Category Archives: Powerful Mind

“In Action, Watch the Timing.”

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Powerful Mind Part 35

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog – January 17, 2025
Created November 2, 2023
Read Powerful Mind 34

This quote from Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching is worth unpacking. Taoism traces its roots to this collection of wisdom and another book, the Zhuangzi. Both books were written about half a millennium before the birth of Jesus Christ. Now, about two millennia after that world changing event, almost every living person knows and understands what the Force means to a Jedi knight, and this is the closest thing to the Tao in our modern pop culture. There are many differences however between Steven Spielberg’s brilliant conception and the Tao.

There is no “dark side” to the Tao. The Tao is the animating principle of all of existence and its common soul or spirit. It is inherently innocent, simple, humble, honest, natural, and spontaneous. Lao Tsu attributed the “dark side” of human beings to their falling out of synch with the Tao due to unnatural additives to natural simplicity and humility. In the language I use to explain such things, these de-synchronizing additives are all the result of ego attachments to things that reach beyond the natural enjoyments of life.

Lao Tsu describes the Flow state as being brought on by the wu wei attitude, in which nothing is added to natural innocent spontaneity. Wu wei may also be translated as doing nothing. Like Plato, and like Zen, both of which came later, Lao Tsu was aware that the use of language itself invited the mind to build imaginary things that could lead the individual to desynchronize from the natural universe. Both Taoism and Zen provide exercises for relaxing back into natural spontaneity.

There could be a philosophical connection between Taoism and the Bible story of Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden Tree Of Knowledge. This was a move away from natural innocent spontaneity.

For us in the accelerated culture of the 21st century, using words in articles/books like this one are playing with a two-edged sword, using words to reduce the hypnotic effects of a lifetime of detachment from natural spontaneity that was itself caused by millions of words, and overpowering attachments to conditioned desires, and thousands of traumatic memories from unassimilated learning experiences when those desires were thwarted.

“Spontaneity” is one of those two-edged words which can have opposite meanings in certain contexts. When one is in the Flow state, back in synch with the Tao/Universal Consciousness, every action we take and every thought/feeling that goes through us is perfect, and there is nothing gained by hesitation, checking each impulse before acting upon it. Yet in the Observer state, the state which I’ve learned is more sustainable and a jumping-off point for the Flow state, the opposite is true: in the Observer state, it has the most positive outcomes to check oneself before acting on impulse. This is probably the most subtle trick in the book of life, knowing when one is in Flow and can trust the natural impulses of the heart, versus knowing when is not in Flow and ought to seek shelter in the Observer state in order to maximize one’s positive effects on the world and the self.

Negativity is the basic clue to making this discernment properly. Any presence of negativity in oneself is a clue to restrain action, because negativity is incompatible with Flow. The cue may be subtle internally and it takes practice to learn to pay attention to subtle guidance system internal cueing.

This is why timing is so important, because there is this knife-edge distinction between one’s readiness to Flow versus the wisdom of holding back and studying one’s own impulses before letting the action occur.

Mind Magic pages 137-141 offers an exercise which can help train your mind to automatically achieve this balancing act between action and non-action. Here are a few excerpts from that passage:

Do not move any part of your body
From the position it is now in.
Regard any such movement
As an action to be evaluated prior to action.

 Are you curious
About something that is now going on nearby?
What specifically will you gain by looking?
Why do you want to gain this?

Be aware of, but unmindful of, voices and feelings
Which tell you that you must decide now
Or must take action now.
These voices and feelings
Are a force that has had power over you until now;
They originate in society;
Society which expects you to perform in certain ways.
Then you should remove all force
From the feelings inside you
Which tell you to move.

Hurrying (in most cases) is a sign that you are afraid and/or that you wish to get past the thing you are currently doing, in order to do something specific that you can’t wait to be doing. It would be far more valuable to set aside the thing you are doing in a rush and to do the thing you really want to be doing. That is what brings on the Flow state, doing something that you find to be fun.

My good friend Marshall Cohen, known as the guru of the cable industry, sent me an article indicating that billionaire Warren Buffett is aware of Flow state, and purposely leaves open certain days on his calendar in order to maximize his own experience of Flow.

Planning and scheduling your time and leaving enough time to not feel any time pressure is a wise course of action, and will tend to maximize the quality of what you create, and your enjoyment of life. Remember James Taylor’s saying “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” This is very Tao.

Sometimes you will feel that the Universe has given you an inspiration, an idea which will make a positive difference in someone’s life or even in the lives of many people. Your natural tendency will be to share that idea as quickly as possible. But the timing must be right in order for an idea, no matter how good, to be accepted and acted upon. If you spill it out impulsively because your ego has become attached to the praise you expect from it, the likelihood is that it might fall flat, and then take even longer to be adopted. Wait for the cue that it is the right moment to use such ideas.

Be especially sensitive not to mistake right timing because your idea might be very rational and the person you are giving it to might be in a very emotional state, or vice versa. If you sense any subtle doubt in yourself, wait. If you are missing the moment the Universe will give you an encouraging cue to say it now.

Key #9

Consciously determine how much to take your time.

Best to all,
Bill

Start Your Life Anew with a Clear Slate Every Moment

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Powerful Mind Part 21

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog – January 3, 2025
Created July 28, 2023
Read Powerful Mind 20 

“The entity should ideally retain all power
over current behavior;
none should be yielded to the past or to others.”
– Mind Magic – page 73

 In the prior three posts Powerful Mind 18, 19, and 20, we have been offering techniques of metacognition which have worked for me, in stripping off layers of conditioning that obscured my individuality. This post will put it all together and add a few more relevant tips that will help you make each moment an originality moment, when you can come to entirely fresh perspectives, including everything you have learned up to the last second.

Some of the major challenging or helpful aspects of this Key #3 to overthrow conditioning are mimicry, consistency, expressing true feelings constructively, resolutions, self-descriptions, predictability, the momentum of others, and the naked eye.

Review: Mimicry and Consistency

“Avoid mimicry.
You don’t have to be like your friend
in order to be his/her friend.”
– Mind Magic – page 78

Let your own latest words come kindly and constructively out of your mouth, filtering out negativity. Observe momentary impulses to stick in the words of others, sometimes choosing to use them if that feels right, most of the time ignoring the impulse. If the situation is a professional discussion, for example, quoting experts or peers has its place. In a normal one-on-one conversation, external support for one’s statements is not typically an immediate necessity.

If you particularly like a way you have said something in the past, sure, go ahead and use such phrases occasionally, but rhetoric becomes old pretty quickly, and in Flow state the words will usually have morphed and moved ahead in your inner counsels and what you hear yourself say may be happily surprising to you.

Review: Expressing true feelings constructively

 Nothing is gained by quarreling or hurting people’s feelings. Adding more of that stuff only adds to the challenge heap of your own life. Doing good each moment makes life easier for yourself and others. Expressing yourself negatively sets you back, gives you a longer to-do list for the immediate and long-range future, replacing those divots you yourself caused. It’s totally counterproductive.

It also stores up negativity within you that biases clear right judgment. You will make more mistakes in completely different areas from the one in which you allowed negativity in. The ripple effect occurs both with positivity and with negativity. Marketing research studies have consistently shown that the ripple effect of negativity is stronger than the ripple effect of positivity: The average person having a positive experience with a brand tells six other people about it. The average person having a negative experience with a brand tells thirteen other people about it.

If you are going to express yourself, do it right, think carefully about it, anticipate scheduled meetings you will be having tomorrow, and think deeply about what you want to say. Catch yourself during mental rehearsal stepping on a landmine which will derail the conversation and waste time plus create or enlarge future obstacles.

New: Resolutions

 Breaking years and decades of conditioning and of repetition of habitual behaviors is not easy. It is a form of making resolutions with yourself to change a given behavior pattern.

One thing that stands in the way of the effectiveness of any resolution is the memory the average person has of having made resolutions before which had never taken hold and were quickly broken. This memory undermines belief in any new resolution.

The only way around this barrier reef is to manifest your new resolutions in very small ways starting immediately, so all parts of you actually see the proof that this time it is different, something new in you is there, giving you the strength to stick to your promise to yourself. Then keep it up, refresh the resolution each new day, get up in the mornings, and take advantage of the first opportunities to manifest your new resolutions.

Most importantly, be kind to yourself in the instances where habit sneaks in, and before you knew it was happening in some way you have broken a resolution before you could catch yourself. That doesn’t mean you’re pushed all the way back into the habitual robot you used to be. It’s normal to not have 100% efficacy when setting out on a new course in life. Keep an eye out for similar situations in the future, detect when you are in a situation that could cause you to backslide, and speak more slowly, think ahead more meticulously when speaking in those situations.

New: Self-Descriptions

 Avoid describing yourself in unqualified terms. If someone asks you to describe yourself, go ahead, but make sure that you qualify your attributes as to whether they apply to the way you have sometimes been in the past, or whether they are up to the moment descriptive of your aspirational self, the way you want to be. Talking about the way you have been in the past is telling your robot to keep doing it that way. That’s the opposite of what you really want: freedom to be yourself stripped of external conditioning and negativity. Your own free will, your own creativity, your own growth potential, your passion work, your unique gifts to the world. Don’t lock in the past. Don’t reinforce ways of being that you don’t want.

New: Predictability

“Predict and eschew
the predictable culture-conditioned response.
Do not always get angry in situations
in which anger is expected of you;
do not always contradict in situations
in which contradiction is expected of you.”
– Mind Magic – page 76-77

 When people expect you to be resistant to something, surprise them by being more open-minded than they expected. When they expect you to join a bandwagon of complaining about some other people, surprise them by being compassionate to them and to the people they are mentally beating up. Be solution-oriented and think win/win. If you can’t come up with any creative realistic suggestions in the moment, be open to hunches that come up in the fringes of your mind for the next few days, you might have a delayed reaction idea that could be beneficial to the person you had been speaking with, and their relationship with the people that had been criticized.

Creativity by definition is always somewhat unpredictable.

True freedom always exalts creativity.

New: the Momentum of others

 Don’t allow yourself to be stampeded by the momentum of others. Others anxious to have something a certain way, carry psychic momentum which can be imparted to you without you even realizing it. What others think they want from you may not get them what they really want or need. Listen compassionately and objectively seek to help where you can. Remain calm and cool-headed in the midst of all emotional weathers. Be the voice of reason and kindness in coming up with win/win solution possibilities for others to consider and refine. Encourage people at their positive undertakings. This does more good than constructive criticism, which in the Acceleritis / EOP(Emergency Oversimplification Procedure) culture is taken the wrong way too much of the time.

New: the Naked Eye

 Our expectations create a perceptual screen. As we emerge from our conditioning to realize and actualize the uniqueness of our being, the conditioning sneakily remains lodged in our senses. When you look at something, see only what is there. Look at things as if for the first time you are seeing them. Drop all expectations and comparisons and see what is really happening with an open mind. Look for the thread of something good nascently in the situation, and gently call attention to that thread of opportunity.

Key #3

Constructively and kindly express what you are really feeling.
This is radical new mental strategy #3,
the third simple key to the doorway
of the upper mind.

Further Keys: see The 12 Powerful Mind Keys.

Happy 2025 to all!

Love to all,
Bill

Starting Over

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Powerful Mind Part 43
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, December 27, 2024
Created January 5, 2024
Read Powerful Mind 42


A useful exercise from time to time is to pretend that all of your experience to date has not happened, you have no preconceived notions of anything, and you are going to restart your life in this very moment.

After making this proclamation to yourself, since you no longer have any agendas, the first thing to do is to simply observe what is going on inside you, in the supposed absence of all previous records.

You might sense words in your mind, or perhaps only feelings. What are those feelings and/or words? The ones that come back first after the reboot?

Why did those arise first?

If they are feelings, they might be left over from your previous life, the one before the restart. Or they may be your first feelings in this new life. You’ll find yourself able to make some pretty confident guesses. Either the feelings will be negative, and stem from your previous life, or perhaps they might be positive, excited at the chance of starting all over.

Let’s say they are negative. You say to yourself (without words, they are unnecessary) that you’re breaking the rules of the game by carrying over feelings from the past. How come your past life led you to store up these bad feelings with such power over you that they were able to break confinement by your will?

You might answer yourself by reminding yourself that you never had been able to overcome negative feelings by your willpower alone.

OK, but that was then, this is now. You are reborn as a blank slate. You will get off on the right foot this time, and are absolutely determined to have a strong enough will to break the hammerlock of negative emotions over you.

Sustain the moment for as long as necessary and put all other things aside while you win the internal battle.

Notice words that arise in your mind. Which senator* are they coming from? What is the general mood of that senator? Are the words taking the side of your will to overcome negative emotions, or are they taking the side of the negative emotions?

As the exercise progresses you will see that the robot has not crossed over with you into a new blank slate, the robot has all of the baggage it has always been carrying, and intends to keep using it to manipulate you. This will give you a clearer and more comprehensive view of the robot than anything you have read in my writings. You will see what you and all of us are up against. It is almost like needing to fight off the mind of an invading demon that is trying to take us over completely and has almost entirely succeeded already.

However, you will always have the upper hand if you remain cool and open-minded and not give in to negative emotions, defeatism, or attachment. Simply observe these inner battles from above them. You’ll need to give up all of the attachments you had formed in your earlier life, before the restart.

The things you deeply love and care about, which are good for you and others, will always come back and seek a place in your heart, and you can welcome them back, but in a stoic manner: meaning you will not make yourself suffer by not experiencing these things enough, you will be grateful for what little of them you get.

There are resolution moments where we take life-turns and we can actually feel the difference inside, where something that once had power over us, no longer does.

Afterward, we might experience backsliding, and at such times focus our consciousness on sticking with our new resolution. Do not cause yourself to suffer, nor accept suffering at the hands of others, but remain resolute and compassionate to everyone and everything. It is possible to balance in an open-minded way and to help others without being carried off by oversensitivity to the suffering of others. You can do more good in the world by staying over the weather.

Use your newly developed inner visibility to study what brings you up and what brings you down, and curtail downward emotions immediately. Accept whatever is happening as reality and deal with it as constructively and patiently as possible without becoming caught up in it. Your free will, your personal freedom, your resolute will, is the most important thing that you have, more important than your negative feelings, your will is the protector of your positive feelings of love and joy and wonder.

Do not confuse willpower with stubbornness. Stubbornness is the opposite of open-mindedness. Taking intractable positions means you are not open to considering other ideas. This means you are attached to certain ideas and things without recourse to new facts, new learning. That is being stuck. That is Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP) of the robot. Your consciousness should remain open to all possibilities while taking necessary actions based on your current best estimate of reality.

When you are having fun, such as when you do your passion work, will bring you up, not only emotionally but also cognitively and in terms of effective body movement. This is Flow state.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I was very young and experienced Flow state for the first times (on stage), it was very impactful on me. I had discovered another level of reality that felt very magical, although I was sure that it had a basis in science. My parents who had taught me everything about life from much earlier in my life than other parents discussed everything with their children, had never taught me about Flow state. Did they know it existed? I didn’t trust myself to know exactly how to explain it even to them and so I never did. Eventually, Jack Carter, the comedian I respected most, recognized what I was saying to him in a private conversation, and said that in showbiz it was called being “on”.

As I grew up I formed certain ideas about Flow state, which I thought about a lot because it was my aim to get into and stay in Flow state as much as possible. One idea I had was that every impulse received during Flow state was perfect. One could do no wrong. It took me years to see through that mistake. Actually, the foolish impulses continue to arise during Flow state but the ability to instantly discriminate the right impulses to follow has become impeccable, for as long as the state lasts.

With my wrong model of Flow state, I was always quickly taking myself out of Flow. Because I would act on decoy impulses thinking I could do no wrong.

Nowadays in Flow, I listen to the endless babble of my robot pretending to be me, following up on an inspired idea I just had as if with further improvements on it, when these follow-on remarks really added nothing of value.

As a note to neuroscientists studying states of consciousness, my original hypothesis was that only one set of instructions was being sent to my conscious mind, and the perfection of Flow state was therefore determined by the subconscious layer that sent my conscious mind these instructions. My current hypothesis (or observation) is that the impeccability of action is not at the generative layer but in the discrimination function. In Flow state, the conscious mind and body act as a single unit, confidently choosing correctly from among the sea of impulses constantly arising, with the self and other seeming to be of a single piece. It all feels like play or doing what comes naturally as opposed to striving.

Whether you are starting over to evade a bad mood, enjoying creating something in Flow state, or whatever you are doing, the ability to focus your attention and notice what is going on in and around you is what is going to get you through to the highest outcomes, even as you prevent yourself from becoming attached to those outcomes.

Your ability to see yourself inside continuously will reveal to you many important learnings. You will see that discomfort generalizes. If something makes you feel uncomfortable, soon other things will also be making you feel uncomfortable. You will see that being interrupted discomforts you, and that you quickly tire of it. This whole distraction culture which we have created continuously interrupts thoughts and feelings you are having, which contributes to the development of EOP as a form of “thick skin” to coexist with all the interruptive distractions going on almost all of the time. Acceleritis (information overload) has created a world of broken thoughts. We reduce the pain of this with EOP, but that actually makes things worse.

Be on the lookout for certain signs that you are in EOP. Procrastination is one of those signs. Something needs to be done but we put it off. If we stop and focus on it, the sense that it is overwhelmingly difficult melts away as we patiently and open-mindedly analyze it.

Circling is another form of procrastination. This is when your mind is in a loop, it keeps going around and around through the same path of steps, without adding new insights in the endless circling. Might be a good time to start your life over at times like that.

May your 2025 be filled with happy surprises!

Love to all,
Bill

 

*Senator

A Bill Harvey construct explained in Mind Magic. The bio-AI in your brain is referred to as “the robot”. The robot makes predictions and sometimes asserts motor control. From your own subjective point of view, it is not easy to discern your own free will from the will of the robot. To the extent that you act on impulses, you will be giving up maximum control to the robot. When you hear yourself thinking certain thoughts they may be coming from the robot. There the robot appears not as a single unified voice but as a huge auditorium filled with senators, who speak with apparent certain knowledge, but each senator speaking from a different persona. This is apparently an artifact of the brain’s bio-AI system. The AI clusters the verbal and visual inputs of others and this forms the senators, reducing the data to a manageable number of types. Back ↑

Speak to the Other’s Saliency

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Powerful Mind Part 32

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, December 20, 2024.
Created October 13, 2023

Read Powerful Mind 31

Every conversation is a potential spike in learning, typically even richer  than most
other times, though “alone times” can reap the most surprising revelations.

The amount of learning available in each instant of life mostly goes untapped. Looking at life through a variety of observation lenses helps capture more of that nascent learning.

One way of looking at life is that it’s all a big reconnaissance. Looking at it that way defers the feeling of urgency to achieve closure on some solid pro or con position on every little thing.

Every conversation is a potential spike in learning, typically even richer than most other times, though “alone times” can reap the most surprising revelations.

Many of us live lives focused around day jobs in some sort of business or another, sometimes in the public or nonprofit sector or academia or science, but it is still “taking care of business” on a day-to-day basis. This affords us many conversations, sometimes specifically goal-directed, and sometimes off-duty.

In our interactions, while taking care of business or at other times, often each person brings some hoped-for outcome. Say for example you attend a small group meeting or a one-on-one. The other person probably has one or more things they are trying to achieve and wants your help. You may be in the same position. It may not be obvious from the outset what the other person wants. You may not always be aware of your own expectations or desires, they may be hidden from you, and you may not have done your homework.

The networks in the brain we have discussed before include the salience network, which is responsible for prioritizing what to do next, what is most important in the present moment, and which has the key role of switching from the default network to the executive control network, which is an overarching theme of our body of work within what I call psychotechnology, the pragmatic optimization of mental/affective functions.

Saliency as a concept refers to that which stands out in the foreground against the background of everything else.

When you are with someone it is polite and considerate to try to discern what the other person’s saliency network is prioritizing at the moment. For example, let’s say it is in a business environment. You may be there for a very special reason of your own of which you are well aware.

The normative way of proceeding in today’s world culture – at least in the West – is to go for the jugular. Take the initiative to make your pitch.

However, you will learn much more and increase your chances of success if you start by helping the other person further the implicit goals of whatever is currently the focal point of their salience network. It’s also kinder, nicer, and – if my theory of the conscious universe is correct – the “force will be with you” if you do it this way.

In order to do this you need to listen and observe carefully, without presuppositions.

You also need to avoid pigeonholing based on your first impressions. “Aha, they want X!” might occur to you but keep an open mind.

Within the conventional bounds of whatever context you are in, of course, you are allowed to ask direct questions to find out what the other person is most concerned about.

This next thought is very much about the present-day reality and may not be so important in other eras. Prepare to be shocked because nowadays it’s not uncommon to hear a person say something that is strongly emotionally charged and deeply wedded to some political or anti-group position. If you don’t already know this about the person it could flip a switch inside you that has the effect of feeling that this is not your sort of person. You may start to think about how to depart. Observe those reactions in yourself without ratifying them and let them drift into the past. Continue to be open-minded and compassionate.

Once it becomes more clear what the other person wants, work on that first, and hold back what you are there to accomplish.

If it’s a group meeting, before putting forth your own agenda, observe carefully to see if you can make out what is salient to each person in the room or Zoom.

Work creatively to help others accomplish their aims. Doing this before putting forth your own needs is a better pragmatic approach in terms of actual achievement of your aims.

Of course, if there is a natural linkage by which your desired ends can serve theirs, without contortions or fakery, then it’s a win/win.

Here are some helpful observational lenses lifted from my book Mind Magic which may facilitate learning during the reconnaissance.

    • If I look at this situation as a child might, what do I see?
    • Be aware of the emotions radiated by each entity including yourself.
    • How might I turn this to everyone’s advantage?
    • Unstitch yourself from the moment by looking down at the whole scene from the ceiling.
    • Question your own possible biases which may affect what you see.
    • Strip away your own interpretations to get back to the things themselves.
    • “Just the facts, Ma’am.” (Dragnet’s Joe Friday)
    • Remember that words have a physical impact on you, so that you must guard against being influenced by them.
    • Toy with alternate explanations for events. Allow your imagination free reign to propose the most unbelievable such explanations.
    • Look at everything as if seeing it for the first time.
    • Why did I notice that?
    • Why did that happen? What is it trying to tell me?

Love to all,
Bill

 

happy holidays!