Learn to read people; not books.
Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash
I have a friend who likes to say “I didn’t learn this in a book.”
I met a Mongolian Buddhist master last winter who told me “learn to read people, not books.”
I have a lot of clients and people in my network asking me to suggest books they can read to learn how to do this transformation-liberation-self-realization thing.
Sure. There are books. Some incredible ones, no less.
But what I know deep in my soul, I didn’t read in a book.
I learned it by living. I learned it through meditation and cultivating inner-silence. I learned it by diving full throttle into my experience and sticking around long enough to find the learning on the other side. Over. And over. And over again.
The only way out is through.
The fastest way forward is inward.
Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum and you won’t learn much by isolating yourself in like-minded communities or alone in your house/apartment.
Transformation requires adversity.
Some of the things I’ve learned have taken me years to fully grasp just the edges of. A lot of the things I’m still learning, because life is this constant teacher which is perpetually revealing clues that — if I’m willing to take them all the way in to the core of my heart — may produce fruits decades later. Time as we often understand it offers no guarantee of transmutation. Transmutation occurs through willingness and surrender and embracing all aspects of life.
This life we are all living is all for us. Even the things we think aren’t.
Being willing to see; to live; to experience, is the singular greatest skill you can develop. The rest is inconsequential.
My role on this planet is in part as a messenger. I know that about myself. And I know that my responsibility in that role is to be transparent about what matters most.
It’s not what you know that matters. What I know doesn’t matter, either. No matter how convincing I may be at times.
What matters is being willing to not know *experientially* so deeply that you find safety in that, and in only that. Resting easy in the security of that posture will change your life forever.