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Pathways To A High Ticket Coaching Or Consulting Practice

Pathways To A High Ticket Coaching Or Consulting Practice

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Or … The Gravesian Way To Making A Great Living As A Coach/Consultant/Trainer …

Graves Business Model Venn Diagram JSR

 

Okay … the idea of the Venn Diagram isn’t mine, but the commentary around it is …

Let’s take a closer look together … shall we?

 

Graves Business Model Venn Diagram JSR

Most of the “Build Your Coaching Business Gurus” will point you towards what I’m calling out as the “Graves Six” position where you supposedly make money by pursuing your passion … e.g.: “Your Million Dollar Message” B.S.

BUT … while you can indeed make money by overlapping “What You’re Passionate About” resides and where “What Your Clients Want and Are Willing To Pay Handsomely To Get” overlap … there ain’t no guarantee that’s gonna happen …

BECAUSE there’s no guarantee that what you’re passionate about … or your message, life story, insights, calling, whatever … is going to resonate with what customers and clients are willing to pay handsomely for today.

Now if you notice most of these “Gurus” are following the path that most of the “OnLine Business/Marketing Gurus” will point you toward (and mostly follow themselves) … i.e.: the place where “What You’re Good At” and “What Clients Want and Will Pay Handsomely For” overlap. This is the Graves Five position on the diagram, and you can indeed make loads of money when you follow this path to riches.

In other words, the Graves Six “Do What You Love Gurus” seldom follow their own advice precisely, except when there’s a lucky accident and they are actually at the Graves Seven position (think Oprah Winfrey)

I point to this position in the middle of the diagram where all three circles overlap … (BTW this is where the money you can earn is for all intents and purposes unlimited), so it all comes together for them.

Just to complete the outer positions, 90% of folks who have businesses that are actually jobs are stuck in the Graves Four position, where “What You’re Good At” and “What You’re Passionate About” overlap. (NOTE: This is Michael Gerber of “The E-Myth” fame refers to as the technician’s entrepreneurial spasm.)

 

OKAY, SO HERE’S THE “SKINNY” AS I LIKE TO SAY …

YOU HAVE TO DECIDE EXACTLY “WHY” YOU WANT TO RUN A COACHING/CONSULTING/TRAINING BUSINESS!!!

Or, what you get from it will not necessarily be what you want or expect.

What To Do About It …

(If You Really Want To Build A High-Ticket Practice)

A great majority of folks who are good at what they do, but they ain’t making no money, are operating at a Graves Four position on this diagram. Simple and kind of stupid (I’ll explain why later on, give me a minute to get there …)

Most folks who are willing to do what it takes, are at a Graves Five position on the diagram, and are building businesses that make money, sometimes “tons of moolah,” but they aren’t necessarily that happiest folks on the planet (in fact they are often the most anxious folks on the planet, always waiting for the house of cards they built to implode).

When you leap to the Graves Six position you find that there’s a whole spectrum of success, from what is utter financial failure to super financial success and independent wealth. Yet, these folks are living in a dream expecting to live “the dream,” i.e.: doing well by doing good, regardless of the fact the reality is that most of the time they are more interested in what they want to do for themselves than helping out the world as a form of service or sacrifice.

Now that ain’t saying that folks who are operating out of the Graves Six Value Set aren’t doing good work, it’s just that the reality is that most of the time that decision is based on what NLPers (folks trained in neurolinguistic programming, or NLP) call “Sorting By Self” and “Internal Reference.” In other words they decide what’s most “right” by their own internal measure and not necessarily what would in fact most serve the world-at-large.

For example a whole lot of these folks drive expensive SUVs and many drive expensive sports cars, that ain’t doing a whole lot for the planet they claim to love, or being particularly respectful of the percentage of resources they use compared to the least privileged folks on the planet. And those in the coaching/consulting industry don’t stay local/buy local/work local either, because they are getting on planes to go to the conventions where their “tribe” meets up and when they’re not flying to meet their “tribe” they’re looking to hook up with some tribe in Fiji or Patagonia or the Himalayas “on holiday.”

Once again, I’m NOT condemning these folks … good on the if they’ve found a way to satisfy their deepest desires and making the dosh they need to pursue them fully. BUT, as I said this is as much a lucky coincidence as it is strategic planning, and even then this is NOT the path to sainthood regardless of how many Salutations to the Sun you’ve done, or how many hours you’ve spent meditating mindfully, or even if you’ve spent two years of your youth in the Peace Corps.

The main point for anyone who’s trying to build a High-Ticket Coaching or Consulting Practice is to get that if you want to be on the path to success that IS strategic, then you’ve really got to look at WHY you want this and how you expect to pull it off in the real world where no one cares about your intention …

 

That’s right NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR INTENTION!

ALL FOLKS CARE ABOUT ARE WHAT THEY WANT AND HOW YOUR ACTIONS HELP THEM GET THAT OR NOT!

(NOTE: There is an exception to this as well … when folks believe and expect that you will help them get what they want, even when that doesn’t turn out to be true after the fact.)

 

So think about it … WHY DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A HIGH-TICKET COACHING OR CONSULTING PRACTICE???

In other words answer these two question for yourself:

1. What do you expect to get from building a high-ticket coaching or consulting practice?

2. How will getting this satisfy your deeper desires and values beyond JUST making money (unless your at Graves Five, JUST making money is NOT going to keep you happy).

Now going back a step …

If you both want to make money AND satisfy your deeper desires and values you’ll need to come to terms with a couple of things …

FIRST … you MUST satisfy the intention to serve your clients based on “What Your Clients Want and Will Pay You Handsomely For” … if you’re NOT starting here you are NOT operating strategically with regard to building a High-Ticket Practice.

AND … you MUST satisfy the intention to serve “What You’re Passionate About” as well.

Now, that may sound like I just recommended that you follow the Graves Six pathway to success, and that’s ALMOST correct, but as they say in the infomercial world … “WAIT THERE’S MORE!”

REMEMBER … there’s absolutely NO GUARANTEE that “What You’re Passionate About” and “What Your Client’s Want and Will Pay You Handsomely For” are aligned or will come together … if those two things aren’t also “What You’re Good At” too.

Because typically High-Ticket Clients almost always go to someone who is an expert, who does the best quality work, for what they want and expect to pay handsomely for as well. In other words, they seek out folks who are good at what they do as their primary criteria (even when they get it wrong because someone has created a reputation built on sand … probably a savvy Six BTW).

 

For BOTH YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS to be deeply satisfied you need to be in the Graves Five zone for them … AND the Graves Six zone for you!

And, in the world of this model Five and Six equal Seven when it comes to building a High-Ticket Coaching or Consulting Practice that satisfy BOTH YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS!

 

Summing It Up

Simply put STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MAGICAL THINKING WORLD OF THE GET RICH QUICK BY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE Gurus!!!

While there’s nothing wrong with doing what you love … HECK I RECOMMEND IT … BUT, DO IT BY MOVING TO “SEVEN” AND HAVE IT ALL BY SATISFYING ALL THE FOLKS IN THE EQUATION … you just aren’t going to have the chance to work with the High-Ticket clients you want, or to strategically satisfy your desire to make more money … or get filthy, stinking rich for that matter … if you don’t move out of the position your in to a position where you really do satisfy all the people in the equation BASED ON THIER CRITERIA AND NOT YOUR ALONE.

As the wise men say, there are many paths to the top of mountain, but whether you get up there broken and defeated barely having survived, happily trekking with a merry band of sherpas and stopping for a week in basecamp before you turn around and head down never having seen the peak, or travel all the way in a luxury helicopter is up to you.

If you want you can indeed have it … and, knowing “WHO” you are, is at least as important as “WHAT” to do and “HOW” to do it.

So if your “guru” isn’t starting by putting you at the center of it all then at least remember this wise saying, CAVEAT EMPTOR (“buyer beware”)

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

P.S. – Let me know what you think below …

P.P.S. – If you’d like to move to “SEVEN” start by getting a little more clarity on your current identity and values in regard to your business, I can talk and walk you through where you are on the diagram today and help you make the move to the center of yourself in about 15 minutes . If you’re like to purse it you can schedule a call by clicking on this link: Get Some Clarity w/Joseph

SENSING TIME

SENSING TIME

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Time lines in an abstract spiral

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

I was in a brief exchange with James Tsakalos, an NLP Trainer, colleague and FB friend of mine, about setting time frames in training events.

Fundamentally it was about when we begin and end training days with groups. I mentioned that I almost always begin the first day at 10:00 or 11:00, while I think James likes to start early. typically around 8:00.

My reasoning for this is that for most folks who work they typically begin their day earlier rather than later, say 8:00 – 9:00 versus 10:00 to 11:00, and starting at a different time signals very clearly “THIS is NOT THAT.”

The same can be said for other aspects of timing during the day, e.g.: ending times, or breaks … I usually break for 90 minutes for lunch, not 30 or 60 minutes. Again in part for the distinction that it makes versus many people’s standard routine, as well as because it gives them longer to integrate and incorporate the material we covered in the morning.

Also my lunch is ordinarily set at 1:00 PM/13:00, and it’s interesting how much that can shake people up who are habituated to an earlier time for lunch.

 

 

A Sense of Time

Most folks don’t think of TIME as a sense, but when you begin to you also get that time is a sense just like seeing or hearing, touch, taste or smell.

I also count vestibulation (balance) and proprioception (spatial & movement awareness) as senses. So in my world as a neuro-cognitive scientist there are eight senses I address that we use to discern data about the world we live in, move through, manipulate and experience. FWIW I don’t limit my list to just eight, I only keep these eight in the forefront of my awareness and in the loop when I’m discussing senses and sensation.

First a little background to where I’m going …

Way back when … I started my movement into consulting, coaching and training as a hypnotist and then I studied and became an NLP trainer. NLPers (those folks who are NLP practitioners) break down the five senses into what the call representational modalities, i.e.: visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (feeling), olfactory (smelling), gustatory (tasting), shortened into the acronym VAK-O/G. Then they are trained to calibrate what representational modality that someone is accessing according to the VAK-O/G.

NLPers track the VAK-O/G representations that someone is using in a number of ways, but the most common are eye accessing (noticing where locationaly relative to the individual moving their eyes they rotate their gaze to, e.g.: upper left, lower right), language predicates, e.g.: “I see” … “It’s crystal clear to me.” … “You sound funny.” … “I’m feeling excited.” …, and in a more subtle and sophiticated approach by where in their body they are breathing from and the rate of their breathing, e.g.: upper chest, rapid breathing is associated with visual accessing verus lower belly, slow breathing with kinesthetic accessing.

Ideally NLPers want to cross calibrate and confirm their assessment of which representational modality a person is accessing by having two or more of these kinds of signals simultaneously happening, e.g.: they look up to their left (a visual access), while they say, “I observed you were moving a lot when I looked across the room.” and they say it quickly for them indicating a more rapid rate of breathing and expression associated with visual accessing.

Now, a bit later on in the development of NLP, let’s call it ten years to make it simple, one of the co-developers, Richard Bandler, began putting a lot of attention on what he called “submodalities” – or, more refined distinctions of the representational modalities. For instance if we use the visual representational modality (sight/seeing), we could speak to the distinctions of location … where is the image, what is the posititonal angle of the image (relative to the individual accessing it), how far away or close is the image … then there would be other things we could notice for as well, e.g.: size, color, brightness …

Okay, so as a NLPer I learned to calibrate and track for representational modality accessing and the finer aspects of sumbmodality distinctions. BUT, as a NLPer I was only introduced to these within the traditional five senses covered by the VAK-O/G list.

 

 

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

As I continued working with people, learning and studying I realized that I had to include both vestibulation (the vestibular process of the sensation of balance) and proprioception too (the awareness of spatial perception, our bodies in space relative to other objects, movement of our own body and other objects relative to one another, and the location and movement of our body relative to ourselves, e.g.: posture, limb articulation, etc. This radically changed how I worked with clients and over time how I perceived and experienced myself, and the world around me.

Then at some point I became aware of TIME as a sense like the traditional five senses, and vestibulation or proprioception. This was a powerful moment of awareness for me. To give some credit where it’s due I had some introduction to time as sense of sorts from other sources as well. NLPers also have an awareness of time, and they have a process they use called the “timeline” that indicated how people experience and position themselves relative to time. The NLP book that addresses the “timeline proccess,” “Timeline Therapry and the Basis of Personality” by Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall. So I’d already had some influences vis-a-vis my discoveries about time with clients.

Time was a topic that the great American anthropologist E.T. Hall explored in his book, “The Dance of Time” and I’m a great fan and virtual student of his work. His work covered many “silent languages” as he referred to the non-verbal and cultural aspects of communication, perception and awareness in his many books. The more I learned about “silent languages” the more I became intrigued with how we perceive, think, process and act outside of the normally referred to ways that are what I’ll call fully conscious for now. In other words, some of what we do is available to use as a consciously aware experience we’re having or have had, and some of what we do is utterly outside of our conscious awareness and happens silently or invisibly as E.T. Hall might refer to it.

Time for most folks is outside of their conscious awarenss, except as they track it by the clock in modern life. Yet, internally we have incredibly sophisticated ways to track time that are organized primarily around the rising and falling processes of our internal physiology and its chemistry.

 

 

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

So as I continued my exploration of time I began to realize that time also has submodality distinctions, i.e.: finer ways of thinking about time than “it passes” or that it is a particular time based on the agreed to conventions of time … “clock time.” One of the things that both NLPers and E.T. Hall point out is that time “moves” differently for differnt people in different contexts and depending on what they are experiencing.

We’ve probably all experienced a time when we were with people we enjoyed being with and the sensation was that time just flew by and our experience with them was over in what seemed an instant. If you’ve ever been in a bureaucratic or institutional loop where you need to get something done, e.g.: renew your driver’s license or get a copy of your birth certificate, you might have experienced time moving much more slowly than the clock indicates, looking up after an hour and realizing it was actually only five minutes. Now if you love someone and you’re waiting to see them again multiple that by 10, and if you’re a five year old waiting for your birthday to arrive or Christmas maybe, multiple that by 100 (then of course when your birthday comes the party only lasts 1.5 seconds)!

But time does more than this … it also organizes our lives syntactically according to the rules of computation, e.g.: this happens before that and after this. Time therefore becomes the tableau upon which we write our lives in part, since we experience our lives syntactically, or happening in a sequence or events that occur according to the movemnt of time. The brilliant theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, wrote about time and space in his popular non-fiction book for lay folks (i.e.: those of us who aren’t theoretical physicists or cosmologists), “A Brief History of Time” where he lays out the relationship of time and space syntactically for the entire universe and everything in it as well.

This realization that time and space are singular leads to a secondary realization that the perception of time and space are also singular, meaning that for humans time and proprioception are singular as well. I’d argue that we also experiene balance as a function of time and space, making the actual human perceptual singularity the interwoven realtionality of time, proprioception and vestibulation. This is more than a little relavant with regard to action and outcomes too.

 

 

The Teleological Factor

Now to make things just a little more complex, I need to address the fact that I’m a “teleologist” by inclination. By that I mean that I think in terms of the future pulling us toward it versus the past pushing us forward.

So rather than being an artifact of our history we are artifacts of our futures … i.e.: we experience ourselves in relation to what has happened, just not yet. This is the teleological equation, and is built on the beliefs and expectations we hold about what will happen when we act or not. So we don’t act based on what we’ve experienced, but rather what we expect we will act upon and experience.

So this brings me around to my next point …

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

When I’m training I consider the context as important as the content I’m delivering. And I mean that literally. I organize the context as carefully, and often more carefully, than the content I deliver.

My shifting the relationship people in my training have, by doing something as simple as changing the start time to what might be “normally” expected, say 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM, it shifts the sense of where the participants are from “this” is like any other day, to “THIS” is NOT like any other day, “THIS DAY” is special in someway.

Now they reorganize their expectations to allow for something special to happen, making it that much more likely that something special will happen. There are many reasons that this can happen, but the simplest expectation is that because they are now experiencing themselves in relation to what’s happening as extraordinary compared to their normal day. When someone expects something out of the ordinary they begin to notice for it, even when it was something that was there all along. Even when what they are noticing for might have been missed or taken for granted before.

Also, one shift leads to another, when I shift the time frame that’s typical or normally expected, the relationship to time that someone hold shifts … like when they are on vacation and move through their day differently than when they are at work. So now we can use the presumption that when someone’s relationship with time has shifted and their hold on “normal” time is looser, and I can help them move through time differently.

For example, if there is something they want to attain or achieve that they perceive as far off in the future, when their sense of time is loosened we can shift it to bring it closer (remember my teleological premise of the future pulling us forward towards it … when that future is closer the pull tends to be stronger).

We gain another shift as well. When the pull of the future is stronger, because we’ve slid it closer in time, we also tend to become more adept at noticing for what will allow us to realize what we intend more effectively and efficiently. In some ways we shift the signal to noise ratio of what’s important to notice versus random data in the system that’s unimportant to us in regard to getting out outcome. This also allows us to adust and adapt more rapidly, and therefore we expend less energy and time getting to where we’re going.

So this simple thing of doing something outside of the expected, like starting an hour or so later than people are used to starting their day, becomes a vital contextual advantage to helping them make the shifts they need to so they can both succeed in getting their outcomes and geting them with less effort and time invested.

 

 

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

There’s a big difference between shifting what someone thinks about and how someone thinks. To make big shifts in life it’s important to shift the way you think, NOT just what you think about, or how you think about it (whatever the “it” may be … money, relationships, health, fitness, security …).

The most significant thing that helps shift the way you think is shifting the way you experience the context you how whatever you’re thinking about within. Part of the premise I work from is that all thinking is both embodied and situated, i.e.: it occurs in and is shaped by the context it occurs within.

Now if we shift the context we will shift what is experienced within that context, since everything is experienced within the context it occurs within and is shaped by that context. Taking that a step further we can also presume, whether it’s true or not, that it’s possible that everything we expect to experience within a context is shaped by that context as well. Since we act upon and experience what we expect, how the context affects what we expect it also affects what we act upon and experience.

When you accept these presumptions of how context shapes experience you begin to recognize the the significance of shaping the context … hence the importance of shaping time as contextual frame and using it to help shape the way we think, and not just what we think about …

 

I’ve been describing it…
TIME IS A TOOL FOR TRANSFORMATION.

 

 

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

P.S. – I’d love to hear what you think too … leave me a comment below …

NOTE: Join the extended conversation in my FB group: GNAU Nation at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/GNAUNATION/

Hi, I’m from New Netherland …

Hi, I’m from New Netherland …

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11 nations of the US Map

The US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures

(From Business Insider July 27, 2015)

 

In my work I travel extensively, and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit many countries and also to meet many people who live in those countries. In some I’ve even built lasting friendships.

When I speak to my foreign friends about the United State I keep trying to explain that distinction that the United States is really very, very different depending on where you are from and/or living.

Colin Woodward is a journalist, who’s originally from Maine, making him a true Yankee born in the nation of Yankeedom according to what he writes in his book, “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.” 

In this book he makes the cogent argument that America is really a nation of nations, and not one undivided nation coast to coast as we have been led to think about it. 

Of course, I’m not suggesting that politically the United States of America is not one sovereign nation under the Constitution organized as a Federal Republic of individual sovereign States, and neither is Colin Woodward. The argument is that the regions of the United States have such unique points of view that they can be looked at as absolutely distinct, similarly to the individual nations of Europe for instance.

I totally agree with his fundamental premise that the United States is regionally diverse … politically, economically, socially and in terms of the basic and fundamental things we value the most from region to region. Using his book as the starting point then …

 

Here are my tongue-in-cheek analysis and observations on the article:

I’m from what the author, Colin Woodward, calls, “New Netherlands” … and I now live in what the author refers to as “The Midlands.” I have both friends and family in “Yankeedom,” and on “The Left Coast,” as well as in “The Deep South” but most of those are displaced “New Netherland-ers.”

I know people from all the other regions and find it easier and more difficult to relate to their way of seeing the world depending on where they are from on this map. Sometimes I think those of use from the New Netherlands are the hardest for folks from almost all the other regions to fit in with over the long haul, because we’re both headstrong and pushy about our beliefs in a way that comes across as harsh, abrupt and/or rude to most others.

Once they know you’re from the New Netherlands they’ll accept the attitude that brings, but that isn’t the same as liking it. Those of us from the New Netherlands have just as hard a time at the close-minded, myopic ways we sometimes perceive those from these other nations operating. It’s also sometimes difficult to deal with what we see to be the naive and privileged attitude of the Left Coast-ers.

However, for New Netherland-ers it all begins and end with “Attitude” …

New Netherland-ers are particularly proud of their “Attitude” and see it as quite special, even unique. There’s a time element to it, i.e.: they expect everything to happen “yesterday” and only minimally accept “now” as an answer for when. They move fast and live fast, much faster for instance than the rest of the nations indicated on the map, with some few exceptions in the largest cities in Yankeedom, The Midlands, Tidewater, and surprisingly The Deep South, but that’s because of how many displaced New Netherland-ers there are in some of The Deep South cities.

The Greater Appalachia, The Far West and El Norte are foreign lands for us from the New Netherlands. We try not to go there, except for those New Netherland-ers who somehow have opted out of real life and work, and have the time to ski. Otherwise we avoid the natives of those regions, because we’ve heard strange stories of abductions and dueling banjos, a ritual we don’t actually comprehend ourselves.

One of the unique aspects of each of the nations of the United States are our food rituals …

The New Netherlands boasts a remarkably varied ethnic smorgasbord of foods … Italian (predominate), Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Greek, French, German, Ethiopian, Jamaican … and it goes on and on. We often refer to the option to go out by the question, “What do you want to eat tonight?” meaning which kind of ethnic cuisine. The other unique thing about food in the New Netherlands is that it is the only place on the planet with authentic pizza – forget Naples!

The other regions also have their unique cuisines … the southern New France has something they call “creole” food … worth a trip across the border to get. Tidewaters does some remarkable things with seafood, and the Midlands and some of Appalachia are masters of a meat dish called, bar-b-que. The Left Coast is highly influenced by both Asian and Mexican cooking, and you’ll find some unique fusions of these cuisines there, as well as an assortment of ethnic foods rivaling the New Netherlands. El Norte of course is where they have mastered the art of what’s called “Tex-Mex” cooking as well as some truly traditional Mexican foods. I’m not sure if or what they eat in Yankeedom or The Far West, but I hear it’s got to do with a lot of lobster, beef and dairy.

But, above and beyond all of these distinctions of the nations of the United States we see some of the greatest ways they differ politically and socially. What each region needs and wants in these arenas isn’t just different or unique, but literally oppositional.

For instance while the New Netherlands shares much in common with The Left Coast in many ways, they are in many other ways almost in direct conflict on some major political issues and how they think about social justice. In the New Netherlands it’s all about “applied politics and social justice” a kind of social street code. On The Left Coast it’s much more about an idealism and activism that’s divorced from the reality of many, if not the actual majority, of the inhabitants. I think I’d apply the word “gritty” to the politics and social issues of the New Netherlands, where I’d call them “idealistic” on The Left Coast. So sometimes those of us from the New Netherlands see the Left Coast-ers as somewhat prissy in their approach, while I’m guessing they see our way of attacking the same issues as aggressive.

The other regions also have their thoughts and approaches to politics and social justice. I don’t feel equipped to address them as they often make little to no sense to me personally. Like many of the Midland-ers have a kind of live and let live attitude they share with much of New France as I see it, while the Greater Appalachians and The Far West-ers have a more “Don’t Tread on Me” attitude they share in common with much of Yankeedom. The Deep South, again along with much of Greater Appalachia, is still trying to get past 1865 and into the modern world I think I live in, but I get that’s just a point of view for both of us. Tidewater folks really believe they are a separate country, and are more or less just annoyed to be attached to the mainland and have to deal with its issues along with their own, but they’re happy at least that they run the country-at-large. El Norte … who the hell know what they’re all about, except possibly wanting to annex the area they live in back to Mexico???

So it’s really useful for folks outside the United States to get that there is no such thing as “an American” if you’re thinking about some creature that’s the same from coast-to-coast.

It’s also just as useful for Americans to get that we are a divided people united by choice and affiliation, and that a dominant federal government or system doesn’t truly serve as it did when we were evolving from thirteen colonies to the fifty states we’ve become. We haven’t even included the lands of Polynesia or The Far North here either, just to make the issues even more complex.

Trying to unite our great country as fifty individual sovereign States under one singular federal government that we allow almost absolute power over us legally and economically is no longer as feasible or useful as it once was in simpler times. It may be that we look to this map to establish regional governments, that abide to a common agreement to collaboration via a centralized federal government, but with much more autonomy from it than the States are currently operating under, despite the promises of the Constitution that officially governs us, but has been continually degraded over time. Let the regions rule their lands and their people, and make the federal government beholding to them instead of the other way ’round.

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

P.S. – As always I’d love to read your own observations and comments … in fact I’m already looking forward to them!

P.P.S. – The original article from Business Insider, Jul. 27, 2015, can be found here: “This map shows the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures” and you’ll find the book by the author, Colin Woodward, on Amazon here; “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America”

Leaping Forward …

Leaping Forward …

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Preparing The Future …
Neuro-Evolutionary Modeling

 

I posted something on Facebook in response to comment made there about how someone wasn’t getting the point that the person posting was trying to make … not an uncommon scenario unfortunately.

 

But there are different reasons people won’t get a point someone is making … maybe the point isn’t being clearly made, or getting it requires a bit of background that’s missing, or sometimes it can just be that the people disagree and that creates a block in the communication.

However, in this case I believe it was something else … a fundamental inability for people to see anything that’s beyond their neuro-evolutionary development.

Here’s my response to that posting:

I’m a big fan of neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling. Think of the work of Julian Jaynes and his bicameral mind theory, or the work of Clare Graves or Jane Lovinger, or E.O. Wilson’s work in sociobiology. This is where my attention has been for the better part of a decade now.

Rebecca Costa has summed up some of this work in her excellent book, The Watchman’s Rattle. In the book she speaks to the neuro-evolutionary trait of insight, technology, complexity and the collapse of civilizations. Well worth the read.

In my work I’ve been looking at a few things too … different from Costa or the others. I think some of my work is paralleling the things Ken Wilber has been speaking to most recently. My focus has been on how we create transformational change leading to a new position of consciousness and performance breakthroughs. NOT better performance where we already are, but performance we cannot get to from where or how we are today.

This focus forced me to look at the questions of power and complexity, and their relationships as contained in the interpersonal relationships in institutions and organizations. This is akin to what John Gatto found when deconstructing modern schooling, it’s process and intent.

Simply put there may not be a place for consensus if we want real change. This idea, of consensus, is mired in what Clare Graves points out is Level Six thinking, what Spiral Dynamics labels Green, and what Dudley Lynch calls First Dolphin or Enlightened Carp thinking.

The idea that we must create consensus and bring people along is an anchor we drag from a limited world view that has not yet leaped beyond systemic thinking to fractal thinking where deep complexity resides.

Rebecca Costa points to this limitation as reaching a cognitive threshold, and suggests it’s the basis for the collapse of civilizations. Her analysis and evidence is impressive. IMO many Western Europeans and North Americans are stuck there today, along with some others as well.

(Name Withheld) you’re suggesting something that remains in a blind spot to anyone who hasn’t fully evolved beyond Level Six mind.

This posting and the responses to it got me to thinking.

 

Is it unreasonable to consider that some folks are just not neuro-evolutionarily developed enough to perceive what others do as obvious?

 

This falls under the rubric of Developmental Modeling as I refer to it, or if I really want to be fancy about it, Neuro-Evolutionary Developmental Modeling.

In less fancy terms this is the assessment and modeling of the literal neuro-evolutionary developmental stage that someone is at, and the implications of what that means.

Let me put it another way …

My work as I said in my Facebook response focuses on:

“… how we create transformational change leading to a new position of consciousness and performance breakthroughs. NOT better performance where we already are, but performance we cannot get to from where or how we are today.”

This is about looking at levels of consciousness and meaning-making as I think about it.

There’s a cognitive consideration, i.e.: how we process information beginning with perception, moving through sense-making and decision-making, and respond in regard to the action we take and the action we choose not to take.

Within the scope of my consideration is how we process that information that leads to action, including what Cognitive Scientists refer to as Situated and Embodied Cognition.

 

Situated Cognition:

The school of thinking about situated cognition aligned with the cognitive scientists say that cognition is a function of where we are situated in space and time, i.e.: the situation and circumstance we find ourselves in determines how we think about the information available to us.

Simply put, cognitive scientists say that thinking cannot be separated from doing and context as a way to speak about situated cognition. The situation becomes part of our “cognitive process” as well as what we do internally with the information we have access to, including the way the information in the situation relates to other information in the situation.

For example, if we are in a diner and hungry and we see a menu advertising the “Burger Special” we will think about it differently than if we had just left a restaurant after a particularly satisfying meal and saw the same “Burger Special” advertised on a billboard as we were driving home. The situation and circumstance changes how we think about the information that’s present.

Another example might be, if we are in the diner and hungry, but we only have enough money for a cup of coffee we’d respond differently to the “Burger Special” advertisement than if we had sat down to eat with plenty of money in our pocket to choose whatever we want for dinner.

Also, what we bring to the situation ourselves affects how we process the information presented to us as well. For instance if we are vegans or eating a strict paleo/high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet will impact how we process the information about the “Burger Special” too.

The situation becomes part of our “cognitive process” as well as what we do internally with the information we have access to, including the way the information in the situation relates to other information in the situation.

 

Embodied Cognition:

Keeping it as simple as possible, when we refer to embodied cognition we’re referring to the idea that … we think like we do because we’re embodied in world.

This means that our thinking arises from the physical experience of having a body, and the way we experience things in and with our body.

While this might seem obvious at some level the more prominent position has been held for more than three centuries has been dualism, i.e.: the separation of body and mind. Cognitive scientists who hold a strong position about embodiment believe the mind arises from the structure, processes and actions of the body.

Early examples of embodied cognition arise in the world of the phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

In the mid and late twentieth century some cognitive scientists went beyond the theories of dualism and the mind as an independent processing mechanism to considering a unified cognition that includes the body. Two of the folks who did a lot of work in the embodied cognition paradigm that influenced my thinking are Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. They studied and wrote about visual perception, including the biology of vision, like the physical aspects of the human eye, and how those physical aspects of embodiment effect how we perceive visually.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are two philosophers who are also in the embodied cognition camp who did a lot of work together around metaphor and embodiment. Their book Philosophy in the Flesh was one of the most influential early works in my own conception of mind. It was this book that led me to thinking about what cognitive scientists call enactivism.

 

Enactivism:

Enactivism postulates that cognition is a function of the tension between thinking and the environment, and the need or desire to respond to what’s happening. Specifically enactivism suggests that we shape our environments by the ways we respond and take action, shaping the environment in turn as we go.

This looping between the individual and their environment becomes a part of their cognitive processing, and as I think about it it’s here that situated and embodied cognition collide and become something more than either alone.

In some way we can say that enactivism brings about who we are as we know ourselves to be, as well how we know the world to be as we know it. Through enacting in the world we generate both ourselves and our sense about and knowledge of the world, including others.

This is where I mostly settle when it comes to how we process cognitively in a real sense of what happens as we’re processing information and acting on it.

Yet, I’m also influenced by other cognitive models that share how I think about enactivism, like neuro-evolutionary developmental models.

 

Neuro-Evolutionary Developmental Modeling:

For me the rubber hits the road when we’re talking about mental models when the dialogue revolves around neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling.

My early introduction to the idea of neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling was via the work of Dr. Clare Graves. The Graves Model lays out a double helix of stages of evolutionary bio-pyscho-social-cultural growth alternating between self-sacrificing and other-sacrificing. At each stage the dynamics of dealing with the limitations of the system the individual is contained in and relating to create a tension that leads to dialectical transformation.

According to Dr. Graves each stage of human evolutionary growth comes about as a result of dealing with the challenges presented by the environment they are contained in and operate in relation to until the operating paradigm itself becomes the generator of the challenges the individual confronts.

When the point where the operating paradigm generates irresolvable challenges as a result of functioning within it there is a point of dialectical transformation that is reached. It is at this point that individuals within the system respond by rejecting the present paradigm and leap to a new level of consideration that offers resolution to the challenges the extant operating paradigm generates.

In other words every human system can be defined by some set of boundary conditions that limit it to being what it is in the moment. These boundary conditions arise as a result of the values that are held as true, and in some regard sacred, within that human system. These values are designed to create a functioning system that resolves the challenges that system faces collectively, and become the agreed upon and accepted values of the culture.

Yet, these values require varying degrees of cognitive development to incorporate and act upon. The neuro-evolutionary developmental models I follow closely suggest that the human cognitive system evolved in relation to the stresses confronted at various stages of human evolution. Literally on one hand the brain evolved to access new ways and patterns of thinking, partially due to the interactions of the multiple brain modules that evolved in response to evolutionary pressures.

At each level of neuro-evolutionary development the individuals who have access to that level of development become able to perceive their environment in ways that individuals before them, who had not evolved that level of neuro-evolutionary development are able to comprehend. Quite literally the ability to perceive the information in the system is limited by the level of neuro-evolutionary development.

This shows up in application or practically in relation to the level complexity the individuals within a system are able to process the information present. The higher the neuro-evolutionary development of the individuals in the system the more complexity they can perceive and comprehend. These advanced stages of neuro-evolutionary development allow these individuals to make choices unavailable to those who cannot perceive and comprehend complexity at these levels.

One way to think about this would be as the scope and range of complexity that individuals in a system use to make decisions and take action. The higher the level of neuro-evolutionary development of an individual the greater the scope and range of choice they will have, theoretically giving them an edge in responding to the emergent conditions in any given system. However, there’s a strong caveat …

The theoretical best response will arise when the level of complexity present in the system and the level of neuro-evolutionary development are most closely aligned and matched. When the complexity of the system exceeds the level of the neuro-evolutionary development of the individual confronting it the lack of appropriate choices available will limit the individual to less than ideal choices and, corresponding less than ideal responses and outcomes.

Applying higher level choices in a system that operates at a lower level of complexity than the neuro-evolutionary developmental level being applied to make the choices acted upon often results in less than ideal responses and outcomes.

 

Therefore we can say that using the most aligned neuro-evolutionary developmental level to the situation and circumstance at hand results in the most ideal responses and outcomes being realized.

Yet, when someone simply doesn’t have access to the neuro-evolutionary developmental level required by the complexity in the system they will be limited to responding from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level they can access at present.

This is how individuals and system fail and go into devolution resulting in personal failure and civilization collapse.

 

I’m seeing more and more that individuals in our complex Western civilization are reaching cognitive thresholds, which define the limits of complexity they can perceive and comprehend. Yet the systems they are operating within require a higher level of neuro-evolutionary development then they currently have access to, to create useful choices that allow them to respond and produce the outcomes they desire.

The feelings they experience as result of reaching their cognitive threshold  include frustration, anger and despair. This leads to lashing out against others who are also experiencing the limits of their own cognitive threshold, albeit in ways different from their own.

 

Regardless of the level of neuro-evolutionary development that limit an individual from accessing the most useful choices to address the challenges they face, the result is the same … i.e.: they produce less then ideal responses and outcomes. 

In particular, as a result of their neuro-evolutionary developmental limitations, these folks believe they are addressing the challenges they confront in the most ideal way possible, yet the outcome they produce replicates the conditions to perpetuate the challenges they seek to resolve.

The key to resolving the limitations of neuro-evolutionary development begins with accepting that the choices available to you are constrained by your level of neuro-evolutionary development … and NOT the conditions of the challenges you face or the system they are contained within.

 

The first step forward then starts with exploring ideas and choices that are unfamiliar and unaccessible from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level you are most comfortable with today. This means opening yourself to the discomfort of confronting your most cherished values and beliefs for what they are … values and beliefs, not facts or truths.

Individuals who can do this … confront their most cherished values and beliefs and open themselves up to the discomfort of seriously considering that ideas and choices that are unfamiliar and unaccessible to them from where they are today … open themselves up to the possibility of creating responses and outcomes that were unavailable to them previously.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean they have actually evolved to a higher neuro-evolutionary developmental level, it doesn’t matter as much as having access to the strategies used by individuals who can operate at those higher levels.

But, it also requires accepting that until we actually evolve to a high neuro-evolutionary developmental level, we will remain blind to what we cannot perceive from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental operating level we can access ourselves.

Despite the frustration, anger and despair this realization may bring, i.e.: that we are limited to the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level we can access, it allows us to move beyond operating from distorted values and beliefs we impose, while ignoring real facts and truths that are evident to those who aren’t blind in the particular ways we are ourselves.

This work … guiding my clients beyond the limits of their current level of neuro-evolutionary development happens in my Foolish Wisdom program and private 0ne-to-one work. The feedback I get is that while the result is often transformational leading to significant performance breakthroughs, getting there isn’t always the most comfortable experience on the way, but worth it at the end.

I’d love to hear your thoughts …

Buona Fortuna and Abundanza,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

 

P.S. – There is still time to get the details about the upcoming Foolish Wisdom program on 28 January in NJ …

 

FOOLISH WISDOM DETAILS

 

 

Why Hillary Clinton Lost The Election …

Why Hillary Clinton Lost The Election …

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Or … Thank G-D Donald Trump Won

2a93b0af728fdccd0d0cabc4320b257fOkay, before you decide to send me death threats let’s me make something abundantly clear that it seems so many of liberal, progressive and centrist friends can’t or won’t get …

 

I don’t like Donald Trump and I think he’s bad for America.

But, there are caveats galore attached to that pronouncement.

  • First, compared to what Hillary Clinton, the DNC and the Democrats and Democrat Party represents today, Donald Trump is a godsend for the American people, and I believe the world-at-large too.
  • Next, Donald Trump isn’t the enemy or even the issue … it’s the arrogance that the global elites treated him, his campaign and his supporters with, starting with monied interests represented by the mainstream media.
  • Finally, Donald Trump was an inevitability given what we’ve seen happening on the world stage, centered right here in the heartland of America … the massive division between those who have and those who have not, and the smug, highbrow patrician attitude of the intellectual and monied elite from Wall Street to Hyde Park and Hollywood.

 

Donald Trump didn’t win the election …
Hillary Clinton lost it!

 

Now of course Hillary Clinton and the Democrats would like to blame everyone from James Comey to Barack Obama for her troubles, but that’s just more of the same arrogance that cost her and her party the election.

She began losing the election when she started believing she was about the law, or at least above the rules and regulations that apply to everyone else. Then her confidants and cronies allowed her to believe the false narrative they spun around her with misinformation like the fact that former Secretary of State, Colin Powell did just what she did in setting up and using a private email server. Yet the reality was that the times and the context were radically different for Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, beginning with the fact that Colin Powell’s actions were known to and monitored by the State Department, while Hillary Clinton’s were directly against the advice and protocols of the State Department. Yet the lies were disseminated to the faithful who worshipped at the alter of the Clintons and the DNC and the chosen choose to believe despite the evidence to the contrary.

Then of course when the lies came to haunt Secretary Clinton we were fed the line that it really didn’t matter at all, that defying the State Department protocols for handling classified information were of no consequence and that there was nothing for us to see or notice there where the investigation was happening. Even when the FBI identified that classified information was mishandled, and it was likely that the server Secretary Clinton was using was penetrable to foreign powers we were again told it wasn’t really a big enough deal to prosecute or punish anyone over. But the problem for the Clinton campaign is that a substantial portion of the population just didn’t like it or believe it … including Senator Bernie Sanders, her Democrat rival for the nomination as the party candidate for president.

It was not a good report for Secretary Clinton. That is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I mean, everybody in America is keeping it in mind, and certainly the superdelegates are.”

The comments are something of a reversal for the Vermont senator, who has all but ignored the email scandal throughout the entire Democratic presidential primary. His refusal to attack the former secretary of state over her emails was a political risk; the issue plays heavily into voters’ doubts about Mrs. Clinton, who is widely seen as dishonest and untrustworthy.

Bernie Sanders seizes on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in bid to sway superdelegates
Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times – May 30, 2016

Then of course there was all the noise about the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s potential “pay for play” schemes with wealthy individuals, companies and even countries. None of it was founded in hard evidence, but the general feeling amongst just about everyone except die hard Hillary Clinton sycophants was that it was an awful lot of smoke without a fire.

Recently, the Foundation and the emails have become considerably more interconnected in a kind of toxic smoothie. Yet, when it comes to the Foundation, there appear to be two main points to evaluate when all the evidence is in.

If nothing else, both are worthy of some raised eyebrows. But they are quite different in scope and import. One is the alleged influence peddling that suggests that the Clinton Foundation may have been a well-worn avenue for some donors to travel to get access to the Secretary of State. The facts are still coming out, and there are many differing views on just how much of this occurred or should be allowed. But the appearance does seem striking. For example, it is hard to explain the report that the Foundation gathered $100 million from Gulf sheikhs and billionaires, and for what promises.

The second main issue with the Foundation is pure tax issue, that of private inurement or private benefit. This one may be considerably less serious for a political candidate, but might look somehow even more unseemly. Charities are supposed to be operated exclusively for charitable purposes. In fact, the law is very clear that charitable organizations with public charity tax exemptions must benefit thepublic interest. The law requires the charity to operate exclusively for charitable purposes, and normally the IRS really means exclusively.

Clinton Foundation’s Alleged Pay To Play Or Its Private Benefits: Which Hurts Hillary More?
Robert W. Wood ,   Contributor – Forbes – August 23, 2016

Then we can top much of that off with the DNCs role in favoring the Hillary Clinton campaign over that of Senator Bernie Sanders, despite the huge groundswell of popular support for the Senator from Vermont and his truly progressive views on politics in Washington, D.C.

Many people feel that the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders and rigged it for Hillary Clinton to win despite the will of the people.

Top officials at the Democratic National Committee criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race, according to committee emails made public on Friday by WikiLeaks.

Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clintonover Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.

Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derided the Sanders Campaign
Michael D. Shear and Matthew Rosenberg – The New York Times – July 22, 2016

This all showed how Hillary Clinton simply displayed an utter contempt for playing by the rules or being limited in her actions in a way that seemed to suggest she believed herself to be above the law that governs the rest of America and her ordinary citizens.

Then of course there was the whole “basket of deplorables” comment …

Memo to candidates: Stop generalizing and psychoanalyzing your opponents’ supporters. It never works out well for you.

The latest to fall into that trap is Hillary Clinton. The Democratic nominee, at a New York fundraiser Friday night with liberal donors and Barbra Streisand, said “half” of Trump supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables,” while the other half are people who feel the government has let them down and need understanding and empathy.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Basket Of Deplorables,’ In Full Context Of This Ugly Campaign
Domenico Montanaro – NPR – September 10, 2016

Yet the Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, many of the Democrats, dozens of media personalities, and scores of folks on the Internet and in social media sites want to blame what happened on someone else other than resting the result on the shoulders of the would be coronated queen of American politics, Hillary Clinton.

 

Donald Trump was the solution to Hillary Clinton

What many good intentioned people who saw and see Donald Trump as the personification of white elitism, that speaks to the worst in us … the people who voted for Donald Trump saw someone who was speaking to them and not at them.

Donald Trump spoke to the unbelievable profound distrust and despair that the middle class in America felt with a country they love in the form of her political institutions centered in and around Washington.

They saw what they hoped would be a President of the people sell them out to the bankers and the war hawks.

They saw the rich getting richer, while they struggled to hang onto their jobs and their homes.

They watched the President and his family on holiday excursions costing the American taxpayers millions of dollars, or reading about how many days the President took off golfing, when they themselves couldn’t afford to take a week off just to stay at home and recover from hard year of working themselves ragged in two or three jobs to make ends meet.

They watched as family and friends lost good paying jobs and went without work for months that turned into years, and Congress voted in packages that increased their salaries and benefits, while they stripped Social Security to pay off the debts they incurred at the expense of the American people that generations to come will still be paying off as they built their personal fortunes.

Middle class, blue collar, working Americans were sick and tired of being spoken to from the raised platform that politicians like Hillary Clinton spoke from with her millions in the bank, her multi-millionaire husband, daughter and son-in-law standing behind her, and her haughty expression and commentary about how she’s always been there for the common man, woman and child.

The simple truth is the middle America was just plain sick and tired … and they began to recognize that the symptoms were all pointing to the same disease … systemic rot in Washington.

Then they saw Donald Trump as someone outside of that system … someone who promised to “drain the swamp” … and that was enormously appealing to them.

Now they are waiting to see what this “outsider” will do … and whether or not he’s just going to be more of the same or if he’ll deliver on some of the promises he made to “make America great again” … rolling back the clocks to the post-war glory years of the 1950s with it booming economy, jobs in every town, a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.

They have forgotten the despair of those left out of that dream, or the uprisings of the 1960s that followed those golden years when those left out in the cold demanded some of the heat they were part of creating.

And, the ones who gained some ground in the decades that followed forgot the real fight was with the folks who held the reins of power and not their next door neighbors.

This is just exactly how it was planned and implemented since Bill Clinton first took office though … keep the people fighting in the streets and they’ll leave the folks in the halls of the Capitol to do their dirty deeds and create the greatest divide between the have and have-nots since Charles Dickens was writing about the best of times and the worst of times.

 

However … some good may still come of all this …

After decades of doing transformational change work with people from all walks of life on five continents around the world I’ve learned a significant lesson:

 

”People don’t change except in response to crisis.”

And, believe me this is a crisis.

I don’t think it’s the crisis that many folks think it is though. I don’t think we’re headed towards the precipice of social oblivion … or that the country will become the next historical footnote of how once great nations fall in the tyranny of fascism … or even how hate crimes, racism and misogyny will overtake civility and public decorum in the streets of America.

No, I think the crisis that’s been long coming is the crisis in faith that Americans have long held that their institutions and those that lead them were fundamentally honest and good intentioned.

The tide has changed and there are more and more people who see the government and the leaders positioned within it as the enemy of the people.

This is the basis for all great revolutions in the history of the world … especially the non-violent kind that erupt when the people demand that those who have become the corruption step down or are removed from power.

Donald Trump is the great white hope that has forced a compliant America, and much of the world to take notice of who sits on the throne of power in the Western world … and of course people are concerned.

We have been going along to get along without demanding that our representatives act as servant leaders of the people and not mouthpieces for the oligarchy that rules America.

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Echo Chambers – BBC – April 17, 2014

Now finally we have an oligarch in the seat of power in the White House and maybe, just maybe, enough Americans will wake up and start paying attention to how the system actually works.

Maybe, just maybe, people will begin to think about who they are voting for and what these people represent.

Clearly Hillary Clinton represented the oligarchy and NOT the people.

This was and remains the main and fundamental issue this election cycle has demonstrated if nothing else.

And, until enough people who have been willing to deny what they know to be true, keeping their heads firmly below the sand, while their buttocks remain exposed and ready to receive, wake up and demand to be counted and not used and abused by those in power the raping of America will continue.

Now I know this is NOT a message many of my fellow Americans want to or are ready to hear … at least not yet, but the time is always now.

We don’t have the luxury of time to wait for when it’s comfortable and we’ve adjusted to the new reality to start acting on our own behalf, on behalf of those who have less of an opportunity to be heard, and on behalf of the planet and her people at large … NOW IS THE TIME!

Our most cherished beliefs and values are in peril … AND IT’S NOT FROM DONALD TRUMP OR HIS CREW … it’s from the entrenched military/industrial/banking complex that is the cabal that runs American and much of the world … including almost every seated politician in Washington today on both sides of the aisle.

Fortunately, I believe it’s not too late … if this election has shaken you to the core, because your candidate lost, or because your candidate won … or even if your candidate never made it to the race … if you remain awake we can take back what Abraham Lincoln so forcefully reminded us that the Constitution guarantees us … a country of the people, by the people and for the people …

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo

(http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/04/we-have-met-enemy-and-he-is-us.html)

 

 

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

 

P.S. – If you’re ready to take the leap and wake up a bit more you can dip into my collection of materials for revolutionaries at: ABTI | Joseph Riggio International Members Platform

P.S.S. – You can get anyone of my previous programs for 50% during my Black Friday sale when you purchase them today … use the couple code “BLACKFRIDAY” (no quotes, no spaces, all upper case) when you check out and your discount will automatically be applied.

Deciphering The Narrative

Deciphering The Narrative

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How Do You Make Sense Of The World?

 

If you’re like most folks … you don’t.

Sorry to be so blunt but them’s the simple facts.

Most folks just “accept” the world as it’s presented to them, and don’t do much about trying to establish how they are perceiving what they experience or from what position they are experiencing it from either.

I’ve been reviewing where my clients report getting the most benefit from the work we do together, and I think more importantly where the evidence is that they have made some kind of significant positive changes as a result of the work we’ve done.

It seems it boils down to just a few simple things we do …

  1. Establishing a very clear perception of the patterns they are living from and their personal myth/story
    (i.e.: the autobiographical narrative that contains their personal myth/story)
  2. Developing the ability to “read” the Signals in the System to decipher the narrative that’s present
    (i.e.: patterns in the information they are exposed to, as well as reading between the lines for information that’s missing)
  3. Recognizing the narrative that others are operating from and the patterns of their behavior
    (i.e.: noticing for how others make decisions and take action, and the ways that differs from person to person)
  4. Gaining the ability to act on one’s own independently and to communicate with others effectively
    (i.e.: making things happen on one’s own and with others, including the ability to effectively set boundaries and influence others)

When these few things happen in the work I do with others some amazing things happen as a result.

Again, keeping it simple, what everyone wants from the work I do with them is some variation on number four above …

 

Gaining the ability to act on one’s own independently
and to communicate with others effectively

However, getting the ability to do so requires that 1, 2 and 3 are in place as well.

 

Living The Narrative 

fish_mosaic_1 300pxWe all “swim” in the waters of culture in the same way fish “swim” in the sea.

And, in the same way we might speculate that fish don’t think much about the water they’re swimming in, except when they are challenged by it in some extraordinary way … say encountering highly polluted seas, lakes, rivers or streams … we too don’t much notice our culture.

We might also extend the speculation to those particular fish who are apt to on occasion breach the surface and escape the ever present ubiquitousness of the water they dwell in to notice that there’s something beyond what they experience as ordinary and normal, in this case the entirety of the sky above the surface of the waters that contain them.

I’d go so far as to suggest that fish are more likely to breach the surface of the water than we are to breach the boundaries of our culture …

And there’s the rub …

To get more specific the “ocean of culture” we swim in is bounded by the narrative that contains it. In the same way the ponds and lakes have edges, rivers and streams have banks, and oceans have shores cultures are limited by they narratives that define them.

 

The challenge for most people is that the narrative has become what is real …
it is their reality in the same way the water is reality for a fish.

 

Okay, I’d agree with anyone who says that we can’t be without a narrative of some kind. It seems the dilemma of humanity that we are capable to both recognizing that we are living within a narrative, and noticing that the narrative is just made up … a creation of our collective agreement and imagination.

Reconciling the dilemma that the narrative is both “real” and “unreal” at the same time without giving into it is a bit more challenging.

  •  The narrative is “real” in that it sets the frame for how we interpret what is happening and in turn what to do about it.
  • The narrative is “unreal” in that it is simply one one of an infinite number of ways to interpret what what is happening.

So what are we left to do about it then?

 

Escaping The Charybdis

Charybdis was a whirlpool that devoured ships foolish enough to dare to sail too close. The option for a ship captain was to dare the Scylla, a dangerous rocky shoal that would tear ships to pieces instead.

The ancient Greeks described both of these originally as sea monsters that would attacks unwary captains, annihilating their ships and their crew.

In our current world we too run the risk of being devoured if we dare to venture too close perceptual reality versus the cultural narrative we’ve been led to believe as what is real … yet like Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, we must endure this very challenge if we intend to realize the possibility of awakening beyond the illusions of culture.

Left unchallenged the filter of culture determines how we will interpret the entirety of our life experiences and the meaning we make of them.

The collective agreements of culture are designed not only to inform us about reality, but also to shape how we perceive all the events and information we encounter.

One of the most pervasive and “essential” truths we learn within the culture of modernity assumes that we are informed because we are literate and educated … beyond this we often make the leap to the further assumption that this means we are also intelligent, when the evidence gathered from how we most often go about our lives and the current state of the world seems to suggest that nothing could be further from the truth.

We are a species hovering on the edge of destruction … not only of ourselves, but seemingly threatening the entire basis of life in the biosphere … and yet we continue unabated with the same patterns of action that brought us here.

The first thing we must agree to accept, if we intend to do anything about this state of affairs personally and collectively is …

The current narrative is broken!

The story we are living our lives from no longer supports life as the basis upon which it rests. Instead we are living from a story that has its foundations in fear and greed, built on the assumption that the only way to have enough is to get more.

We seem to desire a life worth living, filled with deep meaning and purpose attached and connected to others in meaningful and caring, if not loving, relationships.

But such a life has been supplanted by a life organized around earning a living that exceeds what we need to survive and prosper in the service of productivity and consumption.

  • We are fed lies that support a system where the majority of people live in servitude to a micro minority elites who run a corrupt and rigged system.
  • We have been led to believe that we have a say in the way that society is organized and managed, yet most of our laws are designed to improve the quality of life of the very few at the top, while minimally allowing those at the bottom merely to survive.
  • We buy into this system of lies and misinformed beliefs after more than a decade of compulsory education followed by up to another decade of voluntary education that we’ve been told is “the great equalizer” when the evidence is that some of the most privileged in our society only became that way after dropping out and opting out of the very system we’ve were led to believe would be our salvation if we just stayed the course.

When we navigate the narrative based on the evidence we find that the very systems we’ve are told will save us actually enslave us … one of the most unforgiving being the schooling we received that conditioned us to perform at the bequest of the experts and masters like trained circus animals performing on demand …

The “Gold Star” effect spanning the time from the first encounter in school with the teacher acting as overlord in the classroom, handing out rewards for good performance, to the time we either awaken, retire or die in the hands of a system that teaches us first and then tells us for the remainder of our lives … Be Good and Fit In.

Yet this narrative has been so cleverly woven that the majority living under its cloak of deception fail to see it as other than reality itself. 

However, immediate escape is available to anyone who simply recognizes the narrative for what it is … a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

That choice is ready at hand to anyone who wants it and opens the way to beginning to notice and perceive the signals in the system for what they are and not what we are told to believe they are … learning to trust ourselves above the overlords who would have us believe that without them and their guidance we would be lost.

 

The Gateways Of Perception

The beginning of the transformation from being the good boy or girl who has learned to fit in starts when we reject the veneer of truth spewed forth from the media, the politicians and the educators who swear to keep us informed and educated posing as the whole truth, when in fact it is nothing more than the tidbits they are willing to share that continue to support the story that enslaves us if we let it.

You do have a choice … accept that you are living within a perceptual position that continues to allow you to perceive and see the yourself, the world around you and your place in it as you do from that position … and that your perception isn’t what’s necessarily real. 

While you may not be able to escape the human condition of living from a perceptual position you have choices about what position you choose to inhabit at any given moment in time and space.

One of the great “truths” that has been thrust upon us from those who have spent lifetimes exploring the development of what it means to be fully human suggests that we are capable of accessing and holding multiple perceptual positions. 

Each one of these perceptual positions acts like a distinct gateway to perception and shapes what you experience and the meaning you give to your experience.

Change your perceptual position and another gateway opens for you to an alternative future with a multitude of alternative possibilities. 

This has become the essence of the work I offer to those I work with individually and organizationally … exploring with them the scope of possibilities that appear when another gateway of perception is chosen. 

While I focus on eight primary gateways of perception that have been the most fully explored and are most readily accessible, recognized and understood, I accept that the potential number of gateways humans are possible of accessing may be infinite.

What may be most useful in beginning the quest to decipher the narrative is simply the willingness to release the death grip on a singular perspective and gain access to the choice of standing at the gateways of perception that most serve the outcomes you desire.

Having read this far it’s likely you’ve already taken the first step … 

 

Bon voyage,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
New Hope, PA

 

 

The GOD Code

The GOD Code

by ·

Disclosing Spiritual Self-Deception …

FULL DISCLOSURE WARNING: I’m frackin’ pissed … and the following post is sure to piss some people off too, and just so you know I use bad words below according to the word police who think some words are more entitled to be used than others!!!

I watched two short videos today that got me thinking … so, here I find myself sitting in front of my computer thinking about you and me, and what I do for a living that connnects us.

The first video was about “Life Coaching” recommmended by a colleague. It was one by JP Sears on his Ultra Spiritual page. He makes satirical videos about the “spiritual lifestyle and being a spiritual warrior” like, “The Tao of the Man Bun” … so you can learn how to join the New Age elite.

The second was by a well known coach who was not being satirical and talking about spirituality much more seriously, heck he even sounded serious talking seriously about what it takes to be serious about serious spirituality … well maybe I was wrong and it was a satire!

The essence of the second talk was an age old idea called “The Master Game” a phrase I first saw coined in a book by Robert S. de Ropp, originally published in 1968.

Of course no self-respecting life coach will every tell you the sources of their profound and unique revelations … so like all references this reference is never actually referenced and the idea is presented as totally original and emergent from the mind of the life coach (are you beginning to get the kind of stuff that pisses me off?).

BTW I’ve read and loved De Ropp’s book many, many moons age, long before I had “snow on top” as the Japanese masters like to say. FWIW he doesn’t present “the Way” in seven simple steps or three principals or any of that pseudo-spiritual crap (sorry to those of you who have bought into the New Age B.S. hook, line and sinker … but as per Lao Tze who wrote another great book in the genre:

”The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;

The names that can be named are not unvarying names.

It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;”

(Watley, trans. from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaoTeChing)

Now let me share with you the essence of the book and the talk using the same references, albeit using different words making it totally unique and original, that I watched so we can start from a common point of reference …

You are really NOT you, you are more than you … in fact you are everything and everyone, pure embodied consciousness … the only reason you think you are you is because you have succumbed to thought i.e. bad ego informed thinking and social projections … and, now that you know that you can overcome the ego and social projection that you actually exist and return to the pure consciousness that you really are … i.e.: G-d, who by the way doesn’t exist either.

 

Pseudo-Spiritual Awakening

This is the essence of many pseudo-spiritial awakenings posing as enlightened souls who are now experiencing non-dualism by having shed their identities as individuals.

Of course these newly hatched spiritual beings still have the burden of body they have to use to drag their souls around, but soon that too will pass and they will regain their rightful place as the G-d of the Universe that they actually truly are … the creator of all and everything, omniscient and omnipotent.

At least the Hindus believe that this projection is actually all just a dream that Vishnu is having and none of it actually exists … that I can buy into totally, ‘cause I believe that I exist in my own dreams when I have them too.

The Abrahamistic monotheists believe there is a G-d and that G-d is beyond human understanding or containment, and frankly that makes more sense to me as well.

But the idea that I “incarnated” to have a “human experience” as a “spiritual being” because somehow being purely spiritual wasn’t actually spiritual enough and I needed to incarnate in corporeal form to experience my way back to what it is to be be spiritual is FRACKIN’ INSANE!!!

This is the worst logic I’ve ever encountered …

 

Why I’m Pissed Off …

Okay, again so we’re clear, I don’t want to interfer with anyone’s desire for or approach to spiritual awakening.

Fuck it man, just do your thing!

(Note: I came of age during the 1960s and 70s and the term “man” was a common non-gender reference from a patriarchal society trying to free itself from being a patriarchal society, later replaced by “dude” that also attempted to do the same thing, but less successfully because it actually did become associated with boys or men thereby extending the patriarchal forms it was intended to obliterate, thereby requiring the addition of “girl” as in “you go girl” to the common vocabulary to balance the lingo of the emergent post-partriarchal system that such changes in language forms are intented to bring about … “do your thing” from the same era of the 60s and 70s is more self explanatory.)

What I’m pissed off about are two things …

  1. The idea of pseudo-spiritual teaching posing as deeply profound consciousness raising and transformative work
  2. The positioning of pseudo-spiritual teachers who are incredibly materialistic in their approach to “spiritual” enlightenment leading incredible numbers of discontents further into the maya of their own delusions

Now to be sure, I’m no spiritual teacher, guru or Zen master, although I do think the Zen masters from the golden age of Zen are particularly cool and relevant cats to attend to in the writings and teaching we have from them, e.g.: Nagarjuna, a personal favorite of mine, who wrote “Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way”

[BTW, if you actually want to read and understand Nagarjuna I suggest you get the version of his bookshops by Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Brad Warner that makes it much more approachable than 99% of the more scholarly translations – http://amzn.to/28JEji1. (Brad Warner is a young, Gen X, ordained Zen priest and ex-Japanese monster movie fan and claymation animator, who’s one of my favorite writers on the topic, e.g.: “Hardcore Zen” another worthwhile book in the genre IMO – http://amzn.to/28M4GWW).]

Okay, now that we’re totally clear on what I’m not, i.e.: a spiritual teacher, guru or Zen master, here’s my 50 cents on the topic at hand …

Being “spiritual” has nothing to do with being “materialistic” … LITERALLY NOTHING!!!!

 

Being Spiritual

So, being spiritual doesn’t mean you’ll get rich … as far as I can tell G-d, Vishnu or Buddha don’t give a flying fuck about whether you’re rich or poor … because, spirituality and materiality are two completely different domains of experience.

You can be spiritual and poor, or spiritual and rich … and you can be either poor or rich and not be spiritual at all!

Are you getting it (my POV and why I’m pissed this morning)???

By the same token you can be spiritual and blissful or spiritual and miserable … or even spiritual and not give a fuck either way!

Another one of my favorite authors on spirituality is U.G. Krishnamurti (not J.K. Krishnamurti of Theosophy and Blavatsky fame.). Try his book, “Mind is Myth” for a taste – http://amzn.to/28M5PxW .

U.G. blows away about 99% of the spirituality bullshit and the bullshit spiritualists. He’s also not particularly happy about anything, or blissful … or for that matter disillusioned or sad or anything else, i.e.: he pretty much makes it clear that he doesn’t really give a fuck. I LOVE THIS GUY!!! (That’s the opposite of being pissed off BTW.)

I’m just tired of hearing all the old ways repurposed for a new and modern audience that trivializes or monetizes them for the personal gain of the presenter.

Even when the presenter is authentic in their beliefs, and their audience authentic in their acceptance and the value you find in the pablum being offered as spiritual steak, it pisses me off!

 

Why I Do Give A FUCK …

Okay, so why bother writing this at all???

Because the deep spiritual ways … Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist … you choose your path, e.g.: Native American Spirituality, Siberian Shamanism … whatever, do indeed point to “The Way” IMO.

“The Way” as I use the term here is that which is beyond the self (small “s” intentionally).

To paraquote one of my intellectual heroes and mentors, Joseph Campbell …

“The hero is committed to something larger than themselves.”

We are in a state of flux … in society, in the world, in our professional and personal lives.

We are raising children without a shred of resilience, who require “safe spaces” and “trigger word warnings” on university campuses to feel complete, whole and secure as they move through the world … or they collapse in a heap of emotional overload and require counseling and reparations (of course reparations, because after all a significant sum of money will repair their damaged or broken soul considerably, right?) … and pseudo-adult, pseudo-intellectual university chancellors, presidents, deans and chairs who support them!!!

We have pseudo-adults who cannot and do not take responsibility for their beliefs or actions, even after it has been pointed out to them they actually own both … instead they blame “mommy” or “daddy” who didn’t love them enough or at all, or who left them when they were young and now that have an irreparable hole in their soul … or the system or the man … or white priviledge, black hoodlums, immigrants, the godless, the fundamentally religious … there’s always someone to point a finger towards for these folks.

We have and support politicians who are ruthless and self-serving, and an entire system that allows and even encourages “politics for profit.”

We have a movement here in the U.S. of A. in the 2016 election cycle of people who believe it’s time for a woman to be President as though one’s genitals are up for election …

WHAT THE FUCK HAS GONE WRONG WITH US???!!!!!????

 

The Re-Enchantment of the Self

From an anthropological, psychological profiling position it’s seems simple enough … society is under a mass delusion and it’s members are hypnotized into what appears to be a form of group insanity.

Or going back to one of my uber sources, Joseph Campbell the renowned mythological scholar, again …

We don’t have a cosmology that supports us and the soceity we are living in today … so we depend mostly on cosmologies that are multiple millennias older than we are to make sense of the world based on a way that no longer exists.

This opens the door for pseudo-spiritual teachers and outright spiritual charlatans to occupy our minds and hearts, leading us astray in our desire to regain our center … and, from my view at the edge of the stage it’s causing us untold amounts of misery.

I could list the things I see …

  • environmental degradation to the point of dead bio-zones that once flourished with life …
  • totalitarian, oppressive political regimes posing as democratic states offering their citizens the illusion of freedom while indenturing them to the bankers that keep them eternally indebted and working as serfs for the system …
  • abject poverty raging across the globe for a majority of the people living on it, while others live in decadent abundance , conspicuous consumption and wasteful ignorance …
  • and there are more …

But, these are all just symptoms of a deep spiritual vacuum that appears when we are left without a cosmology that fits the times and helps us to make sense of our lives in the shadow of the ineffable.

We are spiritually adrift because we are bereft of a cosmology, or as I say it … we are suffering from mythological distress.

As individuals and as a people we have lost our way, and to find the path we must approach it in that order IMO … we must find ourselves and then our people.

When we discover the center of our being, who we essentially are before all else, we will liberate what it has always been possible for us to become … i.e.: fully human.

Our humanity allows us to connect and participate in the lives of others, to become part of society that we find ourselves within, that contains us and washes over us endlessly with the primordial promise of culture as we know it to be … informing us about what is real and what is not.

Only once we’ve uncovered and made free the unchangable center of ourselves can we hope to withstand the waves of culture pointing us to the “real” and directing our attention away from and outside of ourselves.

Yet, time and again, when I have sat with those who have begun to realize themselves as they are … unchanging and unchangable … they are free to come out and play in the world as it is, without demanding it to be different or changing for them to be at peace with it either.

So this is why I’m pissed … the world does indeed need spiritual warriors to survive, thrive and prosper … and those warriors need to be outward looking, not lost in the contemplation of themselves as the center of the Universe and demanding repartaions when they could be walking lightly and sharing this window of light we call our lives with those they love and the world-at-large.

We do need heroes … those who are committed to something greater than themselves … and heroes need to know the myth they are living so they can escape it and live they myth they are …

Namaste,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics