Tag Archives: The Zone

Humanism and the Conscious Universe: Impacts on Decision Making

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Volume 3, Issue 15

In our last post we began to clarify the main themes of this blog and their inter-relationships. Ultimately our purpose is to help you make better decisions and to spend more time in the more effective states of consciousness where better decision making happens automatically. How does our Theory of the Conscious Universe help you achieve that?

Motivations are the drivers of all decisions. You don’t know what decision to make until you have a goal, objective, desired end state, or whatever name you wish to put on it. Your view of reality itself is what shapes your motivations. Therein lays the primal linkage between a worldview and decision making.

On the surface, the motivations are similar between two individuals, one of whom is a dedicated Humanist, and one of whom lives and experiences the Conscious Universe. Both have the highest ethical standards as regards human beings. Both are capable of holding the nose of their ethics and pulling the trigger on a Hitler or Bin Laden. So why not leave Humanists as they are, and leave out the idea of a Conscious Universe? Would that not be a more Occam’s Razor elegant solution to improving decision making?

After all, this Conscious Universe stuff is sure to turn some people off, seeming to be religion. Religious people who feel brand exclusivity for their beliefs are most certainly going to be wary of our theory. So why create barriers to the acceptance of the Human Effectiveness Institute toolware (improving decision making, optimizing consciousness, and enabling Observer state and the Zone or Flow state) that can be of great benefit to everyone (regardless of their religious beliefs)?

Our theory of the Conscious Universe is not religion, by the way, as it does not extol faith but is instead predictive and testable, i.e. a scientific theory that we are all one software-driven entity. Our recommendation is to believe nothing but to keep one’s mind open to everything not ruled out by science.

Let’s face it: it’s already pretty bold, without sufficient academic credentials (mere degree in philosophy, lifetime of applied social science i.e. media research), to put forth a theory that explains the ego as a sub-sentience that takes over the self, and to offer toolware that enables the real self to take back over, creating a state of Holosentience where the whole self is working together in the higher states of consciousness, Observer state and ultimately Flow state. This is the basis for our nonprofit work in improving decision making. Interestingly, the toolware appears to work, according to letters from more than 2000 Mind Magic readers.

It is even more daring to claim that a condition of Acceleritis has existed since cave paintings and written language caused a shift 6000 years ago into Piaget’s Formal Operational level for the human race. Inventiveness has run wild, causing information overload defined as the number of question-producing sensory impressions (proposed metric: P300 waves received by the average human per day.

Why then not leave it at that rather than go further and expound a theory of reality? Do we know no bounds?

There are two reasons why it’s worth opening Pandora’s Box. One is that in the hunt for truth, one cannot be shy. If a person stumbles upon something that seems worth saying, it should be said, and not held back out of timidity. It’s better to be shown that one is wrong than to choke back one’s deepest intuitions.

The other reason is purely practical.  We are attempting to improve decision making in a world that is racing through a thicket of complexity. The fact is, the Humanist and one who is consciously living in the Conscious Universe do not act identically in all circumstances. There is for one thing a huge gap in the way they respectively make use of their intuition or hunches — both being the same thing. More on this in our next post.

Best to all,

Bill

 

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

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

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Volume 3, Issue 14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best to all,

Bill

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

Multitasking Increases Short-term Brain Fun at Expense of Long-term

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Volume 3, Issue 13

Speaking at the recent Wharton Advertising 2020 Conference in New York (where I also had the honor of being one of the speakers), neuroscientist Carl Marci used his closed fist to illustrate the brain. He described the fingers, curved under to touch the palm, as the brain’s newest evolutionary part, the prefrontal cortex. He noted that this latest brain development curls back to reach for and touch the much older limbic system, the seat of motivation and emotion.

His interpretation of what the DNA is looking for in doing this, is that the service of the most intellectual part of the brain seeks contact with the primal driving forces that are the seat of the goals in the goal-seeking organism. As if the power of mind exists — like every other part of the organism — to serve the highest ends of the DNA coding the system.

It is all highly purposive and this interpretation lends greater respectability to the primal drives that for centuries have been characterized as “lower” aspects of our being. This also gets back to Freud’s depiction of the id as being the animalistic and gross, babyish and least acclaimed part of our selves. In an earlier posting I offered an alternative view of the id as being our true selves, our original essence divorced from the later layering of experience-driven neuronal nets of software that expand the true self into new territory, some of it counterproductive.

Carl went on to spellbind us with an outpouring of ideas, one of which is that multitasking is so popular especially among Millennials because it gives them a jolt of pleasurable brain chemicals (presumably oxytocin or adenosine, or serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc.) by maintaining novelty-driven attention on something again and again by adding in another element whenever boredom sets in, which it all too easily does.

This jibes with my theory that the Acceleritis-ridden culture shifts us into avoidance of going deeper into percepts. Due to the overwhelming daunting list of questions arising in our brains from all this stimulation, which one subconsciously wants to avoid opening like a Pandora’s Box. This avoidance of the deep makes us lovers of the breadth – seeking more brain-juice cocktails by taking the overdose of stimulation even further.

However, as Carl noted, we are less effective when multitasking. Single-pointed attention is the way to Flow state/the Zone. This means that the seeking of momentary brain pleasure actually works against the organism attaining the goals of its heart. In the long run this reduces brain pleasure more profoundly and in a more lasting way. Borrowing on the credit card of brain-juice by multitasking burns your credit in the end.

Best to all,

Bill

NOTE:  Learn more about dopamine in this article.

Going Through the Worst to Get to the Best

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Volume 3, Issue 10

The two biggest blocks to the Zone/Flow state are distraction and attachment.

Attachment is also the only block to happiness, joy, delight, fun, ananda (from Hinduism, Buddhism, Extreme happiness, one of the highest states of being.) — the natural (built-in) target state of all experiencers. An experiencer is any entity that experiences consciousness through which an apparent inner/outer world is engaged. In this condition of experiencing, the automatic preference is for positive self-reaction.

This is because experiencers are driven by motivations that exist in the emotional dimension of experience (the other dimensions being intuitive, intellectual and perceptual). And happiness is the off-the-scale self-evidently best state one can experience in the emotional dimension.

Attachment blocks happiness because one is fearful of losing the things one associates with happiness and tacitly assumes are requirements for happiness. One is also angry at whatever agencies are suspected or known to be removers of those precious happiness-causing things.

“I am really attached to Pippin” (one of my cats) is a true statement for me because I love her. To experience love is not necessarily to be attached. So it is possible to get lost in word games about whether attachment is a good or bad thing because the word “attachment” is associated with the word “love”. To avoid confusion and getting lost in wordplay, I am using the term attachment to mean the inability to separate love from attachment and therefore the anger/fear syndrome.

The difference is the importance given to keeping the “things” that give us happiness. If one truly appreciates the joy that has been created by one’s loves, joy that has been creating other good things through spontaneous Flow state creativity — which emerges naturally from joy and from love — it is still possible to not worry about losing any of those “things”. In fact, when one is in that state of non-fearing loss, one is truly free, and true freedom does not exist up to that point, even in a pure democracy. This is because one is not free from one’s lower self — the ego software we built in our heads since birth (the Theory of Holosentience) — until Enlightenment, the lightening up (Fred Klein) that sets in once one has seen through the self-trickery of attachment.

A powerful contemplation technique in Mind Magic is burning out one’s attachments by intensely imaginarily experiencing the loss of each separate thing to which one is attached. This requires setting aside Alone Time, without a sense of time pressure. It requires immersion, concentration, patience as you go over the same material again and again. You can only do it for one object of your attachment at a time. It can take weeks to fit it in and spend the necessary time.

Give your imagination free reign like in a daydream. See yourself go through the experience of the moment the loss takes place, visualize how it might happen. See it vividly from the inside the way you experience life. Feel the feelings. Watch yourself in the daydream, the things you say in that situation, and the way you say them, and how the other person responds (if the particular attachment involves another person). Let yourself actually feel the loss as if it is really happening.

In your later iterations of the exercise you start to act like the hero you are in the daydream of the loss. You give the situation a more intelligent response. You realize that this is now how you will respond if that ever happens, or when it happens if it is inevitable. You feel differently about yourself from that moment on — more confident, more self-respectful, more courageous, in fact less prone to fear, and also harder to make angry.

It can take much longer than weeks for you to feel the effects of this internally due to the interconnections among various ego circuits in your head. It’s best to be removing all of the attachments during the same period of time — the perceptual, cognitive, intuitive/spiritual, and emotional parts. This is what the manual called Mind Magic is designed to do.

Happiness to all,

Bill