Tag Archives: Observer State

Where Does Value Reside?

Volume 2, Issue 23

I had the pleasure recently of attending the Summer Board meeting of MASB, the Marketing Accountability Standards Board created by Meg Blair. Top marketing people from some of the largest advertisers met with world leaders in the business of estimating value of companies and their brands, to discuss the linking of marketing with finance. One of the most fascinating aspects of this unusual gathering was the discovery that accounting people are also by training philosophers, mentally athletic in the analysis of what value means in different contexts. This gave me ample stimulus to think again about what value is, and where it actually exists in the world.

To cut to the chase, value is in the heart (feeling core) of the perceiver. It is not in the perceived object that the perceiver associates with this feeling of value. Value is a perception/feeling cluster in consciousness. Consciousness is where value actually lives.

Why care? Because value is what drives us, what makes the world go ‘round. This is not just true under capitalism but in all cultures and conceivable (and inconceivable) economic systems. All action is driven by motivation and all motivation by value. We would have nothing to do — no action we would feel like taking — unless there is something we value that leads to such movement. Everything we do is driven by value — the value perceptions/feelings in our own selves.

This also answers the question of why we should care what consciousness is. If all action is impelled by value, and value resides in consciousness, then everything that we value and do, who we ourselves are, is all about consciousness. For us to not care what consciousness is, is to admit that all of one’s life is meaningless, based on unquestioned (and even incognizant) assumptions that at their essence say: everybody else is just going along with it, who am I to stop and question it, ok I am being a victim of herd mentality but so what, so is everyone else, I can’t do anything about it, so why not just drift along with the mob?

This line of self-reasoning would make sense to a person who places low value on independence of thought, and high value on belonging. That person is at a certain place in their own evolutionary path and those values and the ignoring of the Observer state — which uses consciousness to observe consciousness — are natural to him or her at the time. My only hope is that environmental stimuli will catalyze a creative spark, waking him or her up to a world of new possibilities, a vista of depths to life that make life new again, ripe with value.

We are closer than ever now as a culture to coming to grips with the foundational questions of existence. We see books flying off the eBook servers and shelves about something beyond current materialist science, some even gravitating to the center of the sea of questions, which is consciousness itself. But the near-miss of all of these books in my view is emblemized in one of the best, by Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained. Although evidently deep into the Observer state himself, Dennett is really just still trying to explain what in the material brain is happening that is associated with consciousness. This is typical of the near-miss — itself exciting because it portends that soon we will no longer be missing the point. The point is that what is is this experiential domain — this phenomenological fact that we are consciousness — and matter and energy are merely unproven constructs that we use to label and organize the perceptions we receive within consciousness. Consciousness in fact is the only thing we can empirically prove exists. It is where we perceive and receive value, where our actions begin and perhaps end. To know what consciousness is — is to know what and who we are.

Best to all,

Bill

Antidoting Toxible People

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Volume 2, Issue 22

We hear the expression “toxic people” and think: there are no toxic people, but there are people whom we allow to be toxic to ourselves. So rather than being toxic they are merely toxible. They would not be toxic to us if we knew how to handle the experience of them.

Take the case of Corporal Luiz. Luiz went through an evolution in the way he took in experience from his boss, Sergeant Murray, who never missed an opportunity to make Luiz feel small.

Early in the process Luiz daydreamed about fragging Murray. Unfortunately or not they were Stateside and fragging was not an available option, nor would we recommend it. A bit later on things eased slightly for Luiz when he got it that Murray was doing the same thing to everyone under him. His first bit of learning was to remind himself not to take it personally. This helped a lot because it put Luiz on the trail of discovering that Murray’s behavior was not the result of free will because Murray was a taken-over robot, mechanically living out a reaction script to being oppressed under the thumb of Lieutenant Gray, who probably had his own causes behind acting toxibly to Murray and God knows whom else. Serendipitously and synchronistically Luiz picked up a book by Dr. Robert Ornstein and read about the reptile part of the human brain, anachronistically still causing pecking-order behaviors in humans.

The onion peeled every day for Luiz now living mainly in the Observer state especially when around Murray. He saw that each of his peers now having fallen in helplessly with Murray’s style, were unconsciously protecting themselves by laughing at Luiz when Murray picked on him, and doing the same to each other. Again Luiz realized not to take it personally and was beginning to see the situation in the objective scientific way that automatically removes the sting from the negative emotional reaction. He used the discomfort he still felt to find the things within him that he realized needed changing, things that attracted him into such situations and were vulnerable to childish nonsense. He relived moments he had never forgiven himself for, saw more deeply into the causes, and realized that his actions had not been as basely motivated as he had always blamed himself for. He forgave himself and cleared the ancient debt list.

The first moment of triumph came when Murray picked on Luiz, and Luiz did so obviously not care one whit, that the rest of the squad was impressed and the tide began to turn on Murray. In the end Luiz turned into Murray’s mentor and wised him up on how to be free and not a robot. But that was many years later. Luiz had to wait until Murray came to him and asked.

To remain in the Observer and Flow states, observe your own negative emotion and work with it, turning off the emotional alarm with gratitude for telling you to figure out the situation and discern right action.

Best to all,

Bill

Rooting Out Hidden Fear

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Volume 2, Issue 21

Negative emotion and Flow state cannot happen simultaneously within a person. If the objective is Flow state, the ecstasy of simply being, with freedom in place of fear, then to thine own self be true and use the Observer state to root out things you are hiding even from yourself, and make a deal with yourself to expunge all negative emotion — including fear.

In Flow state, inspirations keep popping even in the middle of a sentence and you incorporate them easefully because you are not afraid you might say the wrong thing. Not because saying the wrong thing is impossible in Flow but because it is irrelevant. If you are communicating in the Flow state, the object is not being right but instead collectively reaching truth and right action — as Socrates pioneered.

Fear has been prevalent since the dawn of recorded history, except for those who have attained Observer and Flow states. We postulate that the recording of history, which occurred as the result of written language, therefore started at the same time as Acceleritis — the pandemic disease of the mind caused by information overload and triggered by written language itself.

Today there is more rational reason for fear than ever before. Practically no one has enough money to not live in fear of losing one’s job. Companies are turning over personnel rapidly and cutting jobs. The average person is keeping his or head down rather than trying to fix things because stepping forward is a risk that could go either way.

Some people are afraid because to their own minds they still have not proven themselves. There might be a hidden senator in their mind such as the taped and aped voice of e.g. their verbally abusive parent. They might feel the need to prove themselves to that mother, father, spouse, critic or rival sibling, or one of the people who has been unknowingly projected into taking over one of those roles. Or they might have achieved a degree of autonomy and do not need anyone else’s approval, but having achieved a degree of nobility and having taken on the world’s problems, they might be afraid they will die before succeeding in some noble cause.

Even in the latter case, hidden fear precludes Flow state. Observer state must be cultivated to remove the hidden blockages within and thus enable Flow state. One may continue to pursue the noble cause but without a fear of failing, with acceptance of whatever the outcome may be, still doing one’s best to make the dream come true. In this manner one will rest within the higher states, often rising to Flow and thereby maximizing the probability of achieving the objective.

Observer state can be used to detect flashes of fear that come and go so fast one would not be aware of them in lower consciousness levels. In Observer state, one is actually observing the mental function of repression taking place. This is an amazing feeling. Observer state is not as dramatically amazing as Flow state but it too has its amazing moments, yours for the taking.

Best to all,

Bill

In the First Waking Moments, Remember Observer State

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Volume 2, Issue 20

Observer state is a mindset in which you are not so caught in the process of your own emotions, and thus you are able to also simultaneously observe and analyze them somewhat impassively. This is a lens you sometimes find yourself wearing which makes you more effective and creative at changing the conditions that cause negative emotions. It also makes you more able to flick into the Zone where your performance and creativity are further upshifted.

In the Observer state, we hypothesize that information processing is going on largely in the prefrontal lobes. In the Flow state (aka the Zone) we postulate whole-brain balanced and meshed information processing.

The Human Effectiveness Institute has developed techniques to empower people to spend more time in these states, which are conducive to a happy successful purposeful life. Acceleritis is the cultural condition caused by the speedup in human evolution and daily information overload apparently caused by the invention of written language — according to our theory. Acceleritis raises the challenge slope facing human beings every day and makes it harder for us to use the new brain evolved in just a relative eyeblink of the usual evolutionary timescale. The new brain triggered the invention of writing, and the effects are now overloading that new brain, kind of like a four-year-old kid trying to control a Ferrari.

If people in power spent more time in these states, they would make better decisions causing less suffering than at present. If people not in power spent more time in these states, they would move into power and thus be able — if not seduced by the ego — to bring about positive change. Hence, the mission of the Institute is to spread experiential knowledge of these states, and the techniques for achieving and maintaining them.

The first moments of waking up in the morning are a perfect time to remember the Observer state. As the day begins, so shall it most likely go, until one’s will has become strong enough to overcome a bad start.

First, while remaining in the hypnagogic state by avoiding the use of language orally or mentally, and filtering out any distractions, stay focused on the feeling of whatever dreams you had, and recapture whatever images you can from those dreams. Stay with the feelings and images a moment longer until you can get a hunch as to the possible sense of those dreams — what is the message from your subconscious? Jot down notes as soon as you feel you have to actually open your eyes and get out of bed.

Even better if you can move on to your day while still in bed and still sleeping as far as anyone can tell. Get a fix on the possible significance of the day, what you can potentially accomplish. Visualize an upside outcome that will make you happy when you go to sleep next. This is your strong intention, your Will. Feel it. Then see what could go wrong and come up with ideas as to how to deal with those challenges. No one in Acceleritis has the luxury of much time to spend on such thinking, so you can settle for brief flashes of the direction of an idea to be worked out in detail later. Making notes while they are fresh in your mind will be a huge advantage.

The older parts of the brain such as the amygdala are involved in the ego process, which keeps you out of the two higher states of consciousness, Observer and Flow. This ego process is driven by fear of failure in one form or another, and derives from excessive attachment, which itself is the product of past events perceived as failures that have not been fully assimilated as wonderful learning experiences. The Observer lens helps one float upward out of this debris and gain perspective on it. Then one can enter the Zone, typically in an activity one has practiced for a long time.

Best to all.

Bill