Tag Archives: Consciousness

What Is the Meaning of Life?

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Volume 3, Issue 36

When I was younger, I would ask this question whenever anyone, even a tour guide in a museum, asked me if I had any more questions.

Internally, it’s the question I asked myself multiple times a day all my life until I felt sure of the answer, which occurred sometime in my 30s.

The underlying question is “What is the meaning of ‘meaning’ in this context?” The intent of the question is to understand what life is, what its purpose is (if any), what the universe is, what its purpose is (if any), why we are here, who we are, how we are to behave, what our relation is to one another, is there a God, and why are we compelled to consider any of this relevant/meaningful to our second-to-second management of our personal business of existence. In other words, it’s a packed — if not loaded — question.

The alternative to asking and answering this question to one’s own satisfaction is either to go about life happily without caring about the question (which could be a Zen-like answer in itself, essentially filing the question away into the “Overthinking” file), or to consider life meaningless, which many existentialists did in the last century.

Other than an intuition I had at age 12 that I am God and so is everyone else, which I tucked away as an interesting but unexplained aberration, the meaninglessness of life was my own position for the first 30-odd years of life. Around age 20, as I studied philosophy, I put reasoning around this intuition, deciding that one took positions such as this based solely on aesthetic preference, since knowability of the answer to What Is the Meaning of Life? was apparently out of scope.

 In my 30s I had some unusual experiences that also reminded me of similar experiences in my childhood, at which point I felt as I do now — a very strong conviction that I actually know the answer.

As I see it, all that exists is a single consciousness of such great computing power as to know everything that goes on within itself instantaneously at all times (metaphorically speaking since God or the One Self is above time). Depriving its temporary offshoots of this omniscience it plays our roles with more drama and excitement. The meaning of life therefore is to realize and enjoy this game as our true Original Self does, and thereby re-merge into the Original Consciousness.

However, the question is complex and so is the answer. If we obsess about this question as our purpose we automatically miss the point, since obsessing about anything blocks us from higher states of consciousness. This goes back to our earlier point about Overthinking. In the context of this planet at this time, the prefrontal cortex is a new toy that obsesses us, causing overthinking and underuse of the other three Jungian functions of consciousness, namely intuition, feelings, and perception.

In my new book You Are The Universe: Imagine That, I conjecture that the One Self enjoys seven aspects of existence: simply being, pleasure, power, love, creativity, making oneself better, and selfless service. Playing our role down here amidst the vast distraction caused by the Overthinking Culture’s pandemic shock reaction, which I call Acceleritis, each of these over-loved good things becomes an obsessive attachment and blocks the subsequent level of consciousness. Maslow partly perceived this in his Hierarchy of Needs model.

From a practical standpoint, life becomes most meaningful for us to the extent that we realize our own unique gifts, we love doing the things propelled by those talents, we develop a life plan around sharing these things with the rest of us, and then we go forward with that plan without being attached to the outcome.

Thus we have a Purpose, a Mission, which satisfies the thinking mind as to our own meaningfulness. Again this can get in the way of higher states of consciousness (merging back by stages with the Original Self) if it becomes an attachment to certain “success” outcomes. In a recent bookstore talk, I reported that although I go into meetings with awareness of my preferred outcomes, I discard those at the last minute and go with the meeting flow from the standpoint of simply trying to help out everyone else in the meeting as best I can. Pragmatically and empirically, this appears to work best in balancing out the complexities of life.

So “What is the meaning of Life?” Enjoying it, loving it, loving all, and helping others to do the same.

“The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return.”

— “Nature Boy”, by Nat King Cole

 

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com. 

Inner Head Language

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Volume 3, Issue 33

My daughter Nicole and I were at a book fair today, ostensibly selling my book Mind Magic from our table alongside other local authors at their tables. I say “ostensibly” because my real motivation for attending these events is to see if and how people can be helped to reach higher levels of consciousness. Everything is reconnaissance with readiness to engage with any seeker. The average seeker today has seen it all and has the t-shirt.

My great friend Stanford Silverman, who came from 25 miles away to buy yet another copy of Mind Magic, summed the answer up as “99.9% actually get no benefit from books.” He went on to say, “when the supreme reality is not understood, the reading of books/scriptures is useless, and the study of books/scriptures is useless when the supreme reality has been realized.” This is the viewpoint of a person who has found a Living Master and has devoted his service thereto, for its own sake and also to receive the kind of grace that has been observed to effect great positive changes in people.

Nicole later questioned this pessimism about our work and I repeated the stats I had shared with Stan, that out of 35,000 books sold we’ve received over 2000 letters/emails/cards from readers saying the book changed their lives in a way they wanted to thank us for. That’s 5.7% — in a considerably higher ballpark than the 0.1% stat Stan offered. And 5.7% only counts the hand-raisers, not those who got benefit but didn’t let us know. I also told her we are not doing this to see a complete world change as a result (though that outcome would be nice and was my initial vision) but rather we are doing it because it’s the right thing to do, sharing this stuff based on the 2000+ hand-raisers. Whatever effect it will have, it will have.

A man asked what the book was about and Nicole answered “It’s about you,” and I explained that “the way the language speaks to your subconscious, it brings out your own higher Self.” The language in the book is my own “inner head language” — it came unbidden and I didn’t put it into the King’s English — and as a result, coming from my subconscious, it seems to absorb directly into the subconscious layer of the reader.

One reader said it like this: “The communication so transformed and met me as to feel as though it was clearly mind-to-mind.” (Jordan Salison, Insight Meditation Society, Barre, MA)

And this, from a review in New Age Journal, “resonates with the higher aspects of our beings and is experienced as truth…”

You can get a flavor of Mind Magic here.

I am always curious to hear what I will say when a person asks me what the book is about because something different always comes out. In a bookstore I don’t want to rattle on any more about the brain, Observer state and Flow state (the Zone), I want to relate to daily life, not its underlying science.

“It’s a mood, an attitude, the book gets you into. You see opportunities to take elements in the situation and move them around in ways you actually can, to be a win for everybody. Including stuff inside yourself, which you can move around to create a win/win inside yourself.”

The most useful answer we found was to suggest, “Open a page at random and see if it speaks to you.” This worked 4 out of 4 times, at which point I fled to write this column, leaving Nicole for a hostage. One woman said it understood her, that it was exactly what she had been thinking about. The others got absorbed and read for quite a while.

In the 70s, when the human potential movement got that name it was rediscovered that intellect alone does not change behavior, emotion and/or the subconscious, something deeper than the rational mind, must be involved. This goes back to even before the Eleusinian Mysteries, before the cave paintings, as old as homo sapiens ourselves, 200,000 years. The shaman was wise by definition, understanding at a gut level that someone not-yet-wise needed certain stimuli and experiences to become wise, and so he/she did the needful. Sometimes it worked. Maybe it nearly always worked a little.

Emotion, imagination, and/or the subconscious are engaged by the “inner head language” in Mind Magic in much the same way that these beyond-rational faculties are brought into play by art, poetry, music, theater. It is this linguistic subtlety as much as the insights that make it possible to move people into the higher states of consciousness with a book — not just Mind Magic but also other books whose neurolinguistic approach engages with the deeper levels of self.

This form of linguistic communication with more than just the rational mind could be more deeply investigated by brain researchers in order to optimize the psychotechnology. This is one of the goals of the Human Effectiveness Institute (THEI).

Best to all, 

Bill 

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com. 

Savor the Moment

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Volume 3, Issue 32

It’s true that all we have is this moment, the Now. The past and future are concepts, abstractions, ways the brain has of organizing experience so it seems to make sense. What is always real is the Now. To the extent that our attention is divided into the Now, the past and the future, we are sapping the energies needed to get into the Zone (Flow state) in the Now.

Love the one you’re with. If your day is filled with scheduled meetings and phone calls, you may find yourself doing some of them to get past them and on to something you’re more looking forward to. You’re doing it so you can check it off your to-do list. The quality of the interaction you’re in would be nowhere near the Zone. A better strategy is to engage in each interaction at the top of your game. From the cosmic perspective you’re always on stage and no performance should be a throw-away.

Useful lens: love the One you’re with. See that person or those persons as other free-agent extensions of the One, highly sentient like you, each with his or her own story. You are interacting with them now for reasons that may be non-obvious, beyond and including the obvious reasons you know about. There are undoubtedly layers of additional opportunity in the moment. Allow your interest to gather in the interaction and be a studious observer.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. — Rumi, from “The Guest House”

Nothing will work, however, if your day is packed and you have not ingrained yourself with organized processes for managing constant chaos and distraction. One such process starts with putting fake meetings in your calendar so others will not book anything with you at those times. Those are times reserved for meetings with yourself, which on each occasion you will use as you like best at the time. It might be to launch into a high-opportunity project that has been waiting. It might be to take a break and a mental vacation, where you may find creative ideas popping of their own volition. It might be to sort out the latest incoming chaos and to assign it a place in your future schedule for handling.

The strategy is to pre-plan your days to include these meetings with yourself at reasonable intervals, and pre-dream the other meetings, calls and other activities — which you can do in the shower or even in bed in the morning or the night before. Arrange things so you can focus 100% on one thing at a time. As interruptions arise or even fresh thoughts relevant to the meeting you’re in, note them on pieces of paper so you don’t lose them (this also relieves your mind of the need to blurt them lest you forget them). Throw these notes into the chaos file folder until you can sort them into the right client file. Empty the chaos folder each night so you have the feeling of being in control and not overrun.

Deep breathing in the moment helps. Remembering how much can be accomplished in a few minutes when you are patiently relating human to human. Listening to and feeling the feelings of the mirror neurons in your brain. Swinging for the Big Idea fences inherent in the present conversation.

There is always a game going on. If you’re not in one game you’ll be in another. One game is the success game. Money is the main point-keeper in this game. Another game is self-actualization, where you are having fun because you love your work. There can still be attachment in the self-actualization game because if at any moment you are not having fun you can get brought down, and this is not conducive to the Zone. The most-rewarding game is the one in which you are always focused on the presence of a/The Higher Power (HP), with whom you are a working team. The HP is the pitcher and you the batter; however, you are both on the same team. The object is not to beat anyone else but to perform at your highest level through whatever game course you are playing.

When something “good” happens observe how you take it — ideally with gratitude and satisfaction but without hubris. When something “bad” happens observe how you take it — ideally appreciating the size of the challenge and the cool way you are not fazed by it, handling it with grace under fire, again not crossing the line into hubris.

Imagine this is actually the underlying real game whether we believe it or not. This is the game being played through us. We are just hypnotized into thinking we are separate beings instead of extensions of the One Being. It is this mis-identification that takes us out of Flow (the Zone). When we drop such conceptual baggage Flow happens. This is the core of Zen psychotechnology.

Computing power is the common link between consciousness and computers. We know that consciousness exists — in fact empirically it is the only thing we know for certain.

To grasp what the universe really is, it is necessary to merely accept the possibility of an unimaginably large consciousness, with enough computing power to be responsible for everything that is going on in universe.

Best to all,

Bill

P.S. I’ll be signing my book MIND MAGIC at the Dolphin Bookshop’s local authors book fair in Port Washington, NY on Saturday, September 28 from 11 AM to 3 PM. Please stop by if you are in the area.

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com. 

“Your Last Day on Earth” Lens

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Volume 3, Issue 30

Whether we realize it or not, we are always managing our Selves. I’m capitalizing the word “Self” (and variants) for emphasis — to draw attention to the concept of Self, which may be of greater significance than any other concept in any language. To meditate on the Self and to penetrate to a deep understanding of our own Self confers the highest level of consciousness, the greatest happiness, the Zone/Flow state, creativity and peak effectiveness.

Our skill at Self-management varies. Sometimes we are in the Zone, though mostly not. Sometimes we are in a living hell. Whichever way it is, we are always doing it to ourselves. As the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers and Buddhists knew, whatever happens to us is not what makes us unhappy, it is our attitude toward it that makes us unhappy, and the latter can be controlled. Managed. It is a skill, one that can be learned.

As one studies and trains oneself and grows up to become a mensch (“stand-up guy”, “grownup”), it becomes apparent that:

  1. The most important thing to the Self is to know one’s purpose in life, and this gives meaning to life. One’s purpose is closely tied to one’s true work, which one must love or it is not one’s true work, one’s calling. One will not experience much Flow state if one is working at something else. However, I knew a truck driver who experienced Flow by his enjoyment of the travel adventure and camaraderie of the job, so as always in life there are no hard and fast rules.

     

  2. Distraction is the main barrier to Self-realization. Distraction is exacerbated by the Acceleritis-ridden culture we live in, and by attachment to outcomes driven into our psyches by conditioning, fear, and other-directedness. In a distracted state, little things having no bearing on our purpose in life become a big dramatic deal and we cannot think clearly because we keep obsessing over this peripheral stuff. It brings us down, making us weak, dependent, and fearful. We project failure, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We attract to us all the things we are fearful of.

In one of the methods described in our book Mind Magic, one does not “believe” anything, but instead takes an empirical approach to testing different strategies and carefully observing results to prove to oneself what works and what doesn’t. Lenses are used as trial strategies, that is, one temporarily adopts a lens or way of looking at things to see if this way gets one into the Zone more often, or not.

Here’s a lens for today: look at your life as if right now, today, it is your last day on Earth. This lens keeps you focused on what you are here to accomplish in this life — on meaning and purpose, and not on the little dramas that usually take all our attention.

In one’s last day on Earth, how you do things becomes the most important thing. Every little thing you do is done with quality. You are in the moment, present, with every person you interact with. You let out the hero inside. You exemplify grace under pressure, Hemingway’s and Churchill’s definition of courage. Churchill said that courage is the key virtue because all the others stem from it.

You find that the usual distracting dramas melt down in perspective to what they are, no big tzimmis.

By this lens one stays focused on the true priorities.

Best to all, 

Bill

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.