Maps and Step #5
The MAGIC Formula came into existence to help me through the worst depression of my life. What it suggested was a brutal thought: in order to get OUT of a bad situation, I had to be grateful to be IN it. Jesus, I didn't want to believe that. But the moment I found reasons to be grateful, suddenly I saw solutions to change it. It was that direct and powerful that I took the rest of what THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH, a core source of "The Secret" (IMO, the "Secret" omits some important notions) was saying. And I organized that into an easily remembered acronym, MAGIC. MAGIC stands for:
Map or Model
Action
Gratitude
Intention
Core alignment
And I theorized that all I had to do was be dead-bang sure I never got a "zero" in any of those categories, I'd automatically advance at least 1% a week. And that if I burned ass, got over a "6" in all categories, I'd not only advance closer to 1% a DAY, but started generating "luck." I didn't believe this until I tried it in three different arenas. Cannot explain it fully…but honestly believe it to be true, and challenge anyone and everyone to try to disprove me. All you have to do is give it a shot: Start with the 5MM breathing, moved from there to your Morning Ritual, and use it to implant these principles.
You'll see the difference rapidly. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. Please.
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So what is the "Map" or "Model"? Simple. See any task you wish to achieve, any problem you want to solve, as a maze of surpassing complexity. Most wander around and, if they continue long enough, they will come out the other side. But the most fortunate are the ones who are taught a simple concept:
If ANYONE has ever solved the maze starting where you started, they left clues. Maybe a string. Maybe the notion of touching the wall and keeping contact. Maybe "go down three openings and turn left, then right."
It really CAN be just that simple. "Don't push on a door marked `pull'". You'd be shocked at how simple the solution can be. That yeah, hard work is critical, like Oxygen is critical to life. But its not the ONLY thing you need.
In the Hero's Journey, the first real "success pattern" you need after understanding MAGIC.
The Hero is confronted with a challenge: escape suffering, embrace joy, be of service.
You will avoid the challenge. Only someone who has mastered all three basic arenas of life has fully accepted it. So unless you strive to be fit, loved and loving, and financially abundant, you haven't taken full responsibility for your life.
The real journey demands acceptance. The road to awakened adulthood demands personal responsibility. By the time you start engaging in adult behavior (ahem) you are SUPPOSED to have accepted adult responsibility. Otherwise you are playing dangerous games, and if those adult behaviors are reproductive, there is a real chance you'll make babies before you can fully protect and train them. The result is chaos.
The road of trials is the journey between where you are and where you want to be. The more accurate your "Map" the more direct your path becomes. Here's the trick: you WILL be tested, countless times, before you reach your destiny and evolve to the next level. So your "path" has to be designed to teach you all the things you need to meet that test. And that was part of the reason I had to find a way to be GRATEFUL for the personal nightmare I found myself in. This just might be the hardest part of the whole thing. You'll figure it out. Part of the answer is that "are you happy with who you are? Then you have to release resentment about the path that got you here" thing. REALLY hard, especially if you have been abused, neglected, oppressed. All I can say is that if you can find a way to grow from that pain, you are free.
But today we're looking at the fifth step, "Allies and Powers." We are all doing the best we can with the resources we have access to. This might mean we need to gain NEW resources, OR to get in touch with resources within us yet untapped. We must grow in being or awareness. And for this we not only need companions on the journey, but we need teachers, mentors, allies who are further down the road who can teach us about the territory.
I had three primary teachers: my mother, who taught me that success left clues one could study. There were maps out of the maze.
Larry Niven (and Jerry Pournelle) who taught me to focus my mind and heart to create art and craft that allowed me to express myself and support my family. Bless them both. They saw something in me worth developing, and there is no way I could ever repay them for that gift, across decades.
Steve Muhammad, who was the standard of what a MAN was. Admired by men, desired by women. I wanted THAT. And my rickety ego didn't allow me to just go straight for it. I had to follow his core dictate: "The word DEFEAT does not exist in my fighting science. I will find a way or make one." And I did. Took me decades, literally. But I did.
And in one way he, and they, gave me nothing but a mirror and a set of role models…and the belief that I COULD BE THAT if I found and nurtured the right part of myself. My Mom gave me both a bleak view of life AND the tools to create beauty, power and meaning. Larry gave me the notion that if I created with joy, and developed the right tools, that my reader would FEEL that joy when they consumed my work. Art and Craft.
And Steve gave me the first inkling of what a warrior really is. I knew that one view was "I'm ready to die, and ready to take you with me" but it was his brother in the arts Cliff Stewart who taught me that what I'd been intimidated by, the physical skills and aggressive energy I felt I couldn't face directly was NOT evidence of warrior ship…but rather athletes playing "warrior games."
"A warrior, Steve" he said to me one day, "is someone who tells the truth. Whose word is good. Who raises his own children. Who stands for his community."
And those words set me free. I could do that. I'd already DONE that to the best of my ability, and his words made me believe that while I had seen only my failures, the teachers who had welcomed me to their various inner circles had seen something else, something questing and desperate to be real, to have a genuine experience of life whatever the cost, who was willing to drive a thousand miles to spend an hour with someone who could really answer a question…
That young man was already a warrior. And he'd better have been, because you can't become something you are not. The SEED of what you desire to be must be within you. That's the bad news. The GOOD news was that if you can hold a dream in your mind and heart continuously, over time…you have that seed.
They gave me maps, techniques. But more than that, they gave me MODELS of excellence. I felt their "vibration" in a sense, and knew all I had to do was raise my own energy to that level, vibrate at their frequency, and they would transmit to me the information I needed, the state of BEING I needed, whether I consciously understood or not.
If you can see, or begin to grasp, how Mom, Larry, and Steve gave me Maps and Models (in Mom's case, she could use them to crawl out of the hole she'd been born into, but was not able to climb the mountain she found once she had. But she could prepare ME to climb that mountain. She planted a tree whose fruit she would never live to eat) then you'll see that yes, you have to work harder and longer than the people around you if you want better results…but you also need to have a MAP. If you run faster than any human being who ever lived, but run East, you'll never see a sunset. People commonly work hard, very hard. But if you don’t know where you are going and how to get there, you will run around in a maze without cheese until you starve…or almost accidentally stumble out into the light.
If you care about those who follow, CREATE A MAP AS YOU GO if there was no map to guide you. And then share that map with others, and the next generation.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" said Isaac Newton.
And if I have GONE further, it is because I studied the maps left by others who had freed themselves from the maze. It really is that simple
Namaste
Steve
