Lifewriting Live 1-31:The "Three Gates" experiment

Greetings. I think we are trying to get in there. Okay, good. So today is life, writing lives. The last one for January of 2021. And tomorrow we get February, a whole new month. You know, I don't know about you, but it can take me almost a month to really get ramped up into the new year. I've got to work on the stuff that I was thinking about for the previous year. All the tail end of so many different threads coming together at the end of one year. And then we try to find a way to make the next year reasonable. You know, how do you step into your year? How do you. How do you hold in your hands the things that are most important to do, the things that are most effective and efficient to do, and the things that are most righteous to do? That's a question that always comes to me. All I'm doing in these broadcasts is sharing my perspective on what these things are. So Tom Barkley says hello. Hello, Tom and Scott. James Magner says hello. Hello there. Cliff Winnick says hello. Hello. It's always good to see people. I'm a half hour late today because I slept really late this morning. I was up late last night. It happens. But Tananarive was sure that I was going to blow this off today. But no, I really didn't want to have a conversation because I wanted to be able to tie up those loose ends from last year. And the last thing that I wanted to do from last year was to take a deeper look, a deeper dive into the question of the three gates. You know, life writing grew out of my observation that Joseph Campbell's model of the hero's journey and the yogic chakras, if you combine them together, you had a model of what human beings are and what it is that human beings have to do order to move forward in life. That was a realization that came to me about 25 years ago, maybe actually a little bit more than that. Life writing per se was just the hero's journey. That was the first step. Joining it together with the chakras. Said if the hero's journey is about what a hero has to do in order to overcome issues, then you still have another question, which is, what is the hero himself or what is a human being? And that was a critical question. And I found that the chakras were the most complete model of this. Somewhere in that process, I have been doing a massive amount of research in different ways of looking at questions like, you know, morality and efficiency and effectiveness. And the three gates began to pop up which is the notion. And I first came in contact with it through the poetry of Rumi, but later came across very, very similar concepts in yoga and in Buddhism and in other places. Basically, that there are three things that any action or word should pass. And that is, is it true? Is it useful? Is it kind? Now, I changed the order of those a little bit. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? And I do that as a mnemonic. I don't think it matters that much which one goes first overall, but I do think that it is. You get slightly different effects if you change things, if you put the order this way as opposed to that way. So I would suggest that you sort of experiment with it. But I do think the truth needs to come first, because if it's not true, then I think the whole thing falls apart. That within the set of things that are true, you also find those things that are kind and those things that are useful. Now, of course, there'll be people say, within that set of things that are useful, you find those things that are kind and true, or within that set of things that are kind, you find things that are useful and true. You can do that. And I would suggest, like I said, that you think about that whichever way you want. But I wanted to spend some time thinking specifically about what happened when I decided to really kind of focus on this for a month. Ah, boy, water. It's the little things that count. So just. Hi to everybody who has signed on. Basically, Jamie and Earl and Dim Jones. Hi, Dim and Paul Hoff. And it's really great to see everybody out there. And once again, if there are any questions about any of this or any of the implications of it, please let me know. Because all I'm doing is sharing the. The process that I'm going through, trying to get as clear as possible so that I can be the best father and husband I can be the best martial artist I can be the best writer I can be, given my talents and limitations. You know, I'm not trying to be somebody else. I'm not trying to get someplace in particular. I'm just trying to be as authentic as I can possibly be. I had a realization yesterday. I'd done a number of exercises and meditations yesterday, and I realized that I was moving differently. This was just when I was walking. And I said to Natari, I've mourned several times that I have a hard time doing more than a certain amount of working out in a day, that I can't seem to increase what I'm Doing without it, having negative influences on other things that I'm trying to do. But then I had a realization that it doesn't matter how much work out as much as it matters who I am when I'm working out. This is a lot like the writing question, you know, if you do a sentence a day, that keeps the space of writing open. And what you'll find is that by the time you've set yourself up to do a sentence, in most cases, you'll be able to do a page or two pages or three pages. And if you know to yourself that in order to do a book in a year, you need to do at least a page a day, and you do two pages a day, then you've got, you know, wiggle room. If you tell yourself that all you have to do is one sentence, then there's a part of you that doesn't want to dog that out. I mean, that wants to do the best sentence you can do. You're going to. You're going to flow. You're going to sit in your excellence, you're going to come from a place of excellence, and you're going to do that single sentence. And I think that the same thing is true if you. If you're working out, what is the thing that you can do to connect this most deeply with your other processes? Because in the arts, as in philosophy, there are two basic questions. What is true and who am I? The degree to which you are authentic in the moment that you're writing is the degree to which your work is going to be the best that you can do at that moment. And if you are continuing to input good material, and you're continuing to observe life, and you're continuing to tell yourself that you want to raise your game, you want to raise your level, you want to be better and better and better, then you will slowly begin to improve. And it is a natural thing. And that will happen over time. You don't have to worry about that. You just have to do the work. It's not that you don't have to be concerned. It's not that you don't have to continue to make better and better distinctions, choose the right words, choose the right characters, the right perspective, the right pacing. But, you know, one of the things that's true in writing is that in speaking, I have to actually try to choose words, concepts, analogies and so forth in the moment, spontaneously, that will communicate in a particular way. So I can't observe myself doing this. I just have to do it now. That's more similar to what martial arts are, unless you're practicing forms alone. Martial arts is about what happens in the moment. You're not thinking about it, it just happens. So speaking is that way. Writing is not. Writing is. You're in the moment when you're creating the first draft, but then you actually have a chance to step back, take a look at what you wrote, and ask yourself, what is this? So Paul Hoff asks, do you draw a distinction between authentic and integrity? You know, I think that authentic is. Is a perception of a state. What is the thing? Then your actions should be in alignment with that truth so that your actions that have integrity. So integrity is being in alignment with your authenticity. But the first question is what is true? That would be the way that I would answer that question. That's a very good question, and thank you so much, because this is an inquiry and it's a conversation. And to the degree that we can communicate together about these things, you can push me to be a better person and a better teacher, which is all that I want. So what happened? If writing is about being true to yourself, but you have the additional layer of being able to go back and. And rework it. Martial arts are about authenticity in that moment. Although you prepare for that moment, most of martial arts is preparing for a moment that you hope will never happen. That is an interesting thing. And how do those things connect with the question of being a husband and a father, of being loving, of expressing that love to my wife, expressing that love to my son, my daughter, my sister, the people who I genuinely care about. Okay, here's another question. What about the line between deliberation and overthinking? You're only going to discover what that line is through actual practice. Overthinking is subjective. You spent more time thinking than you spent acting when acting was necessary. If you know, if you are on the freeway and you're overthinking whether or not to get off at a particular exit and you pass the exit, then you overthought it. Okay, so there's no. All I can say is engage with life. Take your theory, take your hypotheses about what works. Actually step into the arena and test it. You know, in martial arts, you. You know, if you're right, you hit the guy. If you're wrong, you get. You get clocked out. If you. If in love, you communicate. If you got it right, then they understand what you're feeling and the two of you become closer. If you got it wrong, then there's a misunderstanding and you get further away in finances. You're going to have your theories about sales and marketing and so forth and so on. And if it's correct, you get the sale, you make money, your bank account swells. If you got it wrong, then you didn't get the sale. Or you have both sales and the production of the thing that you are selling, the service that you are providing. So you have to put thought into the quality of the product or service and the communication skills with which you tell people, I have something that will make your life better. I hope that whatever it is that you're selling, whether it's a sidekick, a loving interaction, you're telling somebody, if you go out with me, you're going to be happier than if you stay home or if you date that other guy, or in terms of sales, if you buy my product or service, you will be healthier, happier. I would hope that it is authentic that you mean what you're saying, that you actually are trying, that you're actually giving it the best you have and that you're actually working to get better at that thing. Day after day after day, every day you wake up, how can I get better at this? How can I serve my audience more? How can I be a better father? How can I be a better husband? I would think that these are things that concern you, so that you are constantly learning these things. You are constantly, every day you're working at it. And it requires, I think, primarily the question, what is true? And I think that because if you don't start with truth, you're starting with delusion. And we had some, you know, just recently in our country's history, very, very recently, just a few weeks ago. I think that the majority of the country feels that there were a group of people who believed a lie. They believed something that was not true. And the tragedy about it was that if it were true that the election had been stolen, then the actions in Washington make sense. If it is true that a cabal of traitors are controlling our country and completely screwed up the election, completely stole the election, then it is not an act of traitors to. To try to counter that. So this is why it was so insanely irresponsible for our leaders to push the narrative that the election had been stolen because they were actually trolling for patriots to take an action. The question, what is true? How do you determine what is true? How do you test your understanding of what is true? The whole epistemology is the study of true truth is the study of information, making sure that your Information streams are accurate, how do you test it? Who do you listen to? How do you determine when something is wrong? And if you determine that something is wrong, what does that mean? How much of your own behaviors do you need to go back and look over to say, I was right here, I was wrong here? Once you understand that anybody, everybody has been wrong, then, well, one thing, I think that you end up having a little bit more compassion for people who make mistakes. But you also, I think justifiably there is that thing called righteous anger toward the people who abuse their power to spread misinformation. We had a grotesque example of that in my mind. To me, that is honest. And is it kind. It's kind, I think, to the people who were misled, who were led into false paths, to say that they are fellow citizens and although they're going to be punished, many of them are going to be punished. It is important to understand how this happened, that we can try to prepare our children to make such mistakes less often, to be able to welcome back into the community of humanity those who can say, I was wrong, I was. I was misled. Now, that doesn't mean that somebody saying that they were conned or misled are going to agree with you on everything political. I mean, we have two major parties, and in my mind, the difference between those two parties was not supposed to be what reality they saw. It was having a rough similarity of intended outcomes, but differences in the way we address them, the way we try to accomplish things together. You know, big government or small government, those sorts of things. But everybody's agreeing that the basics are true. We're at a point right now where there is disagreement about what the basics are. Are the basic realities are. That is dangerous. You can't have a country in a situation like that. So what we have to do is find a way to sit down with each other and determine first, you know, what is true. I try very, very hard. The only thing that I ever kick people off my page for is being impolite. Now, I've got some flexibility in that. If I ask somebody to please stop speaking, speaking about something, they're at my. They're on my wall, they're in my home, as it were, and they should pay attention to that. So it is not. I don't think that that is an improper use of my leverage as the host on a wall to say, I want. I want these things. I want people to. To be courteous to each other. I don't insist that people follow the three gates, but I Do tell people. If I feel that you're not following the three gates, if I feel that you are being dishonest, that's the same as if I feel that you are being terribly, terribly wrong. Because at the very least, we, you and I, are seeing different worlds, the world so different that I cannot trust you to drive me, you know, while I'm not paying attention. I can't sleep in the back seat because I think we're going to New York. You think we're going to Florida. We have to both be aiming and going in the same direction. We can decide to take different routes there, you know, but. But the, the basic intent, the basic values have to be sufficiently in alignment that we want the same things. Now, this is true about relationships. It doesn't matter how much you love someone if you're going in different directions. It just doesn't matter. I mean, they could be a wonderful person. You guys are great together in bed and you love each other, but you're going over here and she's going over there. I'm sorry, you're not going to be able to have a marriage. Because a relationship in that sense is two people who are traveling the same road, close enough to each other that they can hold hands as they travel. In some ways, that's all it really is. That means similarities of values, similarities of intent, similar definitions of words. And the deeper you go into discussions about certain things, especially things like religion and politics, you're going to find differences. But hopefully the basic intents, the basic values would be sufficiently the same so you will see the same. And those values come from a belief about what is it to be human and what is the nature of the world. So there are two things that are key to questions that are key in art and philosophy. Who am I? And what is true? So their answers need to be similar enough that you can sleep in the back seat while they're driving and there'll be some weaving. That's okay. You do a little course corrections, but you're traveling in roughly the same direction. And the outcome is that you get to spend your life together. Truth, I would say, is the most important starting spot. And it is true that people disagree with you about what is true, that your vision of what is true will change from time to time, and that you could be wrong, they could be wrong, but you are committing. You are trying to figure out what is true. You are using your intelligence. Intelligence is problem solving. You're using your intelligence to develop better and better ways and shortcuts. We all have shortcuts to what is true. Nobody can do all the original research you need to do to determine the reality of something or the veracity of something. You end up having to trust people, trust organizations, trust sources that gather information together. Newspapers, you know, used to do that. Now we have websites, networks. And if somebody connected with that website or network gets something wrong, they need to apologize. In some cases, step down. And that's one of the ways that you know that the integrity of this organization is important to them. If the organization goes to court to fight for their right to lie, I'm sorry, you know, that they're going to lie when it is convenient to them. They're going to give you just enough truth to. To get you to drop your shields. But then when it's important, they're going to lie. Or at the very least they would not have an objection to that. Anybody who fights for their right to lie is telling you that they consider lying to be a valid tool in communication. So you start there, and you start by being honest with yourself. And if you can be honest with yourself, then the effort to be honest with yourself will embarrass you and it will hurt you and it will break your heart, but you will keep getting back up and trying to make better decisions. And when I look over my life and ask myself, what do I think about the times when I went off the rails, when I was not able to function well, When I hurt someone, when I failed? The majority of these instances were times when I was not honest with myself or honest with somebody else. I can trace almost everything back to that question. Was it true? Was it true? So that's that. If it's not true, you'll drive your car off a cliff. But within the scope of things that are true in the world, what about kindness? Once it is true, is it kind? Now, I think that there's a lot of confusion around that. People will say, is it kind to hit a mugger over the head if they try to mug you, Isn't it kinder to give them your money? Isn't it kinder to let them hurt you because you don't want to do so? People who go down that road have not gone down the road of truth. Because the truth is that if you go deeply enough into your own nature, you will find your animal survival drive. Your animal survival drive is the bottom line. It's the third rail. It's that I'm here and I'm going to be here for as long as I can. And every animal is wired up with that. And every human being has that right. And if you start with the fact that you have the right to survive, and the way that works out in all animals is moving away from pain toward pleasure. If you start with that, then you can open your heart to people. And without fear that you're going to let them abuse you because you know you're never going to put their survival above your own unless they are under your protection. You can do that with your family. You make that choice. You can make that choice to. To hold someone else's happiness, someone else's welfare above your own. You can do that. And it's a spiritual path. It's a spiritual commitment. But there are no spiritual people who I respect who would not fight to protect a helpless child. It's as simple as that. Even if it is quote unquote, their actions are cruel to the person attempting to help that child. And I think that there are many different ways you can look at that is there is the greatest good for the greatest number. There is, you know, the idea that there are those who we have a spiritual obligation to protect, like children, that you have the right to survive. And therefore anyone who threatens that survival, you have the right to dissuade them, to give them enough pain that they no longer wish to do that. You can even take a more spiritual position and suggest that people only want to hurt each other because they themselves have been damaged, that they're so souls are not expressing themselves. What you have is a damaged ego expressing itself, and that you're not doing anybody any favors to let them hurt you. I like that. I like that a lot. I think it works very, very well that the notion that this person, were they not consumed with fear, had they not been hurt, would want to walk a righteous path. That all they really want is to be connected to love. And that if they are violent, they are allowing fear to control them. That if they are being violent toward you and you do not resist that violence, they are not having an opportunity to learn. They are not having an opportunity to grow. I know for a fact that a lot of bullies will push and push and push because there was no father in the home, There was nobody in the home to stop them from basically taking over. And so they will go out into the world and they will engage in criminal behavior until they meet a force, often a male force, not necessarily a man, but someone who has the force to push back directly that yang male energy that can push back, that can kick his butt. In essence, once you've Kicked their butt. You have the opportunity to teach them. They are in that sort of child space, and they open their neurology, they open their hearts. This has happened countless times where the thug, the bully goes into martial arts school, the teacher there can kick their butt, and the student then says, teach me. Because he really wants to know how to be in the world in a way that gets him the things that he wants. Moving away from pain toward pleasure. Short term, dishonesty and hurting people can work very well short term, but long term, we need to live in a society of people who we interact with, who we care about, who we can be honest with, who we can trust enough that we could sleep in the backseat and trust that they're going to drive us to New York, not Florida. We all want to be able to trust someone. And the only way you can do that is to be trustworthy yourself. The way to earn your way into the community of people who are trustworthy is to be trustworthy. So the person you meet who is an abuser, who is a thief, who is a liar, they are people who are doing the best they can to find their way to happiness, but they see a warped view of the world. They believe that there are no honest people, or they believe that there is something corrupt inside themselves and that if they express their truth, that people would run screaming. The way that happens is because someone, probably in their home or in the society around them, looked them in the eye and said, you are not worthy. This usually happens when you're early in childhood. You are at your maximum state of imprintation. And when people who are tasked with protecting you say such things about you, you often have no defenses against it. You know, these are godlike beings. You, you know, your parents, your teachers, your brother, older brothers and sisters moving out to the community, you know, where, you know, it's police officers and judges and things like this. The people who have power over you, if they look at you and they see corruption or they tell you that you are not worthy, it can go in deep. Same thing can happen if you're in a loving relationship or relationship that's supposed to be loving. I remember a woman who told me once that she was responsible for her husband's success. Her husband was a multimillionaire. And I didn't believe it, of course. And one day she got divorced from him eventually. And one day I found myself in intimate situation with this lady. And the entire time that we were engaging, she was whispering in my ear, you are a God. You're amazing. You are Going to absolutely shock the world with your brilliance. I mean, just, wow, she's making love to me. I mean, if you cannot see how open your mind and your heart are when somebody is in that intimate space with you, I, I believe now. Oh yeah, she was right. A man who got that every night is going to have a belief in himself that is going to be shocking. But what if she was mocking him? What if she was denigrating him? Or what if he, you know, the man was doing that to his wife? That the person who is in your intimate space, who's in your survival space, the person who, you know you've got to drop your load somewhere. You've got to put down your shield somewhere. No one can be strong all the time. Nobody. And if the person you've chosen to share that space with uses that intimacy to program you with negative beliefs about yourself, believes that you are helpless, beliefs that you are worthless, that stuff can go deep. Stuff can go deep. So how do you heal that? How do you be kind to yourself so that you can be safe enough to drop your shields, feel safe to drop your shields and be compassionate. Because until you feel safe, you should not drop those seals. You know, you do that and you're betraying your own instincts. So, so go back to the beginning. What is the truth? The truth is that you have the right to survive. You have the right to be happy. Being kind to yourself means moving away from pain towards pain, towards pleasure. You protect yourself first. Sometimes it is useful to differentiate between the adult and child parts of your personality. To envision. If you can envision going all out to protect a child, but not all out to protect yourself, then there is a break. There is something that, that's not, that's, that's been damaged in your connection to yourself. So by envisioning yourself as a very small child, you can often trigger the same protective instinct. Now, recently I've made connection with a coach in my own life. I love finding people who can teach me. I love it. And he is further along that path of development than I am. And he gave me a very specific exercise. I want to pass this to you. We've talked a lot about the Ancient Child exercise and it's part of the Warrior's Journey course. And by the way, very, very quick brief, this is all connected to the Warrior's Journey Course www.warriors realwarriorsjourney.com the idea of the Ancient Child was that everything that you want to know in life is on the continuum between the child you were and the ancient self that you're going to be on your deathbed. Beyond all ego, can't be scared. You know you're going to die anyway. So you can tell the truth. And if you can create images of both of these, you can literally step back and listen to the conversation between your very young self and your very old self. And you can tap into the wisdom stream that's already within you. You don't need external teachers if you can make contact with your internal teachers. All of the great spiritual revelations in the world came from somebody. They can come from you. What Dr. Totten, Carl Tottenham, gentleman that I'm working with, asked me to do is to visualize the child within me and say to that boy, I love you. Thank you. I love you. Thank you. I found it relatively easy, but I know that there are people who cannot visualize the child part of themselves and cannot express love towards that child part of themselves, let alone gratitude towards the child part of themselves. I suspect that this is not just a healing exercise. It's a diagnostic that if you can do this without a hint of irony, without feeling like you're a liar, to be able to visualize the child you were and say, I love you. Thank you. Can be an enormously healing thing. And I would ask you to practice that. It's just, you know, for a week until we see each other again, to try that every day when you first wake up in the morning, visualize the child that you were and say, I love you. Thank you. To the last thing before you go to bed at night, to visualize that child who's worked and played hard all day long, to provide you with the aliveness, the creativity, the passion to be able to live and to be able to say to that child who's probably feeling kind of sleepy, is. Is she yawning and stretching and ready to go to bed? If you have children, how did your children want to end their day? Probably being told a story. Being hugged, being told they're a good boy, good girl, do that for yourself. You've worked hard, you've tried hard. And if you don't acknowledge how much effort you've put into just trying to be a decent human being. If you don't acknowledge that you can end up looking at other people and not grasping how hard life is for people, that everyone gives it everything they have, if they could be doing better, they would. To understand that broken people break people is not saying they then have the right to hurt you. Because remember, you're starting with survival. Always start with Survival. Before you open your heart, do not open your heart first, I would say, because unless you are in a totally safe situation, you are placing yourself in jeopardy. Open your survival drive first. The part of you that's, you know, a rabid wolf. If somebody messes with your kid, connect that to yourself. Then open your heart, because you know that you're safe. And you're not safe because you could stop somebody. You're safe because you know you're willing to do whatever it takes to stop somebody. You're willing to do the best you can to protect yourself. And ultimately, all you have to do is be willing to give it a hundred percent, all out, no reservations. And what I have seen is that that little kid inside you. Little kids don't care about whether or not you got the raise. They care about, do you love me, Daddy? Do you love me, Mommy? A lot like puppies. Puppies don't care whether you're employed or unemployed. They care about, do you play with me? Will you feed me? Do you love me? Can I sleep up against you? And you'll share your warmth with me? The most basic and powerful parts of ourselves are very simple. And you don't have to be a badass. You don't have to be rich. You just have to be honest and kind of. And give what you have. You do that and they'll meet you halfway. That's what I have found. So if you start with I love you, thank you. And you mean that you're creating a connection with yourself from which you can deal with the problems of life and the abuses of life in as healthy a way as it's possible for a human being to do. You can start. No one has to give you this. You can do this for yourself. You can heal yourself in these ways. And once you open that door, all you have to do is go out and find the resources that you need. Let me get better at this. Let me get better at this. Let me get better at this. And you find the company of people who are interested in healing more than conducting pity parties. And you ask them, what has worked for you? How do you do this? How do you set your days up to have wonderful days, your weeks up to have wonderful weeks, your months up to have wonderful months, your years up to have wonderful years. How do you do it? And the truth is, you do it one moment at a time. You live each moment for itself while having aligned yourselves so that the moments that you're living are also taking you in the direction that you want to go. So you're alive in each moment, but at the end of the day, you look and you realize, oh, I've done good things in terms of moving towards the things that are important to me. So kindness to yourself creates the freedom and the safety you need to expand your sense of. Of self so you are beginning to include other people, that you continue to protect yourself and create symbiotic and synchronistic relationships with these other people. Not codependent, where people are sharing their strengths and protecting each other's weaknesses, and you're working together in a common cause. You, you do that outside yourself by first feeling safe inside yourself, getting to know the different parts of your personality, what their proper use is, what their intent is. Remember, everything you've ever done in life was an attempt to try to move away from pain toward pleasure. To the degree that you've made mistakes, those mistakes were honest mistakes. You didn't see. Why didn't you see? How can you make a better choice? Next time in February, we're going to be talking about love and relationships, but the question of is it true? Is it kind, Is it useful? Central when we go to is it useful? Useful at what? Well, I think this is where it's important to have goals and a goal of your physical being and health, a goal of your emotional being and your connection to others, and a goal of your financial being. Those three goals can become the safety rails within which, if you have those things, if you're doing well in your career and you're healthy physically and you're in loving relationships with your friends and family and community, I don't see how you've gone terribly wrong. I mean, seriously, it is using things that you can see consciously to create, like I'm calling the safety rails within which the things that you cannot see, the softer values, the more spiritual values can manifest. So you start with the external things, you know, money, physical fitness and health relationships. You clean those things up. The process of cleaning those things up will teach you the things you need to learn to be walking on a spiritual path that is not measured in terms of direct, you know, it's not about money and it's not about how fast you can run or what kind of belt you wear around your waist or even who you're dating. So it's caring about these things, but simultaneously understanding that they're not what you're looking for. What you're looking for is that sense of being at peace with yourself, in your world within yourself, of spending every day being who it is that you are in a way that is authentic, it is true, and it's kind. And now it is useful. Useful for what? Well, useful for helping me be a good writer. Useful for helping me continue to advance in the martial arts. Useful for helping me be the best husband and father I can be. At the core of it, the question is not one of selling stories or fighting or being a good dad or husband. The question is, who am I and what is true? The expression of who I am comes out in these different areas, but they're just shadows that are being thrown by the fire of my passion and my being. We use the external world, but don't be limited by the external world. When you find this, you will. Over the course of the month where I was experimenting with the Three Gates, I found that there were times when it was relatively easy for me to tell the truth. It was easy for me to be kind, and it was easy for me to stay on the path in terms of career, things, usefulness. But then things happen. Life happens. Terrible things, sometimes disruptive things. What's true then? What's kind then? What's useful then? Is it not then useful to be insulting? Is it not useful to hurt the people who hurt us? You know, you're going to have to work these things out for yourself. Steven Smith says, I like the list. I really like threes for memory purposes and to emphasize the simplicity of caring. Okay, so I'm going to read these. Are these personal development centers? Yes, because you are the web, you are the tool, you are the thing that does so. Working on yourself is a way of asking, who am I? What is the self? For what? Biggest bang for what? Once again, I believe that you're best off if you look at the three basic arenas. Mind, body, relationships. Because even if there is no spiritual reality, if you're healthy, rich and in love, that's about as good as life gets rich by your standards. What is rich for you? So it's that using the externals while understanding that the externals are not of real importance and that you. What you want is to operate in such a way that you're not concentrating on those things anymore. You're just being who it is that you are. But you're simultaneously taking care of everything that needs to be taken care of. I like these questions, by the way. What about frameworks that address family, community concerns, that offer insights into politics and economics? Start with yourself. And then as the self feels safe, you automatically begin to expand your sense of self to include other people. And that's where communities and relationships and politics and stuff like that comes in. But start with yourself. Don't ever go backwards. Maslow hierarchy of five needs comes to mind. I think its hypothesis is weird sittered. The four or five pillars of moral foundation is a good one too. I don't understand what you mean by weird centered. I think that's an acronym, but I'm not recognizing it. I've enjoyed the model of hierarchical complexity because of the research to support it. I like the chakras. It's 6,000 years of yogic psychology that seems to me pretty much in alignment with behavioralism or neuro linguistic programming or any other way that I've seen of addressing what it is for human beings. You know, Freudianism gets, you know, seems to have a popular concept that it's all related to sex. I don't think that's what Freud actually meant in that sense because sex is not more important than survival. You know, as I've often said, nobody stops running from a forest fire to get laid. So you know, you have to be realistic about this stuff. I like the chakras better. Positivity ratio is a way to balance emotional experiences. Lots of good stuff out there. And those of you who are reading this, take a look at the, take a look at the comments and there might be some things in there that you want to look into. So if you start with the three gates and you apply the three gates to the three centers. Belly, brain, heart center, head center. You've got the physical arena, you've got the emotional arena, you've got the problem solving, hunting and gathering arena. Just by interacting, interlacing those two things, you would create sort of a grid perhaps with the three gates going this way and the three centers going this way. And then you apply the three gates to each of the three centers. What is true, kind and useful about my relationship with my body? What is true, kind and useful about my relationship with my finances? What is true, kind and useful about my relationship with my own heart and other people? Because you can start with the personal and then expand outwards to the universal. I see that as a way to start. If your sense of your own heart has been damaged, if you've been suffering, if you've suffered abuse, then you might not be able to have a really happy time connecting with that deep self. And you might be the kind of person who gets lost into politics. You know, you don't feel like you can protect yourself. So what you need to do is to create a group that can protect you. And there's Nothing wrong with that. I mean, we all come to the place in our lives where we can't do it ourselves. That's just. That's just true. But that does not absolve us of the responsibility of connecting with our own hearts to the limit of our capacity. If you do that to the limit of your capacity, you've done the most you can do. If you start with the sense of other people and the actions of other people are responsible for my sense of safety and my sense of happiness in the world, all you can develop is codependent relationships. And every relationship you get into will be with another person who is afraid and another person who is damaged. And if you are not careful, you will attract someone who's damaged in such a way as to express their predatory nature. You go to somebody with your bleeding heart in your hands, and either they're going to be smart enough to run in the other direction, or they're going to say. They're going to lick their chops and say, oh, here's somebody I can drain. But if you do your work to be the healthiest person you can be, and you're taking responsibility for your emotions in your being as an adult, then you can create a connection with another person who's at the same level of connection that you're at, same level of healing that you're at. And if you've passed that place where your entire life is about avoiding pain, then you have earned your way into the company of people who are embracing life as an adventure. But first, you have to be sure that you've taken care of the pain. You know, it is true. There are predators in the world. There is danger in the world. I'm not mocking that at all. And it always kind of amazes me that people think, you know, well, it's Steve, you know, you're being so Pollyanna. Will you please notice that I've spent over half a century practicing martial arts? That my entire life, you know, one of the most consistent things in my life has been about learning how to deal with fear, learning how to deal with that sense of being threatened by the society around me and the people around me. I'm not oblivious to these things. I just know that you can't let that control your life. If you do that, you miss your life. You miss the adventure that life is. And I want all of that, and I want that for you as well. So what I've learned over the last month is it is hard to follow those kids. But if you only open your circle to others who are willing to commit to them, then you have some shared standards that you can work with. When people are not being honest or you think people are wrong, you can remind them that that is their commitment. If they're not being kind, you can remind them that that is their commitment. If they're doing something that is not useful, you can remind them that that is their commitment. They may or may not be able to find their way out of the maze, but at least they will not defend their right to keep running a maze that has no cheese in it. When you meet people who will say, well, I don't think the three gates work, hopefully they have another set of ethics in their world. But if I cannot detect what that is, then what they're telling me is don't trust me, don't trust me. I don't think that honesty is important. I don't think kindness is important. I don't even think it's necessary to measure whether something works. What are they saying? If they don't care about whether it's honest, kind, or useful, what are they saying? I think to a certain degree they're saying, I just want to live in a fantasy land. I've got this idea, I've got this concept of life, of how bodies work or how relationships work or how money is obtained. And I don't care that I'm failing in all of these arenas, that I'm morbidly obese and I've never been in a relationship and I'm broke, but I've got these ideas about this stuff, and I have no way of measuring, and I don't care to measure whether they're true, kind, or useful. Holy crap. You know, that person is so controlled by fear that they're not willing to look at this stuff. You need to be very careful. You need to avoid those people or to put those people in a category where their actions and words and thoughts do not impact you. You can love them, you can care for them. But it's a little bit like when my mom was dying of cancer and she was no longer controlling her ID her, no longer controlling her fear. And she said terrible things, horrible things to me during that period of time. And I had to listen to them and just let them roll off me. If I didn't, it would be like, okay, so she's very sick and she vomits on my shoes. And I take it personally. Every chunk of that vomit. I'm going to go over every chunk of that vomit and take it personally. Oh, please. You just wipe your Shoes off and keep going. That's what you have to do to people who are so damaged that they don't care what is true. They're not connected to their hearts and they're afraid of having their efforts measured against an objective scale. These people are dangerous to themselves because their chances of finding happiness in the world are not great. They're really not. And if you let yourself believe that loving them means letting them drag you down and people will do this in relationships, and they'll do it, you know, if they're highly politicized, it's like, stand with me, believe in my politics, or there's something wrong with you. Wow. Ultimately, you have to be happy with who you are. Ultimately, all you have is your integrity with who you are, who you've been in life. Not whether people agreed with it, not whether this or that person prized you, loved you, accepted you into their heart, their business, or their bed. But whether or not when you think about the child that began the journey of your life and the ancient you on your deathbed, the last few breaths of your life, are you in integrity with those two? If you are, you can stand against the world and say, yes, I see that you don't. You don't agree with me, but this is what I see. This is who I am, and I'm going to defend this position. Position. I think we all have positions that we're afraid that if we let people know what those positions were, they would not like us, they would not approve of us, they would not protect us, they would not give us money or sex or resources or opportunities. But there is nothing in life they can compensate for. The feeling of being in integrity with yourself. That's the beginning. It's not where you end. You end in spirit. You end in that sense. That spirit is what remains when you have removed all illusion. In other words, when you've taken what is true to the end of the line. Spirit is what remains when you've connected with the loving force that controls the universe. So you've taken is it kind? To the end of the line. Spirit is what exists when all the things you must do to function in the adult world have been removed to the realm of unconscious competence. You just chop wood, carry water, you know, you do the things that you need to do in your day, and there's nothing special about it. You're just doing what you do. You know, in my own life, and I wake up in the morning and I meditate and then I exercise and then I check in with my family, actually I check in with my family first, then I exercise, then I get a certain basic amount of work done. And then I check on my business and I do these things. And then at some point I say I'm finished for the day. Let me watch some movies. Let me have some fun. It's simple, it's not complicated. And my challenge is not to find more stuff to do more techniques. It is to sort through the things that I am offered, even by someone as wise as the gentleman that I'm working with right now and say, this works for me. This does not. This helps me along my path. This might have been interesting when I was a younger person. This is good for me. This might be good for a friend of mine. You find the things that work for you and you continually cut away the things that do not. Because the question who am I? Depends upon removing everything that is not you. The question what is true? Depends upon removing everything that is not true. What you're left with are things that don't have words, they don't have language. They just are. And to move beyond language, you first have to deal with those things that language can touch in your life. How do we encourage people we love to consider their own happiness? Erica Aisha Chavez I'm sorry if I've mispronounced your name, dear. Thank you, Stephen Barnes. Really another really useful hour information I needed to hear today. I'm profoundly grateful if that is true. How do we encourage people we love to consider their own happiness? I wish I could talk to my mom about these things. I tried to really listen to last week's talk in light of my mom. She's evangelical and I'm Muslim. For your information, I'm a liberal and she's conservative. So you start with the things that are true. Your heart, space, connection to your mom. You love her, she loves you. Exemplify within yourself those traits that you would like to see blossom within her. Then when you love, when you're near her, every time you're with her, simply serve her, give her love, tell her about your life and encourage her to laugh. If the path of communication and influence is first understand their world. Then achieve rapport with them and find out what leverage to use on them. Then break their pattern. Then define the problem in solvable terms. Then connect them with new resources. Then get them to envision themselves in life, enjoying these new changes. And lastly, connect with their higher purpose. The three most important steps there, and you're going to probably want to go over this again, listen to that again, are. Get Leverage and achieve rapport with them. Those are both part of the same step. Break their current pattern. When they begin to go negative, you interrupt their pattern. You can interrupt their pattern by shifting the way they use their body, what they're focusing on, the language they use. Laughter is great. Getting them to go for a walk with you in nature is great. In a park or someplace that is the natural world. Achieve rapport and get leverage on them. What is it that motivates them? Find out the times in their life that they've made positive changes, what made it possible? I'm going to guess that your mom was able to do it for her family, she was able to do it for her children, but not necessarily for herself. So if you can find the times when she did the thing that you want her to do more of and ask yourself, what was her recipe for doing it? How did she think? How did she feel? What did she say? Say what was at stake? How did she move herself, motivate herself, keep herself on track? It happened in her past. If she has lost that, then exemplify it. At the very least, you're using. What she wants to know is that she has not damaged you. And if you can show her that you love her beyond all words and that you're fine and what you want to do is reach back and help, help her if she's a conservative. People often become more conservative as they get older. Their spines also get stiff as they get older and they tend to have arthritis and Alzheimer's. So it's not like, well, you just get wisdom and as you get more wisdom, you get more conservative. It's not that continuum. I think the conservatism is more fear based. But there are enough things in the world that are worthy of being fearful, you know, of triggering fear. That it's not, it's not a foolish thing. Just like, you know, being liberal or progressive is about, let's change the way things are. Most change is damaging, you know, most mutation creates cancer, not wolverine. So it's the progressive and conservative sides of the coin are rightfully suspicious of each other. But if you can love her, if you can break her patterns, make her laugh, if you can remind her how expressing divinity in her life, expressing God's love, expressing the life force in her life, is serving her community, is serving the people who, whatever it is that she cares about, does she want to serve her country? Does she want to serve God? Does she want to serve her children? She show her how the changes you're asking her to make will Serve that higher purpose. Get leverage and rapport. Break her pattern. Connect it with the higher purpose. If you can do those three things, you'll be ten times more efficient and effective than you were before you started doing those three things. Very, very good question. Most important thing you could do is live as close to an impeccable life of joy, joy and service and success that you possibly can so that she knows that her daughter is fine. She knows that. Do that and you've set her heart at peace. Because every parent really wants to know. They know that they failed. They know that they're imperfect. But if their children are okay, it can make a huge difference. If you can ever get her to think about the little girl she was, maybe show her a picture of the girl she was. You find a picture of her at 5 years old. If you could find that and get her to say to that child, I love you. Thank you. If you can do that with her, you'd be repaying her for being a good mom. Listen, guys, that's all I'm going to do today. We could go into these things as much as possible in February. I hope that that kind of helps you understand what I saw about the Three Gates. This month in February, we're going to talk about relationships, love, loving yourself and nurturing the love with another person. Until that time, please continue to send me personal messages or anything that that will help me understand how I can help you, what it is that I can do for you, how I can serve you. There's nothing more important to me in my life. If you like what it is that you've been hearing, I strongly suggest that you share this with your friends. The only way that this work spreads is by people who've experienced it, sharing it with others. If you'd like a more concentrated dose, I definitely suggest that you go to realwarriorsjourney.com and check out that course. And I'm going to say something my business partners are always upset with me to say. That's not really true. That doesn't pass the Three Gates. My business partners are like me. They live to serve. If there's someone who feels that the sense of being safe has been ripped out of their lives, I cannot recommend the warriors journey too highly. And if you look at that page, realwarriorsjourney.com and cannot afford it, you honestly cannot afford it, send me a message. We have, you know, our former students, the people who've gone through the course, have provided us with, with funds for scholarships. We can help you. What we want is for you to be well in the world, for you to feel safe in the world and loving in the world. Because people feel safe and loving and happy, cause no problems. They're the people that you love being around. And I want each and every one of you to have that experience. So until the next day, the next time we meet, the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Have a wonderful day.