Tag Archives: Flow State

What Does the Nature of Reality Have to Do with Decision Making? What Does Either One Have to Do with Flow State/Zone?

Volume 3, Issue 14

In other words, how do these themes of our blog fit together? Why are they necessary to complete the mission of The Human Effectiveness Institute, whose charter is to improve human decision making? And how can understanding these linkages improve your decision making in business and in life?

In answering this, first let’s boil down the theorems of the Institute. There are two main theories. The Theory of Holosentience posits that protein-based firmware/software created as neural networks in the brain, under conditions of information overload (Acceleritis), establishes a false self (the ego) whose normative dominance blocks optimal performance and happiness (Flow state/the Zone).

Other contemporary writers/researchers at this growing edge of psychology include Dr. Daniel Goleman and Dr. Richard Davidson, who use the term “hijacking” to describe the event of the amygdala and other brain structures bringing the consciousness down to a hyper-attached and low performance state. Dr. Phillip Romero uses the term “triggered” to describe the same thing.

The actual work of the Institute is to create and disseminate as widely as possible, proprietary validated toolware to bring on the Observer state, leading ultimately to the Flow state.

Our second main theory is The Theory of the Conscious Universe, which postulates that consciousness and intelligence came before the rest of the universe, rather than the other way around. And that each of us is an instance or over-dub of the One Consciousness, which is the primary real thing that exists (see the May 2, 2013 post, Bring a Sense of the Epic into Your Life).

The link between the Holosentience theory and better decision making is obvious: one makes better decisions when one is performing at higher levels of effectiveness. The linkages to the Conscious Universe are more complex and subtle.

The Conscious Universe is what I experienced when I had processed out most of the dominant ego software I had built in myself. Comparing notes with some others I found this was their experience as well. This led me to start writing about the Conscious Universe as a way to enable others to add it as a lens interchangeable with their other lenses such as Accidental Materialism. Having alternate lenses to switch between lessens the perceptual distortion of a single “belief” lens. Since Accidental Materialism and the Conscious Universe are both unproven, the thing to do is not to believe either one but to be free to observe reality directly, without a predetermined single lens, and to see which lens better explains what is really happening.

How does this improve decision making? Tune in to our next exciting episode.

Best to all,

Bill

P.S. My regular blog contribution to Jack Myers Media Network has returned. It is in the free section of the website. Here’s the link to the first post of many: Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Multitasking Increases Short-term Brain Fun at Expense of Long-term

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Volume 3, Issue 13

Speaking at the recent Wharton Advertising 2020 Conference in New York (where I also had the honor of being one of the speakers), neuroscientist Carl Marci used his closed fist to illustrate the brain. He described the fingers, curved under to touch the palm, as the brain’s newest evolutionary part, the prefrontal cortex. He noted that this latest brain development curls back to reach for and touch the much older limbic system, the seat of motivation and emotion.

His interpretation of what the DNA is looking for in doing this, is that the service of the most intellectual part of the brain seeks contact with the primal driving forces that are the seat of the goals in the goal-seeking organism. As if the power of mind exists — like every other part of the organism — to serve the highest ends of the DNA coding the system.

It is all highly purposive and this interpretation lends greater respectability to the primal drives that for centuries have been characterized as “lower” aspects of our being. This also gets back to Freud’s depiction of the id as being the animalistic and gross, babyish and least acclaimed part of our selves. In an earlier posting I offered an alternative view of the id as being our true selves, our original essence divorced from the later layering of experience-driven neuronal nets of software that expand the true self into new territory, some of it counterproductive.

Carl went on to spellbind us with an outpouring of ideas, one of which is that multitasking is so popular especially among Millennials because it gives them a jolt of pleasurable brain chemicals (presumably oxytocin or adenosine, or serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc.) by maintaining novelty-driven attention on something again and again by adding in another element whenever boredom sets in, which it all too easily does.

This jibes with my theory that the Acceleritis-ridden culture shifts us into avoidance of going deeper into percepts. Due to the overwhelming daunting list of questions arising in our brains from all this stimulation, which one subconsciously wants to avoid opening like a Pandora’s Box. This avoidance of the deep makes us lovers of the breadth – seeking more brain-juice cocktails by taking the overdose of stimulation even further.

However, as Carl noted, we are less effective when multitasking. Single-pointed attention is the way to Flow state/the Zone. This means that the seeking of momentary brain pleasure actually works against the organism attaining the goals of its heart. In the long run this reduces brain pleasure more profoundly and in a more lasting way. Borrowing on the credit card of brain-juice by multitasking burns your credit in the end.

Best to all,

Bill

NOTE: Learn more about dopamine in this article.

If You’re Not Getting Enough Pleasure out of Your Life, You’ve Got to Fix That

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Volume 3, Issue 12

No one else is going to do it for you.

All that exists is the Now, so you can’t be putting off fun to some hoped-for future. If you’re not getting it right now, this very day, you’re not playing to win at the game of life; you’re trapping yourself in illusion and accepting second best.

What’s stopping you from seizing the day and living your dreams, right this very moment? Very likely it’s the deep dark repressed (or expressed) belief that you don’t have the power to change your life into the ideal vision you had for it. Especially now, when so much time has passed, and you’ve got negative momentum leading away from the goal, and everybody sees you one way so how could it ever be even imaginable that the consensus reality could ever change that dramatically?

It’s a deep and true intuition we feel in our gut that when so many minds are tuned to one way, getting all those minds to change very much is literally unthinkable. Yet it is truly miraculous how much those minds can change once you’ve changed your own.

The Ouroboros, the Greek symbol that Carl Jung said was the first symbol used by humanity, is a snake holding its own tail in its mouth, forming a circle. It has many meanings, some “good”, some “bad” — really all of them good but most of them bring you at first through stuff that appears bad. The “bad” interpretation is the fact that when we have a mental block, like believing we cannot live our dream, the belief comes true only because of the belief itself.

The intellect alone cannot get itself out of such traps by understanding them. The whole self working together has to turn the great ship in the water because its momentum is so strong that without unity among all parts of oneself the belief will unfortunately be borne out.

You get to unity inside through the Observer state, in which you meditate on your own Self, observing its machinations in minute detail perhaps for the first time with such sustained energy. This causes a breakthrough in which the Observer state becomes second nature and you find yourself popping in and out of the even higher Flow state — higher in the sense of higher performance, greater effectiveness.

In these higher states you can unravel the Ouroboros and make sure the energy is flowing in the right direction, where its meaning is the consuming of minutiae thoughts and low feelings as they arise, like a rising phoenix burning the dross to reveal the gold of your inner genius.

Best to all,

Bill

PS I am doing a book signing and talk on Thursday, May 16 from 5 to 7 PM at Forest Books, 182 Birch Hill Rd., Locust Valley, New York 11560 in Long Island. Please join me if you are in the area.

Bring a Sense of the Epic into Your Life

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Volume 3, Issue 11

Science can no longer rule out the possibility that a Single Universal Intelligence is the only thing that exists, per our Theory of the Conscious Universe. Our theory explains how this Intelligence is able to simultaneously play an infinite number of chess games called lives. The You who looks out your eyes and experiences life may not be the gnomish “you” that parts of yourself — neuron clusters programmed by Accidentalism and Materialism — think you are.

Accidentalism is the religion that claims the universe came about by accident out of nothingness.

Materialism is the religion that claims everything is matter, so the human need to worship something can be directed only at material things.

My theory is not a religion. It is a system of hypotheses aimed at explaining all of documented human experience including the “paranormal”. We classify certain experiences as “paranormal” based on our limited experience in the universe as the standard for what is “normal”. And based on our mental emotional ego filters that protect us from dissonance by steadfastly refusing to make anything out of the cumulatively uncanny success rate of our own hunches, thereby trivializing our own experiences of the “paranormal”.

The explanation making the most sense to my gut is that there is only One of us. Each of us is another instance of the Universal Intelligence. All instances are really one Intelligence playing many roles.

The main thing about my theory is that I don’t want you to believe it but rather to test it for yourself. This means using it as a lens of what may in fact be true, certainly is possible, and why not see if using the lens to explain experience might not lead to more control and pleasure than the present way of looking at things?

Some might liken this to a pleasant drug-induced state of useless fantasy. It is equally plausible that the way we as a world look at things today is an unpleasant drug-induced state of useless fantasy.

At any rate, one needs merely to entertain the possibility that the entire selfness of the Universe is what looks out your eyes, which you call yourself “me”. This is logically and empirically possible based on the most predictively successful theory in history, quantum mechanics. So entertain it for a second.

Realize it is possible that you are the one self that exists, enjoying yet another life. Realize if this just happens to be the one true explanation that science and everyone will affirm some day in the future, here you are going to the movies to enjoy identifying with a fictional character who is having an epic adventure, when in fact that is just a fairy tale produced in Hollywood while your own life is a genuine, authentic, rich real life saga of a hero beset by challenges and overcoming them — just like in the movies — but real — and therefore infinitely more meaningful and dramatic.

It is possible that the One Being is you… and everyone else. Possible. Actually possible. You have been betting on a reality so far different from this, your automatic reaction is to thrust it aside with a derisive snort. That reflex is itself an interesting phenomenon deserving careful attention — put a pin in it, we will come back and dissect it often on this page in the future. Call it your daily persona, “the robot”. The name is a handle to put on that aspect of your self — the reasons will become apparent in this blog and in my books (including Mind Magic) and DVDs.

Don’t let the thrusting aside of new concepts or experiences be internally accepted. Override it by an act of will from your true self. Keep an open mind. Empirical evidence is the only thing to give weight to. Things you yourself have experienced, seen with your own eyes, not things you were told. All the philosophies and cosmologies and religions and scientific theories and my theories are just abstractions of the real thing — symbol systems, metaphors, isomorphisms (same information carried in different code). Reality is what it is. As a race we cannot say yet that we really know what it is. Therefore an open mind is the only sane position — yet another clue that the present world system is not actually sane. Acceleritis has caused EOP. Information overload has actually existed for 6000 years and just keeps getting worse, exponentially. We are dealing with it very poorly. Our society is not yet a sophisticated one. Civilization on planet Earth will be sane and sophisticated when its mind is open and each person is making careful and unfiltered observations of his/her own experience. The Observer state leading to the Flow state.

Takeaway: don’t thrust aside the undisprovable possibility that you are the hero in the most epic movie of all time… and so is everyone else.

Best to all,

Bill

PS — You Are The Universe is now on track for Summer 2013 publication. Watch this space for more.