OK. So I woke up at, at three this morning and I, I was, I opened up my notes file and I was getting ready to go and I was psyching myself up over the last few hours of yesterday. Really excited about um processing a, a large volume of notes this morning because I just haven't been able to do that. I
, I keep getting uh pulled off of that to do other things. And um I'm, I'm really excited to get these books furthered along and I had this uh this view of some pictures to help explain awareness. And I thought this and this is what I always do is when I have an idea, I write it down, sometimes it's
faster to just draw the pictures in uh this, this slideshow program I use on um on, on my Mac um called Keynote. So it's not powerpoint. But anyway, I, I will just generate a few slides and usually I put it in this file I have, that's an enormous slideshow of visuals. I've created that I haven't used
yet or visuals that I will reuse. Anyway, it's just, I have various levels of in progress. Work with uh slideshows. So I was just figuring, I would jot down a few ideas and then move on and I looked up and two hours had passed and I have a whole presentation done and as I reviewed the presentation, um
, which I didn't do so closely. So, hopefully there aren't any egregious mistakes here or undone items. Anyway. I, as I was looking over it, I thought I, I can't keep this to myself. It looks like it's publishable as is. So let's just roll with it. And um I'm happy about that because I think that there
are things in this presentation that will help people. But um well, I know that they, that there are, but this is gonna burn up even more time from my notes. So um I hope this is worth it to you. Earn this. I guess what I'm saying, it's famous scene from Saving Private Ryan that has significance to many
things. Um OK, so we're talking about the hierarchy of awareness. Now, if you've read books that I've written or blog posts or videos, you know, I, you've probably heard me use this word awareness. It's a word that other people use too. But I think my definition of this varies quite a bit. So we're gonna
go into that. Um As of right now, it's October 26th, 2023. Um The books that I've written about this that will help you understand the things we're gonna talk about here. Let's see through faith is one and definitely the glory of God is intelligence. Now, this presentation I hope will remain online for
years to come. And by the time you see this, those books may or may not be available anymore. Um And they may have been superseded by something better. And it's certainly the case that I am going to describe a lot more about this in books that are not yet published. I already have a lot of that content
written and that's, that's what I'm not working on uh this morning because I'm doing this. But um so, so anyway, you'll just have to find those things and read them. So let's talk about this definition. What, what do I mean when I say awareness? Well, basically everything, I mean, that's not a very useful
definition, but I've made this diagram to kind of indicate this, this space of your life. So reality is a thing um in case you didn't know and it's external to any of us, it, it exists and what we think about that and how we interact with it is different from what it actually is. And so when we talk
about awareness, it's, it's our individual representation of reality. That's what it is. So, um but it's, but it's not limited to whatever we might think, feel et cetera about reality. It's the overlap, I guess a Venn diagram would have been good here. It's, it's the overlap between that and what actually
is. So, it's, uh, it's the overlap between the truth and what we think of the truth. And so, um, within that is gonna be an awful lot. You're gonna have your work situation, what you understand about things, your, your, uh, the people in your life, the pets in your life, um, your own family, what you
do for fun and, uh, all of these things where you live. So it's everything. Ok. Um Now, how does this factor into your life? Well, it defines the framework in what you think. Now, whenever I say things like this, it's, it's painful to me. It's probably painful to you too for other reasons. But I try
to minimize, but it's painful to me because I can see and feel everything I would like to say about this grossly understated idea, but it is what it is. So, awareness defines the framework of what you think about and how you think it's contained within what I mean by awareness. That's not all also what
you say, not just what you talk about, but how you're able to communicate and why you do and then also what you feel. So, so hopefully you're getting a sense for how important this is and that's the theme that's gonna recur throughout this presentation. So it's a framework for, for what you feel and
how much of it you feel and why you feel it and about what so it, it even defines how you interact with the world. So this is where you're standing, that's what that's supposed to be. And so this box around everything is really important because your awareness is finite. It's, it's, it's how you reduce
or what you reduce the infinity of reality into because reality is continuous and infinite. But your awareness is finite. And so it's, and, and it's discreet, it's neither continuous nor infinite. And so you draw a box around reality and that's reality as far as you know it and that's awareness now,
got that out of the way. Now, we need to talk about how awareness is hierarchical. Now, even before we get there with what I've just described about drawing a box around reality already, you can, you can freely understand that you could draw a big box or a little box, right? But that's not the only dimensionality
of the situation. OK. Let me explain the first way we're going to look at this is differences between people. Now, this is a theme that's enormously important. It connects to basically everything, the differences between people. I mean, however, it's extremely unpleasant for people to hear, talk about
believe or live. A big part of that is modern culture. And I don't wanna get too much into this, but it turns out that we need to hit this sacred cow head on. We need to strap it with explosives and detonate it because it's in the way of basically everything. So I'm not gonna shy away from it. I'm just
calling it out so that we can recognize the fact that I acknowledge how many people uh don't believe what it, what that idea. And uh the fact that I believe that it's extraordinarily important and I believe I can make an, a lock tight case for why. But we'll just put that out there and keep rolling.
Let's talk about differences in awareness between people. So here's our box and now we're going to describe some qualities of differences that could occur between people. So the first and it may be most obvious is the contents of the box. So in here we have this medal which is referring to someone's
um accolades in life, their, their accomplishments, whether those are self perceived or acknowledged by others. Um Maybe you couldn't care less about that. Maybe you don't care about achievements in life or maybe um those achievements that you care about are very different than the ones that someone
else would care about. Maybe they're not externally visible at all. Maybe all you care about is what other people can see and so on and we could go through all of these, you know, some people don't want kids, some people would do anything for kids. And there's, there are people that, that occupy the
every bit of the space between those two extremes and so on and so forth. So the contents can be very different. All right. What about the relationships between these things? What do I mean by that? So for some people, their work life is very much connected to their family life and beyond the scope of
the degree of the connection, the, the contents of the connection can differ widely as well. So, so there are people who, who, for example, the only reason they work is to play, a lot of people are like that. Um some people work to be able to support a family. Some people have a family just to feel better
about themselves, which happens to be the same reason they work. And so both of these would be connected in that way. And so uh you could go through this and talk about it endlessly. But the point is that within our awareness are the relationships between the sub components inside our awareness if that
makes sense and those differ between people significantly. OK. What else? The ranking? This is a very important and fun one. So in this, in this overly simplified diagram that we've been using of the box and the things inside the box, even with AAA an arbitrary minimization of the quantity of these things
and the scope of them even within this, just these symbols I'm using if we took 10 random people, even amongst the subset of people who would bother watching this video, which that, that group is probably more self similar than a random sample of the population. But even with all of these constraints
, I bet we would have very different rankings between us all if we were to rank all of these things by importance. Some people, like I say, they just kind of live to be entertained. Some people live for, for uh accomplishments, whether those are externally recognizable or only internal. Some people live
for their Children. Some people live for their dog. You, you might be someone like that or you might know someone like that. It's quite something and you really worry about what's gonna happen in 7 to 12 years and the dog kicks the bucket. Um Some people live for their friends. Some people live for work
. I mean, I'm sorry for, for where they live, some people live for where they work. Some people live for what they learn and what they know and some people live for farming. So, so within all of these, that, that when I say some people live for in, in that person's square that's at the top. OK? And I
didn't rank these top to bottom. I did this V shape, sideways, V shape, this great uh less than sign because um it, we're just confined by space. OK? But the the height of something indicates its rank in this diagram. So for any given person, any one of these might be number one and then all the other
rankings could likewise differ, right? So um this can be very different between people. Now, what's not shown here. But that needs to be mentioned is that when it comes to value, it's not just a question of rank order, it's a question of quantity. So by how much do you value recreation for some people
, it might be number one or anywhere else, but maybe the, the absolute value that they derive from it is not as much as what someone else's number one would be because it turns out and this is a slight side note. But, but very much a factor of reality that not all things can produce the sa same levels
of value. They're not capable of it. Everything has a range and the minimum zero always, but the maximum differs. And this is another factor of awareness. But in the, in the property of the thing itself, there is a maximal amount of value. And for this reason, there is a maximum amount of joy in each
and every possible thing, person, situation, idea whatever in life. And so uh if you start thinking about this for too long, you will, you will come up with the question, what things or situations or ideas or people or whatever are capable of producing the greatest joy. And the answer to that question
is what things et cetera are capable or, or have the greatest potential value. Those are the, the, the answers to those questions are the same. And I will go ahead and solve the puzzle for you. It's the objects that are created in God's image, namely people because um God himself has the greatest value
. So we will discuss that much further later. But that's not to say every single person is more important than anything that's not a person and have some visuals for that to be shown in another presentation. But anyway, role, um what role do all of these things have in your life? And what's your role
relative to them? So conveniently in this square, I've left the middle blank. Uh And that's because for most people, they are the center of their own universe. So that's their role. But this would differ for different people. Um Some people are closer than others to this idea of altruism or selflessness
and everything will be different for between people. OK? In terms of your role. Now, this, this um what could we call this? I guess this categorization of differences between people. Um It's not the best one and it's not exhaustive or anything else. It's just uh it's just a scaffold to get us thinking
about these sorts of things. It's not very important to get tied down to the particulars. Here, we're just trying to open our minds a little bit. OK? So why do these differences matter? And here again is another, we could talk about this for a much longer period of time and we, we should and we will
one day, but just to do service to, to set down a flag and say, by the way, there's a lot more here, we're just gonna have to mark and come back. First question is what do these differences look like? Ok. That's its own big, big, big, big topic because it's, it's not, if you think it's simple, it, it's
not ok. But what difference would these differences make between people? Well, it's gonna, it's, it's going to cause a difference in what they, what they do and why they do it. Which if that were the end of the list, that'd be enough. It'd be a very big deal, but it's not the end of the list. It determines
what they accomplish in life, what they can do for, for others, their, their potential and how much like God they can become, which incidentally that bullet is a synonym for all the others combined. I, I like to restate those things in non-religious terms. And I also like to precede the religious terms
with the non-religious ones so that your brains don't immediately revert back to the religious mindset. And I say revert because the religions of the world have a very reductive mindset, they shouldn't, should be the opposite, but we're not there yet. So it matters a lot. Ok. But this isn't the only
difference is that exist in awareness. So there are differences between people, but depending on the choices you make there, you will see changes to your own awareness. So um there are differences within you over time, your own awareness will change over time radically. In fact, so we go back to our
square that represents awareness. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna squish this down and put it on its side. And um that becomes important because this is on a hierarchy. So this is that same square, the the colored parts have gone away just to simplify it. But it turns out that there is a hierarchy
of awareness. Now, this hierarchy also exists between people, but that's not the focus of this presentation. We're just talking about you over time. So suppose this, this uh represents your awareness and you can go up and you can go down, you can ascend and you can descend. OK. Now the question is what
are the differences between these levels? And then we're gonna talk about how you move between them. So this is the list that we've already gone through because I I said the, the hierarchy, it's between people. It's also within a person over time. It's the same, they're the same categories of different
differences, contents, relationships, ranking and role. So let's zoom into each of these a little bit. OK. And what I would like you to do is think about exactly what within these things could change as you move around in the hierarchy of awareness. So as far as contents go, there's a whole list of new
things that could come along, new people, new actions, new, I and I don't just mean, changing your actions, I mean, becoming aware of completely new possibilities. Like if you've never seen a person juggle before, how on earth would you come up with that idea? But once you see it, you say, well, I could
learn to do that or I could go see someone do it or whatever and, and now you have all these new possible options, new ideas, uh new places, new situations and so on. Again, non exhaustive list, just enough to get your mind going. So here's my question to you, how many of these things can coexist with
what is already there? And of course, the answer is it depends because that's gonna be specific on what's already there and what the new thing is, some of these things can cour but a surprising number of them cannot. And this is something that we need to really uh draw emphasis to because I don't think
many people realize this. They really think that they can move forward in, in this case, we're talking about awareness, but we'll just say in the broader scope of life while holding on to everything that they already value. And that's just not the case progression in life is almost always in exchange
, not just an augmentation without replacement. OK. That's very, very important. What we think of as a kid. Have you ever seen like a little toddler? Maybe too young to walk, but they can crawl around. They're really mobile and, um, they're in like a room with a lot of toys. Maybe you're going to visit
someone and they just put out all their toys and there's two little toddlers playing while the parents talk or something. And that toddler will just start hoarding toys. Right. Going, just taking every little toy and maybe it's not so extreme. But you can imagine this even if it's not exactly what you've
seen. And the toddlers just got this pile of toys. I had a dog like this who would do this and she would just sneak off. It's the dog that, that, um, I recently had to put down bubble gum. Um, but she would, she would sneak around the house and collect up all the bones and all the toys and also like
little random things and she would just hoard them in her little dog cage that we put the dogs in at night. So they don't tear things up. So, um, people think that that's what life is like. It's just this treasure hunt where you have an unlimited, uh, cart that you can put all your treasure into and
you haul it around everywhere you go. But just like homeless people, you look in this cart and you're like, what are you dragging this around for? Right. We're not meant to be hoarders. And this analogy it fits very well. The, the point is that um so often in life, what we want requires us letting go
of something we already have. And that's a point, I'm going to talk a lot more about later. So that's probably enough of an emphasis on the fact that there will be removals, not just additions, there are replacements and for the sake of um doing my duty here, I have to say that that often it's not just
a, an instant swap. Often you have to let go of things whose limits you've seen and remain empty in that thing before you get the thing that replaces it. And there might be quite some time between those two events and it's all part of the necessity of how all this works. So if in your life, you don't
have recognizable instances where you've let go of things that you consider valuable because you have reason to believe that there's something better out there. And if you don't have recognizable instances where you've remained empty in those things or, or maybe even you have that situation. Now, if
that's not the case, there is so much more out there for you that you cannot access without adopting those behaviors, it's absolutely essential. It's not negotiable. And this is why one reason why it's so painful to see people um say things like, oh, thanks for this. It's exactly what I believe or I
heard what you had to say about this and it matches my understanding of it like, good for you kind of thing. Well, no, that's not what I wanna hear at all. I mean, don't tell me what I wanna hear, tell the truth but, but just know that that's not going to be interpreted by me in the way that you intend
because what I'm looking for and what, what God is looking for because this is what progress requires is, I'm looking for things where people, where comments, where people say uh I'd never imagined this before or I'd heard about this and I thought it was terrible before. And now because of the way you've
described this. Uh Now I'm thinking about it, or at least this differs from what I believe, but I'm, I'm willing to put it up on the shelf and just let it simmer for a while or the way you've explained this, it makes total sense and now I see it and I didn't see it before and hopefully you can see why
I feel that way, right? So that's, that's the goal is that it's all about the, the delta, the change, the, the improvement, not just change, change does not equal improvement, but uh all improvement requires change. Most change is actually not towards improvement. Um And we could talk about that but
um OK, so that's contents, people, actions, ideas, places, situations, et cetera, they're gonna be new things and some old things are gonna have to go and there will also be some new things that don't conflict with anything pre-existing and, and for most people, all of the improvement they ever experience
is limited to those few things that fit that criteria. As long as it doesn't mess with anything already here, you can come. But, uh, if you, if you mess around with anything already here, I'm not interested. That's the attitude of most people and that's not an attitude of loving truth or goodness or
God or beauty or anything good or useful even. Ok. So um relationships also change now, I don't mean relationships limited to, you know, the relationship between you and your dog or you and your spouse or whatever. I'm I'm saying this relationship idea. Where was it here? Right? The relationship between
things and your awareness. Um Sorry, we were here. So, what about ranking? So um I'm sorry, I jumped ahead and I wasn't ready yet. Um How do your relationships change? Well, they change because of your beliefs, specifically the laws of cause and effect that you have discovered and live now? What the
heck am I talking about there? So I know a lot of you have heard me say these words before but let's say that this is your first video ever or you forget. Um Maybe just examples is the best way of doing this. Why would you understand, work to have something to do with where you live? Well, because you
have to pay bills, but how do you know, that bills require money and how do you know, money comes from work and, and how exactly do you choose where to work and when to work? And so just with a few questions, we've taken this thing, it seems very simple that people take for granted and we've added quite
a bit of sophistication but not arbitrarily. It's actually there, you see, humans were experts at making really complicated. Things seem simple. Now, unfortunately, that skill usually doesn't occur in a way where we're helping other people actually simplify or ourselves, actually simplify things in a
way that doesn't, that's not lossy, that doesn't lose efficacy. Usually we're just throwing things out left and right until we get down, we've whittled it down to something we can deal with and it really doesn't matter how many critical details are missing or you know how much this is gonna explode in
our face in five seconds. Um But we're really good at simplifying things and not noticing things intentionally and unintentionally. And that's a conservation of energy situation. But if you really want to understand something, you have to look at it and you have to think about it and you have to dig
it's uncomfortable for most, but you can get used to it. So sorry. Um That's in a nutshell. What I mean, your beliefs, your beliefs are putative, putative laws of cause and effect and that's you, you take reality and you slap on to it your best guess as to how things work. OK. How things are related
, how they interact, what the inputs are, what the outputs are. You say? You know, if, for, for a long time people believed, if I want to make a decent salary, I need to go to college. It's not true belief. But for a long time people had that belief. So that was a putative law of cause and effect. It
wasn't a true one. They're just estimates the real law is a cause and effect. That's actual reality. That's bedrock. It's not gonna change. It is what it is. But our estimates of those, that's what beliefs are. So anyway, um your relationships change between the things in your awareness when your beliefs
change and your beliefs are your putative laws of cause and effect. So hopefully, that's clear enough cause what we're gonna see is the same thing is true for ranking and the same thing is true for role. So at the end of the day, we have these as four bullets, but there's a better way to represent this
as two things. There's contents and then there's relationships, ranking and role. There's basically there is what is and there is how we see it, how we value it, what relationships we believe exist between it and so on. Right. So how did the changes happen in this set of our uh this, this subset of our
awareness? How did these changes happen? There are two ways involuntary exposure and those are basically external changes. I mean, we're agents in that because if you're walking down the street and you see something you didn't, you've never seen before, you were walking down the street, right? But this
was presented to you in reality. So that's involuntary exposure. You find things you're not looking for and then there's intentional searching, which is, you look for things that you haven't found, right? But here's the kicker, the other category, your beliefs, those change in the same exact way through
involuntary exposure and through intentional searching. So now let's take a closer look at the first of those because these are really important, you know, they, they overlap. It's really nice to see a whole bunch of things that can change for the better with the same inputs, right? It's like if you're
obese and you lose weight, a whole bunch of things are gonna change for the better. It's not just that you'll uh eat less or have better blood panels or whatever, less achy knees. It's that all these other things, all these things together will happen. It's not just one thing. So that's always a good
way to gain efficiency is find the inputs that change a whole lot of outputs. In other words, the inputs that have the greatest impact. So these are really important. So let's look at the, the first one. OK, which is involuntary exposure. So now we've talked about what is and now we're, we're going to
transition to what to do about it. So, what are the sources of involuntary exposure? Here's a, here's a uh uh a subset of the list, unsolved problems, unsatisfied desires, unanswered questions, betrayal, which is when your expectations of another person are disappointed. That's a strong word. People
don't like to use it. It's like hate and lying. There are things that normal people do all the time that normal people refuse to label as such because it makes them feel bad about themselves. And then there's unexpected events, there may be others, but this is a good enough list. OK? Now there are a
few keys about this that I want to draw attention to. The first is when we were talking about involuntary exposure before I showed you this slide. I'm pretty sure that what you were expecting under that heading is something like you're walking down the street and a car hits you or you're living your
life and you get cancer. Sure. OK. But those are seen as rare events. It's questionable whether they should be, but they are seen that way. And the thing about rare events is that most normal people pretend that rare equals. I don't have to worry about it. It's never gonna happen to me. But if you transcend
that specific example that you're thinking of and you look at what the broader layout is, what you're going to find is that in generic terms, these sorts of things happen all of the time. Please tell me you don't have any problems in your life that are unsolved. I guarantee you, you do. Please tell me
you don't have any desires in your life that are unsatisfied. I guarantee you, you do. You might have questions that are unanswered. A surprising number of people don't ask questions. I've met people that are not aware that they've been betrayed yet. And that's because our perception on that dimension
is determined by our own. Um How often we do it ourselves. This is one of many qualities that are impossible to see by those who do it. And those are all negative things by the way, like lying. If you talk to a liar and you start start describing what honesty is. They, they will assume that they're honest
people and they'll also assume that most people are not liars, but it's because they're liars, they can't see because their threshold or perception is uh pretty bad. So I, I fully expect there are people who don't have unanswered questions and who feel like they've never been betrayed, but actually they
have been betrayed, but it's only at the degree they've betrayed others. So they don't really notice. Um And then as far as unexpected events, again, a truthful, a truthful, um a truthful gaze into your own life will reveal many of these, but most people don't pay attention to them. Therefore, you might
come away saying, well, I don't have any of those until one really big hits. And it crosses through that threshold of perception that you have. The point is these things happen all the time, all of the time daily, in, in aggregate, they happen daily, but you probably don't notice hardly any of them.
Now, what are the differences between how we can experience these things perceive, et cetera? So, so if we're talking about how to change your awareness, and alternatively, if we're comparing the awareness of two or more people, the question is, what, what are the metrics here? So when these sources
of involuntary exposure crop up, there are going to be differences in what you see that comes down to how sensitive you are. Now, I don't mean that in the common use of the word. Uh oh I, I will avoid that pitfall of jumping into talking about that. What I mean is how extreme does it have to be before
you notice? How extreme does the involuntary exposure have to be before you notice. So for example, if we go back an unsolved problem, how big of a problem does it need to be before you notice? So for example, you have a job and I was just talking with a person who's this is their situation, you have
a job and you know, your boss doesn't like you and you know that they would probably do anything they could to get rid of you. And, you know, the only reason you still have a job is that they're limited in what they can do to get rid of you. So, the, the, the overlap between the tools they have at hand
and what they're willing to do, you still have a job. So maybe for you that's not an unsolved problem. But in reality, it is because the second conditions change so that the tools they have at hand that they're willing to employ become sufficient to get rid of you. They're going to get rid of you. Years
ago. I was talking with a friend of mine and he had explained to me that, that his, his boss really liked him, but his boss's boss hated him and it was for political reasons. And even though this person is not political, but they weren't political in the right way. And, um, he knew that if there was
ever going to be a layoff, he would be the first to go because that's what you do when you're that kind of person, you get rid of all the people you don't like first. So, uh I asked him how secure he thought the company was and how much time he thought he had until the downturn would occur and what his
options were, et cetera because that was an unsolved problem. And he did something about it. And sure enough after he left, there were massive cuts and there were a lot of people laid off and he would have been out of the job without any preparation. Right. So there's an example of how extreme does it
have to be before you notice most people wouldn't have done anything in my friend's situation until they lost their job. And, and the example I referred to of the person I've spoken to more recently, that's exactly what happened. And here there two months after they've been laid off and now they're recognizing
their problem and, and that's how most people are. What about response? This is another spoke on the wheel. Uh So let's say that you've perceived the issue. How do you respond to it? That's not just a question of what do you do. In fact, I think what you do is a lot less important in this case that,
that, hm, I don't wanna get in trouble here. What you do is determined by a different set of tools and that one's actually much, much easier to improve. It's much easier to improve your toolbox on what to do than it is to, um, talk about your speed and intensity of response to change those things. It
touches on something much more fundamental about a person's character and it's very difficult to help someone change this. They really have to just choose to do it. There's very little you can do to help them do so. But the question is, how promptly do you respond? How promptly do you respond and with
what intensity and between perception and response, you can explain almost all the differences that you see between people. It's, it's really that important. It's that critical. OK. Now let's talk about intentional searching. Now you're gonna see a pattern here from the last slide. The difference is
between people who search uh proactively for something better and those who do not and the difference among those who search for something better, it can all be explained by the sensitivity, speed and intensity that they employ. Now, you might say, well, why I get speed and intensity, but why is sensitivity
on this? Because before we were talking about basically recognizing problems or um what were the other things on our list desires that you have that are unsatisfied questions you have that are unanswered and so on. By, by the way, I didn't say this. But if, if, if you're betrayed, you know, if a human
lets you down and disappoints you in your expectations, how is that like these other things? Well, you need to go find better people. That's what it is. OK. Um So how is sensitivity a factor in intentional searching? Well, most people require a potential change to be radically better before they'll even
consider it. And that's the slider on this one is what does it, how extreme does the, the perceived improvement have to be before you will take that action and make the change? The people who get the most out of life will make any change that's justified period. So if it's better, they say, what's the
cost, what's the benefit? Is there? Net benefit? Is it a greater net benefit than any other option for that thing? If yes, I do it. So hopefully that illustrates that a bit, but no one does any of these things without believing that something better is out there. And so that is the key for this one.
That is also another difference, right? And it has something to do with the differences that we've talked about here. Um That belief is going to be stronger or weaker between people or even for the same person over time. And so you have to believe that something radically better exists. And if you do
, you'll have a radically better life because you'll do radically greater things to find those things and you'll be willing to make bigger changes. But if you don't think that it really matters in the end and that whatever's out there is pretty much the same as what you have, you will have an abundantly
plain life. So the choice is yours. You can have a life of abundance or an abundantly plain life. And this attitude like all of these things, we could talk at length about all the clues that these leave scattered through a person's life. And once you learn them, you can't unsee them. And so what you'll
find is that almost all people really believe deep down inside, they wouldn't admit it and they wouldn't say it. But everything they do illustrates that they do not believe that something radically better exists amazingly. Uh uh The vast majority of Christians are like this and I don't understand why
that is it? Well, I do, but it shouldn't be that way. There's no reason for it to be that way that has anything to do with Jesus, that's for sure. It's about human nature and honesty and whole bucket of those things. So we could talk more about this. But I, I don't wanna artificially extend the length
of this presentation. It's, it's important. So basically, if you distill what we've talked about so far, what you're gonna find is that these three things, sensitivity, speed and intensity or sensitivity to perception and degree of response is another way you could summarize that, that will explain pretty
much any difference you see between any people. Now, briefly, before we go on, this is not the focus of the presentation, but just to do justice to the topic, I have to just briefly mention because we've only talked about increasing awareness. But in that slide way back, let's see. Where were we? It
does go up and go down, OK, does go up and go down. So let's talk about going down for a minute. What causes diminished awareness? Well, hopefully it's not a surprise but rebellion does. Now again, you're gonna go into your religious snap to grid, right? Um, and turn off your brain and just hit replay
on the stuff that you've heard before or the ruts that you've lived so far in your life. When you think of rebellion, you think of Cain murdering Abel or, you know, saying to God, you know, Satan saying to God, I, I do what I want or whatever. Right. But we gotta bring that down to normal life to see
the abundance of rebellion that is just sort of considered normal life. And to do that, you need to understand that rebellion doesn't have to be this overt production. All it takes, all it takes is is turning away from what is obvious, sufficiently obvious. What do I mean by that? Let's say you're in
a job making minimum wage and you're 23 years old and able bodied and able minded, what's wrong with this picture? You're in rebellion. How so it should be really obvious that this is not a life plan. And instead you go to all these rallies and complain about how minimum wage needs to be higher and the
world's not fair and boomer this and boomer that. Well, you're in rebellion. And so then guess what happens now, I'll adopt scriptural phrases. Your understanding will be darkened because you're in rebellion. You are now on the downward slope of awareness, you will actually get dumber. This is a real
thing. It will really happen, your ability to see and effectively interact with life will reduce. It's a downward spiral and all it takes is doing the opposite of what you obviously should or anything less than what you obviously should. It's, it doesn't need to be the, the diametric opposite. And we're
gonna make this even more sensitive. Are you doing anything different than what is sufficiently evidenced to be the best available option? And now I connect this back to what I just said about the slider on how much net benefit does there need to be before you make the change? Any potential change that
suggests a likely net benefit has to be done. There's no choice. The only, the only, I mean, it is a choice but you have to do it. The only variation would be, is there something that it conflicts with that yields a greater expected benefit? If so that thing has to take priority instead and that's it
. We're not done with the surprises here. OK. There are two more things we need to talk about. One is that delaying your response diminishes your awareness. Now you've heard this codified in quotes. Um Let's see if I can just remember one off the top of my head, paraphrasing of course, um delayed decisions
are always harder or doing the right thing is always harder when you delay it. It's absolutely true. But why, why does it become difficult, more difficult? It's because your awareness is diminished, your reasons for doing it. It's going to be harder to see what's right. What's best? It's going to be
harder to evaluate the consequences of things to see the cause and effect, the longer you delay, the harder it becomes. So again, it, it's a downward spiral. Here's the last surprise, which is the most sensitive of all. You can actually do all these things and still diminish in your awareness. How well
, what's your attitude? Because if you do it begrudgingly or you're grumpy about it or you just complain about it all the time that is sufficient to diminish your awareness, it will make it less likely for you to recognize value and live something better later every single time. And so we see the importance
of acting with speed. When you see an opportunity for improvement, the only limitation should be that you never, you never impede something more important. That's it. That's the only limit and also to not be a grumpy gus about it, you have to have a positive attitude. All right, sufficient description
of diminishing for. Now, let's get back to the increase. So with all that said, then how important is sensitivity to signal and response to signal? It's really important. I'm not sure what could possibly be more important. Right? Here's a layout of, of, you know, here's a quick take of why this is so
dang important sensitivity, speed, intensity, all of that determines what you're doing in terms of response to involuntary exposure and action in internal search, intentional, not internal intentional searching. You see it's, it's just, it's a ladder this you do this and this is where the rubber meets
the road. And what does this dictate? Well, all of your awareness comes from that, all of it. OK. I should say everything beyond the baseline. Um Maybe here is a good time to mention we all get a free gift of a baseline of awareness through birth. But what you do with it beyond that, it's all from this
. Well, why does that matter? What, who cares where you are on the awareness hierarchy? Yeah, a better question would be, why doesn't it matter? Because I'm not sure there's an answer to that one. The answer is everything. It's who you are, what you do, what you have, what you think about it, how you
feel about it, the good you can do for others. What challenges you can handle in life, what, what tragedies you can withstand and on and on and on and on. It's everything. Awareness is everything. And why does that matter though? Because at the end of the day, who cares who you are? Who cares what you
do? Who cares what you have? Who cares how you feel about it? Who cares what good you do for others, et cetera. Well, all of those things determine the joy that you have and it's all about joy. That's the reason you were born was the increase in the joy that you have. So I'd say it's pretty dang important
because this really is there aren't all these extra things floating around in this equation. This is just the process. If you care about joy, you have to care about sensitivity, speed and intensity. I'm not sure anything is more important than this. Here's another um I don't know, formulation of this
simplified sensitivity, speed and intensity are going to determine how you find, evaluate, choose and change your people, actions, ideas, places, situations and your beliefs or your putative laws of cause and effect. The importance of this could not be overstated. And yet my question to you is where
have you ever heard this before? Because some of you have gone to church your whole life and no preacher ever told you this because they didn't know you want to talk about the blind, leading the blind. This is not what you've been exposed to or, or given or taught or led in. You were on some other path
. And I mean, I didn't diagram that out, but that path is basically to pretend like you have everything that can be had and whatever you have is as good as it gets. And because that really stinks and no sane person would buy that because life is so difficult. What you have to do is downplay how bad life
really is and that works out great. Now I'm heading back in the slideshow. That works out great until let me find it until something like this happens. Ok, you can ignore unsolved problems until they crack you in the face. You can ignore unsatisfied desires until you can't, you can ignore unanswered
questions. The best way to do that is just not ask them which most churches will actively teach you to do. When you ask a question, they'll either say, well, we just need to have faith in God or which, which they define as, don't ask questions or they say quit asking questions or we're gonna kick you
out. Um Betrayal happens and the people in those churches do the betraying, but they also are betrayed. And when that happens above the threshold, they lose their minds and tragedy happens. You know, we all know someone whose kid died or whose spouse left them or who got cancer. And then they started
questioning things because they said, you know what this, what I've been taught here is insufficient. It doesn't address what I'm going through. It's not enough, but it's all out there already. You don't have to go through any of those things to see that what's being taught in churches or universities
or families or any institution. It's insufficient to handle this reality. This is how you overcome all of that. And so it's extraordinarily important to understand sensitivity, speed and intensity and not just to understand it, but to get better at it to get better at It?