Noticing for “Signals In The System” … and Missing The Elusive Obvious
Start here …
Imagine a large moth with brown, black and orange markings settled on the riser of a staircase of a hotel that’s been carpeted with a worn rug with a similar brown, black and orange pattern, in London, England on a beautiful cool, sunny, early autumn day.
So it began …
Now add in about two hundred people walking up that staircase in broad daylight … all passing literally over that moth without noticing.
Including the world-renowned trainer who is leading a program in Pattern Recognition …
This is the state that the majority of the world lives in … seeing only what they expect to see, where they expect to see it and doing what they expect it will be doing, e.g.: a rug carpeting a staircase, NOT a moth resting on a riser of that staircase in a hotel.
Now imagine how much is there before us that remains unnoticed …
Exposing The Pattern That Connects …
This is how I left a program entitled Pattern Recognition with a world renowned trainer of NLP that I was attending in the U.K. a number of years ago … by noticing the pattern that was elusive …
We were on a break during the first day of a two-day program I had flown out to the U.K. to attend. We spent the morning covering the idea of patterns and pattern recognition. The session was full of definitions, explanations and exercises to refocus our attention on the idea of pattern, and how pattern is swirling around us constantly in the midst of our lives.
We broke for lunch and returned to a co-presenter who began by framing a story she was going to tell us, which led into a vocal presentation delivered on a tape recorder she had brought with her … very elementary school pedantic and whilst intending to be metaphorical and complex, was fundamentally linear and flat. I began questioning what was going on around me at a deeper level then.
After the presentation by the female co-trainer we again broke for a short break. All two hundred or so participants filed out of the room we were in, down the staircase and gathered in the lobby or just outside the venue in a small patio courtyard in front of the hotel surrounded by a half meter high wall. I was just outside the wall on the sidewalk, enjoying the afternoon sun and a chat with another participant when we were called back.
When I got to the lobby I went to grab a drink and by the time I was ready to move the staircase was loaded with the other participants returning to the room where the training was taking place. I chose to wait until everyone had made their way up the staircase to make my way back to the training room. That’s when I saw it. There on the fourth riser up from the bottom of the staircase. A large moth, probably about 5 or 6 centimeters across was simply resting on the riser face, blended into the background of the rug carpeting the stairs.
The two hundred or so participants … and the two trainers … in the Pattern Recognition program had walked over this magnificent moth without so much as a scant awareness of it’s presence. To me it was the entire program defined in bold relief.
I passed it over after looking at it for a few more moments, admiring the complexity of the patterning on it’s wings, and the brilliance of it’s camouflage. I went back to the room, directly up to the world renowned trainer running the program … who hadn’t yet begun again … and told him, “Come with me for a second there’s something I think you’ll want to see that defines what I think we’re doing.” He followed be back out of the room, down the base of the stairs where I turned him around pointing towards the stairs we’d just walked down together, and asked him, “What do you see?” He said “Nothing.” meaning just the stairs I guess, not that he had gone blind for the moment or closed his eyes.
I pointed more specifically to the riser with the moth on it and asked again,”There, what do you see on the riser?” And again he said, “Nothing.” So I pointed directly to the moth and said, “Look … it’s a moth.” at which he started and realized what I was pointing at for the first time. I said, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that there are about two hundred people attending a Pattern Recognition training and none of them notice what’s right before them entrained in the pattern they are walking?” He just looked at me, reached down and lifted the moth from the riser and walked it outside.
When we were outside it was clear to me that the moth was lethargic and I attributed it to the chill of the autumn day when this event took place. The trainer placed the moth on the top of the wall surrounding the patio courtyard in front of the hotel, and turned to walk back up the stairs to return to the training room. I just stared, first at the moth … then at the departing trainer … then again at the moth … mouth open, slack jawed in disbelief.
Not only hadn’t anyone seen the moth except me … the world renowned trainer presenting a program on Pattern Recognition didn’t care! Then to add insult to injury from my point of view he took the moth, which had carefully found a background that virtually made it invisible, and put it in the open on a grey concrete wall where it stood out like a beacon to every and any passing predator that was interested in an easy meal. To my mind nature had been corrupted in that moment, and I was done with the program despite my interest in the topic.
I returned to the room, the trainer was fully engaged in delivering the next section of the program and I sat down to see where it might go, hoping that he’d at least mention the moth he resigned to become a meal. To my chagrin, no such luck … not a word, in fact it became clear to me that he was far more interested in the words he was using to describe pattern and pattern recognition, then he appeared to be interested in the patterns swirling about us.
At the next break I walked up to the trainers, thanked them for their time and the information they’d presented, and told them I was leaving that afternoon to return to the U.S. I booked an evening flight, gathered my stuff, left the hotel and walked out. On the way I checked for the moth of course … and it was no where to be seen. I guess it could have roused itself and flown off, but I expected it was being digested by some other creature who thought it was a catered meal.
I made my way to the airport, boarded my flight … and felt well satisfied that I had experienced Pattern Recognition, despite having to travel half way around the world to do so, pay for a program which I walked out of (I never ask for money-back from a trainer, training program or product because I assume the responsibility for my own decisions and don’t place the blame on others, even if they don’t live up to my expectations … the one exception, if they use bald-faced lies to get me to make a decision), and leaving a day early so I could spend the time with my then young son rather than what I thought would be wasting another day in a program I thought was missing the main point.
The Main Point Is The Delta
In mathematics the definition of “Delta” … i.e.: upper case “D” or represented by the symbol, Δ, the Greek letter “delta” … references difference, usually indicating change of values.
In the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm of science the delta is typically plotted against some linear scale, despite the irregularity or non-linearity of the change itself. For instance meteorologists might plot a change in temperature over a series of days, weeks, months, years, decades … as an irregular graph, but the logic used to measure the change is still linear, i.e.: temperature measure by a constant change indicated by degrees (either Celsius of Fahrenheit).
This system of measuring change plotted against a linear scale predisposes scientists to think of change in a linear way, and for the pattern represented by that change linearly as well. This prevented many scientists from noticing what was present in the linear system for many years, i.e.: change that occurred beyond the structure of the pattern being measured simply didn’t exist as part of the pattern at all.
This model imploded when Benoit Mandelbrot revealed the original coefficient of chaos, establishing the field of Fractal Geometry. His pursuit in mathematics was of patterns within patterns, as well as patterns building up to larger patterns revealed in the essential form from which they emerged. These kinds of forms shared two specific characteristics, they were irregular – often mimicking the shapes found in nature, and they were complex – as the scale changes from macro to micro there may be even more complexity at each level explored.
Applying the maths of fractal geometry to diverse fields like physics and biology the concepts of Chaos Theory began to emerge as well. Now non-linear, irregular patterns … like those in climate change … could be plotted against a non-linear scale approximating the nature of the change being measured without forcing it to conform to linear form.
The result of using Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry open the eyes of those scientists applying it to aspects of the events they’d never noticed before … like the impact of extremely distant events upon one another, or incredibly small changes in a system compounding to create massive complexity and change within the system. Now the world began to resemble David Bohm’s quantum description of “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” more than Newton’s classical physics.
The Bateson Shift
One of the strongest influences in my intellectual and philosophical development was Gregory Bateson.
“The Pattern That Connects …” is Gregory’s phrase, referring to his search for organization in nature. One of Bateson’s main ideas was that “mind” is a reflection of “nature” and visa-versa. He insisted that organization in biology was unique from organization in non-living systems … FWIW I agree … and I don’t. I think it’s a function of scale and scope instead.
What you’ll find depends on the scale and/or scope used to notice for, explore, examine and measure organization regardless of the system you are operating within. Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry opens the possibly of finding pattern in non-living systems, like crystal formation, that we find in living systems. This can be so pronounced using non-linear, irregular measurements that some non-living systems act like living systems at some level.
Gregory Bateson also made another distinction, i.e.: about dynamic systems versus static systems. Specifically systems that had the ability to act … especially those that act cybernetically. The self-referencing, self-organizing properties of cybernetic systems operate outside of formal, linear logic and linear cause and effect. Instead of following a progressive sequence that can be plotted against a linear scale, these special systems operate in oscillations … on, off, on, off, on, off … ad infinitum, in response to change in the system.
When a cybernetic system become sentient, or capable of thought, the properties of self-awareness and consciousness become possible. One of the great questions is whether or not consciousness can and does impact matter, i.e.: “To what extent does our noticing impact what we notice?”
Another associated question that follows on the heels of the first is, “Is the Universe sentient and/or self-aware?”
Following on Mandelbrot’s exploration into complex systems via fractal geometry this is a reasonable question to ponder based on what seems to be a self-determinate Universe that responds to the events unfolding within it, i.e.: the Universe appears to be a cybernetic system when viewed as a whole … on, off, on, off, on, off … especially at the quantum level.
When we take this way of noticing and considering what we’re noticing to the human level, i.e.: human scale and scope re: space-time, what we perceive are relationships … interactions and inter-dependencies …
Humans act upon the world and the world acts in turn on them …
AND humans act upon one another.
So this becomes the basis for the non-linear logic I’m proposing in these posts
… i.e.: RELATIONSHIP … NOT CHANGE.
In this way the measurement becomes metaphor. Instead of plotting against a scale of any kind, i.e.: regular or irregular, the reference has become ambiguous and internal, versus fixed and external. Only in this way, i.e.: metaphorically, can we hope to relieve the ontological and existential longing we experience as being human.
The Place Of The MythoSelf Process Work …
(As A Metaphorical System)
Within the MythoSelf Process work metaphor replaces measurement. Another way of saying this could be that story replaces diagnosis and/or labeling within the system being observed. The system in question could be an individual or it could be any system that includes the individual but is beyond the limits of self, e.g.: a relationship with other/s.
The essential form is the story, or autobiographical narrative … which is projection of the perceived, subjective reality of the individual. The pre-conscious subjective reality exists before the narrative is formed as direct sensory experience. Direct sensory experience creates immediate ripples in the system via the immediate response of the individual to it. This is followed by the secondary responses as the direct sensory experience transmutes into becoming part of the updated autobiographical narrative that the individual consciously experiences. Then there are further levels of response, i.e.: tertiary, quadriary, and so on … that continue layering ripples into the system, as well as the reactionary ripples created as well.
The premise of the MythoSelf Process work is that any given system is more complex than can be noticed for at a conscious level, and that mastery comes from being able to attend to the information in the system beyond conscious awareness. When this is astutely trained as a process the result is an exquisite level of intuition and the ability to response faster than conscious thought.
The promise of the MythoSelf Process is that by using a metaphorical process of intervention and training the intuitions of mastery emerge, and the individual (or the group) becomes able to notice for signals in the system that are outside of conscious awareness or access. The effect is a defragmentation of thinking, to a localized coherency of thought, a profound sense of directionality guiding the responses and actions of the individual (or group), and the ability to perform at elite levels even, or especially, in uncertain environments that exhibit chaos and complexity …
The result of MythoSelf training is that you become able to act with certainty in the face of uncertainty … however, the catch is you have to give up the desire for certainty.
What may be most pronounced of all about deep training in the MythoSelf Process, beyond the ability to notice for the signals in the system, is the emergence of creativity replacing projection and or prediction, making what was not possible … possible.
INTERESTED???
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
T says
Hi,
Great posting on the birthday. I love the effectiveness of the elusive moth story. I’n giving up the desire then there is the embodied expectation of certainty that is continuously and creatively discovered? I love the eduction that’s on offer here!!!!!!
Best
Joseph says
T …
Thank you.
When you give up expectation you can’t have an expectation, so an expectation that there will be “the embodied expectation of certainty that is continuously and creatively discovered” … make sense???
T says
It’s beyond sense 🙂
John J says
Happy Birthday !!!
W.L. Hoffman says
Joseph – great posts (Part I and II) on “The Pattern that Connects,” as they are probably (IMO) your best and most succinct presentation I have yet read on “deeper” issues and the MythoSelf. This does not mean to imply there is a short cut to the journey. I’ll reference it to the pursuit of mastery – which can be a life long event from the perspective of you never really stop perfecting the experience even if somewhere along the continuum you actually cross into a master level of performance.
You know me – science fiction and fantasy, philosophy and cosmology – let me throw another concept into your fascinating mix to those interested: MAGIC. This is not the Heaven and Hell variety, nor the consequence-free fiction so often presented in the mainstream, i.e., Harry Potter, Wizards of Waverly Place, and fashionable witchcraft societies. I’m talking about patterns, energies and influence in the Universe, in some ways, the quantum border where science meets religion. And yet, this is not a domain where linear logic applies, but a more chaotic and abstract landscape where cognition, intuition, and intent combine to open a wider reality. To me, much of your discussions on the MythoSelf also have application in this regard.
When we as humans have refined our consciousness and receptivity to elite levels, there are capabilities that can be tuned to those with serious intent. You begin to drift away from local energies and it can be dangerous for those not sufficiently grounded, especially because you are seeking to enter a realm without “fixed” rules and definitions. But this type of interaction can lead to results that seem like, well… magic. Your example from Dune of Paul Atreides is apt… his ability to perceive the patterns and possibilities of future convergences has an aura of wizardry, and I don’t think it’s an accident that the Bene Gesserit were depicted by Herbert as witches.
Again, I don’t want your folks to be confused… I am not attempting to encapsulate your MythoSelf Process within the “magic” moniker, but I do want them to realize that “strange” synchronicities and confluences might occur as they move along the journey. There is an interconnectedness, a quantum entanglement of sorts that permeates the entire Universe and in all likelihood a MultiVerse of surrounding dimensions. When you align “self” via an excitatory state, to a purer representation of purpose and intent, other alignments spring into the pattern. Some will enhance, while others will cause interference.
Anyway, this is not a discussion that can be adequately captured online – we can continue by the fire pit with a glass of the good stuff – but I did want to plant the seed here.
Happy Birthday too.
Joseph says
Bill … Thanks …
Great reply. As you and I have discussed the allure of magic for many people is of the “silver bullet” kind, i.e.: “I don’t have to do anything except cast this spell, sprinkle this magic pixie dust, say the magic words … and my life will work out happily ever after.” The exception may be that they have to pledge their soul to make it work to one deity or another, and maybe spill a few drops of their blood or buckets of someone else’s to ignite the magical contract.
When you read deeply into David Bohm (who I can’t seem to stop mentioning in this thread ‘;~>) you get a glimpse of the kind of magic I think you’re referring to albeit with different terminology. If you haven’t read a lot of Bohm yet, and you want to go in that direction first read this, “Science, Order & Creativity” by David Bohm and F. David Peat.
I know that the magical writers use alternative language to discuss many of the same things I’m discussing here. This is akin to the alternative language you’ll find the philosophers and physicists using. Each group preferring their own professional terminology and lexicon to achieve the same outcomes.
As an applied cognitive scientist trained in pragmatic linguistics, including the technology of NLP and hypnotic protocol, my own preferential language tends in a specific direction as well. The main direction of my preference of course metaphorical as I’ve been pointing out, but for me metaphor is the embodiment in language of the embodiment of direct sensory experience in the world … kind of like “Memoirs of Dasein” if such a tale existed.
However, coming back to what was my main point, and I think yours, the essential dialogue we are engaged in revolves around pattern, and its detection and recognition, prior to aligning one’s self with it to some end, i.e.: Intentionality.
This is what I am referring to and mean by pointing to relationship as the essential characteristic of organization when viewed through a biological lens. It’s also why I think science is limited when it approaches an understanding and explanation of reality via reductionism and determinism. They don’t work in a biological paradigm IMO, and IMO BIOLOGY RULES!
In a biological paradigm relationship literally creates more than the sum of the parts. If you speak to some chemists they offer you that all biology is chemistry, e.g.: the approach big Pharma takes. If you speak to most physicists they’ll tell you that all chemistry is physics, i.e.: molecules interacting based on valances of electrons determined by the laws of physics as they know them (mostly based on the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics).
What I think is that biology is a higher order logic than either chemistry or physics and the rules change at this higher level. You can’t account for higher order logic using the rules of lower level logic, although you can account for the rules of a lower level logic using a higher order logic. This is a fundamental rule of ordinal logic, which of course is based in linguistic/semiotic theory so the ordering of the system is dependent on the rules of the symbolic descriptions used to order it.
The old shamans, priests and magicians got this when they were chanting and casting runes or bones to predict and influence the ordering of the Universe and the events that transpired within it. What’s most interesting to me about their technology, i.e.: magic, is that the approach they took would undoubtedly organize the awareness and attention of the practitioner and the believers to align with the expectations of the ritual being performed. In this way magic would allow it’s users/believers to notice for Signals in the System that might otherwise go unnoticed, and to organize themselves to act to potentiate possibilities that would otherwise remain dormant.
FWIW this is what “good” parenting does for children as well … in the same way that “bad” parenting will potentiate negative consequences that would otherwise have remained dormant. (Again, I point to the shaman story in “The Power of One” … MUST READING FOR ALL PARENTS OF CHILDREN OF ALL AGES!!! … remember the “magic” is in the story!
Marla says
the stars were shining brightly on the day you were born: blessings to you. Your tale of the
moth points to a duality between living and perception. Your choice to return to your young son reflects a desire for relationship. Connectivity is the new currency so they say.
Your intuitive wisdom guided you to a choice against the grain. Thanks for living in the
moment and giving heart to those who choose not to follow the herd.
Marla says
PS: Look forward to Tuesday! 🙂
couldn’t figure out how to add the last line of text on the “smarter than me” phone!
Joseph says
Marla … until then …
Gary says
Great story, I can’t help wondering if the renowned trainer in your story was responding to the moth implicitly (in the psychological sense) simply seeing the moth and jumping to “must be outside” without any real consideration or if they made some attempt to grapple with what you were attempting to communicate and deciding they disagreed. In the second case they could have removed the moth as a way of communicating “that perspective/understanding doesn’t belong here”
In any event would it be correct to say that the mythoself process primarily trains the faster “low road” implicit processing of information rather than the slower “high road” explicit conscious processing of information?
Joseph says
Gary,
I am still limited in my clairvoyant skill set so I cannot comment on the nature of the mind of the trainer beyond what he displayed behaviorally, and I was able to perceive via my own sensory acuity and openness.
That said …
My sense of things was that he was making a point, also adding in a sense of what I know about him historically and using a kind of real-time hermeneutical analysis overlaying my read of him behaviorally.
I think his point was threefold:
1) “How dare you discover a pattern worth noting that I didn’t discover first!”
2) That the moth was outside of the pattern/s he was most concerned with conveying information about, e.g.: his pattern language was literally a language about language and the thought processes that emerge in relation to it, and the pattern I was most interested in and noticing for was the larger systemic pattern that emerges outside of language and the thought processes connected with it.
3) That he wanted to look like he was taking back control and demonstrated behaviorally he could in fact contain and control the context … and that the moth was part of another context … despite the cost to the damn moth.
In my case I think the essence of Pattern Recognition is sensory acuity, i.e.: the ability to notice for the information in the system-at-large, while simultaneously noticing the impact of that information on the system you are … Self.
This way of approaching the world empowers you to become the instrument of perception and evaluation that determines what the emergent form of reality you are present to means to and for you, i.e.: resolve the ontological consideration of what “IT” is in an ever unfolding and evolving way.
The key to succeeding using this approach is to endlessly reset to a base position of readiness and something I call the “fullness of nothing” … where having nothing in place allows what “is” to become present for you before judgement. (Very Taoist/Zen … don’cha think???)
Dudley Lynch says
Recalling Conin Doyle’s curious incident of The Dog That Didn’t Bark, might we term your experience in the U.K., Joseph, the curious incident of The Moth That Didn’t Use PowerPoint?
The encounter strikes me as a telling example of the difference between what in my latest dolphin-thinking book, “LEAP! How to Think Like a Dolphin & Do the Next Right, Smart Thing Come Hell or High Water,” I call dolphinthinking and what I call not-quite-flying-fish (or “NoQuiff”) thinking.
One of the trenchant qualities of the dolphinthinker, in my opinion, is a special propensity to notice “patterns that connect.”
I’d like to inform your other readers that the foreword to “LEAP!” is authored by that foremost pattern-collecting and -connecting authority, Dr. Joseph Riggio. I’m most grateful to him for gracing my latest work with his blessing and his insights. Like most corpuses he comes in contact with, his influence is still reverberating long after you’ve moved past his prose. I hope you’ll catch his “take” on my assessment of the extreme importance of taking a mental stance of “actionable pragmaticism” in this turbulent new century. (The book is a sequel to my previous works, “Strategy of the Dolphin” and “The Mother of All Minds”.)
A preview of our “LEAP!” video trailer is available here:
https://vimeo.com/43990908
Details about the book and our supporting seminar in October are not up yet on our website but will be very shortly.
Carpe dolphin to all the other regular readers of Dr. Riggio’s endlessly entertaining and informative Blognostra!
Dudley Lynch
P.S. Heartiest congratulations, Joseph, on your latest work, “The State of Perfection: Your Hidden Code to Unleashing Personal Mastery”! What a superb example of how attentive pattern-connecting can make the often counterintuitive findings of the Neuro Revolution more accessible, apprehensable and applicable (come hell or high water!) !
Joseph says
Dudley …
Thank you, for the congratulations and the reply.
I agree with what you’ve shared here, i.e.: go read the book when you can your hands on it … as soon as you can get your hands on it … but go and watch the video first, https://vimeo.com/43990908
Just add a small bit to that comment, and Dudley’s above … the Graves Model, which is what Dudley explicates in a uniquely pragmatic way, forms an essential filter to begin to understand the complex relations between the value systems simultaneously operating today on the planet.
I’m sure I couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to make sense of the influx of data in the news, especially the international news and it’s ramifications locally, if I didn’t have the grasp of the Graves Model that I do. Further, understanding your own world view, and the options you have regarding the primary value set you hold and that forms your world view, will change your life.
Most people have a world view, their “welterschauung” that remains outside of their conscious awareness yet shapes and informs every thing they think is real, it is the epistemological basis of their ontological awareness … i.e.: a person’s world view forms the essential basis of how they know the world to be, what it is, what is in it and what that means to them and others.
“Reading Dudley Lynch’s work will open up and give you access to a filter set that extends your ability to choose life in new and innovative ways … do it!
Randy Green says
So learning/training to pay “exquisite attention” to both signals within the system and the narratives generated by responses to those signals expands one’s ability to become more creative in making choices and other responses? And that would I suppose encompass pattern-recognition. Interesting to me how much of this dogs can already accomplish!!! (the sensory data portion, of course… they likely run their own form of ‘narratives’ that are nested in their movements).
I am curious about “The Power of One.” Ordered it…
Randy
Joseph says
Randy,
Yep … what I wrote to Gary above …