I walk into a room and there is an effect. It seems impossible to avoid … not that I’d want to if I could.

I affect others … and in turn they affect me.

It seems that this is what it may be to be human, i.e.: humans affecting other humans … the human condition. Maybe we are built to affect one another, maybe “rubbing up against one another” is the essence of what life is about … life rubbing up against life.

To me, this seems at the heart of the human condition.

This is where I constantly find myself drawn. I spent years learning about and studying individuality, i.e.: “the way of the individual.” Even though much of what I was learning about in my reading and study gave lip service to the group – despite the name given to it, e.g.: family, organization, community, society – the focus and emphasis was on the individual.

The sources I went to were divergent … texts and teachers in the domains of psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy – Eastern, Western, Meso-American, Middle Eastern … and where that led me I followed … theology, spirituality, mythology, therapy, cybernetics, linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive science, economics, organizational theory, leadership … on and on I went. Despite my reach I continued to find myself stumped with few exceptions.

Let me reframe my comments for a moment before going on …

I was trying to figure out what it meant to be human, i.e.: how to do “human” really well.

I was trying to figure this out first for myself … and then how to engage with others who seemed to be asking the same fundamental question in so many different ways and personal languages of their own, “How do I do “human” really well?”

These folks were colleagues and clients. Sometimes they were in consulting situations I worked in with business outcomes and intentions. Other times they were direct therapeutic type interactions where a client was stumped about how to move on in their life … or what to move on to … what to be doing next with themselves.

In most cases I noticed that many of the folks I encountered seemed lost and hurting, even suffering by some accounts. Yet, in the work I offered, this was rarely on the surface. Rarely did my clients come to me with the expressed intention of relieving suffering per se.  Instead my clients wanted “strategic” help … “Joseph, how do I achieve the next goal?” Whether that goal was making more money (often), becoming more successful (even more often), finding a relationship, fixing a relationship, finding peace and comfort in their life … it always was about the next thing and what to be doing about it … what to be doing to achieve and attain the elusive “IT” they were searching for in their lives.

Fortunately for me I met and trained with someone who actually had something to offer. I sat at the knee of the master for many years, decades actually … studying and learning, absorbing his wisdom and tricks. He redirected me and my attention with these clients to help them re-focus themselves to attend to where they were in the moment, and only then moving onto what was next for them.

I called this (following the style of my mentor) an ontological approach, i.e.: attending to the experience of being in the moment … a critical distinction.

My mentor, and I following his lead, distinguished the idea of an ontological approach from one that was epistemological. The distinction was the focus on the nature of being versus knowing, or maybe more simply experiencing versus thinking.

I followed this lead further beginning to develop my approach with further distinctions, e.g.: the distinction of experiencing versus thinking about experiencing. I found that many of my clients, despite the particulars, were confounded by thinking about experiencing instead of experiencing their experience.

Then I found two more things that fascinated me and led me further down the rabbit hole …

That most people aren’t having their experience, they are having other people’s experience that had been imposed upon them. Most people start out living their parents’ dreams and not their own. Neither they nor their parents recognize the imposition or insult – until they begin to rebel (it’s typically called “adolescence”). Yet, despite the grand protestations they continue living the life imposed upon them, even if they leave behind the impositions of the parent.

An interesting side note here …

I’ve noticed that many folks I’ve worked with who believe they are leaving behind the impositions of the parent/parents spend the rest of their life in rebellion, not free of imposition, just transforming the imposition into it’s opposite.

Instead of accepting and becoming the vision of the parent they spend their lives becoming what they believe will free them of that imposition by becoming it’s opposite … never once even considering becoming themselves.

Back to our story …

Then life imposes further … schooling telling the child what to do and who they are to become, followed by society … and then the work environment and colleagues … and often life partners, spouses, children … an unending stream of impositions about who you are meant and destined to be … an overwhelming avalanche of impositions burying and suffocating who you are yourself. This is what I found again and again in my work with clients. Then, when I encountered them about the idea of simply being … NOT DOING (a very Zen, Taoist, Yin kind of idea BTW) … they fell in love with it.

The ones I worked with who got ‘IT’ began to rearrange their lives around being, often leaving significant aspects of doing behind. Sometimes leaving behind the contexts they had built their doing in as well … organizations, businesses, families … even whole communities … left behind.

Others sought new contexts to support their new found “freedom” … the groups I ran, organized religion, causes … something to hold onto that would confirm and reaffirm their sense of self.

What I began to notice was the need to be given permission to simply be … to relieve themselves of the obligations of the impositions they had carried for so long, who they had become. For some this meant exploring the other side of things … their suffering instead of their freedom. What some call “shadow work” … the repressed self.

Yet for my mentor, and for me as well, this was a path without reward. Of course there was and is great emotional experience there, a charge to be gotten from experiencing the suffering, the sense of coming to terms with what had been and may still be repressed in one’s self. But we agreed there was no way out of the hole by digging deeper.

So we sought a different way, first his decades of work and then, standing on his metaphorical shoulders, I began climbing myself.

The first thing I noticed (my second insight … the one that began to lead me up out of the rabbit hole I’d fallen into, the first being the lack of people having their own experience and substituting doing for being to compensate for it …) was that the shift from doing to being was primarily organized somatically. To become yourself you must first learn how to inhabit yourself.

That must sound strange to someone the first time they hear it I imagine, i.e.: “… you must first learn to inhabit yourself.” But it is the key in the work I have been doing for the last two decades with my clients, i.e.: repositioning them in their body in relation to themselves.

This work is about moving from intellectualizing experience to instantiating and inhabiting experience … to feel it … to see, hear, smell and taste it fully. To let the sensations of life wash over and in turn wash away the stench of abstraction for the sweetness of being present to life.

Again, I find myself coming to the idea of “life rubbing up against life.”

But still … for decades, I found something was missing in the puzzle that had and continues to consume me.

The somatic piece was and is indeed critical, powerful beyond the imaginings I could have held before I encountered it fully. Recognizing that we respond, as incarnate beings, to our lives and the experiences we engage in was immense. Recognizing further the dynamics of interaction, how we respond to one another responding was even more powerful … mesmerizing me into a kind of stupor.

I had climbed out of the rabbit hole for a moment only to be drawn back down. This time via another tunnel, the tunnel of somatics. So I went all the way … submerging myself into the study of the interaction between the mind and body, until I dissolved the separation of the two for myself … a body-mind emerged.

A singularity that has been my domain of expertise for the past twenty years, i.e.: the body-mind and how it manifests ontologically, forming the essence of who we are and know ourselves to be … the return of epistemology and the integration of it with the ontological consideration.

Yes … the body-mind … I worshipped at its magnificence.

When I worked with clients, exposing them to themselves via an new found integration of the somatic form they had repressed into a barely acknowledged part of their experience of themselves, they often blossomed into new beings … a kind of metamorphosis. Like the seed becoming the tree, emerging from themselves in a new form that had been barely contained in the kernel of themselves they had known and expressed previously.

As my clients learned about noticing the body-mind themselves via the somatic path I was sharing with them, they began to notice others differently as well. The noticing became subtler and subtler until they could and were adumbrating entire groups of people they encountered day in and day out, and for many they flourished in this way.

But I noticed a different kind of shadow too. The more they fell into the rabbit hole themselves, the more they became observers of life, playing less with others and more with themselves.

In the best cases they removed themselves to tiny enclaves of others who shared their new sense of awareness, a kind of “insiders” club about the wonders of the body-mind experience.

These insiders noticed the interplay between the somatic forms and the semantic forms that people expressed, and they would delight in their noticing and the sharing of it with others of like mind. But they were also somewhat removed from the messiness of life, somehow trying to remain out of the reach of the stench that arises when bodies truly rub together. Yet it was exactly in the space that ceased to exist between bodies with life that life was most evident … where life is both conceived and consecrated from what I could tell.

So my insights had led me out of the hole and then right back in … only with different illusions, not illusion free as I had hoped.

However, I was helping people. My clients were actually achieving and attaining more of what they were capable of and desired … more success, better and fuller relationships with others, a greater sense of coming to peace in their lives.

So for many years I continued refining the models I had been designing and developing. These were the models I used when I engaged with clients to provoke the critical transformations they desired, and in many cased we were successful together … and that’s where the new opening appeared for me … in the “together” I’ve only come to most recently.

All the years of learning, reading and studying had helped, but left me in some ways as lost as I had been when I first began. The abyss was individuality, the illusion of the individual.

I realized I had moved spasmodically away from anything resembling what I though of, and continue to think of, as false community … the lip service given to inclusiveness, plurality, diversity and all the socially, politically correct ways of thinking about communities of people. It all seems to be so much bullshit! When it comes down to it in those communities the folks who are so outspoken about their caring for others simply take care of themselves. Frankly, it disgusts me.

So I ran in the other direction. I renounced anything to do with the prophets of community and their false doctrines. The entire “New Age” movement and everything associated with it, including the meta-magical thinking and “love talk” that spouts from the mouths of every prophet espousing their wares nauseated me to my core.

The endless stories of the gurus with their perversions, the socially minded entrepreneurs with their addictions, and all the rest of it wasn’t what I was searching after … it was something more, something undefined, some call to something else .

I cannot conclude my tale here with the revelation of having found “IT” yet. I may be as delusional as the false prophets I so detest. But …

There is something that has been emerging from the manure piles the prophets have left in their wake, something more wicked than they ever imagined coming I think. Maybe the end of society as we know it even … but I both digress and expose myself too much without evidence for my philosophical meanderings.

What I’ve begun to notice is the emergence of a new kind of thinking that transcends self-interest. Not the self-serving speeches of the socially-minded about being of service to others, of social and economic equality for all. It is not even the talk about the rights of the repressed that I am pointing towards …

My meandering is about an organism I’ve only newly begun noticing for the first time, despite seeing it forever (forever being the entirety of my lifetime). The organism of society itself … we are collectively the organism. The ontological form we are is social, connected … in the same way our organs, muscles and bones comprise who we are, we comprise the organism of society … a living, breathing thing unto itself beyond anyone of us.

Let me close for now with another reframing exercise …

I have long disagreed with the idea that some physicians hold of treating disease apart from the whole-form of the body in which the disease resides. Despite the successes that this approach has generated in some cases, I believe the cost to be higher than the gain. Only when we expand our perspectives to see the entire being can we properly treat the symptomology that confronts us.

For instance treating a persistent rash with cream to suppress it will not relieve the issue of what causes it if the cause is metabolic or environmental, even if the symptoms are relieved.

The individual may indeed have temporary relief from the rash, only to find that they given room to the cancer to form and grow within them. However, when the cause is contextual, say living in New York with all of the stressors there, environmental and otherwise, and to “cure” oneself means giving up all that you’ve come to associate with being in New York true healing may be impossible.

The individual goes on living with the suppression of symptoms, maybe addressing one symptom after another … first the cream for the rash, then anti-acids for the stomach upset, satins for high cholesterol, blood pressure medications … until the system collapses in utter and total disrepair … FUBAR!

You see it’s not within the individual that the issue resides … it’s in the system-at-large. The individual is an illusion as something apart from the system that contains them, in the same way that a heart or spleen actually exist but are meaningless outside of the system that contains them.

What is the heart outside of the body where it pumps blood that is not it’s own, and breaths oxygen it does not absorb???

This is the question I began to see about the “individual” … and I had had inklings of this before, inklings I suppressed and ignored because I didn’t have the insight or tools to deal with them.

Often, we as change agents try to fix the individual, or to fix the system via the individuals within it. We think that change happens locally, even when we think systemically the systems we think about are most often local … not total.

Now I’ve begun to think that maybe the only thing we can do is to relate the individual to the whole-form, to relieve them of their illusion that they are in any way separate and/or apart from the system, that they are the system in the same way the heart is the system in the body … i.e.: it is nothing without the blood it pumps or the oxygen it breathes, both of which are beyond it’s ken … the domain of the marrow and lungs.

I don’t really know where to go with this from here … but somehow it feels like I am once again standing in the sun, out of the warren that had trapped me into thinking I was home.

The “ontology” I am looking for is everywhere … now if only I had eyes to see …

Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

P.S. – FWIW I’ve incorporated all of the *new* learning and insights I’ve had into my current work, what I’ve begun calling “Foolish Wisdom” … maybe you’ll join me in becoming a “Wise Fool” yourself someday soon …

P.P.S. – HERE’S THE LINK TO FIND OUT MORE …

 

Foolish Wisdom – London, UK 7/8 June 2014

Download the graphic files I’ve been working on about the Performance Logics models here too!

I Am Pissed At The Lies Being Told About American Education!

Well … they are not really lies per se, more like ‘mis-truths’ or ‘misleading comments’ about our kids here in the U.S.A.

The story reported by PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) picked up by NPR as “U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science” where I got it, is suggestive that American students are falling behind in their math and science scores compared to other countries.

Now here’s the challenge with that statement …

MOST PEOPLE ARE TOO ILLITERATE TO READ THE STORY ABOUT THE FAILING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN AMERICA!!!

I bet that got your attention, huh?

Well that’s my point.

This story is a kind of subtle fear mongering designed to promote the interests of a very select group IMO.

Here’s a definition of “illiterate” from WordNet® 3.0 2006 edition:

1. uneducated in the fundamentals of a given art or branch of learning; lacking knowledge of a specific field; “she is ignorant of quantum mechanics”; “he is musically illiterate” [syn: ignorant, illiterate]

Now most people are familiar with the definition of illiterate as:

1. not able to read or write [ant: literate] (also from WordNet® 3.0 2006)

Yet the idea that illiterate also means “lacking knowledge of a specific field” escapes them when I use it in the bold statement above.

In this case I’m pointing to being illiterate in a specific way: i.e.: illiterate about how to read the subtleties of statistical information

The U.S. is not falling behind other countries … allow American students remain “sub-average” in ranking when compared to the countries that are “above average” in the PISA study, students in America are showing improvement in math and science scores between the years of 2003 and 2009 (the dates of the studies indicated in the PISA graph). It’s rather that the other countries begin compared with American scores on the PISA standardized test are moving up ahead of the U.S. in this specific scoring and ranking system …

The US is not falling behind at all, their scores have in fact remained flat from 2009, and have gone up since 2003!

NOTE: Using the data from the PISA scores the U.S. is actually tied at 15 in reading, tied at 33 in math and and 22nd in science specifically, so the mean of 28th is bunk when looking at the specific scoring in the individual areas of the test.

The specific score used for China’s ranking in math was the highest in the chart “600” and was from “Shanghai-China”  – arguably the most westernized and international city in China (with the possible exception of Hong Kong) with the most privileged educational opportunities in the country, not China at-large, including all the rural and non-metro areas of the country where education is likely least emphasized and least privileged.

As far as I can tell the scoring for the United States was a mean score for the entire country, presumably including all of our most economically underprivileged, and arguably least educationally privileged, regions. I’d personally be curious to see how students in the most privileged U.S. educational communities, like the one I live in near Princeton, NJ, would score comparatively.

(Ref: “Shanghai tops international test scores” SOURCE: 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development | The Washington Post – Dec. 7, 2010)

These are the kinds of distinctions that must be accounted for when looking at comparative test results and scoring.

Look at the chart provided from PISA that’s attached to the article I referenced above … it’s very clear from that chart what’s happening; much better than the article states it in words IMO.

THE U.S. IS NOT FALLING BEHIND AT ALL IN MATH AND SCIENCE per se … JUST IN THIS ‘SPECIFIC’ SYSTEM OF TESTING … AGAINST THE IMPROVEMENT MADE BY OTHER COUNTRIES!

There’s an question hiding inside of this data from my point of view.

What is the data, as it’s being presented publicly, intended to demonstrate and/or suggest … and who would benefit from the results the data indicates?

I don’t want to leap off of the “conspiracy death curve” … but I believe that more often than not statistics have an insidious purpose when they are applied to making a point without clarity about reasoning behind how the statistics were generated and the results arrived at by them.

To quote a favorite scholar of mine, Gregory Bateson … “shoddy epistemology!” 

 

 

So what’s the big deal … why all the fuss about math and science scores???

Simple …

Better math and science scores means a better chance at getting the “cubicle” jobs available in the current market conditions.

Yup … that’s it.

The U.S. and other developed countries need people in cubicles to run the sophisticated technology we depend on, to run our laboratories where drugs are made, to step into the industrial-military complex where the big money is spent to make millionaires and billionaires out of the capitalists that own the factories and businesses behind them … and we’re losing those jobs to immigrants who are better trained at filling the cubicle positions because they are better trained in rote math and science studies.

Here’s my proposition …

Americans who attend our public and private elementary and secondary schools, and continue onto both our public and private universities are among the best trained “thinkers” on the planet … BAR NONE!”

Instead of getting lost in this ridiculous intensity about producing better trained rote mental robots that will compete with the rote mental robots being produced in other countries … let’s focus on building up the creative and entrepreneurial skills of our youth so we can employ those folks as we continue to build the best and most successful businesses, products and services on the planet.

America will NOT produce more creative/entrepreneurial adults by focusing more heavily on math and science … BUT BY REINTRODUCING MORE HUMANITIES AND ARTS INTO OUR SCHOOL CURRICULUMS!!!

This is especially true in our elementary schools … and heck, our pre-schools as well where we’re beginning to see an earlier and earlier introduction of math and science into the curriculums there as well.

(Does it seem ridiculous to anyone but me that pre-schools even have curriculums??!!!????!!)

FWIW in my mind this includes the movement arts …

We need more music and dance in our schools … not longer school days and school years to improve what calculators and computers will always outperform humans at doing …

LET’S MAKE WHAT MAKES US MOST HUMAN MOST IMPORTANT!

 

 

A couple of other statistics that might be more telling than math and science scores …

Now let’s cross-map the impact of math and science in terms of real output. IMO this would be the test of applicability of the learning, more so than testing well, i.e.: what can you do with what you’ve learned?

From my point of view learning is all about the ability to perceive, think, imagine and create … not about regurgitating rote information.

So how about using information about worldwide patents issued???

In that ‘test’ where would the United States residents come out?
Well based upon a global study done in 2006 (a period that overlaps with the PISA study quoted about declining U.S. math and science scores BTW) … it turns out that the Americans did pretty dang well!

In fact the only country that surpasses the U.S. in patent grants is Japan … which is statistically relevant, especially when you consider that the population of Japan is about 1/6 of the United States.

Here’s some data for you …

“World Patent Report: A Statistical Review – 2008 edition”

When you look at the data you’ll get a sense of who’s doing what worldwide in terms of creating “new stuff” … as in new products, technologies, drugs, etc. … and you’ll see that the U.S. is by no means “failing” in any way!

In fact when you cross map the data from the PISA study and see how well the students from countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands are doing in math and science … and how well that translates into new patent filings you’ll see that the U.S. education begins to look quite a bit better very quickly (yes, I’ve taken into account the small populations of those countries in my comments).

How about we move on … to Nobel Prize winners, a distinction about who has done truly significant, often seminal, groundbreaking work in their field of expertise???

Here’s the list:

“Nobel Laureates and Country of Birth“

Now when you scroll down you’ll see that there are some pretty impressive turn outs given the population by folks in places like:

Austria, Canada, Denmark, France (very impressive prior to about 1940), Germany (both pre- and post- war geographical distinctions), Italy, Japan, Norway (very impressive given the population), Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden (a little over-represented? … maybe some bias there???), Netherlands (again, very impressive given the population), and then you come to …

United Kingdom … HOLY COW!!! … that’s a long list!

And, look at the dates for the Brits … consistent winners from the early 1900s through to the most recent prize awards.

By the way if you’re still up to it after reading this far, try cross mapping the list of Nobel Prize winners with the PISA graphic of math and science scores.

Especially look at the countries where there were declining scores and those where the scores were improving against the most recent prizes awarded by the Nobel committee.

Then you get to the United States Nobel Prize winners … and you have to ask yourself … “REALLY? Are we really worried about the state of education in the United States recently???”

Okay … that’s not just a long list … it’s a crazy long list!!!

And, look at the dates of the prizes awarded too.

Notice the number of Nobel prizes awarded for achievement (i.e.: not the Peace Prize) in the last decade or so to Americans, versus those awarded to folks from elsewhere.

Also, notice the categories that Americans receive the award for specifically. Nobel Prize winners from the U.S. dominate the list in Economics, Chemistry, (Physiology of) Medicine, Physics … with the only real competition in numbers coming in some categories from the Brits.

This is an impressive achievement for a country to lay claim to year after year. Not bad for one with such a “failing” educational system, eh?

Do you think we do so well on the world stage because of the rote learning of math and science required to score well on standardized tests???

OR … do you think that Americans do so well in the application of math and sciences because we’re taught to think and have the freedom to imagine what hasn’t be discovered to be taught yet?

If we follow the plans that the cabal of educational critics will have us believe we’ll focus on scoring well on standardized test, while we give up our children’s future ability to think and imagine.

Is this what we really want for the future of American education???

 

 

Creativity and imagination is where it’s at IMO!!!

To illustrate competence in creativity I want to use one more comparison, the MacArthur Foundation grants and prizes.

Here’s a comment about the MacArthur Foundation from their website:

“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.” – See more at: http://www.macfound.org/about/#sthash.BBwbRFQe.dpuf

This foundation awards what some people refer to as the “Creative Nobel Prize” – specifically looking to recognize and award creativity and imaginative approaches and solutions to significant issues in the world.The foundation is open to international inquiries, nominations and submissions.

While MacArthur grants are open to international applicants the Fellows program is solely for Americans So while looking at MacArthur Fellows won’t give us a clue about their ranking comparative to potential fellows from other places, because they are no such fellows, it will give us a chance to look at some of things some of the best and brightest from America are up to …

So the question again is, “In the international pool where do Americans swim when it comes to generating innovative and creative solutions to significant global issues such as those addressed by MacArthur Foundation fellows?”

Here’s the 2013 MacArthur Fellows List:

http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/

Take a look at what American education produces and also what some of the top American educators look like through the lens of the MacArthur Fellows Class of 2013.

Once again I’d argue that …

The difference that makes a difference is education (especially early education IMO) is promoting a sense of wonder and curiosity … as well as a sense of intellectual confidence … that we’d all be better served putting our attention on than the building of rote memorization or methodology skills that the PISA standardized test measures for showing Americans falling behind in math and science.

 

What do you think it does to the psyches of our young when they are presented with misleading information about their “failure to perform on the world stage” in regard to considering their future … and the future of our nation???

And, once again that insidious proposition, “Who does this serve in the long run???”

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts about American education … or education anywhere in the world for that matter.

IMO there is nothing more important to us than protecting and preserving the future of our people and our planet … it is the sacred task we’re born into, like it or not.

What do you think???

Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

PS – WARNING: massive Parental Pride follows … take care in reading further.

FWIW I have two children I inordinately proud of that are products of American education … both of whom attended American public schools.

My son Jason, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Davis in Ecology, attended American public schools though the end of his secondary schooling, and went on to graduate from the University of Vermont’s Honors College, and Duke University with a MEM (Masters in Environmnental Management) and a M.F. (Masters of Forestry), before beginning his Ph.D. work.

Jason is now working on mapping projects in Africa using global imaging, with a major scientific paper published in his name as lead author … and he was never a top science or math student recruited by top universities for his skills in those areas as a secondary student. While he was a quite respectable student, his skills were much more broadly focused than on a narrow band of learning in math or science, and today it is that broad approach that is creating the value he adds to the science he is publishing — alongside some of the world’s leading conservation biologists and ecologists BTW.

My daughter Michaela attended a private Waldorf school through fifth grade and then transferred to a local public school to complete her elementary education. She is a good student in the maths and sciences, but outstanding in the arts and writing. How would a student like her be better served by more focus on math and science in her schooling??? Where would she find time to do her art and writing in an already overcrowded academic routine … i.e.: three to four hours of homework a night, much of it in math and science. For my two cents I’d rather her have no homework, and three to four hours of time outdoors, dancing, singing, drawing, sculpting, conversing with friends and standing in awe at the wonder of the world-at-large that surrounds her. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help her navigate a course in secondary school that allows for many, many hours of wonder … not filled with repetitious rote learning.

As you can see this is more than mere speculation on my part or the opinions of an interested observer standing apart at arm’s length.

NOTE: I’m about to publish my next book on “whole-form learning and whole-form communication” … my next after that, which I’ve begun writing, will be on “whole-form” parenting. All the best – Joseph.

Truth Be Told … Fukushima Lies

 

The Times, Oct. 6, 2013: Japan admits it needs help to plug radioactive leaks […] Japan’s Prime Minister has asked the international community for help in containing radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant, a month after promising the International Olympic Committee that the problem was under control. Shinzo Abe told an international Japanese Government knows exactly what is going on.
TEPCO knows exactly what is going on. Lying has been the information method of choice.

How do you know when you hear or read the truth???

This is a critical question on two levels …

1. For your own safety and sanity it is imperative to know when someone is speaking (or writing) truthfully, and when they are being deceptive or deceptively manipulative.
2. If you know how you experience “THE TRUTH” then you know something about what it sounds like, looks like and feels like … and you will be able to present yourself and your ideas so others will hear them as truth

N.B. – Before I jump ahead I want to point out something I believe absolutely …

All human beings have built in B.S. meters that tingle or tremble when we encounter deception … AND, we are able to override those signals when our hidden agendas and secondary gains interrupt our natural instincts and intuitions.

Lies, Lies, Lies …

Okay, so we all encounter lying from simple, innocent deception to outright malicious coercion – we must decide BEFORE we encounter the lies we inevitably will how we will address them and handle ourselves as we confront them.

Simple, innocent lies are the white lies that range from the deception we engage in when we want to throw someone a suprise party to when we don’t want to expose our real feelings for fear of the confrontation they would expose us to, e.g.: “No, I’m so sorry, I can’t go to the movie with you tonight I have to take care of my sick grandmother.”

Malicious coercion occurs when others manipulate our experience to gain their outcomes at any cost, e.g.: “I am an expert emergency room physician and would be happy to help you out in the hospital.” (one of many lies told by Frank Abagnale famed deceiver who convinced people he as among other things a pilot, physician, attorney … and along the way cashing over $2.5 million dollars of phony checks in 26 different countries).

Now it might seem outrageous and you might hear yourself asking, “How is it possible someone could get away with this without people realizing what’s going on when they meet someone who lies so outrageously???”

Let me share a comment from the Energy News site on an article about the Fukishima cover-up:

Energy News 99.99999999% of the World Public believe TEPCO statements and their Government’s statements because, lies are easier to mentally process than truth and facts!science conference in Kyoto yesterday that “my country needs your knowledge and expertise” in dealing with the worsening situation at the power station. […]

The information has been out there for months, if not years, and anyone who gave even the slightest care about the truth of Fukushima would have been alerted to the inconsistencies in the Japanese version of “the truth.”

Just as the commentor on Energy News points out, i.e.: ” … lies are easier to mentally process than truth and facts.”

 

The Art of Deception

This is how we ge caught in deception … the lies of commission and omission that others tell us, and the lies we tell ourselves (to others and ourselves BTW).

The biggest issues include our greed, our laziness, our submission to authority and our desire to avoid unpleasant confrontation.

All “Professional Criminals” know these rules of human nature … and they especially like those who are greedy and lazy, these folks are the perfect marks.

One type of professional criminal is the confidence man (or woman), these folks are also known as “grifters” or as a “con man.” These criminals look for marks who are driven by their greed and laziness to seek out opportunities to make “easy money” … and are therefore perfect stooges for the “con game” that will be run on them, soon separating the fool from his/her money.

Unfortuately, these folks are also playing in more legitimate games like selling where the unscrupulous give the entire profession a bad name and image.

If you don’t want to be a “mark” for either a con man or an unscrupulous sales person you need to learn the rules of deception, and their opposite the rules of honesty.

 

Influence Rules

One of the most famous studies on influence was done by Dr. Robert Childini and the results were published in his bestselling book, by the same name, “Influence.”

Childini came up with six principals of influence he identified in his study:

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment/Consistency
3. Social Proof
4. Liking
5. Authority
6. Scarcity

By using these six principals of influence it is possible to both influence with integrity or to manipulate, deceive and coerce people.

The Mind Tools website (www.mindtools.com) calls these principals “The Six Weapons of Influence” and places this warning on their pages listing and explaining these tools:

[Childini’s Six Principals of Influence]

Warning: – Be careful how you use the six principles – it is very easy to use them to mislead or deceive people – for instance, to sell products at unfair prices, or to exert undue influence. When you’re using approaches like this, make sure that you use them honestly – by being completely truthful, and by persuading people to do things that are good for them. If you persuade people to do things that are wrong for them, then this is manipulative, and it’s unethical. And it’s clearly wrong to cheat or lie about these things – in fact, this may be fraudulent. A good reputation takes a long time to build. But, you can lose it in a moment!

Now when many people who have come across Childini’s work before think of both influence and deception they think of these principals.

FWIW the Japanese government and TEPCO have been using these principals to deceive the public and hide the facts for more than two years now. Finally, after lying to the world, and to the International Olympic Committee to get them to award the 2020 games to Japan, they have begun to come clean and share the truth they have known for years.

Think about it … how has the Fukushima story been told in the mainstream press???

As an local tragedy that’s under control? (Yes, absolutely early on and for the most part.)

In terms of a disaster that was affecting the entire region and possibly even remote parts of the world?” (On occassion, and mostly by the alternative press.)

That this was potentially an “extinction level” event, that was out of control and possibly uncontrollable by any means available to us whatsoever?” (Not all all anywhere other than in the fringe blogs that most people perceive as utterly looney or at best promoting unsupported conspiracy theories.)

Now the question you have to ask yourself is, “Who can I/will I believe?” -or- “How can I know when I’m being told the truth?”

Patterns of Persuasion

There is more that occurs beneath the surface of human interaction and communication than occurs above the surface.

Almost all research and training in influence and persuasion, or alternatively training in uncovering deception, is based on some form of a cognitive/peceptual model.

The vast majority of research and training around the topic of human communication focused on influence, persuasion and deception is based in how we make decisions cognitively (i.e.: how we think) based on information available to us perceptually (i.e.: information that we can see and/or hear).

HOWEVER … for years I’ve been working with and developing the pre-conscious, non-verbal skills that we are innately born with to …

• A) communicate with honesty and integrity

and

• B) instinctively and intuitively recognize deception
  

… and these skills are first and foremost based in our somatic awareness.

As strange as the mixed metaphor maybe some people refer to the somatic awareness they have as a small quiet voice within” or “an internal whispering” – in part because the experience is so subtle as to be virtually undetectable as a feeling in their body.

What I’ve found actually happens is that there is first a somatic response that is in fact body-based and only then, after the fleeting body-based response, they become aware of what they’ve just experienced and processed, often as an internal auditory whisper.

The challenge for many people however is that when this feeling comes up into conscious awareness it’s no longer present in the body.

When there is no check-and-balance system in place, or a way to confirm the inkling about something you just sense, you will rely on conscious, rational/logical processing to make your decisions – and, you don’t have the information that you need to make a high-quality decision in the rational/logical channel of your experience!

In fact, professional liars … including grifters, indecent politicians, malfeasant corporations, unscrupulous sales people, portions of the interconnected media and others … depend on you using your rational, logical mind to make the decisions they want to lead you to making.

Trusting Your Gut

We literally store a “second brain,” i.e.: the label Dr. Michael Gershon, full professor in the department of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University’s Medical Center gave to the enteric nervous system, in our intestines.

The enteric nervous system consists of around one hundred millions neurons. That’s a huge number of neurons for food processing!!! Compare this number, 100,000,000, to the number of neurons in the human spinal cord for example, about thirteen million (13,000,000) or about eight times as many.

While many people are aware of the significance of the spinal cord to the nervous system, human information processing and the motor responses that constitute much of our voluntary and involuntary behavior, they are much less aware or the impact of our “second brain” in how they perceive information and respond to it.

There’s another potent factoid about the enteric nervous system that might make you wake up and realize its potential importance to your decision making …

About 90% of the fibers of the vagus nerve (the primary nerve that connects the brain to the organs of the body, especially the heart … lowering or increasing heart rate/blood pressure and the like) run from the enteric brain to the cranial brain and not the other way around!

Beyond What Can Be Seen Or Heard

One significant aspect of the information processing and the subsequent transfer of that information to the cranial brain is that the enteric brain significantly impacts how we feel about things and our emotional response to events.

We are aware that neurologially the enteric brain and the cerebellum are linked. One way this connection is in place is via the route the the vagus nerve takes through the front portion of the cerebellum joins with the pons, the inferior cellebellar peduncle, where the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata (brain stem) meet.

Ultra simply put the vagus nerve and the cerebellum are capable of stimulating one another and creating an effect that you will experience in the body and that will affect your emotions and emotional responses.

Gaining direct access to the subtle, but profound, signals processed deep in your physiology will create an awareness of what is happening around you that others could only consider as some kind of magical or psychic awareness.

IMO the cerebellum is the portion of our neural system that I’d personally prefer to label our second brain for reasons pointed out by Dr. Steven Novella on his NeuroLogica Blog who is a clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine.

I tend to disagree with Dr. Novella’s characterization of the cerebellum as narrowly focused only on coordinating motor movement … by some recent accounts that view is an old and outdated characterization. For instance another neuroscientist, Masao Ito, gives much more credence to the functions of the cerebellum in his ground breaking book, “The Cerebellum: Brain for an Implicit Self”).

And, Where Do We Go From Here …
Which Is The Way That’s Clear?

In the work I do with clients we bring to the forefront the subtle somatic, or body-based, signals that are typically present below or before conscious recognition, perception and decision making … striving to create awareness and direct access to those signals.

When you become aware of your somatic signals you begin to assume control of your pre-conscious responses in the same way that professional athletes, A-list performers and special forces soliders do. These are the same signals that elite communicators use to manage themselves and their presentations to others.

Developing this level of skill exceeds by far what is possible when you rely only on developing your ordinary cognitive capabilities, including rational and logical thinking.

One of the most powerful things you can do to begin developing this “Sixth Sense of somatic sensitivity and awareness is to train ourselves to become sensitive when we are intentionally using our bodies.

There are what I call the “long road” options to doing this (some of which I have engaged in myself and loved BTW):

• Yoga
• Martial Arts
• Dance
• Chi Kung

You can add to this any movement activity that trains you to use your body and to simultaneously remain conscious of your experience in your body.

There are some shorter routes to learning about somatic sensitivity and awareness like:

• Alexander Technique
• Feldenkrais
• Hanna Somatics

And again there are many more in this category as well when applied for the purposes of learning in the hands of a truly skilled practitioner, e.g.: Rolfing, Cranial Ostepathy …

There is however a caveat I’d apply to these types of interventions, when the intention is physical training or therapeutic the potentional deep somatic learning and sensitivity I’m pointing to is often lost to the primary outcome of performance and/or rehabilitation.

The Clear Path …

My approach, i.e.: the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics are focused on making explicit the very subtle and sublime aspects of somatic awareness, and developing the ability to notice for and control the somatic responses you have.
To my way of thinking this is the direct route, the clear way forward … i.e.: putting your attention directly on what you want to learn about noticing your somatic responses and how to access the powerful information they reveal to you.

For instance the next time you become aware of a strong emotional response your having, positive or negative, notice what you are doing with your body.

At the gross level of awareness you may notice things like clenching your fists, shoulders or jaw, a specific postural change like leaning forward or back, or a big shift in your breathing from very shallow to hyperventilating. In this same category you may even notice things like body tremors or shivering, teeth chattering, feelings a sense of looseness in your bladder and/or bowels, feeling like you cannot get enough air or faint, especially when you are in an extreme situation.

On a more subtle level you may notice less dramatic changes in breathing, your heart beating more quickly, pounding, ringing or swishing in your ears, extreme heat or coolness (especially in the extremities, i.e.: hands, feet and head/nose/ears), blushing, mouth dryness, light perspiration (especially from the palms or on the face/scalp), etc.

If you are extemely sensitive you may notice the precusors of movement and/or response (pre-fight/flight), a slight contraction of the muscles in your torso, arms, legs, hands or feet (especially slight twitches in your scalp, fingers, toes, lips and/or tongue), change in your eye blink rate, change of visual focus (i.e. sharpness, depth of vision, peripheral vision, color awareness), auditory directionality (acute awareness of the location of sounds in the environment).

Any or all of these can be signals that something is happening in the environment that you want to pay closer attention to so you can respond immediately, accurately and usefully.

Updating the System

One of the most powerful ways to enhance this kind of deep somatic learning, shorten the learning curve dramatically and build exquisite acuity (somatic micro-calibration), is with direct facilitation … i.e.: working with a highly trained and skilled facilitator who is capable of provoking specific somatic responses to be explored and updated.

An example of this kind of learning when you want to revisit vis-a-vis alternative responses would be to recall an event vis-a-vis exploring the possibility of alternative responses in situations similar to it.

For example as you think back to your response to the news coming out of Japan about Fukushima what were your responses?

If we were working together I’d ask you to think about what you heard about Fukushima’s nuclear reactors after the tsumami event in Japan in 2011, and I’d watch how you respond.

Then I might ask you if you remember how you heard the news … reading about it, watching a newscast on television, hearing it on the radio or from someone you know … and I’d continue to watch your pre-conscious, non-verbal responses.

I would likely then have some information about how you processed that event and I might begin feeding it back to you indirectly, in my own posture, gestures and movements, or via using hypnotic protocols in communication to direct your attention to your somatic responses.

We might then move onto how you thought about the news coming out (or not coming out) about Fukushima over the past couple of years. All the time I’d be weaving the information you were displaying back into the context conversationally so it became a part of what was happening between us interactionally.

When we’d conversed for a bit, and I’d gathered enough information to form a baseline and a pattern of response from you about this event and your experience of it, I’d move to asking you what you now think that in essence the Japanese government and TEPCO have revealed that the situation is out of control and that they likely lied about it all along.

 

NOW I’D BE FIXATED ON YOUR RESPONSES!!!

 

You’d be inadvertently revealing how you respond to being lied to … and we’d have a new pattern to work with that you could be using to notice for in the future in any situation where knowing the truth would be important to you … the pattern that remains “elusively obvious” (to quote the great Moshe Feldenkrais).

• PERSONAL PATTERNS OF PERSUASION PART I: Reading and Calibrating Communication Somatically

  When you learned to tap into this response you’d have the first part of the learning you need to become a highly effective communicator … i.e.: reading and calibrating the responses of others somatically.

• PATTERNS OF PERSUASION PART II: Sending Somatic Messages of Trustworthiness and Veracity

  The second part of the learning is to know how to shape your own communication so that others receive and perceive what you want them to about your trustworthiness and the veracity of your message.

 

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

[mark – an un-streetwise person, and easy target or victim, e.g.: “This mark came walking out of the bank yesterday, counting his income tax check he just cashed. I just had to rob him.”]

 

PS – If you want to work with me on your own Personal Patterns of Persuasion check out the brochure for the Autumn Master Class I’m running with Acuity World in Denmark at the beginning of next month …

Behavioral Communication for Selling

 

PPS – If you think you want to attend but can’t make the live program work we’ll be running a Live Internet Simulcast of the full Autumn Master Class I’ll be delivering at Acuity World, and there is a special pre-program discount if you only want to order the program recordings so you can view them at your leisure in your own time.

NOTE: We’ll have the registration page for the simulcast and the order forms for the recordings up in the next day or two.

Sharpening The Sawbucks

There are a million different metaphors for what money is … and some of them are based in metaphysics, e.g.: “Money is stored energy.” … others are more poetic, e.g.: “Money is a social lubricant.”

A powerful, pragmatic metaphor about money is:

“Money is a tool.”

In other words money is an instrument of facilitation of one sort or another, i.e.: when you have it you can get things done that you might otherwise have to work much harder to accomplish, or might not get done at all.

I like that metaphor about money for two reasons; a) it places money in the context of its use and not as an end in and of itself, and b) it places money alongside other tools I have available to me to get things done if or when I don’t have access to the money I’d like to have to use in the moment (I learned that there’s more than one way to build a treehouse).

 

Getting Familiar With Tools

My father is a carpenter by trade, and a master craftsman. Growing up I spent many hours working with my father on job sites doing all kinds of projects. Some of these projects were heavy constuction such as putting a roof on a building, others were finishing projects like installing custom moulding in a room, or building furniture.

In the case of heavy construction or finishing, or any project in between, my father relied on his tools to get the job done. I loved my father’s toolbox and all of the stuff in it …

Hammers, chisels, saws, rulers, squares, nail sets, hand drills, screw drivers, chalk lines, planes … all kinds of amazing tools.

My father accumulated these tools over many years, and some were virtually ancient … like his hand brace (bitstock) and the bits that went into it, others were almost brand new, e.g.: most of his electric tools.

There were two very important things I learned about tools from my father in those days.

The first thing was: having the right tool for the job make things easier and also often helps to make the outcome better.

For example in a pinch you could use a screwdriver to remove some wood from a door frame to set a hinge, but using a screw driver as a chisel never produced a result that was anywhere near what you could produce with a chisel, and the outcome was almost always unacceptable if your intention were to do fine work.

The second thing was: keeping your tools sharp, and in good condition, was essential if you wanted them to do the job they were intended for when you needed them.

There were a few other things I learned along the way as well, like always put your tools back when you finish using them so you know where they are the next time you need them, and … it’s better to put your tools back in the toolbox exactly where they were when you took them out, because the next time you go to look for them they will be right where you expect them (to be).

 

Refining The Process

I began to notice that at some point my father stopped taking his toolbox with him on all of his jobs. Instead he began changing his habits a bit. He would take only the tools he knew he was going to need, and he took less and less tools with him as he got older (and more skillful).

What was happening was that as he got older, wiser and more skillful he needed less tools to get the job done. In fact I’d say as he got older his work got better.

That was actually kind of amazing to me, because he had truly learned how to do more with less (unlike most politicians and governments it seems who do less with more as time goes by …).

My first career was in architecture. In my early twenties I was a founding partner in an interior architectural design firm with two friends. We specialized in doing very high-end interiors work, mostly in New York City, and in the wealthy suburbs surrounding it.

I was doing space planning and designing custom furniture, flooring, and window and wall treatments for some of the finest offices in the skyscrapers of New York City, and at the same time doing interior design in some of the most opulent homes in the area for our clients.

At times my father would work with me on projects doing the carpentry work for my clients. By this time he was semi-retired, but still working eagerly on the projects that interested him. We did some amazing things together, and I got to watch him create at the height of his craft.

This is when I most noticed that he had begun streamlining his toolset, taking a kind of minimalist approach to his work. Yet, it was also some of the best work I’d ever seen him produce. Our clients loved him and the outcomes he would create for them.

 

Refining My Vision

It’s years later, and my father is an older man and grandfather … still mobile and capable, but doing very little of that kind of work. However, whenever he’s asked he’s still up for taking on a project for the family, or in his own home.

Now my dad is most likely to travel with just a tool belt … a hammer, a chisel or two, a ruler and triangle square and maybe a screwdriver … maybe. Only if he really needs them will he take along one or two specialized tools, but more often than not it’s just his tool belt … not the heavy wooden toolbox I used to carry around on job sites as a kid working alongside him.

He learned the value of only depending on the tools he really needs, and no more. In the process of watching him refine his working approach I’ve learned something about paring down my needs and desires for “tools” as well.

I love having the tools I need to do a job … in my case a fast, reliable laptop connected to a fast, reliable Internet connection, and a few other specialized tools I break out when I need them too, like my video camera and wireless mic set.

I’m long past the days of wanting more than I need, or investing the time and energy to do what it would take to get more when I can do just as well with less.

In fact I find I’m doing more and better work with less these days … just like my “old man” taught me by example.

What I’ve found, and didn’t expect, is that my vision has become more precise and clear as I’ve learned to give up depending on having more than I need … to the point where I no longer want more than I need.

I think this is the essence of freedom … knowing you can get by well with what you have and no more … it’s a freedom I’ve come to appreciate and treasure.

I love having learned to walk a little more lightly upon the Earth, and in respecting her in this way I’ve come to respect myself a bit more as well. Long gone are the days where I chased “more” without knowing how much was “enough” …

My soul has come to rest in this new way of being, just like the simple carpenter I learned it from, without him ever knowing that he was teaching me one of the most valuable lessons of my life.

Thanks dad.

 

Love,

Your son,  Joseph.

 

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, N.J.

Emotional Vampires

 

Just a few days ago I wrote about “EVP – Emotional Projectile Vomiting” … something folks who have no awareness of their emotional states other than as explosive experiences beyond their control spew the contents of their emotions all over others.

In that post I assert that this is a particularly nasty and all too common human trait. I also laid out the structure of how EVP happens and even some suggestions about what to do about it if you’re a sufferer.

However, there’s another side to nasty human emotional responses … the Emotional Vampires.

 

The Sad Story Of The Too Kind King

There is a fable about a very kingly and kindly king who ruled a kingdom a long time ago, far, far away.

The story goes something like this …

One day in a massive battle against another kingdom during a particularly brutal time in the fighting one of the king’s closest companions, a boyhood friend and confidant, was challenging a foe who was too big, too strong and too fast for him to handle alone.

Just as the tables turned against the king’s companion, and he found himself about to be pierced by his opponent’s sword and struck dead, his opponent unceremoniously fell to the ground … and as he did his head rolled slightly to the side sliding off it’s neck to lie still on the ground next to his body.

The shocked man followed the falling body and the rolling head with his eyes, as his body was frozen in place – unable to move, until he looked up and away to see the king with his bloody sword in hand.

Immediately the king’s companion realized what the king had done and wept tears of graditude as he hugged his friend thanking him. The king accepted his friend’s graditude simply and silently, thinking to himself there was nothing else to do, but what he had done.

After the battle ended with victoriously for the king, he and his companions went their separate ways … the king back to the palace, the companion back to farm. A few years went by and one day a small caravan passed by the king’s companion’s farm and he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and fell in love at first sight – fortunately for him, she too fell in love with him as soon as she laid her eyes on him.

He knew he had to follow this woman and did so, back to the palace. When he arrived he found out that this woman was the king’s younger sister, a princess … who the king delightly offered to marry him to when he heard of their love. Soon after the wedding the princess became pregnant and they had a daughter born to them.

There was much rejoicing at the fortune of the young couple, as any news spread quickly in the small kingdom. However, just two years later the young princess fell deathly ill … and it seemed all hope was lost. But the king would not hear of it and sent his personal physician to care for his niece, and miraculously the physician healed the girl bringing her back to full vigorous health.

The companion and his wife, the king’s sister, were overjoyed at their daughter’s recovery, and for many more years all was well. Then there was a terrible drought and the farm failed, leaving the family near starvation. One day, without fanfare or notice a carriage from the king’s palace arrived to take them to the king, saving the companion and his family once again.

When they arrived at the palace the companion went to see the king. They met in the king’s private chamber, the king opened a bottle of his best wine and poured them both a cup. Then the king was called away for a moment on some affair of the state, and when he returned they drank together.

Almost immediately the king felt himself seized by terrible convulsions, and he knew he had been poisoned. He looked to his friend asking him with gasping breaths to call the physicians, but his lifelong companion did not move, instead he slowly sipped the wine in his own cup.

Then the king knew … it was he, his childhood friend, the one he loved as a brother, that had poisoned him. He managed to croak out but one word as he slowly died, “Why?”

The companion looked away and said, “How could I live with this … when you have done so much for me … so much I could never hope to repay you?” He continued, “For as long as you are alive, as long as I know that you live and I may see you, or hear your voice, I know that I will carry the burden of your gifts and the weight of them has broken me.”

The king was astonished at this, but did not have the strength to speak. His last breath rattled in this throat and his old friend spoke to him one last time, “This my dear friend you brought upon yourself … so much kindness can never be borne by one so common … I would say that I am sorry, but in truth, I am not.”

And so the story begins …

 

How Emotional Vampires Get Their Fangs

It may seem counter-intuitive to presume that an excess of kindness creates a monster, but so often that is in fact the case.

The fact of the matter is that when the scales of relationship become excessively imbalanced in favor of one person in the relationship, the other person begins to experience a kind of relentless guilt that’s unbearable and impenetrable. Simply … there is no way that the receiver of such extraordinarily excessive kindness can ever imagine how they will rebalance the relationship … so they begin to see the giver as an oppressor rather than a benefactor.

However, these folks are seldom then able to remain content with simply taking out their vengence on their benefactor, they often begin to build a kind of expectation that transitions to entitlement.

When someone begins to experience a sense of entitlement they begin to expect others to take care of them, to ensure they get to experience what they desire, regardless of the cost to others.

One of the ways this kind of expectation is expressed is in the manifestation of the Emotional Vampire … the person who drains the energy and emotions of others relentlessly to fulfill their own desires and needs.

Emotional Thievery

The nature of vampire’s behavior is often contradictory. While they seem needy and weak, this is just a smoke screen for justifying their demanding and insistent nature.

“GIVE ME! GIVE ME! GIVE ME! … I HAVE NEEDS!!!” … rings forth from them in their every breath and act. Yet their words are often softly spoken, almost inaudible at times. Their movements may be deliberate, smooth and slow, belaying their real intention to steal what they can from others.

Like a thief in the night, Emotional Vampires often take what they believe they need and want without being noticed until they have fled. Only afterwards … when the victim is feeling drained and weak themselves do they begin to notice that something has been taken from them.

By then it is too late to recapture what has been lost … but it is not too late to keep what remains … and to rebuild the emotional treasury.

“PREPARE YE!”

Crosses, Garlic Necklaces and Wooden Stakes

Like with most things a little knowledge is a dangerous thing … and when it comes to Emotional Vampires your having a little knowledge is a dangerous thing for them.

Probably all this means nothing to you if you’ve never been bit by an Emotional Vampire … but if you have this will make all too much sense.

You’ll know you’ve been bitten by the symptoms you experience after the bite … a strange, unyeilding fatigue … a terrible sense of longing for relief, but relief from what or whom remains vague or utterly unknown … what feels like complete exhaustion down to the center of your bones …

Sometimes just the thought of spending time with the vampire is enough to bring on the symptoms.

But … fear not. Now that you’re beginning to learn the symptoms and the cause you can prepare yourself to resist the onslaught of the vampires before it begins.

First you must do is to raise your level of self-awareness (as I wrote about in my posting about Emotional Projectile Vomiting this is an area we place extensive emphasis on in the MythoSelf Process work).

You need to be able to recognize the symptoms of having been bitten by an Emotional Vampire after you have been … then as you are experiencing the symptoms … and then as you are beginning to sense them coming on … and finally when you are in the presence of an Emotional Vampire before they begin their treachery.

STEP ONE: Re-gaining Your Ground

Self awareness is the key to recognizing the symptoms of being bitten, as well as being able to notice when you are in the presence of a vampire.

The kind of self awareness I’m referring to is an awareness of how your being in the moment … a body-based awareness that is somatically organized. You need to be able to notice for subtle somatic changes in yourself, and attend to them properly.

One of the key premises of the MythoSelf Process is that how we are (and how we operate) in any given moment is somatically organized … or grounded in our bodies.

This is linked to another fundamental premise that cognition is embodied as well … i.e.: that we literally think with and in our bodies … therefore you must learn how to notice the subtle cognitive shifts that show up in the body first (another thing we feature in MythoSelf Process training for good reason).

STEP TWO: Re-setting The Field

In all human interaction there is an exchange that everyone who is engaged in the interaction experiences.

Some folks like to refer to what they experience in their interaction with other using words like energy, chi, ki or prana … whatever the name for this field that something is exchanged between us is plain and clear for most people.

While the experience is ineffable, the recognition that something meaningful has been exchanged and that something meaningful has transpired between people is unmistakable.

This is part of the human field and it feeds us and nourishes us, emotionally and spiritually, as food nourishes us physically.

Emotional Vampires are gluttons for the charge of this experience … they seek only to dwell in the field of human interaction and feed … they consume much while contributing little.

To reset the field, such that you are not suceptible to the lure of the vampire, you must be able to reconnect the three main centers of human experience so they operate integrally.

The Three Main Centers of Human Experience

The three main centers of human experience are:

1. The Head Center (or the intellect)

2. The Heart Center (or the emotions)

3. The Gut Center (or the intuitions)

Working with the three main centers of human experience in an integrated way is referred to as operating in wholeform within the MythoSelf Process work.

When you are operating in wholeform manner, with all three main centers integrated, you are able to notice for what we call “Signals In The System” in the MythoSelf Process model.

Signals In The System are subtle signs that you begin notice perceptually via your five senses and simultaneously intuit via changes in the environment tat create shifts you experience internally within yourself (in part this is the power of re-setting somatic ground).

One of the effects of deep meditation practice is the awakening and re-integration of the three main centers of human experience. However, this is not the only way …

In addition to silent meditation and/or active contemplation, another process for awakening and re-integrating is working somatically.

Clinical somatic re-education, things like the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Work or Hanna Somatics, are among the practices reported to produce an effect that is similar to deep meditation.

There are other somatic practices that are more active as well … Yoga, Chi Kung, Sufi Dancing … that also create shifts that may lead to an awakening and re-integration of the three main centers of human experience.

However, in the MythoSelf Process we use very subtle forms of somatic interventions, as well as those resembling the more familiar practices like those I’ve mentioned.

The sublte form of somatics we use when training in the MythoSelf Process model opeate at the micro-muscular level … sometimes intending to focus on the idea of twitching as little as a single muscle fiber.

STEP THREE: Keeping the Vampires At Bay

Regardless of the process it is essential for your emotional and spiritual wellbeing that you keep the Emotional Vampires at bay.

When you’ve learned to operate in wholeform the ability to notice the shift in the environment as a vampire begins to feed on the emotional charge in the field becomes instantly available to you.

When you are organized in wholeform, i.e.: in an integrated way, you can immediately shift what you are doing and disrupt the pattern the vampire runs to escalate the emotional charge.

The primary shift you learn to make is internal, the ability to maintain your state regardless of the circumstance or situation you find yourself confronting … or to change it if that’s more appropriate or useful to you.<

You’ll also intuitively know how to notice for and interrupt patterns of behavior and speech that create the kind of charge that Emotional Vampires feed on and drain you.

The third powerful resource for dealing with vampires that becomes available to you when you are operating from a wholeform position is the ability to shift the direction of an interaction, steering the emotional quality in the positive direction, e.g.: to joy, happiness, optimism … something Emotional Vampires hate.

The Final Word …

Emotional Vampires feed on negative emotions, not positive ones … they luxuriate in sharing the misery of others, and their lure is often their own misery, which they freely share to take control of the interaction.

When you refuse to have the negative conversations that vampires so often gorge on they are stunned and will reveal themselves openly.

You will be accused of not caring about them, being insensitive, ignoring their needs, acting in a hurtful way … yet, if you learn to listen closely you’ll hear that every word they speak is about them … their feelings, their needs, their desires … they deplore your selfishness!!!

Don’t give in … never, never, never, never give in …

Just say “NO!”

 

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

PS – My book “The State of Perfection“ has a full set of examples of me pointing out and working with Emotional Vampires in the training room … and helping the folks there learn how to deal with the ones not in the room … sometime living at home with them. Pick up a copy and let me know what you think about it …

GET IT NOW: The State of Perfection on Amazon.com

Are You An …
Emotional Projectile Vomiter???

 

I was having a conversation with a colleague this mornign and it turned to the concept of “Emotional Projectile Vomiting” … a unfortunately common human exchange.

Let me take you back a bit in our dialogue first (the one I was having with my colleague Mark) …

 

The Thalamic-Cortical Pause

We began when Mark brought up a concept from Alfred Korzybski the creator of General Semantics, the “thalamic pause.”

The concept of the thalamic pause played a significant role in the “Null-A” science-ficition novels of A.E. Von Vogt. The thalamic pause is about stopping when there is a limbic response to attend to the sensory data that is present, and likely linked to and generating the limbic response.

Okay … okay … yes, Mark and I are “MythoGeeks” (i.e.: a reference to folks who are trained in and use the MythoSelf Process as a means to attend to their experience and manage their perceptions, thinking and behavior).

I’ll put it into simpler English for the non-MythoGeeks.

The thalamic pause (or thalamic-cortical pause) that Korzybski’s work points to is a reference to experiencing an emotional response that is generated in the limbic system due to data in the environment that is experienced and perceived.

The data could be sensorial, such as something you see or hear like the sight of a large werewolf roaring while it runs to attack you, or it could be informational like something you read or hear that creates an internal response as you process it, like a “Dear John” note, or your lover telling you that they’re leaving you for a goat they just met recently.

The specific data is not relevant, it’s the limbic, i.e.: emotive, response that Korzybski and Van Vogt point to in reference the thalamic-cortical system.

The challenge for most people is that the emotive response is faster than thinking can be, and by the time they kick in thinking it is at the very least colored by their emotive repsonse … or worst they only begin thinking after they have already responded behaviorally.

In other words people often act without thinking based on purely emotional reasons that actually have nothing to do with getting them the outcomes they want.

 

Emotional Projectile Vomiting

One of the ways people react is via Emotional Projective Vomiting … a particularly disgusting, and common, human behavior.

So here’s the case …

Someone has an experience they upsets them, e.g.:

• someone cuts them off in a line they’re waiting in
• someone grabs the last grapefruit from the display
• their lover says something they don’t want to hear
• someone offers a political opinion you disagree with
• someone has the wrong color skin or calls G-d by the wrong name
• … or, or, or … ad infinitum …

Someone does something that you don’t like … so you respond with Emotional Projectile Vomiting …

It’s really that simple … someone does something you don’t like and you spew emotional vomit all over them.

It could be something agressive that you do … e.g.: saying something nasty to them, giving them a dirty look, punching them in their face …

It could be a more passive aggressive response … e.g.: giving them the cold shoulder, using the silent treatment, withholding sex …

It doesn’t matter how you express it, the end result is that you’ve emotionally vomited on them.

This is the equivalent of a thalamic-cortical breakdown, where the emotional response overrides the ability to choose wisely and well. Yet this is also the most common way people respond when their emotions are pricked.

 

Interrupting the Thalamic-Cortical Breakdown

So what Mark mentioned is that he’s seen me repeatedly “just let things go emotionally” … meaning that he’s seen me have a response, pause and move on, even though he’s recognized that I didn’t like what just happened, or the news I received.

I said,

“Of course I just let things go that I can’t control or do anything about … there’s nothing I can do about them that would be useful … so the only sane choice is to move on.”

It’s not that I don’t care … it’s that I’m able to make the distinction between what I can change, and what I cannot.

I can also make the distinction between what’s about me, and what’s about others … and I let them keep their shit. I don’t take their shit on me, primarily because if I did it would upset me and I’d have to emotionally vomit to rid myself of the upsetting input.

When I can do something that makes a difference I do … and I act immediately. Then I move on to the next thing. I don’t linger on what I’ve done, either in regret or rejoicing – that’s like emotionally chewing cud (maybe something for another posting …).

 

Taking Control of Your Emotions

Here’s the trick …

To move beyond Emotional Projectile Vomiting (or the thalamic-cortical breakdown) you must attend to the Sensory Data AND the Sensory Experience you’re having in response to it.

Attending to the sensory data is about noticing what’s really going on, i.e.: somebody said something (NOT the content but the fact that something has been said), that they used a particular tone of voice, that they looked a particular way when they said it, that they gestured in a particular way … blah, blah, blah … THE SENSORY STUFF!!!

This takes external sensory acuity (something we work extensively with to enhance in the MythoSelf Process work we do, what we call Situational Awareness). Most people are incapable of noticing more than the most trival and obvious information because they are untrained.

Although most people “look” few actually “see” to paraphrase the brilliant deductive detective Sherlock Holmes.

Instead of noticing and attending to the information that is present and available, one molecule of information sets most people off emotionally and their sensory systems shut down.

One of things that we emphasize in MythoSelf Work, more than is written about by Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is remaining present and aware in real-time to the emergent data … i.e.: noticing what happens as it’s happening, not after the fact, and responding in real-time as well.

This about “calibrating” … “tracking” … and ultimately “adumbrating” information as it’s emerging, and moving sympathetically and empathetically in response to the system-at-large (this is the basis for wellformedness, or being both structurally and functionally wellformed as we discuss it in MythoSelf Process training).

Sensory experience is about noticing your internal sensorial response to any given situation you’re experiencing. This is about internal sensory acuity … and it’s the basis of establishing a thalamic-cortical pause (something we spend even more time on in MythoSelf Process work than on external sensory acuity).

To create a pause between your emotional response and acting based on it without thinking (a thalamic-cortical pause), you need to learn to separate the emotional experience from the sensory experience you’re having about it.

Whenever you have an emotional experience you are having body-based sensations associated with it. The ordinary knee-jerk reaction to these sensations is to associate them with emotional meaning … and immediately, subsequently emotional judgement for most people.

E.g.:

There is an integrated body-based set of sensations you typically experience as “being angry” … and another set of sensations as “being joyful” … and so on and so forth with each set of sensations and emotions you experience.

When “someone makes you angry” the typical response is to link a judgement about their actions to them, i.e.: “they’re being a jerk” … yet what actually occurred is that you responded to their behavior in a particular way, that generated a particular set of sensations in you that you label anger … and you accuse them of causing them!!!

Every sensation you have is yours … and, “no one can make you have a sensation if you don’t let them.”

In order to control the sensations you have, you need to own them, and claim them as your own … you need to step up the game you’re playing and take responsibility for your emotional responses … otherwise you give the keys to your emotional kingdom away to whomever choose to push your buttons!

AHH-HA!!!

This is the part almost no one likes … i.e.: the taking responsibility that they create every emotional response they have … and no one can make them have their emotions.

 

Taking Thalamic-Cortical Control

Well … I could go on and on about this stuff, but suffice it to say that you get to choose …

You can either begin taking stock of your sensory experience, separating the emotional response from the sensory response and learning to attend to your sensory response and controlling it … or you can continue Emotional Projectile Vomiting everytime the world doesn’t show up the way you’d like it to …

Attending to and notcing your sensory responses means recognizing that emotional labels for your experience have specific sensory forms you experience bodily as well, e.g.: when you’re angry you may begin to clench your fists (I do!) … and simply unclenching them begins to disapate the anger substantially.

With enough practice you can begin to notice the onset of the emotions you about to be having at a body-based level, i.e.: as your body begins to respond to the limbic signals, and you can create a pause and unwind the limbic override of your thinking.

Taking control of your emotions does NOT mean not having your emotions!!!

Instead it means recognizing them for what they are, i.e.: body-based sensations, that are in response to some data in the system that you are experiencing …

AND, THEN MAKING GOOD CHOICES ABOUT HOW TO USE YOUR EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO GET THE OUTCOMES YOU WANT ON YOUR OWN AND WITH OTHERS!

N.B.:

When you do take control of your emotional responses, and make high-quality decisions about what action to be taking, you are likely to get some surprised responses from folks around you.

One of the things that may happen is that you will be seen as “robotic” and “in-human” to them as you stop your Emotional Projectile Vomiting.

Forgive them …

Think about it … how could someone live with themselves if they are constantly presenting others with their Emotional Projectile Vomiting and have to accept it’s not “just human” to be out of control and spewing all over others???

So the only explanation they can have for you, which allows them to remain at peace with themselves (if you can call it “peace”) is to make you into an in-human monster because you’ve begun to see the world a bit more clearly than they …

All the Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

PS – You’ll get a ton more about this topic when you’ve read my book, “The State of Perfection“ … you can get it at Amazon.com … CLICK HERE NOW …

PPS – Another good (and really accessible) book about General Semantics and learning more about taking control of your life is: “Drive Yourself Sane“ by Susan and Bruce Kodish (here’s the link: Drive Yourself Sane @ Amazon.com).