Originally Posted by veritas
....Become a student.
It was the thought that ran through Kirk Hammett's mind when he decided to be tutored by Joe Satriani. It was a thought you never had. It was a thought you needed to have. you need to learn what you don't know. To firm up your grasp on the fundamentals. You may be a "professional" , but all those who can see know that you need alot more instruction. So there will be weekly lessons, and these lessons must be learned, and if they aren't, you are wasting everyone's time, and don't bother coming back. Pulling on it won't make it longer. You need to absorb honest feedback, judgement, and drilling in technique. Becoming a student will actually give you a power. Not just in its extended period of instruction. It would force you to place your ego and ambition in someone else's hands. You could impose upon yourself and ego ceiling. Knowing that you are not better than the master. Not even close. You must defer to him. You must subsume yourself. You cannot fake or bullshit him. If you try for gains any other way, you will be dropped. your problem is that your ego doesn't like you thinking that anyone else is better than you. Or that you still have alot left to learn. you want to be done. you want to be ready. You are busy and overburdened. Because of all these pathetic excuses you find that updating your appraisal of your talents in the downward direction is the most difficult thing to do...and since this is a vital component of mastery...you will never have it. Your most dangerous vice is not the porn, or the lonely steaks, or booze, or drugs, or greed, but rather your pretense of knowledge. This prevents you from getting better, embrace studious self-assessment. Was it not Ken Shamrock who said that false ideas about yourself destroy you? or that that is what the martial arts are about, and that you have to use humility as a tool? you have to put yourself under someone you trust? put yourself under? submit?? Well this begins by you accepting that others know more than you and that you can benefit from their knowledge, hopefully by seeking them out and allowing them to tear down all of the illusions you have about yourself. You must know how little you actually know, and know that deeply, but Socrates, we all see, you are not. Why? because to become great and stay great, you must know what came before, what is now, and what comes next. you must internalize the fundamentals of your domain and what surrounds you, without ossifying or becoming stuck in time. you must always be learning, you must become a student, and hearken unto your master's criticism. The temptation you face is to think: "I've made it, this lonely steak I am cooking is proof". You then think: "that guy isn't as good as I am, they chose me because I have what it takes (the irony). Become like a sponge, absorb what it around you, filter it, and latch on to what you can hold. Unfortunately your ego prevents this. You will not have read this, let alone study it, and instead post a meme, or say something asinine. There is no room for ego here. Your opponent matches his strength against your weakness. Since you are not capable of learning and practicing every day, since you are not always looking for areas of improving by examining your own shortcomings (such irony), finding new techniques to borrow from peers and opponents, you will be broken down and destroyed. Did not Epictetus say that "it is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows"? you will not find your answers because you are too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. you cannot get better, because your ego has convinced you that you are the best. Your unconscious is registering all of these words as an unblockable, undefinable soul crushing force by the way. You need to understand that the art of taking feedback is so crucial for the success of life. you need to not only take this harsh feedback, but come back and demand more of it! Your ego will avoid such feedback at all costs, however, because you are not yet a man. Not to other men, and not to your wife. You think you already know who and how you are? you think you are specatacular, perfect, a genius, an astrophysicist, or innovative? You dislike reality and prefer your own perverted assessment...provided by your ego. Your ego cannot withstand the incubation period needed for true greatness either, but that is another lecture perhaps. For now know that your ego is your enemy. It gives you wicked feedback and disconnects you from reality. it makes you defensive, precisely against the last opponent you should be defensive in front of. You block yourself from improving by telling yourself that you don't need to. Now wonder why you don't get the results you want, and why others are better than you, and why their success is more lasting. Your ego has made you so hardheaded and hostile to feedback that it drives away the real from you, it puts them beyond your reach. So....this is why the old proverb says "When the student is ready, the Teacher appears".
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06-23-2016, 12:59 AM
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