OBJECTIVES:
(A) To describe "problem."
(B) To make a few observations concerning the nature of problems.
(C) To describe "theory."
(D) To indicate that all our actions are based on our theories.
(E) To describe "system."
(F) To indicate the necessarily weak foundation of every system.
(G) To distinguish between "mechanical mode" thinking and "intelligent mode" thinking.
(H) To describe intelligence, paradigm, and mindset.
(I) To indicate the extent to which language colors or influences our orientation, perception, and thinking.
(J) To introduce Edward de Bono's idea of the "logic bubble."
(K) To introduce the practical philosophy and psychology of Wayne Dyer as an attempt to map the "road to the superperson."
(L) To indicate that you can choose your emotions and be responsible for them.
(M) To indicate that you can be the master of your thoughts.
(N) To suggest that the most basic way in which people victimtize them-selves is in how they think and what they think.
(O) To propose that the next most basic manner of self-victimization is the choosing of negative, debilitating, immobilizing emotions.
(P) To indicate the third most basic form of victimization stems from (projected?) "external authorities," and mostly people are victims because they allow themselves to be victimized.
(Q) To urge you to commit yourself to becoming a "no-limit" person.
PROBLEM:
Something thrown forward; a barrier, obstruction, restraint, hindrance, or limit; a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution; a situation or state of affairs that is difficult to deal with; an intricate, unsettled question; an attempted "solution" to a more basic problem; a source of perplexity, distress, vexation, tension, anxiety, unrest, or conflict; a situation characterized by intention versus counter-intention, or force versus counter-force, or opinion versus counter-opinion, or decision versus counter-decision, or theory versus counter-theory, or system versus counter-system; a matter or issue characterized by a lack of available useful information, false perception, misinterpretation, or accidental and/or deliberate deception; a challenge and an opportunity (one person's problem is another person's opportunity).
Philosopher friends tell me it was Aristotle who first thought to define living things not in terms of what they happened to be at a given time, but in terms of their potentials, or what they naturally and at their best could become, which is the way I believe we should see ourselves - while admitting that at any given time, we are actually the best we can be at that time! (You're allowed to be perfect!) - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
Maybe we should interpret "living things," in this context, very widely...remember what was said in Section 2 about the power of definition? On the face of it, does it not seem absurd that in a world beset by so many apparently insurmountable problems that millions of people are "unemploy-ed"? When every single problem can be defined and seen as an opportunity? We shall be returning to so-called "unemployment" in Section 13.
So, what is a problem? Is it a way of looking at something? A perspective? A context? Limited perception? False perception? Is it a balance of opposing forces? Is it a vicious circle? An attempt to "solve" a more basic problem? Or is it a wrong definition? Is it language that is the problem? Are politics, religion, economics, philosophy, and psychology solutions or problems?
For man seems to be unable to live without myth - political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet, the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them, for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.
Once there is suspicion that a religion is a myth, its power has gone; a myth can only "work" when it is thought to be truth, and man cannot for long knowingly and intentionally "kid" himself.
Religion, as most of [ ] has known it, has quite obviously tried to make sense out of life by fixation. It has tried to give this passing world a meaning by relating it to an unchanging God, and by seeing its goal and purpose as immortal life in which the individual becomes one with the changeless nature of the deity...We have thus made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intelligible with the fixed. We think that making sense out of life is impossible unless the flow of events can somehow be fitted into a framework of rigid forms. To be meaningful, life must be understandable in terms of fixed ideas and laws, and these, in turn, must correspond to unchanging and eternal realities behind the shifting scene. But if this is what "making sense out of life" means, we have set ourselves the impossible task of making fixity out of flux.
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are "conventions," and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. Thoughts, ideas, and words are "coins" for real things. They are not those things, and though they represent them, there are many ways in which they do not correspond at all. Ideas and words are more or less fixed, whereas real things change.
But because it is the use and nature of words and thoughts to be fixed, definite, isolated, it is extremely hard to describe the most important characteristic of life - its movement and fluidity.
Words and measures do not give life - they merely symbolize it. Thus, all "explanations" of the universe couched in language are circular, and leave the most essential things unexplained and undefined. The dictionary itself is circular. It defines words in terms of other words.
To define means to fix and, when you get down to it, real life isn't fixed. - Alan Watts ("The Wisdom of Insecurity")
The word "fix" is rather interesting. I will leave it to the reader to look it up in the dictionary and to contemplate its various connotations. In fact, it's a fascinating word - one could write a whole book about it.
Maybe one of the common denominators of problems, in general, is that persistence occurs - invariance (something "fixed"?). Remember Section 5? Maybe another common denominator of problems, in general, is falsehood, a lie (wrong or missing information?). On the personal level, maybe the areas of your life where you have problems that are difficult to deal with are also areas where you have "fixed" yourself in some way and about which you deceive yourself in some way. You could have "fixed" yourself through some "decision" (remember the meaning of decision? - Section 9). We shall return to this issue later in this section when we tackle "Your Erroneous Zones."
Very little thinking was ever done in English; it is not a language suited to logical thought. Instead, it's an emotive lingo beautifully adapted to concealing fallacies. A rationalizing language, not a rational one. - Robert Heinlein ("Time Enough For Love")
Theory: The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject; a group of scientific notions; a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or for investigation; a general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena; a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as a basis for action.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely, to you. - Walt Whitman
"Don't bother me with theory; I'm a practical man." So reads a particular theory! You simply cannot get away from theory. Your behavior stems from theory, whether or not you are aware of the specific theory you utilize at any given moment. "I behave spontaneously" is a theory. Your thoughts stem from theory - that theory might be, "Thoughts just pop into my head." Your feelings and emotions are consequences of theory - and that theory might be, "You can't control emotions; they just happen to you." Remember the option process (Section 2)? You can utilize this process to discover the theories out of which you think, feel, emote, and act. Maybe becoming aware of the underlying theory is a major factor in dealing with problems.
The question, "What shall we do about it?" is only asked by those who do not understand the problem. If a problem can be solved at all, to understand it and to know what to do about it are the same things. On the other hand, doing something about a problem which you do not understand is like trying to clear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light is brought, the darkness vanishes at once.
We do not need action - yet. We need more light.
You have to see and feel what you are experiencing as it is, and not as it is named.
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates not by building, but by hacking away.
A practical person who wants to "get results" is impatient with theory and with any discussion which does not immediately get to concrete applications. This is why the behavior of western civilization might be described, in general, as "much ado about nothing." The proper meaning of "theory" is not idle speculation, but vision, and it was rightly said that 'where there is no vision, the people perish." - Alan Watts ("The Wisdom of Insecurity")
We behave out of theory. That theory might be religious, political, economic; it might be based on some philosophy, psychology - another theory. We have designed "systems" based on these theories. Generally, the theoretical foundations of our "systems" are invisible. Extraordinary vision is necessary to hack down to the inner core of our theories: The vision of Etienne de la Boetie, Jonathan Swift, G. I. Gurdjieff, Lewis Carroll, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lysander Spooner, and Timothy Leary; the vision of the "mask removers."
And acting out of our "systems," people perish by the million. "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. - Jonathan Swift ("Thoughts on Various Subjects")
System: A regularly interacting or interdependent group of items; a group of body organs that, together, perform one or more vital functions; a group of related natural objects or forces; a group of devices or artificial objects or an organization forming a network; a form of social, economic, or political organization or practice; an organized set of ideas, notions, principles, or doctrines, usually intended to explain or describe the arrangement or working of a systematic whole.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("Twilight of the Idols")
The reason is that any system rests on certain assumptions that can neither be explained nor even described. If, for example, we repeatedly ask "What?" and "How?" to the most basic notions of meta-information, we soon get to a point where we cannot give any meaningful answers. "How come there are energy differentials in the universe?"; "What is randomness?" (answer)..."What is that?"...etc., etc.
Like Nietzsche's philosophy, meta-information is a network of related and interlocking notions, not a "consistent system" (if such is at all possible).
Whoever hath an ambition to be heard in a crowd must press and squeeze and thrust and climb with indefatigable pains till he has exalted himself to a certain degree of altitude above them.
To this end, the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain "edifices in the air;" but whatever practice and reputation these kind of structures have formerly possessed or may still continue in, not excepting those of Socrates, when he was suspended in a basket to help contemplation; I think, with due submission, they seem to labour under two inconveniences. First, that the foundations being laid too high, they have been often out of sight, and ever out of hearing. Secondly, that the materials, being very transitory, have suffer'd much from inclemencies of air.. - Jonathan Swfit ("A Tale of a Tub")
Mechanical Mode and Intelligent Mode:
In "Goedel, Escher, Bach," Douglas Hofstadter writes about "mechanical mode" and intelligent mode." The essential difference is that in the "m-mode," one operates within a particular system, bound by the concepts, rules, and limitations of that system, while in "i-mode," one "steps outside" the system and examines the system itself critically (including the concepts, underlying theory, rules, and limitations of the system).
M-mode and I-mode can be illustrated by juxtaposing "engineer" and "inventor." The "engineer" designs and builds a bridge according to a system of bridge building (that is known to work; i.e., to produce desirable results). The "engineer" sees no need to "step outside" the bridge-building system that he considers to be perfectly workable and adequate. In fact, because of his training and environment (including friends and colleagues), the "engineer" might be incapable of "stepping outside" his system in order to examine it critically. This "engineer" would be locked into m-mode.
The essential characteristic of the "inventor" is his ability to "step outside" the bridge-building system and to examine it critically (including all its theories, concepts, rules, and limitations). This faculty enables the "inventor" to "imagine" or "create" a better bridge-building system or technique. This ability to "step outside" the system is probably one of the most important aspects of intelligence. "I-mode" could also be called "meta-mode" - refer to the definition of "meta" in Section 3. (I have used "engineer" and "inventor" [in] a metaphorical sense - I'm not suggesting that engineers cannot be inventors.)
"Meta-information" has to do with "stepping outside" the system in order to examine the system and the theory on which it rests, critically, and to create or "invent" an original system. "How do you step outside?", "How do you invent original bridge-building systems?", "How do you communicate better systems and get them applied?" are questions of meta-information.
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. - Fred Hoyle, 1948
Imagine that you travel to and from work by double-decker bus. You always sit on the lower deck, because you don't like going up the steep winding stairs to the upper deck; but one day, you actually decide to sit up top in the front seat. For the first time, you observe a "very familiar" world from a different angle (perspective); you can see what's behind walls you could never see over before. You discover aspects you had never imagined in your "very familiar" world...This is, essentially, the methodology used in Sections 7 and 9 to examine politics. The theories on which politics are based were found to be, at best, doubtful and, at worst, absurd. This tallies with the observable consequences of politics: Generally, any area or activity which politicians demarcate as their exclusive domain (because it is an "essential service" or a "strategic industry") becomes, at best, problematic and, at worst, disastrous and murderous. If politicians claim as their task the "creation of jobs," then the likely outcome is "unemployment;" if they enforce "price control" to "protect the consumer," then the most likely result is even worse - inflation." What about "peace"? "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Inversion, deception, identification, protest, destruction, "much ado about nothingness"?
Intelligence: The ability to deal with problems; the faculty for discerning similarities, differences, identities, relationships, appropriateness, and relative importance; pattern recognition; the ability to reason; the ability to unlearn and to learn; the capacity for flexible application of thought processes in original ways in order to achieve desirable results; the application of memory and experience in order to improve performance; access to useful information; the ability to improve the quality of information; the degree of ease of "stepping outside" any system in order to examine all aspects of and underlying that system; the ability to recover from disastrous occurrences (coming out of the shit smelling like a rose); the perspective to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory information; the ability to examine concepts for "correctness;" the courage to eliminate or correct faulty concepts; the ability to synthesize new concepts from the old; the faculty for creating novel and original concepts and ideas; mental visualization; [ ]row concentrated focus to a very wide, diffuse focus and vice versa; the opportunistic ability to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; the ability to become aware of one's own thought processes, to monitor them, and to improve them.
We require a special kind of intelligence if we are going to be able to relate to one another successfully. We have to reacquire the ability to see each event or situation as unique and individual. Then, we have to be able to respond to the event or situation in a unique and appropriate way. Sadly, we rarely do this; instead, we relate to a person today the way we remember him being the last time we saw him. - Stewart Emery ("Actualizations")'
Paradigm: A mental model that serves as a pattern or basis for the interpretation of information; a mental framework or structure of assumptions according to which information is interpreted, then accepted or rejected; mental preconditioning to think and interpret in certain ways (sometimes rigidly); a programmed attitude towards the interpretation of information; a particular theory, viewpoint, or belief system.
Scientists speak of this process [the interpretation of information in a new way] as the creation of a new paradigm, a term coined by the philosopher and science historian Thomas Kuhn in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." The word "paradigm," coming from the Greek "paradigma" (pattern) was used by Kuhn to refer to the dominant theoretical framework, or set of assumptions, that underlies any particular science. A paradigm is like a "super theory," providing the basic model of reality within a particular science. It governs the way a scientist thinks and theorizes and the way in which experimental observations are interpreted.
Once accepted, paradigms are seldom questioned; they usually become self-perpetuating scientific dogma.
...Underlying our thoughts, perceptions, and experiences are implicit assumptions about the way the world is. - Peter Russell ("The Global Brain")
Mindset: Mindset is to perception as paradigm is to interpretation; certain very basic assumptions that determine the selection of sense data to be perceived (most of the available sensory data is "filtered out" as "irrelevant" - there is a tendency to perceive only what is considered "relevant"); the assumptions that serve as criteria for deciding the relative importance of sense information; preconditioning to perceive only certain information; a programmed attitude towards the perception of information; perspective.
Psychologists refer to the mental models that underlie the construction of perception as "sets." They not only condition most of our experience, they also determine what is reality for each of us. We are predisposed by our sets to see certain features in our environment more than others. If, for example, you have just bought a new car, you will probably start seeing a lot more of those cars on the streets, particularly ones of the same color.
Mental sets, whether we are aware of their presence or not, are extremely powerful. They determine how sensory data is to be perceived, which experiences to accept as "real" and which to reject as "illusion," and what reality is like. Like paradigms, they are usually taken for granted and seldom, if ever, questioned.
Underlying how we think the world works (paradigms) and how we construct our experience (sets) is an even more basic model: The way in which we see ourselves and the relationship between this self and everything else. This fundamental model cond-itions all thought, perception, and action. It is the set, or paradigm, for all mental activity. Furthermore, since a self-model is often implicit in many educational, social, economic, and political paradigms, it can even condition the development of paradigms themselves. If a physicist, for instance, experiences his consciousness and the physical world to be completely separate entities, he is likely to evolve different paradigms than he would if he experienced the two as part of a greater whole. In this respect, our self-model is far more than a set or paradigm. It could be termed a "meta" set or "meta" paradigm (from the Greek "meta," "beyond") that which lies beyond all other sets and paradigms. - Peter Russell ("The Global Brain")
Language represents, of course, our most fundamental mindsets and paradigms. What we have words for we can perceive. We interpret our world in terms of the words we learned from our parents and teachers. Language has been imprinted into our nervous systems. Words are labels for concepts - units of meaning, units for thinking. The development of consciousness is largely the development of language. (Personally, I have attempted to question the meaning, the validity, and the psychological consequences of every word I use.)P References: "Power of Words" by Stuart Chase; "The Psychic Grid" by Beatrice Bruteau (nothing mystical or occult in the latter, despite the title).
A logic bubble is the total set of perceived circumstances that logically determine action at any particular moment. In other words, we live in the bubble of our perceptions and at a moment, we act sensibly and intelligently in a logical manner determined by those perceptions. A unique set of circumstances has a unique action that is determined by them.
It is important to remember that the bubble does not consist of the actual world around, but of a person's perception of that world. Sometimes, the two may be similar but, at other times, there may be differences. - Edward de Bono ("Future Positive")
Please re-read the last paragraph from Peter Russell above. Self-conception, self-definition, the self-theory out of which you live your life, the context from which you create your life, the mindset, and the paradigm that determine who and what you perceive, interpret, think, emote, and act.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Wayne Dyer:"Your Erroneous Zones" is the title of the first of a series of four books by Wayne Dyer. The second is called, "Pulling Your Own Strings;" the third, "The Sky's the Limit." (I'm waiting for the fourth, which deals with "raising children.") These books are very useful examples of meta-information in that they attempt, from a "large pot of practical philosophy and psychology," to distill and crystallize pearls of wisdom. From the books, it appears that Dyer lives his philosophy. The rate at which his books have been selling is an indication of the degree of his success in communicating his pearls of wisdom. How many people actually apply his principles is unknown to me. Personally, I think they are relatively easy to apply.
"Your Erroneous Zones" basically deals with mastery over your emotions - overcoming "internal victimization." "Pulling Your Own Strings" deals with overcoming "external victimization" and learning how to operate or act out of a position or a context of strength or power. "The Sky's the Limit" attempts to point the way to the superperson, or "no-limit person."
Dyer has formulated a "panic-to-mastery scale:"
You "are somewhere on this scale," and the objective is to provide some practical tools to enable you to advance towards greaeter mastery. I will give some extracts of what I consider the highlights from these three books - in accordance with:
That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken. - Jonathan Swift ("Thoughts on Various Subjects")
We can demarcate that part of life involving anger and call it the "anger erroneous zone" or the "anger context." Relating back to the beginning of this section: For some, it is a problem because they have a mistaken theory about anger - out of which they have built a system of reacting with anger to certain situations - limiting, debilitating, immobil-izing...there are one or more holdcepts that keep them stuck in this erroneous zone or context. The collection of "anger holdcepts" could be described as mindset plus paradigm or logic bubble. The "anger mindset" is prejudiced to over-perceive "potential threats" in the environment. The "anger paradigm" is ever-ready to misinterpret people and events as threatening. This context is called "temper." Applying jumpcepts intelligently, one can escape from the "anger prison." (Most anger probably comes from the unrealistic expectation that "others should be like me, should think like me, should understand me, should behave like me; all disagreement is threatening.")
"Your Erroneous Zones":
For each erroneous zone, Dyer discusses:
(A) The historical origins (origin and formation of holdcepts);
(B) Family-inspired beliefs;
(C) School-inspired fallacies;
(D) Indoctrination from other institutions;
(E) Typical self-defeating behavior (how it all manifests);
(F) The psychological payoffs of the system developed to maintain the belief-behavior pattern (psychological maintenance system). [Most payoffs (holdcepts) enable you to relinquish responsibility by blaming others; they give you a kind of security you don't have to risk changing.];
(G) Exercises and strategies for self-liberation (jumpcepts).
What Dyer attempts is to describe a wide context for each erroneous zone, including the practical jumpcepts to transcend it. It is important to realize that people who suffer from anger as a problem have a theory about anger (which they are probably not fully aware of). This theory includes "definitions" of what is "threatening" and what isn't. And, based on this theory is an habitual anger reaction system which sometimes gets "triggered." These aspects of life are covered by "Your Erroneous Zones:"
(A) Taking charge of yourself (you choose your feelings and emotions, choice is your ultimate freedom);
Learning to take total charge of yourself will involve a whole new thinking process, one which may prove difficult because too many forces in our society conspire against individual responsibility. You must trust in your own ability to feel emotionally whatever you choose to feel at any time in your life. This is a radical notion. You've probably grown up believing that you can't control your own emotions; that anger, fear, and hate, as well as love, ecstasy, and joy are things that happen to you...
Just as you are free to choose happiness over unhappiness, so in the myriad events of everyday life you are free to choose self-fulfilling behavior over self-defeating behavior...
Immobilization cuts a wide swath. Virtually all negative emotions result in some degree of self-immobility, and this alone is a solid reason for eliminating them entirely from your life. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(Maslow formulated the notions of "growth motivation" and "deficiency motivation" - he may have been inspired by Nietzsche's will-to-power and will-to-survival! Dyer was inspired by Maslow.)
You can be motivated out of a desire to grow rather than a need to repair your deficiencies. If you recognize that you can always grow, improve, become more and greater, that is enough. When you decide to be immobilized or to experience hurtful emotions, you've made a non-growth decision. Growth motivation means using your life energy for greater happiness rather than having to improve yourself because you've sinned or because you are in some way incomplete. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(B) Self-love, self-acceptance, positive self-images;
(C) Needing approval;
Politicians, as a class, are generally not trusted. Their need for approval is prodigious. Without it, they are out of work; therefore, they often seem to speak out of both sides of their mouths. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(Have a go at the poor politicians at every opportunity! While I do not hesitate to reveal my scathing attitude towards politics, I do recognize that individual politicians do act rationally, given their mindsets, paradigms, theories, logic bubbles; i.e., the information or programming in their brains. It is an "information problem," not a "politician problem"!)
The need for approval is based on a single assumption: "Don't trust yourself - check it out with someone else first."
When you left home and arrived in school, you entered an institution that is designed expressly to instill approval-seeking thinking and behavior. Ask permission to do everything. Never bank on your own judgment. Ask the teacher to go to the bathroom. Sit in a particular seat. Don't leave it under penalty of a demerit. Everything was geared toward other-control. Instead of learning to think, you were being taught not to think for yourself. Fold your paper into sixteen squares and don't write on the folds. Study Chapters One and Two tonight. Practice these words in spelling. Draw like this. Read that. You were taught to be obedient. And if in doubt, check with the teacher. If you should incur the teacher's or, worse yet, the Principal's wrath, you were expected to feel guilty for months. Your report card was a message to your parents telling them how much approval you had won.
The government is another example of an institution that uses approval-seeking as a motivator for conformity. "Don't trust yourself. You haven't got the skills and wherewithal to function alone. We'll take care of you. We'll withhold your taxes because you would spend them before your tax bill came due. We'll force you to join Social Security because you wouldn't be able to decide for yourself - or save for yourself. You don't have to think for yourself - we'll regulate your for you." - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(D) Breaking free from the past (vicious circle behavior);
Only a ghost wallows around in his past, explaining himself with self-descriptors based on a life lived through. You are what you choose today, not what you've chosen before. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(E) Guilt and worry;
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or a future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system...
Many of us have been subjected to a conspiracy of gilt in our lifetimes, an uncalculated plot to turn us into veritable guilt machines. The machine works like this. Someone sends out a message to remind you that you've been a bad person because of something you said or didn't say, felt or didn't feel, did or didn't do. You respond by feeling bad in your present moment. You are the guilt machine. A walking, talking, breathing contraption that responds with guilt whenever the appropriate fuel is poured into you. And you are well-oiled if you've had a total immersion into our guilt-producing culture.
Guilt is the most useless of all erroneous zone behaviors. It is, by far, the greatest waste of emotional energy. Why? Because, by definition, you are feeling immobilized in the present over something that has already taken place, and no amount of guilt can ever change history.
Most prisons operate on the guilt theory. That is, if a person sits long enough thinking how bad he's been, he will be better for the guilt. Jail sentences for non-violent crimes, such as tax evasion, traffic citations, civil infractions, and the like are examples of this mindset. The fact that a strikingly large percentage of inmates return to law-breaking behavior has done nothing to challenge this belief.
Sit in jail and feel bad for what you've done. This policy is so expensive and useless that it defies logical explanation. The illogical explanation, of course, is that guilt is such an integral part of our culture that it is the backbone of our criminal justice system. Rather than have civil lawbreakers help society or repay their debts, they are reformed through guilt-producing incarceration that has no benefit to anyone, least of all the offender. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(F) Exploring the unknown (spontaneity, new experiences);
Only the insecure strive for security...
Albert Einstein: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the true source of all art and science."
Opening yourself up to new experiences means surrendering the notion that it is better to tolerate something familiar than to work at changing it because change is fraught with uncertainty.
Kenneth Boulding: "I have revised some fold wisdom lately; one of my edited proverbs is 'nothing fails like success' because you do not learn anything from it. The only thing we ever learn from is failure. Success only confirms our superstitions." - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(G) Breaking the barrier of convention (blaming and hero worship, blind obedience [musterbation!], resisting enculturation, and tradition);
There are no rules, laws, or traditions that apply universally, including this one...
Blame is a neat little device that you can use whenever you don't want to take responsibility for something in your life. It is the refuge of the externally oriented person...
John Stewart Mill ("On Liberty"): "We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is false opinion and, if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."
There is a neat little word, coined by Albert Ellis, for the tendency to incorporate shoulds into your life. It is "musterbation." You are "musterbating" whenever you find yourself behaving in ways that you feel you must, even though you might prefer some other form of behavior...Some of the most despicable human behavior ever recorded was done under the guise of following orders. The Nazis executed [murdered?] six million Jews...because it was the "law"...
If you must comply with all the rules all the time, you are destined to a life of emotional servitude. But our culture teaches that it is naughty to disobey, that you shouldn't do anything that is against the rules. The important thing is to determine for yourself which rules work and are necessary to preserve order in our culture and which can be broken without harm to yourself or others...
To function fully, a resistance to enculturation is almost a given. You may be viewed by some as insubordinate, which is the price you'll pay for thinking for yourself. You may be seen as different, be labeled as selfish or rebellious, incur disapproval from "normal" people, and at times be ostracized. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(H) The justice trap;
(I) Procrastination;
(J) Declaring your independence;
(K) Farewell to anger;
The only antidote to anger is to eliminate the internal sentence, "If only you were more like me." - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
(L) Portrait of a person who has eliminated all erroneous zones.
Their values are not local. They do not identify with the family, neighborhood, community, city, state, or country. They see themselves as belonging to the human race, and an unemployed Austrian is no better or worse than an unemployed Californian. They are not patriotic to a special boundary; rather, they see themselves as part of the whole of humanity. They take no glee in having more enemy dead, since the enemy is as human as the ally. The lines drawn by men to describe how one should be affiliated are not subscribed to. They transcend traditional boundaries, which often causes others to label them as rebels or even traitors.
They have no heroes or idols. They view all people as human, and they place no one above themselves in importance. - Wayne Dyer ("Your Erroneous Zones")
Dyer's books are a gold mine of specific holdcepts and jumpcepts. If you are not master of your emotions, I highly recommend that you study and apply "Your Erroneous Zones."
In my opinion, Dyer makes a strong case for the notion that emotions are preceded and controlled by thoughts. A great deal of thinking occurs so rapidly that it is difficult to become aware of these thoughts. You could apply the "option process" (Section 2) or "Focusing" (Section 4) to bring these thoughts into consciousness. If you suffer from any immobilizing or upsetting emotion - even under the "severest circumstances" - this could indicate that you have a reaction system based on a theory you are not fully aware of. And, under certain circumstances, some thoughts that come from this theory "flash" very fast, followed by the negative emotion. When you discover the nature and the contents of these thoughts, you will actually become aware of the exact thought as it "flashes." Then, you will notice yourself "breaking out" of the formerly habitual reaction patter. Aaron T. Beck, in his book, "Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders," calls them "automatic thoughts." If you experience any emotion (even "occasion-ally like all normal people") that reduces your ability to act effectively, I suggest that you study and apply Beck's book, also.
Pulling Your Own Strings:
This book is written for people who would like to be completely in charge of their own lives - including the mavericks [and] rebels...of the world. It is for those who will not automatically do things according to other people's plans.
To live your life the way you choose, you have to be a bit rebellious. You have to be willing to stand up for yourself. You might have to be a bit disturbing to those who have strong interests in controlling your behavior - but if you're willing, you'll find that being your own person, not letting others do your thinking for you, is a joyful, worthy, and absolutely fulfilling way to live.
Many will see these views as counterproductive and will accuse me of encouraging people to be rebellious and contemptuous of established authority. I make no bones about it - I believe that you must often be assertive, even pugnacious, to avoid being victimized.
A special kind of freedom is available to you if you are willing to take the risks involved in getting it: The freedom to wander where you will about life's terrain, to make all your own choices. The central insight must be that individuals have the right to decide how they will live their lives, and as long as their exercise of this right does not infringe on the equal rights of others, any person or institution that interferes ought to be viewed as a victimizer. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(A) The philosophy of non-victimization;
To be victimized, as I use the word here, means to be governed and checked by forces outside yourself; and while these forces are unquestionably ubiquitous in our culture, you can rarely be victimized unless you allow it to happen. Yes, people victimize themselves in numerous ways, throughout the everyday business of running their lives.
Victims almost always operate from weakness. They let themselves be dominated, pushed around, because they often feel they are not smart enough or strong enough to be in charge of their lives. So they hand their own strings over to someone "smarter" or "stronger," rather than take the risks involved in being self-assertive. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(B) Delcaring yourself as a non-victim;
All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. - Declaration of Independence - July 4, 1776
No one is handed freedom on a platter. You must make your own freedom. If someone hands it to you, it is not freedom at all, but the alms of a benefactor who will invariably ask a price of you in return.
Freedom means you are unobstructed in ruling your own life as you choose. Anything else is a form of slavery. If you cannot be unrestrained in making choices, in living as you dictate, in doing as you please with your body (provided your pleasure does not interfere with anyone else's freedom), then you are without the command I am talking about and, in essence, you are being victimized...
The freest people in the world are those who have senses of inner peace about themselves: They simply refuse to be swayed by the whims of others and are quietly effective at running their own lives. These people enjoy freedom from role definitions in which they must behave in certain ways because they are parents, employees, Americans, or even adults; they enjoy freedom to breathe whatever air they choose in whatever location, without worrying about how everyone else feels about their choices. They are responsible people, but they are not enslaved by other people's selfish interpretations of what responsibility is...
You choose freedom for yourself when you begin to develop a system of non-victim attitudes and behaviors in virtually every moment of your life. In fact, liberation, rather than slavery to circumstances, will become an internal habit when you practice freedom-commanding behavior...
Bureaucracies: Institutional machinery is a giant victimizer in our country. Most institutions do not serve people very well, but use them in high depersonalized ways. Particularly abusive are government and non-profit monopolistic bureaucracies, such as public utilities. Institutions like these are complex, multi-tentacled monsters with endless forms, departments, red tape, and employees who don't give a damn - or, if they do, are as powerless as those they're trying to serve...
You can adopt some strategies against the big victimizers built into bureaucracies, but bureaucracies themselves are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to change. You must really be observant to escape their gnashing jaws. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(C) Operating from strength;
In dealing with your self-worth, remind yourself that by definition, it must come from yourself. You are worthy not because others say so, or because of what you accomplish, or because of your achievements. Rather, you are precious because you say so, because you believe it and, most importantly, because you act as if you are worthy.
Being a non-victim starts with the principle of saying and believing that you are valuable, but it is put into practice when you begin behaving as if you are worthwhile. This is the essence of strength and, of course, of not being a victim. You can't act out of needs to be powerful or intimidating, but you must act from strength which guarantees you will be treated as a worthy person simply because you believe down to your very soul that you do count...
[Creating a context of strength or power, from or out of which, you act.]
Being effective simply means you apply all your personal resources and use all available strategies, short of stepping on others, to achieve your objectives. Your own worth and personal effectiveness are the cornerstones of operating from strength.
...Courage means flying in the face of criticism, relying on yourself, being willing to accept and l3earn from the consequences of all your choices. It means believing enough in yourself and in living your life as you choose so that you cut the strings whose ends other people hold and use to pull you in contrary directions.
You can get yourself operating from strength by beginning to place total reliance in yourself, and not placing others in positions of authority above you. You are asking to be victimized when you place total reliance in someone else to control your life properly. If you seize or make your own opportunities, rather than waiting for success to come along, and go after your objectives without staking your personal emotions on the outcome, you'll be on the non-victim bandwagon before you even recognize it. One little statement wraps up the contents of this chapter: "If you are paying the fiddler, make sure he is playing your song." - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(D) Refusing to be seduced by what is over or cannot be changed;
Our minds are capable of storing an incredible amount of data. While this is a blessing in many ways, it can also be a curse when we find ourselves carrying memories which can do nothing but hurt us. Your mind is your own; you have that terrific capacity to push its victimizing memories out of it. And with determination and alertness, you also have the power to help others stop victimizing you. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(E) Avoiding the comparison trap;
Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Self-Reliance"): "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
Albert Einstein: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
What a hunk of truth that is. If you want to achieve your own greatness, to climb your own mountains, you'll have to use yourself as your first and last consultant. The only alternative is for you to listen to the violent opposition of virtually everyone you encounter.
The masses will always compare you to others, since that is their weapon of manipulation and enforcer of conformity. Your anti-victimization stance will involve your steady refusal to use others as comparative models for yourself, as well as your learning how to defuse the victimizing efforts of others to compare and so control you. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(F) Becoming quietly effective;
(G) Teaching others how you want to be treated;
Epictetus: "It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you, it is your own opinion which is provoking."
You get treated the way you teach people to treat you. If you adopt this as a guiding principle of your life, you'll be on your way to always pulling your own strings. While teaching some people is more difficult than teaching others, don't compromise on the basic idea - because to believe otherwise is to give up control of yourself to all those who would gladly take over the reins if you are willing to loosen your hold. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(H) Never place loyalty to institutions and things above loyalty to yourself;
(I) Distinguishing between judgments and reality;
Everything that exists in the world does so independently of your opinion about it.
[You better believe it before you cross the road!]
If you started on a scavenger hunt today and you were told to bring back a bucket-ful of fear, you could look forever, but you'd always come home empty-handed. Fear simply does not exist out there in the world. It is something that you do to yourself by thinking fearful thoughts and having fearsome expectations.
[An excellent reality test - what else does it apply to? A million-dollar reward to anyone who can bring me a bucketful of "government" or "laws"! - or "happiness" or "sorrow"!]
Reality just is. This philosophical maxim and the attitude toward life that goes with it are as important to your quest for freedom from victimization as any of the more concrete lessons of the earlier chapters. In fact, it is what they add up to, in a way. Just learning to appreciate life without cursing reality all the time, and so destroying your one chance for happiness now, can be both the first and last step in your own pursuit of complete fulfillment. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(J) Being creatively alive in every situation;
You always have options. In every situation, you can choose how you are going to deal with it and how you are going to feel about it. The word "option" is most important in this chapter, since you will be encouraged to have an open mind about attitudes which may well have kept you closed to being creatively alive. Wherever you find yourself in your life, whatever the circumstances, you can make the situation into a learning or growing experience, and you can choose not to be emotionally immobilized...you can be alive enough to get something out you prefer, work at moving to another, more fulfilling place.
When it comes to aliveness, "creative" refers to the individual's capacity to apply himself to any undertaking in the world.
Being creatively alive involves abandoning your posture of inaction in circum-stances which have traditionally immobilized you. The name of the game is action. Doing, overcoming your inertia, and acting will give you a whole new lease on being creatively alive.
Action is the single most effective antidote to depression, anxiety, stress, fear, worry, guilt and, of course, immobility. Lack of action is not a result of depression - it is the cause.
[Two important holdcepts: "There's really nothing I can do!"; "That's just the way things are!"]
You are the product of what you choose for yourself in every life situation. You do have the capacity to make healthy choices for yourself by changing your attitude to one of creative aliveness. By being ever alert for turning adversity around, by improving your attitudes and expectations for yourself, and by fearlessly implementing risk-taking alternatives, you'll soon be gratified by the way your life can take a turn for the better. Be fully alive while you're here on this planet; you'll have an eternity to experience the opposite after you leave. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
(K) Victor or victim? Your present victim profile.
A typical victim behaves typically. - Wayne Dyer ("Pulling Your Own Strings")
Highly recommended. A major step towards personal power, responsibility, and freedom. If you ever have any difficulties with "external authorities" - family, friends, colleagues, bureaucrats - then this book is a must. Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World" is a worthy companion that covers many of the same aspects. If you are a victim in any way - like, if you think you will be free if "they change the law" - then I suggest that you learn how to "pull your own strings"!
"The Sky's the Limit":
And the next step - towards the superperson:
(A) What's your limit;
This book is about recognizing that, as far as your own potential for happiness, growth, creativity, constructiveness in society - whatever you, as a human being value - is concerned, there are literally no limits to what you can attain...
Maslow wanted to look at humanity from a different perspective. He believed in studying the great achievers and learning from their examples rather than confining psychology to the study of sickness and low achievement, and ending up viewing humanity solely from the point of view of what can go wrong with the human psyche. Maslow believed in humanity's greatness. So do I.
This book is offered as a practical philosophy course in being fully human. At the core of my philosophy is the belief that you can motivate yourself and choose greatness even if you've never done so before... - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
(B) NEZ (no erroneous zones) to no limits;
Being perfect means viewing yourself with new eyes. It means letting yourself arrive fully into life, rather than always hanging around the edges, thinking you're not quite good enough yet to get into the "big game." It means being in awe of your own humanity and your limitless potential as a human being. It means granting yourself permission to grow and achieve the highest levels you can imagine. In this sense, you are capable of being perfect...
Mastery means being master of your own fate - being the one person who decides how you are going to live, react, and feel in virtually every situation that life presents to you; mastery is the level of being at which you are to your life, your destiny, the way a master craftsman, artisan - no, a master artist - is to his creation.
The simplest version of my proposed philosophy of life that I can offer: let's pretend that the real purpose of being here in the first place is to journey through life with a maximum of enjoyment, victimizing no one and undertaking tasks that will make this planet a better place to be for everyone now living here and those will live here after we leave.
The first step in transcending your past is to surrender the attitudes toward it that immobilize you now. - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
(C) False masters:
Among authoritarians, the concept of the parent as absolute authority figure is sacred...
...It is important to help anyone to resist automatic conformity to anything because it detracts seriously from a person's basic human dignity by elevating other authority to a level higher than ones own. This is true for dominated children, wives, husbands, employees, or anyone else: If you can't think for yourself, if you are unable to be other than conforming and submissive, then you are always going to remain gullible, a slave to whatever any authority figure dictates.
There is no such thing as "always having to obey the law." When the laws are immoral, they must be challenged and disobeyed. Likewise, when authority figures are abusing you, you are not obliged to follow their dictates. If anyone insists that you must be just like everyone else to be a good member of your family or your society, it is absolutely vital for you to refuse to conform and to establish yourself as a person with your own dignity and self-respect. - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
(I wonder: If Wayne and I were to have a private conversation, and I were to ask him, "Do you believe that Ronald Reagan is President of the U.S.A.?" whether he would be able to reply (with a straight face), "Of course Ronald Reagan is President of the U.S.A.; everybody knows that!")
Taking a potential conqueror's look at the U.S.A., a huge country with more than 200 million people and a highly complex economy in which disruption of one or more sectors - agriculture, industry, mining, transportation, communications, energy supply, etc. - would throw a monkey wrench into the whole works, what other nation could possibly govern this one if we all simply refused to be governed by anyone but ourselves?
The flat answer is "none," and if we keep it that way and each of us resolves to eliminate authoritarianism from his own thinking and behavior, to adopt the philosophy that "the sky's the limit" on the freedom we can all share, we will be doing far more to assure our national security and independence that we can ever do by building bigger and better bombs. - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
(D) Transcending authoritarian thinking:
How you decide to think is one of the most important choices to make in life.
The no-limit person believes very firmly that he has choices which can elevate him beyond being "normal" or like most other people. No-limit people look at life in a unique way and, because of this different vision, they can see things very clearly in terms of choices which they can make rather than seeing themselves as being trapped or otherwise unable to exercise control over their life situations...
You can become the creator of what you are rather than the result of what others have programmed for you.
It is in the nature of every human being to think toward building a philosophy of life, the accumulation of a store of wisdom-for-self-guidance which is automatically called upon every time you do anything.
Perhaps the central premise of this book is that you are responsible for the thoughts you have in your head at any given time. You have the capacity to think whatever you choose, and virtually all your self-defeating attitudes and behaviors originate in the way you choose to think - as will your self-fulfilling attitudes and behaviors, once you learn to think "like a no-limit human."
Your thoughts are your very own personal creation and responsibility. Once you accept your thoughts as a fundamental key to your total humanity, you will be on the way toward changing anything about yourself that is keeping you from the mastery of your life. But to transcend authoritarian thinking toward no-limit thinking, you have to accept that human emotions don't "just happen," human actions don't simply "take place." All mental phenomena we call thoughts, and no one, nothing, no force in the world, can make you think something you don't want to think. Your inalienable corner of freedom, even if others are forcibly enslaving you, remains in your ability to choose the thoughts you have within your own mind. Once you understand that all your emotions and behaviors come directly from your thoughts, you will simultaneously understand that the way to attack any personal or psychological problem is to attack the thoughts that support your negative emotions and self-defeating behaviors. - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
(E) First, be a good animal:
(F) Be a child again:
(G) Trust your inner signals:
(H) Respect your higher needs:
(I) Cultivating a sense of purpose and meaning:
(J) Winning one hundred percent of the time:
Highly recommended.
You may or may not like Dyer's suggested route to the superperson. Then, you may also think that the idea is absurd: After all, humans once made, cannot change? Maybe the idea of changing is very threatening? Better to blame it on "the government," and "vote" for a "libertarian candidate"? Maybe many libertarians play "libertarianism" as a substitute for the horror of having to admit that they are not perfect?
It seems to me absolutely vital that many of us embark on a road such as that suggested by Dyer. We should also study what has been written on the subject of the superperson by Nietzsche, P. D. Ouspensky ("A New Model of the Universe"), and George Bernard Shaw ("Man and Superman"). Probably (maybe definitely?), each of us has to map or build is or her own road...(including life extension!).
I want to suggest that the current "problems of the world" will get handled when there are a large enough number of no-limit persons available to deal with them...
POINTS TO REMEMBER:
(A) A problem is, basically, a state of affairs in which persistence occurs because of the unrecognized balance of opposing forces or influences.
(B) Ignorance is a common denominator of all problems.
(C) Corny (and solipsistic) as it may sound, all problems can be resolved by discovering and applying the required information; i.e., by correcting ignorance.
(D) Correcting ignorance is the only solution (which is also corny and solipsistic!).
(E) A theory is a somewhat arbitrary grouping of notions - which may or may not be useful.
(F) Mechanical mode has to do with operating within a particular system.
(G) Intelligent mode has to do with jumping out of a system to a higher level (meta-level).
(H) Intelligence is a "group" or "class" concept which covers many abilities; if you re-read the definition of intelligence above, you will see that the common denominator of all the aspects of intelligence given is "meta."
(I) A paradigm is, basically, a mental model that serves as a pattern (or a mold) that determines how information will be interpreted.
(J) A mindset is, basically, a set of assumptions (or a mold) that determines what information will be perceived and what information will be ignored or filtered out.
(K) Language as the most fundamental mindset and paradigm.
(L) Edward de Bono's logic bubble.
(M) The panic-to-mastery scale: Panic/inertia/striving/coping/mastery.
(N) You can control your emotions.
(O) To do so, you need to become aware of the thoughts that precede your emotions, and you need to become the master of your thoughts.
(P) You don't have to be victimized by external circumstances or projected "authorities."
(Q) What is necessary for you to operate from strength or power.
(R) You can become a no-limit superperson.
CLARITY CHECK:
(A) How would you define or describe the concept problem?
(B) How can it be possible for problems to occur?
(C) Why do human beings sometimes consider that they have problems?
(D) Hat is the relationship between ignorance and problem?
(E) If you know what to do, have you then a problem?
(F) What is the first common denominator of all problems?
(G) What is the second common denominator of all problems?
(H) Can you list aspects that frequently form parts of problems?
(I) What is a theory?
(J) What is a system?
(K) What is intelligence?
(L) What is the difference between mechanical mode and intelligent mode?
(M) Do you think it is possible for you to become more intelligent than you already are? If so, how?
(N) What is a paradigm?
(O) What is a mindset?
(P) What is the relationship between paradigm, mindset, context, and perspective?
(Q) Can we usefully define holdcept as any element of a paradigm or a mindset?
(R) Why is language important?
(S) What is a logic bubble?
(T) Can we say that a holdcept is anything that holds one within a logic bubble?
(U) Can we say that politics is a logic bubble and that every political doctrine (including philosophical anarchism) is a holdcept?
(V) Could every decision and opinion be a holdcept?
(W) What is the panic-to-mastery scale?
(X) Are you the master of your emotions? If not, do you intend to do anything about it?
(Y) Are you a victim in any way? If yes, what do you intend to do about it?
(Z) What is necessary in order to be able to operate from power or strength?
(AA) Do you think it is possible for you to actualize your potential greatness? If yes, then how?
(BB) What is your opinion of this book, now?
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org - terrorcrat.com - mind-trek.com