Colin Wilson is one of my favorite writers. I started my course of study with him with The Mind Parasites, a science fiction novel, back in 1987.

In the books I have read, Colin Wilson is only interested (really) in a few questions: What does it mean to be a Human Being, and how to accomplish that? What is the purpose of life, and how to fulfill on that purpose?

These are exactly the questions I have been pondering for about 23 years.

If we consider the question a jigsaw puzzle, he provides the final picture, and some methodology, I provide mostly methodology.

I need Colin Wilson. My faculties to think “What is the purpose of life” are somewhat impaired. It is not my strength. My strength is to provide Kaizen type (transformative) exercises to

1. prepare yourself
2. accomplish the task.

Like any worthy goal, the preparation, the becoming the kind of person who can reach the goal, is 99% of the job. 1% is crossing the finish line.

One of the major hurdles along the way is staying awake, or for most of us, waking ourselves up.

We are sleepwalking. We look alive, we look awake, but we are not. We are swept away by “life,” by outside stimuli, societal, or personal, and we are rushing through life without living it fully. Colin Wilson says:

the purpose of life is to live abundantly

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But you can’t live abundantly if you are not present to life, moment by moment. If you are speeding towards some destination, totally unaware and uninterested in the journey, you are not living abundantly.

But isn’t this how we live? Completely missing the journey, completely missing life? As if we were asleep on a plane till we arrive?

One way you have experienced this probably, when you are heading home, and between entering your car, and parking in front of your home, somehow you have no recollection of driving.

Another example: you are making a u-turn on a busy divided road, failing to look at signs… not even considering that the world may have changed since you last did this same u-turn… and you wreck your car and yourself… or almost… just ask Diana.

One of the exercises Gurdjieff invented to keep yourself awake is called “Remember Yourself.”

It goes like that: you go through your regular day. So far so good, right? Added difficulty: while you are interacting with the world, include yourself in your cone of vision, while you are observing yourself and what you are interacting with.

One way I used to train this principle (before I even heard about Gurdjieff) is, I would ask the trainee to include his/her arm in his field of vision while talking to someone, so they can remember themselves as distinct from who they are talking to.

Never succeeded, I must admit. It must be hard. According to some figures, only one in a thousand is awake, at least some of the time.

The other day, while I was driving to my mail box, a 4-mile drive that I do 2-3 times a week, I noticed a blue house on a hillside, a very strong blue, I might add.

I had never seen it, and doubted that there are more than two blue houses in Syracuse… I know where “the other” house is. I really like both. Blue stands out in the lush green… I don’t know. I just like them.

Anyway, that unusual house color gave me an idea: to notice everything that is blue, within my cone of vision, on my total 8 mile drive. So I proceeded to just that. And something unusual happened. Everything that was blue was calling to me, everything that had a hint of blue, showed up as blue. Even green was a shade of blue. Cars almost covered by a tarp, bus stop signs, a faded blue house, a bluish jacket on a bicycle rider.

It was sheer delight. I rejoiced over every discovery like a child. I loved every shade of blue.

OK, but why am I sharing this in this article? Because it is possible to remember yourself, i.e. consciously be present to you seeing, to you enjoying, to you being there… as a major spiritual exercise.

It won’t work after a while… it will become routine. But the first few times it will be a blast, and your experience is going to be one of aliveness and joy. That is way awakeness (is that a word?) feels.

I spent 20 years in Landmark.

The most important thing I learned there was that all the power for you lies in the part of reality that you don’t know that you don’t know.

They demonstrate the proportions with a pie chart: the whole pie is all that could be known. A thin slice is what you know. Another thin slice is what you don’t know and you know that you don’t know. For example I know I don’t know how to fly. These things you can learn if you have the time, money, etc. But what about the rest of the pie? That is the 99% of reality. The part that you don’t know that you don’t know. The part I considered non-existent until Landmark. The part is that is like water for the fish.

Imagine a fish swimming around happily in an aquarium. Do you think the fish knows it swims in water? Don’t guess, it doesn’t. That is the only environment it knows, and it is invisible for him.

Now, imagine the fish jumping out of the water, flying in the air looking down at the water, gasping: “Oh my Gosh, water!” Just before it plops back into the water.

In that split “Kaizen second” he suddenly gained access to the DKDK (don’t know that don’t know) paradigm.

Very easy to notice and promptly forget. Or explain away. Like my last boyfriend’s alcohol breath at 11 am at our first date.

But when it jolts you out of your normal sleeping mode, it is invaluable. That is why I stayed in Landmark for 20 years.

One of these moments were when, at age 40, after complaining all my life that my mother didn’t love me, I managed, for a split “Kaizen second” see, what it must have been like for her to have a child whose attitude was “My mother never loved me.” For a split Kaizen second I saw it, and I could never complain about her again. I couldn’t. Because I suddenly had no idea what she would have been like, had I complained about her loving me too much. Or, G-d forbid, hadn’t complained about anything.

That Kaizen second was my first foray into the 99%.

For many it is the “Necker Cube Demonstration.” (see illustration)

The power of those seconds to alter past, present, and future is the “Real Power”.

The power to become well, wealthy, fulfilled, connected, significant, exuberant, and to making a difference. Even to becoming thin, or having a clean house, or having a wrinkle free face at age 61.

Once you “really” know about that whole big paradigm, the 99%, you arrive to the state of certainty. And you will appreciate the Kaizen seconds, you will even become diligent at generating them, instead of waiting for them to pop up.

One of the most puzzling things about Kabbalah has to do with the proportions of worldly to spiritual. It says it is 1%, as opposed to the 99% spiritual. Therefore if you do your job in the 1% reality, then the 99% reality will to its job. It is like putting in $1 to a self improvement fund, and your company would match it with 99. Good deal, isn’t it.

It may be a good deal, but very few do it.

Why? Because your mindset has to be certainty, instead of waiting for it to come, or hoping, or wishing, or at the other extreme, thinking that you can only count on yourself.

None of those mindsets activate the 99%. Bummer.

I am learning a “new” method of getting around fear method, called Kaizen.

Kaizen is the tiny steps method. A step can be asking a question, can be saying something, or doing something unthreatening.

Though no one says, the foundation of the Kaizen technique could be found in the 1%-99% Kabbalistic teaching.

While Kaizen is designed to fool the fear (Satan?) by not waking it up to the thousand mile journey you are planning, it only knows about a tiny step, and it deems it insignificant. And the tiny steps come, one after the other, in a leisurely way, and Satan doesn’t wake up until you are thousands of miles into your journey.

Each tiny step activates the divine, and makes it easier to get the 99% support.

It goes so counter with the bombastic declaration, or big hairy goals that self improvement gurus preach. And it goes counter with Kabbalah.

One place where you can learn about Kaizen is here.