THE CORROSIVENESS OF JUDGEMENTS

Judgements (and therefore Judging activities) are products of human mind.

In our very young lives we are beset almost every waking moment of every day with experiences that are raw and new, and we struggle to make “sense” of them. Mind, which was unconsciously created by us and for us in the womb for just this purpose of “making sense”, is set to work at joining the dots between things that seem to be related, and forming ideas, shaping opinions and finally making judgements as to “what that means”. The result is a primitive Understanding of this sequence of events that has taken place. The early purpose of this process is to create some order out of the chaos of new experiences befalling us from moment to moment, and give us some ground to stand on as we start to build a life to come.

It is important to realise that, for the first months of life, this process of “making sense” is unconscious, primitive, based almost entirely on sensation and emotion, and totally lacking in any kind of wider perspective, because we do not yet have Language with which to reason, not the life experience to see the wider picture. That puts the conclusions we un-consciously form completely at the mercy of chance. For instance it may be that as I am being born and coming down the birth canal the young and inexperienced country obstetrician notices that I'm coming “too fast” and he starts to worry. That makes my mother worried because this is her first child and she is anxious that everything be “just right”. Then, instead of “crowning”, as it says I should do in the doctor's textbooks, I present face-first. The next things I know, I feel this crushing force at either side of my head, and feel myself being pushed back into the pulsing counterforce that is still trying to evict me. This is my experience of being born, and I put it together (without the benefit of language) that “I'm being stopped”. I judge it as a dire threat to my survival because my lungs are now working and I can't breathe because my face is being squashed with a wet chamois, and I start to struggle. Finally I'm allowed “out”, I can breathe. Then my unbilicus is cut, so there's no going back, even if I wanted to, and I come to the end of a No.1. Royal experience of “being born”. Except the whole bloody thing felt like I was dying, and I only survived by the skin of teeth I don't yet have. I form a bunch of possible judgements, right there and then.....

“Life is hard.”

“I have to struggle to survive”

“When I want to move, something pushes me back”..... There were others, but you get what I mean.

But it doesn't end there. Shortly afterwards I meet my father. Now he's as new to this as I am, but he has had the advantage of being able to read a book and take some hints from his family. He “knows” that newborn babes should be swaddled very tightly for some time after birth – something about lessening the shock of being suddenly in a much larger womb than recently. He “knows” that because he was told it by someone who purportedly “know better” than he. So he bought that as “truth”. True to that belief, he wraps me tight. But I didn't read his books, hear his experts or have his experiences, and I want to savour the freedom of being able to wave my arms and legs around and explore this new thing called “space”. So I bust out of the swaddling – every time!. Now my Dad has been well versed in a form of misbehaviour called “disobedience”, so he “Judges” me to be “disobedient” and enforces what he believes to be right – for my own good, of course! And what ensues is a clash of his will against my Won't (remember, I'm only a few hours old). You can guess who won that argument for the next 17 years!

But what's just as important here is that, in light of my recent experience with the dickhead MD with the forceps, I have formed a judgment that “Life is out to push me back. Life is out to stop me”. And Bill Barkla shows up to prove how right I am! My prior judgements and conclusions are already shaping my perceptions of “how life is”. Aren't you fascinated by the perfection of all this? Out of pure chance we fit together like pieces of a well-crafted jigsaw.

I'm right. And so is Dad. Each “right” in our own judgements. And there's nothing surprising about this because, in order for the mind to be able to do its job of making”sense” and telling us what to do and how to do it in order to survive, Mind, and all of its machinations have to be right!

And that's the way it is with the human Mind. The Judgements of the mind are a series of conclusions formed after we experienced things and came to an Understanding of what we thought was happening. “Sense” was made, at least a far as we were prepared to go with it. No further correspondence questioning those conclusions will be entertained; it's common sense! That Mind (whose existence we're not even aware of yet, and won't be for quite a long time) insists on being right about every one of its conclusions. Its conclusions, regardless of how solid or shaky they might be, are self-proving, and every experience that follows will be tucked neatly into a drawer along with all the other “proofs” of Mind's rightness. Which means that subsequent judgements, like British case law, will be made in the light of precedent judgements. Anything that doesn't “fit” will be ejected, like everything else your mind will ever consider to be “foreign” and a threat to its supremacy.

Judgements, as I've said above, were and are created at a time and in a climate that lacks information, experience and perspective. The purpose of a judgment was to help us get a starter perspective that we could use as a kickoff point for further exploration and experience. But we didn't do that. Mind jumped in, claimed ownership of the conclusion we'd reached, and said “That's it.” Thanks to our premature conclusions, the last word has been heard. Subject closed. Ever since then, when anything like that subject is raised, our prior judgements are produced by Mind, and applied to the current situation without further consideration. When I audition for a role in a play of film and don't get it, my mind says “See? I told you so. Life holds you back.”

The purpose of judgements once was to help us make sense of our world. Now the purpose of our judgements is to protect those judgements – to be right about our ideas, formulations, beliefs, concepts and opinions, and to sell all that stuff on to, and impose it upon others.

Here's my bottom line on Judgements, and their corrosiveness to those who hold them – Every judgement is a Conclusion that we once arrived at.  Each of our judgements is a result, a foregone conclusion, an outcome of an experience that is no longer relevant. Your Judgement is the deduction or inference you've already made from dead-past experience. It is the end, the final part, the final settlement or arrangement, the last main division of a discourse, containing a summing up of the points. Your judgements (and mine) are the last word on everything.

It follows, then, that a judgment resists and blocks any urge to see more clearly, dig deeper, or explore farther in the interests of change, growth or further possibility. The eyes harden, the jaw sets, and that steel trap of a mind shuts with a resounding clang.

So what can be done about that? What I chose to do was ignore my mind's protestations that there is no choice, and give myself the power to Choose. That was very hard to do because my Inner Judge has the strident, thundering, armour piercing voice of my father – impossible to ignore. Putting that voice to one side can still be difficult at times – providing me with an opportunity to sharpen my abilities to carry out Intention and Commitment to a higher level of Self. That gradually opened a level of awareness that had long since lain low under the baleful stare of my unkind, judging mind – my Inner Judge & Critic.

I was once asked, “Does criticism hurt you?”. My reply, “Yes, of course. But mostly when the critic is Me.” Question:”Does your inner judge ever go away?” I don't know; but for me – not so far. But I have found a few uses for him that make him a powerful ally. One use is that, because he knows all my secrets, he doesn't let me get away with bullshit when I'm examining areas like my motives, or the true state of my being right now.

Another area where I find the judge useful is when he jacks up and judges me for something I'm either about to do, am doing, or have done a while ago – that shows me exactly where I'm stuck, and limiting my own possibilities. He's like a canary in my coalmine; the watchdog disturbed by a lurking predator. Wherever and whenever the dog starts barking, that's where and when I call up the light of Awareness, and start opening up the scar tissue of the past to reveal a living present inside.

An Inner Judge. We all have one. Rather than be a victim to the damage he does, or try in vain to deport him, how about re-writing his job description?

Have you tried that?

REPUTATION

REPUTATION

Many years ago I began asking the question, "Why is it that some people are more successful than me?"

I started reading and studying authors like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and Robert Schuller. They told me “You probably have more talent and ability than you could use in one hundred lifetimes. You have all the intelligence you need, right now, plus the ability to learn any subject you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. In the real world of Possibility there are way less limits than you think on what you can be, do, and have. But you do have to transcend the limits you accept from your own mind.”

That answer comforted and challenged me, as it does, I guess a lot of people. We are living in another of those fast-moving, turbulent, disruptive, and unpredictable times in human history. This kind of rapid change often causes those affected to become distracted, unsure, insecure, and demotivated. As a result some just slow down, sit around, and accomplish very little.

It is simple. Your success is based on what you do, the results you get, and how quickly and efficiently you achieve those results. It is not based on what you say, wish, hope, or intend to do at some time in the future. Success is only based on what you are doing right now in this moment. As Henry Ford said, "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." Unfortunately, we seem to have acquired a generation of false leaders who missed that oneTHE MOST VALUABLE ASSET
What is an group's most valuable asset? According to the Harvard Business School, it is its reputation. A company's most valuable asset is what people say about the company, and its products and services, to other customers or potential customers.

Well, that made sense to me at the time I first heard it. My Dad set huge store by what people said about him, and he brought me up to feel the same way. But then I discovered behind all that Me-generation entrepreneurial flummery a thriving industry involved in constructing and marketing reputations for their clients that, in some cases preceded the client actually doing anything remotely resembling what their artificial reputations were lauding them for. The Eighties and since are littered with the burnt-out corpses of companies, corporations, politicians and their pimps, stockbrokers, bankers, financial advisers, drug peddlers and small-time shysters who go the way of all who manufacture a reputation rather than go to the time and trouble of growing and earning a reputation. They forgot Henry Ford said, "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." Current politicians please take note.

The Brian Tracy's (from whom I've pinched the idea for this article), Peta Credlins and Jill Botterills of this world still come down from Mt. Sinai proclaiming “Reputation is Everything” and offer to sell you one for a fee. But because technology, information, and customer tastes are changing rapidly, products and services are changing faster than ever before. Think about companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google. They started well, but got lost in the stampede they started. Their reputations were so excellently crafted and deployed that people queued up for days to get the latest issue of the products and services they offer. Now the public is slowly waking up to discover that they're no longer living up to their hype. They're not delivering. We've been duped.GETTING THINGS DONE
How do reputations evolve? They start when you, consciously or otherwise, form a vision and a plan. Proactive gamers go out and find enough people who also want it, making commitments to those people, and keeping your commitments, no matter what the cost. That's how real reputations emerge. If you skip any one of those ingredients, you still get a reputation – just a different one.

Ultimately, reputation is secondary result of something you've built that is far more important -- Character. Reputation is merely what other people think you are; character is what you really are. Your reputation is a wrapping that others lay on you -- character is the person you have to live with 24/7

The most important part of your personal character is your ability to start and complete important tasks, to get things done, to be true to your intention, and to be known for speed and dependability. In the present climate, anybody who delivers what they commit to, on budget and on time, stands out from the crowd. This will do more to make your happiness, health, success, and wealth than any other facet of your reputation that you can connive to conjure.

"GOOD" GOVERNMENT

I have a message about governance to anyone who fancies him/her self making decisions that affect the lives of others whether it be at a federal, state, municipal, corporate or community level.

Try this on for size.....

The purpose of worthy government is --
To gather a nation together
And lead it from where it is
To where it wants to go..

The purpose of government in Australia, however, has become to stay in government, by hook or by crook, regardless of the cost to the people it pretends to serve.

Do not be surprised, therefore, that the herd is fractious, bristling, afraid for its welfare, and mightily pissed off at the paucity of leaders on offer..

I learned this stuff on Anna Plains, a cattle station in the Kimberly. No amount of testosterone, horses, bull-wagons, cattle prods, bulldust (aggressive or florid), righteous paternalism and cracking stock whips will ever make up for lack of Leadership.

I'm looking, I fear in vain, for a leader..

PS. The first step is to "gather a nation together". Until that is done, it is absolutely pointless trying to move to the next steps. You do not gather any group of sentient beings together by splitting them up – by perpetuating Position and Opposition, by pitting groups of beings against each other. Those are the mechanics of Control, not of Leadership. Too much of the misrepresentation, obfuscation, manipulation, fear-mongering and outright bullying that presently passes for leadership is excused on the grounds of “I'm doing this for your own good. This is what's right for you.”

I mentioned above that a leader seeks to lead the herd where it wants to go. To do otherwise is to court resentment and eventual failure.

Back to Anna Plains.....a bore broke down in the Great Sandy Desert. Without water, cattle will perish within two days. Repairs were going to take longer than that, so the cattle were driven for 8 hours over the stony terrain to another bore, where water was plentiful, and grass grew up to their bellies. The next day we drove straight to the broken bore to begin repairs only to find the cattle herd back there! Overnight the cattle had left an oasis of food and water and hiked back to possible death – because that bore was their territory -- it was familiar. I learned that day that cattle are nearly as stupid as humans.

If your herd doesn't want to go where you want to take them, you have a pre-selling job to do before you even take the first step in creating any permanent shift.

What’s the Point of Being Human for Humans- Being?

What’s the Point of Being Human for Humans- Being?

My Best Answer (So Far)

With thanks and acknowledgement to Deepak Chopra, MD

Some 3 decades ago my life had pretty much turned to shit and I was left stumbling around in the dark, bumping into the furniture, and leaving a trail of excrement and a bad smell behind me wherever I went.

Then life said “Hey, you could grow something with all that shit, you know!” “Luck” intervened. Through an impossible sequence of chances and coincidences I met two people – Colin Hayes and Gail Leppard – who seemed to have whatever it was I was looking for. Following their example, I stepped into a number of questions in order to get experiences that I might otherwise miss. Well, I was desperate enough to try anything, and the world they had gathered around them radiated a lightness that was unfamiliar but attractive to me, and those who populated their world had light in their eyes that announced “Somebody at home here!.” So, having failed so spectacularly up to this point, I did something I'd never really done before -- I followed instructions.

From the experiences that followed (I was assured they would – and they did, and still do) , I hoped to get some insights into why the hell I had once bothered being born, not only as a human being, but as this particular one.

Thanks to a woman called Sheila Powers, I phrased my question thus - “What is the experience of being human for this human being called Barrie Barkla?” I figured that, if I could get some answers to some basic human-type questions for myself, then I might discover WHY – and maybe even get answers for the similar, familiar-looking beings surrounding me who seemed to have the same questions hanging over their heads. The only difference I could see between them and me was that they seemed to place a higher priority on things like getting recognised, getting promoted, getting laid and being right. I had already been through that stuff and had come up very empty, so I chose to commit, for as long as it took, to questing and generally poking my nose into philosophical, moral and psychological places most people don't want to look into.

This was going to be my Big Adventure. As tough as it has been sometimes, I have never regretted it. And for thrills it sometimes beats groundbase jumping.

Oh, the questions I committed to stand in? Nothing remarkable – "Who/what am I?"  "Why am I here?"  "Why is all this other stuff here, how did it get here, and how come I got landed with it?"  "And who the hell are all these people? What are they doing in my life? Who invited them?"  And for that matter, "Did anyone invite me, or did I wander mistakenly into the wrong party after taking a wrong turning coming back from the toilet?" I sure as hell didn't feel like I belonged where I was. I wanted to fit in – desperately, but no-one seemed to want me. After two decades of relentlessly pursuing a dream and a career, I felt like a lost punchline that had somehow got into the wrong joke and fallen flat.

One of the first possibilities I explored was that “human-ness” is a context – a way of being in this world (as distinct from being a baboon, a boab tree or a lump of rock). But it's a context that has long since divorced itself from the moment when it was Chosen, when someone or something asked “What would you like to be when you get born, sonny?” Divorced from the moment of aware chosing, being human had become a default-context – a Condition, in the same way as a fish is born into water. It's given. I was born into this condition called “human-being”, so much so that when the question “What would you like to be when you grow up?” was posed, the idea of being a firefly, a planet, or even just plain “happy”, didn't even occur to me as a possibility. I came to this Mardi Gras called Creation  dressed as a human, learned and adopted the dances and --- voila another variation on the theme of Human Being.

And, what's more, I discovered to my utter despair that, thanks to my ignorance, this “being-human” condition, and everything hat seems to go with it, was using ME in order to survive Itself. It existed before I arrived. Simply by being human I was perpetuating what I was born into, and it would go on just the same after I die. While the supply of human beings keeps on coming, Being Human will continue to survive. And all the conditions of being human keep leeching off most other people, too. The horse is riding the poor bloody jockey, and we can't get the damn thing off our back!

Well, that realisation stirred up the black dog in me alright! I spent all of ten minutes wondering if I could find someone to mercifully put me down. THEN – out of that despair came a possibility, followed by blinding flash of something so bloody simple and obvious it took my breath away........

The Possibility occurred to me that my purpose in being human might be to transcend the condition of being human. And I already knew from previous work that all I had to do to escape from being the victim of a condition is to choose it to be exactly as it is. Could it be this simple? Instead of resisting being human, fighting it, denying it, wanting it to be something else – all I needed to do was to surrender, to give up all that dodging and weaving, be fully warts-and-all human, and explore all the nooks and crannies of being human and say “Yes. OK. Thank you. I am this. Let's see what I can create with it.”

That meant my past up to that point was no longer a liability; it was an asset. My next step was to stand in the Possibility that the point of being human is to push the envelope of being human. Stretch the boundaries. Defy the borders. Dig deeper and dare higher. I find this well worth remembering when times are tough and my self-confidence wobbles. As far as I know so far, no other creature on earth has the capacity to redefine itself. We do.  I've done it, and do it again and again every other day. By actively accepting and taking a moment every now and again to find gratitude for progress made, then moving on to once more redefine another aspect of my experience, I ensure that I am still a work in progress, and hopefully remain so until I draw my last breath. My daughter did it, and prevailed. My eldest granddaughter has done it and is now utterly unlike the way she was 8 years ago. And yes, for her it is also a work in progress.

How humans gained this ability to reconstruct their “selves” remains a total mystery. Looking at physical remains, it’s possible—although controversial—to outline the evolutionary march from ape to hominid, from hominid to Homo, and finally from Homo to our specific species Homo Sapiens. But that orderly progression doesn't take into account quantum leaps that also happen along the way – sideways jumps that just happen, defying logic. Nor does it take into account the numerous similar species that co-existed with us Homo Saps until relatively recently.

Because of illogical happenings the physical evidence is blurry at times, and even a simple achievement like the discovery of fire is up in the air; estimates could be off by hundreds of thousands of years. Things like “wheel” and “fire” I stick in a tray labelled “Ideas Whose Time Had Come”, and am quite comfortable with the probability that each did not happen in one place and spread from there, but happened in many different places at around the same time -- there is solid evidence that this phenomenon of multiple birthings is quite common.

Back to the here and now, not a single physical trait explains why we are self-aware. We just are, each of us to a greater or lesser degree, but that seems to be less down to capacity than to our personal willingness to put our capacity for self-awareness into practice. 

It is Awareness gives us the ability to push the envelope of being human. Ten thousand years ago the higher brain, the cerebral cortex, was a finished structure, more or less. In other creatures, once their brains are finished, that’s the limit. An elephant’s huge brain allows, we think, for emotional empathy. Elephants grieve over the dead and are emotionally tied to one another. But an elephant’s brain can’t do mental arithmetic, write poetry, or invent the atom bomb. But then, maybe an elephant never had to write a sonnet to ensure its ongoing survival. Considering the time elephants have been around, maybe we're not so smart as we like to think we are.

The human brain is part of the secret, physically speaking, behind our incredible abilities with language, tool-making, art, and weaponry. But no one knows the secret behind how the mind uses this brain. And what is this no-thing called Mind that's driving us? On the one hand, we remain totally confused about who we really are, and on the other hand we impose our selves upon the landscape as it we're God's chosen creation. Good Lord, we don’t even know if we are basically good or bad. At the moment, original-sin religions, fear of lack (greed) and so-called “opinion” have turned us into baddies destroying the environment. But that’s a lopsided view, given the fact that no matter how horrible our behaviour, some people can look in the mirror and change it, while others remain utterly powerless to do so.

We cannot even agree amongst each other about a simple experience, let alone what is “good” and what is “bad”. Maybe the Mind has something to do with the confusion and right-fighting??? Maybe the human mind is the Problem, in which case it will never be, on its own, the Solution. If that is so, what is pushing – or drawing – us to ask with some desperation “What is the point of being human?” And is the search worth our while? Just because we can do something, it does not follow that doing it is a good idea.

If this is true—and it seems very likely—then what’s the next stage in pushing the envelope? Although some pushy people would like to dictate the direction the rest of us take – “for our own good”, of course – the fact remains that no one knows what the best course should be, because the whole point of human evolution is that no-one can predict where it’s going. Indeed, none of us knows what our next thought will be. We plunge into the unknown at every second. But in the face of confusion, uncertainty, and low morale, one possibility remains untarnished -- if we are willing, we are likely to become even more self-aware. That’s the pattern that has held good for all of recorded history, and despite every catastrophic setback and horrifying turn of events, the march of awareness continues in the hearts, minds and bodies of those who are willing to engage creatively with change.

Some people have even made Awareness their life’s work. They take it upon themselves to push the envelope into higher consciousness. What they report back to the rest of us then becomes the new frontier. “Wake up!" they say. "Here’s what we can become. Now choose.” That’s my message repeated over and over again. Until you become aware, though – as Dr. Phil says – “The best predictor of future behaviour is past relevant behaviour.” Put another way, without developing and exercising conscious awareness, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Such human life is pointless. What stretches my tolerance is the possibility that the unquesting individual may well have come here this time in answer to a question: “What does it feel like to live a pointless life?” In which case, who am I to interfere?

Recently Dr. A. K. Mukhopadhyay of the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, has developed a model for where aware human beings are headed, based on his theory of an ever-renewing theme of purifying Awareness and higher-frequency consciousness.  In a sense Mukhopadhyay has picked up the thread offered by Jonas Salk, whose later career after achieving worldwide fame for the vaccine that eradicated polio was devoted to the future path of humanity. Decades before we got ourselves into the present ethical, economic and ecological crisis, Salk saw that the evolution of our species would no longer be physical. The only way forward would be mental, emotional and spiritual. The force of evolution, which for millions of years has pushed us along a physical plane, has now been internalised. Salk sees the inner world as our future. If he's right, and I hope he is, politicians, bishops and lawyers the world over had better start looking for some radical de-briefing and a new day job before they too find that they have long been hurtling into a terminal redundancy.

The good news is that higher consciousness isn’t a spiritual aspiration open to a few gifted or annointed saints, sages, and gurus. In reality Awareness is a universal trait, not limited to humans; nothing could be what it is without awareness. And even the most unaware bozos are being unconsciously carried along by it, much to their growing bewilderment and resistance. I am synopsising here, but the essence of Mukhopadhyay’s insight and theory lies in the term “supracortical consciousness,”

The old, standard view of human consciousness is physical, based on primitive life forms that exhibit no-mind to evolved species like reptiles that have an advanced nervous system but still (presumptively) no mind, then lower primates, higher primates, and finally Homo Sapiens—in short, a 4-billion-year evolutionary march that saw mind emerge very gradually. Some humans feel guilty about many things, from war and crime to our despoiling of Nature, and we still arrogantly see ourselves standing on the highest rung of evolution, when the only real fact is that we were probably the last to arrive – so far. Until we evolved, we claim, mind was totally or partially undeveloped, as witness our unique “higher brain” (our term, not God's). When I read “higher brain” tripe like this I realise scientists know diddley-squat about Intelligence. It's the same kind of ignorant arrogance that assumes that extra-terrestrial forms of life will turn out to look vaguely like us, with 4 limbs, a head and a body. Scientists sometimes amuse me. Look at the lather of excitement they worked themselves into this week after they detected for themselves that matter and energy travel in waves. I can almost hear Albert Einstein yawning in his grave and muttering to himself, “I knew that ages ago, and told you so, too. But instead of getting on with it, you've spent decades and squillions of dollars to prove it for yourself, and you're no further advanced. Ho-hum.”

The problem with this physical view of consciousness is that it’s like saying that a better computer will make you smarter. In reality, it’s the other way around. When you’re smarter, you can build a better computer. That is exactly what nature did. Higher consciousness built a better brain, and using this ever more intricate mechanism, it pushed the envelope of mind—a process that hasn’t ended and never will. He assumes there has always been an organising intelligence higher (supra) than the cortex. Hence Mukhopadhyay’s choice of “supracortical” to describe it. I have a problem with this view because it appears to confuse “brain” with “mind”, which is a bit like confusing a car with its driver. And it takes no account of mental and emotional intelligence, which are something else again, but absolutely integral to how we handle and express our Being (drive the car).

The notion of a cosmic mind that human evolution is trying to reach isn’t new. It lies behind every spiritual tradition, even though the name for this supracortical consciousness has shifted. Sometimes it’s called God, sometimes Atman, Brahman, soul, or simply spirit. Mukhopadhyay unabashedly links his thinking to India’s spiritual past, which is not surprising since that's wher he coms from. But his overarching aim is merely scientific. In this regard he has offered a challenging hypothesis, which says that current sciences, including biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, and even the “soft” sciences of psychology, cannot explain what makes us human unless his “supracortical” consciousness is introduced. I'm not tied to that connection.

Whatever may be, a host of mysteries remain to tantalise and awe us:

1.     Why did Homo sapiens’ self-aware mind evolve? There doesn’t seem to be a need for it, since other species have thrived without recognisable self-awareness for billions of years. But just because we can't see evidence of self-awareness in other creatures does not mean, I contend, that it does not exist. Human sight is a long way from the be-all and end-all of vision. I say the same about Awareful Insight. In fact, if the current crop of human “leaders” is anything to go by, we could all be a lot closer to the vibrating frequency of a rock than a dragonfly. Fancy a herd of elephants lost in the West African desert, without water or food. Now imagine them getting together and voting for the hungriest, thirstiest, least experienced, most lost elephant in the group to lead them out of trouble! It just wouldn't happen in the elephant world, but in the world of humans? Every day.

2.     How did the human body learn to self-organise? We know the mechanics of the messages and instructions that go on in the womb to guide the kind of being that will develop, and we know a lot about chromosomes and genes, but what intelligence “thought up” genes and “told” them how to get the job done? Every cell has self-interest in surviving and reproducing. Yet there is no physical structure that contains the invisible ability to have a self in the first place. Not a surgeon on earth can yet go into the body and say “There it is. There's reason for being human under my scalpel”. Or any other being for that matter. Every time we think we've found “the answer”, more questions arise. The closer we get to a “solution” the further away it gets. God, I love a good mystery!

3.     Why do our bodies hold on to energy? For that matter, why do minds hold on so tenaciously to everything they hold dear? To survive. To “save” themselves, and anything they consider themselves to be, from dis-integration. Which is problematical because creation is a continuous process of integration, dis-integation and re-creation. But the human mind does its best impede that flow – the dharma.

4.     Where did evolution come from? Science says that the universe began as a swirling chaos, a kind of quantum soup that had no reason to evolve. But evolve is exactly what it did. Embarrassing ain't it? Maybe because the universe did not ever begin. Whoah! Now the finite mind is reeling, yes? A finite mind cannot encompass Infinity. OK, mind is the wrong tool for investigating this.

But something did happen in this void of Nothing -- Nothing being a code word for Infinite Possibility. Thought thought about itself, lowered its frequency from thought waves into ultra-violet waves, then into white light waves, infra-red waves and so on down into gross matter. BANG!! Sooner or later, something happened. A bump, a spark perhaps, and the Butterfly Effect came into play.

And Awareness watched to see what would happen next.

Entropy already had the infant cosmos in its grip, but something else said “No”. In the tension between counterbalancing opposites, a few constants perhaps allowed primitive matter to clump into atoms and molecules.

The journey from interstellar dust to human beings exhibits no logical reason. That may be because logic and reason were not there at the time and, possibly, never have been. Because we have learned to “mind” everything, we like to believe in logic and reason, and we worship whatever we identify as being “reasonable”, but that, too is as dicky and variable as the person creating it. Whatever happened because it happened. That's it. Am-ness changed and diversified its form. For no reason. To no end. No meaning. And it doesn't mean anything now that there was no meaning then.

And the rest would one day become history, and speculation, and theory, and mystery.

5.     Why is the universe fine-tuned? Fine-tuning is the term for how the various aspects of time, space, matter, and energy mesh to sustain a viable universe. With a change of less than a millionth in any constant, sometimes less than a billionth, the infant universe would have either collapsed in on itself or flown apart too fast for atoms to form. Well, how do we know that it didn't? Time was never a consideration. Who knows – what we're living in now may be god's version of Windows 10. What I experience now, however, is an exact, self-balancing universe that will one day curve in upon itself, disappear up its own fundamental black hole and the whole thing will start all over again.

Or maybe not.

No branch of science has yet been able to explain why reality is what it is, and I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. Rather than look for an “explanation”, I'd far rather look at the pictures from Hubble as large as I can get them and play Mozart and Beethoven full-blast while I gaze at the wonder of it all. Let the pointy-heads beat their brains out against dead ends. Sooner or later they, like me, will wake up in a process we call “dying”.

Physics cannot explain the origin of space and time, perhaps because it's outside the limits of physics, ot maybe because there  just isn't one. Biology cannot explain the spark of life and why it caused simple sugars and amino acids to become living entities. Psychology cannot explain where thoughts come from. In fact it took a mystic to point out that the thoughts that plague and the thoughts that nourish us are not “ours”, and that we are not even the thinker of those thoughts. We're being used, played with like and audience at a screening of “Deadpool”. Neuroscience cannot even explain how the dark, silent, watery recesses of the brain create a four-dimensional picture of the world filled with light, sound, and colour. Not the foggiest notion.

Am I losing any sleep over that? Does my ignorance stop me from exploring the mystery? Not likely. Curiosity is the better of me.

Now, you have a choice – a) Spend your term as a human obsessed with trying to figure out how the trick is done; or b) enjoy the ride; or c) both a) and b)! I'm just glad that this is the way it is. It's one helluva playground!

The only way to get past intellectual dead ends is to find a single organiser that knows what it is doing.  Has it occurred to anyone yet that the idea of an omniscient organiser is so attractive because we desperately want to find one, and maybe the discovery of one hasn't happened because such a”god” does not exist? All our searching for such a First Cause may have drawn a blank because there has never been a First Cause. There never was a Beginning. But we keep looking, because at the level of cosmic mind, only an all-encompassing vision that attends to the smallest subatomic particle and the vast reaches of outer space could possibly link us meaning-fully into a dynamic, coherent whole. Our tiny, unkind minds cannot abide the concept of meaninglessness, and they insist on creating god in their own image – a god that has known all along that evolution, life, creativity, intelligence, and Homo Sapiens would emerge to rule the kingdom. Then this god will one day turn to all His doubters (the goats) and say “See, I was right!”

Well, I don't know if that's how it will pan out, but I think not.

With all this in mind, I now suspect why human beings keep pushing the envelope of being human. Like other sentient beings, we're curious. Thanks to certain bodily and mental coincidences, we're able to indulge our curiosity a bit further than, say, an amoeba. But with that freedom to indulge comes a responsibility to heed the Law of Consequences, and the possibility that our profligate indulgences may lead to self annihilation. We now know that, just as the dinosaurs self-destructed because of their inability to modify and adapt, so we might go the same way for the same reason – our inability to change combined with a curiosity untrammelled by responsibility.

I think, though, there is still time.

The present moment is still a laboratory of possibilities. Infinite possibilities are embedded in pure awareness, and glimpses of them are available to those who develop a higher level of consciousness. It’s our destiny, while we are here enclosed in time and space, to unfold them one by one, to be amazed by what it means to be human, to grow in insight and wisdom, each day transcending our memories of yesterday, and then to move on to whatever happens next. 

As Arthur C.Clarke wrote at the end of “The Sentinel”....”He wasn't sure what he would do next, but he knew he would think of something.”

And I think that's the point.

LISTEN HEAR!

LISTEN HEAR!

Bottom line, there are only two major causes of personal crisis. One springs out of one or more kinds of Fear: the second arises out of a perception that our emotional needs are not being met.

The Royal #1. Emotional Need is the need to BE HEARD.

Whenever you feel you are not being listened to, you feel unsupported by your environment and unable to interact with it to get your other needs met. That leads to perceptions of aloneness, inadequacy, confusion, anxiety, rejection, alienation, insignificance, meaninglessness, overwhelm and an inability to cope.

FIRSTLY, BE A GOOD LISTENER

To feel you're not being heard is one helluva smack in the face. I find it hard to think of a more devastating one. That being the case, the first skill to acquire may well be to learn how to listen.

Rare indeed is the effective communicator who did not first learn to be a good listener. Adolf Hitler comes to mind as one exception, but he did not last long. Neither do other bad listeners. No matter how gifted you may be with the gab, the time comes to shut the orifice that dominates your face, and use the two on either side of your head. While your lips are moving and your mind is working out what you're going to say next, you're not learning anything.

Unlike Hearing, which is an innate sensory resource that most of us were born with, Active Listening is a skill that does have to be learned. Listening involves intentionally creating space inside our-self to receive unconditionally whatever is being offered. In listening mode we turn the volume down on any expectation we may have of what or how the offering should be. Listening focuses on the speaker, seeks to enter the space he/she is coming from, and consciously allows the message and its context to filter easily through our judgemental defences.

Listening means attending to the Speaker, as well as what is spoken. In Listening mode we openly meet the speaker and what is being said and how it is being said and we wilfully allow all of that to lie alongside our experience up to date. We consciously create a temporary “Maybe” file in which what is being said can lie, unmolested by our Inner Judge for the time being.

Listening means giving your ego a break and taking in the whole message before any comparing, evaluating, believing, doubting, accepting or rejecting robs the process of its transforming potential. Any thinking about what is being said stops us from hearing what is being said while the thinking is going on. No-one can do both at once. Don't believe me – try it for yourself. Set yourself a difficult mathematical problem to work out in your mind, and have someone read you something at the same time. Watch how your mind has to flick from one to the other – the instant thinking starts, experience and listening stops everywhere other than precisely where you're focused in the moment. That's why we're widely advised to ignore the mobile phone while we're driving

Until recently I had a friend who, in time, revealed an annoying habit of listening to the first few seconds of what someone else is saying to him, then I'd see him switch off his ears and start compiling his response, waiting for the other to pause for breath so that he could jump in and take over control. Needless to say, he is no longer on my “friends” list. If you have such an acquaintance, you might try getting an agreement from him/her to hear you out until you have finished, then NOTHING is to be said for the next 60 seconds, at least. Both of you allow the echoes of what has been said to quietly reverberate, and the thoughts contained to percolate in silence. At first you will find this task impossible to do without “losing it”. Most people cannot go more than 7 seconds in silence; a minute will feel like eternity, during which your mind will wriggle and squirm like a tortured eel. Persevere. With persistence, it will get better to the point where you actually enjoy the pause.

In Listening mode, we agree to allow ourselves the possibility of being affected. If you're addicted to being “right” about your own concepts, beliefs and opinions ,and who isn't, “listening to be affected” is going to be the toughest of challenges for you.

After moving to Perth television, my career morphed into hosting and interviewing. If I had not already learned how important it is as an actor to really listen to the other actor so that I could catch and bounce off nuances in rhythm, inflection and body language, interviewing sure taught my very quickly how immensely important a skill is active listening. Being a good interviewer is not just about asking great questions – anyone can do that, especially in TV shows where researchers and writers prepare the questions for you. It's too easy, especially as a rookie, to ask one question and then jump straight to the next question. Danny Kaye, on the Midday Show, once caught Mike Walsh doing that. He leaned across, took Mike's clipboard off him and flicked it to the back of the set, and then said “Now, let's you and me just talk.”

I still hear the answers to too many interview questions go in one ear and out the other of the interviewer. Countless opportunities for follow-up questions and real exploration go begging because the interviewer is simply not listening. At it's worst, and this is becoming depressingly more common as journalists are replaced by “presenters”, questions are asked of the interviewee after he/she has already given the information. I've been in this situation too many times as an interviewee, and it's very hard to reframe what you've just said so that it sounds as if you're saying something new. I for one resent being put in that position, simply because the interviewer is not listening. I find that disrespectful in the extreme.

OK, let's get onto listening in everyday discourse.

Ground rule – if you want to be interesting, first be interested. Preferably more interested in the other person than you are in how you look and sound in a replay.

Becoming a better listener is no strain – the sounds will come to you just as clearly whether you try or not. But efforting creates static that makes listening harder. Relax.

Active Listening will help you in almost every aspect of your life. It will make you a better conversationalist, a better spouse, a better manager, a better leader. Listening also makes you more like-able. As distinct from the person who commands central position in any group, the most popular person at a party will always be a good listener.

What can you do to become a Good Listener? Well, if you want to be a professional listener – counsellor, teacher, interviewer, journalist, public speaker -- enough to challenge you for the rest of your life. But to raise your acceptance levels in everyday situations, three disciplines mastered will see you well on your way:-

1. Reflect back what you're hearing;
2. Ask questions and, yes, listen and watch uncritically to the feedback you get;
3. Focus your attention.

1. Mirror what you hear being said to you. This is more than mere parroting. This repeats, in the form of a question, what you've just heard so that the other person knows that you have heard what was intended to be heard. It can also be done with an inflection that says “Tell me more”. You've made a friend in two or three sentences.

If the conversation is via telephone, it helps if you occasionally drop an “Hm-hm” into pauses so that the person on the other end doesn't start to wonder if you've left the room.

These things need to be practiced until your sincerity is unimpeded. DO NOT EVER pretend to listen; the other person will know, and possibly take offence. In every facet of communication, be real.

2. Ask questions. How many conversations have you been in where someone says something that just doesn't make sense to you? And you let it pass either because you hope it will make sense shortly, or it seems like too much trouble to ask about the point of your confusion. Don't do that. Get the conversation back on the rails before there's a major crash.
   People sometimes make remarks that seem nonsensical, not because they're stupid, but because they have entered the conversation with you on a wavelength different to yours. Actually, it happens 99% of the time, and leads to protestations like “I thought you understood!” If you want to be a Good Listener, you must take 100% of the responsibility for putting yourself completely in their space, so that you can fully understand what they're trying to say, from their perspective. There's a challenge for you. Yes, I did say 100%; not 50-50. The other person probably won't be as fluent a communicator as you. When you stop at a point of confusion, it shows the speaker that you are indeed listening.
   If, however, the person is running on endlessly about something of no real interest to you, you can signal that you've left the room by – looking around the room. Which leads me to the 3^rd principle of Good Listening....

3. If you want to be a good conversationalist, stay 100% present and available to the person you're with. Do not let your attention, and then your gaze, wander. I am struck by the number of times a person who has been in the presence of a good communicator says of that experience, “She talked to me like I was the only person in the room.”. That experience is so rare that people do not forget it. Make this one rule a habit and you will not only be noticed, you will be remembered and sought after.
   Five minutes spent fully engaging with one person is more satisfying for all than 100 times that amount of time half-heartedly twittering on about the dullest inanities.

Try these three techniques and you'll find you can be the life of the party without having to apologise to someone next morning.

There is a blessedness in giving others the gift of Unconditionally Receiving what the others say. You can disagree or say what you think later, but first hear them as unconditionally as you possibly can.

When I'm counselling, I ask open questions to get feedback. I listen to their experience and listen for clues in words and vocal quality that display any social and cultural conditioning and assumptions that may be shaping their experience of what I'm saying. I get them to describe how the world looks and feels from where they stand. I reflect what I am hearing back to the client so that he/she is reassured they are being heard. I then work from there.

When it comes your turn to speak in a live presentation to an audience your training as a good listener helps you to get to know who you’re communicating with. It helps you tune in and be appropriate to them. In every meet-and-greet situation ahead of your presentation, use the opportunity to get a handle on their language, style and speed; you may even pick up references and anecdotes that you can use in your presentation. The greatest exponent of this art I've ever met is comedian Barry Humphries. For at least an hour before every performance he is in the foyer, listening and getting a feel for his audience that night. It's hard to spot him; he has developed a talent for being almost invisible. But he is there – watching and listening for anything and everything that will help him connect with those who have come that night.

We can't all be a Barry Humphries, but we can be an empowering listener.

Isn't that enough for you?

WHAT'S YOUR EMOTIONAL E.Q.?

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the “something” in each of us that ensures effective communication between the rational and emotional processing areas of our brain.

It is a bit intangible – we don't actually know what it is, but we know from our own experiences that it exists, and from science some of the neuro-chemical mechanics it triggers to exert its influences .

We also know that it is a faculty largely acquired through awareness of its existence and practical training “on the job” as it were. This is where there's a rile for conscious, deliberate, educated parenting. As you improve your emotional intelligence, you improve your ability to understand and manage the primary motivations for your behaviour, which reaps dividends in everything you do every day. A developed Emotional Intelligence is powerful and efficient—it allows you to focus your energy on a single skill with tremendous results.

What Does Emotional Intelligence Look Like?

It looks like nothing. Like electricity, we cannot see it, but we can see the effects of where it has been. It affects how we manage behaviour, navigate social complexities, and make personal choices and decisions that achieve the kind of short-, medium- and long-term results we prefer. It is a precursor to another equally elusive trait – Maturity.

Emotional Intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies:

TWO PRIMARY COMPETENCIES

Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and the thoughts that arise as a result, and manage your reactions into responses, and thus manage your behaviour and tendencies from those of a reactive brat to those of a cogitative, considerate, response-able adult.

• Core Skill #.1. = Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive the emotions and the thoughts as they arise, which ones you entertain, and stay aware of them, and their effect upon your mood and efficiency as they are happening. But self-awareness is often (wrongly) confused with “self-centredness”. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's an Australian aboriginal teaching that goes something like this – “Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love.... and then we return home.” In true Awareness, you cannot be self-aware without becoming more attuned to “otherness”. Awareness isn't just catching; Awareness is all that is. In its active form, this principle is known as “The Butterfly Effect”.
• Core Skill #.2. = Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and thoughts, and any repeating patterns you've created, and the effect those patterns have on the choices and decisions you make about how to interact with your environment. Aware self-management of your habitual thinking patterns shines light on your understanding pf why you react the way you do to situations, and the kind of person all of that turns you into. Skilled self-management allows you to stay flexible and productively deploy your resources to act in the best interests of everyone involved. You also become less the victim of existence and more it's author. A self-aware, self-managed person exudes an air of quiet authority – someone who knows what's what, and doesn't have to proclaim it from the treetops like some toey alpha-elephant in musth.

Social Competence can be defined as the level of your ability to empathise with other people’s moods, behaviour, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships. Social Competence is made up of your social awareness of the moods, agendas and needs of other people, combined with the relationship management skills you've learned in the process of growing up with family, schoolmates, friends and acquaintances.

• Core Skill #.3. = Social Awareness -- your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and, through self-awareness, get some insight and differing perspectives of what is really going on.
• Core Skill #.4. = Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and thinking, and the others’ emotions and thinking patterns, to manage interactions creatively and successfully.

While working on your emotional intelligence will improve a lot of different skills, there are four in particular that people tend to set goals around whenever the yearning for some kind of life-change surfaces. I'll explain how you can improve each of these skills solely by exercising your emotional intelligence. It doesn't matter whether you have honed you emotional skills to a high degree, or you still have you “L” plates on, paying attention to the following disciplines will pay off for you – and those who interact with you.....

A) Managing Your Time

In this age of abundance, time is the one thing nobody has enough of. And now that I'm older, I'm more acutely aware that time wasted is time that I will not get back. It seems that I'm not alone either – Google receives 111 million searches a month for “Time Management”. Few people recognise how time management depends upon the emotional intelligence skills of Self-Management and Relationship Management. Until you learn that, you have no hope of differentiating between what is “Important” and what is “Urgent”. Nor will you have much success in accurately identifying your hierarchies of what's more or less important/urgent, and even less awareness of how your hierarchies change according to who you're dealing with at the time.

Creating a good schedule is a very rational thing, and some people's personalities are better at it than others'. But sticking to a schedule is decidedly an emotion-based thing. Many of us start out every day every week, every month, and every year with the best of hopes, blisslessly unaware of intentions we've long forgotten we have, hidden leftovers of a more primitive time in our lives when bad choices were made, and have not since been un-made – just papered over. Those unresolved and forgotten remnants are the gremlins that sabotage our declared present intentions to manage our time wisely. We're fighting against our selves. Look in the closest mirror. That's you enemy.

We start out in fair weather and the breeze behind us, but then we receive a complicated email from a co-worker, a consuming phone call from a friend or relation, a rash of “beeps” from Facebook, or otherwise get sidetracked until our well-laid plans disappear into a fog of distractions. We spend the rest of the day trying to put out somebody else’s brush fires, or working to resolve issues that weren’t there in the morning. Before you know it, the day is gone and you’re completely off schedule – if you can even find it under the pile of accumulated spoilers. So you either stay behind and miss dinner with the family - also high on your hierarchy of “What's Important” - or you tack today's schedule onto the end of tomorrow's. And the further you go, the behinder you get.

When the needs of others try to impede upon your plans, it takes deft relationship management to finesse the relationship while ensuring that your priorities are still addressed. When the distractions are your own, sticking to a schedule requires self-management, prioritising, and finessing the relationships you have with each of your Selves. It will make your life a lot easier if you have become acutely aware of, and on pleasant working terms with the competing needs of your different “selves”. The more “onside” each of them are with You, the more assured and comfortable you will be, and so will others in your presence.

B) Embracing Change

Show me somebody who claims to love change, and I’ll show you a well-intentioned liar. There's a very good reason why Change is the basis of so much that is funny – Change is something that afflicts every one of us. Change is uncomfortable for everyone at times, and for many of us, real change makes our anus tighten and our skin crawl. Those who apply well-honed self-awareness and self-management skills tolerate change much more successfully than others. Those who don't, get forced into change that they resist, overtly or covertly, along the way adding resentment to the baggage they're carrying. This dynamic explains why so many people may resent you and punish you later for something they felt “forced” into, even if you did “for their own good”, and which they appeared to embrace at the time. (They did that, not out of spite, but out of their own poverty of self-awareness. They didn't feel the resentment under the rug. This is why I say often “You cannot ever know anyone else on the planet unless and until you know your self.)

Self-awareness enables you to adjust comfortably to change because it gives you the perspectives and the space you need to realise when change is coming, how it's affecting you, and how to make ample room for it. Some changes may be discomforting for some , but Change itself does not hurt – it's your resistance to it that hurts.

Self-management keeps you cool in the moment—often with a reminder that the most stable, trusted facets of your life are not completely under your control. Surprises and challenges are on the menu right up until you settle the bill and go home. If you find yourself incurably change-averse, develop the antidote of self-awareness and the skills of self-management, even set aside a small amount of time each week to list possible changes and blue-sky on what actions you might take in response.

C) Managing Assertiveness

Assertive people are often criticised, sometimes unfairly, for being “rude”, “negative” and/or “not-nice”. This is not surprising, as it is rare indeed to find people in positions of power in this country who do not indulge in obfuscation or equivocation. Most people are quite taken aback when somebody speaks straight from a heart and mind in concord. To a liar, straight truth is a direct and overt threat to dishonesty and an assault on shifty doublespeak.

It is my view that there is a marked difference between the extremes of Assertiveness at one end and Boorishness at the other. A boorish person seeks to impose his views, opinions and beliefs by browbeating, quarrelling, blustering and bearing down upon smaller or weaker people. An assertive person has an informed, considered and balanced wide-angle view of a situation, delivers it without equivocation, deceit, archness or duplicity, and listens politely and openly to dissenting views.

The most emotionally intelligent response to a situation in dispute is often one where you either say nothing, or openly and directly express your truth. If you choose to speak, you say what you mean, and mean what you say. You do not avoid responsibility for the words that come out of your mouth, or the nature of the energy that punctuates the content by hiding behind cowardly cop-outs like “I didn't mean it”, or “I was only joking”, or “I've been taken out of context”.

To paraphrase Aristotle, getting upset is so easy. It's a habit ingrained from centuries of habit as a means to control what others say and do. Getting upset is evidence of a chronic condition of low self-esteem and Self-Importance – “I'm far too important that you should make me feel this way. Apologise and pull your head in immediately.” Getting angry with the right person, at the right time, and to the right degree requires emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence doesn’t resort to either lashing out, or covertly manoeuvring, or rolling over to become someone else’s doormat. To be assertive, you have to know what you’re feeling, read the other party accurately, and express yourself in a way that garners the best result. People with high EQ's do this naturally.

To be “nice”, more often than not, requires you to “pull your punches”. The result is confused perceptions and outright mis-communication. I have known Chinese Whispers to work better than this current flurry of “nice” political correctness, where no-one says what they really mean, nor really mean what they say. Nicety also leads to deeply hidden resentments because, when you are not straight with someone, your miscommunication is coming with a hidden subtext, which sounds something like “I think you're such an idiot that I don't think you can handle the truth from me.” This is one of those things that come under the heading of “what you don't know you're doing (things you don't know that you don't know)” that will sabotage you every time.

D) Making Effective Decisions

It has taken the world far too long to wake up to the fact that emotions simply cannot—and should not—be ignored when making choices and down-the-line decisions. Neuroscience shows us that sometimes the most rational thing you can do is trust your emotions when making a decision. But in order to make this work, you have to be aware of the emotions you’re feeling, know why you’re having them, and see how they factor alongside logic and reason into the situation at hand. Here, there is no substitute for self-knowing (intimacy – “into-me-see”) and emotional intelligence.

To sum up – If you ever want to have any traction in this world and derive any satisfaction from your time here, you had better develop Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Maturity. If your parents didn't have EQ to pass on to you, find someone who has it and do whatever it takes to spend time with them so that you can pick up on it. I don't recommend “coaches” because they try to impose “integrity” and “sincerity” from without, as an act, and most of them, I suspect from their showy displays, are about as real as a Bangkok watch.

Getting real is best done from the inside out.