Category: Creativity

"Panic Culture" and Ebola

Airborne

I had the “pleasure” – if you can call it that – of traveling through one of America’s busiest airports today. On my way through, there were headlines and TV’s blaring: “EBOLA!!!”

Scare. Fear. Worry. Doubt.

“It could strike you at any time, so be AWARE, be CAREFUL, be SAFE.”

Now, look. I have done a lot of computer modeling using fancy-sounding things like “Agent-based modeling.” I’ve played with the simulations of disease spread. It used to strike fear in me.

If you believe like I did that something like Ebola can strike you down at any random time, then you are screwed. If not this virus, then the next, or the one after that. Or heart attack. Or cancer. Or meteor. Or war. Or murder. You’ll find a way.

There are MANY ways to die, and a lot of people spend their entire lives, not LIVING, but AVOIDING DEATH. That’s so silly, because you can’t avoid the inevitable.

No Regrets

And yes, I’m going to die someday. Maybe soon, maybe later. Would I prefer the “later” scenario? Sure – but only because I feel like I have unfinished business, like raising kids and getting some more positive messages out into the world through the work that I do. I also want to explore some places I haven’t seen before. Yet, if it happens today, or tomorrow, I feel that I’ve lived life FULLY so far. I’ve done in one lifetime what few people do – experiencing life as a student, a teacher, a scientist, an entrepreneur, an explorer, an author, a man, a woman.

And IF it happens soon, I don’t give any credence to the idea that it’s just “random.” If that happens, it means that I’ve accomplished what I came into this body and this life to accomplish, and it’s time to move on. There is nothing WRONG or SCARY about that.

Led by Fear or Leading by CORE

One of the principles of our universe – and our lives – is that you get what you focus on.

So, if you’re constantly tuned into the news that is screaming EBOLA or disaster – you’re constantly tuned into fear. Since you get what you focus on, you’re going to get more FEAR in your life – i.e. an ever-accumulating pile of things in life to worry over, all adding up to the BIG ONE, the FINAL thing that you worried about but couldn’t ever fully prepare for (because you were so afraid to think that you might be snubbed out so handily by “circumstances” that you pretended you weren’t thinking about it – but you were).

I’m not talking about sticking your head in the sand. You can be aware of your goals (such as “I’ve got more to do here”) and act in accordance with those goals (such as “I should wash my hands and avoid dangerous situations where possible.”) But it’s easy to go over the top with this, and lose connection with your CORE – your intuitive guidance system that can HELP you accomplish your goals. If your goal is to live longer, that guidance system is far more powerful than any screaming alert sirens or flashing headlines. It will help you line up with the people, places, and things that help you accomplish your goals.

Auto-pilot vs Taking the Controls

What screws most of us up in that is that we get lost in doubt, worry, and fear. Those things disconnect us from that very guidance system – much like an airliner that has just been flipped off of autopilot into manual flight mode. Manual flight is ok, but has a few challenges: it is tiring because it requires constant vigilance – and it requires VERY good instruments. Especially in our extremely complex world, operating on “manual” will tie you in logical knots about what is right, safe, and correct versus what is wrong and unsafe. Our “rational” minds cannot deal with a complex future, so we end up making these “rational” decisions with heuristics – i.e. shortcuts. One of the most common heuristics is: “everyone is doing it, so that must be the way to do it.” Talk about a dangerous way to run your life. It’s like an airiner on manual pilot flying through fog. There are many illusions and without very good instruments, an “incident” is quite likely. Good instruments are like your CORE guidance system – yet most of us ignore those.

An intuitive signal from the CORE is powerful. A heuristic is weak. They are NOT the same. Listening to heuristics leads to those random bad things (and some good things, too). Listening to the CORE helps you stay on track to what you want – as long as you’re clear about it and you don’t contradict it with the worry, doubt, and fear.

Do not succumb to the fear mongers. Yes – be aware – but more important is to stay in tune with what you want out of life – your positive vision – and keep moving towards that. And by God, if you’re not living life FULLY right here and now, start doing it. Ebola or not, one day you WILL be dead. It happens to the best of us 🙂

Morgan

October 29, 2014
Accepting What You Deserve: YOU Deserve it ALL!!

Dear One,

Deservingness. You’ve been told a lie and you’ve told a lie.

The lie that you don’t deserve it.

It doesn’t matter what “it” is.

But you find yourself always making excuses for why you have to do X, Y, and Z BEFORE you can deserve it.

A better life. Improved health. More happiness. A better relationship. Better work. Better clients. More money.

We find all the excuses in the world for not allowing these into our lives…

Because, we say, “I don’t deserve that!!”

Or worse, guilt and shame. “I feel guilty because if I get that, I’m taking from someone else.”

It’s a lie. Who knows where it started. That does not matter here. What matters here is only one simple thing.

Did you believe it? Do you believe it?

Because at its core, most believe it to be true. At some level, good things only come from really hard work. They only come from suffering. They only come from lots of guilt.

Yet that’s not EVER how good things come. No good thing has ever come via the pathway of shame or guilt. Not a single one. Those are negative attractors that only bring more of the same to themselves.

You cannot believe that these things are the pathway to “success” in what’s important to you and ever achieve success in that thing.

The avenue is different. The avenue is from something more fundamental, more basic.

The avenue comes from eliminating the lie and getting to the truth!

You didn’t come into the magnificent body to hold success and well being away from yourself – at least not for long.

Yes, you want challenge. You want growth. But because we internalize this lie of non-deservingness, we go way beyond the healthy aspects of challenge and growth, into a perpetuation of states that hold us back. They keep us from embracing the growth that we could have had so simply – if we had only felt we deserved simplicity and ease.

If you are overwhelmed, it is for one reason alone. It is because you do not believe at your CORE that you deserve your success to come to you easily and without struggle.

Perpetual struggle is not a “natural” state for any being except modern humans. All other creatures may have brief struggles, but they quickly move on. They understand that struggle is not from love, not from flow.

We do not. We have accepted the illusion that in struggle is glory – and so struggle we do. Always. We turn it from something that may happen once or twice into a state of being.

That is a state of being which says: I do not deserve joy, I do not deserve flow, I do not deserve ease. It says: if I overcome one hurdle, I have to immediately find another one to embrace, or else I will not have value.

Yet you DO have value. Intrinsically. Who you are is valuable. But if you have forgotten that, then you start associating your value with what you do, and with how people react to you.

Do you see how fickle that is? Those people you are depending upon for your sense of worth, deservingness, and value may or may not give it to you. And so you stake your fate on external factors that you will NEVER control.

Human babies do not do this. They feel their value. They feel worthy of the attention they receive. Of the love they receive. Then, as they grow up, they start learning that worth comes from pleasing others, and from “hard work” or accomplishment!

Yet there is never enough hard work or accomplishment or pleasing of others to fill the void! Those are incredibly weak factors. They are transitory. The void never gets filled.

You are deserving. That deserving does not come from outside, it comes from the inside. Inside of you is a loving, deserving being. But in your attention to these outside factors, you forgot to look inside for that which you seek. You’ve buried it, much like a treasure lost at the bottom of the ocean – and now it’s so far down beneath the water, that you can’t even see where it is.

IT IS THERE! It may take some effort to find. But if you TRUST, and BELIEVE that it is there, and persist in your search, find it you will. You will find the greatest treasure that any human being could have: a sense of worthiness, well beingness, and deservingness.

Once you find those things, and truly FEEL them, LIVE them, you can have any external thing you want. Yet those external things will not matter so much to you, because they will pale in comparison to the treasure you have found INSIDE of you.

Seek your treasure. Seek your own inner worth and value. Learn to feel deserving again. It is the most important adventure and challenge you could ever embark upon. So go in haste, my worthy, wonderful human being! Now is the time.

-Morgan

October 22, 2014
Morgan's über-fantasy world (how about rewriting YOUR story?)

This is a blog post about my fantasy world. Before you click away into the nether lands of cyberspace, let me tell you why this might be important to you.

We all live in a fantasy world.

From the most brilliant scientists to the most fundamentalist religionists, our fantasies define who we are.

In this second decade of the third millennium, we like to pretend that we’re “data driven” – that we are smart and savvy – supported by the latest info-overload purporting to tell us who we are and where we come from.

It doesn’t matter whose data you use or where it came from. Data are neutral. Data have no meaning apart from the meaning we give them. In science, we tell stories about the data based on our hypotheses and theories. Some of those are some pretty darn smart sounding stories. So smart sounding that we often confuse them for the “TRUTH,” so help you God.

In other areas of our corner of the vast Universe, people tell very different stories about their world. They look at different data, or they choose to tell a different story about the same data. Or both. This results in sometimes very different stories about who we are and how we came to be.

You grew up telling yourself a story, and so did I. Everyone does. That story defines everything about how we show up in the world.

There’s no problem with having a story. It’s how we make meaning out of the vast reams of data that we are exposed to in every moment. The problem occurs later on, after the story gets fixed – cemented like Krazy Glue – into our psyche. Not to be rooted out or changed, we cling to our story as if it were the TRUTH, never again allowing any information to come to us that doesn’t fit with that story.

Then it often goes South. Many of these stories we glue into our minds impose upon us self-inflicted misery, disconnection, judgement of others, lack of self love, and worse. Despite those problems they cause, we cling to the stories as if they were some kind of “unchangeable TRUTH.” We cling to our stories, and we cling to our misery, lack of self love, judgement, and disconnection.

I got sick of that and decided to change my story.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. It would have been a much faster transformation if I had recognized my story for what it was, and intentionally rooted it out. Alas, I was not that lucky. (I was going to write “smart” there, but smart people are just as prone to telling themselves stories as the not-as-smart. Telling stories is an equal opportunity habit).

So, my story began with growing up in a scientific household. My father was a famous chemist and my brother is a well known physicist. In our household, there was the truth as laid out by “science”, and there was all that “bogus crap that other people believe.”

Little did I know that there were people all over the world looking at us scientists, and lumping our stories into the category of “bogus stuff that other people believe.” I suppose that it dawned on me at some point in mid-childhood that ours wasn’t the only story out there. But it didn’t matter, because our story was RIGHT and theirs were obviously WRONG.

I was so wrapped up being RIGHT that I paid no attention to whether my story was bringing me any joy, love, fun, or peace. According to my story, emotional stuff like that was just a bunch of side effects of biochemistry that weren’t all that important.

What was important was SCIENCE. What was important was Figuring It All Out (TM). What was important was being smarter than those ignoramuses who hadn’t yet Figured It All Out.

My Ego was bloated with facts and figures to PROVE my case, a bit like one of those dead cows I’ve seen floating in the Colorado River. Yeah, it was that gross.

And what did I figure out with my high-minded story?

It’s a Random Universe and We Are Meaningless Players

In that so-called scientific story I’d adopted, the universe started out for some unknown reason, and since then, everything that happened has been a product of randomness.

My story about our random universe was based on ideas about what happened a very very long time ago. That was long before any humans were around to measure things with our fancy instruments. There were no weather vanes on Saturn to tell which way the wind was blowing… So to call it “scientific” is assuming that we know far more than we actually do about what was going on back then.

Anyway… in that story, you and I and everyone else came from something a bit like green pond scum. Chance pond scum turned into chance human beings. By chance we were the fittest in a brutal, harsh, dog-eat-dog world. We out gunned and outsmarted the other species to ascend to the top.

And the prize? A sort of clinging, tenuous survival on this planet, where at any moment we could be wiped out by war, meteorite, or other disaster… and then the cockroaches will ascend to replace us.

Worse, because we wiped out so many other species (and later, races) on our clinging way to the top… guilt for our sins is mandatory. We are just selfish, brutish beings… not much more than a blight on the planet. It would all soon come to an end, a just dessert. When I was 13, I dreamed that my dog Bear and I were going to go live in a cabin in Alaska to wait it all out. Bear was the perfect companion for my plan, a stout St. Bernard – German Shepherd mix who could probably outlive me in that kind of scenario. He just needed a keg on his neck to carry our food and drink for the apocalypse.

My daughter recently came to me and said: “I think it would be nice if we could just have a big reset and start it all over with far fewer humans.” WOW. Now she’s carrying around a similar story, even though I didn’t consciously pass it on to her. That particular story of humans-as-blight is a prevalent one, especially in liberal/progressive circles**.

(** I’m only picking on this story because it’s the one I’d adopted. There are plenty of other just-as-dysfunctional stories that people tell themselves, like the one that says we were all perfect until some rib-cum-woman came along, got hypnotized by a snake to bite into an apple, and that perfection was permanently ruined by this heinous act. Implicit in this particular story is the sin and temptation inherent in humans – especially women).

That story led down a dark path for me. The more I reinforced it as I pursued my professor job as a bigwig scientist, the more it translated into dysfunction in my relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. “Things could collapse at any time” – I lived in constant fear due to this story. I perused the economic and environmental websites daily to reconfirm just how bad things were becoming. That focus on collapse became a personal reality for me. In 2010 UNC pulled the rug out from under a big project without notice, and that led to my angry resignation. According to my story – as just one more sign of how bad things were, they’d screwed me over for space for years, and things were just getting worse and worse.

That story led to a lot of personal turmoil. It led to turmoil with my family. It led to bouts of depression. It was unfun and unhealthy, and I’m still recovering from it all.

And it gets worse…

My story also said I am unlovable. My story said that since I grew up with a peculiar birth defect, “I’m not going to be accepted.” It came from a childhood where my mom walked out the door…never to return. Whenever I saw something I didn’t like, I projected onto it a sense that “it is personal, against me…” instead of realizing that most people are just living each in their own world. My mom didn’t leave because of me, she left because of her own issues. Yet my story for all those years had been telling me that I somehow caused that.

This story didn’t allow me to believe in LOVE. I mean, I believed in the concept of a biochemically-derived love, but it was just a function of neurotransmitters, and nothing more than that. Loving myself wasn’t on my radar, because it seems pretty odd to love oneself when love is just a bunch of chemicals in the first place. And….I was suicidal at times. It was bad.

Why share so much? I do it to illustrate just how a story can paint you into a corner, like that story did for me.

Then something happened and I got a new story

Over the past six years, I adopted a completely new story. I took the same “facts” that I did before, and I chose to interpret them in a whole new way. I chose to tell a new story, one that has led to a profound change in my life.

For a long time, I was afraid to share this with anyone. My new story very different than the previous “scientific” story I carried around. I felt like I would be laughed at for sharing it.

But it is Just A Story

Then one day it dawned on me. This is just a story. No more, no less. It is not a matter of who is right or who is wrong. That is a totally unimportant ego distraction that I had been caught up in (as are many, many other people). I’d been so caught up in the Ego of my story, perhaps because I was a non-Mormon who grew up in Mormon Utah. I felt like I needed to defend my particular view against the very strong views of the nearly all-pervasive church influence around me.

Yet it’s not just me. Nearly all of us adopt these stories, and then we go out into the world with a sort of missionary zeal for defending our story. We ttry to constantly prove to others that it is right, and we make judgements of those who’ve chosen a different story.

All the while, we separate ourselves from what’s really important: finding and holding the best story that works for our joy, our peace, our prosperity, our love.

So, I’m going to tell you my new story – a fantasy I created

I make no claim about its “rightness.” I make no judgements about the very different stories that others hold. It may offend both some of the hardcore materialist scientists and many of the religious. That doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you use my story transformation as an example, an illustration of how you can examine your story. You can figure out whether YOUR story is serving you, or whether it’s holding you back from a deeper sense of joy, love, and fun in your life.

Since I spent my whole life around a scientific worldview, my new story is based on the best I can make of the evidence (not just the mainstream). You may not need as much evidence or data or “logic” for your story, and that’s ok. Those are things I need to justify my story due to my curious upbringing.

It goes like this:

In the beginning there was consciousness. It was aware of itself, and of possibility, but there was no medium in which to express itself. It was like a painter without a canvas. It was frustrated and forlorn, until it figured out a way to create a canvas out of itself.

The canvas (our universe) is part of that awareness, and yet the universe, its canvas, has its own independent existence and progression. It is free to evolve by its own course – and yet all the while is supported through LOVE by that which created it.

Within that canvas is a vast universe of universes, and there are also a vast series of “intelligences” – only a small fraction of which inhabit physical bodies like ours.

Our own being came through a process that resembles the Evolution written about by Darwin, but with one difference*. It is not entirely random. Rather, it is driven by a creative process, expressing itself on the tableau of DNA as its canvas. It is driven by a process that has LOVE for its creations – all of its creations – at its core.

It is not an old white guy with a beard planning out the “perfect scenario.” Far from it. No, it is an awareness that constantly grows and expands, and is joyous at each new development. It paints on the canvas through each evolutionary development. It paints on the canvas through each human idea. It paints on the canvas with each new star system that explodes into being. Sometimes those new developments don’t work, and can’t be sustained. Sometimes they work too well, and take over – squeezing out others.

*note: remember, this is my own fantasy. If you want to get into a debate about evolution vs whatever (creationism, intelligent design, etc), I won’t join you. That is not the point here. It’s finding a story that makes us happy.

With each new advancement, it opens up even more new opportunities for further developments. There is no “good” vs “evil” in all of this. The artist loves all of its creation. Evil is only a human creation, a product of people who’ve become disconnected from the love, the creativity, and the joy.

The artist loves all

The artist who created the canvas loves all of its creations, even though many of them have become so disconnected from it that they think they evolved randomly from pond slime. Even though they think that the artist doesn’t exist. Even though these creations have forgotten that they are love, and that they should start by loving themselves.

A conscious being who does not love itself cannot give deep love to another. One cannot giveth of that whicheth one doth not have.

We came here to explore and to create. We came here to build upon others’ creations. We came here as artists, much like the original artist, to see what great things we can do with the canvas of our life. It’s the canvas we’ve been given, yet many of us devalue it, minimize it, and feel unworthy of it.

Sadly, like me with my former story, many of us have forgotten. We’ve become lost in a story that says we have to work really really hard to succeed, and if we don’t, we are not worthy and we’ll be left behind in the dust. We’ve become lost in a story that says we are insignificant, unexceptional, and unimportant in this vast (and cold) universe. Many of us get lost in a story that says we are here only to serve others, rather than to live our life to its creative fullest – while serving others through living our lives to their fullest.

We have the free will to build upon creation with joy and love, or to unplug from it and destroy small parts of it with our hate and our fear. Though a lot of humans have chosen the course of hate and fear, our world is a resilient place. It will take a lot of hate to truly destroy it. Meanwhile, there are more and more of us who are waking up and embracing our true purpose here. We are gaining momentum to displace the hate and the fear. We are likely to triumph, as long as we embrace a better story.

I like my new fantasy much better.

It has begun healing my psyche and my relationships, without psychotherapy or pharmaceuticals. It has led me out of depressive episodes, and out of withdrawal from other human beings. I’m not 100% of the way there yet. The painting is by no means complete. We are never done. But I’m making great progress, because of the new story I’ve chosen to tell myself.

So now it’s your turn. What story are you telling yourself? Is that story helping you be a happier, more connected human being? Or does it have you lost in despair, dysfunction, overwhelm?

If it’s not serving you, perhaps it’s time to start rewriting that old story into something new. If you need help with that, reach out.

August 8, 2014
Fear in the Gym, Fear in Life

Today in Lake Tahoe, I felt like a lazy ass because my relatives were up at 5:30 am, clanking around in their bike shoes in the early morning, getting ready to head out to ride 70 miles around the lake, while I lay in the comfy bed…. Finally, the feeling that I needed to do something set in, and I roused myself at around 6:50. I donned my biking gear, filled the pack with cool water, and hopped on my bike to go exploring.

It is a mountain bike meant for exploring – for crossing nearly any kind of terrain you can throw at it. I’ve had it on mountain peaks and desert valleys, along with many roadways chock full of exhaust-spewing traffic. I got that bike for free. I was visiting a friend who’d bought it on a whim. He’s a surfer and Internet Marketer (with initials FK for those of you in the know…). He’d bought this $4,000 bike, taken it out once or twice, and proceeded to have some kind of wreck which he described as “totally embarrassing” near a busy intersection.

The wreck didn’t damage the bike or its rider – except for his ego. That was enough to relegate the bike into disuse, out-favored by the 60-some-odd surfboards in his arsenal. Nothing like being in 61st place for favor. For some reason, this conjures the image of a polygamist with 61 wives, who never has time to get to them all… I don’t know where that came from. Can I put that image back into the bottle now, please? No… too late.

So anyway, there the bike sat, stashed behind the quiver of surfboards and a beautifully restored VW bus, until I came along. It’s the kind of thing that happens in movies. I was in Frank’s place, and saw a water bottle on the counter. Knowing not of the bike, I asked innocently enough: “do you ride much?”

His answer: “oh, I got a bike and rode it a few times, then totally embarassed myself. Do you want it?”

I stammered a bit… “what kind of bike is it?” I managed to get out before the silence became embarrassing. As I’d processed the offer, images of old Schwinn cruiser bikes were flashing through my mind, as I calculated whether it would be rude to turn down the offer of a bike – even if a junky, rusted out one. I should have known better. Frank only does things with style. He said: “It’s a pretty good one, I think, I bought it new and just haven’t used it. We can go check it out! I’ll bet it’s about your size.”

“Okay,” I responded, as I followed him into the surfboard-stuffed garage overlooking the beach in La Jolla. As he dug his way through the piles upon piles of surfboards, I wondered what was going to emerge. The bike finally revealed itself amongst the surfboards, and I beheld a full-suspension 29er Titus mountain bike. If you’re not a mountain biker, here’s the translation: this was a damn fine bike, far better than what I owned at that time. He said: “here you go, want to take it for a ride and see if it will work?”

“Sure…” I was still doing mental math. “Does he expect me to pay him for it?” I was thinking? Nobody had ever given me anything worth that much before (or since)… After riding it for 30 seconds, I knew that this bike didn’t suck. Those are code-words for: “awesome!”

I rode back to the place, and asked him “what do you want me to pay you for it?” I still couldn’t wrap my head around getting something like this for free. His answer: “Nothing. take it – it’s yours. Otherwise I’d have to deal with putting it on Craigslist and all the weirdos coming by and looking at it.”

A price I can’t refuse

Okay, we can accept that price. And so I became the proud new owner of a fantastic bike at the best price I’ve ever paid. That bike has been all over the Western USA with me, and I’ve ridden it 1,000’s of miles. Occasionally I send Frank pictures of me and the bike – but I think he’s getting tired of random pictures of the bike that he never really grew fond of in the first place.

Flash forward to now, like one of those 70’s television shows where someone has a reminiscence then returns to the present via a cheesy shimmering effect… and here I am riding my bike around South Tahoe, exploring the trails and roads near the lake to see what’s around and enjoy the morning views.

Beautiful morning, perfect temperatures. My map of the trails was sketchy, so a couple of times I followed trails through the woods that tapered out into swampland, and I had to turn back before the buzzing mosquitos got to me. Exploration at it’s finest, as I burnt hundreds of calories climbing and descending Tahoe’s hills.

The pattern interrupt: a gym chock full of people

At one point, right after I was treated to some incredible lake views, with geese in the foreground and shimmering mountains in the background, I came across a sight that was a total pattern interrupt: a gym whose parking lot was nearly full, boasting “great views” on its sign.

On my ride, I’d seen, at most, three other cyclists and maybe a handful of runners out enjoying this gorgeous morning. And there at the gym were at least 30 people, packed into a small space with other sweating people, breathing in the sweaty smell as they clanked their weights and pounded the rubber of the treadmills – probably consuming the latest news about the war in the Middle East on the built-in TV screens.

Wow… really? How could anyone want to be in a gym right now, rather than out enjoying this awesome morning? I was flummoxed.

Then a thought came to mind. You know how sometimes your mind just speaks a judgement before you can get hold of it and tell it to shut up? (okay, I admit, I like the voice in my head, most of the time).

Well, in this case it spoke one word to me: fear. Followed by: Fear breeds fear. That’s the only explanation I could come up with for why someone would be in a gym on a day like this.

Non-judgement is hard

I try not to judge. I do my darnedest. So instead of deciding that they’re all crazy and weird and screwed up, I went into reflective mode. “They’re not bad people,” I tell myself, “they’re just confused by fear.”

Fear of the unknown of the outside world. You might get rained on (I did). You might get lost. (I did). God forbid, you might even have a mechanical problem (I didn’t, fortunately!). Worse still: you might be embarrassed by having a wreck or something. You could even get bitten by a mosquito carrying the dreaded West Nile virus, then it’s all over in a blur of fevers and coughs.

I get it. It’s safer and more controlled to go to a gym. You can get the same workout, every time. In it’s perfect, climate-controlled environment, not much can go wrong. There is almost no risk of any kind of failure.

And yet… there’s no risk of coming across stunning mountain landscapes… a flock of geese and their goslings, walking the bike across a sandy beach, feeling the morning dew and a few raindrops on your face, smelling the fresh new mountain air. There is no risk of hopping the bike across a fallen log and maybe screwing it up… or maybe not – and feeling the exhilaration, either way. There is no risk.

You get a certain, prescribed amount of exercise and it’s almost guaranteed. Yet – where’s the joy? Where’s the adventure? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the newness?

The robotic nation takes over

I find it bizarre that we humans used our creativity to create great empires and great machines to help us keep those empires running – and then we decided to fall in love with those machines by becoming more like them.

We plan out every moment of every day to assure climate-controlled comfort at all times.

God forbid if a new idea should strike us – that’s just “crazy talk” to be dismissed by the more sane and robotic part of us.

Worse still if we happen to go on an adventure like a mountain bike ride… and run into some kind of challenge. We might not be able to handle it – and our ego would be in shreds.

Besides, machines are just machines – no different than any of the other machines – and don’t have any special privileges, nor do they deserve a “great life!” – because they’re just machines. So, since we’re trying to be like machines, why should we feel “deserving” of anything great? We shouldn’t: that’s just selfish for a machine to want. Stop it now.

This gym phenomenon is just a tip of the iceberg in machine-dom. Machines aren’t flexible, creative, and adaptable like humans*. Hell, the other day I saw an article about bacteria that evolved to eat electricity for their energy. Now that’s flexible and creative. Life is spontaneous, creative, adventuresome. Robots are not.

So why do we pack ourselves into places like the gym, going there for a precisely defined workout, followed by a precisely-defined diet to assure the precisely healthy body fat percentage as specified by the precisely measured statistics coming from the latest studies?

I have no damn clue, really, except to say that it’s dismaying that many of our lives have come to this. We are not machines!

We are creative, beautiful, loving beings, meant for more than just living a daily life of machine-dom. We are not here to avoid any variation in circumstance – we are here to adapt to the variations, to roll with the punches, to seek and have adventure and fun.

We are creators, not robots. Let’s stop trying to live like robots, and start reclaiming our creative, spontaneous humanity.

* – this is referring to humans who haven’t already become too robotic….

** – Sorry to gym owners and friends of mine who go to the gym. Like I said above, I do not judge you. However, I cannot follow your path, I must create my own, and it doesn’t involve a gym.

July 22, 2014
Got something to create? Watch out for toxic green slime.

This post isn’t for everyone. It’s not for people who want to live a life of consumption or complacency and be content with that.

No, it’s not for those. If you want to do that, I don’t have any words of assistance for you.

I do, however, have words for you if you know, deep in your heart, that you want to create something great, but you’ve been holding back all these years because of fear.

That “something great” can be of any type, shape, or variety.

Maybe it’s a new business.

Maybe it’s making a new toy named smudgie-dolls.

Or perhaps it’s creating great gospel-rock music. Or perhaps even great scientific breakthroughs. Maybe even a grant proposal that rocks the reviewer’s world.

Who knows.

It doesn’t matter what the what is. Because all people who have something unexpressed inside struggle with the same issues.

A sea of toxicity for creators

The industrialists were creators. They created great factories that churned out widgets that were designed to enhance our lives.

Ironically, their creations had the effect of generating a whole populace that is deathly afraid of real creating and creativity. So, while the creators of those industrial empires got to express themselves – generations of people who have gone to work for them and been influenced by them have had their creativity stifled by the creating that the industrialists did.

Just go tell your relatives that you’re going to be in a rock band. Or that you’re going to start a business. Watch their sympathetic, patronizing reactions as the look on their face turns to horror, like you might expect after a cancer diagnosis.

“Find a real career, like medicine or engineering, so that you can support yourself and your family.”

I’m not kidding about this. I’ve recently helped someone start a new business to work on a cure for a major disease. This person has suffered from anxieties both internal and external. Externally, she’s felt judged and pressured by colleagues who act like she’s a traitor for doing something positive with her work. Internally, she frequently worries about “what if it fails and I can’t support my family.”

(She probably would have given up on this journey if it hadn’t been for having the support of a mentor – going it alone in confronting these fears is very difficult).

Schools fuck it up

Our education system these days is totally fear driven. In the US, a lot of it comes from politicians and pundits who look at Asia, where they see students accomplishing higher test scores in subjects like math and grammar.

“We have to get rid of that useless art crap, and spend more time teaching them the basics, so that we can keep up with them damn foreigners…” All the creative stuff gets thrown out the window as “useless” in this fast-moving world.

Yet that’s the stuff of which all progress is made. It’s the stuff of genius. New cures, new technologies, new works of art – they don’t come from hitting the books harder. They come from unleashing more of the creativity.

Very few schools focus on helping students with that. Instead it’s all about becoming subservient, listening to the teacher, learning the subject material “correctly” and regurgitating it on the next exam.

That stuff teaches young people the screwed up lesson that success is all about getting the answers “just right.” Hey, when you’re doing something like creating a new business, there is no “right answer.” If you search for the right answer, you get paralyzed.

I’ve seen it happen to more than one entrepreneur friend, who goes to seminar after seminar, seeking the “answer” to how to make their business successful… when the answer was inside of that person the whole time, and just needed an expression of creativity to let it out.

How many world-changers went to Ivory Tower University(ITU)?

(I almost wrote a university whose name starts with H – but decided their lawyers and/or marketing department might get in a kerfluffle if I mention them by name).

So, I don’t have fancy statistics to prove my case, but I quickly thought to myself, who are some of the most influential people of the past 100 years that come to mind?

Some random names that pop up for me are: Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gahndi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, The Dali Lama, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford…

Of the names that came to mind, not a single one of these world-changers attended Ivory Tower University. Of the university that they did attend, it was a minor contributor, if at all, to their world-changing creations.

Point is: universities don’t focus on creating great creators. In fact they usually do the opposite, which is to stifle the creativity. (That’s why I’m no longer with a university).

The typical approach that universities take to education is to scare students into conformity, via grades, an endless series of exams, and a pre-digested view of the “facts.”

Now, for my academic friends who are riled by this statement, don’t worry. I realize that there are some of you who do things differently. Some of you encourage students to develop their own independent thinking and creativity. Some of you teach classes by supporting inquisitiveness. Kudos to you, seriously! At the same time, realize that you are in the tiny minority who actually cares about this stuff, and that the overall momentum of the system is very much in the direction of conformity. That’s what I’m speaking about.

So it’s time to make it a wrap, by encouraging you to let that creation out

Creating is a bit like giving birth. It’s a long period of pregnancy, followed by an often painful delivery, and finally, relief! Many of us stay “pregnant” with those unborn ideas for our whole life… and the result is never healthy.

If you’ve got something great to create, now is your time. Don’t hold it back any longer. Find a way to move forward on your creating, of whatever kind suits you – and close your ears to the endless naysayers you may encounter along the journey!

Treat their input as you would treat toxic green slime mold growing on food – get rid of it!

Morgan

July 17, 2014
The feedback on Create or Die is in, and it's badass

I sent out preliminary copies of the book Create or Die to some people, and the feedback I’ve had has been badass. Here’s some of it:

“Morgan! That was soooo good! And yes I read it ALL.
I am a voracious reader. There are times I read 3 books a week.
This is one of the best books I’ve read all year.
I was inspired from the very first page of chapter 1.”

– Travis Sago, Entrepreneur

And this one:

“One of the most important and provocative books I have read in years. A guide to how to live your life without being manipulated, scared or influenced by others. A cross between Stephen Hawking, Art Bell and Napoleon Hill. Highly recommended.”

– Geoff Ronning, founder of Stealth Seminar

Oh, another:

“I absolutely loved it and your message “To be Healthy, Happy and have financial Security ” is absolutely in ‘your’ hands as long as one taps into their ‘own unique creative abilities/talents’. Your ability to drive home this message was Powerful & Clear. Your chapter on the mechanistic way of functioning in a society coming strictly from the left brain only versus the coming more from the Creative perspective which includes tapping into Love and Beauty is explained really well – I love how you explain how this shows up in peoples outwardly expression: mechanical deprives people of feeling and expressing happiness and joy. I also love how you point out : robots & computers can simply never ‘out-create humans’…… Very well explained in your book – and I know so many ‘out there’ will agree! I resonated deeply with most all of your chapters and I believe your book and all that it addresses is very timely…”

– Debra Capranos, Holistic Nutritionist

And how about:

“You have faced your internal struggles with great courage, and as a result have produced a book that sounds a clarion call to rethink our cultural values. This is a great achievement.

We both found it easy to read and stay with the text. The underlying ideas are excellent, interesting and well put with plenty of helpful metaphors and analogies.

I love the emphasis on the value of failure and a vision of where you want to go. (There was a great diagram on Facebook a few weeks ago that illustrates this — see it attached)

I love that you are writing about the fact that as humans, we can’t NOT create. It’s in our genes. We MUST create – ideas and/or things. The two are inextricable, it is how the life force is evolving through us. By creating ideas, we develop our individual reality. By creating things, we develop our collective reality and culture. And, we CAN control our creativity. These ideas are BIG.”

– Pat Watt, Retired teacher

We’re not done…

“Dr. Morgan Giddings put her own brilliant mind and shared her wisdom and expertise on creativity. As an academic scientist, creativity with integrity is the core to pursue scientific excellence. I enjoy reading this book and agree with the center message of this book: “If you’re not creating, you’re dying.”

Dr. Gladys Ko, Scientist, Texas A&M

Oh yeah, oh yeah, another one:

“This is a home run in so many ways. Most don’t understand the difference between living life asleep in your shoes and being awake creating and changing lives! You covered it so well! Hopefully more readers will wake up and find their creativity and change the world!”

– Robin Gerhart, Entrepreneur

And that’s just from a small group of preliminary readers, before any kind of public release.

July 16, 2014
The Real Problem With The Economy

Over on Fearless Creators, there’s a new blog post: the Real Problem With The Economy. Here’s the link: http://fearlesscreators.com/blog/the-real-problem-with-the-economy

June 19, 2014
Gag Me With a Bucketload of Stupidity

Once, a long time ago in a place not so far away, universities and research institutions were the shining beacon of hope for our society.

They were going to cure cancer.

They were helping send us to the moon.

They were discovering penicillin and the polymerase chain reaction (which allows us to sequence DNA).

We had high hopes, so we invested in them heavily.

We believed in them, and they in turn opened their doors to our masses.

Giving nearly every kid the opportunity for a college education, we thought our future was bright.

Then something happened.

I’m not sure exactly what it was. I can come up with some smart-sounding theories, but in the end they matter not.

The only thing that matters is where we’re at, and what to do about it.

As our colleges and universities go, so goes society. As much as I love entrepreneurial activities and my own current independence from academia, we as a society need these institutions to carry forth the great intellectual traditions that have led to so much advancement for our species.

So, let’s start with the present tense. Let’s look at two examples of the lunacy that seems to be spreading throughout our halls of higher ed.

Example 1: Get Grants Or Be Fired

“If you don’t get at least one federal grant in the next six months, you’ll be out on the street, jobless, sweeping floors at the local burger joint… so get your butt in gear writing grants!” This is a proclamation handed down by an administrator to more than one researcher I know lately. In each one of these cases, the recipients of the proclamation were already working blood, sweat, and tears on grants, but that is not enough. The proclaimer felt like adding some pressure to make sure that the “lazy” researcher in question got the message loud and clear.

A bit of background for my non-academic readers. When you get hired to do research, you are expected to go out and get money to pay for your research. This usually comes in the form of grant money from various federal and state agencies, along with foundations. Grants come in all shapes and sizes, from small $5,000 grants to buy a piece of equipment to some that pay as much as $2,000,000 per year or more to support a whole team doing research on a topic like cancer.

It’s always been a challenge to get grant funding. I remember back in the 1980’s when my father ran a science lab, how much he’d stress out about writing grant proposals – these thick stacks of paper justifying every little detail of a project that hadn’t happened yet. I’d see him up late at night and then up again early, with circles drawing under his eyes, as he’d finish up one of these things for submission.

Yet, in the past few years, it’s become a whole new ballgame, kiddos. The new ballgame is definitely a pro’s only sport. For big grant-giving agencies like the National Institutes of Health, less than 1 in 10 proposals get funded. It takes months to hear back whether you’ll get funded or not, and if you get a rejection, reviewer’s comments are generally cryptic and don’t really help much.

Throwing Young Faculty Into The Ring With Pro Fighters

So here we have in one corner: new faculty who’ve never had grants before, never had any deep training in persuasive writing, being hired by big universities and thrown into the ring to duke it out.

The all pervasive mantra is “just fight more fights!!!”

As if getting knocked out and bloodied frequently is a substitute for real training. (It’s not).

In the other corner, we have university administrators. They’re coming out of their corners with gloves swinging, sweat dripping, and a big hard-on for grant money. Their fight is driven by the mantra “we need more money to pay the bills! so YOU are going to fight, whether you’re prepared or not!”

The bizarrely stupid thing about the threats I regularly hear lobbed at faculty over the need to get grants “or else” is that those doing the threatening are ignoring the very clear research that’s been done on human motivation.

How to Motivate Workers in Modern Enterprises (or… Not)

Dan Pink summarizes this in his book, Drive. If you put more pressure on people using a carrot and stick method, it works okay for simple mechanical tasks like assembly line work. You can use the carrot and stick to get more “productivity” out of those “damn workers.”

BUT: If you use this kind of punishment and reward scenario on people involved in complex cognitive tasks that involve creative thinking, forget it. The more you incentivize, the more you get just the opposite of what you want. It takes people longer to solve those big problems that need solving.

So let me riddle you this: Is writing a grant proposal an assembly-line job, or a complex cognitive task requiring creative thinking?

If you answered “assembly-line job” you joined the chorus of those misguided souls who think that grant proposals can be written by robots (robots that happen to be of the skin and bones variety). Last I checked, nobody has been able to build a grant writing robot.

No, grant writing – like much of what professionals and business owners do, involves complex thinking. It can’t be carrot-and-stick’d into happening faster or better.

The Creation of a Robot Monoculture

As a result of this pressure, there’s a sort of “natural selection” that’s going on in these institutions. It is weeding out the creative thinkers, the innovators, and the future Nobel laureates to produce a monoculture of pseudo-robots that follow orders blindly and manage to just scrape by though a process of sacrificing family time, sleep time, and even their own health in the name of satisfying the hungry dollar-sucking institutions they work for.

Sadly, there seems to be a nearly limitless supply of such robots, so that when one of the monoculture succumbs to cancer, another steps up to gladly take the place of the fallen ones.

Yet, lest ye think this is sustainable, think again. As has been discovered with agricultural crops, growing monocultures is a fragile situation. It’s susceptible to breakage if anything unexpected happens, such as pests or bad weather. In academia, the precise nature of future shocks can’t be predicted, but we can know for sure that they will happen. The unexpected is part of life, everywhere and every time.

I am honestly sad for these administrators. I think at least some of them are well-intentioned. But they find themselves in a situation that requires true leadership and vision, without the skills and tools to exhibit leadership and vision. So they resort to carrots, sticks, and “incentives” as a substitute. And they don’t realize that they are doing the opposite of leading in the process. True leaders inspire (think of MLK, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ganhdi, etc…). False leaders cajole.

So let’s consider the second scenario, again from a recent interaction within academia:

Example 2: The Only Real Way To Succeed Is To Join an R1

“You’re about to get your PhD, and to be a success you have to take a serious research job at an R1 institution. If you take that teaching job you want from that small college, you’ll be relegated forever to that third-tier, stuck in the backwaters as a nobody. So, c’mon, ignore your distaste for the direction research is going in the field, get with the program, do some fundable research, and start applying for real jobs at real universities!”

I remember the cliques in high school. If you weren’t part of the clique, you were a “nobody.” Well, I wasn’t part of the popular cliques – the jocks, the cheerleaders, the A-students. I have yet to return to a high school reunion, but I may do so someday to see what has happened to all those folks.

I suspect this: that 1) I earn more money than most of them; 2) I have more free time than most of them; 3) I spend more quality time with my family than most of them; 4) I am doing what I love unlike most of them; 5) I am having a positive impact in the world unlike most of them; and 6) that almost none of them has all of 1-5 going on in their lives. (I know this because it seems like less than 1 in 1,000 that has all this going for them).

No, I didn’t get to where I am by listening to the “advice” of the cliques. It’s a damn good thing that I never was really a part of one, so I got spared that kind of mind-numbing groupthink.

Sadly, much of this cliquey groupthink has now infected academia – and our world. If you’re not part of the “R1 clique” you are a “nobody.” (R1 refers to the exclusive group of 50 or so top-tier, well funded research universities, including those brand names we’ve all heard). Forget what you’re good at, your individual talents and contributions and join us in the “IN” group.

OMG. Gag me with a spoon! No, wait… gag me with a bucketful of stupidity!

It’s not that the individuals in a clique aren’t smart. Sometimes they are. But groupthink is almost never smart. So when one subsumes her own smartness to the groupthink, it produces an immediate 30 point drop in IQ.

That’s what is happening in this highly toxic advice that someone gave this soon-to-be-minted new Doctoral researcher.

What’s so sad about this groupthink-spawned advice to our erstwhile PhD is that I think these folks giving the advice actually believe that there could be nothing better than life at an R1 research institution. They seem to actually believe that the sacrifices of family, free time, and health are worth it. They seem to believe that the constant treadmill of robotic grant writing and “publish or perish” is just a fact of life. Worse still, they actually believe that the current funding system leads to the best research being done, when it is just the opposite. The groupthink that happens in grant review committees usually produces a lowest-common-denominator approach to research progress that stifles creativity and innovation (how else can you explain the billions spent on cancer and no big cures to date?)

No. It is a case of the blind leading the young off the cliff into oblivion.

Do. Not. Listen. To. Groupthink.

Listen to what’s right for you. That should be the only criterion for any decision, ever. Sadly, we’ve programmed ourselves to listen to others, to follow orders, and to totally ignore our inner wisdom and intelligence.

And people ask me why I left academia… maybe a picture is emerging?

When this kind of terrible advice being doled out to our students is par for the course, it’s a sign that the system is more and more bent on breeding clones instead of creative, innovative researchers who could actually make a difference in the world.

It is truly sad, this state of affairs that’s represented by these two brief glimpses I’ve shared with you here.

It’s sad because I have so many friends and colleagues still in the system, trying to survive with some sense of self retained. It’s sad that it’s getting harder and harder to do.

The solution

I could write a lot about all the things that need to change, but in this case I think simplicity is the best policy.

The solution is the epitome of simple: we need leaders to stand up and step up, facing off with these negative forces, and saying “enough is enough! no more stupidity will be allowed in our halls of higher education! let’s start living sane lives again!”

I saw this recently happen with a PhD student whom I inspired, who then went and stood up to a borderline-abusive supervisor.

I don’t think unions are the answer. The only time, ever, that unions have made a difference is when they have strong, inspiring leaders. But unions bring lots of baggage with them – including the very groupthink that’s part of the problem. You can’t fix a problem by substituting it with another equal (or worse) problem!

Great leadership is a solution, always and every time throughout human history.

I just got an email from someone I have worked with. This person decided to walk away from a faculty job next year – disgusted by what’s been happening. (Like most sane people are).

While I applaud the decision for the person’s own sake, it is sad that some of the best and brightest are choosing to leave rather than to stand up as leaders to fix the problem. (mea culpa, I am one of those who left, because I didn’t know how to stand up to it at the time – I didn’t have the skills needed).

These academic institutions are like a car on the road that’s just run out of gas, and which is now coasting on momentum end elevation gained during better times. If we don’t start seeing some real leadership, these institutions will soon run out of momentum and come to a jerky, shaking halt.

Are you ready to step up and be a leader, be a visionary?

Because if our instituions of higher learning are going to live up to our belief in them as great institutions, then things need to change. We need leaders who are willing to step up and take risks, change the way the model operates, and CREATE a vision of an institution that is not just spewing out well-trained robots who join the existing rat race of chasing money.

And if these institutions fall, then what does that mean for the rest of us? Where will intellectual traditions be fostered? What will we look towards for the future of progress?

If you aren’t willing to step up, then you are participating in a slow-but-sure death of the system. Rest assured that things will get worse before they get better.

If you are, be prepared for a difficult but rewarding journey of change and struggle. Leadership is never easy, yet it is the only thing that brings true success. It is leading by example, leading with love, leading with a vision and passion. If you choose this path, you may be like a real-life Frodo Baggins, with dark forces amassed against you – but you will ultimately prevail.

Dr. Morgan Giddings

December 24, 2013
Creativity-sucking education stamping widgets of children* (video)

Why our educational system is stamping out “children as widgets” – a great video with Sir Ken Robinson

Working with the world’s top scientists and entrepreneurs, I’ve seen a few things. The biggest of those things is the thing of creativity being repressed and even outright absent. This stunts career growth and all sorts of other badness. So, check out the video to learn where it came from and what we need to do about it.

And if it makes you really angry like it does me – or even if you just find yourself stifled because you feel “widgetized” and unable to make creative leaps and bounds in your life, then take it a step further.

Learn how to kill the creativity killer. (I know, that’s a double negative. Hey, I’ve got creative license!)

Incredibly cool thing for you: I’ve reopened registration for Think Creative! Be Productive! for one day (today) only!**

This is the class that’s helping thought leaders all over the world reclaim their “birthright” of creative leadership. Seriously – if you look at leaders in any field, are they the ones playing “follow the leader?” Um, by definition, no. They’re the ones who are at the leading edge, creating new ways of doing things.

Wanna be one of those? Or do you have the more modest goal of just taking control of your own life? Then join us in this class, asap.

See you there! It’s going to be really fun (and eye opening!)

Morgan

* Occasionally I get some commenter freaking out about the “dramatic” titles I sometimes use. Well, if you don’t like the title, go read another blog – or better yet, create your own (um, yeah, that requires creativity, hah!). Seriously – with billions of pages on the web to get bored with, why do boring stuff? I mean, really! Don’t do boring stuff. Instead, join us in the class!

** Yeah, I know, maybe you’re a bit late hitting this page, and for that, I’m sorry – but you can get on the waiting list if that’s so!

November 22, 2013
Who is that mysterious author?
In my previous piece, I wrote about the nature of our identity…

Included in that post were some deep quotes, but I didn’t name the author.

I held that back for a reason.

I didn’t want the complexity of the source to be confused with the message.

Because that message is important.

See, in the early 1960’s, there was a woman. She was a journalist. And one day, she got an idea: let me write an article on psychic phenomena.

She set out with the notion of debunking the happenings of occult.

So, one night, she and her husband sat down with a Ouija board, expecting nothing much to happen – but being at least a little bit open minded, in case something did.

Well, let’s just say that something happened. That something was the “energy personality essence” that goes by the name of Seth. Seth wasn’t just a trivial fortune-teller or big-top show woman. In fact, Jane Roberts, the woman in question, actively avoided publicity as much as possible.

Seth was eloquent. Seth wrote books, spoken through Jane. Not just little books – but big, meaty, complex books. They are the über-philosophy. After reading them, I can hardly go back to reading the mere human philosophers like Kant, Sartre, Nietzsche, Plato, and etc…. Those philosophies seem so small in comparison. Each may hold some truths, but they are just surface truths.

Seth wrote books about the nature of reality. He wrote books about how our universe came to be. He wrote books about the process of evolution and creativity (BTW, he verifies my long-held suspicion that these are not independent processes).

He did this for almost twenty years, until Jane’s death in 1984 silenced his voice.

The pseudo-skeptics and Seth

In the early days, Jane and her husband Rob were skeptical. They sought out multiple academics to assess and test the Seth phenomenon. They wanted to make sure that it wasn’t somehow just a manifestation of schizophrenia, or worse.

They did a lot of tests of Seth’s ability to see well beyond what was in front of Jane and Rob’s immediate senses. They’d do test with hidden objects and drawings, where Seth would have to view the remote object and bring back information about it.

Many of the tests were successful, some were not. Seth wasn’t perfect. But he was damn good.

Yet, most of their attempts to engage academics in rigorous scientific examinations of the phenomenon ended badly.

Why?

Because in almost every case, the academic in question brought a strong pre-supposition of falsity into the endeavor.

Take for example, this:

Not too long ago, a young psychology professor called and asked me to speak to his class at the local college…. The man’s attitude was apparent the minute he came in the door. Personally he wouldn’t touch a medium with a ten-foot pole, but since they did exist and he knew one, he felt duty-boudn to “expose” his students to the phenomenon.

A lot of people, especially many scientists, like to think we are objective and unbiased. And yet all of science is driven by the questions we ask, and the data we choose to admit or exclude.

In this fellow’s case, he started out with a firm disbelief in the phenomenon of Seth. He expressed that disbelief strongly to his students.

So, when Jane offered to do a set of experiments where the students were to try to “remote view” a new drawing each day posted inside Jane’s abode (where it couldn’t be seen from outside), the professor reluctantly “allowed” it for those students who wanted to try.

Already he biased the experiment: he clearly let the class know that these kinds of experiments were beyond serious consideration.

Given that background of strong negative belief by their professor, only five students took part.

Those five students managed a decent track record; yet the professor dismissed the results as coincidence because of “the low number participating.”

So here we have an experiment that has been dismissed before it got underway. There is no hope of an unbiased experiment under such circumstances.

I wish that I could say that Jane and Rob’s experiences were unique. But they’re not.

Like everyone, academics believe what they want to believe. They select narrow questions and data-collection activities to focus upon based on those beliefs. Science is no more open-minded than religion, or any other field.

There’s a whole “skeptics” movement that has arisen to debunk anything that could be considered paranormal or as going beyond the materialist model.

These people are not real skeptics. They are pseudo-skeptics. They adhere to a rigid dogmatic belief system that is just as narrow-minded as the most fundamentalist of religious practitioners do.

However, standing in the way are groups of organized fundamentalists who call themselves “skeptics” but in reality know nothing about the true meaning of the word nor practice it. In fact, they’ve hijacked the word to mean its opposite. Rather than inquiring, or asking questions to try to understand something, they seek to debunk, discredit and ridicule anything that doesn’t fit into their belief system.

That’s from the site http://www.debunkingskeptics.com.

The question I ask you, dear reader, is this: are you a true skeptic, or a pseudo-skeptic?

My own skepticism

I have pursued the reading of the Seth books as an open-minded inquiry, with healthy but not overarching skepticism.

I have constantly asked myself: are there valid alternative explanations for the source of this material?

The only alternatives I’ve come up with are that either Jane was a brilliant faker, who in the process managed to tap into some very deep truths and some of the most important books of the last century; or

Jane was a schizophrenic who had a personality that managed to do the same.

Let’s consider the first alternative explanation. Does it make sense? Jane had her own writing career – she wrote several books under her own name, separately from Seth.

As an author myself, I have to say that my Ego would way rather have credit for what I write under my own name than under the name of some other mysterious entity that I am “channeling.” It seems like a strange way to get credit for your creative output.

And, given the extent to which Rob went to great lengths to document all the circumstances of the Seth phenomenon, it seems like an awful lot of effort for questionable gain. He produced shelves and shelves of notebooks that contained his transcriptions of all the sessions.

Further – where’s the gain? Jane didn’t charge for readings or seminars. She did invite people to her home to experience Seth, but no money transfer was involved. Simply put, why would someone go to all that trouble for an elaborate fake of some of the best material ever created?

The schizophrenic explanation is no better. The idea that a whole separate, highly complex, very smart personality is there, sharing gray matter with this writer, is quite astounding in it’s own right.

I haven’t found a more satisfying alternative hypothesis than to accept what they claim as substantially correct. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, but just that I haven’t found it. Given that, I tend to believe it just as I would any other human author’s work. I consider it as having insights that I may be able to use and apply in my life; but I’m not going to just consume it as if it were gospel. It is not “perfect.”

Why not perfect?

There are occasional flaws and inconsistencies in the works of Seth. Does this invalidate the whole thing?

Seth himself said that the “medium” has a strong influence on the message. They act like a translator at a very fundamental level – biasing what is said and how it is said by their own beliefs and feelings.

That means that we would never hear “pure” Seth through Jane (or through anyone else). It’s like reading Tolstoy in English. You are not getting the “pure form” of the writing.

For example, there are passages about the lost city of Atlantis (which Seth claims lies in our future), and also passages about other humanoids who’ve existed before us on our planet. Such speculations may be just as much a reflection of Jane’s interests as they are of Seth and his insights. It’s a blend. Because you can’t truly separate the medium from the message.

However, the small imperfections aside, these books have some of the best explanations I’ve encountered for why we exist, and the nature of life.

Of course, you’ve probably figured out by now that the quotes in the previous post were from Seth.

Specifically, the quotes were from the book “The Seth Material” by Jane Roberts.

What is at the core of the Seth material?

There are a few main “take-home” principles:
1. We create our own realities. No, really, we do! Through complex machinations that go far beyond the visible universe, what we experience is a direct reflection of what we are thinking and feeling. It is not a direct reflection of what we desire, because we often desire things that are in opposition to what we believe to be true.
2. We are the process of “The Universe” or “God” discovering itself. Imagine an all-powerful, all-perfect God, by itself in the Universe. It would be lonely, and damn boring. So how did God solve this dilemma? By creating other entities a part of but apart from itself! We are the ongoing result of that process of those entities discovering who they are. We are here to discover and experience: not to work hard or to suffer or to atone for sins.
3. We are fundamental to the ever-ongoing action of creation. There is no finished or “perfect” state here. That would be The End. We participate in it by creating. Each creation leads to an inspiration for the next creations. It is never ending. If it were to end, we’d be done for.
There’s a lot more. But if you understand and live just these few, your life will be vastly enhanced.
September 2, 2013