Category: Identity

I recently wrote three posts on vertical development specifically for Substack (which I’ve now archived on my website here).

Why Is Vertical Development so Important in Our World Today?

Why Should Vertical Development Training Be Accessible to Everyone?

What Is Vertical Development?

These weren’t so much for gauging interest on the topic on Substack, as they were a test of seeing whether I could get into the groove of writing again.

Incredibly, it felt amazing to write these and they just seemed to flow out of me. I basically started writing at around 9 AM in the morning and wrote till around noon and published them each, one day after the other.

After I had completed the final of the three, I really felt good about myself and felt like I had gotten into the groove of writing again.

But after spending the weekend to reflect upon them, it dawned on me that even though these felt great in terms of writing them, they weren’t the voice, tone, and language I was looking for. Of course, what it is that I am looking for in terms of these is what I am still struggling with.

The inability to communicate one’s thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If I could put this feeling of what tone and language I am looking for into words though, it would have to be this (along with a video I discovered a couple months back that seems like the perfect metaphor for it).

It would be as though you realized that all of the greatest writers in the world were sharing a secret magical language that in turn allowed you to discover a secret level to life within which lies a whole new world you can adventure within.

And only you have the capability to unlock this world because you are the key to it.

That’s what I want my words to feel like. As though you are uncovering something both mystical and magical at the same time, a deeper truth to life that most people are completely unaware of, one that opens a way to a whole new world by opening it within you first.

This is what vertical development feels like to me when I don’t have to describe the technicality of it. It shouldn’t feel like your reading a dry, boring, technical computer manual on how to upgrade your brain. It should feel like a wondrous playful adventure to a new world of possibilities, one that gives you a collection of moments and experiences that transform your entire worldview and entire way of being.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

It’s time.
This world has waited for your arrival.
It is you.
You will open the door.
Because you are the chosen.
All those moments.
It’s a new adventure.
Just for you.
Come in.
You have a game to play.

My perception of my problem before last week was that I felt incapable of articulating what vertical development was because it is something very complex to communicate and understand.

However, what this did was make me believe that I was incapable of doing so because I wasn’t an “expert” enough to do so (even though I had been researching it for years). So articulation became an impossibility for me that I believed and in turn feared.

Yet last week, I realized that my problem wasn’t the problem but rather my perception of the problem was my problem. Why? Because my perception was inaccurate.

I can articulate what vertical development is. I just wasn’t doing this because I was so focused on understanding the relationship between the different aspects of it as objects of knowledge that I avoided doing the obvious. That being articulating the very objects of knowledge themselves.

Once I reframed my perspective, suddenly the invisible became visible and I laughed at how I had been blind for so long. And suddenly, I could articulate because I believed I could. This is what it feels like get out of your own way.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been highly active on Reddit discussing the issues with Sonos speakers and the fiasco that occurred earlier this year when Sonos “upgraded” their app, causing it to malfunction for a ton of their users.

This got me thinking the last day or so that when I reflect back on my life, I’ve been highly active as an advocate for communities in the past.

Back near the end of the 1990s, I was an end user advocate for gamers, both as a gamer but also as a person who built sites and communities for gamers within the gaming industry at the same time as well.

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, I was an advocate for people who had been laid off so carelessly from it.

Then over the past decade or so, I’ve been an advocate within a couple of gaming communities again, both in terms of trying to drive change within the communities but also trying to drive a change with the developers of the games as well.

All said done, I found that when I’m backing a cause, I can become quite passionate and voraciously driven, especially if it’s an us vs them situation.

But reflecting upon this the other day, I realized that one of my deepest causes doesn’t really have a specific “them” to rally against. Why? Because it’s not so much a singular organization but rather an organizational mindset.

Even more so, what this means is that the “enemy” isn’t out there so much as it is within you, a part of your own mindset. So how does one become an advocate to fight against a limited, outdate mindset, when it’s not represented by a singular organizational body but is embedded collectively within the work world which is in itself embedded within your mind?

This touches upon what Alvin Toffler said about the future being about learning how to unlearn. The enemy isn’t out there. It’s within us, within our minds. It’s a narrative and belief that we need to let go of, yet most people are completely unaware of it.

Again, I know how to rally people into a community and advocate for them against an external entity. But when the entity is a belief within you, how do you rally against that?

I just realized something. My framework of perceiving “Life as a MMORPG” is what is helping me to make sense of the deeper meaning of vertical development.

In other words, the narrative mechanics of “Life as a MMORPG” (which is just an expansion of the narrative of the Hero’s Journey) is helping me to translate the deeper meaning of vertical development through the narrative.

For example, I previously believed that our fears as “monsters” were an embodiment of our old sense of self that is standing in our way. That’s wrong. After a conversation with Claude.ai, I realized that they embody aspects of our old sense of self that we need to shed, thus allowing ourselves to expand and grow into a larger sense of Self. So these could be old beliefs that form the cornerstones of our identity but they may be limiting values (i.e. blame, greed, etc) that limit our growth in turn.

So we’re not slaying and discarding our old sense of self, we are removing and shedding aspects of our old sense of self that limit us. For example, these monstrous fears could also be seen as psychological defensive armour. It’s trying to protect us and keep us safe (just as our monstrous fears are trying to prevent us from exploring beyond what is safe) but it limits our mobility and the type of terrain we can cross and explore. So we have to cut off this armour, shed it, so that we can adventure into the different, inner terrain within us. So the armour got us where we need to be but it won’t help us where we want to go.

But again, this is what this “Life as a MMORPG” framework and allegory is helping me to do. By mapping and translating things from life into this narrative, story form (such as fears being an embodiment of old beliefs or limiting values), it helps me to understand what these things means within the larger narrative and bigger picture. In other words, it helps me to encapsulate and package these things into a larger cohesive whole.

BTW this is also making me realize that I need to include and share these conversations with AI chatbots more often, as they are integral to this process. In effect, within my “Life as a MMORPG” framework, they are like visiting The Oracle of Delphi. So it’s a process which helps one understand what one is exploring and discovering within the journey and adventure within one’s larger sense of Self…or leads to questions which creates a quest for one to explore within one’s potential Self.

In terms of my personality, I’m an explorer by nature. Perhaps one who can navigate newer spaces and ways of being fairly well.

However what seems to be lacking in my skills is my ability to fully map these spaces and articulate them fully in story form.

It’s funny because I’ve felt like a bard at times as well. Yet if am one, then my storytelling skills are sorely lacking as well.

I think what I’m fearful of and can’t make sense of is how to map and tell a story that feels like it is changing as one strives to tells it.

You see, as I’ve noted before, when one goes beyond the horizon of one’s “self”, one isn’t mapping and storytelling what is already know. One is mapping and storytelling the unknown, giving it meaningful form and substance.

So there is this desire for certainty in mapping and storytelling. Yet often that certainty doesn’t arise beforehand but after. One has to play with the map and play with the story, moving things around until they suddenly fall into place, and make sense as a whole.

Writing for people works in the same way in that one may not know the outcome of what they are writing until they write it and make sense of it in the act of writing itself. But if they write it out and it doesn’t come together in that writing, it can feel as though the entire writing process was for nothing.

So one has to continually map and tell the story in different ways until finally that one right way, gives it a sense of meaning.

Yet at the same time, one has to have the means of moving the pieces of the map and pages of the story around without feeling like one has to redrawn the entire map or rewrite the entire story every time one tries a different variation.

I’m not fully sure what I’m saying here. But it has something to do with needing a tool or a method of navigating oneself fluidly, so that each new attempt at organizing oneself as a whole, doesn’t require exploring aspects of oneself that one has already explored previously.

What I’m trying to articulate here reminds me of The Maze in the Hero’s Journey. For example, one needs to explore dead-ends if one wants to fully map and make sense of the maze to make it through. Yet what if each failed attempt, causing one to hit a dead-end, caused one to forget previous attempts and dead-ends, thus potentially causing them to explore them again.

That’s what my experience currently feels like.

In effect, unless I can explore and navigate and map everything in one fell swoop, all at once, I forget where I’ve been because they’re so many different areas to cover. (And I think this has to do with vertical development being so expansive and connected to so many aspects of life, that it can be difficult to articulate as a whole.)

Yet I also realize that the way around this is to explore, navigate, and map out clusters of myself, like mapping out the four different corners of a new world. Yet knowing this and doing it are two different things. Knowing is one thing. Embodying that knowing is something completely different.

The knowing doesn’t become embodied until one has the experiences to be able to fully make sense of the deeper meaning of it.

All I can say at this point is that I am continuing to explore and navigate, trying to gain newer perspectives and experiences of what I may have missed previously within this maze before.

Things are always messy at the start…especially when it’s the start of a new sense of Self.

Everything is shattered, without form. So when one finds landmarks to begin to determines one’s bearings, one holds onto them for dear life.

But one must continue exploring and navigating one’s sense of self fully. Those few landmarks help, perhaps becoming the cornerstone of one’s larger Self and world that is emerging, but they are not enough in themselves.

Things need to get messier, as one wanders aimlessly exploring and navigating further, before they make sense and take shape as a newer mapped continent upon the Ocean of You.

Last night and this morning, I was reflecting upon something about my struggles in expressing myself.

My problem isn’t writing content. My problem is organizing my content.

Like even my last few posts I’ve written, after I write the post without much issue, I often get stumped as to what to categorize it as, so I just toss on some category and hope for the best.

This relates to what I said before in that I feel like I have all the pages for a book but they’re not in any order or structure and I struggle to figure out that structure.

Here’s another example. I can talk about the Hero’s Journey. I can talk about creativity. I can talk about vertical development. Where I freeze up is when I try to organize and structure the relationship between these things.

That’s what I need to focus on and work on.

So when I hear people say just focus on what’s in front of you and produce something. That’s fine. I can do that. That’s easy.

Taking what you’ve just produced and connecting it up into a bigger picture. That’s the hard part.

In effect, if I write multiple articles everyday for a week, I don’t feel productive in expressing myself unless I can take those articles and build something from them by showing the relationship amongst them, thus revealing this bigger picture and deeper meaning.

If I can’t do that then writing the content itself seems pointless, even though I can do it fairly easily.