4951. When you deny your deep truth to please your
woman, everyone will feel your lack of authenticity. They will sense that your false smile hides
an inner division. Your friends,
children and business colleagues may love you, but they won’t trust you since
you don’t trust your own core intent.
And, more importantly, your own sense of inauthenticity will burden your
capacity to act with clarity. Your
actions won’t jibe with your core;
4952. If you listen to your woman, taking
everything she says into account and making your own best decision then you are
acting in accordance with your core. You
are saying, in effect, “My deepest wisdom is leading me to this decision. If I am wrong, I will learn from it and my
wisdom will have deepened. I’m willing
to be wrong and grow from it;
4953. The attitude of self-trust engenders others’
trust in you. You may be wrong, but you
are willing to find out and, thus, grow from the experience. You are open to listening to others, but in
the end, you will take the responsibility for making your own decision. There is nobody else to blame;
4954. If you give up your real decision to follow
your woman’s then you will blame her for being wrong, if she is wrong, and you
will feel disempowered if she is right, having denied yourself the opportunity
to act from your core and grow from your mistakes;
4955. Be open to changing your feeling based on
whatever your woman might reveal to you – through her words or her body
language – and then make your own decision based on your deepest intuitive
wisdom and knowledge. You may make the
right decision or the wrong one, but whatever happens, it is your best shot and
you will strengthen your capacity for future action;
4956. Every man knows that his highest purpose in
life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over
his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe and cheats his
woman of an authentic man, who can offer her full, undivided presence;
4957. Once you are honest with yourself about your
real edge, it is best to lean just beyond it.
Very few men have the guts for this practice. Most men either settle for the easy path or
self-aggrandize themselves by taking the extreme hard path. Your insecurity may cause you to doubt
yourself and so you take the easy way not even approaching your real edge. Alternatively, your insecurity may lead you
to push, push, push, seeking to become victorious over your own sense of lack;
4958. Your fear is the sharpest definition of
yourself;
4959. Primary fear shows you that you are at your
edge;
4960. Staying with the fear, staying at your edge,
allows real transformation to occur;
4961. Playing your edge allows you to perceive the
moment with the least amount of distortion;
4962. Fear of fear may lead you to hang back,
living a lesser life than you are capable.
Fear of fear may lead you to push ahead, living a false life, off
center, tense and missing the moment.
But the capacity to feel this moment, including your fear, without
trying to escape it, creates a state of alive and humble spontaneity. You are ready for the unknown as it unfolds
since you are not pulled back or pushed forward from the horizon of the moment. You are hanging right over the edge;
4963. Own your fear and lean just beyond it in
every aspect of your life;
4964. A man’s capacity to receive another man’s
direct criticism is a measure of his capacity to receive masculine energy. If he doesn’t have a good relationship to
masculine energy (e.g., his father) then he will act like a woman and be hurt
or defensive rather than make use of other men’s criticism;
4965. Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity
in one another. If you are at your edge,
your men friends should respect that, but not let you off the hook. They should honor your fears and, in love,
continue to goad you beyond them without pushing you;
4966. If you merely want support from your men
friends without challenge, it bespeaks an unresolved issue you may have with
your father, whether he is alive or dead;
4967. Choose men friends, who themselves are living
at their edge, facing their fears and living just beyond them. Men of this kind can love you without
protecting you from the necessary confrontation with reality that your life
involves. You should be able to trust
that these friends will tell you about your life as they see it, offer you a
specific action, which will shed light on your own position, and give you the
support necessary to live in the freedom just beyond your edge, which is not
always or even usually, comfortable;
4968. The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to
your career, must be aligned with your purpose, if you are to act with
coherence and integrity in the world. If
you know your purpose, your deepest desire then the secret of success is to
discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize
distractions and detours;
4969. If you don’t know your deepest desire then
you can’t align your life to it.
Everything in your life is dissociated from your core. You go to work, but since it’s not connected
to your deepest purpose, it is just a job, a way to earn money. You go through your daily round with your
family and friends, but each moment is just another in a long string of
moments, going nowhere, not inherently profound;
4970. When you know your true purpose, which is
your core desire in life, each moment can become a full expression of your core
desire. Every instant of career, every
instant of intimacy is filled with the power of your purpose. You are no longer just going through the
motions at work and with your woman, but you are living the truth of your life
and giving the gifts of your love moment by moment;
4971. The superior man is not seeking for
fulfillment through work and woman because he is already full;
4972. As you open yourself to living at your edge,
your deepest purpose will slowly begin to make itself known. In the meantime, you will experience layer
after layer of purposes, each one getting closer and closer to the fullness of
your deepest purpose. It is as if your
deepest purpose is at the center of your being and it is surrounded by layers
of concentric circles, each circle being a lesser purpose. Your life consists of penetrating each
circle, from the outside toward the center;
4973. The outer purposes are often the purposes you
have inherited or learned from your parents and your childhood
experiences. The outer circles, the
purposes you often apply yourself too early in life, are most likely only
distant approximations of your deepest purpose;
4974. As you dissolve each layer and move toward
the center, you will more and more be living from your deeper purposes and then
your deepest heart purpose, whatever that is, in every moment. However, you probably are not living your
deepest purpose yet. You probably need
to burn off the karma or fulfill the need, of the present purpose by which you
are fascinated and distracted;
4975. It’s easy to feel disappointed by life;
success is never as fulfilling as you think it is going to be. But there is a reason for this. Successfully completing a lesser purpose doesn’t
feel very good for very long because it is simply preparation for advancing
toward a greater embodiment of your deeper purpose. Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be
fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake
it for a sign of failure;
4976. You may take on a business project, work at
it for several years and then suddenly find yourself totally
disinterested. You know that if you
stayed with it for another few years you would reap much greater financial
reward than if you left the project now, but the project no longer calls
you. You no longer feel interested in
the project. You have developed skills
over the last few years working on the project, but it hasn’t yet come to
fruition. You may wonder, now that you
have the skills, should you stick with it and bring the project to fruition,
even though the work feels empty to you?
Maybe you should stick with it.
Maybe you are bailing out too soon, afraid of success or failure or just
too lazy to persevere. This is one possibility. Ask your close men friends if they feel you
are simply losing steam, wimping out or afraid to bring your project to
completion. If they feel you are bailing
out too soon, stick with it;
4977. The signs of fulfilling or completing a layer
of purpose are these: 1. You suddenly
have no interest whatsoever in a project or mission that, just previously,
motivated you highly; 2. You feel
surprisingly free of any regrets whatsoever for starting the project or for
ending it; 3. Even though you may not
have the slightest idea of what you are going to do next, you feel clear,
unconfused and, especially, unburdened; 4.
You feel an increase in energy at the prospect of ceasing your
involvement with the project; 5. The
project seems almost silly, like collecting shoelaces or wallpapering your
house with gas station receipts. Sure,
you could do it, but why would you want to?
If you experience these signs, it is probably time to stop working on
this project. You must end your
involvement impeccably, however, making sure there are no loose ends and that
you do not burden anybody’s life by stopping your involvement. This might take some time, but it is
important that this layer of your purpose ends cleanly and does not create any
new karma or obligation that will burden you or others in the future;
4978. The next layer of your unfolding purpose may
make itself clear immediately. More
often, however, it does not. After
completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your
life. You know that the old project is
over for you, but you are not sure of what is next. At this point, you must wait for a vision;
4979. Parenting children, as well as any
responsible commitment in love, requires that you transcend your own personal
preferences for the sake of the larger commitment, for the sake of service in
love. This is a natural part of being a
householder. However, you cannot
abnegate your deepest purpose to do so or else you will feel frustrated,
eventually resigning yourself to a lesser life than you know you are capable of
living;
4980. Self-resignation will communicate itself to
your woman and your children. They will
feel your weakness. Your woman will
begin to take charge more than she really wants, since you are clearly not
capable of taking charge yourself, and someone has to do it. Your children will challenge your capacity to
discipline them, since they can feel your own lack of authentic
self-discipline. Try as you might, once
you have negated your own deep purpose, your household will become a place
where everybody tests your capacity to stand your ground and you will lose;
4981. A short period of time with a father, who is
absolutely present, full in love, undivided inside and sure of his mission in
life, will affect your children much more positively than if they spend lots of
time with a father who is ambiguous in his intent and has lost touch with his
deepest purpose, no matter how much he loves his children;
4982. Children learn most from their parents by
osmosis. If their father is subtly
weakened and compromised, this will flavor their experience of his love;
4983. It is not the amount of time, but the quality
of the interaction that most influences a child’s growth. Children are exquisitely sensitive to
emotional tone. If you are not full in
your core, aligned with your deepest purpose and living a life of authentic
commitment, your children will feel it;
4984. Don’t cheat your family of your fullest core
and don’t use them as an excuse to avoid the work it will take to manifest your
highest vision. You can give love to
your family and engage your life’s work, if you discipline yourself to act on
your deepest desires with priority. Then,
when you are with your family, you are with them totally, since there is no chronically
unfinished business in your life to distract you, and no inner ambiguity about
where you want to be or what you really want to be doing;
4985. If you forget your larger purpose, while
pursuing the small and endless tasks of daily life, then you have reduced
yourself to a machine of picayune;
4986. To help you remember the triviality of your
daily tasks, interrupt your schedule with refreshers. These refreshers should cut to your core and
strip the fat off the moment. Consider
your own death. Behold an image of the
most enlightened being you know.
Contemplate the mystery of existence.
Relax into the deepest and most profound loving of which you are
capable. In your own way, remember the
infinite, and then return to the task at hand.
This way, you will never lose perspective and begin to think that life
is a matter of tasks. You are not a
drone. You are the unbounded mystery of
love. Be so, without forgetting your
tasks;
4987. Too many professionals, by focusing on
maximizing control, become mediocre at a lot of things instead of becoming
amazing at one or two things. This leads
to exhaustion and, in many cases, even becoming resentful of their profession;
4988. The caveat here is that it’s a huge mistake
to hand off too much control too fast.
Don’t get so eager to let go that you create chaos. You need a good transition process. You need to adapt and adjust to challenges
that arise;
4989. The reason that most people struggle to
change habits is they forget to give themselves a reward. Without the reward, the brain doesn’t get the
chemical payoff from the new activity and, thus, never fills the hole left by
the old reward. Eventually, if no reward
is encountered, the new attempt at a habit will fail;
4990. Make a list of the habits in your life that
aren’t serving you. Write out a new
habit for each of the habits identified.
Determine if and how you can utilize the trigger of an old habit to
spark a new habit. Write down a trigger,
action and reward for each of the new habits.
Prioritize the importance of each habit and begin implementing them one
at a time;
4991. This is the only life you have and the only
body you have so cherish them both and treat them right;
4992. Never sacrifice what you want now for what
you want most;
4993. Be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we
are for what we could become;
4994. More people fail through lack of purpose than
lack of talent;
4995. Character is a commitment and can never be
less than 100 percent commitment, otherwise, it is merely an interest;
4996. Integrity is gained by doing what I say I am
going to do, when I am going to do it or at a minimum honoring my word by
communicating and making a request to the party I am working or communicating
with to invent a new possibility;
4997. The most powerful times to have integrity is
when it is difficult or if it stretches you or if you don’t feel like handling
it;
4998. The fastest way to get to where you want to
go is to pick the brain of someone who’s already been there;
4999. Do not ever ask advice of a trusted mentor
unless you’re one hundred percent willing to do exactly what they advise even
and, especially if, you disagree;
5000. If you’re offended by advice you solicited,
that’s a sure sign your heart wasn’t right when you asked. If you’re not willing to hear it and follow
it, don’t ask for it;
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