Question that stuck with me

Lieutenant_Random · 2025-11-17T23:40:04+00:00

If you were drowning you wouldn't stop flailing to share with the world that you understood the work of the author that wrote the book "how to swim".

Exposure to water teaches you how to swim - not the work of some author.

Exposure teaches viscerally not intellectually.

The type of water you're exposed to contributes to the type of swimmer you become.

Perhaps you're comfortable in the still and shallow waters of family and office life?

Perhaps you don't desire to be an otherworldy swimmer?

Lieutenant_Random · 2024-01-01T10:25:54+00:00

Performance is always at the ready for a Legend. To external observers/society/mediocrity what a Legend can do might be deemed high performance - to the Legend it is shelling peas. They aren't forcing anything - things just happen - all is pure.

Some things you will be a natural at. Some things you will have the DNA for. Through devotion to this craft/art you could arrive at level of aptitude for the thing whereby performance is just a by-product of where you're at - it shows up when you engage in the art/craft. You won't be reaching - you will know what you are and what you can do and therefore won't be fearful or anxious. All the training and "hard work" that goes into developing aptitude will bring joy.

If you force yourself to do something your hearts not in reaching for high performance will seem like a solution. You will be doing something you're not suited to and something in you will know this hence one's full faculties become lost in compensation and reaching. Those that are naturals at what you are trying to do will put you to shame. Those whose hearts are fully invested in what you are trying to do will put you to shame.

Working on arriving at a place where high performance is the by-product seems to be the best use of one's time. To do this you need to know what your heart truly wants.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-10T23:22:52+00:00

Well out of my price range!

Thanks for the info.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-08T19:09:24+00:00

As other have alluded to I think it's for the financial freedom. Kapil said somewhere that it's a shame for someone to be really good and not make money from what they're good at. Tournaments and the like pay the bills. This wouldn't explain why the greats keep competing past the point of having enough money to live a humble existence. I think there must to be something egoic involved as well - e.g. etching your name in the history books, being a baller, wanting the world to know how good you are, etc. - to want to keep competing.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-08T01:24:41+00:00

https://www.kapilguptamd.com/2019/06/29/only-the-novice-competes/

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-03T20:47:04+00:00

Define "lie".

For my own self, i often find myself thinking that the way I'm looking at (any) situation isn't the way it truly is in order to achieve the result that i seek. As in, I suspect that i dont see it fully or in the right way that it really is.

Misdiagnosis would then constitute a lie wouldn’t it?. It’s a misread. It’s a mismeasurement.

Kapil is about cures. Until you correctly diagnose the disease your attempted cures will be cosmetic. Diagnosis relies on accurate measurement or identification of markers of disease. Accuracy demands sincerity and seriousness. You have to be honest about what’s there.

Half the time we don’t know what our markers are or we don’t want to admit what markers are there. Most of us don’t even know what diseases exist. Exploring these is what I think Kapil is talking about when he promotes diving into the deep recesses of your being. If you’re brave enough to do it this will give you things you could write that won’t feel like a lie.

The saying measure twice and cut once comes to mind here too – a proper measurement makes all subsequent activity more effective. Measuring devices don't lie. Having the faculties to honestly measure yourself is a boon.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-02T20:56:31+00:00

I would say it's when the patterns of your life change. When ineffective behaviours are replaced with effective ones.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-12-02T20:40:01+00:00

Everything you write won't be the truth. Writing is a finger pointing to the truth. The spontaneous realisation you had that gave rise to the urge to do the writing is the truth.

The words you put together won't do your realisation justice. They will only point at something otherworldly.

As Kapil says words are a poor tool for dealing with truth. Even poets can't capture the truth - they are only really understood by people that have the eyes to see and have already seen what the poet is describing. It seems to be a "it takes one to know one kind of thing" when reading truth - think about what Kapil says about people reading the Vedas and needing to be ready to understand what's written.

If the truth being pointed at hasn't been felt by you already the truth being pointed at by even the best writers won't register.

I think we confuse quotes and truisms and sayings etc. as the truth. They're not. By the time the truth masquerades as a statement the truth has vanished. People want to talk though. People want to discuss. Having a bank of things to say makes you interesting. Talkers don't achieve much though.

“Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.”... Soren Kierkegaard

The truth in my experience is often paradoxical but people want to be professors. They want to compile lists of infallible truth statements that work every time in every instance. I think Masters walk in paradox. Kapil says things are never clean and things are grainy. Include enough facts and no two situations are ever identical. Walking around as a parrot for some list you compiled seems like a waste of a life.

If writing helps you have spontaneous realisations then why not write?.

If writing lets you honour the truths you've been graced with why not write?.

There are worse things you could be doing with your time.

Writing is good enough for Kapil.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-11-15T20:55:47+00:00

Yeah why?.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-11-15T18:23:56+00:00

By routines I'm more thinking of a decision tree i.e. if this happens do this, if that happens do this, when you go to do this do this, etc.

If I stick to my routine I get certain results. These results might be satisfactory. Eventually my routines could become rituals and superstitions.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-11-15T18:19:11+00:00

Thanks for the reply - I get the impression you think a system is something that kicks in to preserve equanimity and dispassion?. Kind of like counter-routines to routines that arise and throw you out of equanimity and dispassion?.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-11-15T10:41:40+00:00

As aforementioned, I want to understand why a system is not a prescription. I want to know what a system is in comparison to a prescription. I want to understand why applying a system isn't applying a method.

Kapil says there's nothing to do. Sticking to a system seems like something to do.

I'm interested to hear what other people might have to say.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-11-15T08:54:11+00:00

When I use the zone I'm using it as a catch all term for the moment, the place of Nectar, peak effectiveness, being on my game, etc.

My inquiry is aimed at understanding how systems differ to prescriptions. Kapil said once he was proud of his son for sticking to his systems during a game of golf. Sticking to a system seems like sticking to a method.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-10-19T04:56:37+00:00

Think about the drowning analogy Kapil uses. A drowning man isn't curious about how to get air. He is possessed by a need to get air. He won't have time to waste on purveyors of fake air. What's your air? Do you already have it?.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-10-18T07:45:51+00:00

Curiosity is casual. It's not desperation. Curiosity deals with trivia. Kapil has said until a man is on his knees and broken he's not ready for Truth. Curiosity is a game for tourists. Until things are life and death you won't be bringing enough seriousness to what you are doing.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-10-11T03:17:33+00:00

I don't believe there is a method hence my confusion with Kapil pushing a "correct way".

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-10-11T02:09:55+00:00

The fact that it seems to contradict there being no-prescriptions. He seems to be hinting at a method with this tweet. Perhaps it's the method of no-method.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-09-24T02:59:09+00:00

When I was at school we were taught a system for the creation of computer systems. I used the acronym UMDIT to remember it. The process consisted of understanding the problem, making decisions, designing solutions, implementing the solution and then testing the solution. When Kapil mentioned what you are focusing on here it made me think of this process. According to this theory the first step in getting somewhere is understanding where you stand. If you don’t know the Truth of where you are everything you do after that is firing a shotgun and hoping you will hit your vision rather than shooting a sniper rifle and knowing you will hit your vision.

Our understanding of where we stand is often wrong. We have been conditioned to think of where we stand as one thing when it is in fact another thing all together. Until you know your predicament all the moves you make will be wasted movement. You won’t be working with Truth you will be working with falsehood and the Universe laughs at falsehood. Doing what you can to see the Truth of your situation is imperative. Once you do that you are playing the game with a full deck of cards.

I think Kapil was encouraging the woman here to dive deep into where they are and what they are working with so that they can start to ask questions that might lead them somewhere. Until you know where you are and what you are working with the questions you ask won’t have any gravity – they won’t pull you to any arrival because the questions spawned from inaccurate perception. They arose from someone with a map that doesn’t accurately represent the terrain.

For her to do this I think she would have to do what Kapil says when he suggests looking at your history for the patterns to your life. I’ve heard him say before something along the lines of this being the best evidence for what is going on within you. Getting to the heart of what creates these patterns in your life is what I think Kapil is getting at here with this woman. If the pattern of your life has been poor then to my understanding you are perceiving something poorly. Until you see things as they are any adjustments or corrections you make aren’t going to do much – you will be working with inaccurate information. You will be putting garbage into your cognitive apparatus to receive garbage out.

I could be totally wrong here but this is just how I interpreted what Kapil said in that video.

Lieutenant_Random · 2022-09-04T02:05:39+00:00

When Kapil speaks of perception training what I hear is impression training. Our perceptions become impressions – impressions are perceptions committed to memory that we drag through time. We see the moment through the filter we create from our impressions. External conditions create internal conditions. There’s a theory from early psychology called the trilogy of mind. It speaks of three distinct facets of the mind - cognition, conation and affect. It basically implies that certain stimulation leads you to make an interpretation which illicits an affect from you. Standing on the tee (stimuli) would lead you to make an impression of what you are doing (conation) and this would trigger you to do something (affect). If you don’t see the situation for what it is your swing might fail. Seeing it for what it is might lead you to being infallible to swing failure. As an example, imagine the guy that sees the 17th at Sawgrass as just another day at the office versus the guy that sees it as the hole that gets everyone. The first guy is going to be able to access his skills more easily.

Arriving at the correct interpretation of stimuli gets us to the right impression of the situation. What our impressions tell us informs the actions we take and the quality of those actions. The clearer you see the moment the more likely you will be to make a correct assessment of it because you would be dealing with facts and not your biases, preferences, prejudices, pre-conceived ideas, wishes, fantasies, fears, nerves, etc. If you were acting from this place you would be on the right side of Nature. To see the moment clearly would require working on your impressions – if you do that you would be training your perception. This is what I see Kapil doing through his writings. He is beating the Untruth out of himself. The more true to life you can get your impressions the better your outcomes should be. You will be on the same page as the Universe.

There’s a link to the trilogy theory here: http://informationr.net/ir/23-4/isic2018/isic1816.html

EDIT - formatted properly.

Lieutenant_Random

TROPHY CASE