Thursday 1 July 2021

Learning to read the moment.


 

Literacy isn't what they said it is. Sure enough, the alphabet is really key to know, words, vocabulary and sentences relevant to recognise, and text, context, author, purpose and place all necessary to determine what's meant in any communication. 

Ask anyone what it felt like to learn to read, and you'll have a point of contact to know what it's like to read the moment. 

In the moment, anything is happening. The miracle is, your brain is capable of grasping the moment. The pity is, it seldom does. 

The open door of each moment is usually slammed shut as it opens. 

That's not natural, that's human-inspired. 

The heavy-handedness, intellectual clumsiness and emotional stuntedness of humanity are not good teachers. 

Be comforted: there's a perpetual, really good teacher within: a natural, cosmic voice and presence that defies description. 

It offers you your own language of truth, an imperative of kindness that's all about the moment. 

Do you kill spiders spontaneously? Consider for a moment: does that make you a bad Buddhist or a normal survivalist? 

You can see where this is going: in the moment, there's, data, desire, choice, decision and action. Also totally, really totally unconscious neural activity, which is the actual basis for the action in the moment, conscious or unconscious. You can't escape biology. 

There's a process and a story to this: the moment is a bridge between the decipherable and the indecipherable, and consciousness is key. 

Unfortunately, there are no hard rules to this literacy. The art is more than the discipline. 

But how do you read your own consciousness which is the bridge, key and cargo?

Here are the steps:

notice, articulate and know your subtle emotions

allow your obvious and immediate attitudes

test the range of your choices

decide on the personal acceptability of possible actions

scale your influence of acting

reflect on each step you take. 


Reading the moment has become a literacy of real importance, with not many knowing how to do this. Hence the plethora of coaches, most of whom are learning their own self-literacy, and not so sure how to pass this on without a well-founded sense of humility well-disguised by words and attitudes that don't quite cut it. Leadership? Don't make me laugh. You got there randomly. 

The moment is yours. 

It's a quiet, tall, immense moment, quite cruel, really, unless you sense presence greater than your own. 

How is it to be read? 

So the learning is the actual process and purpose of the moment. And the core aspect of that organism you recognise as yourself. 

I'd offer these new ABC's of reading the moment: 

quietness

observation

reflection

truthful communication

closure. 


Closure is important. The timing and honouring have to be right. That's a whole literacy in itself. 

The moment is fluid. 

You have to be quicker than that.