When Your Past Pretends to be Your Future

What could you say if I commanded you:

“Go and look for it NOW!”

An obvious rejoinder is:

“Look for WHAT?!”

To which I’d say:

“Exactly; you’ll know when you find it.”

People who seek, seek to find the unknowable.

Truth starts out in the dark. It shines once you find it, which is how you know you found it.

Self-growth is like that. Your dark is where you have no awareness of how you are generating the problems you are experiencing.

Often our friends know how we do it, our mother certainly does. But we would never ask HER, because we know she is WRONG. And besides, I’m an adult now. Time to grow up.

***

There are three categories of self-knowledge, of which only one matters to the seeker.

1. The Things "You Know"

This is where you stand, who you think you are, what your values are, how you live in the world right now. In varying degrees, we are all this. The dictator has no doubt about his way, whereas the artist always doubts.

Somewhere between those two live the rest of us.

2. The Things "You Know You Don’t Know"

We are accustomed to searching for answers in the light as this Sufi story well illustrates...

When walking home with a friend one night, a man dropped his key in the dark. Not far away there was a street lamp shining down on the footpath, so the man went over there and started looking for his key.

The friend was puzzled, so he asked him:

“Why are you looking there? You dropped your key over here.”

“Yes,” replied the man, “but there’s no light there. I can see over here!”

That’s what it’s like seeking the thing you know you don’t know. It will reassure you by giving you what you seek – the feeling that you are right, that you know:

“Certainly the key is here! I will find it eventually. And even if I don’t, well at least I tried! That’s better than most people.”

In a way, you can say you are looking to confirm what you already believe to be true. As the Scottish scientist used to say to his students when they conducted a new experiment:

“Now, now – don’t find what you are looking for.”

3. The things "You Don’t Know You Don’t Know"

There is where the key is – in the dark. You can’t find things in pitch blackness, or so you think. Anyway, there’s nothing to be found (you believe), so you don’t look.

You can only make a discovery when you have light – and there’s the rub: it’s the discovery that supplies that light.

There is a simple way out of this conundrum. It’s so simple, it’s shocking, and yet almost no-one does it.

Ask questions. Is that simple enough for you?

For example: turnaround your belief: ask if the opposite could be true?

Say you are in the middle of a divorce. You are feeling betrayed and belittled because your spouse took another lover and left you. You rightly believe “He left me.” That’s where all your light is shining.

Where is it dark? Ask questions. Try turning the belief around by asking…

“Did I leave him?”

Wow! Now you KNOW that isn’t true right? He got the lover. He told you he was leaving. Right? No, Wrong. The more you know it isn’t true, the more darkness covers up your secret path out of pain.

How does darkness get produced?

First, because “you know” (he left me)

Second, because you “know you don’t know” (I must forgive him to feel better)

Third, because “you don’t know that you don’t know” (that maybe you actually left him?)

You get stuck being in the light with what you “know you don’t know”. It looks like this:

“Oh, I have to forgive him. I have to understand he has a right to love another. I know I can’t do that yet, but I know this is what I must do.”

Nope.

That is "know what I don't know" at work. No joy there. That is the past paving the road to your future. That is darkess at work. People have been trying to forgive each other for decades, and it’s really hard to do. Have you noticed that?

You might just achieve it on your death bed. And maybe not. There’s no enLIGHTment when you follow what “you know you don’t know”.

What does darkness look like then?

It would be: there is nothing to forgive. It could be: “You left him” It could be: “You actually wanted him gone” It could be: “You set him up” Here’s a simple test – when you turn your belief around, does every cell in your body resist it?

It’s that resistance that’s gives you away. If you are not holding on to something, why do you resist considering it’s opposite?

You make the opposite live in darkness by your inability to shed light upon it.

The more vehemently a person declares their truth, the more the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Truth is hidden in the unforgivable darkness where “you don’t know you don’t know”.

***

What does this mean for your Alexander practise, your business?

What you think you should be doing may have very little to do with what you actually need to be doing.

And it is this way because “you know you don’t know”

You avoid the dark by busily trying to solve things in the light.

I see this about my Self from the past, and I remember when I did not know what I know today. These days I see many teachers of Alexander's discovery in my same old place. Teachers who are living in my same old kind of darkness.

They believe things like: I must get a website. If I can do that, things will get better.

Nope.

Things won’t get better. I’ve talked to several teachers now – smart and gifted teachers - who put a lot of time and energy into making a website, then felt deeply disappointed because their website did not produce the magic that they felt it should.

Of course not – because there are another 11 things that need to happen to make that website function. It’s all laid out clearly in the ATSuccess 12 step plan.

There is a way out of the dark – and this way has been my own personal secret to success.

Find a mentor.

Find someone who has walked the talk, who has escaped from the prison and knows what life is like outside.

What is the prison in this metaphor?

It is your mind cluttered full of useless beliefs of the “you know you don’t know” variety. You think you know how to get your Alexander practise to succeed, your only problem is that you don’t act on it. You say “I’m too busy already. I don’t have the time”

Nope.

Stop wasting time by paving your future with your past: instead, get with a mentor.

You can start really easily by signing up below and reading about the 12 steps that can make every Alexander practise successful. All it will cost you is a bit of time, and time well spent looking for a key in the dark where it can actually be found.

The website is a part of just 1 step, 11 more to discover. Your website is a one brushstroke on a much larger canvas. What is that larger canvas?

Find out by signing up now (below) for my free email seminar on the ATSuccess 12 steps…