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Your Unconscious Is in Control

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That much Science and I can agree upon

Volume 4, Issue 1

I think now that I might have been borderline autistic.

The stage performances, and Ned and Sandy’s social behavior coaching, eventually got me to a place where I could hang out with people. Hanging out led to ultimately receiving data from my mirror neurons, thereby really sensing other people and their feelings. And being able to love people for what I sensed in them.

What I always found most interesting to study, however, was me. Watching myself carefully, I knew from very early on that I the observer was not in total control of this reckless robot. Psychology as a science is only now coming to that realization. If they had only looked inside they would have found out sooner. Instead they were looking outside for measurable phenomena in the subjective consensus reality, the scientific credibility of subjective introspective reality having washed out to sea after William James left us very early in the 20th century.

My room had a red rug, black couch, black furniture. On one wall was a construction I had made with a Fairbairn Fighting Knife hanging under a red plume feather pen. “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Door closed often, I would stand in contemplation for very long periods of time. I would take notes and sketch diagrams of consciousness, my own consciousness.

Later I would write down the distillation of decades of operating this observatory. I could have called it Mining the Unconscious. Mind Magic, as it is actually called, is a way of pivoting your mind that happens as you read the book and gain more transparency between conscious and unconscious.

My brainwaves apparently indicate abnormal amounts of delta waves going on while awake. I happened to be in a terrific mood the day of the measurement and laughed when the psychologist asked if I was extremely depressed. He opined that I must have access to my subconscious mind at all times to have sleep waves going on during wakefulness.

One thing I noticed was that there were many “voices” speaking to me (really thinking to me) in my head. I knew by this point what split personality disorder (schizophrenia) was and studied myself carefully, ruling out that conclusion. I did not seem crazy to me, and there were not two or a few well-defined personas with their own names and such. Instead it was a senate of many speakers, all in effect claiming to be the same person. Me.

This became useful when I learned that I the observer could listen to a speaker in my head acting as me, and objectively consider the message as if it were coming from someone who is not me.

Reporting my results to a strategic government think tank a couple of years ago I shared my working hypotheses:

  • A new neuronal net grows around undigested experiences that impinge on motivations.
  • This involves brain plasticity, i.e. new neuron formation;
  • As well as new patterns of connections among neurons.
  • In effect this is new software, not part of us at birth, therefore not the essence observer self that was born.
  • Each such “senator” or “senatorobot” is able to convince the observer self and moreover the body to follow its commands as if it were the total self speaking.
  • Each senatorobot is a subsentience, i.e. it has a degree of intelligence and a degree of self-reference as its own self.
  • Therefore each senator has a drive to continue to exist even when the observer self wants to discontinue it (for causing undesired behaviors).

Science has now validated certain parts of this theory. I just finished reading one of my Christmas presents from Lalita, Incognito, by noted neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman. Dr. Eagleman refers to senators as “automaticities” and describes the way the unconscious mind runs most of our behavior as “a team of rivals”, which sounds like a senate to me. The number of pages I’ve marked in his book suggests I’ll be writing a book about his book! 😀 

Drinking caffeinated (who knew?) carbonated beverages in great quantities I laid awake nights watching the debates among the senators and feeling how a speaker could ensnare me into fully taking ownership of what he said. I assumed that everybody was doing this.

I am very happy now to see a path to integrate my theories with the latest best-of-breed science, and hopefully add a dimension: how our experience changes when certain things are going on in the neuronal part of our self. That dimension gave me a control surface to work with to metaprogram my brain. Without introspection, neuroscience would have no way to hand the controls over to the patient, except Pavlovian button-pushing to change the chemical mix. David Eagleman’s work is a bold step away from the dominance of reductionism, leaving introspection as a valid part of the testrig. Thanks, David!

Best to all,

Bill

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe: Imagine That, coming soon.

For those interested in my work in the media business world you might want to check out this video. Or this collection of videos.

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.

Do What You Want, and Take It to the People

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Volume 3, Issue 51

Kids setting out in life are best advised to have a two-level plan: the longterm plan to do only what they want and get paid enough for it, and the immediate plan of having a job in a field that pertains to that longterm goal.

First of course they have to know what they want. Intention is a powerful thing, with effects across one’s entire lifespan. Setting out without a strong intention i.e. a concrete two-level plan, is like driving blind. The Universe will still get you there unless you make it impossible with some point you’re stuck on, but it will take longer and involve more pain.

If you do what makes you happy, you are more likely by an order of magnitude to get into Flow state. Your performance will be Flow state, which will cause your natural audience to be attracted to you.

During my life I got to meet a lot of musicians, performers, artists of all kinds. I liked that. My father Ned was probably the last orchestra leader/master of ceremonies whose band backed the biggest acts in the world in nightclub and hotel venues as the Big Band era transitioned into a memory. He established a school that taught performers. My mother Sandy was a painter and paint sculptor.

I met so many whose talents far exceeded their success. Some even knew how to jump into the game, meaning they followed the advice of the plan above — find a way that pays to get into the field you want to be in. They taught me that lesson. For example, Bill Heyer, a multitalented genius who made the leap into big industrial shows with Harold Beebe, bringing Broadway to the corporate stage — great plan and inestimable talents. He was on his way to stardom when he lost his way.

For a decade I saw him in Flow state a large part of the time, and he exuded love. Later on, when he had lost his way, he hurt my feelings by pointing out that he was not really my adopted older brother, it was just an inside joke Ned and Sandy had and we’ve been humoring them all our lives.

“You mean you were humoring me,” I said.

Sometime later the police asked me if I knew a man about 6 feet tall, moustache, well built, who would have my phone number in his wallet along with nothing else. Bill had apparently been doing a Norman Mailer on the parapets of the Gotham and fell to his death. I see him dancing off the ledge.

Before the Internet, lots of artists of all kinds, including showbiz, photographers, authors, creative of whatever stripe, had a good excuse when they caved to their inner cowardice and refused to market themselves, waiting for the mountain to come to Mohammed. Now we live in the ideal era for artists, when the Internet allows them to do whatever makes them happy, and simply requires having a decent available presence on the Web. They will in time attract their natural audience if they are projecting positive energy, which is the real joy of Flow state — you don’t have to fake love, just get a good night’s sleep.

Do what you want artistically, and by that I include whatever turns you on — writing code, inventing things, whatever. It’s all art if it makes you happy.

And remember the two-level plan when you advise young people in their teens and younger. This is in all of our best interests!

Remind them too about the second half of the title of this post — you yourself have to market yourself, you can’t depend on anyone else any more.

Ned would have changed one thing in the world if he could have. Talented people would always be found. They wouldn’t perish like a beautiful flower in a desert, and waste one’s spirit on the air — allusions he used in his writing, echoing the poet whose line he quoted in his memoirs:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And  waste its  sweetness  on the  desert air.

  — Gray’s Elegy in a Country Church-Yard

 You’ve got to do it for yourself. Nowadays the way to do that is available and affordable to everyone. It’s Facebook, Twitter, having a website, having a Youtube channel of your own. Whether you’re an inspired carpenter or calligrapher or therapist or tuner of instruments, whatever gives you joy and so gets you into Flow, open these windows so people can see you doing it.

That’s the advice I would give a kid. Or a performer. Or anyone that needs to hear it.

Best to all,

Bill

PS — P&G’s Olympiad series on Youtube will be remembered as the start of the age of Custom Content Takes Over Advertising. 

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe. Imagine That, coming soon.

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 Humor?

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Volume 3, Issue 50

Like life itself, and consciousness, love, oneness, even Flow state, and so many other things we take for granted just because of long familiarity, have you ever stopped to wonder what is this weird sound-and-breath spasm thing we do sometimes? Laughing, I mean. What is that?

Feelings are one of the best clues to meaning. The meaning of any moment is most easily extracted from our feelings at that moment and in retrospect. Moreso than logical analytics alone.

(Side Note: The mind/body/spirit is in Flow state when all the detector and effector functionality is optimized together, feelings and intuition and analytics and perceptions and actions are not abstracted from one another, and inside/outside subject and object are one flowing process. A Oneness Singularity.)

What are the feelings associated with this bizarre phenomenon we take for granted? Laughing, that is.

We are pleased when we laugh, it’s fun, and it is an expression of at least momentary happiness, even if we do it ruefully during a negative feeling context.

Sometimes laughter is joy expressing itself bubbly and uncontainable, as when a child takes off on his first flight on a sled.

Humor is the intentional or unintentional causation of laughter. Of course the standup learns that sometimes it is the intention to create laughter without the fact of it.

Once we discovered that we liked this involuntary spasm (as we like orgasm, another preferred spasm, whereas we dislike and fear most spasms we experience) we began to purposely try to evoke it as much as possible under whatever circumstances befall us.

Laughter and orgasm may be related in ways we don’t know yet.

My dry cleaner is a comedian. Everything he says is intended to make you laugh. At least it makes him laugh, which is definitely a healthy thing. Good spasms are healthy spasms.

In the case of humor, sometimes our laughter expresses relief. The butt of the joke is being ridiculed, and since we are not the one getting the ridicule, we are relieved. Yet ridiculousness, related to ridicule, appears to be at the center of all humor.

When I have fallen from Observer state, I often get back up by realizing that if I can’t see the humor in the situation, I have clearly lost perspective. “These are the jokes,” I remind myself.

Enjoy this moment. And now this one.

Be prepared to laugh.

If you’re already smiling, you’re already prepared.

Wishing you laugh-filled days and nights,

Bill

PS – Top copywriter and genius Ed Ney of Young & Rubicam fame has moved on to the next classroom. Read his speeches and yours will be even better than they’ve been. Like Erwin Ephron, Ed used short pithy memorable sentences packed with meaning and impact, condensed intelligence and insight. Much to unpack. Rhythmic to the mind. Ed had been a reader of this blog. Treasured like all of you. So long, Ed, see ya. Somewhere somewhen down the long and winding.

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe. Imagine That, coming in February.

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.

How to Increase Your Luck

Volume 3, Issue 49

The flock of wild turkeys walks past my window facing the river, heads bobbing forward and back, through the light snow drifting down. Today, whatever guides me to decide to write about a specific thing in these posts has assigned me the subject of luck. My mind, like the snow, drifts through kaleidoscopic memories, recent ones of remarkable luck my two startups seem to be having, and for some reason, a particular moment one day in 1975.

A young lady let’s call Sue regards me as her spiritual coach and is ever eager to ask me questions, which I am happy to answer. Her pattern though is to guess at the answers as I am midway through the first sentence of an answer. I’ve patiently indulged her in this for some months. At times she appears to be reading my mind and at other times just wanting to be the smart one, making ridiculous statements, and I’ve woven whatever she says back into the conversation, playing Socrates and maintaining my own self-amusement. But on this particular day something happens that’s clearly out of the ordinary.

She has asked a question, I have started to answer it, and she interrupts. However, as she speaks, there is a crash of thunder. The sky is cloudless and there is no prediction of rain. She smiles and starts again, and again the thunder interrupts her. This time she waits and looks around kiddingly, seconds go by, and then I go back into giving my answer. She waits only a moment before interrupting, and again the thunder overrules her. This goes on for some time. The exact concurrence of the thunder with her interruptions is unbelievable — the explanation of the concurrence as a random coincidence being the unbelievable part. Somehow when I speak there is no thunder, and when she interrupts, there is.

When these strange synchronicities occur, as they do billions of times a day around the Earth, something has changed the odds. Luck — good or bad depending upon one’s point of view — is not a constant. Some kind of energy has changed the probabilities of things. Like the way the value of pi is theorized to change near a large gravitational source. In my observation, a person in Flow state appears to increase the probability of synchronicities.

Philosophy seems so impractical when one is living through a period of Acceleritis. As if the preconscious mind is saying to itself, while choosing among flitting mental impulses as to which ones to shine the bright light upon, “Cogitating about the nature of reality would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic — I’ve got to stay grounded in fielding all this incoming traffic.”

Unfortunately that’s a suboptimal procedure. The nature of reality has a very practical significance in every decision we make. Putting aside learning about the nature of reality is like deciding to keep playing a game without learning the rules, or like trying to win at cards without taking the trouble to keep track of which cards are already out.

In these posts and in my new book You Are The Universe I have laid out the case for strongly suspecting that consciousness is not a rare happenstance in the universe, but rather the essential nature of every part of it. This (some would say just accidentally) happens to explain the observer effect in quantum physics and relativity, and why Charles Tart’s objective statistical analyses of paranormal phenomena shows that the occurrence of telepathy, precognition, and remote sensing are statistically significant and the odds of a random explanation are billions to one. My theory also explains why sometimes our hunches are uncannily accurate, and explains the highly unlikely synchronicities that happen all the time.

Our culture makes us think that we are alone in our minds, whereas if my theory is correct (I am betting my life on it) we are all pseudopods of one mind, and hence anything but alone. There is a higher level of significance to everything that happens to us, and we are in a constant interactive game of life with a higher part of ourselves, the overall universe in which we are not a separate ball-bearing rattling around in a disparate box, but rather a morphing feature on the apparent surface of one Whole.

What luck is, then, is not a Monte Carlo procedure of random chance, but only appears that way because we do not understand all the purposes and causes impinging on every outcome of every action.

I feel intuitively certain that the next step for science is a subtle shift in point of view that will make everything fall into place, and will lead us to discover new ways of tapping into energy fields that will yield so much power that we can all afford to live like kings and queens. With his magnifying transmitters, Tesla had the start at a system of converting the Earth’s rotational magnetic energy into electricity — free to the masses. That was electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces, and perhaps all four can be tapped into in an analogous way. Will consciousness play a role as a fifth force in future technologies involving energy fields, not unlike the way the observer influences the outcome of quantum experiments?

Wishing you all luck that you consider extraordinarily good. I recommend objectively testing whether such “positive” luck can be attracted by flowing helpfully with every implied or explicit request that anyone makes of you. And that you dissect whatever appears to be “negative” luck so as to detect what the universe seems to be guiding you toward. I’d love to hear how your testing comes out — I do read your Comments, though most come by email.

Happy, lucky Chinese New Year!

Best to all,

Bill

P.S. Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe. Imagine That, coming in February.

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.