Volume 3, Issue 32
It’s true that all we have is this moment, the Now. The past and future are concepts, abstractions, ways the brain has of organizing experience so it seems to make sense. What is always real is the Now. To the extent that our attention is divided into the Now, the past and the future, we are sapping the energies needed to get into the Zone (Flow state) in the Now.
Love the one you’re with. If your day is filled with scheduled meetings and phone calls, you may find yourself doing some of them to get past them and on to something you’re more looking forward to. You’re doing it so you can check it off your to-do list. The quality of the interaction you’re in would be nowhere near the Zone. A better strategy is to engage in each interaction at the top of your game. From the cosmic perspective you’re always on stage and no performance should be a throw-away.
Useful lens: love the One you’re with. See that person or those persons as other free-agent extensions of the One, highly sentient like you, each with his or her own story. You are interacting with them now for reasons that may be non-obvious, beyond and including the obvious reasons you know about. There are undoubtedly layers of additional opportunity in the moment. Allow your interest to gather in the interaction and be a studious observer.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. — Rumi, from “The Guest House”
Nothing will work, however, if your day is packed and you have not ingrained yourself with organized processes for managing constant chaos and distraction. One such process starts with putting fake meetings in your calendar so others will not book anything with you at those times. Those are times reserved for meetings with yourself, which on each occasion you will use as you like best at the time. It might be to launch into a high-opportunity project that has been waiting. It might be to take a break and a mental vacation, where you may find creative ideas popping of their own volition. It might be to sort out the latest incoming chaos and to assign it a place in your future schedule for handling.
The strategy is to pre-plan your days to include these meetings with yourself at reasonable intervals, and pre-dream the other meetings, calls and other activities — which you can do in the shower or even in bed in the morning or the night before. Arrange things so you can focus 100% on one thing at a time. As interruptions arise or even fresh thoughts relevant to the meeting you’re in, note them on pieces of paper so you don’t lose them (this also relieves your mind of the need to blurt them lest you forget them). Throw these notes into the chaos file folder until you can sort them into the right client file. Empty the chaos folder each night so you have the feeling of being in control and not overrun.
Deep breathing in the moment helps. Remembering how much can be accomplished in a few minutes when you are patiently relating human to human. Listening to and feeling the feelings of the mirror neurons in your brain. Swinging for the Big Idea fences inherent in the present conversation.
There is always a game going on. If you’re not in one game you’ll be in another. One game is the success game. Money is the main point-keeper in this game. Another game is self-actualization, where you are having fun because you love your work. There can still be attachment in the self-actualization game because if at any moment you are not having fun you can get brought down, and this is not conducive to the Zone. The most-rewarding game is the one in which you are always focused on the presence of a/The Higher Power (HP), with whom you are a working team. The HP is the pitcher and you the batter; however, you are both on the same team. The object is not to beat anyone else but to perform at your highest level through whatever game course you are playing.
When something “good” happens observe how you take it — ideally with gratitude and satisfaction but without hubris. When something “bad” happens observe how you take it — ideally appreciating the size of the challenge and the cool way you are not fazed by it, handling it with grace under fire, again not crossing the line into hubris.
Imagine this is actually the underlying real game whether we believe it or not. This is the game being played through us. We are just hypnotized into thinking we are separate beings instead of extensions of the One Being. It is this mis-identification that takes us out of Flow (the Zone). When we drop such conceptual baggage Flow happens. This is the core of Zen psychotechnology.
Computing power is the common link between consciousness and computers. We know that consciousness exists — in fact empirically it is the only thing we know for certain.
To grasp what the universe really is, it is necessary to merely accept the possibility of an unimaginably large consciousness, with enough computing power to be responsible for everything that is going on in universe.
Best to all,
Bill
P.S. I’ll be signing my book MIND MAGIC at the Dolphin Bookshop’s local authors book fair in Port Washington, NY on Saturday, September 28 from 11 AM to 3 PM. Please stop by if you are in the area.
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.