Being Real

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Powerful Mind Part 19

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Updated July 11, 2025. Created July 14, 2023

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In Powerful Mind 18, we talked about the consistency program, one of the elements of your robot (mechanized, oversimplified coping patterns) that constrains your freedom of expansive choice in every situation. There are other constraints on your free will and creativity in every moment, and one of them is social pressures.

We are social animals, we have built huge hives called cities, and we huddle in them together, or if we choose to live closer to nature, we still highly value the ability to go out and mingle. This is a natural form in which love expresses itself as belonging; we belong to each other and with each other, and we enjoy it. This is part of our reality and can have positive and negative outcomes on our ability to express what is in us. It is of more long-lasting positive value to learn how to channel situations so as to be free in every moment to be who you are, even if it does not seem to fit in at an obvious level.

It’s natural to seek rapport by acknowledging the beliefs you have in common with the people around you. It may feel risky and unnecessary to expose your differences. But it need not be risky, if done right. Instead of expressing disagreement, try the Socratic method: ask questions, and consider the answers objectively, temporarily suspending whatever you may believe based upon your accumulated past experiences.

A contrarian is one who has established a fixed script to argue against practically everything said in earshot. This is the robot with its oversimplified and fixated habit patterns.

Being yourself and not glossing over inner secret disagreements you may have while appearing to go along with the crowd is an act of courage. But it need not be risky if carried off with savoir faire, kindness, and respect.

Open-mindedness is an attractive quality and encourages people to be themselves too. Locked-in ideological dogmas are among the more dangerous side effects of allowing enslavement to one’s robot. Enslavement creeps. You start by enslaving yourself to robot reactions in order to avoid the psychic dissonance and feeling of helplessness at the complexity of life. That then becomes enslavement to other people because you are trying simplistically and superficially to become accepted by them.

The trick with being real is that it is not a stand-alone principle; it must be executed simultaneously with a complementary principle, screening out negativity. If you open up yourself without screening out negativity, the results will be undesirable. You will be expressing not only the real you, you will also be letting out the ventings of your robot. The real you does not want negativity, does not want to add more negativity to the world, would far prefer to never experience negativity, ever. So why do we so often express negativity, sometimes without realizing what a negative expression sits there on our face? It is a robotical phenomenon, not coming from our True Will. Call it a chemical reaction or Pavlovian conditioning or anything else you want; it is part of the problem not part of any solution.

When called upon to comment on a subject you know to be important to the people you are with, and you know going in that you differ from them on certain aspects of this subject, reveal your open-mindedness up front, and mention some of the things that have occurred to you about the subject about which you are still sorting things out. Handled this way, you are inviting your friends to discuss the subject open-mindedly, which is more fun for everybody. Everyone might learn something. This method of respectful discourse is the foundation on which great civilizations have been built. When this format of openhearted discussion is lost, these civilizations have crumbled. That’s how important it is to be real and yet positive at the same time. When you disagree, you can still express positivity by the way you do it, with respect and open-mindedness.

One of the best ways to move toward resolution of ideas which are being debated is by setting up experiments and objectively recording and interpreting the outcomes. This is the method of science and deserves to be applied to daily life, including politics and governance. Fact-based decision-making based on empirical observation of test results, safely testing concepts in action. This can be done at the level of small local organizations or on a global scale.

By avoiding giving your usual response, you open up the chances of creativity and learning, you rethink things. By avoiding social pressures to simply pretend to agree, yet maintaining friendliness and respect as you speak your mind, you make the world a better place, you add to the net value of the universe.

Every rule in the Powerful Mind series  (these posts will become the book Powerful Mind) has its exception cases. All 12 Keys work best when balanced together, customized to the current situation you face. This integration is best done intuitively without attachment to outcomes and without fear or anger. Living in this open way rests upon a foundation of courage. Winston Churchill identified courage as the most important virtue because all the other virtues rest upon it.

 See all 12 Powerful Mind Keys

Love to all,
Bill

 

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A July 4th Message from the Father of Our Country

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
Updated July 3, 2025. Original post: July 2, 2021

HAPPY AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY 2025!

The address of Gen Washington to the People of America

Washington’s Farewell Address

For at least two decades from July 4, 1776, George Washington was the most trusted person in the United States of America.

The Walter Cronkite of his times.

He served as President when, to him, the job was a burden rather than a prize.

He was the glue of authenticity and integrity that gave our country its chance to build a foundation that would last.

For two decades, he made parties unnecessary, because all differences could be resolved in him.

And then, when the party divisions arose with their bitterness and hate, he stood down and would not accept another term as President. He was 64. Average life expectancy for an American male was 36.

In departing, he was sure to warn us about the forces that were arising to counter the most innovative governmental structure in history.

In this post, I will read you some excerpts from George Washington’s final address, his last guidance to the children of the country he helped create and lead through its fragile infancy. I’ll also provide the link to the full going away letter he left for all of us, which is read annually to both houses of Congress.

I hope it revitalizes your true loyalty to our true bedrock principles, and helps bring the unity we need now more than we have ever needed it before.

Washington begins by humbly and diffidently explaining why he will not accept another term in office:

Transcript Excerpts of President George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)

Friends and Fellow Citizens:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.


Later in his address, he warns of the dangers of the political parties just then sprouting up in America:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

He goes on to warn against the danger of one branch of government becoming dominant:

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. 

To me, the humility, authenticity, and kindness of the Father of our Nation comes through loud and clear in these his last words of advice, to us his children, endowed to carry on the idealism of the Founders.

Let his spirit re-inspire us to our original Mission and Values, and help us return to unity with forgiveness and a renewed dedication to work together for the good of all of us.

What you feel when you read these words of George Washington…
You are feeling what it is to Be An American.

This American Noble Experiment is worth preserving!

Commemorating and honoring that Beacon for The World,

A song from the heart of Ray Charles in 2022, 50 years after first singing this rendition of it on the Dick Cavett Show.

I hope you agree with me that this post should be sent to as many Americans as possible. If we each send it to 10 or more people asking them to send it to ten or more people, by the sixth round at least a million people will have received it.

My best wishes to all,
Bill

 


Image source: George Washington, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Religion and the Founding of the American Republic exhibition.

Change the Way Your Mind Does Business

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Powerful Mind Part 13

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
Updated June 27, 2025. Created June 2, 2023

Read Powerful Mind Part 12              |              See all 12 Powerful Mind Keys

Perhaps there is nothing after death. Perhaps consciousness goes on after death of the body. There are many ways in which this could be possible. Consciousness is information being internally communicated within an experience of “self”. That “self” might change after death, or not. Science has not ruled any of this out. Most of us tacitly assume that these things are unscientific because religion has considered them, and as we all know, science and religion have historically been at odds. So the mind leaps to the hasty closure that these considerations about the self, consciousness, death, and so on are unscientific, questions that science cannot answer. Instead, it is this hasty closure process that is itself unscientific. Science is all about holding to open-minded objectivity until there is evidence one way or another.

Here’s an experiment:
Consider that you do not “know” anything. Wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Reconsider all of your old beliefs. Do this systematically, in times you are alone. Treat it as a game. Come back to the game from time to time until you feel you have exhausted the game and reached its end.

When possible, write down as single words or very short phrases some of your beliefs, things you have believed are true up until this moment of reconsideration. Don’t try to get them all at once — more will come to you over time, and you can add them to this list as they arise. All you really need to get started is any one belief you hold. For example, “Government is corrupt”, “Big Business is corrupt”, “We have but one life to live”, “Look out for yourself”, and so on.

Cross-examine yourself as to where this belief came from and what evidence you have to justify believing in it.

Ask yourself if you can imagine proving this belief one way or the other. What would be necessary? Imagine the scene in which you have proof that it is true, then imagine the scene in which you have proof that it is false. What would such proof consist of?

If you can’t prove the belief is true or false right now, ask yourself if you have a need to hold on to this belief. Does it serve a useful function? Does this belief do something for you?

Contemplate where the belief came from. One of your parents? Someone who had a great influence on you? Do you maintain this belief to gain the sense of having that person’s approval now? (As ridiculous as that is, but more on that later.)

Try on for size the possibility that you no longer need to have this belief, nor do you need to actively disbelieve it. See how that feels inside.

When you have run this game through to its goal, you will have reopened your mind to all possibilities and will no longer have any of the keys in your mental computer keyboard stuck down. You will be able to take events as they come and see them as they are without imposing on them any prejudgments or forcing them into any preconceived molds. You will hear what the other person is really saying rather than hearing what you expect them to say.

You will have outsmarted hasty closure.

Common Sense

Following are common practices known for millennia to most everyone, though few actually practice them as a result of Acceleritis. They differ from the techniques described above in that these are relatively obvious. What is not obvious is their great value in supporting the quest for higher states of awareness:

Planning/Preparation

In a hurried, rushing world, impatience is almost guaranteed. You can tell yourself not to be impatient, but this admonition will have no force if life catches you unprepared for each day’s challenges. Don’t let yourself go to sleep until you have contemplated the likely events of the next day and prepared yourself with contingency tactics for different ways things could go with the people and situations you could meet with the next day. This way, you will be as prepared as you can be, and this will make it more likely that you can actually achieve some degree of patience tomorrow. With adequate preparation the night before, you will be less distractable and therefore more likely to shift into Flow state, where you will be traveling at the “speed of life”.

Priority Order

At most times, you will have more than one item competing for your attention: new emails, someone pops into your office, and besides all that, you were trying to work on something. This causes frustration and helps fuel impatience. It’s best to focus all attention on one thing at a time, to get the highest quality, most lasting result. This implies a fast selection process to determine which item deserves attention first. The way you make this decision reveals a lot about you. Are you trying to curry favor, or are you overhauling a company; are you doing the easiest things, or giving priority to helping people?

If you can agree with yourself on how to prioritize, it will put most of your daily attention and time on achieving the things that are most significant in life.

Patience/Quality/Appreciation

Did your mother or father ever say to you, “Take a deep breath and count to ten”? This is actually very practical advice. It is a way of avoiding hasty closure. And it is a way of instilling patience in yourself. It’s also helpful to remember that life is like a pearl necklace. It’s made of moments — the pearls — and all we ever have is the present moment in which to extract enjoyment and to show our quality. Making each moment precious. This is the real value of patience. We give our all to the moment, we are at our best, and we are taking as much pleasure out of the moment as we can. With the more difficult moments, that pleasure may not seem so pleasant; the pleasure then is in being interested in what is going on, and seeing what we can learn, which may make future moments of this kind more actually pleasant.

Objective Skepticism (Reasonable Doubt)

In science and in law, the only thing that ultimately counts is proof. Too bad so many of us do not realize this is also true in life itself. Before deciding that something is good or bad, or what to do about it, make sure you question yourself to see if you have anything proven to go on. Don’t accept evidence that wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. If you don’t have proof, proceed cautiously, and on the fair basis of “innocent until proven guilty”. Don’t accept hearsay. Make sure that your own empirical experience is your basis for proof of anything.

And don’t forget to breathe. Just breathe.

These platitudinous-sounding bits of common sense advice really work. Don’t avoid getting their benefit simply out of intellectual snobbery.

Yet these gems of ancient wisdom do not do the whole job. They effectively support, but do not change your consciousness. For that, you must profoundly change the way your mind does business.

Trial-doubt your own last thought/feeling.
This is radical new mental strategy #1, the
first simple key to the doorway of the upper mind.

 

Love to all,
Bill

 

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Peel Away Your Layers of Conditioning

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Powerful Mind Part 12

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
Created May 26, 2023. Updated June 20, 2025

Read Powerful Mind Part 11               |              See all 12 Powerful Mind Keys

You may have an investment in accepting some thoughts over others, such as thoughts that make you look smart to yourself. Just knowing that you can be biased goes a long way to seeing past any bias you may have lurking in your head.

Example: Now that you are reading this blog series, Powerful Mind, you are paying more attention to what goes on in your mind. Someone just said something to you and you notice that you have a flash of invisible anger and then go on with the conversation as though nothing happened. Later, you have a free moment to look back and ask yourself, “What was that?” It takes a little while, but when you least expect it, when you are thinking of something else, it suddenly pops into your head that you have been secretly competing with a specific person, making him or her a rival, and what made you mad is that your rival scored a point. It was “secretly” because you never said to yourself “out loud in your mind” that you considered that person a rival. It was your own secret from yourself. You may know exactly what I’m talking about because this kind of thing has happened to you in the past. As a result of Powerful Mind, look forward to more of those exposés happening in the future as you peel away the layers of conditioning.

Don’t take anything to extremes. This key is not meant to turn you into Hamlet, never able to make a decision. You must, in fact, become more decisive, simply not hasty: think things through thoroughly and then take action.

If you sense something is dragging on too long and you have needed to take action for some time, you really need to get away by yourself for however long it takes (within reason) to plan out what to do decisively.

Check your Perceptions

One form of hasty closure is perceptual: you actually “hallucinate” in mild ways all the time, seeing or hearing things that are subtly different from the reality that actually exists around you. You tend to see things that you expect to see, rather than what really happened. In this way your preconceived biases act themselves out in your physical senses.

You expect that someone will be sneering at you and you actually seem to see that sneer although this time the person is actually trying to be nice. Or the other way around, you expect them to be nice and don’t realize they are actually sneering at you.

The automated pre-conscious mind has searched your memory banks, found something similar and projected it, so that you literally see your prediction instead of seeing the current reality. Only by paying careful and patient attention can you override this hasty closure of the senses.

Unless you are patiently paying attention to everything that goes on around and inside of you, you will not notice your mind screening out things that are familiar, things you have seen before. This function of the mind is a type of hasty closure where the closure occurs in the pre-conscious state, even before you become aware of something.

To the robotical part of the mind, this makes sense, because it is conserving mental energy by making “invisible” those perceptions that it considers unimportant because that sort of thing has been seen before. At some point in the past, it was interesting but then closure was achieved on that content. The beautiful view out your window that you persistently ignore.

Most of the time, it might even make sense that you save time by ignoring the familiar. But sometimes it means that you have lost the power to relish something beautiful just because your mind takes it for granted. Better that the whole you stays awake and aware of everything so the whole you can make your own decisions, rather than be run by automated functions of your pre-conscious mind.

Contemplation “Vacations”

I mention this strategy last because most people would say, “I don’t have time for this one.” Here the idea is to set aside some time for yourself, perhaps when there is nothing else to do — on a train, plane or bus when you have nothing you want or need to read, waiting in a doctor’s office, you can’t sleep for some reason, you’re getting a CAT scan or MRI and have to lay still for 25 minutes. Or when you are actually on vacation, or by yourself and no one is phoning you or texting you or otherwise distracting you.

Consider these times to be vacations from Acceleritis. There is no pressure. You can do anything you want. Instead of just letting your mind wander aimlessly, here’s something else you can do that is extremely useful and beneficial and pays back for the rest of your life.

Contemplate who you are — who you really are. And what do you really know about what life is really all about.

Many eminent scientists have pointed out that everything science has learned since the beginning of time is a mere thimbleful relative to what there is in total to know. As the song goes, “how little we know, how much to discover” (Springer/Leigh).

Actual knowing is very difficult. It requires the kind of proof demanded by science and by courts of law. Yet our minds want closure; it is built into our brains to want closure. We create fake closure just to have a sense of closure. This is hasty closure and it is self-defeating. It keeps us from objectively seeing and, in the long run, from getting closer to true knowing.

Details to follow in the subsequent posts.

See all 12 Powerful Mind Keys

Love to all,
Bill

 

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