Tag Archives: Consciousness

How Do I Escape the Fear that I Am Growing Old?

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Volume 3, Issue 19

By realizing deep down, in a profound moment of inner silence and receptivity so it goes to the ground of your being, that we don’t know diddlysquat about what comes after this life.< /br>

I know that one has not normally spent the moment it takes to realize that the consciousness itself — you — are a jumble of information-processing programs, a biocomputer — implemented in a subtle energy field that human Earth consciousness collectively has yet to discover (gee, science hasn't discovered everything yet?! being the hidden assumption/block). So it is not impossible that consciousness can exist outside of a material body. If consciousness is an energy computer — a computer made out of energy — then why not.

Of course it is reductionist to say that consciousness is just an energy computer. It must be more than that in the sense that it is self-aware. The human race has not come close to understanding what it would really take to cross the great divide between an amazingly smart supercomputer made out of energy — a biocomputer that is alive and able to draw power from its interactions and sustain its life and reproduce, a living computer — to something that experiences self-awareness. The experience of self-awareness cannot be reduced to anything else, neither scientifically nor even philosophically, yet.

So let’s say one has this moment of epiphany that lasts, in which one accepts that the universe may be a sentient thing and that each of us is a little face looking out from it.

If so, the idea of a permanent death caused by a happenstance in this current stage set has no binding effect on the parent consciousness that is playing this role.

This at least opens the door to consider as a real possibility that death may not be the end. How does that change the fear of becoming old? Profoundly. To its roots. Who cares if the setup is that there is incipient slowdown and decay at the end of one of these rides? Small price to pay. One can only hope that not every ride ends with a downslope. In fact, why imagine that a downslope has to be inevitable even in this life? If one is still functioning effectively, why project to oneself the repeated imaginary thought feeling that one is going downhill, getting old. The repetition of any thought feeling draws to oneself the reality that one is imagining. We make it come true by dwelling on it. We expect to start to break down, so we start to break down. We spend more and more time discussing the ills of old age. Given the possibility that my theory is correct and everything is made of consciousness, it is inevitable that the body cell consciousnesses will hear the operating system tell them to get old.

Let’s tell our body cell consciousnesses something else. Let’s vow to ourselves that we will make the effort to keep getting better on the inside every day for as far as the ride lasts, whether or not this body is the last chariot we ride in.

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.

Humanists May Not Be Using All of Their Powers

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Volume 3, Issue 16

Humanism is a wonderful thing. As a teenager I came to the conclusion that people’s decisions reflect not only pragmatism and ethics but also one’s aesthetics. Based on all three sets of criteria, pragmatic (getting the job done), ethical (doing so with least harm and most gain to all), and aesthetic (delectation of the beauty of the solution as it unfolds), I loved Humanism.

I was still an atheist and worshipper of science at that point. The realization at age 12 that “I am God and so is everybody else” was still an unassimilated revelation in my mind, not integrated with everything else in there. (The word “God” turns a surprising number of people off and so I typically say “Universe” instead.) I had experienced the Conscious Universe but could not explain it logically to myself. Humanism was therefore to me the highest philosophy on the planet. I still love Humanism, but now see that the Conscious Universe perspective gives me more ability to achieve the aims of Humanism.

With the Conscious Universe, one is open to get creative solution ideas from events around oneself that would have no special meaning to a Humanist not open to the Conscious Universe. It is as if the Universe is trying to clue you into something. It goes right past you unless you are open to the possibility. I call this Noia, the suspicion that the universe is out to benefit you. This word popped into my head in the mid-70s and I’ve been using it ever since. In 2005 Rob Brezsny came out with a book Pronoia about the same idea.

Openness to the Noia-type event reveals that synchronicity is actually happening a heck of a lot more to each of us that we notice in our pre-Noia state. Noia is not the totality of why the Conscious Universe tends to lift time spent in Flow more than Humanism does. Noia is a subset of the use of intuition. Intuition is actually ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Carl Jung listed intuition as one of the four functions of consciousness (intellect, feelings, and perception being the other three). To science, intuition is the sudden synthesis of an idea in our mind without the intervening steps that intellect would take, and as such the scientific definition does not link intuition to ESP. However, my sense is that the continuum of intuition starts at the lower end in the subconscious/autonomic mind simply putting ideas together for us, and moves up into drawing information from outside the local mind we call our own. The upper end of intuition is blocked if one’s worldview does not allow for it, and this is why the Conscious Universe is a useful theory linked to decision making.

Again, the Conscious Universe is put forth not only as a theory explaining the world including consciousness, the paranormal and Quantum Mechanics, but mainly as a useful lens for staying observant of second-to-second experience. Unlike religion there is no command to believe based on faith or authority or tradition. Instead the idea is to keep an open mind and not to lock oneself into Material Accidentalism, because if the Universe is Conscious (which, contrary to popular belief, Science has not ruled out) one is limiting one’s powers unnecessarily by taking a fixed action stance based on what turns out to be, ironically, faith in an anti-religion religion. Some have dubbed this anti-religion “scientism”, the layman’s mistaken belief that science has ruled out the possibility of an intelligence behind the universe (I usually refer to this as Materialist Accidentalism) — which by definition is a faith-based belief since there is no proof for its position.

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.

What Does the Nature of Reality Have to Do with Decision Making? What Does Either One Have to Do with Flow State/Zone?

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Volume 3, Issue 14

In other words, how do these themes of our blog fit together? Why are they necessary to complete the mission of The Human Effectiveness Institute, whose charter is to improve human decision making? And how can understanding these linkages improve your decision making in business and in life?

In answering this, first let’s boil down the theorems of the Institute. There are two main theories. The Theory of Holosentience posits that protein-based firmware/software created as neural networks in the brain, under conditions of information overload (Acceleritis), establishes a false self (the ego) whose normative dominance blocks optimal performance and happiness (Flow state/the Zone).

Other contemporary writers/researchers at this growing edge of psychology include Dr. Daniel Goleman and Dr. Richard Davidson, who use the term “hijacking” to describe the event of the amygdala and other brain structures bringing the consciousness down to a hyper-attached and low performance state. Dr. Phillip Romero uses the term “triggered” to describe the same thing.

The actual work of the Institute is to create and disseminate as widely as possible, proprietary validated toolware to bring on the Observer state, leading ultimately to the Flow state.

Our second main theory is The Theory of the Conscious Universe, which postulates that consciousness and intelligence came before the rest of the universe, rather than the other way around. And that each of us is an instance or over-dub of the One Consciousness, which is the primary real thing that exists (see the May 2, 2013 post, Bring a Sense of the Epic into Your Life).

The link between the Holosentience theory and better decision making is obvious: one makes better decisions when one is performing at higher levels of effectiveness. The linkages to the Conscious Universe are more complex and subtle.

The Conscious Universe is what I experienced when I had processed out most of the dominant ego software I had built in myself. Comparing notes with some others I found this was their experience as well. This led me to start writing about the Conscious Universe as a way to enable others to add it as a lens interchangeable with their other lenses such as Accidental Materialism. Having alternate lenses to switch between lessens the perceptual distortion of a single “belief” lens. Since Accidental Materialism and the Conscious Universe are both unproven, the thing to do is not to believe either one but to be free to observe reality directly, without a predetermined single lens, and to see which lens better explains what is really happening.

How does this improve decision making? Tune in to our next exciting episode.

Best to all,

Bill

P.S. My regular blog contribution to Jack Myers Media Network has returned. It is in the free section of the website. Here’s the link to the first post of many: Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Flow Goes Mainstream

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Volume 3, Issue 6

March 18-20, 2013 — the Advertising Research Foundation Re:THINK 2013 program sports a lunchtime speaker, Steven Kotler, two days in a row on the subject of Flow state (the Zone) and how to instill it in business. Bravo! (See Review next issue.)

I’d like to think that my blogs on Flow, and the (somewhat) Flow-inducing ARF University Masters Level Playshop with Richard Zackon, helped create a conducive atmosphere for ARF to put Flow state high on their new program. Hopefully it will stay there over time as Flow state means better decisions, more creativity, more effectiveness, and significantly, it means authenticity, not the Mask of the Advertiser, as Nick Pisacane calls it. Advertising itself as well as its research will benefit more from Flow state than by any technology.

Authenticity is the key attribute most necessary in the new social era of media advertising and persuasive communications. In Flow state, one has no egoistic tugs on the essence of the idea emanating. One is not self-protective (except in martial arts settings). Authentic feelings are expressed and this is what the public thirsts for — both to receive authentic messaging and to evoke it from inside by immersion in a world of role models acting genuinely. This is the promise of the future society powered by Flow state.

President Obama is initiating a federal research program into the brain and consciousness. Flow state for the military and government is one motivating driver. I began to pepper US presidents with this idea 40 years ago and have run workshops for top US military officers to teach the inner “tricks” of Flow.

Our work at the Human Effectiveness Institute is focused on the experiential handles. What goes on within the subjective frame that can be guided? Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, my old friends and partners, lead the world in both understanding the psychology of consciousness at the brain level, and in disseminating the information so that everyone can benefit. I see our workstreams as complementary. Theirs is objective and mine subjective, the way consciousness is experienced from the inside and what controls we have over it, which are largely subtle.

Dan in his great book The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights (reviewed here recently) uses the term “Self-Management” to describe one of the pillars of Emotional Intelligence, a quotient conducive to Flow. We would probably use the word “guidance” in place of “management” in that managing is not as encompassing as guiding. Freud in Civilization and its Discontents calls the ego or secondary principle the “manager”, arising from the id or primary principle, which is who we are at first. In Freud’s view both the id and ego persist together as aspects of the self, joined by the impounded incoming other-directedness of the superego or conscience.

Zen is the art and science of making the ego and superego transparent (though still present) so the self is expressing the id in a way that is in Flow with the Tao or universal consciousness. Zen’s contempt for words and concepts neuter the ego, which depends on the intellect, concepts and words for its management style. In Mind Magic, the section on Mindquiet provides a simplified step-by-step approach to removing the over-emphasis on words.

In his Maximize your “Aha!” Moment blog post recently (see also my post Set Yourself up to Cultivate “Aha!” Moments from Sept 27, 2012) Dan points out that there is a burst of gamma activity (signaling “far-flung brain cells connecting in a new neural network”) in the neocortical right temporal lobe 300 milliseconds before an “Aha!” moment. He also describes that part of the brain as being the part that gets jokes: “It understands the language of the unconscious… the language of poems, of art, of myth. It’s the logic of dreams where anything goes and the impossible is possible.”

That’s a good description of the inner-mind language used throughout Mind Magic, which is designed to be a stimulus to bring the reader into the Observer state as an ideal Launchpad for Flow. We hypothesize that the subjective self is more centered in the right temporal lobe than the left during Observer state, as sensed by the natural ease with which one thinks wordlessly — whereas the left temporal is the “Worder” as I call it. Both right and left temporal areas have active insight collection capabilities, the left seeing differences analytically through abstraction and symbols (e.g. words), and the right seeing connections holistically in feeling/images.

Main takeaway: we need tools we can use to get into Flow and these must speak in layperson terms. Dissecting the physical brain processes underlying Flow is needed too, but in itself does not replace tools that the layperson can apply to get into Flow — which is the purpose of our work. More on Flow Goes Mainstream in the next post.

Best to all, 

Bill