The Temple of I.

Anyone can meditate in a temple.

On the face of it, “It’s easy to do this specific thing in this specific place.”

It’s a well-known meme, “Sure, you can do all that meditating while you’re up in the temple, way away from all the normal-life stuff. Try meditating in the marketplace.”

Or, “It’s easier to do a non-normative thing in a space that makes it normative.”

It’s easier to be vegan if you go to a retreat where that is the only choice you have.

It’s easier to meditate 8 hours a day if you go to a retreat where everyone is doing that.

It’s easier to talk about your addiction with a room full of people who are doing the same thing.

It’s easier to do racist talk with a bunch of other racists.

Makes sense.

Now for a Dojo twist.

Your Primal Character has created a temple out of your life.

All of those things that you routinely do and don’t do, it’s because your Primal Character has made it easy, if not necessary, for those things to happen.

Your Primary Character is specialized temple.

“These things will happen here.”
“These things will not happen here.”

And look at all the support mechanisms you have in place to make sure that this is so.

No different than a meditation retreat center.

When you say, “I like this” or “I don’t like this”, that’s the temple asserting itself.

The Temple of I.

From a Dojo POV, there isn’t an “I”.

It’s a character saying that. 

Creating certain kinds of spaces, certain kinds of rules, certain kinds of values, certain kinds of relationships that has it continue to be doing what it’s doing, to continue being what it is.

There’s another old chestnut, “Argue for you limitations and sure enough, they will be.”

If you keep arguing for the things that your “I” believes to be true, how do you expect any really new and different to come into being. 

This is not about strong-arming your character into submission while you do something new.

This is about becoming something else, such that you don’t need to do that.

Enliven a new character and there won’t be anything to fight. 

Well, after you’ve got some practice being the new under your belt. 

There is a learning curve with new vocabulary, skill sets, and values.

This is why it’s so important not just to do the new things solo.

It’s much more efficacious to practice being the new values which give rise to those new things completely naturally. 

The new things are an outgrowth of the new values rather than being in antagonism with the regular values.

What do you want your new temple, your new life, your new values to make “happen naturally”?