SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE : BECOMING IRREPLACABLE

Image: Landscape of Vibration, Cone of Wave, 1993, Tama Rē-en, Mitama-dō Tokyo

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will explore Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, under a modern Benshen-esque lens. Though one might believe that wealth only equals money, “rich” expands beyond that: it means being able to create prosperity in your life, which can take shape in many different forms. Money is just one medium. Prosperity goes so far beyond financial gains and Hill, with his 13 Principles of Success and teachings on the Laws of the Universe, pioneered a unique roadmap to excellence and how to unlock prosperity—one that focuses on how to program our mental faculties rather than lean on external circumstances.

LAW FOUR: SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE

Make Your Ideas Pay Off

Once we’ve identified our desires and begun to practice the art of mind-training—to autosuggest and prepare for the responsibility of magnetizing our dreams—what do we do in the meantime? Sit on the couch, grab the chips, queue up HBO, and passively wait for the blessings to rain down? Not quite (although, that really does sound like the perfect Sunday night…) According to Napoleon Hill, this is when we should plan to ENRICH ourselves. To learn, study, and follow our nose toward every little thing that lights up our spirit. It begs the question, how many of us put on the student hat after we’ve graduated from school? Or maybe we’ve even decided that we weren’t “good students?” When it comes to traditional schooling—the grades, the standardization of who gets to be “smart,” the discipline— we may have a sour taste in our mouth about what it means to continue our education. But learning has the opportunity to be the most creative, pleasurable, and fulfilling part of life. Building these vaults of knowledge ultimately boosts our self-confidence and strengthens our sense of personal power as we apply this knowledge to our lives. We start to know that we belong in any room we’re in, we know what we're talking about, and we build, as Carla Harris says, a unique competitive advantage by cultivating our passions and various skill sets. 

It’s irrelevant whether or not what we choose to learn about feels connected in a linear way to our ultimate desires. Think about the creation of Benshen, for example; it’s the culmination of over a decade of studies across lineages, modalities, rituals, and passions that perhaps in any other person’s brain, may have manifested into something totally different. And that’s the beauty of specialized knowledge; through our individual experiences and perspectives, we can continue to be students and become irreplaceable in any setting we’re in, because the combination of knowledge we each pick up on makes us unique. It’s the lifelong pursuit of making ourselves special. 

In this newsletter, we’ll cover two important ways to carve out time to gain all the knowledge we want to make ourselves irreplaceable. As Seth Godin describes in his book “Linchpin: How to Become Indispensable,” it’s all about giving up our “lizard brain,” committing to making art constantly, and pressing the “publish” button before we think we're ready. Learning is about failing along the way, but the constant pursuit of growth is what will make us undeniably special.    

Image: source unknown

Exercise: If you’re feeling inspired to step into the role of student, but don’t believe you have the time, get curious and take inventory of where you’re currently feeding your mind. 

First, make a list of three things you’re currently doing in life that feel like a distraction. We all have those activities in life that bring us out of the present and leak our energy—social media is a huge example of this. If we can be honest about what those distractions are, then we can also determine what it is they’re feeding and reinforcing. As Hill writes, “both success and failure are largely the results of habit.” Sometimes we only think a certain way about ourselves because it’s the pattern in our brain we’re most comfortable repeating, not because we are consciously or intentionally choosing to believe that thought.

Once you’ve identified what’s been distracting you and what beliefs it’s reinforcing, decide how you want to feel instead and use that knowledge to intuit what to replace the activity with. For example: say you want to be a personal chef, but you’re constantly down a comparison rabbit hole on Instagram and it’s draining your energy. Simultaneously, maybe you’ve always wanted to attend a nude figure drawing class but have never made the time and it feels unrelated to your ultimate desire. They seem disparate but what if, you attend the class and gain a greater sense of confidence, tap into your sensuality, brighten the wattage of your radiant body, and end up meeting someone important in the food world simply because of the joyful aura you’re emanating? The beauty of following our intuition and finding ways to explore our passions instead of leaking energy through distractions, creates a powerful free-flowing nature in our lives where extra-ordinary circumstances seem to unfold more regularly. 

Image: Clamshell lamp, source unknown

Another valuable reason to carve out time to learn and be a student, is that it helps our lower triangle energy centers—our first, second, and third chakras—become unstuck. In September’s Benshen book club read, Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza outlines the 8 energy centers and the ultimate goal of flow, where the eighth energy center provides us with “visions, dreams, insights, manifestations, and knowingness that comes from not anywhere within our own minds and bodies as memories but from a greater power in and around us.” When we expand our minds through our passions and beyond our day-to-day obligations, we build our creative muscle, strengthen confidence and self-esteem, and create expansion in our lives so there’s no time to wallow in comparison, lack, or unworthiness. This practice rebuilds our lower triangle of chakra energy centers, where the vast majority of us stay stunted in life, and transcends us to the upper triangle where we can explore the depths of love for self and others, expression of our truth, and expand to a broader version of reality than we ever saw before.

Image: from Joe Dispenza's Becoming Supernatural

After beginning the practice of unblocking the lower triangle of chakras related to safety, sex, money, and self-worth, the bridge to the juiciest, enlightened parts of life can then open up by way of knowledge. It’s in the fourth chakra, the heartspace, where our connections to others can help us strive towards enlightenment as well. Relying on community is an act of the heart-chakra, in which we lean on others and live receptively to lift others up with our talents. When we foster our own unique set of skills, we become irreplaceable and helpful to the community around us. But we’ll never capture all the knowledge available in the world, and THAT’S OKAY. It is then that we assemble, as Hill describes, a group of “master-minds,” and to surround ourselves with people who inspire us and know something we don’t. For example, if you want to venture off into the world of freelancing but the idea of doing your own taxes feels daunting, who in your network can help light the way? Who around you can you leverage to help uplevel your dreams to become reality, and how can you karmically return the favor? Within the Benshen community and in our pods, how can we practice receptivity and get excited about what there is to learn and grow from each other? The foundation of community can help us launch our respective rockets that much farther.