Good Morning – Chris Asked me to step in this morning and do one of his audio because he is so enthusiastic for you to have variety in the voices. Today, October Fest Episode 9#. Big GAME or Small GAME – Dealing with Reality.

When we go through difficult times, we can either think the world is against us, or for us. With small picture thinking we always perceive that things happen against us because we take everything that happens personally. This is understandable because small picture thinking is personal. For example if we get a parking ticket, we identify with the attack on our personal resources. And so it’s easy to imagine that if a person is going through a legal dispute, a a domestic crisis, a business challenge that they will easily take everything that happens personally if they are fully immersed in small picture thinking. And there are even leaders who lead with this attitude. When something goes wrong for a leader who believes that their personal identity is the core reason the business is successful, then that individual will fight like tooth and nail to fix the wrong. That, in another language, is called anxiety, stress, exhaustion, fatigue, depression, mental health problem, addiction, and over reaction. But call it whatever you want, the source of it is small picture thinking.

The beauty of a religion that believes there is an omnipresent God, is that there is a competitor to the small picture thought. However, most of these omnipresent gods are simply extensions of the self which means that if something goes wrong we perceive we are being punished by some extension of our selves for not being good enough, for being bad, disobedient or whatever.

In the Himalayas of Nepal Sherpa’s prey and make offerings to the mountain before they climb on it. Is this a superstition or is there some value in climbing a mountain believing that you are welcome and wanted on it? When people die on the mountains, and you must remember many are Sherpa, then, these superstitions you would think would come into question. I most often, during the preparation ceremony for a mountaineering event, a monk will chant and the question will become whether the mountain wants them to climb or not. This is entirely intuitive on the part of the monk. And yet people still die on the mountain even when the monk has said it’s all good.

And so there must be a third variable. If the mountain has said yes to the climb, if the monk has said yes to the climb, there must be a third variable in the cone of consciousness we have not taken into account in order for this tradition and belief to survive through thousands of accidents. And that variable is called karma. Although in western words, sort of means punishment or something similar in the western world we do not have a language to explain merit. Karma in the east has a whole different meaning. And the purpose of having the notion of, in the east is to prevent people from having small picture thinking. Karma, describes a network that entangles the individual in a bigger story. The purpose of the notion of Karma is to therefore prevent individualism, which is our Western addiction, from overtaking the behaviour of an individual., Connect people to a bigger story that, in the notion of the Himalayan Sherpa, means that if something doesn’t go exactly according to plan for an individual, it was ultimately beyond that individuals reach to contain it.

Taking this insight further. Imagine you are climbing the vertical face of one of the most dangerous mountains in the world and you are worried about yourself. The very notion of self in such a situation would distract you from the process of being connected to the ice and feeling what is essentially the mountain holding you in its hands through the structure of the rock and ice. This relationship between the climber and the nature environment, requires extreme concentration but not on the self. The climber cannot be saying, am I good enough? The climber cannot think that the mountain has a vendetta against them. The climber cannot be thinking how do I feel right now and I wish I was home toasting marshmallows over and open fire. The climber must be thinking that the mountain and the climate are one unit and their process is to feel. This process of feeling is not about self, it is about feeling the guidance of the mountain. It is the identical feeling one gets when riding a road racing bike at 90 or 100 km/h down a very steep hill. One can easily revert to worrying about themselves and to whether they are capable of writing at the speed and what might happen if something goes wrong, or, more likely to succeed, is to feel the bike the road and the wind and become part of the picture beyond the small picture of self.

And so it is that when there is a divorce in a situation where an individual has small picture thinking they take everything about this divorce as an assault on them personally. But a divorce, is simply a crack in the mountain they must climb through in order to reach the summit. A divorce is not a measure of incompetence or anything unless we have small picture thinking and take the divorce as some sign that we are not adequate or that we are small. A divorce is as much a part of life as a marriage. But we celebrate one with what I think is over dramatic emphasis and we commiserate the other with what I think is overdramatic emphasis. The process of life, is not about marriage or divorce nor is it about a bond that prevents people growing into their true self but rather a process that may bring children into the world and provide the resources to care for them. But most people get married for the small picture, the self and the ideal that they will have pleasure and avoid pain through this mechanism. We know that is not true.

And so there are variables at play that we do not take into account when we have small picture thinking. When our story is about me, why me, poor me, disappointed me, threatened me, inadequate me, the world is against me pity party me, we have shrunk to the most disgusting shape of a human being possible. The identical circumstances that face a person with small picture thinking also confront a person with big picture thinking. But in big picture thinking there is a reason greater than the self and pleasure or pain, that things happened. It is this belief that there is karma that is very important to our existence on this planet that makes this difference tangible.

Now, I never use the word, with people in coaching because it disempowers them. Not disempowers them in the true meaning of karma but disempowers them in the western translation of karma into some form of punishment or heavenly inflicted negative experience caused by guilt. But I do say there are ways of interpreting circumstances that keep individuals in a state of big picture thinking. And this is why the universal laws, and their translation into the universal laws of nature, become such a core separation between those who are living a life shortened by stress and worry in those who live every day for a reason greater than themselves.

What do you do if those people you work with and you live with have small picture thinking and you have big picture thinking. What do you do if your boss reacts and takes everything personally when you can see that it has got nothing to do with them personally? What do you do if your spouse thinks everything that is said to them is about them and is a criticism when it is actually a compliment. People come to work and home with wins and memories of the past. When they do they do not meet you, but a cardboard cut out of a person they want you to be. Unfortunately, the boundaries of the cardboard cut out and made out of memories of things they don’t want and therefore the more things they don’t want in life, such as the experiences of a previous relationship or the insecurity of losing a job or doing badly, the more of those they have the smaller the hole in the cardboard cut out you are meant to fit through. You might think that if you behave really really well and do everything you’re take it personally boss, or you’re take it personally partner, wants you to do that you will eventually fit through this cardboard cut out slot but the truth is the very opposite. The more compliant you are to their cardboard cut out expectation the smaller the hole in the cardboard cut out gets.

The more you shrink in compliance to fit through the expectation of another person as an individual, the smaller the whole gets. What do you are doing is enabling them to belief that there is such a thing as this ideal individual who is the opposite to something they dislike grossly. Now, if you look at this story through the lens of big picture thinking you will understand that there is a universal principle that “whatever you judge, you breed, attract, or become.” And so that cardboard cut out becomes impossible for the very individual who drew it, to fit through, or the children won’t fit through, or you won’t fit through as a partner, or people at work won’t fit through. There is a golden guarantee that whatever you judge you breed attract or become. And so the small of that cardboard cut out becomes through either religious or self-help aggrandizement, the more confronted an individual will become about their judgements. And so there is nowhere to hide. And this is the definition of karma. That if you judge something you will bring it into your life and it is not in the form of a punishment, it is in the form of the universe and love because the universe depends on you either evolving your judgements or returning the matter, the atoms molecules and subatomic particles of which you are made, in to the recycling system called birth life death.

Returning your particles into the recycling system of the universe is not a punishment it is simply a recognition that you have individualised to such a degree that you cannot evolve and it is time to give the rent a car back to the universe so it can create another one. Remember that nothing can be created or destroyed just changed form. So the atoms molecules and subatomic particles of the entire universe can only be recycled in different forms. This recycling system is also called the manifestation process. You can take energy and matter in one form and cause it to appear in a different form if you can control your small picture thinking and instead think big.

In the big game of life, the universe, the mountain, the car, the marriage, the divorce, the job, your leadership, your wealth, your health all belong to one single entire game plan. When the game plan does not go according to your expectations it does not mean you have become a failure, it is simply an opportunity for you to grow and connect closer and deeper to a big game plan. But you can also choose to play the small game and read all the books about meditation and about how happy you would be if you simply changed something simple in your life. The small game fills nearly $7 trillion. worth of the world economy. So you can see it is a very attractive commercial process to engage people in the idea that they are a complete failure and a mess and they need to fix it up otherwise they are not worthy of love. And this game has become epidermic. You are part of that epidermic when you think that when something goes wrong in your every day life, like you dropped the milk bottle or you burnt the toas, and you think about it in terms of what a failure you are or how stupid you were for doing it you missed the big picture and you become part of the epidermic of individualised self obsession and narcissism. But you might also consider a little bit of superstition such as the Sherpa people teach because this works even in the most terrible circumstances to sustain you in your belief that you are part of something far bigger than your tiny little weenie bitchy itsy weenie tiny mini screen a little dizzy weenie Deanies dizzy little self.

Viewpoint is everything. On previous blogs and podcast I have taken you on a journey outside this tiny little bubble called self and travelled with you to the far reaches of the centre of the universe. That journey can only be done by sort. There is no physical way even light can travel there in the time we considered to be our tiny fragment of reality called our life. Light could not travel from the centre of the universe to you, your tiny weenie itsy-bitsy you, in your lifetime. But it can travel to you through thought and we diminish this capacity because we create a bubble in which we think that we think but don’t think. When you burn the toast, it is not about you. It is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to smell smoke, it’s an opportunity to think about the origin of the food that has been wasted, it is an opportunity to think about the electricity that was wasted and it was an opportunity to think about the beauty of the black crust of carbon that covers what was once an edible thing. You can see this burnt toast as a miracle or you can see it as a reflection of how stupid you are. But at the end of the day the largest you can consider through the lens of the small game is the size of your ego. Everything becomes about you, bigger you, better you, smart are you, more love worthy you and the list will go on until the cows come home and you can buy all the books and listen to all the YouTube videos about you being you and all the American actors trying to make money selling videos about how fantastic it is to be you. Or you can shake free of this.

In the big game everything is connected. Yesterday, my client complained that they were being micromanaged. They wanted to condemn the leader who was micromanaging them. And I asked them where are you in your life being not micromanaged? They went into shock at the idea that there could be balance. Another client asked me why do I get insecure in a meeting when I am talking about things that I am absolutely confident about. And I asked them are you being the same person in the meeting as you are when you are at home in your private shit life or are you coming to the meeting faking that you are a business executive with high-powered intelligence. Because nobody treats you better than you treat yourself if you treat yourself like a clown and then go to a meeting acting like a genius then the way you treated yourself outside the meeting is going to roof be reflected in what you fear other people will see in you. Everything is connected in the big game. There are no such thing as accidents in the big game. There is nothing to blame because nothing went wrong. There is nothing to grieve because nobody can die they can only change form. Every single personal trauma can be witnessed through the lens of the small game or the big game. And it is easy to become the champion of the small game but lose in the big game. In the big game there are rules and it is a beautiful game. In the small game there are rules and it is a very confusing game because it is all about Mini Mini me I mean me I me me me me me me I I I I I I.

That’s the end of this episode of Oktoberfest. With Spirit Chris