It’s not just chess. In 12 step programs you hear the maxim, “the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results.” So I’m sure everyone will be happy to know since I started this article as a draft three weeks ago the chess gods have somehow seen fit to smile upon me. Of course I don’t believe there are such things as chess gods, except when I win, and when I win I am a chess god.

Yes this is about chess, and it’s not about chess. It’s about doing things well. Anything, really, writing for Triond, let’s say. From the number of “I liked it!” responses I have received you might suppose I’m not writing very well for Triond, but I think I am. I ignore earnings reports, my reward is simply in the creating. Chess is similar, but harder to detach from the result because it is after all very much predicated on a competition, an outcome.

I’ve concluded it is the highest form of math. Since I was never very good at the lowest forms of math I have, understandably, struggled to win games. Yet lately I have been winning. Listen up all you folks who read the “Secret.” I did not, apparently it is some sort of imagine what you want self help tome. I can’t imagine myself buying a book like that although…

What if you could convince yourself that what you have is what you want? I think I’ve seen a book like this is the self help section of Borders also. Not to steal anybody’s take on ancient teachings here, (talking to you Dan Millman, Shakti Gawain, etc.) but what if then you imagined what you wanted, and convinced yourself you had it (even though you don’t, yet), and now here’s the tricky part – you don’t really care that you have it!

So, you’ve convinced yourself, acted as if you had something, we’ll just say a high chess score. Ok, I’ve got it, I’m going along with the idea, yeah I’ve got that, ok. I’m happy with it but I don’t feel the need to hold on to it. See I think this is where the creative visulaization/secret/do what you love the money will follow etc. philosophies fall apart. Sure, you see it, you manifest it even, let’s say even winning the lottery, but as soon as it appears, either in reality or your imagination, the nearly irresistable tendency is to grab it and hold it before it gets away!

And of course then it disappears. I’m not saying I’m an expert on how to do this, but my experience in chess has been the more I wanted to win the less I did. I played well a lot of the time, really well, but still somehow found a way to lose. Yes, I could plainly see I was giving away what I wanted- because I wanted it too much!

So something happened finally that allowed me to care, and yet not care. Care enough to look at the board, assess the position, all the mechanics of things and yet not care enough to see the pattern. It really is tricky, hence the preponderance of the mediocre versus the masterful in chess, business, arts, politics, etc., one author described it as “the Flow,” and of course in sports, the Zone. There’s probably as many ways to say it as there are chess openings at least and yet it’s not like just taking a pill or memorizing a strategy because not only does it change with each person it changes within that person from moment to moment.

At a given point in a chess game a number of conflicting emotions and thoughts enter my conscious, some loud, some soft; play it safe, play it daring, the usual litany of choices people confront with so many things in their everyday life they shut off most of them and default to – go to work, don’t get fired, drive home, eat dinner, watch TV, read “The Secret” and wonder why I’m not rich.

I would say truly not caring if you win or lose- chess, job, whatever, is the first step, because traditional caring is based on duality- it’s always going to be one or the other so as soon as you put your money on one you worry about the other coming up. After that, do all that you do caring about doing it ‘the right way.’ Right is not opposite of wrong here, right in this sense is the higher principle of doing it for the higher principle. What is the higher principle? That which most allows you to expand your consciousness because only by expanding your consciousness can you see the overall pattern and only when you begin to see the overall pattern can you quiet your mind enough to listen for what is the next move; the right move!