Seeing Through

You may arrive at a point of observing someone and knowing what the intent is behind their every word and action. For instance, they want to appear attractive, friendly, interesting, funny, powerful, or wealthy.

Our demeanor and the words we speak reveal what is on our minds. We may not say what we are thinking precisely, but often just through listening and observing, you will come to See Through a person. You may even come to perceive them better than they know themselves.

When we lie or “bend the truth,” often we are doing this for the benefit of ourselves, just as much as we do it for others. But these falsehoods prevent us from truly Seeing at all.

A path to Seeing Through is to lose concern over how you appear to be and to focus entirely on someone else. You may do this by simply wanting to know the truth and exploring every statement that a person makes. Further, you may explore every facial expression, the intonation of voice, and what it is that this person wishes you to see, versus what actually is.

Any statement that deviates even slightly from the pure truth signals an intent. You will see that this person wants you to think something for a particular reason. For example, they exaggerated or implied something was the case when it wasn’t. Their words may have painted a beautiful picture of who they are and what they have done, but perhaps their actions haven’t lived up to their words.

See Through them to see things as they actually are.

And for any statement they make, you may ask what presumptions they have made. With those presumptions, you can quickly understand what beliefs or ideas are so important to them that they have stopped questioning them. They have assumed these things to be true when perhaps they were not.

Any statement at all tends to presuppose something, to assume that something is the case. You simply have to be willing to consider what they are and ask yourself “What assumption is at play here?”. Then you should be aware that the assumption could be wrong.

Seeing Through, essentially, is about taking a small amount of information, and extrapolating abundantly from there, to provide a full picture of where someone is coming from.

Soon enough, in exploring people’s demeanors and the words they say and beyond, you will quickly figure out their intentions. You will know how they want to be perceived and why, and what matters to them. You may know where they came from and where they are headed and why, just from a few words.

When you master the practice of Seeing Through, you will see that what I have said above is what often applies. People want to appear attractive, friendly, interesting, funny, powerful, or wealthy.

Some people may even make efforts to appear superior on all those fronts, perhaps desiring to be seen as better than others.

And strangely, the ones trying to be seen in a certain way have often failed to meet that goal. Otherwise, why would they focus on it so much?

Seeing Through others is an ability we may all acquire in due time, with life experience. But we tend to forget to use that ability on ourselves. We don’t practice Seeing Through our own empty desires to appear to be a certain way.

What do you want to appear to be that is not actually who you are?

See Through Others, and this is worthy, for you will come to see people as they are. See Through Yourself, and this is a higher path, for you will come to see yourself as you are.

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To explore truths about yourself and the world more deeply, you may wish to read Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth. The book is available on Amazon and other major retailers.

Make Yourself Obsolete

We all want to feel important and needed, but are we really?

For every profession I look at, I find myself wondering how necessary it really is.

Many of us are not truly working from the deepest, most serious part of our hearts.

Instead, we see it as just a job, just a way to make some money, just a temporary station on the way to something better.

Ask yourself, when something goes wrong with your work, do you care about this deeply? And if you do, is it because you truly care, or just because you worry that others will think less of you? Be honest and sincere here with your thoughts. I am asking you to reflect on these questions, not to feel the need to get defensive.

A few months ago, I spoke with someone in the Education field interested in developing a better curriculum for her students. I told her that she would succeed when the student no longer needed the teacher.

I felt that this was not what she was expecting to hear.

I advised her to make her job unnecessary.

Why would I do that?

I’m not sure it’s a success when students graduate to need another teacher, and another, and another. I’ve often heard that students decided to pursue the next level, whether it’s to a bachelor’s degree, master’s, or even a Ph.D. because they didn’t know what else to do.

Is that worthy? Is that success? Or is it futility?

On the one hand, ongoing learning is honorable. On the other, we keep learning more and more stuff and not having much to show for it.

Is it the contents in our minds that are valuable, or the power we have to make something happen in the real world? Many of us have been led astray or forgotten which of these actually mattered.

No one wants to hear that their job should be made obsolete. No one wants to think that success is in finding a way to make your job unnecessary.

We want to hear that we are essential, that society needs us, that society would crumble without our involvement. But that simply is not the case.

We need doctors so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we have neglected our health, to the point that we have outsourced its care rather than taken responsibility for it?

The most common “solutions” offered are medicines, which to some degree, act as poisons with their side effects.

We need teachers so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we never taught students to think from the beginning? We led them to become reliant on digesting specific curriculums and memorizing them, only to forget most of it anyway. And the material they remembered would become obsolete in a few years.

The most common “solutions” offered are more degrees and more courses, often with no clear path toward careers. And for the ones that lead to careers, there is no guarantee that such careers will still exist in a few years.

When the “solutions” keep us reliant on needing more and more “solutions” from the same place, are they truly solutions?

I have no problem with doctors or teachers. I have merely used these as examples. I could have used any other profession.

For any career I can think of, the motivation of that job is to keep you locked in. There is never a true solution to any problem. It’s just a treadmill that keeps you running but staying in place at the end of the day.

Whether conscious and done purposely or not, it seems to be a consistent theme across most jobs. The client becomes an eternal source of revenue – always needing to come back for something more.

We never arrive at some desirable end point. There is just this empty feeling of needing more.

I don’t expect anyone to take today’s lesson seriously. I expect you to read this and continue about your job the same way you always have, and I can’t blame you for that either.

You are one piece of a much larger system. If you talk to your boss tomorrow and tell him: “I realized we’re just running our clients in circles here, and I think I know a way to get their problems fully resolved, so they never have to come back,” you’ll probably get fired on the spot.

There is no profit in true solutions.

We fear becoming obsolete the most, but perhaps it was what we needed all along.

Somewhere, in the Amazon rainforest, there was probably a panacea (cure-all) plant that would have cured everything. And it doesn’t matter because it would have made no profit for anyone. The only profit would have been to destroy the plant to avoid competitors, make it into a patentable drug, and then sell it at a high price.

This is where we are.

We are more interested in making people need us rather than truly offering something worthy. The most worthy thing to offer would be that which would make us no longer relevant or needed.

No one wants to hear this.

I don’t even want to say it because I know no one wants to hear it.

No one will hire me to give presentations at a Fortune 500 Company to tell them that they should make themselves obsolete. They would laugh at the idea that they should look for ways to dismantle their job positions and the company they work for.

Instead, they are focused on growth.

But the more a company grows, the more it shows they haven’t solved anything. They have learned to make others reliant on them, is all.

But if [Insert famous product here] is so great, why do we need more of it? Why does it never satisfy us? Why do I need to keep buying it or keep doing it to get that feeling?

Mind you, this is a feeling which is fleeting and illusory anyway.

If it were truly the best product, I think I could buy it once, and I would never need it again.

Those products don’t exist, of course. The products and services we have are the ones that keep us chasing our tails, coming back for more, like strung-out addicts.

The “solutions” we have are those that work for a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe even a day, but not much more. In a recent post, I said: “The problem with solutions is that they are all temporary fixes. No problem has ever been permanently fixed.”

Our whole lives, nothing ever worked, but we think: “Maybe this new product or service will do the trick.”

I hope my books and Thoughts help someone somewhere, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they need me, my books, or my Thoughts.

My goal is not to keep you on the line, needing more.

Some of the “best” writers out there are actually the worst. If I read someone’s blog post, and it’s so great, why would I feel the need to read all their books and posts? If they were so great, I wouldn’t need to. If they were that good, I could read an article or two, get the message I needed, and never return to them again.

But that is exceedingly rare.

These days, I am writing everything I feel the need to so that it wouldn’t matter if I were to die. Even if I die, you can still access all that I thought was ever worth saying.

There isn’t this sense of “I must write 100 books or 1,000 articles.” That is irrelevant. The point is, did I say everything I needed to say, to the point that if lightning struck me dead one of these days, it wouldn’t matter?

Did I make myself obsolete? If so, then that was a success in my book.

Again: I don’t need you to need me. If you can click away from this site, and never return and be better for it, then I have succeeded.

Here is a quick example of how making oneself obsolete can lead to success:

A friend of mine had a Master or Guide in his life. He provided direction and words of wisdom regularly. One day, that Master decided to move on. My friend had often received good counsel and friendship and was saddened by his departure. But after this, my friend grew immeasurably. He started to realize that he did not need that Master at all. Rather than following or abiding by the lessons taught, he was paving his own way. In being left Masterless, he was now finding the Master within.

The Master, Guide, Parent, or Teacher who can leave and make you something better for it is the truly worthy one. Don’t misunderstand me to condone abandoning anyone. Only you can decide the point where it is better to walk away, or give space, or leave and never come back. But know whether you do this selfishly or selflessly.

Make yourself obsolete. Make it so that even if you vanished, the world would somehow become better for it.

We risk being made (or revealed to be) obsolete by the natural order of things every day. We might as well do it ourselves.

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Today’s post may be a heavy dose of Truth for some of us. If you would like to dig deeper into Your Life’s Truth, you may wish to read a book I just published, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.

To Pursue Truth

What would it mean to pursue Truth?

To pursue truth would mean to see that there is a personal element to Truth, as, in the end, only you can decide whether something is true or not. Someone else can tell you a “truth,” but if it is not true for you, then it is irrelevant. To think of this another way, something may be “true,” but only in a particular context that does not affect you.

To pursue truth would mean to open yourself to the idea that any assumption you begin with has wrongness to it.

Assumptions lead to assumptions. For example: “If I can assume A, then I can assume B, which leads me to assume C.” This is how we often think, which piles assumptions on top of assumptions. Yet, we have an air of certainty behind our words, which is falseness.

To pursue truth would mean to see that what you want to be true and what is indeed true are not the same.

It would mean to see that the ideas you obsess over do not correspond to the reality around us. The past is an illusory story we tell ourselves, rather than fact. Our desires or anxieties are thinking that something good or bad will happen when it has not yet happened and may not happen.

It would mean seeing that who we think we are and who we are is not the same. Are you defined by a set of actions or thoughts which were handed to you? No. Who we think we are is just a story and not the truth.

To pursue the truth would mean that you are willing to go on a path that leads you away from comfort and happiness if that is where it will lead. To feel otherwise will mean resisting truth, which will ultimately lead you away from it.

If you long for the truth, you will lead yourself to it or be led to it. However, your longing for it must be greater than your willingness to give in to distraction, nonsense, and delight.

The pursuit of truth will mean a return to something you once had and have lost along the way. We can aim to retain the aspects of truth that we have not fully lost while seeking to regain the ones that were lost. This would be a starting point.

It will mean perceiving that a tone of voice can ring false, a single word can ring false, and so can an intention. Even an action can be done falsely. We can train ourselves to see such falseness, which will allow us to see truth.

The pursuit of truth is actually to learn to see the falseness within and all around us.

In the pursuit of truth, we will learn to say to ourselves, “that is false” so many times per day that we will be surprised to see that there are few human moments where the truth is present.

To pursue truth would mean to let go of such notions: ideas present us with reality, people are valuable sources of insight, and the material world is what it seems to be.

To pursue the truth will mean to see that anything less than entirely true cannot be said to be true.

It would mean to let go of the idea that the masses, your neighbors, your family, or friends have grasped truth.

It would mean to look inward, to stop looking for someone to follow, and start on your path that no one else could have guided you toward.

In your pursuit of truth, you will find that your thoughts have led you astray – the thinking that you have used all your life was not conducive to revealing truth. Instead, it set you up for self-deception.

From the beginning, we were set up to fail in the pursuit of truth.

In seeking truth, you will find that you must be sincere, as anything else would be a lie. If you acknowledge the challenge of being sincere, then that is the beginning of sincerity.

The above ideas cannot lead us to truth, shine a light on the path, nor do anything for us unless we are ready to let the truth in.

But if we are ready, awareness of the truths stated will help us steer ourselves more toward truth and away from falseness.

Even if we become aware that we have been unable to grasp these ideas fully and have been led astray in our lives, this can be the beginning of our journey toward truth.

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If you are ready to pursue your unique path to truth and understanding, you may wish to read Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.

Who Can Truly Teach You?

“Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I cannot teach you. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.” – The Red Book (Liber Novus) by C. G. Jung

This is a powerful insight and one that I have been contemplating in my own way. This Thought suggests that no one can truly teach us, and in the end, we must find our own way. Ultimately, anything that we are taught is likely to apply to someone else, perhaps of a different time, context, and situation. In that way, the teachings we are given have a way of leaving us behind if we do not adapt and find our own way.

My current way is to read as much as I can and absorb as much knowledge and understanding as possible. Yet, some of the most advanced thinkers I have known of (some personally, and some through books such as Jung’s) have spent great deals of time searching for their own way rather than looking beyond themselves for it. Perhaps they haven’t merely searched but created and cultivated their own way of seeing and being. They have reached a stage of not needing the teacher and not even needing to teach, necessarily.

Of course, a key part of thinking involves knowledge, and where do we get our knowledge from?

In reading, or in learning generally from the world around us, we can see different types of knowledge. There is anecdotal knowledge – meaning that there is some information that pertains to a particular person at a point in time.

There is scientific knowledge – meaning that some information has been found to apply to a particular group of people, and we can figure that this information is likely to transfer to another similar group of people. For example, research conducted on smokers is likely to apply to other people who smoke, even those who did not participate in the research.

Then there is spiritual knowledge – meaning information that has somehow surpassed the need for the anecdotal or scientific understanding. With this kind of knowledge, we come to know some deeper part of ourselves, the universe, or others without necessarily being able to explain it in words or relationships.

You may be surprised to learn that often, none of the above types of knowledge will give you certainty. Anecdotal knowledge may apply just to particular cases and not universally. Scientific knowledge may apply generally and not necessarily to your specific case.

Spiritual knowledge may apply to only the individual spirit, yet this spirit may be interconnected with other spirits or the universe more deeply. Theoretically, spiritual knowledge can transcend our finite being, and tap into something much deeper and greater, perhaps even infinite. Yet this knowledge is not easily put into words and cannot be conveniently revealed to anyone else.

Jung is interested in spiritual knowledge and seems to have lost the need or desire for anecdotal and scientific knowledge, which has failed him on his quest for true spiritual understanding.

Jung clearly believes in a soul, which is the idea that we have an eternal element within us. Given this idea, it makes sense that one could gain deeper truths within rather than searching for them in a universe that is in constant states of change. I have read other works which state that scientifically, there is no proof or even evidence of a soul – and you can make of that what you will and figure out where you stand on this issue.

Some assume we have a soul, and others say there is no evidence of one. What do you think?

Do you have a soul? Do you believe the idea is misguided and does not exist? Or do you think we have lost our souls, and need to find them once again?

Are you part of an eternal, infinite realm that connects you to the past, before you were born, and the future, after your death, and perhaps to alternate realities and dimensions? Or are you just here, just now, just limited to what we see? Personally, I think it is fun to speculate on this. However, I am also a pragmatist, and I like to focus on ideas that can help to learn something valuable and not just get stuck in speculation.

On a practical level, I believe that there is some true knowledge and understanding to be gained by looking within, rather than spending all our time captivated by the whims of our external reality, of the happenings around us.

But who can teach us to look within, and what does this even mean? First, this has to be something that we wish to pursue. We have to get fed up with the transient noise that everyday life brings us. Is every day just some new trivial drama to attend to? Some chores that must be taken care of? Some enjoyment gotten from a silly task or screen? A search to satisfy our need for more, whether it be more money, things, or the adoration of people we barely know? Is that what we are here for, or is there something more?

Then we have to get fed up with teachers who have led us astray. The teacher who taught us to want a particular thing, solve a certain problem in a certain way and not in some other way, see some as good and others as evil, follow arbitrary rules, and so on. Perhaps some of the teachings led us to make more mistakes, question or dampen our own spirit, or ultimately regret having been taught.

I have found that the best teachers are the ones who allow you to create your own path, make your own mistakes, and form your own distinct footprint on the world.

I admit, I sometimes wonder – what would have happened if I had never been taught? Would I have learned more through my own curiosity, will, and searching? Or would I have become a hopeless case, an ignorant fool? Ultimately, I would have found my own way, just via a different route. The key is to teach our students how to find their own way, and not limit them and make them need to have a teacher for life.

When we finally get fed up with the fact that our daily patterns, teachings, sources of information, and everything in our lives is not truly teaching us anything worthwhile, then the only place left to look is within. You do this by being quiet with yourself. Meditating, or not. Simply sitting in quiet, thinking about your life, your wants. Then you think, “Why?” Why did you do things this way and not that way? Why did you want this and not that? What did it ultimately matter when you got that thing you wanted? Or what did it matter when you didn’t get that thing you wanted? What was the difference in the end?

What were the things that ultimately mattered? Was it the things as they happened, or your beliefs about what those things meant? Was it the experience, or the interpretation of that experience?

What are you thirsting after? It’s always something. The next TV show. The next book. The next teacher. The next restaurant. The next place to visit. The next thing to buy that will solve all our problems (but it never does).

But do we know ourselves? Soul or not, do we know who we truly are? Are we here to fall in line and be told who we are by others? Or to discover our own true path in life?

I can’t teach you who you are. I can’t even teach you how to figure out who you are. I am the teacher who doesn’t know how to teach and doesn’t want to teach, but maybe that is the best teacher to have. I’m not sure anyone else can teach you who you are or how to find who you are. No one can be your teacher for this. The universe itself must be your teacher.

I wonder: What are your fundamental truths? By this, I mean the things you know to be true and do not need a pile of evidence for. You simply know them. Maybe this is something that points you toward your soul. Or maybe this is something your soul is pointing you toward.

Where is your spiritual knowledge? Have a conversation with your spirit, and learn about your true self. Not the wants, but something deeper. You may have to invent a new language or create a new way of perceiving. Perhaps your spirit has its own unique way that cannot be easily explained or thought of in mere words, relationships, and images. You may be surprised that who you are in your daily life is not at all the spirit within. And that is fine. This experience is just learning, and discovering your spiritual knowledge, your true self.

If it helps, release yourself from the pressure. Sit in silence, and do not pressure yourself to go in any direction. Do not question and interrogate yourself and judge yourself. Just let yourself flow out from yourself, like a river, a stream. Pour out, and stop holding it all back.

Our human ways in modern society are walls, dams, holding back our spirit’s way. So this may be a journey for you, a new path that you need to set on.

The Liar’s Scale (Some Lies Are Worse Than Others)

All lies are not the same, so today, I want you to consider how some lies can be better or worse than others.

On the path to seeking Truth in our lives, I think it’s important for us to think about this because if we don’t put any conscious attention on how truthful we are, or how truthful the people around us are or the systems around us, then our lives can descend into falseness. We may tell bigger and bigger lies, become surrounded by falseness, and then one-day truth and falseness can blur together.

We should always maintain our grasp on truth because grasping truth means grasping reality. To help you maintain a better grasp on truth and reality, I present you with The Liar’s Scale: (Lower numbers indicate lesser lies, and larger numbers are for bigger lies.)

1) The Survivor’s Lie

The purpose of these lies is to meet personal needs – such as for food, water, shelter, or other necessary comforts. When telling such lies, the primary goal is to survive and not take more than necessary.

2) The Positive Lie (E.g., “White Lie”)

The purpose of this lie is not to cause any harm and not to hide any misdeeds. The purpose is usually to help prevent someone from feeling bad or to help someone feel better. Your goal is to somehow improve the situation for someone else by telling a positive lie.

3) The Minor Lie

These are small lies that we may tell to get our way in fairly trivial situations. The purpose may be to help others somehow, but often we are more interested in helping ourselves to feel better or avoid a negative consequence, rather than on how this lie impacts others.

4) The “Saving Face” Lie

This is a lie where you make up an excuse or state something just for the purpose of not looking bad. At this stage, you want to manage how people think of you, even if this involves lying to them. Rather than being motivated to make people think you are the best, you don’t want them to think less of you. At this stage, you lie about who you are, which seems to be bigger than the prior lies on the scale.

5) The “I Can’t Fail” Lie

With this type of lie, you had a goal in your life, and you have realized that you could not meet it normally. To meet it then, you have decided to either tell a lie or to cheat in some way to get your desired outcome. At this stage, the lie should only be an isolated or rare incident and not a regular occurrence. However, this type of lie is higher than the prior ones because at this stage, to avoid derailing your entire life or losing a job, people can be motivated to tell much bigger lies (or cheat in substantial ways).

6) The “I Must Win” Lie

Here, the need to always win or be right or better than others will result in lying to always have that competitive edge and to maintain the illusion of being the best. You are determined to be highly competitive or possibly the best, even if it means telling big lies. This is a larger lie than the prior ones because you have decided on an outcome you must meet, and you will do anything to get that outcome, which includes lying or cheating to meet that objective.

7) The “I Will Protect You” Lie

With this type of lie, someone is aware of a bad action (by themselves or someone else), and this person lies (or purposely does not state the truth) to protect someone from having to learn about this bad action. Someone may tell themselves that they lie to protect others, but often they are also lying to protect themselves from the backlash they will receive if people learn the truth. This lie is fairly high on the scale because these lies can easily turn into further lies to cover up prior lies. It is also high on the list because, generally speaking, this involves lies that people consider major breaches of trust or integrity. Otherwise, they would not expend so much energy in maintaining this type of lie.

8) The “I Will Hurt You” Lie

The above lies are usually not intended to cause harm actively, and that is why this lie is higher up on the scale. At this point, a person is motivated to harm others – it may be for revenge, to teach someone “a lesson,” or because someone has personal reasons for disliking someone. Such lies may be used to acquire money or valuables or to cause psychological or physical harm.

9) The “My Life is a Lie” Lie

At this stage, someone has discovered that lying is a powerful tool for getting what you want. You may be able to gain sympathy by making things up or exaggerating your problems to absurd degrees. You may make up stories to entice people to give you money. Whenever your integrity or expertise is called into question, you may have lies ready to support your behavior. At this stage, major aspects of your life may have been fabricated. Your resume may be mostly made up of falsehoods, your attire may indicate that you are much more successful than you are, and your relationships may be based on promises you have made and never intended to follow through on. At this stage, a person is so used to lying as their way of life that when they are inevitably caught in a lie, they make up new “facts” to support a new story that justifies their actions.

The “Keeping the Justice” Lie

Another type of lie that will not be easily ranked above is the “Keeping the justice” lie, where someone lies to uphold some greater sense of justice or values. The reason this one will be kept unranked is that, in the end, we must all make our judgment calls as to whether it is worth it to try to keep the justice or not. And we may all have different impressions of what is justified.

I’m interested in discussing lies because it happens quite a lot, and we tend to accept it as a way of life. Anything someone tells you or anything that you read today may be a lie. We are all aware of this and probably have made some level of peace with this.

Unfortunately, the more lies a person tells, the more likely they are to fall into a pattern of telling deeper and bigger lies more frequently. At the highest stages of lying, a person’s life consists more of lies than of truth. When they get up in the morning, the first thing that runs through their mind is which made-up stories they may have to tell to which individuals to get the desired results or protect all of their prior lies from being discovered.

Even at lower stages of lying, one can easily slip into deeper levels. Imagine if someone perpetually tells minor lies (#3 on the scale). These may be small lies, but it seems like in time, this person may slip deeper and deeper down the scale as lying becomes a regular part of their life.

I would encourage you to become more conscious of any lies you may be telling in your life. Sometimes, they can become so routine that we fail even to notice them. For example, perhaps there is someone in your life which lies to you regularly. If you “go along” with these obvious lies, then in a sense, you are lying too.

If someone lies to you or those around you often, think about what you can do to break this cycle where they “sell” you their lies, and you appear to “buy” into them. We should find ways to reduce the lying around us because people who do this regularly may not even be conscious of what they are doing. And if they think they are getting away with it, they may be motivated to continue. Perhaps this is a bad habit they developed, and they will not stop unless they are called out on it somehow.

Here are some remarks I have made in the past or that I might make if I hear something that is an apparent lie:

• Really? That’s not what “such and such source” told me.

• Where are you getting your facts from? I don’t think I would trust that source.

• Some people are concerned with (insert whatever sense of integrity or value the person aims to protect with this lie), but I couldn’t care less.

• So what do you think about (mention another topic)? Or “Look at the time – I really have to get going.” (This can get them to see that you will not sit by and listen to lies.)

• Wow, that is truly unbelievable – that is one for the record books (said with slight sarcasm).

• Now you are just making stuff up (not in an irritated tone, but possibly a slightly amused tone).

• I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.

• Now that flies in the face of everything I know to be true (I may save this one for a pathological liar).

Think back to times you have noticed that someone was most likely lying. If you pay attention, you can often spot signals that will indicate someone may be lying. For example:

• An inconsistency in what someone has stated. Perhaps they claim to be whatever is advantageous at the moment, and this may result in conflicting statements.

• Their body language or tone of voice is out of sync with the words they use. They may tell you bad news in a happy tone of voice.

• They always have excuses to avoid having to do undesirable activities.

• They tend to get overly defensive, and their tone of voice rises sharply.

• They become uncomfortable and touch their nose or face as they speak.

• They closely monitor your reaction, possibly to see if you are “buying” their story. They may check for your reaction to judge if they should continue with their story or modify it to appease you.

• They make claims that do not have common sense or reason behind them – and they do this regularly.

I have given you a lot of information here. Why don’t you take a minute to reflect on the lies in your life? Consider:

What types of lies do you tell?

On average, where do they fall on the Liar’s Scale?

Have your lies gotten smaller or bigger in time?

What about the people around you. How much do you think they lie, and are you doing anything about it?

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If you liked this post, you may want to read this post next - The Path to a True and Fruitful Life - where I discuss the most impactful truths that I have found in my life.

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If you are ready to pursue your unique path to truth and understanding, you may wish to read Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.

The Paradox of the Model Citizen

The paradox of the model citizen is that he has to know all the rules (e.g., laws, ordinances, regulations, etc.), and these rules are constantly growing, adapting, and changing – making it impossible to know them all. Then he has to obey all these rules unless it is more appropriate not to follow the rule. Rules that may be broken are those that are completely trivial or those which are unjust in their purpose. For example, the model citizen should not follow a trivial rule that gets in the way of his ability to be a productive model citizen. He should try to follow the trivial rules, but only within reason.

Also, if a rule is unjust, such as a rule that is prejudiced against some people, he has the right to defy that rule in as civil a manner as possible. However, by the nature of the rules themselves, he will likely be punished if he is caught violating a trivial rule or violating an unjust rule.

At times, the model citizen may be confronted with a situation where he must break one rule or another. In such cases, he should break the more trivial rule rather than, the more severe one. Other times, rules from one entity may conflict with the rules of another. Either way, he is in a paradox because he must choose to break a rule nonetheless. And model citizens should choose not to break any rules.

The model citizen is placed in paradoxical situations where he must defy some rules at least sometimes, meaning that he is not the model citizen. However, the model citizen that does not defy the rules is not a model citizen either because he is the fool who follows all the rules and gets in the way of society operating properly.

For example, imagine a citizen who refuses to leave a store until he receives his 12 cents in change from the cashier, even if the cashier has explained that he ran out of change. In this case, a person would be within his right to demand his change, but it is completely unreasonable. This would be especially unreasonable if this person were holding up a long line behind him.

As another example, consider a citizen who goes to the bank and wants to open a new account. The banker may say that he must sign a 25-page document to open the account. If he were actually to read it, though, the banker and surely everyone who works there would consider him a complete fool. Who would even consider wasting so much time reading this document? A model citizen may consider it, but that is the model citizen paradox, where the model citizen actually accomplishes nothing and wastes time by being the model citizen.

The true model citizen probably does not demand his 12 cents and probably does not read the 25-page document at the bank, even though such actions defy the rules or allow them to be defied.

The true model citizen values his time and ability to accomplish some good in this world. And that cannot be done if he is obsessed with every minor rule that can be used against him. The unfortunate part is that model citizens will be most concerned and worried about breaking every rule. They don’t want to tarnish their record of always following the rules. Yet, to get anything done in their lives, they must occasionally defy those rules.

Thus far, I have not even factored in all the social, implicit, unwritten rules of society.

For example:

• How many times is it appropriate to go to the restroom during the day?

• How often should you go out with friends?

• How much money should you make?

• How many friends should you have?

• How many decorations should you have in your home?

• How should you greet an acquaintance?

• How much time should you spend talking when you are in a group?

If we are overwhelmed by the official written rules, there are plenty of unwritten ones as well. Popular or likable people tend to follow these social rules well. Likewise, the model citizen will wish to follow these rules, as he values the general idea of rule-following.

The model citizen values rule-following because it helps to keep order in society. Order is good because the better you behave, the better outcomes you receive. For those unwilling to follow or obey rules, they will receive worse outcomes typically. The model citizen also values rule-following because he does not want to get in trouble for disobeying a rule. When you follow the rules, you avoid unwanted consequences. Lastly, the model citizen values rule-following because this allows him to have a more respectable and higher level in the social world. People who do not follow the rules tend to be viewed as less intelligent, troublemakers, and possibly criminals.

The problem here is that the model citizen who is too rule-focused will lose his identity. He will become obsessive about needing to follow every rule, and those rules will dictate his behaviors. He may avoid doing much because the more you do, the more likely you will break some rule, even if you were not aware of that rule.

The model citizen, in time, may lose his personal will or energy. His motivation becomes to avoid breaking the rules rather than to be his true self.

The reality is that there are so many rules at so many different levels that it would be almost impossible to avoid breaking them all – there are city, state, and federal laws. There is international law. There are rules and regulations at your workplace and every other building or organization you interact with. If you live in a gated community or apartment, they will have their own rules and regulations. If you have kids, their school has rules. And as already mentioned, there are countless unwritten social rules and expectations.

The model citizen will, of course, realize that the most critical rules are usually obvious: such as not killing, stealing, causing damage to property, drug dealing or drug use, or causing the most obvious forms of trouble.

But we should be aware that if we focus too much on rules, we may lose who we are. Rather than being who we are, we will come to avoid being who they don’t want us to be. Being who you are is different than avoiding being.

Consider the social rules that may dictate much of human behavior. Of course, etiquette is valuable in society, as this helps us to avoid being rude and hurting feelings. However, if everyone followed etiquette perfectly, where would we find personality? Isn’t personality in the nuances of how we choose or do not choose to follow etiquette?

Ask yourself: are you being you, or are you avoiding being something else?

Rules tell us what we should not be. And while these are valuable limits, especially when it comes to serious crimes or misdeeds, I don’t think we were meant to be shackled by rules everywhere we go.

For example – it is a basic social rule that we should be considerate of others. Yet, the rules are not human and not considerate of us. At some point, there are so many rules, and some of them trivial or not well known, that the rules themselves become an inconsiderate imposition on our lives.

Also, becoming obsessive about too many rules may end up creating a self-limiting mind, always focused on what we can’t and shouldn’t do, rather than on what we can and should do. If you focus on what you can’t do every day, that ends up being all you can see. Your creative abilities end up being used only for thinking about what you can’t do, rather than actually being used for their true creative purposes of coming up with new and interesting possibilities.

We need the rules – that is not in debate. However, we have so many rules that we create the paradox of the model citizen. The model citizen cannot be the model citizen. We cannot find the model citizen because he defies himself by trying to be one.

What can we do about this? Ignoring or disobeying the rules is not the answer. Rather than becoming obsessive about the rules, however, we could develop our own conscience, our sense of truths and values, and what is right. I’m not sure that we need written rules to know what is right from wrong. Thoughts or actions can actually feel wrong in your body, such as the “gut feeling.” We should listen to those to help us avoid what is wrong and move toward rightness. Do not give way to impulse – rather, listen to the deep-seated human feelings from within.

Ultimately, we should aim to take more right actions. This means that when we are presented with options or choices, we aim to do what creates more good for ourselves and the world. In this way, we can operate beyond rules and the idea of the model citizen.

The model human may be the one who knows his truth best and who demonstrates this through every action. He would not focus on not doing (e.g., obeying rules). Rather he would focus on being who he is and needs to be (e.g., doing what is true to yourself and right becomes the most worthy path).

Approaching Higher Levels of Consciousness

Our consciousness needs to be ready before we can expand ourselves into higher levels of seeing, being, and doing. There are so many problems most of us are dealing with in our personal lives and with our families that most of us do not have the mental bandwidth to seriously consider problems on a higher level than our current consciousness.

It is not practical to expect anyone to jump levels, from worrying about their survival, for example, to suddenly being concerned with world peace. How can anyone expect to influence world peace if they have not been able to accomplish their own personal peace?

One of the most fruitful things we may do in our lives is to identify what level of consciousness we are at. When you know your level of consciousness, you know what types of problems you are capable of tackling. It is also useful to be aware that certain goals or problems may be above your current level of consciousness.

Here is a brief summary of some levels of consciousness:

Survival Mode

At this level, you are mostly concerned with having some basic needs met, such as food, water, and shelter. Since your life itself is possibly under threat, you face the challenge of doing the right thing and living a humble, difficult life or doing the wrong thing and receiving quick benefits from it.

For those in survival mode, the primary goal is to move out of this phase. Unfortunately, some people may become desperate and get into drug dealing or other crimes, find themselves in prison, and then become unable to escape this mode of consciousness.

At this level, hard work may not be rewarded. In fact, it may be punished, as the people around you may view you as a threat when your diligence makes them look bad. Otherwise, a boss who knows you need your job may use this knowledge against you, refusing to give you a deserved raise.

Ironically, in order to escape this level of consciousness may require you to be an especially knowledgeable, conscious, organized person. But because you are at this stage, you may not have good models to help teach you this. Also, you may be at this stage because you lacked opportunities to acquire these qualities in the first place.

The Chase

Perhaps you know what it is like to be hungry or to be without your basic needs, and so now you have been given the opportunity to chase a better way of life and you are happy to do it. You may have just completed a certification program, or a degree, or been offered a job that seemed out your league. Now, you are ready to commit and work to get that dream life you wanted.

At this point, you may find that you are actually able to save money and build up your bank account gradually and work on making life improvements such as eating better or exercising. Alternatively, through seeking a better way of life and buying more things regularly, many people will find it hard to save money when they enter this phase of consciousness. Likely, you will have the goal of moving into a better home or community, getting a car (or upgrading it), or educating yourself to pursue a path that will help get you there.

Perhaps you have lived the hard life, and are eager to enjoy the little things in life. For example, you may wish to be able to turn on the AC in the summer without worrying about how much it costs.

At this stage, we find that our good and positive actions generally lead to good and positive results. You have reached a point where the harder you work, the more rewards you tend to gain from it.

Although you may not have attained it yet, you are generally on the path to achieving what you wanted.

The issue is that as long as you are on the chase for more money, more things, more people to network with, more sales to close, and so on, you may find yourself locked into this phase, always chasing, even after you have already surpassed your goals and dreams.

Keep in mind that for some people, the chase can be for something highly maladaptive, such as alcohol, drugs, or sex – and such forms of the chase are likely to keep one stuck in this form of consciousness, or possibly even lead you back into survival mode.

Self-Understanding and Growth

Here you will be focused on understanding who you are and how you can improve yourself, not just to meet goals like getting a job or a date. Rather, you want to grow as a person at this phase because you recognize this as an important goal on its own.

You may find that you didn’t know yourself as well as you thought. Perhaps you will question things you always took for granted. You may have been born surrounded by people of a certain political belief or religious belief and now find yourself questioning it all. Everyone thinks they are right, and every belief system thinks it is right. So do you believe what you do because you are following others, or have your personal reasons for believing?

This phase will be marked by many life questions that leave us feeling conflicted:

• Who am I?

• What do I value above all else?

• Have I done something good in this world?

• Were some of the things I always thought actually wrong?

• Am I in control or just being led by outside forces around me?

• Why am I here?

• Do I matter?

• What do I believe in?

• Were the goals I set for myself the right ones?

• How can I do better?

• What will be my legacy, or what will I leave behind when I’m gone?

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If you enjoy thinking through questions such as the ones above, you may be interested in reading a book I wrote with co-author Dave Edelstein: Question Yourself: 365 Questions to Explore Your Inner Self & Reveal Your True Nature

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We may go through periods of turmoil and unrest, feeling that we don’t even know ourselves. This can happen at any point in life. We may turn to others to help us figure out who we are, and find that all we hear are what they perceive us to be. Other people have their own beliefs about who we are, but all of that is based on their perceptions and prior interactions with us. While their perceptions may help guide us to understand ourselves, they will ultimately be limited in what they can reveal to us.

We will have to decide if we will be defined by who other people think we are, based on who we have always been. Will we be limited by others, and our past, or do we want something greater for ourselves?

As a final part of your self-growth and understanding, you may come to the realization that you get to define who you are, and you get to create who you are. These are powerful ideas that when fully realized, will aid you in being your best possible self.

Becoming Your True Self

We become our true self by actualizing our self-chosen highest values.

While in the prior mode of consciousness, you probably identified some of your highest values in your life. Perhaps you will even realize that you have not been properly living out your values. You may have gotten so caught up in The Chase mode of consciousness, that you forgot what really mattered to you. Or perhaps, you never properly thought through what truly mattered to you. You allowed others to guide you toward what they valued, rather than consciously thinking through your own values.

When you have identified your highest values, you will see that all that truly matters is living by them. To live against your values is to live in falseness, and to be a hypocrite, and to cause your psyche and soul to be in pain and disorder. Every time we go against our values, we are actually going against ourselves. This leads to the inhibition or even destruction of the better parts of ourselves, which is not the way to the fruitful life.

My primary life value is truth, and I think this should be on everyone’s list of primary values. This value is so important to me because it allows me to always have a voice. Many times in my life, I felt scared to say what I truly wanted to say. I assumed that it was not important or people wouldn’t care or they would ridicule me. Now, I see that anything that comes from my heart is always worth saying, because it is my truth. Truth is actually a part of my life’s quest. I am always on the search to learn something that will help me to understand our entire universe, and our place in it.

My highest values are Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference. This is what I aim to live by in every thought, word, and action.

When you know all of your primary values then you can aim to live your life congruently, where your thoughts, words, and actions, and your whole self becomes one with itself. You will be a harmonious person with a clear vision for who you are, living by it every day, and people around you will come to see this too. You will represent something worth representing and not be a person who trivially pursues his impulses and desires without being connected to a greater purpose.

A powerful realization you may have at this point is that your self is connected to everyone else in the world. Your thoughts, words, beliefs, and actions are not just your own, but they ripple throughout the rest of the world. When you are lazy and do nothing for a day, that is a day that the world suffered by not gaining the best from you. When you help an elder across the street, that is a day that you, one part of the universe, is helping the elder, another part of the universe across the street. We are all parts of the universe, and not outside of it. We are all therefore interrelated with everyone and everything else. So at this stage, you will feel a compelling motivation to think better and do better not just for you, but for as many people as you can.

Your self is not just your self. Every person who has ever spoken with you or engaged with you in any way has shaped you into becoming who you are, just as you have shaped them into becoming who they are. We are all an interplay on each other, and not separate and distinct islands on our own. With these thoughts, you cannot help but focus on improving the world (the next phase of consciousness).

At the highest levels of finding yourself, you may found your own personal philosophy (or your own interpretation of it), even if this is just a mixture of other philosophies. Strictly speaking, it may not be a philosophy, but rather a religion for some people. You may grow spiritually, attaining insights that are not easily put into words. Some people may take ideas from various philosophies, religions, or spiritual traditions, to come up with their own unique path.

Improving the world

After you have surpassed survival mode, made it through the chase, figured yourself out, and then become your true self, you will be ready to aid others fully with your consciousness. Do not misunderstand, you have probably been helping others since you were on The Chase. But perhaps, when you were on The Chase, you didn’t care if you helped others. You were mostly concerned with making sure that you benefited from everything you did.

In this stage of consciousness, you are deeply concerned with everyone and everything. In reality, this mode of consciousness may happen in stages. You may find yourself more concerned with your community, then your country, then your part of the world, then the whole world. That is fine, this mode of consciousness happens in different ways for different people. Importantly, this level of consciousness involves a deeper connection with larger communities. Most people are naturally concerned with their families and close friends, almost as an extension of themselves, and so those types of connections are intertwined with our earlier stages of consciousness.

When you arrive at this level of consciousness, you may learn about physics, and realize that this domain relates to biology, which relates to your heart, which connects to all hearts, which connects to all lives. You see that physics is fundamentally important.

Then you read about history, and you realize that these stories connect to patterns in all of human history, and that currently we just happen to be in our own part of the human history. All history interrelates and interconnects, and the same themes happen over and over. So when you know your history, you know the present day, and even the future.

At this stage, with everything you learn, you can extrapolate it to mean something greater than what it was intended to mean. Everything is an analogy or metaphor or pattern from which you can absorb more understanding than was intended. You observe a bird fly outside your window, and see that humans want to be the bird, free to go anywhere they want, and free from concern.

Your seeing that the world is acting on you, and you are acting on the world, motivates you to find ways to impact the world for the better. You may pick any kind of world problem and see what you can do to make it better. For example, hunger, domestic violence, income inequality, lack of literacy or education, racism, sexism, pollution, global warming, misinformation, overpopulation, endangered animals, or improving human consciousness. There is no shortage of big problems to work on. The challenge is choosing the most important ones and then committing to them. The most important ones for you will likely be based on your most important values.

Someone who values truth above all else may choose to focus on tackling misinformation, miscommunication, poor literacy and education, and helping people to identify common personal biases (e.g., logical fallacies and cognitive biases).

As far as actually making improvements, you may decide to do this in different ways. Your daily actions may work to improve some world problem. For example, you may work in a field that works on these problems, or you may volunteer in one, or you may simply choose to speak to people about these problems and raise awareness. Another option is to donate to different causes. There is no one path for all. You will get to choose how you wish to improve the world.

A challenge at this phase is to keep ourselves grounded and remember the fundamentals. We should stay true to our core values and continue to help the most important people in our lives such as family and close friends, even though we have now come to see the greater importance of everything and the world at large. Also, we may cause ourselves new sufferings, as we see that no matter how much we do, and how much we try to change things for the better, there are limits to what we will be capable of accomplishing alone. For that reason, many people will find it useful to join organizations that can work on a greater cause together.

There are even higher levels of consciousness, but those will need to be explored at a later time.

The Path to a True and Fruitful Life

An Introduction

Today I will present my basic philosophy, which is my way of life, and this is the path I think more of us should consider. I believe these are the key parts to living one’s best life:

Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference.

Truth

One of the greatest human problems is that we conflict with ourselves. Our personal desires may guide us one way. Yet, society may guide us in another, religion in another, science in another, our teachers in another, our parents in another, our siblings in another, our friends in another. Some of these directions that we are guided in may overlap, but many of them will conflict.

Many disorders of the mind may arise from an incongruence within ourselves. We become split in our persona, psyche, direction, and even our truth when we focus on all the truths of people important in our lives, many of which conflict with each other.

As a basic example, one’s teachers may say to obey authority, trust what you are taught by your teachers, and don’t ask too many questions. One’s religion may say that the only authority to trust is the Bible itself. At the same time, one’s parents may reveal that our teachers and authorities are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and the teachings of religion are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. These same parents may guide you toward finding a stable, high-paying career, even if this conflicts with your own personal truth.

In my life, my personal truth has been to follow my curiosity. I have been extremely curious about the mind, consciousness, thought, optimal performance (e.g., genius, creativity, flow, self-actualization), and improving societies. This has led me to study psychology, philosophy, sociology, and history to varying degrees.

I was fortunate never to have anyone in my life tell me that I was on the wrong path. No one ever took me aside and said that there is no stable career on this path, or that I am no one special to consider such things. I was always free to pursue my truth, and this is because I have been given a privileged path, which is not available to all. But by having been allowed this path of truth in my life, I see that there is no other way. Any other path than truth would logically have to be falseness. We all walk the path of falseness to varying degrees, and so our goal must be to reduce and eliminate it as much as we can and always be truthful with ourselves. Being truthful and congruent with ourselves is the ultimate truth that we can strive for.

Pursuing one’s truth is one’s source of life, energy, a connection to a greater good, the truest expression of ourselves, and the ability to be harmonious and coherent with our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions, where we align into one unified being with ourselves.

Of course, finding our personal truths means exploring all the truths in our surroundings from our parents, siblings, friends, society, religion, science, etc. We can use all of these as options to select from. And our truth can be an organic, growing, evolving concept, changing along with our changing mind or changing environment. But some part of that truth should be stable and steady, highlighting universal concepts of goodness and rightness and oneness with ourselves.

Balance

A focus on balance is to see that when we focus on just one aspect of our lives, all others tend to become neglected or ignored. For example, someone born to be a fighter may train all his life and become one of the strongest, quickest, and best fighters by 20 years of age. However, in this time, if he knows nothing else, he will never know what to fight for. He may not have taken the time to develop his emotions, curiosity, intuition, reasoning, creative, and passive nature. He may have always focused on fighting and training to fight, thus becoming the best at this, but perhaps the worst at everything else.

We do not all need to be perfectly in balance, and to put equal weight on work/family, or strength/wisdom, or learning in every discipline to equal degrees, or productivity/recreation, or activity/reflection, or healthy and safe activities/fun and risky activities, money making / money-saving. There is no perfect level of balance that works for all.

Balance can be thought about at the individual and societal levels to make matters a bit more complex. An individual who is not very well balanced may help to balance out the rest of society. For example, consider an immensely creative individual who always talks about new ideas and inventions and makes up stories. He is always going into new directions and so rarely completes anything. However, his imbalances may help to balance out the rest of society. Perhaps most people are too conventional, stuck in old ways of thinking. When they meet this hyper-creative individual, this helps them discover new solutions in their daily lives or work goals. An occasional unbalanced individual can actually help to balance out society.

Another way to make a case for some people being unbalanced, is that for some people, they may find balance in the imbalance. To clarify, a workaholic may use the immense hours at work to feel a sense of inner balance. Spending so much time at work may have a calming effect on the individual and help him feel that he is achieving a higher purpose of helping others (providing balance to society somehow). There is even a chance that working extensively can help someone work through psychological traumas or avoid having to dwell on negative thoughts. The point here is that we all have ways of finding inner balance, even if sometimes it is done through imbalance itself.

We must use our personal truth to help figure out what level of balance we need in our lives. Just as there are many conflicting truths, we may decide that work is important and family life is important. Or we may decide that pursuing a well-paying career is important, but also pursuing something we find personally fulfilling is important. In your efforts to find balance, you have many different options available to you. You may decide to pursue a single path that helps to balance everything, such as starting a family business that has the potential to provide a great deal of income while working modest levels and helping to deepen connections with your relatives. Alternatively, you may decide to focus exclusively on work from Monday to Friday and exclusively on the family on the weekends. There is no one right path, but we will be happier and more fulfilled when we consider balance in our lives.

Love

Love is an energy that unites. Hate is energy that repels. In that sense, love is gravitational – it will pull others into your orbit.

When we hate others, we do not hate them. Rather, we hate the aspects of ourselves that are like them. If you hate insincerity in others, it’s because you hate it in yourself. The same for greed, superficiality, bragging, being overly self-conscious, an inability to make decisions, etc.

We see ourselves in everything around us and everyone around us. Our selves are tied to the entire universe because we only process the universe through our own minds and mental patterns (or, to put it another way, through ourselves). Think of this – all the universe fits inside your mind, and so all of your universe is affected by the way you think and your expectations. You cannot fully see anyone else because you are always using parts of yourself to interpret them. When I see my Mom, I am not necessarily seeing her for what she is now. Rather, I see what I expect my Mom to be, given all my prior experiences with her. A large part of my Mom in my mind is actually me perceiving aspects of myself and our prior interactions in a way that represents her. My mother is a representation of my mother in my mind – My mother, to me, is not my actual mother, but just a representation. This is the nature of perception.

Any emotion I have toward my Mom, is actually an emotion I am experiencing toward myself – my mother is represented by myself. I cannot separate myself from the representation of her. And this is the case with every individual I come in contact with.

So in a way, all love and all hate, and all emotions we feel for others, we are feeling for aspects of ourselves.

We must learn to love ourselves. This is true love that transcends whether we did the right thing or not, whether we succeeded or not, whether we helped or not, whether we failed or not, whether we tried hard enough or not, whether we loved properly or not, whether people liked us or not, and so forth. We need to transcend all of this and learn to love ourselves along with all the goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, perfection and imperfections that go along with it.

Our emotions, in many ways, operate as reflections. If I carry anxiety, depression, and hatred with me everywhere I go, in my body, my mind, and my facial expressions, then the people around me will operate as a sort of reflective mirror, and they will tend to feel those types of thoughts back toward me. They may or may not consciously understand what they are experiencing, but either way, the effects will be there.

Thus, a person who could extinguish all extraneous emotions and feel pure love would have a tremendous impact on their surroundings. Every person they came in contact with would likely be forever changed. A genuine experience with true love would be life-transforming. Just the same, we don’t properly consider it, but carrying around hate, anxiety, depression, etc., may have similar transformative effects on those around us, for the worst.

The challenge of love will be to learn to love ourselves. This will be an immense quest on its own for most of us. We have learned to talk offensively, bitterly, and ruthlessly to ourselves, but we must unlearn those patterns and focus on more constructive, loving ways of seeing ourselves. From there, we must relearn how to love the people we are closest to in our lives. We must come from a place of true acceptance, understanding, unconditional love, warmth, gratitude, and such to learn to love those closest to us in our lives truly.

Then, we must learn to love our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, city, state, country, world, and then not just humans but also animals, plants, and even insects. We must even learn to love what we consider nonlife, for that nonlife supports all life. Nonlife is the Sun – it may not be sentient, but it helps provide the source energy for all life on the planet. Nonlife is water – again, something that helps to nourish virtually all life on the planet, and life originated in the seas, in water. Nonlife is wood – used for building homes and furniture, but it comes from trees. The point is that even nonlife supports all life, and thus nonlife deserves our respect and love.

I will remind you that I do recognize it as a great feat if you can love yourself. To truly love yourself fully regardless of what or who you are will help carry your love to the next level and onto the universe itself.

Knowledge (Along with Understanding & Wisdom)

Knowledge is quite a powerful force to behold. Many of us think that only the experts need to know their particular fields, but I have made it a habit to question the experts, and I think most people would be surprised at how little our experts sometimes know or understand. Often, with just a few questions, I can find limitations in the knowledge of an expert. We credit the experts for all they know, but we forget how little we all seem to know. Of course, we all need experts, but perhaps some parts of life are so important that we need to become experts in multiple areas too.

You may be surprised to find that in a short time, you can rival the knowledge of some experts.

We need to stop giving power to everyone else and take some of it for ourselves. Your average person should not be on an endless quest for power, but we should at least be looking to empower ourselves in our daily lives. If you lack awareness of why anything in this life is operating the way it does, then how can you possibly have any power or ability to influence even your own life?

To change your life for the better, or the life of those around you for the better, or to constructively solve problems, or to creatively look for new solutions, you must empower yourself through knowledge – which may then lead to understanding and wisdom.

We have no excuse. Knowledge is freely available in many cases. There are free online courses offered even from leading colleges and institutions. There are free YouTube tutorials to learn practically anything. There are libraries of free books and now libraries of digital books available to us all. There are websites or podcasts to access even more information from leading experts around the world.

The knowledge in schools and educational programs is worthy. Still, it is limited because it was prepackaged for the masses, predigested, and pre-thought out by the teacher, and this is good because it helps to make sure that it takes you toward an end goal of having a balanced, certified education. Yet, it is bad because it provides everyone with the same thinking processes, same conclusions, and same journey, rather than allowing you to pursue your own unique path of learning.

In my personal journey, I got my B.A. in psychology and then my M.S. in industrial-organizational psychology. I was on the path toward a Ph.D., but I decided to abandon that path since I wanted more control over my learning. I wanted to learn in a more broad and interdisciplinary fashion, rather than be locked into a particular school of thought or be locked into needing to study a particular field in a certain way and examine particular problems others found important to examine. I needed my own path, to find my own truth, in my own way.

In this day in age, you can choose your own knowledge path. It may involve books and podcasts, school or university, or it may involve personal tutors, or certification programs, or self-learning (with free online resources), or finding a variety of mentors to guide you along your way, or a combination of these, or none of these.

The important thing is to seek out knowledge. Many in this world are motivated to get you to see things their way. People will try to convince you that this religion is better, or this product, or this philosophy, or this service, and so on. They will try to convince you, and the less you know, the more easily fooled you will be. If you do not pursue your own knowledge and way of learning, being, seeing, and doing, then you may forever be led by the currents of our times rather than the currents of your soul and your personal truth.

As a part of seeking out knowledge, I recommend incorporating experimentation into your life. Test what works for you, what does not work for you, and what needs improving. Also, measure how you are performing on the metrics most important to you. If you want more love in your life, are you performing loving actions every day? If not, you may want to measure this to make sure you are on track.

Transference

The idea of transference is to see that the above pursuits and qualities may be good. Still, they are somewhat useless if an individual pursues them in conflict with society or at the expense of society. Rather, we must find a way to unify ourselves with society at large.

Through transference, we will aim to act as a conduit and transfer the four forces of truth, balance, love, and knowledge onto others. We will act as a stream of higher consciousness, passing these forces along to everyone around us to magnify them and help humanity reach a higher plane of being.

For example, I have sometimes met people who had higher levels of knowledge than me, especially when I was younger. And I sometimes noticed that they did not really want to share what they knew with me. They might make a statement about how fixing a particular problem was actually quite easy. Still, when asked about how to do it, they would be vague, suggesting theories or that a person might learn them from trial and error. I realized that some people enjoy having knowledge that they can hold over others. They can boast about knowing things or having resolved problems, and when someone else has difficulties, they can sit back and enjoy watching them struggle when they already know the solution. As you might imagine, this is the opposite approach I suggest we all take. I understand that some people have limited time and do not wish to spend their time explaining something. Still, even then, I think they should suggest reading a particular book or taking a particular class, or something rather than just a vague remark that leads nowhere.

Let’s go deeper into what I mean by transference.

Transference in regard to truth will mean seeking your own truth while avoiding counteracting someone else’s truth. It will also mean helping others on their path toward truth. Sometimes, this help can be indirect or counterintuitive. If a wise person notes that his friend spends money on things he doesn’t need, and then often runs out of money before his next paycheck, the wise person may refuse to help this person with any money issues, so that he is forced to learn his lessons on his own.

Transference in regard to balance will mean seeking your own balance while avoiding counteracting someone else’s balance or avoiding causing imbalances in other people’s or living being’s lives. If it helps balance yourself to listen to loud music, this may disturb your spouse or roommate, causing them imbalances in their life. So we should learn healthier forms of balance that balance ourselves and those around us.

Transference in regard to love is fulfilled on its own. When you love fully, that energy is transferred or passes to the person you love, making it much more likely for them to pass it on to others.

Transference in regard to knowledge means seeking your own knowledge path while helping others build their knowledge. The ideal knowledge seeker will mentor at least one person and have a mentor of his own, helping and being helped. You are always learning and teaching. Not just learning. Not just teaching.

The general idea of transference is that whatever your philosophy maybe, if your reasons are strong enough for your convictions, you should aim to transfer this way of thought and being onto others, but this transference need not be through preaching. It can be through real actions that you commit to on a daily basis. Just as a child learns from the parents' actions, the world will learn from your actions more than it will from your words.

Final Thoughts

Something important to note is that all of these principles or forces will operate in different people’s lives in different ways. For one person, truth may involve delving fully into a scientific way of thinking and being. For another person, their truth may be to delve fully into a religious way of thinking and being. For another person, they may incorporate a mixture of scientific and religious truths into their lives. Truth is not a single path, but it allows countless possible paths to open up before us. Our lives will become much simpler when we pursue truth rather than open up the paths of falseness.

Truth expands into all the other principles. When you pursue your truth, you can figure out the best way to love for yourself, the best way to balance your life, and the best way to pursue knowledge. It is even possible that for some people, their truth will point them away from balance and instead point them fully toward love or fully toward knowledge.

Everyone’s journey or path will be unique, and this philosophy is meant to help bring out the best in all individuals and society at large.

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If you are interested in learning about specific Thoughts to help you walk the path toward a True and Fruitful Life, I recommend reading:

Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life

Find Your Inner Truth

The most important thing in life is to always pursue your inner truth.

Life throws much falseness at us. It presents us with false choices such as going along with our parents or against them. How can there be such a thing? If your parents taught you to stand up for yourself and to tell the truth, then if you go along with your inner truth and stand up to them, you are for your parents, even if you are against them, are you not?

Words themselves often present us with falseness. For example, the “mastermind” is a title often given to criminals rather than people who have actually mastered their minds. A person who has truly mastered their mind would never mastermind a horrific crime. This is just one example of the falseness of language.

Why does the truth matter so much? I have noticed in my life that I am happy when I am pursuing my truths. When I am going along with my ethics, beliefs, deep needs (not just survival, but also intellectual and creative), I am happy and feel fulfilled in my life, as if I am on the right path.

When I deny myself, my beliefs, my ethics, then I am in misery. You cannot lie to your true self, as your true self always knows if you lie.

Understand that we live in societies full of falseness.

Corporations are looking for shortcuts to increase their profits while decreasing their expenses, meaning degradation of the product while making it appear to be of higher quality. The ones who best accomplish this are rewarded with greater profits. Politicians who tell the truth about their skills and motives will have the shortest careers. Unfortunately, the more lies they tell us, the more likely they are to have satisfying and full careers. Some musician’s voices are processed through software that helps to perfect the voice quality, regardless if the original musician has any talent or not. Those who make the best use of the software may be more likely to succeed, rather than those with the best singing voices and techniques.

There is much falseness, and we must learn to see it to move beyond it and wake up to the truth.

If asked how we are doing, we are expected not to share our pains but only put on the façade that we are doing well. We must all wear masks that all is well, even if we are dying inside. We smile on the outside and frown on the inside.

Many groups will, of course, argue for their version of the truth. There are the materialists and the spiritualists, the liberals and conservatives, the countries that always seem to be at war with one another and insist they are right and the other is wrong, the majority and minority groups with their quarrels, and so forth. We always argue that we are right, and therefore other groups must be wrong. But in the end, likely everyone has some rightness and some wrongness to their beliefs and behaviors.

You may realize that I refer to truths when they are personal realities for ourselves, but these same truths turn into beliefs when viewed on a grander world platform. My truth may be that war is wrong for me. But to someone else who is forced into perpetual wars even though they hate it, war may be an uncomfortable truth. It cannot be wrong because they did not choose it. To the person sucked into perpetual wars, they would say that I believe that war is wrong.

This is where language provides us with falseness once again. How can truth = belief? Well, even though it seems to be a contradiction, they sometimes do equal the same thing. This is a source of great misery in our lives. The truths which I may hold to be of the highest value may ultimately be my personal beliefs. And someone else in a different circumstance may be right to see my truths as wrong or naïve or even malicious. I do not intend any of my truths to be malicious, but someone else may interpret them in that way if my truths function as an imposition on other people’s truths.

In sticking to your truth, it is important to commit to positive ways of being and seeing that will not add pain to the world. If your truth is based on hatred, then I would urge you to find another way. Find a constructive use of your negative energy if you hold it, and morph it into something positive to help make things better for your people. Making things worse for someone else is unlikely to make things better for yourself in a way that is true to yourself.

The most important thing in life is to find our truth. No one is going to give it to you. The easy-made truths of following an ideology, a leader, a parent, and so on can give us a starting point. But it is not always best to go with what is conveniently in front of you. Of course, if you are happy and fulfilled with what you have, it makes sense to stick with it. If you find yourself questioning and doubtful, and unhappy, it could make sense to explore other truths outside of the ones you have been exposed to.

In the end, I believe that we select our truths. As an example, one society may believe that thieves should have their hand cut off. They will justify this by showing that thieves can no longer steal so easily when they are missing a hand, making the rest of society happy. We end up justifying the truths we select for ourselves - if we cut off hands, we have fewer thefts, meaning that we can continue to justify this course of action.

Another society may say that the punishment is too strict. If we punish them that way, will we punish all minor crimes with such violence, leaving much of society mangled and feeling bitter and hateful? This society does not cut off hands and instead tries to help poor people so that they do not feel pressured into stealing. They implement this course of action, and it leads to fewer thefts. So again, they continue to justify this course of action.

No matter which course of action we take, if it is based on deeply held beliefs, then we will probably find a way to justify viewing it as a success and wanting to continue in that direction.

We justify our beliefs and truths to ourselves every day. So every day that goes by, our truths seem truer than ever. And anyone who disagrees seems more wrong than ever.

Our minds want to see one pathway as correct, making all other pathways incorrect – but perhaps this assumption is itself false. There may be multiple competing truths and some statements or paths which are more true than others.

Most of humanity’s misery is one group looking at a coin on its side and shouting that it is heads, and the other group looking at it and shouting that it is tails. Both groups are right from their own vantage point but fail to realize that the other side is also right. Then, both groups fight over their truth and belittle each other to get the other group to understand their viewpoints, which makes things worse.

We should trust others to know what is true for them and stop imposing our truths onto them. Tell others what your truth is, without expecting them to follow you. And allow others to tell you their truth, but do not feel pressured into following it.

If I were to search for some basic truths, they would be as such: Treat others as you want to be treated. Do not harm anyone – it is most important to avoid physical harm, although, of course, we should avoid verbal abuse or emotional abuse as well. Do good deeds when you can, to whoever you can – such as helping someone survive or accomplish their goals.

The above truths are nothing new – many religions and philosophies point to some basic truths. And many of those truths overlap with each other. Obviously, basically, everyone agrees that to kill is wrong and to steal is wrong. And even these basic truths may have their exceptions. Many people would agree that to kill in self-defense or in defense of loved ones is acceptable. And to steal food when you are starving can also be viewed as acceptable.

Our task is to explore ourselves deeply to find what our inner truths are. What are the truths that we must actualize in our lives to feel whole? I recently spoke with a music lover who told me he had no access to music nor to learning it and that he was faced with the choice of finding a well-paying job or being a bad and poor musician. But our deepest inner truth isn’t just an abstract concept. It is who we are. Your deepest truths are an expression of who you are.

If music is in your soul, to deny yourself music is to deny yourself to yourself. It is to allow falseness in your life. Every day when someone asks how you are, and you say “fine,” then you are a liar because you are never fine since you do not have music. Choosing a paying job or music is a false dichotomy once again. You don’t have to choose. You can pursue both. You can pursue a solid job that involves music somehow (even if it is only in the background) and then pursue learning music on your own time. You can even play on the streets to earn extra income.

What are the most important truths of your life? Focus on the convergence of your thoughts, words, needs, desires, and actions. When your thoughts are in one place and actions in another, you are not living your truth. Do not lie to yourself.

If you privately think that it is wrong to curse, but you allow people to curse around you all day long without saying anything, then you are not living your truth. You may take a stand for yourself and tell the people around you that this makes you uncomfortable, and you want a respectful environment. Importantly, you should not impose your truth on them but rather state your perceptions. Either that or you change your view that perhaps cursing is not worth raising a fuss over every time.

Perhaps you focus your truth elsewhere. You may decide to look for a positive thing to comment on about the people you find a negative flaw. Every time you hear someone curse, you may look for something to compliment them on. This may be a middle path where you guide people in your life away from cursing – by shifting their attention to something positive rather than directly asking them not to curse. This may be wiser, as it is often more fruitful to ask people to do something than ask them not to do something.

Following your inner truth is the most important thing you can do.

However, this can be a challenge, as it is easier to go with the flow and allow our surroundings to guide our behavior. Your family will have its own rules, written and unwritten, then your company has different rules, written and unwritten. Your government has rules, of course, and so does your religion, if you have one. It is easier to go with the flow and follow the rules than to stop and think about them and realize that perhaps your personal truths do not always converge with those other rules.

And here we have the choice or the question of our lives. Will we adopt the rules handed to us, without thought, and mindlessly follow them? Will we assume that the rules are all there for a reason and abide by them? Our lives are, of course, filled with endless rules. Every time you access a new forum online or download a new app or piece of software, you may be urged to sign a 100-page document of rules. Even the people who write these Terms & Conditions do not expect you to read them, of course. It is all intended as legal protection for them.

Please do not get distracted by the rule books that dominate our lives. It is easy to get frustrated and overwhelmed and decide that the rules do not matter. Everyone has rules, and they often conflict. Yes, some agencies have gone overboard with their rules. Ironically, there are so many rules in modern society that most people don’t know what they are and don’t care. We only find out a rule, often, when we are being punished for not following it. Then we are always told that ignorance of the rules does not excuse us from them. We should have read the 100-page rule book, apparently. Or likely, thousands of pages when it comes to national, state, and local laws and regulations.

As strange as it may be, I would suggest that you form your own personal rule book of truths that you follow. We should all have this book of personal truths. The key question is, “What is my truth”? If you do not know your own truth, then you cannot live by it. If you don’t know your own truth, you cannot scrutinize it. And if you can’t scrutinize it, then you will stunt your growth as a person.

You may be living in falseness if you have never consciously thought through your life and core truths.

In time, your truths become your way of being. If one of your truths is that small matters in life should not cause you to blow up in anger, then reminding yourself of this will help you actualize it.

A truth I find important is that we should be more aware of ourselves and our surroundings. Every day, I see people walking into the streets, absorbed with their phones. I feel that this is a tragedy waiting to happen. People are so absorbed with their phones that they forget to check for oncoming traffic. They are much more likely to entrust their life to a green light or “walk” sign, forgetting that drivers often neglect these rules. My truth is that every moment of every day, something critical to our lives may be about to happen. If you are not looking, you could miss the most important moment of all. Bad people with bad intentions rely on good people who are completely unaware of what they are doing. Also, children get into trouble when no adult present is aware of that child.

A strange thought that I have sometimes is that someone in my vicinity could be in big trouble, and they may be waiting for me to notice it. For example, what if you are in a pool having fun, and while you are distracted, a child is drowning in the shallow end, and there is no lifeguard? What if there is a “missing child” poster, and you later see that missing child by chance, but you were not paying enough attention?

Imagine if we were put in the position to save a life every day, and we had never realized it. A depressed friend may call you today, but absorbed in his own falseness, he may insist that everything is fine. If you do not read through the signs of despair carefully, that his tone of voice is defeated, that he has just lost his job and the right to see his kids, then you will not be fully aware and present and able to help him. Put aside the falseness, and see through the falseness, and you may find that you will save a life today.

One of the greatest truths must be that what we do matters, as it impacts ourselves and everything around us somehow. And so, this reality must be important in some way if it is part of the collective truth that we are all living in. Then this means that we should work to help each other in this reality. We should give ourselves more to this real-world and stop escaping as much into the world of the phone and the screen, and social media. These tools of escape often drive us further from the truth. There are surely some good resources online, but we tend to spend most of our time on the most superficial parts of the online world, such as social media posts that manipulate our emotions and fill us with falseness. Most of the media, online and offline, seems to have an agenda, to teach us what it wants us to think. Rather than accepting what is given to us as truth, we must form our own basic truths and stop being swayed like a leaf by the winds of superficiality.

I would caution you not to adopt someone else’s truth so easily. Many people or agencies want to teach us to hate someone or something. If someone teaches us to hate their competitors, it gives them time to rise to power. Also, it shifts attention away from the source’s possible incompetence or deceptiveness. Hate is used as a tool to gain money and power. But you do not need to be an instrument of hate and should instead pursue your personal truth to gain personal power so that you can nullify hate and the negative energies in this life.

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If you liked this post, you may want to read this post next - The Path to a True and Fruitful Life - where I discuss the most impactful truths that I have found in my life.

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If you are ready to pursue your unique path to truth and understanding, you may wish to read Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.