The Internal Slave-Driver

I find the internal slave-driver a fascinating topic. This sense we each have of a pace that must be kept up with, a sense of a tempo of humanity, feels real to the point we don’t question it. But is it actually real or are we merely imagining it? Much of the internal rush derives from the way your parents got you ready for school, and before that tried to get you to fall into their schedule and pace as they changed your diapers, fed you or whatever.

If they rushed you as most busy parents would, you’ll have mimicked and internalized that and will now tend to rush yourself.

Psycho-biologically this is programmed in at the deepest level anyway, because as part of a clan wandering the Earth before the advent of agriculture you’d have had to keep up or you’d have died.

And useful it is to have this programming because with the opportunities life presents you if you don’t take advantage of them and act fairly urgently they tend to slip from your grasp.

But you are not a slave so slave-driving yourself to achieve a congruent pace is inappropriate.

You are a magnificent expression of nothing less than the Tao itself. As such you must accord yourself the commensurate dignity. So rather than slave-drive yourself, coach yourself along respectfully.

This is all down to how you talk to yourself inside.

When parents are enlightened, wise, kind and respectful and only focus on reinforcing the child’s strengths and indeed on seeing and pointing out the benefits even if the child’s weaknesses, as in never undermining or denigrating the child and always encouraging and supporting the child as a fellow magnificent expression of Tao, the child grows up confident and evolved.

When you parent or coach yourself like that you too will be confident and evolved.

So instead of punishing yourself for not being perfect you love yourself for it. Instead of stressing yourself to keep up with what you perceive to be the pace of others, you relax into going at your own pace – and you find you get far, far more done like that. Plus you don’t waste all your precious life-force and accelerate your death in the process.

To the contrary, by desisting from self-punishment in the way you speak to yourself, your life-force increases and you live far longer as well as getting far more done.

This is fundamentally about choosing between competitive mode and creative mode.

Competitive mode has you running to keep up with the pack, even though the assumed correct pace is mostly just in your imagination and while it has its benefits as above, it’s by no means the most productive way to proceed. To the contrary, it wastes so much chi and depletes you so much you don’t have the necessary energy to enjoy the fruits of your labor, and so makes the whole exercise of achieving things a bit pointless.

Creative mode infers referencing yourself to the Tao rather than other people.

It means knowing yourself as one with the creative thrust of the cosmos. As such you flow with the innate tempo of the cosmos, which if we go on the speed of light as being the speed limit of the universe – 186,000 miles per second – is so fast it’s nit even worth trying to match it in the competitive sense. But by referencing inwards and feeling your connection with the power informing that movement of light you realize you yourself are and have all along been moving at 186,000 miles per second – because you essentially light.

Once you see that, all you then need do is relax and sink backwards rather than rush forwards, and in your backward flowing internal motion you generate a vacuum in front of you, which is instantaneously filled with the seeds if all the opportunities you require in order for your story to unfold in optimal style.

The mechanical lever you have to decelerate is your breath-tempo – slow your breathing down, and your mind slows down. Slow your mind down and life around slows down.

Along with that to short-cut the process and place you back in command of your own pace, as if you’d never been conditioned to go otherwise in the first place, repeat this nifty affirmation a minimum of six times today, preferably by writing it by hand and then saying it out loud: 'I am one with the creative force of the cosmos, and as such I have all the time in the universe to achieve everything I need to with ease'.

And talk to yourself in a kindly respectful patient tone, no criticism allowed, only encouragement and support and you’ll be feeling fine and dandy like Andy Pandy.

With love, Doc