This is an excerpt from the book entitled, 'Mastery' by Robert Greene. This is for promotional use only. I do not take credit for any of the following content. The following passage can be found on page 255 - 262
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui . . . "Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hu. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!" Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care a out is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now, now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants.
- Chuang Tzu
Throughout history we read of Masters in every conceivable form of human endeavor describing a sensation of suddenly possessing heightened intellectual powers after years of immersion in their field. The great chess Master Bobby Fischer spoke of being able to think beyond the various moves of his pieces on the chessboard; after a while he could see"fields of forces" that allowed him to anticipate the entire direction of the match. For the pianist Glen Gould, he no longer had to focus on notes or parts of the music he was playing, but instead saw the entire architecture of the piece and could express it. Albert Einstein suddenly was able to realize not just the answer to a problem, but a whole new way of looking at the universe, contained in a visual image he intuited. The inventor Thomas Edison spoke of a vision he had for illuminating an entire city with electric light, this complex system communicated to him through a single image.
In all of these instances, these practitioners of various skills described a sensation of seeing more. They were suddenly able to grasp an entire situation through an image of an idea, or a combination of images and ideas. They experienced this power as intuition, or a fingertip feel.
Considering the power such intelligence can bring us, and the tremendous contribution to culture made by Masters who possess it, it would seem logical that such high level intuition would be the subject of countless books and discussions, and that the form of thinking that goes with it would be elevated into an ideal for all of us to aim at. But oddly enough, this is not at all the case. This form of intelligence is either ignored, relegated to the inexplicable realms of the mystical and occult, or ascribed to genius and genetics. Some even try to debunk this type of power in general, claiming that these Masters are exaggerating their experiences, and that their so-called intuitive powers are nothing more than extended forms of normal thinking, based on superior knowledge.
The reason for this overall disregard is simple: we humans have come to recognize only one form of thinking and intelligence—rationality. Rational thinking is sequential by nature. We see a phenomenon A, and we deduce a cause B, and maybe anticipate is reaction C. In all cases of rational thinking, we can reconstruct the various steps that were taken to arrive at some kind of conclusion or answer. This form of thinking is extremely effective and has brought us great powers. W develop it to help make sense of our world and to gain some control over it. The process that people that people go through when they arrive at an answer through rational analysis can generally be examined and verified, which is why we esteem it so highly. We prefer things that can be reduced to a formula and describe in precise words. But the types of intuitions discussed by various Masters cannot be reduced t a formula, and the steps they took to arrive at them cannot be reconstructed. We cannot go inside the mind of Albert Einstein and experience his sudden grasp of the nature of relativity of time. And because we recognize rationality as the only legitimate form of intelligence, these experiences of "seeing more" must either be forms of rational thinking that just happens faster, or are simply miraculous by nature.
The problem we are facing here is that high-level intuition, the ultimate sign of master, involves a process that is qualitatively different from rationality, but is even more accurate and perceptive. It accesses deeper parts of reality. It is a highly legitimate type of intelligence, but one that has to be understood in its own right. And in understanding it, we can begin to see that such power is not miraculous, but intrinsically human and accessible to us all.
Let us try to make sense of this form of thinking by examining how it might operate in two very different forms of knowledge—the life sciences and warfare.
If we were to study a particular animal in order to understand it, we would break up our analysis into several parts. We would study its various organs, brain, and anatomical structure in order to see how it has adapted differently from other animals to its environment. We would study its behavior patterns, how it gathers food, and its mating rituals. We would look at how it functions within an ecosystem. In this way, we would be able to piece together an accurate picture of this animal, covering it from all angles. With warfare, we would go through a similar process, breaking it up into parts, field maneuvers, weaponry, logistics, strategy. Having deep knowledge of these subjects, we could analyze the results of a battle and come to some interesting conclusion; or, with some field experience, we could lead an army into battle and do an effective job.
In taking these analyses as far as possible, however, something is inevitably missing. An animal is not merely the sum of its parts that we can understand by adding them up. It has its own experience and emotions, which play an enormous role in its behavior, but which are elements we can not see or measure. It has its own highly complex interactions with the environment that becomes distorted when we break them up into parts. The animal's continuously fluid, dimensional interaction with its environment is also something that is not visible to our eyes. With warfare, once battle is engaged, we become susceptible to what is known as the fog of war--the highly unpredictable element that comes into play when two opposing forces square up and nothing can be precisely anticipated. The situation is continuously fluid, as one side reacts to the other and the unexpected intervenes. This battle in real time has an interactive, changing element that cannot be reduced to its parts or to simple analysis, and is not something we can see and measure.
This unseen element that constitutes the animal's entire experience, and that makes battle a fluid, organic entity, can be called various things. To the ancient Chinese, who understood this very well, it was known as the Tao or Way, and this Way inhabits everything in the world and is embedded in the relationships between things. The Way is visible to the expert—in cooking, carpentry, warfare, or philosophy. We shall call it the dynamic, the living force that inevitably operates in anything we study or do. It is how the whole thing functions, and how the relationships evolve from within It is not the moves of the pieces on the chessboard but the entire game, involving the psychologies of the players, their strategies in real time, their past experiences influencing the present, the comfort of the chairs they are sitting in, how their energies affect each other—in a word, everything that comes into play, all at once.
Through intense absorption in a particular field over a long period of time, Masters come to understand all of the parts involved in what they are studying. They reach a point where all of this has become internalized and they are no longer seeing the parts, but gain an intuitive feel for the whole. They literally see or sense the dynamic. In the living sciences, we have the example of Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees in the wilds of East Africa for years as she lived among them. Interacting with them constantly, she reached a point where she began to think like a chimpanzee, and could see elements of their social life that no other scientist had come close to fathoming. She gained an intuitive feel for not only how they functioned as individuals but as a group, which is an inseparable part of their lives. She made discoveries about the social life of chimpanzees that forever altered our conception of the animal, and that are no less scientific for depending on this deep level of intuition.
In warfare, we can pint to the great German general Erwin Rommel, who was said to possess the highest form of the fingertip feel ever chronicled in the history of battle. He could sense exactly where the enemy was thinking of striking and foil their plans; he could launch an offensive at precisely the weak point of their lines of defense. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, and oracular powers to reading the future. He did all of this in the deserts of North Africa where it was nearly impossible to get any clear sense of the terrain. Rommel's power, however, was not occult in nature. He simply had a much deeper knowledge than other generals of the aspects of battle. He constantly flew over the desert in his own plane, gaining a bird's-eye feel for the terrain. He was a trained mechanic, and so had a complete knowledge of his tanks and what he could expect of them. He studied in depth the psychology of the opposing army and its generals. He interacted with almost all of his soldiers, and had a clear sense of how far he could push them. Whatever he studied, he did so with incredible intensity and depth. A point was reached where all of these details became internalized. They fused together in his brain, giving him a fell for the whole picture an a sense of this interactive dynamic.
The ability to have this intuitive grasp of the whole and feel this dynamic is simply a function of time. Since it has been shown that the brain is literally altered after approximately 10,000 hours of practice, these powers would be would be the result of a transformation that happens in the brain after 20,000 hours and beyond. With this much practice and experience, all kinds of connections have been formed in the brain between different forms of knowledge. Masters thus have a sense of how everything interacts organically, and they can intuit patterns or solutions in an instant. This fluid form of thinking does not occur through a step-by-step process, but rather comes in flashes and insights as the brain makes sudden connections between disparate forms of knowledge, causing us to sense the dynamic in real time.
Some people like to imagine that such intuitions do operate sequentially, but simply happen to fast for the thinker to see the steps. This reasoning comes from the desire to reduce every form of intelligence to the same rational level. But with a discovery like the theory of simple relativity, if Albert Einstein himself could not begin to reconstruct the steps in retrospect that led to his insights on the relativity of time, then why should it be imagined that such steps exist? We must trust the experience and description of these Masters, all people with higher levels of self-awareness and analytic skills.
It would be a misconception, however, to imagine that Masters are simply following their intuitions and moving beyond rational thinking. First, it is through all of their hard work, the depth of their knowledge, and the development of their analytic skills that they reach this higher form of intelligence. Second, when they experience this intuition or insight, they must work out the ideas that come to them intuitively and rationally shape them into a form. This is hard for us to imagine, because we find intuition and rationality mutually exclusive, but in fact at this high level they operate together in a seamless fashion. The reasoning of Masters is guided by intuition; their intuition springs form intense rational focus. The two are fused.
Although time is the critical factor in attaining Mastery and this intuitive feel, the time we are talking about is not neutral or simply quantitative. An hour of Einstein's thinking at the age of sixteen does not equal an hour spent by an average high school student working on a problem in physics. It is not a matter of studying a subject for twenty years, and then emerging as a Master. The time that leads to mastery is depend on the intensity of our focus.
The key, then, to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information—we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use. We look for connections between the various elements we are learning, hidden laws that we can perceive in the apprenticeship phase. If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not quickly forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are patterns to our mistakes. As we progress, we start to question some of the assumptions and conventions we have learned along the way. Soon, we begin to experiment and become increasingly active. At all points in the various moment leading to mastery we attack with intensity. Every moment, every experience contains deep lessons for us We are continuously awake, never merely going through the motions.
The person who best exemplifies this usage of time for master is Marcel Proust, whose great novel, In search of Lost Time, concerns this very subject. In French the word for "lost" is Perdu, which equally means "wasted." And to Proust, and to many of those who knew him a s a young man, he seemed the least likely person ever to attain master, because on the surface he appeared to waste so much valuable time. All he ever seemed to do was read books, take walks, write interminable letters, attend parties, sleep during the day, and publish frothy society articles. When he finally applied himself to translating Ruskin, he took an incredibly long time and involved himself in seemingly irrelevant tasks, like traveling to locations Ruskin described, something no other translator would think of doing.
Proust himself complained endlessly about the time that he had wasted as a young man and how little he had accomplished, but these complaints cannot be taken at face value, because he never gave up. Despite his physical weakness and bouts of depression, he continued to try new endeavors and kept widening the scope of his knowledge. He was tireless and tenacious. These moments of self-doubt were his way of propelling himself forward and reminding himself of the short amount of time remaining to him. He had a deep awareness of a sense of destiny, of an overall purpose for his strangeness, that he was called to fulfill through his writing.
What made those twenty years qualitatively different from those of an ordinary person was the intensity of his attention. He did not simply read books—he took them apart, rigorously analyzed them, and learned valuable lessons to apply to his own life. All of this reading implanted in his brain various styles that would enrich his own writing style. He did not merely socialize-he strained to understand people at their core and to uncover their secret motivations. He did not just analyze his own psychology, but went so deeply into the various levels of consciousness he found within himself that he developed insight about the functioning of memory that foreshadowed many discovers in neuroscience. He did not merely translate, but trove to inhabit the mind of Ruskin himself In the end, he even used the death of his mother to intensify his development. With her gone, he would have to write himself out of his depression, and find a way to re-create the feelings between them in the book he was to write. As he later described it, all these experiences were like seeds, and once he had started his novel he was like a gardener tending and cultivating the plants that had taken root so many years before.
Through his own efforts, he transformed himself from an apprentice to a mature writer and translator, and from there to a novelist who figured out what to write about, which voice to assume, and how to attack his subject. At some point after he began writing his novel, he underwent a third transformation. Memories and ideas came flooding into his mind. Even as the book kept expanding, he could intuit its overall shape and the relationships between many tiles of the mosaic. This immense novel had a living, breathing dynamic that was now completely alive within him. He was inside his characters and the whole slice of French society he was writing about. More important, he was completely inside the narrator ( who is Proust himself), and in his novel it's as if we are literally, from the inside, experiencing the thoughts and sensations of another person. He was able to achieve this effect through the intuitive powers he had gained from close to thirty years of perpetual work and analysis.
Like Proust, you must also maintain a sens of destiny, and feel continuously connected to it. You are unique, and there is a purpose to your uniqueness. You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trail along the way, as seeds that are being planted for farther cultivation, if you know how to grow them. No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience. By constantly applying yourself to the subject that suits your inclinations and attacking it from many different angles, you are simply enriching the ground for these seeds to take root. You may not see this process in the present, but it is happening. Never losing your connection to your Life's Task, you will unconsciously hit upon the right choices in your life. Overtime, mastery will come to you.
The high-level intuitive powers we are talking about have roots in our development as the thinking animal; they have an evolutionary purpose that is extremely helpful to understand, and one that is highly relevant to the times in which we live.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a pdf of the first twenty or so pages of the book.
If you enjoyed this article tell Google you did as well and +1 it. Or give it an upvote if your from Reddit. Also check out Robert Greene's other books. He is a terrific writer.
Here is a link to my website: austinmunday.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Chuang Tzu
 |
| The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu Translated by Burton Watson |
Throughout history we read of Masters in every conceivable form of human endeavor describing a sensation of suddenly possessing heightened intellectual powers after years of immersion in their field. The great chess Master Bobby Fischer spoke of being able to think beyond the various moves of his pieces on the chessboard; after a while he could see"fields of forces" that allowed him to anticipate the entire direction of the match. For the pianist Glen Gould, he no longer had to focus on notes or parts of the music he was playing, but instead saw the entire architecture of the piece and could express it. Albert Einstein suddenly was able to realize not just the answer to a problem, but a whole new way of looking at the universe, contained in a visual image he intuited. The inventor Thomas Edison spoke of a vision he had for illuminating an entire city with electric light, this complex system communicated to him through a single image.
In all of these instances, these practitioners of various skills described a sensation of seeing more. They were suddenly able to grasp an entire situation through an image of an idea, or a combination of images and ideas. They experienced this power as intuition, or a fingertip feel.
Considering the power such intelligence can bring us, and the tremendous contribution to culture made by Masters who possess it, it would seem logical that such high level intuition would be the subject of countless books and discussions, and that the form of thinking that goes with it would be elevated into an ideal for all of us to aim at. But oddly enough, this is not at all the case. This form of intelligence is either ignored, relegated to the inexplicable realms of the mystical and occult, or ascribed to genius and genetics. Some even try to debunk this type of power in general, claiming that these Masters are exaggerating their experiences, and that their so-called intuitive powers are nothing more than extended forms of normal thinking, based on superior knowledge.
The reason for this overall disregard is simple: we humans have come to recognize only one form of thinking and intelligence—rationality. Rational thinking is sequential by nature. We see a phenomenon A, and we deduce a cause B, and maybe anticipate is reaction C. In all cases of rational thinking, we can reconstruct the various steps that were taken to arrive at some kind of conclusion or answer. This form of thinking is extremely effective and has brought us great powers. W develop it to help make sense of our world and to gain some control over it. The process that people that people go through when they arrive at an answer through rational analysis can generally be examined and verified, which is why we esteem it so highly. We prefer things that can be reduced to a formula and describe in precise words. But the types of intuitions discussed by various Masters cannot be reduced t a formula, and the steps they took to arrive at them cannot be reconstructed. We cannot go inside the mind of Albert Einstein and experience his sudden grasp of the nature of relativity of time. And because we recognize rationality as the only legitimate form of intelligence, these experiences of "seeing more" must either be forms of rational thinking that just happens faster, or are simply miraculous by nature.
The problem we are facing here is that high-level intuition, the ultimate sign of master, involves a process that is qualitatively different from rationality, but is even more accurate and perceptive. It accesses deeper parts of reality. It is a highly legitimate type of intelligence, but one that has to be understood in its own right. And in understanding it, we can begin to see that such power is not miraculous, but intrinsically human and accessible to us all.
Let us try to make sense of this form of thinking by examining how it might operate in two very different forms of knowledge—the life sciences and warfare.
If we were to study a particular animal in order to understand it, we would break up our analysis into several parts. We would study its various organs, brain, and anatomical structure in order to see how it has adapted differently from other animals to its environment. We would study its behavior patterns, how it gathers food, and its mating rituals. We would look at how it functions within an ecosystem. In this way, we would be able to piece together an accurate picture of this animal, covering it from all angles. With warfare, we would go through a similar process, breaking it up into parts, field maneuvers, weaponry, logistics, strategy. Having deep knowledge of these subjects, we could analyze the results of a battle and come to some interesting conclusion; or, with some field experience, we could lead an army into battle and do an effective job.
In taking these analyses as far as possible, however, something is inevitably missing. An animal is not merely the sum of its parts that we can understand by adding them up. It has its own experience and emotions, which play an enormous role in its behavior, but which are elements we can not see or measure. It has its own highly complex interactions with the environment that becomes distorted when we break them up into parts. The animal's continuously fluid, dimensional interaction with its environment is also something that is not visible to our eyes. With warfare, once battle is engaged, we become susceptible to what is known as the fog of war--the highly unpredictable element that comes into play when two opposing forces square up and nothing can be precisely anticipated. The situation is continuously fluid, as one side reacts to the other and the unexpected intervenes. This battle in real time has an interactive, changing element that cannot be reduced to its parts or to simple analysis, and is not something we can see and measure.
This unseen element that constitutes the animal's entire experience, and that makes battle a fluid, organic entity, can be called various things. To the ancient Chinese, who understood this very well, it was known as the Tao or Way, and this Way inhabits everything in the world and is embedded in the relationships between things. The Way is visible to the expert—in cooking, carpentry, warfare, or philosophy. We shall call it the dynamic, the living force that inevitably operates in anything we study or do. It is how the whole thing functions, and how the relationships evolve from within It is not the moves of the pieces on the chessboard but the entire game, involving the psychologies of the players, their strategies in real time, their past experiences influencing the present, the comfort of the chairs they are sitting in, how their energies affect each other—in a word, everything that comes into play, all at once.
Through intense absorption in a particular field over a long period of time, Masters come to understand all of the parts involved in what they are studying. They reach a point where all of this has become internalized and they are no longer seeing the parts, but gain an intuitive feel for the whole. They literally see or sense the dynamic. In the living sciences, we have the example of Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees in the wilds of East Africa for years as she lived among them. Interacting with them constantly, she reached a point where she began to think like a chimpanzee, and could see elements of their social life that no other scientist had come close to fathoming. She gained an intuitive feel for not only how they functioned as individuals but as a group, which is an inseparable part of their lives. She made discoveries about the social life of chimpanzees that forever altered our conception of the animal, and that are no less scientific for depending on this deep level of intuition.
In warfare, we can pint to the great German general Erwin Rommel, who was said to possess the highest form of the fingertip feel ever chronicled in the history of battle. He could sense exactly where the enemy was thinking of striking and foil their plans; he could launch an offensive at precisely the weak point of their lines of defense. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, and oracular powers to reading the future. He did all of this in the deserts of North Africa where it was nearly impossible to get any clear sense of the terrain. Rommel's power, however, was not occult in nature. He simply had a much deeper knowledge than other generals of the aspects of battle. He constantly flew over the desert in his own plane, gaining a bird's-eye feel for the terrain. He was a trained mechanic, and so had a complete knowledge of his tanks and what he could expect of them. He studied in depth the psychology of the opposing army and its generals. He interacted with almost all of his soldiers, and had a clear sense of how far he could push them. Whatever he studied, he did so with incredible intensity and depth. A point was reached where all of these details became internalized. They fused together in his brain, giving him a fell for the whole picture an a sense of this interactive dynamic.
The ability to have this intuitive grasp of the whole and feel this dynamic is simply a function of time. Since it has been shown that the brain is literally altered after approximately 10,000 hours of practice, these powers would be would be the result of a transformation that happens in the brain after 20,000 hours and beyond. With this much practice and experience, all kinds of connections have been formed in the brain between different forms of knowledge. Masters thus have a sense of how everything interacts organically, and they can intuit patterns or solutions in an instant. This fluid form of thinking does not occur through a step-by-step process, but rather comes in flashes and insights as the brain makes sudden connections between disparate forms of knowledge, causing us to sense the dynamic in real time.
Some people like to imagine that such intuitions do operate sequentially, but simply happen to fast for the thinker to see the steps. This reasoning comes from the desire to reduce every form of intelligence to the same rational level. But with a discovery like the theory of simple relativity, if Albert Einstein himself could not begin to reconstruct the steps in retrospect that led to his insights on the relativity of time, then why should it be imagined that such steps exist? We must trust the experience and description of these Masters, all people with higher levels of self-awareness and analytic skills.
It would be a misconception, however, to imagine that Masters are simply following their intuitions and moving beyond rational thinking. First, it is through all of their hard work, the depth of their knowledge, and the development of their analytic skills that they reach this higher form of intelligence. Second, when they experience this intuition or insight, they must work out the ideas that come to them intuitively and rationally shape them into a form. This is hard for us to imagine, because we find intuition and rationality mutually exclusive, but in fact at this high level they operate together in a seamless fashion. The reasoning of Masters is guided by intuition; their intuition springs form intense rational focus. The two are fused.
Although time is the critical factor in attaining Mastery and this intuitive feel, the time we are talking about is not neutral or simply quantitative. An hour of Einstein's thinking at the age of sixteen does not equal an hour spent by an average high school student working on a problem in physics. It is not a matter of studying a subject for twenty years, and then emerging as a Master. The time that leads to mastery is depend on the intensity of our focus.
The key, then, to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information—we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use. We look for connections between the various elements we are learning, hidden laws that we can perceive in the apprenticeship phase. If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not quickly forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are patterns to our mistakes. As we progress, we start to question some of the assumptions and conventions we have learned along the way. Soon, we begin to experiment and become increasingly active. At all points in the various moment leading to mastery we attack with intensity. Every moment, every experience contains deep lessons for us We are continuously awake, never merely going through the motions.
The person who best exemplifies this usage of time for master is Marcel Proust, whose great novel, In search of Lost Time, concerns this very subject. In French the word for "lost" is Perdu, which equally means "wasted." And to Proust, and to many of those who knew him a s a young man, he seemed the least likely person ever to attain master, because on the surface he appeared to waste so much valuable time. All he ever seemed to do was read books, take walks, write interminable letters, attend parties, sleep during the day, and publish frothy society articles. When he finally applied himself to translating Ruskin, he took an incredibly long time and involved himself in seemingly irrelevant tasks, like traveling to locations Ruskin described, something no other translator would think of doing.
Proust himself complained endlessly about the time that he had wasted as a young man and how little he had accomplished, but these complaints cannot be taken at face value, because he never gave up. Despite his physical weakness and bouts of depression, he continued to try new endeavors and kept widening the scope of his knowledge. He was tireless and tenacious. These moments of self-doubt were his way of propelling himself forward and reminding himself of the short amount of time remaining to him. He had a deep awareness of a sense of destiny, of an overall purpose for his strangeness, that he was called to fulfill through his writing.
What made those twenty years qualitatively different from those of an ordinary person was the intensity of his attention. He did not simply read books—he took them apart, rigorously analyzed them, and learned valuable lessons to apply to his own life. All of this reading implanted in his brain various styles that would enrich his own writing style. He did not merely socialize-he strained to understand people at their core and to uncover their secret motivations. He did not just analyze his own psychology, but went so deeply into the various levels of consciousness he found within himself that he developed insight about the functioning of memory that foreshadowed many discovers in neuroscience. He did not merely translate, but trove to inhabit the mind of Ruskin himself In the end, he even used the death of his mother to intensify his development. With her gone, he would have to write himself out of his depression, and find a way to re-create the feelings between them in the book he was to write. As he later described it, all these experiences were like seeds, and once he had started his novel he was like a gardener tending and cultivating the plants that had taken root so many years before.
Through his own efforts, he transformed himself from an apprentice to a mature writer and translator, and from there to a novelist who figured out what to write about, which voice to assume, and how to attack his subject. At some point after he began writing his novel, he underwent a third transformation. Memories and ideas came flooding into his mind. Even as the book kept expanding, he could intuit its overall shape and the relationships between many tiles of the mosaic. This immense novel had a living, breathing dynamic that was now completely alive within him. He was inside his characters and the whole slice of French society he was writing about. More important, he was completely inside the narrator ( who is Proust himself), and in his novel it's as if we are literally, from the inside, experiencing the thoughts and sensations of another person. He was able to achieve this effect through the intuitive powers he had gained from close to thirty years of perpetual work and analysis.
Like Proust, you must also maintain a sens of destiny, and feel continuously connected to it. You are unique, and there is a purpose to your uniqueness. You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trail along the way, as seeds that are being planted for farther cultivation, if you know how to grow them. No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience. By constantly applying yourself to the subject that suits your inclinations and attacking it from many different angles, you are simply enriching the ground for these seeds to take root. You may not see this process in the present, but it is happening. Never losing your connection to your Life's Task, you will unconsciously hit upon the right choices in your life. Overtime, mastery will come to you.
The high-level intuitive powers we are talking about have roots in our development as the thinking animal; they have an evolutionary purpose that is extremely helpful to understand, and one that is highly relevant to the times in which we live.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a pdf of the first twenty or so pages of the book.
If you enjoyed this article tell Google you did as well and +1 it. Or give it an upvote if your from Reddit. Also check out Robert Greene's other books. He is a terrific writer.
Here is a link to my website: austinmunday.com
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