Cliff’s List 5/17/2005

As all of you know, I love to post Cliff’s list newsletters on here. I just find that they
are like the heart beat of the community. They have been around for a long time now
and are always the first to break news of anything new in the seduction community.

Cliff’s List Newsletter

Sean (www.PickUp101.com – Sean is one of the Senior Instructors at
PickUp 101):

The ‘Movie Moment’ direct approach is taught in the Art of Rapport
– Daygame workshop. This is a field report Sean wrote about using
the Movie Moment to meet his current ‘perfect’ girlfriend.

Using The Movie Moment – 100% Perfect (field report)
She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Warm, honey skin,
soft brown eyes, long lashes, silky hair flowing under a funky cap,
just a touch of sparkly blue eye-shadow, and a sly smile under
pillowy lips.
It’s a crowded Sunday in a little caf in Union Square in San
Francisco. Workers are putting up the giant Christmas tree, and
shoppers are everywhere. It’s not quiet, calm, and peaceful. People
are jostling about, and everyone can see everything. Perfect. Put
this on display for all to see -­ this is exactly what I have
prepared for.

Get in line for food and keep looking at her. I fix her image in my
mind. I look away. Let the nerves build up. Feel it in my chest, in
my heart. I want this beautiful girl. I want her so much. I want
her to have my kids, and her kids, and walk hand-in-hand on the
boardwalk on the beach, win her giant stuffed animals for her at
games of chance, snuggle on Sunday mornings, and buy her sparkly
things to make her smile. I let all the silly and wussy and
once-again-silly thoughts fill me up. I will use them as fuel.
I will walk up to her, alone. I will have no pretext, no
introduction, no excuse. It will be her, and it will be me, and in
this secret world, we will be. I want the nerves. I want the fear.
I want this to be hard. For a man who didn’t know what he was
doing, that would make it impossible. For me… for me it makes it
perfect.

Then my single 100%-perfect girl takes a seat at a table right
behind me… with her 99%-perfect girl friend. She’s here, now. I
know from experience if I leave now, without meeting her, it will
wake me from a sound sleep when I am old and gray, and the not
knowing will haunt me like a ghost.

f-word it.

I have studied, practiced and worked at this for a reason. This
girl is the reason. She is the one that brought me here today. When
you find the princess, she will not be waiting for you on a bed
made of Twinkies and tits. She will be in a castle, guarded by a
dragon, behind a wall of flames. Walk through the flames.

I step out of line. Walk to her table. I feel every eye upon me.
Stand at their table. They both look up.

I say nothing. I don’t worry about what to say. My hands are down,
my eyes are steady. I open my mouth.

“I was on my way out, and I saw you.” Is my voice quavering a
little? It is. Good.

“I couldn’t leave without meeting you. May I sit?”

They both stare at me. The room stares at me. I wait. She says yes.
I reach back to table behind me and grab a chair from another table
without asking. Is someone else using it? Not anymore. Chair bangs
against other chairs. It appears unsmooth, but I don’t care.

I sit. Look at her… gently, but seeing her. I don’t say anything. A
year passes. She asks, “so what are you doing today?”

I mention something about Christmas shopping. Start talking normal
stuff. Introduce myself, they introduce themselves. Gia and Lily.
My internal circuits are all afire, but I will not stop. That’s how
it works. I don’t have to keep going. I just have to … Not. Stop.
Gia is from Indonesia. Lily is from Thailand. They live here now. I
tell them I teach dog owners how to understand their dogs. They
love dogs, Golden Retrievers. I tell them how big the hearts of a
Golden are, that they are made of love. Time passes. I talk about
the park near my house. Watching sunset from the swings, and the
cafe close by with the best hot chocolate in the city.

The air is heavy with this moment I feel the weight. Time to go.
Tell them so. Tell Gia to meet me at my house next week and we’ll
go to the park. She agrees. Offers me her number. We hug, and her
skin smells like summer.

I stand. Legs still working. Nice surprise.

Walk out, slow, stunned. Kick-to-the-head stunned. My world is of
muffled sound, like under the sea, like leaving a Metallica show.
Everything is slow and gentle, everything is floaty.

Talk twice over next week, flirty, funny, sexy. Normal topics too.
School, work, fun. She’s coming over Saturday.

With two bottles of wine, one white, one red. With a dog treat for
my dog.

We will be as lovers who meet again and again, as the wheel does
turn, as it was meant to be.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Tolan2:

Commenting on: >> Jeffrey (commenting on Rhino’s post about the
stagette): So, after you said ‘there’s no chance, she should be
paying me to eat the candy off her neck. How much are you payin’
me?’ How would you answer if she says “You? What’s so good about
you? Why should I be paying you?” (or something along those
lines… or saying stuff like ‘I got hotter guys paying to do this
.. what’s so special about you”?)

> Rhino responds: I think the Seduce and Conquer
(www.seduceandconquer.com/seducewomen) cd’s prepare us for this
easily: If she gives that kind of response, then you’ve got her
interested and she’s testing you more. There are all sorts of
things to respond with, the staple being “you’d only be so lucky to
find out.” But it would be better to say something you come up
with on your own that gets a similar result. Like: “You don’t need
to know,” or if she’s a complete bitch, completely brush her off
saying “ya ya, whatever” and walk. Put yourself above them:
“Honey, if they were hotter than me, they wouldn’t be paying you;
put your glasses on.” Or challenge her; “you don’t have it in you
to find out.” – after this comment I would move towards saying
something to make her laugh and change the tone from bitch to
funny. She needs to be thrown off more or challenged more. The
right response depends on the context of the situation. This was
my 2nd time in a similar situation and I was much better prepared
than the first time.

Tolan2: Actually, I think this is when RJ’s “pace her ongoing
reality” should come into play.

A better response would be, “Well, I have you asking, don’t I?”
Followed by a smile and a well-timed back turn. Perhaps an
additional (neutral) Neg, if she is tough.

I mean, if she is smoking hot, how many times in that night will
she be asking her self “why is that guy so great?” Just by the
very merit of her asking that question, it puts the guy in a good
position. This should be acknowledged, paced, and then led into a
convo that is more productive. I think direct verbal sparing, or
C&F if you prefer, would be a little clich in that kind of
setting. Your job as a PUA is to go beyond the clich.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Elvis Preston King:

Commenting on Badboy’s. This boy has been around or is super smart
or has a Hell of a coach.

The thing is most guys just don’t understand these crucial rules.
This is the biggest danger of losing one’s status a PUA. I mean the
power struggle in a relationship is so delicate and a guy can lose
control so easy even by buying her little gifts and taking her out
to dinner if she hasn’t earned it by putting another girl in your
bed!

The rule to live by is “if you don’t show a girl who is boss she
will show you who is boss.”

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Joe:

Offbeat body language question

Was at a hypnosis seminar last night. There was only one eligible
chick there. Didn’t make a play due to fatigue. But I noticed after
a break, she’d pulled her hair back and was now showing her ears.
If I’m the center of the clock, she was sitting at 2:00…one row
ahead of me and three seats to the right. So the side of her head
was in my sight line…and it could have been directed at me. Is
that a sign of interest/availability, etc.?

She was doing a little dangling-shoe stuff…wearing clogs, letting
one shoe dangle from her foot a little bit. Hey, it’s bare feet
season and I like to look; sue me.

Comments?

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Dr Alex Benzer (www.thetaoofdating.com):
THE TAO OF GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY II

Hey there, guys. I’m writing you from Amsterdam, from a window
overlooking a canal on a rainy day.

It’s easy to dismiss rain as ‘bad weather’ and to frown at the
mention of clouds. But that just reminds me of the old Hawaiian
saying: “No rain, no rainbows.”

Moreover, rain and clouds have their own beauty: the smell of damp
earth, mellow sunlight streaming through cottony clouds and the
dance of raindrops on the surface of the water.

To the Taoist, this would be the notion of accepting the world
exactly as it is. Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching reads:

“When people see some things as beautiful,
Other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
Other things become bad.”

Now the rain and the clouds has gotten me thinking about the shadow
side of relationships. Things like, conflict. Pain. Heartbreak. All
that fun stuff. If you are a man reading this, chances are you have
been hurt before in a relationship. Maybe betrayed. Stood up. Phone
calls gone unreturned. She made you a promise and didn’t keep it.
She left you for another man. Maybe some of these things happened
more than once.

If you’re a woman reading this, chances are *you* have been hurt in
a relationship. Maybe betrayed. Stood up. Phone calls gone
unreturned. He made you a promise and didn’t keep it. He left you
for another woman. Maybe some of these things even happened more
than once.

The point is this stuff happens to *everybody*, all the time. We
are the most successful organism in history not because we
experience no conflict or challenge, but because we are most able
to adapt to them. As I like to say, challenge is not a bug — it’s
a feature. Deal with it.

Now the question comes of *how* you are going to deal with it. The
first strategy is what I call the “woe is me” strategy. Basically,
it means you take it all personally and say, “Why does this always
happen to meeee?” and have a little pity party for yourself. You
assume the position of the victim that the world does unto and
whine yourself into powerlessness. You hold all those people who
have wronged you responsible for your pain and hold grudges against
them for ever and all time, world without end, amen.

As twisted and useless a strategy as this sounds, it’s probably the
single most common one I’ve encountered amongst people. And every
one of us has used it at some point.

Now let me tell you exactly what this does to you. It burdens you.
It slows you down. It mucks up your entire mind and heart with this
dark energy of self-righteousness and injury.

And, most important, it robs you entirely of your personal power.
Because you are tying your well-being to the external actions of
some other person — sometimes another person who is years in the
past or hundreds of miles away.

Sure, being pitiable might get you some sympathy. But pitiable is
the opposite of powerful. I’d much rather see you powerful.

Pitiable is also often a cheap disguise for bitter. I have spoken
to enough men (and women) to know that there’s a lot of bitterness
floating around. Some of them figure it out and use the strategies
(enumerated below) to become better people as a result. But I know
a lot of guys who take the bitterness to heart and take every
slight very personally.

What happens then is that they generalize from a handful of cases
to put some label on *all* women. “All women are (blank).” Then
they bring this bitterness to their next interaction with a woman,
which of course is doomed from the start. Or they accumulate an
arsenal of weapons to trick and browbeat women, or to mask the fact
that they don’t really like themselves.

Needless to say, this ain’t the best way to go, my friend. One of
the best pieces of advice I got was from Don Miguel Ruiz’s book
“The Four Agreements”, in which he says ‘take nothing personally.’

I know it feels pretty darn personal when, say, somebody dumps you,
but taking it all personally just means that you think you’re
taking yourself way too seriously and somehow believe the world
revolves around you. And that just ain’t the case, buddy. Lighten
up. And, even if not taking it personally sounds totally phony, it
will make you feel better. Trust me on this one.

Slowly we’re getting to the second strategy: the strategy of
empowerment.

Now if you take responsibility for everything that’s happened and
all the feelings you’ve had, something miraculous happens. The
agency is now shifted from an external source (where you had
minimal control) to an *internal* source (where you have maximal
control).

Responsibility is control. And control is power. Power is good.

I’m not saying that it’s your fault that she dumped you. I’m saying
that you have responsibility for it happening, even if you were
completely blameless in the transaction.
*You* were the other half of that relationship, not your grandma.
Therefore, you were responsible. Responsible good.

Now, in typical Tao of Dating fashion, I’ve presented the
challenge. Now I’m going to give you some ways of handling it —
some ways of achieving this empowerment when it comes to
relationship pain.

The first one is the toughest and most effective one. It’s called
*letting go.*

Right now, wherever you are sitting, I want you think about all the
pain you’re holding right now about women in your life. All the
times she turned you down for a date, didn’t return emails and
phone calls. Now let it go.

She divorced you and took the house. And the kids. Let it go.

She shacked up with the gardener and took your toolbox, too. Let it
go.

She said she loved you but didn’t mention her fiance. Let it go.

She said yes, then said no, then said yes, then said no again. Let
it go.

Pain happens. But suffering is optional. And it’s time you emptied
out your bitterness account so it stops earning any more interest.
Because your suffering does not affect her (or anyone else whom you
perceive as having wronged you). It only affects you! It holds you
back. It burdens you and slows you down.

Because when you hold the bitterness inside, it becomes more
difficult to love yourself. And that diminishes your radiance.

So drop it. Lose all the grudges, all the perceived slights, all
the little black dots you’ve unconsciously put next to other
people’s names. Chuck ’em all.

Some people call it forgiveness. Some people call it indifference.
I call it rising above. Clouds do not impede sunlight if you’re
flying above them.

And when you rise, you become light. You glow. And people will
gather around you, wondering what’s up. “Who is this guy?” There is
something deeply att ractive about a man who can suspend judgment
indefinitely, to accept all as they are. Isn’t that what everyone
wants — to be accepted as they are?

If you didn’t do the exercise now, that’s okay. Just promise you’ll
do it soon.

The second method of empowerment is centering yourself in the
present.

Right now, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re not actively
bleeding. You probably don’t have an open head wound, respiratory
distress or congestive heart failure. (As they said in medical
school, there are only three emergencies in life: airway,
breathing, circulation. The rest are details. ABCs, man.)

You’re also probably well-fed, clothed and dry, with a roof over
your head. In fact, it’s raining outside right now, and I have not
electrocuted myself on this computer, so life is pretty good.

The point is that at this sliver of an ever-moving, always still
nanosecond called ‘now’, everything’s fine. Stuff goes haywire only
if you start dwelling on the past (“She did me wrong!”) or the
future (“She hasn’t done me wrong yet, but she will soon, darn
it!”), which frankly don’t exist. So get out of the country music
version of your life, take a deep breath, and bring some gratitude
to where you’re sitting instead. Focus on what is, not on what
isn’t. Realize that there is nothing missing, and you have
everything that you need. Take on that glow of self-sufficiency,
and watch the world gather around you.

And perhaps, in your infinitely astute perception, you have noticed
that letting go and self-sufficiency are pretty much the same
thing. Because when you suspend all judgment and let go of all
grudges, you also have to include yourself in that equation and
forgive yourself. And when you forgive yourself, you are
acknowledging that you are okay. You are complete as you are.
Nothing is missing. You are fully present. Life is good.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Cliff’s List, 2348 Lucerne Rd., Suite 143, Montreal, Quebec, CANADA H3R 2J8.
Please notify by email before sending any mail to this address.