“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

 

I’ve received a bag of mixed comments about my most recent postings … ranting on and on about, well … “NOTHING.”

Some folks seemed to like what I had written … others, not so much.

I could write a clever vignette about my own life experience and coming to nothing, and it would be good reading. That though is not for this posting.

NOTE: I am in the process of collecting some vignettes which I’ll release in book form I’ve tentatively entitled “Apprentice of Wonder” later this year, I hope.

However, I do want to share some more of my ideas about nothing and address one specific comment:

“If nothing is what you offer than what is the point ??? That’s where the confusion is.”

I think the confusion is semantic … in the understanding of what I mean when I say “NOTHING.”

 

 

NOTHING as I use it is a beginning point …
an orientation … a way of seeing the world.

 

 

NOTHING is to be free of the limitation of bias, assumption, presumption, prejudice, personal history … all the stuff that filters what we perceive to be “real.”

As humans I don’t think it’s possible to be free of the things I mention about, e.g.: bias, assumption, presumption … BUT, I do think it’s possible to be aware of them!!!

When we are aware of our bias, assumption, presumption, prejudice … and so on, we are at the beginning of freeing ourselves of the limitation they impose upon us.

NOTHING is the ability to stand in a position beyond the limitations of our personal history, with all the baggage that brings along.

NOTHING is the position of choice … the place where we become free to choose.

 

 

Choosing Well

Most folks never get to choice, because they are stuck in the limitations of their personal history. The world most people inhabit is the one they’ve already experienced and have projected before them.

In the movie he conceptualized, “After Earth,” Will Smith, playing Ranger General Cypher Raige, explains the idea of projection to his son Kitai (played in the film by his son Jaden Smith).

The movie script uses the singular emotive response of “fear” to illustrate the power of projection:

Cypher Raige: “Son this is not training. This is a class one quarantined planet, the threats we will be facing are real. Everything on this planet is evolved to kill humans. Every single decision we make will be life or death. But if we are going to survive this, you must realize that fear is not real, it is a product of thoughts you create. Now do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice.“ – After Earth

 

There is a subtle undercurrent in the movie about transcendence IMO (maybe some projection on my part).

Cypher Raige is a man without fear. He conquered his fear years before and became a hero as a result. This is half the battle of the Buddha in the attainment of enlightenment of course, i.e.: conquering fear.

Later in the movie we learn the story of how and when Cyhper conquered his fear. Simply told he believed he was about to die, and in that moment gave up being afraid. The moment of his perceived death released him entirely … in the moment there was NOTHING left for him, only a choice to be made and the action that followed.

When there is NOTHING we are free to act … there is no resistance, no friction in the system … only clarity and movement. I would call this the the moment of choice the instant in which we are free to act beyond the limitations of our personal history.

The power in the moment of choice in altering the course of one’s life is enormous. In that moment, and only in that moment are we free to express ourselves completely without remorse or regard for consequence beyond meeting the moment as it is …

 

In the “moment of choice” we experience ourselves as we are, beyond the imposition of our past or the concern for our future … we are free to act potently and powerfully in a life affirming way … we regain our humanity.

 

 

If that is not enough to make NOTHING worth pursuing than I am at a loss to offer you more value in what I am attempting to present.

 

Beyond Choice … Poo-Pooing the “Non-Dual”

There is another consideration attached to the concept of NOTHING as I approach and employ it.

If you are of the spiritual ilk of non-dualism you are probably aware of the offer held out that suggests there is a position beyond self-identifying, an all encomposing awareness beyond the egoic position of being.

NOTHING as I am referring to it sees non-dualism as just another booby prize … the treat or candy held out as a reward to the infantile mind that seeks transcendence or enlightenment as they understand it from a non-transcendent or unenlightened position.

Non-duality is the grand awareness of pure being, consciousness.

Non-dualism, or non-duality, as it is often presented and discussed in mostly Western spiritualism is offered as a position without subject or object, or beyond subject of object.

In the Advaita tradition only Brahman is real, the empirical, manifest world is nothing, or non-existant, i.e.: only a projection of consciousness, unreal. This path is common to the spiritual traditions influenced by Hinduism and Vedantic philosophy.

In the Advaya tradition there is no difference of distinction between the absolute and the relative, all things are the same essentially … simply understood at different levels of awareness. This is consideration is present in Buddhism, as well as in the Vedantic paths.

 

 

There is a misconception in the non-dual traditions (according to me) about something to be attained, i.e.: non-dual consciousness, the experience of pure being, or pure consciousness without subject or object.

 

 

The Advaita and Advaya traditions suggest that in the moment of transcendence or enlightenment the egoic identification of “self” or “I” is lost completely, i.e.: there is no longer anyone there/here … only primordial beingness or consciousness.

 

In the model I am holding out the only thing to be gained is truly NOTHING … simply the experience of being as you are incarnate in this manifest form we occupy…

and … if you continue beyond NOTHING, to occupy the incarnate form and the access to wonder and awe it offers fully and completely for as long as you are able.

 

 

The “trick” to gaining NOTHING however is first letting go of everything else.

This is kind of submission, but a submission only to the moment and yourself. To become completely aware of this moment, and only this moment as the starting point. Then to act …

 

 

In acting all things become present, eternity and infinity are complete, and what is real are the clarity and movement of the moment … life is held in that dynamic sphere of acting and there is nothing else.

 

 

If I’ve learned one thing, or maybe more accurately stated, come to believe one thing, in my many years of living now is that, life is dynamic, i.e. it will not stand still or wait. Life demands that we show up for it fully and completely, or it will pass us by.

Most people remain ever waiting, thinking that “waiting” is a passive act. A warrior understands that “waiting” is active and does so only when there is no action that is needed. Yet, when the waiting is full a warrior acts without hesitation blending fully in the warp and weft of the moment in a whirling blur.

Like the Dervish, the warrior acts, becoming one with the One, while devotionally remembering themselves in the “I” that is all.

 

REMEMBER, there is literally NOTHING to do …

just be … what you have is already “IT.”

 

 

NOTHING to it, really.

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, N.J.

 

P.S. – This is the basis of my Foolish Wisdom dialogues in the workshops I run. If you want to experience a live event or program with me you can either in person or via our Live Internet Simulcasts, now broadcast in HD on our private MythoSelf LiveStream channel (http://www.livestream.com/private/mythoself).

 

 

 

Reclaiming Life …

It’s a scary thought …

Here we are all trapped in an illusion, a matrix, designed to keep up caught up in its intricacies while we spin out the days of our lives. Yet the design is so clever, so well thought out that we perceive ourselves engaged with something “real” something “meaningful” nonetheless.

I’ve written about “The Matrix” before … calling it out as “language” … nothing more, nothing less …

Language traps us … and it frees us … when we use it, instead of letting it use us.

It couldn’t be simpler actually.

Our escape from the Matrix is what keeps us locked into it … language, or rather how we use and relate to it.

Maybe I’d be better off  explaining it slightly differently …

It seems our lot as humans to “own” language, yet I am proposing that language “owns’ us instead.

Specifically, through the process of “labeling” things we interact with our labels, i.e.: the language we use for things … including people, activities, places, ideas … instead of the things themselves.

Language, as we typically use it, removes us from our experience. Yet, if/when we learn to use it, language can allow us to become one with our experience it.

In the MythoSelf Process work we move towards the experience of life as a singularity, a simultaneous compression and expansion of life as it is … NOT as we wish for it to be.

The MythoSelf Process is a uniquely non-magical, or even anti-magical model. There is no presumption of being able to manipulate the rules or laws of the Universe, nor is there any desire to do so. Residing outside or, or beyond, the mundane and ordinary is counter to what the model offers and proposes.

I have placed the MythoSelf Process model within the sphere of “Fourth Way” models … an homage to the wisdom seeker, Gurdjieff, and his model or “The Work.”

As I understand it the “Fourth Way” refers to a way of becoming “real” or present to the “truth” of the world or cosmos as it is … nothing more, nothing less … and doing so while you remain fully immersed in the swirl of life as it arises.

In my opinion a “Fourth Way” model, like the MythoSelf Process is the “Way of the Warrior,” confronting life and all it has to offer, as well as all it demands, whilst remaining in the midst of it … at the center of the cyclone that is life. 

I say the “Fourth Way”  is the “Way of the Warrior” because it demands courage … there is no desire or room to remove yourself from the daily interaction with life as it shows up in all of its fury and finesse … its horror and its beauty … the terror it provokes as well as the awe and wonder. Only a warrior could withstand the paradox, contradiction and chaos of the Universe as it is … without desiring or striving to make it other than it is … and the path of the warrior is NOT for everyone.

It seems some souls are better suited to another way … the way of the Monk, the Yogi or the Hermit as Gurdjieff proposed long before I.

However, in “The Matrix” film trilogy we see the Way of the Warrior, a Fourth Way exposed in full relief IMO. 

Neo represents the warrior way …

He begins in an ordinary life, doing ordinary things, bored out of his mind. So he rebels, he resists.

He thinks there might be somewhere to go within the Matrix, something to be doing. Yet he is miserable and lost, a shell of what a human is capable of being

But at the start of the film he knows none of what he is truly capable of … so he resorts to small time crime in the pursuit of money, entertainment and escape

In time Morpheus gives him the option of learning the truth … nothing more, nothing less …. and it is not at all like what Neo expects.

Like all other seekers when he comes to know “the truth” beyond the illusion, he is shocked and wants to return to the comfort of the illusion.

As the film progresses, Neo becomes more aware, more present to what is possible. He begins to manipulate his perception … how he perceives the Matrix … and himself

As Neo lets go of the limitation of what he has believed to be “truth” … the way the world is … his worldview … he begins to shift … to become someone, something else.

In the end Neo learns to “see” the system for what it is … interactive patterns of swirling energy contained in the material of the world he inhabits … yet to all external evidence he is blind.

What Neo finds is his way … his destiny … and the cost is his life … he sacrifices himself so that life may go on … despite the predictions of the Architect he finds a way.

Neo escapes the Matrix, but not with his life.

The MythoSelf Process is a model for finding your way … a true Fourth Way … a way for warriors.

The MythoSelf Process depends on ‘tricks’ to unravel the puzzle and mystery that life is as we typically experience … while we are trapped in the Matrix.

The ‘tricks’ of the MythoSelf Process are the ‘tricks’ that warriors use to awaken themselves, to become aware of the world as it is … to uncover the”truth” … to become themselves.

Here’s the first ‘trick’ …

We are led to believe we are going somewhere from the moment of our birth … like life unfolds as a linear process … Point A leading to Point B … leading to Point C … the cause and effect paradigm.

Language supports the cause and effect paradigm because it is itself digital, linear and sequential, one distinct word following another, ad infinitum, giving the illusion that what is labeled, described and held in language is digital, distinct, linear and sequential.

Language also identifies things relationally, that this is like that, similar but different, part of a common framework. Language, and labeling things, forces a taxonomy to emerge … relating unrelated things as though by virtue of their similarities they belong together … ala a hydrax is like an elephant .

I call this the “X/Y Paradigm” comprised of two distinct parts:

Part one is where “X” leads to “Y” (cause and effect), establishing a causal, liner progression from one thing to another, moving sequentially forward in time.

Part two is where  “X” can represent any given perception that we associate with “Y” … the “this is like that” consideration

Taken together there is no escape from the “X/Y Paradigm” – your destiny if fixed

Yet in the Matrix we are offered another alternative … choice. 

Life may in fact be more like a spiral wrapped around a center point. than a line progressing away from the center

This is the paradigm of choice … recognizing the spiral emerging from and leading to the center, and closing the circle so that you reside at the center at all times.

Instead of getting caught up in getting somewhere … you begin seeking to experience where you are  instead.

Let’s call this an non-magical, or anti-magical, framework designed simply to re-enchant life as it is … nothing more and nothing less.

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D

Princeton, NJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Mea Culpa …

I was a young’un when Carlos Santana released his version of the Clarence “Sonny” Henry song … “Evil Ways” in 1969 on his debut album “Santana” with the band of the same name. Yet I got it, I understood what Clarence had written about and Carlos was singing about … if you want things to be different you’ve got to change your ways … do something different!

Now I know something about how to organize myself so that what I got back then makes sense, instead of just “understanding“ it.

Folks come from around the world to the programs I run. Other folks watch from the comfort of their homes or offices … in real time via my simulcasts or on the videos we release … what I do with those that show up wherever I am in the world doing what I do. And now it seems I owe them all … a deep apology!

Mea culpa … I am sorry!!!

What am I sorry for? Well, most of all for unintentionally misleading them about what it is that I’m doing with them.

Indulge me for a moment more …

I don’t come from any “spiritual lineage in the sense of the modern day gurus out there, or the “spiritual teachers“ offering their wisdom about enlightenment or whatever.

I do have a lineage of sorts, having studied intensely with my own teacher, Roye Fraser, for seven years … dang near every week, two or three days a week for all those years. And then remaining close to him for the next thirteen until he passed away … learning from him and absorbing what I could of his hard earned wisdom.

BUT …

My training with Roye was unlike anything that resembled “Spiritual Teaching“ or New Age Thinking as most folks have come to think about them … or experience them either as far as I can tell.

What differentiated what I learned with and from Roye as simple …

Roye taught me to stand on my own … to have my own views, to figure out for myself how the world was and worked, and what to do to build a life that was uniquely my own!

There were no rules, or formulas, or rituals to practice … no early morning meditation, or energy transmissions, or anything of that sort … just hard, disciplined, prolonged work to GET “IT!” as he used to say.

There was no commitment to a group or community per se (although there was an informal group of us having our individual experieinces with Roye of course) … everyone was on their own, but it was not every man, woman or child out for themselves (just one of the paradoxs of a true Fourth Way system).

There was really only yourself … and the way.

Roye was a guide, pointing endlessly to a possibily … i.e.: finding one’s self.

Most of what I did in the process of learning with Roye was giving up what I had come to believe is true … about myself, about others, about the world that contained us … about the nature of the cosmos itself …

In my language today I refer to the process of giving up and surrendering to truth, or things as they are, as getting over it … and my students are often at the other end of me barking, Get Over “IT!”

My first confession …

My first confession is that I have nothing and no particular common “WAY” to offer anyone … except for a process that points to a “WAY” you yourself must find or invent … a unique WAY to find yourself.

This is the Fourth Way … finding one’s self by trial and error … but not alone.

This is the path of the individual … the “Western Way” as Joseph Campbell pointed out.

Unlike the traditions of the Orient, or the Eastern Way in the West the seminal and sacred way is the way of the individual, not the collective.
In the West no one submits to anyone or anything other than themselves … so much more difficult than pledging allegiance to a teacher, guru or master of one sort or another.

The Fourth Way … or The Way of the Individual is a lonely path compared to sitting in meditation in an ashram or dojo. Yet it has it’s benefits as well.

When you “arrive” via a Fourth Way path you know without question where you are going, and where you have arrived when you get there … i.e.: to yourself, not to an immersion in a system or a collective.

Now this may or may not be of interest to you … no way for me to know really (except for those of you I have met … and who have demonstrated that this way is the WAY for them).

My second confession …

My knowledge is NOT passed on from a lineage, or from one teacher to a disciple, or a master to a student … DESPITE MY YEARS SITTING AT THE KNEE OF A MASTER LEARNING … HE DID NOT TEACH ME WHAT I KNOW!!!

What Roye offered was only an opening to find out for myself what was possible … and held the space for me to explore whilst I did.

This WAY … what Roye called the “Generative Imprint Model” and what I call the “MythoSelf Process” is a Fourth Way … a way of holding a sacred space intact for others until they can hold that space intact for themselves.

That’s all … Nothing More and Nothing Less.

While this is enough … offer others the gift of nothing so they can find for themselves what is truly possible for them and they alone … it has been so often corrupted and co-opted …

I find myself in the challenging position of having to apologize here for the confusion that has occurred via my own communication over the years as I came to the fullness of appreciating the “NOTHING” that I was seeking, and presenting what I now recognize others heard as seeking “SOMETHING” instead.

My third confession …

There is NOTHING to learn, NOTHING to get, NOTHING you need … and that is all I have to offer … NOTHING MORE and NOTHING LESS.

This statement is reasonably confusing unto itself, but there is really no other more direct or powerful to say it. What I can do to help clear up the confusion is say it differently maybe …

You have to change you way if you want to have the experience of YOUR life.

Literally, you must become someone anew … let go of your current view of the world and begin to consider the world as you have never done so before.

This includes first and foremost the way you know yourself to be … and then everyone you know as well … and finally everything that you ever thought of as you have must shift for you to come to have YOUR life.

You must surrender yourself … to yourself … and to truth, i.e.: the world as “IT” is … NOT as you hope, wish, desire or pray for “IT” to be.

YOU HOLD THE WORLD AS “IT” IS … YET “IT” IS WHAT “IT” IS … DESPITE YOUR DESPERATION FOR “IT” TO BE ANOTHER WAY!”

When you come to … “the entirety of your experience is a projection you create and manifest as “IT” becomes what you intend for “IT” to be you become free to have the experience of YOUR life” (NOT the experience imposed and impressed upon you).

Somehow along the way folks who have trained with me came to think they were adding something onto or into the life they already had … as opposed to having to give up the life they have to get the one that’s waiting for them.

I saw this painfully this past weekend when I ran the most recent MythoSelf Professional Training module with a group in New Jersey.

Even folks that have been around training with me for years and should know better are stuck in what I did and was doing in 1999!!!

MEA CULPA … it is my cup … and I apologize to you profusely for the confusion!!!

Now you must let go … give it up … GET OVER “IT!” … and move past what you thought you learned with me and into what I have now learned myself if you want to GET “IT” …

Truly, it was painful to watch … and we must set a new direction …

My only pledge is that I’ll start with me, ’cause there’s no where else to begin.

Letting go of the way you know the world and coming to know the world as “IT” is … that’s all I have to offer … ‘far as I can tell there is NOTHING MORE and NOTHING LESS … but as I said, this is enough.

SCHOOL’S OUT … time to find your own WAY …

“No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks …”

If you’ve got the fever, and you’re interested in coming along for the ride … stay tuned … it’s only gonna get hotter now that summer’s here!

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

P.S. – My apologies to those who been around a long time … especially those who’ve been around the longest … Something Wicked This Way Comes* and the old must go out to make room for the new or we may all get lost in the promise of living out our fantasies, instead of coming to and finding the truth ourselves.

*”Something Wicked having an emphasis on the more serious side of the transition from childhood to adulthood …”  

 

 

 

“The Work Is Your Salvation”

For years I made that comment to a student of mine whenever it would come up about what he should be doing next … especially when he found himself troubled or feeling lost.

I truly meant it too … “The work is your salvation” … a simple, powerful phrase for me (and him too). It’s so unlike, the sentiment of Tim Ferris’ “Four-Hour Week” … or “Four Hour Body” … or “Four Hour Master Your Life” whatever program/workshop/book/lecture he or anyone else of that ilk can or will come up with IMO.

Instead I’m suggesting that weeks, and months, and years go by while you do your work … chopping wood and carrying water so to speak … as an act of your own salvation. NOT to pay the bills, NOT to amass a fortune, NOT to achieve fame or glory … but simply to stay the course, because in that you find yourself … and your salvation.

So many people find “work” boring, or worst “dreadful” … like it’s the bubonic plague or something horrid. They seem to seek immediate relief, ala “The Four-Hour Week” … or drinks at the end of the day … or “working for the weekend’ parties.

Personally, I find myself lost at trying to get that attitude or behavior. I mean, “SURE … I get it.” … most folks aren’t doing the work that is their salvation. NOT BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T FOUND THE WORK … but, because they don’t do it like it’s their salvation.

Most folks aren’t connected to what they do or why they do it … “for others.” They don’t get the joy of contributing to the greater good … really bringing themselves to what they do FOR THE GREATER GOOD.

I think this is mostly because of two or three things:

1. They have been taught that the “greater good” means sacrificing themselves to others, and losing themselves in the process (a major function of the Great Society teaching process to keep the economy going strong … and filling the coffers of those who get to sit at or near the top of it)
2. They have been taught to “Look Out For Number 1” … and that it means taking care of themselves by getting more and more stuff, i.e.: consumerism rules! This plays right into a desperate need most of us have to continue our childish “I” … “Me” … “Mine” mentalities that society continues to reinforce (good for consumerism  and filling the coffers …)
3. They don’t get that there is another choice … the best they can imagine is getting the most they can out of the system for themselves, even when they ain’t gettin’ much (and again, this serves the masters who enslave them from afar with the lure of luxury and laziness, while themselves feasting on the labor of others)

Heck, I don’t mean to be bleak … but, HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED INTO THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD???!!!???

No wonder Tim Ferris sold a million, gazillion copies of his book!

No wonder Eckhart Tolle sold two gazillion of his book … and,

It’s no frackin’ wonder that Oprah became a mega-star with the message she sold …

“We’re all commoners, and you’re okay … just like me.”

BULLSHIT!

We’re not okay … the world around us is falling apart … and we’re either playing the violin, or downloading an MP3 of someone else playing it for us.

Well okay, not everyone is playing …

Some folks actually are working. Some folks really do get it. Some folks have found their salvation …

Me???

I began writing this because I was struck by the question, “Why do I do what I do?” prompted by another on a forum I was reading about how folks who do something similar to what I do approach the work they do.

Many folks in the “helping professions” believe they are “helping others” … nurses, social workers, therapists, teachers … you name it, they may truly hold onto the idea they are doing it for others. Yet … why??? Why do they … why would they do it for anyone other than themselves???

Gandhi said he did what he did because it was all about him, getting his salvation through the work.

“IT” had nothing to do with others, other than his work was all about them … a paradox indeed!

So here’s Mr. Gandhi changing the world around him, and he’s really doing it all for himself! WONDER-F**KING-FUL!!!

When I step into that space myself I find that most folks think my work is to help other people … maybe to help them “change” … or “become different … or bettter” in some way … or to “do something different” … and yeah, sure, DAMN THAT HAPPENS … but it ain’t what I do!!!

Who the F**K am I to impose that shit on someone else???

I.e.: “You should/need to/ought to/want to change.” … “You should/need to/ought to/want to be better.” … “You should/need to ought to/want to do something different.”

NOPE! Not for me … I call a time out, do over … hell, I QUIT!

I’m taking my bat and balls and going home …

What I do is for me … I strive to be the change I want in my life. I open a space to step into where I want to be … where I want to live … where I find my salvation.

When I do that well … for some folks … being around me is helpful for them, they find it cathartic is some way … or informative … or entertaining …. something shifts for them because I am some way in their presence … and in that way I do my best work.

I think about it more formally at times, we can all it “mythological” … and I even spout out steps to what I do that are involved in it … like there is a process or something of that sort, but there is only really BEING … just that, no more.

The “mythological’ stuff is the story about BEING, and sometimes about BECOMING … but that’s the artifact after the fact, not the fact itself.

Yet, having a good story helps to give us a sense of clarity and direction … something to be doing. So I wake up each day and I find the story I am living … and I try to live it well enough so that others can see that it’s only a story and find theirs too.

Heck, maybe if we all find our stories we’ll be able to find a story that works for all of us together … and we’ll save the whole damn planet … and get some salvation in return.

“Experiencing The Hero’s Journey …”

Howdy,

 

I have a quick post today for ya’ …

I have finally, finally finished the editing on my new book:

 

“Experiencing The Hero’s Journey …”
Foolish Wisdom Book 1 – An Apprentice of Wonder

 

And, I’ve set up a link so you can download a PDF of the Preface and the Introduction too … FREE, FREE, FREE  (that means it’s a gift you don’t pay anything for BTW)!!!!

Here’s the link:

“Experiencing The Hero’s Journey …”
FREE PDF Download

That’s all for today (the file you download should do some more speakin’ for me …).

However, I’d love to hear what you think … leave me a comment after you get a chance to read a bit of the book …

 

ENJOY!!!!

 

All the best,

 
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

If This Is Wednesday We Might Be In Vegas …

 

Just a short post today …

If you read yesterday’s post you already know I’ve been busy as a beaver in early spring.

I’ve really immersed myself in examining my own presuppositions about the work I do, which also happens to be the basis of how I live my life!

What I’d like to share with you, extending on my rant about ‘adaptability’ from yesterday, is the idea of improvisation, as in life improv …

I always fancied myself a jazz musician, played a bit of trombone, some guitar, little bass … and sing whenever I can too. I’m not claiming any distinction as a jazz musician, but the idea of it had deeply influenced just about everything else in my life.

What I like most about jazz is the improvisational aspect of it. There are two things that might help make my point:

1. Improving on a song that you know … kind’a like Frank Sinatra’s take on any of the standards, or Joe Pass’ chordal melodies.

2. Pure improv, where you just show up and jam … taking what comes and going with it, letting it take you and taking it in turns.

If you get the second part just right it’s a lot like great sex (if you get the first part right you often get to have great sex … just check out Frank’s bio or Eddie Murphy’s take on singers).

This is almost exactly what I aim for in the way the MythoSelf Process model operates as a transformational technology …
great improvisation.

When I work with clients I treat them the way I do other musicians when I’m jamming with them … I let the music flow and follow for a bit, then I add in my licks and we see where it goes. The intention is to end up with a moving composition that’s more than the parts could ever be independent of one another. In many ways this is what I mean when I call the work “wholeform” – it’s a cybernetic structure that’s more than the sum of the parts.

So learning the MythoSelf Process takes this form on as well … it’s like learning to jam with other people in life. To move with them with incredible flexibility … first following, then blending, then leading, then giving them back the lead … and round the bed again, so to speak.

One aspect of the work, i.e.: the MythoSelf Process, is verbal … getting facile and fluid with using your tongue well in the creation of powerful and potent outcomes with others. This was a kind of game I played as a kid … and it’s apparent in the nature of how I approach the training experience … like an experienced cunning linguist.

When you come you’ll recognize the power of this kind of playfulness for yourself … done well this stuff will knock your socks off and rock your world (although I may be mixing musical metaphors here).

If you’re not such a jazz fan as I am, then maybe more of a hip-hop, rap thing will make my point. The early players were pure improvisationists, using words as their instrument. If you haven’t seen it rent or buy, Eminem’s “8 Mile” for an example of which I speak.

The thing is that regardless of your genre of choice, it’s all about the way you use your instrument and make it your own
-and-
MythoSelf training is all about making your instrument your own to use as you choose!

There’s also the entire aspect of learning to flow with way you use your body … and to flow into the way others bodies are used too, but let’s maybe leave that for tomorrow …

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

 

P.S. – I start the next Professional MythoSelf Training tomorrow if you’re thinking about coming, check out the details here:

 

Professional MythoSelf Training: Module 1

 

 

 

The BIG Question … “Why MythoSelf?”

Author’s Preface:

It’s been quite some time since I’ve sat down to write a post for Blognostra … for a million and one reasons!!!

I’ve been fixated on shifting my presentations to what I’ve begun to call the “Foolish Wisdom” an alternative life perspective that’s all about seeing the world in ways you haven’t before considered.

Another project that’s been consuming my time is finishing up the new book manuscript I’ve been working on (… lot’s of writing has gone into that!). I’m tentatively entitling it: “Foolish Wisdom Book One: An Apprentice of Wonder” … and it’s about my time learning with Roye and developing the MythoSelf Process. I’ve done my best to capture the feel of what it was like growing into the role I now work from, and some of the learning I’ve accumulated along the way.

I’ve also been working on the total revision of my main training presentations, i.e.: the MythoSelf Professional Training (more about that below in the P.S.), and what had been the original Performance Design workshop I developed for doing group personal work into the current presentation of the Foolish Wisdom/Performance Design combined weekend workshop I’ve just run in New Hope, PA last month (very cool format and workshop IMO).

I don’t want to go into the deep, deep details … but let’s suffice it to say that I’ve been busy as a stud bull.

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WWWWH…W:
Who? What? When? Where? How? … Why?

The big question that continues to resonate around my work is “Why bother with MythoSelf® Process training … or work with a MythoSelf® Facilitator or Trainer?”

To answer this question I had to address the questions (plural) surrounding the MythoSelf Process … “WWWWH…W” … Who? What? When? Where? How? … and then the one that all the others depend upon, “Why?” comes into direct focus. But rather than make this a book unto itself I’m going to jump directly to the “Why” question.

Why MythoSelf®? …
The answer can be contained in the simple answer … PERFORMANCE!

I’ve been working on the design and refinement of the MythoSelf Process for over twenty years now … a kind of obsessive, compulsive love affair of sorts. Each time I ask myself the question, “Why bother?” again I get to the same place … “PERFORMANCE!” I’ll break it down just a bit …

The MythoSelf Process is built on the premise that …

My clients are seeking a common resolution …
to achieve an outcome that exceeds or eludes them from the way the are operating in the world  today.

This is beyond “problem solving” or even “doing” in the classic sense of the word. The MythoSelf Process work focuses on shifting the relationship between being and becoming from separate or distinct to singular. Okay, that’s kind of esoteric and dense, so we’ll go through it step by step a bit.

Almost everything we are exposed to educationally suggests that the world is static or moving towards a static state. We’re constantly looking for the steady, stable state … e.g.: homeostasis.

For  instance we could use an example from the world of medicine. The ideal that’s suggested is physiological homeostasis, that the body is constantly moving towards some ideal state even when it’s not stabilized there at that state.

The same could be said to be true in regard to the way some folks think about the ideal psychological state, e.g.: calm, loving, peaceful …

We could also look to the world of business, where I’ve played for a quite some time around folks at the top levels in the game. In business there’s a kind of “dynamic steady state” that the aim … a steady state of growth … an endless desire for more.

Even our language suggests a preferential “static state” when it nominalizes words like “love” as though this is a fixed way of being.

Which brings us to the concept of “Being” itself.

There is no ongoing “State of Being” … this is Plato’s mistake, i.e.: the ideal.

We are always in a state of Becoming AND in a state of instantaneous Being.

We go from “Being” to “Being” to “Being” … in an unbroken stream of events that are our lives. In each event we are “Being” and we are “Becoming” … a singularity that almost everyone finds difficult to hold on to conceptually … yet, there you go!

However, when you get this concept deep into your bones, absorb it and operate from it viscerally … that you cannot help “Being” in any given moment … you literally cannot not “Be” … AND you get that the “Being-ness” you possess in this moment is simultaneously “Becoming-ness” as well, you are free to choose.

When you are free to choose you become present as a performer of a higher caliber than you could possibly ever be while you are operating from a static state.

It really is that simple … when you are free to choose your performance skyrockets … it goes off the charts … you’ll exceed your wildest imagination.

But this idea comes with a profound caveat, i.e.: you have to be free to choose … and that’s one of the most unlikely things you’ll ever encounter … a human being who’s free to choose.

 

Why/How the MythoSelf® Process Creates The Freedom To Choose

The most significant thing that you can do if you want to embody this concept of begin and becoming flowing into a singularity you can begin operating from is to remain aware of your sense of self AND simultaneously of the change happening at all times around (and in) you.

The essential premise of the MythoSelf Process is to work with the idea of change and changelessness in simultaneity.

In order to do this we have to go beyond language. Language, as soon as it is spoken or written, freezes what is spoken or written about in the words spoken to represent what is being pointed at by them.

Getting this bit about language is critical if you want to get what I’m pointing at here myself.

Language only points to experience, including the experience of things … not the experience or things themselves.

Most people treat the language that they and others use as the experience or things themselves, NOT  as a pointer towards those experiences or things. HOWEVER … language also has the ability to generate experience itself in the system of the individual using or experiencing it. This is just a critical a concept, because when people experience language it “feels” like they are experiencing what the language points at not something that points to something else.

The MythoSelf Process introduces the body directly into the conversation, bypassing the confusion that language creates when it is misunderstood to be the experience or thing itself. Because we focus on what is happening at the experiential level in the body we can (and do) access the pre-representational forms that are not the experience or things themselves.

The other thing the MythoSelf Process does is organize and align the conversation along a positive trajectory, i.e.: in regard to what is working, and how to move from that to how it must be present, to create intended future outcomes.

A powerful applied principal of the MythoSelf Process is what is referred to within the MythoSelf model as a “Future Memory” … a wholeform, embodied experience of the future state experience/outcome. The Future Memory creates a teleological pull towards the realization of the outcome experience by virtue of holding and expressing a way of being that constantly updates in a moment to moment way based on an emergent and unfolding present.

This is all aimed at a singularity of sorts as well … not a fixed singularity, but a dynamic singularity … ADAPTABILITY.

 

Why Is Adaptability So Powerful???

The main question I’ve been posing here is:

Why bother with the MythoSelf Process at all … either studying it … or experiencing it for yourself?

We can point to an answer based on the ideas I’ve outlined above and say …

It can truly be summed up by the idea of ADAPTABILITY.

 

Why adaptability?

Because the world … heck, the entire cosmos as far as we can tell …  is in a constant state of flux, it’s dynamically and endlessly changing.

 

We are all dealing with uncertainty in one way or another. The individual who can perceive most clearly the situation as it is based on the existing data in the system has the most options available to them.

Rather than operating based on a single path forward the adaptable individual continually makes choices that are most likely to reset the system to aim at the outcome intended.

By resetting the system it becomes possible to reset the opportunities the system presents to us. These folks are not locked in a static state experience that resides within the cause and effect paradigm most people are limited to, they can choose adaptability. Regardless of the seeming present state situational limitations or constraints … the individual who can choose from alternative futures can aim the system as they desire it to be based on a future state.

The primary idea here is attuning to the subtle, sublime signals in the system and making subtle, sublime adjustments to use the signals as beacons to realize the alternative future of choice. Rather than being powerless because of circumstances, adaptability allows you to use the circumstances to your advantage … think, Mac Gyver, or Colonel Hannibal from the A-Team … now generalize that to everything.

 

The Next Step:
Professional MythoSelf® Process Training

Professional training is the most powerful way to access the ideas of MythoSelf Process, first incorporating them into your own life … and gaining the skills to lead others to a powerful, wholeform position themselves.

From the start the entire MythoSelf Process will be present in each moment during the training. Instead of presenting the material as a series of steps or topics, every step of the presentation will be presented as a wholeform immersion experience. By working with the participants in the training program with whatever is present for them in the moment the MythoSelf Process becomes a living, organic experience in the room.

Unlike in standard educational pedagogy, only after the fact, once the experience has been presented in wholeform, is there any intention to unpack it for the participants.

The same thing is true of learning to replicate the work presented. Instead of building from a series of steps, MythoSelf Process training is learned in wholeform as well, by actually engaging in entire pieces of work with other participants. The advantage of keeping the programs small is that there is ample opportunity for direct supervision as you’re learning the material, however when operating in a wholeform design it’s almost impossible to do it any other way … in this case think about how you learned your cradle/birth language.

Anyone who has experienced Professional MythoSelf Training gets it in their bones. Once you experience something in wholeform it’s yours forever.

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

 

P.S.: If you want to see into the Professional MythoSelf Training program a bit deeper you’ll find the logistics and details here:

Professional MythoSelf Training: Module 1