Tag Archives: The Zone

Flow Goes Mainstream

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Volume 3, Issue 6

March 18-20, 2013 — the Advertising Research Foundation Re:THINK 2013 program sports a lunchtime speaker, Steven Kotler, two days in a row on the subject of Flow state (the Zone) and how to instill it in business. Bravo! (See Review next issue.)

I’d like to think that my blogs on Flow, and the (somewhat) Flow-inducing ARF University Masters Level Playshop with Richard Zackon, helped create a conducive atmosphere for ARF to put Flow state high on their new program. Hopefully it will stay there over time as Flow state means better decisions, more creativity, more effectiveness, and significantly, it means authenticity, not the Mask of the Advertiser, as Nick Pisacane calls it. Advertising itself as well as its research will benefit more from Flow state than by any technology.

Authenticity is the key attribute most necessary in the new social era of media advertising and persuasive communications. In Flow state, one has no egoistic tugs on the essence of the idea emanating. One is not self-protective (except in martial arts settings). Authentic feelings are expressed and this is what the public thirsts for — both to receive authentic messaging and to evoke it from inside by immersion in a world of role models acting genuinely. This is the promise of the future society powered by Flow state.

President Obama is initiating a federal research program into the brain and consciousness. Flow state for the military and government is one motivating driver. I began to pepper US presidents with this idea 40 years ago and have run workshops for top US military officers to teach the inner “tricks” of Flow.

Our work at the Human Effectiveness Institute is focused on the experiential handles. What goes on within the subjective frame that can be guided? Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, my old friends and partners, lead the world in both understanding the psychology of consciousness at the brain level, and in disseminating the information so that everyone can benefit. I see our workstreams as complementary. Theirs is objective and mine subjective, the way consciousness is experienced from the inside and what controls we have over it, which are largely subtle.

Dan in his great book The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights (reviewed here recently) uses the term “Self-Management” to describe one of the pillars of Emotional Intelligence, a quotient conducive to Flow. We would probably use the word “guidance” in place of “management” in that managing is not as encompassing as guiding. Freud in Civilization and its Discontents calls the ego or secondary principle the “manager”, arising from the id or primary principle, which is who we are at first. In Freud’s view both the id and ego persist together as aspects of the self, joined by the impounded incoming other-directedness of the superego or conscience.

Zen is the art and science of making the ego and superego transparent (though still present) so the self is expressing the id in a way that is in Flow with the Tao or universal consciousness. Zen’s contempt for words and concepts neuter the ego, which depends on the intellect, concepts and words for its management style. In Mind Magic, the section on Mindquiet provides a simplified step-by-step approach to removing the over-emphasis on words.

In his Maximize your “Aha!” Moment blog post recently (see also my post Set Yourself up to Cultivate “Aha!” Moments from Sept 27, 2012) Dan points out that there is a burst of gamma activity (signaling “far-flung brain cells connecting in a new neural network”) in the neocortical right temporal lobe 300 milliseconds before an “Aha!” moment. He also describes that part of the brain as being the part that gets jokes: “It understands the language of the unconscious… the language of poems, of art, of myth. It’s the logic of dreams where anything goes and the impossible is possible.”

That’s a good description of the inner-mind language used throughout Mind Magic, which is designed to be a stimulus to bring the reader into the Observer state as an ideal Launchpad for Flow. We hypothesize that the subjective self is more centered in the right temporal lobe than the left during Observer state, as sensed by the natural ease with which one thinks wordlessly — whereas the left temporal is the “Worder” as I call it. Both right and left temporal areas have active insight collection capabilities, the left seeing differences analytically through abstraction and symbols (e.g. words), and the right seeing connections holistically in feeling/images.

Main takeaway: we need tools we can use to get into Flow and these must speak in layperson terms. Dissecting the physical brain processes underlying Flow is needed too, but in itself does not replace tools that the layperson can apply to get into Flow — which is the purpose of our work. More on Flow Goes Mainstream in the next post.

Best to all, 

Bill

Entering and Sustaining Flow by How Much of the Mind Is Cooperating at One Time

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Volume 3, Issue 4

Continuing our theme of recent posts, we are contemplating and “unpacking” Buddha’s root notion that mindfulness plus comprehension is the one route to true human happiness.

And we are relating that notion to our theory of Holosentience, wherein the brain and mind operate most perfectly and effectively when the sentience, or self-awareness, gathers itself into a wholeness exclusionary of nothing — when the selfness is so complete it disappears into absorption with the wholeness of experience in the now.

In earlier posts we posited that the physical brain is in Flow state (the Zone) when all parts of the brain are contributing and processing harmoniously. Below Flow in perfection is Observer state, where the self has a degree of objective detachment from its own emotional and cognitive arisings. In this state the prefrontal cortex is postulated to be in control though the whole brain is not yet in synchronistic action. These hypotheses are not yet supported by conclusive evidence.

Below the Observer state is what in the last 6000 years of recorded history has been called the normal state of waking consciousness, which I judge to be a state of brain process division far from Flow, and which I attribute to the information overload produced since written language was invented. I call this phenomenon Acceleritis. This lowest mental state I call Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP) meaning that the mind is cutting corners to get things done despite being overloaded, overwhelmed, torn into warring bits, and confused.

Mindfulness is a word that has the connotation of striving for itself. The word has been used going back to the Vedas (the term is again on an upswing) as a tool to remind the seeker that he and she must remember to be mindful, to pay attention — but to what? To both the events around and outside oneself, and the ones inside. At the same time. “Inside” and “outside” both being constructs of the mind. In effect, “mindfulness” is the trigger word for the Observer state — a mnemonic device to remind oneself how to get out of EOP.

For my entire lifetime I have had the intuition of a common natural evolution of mindfulness and comprehension that is accessible internally to each of us. We don’t need outside inputs to discover it. So I have spent most of my life unpacking that intuition into communicable language. And articulating the intuitive cookie-crumb trail that is leading me myself back from EOP into Flow. In doing so I intuit myself to be reiterating the communication of the psychotechnology that resides within each of us, which others throughout history have also communicated, using language more common to their times, and often using metaphors when explicit language was challenged by a lack of models. Living today I have the advantage of the existence of models of information processing that are for the first time in history ideal for articulating what goes on experientially in our consciousness, since in our theory consciousness is an information processing system.

To be continued next week, with more techniques for attaining Observer state and making the transition to Flow.

Best to all,

Bill 

Entering Flow State by Casting Your Net

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Volume 3, Issue 3

To recap this series of posts, instructions on entering the Zone willfully, the model posits three states of consciousness, EOP, Observer and Flow, each one driven by the manner in which attention is deployed. We have seen how the koan operates as catalyst between Observer and Flow. In this post, another catalyst.

One way to explain anything is in chronological order. Both Carl Jung and Anais Nin advised, “Proceed from the dream outward,” meaning not to lose sight of the door through which you came into a particular stream of thought. This is a key to the utility of a journal, because it records the beginning of an idea stream — the first door, with all the contextual underpinnings inscribed in memory. Without this remembrance of the whole context, ideas can become counterproductively abstract.

In my case, I discovered the Observer state naturally — it was my resting state. I sometimes reacted almost autistically when interrupted by a question or comment from outside my little head, and Solly Gaines, the headwaiter at Brickman, called me “the misanthrope” in observing my asocial ways as a small child.

My first experiences of Flow state were also at the Brickman when Ned and Sandy put me onstage. The height of stage fright got my attention. I was pulled out of my mind by the sheer challenge of dealing with it. I had no time to dawdle with the usual types of unanswerable questions pouring through my mind. I perceived this as being as close to a life-threatening experience as possible, although did not have time or the wherewithal to analyze my perceptions that way. I couldn’t even distract myself by paying attention to my fear. I was totally absorbed in handling the immense challenge.

This and other experiences made me keenly aware of the existence of Flow, although I had no name for it and did not think clearly about it. I was strongly attracted to it and would have made more conscious effort to achieve it were it not for the horde of EOP processes I was dealing with, in introspectional analytics. For me, EOP was the bleeding I had to stop before having the luxury of giving myself a nose job (Flow).

One instance in which I began to move toward solid methodology was when I was able to put the words “Mindquiet” and “Inforush Paralysis” together in my mind. This happened organically after a series of incidents in which I was Hamlet, overthinking a problem while the time to move passed. The first time I went with the Flow rather than insisting on thinking it all out in advance was on the ball field in Brooklyn.

Again, this was taken to be an immense challenge by my being at that time. Over-ridden by EOP viruses, I had come to the decision that I was not going to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses, and so I could not see blackboards, and required extra fractions of seconds to see where the ball was. At the same time I wanted to prove myself to the other boys as being more than a brainy kid.

Adults had flattered my mind from early on and this encouraged me to form a neuron cluster and a neuronal process pattern centering in that cluster, which operationally was the attachment I had been infected with — an ego need to always be praised for my mind. With the first stirrings of testosterone it became for some unexplainable reason important for me to show the guys that I was more than smart, I was also one of the guys.

Attention is the key to everything we talk about here. It is one’s attention that is moving around when we go from one of these states to another. It is all about attention and where we choose to put it (although our choice may not be a conscious choice).

On stage, I was frighted into paying attention to the Now. The same thing happened when playing ball half-blind. No time for BS to myself, out of my own little world into the world writ large, no time to extensively pre-think each move, split-second decision- making, paying attention to the subtle inspirations inside and everything outside at the same time.

I found that a helpful and instantaneous inner discrimination tool is Doing What Is Right when one is in Flow. This razor separates inner inspirations on the radio beam of Flow vs. inner impulses coming from ego clusters. One such ego cluster is the attachment to act heroically as a bias, without regard to probable risk/cost/value balance.

In those moments onstage and on the ball field, it felt like my attention was sucked out like a vacuum-propelled automatic fisherman’s net originating behind my eyes, and now that net was me and I was embedded in the scene around me, not centered in my head.

That feeling of attention swooping outward can be cultivated. You can sublimate (instantly gasify) into mixture with the scene. Look for this sensation as you process the Now, each moment. Know which of the three levels you are in. This is the game espoused herein. It is a fruitful life game not just a pastime.

Best to all,

Bill

Each of Us Is Many People, yet There Is Only One of You

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Volume 2, Issue 42

Is this oxymoronic? Or if not, then what am I talking about?

In You Are The Universe, which will be out in the Spring, I explain my Theory of the Conscious Universe in simple terms. The theory is not speculation but science, given my definition of science being its verifiability. This theory is just that sort of science. It is verifiable.

Mass verifiability may only be a dream. Yet individual personal verifiability is available and many individuals have achieved it.

If you’ve read enough of these posts you already know a bit about this theory. For other readers here’s a quick summary of what we’ve written about over the past two years:

The real you pre-existed your present body. The real “you” is also the “you” of the entire universe. There is no space, time, matter nor energy, except as “you” created it.

At the same time, on this planet, each of us is many people. Why is that?

Before we get there, take a look inside. Do you ever surprise yourself by doing something completely out of character? When you debate yourself internally, aren’t there voices taking opposing sides? Do you have the potential for extreme tenderness and extreme harshness? Could it be that there is a slight version of schizophrenia in all of us?

The Theory of the Conscious Universe posits that Acceleritis is what causes each of us to contain widely variant behavioral patterns, almost different selves, but not quite.

The Original Self is always there and always accessible. Acceleritis blocks that accessibility.

We become trapped in EOP (Emergency Oversimplification Procedure), and our actions become more predictable, mechanical outcomes of prior memory storage. The vectors combine with their relative accelerations and the outcome vector can be predicted. Creativity is lost, then effectiveness.

We become constantly distracted. Too much sustained infopressure per second on the human brain.

Having identified the problem, I set about finding solutions, which morphed into a book of tricks I had found to overcome Acceleritis and get in touch with the real me, the creative me.*

This is where the multiple inner selves part comes in. In my book MIND MAGIC, I call them senators. Minipersonalities that in moments of inner debate seem to be different people — perhaps specific people who impressed themselves on us and we retain their amanuensis within to help guide our actions.

Phenomenologically, what we experience most dramatically about our different selves is that we feel quite different (a) when we are oppressed into our EOP selves, versus (b) when we are in the coolly detached observer state, versus (c) when we are in the Zone — Flow state. Those three “selves” are the most obvious.

But those “selves” are not what I really mean by each of us being many people. What I mean is that unresolved emotion tagged experiences each create plucks on certain neuronal strings and set up camp as growing associational clusters of neurons, which become power centers. Together this software built from birth becomes the ego self, the self that is prone to fall into EOP.

So the meaning of the title is that:

1.  There is only one virtual point, it is consciousness. The rest is maya.

2.  Observed as if for the first time, one finds multiple points of view conversing within oneself, and maintaining this observer stance is a powerful learning strategy.

3.  Personally verifiable evidence is available to everyone. You can verify this theory yourself, including the truth that one consciousness underlies our apparent separateness from each other. Once in Flow, in inner contemplation, over time, you come to see that this is true. You gather information from other minds and verify that you have done so. You intuit what is about to happen next and it happens. This is verification. Many people have reached the same state of universal consciousness at least briefly, and saints, sages, prophets and gurus (all essentially the same thing in my estimation) have resided permanently in that state once achieved.

Go with your flow,

Bill

*I am happy and excited. Through the miracle of the volunteer team at the Human Effectiveness Institute, the new Sixth Edition of MIND MAGIC, wearing its pretty new cover (over in the right-hand column), is in my hands. And it can be in yours — it’s now available in all bookstores through Ingram. Just text your friend at any bookstore and it will be in the store in a week if it isn’t already.