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

Joseph Riggio

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

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

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

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

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

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

A SIDE STEP …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joseph Riggio

Exploring Ontological Form

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

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

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

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

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

START HERE …

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

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

STOP AND COMPLETE STEPS 1 & 2 BEFORE CONTINUING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ideal Ontological Form

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Final Thoughts About Ontological Form And Performance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process With Joseph In November