Witnessing someone go through an awakening — or excelling at anything — does something to you that information cannot. Joe describes it through golf: if you’ve played your whole life with people who are mediocre and then play a single round with someone genuinely great, your own game improves just from watching how they approach it and hearing a few of their words. More than that, you now know it’s possible, and you can see the path.
“Having contact with greatness, somebody who’s really exceptional at anything, is a privilege that allows you to know that something’s possible and then be able to shoot for it.”
This is the deeper argument for doing the work in community rather than alone. In a group, you watch many people awaken from various distances, at various stages, noticing it and responding to it in different ways. “One person pops and then a couple other people see it and they’re like, ‘Oh, I can go there.‘” The proof of possibility spreads.
It’s also why being present with someone going through a transformation is a privileged place to be — it quickens your own experience. Seeing greatness, in any domain, turns on a kind of homing beacon: once you’ve glimpsed it, you tend to arrange your life to reach it.
Related Concepts
- Deep community dissolves identity
- Transformation requires experience, not information
- Awakening is not personal — it is the erosion of self over time
- Awakening is not a conclusion, just part of the journey
- The intellect can understand a change the body never makes
- Welcoming everything, not managing it, is what leads to awakening
- Making awakening a goal slows the process down