ATTACK OF THE NIJA PEOPLE
THE BASIS OF MY CONSULTING WORK
by Jon Rappoport
“The Nija people” is a phrase coined by a client of mine. He had just finished a series of imagination-sessions with me, and he was launched on a new enterprise in his life.
NIJA, he said, stood for “No, I’m just a…”. In the blank goes some word or phrase that implies everything the person can’t do.
No, I’m just a housewife. No, I’m just a guy struggling to get by. No, I’m just a human being. No, I’m just a person who doesn’t have any imagination. No, I’m just a…
There are a lot of NIJAs.
In a curious way, many of them take pride in their NIJA status, as if it’s a badge that guarantees them a place in the club. It’s a hazy sort of club. There aren’t any official rules or descriptions, but everyone in it seems to understand the deal.
NIJAs tend to recognize each other right away.
A few of my relatives were NIJAs. One in particular, who had an IQ of about 160, was very adroit at claiming he had no special talent for anything. To listen to him, you’d think he was struggling just to figure out how to read the newspaper in the morning.
And then I’ve known people who would tell me about a few isolated moments in their lives, when they were able to do extraordinary things…but all that was gone now, and it would never come back. NIJA
From brushing up against enough NIJAs, one could form a good picture of society itself. It tends to be a NIJA operation, a kind of space where a NIJA can find a spot for himself toiling away, without any danger of being asked to do something that requires imagination.
I’ve worked with NIJAs in my consulting practice, and I’ve noticed (as they have, too, after a while) that they’re often “secret agents.” Meaning they operate with a solid NIJA cover story. They know that story backwards and forwards. In any situation where NIJA credentials are useful or necessary, they can work a room like a master.
One of them told me, when his cover story was blasted apart and lying on the floor in a thousand pieces, “I guess I won’t be needing that anymore. It was a good front, though. I could play it like a harp.”
I worked with a NIJA writer once, who was well-known for publishing realistic novels. After doing a number of my imagination exercises, he said, “In the back of my mind, I always knew realism was just another style of art. You sort of pretend you don’t know very much. You boil everything down to basics. People like that kind of thing.”
This, coming from a man who had taken pride in being quite a hard-boiled character in his own life. A NIJA cynic.
“I’ll never tell,” I said.
He laughed.
“If you do,” he said, “I’ll sue you.”
Yes, NIJA is all over the place. It grows like weeds. It’s laid down like artificial turf.
As a kid, my favorite NIJA was an old friend of my father, a boxer who lived in New York. After he retired from the ring, he painted. He had a few hundred canvases in his garage. He never told anyone about his clandestine passion, except his wife and a few friends. His wife thought it was hilarious. She had studied art history in college, and he knew more about what was inside the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art than she did. Once he took me to the Metropolitan and spent an hour telling me about Rembrandt’s self-portraits. I’ve never met or read anyone who was more engaging or insightful on the subject.
If you look at the history of Tibetan tantric mysticism, you can see they spent a great deal of time burying the titanic amount of first-hand knowledge they had about the power of sheer imagination. But that’s another story for another time…
…NIJA. I salute you and raise a glass to your ingenious cleverness.
Mostly, NIJAs use their cover story to explain the fact that they don’t use their imagination and don’t know how to and don’t have a clue and couldn’t possible use imagination to envision the future they desire and make it happen in the world.
The lead question here is, HAVE YOU EVER PULLED A NIJA NUMBER ON SOMEBODY?
Have you ever said, “No, I’m just a…”
Were you good at it?
Were you able to sell your cover story?
“Hey, I’m not overqualified for this job. No, I’m just a…”
“Sir. I love following orders. My own ideas? No, I’m just a…”
“I don’t care you if you don’t understand nuclear physics. I want to take you to dinner. Heck, I don’t really understand all that nuclear stuff myself. They bring me in to fix a widget here and there in the reactor. No, I’m just a…”
“Imagination? The most powerful thing in the universe? The secret of the ages? It could change my future and my life? Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just work at my job. I do a little research here and there. No, I’m just a…”
Of course, between you and me…shh…I won’t spill the beans…if you’re able to do a NIJA number and sell it, you need to use your imagination…we both know that, don’t we?
To sell your NIJA number, you have to use your imagination to sell the fact that you don’t have any imagination.
I understand that and I applaud it.
I’ve read a ton of secret-agent novels.
A cover story and a disguise can be a thing of beauty.
But NIJA has its limits. There tends to a ceiling on getting what you want, and there is definitely a ceiling on joy and power.
That’s why I opt for imagination as the key to a person’s future. Because out of imagination comes the really big vision, the one that gets you exuding so much energy you feel like you could run a hundred miles without breaking a sweat.
Imagination is the thing that gets you up in the middle of the night with all barrels blazing. You’re standing at the window looking out over the city or the plains and you’re seeing your future out there in 3-D. You’re thrilled to be alive, and possibilities are exploding like firecrackers in your mind, one leading to another.
To live without this is less than we want. We’ve brushed up against it before, and we know how it feels. We know the future can be ours.
You can hose this down with a dose of amnesia, but you don’t really want to. And I’m with you on that.
Believe it.
NIJA is fun for a while, but then it starts grinding, and you wonder what would happen if you stepped out from behind your cover story.
Jon Rappoport