Articles online have a major problem.

Either the articles are too short, and leave the reader wanting more, or they’re too long, leaving the reader overwhelmed with information that they don’t need.

Some authors have found a middle ground that works more often than it works for most people, but people still tend to read the first 2 paragraphs, skim the headings of the article, and find something else to read.

I have caught myself skimming many articles… I simply can not keep myself interested in the long articles. I purposefully leave articles unread in my RSS reader if I know that an author tends to write long articles. Even worse, I don’t usually add authors who only write short articles, because I don’t feel that I’m getting enough out of their writing to justify reading their articles.

This brings me to an idea I’ve been building over the last couple of weeks. For now, I’m calling my idea Tangent Rich Hyper-Textbooks, and I will be developing it on my other site, Code Artist (CodeArtist.com).

It’s like a blog blended together with lengthy in-depth tutorials, and a dash of Wikipedia’s link-crawling addiction thrown in.

The idea is far less time-sensitive than traditional blogs, where an article posted a week ago is considered ancient news, but far more interactive than news or how-to sites.

Here is my idea:

Each tutorial will span several individual pages… They’ll be split by sub-topic. For instance, the first tutorial that I’m writing will be on HTML, and its sub-topics will include a minimal HTML page, how to make links, how to format text, how to insert images, etc., each on their own page.

Inside of each sub-topic’s page, there will be links to tangents… a “further reading” section, if you will. Tangents can be on any semi-related topic, such as the difference between text editors and word processors, basic Search Engine Optimization, the death of Frames-based web pages, to name a few.

Each tangent will also include links to in-depth content that I (personally) rate as Super-Nerdy… For instance, in the tangent describing the differences between text editors and word processors, I might explain the inner workings of different file types, and how to put the raw data together. If this idea were applied to a different field, such as veganism, then the in-depth content might explain how sucrose, glucose, starch, and the other “sugars” contribute in different ways to our blood-glucose levels, giving rise to the Glycemic Index.

This three-tiered approach satisfies my need to write long, involved articles, but because each individual article is optional, those who simply want to walk through the tutorial without distractions are free to, satisfying the needs of those who simply skim articles. Those who want more information also have this information at their fingertips.

This way, the whole tutorial stays on a central theme, much like a textbook stays on its topic, but it also wanders around the topic, giving new perspectives, much like a blog does. The extra layers of tangents and Super-Nerdy content (hopefully) give the site the same time-drain abilities that Wikipedia has. This is where I get the name… Just like a blog, it is Tangent Rich, like Wikipedia, it is full of Hyper-Links, and it has the primary aim of a Textbook.

Admittedly, it isn’t a very imaginative name… It doesn’t even make a good initialism or acronym, although the combination of Hyper-Text and Textbook is pretty nifty…

Anyways, in addition to the site’s structure, there are a few things that I thoroughly enjoy about blogs that I simply would not be able to leave out. The first is comments.

Anybody who has written PHP extensively has found the utility of PHP’s online documentation… Along with the developers’ notes about each function, there are also countless user-contributed comments, ranging from asking silly questions to giving in-depth, invaluable insight and sharing best practices, common mistakes, better functions than the ones being discussed, and source code that has worked for them.

The second must-have feature is RSS feeds. It will take me quite a bit of time to write each tutorial, especially since I’m adding two extra layers of content per page. Letting a person subscribe to a topic — or even to the entire site, depending on their whim — would be an uncommonly useful tool, both for the readers, but also for the site in terms of enticing readers to return.

I think that forums are also a must-have feature for large information sites. Forums allow people to share ideas without having to find the right article to comment on, to ask questions that haven’t been answered on the content-side of the site, and also provide a wealth of resources for future articles, or to help improve existing articles. Since I’ll be writing the code, I’ll be able to tie the forums, content, and comments together in a way that very few sites can achieve.

Best of all, once I get the software written, I’m hoping that people will steal my idea.

After all, I may be good at programming, but if someone could write a Tangent Rich Hyper-Textbook on time management, I would be thrilled. A Tangent Rich Hyper-Textbook on linguistics could also be a valuable tool… As could a Hyper-Textbook on writing, or on fractals, or on paintings, or truly any subject that is worth talking about.

Since my Code Artist Hyper-Textbook will be devoted to teaching people how to write software, as I develop the software for the site, I’ll be making tutorials based on that software… By reading the site, people will be able to copy it.

And, for those who don’t want to bother learning how to code, once I finish making my site, I’ll make the software available for free. (Free as in Free Beer. That’s a good thing.)

How will I make money with this site?

That’s a really good question. Perhaps I could sell other software that I develop, such as Placebo TimeAgent. (No, I have not forgotten about it… Only neglected it.) Perhaps I could also start a business selling personalized programs, although the turn-around time will be pretty long until I can afford to hire employees… Especially since my primary loyalty is to my current employer. I don’t want to sell advertising… Especially not banner ads.

I might sell special privileges on the forums… such as a paid-members only area, customizable avatars, signatures, etc… Who knows? The time to monetize the site is still far away.

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.

Most of us want to be noticed, at least by a few people. The problem is, few people know how. If you are a writer for a blog, being noticed is probably one of your primary motivations for writing. Software developers want people to use their programs. Painters want people to view their paintings. Artists around the world are motivated by being noticed, yet it seems that a few artists have mastered the skills necessary, while the majority suffer in obscurity.

A Few Definitions

I would like to start with a couple of definitions so that there is no misunderstandings.

Artist: Anybody who works creatively. Painters are artists, as are writers. A grocery clerk could also be an artist by finding creative ways to help customers. Machinists can also become artists by finding different ways to present the parts they create.

Talent: Something which comes natural, or which other people generally can not do, even with special training. Talented people include contortionists, because most people can not be that flexible, and professional athletes. Wiggling your ears is also an example of a talent.

Skill: Something which can be learned. A database administrator may seem talented, but he simply chose to pursue his education for his skill beyond what most people are willing to learn. Painters are skilled because they practice, experiment, and receive feedback, as well as seek out other painters in order to learn their skill. Writers and programmers are also skilled, rather than talented, because they each learn their trade.

We can see from these definitions that anybody can be an artist, because art is a skill.

Painters and Framing

A typical painter has a certain set of tools that he uses when he paints. I was fortunate enough to live with a painter for several years during my childhood, so I can recognize many of these tools and describe their uses, even though I would be very clumsy if I were to try using them.

These tools include brushes, pallets, paint, easels, canvas, pallet knifes, pencils, pens, and in recent years, computers, among many others.

Would it surprise you if I included saws, hammers, nails, staples, routers, jointers, and other carpentry tools in my list of painter’s tools?

The artist that I lived with, my grandfather, considered his carpentry tools to be as important as his brushes, paint, and canvas in making his art.

He did many things himself that he didn’t have to. A person can go to a paint supply store and buy canvas that is already stretched across a framework, so that it will stay steady. My grandfather stretched the canvas himself, so that he could set the size of his painting, and so that he could control just how flexible the canvas would be as he is painting. This meant that he had to create his own wooden framework, so he needed his table saw, hammer, and nails, as well as staples so that he could fasten the canvas to the frame.

All of this work goes unnoticed when people visit my grandfather’s house. They simply see the paintings hanging on the wall, and don’t know or care how the canvas was mounted. The vast majority of people don’t realize that if the canvas wasn’t stretched across a framework, it would be impossible to paint on.

After my grandfather finishes a painting, he would set it aside for a few days, then come back and take a good long look at it. Often, he would simply store the painting, since my grandmother forbade him from ever throwing a painting away. Every once in a while, though, he would get a ruler out and measure the sides of the painting, then head back to the garage where he kept his carpentry tools. After several hours of cutting, he would let the glue dry on a new frame, then place the painting inside.

There were several things going on inside my grandfather’s mind while he was looking at the finished painting. First, he asked himself whether he liked it. If he didn’t like it, then there was simply no point in framing it. Second, he asked if someone else might like the painting. If yes, then he would build a simply frame for it, with little detail. If he didn’t think that other people might like it, though, he would spend a long time making the frame, putting special detail into it. It was understood that certain paintings were for sale, and certain others would never be sold.

The reason why my grandfather put simple frames on the paintings to be sold was because he wanted to be considerate to the buyer. Nobody knows, before hand, where a painting will end up. Because of this, my grandfather kept things simple, so that the painting could be hung in any room.

The reason why he put frames on his paintings was so that he could say that this is a finished painting, worthy to be viewed. The frame separated the painting from the wall it was being hung on, letting it stand out, and keeping the eyes from falling off the painting. He understood a lot about how the eyes travel while scanning objects, and he knew that if he could keep people’s attention on the paintings he wanted to sell long enough, the price would go up and he wouldn’t need to haggle. The frame drove the prices up, simply by existing. Sometimes, the frame would drive the price up to ten times an asking price for an unframed piece.

A lot of people assume that my grandfather created the elaborate frames in order to draw more attention to the special paintings that he never wanted to sell. My grandfather was smarter than that. He made the elaborate frames to make certain that a buyer would be less interested in the painting, and so that he could continue to enjoy his work. He knew that the complex frame drew the eyes away from the painting, making it blend into the background. Only the people who had become desensitized to the frames would see the paintings they hid… Only family and close friends would be able to see his most precious paintings, even though they were hidden in plain sight.

Framing and Writing

Writing is a different art from painting. The most immediate difference is, instead of making one original image which can’t be copied cheaply, writing consists of putting words in different order to create sentences and paragraphs, and these words can be copied many times for a few cents.

Writing can be sold, though. The price of my writing is that I ask people to consider my points, and be subjected to a couple advertisements. Please note that I do not require a person to click on ads. In fact, I discourage people from visiting those links, unless a person is genuinely interested in what may be on the other side of that ad. I believe that the power of advertising is only effective if people make purchases.

Similarly, writing is only effective if people read what you have written. This is where framing comes in.

A typical writer’s tools could be any number of things. These can include pens, pencils, and paper, spray-paint and a wall, or a computer and a keyboard.

What is often overlooked, though, is the printer’s tool set.

These tools include the font, size, colors, and decorations.

Size is self-explanatory, as is color. The key here is to be consistent.

Decorations include italic, underlined, and bolded text, as well as the less common struck-out text. ^Superscripts and _subscripts are also considered decorations when used in formatting text on a computer, but printers consider these different types of typesettings.

When working with web pages, each of these decorations and many other typesetting options can be set by learning CSS. Unfortunately, as fascinating as markup languages are, they is beyond the scope of this article, or even this site, so I would like to deffer those interested to W3 Schools.

Fonts deserve additional study, though. There are four types of fonts that people can use, two of which are not appropriate for long articles. The two fonts that shouldn’t be used are scripts (which look like cursive writing) and specialty fonts like Wingdings or ones that have each letter put into a shape.

The remaining two fonts are grouped together as serif and sans-serif.

For those of us who have never been able to learn more than English, sans means without. Before I learned that distinction, I was often found putting my foot in my mouth, classifying the different serif fonts as sans-serif, and vice-versa. My train of thought was that sans-serif sounds more distinguished, so I mis-labeled the more stylized fonts.

I had to enlarge the example sentence so that I could point out the key quality that makes a serif font. On most of the letters, there are additional lines, most pointing left or right. These extra bits help out in different ways, depending on what a person’s medium is.

Serif fonts are easier to read, because the letters give the eyes natural lines to follow. The key time to use a serif font is when a document has a lot of text closed up in paragraphs, and there are more than 25 words per line. When used this way, people are able to read faster, and so they’re able to absorb more information in shorter times.

The problem with serif fonts, though, is that they are distracting if they are used on lines with fewer than around 25 words, or if the serifs are not clearly printed. If your medium is printed paper, you have a lot of information to present, and you have a laser printer available, then it is recommended to use serif fonts.

On the other hand, if your intention is to attract attention, such as when you are printing the title of a paper or a section heading, sans-serif fonts are encouraged. Also, if your only printer is a bubble-jet, ink-jet, or another poor quality printer, or if you want to display the text on a screen, then you have to remember that the extra lines of a serif font will not show up clearly and will be distracting.

When writing, there is no real purpose to over-frame an article, as there is with paintings. If you want to draw attention to your article, make your article visually attractive and use clean lines around the text. If you can, use the lines of your template to draw people’s eyes towards the article and avoid cluttered appearances. A few bells and whistles draw attention. A room full of them is just noise.

Framing and Programming

Here is where I get into trouble. When I write programs, I want to get to the meat of the matter. I want to get in and start arranging array indexes, pass pointers, and fill stack heaps. (Yes, that’s all just jargon.)

When I’m deep in my code, I don’t want to worry about how the program is presented to the user. And yet, it has been shown time and time again that the “pretty” program will be bought before any others.

The source code for Linux and FreeBSD are beautiful works of art, lovingly refined through decades of dedication by the open source community. Unfortunately, everybody has to take my word for it, because few people are willing to look at source code and figure out what it does.

I haven’t looked at the source code for Windows, but from the way that it behaves, I picture the story of Humpty Dumpty… The kernel, the smallest part of the operating system that makes everything else work, would look like a fragile egg encased in strong armor so that when it falls off of its wall, it doesn’t need to be put back together again.

Macintosh used to be no better, except that it seemed to me to be a paranoid teenager afraid to talk to the girls from fear of being rejected. Fortunately, the guys at Apple decided to wise up, forgot about writing operating systems, and they now use FreeBSD, even though they’re continuing to charge an arm and a leg for something that’s free to the rest of us.

And yet, both Windows and Mac are doing better than Linux and FreeBSD. This is because the Unix descendants have zits… They’re still nerds who wear their own logos on their t-shirts. The average user takes one look at them, then sees Windows and Mac on the other side in their gleaming boxes, and they justify choosing based on appearances because they heard that Linux was hard to learn. Each time Windows crashes, they curse the machine, but never consider using an operating system that just doesn’t crash. Whenever Macintosh forces a person to think the Apple Way^(tm), they never consider that there are free programs out there that let you do things any way you want.

These huge businesses are successful because they know the value of framing their software, not because their software is better by any stretch of the imagination.

A lot of the framing comes directly from their marketing departments… This includes the color of their boxes, the deals they make with computer vendors, and the curvy glass look on their task bars. They have enough bells and whistles to attract your attention, but their bells and whistles show up around clean lines and curves calculated to draw your eye.

Just as a painter learns carpentry in order to frame his paintings, and as a writer learns typesetting in order to frame their words, software developers frame by learning a different art: Visual design.

It makes me wish that more visual designers would notice GIMP, jump on the open-source bandwagon, and start framing Linux and FreeBSD.

General Purpose How-To of Framing

We have discussed how painters, writers, and programmers benefit from framing, and some of the most obvious ways that they frame their art. What about the rest of us?

How can a grocery bagger frame his job?

By learning more skills. He can become more valuable to his managers by taking pride in maintaining the store. He can become more valuable to the customers by asking about them and engaging in small talk. He can find one small thing that he can turn into habit that will set him apart from the background, such as by putting a personalized thank-you note in each customer’s basket. (By personalizing, perhaps he can sign a stack of notes the night before, so that he isn’t taking extra time while bagging. Then, when he asks the person’s name while engaging in small talk, he can write “Dear so-and-so” at the top.)

How can a taxi driver frame his job?

Getting out of the seat can go a long ways towards improving the tips… Turning around (while parked) and looking people in the eyes. I have even heard stories of cabbies who have espresso machines in their cabs, and who give free drinks to their passengers before starting on their way (and before starting the meter). Of course, one cabbie in New York has set himself apart and has become the most-sought after taxi in the world by hosting a game show called Cash Cab. He has advertising funding, though, so it probably isn’t a good idea for other cabbies to copy.

Any other job:

Get to know what your customer would also like. It doesn’t have to be related to your main job.

How I’m Working On Framing

I have to admit, I haven’t given much thought to giving extra to my customers before I started this post.

I have already started writing a program for helping to keep track of different to-do lists. That would make an excellent extra perk for readers of this site, even though I don’t write about project management often.

As I’m finishing off the first rough-draft for this post, I am also noticing that my site’s template is boring, slightly distracting, and I haven’t worked on the non-blog portions of this site for a long time. It is time for a redesign with clean lines and flowing curves that accent the content and clearly mark the non-content. If someone is willing to donate a Wordpress template, saving me hours of coding, I would appreciate it very much, although I might have a logo being designed soon, so it would be best to wait.

In addition, I do know a bit of the technical side of HTML. While I have not practiced the artistic side of making web sites, I can create articles explaining how to use HTML with blogging, and perhaps redesigning my site’s template will help with making articles explaining how to make your own template.

Each of these take extra time to prepare, though. This leads into the reader question: What can I do for you, in addition to writing on this site?

Further Points to Consider: Clutter

I mentioned it before in the article, but this point is important enough to need its own section.

Clutter distracts from the art.

When it comes to paintings that my grandfather didn’t want to sell, increasing clutter by making the frames ornate served its purpose. Those who were used to the ornate frames could see past the clutter and appreciate the art, yet buyers seeing his art for the first time passed those paintings by.

Similarly, advertising copy is cluttered writing, full of many different typographical styles and tricks meant to grab people’s attention. Yet, more often than not, these tricks end up overwhelming the reader and they go to a different web site. There have been many products that I have considered, yet have turned down because I ran into ad copy.

If you want to “sell” anything, whether it be a product in exchange for money, or some writing in exchange for their honest consideration, the key is to set up your framing in a way that it draws attention to your product without distracting away from it. Naturally, your product must also be able to stand on its own; a terrible painting in a good frame is still a terrible painting, and a terrible article placed on a good template is still a terrible article.

The point of a frame is to give people a chance to stop and consider your product, not stop and consider the frame.

Link Love

The idea for this article came from reading Loren’s article on her site Writing Power, named Well Dressed Writing: Tips for Effective Page Design. I highly recommend that article for anyone who is considering the presentation aspects of their writing. I also highly recommend her entire site for anyone who writes.

Yes, this includes you. Everybody writes, so I recommend her site to everyone.

Reader Question

To repeat the question of the day, what can I do to help you, above and beyond writing on this site?

This can include any topic where I do not have to physically be present. No, I can not help you move to a new house, but I am willing to help out in any other way.

One idea includes interpreting symbols. I still astonish Jeff of Druid Journal.net with my interpretation of symbols, even though he first came to me to help interpret a dream that he had.

No, I have not reached the burn-out stage yet. Posting 3 articles per week has been a challenge, but I had the inspiration and motivation required to crank out these posts.

In order to keep my inspiration up, I’m going to be cutting back on how many posts I write, and I’ll be taking this week off. I’m considering taking things a different direction when I come back, but only time will tell.

If I find another massive burst of inspiration, be assured that I’ll resume the 3 posts per week that I have had recently, though I doubt if I’ll allow myself to post more per week than I have been, simply because that seems to be the edge of quality v.s. quantity. Over the next few months (excluding this week), you can expect one or two posts per week, on random days of the week. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed so that you’ll know within the hour when I write a new article.

The purpose of this post is to get feedback about the series that doesn’t fit within the topic of the virtues, and to share some thoughts that just don’t fit within the series.

For instance, you can leave comments about the posting frequency, the wording, content structure, etc.

For those who were hoping to have another lesson on peace, I urge you to spend the next thirty minutes studying this image, provided by Vitor of Fractal Forest. As I mentioned in the conclusion to the series, I am already planning my path for future growth, and this is the first step.

I urge everybody who wants to leave a comment to stop reading when I tell them to, scroll to the bottom of the page (or follow the link in your feed reader), and post your immediate impressions of the series.

First impressions are just as important as the impressions you form after gaining further insight. Countless times, people’s impressions change as they gain more information about what goes on behind the curtain, and they look at the impressions that other people have expressed as well. I’m hoping to catch as many of the “raw” thoughts about the series that I can.

At this point, I’m looking for comments about presentation, pacing, posting frequency, and any improvements that I could make in any future series that I write.

So, here’s the point to stop reading, head over to the comments, and leave your raw impressions.

When I first started writing this series, it came immediately after a huge breakthrough in my personal development. I was finding that I was able to slip into a peaceful mindset easily. This realization dawned on me very quickly, and when I took the time to study it, I found that there were four pieces that needed to be in place before I could find inner peace. These, of course, formed the four peaceful virtues.

As I studied the virtues more, I found that they were also attached to the past, present, future, and were timeless in scope, with honesty, of course, being timeless. Since I was posting two articles per week in the series, and there were a total of six articles, this gave me three weeks of additional study between the first and last post. I also noticed my mood change as I wrote each new article… When I wrote the introduction, these virtues were still a very new realization, and I was approaching them with wonder. As I ended the series, I was more concerned with giving analogies to help people understand, more than I was in awe at the realization. I’m not certain if that helped or hurt the series, only you can tell me that.

Also, towards the end of the series, my thoughts started turning towards what was to come next.

I experimented a lot with the way that I write the articles as well. Normally, when I write, I commit the cardinal sin of simply sitting down at the computer with a vague idea, and I just let the words flow out onto the keyboard. This is, admittedly, a very disjointed way to write, and often produces my signature posts, which I describe as bent monoliths. Each post is large, and often goes off in tangents that are sometimes unnecessary before I finally arrive at the point.

After some feedback, I attempted to outline some of the posts before hand… I already knew what points I wanted to make, but I almost never know how I want to support those points until I start writing. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out quite the way I wanted it to… For the final posts, I made one third of the outline, then just started writing without consulting the outline at all.

Right after writing the introduction, I saw a post on ProBlogger.net about how to build RSS readership… Darren’s point was to make people want to return by pointing out that there were going to be more great posts that people simply would not want to miss. Ironically, having a series of posts was one of the ways to increase this anticipation, so I began tracking my RSS subscriber numbers more closely. The results were great: Previous to writing the series, I had an all-time high RSS subscriber count at 41, and within 11 days, I had a new all-time high of 49… My weekly average before the series was 34, and now that average is at 42. It looks like I picked up 8 more subscribers, which really might not seem like much. Considering that this about a 19% increase in three weeks, though, this is very dramatic.

So, to those of you who subscribed while I was writing this series, welcome.

Another trend that I noticed, traffic wise, is that some of my posts were submitted to StumbleUpon. To those who submitted articles, thank you. I did indeed notice, and I am appreciative.

I am also noticing more and more traffic coming through search engines, which means that I’m starting to be seen as an authority, according to Google.

Now, I’m going to say something that may surprise some people:

I am not going to concentrate on StumbleUpon or search engine traffic.

The reasons are of quality and laziness. In order to concentrate on SU and Google traffic, I have to change my posting style… I would need to write shorter posts that appeal to the first time visitors. There is nothing wrong with first time visitors… In fact, everybody who is reading this either was or is a first time visitor. Something about the way that I write caught your attention though… Perhaps you appreciate my bent monoliths of posts, and enjoy seeing the unexpected twists. I know that I enjoy them when I see them.

One thing that I have noticed, out of those who leave comments, is that each person tends to enjoy reading and inner reflection. This might not be true of everybody, and it’s unfair of me to generalize anybody, but this is the overall trend that I see. The people who leave comments are used to reading until the climax of a story, and enjoy the twists and turns that people who don’t read don’t enjoy. (For instance, where is Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings movies? He’s not there, because he’s an unexpected turn that doesn’t entice people who watch movies… but he certainly intrigues people who love to read.)

I don’t think that I could be a new reporter. They write away from the point, out of necessity. They start by explaining exactly what happened, then they move on to points that apply less and less to the main event. I’m too used to reading stories, and so that is how I write. I try to start by describing what the story is about, of course, but then I quickly move off to a tangent, and pull that tangent into the main idea.

And now that I have pulled back the curtain a little, explaining my process of writing, please feel free to read everybody else’s comments, and leave another comment, this time knowing the full story.

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.

A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing stream does not grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.

These are great mysteries.

– The Tao of Programming

Responsibility is probably the least-loved topic of personal development, spirituality, objectivism, or really of any other mindset. It is also one of the most-loved topics of personal development writers. As time goes on, we find that responsibility becomes more and more important to the areas where we want to be successful.

How does that fit in with my model of responsibility being tied to our future? How can we reconcile that I’ve also described our future as being within the realm of our imagination?

Surely it isn’t responsible to use our imagination… That’s the realm of faeries and dragons!

Also, what about the spoiled rich who seem to live in fantasy worlds and don’t have any responsibilities? How did they get so wealthy and “successful” without being responsible?

Well, perhaps it is time to narrow the definition of responsibility down a bit. After all, to win a debate, you simply have to be the one defining the terms.

What Responsibility Is

In a nutshell, when we are being responsible, we are making certain that the future that we imagine becomes the past that we remember. Responsibility is taking care of the future.

Of course, the future will happen, whether we work towards our version of the future or not. Time is constantly forming new memories for us, as we observe where we are right now and fill our past with stories.

How Responsibility Fits with the Other Virtues

Honesty makes up our foundation. It anchors us to reality, both the objective and subjective worlds that we live in.

Forgiveness and Acceptance allow us to deal with the past and our memories. Through these, we’re able to find what is important within our subjective world and deal with unresolved issues.

Awareness is both observing and being active within the present. It is the key to action.

Responsibility is our road map. It contains all of the potential and possibilities that we could ever imagine, so long as we are honest, accepting, and aware.

How to be Responsible

Here’s the tough question.

This is the question that has led to a very large selection of personal development books, blogs, audio-programs, seminars, and really, the entire personal development topic. It has sparked religions, created political parties, advanced science and understanding, and yet, it is perhaps one of the most elusive of qualities.

If you read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, each habit falls under the category of being responsible. The book Financial Peace teaches us how to be responsible with our money. Steve Pavlina’s 30 Day Trials are acts of responsibility, as is Albert Foong’s Emotional Mastery habit.

Any habit that we take on in order to find future joy is responsibility.

Deferring Happiness

I’ll say, right now, that often times putting off our present happiness for future happiness is a mistake.

Sometimes, of course, putting off our happiness is essential. Fortunately, these cases are few and far between.

Our goal should not be centered so much around being happy tomorrow that we make ourselves miserable today. If that happens, human nature will kick in, and we’ll never push ourselves far enough.

We need to enjoy ourselves at least a little in order to stay motivated and avoid burning out.

I greatly enjoy communicating… It gives me pleasure whenever someone leaves a comment. Writing an article, in itself, is work. If I simply wrote articles without people replying, it would feel like I’m only talking to myself. I can talk to myself without writing my words down, or even forming them into complete sentence, checking spelling, and finding hyperlinks. Blogging is extra work… yet it is because I enjoy communicating with others that I’m able to write these articles.

I don’t enjoy housework… I enjoy helping my wife. If my wife is on the computer or watching television with no hint of getting up and cleaning, then I simply can’t bring myself to clean because there is no joy in it. If she gets up, then I’m more than happy to help her out.

Unfortunately, cleaning the litter box is largely a private task, one that I can’t enjoy directly, nor can I share it with anyone else. Even though I know that I must clean it, it is because of the lack of any joy that I find it very hard to make a habit out of it.

Some people can push themselves to do things that they don’t enjoy… Yet, talking to them years later, they regret what they have accomplished. They regret the years missed enjoying life and the fact that they didn’t seize the moment. I’ve talked to other people who did only what they enjoyed… My grandfather greatly enjoyed painting and made a career out of it, and he only regretted the times when he forced himself to paint, instead of letting creativity flow naturally.

To be responsible, we must enjoy the process and the outcome. This is the final key, along with honesty, acceptance/forgiveness, and awareness to find personal success.

Success

I am successful, within myself.

I am not rich.

I am not powerful.

I am not famous.

However, those aren’t my definitions of success.

I am secure. I earn enough money to pay my bills and provide for my family.

I am respected. People tell me that I am smart and that I’m an excellent communicator.

I am loved.

I am improving. Continual growth is something that I always find joy in.

I am Honest, Accepting and Forgiving, Aware, and Responsible. While I can always improve, I have come to realize that even if I stopped improving myself right now, that nobody can take these virtues from me.

It has taken me two years of study, trial and error, failure, and stubbornness to get where I am today. It wasn’t easy, but it is something that everyone can do.

And, for the rest of the day, I am working within these virtues, to improve my success, to find out how else I can fail, so that I can learn and grow even more.

Don’t worry, I’ll be posting the article about Virtue 4: Responsibility tomorrow, followed by the conclusion the next day. This is an extra post, not a replacement.

I’m having a crisis of faith.

Well, it’s not really a crisis. There’s no danger or fear… No suffering will come from any choices I make; at least, none that I can see.

You see, I’m coming to terms with my past, slowly and steadily. Part of my past was a deep search for meaning in religion, and I invested a lot of time, energy, and emotion into that search.

I thought that I had come back empty-handed, but after writing a comment on Scott’s blog (which I never submitted), I found that I was reacting very bitterly. I was attacking religion like an old man yelling at kids who are having fun, because he can no longer jump and play.

I wasn’t just attacking Christianity, which seems to be the obvious target… I was attacking paganism as well, and any organized religious structure that I could wrap my mind around.

When I was done attacking, I asked myself why I had written that. More words poured out, this time apologizing, saying that I was simply venting my bitterness and begging the readers not to take my words personally. More apologies flowed out to Scott, asking forgiveness for cluttering up his comments with my inane ramblings, and finally I had a struggle with my ego. Rather, three sections of my ego fought with each other. One side wanted to hit the “submit” button, to say “Look at how honest and humble I am.” Another side wanted to simply navigate away from the page, to hide the shame of writing such spiteful words. Still a third section of my ego wanted to defeat the part of my ego that wanted to navigate away and hide the post, so that I could claim that I defeated my ego.

Well, the fourth section of my ego won… I’m in a damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation, and I’m likely to be here for quite a while. I no longer have plans to publish that comment, but I haven’t navigated away from that page yet, either. I can’t simply do nothing, ignoring my ego, because then my ego will have won. I can’t take action, whether to avoid posting or to actively post it, because again, my ego will have won.

At least this struggle has led me to recognize that I have a crisis of faith.

Now, I have faith. My faith is just as plain as my ego… If I fight my faith, then I build up faith in other areas. If I submit to my faith, then of course I’m simply building it up. I can’t exist without faith… Or rather, my ego can not exist without faith. Just as struggling to defeat the ego only makes it stronger, my faith gets stronger with each scrap of faith that I shed.

I feel as though I’m only going through the motions now… I’ve hit a point where I can’t climb any higher without climbing back down and plotting a new course. I have a new perspective now… The Peaceful Virtues series is a testament to this new perspective. It’s the map to get to the summit of this new mountain. Yet, as I stand atop this one, I am looking around and I see new mountains to climb, each higher than the last, with more rewards for reaching their summits, each one making my accomplishments so far seem insignificant.

Religion, faith, and the ego seem to be the keys to moving on towards the next summit… yet I have a problem with taking things on faith alone… Indeed, I credit my need for objective answers to be one of the keys for getting me to where I am now.

I don’t feel that this lack of faith is unreasonable, either. I have certainly tried different religions with an open mind and an open heart… yet none so far have delivered in what they promise: peace.

Should I rally against God, though, because I have not felt peace? Perhaps Odin is personally responsible, with His love of knowledge and warfare, for destroying my hip as I worked in His service… Maybe the Crone has adopted me early, giving me the lessons that would be easier to understand coming from the Maiden… Just this once, perhaps Jesus wants me to accomplish things that no man is capable of doing.

I know that these archetypes simply don’t behave this way… (And yes, I mixed different mythologies on purpose.)

Perhaps that is my problem… I’m seeing them as archetypes. Yet, somehow, that just doesn’t feel right. They aren’t models “in here” to me, any more than my wife exists only in my head.

At the same time, though, I’m disconnected from them. They don’t enter into my daily life, nor help form my opinions about the world at large.

A Sudden Change

Today, I’ve been experiencing a quick change in viewpoints.

This morning, I woke up, and instead of taking my shower immediately to wake up, I wandered over to my computer. At the top of my RSS feeds was a post written by Jeff Lilly on his site Druid Journal, talking about his sudden conversation with Odin. With my head spinning, I went and took my shower.

In the shower, I reached out with the long forgotten “muscles” that I used to use when talking with spiritual beings, and caught hold of Odin. He seemed quite… unconcerned with me. It was as though he were just noticing me for the first time, and was wondering if he should bother spending time with me.

After a brief exchange, he told me that I was out of practice, that he could only see the barest hint of me. Then he described me as “slow,” more of a description of my spiritual abilities than of mental abilities. I had to put everything into words… I had to construct everything, rather than simply trusting the symbols I was given and reacting to them immediately.

Then, almost immediately, my thoughts turned to a picture of Ragnarök. It was a raw emotion at first, thrust immediately upon me. Looking back, it seems that Odin had decided something, and wanted to show me what he decided.

I saw before me a great battlefield, and a walled city nestled in the mountains. The mountains were impassible; the only approach to the city was through a valley and through a heavily fortified wall.

In front of that wall were tents… modern military tents, lined up in rows by the thousands. In front of those tents were legions upon legions of soldiers dressed in ancient armor carrying strong swords. Each one had their eyes on the horizon and one thought in their heads… I’ll get to that thought in a bit.

I gravitated towards the tents… Inside was modern equipment, full of computers that had various maps of the battlefield, showing different pieces of information, and I found one that was comfortably familiar. There were generals inside, as well as other low-ranking soldiers sitting at the consoles letting the generals know the progress of the enemies. Each soldier and each general had swords at their sides, and the ones informing the generals each had daggers and flowers. They each watched the swarming tide beyond the horizon, and they all had one thought in their heads.

Behind the tents, there were people on the walls… Again, they all had swords in their hands, and these ones had bows and arrows as well. Behind the walls, there were people preparing to hide themselves in dark alleys and the sewers, to spring out and fight against the enemies in surprise… the last line of defense.

And, the one thought that each one had was to be allowed to give the people standing behind them just five more minutes than they might have had before. Each line knew that they would be overrun, in the end… This was the nature of Ragnarök; a battle that can not be won, but which must be fought. Each person knew that they would have to use their swords, and their experience from the wars they fought while they were alive… If only to give the last people, those who were defenseless, just five more minutes than they had before… than they might have had if that one soldier had fled.

That thought, of giving the people behind me five more minutes, swept over me, and I wept.

I wept, not for my own sake, but because I knew that I could not hold back the tides of the enemies forever… That there would come a time when I would have to stop shouting updates to the generals and start running out from my tent towards the masses… And some time after, the enemies would be at the gates, and there would be nothing that I could do beyond that, except know that I gave everybody behind me five more minutes.

Odin gave me this, knowing that I’m a man of peace…

But more importantly, knowing that I would sit in that chair, watching the battle unfold, and that I would indeed lift my sword in that last minute.

Oh, I hope that the Valkyries make themselves known as they visit that veterans cemetery where I’m to be buried. Let the world know that, though the bones of those around me are turning to dust, that we’re each being called to defend the world one last time, and that we’re proud to stand, looking towards the horizon, with our thoughts on those behind us. Oh, that the Valkyries would let them know that I’m proud to walk among the other soldiers, regardless of what uniform they wore when they fought.

But, as the day wore on, the freshness of the vision faded, as all visions do. On my drive to work, I watched for cars that had a headlight burned out, but I didn’t see any. At work, my thoughts turned to databases and programming…

Then, as I re-read Scott’s post about why he is an atheist, and as I read over eighty comments that he received from it, I thought to reply, and my reply turned to anger and bitterness. Gone, already, was the camaraderie of standing in front of the gates at Ragnarök. Which, of course, leads me back to the beginning of this post.

More Musings

So, it seems that the question is… Why am I bitter about religion?

Why am I bitter at all?

After all, I’ve been training myself to recognize my emotions… to deal with them so that I’m neither ignoring them or repressing them, nor am I letting them get out of control. How could I have had such a deep emotion hiding within myself?

And, how does Odin’s appearance fit into this? It is definitely unlike me to walk to the computer before taking a shower… I need to wake myself up before I can do anything else, or I end up slipping back into bed. Yet, there seemed to have been a message waiting for me that I had to hear in the shower, and I wouldn’t have thought to search for that message if I hadn’t have been on the computer first.

I’m afraid that if I study this logically too much, that I’ll lose something. Yet, logic is one of my foundations.

Odin says that I think too much… that I must act quickly and decisively, then adjust accordingly. It’s advice that I’ve given out before, but I didn’t expect to be called slow.

So, who am I to be?

Am I to be a soldier, even after I have left the military?

Or, am I to sit back, and be the hermit, giving information only to those who come to me?

Jeff’s Inner Landscapes Meditation

This leads me back to a meditation that I had asked Jeff to do for me a while back.

In it, Jeff was shown an image of who I’m supposed to be… At least, who the earth sprites say I should be. They showed him an image of a shaman… half man and half beast. Not quite one, and not quite the other.

Another image that Jeff saw, which caught him by surprise, was machines of war left frozen on the peaks of mountains…

This is, out of necessity, an incomplete view of Jeff’s meditation… Perhaps more will come later… but it seems that I have some work to do, the least of which being to understand what is at the peak of those mountains, and understand why those machines of war are left out there.

In Jeff’s talk with Odin, he is reminded that war does not only happen physically. I’m not equipped to wage war physically… Indeed, I can’t. Instead, I need to keep climbing my mountains, and discover the nature of these weapons of war.

Next Steps

I suppose my next steps are to try things… To be active. Ragnarök will come in its own time, and it will be with my spirit that I’m fighting, rather than with my body… It isn’t something to worry about now, Odin has already said that he’ll be proud to hear my words calling out to update the generals. Whether the Valkyries pick me up or not… Even if my spirit has to walk the entire distance, I’ll be at that battle defending those who can’t defend themselves… just to give the people behind me five more minutes.

Until then, I’ll continue to learn about myself… And, I’ll be more open spiritually.

It has been a wild, educational, and entertaining ride.

To commemorate the occasion, I’ll let my wife be creative for a change. Here are some of my favorite pictures that she takes credit for (although the first one is the only good one I’ve ever taken).

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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