Tag Archives: Self

Guiltless Housecleaning

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles in the Pond Blog, written by Bill Harvey
October 23, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS: The 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 12

It's time for a guiltless housecleaning

In last week’s post, we explored how to dismantle counterproductive tendencies by tracing their origins, setting realistic, gradual goals for self-control, and shrinking the gap between action and self-awareness until we can catch ourselves before we act. We also examined how our old coping mechanisms—”senators” or past influences—fight to survive long after they have outlived their usefulness.

This week, it’s time for a “guiltless housecleaning” of our internal system.

To compensate for these tendencies, it’s wise to regularly review our favorite programs for signs of vestigiality. But in light of their past service, we do not blame any program for being counterproductive as we remove it. Housecleaning should be guiltless.

We will remove a program when it no longer fits our developing gestalt; until that point, the program fit, and neither we nor the program were to blame for our union.

Avoiding the temptation to be harsh with the programs we remove, we look upon them not as enemies but as “mischief programs”. They were necessary stepping stones to where we are now; we can love them for this while defusing their power over us for the upcoming phases.

As we remove our extraneous programming, we will be simplifying the number of variables impinging upon any set of circumstances. Thus, we will solve the circumstances for best action more quickly and accurately.

In attempting to identify our unconscious programming, we need to be prepared for the pervasive to be invisible: the things we do most continuously will be hardest for us to detect and analyze.

Mind Experiments

1. De-energizing parental-dynamic-compensating parasite circuits

You may not yet know this, but you can “return in time” and re-experience any memory quite vividly just by putting the time and energy into it.

2. Do this—return to the first time you saw your parents perform the first act on your list, from Mind Experiment 2 from last week: De-energizing parental-dynamic parasite circuits.

Then do it for each other act on the list—go back to the first time they played that one in front of you.

To the extent that your rational mind believes that this built-in memory ability is impossible for you, the process will be delayed, but the subconscious processes will still work on it, will flash you hints from time to time, and eventually, you’ll suddenly re-experience a key moment: from then on, it will be easy—you will systematically re-experience each unassimilated moment in your memory and clear it.

When you are re-experiencing, check how you were feeling and what you did about it—then contemplate how this has affected the rest of your life by lulling you into fixed coping styles.

Our best wishes to all,
THEI Team

Edit Your Head Files

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles Blog written by Bill Harvey
October 9, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS the 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 10

The first step is to become aware of our programming...

We have all been programmed. Every experience we have ever had and every communication we have ever received has implanted in us a predisposition to act and think in certain ways.

There are currently a large number of programs operating in our heads, most of which we are no longer aware of or were never aware of.

These programs interact to determine precisely how we will behave in a specific set of circumstances. To the extent that we allow this to continue, our behavior will be predictable based on knowledge of our programming. Thus, we will be mechanical slaves, our lives the mathematical result of all our programming inputs.

It is possible, however, to gradually become aware of all our programming; to select which programming to keep, which to modify, and which to remove; and to act with conscious awareness of our relevant programming so that we can either ratify or override it in any given set of circumstances. When these things are done, we are no longer mechanical slaves to our programming and can choose when to use each of our specific programs.

The first step is to become aware of our programming:
this requires close observation.

We must observe ourselves as if we are observing another person we have never known before. Every word, every tone of voice, every minute gesture, every action, and every thought must be scrutinized from the standpoint of:

  • Why was that done?
  • What are the roots of such behavior?
  • What is the motivation?
  • When might it have been implanted and by whom or what?

We will find that the bulk of our actions serve petty ends of which we cannot consciously approve. For example, we will find that most of our words, gestures, and postures can only be explained as role-playing mimicry designed to make us feel approved of. We will find that even when we can do without outside approval, we still seek inside approval from other people whose viewpoints we have stored inside our heads.

When we have stripped away all such programming, we will no longer be addicted to the support of others: we will take what we consider the best action we know how to take at any given moment, assess the results of that action, and revise plans accordingly. We will see status in society as a form of scrip slaves/workers are permitted to give themselves in return for obedience. (Scrip = ersatz money as given by the “company” for use in the “company store”.)

Mind Experiments

Let’s revisit the Mind Experiments from Part 9

1. Watch action patterns.

  • Pick a day. On that day, from the moment you awaken, stay alert all day and watch your actions down to the smallest gesture.
  • When you seem to be observing an action pattern that appears significant to some part of your mind, ask yourself: “Why did I do that?” (Or, “Why am I doing this?”)

2. “Autopilot addictions” meditation

  • What were your mother and father “addicted” to (attached to getting or avoiding)?
  • How about your peers at school and others known to have influenced you: to what were they “addicted”?
  • To what extent do you now automatically mirror any of these addictions?

3. Meditate on the extent to which you “need” approval.

  • Whom do you “need” approval from? Why?
  • Clue: What do you work hardest at? Who would approve of you the most for working so hard at it?

Let’s add one more:

4. Develop absolute willpower.

Absolute willpower means that when you make a vow, you know you will keep it.

What stands between most of us and absolute willpower is the knowledge that we have habitually broken our vows and don’t know how to break that habit. In other words, we don’t believe ourselves when we make vows, so we don’t feel truly bound to keep them.

The way to break the habit is to start making vows to ourselves that we know we will keep, and then allow time to pass during which we always keep these vows.

Example:
The next time you catch yourself in an “unwanted manifestation” you know you can give up, vow (decide) to give it up. Make as many of these as you like, but don’t try to give up something you’re not sure you can give up until your body has observed you keeping the “easy” vows in three-dimensional reality.

Once your “lower” (cybernetically less sophisticated) parts have observed you keeping your “easy” vows, it will become much easier for you to make and keep “not-so-easy” vows, and eventually “hard” ones as well.

Love to all,
THEI Team

Awakening Real Will

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“Losing oneself and becoming a rolebot” and how to undo this

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
September 18, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS Book Excerpt Series: Part 9

Losing oneself and becoming a rolebot and how to undo this

People run on programs.
Programs are action patterns. For example. the way we get out of bed in the morning is an action pattern. Observe how you do it for a few days in a row, and you’ll see the pattern. The way you throw off the covers, swing your feet to the floor, how your body feels, what you think about, your mood, the people you think about, the emotions that strike you, and your attitude as you stand up, etc.

All this is an action pattern. Nothing is exactly the same from day to day, but everything stays within a relatively narrow range of variation. This is because there are now sets of interlacing programs in our biocomputers upstairs. They bring us through this action pattern daily without us having to consciously think about each move.

These automatic programs run 99% of our lives.

Of course, we all override the autopilot at times.
For example, when some potential danger snaps us into full alertness, we don’t make a move without thinking about it first. For example, when we are able to rise above “automatic-pilot” anger. For example, at moments of “peak realization”, “expanded consciousness”, or “satori”. But most of the rest of the time, although we repress knowledge of the fact religiously, we have no free will in what we do, because the body’s and mind’s movements follow conditioned paths from which deviation is improbable.

We always react to the same types of situations in the same ways. The programs go through their steps while we sleepily look on, along for the ride.

We consciously participated in creating these programs.
Some of the “autopilot” program punchcards in our heads were keypunched by our “conscious-mind-pilot”. For example, when we discovered how well we looked smiling that way, we decided offhandedly to keep doing it that way (at least at those times). Then our “conscious-mind-pilot” forgot about it.

The “autopilot” does it faithfully to this day whenever those times come up. Good “autopilot”!

On the other hand, the great preponderance of our “automatic pilot” programming appears to be of the Pavlovian variety, whereby we grew up addicted to certain shallow rewards without this being anyone’s conscious intention.

Mind Experiments

1. Watch action patterns.

  • Pick a day. On that day, from the moment you awaken, stay alert all day and watch your actions down to the smallest gesture.
  • When you seem to be observing an action pattern that appears significant to some part of your mind, ask yourself: “Why did I do that?” (Or, “Why am I doing this?”)

2. “Autopilot addictions” meditation

  • What were your mother and father “addicted” to (attached to getting or avoiding)?
  • How about your peers at school and others known to have influenced you: to what were they “addicted”?
  • To what extent do you now automatically mirror any of these addictions?

3. Meditate on the extent to which you “need” approval.

  • Whom do you “need” approval from? Why?
  • Clue: What do you work hardest at? Who would approve of you the most for working so hard at it?

Love to all,
Bill

The Independent Mind: Breaking Free from the Partisan Spell

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
August 14, 2026

This is a moment for cosmic re-evaluation, starting from an open mindCosmic Crossroads Beyond Division

The trouble started long ago when Democrats started demonizing Republicans and vice versa. When I was a kid, it wasn’t this way. It was like rooting for the Yankees instead of the Dodgers, although living in Brooklyn. It was surprising but not something to rouse animus.

Sportsmanship has always been an attractive characteristic of individuals, athletes, and famous people. People could be rivals, kid one another, but never come close to demonization.

My first realization came about the turn of the Century. Someone sent me a Halloween card whose cover said, “Want to wear a really scary costume this Halloween?” Inside it said, “Dress up as a Republican.” I had to shake my head.

After that, it came on in slathers, and the buildup was tsunami-like. My beloved business partner, the late Bill McKenna, called liberals “Libbies,” and it was obvious from his tone of voice that the female surname “Libby” was a giveaway that all Liberals were effeminate and not masculine enough.

The algorithmic intensity of modern media has brought this to a level absolutely on a plane with Brave New World and 1984. In fact, the proportion of movies, video series, and books about dystopia has shot up. It is as if the whole population is helping to order up dystopia to engulf us in consensus reality, by the amount of our thinking and dreaming about it, which is helping to bring it about. We are “Living the Nightmare” in our expectations, and now we have accepted it as the necessary reality.

It has become literally mass hypnosis.

We now accept it as normal that our leaders will be corrupt, lie to us, bully us, shoot us, and steal our money in every way possible. Yet, we go about our daily routines less happy than usual and more prone to escapism. We don’t rearrange our fundamental thinking about our loyalties because that would be too much to bear; the fear of the unknown floods in when we even come close to thinking about that.

We would not be that way if we were not surrounded by all of our tribe and reinforced in our tribal thinking by very select use of media channels that echo chamber us and keep out the bad memes that would undermine our sense of self and drag us down into doubt.

“This is who I am,” we think, without words, down at a level below our own conscious awareness. “I have chosen this course in life, and it’s far too late to turn back and become somebody else. The other Party is far too radical and ugly; none of my best friends and family like them.” In these subconscious self-conversations, we do not have enough intellectual prowess to point out to ourselves that there is a third option of not being hung up on either Party. If we take the time away from escapism to have these self-conversations at a conscious level, we will have more controllable intelligence to make sense of things. The third option is to become a political Independent, which about half the US population has already chosen. That would allow us to vote based on individual merits rather than robotic puppeting the party line.

It’s hard to admit to oneself that one has been a puppet and played like a violin for decades of one’s life. It’s better to let awareness of the truth come in rather than to protect oneself against the truth and to live in a shell of self-deception. The truth will sometimes show you that you say one thing and do another, and that the high and noble precepts you mouth are not reflected in your actions. Yes, this is a painful experience, but so is childbirth, and both types of temporary pain lead to an infinite amount of emotional payoff in the end.

This is a moment for cosmic re-evaluation starting from an open mind.

Love to all,
Bill