Book Summary :Awareness: Conversations with the Masters

Awareness: Conversations with the Masters-Anthony de Mello SJ and J. Francis Stroud

Like all great books, it was difficult to summarize this book , There is so much of  great stuff in this single book. This is a result of some great effort .  My Personal favorite. I strongly recommend to read.

Wake up

• First understand you don't want to wake up . Once you understand this, next step is to question the entire belief system of yours .
• Don't fight or renounce any , you only make the desire stronger . Instead understand the desire and it will automatically vanish.
• You only trust the judgement of the person. you never trust anyone . You will be disappointed with the person only when your judgement of the person fails.
• Truth is never expressed in words . Truth is sighted suddenly ,as a result of certain attitude.
• Three things are difficult in this world - Returning love for hate , Including the excluded and admitting that you are wrong.

Learning

• In Spirituality - Learning is all about unlearning and listening
• The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new.
• The first reaction is one of fear. It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear.
• Things don't need to be fixed . Drop your illusions.
• As life of awareness settles on your darkness , Whatever evil will disappear and whatever good will be fostered. This will have to be experienced for yourself.

Selfishness

• Drop your false ideas . See through people - Selfishness in our deepest and first interest. Everyone is expected to be selfish either in crude or refined way.
• Three kinds of Selfishness
  • 1.pleasure of pleasing oneself
  • 2.give oneself pleasure by pleasing others
  • 3.One does something good so that one will not get bad feeling.

Self observation -

    "I" observing "me". "I" is not the body which is ever changing . The Labels attached to "I" is me also changes with time . But "I" the observer is never changes. No matter what labels you can think of , you can only attach them to "me". "I" is none of these. So when you step out of yourself and observe "me", you no longer "I" with "me" . Suffering exists in "me". So when you identify "I" with "me", the suffering begins.

       Think of any suffering , first you can pick a desire under that suffering. Else you would't be suffering . What is that desire? Second, it isn’t simply a desire; there’s an identification there. You have somehow said to yourself,“The well-being of ‘I,’ almost the existence of ‘I,’ is tied up with this desire.” All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something, whether that something is within me or outside of me.
     What kills the sensitivity is what many people would call the conditioned self: when you so identify with “me” that there’s too much of “me” in it for you to see things objectively, with detachment.

Friendship-

     Enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling. What I really enjoy is not you; it’s something that’s greater than both you and me. When I meet someone else, it plays another melody, which is also very delightful. And when I’m alone, it continues to play.

Self Observation

    Come home to yourself . When you talk to someone, are you aware of it or are you simply identifying with it? When you got angry with somebody, were you aware that you were angry or were you simply identifying with your anger? Later, when you had the time, did you study your experience and attempt to understand it? Where did it come from? What brought it on? I don’t know of any other way to awareness. You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not aware of, you repress. You don’t change. But when you understand it, it changes.
What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.

Happiness is a natural state

• Zen masters say, “Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.”
• Uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, “Why are you happy?” and the awakened person replies, “Why not?
• 4 - step process
• The first thing you need is awareness of your negative feelings.
• The second step (this is a four-step program) is to understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality. Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop trying to change reality.
• The third step: Never identify with that feeling.
• The fourth step: How do you change things? How do you change yourselves? There are many things you must understand here, or rather, just one thing that can be expressed in many ways. When you change, everything changes
• Stop trying to push yourself somewhere. Then someday you will understand that simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself toward. you need understanding, insight, awareness—you don’t need pushing. You don’t need effort.
• The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable.
• Pleasant experiences make life delightful, but they don’t lead to growth in themselves.Negative feelings, every negative feeling is useful for awareness, for understanding.
• Every time you are unhappy, you have added something to reality.
• “The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.”-Confucius 
• Understand another illusion, too, that happiness is not the same as excitement, it’s not the same as thrills.
• We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.

Desire

Don’t seek to fulfill desire so much as to understand desire. And don’t just renounce the objects of your desire, understand them; See them for what they are really worth. Because if you just suppress your desire, and you attempt to renounce the object of your desire, you are likely to be tied to it. Whereas if you look at it and see it for what it is really worth, if you understand how you are preparing the grounds for misery and disappointment and depression, your desire will then be transformed into what I call a preference. When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake.

Self Concepts 

• So your concept points, but it is never entirely accurate; it misses uniqueness, concreteness. The concept is universal.Concept is generalization but always misses or omits something extremely important, something precious that is only found in reality, which is concrete uniqueness.
• When I call a person a woman, that’s true; but there are lots of things in that person that don’t fit into the concept “woman.” She is always this particular, concrete, unique woman, who can only be experienced, not conceptualized. The concrete person I’ve got to see for myself, to experience for myself, to intuit for myself. The individual can be intuited but cannot be conceptualized.
• Second quality of a concept is that it is static whereas reality is in flux. We use the same name for Niagara but water that constitutes it is always different .
• Reality is whole, but words and concepts fragment reality.

What is love ?

     What is love? Love is sensitivity, love is consciousness. An attachment destroys your capacity to love.What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn’t harden itself to any person or thing. But the moment you become attached in my sense of the word, then you’re blocking out many other things.

      But to come to the land of love, you must pass through the pains of death, for to love persons means to die to the need for persons, and to be utterly alone. How would you ever get there? By a ceaseless awareness, by the infinite patience and compassion . By developing a taste for the good things in life to counter the craving for your drug. What good things? The love of work which you enjoy doing for the love of itself; the love of laughter and intimacy with people to whom you do not cling and on whom you do not depend emotionally but whose company you enjoy.
      Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something that you have; love is something that has you. You do not have the wind, the stars, and the rain. You don’t possess these things; you surrender to them. And surrender occurs when you are aware of your illusions, when you are aware of your addictions, when you are aware of your desires and fears.

How to cope up with anger

     If you are angry, there’s something wrong with you. So you’d better cope with your anger. Stay with it and cope with it. It’s not mine. Whether there’s something wrong with me or not, I’ll examine that independently of your anger. I’m not going to be influenced by your anger. I don’t feel the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty.” I’m not going to hate myself for anything I’ve done. That’s what guilt is. I’m not going to give myself a bad feeling and whip myself for anything I have done, either right or wrong. I’m ready to analyze it, to watch it, and say, “Well, if I did wrong, it was in unawareness.” Nobody does wrong in awareness.

     Your attitude should be: “I want to be aware, I want to be in touch with whatever is and let whatever happens happen; if I’m awake, fine, and if I’m asleep, fine.

Self change 

•  First, insight. Not effort, not cultivating habits, not having an ideal. Ideals do a lot of damage. The whole time you’re focusing on what should be instead of focusing on what is.
• Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged. That is extremely important for the process of change.
• You don’t have to go to the desert; you’re right in the middle of people; you’re enjoying them immensely. But they no longer have the power to make you happy or miserable. That’s what aloneness means. In this solitude your dependence dies. The capacity to love is born. One no longer sees others as means of satisfying one’s addiction.

Wisdom

• Wisdom occurs when you drop barriers you have erected through your concepts and conditioning.
• Wisdom is not something acquired; wisdom is not experience; wisdom is not applying yesterday’s illusions to today’s problems. As Wisdom is to be sensitive to this situation, to this person, uninfluenced by any carryover from the past, without residue from the experience of the past. This is quite unlike what most people are accustomed to thinking.
• When you get a feel for it you change. When you know it in your head, you don’t.
• The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand.

My Rating  -🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

How are you feeling now - Emotionally aware

How are you feeling now?

 Ask this question to your kids often.

Ask when she/he is happy after a good grade.

Ask when she is a bit down when her close friend is leaving the school.

Ask when she looks bored; irritated ; elated ; upset; or agitated.

But don't start with your sermon after that.Just leave it there with a gentle inquiry.

Idea is to make her aware of her emotions.

By being emotionally aware , she could handle her communications, interpersonal relationships and profession lot better later on in her life .

Else she is going to learn this skill in a hard way anyway.

Even after learning all the skills in this world to survive, she will find this the missing piece in her life puzzle for a happy life.

We don't teach our kids this stuff at home or at school!Even we where not taught!

So ask this is question - How are you feeling now ?

She may answer with her judgments instead of naming the feeling,like ' I feel insulted' . Well, this is judgement. This is not same as 'I feel sad'. Point out the difference and ask her stick to name her feeling.

She may struggle at first. So help her with the vocabulary of feelings. Let her start understanding the subtle differences of those words and start using them .

Rollo May puts clearly as  “the mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones as in the different passages of music in a symphony.” For many of us, however, our feelings are, as May would describe it, “limited like notes in a bugle call.”

If you yourself need to educate on this, Please go ahead and start. Teaching others is the best way to learn.

you will see how your personal and professional world transform, how your communication improves . This awareness will lead to you empathy and then compassion  which are among the rarest now a days.

So Ask this question - how are you feeling now? 

Book Summary - Courage to be disliked

The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness

Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Synopsis-

We are living in a subject world. All our problems are interpersonal problems. The moment you change ,the world changes. We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes. Our unhappiness cannot be blamed for our past and present experiences. The problem is not in our ability to be happy. But it is the lack of courage to change lifestyle - the way one give meaning to the world and himself. Self reliance, cooperation with others and contributions to others are three overarching objectives of our behavior. We can achieve these through life tasks(work, friendship & love). Separation of tasks is gateway to interpersonal relationships. Cultivate horizontal relationships through them.

All problems are interpersonal problems -

• Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you and feeling the sense of being excluded by them. To feel lonely , we need other people. we are social individuals.
• The feeling of inferiority and striving for superiority is important for normal , health striving for growth. This does not mean competing with any one. Feeling of inferiority and inferiority complex are not the same. it is using the feeling of inferiority as an excuse . We begin with self acceptance and continue to move forward in our own way with out competing with anyone .
• We are equal but not the same. Don't confuse being different with good and bad, superior or inferior. Whatever differences we have , we are equal.
• Anger - Anger is a tool, a form of communication. We can communicate our thoughts ,ideas and able to be accepted without any need for anger. if we can learn to understand experientially then the anger will disappear automatically.
• Power struggles are interpersonal relationship traps.
  • when you sense a power struggle, immediately step down. Do not respond with a reaction to the action.
  • Pursue of superiority is not engaging in competition.
• Separation of tasks -
  • There are three overarching objectives for behavior
    1.Self Reliance
    
    2. Cooperation with the society
       
    3. Contribution to others
       
  • There are 3 categories of tasks to achieve the above .They are called Life tasks .
    
    1. Tasks of work
    2. Tasks of friendship
    3. Tasks of Love
  • Separation of task - First, one should ask ‘whose task is this?’ Then do the separation of tasks. Calmly delineate up to what point one’s own tasks go, and from what point they become another person’s tasks.And do not intervene in other people’s tasks, or allow even a single person to intervene in one’s own tasks.
    
  • Separation of tasks is the gateway of interpersonal relationships. It is not the final objective.
    
• Horizontal Relationship -If one has been able to build a relationship of equals in the true sense of the term—that is a major lifestyle transformation.
• Let us look at he people not on the level of acts, but on the level of being . Rejoice their existence with gratitude .
• There is no such thing as a one hundred per cent person. This is something we should actively acknowledge.
• Unconditional confidence is a means for making your interpersonal relationship with a person better, and for building a horizontal relationship.
• Happiness in the feeling of contribution .

Life - A series of moments - Journey 

• Our lives exist only in moments called now . It is not made up of lines like staying on the conventional tracks
• It is as if one were dancing ,right now , around and around in each passing instant.
• you should be on a journey the moment you step out of your home , and all the moments on the way to destination.
• The goal is not to get to mountain top but claiming up the mountain itself. It does not matter if you reach the mountain top or not.
• Let’s dance in earnest the moments of the here and now, and live in earnest. Do not look at the past, and do not look at the future. There is no need to compete with anyone, and one has no use for destinations.
• As long as you are dancing, you will get somewhere.When you have danced here and now in earnest and to the full, that is when the meaning of your life will become clear to you.
• Life in general has no meaning . The meaning has to be assigned to life by the individual. No one else can .

My Rating -🌟🌟🌟🌟

Ten tips for improved relationship - Dean Abbott twitter thread

1. Never play the victim. Realize that your relationships are a product of what you put out, your energy, your behavior, your attitudes. Make sure these are right on your end.

2. Accept that most people do not think what they think of you by accident or because they are evil. This happens less than most people think. People's attitudes toward you are a reflection of the signals you send.

3. Enter all your encounters with a focus on providing value to the other person. Focus on understanding their needs and doing what you can to meet them.

4. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself and engage in lots of self-examination. We are all running off programming we are usually unconscious of, and that has an impact on our relationships.

5. Know your limits. You cannot take care of anyone else totally. You must know what you can and can't do for others. You must know what you are and are not willing to do for others, and you must stay within those limits.

6. Have standards. Decide on very clear limits to to the kind of behavior you will accept in a relationship. Do not compromise on these. Don't be afraid to let a relationship end if the other person refuses to treat you in a way you can accept.

7. Don't try to change others. Instead, focus on your boundaries and what is acceptable to you. Don't, for example, try to get your boyfriend to give up stamp collecting. Decide for yourself whether you want to date a stamp collector.

8. Realize that other people are also broken, lost and miserable. Take that into account when making judgments about them and relationships with them.

9. Remember that it is more important to have integrity than to be liked. Do not compromise on morals or principles. By doing this, you will drive away those who would undermine your integrity and attract those who uphold it.

10. Make growth the point of your relationships. The goal of relationships should not be mere fun or companionship, but mutual aid in becoming something more like the ideal version of ourselves.

His twitter feed

Pain vs Gain

Are u a self improvement junkie? This one is for you.

Wondering why you always give up on self help routines after few days?

you are not alone. I myself have these questions too.

One good thing though is I never stopped trying new routines.

So I decided to figure out myself. I observed myself on the next few occasions and got it!

So here is how it goes !

I normally start with a self improvement routine when I am not satisfied with something. For example, a weight loss routine when I thought  I look fat in photographs . 

My resolve to follow the routine quickly fades away almost all the time. I did try to nail the cause. But only managed to find a nice concept to put the blame on -That poor thing is called  'The law of diminishing intends '.

But deep inside I know I am fooling myself. 
These questions keep coming. 
why they did not work ? why do I chicken-out every time?

I went back to books, blogs , tube videos and every place I usually go to pickup ideas. As usual, came out more confused...

So sat back and did another round of introspection...

 Aaha , few routines did stick. like Badminton , Surya Namaskar and meditation... okey!  I looked at the reasons for sticking to them.

 Is it the fun factor? or 
 Is it the sweat that gives the sense of competing well? or
 Better body shape ? or 
 The joy of becoming calmer? 

In fact all of them. So a pattern was emerging. Here is what I found out .
I stick to improvement routines only If I gain something and feedback loops that give near term positive results.

Now.. Round 2 of books, blogs and youtube videos. Finally zeroed in the right word 'Gain Motivation'. 

Let me explain,

I gave up those improvement routines that I took up to avoid pain. I gave up as soon as i felt little better. 

yes!That is right.. on some occasions just a little improvement all that I needed! 

On the contrary, if I am motivated by gain, the positive feedback loops kept me in the game longer.

Ureka!!!! 

It may seem so trivial for you. But this little insight will save you many fruitful years.

More on this later.. 

Power of multiplied by zero

Multiplicative systems :Power of Multiply by zero - Mental Model series - 15

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.” - Warren Buffet

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels
Chain is a very good example of multiplicative systems. Let us start with the famous adage 'A chain is no stronger than it's weakest link' . when one link breaks , the entire chain breaks. Taleb calls  multiplicative systems as Fragile systems. Our human body is a fragile system but it has anti-fragile qualities. To learn more , read his book Anti-fragile. Multiplicative systems are governed by the weakest links or break points.

On the other hand we have additive systems . A wire rope is a good example. As you know, even when some of the wire break, it will hold. The outcome of additive systems is the sum of its parts, and the parts is independent. The outcome will not be win or lose , a binary.Instead if you change some parts , remove some parts and add some now and the outcome will be different ( becomes better or worse).  

We see this play out in many ways in life . Some of our life processes are additive systems and some are multiplicative.  Let us take your career for example. You seems to think you have ticked all the boxes: great resume, great background, great experience… but the problem is that you  suck at dealing with other people and treat others like stepping stones. That’s a zero that can negate all of the big numbers preceding it.  Get it?? 

Let us take another example from the book "Why nations fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

In this book , Authors examine the factors could be responsible for determining countries success and failure.They argue the factors such as geographic, climate, culture, religion, political leader are either insufficient or defective in explaining it.

According to them, economic prosperity depends above all is whether the economic and political system is inclusive or extractive one.

Inclusive system, is a additive one, there is a lot of path to prosper, and you can compete freely.

and Extractive system, is an multiplicative one. there is few path to prosper, once you are there you need to keep other from stealing your position.

So understanding whether you are in an additive system or multiplicative system , then which components need absolute reliability for the system to work, is a critical model to have in your mind.

Footnote -
What are Mental Models ?
“It’s your mind’s toolbox for making decisions. The more tools you have, the more equipped you are to make good decisions. “
A mental model is an explanation of how something works. It is a concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind to help you interpret the world and understand the relationship between things. Mental models are deeply held beliefs about how the world works. 
For More , read Mental Models - Introduction

Compounding

Compounding - Mental model series - 14 

"Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. "-Naval Ravikant

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it. "— Albert Einstein

Compounding is when your interest earns interest.
It is a mathematical representation of positive feedback. 
It is the growth on your previous growth. 

Compounding plays out over the long term. In the short term, the incremental gains can be hard to notice.Also compounding applies to so much more than just your investments and credit cards.

Imagine a small, 3 inch snowball rolling across the snow. The small snowball picks up snow slowly (interest) with each roll. The snowball grows to 2x, 3x, 4x… The newly collected snow (interest) allows the snowball to pick up even more snow as it moves across the snow.

Now, imagine this snowball is your knowledge of a particular subject or your relationship with a close friend or your blog’s audience. Make small investments in these areas and watch your growth compound.

Consider James Altucher's 1 percent rule -

Improve a little each day. It compounds. When 1% compounds every day, it doubles every 72 days, not every 100   days. Compounding tiny excellence is what creates big excellence.

Charlie Munger  has spoken about this effect many a times -

  “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” - Charlie Munger USC Law Commencement Speech, May 2007

But a word of caution - one must be very careful on what are you compounding on ,
If you focus on wrong thing , compounding can be very expensive.
Then how to apply this mental model ?
Answer : Your compound base - Identify carefully

• What do you want to compound?

Jeff Bezo,Amazon CEO, Hintst on how to do compounding correct: focus on what will not change.

"I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it. - Jeff Bezo

• Is it compoundable?- Make sure this is something compoundable and useful in the long run.
• Make sure your it has solid base - Don't bet on sand castles.For example -Expiring information is not knowledge. It won’t be relevant in a month or a year.Focus on accumulating knowledge that will be as useful ten years from now as it is today.Remember First principles ?

• How does it compound ? by time or in turn?      Business compounds when a transaction happens, and your bank account only compounds with time.

Ok, Let us conclude with some words of wizardry ,

Warren Buffet explains why stock market out performs bonds by attributing to compound interest -

"It was that simple. It wasn’t even news. People certainly knew that companies were not paying out 100% of their earnings. But investors hadn’t thought through the implications of the point. Here, though, was this guy Smith saying, “Why do stocks typically outperform bonds? A major reason is that businesses retain earnings, with these going on to generate still more earnings–and dividends, too.”


Footnote -
What are Mental Models ?
“It’s your mind’s toolbox for making decisions. The more tools you have, the more equipped you are to make good decisions. “
A mental model is an explanation of how something works. It is a concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind to help you interpret the world and understand the relationship between things. Mental models are deeply held beliefs about how the world works. 
For More , read Mental Models - Introduction