Tag Archives: Self

The Beneficial Effects of Achieving Mind Reopenability

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Volume 3, Issue 42

Gaining the yogic power to control what are now self-propelled functions within your being is an end in itself. The point of this little story is not aimed at reopening your mind for the purpose of flooding it with my ideas. When you gain mastery over any previously involuntary aspect of yourself, your ability to stay in Flow state increases.

Here on Earth at this time there is a pandemic cognitive bias toward closure in the face of the very number of things our minds have to deal with every day, 99% of them distractive.

Acceleritis is my neologism to denote the condition of being cognitively and emotionally overwhelmed by the accelerating information stimuli our brains contend with every moment of every day. My theory is that written language 6000 years ago was the trigger, leading to tools, weapons, and media — the three historic shocks that created the modern trance characterized by Acceleritis. The metric by which this can now be tracked going forward would be the number of P300 waves detected in the average human brain per day, which I hypothesize is continuing to increase. These waves occur when experience deviates from expectations, causing surprise and attention. I dub the stimuli causing P300 waves as “question-producing” stimuli relative to that individual at that time.

Because of Acceleritis we yearn for closure. We can easily become irritated or even angry when we are feeling mentally overloaded and someone asks us a question or begins to speak about something in a way we sense will require us to give attention to something else on top of what we are already dealing with. All the little details between us and our priorities madden us and so closure becomes a subconscious goal energized by more and more invested neuronal motivation weight.

This makes reopening our mind on any subject something that we generally refuse to do in earnest. If someone asks us to reopen our minds we might pretend to do so, humoring the person as politely as possible.

You can test this for yourself within your own mind and emotional body. Pick a subject you feel strongly about, perhaps some religious or political issue that means a lot to you and into which your idealism has been channeled. Or perhaps pick your visceral distaste for some political figure, or a strong negative feeling you have about some person you know. By act of will, just to prove to yourself that you can do it, reopen your mind to the possibility that you are wrong about that subject. Actually feel the internal resistance morph into willingness to reconsider.

Evidence that you have achieved this would include hearing yourself think of a few persuasive arguments as to the view opposing the one you have held. The proof that you have actually reopened your mind is a feeling, however. It is a feeling of lightness, calm, freedom, being more present than usual, an ability to let your mind go anywhere, objectivity, clarity, a sense of being superior to your normal self. You may be more conscious of your breath, and of having choices, creativity and control over your future. You yourself are now in perspective as being far more important than the relative trivia to which you have been bound. You will know it when you feel it. You will know that your mind is really reopened, at least on that issue. This is a useful exercise. It can be used often, particularly when you are out of sorts about something. At those times, locate the source of the irritation and see whether a belief you have is making you vulnerable to something you could be invulnerable to, by reopening your mind about that belief. 

To demonstrate, let’s try it on me. One of my strongest intuitions/hypotheses is that One Consciousness is all that exists and, by biocomputer partitioning, that One Self is able to live through all things in the universe that it created out of Itself.

This picture of the universe supports my intuition that each individual deserves respect, that there ought to be equality of opportunity. The cosmology of One Self, even considered open-mindedly as a real possibility, pragmatically encourages the individual to be alert to possible beneficial yet subtle messages in surrounding occurrences, and to be alert to one’s own subtle guidance system of hunches. This model balances Individualism and Collectivism in making logical that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, and at the same time making logical that in the long run certain individuals could do more good for the many. This map of reality tends to open the heart to other people, and leads to optimism.

Despite my ardor for this theory, however, I can reopen my mind to the possibility that Accidental Materialism is true, that consciousness is an emergent self-referential characteristic dependent upon the number of neuronal connections a brain can make, and that everything came about by random collisions of subatomic particles.

As unlikely as I feel the latter to be, I can open my mind to the fact that it is absolutely possible. As a scientist I can defer final closure on the subject until there is adequate evidence to lock in one view. Yet even then I can leave open the chance that better science in the future could change that too. Despite being as flooded as everyone else with too many things to think about, I can attest that relaxing the need for closure entirely is a useful state 

Interestingly, however, from a Game Theory point of view, I still feel it is more practical to act as if my model of the universe is true, and thus Accidental Materialism is false. Whether the One Self view is true or not, living in that viewpoint has already made me a happier person enjoying life more, and apparently tapping into more subtle clues, as evidenced by the number of ideas I’ve had that turned out to be successful in the media business.

If Accidental Materialism is true, then when I die, I will never know I was wrong. If the One Self view is true, then when I die, I will know I was right. In the absence of certainty, Game Theory suggests the One Self model is more pragmatic, and leads to more pleasure when one is cognizant of it. If there is no penalty at the end or along the way, why not live in paradise, even if it could ultimately be a “fool’s paradise”?

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.

You Are Much More Exciting Than Any Character in a Movie

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Volume 3, Issue 42

This is only true if my theory is correct, that all that exists is one consciousness, a computerlike yet living entity, capable of self-metaprogramming, that is living through you right now.

If my theory is correct, this is who you really are.

Looked at that way, the reason you are more exciting than any character in a movie is because reality is actually happening. Movies are fiction. As exciting as fiction can get, the real thing is even more exciting.

In the current spatiotemporal location (Earth 2014), the One is having a trip based on the premise of rapid acceleration of its own mini-personalities’ consciousness. It was a geologically slow process for millions of years — brewing these creatures up the evolutionary chain, living each one from the inside and feeling its passions and fears as its own, in immersed self-identification and sequestering the memory of its real identity, for dramatic effect.

Now merely 6000 or so years ago, the One jumped hard on the input accelerator and caused a quickening. Written language was its trigger. The wave that started there is now an information tsunami producing a pandemic shock reaction I call Acceleritis. Too many question-producing stimuli to be processed per second, sustained almost continuously. In this highly-distracted condition, we find it hard to have feelings like how exciting our life is. Nothing seems real, and “ideas like Bill’s” make us feel better so they must be wrong.

It is real. Life is real. Reality is real. It is a very exciting reality. It has been painted by circumstance with dread in place of excitement for too many people. Some mysterious evil being did not do this, we did it ourselves, the One did it through us. It is intended as an exciting challenge, worthy of the One and His/Her avatars — us. The challenge is to stay focused through complexity. We can do it, and there is psychotechnology to help us adapt.

Incidentally, even if my theory is not true, it is a useful fiction, a construct to improve self-management and increase creative effectiveness. Even if it is wishful thinking, it has more positive effect on revenue and love generation than the cynical reductionist defeatist state. That’s just giving up, apathy. The Greek apatheia is better than apathy. Apathea is the Observer state, which provides access to the Flow state. 

If you accept that premise or even the theory itself as possible, what do you do about it? Step one is to remember THE main dream of your life. What you really want to do the most.

Assuming this is the Mission the One had in mind before stepping into your role and temporarily becoming amnesiac toward prior memories, how are you doing with it? Have you stayed focused on it? If not, what would be the way back onto that radio beam?

How about your night dreams? Are they all, as a collection taken together, trying to tell you something about your Mission?

For example, THE dream in my life is to see really positive change take place in the world and to be part of making it happen. My night dreams taken as a collection are often about being caught up in irrelevancies, having lost the way, not remembering the hotel room number this key opens, looking for the front desk, frustration, and otherwise not engaged in making big creative changes happen. In short, total apparent disconnection from THE dream.

If somebody told me to follow my dreams and I were to take that to mean my night dreams, I’d drive myself into oblivion. The advice ought to be to follow THE dream, the waking dream, of what you could be.

As a character in a movie, playing the game of life, the LIFE MOVIE, look back over the moments in your life when you were at your best. The characters in movies that we are supposed to identify with and immerse in are made attractive to us by portraying them doing some noble act early in the movie. Recall your noble acts.

There have to be huge challenges in a movie, even a comedy. Challenge is the mainspring of plot. Look back at the main moments of supreme challenge in your life. See the ones where you caved. See the ones where you rose to the challenge.

Define where you are in the plot trajectory. What part of the challenge slope still lies ahead? How will the challenge slope itself change were you to change direction more in the direction of THE dream?

On a pad of paper held landscape position, assume you are now at the left side of the page. On the far right side of the page articulate and write down THE dream. What you always wanted to be when you grew up. Or what you realized you wanted to be in the process of growing up.

The middle of the page is 2014. What should happen in the movie in 2014 in order to get from where you are now to THE dream?

The subconscious typically takes about 3 days to cook stuff like this. Be prepared to take notes if one day soon in the shower you suddenly want to take notes on what is coming up in your mind in response to these questions.

You are the scriptwriter as well as the protagonist.

You will enjoy the movie the most if you do it just to do it, and don’t get attached to the outcome. In other words, be happy in the trajectory, even if it doesn’t take you to the pinnacle you aimed at. Let it come out wherever it comes out. Do it for the fun of it.

That’s why the One is doing it 

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.

The Game of Life

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Volume 3, Issue 40

In my Cosmopoly, a game form of my cosmology, we seek to mirror the intuited Self having all these lives, including the life through us as an individual. To the Self it is just a game and since we are the Self why don’t we just wake up to our true role or, if that is too unbelievable right now, play it that way anyway?

What do you have to lose?

Like everyone else, you’ve already made it tough enough on yourself. Couldn’t you use a little relief?

Why not even as purest fantasy, impossible to conceive. Nevertheless let’s just play along with Bill in this funny crazy game… at least unless it becomes too risky or not fun.

There really isn’t any risk because whenever you see any non-fun coming, you drop out of warp. Just try warp with me for a little while, provisionally. Trekkies welcome.

Imagine it is at least scientifically possible (even if you can’t picture it or it sounds too good to be true) that there is one Self, kind of like an optimized Mind — at essence a form of biocomputer. It’s all that ever existed, It will always exist, and It will always be the only thing that exists.

And what you think of as your identity, your sense of being yourself, is actually an active bit of the One Mind that is assigned to your coordinates. It’s living through you.

The Game is to see how long It takes to wake up in each specific role and “challenge-environment”. To wake up and realize who It really is. And what It can really do, even in this attenuated-self version.

Knowledge is power. The power to do good — if this Knowledge we’re talking about is our own inner knowledge of our own true identity. Even if you’re only accepting this as a trying-on of something you might decide to buy, like a new dress or suit. A working hypothesis to be confirmed or disconfirmed — which way shall the evidence point? That’s part of the game. The part we are at now, on Earth.

The process of waking up during our lives, whether or not we are guided by this working hypothesis, always involves a thousand adjustments we must make to ourselves consciously and effortfully as we go along.

Some individual adjustments take lifetimes.

Take a review of where you are at the moment:

  1. For whatever reasons, is there anything happening with your body that you could be paying more attention to and resolving?
  2. Same question about your mind.
  3. What about personal appearance?
  4. What about people in your life, now or in the past, with whom you still have bad feelings?
  5. Are you doing the work you really want to and should be doing?
  6. Are you having moments of fear? Anger? Envy? Melancholy? Greed? Cruelty? 

If you have cleared away most of these adjustments, you are likely to be in and out of the Flow state and usually sustaining the Observer state. And pretty happy most of the time, behaving as the mensch you are, encouraging, mentoring, taking care of other people, loving as many and as much as you can.

Perhaps you agree with some of what I say but consider it arrogant to equate oneself with the Deity, with whom one must always take a surrendering posture. In fact we agree on the surrendering posture, yet the only story I can calculate in optimizing agreement with all observables, is that there could only logically have ever been one point of light, the self-referential Observer Itself. This premise is explored in depth in my upcoming book You Are The Universe: Imagine That!

We surrender in many ways. The most meaningful is the surrendering of existential sloth, eagerly accepting the many challenges to make the adjustments needed to actually make all the connections back to the great Spiritual Mind of the Universe. Honoring the Whole of which we are an aspect is obviously the only sane response to the situation. Playing the (W)Holy Game each day, making the adjustments pointed out to us. Reading situations this way rather than cluttering them up with stuff that is only logical until you realize the process of the game underneath the little games you’re playing on the surface of each day. 

My best to you all, as you,

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.

Useful Transcendence Techniques in Mental Wrestling

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Volume 3, Issue 37

Fluttering saffron leaves wave at me through all the windows that surround. It is another ecstatic autumn day here in the Hudson Valley. Inside the house, décor projections of Lalita’s beauty catch my eye as I sit to write to you.

The subject as always is living in the Flow state (the Zone), and employing psychotechnology to get there. My recurring theme: it’s easiest to get there through an earlier state of awareness, the Observer state.

Educators at their best have toyed with the notion of providing courses in Thinking (click and scroll to Majoring in Thinking),  allowing students to major in it. The second article at this link uses the term “metacognition” to describe thinking about thinking, and being cognizant of one’s own prior thought. This is exactly the Observer state if one is focused only on the thinking dimension, but instead of thinking out of the box, folks ought to consider getting out of the box called thinking. There is also intuition, perception, and emotion to be cognizant of within oneself. The Observer state then is to be aware of all of this stuff that is going on within, without losing observant attention to the apparently-outside world. So in the end it is all about attention.

Brilliant psychological work has been done by Piaget in recognizing the high abstract level of thinking he dubbed the Formal Operational Level. In my new book, You Are The Universe: Imagine That, I suggest that as a race we reached this level for the first time when cave paintings and then written language appeared, which happened only very recently in our embryonic species career. This triggered such acceleration in information input to each of us that we mostly operate below the Piagetian level due to distraction. More recently other brilliant psychologists and researchers have named a new even-higher level of thinking called Systems Thinking; however, one is still locked into the trap of acting as if thinking is the whole of the self. Flow state and even Observer state require that one is in one’s body feeling the emotions, receiving the perceptions, and attuned to the subtle guidance system of the intuition. In fact the intuition is the most valuable platform in terms of Systems Thinking, where the more precise term might be Systems Perception.

Within the sphere of the emotions there is a crucial dimension called motivation. Here the leading psychological minds of the twentieth century include Maslow and Erikson, each of whom offers a specific set of levels the individual passes through on the ladder to the highest states of consciousness. At Maslow’s highest stage, one is motivated by morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts. This is a very good description of the Observer state, and the spontaneity part of it is suggestive of the Flow state.

In fact it is the lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts that best characterizes the Observer state among Maslow’s list of terms. Below the Observer state one is operating through a distortion lens caused by wounds one has received and habitual defensive patterns one has robotically adopted to cope with these wounds.

Wrestling the angel in transcending the wounded ego self, which is the true/higher inner jihad, one learns the traps one’s opponent (the ego) gets one into, and the escapes by which one extricates one’s higher true self. Incoming gets autoclassified by the ego self and this autotriggers certain reactions —look for these reactions and let them float downstream, disidentifying with and annihilating them. This keeps or gets one into the Observer state, the launch pad from which Flow can occur. Emotional reactions to be on guard against are: anger, negative judgment, unease/fear, envy, and irritation/impatience.

These emotional reactions are signs of the nonacceptance of fact, and the existence of prejudice in oneself. One is projecting a subjective expectation rather than observing objectively. This reduces one’s problem-solving ability, bringing one down below the Formal Operational Level.

Woodstock Roundtable host Doug Grunther, himself a psychologist and dream therapist who has interviewed many deep thinkers, commented in a recent radio interview with me that “higher” states of consciousness ought to really be called “deeper” states of consciousness, because these states come from deep down within oneself. I would agree and add that they come from deep down within the One Self too. So in what sense are they “higher”?

The stated purpose of my nonprofit Human Effectiveness Institute is the improvement of decision making. Our objective in understanding psychotechnology and getting more people into Observer and Flow states more often is so that we can run ourselves and the world better, be more competent, more effective, more creative. “Deeper” may be more descriptive and explanatory, but “higher” illustrates the rise from lower dysfunctional levels.

Takeaway: notice and nullify the prejudicial instant reactions of anger, negative judgment, unease/fear, envy, and irritation/impatience. Accept the facts and get on with finding creative and effective solutions. This will bring more pleasure to you and yours, and radiate outward as positive energy to the ends of the universe.

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.