Data Mining Your Own Intuition

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Volume 3, Issue 20

Intuition is when an idea (usually in the form of a feeling with cognitive elements embedded in it) pops into your head fully formed without being preceded by a step-by-step logical chain. These “cognitive elements” equate to meaning; that is, you know and comprehend the content of what it is you are saying to yourself. You know this without having heard words spelling it out and there is usually no image that you can see in your mind — although in heightened states of consciousness you may be able to see an image tied to this intuition.

Dan Goleman points out that at least some of these feelings — the ones we call “gut feelings” — are called that because we sense they are somehow coming from our gut, which is accurate because the part of the brain from which these intuitions come (the basal ganglia) is also associated with the nerve connections between the brain and the gastrointestinal system. These intuitions are really the net guidance stored from our experiences in the form of summary action implications that tell us the way we are going either worked or failed in the past.

These gut feelings are not the totality of the intuition but a subset of the intuition. Other intuitive packets come to us from other parts of the brain and some may not be directly traceable to our experiences in this life.

These ideas flash into our mind and usually flash right out again unless we have a strong and abiding mental intention to pay attention to and remember their content. Without such conscious intention, we probably won’t even notice these fleeting intuitions. They are a subtle guidance system that does not speak loudly in our mind.

By contrast, the ego voices that dominate most of our mind at most times are loud, strident and salient. These ego voices are the thoughts, inner dialog, and feelings that are linked to our base motivations. We are pulled around by our negative fears and anger reactions to events around us that we are attached to because we feel our livelihoods and social standing are at stake and at any moment something can be taken away from us. The ego is stressed out due to Acceleritis (Information Overload) on top of and thus exacerbating its own predisposition to worry. As a result of this inner competition for attention and the fact that most of our attention is at nearly all times cast outwards not inwards causes us to not even catch these intuitions in the first place.

If we do catch the event it is generally not heeded because of the jumble of subsequent louder thoughts giving us impulses to verbally fight, complain, argue, dismiss, or otherwise rain on whatever it was that somebody just said that may have triggered the intuition.

This is a testable hypothesis — you can experiment with the following to see whether it is the good advice I think it is, or not:

Start a program of paying attention to your own hunches and look for them to arise. When they do, put off the other business that seems so important to the ego and commonplace mind, and focus on what your intuition just told you. Make sure you remember the content by either writing it down or forming a keyword or key phrase or key image that will serve as a retrieval mechanism to bring back the whole content of the idea.

Then at an appropriate time in the proceedings taking place around you, if any, tentatively see if the application of that intuitive idea seems to contribute anything to the situation or not. Do this instead of — or at least before — offering any of the subsequent jumble of thoughts that came after the intuition to the company around you.

This is the reverse of the commonplace mind’s procedure, which is to speed past the intuitive event and come up with some other strategy for dealing with the present situation. Or even if we retain memory of the hunch our tendency is to edit and “improve” upon it, which often has the opposite effect. Stick with the way it appeared in the beginning — based on my experience, the odds favor this being the successful course of action.

On the other hand, you might see what the intuition is and realize that although triggered by the current situation, it really applies to another situation. You would then wait to tentatively apply the hunch until you are in the situation to which it refers. In this case also resist the tendency to edit that first flash — though using diplomatic language is always a good idea so long as you do not distort the original idea.

Sometimes the intuition gives us not the right answer but an answer that is wrong but which will lead to the right answer, one that might not be reached other than through this wrong answer. Socrates appeared to know this — he flowed with his intuitions yet by phrasing the ideas as questions he protected himself against error.

More on the complexity of intuition and its optimization in upcoming posts.

Happy Independence Day 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.

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

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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

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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

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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.