Let the horses run freely

[First draft] Starting with the article I wrote “for my sister”, a new fire seems to have ignited inside me.

At Reboot11, joining the discussion after the talks in the workshop “future building for WikiCrats” (organized by Nadia El Imam) and discussions after other things are merging as well and the past days I seem to be talking about nothing else.

One returning thing is the body/mind connection. Apparently Plato is to thank for the idea that the sexual, animal and sensual part of our human state is best to be repressed. See this short reference. Another returning thing is the idea that we are economical, rational beings. See this reference to get more info about that. A third one is based on the theory that people need governance not to fall into a state of chaos, rape and murder, “a war against all” as Hobbes believed.

With these ideas as a basis you can build a society where i.e.:

1. It is preferable to learn how to repress any bodily sensation and focus on the development of your rational thinking
2. People perceive themselves and their decisions as rational and where emotions are considered to be a nuisance you rather avoid. Especially the “lower” or “negative” ones.
3. Sex could be considered as a functional activity only: to procreate in order to prevent our human species from extinction
4. The government is essential to watch over us all and tell us what choices, rules and behaviors are best to live by

As an effect:

1. Play might be considered as a lower rate activity. It is neither economical, nor rational and therefore useless for your adult life and merely useful for recreational purposes.
2. To feel emotions and understand and explore your own body and sensory/bodily experiences might be considered to be a lower rate activity and maybe even something to stay away from, as the body and our emotions is part of our animal nature and not rational.
3. To explore play and the exploration of bodily experiences and expression of sensuality might be considered childish, irresponsible, strange, maybe even harmful (seductive, disobediant, disruptive) to them/ourselves and others and something that should be corrected.
4. The government might be allowed to lay any rule upon us as they deem just. Furthermore this government might even be allowed to interfere with isseus on very low levels, write rules like: “how to sell an orange to a customer” and create subrulings like: “How to sell an orange to a customer which has an income above the local avarage income” and “How to sell an orange to a customer which has been ill the day before.”

Here are eight of the items I shared with others this past week:

1. Emotional confusion regarding sensuality and sexuality: by only having a limited “language” for the different emotions and bodily experiences it is hard to create a clear space to the different variations on love, lust, endearment, feelings of bonding, feelings of warmth. Imagine a space in your mind where you can completely enjoy all the feelings you can experience for someone else, without holding back, and shine. Where it is normal to fall in love with a stranger three times a day, never see that person again in your life and be totally happy with it.
2. Western society and retarded views regarding female-, male- AND homosexuality: women in Western society have for a long time been preferably regarded as “subordinate to male sexuality” which can even lead to the idea that rape is allowed under certain circumstances. Until 1973 homosexuality was officially considered to be a mental disorder (see reference here).  Masturbation has been considered “wrong” and “taboo” until the late 60’s (read more about this and “medical” points of view here) and has sadly been a very obscure thing for woman. (Quoting an article on BBC Home to state the basics: In fact, a great deal of the problem with women’s sexual gratification is their own general ignorance of the anatomy involved. A woman who is totally unacquainted with her own body is relatively unlikely to find someone capable of satisfying her, even to her own apparently inferior standards.)
3. The misconception regarding the differences between men and woman: we used to think women were very emotional, where men were rational, men were practical and woman were not, woman can not handle money where man could, women could not organize or magage things and events where men could, women could never be good scientists/leaders/teachers/programmers where men could (do you start to see a pattern here?) in fact most men are hardly rational in their own decisions, fail to organize and be organized over and over again and can be easily surpassed in leadership by woman. When you start to look further, you will find more and more that most if not all of the “differences” which are related to emotion, cognition and mental abilities are simply biased bullshit either way around.
4. The position of women in Western society: while pointing fingers at Muslim societies, it is only since the 1980′ that Western society started to drop their own sexist preconceptions and a male dominated society started to view women as possible equals in some professional fields. Still, even by “modern” men, women still are viewed as less than equals due to the remnants of our social- and cultural programming.
5. Humans as social, empathic, pain-avoiding and problem solving animals versus Hobbes and co.: I believe our social wiring, our ability to mimic and simulate the emotions of others (empathy) and our strive for an easier and more pleasant and pleasing life are the returning elements in any developed society and civilization. Pain here is wider than the physical “ow!” pain. It also includes boredom, trouble, problems, abuse and the feeling of lonelyness, lack and loss.
6. Schooling is killing creativity in children: Our current way of  public education – in my opinion – uses the factory model of production, production units and quality measurement. Each year a specific target needs to be reached. This target consists of an X amount of children being able to reproduce specific knowledge according to one specific model and standard. It is linear and limited in what it offers. In this system, your conformity and your skills to reproduce are rewarded highest. Creativity and alternate thinking are mostly considered disruptive.
7. The world as fluid and constantly changing: We tend to assume that the world and things happening in this world are quite linear and therefore predictable, where it is not. Our reality is so complex, with so many factors, forces, fields and elements interacting, that any attempt to find, create or enforce an all enveloping order is doomed to fail. You can not freeze a moment and make it everlasting. Plans you made yesterday already might need change today. As a result we are constantly improvising.
8. Schooling based on improvisation, play, discovery, negotiation and coached self-education as a basis: We remember best what is most relevant to us. We solve problems by searching for solutions. When you look at children and adults still in the process of play, in most cases they start investigating the things they are interested in automatically. When they have been tought to think from open spaces and possibities they will use improvisation to solve the problems they encounter.

Tame your horses

We were tought to “tame the horses”. Be strong. Manage your emotions. Don’t cry. Do not ask questions. Obey the rules. But against what price? And do our “horses” need to be “tamed” or is “taming the horses” a flawed model based on the wrong preconceptions?

Set your horses free

I believe horses should be free. They will not rape each other, nor take each others rights to claim their place in an endless and abundant world, nor die because I am not there to feed them. I think the horses will find their own ways and start to shine and be happy and will be running around and create new beauty just by what they are.

To believe in old systems that do put not trust in human nature is strange. I rather take the ones that believe in the good qualities we have.

Utopia does not exist, but we can certainly do much better regarding our own development as an emotinal and intelligent, social and empathic animal then we do now.

Additional to item 5:
In general we try to create solutions to solve the problems we encounter and gain a new level of stability. Our empathy allows us to feel for other people and feel sorry for other people so that their problems become part of something we want to solve ourselves. Our social component makes that we enjoy being with other people and preferrably people we like (avoidance of “pain” again) and also why many societies and groups within societies are starting as self-organizing before becoming organized and governed and why governments have no need at all to be “big brother” or our “big mom and big dad”. (We sometimes tend to forget that people in the government are just as stupid and dumb and short sighted and human as we and our neighbors are).

Additional to item 8:
Most scientists from the current and old days in my view simply continued and continue their play, their daydreaming and their skills for improvisations in combination with – in many cases self-tought – systematic and methodic approaches to solve problems and manifest their fantasies (objects, machines, computer programs, movies, books, calculations, formula’s and so on) into this world. Where I think play and curiousity is our natural way to learn, via request based coaching we can hand the kids tools to focus this natural play into more systematic ways where suddenly the scale of things are increased. The further development of natural negotiation can help kids reaching goals they alone woult never reach. And even the “soft” kids interested suddenly can learn mathematics and physics when you connect it to something relevant like that “the seeds of a sunflower are organized according to the Fibunacci range” and that by knowing that “human limbs are restricted to specific physicallimitations” you can optimize these movements and even invent new ways of moving.

Kids are crappy programmers – fun with behavior patterns

Embracing yourself, embracing your inner child, be at peace with yourself, deal with your fucking “pain body”. It has not worked for me yet. I read the stuff and simply do not “click” with it, nor do I allow myself the time to decipher the fluff and get to the practical side of it. So let’s get to business.

Intro

My main goal for years is to get “unstuck”. I know I have much more potential than I show now (and fuck the Tony Robbins-es of this world milking this by claiming “OK is not enough” and that I should be “on the Edge” That as well does not work for me). I see myself holding back on issues where there is no risk except for maybe to get hurt.

So what is keeping me back?

One thing I use to get unstuck is the assumption that my brain heavily leans on pattern recognition to interpret my “reality”. It is a handy and very clever shortcut my brain applies by using already interpreted stuff from my memory instead of re-interpreting what I just experienced. In programming we would put this under the label “optimization”.

Illustration 1: Matching situations with patterns via pegs and hooks

Simplified it looks like the above image: a “square” situation is matched with a (memory) pattern already available and when our brain finds a matching “square” in our memory we can assume it is similar to something we already know.

But what if this pattern has some gnarly emotions attached to it: fears, anger, desperation, sadness, you name it. A new (possible) situation will recall and trigger these emotions we might have experienced and attached to this pattern. So every time I  move into a new social environment I might experience the same anxiety I experienced once as a toddler or teenager since the situation of old times might repeat itself again.

Why do we do the irrational things we do? – Kids are not the best people to write complex software

A 1,5- or three year kid is not the best person to write the often complex software of responsive patterns. It simply misses the experience and broader view you (hopefully) develop when growing up. Looking back at your own creations from when you were that age, there is certainly a significant difference in style and quality. And some simply do not make any sense any more and may even seem irrational to us from where we stand now.

Still: as a kid we are actively programming all kinds of patterns to be able to respond to new and old situations in the best way possible at that moment. And all this programming grows and is tweaked and adapted as we learn and grow. But still old remnants remain active. Jumbled up code. Weird response patterns that make no sense anymore now that we have become more experienced teenagers and grown to be adults.

Enter the world of broadly defined filters and new connections

People who state: “it’s how I am” or “this is what I am” are talking bullshit when you take the following into consideration: We “are” not our response patterns. We merely created them as a response to our environment.

Our mind already starts programming response patterns and pegs and hooks to be able to respond faster to new situations which resembles situations we already have stored in our memory. Let’s say one of these pegs is our “square” in the image. Now suppose we forgot to be very specific of the matching criteria of this square. So instead of only squares, any form small enough to fit will be accepted as a match.

Let’s assume I have been repeatedly publicly humiliated by the class bully. Since there was no other options shown to choose from, at these moment I went through the emotional states of shame, angst anger and sadness. Most of the fights I started I lost. So on top of the first humiliation the second of physical defeat was added, combined with a deeper hurt. And repeated.

A new pattern takes form. The main message is: when you show yourself in public, you take a risk to be humiliated.

But how specific is the filter I use for this pattern?

1. Any situation?
2. Any situation in public?
3. Any situation in public where I think people are watching me?
4. Any situation in public where people are actually watching me?
5. Any situation in public where males or females are actually watching me?
6. Any situation where I might wear the wrong combination of clothes?

And who is marked to be hostile in my mind?

1. Anyone?
2. Only males?
3. Only females?
4. Within a specific age?
5. Any age?

When the filters are to wide, any seemingly similar situation can be linked to this one specific pattern.

In the worst case: anyone could be hostile and out there to humiliate me.

Illustration 2: Mismatching judgmental pegs and hooks

Brief: “Five and six sided situations are the same as square ones”. The result is that I will be limiting my own options more than I really need to because I assume that “Square is the same as five- and six sided” where they are not. It is the result of bad programming.

But hey: I was 1, 2, 3, 4 years old at that point.

Narrowing the filters, re-evaluating and re-matching patterns

First: any pattern I created had it’s value in the past. It helped me to cope with the situations I was in at that moment the best I could.

Step 1 is to disconnect the situations that actually are different from the situation related to the pattern.

Instead of assuming that my judgment is right, I become inquisitive. “Is this situation really what I assume it to be?” It might not. I might be totally wrong when I take a better look at things. And yes: it takes courage to look beyond my assumptions. I suddenly have to open my mind, take a look at things I have learned to avoid because they might inflict pain or hurt. I have to re-learn that not all things I am trying to avoid or attack are a possible threat to me.

Step 2 is to define new judgmental pegs and hooks and to create openings for new patterns to evolve.

The question is: “if it is NOT-A, what COULD it be otherwise?” The only way to find out is to stay open, broaden my vision, observe and discard my assumptions as best as I can. Reality proves 99.99999999% of all my fantasy futurama assumption escapes into “WHAT COULD HAPPEN WHEN..” wrong anyway when I am brutally honest, so there is hardly any loss into neglecting them and try something new instead.

Step 3 is to reconnect situations to new matching hooks.

It simply makes it easier to re-evaluate a situation every time I do so. The school bully is not around any more to humiliate me. The people around me are no representatives of this bully: “out to get me… even now”. And if they are I can respond in many more ways than I could image when I was that kid because I learned some new tricks. Responses I previously perceived as attacks might even be positive critiques outed from a loving place to help me grow beyond my current state. I can stop repeating specific behavioral patterns.

Any situation is different and with different actors.

Why I think “positive thinking” does not work…

There is a lot of old hooks and pegs and response patterns in our brain. They produce all kind of responses to our day to day situations. In my case it sometimes seems like I have an entire crowd of people with sometimes contradicting agendas in my mind all talking at the same time without getting to a productive result.

To override these patters with “positive” thinking is like adding a new person to the crowd. It is really hard work to make this new “thought” loud enough to get the others to stop. And what if this “positive guy” fails? Some of the others are constantly ready for the kill. And they will make sure I understand that I have failed in yet another attempt to make a change.

..and I think opening your mind and aiming for a neutral state does

You first need to clean up.

Instead of working hard, try for a change to do nothing. Sit back and let the crowd speak their mind in your mind until they get bored from getting no response from you at all. It is already such an advantage to get a loud and noisy mind to calm down. It is like moving from a busy street to a calm meadow. Suddenly you can hear your own thoughts again, relax. Be you instead of an internal response machine repeating over and over again all the fears and doubts you already know for so long.

Like stated before, to develop new pegs and hooks for new response patterns, you first need to understand what the situation is. In my experience the best position to do this from is where I am calm and relaxed. In an argument, or when receiving critique, it is good to actually hear what is being said without immediately responding to it. To let things sink in without immediately connecting it to yourself or to your possible failure.

A neutral state is simply “observing situations without the need to have any opinion at all about it”.

“And the price winning solution is?”

I have no clue. (Fuck me if I knew. I could make millions.) My best guess for now:

1. To challenge yourself to assume that your current judgmental system is flawed. Non-stop.
2. To start with observing and learning to see things from multiple angles.
3. To re-evaluate any current judgemental system and build new ones where you feel it will help you

Signing off.

Until next time.

Peter

Me and my old patterns, my subconcious and the desintegration of old shit

After 3 years I still wake up every morning around 4:00 or 6:00 AM with fear in my body. The fear is related to “unfinished business” and basically a literal wake-up call to close things. Based on some new reading and exploring I encountered the technique to conciously relive specific moments over and over again instead of avoiding them. The idea behind reliving is to reduce the emotional charge connected to this moment in the past. One way is by changing the “movie” every time you replay it in your mind and replacing the threatening elements by something more neutral. When done well, the complex of memories, physical reactions and emotions can be even turned around into something empowering. I entered my session today with the question if this approach could be useful.

I found that it could and that the standard methods are too elaborate and indirect to keep my interest going. My mind has been very creative in finding evasive movements via distractions and spontanious loss of focus and recollection of my planned actions: “what was I doing again?”. The “replacement” method requires focus in constant replay of the movie. So I basically need a shortcut, a way to get down to the core of things.

We discussed the technique of “you sitting in a cinema and watching the movie of your memories, replaying specific scenes and revaluaing your emotional responses”. Here is a brief transcript of my deconstruction of that approach into some core elements I think will be valuable to me.

The main assumptions

The main assumptions are that:

1. Many of my emotional, physical and mental reactions on a situation are based on old patterns triggered by assumptions
2. These patterns were once successful and helped me to get through the situations they were designed for
3. To get from a negative to a neutral state is the easiest way. I will get back on that later.

1. By desintegrating old patterns, room for new patterns will be created automatically
2. My brain can let go of old triggers of old patterns when it no longer needs to solve the “why’s” regarding the surrounding issues
3. Desintegration is faster and more long-lasting than “re-training / reprogramming the brain” methods (like positive affirmations)

I go through my findings of today step by step.

Emotional triggers

When I am in certain social situations, old patterns are triggered. My basic response is to withdraw, to avoid contact. In other situations other triggers and other patterns related to these triggers have me ending up feeling frustrated, angry, fearful, drained of energy, depressed or waking up in fear at 4:00 or 6:00 AM. They create tensions around issues and possible actions which bear relatively no danger except from looking stupid to other people (when it regards people who tend to judge in that way).

The first step today, based on the technique of the cinema was to define the following model:

1. Recognition of the event in the past
2. Recognition of me in that past period, with the knowledge and experience I had then.
3. Seperation of me NOW from myself THEN, with my new experiences, new insights and new knowledge
4. Taking action from that new perspective / building a new model / building new assumptions

If I look at the event in the past through the eyes of my old me, there are a lot of unanswered questions: “why did I choose ‘A’ instead of ‘B’?” “Why did I not call for help?” “Why did I let it happen even though I knew what was coming?” and so on. Since there is no time machine available for me now, I can only look forward and try to grow into new states of working that will make these old blocking patterns obsolete.

In my attempt to deconstruct the given methods of replaying and replacing aspects of memories I defined the following. The orginal notes fit on one A4 page, but would be totally cryptic and meaningless for anyone except me.

Problem solving:

I think that a major part of our brain is very focused on problem solving (using pattern recognition as one of the tools). It strives very hard to find answers on any question with enough relevance (by matching old patterns with new situations). I compared it in a older post with an “addiction to problem solving”. Unsolved issues (like cliffhaners in movies) are hard to accept for the problem-solving patterns in our brain and can create feelings of unease and/or ‘wants to solve’. I believe that this is one of the reasons why we like mysteries and puzzles and why some things from the past keep hunting us. Only when the problem has a clear resolvement status, the mind can release the question. My experience is that for my mind these resolvement states are the following: “the problem is irrelevant”, “the problem is solved” and “the problem can not be solved now / will be picked up later”.

Avoidance of pain:

In almost all assumptions below, the premis is taken that one of the reasons to create reactive patterns is to avoid pain I have experienced in the past.

Five primary responses to a (possible) situation:

1. Assumptions of pattern repetition: “that what is happening now / what will happen now / what I am going to do now is very similar to something I have done / seen / experienced in the past and will most likely lead to a similar result”
2. Event recollection: “what situations from my past look like the current one?”
3. Emotional and physical recollection: emotional and physical reactions connected to those recollected events
4. Avoidance of possible pain: when the recollected patterns are experiences as “negative”
5. Problem solving reflex: “What did I do wrong then?” “Why did it happen?” “How could it have happened?” “What could I have done differently?” “Why did I (not) do it?” “How will that repeat itself now?”

When out of control, the Problem Solving reflex can create what I used to call “upside down mind pyramids” representing the thought-constructs of assumptions and inner conversations that start with one topic and ends with an bulkous towering “thing”. Little side-note: To stop that process: I looked at the inner conversation and the original question. In most cases they had no connection any more. So I started to treat everything not related to the original question as being irrelevant (without fighting the thought process! that was what I tried before). At a certain moment, the process slowed down and eventually stopped. Only seldomly I create upside down mind-pyramids now.

Boosting the process of problem solving

The problem solving reflex is handy to create new strategies to avoid pain. A workable approach is the three step approach on the triggered recollections:

1. Problem definiton: How did it happen? / Why did it happen? / When did it happen / Why did I let it happen?
2. Classification in relevance: What can I solve now? / What can I only solve later? / Can I solve it? / Is the solutions in my hands?
3. Exploration of possible solutions and alternative paths: What can I do different this time? / What should I avoid? / What can I avoid? / What actions are absolutely required in which situations? / What is Plan “B”? / What is Plan “C”?

Questions that do not help are like: “Why is it always me?”

Approach 0: Neutral state – I am, this is now, what are my options?:

To get from a negative to a positive state, you pass a neutral state. To get to a neutral state is easier than trying to jump from a negative to a positive directly. For instance, when I think: “I am stupid” my emotional state at that moment is not ‘happy’. It takes me a lot of effort to get “happy” or “joyous” when I feel down and when I fail I am even more stupid. Instead of forcing myself to turn the emotion around I can simply move to a neutral state. These are the steps I recalled this morning (after saving this post last night):

1. I am: I am neither good or bad. I simply am.
2. This is now: this is not the past and the future has not happened yet. I can not predict what will happen next. So no need for overly speculation.
3. What are my options?:  in every moment there are multiple options to choose from. When I look around me I will find many possible roads to go. Which will be the best one in my situation, based on my observations of this present?

Approach 1: Dissection of questions in three categories:

1. Solvable: you can answer this question now, find an actual solution for the problem now based on your current experience.
2. Irrelevant: the question is actually impossible to answer and therefor irrelevant. For instance: “why did God not help me?”
3. Unknown if it can be solved now: there might be an answer or solution for the problem, but you currently lack the knowledge.

The irrelevant questions (ones that can not be answered) can be dropped. The unknown require more investigation, reading and learning and the solvable can be used to work out new strategies. I am not sure if you can trick the mind for a long time by telling it that a relevant “why” is irrelevant.

Approach 2: Identification of the present and the past

1. Past: The emotional trigger / emotional response is connected to a painful event in the past
2. Fear: I am afraid to experience that “same” pain again in my current situation
3. Present: The actual situation which may have no relationship to my past experiences at all and might lead to totally different outcomes
4. Response: The choice I make in order to deal with the actual or imagined situation

Approach 3: Learning more about my patterns by dissecting my assumptions

If I start taking my assumptions apart, I might be able to understand what might have been the causes to the build up of these assumptions. For instance: if groups of people trigger fear or unease in me: IS THERE REALLY SOMETHING I SHOULD BE SCARED OF? What situations caused the pain that led to these reactive patterns? We take that there was a real and present fear of danger to develop any pattern like this. We do not question IF the response was once relevant, but WHY it was relevant. Then we move it to the current time and give it a new place.

1. Definition of the assumption: What do I assume is going on? What do I assume will happen?
2. Localization: When did a situation like that occur? Where did I see it? Was I involved myself? What physical and emotional responses are connected to that situation? What did I feel? How did I respond?
3. Relevance and value then: Why was it relevant to respond like that then? What added value was there? What other options did I have not?
4. Relevance and value now: Does it work for me now? If not: what are the prices I pay due to this behaviors?
5. Re-valuation of the reactive patterns: Where and in what form could these reactive patterns be valuable again? Where in what form am I already using them in a constructive way?

Approach 4: Re-valuation of the core reactive patterns:

With re-valuation I mean: “to give an old pattern a new relevance based on what is valuable in my current life”. For instance: If I withdraw from groups because as a young child I experienced these groups as “hostile” I can redefine “hostile” by asking myself “what would be the hostile situations I can encounter in my current life? Where and how will this pattern be useful now?” Anger is another thing. Anger can be destructive when aimed at people and situations who pose no threat at all. However, when directed at someone who poses a very possible threat or will likely cause harm, anger or even rage can be very useful. The three basic questions are:

1. Why, where and when was it relevant to trigger these emotions and responses in the past?
2. What is the relevance of that reactive pattern in my current life?
3. How can I re-valuate these reactive patterns with things that ARE relevant in my current life? Where can I use these patterns now? Where can I let them go / where are they no longer needed?

Approach 5: Recognizing the patterns

1. Trigger: Based on a current situation one or more old emotional patterns are triggered
2. Assumption: These patterns are triggered due to the (unconcious) assumption that one or more painful events from the past will reoccur in the present
3. Recollection: Based on the assumptions certain emotional states and old strategies are recollected (like fear or tiredness)
4. Response: Partly based on this old information I respond to my environment

Filters, focus, expecations, assumptions and emotional responses

In the models I discussed today, flters, focus, expectations and assumptions cam forward in the following way:

1. Focus and filters: are neutral. Filters take out irrelevant information from observations. Focus is aiming the attention to one specific item. Focus and filters interact ans support each others process.
2. Expectations and assumptions: are connected to emotional states. Expectations are my projected fantasies of a possible outcome regarding a specific situation. Assumptions are stories or patterns I created some time before and which I can use to quickly evaluate a situation.

I use Focus and filters and expectations and assumptions as handy tools to quickly judge the possible outcome of a situation before I have all the facts. However when my emotional response take over, I risk to forget to take the important next step of fact-finding.

Approach 6: Stop, experience, re-evaluate, reconsider, take action

To avoid moving on assumptions, I have learned to use something like above: based on what A.E. van Voght quoted in “The world of Nul-A” which was heavily inspired by the work of Anton Korzybski called: Science and sanity (which has offered many of the things used as a basis for NLP). Korzibsky was one of the first to assume that our responses to our environment flowed in a specific direction related to the evolutionary development stages of our brain. The order of responses he defined was:

1. Observation
2. Physical response: contration of muscles, release or withdraw of specific signal chemicals, fight/freeze/flight action
3. Emotional response: anger, fear, frustration, joy ..
4. Verbal respons: exclemation of sound
5. Mental response: thoughts
6. (re) Actions

Based on this model something like the following action plan was introduced by Korzibsky. The original helped me greatly. This is how I formulate it today:

1. Stop: do not take action. The information regarding the situation I want to respond to is very likely false
2. Experience: what is currently going on? What emotions do I experience? What is my physical reaction? What are my thoughts? What do I want to express? What are my assumptions?
3. Look around / investigate / re-evaluate: what is going on around me? What do I see? What are the facts? What is the basis? Do I have time for re-evaluation or must I act now?
4. Reconsider: Based on this new information and my personal (creative) values: what would be the best response in this situation? What is really good to be my physical and emotional state?
5. Act: Take the best action you can imagine at that moment based on your new information.

Approach 7: using my body and imagination

Whe I fear, my body tends to close and my energy goes down. I have found a very simple way to counter emotional states that cost me energy.

1. I straighten my back and push my chest open/forward. This opens the body and the heart
2. I focus on my solar plexus-area when breathing and imagine my breath goes “through” this area. It induces deep-breathing which releases tensions in this area. The solar-plexus area is one of the first areas to “tighten” and block when I am in an emotional state related to fear. Releasing this part releases my body-state of fear
3. I focus on my heartbeat. By just doing that (and just accepting it is beating fast and heavy) it starts to calm down. No intervention is needed. It simply is and will calm down eventually without me having to do anything.
4. I observe my assumtopns and fears without having to do anything but observing them to get to know them: no intervention or what so ever is required. They simply are and will pass.
5. I imagine rings of golden light flowing down and pushing open my energy body

Manifestation via the curious subconcious

I close this long post wit the following: The last part of the session I had today brought a funny thing about manifestation via the subconcious. “The things you fear will happen” or “be careful what you wish for..” are two statements related to that. And Aristotle (if I remembered properly) stated that the subconcious are like horsed you need to tame.

I found – based on the train of thought above that there might be a more relaxing approach to the manifatation powers of the subconcious. I came to it via my own past vertigo.

When I experienced vertigo I had the feeling that “something is sucking me to the edge to fall down” With items (like my glasses) on my body I sensed “something pulling these items down”. Fear somehow seems to feed this mechanism.

What if it is not blind manifestation, but sheer curiousity of a playful “subconcious” mind, leading to response patterns that satisfy the curiousity (like the imagined suction towards the edge). “What if?” is one of the big questions the subconcious tries to solve.

I guess to un-learn stuff like vertigo one of the solutions could be to aim the curious subconcious to something else.

The fluke of religion and some ponderings on faith and rationality

We do not know if God exists. Our minds and senses are too limited. If we experience some kind of religious moment it is hard to say if we really saw God, or our mind just fucked us around on some God-trip. And religion? What is the value of religion?

I believe that any form of religion is an organized system of belief with a closed system of manipulation that is designed to expand by adding as many new believers as possible. In many religions there is one main story and a cluster of mindfucks to try to keep you in. To me the main difference between different religions and cults within these religions is the level of aggression. The story they have to share is usually a load of fantasy nonsense backed up by systems of fear and indoctrination.

With systems of manipulation, it works something like this: to make you believe, I first need to break down any other form of competing belief system. To do this I will start with things that seem to make sense  to you. Values, beliefs and morale-systems that feels good, that you will say “Yeah” to. When we have built a level of trust I will start to feed your insecurities and fears. I will narrow your worldview and show you my version of the “truth”. I will gently use systems of exclusion and peer pressure to draw you out of your circles of non-believers and slowly help you to change your mind if you do not completely buy my story. I will help you see that the people you knew and that what you held to believe in the past are bad influences, very wrong and maybe even evil.

Depending on how aggressive my method is I might even resort to different methods of brainwashing to break your resistance.

If I truly believe in what I am doing, I am actually convinced that I am doing you a favor. Otherwise I am just playing power games with you, with me on top and you as my devotee. And sure I will offer you stuff that works. Otherwise my system will be unmasked as a “take all, give nothing” scam.

I will use your longings for something better and I will promise you things you like to hear to soothe you, things to believe in, things that will improve your life. I will help you see that my way is the best and even only way to reach those things. When our viewpoints differ I will keep on using your insecurities and keep showing you where you are wrong and where I am right. I will use closed systems of beliefs and arguments to reshape your view on reality. I will induce new systems of fear in your system to undermine your freedom of movement. When you ask me why you should fear, I will tell you “because it is so” and offer you more proof from my closed system.

To spread my influence I will motivate you to have a lot of kids and to invite others to join us. When enough people follow my fear induced dogmatic system I can extend my power by power of exclusion. This could mean that you will never get a decent job, that you will never be part of a community if you do not follow my belief system. If my system is more agressive, followers of my belief might even turn against you, use lies and force to intimidate you, hurt you, create an hostile or unsafe environment around you or even destroy what you hold dear or precious.

In many if not all cases religion is hardly about the “truth”. It will not offer you a system for spiritual liberation. It does not help you to understand anything as it is a closed system showing only a limited view of “reality”. The promises of a better world, the ideas that my way will bring order and peace is nothing more than a sham. You will never get it, because it will not serve me when you reach personal freedom or liberation and my personal agenda has never been about these things I promised you.

Religion very often promotes faith. When mentioning faith many people automatically connect it to religion. I believe faith is wonderful but certainly not the ownership of religion. Here we go, from the dictionary:

Faith

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something
2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

When people are in a gnarly situation: losing something dear, faith can be the one thing that pulls them through. “It will be allright. Today was terrible, but tomorrow will be better. And if tomorrow will not, the day after will be. I know it will.” “I just know that someone is watching over me.” The dark side of faith is that you will not questions things. Even when they can be harmful to others. When the circumstances are right, I can use my dogma’s, your faith and your religion to make you believe it is right to kill another human being.

Faith is a wonderful tool we learned to use, based on our capacity to invent and tell ourselves beautiful stories. And it works if you get into that state. It is our way to deliver ourselves to the unknown and leave it up to the universe or some other external power. It is another way of saying: “I actually know fuck all but I am totally OK with it.”

The thing about faith is that it has no grounds in reality. It is part of the realm of dreams.

When looking at rationality, the world gets a bit more sober. Pure rationalism leaves no room for faith. There is the stuff you can proof and the things you can not prove. The stuff you can prove is based on reproducible facts. For instance, the statement: “a glass holds water when held in the right position” is reproducible. The stuff you can not prove is not necessarily “untrue” but at least an assumption: “unknown until we know more”. Pure rationalism deals with the world of logics. The light side of rationalism is where you can acknowledge that there are many things you do not know and can not control. The dark side of rationality is where it gets you into states of fatalism.

Where faith just assumes, rationality (unless abused for other means) searches for tools to get down. For instance to cut away all the assumptions and fluff until until the most plausible explanation remains (Occams razor). It tries to cut it down to parts where reproducible facts remains. To get a completer picture you need to be willing to step out of boxes, move out of closed systems, park your old belief systems, open your mind.

To close this blog:

A Dutch comedian called Freek de Jonge was criticized last week in “HP / de Tijd”. One part struck me most. Apparently – according to the article – Freek de Jonge holds the belief that religion is one of the greatest inventions of man and humanism is a pipe dream. According to the article Freek de Jonge has said that the fear or awe for something greater keeps us from falling into chaos. I think that idea is a load of fatalistic nonsensical crap held by people with a creepy tunnel vision.

Things are never simple.

Arguments, Justification, fulfillment and joy

What is wrong with arguments? In basics: nothing. Arguments can help you to set things straight, clear the unclear, discover and border the uncharted territories of your own emotional landscape. However, when one or both parties offer a closed mind, arguments can turn into a war of will.

One of the instruments I use in arguments is justification. To save myself a lot of words, the Oxford dictionary translates “justification” to: “show or prove to be right or reasonable”. But when the other party discards your arguments or part of your arguments (for instance due to a different belief system) what is there to gain? Very little more then frustration or anger in my case and I am very much done with those emotions. Apart from that, the feeling that I was not able to “justify” myself almost automatically starts a time and energy consuming dialog in my mind where I try to find and mirror the arguments that will make me “rebound and win”.

So I started looking for a different approach, asking myself: “What am I really after? What is a better approach than justification?”

The answer that popped up in my mind was: “fulfillment”. Taking the dictionary again, we read: “satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one’s abilities or character” or “the achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted”.

I clearly like “fulfillment” more to strive for. Why?

I love the “satisfaction or happiness” element. Second: I simply do not like battles that lead to loss. Third: justification as a goal in battles of will is basically a waste of energy. It is short sighted, single minded and in most cases counterproductive. There are more roads to Rome than “to prove myself right”. I guess this is where it hit me:

When I strive for fulfillment, more important than “proving my right” is to find the answers to the following questions:

1. What is the actual situation / what am I dealing with here?
2. What would I like to achieve for myself now?
3. How important is that for me (really)?
4. How many different routes are available to reach my goal?
5. Which route would be the most effective?

I do not have to prove anything to anyone. Sometimes the right choice is to abort mission. Sometimes to wait. Sometimes to push through. Sometimes to do something totally different. Sometimes to just listen. Sometimes to do simply nothing.

I believe in win/win (1/1) situations and neutral outcomes (0/0). I simply do not believe in win/lose (1/-1) and lose/lose (-1/-1) situations.

To close this article, a friend recently asked me: “Are you happy?” I was not able to answer this question. I believe since “happiness” is a too abstract concept for me at this moment in life and dissatisfaction an intricate part of my creative drive. I do know “joy” however and certainly have more and more moments of silly pleasure and joy.I think letting go of justification will increase the amount of these moments, since my mind will be less and less occupied by internal dialogues “proving things right” when I feel I “lost” an argument.

I simply start to like this silly smile on my face too much I guess.

Fuck “the Secret”

As a kid I read “Telek” by Jack Vance and many other stories with related subjects. In the story “Telek” = “people with telekinetic abilities”. People with telekinetic abilities are capable of moving objects with the power of their mind. I was 12. I started training with the determination of a kid. I developed a believe system in which I would move objects. It did not work. Not even the shedded hairs of our cat would move when I willed them. (I also tried teleportation very hard, which would have come in handy on the rainy days I cursed my way paddling through 15 kilometers of windy road towards and from school. I did believe for a while that I could influence rainfall and the direction of the wind since they are more prone to change and thus seem to confirm your magic powers.)

Another story by Vance is “the world dreamer”. In the story, the world starts falling apart because it is actually the dream of someone waking up. Bordering on this story lies the deeply philosophic question kids around the age of 3 can have when they close their eyes (or at least I had when I was that age): “When I close my eyes: does the world really stop to exist?”  Connected to that is the philosophic question: “Is the world ‘real’ or only existing in my mind?” which is one of the pillar stones of Zen and the life of people who fear to slowly turn insane.

When a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there, it Does make a sound. To think that we and even “I” am and are the kingpin of reality (as books like “the Secret” suggests) is a big load of crap and self delusion.

Somewhere between the age of 16 and 18 I made a simple statement based on these questions:

1. It is all in the mind.
2. Our individual perception of “reality” is a personal fantasy
3. “Reality” does not exist.
4. “Truth” does not exist.

To read books about Zen was a revelation afterward, seeing that I was not completely alone in this approach.

Many of the stories I wrote when I was between 19 and 21 dealt with the deconstruction of reality based on these starting points. Most of them were crap simply because I still had a lot to learn about writing stories, plot and character development. Most have disappeared in obliteration.

Regarding “Reality”: there is very likely a world. There is very likely a body. There is very likely “You”, “Me” and other people. There is very likely a “mind” producing thought processes inside. But for all the same we could be all floating brains in a tank, fed with sensory impulses which creates the seemingly consistent dreams we tend to call “reality” or even completely non-existent in any form we think we were. Enter “The Matrix”; read John Varley’s “Overdrawn at the memory bank” or “Ubik” by Philip Dick to name one film and two classic stories about this subject. All the same, we could be mere players in a dream of the World Dreamer or passing bits in a giant simulation as described in Galouye’s “Simulacron” (to name another antique story just for the sake of reference and promotion of vintage SF).

I, for one, am not able to tell, since I have not found a way yet to transcend this “reality”. And to be honest, I do not care at this moment since I believe that to be an escapist dream from the challenges “here and now”.

Assuming that our body is “real”, our brain is a big lump of organic material in a closed bubble made out of bone. The brain itself is not able to “see” or “hear” or “taste” or “feel”. It can only translate impulses from outer sensors into something that at least makes a little bit of sense so that it can instruct the body to respond, act and react.

ALL information we use to construct our “reality” is interpreted. And this is one very important to know and understand if you ever want to “understand” reality. So I repeat: ALL information we use to CONSTRUCT our “reality” is based on INTERPRETATION. In other words: nothing we “see” or “hear” or “feel” or “taste” is real. All we remember is a story we created in our mind. Nothing we remember has really happened. All that we think we perceive does not exist.

The most clear way to illustrate this is by a kids game we used to play at birthdays. All kids are sitting on chairs placed in a circle. One kid chooses a word, say: “Pancake” and whispers it as softly as possible into the ear of the kid next to him or her. The word passes each kid and when it reaches the last kid in the circle, it is spoken aloud: “The word is Bicycle!”.
Hilarity! Laughter and giggles!
We al know it was not “Bicycle” but “Bat cave” and “Cat cave” and whatever other word came up in between.

We do not perceive “reality” nor “truth”, but a reconstruction of what we think we perceive. “Pancake” becomes “Bicycle” and since we have no reference other than our own belief systems and we generally lack the training to question “reality” we convince ourselves that “Bicycle” is actually “the real thing” and “true”.

Sure there is “reality”. In this “real” “reality”, when I close my eyes or do not see you, you are most likely not blotted out of existence but will still there somewhere. When I die, due to the death of my brain you will not be blotted out, but still be there. The thoughts you think are in YOUR head, not created by me. When I sincerely want you to die right now, you will just follow your own bliss and happily live on. And if your death – by accident – might happen, very likely it was due to another reason than my wish. And if it DID happen the way I envisioned it, the chance is higher that I am clairvoyant than that I created your death via my mind. And even than the chance is higher that I just guessed right than being clairvoyant.
The hard work it requires to bend reality via mind alone is something most conscious people have gradually discovered testing the concept of “I am the center of the world and my wishes come true by my power of intention” into the tough play garden of “reality”. Like on school exams. (No matter how hard you wish for, you still need to learn or use foul play to get good grades.)

Regarding our connection to other people: Yes: there might be all kinds of connections between people based on energies most of us can not see, but if any of the more dark warnings of so called “enlightened” New Age thinkers would be true, any publicly hated famous person would have  died form cancer, car crashes, plane crashes, murder, or bodily failure a long time ago.

This most useless school of thought that creates belief systems based on: “by mere thinking I will manifest” carries a great danger in itself. Before you know, you will be working hard to create systems to “avoid negative thoughts” as “negative thoughts  will also be manifested in my life”. In some cases this might border neurotic behaviour.

The biggest promise “the Secret” makes regarding “manifestation” is a flawd and escapist dream of a 3 year old in the lines of: “If I close my eyes and wish hard enough, it will be done or undone”. Yay! for all the people who are sick, gotten accidents and have been treated unfair “for they have created that themselves” – including the bullies and the shitty environment. So: fuck “the Secret”

To create abundance in your life, all you need to do are three things:

1. Stop wasting your time about the things you do NOT want (including negative thought patterns)
2. Start to create as much clarity as you can about: a) the things that you DO want and b) the reason WHY you want that
3. Create a chain of movement and physical actions that will help you realize number 2

Since mostly “random” things will be manifested in this “real” world unless you start to move and use your physical body to create a chain of physical actions (or the lack of.. which is almost the same), negative thoughts are actually quite irrelevant and nothing to be afraid of. Yes: they stop you from doing what you actually would like to do, yes: they repeat all the negative crap you have learned to associate with and yes: these negative thoughts and beliefs often might make you react in ways that produce the exact opposite of what you desire. So it does come in handy to take a look at the patterns, the fears and the belief systems that cause these negative thoughts and broaden your vision to alternative systems, wider meadows and other toolsets.

The fun thing is that each of these “negative” thought patterns had their use some times and can be altered and expanded with a new set of more effective patterns. That is a slow process and requires you take responsibility over your own life and to brutally honestly take look at yourself (without beating yourself up) and acknowledge:

1. THAT you fuck up from time to time
2. WHERE you fuck up
3. That it is actually OK to fuck up as long as you CORRECT/REPAIR your fuckup
4. That there are many other approaches which are more effective than the ones you have used until now

So: back to “reality”.

You brain is a blob in a black box, constantly interprating “reality” via indirect sources that already garble and give distorted and incomplete images of “reality”, making associations and connections between things you remember and things you think you experience. One of the most powerful tools in this is the recognition of patterns and the ability to translate these “recognitions” into creative thoughts and into actions.

By using your focus (and here is where “the Secret” gives you the illusion that it works) the result is that your mind starts to pick and enlarge these patterns that match your focus. An example: 10 years ago, when I had hardly any money I started to focus on abandoned bikes. Every place that held bikes became part of my primary focus until after roughly three weeks the visual “abandoned bikes” recognition pattern became dominant. In other words: everywhere I saw bikes, I immediately spotted the abandoned ones. Within no time I had two “new” bikes in perfect working condition.
Where the power of  this new receptive pattern hit me, was when I  started to let it go of it.

FOR ANOTHER 3 WEEKS I STILL PRIMARILY SAW ABANDONED BIKES ANYWHERE I WENT.

It took a period of 3 weeks of neglect to get rid of this new pattern. Then, the city looked like a city again, instead of a collection of bikes with a cityscape around it.

The lesson I got: You see that part off “reality” what you WANT to see. You see that part off “reality” what you FOCUS your mind on.

The “universe” does not respond by creating what YOU want. It simply goes its own selfish way and very likely does not give a shit about you or your wishes. It DOES offer you a lot of opportunities simply because continuous creation and destruction is very part of it and any moment of NOW it is offering you new opportunities if you know where to look for them. And IF your “mind” DOES have influence on reality, the easiest way for it to happen is that your “consciousness” travels to another quantum reality resembling more the reality of what you wish for. Still it is you who is moving trough alternate realities and not the universe shaping to your wish since things follow the path of least resistance.

The “real law of attraction”
Part of “The real law of attraction” (fuck that) is a training of your mind to focus primarily on all the the things you want and put anything else on a lower scale of importance, like in my example of the bikes and the cityscape. When opportunities arise that match your field of focus you will spot them faster and faster until your brain register them almost instantly. You will start to look at places where you can find more of that. From that you will be able to act and react faster and faster until things seems to be happening effortlessly and abundance in your field becomes yours.

Naturally, if your field of focus is “Everyone thinks I am stupid” or “I will never get out of this situation” that focus will also enlarge anything that might resemble that thought out from the “reality” around you. “Pancake” has been twisted into “rotten strawberry”. As your perception is limited by this negative focus, you will only get out of the negative manifestations you create by your physical deeds by creating a new reality by starting to LOOK and FEEL and HEAR differently. By moving to other places, see other people, see other things, by strongly disbelieving your old convictions, by proving your old convictions wrong. By opening your mind to a new reality. By ignoring the things you THOUGHT were real, but in the end only create shit.

To undo those patterns and belief systems simply stop investing your time and energy in them. Start focusing on other things.

Again: You are not the center of the universe. Everything you perceive is an illusion. Nothing your mind perceives is “real”, the “universe” does not give a shit about your thoughts, only physical actions will create a respond in the “real” world and your brain mainly sees what “you” want to see and all you really have is freedom of choice.

So: fuck “the Secret”.

P.S.
Everything I wrote in this article is not true. So “fuck me” too.

Some links to related posts:
A little secret about the secret

Humanness

Humanness to me is about making contact with the people around me. Contact in the most simplest form: “How are you?” “Who are you?” “What brings you here?” To look at your face, look at your eyes, see what you express, be with you, listen to what you want to say and speak my mind as an expression of me. To respect your boundaries without violating mine. To play the game of expansion, to see where we meet and how far we can travel together in any way. To have fun, to feel, to enjoy, to experience.

So why is it so hard?

What fucks it up for me is the following:

1. Second guessing (“What is it that the might the other think now / later / before?”)
2. Fear to cross the other’s borders and become discarded

My mind has the tendency to try to figure out what the possible outcome of my possible future actions might be: based on a broad collection of past experiences. It is like playing a game of chess trying to forecast a multitude of possible moves the world around me might make after I make mine. In this game it is constantly mirroring “me” in a virtual world of things and hypothetical events that haven not happened yet.

It is part of my training to think like that: to put our my antennae, mirror myself in a virtual world of mostly unwritten rules possibly in place here and adapt my behavior accordingly.

Some of these rules – and my emotional responses on the consequences of breaking or respecting them – have been internalized and have become important factors for my character. Most of these internalized rules have become “voices”. The ones I use to correct myself, to put myself in place, to scold myself when I feel I have fucked up.

But where am I? Where is the balance? Why do I wake up at 6:00 AM with fear raging through my body when there is no real danger or threat? Why am I so afraid to step up to a stranger I think I might like as a friend / lover / partner and say “Hi”? Why do I consciously choose second rate options.
I like people. I love being around in places where people are. I am very much OK. My environment is mostly friendly. In general there is no reason to be afraid. So what is the problem?

My primary reaction is to avoid gnarly situations. Avoidance to make contact with the “voices” I do not like inside myself. By doing so I will never know what their story is.

Reverse that:

“Hi, I saw you standing there in my mind, shouting instructions. Just out of curiousity: who are you? What is it you want to say? Why do you throw these things at me?” What if I just open up and listen, instead of walking away?

This is less hypothetical to me than I state it here. Waking up with fear vibrating through my whole body – every morning, month after month for over two years – allows for enough room for experimentation to practice all kinds of strategies. The most effective one?

1. I break the connection between the “I” and the fear. (This is fear inside my body. I am not the fear. My name is Peter. Hello, fear, nice meeting you. So tell me, what’s up?)
2. I “listen” to the fear with full attention while also stimulating my deep-breathing. No asking questions, just observation. (To help you understand this one: I learned one day being very tired that watching television with full attention made me fall asleep even faster the more I directed my attention to it)
3. I fall asleep again.

My biggest trap is “I should” and “I must”.
But according to whom? For what reason? Will it make me happy? What is my way anyway? I feel that it is limiting me without any reason except that I fear to make the next move, to reach out and make contact. To act from my human curiosity to make contact and meet other people.

In the session today I concluded the following:

1. My avoidance to make contact with the “voices” within of me is directly reflected in my avoidance to make contact with people around me.
2. To break through this pattern, the most effective way is to start from the inside. The outside will follow.

The how?

If my mind is a room full of opinionated people all talking, imagine what will happen when I – instead of arguing or avoiding everyone – just make contact to each individual and genuinely listen. Without an agenda. Without the need to solve or repair anything. With whoever comes up.
I saw such situations happen in the past. People are still talking, but the room becomes quiet somehow as this person moves form one to another. Tension drop. Conversations change. The atmosphere clears. It is fun.

So today I decided to take on this model of contact, listening and observation to:

1. Clear my perception
2. Clear the fear of making contact

“Hi. What’s up? I saw you standing there. I love to hear what you have to say. How come? What else?”