Vishen Lakhiani contrasts two modes of spiritual/personal growth: Kensho (growth through pain/forced correction) and Satori (growth through insight/awakenings). He argues we can reduce painful "kensho" events by cultivating introspection and challenging society's default rules—the "culturescape"—and dropping unnecessary "brules" (bullshit rules). He illustrates this with personal choices (e.g., removing the CEO title, changing Mindvalley and A-Fest practices) and asks how to foster more satori moments through listening to intuition.
Chapters
One of the biggest ideas I learned from Beckwith is this concept called Kensho vs Satori. Kensho, says Michael Beckwith, is growth through pain. Satori, says Michael Beckwith, is growth through insight. So if you accept the mental model that you are a soul having a human experience and that to make it fun, the soul forgets that it is truly a soul and puts you in this playground called Planet Earth, then every now and then, the soul might need to autocorrect you. And it's going to autocorrect you in one of two ways. Kensho is auto correction, true pain. You're not listening, you're stubborn. So the soul is like, okay, I'm going to smack you at the back of your head till you wake up. That is growth, true pain. But there's also growth, true insight. And insight is when you are listening. Insight is when you go through introspection. Insight is when you meditate. Inside is when you learn to listen to your heart or intuition. And insight is what you call a satori moment. It's growth through awakening. So I wrote about this idea in my book because it was so insightful. And I drew this little diagram to illustrate what Michael Beckwith said. You can see kenshaw moments, growth through temporary pain. They cause your life to dip, and the dip is painful, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And then there's growth through satori, or growth through insight. So I found this idea fascinating. The question is, how can we overcome the dips? How can we actually listen to our soul so it doesn't have to kick us on our butt and instead allow us to grow through introspection, through insight, through awakenings, through eureka moments. True aha moments. That is the question I want to talk about because this is a much more comfortable way of growth, wouldn't you agree? It doesn't require someone to steal from you. It doesn't require business failure. It doesn't require exact target as an email marketing software to collapse on you. And it allows you to grow in a more peaceful way. Now, to understand how to develop these satori moments, I realized that one of the best ways to avoid kensho is, is to understand the culturescape. The culturescape is a word I coined in my book. And it means the tangled web of beliefs, rituals, ideas that permeate the world. The culturescape is designed for human beings to make sense of a complex world. It tells us how to act, what to do, how to live our lives. It tells us what value systems to have. And it comes from fathers Mothers, teachers, preachers, organized religion, the media, politicians. The funny thing, though, about the culturescape is that while there are rules which are useful, for example, look two ways before crossing the street or do a background check on your accountant before you hire her. It also comes with a lot of bullshit rules, or brules, as I refer to them. Bullshit rules are rules that we adopt to simplify our understanding of the world. But these are rules which are not necessarily true. Now, the question I want to pose for you is, is what if very often the pain that we experience is our soul telling us that we are following a bullshit rule? And that was my insight, I think. I believe the more you separate yourself from the culturescape. Now, the culturescape has its purposes, right? You don't wanna walk into a conference hall naked because you're a rule breaker. You were thinking about that, weren't you? But there are rules in the culturescape that make no sense. For example, I recently dropped the title CEO because I found that that was a rule. But the problem with that rule is it required me to operate in a certain way that I felt was out of alignment. And it caused a rift between me and the people I lead that I felt was out of alignment. I decided to remove CEO from my title and just be founder. So br. Brules often hold us back. And one of the big things I've been exploring in my life over the last one year is how many brules can I drop? How many brules no longer make sense to me? And so, you know, I changed the way we ran mindvalley. I'm shifting the way a fest functions. I'm trying to live life based on my own terms rather than what society says is an acceptable way.
