Language & Linguistics

SENSING TIME

by Joseph Riggio · Sep 1, 2017

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

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

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

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

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

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

A Sense of Time

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

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

First a little background to where I’m going …

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

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

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

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

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

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

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

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

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

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

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

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

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

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

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

The Teleological Factor

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

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

So this brings me around to my next point …

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My comments on Social Ontology

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 18, 2017

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

Robert,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing can come of nothing.
– William Shakespeare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards … until we meat again,

Joseph Riggio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you guessed right, it does!

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

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

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

Infinite of course!

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

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

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

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

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

The other side?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you want to go?

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

Infinite

Your best

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

Freedom is just another word …

by Joseph Riggio · Sep 21, 2015

… and Freeing Your Mind is where to start!

When I think about “freedom” I think about something that goes beyond place and time.

For instance most folks think of freedom as:

The ability to do what they want, when they want, where they want, whenever they want … or something like that from my observations.

But, that presupposes something that is very typically missing more often than not … the fundamental ability to have a choice in the first place.

Ah, but there’s the rub …

To begin with to have a choice you must first be free of preconceived notions and knee-jerk responses, and so few of us are even a little bit free of those bits of installed mind programs.

From the very beginning, maybe even in the womb, we are being programmed with what to like or dislike, what is good or bad, what to desire or reject … and on and on. Yet we think the things we choose are our preferences most of the time, and not just pre-conditioned responses.

If only that were true …

I’m not here to tell you that your full of it … but I am here to tell you that you are full of pre-conceived notions and knee-jerk responses you think are choices and preferences. Heck, even the way you just responded to reading that last sentence probably falls into the category of pre-conceived notions and knee-jerk response.

Your “brain” ain’t your “mind” … at least not in the way I use those terms.

An easy analogy to use in making my point would be the distinction between “hardware” and “software” in a computing system.

The “hardware” part is analogous to the brain part in humans, the wetware that runs the “software” part.

This would include things like the brain and the central nervous system, and also things like the sense organs and the parts that comprise them as well, e.g.: your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin.

When thinking about the wetware connected to and part of the brain system as I’m using that terminology here the “hardware” mechanisms that provide the input and throughput for the compound senses like balance and proprioception are also part and parcel of what I’m referring to as wetware.

Then you have the “software” that runs on the “hardware,” which in the case of the human brain may be a configuration of the “hardware” itself.

The particular patterns of connections in the brain may be what comprise the programs we run, like the plugboards in early computers . In order to run an instruction set on these early computers wires would have to be physically rerouted to the appropriate connections on a plugboard with dozens or hundreds of fixed, pre-programmed microcircuits (see the image attached to this post above – Programming the ENIAC – Columbia University).

When the plugboard had the wires connected in a particular pattern the particular instruction set associated with that pattern would run, and only that instruction set. If you wanted to run a different calculation, based on a different instruction set, you would have to physically remove the wires from the plugs that linked the pre-programmed microcircuits in the existing order they were in to do it. Then you would have to re-route the wiring to the new configuration that provided the instruction set you now intended to run.

In many ways the human brain seems to be organized much like the early computers were with their pre-programmed microcircuits. Except in the case of the humans the preprogrammed microcircuits are the distinct patterns of neuron firing across the synapses that comprise the wetware of the brain.

The patterns of neural firing in the human brain are preprogrammed by virtue of familiarity. In the cognitive sciences we say that synapses that fire together wire together, meaning that the pattern of use determines the ease of recreating that pattern again.

The more a particular synaptic pattern fires the more it becomes myelinized. Myelin is the fatty sheathing that surrounds healthy nerves and facilitates the transmission of nervous impulses along their pathways. The better a nerve is myelinized the more easily, efficiently and effectively it seems that impulses are able to flow through it.

Nerves also seem to become more myelinized through repetitive use, i.e.: the more a particular pattern is used the more it becomes grooved in as the preferred pathway taken in response to a particular stimulus or category of stimuli. This allows us to build very rapid responses to common action scenarios when exposed to familiar stimuli or a category of stimuli, for example:

There is a particular way you tie your shoes, right lace over left lace first, or visa-versa. Doing it any other way feels unfamiliar and awkward. Yet, tying your shoe laces the way it’s been programmed is so familiar and comfortable it has likely become second nature, and you can probably do it at a pre-conscious level, while attending to something else on a more conscious level.

Your choices aren’t only limited to the way you tie your shoes … and we’re not in Kansas anymore!

So following the logic of the pre-programmed brain patterns we can begin to discuss, “What is the mind?”

In some ways I think it would be fair to consider the “mind” the patterns of neural connections in the “wetware” that we use in thinking consciously, pre-consciously, sub-consciously and trans-consciously.

These patters of wetware connections at one level are what thought is as we understand it today. However, there seems to be more to mind though than just the wetware connections, because we retain an ability to override the preferred patterns grooved into the wetware and do creative, impulsive, spontaneous and original things.

This ability to create unique responses is grounded in the brain (or the total configuration of the wetware in the body-at-large), and at the same time it exceeds the patterns previously organized in the wetware configuration and familiar within it.

Every time you respond as you have “without thinking” you are NOT expressing freedom or choice, you are expressing a pre-conceived notion or knee-jerk response grooved into the patterns in your wetware … like a pattern in the way the wires are configured in the plugboard of the ENIAC at any given time. In this way you are literally only capable of running the particular instruction set associated with that configuration in response to the presenting stimulus – you aren’t “thinking” you’re just following the actions associated with that instruction set.

Have a choice, or being free, requires you have options when acting in relation to any presenting stimulus.

So freedom isn’t being able to do what you want, when you want, where you want, whenever you want … unless you have a choice about doing it at all!

“FREEDOM” is a Mind Game … but you have to first take control of your brain to have access to your mind.

This is something I learned early on in my NLP days … to use a quote from Richard Bandler, one of the co-developers of NLP:

Brains aren’t designed to get results; they go in directions. If you know how the brain works you can set your own directions. If you don’t, then someone else will. – Richard Bandler (http://www.azquotes.com/quote/703363)

In Richard’s book, Using Your Brain For a Change: Neuro-Linguistic Programming says he’s going to give the reader “a manual for running the brain” and in my opinion gets at least part of the way there in his descriptions, instructions and examples.

One of the things that’s interesting to me about “Using Your Brain For a Change” is that Richard never really talks about the hardware as wetware as I have above. Instead of getting into the whole discussion about neural patterns as they operate at a physical level Richard spends all his time discussing our representations of reality, i.e.: how the patterns we make about the world and ourselves are organized.

In particular the discussion of how we organize our representations of reality in this book by Richard Bandler are focused on what he refers to as “submodalities” … unique distinctions about the elements of perception that determine how we make sense of what we perceive and what meaning we attach to those perceptions.

The submodalities of perception are organized into configurations, i.e.: “submodality configurations” that are more significant than any individual submodality standing apart from the pattern of the configuration as a whole.

Submodality configurations are comprised of two aspects that are equally important:

The Semantics of Submodalities: these are the way in which the particular submodality of perception is present in the representation of reality as it is known to you, e.g.: the unique color of someone’s eyes as you recall it and where you “see” that image in your mind’s eye, as well as the brightness, angle of view, distance from you and the way you hold the totality of the representation in regard to the visual image … as a photograph or video for instance.

The Syntax of Submodalities: this is the order or sequence in which the submodality configuration that forms your perception of reality is represented and attended to by you, e.g.: you can notice first the visual submodalities and then the auditory submodalities, or you might notice them in wholeform all at the same time as you would were they occurring in real time, and you might also notice the unique pattern of the submodality in stages as well, first noticing the color, then the brightness, then the angle and so on … and by virtue of the order or sequence the submodality configuration take on a logic unique to the syntax you use.

What Richard explores and examines in his work is both the semantics and syntax of “subjective experience” and how we can alter that for ourselves.

There is a powerful perceptual logic in the semantics and syntax of submodalities, and what’s unique to this logic to me is that it is non-linguistic, and therefore can be held and experienced in wholeform, i.e.: beyond the limits of language.

While language is always digital, with one element … a word, a sentence, a paragraph … distinct from the one before it and the one after, indeed from all other words, sentences and paragraphs, and by it’s very nature needing to be experienced separately from them, life occurs in wholeform, i.e.: all at a time, simultaneously.

Language is also always ordered sequentially and linearly, once more separating it from the experience of life, where many things can and do happen in simultaneity.

Submodalities are a kind of a bridge between the direct sensory experience of wholeform life as it happens and our processing of our conscious experience of life as what happened. They (submodalities) are magical, like the Old Norse runes, they are the elements from which we can conjure our subjective experience as we see fit.

“I, master of the runes conceal here runes of power. Incessantly plagued by maleficence, doomed to insidious death is he who breaks this monument. I prophesy destruction.” – Björketorp Runestone, 6th C. Sweden

Or one more, suggesting a runic use benevolently capable of giving life to the dead …

I know a twelfth one if I see,
up in a tree,
a dangling corpse in a noose,
I can so carve and colour the runes,
that the man walks
And talks with me.

– Odin

Hávamál, Codex Regius 13 C.

The relationship between Subjective Experience … Freedom … and Choice/Choosing

Until we have access to how we are choosing what we are responding to and how we respond to it, we have little or no choice … and, without the option to choose we have no freedom.

Now here’s a critical distinction … we may not always be able to choose “what is” or the elements we are experiencing in our reality, but we always have options about what we choose to make of what we’re experiencing.

How we make sense of things and what we allow them to mean to us is always in our control … when we are able to access the process we use to make sense of and make meaning from the presenting stimulus of our subjective experience.

In this way, even when we are “objectively wrong” we get to choose our own experiences, and from there what and how we choose to respond to as it appears to us.

Here’s another Richard Bandler quote to tie things together:

The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can’t, but in the things you’ve never considered doing. – Richard Bandler (http://www.azquotes.com/quote/703366)

This is the essence of freedom (and mind) as far as I’ve concerned … i.e.: being about to choose what isn’t and hasn’t yet been.

Someone in prison who gets this idea fully can choose “FREEDOM” while doing the time of their sentence. Someone being beaten can choose to make it means something other than the loss of control of their experience.

Regardless, of the circumstance or situation if you can choose what something means to you, you can be free.

One of my favorite scenes of all time is from the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale” with Daniel Craig, playing Bond. He’s being tortured by the criminal mastermind, Le Chiffre, played by the actor Mads Mikklesen. He’s in great pain and likely to be killed imminently in this particular scene:

Bond: I’ve got a little itch … down there. Would you mind? No! No! No! No. To the right. To the right. To the right!

Le Chiffre: You are a funny man, Mr. Bond.

Bond: (Laughing) Yeah! Yes, yes, yes. Now the whole world’s gonna know that you died scratching my balls.

Now that’s having control of one’s “subjective experience” and choosing in the most dire of circumstances!!!

In the end it ain’t what you can or can’t do … or be … it’s the choices you make with what you’ve got.

In the follow up to the scene from “Casino Royale” above Bond is next seen recuperating from his trauma in a hospital accompanied by his paramour in the film, Vesper, played by Eva Green. They are on a lawn and he is clearly weak and debilitated after his ordeal.

Vesper: Hello.

Bond: Hello.

Vesper: You all right? I can’t resist waking you. Every time I do, you look at me as if you haven’t seen me in years.

Bond: It makes me feel reborn.

Vesper: If you’d just been born …wouldn’t you be naked?

Bond: You have me there.

Vesper: You can have me anywhere.

Bond: I can?

Vesper: Yeah. Here, there, anywhere you like.

The scene continues a bit further in the dialogue …

Vesper: You know, James …I just want you to know that if all that was left of you … was your smile and your little finger … you’d still be more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met.

Bond: That’s because you know what I can do with my little finger.

Vesper: I have no idea.

Bond: But you’re aching to find out.

Vesper: You’re not going to let me in there, are you? You’ve got your armor back on. That’s that.

Bond: I have no armor left. You’ve stripped it from me. Whatever is left of me …whatever I am … I’m yours.

There’s something particularly remarkable in these two scenes to me.

There’s something particularly powerful about the nature of having control over one’s self, including the ability to let go … to be fully present to “what is” as well as one’s self and what one wishes to be experiencing in the moment, regardless of what the evidence is that is presenting itself in that moment.

I’d even argue that in terms of mythic form, in this moment captured by these actors, Bond is everyman and Vesper is everywoman … the ideal of the anima/animus as the blended being becoming whole and complete. Wonderful!

The conclusion I reach is that FREEDOM is more a powerful and potent force than PERFORMANCE.

Even though I make much of my living, and devote much of my life’s work to assisting others with mastery in terms of performance, i.e.: linking intention to action in terms of the results and outcomes they achieve, freedom is the real treasure … i.e.: having what you want as you want what you have.

Buona Fortuna & Abundanza,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

New Hope, PA

The Nature of Change

by Joseph Riggio · Jun 12, 2013

**“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.”**

-Graham Greene

**I often get asked something like, “Why bother?” … because it’s unclear to most folks exactly what it is that I do.**

It’s usually a sign of some confusion that I get asked such a thing, because the connection between the work I do … the actual service I provide … is often unclear, even to my clients … except for the results they get. It’s why they keep coming.

To be fair what is unclear is “HOW” what I do works, NOT the outcomes I produce.

The outcomes, the “WHAT” that clients want, are attained within the work we do together … that’s clear.

However, from my point of view the “HOW” is much more interesting than the “WHAT” … despite how obscure it can seem to the uninitiated.

Separating “THIS” and “THAT” … or,
Unraveling the “X/Y Paradigm”

In the simplest terms I am a “Change Artist.”

That is, I help individuals and organizations make changes they want or need to make … for whatever reasons they may have to do so.

To be more specific, I am a “Healer” … in the most traditional sense of that word.

For most people the word “Healer” is a mystery of sorts, carrying a ton of semantic baggage with it.

However according to Webster’s 1913 edition of the dictionary a Healer is:

“One who, or that which, heals¹.”

I prefer this quote in describing a Healer myself:

“Healing is really just a common job, there are lots of healers. She was one, I was one. Doctors, therapists, nutritionists, acupuncturists, dentists, shamans, physical therapists, editors, divorce lawyers, plumbers; there are healers everywhere. I used words and emotion to help people heal. He, I was told, used something along with words and emotion. That’s what interested me, the something else.“

Bill Bruzy (2009-09-15). I Took the Buddha Shopping (Locations 68-71). Kindle Edition.

I too help people to heal with “something else“.

The “healing” I provide people with happens through facilitating change.

If we dig a bit deeper we would come to a more interesting tidbit about the nature of the work I do, and that is that I am actually promoting “changelessness” in the work I do with clients.

You see I’m Graham Greene on this one, that “changelessness” is more welcome by most people than happiness. BUT unlike Graham, I believe that perceiving and experiencing the extant changelessness at one’s core is what they actually seek … NOT the changelessness he refers to on the outside, i.e.: no change in the context of their lives, stability and consistency over all.

Folks are simply confused about this, and it’s what I believe leads to confusion in my work too.

I’m never confused about what I do, or for that matter, what I’m doing when I’m working with clients … I’m aiming at what is changeless in the individuals and organizations I work with, and making that manifest and extant in how they experience themselves.

Sometimes it’s also about how people in relationships experience what is changeless in their relations … but it’s always the same old, same old … or as my teacher, mentor and friend would tell me … “Joseph you’re a one trick pony.

The real trick is the paradox that to become changeless you must first change, and I am gifted at provoking change in people.

Healing Beyond Words …

What’s sometimes surprising to me is how the obviousnesss of what I do escapes folks, even those I’ve worked with for years sometimes.

Sure, they get the outcomes the come for … the the “HOW” seems elusive, or invisible, to them somehow.

What they miss most of all is that what they really get is healing … deep, profound, unspeakable healing.

This is understandable, how they miss the healing part of it … because it’s beyond words, and beyond the common paradigm. WHAT I do, and HOW I do it, are beyond how “it’s done” in the modern framework.

Heck, if I more openly called what I do “healing” or called myself a “Healer” most folks who don’t yet know me would be more likely to use the label “quack” … especially when I refer to healing relationships and organizations!

I’m guessing though that quite a few of the folks who do know me, when they read this, will get exactly what I’m talking about … and may even wonder why I don’t more often use these terms in referring to what I do or myself.

There is another part of the “trick” I do. My “trick” depends on helping my clients get to NOTHING before they get what they want.

This is where we separate the clients who will make and those that will go back to where they’ve always been … those who choose the red pill and those who choose the blue pill.

“Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.“

From: The Matrix (1999)

It’s about the choice between the path of seeking change or unveiling one’s changelessness and learning to remain constant in that.

It’s about the freedom to become who you are … fully, completely and wholely … and in that healing what ails you. In becoming changeless, even when the disease remains … the discomfort is relieved.

The idea of becoming changeless is far beyond “healing” as most people have been taught to think about it … it’s about leaving the Matrix behind.

Profound healing is NOT about getting better, or getting past or over what ails you, or learning how to cope with it either.

Profound healing is stepping into your life “as it is” without changing a thing … and in that finding the enchantment, wonder and awe present in this moment.

Then and only then, when you’ve stepped beyond the Matrix, delved into the deepest regions of your being, and begun to experience the essential nature of your changelessness, can you begin to re-emerge into the world proper and choose the life you will lead.

Maybe even more acurately than calling myself a “Change Artist” or “Healer” .. in the tradition of Tarkovsky I should call myself a “Stalker”². This is very particular and peculiar skill … one I seem to have a proclivity and prodigious training for as well³.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 ↩
A guide who leads others into the “Zone” where their deepest desires are revealed, and their wishes granted. ↩
My everlasting thanks to Roye Fraser. ↩

PS – Summer Intensive Training w/Dr. Joseph Riggio:

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication
Professional Certification Training

Presented by ABTI | Princeton and Acuity World, DK

SPECIAL ONE WEEK ONLY OFFER
(expires 19 June 2013)

Opps … I made a BIG MISTAKE …

My partner Henrik Wenoe, at Acuity World has been on my case for weeks (months really) to announce this training program to my list … but I’ve simply been swamped.

The Early-Bird pricing “officially” ended on 15 May 2013 … and here we are almost a month later and I haven’t even let folks know about this powerful program we’re running this summer.

So I’m taking the blame and doing what I can to make it up to you …

For the next week you can still get the Early-Bird pricing for either attending the event live in-person, or via Live Internet Simulcast (there’s even an option to pre-purchase just the videos) … when you register directly using this link:

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive

You’ll SAVE $3000 from the Regular Investment for this 12-day Intensive program when you attend it live (BTW the investment includes room and board with three meals a day, snacks and coffee/tea/water all day long).

If you want to attend via the Live Internet Simulcast … now broadcast in HD via my private LiveSteam MythoSelf Channel … or pre-purchase the HD video recordings, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Early-Bird pricing as well.

BUT … you must act immediately to get the Early-Bird Pricing (there’s also a three-payment plan I’ve set up for you as well if you want to spread out your payments over three months) …

Here’s the link you need to use to register and get the Early-Bird pricing:

MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive

[NOTE: The full program brochure is here: http://www.acuityworld.com/pictures_da/med_clips/Joseph%20Riggio_2013.pdf]

The Aesthetic Frame

by Joseph Riggio · Jul 17, 2012

There’s a profound possibility in organizing aesthetically … in other words to see the world in terms of pattern and potential beauty. I used a word for it in a response on Facebook earlier today … “SPLENDOR” … to become present to and aware of SPLENDOR.

Specifically the beginning point may be as simple as choosing to acknowledge that your experience reflects you. What you perceive reflects your being-ness in any given moment. I keep peppering my posts with the word “ontology” referring to this idea of being-ness. From my point of view it is both the beginning, center and end point of everything we experience.

Much of what has been written about “personal development” and even much of what has been written about “spiritual development” is organized around what we know and/or believe to be true. What we know and believe belongs in the domain of epistemology, which as I see it emerges from ontological ground.

Here’s an easy way to translate the fundamental position I’m presenting from the philosophical …
“You can’t have an idea or opinion if you don’t first exist.”

So I’ve pointed the vast majority of my adult working life towards exploring existence … my own and that of others … what it is and how we do it.

The Aesthetic Frame

What I’ve found in my explorations of existence, i.e.: my ontological research, all points to the possibility that the only way to fully experience our existence resides in the aesthetic frame.

We experience everything first sensorially, through direct sensory experience. Even our inner reality seems to be comprised from bits and pieces of our sensory experience … recombined, reconstituted, re-formed into vast landscapes of imagination.

If this has any validity, i.e.: we first experience everything sensorially, through our senses … doesn’t it then make sense to build a methodology that deepens our sensory experience as the primary means we possess to experience our lives most fully?

This is the primary argument for building the aesthetic frame, to experience our lives most fully.

The aesthetic frame requires that we suspend all judgement and/or assigning any meaning until we’ve fully experienced at the sensory level the events of our lives. This pattern of willful suspension, an intentional inhibition if you will, creates a uniquely powerful framework for making meaning, taking decisions and acting in our lives.

So What’s The Problem?

Well … there isn’t any really. As a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (most of it published posthumously), I accept that all problems are actually puzzles in language … if you accept that logic is bound in language (and I do that too).

(If you want the direct insight on Wittgenstein’s premises of philosophical puzzles start with his “Philosophical Investigations“ … and let that lead you to what’s next …)

However, back to the issue of building The Aesthetic Frame …

The most significant thing you can do when you are organizing an aesthetic frame begins with learning how to operate in multilevel, multilayered realities – realities that are common to all creative geniuses. As simply stated as I can these realities hold more than one “truth” simultaneously, often “truths” which are in opposition or cancel one another out.

Another way of putting it would be to say that these realities hold multiple perspectives regarding the same data present in the system in this moment, effectively creating multiple moments of opportunity simultaneously.

Once you get the power of accessing multilevel, multilayered realities you’ll have access to a level of creativity that very few folks ever experience.

When you hold multiple positions of perspective simultaneously – about any given “truth” – the sense of uncertainty that so often unnerves and confuses others in complex and chaotic situations, never comes up for you.

This is another function of achieving an internal cognitive state of NOTHING, which is different from the ontological or internal state … or more simply stated, a way of being you operate from … where the cognitive state of NOTHING is present.

Resonance & The Aesthetic Frame

One of the most powerful ways to arrive at NOTHING is through the lens of resonance …

Accessing resonance in your life begins with becoming open to what I refer to as the “Signals In The System” … or the seemingly insignificant data that arises and becomes present in the context in which you are operating.

Noticing birds of prey as an example of resonance that I attend to is one that I’ve used before. In and of itself the bird of prey, an eagle … hawk … or falcon … isn’t necessarily significant, but I place significance on its presence when I become aware of it.

When I notice a bird of prey it shifts my internal state so something we can refer to as hyper-awareness. It focuses my attention and I begin to notice other data in the environment, my own internal state and my thoughts in the moment. This shift in consciousness often leads to cognitive leaps where something seemingly insignificant becomes significant, or I may arrive at a conclusion about something that’s been elusive that suddenly comes into focus and becomes clear.

On another level, noticing for “Signals In The System” can also be about noticing very subtle signs and signals that are present in a context that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. An example of these kinds of signs and signals might be noticing a subtle somatic shift as someone is speaking, either in the speaker or a listener … or it could be an equally subtle and elusive change in tone.

The famous anthropologist, E.T. Hall, referred to subtle contextual signals in terms of spatial distinctions, e.g.: high territoriality and low territoriality cultures, temporal distinctions, e.g.: monochronic and polychronic cultures, and communication preferences, e.g.: high context and low context cultures. These can also be referred to as attending to “Signals In The System.”

Within the context of the work I do, i.e.: using the Soma-Semantics model within the MythoSelf Process, we place a significant amount of attention on subtle signals that can be referred to as attending to transpersonal data. For instance, using what emerges contextually in terms of semantic and somatic data that the individual presents in conversation/dialogue a significant amount of information about their personal history becomes obvious, despite what they are attending to in the moment.

E.g.: As someone begins talking about a movie they’ve recently seen they inevitably reveal information about what they attended to (noticed) and how they attended to it in the storyline. This information reveals something about when developmentally they were perceptually positioned relative to the story. This information will be present in their semantic (language) and somatic (body based) exposition.

Attending to information at this level demands residing within an aesthetic frame. From within the aesthetic frame this kind of information becomes most evident and trackable in terms of resonance. Rather than attempting to attend to the subtle “Signals In The System” directly it can be far better to simply REMAIN PRESENT TO THE TOTALITY OF WHAT EMERGES AND NOTICES WHERE YOUR ATTENTION FLOWS … WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO CONSCIOUSLY DIRECT IT.

This effect, i.e.: noticing without effort via attending to what becomes resonant for you, rises naturally from residing within the aesthetic frame.

POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

Within the tri-legged structure that I use, POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE, the idea of the aesthetic frame constitutes the foundation for the CREATIVITY leg.

Creativity allows you to exceed the limits of the current frame you find yourself operating within. Using a creative process/approach you are literally about to extend the frame beyond its current limits. You add to what is present by bringing into the context something that is not yet contained within it.

To do this … bring something into the context something that is not yet contained within it … you must be able to extend yourself beyond the limits of the current frame, i.e.:

When you are operating creatively,
rather than playing within the boundaries,
you begin playing with the boundaries.

This way of operating, i.e.: playing with the boundaries, allows you to transcend uncertainty … and to bring certainty into a context where it isn’t yet present.

This is akin to bringing certainty to the unknown … quite a trick (literally a quantum trick, transcending linearity and cause & effect, by making a quantum jump to what exists outside of and beyond the frame that contains you in the moment)!

This also requires holding multiple perspective simultaneously in place. In order to have certainty in the face of the unknown you must bring NOTHING to bear on the current situation. By this I mean that you apply no judgement or expectation to the situation.Specifically, the ability to hold an intention about outcome/s without necessarily holding an expectation about the outcome … other than in a moment to moment manner.

Bringing NOTHING to bear on the current situation is the ability to hold only “What’s Next …” in mind at any given time as demanding action, while holding the entirely of the scope of your consideration in place without any urge or urgency about committing action to it.

As I said quite a trick …

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

New Games and New Code …. Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

by Joseph Riggio · Mar 20, 2012

New Games and New Code …
Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

I’ve struggled with writing this post for more than a few days now.

Let me begin at the beginning and sharing why this has been a difficult post for me to write.

I hate the idea of being a harbinger of doom, and this is not going to be that, but there are some folks who might read it that way anyway because of their existing mindset. So the compromise I’ve decided to make is to let you know up front that this won’t be my regular cheery, inspiring type post, but something more serious and deeper.

WARNING:

If you are prone to being easily pulled to a negative mindset you might want to stop reading here and delete this particular post. What I want to share in it will be disturbing for some to read, especially if they are not prepared to hear some inconvenient truths and deal with them before time runs out on them. Sorry to be so blunt, but the prime directive of my philosophy is truly “First Do No Harm – To One’s Self.”

Okay now that we have that out of the way and you’ve decided to step beyond reasonable caution and my warning about what might be perceived as disturbing news I’ll get to it with you …

YOUR TIME IS LIMITED TO TAKE ACTION ON YOUR BEHALF TO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A NEW WORLD ORDER.

I assume if you’re a regular reader you know that I am a U.S. citizen and reside in the United States. However, I by no means consider myself any less of a citizen of the planet than an American citizen, because anyone who’s thinking clearly realizes that no one can afford to ignore the interconnectedness of the planet on a global level.

I’ll leave the pure science to the scientists (physical, biological and social), but you are probably aware of the news that circulates about things like:

global warming (fact not fiction, only the cause is in debate)
recent significant sun spot activity (the most extreme in recent times)
the dire state of our oceans (depleted fishing stocks, coral reef die off, pollution on a scale that’s visible from space …)
the issue with our energy sources that will likely continue to exacerbate (oil reserves are dwindling, new sources of oil have consequences that we need to seriously consider, e.g.: fracking shale and the chemical pollution, running pipelines across virgin wilderness, oil spills in the oceans and seas …, nuclear power and the containment and waste issues …)
political and economic unrest circulating around the planet (the rising tensions on the mid-East … Israel/Iran, Libya, Syria …, the economic fallout in the E.U. … Greece’s imminent default, Spain and Italy on the verge of serious economic tailspins …)

I could point to more but I’m sure you get the point … i.e.: there’s serious stuff happening. This is not news BTW … there’s always serious stuff happening. The news is that it’s happening on a global scale that’s largely unprecedented in modern times in a world that is inextricably interconnected in a way that has never before been present to my knowledge.

Becoming An Enlightened World Citizen:

This makes it urgent that we all become Enlightened World Citizens. I mean that we commit ourselves to pulling ours heads up out of the sand, waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee regarding the state of the planet, including but not limited to the state of the various societies in which we reside.

The opposite of being an Enlightened World Citizen is believing that “the government” will take care of it … or that there are others more qualified to address the serious issues we are confronting than we are … this is just an artifact of the manipulation of all governments in the modern era, but give me a moment more to explain.

Sometime recently, let’s just say sometime post World War II as a common demarcation point, there has been a shift from governments that hold an obligation to serving the people to governments that serve themselves, i.e.: the people in and running the world government bodies. We’ve seen a worldwide crisis in the political domain to governments declaring that their top priority is the continuation of government (and we can assume that means the folks who are now running it and their direct supporters) and not the fate of the common people that are by default the nation these governments represent. This is in fact a declaration of class warfare, establishing a privileged class of those who hold senior government roles and those who support them, i.e.: big money backers, and the rest of us.

Please make no mistake about this … I do not intend you to read my last sentence above as hyperbole, i.e.: that our governments are declaring a de-facto class warfare on the common citizen, but instead as a statement of obvious fact based on evidence that can be tracked.

Governmental Class Warfare:

For example, here in the United States we saw an abominable piece of legislation passed as a National Health Care Bill putting into law forced purchasing of health care from privately held insurance companies under the duress of fines to be executed by the Internal Revenue Service. This is horrific legislation in my opinion and in the opinion of many clear thinking social and political scholars. The supporters are decrying that it was the best they could do, but better than nothing. I say we’d be better off with nothing, but I’ll leave that be for now.

Let me just address one specific aspect of that bill. As an accommodation to those who are in government, i.e.: the folks who wrote and passed the National Health Care legislation, they are above this law. Pubic “servants”, e.g.: congress men and women, senators and of course the President and his family, will keep their government provided (read: paid for by the people) health care policies, which are A) unavailable to the common citizen and B) superior to just about any privately provided insurance policy that an individual can purchase barring all considerations of cost. This is a de-facto statement of a declaration of a privileged class by my reading of the evidence. As an American citizen I find this to be offensive legislation, and doubly so when it’s sold to the public as serving the underserved.

I can point out more … e.g.: the recent legislation here in the U.S. that makes the time honored laws around haebeus corpus null and void. If you question my veracity of this claim here is a direct quote from the ACLU:

“The Senate voted 38-60 to reject an important amendment [that] would have removed harmful provisions authorizing the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world… We’re disappointed that, despite robust opposition to the harmful detention legislation from virtually the entire national security leadership of the government, the Senate said ‘no’ to the Udall amendment and ‘yes’ to indefinite detention without charge or trial.”¹

If you understand constitutional law in an even cursory way, or care at all about civil liberties as a citizen, this is a terrifying indication of things to come. Habeus corpus is a fundamental point in any conversation about “the rule of law’ that is so often cited by fans of big government initiative. The right of habeus corpus was established in English Common Law in 1679 in the Habeus Corpos Act, and has remained a central tenant of the rule of law in terms of protecting the rights of the citizenry against undue government aggression. Yet here we are after more than three hundred years of accepting this as a fundamental right of law granted to the citizens for protection against their government taking unjust action against them with the repeal of this law virtually overnight.

Maybe the more significant question here is whether this legislation to suspend habeus corpus is even constitutional. This is important to you regardless of where you are reading this from, what your national origin of citizenry is, or in which country you reside. It is not only an issue of U.S. law, but of an indication of the kind of changes to common law that are being worked into systems around the world … often in the guise of national security, national sovereignty or national prosperity. This last, national prosperity, is possibly the most worrying.

In Greece recently we’ve seen an entire population held hostage not even by their own government, but by the actions of an external body who has demanded austerity measures placed on the people of that nation that serve the external actors far more than they serve the people of Greece. If Greece defaults on it’s economic obligations today there is little doubt that the country as a whole would suffer severe economic retribution from it’s lenders. However, this begs the question, “Which is worse, a single default with the repercussions that will entail on a road back to economic stability, or the on-going deprivations of an entire nation to keep feeding the economic masters they come to depend upon?”

Along with our international allies, here in the U.S. we are becoming ever more subject to the dubious imposition of “international law” that our government, specifically the Presidential Administration, seems ever more willing to allow to usurp of rights as a sovereign nation. We are engaged in war acts on behalf of an international request without the due sanctioning of those acts by Congress, who by U.S. Constitutional law hold the sole right to declare and engage in war acts. The only exception to this is direct and imminent threat to the nation of the United States and/or the land itself.

According to United States constitutional law the President can only act with urgency to secure the national interests of the United States, and then still must go to Congress to authorize any continuation of the war acts. Our current President, Barack Obama, has declared himself above this constitutional imperative, denying even the questions posed to him to address this issue. This is evident by example in the recent action taken in Libya by U.S. armed forces, first in the bombing raid and then in terms of supplying ground support. His excuse was that there was an international request for U.S. action, and he complied, without feeling any need to honor constitutional law it seems.

This, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg. While many of my examples above are based on actions occurring here in the U.S., they are typical of the kinds of actions governments are enacting around the world as I write this post. The point of these examples are to provide the impetus to recognize that you must become responsible for your own sovereignty first and foremost.

The Challenge of Sovereignty:

Now here’s the major concept I want to introduce …

It’s largely impossible to remain “sovereign” as an individual in today’s political and economic climate … you can only seek to remain aware and move with the flow of the actions you are subject to, unless and until there is a major revisioning of the structure of both national and international laws and significant political reform.

For what it’s worth, I think this will happen … very probably within the lifetime of most of the folks who are likely to be reading this post.

However, unless and until this kind of reform happens you have only yourself to turn to, along with those who share a like-minded view and are savvy enough to be preparing themselves to act as and when necessary.

Once again, let me be clear as to what I mean by the statement above.

I am not suggesting stockpiling food and water.
I am not suggesting that you arm yourself and stockpile weapons and ammunition.
I am not suggesting that you conspire to revolt or rise against the government with violence.

These are the acts of fear that I would specifically suggest you avoid and shun. At best actions of this kind are a bandaid on a grievous wound should they become necessary, i.e.: to protect ourselves against a government gone haywire that seeks to harm it’s own citizens, or a major economic or environmental catastrophe.

I am suggesting that you become informed, and to stay informed.
I am suggesting that you develop and hone the skills to notice what I call “the signals in the system.”
I am suggesting that you let go of your false beliefs of security based on the way the world was fifty or more years ago.
I am suggesting that you build a kind of internal “rapid response system” that will allow you to respond to the events that unfold around you in real time (and not after the fact when it’s too late to do what you need to for yourself and those you care about and love).
I am suggesting that your primary tool of survival is your mind in times like these, and you must prioritize it’s care and feeding so to speak.
I am suggesting that you do whatever it takes to develop razor-honed senses that allow you to react prudently despite the crisis or chaos that emerges around you.

Now I admit I’m a bit biased, but I deeply and truly believe that preparing for what’s coming by trying to build a stockpile of any kind of material resources BEFORE you build the mental resources that will serve you in crisis and chaos is downright foolish and possibly suicidal.

I had the privilege of beginning this path of formally learning how to be mentally prepared to deal with whatever life and the world threw my way from the tender age of 15 or so. I could go into detail, but that would detract from the essential message I want to be sharing here. Suffice it to say that I’ve had teachers who were real life experts in survival in circumstances of crisis and chaos, including real life and death scenarios, and that I took their lessons to heart.

What I learned from these folks is that becoming mentally agile and nimble is the single best form of security in times that are uncertain. If nothing else I would expect you would agree with me that we live in uncertain times. What these folks paid attention to were using the signals in the system to project where the system was moving before it arrived at where it is headed.

Playing the “New Game” Using the “New Code”:

Today I meet many people who are playing the game as it was defined fifty or more years ago, and missing the big picture that the game has changed. Let me state that categorically, this is NOT the game your parents and grandparents played … it’s not changing, it has already changed … and woe to you if you fail to catch up and smell the metaphorical coffee that’s burning on the stove as you’re reading this now. You’ve got to catch up and learn how to properly interpret the signals in the system based on the “new code” that is present today, and not apply the code you learned growing up, or the code constantly being misrepresented in the popular media today.

The “old code” worked for a long time, i.e.: become part of the system … study hard, do well in school, get a good job, keep your nose to the grindstone … and you would largely be rewarded commensurately with your contribution. This no longer holds true. In fact this is the most blatant form of misinformation and propaganda that you could possibly be subjected to in the current system, i.e.: “education is the great equalizer” … BULLSHIT! Education is absolutely NO GUARANTEE that you will succeed or even survive … just ask the thousands of college graduates out of work and laboring under unbelievable debt from student loans.

However, your government, big business, the wealthy upper-class in all societies internationally, the popular media lapdogs … all will try to persuade you of this “evident” truth, e.g.: Mitt Romney, a current front-runner in the U.S. primaries for the selection of the Republican Presidential candidate, recently told a student who questioned him in a rally to select a school that doesn’t cost too much that would provide a good education, and “not to expect the U.S. government to forgive student loans.” This is both atrocious and frightening behavior from a super-wealthy politician who hopes to become President of the United States. I can assure you this is NOT the advice he’s given to his children. His children are more likely than not to attend one of the most privileged schools in the United States, make contacts there that will secure them entry into the most select opportunities for the rest of their lives, and carry with them the calling card that opens doors only having an elite education can do for you in the United States.

As I said, make no mistake about this … we are engaged in class warfare … and the only “real” weapon you have is your mind.

How-To Survive, Succeed and Prosper In the “New Game” Using “New Code”:

Okay … so what can you do?

First of all you can acknowledge and recognize that this is indeed a new game we are all playing.
Next, you can acknowledge and recognize that they old rules no longer apply.
Third you can begin to learn the “new code” I’ve referred to above.
And, most importantly you can begin to build and develop the mental tools you’ll need to play this new game using the new code effectively.

I’ll leave steps one and two above to you, with a single caveat … you’d be a fool to trust the popular media for your news. This includes any widely distributed newspaper, periodical, radio or television news programming. There are no sources that fall under these categories I’ve just mentioned that are exempt. Tuning into many of these sources, making a concerted effort to tune into those news sources that hold seemingly conflicting views is a start if you’re not prepared to go further, however this will NOT keep you informed in the way I’m suggesting in this post.

Understand this … the major news media is a business enterprise, and as such it’s primary obligation is to make money NOT to report the news or provide world-class journalistic objectivity or coverage. To get beyond the surface level that the major media news sources are committed to maintaining, including all the misinformation and propaganda, you would have to go to much more selective sources, and that is beyond the scope of this posting to provide. The best recommendation I can quickly give you however is this, A) find independent resources and speciality resources (e.g.: scientific journals, academic journals …) and B) cross check their reporting to gain a wider view of the stories you are following, and become selective in where you place your attention … most reporting is entertainment and designed to deflect your attention from the real stories that matter. You can only build this skill with commitment and time.

If you’re willing to make the commitment and devote the time to gathering and absorbing the real news you will become far more discerning about local and world affairs, and my points 1 and 2 above will be taken care of, however you cannot skip this step and expect to succeed in steps 3 and 4.

In order to discuss how to learn the new code I’m referring to I need to take a minute and define what I mean by the new code.

The new code is a reference I’m using regarding the rules of engagement in the new game we are currently playing globally. The best way for me to get to the new game is to point out some of the old games (there are more than I’m going to point to here).

Old Games:

Game A:

There was a game called, “The church/temple/mosque, state, government … will take care of you.” this game is still prevalent in some parts of the world, and present in virtually all parts of the world to some degree or another, i.e.: some portion of the population is still playing this game. The markers of this game are … “Just be good, do all that is required and requested of you and the rest will take care of itself.” The people who play this game are hoping for the kind of stability and security that the senior players, i.e.: priests, rabbis, imams, monk … president, prime minister, dictator … whatever, promise them. Ultimately the people who play this game become fodder for the feeding of the people they serve.

Game B:

There is another game called, “If you have enough and take care of your self you’ll be okay.” this is a game of material acquisition. It is very prevalent today in many parts of the world. In fact this is still probably the most prevalent game begin played today, even by most of the folks who live at or near the top of the heap, and virtually everyone in the middle who isn’t playing the game above. The markers for this game is the belief in the idea that, “He who has the most toys wins.” or “You have to look out for yourself because no one else is looking out for you.” … and the idea that you can have enough to keep you secure, safe and sovereign despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. This game will continue to be popular and played, even giving those who succeed best at it some illusion of the security, safety and sovereignty they seek, however all the evidence is in that it is only a matter of time until you can’t have enough to be protected.

Game C:

A third game is called,“If you are part of the right group you too can share in the wealth and privilege that is rightfully yours.” this is a game that has gained popularity among folks living in the most prosperous nations of the world, who themselves come from a position of prosperity (largely the result of those who played or are playing the game above). This is the most dangerous game on the planet in my opinion. It’s dangerous in many ways.

First of all the people who play it often believe it is “the game” that should be played by everyone, so they seek to bring everyone into their game … willingly or not.
Secondly, they think they are playing a game that has equal rules for everyone playing it, while they ignore all those who are not playing and can’t or won’t, and the significant stratification to resources even among those who are playing.
Third, and most significantly, this is the game that the top politicians and their cronies are playing at around the world and the others playing at it support them in achieving the lifestyles and privilege I’ve been bemoaning in this entire posting.

The markers for this game include, “You can play with us if you agree to join us and use our rules … but of course we respect your right not to play, we just won’t share any of our resources with you and will persecute you for being different.” What makes this so scary is that the folks who play this particular game really believe in the game they are playing, and that it’s only right everyone should be playing this game with them.

New Games (and the New Code they use):

Now there are two new code games I want to present for your consideration:

New Game 1:

This game is called, “I’m free to do what I want, when I want and where I want … as long as I don’t get caught by the system.” this game is the outgrowth of a jet-setting lifestyle popularized by those playing Game C above. The folks who play this game believe they can remain just outside of any system that seeks to contain them, using multiple sets of rules as suits them to achieve the freedom and liberty they most desire. A couple of the markers of this game are, “I’m a world citizen and don’t feel confined by or obligated to any one nation or system on the planet.” and “The formal systems on the planet are so f@#ked up that the only way to survive is to find a way to be beyond their reach.” Following these rules the players of this game seek to remain unencumbered by any single system, but to benefit from as many of the systems they encounter as they can. To some extent the players of the first new code game are first and foremost game players who seek to win the game even if it means sacrificing a hand or two depending on the cards their dealt in this round. An advantage of this game is that they players are good at inventing new ways to win and leaving others alone, while they pursue their own satisfaction. A major disadvantage of this game is that it does little to nothing to contribute to the common good, and in fact saps the resources of the system-at-large serving only the individual who is playing.

New Game 2:

This game is called, “I’m sick and tired and I’m not going to take it anymore … join up or be left behind!” and it’s a game that is gaining serious popularity and adherents among the children of the common folk who are playing games B and C above. The markers of this game include, “You’ve left me a world that is dying and depleted, and you expect me to sit by passively, while you continue to suck up the resources of the world and f@#k it up for the rest of us!” These are largely young, ambitious and angry youth who want to live the promise of a different future than games A, B or C suggest to them. They are willing to move from complaining to taking action, including stepping away from the old rules and old code of the old games. When their momentum builds enough they are quite willing and able to take the reigns from the current stock of world leaders and reset the system. The only real questions in my mind are:

will they have enough time to do it
will there be enough left to build a new future from when they are in control, and
what damage will happen between now and then as the transition to New Game 2 is unfolding?

So the new code I’m referring to is reflected in the attitudes of the people who are playing the new games (1 & 2 above). Some of the distinctions of people who are playing the new games using new code are that:

they are self-responsible – not leaving it to others to determine their fate
they are globally, socially, economically, politically and environmentally aware
they are activists – even if it is only in their own self-interest, they are innovative and committed to inventing new solutions to the situations they encounter instead of depending on old formulas, dictums and paradigms

While we could extend this list that should give you a good idea about what I mean by the “new code.”

Learning the New Games and the New Code:

Frankly learning the new games and the new code isn’t going to be for everyone. Just a posting like this is enough for many people to get them running back to the old game they’ve been playing, going back to sleep and accepting the pablum they’re being fed that passes for news, driving their head under the sand and hoping this is all just another “Chicken Little Chant” claiming that the sky is falling.

Only the folks who are ready to become Enlightened World Citizens are likely to sit up and take notice of a posting like this, in fact I expect I’ll be getting equal numbers of hate mail and praise mail once I’ve published this post. I look forward to both because it’s all data in the system and grist to the mill of my mind as I continue to hone my “new code” skills.

Here are some of my recommendations for you if you’ve decided that what I’m proposing is interesting and you’d like to know more, or take the next steps forward.

If you are over the age of seventy :

stay alert and do what you can to pick up on the signals in the system
be prepared to hunker down and secure what you have, largely by becoming “grey” … don’t stand out
do what you can to preserve and secure what wealth you have
if you don’t yet have any security funds of your own start setting some aside as the dole may dry up (think in terms of hard, liquid, moveable assets for at least part of this funding)
build networks of contacts you can count on and to the extent you’re able who can count on you … include those who are older and need your help if possible, as well as those who are younger and you can reach out to in times of need or crisis (this may be your most important lifeline if things really hit the fan)

If you are between the ages of fifty and seventy:

begin becoming a consumer of world news, including non-traditional resources in your data feed (the Internet can be a great source of these resources, but you have to be discerning about the quality of the data you’re receiving)
make a concerted effort to build multiple nest eggs … DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET! (use access to international funding to build resources in more than one jurisdiction legally so if something critical hits one of the places where you are invested you can resort to your other holdings)
consider your hard assets and liquid assets as perishable and create a plan of action regarding what you will do if they are devalued in some significant way (your best resource is your ability to create new wealth on the fly, if you don’t yet have a way to do this consider getting the knowledge and/or skills you need to prosper in hard times, e.g.: manual craft skills will always be necessary and in demand, basic life survival knowledge and skills will always be in demand as well)
if you don’t yet have them invest in learning real “human skills” – including high quality communication and decision-making skills (even in the worst of times these can’t be taken from you and will most definitely serve you – two recommendations in this arena are Paul Eckman’s “Telling Lies” and “Leadership and Self-Deception” by The Arbinger Group)
depending on where you see yourself on your career trajectory make the most of it, or find a way to ease yourself out of it with as many good contacts in place as possible (this is likely to be the moment in your life where you have the most substantial and well developed professional contacts you will ever have, deepening those that are valuable to you is worth your time and effort, do this by becoming a valuable contact yourself)

If you are between the ages of thirty-five and fifty:

make a significant commitment to becoming an astute and diligent consumer of information – commit to reading multiple sources of news, both popular and alternative, also subscribe to a leading journal in science, social sciences/economics/foreign policy and at least one from your personal field of professional focus
build a deep nest egg, and then diversify your investments – use multiple forms of investment, and don’t be afraid to include some risky investments in the mix with a high potential for strong and aggressive growth, also include some hard assets – especially those that are liquid and mobile
commit to developing exquisite skills, both professional/expert and general human skills (e.g.: communication/decision-making) – you need to invest in developing yourself at least as much if not more than your portfolio, these are the most permanent resources you can develop – despite changes that occur in the world around you these are yours to keep, being skillful in human interaction will be seen more and more as an expert skill that has high value in the future as it’s unfolding (NOTE: don’t be misled by the current emphasis on science and technology, while these skills will remain important they will become more and more commonplace to possess, while real expertise in the general human skills will be less available and more highly valued)

If you are under the age of thirty five (what are you doing reading this?):

this is the moment to be developing your life skills and contacts aggressively – this translates into doing things, lots of things … build multiple experiences and get as wide a variety of exposure as you can, specifically don’t get lost in a single space, e.g.: a “lifetime” position, because it won’t exist for you when you need it most
become financially astute, but don’t worry about creating your fortune – Henry Ford is famous for saying that he didn’t save a nickel until he was forty, he invested all his money in himself and his business until then … a man ahead of his time, but you do want to learn about the way money works and how the financial marketplace and the economy will and do effect you … study the patterns of movement of money to build a facility to notice the patterns as they are emerging and then move onto developing a sense for predicting where the markets are heading
develop a “sixth sense” for people, learn who to stay close to and whom to avoid – you have a unique window of opportunity to develop your people skills in a way that will become unavailable to you as you grow older, this is akin to the window of opportunity to learn a new language with greater facility at particular points in your development than others, as we approach full adulthood and maturity we are naturally organized to reset our patterns of personal interaction in a way that becomes more fixed as we get older, take advantage of this window by engaging in as much productive human contact as possible – and find opportunities to get high quality input from others who can help you establish good patterns as soon as possible

Of course I could be more specific, but this is already a long post and my recommendations above should be sufficient to get you started at least.

If you’re unsure about where to begin start from where you are most familiar and comfortable and then stretch from there.

I look forward to your comments …

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

PS – To jump start your own learning about the new games and the new code have a look at my programs that will most definitely rock your world regarding what I refer to above as “real human skills” start here: Joseph Riggio Training – Courses

¹Senate Rejects Amendment Banning Indefinite Detention (http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senate-rejects-amendment-banning-indefinite-detention)

Applied Mythology 101: Reflections On Heroes, Mentors and Stories

by Joseph Riggio · Feb 26, 2012

Applied Mythology, ala Dr. Joseph Riggio and the MythoSelf Process, Is NOT About The Telling Of Old Stories …

Applied Mythology IS ABOUT How To Incorporate The Structure Of Mythic Form Into Your Life To Make It More Whole and Wellformed … i.e.: More Blissful

Heroes and Mentors

I have a couple or “Intellectual Heroes and Mentors” folks whose intellectual/academic work has spurred me on in my work. Some of my heroes and mentors I found many years ago, some are newer to me. These are folks I’ve spent a lot of time with, reading their books, writing about their ideas, incorporating and applying their ideas in my own work, using what they developed as a platform to leap from in developing my own fledgling conceptualizations, methods and processes … and finally, in some cases, coming to the point where I truly believe I have mastered the ideas they wrestled with first and made accessible to me in their life’s work.

When I talk my intellectual heroes and mentors I’m not talking about the folks who necessarily had the most actual influence in my life. The folks who had the most influence in my life would include those closest to me, family, some teachers, friends and very near the top Roye, my own mentor for nearly twenty years.

My intellectual mentors and heroes are folks like,

Carlos Castaneda (yes … it’s true, very influential to my thinking in my late teens and early twenties … his writing opened up the entire possibility of alternative realities and magical thinking to me)
Suzuki Roshi and Alan Watts (very early on … around 11 years old … I began to become interested in and to train in martial arts, this led me to writings about Zen, Taoism and Bushido, and by 15 I was “sitting” regularly myself … and reading Watts caused me to question everything)
Milton Erickson (in my twenties I developed a profound fascination with hypnosis and began reading intensely on the subject … then I found Milton Erickson, and everything I’d though about hypnosis shifted for me)
F.M. Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais and Thomas Hana (the idea of how the body was influencing the mind … and subsequently my behaviors had me … for more than a few years, from my mid-twenties through to my mid-thirties, I was diligently working to figure out where the interface was and how to operate it)
Dudley Lynch (leading me to) Clare W. Graves (there was something in Dudley’s book “Strategy of the Dolphin” that caught my attention deeply when it came out … later I found he was pointing to a true genius of social evolutionary thinking, Dr. Graves … I’ve now spent many hundreds (or possibly thousands) of hours deeply contemplating and applying the Graves model in my work)
Edmund Husserl, Soren Kirkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittengenstein, John Searle et al … (I tracked the movement of modern philosophy from phenomenology, through to existentialism, and then onto analytic philosophy I delved deeply into what these folks had to say about the Philosophy of Mind … and by the time I got to the analytical philosophers what they were saying about language and reality as well)
Charles Sanders Pierce, John Dewy, William James, Richard Schusterman, et al … (I love the work of the American Pragmatists … this is a philosophy that draws deeply upon the aesthetic and it speaks to me deeply … I get the sentiment and the soul of pragmatism, in the way that it shows up in life, like no other philosophy)
Joseph Chilton Pearce, Daniel Siegel, David Abram, Jeffrey Schwartz, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Nicholas Humphrey, et al … (there a whole host of neuroscientists, linguists, cognitive scientists, etc. who are exploring the ideas that are at the heart of my fascinations and they have all at one time or another influenced my thinking … some more deeply than others)
Richard Bandler & John Grinder (I’ve read everything they’ve written … jointly and solely … some of their books ten or more times … and some I barely got through once … but the work of NLP still holds my attention like little else, especially in the direction it took under my tutelage with Roye)
Joseph Campbell (I saved him for the last because he surely ranks as one of the folks I literally consider to be an intellectual hero and mentor to me … much of my thinking has been influenced by the writing and speaking of Joseph Campbell and his take on the structure and form of mythological thinking)

Believe me that’s the short list … but I want to share a range of the kind of folks I’ve been paying attention to over the years. It has been a funky, fun, interesting and enlightening journey … and I’m guessing I’m now about halfway there.

So What’s This Got To Do With You?

HECK … ONLY EVERYTHING …

I’ve laid it out before and I’ll do it again … YOU ARE YOUR STORY!

The sources that inform your story contribute to the form it takes … i.e.: WHO YOU BECOME! Of course, I’m not saying that you become the story of the sources that inform your story, you become something like a multi-hued reflection of the multiplicity of sources that you continue to absorb that inform the story you are living. Keeping it simple if you were to see a tree from the point of view of an Impressionist painter reflected on water, the seemingly infinite number of leaves are the equivalent of the sources that inform your story … and there is a main trunk that is unique and singular as well.

Now, before I keep jumping forward let me make it really clear that within the structure of where I place my attention, “YOUR STORY” is really a bunch of stories that are interwoven like a tapestry that forms what you experience as the ground of being in your life … for you this tapestry defines “what is real” and how to make sense of what you encounter in an ongoing way. I use the word STORY and not tapestry because for most people the tapestry I refer to is experienced in the form of an autobiographical narrative.

NOW HERE”S A MAJOR POINT …

Most people experience their own unique autobiographical narrative as “absolute” … meaning that at any given moment in time what you believe to have happened and is happening is actually true to fact for you. For example you believe you are reading these words and in this moment no one could dissuade you about that as being a fact. This is true even though there are a thousand other things that are true in that moment that just passed and in this one as well … that you ignored, deleted and distorted.

Let’s expand that one just a little … you think you are reading “THESE WORDS” – but YOU ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE READING WHAT YOU THINK THESE WORDS MEAN … and not the words themselves. Let me demonstrate what I mean … in an hour you’ll have a memory of reading this, but what will you remember, the words you’re now reading, or what you think these words mean? It’s that simple at one level and it’s levels all the way down …

For most people this also represents what they experience their memories like as well, i.e.: absolute narratives of what happened. You are as likely to do this about what happened less than a minute ago as you are about what happened a decade ago … and you’re as likely to be just as wrong about both. It would be foolish to trust that you’re memories are accurate to fact, they’re just not. You can find overwhelming evidence that your memory works as a flawed system, and that may in fact be in your best interest. So while you’re memory may be flawed, your memory will be how the world world was and continues to be for you.

Okay so what does this have to do with you again?

At the most basic level it would be useful to recognize that what you are creating in your interactions with others aren’t really experiences, but flawed representations of those experiences called memories. People will not remember what you say or do, they will remember the impression of what you say or do has on them … and it will be different from what you say or do in some measure, large or small.

We could go on with the practical aspects of what this has to do with you, but for now I’ll stop with that example there.

The main point you want to get from this, if you get anything at all, would be that they are all stories … and those stories collect into an Über Story that becomes the Gestalt you are living. The gestalt of your life may be best thought of as a “reality filter.”

Living Your Life Story

I’ve been making the point that you are living your Life Story. This story represents only one way of interpreting all the events that have happened and are happening, as for as long as you have this story, what will happen too.

You have no choice but to live your Life Story … BUT you do have a choice over what story you are living!

[NOTE: You may want to add into this narrative that you’re reading now that one of the most powerful ways to choice your Life Story would be to pick the stories that go into it.]

The stories you accept as being “real” are only a part of the construct of your Life Story, i.e.: your memories of your experiences as you know them to be. In addition to the things we experience, and the things we “know” there are the things we can’t explain … that we yearn to have an explanation for nonetheless, e.g.:

Why do bad things happen to good people? …

Why did that happen to me, and not to them? …

Why did that happen to them, and not to me? …

Why am I here? …

Who am I? …

This may be the most profound function of myth,
to answer the unanswerable.

Now I am not saying that myth, or more properly in the way I am using this idea – mythic form, has literal, concrete answers. Rather than providing literal, concrete answers myth shows the way … it’s is about the path, the journey, the process … not about the content. Myth gives us what we cannot possess … as way to see ourselves. The eye cannot see itself, the finger cannot touch itself … the eye must have a reflection of itself to “see” itself, the finger must be touched to “touch” itself … in this way myth provides the reflection and the touch for us to know ourselves beyond ourselves.

Myth places the most significant and urgent information “out there” beyond the limits of how we “know” things to be … including ourselves. This information may be simply revealing, “Oh, now I see how I am like that too.” … or educational/instructive … “Now I get how I can move beyond this moment in which I have been stuck.” or it may reveal, educate and instruct us about others and the world we share, “Ah, now I get how he/she/they think the world must be.”

This information comes to us as an impression, not as a “fact” or “absolute.” Myth offers us the means to use our innate intuitions about the world to construct a reality that fits our experience. The opportunity myth provides can and will take us beyond self-imposed and socially-imposed limitations if we allow it. We are built to “guess” at “what the world ‘is’ out there” – we don’t have the equipment to “know” the world out there, we miss too much of it, and make up most of it as we go along. The philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists … and others have been hard at work for centuries proving how limited and flawed our perceptual capacities are in fact.

To use a Robert Anton Wilson phrase:

“Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.”

(from Prometheus Rising)

So you can say, once we find the way to reset our “Thinker” we have found the way out of our own limiting beliefs … because the “Prover” will prove whatever the “Thinker” thinks!

The trick to resetting the “Thinker” has always been the same … A, B, C

A) Give the “Thinker” new data in the form of experience and information to work with

B) Make the experience and information that you provide the “Thinker” with emotionally compelling … i.e.: make it “feel really good” or “feel really bad“

C) Create a recursive somatic loop in the “Thinker” that connects the experience and information to the feeling in the body where it will be stored and accessed/re-accessed later

“We act based on how we “feel” about things that prompts us to “think” things are as they are for us … i.e.: change the association to how we “feel” about things and we change what we “think about them.”

“Applied Mythology, as mythic form, gives us the mechanism to change how we feel about what we think.”

“We can update our Life Story by encountering powerful stories that are emotionally compelling and create new associations between what we “know” and how we “feel” about it … this has always been the appeal and power of mythology, literature, theater … and more and more today the stories we encounter in film.”

– Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

This is my quest … to follow my myth wherever it leads … and for now it leads me to be an applied mythologist.

So I have an invitation for you … will you join me on your journey?

As always I look forward to seeing, reading and responding to your comments …

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D., Princeton, NJ

Architect and Designer of the MythoSelf Process & Soma-Semantics

PS – There will be an Applied Mythology 102, or 202, someday soon … promise. In that installment I’ll share some of my thoughts about the “Social Myths” that keep us stuck where we find ourselves today … and some possible stories that might help to free us in the societies we are constructing going forward … my little take on “Social Ontology”

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Language & Linguistics

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

A Sense of Time

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

The Teleological Factor

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

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

… and Freeing Your Mind is where to start!

When I think about “freedom” I think about something that goes beyond place and time.

Your “brain” ain’t your “mind” … at least not in the way I use those terms.

Your choices aren’t only limited to the way you tie your shoes … and we’re not in Kansas anymore!

“FREEDOM” is a Mind Game … but you have to first take control of your brain to have access to your mind.

The relationship between Subjective Experience … Freedom … and Choice/Choosing

In the end it ain’t what you can or can’t do … or be … it’s the choices you make with what you’ve got.

“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.”

-Graham Greene

I often get asked something like, “Why bother?” … because it’s unclear to most folks exactly what it is that I do.

Separating “THIS” and “THAT” … or, Unraveling the “X/Y Paradigm”

I’m never confused about what I do, or for that matter, what I’m doing when I’m working with clients … I’m aiming at what is changeless in the individuals and organizations I work with, and making that manifest and extant in how they experience themselves.

The real trick is the paradox that to become changeless you must first change, and I am gifted at provoking change in people.

Healing Beyond Words …

Heck, if I more openly called what I do “healing” or called myself a “Healer” most folks who don’t yet know me would be more likely to use the label “quack” … especially when I refer to healing relationships and organizations!

Maybe even more acurately than calling myself a “Change Artist” or “Healer” .. in the tradition of Tarkovsky I should call myself a “Stalker”2. This is very particular and peculiar skill … one I seem to have a proclivity and prodigious training for as well3.

PS – Summer Intensive Training w/Dr. Joseph Riggio:

SPECIAL ONE WEEK ONLY OFFER (expires 19 June 2013)

Here’s an easy way to translate the fundamental position I’m presenting from the philosophical … “You can’t have an idea or opinion if you don’t first exist.”

The Aesthetic Frame

This is the primary argument for building the aesthetic frame, to experience our lives most fully.

So What’s The Problem?

When you hold multiple positions of perspective simultaneously – about any given “truth” – the sense of uncertainty that so often unnerves and confuses others in complex and chaotic situations, never comes up for you.

Resonance & The Aesthetic Frame

POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

When you are operating creatively, rather than playing within the boundaries, you begin playing with the boundaries.

This is akin to bringing certainty to the unknown … quite a trick (literally a quantum trick, transcending linearity and cause & effect, by making a quantum jump to what exists outside of and beyond the frame that contains you in the moment)!

As I said quite a trick …

New Games and New Code … Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

WARNING:

YOUR TIME IS LIMITED TO TAKE ACTION ON YOUR BEHALF TO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A NEW WORLD ORDER.

Becoming An Enlightened World Citizen:

Please make no mistake about this … I do not intend you to read my last sentence above as hyperbole, i.e.: that our governments are declaring a de-facto class warfare on the common citizen, but instead as a statement of obvious fact based on evidence that can be tracked.

Governmental Class Warfare:

The Challenge of Sovereignty:

I am not suggesting stockpiling food and water.

I am not suggesting that you arm yourself and stockpile weapons and ammunition.

I am not suggesting that you conspire to revolt or rise against the government with violence.

I am suggesting that you become informed, and to stay informed.

I am suggesting that you develop and hone the skills to notice what I call “the signals in the system.”

I am suggesting that you let go of your false beliefs of security based on the way the world was fifty or more years ago.

I am suggesting that you build a kind of internal “rapid response system” that will allow you to respond to the events that unfold around you in real time (and not after the fact when it’s too late to do what you need to for yourself and those you care about and love).

I am suggesting that your primary tool of survival is your mind in times like these, and you must prioritize it’s care and feeding so to speak.

I am suggesting that you do whatever it takes to develop razor-honed senses that allow you to react prudently despite the crisis or chaos that emerges around you.

Playing the “New Game” Using the “New Code”:

As I said, make no mistake about this … we are engaged in class warfare … and the only “real” weapon you have is your mind.

How-To Survive, Succeed and Prosper In the “New Game” Using “New Code”:

First of all you can acknowledge and recognize that this is indeed a new game we are all playing.

Next, you can acknowledge and recognize that they old rules no longer apply.

Third you can begin to learn the “new code” I’ve referred to above.

And, most importantly you can begin to build and develop the mental tools you’ll need to play this new game using the new code effectively.

If you’re willing to make the commitment and devote the time to gathering and absorbing the real news you will become far more discerning about local and world affairs, and my points 1 and 2 above will be taken care of, however you cannot skip this step and expect to succeed in steps 3 and 4.

Old Games:

Game A:

Game B:

Game C:

First of all the people who play it often believe it is “the game” that should be played by everyone, so they seek to bring everyone into their game … willingly or not.

Secondly, they think they are playing a game that has equal rules for everyone playing it, while they ignore all those who are not playing and can’t or won’t, and the significant stratification to resources even among those who are playing.

Third, and most significantly, this is the game that the top politicians and their cronies are playing at around the world and the others playing at it support them in achieving the lifestyles and privilege I’ve been bemoaning in this entire posting.

New Games (and the New Code they use):

New Game 1:

New Game 2:

will they have enough time to do it

will there be enough left to build a new future from when they are in control, and

what damage will happen between now and then as the transition to New Game 2 is unfolding?

they are self-responsible – not leaving it to others to determine their fate

they are globally, socially, economically, politically and environmentally aware

they are activists – even if it is only in their own self-interest, they are innovative and committed to inventing new solutions to the situations they encounter instead of depending on old formulas, dictums and paradigms

Learning the New Games and the New Code:

Applied Mythology, ala Dr. Joseph Riggio and the MythoSelf Process, Is NOT About The Telling Of Old Stories …

Applied Mythology IS ABOUT How To Incorporate The Structure Of Mythic Form Into Your Life To Make It More Whole and Wellformed … i.e.: More Blissful

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

**“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.”**

**I often get asked something like, “Why bother?” … because it’s unclear to most folks exactly what it is that I do.**

Separating “THIS” and “THAT” … or,
Unraveling the “X/Y Paradigm”

Maybe even more acurately than calling myself a “Change Artist” or “Healer” .. in the tradition of Tarkovsky I should call myself a “Stalker”². This is very particular and peculiar skill … one I seem to have a proclivity and prodigious training for as well³.

SPECIAL ONE WEEK ONLY OFFER
(expires 19 June 2013)

Here’s an easy way to translate the fundamental position I’m presenting from the philosophical …
“You can’t have an idea or opinion if you don’t first exist.”

When you are operating creatively,
rather than playing within the boundaries,
you begin playing with the boundaries.

New Games and New Code …
Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

This may be the most profound function of myth,
to answer the unanswerable.