The Pattern That Connects (Part 1) …

by Joseph Riggio · Jun 21, 2012

There Is A Primary Flaw In Fundamentalism,
i.e.: it doesn’t really exist, except as a consequence of flawed thinking …

When we look to/at the world what do we see? The same question applies to what we hear … feel … taste … smell … all of the various and interactive ways we experience the world external to us, as well as that which we perceive to be occurring within ourselves.

Whether it’s the look, feel and smell of a rose blossom … or the sensation of having a full or empty stomach … or the light brush of touch as the hand of a loved one caresses the back of your own … these sensations are what we experience as being what the things we experience are … i.e.: their fundamental nature.

Yet, is that true?

Do we experience fundamental nature? … Ever?

This is a “trick” of thinking that we have been trained into believing … i.e.: that things, events, experiences, perceptions are something.

The Trick of Cartesian Thinking (or “Aristotle’s Gift”)

Anyone trained in Newtonian based science … i.e.: the extension of Hellenistic natural science … has been covertly trained in the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm. Here are some of the “laws” that operate within that paradigm:

There is such a thing as cause and effect that operates on both a macroscopic as well as microscopic level
There are things that exist as themselves … matter that is self-defined as being what it is fundamentally
That there are some fundamental laws of the Universe that will apply everywhere and at all times in the Universe
That there is some fundamental unit of matter from which all matter arises, i.e.: atoms … now, quarks … or strings
That finding the fundamental unit of matter will lead to the discovery of a fundamental equation explaining the nature of the Universe at it’s most fundamental level … i.e.: A Theory of Everything (TOE)

What fundamental of course is that virtually anyone who has been ‘educated’ in any standard schooling system, e.g.: in the U.S. … the U.K. … Sweden … China … Iran … Brazil … Nicaragua … wherever, has been trained to ‘believe’ in Newtonian science as the basic explanation of the Universe at the macroscopic scale.

Newtonian based thinking goes well beyond ‘science’ and is applied across the board to all aspects of human understanding and endeavor. We begin to look for the cause and fundamental rules/laws of “WHY?” everywhere.

Why do people treat me like they do (there must be a reason, a cause, some fundamental aspect of who I am …)?
Why does the economy work like it does (there must be a fundamental equation we can find to explain it)?
Why do some people achieve success, while other struggle and fail (there has to be a reason, something fundamental that they do … a system they use to create success …)?

However this assumes some kind of “pure logic” exists as well, i.e.: that the Universe operates “logically.”

Yet, there is no proof that the Universe operates based on any kind of linear logic as is typically assumed will be found.

Ludwig Wittgenstein basically unraveled the mystery of formal logic … and then went onto decry it into non-existence as a function of human thinking error … for him it was all language and the puzzles we create therein.

The quantum physicists … and the physics they play with, e.g.: particle physics … so often points to a non-linear, non-logical Universe that you’d think they’d have gotten it by now, but they are still looking for the fundamentals … i.e.: the fundamental particle … the fundamental equation …

It’s not that classical physics (the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm) breaks down at the quantum level … it’s more that the world they are looking at doesn’t exist … in some ‘fundamental’ way they create it as they are looking for it.

What seems more accurate is kind of Cybernetic paradigm … a recursive loop that creates and recreates what is fed into it … with subtle alterations the build up to perceivable complexities over time as the system evolves and interacts with itself.

This kind of thinking feeds into a consideration of an emergent Universe as opposed to a predetermined one …

METAPHOR …
Moving Beyond and Before the Newtonian/Cartesian Paradigm

Considered from the point of view of a non-Newtonian/non-Cartesian position, let’s call it a Cybernetic worldview, the idea of absolute linear, cause and effect fundamental determinism becomes absurd.

Here’s a thought experiment for you to consider it for yourself …

Imagine a perfectly clear, still pond … now imagine throwing a small stone into the center of that perfectly still pond and the effect you’d see at the surface … the perfect concentric rings of waves formed by the action of that stone breaking the surface and disturbing the water in the particular way it would.

Now imagine that at some distance from the center of the pond there is a single, small water lily flowering … and imagine what happens when the ripples hit the stalk of the lily … the secondary ripples created … and the way they would interact and create inference patterns in the ripples created by the initial stone dropping into the pond.

Then imagine a small frog on the stalk of the lily that jumps just before the first ripple hits the stalk creating yet another set of ripples … these moving even faster than the now slowing ripples the stone initially created … and again the inference pattern created by the ripples hitting and interacting with ripples … hitting and interacting with ripples … ad infinitum as more and more events build in the pond … small insects flying off the surface as the frog jumps … the movement of the water below the surface from the stalk … the bird flying off the branch of the tree sitting next to the pond startled by the sound of the frog’s splashing …

Now finally imagine instead of an equation defining all of these events, which are in fact both simultaneously discreet and continuous … a pattern which describes what has and is occurring moment by moment and a simultaneous pattern which describes what is occurring through time as well … and a third, inference pattern, describing the relationship between the two patterns describing the events.

The pattern that describes the relationship between the two patterns that describe the events is metaphor.

The key in getting metaphor is remembering that it doesn’t exist, it’s only pointing to something else which is beyond the direct reach of our understanding.

Despite the specificity and precision that metaphor inherently lacks it points more accurately to the approximations that the equations of the Newtwonian/Cartesian paradigm seek to define then they do.

What To Do When Logic Fails …

The vast majority of my clients want strong working definitions, which is fine as long as they recognize the definitions are metaphoric and imprecise … simply pointing to a suggestion of possibilities in an infinite range.

However, many or most people what precise definitions they can count on that are continuous and unchanging, despite the discreet nature of the lives they are living and the events they experience. E.g.: many/most people would like to know what their “life’s purpose” is … what their true destiny holds … who they are supposed to be (when they grow up …) … yet this is at best illusion.

Who/what one is remains purely emergent within a Cybernetic paradigm, constantly open to change and the flux of the emergent events that surround them.

What seems to focus the emergent form that you perceive and experience is a particular property of consciousness we can call “attention” … i.e.: the particular position from which and the unique way you interact with and perceive sensory data.

In the Cybernetic paradigm oscillation replaces logic, linearity, and cause and effect.

In the Cybernetic paradigm things are either “on” or “off” … like the working of a thermostatic control system, e.g.: when it’s hot it’s “off” … when it’s cold it’s “on” … and so the system goes self-regulating, self-adjusting but always in response the effect that “IT” has on the system, never as separate or distinct from the system.

This is fundamental to the Cybernetic paradigm, i.e.: “on/off” operating relative to an emergent, dynamic system in flux.

In a purely Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm we would look to maximize the precision of the system relative to some fixed ideal, e.g.: a set temperature. Within a Cybernetic paradigm we could consider the effect of subjective perception, that remains in flux, as part of the model we design … e.g.: when it is colder we tend to move more creating more internal heat requiring a lower temperature, or visa-versa depending on the individual, subjective experience of cold … non-deterministic based on purely calculatable external data … i.e.: an individual can choose how they feel about the cold/non-cold.

Oscillating INTENT

In the MythoSelf Process model the idea of oscillation is central to the process.

There are two primary oscillations that collide forming the emergent quality we refer to as “INTENT” … a massive directionality that is uniquely suited to the individual and relative to the system they operate within that contains them.

The oscillation between the Excitatory State and the Inhibitory State, i.e.: the relative state of the neurological system as open to new information or closed to new information … open or closed neurological loops … a unique, generative position or Generalized Desired State, the G.D.S.

The primary distinction of the Excitatory State is that when you are operating from it you have access to creativity … this in turn creates remarkable resiliency in the system, i.e.: how you perceive and consider the events you encounter and the range of your behavioral responses to them. This is why the Excitatory State is referred to as the “Ready State” within the model, i.e.: because when you are operating with open neurological loops the system can perceive and incorporate new data in/from the environment as it emerges and respond … you are “ready” and capable of responding resourcefully*.
The oscillation between a Generalized Desired State (G.D.S.) and a position relative to that which is Greater Than Self (G.T.S.) – the system that contains the individual and all that represents, e.g.: the Cosmos … G-d …

The G.T.S. organizes the individual transpersonally, i.e.: beyond the limitations of themselves. Because there the awareness of the system-at-large becomes present when you are operating from the G.T.S. you become capable of perceiving the patterns within the system … both those that preceded the emergent form you are responding to as well as the forms that will emerge as a result of the action you take. Operating from the G.T.S. the consequences of actions become apparent and the sense of directionality emerges when an oscillation with the G.D.S. is organized into the individual operating position, i.e.: the way experiences are perceived and limited range of responses that emerge relative to maximizing positive consequences while minimizing negative consequences.

The unique outcome of the emergence of INTENT is that you become more aligned with yourself, i.e.: your perceptions, decisions and actions become a direct manifestation of both who you are and who you desire to become … without the imposition of socially organized, external markers, i.e.: what you have been taught to do, should do or ought to do according to some externally imposed measure or referential index.

The position that is associated with operating from INTENT is the release and realization of your unique creativity … a subjective “creative imperative” directed to the unique outcome you desire and intend to manifest.

When you build in this way of operating you leave behind the fallacy of fundamentalism, i.e.: fundamental rules or laws applied universally despite the discreet unique, individual differences that exist. Operating from INTENT opens you to possibilities that exist beyond the evidence that is currently present, but may become present as a function of the emergent properties released by your creative action.

In The End The Choice (As Always …) Is Yours To Make …

Are you up to it?

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

The Folly of Education

by Joseph Riggio · May 19, 2012

… begins when you leave behind your will to pursue your personal fascination.

The cost ~ only your Bliss!

Beginning with books

I still remember some of the books I read before I was ten years old …

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
The Voyage of the “Beagle” by Charles Darwin and Millicent E. Selsam

and of course … the Boy Scout Handbook, as well as many others.

I remember reading for as long as I can remember. Of all the things my parents did for their children filling the house with books and a love of reading was among their greatest gifts to us.

While we weren’t particularly wealthy or even well off, we were comfortable. My dad was a steadily employed blue collar, middle class worker … a carpenter by trade. He worked for a division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and on occasion did some extra work on weekends to supplement his income as well. But I can’t remember ever being told I couldn’t have a book I wanted.

In addition to the books in our home my mother was a fan of encyclopedias, and I remember the encyclopedia salesman coming to our house one day and selling my family a set of World Book Encyclopedias. This set became a staple of my research for many school projects and papers throughout my elementary school years. The set also continued to grow with each edition of the Year Books. Over the years my mother also added specialty encyclopedias on space exploration, animals, geography and even a set of The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau encyclopedia. So information overload isn’t something new to me by any means.

Even with all the books and encyclopedias we had in the house I was a frequent library rat, spending hours perusing the shelves of books there. I was really fortunate to attend a school from Kindergarten to 8th grade that had a library annex housed at the school. We had regular library classes all through my school years, where we learned how to use the lib ray, including the card catalog (only some of you who are old enough will actually remember using card catalogs I’m betting … or maybe even a library for that matter!). We also learned how to do research, find and request books that weren’t available on the shelves of the small library at our school, and we had the opportunity to check out books during these classes as well.

By about the fifth grade I had read every book in the children’s section I was interested in and got special dispensation to move into the adult stacks, with the caveat that I couldn’t check out any books with “adult” themes … but the rest of the library was now available to me. The first thing I remember reading was a book by Shunryu Suzuki, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” because I was interested in Karate and Kung Fu … remember this was around the time of Bruce Lee and the Green Hornet. Just after that came “Kung Fu” with David Carradine too that started airing when I was 13. That was the perfect age to be completely entranced by Kwai Chang Caine … and I was as hooked on martial arts as any other red blooded American boy could be at that time.

So here I was about to enter high school with books leading the way …

I went to a semi-elite catholic college preparatory high school and started what was then still a classical college prep curriculum … four years of history, math, science, foreign language, classical studies (including religion and philosophy), social studies and history, english literature and language studies … you get the idea I’m sure. In high school every year we had a book sale and in my Freshman year I picked up a copy of a book by W.D. Norwood called, “The Judoka” … it proved to be a life shaping book for me … and I’ve read it a dozen time since then.

However, what I also found out was that I could read books that were just above my punching level and still make sense of them. It was during those years, impelled by my classical studies teacher that I read Homer and Virgil, and then went onto read other classics on my own like Dante’s trilogy. I also became fascinated with science during that time and began reading deeply there as well … and I’d been reading as much philosophy as I could get my hands on since I first read Suzuki, both Oriental and Western philosophy. By the time I graduated high school I had a substantial canon of great works under my belt, as well as some pretty substantial science and literature. By the end of my high school career I was also beginning to read and study mathematics and logic on my own as well.

One of the downsides of all this reading was that college classes were utterly boring to me for the most part, and I skipped far more than I attended. The end result of that was a doomed college career that ended pretty much before it started. The upside was I had much more time to read what interested me … a pursuit I engaged in vigorously, some might even say with abandon.

The first twenty years … and the following thirty …

Well … if I were to sum up the first twenty years of my intellectual journey I’d have to say it was all about consumption. I was taught and learned to be a consumer of information (a practice that I continue, sometimes feverishly, through today). That all came to a screeching halt for me as I attempted to “do” college. The insistence that I spend another four plus years consuming more information was beyond me. I had mega dosed on information and needed to move beyond inputing to outputting, but the challenge was no one had taught me how to do that other than to simply regurgitate what I’d consumed cramming for tests, like an information bulimic.

What I wanted … nay, needed … was a means to digest the information, assimilate it thoroughly and create something anew. So upon leaving the grand institution of higher education I began a different journey outside of those hallowed halls. I began to pursue the integration and innovation of knowledge, far better for my psyche than the mere accumulation thereof. I learned many lessons along the way … one being that it’s a harder task to leave behind the information you’ve consumed to create something new from it, than it is to repeat it upon command like a favorite pupil of some tenured professor … or maybe better put the lapdog of the same.

I also learned that there’s a price to be paid for NOT SPEWING FORTH ACCUMULATED INFORMATION UPON COMMAND IN FAVOR OF CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO OF THE INFORMATION KEEPERS. Specifically, I learned that the ability to document that you’ve attended the requisite classes, passed the requisite tests and bear the imprimatur of the institution where you paid your dues is more significant that possessing the knowledge or skills declared by such imprimatur.

For the last thirty years I’ve continued to seek my own way, deepen my knowledge and skills, integrate and innovate upon the information I’ve consumed … and pay the price of not prostrating myself before the alter of higher education. In these past thirty years I moved beyond being a mere consumer of information to a developer, designer and architect of information … making output more critical in my learning strategy than input. I even committed myself to earning a doctorate and writing the requisite dissertation to document the research I completed along the way.

While the price has been high, flaunting my lack of pandering to the popular notion of education as documented by the receipt of parchment alone … the payoff has been equally high.

Keeping the Status Quo

If the achievement of pandering to the social and political pressure to document ones knowledge, skills and expertise by attaining certification from an “accredited” institution is possessing the paperwork to prove it, the achievement of not pandering to the professorial elite is possessing the resiliency to pursue what cannot be documented by others because you choose to blaze a trail not yet broken.

Make no mistake about it by the way, the pressure to attain the documentation of institutional certification is well regulated and overseen by the political establishment, virtually guaranteeing that only those submitting to the conformity of consensus will ever be allowed to practice their chosen arts. The exceptions to this rule are extraordinary if you do the math. The most concrete examples are the statistics following the success of those who possess sheepskin versus those who do not … the evidence is overwhelming that if you submit to the mind numbing experience of the classroom you will be marginally better off than your peers.

I put forth that the reason for this prejudice against those who are self taught and self made is both social and political.

Beware the professionals! First there is the protectionism of the tribe of the defeated. Those who have endured the hazing of higher education do not want the doors to their private clubhouse swung wide open to the riffraff who would seek to join them if they didn’t erect the barriers of entry. They live in abject terror of having their sacred protected territory taken from them by those who merely possess extraordinary capability, skill and expertise, but lack the proper documentation. In an every widening gyre they seek to sweep to themselves a greater share of the pie they perceive to be their unique purvey to possess.

Next, you have the money these professionals gain by protecting their turf so studiously that is then poured into the political arena, e.g.: AAJ, the American Associate for Justice (formerly the Association of Trail Lawyers of America). This tribe, the AAJ, has over fifty thousand members who contribute over five million dollars a year to political campaigns in the U.S. individually, in PACs and as soft money. In addition they spend an additional 3+ million dollars lobbying politicians each year to further their professional ambitions and protections. This kind of financial juggernaut creates a political wall that’s virtually impossible to circumvent. By example while campaigning for President, Barack Obama made clear that the favored tort legislation of the AAJ would not even be a topic of discussion if he were to be elected. As a result trial attorneys remain one of the most well compensated professions in the United States, with many of the tribe becoming deca and centi millionaires. The cost to the average American, untold ..

In the United States of America, like in so many of the first world countries around the globe, the politicians are in the pockets of the wealthiest members of the societies they supposedly represent … and as a courtesy to their patrons they keep the gates of opportunity open enough to create the illusion of entry, but closed beyond that to all but the privileged few. One of the “tricks” of this crowd is to promote the c0-illusion of the “equality of education” both in terms of access to education and the myth that an education creates equality economically and socially … nothing could be further from the truth. Education creates compliance first and foremost. While this conclusion is not something I cooked up on my own, I agree with it wholeheartedly.

It takes a rare and unique individual to overcome the indoctrination of education, or to fail to be indoctrinated by education in the first place … and those who escape this fate will pay a price, like Ulysses paid for his hubris against the gods … forced sometimes for decades before they can claim a place to rest their weary bones.

The Way Out …

Despite what may so far appear to be a demoralizing tale of education there is both an upside and a way out. First the upside …

Those early years of education are actually quite crucial to become a self-directed learner (the way out by the way …). The trick is not getting caught by the system while you’re learning the essentials. Yes, you know what they are ...the three Rs, reading, writing and (a)’rithmetic. However I’d add in three more, the three Ms … movement … music … and making, in school these three become physical education, dance and sports … music … and fine and practical arts.

If you can gain the skills without losing your soul you can find the egress from education (the key is escaping formal education … not self-education, which is the key to succeeding beyond the limits the system inscribes). The treasure to be mined with these skills in found in both books (more on that in a moment) … and now via the world wide web (or the Internet if you prefer), but there’s a caveat … you must learn to “punch above your weight”

Punching above one’s weight: Meaning: Competing against someone who you are no match for. Origin: The different classes of contestants in boxing matches are distinguish by the weight of the competing boxers – heavyweight, middleweight, lightweight, flyweight etc. The sport is regulated so that only boxers of the same weight fight each other. Someone from a lighter weight wouldn’t be expected to have much chance if ‘punching above his weight’ against a heavier fighter. The term is often used figuratively in situations where someone finds themselves competing outside their usual class; for example, the Irish comedian Graham Norton described that, since becoming well-known, he was able to attract better-looking partners than previously and that he was ‘punching above my weight’ when it comes to relationships. – http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/290900.html

When it comes to self-education punching above your weight means learning to read and benefit from books and material you have no right to expect to understand. Whilst anyone can learn to do this it requires a commitment and dedication to achieve.

Recently I ran a program in California where the group asked me to teach them how to read much faster (up to three times faster in about two hours, and up to 4000 words a minute after some diligent training). However, reading faster is not the same as reading better … and it’s reading better that makes a bigger difference!

To read better you have to learn how to extract the information you encounter … AND you have to learn how to interpret the information so you can apply it yourself.

One of the keys to reading better is learning to contextualize the information. This means learning about the author of the information. learning about the audience the author intended the information for, learning abut the purpose the information was intended to serve … and learning about both the sources and the subsequent extensions of the information authored. When you know how information was developed and aimed you’ll be better able to incorporate it for yourself.

I want to share with you a seven step “Secret Code” about how to read a book and learn the most you can from it that I’ve been using for years …

You must leave your learning about learning behind …

In order to become and succeed as a self-directed learner and independent scholar you must stop trying to impress the teacher. This is not about being about to regurgitate what you read … the standard learning protocols of memorizing the dates, names and places is irrelevant. Instead of consuming and absorbing facts and figures, focus on digesting and assimilating concepts. Put your attention on mining for ideas and finding the critical notions the author is building. The key question to ask yourself at this point is, “How is this information relevant?”
Start with the knowledge you’re seeking to gain …

Read everything you can about the book in the book before you read the book. Read the table of contents (yes, “read” the table of contents – familiarize yourself with the chapter headings and the way the author has sequenced the material in the book before you begin reading it), read the forward and preface if they exist (these two elements of a book will outline what someone familiar with the author and their work think about what the author has written, and what the author or maybe an editor thinks about the material in the book – this will put you into the right contextual frame before you even begin accessing the content of the book), read the back cover and the inside flaps if they have copy (this is the place the author and publisher create what they think will draw in readers and what they think the book is mostly about on a practical level), read the author’s bio (this is essential contextual material to further set the frame for reading the book), and make sure to read the epilogue if there is one (this is a real trick to getting the essence of the book out of it … because you know where the book is heading before you read it, as you read it more of it will make sense to you along the way). By the time you get done doing this preliminary reading you’ll feel like the book your about to read is an old friend.
Let others lead the way …

Before you dive into the book contents proper go and read all the reviews you can get your hands on (or that you can stand if there are just too many). You want to get a sense of what others think about the book and what it has to offer to set the proper context for you to extract the most from the book you’re about to read. Reviews … especially those with spoilers, lists and those pros and cons outlines that have become so popular in some places … are hugely helpful in gaining a sense of the material you’re about to delve into yourself. If you’re lucky you’ll come across some reviews that will compare the book you’re about to read with others in it’s genre and/or others by the same author … this will place the book in deep context for you. If you are up to it take this one step further and do an online search for the book and the author and see what you can find out about them from whatever sources show up, e.g.: Wikipedia. When you read reviews and such compare them to one another to see where the commonalities and contrasts are between the comments. Armed in this way you’ll free up enormous amounts of cognitive energy worrying about “getting it” that will become available to you to decide what you agree and disagree with yourself, parsing out the meaning from your own point of view and most significantly determining if you want to make the investment to finish it once you’ve begun it (or possibly even before that …).
Make it your own …

In my opinion this may be the most important step of them all. WHILE YOU’RE READING A BOOK MARK IT UP! Literally put your notes about the book in the book next to the information you’ve read that inspired your own thinking. Keeping your books pristine is perfect if you’re a lending library, but as a private owner make the books you own your own … MARK THEM UP!!! If you come across something you want to get back to again fold the corner of the page … I love my dogeared books. If you see something worth remembering highlight it. If you have a way of making sense of something the author writes other than via their words feel free to write your own words next to theirs. If you are reminded of something from somewhere else put it in the margin as a reference to what you’ve just read. You’ll really feel like you own the book when you’ve contributed a substantial amount of writing to the author’s in the margins.

NOTE: FWIW I love e-book readers for this reason, e.g.: Kindle, Nook, Kobo … because they let me mark up by books with ease. I highlight, I add notes … I can source external information while I’m reading via hyperlinks and built in tools like dictionaries hearing the pronunciation of words that might be unfamiliar to me. I can even access my highlights and notes separate from the book itself with some readers, e.g.: Kindle, and if I want to print them out as a study file, I may even have the facility to share my highlights and notes with others, or engage in discussions around the book in social forums supported by the e-book technology, e.g.: Kobo VOX social reading technology.
“Do Over!”

This one is simple and easy … but you have to make the commitment to do it. Once you’ve read the book AND MARKED IT UP go back and first re-read your highlights and notes. Then add to them as you see fit. As you’re doing that copy your notes out to a suitable medium, e.g.: index cards, a digital notebook (Evernote is my current favorite for this) … whatever, as long as you can sort the information into categories (or tag it in a digital medium to access via search later on). You want to be able to re-access your information at a moments notice later on without re-reading the entire book. If you do this diligently you’ll find that in a short period of time you’ll have a true scholars cabinet of notes you can use for any number of purposes, e.g.: research, writing, preparing for a speech … refreshing your memory while your reading another book … winning arguments … . Finally, after about three weeks of letting the book sit, re-read it quickly again, even just scanning it and allowing yourself the freedom to only read word for word those sections that catch your attention. After you do this the contents of the book will be yours to keep.
Extending the journey …

Here’s where it begins to get really interesting …

After you finish the book that was “above your punching weight” when you began you’ll be ready to read another book or two of the same, or even a higher level, within that category. This is a “trick” that every serious independent learner I know uses. They literally use the first book in a category to prepare themselves for further reading, research and study. Depending on their intention, e.g.: familiarity with a topic or mastery of the topic, they take the journey as far as they need/want to … but I don’t know anyone, including yours truly, who stops at the first book and leaves it there if they care about the topic at all. Most independent scholars I know and virtually every expert I can think of, buy many, many books within a topical area of interest, often all at the same time, amassing a large collection of books that will give them a depth of knowledge almost equal to the authors who wrote the books they’re reading. However, I’ll keep it simple … make a commitment to read at least one additional book the author recommends or uses as a primary source (they will share this information in their bibliography, and sometimes in the text as well).
OUTPUT!!!

Okay, now you’ve done the requisite homework and you’re ready to step beyond the learning phase to the action phase. Find some way to apply the material from the books you read as soon as possible after you read them. If you can use the material personally or professionally do that, if you can join in a conversation or dialogue about the material do that, if you can write about the book and what you got from it do that (you can always write a review in one of the online bookstores or review sites), if you want write a blog post about the book and it’s contents.Regardless of how you take the words from the page and make them real find a way … do something applied with the contents beyond “having read the book” and you’ll be building one of the most powerful habits you can possibly have as an independent learner and scholar. The purpose of all this work you’ve put in is for you to have a better life … the real magic is becoming truly free of the habituated idea that you have to learn from teachers or experts … and making the information practical, pragmatic and/or applicable in your life will make it all worthwhile.

When you’ve taken your first book and applied these seven steps of the “Secret Code” I’ve outlined above you’ll never be outclassed or out punched when it comes to learning again …

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, New Jersey

The Cost of Being an Information Junkie

by Joseph Riggio · Apr 10, 2012

“Hello I’m Joseph and I’m an Information Junkie …”

It’s an interesting thing being addicted to information … especially as an information producer.

Let me back up for a moment, and then I’ll get to my point …

The Life of an Information Junkie …

An information junkie consumes and collects information like an alcoholic consumes and collects alcohol. While the cost to one’s liver may be less the cost to one’s pocket may not. This is especially true in today’s digital environment … and compounded by the advent of Internet purchasing.

First, of all there are so many ways to collect information … text, audio, video, live events, recorded events … you name it, it’s out there!

Second, it’s all viable and much of it is valuable … if you use a bit of discretion on your sources and your selections.

Third, all of it takes time and energy to consume, much of it has a cost to consume or collect … and some of it demands the commitment of a curator to keep.

It’s the third category that creates the quandary for me … the time, energy, money and space commitments.

I get two huge benefits from my addiction … 1) I gain valuable information and sometimes valuable insight, and 2) I get tremendous entertainment value from just about all of it.

However … those benefits come with a cost as I’ve pointed out … and keeping the cost in line with the benefit has only come to me slowly.

I’ve been a voracious reader for many, many years … several hundred books a year. Plus I read many magazines, an occasional newspaper (usually only when I’m traveling these days) and innumerable white papers, journals and professional articles … and then there’s the on-line forum, where not only am I reading and gathering … I’m also responding.

My argument (mostly to myself) is that I “need” to consume information at this rate and level to keep up. HECK, I’m an information creator and provider. I make my living off of selling information in the form of expertise and experience (i.e.: some of my use of information is to create experiential interactions that provide enormous value beyond the intellectual to my clients).

To some extent … even a great extent … that’s true; I need to consume more than the average person a great deal of information to keep up and move forward.

However, fessing up to the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth … I’ve got to say I go beyond what I need, way into what I want.

The whole truth is that I love information!

For me, and other information junkies, information is as alive as any growing, breathing, moving thing …

I follow information the way a tracker would follow quarry. I recognize that information lives historically in what has been done and in the future as well in what hasn’t been done yet. The excitement is in picking up the trail …

That’s in part why I have a personal library of over 10,000 books (heck … I’m approaching 100o in just my Kindle collection!).

I have dozens of magazine subscriptions … most of which are digital these days (keeping the trees alive has come to mean something to me).

I have on-line subscriptions to more than a dozen information-based services, e.g.: HighBeam Research, DeepDyve …

I have on-line or physical subscriptions to the major professional journals I read regularly (mostly neuroscience or cognitive science these days, but I keep a few subscriptions to philosophy and psychology journals going t00).

I participate in a number of on-line forums for professionals in my areas of interest …

And, of course I publish and present my ideas regularly as well …

It’s enough to keep me busy … but it’s because of the way all the information interconnects for me that I keep doing it.

THINK … Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code.

It’s kind of like being an information detective … and you need the source material to uncover and follow the clues (in this case you might want to think … Gil Grissom, in CSI Las Vegas).

Inside the Lair of an Information Junkie …

What you’re going to find inside the lair of an information junkie is … stuff, lots and lots of stuff, starting with books. You’ll find tons of books depending on the range of the junkies habit … i.e.: is it highly focused or widely spread (I’m a widely spread sort … very eclectic in my interests).

You’ll also likely find paper … lots of it. From magazines and journals, to newspapers and printouts. There could be piles of the stuff, or it could be neatly organized and put away. In the case of a techno-nerd junkie you may find it scanned and digitized on a NAS system (Network Access Storage System) many terabytes deep.

In my case you’d also find old cassette tapes from recordings I made as well as recorded material I purchased. CDs, DVDs and BlueRay discs. You’d find as much or more of the same material in digital form on my own NAS systems (yes plural). Then if you looked a bit further you’d see that I’m still housing some old VHS tapes as well.

And … PAPER … lot’s and lots of paper. You’d find twenty years of my own journals. Manuals I bought from other trainers and information producers. Magazines and journals I’m keeping with articles that have some significance to me. And … ten times the paper I’m currently housing in digital formats.

It’s like housing and caring for another child!

But the defining factor is that this “collection” is living for me. I actually know what information I have (somewhere) … and a sense of it’s value to me as well.

I like knowing it’s there, secreted away in some dusty corner of my place, waiting for me to snatch it out of retirement when the mood strikes me … or I’m on a hunt where that specific piece of information or reference will be the key to unlock the secrets I’m searching.

I remember visiting with Irving Dardik, the discoverer of the Super Wave theory, and how he had rooms full of paper that were his version of a filing cabinet. Now there’s an information junkie for you!

Getting to the Point … Collectors and Experts

Okay, you may be getting a visceral sense of the commitment to information gathering, consuming and collecting that a true junkie has by now, or maybe not … but let’s move on with whatever you’ve gotten.

My point is actually two-fold:

A) Information can and does hold great value … in the right hands and when it’s properly used.

B) No amount of information will substitute for the real thing … i.e.: EXPERIENCE!

It’s that last bit that differentiates the pure collectors from the experts. Let’s keep it really simple, shall we?

Experts use the information they gather, consume and collect!

Yes, experts are no less information junkies than their brethren, the collectors, but they take things a step further … the use what they’ve collected.

This is a huge distinction … and what I’m about to say will mark me as a heretic among some information producers …

If you are not using the information you collect …
then it has no more value to you then:

1) the entertainment value it’s provided you with … or,
2) what you can sell the media you’ve collected for in an open market.

I know many, many people who collect information with “good intention” … but then never get around to even opening the package. I know many people who subscribe to magazine and on-line information sources that never even check out the contents. I know many, many people who have collections of information many, many layers deep and widely varied that they’ve never even looked at … and it’s all useless to them in that way.

The difference that makes the difference is that experts know how to get to and use the information they have access to and own.

They begin by recognized the rank scale order of value to them, i.e.: how much a given piece of information is worth to them at this time. They can quickly scan information and determine its real-time value to them. Then based on how valuable that information is to them in this moment, they decide where to put in on a hierarchy of urgency, and prioritize their consumption along that hierarchy.

There are largely two factors that impact the hierarchy and prioritization of information consumption … usefulness and entertainment value.

Experts also understand how to extract the most value with the least resource consumption. For example I know many experts who can glance at an article and decide what if any value it has for them, go directly to the part that has value and discard the rest … they feel no great commitment or urgency to “read it cover to cover.” This applies to books, magazines, papers, on-line material … whatever. They know how to maximize their information gathering and consumption efforts.

The experts also understand where to get information and how to get to it. They have “private” techniques unique to them that they use in their information gathering exploits. It may be a deep facility with using Internet searches. It may be a tremendous familiarity with libraries and their contents. It may be an overarching awareness of what the primary and best sources for the most current and useful information out there is today. Whatever their personal approach they have maximized its effectiveness.

Another “trick” of the experts is that invariably they have built up “information networks” … people they can count on to guide them to what they need or want with high efficiency.

The networks of information contacts that experts develop may be as valuable, or more valuable, then any information they themselves possess. They are aware of the “go-to” sources in the areas where they do their primary hunting … and know where the big game hides. Very seldom do the experts come back empty handed when they are working at this level.

Putting It All Together … What’s This Mean to You?

Well my final suggesting to you as a verifiable information junkie is this …

If you ain’t gonna use it …
save your time, energy, money and space …
don’t get it … pass it by.

This goes for all the information I produce as well of course.

You only have so many personal resources … and for my two cents your time and energy are among the most precious … conserve them and use them well. The same goes for money and space … use them well.

If you have the need and/or desire … and you will consume the information you gather … by all means go for it.

If it’s just going to sit there … let it go. 99% of the time, by the time you get to it there will be better information out there to gather and consume (unless you are working on Renaissance literature hermetic research).

However, if you will get it … consume it … and use it don’t wait … go for it now!

Now my final caveat … there is no substitute for information, just like there is no substitute for experience. When you become an “expert” … knowing what you want and need … where to go and who to go to to get it … and you consume and use it … you’re life will be dramatically improved in unimaginable ways.

Your Life Story – Coming Full Circle

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 28, 2012

Your Life Story and Self-Leadership … Uncovering the Path to the Results and Outcomes You Really Want

I’ve been at something for the last twenty five years or so that I think is wonderful … a model that’s literally life changing.

For twenty of those twenty five years I’ve been engaged in spreading the word formally in terms of my professional pursuits and passions. Yet I’ve remain troubled by how challenging it has been for people to catch the essential, profound value in their Life Story without struggling through trying to understand it first. For quite some time it’s been clear to me what the challenge has been, but that hadn’t necessarily made it any clearer regarding what to do about it.

But, I’ve begun to get it – I think …

Let me jump ahead for a moment, and then I’ll step back to basics.

The advantage of the model is that once you have internalized it and own it everything in your life becomes easier, if not easy.

Your relationships become more alive; i.e.: instead of dealing with a sense of distance and aloneness that can be present in even the most intimate relationships there is a continual sense of being connected, instead of dealing with conflict there is a growing sense of harmony and good will, instead of wondering where the initial spark went in your relationships there is a renewed kindling of the energy that sustains relationships and keeps them sparkling.
You pursue your passions and live your purpose; you naturally uncover what fascinates you and pulls you forward into your own life, rather than chasing some external definition of success you begin building momentum towards experiencing intense satisfaction, you begin to measure success by your contributions and the rewards associated with creating rather than consuming
You experience the wealth of pervasive well being; you begin to express a renewed sense of self esteem, you gain confidence in yourself and your ability to act, you release the limitations that hold you back, you know without question what it is to act in your own self interest in a way that doesn’t impose your wants and needs on others, you live every day to the fullest, you are happy without needing a reason to be or doing anything about it
Your performances become extraordinary; you make high-quality decisions without hesitation or doubt, you take action immediately in the direction where you intend to produce results, you are able to evaluate the results you are getting and reset without attachment to limiting beliefs or dogma, you gain a clarity that makes situations and interactions transparent to you, it becomes obvious to you what to be doing next without worry or concern about what you don’t know or what will happen beyond what to be doing in this moment

When most people read this list of bullet points they typically think that it sounds too good to be true … then they think, “What if my life could really be that way?”

What I can tell you is that I began learning about living within and from this model formally in the late 1980s. Before then I’d read many books about various spiritual and philosophic traditions that suggested a life that included the kinds of things I’ve written about above, but failed to experience any of it fully. However, after becoming immersed in the essence of the model I’m referring to as I apprenticed with my mentor Roye Fraser it become evident what I’d missed and what was missing from all the various studying I had done in the past.

Of course the answer was simple, it always is …

But simple isn’t necessarily easy!

Now I’m not going to bore you with twenty five years of learning that it took me to get to the point I’m at in my life today. I can sum up where I am in my life today by offering you this …

My life today IS simple … and living it IS easy, because I got “IT” … “the one trick.”

In the interest of full disclosure it took me a good seven years to get “IT” – the one trick I called out above. Yes – it was a long time, but the journey was enticing, engaging and exciting all the way. There were moments of pure wonder and joy along the way. There were challenges as well, but with a sense that they were just steps on the path. What I started out looking for and thinking I would be pursuing and gaining turned out to be utterly wrong. What I found turned out to be unexpected and delightful … and as I approached the end of that phase on my journey I realized that I’d gained mastery of a body of knowledge and skills, and just as importantly I’d realized more than I’d hoped for regarding the life I found myself living.

Then I went from maintaining my primary focus on being an apprentice to stepping beyond learning to living the life of a journeyman.

In this new phase of my life as a journeyman an entirely new set of challenges confronted me …

Again, in the interest of respecting your time I won’t go into details. Where I found myself most limited was in conveying the essential life changing concept that I had internalized and was operating from in an ongoing way easily to others. I didn’t want others to struggle for seven years to get “IT.” This became my new question, i.e.: how to convey this simple idea and make it easy for others to *incorporate.

(Incorporate Incor”po*rate, a. [L. incorporatus, p. p. of incorporare to incorporate; pref. in- in + corporare to make into a body. See Corporate.] Corporate; incorporated; made one body, or united in one body; associated; mixed together; combined; embodied. [1913 Webster])

Facing the Dilemma

It took me many years to figure out what the dilemma was … i.e.: making something that was essentially simple easy. The dilemma was that I had been taught it technically so that I could eventually master the form and replicate it with others.

Facilitating the model is NOT the same thing as living the model! Wow, what a concept!!!

While my knowledge and skills were significant after a formal seven year apprenticeship at the knee of the master … the ability to translate what I now knew and could do was based in a technical model, Oy! … that made it so much more complex than necessary. So I went back to the drawing board (architect speak, old habits die hard as they say …).

For the next ten years I was consistently refining and revising the way I worked with and presented the essential model, which by now I had named the MythoSelf Process. During this decade of refinement I realized a few things and had to build an integrated set of tools for the work I was now doing with clients, a toolset I called Soma-Semantics, referring to the singularity of the body-mind experience and the way that’s represented. The body is experienced and expressed somatically, and the mind is experienced and expressed semantically. Anyone wanting to do the work I was now doing would have to master the knowledge and skills to read the signals and interact effectively at both the somatic and semantic levels. This part of what I do had to remain technical, but to get the outcome I intended … to make the simple, easy … all the rest need to become as non-technical as possible.

The question that remained was, “How?” … how do I make the simple, easy?

I needed a simple structure that was completely non-technical if possible … and then I found it right there under my nose! For years I had been calling the work I was doing the MythoSelf Process, in part based on the influence of Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology. I understood the nature of mythological form, and the way we are neurologically organized to respond to it. I got how we encapsulate our experience into autobiographical narratives that become for us our Life Story, the all and everything we believe to be what is, how things are and reality itself. Our stories are more real to us than the sensory evidence we experience … dang it, there it was right in front of me!!!

Now I had it … a way to make the simple easy! K.I.S.S.

Keep it simple stories! That was the key … it was already all there laid out in the work I was already doing for the past twenty years! The stories are the key, I already knew that. Specifically, the stories that people tell themselves and others are for them the reality they live – change your story and you change your life. What remained was to find the way to move someone from the story they were currently living from to a new and more powerful story … the essential Life Story that was theirs and theirs alone.

The essence of what I’d learned from Roye, in addition to a massive set of powerful changework skills, was how to help someone shift from what he called “the inhibitory state” to “the excitatory state.” One of his ways of referring to the excitatory state was as the Ready State, a state from which anything is possible and you are ready to act. Using the model and skills I’d learned working with Roye that became easy, i.e.: getting someone to the Ready State. When they were working with me it was even easy for them as well. The challenges was stabilizing it over time.

When someone experiences the Ready State they are blown away … literally in that moment their life changes completely. There is no sense of limitation or inhibition. There are no problems. Opportunities seem abundant and the way forward becomes clear. A sense of pervasive well being radiates through you and from you. Everything and anything seems possible from the Ready State, and yet there is no sense of stress or urgency surrounding what needs to be done, or what you want to be doing.

Over time I began referring to the pattern that people operated from when they had accessed and were living from the Ready State as their Success Blueprint. This resonated for many people and it made what could be a complex idea simpler and more accessible. That was a start …

The challenge that still remained however was that it took people days, weeks, months or even years to get “IT” sometimes. There are so many potential inhibitions to address if you think you are supposed to be living from some kind of extraordinary, superhuman state … whether you call it the Ready State, or Being At Your Best (as some folks still inaccurately like to refer to this state of being) … enlightened or whatever. Believing that there’s anything you need to change about who you are so that you can live a life worth living, and accomplish the things you desire, isn’t only foolish it’s foolhardy.

Thinking you first need to become someone other than who you are right now, right here in this moment without changing a thing about yourself is foolhardy because A) it cannot get you what you want (you can’t have to be someone else before you begin because using that logic you can never begin), and B) the cost is just too damn high (you will spend years chastising yourself for what you are not, for what you haven’t accomplished, for all your faults … and then you’ll blame others for being in collusion with you in your faults, eventually you’ll even pay the price of ill-health and emotional distress or complete breakdown).

The evidence of the cost of holding a negative self image has been mounting for years. The sources of perennial wisdom have touted it for millenia, and now medical science is catching up and confirming the high cost on our physical well-being. As we continue to unfold how human neuropsychology works we are finding out that a negative self image literally inhibits us from functioning fully.

It is essential to shift our perceptions, beginning with our self image, if we intend to achieve anything like the levels of health, well-being and elite performance we’re capable of … and the fundamental key to making this shift is held in our Life Story.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

How To Shift Your Life Story

This part of this posting could be a book unto itself … but I’ll skip over all the parts about how you get your Life Story, how it’s initially imposed upon you, how you compromise the essential and unique story that is your own, how you get stuck in believing your less and less capable than you are, how you begin pursing a path that has nothing to do with who you are, how you learn to measure yourself by arbitrary and external markers of success. (If you want to read all about that, and the way out from under it too, get my new book is coming out next month … “The State of Perfection: Your Hidden Code to Unleashing Personal Mastery”)

I’ll jump right to what I found out when I resolved the dilemma of making the simple, easy.

There are really two parts to this, i.e.: making the simple, easy.

The first part has to do with how to do it. I’ve already begun to make it clear that the key is in the stories we tell that are collectively our Life Story. Your Life Story is the wholeform gestalt worldview you possess, i.e.: how you see yourself and the world, including people you interact with … what all that means to you.

You are limited in what you perceive by your Life Story, and from what gets through you create meaning.
The meaning you create … about yourself, about the world, about others … determines what you will do, i.e.: your behaviors that form your acts.
These acts are what create the results and outcomes you produce in the world, and these become the life you live.
Your experience of the life you live, i.e.: the results and outcomes you produce by your acts, starts the cycle all over again feeding your perception and sustaining your Life Story.

The recursive loop that follows from your Life Story is a powerful mechanism keeping you in the life you are living. If you want to have different experiences in any part of your life, or your life overall you have to begin with your Life Story.

The second part has to do with the primary distinction I learned working with Roye, i.e.: the shift from the inhibitory bias to the excitatory bias. This distinction is remarkably precise, but for most people confusing or even meaningless. Before someone can make meaning of what I mean when I say, “Shifting from the inhibitory bias to the excitatory bias.” they need to be educated in the terminology I’m using.

Technical terminology, or jargon, makes something that’s essentially simple and potentially easy, unnecessarily challenging.

The way out of that conundrum of jargon is finding the way to express the essential concept in common terms. That was the breakthrough I needed!

Let me start again with the essential concept of shift the Life Story from an inhibitory bias to an excitatory bias. Instead of getting lost in what that means or might mean think of it this way …

You can either be in an open frame of mind or a closed frame of mind.

In an open frame of mind you are seeking information and withholding judgement until you have all the evidence you need to reach a reasonable and useful conclusion about what to be doing, if anything needs to be done at all. This applies to information about people, places, things, activities and even information itself. Rather than working from pre-existing frameworks and old evidence to generate meaning in the moment, you remain open to what is actually happening and create meaning on a situation by situation basis, allowing yourself to update the story you are acting on in real time.

This is a really powerful way to move through the world. Imagine how different your relationships would be if you literally dropped all your preconceptions and began tracking for the evidence about who someone is and how they are being in real time. For instance, how would your relationships be different if you didn’t blame others, hold them responsible for your experience, or place a burden of your expectations on them? This doesn’t mean that you don’t hold people accountable for their actions, you do … and at a level that’s probably higher than you ever have before. What it does mean is that you don’t burden them with the past and you allow them to move forward with you. It also gives you the personal freedom to exit from relationships or interactions that don’t work for you without needing to blame others or have explanations beyond what’s not working, i.e.: you don’t need for them to be bad so you can be good.

Now you can extend the idea of operating with an open frame of mind to any other consideration as well. In the work I do with business and organizational clients teaching them to operate with this kind of clear thinking provokes creativity and a remarkable focus on getting results. There is no wasted energy on the ordinary “people problems” that often interfere with getting the outcomes everyone claims to want. Entire groups or people begin to self-organize to create extraordinary outcomes. And you can begin to play with where else and how else operating with an open frame of mind would show up in your life.

The excitatory bias is a reference to the underlying neurological state that someone has when they are in an open frame of mind, but its not necessary to understand the neurology to live from this powerful position yourself. What is important is learning to recognize how to lead yourself to an open frame of mind when and where you need and want to get results and outcomes that are meaningful for you. This has become the basis of the work I do and the way I now do it with clients, individually … in groups … and in organizations.

What shifted most significantly from the way I was working ten years ago to today has been the level of non-technical, conversational process I now use. What I’ve found has been that there’s no need whatsoever for the process to be technical in any way whatsoever … unless I’m engaged in teaching others to facilitate the process, and even that has become far less technical in the way I approach it today.

Literally the best way is the most conversational way in my opinion. I’m finding that the old ways, work the best. Like sitting around the fire, sharing stories, after a long day with family and friends … the process I now work from allows my clients to experience the shift they want without even necessarily knowing how or what has happened, but knowing without question that something dramatic has occurred by the results and outcomes they get, and the way life has become for them.

What I’ve found over these many years of pursing what I call my passion and purpose is that to make something simple is only the first step, despite the enormity of that step. Making the simple, easy can be another thing entirely. In my case this quest has been more than two decades long to date … and worth every minute. What I’ve learned in these years is that what I thought of as mastery before is only the beginning in many ways … making the simple, easy is worthy of a lifetime’s investment.

It’s often amazing to me how life is so much like a wheel coming full circle …

Mentoring, Magical Thinking & Myth

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 26, 2012

The Danger of Magical Thinking In The Hands Of Would-Be Mentors Cannot Be Overemphasized If Your Serious About Your Success!

Every couple of days I drop my my Facebook page to see who’s posted what – and today what came up for me is the foolishness of magical thinking, especially when it’s presented by someone who’s out there mentoring people.

Today I began writing a long response to someone on Facebook who is a well known trainer running mentoring programs and offering mentoring to individuals about magical thinking based on a post he put up. I decided after about three minutes of writing to delete it not to embarrass a colleague in a public forum, however the bitter taste of his folly still lingers and I need to spit it out.

While I don’t spend hours a day doing “social media” there are a couple of groups there I participate in on occasion. Most of these are about NLP, hypnosis, changework, performance or transformation … and posting in the last category often get my goat, because they so often wander into the land of magical thinking.

However, before you think this is going to be a posting about Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social networking site in the interest of full disclosure you need to know I’m far from being the “social networking maven.” Despite my familiarity and knowledge of the medium, it’s just too time consuming to be everywhere all the time – and make no mistake about it that’s what it takes to be a social networking maven … huge commitments of time, energy and effort.

I’m reminded of my own rejoinder to folks about how to create outstanding results where you want them …

“Where you put your attention, is where you’ll get your results.”

This in turn reminds me of another idea a colleague and friend of mine, Matt Furey, first introducted me to:

The Law of Practice

“The Law of Practice” is Matt’s companion to the “Law of Attraction” that makes a magical idea practical IMO.If you want to get more of how Matt thinks about this I recommend his book, “Expect to Win, Hate to Lose” it’s incredibly inspiring, informational and entertaining as hell too, if you haven’t read it yet, go and buy it now.

I’ve been on about the idea of putting your attention where you want your results for over ten years now. To me this is akin to the law of practice at an attentional level, i.e.: keeping your focus where you want to see the results and outcomes of your life happening. Matt’s idea of The Law of Practice takes this another step forward IMO.

To sum up Matt’s idea briefly it’s that while there are a ton of people who are talking about The Law of Attraction, and the The Secret that it supposedly holds, almost no one is revealing that you only get your results when you add in The Law of Practice, i.e.: you have to take action. The practice Matt refers to is two-fold, practice as in the continual refinement and honing of your knowledge and skills, and practice as in taking continual action as in a disciplined way of acting in the world. I couldn’t agree with Matt more on this one … I think he’s not only right on, but without The Law of Practice, The Law of Attraction isn’t only ineffective, it’s downright dangerous!

But I’m probably a bit ahead of myself here … so I’ll slow down a bit and take it step-by-step with you.

Magical Thinking:

Magical thinking often goes something like this …

“In the beginning there was a unified singularity smaller than a grape. Then something shifted in that singularity – badda bing, badda boom – and the Universe as we know it began at what is now known as the Big Bang!

From that single event and that grape sized mass all of the known Universe emerged, speeding away from the place where it all began at incredible speeds. First the debris from the Big Bang began to collect in clouds, and under the force of gravity those clouds began to collect and become stars. Because those stars where packed in a space much smaller than the Universe occupies today they collided and from those collisions new stars were born, some smaller and some larger … and those stars spawned other forms of matter … denser than the matter of stars. From this more dense matter planets, moons, asteroids, comets … were formed as well.

Over billions of years as the Universe expanded it cooled. Some of the stars collected systems of denser matter around them by the force of their enormous gravitational field. These became solar systems, and in even larger collections of stars and solar systems loosely knitted together by forces both known and unknown, galaxies formed as well. Yet everything there ever was and ever will be was contained in that single grape-sized mass at the beginning. Here on Earth some of that matter spawned life, and again over more billions of years life evolved to become humankind, made of the same stuff as the stars. So you can say you are made of stardust … and that would be accurate.

Well we also know that at the quantum level all matter is connected. When you split an atom and observe the separate particles racing away from one another you can measure their spin as positive or negative, a clockwise or counter-clockwise spin. However, what’s amazing is that when you act on one particle and change it’s spin by forcing it to pass through a strong magnetic field the other particle that was paired with it instantly changes its spin as well. Despite begin separated by vast distances, the two particles remain entangled with one another energetically.

Since we are made of the same stuff that the particles are made of then it is reasonable to acknowledge that once we’ve connected with someone we remain energetically entangled with them as well. This is the miracle of quantum entanglement and energy. It’s what the mystics have said throughout the ages and now science is giving us proof that they were right all along. In fact when we look at the world at a quantum level we realize there’s nothing there, literally … there’s just potentiality until we observe it, at which point the potential becomes manifest depending on what we’re looking for in it.

The mystics and sages have been telling us this as well, that the entire Universe is a projection of our consciousness … that we create reality with our minds. Before we project our consciousness into the Universe it’s just random potentially, and only when we do does it become manifest and real. We have the potential to create our realities at the quantum level by learning to project our consciousness in specific and concentrated ways to manifest anything we desire. This is the essence of The Law of Attraction that the mystics and the sages have known all along …”

Of course I could make the story longer and more complex, but that covers at least the basics … and a good hypnotic tale it is too! It presumes a hermetic, tautological reality. It uses logical chaining and cognitive inertia to pull the reader/listener along. It presents seemingly convincing science to support the argument being made. It’s emotionally compelling, i.e.: most people want to believe it. These are all sound hypnotic storytelling techniques, and there are more, but that’s not what the point of this post is about today – let’s leave it at saying that to/for an untrained, non-critical reader this is very believable story on the surface.

The problem with this story and all others like it is that it’s pure bunk wrapped up in pseudo-scientific speak. Sure some of the facts are true enough based on our current state of cosmological understanding, e.g. the Big Bang theory, basic quantum physics ideas like entanglement … but they are presented out of context and used to support a spurious argument at best.

The most significant aspect of this kind of telling is that it satisfies our G-d quest, i.e.: the desire to have the mysteries of the Universe explained. This may or may not be a result of a G-d gene that programs us to seek a metaphysical answer to the realities of the Universe that we confront as humans, but regardless of the cause the quest persistently remains a part of our longing. I refer to this as an ontological longing, a desire to know what and who we are … and to fit that into an understanding of our place in the Cosmos.

However as soon as we begin to apply even the most basic scientific analysis to the “science” used in magical thinking it begins to fall apart rapidly. Here are two simple examples …

Claim: “We are made of stardust.”

Analysis: Yes, we are formed of the same atomic and sub-atomic particles at the physical level as stars. However stars are made up of elements all much lighter than iron when they are living and active. As soon as iron begins to form in stars as a result of the process of nuclear fission occurring within them, they begin to rapidly collapse, die off and go nova. The physical world we live in, are constructed from and contain within us, is comprised of elements much denser than iron that are stable and required for life as we know it in human terms. No star could survive in a “human condition.”

Claim: “We are energetically entangled.”

Analysis: Even particles that display quantum entanglement show no evidence of being entangled energetically. There is no transfer of energy that is discernible, nor is there any time that can be discerned for this transfer of energy to occur in the instantaneous response of the entangled particles to the state change in the other. This can only be accounted for as informational, not energetic. The brilliant quantum physicist, David Bohm, makes this clear in his seminal work, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” about the role of information at the quantum level and the hidden variables required to create a satisfactory explanation of quantum behavior at a macroscopic level. David Bohm uses the representation of a holographic universe to make sense of the role of information as enfolded or unfolded in physical reality, a much better way to explain entanglement than energetically.

Now here’s the major problem with all of this … people are pre-disposed to believing magical thinking, they want to believe it and they will believe it despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary – in matters where the evidence matters. For instance there is no escaping that we are a superstitious species, most likely the only superstitious species that ever evolved on the planet. Yet most people can discern the difference from superstition and what’s real, e.g.: breaking a mirror is not really going to create a seven-year bad luck streak. But when presented with magical thinking, the same impulse that gives rise to superstition, i.e.: spurious cause-and-effect linkages, rushes up and takes over … because, unlike with much superstition, the suggested result is so desirable in so many instances of magical thinking.

When someone who is a trusted source, e.g.: a mentor, is added into the mix, the potential for being misled by magical thinking mantras becomes wildly exaggerated. There are thousands of people who have been under the sway of husksters selling false belief to the tune of millions or maybe even billions of dollars fueling this fire of misinformation.

Magical thinking satisfies the ontological longing in the same way meth-amphetamine releases the rush of dopamine that produces extraordinary sensations of satisfaction and pleasure in the brains of addicts.

In the world of modernity or post-modernity, where as Nietzsche put it “G-d is dead.” (German: “Gott isht tot.”), there is a innate compulsion to experience the satisfaction of having the answers to unanswerable mysteries of the Cosmos, the understanding that comes with having those answers and the sense of profound relief and pleasure at having something to look to for the explanation that satisfies our ontological longings and desire … and magical thinking fulfills that desire brilliantly.

Myth, Mythos and the Mythosphere

In the work I do mythological form plays an extremely important role, allowing me perceive, access and modify the narratives that my clients are operating from, both individual and organizational clients. I normally refer to this as the semantic structure, meaning the entire representational form of the gestalt worldview of the client. This is how the client perceives, represents and relates to what they think of as “real” or “reality” in a conscious, i.e.: representational, way.

The reason I refer to it as mythological has to do with the structure of conscious, representational awareness. The renowned comparative mythological scholar, Joseph Campbell, gave a form to the structure of mythology when he published his seminal work, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.” Rather than present myths as stories that were told, he used those stories to unveil the structure beneath them. This structure is form of what he referred to as “becoming human” … the journey from birth and immaturity to adulthood and maturity. Within that journey he speaks of the phases of human experience moving from dependence, to independence, to interdependence – thus becoming fully human. What’s interesting of course is that not everyone becomes fully human according to this model, with some people never moving beyond dependence to independence, and many people finding themselves stuck at independence, and others stuck in the transitions between phases, e.g.: dependence-independence or independence-interdependence.

The relative position – from dependence, to independence, to interdependence – that someone occupies within the structure of the “Hero’s Journey” is revealed in the Life Story they hold and operate from in their life.

The autobiographical narrative is held and told with very unique and specific characteristics, depending on where a person resides in their journey to becoming fully human. The story someone is living is their gestalt worldview, and one way it can be interpreted is using the filter of Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” model leading from dependence to interdependence. Along the trajectory of this journey the desire to satisfy the ontological yearning to know who we are is encapsulated in the narrative that is a person’s Life Story in any given moment. To what extent the ontological yearning is satisfied will be revealed by the structure of the story someone holds, i.e.: their gestalt worldview in terms of their autobiographical narrative.

The advantage of using mythological structure to analyze the autobiographical narrative someone reveals in the way they express their Life Story is that it offers clues about what to be doing to help them move along the trajectory to becoming fully human as Campbell put it, and also to relieve the pressure of the ontological longing. Unlike magical thinking, mythological form is fully vetted over many millennia of human history. Rather than working with magical thoughts that are perceived to be representative of extant reality, mythology treats the stories we hold as metaphorical. The distinction that myths suggest possibilities and pathways versus absolute truths or cosmic laws of some kind is overwhelmingly significant from the point of view of the mentoring process. Mythology, again according to Joseph Campbell, should be treated as connotative rather than denotative.

In the mentor’s role using mythological form creates access to the autobiographical narrative … the gestalt worldview … and an elegant means of shifting it to a more mature and useful position. This is the entry point to creating transformational change at the conscious level of what I’ve referred to as representational reality … the way we perceive the world to be, and the way we represent it to ourselves and others. This is the structure we use to make sense of the world. Changing the structure of the autobiographical narrative changes what things mean to us, and how we experience the events of our lives. However the most powerful aspect of working mythologically is that it takes the control out of the hands of the mentor and gives back the control to the client. This distinguishes working mythologically from magical thinking in a radical way … rather than being subject to the whims and winds of the Universe, the individual who possess mythological knowledge takes control of their life.

Maybe this is most clearly presented in Joseph Campbell’s stated four functions of mythology:

1) To explain the mystery and awe of the Cosmos

2) To present the cosmology of the times according to the latest scientific and technological understanding of the times

3) To inculcate and teach the social mores and rules of the culture and society

4) To reveal the path of self-knowledge to uncover one’s essential identity, relieving the ontological yearning to know oneself

The wonder is that when working mythologically a mentor can walk with a client sharing all four of these steps on their journey to becoming fully human.

While not every mentor is mythologically trained or capable, those that are stand apart in their ability to expose the magnificence often lying dormant in their clients waiting only for the fresh breath of inspiration to awaken and be realized. Owning and applying this knowledge, skill and ability as a mentor could be called applied wisdom … because after all the first Mentor was Athena in disguise … another role familiar to the best mentors, the trickster provocateur.

P.S. – Check out my newest workshops: Experiencing Transformational Performance, 2 Extraordinary Days with Dr. Joseph Riggio: Experiencing Transformational Performance (http://tiny.cc/hs5rbw)

New Games and New Code …. Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 20, 2012

New Games and New Code …
Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

I’ve struggled with writing this post for more than a few days now.

Let me begin at the beginning and sharing why this has been a difficult post for me to write.

I hate the idea of being a harbinger of doom, and this is not going to be that, but there are some folks who might read it that way anyway because of their existing mindset. So the compromise I’ve decided to make is to let you know up front that this won’t be my regular cheery, inspiring type post, but something more serious and deeper.

WARNING:

If you are prone to being easily pulled to a negative mindset you might want to stop reading here and delete this particular post. What I want to share in it will be disturbing for some to read, especially if they are not prepared to hear some inconvenient truths and deal with them before time runs out on them. Sorry to be so blunt, but the prime directive of my philosophy is truly “First Do No Harm – To One’s Self.”

Okay now that we have that out of the way and you’ve decided to step beyond reasonable caution and my warning about what might be perceived as disturbing news I’ll get to it with you …

YOUR TIME IS LIMITED TO TAKE ACTION ON YOUR BEHALF TO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A NEW WORLD ORDER.

I assume if you’re a regular reader you know that I am a U.S. citizen and reside in the United States. However, I by no means consider myself any less of a citizen of the planet than an American citizen, because anyone who’s thinking clearly realizes that no one can afford to ignore the interconnectedness of the planet on a global level.

I’ll leave the pure science to the scientists (physical, biological and social), but you are probably aware of the news that circulates about things like:

global warming (fact not fiction, only the cause is in debate)
recent significant sun spot activity (the most extreme in recent times)
the dire state of our oceans (depleted fishing stocks, coral reef die off, pollution on a scale that’s visible from space …)
the issue with our energy sources that will likely continue to exacerbate (oil reserves are dwindling, new sources of oil have consequences that we need to seriously consider, e.g.: fracking shale and the chemical pollution, running pipelines across virgin wilderness, oil spills in the oceans and seas …, nuclear power and the containment and waste issues …)
political and economic unrest circulating around the planet (the rising tensions on the mid-East … Israel/Iran, Libya, Syria …, the economic fallout in the E.U. … Greece’s imminent default, Spain and Italy on the verge of serious economic tailspins …)

I could point to more but I’m sure you get the point … i.e.: there’s serious stuff happening. This is not news BTW … there’s always serious stuff happening. The news is that it’s happening on a global scale that’s largely unprecedented in modern times in a world that is inextricably interconnected in a way that has never before been present to my knowledge.

Becoming An Enlightened World Citizen:

This makes it urgent that we all become Enlightened World Citizens. I mean that we commit ourselves to pulling ours heads up out of the sand, waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee regarding the state of the planet, including but not limited to the state of the various societies in which we reside.

The opposite of being an Enlightened World Citizen is believing that “the government” will take care of it … or that there are others more qualified to address the serious issues we are confronting than we are … this is just an artifact of the manipulation of all governments in the modern era, but give me a moment more to explain.

Sometime recently, let’s just say sometime post World War II as a common demarcation point, there has been a shift from governments that hold an obligation to serving the people to governments that serve themselves, i.e.: the people in and running the world government bodies. We’ve seen a worldwide crisis in the political domain to governments declaring that their top priority is the continuation of government (and we can assume that means the folks who are now running it and their direct supporters) and not the fate of the common people that are by default the nation these governments represent. This is in fact a declaration of class warfare, establishing a privileged class of those who hold senior government roles and those who support them, i.e.: big money backers, and the rest of us.

Please make no mistake about this … I do not intend you to read my last sentence above as hyperbole, i.e.: that our governments are declaring a de-facto class warfare on the common citizen, but instead as a statement of obvious fact based on evidence that can be tracked.

Governmental Class Warfare:

For example, here in the United States we saw an abominable piece of legislation passed as a National Health Care Bill putting into law forced purchasing of health care from privately held insurance companies under the duress of fines to be executed by the Internal Revenue Service. This is horrific legislation in my opinion and in the opinion of many clear thinking social and political scholars. The supporters are decrying that it was the best they could do, but better than nothing. I say we’d be better off with nothing, but I’ll leave that be for now.

Let me just address one specific aspect of that bill. As an accommodation to those who are in government, i.e.: the folks who wrote and passed the National Health Care legislation, they are above this law. Pubic “servants”, e.g.: congress men and women, senators and of course the President and his family, will keep their government provided (read: paid for by the people) health care policies, which are A) unavailable to the common citizen and B) superior to just about any privately provided insurance policy that an individual can purchase barring all considerations of cost. This is a de-facto statement of a declaration of a privileged class by my reading of the evidence. As an American citizen I find this to be offensive legislation, and doubly so when it’s sold to the public as serving the underserved.

I can point out more … e.g.: the recent legislation here in the U.S. that makes the time honored laws around haebeus corpus null and void. If you question my veracity of this claim here is a direct quote from the ACLU:

“The Senate voted 38-60 to reject an important amendment [that] would have removed harmful provisions authorizing the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world… We’re disappointed that, despite robust opposition to the harmful detention legislation from virtually the entire national security leadership of the government, the Senate said ‘no’ to the Udall amendment and ‘yes’ to indefinite detention without charge or trial.”¹

If you understand constitutional law in an even cursory way, or care at all about civil liberties as a citizen, this is a terrifying indication of things to come. Habeus corpus is a fundamental point in any conversation about “the rule of law’ that is so often cited by fans of big government initiative. The right of habeus corpus was established in English Common Law in 1679 in the Habeus Corpos Act, and has remained a central tenant of the rule of law in terms of protecting the rights of the citizenry against undue government aggression. Yet here we are after more than three hundred years of accepting this as a fundamental right of law granted to the citizens for protection against their government taking unjust action against them with the repeal of this law virtually overnight.

Maybe the more significant question here is whether this legislation to suspend habeus corpus is even constitutional. This is important to you regardless of where you are reading this from, what your national origin of citizenry is, or in which country you reside. It is not only an issue of U.S. law, but of an indication of the kind of changes to common law that are being worked into systems around the world … often in the guise of national security, national sovereignty or national prosperity. This last, national prosperity, is possibly the most worrying.

In Greece recently we’ve seen an entire population held hostage not even by their own government, but by the actions of an external body who has demanded austerity measures placed on the people of that nation that serve the external actors far more than they serve the people of Greece. If Greece defaults on it’s economic obligations today there is little doubt that the country as a whole would suffer severe economic retribution from it’s lenders. However, this begs the question, “Which is worse, a single default with the repercussions that will entail on a road back to economic stability, or the on-going deprivations of an entire nation to keep feeding the economic masters they come to depend upon?”

Along with our international allies, here in the U.S. we are becoming ever more subject to the dubious imposition of “international law” that our government, specifically the Presidential Administration, seems ever more willing to allow to usurp of rights as a sovereign nation. We are engaged in war acts on behalf of an international request without the due sanctioning of those acts by Congress, who by U.S. Constitutional law hold the sole right to declare and engage in war acts. The only exception to this is direct and imminent threat to the nation of the United States and/or the land itself.

According to United States constitutional law the President can only act with urgency to secure the national interests of the United States, and then still must go to Congress to authorize any continuation of the war acts. Our current President, Barack Obama, has declared himself above this constitutional imperative, denying even the questions posed to him to address this issue. This is evident by example in the recent action taken in Libya by U.S. armed forces, first in the bombing raid and then in terms of supplying ground support. His excuse was that there was an international request for U.S. action, and he complied, without feeling any need to honor constitutional law it seems.

This, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg. While many of my examples above are based on actions occurring here in the U.S., they are typical of the kinds of actions governments are enacting around the world as I write this post. The point of these examples are to provide the impetus to recognize that you must become responsible for your own sovereignty first and foremost.

The Challenge of Sovereignty:

Now here’s the major concept I want to introduce …

It’s largely impossible to remain “sovereign” as an individual in today’s political and economic climate … you can only seek to remain aware and move with the flow of the actions you are subject to, unless and until there is a major revisioning of the structure of both national and international laws and significant political reform.

For what it’s worth, I think this will happen … very probably within the lifetime of most of the folks who are likely to be reading this post.

However, unless and until this kind of reform happens you have only yourself to turn to, along with those who share a like-minded view and are savvy enough to be preparing themselves to act as and when necessary.

Once again, let me be clear as to what I mean by the statement above.

I am not suggesting stockpiling food and water.
I am not suggesting that you arm yourself and stockpile weapons and ammunition.
I am not suggesting that you conspire to revolt or rise against the government with violence.

These are the acts of fear that I would specifically suggest you avoid and shun. At best actions of this kind are a bandaid on a grievous wound should they become necessary, i.e.: to protect ourselves against a government gone haywire that seeks to harm it’s own citizens, or a major economic or environmental catastrophe.

I am suggesting that you become informed, and to stay informed.
I am suggesting that you develop and hone the skills to notice what I call “the signals in the system.”
I am suggesting that you let go of your false beliefs of security based on the way the world was fifty or more years ago.
I am suggesting that you build a kind of internal “rapid response system” that will allow you to respond to the events that unfold around you in real time (and not after the fact when it’s too late to do what you need to for yourself and those you care about and love).
I am suggesting that your primary tool of survival is your mind in times like these, and you must prioritize it’s care and feeding so to speak.
I am suggesting that you do whatever it takes to develop razor-honed senses that allow you to react prudently despite the crisis or chaos that emerges around you.

Now I admit I’m a bit biased, but I deeply and truly believe that preparing for what’s coming by trying to build a stockpile of any kind of material resources BEFORE you build the mental resources that will serve you in crisis and chaos is downright foolish and possibly suicidal.

I had the privilege of beginning this path of formally learning how to be mentally prepared to deal with whatever life and the world threw my way from the tender age of 15 or so. I could go into detail, but that would detract from the essential message I want to be sharing here. Suffice it to say that I’ve had teachers who were real life experts in survival in circumstances of crisis and chaos, including real life and death scenarios, and that I took their lessons to heart.

What I learned from these folks is that becoming mentally agile and nimble is the single best form of security in times that are uncertain. If nothing else I would expect you would agree with me that we live in uncertain times. What these folks paid attention to were using the signals in the system to project where the system was moving before it arrived at where it is headed.

Playing the “New Game” Using the “New Code”:

Today I meet many people who are playing the game as it was defined fifty or more years ago, and missing the big picture that the game has changed. Let me state that categorically, this is NOT the game your parents and grandparents played … it’s not changing, it has already changed … and woe to you if you fail to catch up and smell the metaphorical coffee that’s burning on the stove as you’re reading this now. You’ve got to catch up and learn how to properly interpret the signals in the system based on the “new code” that is present today, and not apply the code you learned growing up, or the code constantly being misrepresented in the popular media today.

The “old code” worked for a long time, i.e.: become part of the system … study hard, do well in school, get a good job, keep your nose to the grindstone … and you would largely be rewarded commensurately with your contribution. This no longer holds true. In fact this is the most blatant form of misinformation and propaganda that you could possibly be subjected to in the current system, i.e.: “education is the great equalizer” … BULLSHIT! Education is absolutely NO GUARANTEE that you will succeed or even survive … just ask the thousands of college graduates out of work and laboring under unbelievable debt from student loans.

However, your government, big business, the wealthy upper-class in all societies internationally, the popular media lapdogs … all will try to persuade you of this “evident” truth, e.g.: Mitt Romney, a current front-runner in the U.S. primaries for the selection of the Republican Presidential candidate, recently told a student who questioned him in a rally to select a school that doesn’t cost too much that would provide a good education, and “not to expect the U.S. government to forgive student loans.” This is both atrocious and frightening behavior from a super-wealthy politician who hopes to become President of the United States. I can assure you this is NOT the advice he’s given to his children. His children are more likely than not to attend one of the most privileged schools in the United States, make contacts there that will secure them entry into the most select opportunities for the rest of their lives, and carry with them the calling card that opens doors only having an elite education can do for you in the United States.

As I said, make no mistake about this … we are engaged in class warfare … and the only “real” weapon you have is your mind.

How-To Survive, Succeed and Prosper In the “New Game” Using “New Code”:

Okay … so what can you do?

First of all you can acknowledge and recognize that this is indeed a new game we are all playing.
Next, you can acknowledge and recognize that they old rules no longer apply.
Third you can begin to learn the “new code” I’ve referred to above.
And, most importantly you can begin to build and develop the mental tools you’ll need to play this new game using the new code effectively.

I’ll leave steps one and two above to you, with a single caveat … you’d be a fool to trust the popular media for your news. This includes any widely distributed newspaper, periodical, radio or television news programming. There are no sources that fall under these categories I’ve just mentioned that are exempt. Tuning into many of these sources, making a concerted effort to tune into those news sources that hold seemingly conflicting views is a start if you’re not prepared to go further, however this will NOT keep you informed in the way I’m suggesting in this post.

Understand this … the major news media is a business enterprise, and as such it’s primary obligation is to make money NOT to report the news or provide world-class journalistic objectivity or coverage. To get beyond the surface level that the major media news sources are committed to maintaining, including all the misinformation and propaganda, you would have to go to much more selective sources, and that is beyond the scope of this posting to provide. The best recommendation I can quickly give you however is this, A) find independent resources and speciality resources (e.g.: scientific journals, academic journals …) and B) cross check their reporting to gain a wider view of the stories you are following, and become selective in where you place your attention … most reporting is entertainment and designed to deflect your attention from the real stories that matter. You can only build this skill with commitment and time.

If you’re willing to make the commitment and devote the time to gathering and absorbing the real news you will become far more discerning about local and world affairs, and my points 1 and 2 above will be taken care of, however you cannot skip this step and expect to succeed in steps 3 and 4.

In order to discuss how to learn the new code I’m referring to I need to take a minute and define what I mean by the new code.

The new code is a reference I’m using regarding the rules of engagement in the new game we are currently playing globally. The best way for me to get to the new game is to point out some of the old games (there are more than I’m going to point to here).

Old Games:

Game A:

There was a game called, “The church/temple/mosque, state, government … will take care of you.” this game is still prevalent in some parts of the world, and present in virtually all parts of the world to some degree or another, i.e.: some portion of the population is still playing this game. The markers of this game are … “Just be good, do all that is required and requested of you and the rest will take care of itself.” The people who play this game are hoping for the kind of stability and security that the senior players, i.e.: priests, rabbis, imams, monk … president, prime minister, dictator … whatever, promise them. Ultimately the people who play this game become fodder for the feeding of the people they serve.

Game B:

There is another game called, “If you have enough and take care of your self you’ll be okay.” this is a game of material acquisition. It is very prevalent today in many parts of the world. In fact this is still probably the most prevalent game begin played today, even by most of the folks who live at or near the top of the heap, and virtually everyone in the middle who isn’t playing the game above. The markers for this game is the belief in the idea that, “He who has the most toys wins.” or “You have to look out for yourself because no one else is looking out for you.” … and the idea that you can have enough to keep you secure, safe and sovereign despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. This game will continue to be popular and played, even giving those who succeed best at it some illusion of the security, safety and sovereignty they seek, however all the evidence is in that it is only a matter of time until you can’t have enough to be protected.

Game C:

A third game is called,“If you are part of the right group you too can share in the wealth and privilege that is rightfully yours.” this is a game that has gained popularity among folks living in the most prosperous nations of the world, who themselves come from a position of prosperity (largely the result of those who played or are playing the game above). This is the most dangerous game on the planet in my opinion. It’s dangerous in many ways.

First of all the people who play it often believe it is “the game” that should be played by everyone, so they seek to bring everyone into their game … willingly or not.
Secondly, they think they are playing a game that has equal rules for everyone playing it, while they ignore all those who are not playing and can’t or won’t, and the significant stratification to resources even among those who are playing.
Third, and most significantly, this is the game that the top politicians and their cronies are playing at around the world and the others playing at it support them in achieving the lifestyles and privilege I’ve been bemoaning in this entire posting.

The markers for this game include, “You can play with us if you agree to join us and use our rules … but of course we respect your right not to play, we just won’t share any of our resources with you and will persecute you for being different.” What makes this so scary is that the folks who play this particular game really believe in the game they are playing, and that it’s only right everyone should be playing this game with them.

New Games (and the New Code they use):

Now there are two new code games I want to present for your consideration:

New Game 1:

This game is called, “I’m free to do what I want, when I want and where I want … as long as I don’t get caught by the system.” this game is the outgrowth of a jet-setting lifestyle popularized by those playing Game C above. The folks who play this game believe they can remain just outside of any system that seeks to contain them, using multiple sets of rules as suits them to achieve the freedom and liberty they most desire. A couple of the markers of this game are, “I’m a world citizen and don’t feel confined by or obligated to any one nation or system on the planet.” and “The formal systems on the planet are so f@#ked up that the only way to survive is to find a way to be beyond their reach.” Following these rules the players of this game seek to remain unencumbered by any single system, but to benefit from as many of the systems they encounter as they can. To some extent the players of the first new code game are first and foremost game players who seek to win the game even if it means sacrificing a hand or two depending on the cards their dealt in this round. An advantage of this game is that they players are good at inventing new ways to win and leaving others alone, while they pursue their own satisfaction. A major disadvantage of this game is that it does little to nothing to contribute to the common good, and in fact saps the resources of the system-at-large serving only the individual who is playing.

New Game 2:

This game is called, “I’m sick and tired and I’m not going to take it anymore … join up or be left behind!” and it’s a game that is gaining serious popularity and adherents among the children of the common folk who are playing games B and C above. The markers of this game include, “You’ve left me a world that is dying and depleted, and you expect me to sit by passively, while you continue to suck up the resources of the world and f@#k it up for the rest of us!” These are largely young, ambitious and angry youth who want to live the promise of a different future than games A, B or C suggest to them. They are willing to move from complaining to taking action, including stepping away from the old rules and old code of the old games. When their momentum builds enough they are quite willing and able to take the reigns from the current stock of world leaders and reset the system. The only real questions in my mind are:

will they have enough time to do it
will there be enough left to build a new future from when they are in control, and
what damage will happen between now and then as the transition to New Game 2 is unfolding?

So the new code I’m referring to is reflected in the attitudes of the people who are playing the new games (1 & 2 above). Some of the distinctions of people who are playing the new games using new code are that:

they are self-responsible – not leaving it to others to determine their fate
they are globally, socially, economically, politically and environmentally aware
they are activists – even if it is only in their own self-interest, they are innovative and committed to inventing new solutions to the situations they encounter instead of depending on old formulas, dictums and paradigms

While we could extend this list that should give you a good idea about what I mean by the “new code.”

Learning the New Games and the New Code:

Frankly learning the new games and the new code isn’t going to be for everyone. Just a posting like this is enough for many people to get them running back to the old game they’ve been playing, going back to sleep and accepting the pablum they’re being fed that passes for news, driving their head under the sand and hoping this is all just another “Chicken Little Chant” claiming that the sky is falling.

Only the folks who are ready to become Enlightened World Citizens are likely to sit up and take notice of a posting like this, in fact I expect I’ll be getting equal numbers of hate mail and praise mail once I’ve published this post. I look forward to both because it’s all data in the system and grist to the mill of my mind as I continue to hone my “new code” skills.

Here are some of my recommendations for you if you’ve decided that what I’m proposing is interesting and you’d like to know more, or take the next steps forward.

If you are over the age of seventy :

stay alert and do what you can to pick up on the signals in the system
be prepared to hunker down and secure what you have, largely by becoming “grey” … don’t stand out
do what you can to preserve and secure what wealth you have
if you don’t yet have any security funds of your own start setting some aside as the dole may dry up (think in terms of hard, liquid, moveable assets for at least part of this funding)
build networks of contacts you can count on and to the extent you’re able who can count on you … include those who are older and need your help if possible, as well as those who are younger and you can reach out to in times of need or crisis (this may be your most important lifeline if things really hit the fan)

If you are between the ages of fifty and seventy:

begin becoming a consumer of world news, including non-traditional resources in your data feed (the Internet can be a great source of these resources, but you have to be discerning about the quality of the data you’re receiving)
make a concerted effort to build multiple nest eggs … DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET! (use access to international funding to build resources in more than one jurisdiction legally so if something critical hits one of the places where you are invested you can resort to your other holdings)
consider your hard assets and liquid assets as perishable and create a plan of action regarding what you will do if they are devalued in some significant way (your best resource is your ability to create new wealth on the fly, if you don’t yet have a way to do this consider getting the knowledge and/or skills you need to prosper in hard times, e.g.: manual craft skills will always be necessary and in demand, basic life survival knowledge and skills will always be in demand as well)
if you don’t yet have them invest in learning real “human skills” – including high quality communication and decision-making skills (even in the worst of times these can’t be taken from you and will most definitely serve you – two recommendations in this arena are Paul Eckman’s “Telling Lies” and “Leadership and Self-Deception” by The Arbinger Group)
depending on where you see yourself on your career trajectory make the most of it, or find a way to ease yourself out of it with as many good contacts in place as possible (this is likely to be the moment in your life where you have the most substantial and well developed professional contacts you will ever have, deepening those that are valuable to you is worth your time and effort, do this by becoming a valuable contact yourself)

If you are between the ages of thirty-five and fifty:

make a significant commitment to becoming an astute and diligent consumer of information – commit to reading multiple sources of news, both popular and alternative, also subscribe to a leading journal in science, social sciences/economics/foreign policy and at least one from your personal field of professional focus
build a deep nest egg, and then diversify your investments – use multiple forms of investment, and don’t be afraid to include some risky investments in the mix with a high potential for strong and aggressive growth, also include some hard assets – especially those that are liquid and mobile
commit to developing exquisite skills, both professional/expert and general human skills (e.g.: communication/decision-making) – you need to invest in developing yourself at least as much if not more than your portfolio, these are the most permanent resources you can develop – despite changes that occur in the world around you these are yours to keep, being skillful in human interaction will be seen more and more as an expert skill that has high value in the future as it’s unfolding (NOTE: don’t be misled by the current emphasis on science and technology, while these skills will remain important they will become more and more commonplace to possess, while real expertise in the general human skills will be less available and more highly valued)

If you are under the age of thirty five (what are you doing reading this?):

this is the moment to be developing your life skills and contacts aggressively – this translates into doing things, lots of things … build multiple experiences and get as wide a variety of exposure as you can, specifically don’t get lost in a single space, e.g.: a “lifetime” position, because it won’t exist for you when you need it most
become financially astute, but don’t worry about creating your fortune – Henry Ford is famous for saying that he didn’t save a nickel until he was forty, he invested all his money in himself and his business until then … a man ahead of his time, but you do want to learn about the way money works and how the financial marketplace and the economy will and do effect you … study the patterns of movement of money to build a facility to notice the patterns as they are emerging and then move onto developing a sense for predicting where the markets are heading
develop a “sixth sense” for people, learn who to stay close to and whom to avoid – you have a unique window of opportunity to develop your people skills in a way that will become unavailable to you as you grow older, this is akin to the window of opportunity to learn a new language with greater facility at particular points in your development than others, as we approach full adulthood and maturity we are naturally organized to reset our patterns of personal interaction in a way that becomes more fixed as we get older, take advantage of this window by engaging in as much productive human contact as possible – and find opportunities to get high quality input from others who can help you establish good patterns as soon as possible

Of course I could be more specific, but this is already a long post and my recommendations above should be sufficient to get you started at least.

If you’re unsure about where to begin start from where you are most familiar and comfortable and then stretch from there.

I look forward to your comments …

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

PS – To jump start your own learning about the new games and the new code have a look at my programs that will most definitely rock your world regarding what I refer to above as “real human skills” start here: Joseph Riggio Training – Courses

¹Senate Rejects Amendment Banning Indefinite Detention (http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senate-rejects-amendment-banning-indefinite-detention)

Applied Mythology 101: Reflections On Heroes, Mentors and Stories

by Joseph Riggio · Feb 26, 2012

Applied Mythology, ala Dr. Joseph Riggio and the MythoSelf Process, Is NOT About The Telling Of Old Stories …

Applied Mythology IS ABOUT How To Incorporate The Structure Of Mythic Form Into Your Life To Make It More Whole and Wellformed … i.e.: More Blissful

Heroes and Mentors

I have a couple or “Intellectual Heroes and Mentors” folks whose intellectual/academic work has spurred me on in my work. Some of my heroes and mentors I found many years ago, some are newer to me. These are folks I’ve spent a lot of time with, reading their books, writing about their ideas, incorporating and applying their ideas in my own work, using what they developed as a platform to leap from in developing my own fledgling conceptualizations, methods and processes … and finally, in some cases, coming to the point where I truly believe I have mastered the ideas they wrestled with first and made accessible to me in their life’s work.

When I talk my intellectual heroes and mentors I’m not talking about the folks who necessarily had the most actual influence in my life. The folks who had the most influence in my life would include those closest to me, family, some teachers, friends and very near the top Roye, my own mentor for nearly twenty years.

My intellectual mentors and heroes are folks like,

Carlos Castaneda (yes … it’s true, very influential to my thinking in my late teens and early twenties … his writing opened up the entire possibility of alternative realities and magical thinking to me)
Suzuki Roshi and Alan Watts (very early on … around 11 years old … I began to become interested in and to train in martial arts, this led me to writings about Zen, Taoism and Bushido, and by 15 I was “sitting” regularly myself … and reading Watts caused me to question everything)
Milton Erickson (in my twenties I developed a profound fascination with hypnosis and began reading intensely on the subject … then I found Milton Erickson, and everything I’d though about hypnosis shifted for me)
F.M. Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais and Thomas Hana (the idea of how the body was influencing the mind … and subsequently my behaviors had me … for more than a few years, from my mid-twenties through to my mid-thirties, I was diligently working to figure out where the interface was and how to operate it)
Dudley Lynch (leading me to) Clare W. Graves (there was something in Dudley’s book “Strategy of the Dolphin” that caught my attention deeply when it came out … later I found he was pointing to a true genius of social evolutionary thinking, Dr. Graves … I’ve now spent many hundreds (or possibly thousands) of hours deeply contemplating and applying the Graves model in my work)
Edmund Husserl, Soren Kirkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittengenstein, John Searle et al … (I tracked the movement of modern philosophy from phenomenology, through to existentialism, and then onto analytic philosophy I delved deeply into what these folks had to say about the Philosophy of Mind … and by the time I got to the analytical philosophers what they were saying about language and reality as well)
Charles Sanders Pierce, John Dewy, William James, Richard Schusterman, et al … (I love the work of the American Pragmatists … this is a philosophy that draws deeply upon the aesthetic and it speaks to me deeply … I get the sentiment and the soul of pragmatism, in the way that it shows up in life, like no other philosophy)
Joseph Chilton Pearce, Daniel Siegel, David Abram, Jeffrey Schwartz, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Nicholas Humphrey, et al … (there a whole host of neuroscientists, linguists, cognitive scientists, etc. who are exploring the ideas that are at the heart of my fascinations and they have all at one time or another influenced my thinking … some more deeply than others)
Richard Bandler & John Grinder (I’ve read everything they’ve written … jointly and solely … some of their books ten or more times … and some I barely got through once … but the work of NLP still holds my attention like little else, especially in the direction it took under my tutelage with Roye)
Joseph Campbell (I saved him for the last because he surely ranks as one of the folks I literally consider to be an intellectual hero and mentor to me … much of my thinking has been influenced by the writing and speaking of Joseph Campbell and his take on the structure and form of mythological thinking)

Believe me that’s the short list … but I want to share a range of the kind of folks I’ve been paying attention to over the years. It has been a funky, fun, interesting and enlightening journey … and I’m guessing I’m now about halfway there.

So What’s This Got To Do With You?

HECK … ONLY EVERYTHING …

I’ve laid it out before and I’ll do it again … YOU ARE YOUR STORY!

The sources that inform your story contribute to the form it takes … i.e.: WHO YOU BECOME! Of course, I’m not saying that you become the story of the sources that inform your story, you become something like a multi-hued reflection of the multiplicity of sources that you continue to absorb that inform the story you are living. Keeping it simple if you were to see a tree from the point of view of an Impressionist painter reflected on water, the seemingly infinite number of leaves are the equivalent of the sources that inform your story … and there is a main trunk that is unique and singular as well.

Now, before I keep jumping forward let me make it really clear that within the structure of where I place my attention, “YOUR STORY” is really a bunch of stories that are interwoven like a tapestry that forms what you experience as the ground of being in your life … for you this tapestry defines “what is real” and how to make sense of what you encounter in an ongoing way. I use the word STORY and not tapestry because for most people the tapestry I refer to is experienced in the form of an autobiographical narrative.

NOW HERE”S A MAJOR POINT …

Most people experience their own unique autobiographical narrative as “absolute” … meaning that at any given moment in time what you believe to have happened and is happening is actually true to fact for you. For example you believe you are reading these words and in this moment no one could dissuade you about that as being a fact. This is true even though there are a thousand other things that are true in that moment that just passed and in this one as well … that you ignored, deleted and distorted.

Let’s expand that one just a little … you think you are reading “THESE WORDS” – but YOU ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE READING WHAT YOU THINK THESE WORDS MEAN … and not the words themselves. Let me demonstrate what I mean … in an hour you’ll have a memory of reading this, but what will you remember, the words you’re now reading, or what you think these words mean? It’s that simple at one level and it’s levels all the way down …

For most people this also represents what they experience their memories like as well, i.e.: absolute narratives of what happened. You are as likely to do this about what happened less than a minute ago as you are about what happened a decade ago … and you’re as likely to be just as wrong about both. It would be foolish to trust that you’re memories are accurate to fact, they’re just not. You can find overwhelming evidence that your memory works as a flawed system, and that may in fact be in your best interest. So while you’re memory may be flawed, your memory will be how the world world was and continues to be for you.

Okay so what does this have to do with you again?

At the most basic level it would be useful to recognize that what you are creating in your interactions with others aren’t really experiences, but flawed representations of those experiences called memories. People will not remember what you say or do, they will remember the impression of what you say or do has on them … and it will be different from what you say or do in some measure, large or small.

We could go on with the practical aspects of what this has to do with you, but for now I’ll stop with that example there.

The main point you want to get from this, if you get anything at all, would be that they are all stories … and those stories collect into an Über Story that becomes the Gestalt you are living. The gestalt of your life may be best thought of as a “reality filter.”

Living Your Life Story

I’ve been making the point that you are living your Life Story. This story represents only one way of interpreting all the events that have happened and are happening, as for as long as you have this story, what will happen too.

You have no choice but to live your Life Story … BUT you do have a choice over what story you are living!

[NOTE: You may want to add into this narrative that you’re reading now that one of the most powerful ways to choice your Life Story would be to pick the stories that go into it.]

The stories you accept as being “real” are only a part of the construct of your Life Story, i.e.: your memories of your experiences as you know them to be. In addition to the things we experience, and the things we “know” there are the things we can’t explain … that we yearn to have an explanation for nonetheless, e.g.:

Why do bad things happen to good people? …

Why did that happen to me, and not to them? …

Why did that happen to them, and not to me? …

Why am I here? …

Who am I? …

This may be the most profound function of myth,
to answer the unanswerable.

Now I am not saying that myth, or more properly in the way I am using this idea – mythic form, has literal, concrete answers. Rather than providing literal, concrete answers myth shows the way … it’s is about the path, the journey, the process … not about the content. Myth gives us what we cannot possess … as way to see ourselves. The eye cannot see itself, the finger cannot touch itself … the eye must have a reflection of itself to “see” itself, the finger must be touched to “touch” itself … in this way myth provides the reflection and the touch for us to know ourselves beyond ourselves.

Myth places the most significant and urgent information “out there” beyond the limits of how we “know” things to be … including ourselves. This information may be simply revealing, “Oh, now I see how I am like that too.” … or educational/instructive … “Now I get how I can move beyond this moment in which I have been stuck.” or it may reveal, educate and instruct us about others and the world we share, “Ah, now I get how he/she/they think the world must be.”

This information comes to us as an impression, not as a “fact” or “absolute.” Myth offers us the means to use our innate intuitions about the world to construct a reality that fits our experience. The opportunity myth provides can and will take us beyond self-imposed and socially-imposed limitations if we allow it. We are built to “guess” at “what the world ‘is’ out there” – we don’t have the equipment to “know” the world out there, we miss too much of it, and make up most of it as we go along. The philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists … and others have been hard at work for centuries proving how limited and flawed our perceptual capacities are in fact.

To use a Robert Anton Wilson phrase:

“Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.”

(from Prometheus Rising)

So you can say, once we find the way to reset our “Thinker” we have found the way out of our own limiting beliefs … because the “Prover” will prove whatever the “Thinker” thinks!

The trick to resetting the “Thinker” has always been the same … A, B, C

A) Give the “Thinker” new data in the form of experience and information to work with

B) Make the experience and information that you provide the “Thinker” with emotionally compelling … i.e.: make it “feel really good” or “feel really bad“

C) Create a recursive somatic loop in the “Thinker” that connects the experience and information to the feeling in the body where it will be stored and accessed/re-accessed later

“We act based on how we “feel” about things that prompts us to “think” things are as they are for us … i.e.: change the association to how we “feel” about things and we change what we “think about them.”

“Applied Mythology, as mythic form, gives us the mechanism to change how we feel about what we think.”

“We can update our Life Story by encountering powerful stories that are emotionally compelling and create new associations between what we “know” and how we “feel” about it … this has always been the appeal and power of mythology, literature, theater … and more and more today the stories we encounter in film.”

– Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

This is my quest … to follow my myth wherever it leads … and for now it leads me to be an applied mythologist.

So I have an invitation for you … will you join me on your journey?

As always I look forward to seeing, reading and responding to your comments …

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D., Princeton, NJ

Architect and Designer of the MythoSelf Process & Soma-Semantics

PS – There will be an Applied Mythology 102, or 202, someday soon … promise. In that installment I’ll share some of my thoughts about the “Social Myths” that keep us stuck where we find ourselves today … and some possible stories that might help to free us in the societies we are constructing going forward … my little take on “Social Ontology”

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Joseph Riggio

There Is A Primary Flaw In Fundamentalism, i.e.: it doesn’t really exist, except as a consequence of flawed thinking …

The Trick of Cartesian Thinking (or “Aristotle’s Gift”)

There is such a thing as cause and effect that operates on both a macroscopic as well as microscopic level

There are things that exist as themselves … matter that is self-defined as being what it is fundamentally

That there are some fundamental laws of the Universe that will apply everywhere and at all times in the Universe

That there is some fundamental unit of matter from which all matter arises, i.e.: atoms … now, quarks … or strings

That finding the fundamental unit of matter will lead to the discovery of a fundamental equation explaining the nature of the Universe at it’s most fundamental level … i.e.: A Theory of Everything (TOE)

Why do people treat me like they do (there must be a reason, a cause, some fundamental aspect of who I am …)?

Why does the economy work like it does (there must be a fundamental equation we can find to explain it)?

Why do some people achieve success, while other struggle and fail (there has to be a reason, something fundamental that they do … a system they use to create success …)?

METAPHOR … Moving Beyond and Before the Newtonian/Cartesian Paradigm

What To Do When Logic Fails …

Who/what one is remains purely emergent within a Cybernetic paradigm, constantly open to change and the flux of the emergent events that surround them.

Oscillating INTENT

There are two primary oscillations that collide forming the emergent quality we refer to as “INTENT” … a massive directionality that is uniquely suited to the individual and relative to the system they operate within that contains them.

The oscillation between the Excitatory State and the Inhibitory State, i.e.: the relative state of the neurological system as open to new information or closed to new information … open or closed neurological loops … a unique, generative position or Generalized Desired State, the G.D.S.

The oscillation between a Generalized Desired State (G.D.S.) and a position relative to that which is Greater Than Self (G.T.S.) – the system that contains the individual and all that represents, e.g.: the Cosmos … G-d …

In The End The Choice (As Always …) Is Yours To Make …

… begins when you leave behind your will to pursue your personal fascination.

The cost ~ only your Bliss!

Beginning with books

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

The Voyage of the “Beagle” by Charles Darwin and Millicent E. Selsam

So here I was about to enter high school with books leading the way …

The first twenty years … and the following thirty …

Keeping the Status Quo

The Way Out …

To read better you have to learn how to extract the information you encounter … AND you have to learn how to interpret the information so you can apply it yourself.

I want to share with you a seven step “Secret Code” about how to read a book and learn the most you can from it that I’ve been using for years …

You must leave your learning about learning behind …

Start with the knowledge you’re seeking to gain …

Let others lead the way …

Make it your own …

“Do Over!”

Extending the journey …

OUTPUT!!!

“Hello I’m Joseph and I’m an Information Junkie …”

The Life of an Information Junkie …

Inside the Lair of an Information Junkie …

Getting to the Point … Collectors and Experts

Experts use the information they gather, consume and collect!

If you are not using the information you collect … then it has no more value to you then:

1) the entertainment value it’s provided you with … or, 2) what you can sell the media you’ve collected for in an open market.

Putting It All Together … What’s This Mean to You?

If you ain’t gonna use it … save your time, energy, money and space … don’t get it … pass it by.

Your Life Story and Self-Leadership … Uncovering the Path to the Results and Outcomes You Really Want

I’ve been at something for the last twenty five years or so that I think is wonderful … a model that’s literally life changing.

Of course the answer was simple, it always is …

But simple isn’t necessarily easy!

My life today IS simple … and living it IS easy, because I got “IT” … “the one trick.”

*(Incorporate In*cor”po*rate, a. [L. incorporatus, p. p. of incorporare to incorporate; pref. in- in + corporare to make into a body. See Corporate.] Corporate; incorporated; made one body, or united in one body; associated; mixed together; combined; embodied. [1913 Webster])

Facing the Dilemma

The question that remained was, “How?” … how do I make the simple, easy?

It is essential to shift our perceptions, beginning with our self image, if we intend to achieve anything like the levels of health, well-being and elite performance we’re capable of … and the fundamental key to making this shift is held in our Life Story.

How To Shift Your Life Story

You are limited in what you perceive by your Life Story, and from what gets through you create meaning.

The meaning you create … about yourself, about the world, about others … determines what you will do, i.e.: your behaviors that form your acts.

These acts are what create the results and outcomes you produce in the world, and these become the life you live.

Your experience of the life you live, i.e.: the results and outcomes you produce by your acts, starts the cycle all over again feeding your perception and sustaining your Life Story.

You can either be in an open frame of mind or a closed frame of mind.

The Danger of Magical Thinking In The Hands Of Would-Be Mentors Cannot Be Overemphasized If Your Serious About Your Success!

“Where you put your attention, is where you’ll get your results.”

The Law of Practice

Magical Thinking:

Myth, Mythos and the Mythosphere

The relative position – from dependence, to independence, to interdependence – that someone occupies within the structure of the “Hero’s Journey” is revealed in the Life Story they hold and operate from in their life.

New Games and New Code … Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

WARNING:

YOUR TIME IS LIMITED TO TAKE ACTION ON YOUR BEHALF TO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A NEW WORLD ORDER.

Becoming An Enlightened World Citizen:

Please make no mistake about this … I do not intend you to read my last sentence above as hyperbole, i.e.: that our governments are declaring a de-facto class warfare on the common citizen, but instead as a statement of obvious fact based on evidence that can be tracked.

Governmental Class Warfare:

The Challenge of Sovereignty:

I am not suggesting stockpiling food and water.

I am not suggesting that you arm yourself and stockpile weapons and ammunition.

I am not suggesting that you conspire to revolt or rise against the government with violence.

I am suggesting that you become informed, and to stay informed.

I am suggesting that you develop and hone the skills to notice what I call “the signals in the system.”

There Is A Primary Flaw In Fundamentalism,
i.e.: it doesn’t really exist, except as a consequence of flawed thinking …

METAPHOR …
Moving Beyond and Before the Newtonian/Cartesian Paradigm

If you are not using the information you collect …
then it has no more value to you then:

1) the entertainment value it’s provided you with … or,
2) what you can sell the media you’ve collected for in an open market.

If you ain’t gonna use it …
save your time, energy, money and space …
don’t get it … pass it by.

(Incorporate Incor”po*rate, a. [L. incorporatus, p. p. of incorporare to incorporate; pref. in- in + corporare to make into a body. See Corporate.] Corporate; incorporated; made one body, or united in one body; associated; mixed together; combined; embodied. [1913 Webster])

New Games and New Code …
Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

This may be the most profound function of myth,
to answer the unanswerable.