no such invention exists, it is original. The
source of originality, therefore, is purely an external measurement. You cannot if something is
original or not unless you have scope of what is present – in terms of inventions – in the world.
Knowing how much perseverance, creativity, and sincerity – internal bearings -- you put into
something will not make it, necessarily, original because originality is entirely externally based.
Obviously the combination of something that is new frontier of your soul – authentic –
and new frontier in the external world – original – will quickly be a successfully changing force
in the world. Its incipience and passion automatically give the product momentum and
recognition.
Groundedness, if you recall, was connecting with your external environment. One of the
highest elements – the apex – of groundedness is originality. You can only be truly original
when you have reached a zenith of being grounded; you are so connected to your environment
that you not only recognize what is present, what is not present, and what is needed, but you
develop a pathway to create something that fills those means. Only be branching out and being
completely connected to your external world and environment, can you evoke certainties and
passions based on intense knowledge.
Authenticity, furthermore, is the highest mark – the culmination – of stability. Stability, if
you recall, is the ability to truly have internal bearings and have awareness of your soul. When
you are fully aware of your soul’s creativity, desires, design, and aspirations, and have committed
yourself to acknowledgement and perseverance of your spiritual certainties, you have the
opportunity for authenticity. Only when you have evolved into a dynamically stable being –
understanding your personal truths, veracities, and intrinsic truths – can you have the opportunity
to be authentic. This is why authenticity is such ha powerful act of will, almost certain, without
a doubt, to leave an impact on the world.
Chapter 8: The Mastery of Myopia and Connecting with People

Connecting with people is a truly authenticating art. You can nourish your own soul if you
can let go and respond to a situation and promote a connection that is intimate and felt on both
parties. I remember one time after swimming, I was feeling emotionally very clear and I decided
to help a fellow neighbor, just out of generosity, move a chair into their room. The couple and I
struggled trying to wedge the chair into the narrow doorway, and finally shoved it in without too
much of struggle. The connection with one of the people was totally reactionary. I glanced up at
her, saw a joyful expression, and then mimicked her laughter and joy, which created the synthesis
of a connection and the actual connection. The synthesis of the connection became authentic by
because facially mimicking joy actual caused my brain to register a joyful state, making me alert
and quite alive. This meaningful example shows how connecting with people is an art of
dancing, mimicking; leading and following, and generating catching (as a contagion) the
benevolent sensations of joy, happiness, and laughter. Because, after all, our joy truly is poignant
in a situation where we focus our own sensations on connecting with a source -- be it another
person, book, music, etc. -- and span out to make the resiliently nourishing connection embrace
the verisimilitudes of the soul. This connection to the soul manufactures authentic meaning.
Meaning is something you have to constantly keep fighting for, striving for and nurturing.
You must place a ton of conviction in the certainties of your rejuvenation to have gratitude to the
purpose that you pursue and promote. Define that purpose, remain in allegiance with it through
thick and thin, but have the flexibility to subtly improve it with minor altercations, but hold on to
the center and meaningfulness will exude through you and from you!
You can clarify that source of meaning by certifying your appreciation of the human body's
intricacy, artistic majesty, and cohesive mastery. Let’s enrich and invigorate our compassionate
soul to arrive at an agenda where we find a certainty that uplifts the embracement of our
individuality. This captivation synthesizes our soul with the complexity of certainty and
instigates a compassionate endeavor of pleasing the certainties and nurturing our enlightenment
to an incredibly enlivening level of invigoration. Trust in that enlivenment!
The Shiva of Parenting

So many parents complain that their teens drive them nuts, rip open their lives, and make
them insane by destroying their sense of predictability – or the parents are capricious, by
instilling predictability. This is the role that teens always seem to have. Having parents have a
fixed pattern that isn’t the correct framework, life pattern, and interpretation of the Supreme
Being, the teen acts as the Shiva and destroys that framework, life pattern, and interpretation to
make way for a new creation. In Dead Poet’s Society, the parents of one of the main characters,
Neil, who wants to be an actor, are incessantly pushing Neil to be a med student, to the brink of
which he kills himself. The dad was the opposite of Neil – cold, obsessive-compulsive,
organized, and argumentatively brilliant. The father made it seem to Neil that there was no way
buy his own parental way.
When he killed himself, he no doubt set of a chain of new creation, by destroying the
normal connection of the family. However, I sometimes feel nervous or worried that I haven’t
done my Shiva part, but then I remember the drinking, countless parties, pot, smoking, painting
on walls, yelling, screaming, insulting, and being destructive in almost everyway possible, and
realize that I must be a lunatic to think I haven’t done the Shiva part.
It is simply important to keep all 3 of those deities intact in normal interactions – in
balanced with the destruction, sustentation, and recreation of all of them! Making relationships
with your kids flexible and dynamic will make the connection of those three qualities not
explosive buy dynamic. Of course, there is always something to be put into more balance
(including too much or too little balance) but making certain the poignancy of the truths makes
us all incredibly people. This is not saying any teen with excessive strict parents can only play
the role of disrupting them by killing themselves, not at all. It is saying that the more fixated,
extreme, and rigidly focused on permanent lifestyle the parents are (especially if they try to
encroach this on the kid) the more explosive the Shiva teen might be.
The person in DPS didn’t authenticate his own desires – to act – and simultaneously
didn’t see a possible way to communicate those desires to his father. So he communicationally
was shut-down, just showing that you must always aim to communicate. It is how you live, how
you change any component of your lifestyle for the better, and how you enrich your life.
Whenever you communicate something, clarity follows as one piece of the pie becomes
unravels, allowing you to have more conviction and energy in your life. Most importantly,
obviously, is that the father was blind to his own son’s sensitivity and passion, and not interested
in providing what was best for him, but what he thought was best for his son; this is simply the
dictionary definition of debilitating incorrect, maladaptive parenting. The father was a jerk
parenting a sensitive, good, benevolent son. The father was being benevolent with school but not
with volition; this communication should have been made. Maintaining incessant equilibrium
ensures the vivacity of the soul!
The Intertwining Paths of Life

When we allow ourselves to connect to an incredibly divine source of passion, we can
extend wisdom from the certainty of truth by examining our connection to our soul. This
connection to our soul provides an intimate permeation of certainty, truth, and abundant certainty
so that we may provoke the incredibly expansive knowledge that furthers the notion of the
human capacity for expansion. People, after all each choose their own path to get to the top of
the mountain. Many times these individual paths coincide with another’s path, making them able
to joke and “speak the same language”. A biker, whose path, intersects or zigzags with another
biker’s path, for example, creates a certainty of truth between them two that form an intimately,
“knowing” connection where few words need to be spoken sometimes. But these individuals
are, inevitably on their own path. Similarly, two writers whose paths intertwine, may debate,
snarl, or interactively respond to, or joke together about various authors. The similarities of
pursuit that one has allows them to create an abundance that becomes a window to their soul and
a directed, guided, source of advising wisdom from their source of passionate nurturing. By
examining the truth of the area, we can provide substantial growth and fortitudes to further our
permeating certainty. When these paths temporarily intersect, do not be offended that someone is
an obstacle or that person is invading your turf; you are always on your own path, and have been
ever since your were born, you can interact with other people and appear to be deterred, but are
always on your own incredibly enlightening path. When people feel that others have distracted
them from their specific path, they tend to get hostile with people. I remember doing this in an
English class. The professor was saying that Shakespeare copied a bunch of his plays – a
comment I interpreted as semi-disparaging – and I got hostile toward the teacher because, if I
decided to be an English major, I thought he was trying to derail me from connecting an amazing
playwright.
Despite the sincerity or the emotional reaction a comment provides, we must illuminate
ourselves to incredible sources of wisdom, truth and providence by igniting our passionate
agenda for certainty. When we promulgate unnecessary messages, we can quickly become too
spread our and disheveled and hard to make progress on our path because we have become too
expansive and aware, instead of actually traveling the distance on our path. When this is the
case, we must narrow our focus. However, when we narrow a focus, we must be wary not to
become too myopic, because such extreme narrow-mindedness can causes us to lose awareness
of our path. When this awareness is lost, we cannot take emotional, mental, and/or physical
bearings, and navigate correctly through our path. So, in other words, we must keep the
awareness to have the map, direction, and experiential decisiveness to make astute decisions
when a fork in the road arises, but maintain the direction and ambition to continually keep
moving forward. When we allow ourselves to slowly drift off the map and are unaware of where
we are going on our path, we have reached the point of excessive myopia.
Myopia and Awareness

Think of a jogger, whose eyes are squinted so only a crack of light shines through. This
extreme myopia has the agenda of producing progress, but, in reality, might cause them to lose
track of the trail, run into trees, bushes, and shrubs, or trip and fall on something. The other
extreme of this example would be the wide-eyed awe-stricken jogger, who, constantly being
passionately agape at his surroundings stops to look at every flower, tree, and bush he passes,
and examines the beauty of the trail and always knows which direction the trail will lead to and
constantly is aware of his mental map. This jogger certainly won’t run into anything, but he
most likely would remain stuck, fixatedly paralyzed at the base of his trail. Both of these joggers
could be happy in their own worlds; the myopic would always be under the delusion he is getting
somewhere while the excessively aware is constantly entertained and conscious of his
surroundings. The excessively aware is perfervid (excessive emotional fervency), leaving him or
her overly consumed with passionate connection. Myopic is progress because the myopic
traveler or “liver” (using the connection with life paths) is always focused on getting from A to
B, so focused that they don’t even stop to get a breath of awareness to make sure they don’t
constantly run into obstacles or deter of the path. This check-up, connecting to the other
extreme, is profoundly crucial to remain focused on the path in general.

The myopic needs the awareness and navigational strengths of the aware person, but the
aware person needs the commitment to moving forward and progress-focused myopic. The
passion meets the road with the aware person – finding meaning, aesthetic beauty, and navigation
on the road – but this person needs a source of myopia to focus them and keep them moving and
connected as well. The problem with the excessively aware is over-connection, while the
problem with the excessively myopic is, simply, over-momentum forward. The harmony of
these two entities are met with sincerity and focus at a juncture where a balance between them
both keeps are person passionate about their path and where it’s going and the element that
instills motivation, conviction, and the perseverance and commitment to continually keep
moving forward.
Most the time throughout your life, you, no doubt, want to have a balance so you aren’t
unprepared if a medical emergency arises (lack of awareness/preparation) but you also don’t
want to sit around constantly planning (lack of myopia/progress): you need action as well.
Running, I realized is about trying to break people, in any way possible. Trying to derail
them, make them uncertain, inciting the judge. Effective running is about intellectually
dismantling the opposition, keep pace, maintaining focus and commitment, and most importantly
disaggregating and killing off your own inner judge, your own source of inner criticism. I
remember running in a cross-country race in high school and someone said, “Man, it’s so small”,
I thought I was small, my confidence was brought to question, and then smashed, and I was
passed up. Running is certainly not how physically fast you can run – cheetahs can run faster
than humans – but no animal can run 26.2 miles (a marathon) without mental consciousness,
commitment, years of planning, and mental awareness. No animal would and could physically
cover such a huge amount of distance in a single setting if they didn’t consciously decide to do
so. That’s why running marathons is all mental. Why can’t a 60 mph cheetah run a marathon?
Why not a lightning-fast puma? They simply don’t have the mental integrity. Mental
perseverance, concentration, and commitment to the challenge is what any running race is about
– other-wise people wouldn’t do it. If everyone can run a 100m race in 9 seconds – not faster,
not slower – racing wouldn’t be a form of competition because we would all be clones when it
came to physical mobility. People test their minds, not their bodies when they run against
someone else. Especially in a marathon, you are testing the person’s mental mastery of using
their body, creating a certainty in their practice, and testing their resilient confidence in their
sprint.
Time and place for Excessive Myopia
When you are passing someone or take something competitively, and are, before-hand,
aware of challenges, this is when excessive myopia is effective. With effective myopia, you
won’t be negatively affect by another person’s disparagements nor will you pick up on other’s
emotions of struggle, anguish and pain and try to help them. You will not see well and be
emotionally, numb, but will propel forward with indifference. This indifference obviously is an
asset, when the test is of the mind. However, after awhile you will have to rebalance with
awareness to maintain your bearings and to find meaning in your path, race, life journey,
whatever the endeavor of the excursion.
Time and place for Excessive Awareness
Moreover, excessive awareness is crucial if you are planning out your career for the next
10-years, planning out the survival and finishing steps to a marathon, deciding about a major life
commitment (marriage, for example), or taking your bearings. During these moments you don’t
want to make progress forward at all! Who would want to pick an ill-suited career that is too
intimidating, overwhelming, boring, or frightening just because one avoided taking the time for a
brief bout of excessive awareness and plunged headfirst for the sake of progress? I know many
marriages that unsuccessfully end in divorce after a few years or even months because someone
“felt they should’ve gotten married by now”.
This pressure for progress prevents us from maintaining connection to our roots and
places us in a position for making poor, capricious decisions. During my junior year, I become
excessively myopic – blocking out my parents’, teachers, and even close friends (a rarity for the
“terrible teens” (or is it “twos)) from my decision-making process and dived headfirst into a
public school, acting programs, raves, new somewhat “darker” friends, and lacked any direction.
Everything was capricious because I was excessively myopic. Despite this excessively myopic
(and in some ways, excessively decisions about high school and academic focus: definitely not a
good place to be purely myopic. Competitive situations where “beating the other person” is the
objective -- yes, but not life-term decisions. After slowing down and opening my eyes of
awareness, I kind of realized where I had ended up and chose to counterbalance this by
completely putting the brakes – to a dead stop – on my hyper-spaced life, and made some wise
decisions about returning to my original, private high school junior year, and, essentially,
devoting a lot of time to planning.
The Harmonious Synthesis of Myopic Awareness
The times to competitively surge ahead are ideal for excessive myopia, while the times
for taking bearings and deciding direction to take with major life decisions are definitely perfect
spots for excessive awareness. We must authentically strive, however, for the nurturing
illumination of the fine balance between both these entities, so we do not placate our existence
with debilitating problems of impulsivity or stagnation ,but maintain a constantly flowing
nourishment of the soul,. Let’s embrace our resilient capacity to originally authenticate our
facilitations and promote an engagement of selectively, connection, and progressive passion of
the spirit.
Chapter 9: The Delicate Human Body and Alternative Looks
Beauty of the Circulatory System

We must cultivate our minds and understand the examples of extraordinary growth in
contradicting initial conditions. When we learn to promote certainty based on truths of
existence, we nourish the empowering capacity to uplift our entire emotional construct. Our
authenticity and capacity for growth can supply incredibly enlivening sources of nourishment,
growth and understanding. When we access our core, we can awaken our capacity to undergo an
inner knowing for certainty and become more of a complete individual.
My English teacher, Mr. Baker, became a paraplegic and was reawakened to elevate his
teaching caliber to an outrageous level. Helen Keller had three less forms of interaction than all
of us (sight, speaking, hearing) but was able to write a book, start a deaf/blind foundation, and
become a prominent character. When people use drugs to fit in or be a member of a group, I am
appalled, sickened and offended because of the damage they do to the complex beauty of their
circulatory system. If you understand how amazing the circulatory system is, you wouldn’t
shove drugs into that permanently destroy its delicate nature; it is most truly one of the most
complex and beautiful arts out of the plethora of paintings, sculptures, etc. The human body can
be easily looked at as an artistic masterpiece. The veins, all veins, have one-way valves that
ensure blood flow going one direction from the heart, to the organs, back to the heart, to the
lungs. It is an amazingly intricate system, all catalyzed by breath. Take the body’s immune
response. There are three crucial layers to defense.
First, there the preventive, which include skin and external separation from the outside
world. IF a virus penetrates this, it will be eaten by molecules called phagocytes, be burnt off
with a fever, natural killer cells, or inflammation. If this general interior defense is defeated, a
specific cell-mediated or humeral immunity response will take over. A huge component of the
immune system, no doubt is the Helper T Cells, which, along with antibodies, bind to cells make
them vulnerable to by disaggregated. When an antigen – component of a virus – is bound by an
anti-body, it’s entire impact on the immune system is diffused. From urine production in the
kidneys, to the intricacies of the circulatory system, the human biology is a fascinating mastery.
The human body is a delicate entity. I was shocked (almost literally) at how sensitive it is when I
went to the dentist this one time
Trips to the Dentist: the Delicate Human Body

Have your ever gotten your wisdom teeth pulled? Have you gotten them pulled while
fully aware of what was going on (not sedated, instead having Novocain)? It is one of the most
horrifying experiences I have ever endured. First, they make you sign about 10 pamphlets
saying that if your liver pops out of your tooth socket or something, the doctor isn’t responsible,
and realistically that their may be tooth shards, bone fragments, infections, and all of that
outrageous stuff. So you’re pretty already freaked-out before the operation starts.
I was nervous, without my folks (who I normally attend these things with), and decided
to get all three out instead of just one (so I wouldn’t have to do it again later) and Novocain over
sedation. I was told that you hear the suction and the cracking and pulling of the teeth if your are
not under sedation so I choose the sedation. Right when they had given me the oxygen, heart
rate monitor, and were about to knock me out, they asked if I had breakfast, I said I had an
orange, and because you could barf up you breakfast during the sedation, I had to use Novocain.
This was outrageous. First off, seeing dentist shows up in this biker bandana, kind of
gave me an instant heart attack. Then the dentist and assistant tipped me back in this chair, took
this massive dagger-like needle and kept shoving me full of Novocain – it felt like he was slicing
the roof of my mouth. Then, not wanting to look most of the time, I saw him insert this
mechanical barrage of pliers, picks, little mini-knives, drills and wedges into my mouth. It felt
like my molars had just become an ice sculpture being chiseled at. I saw the dentist pull out
fragments of the tooth when I heard this huge crack, and felt tremendous pressure on my
mandible, so I thought something had gone wrong and that the tooth had broken and was stuck in
my gums or something. I saw shards of tooth spraying everywhere and felt the vibration of this
drill, as the dentist pulled out blood-soaked swabs. All the while, my arms were physically
shaking and I heard the cracking and ripping of the teeth as he pulled them out with pliers. I felt
like a frickin’ lobster or something. It was the most outrageously crazy experience. But my
shaking arms made me realize how sensitive the human body is. I am definitely hard on the
outside, soft on the inside!
Autism: New Outlook

Emotional authenticity is crucial in whatever context you reside. You can’t hide your
emotions and are always showing them. Whether you bury your head, whisper stuff under your
breath, clench your jaw, or bite your lip, you are always producing affects that magnify your
emotions, sot the best thing – the most productive thing to do – is simply to consciously, rather
than unconsciously express them. Even by not showing your emotions, you are engaging in a
form of communication. Choosing not to communicate is still communication.
The Autism society remarks on this, saying that autistic kids are simply unique
individuals who communicate differently. The opposite side of the argument from ABA
(Applied Behavior Analysis) says that kids should be taught at a young age to conceal any of the
abnormal behavior expressed by most autistic people. This means suppressing the tics, hisses,
finger-clicks, rocking back and forth, difficulty in mastering tonal expression, facial expression
and language, excessive attention to detail, extreme specialization in a field. Autism Activists,
like those at the Aspie (Autistic Strength, Purpose and Independence in Education) School in
Boiceville, NY, say that by burying the reaction, you any way to communicate because a
behavior is an attempt at communicating something. Aspie schools choose to nourish and
continue with that attempt to communicate, rather than bury the reaction because after all the
students still feel the pain or the sensation they are trying to communicate when they react the
way they do.
This school takes on the principle of having extraordinary growth contradict initial
conditions because you can cultivate the mind to perform amazing accomplishments. Apparently,
American society has become ridiculous at diagnosing Americans with Autism. Autism.org and
other activist sites say that 1 in 200 Americans are diagnosed. The Autistic Liberation Front,
promoting neuro-diversity, remarks this is simply too much. The people at the Aspie school say
that autism should not be “cured” but embraced. “Curing it” they say, would be like curing “left-
handedness”. The old diagnosis was that autism created a shell from which a normal child would
evolve, while the new diagnosis is that autism is more like “skin”, not to be shed, but to remain
an integral part of the child’s identity. Lenny Schaffer, who writes an Autism report, focuses in
on turning something debilitating into something better. This better state is something we are all
looking for except that people with autism go about it from different angles.
Other people, like this one 37-year old with Asperger says “why not look for a cure”.
Whatever the cure may be, whether it be embracing and cultivating the autistic response to draw
out and elicit the meaning behind the attempt at communication or finding an actual cure the goal
is the same: allow people with autism to effectively communicate. Understanding the connection
of this goal is remarkably poignant because it shows that these apparently contrasting sides – for
ABA and against it – are really on the same side trying to alleviate the frustrating effects of
Autistic mannerisms. It seems that simply applying more emotional response and facial
expressions to communication is more important for the sake of being a cogent communicator
rather than “to dispel negative symptoms of autism”. Many of the causes of autistic irritation,
like causal hugs, fluorescent lights, and whatnot are basic examples of why not to bury the
behavioral communication. Autistic people still feel the emotional pain and anguish when they
experience these things whether they can sense them or not.
The Aspie school, started by adult autistics, who were institutionalized because they
couldn’t communicate normally, recognizes that people with autism prefer to be called autistic
individuals rather than “people with autism” because it makes it sound less like a disease. They
say the former would be similar to saying a person has “femaleness” instead of the person is a
female, the person is autistic. The school tries to focus on the positives to autism, like how
specialized expertise on one obscure area (super volcanoes, for example) could actually have a
large social interest. Excessive detail to a specific situation would produce valuable insights as
well. Researchers have even found that some famous scientific contributors were autistic: they
just turned their “symptoms” into positive reactions and, like the 18th century chemist, Henry
Cavendish, who discovered Hydrogen, changing the face of chemistry forever. Apparently the
Aspie school, in trying to understand the underlying meaning behind any tics or odd behavior,
hosts “Autreats” (similar to gay rights retreats), where autistic people convene and wear badges
indicating their willingness to converse. The form of communication that differs in Autism
shouldn’t be looked at as something debilitating, but different. Sometimes, very different.
Dance of Verisimilitudes
The dance of our verisimilitudes completes the certainty of authentic origins of faith.
When we have such faith we can unite our soul with the capacity for originality and authentically
derive passion from a connected source of invigorating ingenuity. This ingenuity is a source of
passionate creativity that permeates our souls and unites with a graceful gesture of knowing.
When we know the understanding of certainty, we can promote incredibly origins of truth and
sophisticated origins of compassion and relate to our authentic energy without the debilitating
sources of ownership, problematic indictments and unhealthy disparagements. Manufacturing
the connection with the vibration of our emotional truths unites our enlightening energy in a
soothing congregation, dissolving disillusionment, transcending above doubt, and dismantling
fear.
Love life to the fullest by creating a source of compassionate originality in the soul and
captivate this essence to permeate the endeavor for clarity. This authentic gesture promotes
clarity and resilient fortitudes that impassion the soul with prominently awakening gestures of
authentic compassion. Let this vigorously active energy facilitate growth and abandon the
lethargic practice by cultivating a didactic edification of the soul!
Sabotage
Dr. Phil talks about this thing called sabotage where a person “stays the course or get
sabotaged and sucked back into playing roles that were expected” (Phil 291). When this happens
are friends can prevent us from growing positively; “we can get pulled back into our life script.
We can be persuaded that it was all a dream. We can be convinced that our passions, the
convictions we have felt with such intensity and clarity, are silly. We become embarrassed at our
audacity in believing that we are different...just as we are about to escape our fictional self, our
“friends” hold us to the way we were and, in their view, always will be”. This is friends can play
a very deleterious role with growing relationships because instead of encouraging, they can
unintentionally sabotage you. “Some do it out of a desire to protect you. Others are trying to
protect themselves from change. Still others may be trying to protect the predictable world that
the two of your share. “ (Phil 292) “They are normally not trying to do you harm, but rather
they are trying to protect their own lives, their own fears, and their own fictional selves..” ( 295)
A crucial thing to maintain is confidence in your own agenda. Don’t be deterred by
doubts of others: don’t be deterred from you quest for your authentic self just because somebody
notices that the journey has a lot of twists and turns. Often those same people are the ones who
are too afraid to confront their own twists and turns. They are only challenging your new script
because it challenges their old one.” (293) This prevention of growth could be from your own
internal judge or external manifestations of the judge if your friends get really feisty about
something. “You need to recognize that there will be people in your life who will not encourage
you in this process” (293). “You can’t afford to say, ‘Well, gee, I’m screwed here and am right
back where I started, but I know you didn’t mean it”. (295). Instead you must learn the four
forms of sabotage and defend against and dismantle them.
First, there is overprotection, this is the idea where someone says, “I really don’t think
you are capable of being more than you are. You’re just setting yourself up for failure. Just calm
down or you’ll get hurt.” (295). This is where a person uses phrases like calm down, chill out,
don’t over-react and be too rash to limit you. Secondly, is power manipulation where I person
who is reluctant for you to grow because it would change their relationship with you doesn’t
change. “They may be threatened by your personal empowerment, so that, consciously or
otherwise, they’ll try to keep you in their safe little cocoon.” They may not always be doing this,
but many times people sabotage others because they want “their power to control and have
access to you…and feared they would lose you” (296). When people are too graspy in a
relationship, this, unfortunately can happen. Third is leveling, where a jealous person can get
“control over you with that jealousy, if you let them drag you down and define who you are, they
will define you in a way that is convenient and non-threatening for them. Jealous people are
going to sabotage you for reaching a higher level than them” (298). Don’t let levelers flatten you
out.
Acknowledge their jealousy and disown their attempts for control. Levelers usually
“work for you when you when you are failing and against you when you are succeeding.”
Finally, the fourth mechanism of sabotage is safety in the status quo. Where people are reluctant
for you to change because it will cause the status quo to change, which is frightening. “Any
move you make toward reconnecting with your authentic self may trigger resistance: the group
or partner that you’re dealing with may rise up against the perceived threat” (300). The crucial
point here is that it is a perceived threat that the “status quo offers a refuge from the fear of
change” (300). People erroneously hold onto this fear of change very often, so they stay
anchored to the status quo, making this form of sabotage the most deadly and commonplace.
Avoid it be recognizing other’s fear of change and saying to yourself you are only changing (and
can only change) yourself.
It is challenging, but a crucial necessity to determine who is focused and sincere with
emotional authenticity; you can’t hide your emotions and are always showing them. Even by not
showing your emotions, you are engaging in a form of communication. Choosing not to
communicate is a form of communication. Communication is inevitable. Because of this
inevitability we should aim to communicate with veracity and sincerity so that we create a
sincerity of purpose to endeavor the specialized format of truthful connection.
Chapter 10: Representation and Identity, Time’s Milieu, Evocate

Uprooting
Representation and Identity
We must ask ourselves, how do we represent ourselves? Is the appearance we give off --
the clothes we were, way we carry our body, and items we use? Our appearance should be none
of these things. In reality, or representation is a deeply spiritual connection. When we learn to
associate this authentic source of growth with the pattern of knowing and perceiving what we
must understand, we quickly arrive at the ideal perspective of a representational system. Some
people represent themselves with their identity -- how they decide to carry their life, by which
moral standards, and what personal truths they reckon by. Those are certainly worthwhile
considerations, but our certainty of purpose, our identity, is, fortunately, something much deeper
than a representation. A representation is our image that we exude each and everyday. I have
cycled through a wide variety of images, but one common theme among them has been
authenticity. I always strive for authenticity. When we learn to connect with our source of
truthfulness, we can provide authenticity from multiple angles of clarity. The perspective that we
use to shape and filter our daily experiences is directly impacted by our representation. During
one year of my life, I became so focused on being "authentic" that I would rarely smile and
purposely try to where my emotions like a book on my body and on my facial expression. I tried
to never have any superficial expression of emotion, whatsoever. The more I learned that such
blatancy and not trying to cultivate positive emotions was a problem, the more quickly I realized
that our representation affects our identity. When I tried to "be authentic" -- and, therefore,
rarely smiled except when I truly felt exuberant -- my entire identity began to feel diminished
and neutral. Before, when I had aimed to create authenticity, but focused on cultivating
happiness, as well, my representation displayed buoyancy and warmth (even if I felt kind of
down in the dumps) and, because of this focus in my representation, my identity became uplifted
and more nourished as well.
Self-Consciousness and Detail Adjustment: Whale-Watching
I remember meeting this fantastic girl at a party, really kicking it off, and having one of
the best nights of my life. Later, we became best of friends, as well. The next day we had
planned to take a Whale Watching boat expedition. I had partaken in a Whale Watching cruise
with this one specific boat line and recommended it highly. I left it up to her to get the tickets.
But when I arrived at the dock to meet her and her friends, I discovered she had purchased
tickets for a different, for less reliable boat company. When I had a strong faith in the other boat
company, which had a large touring boat with a PA sound system to announce the whale
breaches or dolphin pods, the boat we boarded was a sailboat driven by a small dinky motor and
navigated by two guys that looked like college students trying to make a few bucks without
knowing anything about whale watching. The boat had a rickety "gangplank" and had no
certifications of any kind. As suspected, the trip was a disaster. Three hours of ripples and
waves before the idiot captains decided to follow another whale watching boat, where we finally
glimpsed a few breaches. I was furious the entire trip because 1) I knew how unequipped this
boat was, 2) I knew how much fun and exhilarating the other boat trip was, and 3) I loathed
knowing the other boat was better and paying for being on this boat. Naturally, I was a complete
grump on the boat, offering almost know communication, being in a pouted ball. As a result, the
girl I liked so much, who, the night before, I was thinking of getting into a very strong
relationship together (I hadn’t become intimate with someone that quickly before) left (quite
reasonably due to my behavior) for Lompoc and I never saw her again. You could say it was just
superficial fling, but it was more than that, and the whale-watching experience had mutilated the
relationship. The disruption of our relationship, however, could have been prevented.
How could I have handled that differently? I was astonished that to think about how
amazing our relationship could've been if we had simply gotten on the other boat. The boat that I
knew was reliable. I wouldn't have been grumpy; we would've had an amazing time, and we
would have grown closer. Instead, because of lack of the details, we grew icy, apart, and severed
the relationship completely. The details of an excursion like that can mutilate the human
relationship. I realized the best lesson is to realize the exponentially destructive potential of
having "off" details, and make an assertive commitment to fix them and get all aspects of
something as "right" and as "aligned" as possible. Most importantly, speak your mind before
your commit. If I had said, directly, that the boat we were about to board didn't look equipped (it
didn't even have seats for heck sake), and I didn't want to board it, at least that would've
generated lucidity in our communication waited and then felt self-conscious about saying it
around the captain of the boat when we had already set sail. In the end it was a disaster that
could've been prevented by never being self-conscious of what others might say and always
adjusting details of a "date" or excursion to make sure they are aligned.
Lesson#1: Adjust the details of an excursion so they are aligned to offer the maximum
satisfaction and happiness.
Lesson #2: Avoid self-consciousness --it is never rude express your true thoughts about
someone or something when you are paying for that service with your own time and/or money.
Time’s Milieu
It is fascinating how we quickly change the emphasis of our time, depending on the
amount of time we have in our possession. The pattern of time usage always seems to reflect our
representation. If we have a system of representing our time in little segments, we always will
use our time efficiently because, even during a large amount of time, we create an inner knowing
that provides authentic virtues to uplift ourselves. The large chunks of time will be broken into
smaller segments, and since we only work with "one chunk" at a time. We will certainly have a
connection for truthfulness with our timely selves. If our representation is based on allotting
time as large chunks, we may be less efficient with time. This inefficiency takes form because
this method would be similar to looking at a year, as one time chunk, not 12 months, of 4 weeks,
of 7 days each. That is the reason the calendar exists -- to produce time efficiency. Calendars
and even "time" doesn't exist naturally -- it is man-made. Sure, age and decay and sunrises and
sunsets occur, but the entire concept of time, as it relates to a calendar, watches, and "keeping
track of time" is completely man-made.
It is important to incorporate this man-made gift into our representation system and to,
simultaneously, choose not to incorporate.

What? Apply, but don't apply it? It is useful to have a time system so you can keep track
of long-term projects, and connect with those sources of time on a regular basis, but we must
associate time with a present mood, as well. Time outside the man-made schedule is perceived
as a disposition, a demeanor, a milieu. Time that is outside of the man-made mathematical
allotment of time has a "mood" to it. Have you ever felt that time droll on a like some old honey
creeping, inch by inch, oozing ever so slightly out of a bottle? Have you ever felt that time was
like one of those carnival games where the mini-heads pop up and you have to bonk them with a
hammer to gain points? Sometimes time is fleeting and difficult to grasp, popping up at random
and sporadic times in which we must seize. Have you ever felt that time was like a waterfall,
gushing down with immense force?
I have certainly felt the waterfall effect of time during important standardized tests. The
time seems to be pelting me with droplets, weighing more and more down on me with the
pressure of performing well on the test. Have you ever-felt time feel like a warm breeze in a
pasture during summer? Such time is free flowing and "timeless". All of these different "types"
of time are still on the man-made calendar. All these completely different feels of time have
totally different moods and mentalities, but they take up "the exact amount of time" that is on the
man-made time. The "slow-dripping honey" time and the "waterfall" pressure time could be
mathematically displayed as an hour, but the latter would feel like days, and the former would
feel like 10 minutes!
Man made time – man manufactured time -- by counting tallies etched in stone and
examining the solar and lunar phases, thousands of years ago. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs
used advanced astronomy towers to accurately use the sun (which, due to physics) reliably
showed the source of time it took for earth to complete one revolution in the solar system.
Because of Newton's first law: An object in motion stays in motion; and an object at rest, stays at
rest" the earth, with no friction in space, has constant inertia, providing an adequate source of
time, making it a reliable reference for our man-made calendar. All fine and dandy; all should be
nothing new. What’s interesting, however, is that anything could have been used for a "clock" --
it could've been flower blooming patterns: when a certain flower blooms, it would be day, when
it folds close that would be night, etc. We must learn to associate our sense of time with the
efforts used in determining the nature, or the classification, of time.
Determining the categorization of time is best accomplished by identifying finite versus
infinite time. James Carse writes, “Power is a concept that belongs only in finite play. But
power is not properly measurable until the game is complete” (Carse 28; “Finite and Infinite
Games”). In reference to the measurability of power, Carse, of course refers to a situation where
an underdog component can suddenly “come back” in the end of a game: so a game must be
finished before the metric of power can be applied. However, “power is contradictory and
theatrical” (Carse 29). Power is an artifice; a sham. Power doesn’t exist! It doesn’t exist in
infinite play and therefore the expansive thinker, the infinite player, completely disregards power
concepts or goals. Winners never get distracted by the illusion of power.
Now, of course, the winner doesn’t disregard time in a setting where timeliness is a
crucial element of success. However, the infinite winners recognize and understand that power is
a time-bound artifice that should never be a goal or a focus of anything. To understand the
nature of a man-made structure of time, examine what is crucial and connected to you.
What is important to us? The man-made structured interval of time? Or embracing time
based on its "mood". Does it feel like slow-time and "fast-time"? How does the sentient
experience feel? This is not saying that time doesn't exist, but just illustrates that time could
quickly be illustrated as something that provokes more than tic-tocks of a clock or pages turned
on a calendar-based planner. Our sense of time should use calendars as reference frames, but
these conduits for "evaluating time" shouldn't limit our feelings, the sensations of the time’s
mood. Man-made time should simply be a container to associate our sense of place, but the
emotional emphasis of time should authentically embrace the milieu of time 100%. After all, if
we simply examine time as a source of tallies, counters, and another 365 days, we deny ourselves
the right to fully feel each day’s moments. Time and decisions are all we have to start with to
produce emotions, journeys, situations, and outcomes. If we examine and interact with our time
as if it were a sterile, linear, environment quantifying it with notches on a wall or measuring it
like you would numbers on an abacus (where you simply shift over spherical markers on a wire
like days on a calendar) we prevent spiritual growth. Engage spiritual understanding and growth
by heeding finite, man-, made time, but recognizing that the true essence is in the infinite time
experience.
Spiritual growth can exist in structure, but not within confinements. Structure can help
growth in many ways, but the primary method of enunciating ourselves to create a new structure
is by examining, sometimes destroying, and then rebuilding our current structure.
Evocative Uprooting
I remember countless times in my life I had been reasonably happy, invigorated and had a
system where I had a company of friends, shelter, mental stimulation, source of income, great
supply of food, a lover, a stable health system, and a progression toward variable goals, but
completely uprooted my life to start from scratch. Why did I do this? To learn. Because of an
emotional wound that I had continued to reseal but not treat. Because of some patterns that
cramped and crippled my life, but chose to bury. Because of some deeper, incomprehensible,
intuitive message of my soul that I had not heeded. My life "worked" it was functional and
practical and more often fun than neutral or depressing, but something was missing. Because of
this "missing something" I, many times, took the bold step to uproot my life and make a constant
change in all my patterns. I disliked patterns, but I loved stability, consistency and happiness.
I felt that everyone should have their own path to happiness, consistency, and stability
and that patterns simply turned people into machines, downloading "functional models" and
applying the appropriate circuitry. I didn't feel authentically and spiritually human.
This is why I changed my schools junior year, traveled to various continents, did a Sea
Semester, earned a Brown Belt in karate, lived with natives, swam with sharks, ran marathons,
underwent intensive therapy, deeply and introspectively analyzed my soul, related to great
literary, spiritual, and international leaders, and investigated poignant friendships that would
open my life to entirely new levels of clarity. I became discontent with a pattern that "simply
worked"; I needed a life (not even a lifestyle that is debilitating) that was focused on promoting
compassion and happiness. The simplicity of this agenda was ingenious because of the variety
of mechanical patterns it denied.
Blemishing my life with patterned rituals seems to languidly stain my daily existence into
a bland blur. I wanted crisply alive emotions and evocative experiences every day. Not once a
year. After realizing what I was doing, year after year after year, I decided to call this process the
"Evocative Uprooting". I would uproot my lifestyle to go through struggle, problems, and then
"replant" in a new area that would promote sincerity and truthfulness. This in itself became a
pattern that I could not avoid and did not want to because it wasn't a pattern, but the perpetuation
of instilling vigorous personal truths.
When we learn to associate ourselves with these truths as organic, morphing entities, we
can quickly pacify any concerns of feeling trapped in a pattern and evoke even more certainties.
Just recently, I felt as though I was transported back to Chicago after the sea semester.
Professor Janke's office even reminds me a bit of dad's office and me discussing my distress on
the boat with you and dad strongly resembled me (even using the whiteboard) trying to convey
my distress of computer science to professor Janke (like you guys -- that type of emotional
intelligence, along with being a really great teacher). The capacity to relate to a professor in a
similar method as I related to you guys is a fantastically huge step to becoming comfortable with
my surroundings. By doing this, I created a pattern of truthful knowing that could authenticate
my patterns and relationships with students.
The more I incited these type of connections (make an unfamiliar situation familiar by
associating comfortable settings -- like family -- with the unknown), the more quickly I provoked
a sense of knowing that allowed me to understand my truths and connections to myself. By
grasping this I could move on in an original pattern that avoided rituals and models, but provided
stability. This was the progress of adaptation. The more quickly I began to examine my
audience, the more easily I could grasp to the situation. This wasn't problematic grasping
(groping or holding on when I should let go) but clarifying rejuvenating understanding. I kept
thinking about how there are many "births" in a lifetime. I have been born into life, into family,
into close friends, and have been (possibly delayed) trying to be born into school. Environment
has a huge impact with this. I feel that, possibly, my connection with the birth at school needs to
be in a nourishing, sensitive, clean environment.
All of this stuff is in Tutt Science center, which is maybe why I feel kind of overwhelmed
and extremely connected there. It seems like all the mathematical "artifacts" and items in the
building seem to have a source of connection that associates myself with being at K & A's office,
or around people similar to you and dad, and amazing sources of clarity. Knowing all of this
makes me feel more connected to the people, which promotes an even greater understanding of
the other types of connection, knowing and creating. I felt, for awhile, that all that stuff in the
building was placed there for my comfort -- for me to feel comfortable. But it wasn't placed
there "for me", just located in that vicinity for the sake of creating that building's atmosphere.
But that very atmosphere, however, was what made me feel extremely clear and as though I
didn't have to "shake any thing off". Sometimes, I felt kind of dirtied or obfuscated --
ineffective, accumulative growth, instead of qualitative learning. It seems like "learning" is
adapting to an environment to not just "survive" but to "fully live authentically!
Writing is a huge process. To acquire clear writing, I have to associate my body with clarity.
This is accomplished by physical activity -- when I run and put oxygen into my body, I
make my body clear. This combination of mental clarity -- writing -- and physical clarity is
paramount to monumentally embracing a life that disowns disparagements. When you feel fully
clear, you don't have disparagements. Nor do you have self-criticism, because you have
disowned that behavior and have taken over a new mindset, focusing, not on being positive, but
what to do with positivism. Mental and physical lucidity provides positive states. So many
people focus in on activities that obscure and blur their brain. Excessive reading, TV watching,
video game playing, even "listening" can obscure and tarnish the efficient clarity of our brain.
Using our brain towards active exhibitions -- writing, speaking, communicating, and performing
-- automatically connects our personal and original sources of integrity with confidence
structures of truthfulness. This is a process we must incorporate into all of our time -- regardless
of our emphasis on a "man-made" or feeling-based time. The time we experience must have
sources of integrity that tie into our representation. This way we can perceive our identity in a
fashion that nourishes our very existence and promotes clarity that unites the compassionate
individual with the personalized knowing and fortunate connection of any "Evocative
Uprooting" being clear and poignant.

Expressing The Observation

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Expressing The Observation

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

John Thomas “Kooz” Kuczmarski

Expressing the Observation 1

©2007 by John Kooz and Validate Your Life

A Division of John Kuczmarski Publishing

BOOK ENDS PUBLISHING is a registered trademark of Book Ends Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is not available.

Visit us online at http://www.validatelife.com.

Chapter 9: The Delicate Human Body and Alternative Looks...................................74

About the Book

environment, accessing your voice, elevating to different mental planes, understanding

Expressing the Observation

Chapter 1: Anchoring to the Environment and Removing Struggle

blocked or stymied is when we allow extraneous variables to accumulate in our mind.

However, because of lack of motivation, reason, or because of hesitation aroused and

of my own sanity and clarity.

connection to personality by making comparisons and associations with compliments or

us, instead of the mirror’s flashback residual image.

In addition to having almost a philanthropic effect on a person’s concrete and crystallized

understanding of themselves, saying things that I observed or noticed allowed my mind to

(transformative) changes in my mind, allowing me to incorporate and instigate more provocative

and prolific examples of knowledge into my understanding.

Passions unite Soul

knowledge about outlets.

reservoir become devices and tools.

Norman Geisler on Truth

Anchors of the Environment

warmth and nourishment is delusional.

embracing the cultivation of an authentic internal environment, allowing you to maintain

too much hesitation, habitual tendency or provocation.

We should challenge ourselves to not only survive in demanding and difficult

allows us to take our environmental bearings, eradicate ‘disorientation” and replace

disfigurement with profound ingenuity and clarity of purpose. Casting of “items of

Lost in the Woods and Being Found Again

apply necessary pressure to ourselves in an unnatural, daunting, or frightening conversation, we

anchor ourselves to confidence.

The 15-Minute Segment

and essential element to understanding ourselves.

Exercise is another incredibly environmental anchor because if I can exercise in an area

and tangible atmosphere.

Finally, another environmental anchor is to cast of the idea of getting everything

being an intangible, unmanageable medium

you relate with.

matter, are the attributes of the present.

nothingness space, yielding matter and reality.

directly or through some other inlet of reality.

Acknowledging the Need

be an ideal fit for you.

Chapter 2: Removing Struggle with the Perception

everyone else is “insane”, when, in reality, it is their perception.

we will obviously have a greater tendency to live our genetic “prophecy”.

Don’t Personalize, Synchronize

remarkably connection of the soul!

Chapter 3: Emotional Authenticity: Sea Semester

punishment system, but the cruise was anything but savory.

such a haphazard, dangerous fashion – I became instantaneously committed to and genuinely

quarters. In other words, it immediately became an “adult” conversation.

and wait in the airport for seven hours!

for security to pick me up.

floor, “What are you working on?!”

could ever be imagined by any storyteller!

semester experience because of sheer intimidation!):

Dear Ms. Mcleod,