Vishen Lakhiani argues that marriage, religion, and emotions aren't fixed realities but cultural inventions. He cites research showing Tahitians lack a word for sadness, suggesting emotions themselves are shaped by language. Questioning these cultural labels, he says, lets people break free and reshape the world.
Chapters
The world that we exist in is really a world that is happening cognitively in our minds based on beliefs, rituals, culture, social indoctrination, and what our mom and our dad and our media and our priest and our teachers and our preachers tell us to be, do and think. That's the culturescape. But we don't see that because like a fish swimming in water, we. We don't realize that the rules in which we live life are not necessarily true for everyone else. They're only true for us because of our conditioning. Now, the problem with this culturescape is that many people believe it's real. And thus they become a victim of the culturescape. The things that happen to them. A breakup, a business failure, being hospitalized severely influenced them. The world happens to them. Now, the interesting thing is, Alan Watts said none of this stuff is real. In fact, there's a famous lecture by Alan Watts where he says this. There is no such thing as a thing. Nine to five is a thing. No such thing. Marriage, religion, God, mindfulness, none of these exist. They are simply ideas in our head. Everything that we often label a thing only exists because it is a noun. In our heads, our ears hear the sounds of the world around us, right? We hear the sounds outside us. But what if we could hear the sounds inside our body? We evolved to listen to what's going on outside, but not to listen to what's going on inside. Or do we? Because one scientists suggest that we do listen to what's going on inside. We just don't hear it as sounds. We hear it as emotion. Your emotions are governed by what's going on inside you. And then we give a label to these emotions. Jealousy, anger, hate, joy, happiness. But it's nothing more than what's going on inside you. Now, in Tahitian culture, there is no word for sadness. In fact, there's a famous book by a scientist called Lisa Feldman Barrett, and she says in our culture, meaning the U.S. culture, we have sadness. But in Tahitian culture, they don't have that. Instead, they have a word whose closest translation would be the kind of fatigue you feel when you have the flu. Imagine that there is no sadness. Now, what she's saying is even deeper than this. What she's saying is that emotions are not a thing. Just as Alan Watts said, emotions are not a thing. In fact, there are only four different emotions. There is unpleasant, pleasant, arousal, or calm, arousal, calm, pleasant, unpleasant. And everything we feel in the world that we give a label to is really the intersection of these four basic emotions, which are Based on the chemistry going on in our body. Now, Lisa Barrett goes on to say this. She says, if you know the word for an emotion, if you hear the word often, then it becomes much more automatic, just like driving a car. It gets triggered more easily, and you can feel it more easily. In short, would we experience jealousy if there was no English word for jealousy? Would we experience hate if there was no word for hate? It's an interesting question to ask ourselves. But this idea of a thing not being a thing goes on to everything that we do in the world. Every construct of human society that we often give a name to. So in this first stage of consciousness, the mistake that people make is that they associate who am I with a thing. Who am I is your vocation? I'm a lawyer. I'm a doctor. I'm meditation instructor. Then they associate, what do I desire with a thing? Well, I want love. I want wealth. Those are things that don't really exist in the real world. Then they associate what do I know with a thing. I want to be peaceful. I know that I am a kind person. I know that God has my side. But kindness, God, they don't exist. They are nothing more than labels that we have given things that we have created in the culturescape. You see how this works. And when you go as deep into this philosophy, you start to see that illusion, and this is what happens next. You go into what is generally an awakening. You start to understand that this illusion is only there because you're blindly following the language and the culture of your forefathers and the media and the politicians and the newspapers and mom and dad. So think of that circle as the culturescape, and think of the dots as everyone else. Every now and then, one of you starts gravitating towards the edges of the stone circle. And you'll be criticized. You're the misfit. You're the rebel. You're the troublemaker. Criticized by your family or your corporation or your society. You can't do that. You can't play too close to the edges. But then you follow that inspired action and you create something new. Remember, everything is just a thing. Right? You've just created your own new thing. And you push for the boundary of the circle, and that's the dent in the universe. And now, guess what? They label you a visionary. Start using this formula to become a visionary. It's not that hard, Sam.
