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Outlaw Thinking: Part 2

Outlaw Thinking: Part 2

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“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes.” – Steve Jobs

That’s a nice summation in a neatly wrapped up, memorable quote of “Outlaw Thinking.”

What it isn’t is a good description of what I mean by “Outlaw Thinking.”

Outlaw Thinking is about two things that the interplay between them, disruption and adaptability.

In the world of business a disruptive paradigm upsets and replaces what came before it, usually with the intention or actuality of making a system more effective and efficient, improving performance, and thereby increasing the results achieved within it. Usually in the world of business this translates into more market share and profit.

When we apply this same concept of outlaw thinking to our personal lives the same two functions of disruption and adaptability come together. The distinction within the personal sphere, when you apply outlaw thinking, is that it allows you to see past the cultural norms, impositions and installations that shape so many people’s worldview.

When you can see beyond the cultural norms that are familiar and contain you, new perspectives become available to you, and new opportunities become open for you … in your relationships, in your work, in your health and mental well being.

You become more free to decide and act outside of what is considered “proper” according to the accepted socio-cultural agreements, thereby creating a new, more authentic, and freeing worldview.

When you think and act outside of the “proper” worldview that you had been sharing with others, there are usually repercussions and push back from those who had counted on you to go along.

Yet, almost always those who have realized that installing and operating from an outlaw thinking worldview have come to realize how worth it making the investment and shift had been for them.

The key begins with upgrading your mind so you can elevate your performance, and this will not be the familiar way you probably think about thinking today, nor will it be comfortable initially to let go of that familiarity.

Most people have a worldview that is dramatically shaped by the cultural norms they’ve been exposed to that’s generally one dimensional. This leads to thinking linearly about cause and effect, i.e.: “this happened because that happened,” as though the Universe unfolds in a straight continuous, unbroken line. Philosophers call this deterministic thinking.

I call linear, cause and effect thinking, “First Order Thinking” in the model I’ve been developing, “Cognitive Maturity.” Current research suggests that 80% of the population falls into this first order of thinking.

10% of the population have not fully mastered even First Order Thinking, leaving 10% that operate beyond First Order Thinking. I’ve developed descriptions of two further orders of thinking in the Cognitive Maturity model.

Second Order Thinking takes into account a teleological consideration, where the present is organized in relation to the desired future outcome, independent of and transcending historical limitations.

Third Order Thinking adds the recursive aspect of being able to recognize the effect of the actions you take in the systems you operate in relation to as having the consequence of changing you as well as bringing about outcomes outside of yourself.

Here’s a short list of these three levels of Cognitive Maturity:

  • 1st Order Cognitive Maturity: Linear Tactical Cognition
    Recognizing That You Are Thinking About Achieving A Specific Outcome And The Specific Action You Plan On Taking To Create The Outcome
  • 2nd Order Cognitive Maturity: Consequential Strategic Cognition
    Thinking About And Recognizing That The Action You Are About To Take Has Consequences And Factoring Them Into Your Decision-Making Process
  • 3rd Order Cognitive Maturity: Cybernetic Systemic Cognition
    Knowing Achieving Your Outcome  Happens Within A System That Contains You, And That The Action You Take Will Have An Effect On You As Well As On Whatever Or Whomever Is Also Effected By It In The System

What I’m talking about here is called developmental modeling, and the folks who do this work, developmentalists. I think of myself as a neurocognitive developmentalist in terms of the models I’ve designed and specifically in relation to the body of work I’m engaged in that I’m calling “Cognitive Maturity.”

One of the major developmental researchers suggests ten total levels of potential development that she’s demarcated. Within her model, that she’s been studying and refining for more than twenty years, there are four levels above what she refers to as the “conventional” and what I’m calling First Order Thinking.

The developmental model continues beyond “conventional” to postconventional levels, and I’ve broken these down into Second and Third Order Thinking as I’ve described above. In her model, two of the postconventional levels, 7 & 8, would fit into my Second Order Thinking level, and the last two, 9 & 10, would fit into my Third Order Thinking.

Here’s what she says about the postconventional levels 7 – 10:

“Stage 7, the Individualistic stage, represents the first of several postconventional stages. To grow beyond Conscientious, Stage 6, a person must become more inner-directed and more tolerant of themselves and others. The self-established standards of the previous stage must become more contextualized and flexible. Persons at the Individualistic stage become aware of contradictions, such as the conflict between their need for autonomy and their need for emotional connection. They are willing to live with emotional and cognitive complexities that may not be resolvable, and they become more psychologically minded. The Autonomous Stage, Stage 8, and the subsequent Stage 9, Integrated, describe about 10% of the U.S. adult population. Autonomous individuals are able to accept conflict as part of the human condition. They tolerate contradictions and ambiguities well and demonstrate cognitive sophistication. The Autonomous person respects the autonomy of others and values close personal relationships. Self-fulfillment and self-expression gain increasing importance in this person’s life. High social ideals of justice are also typical of this stage.

— The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development by Angela H. Pfaffenberger, Paul W. Marko, et al.
https://a.co/b1ERrw0

Then the postconventional levels, 9 & 10, are further described in her model as following after what she called Stage 8:

“She emphasized a cognitive shift that takes place at the Autonomous level, Stage 8, describing it as the embracing of systemic and dialectical modes of reasoning. Such individuals can hold multiple viewpoints and are interested in how knowledge is arrived at. In the language of the post-Piagetians such as Richards and Commons (1990) this constitutes a postformal way of reasoning. Individuals are aware of subjectivity in the construction of reality, accepting interpretation as the basis for the creation of meaning. Cook-Greuter constructed two postautonomous stages to replace Loevinger’s final Stage 9, and suggested that about 1% of the population reach this level of development. The ninth stage in her system is called Construct-aware. At this level, individuals become conscious of how language shapes the perception of reality. Language is experienced as a form of cultural conditioning that people usually remain unaware of throughout their lives. According to Cook-Greuter (1999) individuals can subsequently progress to an understanding that their egos are actually constructed from memory and maintained through an ongoing internal dialogue. As their self-awareness increases, they become interested in alternative ways of knowing. Transpersonal episodes, such as peak experiences, become increasingly common and people become drawn to meditation, alternate ways of knowing, and the witnessing of the internal process. At this stage, the individual experiences conflict between ordinary consensual reality and transpersonal awareness. This may be evident in the ego’s ownership and evaluation of transpersonal episodes, or in seeming paradoxes such as attachment to nonattachment. Only at Stage 10, the Unitive stage, can individuals sustain an ongoing openness to experience that is fluid and without struggle. They are now able to make use of transpersonal experiences free from ego clinging. Individuals have been tested who are found to be functioning at the Unitive stage, ranging upward from 26 years of age (S. Cook-Greuter, personal communication, December 3, 2003).”

— The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development by Angela H. Pfaffenberger, Paul W. Marko, et al.
https://a.co/6RcNDGc

From these descriptions, if we follow Cook-Grueter’s developmental modeling, only 1% of the population ever reach levels 9 or 10 as they are detailed here by her, with this being the focus of the work I’m aiming at with my clients:

The ninth stage in her system is called Construct-aware. At this level, individuals become conscious of how language shapes the perception of reality. Language is experienced as a form of cultural conditioning that people usually remain unaware of throughout their lives. According to Cook-Greuter (1999) individuals can subsequently progress to an understanding that their egos are actually constructed from memory and maintained through an ongoing internal dialogue.

And it continues …

As their self-awareness increases, they become interested in alternative ways of knowing. Transpersonal episodes, such as peak experiences, become increasingly common and people become drawn to meditation, alternate ways of knowing, and the witnessing of the internal process. At this stage, the individual experiences conflict between ordinary consensual reality and transpersonal awareness. This may be evident in the ego’s ownership and evaluation of transpersonal episodes, or in seeming paradoxes such as attachment to nonattachment.

The model I began designing almost thirty years ago, the MythoSelf Process was specifically designed to raise the level of awareness of the clients I work with to achieve this 9th level of cognitive maturation. This is virtually unheard of, even by the developmentalists who I’ve studied for the past twenty plus years.

The developmentalists tend to believe and operate from two “certainties” … 1) the levels must be progressed though sequentially, and 2) you cannot therefore jump levels, you must progress sequentially. Everything I’ve done in the past twenty years suggests that it is indeed possible to attain a level 9/Third Order Thinking awareness regardless of the level of cognitive maturity you are operating from today.

That’s now become my mission, to make this kind of advance in cognitive maturity to the higher postconventional levels of awareness, available to as many people as I can, who get the value in making the personal investments required to attain it, and to reap the rewards that accrue when it has been attained.

I’ll be back again with a bit more in Part Three … if you’re ready to take the next steps in exploring how you can make this kind of leap yourself have a look here now:

Mastering Cognitive Maturity

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Developer of A.C.T. | Adaptive Cognitive Training and the Cognitive Maturity Model

P.S.: If you’re interested in working with me in one of my small coaching groups or 1:1, there’s no need to wait any longer, reach out to me directly at: joseph@josephriggio.com, and we’ll come back to you about how to find out more about taking the next steps to do that …

Mission: OUTLAW THINKING! -Part 1

Mission: OUTLAW THINKING! -Part 1

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We are certainly living in interesting times … (the foundation)

The most obvious aspect of this seems to be the speed at which things are happening and changing, as well as the level of complexity we are forced to deal with in our daily lives … in our relationships, or work, our heath, in politics and the economy, and in terms of the cultural values that we are most familiar with that are we can no longer expect to remain “as is” or stable for very long.

Why is this important?

Putting it as simply as possible, the mind you are currently using to think with isn’t going to get you the outcomes it could have just ten years ago, and will likely be totally outdated before the next ten are over

We’re seeing signs of this everyday. Consider for a moment people who you know who made it through most or all of their working careers never using or needing to use a smart phone or computer, or even a “dumb” mobile phone for that matter. That is becoming harder to do with every passing year, and will likely be virtually impossible for a vast majority of people in the next ten years.

Professions where being computer savvy wasn’t even a consideration, for example for many craftsmen ten years ago, is now becoming a necessity from communicating with customers to ordering materials, in addition to dozens of other professional uses that show up day to day. These examples are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg however.

Imagine for a moment a roofer who simply needs to point a laser measuring device at the edge of a roof as he or she walks along the perimeter, and the AI software he or she is using doing all the calculations of materials and labor, preparing all the materials purchase orders, work schedules, and cost estimates for the customer by the time the contractor has “walked the building.”

Now imagine a year from then when the contractor simply responds with a drone “fly over” the customer’s home, has all the information taken care of, and the customer receives the project estimate in real time with the contractor. That’s all possible today.

These kinds of considerations change things at many levels, including what the “work” of a roofing contractor becomes, and whether roofing contractors even exist in the near future, or if the home owner simply uses the drone-based AI system to do what a contractor would do today running the project themselves via the integrated software systems connected to materials suppliers and labor pools from their computer or smart phone.

Once again, this is at least theoretically possible right now … let’s call it “Uber Workforce” for kicks, imagining that it wouldn’t be too difficult for Uber to expand it’s operation to provide this kind of service as a mobile phone app. This will become the “new normal” very soon … for many, much soon than they are prepared for or will like when it happens.

So the question becomes, how do you deal with this kind of fast changing world using your current sense of normal and the kind of thinking you’ve been conditioned to believe will suffice in getting the outcomes in a world that no longer conforms to what’s been normal for decades, and in many cases, centuries.?

I’m all about this mission now … i.e.: helping those who “GET IT” and are ready to update their thinking, to radically update what they think about thinking so they can upgrade and install a whole new mind.

And, I get for most folks that leads to a second question, how … how do I make the adjustments and update my mind so I can deal with what’s already happened, and what’s going to continue happening that will requires ways and types of thinking I don’t currently have access to, but will very quickly become the new normal?

I’ve literally been thinking about these questions and how to answer them for decades. I’ve been building models and working with individual and corporate clients internationally to train them to become more effective in they ways they think and communicate.

My clients know they can count on me to help them navigate complexity, the sticky and wicked problems they face and must deal with that exceed ordinary ways of thinking and approaching “problem solving” as most professionals, including most consultants, do it today.

The folks who hire me count on me to think outside the box, and to bring my “outlaw thinking” to the problems they face. In it’s simplest form I bring a counterintuitive approach that turns problems on their head, and I look at them through a lens of possibility making them into windows of opportunity.

More specifically I’m looking at my clients problems from a completely different, higher order of thinking and level of complexity then they are presently capable of themselves. At the higher orders of thinking, and levels of complexity, more information becomes available, and the patterns that connect various sources of information within the context become obvious, because you begin to deal with what’s in front of you and obvious, as well as the underlying and hidden interconnections.

When I take into account the higher order of thinking that’s possible what’s emergent in the systems I’m dealing with also becomes obvious to me. Once I’ve done the calculus to analyze the data in the system, both what’s evident and emergent, I am able to make higher quality decisions about what action to take. This includes calculating the potential positive and negative consequences of the action, and factoring it into best and worse case scenarios, and then preparing for either as the actual outcome.

This is a cybernetic process of thinking that is iterative, recursive and systemic, generating self-referencing and self-organizing update loops. Working this way is the basis of generative learning, and this is what I train my clients to do when they hire me, or attend training with me. I refer to this kind of modeling as “wholeform learning” where the entirety of system, including connections through space and time, is considered in the functional analysis leading to a strategy to be implemented and refined through time as more data emerges and becomes present.

Almost always the greatest complexity in the systems I deal with, and train my clients to deal with, involve others as actors and agents within them. These actors and agents bring agendas of their own, and the ability to recognize the interactivity of these agendas in creating the outcomes achieved, even when the agenda are competing or conflicting, is where a kind of generative magic emerges from approaching the resolution of problems and the realization of solutions in the way I train my clients to do.

To recognize the overt agendas that people bring is easy and most people can do that innately. Recognizing hidden agendas and the secondary gains that remain unspoken and largely unseen requires very specialized thinking. This means significantly upgrading the order of thinking you apply to the analysis of any system you’re operating within and/or in relation to, if you want to achieve your outcomes effectively and effortlessly.

I’ll be back again soon with Part 2 of this mission statement, if you’re ready to learn a bit more now check this out today:

Mastering Cognitive Maturity

(As always, feel free to leave me your comments below, I love reading them and responding too.)

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Developer of A.C.T. | Adaptive Cognitive Training and the Cognitive Maturity Model

P.S.: If you’re interested in working with me in one of my small coaching groups or 1:1 reach out to me directly at joseph@josephriggio.com and we’ll come back to you about how to find out more about taking the next steps to do that …

Changing Minds …

Changing Minds …

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Escaping The Matrix

“Remember … there is no spoon.”

(Author’s Note: This one is going to go deep fast, and then loop around a bit, all requiring some commitment, probably demanding a few readings, but I bet it will be worth many readings after you’ve read it once … ENJOY!)

Take A Walk With Me On The Wild Side of POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

For thirty years I’ve been working with clients personally and professionally helping them become more:

  • Powerful in their lives, i.e.: able to take the action that leads to the results and outcomes they intend
  • Creative in how they approach thinking and decision-making, with an aim at helping them become more adaptable and artful in acting strategically
  • Influential in their interactions, becoming masterful at communicating authentically and persuasively to engage, enroll and empower others

This is ultimately about how you can develop deep personal mastery so you can create the life you want to be living … a life lived on your own terms, without compromise.

So if you’re ready walk with me for a bit and we’ll explore the journey I’ve take to where I am today in the work I do.

A Little Background:

In the early 1980s I began developing a model of thinking about thinking, or more specifically thinking about how to improve thinking, that I called “Transformational Applied Philosophy” … T.A.P.

I named what I was working on Transformational Applied Philosophy because I was focused on building a phenomenologically grounded model of transformational ontological change, designed around the work of a few philosophers I was reading deeply at the time.

The philosophers I was reading at the time included: Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel (post-kantian logic and phenomenology), Edmund Husserl (existential phenomenology), Arthur Schopenhauer (aesthetic existentialism), Martin Heidegger (existential ontology), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (embodied ontological existentialism), Ludwig Wittgenstein (metaphysics and analytic philosophy of language), and John Searle (analytic and linguistic philosophy/philosophy of mind).

Then I went on and found a few more philosophers who I added to the mix of my reading, social ontologists like Gilles Deleuze, a couple of the hermeneutic philosophers like Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and those in the domain of philosphy of mind, neurophilosophy, cognition and embodiment like Patricia Churchland and, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

All of that reading was significant because philosophy has been informing people about how to live their lives well, to find a path of authenticity and purpose. Reading philosophy can be challenging, it dense and sometimes very dry too. And, one thing literally leads to another … and another, and another … ad infinitum, until you’ve read the entire canon of Western Philosophy at least (which of course I haven’t, and neither has anyone I know of, but some professional philosophers sure seem to have read 90% of it!).

I still read philosophy actively, more of the later kind … philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neurophilosophy … and this forms a great deal of my background, and current focus, about how I think about thinking, and help others to think better … i.e.: with greater clarity and more precision, leading to a dramatic increase in the ability to think with passion and strategically.

My realization was that while approaching my work with clients philosophically had great and deep value, what I am aiming at required something more than what staying just in the domain of philosophy offers me and my clients.

Going Beyond The Basics

When I found them I fell in love with informal logic and embodiment. This was especially true as the embodiment movement led through the extended mind phase led by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s work (following Gregory Bateson), and evolved to an understanding enactivism/enactment, where the premise is that the mind exists in the interaction with the environment. Quite literally the environment, and the objects in it, the total context, is as much a part of the mind of the individual as the individual’s neural processing and physical/sensory experience.

So I began to look more and more into the domain of somatics and folks from F.M. Alexander to Moshe Feldenkrais to Thomas Hanna. That took me deep for many years, way into anatomy, physiology, and eventually into neuroscience too. But, because I was led there by an interest in the idea of undifferentiated body-mind singularity my focus for about five years centered on studying cerebellar response where movement predominates thinking, proprioception and vestibulation.

HEY, PLEASE STAY WITH ME … WE’RE GETTING THERE …

Somehow this stuff made sense to me as a set of intertwined connections linking and weaving it all together, especially when I began looking at it through the lens of narrative and mythology, and the structure of storytelling.

This phase of my work was deeply grounded in studying the work of Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythologist, and his “Hero’s Journey” model. There’s no way you can do this and avoid looking at the work of many other folks in related fields from psychology (e.g.: Carl Jung) to ethology (Konrad Lorenz) and anthropology (e.g.: Gregory Bateson), linking what I call the biological imperative with the creative imperative, leading to an aesthetic orientation.

Sometime in the late 1990s I was introduced to the work of Clare W. Graves, the developmental social pyschologist. Dr. Graves work impacted my thinking on many levels and shifted the framework of the model I been developing for almost ten years by that point. For the next ten years I would study the work of the post-autonomous, post-conventional developmentalists including Jane Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and William Torbert.

OKAY, WE’RE THERE!!! (WELL ALMOST THIS TIME, REALLY …)

Mythological Expressions

By the early 1990s I’d begun referring to my model as “The Mythogenic Self Process” which became the “MythoSelf Process” by around 1994.

That was because of the impact of Joseph Campbell on my work. Adding up all the pieces led me to take a mythological turn, or what I think of equally as a narrative turn. I began to realize that our entire relationship to reality is structured like story, i.e.: in narrative or mythic form.

I’d moved well beyond the limited philosophical approach I’d begun thinking was the way to achieve significant transformational change with clients.

The way I approached transformation early on was based on a premise that the way we hold and process information in our brains as the manipulation of representations, both sensory memories and/or abstractions. That’s why I became (and to some extent remain) so fascinated with a philosophical approach. This approach has great validity when dealing with the cognitive process of making sense of and manipulating information, e.g.: language.

What was missing were the two elements that have become the signature pieces of the MythoSelf Process, sensorial cognition and dynamic movement. When I added these to using a narrative approach to uncovering the mythic form of the frame of reference that holds reality intact for an individual or organization, i.e.: the externalized temporally organized markers that are then internalized and acted upon, it all came together … finally!

(FWIW, I know this all very technical sounding, but I warned you up front this was going to take some commitment, but that it would be worth it, right? BTW, you can ask me about anything you want me to clarify in the comments section below.)

By 1999 I’d already begun training and certifying others to use the model and process I’d designed with great success.

For the next twenty years I’d continue to develop and refine the work I’d designed, and extended the reach of applications from sales and leadership training, to executive coaching, to team development, to intensive individual coaching, to mentoring coaches and consultants to use the model and process with client groups in virtually every specialization imaginable and with clients from eight to over eighty years of age.

What I had in hand was …

An aesthetically oriented, phenomenologically grounded and embodied model of transformational ontological changework that took into account developmental levels of awareness engaging the mythological form that supported the fundamental autobiographical narrative from which individuals and groups define reality as they know it to be in any given moment, operating it enactively.

WOW!!!

That’s surely a mouthful (and why I just refer to it simply as the MythoSelf Process model).

To get what it really is we’re dealing with all of that is actually essential. What makes this so strange to consider however is the typical orientation to reductionism, silos and linear thinking versus synthesis, integration and systemic thinking.

BUT … you can’t deal with dynamic complex systems, e.g.: human systems, without addressing the reality of that they are in fact dynamic complex systems!

The model of transformational changework I built, the MythoSelf Model, then is a model that shifts the fundamental way you perceive, think about and act in the world.

What’s at the center of the model is the shift in thinking from linear to systemic, and from fuzzy to precise. This requires a whole new way of using your brain than most people have ever experienced, one that is both more integrated and, far more embodied and wholeform than your education has ever made available for you to access.

Two other aspects of using your brain in this way is how embodied the experience becomes as you being thinking through and with body-based processing (somatically organized) as well as mentally-based processing (semantically organized) as an enfolded and entwined processing model of thought … and, how sensual and aesthetic this way of thinking is organized. When using the MythoSelf Process model as the basis of how you experience, perceive, process and act in the world aiming for beauty and elegance in form becomes a most sought for characteristic. Essentially this drives sensuality into decision making and performance (strategic action aimed at an intended outcome), making them beautiful as well.

Storytelling & Narrative Communication As A Control System

Way back when … virtually at the same time I began this journey from my study of the philosophers I’ve already mentioned, I also was beginning to read in the field of cybernetics, and cybernetic control systems based in communication.

I felt from the start that there was a direct correlation between what I was reading in cybernetic theory and the work I wanted to master in helping individuals and organizations make transformational changes. What I couldn’t put together was the mathematical orientation of many of the cybernetic thinkers I was studying at the time and how to apply them directly to helping people make the changes they desired.

The idea of systems that provided and operated on feedback made perfect sense, yet the mechanism of how to apply this directly with my clients eluded me for many years. It took the connection between mythological form/narrative and developmental theory to make sense of it as I now have and apply in my work with clients.

While the idea of a primary cybernetically organized mechanism to assist clients to make change made perfect sense, the specific methodology was a bit trickier to fully explicate and define.

When I brought together all of the systemic work I had been doing with individuals and organizations, as well as the mechanism of mythological form/narrative applied within a developmentally organized approach, it all became very clear that what I knew was working could be codified.

Stories are intrinsically cybernetic in the sense that they are self-contained systems. In stories language “controls” the movement of the narrative in terms of content, space as place, and temporality.

Where someone perceives themselves in space and time relative to the content in consideration determines what the content represents to and for them, and what’s possible as a result.

Narrative structure is based in organizing temporally, and placing actors and agents in relation to one another relatively in space, i.e.: who’s affected by the events that happen and how, where the events are happening, as well as when the events happen, are all part of narrative structure.

Organizing the stories we tell ourselves and others, as well as the stories others tell … especially those they tell about us … are all part of the mythic form of our life that organizes who we know ourselves to be in relation to reality as we know it to be.

Therefore the most powerful skill we can possess may be our ability to design, craft and tell potent stories … in storytelling we contain POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE simultaneously. When we tell stories intentionally, to ourselves or others, we shape and reshape reality as we know it, and in regard to how we relate to it.

Transformational storytelling sits at the heart and soul of the MythoSelf Process model. Storytelling is the essential and central skill that allows someone to create a future possibility that doesn’t exist for them as they are today. Using stories also opens up the possibility of shifting away from those things that limit an individual or organization.

I’ve designed the MythoSelf Process to allow facilitators of the Process to help clients make significant shifts towards what they want, as they simultaneously reset their relationship to what had been limiting them in the past, using narrative form as a means of updating their personal mythology.

Using a wholeform approach that takes into account sensorial and dynamic movement processing, as well as content driven sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making, defines the MythoSelf Process more than just a narrative or storytelling methodology as they are normally approached.

The MythoSelf Process creates a new wholeform reality by blending somatic and semantic modeling within a narrative, storytelling process that resets the temporal and spatial relationship of a client to the future-based position they intend to achieve.

Holding The Space For Clients Until They Can Hold It For Themselves

The new wholeform reality created by combining somatic and semantic modeling using a narrative, storytelling approach shifts the filters of perception and the sorting patterns that lead to sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making that precede taking action that produced the results that lead to achieving outcomes.

Only when an individual’s or organization’s filters and sorting patterns are fully organized and aligned with the outcome that’s intended, will the trajectory of action create the results needed to achieve the outcome that’s desired.

By shifting the filters and sorting patterns to align with a newly intended future, the individual or organization shifts the way they are paying attention, what they notice for, and how they notice for it, as well as what it means, needed to create that future intended outcome. This amounts to stepping into and living a new story that forecasts and leads to a new emergent reality.

Like this, what to do becomes obvious, even when it requires significant work to accomplish. In this way, operating from within the new story structure, moving towards the new emergent reality becomes effortless … regardless of how challenging it may be to do what’s necessary.

As the agent of change, “I” was the primary mechanism I had been seeking, and the specific way I could organize myself in relation to my clients to assist them in bringing about the change they sought when they engaged me became instantly clear as well (although it’s taken me another ten years to document and codify it fully).

There are two aspects to applying the MythoSelf Process in the way I have been building up to and describing … first by establishing the stories that need to be told and re-told, and second by holding a position in relation to your client that demands they operate from the position they’ll be in when they achieve their outcome. Doing this requires understanding all the “science” part of what I’ve been laying out here, as well as the “art” of knowing how to step into and adopt the position of choice.

In this way bits and pieces of what your clients need to be aware of starts becoming obvious to them. As the become aware of what they need, they simultaneously become more able to hold the position they need for themselves where noticing in this way is automatic and natural for them (without needing you to provide the structure and stimulus to prompt them to hold this position).

Over time the new position, actually a new reality for them, becomes how they are without effort or trying, it’s quite literally who they become (with your help of course, until you don’t need to help anymore).

This is a radical departure from how most processes, approaches, methodologies and models of transformational change operate. In virtually every other way of prompting transformational change it’s what the change artist does with or to the client that makes the difference. In the MythoSelf Process model the way you are as you do what you do with or to the client is what makes all the difference.

“Holding the position” is a cybernetic process, and personal communication … including the art of storytelling … is the ultimate control function in the system.

Stories form the mechanism to provide the intervention, or interventions, required to shift the system so the individual can find a way to permanently occupy the new position of choice, opening the pathway to a new possibility, a new future, beyond what would have been possible before resetting the system to the new position created in the relationship between the client and the facilitator.

In the end becoming that person, the one who can hold the position necessary makes it all worthwhile to have done all the reading, study and the thousands of hours of client work required to know how to discover what to do and how to do it, and then to do it.

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process

Sarasota, FL

P.S.: – If you would like to discuss the MythoSelf Process more, either as a coach or consultant … or, with the intention of exploring how experiencing the MythoSelf Work might help you personally … let’s talk, set up a complimentary consultation at your convenience: Schedule Time To Talk With Joseph Now

Accepting Impermanence

Accepting Impermanence

by ·


 

Today was that day … again

 

It’s all about the shift from an external point of view always looking in towards yourself …

To an internally organized point of view … always looking out and seeing what is truly there.

It’s been an interesting week.

I almost want to say a difficult week.

Truth is it’s been a very average week.

Today though was that day, again.

It’s the kind of day when I almost lose track of why.

Why bother?

Why bother doing any of it, because truth be told, none of it really matters in the long haul.

The stars have been there long before I was as I know myself to be.

I’m quite certain that the stars will remain in the firmament long after I cease to be too.

So anything I do is at best transient, temporary.

I think the Buddha also realized this same thing …

All life is impermanent.

Making a Choice

Years ago, specifically coming up on 34 years ago, more than half my lived life so far, I made a decision.

I will be great at this thing.

Funny part about that … when I made that commitment in an indelible way I didn’t know what “this thing” even was in actuality.

Turns out I was trying to answer a deeper question …

”Am I good enough?”

Although that question plagued me, I didn’t know what the “good enough” part even referred to in the moment I made that original pledge.

Somehow I just felt it.

I knew viscerally that what I was seeking was part of who I was at a level so deep, so buried within me, that it remain both invisible and inaccessible to me in the moment … except for that felt sense when I was in the presence of it.

I knew, without knowing how, that the answer to that question, “Am I good enough?” was contained in felt sense of self that I’d experienced already.

That felt sense of self was not accessible to me, and I had no way of representing it at the time other than as a visceral awareness … a sense of pure beingness.

The sense of beingness that I’m pointing to … the felt sense of self … was in fact a response to being in the presence of what “good enough” meant to me personally.

I could feel it, but I neither knew what “IT” was, nor how to do “IT.”

In the moment I experienced “IT” I knew that “IT” was what I had to do for the rest of my life … despite knowing I didn’t know what “IT” was at the time.

What I did know was that I was in the presence of someone who was doing “IT.”

I believed without exception that if someone else could do “IT” that it was learnable, maybe even repeatable, by me.

At first I associated the “IT” with the specific doing I experienced.

So, I pursued that specific doing.

I dedicated myself to learning “how to” do the thing I thought was “IT.”

I got good … remarkably good at doing the thing.

BUT that wasn’t “IT.”
I was closer, sometimes when I did the thing I could sense “IT” … almost as if it was going to happen.

The “IT” was that felt sense of self I had when I was in the presence of “IT” … and, it almost happened when I did the thing.

Almost, but no cigar.

Going Beyond Almost

In the process of becoming remarkably good at what I now do I keep brushing up against “IT.”

The doing I had access to was meticulous and precise, and I could get the outcome.

What the doing I had access to wasn’t though was poetic, beautiful.

I wanted poetry … beauty though.

In fact all I wanted was the poetry and beauty, because that’s when “IT” was present.

When there was poetry and beauty the felt sense of self I so yearned for was …

I was seeking an aesthetic form long before I know what an aesthetic form was, or had any idea about how to arrive at one.

My work was extraordinary even then.

It was as I said meticulous and precise, but it lacked poetry, beauty.

It was disciplined, intellectual, based in cold rational logic and deep learning.

I could create outcomes that others only dreamed about … I had a great teacher.

My commitment to learning to do the thing had paid off.

My skills were (and remain) world-class.

Yet, my aim was slightly off …

I keep aiming for the bullseye, though even when I hit it I didn’t get “IT.”

There was a perpetual emptiness in getting everything I thought I ever wanted … success, money, even a degree of fame … and yet “IT” was missing.

I returned to the source, hoping to find the fountain of youth.

Of course I mean that metaphorically, because when I had “IT” … even for the flashes of time when it was present for me … time ceased to exist, I became eternal.

I instinctively knew the answer was inside of me, not outside with more of the trappings of success, because by then I’d done it all, and I had that outcome … but still I didn’t have “IT.”

I also knew in the same way that what I was doing was stilted, deformed in a particular way because I didn’t have “IT” even when I was doing the thing and getting acknowledged for the skill and competency I brought to doing the thing in the way I did.

So I stopped trying.

Literally, I gave up.

It was evident that the way I was going about things wasn’t going to answer the riddle.

Instead I went backward to before I could do the thing.

There was obviously something present that allowed me to presume I could do the thing, and believe that I could have “IT” as well.

I began finding hints of “IT” in books.
I started looking past the content to the form.

That’s when I discovered the idea of mythic form, the deep essential structure of being.

The form I was uncovered was physical, not mental.

Not in a new way of doing however, a way of being in the world, that was based in my body and how I was within it.

That shifted things for me I realized something essential, that “IT” wasn’t either a way of doing things, not even the thing I did, nor the results of doing things, including the success I’d achieved.

”IT” was how I expressed myself when I was “occupying myself” fully, naturally, without corruption of compromise.

So that became my thing … my “ONE TRICK.”

I began reworking how I did the thing I do to always stand in the space where I occupy myself fully, especially when I working with clients.

When I am, I am “IT.”

Seeking “IT” never works.

The only resolution to seeking “IT” is becoming and being “IT.”

Now about 90% of my work is about standing in the space of occupying myself fully, what others might call being true to myself, or being who I really am.

The other 10% is about the meticulous and precise skills I bring that allow me to do the thing I do so exquisitely.

That means the thing I do isn’t for everyone.

The thing I do isn’t for anyone who’s looking for the step-by-step way to do things that leaves them out of it.

The thing I do isn’t about becoming remarkably skillful in a way that leaves who you are behind.

The thing I do isn’t about creating success at the cost of losing who you are essentially.

The thing I do is about finding the center of yourself, and moving in the world where you are always at the center of your being … realizing a felt sense of self.

When you operate this way you are always at ease.

You become as Werner Erhard said it, “At Cause.”

Instead of responding to the world as a puppet of stimulus response, you move the world by reason of the intention you hold.

Things that would impossible to or for others become effortless for you.

Most of all you realize you are who you have always been, who you are intending to become.

This is a foundational shift away from responding to external events and motivators.

It is a shift away from seeking external rewards that signal success.

It is a shift toward responding to the internal urge to express yourself fully.

It is a shift towards realizing the totality of the rewards of being who you are without exception.
This is power personified, and at the expense of no one else.

Accessing POWER

POWER’s just another name for Clarity, Confidence and Calm.

What I do leads to a deep sense of knowing the path you are walking on is yours and yours alone.

It leads beyond that to a deep felt sense of self where you know who you are, and allow yourself to be that and just that without compromise.

The POWER I speak of is first held in the felt sense of self that I’ve been pointing to all along …

And, POWER manifests as a function of communication as a control system to organize yourself to take action in the world t create whatever outcomes you truly desire …

And, POWER is also the ability to walk away elegantly, with dignity and certainty when you recognize something as not for you.

In every instance you communicate with yourself meticulously and precisely, so that when you communicate with others it is also meticulous and precise

However, this way of being in the world opens you up beyond being prosaic to becoming poetic …

You gain direct access to the aesthetic form where poetry and beauty arise naturally.

Your life becomes an expression of who you most are and know yourself to be, you allow others to experience that in your presence, and by dint of being, not only do you create what you most desire, but you give rise to poetry and beauty in all the things you do … in who you are.

As I said, this is not for everyone … but it is for anyone.

The choice remains yours …


Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Sarasota, FL – 16 October 2020

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Further Down the Rabbit Hole …

Further Down the Rabbit Hole …

by ·

Imagine for a moment that you have entered a restaurant in a foreign city center … an amazing, beautiful and mysterious place … one that you were referred to be a local stranger you met in a cafe over a coffee earlier that day …

She recommended it because you asked in the course of your causal conversation if there were anything they thought you absolutely must do while visiting their city, and the only thing they insisted was essential if you wanted to have the experience of a lifetime as a visitor was to reserve a dining experience at the restaurant you’ve just entered.

As you continue to reflect on how you got here you recall a sense that the stranger was indeed strange, sublimely attractive in a way that no one would likely call beautiful in a trite runway or cover model way, but indeed beautiful in a deeply radiant way. In fact as you continue reminiscing about the exchange you recall you couldn’t take your eyes off her … no, that’s not right, you couldn’t take your eyes off her eyes, feeling like they were inviting into somewhere completely familiar and yet utterly unknown.

“May I Help You”

You are slightly startled by the maitre d’s voice as you suddenly recall where you are, and respond, “Yes, I have a reservation.” and give the maitre d your name, and he walks ahead, leading you to your table.

It is a small round table, clearly set and ready for two, yet you clearly said your reservation was for just one. The maitre d assures you that the reservation is for two, as this small adventure gets curiouser and curiouser, and you decided not to challenge his clearly incorrect assumption.

Shortly a waiter arrives at your beautifully set table … filling the crystal goblet in front of you with water. Sitting just to right of your water goblet is the most unique wine glass you’ve ever seen with an etched bowl depicting a hunter chasing what appears to be a deer or maybe an elk with a bow resting on a gold leafed stem. It is clearly a glass intended for a deep red wine, large and rounded, with a large opening for the wine to rise and open.

You ask for a menu, and the waiter just smiles and walks away, barely acknowledging your request. Within a minute another waiter returns with an appetizer, a small beef tartar, very traditional, decorated with a few sprigs of watercress. It’s literally perfect!!!

An Appetizer and More …

Tender … flavorful … just the right amount … and the crisped toast points compliment it ideally. But how did they know that beef tartare is both your favorite appetizer, and your “test” dish for a new restaurant if it’s on the menu???

Now you just decide to settle in and with the flow, expecting a entree will appear shortly as well. As you lean back in your chair, feeling the weight you’ve been carrying from the day drop away the original waiter arrives back at your table, and you realize he’s very well put together, groomed to a “T” and wearing an immaculate tuxedo, all the way to his perfectly white, white gloves.

Behind him is a second person to whom he hands you empty dish and utensils, and almost magically a bottle of a fifteen year old reserve brunello di montalcino appears in his hand as he fills your wine glass, without a single drop going astray. It’s magnificent, like liquid velvet of a deep purple red, just barely translucent in the dimmed light of the restaurant. Again, how did they know?

Of course you want to pick it up, you can feel your arm tensing and your mouth wetting with saliva in anticipation, but you restrain yourself for another moment to take in the beauty of the entire setting as you allow your gaze to go from the glass to take in the entire restaurant, the patrons dining at other tables, the way the room is decorated and appointed … all of it somehow providing a matched frame to your glass, the brunello waiting there for you to indulge, your favorite of all red wines.

So you pick it up, and even before it reaches your lips you smell the bouquet … it fills your nostrils, tickling the front of your brain and exciting your taste buds already. You take the first sip and it expands from the front of your tongue to the back of your mouth. It’s exquisite, and it’s as though time has stopped between the moment of taking that sip and swallowing, and as you do swallow once again you are filled with the bouquet of the wine, and the subtle sweetness of the grape at the back of your throat. Ahhhhhhhh … this alone would have been worth coming for …

You open your eyes, not realizing you had closed them, and in front of you is a filleted Dover sole menuniere … the simplest and most elegant of presentations. Brown butter, lemon and parsley forming the sauce the lightly dredged fish was sauteed in directly. This meal is wonderful beyond words, and literally since you asked for the menu that never appeared you haven’t spoken any.

What’s next, can there be more, can it get better???

Coffee and A Surprising Dessert

You refuse a refill on your wine, as you fork the last morsel of your sole. The plates are unobtrusively removed and the crumbs wiped from the tablecloth, and again, almost as if by magic elegant china coffee service appears before you. You can’t help but raise the empty cup for it’s beauty and it’s so fine the light shines through the translucent side walls, and transfixes your gaze for a moment.

As you bring your cup back down to the saucer, and pick up your gaze again sitting across from you is the stranger from the coffee shop again, with the same beautiful china coffee service before her as well … smiling back at you mischievously.

Once again you wonder for an instant when she arrived and sat down, because you missed it entirely, but this evening has so far been unusual enough to condition you to allow this to pass without comment. As that thought floats away your guest says simply, ‘Good evening. Did you enjoy your meal?”

“Thoroughly, it was the most magnificent meal I’ve ever had!”

“That’s wonderful.” she says. “But you haven’t had desert yet … just wait the meal isn’t quite finished yet.” As if on cue the waiters appear again, with covered silver platters they place before you and your guest.

The waiters glance at one another and simultaneously lift the silver covers from the platters, and you almost laugh out loud as you see what’s on the platter before you … three small donuts … a glazed doughnut, a chocolate cake doughnut, and an iced doughnut you don’t quite recognize.

After this extraordinary meal it feels so incongruous to be served donuts. Your guest seemed not to have moved a muscle, and has remained smiling, if anything possibly a little more of a smile now than when you first noticed her sitting across from you.

She nods towards the donuts, so you pick up the first one you noticed, the simple glazed one. You’re surprised as how light it is as you lift it. As you bring it up to take a bite, you are hit by the subtle smell wafting up to you you’re sure it’s citrus, but not sure what exactly, it’s familiar but you can’t quite place it. And, you take a small bite …

The taste is out of this world, this is unlike any doughnut you’ve ever had … bergamot and lime sublime!

Your hand feels frozen, as you look back and forth between the doughnut in your hand, and the two left on your platter, and your guest literally laughs out loud as she she’s your indecision … “Go ahead, finish it, you’ll be able to finish those two as well, that’s why they make them so small … no one has been able to resist yet.“

So you do, in one more rather small bite, and smile yourself. Then, you take a sip of the still steaming, strong, black, French Roast coffee in front of you. It’s bitterness hits you as the ideal way to cleanse your palate preparing you to try the chocolate doughnut. Again, it’s as if they knew how you like your coffee, hot, black and strong. How?

Your guest has already finished the glazed doughnut, and has already taken a bite out of her chocolate one. She looks almost intoxicated, so you reach out, lift the chocolate one yourself, and in almost direct opposition to how light the glazed one was this doughnut feels heavy and solid in some way.

This time you don’t hesitate, you take a bite and it is indeed dense, and then immediately melts in your mouth, almost like a divine chocolate truffle, and much less like any doughnut you’ve ever imagined.

This time the second bite, finishing the second doughnut, follows almost immediately and you feel you could giggle like a child, but you resist and feel a grin stretching your mouth happening beyond your control.

Coming Full Circle …

You realize you’re very happy, and you feel very close … even intimate with your dinner guest sitting across from you. How did this happen? What have these people done to you? Whatever it is, you realize you’re pleased they have … and, of course you realize you decided to accept the suggestion your guest gave you over coffee, and have participated in each act in the theater of this dinner.

Now, after another sip of your coffee, you feel an excited, anticipation about trying the mystery iced doughnut. Almost as soon as you have it in your fingers you realize what it is … carrot cake! The icing is cream cheese, and the flavor explodes with a remarkable balance of sweetness, spice, dark caramelized sugar … this time you do actually giggle, which turns in a moment to a laugh forcing you to cover your mouth because you haven’t quite finished your first wonderful bite of carrot cake doughnut.

After you wash down the final bite of dessert, you look across to your dining partner, and ask her, “So what’s really going on here? This meal has been the best of my life, and of course I want to thank you for your recommendation, and I will most surely come back, sit here again, and indulge in another fine meal like this one.”

The Last Laugh!

Now it’s your guest’s turn to laugh out loud again, literally tilting her head back as she does, and says, “No, no, no … you won’t! You see this is what we call the ‘Front Room’ for first time guests only. There are many more rooms in this building, each taking you further into what our chefs are capable of preparing … much more than you can even imagine from this meal alone!”

You find your head reeling with what you’re hearing. How could this be the simplest meal you’ll have in this amazing restaurant. “How … how can this be this not be the best meal they are capable of preparing, I’ve never experienced anything like it!”

“I can only ask that you trust me, and come back soon. This meal was specifically designed to begin what we think of as both satisfying you completely, and training your palate for what’s to come.”

“My friends and I,” at this point you notice the waiters have returned to your table side, “would love to see you again and take you much deeper into the adventure you’ve just begun.”

Now imagine how, at this point as your new found guide looks across the table, you realize that what she has just said is exactly how you feel sitting there … content, confident and curious about what’s next.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Sarasota, FL – 9 Oct 2020

Surviving Myself

Surviving Myself

by ·

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117791/

Beginning again … and staring anew …

A little more than thirty years ago last month, September 2020, I began a journey that I didn’t fully understand as I took the first steps on the path that led me to where I find myself today. 

Truth be told if I properly unwind the spiral of time, tracing back the tendrils enfolded within to the source, the journey began long before … and I can’t actually tell that story because I don’t really know it.

That story began before I was able to track what was happening, or how, let alone having any consideration of why. 

The story I refer to, that must remain unknown, is common to all … the story of our becoming before we know ourselves to be, at least in any truly conscious way. 

“My people” … those who cared for me, raised me, instilled me with my earliest beliefs and examples of how to be in the world … set me up to become who I know myself to be today in ways I doubt could ever be fully unpacked. 

I believe myself to be who I know myself to be, and it sure seems and feels that this is ‘me’.

At the same time I am astute enough to know that many aspects of ‘me’ are actually remnants of my upbringing and of hundreds or thousands of subsequent experiences that have embedded themselves on and within the ‘me’ I know myself to be … which seem from the inside to be aspects of my own creation, because I’ve long ago lost the source of how they came into being in the first place.

So I’ll ask you to indulge me and allow me to begin my story much later this time, around the age of 30 give or take a year or two either way.

BEGINNINGS: The MythoSelf Process

For the years since then I’ve both unofficially and officially been practicing what I call the MythoSelf Process, or when first conceived originally, the Mythogenic Self.

Most of all this is an idea, a concept or notion, if you will, that points to a way of knowing ourselves to be, that places us at the center of the Universe.

Now it’s important to state that this particular way of referencing and organizing one’s self doesn’t preference you to be uniquely at the center of the Universe, but places anyone who is contemplating their place in the Universe simultaneously and without cessation at the center of the Universe … so you and everyone else is at the center of the Universe by virtue of the simple consideration that makes it so.

This idea, of being at the center of the Universe, is not the most complex idea in the model I’ve been practicing, the MythoSelf Process model, but until it’s grasped … or better groked … it remains a bit confusing to most who are used to Cartesian thinking and especially Cartesian graphing. 

THINKING … in more than one dimension

That’s largely because most people have been trained to think in only two dimensions … for example …

This and That, or, Here and There, or, Then and Now … and so on.

Rarely you have someone who can actually process in three dimensions …

This and That or some other thing, time place … and so on.

And, damn few who ever ever consider living in relation to four dimensional thinking …

This and That or some other thing only now and then not now … because the Universe is both dynamic and fractal by all evidence we have at our disposal.

So let’s change the language and labeling just a bit to avoid some of what might otherwise be confusing.


Let’s call the first kind of thinking, two dimensional, This and That, binary thinking

Let’s call the second kind of thinking proposed above, This and That or some other thing, multidimensional thinking.

And, let’s call the third proposed pattern for thinking, This and That and some other thing only now and then not now, fractal thinking. 

THINKING … Part 2: Why Bother?

OKAY … if you made it this far you might be asking “WHY?” … “Why bother with all this Joseph?” 

Fair enough, because when you upgrade your thinking you improve your life. That simple.

For the entire thirty plus years I’m referencing that’s been my focus …

How do I upgrade my thinking and the quality of my life, and subsequently, how do I help others do the same themselves?

That essentially is what the MythoSelf Process work is all about, so I’m starting at the core, not necessarily the beginning. 

I’ll assume for argument’s sake that you’re beginning to grok even more than you think about the MythoSelf Process and why I believe it’s so valuable to myself and others.

Let’s start again with more of the early story, and I think that will make all this much easier to grasp. 

In late 1980s I participated in Werner Erhard’s “The Forum” … as he described it then, a conversation that we are in even when we don’t recognize that we have been engaged in it for as long as we know ourselves (my phrasing, not his).

That experience was transformational for me, and led me to study NLP, meet Roye Fraser, start training people, develop the MythoSelf Process, and build and international training and consulting organization, and coaching and facilitating thousands of people in the essential fundamentals of the Process.

Quite frankly, the beginning was so pretty, because it began when I was largely out of sorts about myself and my place in the Universe, not feeling much like I was at the center at all. 

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was coming to the end of my first marriage, I was struggling to make ends meet financially because I’d just walked away from a lucrative role as partner in an Interior Architecture and Design firm I helped to found with two other partners, I had just begun training dogs full time in transition to I don’t know what, and soon I’d be living back at “home” with my parents for a few years … 

What I did know was that I was unsettled, and the source was internal and not external. I had to come to terms with something about myself that was unsettling, but I didn’t quite know what it was, or in reality even where to begin looking for it. 

I’d already done a lot of self examination and searching. I was a product of the 1970s, and the near universal quest to “find oneself.” 

I’d read all the pop psychology and spiritual books that were prominent at the time. I practiced meditation, tried yoga, fasted, followed a path of Christian contemplative mysticism, read a lot of the books on Zen translated into English at the time, even tried ‘sitting’ for a while … but my mind had been trained in a Western form of thought, and while all those things continued to fascinate me, they were “The WAY” for me personally.

But in my late teens I’d come across some reading that opened another possibility to me, including Carlos Castenada’s “Don Juan” books and a particular book by W.D. Norwood, “The Judoka.” 

Finding the 4th WAY

The difference in these books was that the main protagonists were active, not sitting still contemplating their internal world, and I had an innate sense that “The WAY” for me was about being in the world, not apart from it. 

That led me to G.I Gurdjieff and the idea of a ‘4th WAY’ … rather than profound meditation, contemplation, prayer or yoga, I could move in the world and use that movement and the interactions that arose as a result as the grist for the mill of deciphering the meaning of life. 

This suited me greatly at the time … so I began going further into the idea of living meditation as I thought of it, seeking to extract meaning from the day to day living of my life.

I think that the main thing I was seeking was a purpose for my life, a reason to wake up and get going, but I still lacked an essential quality … directionality.

Pursuing DIRECTIONALITY & Discovering EFFORTLESSNESS

That’s a word I got from my years studying with Roye Fraser … DIRECTIONALITY.

It’s a quality of mind that organizes action in a direction that is aligned with one’s being.

It’s about knowing where and how to direct yourself to take action that supports both who you are and who you intend to become by virtue of where and how you place your attention, and then how you act in relation to what you perceive and intend. 

The result of operation with DIRECTIONALITY is that you build a level of precise focus of attention and the action that flows from it such that you’re ability to create outcomes becomes effortless for you, regardless of how difficult the tasks involved.

EFFORTLESSNESS shifts radically when you’re operating out of profound DIRECTIONALITY, because it no longer references how difficult or hard something is to do as most people might measure effort.

For example, imagine a world-class athlete performing at the very top of their game, and engaged in competition in a state of pure flow … in that performance there is no effort.

Or, you might imagine an A-List entertainer … an actor or musician … engaged in a particularly demanding performance, even one that is physically draining or exhausting, but again you’d find their experience while in the performance to them might seem truly effortless. 

“… there is no time.”

There is a great scene in the movie Surviving Picasso where Anthony Hopkins playing the character of Picasso is approached by Natascha McElhone who’s playing the character Francoise Gilhot, Picasso’s lover at the end of his life. 

In this scene Gihot approaches Picasso who’s been working non-stop in his studio for nine hours and hardly eaten or drunk anything and implores him to take a break because he must be exhausted she thinks, especially because of his advanced age. He refuses, and she reminds him that he’s been at it for nine straight hours. As I recall, in the movie scene I’m referring to here, Picasso simply replies, “When I am working there is no time.”

This is the essence of what EFFORTLESSNESS means within the model I’m beginning to describe and share with you here.

I hope to share a bit more soonest … 


Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Sarasota, Florida 2020

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