People who empower us and ignite our own capability? Or those who do our work for us?

Whether we're talking about our spouse, friends, or children, I don't think it's loving to do anything (repeatedly, long-term) for them that they can do for themselves.

Read this article here: https://substack.com/@roadlesstraveledonline/p-190405800

To learn more and support Chris' ministry: https://www.kingdomvoyages.org

Each and every action has a direction. We need a vision, but it need not be an inflexible blueprint of specific timelines and circumstances.

The first step is know yourself. What are you good at, what do you love? What brings you to life, and what opportunities are calling to you? Which lofty ideals, indeed, appealed to you repeatedly since you were young? What do those things feel like, over and above what they might present as?

Once we really accept that our individuality is a gift, we can drop the pressure of external expectations, and begin to move in the directionof these aspirations and skills, block time to allow creative inspiration to come to us, and decide whether it’s the gym or the driving range we are going to today.

There does, indeed, need to be a pull toward a certain direction, and while we hold that trajectory, we can look down at our feet, be where they are, turn them slightly in the direction of the goal, and do something today that brings us that way.

It can be a much more gentle process than we originally thought, in this culture of hurry.

From: https://substack.com/home/post/p-157117721

Jordan B Peterson: "If you say the truth and nothing else, you will have an immense adventure as a consequence.

You will not know what is going to happen to you, but you have to let go of clinging to the outcome. You have to let go.

The truth will reveal the world the way it is intended to be revealed. The consequence for you will be that you will have the adventure of your life.

The other part of that ethos—which makes perfect sense to me and I cannot see how it can be any other way—is that whatever makes itself manifest as a consequence of the truth is the best possible reality that could be manifest, even if you cannot see it.”

Notice the connection between binding up our efforts in material shapes, and the unconscious proclivity to manipulate others and take them into the service of our need for validation. Interestingly, Jung notes that there are many such people desperate to escape their own selves, so we have willing pawns for our scarcity-based formations.

Only by integrating, accepting, looking squarely at our propensity for evil and control can we prevent it from overwhelming us or taking others captive.

In this episode, I explore the dangers and benefits of breaking free from the herd, the marked zebra phenomenon, and missing the safety of what you've left behind.

Jordan B. Peterson & Warren Smith Interview:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000679402431

Warren Smith Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@SecretScholars

When we as parents (or coaches, mentors, teachers) don't actualize our own potential or hearken to our callings, we have one of the following effects on those following and looking up to us:

1. We live vicariously through them, putting pressure on them to finish our dreams for us. Then, nobody lives their lives, because they're busy aping the ones we were too afraid to live for ourselves. (Who will live your life if you do not?)
2. We suffocate them when we are afraid of them outshining us. Their souls shrivel and the light goes out of their eyes. This is the story of the Oedipal, devouring mother, or the evil stepmother in Tangled. This happens when we aren't actualized ourselves, and our children/students are all way have to ensure we are worth something.

In either case, we lose the person we love, because instead of inspiring them into expansion, we either drive them away, or we drive them to dilution and decay, thereby losing them through a thousand silent concessions.

Blog post: https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/we-live-in-a-pixel

Life is a picture, but you live in a pixel: https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/life-is-picture-but-you-live-in-pixel.html

Hugs being good for our health: http://youtu.be/GW5p8xOVwRo

Abraham gave his best, and got it back.

He sacrificed his best to what is highest.

JBP also was talking about the Pieta, the mother’s crucifixion. The job of the mother being to offer her son (her best, herself) to the world, for it to have its way with him.

So doing, our sons become men, able to contend with the brutality and complexity of life.

We let go. Completely. Mary’s left hand is raised, perhaps for hope, perhaps to symbolize letting go, perhaps in worship.

Jordan Peterson eloquently tied this into becoming friends with one’s adult children. How does one accomplish such a thing? By raising, then releasing them.

Jesus Christ operated entirely by invitation, never by force.

This is the same way your adult children come back to you as your friends.

“The complete abdication of force.”

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/notes-on-jordan-b-peterson-s-april-23-2024-lecture-in-austin-tx

These single-minded growers keep me inspired, by the fact that they are doing it for themselves. I don’t want to miss out on progress, excitement, and new learning.

They show me what is possible, and they prove that the common doesn’t have to be the inevitable.

The best thing they are doing to create a positive impact on the people around them is to become their best self, spiritually, intellectually, financially, and physically. And that’s not even why they’re doing it!

They hold me accountable by their very existence.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/accountability-i-don-t-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

Confidence: To have full trust

The etymology of these words reveals why we are so drawn to confidence and composure, and can be found here: https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/composure-and-confidence

These things happen iteratively, laboriously, and always intentionally.

That's power.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/on-defibrillation

Isolation > Self Sufficiency - Dependability - Interdependence > Codependence

How do we avoid the extremes, build a strong sense of self, and stop feeling at the effect of all of the opinions around us? How do we fortify our own confidence, so we can relate from a place of strength? What is the bridge between the extremes of isolation and codependence?

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/self-sufficiency-and-interdependence

What bothers you? That’s what calls you forward into who you could be. That’s what calls you forward into participating in the process of setting the world right, and there’s meaning in that.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/overwhelmed-by-beauty

Where did the innocence go?

Why do we automatically conflate feelings of appreciation, understanding and admiration with a desire to consume or own the person?What if we could love without seizing and grasping at the object of our affections? What if we learned to do that so well that we could give love and true encouragement to everyone we interacted with, while also being able to drink in the inspiration of a beautiful mind, to admire a capable body, to curiously study a vast and intricate soul? What if doing so expanded all of our hearts, emboldening us toward our own personal challenges in the process? Innocently, purely, seeing each other’s value?

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/connection-consumption

Dis:

The dis prefix is a negative prefix that means “not, or none.”

Traction:

1. The force that causes a moving thing to stick to the surface it is moving along
2. The power that is used to pull something
3. A way of treating broken bones in which a device gently pulls the bones back into place
4. The support, interest, etc., that is needed for something to succeed or make progress

Distraction:

The preclusion and impossibility of stability, grounding, momentum, power, movement, alignment, and progress.

......No big deal.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/distraction

There is a path set before me, each choice leading to the next, that only I can walk. Only I can play these roles and exert this influence on the quest unique to me. Nothing is wasted.

It’s a mandate.

It’s a beckoning to come out of the shadows, shake off the fear. To be fully engaged in now, and use the past as fuel to walk boldly into an unfamiliar future.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/fully-alive

Carissa takes us on an expanding and provoking journey, meandering through many contradictory lenses through which to practice friendship.

She explores at length the tension between self sufficiency and intimacy. The question is asked implicitly: What interconnections build a full life?

In my view, friendship is drastically neglected in religious and philosophical writings, which usually focus on romantic and familial relationships, as well as how to help those in need.

In stoicism, a true friend is someone who “activates our virtue.” The Buddhist idea that “there is no self without the other” is invoked here, as many of our expressions and principles cannot be embodied or enacted without another consciousness with whom to interface.

In Seneca’s account of friendship, as explained in this essay, there are three key ingredients to friendship: trust, self-disclosure, and attachment. These ingredients are what make individual relationships unique and irreplaceable.

Pondering the ideas in this essay and allowing them to colour the lenses through which I see and experience my own relationships has refined and defined, given a framework to, my beliefs and practices around solitude, reciprocity, sacrifice, and time spent within friendships while maintaining that “full self,” which is central to the stoic philosophy and imperative in a grounded, peaceful life.

I would love to hear what you think. The essay is here:

https://www.academia.edu/54211894/Completeness_Self_Sufficiency_and_Intimacy_in_Senecas_Account_of_F

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/anph.2021.0052

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/friendships-and-stoicism

Inspired by: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000587689256

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/flipping-the-script-on-dopamine-sourcing

Perhaps God's plans have more to do with our development, leading to our fulfillment, than they do with our ease.

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/grit-is-developed-when-there-is-no-escape

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/chosen-or-needed

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/saying-words

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000578074407

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/conversations-save-lives

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/chasing-excellence/id1170629044?i=1000561781908

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/purpose-to-focus-and-to-solve

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/personal-fulfillment-and-the-will-of-god

https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/changing-someone-s-mind

https://www.christianity.com/theology/theological-faq/how-did-lucifer-fall-and-become-satan-11557519.html

Read from my blog: https://www.roadlesstraveled.online/post/wanting-the-one-thing-we-cannot-have-adam-eve