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The Nature of Change

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“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.”

-Graham Greene

 

I often get asked something like, “Why bother?” … because it’s unclear to most folks exactly what it is that I do.

 

It’s usually a sign of some confusion that I get asked such a thing, because the connection between the work I do … the actual service I provide … is often unclear, even to my clients … except for the results they get. It’s why they keep coming.

To be fair what is unclear is “HOW” what I do works, NOT the outcomes I produce.

The outcomes, the “WHAT” that clients want, are attained within the work we do together … that’s clear.

However, from my point of view the “HOW” is much more interesting than the “WHAT” … despite how obscure it can seem to the uninitiated.

 

Separating “THIS” and “THAT” … or,
Unraveling the “X/Y Paradigm”

 

In the simplest terms I am a “Change Artist.”

That is, I help individuals and organizations make changes they want or need to make … for whatever reasons they may have to do so.

To be more specific, I am a “Healer” … in the most traditional sense of that word.

For most people the word “Healer” is a mystery of sorts, carrying a ton of semantic baggage with it.

However according to Webster’s 1913 edition of the dictionary a Healer is:

“One who, or that which, heals1.”

I prefer this quote in describing a Healer myself:

“Healing is really just a common job, there are lots of healers. She was one, I was one. Doctors, therapists, nutritionists, acupuncturists, dentists, shamans, physical therapists, editors, divorce lawyers, plumbers; there are healers everywhere. I used words and emotion to help people heal. He, I was told, used something along with words and emotion. That’s what interested me, the something else.“

I too help people to heal with “something else“.

The “healing” I provide people with happens through facilitating change.

If we dig a bit deeper we would come to a more interesting tidbit about the nature of the work I do, and that is that I am actually promoting “changelessness” in the work I do with clients.

You see I’m Graham Greene on this one, that “changelessness” is more welcome by most people than happiness. BUT unlike Graham, I believe that perceiving and experiencing the extant changelessness at one’s core is what they actually seek … NOT the changelessness he refers to on the outside, i.e.: no change in the context of their lives, stability and consistency over all.

Folks are simply confused about this, and it’s what I believe leads to confusion in my work too.

 

I’m never confused about what I do, or for that matter, what I’m doing when I’m working with clients … I’m aiming at what is changeless in the individuals and organizations I work with, and making that manifest and extant in how they experience themselves.

 

Sometimes it’s also about how people in relationships experience what is changeless in their relations … but it’s always the same old, same old … or as my teacher, mentor and friend would tell me … “Joseph you’re a one trick pony.

 

The real trick is the paradox that to become changeless you must first change, and I am gifted at provoking change in people.

 

 

Healing Beyond Words …

 

What’s sometimes surprising to me is how the obviousnesss of what I do escapes folks, even those I’ve worked with for years sometimes.

Sure, they get the outcomes the come for … the the “HOW” seems elusive, or invisible, to them somehow.

What they miss most of all is that what they really get is healing … deep, profound, unspeakable healing.

This is understandable, how they miss the healing part of it … because it’s beyond words, and beyond the common paradigm. WHAT I do, and HOW I do it, are beyond how “it’s done” in the modern framework.

 

Heck, if I more openly called what I do “healing” or called myself a “Healer” most folks who don’t yet know me would be more likely to use the label “quack” … especially when I refer to healing relationships and organizations!

 

I’m guessing though that quite a few of the folks who do know me, when they read this, will get exactly what I’m talking about … and may even wonder why I don’t more often use these terms in referring to what I do or myself.

There is another part of the “trick” I do. My “trick” depends on helping my clients get to NOTHING before they get what they want.

This is where we separate the clients who will make and those that will go back to where they’ve always been … those who choose the red pill and those who choose the blue pill.

“Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.“

From: The Matrix (1999)

It’s about the choice between the path of seeking change or unveiling one’s changelessness and learning to remain constant in that.

It’s about the freedom to become who you are … fully, completely and wholely … and in that healing what ails you. In becoming changeless, even when the disease remains … the discomfort is relieved.

The idea of becoming changeless is far beyond “healing” as most people have been taught to think about it … it’s about leaving the Matrix behind.

Profound healing is NOT about getting better, or getting past or over what ails you, or learning how to cope with it either.

Profound healing is stepping into your life “as it is” without changing a thing … and in that finding the enchantment, wonder and awe present in this moment.

Then and only then, when you’ve stepped beyond the Matrix, delved into the deepest regions of your being, and begun to experience the essential nature of your changelessness, can you begin to re-emerge into the world proper and choose the life you will lead.

 

Maybe even more acurately than calling myself a “Change Artist” or “Healer” .. in the tradition of Tarkovsky I should call myself a “Stalker”2. This is very particular and peculiar skill … one I seem to have a proclivity and prodigious training for as well3.

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

 

  1. From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 ↩
  2. A guide who leads others into the “Zone” where their deepest desires are revealed, and their wishes granted. ↩
  3. My everlasting thanks to Roye Fraser. ↩

 

PS – Summer Intensive Training w/Dr. Joseph Riggio:

 

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication
Professional Certification Training

Presented by ABTI | Princeton and Acuity World, DK

SPECIAL ONE WEEK ONLY OFFER
(expires 19 June 2013)

 

Opps … I made a BIG MISTAKE …

My partner Henrik Wenoe, at Acuity World has been on my case for weeks (months really) to announce this training program to my list … but I’ve simply been swamped.

The Early-Bird pricing “officially” ended on 15 May 2013 … and here we are almost a month later and I haven’t even let folks know about this powerful program we’re running this summer.

So I’m taking the blame and doing what I can to make it up to you …

For the next week you can still get the Early-Bird pricing for either attending the event live in-person, or via Live Internet Simulcast (there’s even an option to pre-purchase just the videos) … when you register directly using this link:

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive

You’ll SAVE $3000 from the Regular Investment for this 12-day Intensive program when you attend it live (BTW the investment includes room and board with three meals a day, snacks and coffee/tea/water all day long).

If you want to attend via the Live Internet Simulcast … now broadcast in HD via my private LiveSteam MythoSelf Channel … or pre-purchase the HD video recordings, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Early-Bird pricing as well.

BUT … you must act immediately to get the Early-Bird Pricing (there’s also a three-payment plan I’ve set up for you as well if you want to spread out your payments over three months) …

Here’s the link you need to use to register and get the Early-Bird pricing:

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive

 

 

[NOTE: The full program brochure is here: http://www.acuityworld.com/pictures_da/med_clips/Joseph%20Riggio_2013.pdf]

 

 

Foolish Wisdom … Making The World Go ‘Round …

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“Foolish wisdom is about dealing with the world in ways you have not before …”

 

Challenge is …
Most folks can’t get out of their own way

What I mean by “most folks can’t get out of their own way” is that they lead with their limitations. Of course, they don’t mean to … heck, they don’t even know their doing it 90-plus % of the time … but they do nonetheless.

The reason most folks lead with their limitations can be boiled down to just a few things:

  • Their limitations are intertwined with their “success formula” – i.e.: how they know to create the successes they do

  • They perceive the world from a limited point of view that’s relatively fixed and unchanging, i.e.: myopic perception

  • What they’ve experienced is what they think they’ll always experience, i.e.: they project their past into their future

  • The education they’ve had defines the world for them as they know it, i.e.: they haven’t learned to use their senses

  • Reality as they know it to be has a singular form that’s unchanging, i.e.: they seldom if ever challenge their beliefs

  • Truth/Knowledge/Learning … whatever … all exist “out there” beyond them, i.e.: expertise is external to them

I’m sure I could extend the list, but why? If you don’t get the pattern from what I’ve included above, more items in the list isn’t going to make it any clearer for you. In fact I could probably make it just one list item and cover the whole gambit …

  • Only socially validated and reinforced values are acceptable to them, i.e.: what they know instinctively and intuitively is put aside when they are confronted by others who demand socially acceptable “proof” … they are externally organized and other-referencing, versus internally organized and self-referencing

Now there’s nothing wrong with being externally organized and other-referencing per se … BUT it’s a function of interplay between context and content … and timing. When you know you don’t know, and you seek external input, from experts or otherwise, that’s wise … BUT, when you have gathered the information and knowledge you need the ultimate decision about what it means always remains personal … ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU.

This may seem obvious and self-evident, and to a very great extent it should be and is so. The challenge for most people is clear however …

SELF-DOUBT

FWIW I’m a big fan of doubt … until I don’t. To quote my own mentor, Roye Fraser …

“When in doubt don’t.” 

What Roye taught was that doubt meant, “not enough information” – simply meaning, you need to gather more information than you have, so you can remove the doubt. So until you become settled within yourself don’t take any action you don’t need to take before you need to take it.

The key in that statement is: “until you become settled within yourself don’t take any action you don’t need to take” …

Yet, the deep challenge for most people is they’ve never learned how to know when they are settled within themselves, so they continue to look for and count on external information and validation, i.e.: social proof.

 

What to do about it …
(escaping the pattern of leading with your limitations)

This is in a very large part why I’ve shifted the presentation of what I’m doing around to focus on the idea of “Foolish Wisdom” … i.e. dealing with the world in ways you have not before (that will make you more successful). 

“Foolish Wisdom” is the wisdom of the Fool

This seems so very self-evident, yet most folks have forgotten who or what the Fool truly represents.

The Fool doesn’t represent stupidity, mental limitation, sensory inhibition or even immaturity as some seem to think.

The Fool represents the innate, naive, childlike wisdom that perceives with clarity and without distortion what is happening around them. 

The Fool is NOT childish, but childlike … a distinct difference. The Fool first perceives and then acts, without prejudice. When you get that last statement you’ll get how profound the position of the Fool truly is … beyond where some vast majority of people can or do act from themselves.

Let’s step back for a moment to an earlier part of this post. Take a look at these four bullet points again in relation to the statement about who the Fool perceives and acts:

  • They perceive the world from a limited point of view that’s relatively fixed and unchanging, i.e.: myopic perception

  • What they’ve experienced is what they think they’ll always experience, i.e.: they project their past into their future

  • The education they’ve had defines the world for them as they know it, i.e.: they haven’t learned to use their senses

  • Reality as they know it to be has a singular form that’s unchanging, i.e.: they seldom if ever challenge their beliefs

You can see that if these bullet points are accurate about how most people operate, it’s almost diametrically opposed to how the Fool operates. The typical person’s operating position is mired in prejudice, based on what they have been taught, what they’ve experienced and what they already believe. As it says, “they project their past into their future” … and this applies to how they judge what they haven’t experienced or learned about yet.

In working with some of the largest, most progressive and most well-funded businesses in the world, I’ve had the opportunity to counsel the senior most leaders of those organizations regarding decisions they needed or wanted to make (and sometimes about the ramifications of decisions they’ve already made). I’ve also spent thousands of hours in rooms with these same folks doing developmental training and facilitation work with them.

What I’ve found again and again is that these bright, extremely well educated, accomplished and successful individuals sometimes don’t know their rectum from a hole in the ground when it comes to making good decisions, taking meaningful action and/or leading others to do the same!

The “standard path” that many senior business leaders take (and you can include most entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals in this group too) … is to use past performance to determine the future direction and action they should, will and do implement. STUPID! STUPID!! STUPID!!! Not only do they do this in their organizations as leaders … often based on “best business practice” bullshit … they also do it in their personal lives. STUPID! STUPID!! STUPID!!! (I can’t say or emphasize this enough regarding this ridiculous pattern of thinking and behavior.)

Okay, let’s back off a minute … calm down and cool off, shall we?

Why would anyone do this if it were such a stupid thing to do?

Three profoundly powerful reasons:

  1. Because it’s embedded in their success strategy

  2. Because they’ve learned that this is the way to do things

  3. Because it’s socially acceptable to do it this way 

  4. And, when they do they get massive CYA (Cover Your Ass) benefits

Simply put, they don’t know any better … so they do what they know.

On the other hand, the Fool always knows that they don’t know … so they can’t do (act on) what they don’t know … instead the Fool acts “in time” based on real data/information in the system as it emerges, i.e.: their perception, decision-making and action strategy is always emergent.

 

Where to go (I’m going …) from here …

I’ve learned a tremendous amount of how to help people make transformational change in the last two plus decades of doing the work I do … and most of it revolves around helping them to unwind bad learning.

The starting point of real change is the ability to accept that what you’re doing now, and the way you’re doing it doesn’t work … or at least doesn’t work as well as it could. You’d have to be willing to try what you haven’t tried before … and YOU can’t do that … literally!!!

YOU can’t do what you haven’t done/tried before, because YOU won’t even be able to recognize it if it bit you on your arse!!!

You can literally only see, hear, feel, taste and smell what you are already accustomed to … until the doors of perception you operate from are opened further than they are now …

YOU CAN’T DO THIS YOURSELF!!! …
It must be done from outside of YOURSELF

There are pretty much two ways to get there … i.e.: outside of yourself:

 

  1. You can step aside from what you now know and believe … putting all your learning, experience and beliefs aside

     

    -or- 

  2. You can allow someone who has been where you haven’t been perceptually to open the doors of perception for you

 

This is the work I’ve now committed myself to doing, i.e.: working with clients to provide them with Foolish Wisdom … pointing to the emergent present with enough clarity, humor and provocation so that they can see, hear, feel, taste and smell it for themselves. 

In this regard I see myself as the “Wise Fool” leading the way by proving that I don’t know … claiming to neither possess nor offer anything except the most valuable thing of all for the truly wise … NOTHING.

Hell, that must be a claim you can believe …

“When you come to me I promise you I’ll do my best to neither have nor give you anything, and if we’re successful you’ll leave with NOTHING for yourself.” 

There’s really only one good reason to pursue Foolish Wisdom for yourself …

Because you want to make better decisions and take more meaningful action in your life.

By making a commitment to become a Wise Fool yourself –

  • you’ll become a better leader …

  • you’ll experience life more fully …

  • you’ll transcend the limitations that you now encounter repeatedly …

  • you’ll find a way to achieve what you haven’t before …

  • you’ll transform your relationships – with your spouse/lover, children, parents, friends, employer, employees, co-workers – EVERYONE …

you’ll begin …

Having the experience of YOUR life!
(both on your own and with others)

Foolishly yours,

 

Joseph Riggio, Wise Fool and Provocateur Extraordinaire

Princeton, NJ

 

PS – Soon enough I’ll be announcing my workshops for 2013 … in the meantime you can still register to attend the MythoMania program here in NJ on Nov 29 and 30, Thursday and Friday … and it’s almost FREE, my gift to the MythoSelf community each year …

 

MythoMania 2012 Register NOW

 

 

The Aesthetic Frame

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There’s a profound possibility in organizing aesthetically … in other words to see the world in terms of pattern and potential beauty. I used a word for it in a response on Facebook earlier today … “SPLENDOR” … to become present to and aware of SPLENDOR.

Specifically the beginning point may be as simple as choosing to acknowledge that your experience reflects you. What you perceive reflects your being-ness in any given moment. I keep peppering my posts with the word “ontology” referring to this idea of being-ness. From my point of view it is both the beginning, center and end point of everything we experience.

Much of what has been written about “personal development” and even much of what has been written about “spiritual development” is organized around what we know and/or believe to be true. What we know and believe belongs in the domain of epistemology, which as I see it emerges from ontological ground.

Here’s an easy way to translate the fundamental position I’m presenting from the philosophical …
“You can’t have an idea or opinion if you don’t first exist.”

So I’ve pointed the vast majority of my adult working life towards exploring existence … my own and that of others … what it is and how we do it.

 

The Aesthetic Frame

What I’ve found in my explorations of existence, i.e.: my ontological research, all points to the possibility that the only way to fully experience our existence resides in the aesthetic frame.

We experience everything first sensorially, through direct sensory experience. Even our inner reality seems to be comprised from bits and pieces of our sensory experience … recombined, reconstituted, re-formed into vast landscapes of imagination.

If this has any validity, i.e.: we first experience everything sensorially, through our senses … doesn’t it then make sense to build a methodology that deepens our sensory experience as the primary means we possess to experience our lives most fully?

This is the primary argument for building the aesthetic frame, to experience our lives most fully.

The aesthetic frame requires that we suspend all judgement and/or assigning any meaning until we’ve fully experienced at the sensory level the events of our lives. This pattern of willful suspension, an intentional inhibition if you will, creates a uniquely powerful framework for making meaning, taking decisions and acting in our lives.

 

So What’s The Problem?

Well … there isn’t any really. As a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (most of it published posthumously), I accept that all problems are actually puzzles in language … if you accept that logic is bound in language (and I do that too).

(If you want the direct insight on Wittgenstein’s premises of philosophical puzzles start with his “Philosophical Investigations“ … and let that lead you to what’s next …)

However, back to the issue of building The Aesthetic Frame …

The most significant thing you can do when you are organizing an aesthetic frame begins with learning how to operate in multilevel, multilayered realities – realities that are common to all creative geniuses. As simply stated as I can these realities hold more than one “truth” simultaneously, often “truths” which are in opposition or cancel one another out.

Another way of putting it would be to say that these realities hold multiple perspectives regarding the same data present in the system in this moment, effectively creating multiple moments of opportunity simultaneously.

Once you get the power of accessing multilevel, multilayered realities you’ll have access to a level of creativity that very few folks ever experience.

When you hold multiple positions of perspective simultaneously – about any given “truth” – the sense of uncertainty that so often unnerves and confuses others in complex and chaotic situations, never comes up for you.

This is another function of achieving an internal cognitive state of NOTHING, which is different from the ontological or internal state … or more simply stated, a way of being you operate from … where the cognitive state of NOTHING is present.

 

Resonance & The Aesthetic Frame

One of the most powerful ways to arrive at NOTHING is through the lens of resonance …

Accessing resonance in your life begins with becoming open to what I refer to as the “Signals In The System” … or the seemingly insignificant data that arises and becomes present in the context in which you are operating.

Noticing birds of prey as an example of resonance that I attend to is one that I’ve used before. In and of itself the bird of prey, an eagle … hawk … or falcon … isn’t necessarily significant, but I place significance on its presence when I become aware of it.

When I notice a bird of prey it shifts my internal state so something we can refer to as hyper-awareness. It focuses my attention and I begin to notice other data in the environment, my own internal state and my thoughts in the moment. This shift in consciousness often leads to cognitive leaps where something seemingly insignificant becomes significant, or I may arrive at a conclusion about something that’s been elusive that suddenly comes into focus and becomes clear.

On another level, noticing for “Signals In The System” can also be about noticing very subtle signs and signals that are present in a context that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. An example of these kinds of signs and signals might be noticing a subtle somatic shift as someone is speaking, either in the speaker or a listener … or it could be an equally subtle and elusive change in tone.

The famous anthropologist, E.T. Hall, referred to subtle contextual signals in terms of spatial distinctions, e.g.: high territoriality and low territoriality cultures, temporal distinctions, e.g.: monochronic and polychronic cultures, and communication preferences, e.g.: high context and low context cultures. These can also be referred to as attending to “Signals In The System.”

Within the context of the work I do, i.e.: using the Soma-Semantics model within the MythoSelf Process, we place a significant amount of attention on subtle signals that can be referred to as attending to transpersonal data. For instance, using what emerges contextually in terms of semantic and somatic data that the individual presents in conversation/dialogue a significant amount of information about their personal history becomes obvious, despite what they are attending to in the moment.

E.g.: As someone begins talking about a movie they’ve recently seen they inevitably reveal information about what they attended to (noticed) and how they attended to it in the storyline. This information reveals something about when developmentally they were perceptually positioned relative to the story. This information will be present in their semantic (language) and somatic (body based) exposition.

Attending to information at this level demands residing within an aesthetic frame. From within the aesthetic frame this kind of information becomes most evident and trackable in terms of resonance. Rather than attempting to attend to the subtle “Signals In The System” directly it can be far better to simply REMAIN PRESENT TO THE TOTALITY OF WHAT EMERGES AND NOTICES WHERE YOUR ATTENTION FLOWS … WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO CONSCIOUSLY DIRECT IT.

This effect, i.e.: noticing without effort via attending to what becomes resonant for you, rises naturally from residing within the aesthetic frame.

 

POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

Within the tri-legged structure that I use, POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE, the idea of the aesthetic frame constitutes the foundation for the CREATIVITY leg.

Creativity allows you to exceed the limits of the current frame you find yourself operating within. Using a  creative process/approach you are literally about to extend the frame beyond its current limits. You add to what is present by bringing into the context something that is not yet contained within it.

To do this … bring something into the context something that is not yet contained within it  … you must be able to extend yourself beyond the limits of the current frame, i.e.:

When you are operating creatively,
rather than playing within the boundaries,
you begin playing with the boundaries.

This way of operating, i.e.: playing with the boundaries, allows you to transcend uncertainty … and to bring certainty into a context where it isn’t yet present.

This is akin to bringing certainty to the unknown … quite a trick (literally a quantum trick, transcending linearity and cause & effect, by making a quantum jump to what exists outside of and beyond the frame that contains you in the moment)!

This also requires holding multiple perspective simultaneously in place. In order to have certainty in the face of the unknown you must bring NOTHING to bear on the current situation. By this I mean that you apply no judgement or expectation to the situation.Specifically, the ability to hold an intention about outcome/s without necessarily holding an expectation about the outcome … other than in a moment to moment manner.

Bringing NOTHING to bear on the current situation is the ability to hold only “What’s Next …” in mind at any given time as demanding action, while holding the entirely of the scope of your consideration in place without any urge or urgency about committing action to it.

As I said quite a trick …

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

 

Applied Mythology 101: Reflections On Heroes, Mentors and Stories

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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”

 

What The Single Most Important Decision You Must Make?

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Almost every day I ask myself a single question (amongst others of course … but this one I ask myself almost every single day …).

“What is the contribution that I will make today?” 

And, almost every day I come up with the same way to answer it too:

How can I help people make better decisions … that are their own, and not the ones they’ve been taught to believe are their own?

Now from there on out things begin taking on a life of their own!

There are all kinds of reasons I can point to as to “why” things at this point begin to spiral … but suffice it to say it’s complex ‘`~>

 

However I do want to share with you some ideas about how I specifically go about answering that question.

[Now remember I am a developer, designer, creator, broker and peddler of information … so these questions are always asked and answered by me within this framing.]

 

I think that the most amazing thing we do … dang, maybe the most amazing thing about being human … is that, we are capable of making decisions. But it ain’t as easy as all that … 

Son of Nobel Prize winner, and himself a Pulitzer Prize winner for his non-fiction, best seller, “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid” (GEB), academic Douglas Hofstadter who is the Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition wrote about this in his book, “I Am A Strange Loop“ …

In the end we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.

– Douglas Hofstadter, “I Am A Strange Loop, pg. 363

 

 

 


Now … here’s a question for you … AND I WANT YOU TO BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF …

  • “Were you, even a little bit, impressed by this guy’s credentials before you read the quote I posted above?”

And, depending on your answer …

  • “How do you think that influenced your expectations and perception of what he would have to say?”

Then go one more step (or league …) down the rabbit hole and answer for yourself this question,

  • “How do you think what I did in framing this way set you up for what I’m presenting to you now?” 

 

I’m bringing all this to the forefront and putting your attention on it, however, how much would you have considered those points if I hadn’t ? (… and I know the answer will vary depending on the person reading that last question and all the preceding ones too.)

BUT … you want to get that this is obvious … or at least as obvious as it’s likely to get!

 

So, as a practicing, applied cognitive scientist – who did his doctoral research on decision-making, specifically decision-making in contexts where the information required to make decisions was incomplete and implicit – where my personal attention is focused, is on how we are all influenced in making what we believe to be “our own decisions” … about anything and everything?

 

Now take this question way beyond language, and directly perceived, explicitly available information … and ask it through the lens of my focus … in relation to the implicit contextual data relative to the way all information is perceived.

 

Here’s what I think is the single most important decision you can make …

 

“Is the decision your making (or about to make)
truly your own?”

 

Now add in a further piece of data, relative to my life’s work …

How do you know you’ll be able to make decisions that are truly in your best interests (including those that impact the folks you most care about and love) in critical moments and situations, e.g.: crisis and chaos?

These are the moments where it most counts … when time is limited and data is even more limited … AND you’re least likely to take into account the incomplete and implicit data that significantly impacts the quality of the decisions you’re making.

 

So this is where I live in answering my own daily question …

How can I help the folks I work with day in and day out run their brains like they actually own them … and live lives worth living.

 

I hope I’ve given you some things to ponder …

 

All the best,

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics

 

PS – There are more clips and posts in this blog that take these ideas further and in difference directions, including the audio and video posts “we’ve” begun making (yes, there really is a team of folks who help me get my messages out there …)

PPS – If you really want to take a HUGE step forward in training your brain to make decisions that are your own … I recommend you seriously read and consider this: Getting Started … [NOTE: It’s a long piece to read, but when you’re down you’ll know more about how to bring yourself to peace than when you began, I PROMISE! … “cross my heart and hope to live”]

Stepping Forward: A Hero’s Journey

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Stepping Foward: A Hero’s Journey

[The animation of Joseph’s presentation at TEDx Academy, Athens, Greece 10 October 2011]

““You All Have Brilliant Brains … And Bad Educations.”
– Dr. Joseph Riggio

In this video, Dr. Joseph Riggio explores the topic of how our stories shape the worlds we live in, as individual and collectively. He speaks to the way our education influences our ability to shape the stories we are living, what’s missing from our schools – and how we can add back in what most essential to reshape the future we’re creating.

Rethinking the Value of Language – Part 3

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Howdy all …

Using a thread that began with a posting about the Swine Flu vaccination on a colleague’s Facebook page I’ve been analyzing how the interactions have progressed from that posting into a minor flame war. However what’s most interesting to me is the underlying structure.

I been looking at the structure and impact of language in communication in this thread in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, but more importantly IMO I’ve been writing about the effect of language on thinking and the behaviors it creates. In this entry I’m going further, below the surface, into the deep structure of language and it’s usage where the logic resides.

[NOTE: If you haven’t yet read Rethinking the Value of Language (Part 1) and Rethinking the Value of Language – Part II it would make sense to do that first – before you read this and try to make deep sense of this entry.]

The Origins and Implications of the the Meta-Model:

About thirty-five years ago Richard Bandler and John Grinder the co-developers of what later became the NLP model discovered a series of patterns in language that prevent the user from either communicating or thinking with precision. They grouped these patterns into three meta-catagories of what they referred to as meta-model patterns, Generalizations, Deletions and Distortions.

I’d add that this model of thinking about language usage is essentially about the logic of language, and how we violate that logic. When we violate the logic of language the meaning of what’s been/being communicated is unwound, creating ill-formed representations by we we communicate and/or fail to communicate.

  • When we violate this logic in language usage in a grammatically correct way it may seem to make perfect sense, although in reality much or all of the sense contained in the language is lost
  • Without being able to control our language usage to control our own thinking and communication we give up our personal power … losing much or all of our ability to choose for ourselves
  • When we fail to manage our language use well in our communication with others we pay a great price … we lose our power to influence and persuade others in any meaningful way as well.

Essentially in each of these cases what’s happened is that what’s communicated or thought loses the ability to accurately represent what’s intended with any accuracy of precision whatsoever. When you violate the logical patterns of language usage in regard to the patterns of your own thinking you create ill-formedness in your representations of the world-at-large.

Simply put … when you violate the logic of language usage you lose touch with reality, a basic condition of what might be called insanity.

FWIW a significant part of my intention is to offer you access to the skills of critical thinking and the ability to communication with precision. When you can think and communicate with precision you have the means available to you regain and maintain some real semblance of sanity in a sometimes insane world. IMO this all begins with skill of critical observation … so let’s begin again …

Re-Visiting The Text:

Jim ended his last message with two quotes:

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” ~ Douglas Adams

“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” ~ Hubert Humphrey

My response to Jim following his exchanges that preceded these quotes was:

”I don’t know you, but keep pointing to facts and non-facts as though this discussion here is based on some facts and some non-facts. Yet what continues to be missing is the evidence.”

I happen to be one who does believe in the primacy of evidence. This may of may not be the same as what you refer to as “science” above.”

What I’m doing here is trying to find out how Jim will respond to the possibility of allowing the discussion to be reframed.

I use his own argument form to respond to him. Specifically his call to ”logic and argument” vis-a-vis the Douglas Adams quote.

I begin by offering him some reason to consider accepting the reframe by pointing to Karl Popper’s philosophy of Logical Positivism – the dominant paradigm of scientific theory in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

The most essential comment I make in regard to Popper’s philosophy is, “Simply stated, “we cannot prove what is true only that which is untrue.” A very logical statement that forms the foundation of Popper’s approach to science, which itself is an attempt to ground the scientific approach in logic.

Taking Jim “SERIOUSLY”

Then I build further on this by taking HIM seriously, especially in regard to the second quote he uses by Hubert Humphrey. I continue building towards a logical structure, offering him this well known premise, ”correlation does not equal causation”, another logical form at the core of the scientific method.

At this point there is some reason for him to choose to take what I’ve written seriously … if he choses to operate with an internally consistent logic himself. This is an essential basis of sane thinking and is easily revealed in language usage. Dialogic logic (the logic of communication exchanges) is either consistent or it’s not, i.e.: each comment connects to the one before and leads to the one after … with some reasonable gaps and movement allowed for to accommodate the nature human interaction.

Narcissistic Thinking

Yet there is a counter-arguement to believing that he’ll accept the offer I’m presenting to him. His previous entries all send the same message … I’m smarter than you, more educated than you, one of the intelligensia … an expert. As I said in my last posting, what Jim’s responses suggest are, “there are those of us who know and those of you who don’t … so stay out of it.”

This attitude is at the heart of what could be called narcissistic thinking. One of the characteristics of this kind of thinking pattern is the unwillingness to lose, to give any ground at all and especially to give away any of what is perceived of as power in interpersonal interactions.

Up until this point the only response I can reasonably expect is, ”So what?”

So I continue … I test whether or not he’s willing to give some ground, any ground at all …

”While I don’t depend on homeopathy to save me in times of crisis, I wouldn’t remove it from the medical lexicon of those who are supported by it, if only to raise their morale – there is as you know strong evidence for the power and effect of placebos after all.”

While I don’t expect him to accept this statement, without it I can’t know if he’ll give any ground. Then I push it a little further …

”In the meantime the best defense that history offers against plague is not being there, then after that a strong immune system either by fortune or genetics … or both. So what I’ll choose is the massive evidence from the medical community regarding what does impact the ability to support and sustain a strong immune system based on the longitudinal studies we have, and do my best to remain free of exposure to the greatest extent possible in the meantime.”

The point above should challenge what Jim put out as his fundamental position so far, i.e.: ”I am a medical doctor, one of the experts who know … and you should be paying attention to what we have to say and follow our advice, if you don’t it’s because you’re stupid (remember you can’t possibly know anything without being an expert too) … and you will die because of it (”You’ll get no herd immunity …”).”

It also gives Jim something to say “NO” to without having to dismiss my entire response … maybe even an opening to say “YES” to the previous part of the posting.

Testing the Theory and Dangling the Bait

Then I dangle the real bait …

”FWIW no vaccines for me … the jury is also most definitely out on that one, unless you count the definitive proof by Popper’s standards that they in fact are neither universally safe for all nor universally effective. Either way I accept your personal choice here and wish you the best with it.”

In many ways this is the real bait specifically because I take back my own power here, accepting his right to do as he will and claiming my own at the same time. We should see very quickly if Jim takes the bait and proves out my budding theory about him being a victim of narcissistic thinking … a particularly virulent form of ill-formedness in human interaction IMO.

Jim’s Response …

FWIW there should be no surprise that Jim takes the bait … hook, line and sinker as they say.

Once again you’ll have to wait for the rest of my analysis of the communication patterns in this thread and the light they throw on language usage, thinking and behavior.

I’m trying to keep this to bite size chunks of information, and this already feels a bit long and dense … but not too long, so I’ll stop it here for now.

I’ll be posting Part 4 very soon … but in the meantime I’d love to hear from you with your own analysis, comments and observations.

Best regards,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Flt. CO29, somewhere over the North Atlantic