How The Mind Keeps Men Bound And Gagged

Across centuries, it has been said that humans listen but don’t take action.

While it is true, the statement implies that action is in the hands of human beings.

If action was truly in the hands of human beings, then there would be no shortage in action.

A human being that acts is as rare as a supernova.

Why?

Because the truth is that action is not in the hands of human beings.

Show me a man who is in charge of his own actions, and I will show you a Unique, Free and Prosperous man.

If you wish to take a slave on a trip, you cannot ask the slave. You must ask the slave’s owner.

Expecting a human being to take action to not understand the human being. It is his mind that makes the call.

This form of slavery is so powerful that the things that men refuse to take action on are the things that are to their own immediate benefit.

Call a professional contact of yours (not a friend). Tell him that you have a gift waiting for him, and once he calls you back you will tell him where to pick it up.

There is a high likelihood that he will never call you back.

Voicemail is one of the most useless tools in the world.

Because human beings are programmed not to return calls.

Understand this Truth: 99.5 percent of the human beings that you meet and associate with in your entire lifetime are so incalculably enslaved to their mind, that associating with them will do you far more harm than good.

Most of that harm will come in the form of confusion and frustration.

Aristotle Onassis’ father must have learned this lesson. For he told his son, “When you meet a man, write down how much time he is worth.”

This is Truth.

Why does man not take action?

Because the mind has him bound and gagged.

Why does the mind have him bound and gagged?

Because of the mind’s love-hate relationship with change.

The mind likes new things. It likes changes of scenery. It enjoys vacations. New smells. New clothes. And so on.

But the mind will fight to the death any person or force that attempts to change the Nature or the Life Situation of the human being it controls.

It will allow its slave to go on a stroll or a trip. But he had better to be returned in the same condition he left.

Understand this Truth: Those who were meant to Arrive, have settled into their arrival. Those who were not meant to arrive, have settled into their non-arrival.

There are (maybe) a handful of people on this planet who are in-route to arriving.

Everyone else has already secured their position. And this is where they will be for the rest of their lives.

You see, the mind is a coating of wax on a dirty car. The dirt remains preserved forever.

Who a man is today is who he will be tomorrow. With extraordinarily rare exceptions.

Human beings are like organs preserved in a formalin jar.

They are chemical reactions that reach a steady state.

Where they settle once, they settle forever.

What of the poor man who becomes a rich man?

If the poor man becomes a rich man, and he remains rich for the rest of his life, the stage of his poverty was not his steady state. He was always a rich man, even when he was poor. In one way or another, he was going to settle into wealth. It was only a matter of time.

But if the poor man became rich, then lost it all forever, then he was always a poor man. Even when he was temporarily rich.

One may be tempted to ascribe this to “fate.”

They would be wrong.

Fate does not control whether a man becomes rich or poor.

This is controlled by the nature of one’s mind.

It is interesting to note that this exists even in the domain of the highly successful.

Professional athletics is a truly wonderful example of this.

You have professional athletes who are superstars.

And you have those who struggle for most of their careers.

The world (in its infinite ignorance) will say that the difference between these two classes of athletes is talent or hard work.

Then coaches and psychologists and scientists and commentators will spend hundreds of years speaking, lecturing, debating, and writing books about whether it is talent or hard work.

Then you will have an Anders Ericsson who will interview athletes and musicians, and based upon questionnaire data, come up with an idea of “10,000” hours.

And then Malcolm Gladwell will “wax this dirty car” and preserve and propagate the “10,000 hour” rule into the culture.

I have written about this elsewhere (10,000 hours, For Whom The Bell Tolls), and I will write about it more. I have discussed this with Anders, and I will explore it more in the future.

But suffice to say that expertise requires neither 10 years nor 10,000 hours. And to trust the words of a musician or an athlete and make extrapolations based upon their remembrances is in itself grounds for disqualification of the idea. For human beings’ retrospective testimony is no more accurate than a wooden divining rod.

The difference between the superstar athlete and the one who struggles throughout his career is that one enjoys being a superstar and the other enjoys struggle.

If 297,000 people read this discourse, there might be Two who really understood that sentence.

The mind will protest with all forms of questions.

It will contest the idea that the “struggler” enjoys struggling.

And I have no interest in obliging such a mind by debating it.

Hecklers are hecklers.

If a professional athlete truly understood The Truth . . .

If he understood that all of his struggles come not from technique or psychology . . .

If he understood that he is hell bent on keeping himself shackled to a narrow window of success . . .

Then he would spend 100 percent of his time opening this Pandora’s box in order to discover the riches, the fame, the prosperity, and the success that he quietly insists that he deserves.

But this does not happen. And the reason it does not happen is because there is no opportunity for it to happen.

You see, professional athletes are locked in air-tight containers. They are surrounded by guards day and night. These guards are their coaches and their mentors.

The goal of these coaches and mentors (whether intentional or unintentional) is not to guard them from harm. But to guard them from success.

Their job is to guard them from The Truth.

Their mandate is “I shall allow no Truth to come to you that will change your current position. I have sworn an oath to keep you where you are. So that you may retain your struggles. And so that I may retain my job.”

Why would they do this?

Because the coaches are in their own air-tight containers. They are bound to remaining where they are as well. And their mind stands guard to ensure this.

For who would a non-superstar coach be if his player suddenly became a superstar?

The coach may feel that the player may fire him and hire a “superstar coach” to match his new found status.

Or even more frightening, the superstar player might keep his current coach, but this non-superstar coach may not know how to handle the extra media attention and fame that might come with it.

People are who they are.

And they will do everything in their power to remain who they are.

And the Mind will make certain of this.

There is a great human tragedy in all of this.

The tragedy is not that the struggler forever remains the struggler.

The tragedy is not that the superstar remains a superstar.

The tragedy is that somewhere amongst the strugglers is one struggler who genuinely feels that he is a superstar. But he sits on this cusp awaiting a small catalyst that could release him into the stratosphere.

All humans are the same.

And then there is that One who is different.

For he is the one who the world swims across the Atlantic to watch.

And who the mind wishes it could control.

Namaste.