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“Moving To The Beat Of A Different Drummer”
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Tuesday, August 15, 2006The heart of my message today is around “INTENTIONALITY” - finding and operating from your center ... some people I heard call this “living from cause” - and I like that.
Howdy all,
Do you ever think ... "I like to live my life on my own terms someday ... moving to the beat of a different drummer."?
This idea comes up a lot in my private client work. Often the folks I'm working with are asking themselves, "What was I meant to be doing?" or "What would I be doing if I could be doing anything?"
In essence these questions are sophisticated versions of "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Taken a step further they are questions about "What legacy am I building to leave behind me?" Anyone who's read even a little of the existentialist literature will recognize the form of these questions as variations on, "What meaning does life have - both generally at-large and for me specifically?"
For me these are questions of what I'd call questions of INTENTIONALITY. I'm quite familiar with this idea in working with clients - privately in one-to-one settings, publicly in group settings, and even organizationally in business settings. The existential drive shows up in virtually every context I find myself in when a client arrives at a sufficient level of awareness to become conscious of the system that swirls around them.
This evolution of awareness is what Joseph Campbell often referred to as "the journey to becoming human" and Dr. Clare Graves referred to as the evolution of consciousness. I myself have used both phrases in describing this kind of existential angst ...
"What does it all mean and what place do I have in it all?"
In fact I've gone further, beyond the idea of "existential angst, and said ...
Experiencing the emergence of an expanding conscious awareness - of ourselves and the systems we find ourselves operating within and in relation to, represents an - ONTOLOGICAL LONGING - a massive desire to know ourselves in relation to the cosmos.
I've come up against framing this out for myself recently as I've been engaged in negotiations to host a live Internet talk radio show. And, one of the great challenges I've faced after accepting has been deciding what to call it. You may recognize that for me this brings up an ontological issue - what we call something gives it form.
I get that my audiences (folks like you reading this right now for instance) are typically comprised of individuals, couples, families and even business organizations going through the experience of wanting to resolve their ontological longing - coming to terms with a deeply satisfying sense that you know who you are and more importantly that you're living your life from your own center while holding this position. I would call this ... living, working, playing, loving ... INTENTIONALLY.
So - so far the name that has most resonated with/for me has been "Intentional Profit". I think I have something to say and something that I want to say, to:
"People who are coming to a greater awareness of themselves - while they remain firmly implanted in the work-a-day world at-large - intending to give meaning to their lives, to do good in the world and to do well for themselves ... all while coming to terms with their ever expanding awareness of themselves and the larger contexts and systems that they operate within."
To some extant I am modeling out what I believe and want to be talking about by choosing this direction for the show ... knowing myself and moving out into the world from my center. I want to be creating an example about doing what you believe in and what fascinates you - represents the best way to do good AND do well. And, I want to be demonstrating that, the line between who you are and how you go about making a living never requires that you compromise yourself.
I've become comfortable over the years of developing and deploying the Mythogenic Self Process work internationally that the general model of beginning from going to the center of one's being and then moving out again into the world from there has profound value. I've seen it work wonders in the lives of individual clients and in the business/organizational clients I've worked with as well. It doesn't matter so much what particular path you follow to get there -
... getting to one's center ... beginning from there and holding that position - regardless of the circumstance or situation - makes all the difference ... especially in the presence of evidence to the contrary or when faced with holding that position diligently amid life's unfolding chaos.
The ability to choose your position and to hold it - in the center of the playground called "ordinary life" bestows a remarkable gift to you, the chooser. You get to creating a life worth living, and if you do it very well you'll also be leaving behind something worth remembering.
I've come to refer to this lately as "moving beyond consumption to contribution" and I think that one of the greatest field's of discovery we have to doing this will be in our work, in our professional lives, in our businesses, in our organizations and institutions - and most especially those operating "for profit" as we've all seen first-hand how powerfully these entities are shaping our world.
So, my intention with my new show, Intentional Profit will be to share this point of view, as well as complimentary and contradictory points of view through my guests, with my audience. I hope when the time comes you'll find yourself among us. In the meantime I'd love to hear your comments and your suggestions - including what you think of the name for the show (there will still be time to change it if you blow me away with a suggestion! ;~>).
Spreading the word ...
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Flt. CO 448, somewhere over the Rocky Mountains at 34,000 feet above sea-level
The show will air on "VoiceAmerica" Live Internet Radio at 1:00PM-PST(13:00 or 9:00PM/21:00 GMT) each Monday beginning on 2 October 2006 and then re-broadcast each time it's recorded twelve hours later (1:00AM-PST (01:00 or 10:00AM/10:00 GMT) each Tuesday).
I'm building the "Intentional Profit" show schedule now and thinking about guests I'd like to invite - guests who have something to say, say it well and are engaged in the idea of living and working Intentionally, as well as pushing the envelope a bit, as they nudge the system forward.
If you have any suggestions for guests I'd love to have them. I'd really like it if I could be providing you with a listening experience in this direction that you'd like to have and haven't found yet.
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Back In Perspective
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Monday, August 14, 2006Welcome To The Week,
Someone asked me off-line (i.e.: privately in a "real" conversation - they do still happen) who I thought my "audience" was and what my "message" was as well. In other words who do I write to and what do I write about in simpler language. Their intention was to push me more towards making the message obvious to the intended audience.
While I do appreciate the interest and input I also found myself asking another question, "Why do I write here (in BlogNostra) each day?" For me this has more significant ramifications to both what I'm writing and who I'm writing it to/for.
Let me step back a moment ... I come in part from a deep background in NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). In fact it would be fair to say that my deepest and most intensive training was in NLP. I also probably spent/spend more time in and among NLPers than any other single professional group. So my work has a definite NLP flavor and reeks of the scent of that method of working.
Within the NLP model, the question "Why" according to protocol should not be invoked. The preference leans ever so strongly towards asking, "How?" instead. The question "WHY?" has been framed as going to motivation and invoking judgment/blame - a highly prejudicial position to take from my point of view. Where, the question "HOW?" gets credit for eliciting and establishing process, seen in NLP circles as a much better outcome.
Yet this strikes me as the fundamental choice point in defining that model (NLP) when taken literally - i.e.: going to "HOW?" instead of "WHY?" It would be obvious to anyone considering it that asking "WHY?" will in fact elicit and establish motivation as well as any question could. So, then the question remains, "Why not ask WHY?"
Ultimately you'll find there are two main reasons, the first I'll dismiss for the purposes of this posting - fear of judgment/blame, which really just announces a lack of skill and awareness ... beyond the semantic argument (I'd deny that we are a "semantic" species, preferring greatly to consider us a "somatic" species instead). The second reason goes much deeper into the heart of the NLP model, including it's semantic roots and the linguistic ground they are buried in - NLP was designed and developed as an epistemological model.
An epistemological model seeks to address how we know what we know - or the structure of knowledge. Epistemology presumes that, our knowledge of things makes them so or to put it another way how we think about things makes them what they are. I could not more vehemently disagree with this ideology!
While I totally accept and respect the value of the NLP model for what it does, I disagree completely about how to go about using the tools NLP provides, and to what ends - of course this loops me as well around to where it begins.
The model I grew up in vis-a-vis my NLP training has a very particular form that it resides in - an ontological form. The distinction between an epistemological model and an ontological model has everything to do with where they begin - an epistemological model either discounts or disregards any form of "extant reality" ... while an ontological model begins from and revolves around "extant reality."
What an ontological model seeks to address has to do with how we interact with extant reality AND how we shape our relationship to/with it as well. The particular approach I was apprenticed in began from a clear and simple distinction - am I operating from a positive/excitatory bias - or - am I operating from a negative/inhibitory bias. I apprenticed with an "applied ontologist," Roye Fraser of NLP America/Blue Dell Systems, for seven years - while he never overtly in my memory used such a term as "Applied Ontologist" to describe himself, or even "Applied Ontology" to describe his work - Roye's practice defined him in my mind as just that, an "applied ontologist."
Quite literally what I observed and learned about in my seven intense years of learning with Roye was the art and practice of shaping reality, specifically both personal/subjective and interpersonal/inter-subjective realities. Instead of beginning from the "process" or "understanding" of knowledge, Roye taught me to begin from the experience people found themselves residing in that shaped their reality. In essence this meant developing the skills to unpack the structure of an individual's or group's reality - how they formed and held intact the reality that contained them.
The subsequent skills that came with and over time had to do with the ability to re-shape those realities and create the ground upon which an individual or a group stood and from which they moved out into the world around them.
So this is "WHY" I write here everyday - in a continuing effort to explore the realities we create and share.
WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT TO ME? ... you might ask? Because my I have come to accept that only when we've built the realities we want to be living, working, playing and loving in will be have reached our destiny as a species.
I think us largely misnamed: homo-sapiens or "wise human-being (or "man" generally) sounds like a misnomer to my ear about us a species. Instead it seems to me that we would be better called, homo-artifex or creating human-being, or possibly, homo-genitalis, or creative human-being. The idea of "man" as the species that creates appeals to me
If we thought of ourselves as "the species that brings into being", i.e.: the "creative/creator" species, I think that we would take a higher level of responsibility for our actions. Instead of simply thinking, "Hey the world 'out there' exists ... how can I take advantage of that ... satisfy my desires ... use it and consume it ... and those that reside within it.", maybe we'll take a different tact. Maybe we'll begin to ask instead, "Hey how am I contributing to the world out there ... how am I shaping the experience I am having, as well as the experience of others ... how can create the kind of a world I want to be living, working, playing and loving in?"
This then forms the core of "Why I write here everyday." - to provoke a desire and interest in shaping the world you want to be experiencing, for yourself and for others. I want to provoke you to take an ontological stance and become "homo-artifex" - a "creating human-being" ... "man/woman the creator".
I know that for many that will be more than they want ... more than they want me to ask of and for them. Yet I cannot act any less intentionally than this myself ... I always realized my message ain't for everyone, and I've always been okay with that being so. I guess I am saying most of all that it has always been clear to me what I'm writing about and whom I'm writing it to ... I'm okay playing with those of you who want to change the world and are willing to "play all out" to fulfill your own destinies, leave a legacy and in the process gently nudging the system forward as well.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
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The In-Sanity and Terrorism Continue
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Sunday, August 13, 2006A bit of an “alternative” direction today ... maybe one that points away from terrorism, fear, panic and the sense that “the world is coming to an end.”
Hello All,
Once again it's morning ... and I've made it to another day. I haven't been kidnapped, maimed or killed by the terrorists, yet. If you've attended to any of the "Headline News" lately you'll realize it's only a matter of time until they all get us ...
I'm begin facetious of course, only if you have been watching, listening to or reading the "NEWS" you wouldn't necessarily think so. The real terrorist plot seems to be the attack on our minds - NOT BY THE "TERRORISTS," THEY DON'T HAVE THE RESOURCES NECESSARY TO DO THIS ALONE - they need to support and collusion of the mass media to do this!
And, the worst thing of all has to do with the fact that they need us to be in collusion with them as well for this to work. For the most part it seems most people I meet are in fact in this game of collusion to warp our minds to the believe that "the world is coming to an end" - simply by agreeing to the input data stream called THE NEWS.
Without droning on let me get to the point - "I'm suggesting that you "unplug" from the "NEWS." Just drop out of the endless stream of negative data and plug into the world-at-large. Simple, go out and experience the world directly ... you'll find out all you need to know.
Want to know about the impact of the newest "terrorist plot" foiled in Britain recently - go and take a flight, you'll find out what has happened as a result directly. The lines at the airport will be a little longer, there will be more tension in the folks around your (especially those who are "plugged in") and other than that generally speaking you're life will be as "normal" as it has ever been.
Now this doesn't mean you should drop out of attending - keep listening, engage in conversations - even tap into the news stream selectively ... select carefully your sources of "NEWS" ... instead of simply watching, listening to or reading whatever the mainstream news media wants you to be paying attention to for their reasons and not yours. Remember this ... the new media resides at the heart of "Big Business" - they have a corporate mission they fulfill by presenting the "news" they do - and very seldom will you find "unbiased" reporting.
Since you won't often (read: NEVER) find "unbiased" reporting, you can choose to know something about the bias of the sources you are watching, listening to and reading. This puts you heads and shoulders above the "corporate mission."
If you've made it this far you realize that I don't usually take this direction in my blogs ... so something must be up, eh? Well I'll tell you what I think ... I think my mission focuses on how people organize their way of being in the world ... and the most basic orientation that you can take will be: Positively Organized" or "Negatively Organized" - get it? You get to choose ... EITHER ... Positively Organized -or- Negatively Organized.
So ultimately ... once again it comes back to your choice ... SO CHOOSE!
This privilege ... to choose ... has tremendous power ... and may be the most powerful and potent force in shaping the future we experience. What we choose now will determine what we experience next. I can make this as simple as possible ... when you choose to notice for the positive, you act towards that direction in your life ... and this becomes the direction you share and engage around with others. The opposite tends to be just as true ... choose in the direction of the negative and you will move in that direction - both on your own and with others.
I'll put this another way ... what you most expect to happen will be what you most empower to happen. I'll say that again ... what you most "EXPECT" to happen will be what you most empower to happen - NOT what you most "WANT" to happen! This information incorporated and acted upon by you can and will change the world if you let it ... how simple can it be ... CHOOSE!
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
PS - You may be noticing that I'm not suggesting "mediation" or "contemplation" as the solution ... instead I'm suggesting that you "BE IN THE WORLD" ... what has been referred to before by me as a "Fourth Way" model - for more about this take a look at: "Paths of Transformation".
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Tackling Assumptions and Talking Adumbration … Again
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Saturday, August 12, 2006A reply to comment made by Agnes Mariakaki to Seeing Ahead ... on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 in BlogNostra, formatting adjusted for easier reading.
Joseph, great post!
My question is: calibration/tracking/adumbration is the three step evolution of acuity, as you describe it. It is clearly a brilliant skill for understanding others and engaging with them. I would like to know your opinion about understanding ourselves, our self awareness processes, so to speak.
How does one go about it without staying too much in the head, and without too much irrelevant self talk, reading our own somatic signals with increasing acuity?
Agnes,
My ... my, what a complex question you've managed to fit in such a few words. In reality there are more questions embedded in this single question than it might appear to contain at first. Let's begin by unpacking the question, each portion of which begins with the phrase,
"How does one go about ..."
Now, if I begin by reading "the question" as four separate questions all beginning from "How does one go about ..." it makes it a bit easier to see what you are asking - and more importantly removes the ambiguity of assumptions
The assumptions I refer to of course are those that "assume" that each of the four parts I break out in the unpacking of the question above are inherently and directly interrelated. I.e.: The assumption that each of the four parts of the question, as I have diagrammed it above, bears an absolute and linear cause and effect linkage between them.
Essentially what I am saying must be that this absolute linkage doesn't exist by necessity - it is "applied" artificially in the form in which the question has been written. So beginning again I'll address each part of the question in the order that they appear above.
One of the ways we can avoid "... staying too much in the head" has to do with simplifying things a bit. For instance as I have in "unpacking" your question. This has to do with taking thing for what they are ... and when it comes to language, taking things for what they say ... literally.
What we sometimes tend to do, in an effort I suppose to simplify things, or possibly to increase efficiency, appears by example in your question. You have chunked together things that are not by necessity connected. When we then break down what we are encountering into their component parts we can begin to grasp more essentially what we are experiencing - in both distinct and discreet ways.
I have spoken at length about the "interconnectedness" of the cosmos and our experience of it, so I am not going to go deeply into that again here. I accept, and I am asking you to accept as well for the purposes of this reply at least, that the cosmos is "of one thing ... a singularity" and that only our experience of "IT" (the cosmos) has anything to do with being either distinct or discreet in regard to the seemingly independent elements that comprise it - they are essentially not, regardless of our experience of them (including ourselves).
So once again, we begin by simplifying ... tackling each element as though it remains independent ... distinct and discreet. This forces us to a great extent to move back to gathering more direct sensory data. Instead of relying on the abstractions of language to describe what we seem to be experiencing, extracting the components of our experience tend to move us towards a more direct sensory appreciation of our experience ... definitely "Step One" in my book.
Of course you will begin to recognize that if you are moving away from language how you will also tend to move away from "... too much irrelevant self talk" as well. When we begin to again rely on direct sensory data and less on our descriptions of the sensory data, we have begun to reduce the "irrelevant self talk" about the sensory data.
This movement towards relying more on direct sensory data ... and by virtue of that less on the abstractions of language moves us a well towards a recognition of and appreciation for the capacity of our somatic awareness.
We are more likely to become aware of our somatic responses when we are aware of the sensory experience we are having, which includes our somatic signals. In other words, our somatic signals become amplified in our awareness as we more and more attend to sensory experience vs. our descriptions of our sensory experience.
And, now a question for you Agnes. Can you see how this direction in the movement of our awareness would tend to also increase our acuity? So maybe these things are essentially interrelated after all? Yet, it still seems to me that taking things a step at a time ... and moving towards simplifying the intact of sensory data so that we experience what we are experiencing has some deep value worth appreciating ... well beyond technique ... I call it "Living Life Abundantly!" ... or ABBONDANZA! more simply.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D. Princeton, NJ
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“Terrorism,” “In…Sanity” - or - Just SNAFU???
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Friday, August 11, 2006Are we installing the fear of terrorism into our neurology? I’m proposing that we are setting ourselves up to “notice for” what we least want to be happening in the world - and as a result inadvertently setting up the perfect conditions for it to flourish.
Morning!
Of course I could be writing about "The Events of Yesterday!" ... as it seems a significant portion of the blogosphere is doing today. But - since they are I won't.
What I have been talking about has been directed to "NOTICING FOR" ... training the attention to "notice for" specific kinds of information in the environment. What we "notice for" ultimately becomes "trained" through repetition. We begin "noticing for" particular things over and over again - these become we could say, "the default patterns of attending."
What's interesting to me includes how we become "conditioned" to attend to the world in the particular ways that we do. Of course as we do we are also creating the world we are attending to in this way. Another way of stating this might be, as we attend to the world in a particular way, what we're attending to becomes reinforced and therefore more prevalent - in turn reinforcing our attending in the way we do. This recursive attending phenomena may actually be generating a much, much larger effect than we have given it credit for before now.
I mentioned the idea of adumbration a couple of days ago now - the idea that we can learn to notice for patterns that are emerging in such a way as to become able to make high-quality predictions based upon those patterns about where the system we're observing may be headed. I first came across this idea in Edward T. Hall's book, "Beyond Culture." I've included the idea of "adumbration" almost from the beginning of my developing the Mythogenic Self work as well, although my ideas about it have been evolving and changing over time (see MythoSelf Morphology 202, Re: Adumbration and Re: Re: Adumbration from the articles section on the MythoSelf.com site for some comments and examples) .
What's significant to me today as I continue to consider the idea of ADUMBRATION includes the way it tunes our attending forward. In other words one of the most significant aspects of "adumbration" or "adumbrating" has to do with how it focuses the attention forward in time. When you're focusing the attention forward you are setting a direction in the system as well. A forward directionality in the system organizes the perceptions in regard to what you'll be noticing for in relation to what you want to happening vs. what has happened or even what seems to be happening in the moment.
Cognitive scientists refer to this as "feed-forward perception", where the perceptions are pre-organized to notice for something specifically. Organizing the perceptions to notice for something specifically, i.e.: "feed-forward perception," can occur either with/by intention, or by default. Previous experience organizes feed-forward perception, e.g.: we expect to see/hear/feel what has been familiar for us in a given situation before. Another way to organize feed-forward perception would be deliberately and/or by intention - choosing to begin noticing for something specifically.
One of the things that begins to happen unfortunately is that feed-forward perception can be set up virtually instantaneously in response to trauma - or a traumatic event ... like those of yesterday. And, these feed-forward perceptions can be (and are) heightened when we are repeatedly exposed to the trauma or traumatizing data (think ... CNN, BBC ... every major media source playing and re-playing for us the data stream about "terrorism" ... along with all the associated sound-bites).
So there you have it ... not only is terrorism happening, but we're installing it into our neurology as well ... SNAFU!!!
Joseph Riggio
Princeton, NJ
