Transformational Change & Performance

This Ain’t No Zen!

by Joseph Riggio · Jun 27, 2018

If it ain’t Zen, WTF is the MythoSelf Process then???

Essentially the MythoSelf Process is the “the ability to freely play and take action” it’s about “being childlike and creative in the way you experience, approach and show up in the world” … but, it ain’t Zen, or any other frackin’ thing either … we’ll come back to all this, but first we need to lay some groundwork.

Sometimes folks who come to experience the MythoSelf Process or to learn “how to do it” meaning that they want to become proficient in running the process with others as well as for themselves, assume that the MythoSelf Process is “like” Zen or something.

Here’s the first rule of the MythoSelf Process (NO! The first rule of MythoSelf is NOT: “You do not talk about MythoSelf.”):

The first rule of MythoSelf is: “THIS IS NOT THAT.”

Let’s start there things are themselves, i.e: what they are, no more, no less and not “LIKE” something other than themselves, regardless of what we’re referring or pointing to, things are just themselves … objects, people, places, events, ideas, and yes, the MythoSelf Process is just the MythoSelf Process … it ain’t Zen (or any other bloody thing you can imagine in the distortions of your mind “it’s LIKE” … ‘cause it ain’t!).

Okay, so then what “IS” the MythoSelf Process???

The MythoSelf Process is dynamic, i.e.: it’s a process:

proc·ess

ˈpräˌses,ˈprōˌses

noun

a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.”military operations could jeopardize the peace process”synonyms: procedure, operation, action, activity, exercise, affair, business, job, task, undertaking”investigation is a long process”

The MythoSelf Process “happens” (NOTE: it’s never “DONE” to someone, it “HAPPENS” with someone or a group of people).

The MythoSelf Process reveals what we call the “source code” that a person uses to know themselves to be alive. It uses an “if/then” algorithm, “if THIS, then THAT” … if “this” is present then I am alive.

This is the essence of awakening, becoming aware that you are alive, you are present, this is happening right here, right now … and you are able to remain present to it as it unfolds and is coming into being, moment by moment by moment responding to what “IS” …

”Like THIS …”

We often say, “Like THIS …” as a way of referencing what is present that acknowledges the presence of being alive to the individual experiencing the “this” of their own internal awareness.

Unlike many other approaches to “awakening” the MythoSelf Process bases the way to awakening in the experience of the body, the somatic experience, or how you notice yourself being in your body in this moment right here, right now.

Ultimately with training and experience you become able to track this experience almost unconsciously, but fully competently, making adjustments and compensating to be at your best at all times … or at the very least to know when you are not, and give yourself permission to get back to yourself before you make any major commitments or take any major action. (We usually recommend, “WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T!”)

Signals in the System

The skill I’m referring to above is a subtle awareness to notice for the way you are in your body, or how your body is responding in the moment to what we call “The Signals in the System” or all the stuff that’s happening right here, right now, including all the stuff that’s happening internally for you … your thoughts, how you feel, where you are tense or relaxed, what urges you’re feeling, all those internal signals are part of the totality of what we call the signals in the system.

What you need to get for now is that the signals in the system we’re mostly concerned with are the ones that mostly go unnoticed, e.g.: what’s not being said, or the breeze that’s blowing as you’re thinking about how to invest the inheritance you just found out about from your great uncle George, or whatever. Signals in the system points to that stuff in the background, that’s there not just imagined or projected magically, but so often is left out of the calculation of what’s going on and how that’s affecting you and how you’re responding to what’s happening.

Okay, that might sound like a lot to keep track of, we know. Here are a couple of things that might help you relax about all the possible signals in the system that you could be noticing for:

You don’t need to do anything about the signals in the system, just let them be for now
You don’t need to even pay any particular attention to the signals in the system, as long as you know they are there even when you are not paying attention to them

What you do want to do about the signals in the system is pay attention to the ones you do notice!

If something stands out from the background to you, regardless of what it may be or how insignificant it may seem, just agree with yourself to notice it … trust us, there’s a reason you noticed it, there’s a reason your system responded to it. Now immediately check how you are in yourself, what are you doing in your body?

The easiest way to learn to check what’s going on within yourself, what you’re doing with your body, is to check for where you are holding any kind of tension. For now try to relax that tension and notice what happens as a result. You’re not trying to make a change in terms of what you notice, other than relaxing wherever you find tension in your body. Then, just notice what you notice. If it’s nothing, let it be. If you find you’ve changed the way your thinking, or what you’re thinking about, or how you’re feeling … or, if a sudden seemingly random thought pops up in mind … pay attention to that and consider what it means to you in terms of adjusting how you’ll respond to whatever is going on as a result of noticing what came up for you.

Eventually, with practice and some discipline, you’ll begin to “notice for” the signals in the system automatically, and the “distance” between the incoming signals as well as you internal signals, and your response will be virtually nonexistent, essentially you’ll begin to respond instantly and highly effectively with regard to moving in the direction of the outcomes you intend.

Taking Action … Playfully

So this brings us full circle.

When you are able to be present to what’s happening in the moment … right here, right now … you’ll find you’re able to respond to things in a way the feels like playing, as well as instantly and effectively, regardless of the context or circumstance.

This is the beginning of freedom, i.e: the freedom to take action.

Most people experience times where they are hesitant, or get caught and freeze, or maybe they wish they had responded differently after the fact.

Yet, when we watch children at play, while they may not like the outcome they seldom if ever go back and think, “I wish I had done that differently.” or get stuck in their play unable to act at all. They simply act out of their innate nature.

This is the idea of what we mean by becoming “childlike” … having access to your innate, natural way of taking action freely.

When you “arrive” at the point where you are both able to track the signals in the system in regard to your intended outcomes and you also have the ability to respond creatively, as though you are at play, you are free in a way very few adults will ever experience.

This is essentially what the MythoSelf Process leads to … “the ability to freely play and take action” it’s about “being childlike and creative in the way you experience, approach and show up in the world.” …

So, when someone asks, “Is the MythoSelf Process like Zen.” I get how they can be confused … but, regardless of where there may be similarities, THIS ISN’T THAT.”

If you are interested in learning more about the MythoSelf Process I’ve got a short video I made here: MythoSelf Professional Training

All the best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

P.S.: If you’re also interested in getting trained in the MythoSelf Process yourself you can also get that information here as well: MythoSelf Professional Training

L’Chaim …

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 22, 2018

“To Life …”

This morning I was inexplicably brought back to a memory of sitting on a small bench overlooking the bridge that crossed the pond at the Blue Dell Farm in Pemberton, NJ during a break, while at an NLP training with Roye Fraser. I’d gone there to study NLP with him, and discovered he was weaving a magical score with something he called “The Generative Imprint” using NLP to deliver and train in this model of transformational change he’d been developing for about a decade at that time.

This was an unusual way to teach NLP, not by a series of exercises to teach either concepts or techniques, like representational systems or swish patterns, but in what he called “wholeform” (something I’d come to appreciate more as I delved into the work of the quantum physicist David Bohm).

We’d all sit in the “Hypnotorium” Roye’s name for the room we worked in with him, that was a converted mechanics garage on the property he owned there in Pemberton. Roye would begin talking about something, then he’d ask us all “What do you want?” and someone would say or do something that would catch his attention and he’d “bring them up” … meaning he’d bring them to the front of the room and begin working with them. Not demonstrating a concept or technique, but using concepts and techniques to create profound transformational change with whomever he’d brought up tot he front.

Then we’d be instructed to “Go do the exercise.” … and, everyone in the room would be like, “What exercise?!!???” (even though the exercise was clearly spelled out on a flip chart with steps to take to do whatever it was that we’d be working on at that moment) … because, we’d just seen a seamless flow of concept and technique customized to the exacting needs of an individual that no one there at the time could hope to replicate. So we’d walk off, spellbound, to do our best to “Do the exercise.”

It was in the Hypnotorium with Roye that the phrase, “L’Chaim” uttered in a deep, resonant, voice with a ting of a South African accent, usually proceeded or followed by a deep, roaring burst of laughter, became etched in my mind.

“L’Chaim!” … TO LIFE!

The work Roye did was about “LIFE!” … discovering the wonder and joy of being alive … fully, completely and with abandon.

I took this on in my years of apprenticing with Roye, dedicating myself to helping others find for themselves “the wonder and joy of being alive … fully, completely and with abandon.”

“L’Chaim!”

Many times since those early years I myself uttered that phrase after completing a piece of work with someone … often to Jewish clients I’ve had who I hoped would recognize my toasting their new awakening to themselves, sometimes to gentiles like myself who I hoped would recognize the intention if not the literary meaning of the phrase.

A way I’ll often end a piece of work, or a training session, or even many of my posts is with the bastardized Italian-American, “Buona Fortuna and Abundanza!” … which I state as a prayer and a blessing, i.e.: “May you have good fortune and abundance in your life.” (there is no word “abundanza” in Italian, the Italian word is “abbondanza” meaning “plenty”).

Another phrase I picked up from Roye was his colorful way of sending folks off, “Go forth and fructify.” … said with a glint in his eye and a conspiratorial tone to his voice.

fruc·ti·fy

ˈfrəktəˌfī/

verbformal

verb: fructify; 3rd person present: fructifies; past tense: fructified; past participle: fructified; gerund or present participle: fructifying

1. make (something) fruitful or productive.

◦ bear fruit or become productive.

Origin:

Middle English: from Old French fructifier, from Latin fructificare, from fructus ‘fruit.’

You may think, “Ahhh, this Roye fellow was a very playful sort!” … and you my friend would be correct. But, you’d be missing the deadly serious side of him. He was playful only in respect to achieving the outcome, i.e.: to lead his clients to living their lives … fully, completely and with abandon.

More than anything that’s what I got from my years with Roye, first to, “ live my life fully, completely and with abandon” and then to commit to this as the first principal of the work I learned with him as I share it with others.

After some years I began to bring my own approach to this work to life, the MythoSelf Process. This model was born from drawing on some distinctions that came from my own personal history and the study of other intellectual and transformational giants … folks like the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, and the masterful somatic practitioner Moshe Feldenkrais, and seeing how our life stories are carried within us in word and deed.

I began to develop a unique way of working with folks using both transformational stories and subtle somatic interventions to shift the fundamental position of perception and decision making of the clients I work with today. This way of approaching transformational change that leads to breakthrough performance emerged from that early work I began learning with Roye in the Hypnotorium.

Roye taught me to attend to gross and subtle “idiosyncratic movement” aligned with “ideomatic phrases” … individualized ways people express something that is not easily captured in language and is highly unique to them personally. From this early training I began to notice something more about what I today refer to as “micro-muscular response” and “dynamic patterns of movement” … the basis of the Soma-Semantics model I’ve been developing and refining for the past thirty years.

In my observations with clients over tens of thousands of hours of doing work with them in training rooms, groups and one-to-one private work, I’ve noticed how deep values that guide perception, decision making and behavioral responses are reflected in the way the body configuration adjusts to reflect the mind of the individuals I’m working with irrefutably and absolutely.

As a person accesses these values, that are the basis of their personal identity, i.e.: what’s most meaningful to them before any conscious awareness or processing take place, they automatically and irrevocably make somatic adjustments that are the physical manifestations of what they are accessing.

The resulting somatic pattern generates a state change, or a way of being, that is consistent with the values and identity position they have been accessing.

This is a physical declaration of themselves, like a bold pronouncement, “I AM THIS!” … or at a more fundamental level of awareness that is barely conscious for them most of the time, “I AM!”

This then becomes the basis, or the ground, from which all the work that proceeds is built upon.

From this most fundamental, unspoken declaration of “I AM!” we work to extract the narrative form in story and in idiom, often expressed in paradoxical form, e.g.: “supple steel” … “calm intensity” … this is the semantic expression of the Soma-Semantic pair.

When these are firmly inhabited they individual who possesses them has the basis for accessing how they know themselves to be alive in the most fundamental and primal way possible (NOTE: to get here takes a bit of expertise and tradecraft).

This has now become the starting point … beginning the journey that follows, remaining always grounded in and tethered to the fundamental distinction of being alive …
fully, completely and with abandon …
—
“L’Chaim!”.

It’s not always so easy for clients who haven’t yet experienced the wholeform way of learning that is the basis for the MythoSelf Process and the Soma-Semantics model to see the value of investing in getting to this fundamental position from which to live their life.

Far too often folks are consumed with the urgency of the immediate …

– resolving some crisis that has arisen

– paying the bills

– sending the children off to school

– getting the next promotion, contract or client

– growing their business or practice

– caring for an elderly parent

– insuring their own future or legacy …

whatever is staring them in the face in the moment.

Yet, doing all these things, even extraordinarily well, will not bring you peace or peace of mind. These things will not satisfy the deep existential and ontological longings you have to know and live your purpose, and to fully manifest and express all you are capable of being.

And, despite the deep, compelling call of the adventure Jospeh Campbell speaks of in the Hero’s Journey … i.e.: to become fully human and realize yourself in all your magnificent splendor … most folks will pursue the urgent and trivial at the cost of the significant and substantial.

But, I persist because I have seen the difference that establishing the fundamental awareness and access to this way of being makes in every other moment of one’s life.

Instead of trying to “get somewhere” the basis of the work I do with clients is to have them stop where they are and experience themselves in this moment … fully, completely and with abandon.

This is difficult, I know.

To simply slow down enough to face yourself and come to the complex realization of where you are, how you and who you are in this moment … before rushing off to the next thing, or just proceeding to get on with your life.

However, all the accomplishments, achievements and accumulation of wealth and material success in your life will never satisfy you if you are missing this fundamental grounding in being fully , completely and with abandon present to yourself and your life as it is … right here, right now.

Then you can make the essential and substantive decisions you need to that will both satisfy your existential and ontological longings, giving your life meaning, purpose and direction … and, also ”get on with it”, knowing that where you are aiming yourself is a destination worth arriving at in the end.

Not having this one distinction in place keeps virtually everyone stuck without the hesitation, concern, worry, anxiety or fear that stops them from being able to “get on with it” … and create the life they desire and dream of for themselves, and those they care about and love.

Even when all the other pieces are seemingly in place, ignoring this crucial foundation for everything else will leave you at the top of having climbed the wrong ladder, and possibly with no way of getting back down to start over or the time left to do it if you could.

In fact, the greatest challenge is having enough success to dig in and fortify the position you’ve established, even when you sense that the peak you’re standing on isn’t one that serves you or those you truly care about and love.

Here’s the good news …

I’ve worked with enough folks, from 5 – 95, to know that remembering the deep call to life … your source code to living fully, completely and with abandon … is available to you regardless of where you find yourself standing today.

You may have to give up some of what you have, to get what you truly and deeply want, but the reward is worth the sacrifice every time.

The realization of yourself, and the potency of action that comes with that release, will allow you to build the significance and substance you desire in your life, both on your own and with others.

If you are ready there is a way …

“L’Chaim!” … it’s still ringing in my ears after all this time.

With grace and humility,

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

(On a snowy morning from) Parsippany, NJ

P.S.: If you’re interested in exploring experience Foolish Wisdom with me live in Lambertville, NJ, 2-days Live, Saturday & Sunday, 31 March/1 April (or join me for just one day on Saturday, 31 March).

Find out more: Foolish WisdomLet me know what you think otherwise in the comments below or by sending me a private message …

BUONA FORTUNA AND ABUNDAZA!

Thinking Small

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 16, 2018

“I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it.”*

I admit it, I’ve always had a hard time thinking small. Some folks are great at it though. They use small words and a just a few of them to express magnificent and expansive ideas. Not me.

I tend to be wordy. My sentences run on … and, sometimes on. And, if there’s not a big word to express what I’m thinking and trying to say, I just make one up on the fly. I’m like that. I think that “free speech” means what it says, and I should be free to speak even that which hasn’t existed before I spake it.

In fact that’s the heart of the matter. As fish swim in water, we, i.e.: humans, homo sapiens sapiens, swim in language. Words. And, more words. Life is filled with wordiness for humans.

All that so far is okay. It’s okay to think small. It’s okay to be wordy. It’s okay that humans swim in language.

It’s the “belief” thing that gets us every time though. The idea that the words we read, and the words we hear, and the words we write, and the words we speak are “true” … or, represent what’s “real” … when in fact words are words and nothing more.

The words aren’t the thing they point to at all. The word “love” isn’t “love” any more than it’s a fish. But, that doesn’t mean that words aren’t powerful, they are indeed. Words bring worlds into being.

G. Spencer Brown, in his book, ”Laws of Form” speaks of universes coming into being when “… a space is severed or taken apart.”

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. (page v)

Now, imagine if you will, that language severs the wholeform of reality by imagining it’s “parts” as independent and distinguishable by virtue of the idea that they can be labeled, i.e.: named, bringing into being a new universe each time a new word, specifically a noun, is uttered or written, contained within the universe that remains unnamed and residing next to all the universes that have been named, including all those things named, and labeled by the names given them, which don’t exist.

Which brings us to the point of my rambling.

For many years I’ve striven to present what I do as simply and naively as possible. Alas, as I’ve said though, I am not a man of small thinking, or for that matter small words.

I believe my fault lies in thinking in wholeform, i.e.: I have trouble perceiving the boundaries that sever spaces into separate universes. This leads to expansiveness in all ways, including the wordiness of which I am at fault. For what it’s worth I think the British polymath I’ve quoted above, G. Spencer Brown got this idea stuck in his head (or at least his writing) too, despite his writing about the opposite.

”In this sense, in respect to its own information, the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us.” – G. Spencer Brown, Laws of Form

Stay just a little bit longer

(Musical Interlude)

Oh, won’t you stay just a little bit longer

Please, please, please, say you will

Say you will

(Jackson Browne – “The Load Out – Stay” from the album Running on Empty)

Okay, back to the main point or as Professor Rodríguez from my first doctoral program was found of saying, “Keep the main thing, the main thing!”

As simply put as I can put it, what I do is lead people back to a wholeform consideration of the universe to help them get their heads right.

Literally for years I’ve been trying to simplify what I do, in terms of form, i.e.: how I do what I do … or the pragmatics of it. This led me down many paths and alleys.

As a result of this journeying I’ve developed many programs, and mini-programs, and models, and techniques … all in the service of this one thing, looking for the holy grail of transformational change, the philosopher’s stone or alchemist’s prima materia of the Change Artist.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: For what it’s worth I think I may have stumbled upon it, but as Lao-Tau says in the Tao Te Ching,

Tao (The Way) that can be spoken of is not the Constant Tao’ The name that can be named is not a Constant Name.

Nameless, is the origin of Heaven and Earth;

The named is the Mother of all things.

Thus, the constant void enables one to observe the true essence. The constant being enables one to see the outward manifestations.

These two come paired from the same origin. But when the essence is manifested, It has a different name.

This same origin is called “The Profound Mystery.”

As profound the mystery as It can be, It is the Gate to the essence of all life.

http://www.with.org/tao_te_ching_en.pdf)

However, as a result, I’ve become as the ouroboros, swallowing whole the circle of infinity, and realizing in the process neither an end or a beginning. And, so I come back to the start of all things.

The beginning and the end are the wholeform, from which all separate universes are cleaved, but despite the severing remain whole nonetheless.

This was always the essence of the MythoSelf Process model and work.

BUT … to do this, as the sacred work I perceive it to be, i.e. leading a person back to themselves uncorrupted and complete, requires losing all other intentions or distortions along the way.

There can be no intention beyond arriving at the wholeform, having removed all the distinctions that create separate universes, and in turn separating ourselves from ourself.

So, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa” I got both distracted and became disingenuous about the nature of the work at hand.

The MythoSelf Process work was never “about” something other than itself, i.e.: encountering the wholeform that is the *all and everything.

So my apologies for any suggesting otherwise. In other words that I may have misled you to think this was “about” something, e.g.: being happy, or getting wealthy, or having great relationships, or any other damn thing beyond the main thing, which of course is everything.

But, for whatever it’s worth, I’m back at the core of the work, but with a vengeance, having spent far to much time searching in vain for what it was not.

I guess I said it long ago, but had not the ears to hear myself …

“This is NOT that!”

With a few folks who have stuck around and become trainers and master trainers of the work, as well as some folks who are otherwise masterful in their own ways within the scope of the work, I will be offering both “MythoSelf Experience” 3-day programs and a full year-long MythoSelf Professional Training presented over three four-day modules in a few places in the upcoming months.

If you’d like to get on my list about these opportunities either drop me a note in the comments below, send me an email at joseph-AT-josephriggio.com, or PM me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/josephriggio) if you prefer.

I’d love to read your comments about where you are with my unfortunate wordiness below …

Best,

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

P.S. – In the meantime if you’d like to experience the MythoSelf work with me directly in a small group setting I’m offering a “Foolish Wisdom” workshop this month in Lambertville, NJ, you can find the information here:

Foolish Wisdom in Lambertville, NJ – MARCH 2018

The Skeleton Key To Transformational Performance

by Joseph Riggio · Jan 17, 2018

Why We Focus On Neurocognitive Developmental Training As The Basis Of Instigating Transformational Change And Peformance Breakthrough

At each stage of human existence the adult is off on his quest to his Holy Grail, the way of life he sees by which to live.
– Clare W. Graves

Because people get stuck when the worldview they are using doesn’t accommodate the outcomes they intend … they need a way to get out of their “stuck state.”

Neurocognitive Developmental Training provides the skeleton key that unlocks the mystery of success.

This is the essential and most rewarding reason “WHY” it makes sense to get Neurocognitive Developmental Training (NDT) … but, once you dive down the rabbit hole you’ll find so much more that will be valuable to you too.

Neurocognitive Developmental Training is all about building “(Human) Adaptive Intelligence” – i.e.: the ability to adapt your thinking to the situations and contexts you encounter and are engaged in at any given time.

When you put your attention on it, you’ll likely recognize that what I’m calling (Human) Adaptive Intelligence, or (H)AI, is an innate trait of almost everyone you’ve met and know, including yourself. However, you may also simultaneously recognize how most folks avoid “adapting” their way of thinking, or probably more frequently reach the limits of their capacity to adapt rather quickly.

So, why is it, if we all seem to possess the ability to use adaptive thinking, that we don’t more naturally, frequently, and easily do it?

I’d argue it’s because it makes us uncomfortable to operate outside of, or beyond, our most familiar ways of operating, in this case thinking and acting.

This is the clearly identified and documented psychological “Cognitive Dissonance Theory” …

attitude change cognitive dissonance cartoon — Cognitive Dissonance: https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

Essentially this theory states that people will avoid whatever is unfamiliar, and when they cannot make sense of the unfamiliar create a rational reason to explain what is unfamiliar within the boundaries of their current Model of the World, i.e.: their way of perceiving and making sense of the world around them, including their current beliefs and values.

Simply stated, Cognitive Dissonance Theory, suggests that people would rather live with discomfort and/or dissatisfaction, and continue to fail at succeeding in the ways the claim to most desire, than have to change their beliefs and values to match the situational and/or contextual evidence they confront, i.e.:

Therefore, unless AND until someone shifts the Model of the World they are operating from, they will keep repeating the same challenges they have confronted in the past, and fail to make the changes in their life would allow them to succeed, but cause them instead to continue failing in the same way that they always have in the past.– Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

This presents people with a huge limitation in getting what they want, yet people will still avoid updating their Model of the World even when they recognize and know that’s what’s required of them to get what they want, and to find satisfaction and peace in their lives, all because the discomfort of making that change seems to them in the moment more disquieting and unreachable than not having the satisfaction and peace of getting what they deeply desire feels like to them now.

Ultimately most of us operate off of well established patterns of neurochemically and neurophysiologically ingrained behavior. These patterns arise in us as “GO” or “NO GO” signals.

Our “GO/NO GO” signals are actually organized somatically as well as psychologically, originating for the most part as shifts in our vestibular and proprioceptive systems, literally we “feel” in or out of balance, and like we’re stuck or motivated to take action.

This is deeply connected to the idea of your “gut response” … that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know something is wrong and it makes you a bit queasy or nauseous, or when something is very right and you feel a tingling warmth about it in your belly.

Most people have learned to override this primitive, instinctual system designed to serve as both an “early warning system” as well as a “alert system to opportunity” by processing the “signals in the system,” i.e: the data that’s present, rationally or logically instead.

So they lose out on the benefit of learning how to trust this ancient system of response that is designed to protect and serve them.

We now know, through recent neuroscientific research, that the “vagal pathway” a system of nerves that is dominated by the vagus nerve that runs from brain to the digestive organs, controls much of what we have historically thought of informally and colloquially as our “gut response” … that innate way of knowing what is bad or good for us, before we even have time to think about it.

Here’s a short list of some of the ways the vagal pathway is involved in our health and sense of wellbeing (http://upliftconnect.com/12-ways-unlock-powers-vagus-nerve/):

Vagus nerve dysfunction can result in a whole host of problems including obesity, bradycardia (abnormally slow heartbeat), difficulty swallowing, gastrointestinal diseases, fainting, mood disorders, B12 deficiency, chronic inflammation, impaired cough, and seizures.

Meanwhile, the vagus nerve stimulation has been shown to improve conditions such as:

Anxiety disorder
Heart disease
Tinnitus
Obesity
Alcohol addiction
Migraines
Alzheimer’s
Leaky gut
Bad blood circulation
Mood disorder
Cancer

So you can see that we’re looking at a very significant part of our nervous system as it affects us.

What I’ve found in my work with people is that the “GO/NO GO” signal we experience is also part of the vagal response system, and that it links to our vestibular (sense of balance) and proprioceptive (sense of self/movement) systems, the very thing that gives us the feelings of either being stuck or being motivated to take action.

As far as I can tell from my work with thousands of clients this function of the vagal response system is deeply intertwined with the Neurocognitive Developmental Level you are operating from as well. Literally, where in your brain you preference when you are noticing information in the environment, making sense of what you notice, making decisions based on what you perceive, and taking action based on the decisions you make.

Using my unique Neurocognitive Developmental Training technology, ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training, you can literally update your vagal response to be more resilient and effective in aligning your “GO/NO GO” signals to the actual signals in the system and the outcomes you want to achieve.

In the ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training model, I refer to the chain of processes from Sensory Perception to Sense Making to Decision Making to Action Taking, as the “Perception to Action Loop” in part because it’s both iterative and recursive, updating as it “loops” on itself.

Here’s a look at one way of graphically representing this system:

[File Download: ACT-PerceptiontoActionLoop]

If we add the ‘GO/NO GO” signaling process that operates through the vagal pathway the model might look like this …

[File Download: ACT-PerceptiontoActionVagalLoop]

In part, updating the Neurocognitive Developmental Level you’re operating from by default updates what you’re noticing for and how you notice for it in the environment – what I call your Perceptual Filters, and the way you make sense of information – what I call your “Sorting Patterns” … this has the effect of changing the decisions you make and the action you take, because you are noticing different information and making sense of it differently as well.

A simple example of this would be whether you are noticing for risk or opportunity, the sequence in which you do that (assuming you can notice for risk and opportunity), and the way you balance how you make sense of both in relationship to one another.

Someone who notices first for risk will tend to be “risk adverse” and protective of themselves and the relative safety of their current situation.

Someone who notices first for opportunity will tend to be “risk willing” and seek to leverage themselves and the possibilities in the current situation.

Now which one is the better choice is totally situational and contextual …

For example making a decision to walk through a dark alley late at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood to cut ten minutes off the time it would take to get to your hotel if you walked the long way might suggest that the more useful strategy is to first access the risk and act with some degree of risk aversion.

An alternative example might be making a decision to run an advertisement for your business that has an upside of 1000% return on the investment and only represents .01% of the revenue that a product or service currently generates suggests that the more useful strategy might be to first access the opportunity and act with some degree of risk willingness.

Understanding that you are not stuck to one fixed way of thinking about the world, or using one fixed, default pattern of response is the first step in freeing yourself to experience a major update to your worldview and the model of the world you operate from, as well as the ability to reap massive rewards associated with significantly increasing your level of adaptability.

When you engage in Neurocognitive Developmental Training you begin this process of loosening the lock hold that your current worldview has on you, and releases you from the limitations of the model of the world you are operating from now in those situations and contexts where it simply doesn’t serve you best.

Neurocognitive Developmental Training really gives you a smoother and more elegant access to the full range of (Human) Adaptive Intelligence, than you currently have now, and opens up your ability to access all of the Neurocognitive Developmental Levels that are innately available to you, even if you have difficulty accessing them now, or simply don’t access them at all yet.

“When man is finally able to see himself and the world around him with clear cognition, he finds a picture far more pleasant. Visible in unmistakable clarity and devastating detail is man’s failure to be what he might be and his misuse of his world.

This revelation causes him to leap out in search of a way of life and system of values which will enable him to be more than he has been. He seeks a foundation of self-respect, which will have value system rooted in knowledge and cosmic reality where he expresses himself so that all others, all beings can continue to exist.

His values now are of a different order from those at previous levels: They arise not from selfish interest but from the recognition of the magnificence of existence and the desire that it shall continue to be.”

– Clare W. Graves

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics
Stockton, NJ in the Delaware River Valley

P.S. – You can also read more about ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training, the Perception to Action Loop, and Neurocognitive Developmental Levels here: Transformational Performance Breakthrough

Claiming Your Right To Be … Become The Buddha

by Joseph Riggio · Jan 10, 2018

Taking A (Semantic) Stand …

What Would It Take To Get You To Put A Stake In The Ground, And Claim That Space As Your Own?”

One version of the story about the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree seeking the complete unfolding of consciousness tells of his last challenge by the gods before his enlightenment. Just prior to realizing his final enlightenment the gods, represented by the demon Mara had him send his most beautiful daughters, sometimes thought of as “Lust” and “Desire,” to seduce the future Buddha, but he was unmoved by them, so they departed.

Then Mara sent his monstrous army into the fray, and again Siddhartha Gautama, the future Buddha, sat unmoving and untouched. They launched their weapons, arrows and spears darkened the sky they flew in such profusion, but as they reached the future Buddha they fell around him having turned inflight into a shower of flowers.

Finally Mara himself stood against the future Buddha, and he proclaimed his right to the seat of enlightenment by the virtue of his spiritual accomplishments, and his armies of demons and monsters all stood with him acknowledging his accomplishments as well. With this Mara asked, “My army speaks for me, who will speak for you?” and the future Buddha seemingly unmoving but for the single gesture of reaching down with two fingers of his right hand touched the earth, and in that moment claimed his right to be and the space he sat upon, and he was enlightened.

This single, final gesture of the future Buddha is captured in the “earth witness” mudra, where the left hand rests palm up upon the knee of the folded and crossed left leg, while the right hand reaches down to touch the earth and claim witness for one’s right to be. This simple expression of one’s being is the ultimate representation of steadfastness, and the silent exclamation, “I AM!”

I’ve always found this part of the story profoundly moving …

I yearn for Siddhartha Gautama’s steadfast stillness, his willingness to simply be … needing nor wanting anything more. Even when the irresistible temptations of mana … power, prestige, authority are thrust upon him he resists, or when irresistible beauty, lust and desire threaten to seduce him he never falters … remaining silent and unmoving.

As I’ve shared before I’m a “good” Roman Catholic boy by indoctrination if not actualization, and as a good student I’ve learned my lessons well. This moment of the Buddha’s reminds me as well of the moment the devil tries to seduce Jesus in the cave with temptation of worldly gain and power, even trying to trick him with simplicity by offering simple bread and water for his cavernous hunger and blistering thirst … to which Jesus replies, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds. out of the mouth of God.” rebuking Satan and his temptations.

**These mythic forms of claiming one’s space, one’s right to be, have always been compelling for me.**

For almost my entire adult life I have sought to incorporate and assimilate this simple understanding for myself, one’s right to be” – and to explore it and share it with others who share my fascination with this thing that I think is the ultimate expression of what it is to be human … our ability to claim our right to simply be, without adornment or even proof beyond our being itself.

The right to be shows up for me most in the idea of what I call one’s mythic form … the deep, often pre-conscious autobiographical narrative that defines and drives us. This narrative, unlike most stories that are told pre-exists in form and precedes language … it’s more somatic than it is semantic.

It’s been thirty years this year that I will have committed myself to unearthing the mystery of mythic form as I conceive of it. What I’ve convinced myself of in these three decades dedicated to the realization of, what it means to simply be, is that it is held and contained in what drives us to action, and comes to expression in our acts … on our own, with and in relation to others.

This beingness, if you will, is the source of our personal power, it is the seat of our personal performance, and yet it remains elusive at best for most of us.

So we seek to come to terms with our being, what we perceive rumbling unceasingly beneath the surface, driving us, seeking expression, willing us to become .. and, we know it only through what we can call our ‘worldview’ … the totality of the way we know the world around us and ourselves in relation to it … our private realities.

These realities are what I think of as mythic form, the massive, imposing, singularity of the autobiographic narrative that precedes language, and at the same time dominates everything thing we think and speak. Our mythic form is unmistakable in our actions, in deed and in word. And, can seem to us “a given,” fixed in space and time, an irreversible, unchangeable aspect of ourselves … ”who” we know ourselves to be.

Yet this simply isn’t true, we become what we claim to be, much more fully than what we’ve known we were. This then is your key to freedom, your key to become fully human, as the renowned scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested.

This ability to claim our future being is all about what it is to be human, and it requires us to drive a stake into the ground as surely as the Buddha showed us in his simple act of claiming his right to be be by touch the earth with the two fingers of his right hand. In his moment of defiance Siddhartha Gautama was the stake in the ground.

So, as is my wont at the start of the new year I give voice to my stake in the ground, the spot I will sit upon for this revolution of the earth around the sun.

This year I lay claim to “MAD SKILLS” … the expression of virtuosity in action, in my deeds and words. And … I invite you to join me in claiming MAD SKILLS for yourself as well, beginning at the core, with the unfolding of the mythic form, the worldview that drives you.

This surely is at the heart of it all … the chain of causality that determines not just what we do, what we accomplish, realize and gain for ourselves and with others, but ultimately who we become … the worldview we hold, the seat of our perceptions, sense-making, decision-making, action-taking … the results and outcomes we achieve, and fail achieve … our pre-conscious, and ever-present, mythic form.

I share with you that at the very center of our ability to choose and decide who we are in this moment, and who we will become in the next, is our commitment to building ”MAD SKILLS” … virtuosity in our action-taking.

There is a paradox I invite you to explore with me this year … that our doing both proceeds from our being, and precedes it as well in our becoming.

My invitation to you is to enter the liminal space of exploration that exists just before and between our acts, to take control of who we are and who we are aiming to be as well.

This is the space that opens before the Gates of Perception that determine how we know the world around us, and our place in it …

Are you ready for the journey of your life?

Remember, this ship you are upon set sails but once for you … lay claim to who you will have been and who you have become before it docks for the last time …

Best,

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

P.S. – Click this link to find out more about the Gates of Perception and how you can dive in deeper … much, much deeper than you probably ever have now.

SENSING TIME

by Joseph Riggio · Sep 1, 2017

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/

My comments on Social Ontology

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 18, 2017

[NOTE: Copied from http://blognostra.blogspot.in/2005/08/re-sv-mythoself-tm-my-comments-on.html … reposted here in full. Response on mythoself-tm@yahoogroups.com in response to the Social Ontology blog at www.blognostra.blogspot.com – simultaneously posted in both forums. – JSR]

Robert,

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more;

I must admit I don’t “get it” … a lot of words and little point. You the “master” of “simplicity” taking so many words to say so little. I appreciate that Najma loved it so it of course may just be me, but with absolute honesty I don’t get it … at least in relation to Social Ontology … or even the ordinary construction of logical connections.

First, as always with you, I accept that this is ultimately a trance-lation from Swedish into Swenglish … (pronounced either ‘swing-lish’ or ‘sweng-lish’ if you prefer, for those who want to know). I also accept that Najma may speak Swenglish better than I, and that may make a difference. Yet, the connection to Social Ontology, even with these exceptions escapes me.

I want to “get it” … I really do … I read and re-read what I perceive to be your rambling statements … some of which I really liked … individually … and still I must make great leaps of faith to make them connect … faith I have in droves … faith in this connections that are at best so tenuous … I don’t lack … I simply refuse to expend.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
– William Shakespeare

But, maybe, just maybe there is one ‘saving grace’ … the “bridge is just a bridge” part … maybe there you could have pulled it out of the fire of ill-formedness and illogic … you didn’t but …

Let me get to my more immediate point … (and then one more beyond that if you’ll allow me … of course I’ll be writing it, but only you can choose or not to read it) … (BTW is it helpful for me to segregate my comments aside by placing them aside in brackets … in this case indicated by parenthesis) … (I expect if you choose to reply you may go line by line, or paragraph by paragraph and delineate your response in that way … so I want to set it up so that you might use my structure of presentation to make an adequate analysis and rebuttal … let me know if this works for you.) …

My immediate point is that what you write about in your “Comments on Social Ontology” have little to do with Social Ontology. I do recognize that you are disturbed when I elucidate a point with what you consider to be extravagant language, when you believe I could use simple words that would suffice just as well. In part (have spent considerable time in Denmark) this may be an issue of speaking a language based in Old Norse and using lots of “imports” … like German, English and French words … where words are not presently available in the native tongue. Svenska (Swedish for those of us speaking English) is a language that originated in Northern Germany and was imported into Sweden becoming what is sometimes called Old Norse before continuing its evolution into modern Swedish. Discounting “new” compound words that are actually words created to express an idea by combining two or more simple words – similar to the German tradition of compounding words – the language is “vocabulary poor” compared to a language like English, English being one of the worlds richest languages in terms of vocabulary.

Now being “poor” in terms of vocabulary (or “rich” as the case may be) has it pros and cons (as do most things with alternates, or options attached to them – i.e.: a “this/that” framework or framing structure … the essential basis of choice and the decision-making process that follows from it). [Do you notice the cognitive linking and logical chaining? … Do you perceive it’s enhanced by the choice to use bracketing to segment out distinct tangential but separate ideas? … Do you notice that even though I’ve wandered greatly in my response to you, somehow the ideas seem to flow and remain connected? … Have you been able to track how exactly, with precision and specificity I manage this “trick” of presentation? … just curious …]

Nothing can come of nothing.
– William Shakespeare

So back to Swenglish … the pro proposition of a “vocabulary poor” language is that you must use the limited vocabulary to express even the most complex ideas … and sometimes the words themselves don’t actually exist to do this … SO THE CONCEPT MUST BE MADE BY INFERENCE … i.e.: the listener/reader must generate the meaning from the words expressed for themselves. This is an interesting form that generates a specific cognitive approach. The sender and the receiver in the communication “assume” active participation, that the “message” won’t be contained completely in the content of the “expression” of the message, but in the “interpretation” of the message. This particular cognitive structuring regarding communication creates a kind of “short-hand” in communication and leads to a preference for directness, simplicity and brevity. For an insight into the expression of this cognitive structure look at the design ethos of Scandinavia (hear I reference the swath of land ranging from Norway in the west and Finland in the east, all at a latitude north of Germany for all intents and purposes). The Scandinavian design ethos is also one of simplicity, purity that emphasizes clean lines, little decorative extravagance and very direct (some would not hesitate to say “elegant” – myself included) solutions. What you may find “missing” is the “playfulness” and “joy” found in more “extravagant” design – which lead us to …

The con proposition in a “vocabulary poor” language (Swedish compared to English in this particular case) is that somethings are in fact inferred and not expressed. The speaker/writer “intends” a message BUT it is up to the listener/reader to extract it. It is ultimately imprecise in terms of expressing more abstract considerations. Compare the art of Scandinavia pre-WWII with the art now being generated when a large majority of Scandinavians are learning to speak a second language (most typically German or English) and expanding the range of their vocabulary richness. If you want what I’d consider to be the most obvious representation of the Scandinavian ethos that arises from the cognitive structure I’m pointing to follow the “humor.” In most of Scandinavia humor is based in sarcasm. This is itself based in cynicism and irony which of course would work well within the structures I’ve indicated are most present in the cognitive structure driven by a “vocabulary poor” language. By example I give you the comparison between Existentialist philosophers Kierkegaard and Sartre (French being a much more “vocabulary rich” language in comparison to Swedish). It leads to a particular kind of purity in thought, but with little extravagance … what someone raised in a “vocabulary rich” language and the associated cognitive structure might perceive as morose.

Those of you familiar with Edmund Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf and their propositions regarding the influence of language (specifically the specifically the “native” and “crib” languages of an individual) will understand the significance that the native language of a speaker may have on their cognitive structure and the preferences associated with it (the theory that Sapir and Whorf developed is known as the “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” by linguists and cognitive scientists). I am a “believer” in the premise of their propositions regarding the influence of language on the development AND APPLICATION of the cognitive structure of an individual. For those of you who want and/or prefer it more simply … the language you use (as a native speaker) will directly influence the way in which you think. In fact this idea would more accurately along begin to represent what I’m driving at then all of what you’ve written Robert. To say it succinctly and directly I’ll actually put it to Edmund Sapir in his own words:

“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached… We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69)

This is the whole point of what I’m driving at … it’s called Social Ontology … and the creation of a social reality, while what you write about is almost virtually all about a subjective reality (vs. the the inter-subjective position I write about). You are an individualist while I myself more and more find myself becoming a collectivist with a strong individualist consideration. Your entire post is about how an “individual” perceives the world apart from others and then acts upon this perception for all intent and purpose ignoring the impact and influence they have both upon and most importantly from others. That in fact a bridge is only a bridge because we say so … other wise it’s just a structure spanning some gap made of something. When does a fallen tree become a “bridge” or is the answer never? This is my point is unpacking the structure of the structure of how we get to thinking what we think. The fact that the Universe may be infinite is only significant in relation to something else … attached to the cognitive consideration of how space and our relationship with impacts and interacts with our decision-making process for arguments sake. Yet you present this a a poetic “Truth” … when what I am striving for and emphasizing in my work around Social Reality is the presentation of the distinctions between “Truth” (upper-case “T” to indicate some ultimate, inviolate, metaphysical Truth) vs. “truth” (lower-case “t” to indicate something believed to be so by an individual or group based on some empirical evidence they agree to share). The same applies to the distinctions I’m making regarding “Reality” and “reality.”

So while I don’t object to your writing I object to you referring to it as “Comments on Social Reality” and by inference associating that back to what I’ve written about … and the inclusive inferences in what you’ve written about that writing.

The ultimate expression of what I’d like to see is that you express what you are expressing in a way that is intelligible to those who are reading it with regard to the subject you suggest it is in reference to, in this case Social Ontology. And to use your own criteria of “simplicity” as the measure of worth and validity to do so with the extensive suggestion of inference. Do so directly. Say what you mean and want others to “get” from what you are offering. Do this if only within the overall structure of what you say otherwise. BUT … DAMN IT … DO IT!!!

I understand as well as any “staking out a position” … and I understand as well as any staking out that position by standing on the shoulders of giants who’ve come before. I’ve stated well and full that my work, the entire body of my work rests on the enormous foundation of the work I learned with Roye Fraser and most especially his work called the Generative Imprint™ and the Function Mode™ models. Stating anything less would be at the least crude/rude and at the most plagiarism (the most deadly of sins amongst academics and scholars …). However, it is also essential to note that my work resides on a foundation supported and enhanced by the work of Grinder and Bandler called Neurolinguistic Programming or NLP – and my position in regard to these developers is one of ultimate respect, even when I am in disagreement with them. Their work “allows” for my work to exist in the way that it does. Could I have reproduced this work independently … possibly … would I have, unlikely. So to dismantle this work without regard for how it finds its way so deeply into my own is not just disrespectful but duplicitous and deceitful in the extreme … as would be the disregard, dis-acknowledgement or dismantling of the work of so, so many others … including but in no way limited to Joseph Campbell, Sigmund Freud, Edward Hall, Clare Graves, Konrad Lorenz, John Searle … and on and on and on …

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
– William Shakespeare

So let’s move on, shall we … towards an end to this particular rebuttal and reframe. The comments you make have little to nothing to do with Social Ontology and in fact are more poetry than exposition (when the perfect word is available it would be sacrilegious not to glory in its use …don’t you think). The comments you make if they are explanatory or pragmatic in any way are more about the nature of individual perception and expression, or as Bandler and Grinder exposed us to about thirty years ago – subjective experience. This is so much more the domain of phenomenology (as I have clearly expressed on my blog at: http://blognostra.blogspot.com in the earlier postings positioning my take on Social Ontology) then on anything resembling the inquiry I am making into inter-subjective experience (under the rubric, Social Ontology). Further I am taking a particular tack as I move on towards the inclusion and impact of language and specifically communication in the structure and form of Social Ontology as it relates to the construction of social reality.

What I am intending to unpack and make explicit (I personally much prefer the languaging of David Bohm here, “unfolding”) is the nature of the impact and influence of the social constructs of reality on the individual – who often perceive themselves as having their “own” experience when I propose they are most clearly not.

What I am proposing is that the individual, regardless of whom they may be, is having a social experience – even when they are alone. That all of the experience of the “individual” is in fact a social experience and it is perceived individually. So to unfold that point further … the individual has a social experience through an individual perception, or an inter-subjective experience that is perceived subjectively. This is a defining point in my argument (argument as in philosophical argument or proposition put forth in discourse).

The significance I am further bringing to this argument is one of application, that the inter-subjective experience of the individual is the basis of the reality they experience act upon (as well as from). That the inter-subjective experience is the basis of all action and behavior and that this action and behavior is premised in the inter-subjective frame that they reside within. Then further that this frame is constructed in part, albeit in large part, by the structuring of the shared communication of those who participate in it; and in some unique and specific cases most especially by their shared agreements.

[Now a quick aside – how are your comments in any way related to that discussion and argument? … Back to our main program …]

These agreements are largely, if not wholly (Don’cha ya’ just love that ambiguity?) contained in language. This gives rise to the latest direction I’ve taken which is to point towards the impact and influence others who “get” this level of Social Ontology and the structuring of social reality can have on those who don’t “get” that this is the basis of their reality and decision-making process. This is called alternately propaganda, persuasion and influence to name the most prevalent forms of the application. When it’s applied in a mass communication medium it can and does shift the basis of culture and the collective decision-making process engaged in by the individuals who populate that culture (and/or society). This is the realm of Politics (upper-case “P” vs. lower-case “p” which would alternatively apply to the interactions among individuals at a level below that of the “society-at-large” or in the modern sense “Government”).

So my intention is to “set my people free” … what’s yours???

Not wine … men intoxicate themselves; Not vice … men entice themselves.
– William Shakespeare

Best regards … until we meat again,

Joseph Riggio

Architect and Designer of the MythoSelf™ Process
http://www.mythoself.com

“Kick ass, take names” – Matt Furey (http://www.mattfurey.com)

On 12/8/05 05:43, “Robert” <robert@svensknlp.nu> wrote:

Reality, ongoing and working with and without constructing or not within any boundary.
It’s just made up, right in your mind anyway, right?

I was reminded about Milton Erickson in his ways he pursued I guess so many altered states and tested along his journey ways to shift between.
What he found or what he did with that skill and knowledge isn’t for me to say since I never met him.

There are some nice passages in the books about him some about reality and what it is and how to expand on that.

I was reminded earlier this week, that people are often very judgemental about new things, either it be a particular methodology or a particular view or whatever they judge it’s never about exploring new avenues.

The beach is filled with sand, each sand particle is in itself made up by even smaller stuff and in that smaller stuff there is even smaller stuff and then “again” you know and you guessed even smaller stuff!
If I didn’t know better, I bet it would end up empty?

And you guessed right, it does!

It becomes so empty in fact it’s so large it is called space. In relation to that space the sand particle seems large even as a universe some say. Which btw is infinite, that’s how large and small the universe is, it is contained in one single word, infinite, and that if you ask me is pretty neat.
Instead of using complex math describing the universe, we simply accept it is, infinite.

Then some people tries to describe the universe, and many get mad doing so since the universe is so big, remember I did say “infinite” and those scientist cant contain the whole universe in their heads at all. It gets to big, since the brain isn’t infinite but the imagination absolutely is.

Reality is such subtle thing, I worked with realties my whole life, my own and others, its many ways to slice an apple, the description started with NLP gave humanity a way to cut down the apples and oranges to a more down to earth examples where the descriptions could be better describing the reality ongoing and in NLP they named it “a model”.
They found out, its turtles all the way down, and then again another turtle all the way down, an infinite way to say, how big is the universe really?

Infinite of course!

If there is one thing that is clear, sound and felt as it is the one thing, maybe it isn’t and then again maybe it is not that, maybe I should look elsewhere?
Epistemology, the study of how we map cognitively the minds processes and adjusted with the NLP applications by mapping that with the NLP models have brought us truly Jedi Mind powers where we can sway and opinion with just a gesture and a smile and a word…as easy anchored and fired away.

Then a few Jedi’s said, this isn’t the way, we want power, and more of it.
They are known as powerful wizards and never explain what they do and wink and say, come here and become one of power since it is all unconscious ruled and controlled.
They even use waste powers as hypnosis in ways people never before have seen.

Then there was this voice in the crowd, what about just explaining what is going on, take away all the mystery and just plainly explain what it is?
The first night an attempt on his life was made. That power he wielded shined so brightly and was feared by the power wielders as the mightiest power of all and they all missed it.

Truth is what it is, reality for some and a misconception for others, but again, into the unknown we cast our self, and I just never really got it, how can it be unknown if we know it is unknown?
It is as so many argue it is in relation to what is known, the boundary, a string of ideas where your mind just knows this is this, and nothing else it can be, unless you learn NLP or such systems to create a diversion so your mind can hide contemplating that a bridge is a bridge and then it isn’t a bridge but stones and then even other materials in that and then…even more.

Then a few wise men said, just accept it, it is a bridge, then move on to the other side.

The other side?

Yea, while your thinking about the bridge and its reality, this side is crashing down into the sea…so..move it..

Fear is a great ruler of men.
Take away fear and the bridge even if it collapses only offers us the chance of swimming or learning to swim.
Which some would argue and rightly so that seems a tad late to do so.

I saw Dr Phil doing his “get real” workshops where he scare people and even before they end up in the workshop since they are confronting the fears about things like the bridges that collapses even before they do?

That’s the beauty of our minds we can in advance know what things are to be before we even are doing the activity at all!
Doing that into the level of a model where your model is as accurate as the reality it’s applied to is a rare ability, some might argue it is about then creating the reality in your head and I think they are right.
Is the model the reality it is applied to or is the model just a description of what is currently believed to be reality?
It seems it will be a tiny difference, subtle but that level of interaction between our senses and the thing out there as described very well using the epistemology and any further attempt to explain such difference will be just further models about what is infinite.

Then when we can just plainly sit down, eat an apple and look at the waves bathing us into the serenity of life.
Take a sand particle, identify with it in such a way it’s a whole reality of the universe being infinite, and that is just a model about the universe and how you as an observer affects it.

Consciousness allow us great things, what are you going to do today?

Let’s move along, the bridge is closing down.

Where do you want to go?

If there is no fear, life then unfolds, rightly so some would argue.

Infinite

Your best

/Robert
www.riggiomodel.biz <http://www.riggiomodel.biz/>
Kicking asses anywhere and bruising egos all over the world and still sitting there enjoying life.
(Also known as a green small guy by some)
Hey, somehow Lucas got his ideas, why not small green guys from outer space?
Space, a 5 year mission to explore.

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Transformational Change & Performance

If it ain’t Zen, WTF is the MythoSelf Process then???

The first rule of MythoSelf is: “THIS IS NOT THAT.”

Okay, so then what “IS” the MythoSelf Process???

”Like THIS …”

Signals in the System

Taking Action … Playfully

This is essentially what the MythoSelf Process leads to … “the ability to freely play and take action” it’s about “being childlike and creative in the way you experience, approach and show up in the world.” …

“To Life …”

“L’Chaim!” … TO LIFE!

Here’s the good news …

“I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it.”*

Which brings us to the point of my rambling.

Stay just a little bit longer

The beginning and the end are the wholeform, from which all separate universes are cleaved, but despite the severing remain whole nonetheless.

There can be no intention beyond arriving at the wholeform, having removed all the distinctions that create separate universes, and in turn separating ourselves from ourself.

Why We Focus On Neurocognitive Developmental Training As The Basis Of Instigating Transformational Change And Peformance Breakthrough

At each stage of human existence the adult is off on his quest to his Holy Grail, the way of life he sees by which to live.– Clare W. Graves

Because people get stuck when the worldview they are using doesn’t accommodate the outcomes they intend … they need a way to get out of their “stuck state.”

Neurocognitive Developmental Training provides the skeleton key that unlocks the mystery of success.

“When man is finally able to see himself and the world around him with clear cognition, he finds a picture far more pleasant. Visible in unmistakable clarity and devastating detail is man’s failure to be what he might be and his misuse of his world.

His values now are of a different order from those at previous levels: They arise not from selfish interest but from the recognition of the magnificence of existence and the desire that it shall continue to be.”

– Clare W. Graves

Taking A (Semantic) Stand …

What Would It Take To Get You To Put A Stake In The Ground, And Claim That Space As Your Own?”

These mythic forms of claiming one’s space, one’s right to be, have always been compelling for me.

Are you ready for the journey of your life?

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

A Sense of Time

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

The Teleological Factor

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

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

At each stage of human existence the adult is off on his quest to his Holy Grail, the way of life he sees by which to live.
– Clare W. Graves

**These mythic forms of claiming one’s space, one’s right to be, have always been compelling for me.**

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