heathervescent

Free Will vs Programming

Free will is a concept easily understood, and of course everyone thinks they have it - cause "I am in charge" - but it's not always the case. That "I am in charge" often comes pre-programmed (and it's so subtle that we don't even realize it). When responding, reacting or behaving from that programmed "I am in charge" person - sorry to break it to you - but that's not free will - that's "pre-destined aka programmed" behavior that is just finishing out it's if/then statement.

How to have free will? It's simple:
1. Observe your programming (and biases) - you must understand your adversary before you can defeat it
2. Inventory your programming - what do you want to keep (it helps you) what do you want to drop (hold you back)
3. Create games and fun ways to unprogram/upgrade your programming

Note: you must have a new better program to replace the one you are removing.

See - simple in concept - years to "accomplish."

More on Lightworking

Want to learn more on Lightworking? Then go here!

A million people die on this planet every week. One of those weeks will be mine. One will be yours. I realized that if I wanted to live consciously, I had to live in such a way that I was ready to die each and every day. If I don’t feel ready to die, I know I’m doing something wrong. Specifically, that wrongness is the act of pushing my dreams and desires into the future, thereby stealing power from the present and driving myself into a lower state of consciousness. If I consider that today may be my last day on earth, I can’t give in to fear. I have to summon my courage to push through that fear.

Ruthless and Darkworking

I'd like to clarify a misunderstanding about the word ruthless. In the society we live in today this word has a negative connotation that is often misused. It's a subtle word that I continue to unveil its layered meaning in my meditations. In reviewing my writings on it here I like this description from Nick Walker

Ruthlessness, as I understand Castaneda's use of the term, isn't the same as callousness or bloodlust. It's the ability to draw a line, to stand firm, to do what has to be done no matter who it pisses off, to do the right thing even if it's not the polite thing.

Both darkworkers and lightworkers can be ruthless. It can look the same; however the motivations and reasons for using ruthlessness are very different. I have a specific recent example of this, but I'm not ready to share it yet.

The important thing to notice is the intention. What _is_ your intention? Is it for personal gain or the benefit of the whole? Yes, you can hide your true intention with icing from the other side. You can set up a situation where a lot of people benefit (masses or your cronies) - but if you're acting with your own personal gain in mind - that's your intention.

Here's a way I like to see it. If you're climbing the pyramid, you're willing to use people to get to the top - your goal. There is another alternative to climbing the pyramid - and that's raising the pyramid from the bottom. This is much harder because you must look at the pyramid as a whole - not individual bricks or levels.

Often it's hard to know your true intention and motivation. We are such tricky humans programmed by "the village" that unless we have unraveled our own programming we're running off someone else's script or worse, unaware we're even programmed.

Not Feeling Enlightened

A few months ago I had a dream where I was cleaning out these long hollow pipes in my garage. There were a lot of them and they were stuffed with grease, lint, dead insect carcasses. Just the usual delightful stuff you find in your garage. I realized that the dream was telling me that it's time to clean out all the reminding bits of junk.

I've been surrounded by the dust and dirt of my own Karma and I'm getting dirty cleaning it out. It's frustrating sometimes.

All the while I have been inhaling several books. I finished Jonathan's Narcisa - Our Lady of Ashes (it's not publicly available yet). And then straight on to Dharma Punx by Noah Levine. Both talk about addiction, doing crazy shit and in the case of Levine's Dharma Punx, a path of service and redemption. That's Jonathan's story too. I remember talking with a friend about AA and being intrigued at the 12 steps and AA support. It sounded a lot like the stuff I have learned on my own spiritual path. In some ways I wish my path had taken me down and up into the AA realm. The work is hard stuff, but the path has already been laid out.

Anyway, so here I am in my own pile of shit, sorting and sifting, cleaning and attempting to replace mechanisms and processes that have built up over 30 years. I've done the processes before, but it's on bigger, smaller, trickier, twistier stuff.

Would I want it any other way? This is what I've chosen.

And the dreams came true

I recently went to a workshop where the focus was on how to get your heart's desire and manifesting your dreams. I had leave after 30 minutes of it because I realized that I no longer needed to learn how to have my heart's desire. (I wrote my process for doing this in 2005.) Instead of sitting in a conference center for 2 days, writing down my dreams and how I might go about realizing them, I went out and did it.

That was the trip to Salvation Mountain.

That morning, before I went to the workshop, I stopped at drugstore to buy a toothbrush (I had forgotten to pack mine.) At the checkout counter were these packs of green M&Ms specially marketed for Valentines Day (which was over). I realized that here was the manifestation of one of my childhood dreams. You see, the green M&M's were always my favorite - and it was my dream to have a package of only green m&m's. Here it is - almost 30 years later - my dream come true. So I bought the package.

Checkmark: childhood dream come true.

Which made me start thinking - what happens when all your dreams come true? Is that life Bo-ring? Do you dream more dreams? What happens when you can have anything you dream? It sounds like a magical place to be. To conjure up whatever I want. And yet, that's the position I'm in right now. So what do I want? More bigger dreams? More harder challenges? More proving grounds?

There are always more dreams. For me at least. There will be challenges associated with those dreams. And I've just jumped my most recent hurdle (thank you to my ruthless ego). I've proved myself. I can make all my dreams a reality.

So what is beyond dreams?  *** *******

---

ps. and don't go thinking that all these dreams will be destroyed. I have already had all my dreams destroyed. That was my first experience with dreams. It was destroyed dreams that would never come true. And then there was the time where all my dreams came true, but then my dreams changed.

My ego, myself

I am ruthlessly egotistical.

I can be. Because my ego is a mask - a false description of who I am.
My ego, she is disposable.
My ego, she has no problem acting the bitch for the greater good. She will sacrifice herself for moving forward. She has nothing to lose.
My ego, she is not myself. A form fitting mask. A character. Someone I have cultivated for years.
My ego, she is a tool for which I have great respect. She is fearlessly ruthless.

Thank you ego. For being the thundering lightening flashing head on the face of the wizard.
Thank you ego, for blustering your way back here. I have missed your ruthlessness. I had forgotten who you really were. You do great good even while others badmouth you. Do not falter. Do not change your ruthless egotism.

There are other times for patience, sweetness and cunning.

On Perception

From Edge Questions, Donald Hoffman writes about how he changed his mind about perception:

                  Veridical Perception              

I have changed my mind about the nature of perception. I thought                 that a goal of perception is to estimate properties of an objective                 physical world, and that perception is useful precisely to the                 extent that its estimates are veridical. After all, incorrect                 perceptions beget incorrect actions, and incorrect actions beget                 fewer offspring than correct actions. Hence, on evolutionary                 grounds, veridical perceptions should proliferate.

             

Although                 the image at the eye, for instance, contains insufficient information                 by itself to recover the true state of the world, natural selection                 has built into the visual system the correct prior assumptions                 about the world, and about how it projects onto our retinas,                 so that our visual estimates are, in general, veridical. And                 we can verify that this is the case, by deducing those prior                 assumptions from psychological experiments, and comparing them                 with the world. Vision scientists are now succeeding in this                 enterprise. But we need not wait for their final report to conclude                 with confidence that perception is veridical. All we need is                 the obvious rhetorical question: Of what possible use is non-veridical                 perception?

             

I now think that perception is useful because it is not veridical.                 The argument that evolution favors veridical perceptions is wrong,                 both theoretically and empirically. It is wrong in theory, because                 natural selection hinges on reproductive fitness, not on truth,                 and the two are not the same: Reproductive fitness in a particular                 niche might, for instance, be enhanced by reducing expenditures                 of time and energy in perception; true perceptions, in consequence,                 might be less fit than niche-specific shortcuts. It is wrong                 empirically: mimicry, camouflage, mating errors and supernormal                 stimuli are ubiquitous in nature, and all are predicated on non-veridical                 perceptions. The cockroach, we suspect, sees little of the truth,                 but is quite fit, though easily fooled, with its niche-specific                 perceptual hacks. Moreover, computational simulations based on                 evolutionary game theory, in which virtual animals that perceive                 the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed                 and energy-efficiency, find that true perception generally goes                 extinct.

             

It                 used to be hard to imagine how perceptions could possibly be                 useful if they were not true. Now, thanks to technology, we                 have a metaphor that makes it clear — the windows interface of                 the personal computer. This interface sports colorful geometric                 icons on a two-dimensional screen. The colors, shapes and positions                 of the icons on the screen are not true depictions of what they                 represent inside the computer. And that is why the interface                 is useful. It hides the complexity of the diodes, resistors,                 voltages and magnetic fields inside the computer. It allows us                 to effectively interact with the truth because it hides the truth.

             

It                 has not been easy for me to change my mind about the nature                 of perception. The culprit, I think, is natural selection.                 I have been shaped by it to take my perceptions seriously.                 After all, those of our predecessors who did not, for instance,                 take their tiger or viper or cliff perceptions seriously had                 less chance of becoming our ancestors. It is apparently a small                 step, though not a logical one, from taking perception seriously to taking it literally.
               
                Unfortunately our ancestors faced no                 selective pressures that would prevent them from conflating                 the serious with the literal: One who takes the cliff both                 seriously and literally avoids harms just as much as one who                 takes the cliff seriously but not literally. Hence our collective                 history of believing in flat earth, geocentric cosmology, and                 veridical perception. I should very much like to join Samuel                 Johnson in rejecting the claim that perception is not veridical,                 by kicking a stone and exclaiming "I refute it thus." But even                 as my foot ached from the ill-advised kick, I would still harbor                 the skeptical thought, "Yes, you should have taken that                 rock more seriously, but should you take it literally?"

Texas and Cormic McCarthy

I just got back from seeing the Cohen's Bro new movie - No Country for Old Men. I always think the Cohen bro movies are different from what they turn out to be. I had no idea what this one was about, what story would it tell, what was the style. I knew nothing, my mind was zen blank as the lights dimmed and the screen came to life.

A story unfurled. Wide beautiful shots of desert scrubland. A desert I didn't recognize. It was Texas. Some scenes reminded me of my desert trips, minus the dead bloated bodies and drug deals gone awry. (I did once dream of that life, in a country on a border far far from North America.) As the story continued, wide shots, spare dialog, characters that were not Hollywood beautiful, perfect, but interesting and a delight to look at, to watch unfold. Who was this like? What was this like? Fellini came to mind.

Scenes took place. Guns and mayhem, and surprise and ingenuity. And then there were post action come across the scenes, which reminded me of the Bashar and the last 4 chapters in Book 5 of the Dune Series. (I remember you Bashar. I remember you from that summer in Des Moines, when I was 19 and had not yet read Hyperion and learned of the Shrike. You are not just the Bashar Teg, but inspiration for other characters in stories, myths that I love.)

Until the final credits this was just another movie, until, until, I saw it was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. Then everything fell into place. I should have know. The movie perfectly caught the difficulty, challenge and utter sensual delight of a Cormac McC novel. They are hard, rough, bitter fruits - nuanced and faceted. I went home and picked pages to read aloud from Blood Meridian. I remembered the story. I remembered who gave it to me. (Alfonso, your other name.) And I remember what I learned from that time. The love of the desert and compete and utter ruthlessness.

My Golden Ticket

Sometimes I think back to my golden ticket. The life I sacrificed to have, to be the person I am today. I do not look back at that possibility wishing I could return to it. Or to relive it. I knew what I was doing when I cashed it in, took my golden ticket and got on this path. I knew in the future the full implications of the golden ticket would be revealed. In the present unfolding my golden ticket becomes stronger and the sacrifice to create the golden ticket more powerful.

Sometimes I get caught though. I'm human. I forget about the bigger picture, my bigger goals, my dreams I dare not tell anyone. The secret thoughts, solutions I remind myself in cypher through my writing, my metaphors often forgotten, lost to myself, until a specific moment. I get caught in the ebb and flow of this world. And then I remember my golden ticket: gold flecked with dreams of a lifetime and love forever.

When I remember it I am filled with joy and lightness. The radiance has not dampened. It reminds me that each day matters more than the previous and with this time, it's my duty, my responsibility to be the best I can and make the best that I think best.

And the morning comes

"Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain. If certainty is knowing absolutely an absolute future, then that's only death disguised! .... men must do this always, choosing uncertain instead of the certain."
- The Preacher, COD

"Seeking to know nothing of it. Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning."
- Leto II, COD

The battle is not with your fellow men, but out there with infinity.
- from my memory

These books, these stories, these roadmaps. These veiled fiction filled with fragments of history, technique and secret genius from centuries past. The men and women dead, exotic renaming. Myths twisted, double helix teachings re-purposed and packaged into a bestseller.

Almost caught in the rat race web dream - the fight of this world: black vs white, good vs bad, woman vs woman, man vs man, company vs company. It's a battle no-one wins. But many fight it, many win and much ground is gained.

I remember seeing Cory Doctorow at the height of the winning edge. It's hard to describe it. It's wasn't a man receiving an award - although that's what it was. It was full validation of the work he was doing. Good work. Work in the realm of good vs evil. Black vs white. He was fighting the good fight. The fight for values, for freedom, for a lot of things. But a fight for/against one side of a dualistic world. It was clear to me in that moment, that the dualism he fought for did - does indeed exist.

Yet, is a subset of a cohesive universe where good and evil, black and white are equal.

--

This reminds me of the amazing conversation I had with Jason Calacanis last Friday at StartupLA. We're on the UCLA campus. The sun had just set, the sky was my favorite swirling of red/orange and the full moon rose behind us as we talked. On the surface his stories may have been shocking, but there were many wise techniques described in his stories.

Here are some snippets, taken completely out of context, but perhaps you can get his drift.

• You miss 100% of shots you don't take.
• Everything is fair
• It's war, not a case study!
• If you're thinking about giving up, GIVE UP! The rest of us aren't going to.
• Don't look back, just move on
• Even a blind man can hit a baseball if he keeps swinging the bat!
• People overestimate the downside risk
• Proximity and affiliation
• How can I crush them?

I was most impressed by his ruthless in business. "Business is not about being nice." I loved his stories about hiring the "enemy." He would find great people, pay them well and give them equity in the brand. "You pick great people, treat them well, if they're not a good fit, fire them immediately." That's a no-brainer.

I think most of the audience listened to his war stories with shocked silence. From the moment he started talking about crushing the enemy, I was enthralled. And although I'm not sure I agree with crushing the competition attitude, I tried it on Saturday, when I lead the 3+ hour conversation entitled "How to crush Silicon Valley?"

In those three hours we went many very interesting places. Places we would not have explored without the audacious intent of "crushing" SV. Bottom line: it's not about crushing SV (why would I want to do that anyway?) it's about leveraging LA's many many assets. Lots more on this topic soon.

BTW - I love you NorCal. I'm not in this to crush you.