Whats been going on In Possibility's Mind? (Part 1)

There have been a few ideas floating around my mind in my scant quiet moments. I’ll mention them briefly and I encourage YOU to POST YOUR THOUGHTS.

1) The self-improvement and development communities have been expanding rapidly as of late. The most popular undergraduate class in Harvard is ‘Positive Psychology’, which in short is a class about learning to feel good and get a stronger grip on life. ‘Positive Psychology’ is also exploding across different continents. CNN recently described Yoga trips, yoga oriented vacations to enhance spiritual and physical quality and well-being. (Story HERE: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/09/13/yoga.vacations.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch) Anecdotal evidence implies certain therapeutic models and new age ideas are becoming increasingly mainstream.

Why now? My entrance into these communities and belief systems was predicated on a then dissatisfaction that I was not fulfilling my potential. At the time I thought I was an exception. It is readily becoming apparent however, that its far from exceptional.
Is it because the world is perceived as so much more a dangerous place in the last few years? Is the cognizance of loss, pain, and suffering, causing people to relate it to their own lives and determine they want more? They want control?

Is it perhaps a cycle? There were the 60s of course, and sometime over a century ago there was another ‘spiritual’ and self improvement movement. Is it just a natural progression of events, which too will soon find its demise as our expansion in thought meets the inexorable decay of the mundanity of our repetitive existence? I freely admit that it is a concern of mine that I too may eventually fall victim to this subtle oppression, and so I remain ever vigilant.

Is it something else?

If it is a cycle, why so fast? The unbelievable change in our communication, not only in the last two decades but in the last three years with the onset of facebook, youtube, wikipedia, have hyper-accelerated our transfer of ideas. If, lets say, that the specter of conflict in this new millennium is the driving force for our growing trend of happiness/self mastery seeking individuals, then our response has been of unbelievable speed. If the 60s countercultures took a decade to fully form because of the onset of the Cold War (unsubstantiated opinion of one of the big factors), then in half a decade we’ve achieving something in a third of the time. Is it then that we are on some hyper accelerated learning track? Information has never been more accessible and learnings that once were outside the means of all but the few have been packaged and repackaged into easily consumable forms, so much so, that the average person is overwhelmed by its extent. Rather than scarcity, we have an overabundance and it may be far more paralyzing.

Or not. Feedback is welcomed.

Expect Long Delays

Life is busy. I was speaking to a man whose opinion I highly respect who referred to professional school as ‘Intellectual Bootcamp’. His observation was uncannily apt. Quickly and insidiously, it wormed its way into my heart and mind and displaced nearly everything about my life but my attitude. I’m facing other significant challenges as well. My time is at a premium and so this blog has descended down the exalted ranks of my priorities. Fear not, gentle reader, I have not abandoned you.

What the hey!? Thoughts on Confusion

Fair warning, I wrote this up after Torts and I wasn't firing on all cylinders if you take my meaning. Its up to you, gentle reader, to find meanig on this one. It may even be incomplete but frankly I have neither time nor stamina to return to this one.

Having now sampled the wonders of the Socratic Method as a teaching device, applied in several different fashions by several brilliant law professors in the tender opening days of my law school career, my map has been expanded to add fresh new thoughts on confusion as an instructional device.

But first, what is confusion? Several times I’ve heard how a confusion induction ‘works’ by bombarding the conscious mind with suggestions or stimuli, until the critical factor is dropped. Why then the highly draining hyperempiric responses undergone during our ‘orientation’ process. While making the transition from disoriented to oriented, the principle of ‘strategy’ (from NLP) as defined here as the method through which we navigate reality. As such, confusion, is the state in which our reality strategy has collapsed or been interrupted, of which there may be several responses. Some withdraw to reconstruct their reality, others deny, and for others allow change.

All of this must be confusing. Good.

Are we absolutely unable to respond to a host of stimuli at incredible speeds? Probably with the conscious mind still engaged, however if it happens to be stimuli from a certain source, we become ‘trained’ to it so we can engage conscious thought while reacting at high speeds simultaneously. Video games (fighters or shooters) for example nowadays are extremely fast paced involving near instantaneous reactions as well as planning. When someone begins and is new, they don’t have those reactions but with time and unconscious competence, they’re handling more information than one typically needs for many confusion hypnotic inductions. They begin without the proper ‘strategy’ to navigate the game, something they develop over time.
Orientation- Students are constantly subjected to places, people, and experiences of which they are unfamiliar with. Noticeably, everyone is completely exhausted by the day’s end. It is not that the work is necessarily more complicated or strenuous than an average day’s effort, however they exist in a new environment without having developed the day to day strategy that will be had in a few weeks time. We are hyper alert in such experiences, as the mind is both providing your conscious mind with so much information (hyperempiria- heightened awareness) to aid you in protecting yourself, and utilizing a great deal of energy to process it in a way that will make the situation familiar. For lack of a different strategy, herding instincts kick in and people quickly form little associations that will eventually become cliques. Learning is also accelerated as rumors and hearsay quickly become gospel.

Socratic Questioning- If the new environment isn’t enough to cause some flexibility in the students’ state of mind, we then have the no holds barred questioning from professors from the very first day, challenging, overturning, and undermining all assumptions and pretenses of understanding that the students may have. This seemed to me as an overall strategy of mind elasticity, before we can learn things wrongly, we constantly are forced into questioning our thought processes as a means of casting doubt on our classroom and reading strategies. The final intent then is (I imagine) for us to develop similar questioning processes ourselves, redefining and remapping our very method of thinking, our thinking and perception strategies. In effect, the first years of law school seem to be a giant modeling program, as we have a fixed curriculum, and are railroaded into thinking along the lines the professors want us to. The constant undermining of our current reality sets the stage for easy formatting as we’re already placed in a highly receptive state. By learning to doubt our own intuitions, not only are we suppressing our current strategies, but the constant reinforcement prevents them from resurfacing, while making us all the more pliant.

The Return of The King

Possibility is back in action and incredibly busy. I'll be posting again soon.

Okay, here's where I REALLY am going.

Away. I'll be out of the country for a month with no internet access. I'll have more to write about when I'm back in August. Have a good one.

Where am I going?

In the last year I’ve made incredible changes in my life. I found my ambition, motivation, confidence, directness, and considerably more strength of character. That is, not to say that I am finished. I still have my foibles. I can readily be accused of inaction sometimes. There are times when I surrender to lesser instincts and drift a bit from my purpose. To err is human, and its okay, as long as I continue pursuing my path with vigor. There are times when its not so easy, and that’s critical. I believe in being tempered by the forge. Its how I was raised, to my then discontent. All things considered, I’ve made tremendous strides in this year, and the next will be even better. As forges go, the inferno is coming. But as I’ve been preparing myself mentally I’ll be in good form for my next challenges. Physically these past months have been tremendous step backwards, my illnesses, my surgery, the ensuing recoveries, has erased years of effort. That’s okay. The past has passed, and I gave it my best. Now, I once again begin the slow process of rebuilding. I can honestly say I look forward to it.

But where to go with the mind? I’ve been perceiving mine a lot more philosophically and spiritually than clinically as of late. Reading the Tao Te Ching and immersing myself in Zen wisdom finally has true meaning for me. I have not surrendered my religious beliefs, but find great work to complement my personal development in these eastern teachings.

So once again I look at the mind with new eyes. My world changed when I began to perceive the world in through the eyes of a hypnotist. Patterns, states, trances, knowledge, emotion all became readily available.

But now I have begun to look at my mind more philosophically. Am I seeking release? To continue to throw off the chains of the judgment of others? Am I seeking release from my own urges? Looking at the mind from another standpoint, as a tool, would naturally seem clinically unsound. Everything we are is up there (soul not included) after all. But now I am beginning to perceive it as less a container of the personality, at least for me, but to perceive it as a highly sophisticated tool that has a habit of intervening in ways that may not necessarily be what I deeply value the most.

Now all this is easily understood from many different perspectives. However I’m looking at it detached. We have higher levels (logical levels, meta – frames, superconscious, however you want to look at it and chunk it), where we often can see and critique our actions, desires, and wants. We also have a mind that can provide chatter in the forms of words, feelings, pictures, however, that can undermine or aid you. But perceiving the mind as a tool, and all of these feelings that lead you astray as externalities, then what do you have underneath? That’s what I am interested in finding out. I’ve used hypnosis and other techniques to find the basis of many of my major problems, and heal them. But what about the little things that build up? Because deep down I just know these are things applied to sway me from this pure self, this pure state free from all those fabricated things. I wonder what it would be like to have found that place, that freedom from all the negatives holding me back, to fully pursue all things I desire with freedom and clarity? Am I seeking that which some call enlightenment? No, I don’t think so, but I am looking for freedom. Freedom! From the parts of this tool that imposes all limitations on me. Is that where I’m going now? With this new perception, all I know is I’ve taken my first steps. The path is obscured, shrouded in darkness, but at the end there is the beacon, the light that makes it all worth it, and that is where I choose to go. Will I ever reach my destination? I don’t know. How valuable is freedom from your limitations to you?

Yours truly is out of comission...

which is why there hasn't been a post in a while. Recovering from surgery and the drugs knock me out. When I have a life rolling again I'll once again provide discourse.