For the entirety of my life, I have been interested in dissecting what made successful people successful. With that, I have spent a lot of my time observing the mediocre, as it is necessary to understand what not to do before one can understand what to do.
Through my years of study, observation, and creating with the intention of piecing the puzzle together — I have an argument to share with you. This argument has been formed by my studies in spirituality, philosophy, business, health, performance, mindset, and many other domains. As much as I want this to be one size fits all approach, it may not be. However, I do believe success to be intuitive. The problem is that people drown their intuition with modern distractions.
This argument will have flaws. I encourage you to question it, research it, and form your own view. My point with my writing is to understand. To drop a reference point. To brighten more areas on the map that I am crafting with all of my content. This map will have holes, but those holes will be patched throughout the years I continue with this letter.
This argument forms the base for my mission of Modern Mastery. To tap into your intuition, live by it, and take advantage of the modern tools at your disposal — rather than letting them destroy your life. Let us begin.
Living In Accordance With Nature
Per some of my previous letters on mental minimalism and perception, I have discussed this topic before. Flowing with “what is” and living by nature. I was listening to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on my walk the other day and noticed that he often says we must “live in accordance with nature.” To my former self, this wouldn’t have made sense. Now, I have some more firepower to make sense of it for you.
For those that are not familiar with holism or holonic theory, I will give you a brief rundown. A “holon” — a term coined by Ken Wilber — is the building block of reality. It is both a whole and a part. An atom is a whole, but it is also a part of a molecule. A molecule is a whole, but it is also a part of a cell. These holons span in infinite directions across all planes of reality. All the way up, all the way down. Forming an intimate connection with other holons. You are a holon. The universe is a holon. A building is a holon. A grain of sand is a holon. Everything is a holon. Before we dive deeper, I would encourage you to pause and become awestruck by this. How far down does this go? How far up?
Per the image below, this reflects on a macro level with patterns being noticed throughout major religions and philosophies. If you want to dive deeper into all of this, I recommend the book A Brief Explanation Of Everything by Ken Wilber to start.
“Holons” have 12 tenets associated with them. These tenets reflect their evolutionary behavior. For now, understand that we have emerged from nature to body to mind to spirit. Plants, animals, and humans that are now having spiritual experiences. Holons emerge and evolve while bringing everything prior along with it. At our root — our being — we are nature. Yet we have animalistic drives and characteristics. And now we are in the stage of mind. Battling with the ego, understanding it, and bringing it under our control while tapping into the spiritual “realm.”
I know that this is either boring you or piquing your interest to explore more, so I will move on and let the explorers of the unknown do their thing. Before that, understand that nature is our root. Nature is not mediocre, bad, or evil. How can it be when those are perceptions created by mind?
Childlike Wonder
You as a child were your closest to nature. You were confident, curious, creative, loving, playful, and authentic. You acted based on your intuition and childlike impulse. When cultural conditioning came into play and your mind began to develop, you started forming your beliefs, biases, opinions, etc. You started to cover up that childlike wonder that you had. Your mind started to take over, and you began to live off of conditioned impulse rather than with nature.
The point of this argument is to say that it is in your biology (nature) to love, create, play, and pierce the world with your authentic confidence. Especially if you want to reach new heights and “emerge” to the next stage of development (more on that in a bit).
“But Dan, if we only acted from our intuition we may end up doing something stupid.”
Well yeah, that’s kinda the point. Why does doing something stupid scare you if it was the direction you were meant to move in? Aside from that, this is why we have evolved to the stage of mind. It is a survival mechanism. A tool. You can frame your focus through vision, goals, and priorities to make conscious and positive decisions. When we strip away the negatives from cultural conditioning and get closer to nature — our intuition becomes more accurate. Curiosity becomes our guide. Self-education and self-reliance start to trump dependency. We live the life that we were supposed to.
I want to bring up Ken Wilber’s pre-trans model / fallacy. It reminds me of why I believe studying metaphysics, philosophy, and spirituality is better than reading endless books (however those are good for short-term strategy to make money.)
Have you seen the IQ bell curve meme? That is modeled after Ken’s pre-trans fallacy that reflects across all developmental domains of life. There’s a reason why this meme always makes you think, “damn that’s true.”
You have to go through the stages of development (pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational) in many domains of life — and life as a whole. In terms of your skill set, you must go through the stages of development until that skill becomes art. Elite athletes often consider their top performances to be spiritual. Meaning they have developed themselves and their skill to a point where they have transcended the need to think about it.
And that is the point. You HAVE to look like a simpleton. You HAVE to make mistakes and embarrass yourself. You have to reach the “peak of mount stupid” and “valley of despair” before you reach the “slope of sustainability.” As Joey Justice once said, “one must be cringe before they can become based.” Just to become cringe again. An enlightened version of cringe.
Many ancient teachers, spiritual gurus, and modern thought leaders have landed on a similar conclusion for your overarching life purpose. It is to “raise the collective human consciousness,” “pass down your experiences,” and other variations of that. How do we do that? By getting in touch with nature, listening to it, letting all of it’s positive qualities guide us towards our natural inclinations, and create accordingly.
When you have stripped away the perceptions of the mind, brought order to it, and have a curious open mind, you allow destiny to play its part. You become conscious of the modern distractions that stand in your way and you let curiosity run the show. You learn, use, and experience accordingly. Increasing your awareness, understanding, and consciousness. The beautiful thing about this is that the Create-or economy is booming. Modern online business has become a place where people can share their unique and diverse (positive and natural) experiences to “raise the collective human consciousness” at scale. To impact the world through loving, authentic, and creative endeavors that help others develop across all domains of life.
Focus Framing
The mind craves understanding. It makes sense of things through order. Map making, story telling, concepts, labels, symbols and the rest. That’s all your reality is. Layer after layer of stories and concepts based on the lens of perception that you view the world from — usually formed by culture and programming.
This is not a bad thing. It is a thing that you need be made conscious of. The mind loves order, so why not order it in a manner that aligns being and becoming? Nature and growth. Some call this mindset, but I like to think of it as “focus framing.” Considering our attention is being manipulated and stolen from us through modern distractions, we have to channel our attention in a positive, natural direction through focus.
Again, this is why The Creation Hierarchy and/or consistent use and iteration inside The Power Planner is so important. Whether you know if your vision, routines, goals, priorities, and the rest are “good” or not — simply writing them down will start to train your mind towards them. You will become more conscious of a better life. You can begin to iterate on your vision because these things act as reference points. Your curiosity will begin to show because you will notice the things that potentially align with your vision, goals, projects, etc. Then, all at once, as if it were a messenger from the divine, you will feel a “pull” to go all-in on something that YOU want to do. Not what you have been programmed to want to do.
If you don’t want to end up mediocre, you need to order your mind — frame your focus — towards a future of excellence. You need to write down what you currently want. Observe what you don’t want without judgement. With time, allow your vision to gain clarity.
You have to empty your mind of everything except for present moment observation, execution, and being (80%) paired with subtle reminders of your vision, goals, and priorities that spark excitement in you (20%). This battle creates tension. Tension creates story. Story creates meaning.
Stop Caring
Recently I have been toying more and more with “not caring” about anything. It’s taken a lot of practice and development. I’ve “stopped caring” about health and instead make conscious decisions that are aligned with who I want to become. I don’t have to waste energy on thinking through decisions when they are already made. I’ve “stopped caring” about business and build out projects according to my interest. If I hadn’t gone through the overthinking “rational” phase, I wouldn’t have the depth, nuance, or information necessary to make those projects work with little effort.
Life now has become more about doing exactly what I “want” with a conscious mind just to unveil the path of what I really want — just to repeat the cycle over and over again. This tension creates meaning while I move in an infinitely positive direction in the domains I choose to develop myself in.
With all of this, I’m still figuring it out. The main lesson that I’ve pulled from all of my studies is that you should simply do what you want with a conscious mind.
Ending the letter here. If you want to develop your mind, body, spirit, and business — join Modern Mastery HQ here for proven frameworks, systems, step-by-step roadmaps, and personalized help.
