The Principles
1 >>> Love is the ultimate environment.
2 >>> Personal power already lives in you.
3 >>> The sovereignty of good drives you.
4 >>> Sovereign speech teaches you.
5 >>> Action changes you, and ambivalence binds you.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
Principle 1:
The Ultimate EnvironmentLove is the ultimate, all-accepting environment from which you will never be removed. It is not a passive emotion.
This program is centered upon love as the ultimate environment because love accepts everything and rejects nothing. It’s the space in which both the light and the dark parts of human experience are allowed to exist without judgment. Every experience is valid.
We are humans living human experiences. We must not look to escape the darkness or bypass hardships; we must face our darkness in the shade of our light. This means we must use our personal power to stand strong, learn, and grow. We must not run away, suppress, or hide. Since love accepts all, every failure is a step forward.
Cleanembed
Link to originalSummary
Personal Power is not about politics or forcing the world to bow to your wishes. It’s the alignment of your internal world (values, beliefs, principles, and desires) and your external world (choices, roles, habits, and boundaries).
When you do not use your personal power, you live reactively. You allow fear, other people, and excuses to make your decisions for you. You know what you should do, but what you actually do never lines up. You are like a passenger to your own life because you break promises to yourself and surrender your control.
When you do use your personal power, you live as a sovereign person. You understand that your private world doesn’t have to match the real world. You understand almost every angle of your decisions, and you accept the consequences no matter what. You don’t force the world to match your desires because you know how to reconcile differences between the internal and external realities.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
You don’t have to fight for it, pay anyone to access it, or wait for the right time. You already have your own personal power, but the modern world has intentionally or accidentally severed our access to it. Whatever the reason, we have forgotten it. The knowledge on how to reclaim it is left unspoken, and we are left without a light to feel our way through life’s challenges.
This program identifies over 100 traits that describe Personal Power. These are listed in the Power Traits material. The modules consist of your many awarenesses and strengths, as well as your stability, agency, and much more. These traits are already a part of you, but they are like muscles that need to be trained. It might take a lifetime to find the whole suite of traits by looking everywhere it isn’t. Instead, we teach you how to look inside yourself.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
The sovereignty of good drives you.
You have the deliberate, conscious preference for healthy, unifying, and constructive growth over dangerous, selfish, and destructive growth.
The Sovereignty of Good is the preference for positive growth with the intent for prosperity. You prefer community over egocentrism, agency over victimhood, and respect over dismissal because constructive growth is the only path that leads to a true and unifying peace.
Because of Principle One, the ideas of good and evil are the same: they’re accepted. They are subjective and hard to define. However, this program strives for a preference toward conceptual “good”, where intent helps more than hinders growth in ways you would want others to treat you. We offer help to those who share this preference.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
Sovereign speech teaches you.
You prefer speech because it refines your thoughts and helps you discover what you actually know.
Sovereign Speech is the idea that explaining a concept in your own words increases understanding about that knowledge. You don’t speak because you have all the answers. Knowing the whole truth in your lifetime may be impossible, but speaking helps synthesize understanding. Docendo discimus: you learn better by teaching. What you can speak is not always a complete, total conclusion to truth, but it’s often as close as you can get.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
Dialogue helps to build understanding because something happens when you speak your knowledge. A shift occurs when you share what you know without fear of judgment.
- Synthesis: Using the classic principle of docendo discimus (above), speaking aloud forces your brain to make sense of chaotic thoughts. It changes them to clear, logical statements, and as a result, you teach yourself more. You practice logic in real-time, and you get better at it.
- Self-monitoring: In speaking with another or yourself in a journal, you clearly hear your excuses and sense when your reasoning turns back to unhealthy patterns. You learn how to listen to your thoughts and analyze the truth behind them.
- Release: Giving your troubles voice teaches you to let go of a false sense of control. You break out of abstract thinking and negative loops. What you say makes it real instead of something that lives in your mind. It exposes unhealthy habits and strips their power over you.
Passive learning through books and videos cannot work through your personal issues because you cannot interact with their message. Words on a page or in a recording always say the same thing, whether you understand them or not. True alignment with your inherent power requires a dialogue where you are both listened to and questioned without judgment. You are encouraged to make your own truths, while the traits of our Power Traits serve as a supportive framework.
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
Action changes you, and ambivalence binds you.
You warrant that only activity helps you grow, you refuse to let anyone make your choices for you, you don’t wait until you feel ready, and you take a small, real-world step.
Ascending Action is the active avoidance of traps. By acting, you break the spell of stagnation and build the self-trust you need to grow. You may be stuck feeling the need to wait until you are ready, your confidence is high, and you’re free of doubt. While rest does refresh, you cannot simply think your way into a new you.
The time you spend making plans and waiting for the right moment allows complacency to sink in. When you break promises you make to yourself, you teach yourself that your words mean nothing. You lose pieces of your self-trust, and pretty soon, ambivalence to taking action or stagnating takes over.
The Methodology
The program is structured to respect your energy and time. We move away from lectures and focus on active, practical, and, ultimately, interactive sessions.
Discussion
Cleanembed
Link to originalInvisiblock
This program uses both empathy for your struggles and logic for problem-solving. Therefore, we believe in Motivational Interviewing (MI) and the Socratic Elenchus. We combine these in our own approach. Our Elenchus Elicitation is a goal-oriented process that not only elicits your ambivalences, but aims to reconcile the Friction between what you want and what is.
In step one of this method, we use MI’s empathetic approach (pathos) to support and validate the emotions that stem from the desires of your Inner World. We compare what you want or expect to what you are actually getting from the world (Shared Reality) currently. We elicit the pros of what feels good about your desires, and then we elicit the cons regarding what the pros cost you. We then clearly define the friction between the private and shared realities. It reveals a state of ambivalence where you may start to see unhealthy secondary gain patterns and other traps.
In step two, we use the elenchus (logos) to investigate how the desires of your private reality compare to the rigid rules of shared reality. We learn that to begin a compromise, we must manage expectations with logic. We sense that the world doesn’t react to willpower alone. There are physical laws in place, and while we may not agree with them, we must follow them. This step helps reveal specific, internal blockages or blind spots.
Finally, we come to the Elenchus Elicitation method, which bridges pathos and logos. In step three, we learn to reconcile the differences between the desires of your private reality and the actuality of our shared reality. You learn how to live with what you get from life by forming a new understanding, learning how to process emotions healthily, and doing so through your own power. By identifying the specific Power Traits of your personal power that need nurturing through achievable goals, you may bring yourself closer to a harmonic inner peace that helps you expand your perspectives with emotional and logical understanding.
Modular
Each of the traits in your Personal Power is examined in practical, supplemental material provided for free on this website here: Power Traits.
Each Power Module focuses on one aspect at a time to maintain focus and reduce feeling overwhelmed. You are given solid ground to stand, and you decide when you are ready to move on.
Tools
Micro Actions
Change doesn’t happen instantly. It’s a series of small actions made consistently. Micro actions are those small actions that you can do right now and complete in seconds to build agency and momentum.
Thought Experiments
We strip away your mental loops to see your private reality as compared to reality itself. By using imagined situations, we practice the thought patterns that steer you straight. We also notice the patterns that leave you stuck.
Focus Points
We use Learning Points & Misery Points to identify friction, suffering, or repetitive patterns. They become noticeable details that can result in misery or growth.
Demonstrations
To illustrate the ideas behind your personal power, we demonstrate the meaning through short stories, symbolism, and poignant analogies. These reveal hidden insights and glaring mistakes.
Mnemonic Devices
We use clever sayings to help you recall the lessons, similar to PEMDAS (from math class), the alphabet song, and the months of the year song. Mnemonics act like automatic memory refreshers at a moment’s notice because they are simple and sometimes silly.
Support
We provide self-guided materials for you through YouTube and supplemental materials. Everyone is free to move through those at their own volition.
- Level 1, Supporter: Free access to the YouTube videos and the Power Modules. These are fast, packed, and generalized navigation points that can apply to anyone. Our video offerings are being built.
- Level 2, Member: The YouTube channel membership provides longer, deeper insights into specific abilities in your personal power, exploratory questions, and prompts for personal reflection.
- Level 3, Correspondent: This is for those who want regular, scheduled one-on-one guidance sessions with me.
- Contact Mr. Whitehorn me to become a Correspondent.
Regarding Socrates’s idea of the dialectic, our YouTube videos and Power Modules may not be enough to enlighten a person to their personal power.
This is why the one-on-one discussion in support level 3 is the ideal form of empowerment because media doesn’t synthesize for you. For example, a person might understand an ability of their power, but somehow they may not know how to use it.
FAQ
Q: Why should I do this? A: In simple terms, you should do this to improve your mindset. In this program, you are trying to find what you lost: your original, personal power. Maybe you don’t know you lost it, but there is a power in everyone that isn’t easily seen. The goal of the program is for you to want to find your power and do the hard work to claim it.
Q: What if I don’t feel I’ve lost or forgotten something? A: That’s easy to do if you don’t remember that you ever had it. It’s hard to recall something you forgot, and it’s harder if you don’t know you forgot. The best prison is one without walls, and the best slaves are those who aren’t educated to know better. This program seeks to bring that education, which seems to be lacking in most public institutions.
Q: How does A Lighthouse help me find it? A: You learn how to look inward. We set a goal, we work through your blind spots, and you do the work in guidance. The program isn’t a self-centered, eccentric, and exclusive movement open only the few. The only restrictions are those you put on yourself. There are best practices, which may be hard to follow, and not everyone is ready to face the dark parts of themselves. Take the program in stages, when you feel ready for more.
Q: What if I don’t know how or I don’t understand? A: We use the Support Level 3, Correspondent, to have a one-on-one chat with you to customize the program to your life experience.
Q: What do I learn? A: You learn answers to existential questions that many people have: who am I; where am I; why am I here; what’s the meaning of it all; how do I become a better person? You learn to remember, access, and use your Personal Power to understand your emotions and use them with logic to make efficient life choices.
Q: How will I remember the strategies I learn? A: The symbolism in the program delivers powerful messages appropriate to your personal background, and we use mnemonic devices to pack lessons into a memorable phrases. We also have YouTube videos to help you remember the content any time.
Q: What if I need help? A: The thing about A Lighthouse is that it functions like a real one. You don’t have to enter the lighthouse to use it. All you have to do is look at it, know that it’s there, and use it to guide you. That’s what this website and the YouTube videos are for. You don’t have to become a paid Correspondent; you don’t have to sign up for newsletters.
If you do want our help, become a Correspondent, and we can schedule a meeting with you. We will take you through Orientation, the details about your situation, you choose your goal, and we’ll get started with you. Finding your support group (your friends, your loved ones, professional help, and whoever else you trust) can help you stand on your own. We all work toward the same goal, separately, but as a team to support you.