What Are You Selling?
Dear August,
Can you comment on developing a daily personal transformational practice?
Ted
Dear Ted,
Great question and I’m flattered that you want my opinion. When it comes to specifics, I usually work with clients to design something that fits my (and their) analysis of where they are in life. Without knowing you and your specific circumstances, your question is a little like the one I face when people I don’t know ask me to recommend books.
But generally speaking I do not focus on practices, formulas, diets, techniques, etc. They have their place but there are book stores full of suggestions on this head. I think our lives are defined by DECISIONS. Sam Johnson said the knowledge of one’s imminent execution wonderfully focuses the mind. Focusing the mind is what the path to self transcendence is all about.
So what decisions do you need to make that would focus your mind? What are you afraid of doing? What have you been rationalizing? What changes need to be made? Who needs telling off and who deserves an apology? We are posting an article to our site called Cup of Trembling. Even though I did not write it, I consider it so important I got permission to post it. Use it to figure out what your own cup of trembling is. Then drain the cup!
I would also recommend reading my story Rose’s Kitchen, where Richard Rose advises facing the truth as a path to transformation.
In short, do all those things you know you need to do that you have been putting off or pretending are not important. Go against your own grain. Put yourself “in play.” Get out of your comfort zone. Take some risks. Stick your neck out even if it is in very small ways. Stop compartmentalizing your deeper aspirations from your “normal” life.
If you do this, I guarantee it will “wonderfully” focus your mind. Your life will dictate your “daily personal transformational practice” rather than the other way around. Even though I was unemployed at the time, I once turned down the job of a lifetime because it would mean leaving a couple of scraggily college students I was mentoring for free in the lurch. Believe me; passing on that job wonderfully focused my mind! It forced me into just the kind of “agonizing reappraisal” that I’d been ducking for years.
I wrote recently on my site that a spiritual life means above all hard thinking. Not difficult thinking. Intense thinking. Real life decisions; decisions we make ONLY for the sake of our higher goals; decisions that have real life consequences; this is what brings about intense thinking.
The word “asceticism” comes from the Greek word for athletic training. Sages don’t undertake an ascetic lifestyle (NOTE: asceticism like athletics is not a technique it is a lifestyle) because they think God loves to watch them suffer. They do it because SACRIFICE is what forces us to do the hard thinking we need to do. When I meet a person, I give little heed to what they think or feel. What I want to know is the price they’ve paid for those thoughts and feelings.
Above all, start small and slow. You don’t have to go to a cave. Don’t let anything I’ve said become a rationalization for doing nothing. It never ceases to amaze me how much progress I see in my clients based on the little things. Thanks again for your question.
August Turak
Dear August,
After reading through your site and corresponding with you on a few points, I have wanted to call you up and say; “This is great, I’m sold! I’m ready to buy! Uh, what’s the product?”
I have read through your site and attended one of your lectures always thinking that it was leading to a tape program, a retreat, a formula…
A few years ago after a lecture you and I got into a discussion about a sales award that you had earned while at Xerox or IBM. After the award presentation other salespeople came up to you asking what your “gimmick” or technique was to achieve such results. You replied that you had taken the company’s target for sales calls and doubled or tripled it. When the other sales people learned that your success was due to brute hard work and not some clever “close,” they wandered off.
Thank you for taking the time to present the same message in yet another form. I am afraid that I have been trying to find out your “gimmick” or technique for spiritual progress. Hard thinking about my own life is much more difficult to contemplate than yet another “proven” recipe for enlightenment. Your patience with a slow learner is much appreciated.
All the best,
Ted
The Cup of Trembling
Use Turak’s copy of this article
to determine your “Cup of Trembling”
Download a PDF Version of this Post
