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You Are Much More Exciting Than Any Character in a Movie

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Volume 3, Issue 42

This is only true if my theory is correct, that all that exists is one consciousness, a computerlike yet living entity, capable of self-metaprogramming, that is living through you right now.

If my theory is correct, this is who you really are.

Looked at that way, the reason you are more exciting than any character in a movie is because reality is actually happening. Movies are fiction. As exciting as fiction can get, the real thing is even more exciting.

In the current spatiotemporal location (Earth 2014), the One is having a trip based on the premise of rapid acceleration of its own mini-personalities’ consciousness. It was a geologically slow process for millions of years — brewing these creatures up the evolutionary chain, living each one from the inside and feeling its passions and fears as its own, in immersed self-identification and sequestering the memory of its real identity, for dramatic effect.

Now merely 6000 or so years ago, the One jumped hard on the input accelerator and caused a quickening. Written language was its trigger. The wave that started there is now an information tsunami producing a pandemic shock reaction I call Acceleritis. Too many question-producing stimuli to be processed per second, sustained almost continuously. In this highly-distracted condition, we find it hard to have feelings like how exciting our life is. Nothing seems real, and “ideas like Bill’s” make us feel better so they must be wrong.

It is real. Life is real. Reality is real. It is a very exciting reality. It has been painted by circumstance with dread in place of excitement for too many people. Some mysterious evil being did not do this, we did it ourselves, the One did it through us. It is intended as an exciting challenge, worthy of the One and His/Her avatars — us. The challenge is to stay focused through complexity. We can do it, and there is psychotechnology to help us adapt.

Incidentally, even if my theory is not true, it is a useful fiction, a construct to improve self-management and increase creative effectiveness. Even if it is wishful thinking, it has more positive effect on revenue and love generation than the cynical reductionist defeatist state. That’s just giving up, apathy. The Greek apatheia is better than apathy. Apathea is the Observer state, which provides access to the Flow state. 

If you accept that premise or even the theory itself as possible, what do you do about it? Step one is to remember THE main dream of your life. What you really want to do the most.

Assuming this is the Mission the One had in mind before stepping into your role and temporarily becoming amnesiac toward prior memories, how are you doing with it? Have you stayed focused on it? If not, what would be the way back onto that radio beam?

How about your night dreams? Are they all, as a collection taken together, trying to tell you something about your Mission?

For example, THE dream in my life is to see really positive change take place in the world and to be part of making it happen. My night dreams taken as a collection are often about being caught up in irrelevancies, having lost the way, not remembering the hotel room number this key opens, looking for the front desk, frustration, and otherwise not engaged in making big creative changes happen. In short, total apparent disconnection from THE dream.

If somebody told me to follow my dreams and I were to take that to mean my night dreams, I’d drive myself into oblivion. The advice ought to be to follow THE dream, the waking dream, of what you could be.

As a character in a movie, playing the game of life, the LIFE MOVIE, look back over the moments in your life when you were at your best. The characters in movies that we are supposed to identify with and immerse in are made attractive to us by portraying them doing some noble act early in the movie. Recall your noble acts.

There have to be huge challenges in a movie, even a comedy. Challenge is the mainspring of plot. Look back at the main moments of supreme challenge in your life. See the ones where you caved. See the ones where you rose to the challenge.

Define where you are in the plot trajectory. What part of the challenge slope still lies ahead? How will the challenge slope itself change were you to change direction more in the direction of THE dream?

On a pad of paper held landscape position, assume you are now at the left side of the page. On the far right side of the page articulate and write down THE dream. What you always wanted to be when you grew up. Or what you realized you wanted to be in the process of growing up.

The middle of the page is 2014. What should happen in the movie in 2014 in order to get from where you are now to THE dream?

The subconscious typically takes about 3 days to cook stuff like this. Be prepared to take notes if one day soon in the shower you suddenly want to take notes on what is coming up in your mind in response to these questions.

You are the scriptwriter as well as the protagonist.

You will enjoy the movie the most if you do it just to do it, and don’t get attached to the outcome. In other words, be happy in the trajectory, even if it doesn’t take you to the pinnacle you aimed at. Let it come out wherever it comes out. Do it for the fun of it.

That’s why the One is doing it 

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.

Optimizing Startups in the Game of Life

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Volume 3, Issue 41

Before launching into this week’s post, I want to share details of the memorial for our esteemed and fabled colleague, Erwin Ephron — a legend in his own time.

 Erwin Ephron Tribute

A memorial celebrating the life of Erwin Ephron will be held 5:30 pm on Dec. 5 at Simulmedia’s offices at 670 Broadway, New York. Capacity is limited and registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you’d like to attend, please contact ephronmemorial@mediapost.com. Please put “Remembering Erwin Ephron” in the subject line and provide your name, company/affiliation, email and phone number. 

You start by playing life as a game with the working hypothesis that the Universe is playing it with you, aware of you, because you are really the same Being as the Universe.

You live life this way not because you can prove with certainty that this is the truth about reality, but because even as a mere useful fiction it seems pragmatically superior to every other way of life.

You roll with the punches, seeing how they convey useful future-oriented information you need, which more than justifies the temporary discomfort.

You simply have more fun, seeing everything through this lens, feeling the love, seeing problems as opportunities.

You don’t drop anything because of this lens. It doesn’t lull you into a state where you can be tricked. Believe me, I have been in that other state of Candide-like naiveté suited to some other world, and it is dangerous when used here on planet Earth. You can’t assume everything will go your way instantly. That’s the fun part. Otherwise it would all be too easy, no drama element. Like a movie with no central conflict or predicament.

So playing the game of life recently I had a couple of nights in a row of dreams that left me feeling out of control. Probably a sense of not having allocated bandwidth to cover every detail, or maybe not even having the capacity to do so. Writing books, videos, blogs, consulting for interesting companies, and driving two startups is a lot on the plate.

I can’t help it about startups. I love startups. In the game of life startups are not only the most fun, they allow the growing tip of dreams of what might be possible to edge their way into reality.

Startups are the heart of the American Dream.

Technology startups are where the action has been for decades.

You can do a startup from wherever you are, although you might have to stand aside and allow your employer company to reap the benefits. This is still fun and great experience.

What service or product do people you know need that could be fulfilled by a startup?

Is there something that could be invented and patented to meet that need?

Look around and see which people or companies could be partnered together to effect some great new advantage. If they almost fit but there’s a part missing, that part is the startup.

Look around and see which people impress you the most that are not yet celebs. Who knows the most about the subjects you’ve been thinking about when you think about a particular startup opportunity.

Make sure all of your present business relationships benefit, by optimizing the startup that way. Some of your business partners could actually be doing business with the startup from day one, and might seek strategic interest in it.

Find people who are blown away by the opportunity and are the best people to run it and then incentivize them to do so. Make sure they can feel the stock in their hands. Lead at first so they see the direction and then ask them to make decisions without you (establishing protocols for exceptions where the top people cannot agree).

Continue to knock one out of the park weekly for each of your consulting clients or your employer while doing your startup. Make that your number one business priority each week and rely upon the team you have put in place to run the startup. Make sure their benefits are tangible even if only on paper at first. A startup without sufficient drive will not succeed. Action items must not drag on.

Know how to not be knocked out in the first round. A long time ago, the right decision would have been to downsize my company to Jim Bell, myself, and one known employee in the basement of One State Street Plaza, running the Centigram machines and doing everything else. Looking out from my office on the 31st floor at the Statue of Liberty with pontoon planes landing in the water around it and feeling the 34 warm bodies in the adjoining offices, I took another path that closed that startup within a year. At least it gave Modem Media a clear field in which to make its high mark. Both companies were headed toward the same space.

War stories are part of the fun of the game of life — especially when we “get” the lesson.

Wishing you all fun in the game of all games, Life,

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.

The Game of Life

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Volume 3, Issue 40

In my Cosmopoly, a game form of my cosmology, we seek to mirror the intuited Self having all these lives, including the life through us as an individual. To the Self it is just a game and since we are the Self why don’t we just wake up to our true role or, if that is too unbelievable right now, play it that way anyway?

What do you have to lose?

Like everyone else, you’ve already made it tough enough on yourself. Couldn’t you use a little relief?

Why not even as purest fantasy, impossible to conceive. Nevertheless let’s just play along with Bill in this funny crazy game… at least unless it becomes too risky or not fun.

There really isn’t any risk because whenever you see any non-fun coming, you drop out of warp. Just try warp with me for a little while, provisionally. Trekkies welcome.

Imagine it is at least scientifically possible (even if you can’t picture it or it sounds too good to be true) that there is one Self, kind of like an optimized Mind — at essence a form of biocomputer. It’s all that ever existed, It will always exist, and It will always be the only thing that exists.

And what you think of as your identity, your sense of being yourself, is actually an active bit of the One Mind that is assigned to your coordinates. It’s living through you.

The Game is to see how long It takes to wake up in each specific role and “challenge-environment”. To wake up and realize who It really is. And what It can really do, even in this attenuated-self version.

Knowledge is power. The power to do good — if this Knowledge we’re talking about is our own inner knowledge of our own true identity. Even if you’re only accepting this as a trying-on of something you might decide to buy, like a new dress or suit. A working hypothesis to be confirmed or disconfirmed — which way shall the evidence point? That’s part of the game. The part we are at now, on Earth.

The process of waking up during our lives, whether or not we are guided by this working hypothesis, always involves a thousand adjustments we must make to ourselves consciously and effortfully as we go along.

Some individual adjustments take lifetimes.

Take a review of where you are at the moment:

  1. For whatever reasons, is there anything happening with your body that you could be paying more attention to and resolving?
  2. Same question about your mind.
  3. What about personal appearance?
  4. What about people in your life, now or in the past, with whom you still have bad feelings?
  5. Are you doing the work you really want to and should be doing?
  6. Are you having moments of fear? Anger? Envy? Melancholy? Greed? Cruelty? 

If you have cleared away most of these adjustments, you are likely to be in and out of the Flow state and usually sustaining the Observer state. And pretty happy most of the time, behaving as the mensch you are, encouraging, mentoring, taking care of other people, loving as many and as much as you can.

Perhaps you agree with some of what I say but consider it arrogant to equate oneself with the Deity, with whom one must always take a surrendering posture. In fact we agree on the surrendering posture, yet the only story I can calculate in optimizing agreement with all observables, is that there could only logically have ever been one point of light, the self-referential Observer Itself. This premise is explored in depth in my upcoming book You Are The Universe: Imagine That!

We surrender in many ways. The most meaningful is the surrendering of existential sloth, eagerly accepting the many challenges to make the adjustments needed to actually make all the connections back to the great Spiritual Mind of the Universe. Honoring the Whole of which we are an aspect is obviously the only sane response to the situation. Playing the (W)Holy Game each day, making the adjustments pointed out to us. Reading situations this way rather than cluttering them up with stuff that is only logical until you realize the process of the game underneath the little games you’re playing on the surface of each day. 

My best to you all, as you,

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.

To The Protectors

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Volume 3, Issue 39

It is Veteran’s Day as I write this. On the way to the airport listening to the radio I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir doing a special show celebrating America and its war veterans.

Flashback to the 60s when certain protesters sometimes crossed the line to not only condemn the war but also the country itself with the moniker Amerika, sometimes substituting a swastika for the “k”. That saddened me.

We all make mistakes and sometimes they are big ones. This is true not only for individuals but also for groups of people like protesters, countries, corporations, even well-meaning nonprofits and religious institutions.

But the ideals of the Founding Fathers are unique among the articles of constitution for each of the 190+ nations on Earth. The U.S. Constitution is our Mission statement and our collective vision still. Protecting these ideals and this country that seeks to bring about a world based on these ideals is still a sacred trust.

Those who are warriors for any free nation, especially if they take that role voluntarily, are at least in part moved by a very high level of consciousness. The realization of something greater than oneself, and the urge to serve others. This can also be true of cops, firefighters, doctors, and many other vocations, even the oft-criticized paramilitary. Not every individual in these vocations is equally motivated by the idea of service and the will to protect, and that motivation can vary over time. But when one is in that headspace and heart space it is a form of the Flow state and attracts cosmic fire support — at least according to my Theory of the Conscious Universe, which is explored in my soon-to-be-published new book, You Are The Universe: Imagine That!

Most if not all of us would like to see an end to war, but this does not mean we should be unappreciative of the warriors. The prerequisites to ending war forever are not forever distant and unapproachable; in fact we are closer than ever to realizing these possibilities:

  1. Psychotechnology and education bring about better self-management and decision-making at an individual level everywhere, engendering sanity, clarity, perspective, menschness, and happiness.
  2. Science and technology release unlimited free energy by which there is plenty of whatever anyone might need or want, as in the “Culture” novels. With free energy we can afford to transport the Earth’s still abundant raw materials from where they are to where they are needed. Nicola Tesla was on the track of unlimited free energy a century ago and it is no further off than unlimited life extension. Perhaps another century will do the trick.
  3. Space travel provides enough room and raw materials to not have to fight over land.
  4. Medical science brings about the ultimate cures. Only a matter of time. Not soon enough to end the heartache in our lives but soon enough to remove great gobs of pain from the lives of our children’s children’s children.

It will all happen. If we don’t blow ourselves up or befoul the environment too much more between now and then.

In the meantime, here’s to the protectors. We still need them, and they deserve to be honored with our gratitude and deepest respect.

In that spirit, I’d like to share the lyrics to a song written by my friend Stan Satlin, who was inspired by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to write songs about the country he loves.

I Am an American

Chorus (repeats after each verse):

I am black and I am white, I'm yellow and brown
I am red white and blue, Yankee Doodle won't you come to town
I am the whole wide planet, rolled into one
I am a citizen of the world, I am an American

Verse 1:

I came from distant lands, to seek a better life
All I owned was on my back, by my side my wife
The work it wasn't easy, in the factory and the farm
But hope in me grew stronger, like the muscle in my arm               

Verse 2:

As I sailed across the ocean I was told of gold in the streets
When I arrived I soon found out not everything was sweet
I built the road and cities, from the east coast to the west
I've been tricked and cheated, but the land is still the best

Verse 3:

Some things are much better, some things still need change
I wish I could bring back some things, like buffalo on the range
I don't want to be a master or servant of any man
I just want to go on living my life, doing the best I can

And this, to honor the symbol that inspires our warriors, Old Ragged Flag, as told by Johnnie Cash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgpp0V7sDbE.

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.