Do we need habits and self-discipline? Maybe not
Oh, hello everyone. I have missed you all, my virtual friends, through this void of a mic I speak through to your dues whilst you're on your walk across the globe. Home isn't Za by the way, mental. But I've missed you. Hope you've had a really good Christmas and the New Year's.
Speaker 1:It's gone now. Forget about it. It's a big it's a big buildup for nothing really, isn't it? Let's be honest. But what are the new year?
Speaker 1:I think 2022 is the year 2020 was meant to be. We have to be optimistic and, go into 2022. And if you're a turtle member, you've got a big month coming up because you've got a lot of sessions trying to get you back into the loop this month. We've got Octagon two point o, thirty first of Jan, ten week challenge. This is the biggest springboard of a year you're going to with.
Speaker 1:Boom. We're springboard boarding into the depth of 2022 with momentum, with results, with the community behind us. It's all you can ask for. I think we've gone we're on to great things this year. I feel it.
Speaker 1:Everybody, all of you, feel it. But we have to be open to learning once more. It's 2021. What a year we learned. We we guys, we learned Geet Condor.
Speaker 1:We did strike and soul. The Christmas challenge. Snowden. 10 k run. Met people at have met you in real life first time.
Speaker 1:Was amazing year. Cobra Kai season four again just finished, Hope you all watched it. Hope you're catching up. But this kind of leads me into my point. Today I want to talk about because the thing is with January, there's a lot of pressure to discipline and do stuff and we've talked about discipline before and all that.
Speaker 1:And it can, you know, we have to talk about all these different viewpoints, and you need to take what works for you. And at the end of season four, Cobra Kai, what's her name? Larusso's daughter is in the final, and she's like, what style should I use? And they're like, use the style that works for you. No style.
Speaker 1:Okay? Just do the style that works. There's a lesson in that. The reason they're really bringing this across is as well because Bruce Lee's favorite philosopher Krishnamurti spoke about trying not to condition the mind in any way. So you're trying not to do a certain system or style because that's just a form of conditioning and if you replace one style with another it's just another form of conditioning, it's another form of conflict in the mind psychologically.
Speaker 1:So Bruce Lee took this lesson to heart and he actually revolutionized martial arts with it because he said be water my friend. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. If you water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Be water, be flowing, be aware in the moment. Be where you need to be there and then.
Speaker 1:As you're saying, be water my friend, be fully aware. You know, that's what Bruce Lee took from and he says, my style is no style. I'll do what is right in the moment because I'm completely aware of the environment I'm in. I'm not trying to force a system on the environment because that's going to cause conflict between the mind and the environment, your opponent at that time. So if you think about you're fighting someone, you're thinking about what they're doing and you're thinking about the system you've been learned to do, whilst you're not really seeing what's happening in front of you in real time, the awareness and Bruce Lee was the master of being able to do what he needed to do in the moment, that full awareness and doing whatever move it took in that moment, full awareness.
Speaker 1:And he got this from his philosopher. And I'll bring some of his insights to today because I feel it's important to learn this and I've been testing her out. And one of the key lessons he says is, you you wanna listen to anyone, want to you want to inquire yourself. So I don't want you to be like, yes, we've got to build new habits. That's the only way.
Speaker 1:Yes, go this. Let's inquire together about what he's saying and see if it works. Are you with me? Let's get to it. Okay.
Speaker 1:So the first thing he says, for you to have intelligence like a flower blossom and doing the right thing in the morning for your true self, you have to observe the observer. So the observer is you, the I. I am the observer. I'm observing everything. I see a cookie.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. I'm now craving that cookie. That's the observer. You need to observe that observer and not change what the observer feels and wants and desires. You know, I don't I look and go, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm aware that I want that cookie because I've seen it and I can smell it freshly baked. I'm aware of that. I'm aware of the conditioning around me. I'm aware that I got goals and I want to, you know, trim a bit of fat off. I'm aware of all this, but I don't want change anything.
Speaker 1:I don't want change the fact that I'm craving the cookie. I don't want to change the craving for something else like a walk, nothing like that. I'm just going to be completely aware like light on darkness, I'm gonna be just aware. In that awareness, the fight ceases to exist. That conflict between you and a cookie has disappeared.
Speaker 1:You no longer crave that cookie because you are just completely aware of it. So you're observing the observer observing that cookie. Am I making sense here? That's what he's saying. So you're completely aware of all the forces upon you as the you the self, but you're not trying to change anything.
Speaker 1:This is the critical part. You're not trying to observe to change, you are simply observing and in the act of full awareness of the observing that power on you ceases to exist. Then you are free and you are free to do what is truly the right thing for you to do. This is what Bruce Lee was getting at in terms of doing the right thing in the fight. It's a metaphor for life as well.
Speaker 1:You have to be open and aware without forcing things to really do the right thing. And this is another revolutionary viewpoint Krishnamurti has. He says conflict and self discipline there is no freedom because self discipline is a form of force in something. So you self discipline because you're in an environment and you want to do one thing but now you must exert self discipline to stop that one thing to stay on a certain path. So it's conflict, you're always fighting against the environment.
Speaker 1:He talks about in total awareness there is no discipline, there's no need for it. There is no need for this, think about it, it's crazy, this works, it's worth me, I'm not saying it might work for you, it works. There's no need for discipline if we're just aware of the powers on us without changing it. So he talks about being snobbish, talks about a person who's snobbish become aware that they're snobby but doesn't want to change it, so like I'm aware I'm being snobby, seizes till the power's gone and then told you okay, don't want to be snobby. But if they go oh I'm snobby but I'm gonna change it be like that, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:It's not just replacing one thing with another then it's causing conflict and then it's causing conflict between oh snobby and that and actually just being aware we'll just see them awareness of that. Does that make sense? So I want you to just think about this today think about because if you think about our days, we're always thinking of the past experience of the future. We're never really in the present moment but if we are really in the present moment and we're aware, do we need habits? As I'm saying, do we need habits to make the most of the day we live in if we're fully aware in that day?
Speaker 1:I think that guy I think this is this is incredible stuff. So why do we need to force habits sixty six days? Why do we need to wait sixty six days to be the person we really wanna be today? If we can be fully aware and make the most of today, the twenty four hours ahead of us, then we can do that again tomorrow. Why is it that we need habits to do this?
Speaker 1:And is habits really being free? So you're trying to say, can you be truly intelligent living in the moment if we're only following habits and systems instead of being free of conditioning in the day and been doing what the true intelligence, self, creativeness and stuff he talks about does. I hope you're listening. I hope I haven't lost you in this but I feel I find a fascinating way of thinking and I've been testing and it works for me and I've been like I haven't been as hungry or craving as much as trying to be fully aware. I did have like a scare over Christmas.
Speaker 1:Sorry. Sorry, guys. Where someone have a ultrasound to my liver. I've had this thing for for, five years where I've had blood tests yearly and stuff like that. And, you know, the enzymes are slightly elevated.
Speaker 1:Just wanna test it out, ultrasound, see if any scar tissue or something in then I went to sleep one day on a chair, I woke up, there's a lump on my lower back where my liver kind of is, and I'm like, you know, you can get the stress and you're out there. You can start panicking, you start thinking, you go on Google, they say you're gonna die in the next five minutes, all that stuff. And for a second I was like, you know, for about a good hour I was panicking, worrying like this could be my last Christmas, you know, these thoughts like if this is it, like what I'm if I'm what I'm reading is gonna be what's happening to me, I'm gone. And it really helped when I just kind of went back these lessons. Was like, observe the observer in this moment.
Speaker 1:The observer is reading these things and is telling me this and I'm worried because this new thing has come blah, blah, blah. I was just observing it. Wasn't trying to change the fact that I was worried or fearful or whatever, but it's not just awareness of it, it kind of melted away. And I was it's more like it just worked for me and I was like, okay, I get her. And I wasn't fighting anymore.
Speaker 1:I stopped fighting, I stopped fighting, was just stopped being fearful and stopped, you know, reading on this fight while I just kind of was still. It was lovely. And I feel like if we can just bring those moments to our days, I think it's gonna make a huge difference for us. Instead of just being in our own heads all the time. Us versus the environment we're in.
Speaker 1:Wow. It's just so frustrating, isn't it? And let me leave you with a few more things for what he says from the book just to just to ponder today. That's not they're my only task for you today. Simple task.
Speaker 1:I know I going into some deep stuff but let's have a think about this today. We're gonna start the year off right don't we? So he says first of all fear. Fear is the cause of the search for protection or security. Security which is either physical, spiritual, religious or emotional.
Speaker 1:So long as there is that search there must be fear which then creates a barrier between your mind and your environment and thereby creates conflict and that conflict you cannot dissolve as long as you are only concerned with adjustment modification and never with the discovery of the fundamental cause of fear. So where there is a search for security, for certainty, for a goal preventing creative thinking, there must be adjustment called self discipline, which is but compulsion, the imitation of a pattern. Whereas when the mind sees there is no such thing as security in the piling up of things or of knowledge, then mind is released from fear and therefore mind is intelligence. And that which is intelligence does not discipline itself. There is self discipline only when there is no intelligence.
Speaker 1:Where there is intelligence, there is understanding, free from influence, from control, and domination. Guys, this stuff are you are you listening? Are you listening? And remember, we're talking here about psychological stuff. So there obviously is systems for improving health.
Speaker 1:Is science. There's evidence. There is facts behind this. There's facts on how to fly a plane, facts on how to build a car. You must learn these things.
Speaker 1:There are ways of doing it. We're talking to you psychologically. Okay? So this is again, let me finish with a few more passages for you to ponder, and, we leave it at that for today. So let us inquire however if there really is spiritual self protection because economically we see there is no security.
Speaker 1:The illusion of economic security is shown throughout the world by these depressions, crises, wars, calamities and chaos. We recognize this and so turn to spiritual security. But to me there is no security, there is no self protection and there never can be any. I say there is only wisdom which is understanding not protection. That is security, self protection is the outcome of insufficiency in which there is no intelligence, in which there is no creative thinking, in which there is a constant battle between the you and society and in which the cunning exploit you ruthlessly.
Speaker 1:As long as there is the pursuit of self protection there must be conflict and so there can be no understanding nor wisdom. And as long as this attitude exists your search for spirituality, for truth, or for God is vain, useless because it is merely the search for greater power, greater security. It is only when the mind which has taken shelter behind the walls of self protection freezes frees itself from its own creations that there can be that exquisite reality. After all, these walls of self protection are the creations of the mind which conscious of its insufficiency build these walls of protection and behind them take shelter. One has built up these barriers unconsciously or consciously and one's mind is so crippled bound held that action brings greater conflict further disturbance.
Speaker 1:I say do not seek to get rid of it which is merely a process of substitution but become conscious, become aware of what is causing this insufficiency. You cannot compel it, you cannot force it, it cannot be influenced by an ideal, by a fear, by the pursuit of enjoyment and powers. You can find out the cause of insufficiency only through awareness. That is by looking into environment and piercing into its significance there will be revealed the cunning subtleties of self protection. Now to be aware is not to alter.
Speaker 1:Therefore there is no modification but entire freedom from the environment as long we just need to be aware. Okay. Our mind is accustomed to alteration which is merely modification adjustment becoming disciplined to a condition. Whereas if you are aware you will discover the full significance of the environment. And we don't wanna try and change anything.
Speaker 1:We just wanna be aware. So your task today is this awareness task. Be aware of when you get a craving. Be aware of when you want something because you've seen it on Instagram. Be aware when you want to do x.
Speaker 1:And do not stop this demand in mind, Just be aware of it and then see it melt away. And then you can decide what you really want to do. I want you to try that today and let me know how you get on because if we inquire together into these things we might find I'm not saying find a way but what trying to say is all of us can try and look at these things in different ways. We don't have to force wait sixty six days to form a habit of health. We can be healthy, we can be the person we really want to be today but it starts with being really really aware of everything going on around you today.
Speaker 1:That's your task. Now guys, loved coming back on my first day in the voice notes. I hope you have a really good week back versus a turtle. Quick one if you're not a turtle member, we have got a challenge on the 30, January, it'd be 129 to partake in it or you can join up as a monthly member or annual right now. Doors close in two weeks and you'll be doing the challenge for free.
Speaker 1:No brainer really, really no brainer. Challenge is included in the price of the membership, which brings you even more things. So have a think about that, anyone listening that's not a non member. But guys, I love you and leave you. You're one big thing today, total awareness, but don't try and change anything.
Speaker 1:Just total awareness. And let me know you get on. Speak to you tomorrow.
