I was sitting with a coworker at dinner, and I took hold of the salt and pepper shakers. I put the pepper on my left, and the salt on the right.

“I have pepper,” I said to her. “But I don’t want pepper.” I pushed the pepper away. I look to the salt. “I want salt. I don’t have salt.” And I too pushed that away from me.

It’s funny how in life you want the things you can’t have. And you don’t want the things that come easily to you. Why? Because if you can have it at any time, if it is so easy to obtain, and if there is no challenge or sense of reward, then what value is there in it? I attempted to explain this concept to a family member and she refused to hear any of it, chalking it up to immaturity on my part. It is unfortunate though that she cannot understand my predicament. We are all just puppets. I am simply one of the few that can see the strings.

It’s just so ironic. Such a joke, that this “Game” is far bigger, far deeper, and far more encompassing than we first imagined when we started it. Once you begin, you can’t really stop.

I had an epiphany. I love those moments of sudden clarity, where you finally cut through the haze of the world and obtain a small piece of understanding. The only person, the ONLY person in the world that can hurt you - is YOU.

Now granted this is not true 100% of the time. But when you’re single, chasing after others, trying your best to get INTO a relationship, or simply attain a certain GOAL, you find that the only true opponent in this game is YOU. Your thoughts. Your inner-ignorance and self perception. Your own ego. Only he (she) can harm you. Does this mean that you stop taking risks? Does this mean you stop letting yourself fall in love?

The answer is complex. Yes and no. You can’t simply turn yourself off and never feel again. But you must be vigilant. You must be cautious. You must know where to place your foot, for we are always walking on a highwire. And if we lose focus for a moment, oneitis strikes and we lose our balance. For balance is the essence of control. The unfortuante reality is that humans always try to control their little worlds. The truth is, the more you think you control, the less you do. But then, if you change the rules on what control you, you change the rules on what you can control.

Paradoxes. You can’t allow yourself to be overcome by them. The point is simply this. Life is newtonian. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The harder you push, the harder life pushes back. The more you try, the more the goal escapes you. It’s like being bound by a rope, and the harder you struggle against it, the tighter it gets. It’s like quicksand. The more you try to escape, the deeper you’ll sink.

Isn’t it beautiful?

So what do you do? The more you resist the more that thing which pains you will persist. The harder you try the more likely you’ll fail, and the more difficult it will be to regain what you’ve lost, since you’ve invested so much more than had you not cared. But then if you don’t care, how can you love? If you don’t at least TRY and go after those things that you desire, how will you ever claim what you want? What happens to ambition, the mother of success?

The only way I can describe it is this: Become a ripple.

When you start the Game, your main motivation is to seek out women. To improve your lifestyle. To change your outlook. But 100% of the people new to the game make the mistake of single-mindedly pursuing the goal of becoming great with women. They learn lines. Routines. Change their style. They work on their inner game (which IS important). But at the end of the day, they always return to what they know best. Geeking out on the theory and the knowledge and the science of it all.

Yes, it is all incredibly interesting and yes, I too used to geek out on it but at WHAT point do we STOP? Stop thinking about it and just let it… sink in?

Be the ripple.

When we start this game, we chase after our goal with a single mind. Which is good, at the BEGINNING. But we eventually reach an impasse. The point of diminishing return where the more and more we learn yields smaller and smaller results. We come across the issue of consistency where we frequently blame ourselves if we perform badly during a set or during an interaction. We keep listening to rules of the Game and trying to run game on others rather than reading the social cues of the other person and believing in ourselves. The “Game” is just a veneer. Just a veil. A cover of what is really happening underneath. Mystery Method, NLP, and all the other nonsense is merely an extrapolation of what is really happening underneath. A perception of what the Game truly is. And if we could see the game, this fucking game for its reality, we would nearly lose our minds. Nearly. As I almost did.

Like a bullet through water we pursue our goal. But that bullet must eventually come to a rest. And what happens when it does? It sinks. That bullet cannot be fired again. No matter how hard you try.

Instead - be the ripple.

Imagine yourself. Your very body, to be fluid and dissolvable. Imagine yourself melting away into the space around you. Close your eyes and raise your arms and imgaine yourself just dissolving into the air, like a drop of food colouring in clear water, moving out into every direction around you. Calm. Serene. And each heartbeat is like a stone dropped in water, causing a ripple, carrying you further out into the space around you.

What does this mean for real life? Rather than OVER-actively pursuing every goal in your life, like a bullet trying to move in five directions at once, rather be the ripple, that moves out into every area of life, reaching outwards in every conceivable direction, attaining all its goals… with time. The ripple cannot crash. It merely bends around its obstacles. The ripple does not try. It merely does.

Does this mean that you lose yourself? Your sense of self? In a way… yes. But remember what I said. That any sense of self, any sense of “me”, brings a perception of limitation. And stops you from doing something you may never have done before.

There is no more “me”. There is no more “self”. There is no more “try”.

There is only the ripple in the quicksand. And once this has been attained, the salt, and the pepper, and all the other little things on the table, will start to sink into the center. They will sink into you.

Q.