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Shadow Work

Neville Goddess:

People eschewing shadow work, I wish you nothing but the best. There is literally no way around this stuff. You can’t imagine it away, you can’t affirm it away, it resides in you until you make the connection and deal with it. You will go through life blind to the fact that what you feel isn’t what you think it is, or about what you think it is, making decisions and taking actions from that confused mental place, believing that one thing is causing another, just fumbling in the absolute dark while things you don’t have the courage to understand operate you. It’s the nature of the computer, that much is obvious.

All “shadow work” is being willing to understand the things that are operating you without you realizing it and being willing to see them for what they are: mistakes. Errors. Childlike judgment. Decisions and beliefs made from a place of pain and misunderstanding. That’s literally it. What caused this? And what did I decide about it that is creating my reality that isn’t working for me right now. Or what did I fail to grieve? That is what the current thing is for me. “Put on a strong face, don’t let them know they hurt you, and MOVE ON.” – the problem is you carry that with you and make decisions from it, thinking that is just you and your choices.

Sometimes it is just allowing yourself to feel the grief and realizing that the fortifications you’ve built up because of that really aren’t necessary anymore. We draw weird conclusions about how to handle things as kids, young adults, adults operating from a “lower” mindset. That’s all it is.

Every time something is released you are broadcasting a higher frequency, as Esther says. You get freer and freer. You cross one more thing off the list, you kick one more bag of slimy garbage off of your ability to just be happy, secure and safe.

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Steve Jobs & Emotional Intelligence

Justin Bariso on Steve Jobs and Andy Grove:

Jobs then wrote Grove directly, calling the engineer’s email “extremely arrogant” and labeling his (and Intel’s) understanding of computer graphics architecture as “dismal.”

And here is where it really gets interesting.

Just one day later, Grove responded to Jobs. Grove’s email is a master class in communication, persuasion, and emotional intelligence, and it shows why Grove proved to be a mentor for Jobs for much of his life.

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Risk it

Steve Pavlina:

I’ve seen time and time again that the ideas that felt risky or edgy to me were often those that produced the most value for people. The articles that I was most hesitant to publish were frequently the most impactful. I’ve enjoyed a delightful lifestyle thanks to the simple, repeated act of sharing honestly.

And:

Bounce over to the circles where mutual alignment is strong. Bounce out where resonance is weak.

It’s often the case that you must bounce out of a mismatch before you’ll even perceive the possibility of a match. That’s because if you’re in a mismatched situation, you’re actually repelling matches, usually before you can even perceive them.

You can also apply this advice to relationships. Think of your best relationships as being anti-fragile. You can express the full range of your personality without holding back, and you’ll still be loved. Imagine getting involved with someone new with the attitude of sharing everything about yourself that’s you think will induce someone to reject you. Anyone who makes it through is likely to be a strong match.

So share the ideas and express the aspects of your personality that you hallucinate will get you fired, rejected, or cast out. That will help you discover where you’re most appreciated and where you can push your talents and develop your ideas even further.

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“Here I am within you.”

Walter Russell:

Many have asked if I could more specifically direct them how to kindle that spark of inner fire which illumines the way to one’s self. That I cannot do. I can merely point the way and tell you of its existence. You must then find it for yourself.

The only way you can find it is through being alone with your thoughts at sufficiently long intervals to give that inner voice within you a chance to cry out in distinguishable language to you, ‘Here I am within you.’ That is the silent voice, the voice of nature, which speaks to everyone who will listen.

Lock yourself up in your room or go out in the woods where you can be alone. When you are alone the universe talks to you in flashes of inspiration. You will find that you will suddenly know things which you never knew before. All knowledge exists in the God-Mind and is extended into this electrical universe of creative expression through desire. Knowledge is yours for the asking. You have but to plug into it. You do not have to learn anything; in fact, all you have to do is recollect it, or recognize it, for you already have it as your inheritance.

And:

Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her.

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Moby Dick & Anger

Reddit:

Moby Dick is always going to be the most important book to me because it taught me that anger is ALWAYS caused by feeling like you/someone didn’t get what they deserve.

When I think about it, every time I get pissed I can ultimately trace it back to my attachment to justice.

For example:

Angry cause your boyfriend cheated on you: You didn’t get the love you expect/deserve.

Angry because of police brutality: Civilians not being treated like they should be.

Angry cause your fucking phone screen keeps cracking: was meant to be built better for you.

I can go on and on and trace every single instance of anger back to an attachment to justice. This is the most freeing thing I’ve ever learned. If you take away any assumption that there is a general rule to the universe that dictates what you do and don’t get, you’ll be a very chill person.

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Understand your users.

Paul Graham:

Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I’d choose if I could only keep one.

Understand your users. That’s the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users’ lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it’s mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.

Understanding your users is part of half the principles in this list. That’s the reason to launch early, to understand your users. Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users. Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. And understanding your users will even ensure your morale, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going.

Also::

It’s better, initially, to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you.

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You make what you measure.

Paul Graham:

Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You’ll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you’ll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you’ll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.

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Steve Jobs on Intelligence

Steve Jobs:

A lot of [what it means to be smart] is the ability to zoom out, like you’re in a city and you could look at the whole thing from the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B reading these stupid little maps, you could just see it in front of you. You can see the whole thing.

And:

You have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does, or else you’re gonna make the same connections and you won’t be innovative. […] You might want to think about going to Paris and being a poet for a few years. Or you might want to go to a third-world country — I’d highly advise that. Falling in love with two people at once. Walt Disney took LSD, do you know that?

Alan Trapulionis:

Some time ago, I did an exercise where I tried to recall the key turning points in my life. After a while, I realized that it was never a “genius idea” or “an amazing realization” that shaped my path — but people.

I’d meet someone. I’d have my core assumptions challenged. We’d do something together that I’d never think of doing on my own. In the end, I’d be left with experiences and lessons that I never would’ve been able to get just by my own intellectual effort.

Leonardo da Vinci:

To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.

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Confusion is a Choice

Steve Pavlina:

Confusion is a choice – really the default choice for many people because they haven’t voiced the desire for something better. If you’re stuck in confusion, it’s because you’ve haven’t chosen and declared your intention for a lifestream that glides from one clear decision to the next. You could intend to have a graceful flow of clarity.

Note that declaring your intention to make a choice between two partial matches is not remotely the same as what I’ve been sharing about the higher level intention to enjoy a life rich in clarity. Instead of dwelling on one either-or decision at a time (and repeating ad infinitum for the rest of your life), why not set the intention to solve this either-or problem permanently? Why not intend to graduate from the land of partial matches? How many more of these confusing decisions do you really need to face before you declare that whole mode of confused living to be utterly boring and pointless, and you finally demand more from life in terms of perpetual clarity and flow? You can make this choice in any moment. Do you want it or not?

When someone faces an either-or decision, and I ask them what they want, at best they will usually say they want clarity about that specific decision. They want to make an intelligent choice. They want help considering and evaluating the options. Fair enough. But how often do they express the intention to solve this type of problem permanently or to graduate to an experience of perpetual clarity as they gracefully flow from one decision to the next (or something generally in that ballpark)? Pretty much never.

And so reality brings them what they affirm, which is more of the same – more confusing either-or decisions about partial matches.

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