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Mapping Consciousness

Mapping Consciousness

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Thoughts on Werner Erhard’s EST, Richard Bandler’s NLP and Joseph Riggio’s MythoSelf Process Models

“A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” – Alfred Korzybski

This may be one of the most used, most misquoted, and most misunderstood comments driving multiple models of human cognition and behavior.

Maps, Territories and Models

The reason I say this about the Korzybski quote “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” is because it’s so often presented as, “A map is not the territory.” FULL STOP!

“A map is not the territory.” is a very different notion than “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” READ THEM BOTH CAREFULLY, AND NOTICE WHAT THEY ARE POINTING TO SPECIFICALLY.

I am a picky user of language, because language is our primary means of representing “what is”… i.e. the world, reality … and we act on our representations of “what is” NOT on “what is.”

Language is a composition of symbols in a syntax and grammar that give rise to semantic form, i.e.: meaning, or more accurately, the meaning we apply to the sequence of symbols in the language we use (see Saussure and his comments on signals and signifiers for more clarity). 

The semiotician, Umberto Eco, introduced a concept about text as potentially “open” versus “closed,” meaning that the texts are “fields of meaning” and not “strings of meaning.” This idea gives the semantic power (the ability to create and choose meaning) to the reader versus the author. Even when the author might clearly intend a meaning in an open text, it is the reader that confers it.

I believe that this is also true in verbal communication, i.e.: that the listener confers meaning, and not the speaker. 

Based on this observation the author and the speaker create fields of meaning from which their readers and listeners can confer the meaning they intend, without trying to close the system. 

To confer meaning in an open system the author or speaker need then to infer the meaning in the way they present the information they are representing, because the reader and listener will always interpret what is written or spoken and not simply absorb it “as is” unchanged. To do this requires a deep understanding of how the intended audience will transform what is presented as they interpret and incorporate it for themselves. There are some cases in theater and film that I can think of where the playwright or screenwriter has done this particularly well.

Presenting meaning in theater and film has the advantage of a four-dimensional format to express the intended meaning via physical expression and interaction with all that implies, happening through movement in space and time. The richness of the four-dimensional aspect of representation more closely simulates our lived experience than can be expressed in a two-dimensional format like text. Text however has the advantage of remaining more open, leaving more room to imply meaning without directly conferring it. Speaking can also remain more open in this way, with the advantage of simultaneously layering inferences in the non-verbal aspect between the speaker and listeners. 

Hypnotic protocol takes advantage of this open framework in speaking, and in the hands of a master writer in text as well. Inference resides at the heart of hypnotic protocol. By the precise and creative use of suggestion a pathway can be formed that provides the least resistance for the listener or reader to confer meaning. Many playwrights and screenwriters use hypnotic protocol to create the experience they want to confer to their audience, leaving less room for interpretation as the actors’ work unfolds the story being represented by them.

Let’s bring this back again now, with the fullness of what I’ve shared to the comment by Korzybski, “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” Maps seek to capture in representational form the structure of a territory, e.g.: a context or process, that allows the user to navigate and transverse the territory the map represents with a degree of confidence that they will successfully get from where they begin to where they intend to arrive.

The consideration of Korzybski’s comment then isn’t that maps aren’t what they represent, i.e.: “The map is not the territory.” but that maps are tools to navigate and transverse territories that when “correct” will be useful in doing so. Keeping this in mind we can move on to models which provide a similar if not the same function.

EST, NLP & the MythoSelf Process Models:

All three of these models, EST, NLP and the MythoSelf Process model, use the fundamental concept that Korzybski suggests in what may be the most famous quote coming from his own General Semantics model, i.e.: “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

Werner Erhard and EST:

In the case of EST, NLP, and the MythoSelf Process a model of reality, or more precisely, a model of how to conceive of reality and our interactions in it, is organized and presented. 

I am a huge fan of Werner Erhard’s work and his EST model. In that work, Werner points back to some of the fundamental notions of Martin Heidegger’s ontological and phenomenological philosophy, especially his considerations on “being.” To massively simplify that application portion of Werner’s model he points to the perceiver of a context as giving meaning to the context, literally bringing the context into being by conferring meaning. He takes this idea to an extreme in suggesting that by our “word” – literally our speaking into being – we bring contexts forth and can transform ourselves and the world we occupy by doing so. 

The inverse of this is also true of Werner’s work, that by not “being our word” we live in a state akin to an automaton simply responding to the context we encounter like “meat machines” moved around by the feelings aroused by the stimuli we experience. The process that functions to create the cause-and-effect response of the so-call meat machine is the “story” we are living inside of that we presume is real, when in fact it’s just the stories that have been conferred upon us, that we have now colluded with, and from there bring forth new stories that contain the same contexts as the stories we have incorporated. This process creates a never-ending loop of repeating the same story of our life over and over with little or no relief. 

By “speaking our word” we can bring new contexts into being, and transform the story into the one we desire wholeform. One of the flaws I perceive in the EST model is the suggesting that we lead from “being” and not “thinking” or “doing” … and, and yet there is not mechanism or process provided for creating our “word” and thereby transforming our “story” without the “thinking” required to do so. The EST model can be a very powerful to create transformation, but requires a devolution into solipsisim to function as it’s presented. 

If I take the EST model literally the Rene Descartes ontological catch phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” becomes “I think it, therefore it is.” Without too much stretching the EST model can viewed through Korzybski’s conception of maps, as a ontological distortion that might read, “The map IS the territory.” 

Richard Bandler and NLP

The NLP model starts in a very different place than the EST model. NLP begins with the idea that what we know as being real is really representation, and the process we use to create, manipulate and utilize our representations determines how well they will work for us in creating the outcomes we desire. 

Werner Erhard in the EST model suggests that transformation happens by speaking it into the world, ignoring the story of how we have known the world to be, and choosing a context that brings into being our intentions. This process, as I’ve presented it above, is known in EST circles as “being your word,” i.e.: because I say it is so it will be so. (NOTE: I love this idea, even as I see the flaws in it … flaws I see even when it works. Being personally driven in a phenomenologically empirical way to arrive at my own conceptions, the human cost of this method of living and bringing into being my intended outcomes is just too high for me to personally accept.)

In the NLP model as presented by Richard Bandler there is a cognitive process that begins and ends in representational forms of sensorial experience that are able to be intentionally modified and manipulated to create a better map of the world from the point of view of functional usefulness. The individual who perceives the world does so by the way they represent the world to themselves internally, as well as to the degree that they are able to observe the world as it is, i.e.: to align their internal representations in a way that accurately describes the external context as it is now. The step after being able to accurately represent the world as it is now, is to have the flexibility to represent the world as you’d like it to be, and to manipulate the way you internally represent your experiences to generate responses that bring about your desired outcomes. 

NLP also has a secondary application of being able to map the way others internally represent the world to themselves by calibrating their verbal and non-verbal expressions in communication. A significant part of the process of mapping the internal representations of any context, i.e.: past, present or future, is contained in the language use to express the context by the language user. 

Withing the NLP model you have multiple sub-models that are designed to make sense of the language patterns of the user, e.g.: the Meta-Model and Meta-Programs, and to use language interventions to modify these patterns to a more useful form, e.g.: reframing and hypnosis. In addition NLP users are trained to notice the non-verbal aspects in communication as well, for instance the representational system preferences of an individual in context, e.g.: visual vs auditory, or visual to auditory, or visual and auditory. Any combination and sequence of the sensory modalites can be present, and a skilled NLP user will be able to discern by tracking language usage and non-verbal patterns what these combination and sequences are as they communicate and calibrate what they are observing. 

In the NLP model this ability to calibrate the way contexts are represented internally, and to modify these representations allow the NLP user to transform their experience of the context, make new choices, and create the intended outcome with much greater facility. It is also possible to use these same skills in communicating with other to bring about intended outcomes with them as well.

Joseph Riggio and the MythoSelf Process Model

Joseph Riggio (me, in the third person) has designed the MythoSelf Process model drawing on and from both of the models presented above, the EST and NLP models. In addition there is a deep draw on and from Roye Fraser’s Generative Imprint model. 

The Generative Imprint model can be considered an applicaiton of the NLP model emphasizing the access to the excitatory bias and using wholeform communication to do that, and then leaping beyond the representation of reality within the framework of the excitatory bias to a deeper transcendent experience of being alive in a wellformed way that expresses as a pervasive sense of wellbeing and infinite possibilities. In Roye’s model this transcendent experience is the Generative Imprint and is held in “symbolic, iconic, representational form.”

“Form” is a critical consideration in Roye’s model and work. He literally being from and ends what happens in the model by accessing the form of the Generative Imprint. Accessing the Generative Imprint aligns an individual with themselves in relation to their sense of place and possibility to the Universe or the Cosmos as it’s unfolding in real time. The experience of accessing the Generative Imprint brings the indvidual into a very hightened sense of being present through time, i.e.: their past, present and future, in a deeply aware, sensorial way.

I was a student of Roye’s in an intensive seven-year apprenticeship, becoming deeply immersed in the Generative Imprint model, how to access it and apply it for myself and with others. The main processes used to access and elicit the form of the Generative Imprint are based in the NLP model and it’s applicaitons.

After working closely with Roye and observing how he interacted with his clients over several thousands of hours in the training and clinical context with him there was no doubt regarding the intensity of his use of somatic form as well as semanitc form in his work. This observation led me to the first expression of what is now the MythoSelf Process model. The first unique distinction I brought to the MythoSelf Process model that moved it some distance away from the other three models I have been presenting and discussing is the primacy of the use of the body and tracking somatic from at the macro and micro levels of expression. 

Somatic Form in the MythoSelf Process Model

The main premise of the MythoSelf Process model has always been that the ontology of the individual is grounded somaticaly, i.e.: in the body. The somatic form gives rise to semantic form as sensorial experience is expressed in body sensations and responses. In the MythoSelf Process model we know reality as we experience it in sensorial form before there is any post-sensorial representation. 

This idea of pre-representational sensorial form drives all of the transformational interventions within the MythoSelf Process model that allow a user to access and modify their awareness of reality and being, as well as the reponses available to them to take action in the world creating their intended outcomes. 

In the MythoSelf Process model we hold a primary presumption that all of our experiences, including the realization of our intended outcomes, are a function of the action we take and choose not to/fail to take. The action we take are our behavioral responses, so if we desire anything in our lives, including the desire for it to be different in some way we need to modify our behavioral responses that keep the way we experience our lives as we do intact. 

Because we accept that we are ontologically grounded somatically, and our sensorial awareness drives our experience and way of knowing the world, we cannot change our behavior without first changing how we are in ourselves, i.e: somatically, and the way we experience the contexts we occupy sensorially. So within the MythoSelf Process model transformation becomes a soma-semantic function of shifting the sensorial filters we use and the way we sort and process the information we are experiencing and responding to in the action we take (or choose not to/fail to take).

This distinction of driving behavior sensorially, but shifting what and how we are perceiving in and about the contexts we occupy create a significant distinction in the MythoSelf Process model as a a priori model of behavioral change. Within the model we never seek to directly change behavior, instead we simply change the perceptions of reality we hold in the contexts we occupy, and those we intend to occupy, and allow our behaviors to follow form that way of perceiving ourselves and the context we are in or are moving towards. (NOTE: This process can be, and often is, applied to past contexts and events as we consider them too, leading to a reorganization of how we know the world about us and ourselvees in relation to it to be, including our relationships with others … past, present and future.)

The Use of Story in the MythoSelf Process Model

A final commnent on the MythoSelf Process model for this writing concerns the use of story, specifically autobiographical narrative, in creating and stablizing the awareness of ourselves in relation to a specific perceptual position we hold and operate from to create our intended outcomes. This idea that story contains and holds our awareness intact connects the MythoSelf Process to Werner’s EST, Bandler’s NLP and Fraser’s Generative Imprint models. A distinction in the applicaition of story in the MythoSelf Process model is that we hold story as “open” versus “closed” in the way Umberto Eco suggests is possible. In the MythoSelf Process model a facilitator working with a client will create a story-form that infers the possibilities of creating and experiencing the intended outcomes of the client. The story-form connects both the specific autobiographical narrative of the individual client to the “field of meaning” that is also suggested by other stories in mythic form that support the individual in remaining in choice regardless of the extant, empirical evidience that suggests a given path, allowing them to draw on a much wider and bigger range of human experience and possibilities than they could contain on their own.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL, 23 Aug 2022

Communication Mastery

Communication Mastery

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Thinking is Communication … Communication is Thinking

I was speaking with a client this morning and it came up again …

THINKING IS COMMUNICATION … COMMUNICATION IS THINKING

It’s an idea that’s plagued me for half a decade now. It’s remarkable how clearly this makes sense to me today … how obvious it is to me.

Every once in a while I like to revisit the essence of what I do and why I do it, with and for my clients … i.e.: what value I bring to the work I do and am paid for with and by clients.

Here’s my latest update on that consideration, as of this Sunday afternoon, as I sit contemplating it here on 21 August 2022.

Introduction and History:

But let’s go back thirty years or so when I was first coming into the world of NLP, and it was introduced to be as a human communication technology. At that time the idea was that NLP was a way of considering communication and its implications in human interaction. Alongside the idea or interpersonal communication, it was also presented to me that NLP was an intrapersonal human communication technology too.

In the world of NLP the way we process language (the “Linguistic” part of NLP, “Neurolinguistic Programming”) was the critical consideration, especially the nature of syntactical processing, or the sequencing of the internal representations we use to think. In NLP terms this is the V-A-K-O/G representational systems comprised of V-visual, A-auditory, K-kinesthetic, O-olfactory, and G-gustatory, also know as a 4-tuple, where O & G collapse into an overlaid, singular representational form.

Beyond the primacy of the representational systems processing, NLP also looks at linguistic processing, the nature of how language creates representations and meaning. So there are models within the NLP model that address how we process language, like the Meta-Model which looks at the processes of Generalizing, Distorting and Deleting information in linguistic representations, or Meta-Programs which look at how we preference and evaluate language on a continuum of opposites to make sense of and create meaning from linguistic representations.

Then I think forward from that early indoctrination in the NLP model to my years of studying with Roye Fraser, including his training me in the model of work he developed, the Generative Imprint model. The Generative Imprint model is a meta-application of the NLP model that uses a unique positive orientation based in the excitatory bias, using a wholeform structure of perception and communication.

As I think about the years of apprenticing with Roye what stands out most is his use of hypnotic language to create wholeform interactions. Roye’s use of language was exquisite and aimed at what he referred to as the “symbolic, iconic representation” of the Generative Imprint, or a way a person knew themselves to be whole and complete, where they experienced a pervasive sense of wellbeing. This was his forte, and his raison d’etre too.

In the early years of working with Roye I came up with my own application of the Generative Imprint model I called the Mythogenic Self Process (the “myth-making” self process), which I later modified and shortened to the MythoSelf Process. The naming of the MythoSelf Process for my model has remained consistent now for almost 25 years, although the model has been through many revisions and refinements.

It took many years for me to clarify the essence of these models, NLP, the Generative Imprint model and my own MythoSelf Process model. As I was doing this I continued to explore and study other models as well, some philosophic, some psychologic, some an overlay like phenomenology and phenomenography, some others like linguistic and mathematical models, and a deep dive into brain-, neuro- and cognitive- sciences..

However, only after I seriously dove into the exploration and study of cybernetic systems in modeling human cognition and communication was it that all the pieces began to come together. This was the beginning of a profound understanding of the structure of wholeform thinking and communication I had mastered, under Roye’s tutelage and with his intense mentoring.

The Development of SSCT | Sensory-Systems Control Theory

Once I got that deep cybernetic patterns of human perception and cognition I could clearly see the connections between sensorial awareness and symbolic representation that form the basis of what we refer to as thought, and from thought, mind.

It became obvious to me that we transform our direct sensory experiences into symbols of representation so rapidly that there is no temporal gap for all intents and purposes between the two, i.e.: sensations instantaneously are translated into symbols in our conscious cognitive experience. This process is so instantaneous and absolute that reality as we know it is comprised of the symbolic representations we derive from sensory experience, and not based on the actual sensory experience itself.

This led me to develop the theory of human cybernetic cognition that progresses from sensory experience to perception, from perception to sense-making, from sense-making to meaning-making, from meaning-making to decision-making, and from decision-making to action-taking (behavioral response). I refer to this sequential process as the “Ladder of Perception.”

Most of the Ladder of Perception occurs outside of conscious awareness in the feed-forward system from sensation to response. With training the cognitive processing from perception to decision-making can be made conscious in hindsight, looking back from action-taking/response through each of the preceding steps of the Ladder of Perception model.

With advanced training and diligent practice the processing of the steps of the Ladder of Perception can become available consciously as they are happening, and with further advanced training before they happen in the cognitive sequence. When the process that will happen in the cognitive sequence can be considered before it has occurred and created a feed-forward effect in the system adumbration of the unfolding situation becomes possible.

When you can adumbrate the situation you are experiencing, what will most likely happen based on what has happened and is happening is revealed and can be acted upon before it happens as it will if the system is allowed to continue unfolding on the path it is currently taking.

Adumbrating gives you the opening and opportunity to intervene in a system before the event you want to alter has occurred, reshaping the context and framework to allow a different and most desirable outcome to become possible than is possible in the way the current context and framework are organized and being held.

The SSCT | Sensory-System Control Theory is a model that suggests that behavior is shaped at the level of sensation, and by changing the nature of perception behavior can be shaped and will follow. When we can and do choose what and how we are perceiving in the contexts we engage in we can shape the behaviors we need to express that will create the outcomes we desire. Obversely we cannot shape behavior by trying to change our behavior directly, since all behavior is an outgrowth of perception, and if the perceptions remain unchanged our behaviors will always revert to those in alignment with our perceptions.

Sensorial Awareness as Symbolic Representation

Ultimately we want to be able to choose the outcomes we create by our behaviors, because while we cannot necessarily control the contexts we find ourselves in, we do have control over what and how we are perceiving within and in relation to the contexts that contain us.

When we choose our perceptual position we can then manifest and enact the behaviors most likely to produce the outcomes we desire. Choosing our perceptual position requires us to become aware of the symbolic representations we are responding to in the context. By noticing the symbolic forms we are responding to, we can choose to shift our perceptual position until we generate the symbolic form that will and does allow us to manifest and express the most useful behavior in regard to creating the most desirable outcome.

One of the most potent ways to shift the symbolic representation is to shift the filters we are using for our primary way of attending to what we’re experiencing at the sensorial level of awareness.

This can include changing the primary filter, say from visual to vestibular, or auditory to proprioceptive, as well as changing what we noticing for within a given representational system and how we’re noticing for that information sensorially prior to the transform from perception to sense-making (NOTE: in the MythoSelf Process model in addition to the V-A-K-O/G 4-tuple we extend it to a 7-tuple of primary representational systems, V-A-K-O-G- and Vs-vestibular and P-proprioceptive).

Then as we progress through the Ladder of Perception sequencing we can force the sorting pattern of information that would best support our manifestation and expression of the behavioral response most likely to create the outcome we desire. When we shift the filters and force the sorts in this way we begin to reset the processing pattern we use in relation to this situation and the creating the outcomes we desire. Within the MythoSelf Process model this is called “creative expression.”

Creative expression can be partially or fully realized, and is or is not, by the facility that you have with shifting the filters and forcing the sorts to create the behavioral manifestation and expression that most aligns with your ability to create the outcomes you desire. The more elegant the pattern of behavior, the more we can say that you are realizing the fullness of you most profound, potent and powerful creative expression.

When you a fully realizing your creative expression in the behaviors you manifest and express you are living in the most aligned way possible with your innate sense of self, and aligning with that in regard to your external performance. In this way you have begun to create the outcomes you desire by being most who you are, and reducing the friction and compromise in the system. Ultimately when you have refining this pattern and made it the default way you take action the system comes to rest, there is no urgency, stress, anxiety or conflict you experience in taking action in this way.

We can say that when the system is at rest, and you are expressing yourself in the most elegant way possible you are in a state of flow, or what we call your State of Perfection.

By applying the SSCT | Sensory-System Control Theory to notice what happens at the sensorial level of awareness, and in the translation to symbolic representation prior to taking action, we can refine the perceptual position to bring the system to rest.

When you have patterned in the requisite perception training to notice the perceptual position you are holding and its effect on the Ladder of Perception sequencing, and you are capable of choosing the position you adopt and hold to bring the system to rest, you are accessing the reference point of your State of Perfection.

Since the process requires you to attend to your sensorial awareness in a pre-representational way, it is useful to think of this as a somatic intention that occurs in direct sensorial experience had in the body-mind, before the translation to symbolic representation. Only after you have processed the sensorial experience somatically can you accurately identify the accuracy of the symbolic form to the sensorial reality. This transformation from sensation to symbol is a semantic transformation, turning direct sensorial experience into meanings that can ignite conscious decision-making leading to deliberate action-taking, i.e.: in response to an intentional outcome.

THINKING IS COMMUNICATION … COMMUNICATION IS THINKING

So we’ve now come full circle …

We are virtually always acting on the symbolic representations of reality we create from our sensorial experiences. The manipulation of symbolic representation is what we call thinking. Thinking in this way, as symbolic manipulation, operates as a communication process in terms of the use, interactions, applications, and manipulations of symbols, e.g.: words … i.e.: thinking is communication.

In addition to words, symbols can also be communicated in any sensory form we are capable of processing, e.g.: the modalities of the 7-tuple. We are capable of, and do, process symbolic form internally as intra-systemic cognition (processing of information that is self-generated – our own internal thoughts) and inter-systemic cognition (the processing of information that is externally present to us). We can also make a case for inter-subjective cognition as being processed in the space we share with others in simultaneity.

However, what I’ve come to treat as most significant is the communication process itself. I have seen that when you learn to communicate with an exquisite level of clarity and precision internally and inter-personally your ability to express elite levels of performance follows inevitably.

What I mean by elite levels of performance is the ability to consistently maximize positive consequences and minimize negative consequences in the manifestation of your desired outcomes. When you are expressing elite levels of performance, most typically from a flow state or your State of Perfection, you create the outcomes you desire with the minimal cost of time, energy, and resources, including your personal goodwill. We refer to this way of performing as “effortless” in the sense that you proceed through the process of perception, decision-making, action-taking, and adapting that cycle iteratively based on the feedback you get from taking action without any undue urgency, stress, anxiety or conflict.

From the outside looking in, the outcomes you produce when you are operating in alignment with your State of Perfection being and remaining intact appears effortless, and you experience it as being effortless as well, .

When you communicate with others you are expressing your thinking, and they experience your thinking as a process or their own thinking … i.e.: communication is thinking.

Therefore as I consider where I bring the highest value to my clients I realize over and over again it resides in the way I help them recognize the quality of their communication, with themselves and with others, and to refine it to higher levels of quality.

People who work with me begin to recognize the inconsistencies in their thinking and communication processes and begin to experience significant changes in their life as they improve their ability to think and communicate exquisitely.

If you’re serious about wanting to experience the state of flow, effortless performance and the kind of exquisite thinking and communication I’m referring to here let’s find a time to chat.

In the meantime I’d love to read your thoughts and open a channel to exchange our observations and considerations as you have them too.


Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL

“I”Am A Narrative

“I”Am A Narrative

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Searching for the Self …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Narrative Of The Self

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Building The Critical Narrative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing With The Cost Of “Truth”

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

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

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

sol·ip·sism/ˈsäləpˌsizəm/ noun

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

Psychologically a solipsistic personality exhibits Solipsism Syndrome …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schedule A Complimentary Call With Joseph Here

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

2021 MythoSelf Professional Training and Certification Programs Info HERE

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

Changing Minds …

Changing Minds …

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Escaping The Matrix

“Remember … there is no spoon.”

(Author’s Note: This one is going to go deep fast, and then loop around a bit, all requiring some commitment, probably demanding a few readings, but I bet it will be worth many readings after you’ve read it once … ENJOY!)

Take A Walk With Me On The Wild Side of POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

For thirty years I’ve been working with clients personally and professionally helping them become more:

  • Powerful in their lives, i.e.: able to take the action that leads to the results and outcomes they intend
  • Creative in how they approach thinking and decision-making, with an aim at helping them become more adaptable and artful in acting strategically
  • Influential in their interactions, becoming masterful at communicating authentically and persuasively to engage, enroll and empower others

This is ultimately about how you can develop deep personal mastery so you can create the life you want to be living … a life lived on your own terms, without compromise.

So if you’re ready walk with me for a bit and we’ll explore the journey I’ve take to where I am today in the work I do.

A Little Background:

In the early 1980s I began developing a model of thinking about thinking, or more specifically thinking about how to improve thinking, that I called “Transformational Applied Philosophy” … T.A.P.

I named what I was working on Transformational Applied Philosophy because I was focused on building a phenomenologically grounded model of transformational ontological change, designed around the work of a few philosophers I was reading deeply at the time.

The philosophers I was reading at the time included: Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel (post-kantian logic and phenomenology), Edmund Husserl (existential phenomenology), Arthur Schopenhauer (aesthetic existentialism), Martin Heidegger (existential ontology), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (embodied ontological existentialism), Ludwig Wittgenstein (metaphysics and analytic philosophy of language), and John Searle (analytic and linguistic philosophy/philosophy of mind).

Then I went on and found a few more philosophers who I added to the mix of my reading, social ontologists like Gilles Deleuze, a couple of the hermeneutic philosophers like Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and those in the domain of philosphy of mind, neurophilosophy, cognition and embodiment like Patricia Churchland and, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

All of that reading was significant because philosophy has been informing people about how to live their lives well, to find a path of authenticity and purpose. Reading philosophy can be challenging, it dense and sometimes very dry too. And, one thing literally leads to another … and another, and another … ad infinitum, until you’ve read the entire canon of Western Philosophy at least (which of course I haven’t, and neither has anyone I know of, but some professional philosophers sure seem to have read 90% of it!).

I still read philosophy actively, more of the later kind … philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neurophilosophy … and this forms a great deal of my background, and current focus, about how I think about thinking, and help others to think better … i.e.: with greater clarity and more precision, leading to a dramatic increase in the ability to think with passion and strategically.

My realization was that while approaching my work with clients philosophically had great and deep value, what I am aiming at required something more than what staying just in the domain of philosophy offers me and my clients.

Going Beyond The Basics

When I found them I fell in love with informal logic and embodiment. This was especially true as the embodiment movement led through the extended mind phase led by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s work (following Gregory Bateson), and evolved to an understanding enactivism/enactment, where the premise is that the mind exists in the interaction with the environment. Quite literally the environment, and the objects in it, the total context, is as much a part of the mind of the individual as the individual’s neural processing and physical/sensory experience.

So I began to look more and more into the domain of somatics and folks from F.M. Alexander to Moshe Feldenkrais to Thomas Hanna. That took me deep for many years, way into anatomy, physiology, and eventually into neuroscience too. But, because I was led there by an interest in the idea of undifferentiated body-mind singularity my focus for about five years centered on studying cerebellar response where movement predominates thinking, proprioception and vestibulation.

HEY, PLEASE STAY WITH ME … WE’RE GETTING THERE …

Somehow this stuff made sense to me as a set of intertwined connections linking and weaving it all together, especially when I began looking at it through the lens of narrative and mythology, and the structure of storytelling.

This phase of my work was deeply grounded in studying the work of Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythologist, and his “Hero’s Journey” model. There’s no way you can do this and avoid looking at the work of many other folks in related fields from psychology (e.g.: Carl Jung) to ethology (Konrad Lorenz) and anthropology (e.g.: Gregory Bateson), linking what I call the biological imperative with the creative imperative, leading to an aesthetic orientation.

Sometime in the late 1990s I was introduced to the work of Clare W. Graves, the developmental social pyschologist. Dr. Graves work impacted my thinking on many levels and shifted the framework of the model I been developing for almost ten years by that point. For the next ten years I would study the work of the post-autonomous, post-conventional developmentalists including Jane Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and William Torbert.

OKAY, WE’RE THERE!!! (WELL ALMOST THIS TIME, REALLY …)

Mythological Expressions

By the early 1990s I’d begun referring to my model as “The Mythogenic Self Process” which became the “MythoSelf Process” by around 1994.

That was because of the impact of Joseph Campbell on my work. Adding up all the pieces led me to take a mythological turn, or what I think of equally as a narrative turn. I began to realize that our entire relationship to reality is structured like story, i.e.: in narrative or mythic form.

I’d moved well beyond the limited philosophical approach I’d begun thinking was the way to achieve significant transformational change with clients.

The way I approached transformation early on was based on a premise that the way we hold and process information in our brains as the manipulation of representations, both sensory memories and/or abstractions. That’s why I became (and to some extent remain) so fascinated with a philosophical approach. This approach has great validity when dealing with the cognitive process of making sense of and manipulating information, e.g.: language.

What was missing were the two elements that have become the signature pieces of the MythoSelf Process, sensorial cognition and dynamic movement. When I added these to using a narrative approach to uncovering the mythic form of the frame of reference that holds reality intact for an individual or organization, i.e.: the externalized temporally organized markers that are then internalized and acted upon, it all came together … finally!

(FWIW, I know this all very technical sounding, but I warned you up front this was going to take some commitment, but that it would be worth it, right? BTW, you can ask me about anything you want me to clarify in the comments section below.)

By 1999 I’d already begun training and certifying others to use the model and process I’d designed with great success.

For the next twenty years I’d continue to develop and refine the work I’d designed, and extended the reach of applications from sales and leadership training, to executive coaching, to team development, to intensive individual coaching, to mentoring coaches and consultants to use the model and process with client groups in virtually every specialization imaginable and with clients from eight to over eighty years of age.

What I had in hand was …

An aesthetically oriented, phenomenologically grounded and embodied model of transformational ontological changework that took into account developmental levels of awareness engaging the mythological form that supported the fundamental autobiographical narrative from which individuals and groups define reality as they know it to be in any given moment, operating it enactively.

WOW!!!

That’s surely a mouthful (and why I just refer to it simply as the MythoSelf Process model).

To get what it really is we’re dealing with all of that is actually essential. What makes this so strange to consider however is the typical orientation to reductionism, silos and linear thinking versus synthesis, integration and systemic thinking.

BUT … you can’t deal with dynamic complex systems, e.g.: human systems, without addressing the reality of that they are in fact dynamic complex systems!

The model of transformational changework I built, the MythoSelf Model, then is a model that shifts the fundamental way you perceive, think about and act in the world.

What’s at the center of the model is the shift in thinking from linear to systemic, and from fuzzy to precise. This requires a whole new way of using your brain than most people have ever experienced, one that is both more integrated and, far more embodied and wholeform than your education has ever made available for you to access.

Two other aspects of using your brain in this way is how embodied the experience becomes as you being thinking through and with body-based processing (somatically organized) as well as mentally-based processing (semantically organized) as an enfolded and entwined processing model of thought … and, how sensual and aesthetic this way of thinking is organized. When using the MythoSelf Process model as the basis of how you experience, perceive, process and act in the world aiming for beauty and elegance in form becomes a most sought for characteristic. Essentially this drives sensuality into decision making and performance (strategic action aimed at an intended outcome), making them beautiful as well.

Storytelling & Narrative Communication As A Control System

Way back when … virtually at the same time I began this journey from my study of the philosophers I’ve already mentioned, I also was beginning to read in the field of cybernetics, and cybernetic control systems based in communication.

I felt from the start that there was a direct correlation between what I was reading in cybernetic theory and the work I wanted to master in helping individuals and organizations make transformational changes. What I couldn’t put together was the mathematical orientation of many of the cybernetic thinkers I was studying at the time and how to apply them directly to helping people make the changes they desired.

The idea of systems that provided and operated on feedback made perfect sense, yet the mechanism of how to apply this directly with my clients eluded me for many years. It took the connection between mythological form/narrative and developmental theory to make sense of it as I now have and apply in my work with clients.

While the idea of a primary cybernetically organized mechanism to assist clients to make change made perfect sense, the specific methodology was a bit trickier to fully explicate and define.

When I brought together all of the systemic work I had been doing with individuals and organizations, as well as the mechanism of mythological form/narrative applied within a developmentally organized approach, it all became very clear that what I knew was working could be codified.

Stories are intrinsically cybernetic in the sense that they are self-contained systems. In stories language “controls” the movement of the narrative in terms of content, space as place, and temporality.

Where someone perceives themselves in space and time relative to the content in consideration determines what the content represents to and for them, and what’s possible as a result.

Narrative structure is based in organizing temporally, and placing actors and agents in relation to one another relatively in space, i.e.: who’s affected by the events that happen and how, where the events are happening, as well as when the events happen, are all part of narrative structure.

Organizing the stories we tell ourselves and others, as well as the stories others tell … especially those they tell about us … are all part of the mythic form of our life that organizes who we know ourselves to be in relation to reality as we know it to be.

Therefore the most powerful skill we can possess may be our ability to design, craft and tell potent stories … in storytelling we contain POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE simultaneously. When we tell stories intentionally, to ourselves or others, we shape and reshape reality as we know it, and in regard to how we relate to it.

Transformational storytelling sits at the heart and soul of the MythoSelf Process model. Storytelling is the essential and central skill that allows someone to create a future possibility that doesn’t exist for them as they are today. Using stories also opens up the possibility of shifting away from those things that limit an individual or organization.

I’ve designed the MythoSelf Process to allow facilitators of the Process to help clients make significant shifts towards what they want, as they simultaneously reset their relationship to what had been limiting them in the past, using narrative form as a means of updating their personal mythology.

Using a wholeform approach that takes into account sensorial and dynamic movement processing, as well as content driven sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making, defines the MythoSelf Process more than just a narrative or storytelling methodology as they are normally approached.

The MythoSelf Process creates a new wholeform reality by blending somatic and semantic modeling within a narrative, storytelling process that resets the temporal and spatial relationship of a client to the future-based position they intend to achieve.

Holding The Space For Clients Until They Can Hold It For Themselves

The new wholeform reality created by combining somatic and semantic modeling using a narrative, storytelling approach shifts the filters of perception and the sorting patterns that lead to sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making that precede taking action that produced the results that lead to achieving outcomes.

Only when an individual’s or organization’s filters and sorting patterns are fully organized and aligned with the outcome that’s intended, will the trajectory of action create the results needed to achieve the outcome that’s desired.

By shifting the filters and sorting patterns to align with a newly intended future, the individual or organization shifts the way they are paying attention, what they notice for, and how they notice for it, as well as what it means, needed to create that future intended outcome. This amounts to stepping into and living a new story that forecasts and leads to a new emergent reality.

Like this, what to do becomes obvious, even when it requires significant work to accomplish. In this way, operating from within the new story structure, moving towards the new emergent reality becomes effortless … regardless of how challenging it may be to do what’s necessary.

As the agent of change, “I” was the primary mechanism I had been seeking, and the specific way I could organize myself in relation to my clients to assist them in bringing about the change they sought when they engaged me became instantly clear as well (although it’s taken me another ten years to document and codify it fully).

There are two aspects to applying the MythoSelf Process in the way I have been building up to and describing … first by establishing the stories that need to be told and re-told, and second by holding a position in relation to your client that demands they operate from the position they’ll be in when they achieve their outcome. Doing this requires understanding all the “science” part of what I’ve been laying out here, as well as the “art” of knowing how to step into and adopt the position of choice.

In this way bits and pieces of what your clients need to be aware of starts becoming obvious to them. As the become aware of what they need, they simultaneously become more able to hold the position they need for themselves where noticing in this way is automatic and natural for them (without needing you to provide the structure and stimulus to prompt them to hold this position).

Over time the new position, actually a new reality for them, becomes how they are without effort or trying, it’s quite literally who they become (with your help of course, until you don’t need to help anymore).

This is a radical departure from how most processes, approaches, methodologies and models of transformational change operate. In virtually every other way of prompting transformational change it’s what the change artist does with or to the client that makes the difference. In the MythoSelf Process model the way you are as you do what you do with or to the client is what makes all the difference.

“Holding the position” is a cybernetic process, and personal communication … including the art of storytelling … is the ultimate control function in the system.

Stories form the mechanism to provide the intervention, or interventions, required to shift the system so the individual can find a way to permanently occupy the new position of choice, opening the pathway to a new possibility, a new future, beyond what would have been possible before resetting the system to the new position created in the relationship between the client and the facilitator.

In the end becoming that person, the one who can hold the position necessary makes it all worthwhile to have done all the reading, study and the thousands of hours of client work required to know how to discover what to do and how to do it, and then to do it.

Best,

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

Sarasota, FL

P.S.: – If you would like to discuss the MythoSelf Process more, either as a coach or consultant … or, with the intention of exploring how experiencing the MythoSelf Work might help you personally … let’s talk, set up a complimentary consultation at your convenience: Schedule Time To Talk With Joseph Now

Ontological Integrity

Ontological Integrity

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The restoration of ontological integrity. 

“The conflict about who I was, what I know to be true innately and intimately, and what I was taught to believe is the truth about the world, fractured my sense of self … i.e.: my ontological integrity. Instead of remaining secure both in who I was and how to aim myself into my future, I had conflict.”

 

Today I would argue that the ontological crack is really a separation between accepting direct sensory experience, and how someone has been taught (by choice or coercion). In the process of being taught they learned to think about what they experience other than as they themselves experience it directly.

We are taught to turn sensation into ideation … lived experience into abstractions and the representations we substitute for it.

We learn to “process” our experiences to project meaning onto them, not to have our experiences directly and perceive meaning based on what we experience as it emerges and unfolds before us.

In not knowing how to have the experience of our life in favor of “processing” our experience, we do not just lose touch with the direct sensation of what is happening as we experience it … we lose ourselves as well.

Mistaking ontological longing for existential longing, i.e.: mixing up your desire to know yourself as you are, with the desire to find meaning and purpose in your life, especially in your work, is common when your ontological integrity has been compromised.

Doing what you are doing and accepting it for what it is, and no more than that … i.e.: farming makes you a farmer because you are farming, not because G-d destined you to have a farmer’s soul … provides existential peace.

Today we are taught in every way that we must find our purpose to experience existential relief, substituting what we do for who we are, as the basis of our being. Depending on how you look at it this is either insanity … or what must be a leading cause of it.

A way of talking about being at and operating from your center is, “Bringing the system to rest.” Being “at rest” refers to the entirety of your experience in the world … internally, your body-mind experience, and in relation to the system that you are a part of that simultaneously contains you externally. When you are “at rest,” you are settled and at ease, without conflict, internally and externally … simply resting in a “Ready State.”

In the Ready State you can easily take action … or not … there is no hesitation or urgency to act, both are equal and remain fully available based on circumstance and choice.

The beginning point is somatic integration, becoming aware of what you are experiencing as you are experiencing it, i.e.: awareness that is sensory-based and embodied. This sounds remarkably obvious and simple, and it is once you have learned how to do it. Yet without access to the Ready State being aware of what you are experiencing, as it happens, is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.

At first I bought the theory that experiencing extreme stress as you make “progress” in your life is normal, and I thought I was sane, or at least as sane as anyone else I knew. Then I began waking up and realized I was truly living an insane life within an insane social model. When I sought relief, I found that all the ordinary physical and/or psychological medical references controlled by the insane society I was living in had to offer me were ways to modulate and cope with the “symptoms” of stress I was experiencing.

Like this, I was lost and had no easy or clear way back to sanity on my own. I was caught in the web, but I knew enough to recognize that struggling against it would only ensnare me further. While I did not have a path to freedom yet, I decided that I had to begin to make my moves within the structure of the system without attracting to much undue attention from it. From where I stood it appeared to me that “the only way out was through” … so I dove in, going deeper, becoming fully present to the insanity I was living.

 

(Excerpts taken from: “Experiencing The Hero’s Journey”   by Joseph Riggio, edited 13 April 2019)
Seeing Wholeness

Seeing Wholeness

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The Key To Transformational Embodiment 

About 30 years ago I began searching for the universal ”skeleton key” to transformational change.

By the mid-1990s I had come to the conclusion that the ”key” to transformational change was part of what I began calling the somatic ground of being … embodiment … the foundation of ontological experience and awareness. This led to an approach using somatic interventions to instigate ontological transformation.

I remember sitting in the “Hypnotorium” with Roye at the front doing something with someone, a piece of profound transformational hypnosis.

This is very different from what many think of as hypnosis, i.e.: “You are getting sleepy … your eyes are getting heavy, tired, and they want to close … just let them close, NOW … going deeper into a deep, deep sense of relaxation … let yourself float down, even deeper, still …” and then some suggestions about stopping smoking or losing weight, or some other habit interruption and reframing.

It’s also obviously very different from stage hypnosis, (same script followed by), ”Now you will follow my suggestions … when I snap my fingers you will open your eyes, and when I mention the word “hypnosis” you will cluck like a chicken …” No, not anything like that at all.

Transformational hypnosis was … is … the art of shifting the ontological awareness you operate from about reality, what is real and how it is organized, and most importantly your place in relation to it.

Within the art of transformational hypnosis there is an intention not to change symptoms or behavior at the surface, but the structure of your perception at a deep and essential level, all the way down to the core of your sense of identity.

Now the way I was learning about how Roye worked was presented in what he referred to as “wholeform” … never truly broken down into steps to follow, but instead presented as a complete piece of work.

Someone would come in and present a life issue they were facing and within … a significant choice in a relationship maybe, or the need and desire to make a major change in their profession or lifestyle, it might be they were dealing with a major loss and were struggling with processing it fully, and as often it would have been someone who was simply stuck and yearning for a breakthrough to an imagined future that infuriatingly continued to elude them.

Roye would refer to whatever it was that the person presented as the ”presenting problem” and point out that it was simply the lens to a solution. The trick of course was to be able to elicit and discern the solution that had been obfuscated by the presenting problem and remained unavailable to the one presenting it.

So I would come, a couple or a few times a month, or even weekly, to sit in the Hypnotorium with Roye to learn the secrets of the deep art of transformational hypnosis. I have to admit that for months the entirety of it eluded me and all I could gather from what he was doing at the front of the room was bits and pieces of technique.

Maybe I would pick up a way of leading someone into an altered state with some bit of language. Or, I’d notice that Roye would alter his posture to be more like the person he was working with, and yet with all these bits and pieces I was gathering my skill remained mostly limited to working at best at the surface of things.

Then it happened …

I think maybe I was tired, or frustrated, but I’d given up trying to “get it” and I just sat there as Roye was doing a piece of work with someone and I saw the whole thing!

This wasn’t the process he was using, or what he was doing, it was what he was noticing about the person in front of him. They are the whole thing!

This is where the magic happens. I got that absolutely in that instant, as fleeting as it was and as difficult to recapture. By trying to “get it” … looking and listening for what it was, I remained unable to get the “whole thing” … the entirety of what happens moment to moment as you are with someone.

The “whole thing” is the entirety of how someone is organized in any given moment AND how they change moment to moment in an endlessly choreographed dance of dynamic movement.

This way of seeing became the essence of the work I do and teach in MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics models.

I proposed we have a fundamental, ontological state of being that is innate to us, because of the deep integration between the somatic and semantic structure of wholeform experience that treats the body-mind as an integrated singularity. This state of being always emerges in wholeform as a singularity all at once.

The wholeform ontological structure contains the entirety of the way we are within our bodies, how we use them, move within them and move through them, and the language forms that arise to inform us and others via the descriptions of the subjective experience we are having as we do.

One of the primary teaching distinctions of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics is the art of Seeing Wholeness.

Yet Seeing Wholeness remains elusive, as it did for me for months of my early training with Roye, only becoming apparent in that first instance as a wholeform experience of undifferentiated wholeness that was the true essence of the person I saw for the first time that day.

 

Seeing The Wholeform Of Wholeness:

To see wholeness you cannot be looking for the pieces or the parts, as wholeness only exists in the wholeform.

This is what makes it so hard for folks to learn … the letting go of trying to see what they cannot yet discern for themselves.

For most people to learn to see wholeness you must allow yourself to see it through the eyes of someone who can already see it, and see what they are seeing, not what you are looking for yourself.

This of course is a kind of trick you must learn for yourself, i.e.: to see through the eyes of another.

What you’re noticing for is the entirety of whatever you are present to, not the parts of the entirety. Of course the entirety includes you, since you are present as well.

Wholeness always includes whatever happens between you and what you are noticing, and it is there that the magic of the wholeform experience becomes most present … in the space between.

To put this another way, I always feel the wholeform experience before I can see it, but once I can feel it I can’t help but to see it as well.

What we call adumbration in the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics training forms the basis for seeing wholeness … the ability to foresee what is emerging as it emerges, or even a microsecond or so before it is apparent in any ordinary sense of being able to see it.

As crazy making as this seems to see wholeness you must allow yourself to feel it coming before it’s there within yourself. Then you must allow yourself to stop looking for anything and just notice for everything, because when you are tracking for wholeness everything changes all at once.

When you are noticing for wholeness you do not only notice that someone has moved an arm or a leg, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch. You notice for the way they are now entirely different AND they moved an arm or a leg, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch.

By getting caught by the arm or a leg moving, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch, you lose the sense of the wholeform, and you lose any ability to see wholeness.

Wholeness flows.

Wholeness doesn’t exist in any moment and it does in every moment. It is the ability to see the grand pattern of change and transformation, and to notice for how that pattern organizes itself in alignment with some future, teleological wholeform possibility.

Using the information that is present by tracking the Soma-Semantic (whole)form you can then assist whomever you are working with to align themselves with that wholeform possibility as the possibility of choice. This then becomes the trajectory along which they propel themselves into their chosen future.

NOTE FOR MYTHOSELF PROCESS FACILITATORS AND TRAINERS:

When you can do this you are doing the MythoSelf Process, and only when you are doing this, doing anything else is something, but not the MythoSelf Process.

Merry Christmas 2018!

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D., Parsippany, NJ
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process,a SomaSemantics and Generative Flow

SENSING TIME

SENSING TIME

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Time lines in an abstract spiral

Just like seeing or hearing TIME is a sense.

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

A Sense of Time

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

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

First a little background to where I’m going …

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

More Than The Traditional Five Senses

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Finer Distinctions Of Time … And Other Things Too

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Teleological Factor

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

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

So this brings me around to my next point …

TIME IS A CONTEXT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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