Adam’s Peace

I’ve been thinking… Why does the field of Personal Development exist?

From what I can tell, there are three primary ways to approach personal development: Time management, task management, and emotional management.

It seems that the goal of the first two strategies is simply to get more done in less time… do more with less. While this is commendable in its own right, how does it fit in with the rest of our lives? If we take the first strategy, then we’ll have more time in the day, certainly. If we take the second strategy, then we’ll accomplish more during the day… By combining the two, we accomplish a lot in a very short time.

But, what is the point? Sure, we make a lot of widgets and trade those widgets for dollars. We then trade those dollars for someone else’s widgets… Eventually, though, we won’t be able to sell any more widgets or buy anyone else’s widgets, due to death and disease. Our life is impermanent, and while we may leave a great legacy, is there really a point to being the person who made the most widgets?

How about managing our emotions? Is there really a point to this?

The rewards from emotional management appear a lot sooner than the rewards from time and task management… yet emotions are even more temporary than the widgets we produce. I only know of two people who are known as the happiest people alive. Out of the billions of people in the world, this is an extremely small percentage. The chance of creating a legacy based on your emotions is astronomically low.

Now, I’m not saying that productivity and happiness are unimportant… Without food, shelter, and a stable emotional state, we would quickly die. I’m simply wondering why they are the primary focus of personal development.

There is one thing that I can think of, that is more permanent than emotions and that produces results faster than cranking out widgets: Knowledge.

There have been some studies among primates that suggest that humans are unique because we teach other members of our society. Other primates learn through observation just as well as humans, and there are some apes that make spears to use while hunting, which is a highly evolved skill. The difference is that we humans go out of our way to teach our young and our peers, rather than simply observing how others accomplish their tasks.

Some whales actively teach their young, such as by stranding them in shallow water, then demonstrating how to return to the deep water. Almost all mammals, especially carnivores, teach their young by demonstrating tasks essential to daily life, such as hunting or watching out for hunters. Primates and some rodents seem to be unique in being able to use tools, and a very small percentage of these species are able to create tools of their own. Among these tool using creatures, active education seems to be unique to humans.

When a person becomes a millionaire, they usually make their first million through hard work. They then make their second million by writing books, teaching others how to become millionaires.

Perhaps — just perhaps — what it means to be human boils down to learning, then teaching. It is often said that the best way to learn is to teach.

This is simply some food for thought.

On a related note, I have decided on a topic for one of my other sites, Code Artist. I’ll be using it to teach people how to develop software, starting with an extensive article on HTML that I expect to be finished with on March 24th.

Note: This is the conclusion of a 4 part series. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

To recap the series, we talked about virtues that lead to peace. These virtues include Honesty, Acceptance and Forgiveness, Awareness, and Responsibility.

This is a road-map that I’ve found that has led me to my first true inner success. This is only the first of many successes that I’m sure to accomplish in my life, and each additional success will require modifications to these virtues.

There are two appropriate analogies that I could use. One would be climbing several flights of stairs, and the other would be climbing different mountains. Out of those two, it seems that climbing different mountains most closely matches the process.

In each post, I’ve explained how each virtue builds upon the last one. What I didn’t explain is that each virtue builds upon the others no matter what order you put them in.

Virtues Building Other Virtues

Honesty is the foundation for all of the virtues. It is what ties us together with reality and the rest of the universe. Naturally, the other virtues are built upon the foundation… Yet, the other virtues also build Honesty. Acceptance leads to understanding what is in your past, which leads to being honest about who you were. Awareness leads to understanding the world right now, and just like Acceptance, this leads to being honest about who you are now. Responsibility puts order to our future and utilizes our imaginations. Again, this also leads to honesty, by being true to who we want to be.

Acceptance, of course, is built on the foundation of honesty, yet it ties directly with Awareness, giving us an anchor and context so that we can tell what events happening right now mean. It also leads into Responsibility, by showing us what has worked in the past, where we have learned the hard lessons, and giving insight into what we should do next.

Awareness, while naturally being built upon honesty and building it as well, gives us the power to use our memories and imagination. It is while we are being aware that we can accept our past and be responsible for our future.

It follows that Responsibility gives us a purpose… With Responsibility, we have a reason to be Honest, a reason to Accept and Forgive, and a reason to be Aware.

I gave each of these virtues an arbitrary order, putting the foundation first. I did this more because it is impossible to describe all four virtues together, than because any one should be built before the other. When we are building the house, we see the foundation being poured, followed by the frame, then the electrical system, then the walls, and finally, the carpets and paint… Yet, the lumber is cut before the foundation is poured… Without that lumber existing first, or at least without being certain that the lumber will arrive, it is futile to build the foundation. The wires for the electrical system are built before the foundation is poured as well, and the carpets and paint are also created first.

And, interestingly enough, the plumbing is put in place both before and after the foundation is poured. It becomes part of the foundation, then is contained within the walls, and finally, as the sinks, toilets, and showers are installed, it extends out of the walls. The plumbing is built upon throughout the process of building the house.

None of these pieces, by themselves, are the house… Just like none of these virtues, by themselves, ensure peace and success. We can not take on the virtue of honesty, our foundation, without also pursuing the virtues of Acceptance, Awareness, and Responsibility. Without combining the virtues, each one is useless.

Building the House

Making concrete for a foundation is easy… Simply mix the right ingredients with water, pour it on the ground surrounded by a wooden barrier, and smooth out the top. Time will harden it, you’ll be able to remove the wood, and you’ll have a foundation. A lot of the work is done automatically, simply by letting time take hold. Honesty works the same way: Figure out what it means to be honest with yourself, set limits, and start being honest. As honesty becomes a habit, it becomes harder and harder to be dishonest, and you can remove those limits.

Making the frame for the house is a little more complicated. For our analogy, the frame is acceptance. First, you need to have the lumber… Since we all have memories, we already have all of the lumber that we need. Next, we need to anchor the lumber to the foundation. In terms of our memories, that means being honest with what has happened, which can only be done by accepting and forgiving. We also need to anchor the frame to itself. This is a process that takes time… Just as each piece of lumber has to be nailed to its neighbors, our memories have to be associated with each other.

There is a trick in building frames, however, that greatly speeds up the process. Instead of anchoring the lumber to the foundation first and building up the frame from there, most walls are built laying flat on the ground, then are tilted upright and anchored as they’re completed. Roofs are often built in factories well away from the construction site, and simply anchored to the walls and neighboring roof pieces… The roofs can be seen as an analogy for formal education… They’re pre-built for a wide variety of circumstances. Religions also serve this purpose, with their various mythologies providing common points of reference.

The wiring… the power for the house… can be put in when the frame is stable enough. Yet, the wires themselves aren’t built at the same time as they’re installed. We all have experienced moments of awareness, where we suddenly realize that we’re not thinking, just observing and acting. We already have all of the wires for our house… we can provide as much or as little power as we want. We simply have to turn on the switch.

The drywall (gypsum board, etc.,) keeps us from walking through the frames, giving us privacy and structure as we live within the house. It removes chaos, allowing us to plan and have purpose as we live within our house, just as responsibility gives us purpose.

Gathering the Materials

Now, all of this can’t be done in a day, and it can’t be done all at the same time. Before we can build our house, or combine all of our virtues together, we need the tools and materials. Simply combining all of the materials together takes time… We need to figure out what honesty means to us personally before we can apply it, just as we need to know the ingredients in cement before we can mix it. We need to figure out how to accept and forgive, and we have to practice, before we can start using acceptance in our daily lives. We need to recognize awareness before we can expect to expand those moments of awareness. We need to know the tricks of personal development before we can apply them and be responsible for our lives.

It has taken me nearly two years to gather all of the materials together, yet I was at a disadvantage: I didn’t know what virtues I should work on, and it took me a long time to realize when I had practiced the right virtues enough to put them together.

Once I realized that I had all of the right materials sitting at my feet, it was a simple task to put them all together… Yet, just looking at a pile of wood beams, cement, wires, and drywall didn’t mean that I thought I should build a house… Looking at honesty by itself, I don’t think about inner peace… I think fairness in dealing with other people… business and trade. Looking at acceptance by itself, it doesn’t seem to lead to inner peace, it seems to lead towards political power. Awareness leads towards action, and responsibility leads towards money.

Now that I have put them together, it seems obvious how they fit, and how perfectly they apply to inner peace. As separate parts, though, it is hard to image the whole process.

Climbing Mountains

Back to the analogy that I mentioned earlier.

I see this as simply the first of many successes. Each success can be seen as trying to climb to the tallest mountain. Sometimes, when climbing a mountain, we have to travel back down because a path that we thought would be easy was really just hiding a cliff that we can’t climb. Backtracking and finding a different path is common, especially on larger mountains because these cliffs are more common.

Once we reach the summit, we gain a clear picture of the world around us. We can see into the valleys around us… but more importantly, we can see how high the other mountains around us extend. Our normal, human reaction is to want to climb to the highest point… Yet when we reach the highest point of this mountain, we often find other mountains that are even higher.

That’s where I am right now. I can see the path that I took, and I know that I made a good climb… but I also see how much higher I can go. In order to get there, though, I have to climb down the mountain I’m on.

Fortunately, I don’t have to return to the valley I started in. Instead, to get to the next highest mountain, I can walk along the ridge between mountains, still staying quite high and conserving my energy for the next climb. I expect to do this many times… To get to a peak in my development, then seek the next peak.

Each mountain has its own terrain… Each one needs a different map, although many maps will have the same qualities. The details will differ, but the general shape of a mountain doesn’t change, so experience climbing one mountain will help in climbing its neighbors.

Perhaps future mountains will need completely different approaches. After all, climbing a hill is a lot different from climbing a glacier-topped mountain… Yet, people who are just starting to climb mountains should not attempt the snow-capped ones until they have attempted the ones local to their area.

I am putting a mark down right here, and I am saying that this is the map to the first mountain. It is a two-year climb for the unprepared, perhaps faster for those who have studied the map and know what to expect. It is a huge victory, but now, I am going on towards taller mountains.

Note: This is part 3 of a 4 part series, not including the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

A manager went to his programmers and told them: “As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon.” At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot.

So the manager said: “All right, in that case you may set your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule.” The programmers, now satisfied, began to come in at noon and work to the wee hours of the morning.

– The Tao of Programming

This virtue is the key to finding peace within the objective reality of right now.

One thing that must be understood, though, is that the past does not exist anymore. It used to, certainly, but it evolved into the present. All of the parts that made up the past were recycled and now make up the present… Not one bit of the past still exists.

This is a stretch, I know. Certainly we can find fossils in the ground, or even see notes we wrote on a slip of paper two minutes ago… Yet, the truth is that those fossils exist right now, as do the notes. They might have also existed in the past, but they only exist right now.

Originally, I wanted to start this post off by jumping right into Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, so that I could explain how everything exists only right now. I’ll still cover that topic, but I’m going to use that material as a post script, including it only in the comments section, because it is a really distant tangent, even for me.

Suffice it to say, Relativity only seems to say that time is an extra dimension, but actually says that the only time that exists is right now. For those who want to know more, read on to the comments.

Instead, I’ll explain what we can do with right now, and why awareness is important.

Momentum

Everything is in motion. We all know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and that the Sun moves throughout the galaxy. Our galaxy also moves around, relative to all of the other galaxies in our universe. The only constant is motion… And, everything that is in motion tends to stay in motion.

While standing on the surface of the Earth, we tend to see a lot of things standing still… In fact, it is very useful to believe that most things are standing still. After all, a map that describes the territory completely and accurately is no better of a map than the territory itself, so believing that a tall building isn’t moving is very useful to simplify things. Just remember, if you’re trying to move a mountain, it is already moving by itself.

How do we control where a car moves to? We simply change its path of least resistance by turning its wheels. Momentum does the rest. How do we walk? We simply fall forward, keep our feet under us, and momentum does the rest. For the vast majority of movements we want to make, the easiest way to make a change is to change the path of least resistance.

Awareness

Our awareness only exists within the great span of time we call Now. Fortunately, objective reality only exists within Now as well, so we can be aware of objective reality. We can change it, push it, pull it, or if we want to, we can ignore it.

The primary purpose of awareness is to give us a space where we can make decisions. Awareness, however, is firmly planted within our subjective world… All of the information about our world comes through our senses, gets filtered, and only if our senses deem something as important, or if we decide to be aware of our senses, will that information be noticed by our awareness. Our awareness also drifts into our memories and into our imagination, allowing us to compare information from the past and plan for things in the future. While we are remembering, we are not planning, nor are we aware of our senses. While we are aware of our sense, we are not remembering, nor are we planning. And, to be complete, while we are planning, we are neither aware of our senses or remembering. Our consciousness drifts between these three states, giving our memories, our imagination, and our senses instructions that they carry out largely automatically.

While I’m writing this, I use my imagination to plan out a phrase. I then compare that phrase to my memory, figuring out individual words and letters. I then give those words and letters to my motor-neurons, telling them to type it out. While I’m typing, I’m starting the sequence over again, imagining my next phrase, or using my memory to compare what I’ve written, what I intend to write, and my experiences to make certain that they all match. My motor-neurons are happily telling my fingers, hands, and arms what moves to make, and I’m completely unconscious of the individual letters as they’re being typed on the screen, blissfully unaware of the hundreds of minute muscle movements required to move my fingers from one key to the next.

From time to time, I run out of phrases to type, and I have to be more conscious of my imagination. All too often, I can’t find the right word, and I have to search my memory for a word that fits. As each of these problems show up, my muscles run out of instructions, and I stop typing, but I don’t notice that I’ve stopped until it is time to start typing again, when I give my body instructions to move. This arrangement allows me to multi-task. Instead of having to come up with a long series of phrases, then find the right words, then tell my muscles which letters to type, I set my imagination to a task, set my memory to another task, and set my muscles to the third task, and they all get accomplished at the same time, with the minimum amount of awareness.

This is the key of what awareness is, and how we are conscious. Our awareness makes decisions about what to think of next, and then leaves the scene until any one part of the brain either runs out of instructions or gets stuck in processing information.

Our awareness sets our thoughts in motion, and then lets the momentum of our thoughts complete the tasks.

How Being More Aware Helps Us

Our motor-neurons are great at telling our muscles how to repeat a task… This is often called muscle memory, and anybody who types more than ten words per minute knows how that this works. We don’t have to tell our fingers how to press the correct key anymore, we only think of the key we want to press, and for the more experienced, we simply think of the letter, or even the whole word. Walking works the same way… We don’t have to keep track of which foot is in front, and how far extended each leg is… The whole of our conscious thought is usually where we want to be in a few seconds, and our motor-neurons take care of the rest automatically.

The problem with this is that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes habit. If we practice typing with our pinkies only, then we’ll get extremely good at typing only with our pinkies, able to do it without being consciously aware of how we do it. Consciousness can, if we so choose, override the muscle memory and we would be able to type with our whole hands, but while our awareness was concentrating on where to place each finger, we would be unable to use our memories or imagination to plan our next sentence, slowing us down considerably.

Consciousness, then, is not only a tool to put the rest of our brain to work, but to notice and correct our mistakes. It takes a lot of work to correct a mistake, compared to doing something automatically. Being more aware helps us in two ways:

First, being aware as much as possible right now helps us to find mistakes early, before they become habits.

Second, awareness is a mental muscle, just like willpower is a mental muscle… An untrained brain can only be aware for short periods of time, but as we practice and train our awareness, it gains more endurance, allowing us to become more and more aware as time goes on.

This second point feeds back into the first point… The more aware we are, the more we catch mistakes and prevent them from becoming habits.

Training Your Awareness

Unfortunately, I can’t help very much here. The best thing to do is practice being aware. This part really does depend on each person’s own motivations, time management techniques, and existing habits.

I can say, though, that what works best for me is to have reminders for tasks that I want to work on. This jolts me out of the task at hand, bringing my awareness out of both my imagination and memory, and fully into the current situation. I have my personal data accessory sound an alarm at 7pm every night, reminding me to clean out the litter box, and I find that it works wonderfully at not only reminding me of that one task, but of making me aware of my environment.

I’m seriously considering setting a new reminder at a different time, directly reminding me to be conscious. This way, it doesn’t matter what task I may be reminded of, I’ll run through my plans for the day, look at what tasks I may be procrastinating, and search my environment for tasks that I hadn’t thought of previously.

Awareness Working With Momentum

When we’re not being fully aware, we’re running on pure momentum down the path of least resistance. I’m sure a lot of people know just how bad this can be, and is the common thread behind dead-end jobs, relationships with poor communication, and a generally unimpressive life.

When we are being fully aware, we’re also running on pure momentum down the path of least resistance. Yes, read that again. If you missed it, I just said that we run on pure momentum down the path of least resistance both when we’re fully aware and when we’re unaware. The difference, though, is that you are the one who chooses the path of least resistance, so that your path leads to your goals, dreams, and aspirations.

The road between takes work, and to know how to find the path that you want first requires that you’re honest with yourself, and that you are honest with what you want. Finding your best path also requires that you’re honest with your past and with your feelings, understanding where momentum up until now has taken you, and just how far you need to turn. Of course, dealing with your past requires honest acceptance and forgiveness. As we continue this series, come Monday, we’ll discuss how to decide on the path that you want to take.

Conclusion

If we used an analogy of a road trip to describe this series of posts, first, we described how to select the best map, simply by being Honest. We also described how to read the map, through Acceptance and Forgiveness. Now, with this post on Awareness, we have learned how to drive. Staying with this analogy, our next post will tell us how to pick the best roads from those on the map, by having Responsibility.

Link Love

Probably one of my favorites of Steve Pavlina’s recent posts (before he went on a play-by-play description of his latest 30 day experiment, becoming a “raw” vegetarian) is his thought provoking article asking what the Middle Path is.

For those unfamiliar with the Middle Path, the Buddha encouraged people to avoid extremes… instead of seeking more and more wealth to feed the ego, or perhaps giving up everything (and again feeding the ego), simply live your life within your means and abilities.

While I’m not quite certain where Steve was really going with his post, he certainly sparked conversation on his forums. Give his questions a read, then read the conversation that follows.

Reader Question

This question is simple:

What do you think?

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