My quest for learning how to trade Bitcoin is starting to carry quasi-religious qualities! I am no longer participating in an activity, or merely learning a skill that could benefit my life in the long run. I feel more and more I have dove into a world of its own, a grand mirror cabinet of sorts that seems like the most perfect teacher I could ever hope to find.
Perfect not because he makes it easy to understand his lessons, or because he is forgiving and patient. Rather the market - bitcoin - is the perfect teacher because it is always FAIR in what it reflects back to me, even and especially if I get hurt.
All my greatest trading failures thus far have not been the result of random forces acting against me without intelligence, nor have they been the result of the market's ill intent towards a lone dude trying to figure this all out. Instead I find the results of my trades are always a perfect reflection of my state of mind and never the result of anything else.
Hecticness gets punished.
When I feel out of touch with the market and force a trade I get slapped in the face. The thing is I rarely recognize when I'm out of touch because the voice in my mind keeps whispering silly things like "Don't miss this move." I only realize I have been out of touch mere moments after putting the trade on and I pay the price for it - instantly.
In reality I miss most perfect trades because I project, because I am forcing behavioral norms onto my teacher, making him conform to my super clever analyses to no avail. He is a master and will not go with my whims.
And you see, it's not that these analyses are plain wrong - they are most often quite correct in fact. But the way they play out always have this quality of Zen and are just one more time around the corner, one more smart move away, one inch apart from how I projected. When I am not flowing in the moment with what is happening, when I project my plan onto what is happening and confuse a move to a "clever" entry point with what the teacher actually wants seen and understood by its student, I get slapped momentarily. He hits me with a bamboo stick.
And right when I am petting my forehead, being mad at myself for jumping the gun and my premature projection, the thing I actually looked for happens. The master with a big smile on his face shows me in all clarity how he flows, how "it" wants to move, and all the elegance and ingenuity that accompanies it, always a step ahead of my mind because my mind is always in the way and not aligned with intuition to the degree neccessary.
"It's not that you were entirely wrong you just don't get it yet. HERE LOOK AT ME! THEN GET IT! HERE. NOT THERE (points at my forehead)! HERE. NOW. AGAIN."
His following actions could not be more clear and a big "Aha" rises in me, usually dissolving the pain of the trade I just barely missed - completely. Illumination can blow away all the ego-ridden hangups because the master is just so masterful and so full of sense, it's quite scary to the ego sometimes. But there is method to his madness, he is the flow. The Dao.
Like he is constantly reiterating: You can't force this dude, GET IT! Try again! You have endless tries! Don't give up - I'l be right here whenever you want to go again...
And he is. Whenever I am ready I am closest to getting in tune and I try again. Like a monk apprentice from the city with too much baggage but heaps of tenacity.
Some people take up a few years in a monastery, trying to get out of their own way and ultimately finding they could never get away from themselves but instead just get "with" themselves. And everything falls into place, now that observer and actor are aligned. It is that that BTC wants to show me. I feel I am getting closer to what the master is constantly pointing at!
Does that sound fundamentalist and cultish? Sure it does, ahahahaha. I revere the teacher for his wisdom and I respect myself for slowly coming to grips with the audaciously obvious conclusion I can never outperform the master ever, nor that I ever need to... I only want to learn to get so much in tune with him that I become part of the ocean like a wave, that the market and myself are so much merged in spirit and attention that the currentscies can flow my way with ease because that's where I have positioned myself accordingly when I saw what the master was trying to show me next. Not before, not projection. But immediacy and clarity. Focus and the flow of the tide in the moment.
And I will surf that wave with the master until we laugh our bellies crampy in unison when we see that there is no market outside of the trader but only the inner struggle inside a trader to get with what is and move accordingly, uniting all their knowledge, experience and intuition to get so utterly in tune that it would boggle most people's minds.
Though I have a long way to go I really feel I am advancing in my apprenticeship. One ego mistake at a time.
To the universe and master btc: Cheers for the valuable lessons today. I'll be back for more learning and failures tomorrow. Count on it! <3
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