Tag Archives: Acceleritis

What Is Mindfulness?

1 Reply

Volume 3, Issue 24

In the prior post we made the point that better decision-making and higher performance in the end reduce to two main drivers, Positive Thinking and Mindfulness. Positive Thinking, which we also call Solution Orientation, is easier said than done, and we pointed to our book Mind Magic as a compendium of proven operational techniques for actually achieving and maintaining both of these inner behaviors. We promised to investigate the nature of Mindfulness in this post.

Mindfulness is a form of attention control. Going back at least as far as written language and probably as far back as the cave paintings, the human race has discovered the importance of focusing attention in achieving its aims. The cave paintings are widely believed to be evidence of a method for rehearsing the hunt. Yogic mental/emotional methodologies are the essence of what is recommended in the Vedas, some of the earliest writings on the planet, and these include contemplation, concentration and meditation, all three related to the conscious and willful control of the attention.

The need to be master of one’s own attention has gotten progressively greater over the centuries as a result of information overload and its distractive effects. We have given this condition the name Acceleritis. Our relevant hypothesis is that written language, by making language visual — the dominant sense of not only homo sapiens but of all primates — brought the human race up to Piaget’s Formal Operational level of thinking, the highest known level of thinking until Systems Level thinking was discovered in the twentieth century. This so augmented the ability to invent that in only 3% of the time since the appearance of the species, the human race in the last 6000 years has invented more and more things and ideas each year than in the prior year, and at an increasing rate, driving a vast increase in the amount of information needing to be processed by our brains each day. ADD, ADHD, and a fairly obvious reduction in the general population’s ability to stay focused on one problem long enough to solve it, have been the result. Again, the need for Mindfulness has never been greater.

Concentration is the focus of the mind on a single object. Contemplation is the focus of the mind on a single subject. Meditation is the contemplation of the Self. What then is Mindfulness? We define Mindfulness as the optimal allocation of attention for maximum effectiveness. Now that we’ve defined the term, we’ll stop initial-capping it.

Attention optimally allocates both inwardly and outwardly at the same time. This is in sharp distinction from normative behavior, which is to allocate virtually all attention outwardly whenever the eyes are open. This normative attention strategy virtually eliminates the ability to understand one’s own motivations in the moment, causing actions to be controlled by ego drives that are counterproductive to efficacy. When one is mindful, there is a predictive feedback loop allowing one to suppress actions that are merely self-serving and do not consider the needs and probable responses of others.

Mindfulness also makes one more observant externally, improving what fighter pilots call situational awareness. Our theory of Holosentience postulates a shift into a higher state of consciousness as a result of persistent mindfulness. We call this the Observer state, and it is from this state that the mind-body can launch into Flow state or the Zone, the highest known state of consciousness in which right actions seem to do themselves effortlessly.

It takes “attentional” effort to be mindful and thus to reach the Observer state and the Zone.

Mindfulness and solution orientation (overleaping the focus on the problem once it is defined and going right to the focus on the solution, otherwise known as Positive Thinking) combine to form the core of the Human Effectiveness Institute’s psychotechnology — the recommended set of methodologies to achieve superior decisions, highest effectiveness, and creative innovation in all aspects of one’s life.

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. 

Data Mining Your Own Intuition

1 Reply

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.

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.

Humanism and the Conscious Universe: Impacts on Decision Making

Leave a reply

Volume 3, Issue 15

In our last post we began to clarify the main themes of this blog and their inter-relationships. Ultimately our purpose is to help you make better decisions and to spend more time in the more effective states of consciousness where better decision making happens automatically. How does our Theory of the Conscious Universe help you achieve that?

Motivations are the drivers of all decisions. You don’t know what decision to make until you have a goal, objective, desired end state, or whatever name you wish to put on it. Your view of reality itself is what shapes your motivations. Therein lays the primal linkage between a worldview and decision making.

On the surface, the motivations are similar between two individuals, one of whom is a dedicated Humanist, and one of whom lives and experiences the Conscious Universe. Both have the highest ethical standards as regards human beings. Both are capable of holding the nose of their ethics and pulling the trigger on a Hitler or Bin Laden. So why not leave Humanists as they are, and leave out the idea of a Conscious Universe? Would that not be a more Occam’s Razor elegant solution to improving decision making?

After all, this Conscious Universe stuff is sure to turn some people off, seeming to be religion. Religious people who feel brand exclusivity for their beliefs are most certainly going to be wary of our theory. So why create barriers to the acceptance of the Human Effectiveness Institute toolware (improving decision making, optimizing consciousness, and enabling Observer state and the Zone or Flow state) that can be of great benefit to everyone (regardless of their religious beliefs)?

Our theory of the Conscious Universe is not religion, by the way, as it does not extol faith but is instead predictive and testable, i.e. a scientific theory that we are all one software-driven entity. Our recommendation is to believe nothing but to keep one’s mind open to everything not ruled out by science.

Let’s face it: it’s already pretty bold, without sufficient academic credentials (mere degree in philosophy, lifetime of applied social science i.e. media research), to put forth a theory that explains the ego as a sub-sentience that takes over the self, and to offer toolware that enables the real self to take back over, creating a state of Holosentience where the whole self is working together in the higher states of consciousness, Observer state and ultimately Flow state. This is the basis for our nonprofit work in improving decision making. Interestingly, the toolware appears to work, according to letters from more than 2000 Mind Magic readers.

It is even more daring to claim that a condition of Acceleritis has existed since cave paintings and written language caused a shift 6000 years ago into Piaget’s Formal Operational level for the human race. Inventiveness has run wild, causing information overload defined as the number of question-producing sensory impressions (proposed metric: P300 waves received by the average human per day.

Why then not leave it at that rather than go further and expound a theory of reality? Do we know no bounds?

There are two reasons why it’s worth opening Pandora’s Box. One is that in the hunt for truth, one cannot be shy. If a person stumbles upon something that seems worth saying, it should be said, and not held back out of timidity. It’s better to be shown that one is wrong than to choke back one’s deepest intuitions.

The other reason is purely practical.  We are attempting to improve decision making in a world that is racing through a thicket of complexity. The fact is, the Humanist and one who is consciously living in the Conscious Universe do not act identically in all circumstances. There is for one thing a huge gap in the way they respectively make use of their intuition or hunches — both being the same thing. More on this in our next post.

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.