Tag Archives: Observer State

Being a Fool Is Not Necessarily a Permanent Condition

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created April 10, 2026

We have all been fooled into thinking that

In honor of the recent April Fool’s Day, some thoughts here about the idea of being a fool.

The word has had more than one meaning since it came into the English language in around the 13th Century. It comes from the Latin word for “bellows or inflated ball”, figuratively meaning an airhead. It came to English through French, where its connotations at one time were “the King’s jester” and at other times “insane” or even “a prostitute”. Even in English today, it has multiple meanings. It can mean someone who acts with poor judgment, a know-nothing, or someone who is gullible and can be easily taken in by a trickster.

In my opinion, each of us has a certain probability of doing something foolish at one point or another. We can be a fool for a moment or a day and then come out of it.

In today’s environment, in which the internet and AI enable scammers to trick even the smartest of us, we can be made fools of, possibly with greater frequency than in the past, if we are not cautious and patient enough. Acceleritis tends to cause us to always be rushing, and that leads to being a fool more often than we’d like.

It can make us feel really bad when we realize we have just now acted like a fool. We tend to quickly lose all confidence in ourselves. This is an overreaction and a dangerous one. Take it in stride; it’s part of life, it happens to all of us.

The most dangerous thing of all is to be stubbornly resistant to admitting that one has been played for a fool. Everyone in your life may be completely aware that you have been played like a violin and that you are in permanent and rigid denial. That makes others really lose respect for you. Much more than if you admitted your mistake.

Admitting that you can make mistakes, that you can be fooled, gains you respect from every person.

We all know how hard it is to admit our mistakes. When a person has the guts to do this difficult thing, everyone knows what reservoirs of integrity and strength undergird such actions.

Confucius said, “Someone who will not admit he made a mistake is making another one.”

Admitting mistakes is good because you can then learn from them. As you probably know, my cosmic philosophy is that we are here to learn, and that means making mistakes, for without mistakes, there cannot be much learning. And without admitting mistakes, there cannot be much learning.

There is a specific mental/emotional function which causes the refusal to admit mistakes. It’s called the ego.

Freud theorized that the ego was not the original self we are born with, but a mediator with the outside world, which forms as a functional center the first time our needs are thwarted. I agree with this theory; it jibes with my own personal science project of studying the way my own mind works for my entire life. Not that I remember the event of my ego coming into existence, but I can discern impulses coming from an egoistic source within myself from impulses arising from a different source within myself which is not so hung up on what happens to this particular body I’ve been assigned to this time around.

The two sources are not equally competent at making good decisions. I define good decisions as those whose outcomes are beneficial to all concerned. The ego is terrible at making such decisions. Its bias toward its own owner blinds it to opportunities to gain much more for that owner by making things come out all right for everyone involved in the situation.

The ego is an inferior part of the mind which makes decisions that end in our unhappiness and regret.

Unfortunately, not only do we live in a culture which feeds the dominance of the ego, the culture also creates a competitive race which has led to uncontrollable Acceleritis – inhuman amounts of information overload as a distraction. We are born in a relatively angelic state and are turned into egoists operating largely in Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP). This causes us to mess things up on a grand scale, which condition is the one part of my narrative that is now universally recognized to be the unvarnished truth.

The Bible made the connection between “fool” and “ego” in Proverbs without using the word “ego” but by describing many of the main traits of egoistic behavior:

“In the Book of Proverbs, a fool is not merely someone lacking intelligence, but a person characterized by moral deficiency, arrogance, and a stubborn rejection of wisdom, discipline, and godly instruction. They are self-sufficient, quick-tempered, and prone to reckless speech that leads to ruin.

Usage Examples of “Fool” in Proverbs:

  • Rejection of Wisdom: “Fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
  • Arrogance: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 12:15).
  • Uncontrollable Anger/Speech: “A fool gives full vent to his spirit” (Proverbs 29:11) and “A fool’s mouth is his ruin” (Proverbs 18:7).
  • Repeating Mistakes:

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11).

  • Quarrelsome: “It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling” (Proverbs 20:3).

Synonyms and Types of Fools in Proverbs:

  • Simple/Simpleton: Gullible, naive, and easily led astray.
  • Scoffers/Scorner: Proud, mocking, and hostile toward correction.
  • Sluggard: Lazy and reckless with their responsibilities.
  • Babbling Fool: One whose speech is chaotic and foolish (Proverbs 10:8).

Common traits include being quick to anger, untrainable, and unteachable, often needing drastic, painful lessons to learn, as noted in Proverbs 27:22.”

– (Source: Google AI)

People who do not vote have been fooled. They think their votes don’t matter. They think they are powerless. They think the world is all screwed up far beyond anything they can do to make it better. It’s not true. In the 2024 election, 89 million eligible voters did not vote in the presidential election. That’s more people than voted for either candidate.

Some people who did vote know on some level that they have been fooled, but only some of them are willing to admit it.

We have all been fooled into getting into this polarized two-party headspace. We are all Americans, we are all citizens of the Earth, citizens of the universe, and in my estimation, we are all avatars of the One Consciousness that is the universe.

We have all been fooled into thinking that we are entirely separate from one another.

It’s not the end of the world to be fooled, nor to admit we were wrong about something.

We’re all fools to some degree, but we can gain back our self-respect and dignity by admitting our mistakes and moving on.

Happy belated April Fool’s Day! Happy glorious Spring!
 May we all spring forward in all our inward and outward endeavors!

The Fool

Love to all,
Bill

 

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Which Level of Consciousness Do You Want To Be In?

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created February 20, 2026

Flow state, the Zone, where everything does itself perfectly, you exceed your expectations of performance limits.

You have undoubtedly noticed that you are not always at your best. Almost nobody is. Sometimes we have very smart ideas, at other times our minds are dull, and at other times we think we are thinking very intelligently, only to discover that we were way off and should have known better from various earlier experiences and supposed learnings.

We generally assume that this is the way things are and that there is no way to improve our own mental/emotional performance, with some exceptions. We might read a self-betterment book or article once in a while. We might take a supplement that is for making our memory and other faculties work better. If someone we trust gives us earnest advice, we might listen with an open mind, and take it to heart, try to be better in the way suggested. We might even meditate or do yoga.

All of this is admirable. But is it enough? Have we pulled out all the stops to maximize our own performance at the game of life? Should we? Is it worth it? If it were so important, wouldn’t everybody be doing it?

The game isn’t set up that way. Particularly today, when so many people have more than one job in order to make ends meet and maintain the all-important lifestyle, who’s got the time for the luxury of being a perfectionist in any area of life? With two media bombarding you during most waking moments (sometimes only one), who can focus on anything anyway? And if you had a moment to spare, would you want to fill it with something that seems very hard and complicated?

Of course not. Nor should you. Fortunately, upping your consciousness does not have to be hard, nor complicated. And it can make you feel better fast and all the time. This post is all about the lazy person’s way of hacking consciousness. Winning with minimum effort. What a relief!

First, a quick, simplified map of the three levels of consciousness you can be in:

  1. Flow state, the Zone, where everything does itself perfectly, you exceed your own expectations of performance limits, and are as happy as a child at play at their favorite game. This is where you want to be as much as possible. Peak experience as Maslow called it.
  2. Observer state. Here you have no external dependencies – whatever happens, you remain impassive. You have no internal dependencies – you are able to also remain unmoved by emotional alarms going off inside of you. All by force of will, courage, determination, and sheer grit. That’s all you need to ACCEPT WHAT IS. Also known as Stoicism. You take the blows, self-inflicted or otherwise, and do not cave in. As if you didn’t care at all about anything. The way heroes are characteristically depicted in all stories since stories began. You also keep an eye on things inside and out and carefully discriminate courses of action, waiting as long as practical before making each decision, like George Washington and Davy Crockett. Including decisions about what and who to believe. All the old locked-down decisions are unlocked again in Observer state. You coolly observe in detail everything all over again with a completely open mind and no biases from all previous experiences.
  3. EOP – Emergency Operating Procedure – you keep up by moving as fast as you can to get all the things done that have been heaped upon you by yourself and others, get them all over with, and you defer enjoyment until after the list has been mostly ticked off when you can indulge in effortless escapism without having to think about your life or about anything serious. During this time, you experience endless moments of irritation about one little thing or another. You may or may not realize that it is your ego that is causing the irritation, and that you are dependent on others to keep you in a good mood, at which they usually fail.

Those are the three choices, in the briefest summary. The wisest choice among these is to spend as little time as possible in the lowest state. It is achievable by establishing the Stoic mindset as your main point of view. You don’t want to be cast around by outside forces; you want to be your own person, able to stand alone when necessary. You don’t want dependencies, you don’t even want to be dependent on your own internal clamor of bad feelings and babbling voices.

You want to identify with the SELF that is your inner essence, the pure EXPERIENCER, and take everything else with a grain of salt.

Is that all there is to it? Just that one principle will keep you in the two upper states of consciousness?

Not quite.

There is one other basic rule. Do not add any negativity to whatever negativity has gone before.

Stop your negative facial expressions and body language, and internal wallowings, and above all, any hurtful statements. Don’t add any negativity to the sauce of life; there’s plenty already. It will bring you and everyone else down, except for the Stoics in the crowd.

Love to all,
Bill

 

 

The Feeling of Being Guided by a Higher Power to Do Good

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Powerful Mind Part 46

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog – January 30, 2026
Created January 26, 2024

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A 2023 Pew survey found that 45% of Americans “have had a sudden feeling of connection with something from beyond this world.”

“Have you ever wondered what life is all about?” I asked the precocious two-year-old.

“All the time,” she replied.

This is the kind of conversation that parents should initiate as early as possible in a child’s upbringing.

But since this is a rarity, we tend to grow up shoving our awe and wonder out of our conscious minds, because we don’t have time to dally. It’s all coming at us too fast, especially in recent centuries. A conscious mind process forms, which Freud named the Ego and the Superego.

The Ego presents itself as the active conscious mind, and so we all think of it as our self. It’s really more of a chosen spokesperson for the much greater totality of the real self that is our individuality.

The Superego is that part of the Ego (in my estimation) that second-guesses ourselves, our inner critic. Freud considered the Superego a separate functionality in which society’s demands are embedded as the conscience.

H.L. Mencken said, “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that somebody may be watching.”

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may be the part of the brain playing a major role in the manifestations Freud labeled the Superego. It is probably also the structure supporting what Daniel Kahneman labeled as System 2, explicit thinking. Interestingly, Observer state (my term for metacognition) is very useful, and I associate it with the executive control network mediated by the frontal brain; but in  Flow state, which is even more effective than Observer state, the frontal regions of the brain give up control to more primitive parts of the brain (“hypofrontality”), and the Ego and inner critic disappear, as intuition and practice meld everything into a sense of oneness that does itself effortlessly.

When one begins to shift into Flow state as a way of life, it transcends the Ego, as if the Ego had been training wheels which you can now take off your bike. You can now sense and live from the real you, your full self, not the defensive Ego, but from the joyous Muse within you. It was you all along, although it may also be the Self of the Universe living through you.

By now, many people know about the Flow state, and it has become formally recognized by the scientific and medical communities. However, there are some aspects of that state which are still taboo subjects. These are the spiritual intuitions which often accompany the Flow state.

We’ve already discussed Noia, my term for the intuitive feeling that invisible forces are trying to help us by getting us to notice certain stimuli which appear to be giving us information relevant to our current situation and/or thought process. U.S. Andersen, whom I’ve cited earlier, writes about surrendering control to what he calls the Secret Self, and he is talking about the same thing I’ve often referred to as the Universe, or the Muse within. The religion of Islam also preaches the same notion of releasing control to Allah.

It’s conceivable that one should first use the conscious mind and intuition to practice at life and gain a degree of proficiency at it before giving up the inner critic continuously second-guessing oneself, i.e., the Ego. Without practice, the Flow state might not come on so easily just by making a decision to release conscious control. Instead, one might be fooled by impulses coming from the Ego that one thinks are coming from higher guidance.

I know from my personal experience that the latter misclassification has dramatically fooled me many times in my life, especially as a youngster.

I think now that many spiritual people think they are being guided to make political choices by higher powers when it might actually be the Ego masquerading as God.

Even those of us who experience some Flow state every day are (wisely) hesitant to speak much about a feeling of being guided from above. It’s the sort of statement that can cause one to wind up being pigeonholed as a nut.

U.S. Andersen embraces this sense of being guided by the Universe to do things that will develop us as individuals and enable us to provide more value to others. Having been a successful pro football player and businessman, perhaps he was less concerned about how people labeled him.

In this book, Powerful Mind, being serialized here, I’ve already recommended that you keep an open mind about whether the Universe might be a single Self, and you one avatar of The One. It is definitely a scientific possibility that cannot be ruled out. Whether or not in Flow state, I now take it as almost a certainty, because of my experiences. But I do not urge you to believe anything, merely keep an open mind to all possibilities, and notice what your own experience teaches you.

Set your sights high. Visualize how you want your life to be without undershooting out of fear of being heartbroken by failure. Don’t be attached to any outcome, just visualize the outcomes you want, curtail negativity, and enjoy your life each moment. Turn negativity into learning and creatively adapting to circumstance. Don’t fight what is; go with it and steer toward the positive.

As Bob Dylan wrote, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Each of us is serving by the work we choose to do; we are serving people, and they pay us money for what we do for them. In your life’s best dream—your visualization that you will refresh daily—you have to be doing the work that gives you joy and gets you into the Flow state, otherwise you are not on the path to your dream. If you have to make a difficult switch in your life, do it in the way that gives you and others joy rather than stress, and make changes patiently.

Leave open the possibility that you are working for the Universe and that it will guide you along the way to your dream; look for possible messages in everything, but don’t talk yourself into wishful thinking, stay balanced and open-minded, use all of your faculties, all of the instruments in your inner orchestra.

Attune yourself to what is happening to you – become one with it – and go with its flow, except where you feel the need to go around certain parts of it that simply don’t feel right.

Believe in yourself and your ability to tackle any problem life throws your way, just know that you have to put everything else aside and patiently, without time pressure, use single-pointed focus on that one problem. Other side thoughts will arise, but note them in writing and put them aside for later. You can tackle everything, but take it one at a time, don’t rush, and you’ll see that you can solve everything you need to.

The feeling of being guided by a higher power to do good is a wonderful feeling. Make sure you are being an empiricist about it, that other people are sincerely thanking you, that you are really doing good in general, not just for selected others, with some other folks actually being harmed by your actions, but doing good for everybody. That and a feeling of joy in your life are the two essential checkpoints that you are on the path to your dreams.

Key #12:

Continuously focus on, bring out, and enjoy the Good

The 12 Powerful Mind Keys

Powerful Mind Key

New Mental Strategy

Blogpost Link

#1

Trial-doubt your own last thought/feeling.

#2

Study, edit, and reset your automatic reactions.

#3

Constructively and kindly express what you are really feeling.

#4

Root for the Universe, not just for your current vehicle.

#5

Self-rating is irrelevant.

#6

Be sure of what YOU want and enjoy the journey to your dreams, without attachment to outcomes.

#7

Take Observer position, note your feelings without owning them.

#8

When there is too much going on, rotate attention to make sure every workstream is covered.

#9

Consciously determine how much to take your time.

#10

Patiently determine the most constructive use of each salient inner experience.

#11

Inner Visibility: See Your BioAI, See Your Muse.

#12

Continuously focus on, bring out, and enjoy the Good.

POWERFUL MIND 12 Simple Keys
will be out in February

POWERFUL MIND 12 Simple Keys by Bill Harvey

Love to all,
Bill

Starting Over

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Powerful Mind Part 43
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, January 9, 2026
Created January 5, 2024

Read Powerful Mind 42              |              See all 12 Powerful Mind Keys


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 do 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, this 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 time (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.

Love to all,
Bill

 

*Senator: This is a term I explain in my book 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 ↑