Mentally Fit Game - Daily Reflections
Erick Godsey invited us all to play a game, his MF game. A game that offers the full curriculum and resources from his university-level Mentally Fit course.
Months ago when it was announced in the Dharma Artist Collective, I checked it out, listened to the podcasts, and checked out as life kept lifing and I couldn’t responsibly find dedicated focused space for it - although I wanted to play, or did I?
To Play or not to Play?
Maybe I didn’t really want to play. Yet.
I was scared - of the mental part.
Heavily focusing on the game of the mental realm finally broke me down nearly 10 years ago. My deepest and longest dark night eventually broke me through, but only after years of reconnecting to my soul.
For a very long time I wasn’t fit at all. For way more years and many more aspects of my life than I liked to admit.
As of today, I believe I am mentally fit as a byproduct of getting myself to a place of being emotionally, spiritually fit, and in soul-aligned service.
Am I kidding myself? I don’t think so. And I don’t feel so.
But am I really mentally fit?!
Scanning through the resources, I see many ways I can find evidence for both sides of my inner argument.
So let’s find out. There is a safe game to play.
To find out where my blind spots are and grow my roots even deeper.
I am sure it will throw me off kilter occasionally, but I am not scared of that.
I know how to access and use my anchor now.
Today, I trust my foundations and am ready to play despite the fear of finding out what I am meant to find out.
I am taking the step to revisit the game of consciousness from the masculine, scholarly perspective, through the knowledge of others who cared to share. To complement my lived experience and gnosis with which I am arriving to this starting point.
My Game Rules
I promise to myself
to gently reconnect with the knowledge, the masculine approach outside of self in a healthy way this time;
to keep myself anchored and safe by maintaining the living equilibrium of both consciousness and life force while exploring;
to integrate what serves and let go of what doesn’t;
to embrace the fear and face it graciously anyway;
to plant seeds of wildflowers allowing the aligned unexpected to unfold.
I promise to you
to play the MF game for the next 3 weeks before the last cohort of the Mentally Fit class starts;
to spend 10 minutes every day sharing one thing I have learnt.
Insane?
Attempting to comprehend over 3000 pages in 3 weeks after 3 days of contemplating if I can make this a priority and actually follow through? All that while running a business and having a life?
I think it would be insane not to do it as my soul has spoken.
Do I risk being overwhelmed by too much, too fast?
Not really. I know my capacity and rhythm.
My sacred structures hold me in a safe spaciousness.
And knowing that the spaced repetition and deeper contemplation in the second round with the live cohort community will be much sweeter makes the process of evolution and integration even more profound.
Well, and while writing the last lines, a copy of Sacred Derangement was delivered to my doorstep - what a beautiful cosmic wink!
Let’s Play!
Day 0
Playing to win, Setting myself for success, Calm & Curious
The waters are freshly stirred after the lunar eclipse.
The endings make space for new beginnings.
Yet it would be irresponsible to recklessly commit to something that could burn me out fast.
This is not how I operate.
I honour the nudge and the gut feeling.
And I back it up with a plan.
Challenging enough.
Safe enough.
I am calmly curious.
After seeing everything I can from up close as well as the bird’s-eye view, I decide.
I am in!
D0: Learning, Integrating & Asking
→ all materials ready at one place
→ adequate time blocks allocated for next 3 weeks
→ day-to-day adjusted for the elevated information input
What if my biggest lessons are in cultivating better questions I get to ask?
Day 1
She called me in
The last time I read with such conviction and speed was almost two decades ago at university - devouring quite similar kinds of books. Let’s see where it leads me this time.
I believe that because there is no female author in the whole curriculum, I was naturally drawn to a book sitting right in the middle. My neurodivergent brain is very happy about that and agrees to follow intuition now, and the linear structure later. Maybe ;)
D1: Learning, Integrating & Asking
myths are universal imagination and experience of age and culture we stopped learning to understand as such when we killed religious god in the 19th century (to think mythologically and travel into our inner world is a skill)
Psyche, Aphrodite, Eros, Pan
“Whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.” (Aphrodite’s altar)
→ diving deeper into 4 tasks for evolution of consciousness (ultimate synthesis of opposites on all levels)
In what areas of life do we live under the domination of our animus?
Where does our anima hold a knife to kill instead of a lamp to transform?
Is in love the most profound and universal gateway for collective transformation?
Day 2
Foundational Freedom & Safety
Continuing to be a bit rebellious with regard to the syllabus, I feel the need to revisit Tiago Forte’s work. I read his Building a Second Brain book the summer it was published and implemented it straight away — I know how much calm it brought to my life, so I am curious about his second book, which I hadn’t even noticed had been published. There is a part of me that thinks it might be just an expanded version of the PARA method I have learnt, but let’s see.
D2: Learning, Integrating & Asking
“… changing your organisational system to fit your evolving needs and goals, instead of trying to force your needs and goals to fit your system.”
“You can’t change anything until you’re completely honest with yourself about what needs changing.”
to prevent digital hoarding, ask whether it is useful, not just interesting
the Resources folder is often used to avoid important responsibilities
→ moved some Resources to the Archive
→ changed a resource to a project & committed to it
How much collective suffering stems from individual systems not being updated regularly?
Day 3
Seeing him
It’s a rainy Friday night.
A fresh pot of tea steaming.
Candles lit.
A cosy warm blanket ready to welcome me.
That can only mean one thing.
A party.
To meet my animus through mythic knowledge.
(Exactly! I couldn’t put this book aside for much longer once I met her.)
D3: Learning, Integrating & Asking
unconscious perfection - conscious imperfection - conscious perfection (the journey through separation must be made to arrive at the same place)
a touch of consciousness first appears as a wound/suffering until redemption/enlightenment
The Grail, The Fisher King, Parsifal, Heart’s Sorrow, Red Knight, Gournamond, White Flower
3s, 4s, quintessence
6 relationships to the feminine - beware of contamination
to serve the Grail is to serve the inner woman
→ more clarity and courage gained for my upcoming quests
What is stopping me from satiating the collective consumeristic Grail castle hunger by pointing to pathways leading down, left and over the drawbridge?
Day 4
Updating parts of systems
I feel a bit guilty as I would love to continue reading Robert A. Johnson’s books, but also feel the urge to read Tiago Forte’s second book on the list, and in addition to all of that, I am questioning whether some part of me is, for some reason, avoiding beginning with the Sun Wheel, or if it is another part allowing me a little rebellion in low-stakes matters.
Well, I fished out the hardback copy of Building a Second Brain and found out that I actually hadn’t read the whole book and left my highlighting colouring pencil as a bookmark on page 152. So I’ll read this one first, to finish what I began while completing the bigger task of this whole exploration…
D4: Learning, Integrating & Asking
“Innovation and problem-solving depend on a routine that systematically brings interesting ideas to the surface of our awareness.”
life changes when you start expressing your ideas and knowledge turns into action
tacit knowledge
→ updating my 12 favourite challenges
How can we introduce more conscious convergence into the prevailing mindset of divergence that gives the illusion of productivity without yielding regenerative outcomes?
Day 5
Reimagening horizons
It’s time to return to the beginning of the curriculum. Today is uncomfortable – as it’s meant to be. I listened to the first three episodes of the podcast series almost a year ago, but I have not yet read the meditations, and I know it will be challenging to get through – not because I avoid the topics, but because my brain prefers to spend more time creating solutions and making a positive impact rather than revisiting the horror stories. Yet, I see there is potential for deepening and magic. Let’s dive in and face it …
It will be interesting to compare notes between then and now – that is what I am most looking forward to.
Afternote: I think I might have confused The Horizon Series with The Shimmer Series. This one is beautifully hopeful!
D5: Learning, Integrating & Asking
4 functions of myth
mythic pragmatism (beware traps of Postmodernism, Moral Relativism, Pluralism, and Model Agnosticism)
Good Explanations + Critical Rationality/Optimism
→ first draft of my thrice born story
→ revisiting & contextualising stages matrix in Ken Wilber’s work
→ started a list of my finite myths
What motivates the shifts in individual horizons, trickling from the bottom up quickly enough to transform the systems before we reach the point of no return and destroy humanity on Earth?
What if the current instant-gratification culture is perfectly prepared for a quantum leap transformation?
Day 6
Daimons at work
I am very apprehensive about starting this book. As my relationship with my soul is very much experiential, I am resisting the studious left-brain approach here the most, although I have no idea what journey this book will take me on. So I am acknowledging my projections, tuning into my curiosity, and opening my mind to find out what The Soul’s Code has to say.
D6: Learning, Integrating & Asking
the Acorn
a calling is seen better by others without projections (how > what)
safely growing down only after the full recognition of the genius
discomforts and disorders as a disguise for daimon at work
→ connecting more dots of my childhood
→ leaning into learning to see stories differently
What pathways can I co-create to honour the daimons’ calls, so they are expressed in wholeness rather than distorted into demons?
Day 7
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I feel I need a little break from the inward and hindsight work intricately hidden in stories, so I am choosing Mastery today to get cosy with the familiar style of writing as well as to create a balance and let the subconscious marinate in yesterday’s reading while strengthening foundations for mastering the outer expression.
D7: Learning, Integrating & Asking
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