Tag Archives: Holosentience

The Force Is Conscious

Volume 2, Issue 11

In his inspired space epic film series Star Wars, George Lucas postulates a religion based on the notion that a single Force pervades all of spacetime, and can be used by adepts in combat and other situations. It imparts powers of telekinesis (the ability to move matter with the mind), prescience/precognition (knowing the future), remote sensing/clairvoyance (the ability to see things beyond the field of vision), and the ability to shoot bolts of energy from the fingertips.

In Lucas’ cosmology, the Force also has a Dark Side that can seduce you into using these powers for selfish benefits; however, this turns your eyes red and ruins your complexion.

When the first Star Wars movie came out on May 25, 1977, I had just two years earlier formulated my vision of reality which I refer to as The Theory of the Conscious Universe. I was keenly interested in the similarity between Lucas’ vision of the Force and my own theory. One of the key differences is that Lucas does not convey that the Force is conscious. In my theory, the universe is a self-aware field of consciousness.

There is no scientific reason why this cannot be the case.

In fact my theory makes it understandable why the world’s leading theoretical physicist of our times, the late John Wheeler, stated that we observers (consciousness) co-create reality, and that “bits (information) precede “its” (physical objects/energy fields)”. Why shouldn’t our consciousness co-create reality, if we are part of the One Consciousness that created reality in the first place? And why should we be surprised that information plans precede the creation of bits of matter/energy, since consciousness and sometimes conscious planning precede all human inventions including the words we speak — if everything is just one big consciousness?

We know that fields exist — electromagnetic, gravitic, the strong nuclear force that holds atoms together, the weak nuclear force that mediates particle decay. Why should consciousness not be a field?

The other key difference between Lucas’ Force and my theory is that I postulate the One Consciousness lives through us — what we take to be our identity is a sub-identity of the One Consciousness.

One reason I have conviction this theory may actually be the truth is that whenever I am most deeply immersed in acting for the good of all, the incidence of my slipping into Flow state, aka the Zone, is increased.

I have not detected anything like a Dark Side of the Force. When I am in a dark selfish mood I never find myself in Flow state. In my Theory of Holosentience I hypothesize that dark moods are part of EOP, which is the opposite end of the performance spectrum from Flow.

Why not experiment for yourself with “wearing” this point of view of what the universe is, to see if it has any effect on your daily life, and your experience of the Flow state?

Best to all,

Bill

Finding That Hidden Switch Inside

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Sensible procedures for quickly returning to your best self

This blog aims to provide a new psychotechnology for maximizing human performance and happiness, derived from a synthesis of the author’s experience and the relevant findings of science both modern and ancient. The construct posits three levels of waking consciousness:

Flow state — the most desirable state in terms of performance and happiness, where things happen perfectly and one feels a seamless part of everything. A non-ordinary, altered state of consciousness that occurs when you are totally immersed in and merged with an activity you have practiced well and you have simultaneously given up caring whether you win or lose, rising above all negativity and all of your usual ordinary concerns. Action just happens without hesitation, like a child at play.
Observer state — the second most desirable state, in which your attention misses very little of what is going on inside you and around you. The access window to Flow, this state is a form of meditation/contemplation that requires no closing of eyes or immobility, but does require self-honesty/objectivity and paying very close attention both inside and outside.
EOP (Emergency Oversimplification Procedure) — the typical state of the overwhelming majority of human beings today, from which individuals spring infrequently into the higher states in rare moments of clarity and nobility. In EOP there is always a background dilemma, a sense of incompleteness, of wanting and being attached to something that you may or may not get.

In my theory the EOP state is not the natural state of the species but arises from a multi-millennial delay in integrating our evolutionarily most recent brain part, the cortex. Like children handed loaded machineguns, with our newfound inventiveness running amok, our weapons-centric culture has handed control of the planet to those who possess the most powerful weapons, and now through proxies they control everything else as well. This has been true since earliest recorded history. In fact the invention of written language appears to have been the catalyst for the only culture we know, which has made information overload and distraction the way we spend our days, separation our hidden assumption, and EOP our state of being.

Yet every philosopher worthy of such designation has explained that we need not live this way. Each in his/her own way has explained how to peel away the tarnished layer of the outer accidental self to find the pure inner self that exists always, despite whatever culture we find ourselves in. Collective wisdom and understanding from philosophy, theology, science and commonsense proverbs have always existed as a form of primitive psychotechnology. “Primitive” because the whole problem has never been clearly defined. Therefore the solutions have always been merely rote methods that work for reasons beyond the understanding of even those who practice and teach them.

I’ve spent my lifetime trying to figure out the things that spontaneously propelled me into the higher states, having first experienced Flow when performing onstage as a child, being part of a show business family. Over the years, working at it daily, I’ve discovered procedures that help me stay in the higher states more of the time. I rediscovered many of the same procedures that others before me have rediscovered. There are few among us who themselves have not discovered some of this — each of us has come upon some of these truths of how to be one’s highest self. Like me, most people strive to be the best they can be, often without even knowing they are doing this, nor explaining it to themselves in any philosophical or otherwise reasoned way.

Years back I founded The Human Effectiveness Institute to share these procedures, the ones that work for me and for 3000 or so readers of the first edition of what is today the book Freeing Creative Effectiveness — all reporting (unsolicited) positive results. The Institute also exists to understand the underlying scientific mechanisms, i.e. why these psychotechnological procedures work to elevate the mind into the higher states. In an earlier post I provided hypotheses drawn from my theory as to which brain parts are involved in each of the three states of waking consciousness. These hypotheses are the starting point toward making psychotechnology more of a science than an art. Today it is an art more than a science — or a soft science in contrast with the highly-regarded hard sciences.

In the rest of this post we’ll focus on what to do when you find you are not in your best place — and how to get back to your best self as quickly as possible. We’ll divide this into two short sections: (1) the first time you do this, and a few times a week after that, when you can grab an oasis of alone space to check in on your self, and (2) on an ongoing moment-to-moment basis.

The first time, and in alone spaces after that

First, how do you know you’re not in your best self? That part is easy, here are the symptoms: you’re not happy, something is bothering you and you may not even know what it is. You are making mistakes and making things worse. There is a loop going around in your head telling you so many different things about you and your life that you don’t like — you don’t know where to start and you feel defeated before you start. Those conditions are the clue to quickly find that hidden switch in your head.

The practical, sensible procedure when you are having this kind of experience, the first time it happens from now on, is:

You need to be alone for awhile.
You need to let your mind dump the problem statement and whatever solution idea fragments it may have by simply transcribing — taking dictation from your mind, in the form of incoherent notes or however they spill out when you are not trying to make them read well for other people.
Note how much you care about — are dependent upon — certain attachments, as if you are an outside observer watching yourself as a scientific subject. Note how many of these attachments are ignoble things — like envy, jealousy, pride, vanity — that you would rather not see in yourself. Consider what you might do with your life if you gave up caring so much about these specific things or about any specific things. Being looked up to, having more money, whatever forms your attachments take.
Give it all up. Even if you are just pretending, or experimenting — picture and feel that you are tired of it all, and you don’t want these things any more. You are not dependent on anything or anyone. Whatever happens, you will be strong enough to start from scratch and be creative and make decisions to flow with whatever reality deals you. Vividly envision losing it all, and being tough enough to withstand that loss.

One piece of psychotechnology common to many Buddhist and Hindu traditions is to meditate on a corpse in order to eventually lose all horror about it — a common practice also for doctors and nurses. This illustrates the psychological principle at work: it is possible to get used to anything, to the idea of losing anything, given enough time and mental practice. It doesn’t happen overnight in most cases, although sometimes it does.

Will life be worth living, you might ask, if you stop caring about all the things and people to which and to whom you are now attached? You don’t have to stop caring — you can still love people and things even more — it’s just that you are becoming fatalistic and accepting of whatever might happen that would cause you to lose these people and things.

In the moment, in the midst of action

Any time you notice you are not in your best self — making mistakes, losing your temper, feeling lousy or scared, whatever it is — re-set your mind by erasing everything. “Clear the mechanism” as Kevin Costner’s character says to himself in the movie “Love of the Game” (a film that shows what Flow state feels like to a baseball pitcher, as Bob DeSena points out).

Assume that any sense of dilemma is a lack of clarity, that if you were thinking straight you would be accepting what is and dealing with it without negative emotion, just with pure effectiveness. The one thing you want is to take whatever life hands you and deal with it most effectively, and anything short of that is rejected out of your mind and body instantly.

At first you will find yourself re-setting again and again as you slip back into the old time-worn ways of mental hand-wringing, but over time your mental muscles will toughen up. Just stick with it and you will become indomitable.

I know that many of my readers have already been practicing this for a long time, and this post may seem elementary to you, though the review can’t hurt. Since our aim is to always widen our audience to reach as many people as possible, we will sometimes return to basics.

Wishing you Flow and Observer filled days.

Best to all,

Bill

The Most Difficult Game on Earth

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Last week we published here the Human Effectiveness Institute’s “highly incomplete checklist” of things to do each day in 2012 to define and meet your goals for the year. One could write a book on each item in that list. For starters, here’s a drill-down on one item in the list that in a way underpins all the other items on the list.

Item III.1 on the list describes why you should be enjoying the moment and provides ways to get yourself into that headspace. Ironically, this is the most difficult game on Earth.

In some version of this universe, it is natural to be in that state all the time, i.e. happy doing whatever you are doing at the moment, or not doing anything but just being there. Why not be happy? If it’s what you’re doing that is blocking happiness, do something else. Why were you doing it in the first place if it didn’t make you happy?

The ego is what gets in the way. The ego is the be-all and end-all of unhappiness. You can choose happiness or at least neutrality in any moment no matter what is being inflicted upon you against your will, to pick an extreme case. If you’re being waterboarded, okay, neutrality is probably the best you can hope for. But such an extreme case illustrates that by an act of will and focus we can indeed choose our mental emotional state. All of us can. There have been times when we’ve all had an opportunity to prove that to ourselves. Nonetheless, it’s the most difficult game on Earth.

In the prior post we also described a modus operandi where you allow events in your mind/feelings to occur and then float away downstream without holding onto them unless they are perfect and contain no negativity. An impulse to be unhappy is one such event. The typical reaction is to get stuck in it. Great news: you can allow that impulse to float downstream. Perhaps as it goes you realize where it came from, or not. But you choose not to listen to it, obey it, or be taken over by it. It was just an arising in your consciousness. They keep happening of their own accord. It’s as if they are being lobbed into you from somewhere, but it is not necessarily your own best interests or wisest self that lobs each one. In fact most of the incoming is not up to the quality level of your best thinking. So why take it all on?

The ego is what makes this game so damnably hard. Whether the brain is a biocomputer or that concept is merely a construct, we are offered similar user choices in both domains. In dealing with a computer we are always offered choices of “View”. The ego is one “View” we are offered within our own conscious experience.

The ego Views every cup as half empty. The ego is Worf on the Starship Enterprise. Stuff is out to get us and we had better have the adrenalin flowing to deal with it right now.

Adrenalin and cortisol of course play havoc with the body as well as the mind. The ego is also the source of all stress. The ego is the bad guy in this movie. And yet the ego has nothing but your own best interests at heart. As Freud speculated and we agree, the ego is the manager that interposes in front of the sensitive animal infant to take care of it as soon as there is seen to be an Other outside of the self who does not always hasten to obey the felt needs of the self. The ego is therefore a normal part of growing up. Why should we paint it as a bad guy?

My theory of Holosentience (whole-consciousness) is that we do not use our whole brains enough. We are dominated by the ego view, due to “temporary” imbalances that have occurred since the infancy of our race, which is where we still are. These imbalances resulted from a mixture of testosterone, left-brain dominance, and Acceleritis — really all parts of one phenomenon: the newest physical brain parts have been slow to gain their appropriate level of contribution within the total brain. These laggards are the right brain and prefrontal cortex. The violence of the pre-existing culture — driven by testosterone, tools and weapons — co-opted the left cortex, one of the newer brain parts, into their drama, at the expense of the right cortex. That causes the ego to be pandemically “swollen”. We get stuck; we have not learned the “float downstream” methodology. This is why staying happy in every moment is the hardest game on Earth. A million years from now, or even in a couple of hundred thousand years, it will not be so.

But we can’t wait.

We need to develop methodologies to advance ourselves mentally/emotionally that far into the future, now. The actual survival of the race may well be at stake, but more importantly, our own individual happiness — yours and mine, and that of the people we love, the whole human race — is at stake for sure.

Happiness cannot remain up the trail somewhere, an elusive thing we are working toward. Not good. Outdated idea. Time for the new idea. Happiness now. In every now. Now. And now. And now. Happiness all the time, internally controlled, internally generated, by an act of will. Infernally difficult but we cannot abandon this game as we possibly always have before. Now is the time to face it — fight it — and win. And keep winning. Because the game is not won once, but continuously. That’s what makes it so hard.

After nearly 5 billion years of Earth’s existence, dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 160 million years. This is the normal rate of change for evolution. Just 200,000 years ago the hairless standing ape emerged. This is an eyeblink in history considering the billions of years it took for Earth to develop life and the hundreds of millions of years for life to very slowly evolve. The problem is that the new big-brained hairless ape developed its brain physically at unbelievable speed and mentally at lightspeed by comparison with the formerly slow movement of the Earth drama.

The hairlessness was, according to Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape, evolution’s way of making humans sexier so as to promote full-life mating as a survival mechanism enabling time-binding, the passing on of knowledge from generation to generation. Hand in hand with hairlessness, larger female breasts and larger male genitalia than apes. In Morris’ theory, neotony — the longer time required for newborns to become self-sufficient in humans vs. other species — was also aimed at causing lifelong bonding of male and female so that the big-brained new ape could leverage its brain cumulatively across time.

Holosentience theory posits that we are living through a temporary spike in time when “recently” we have been given new testosterone levels, new highly-active left brains, still largely dormant right brains and forebrains, and we have not as a race learned yet how to integrate this stuff. The purpose of the Human Effectiveness Institute is to push forward that learning.

So back to the hardest game on Earth. As you go through your day, keep coming back to your right to be happy, right now, and use your focus, your will, and your creativity to bring about your happiness, in the Now. Let inner impulses float downstream if they are not conducive to your happiness in the Now. Take notes on stuff you let float away if you feel it is worth coming back to later, but let it go in the moment. This is remarkably conducive to flow state. There is a perceptible drag on flow state caused by looking backward at the supposed imperfections of what you did a moment ago. In martial arts one is trained to not gloat or sulk over your own last (good or bad) move. Erase everything downstream of the Now. Keep erasing it in your consciousness all the time, taking notes on items felt to contain future insight.

One thing that gets in the way of winning this supreme game is the never-ending To-Do list. We all have two of them, our primary moneymaking job To-Do list, and the Remainder-of-Life To-Do list. In this time of Acceleritis — which is still accelerating faster all the time, like an out of control merry-go-round — it’s common for sincere people who keep their agreements to wind up subordinating themselves and their moment-to-moment happiness to the To-Do list. This gives more weight to the To-Do list than to one’s own best interests. This is the thinking of a slave.

The recommended technique for de-weighting the To-Do list is, ironically, to be more thorough about how you maintain it. If you sweep everything up into two lists kept on the lower toolbar of your computer, prioritized as well as realistic time pressure allows, and continue to put the incoming in there, a palpable sense of calm ensues when you close these lists back down into the toolbar. You’re not going to forget to do anything. The most important stuff will arise in your mind to remind you to bring it to the top of the documented list. It suddenly all feels under control.

Sometimes learning how to use our brains comes down to simple stuff like this.

You have enough creativity to find ways to make whatever your task is at the moment more interesting to yourself. You may have to give yourself a little more time to achieve the desired effect. If you feel you are being watched at work and can’t carry out these methodologies, go to the rest room and into a stall. (Why do you think the human race called it a “stall” in the first place? 🙂 )

Beyond our own individual lives, I feel we all have a duty to posterity to bring widespread public awareness to how consciousness works, and how to make it work better. We need to start using methodologies such as “float downstream” in the upbringing of our children, in school curricula at all levels, and in on-the-job HR training. That’s the mission of the Human Effectiveness Institute and this blog is one of our means to that end.

Thanks for reading. For a short video relevant to this same subject, please click on the link below.

Joy Now video

Best to all,

Bill

Accomplishing your 2012 Objectives

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A highly incomplete checklist

The year has just started and already you are creatively adapting to the unexpected, steering around unexpected resistances, and still feeling cocky about taking the hill you’ve assigned yourself for this year. Good.

This cursory reminder list of methods is passed along to keep handy if and when you run up against a boulder that frustrates you, casting a dim light over achievability of the year’s target. The list can also be used proactively even during times of smooth sailing to notch the game up a bit.

I. Creativity

Doodle a schematic of the situation and its players. These could be business or personal relationships that you are navigating. Engaging spatial mind centers in the right brain is a prime directive in terms of overcoming the bias of the time i.e. Acceleritis.
1. What would be the ideal “win” for each player in the diagram? Getting down to the human motivational level immediately is a typical mensch method. This engages your own feelings, rebalancing you out of leftbrain dominance.
2. What action might each player take in the situation, and how would other players react? “Consequence thinking” engages the prefrontal lobes. The more your brain is fully engaged the closer you get to Holosentience.
3. Have you left anyone out of the diagram so far? Who?
4. What would be the ideal outcome of the depicted situation from the standpoint of a hypothetical Universal Consciousness?
Get out in Nature alone. Even when it’s freezing cold.
1. Pay attention to nature all around you, up and down, above and below you.
2. In the streets of big cities this works too although not as powerfully, so nearby parks are a plus, the less city-like the better.
Blocked. This is for when you’ve run up against a challenge that worries you and brings you down.
1. Imagine that you can feel the muscles in your head relaxing while you go blank and stop gnawing whatever bone has your mind obsessed at the moment. Don’t let yourself revive that conversation in your head for a while, force yourself to think or feel about some different subject, for at least several minutes, preferably up to three days if timing permits.
2. Turning away from a problem allows the subconscious mind with its far greater resources to attack the problem from new directions. Fearing that you must stick with it, if you persist in trying the ingrained approach you are stuck in and can’t see beyond, it will just take longer to get to a solution, making you miserable, and less effective in everything else you do in the meantime.
3. Like trying to remember a word that’s on the tip of your tongue. You have to stop trying to remember it. You are going into the wrong file drawers, which blocks you from relaxing into the right file drawer where suddenly the word just pops into your mind in the midst of some completely different conversation.
Right Objectives? Have you set the right goals for 2012?
1. Are you following goals set for you by someone else?
2. Were you arm-twisted into these goals by persons or situations?
3. If you’re stuck with such goals, what would be the twist that would make each goal more important to you personally?
4. How will you know if an objective is “right”? It will be a combination of a strong hunch feeling that it’s right, plus you could defend it logically if challenged by a naysayer.
5. In the context of the whole-brain “enlightened” thinking espoused in this blog, right objectives will be outcomes that benefit people widely as well as benefiting you.
Right Metrics?
1. Is there a way of re-stating each goal so that its most valuable effects can be better ascertained and appreciated at the end of the year?
2. Perhaps evaluate not just economic outcomes but also social ones? How will people be affected, people close to you and those far away?

II. In Preparation

Predreaming. This is what you do on weekends in looking at the week ahead, and evenings looking at the next day.
1. For each scheduled meeting/phone call, whether business, nonprofit, governmental, military, personal, or spiritual, what’s the outcome targeted? What might each party, including you, say that would get you in hot water and move you away from the targeted outcome?
2. Actually hear and visualize the dialog back and forth in your mind.
3. What’s the ideal “win” for each player?
Postdreaming. The after-action report to your Self at the end of each day, at stolen moments e.g. when everyone thinks you’re already asleep.
1. What could you have done or said better.
2. What to do next time in a similar situation — what worked and what didn’t.
3. What will be the warning sign next time to remind you of this improved approach?

III. In Action

Check for fun.
1. Okay, if fun is not the right word for you, and neither is play, just make sure you’re enjoying what you’re doing at the moment.
2. If there’s no sense of enjoyment, forget about getting flow state performance out of yourself. It’s not going to happen.
3. Take a one-minute meditation break to get into the headspace of loving what you are doing.
4. Take notes on specific diagnostic ideas you get as to what’s really bugging you so you can focus on them later.
What’s the outcome focus now?
1. You want to be singlepointed not multitasking: what is it you’re trying to achieve right now?
2. Everything else gets put aside — out of distraction range, hidden from eye movements — and every great new idea that pops into your head gets tucked into a one-word note instantly and then ignored until later.
3. Even if it has to do with the present meeting, it goes into a note, one that you will pay attention to during the course of the meeting, just not right now. Again, “meeting” includes any encounter with others, not just business meetings.
4. Stay in the moment. Be 100% present with the others. Absolutely turn off email and all forms of electronic interruption. Do not interrupt the speaker.
All of you in the Now.
1. Your estimable resources are not being frittered away by excessive dispersal, though all your armies are on the line, at the ready. Your attention is one. You are focused with everyone on the common immediate objective. Your orientation is a win for all.
2. As impulses rise up continuously from within, you merely observe them without acting on them, except for the rare impulse that you feel to be perfect for the moment.
3. Therefore you do not allow yourself to be rushed, you take your time.
4. Each impulse to do something you allow to float downstream into the past without acting on it, except for those tagged with the mysterious sense of perfection. These perfect impulses will be those that you feel have no negativity hidden in them, and which go to the core of the matter.
5. In lulls, look over your notes, determine action items and schedule them, file notes in folders based on the relationships you are involved in this year, for easy findability. If necessary start a new 2012 filing system that does not tackle the massive job of re-filing the past right now. Keep the 2012 refined objectives in sight at all times.

Let 2012 be the year of the fresh start for all of us.

Best to all,

Bill