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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 …

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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 …

Living Mythically

Living Mythically

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Living Mythically … Taking Control Of Your Story

From the beginning of my professional practice I referred to what I do with clients as “a piece of work” and suggest to my clients do their work. There’s a bit of danger phrasing thing in this way, in that “work” is often heard and thought of as negative, something that’s hard or difficult, or as something in opposition to fun and play, something that’s not enjoyable. And, yet I think that to be a very small minded and limited point of view, that only applied to work you should never be doing in the first place.

My “work” is aiming my clients to live and perform in their lives mythically. By living mythically I mean taking control of their autobiographical narrative, or writing the scripts they live by, their own life story. There’s nothing I find more playful, enjoyable and worthwhile than doing this work, yet it can be challenging and sometimes downright daunting, and even then it remains completely playful, engaging and fun for me to do.

Establishing A New Profession …

Another way I speak of what I do professionally in my practice with clients is that I am a “Clinical Mythologist.” I guide my clients mythologically to discover the stories they have been living from, the story they are living, and the story they are living into. Once we uncover these stories we take it further to begin to take control of the narrative these stories create collectively … the continuity of past, present and future as a singular way of understanding who you are fundamentally. This is an “ontological/ aesthetic” way of knowing yourself … as a being experience life sensually, contained in the iconic, symbolic representations you form about yourself and your life. One way we do this is in the form of language, the language we use with and about ourselves, and the language we use to describe reality as we know it, including others and our relationships with them.

A “piece of work” then refers to uncovering an aspect of revealing the autobiographical narrative someone is living from, and the affect of that narrative in their life as a mythic form. Of course this also means we’re revealing them to themselves. The revelations we uncover are both ill-formed and well-formed.

Ill-Formed Or Well-Formed Personal Mythology?

Ill-formed myths are fundamentally distortions of reality, not real in some way. Ill-formed myths disconnect you from your life, especially in regard to your purpose, passion and power, and away from living playfully. The ill-formedness creates cognitive dissonance, meaning that when you are operating from ill-formedness what you experience doesn’t make sense, the pieces don’t fit and you cannot form a coherent narrative, or mythic form through time.

Ill-formedness in your personal mythology … the autobiographical narrative your living from that describes reality as you know it and the way you relate to it … leads to what I call mythological distress and ultimately mythological crisis … the story your living doesn’t fit you.

Eventually, an ill-formed personal mythology will lead to ill-formed behaviors, that cannot and will not create the outcomes you desired, or produce the life you intend to be living, the relationships you want to be having, the accomplishments you want to be realizing.

Well-formed myths on the other hand are those that match you intrinsically, the arise from deep within you, before any traumas or comprises of yourself were experienced or occurred. A well-formed personal mythology contains and describes reality as you know it to be as free of distortions as you are capable of achieving. This view of reality leads to coherence that led to a a natural sense of awe and wonder, and a way of being in the world that is playful, childlike but not childish.

Wellformedness in your personal mythology opens you to the possibility of living a life of joy and splendor, experiencing yourself and others in enchanted and enchanting ways … you begin to experience the epiphany or what it means to be fully human and fully alive … life becomes meaningful play, filled with purpose, passion and power without struggle, effort or compromise.

Taking Control Of Your Story, And Your Life

What I’ve found in working with thousands of clients individually, in groups and within organizations and institutions has been that doing the work of living mythologically requires simultaneously becoming aware of your autobiographical narrative and taking control of it. The way this happens begins with choosing to be the author of the scripts you are living from, and rejecting the scripts that others have imposed upon you … often without any conscious awareness that that has happened, or that the script you are running is not your own.

The “writing” of your story, and the scripts you run, rests on the ways in which you perceive and make sense of the experiences you have, the meaning you apply to those experiences, and the decisions you make that lead to the action you take … and, this of course leads to the outcomes your create, as well as those you don’t.

As one of the huge benefits of “doing your work” of uncovering, revealing and taking control of your personal mythology you’ll free yourself from the ways you found yourself stuck in the past … procrastinating, hesitating to act, acting poorly, running in circles and finding yourself trying everything and anything you can think of to move forward, and yet still finding your stuck either not moving or moving and winding up where you began.

I’ve worked often and intensely with clients helping them to get unstuck in many ways and places in their lives, including extremely often in the ways they relate to others in their personal and professional relationships. When you reset your personal mythology it frees you from conflict, resentment, envy, shame, guilt and all the other things that so many people struggle with … without ever needing to wade through the suffering of revisiting those emotional sinkholes.

I find another thing that comes up almost as often can be the way that you relate to your sense of discovering real purpose and meaning in your life and career. Knowing you personal mythology makes how what you do professionally evident to you, the meaning it has in your life, and in relation to others too. Passion come from knowing why you are doing what you do, regardless whether we’re talking about actions you take personally for yourself and with others, or professionally. One of the most powerful things this does for you will be a natural reset of your relationship with money … earning it, accumulating it, spending it and sharing it as well.

It’s also extremely interesting to observe how my clients experience a positive change in their health, physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually, when the take back control of their autobiographical narrative. When you choose to be the author of the stories of your life … what they are, what they mean, and how they organize you to experience your life as it unfolds and you move forward through it … everything becomes clear to you and you have choices about it all, including how those experiences affect your health and wellbeing.

You cannot not live in relation to your life’s story, the autobiographical narrative that shapes and forms you, your experiences, your relationships and the life you are living. Either you choose to take control of your personal mythology, the story you are living, or you are controlled by it.

What’s Next …

As I shared with you at the beginning I love “doing my work” … shaping the story I’m living and sharing my client’s stories, because by keeping my attention here I can help you “do your work” too, and become the author of your life. Let’s get together sometime and tell some stories, eh?

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

Sarasota, Florida

P.S. – WHEN YOU’RE READY … you can always set up a time to arrange a complimentary call with me when you’re ready to begin again … YES, Joseph I’m Ready, let’s get together to explore my personal mythology and the life story I’m living.

P.P.S. – Get my book “Experiencing the Hero’s Journey” and go a bit deeper into the journey of your story by reading a bit about mine … in it I reveal the deep structure of ill-formedness, well-formedness and how to discover your own personal mythology and story.

“I”Am A Narrative

“I”Am A Narrative

by ·

Searching for the Self …

Probably since we first became self-aware humans have been exploring and attempting to make sense of the concept of the self, or the “I.”

Maybe these times more than any other in recent history demand that we achieve the self awareness necessary to process reality as it is … and not as we hope for it to be …

Modern cognitive neuroscience suggests that the “I” must be a function of neurological interactions happening deep in the brain, most of which are occurring at a pre-conscious level of awareness. These interactions are a function of neuronal functions and synaptic connections that happen as a result of what can generally be called learning.*

Exposure and interaction with the external world form patterns that become imprinted in the brain in a process called myelination. These interactions include the sense of self that arises as physical awareness of one’s being, largely experienced and organized in the cerebellum. My sense of this process is that “rear brain” cerebellar processing interacts with “front brain” neocortical processing to create an awareness that forms the self we know ourselves to be.

A neuroscientist, Dr. Masao Ito at the Riken Brain Science Institute in Japan, suggests that it is the cerebellar processing that forms what he referred to as the “implicit sense of self.” In fact, these particular interactions that form the implicit sense of self, or the awareness of the “I” are a kind of recursive, infinite loop that regress upon itself, until only the representation of the “I” remains on the internal screen of our mind as an absolute representation that seems immutable. Yet we also know at another level that this “sense of self’ changes through time.

Essentially I interpret this thinking about the “I” that I know myself to be as a set of neurological interactions as a pattern held intact around a central conception that has many representations that have varied over time. The “I” I know myself to have been at say 7 or 8 years old, doesn’t not correlate in a one to one, isomorphic way with the “I” I know myself to be today. Yet that earlier “I” of 7 or 8 I do know to be a representation of myself from another time.

The kind of variation of my sense of myself as “I” has many forms that are equally me, at points in time that can vary by years or decades, or for that matter minutes or maybe even seconds, as when a particularly strong emotion overtakes me and changes my sense of myself seemingly instantaneously. Yet, some core sense of self, i.e.: “this is me,” remains throughout the varied representations I have as I experience them through time.

The Narrative Of The Self

This “sense of self” as I’m referring to it is contained in narrative, where narrative is the sequencing of events within events as they unfold, e.g.: this happens then that happens … and so on. It could also be languaged as, “this happened, then that happened” or “this happened, then this is happening” or even, “this happened, now this is happening, and then that will happen” so time becomes flexible within narrative.

Also, time isn’t limited to progressing from past to future in narrative, e.g.: because I know that this will happen, I remember that happening, and now this is happening, where the placement in time can be freely moved between moments, in the past, present or future, in any ordering so chosen by the narrator/author. Entire events can disregard any point in time in narrative such that every that has occurred, is occurring or will occur, is the only time referenced.

For each consideration of time, events also need some place to occur as well, e.g.: that happened there, this is happening here, and what will happen will be felt both here and there. This confluence of space and time, is a space-time moment, which I’ll call a “moment” for simplicity, meaning that a “moment” is a reference to a specific space-time where the event in a narrative happened, is happening or will happen.

In any moment each of us has a sense of self that we reference as our “I”… the “I” … or more concisely, simply “I.” Each of the “I”s I experience is considered within the context of the narrative that I hold about the event and the moment within which it occurs. Let me make this clear about the universality of what I am saying to include the event of just thinking about my “I” … for example, who “I” am, or who am “I” … such that there is no experience of self that does not happen as a moment in the narrative.

Since the “I” remains malleable in regard to the moment in which the “I” engages in action in the world, the question of which “I” has the experience comes up as a natural consequence of this understanding. Furthermore, the “I” that has the experience also determines the actions that I take, and the outcomes I produce (including of course not producing an outcome that I intend).

Given all of this, it makes it essential to have some sense of the “I” that would be most likely to haven the experience I want to be having, as well as the “I” most likely to produce the outcomes I intend. Or stated differently, what narrative most likely supports my having the experience I want to be having, and producing the outcomes I intend?

Another, maybe more direct and simple way to consider all of this could be stated as …

The narrative I am holding and operating from determines the experiences I have as well as the outcomes I produce, so in taking control of my self narrative I can direct both the experiences I want to be having and the outcomes I want to be producing.

Fortunately for us we are organized innately to understand narrative, and we posses an innate skill in both responding to and creating narrative on the fly. This of course doesn’t mean we all do this as well as any other, any more than suggesting that we all walk, run or swim as effectively as any other person, but yet possess the innate ability to do these things naturally given the opportunity to do so.

Also, like walking, running and swimming we possess the ability to increase and improve our knowledge, skill and performace in responding to and creating narrative. This suggests that we have an ability to notice for what narrative we are experiencing and responding to with greater facility and effectiveness in regard to producing our intended outcomes, and the ability to increase our facility and effectiveness at creating narratives that are better suited to allowing us to have the experiences we most desire and, those we use in producing our intended outcomes.

Another way to refer to the self narrative form is by the phase “autobiographical narrative,” in this case this refers to the self narrative told by you, about you, to yourself, and to others as you choose. The autobiographical narrative is your “life story” … the way you represent who you have been, who you are and who you will become in narrative form.

If we accept these premises as true for us, then the ability to know you life story can be seen as critical to your self awareness, and more importantly to how you are directing yourself to have your experiences and, how you will respond to events and create the outcomes you do, or fail to do.

Building The Critical Narrative

The narrative you hold as your life story, the autobiographical narrative, is the key to organizing what I call the Ladder of Perception …

  • Perception
  • Sense Making
  • Meaning Making
  • Decision Making
  • ACTION! –> Results/Outcomes

We know the world, and our experience of the events that occur, as a function of who we know ourselves to be in relation to them. This begins with whether or not we even perceive them to begin with, i.e.: we have awareness of the event/s past the threshold of our sensory system processing them for sense making and meaning making.

There are perceptions that occur below the threshold of awareness … i.e.: we are present to the sensorial data, but what we perceive sensorially never reach the level of stimulation necessary for us to become consciously aware that we are perceiving the sensorial stimuli. Yet this transformation from simple impressions in our sensory system, to which we may be responding in a reflexive ways, never make it to the level of conscious processing, i.e.: they remain out of our conscious awareness.

For example many of our phyisological homeostasis responses operate in relation to external, environmental stimuli that we never become aware consciously until they exceed our thresholds of familiarity, comfort, priming , or targeting. Specifically, we can use the sense of temperature changes that we respond to almost instantly via our internal regulation system, keeping our core temperature steady, yet until the range of temperature change exceeds the threshold of comfort we remain largely unaware of these changes happening.

Familiarity and comfort remain largely out of our conscious awareness until these thresholds are breached, e.g.: how salty our food actually is when served and tasted. Yet both priming and targeting can influence the threshold levels we experience. For instance if we are specifically tasting food for the level of salt it contains we become much more sensitive to the taste impression of saltiness. The same is true if we are testing the ambient temperature, say with an intention to dress appropriately.

These threshold conditions are primed in part by the autobiographical narrative we hold, i.e.: how we know ourselves to be in relation to the events we experience. This tends to be especially true in regard to how we experience the “other” … those people we interact with in our lives.

We can build the experience of others into our life story in one way by categorizing people we know as well as those we don’t … e.g.: family, intimate/close friends, casual friends, acquaintances, strangers … enemies. As soon as we fit someone into a category our sense of them (in relation to ourselves, as well as who they are independently of us) becomes influenced by the category into which we’ve placed them.

This example of categorizing people as a reflection of our life story then runs into our ability to make sense of someone immediately upon recognizing them (perception –> sense making), and then almost as immediately making decisions about how to respond to their presence (sense making –> decision making). This in turn determines our response to them (ACTION!) and their response to our response (results/outcomes).

These loops then reinforce or diminish our sense of the validity of our life story as an accurate representation of reality. So for us, reality and the story we tell ourselves and others about it are the same. This remains true for us even when the evidence we’re confronted with presents a contrary view.

Dealing With The Cost Of “Truth”

When confronted with evidence contrary to our life story we typically experience extreme cognitive dissonance, leading to immediate rejection and avoidance in most people. I’d argue that only those who have specifically trained for dealing with cognitive dissonance when it arises in any other way fall into the trap of rejection and avoidance that allows them to keep their pre-existing life story intact.

You pay the cost of failing to produce the results and outcomes you expect, intend and desire … acting insanely, i.e.: being incapable of any action related to what is real beyond your projections of self … when you are living from, and operating in relation to, a life story that rejects and avoids contrary evidence.

Philosophers call this way of thinking and acting “solipsism” …

sol·ip·sism/ˈsäləpˌsizəm/ noun

  1. the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

Psychologically a solipsistic personality exhibits Solipsism Syndrome …

Solipsism syndrome refers to a psychological state in which a person feels that reality is not external to their mind. Periods of extended isolation may predispose people to this condition.

In my experience a large portion of my clients experience either periods of solipsism or respond solipsistically to events in their lives that are contextually driven. I’ve especially seen this when people are going through periods of personal and/or social transition. This prevents them from exiting the loop they find themselves in, where they seem unable to move beyond what limits them, often despite previous success (even in the same domain of consideration).

These folks seem categorically unable to process that “This isn’t That” … or the need to frame what they are experiencing in relation to their pre-existing life story, and the contextual framing represented by it. Their life story has become impenetrable in relation to whatever they are confronting that limits them.

Making the shift that allows your life story to be more porous and permeable in regard to what you confront that leads to a sense of cognitive dissonance provides both relief to the discomfort that leads ordinary folks to rejection and avoidance, and also a way to update your life story to encompass a greater range of possibilities in regard to creating results and outcomes … on your own and with others.

Helping clients make this shift is the primary thing I do … in my webinars and programs, in my 1-to-1 Private Work work with clients, in MythoSelf Process training and mentoring … essentially, I’m all (and to some degree “only” about) helping people to become aware of their life story, how it drives them, and showing them how to modify and update it.

While there may be a million and one ways to tap into the power of your life story, and what could be possible when you update it to more closely reflect reality “as it is” and not “how you want it to be” my singular approach aims at developing profound cognitive adaptability and maturity as personal developmental evolution to achieve new levels of awareness and personal performance. I call this approach the MythoSelf Process, and now you know a bit more about it too.

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

P.S. – If you’d like to arrange a time to explore and discuss working with me privately or joining one of my programs, including the upcoming 2021 MythoSelf Certification programs let’s chat about it …

Schedule A Complimentary Call With Joseph Here

If you’d prefer you can start by requesting more information about the upcoming 2021 MythoSelf Professional Training and Certification Programs …

2021 MythoSelf Professional Training and Certification Programs Info HERE

*NOTE: I dealt extensively with explaining the process of learning, presented as the concept of “wholeform learning” … what others might prefer to refer to as “natural learning” … in my book, “Experiencing The Hero’s Journey” available at Amazon and other booksellers.