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Before, Between and Beyond the MythoSelf™ Process

Before, Between and Beyond the MythoSelf™ Process

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Experiencing the Hero’s Journey
with Dr. Joseph Riggio

The basis of all the work I do exists in the liminal space between what I learned working with Roye Fraser and becoming a certified trainer of his Generative Imprint™ model and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey model.

This liminal space is the threshold between being and becoming, and back to being again. However, this transformation isn’t random, it taps into your deep, primal, pre-cultural creative expression of self.

Joseph Campbell describes the transformational journey back to oneself as the Hero’s Journey, and points to countless mythologies of the world, recounted in every culture and language of the world, as the template for rediscovering this deep, primal, pre-cultural form of being.

The Hero’s Journey

The journey as several stages beginning with the Call to Adventure, and then onto …

  • Meeting the Guide
  • Threshold Guardians
  • Crossing the Threshold
  • Magic Helpers
  • Monsters/Demons
  • Trial
  • Receiving the Gift/Boon
  • Return to the World

The Call to Adventure is established by the arrival of the Herald which may be a person or a life event, but in any case, something is triggered in the individual that is akin to a kind of longing, yearning, or what I like to think of as a “soul itch“ that needs to be scratched and attended to … or as Joseph Campbell tells us it will erupt in a crisis.

I’ve worked with enough private clients one-to-one and in small intimate groups doing intensive transformational work to have seen what Joseph Campbell speaks of … the eruption of crisis in a person’s life. Normally this shows up as a major change of some kind, one that has happened or one that is looming … financial disaster, personal relationships falling apart, business or career failure, a personal health crisis … it doesn’t much matter what it is for the individual it feels devastating and demands change.

After the crisis, it becomes impossible for you to return to the same life you had before without adapting in some meaningful way. The advantage of choosing the adventure when the herald appears is that it allows you to avoid the crisis, and to retain far more opportunity to make the transitions less traumatically from stage to stage of the journey Joseph Campbell tells us is present in all the perennial wisdom of the world.

Roye taught me how to elicit where someone is on the journey, and what phase of transition they were in …

  • Before the arrival of the Herald awaiting the Call to Adventure
  • Responding to the Call to Adventure or resisting/rejecting it and courting Crisis
  • In need of a Guide to help them manage how they are responding to the Call
  • Wrestling with the Threshold Guardians
  • Crossing or having just crossed the Threshold
  • Require a Magical Helper to offer them the Talisman they need to continue
  • Engaging the Monsters and Demons
  • Entering the Trial where they will, and must, confront themselves
  • Receiving the Gift or Boon that creates wholeness within them
  • Returning from the Adventure and at the Threshold
  • Having just returned from the Adventure and needing to integrate it to move on from it

Each of these stages has a specific process of transition and must be completed in sequence to avoid or resolve the crisis of what the Hero’s Journey describes in detail … the process of becoming fully human.

Nietzsche’s DRAGON … and Beyond

Virtually everyone I’ve ever worked with has felt the pull to something more than they were experiencing when we began working together. There is a deep felt sense that we have an innate drive to fulfill, and we are either on track to achieve that or we’ve fallen prey to what Nietzsche calls the Dragon of Society (or Culture,) imposing a path of servitude and submission upon us, demanding we subsume ourselves to its demands.

Nietzsche points to those who live under the rule of the Dragon longing for nothing more than safety, security, and comfort as the ‘Herd’, which he detested. These individuals stick together, want to avoid all risks, and look to the Shepard (the Dragon) to give them direction, tell them what is true, and what to do about it.

Then there are stronger individuals he refers to as Camels who are willing to carry the burden of self-awareness and doing what it takes to awaken from the spell of the Dragon that imprisons them to a life stuck in the Herd. Camels actually increases the burden they carry by adding to the weight of knowledge and experience by seeking ways to become more awake … reading, learning, meeting with others along the journey that challenge and expand their own awareness, traveling and experiencing things that are unfamiliar and even uncomfortable. As the Camel carries an ever greater burden and seeks the solitude of the desert they become stronger, but also more dissatisfied with the illusion offered to them by the Dragon; they begin to realize there are no singular answers or truth and must make choices for themselves, they begin to live relative to the idea that by their will they bring into being the life they are living.

Those who recover from the imposition of the Dragon by refusing its command, “Thou Shalt” awakens the Lion within themselves. They begin to replace all the countless instances of hearing and responding to the command “Thou Shalt” with the self directed choice, “I Will” thereby declaring themselves to have agency in their lives. Of course the Dragon wants nothing to do with the declaration of the Lion’s “I Will” so they refute the Lion by their own declaration that all that is has already been before the Lion appeared. When the Lion is fully awakened this is when they begin to roar back what Nietzsche refers to as “the Sacred ‘No’!” The Lion has now refuted all the values that came before and were imposed by the Dragon … they have fully realized themselves.

When the Will of the Lion is fully present for the individual they have again become the Child, but not in a childish kind of way, they will have a childlike demeanor instead. They will have dropped the burdens of convention and customs of society and culture that limit them. The Nietzschean Child chooses their own destining, exhibiting a remarkable sense of play and liberation to act in relation to their intent, exercising their own personal values in their lives without needing or wanting to impose those values upon others … they have uttered the “the Sacred YES!” to all there is and embrace life as it comes to them.

Making A Life Affirming Choice

Nietzsche speaks to the idea that the Child who utters the “Sacred YES” is life affirming, and Roye endlessly reconfirmed this as the basis of the work he did, and the work he taught to me as the Generative Imprint™ model I learned with him. When I superimposed this learning with the work of Joseph Campbell’s mythological orientation to the experience of becoming fully human the idea and model of the MythoSelf Process was what emerged in wholeform for me (I wrote about this process and my own journey in detail in my book “Experiencing the Hero’s Journey” (http://amzn.to/1pLiAwJ).)

My clients usually arrive at some point in their Camel Phase. They aware they have been called to the Adventure, and maybe are quite a way along in their own Hero’s Journey. They are seeking a Guide and/or the Magic Helper that will create the possibility they need to move into the Lion Phase and onto the Child Phase as Nietzsche lays out the journey in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a philosophy of the journey to becoming fully human (in Campbell’s terms).

The MythoSelf Process is designed to elicit exactly where someone is on their journey, to meet them there, and to provide what they need to take the next steps from wherever they are to complete the cycle and return to a life-affirming childlike state of being. The mechanism that provides the main transformational process to accomplish the completion of the journey they’ve been called to or begun, is based on hypnotic storytelling using a somasemantic model of transformational communication that is unique to the MythoSelf Process.

What’s often most interesting to me is that my client’s know intuitively that they can no longer exist as they’ve been, despite seldom knowing what that means, why or what to do instead. When we meet it become evident to them what the experience of choosing for life is like, because we begin from establishing a life affirming state to explore this option through, and almost immediately establish the somasemantic position form which that is not only possible for them, but effortless and persistently present. This position I call their “State of Perfection” contains the kernel of truth that defines the deep, primal, pre-cultural form of being that yearns to be acknowledged, freed and fully realized.

This the art of becoming fully human, and each time I, and other MythoSelf™ Facilitators and Trainers, work with clients facilitating the MythoSelf Process we are confirming the possibility of refuting the Dragon, releasing our Lion’s Will and re-engaging the world as the Child we’ve begun to remember before any imposition, corruption, or compromise.

Each time we hear from our clients, “OMG, it’s so fast and easy, is this real?” we know that they are ready and able to complete the journey they’ve begun, and while we continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with them as they proceed, they realize the journey they are on has always been their own to choose, and now they are able to sense what had remained unseen and unheard for too long.

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

P.S.: When you are ready to fully awaken reach out and we can discuss the journey you are on …

Ontological Form

Ontological Form

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Looking Within …

Most people would assume if there’s any limitation they experience it’s due to what they don’t know and/or can’t do. However, while that can be true in some cases it’s far more rare than almost anyone expects.

“What holds most people back from having the experience they want aren’t limitations in their knowledge or abilities, but because they are not showing up as “WHO” they are and need to be to have the experience they desire and realize the outcomes they expect.“

Joseph Riggio

The “WHO” question always precedes the “WHAT” and “HOW” questions.

In the work I do and have been refining for more than thirty years, the MythoSelf Process™, this is always the starting point, i.e.: Who shows up when you are experiencing the world as you do (including yourself and others), set your intentions, make decisions, and take action to achieve your outcomes?

The answer to “Who shows up?” points us to Ontological Form, the nature of our “being in the world.”

This phrase, “being in the world” can be referenced back to the German existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his concept of Dasein. The way Heidegger uses “Dasein” and “being in the world” suggests “being” is more than a steady state experience, or even an experience of state at all.

Heideggerian “Dasein” or “being-in-the-world” is more about the process of enactment, taking action in a context in relation to what is present as well as what is emergent in the context than it is about the state of an individual.

Translated beyond the existentialist philosophical or psychological applications to the pragmatic and everyday practical applications “being in the world” as I’m using it refers to the ability to stand in the space of who you are and need to be to have the experiences you desire and to realize the outcomes you intend.

A SIDE STEP …

Before we dig deeper into the idea of Ontological Form we should ask and answer the question, why is this important anyway?

The nature of what it is to be human cannot be separated from what we do as humans, including the way we experience being in the world.

A fundamental point of the MythoSelf™ Process work is to return to “having the experience of YOUR life,” meaning experiencing the world in the way that is innate for you and not through the lens of the impositions of who you are supposed to be, e.g.: a good student and then good employee, a good man or woman who is self-reliant and and productive meaning one who does what it takes to earn a good wage and accumulate wealth, find a mate … maybe get married and procreate, raise your children … in other words follow the rules, fit in and be good.

This is NOT to say all those things cannot be done and realized from a position and in a way that is innate to you, but first, all of the impositions of inculturation must be bypassed, and there has to be a return to your original nature, the essential “Success Blueprint” that’s encoded within you.

When you have recovered yourself in this way, operating without the impositions, restrictions and limitations of a false persona that been imposed upon you and imprinted into your beliefs about who you are or need to become, a level of performance of taking action in the world becomes available to you that transcends anything you might have previously realized.

So, the reason to explore the deep Ontological Form that represents you at your best, operating from and through your “Success Blueprint” is driven by the desire, possibility, and expectation of achieving an elite level of performance that exceeds your previous way of being in the world, and opens you up to your fully realized potential.

“When you have integrated your Ontological Form and have begun operating from your encoded innate Success Blueprint you will naturally and effortlessly access yourself at your best in an ongoing way and unleash your full potential.”

Joseph Riggio

Exploring Ontological Form

So the reason for wanting to explore Ontological Form, i.e.: accessing the encoding of your innate Success Blueprint spring from a desire to be at your best and to create elite performances as you take action in the world.

The idea is literally to unleash yourself from the beliefs that bind you and hold you back from realizing what’s possible when you are fully present and able to respond in an uninhibited, unrestricted way in the pursuit of the outcomes you intend.

Recognizing that your being in the world, i.e.: who you are when you intend to take action and then who you are as you take action, as well as who you are as you assess the feedback of the actions you’ve taken, determines not only the outcomes you achieve, but also the outcomes you intend.

In other words, by shifting the level of your being in the world, you shift your perceptions of what’s possible.

This is a mighty trick when it comes to raising the level of your performance and the outcomes you attain because most people assume that the feedback loop between what you intend and what what you do in relation to your intention drives behavior. The deeper reality is that how you perceive the world BEFORE you take action, even before you set your intentions, are what drive your behaviors and the outcomes that are possible for you to intend for yourself.

START HERE …

STEP 1: Choose an intention you have for yourself … personal, professional, financial, health, relationship … whatever you choose, and write it down, e.g.: “I want to ——.” This can be in the form of achievement, i.e.: doing something, or attainment, i.e.: having something.

STEP 2: Now, define what that is as completely as you can. How will you know precisely when you have realized your intention and gotten your outcome as you desire it? Write this out as well.

STOP AND COMPLETE STEPS 1 & 2 BEFORE CONTINUING

(NOTE: Continuing without completing steps 1 & 2 will prevent you from having the full experience possible for this mini-exercise example provided here to take you past just understanding and experiencing the effect of Ontological Form.)

STEP 3: Read what you’ve written and notice what has to be true about how you perceive yourself and what’s possible to have set that intention and not another.

STEP 4: Choose a person, real or fictional … e.g.: Warren Buffet or King Midas as individuals who created great wealth, or maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger or Hercules as someone who has a great physique, who represents the epitome of what you are intending to achieve in regard to their ability to create outstanding, elite outcomes as you think about them.

STEP 5: Using your identified stand-in that you choose in STEP 4 step into what you believe would be their mindset in setting the outcome you choose in STEP 1 and consider how they would think about setting that outcome for themselves and therefore what the outcome they set would be that they intend for themselves.

STEP 6: Now notice from that position what you consider would be possible if you were your stand-in and notice how you think about what’s present and accessible from that position, allow yourself to take all the time you need to immerse yourself in the experience of noticing through the eyes and ears, as well as any of the other senses, what’s present that you can use to build an elite intention for yourself from the perceptual position your stand-in would hold in regard to the outcome you intend to realize for yourself.

STEP 7: Simply finish by noticing whether or not you intend the same outcomes when you shift your perception to the position of an elite performer in the domain of your desire. Notice how you feel when you consider the outcomes you set when you have shifted your perception versus how you felt about the outcome when you held the first position in STEP 1.

STEP 8: Consider how your behaviors might now be different than they were when you were thinking about going for your intention as you set it in STEP 1 and how you will behave from holding the position when you set the intention to realize the outcome in STEP 5.

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just had a small experience of Ontological Form when you recognize the distinctions of operating from the limited frame of “being yourself” in STEP 1 and the expanded frame of freeing yourself from organizing through the lens of past successes and failures.

The Ideal Ontological Form

Using the lens of the MythoSelf™ Process the ideal Ontological Form is always being in the world as yourself, uncontaminated, uncorrupted and uncompromised.

I’ve referred to this in many ways … the Zero Point … attaining the position of NOTHING, the Zen State, Default State, or Ready State, and “being in INTENT” too. I’ve also referenced the idea of being in FLOW or BEYOND FLOW.

However, all of these are just labels pointing to something that cannot and is not contained in language.

The experience of accessing Ontological Form is always first and foremost somatic and organized in the body, as a way of being in your body and experiencing yourself using yourself through your body in very specific and very precise ways.

The fundamental premise of the MythoSelf Process™ work begins with the idea that you know without question when you are experiencing yourself at your best (what we call being in INTENT in terms of the MythoSelf™ jargon and lexicon).

There is a particular experience of feeling yourself at your best that transcends context and generalizes … “a pervasive sense of wellbeing” … to use the words of my mentor, Roye Fraser.

What’s important to us at the pragmatic, everyday practical level of application is that when you are “Like this …,” accessing your self at your best, in your INTENT, you will always perform in ways that will and must transcend any limitation present when you are operating in any other way, regardless of the context or intention you hold.

So the key is discovering the somatic, body-based sensation of what it’s like when you are indeed at your best, and having instantaneous, reliable and persistent access to this way of being in the world.

The way we access this position of being in the world within the MythoSelf™ Process work begins with accessing a way when you have already experienced being “Like this …” in the past and revivifying that fully in the present here and now.

The experience of being fully present to what it’s like when you are at your very best, feeling the full somatic imprint of what it is like to be “Like this …” and to have a sense of sustaining this way of being in the world as you move toward taking the actions necessary to achieve whatever outcomes you intend is what we refer to as being in your GDS (Generalized Desired State).

Then we begin to amplify and generalize that experience of the GDS and connect the sensations that emerge and become present as a result to gaining a sense of transparency to the immediate context you are actually experiencing in the moment, and then beyond that to the sense of becoming transparent to the totality of the cosmos.

The renowned mythological scholar, Joseph Campbell, referred to the idea of being present to the sense of being connected to and contained within the totality of the cosmos as, “becoming transparent to the transcendent” a phrase I particularly like and use often. Using the particular jargon of the MythoSelf™ Process work we call this accessing the GTS (that which is Greater Than Self).

When you have access to both the GDS and the GTS we can show you how to oscillate them to experience the Ontological Form of being in your INTENT and the experience of transcending the limitations of form that precede unleashing your full potential as we’ve begun describing it here in this article.

INTENT is therefore the doorway to a pervasive position of elite performance on demand … regardless of any evidence to the contrary in the context, including all past experience of limitation

People have described the experience of accessing INTENT for themselves the first-time as explosive in the sense of blowing past all the limits of possibility that they had previously been considering and stepping into a sense of positive expectation that exceeds anything they had known beforehand.

Some Final Thoughts About Ontological Form And Performance

Having worked with many elite performers … business moguls, world-class athletes and A-list entertainers, as well as artists and academics … there are a few things I have discovered about Ontological Form and Performance.

Almost every elite performer has experienced times when they want or need to get into their elite mode of performance, e.g.:

  • stepping into a business meeting to negotiate a multi-million or multi-billion dollar deal
  • entering into a life-changing competition like the Olympics or a world-championship match
  • auditioning for the part of a lifetime or stepping on stage in front of an audience on Broadway in New York or London’s West End
  • preparing to make a recording for a major record label or performing in concert to an audience of 30,000
  • creating your piece for the biggest commission of your life or preparing to write the manuscript that will launch you to fame and fortune
  • writing a proposal for ten-years of research project funding or presenting your findings and conclusions to your peers and colleagues at the most prestigious conference in your area of expertise …

It truly doesn’t matter what the specific performance entails or is about … proposing to your beloved, interviewing to get into your dream school or for the job of your dreams, sitting with your spouse and asking them to support you as you leap beyond the known together, or sitting with your child and helping them through the trauma of transitioning from childhood to adolescence and beyond … each of these are about wanting and needing to perform at your best on demand …

And, to transcend the anxiety that comes with the knowledge that your performance will make a difference that will linger and exceed the moment, maybe shaping a substantial aspect of your life as it expands forward through time, or possibly just the pulsing desire to be at your best when it counts.

I’ve worked with hundreds of elite performers who for one reason or another have hit a wall, sometimes on the way to great success, sometimes after achieving it. Usually, this can be thought of as a slump, a temporary valley in an otherwise spectacular ability to perform on demand.

In every case, I have worked with them, and much less well-known individuals, on whatever it is they desire in regard to performing at their best, and in almost every case I’ve been able to take them to where they need to be in one session together.

The reason is we are not building new strategies and skills, but accessing what is already innate within them, and releasing it … and them … to realize what has been possible and just out of reach until they unleashed their full potential.

If you’d like to experience this for yourself … or if you are facing one of these critical moments in your life I’d love to speak with you if you’d like to work with me about it … to learn how to reliably and persistently access yourself at your best, to step into and being operating from your innate Success Blueprint.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, Florida, October 2022

VSOP Opportunity to work with me 1-to-1 … Limited Time Offer November 2022 Only

Because I’ve been making some significant shifts in my business recently I have a very limited time offer in the upcoming month only to take advantage of my BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process single session 1-to-1 remote coaching experience to do what I have been describing here at a huge discount.

For month of November I have a few spots a week to schedule these 1-to-1 calls and because I find myself with these openings in my schedule I decided to make these slots available to clients who would benefit from a live Zoom BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process session with me, including a full month of follow up.

These sessions are normally $4500, but I am making them available for the month of November only on a first-come, first-serve basis for just $900 until I’ve filled my calendar.

If you’re interested we should speak briefly about whether this is right for you and you can benefit from this work, and if it is I’ll give you the opportunity to take one of these open slots for a personal 1-to-1 BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process session with me.

Book A Call To Discuss Whether This Moment And Opportunity Is Right For You:

BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process With Joseph In November

Mapping Consciousness

Mapping Consciousness

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Thoughts on Werner Erhard’s EST, Richard Bandler’s NLP and Joseph Riggio’s MythoSelf Process Models

“A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” – Alfred Korzybski

This may be one of the most used, most misquoted, and most misunderstood comments driving multiple models of human cognition and behavior.

Maps, Territories and Models

The reason I say this about the Korzybski quote “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” is because it’s so often presented as, “A map is not the territory.” FULL STOP!

“A map is not the territory.” is a very different notion than “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” READ THEM BOTH CAREFULLY, AND NOTICE WHAT THEY ARE POINTING TO SPECIFICALLY.

I am a picky user of language, because language is our primary means of representing “what is”… i.e. the world, reality … and we act on our representations of “what is” NOT on “what is.”

Language is a composition of symbols in a syntax and grammar that give rise to semantic form, i.e.: meaning, or more accurately, the meaning we apply to the sequence of symbols in the language we use (see Saussure and his comments on signals and signifiers for more clarity). 

The semiotician, Umberto Eco, introduced a concept about text as potentially “open” versus “closed,” meaning that the texts are “fields of meaning” and not “strings of meaning.” This idea gives the semantic power (the ability to create and choose meaning) to the reader versus the author. Even when the author might clearly intend a meaning in an open text, it is the reader that confers it.

I believe that this is also true in verbal communication, i.e.: that the listener confers meaning, and not the speaker. 

Based on this observation the author and the speaker create fields of meaning from which their readers and listeners can confer the meaning they intend, without trying to close the system. 

To confer meaning in an open system the author or speaker need then to infer the meaning in the way they present the information they are representing, because the reader and listener will always interpret what is written or spoken and not simply absorb it “as is” unchanged. To do this requires a deep understanding of how the intended audience will transform what is presented as they interpret and incorporate it for themselves. There are some cases in theater and film that I can think of where the playwright or screenwriter has done this particularly well.

Presenting meaning in theater and film has the advantage of a four-dimensional format to express the intended meaning via physical expression and interaction with all that implies, happening through movement in space and time. The richness of the four-dimensional aspect of representation more closely simulates our lived experience than can be expressed in a two-dimensional format like text. Text however has the advantage of remaining more open, leaving more room to imply meaning without directly conferring it. Speaking can also remain more open in this way, with the advantage of simultaneously layering inferences in the non-verbal aspect between the speaker and listeners. 

Hypnotic protocol takes advantage of this open framework in speaking, and in the hands of a master writer in text as well. Inference resides at the heart of hypnotic protocol. By the precise and creative use of suggestion a pathway can be formed that provides the least resistance for the listener or reader to confer meaning. Many playwrights and screenwriters use hypnotic protocol to create the experience they want to confer to their audience, leaving less room for interpretation as the actors’ work unfolds the story being represented by them.

Let’s bring this back again now, with the fullness of what I’ve shared to the comment by Korzybski, “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” Maps seek to capture in representational form the structure of a territory, e.g.: a context or process, that allows the user to navigate and transverse the territory the map represents with a degree of confidence that they will successfully get from where they begin to where they intend to arrive.

The consideration of Korzybski’s comment then isn’t that maps aren’t what they represent, i.e.: “The map is not the territory.” but that maps are tools to navigate and transverse territories that when “correct” will be useful in doing so. Keeping this in mind we can move on to models which provide a similar if not the same function.

EST, NLP & the MythoSelf Process Models:

All three of these models, EST, NLP and the MythoSelf Process model, use the fundamental concept that Korzybski suggests in what may be the most famous quote coming from his own General Semantics model, i.e.: “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

Werner Erhard and EST:

In the case of EST, NLP, and the MythoSelf Process a model of reality, or more precisely, a model of how to conceive of reality and our interactions in it, is organized and presented. 

I am a huge fan of Werner Erhard’s work and his EST model. In that work, Werner points back to some of the fundamental notions of Martin Heidegger’s ontological and phenomenological philosophy, especially his considerations on “being.” To massively simplify that application portion of Werner’s model he points to the perceiver of a context as giving meaning to the context, literally bringing the context into being by conferring meaning. He takes this idea to an extreme in suggesting that by our “word” – literally our speaking into being – we bring contexts forth and can transform ourselves and the world we occupy by doing so. 

The inverse of this is also true of Werner’s work, that by not “being our word” we live in a state akin to an automaton simply responding to the context we encounter like “meat machines” moved around by the feelings aroused by the stimuli we experience. The process that functions to create the cause-and-effect response of the so-call meat machine is the “story” we are living inside of that we presume is real, when in fact it’s just the stories that have been conferred upon us, that we have now colluded with, and from there bring forth new stories that contain the same contexts as the stories we have incorporated. This process creates a never-ending loop of repeating the same story of our life over and over with little or no relief. 

By “speaking our word” we can bring new contexts into being, and transform the story into the one we desire wholeform. One of the flaws I perceive in the EST model is the suggesting that we lead from “being” and not “thinking” or “doing” … and, and yet there is not mechanism or process provided for creating our “word” and thereby transforming our “story” without the “thinking” required to do so. The EST model can be a very powerful to create transformation, but requires a devolution into solipsisim to function as it’s presented. 

If I take the EST model literally the Rene Descartes ontological catch phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” becomes “I think it, therefore it is.” Without too much stretching the EST model can viewed through Korzybski’s conception of maps, as a ontological distortion that might read, “The map IS the territory.” 

Richard Bandler and NLP

The NLP model starts in a very different place than the EST model. NLP begins with the idea that what we know as being real is really representation, and the process we use to create, manipulate and utilize our representations determines how well they will work for us in creating the outcomes we desire. 

Werner Erhard in the EST model suggests that transformation happens by speaking it into the world, ignoring the story of how we have known the world to be, and choosing a context that brings into being our intentions. This process, as I’ve presented it above, is known in EST circles as “being your word,” i.e.: because I say it is so it will be so. (NOTE: I love this idea, even as I see the flaws in it … flaws I see even when it works. Being personally driven in a phenomenologically empirical way to arrive at my own conceptions, the human cost of this method of living and bringing into being my intended outcomes is just too high for me to personally accept.)

In the NLP model as presented by Richard Bandler there is a cognitive process that begins and ends in representational forms of sensorial experience that are able to be intentionally modified and manipulated to create a better map of the world from the point of view of functional usefulness. The individual who perceives the world does so by the way they represent the world to themselves internally, as well as to the degree that they are able to observe the world as it is, i.e.: to align their internal representations in a way that accurately describes the external context as it is now. The step after being able to accurately represent the world as it is now, is to have the flexibility to represent the world as you’d like it to be, and to manipulate the way you internally represent your experiences to generate responses that bring about your desired outcomes. 

NLP also has a secondary application of being able to map the way others internally represent the world to themselves by calibrating their verbal and non-verbal expressions in communication. A significant part of the process of mapping the internal representations of any context, i.e.: past, present or future, is contained in the language use to express the context by the language user. 

Withing the NLP model you have multiple sub-models that are designed to make sense of the language patterns of the user, e.g.: the Meta-Model and Meta-Programs, and to use language interventions to modify these patterns to a more useful form, e.g.: reframing and hypnosis. In addition NLP users are trained to notice the non-verbal aspects in communication as well, for instance the representational system preferences of an individual in context, e.g.: visual vs auditory, or visual to auditory, or visual and auditory. Any combination and sequence of the sensory modalites can be present, and a skilled NLP user will be able to discern by tracking language usage and non-verbal patterns what these combination and sequences are as they communicate and calibrate what they are observing. 

In the NLP model this ability to calibrate the way contexts are represented internally, and to modify these representations allow the NLP user to transform their experience of the context, make new choices, and create the intended outcome with much greater facility. It is also possible to use these same skills in communicating with other to bring about intended outcomes with them as well.

Joseph Riggio and the MythoSelf Process Model

Joseph Riggio (me, in the third person) has designed the MythoSelf Process model drawing on and from both of the models presented above, the EST and NLP models. In addition there is a deep draw on and from Roye Fraser’s Generative Imprint model. 

The Generative Imprint model can be considered an applicaiton of the NLP model emphasizing the access to the excitatory bias and using wholeform communication to do that, and then leaping beyond the representation of reality within the framework of the excitatory bias to a deeper transcendent experience of being alive in a wellformed way that expresses as a pervasive sense of wellbeing and infinite possibilities. In Roye’s model this transcendent experience is the Generative Imprint and is held in “symbolic, iconic, representational form.”

“Form” is a critical consideration in Roye’s model and work. He literally being from and ends what happens in the model by accessing the form of the Generative Imprint. Accessing the Generative Imprint aligns an individual with themselves in relation to their sense of place and possibility to the Universe or the Cosmos as it’s unfolding in real time. The experience of accessing the Generative Imprint brings the indvidual into a very hightened sense of being present through time, i.e.: their past, present and future, in a deeply aware, sensorial way.

I was a student of Roye’s in an intensive seven-year apprenticeship, becoming deeply immersed in the Generative Imprint model, how to access it and apply it for myself and with others. The main processes used to access and elicit the form of the Generative Imprint are based in the NLP model and it’s applicaitons.

After working closely with Roye and observing how he interacted with his clients over several thousands of hours in the training and clinical context with him there was no doubt regarding the intensity of his use of somatic form as well as semanitc form in his work. This observation led me to the first expression of what is now the MythoSelf Process model. The first unique distinction I brought to the MythoSelf Process model that moved it some distance away from the other three models I have been presenting and discussing is the primacy of the use of the body and tracking somatic from at the macro and micro levels of expression. 

Somatic Form in the MythoSelf Process Model

The main premise of the MythoSelf Process model has always been that the ontology of the individual is grounded somaticaly, i.e.: in the body. The somatic form gives rise to semantic form as sensorial experience is expressed in body sensations and responses. In the MythoSelf Process model we know reality as we experience it in sensorial form before there is any post-sensorial representation. 

This idea of pre-representational sensorial form drives all of the transformational interventions within the MythoSelf Process model that allow a user to access and modify their awareness of reality and being, as well as the reponses available to them to take action in the world creating their intended outcomes. 

In the MythoSelf Process model we hold a primary presumption that all of our experiences, including the realization of our intended outcomes, are a function of the action we take and choose not to/fail to take. The action we take are our behavioral responses, so if we desire anything in our lives, including the desire for it to be different in some way we need to modify our behavioral responses that keep the way we experience our lives as we do intact. 

Because we accept that we are ontologically grounded somatically, and our sensorial awareness drives our experience and way of knowing the world, we cannot change our behavior without first changing how we are in ourselves, i.e: somatically, and the way we experience the contexts we occupy sensorially. So within the MythoSelf Process model transformation becomes a soma-semantic function of shifting the sensorial filters we use and the way we sort and process the information we are experiencing and responding to in the action we take (or choose not to/fail to take).

This distinction of driving behavior sensorially, but shifting what and how we are perceiving in and about the contexts we occupy create a significant distinction in the MythoSelf Process model as a a priori model of behavioral change. Within the model we never seek to directly change behavior, instead we simply change the perceptions of reality we hold in the contexts we occupy, and those we intend to occupy, and allow our behaviors to follow form that way of perceiving ourselves and the context we are in or are moving towards. (NOTE: This process can be, and often is, applied to past contexts and events as we consider them too, leading to a reorganization of how we know the world about us and ourselvees in relation to it to be, including our relationships with others … past, present and future.)

The Use of Story in the MythoSelf Process Model

A final commnent on the MythoSelf Process model for this writing concerns the use of story, specifically autobiographical narrative, in creating and stablizing the awareness of ourselves in relation to a specific perceptual position we hold and operate from to create our intended outcomes. This idea that story contains and holds our awareness intact connects the MythoSelf Process to Werner’s EST, Bandler’s NLP and Fraser’s Generative Imprint models. A distinction in the applicaition of story in the MythoSelf Process model is that we hold story as “open” versus “closed” in the way Umberto Eco suggests is possible. In the MythoSelf Process model a facilitator working with a client will create a story-form that infers the possibilities of creating and experiencing the intended outcomes of the client. The story-form connects both the specific autobiographical narrative of the individual client to the “field of meaning” that is also suggested by other stories in mythic form that support the individual in remaining in choice regardless of the extant, empirical evidience that suggests a given path, allowing them to draw on a much wider and bigger range of human experience and possibilities than they could contain on their own.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL, 23 Aug 2022

Communication Mastery

Communication Mastery

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Thinking is Communication … Communication is Thinking

I was speaking with a client this morning and it came up again …

THINKING IS COMMUNICATION … COMMUNICATION IS THINKING

It’s an idea that’s plagued me for half a decade now. It’s remarkable how clearly this makes sense to me today … how obvious it is to me.

Every once in a while I like to revisit the essence of what I do and why I do it, with and for my clients … i.e.: what value I bring to the work I do and am paid for with and by clients.

Here’s my latest update on that consideration, as of this Sunday afternoon, as I sit contemplating it here on 21 August 2022.

Introduction and History:

But let’s go back thirty years or so when I was first coming into the world of NLP, and it was introduced to be as a human communication technology. At that time the idea was that NLP was a way of considering communication and its implications in human interaction. Alongside the idea or interpersonal communication, it was also presented to me that NLP was an intrapersonal human communication technology too.

In the world of NLP the way we process language (the “Linguistic” part of NLP, “Neurolinguistic Programming”) was the critical consideration, especially the nature of syntactical processing, or the sequencing of the internal representations we use to think. In NLP terms this is the V-A-K-O/G representational systems comprised of V-visual, A-auditory, K-kinesthetic, O-olfactory, and G-gustatory, also know as a 4-tuple, where O & G collapse into an overlaid, singular representational form.

Beyond the primacy of the representational systems processing, NLP also looks at linguistic processing, the nature of how language creates representations and meaning. So there are models within the NLP model that address how we process language, like the Meta-Model which looks at the processes of Generalizing, Distorting and Deleting information in linguistic representations, or Meta-Programs which look at how we preference and evaluate language on a continuum of opposites to make sense of and create meaning from linguistic representations.

Then I think forward from that early indoctrination in the NLP model to my years of studying with Roye Fraser, including his training me in the model of work he developed, the Generative Imprint model. The Generative Imprint model is a meta-application of the NLP model that uses a unique positive orientation based in the excitatory bias, using a wholeform structure of perception and communication.

As I think about the years of apprenticing with Roye what stands out most is his use of hypnotic language to create wholeform interactions. Roye’s use of language was exquisite and aimed at what he referred to as the “symbolic, iconic representation” of the Generative Imprint, or a way a person knew themselves to be whole and complete, where they experienced a pervasive sense of wellbeing. This was his forte, and his raison d’etre too.

In the early years of working with Roye I came up with my own application of the Generative Imprint model I called the Mythogenic Self Process (the “myth-making” self process), which I later modified and shortened to the MythoSelf Process. The naming of the MythoSelf Process for my model has remained consistent now for almost 25 years, although the model has been through many revisions and refinements.

It took many years for me to clarify the essence of these models, NLP, the Generative Imprint model and my own MythoSelf Process model. As I was doing this I continued to explore and study other models as well, some philosophic, some psychologic, some an overlay like phenomenology and phenomenography, some others like linguistic and mathematical models, and a deep dive into brain-, neuro- and cognitive- sciences..

However, only after I seriously dove into the exploration and study of cybernetic systems in modeling human cognition and communication was it that all the pieces began to come together. This was the beginning of a profound understanding of the structure of wholeform thinking and communication I had mastered, under Roye’s tutelage and with his intense mentoring.

The Development of SSCT | Sensory-Systems Control Theory

Once I got that deep cybernetic patterns of human perception and cognition I could clearly see the connections between sensorial awareness and symbolic representation that form the basis of what we refer to as thought, and from thought, mind.

It became obvious to me that we transform our direct sensory experiences into symbols of representation so rapidly that there is no temporal gap for all intents and purposes between the two, i.e.: sensations instantaneously are translated into symbols in our conscious cognitive experience. This process is so instantaneous and absolute that reality as we know it is comprised of the symbolic representations we derive from sensory experience, and not based on the actual sensory experience itself.

This led me to develop the theory of human cybernetic cognition that progresses from sensory experience to perception, from perception to sense-making, from sense-making to meaning-making, from meaning-making to decision-making, and from decision-making to action-taking (behavioral response). I refer to this sequential process as the “Ladder of Perception.”

Most of the Ladder of Perception occurs outside of conscious awareness in the feed-forward system from sensation to response. With training the cognitive processing from perception to decision-making can be made conscious in hindsight, looking back from action-taking/response through each of the preceding steps of the Ladder of Perception model.

With advanced training and diligent practice the processing of the steps of the Ladder of Perception can become available consciously as they are happening, and with further advanced training before they happen in the cognitive sequence. When the process that will happen in the cognitive sequence can be considered before it has occurred and created a feed-forward effect in the system adumbration of the unfolding situation becomes possible.

When you can adumbrate the situation you are experiencing, what will most likely happen based on what has happened and is happening is revealed and can be acted upon before it happens as it will if the system is allowed to continue unfolding on the path it is currently taking.

Adumbrating gives you the opening and opportunity to intervene in a system before the event you want to alter has occurred, reshaping the context and framework to allow a different and most desirable outcome to become possible than is possible in the way the current context and framework are organized and being held.

The SSCT | Sensory-System Control Theory is a model that suggests that behavior is shaped at the level of sensation, and by changing the nature of perception behavior can be shaped and will follow. When we can and do choose what and how we are perceiving in the contexts we engage in we can shape the behaviors we need to express that will create the outcomes we desire. Obversely we cannot shape behavior by trying to change our behavior directly, since all behavior is an outgrowth of perception, and if the perceptions remain unchanged our behaviors will always revert to those in alignment with our perceptions.

Sensorial Awareness as Symbolic Representation

Ultimately we want to be able to choose the outcomes we create by our behaviors, because while we cannot necessarily control the contexts we find ourselves in, we do have control over what and how we are perceiving within and in relation to the contexts that contain us.

When we choose our perceptual position we can then manifest and enact the behaviors most likely to produce the outcomes we desire. Choosing our perceptual position requires us to become aware of the symbolic representations we are responding to in the context. By noticing the symbolic forms we are responding to, we can choose to shift our perceptual position until we generate the symbolic form that will and does allow us to manifest and express the most useful behavior in regard to creating the most desirable outcome.

One of the most potent ways to shift the symbolic representation is to shift the filters we are using for our primary way of attending to what we’re experiencing at the sensorial level of awareness.

This can include changing the primary filter, say from visual to vestibular, or auditory to proprioceptive, as well as changing what we noticing for within a given representational system and how we’re noticing for that information sensorially prior to the transform from perception to sense-making (NOTE: in the MythoSelf Process model in addition to the V-A-K-O/G 4-tuple we extend it to a 7-tuple of primary representational systems, V-A-K-O-G- and Vs-vestibular and P-proprioceptive).

Then as we progress through the Ladder of Perception sequencing we can force the sorting pattern of information that would best support our manifestation and expression of the behavioral response most likely to create the outcome we desire. When we shift the filters and force the sorts in this way we begin to reset the processing pattern we use in relation to this situation and the creating the outcomes we desire. Within the MythoSelf Process model this is called “creative expression.”

Creative expression can be partially or fully realized, and is or is not, by the facility that you have with shifting the filters and forcing the sorts to create the behavioral manifestation and expression that most aligns with your ability to create the outcomes you desire. The more elegant the pattern of behavior, the more we can say that you are realizing the fullness of you most profound, potent and powerful creative expression.

When you a fully realizing your creative expression in the behaviors you manifest and express you are living in the most aligned way possible with your innate sense of self, and aligning with that in regard to your external performance. In this way you have begun to create the outcomes you desire by being most who you are, and reducing the friction and compromise in the system. Ultimately when you have refining this pattern and made it the default way you take action the system comes to rest, there is no urgency, stress, anxiety or conflict you experience in taking action in this way.

We can say that when the system is at rest, and you are expressing yourself in the most elegant way possible you are in a state of flow, or what we call your State of Perfection.

By applying the SSCT | Sensory-System Control Theory to notice what happens at the sensorial level of awareness, and in the translation to symbolic representation prior to taking action, we can refine the perceptual position to bring the system to rest.

When you have patterned in the requisite perception training to notice the perceptual position you are holding and its effect on the Ladder of Perception sequencing, and you are capable of choosing the position you adopt and hold to bring the system to rest, you are accessing the reference point of your State of Perfection.

Since the process requires you to attend to your sensorial awareness in a pre-representational way, it is useful to think of this as a somatic intention that occurs in direct sensorial experience had in the body-mind, before the translation to symbolic representation. Only after you have processed the sensorial experience somatically can you accurately identify the accuracy of the symbolic form to the sensorial reality. This transformation from sensation to symbol is a semantic transformation, turning direct sensorial experience into meanings that can ignite conscious decision-making leading to deliberate action-taking, i.e.: in response to an intentional outcome.

THINKING IS COMMUNICATION … COMMUNICATION IS THINKING

So we’ve now come full circle …

We are virtually always acting on the symbolic representations of reality we create from our sensorial experiences. The manipulation of symbolic representation is what we call thinking. Thinking in this way, as symbolic manipulation, operates as a communication process in terms of the use, interactions, applications, and manipulations of symbols, e.g.: words … i.e.: thinking is communication.

In addition to words, symbols can also be communicated in any sensory form we are capable of processing, e.g.: the modalities of the 7-tuple. We are capable of, and do, process symbolic form internally as intra-systemic cognition (processing of information that is self-generated – our own internal thoughts) and inter-systemic cognition (the processing of information that is externally present to us). We can also make a case for inter-subjective cognition as being processed in the space we share with others in simultaneity.

However, what I’ve come to treat as most significant is the communication process itself. I have seen that when you learn to communicate with an exquisite level of clarity and precision internally and inter-personally your ability to express elite levels of performance follows inevitably.

What I mean by elite levels of performance is the ability to consistently maximize positive consequences and minimize negative consequences in the manifestation of your desired outcomes. When you are expressing elite levels of performance, most typically from a flow state or your State of Perfection, you create the outcomes you desire with the minimal cost of time, energy, and resources, including your personal goodwill. We refer to this way of performing as “effortless” in the sense that you proceed through the process of perception, decision-making, action-taking, and adapting that cycle iteratively based on the feedback you get from taking action without any undue urgency, stress, anxiety or conflict.

From the outside looking in, the outcomes you produce when you are operating in alignment with your State of Perfection being and remaining intact appears effortless, and you experience it as being effortless as well, .

When you communicate with others you are expressing your thinking, and they experience your thinking as a process or their own thinking … i.e.: communication is thinking.

Therefore as I consider where I bring the highest value to my clients I realize over and over again it resides in the way I help them recognize the quality of their communication, with themselves and with others, and to refine it to higher levels of quality.

People who work with me begin to recognize the inconsistencies in their thinking and communication processes and begin to experience significant changes in their life as they improve their ability to think and communicate exquisitely.

If you’re serious about wanting to experience the state of flow, effortless performance and the kind of exquisite thinking and communication I’m referring to here let’s find a time to chat.

In the meantime I’d love to read your thoughts and open a channel to exchange our observations and considerations as you have them too.


Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL

Inventing The Future …

Inventing The Future …

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Private Work℠ Coaching with Joseph: Is It Coaching Or Something Else Entirely?

I get asked a question a lot that goes something like this …

“Hey, Joseph, I get what you do is all about being and not doing, but is it practical … what can I do with it?”

Now first of all I see the immediate contradiction that asking about doing represents, but I also get this …

“When I first meet them, almost everyone I start working with is addicted to doing … they literally feel off, or out of balance, when they aren’t doing something, they don’t know how to do nothing.”

“Yet, the first step in achieving greatness in anything begins in nothing, doing nothing first.”

Now that’s the first significant distinction. Coaching virtually always begins from, and organizes around, what to be doing … usually how to be doing something you don’t yet do, or doing something differently than you currently do it.

Changing what you do will be really, really important if you want to get something different than what you’re getting now … bigger, better or different results, outcomes that have eluded you from getting them at all, more wealth, improved health, a fantastic relationship, a vast range of human what humans aspire to and desire can be linked to what they do, and what they do not do.

Many of my clients are engaged in building and running businesses, often leading teams of people that they depend on for the results they want and need to create. To realize the outcomes they set for themselves, and their business, they need to do things that produce those results, they are all about making it happen.

BUT despite how obvious it seems, starting with a focus on doing almost guarantees they will continue to get results very similar to or the same as you’re currently getting, possibly with a minimal incremental increase, usually paid for with extraordinary effort in doing even more than you’ve been doing.

Yet, the conundrum of coaching, the way most people experience it and engage in it, resides in the failure to connect how when you are organized in this way, seeing doing as the driver of getting outcomes, it by default organizes perception driven by behavior.

When you consider what to be doing, or what you can do, i.e.: what it would be possible to do, as the starting point, that by definition determines and limits the outcomes you will even consider, and therefore what you will attempt.

“When you are driven by doing, doing sets the limits of your positive expectation, and positive expectation determines what you will achieve and won’t achieve, because it in turn limits and determines what you will and won’t do.”

And, this also sets the limits of coaching based in doing … updating doing, refining doing, improving doing, adding in new doing … it doesn’t matter the focus of the doing, any focus on doing will create these ripples of limitation in the system.

Now, when you want to improve you’re doing, the behaviors you express in relation to producing outcomes, coaching can be a brilliant way to do this … improve what you do and how you do it.

And, yet when you want to expand the boundaries of the possible, coaching may very well entrench you further in the limits of the boundaries you are operating in relation to now.

The Solution:

To quote my mentor, Roye Fraser …

“You have to go to where the problem is NOT.”

This means going to where you experience the world outside of, or beyond, the problem state.

The pragmatic linguist Paul Watzlawick says that there are two conditions for a problem to exist, 1) the way things are, are not the way you want them to be … or, to put it another way, you want things to be different then the way they currently exist, and 2) you have to believe that you need to do something for the situation to change, something that may be beyond your control or ability.

Taken to another level the analytic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that problems are nothing but “puzzles of language” or a perception that we encase in the way we express it in language … furthering the suggestion that when we change our way of expressing our perceptions the problem dissolves as the language we use to express cannot sustain the problem as we experienced in the problem state.

Roye also said something else that guides what I call doing Private Work with clients,

“The problem as they express it contains the solution to the problem.”

This took me a few years to grasp completely, because it requires unpacking and deciphering the language of the client inside their perceptual experience, while simultaneously remaining outside of and beyond the perceptual framework of the client.

So taking these two things together, to go where the problem is NOT, an accepting that, the problem as they express it contains the solution to the problem, we can begin to build a framework to guide the client beyond the limits of the language that contains the problem that exists outside of their frame of consideration as they know it.

This new framework begins in nothing, as in no projecting of the past into the future in a way that limits it, and no fixed expectation about the future that defines how to perceive the present in terms of what to notice and what we perceive to be important to us, or containing opportunities that exist that we might choose to pursue instead of and beyond what we considered from where we’ve already been.

“The concept of “Blue Ocean” thinking can almost be defined by starting from nothing, meaning that we consider anything as possible, and then begin to organize ourselves in relation to what has to be true to achieve what we’ve imagined from a position of pure desire and positive expectation … Private Work exists to expose the boundaries of Blue Ocean thinking, and position us to operate in relation to, and within it.”

Maybe we can point to this distinction as the primary difference between coaching and Private Work, i.e.: giving up the desire to achieve the results and outcomes a client arrives with, and moving from that and the limitations suggested, to a position that exists beyond limitation. In this way before anything else happens the problems the client arrives with are swept away by releasing the desires and aspirations that contain them.

In Private Work we begin from a position of pure possibility, starting from a clean state where anything becomes possible. We begin by accessing a familiar position where the state of possibility has already been experienced and revivifying that experience fully, in body and mind, and when possible spirit as well. Then we stabilize the state of possibility, and only then begin to explore what, you as a client, want.

We employ the trick of revivifying the embodiment of possibility as a fully realized experience in the moment, here and now. Using this position we can then project to a point in the future where a deeply desired outcome has been realized, and explore what it will be like to have that as a fully embodied experience. The emphasis on the embodiment of experience sets Private Work apart from coaching, as it both contains and exists beyond language, where almost all coaching exists in relation to and within the limits of language.

In a Private Work session we establish the desired outcome position as an embodied realized experience, and then track the language that emerges from that position … versus trying to embody an outcome position by creating it in language. We call the embodiment I’m referring to as a “felt sense of self,” which by definition transcends language, from which language emerges. This distinction provides a critical point of difference in how many coaches work, and what most coaches seek to do, in a way that forces us to claim that Private Work and Coaching are in two different domains of consideration.

  • COACHING seeks to get to something based on a pre-existing frame of reference, that always must include any limitations present in that frame of reference.
  • PRIVATE WORK seeks to get to a position where we begin from nothing, without pre-determined or expected outcomes, so that a completely new way of perceiving possibility emerges, and from there establish the means to achieve whatever emerges as a desired outcome, including Blue Ocean possibilities.

A Little About The Mechanism:

Working in the paradigm of Private Work we begin from an essential presumption, you have a Best State, a way of operating so essential, innate and native to who you are, that when you are acting from this state virtually anything you do seems effortless for you.

We call what I refer to above as your Best State, your State of Perfection.

You embody your State of Perfection as an integrated wholeform position in body and mind, where what you perceive as internal experience matches what you express externally. You don’t experience any difference between the way you perceive the world, yourself or yourself in relation to it, and the way you respond and take action in the world, for you they are one and the same things.

This allows you to form a perfect loop between your perceptions and your actions, including eliminating any hesitation or procrastination between perception, decision making and action taking, and noticing the outcome you create as feedback you can use to refine your action taking, leading you ever closer to realizing your desired outcomes. When you perfect the loop between perception and action you experience uninhibited positive expectation, releasing you to act freely in relation to getting whatever outcome you’ve decided upon, and have projected as your future experience.

In this way positive expectation and your desired outcomes, i.e.: what you intend, determine how you perceive what’s present and what you notice for, becoming the drivers of your responses and behaviors. When you can collapse expectation and desire in this way, you can choose outcomes that are impossible from within the pre-existing frame of reference. You can invent possibilities that aren’t present in the pre-existing frame of reference, but you can nonetheless project as fully realized outcomes in a future position you intend to occupy. As you master this skill you can also begin to collapse the time frame within which you create the results and outcomes you’ve projected, drastically shortening the distance between where you begin and getting what you want.

We can simplify the way we express this as an algorithm we follow …

  1. RE-Discover Yourself – this refers to your State of Perfection
  2. RE-Connect With Yourself – this aligns you with your State of Perfection
  3. RE-Invent Yourself – this allows you project yourself through your State of Perfection into your future where you have already realized your intention

Where each step moves you in time and space in such a way that as you complete the algorithm from one stage to the next, you become more and more skillful and manipulating your sense of moving through time, until it becomes effortless to position yourself in time where you need to be to create any outcome you intend.

So, if you want to redefine and refine how you do what your doing it may be that coaching will be your best bet.

If you want to go beyond anything you’ve considered before, and create the possibility for things you’ve never considered, or believed possible before, then it may be that engaging with me in Private Work℠ Coaching will give you the breakthrough you actually desire, that goes beyond the way you currently create and contain the problems that limit you, permanently.

If this intrigues you, you can make arrangements to schedule a complimentary strategy call with me here … Private Work ℠ Coaching with Joseph (https://abti.learnworlds.com/mytho-magic)

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL

P.S.: I’d love to read your thoughts after you’ve read through this one … I think it’s profound in it’s implications, and I’d love to know if you agree.

A New Take On Trauma

A New Take On Trauma

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I believe some of the greatest successes we’ve observed in the history of the world come from some trauma the individuals who realized these successes experienced at sometime in their life.

TRAUMA = LEARNING

I’d argue that individuals as renowned as Alexander the Great or Napoleon were in part responding out of trauma induced learning, as well as more modern figures we associate with high achievement like Steven Jobs and, many famous athletes and entertainers.

Most of my professional clients, including some of the world-class executives and entrepreneurs I work with, come to me because of the effect of unresolved, unrealized and unconscious trauma they’ve experienced in their lives … both part of what drives their success … as well as what’s hidden from them, that limits them.

The traditional take on trauma is that it has three forms:

Acute – trauma induced from a single incident

Chronic – trauma from repeated and prolonged abuse

Complex – trauma caused by multiple, varied events, often of the kind that are invasive

Furthermore trauma is most often defined as an intense emotional response to a “terrible event.” While this definition works well in a psychological or psychiatric setting, or use, it doesn’t define the absolute boundary of how we can consider what trauma is, it’s lingering effects, or how we might choose to approach addressing it.

I want to propose that trauma may be something entirely different, …

TRAUMA: a massive, intense learning experience … or, to be more specific, a massive, intense learning experience that imprints on the neurocognitive processing pathways, that often occurs beneath the level of fully conscious awareness, and leaves a neurocognitive response that remains out of conscious awareness.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D. – 2022

Assuming trauma creates an imprint in the emotional response that occurs in response to a “terrible event” it becomes acceptable to view it as something to be eliminated, removed, overcome or resolved – in other words, ‘fixing’ the emotional response system that has been somehow overwhelmed and/or damaged.

Abuse and trauma almost always leave a few generalized responses in the individuals who experience them, some are less life disturbing, others are more interruptive, and others still can be fully debilitating, depending on experience of the abuse, the trauma that’s induced and the individual response to it.

At the very least we can probably say that trauma will leave “emotional triggers” behind, some completely beyond the awareness of the individual experiencing them, except in the response that manifests as a result. Some of these triggers and responses are subtle, some are more significant.

Here are some examples of what trauma responses might manifest as, including those that go unrecognized as trauma responses by the person experiencing them:

  • Unexplainable procrastination or hesitation to act, feeling stuck
  • Low energy, low motivation, low or no ability to follow through
  • Fears and phobias, risk avoidance and/or avoidance of the unfamiliar
  • Eating disorders including obesity, bulimia and anorexia
  • Physical discomfort, headaches and/or body pain, profound fatigue
  • Anxiety, or panic with more acute or extreme trauma
  • Irritation, inability to connect with others easily or effectively
  • Lack of clarity, fuzzy thinking, inability to focus, and/or confusion
  • Inability to sleep or experience restful sleep
  • Feeling of isolation, disconnection or dissociation
  • Unreasonable lack of trust, relationship breakdowns
  • Low self-esteem, confidence and possible depressive episodes

Almost anyone who experiences any of these residual effects of trauma wants to get beyond the sense of “stuck-ness” that comes with them. Those who are thinking about trauma in a more traditional way may seek traditional psychological or medical intervention, because that has become the most familiar approach to take.

However, if trauma represents a learning experience, we might choose to begin by asking, “What learning happened as a result of the exposure to the event, or events, that induced the trauma?” This could take us to approaching radically differently than simply intending to ‘fix’ it in one way or another.

None of this means to suggest that trauma doesn’t leave emotional effects, and possibly emotional damage. It almost surely leaves neurocognitive effects, and shapes perception in particular ways. How the perceptual shaping manifests from trauma as response varies from individual to individual, from life changing to trivial, depending on many factors (too many to be discussed in this article).

The television series, Lie to Me, can be seen as a great example of how trauma can be viewed through a lens of learning. The premise of the show is that main character, Dr. Kal Lightman, played by Tim Roth, is a ‘deception scientist’ someone who’s studied the non-verbal signals of emotional response, and specifically micro-expressions, which are preconscious indicators of emotion. At multiple times in the show Kal refers to his protégé, Maria Torres, played by Monica Raymund, as a “natural.”

LIE TO ME, Tim Roth, Monica Raymund, Better Half , Season 1, ep. 110, aired April 22, 2009 photo: Isabella Vosmikova / TM and Copyright 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, Courtesy: Everett Collection 20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

In the television program Dr. Lightman make it clear that first and foremost he’s a scientist, and his ability to do what he does comes from long and deep study, based in scientific research. As his consultancy grows he expands his staff to include Torres, who he’s discovered working security in an airport, a “natural” – i.e.: someone who has never studied the science and has never been trained in reading micro-expressions or signals, but who “naturally” learned to read deception and emotions at an elite level of skill.

We learn she’s become a “natural” as a response to both abuse, and the threat of abuse, experienced by her as a child in her home, presumably from her father. This would be an example of ‘chronic trauma’ and yet despite the damage that may have been inflicted as a result of that trauma she’s also learned to read people, and their intentions, at an incredibly astute level. Her exposure to trauma in this case created a profound learning as well.

We don’t see so much of Torres’ negative response to the trauma in the series, i.e.: the emotional damage it may have caused, although in the show it’s alluded to indirectly. Instead of the emotional damage caused by the exposure to trauma, we are presented with the residual effect of the learning she experienced because of it, i.e.: her elite skill at reading subtle emotional responses in people … she’s become a “natural” as a result of the trauma.

Okay, let’s restate where this has lead us …

TRAUMA =
EMOTIONAL-SOMASEMANTIC LEARNING

We can state with a fair degree of certainty from what many experts working with trauma have shared, including many medical researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others working in the field that trauma stores at some level in the body, and shows up in preconscious body responses (including the obvious ones in the list above) like sweating, heart pounding, shallow breathing, hyperventilating, tremors, the inability to move freely, and the opposite, explosive behaviors associated with anger and rage.

These traumatic responses are also all responses associated with the autonomic nervous system sympathetic response (ANS-S) to danger, threat, fear and/or stress. We know the ANS-S responses in the more familiar, fight, flight, freeze sequence.

Acknowledging that trauma may be even more associated with the autonomic nervous system responses than emotional ones, although they are intimately and inextricably connected, allows us to reconsider both what trauma is, how it’s experienced, and what we can do with it … including taking advantage of the learning it offers us.

The approach I take with clients that experience any of the symptoms of trauma that are below the level of acute debilitation, often not even acknowledged as signs of trauma at all, begins with eliciting the intention of the neurocognitive patterning that has been learned as a result.

For example, if someone comes to me and complains about issues like procrastination, or low motivation, or the inability to change some habit that interferes with their life in some way, I start by assuming that this behavior served them at some point in their life in response to some event or context they experienced. Only by understanding what the trauma response intends to offer can it be reshaped to provide the benefit without the debilitating effects.

Once we’ve uncovered the hidden intention of the learning that’s been experienced we can then update both the way to use that learning, and the deeply ingrained patterns associated with the trauma response that are parasitic and no longer beneficial or useful. I’ve done this work effectively with clients who display simply irritating, intermittent flutters of distraction, to clients who are experiencing full-blown cases of the effects of PTSD, sometimes working alongside their medical caregivers.

One distinction of the approach I take resides in the assumption that most of what my clients experience remains below any conscious level of awareness beyond the behavioral responses that are the after-effect of the neurocognitive patterns induced by the trauma, everything from overeating to hysterical responses to insignificant comments, and everything else in between.

Another distinction of my approach, using the MythoSelf Process and Somasemantic Modeling, can be seen in the direct somatic elicitation, calibration and intervention that forms the basis of the transformational changework that MythoSelf Facilitators and Trainers, including myself, use when working with clients.

This way of approaching transformation can be so effective that at times the change has happened before the client is even aware that anything has happened, yet when the same stimulus that had prompted the traumatic response is represented they don’t experience or display any of the previous trauma affects. While I expect this to work like this when doing this work with clients, I am still in awe at how effective viewing trauma as learning instead of damage can be, as are most of the clients I’ve worked with who experience it with me or another MythoSelf trained professional.

Within the model of work I refer to here as MythoSelf Process facilitation and Somasemantic model we define this kind of work as “structural” meaning a redesign and repatterning of the neurocognitive experience and expression. Ideally we seek to create what we call “Structural Wellformedness” meaning that they experience and expression matches the sensory data present in the the environment, and creates a desired and appropriate outcome for the person expressing their behavior response to what they are experiencing.

Structural Wellformedness is why thinking about trauma as learning is so valuable. specifically because the learning that comes via trauma remains, with none of the inappropriate or undesirable affects that can linger long after the event that induced the original trauma. This is often because, while the learning was useful and appropriate to the context that the trauma was induced in, cross-mapping that response to contexts that are similar, but essentially different, becomes somewhere between interruptive to debilitating.

Yet, when the learning remains, without the damaging affects of induced trauma, we often see the “natural” patterns that form the core responses of extraordinary success and behavioral fluency emerge effortlessly.

I’d love to read your comments to this article … thanks!

Best,

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

1000 Days of Training …

1000 Days of Training …

by ·

My journey to becoming a Master NLP™ Trainer … and, the Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

“Uchi-deshi” … that’s probably a meaningless phrase to you, unless you are a dedicated martial artist, and have hung around the martial arts world for some time, especially the Japanese arts, like Judo or Aikido.

The phrase, Uchi-deshi, closely translated into English would be “inside student,” referring to a dedicated student of the martial arts who lives in the dojo, commits to a full-time practice in the art they are studying, and takes on responsibilities to the dojo’s master teacher and to service in the upkeep and care of the dojo too.

What’s amazing is that these students not only work in the dojo, cleaning, doing minor chores, maintenance, acting as an assistant to the master, and often taking on some of the teaching role for other more junior students as well … they often pay for the privilege of being an Uchi-deshi, and must be able to support themselves financially and independently while in such an apprentice relationship.

I bring this all up because it’s the closest I can come to the apprentice model I experienced with Roye, my mentor and master, while studying the arts of NLP and Roye’s “Generative Imprint” model with him. For seven years I spent the better part of 40 weeks a year attending training programs with Roye, or assisting him when he was working with clients, and often picking him up at the airport or running to the bank to take care of something for him. It was a grueling schedule because my cost for this much training was in the range of $100K/year, plus travel and housing (there wasn’t any live in dojo to stay in, so lots of hotel rooms in addition to the few times I stayed on a sofa in Roye’s home), so I had to work full time, while also studying 8+ hours a day when I wasn’t actually in the consulting or training room with Roye.

Truth is … I wouldn’t trade day of those seven years for seven extra years of life.

There’s just no way I could be who I am today without having spent those seven years apprenticing in the manner in which I did … it was indeed grueling, often uncomfortable and discouraging, and there were many days I thought would be my last, but it was a privilege every day for those seven years.

I remember a particular moment about three months after meeting Roye for the first time, I had asked him to help me with something and he promised he would. I was confident that if Roye promised me that he could help me get something I wanted from training with him I would get it, but after weeks and weeks of waiting, and asking for it over and over, it seemed I wasn’t getting any closer to having it. So I waited some more.

This went on for months, and finally I decided if he wasn’t going to help me I would just get on with it and figure it out for myself, in fact I decided I was done with Roye, and after I completed the commitment to getting my NLP™ Master Facilitator certification with him I was out of there. So I kept at it, showing up, doing the homework, reading prodigiously in NLP, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and cognitive science, averaging a least a book a week, and in some weeks three books. I spend hours every day writing and reviewing my notes too. And, Roye would hand out what he referred to as “hypno-hymnals,” hypnotic scripts that he work on personalizing for me, with me, going back and forth using fax machines to share what I’d written and then incorporating his hand written notes in the margins back into the script that he’d send me back. I must have done this with hundreds of pages of these ‘hymnals’ over just that first year with Roye.

Suddenly, on a Sunday afternoon or a three-day workshop with Roye, sitting in the circle with him, I asked my question again, after Roye ran his typical routine of going around to everyone in the room and asking, “What do you want?” focusing us to think about why we were there that day, and what we wanted from it. When it came to me, I once again asked for the same thing I’d been asking for over the past few months, not expecting anything different than what I’d already gotten in regard to this request … nothing!

Roye did nothing to disappoint me either, because he simply acknowledged my request as he had every other time I made it, and then moved on to the next person. As expected there wasn’t any lightening from the heavens, nor some internal seismic event, just another day in the “hypnotorium” … Roye’s term for the space he set up to doing training in with his students and clients. Yet, sometime later that day, after lunch, Roye was working with a client in front of the room and did something that made what I’d been asking for over the many months since I began studying with him become crystalline clear and obvious … and, I swear to this day he subtly glanced in my direction to see if I’d picked it up. I was dazed and in awe, one of the very few times in my life I was truly speechless, because I realized in that moment that he’d shown me that very thing probably hundreds of times since I’d first asked!

Roye wasn’t holding back at all … I was just incapable of getting what he was offering until I’d seen it again and again, and again. When I finally saw it, it was as though dark scales blinding me had dropped from my eyes, and for the first time I could see the world clearly. Not only did I see what Roye had done, exactly and precisely what I had been asking him to demonstrate for me, but a thousand other things he’d been doing over those same months I’d been waiting for this moment became clear to me as well.

That was the beginning of my humbling. I have to admit prior to that moment I pretty much acted like an arrogant asshole, thinking I knew much more than I did, feeling somehow better than my peers who were so slow in picking this stuff up from my short-sighted observations. In that moment of revelation I realized how little I knew, and for the first time grasped some idea of how deep the rabbit hole I climbed into when I entered the hypnotorium went … a lot further down than I could see from where I was standing was about the only thing I was sure of that day.

Well, obviously, since I’m telling you this story, I didn’t quit, in fact that’s when I doubled down and committed to being available for every weekend, every workshop and anything that Roye would open up to me. I also began making time to join training with Richard Bandler whenever I could, and other famous (to me) NLP™ Trainers like John Grinder and Robert Dilts … I went everywhere and saw everyone, including some of the most famous hypnotists I could catch up with whenever possible. Not a week went by where I wasn’t reading two or three books simultaneously and spending hours on bulletin boards in the early Internet days. I was in … hook, line and sinker, a fish out of water, determined to master the art of swimming … even if that meant upstream and against the current until I got it.

As I said already, that was the start of a seven year apprenticeship with Roye, one I’m eternally grateful to him making available to me … even though I believed I earned every opportunity given to me, with my sweat, blood and tears offered up as payment in full. That was in the late 1980s, and my the early 1990s I was working full time as an NLP™ Trainer and Consulting, working with sales teams internationally, and eventually working my way up to the C-Suite doing leadership development workshops and coaching senior executives for multinational corporate clients.

There was a famous SNL (Saturday Night Live) skit in the early days of that television show, where the comedian Garrett Morris played the baseball player Chico Escuela. In that skit Chico would say, “Baseball been berry, berry good to me.” mimicking the real live MLB player, Sammy Sosa’s Dominican accent. It was a funny skit that stuck with me, and I often think in the privacy of my own mind, “NLP been berry, berry good to me.”

I liken my journey so far to a kid who began playing sandlot baseball, one of millions, who makes it onto a Little League team, maybe one of ten to make that transition from the sandlot successfully. And, then moving along getting on a high school team and then a college team, leaving behind may as many as 10,000 of the kids who all began throwing baseball around with their friends, or if they were lucky enough, playing catch with a father who showed them how throw a baseball properly. Finally, one of a 1000 of those college players makes it through the minor leagues and into MLB, getting drafted by a team who give them a shot, and if they are good enough they then get the honor of entering baseball’s Hall of Fame, maybe one of a million or more.

I’m one of those lucky guys who’s been given the opportunity to do what so many others who picked up a book and read about hypnosis or NLP or coaching, and then found someone to take a class with, and maybe finished a certification program of some kind and even started a part-time practice, hoped to achieve. I’ve traveled around the world training some of the very top, elite performers in every field of excellence, and I’ve been paid very well to do it … enjoying what I so often refer to as a magical life. I know it all began when I stumbled across an ad to go to a single 3-day training on the old Blue Dell Farm, in Pemberton, NJ, where Roye had set up his hypnotorium, and I made that first phone call to find up more about it.

Ever since then I’ve been saying that life has been “… berry, berry good to me.”

All the best,

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

P.S. – I’ve trained just a handful of folks in my version of taking on apprentices like Roye invited me to be with him, at least two of them picked up their roots and moved to live close to where I was living at the time to have that kind of access, another couple I can think of just came to anything and everything I was doing until they absorbed enough of what was going on to claim mastery themselves, and at least one of these folks lived with me as a housemate for a while literally pestering me in daily conversations and dialogue, and picking up everything … almost by osmosis you could say.

I don’t really have a formal program for Uchi-deshi, nor can you come and live me, but I am opening a very limited and small window for anyone who thinks they might want to explore engaging in an intimate mentoring relationship to master the art of transformational change with me. I have “graduated” the last of the group I’d been working with in this way, and I’m ready to work with a few more folks who are up to the commitment to becoming one of the best there’s ever been … because not only do I think of the folks who have studied with me this way, but their reputations now precede them as the master’s they’ve become (if you are interested I’m happy to set it up for you to speak with a few of them to help you decide after we speak and agree that it might make sense for you to drink the potion Alice found, and enter the warren for a while …

Just go here to arrange an appointment … https://live.vcita.com/site/josephriggio/online-scheduling?service=k1zlmegpqkoykvri

NOTE: This link will only be available for a limited time, so if you’re interested schedule a time now. I reserve the right to cancel this opportunity at any time without notice, but I trust if the student is ready …