Volume 2, Issue 20

Observer state is a mindset in which you are not so caught in the process of your own emotions, and thus you are able to also simultaneously observe and analyze them somewhat impassively. This is a lens you sometimes find yourself wearing which makes you more effective and creative at changing the conditions that cause negative emotions. It also makes you more able to flick into the Zone where your performance and creativity are further upshifted. 

In the Observer state, we hypothesize that information processing is going on largely in the prefrontal lobes. In the Flow state (aka the Zone) we postulate whole-brain balanced and meshed information processing. 

The Human Effectiveness Institute has developed techniques to empower people to spend more time in these states, which are conducive to a happy successful purposeful life. Acceleritis is the cultural condition caused by the speedup in human evolution and daily information overload apparently caused by the invention of written language — according to our theory. Acceleritis raises the challenge slope facing human beings every day and makes it harder for us to use the new brain evolved in just a relative eyeblink of the usual evolutionary timescale. The new brain triggered the invention of writing, and the effects are now overloading that new brain, kind of like a four-year-old kid trying to control a Ferrari. 

If people in power spent more time in these states, they would make better decisions causing less suffering than at present. If people not in power spent more time in these states, they would move into power and thus be able — if not seduced by the ego — to bring about positive change. Hence, the mission of the Institute is to spread experiential knowledge of these states, and the techniques for achieving and maintaining them. 

The first moments of waking up in the morning are a perfect time to remember the Observer state. As the day begins, so shall it most likely go, until one’s will has become strong enough to overcome a bad start.

 First, while remaining in the hypnagogic state by avoiding the use of language orally or mentally, and filtering out any distractions, stay focused on the feeling of whatever dreams you had, and recapture whatever images you can from those dreams. Stay with the feelings and images a moment longer until you can get a hunch as to the possible sense of those dreams — what is the message from your subconscious? Jot down notes as soon as you feel you have to actually open your eyes and get out of bed. 

Even better if you can move on to your day while still in bed and still sleeping as far as anyone can tell. Get a fix on the possible significance of the day, what you can potentially accomplish. Visualize an upside outcome that will make you happy when you go to sleep next. This is your strong intention, your Will. Feel it. Then see what could go wrong and come up with ideas as to how to deal with those challenges. No one in Acceleritis has the luxury of much time to spend on such thinking, so you can settle for brief flashes of the direction of an idea to be worked out in detail later. Making notes while they are fresh in your mind will be a huge advantage. 

The older parts of the brain such as the amygdala are involved in the ego process,  which keeps you out of the two higher states of consciousness, Observer and Flow. This ego process is driven by fear of failure in one form or another, and derives from excessive attachment, which itself is the product of past events perceived as failures that have not been fully assimilated as wonderful learning experiences. The Observer lens helps one float upward out of this debris and gain perspective on it. Then one can enter the Zone, typically in an activity one has practiced for a long time.

Best to all.

Bill