Category Archives: Creating Joy

Going Through the Worst to Get to the Best

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Volume 3, Issue 10

The two biggest blocks to the Zone/Flow state are distraction and attachment.

Attachment is also the only block to happiness, joy, delight, fun, ananda (from Hinduism, Buddhism, Extreme happiness, one of the highest states of being.) — the natural (built-in) target state of all experiencers. An experiencer is any entity that experiences consciousness through which an apparent inner/outer world is engaged. In this condition of experiencing, the automatic preference is for positive self-reaction.

This is because experiencers are driven by motivations that exist in the emotional dimension of experience (the other dimensions being intuitive, intellectual and perceptual). And happiness is the off-the-scale self-evidently best state one can experience in the emotional dimension.

Attachment blocks happiness because one is fearful of losing the things one associates with happiness and tacitly assumes are requirements for happiness. One is also angry at whatever agencies are suspected or known to be removers of those precious happiness-causing things.

“I am really attached to Pippin” (one of my cats) is a true statement for me because I love her. To experience love is not necessarily to be attached. So it is possible to get lost in word games about whether attachment is a good or bad thing because the word “attachment” is associated with the word “love”. To avoid confusion and getting lost in wordplay, I am using the term attachment to mean the inability to separate love from attachment and therefore the anger/fear syndrome.

The difference is the importance given to keeping the “things” that give us happiness. If one truly appreciates the joy that has been created by one’s loves, joy that has been creating other good things through spontaneous Flow state creativity — which emerges naturally from joy and from love — it is still possible to not worry about losing any of those “things”. In fact, when one is in that state of non-fearing loss, one is truly free, and true freedom does not exist up to that point, even in a pure democracy. This is because one is not free from one’s lower self — the ego software we built in our heads since birth (the Theory of Holosentience) — until Enlightenment, the lightening up (Fred Klein) that sets in once one has seen through the self-trickery of attachment.

A powerful contemplation technique in Mind Magic is burning out one’s attachments by intensely imaginarily experiencing the loss of each separate thing to which one is attached. This requires setting aside Alone Time, without a sense of time pressure. It requires immersion, concentration, patience as you go over the same material again and again. You can only do it for one object of your attachment at a time. It can take weeks to fit it in and spend the necessary time.

Give your imagination free reign like in a daydream. See yourself go through the experience of the moment the loss takes place, visualize how it might happen. See it vividly from the inside the way you experience life. Feel the feelings. Watch yourself in the daydream, the things you say in that situation, and the way you say them, and how the other person responds (if the particular attachment involves another person). Let yourself actually feel the loss as if it is really happening.

In your later iterations of the exercise you start to act like the hero you are in the daydream of the loss. You give the situation a more intelligent response. You realize that this is now how you will respond if that ever happens, or when it happens if it is inevitable. You feel differently about yourself from that moment on — more confident, more self-respectful, more courageous, in fact less prone to fear, and also harder to make angry.

It can take much longer than weeks for you to feel the effects of this internally due to the interconnections among various ego circuits in your head. It’s best to be removing all of the attachments during the same period of time — the perceptual, cognitive, intuitive/spiritual, and emotional parts. This is what the manual called Mind Magic is designed to do.

Happiness to all,

Bill

Creating Joy

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Volume 2, Issue 9

The more you enjoy yourself the more likely you are to shift into the Zone, bringing your friends with you

We continue to report on behaviors we have found to be correlated with Flow state over decades of making such observations. Flow, aka the Zone, closely resembles a supernatural experience because everything seems to be doing itself perfectly. To expand on our discussion from last post, we are considering the implications of the fact that Flow is prompted by autotelic behavior — that is, you are engaged in the behavior for its own sake, not in your quest for something else, some desired outcome. You are outcome-free and then Flow arises if your challenge slope is perfectly matched to your skills.

Joy and enjoyment are closely linked to autotelic behaviors. One doesn’t do something one hates for its own sake. This implies that you tend to be in a pretty jolly mood prior to the onset of Flow experiences. And in turn if the outcome you want is to be in the Zone more often, then it makes sense to keep yourself in a pretty good mood at all times. Besides, life is more fun that way.

Internally here are some steps you can take:

  • Non-acceptance of non-joy — “it’s simply unacceptable” is the attitude you maintain, and then work it out however you work it out. You remember it is not logical to maintain negative moods because they transmit negativity and thus reduce your effectiveness and influence. This involves a test of your will power.
     
  • Compared to what? In this step, you appreciate the current phase of your life by comparing it to how bad it could be. Gratitude to the universe for your life is conducive to Flow state for some reason, and that correlation has led me to my Theory of the Conscious Universe.
     
  • Enjoy the creative challenges. Take the long view with regard to problematic and vexatious relationship situations. Make a study of the relationship loop and put off decisive action until the recon and assimilation has been completed. You will actually see why X always happens, and how you can reduce the probability of X. Then you begin a patient series of trials to engage with the creative challenge of that particular relationship loop, which may recur in more than one relationship. Accept that each such problematic relationship has been handed to you as a creative challenge to rise above over goodly amounts of time. Make it a project.

Externally, other people may tend to bring you down. But most of them will be willing to get into a good mood if you start it. That’s why positivity is so much more effective than negativity.

Best to all,

Bill