Turning point. Ingvar Villido

      How to Take Most out of This Book?

      Never before have people had such easy access to in-formation as they currently have. However, the proportion of practical skills is lower than ever. Much knowledge is consumed just mentally.

      Therefore, delve deeper into the information, find real connections with your own life. More than reading, aim to have insights about the content and then apply that in practical life. Being a practitioner means to truly and thoroughly understand some topic or thing. Otherwise you create an illusion of “I know”, although “I have read about it” is the case.

      There are sentences and paragraphs in this book, which I recommend you to linger on a bit longer. All of the instructions and questions are intended to help you participate fully and obtain your own practical experience. Although they are very simple, their effect can be life-changing.

      By following these points, you can ensure that the content and teaching shared really becomes alive. Although this book is a short introduction to the “new paradigm”, it is already written in a deepening style, accurately describing reality. Some parts of it may initially be a challenge to grasp, so I do recommend that you read it many times, going back and forth between chapters as needed.

      Prologue

      This book suggests a new and radically different perspective on human nature. All the claims and explanations expressed here are my own.

      My approach to a human is not based on theoretical ideas, but on decades of my own empirical research. As a result of which it has been possible to distill the essentials about how we function, what is the origin of our problems, what is our actual potential and find an answer to the question “who am I”? This new perspective on a human being is based on empirical facts, that can also be verified by each person.

      What makes this teaching different from other theories and approaches? It is based on careful observation and insights about how contemporary society shapes and teaches each individual to become who they are. I compared this data with knowledge preserved in ancient cultures, discoveries from my own personal experience and ones that I observed in thousands of my students. As a result of twenty five years of research and systematization, it is possible to discern what is inherently human and what not.

      May this book serve as a good starting point for discoveries for everyone who wishes to acquire a practical understanding of life and reality as it is for all of us.

      CHAPTER ONE

      HUMANITY ON THE WRONG TRACK

      Everything is taught

      Each of us has been a newcomer into this world, starting our lives without knowledge and experience – a baby who has had parents, a mother and a father. The environment and surrounding people have been engaged with you, this baby, and have taught you. What have they taught? What they themselves have known. And where have they gotten their knowledge? Most likely from their parents.

      Here the historical aspect becomes relevant. In addition to genes, knowledge is also inevitably transmitted through history, from previous generations to the next. When you look at the development of this baby, then most likely s/he will grow up to be a working individual with a family. This is how you and all people around you have developed. In addition, people learn in schools, universities, and trainings, receive information from various sources and learn through activities.

      What does all of it mean in the light of this teaching? It means that everything you today consider to be “me” has actually been taught to you by others. Plus personal experience, of course. What you refer to as “me” is actually a set of values, characteristics and behaviors that you have acquired. Is this a fact?

      What has been taught to you? Primarily three things have been taught:

      Firstly – different emotional reactions. A child is not born emotional. S/he acquires the emotional reactions subconsciously. Initially the surrounding people are the main source. Later on reactions are also received from media, books – other role models etc. Consequently a set of automatic roles develop, overshadowing the initial, primordial individual for your entire lifetime.

      Feelings and emotions are typically understood as synonyms. As phenomena they are the same – invisible inner automatic movements with different, very direct impact. Emotions make people carry out specific actions and usually determine behavior.

      The second thing that the child acquires is speech. Speech is based on sounds and words. Each word has a meaning, it signifies something. Thus, through words, the acoustic description of the world is learned. Initially, the child speaks out loud. Later vocal expression becomes diminished and is ultimately internalized, turning into externally soundless inner speech – this is the “birth” of your thinking process. So, thinking has also been taught to you by others. The challenging process of learning how to speak is always related to objects.

      Each thing or phenomena has a specific label, a name. Through repetition a lifelong connection between a phenomenon and the corresponding word is formed. Sometimes the learned words have several or different meanings, leading to miscommunication. Often the words people speak do not represent the reality correctly and become “empty” noise – without real, adequate meaning.

      Vocalized speech is a physical, audible sound. The inner speech that is not vocalized, being externally “soundless”, is known as thoughts. When the same information is expressed through using symbols, it is called text.

      The third thing you have been taught is how to use your physical body to carry out different activities. This learning process happens primarily through imitation. For example similarities in body language, tone of voice and many behavioral patterns are acquired from others through this mechanism.

      The Complexes

      When emotions, thoughts and expressions of the physical body are joined together into one unit, they create a tremendous amount of different combinations, the complexes. These complexes are formed by the subconscious, either instantly or through repetition.

      Once a complex has been formed, it can and will be activated by triggers, occurring as an inner reaction, usually accompanied by a physical expression. We as humans are full of such reactive complexes, both positive and negative ones. This may initially leave an impression of a well-functioning machine. In fact it is a trigger-reaction system that has almost full control over a person’s life. A life where these subconscious complexes have become fully automatic and autopilot is primary. When you react to a situation in either positive or negative way, what can actually be seen is an activation of one or several complexes. Your reaction is nothing more than an activation of an acquired complex.

      Let’s explore this example: If you think about something positive, you have positive emotions. This is always the case. It doesn’t happen that you think about positive things and at the same time experience shame or anger, right? When you experience anger, you also think thoughts related to anger. But for example, if you think thoughts related to pride, you also feel pride. These are the complexes “in action”.

      All automatic inner activations have one common