Weekly Self-infliction #1: Fallibility (Transcript)

By Gary Z McGee

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.” ~Jean-Luc Godard

Self-affirmations are overrated. Self-infliction is where the gold is at. The more you self-inflict the more you self-overcome. And the more you self-overcome the more likely you are to get out of your own way. Getting out of your own way will help you stay ahead of the curve. The dam of your comfort zone will break, and courage, creativity, and wisdom will be allowed to flow.

Self-inflictions are to humor and humility as self-affirmations are to motivation and empowerment. Ironically, motivation and empowerment can come from humility and humor. So we might as well cut out the middleman and get to the heart of the matter. The middleman is self-affirmation which sacrifices humility and humor for a quick fix. Better to skip the quick fix. Better to cut to the chase, dig into the roots, get down into the nuts and bolts. Best to self-inflict first and self-affirm second.

This week’s self-infliction is fallibility. Always remember that you are fallible. You are imperfect. You are prone to mistakes. We all are. The human species is fundamentally fallible, imperfect, and prone to mistakes. The shores of history are riddled with the wreckage of many an outdated truth.

Don’t let this discourage you. Rather, allow it to encourage you. At least now you have a place to begin. At least now you can replace certainty with curiosity. On the road to wisdom there is no better state to be in than one of curiosity. Because in a state of certainty, you are clinging to outdated truth, you are ignorant to the fallibility and imperfection of the species, you are closed off to the underlying essence. In a state of curiosity, however, you are aware, you are open to new experiences, you are a sponge ready to soak in the knowledge of the cosmos.

Reality is a great mystery. Honor it. Let it continually fill you with awe. Don’t seek certainty. Just seek. Be with the curiosity. Be hunger. Be on the edge of your seat, flabbergasted and entranced, astounded and gobsmacked, dumbfounded and engaged, detached and aloof.

Certainty is the creativity killer. Certainty murders mystery. Certainty cripples mastery. Avoid it at all costs. Being certain gets you nowhere but stuck in a box, closed off in a mental paradigm, stifled by a tiny comfort zone, or blocked by an inflexible boundary. It puts eye guards on when peripheral vision is needed.

Employ strategies of awe instead. Plant a maze in your mind and watch it grow into a labyrinth. Explore it. Transform your eyes into Over Eyes, your mind into No-mind, your soul into Soul Craft. Transform your life into a Hero’s Journey. Confront threshold guardians. And when your mind becomes fixed and settled, strategically plant a minefield in the mind field. Then sit back and enjoy the explosion, as your mind is blown into new ways of seeing the world.

Everything in life is Metaphor. From shapeshifting comes worldmaking. Life becomes art, and art becomes life. Forget genes. Forget memes. Carry mythemes and astonish the world.