A More Detailed Look at The Gold Key Release

When you're brand new at this, you may not get vivid feeling-perceptions at first; you  may feel like nothing is happening or that you're not doing it right.  Do it again. And again.  After a few times through, you will get vivid (and familiar) perceptions during the procedure and wake up more completely. 

After that, it will be easier and you will know whether you are getting good "traction" in a session. 

Understand, though, that you are addressing things in yourself about which you are relatively dense. If you weren't dense about them, they would not have shown up as problems.

If you want me to mentor you through the procedure to show you the "teeth", click mentoring.  With your permission, we may record the session for instructional purposes or for posterity, whichever comes first.

 

A DRILL: "Jiggling" the Key:

(if it the release doesn't happen easily)
Practice the drill once to a good result, then do more Gold Key Release.

| ! | Imagine remembering.

| ! | Remember imagining. 

| ! | Imagine remembering. 

| ! | Repeat indefinitely until you get a shift (not many repetitions will be needed).

|*| Stop imagining.  Awaken. 

(|=| The Transcendent "Kiss" occurs.) 

ESPECIALLY POTENT: As soon as you feel The Transcendent Kiss feeling, go into The Tongue Mudra.

Click the link to learn about, and how to do, The Tongue Mudra.  Using The Tongue Mudra causes releases to occur faster and more completely. Tongue Mudra is potent and not properly to be underestimated.

Let each Transcendent "Kiss" appear and fade before moving to the next step of The Gold Key Release. Let it spread through you before continuing. Pay attention to the feeling, and you'll know.  If it doesn't fade, by itself, you're done.  If you need more for that item, you'll know, later.

FOR "DENSE" ITEMS That Don't Easily Dissolve

... in which either "It's True" or "It's Untrue" feel absolutely true, to the exclusion of the other.

When one "side" ("It's true," or "It's untrue") is overwhelming, you will be too attached to your position to release your item at the final step.

To balance the two "sides", use the technique, below. Use it only after you're accustomed to doing The Gold Key Release and you know what dissolution feels like.

For now, try the words, below, for experience:

"It's true! It's true! It's untrue!  It's true!"

   Pause and feel what comes up.

"It's untrue!  It's true!  It's untrue!  It's untrue!"

   Pause and feel (optimally, at each step).

REPEAT until the two "sides" are equal.

In The Gold Key Release, substitute this sequence for the standard, "... It's true... It's untrue..." steps.

FOR EVEN MORE PERSISTENT (VERY DENSE) ITEMS:

At the, "It's true!" step, follow this (entire) sequence:

| "It's true!  It's true!"

| "It's untrue!  It's untrue! It's untrue!"

| "It's true!  It's true!"

|

| "It's untrue!  It's untrue!  It's untrue!"

| "It's true!  It's true!"

| "It's untrue!  It's untrue!  It's untrue!"

Pause and feel until your attention steadies (optimally, at each step).

This formulation helps balance out bias in either direction -- "It's true!" or "It's untrue!". That balance much eases recognition and release.  Play with it once you've gotten accustomed to the procedure.

Esoteric Somatics and Tibetan Buddhism
on kinds of experience in and to which
TetraSeed Modulations may be "interestingly" applied

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.
When actualized by myriad things,
your body and mind as well as the bodies
and minds of others drop away.
No trace of enlightenment remains,
and this no-trace continues endlessly.”
~~ Dogen Zenji

Intuiting and Harnessing the Powers of Intuition

Intuition isn't guesswork.  It isn't following hunches.

Intuition is direct perception of an impending, distant, or "not evident" event without need for description or analysis by the mind.

Perhaps you've had the experience of thinking of someone and very soon the phone rings, and it's them:  intuition (in the form of precognition).

As you know, intuition, like imagination, is ephemeral.  It tends to vanish quickly, unless captured in memory.

To capture anything in memory, it has to make enough of an impression -- something that can come from the intensity of an experience or its repetition -- or both.

In both cases, attention has to rest stably in an intuitive perception -- which means sufficiently steadily and focussed for a memory impression to form -- without use of the thinking mind.

Although intuition doesn't come from the thinking mind, deliberately thinking of something and holding attention on it can direct enough free attention to that item to open the channel of intuition.  It's "think, then feel".

Fleeting attention can't capture intuition.  Scattered attention can't capture intuition.  Noisy mind can't capture intuition.

Attention has to be free enough, the mind quiet enough, to detect an intuitive impression, which generally occurs spontaneously, sometimes instantaneously and sometimes after a delay, "when we're not looking".  You need free attention to capture it.

That last sentence should have clarified, for you, the importance of cleaning up chronic stress patterns, which are background noise in the nervous system.

I started by saying what intuition isn't.  Now, I'll say some things about what it is.

Intuitive impressions of an event or item feel like that event or item in question.  It's like a coming attraction trailer for a film.  It's a mini-experience occurring in our incoming channel, which is imagination; all of the senses may be involved, but at the very least, the feeling (not necessarily emotional) sense is involved.

A good situation to get familiar with this kind of perception is when you are facing a choice between two options; put your attention on each option long enough to steady, focus and get a felt impression.  Alternate between the two options to detect the differences between them.

Though intuition may give us "yes or no" answers, more information than "yes" or "no" is available -- unless the two options are so close that it makes little difference, in which case I recommend that you wait a while until one of them is more prominent.

Why?

Timing.  It may just be too soon.

Our own biases and preferences may color intuition.  Sometimes, intuition says, "no" when we want it to say, "yes" -- or vice versa.  We're wiser to go with intuition than with preference -- to go for the feeling, rather than by knowledge or analysis.

Once in a while, following intuition leads to a surprise, a "what in the world was that about?" moment.  When that happens, take it in stride.  It's a wake-up call to learn to release your attention from fixed positions.

Intuitive perception requires the kind of openness that occurs when stress is low and the nervous system is relatively quiet.  The quieter, the more deep, vivid, and distinct the intuitive perception.

How to get stress low enough?

Balance your four core modes of intelligence:  attention, intention, memory, and imagination -- in every situation in which you feel stressed out -- and experience the peace that results, in each case.

That's all, for now.

In a few days, I'm going to make an announcement of a coming attraction.  Ready?

 

 

13. Focusing, Coherence, and Receptivity to New Ideas | The Foundation of Inspiration

Refreshed openness to new ideas is one of the promises of balanced intelligence.

First, we'll consider what "openness to new ideas means".  I expect that it will not be what you think.

Then, we'll consider how to be open to new ideas.  Here's a little clue:  it takes the same kind of receptivity as for receptivity to imagination -- and I'll explain why, in case it isn't already obvious.

I suspect that for most people, "openness to new ideas" allows for filtering new ideas according to what we know.  That's precisely not openness to new ideas; it's openness to familiar ideas!

Here's a familiar phrase:  "thinking outside the box".

"The box" is everything we believe we know.

So, openness to new ideas means allowing for all ideas -- not necessarily to act upon them or even to accept them, but to release the grip of mind that screens out anything not already ringing the bell of familiarity.  The operative word, here, is allowing.

Why?  

Because memory -- everything we think we know -- tends to drown out new ideas.  Pre-emptive rejection.

Here's an example of pre-emptive rejection.  It concerns actress Hedy Lamarr, who was in films of the 1940s.

It turns out that Hedy Lamarr was brilliant as well as beautiful.  She had a mind open to new ideas beyond those of the movie industry.  Actresses and actors must have focussed, coherent attention -- and imagination -- to perform.  She was practiced, in them.

On one occasion, she was in the studio of a musician who had a player piano.  In case you don't know, a player piano is an automatic piano; it has the music encoded in punch marks on a large roll of paper that feeds through a mechanism that activates the keys of the piano -- punch marks similar to those used in vintage 1970s computers to enter data from large stacks of punched cards.  We still hear of those used in voting machines.

She was aware of the use of radio controlled torpedos in the war effort (WW II) -- probably from news reports -- and that those radio signals were being intercepted by the enemy to evade or misdirect torpedos.  She was also aware of coding efforts (famous name:  Enigma) used to encrypt communications -- and that the enemy was getting better at decoding encrypted messages.

When she saw how a player piano worked, she had an insight into the radio control problem:  the one-to-one correspondence between the locations of the holes and the keys being activated on a player piano.  She recognized how torpedos' control signals could be made to switch to different radio frequencies (corresponding to different keys) while a torpedo was in transit, analogous to the way a player piano roll controls the piano, while the music was playing -- in a programmed way -- to defeat attempts to intercept the radio control signals.

She went through the effort of contacting officials at the Pentagon to present her idea -- called Frequency Hopping, in a meeting.  They had the meeting, and they rejected Frequency Hopping.

Officials at the Pentagon demonstrated pre-emptive rejection.  They wouldn't think outside the box, but stuck with what they thought they "knew".  They may even have failed to give proper attention to the idea because it came from an actress.

Nonetheless, she patented the technology.

Decades later, the exact same scheme has become part of the system that routes phone calls through the cellular network and which is in use, today -- a switching scheme for efficient wi-fi.  That was Hedy Lamarr's invention -- and now she gets credit, for it.

Hedy Lamarr's insight depended upon her focus (ability to see details) and coherence (ability to stay on-subject and to see more deeply).  She wasn't actively searching for a solution to the torpedo guidance vulnerability; it came to her, spontaneously.  That's how it works -- inspiration when we're not looking.

Coherence allowed her to focus steadily enough for her to see the details -- and for an idea "outside the box" to come.  She had the presence of mind to recognize its potential and the tenacity to arrange a presentation to Pentagon officials.  Coherent Focusing.

Focusing and coherence are attributes of free attention.

Free your attention, and focus and coherence are available, to you.

That's all, for today.

 

 

1. Do you yearn for a more peaceful life? Here's something that may be worth hearing

Have you been trying to create a more peaceful life by changing your circumstances -- everything and everyone around you? or even yourself?

That's what almost everybody in the world has tried and continues to try.  Our world situation is where that strategy has landed us.

Albert Einstein said something relevant -- if people could hear it:  "Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created them."  If we digest that, it might sound like this:  "The results of our actions reflect our state of mind when doing those actions."  Chew on that, for a moment.  State of mind matters.

Another saying often swallowed whole, without much chewing is, "Become the change you want to see in the world."  Sounds good, doesn't it?  Idealistic!  Lofty!  Everybody should do it! 

I think Gandhi said that. After chewing, it sounds like a platitude:  "Live with integrity." Now, re-visit Gandhi's saying about being the change we want to see, in the world.  They fit together.  See?

And yet, we tend to try it the other way, first.  Change the world!!!

Why is that?

I think it's because so few of us are able to regulate our own state, very well, we instead seek to cope with circumstances to bring relief.  Coping is very tiring.  That's because "beneath" coping is resistance and opposition -- or it wouldn't seem like coping.  

Over a lifetime, it piles up. That's why, as we age, we go for the familiar, the commonplace, the conventional.  The pile-up

Some people try "inner work".  We aspire to healthy ideals, mental health, mindfulness and spirituality.  For such approaches to succeed, they must effectively eliminate the pile-ups. It's slow going.

Those pile-ups pervade our lives as lifelong patterns so familiar as to be taken as "just how I am"; we lack access to "the levers and switches of the runaway train that is our mind" -- that's why it's an uphill climb that seems like things are going downhill, fast.

The world is a conspiracy of stressful search for relief from stress.  Doing, doing, and more doing -- our state of readiness for anything and everything in all kinds of ways and running our lives according to everything we know.  "Stress".  "Overwhelm".  "Too much".  "On your mark! Get Set! ..."  Am I exaggerating?

We're not peaceful or we can get only "more peaceful".  A sea of "stress" pervades our places, concentrated some places (like airport departure gates), lower-level in others (like sensory-deprivation centers and massage studios), moderate-to-high level (parks and public venues) to hysterical (corporations, cities and the news media).  We get infected.  Relief is often temporary.

Because we seem to have so little control of our own state, we blame our stress on causes outside ourselves.  "Such and such made me feel bad." 

That load gets big.  When it becomes overwhelming, distress seems to surface like Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster -- or suddenly to loom, like Godzilla.  Bananas -- it's Bananas.

But the stress comes not from the circumstances, but from our own way of operating.  It's our internal state that we're experiencing, not "circumstances".  No escape from ourselves.

But, not having a handle on our own state, we make attempts to change circumstances, escape, or to suppress our reactions -- and away we go.  More of the same.

The more "stressed" we become about our chronic lives, the more disturbed we are, the more aggressive we become for something different.   We might become an entrepreneur! or for more of the same -- like a millionaire politician.

So, some people yearn for a more peaceful life -- and that's a sign of intelligence.

How to unload the pile-up without giving up or making unacceptable compromises? without burnout? without just persisting and bearing up?  Without becoming a moron?

What to do?  What to do?

Stay tuned.

Next expostulation forthcoming in two days, or so.

 

 

Change and Turbulence

 Every change involves turbulence, called, "disturbance".

People who resist change are resisting that turbulence and people who recoil from the disturbance of turbulence resist change.

As a result, little changes.

To be able to change requires a kind of steadiness characteristic of Balanced Intelligence -- a dynamic balancing, not a fixed, static state of balance.

Using the TetraSeed Awakening Matrix | The Intelligence Lattice

There is a way of using the Intelligence Lattice that economizes on time.

It's to select one expression in each of the four "muscles" of intelligence.

Identify the item you're wanting to illuminate.

Holding it in mind, go through each of the expressions in each column ("muscles" of intelligence), sensing which one "lights up" or becomes more vivid and distinct.  That's the basis for selecting each of the four expressions.

Then, using those expressions, combine them into pairs of every possible combination in the TAM3 rhythm, in the following manner.

A

AB

AB

AB

B

B [ item]

B [ item ] 

[ item ]


B

BA

BA

BA

A

A [ item ]

A [ item ]

[ item ]

"Priming":

repeatedly invoking the expressions of the four modes of intelligence until they turn on sufficiently vividly to feel.

Instructions for Novice Practitioners of The Middle-Way Memory Matrix

In the Middle-Way Memory Matrix, the feelings the words evoke tend to show up at varying levels of vividness.

Equalize them.

To do so links them.

Linking them places them into mutual relationship.

That leads to integration

It also leads to self-insight, spontaneous self-releases, and self-corrections.

Sensing the moment of meaning beginning, when we say or think a word, and the moment of meaning ending is called "cropping" our words.

"Cropping" our words teaches observing, starting, and stopping the fixation of attention:intention.

"Cropping" is a more advanced technique in using The Middle-Way Memory Matrix.

The words of The Middle-Way Memory Matrix are expressions of intentions.  Rest at an expression long enough for its meaning to consolidate -- or it's evident that nothing is forthcoming.  Hold to the rhythms of the words shown in the recorded instruction.

12. How Quickly Can We Take It All In? Attention Refresh Rate -- Something You May Have Heard Nothing About

 

There's another consideration to be added to focus and coherence.  It's "refresh rate" -- the amount of time it takes to get an impression of something before a new impression can be received.  It's like reaction time.

 

Memory takes time to form.  It also takes time to evaporate and make room for the next impression.  Those are built-in time lags to the operation of attention.

A slow refresh rate both increases the time needed to focus and the time needed to achieve coherence -- functions of memory.  The quicker memory can receive an impression, the faster the refresh rate can be and the shorter the time to achieve focus and capture details.  Refresh rate.

Memory is affected both by physiology and by load.  Physiology is the activity of bodily systems; load is the demand placed on the those systems by the information (or sense content) being absorbed.

Some nutritional substances enhance refresh rate -- like caffeine, nootropics, and good diet -- and others impair it -- like alcohol.

Some conditions enhance refresh rate -- like integrity and the coherence (clarity) of information -- and others impair it -- like dishonesty, or incongruity (cognitive dissonance), noisy-mindedness, pain and disease conditions.

As short-term memory gets loaded, refresh rate slows down.  That's a good reason why it's better to do many short sessions of learning than to do few long sessions (why "cramming" doesn't work, long-term).

If you're having trouble absorbing this, either your refresh rate is too slow or you're attempting to absorb faster than your memory allows (too much, too fast).

Clean up your diet and unload your memory (stress level).  Quiet mind has a faster refresh rate than noisy-mindedness.

 

That's all, for today.

 

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

For now, be well -- and eat your vegetables!

11. Focusing on Focusing -- It's All in the Details

 

Here's a little-easy one:

Focusing on focusing.

Everybody focuses -- well or poorly, whether visually, through the other senses, or intuitively (bypassing the external senses).

Few focus on focusing, itself -- unless they're having trouble focusing, in which the usual strategy is to try harder to focus -- which leads to eyestrain.  Doesn't work, so well, does it?

So, I'll bring focusing into focus.

Focus is the ability to sense more details.  That's what happens when we bring things into focus.  That's what an optometrist is looking for with the correct lenses:  that ability to see more detail -- smaller letters on the eyechart.

Focus narrows the field of attention so that more attention is available for objects (or subjects) that appear small (the result of size -- or distance).  The result is what's called, "higher resolution" -- sharpness.  Details, visible.

Focus is different from freedom from distraction (which is what many experts mean, by "focus").  The term for non-distraction is the cousin of focus, coherence.

When a person is incoherent, they bring in extraneous matters in a disjointed way.  They have scattered attention and induce scattering of attention in their listeners.

Feel it?

Focus is different from the idea of focus.  The idea of focus, in itself, is unfocussed!  It's vague -- and it can be wrong, as when we conflate focus with coherence.

Focus is what's needed to distinguish an object of attention from its background and objects in the foreground, its context or setting -- involving reducing the field of attention to the object of interest by making everything but the object of attention, blurry.

Focus requires coherence and coherence requires focus.  Attention has to remain long enough on an object for it to come into focus; attention has to focus long enough on an object for attention to steady, upon it (coherence).  Those are good reasons to cultivate both focus and coherence, equally.

How to do that?  Balance your core faculties of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory and imagination.

A word, for the wise, is sufficient.

That's all, for today.

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

10. Focus and Coherence: The Secret to Clarity and Effective Action

 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOCUS AND COHERENCE

Why should we care?

Most people have a sense of focus -- but apparently few people have a sense of coherence.

When it comes to clarity, both are essential.

Why?

That has to do with the difference between focus and coherence.

What happens when we focus?

We narrow our field of attention; we concentrate.

Think of a magnifying glass concentrating the rays of the sun.  The image of the sun on the other side of the magnifying glass is smaller, the more focussed it gets.  Two things result:

• It's hot enough to start a fire -- unlike naked sunlight.
• More details become visible in whatever we are magnifying.

What happens when something becomes more coherent?

See?  Not so obvious, is it?

I'll fill in the gap.

The opposite of coherence is, noise.  

What happens when something gets more coherent is that the noise, in it, diminishes.  The signal-to-noise ratio improves.  It's the difference between a radio tuned on-station (clear) and the signal between stations (noisy).  It sounds better in an obvious way:  Even at a lower level of volume, it's easier to understand than a noisy signal at a higher volume.

Here's another illustration.

The laser.  We've seen them in market checkout stands.  The red laser light has a peculiar, "dotty" appearance -- just so you know what I'm talking about.

A one hundred watt light bulb is not very intense.  A one watt laser is intense enough to melt steel.

The light from a light bulb is incoherent; the light rays interfere with each other, like two people talking at cross-purposes, so more energy is needed to illuminate anything -- or to get anything done, together.  Lots of wasted effort.

The light from a laser is coherent; the light rays reinforce each other, like people agreeing upon and building on what each has said.  More efficient.  More fun.

When we are acting in an incoherent manner, we contradict ourselves or our thoughts are chaotic.  We seem a bit crazy.

What happens when we are being coherent is that our thoughts are organized and our actions are efficient.  We seem more sane, to others (unless their attention is scattered, incoherent, in which case everything seems incoherent, to them).

No matter how focussed we get on the words of an incoherent person, they still seem incoherent.

However coherent a person may be, if they're not focussed, (e.g., bringing up irrelevant points), they're harder to follow.

Now, you have a sense of what I mean by, coherence.  Things fit together.  Another term for this is, integrity.

So, when we focus, we exclude distractions, which we experience as noise -- and we exclude things we consider extraneous -- we narrow our attention.

When we're coherent, everything we say or do reinforces everything else we are saying or doing, so if we broaden our attention, that broadening serves our original intention.

Focus highlights details; coherence reveals how the details are related.

Now, you understand why both focus and coherence are necessary, for clarity.

Now comes the $64,000 question:

How do we get from incoherence to coherence?

It gets back to our four core expressions of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

If any one of those is out of balance with the others, our intelligence becomes noisier, rather than clearer.  People can hear it in our speech (disjointed thinking, wandering thoughts, irrelevancy); they see it in our actions (inconsistency, lack of integrity, wasted effort).

So, the key to clarity -- which requires both focus and coherence -- is to balance our intelligence.

Balanced intelligence -- something few people recognize for what it is (even though it is more functional -- and beautiful -- than unbalanced intelligence).

Balance your intelligence.  Do it, today!

I know, you may not know how.  That's coming.

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

9. From Overwhelm to Free Attention: How Slowing Down Relieves Overwhelm

 

To understand free attention, it helps to understand saturated attention.

Another name for saturated attention is, overwhelm.

It's like a full stomach -- nothing more can come in.

Saturated attention -- or overwhelm -- is a memory problem.  It's what happens when we take in too much, too fast.  Memory is what's saturated; attention is being dragged along, for the ride. 

It's also what happens when we're conditioned into a short attention span, as we may be by video games, advertising techniques and "clever" editing of entertainment media. 

It takes time for a memory to form.  First, it has to go into short-term memory and held, there, long enough (staying with one thing until it's done, before moving on), and with enough intensity or repetition that it goes into long-term memory.  

Short-term memory is like the mouth and long-term memory is like the stomach.  Food stays in the mouth for enough time for us to chew and swallow -- a relatively brief period compared to the amount of time food stays in the stomach, for digestion.

When we attempt to take in too much, too fast, no swallowing is possible.  Overflow.

When we're conditioned into a short attention span, we feel the need to swallow before chewing is complete.  Overwhelm.

Since digestion occurs mostly in the stomach, overflow prevents digestion; since comprehension occurs mostly in long-term memory, overflow prevents comprehension.

Haste, overflow, and overwhelm prevent digestion.

When we're full, that's the time to stop.  Some of us don't know when to stop.  We override knowing when to stop with notions of necessity or limited opportunity.  Result:  gluttony.  Gluttony follows from urgency and leads to poor assimilation and poor elimination.  Likewise, with information.

The term for someone who takes in large amounts of information but digests it poorly is, a fathead.  If you've studied at university, you know about "cramming" -- "11th hour" studying before an exam -- fueled by caffeine and maybe other substances.   How much do you retain what you've crammed and for how long?  Trained by our university experience, we bring the strategy of cramming to our life, thereafter.  So, there's an intention problem, also, when we have memory problems.

Finally, saturated memory prevents imagination from working.  "Loud" memory drowns out "quiet" imagining.  "The old" drowns out "the new".

So, it's a four-part problem, as usual, a problem of attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

That's attention saturation, in a nutshell.

Free attention?  That's known as "quiet mind", lucidity, clarity and other such terms.  Insight, imaginativeness, and ingenuity follow.  We seem more intelligent.

Self-regulation of attention allows us to take things in at a speed at which we can absorb it.  When we take things in more slowly and in control how much we take in (bite-size), we absorb better.  

In this age of haste, many people find that a challenge, both in terms of food ("fast") and in terms of information (too much).  We miss details and nuances.  We act without comprehension, automatically, and hope we get by.  We don't see to it that we're being understood; we don't check by asking, not just whether the other person understands, but what they understood.  We're not playing with a full deck.

Trying harder works no better for absorbing too much information than for absorbing too much food.

No amount of reasoning to justify overconsumption results in escape from the consequences -- overwhelm and distress.

When we've saturated our attention, self-discipline is called for -- the discipline of noticing when we're approaching saturation, fullness -- and stopping, until later, when we have space (interest) for more.  With the right 'tool', the right kind of self-training, that kind of discipline is relatively easy -- but, of course, we've got to want to.

• To get things done faster, slow down.  It works far better to do many short learning sessions than to do one or a few long ones.  We wean ourselves of influences that cultivate short attention span.  If you can't tell what those are, you need more free attention.
  
  
• Clean up questions and points of uncertainty that trap some of your attention before taking in more information.
  
  
• Speak more slowly and clearly (meaning, use language well).  Give yourself time to find the right word.  Blurting out everything that's in our mind is not just rude; it's ineffective communication.  
  
  
• Give people time to absorb what we've just said, idea by idea.  Stop saying, "um" and "you know" and other time-fillers; allow silence to punctuate ideas.
  
  
• If you tend to forget what you're saying, mid-sentence, stop and wait for the thought to resurface -- rather than talking faster to get all of the thoughts out.
  

Clean up performance anxiety, which makes us speed up.  Cultivate listening capacity.  The Gold Key Release is a good way to do that.

Result:  free attention, better absorption of information, less overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a problem of oversaturated memory triggered by counter-productive intentions and abuse of attention.  Imagination fails.  Distraction and urgency increase -- and the cycle of saturated attention and overwhelm goes on, unless we change our ways.  

Free attention stays put, where we place it, until we're done.  It can be selective or completely open.  When we're done, it moves easily and stays put on the next thing.  We're receptive.  We focus and catch the details of things.  It's based on feeling, sensing, and intuition -- not word-and-mind based.

Free attention is coherent -- the opposite of which is, "noisy", prone to distraction.  

Focussed and coherent.

There's a Tibetan saying:  "When things are urgent, move more slowly."

8. What Does It Take for Clarity?

You know the saying, "A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind"?

That's like saying, "A quiet mind is a sign of a sick personality."

It's a topsy-turvy saying, which is what makes the saying funny, isn't it? sort of.

A noisy mind is a sign of a sick personality.

Oops!  Did I hit too close to home, with that one?  Sorry.  

A noisy mind is sick because it's an ongoing disturbance.

Meditation is commonly used to quiet the mind.  That works only when we're not doing anything! -- and it's doing it the hard way.

There's a deeper kind of quiet that allows for full participation in experience.  It results from releasing the stress patterns that run our lives, constantly, without our awareness, consent or control.

Another term for this kind of quiet is a high signal to noise ratio -- in case you've heard that expression.  It's the kind of clarity and purity that we get from a high-quality sound system -- or the intensity of a laser.  Imagine someone with a mind, like that.

Less stress, a quieter mind; a quieter mind, more clarity -- and more receptivity to clear ideas.

How do we get there?

Balance our four faculties of intelligence.  

That automatically reveals the hidden sources of mental noise and quiets them.   It's a state of effortless receptivity that happens with balance -- the balancing of our intelligence.

Our attention gets more focussed and more coherent (less noisy).

When it's sufficiently focussed and coherent, we call that quality of thought, ingenuity.

When it approaches a certain level, we call it, genius.

That's all, for today.

Easy, huh?  

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

7. Locating Our Four Core Muscles of Intelligence -- and How to Use Them

 

Here's something that will stimulate your intuition:  some words that describe the four basic expressions of intelligence -- attention, memory, intention, and imagination.  Here they are, starting with attention.

Locating something is the essence of attention.

The words are,

attention
locating
highlighting

When we locate something, it's highlighted to us.

Repeat the words, to yourself, and notice that they make sense.

attention
locating
highlighting


How about memory?  

Persistence is the essence of memory.  
The triad is:

remembering
persisting
knowing

Without persistence, memory doesn't exist.

Same thing.  Repeat the words and notice that they make sense.

remembering
persisting
knowing


Now, intention.

The essence of intention is causing something to be some way.

Intention's triad:

intending
possibility
to be

Notice how they fit, together.

intending
possibility
to be


Now, imagination:

The essence of imagination is the "unknown Unknown". It's the unknown-ness that distinguishes imagination from memory.

spontaneously
imagining
the unknown

When we imagine something, it appears spontaneously -- unknown by us until it appears in our imagination.

spontaneously
imagining
the unknown


Why are all four needed for clarity?  

No attention, no experience of clarity.

No memory of something, no clarity about it.

No intention, no recognition of clarity.

No imagination, no improvement of clarity.



I know that I've just given you a mindful, so take a few minutes to go through the triads a few times until the special meanings tickle your intuition.  You may feel unexpected releases of tension and shifts of posture, as you do it.

That's enough, for now.  Just know that if you want to have clarity, all four expressions of intelligence have to be working, together, in balance.

Next stop, a biggie:  How do we control attention, when we're distracted?

What's Required for Us to Focus?

 

Here's something nobody ever told you:

FOUR things are required for focus.  

1. attention
2. intention
3. memory
4. imagination

ATTENTION

Focus is a matter of attention, and the essence of attention is locating things.  That's what placing attention means and that's what focusing does.  Everything else about attention follows from that.

INTENTION

Now, about intention, the essence of intention is control.  Intention moves attention and once attention is placed somewhere, intention holds it, there.  But that's not the whole story.

Why?

MEMORY

Because in order to hold attention on something, we have to remember what we're holding on to.  That's where memory comes in.  The essence of memory is persistence.

If we forget what we're attending to, we forget to persist in paying attention.  Some people can't even go from one room to another without forgetting why they went there.  So, where is their attention?  on trying to remember why they went, there!  

Holding attention someplace is what, "paying attention", means.  The "payment" is the effort of intention we're having to make.  The more distracted we are, the more we have to "pay".

IMAGINATION

Now imagination.  

Why imagination?

Imagination is the incoming channel for all new perceptions, even sense perceptions.  Imagination is like a mouth facing the Unknown.  The unknown comes in through the "mouth" of imagination (and memory "swallows" it).

Every experience happens before we know it, at first.  When something comes into our field of perception, that perception is unregistered, by us (yet to be known), for a moment.  It's a little like reaction time; there's a lag.

Imagination has special roles, in focus.  It's also the incoming channel for foresight and insight, which we never know are going to happen until they have already happened.  

A person with no imagination has no foresight and whatever insight they have is limited by what they remember, rather than being closely tuned to the present moment.

When coupled with memory, imagination is the link to conscience; conscience is both imagination-based and memory-based.

So, those four expressions of intelligence are required for us to focus.

Did you notice uneven-ness among them, in you?

That's a clue.  Balanced intensity of all four is necessary for optimum focus.

Balanced intensity doesn't mean "high intensity".  It's when they are of balanced intensity that they integrate, together.  When they are balanced -- even at moderate or even low intensity, they work better than when they are unbalanced with some of them at higher intensity.  

Where intelligence is concerned, integration is the name of the game, isn't it?

That's all, for today.  Stay tuned for the next one.

The Difference between Peace from Suppressing Emotions and Peace from Releasing Emotions

Peace from self-suppression or the peace of relaxation -- a world of difference.

Self-suppression is an effort, a drain on our energy.  It's more a strategy than a relief.  Peace from self-suppression is no peace.

Relaxing is a cessation of effort.  It's relief without strategy.

Imagine a cat luxuriating in an armchair.  No self-suppression, there, is there?  No strategy.  It's natural, for a cat.

Now, the human condition.  Imagine you’ve come home after a difficult day and you’re feeling a mite irritable.  Many of us use alcohol, other substances, or pleasurable distractions to escape our feelings -- or we just try to push those feelings down.  This might look like peace, to others, but it doesn't feel like peace; it’s self-suppression.  How do we know?  We're emotionally loaded and it doesn't take much to set us off.

A cat doesn't have that problem -- have you noticed?  The cat's peaceableness is effortless and soft.  

What's the difference?  A cat has no agenda, no worries.  A cat releases her stress as soon as the need for it is over.

The difference is a matter of mind -- or the absence, of it.  We humans value our mind as the source of solutions to problems.  We seem to have an unending agenda of problem-solving.  So, we rehash memories of problems -- and the worse the memory, the more we rehash.  That's the meaning of the word, suffering, by the way.  It's not the pain; it's the rehashing, the revisiting of disturbing memories again and again, seeking relief through approaches that can't bring relief.

Well, with humans, this behavior is common.  In fact, it's regarded as normal, so normal that it has names:  stress and its big brother -- overwhelm.

We humans may carry our stress into sleep -- and wake up tired or, if we use sleeping aids, groggy.

Unless we have found how to release (rather than suppress) stress, it tends to accumulate (as unpleasant memories tend to accumulate).  Then, we might experience situations where our emotional state seems too extreme for the thing that triggered it:  seemingly irrational (unrelated) emotional reactions and personality characteristics.  Suppression doesn't work.

Some people mistakenly use the word, "release", to signify acting out emotions in an exaggerated way (catharsis), as if "to get the bad emotion out".  That also doesn't work.  While it may temporarily discharge the force of an emotion, it reinforces the pattern -- and then the charge rebuilds in the reinforced pattern, which ends up being suppressed for social or psychological reasons -- or indulged.  It's a vestige of a failed psychological approach.

One habit that builds stress is to persist in frustrating activities -- such as work tasks that are not going well.  By our insistent persisting in those activities ("I'll just finish this."), stress gets driven into us and reinforced -- whatever our good intentions or sense of necessity.  It's self-inflicted pain -- and self-inflicted pain takes longer to ease up than pain when we stop sooner, than later.  With self-inflicted pain, we're particulary tempted to use methods of escape, like alcohol.

In difficult situations, there's another reason it's wiser to walk away (temporarily) than to persist:  Our state of mind carries over into the results we produce.  Think of an angry argument versus an easy going discussion:  what's the aftermath likely to be?  Self-suppression doesn't work.  It's self-defeating.

Have you ever tried to imagine or remember peace?  It's a bit of a strain, isn't it?  That's because stress lurks beneath appearances and resists being "overwritten" by good thoughts or whatnot.

True peace isn’t a state we can imagine or remember; that kind of "peace" is superficial.  Peace comes from releasing.

Releasing doesn’t come from pressuring ourself to "feel peaceful", avoiding emotions, avoiding disturbing others -- or anaesthetizing ourselves.  It's a matter of stopping inflicting pain on ourselves. 

Cats don't need to learn that.  Humans do.

So, the next time you seek peace, stop for a moment and notice:  Are you using a suppression strategy?  If it feels like effort, it's suppression; if it involves a cover-up, it's suppression; if it feels like relief, it's release.

How do we learn to release? There are faster ways and slower ways, more direct ways and more roundabout ways.

Next stop:  mental clarity.

Next expostulation in three days.

What Does Peace Feel Like? It isn't what we think, at all.

Do I really have to say this?

Yes.

Why?  Because it might not be what you think.  Peace is neither a state of mind or a product of mind, not even an emotion.  It's beyond perception of any state or object -- and not some kind of objective to be reached when conditions are right.  It's relief from concern about conditions.

The usual approach to securing peace involves creating preferred conditions.  That approach starts in a state of conflict with experience and puts that state of conflict into action.  Even if preferred conditions are achieved, we then have to monitor them to maintain them.

That's why people have such trouble achieving peace.

Some people equate peace with a kind unmoved stillness -- or perhaps the relief we feel after conflict ends.

Peace is just ease in the midst of conditions.

Peace is the absence of compulsive involvement with the content of experience -- either to delve into it or to resist it.  It's compatible with all experience because it is nothing, in itself.  It's the baseline of all experience before experience occurs, the baseline to which it returns and before the next thought or experience has occurred, and easy freedom during experience.

Peace is freedom to change -- or to stay the same.  Peace is free to be energetic -- or quiet.

Peace is a formless intuition.

It can't be imagined, remembered or intellectualized.  Peace cannot be "understood".  It can be intuited, only.

Peace has no description.  It needs no description to validate itself; it's self-validating.

Peace is a space without center or discernable boundaries.  Some people describe that lack of center or boundaries, as "vast".

While that's understandable to someone who has already intuited peace, "vast" implies size and entices us to explore "vastness".

Can't be done.  The very act generates a form of tension --  the sense of an explorer moving into involvement with the content of experience -- a sense of self with a location who is pressing attention in some direction.

Peace cannot be remembered or efforted toward. Try it.

Peace surfaces when remembering and effort stop.

Peace might be said to be a kind of faith that everything is "going okay without my involvement" -- but without that thought.  It's NOT faith in a person or a belief.  That kind of faith is already a state of distress hanging on to an imagined source of help.

Peace shows up in the moment of release from entrapment by memories, or imaginings, or any kind of experience that can be identified by name or form -- freedom from complication by mind.

Said another way, peace is natural rest and spontaneous right action -- the very experience of being so much "in the zone" that we forget we're in the zone.

It simply involves getting out of our own way so we can enjoy our natural state.

Ring any bells?

Stay tuned.

How Do We Escape the Traps of Memories?

Behind all of our habits and repetitive experiences, in life, is memory.  Memory is the persistence of an experience.

Memory is one of the four expressions of intelligence.  It works hand-in-hand with imagination.  Without memory, imagination evaporates without a trace.

Memory is our way of capturing our ideas, giving substance to foresight, voice to conscience, and getting good grades, in school.

So, we prize memory above all of our other expressions of intelligence.

Wrongly.

Two reasons:

Other expressions of intelligence are necessary for memory to work:

attention:  For memory to work, we must pay attention to it.

intention:  For memories to have any meaning, they must be flavored with an intention.

imagination:  A little twitch of our imagination calls up our memories.  (If a little twitch doesn't do it, a heavy effort of remember rarely works, have you noticed?)

All four are needed for any one of them to work.  None of them is superior to the others.

That's reason #1.

Here's reason #2:

Memory, without balance by the other three expressions of intelligence is a trap -- the loss of peace, the trap of stress,  or obsession, or compulsion, or bigotry, or willful ignorance -- or stupidity, the incapacity or refusal of intelligence.  We forget what peace feels like.

We have a little clue about how to overcome the persistent force of memory and very good reasons to do so.

The clue about how to overcome the persistent force (or alternately, the incompetence) of memory lies with the other three expressions of intelligence.  There's an oddity, about it.

This is the oddity:  As soon as all four expressions of intelligence come to balance with each other, all four become optimized -- and experience automatically loses its entrapping quality.  Said another way, the seeming substantiality memory evaporates, leaving mental space.

The trap of experience evaporates, and yet all four expressions of intelligence -- including memory -- are optimized.  Odd, don't you think?  No teacher ever taught you that, did they?

Well, here's the rub:  How do we balance our four expressions of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory, and imagination?

There are ways -- slow ways and fast ways.

So, how do we know we are trapped by the force of a memory?

We're just a little bit ... annoyed ... or obsessed ... or inconvenienced by conscience or foresight, or that song just won't stop running through our mind.  But mostly, we're just bothered.

The first step to overcoming for force of memory is to recognize that we've lost our peace.

Recognizing that takes just a bit of intelligence -- actually, a lot because we tend to get buried in the details of our daily experience.

Stay tuned.

Next expostulation in about two days!

Why do we seem to lose our peacefulness?

 Why do we seem to lose our peacefulness?

Peace is our baseline condition -- but it doesn't seem that way, does it?

Instead, it seems we must either struggle for our peace or suffer lives of disturbance!

Why is that?

We exist in a vast realm of possibility that shows up as our unexpected lives.  We have a sense of how things are and of how they should be -- so often contradicted by our experience.

That contradiction by life of our values and expectations creates our sense of disturbance -- and yet we seem unable to resolve that contradiction, in ourselves.  Peace seems lost and inaccessible.

Instead, we experience a state of imbalance triggered by our attention to the unbalances of the world -- imbalances that change our sense of reality to a state of imbalance.

Our memories of experience color our sense of the present moment.  Our stored memories overpower our sense of the potential of our imagination and the power of our intention -- and there seems to be little we can do, other than struggle to make the world conform to our sense of rightness or suffer our failure to do so.

The imbalances of life unbalance our intelligence.

If we are to recover our sense of peace, we need a way to recover our own balance -- and struggle is not the way.  Struggle is a state of imbalance.  We've already seen that.

There's another way.  It's the way of releasing, recovering our balance despite the imbalances of the world.  Releasing is a state of less effort.  It's a kind of grooming that removes the aftereffects of life, leaving us in our natural state of intelligence -- the sense of peace that surpasses worldly understanding.

It's a way of less effort, not more effort.

How do we do that?

Stay tuned.

Perception Requires Opposition

In order to perceive something, there must be some attractive or repellent force to provide "push-against".

We synchronize with anything that does not resist -- or that we do not resist.

Perfect synchronization is identity -- and therefore, no perception of "other".

Quadra-Genesis

Somatics is a kind of second-birth -- a self-renewal process that refreshes our integrity in a number of ways -- applied to pain relief and freedom to move freely.

Sins of the Older, Sins of the Young

If we're old enough to sin, 

we're old enough to be responsible, for it.

If we're young enough to sin,

we're young enough to be responsible, for it.

Punishment, as an act of cruelty (rather than discipline as an act of restitution or correction), is a sin.

Using the Middle-Way Memory Matrix

In the Middle Way Memory Matrix, the words tend to show up at varying levels of vividness or intensity.

Equalize them by adjusting your pauses between steps.

Rest at an expression long enough for its meaning to consolidate -- or it is eveident that nothing is forthcoming.

To do so links them.

Linking them places them into mutual relationship, which leads to integration.

It also leads to self-insight and spontaneous self-releases and self-corrections.

EQUALITY =:= communion
IN-EQUALITY =:= agency*yielding

"Cropping" our words (adjusting timing) teaches observing, starting and stopping the fixation of attention:intention.

Thoughts Crystalize Much as Crystals Crystalize

A crystal, suspended in its growing medium—a liquid solution saturated with more of its own substance—exists in a world perfectly suited to its expansion. The environment fosters growth by its very nature, as the water slowly evaporates, concentrating the solution. This heightened concentration drives the crystal-substance out of the liquid and onto the seed crystal, layer by layer, as if guided by an unseen intent. The crystal grows, not randomly, but in patterns inherent to its nature. Yet, if the growth is forced—if conditions shift too rapidly or excessively—the harmony fractures. "Visitor" crystals emerge, jutting off at new angles, seemingly foreign yet born from the same material.

This material behavior, seemingly unconscious yet profoundly ordered, mirrors the workings of thought-forms in the living mind. We exist within a vast, dynamic sea of thought-forms, a medium teeming with potential ideas. Within this medium, our own thoughts take root, aggregating and growing in patterns aligned with what we "know to be so." Just as the seed crystal attracts compatible elements from its environment, our thoughts draw in ideas that resonate, expanding the body of understanding in structured, harmonious ways.

However, the capacity to absorb change is a factor. New, divergent, "visitor" ideas emerge when the onslaught of change exceeds the capacity to absorb it.  That state of "overwhelm" starts as an acceleration of ordered growth and then degenerates into a logjam of chaotic patterns, as in the flaws of grown-too-fast crystals -- or "bugs" in technologies (which are actually mental bugs in businesses).

Divergent, "visitor" ideas may seem foreign, even as they grow in the same environment.  These idea offshoots, like the visitor crystals, are not inherently disruptive or foreign; they are the sign of the generativeness of excess.  Like adolescents, they disclose or reveal the usual order by contrast with it; the generativeness of excess generates opportunities recognize new angles, new directions of development.  It should be recognized, as such, as a resource ("diversity") -- and also as an important indicator of the healthy management of the growth environment.

To cultivate the healthy growth of either crystals or ideas requires intelligent attunement to the conditions at play: What’s in the "growth environment"?  How do we tune those conditions to our capacity to absorb from them?  How do we recognize, "too much", "too fast"?   How do we handle, "too much", "too fast"?  What need we learn to integrate change, harmoniously, so we ride the waves of change with our faculties intact and able.  

Did you have any trouble understanding that? 

You did? Then, try this:

~~ Groucho Marx said that, and he should know.