Burden of Praise

Every time you hear a compliment, stop your brain from believing it because if you did, you are killed.

To be defined is to be killed. The word 'define' comes from French 'de finire', to put an end.

When someone praises you, they encircle you in a walled garden. This wall is fragile, it will shake to the next ego stroke and collapse to the smallest quake.

Easy steps to having a great mind, asking smarter questions

Smart questions start with what, great questions start with why.

The What question  

1. Concerned with outer shell, the color, the number and the statistic.

Examples of that what is the definition? What did just fell on me?

2. It is concerned with the name, the who.  

What's your name? Who are you?

3. It addresses the looks. 

What is he wearing? 

4. The outward expression, the visual part, the book cover. Imagine the asnwer.

What is that? From where do you come?

5. It is the news, the events. 

What's happening?

6. The worst way to categorize people. 

What are you? Are you different?

7. It is basic, it is novel, it is naïve. It is the facts that are available for everyone to read. 

"What the hell!?"

The Why question

1. The deeper layer of the subject. Thought provoking. 

Why did the apple fall?

2. It is the purpose, the drive that gets people going. 

Why are you doing all of this? 

3. It is the reason because. 

Why did that happen to me? 

4. It is reflective. 

Why him? Why me? 

5. It is the ideas. 

Why will they make it happen? Why do they care?

6. A better way to judge people, helps you understand.

Why are you?

7. It is advanced, it is the question children ask and ususally get, "I don't know" from adults. It is core. 

"Why the heck!?"

Art work by Jana Traboulsy (c) 2010

Asking Smart Questions vs. Asking Great Questions

Having learned from life, family, school and university, I grew up asking supposedly, the smartest questions, that are so, according to their standards.  They were apparently, expected.

Only after having asked so many stupid questions I was able to improve. Every time I asked why questions, I got the "what kind of a stupid question is that" look from my teachers & colleagues.

Try doing that. I promise you, you will get that reaction.

In the next post, I will portray the difference between what and why and what they are about, and how one should see them.

Please take note that asking the smart questions (which start with something like 'what') can make you a smart and a favorite student. I kid you not.

Quote by Eleanor Roosevelt (1884, 1962)

What's beginner's luck anyway?

Picasso

It is acting in a way such that the person isn't aware of the risks, the possibilities and the real deal. It is performance sans ego. It is acting with a certain level of ignorance, accepting and acknowledging such incompetency.

To start with the confidence that you have nothing to lose, not your time, your money or your reputation is the key object to getting luck at your side.

The time comes when a person develops status, reputation and an identity. The identity that normally an ego sides with.

As soon as you have that formed identity, the mind is occupied with certain facts from ego, and the master gets busy protecting the newly found identity, the ego.

How often do we hear about the humbleness of great minds, too good to have an ego. The saying "little person, big ego" is nothing but truth.

In biographical documentations of world's great artists, an artist is usually portrayed as suffering right before his masterpiece is delivered. Suffering to a level of self loath and hate. To a level of major depression. Until there's no ego involved in the process of producing the piece of art.

That whole gut feeling thing

Fernando Vincente (c) 2010

I hadn't felt strongly about things since almost ever. The whole gut feeling 'myth' was stuff I hear of, but never seen happening in real time.

Now I am aware of my mind signals, I am able to receive them, after a very long blockade.

It makes me happy. It's a whole different thing to be able to listen to your mind, it is not just listening and obeying, it’s a state where you have a complete faith in the feeling, Zero doubt.

Creepy, I thought it would  when having a gut feeling is so not.

One has to be prepared for the best, it is yet to come.

The different types of happiness

We usually confuse happiness with pleasure. Needs with wants. Satisfaction with settlement, and patience with power.

Happiness is long-lasting, it is a continuous state of mind. Happiness is like the ambient light of a picture, it will show even in the details. It will show despite the shortcomings. In a picture, in spite of the color blotches.

Wants are from Ego. They are pushy, high level, mostly gets you an instant sense of pleasure. It is in the details. When there's too much detail in a picture, the picture gets over-whelmed, crowded, not easy on the eye. Ugly.

To be happy is to embrace flaws, accept them. Giving up some of the details, not to mess up the whole picture.

7 things you probably didn't know about your mind

“its beautiful. Sometimes so beautiful is frightening. hasent anyone ever told you the human minddd is a dangerous place?” - Paulina Ruiz ©

1. It is significant. It is king.
2. The language it speaks is non-verbal, action-oriented.
3. Mind never sleeps, it can feel and experience a dreamer's dream.
4. Doesn't belong to the lower realms of the world
5. Communicates on a different level
6. The mind is perception
7. It is spirit, soul, the energy of the body

What is normal?

Jason Brooks (c)

Normal, in scientific terms, is belonging to the 70 percentile under the bell curve. It is call it normality. Even if it is not the right decision, people will often choose to belong to wherever majority are standing. Because it feels safe.

In pre-modern societies, it was widely accepted to treat ethnic groups alien to yours like slaves because it was a norm. Everybody did it.

Norm is also called going along with the flow. Following trends instead of questioning them.

To act mindfully is to question norms, and good questions start with a why.

How your words travel in time & space

"some... seem to be angry with images for not being things, and with words for not being feelings.

"Words and images are like shells, no less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more open to observation"

―George Santayana

Sometimes you wonder if the other person ever noticed how genuine (or fake) you were?

As a matter of mere realization, there are two zones of communication with others... the first is where our five senses are. It is where materials, logic & reasoning thrive.

In the other zone, the mind and sixth sense happen to be. It is where a book takes you, dreams are made, and people who pray and meditate abandon the world for. In the other zone belong trance and extacy.

Sensorial, the senses of the first zone, serves as a filtering gateway to the mind. If one had the five senses working well but was not present-minded, the senses are useless.

Unlike the old times, the mind today is almost always fully occupied with the sensorial. We often miss out a lot of the second zone's pleasures and peacefulness. Now if the mind is busy processing matters of the sensorial, mind becomes of no use.

In our communications with each other we often feel other's emotions trembling space. Even through the stale paper of a book written centuries ago, emotions can be felt.

When things are done emotionally, they get through better than having them done senselessly or even thoughtfully...

If a mind is involved, it is not just communication, it is actual acting and changing. An unseen, concealed kind of acting and changing.

The who that is you

 (c) Barbara Kruger - Untitled

Labels and tags have been placed on us many years now. Unintentionally, we embrace these labels, own them and prove them right.

We hear comments and compliments all the time. "You're stubborn!", so one acts stubborn in response because when it comes to who we are, we're ignorant .

Inside the materialistic exterior that we have formed --also known as personality, their lays an ego and a mind.

The ego is the who that we have been building up since learning the word 'I'... Forgetting the mind, the why we live and love.

Uniqueness is very common

Gerbera Gallery ((c) different owners flickr)

We have long devoted serious effort to be different, become unique and like.no.other.

Because the ego loves exaggerating its own worth, it keeps drawing lines, elevates itself (and you in the process) to be above the rest of the world, inflating with emptiness.

Fact is, we were born different. From different parents, in different places, on different dates. We keep forgetting this simple fact.

Nobody is the same... we're all equally alike in terms of uniqueness.

the Bias in Beauty

(c) [I don't know]

The perception of beauty that we follow is terribly distorted... it is tilted towards differentiation, and "what's in".

We are forced to like what we like by major industry players. Movies, TV, music, celebs, film festivals, fashion shows and magazines propagate images that are captioned "beautiful", "hot", and "trendy". An influence that you cannot ignore. 

If you question the beauty concept that we live by... does it represent who we really are or the insecurities corporate have placed in our minds?

What love is...

Human Heart (Mine) [(c) unknown]

Love starts with a condition --I will love you for your love, time, status, gifts, or even food.

Time changes this conditional love to an unconditional, pure love. Motherly love. 

i.e. a woman remains loyal and caring to her violent husband. Customers remain loyal despite the company's fraudulence. People love their country even though it is not so good.

Conditional love is worldly love. The ego needs it. I wants love and Attention.

Unconditional love is related to the mind, the "altered conscious". It is why parents wake up from sleep even before their child cries. It is why a person calls you when they suddenly come to your mind.

Why do you want to lose yourself

Salvator Dali (c)

Every person, at some point in their life, will need to lose their self and if they failed, they lose their minds.

This is how it happens: you lose yourself in a piece of drawing, a poem, music, binging, love, prayer or a book. Name it. I lost myself so many times solving algorithms.

This is why people seek love, they completely lose their sense of self and their mind and feelings stay focused on someone else...

It is how great artists got over their mean self-loathing egos, by focusing their attention, their hands and feelings on the art they make.

When people fail at finding a way to lose their self, they lose their minds, they will need extra help (pills, doctors, electric shocks) to reset their system and bring their ego to ground zero.

the Ego

(c) [I don't know]

I started off complaining about the ego with the assumption that you all know it. Pardon my ignorance.

Scientists explained the self, mind, or conscious differently, the most famous is Sigmund Freud's psyche model. 

Ego desires

Francis Bacon (c)

You might have heard of how bad it is to be categorized... be called a name, whether it was a good name or a bad one... Nobody wants that.

In another dimension, the ego strives to categorize itself and be different from other human beings, making you forget the real 'you'.

Affecting your freedom.
Your nothingness.

De categorize the self

Most people, family, friends, experts, scientists and HR people will unintentionally try to categorize you using simple labels and put you in a box within certain dimensions.

They might put you with creative masses, the stupid crowd, or the successful.

Be concerned for once they have done that, they will move on.

They want to learn about the next person they encounter, forgetting the massive potential a person like you have.


Your ego does that too.