Tag Archives: Self

Not Problems, Think of Them as Challenges

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Volume 3, Issue 28

The way the Game works is that the One Self living through each of us assigns optimal challenges to evolve each mini-self based on the Mission chosen to be embodied in that mini-self. At least that’s how I see the Game.

The One Self I am sure has heard this old joke before, even though I thought I made it up: He (She) calls the Game Cosmopoly. Other mini-selves who have played Monopoly must have also thought of it, and everything to the One Self is something that has been seen before.

This is why the Game involves mini-selves who have to relearn everything, in the first place. The One Self quickly realizes that a delicious drama factor is added to existence as soon as He (She) immerses in a new role, purposely forgetting true identity. Not so very different than watching a movie or TV show and losing oneself in the protagonist, just a lot more intense.

Leading the protagonist in Life back to his (her) true identity is how the Game works. The universe is always giving clues to the protagonist and handing out assignments — challenges — optimized to get the mini-self back into true identity. This is The Guru Principle.

My term “noia” is defined as the suspicion that someone’s out to do something good for you. Noiacally, one is sensitive to decoding messages contained in events occurring around us. Knowing how the Game works. Not getting ensnarled into the dreaded feeling of problems when, really, they are creative opportunities. Thinking of them as challenges and always remembering the Game is either a useful fiction, or the absolute truth. One way or the other, noia is a performance enhancer.

Thinking of it this way, there is nothing unscientific about God. What we have learned about information processing from building and using computers leads directly to the rationality of imagining a consciousness that is not dependent upon a physical body. We know that in computer science there is a principle called partitioning, which allows certain computational spaces to be separated from one another. Nothing in my theory requires anything that computers cannot do. So if there happened to exist a consciousness like us but immeasurably greater, why could it not be living through each of us, and if it were, why not give it an affectionate and respectful name like God? We would treat our father/mother affectionately and respectfully, and the One Self is closer to home than even our father/mother is — the One Self is the same self you consider to be yourself. You’re lookin’ in the mirror baby. All the time.

That’s my theory. Try it and see if you don’t experience increased performance. And if you do, ask why.

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. 

Positive Thinking and Mindfulness Merged Method

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Volume 3, Issue 27

In my theory of everything, we are all one Self. The consciousness of the universe is a single processor so intelligent it can pay attention while looking out through all our eyes at once.

Whether or not my theory is right, it has certain benefits as a working hypothesis, or lens. Maybe it’s a useful fiction.

I say this because when you look at things this way, it’s much easier to turn off negative feelings and turn on positive thinking. Most negative feelings involve other people in some way. Whether you experience the negative feelings toward yourself or toward them, it is not a solution-oriented use of your energy. The situation just sits there, with you feeling bad.

Let’s take a case where the negative feelings are directed at someone else. Someone frustrates you, let’s say. Makes you mad because you have a great idea and they are blocking it. For most of my life this evoked some inner dialog along the lines of mental name-calling, becoming very colorful during teenage years and increasingly inventive over time. I must say I enjoyed such inner venting but it wasn’t very useful in the consensus reality.

If your mindset is that we are all one Being, as soon as you have a negative feeling about someone else, it sort of turns itself off. Or at least that’s what happens after years of going through a process of slowly realizing, each time such a negative feeling arises, that if we are all one Being there is hardly an iota of utility in being mad at another part of your Self.

So nowadays for me the mad happens then fades. I go on to the next logical step which is figuring out what actions to take to move closer to the goal. Creativity flows effortlessly once there are no blocks such as negativity.

This approach to conflict resolution tends to see all parties as having energies to contribute, and finds solutions where all instruments harmonize in the orchestra. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a company or any team that employs this lens.

Now the other case is where you experience negative feelings but they are directed at yourself. You are beating yourself up over something. Again this doesn’t really get you anywhere. Except negativity has utility to the lower self, the ego, which likes negativity because it helps to rationalize behaviors you’d otherwise block with your self-discipline. Such as letting yourself have another drink, smoke, fattening food, or whatever else you do when you rationalize indulging yourself. Negativity as a context is effective in lowering your own internal self-discipline so as to allow self-indulgence, which is a powerful self-defeating factor.

If you’ve got this One-Being lens, you can’t sustain anger at yourself, since that means you’re mad at the ruler of the universe, which seems unwise. He/She living through you is the one that goofed up. Although omniscient in composite, the shard coming through you is still learning and while doing its best, goofed up. What to do to win now is the point to be focused on, not wasting time with unsophisticated self-flagellation about the past even if it is the immediate past.

So, while I can’t currently offer proof that my theory depicts the true nature of reality, wearing the lens as an experiment appears to have tangible and verifiable benefits.

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 Is Mindfulness?

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Volume 3, Issue 24

In the prior post we made the point that better decision-making and higher performance in the end reduce to two main drivers, Positive Thinking and Mindfulness. Positive Thinking, which we also call Solution Orientation, is easier said than done, and we pointed to our book Mind Magic as a compendium of proven operational techniques for actually achieving and maintaining both of these inner behaviors. We promised to investigate the nature of Mindfulness in this post.

Mindfulness is a form of attention control. Going back at least as far as written language and probably as far back as the cave paintings, the human race has discovered the importance of focusing attention in achieving its aims. The cave paintings are widely believed to be evidence of a method for rehearsing the hunt. Yogic mental/emotional methodologies are the essence of what is recommended in the Vedas, some of the earliest writings on the planet, and these include contemplation, concentration and meditation, all three related to the conscious and willful control of the attention.

The need to be master of one’s own attention has gotten progressively greater over the centuries as a result of information overload and its distractive effects. We have given this condition the name Acceleritis. Our relevant hypothesis is that written language, by making language visual — the dominant sense of not only homo sapiens but of all primates — brought the human race up to Piaget’s Formal Operational level of thinking, the highest known level of thinking until Systems Level thinking was discovered in the twentieth century. This so augmented the ability to invent that in only 3% of the time since the appearance of the species, the human race in the last 6000 years has invented more and more things and ideas each year than in the prior year, and at an increasing rate, driving a vast increase in the amount of information needing to be processed by our brains each day. ADD, ADHD, and a fairly obvious reduction in the general population’s ability to stay focused on one problem long enough to solve it, have been the result. Again, the need for Mindfulness has never been greater.

Concentration is the focus of the mind on a single object. Contemplation is the focus of the mind on a single subject. Meditation is the contemplation of the Self. What then is Mindfulness? We define Mindfulness as the optimal allocation of attention for maximum effectiveness. Now that we’ve defined the term, we’ll stop initial-capping it.

Attention optimally allocates both inwardly and outwardly at the same time. This is in sharp distinction from normative behavior, which is to allocate virtually all attention outwardly whenever the eyes are open. This normative attention strategy virtually eliminates the ability to understand one’s own motivations in the moment, causing actions to be controlled by ego drives that are counterproductive to efficacy. When one is mindful, there is a predictive feedback loop allowing one to suppress actions that are merely self-serving and do not consider the needs and probable responses of others.

Mindfulness also makes one more observant externally, improving what fighter pilots call situational awareness. Our theory of Holosentience postulates a shift into a higher state of consciousness as a result of persistent mindfulness. We call this the Observer state, and it is from this state that the mind-body can launch into Flow state or the Zone, the highest known state of consciousness in which right actions seem to do themselves effortlessly.

It takes “attentional” effort to be mindful and thus to reach the Observer state and the Zone.

Mindfulness and solution orientation (overleaping the focus on the problem once it is defined and going right to the focus on the solution, otherwise known as Positive Thinking) combine to form the core of the Human Effectiveness Institute’s psychotechnology — the recommended set of methodologies to achieve superior decisions, highest effectiveness, and creative innovation in all aspects of one’s life.

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. 

Applying Game Theory to the Largest Questions

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Volume 3, Issue 21

Recently a great friend sent me this link and these questions:

http://nyti.ms/12a3BJz

NY Times: A Quantum of Solace

Is time an illusion? Is there a universe, or multiverse? Finite or infinite? Will we ever know, and does it matter?

All of these are interesting questions. Let’s however focus on the last one — does it matter?

It matters because one’s view of the universe shapes one’s thoughts, feelings and actions.

If one is betting there is a multiverse and that individuals tune into certain branches and experience different lives as universes branch off into variations on themselves, one is always careful to tune one’s mind to the universe one wants to be living in. Such a person probably would have not built a bomb shelter following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because that degree of concentration on the universe in which the missiles would come could switch one into that branch, which — if multiverse theory is accurate — probably really exists having branched off back in the 60s.

If one is betting there is a single universe that happened by accident, such a person might have built that bomb shelter. If the person is wrong and it’s a multiverse, despite being wrong that person would be lucky enough to be living in this branch in which WWIII did not happen in the 20th century.

We are not saying one is right and the other is wrong — merely that there are reasons why it does matter which view of reality one is betting on. Because our view influences our decisions, implying that all of us should spend at least a little time reaching one’s own position on the largest questions — something that Aristotle advised a long time ago.

If one is truly betting there is a God that is benevolent and likes Good acts, one is more likely to perform those even at self-sacrifice. If one is betting that life is a free-for-all then one is more likely to take care of number one first.

Given the pragmatic importance of a view of reality, it is amazing how little conversation there is about the nature of reality, and how infrequently there are articles like the one in The New York Times that started this post. 

If one has no proof one way or the other about the nature of reality, what are the implications for optimal action and decision making?

Game theory dictates that one should adopt the position offering the greatest chance of success regardless of what reality turns out to be. In other words, if one had an optimizer running in one’s head, there would be a spreadsheet for every contemplated action in which the columns were the alternative possible natures of reality — Benevolent God, Accidental Materialism, One Self Living Many Lives at Once, Two Gods One Good One Evil, We Are All Gods in a Free-for-All, etc. The rows would be the alternative actions one could take in a given situation. Each cell in the table would contain a best guess about how well each action would fare in each type of universe. Calculations done instantaneously on the table would indicate the action with the greatest chances of serving one’s true long-term goals the best regardless of which type of universe we are living in.

This seems pretty far-fetched. Not only have people given up thinking about the largest questions, they have even given up self-observational/critical thinking about their own true long-term goals. This is the nature of the I Have No Time Culture.

Nevertheless it is probable that in the “gut” — the part of the intuition that manifests through the basal ganglia and holds a record of what has worked and not worked for us in the past (see last post) — something very similar to such a table is operating to provide realtime optimal recommendations in the way of gut feel.

Game theory in this case points to not foreclosing on any possible nature of reality. This puts the individual in the strongest position to be able to attune to intuitions, read minds or thought currents, and sense the future, because if one takes the more common assumption of Accidental Materialism (essentially a believed religion like any other), one tends to be shut off from the openness to having these useful experiences.

Now briefly to the other questions my friend posed:

Is time an illusion? I am betting that to the One Consciousness of which we are parts, everything is one instant, and the smaller minds of the slivers (us) have to break the whole down into a sequence in order to delectate it without being overwhelmed. That sequence is time.

Is there a universe, or multiverse? My bet: multiverse — otherwise one is assuming that we are naturally able to sense the entire universe through our instruments and senses — which seems to me to be just one more unwarranted assumption. Any processor capable of launching and sustaining the ornate universe we see is so awesomely powerful in terms of bits per second and other such objective information theory metrics that it is unreasonable to assume limits.

Finite or infinite? I’m with Heinlein on this — whatever is, must be finite, but a very large number so large that it might as well be infinity. Why “must” whatever “is” be “finite”? By definition of the word “is”. My definition is that something “is” if it is perceived by any consciousness. A consciousness alone in its own universe, since it perceives itself, is. A tree that falls in a forest in my view is, because the tree itself is conscious. So is a rock. Being made out of consciousness, everything must have some form of consciousness, no matter how rudimentary. We see evidence of “rudimentary”  or “essential” consciousness in the victims of dementia for example.

Will we ever know?

If your consciousness survives death, there will be a vast increase in your own certainty and knowledge as to which universe descriptions have to be taken off the table. However, those left behind will still be in the dark until they leave this life.

Or is that necessarily the case? Some individuals have unexplainable experiences of contacting the consciousness above, and this convinces them of the existence of an Overconsciousness. Often these are infused with the symbols of a specific religion and as a set these are called “religious experiences”. Others characterize people who have these experiences as having flipped their wigs. This is part of the reason why people don’t talk much about the largest questions any more.

That’s OK with me, I would just hope that people think to themselves about the largest questions some more. Returning to where we began, it matters because one’s view of the universe shapes one’s thoughts, feelings and actions.

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.