A Higher Possibility

Forty Principles, Tools, and Aphorisms 


Consciousness is that which recognizes itself.
Everything changes. Everything happens in cycles. Everything contributes.
Everything contains within itself the seed of its apparent opposite.
Everything is important—and nothing is significant.
There are no accidents.
Things are not happening to me—they are happening for me.
Do I want to be right—or do I want to be effective?
Am I available for what I say I want?
What is my part?
Expand to include and have it contribute.
There is no meaning in reality. Truth does not mean anything—it is just what’s so.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The mind is a dangerous neighborhood; don’t go in there alone.
Our baggage is the material we need to transform. We need our stuff—we just want to become objective about it so we can deal with it.
If you are going to be there, be there. If not, go someplace else.
Whatever you hold as “this shouldn’t be,” you energize its continued existence.
What you can’t choose you have to hold as burden.
Where you are the most wounded, you are the most accomplished.
Where you stumble is your gold.
When you get your limits you get your maturity.
When you diminish another person you lose their ability to contribute to you.
As long as you have to live inside the tribe, you cannot be a leader.
As consciousness rises, significance drops away.
The universe is not oppositional—only our minds are.
It is all, all working.
It is better to ride the horse in the direction it is going.
It is not about me. It may have something to do with me, but it is not about me—or my value. Nor is it about you—or your value.
Do not assign emotional responsibility to another. They don’t cause it—they only occasion it.
Gathering evidence: the way in which we organize our resistance.
Get the debt out of relationship.
Relationship will not fill my gap (the solution becomes the problem).
There is a difference between taking a stand and being a stand.
Position creates opposition. When I take a position, I have to defend it.
Context determines content.
Attachment produces dependence, dependence produces complaint. You can’t get to satisfaction from complaint.
Complaint is an abdication of responsibility.
Expectation shuts it down.
Love is the recognition of the equal in the other.
People are miraculous surprises.
Sometimes you eat the bear—and sometimes the bear eats you.

— quotes from Beyond the Game, by Michael Naumer

 

Michael Naumer
1942 – 2001

Michael Naumer started his work with his wife Christina in their course, The Mind of Love, which later morphed into Beyond the Game. Incorporating concepts from Gurdjieff, Oscar Ichazo, and Werner Erhard, they created a transformational body of work where the objective was one of self-recognition.  The main course, along with the graduate work, delved into the above principles, and then some—the teachings about choice, reality, logic, and transformation.  The purpose of the course was self-recognition, where Michael deemed, “the purpose of relationship was not to make oneself happy, but was a useful vehicle for seeing oneself. ” Beyond the Game was a higher game: chess, not checkers. It was a game not to be missed.