Tag Archives: The Observer

How to Tune the Mind

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Volume 2, Issue 34

In my theory of Holosentience, neuron clusters are formed by experiences both assimilated and non-assimilated. The non-assimilated experiences generate cascades of ego-protective distortions in the perceptual/feeling lens of consciousness. The energy in this endless waterfall of Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (where reality distortion becomes the feedback control loop to maintain self-comfort) draws so much attention to this locus that it is able to masquerade as the self and take over completely.

In that mode the true observer self is ignored and ignores itself, because it is swept into identification with the robotic self as a result of the process described above.

When the observer wakes up we call it Observer state.

The power of self-deception is so strong for two main reasons:

  1. The perceptual aspect of consciousness, which includes the inner perceptions we call feelings (sometimes conflated with emotions, the actual physical correlates of feelings that exist in the phenomenological or experiential realm of consciousness). Feelings are very strong because of their physical correlates; in effect, the machine injects itself with powerful serums not unlike sodium pentathol in their hypnotic effects.
  1. The neuron clusters are living tissue in the physical brain so they have a self-protective urge of their own at the cellular programming level i.e. the operating system of the cell. They act so as to self-sustain. When they speak in the senate of the mind, each cluster grabs the mike and says something while the observer is being further hypnotized by a jack-up needle directly into the bloodstream that hits the brain quickly, so the observer tends to assume “I am the one speaking to myself”. In fact the observer is being offered different viewpoints by different clusters and the observer is in the least biased position to synthesize wisdom from the many viewpoints.

The other night I was sitting on a plane coming back from San Francisco. Window not aisle seat so not my favorite position. Laptop battery spent, no interest in TV or in the two books or notes in my backpack. Not sleepy. Not disposed to strike up conversation. Having just written something before shutting down, I was in Observer state and noted the different selves that were being offered to me to be at that time. There was the grumbly bored character who wanted me to put him on and wear him like a heavy mantle, and there was another one who was pleased with everything. I tuned to the pleased character.

The bored persona would sneak in from time to time and each time it would take active remembering of the whole process to reset back into the pleased persona. After a few iterations of this, the pleased persona settled in and did not need any further work to maintain its turf.

The older couple next to me were now reading The New York Times and having an intelligent conversation. Right in front of me a very small boy peeked through the seats at me and smiled. There was something mildly interesting happening on each of the three TV screens in front of us, and on the other TV screens I could see between the seats in near forward rows there was mildly interesting material there too. There was nothing wrong with sitting here and taking it all in. I remained in that state simply observing for a few hours and was not bored nor feeling guilty about not working. Not working being unusual, except when I am with my lovely Lalita.

Remembering the observer self and tuning among the debating voices in the senate of your mind without instantly caving to the drugs they are giving you — therein is the path of the hero and heroine. The size of the prize is Flow state when the observer is optimizing.

Through this pebble-tossing mechanism called our blog, we seek to share techniques and ideas that have worked for us. Simply, when more of the population is acting from the Observer state, the human world will fix itself. We are on the rising curve, let’s enjoy every second of the playing out of this movie.

Best to all,

Bill

Fun Was Had at the ARF Creativity Playshop

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Volume 2, Issue 28

Of course I had fun. I always have fun presenting and this was so experimental — imagine media researchers, at least one copywriter, and other marketing people meditating together as part of an industry event — I felt like a kid again. Co-presenter and Playshop co-creator Richard Zackon and I alternated in sharing research findings on the creative process and suggesting best practices as well as offering various experiential exercises. Professional coach Jane Harris supported the fun as well, at one point pulling a rabbit out of a hat and at another getting everybody to wear clown noses. The ARF was generous with its refreshments and support as well as participation by Don Gloeckler, Don Sexton, Horst Stipp, and interns Danielle Hemsley and Raphaela Hodgdon. The feedback sheet Richard passed around was responded to by 16 of the 18 participants, with high ratings for presenters, content, and fun, which got the highest rating.

Did we make a difference in terms of their creativity? Time will tell. There are free follow-up sessions and a post-questionnaire yet to come, which may give us some early indication of any increase in creativity, performance, and/or satisfaction. We’re also sending out, free, the book + DVD kit the Human Effectiveness Institute offers as a 60-day course in Creative Effectiveness.

We were happy to see that important companies sent their people to a creativity intensive, one of the largest media companies sending four people. A top car company sent someone whose nametag I hadn’t noticed — I was happily surprised to find this out the next day in a meeting with that company.

I’m also happily surprised to see that the ANA is now offering a creativity workshop. This is a terrific sign. As Richard pointed out early in the four-hour session on October 3, IBM in a 2010 global survey of CEOs, found that creativity was selected as the most crucial factor for future success.

Xyte, a self-administered online questionnaire that sheds intense clarifying light into the way one thinks — which of 16 types of thinker one is — was made available free, courtesy of Gerry Klodt and Linda McIsaac of Xyte. One participant who found it revealed her to herself in a way that was “spot on” asked for and received the two extra free passes we had been given to access Xyte, for members of her team.

The participants were given many methods to stimulate their own creativity and to look at old problems in new ways. Someone asked how to retain singlepointed focus while necessarily multitasking and was given the method of staying focused through complexity, rotating the concentration among the incoming data streams. This is described in greater detail in Chapter 7 of our book Freeing Creative Effectiveness. A few heads nodded knowingly (Don Sexton’s was one of them) at another point when I mentioned using a notepad to take down side ideas that arise while you are focused on one specific task, so the mind does not feel these ideas tugging one.

During the final exercise the participants generated many creative ideas of their own around social media, including a fascinating schematic by Don Gloeckler that could become the framework for studying the diffusion of memes through the population.

Don Sexton objected at one point when I was characterizing stress as being the enemy of the Zone (Flow State), the state of highest creativity that we were aiming at by route of the Observer State. He and I agreed that stress could produce the phenomenon of “little old ladies” suddenly able to carry large heavy men out of burning buildings. It was a moment to remind ourselves that the principles being passed along in the training were none of them black-and-white absolute rules but needed to be balanced against each other customized for every situation. At an earlier point I had cautioned that anything we said should not be applied so absolutely as to become the next block to creativity.

After the session it occurred to me that I should have said we would never have burned down the building just to get the “little old lady” into the Zone for a few minutes, although the experience might lead her to more constant Flow state capability — the cost of the building and perhaps other lives would have been grotesquely too high. So there has to always be a tradeoff between the good of the Flow state and the cost involved — courses like these being a better way to approach Flow maximization than artificially creating stress situations. (For the record, the OSS and many contemporary military and paramilitary organizations did/do in fact purposely create stress in order to gain expected benefits in the performance of individuals.)

Hopefully HR leaders at major companies will take us up on our offer to take this Playshop on the road. The Playshop could be used as part of a management offsite, extending the current Playshop into a fully customized wargame focused on the future of the specific company involved. Having created and led one such wargame recently with high-level U.S. military officers focused on long-range planning, and conducted scenario stimulation with top managements of many advertisers, media and agencies, this is the part that could afford participants and their companies the most benefit. The Playshop at ARF by its nature of having many companies in one room could not delve into confidential matters pertaining to one company. Skills could be sharpened but the focus of these skills on close-to-home opportunities and challenges could not happen in such an event. Companies that take us up on the offer to go in for more customized Playshops can begin creating their company’s future with the shackles taken off of thinking.

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

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