~ Answering Without A Word ~
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Why do we love?
Why are we who we are?
Who are we?
I'll start this book by saying that the best tools I have EVER FOUND to be used in life are only two. They are both WHO you are and What you are. Now, these may sound like the same thing; worse yet, for you scientific folk, this may sound like I'm talking about souls and spirits, or some other "self-help guru" talk. I, personally, am not a man who believes in spirits or souls. I believe in their possibility, but I would never bet my life's success on them. Whether that will lead me to failure remains to be seen, but I am doing pretty well if I've caught your attention so far, no? Yes!
We'll start our journey with the key pieces “of what?” to use and observe, the things that must be examined to make this life of yours truly worthwhile. A good magician must always study his props so that he knows how to use them. Only after mastering the tools can we use them, in more magical methods, for a more ultimate gain. For example, in card magic, most masterful magician’s know to only use either Bicycle playing cards, or the Bee playing cards within the United States. Why?
It’s because of a thing that magicians call “heat”. Only experienced magicians use this term, so don’t tell anyone that I told you this (unless you want to). “Heat” is used to describe the amount of attention a person is giving you. It’s essentially like we’re pretending that the audience has Superman’s heat vision, and the more focused they are, the hotter the laser eyes they’re giving you. When a magician says “Wow man. They’re burning on your hands, huh? You need some ice?” What they really mean is “HOLY SHIT BRO! They are EXTREMELY focused on your hands right now. You aren’t going to get away with anything like this. You need me to help you out, cause a distraction?”
What does this have to do with only using two brands of cards? Easy. Only newbies use fancy decks of cards, because they bring on “Too much heat”.
Any time you use a fancy-looking prop, people will immediately assume that it’s special or gimmicked in some way. This means that they’ll look 100 times closer at the trick to see what makes them special, EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT, making your performance a lot harder to get away with. So using the right props, and in the right way is essential.
The props we’ll be using today are mostly categorized as “constructs” so you’ll need to learn how those work before we can dive into the WHOs and the Whats.
And here... we... go!
My dearest readers, in psychology, there’s a term labeled “a hypothetical construct.” It’s also often called simply “a construct” by non-psychologists, such as myself.
The simplistic, beginner definition that I’ll give you is this: The term "hypothetical construct" refers to a psychological concept or idea that cannot be measured directly (“APA Dictionary”). Intelligence is a construct, for example. You cannot measure intelligence directly. In an IQ Test, for instance, you can directly measure the number of questions you’ve answered correctly and then associate that amount with intelligence. Still, you’re not measuring the intelligence itself. You’re only measuring the ratio between correct answers as compared to the incorrect answers.
You're measuring answers, then using an agreed-upon correlation with those answers to suggest whether or not you are intelligent. In terms of directness, you are only measuring answers, only the answers, not intelligence. Plus, since you can't measure intelligence directly through any method, the "agreement" that we’ve made on this correlation is meaningless and can change to suit the different times and anyone in those times' needs. Giving only good answers is called "intelligent" by the public now when it used to be called "wisdom" before; However, psychologists still tend to side with the older definition. In the past, intelligence was linked with creativity and knowing how to think, so why is it now that we only measure, and test, to see if they know what to think in schools? Why don't we measure the process if it’s considered that critical thinking is a part of the system? Or at least, why don’t we test it more thoroughly and with more physical proof?
To be clear, I’m speaking of basic school exams and quizzes, not a SAT or an IQ test. Those may seem mostly focused on answers, but the questions themselves are designed to have multiple trains of thought going on at once. In short, one question tests your ability to follow many different styles of thinking. For starters, IQ tests are a masterful way of testing both how many paths someone can think of to a solution, as well as how well they can cut away at those paths until they find the correct one. These two categories of thinking are called “divergent thinking” and “convergent thinking”.
Meanwhile, most academic tests in kindergarten through 12th grade is only focused on convergent thinking, which is only a small portion of intelligence as a whole
In old-fashioned (and psychological) terms, the answers you gave meant very little in terms of true intelligence. Back then, knowing what to think was called wisdom, and knowing how to think was called intelligence. Now the roles are reversed. To this degree, when you got a 75% on a test, that did not mean you are only 75% intelligent according to our previous standards. It only meant that you got 75% of the questions right on that test, but nothing more. Your brain may function differently and more stupidly, or you may have come to the wrong answer through methods that would have been correct in other fields. According to the older definition of intelligence, having a good memory wouldn’t be the only prerequisite for being considered smart, so remembering the correct answers shouldn't be the only thing measured on tests and quizzes, according to the olden day rules. I'm a rather old-fashioned man, myself, and I've always agreed with this view.
Knowing HOW to think should always be prioritized over knowing WHAT to think.
Today, you may consider yourself an idiot, but a few years ago, in the right category, you would have been considered nothing short of a pure genius. This is the primary limitation of listening to another man's boundaries. They may work for him, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will work for you.
In order for you to be a successful magician in every aspect of life, we'll need to discuss WHO the people around you truly are, including yourself, and WHOs are a construct, just like intelligence. They cannot be measured directly, but that's not to say that they aren't real or that they cannot be experienced. Everyone knows what it's like to experience feeling smart at one point or another, whether we can measure that intelligence or not. The same can be said of discovering WHO you truly are.
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There’s another fact to be considered here, too. Constructs are also ideas you can imagine the signals of but that you can’t fully understand until experienced. Today's intelligence has the signals of "good answers,” but that does not mean intelligence is the good answers. One is simply a signal for the other. Emotions are yet another example of a construct. You can explain to a child what happens when two people are in love; you can try to explain how it feels physically, and what they often do together, like kissing. These are the outward signals of love, but the child will not fully understand what it means to be in love until they have experienced that emotion, for themselves, internally.
It’s like a house that you’ve never been inside of before; from viewing it on the outside, you can get some… general… idea of what’s going on within, but no matter how many times you’ve done it with other people's houses, visiting a new friend’s house for the first time is mind-boggling. Even if you’ve passed it on the street many times before, and especially if you’re only walking up to it now, all the way up that walkway, all the way up to the front door, you have an idea in your mind. Still, that idea is almost always completely shattered when you actually look inside. Either that or you had no strong assumptions because that's how little knowledge you had to go off of. That collapse of the assumptions, or that epiphany of the unexamined, is precisely what you’ll feel when you see someone’s true WHO for the first time. That is what it feels like to finally see any construct for what it really is (For example, you'll also feel this way, but more powerfully when you fall in love, head over heels, in real love for the first time; as well as when you have an epiphany of a brilliant new idea and can feel yourself reaching a new level of intelligence). You may not be able to see WHOs now, but just because you cannot see the truth, doesn't mean that you never will or that it doesn't exist. Even a blind man can see the truth, so long as he bothers to look for it.
Now, I can help you see at least the size and general shape of what you're dealing with. I can lead you to the signals, like leading you around the house from all angles, even from a bird's eye view, like we're flying over the roof of the house. I can even show you its lowest points as if we're viewing the bottom of the basement floor together. Heck! I can even walk you all the way up to the front door,
but opening the door is your responsibility. That is your task. To quote me is easy, to understand me is important, but to implement me is your task. You, my dearest readers and newfound friends, are the only ones with the key to this great mansion. There is much that I can show you, even from only the outside of this vast and beautiful space. It's a new promised land, but to sneak inside and join the party requires a unique invitation; everyone has a different one, and I can't go using mine for you. The final step. That final push. The movement of your eyelids. The opening of your eyes to WHO we all truly are.
That's up to you.
Some paths to power have been designed for you and will be SO easy to use that it's actually scary. Some paths in life will go against you and make any move for power either impossible or excruciatingly painful for no good reason. WHOs are merely a concept to be attached to anyone and anything. It’s a type of label that your mind attaches to all other forms of concept.
In such, it’s not only important to know WHO you are. It’s also important to know WHO your best future self will be. People don’t love and sacrifice for their future selves if they haven’t met and fallen for them before, and you won't know the WHO that will empower you most impactfully in the future if you don't know WHO you are right now and what paths you match with. Without the fast and easy paths to success in life, you'll either never escape the selfishness of this world, or by the time you do, you'll have become so old that you can't even enjoy your newfound powers in the end. Either way, joyfully protecting others will become an impossibility. It is extremely crucial for you to master your self-identity right now before searching for your proper goals in life and your ways to power, because if you can’t obtain satisfaction and stability in your own life, you will be unable to lend it to others. Remember my friends, one’s generosity is only as good as one’s fortune.
The most significant problem with this is that you still need to find out how to view your own WHO by yourself, and while the path to doing that can be described to you, it cannot be done for you. Seeing one WHO is all it takes to see them all, but how to reach out and touch, sense, feel, even one, is a mystery you'll need to solve on your own. Like any other experience, you won’t know what it feels like to experience “the sight” of a true WHO until you see it and feel it for yourself. It’s not something that can be explained directly in words, because words are merely verbal signals.
Luckily for us, when it comes to WHOs, all of them interact with each other in very, very, limited ways, so when you identify your own, watching how it reacts to others, even if you can't see them yourself, will give you a near-exact image of any other WHO. Besides, as a magician, I know from personal experience that people can learn to see things that their minds couldn’t even begin to comprehend just a few minutes prior.
Now, this site is designed to help you become more powerful than any of the tyrants that are now above you, but it will take time. Believe it or not, true power doesn't just teleport to you overnight, even for magicians. Before you start using my techniques in life, I want to give you the tools for life in the shapes of both Whats and WHOs first. Only after that can I teach you how to use them for the quickest and most powerful results.
But for now, just remember that there are very few things as essential to be separated in your life as the separation in your mind, between knowing the difference between "observing" an item, and "comprehending" that which you just observed. If you cannot understand what was said, then you might not be listening well enough to the speaker, but in truth, you may also have been listening to the wrong people. Make sure to check both every time to avoid late confusion in life; never just observe. Remember to also comprehend, and question what you've observed through sight, smell, hearing, or any other sense that you can imagine. This, of course, includes when you're listening to me. Doubt me when you can.
Now, I've been talking a lot about WHOs and Whats towards the end of this page. I'm sure that it has you at least a little confused. Don't worry, though. It'll all be explained, starting in Chapter 3. Good thing these first few pages are free, huh? I'm sure you'll start seeing the bigger picture, sooner rather than later.
