How Do I Escape the Fear that I Am Growing Old?

2 Replies

Volume 3, Issue 19

By realizing deep down, in a profound moment of inner silence and receptivity so it goes to the ground of your being, that we don’t know diddlysquat about what comes after this life.< /br>

I know that one has not normally spent the moment it takes to realize that the consciousness itself — you — are a jumble of information-processing programs, a biocomputer — implemented in a subtle energy field that human Earth consciousness collectively has yet to discover (gee, science hasn't discovered everything yet?! being the hidden assumption/block). So it is not impossible that consciousness can exist outside of a material body. If consciousness is an energy computer — a computer made out of energy — then why not.

Of course it is reductionist to say that consciousness is just an energy computer. It must be more than that in the sense that it is self-aware. The human race has not come close to understanding what it would really take to cross the great divide between an amazingly smart supercomputer made out of energy — a biocomputer that is alive and able to draw power from its interactions and sustain its life and reproduce, a living computer — to something that experiences self-awareness. The experience of self-awareness cannot be reduced to anything else, neither scientifically nor even philosophically, yet.

So let’s say one has this moment of epiphany that lasts, in which one accepts that the universe may be a sentient thing and that each of us is a little face looking out from it.

If so, the idea of a permanent death caused by a happenstance in this current stage set has no binding effect on the parent consciousness that is playing this role.

This at least opens the door to consider as a real possibility that death may not be the end. How does that change the fear of becoming old? Profoundly. To its roots. Who cares if the setup is that there is incipient slowdown and decay at the end of one of these rides? Small price to pay. One can only hope that not every ride ends with a downslope. In fact, why imagine that a downslope has to be inevitable even in this life? If one is still functioning effectively, why project to oneself the repeated imaginary thought feeling that one is going downhill, getting old. The repetition of any thought feeling draws to oneself the reality that one is imagining. We make it come true by dwelling on it. We expect to start to break down, so we start to break down. We spend more and more time discussing the ills of old age. Given the possibility that my theory is correct and everything is made of consciousness, it is inevitable that the body cell consciousnesses will hear the operating system tell them to get old.

Let’s tell our body cell consciousnesses something else. Let’s vow to ourselves that we will make the effort to keep getting better on the inside every day for as far as the ride lasts, whether or not this body is the last chariot we ride in.

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.

Not Doing Can Be an Exquisite State of Being

1 Reply

Volume 3, Issue 18

In the prior post we offered an exercise and a discussion about the merits of balancing “doing” with “not doing” in one’s life. The object as always is greater effectiveness in one’s life, achieving emotional and higher goals on all fronts including love, creativity, and ultimately spiritual fullness. Our definition of “spiritual” is the intuitive knowing and feeling of relationship with all beings and all things. All of this is yours to enjoy in life. Hence the Jewish toast “to life” (l’chaim).

However, if one is always pushing toward targets, there are times at which one is inadvertently setting oneself back in regard to those targets. Thus the I Ching states: “Keeping still. Keeping his back still so that he no longer feels his body.” The authoritative Wilhelm/Baynes edition comments: “True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward.”

Speaking about cultivating the “Aha! Moment”, an aspect of Flow state, Steve Kotler at the ARF described a stage in the creative process in which one is wise to turn away from the challenge and do other things, for it is during this turned-away phase that the Aha! moment comes.

Certain batteries get recharged when one takes oneself temporarily off the wheel that is always driving us. This also happens during entertainment such as we get from screen devices, books, stage and other performances, spectator sports, vacations, making love, being with family and/or friends. But the subtlest batteries only get recharged when we are alone with ourselves. This can take the form of formal sitting meditation but it doesn’t have to. We can be alone in nature, alone at home, alone on an airplane, anywhere. As long as we are not working down the TO DO List, there is a greater chance that we will slip into the Observer state (the precursor to Flow state) effortlessly. To help bring this on, here are two tips:

  • Look more closely at the place from which thoughts/feelings arise.
  • Don’t add to what you observe inwardly/outwardly, i.e. stop interpretations.

These mindsets are helpful in cultivating the subtle capabilities of consciousness, the intuition as Science calls it.

The movement associated with creative energy is good. Stillness in body and mind is also valuable. Balance is optimal for maximizing effectiveness toward all goals. Here is a relevant excerpt from Mind Magic.  

Best to all,

Bill

PS — Our measure of effectiveness is results, outcomes, measurable things. Thousands of Mind Magic readers wrote unsolicited postcards, letters and emails reporting improved performance across twenty or more scales including happiness, self-confidence, creative output quality, and so on. Corporations wrote similar letters reporting improved decision making, reduced bias in perceptions, better teamwork. Military commanders mentioned mental flexibility, adaptability, fortitude. (Full battery of measures we are using currently in testing, available on request.)

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.

Doing Is Just One Way of Being

1 Reply

Volume 3, Issue 17

Effectiveness peaks in Flow state when the mind/body duality collapses and everything is One — the Zone. One of the obstacles to this condition is the predisposition that one must always be doing something.

This “Doing” hidden assumption has deep roots: the Work Ethic and industriousness virtue we were taught, the sense that while others are suffering one’s duty is to never stop searching for solutions, the inforush that has been accelerating since the cave paintings (which I call Acceleritis), the caffeine culture, the systemically out of whack mounting economic pressure, the TO-DO List that is never done, the admiration we feel for people bouncing with energy. Although the situation has been pandemic for millennia, it is so pronounced in Manhattan that New Yorkers traveling anywhere else sense everybody else as too laid back.

The first serious recorded psychology on the planet (the Vedas), which was set down some 3500 years ago, not long after the beginnings of Acceleritis, noticed this tendency as one of the three qualities of being, Rajas, the addiction to action (vs. Tamas, the addiction to rest, and Sattva, the addiction to knowing). The Vedas called these the three qualities of existence rather than using the negative term “addictions”, which is the author’s own perspective. This perspective sees anything deviating from pure observation, as a motivational drive, which only in the extreme literally becomes an addiction.

The good thing behind the Doing state of mind, beside often good intentions, is that there is a wellspring of creativity bursting to be channeled outward into something. One might be extremely grateful finding this creative drive inside. The point of this post is that the channeling of this drive is a science and an art to study and, yes, at certain times, control.

Being able to hold back the impulse to Doing confers the Observer state. The Observer state is the access portico into the Flow state, and it is easier to willfully switch into Observer state than it is to flip oneself by act of will into Flow state directly. Catching oneself assuming that one ought to be doing something, and arresting that assumption, is one of the easiest ways to get into the Observer state. Here is an exercise. More on this in our next post. 

Best to all,

Bill 

PS — New York tri-state area theater lovers, if you can, go see “The Outgoing Tide” at Ellenville NY’s Shadowland Theater. One of the most moving experiences on or off Broadway. Ends run in just a few days, June 16.

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.

Humanists May Not Be Using All of Their Powers

Leave a reply

Volume 3, Issue 16

Humanism is a wonderful thing. As a teenager I came to the conclusion that people’s decisions reflect not only pragmatism and ethics but also one’s aesthetics. Based on all three sets of criteria, pragmatic (getting the job done), ethical (doing so with least harm and most gain to all), and aesthetic (delectation of the beauty of the solution as it unfolds), I loved Humanism.

I was still an atheist and worshipper of science at that point. The realization at age 12 that “I am God and so is everybody else” was still an unassimilated revelation in my mind, not integrated with everything else in there. (The word “God” turns a surprising number of people off and so I typically say “Universe” instead.) I had experienced the Conscious Universe but could not explain it logically to myself. Humanism was therefore to me the highest philosophy on the planet. I still love Humanism, but now see that the Conscious Universe perspective gives me more ability to achieve the aims of Humanism.

With the Conscious Universe, one is open to get creative solution ideas from events around oneself that would have no special meaning to a Humanist not open to the Conscious Universe. It is as if the Universe is trying to clue you into something. It goes right past you unless you are open to the possibility. I call this Noia, the suspicion that the universe is out to benefit you. This word popped into my head in the mid-70s and I’ve been using it ever since. In 2005 Rob Brezsny came out with a book Pronoia about the same idea.

Openness to the Noia-type event reveals that synchronicity is actually happening a heck of a lot more to each of us that we notice in our pre-Noia state. Noia is not the totality of why the Conscious Universe tends to lift time spent in Flow more than Humanism does. Noia is a subset of the use of intuition. Intuition is actually ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Carl Jung listed intuition as one of the four functions of consciousness (intellect, feelings, and perception being the other three). To science, intuition is the sudden synthesis of an idea in our mind without the intervening steps that intellect would take, and as such the scientific definition does not link intuition to ESP. However, my sense is that the continuum of intuition starts at the lower end in the subconscious/autonomic mind simply putting ideas together for us, and moves up into drawing information from outside the local mind we call our own. The upper end of intuition is blocked if one’s worldview does not allow for it, and this is why the Conscious Universe is a useful theory linked to decision making.

Again, the Conscious Universe is put forth not only as a theory explaining the world including consciousness, the paranormal and Quantum Mechanics, but mainly as a useful lens for staying observant of second-to-second experience. Unlike religion there is no command to believe based on faith or authority or tradition. Instead the idea is to keep an open mind and not to lock oneself into Material Accidentalism, because if the Universe is Conscious (which, contrary to popular belief, Science has not ruled out) one is limiting one’s powers unnecessarily by taking a fixed action stance based on what turns out to be, ironically, faith in an anti-religion religion. Some have dubbed this anti-religion “scientism”, the layman’s mistaken belief that science has ruled out the possibility of an intelligence behind the universe (I usually refer to this as Materialist Accidentalism) — which by definition is a faith-based belief since there is no proof for its position.

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.