extracting wisdom from experiences

Happy people playmore and rest more.
As an ambassador for playful simple waysof self-development, ME-time and the Knowing, this snippet of information doesn’t come as a surprise.

Understanding the natural, built-in human ability to learn from experiences, I know how important it is to have ‘ transformation’ time.

This time, where you are not concerned with actively taking more input in, or giving output out, allows your impressions to be arranged in a new meaningful order.

In our modern day living, we (as a species) seem to have decided we’d be better off without.

Why?
 I don’t know, I am not of that opinion.... !
But look around and see how it seems to be deeply ingrained in society that ‘doing nothing’, not being busy consuming or producing at any given time when you are awake, is a ‘ bad thing’ and a hazard to (your existence in) society.

I am of the opinion that this may be common practise, but not respecting our natural ways and therefore not producing sustainable satisfying healthy results, in the long run.

When I came across the book The Primal Connection by Mark Sisson,  I was very much taken with the insights of Primal Living.
Doing things in a way that made our pre-historic ancestors thrive and live in harmony, made so much sense.
Does that proclaim we need to go back to living in caves and hunting  and must forget about the modern day comforts in order to live in harmony with ourselves and our environment?

No, I  don’t think so. Evolution is hardly ever about going back and letting go of ‘Good Things’.

But in downgrading natural  ‘ playing’ and ‘resting’, we may have compromised a couple of things we do label as Good Things: a Good Mental Health, Harmonious Relationships  (with ourselves and others) and a sense of Wellbeing.. of being happy with Life.

In emphasizing consuming and being busy and not paying much attention to or be vaguely interested in the quality of the ‘ transformation’ : all sort of issues occur in society with a firm root in how we manage our emotional households: depressions, anxiety, addictions.....

In our emotional household, we seem to be mainly/only interested in the tender, easy to swallow  parts.
If we haven’t surrendered to eating well marketed ready meals but cook meals from scratch, most of us prefer to go for the quick and easy chicken breast, steaks and mince meats. We send quite a lot elsewhere, for it to be processed  by others  (the dog food company might like the wobbly and chewy bits)or simply dump it to let it be ‘ somebody else problem’.

In the long run, you are missing out on valuable nutritional values talking about meat.
But the same goes with being picky on which emotions you allow to come on your plate.

But anger, sadness, loneliness, boredom, grief en envie are not tasty!
They are not easy to digest!

Well, I don’t disagree that in their pure raw state, the are of a required taste to swallow them as they come.

But he....!
Who says that the only options you have are:

• To digest it raw
• To hand them over to somebody else or
• To dump it

There are more and better, tastier, healthier, more sustainable options when it comes to chewy and wobbly bits when it comes to meat.
There are more and better, tastier, easier to swallow, healthier, more sustainable options when it comes to difficult emotions too.

If only you knew what gorgeous creations are possible based on transforming emotions in more tasty experiences, benefitting from all the nutritional (educational) values in them.

As most of us are lost with improvising a meal with a bunch of raw ingredients, maybe even more of us are so clueless about our own produce in our inner worlds, that we freak out and are scared of touching any of it in the first place.

Using my insights, using my knowledge of how the human system works ( naturally) in self-development, I’ve created a method anybody can use who is interested in learning how to deal (yourself) with ‘ difficult’ emotions. Supporting the built-in systems naturally present in us all, that help extract wisdom from our (own) experiences. Not simply ‘ knowledge’, but proper wisdom: knowledge applied to create ever better experiences, for all involved.

It holds all transformation supporting ingredients, for your body, your mind and your soul:

• Play
• Rest
• The Knowing

I see no obstacles to use it. It is simple. It doesn't take much time. It is free.
 (Although my play rights do apply: if this makes a difference to your life, please return the favour)

But it is so unconventional!

Uh..... yes.
But that is only because  what used to be conventional (natural and working well, also in the long run) to our very resourceful ancestors, has gone out of fashion .

What will other people say? My friends, my family... they will see me coming with this....

Ah, now......the Good Thing in this unconventional suggestion... nobody sees you giving it a go!
That's part of the whole power behind it.

Enjoy your Primal MEATS in the ME At The Soul Kitchen.

A story

I read the other day a book about Carl Jung, where I learned  that a lot of his contributions to psychology , found its roots in one single understanding:” there is a story in everybody that needs to be told.”

He made a lot of progress in understanding what was not going according to plan under the bonnet of a mentally ill person, by finding the point where telling the story got compromised.

In listening and allowing the original story to pick up where it left of,  he reached an amazing success rate in people functioning well after the treatment he provided. When people pick up telling their own story, uncompromised, many mental ailments vanish.
Jung also gained a lot of insight on the story-telling side of humans and made those insight available to  all people interested in understanding human behaviour more.

It appealed to me so much, since I recognise it, from my work and play.

When life goes on the blink, when the going gets tough, what is happening is simply not within the blueprint of the original story. A small thing can be out of tune, or a number of things don’t correspond anymore. That causes friction within oneself. It needs attention, to go back on track with its natural flow.

I’d say, the attention it needs is not so much from a position as a reader. I personally don’t think that the story is already written in full detail and all you have to do is turn the pages ( be a consumer of your life), although listening to you own story and feeling it, does give may clues on where is starts to derail.

I’d say, it needs the attention of a storyteller, having the inherent understanding of what the rhythm and flow of your story is, the main characteristics of it and a sense of beginning, fluid continuity with interest and end.

Herman Koch, a Dutch writer, explained it saying that the first sentence of a book is given to him (as in a thunderstruck) , and  he senses its DNA, full potential and  he senses  its general shape: a novel. He feels the whole book, although it still has to be written. Every day, he simply picks up where he left of and writes more of it. The novel seems to be writing itself, although he has choices on various details. All is well, he indicates, when he regularly checks if he is still in touch that sense of its DNA blueprint.

I suspect that he, if and when he gets stuck with it, he goes back to the last point where he felt it was fully in line with that DNA of the novel and continues from there.

The DNA blueprint of a story, the DNA blueprint of a person’s story is known.
If you lose sight of it, there are still ways to get connect with it, look into it, to get back on track.

I often say, there are two copies in this Universe of the original blueprint for your life. 

One is within yourself, the other is in  the Knowing.

Holistic ( and reverse) SEO

Anybody who lives in my close proximity might recognise a pattern in the development of these blog posts. The ‘ fuzzy logic’ as described above, has an underlying sharp clear method: HR SEO.

It stands for holistic and reverse Search Engine Optimisation, but can just as easily be understood as: HigheR Self Optimisation.

Which, by the way is ( in my mind) meant to be understood for people who are familiar with ‘spiritual speak’ as: the service of optimisation of the self from a higher perspective. The Higher Self isn’t the recipient in need of the improvement/optimisation... the individual self is sending out requests for it, the Higher Self is providing it... using the Knowing and the soul to exchange this information...

It helps the personal effectively of any self and in its slipstream the harmony in the world enormously along if the self was to listen to the incoming, requested for information.

Back to the fuzzy logic of HR SEO.

I know (and the people around me might recognise this) that the content of a blog post is highly related to the events I experienced in the 24 hours prior to writing this blog post.
Conversations I had, things I saw, things I wondered about, events that happened..... especially if they tick boxes like ‘ new’ and ‘remarkable’ and ‘ having recurring themes’... they seem to get an inner label, that the HR SEO function of the Knowing works with.

I wrote in a previous blog post about the function ‘ I surrender’, where the Knowing can do a search combining all your recent (search) actions on request, when you feel slightly ‘ in crisis’ with finding good solutions.

This HR SEO does something similar, but the drive here is not to get help with something that needs addressing because it holds a problem for you ( something is bothering you) that urgently needs solving.
No, the drive here that you get support to expand, develop, grow in a holistic, sustainable, smooth, effective way.

Relating it to the consumer/creator differentiation: ‘ I surrender’ is a consumer tool, ‘ HR SEO’ is a developers tool for the creator.

Yesterday I was introduced to a ‘ trippy gadget’ developers can use to assess quickly websites: which words occur frequently, how often and what does this mean for the ranking in Google.
This is of no interest to any consumer, browsing away on the internet.
But for developers of a website, if gives ideas on the words other ( successful) websites in the field of their interest use and how well they are found on those words.

New, fascinating and part of a recurring theme (databases information management)...check.

I was also consulted to shine my life coachings light on somebody’s life and desire to make changes on 4 points. In the conversation I had with the vibrational essences practitioner on the team, we talked about the Higher Self and its relation to the self.

New client, fascinating set of seemingly widespread desires for change and a recurring theme ( self-development working with energy)..... check.

Combine it with the material I was writing about for a project creating a self-development tool that encourages people to play with it in a holistic way... and fall asleep.

In the night, every soul connects with the creator side of life.
If you pay attention to what the trippy gadget ‘ HR SEO’ is presenting there, it all gets distilled in insight to write an article that brings all the relevant themes and all the high scoring words into meaningful context, related to what you, as developer want to achieve. It is almost writing itself.

This article is an asset to expand your website with.
This insight is an asset to develop and expand your belief system with.

You belief system is your comfort zone, that is where you can move freely and happily around as a creative consumer of your own life.
Somewhere around the edges... life (also) knocks at your door with challenges and request slightly (or quite some) away from your comfort zone.

“Baker, can you also provide me with some ham, please...?” asks the client.

Are you interested, or are you letting this opportunity to be of service pass, in the light of everything you invest your time in?

If it is one client asking you this, you might reply ‘ No, sorry, I’m not a butcher.. I sell bread products only.”
But if the same question is repeated by several clients and there is room to expand activities ( or a need to bind existing customers to you a bit more in a tightening market)....it might become interesting to make selling ham also part of your service.

Often these knocks on the door come in seemingly random, unrelated topics:

• “ Baker, can you also provide me with some ham, please...?” is a request that is suddenly more frequently heard from smartly dressed clients between 12.00 and 14.00
• “ Baker, your health would benefit from working less hours.” says the doctor
• “ Honey, I’m bored now the children have left home” says the bakers wife repeatedly
• “Organic Lunch Room closes in This Town, office workers complain” reads the news paper.

Of course, the baker can shape his life dealing with all these knocks on his belief system door as individual requests.

• “ Sorry, I’m doing selling bread products only”
• “ Doctor, I can’t work less hours, I have bills to pay. Please give me pills to lower my blood pressure.”
• “Why don’t you find a hobby.. a painting class maybe.. I’ll pay for it, but please stop moaning about it and do something about it.... ” replies the baker with raising blood pressure feeling annoyed for being bothered for this over and over again  in his already busy life.
• “Not before long and This Town is dead. Probably the tax system killed this Lunch Room” mumbles the baker putting the paper to the side to eat his supper.

But if the baker was to listen to suggestion from HR SEO, all these events may have been put into the inspiration to look into combining the whole lot into an asset. Pearls in the crown of moving into good health and  good wealth for himself in a happy harmonious community.

The opportunities are already there.
Seeing them, listening to suggestions on how they can all harmoniously align in your development, matching your fields of interest and exploring them further, is quite helpful.

The HR SEO we all have access to, every single night we sleep ( and even during the day, with some awareness training) is a trippy smart gadget of the Knowing I am quite taken with.

Small efforts, the joy of expanding holistic sustainable response ability as a result.

If this slogan applied on a piece of add on-software, you’d expect it to be expensive.
In this case, it’s no add on, it’s already built-in...... freeware, no adds, part of the package of your human operating system!

(Yes, in the last 24 hours, I’ve been diving into the deeper hidden settings of my computer operating system too.....)

Positions on the scale of creation

In previous blog posts I spoke about ‘ consumer’ and ‘ creator’ as positions in information management/ life. 

I took online database management as an illustration, to show that your power to change things depends on where you are in the system.

To me, these positions are not just ‘ two’ positions.
I would say there is a gradual scale between being fully consumed by being a consumer and being fully creative as being a creator and all the positions in between have their rightful and useful place on the scale.

I’ve put it in an image:

Being passive, on either side of the scale, means that you don’t relate much with your personal values to what is happening and why.
Being watchful, on either side on the scale, means that you are paying attention to what is happening and why and you relate observantly  to the values presenting themselves.
Being creative, on either side of the scale, means that you are causing things to happen, you are acting, actively influencing events by organising and expressing  your own values in a meaningful order.

Please take notice of the idea that it is a gradual scale. So you don’t ‘ jump’ from being passive to being watchful. You increase gradually the amount of attention you pay to what is happening and  why and in doing so you increasingly become aware of the presented values in relation to what is happening  and why.

What are your values?
I would say, it is everything your belief system produces.
Roughly, I would say the most elementary categories since they are the closest to home are:  thoughts & feelings.

It is what matters to you and how it matters to you, how you experience it.

In 6 more pictures it is related to your position to theavailable data in the field.

See how the persons mental positions moves from a distance to the heart of it.

Passive Consumer position

Watchful Consumer position

Creative Consumer position

Passive Creator position

Watchful Creator position

Creative Creator position

In doing so, there is an increase in attention, moving from the periphery to the centre.
But, once logged in, its focus shifts, from details ( on the consumer side) to the overall structural integrity on the creator side.

Ideally, in a vivid cycle, one moves gracefully this path, over and over and over again.

Since the creator, in the heart simply can’t see and appreciate the detailed results, so he needs to look back on ‘ himself’ and play with it, to experience his creation and acquire user input with valuable data on the perception of details and suggestions for improvement.

Anybody who has been involved in the back-end of a database-based website will recognise this workflow.

Anybody reading quite some spiritual teachings will recognise this last paragraph from a reality on macro scale:

The Creator needs human beings for it to experience itself.
Those experiences are stored and made retrievable, in the Knowing.

consumer/creator

In the last three blog posts I introduced the idea that I think people would benefit from being both aware of and actively involved with two sides of their lives: the creating end as well as the receiving end.

The more a person is focussing on life and interacting with life from a consumer perspective, most interested in what is happening on the receiving end, usually the less content they become with (their own) life. “There must be more to life!” becomes a recurring cry- out leading to the question:”But what?”

Shops, the internet and libraries are full with options you can look into answering the question of how to be a fully functioning human being..

Depending on your personal taste, you can very well end up in the scientifical approach of the matter.
The worldly mechanical approach offers things like : self-development, psychology, sociology, biology, chemistry, economy ( to name of few)  usually emphasizing  what you need to do in the ‘seen’.
These approaches usually focus your awareness on what has proven itself in the world, easily to be experienced with your own senses, using your mind and how to keep the Consumer amused with your actions.
Fascinating.

Or, on your wanders, you might end up in the esoteric corner. The spiritual world offers for instance: religion and spirituality. The teachings in this world have in common that they are focussing your awareness on the incredible powers of the Creator (having various names, the Universal Power, God/Goddess, Spirit..... to name a few).
There, the main focus is on a meaningful (soul-) connection with the ‘unseen’, sometimes with recommendations varying in strictness on how to keep the Creator amused with your actions. Fascinating.

Most people combine the two in a customised basket in which they dip when their ordinary responsibilities (work, family life) leave room for it: some yoga on Thursdays, Paleo-diet on weekdays , Tarot-reading once a month, a good inspiring book in bath, fundraising for charity around Christmas and church on (some) Sundays.

Since most people are very much willing to share the insights that seem to work well for themselves with others in return for a small fee ( the investment of your time) or a larger fee ( the investment of some of your money too), you’ve got plenty of choice where to turn to as your providers for inspiration.

So you interrupt your everyday life for a short (or longer) while and dive into the activities provided by retreat centres, churches, diet guru’s, yoga masters, inspirational writers, charity, etcetera.
You’ll definitely feel better for doing that. You are actually doing something about it now! ( A happy consumer of various options).

If, however, after a while of doing these things, this dis-contentment on your own life still rears its ugly tail again, and again and again.... it my even become frustrating. You invested everything that was specifically asked of you ( time, money), you even enjoyed many of these activities. You tried the scientific approach on pure will power, which didn’t do it for you. You walked the spiritual path exercising blind faith, which didn’t  bring you the peace of mind with your situation as promised on the tin...
No, the same structural problems occur again and again and again.

Why is it that what works for others doesn’t seem to work for you?
What to do?

I ( yes, another one of those people investing quite some time in giving you options to choose from,  I see the irony here ), would ask you:” Have you exercised changing your (mental) position?“

Have you left the consumer frame of mind to enter the creator frame of mind?

And by that, I mean not ‘ just once’ (as consumers have a try-before-you-buy period) but have you given it a fair shot, structurally?
By that, I also don’t mean ‘ never to return’.
I do mean:” Are you regularly finding yourself in both positions? Are you able to alternate easily between the two”?

My invitation is one to play with both send and receive.

At times actively being the happy creator.
Confidently in looking,  as a webmaster would do, regularly at what is going on behind the scenes of your own ‘ website’ and playing with making (structural) adjustments there to the content, look and feel and functionalities on your website.

At times, actively being a happy consumer.
Confidently looking, as a consumer does, at what is presented on the front end of your website: content, look and feel and enjoy playing with the functionalities on your own ‘website’.

I observe that in the modern Western World we are conditioned to be mainly concerned playing with our consuming power and activities, thinking that is where we are having most control on what happens in our life.

And we do have a lot of control as a conscious consumer, don’t get me wrong! Consumer behaviour has an enormous impact on your own life and that of others.
All I do here, is inviting you to play with the idea that you have more options available, when you log into your life as a conscious creator too.

introducing me-time

In the previous two blog post I introduced:

-          Two meanings of content

-          Two positions of content: (co-)creator and end-users

I started to explain how being actively involved in the content of your life, as a co-creator, opens the way to make structural changes in a sustainable way.

But only logging in in the right place, isn’t changing anything structurally to the system, yet. Although ..... chances are you feel already in a slightly better position (more content-A).

In that frame of mind, you probably also see opportunities for small changes that would  improve the quality of the content (B). You feel your own influence and so you feel more content-A too.

Compared it again to logging into a database environment online.
Looking at the data stored, you see typo’s in the text somewhere and correct them, you make grammar corrections, update a link here and there and replace a photo with a more recent one. Or you remove to the achieve a whole lot of things nobody has been using for ages. Simple, relatively inconsequential changes, easy to make.

This is nice too and doing these things familiarises yourself with various ways of keeping your data up tot date, which is part of the purpose of the management system.

Structurally however, nothing much has changed.

For structural changes to take place, you need to relate to all data, all routines. That means, moving a step deeper into the settings of your systems, to the heart of it, the core, the control centre.

This may take a little more imagination to do in your off-line life shaping exercises.
It also takes a little bit more discipline in paying attention with full focus, courage and awareness of consequences.
Changing a setting in your core settings, has much more effect in more places than changing a ‘;’ into a ‘,’ in a text, as you can imagine.

Just ‘ doing it’ and ‘ see what happens’ may not be the wisest strategy to apply.
If all your systems go down as a result, can anybody support you?
If your whole appearance ( what you present to the world) changes in look and feel, will it scare your loyal customers ( friends, family, co-workers, clients etc) away? Do you want that?

But then again, if your system settings are outdated and not producing desirable results to your highest standard of quality anymore to your single most loyal end-user who spends a  complete lifetime with you (yourself!) anymore...something needs to be done!

From here it may get even a little bit more abstract.
The issue here is that, as far as I know, there is no concrete physical control panel to change these settings with your fingertips, that I can show you where it is, what it looks like  and how it works.
These settings are made using your mind, your thoughts.

But since that is the same ‘ device’ and ‘ interface’ you use as a user, you really have got to be aware of where you are in the process. There is no icon in the right hand corner indicating that you are logged in, no impressive menu structure looking distinctively differently from the users-interface.

What helps, to my mind, is to divide your time actively between two distinctively different things:

-          Service as usual, where you are open to the outside world, to work, play, socialise etc.

-          Me-time, where you are disconnected from the outside world. You are not involved in tasks for or with anybody else.

Me-time is the time where you go to the centre of your world, the core of your being and spend some time being completely in control of what you do and how you do it.
You are in the centre of your own attention and if and when you feel it is useful, you  monitor your systems. Just observe, to start with.
How am I doing? How am I feeling? What is on my mind?

Change nothing... just observe what asks for your attention, rolls over the screens of your inner eyes and see ( most of) it disappear.

Learn to see that in this mode.... none of what you see( or feel) is what appears like this on the outside. But it is giving you clues about what is going on under the bonnet, the place where you can make the desired changes, by the time you’ve got a good feel for it all.

To most of the people in the Western World at the moment, me-time is difficult.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that we need to be available and actively ‘doing’ something all day. That we are not-productive, doing ‘nothing’, and anti-social.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that  mind chatter is a bad thing that needs to be switched of.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that there are ‘ bad’ feelings and if you feel them there is something wrong with you.
... just to name a few.....

These programs kick you out of where your power for change lies, in no-time!

Before you can do anything else, under the bonnet, you’ve got to reprogram the time-out time on your device (your mind) . This is the  time your system allows any logged in user to sit and observe without doing anything.

Set a timer and take every 20 minutes a 5 minute break in which you ‘ do nothing’, you just are, alone with yourself.
You leave all the tasks you were working on and don’t pick up new ones ( no, not even eating, drinking, active toilet use, or smoking!).
You go somewhere where you are alone and you don’t talk to anybody.
All devices are switched of or left behind ( phones, p.c.’s)
You don’t take any input in ( no books, no food, no drinks) except for air, preferably fresh air.

If doing nothing is hard, you can walk. Preferably ‘ to nowhere in particular’, preferably in nature, away from human activities/ energies.

Every time before you go back into the world, ask yourself, do I feel centred?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t, or even have no idea what that would be.
You’ll recognise it when it is there.

That is the feeling that is indicating: you are in full control, right in the middle of you own Universe.

Create the routine of having (that often? Yes! You need to become comfortable with spending time with yourself in the core)  me-time  and feel this centred-feeling when it occurs. 

That is your indicator that you are in the right place to make sustainable structural changes to your life. You are logged in and all control powers are available to you. Happy in yourself.

Happily and confidently self -centred in a complete different meaning than egotistical.

These are the differences:

Happily self-centred: your awareness is involvend in all that is part of your Universe

Happily egotistical:
 your awareness is only involvend in all the parts of the Universe that you feel are pleasing you.
What you don't like (although relevant to your world) is kicked out of the awareness.

To be continued....

positions and roles in content

This blog post continues where I left of yesterday, where I introduced the idea to change ( mental ) position looking at ‘ content’.

Let go of the idea that you need to create the sensation of feeling content with what is in your reality.
Adopt the idea that you need to be content(B), with what is in your reality... see: in the other meaning!!! Be content(B), be part of the data-set in your reality, complete with all your honest feelings and thoughts about it ( simply: more relevant data!).

OK, so, that is the core idea. Now what?

Now it is time to actively partake in it, start playing with it all.

How?
It begins with actively reminding yourself of the (positive) meaning this whole dataset, with you in it, has in your eyes. That means answering the question:
“How can being here, in amongst this set of data, actually been viewed as a good thing?”

Keep in mind. In doing this, you don’t have to deny that you don’t  like all of it, in the order it is presenting itself  in right now! You are not pretending nor denying anything, just shifting focus (for now).
The point of this part of the whole process here is to acknowledge that you got yourself here as a result of all the choices you made before today. There must have been good reasons for choosing these elements, otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen them. Even if you believe it was your loved-ones, teachers or society choosing these things ‘ for you’, there are reasons why you are invested in these very same things too.

List them, openly, honestly, as many as you can think of:
“I am here, in amongst this lot, because it provide(s/d)  me with the joy of .......”

Making such a list, viewing the available data from within, in a meaningful and positive light, relating it to the meaning they once had (and maybe still have)  to yourself, is allowing the same set of data produced by the creator (content-B) to be re-viewed in a semi-OK style (content-A).
That is the first step to happiness, like content ( B)  is only a step into becoming information ( that selection of data that is meaningful for the end-user).

Don’t stop here, if you desire to see significant changes!
Only looking at what is missing is just as ineffective  as only focussing on the blessings.

You are now aware of all the keys ingredients: what is missing and what you like about it and why.
Having both sides in mind, is allowing yourself to shift into the position with much more creative power, you are shifting now from the perspective of the end-user to the perspective of the creator.

These are two different roles you have in the process of shaping your life: you are both creator of content (B)  and end-user ( hopefully: content A).

It really helps to make a distinction between those roles.
As long a s you are confusing yourself with yourself, there is not much either of you sees they can structurally and meaningfully do.
Confusing?

Bear with me a while longer, I’ll explain that some more, comparing this with similar processes you are probably more familiar with: internet websites.

In information management (think database management for websites), when you are a client/customer, you may have some adding-, structuring-  and changing rights on the users-end, but you have no rights to change anything in the structural order of the overall system!
Only those who log-into the database as a creator, can make any really significant structural changes to its structure and programs.

As a consumer, you can’t change anything under the bonnet of ‘ Google’ , ‘ Amazon’ or ‘ Facebook’.
Yes, you are allowed to create your own account, change the look and feel, add information in your profile. Fine, jolly nice. You can feel very creative with the options given.
But you can’t add functionality to it that Google, Amazon or Facebook haven’t allowed you to.
Try changing a price for a book, try influencing the order Google shows results to others, try altering something on somebody else’s Facebook page.
It is not happening through the front door... you don’t have the creative rights to do so.

Even a developer working for Google/Amazon or Facebook, can’t change anything structural entering the system using the customer entrance. They need to go through the staff-entrance, to have access to their control panels, in the back-office of the system.
They don’t need to leave their chair for it, they can use the same device for it... they just need to login differently.

The same principle applies in your own off-line life creating exercise.

If you look at the appearance of data in your life as  a non-content(A) (end-) consumer,  ...... you are not in the right(full)  creative position to make structural, significant changes.
There, in that position, you can see what is presented. You can have an opinion on what you like and what you don’t like.  You might even have suggestions what would please you more.
However, unless you personally get ‘in’-volved with the fields where all the data are controlled and handled,  you very objectively can’t see all the options to make it better. You don’t have access to the control panels of all of it and so you can’t make sustainable meaningful changes with structural integrity.

That has nothing to do with the fact that you are not pleased with the results, (being a human or spiritual malpractice... doing something ‘ wrong’)
It has everything to do with the fact that you are not, under the bonnet, logged in as (co-)creator, who knows why this structure was made, knows the reasons why this composition is arranged like this, in favour of other possibilities.

A creator also knows all the consequences of changing ‘ one thing’ somewhere  deep in the structure.  It often has consequences on many levels. As simple as it may seem on the users-end...... those structural changes need consideration and handling with care.

But if all the end-users complain structurally about something and give signals that they need different things, the (co-)creator is obviously more than willing to be at service and re-creates.
A (co-)creator does the necessary to evolve the system from 6.1 in to 6.2, or revolutionizes it in jumping from 6.2 to 7.0, if more drastic changes are necessary to be made.  Usually, after testing the new routines, before putting them life, by the way.

Being in it now, acknowledging you are the creator, under the bonnet of the meaningful infrastructure of the data, you are now in a position to look around and see (and adjust) the order in it.

That is the only position, where you have all creation rights ( to your own creations).

This is where I have to put in a comment on my use of the deliberate use of the word co-creation . Usually (unless you are a hermit, living entirely away from everybody else) you’ve got various plug-ins running in your system.  Pieces of programming more people are involved in (co-workers, partners, friends). Even though you are a co-creator of those programs, they’ll not appreciate it much if you make fundamental changes tothat without them being in the loop of your actions, preferably acting with their consent on the proposed changes.

Here is an illustration of what I said so far about positions.

The orange O is the mental position you take, relative to the data (X's) in your world.

End-user perspective:
 looking at what is going on in your life from a distance, based on it's appearances.
Not in a position to change it's structure.

Content (A):
Logged in as being part of the content (B)
Being aware of appearances as well as positive reasons for this (own) co-creation

You are ' in' the content (B) state. Time to look at your control panel and explore your possibilities.

Moving from simply being in a content ( A+B) state to a happy and centered state:

Centered: in the content heart of control 

More on that, in the next blog post.

From resourcefuel to resourceful

In this blog post, I’d like to zoom in on an understanding we, as modern day people, seem to have developed in the course of the last centuries of evolution, when it comes to ‘what fuels’ this process of developments.

In looking at the pattern of human evolution, since the industrial revolution  (see my previousblog post for a summary of human evolution), I notice something about how we deal with resources.

We regard oil to be (among) the most important fuel to keep our lives in motion and we treat all natural resources as we’ve come to treat fuel:

1)      We have evolved into believing that resources need to be burnt, in order to provide us with the high caloric energy we need to move forward, to create joyful comfortable satisfying experiences with.

2)      Having used at increasing speed in 300 years what needed millions of years to develop naturally, we know that those resources are becoming scarce now, putting us in an uncomfortable state of alert, since the shortage of this natural resource is perceived to threaten the comfortable life style we’ve grown to like so much.

We are (probably not consciously) applying what we have learned about the process of using some natural resources as fuel (oil, coal) in evolution, on all our natural resources.

You stick fuel in a machine. Burning that provides the energy boosts, that help us move forward.

·         We stick food in our bodies, that we’ve come to treat as machines. We burn the food to help us, individually move forward.

·         We stick people in bureaucratic machineries to fuel the work force (the rat race). We burn their/our humanity to help us individually and collectively move forward.

·         We stick responsible people in government to make good decisions for the whole, to move us forward. They do a good job in burning each other ( to help themselves move forward) and what is left after that is burnt by the media.

·         We even stick our social connections into machines: smart phones, computers, social media and are interacting with people ‘online’, ( burning off our brain cells for various reasons) thinking that helps us individually move forward.

·         We stick our knowledge in databases, burning our own memory, thinking that helps us individually and collectively move forward.

·         We stick our own response ability in the belief systems of others, burning our own capacity to think for ourselves, thinking that helps us collectively move forward.

Does this sound soap boxy, with a hint of passionate anger finding its origin in ‘ not understanding’ why we, as a collective, would do such a thing?
Good! And I am not finished yet.

We are burning our good resources on one side ( hoping for the best) and  we find it too expensive on the other side to invest in growing, developing in a sustainable way ‘new’ resources, applying principles of scarcity everywhere. 

And where there is abundance, we burn it again:
Fields of ‘ good food’  are few and far between ( scarce) and ‘ more expensive’ and hard to come by.

Fields of ‘ good people’ ( co-developers of sustainable high quality solutions: partners, children, workers, artisans, food producers, animals, inspirational writers, etc. etc.)  are considered to be few and far between (scarce). Although viewed as ‘ valuable’ or ‘ precious’ and hard to come by once you found them, we don’t pay them accordingly, we don’t fuel up their lives, nor in money, nor in appropriate attention. Instead, we burn them, squeeze as much as we can out of them, so we can individually move forward and drop the residue of those actions , at a low cost.

Low cost??!!!

Using  our ‘ burning’ resourcefuel mentality where we do things at this type of ‘ low cost’, we favour quantity and speed over quality and we grab and consume whatever is available that gives a quick boosts of feel good energy.

As a result, consequences have a tendency not to be fully ( in relation to all that matters)  assessed, before a field of resources is being processed.

If the consequences are :  destroying the high quality of your own personal health, social circle and environment PLUS  destroying the structural healthy integrity of the collective and its’ environment,  I would hesitate to call that ‘ at low cost’.

So far.... I had great fun ranting with indignation.
Great fun in every social gathering of intelligent engaged people.

Do I have a solution? What should we do??!!

I propose a solution that stems from the understanding you’ve got to BE first the change you want to see.

I see, that we, as a species ARE at the moment resourcefuel, burning ourselves up in the machinery that life has become.

I propose to us all, to energetically take the ‘ e’  ( resourcefuel) and invest that E-nergy in being resourceful.

It is a small step for man, but a giant leap for mandkind..... in doing so we stop burning ourselves, we apply ourselves, over and over again.

We ARE resources, we ARE energy and life is already fueled up by Energy in motion ( E-motion).
All we have to do is use it wisely.

Please, sleep a night on considering the possibility that resources don’t have to be put  in manmade machines and routines (or need to be found in using machines as a result), and that the joyful comfortable experiences of life ( 24/7!) can be created from the resources we have within ourselves,  in our natural ability to grow sustainably, because we ARE resourceful.

Knowing an living from an understanding:  I am resourceful, opens the channels  for better solutions to feed evolution..

Just play with  the idea, by investigating for yourself:.
Are you predominantly resourceful......or predominantly  resourcefuel?