ABTI | Joseph Riggio International

Claiming Your Right To Be … Become The Buddha

Taking A (Semantic) Stand …

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you ready for the journey of your life?

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

Best,

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

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

Pathways To A High Ticket Coaching Or Consulting Practice

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

Graves Business Model Venn Diagram JSR

 

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

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

 

Graves Business Model Venn Diagram JSR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

What To Do About It …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

That’s right NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR INTENTION!

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

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

 

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

In other words answer these two question for yourself:

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

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

Now going back a step …

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Summing It Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SENSING TIME

Time lines in an abstract spiral

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

A Sense of Time

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

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

First a little background to where I’m going …

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Teleological Factor

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

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

So this brings me around to my next point …

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

Hi, I’m from New Netherland …

11 nations of the US Map

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

(From Business Insider July 27, 2015)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaping Forward …

Preparing The Future …
Neuro-Evolutionary Modeling

 

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

 

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

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

Here’s my response to that posting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

Let me put it another way …

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

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

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

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

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

 

Situated Cognition:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Embodied Cognition:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Enactivism:

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

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

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

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

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

 

Neuro-Evolutionary Developmental Modeling:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’d love to hear your thoughts …

Buona Fortuna and Abundanza,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

 

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

 

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