Tag: consciousness

  • Top-10 Beliefs That Are Ruining Your Life

    Top-10 Beliefs That Are Ruining Your Life

    Wait a sec. How can a belief ruin your life? It’s just a measly little set of biochemical connections in your mind, no way can it have that kind of impact…. right!?

    What if you believed that all water is toxic? If you truly believed this, deep-down, you’d avoid all sources of water… and soon, you’d die. It’s not the water that is toxic, it’s the belief.

    All beliefs are that way. Most of us are comfortable in our beliefs because we’ve surrounded ourselves with other people who hold similar ones. That helps us feel “safe,” because most of us have a herd-like evolutionary (unconscious) belief of “safety in numbers.”

    But being part of a herd doesn’t mean that our beliefs are supporting our progress towards things that matter. Whether the things you want are better work-life balance, more recognition, more money or funding, or whatever – it is most likely your own (toxic) beliefs that hold you back from having those things.

    1. I’m nobody important, and I’m not sure why they gave me this position/accolade/promotion! In a world of over 7 billion people, it’s sometimes hard to feel important – and that means it’s much harder to achieve anything big. When we’re younger, most of us have our parents filling the role of seeing us as important. Then there’s a transition to adulthood, and most of us never replace the parental role with our own inner sense of importance. Believing in your own unimportance leads to self-sabotaging behaviors that will slow or halt progress towards things that you care about.
    2. There’s never enough time to get it all done This time-scarcity belief causes its holders to rush around, always hurrying, cramming and jamming into every possible moment every possible action until exhaustion comes. Yet, if you’re trying to achieve a new situation or goal, that doesn’t come from frenzied activity and lack of sleep. No, the source of change is always clarity, and clarity generally only comes easily to a rested and relaxed mind. A single action made in clarity can be as effective as 100 actions taken without clarity. Stop. Breath. Get clarity, then act.
    3. It’s a dangerous world out there Fear is a paralyzing feeling. How much can you accomplish towards your goals when you’re paralyzed? (hint: none). The more you believe in the world being a dangerous place due to politics, violence, environmental destruction, or whatever, it’s the belief in danger that will hold you back from making things happen.
    4. I’m better/smarter/wiser than my colleagues When you get a rejection, it’s easy to start pointing fingers at “stupid” colleagues that “don’t get it.” Yet that ego-driven attitude also subtly places you in the role of victim and pawn to “them.” This is a disempowering belief, because it prevents you from seeing the blind spots in you where improvement may be needed to get the results you want. Humility is essential to self-improvement, and ego gets in the way.
    5. There’s never enough money or funding to go around This belief in money scarcity reproduces itself in your life when you carry it around. Just look at the facts: there are trillions of dollars and other currencies flowing around the world. Some people (including some of your colleagues) are better at diverting a bigger portion of that flow (both in And out). However, if you’re caught in scarcity, you’re often focused on tightening down the outflow. Think about this: what happens when you turn a faucet — which regulates outflow — to a trickle? You get a trickle of an IN flow. Now, let’s say your faucet is wide open but the flow isn’t very good. It requires a totally different set of mental and physical tools to increase the inflow than it does to reduce outflow. However, if you have a belief that the in-flow is scarce, your focus will be mainly on limiting out-flow, and you’ll be forever caught in a loop of limitation.
    6. Great work speaks for itself There’s this belief amongst idealists that if you do some great work – whether it’s a scientific breakthrough, a new invention, a novel, or whatever – that you’ll get recognized for it. While it is true that some people do get recognized for such greatness posthumously, the question is whether you want to wait until you’re dead to get the rewards for your work. If you’d rather have some of those rewards here and now, then a belief that “Great work speaks for itself” is toxic. It is exceedingly rare that “great work” alone is enough to speak for itself. No, great work must have an effective spokesperson to get it out into the world, and that spokesperson is always one and the same as the originator of the work. (Unless you happen to be a billionare, and can hire a full-time PR team). It is only by embracing the idea that you are responsible for “marketing” your work to the world, and learning how to do it more effectively, that your cure/invention/idea/novel/etc is likely to get into the hands of other people where it can have its intended impact – and bring you recognition/money/reward as a result.
    7. It’s dangerous to be “vulnerable” with my colleagues Many people are extremely guarded around their colleagues, because they believe if they show any “weakness” it will be exploited by hostiles. However, research by Dr. Brené Brown and colleagues has clearly shown that it is psychologically unhealthy to exist in a closed-in cocoon of guardedness. It prevents us from making deep and meaningful connections with people in our lives, and it also prevent us from acting boldly. Doing anything great requires “putting yourself out there” and being willing to be criticized. If you’re locked in a guarded shell, you’ll be unable to make the bold leaps that are required to accomplish anything truly great. This means being forever locked in a cycle of mediocrity. Vulnerability is essential to great accomplishment.
    8. I have to do exactly as my boss/chair/dean/supervisor says in order to succeed If you work at a big-chain-fast-food-joint, then perhaps it’s essential for you to do exactly as people above you say. But when you’re in a position that requires leadership – such as being a faculty member or entrepreneur – you must be willing to follow your inner drive and your own vision, even if it means going in a different direction than someone else thinks you should. Often well-meaning advisors/mentors/bosses tell us things such as “you must apply for more grants.” Many of us try to be people pleasers and therefore to follow such advice. However, at the end of the day, leadership is one of the most essential attributes we must develop, and leadership always means listening to your own inner authority first and foremost. This doesn’t mean ignoring input from others, but it does mean that as a leader you make your own decisions and take full responsibility for them.
    9. I’m struggling because the system is messed up The system may well be messed up but this is never why any individual is struggling. Even in terrible systems or bad economies, there are always people who do well. It is tempting to believe that that’s due to luck, but it rarely is. Instead, it’s due to a spirit of entrepreneurialism, creativity, and fearlessness. While TV and movies would have you believe that its only the greedy, power-monging manipulators who succeed in rough environments, the reality is quite different. The Great Depression produced a large crop of millionaires, many of whom made their fortunes by ignoring the “depressive” sentiment of their time to act boldly in starting new businesses. The choice of whether you thrive or not has everything to do with your own attributes of entrepreneurialism and creativity, and very little to do with the external environment around you.
    10. I’m just a meaningless blip in a vast, cold, universe Humans thrive on meaning and purpose. All great works throughout human history have resulted from people who felt driven by some bigger purpose. So, if you believe that the universe is a hard, cold, meaningless place, that belief will stand like a big cement wall smack dab in your path to achieving important things. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that there’s something bigger/deeper than the material world we see or not, but if you lack purpose and meaning you will be ineffective and mediocre. So, getting rid of this belief and finding your own personal sense of meaning, purpose, and even wonder is like rocket fuel for great accomplishment.
    11. That all top-10 lists should only have 10 items I included this one just to show you the power of your own belief… and to demonstrate the automatic cognitive dissonance that occurs when a belief is violated. I also included it a a tribute to the movie Spinal Tap 😉

    There are plenty more where those come from, but if you found resonance in one or more of these, going to work on them will yield a tremendous bounty in your life.

     

     

  • Lighten up, Life is an experiment

    Lighten up, Life is an experiment

    This is a first. I’ve not been very open in the past about my own spiritual path over the past few years – one that has led me from a very atheist point of view to now believing that there is much more to our universe than the material “stuff” that we see.

    It is not a journey that I undertook readily or with enthusiasm. I grew up to think of many religious people as a bit “nuts,” and by association, any form of spirituality was suspect.

    Yet my own path, my own questions, forced me to ultimately face up to this idea: we are far more than just the flesh-and-bones in these bodies, and we are more than just a random, meaningless lump of flesh in the universe.

    This is not about religion, it is about spirit. It is about finding meaning in an often difficult world, and finding a path that leads to peace, fun, love, and enjoyment of life. It is a very practical path indeed, and yet one that I – like many others – often resist due to our own biases and beliefs from the seemingly never-ending debate between religion and science.

    When you are willing to step aside from that debate, and go on an open-minded exploration of what our reality is really about, amazing things open up for you. One of those things for me has been that I have found I can get very quiet and still, and “tune into” some deeper voice, some deeper consciousness, that has a “knowing” that seems to go far beyond what I in this body could know about things. It has been incredible for me to start asking that voice questions about my life and our world, and to get some amazing answers back.

    Here I share one of those with you, that was spawned by a debate I saw a friend involved in about a rape that had happened, and whether the victim had somehow “attracted” that into her life or not. The flamethrowers came out… and it was not pretty. I wanted a deeper insight into what this was all about, so I asked the question, and here is what I got.

    Q: What about people who suffer severe traumas?

    A: Life is an experiment. Each event is one of a series of never-ending, eternal experiments, trials-and-errors, that happen to a soul over its eternal trajectory.

    For each “bad” thing that happens there is always a comparable “good” thing that happens, though not always in the same lifetime or in a way that is obvious to the person from their perspective at the time.

    You humans could do to lighten up, to chill out, to have fun with this ride you call Life. It is not much different than a play with actors, taking on different roles and trying different perspectives.

    A soul cannot reach it’s full potential if it never experiences pain, or what it is like to be a victim. Nor can it reach full potential without experiencing the opposite, being an oppressor or victimizer. These each lead to expansion and clarity of what is not wanted, which leads to more of what is wanted.

    All paths ultimately lead to Love and to Source (or what some of you may call God). And yet if the path was just a straight line, it would be boring. There would be no point, and certainly no fun.

    The only true thing that is “wrong” is the perspective you humans adopt into the “bad” (or “good”) things that happen. Rather than just letting those things be the past, you bring them into your present by focusing on them and recapitulating them over and over again. You like to think about them, memorialize them, teach history lessons about them, debate about them, stew over them, seek therapy to revisit them….

    And each time you re-live these so-called “bad” things, you bring more things like them to you. That which is like unto itself is drawn.

    So instead of experiencing relatively isolated incidents (or single lifetimes) of “bad,” you often experience a long-term perpetuation of the “bad.”

    We use that in quotes, because in the end, all of this is just an experiment. It’s an experiment that you agreed to participate in, joyously and willingly. How will it go? Will you as a species destroy the Earth? Or will you figure out a way to “make it work?”

    Either way there will be learning and growth and expansion. Neither way is a “dead end” in an infinite, evolving universe of possibility. There are other, countless, realities in which different scenarios play out, and it is never “done.” So if things go “bad” here, things will go “well” elsewhere.

    It is your choice. You do not need to fret or worry over what happens to others. Your job is to learn joy, love, and ultimately, your connection to source – to see as though through the eyes of your Source or your God. To see with love, connection, beauty, and truth, all things, all places, all occurrences.

    This does not, it cannot happen in one lifetime. This is a very grand undertaking, and again, one that leads to your soul’s expansion.

    This is not a “serious” game as so many would have you believe. The whole point of this is, shall we say, a step aside from “boredom.” Imagine an original state where there is nothing but perfection. Imagine that lasting forever. Imagine that perfection never changing. Imagine being a consciousness trapped in that state, aware, and yet trapped. Imagine the agony of that.

    How does one escape? By engaging in creation. Creation involves duality. You cannot create if there is not the thing you call contrast.

    Good/bad. Up/down. Right/wrong. Black/white. Male/Female. There are many, many contrasts that arise, and they are all part of the richness and complexity of this experiment you call “reality.” You cannot have the good without the bad, though some think that you can. The “good” is just as dead and lifeless as the “bad” without the other.

    Contrast leads to more contrast. For each refinement, there are further steps of refinement enabled. For each “BAD” there is new “GOOD” that arises. For each “GOOD” there is new “BAD” that becomes possible.

    It is a game. Kids know this, until you talk them out of knowing it, then they forget it and turn into “serious” adults like you.

    Kids know how to play, to imagine, to relax, to be in the moment, to have fun.

    You could learn from your kids (collectively) a lot about what life really is, but most of you are too busy “teaching” them what you know about life, much of which is bogus.

    You teach them the details of “how the world works” and yet the world changes at an ever-increasing rate, due to the expansion of consciousness that is occurring. How the world worked 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago when you were growing up is different than how the world works now.

    They are wise, they can learn how the world works through play, through presence, through their own exploration of the “good” and the “bad” – unless you get in their way.

    Find the good in every bad. Find the bad in every good. Know that they are just two sides of the same coin, and that they are neither good nor bad, they just “are.” Your judgements are the only thing that make them so. And your judgements are never made from the higher perspective of your soul, because you cannot, in your daily life, see its whole, eternal, trajectory.

    So here you are, in daily life, judging and deciding, and each time you decide and judge, you separate yourself, you slow yourself down from that alignment with Soul that you seek. It is not a problem, because your soul is eternal – it will far outlast this universe you see around you. And yet, you could have so much more of a fun life if you weren’t slowing it down.

    Why waste your life that way? It’s certainly up to you if you want to. You can throw away many lives in that way, and there will be no problem, except for that in each of those lives you “threw away” in worry and doubt and fear and being a victim or whatever, you are not experiencing anywhere near the fullness that you could in that life. It is a choice and there is no right or wrong in it.

    When you see those “bad” things happening to others, do not judge them. Do not judge the people doing the “bad” things, either. This is not to say that someone who violates the rules by which you’ve agreed to play here on this Earth should just be able to do whatever they want.

    But there is a difference between saying: “you’ve broken the rules and there are consequences” versus saying “you hurt this person and you are therefore bad/evil/wrong.” The first is a simple matter of finding a consequence that is appropriate for the rule-breach, and carrying out that consequence, and letting the perpetrator’s soul grow in the way that it is here to grow from that.

    When you get into the judgement about bad/evil/wrong, however, you then involve yourself in those energies. To think about those things, you bring those energies into your system. You attract more challenges with those things that you are giving those labels to. Is that what you want?

    Let’s take the example of the rape that was discussed recently. Both the victim and the perpetrator’s soul have grown from this incident. Was there another way to produce the same growth? Many of you seem to act as if you think there is. And yet if you, the reader, thinks about all the times of major growth in your life, was it not *always* on the heels of a major challenge you overcame? Is that not what every good story, movie, tv show, or book is based upon?

    It is a silly, utopian notion to think that souls can truly expand without challenges like this.

    Now, you may be thinking, “but I don’t want that in my life!” You don’t have to have that. Your soul has a trajectory here, but that trajectory evolves through the power of your choice.

    From an external perspective, often those “bad” things seem so random, so strange, so unfortunate, and so different from the “perfect” person you observe who had that happen.

    Yet you are not a mind reader. You do not see what is happening inside of the person’s conscious mind, nor at the soul level.

    People in your world have become very good at putting on acts. Acts as if everything is wonderful – when inside – there is turmoil, worry, fear, and other things you might call “karmic baggage.”

    So when someone has something you consider “bad” happen for “no good reason” – you are judging that from a very ignorant point of view, without nearly all the “facts”.

    The best that you can do in your life is to focus on your own soul’s trajectory in this body, finding ways to maximize that, and letting other souls do the same. If you do that in joy, in fun, in love, you can have a very expansive, clarifying, wonderful life experience.

    Either way, whether you choose to do that or not, your soul grows.

  • I GIVE IN!!!

    It’s time I come clean, put my BS aside and take responsibility for my truest, most raw BEING.
    Why?
    To serve & honour myself…YES! And just as important, to lead by example.
    To inspire & facilitate your most extraordinary evolution through my deeds NOT JUST THROUGH MY WORDS.
    And to bestow on you, what you are worthy of….choice.
    See…
    For years I’ve been focused on bringing you things like grant writing and productivity because that’s what my ego thought you wanted.
    Did you ever notice that your ego creates many illusions? Mine certainly does.
    One of the illusions it created is this: “my story isn’t important.” I had a false sense of modesty, thinking that “I’m not interesting, let’s not talk about me…”
    And yet…
    Every time I’ve told my story of transformation (several of them!) and of ultimately “finding myself” I’ve had far more requests for help than at any other time. It has inspired people to grow and change, because my story shows that it’s possible despite great obstacles.
    So I finally had a “duh” moment the other day. People have been craving this for a reason:
    Our society is set up from day one to program us to NOT be ourselves, but to live for other people’s impressions of us.
    Our ego gets addicted to the positive feedback that others give us when we do things that are pleasing to THEM, and we un-learn how to just be ourselves.
    Yet being ourselves is THE platform for truly inspired creativity. Lots of people claim “I’m not creative” which is total BS. The lack of creativity is simply a lack of being tuned into “being oneself.” This goes on to impact all other areas of life, limiting career progress and satisfaction.
    Being disconnected from who you are, and living from ego gratification, presents challenges to deep, satisfying relationships. It presents challenges to being truly healthy. 
    Who you are is a wonderful, loving, beautiful, fun, unique being.
    Who you’ve been programmed to act as is quite likely competitive, skeptical, reserved… constantly having to “prove yourself” to others around you in order to feel worthy.
    This way of being leads to things like the “impostor syndrome.” If you’re not being you – but operating out of your ego’s notion of what you think others want from you – you’re going to feel like an impostor! Operating from this false platform will never lead to truly good things in life.
    People who’ve achieved so-called success in that way always end up self-sabotaging at some point. Like the guy I just heard about from a friend who was wealthy, until a particular self-sabotaging behavior (coming from Ego) sunk the whole ship, and now he’s destitute.
    Yep, that was me, for many years of my life. And it continued even after I had the sex change. One surgery didn’t suddenly resolve this disconnection I had from myself. (Oh I wish it were that easy!!) It took far more work than that.
    I had PLENTY of self-sabotage going on, despite my apparent successes that my ego has been able to brag about (like the track record of grant funding and business growth).
    So anyway….
    I give in! I give up on my own illusions that my story is unimportant and uninspiring. I give up on the notion that people need help with grants and productivity and creativity… when if I’d been listening, I would have heard the message loud and clear:
    “Morgan, help us learn how to powerfully express who we truly are in the world, with no illusions, games, or false fronts!”
    And in doing that, I strongly suspect that the “troubles” with grants, with sales, with relationships, with health, with employees, with feeling like an impostor… those things will start resolving themselves. (EVERY big breakthrough in these areas I’ve had has been directly correlated with work I’ve done on aligning with core.)
    Honestly, it’s a bit weird to do this. It seems too “easy” – but that’s only because I’ve spent years and some major ups and downs learning how to do just that. Learning how to finally be myself! So I’ll see how it goes….
    And, if you’re ready to go to work on this – to remove those layers of falsity that keep you from expressing who you are in the world – then reach out to me. I can help.
    Morgan

  • Would computers really want to do math proofs?

    Roger Penrose wrote a book titled “The Emporor’s New Mind.” The book roused quite a bit of controversy, because he claimed that he had proof that computers can’t think in the same way that humans do.

    To illustrate, he used the complex subject of mathematical proof making. Using various fancy arguments tied to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, he basically said this: computers can’t go beyond the logical system they’re already inside of, and math proofs must go beyond what’s already known, therefore humans are doing something when making math proofs that computers can’t do.

    There’s been a lot of argument about the points he raised. Some artificial intelligence proponents have shown ways in which computers can do things like mathematical proof making. The arguing back and forth goes ’round in circles of complex logic and abstract math theory, with neither side really gaining all that much traction in the debate.

    Yet, it’s almost twenty years after the book was published, and we still don’t have self-aware or creative computers. Sir Penrose was onto something, but I think he somewhat missed the boat on a much simpler argument that could have been wielded for his side: would computers really want to do math proofs to begin with?

    No. Not unless a human programmed them to do math proofs. That is the one and only instance in which a computer will do math proofs.

    This is really where the argument lies. Computers have no inherent self-awareness, and hence no intrinsic motivation to accomplish any goal. The only “motivation” they ever have is that supplied by their human programmer.

    Now, a simplistic argument might go like this: ok, Ms. smarty pants, but our human motivations are simply programmed functions of our DNA and our environment growing up! Despite that there is no hard proof for this would-be-assertion by a would-be-hard-core-artificial-intelligence-practicioner, it is nonetheless likely to be wielded much like a shield wielded by a knight going into battle.

    The counter-proof to this not-really-proof is simple: humans often go directly against our programming. For the new book I’m writing, I’ve been doing a bit of research on the Wright brothers. You know, those guys who invented powered flying machines that actually worked. They went against their programming in many ways. They gave up their bike shop, which provided them with economic well being, to have the time to pursue the flying, and they suffered financially. Multiple crashes resulting in broken bones and potential death, but they kept flying. After their first successful flights (albeit short ones), they faced scorn and outright hostility, with many newspapers calling them liars. They were going firmly against their programming of self-preservation, social belongingness, and economic well-being to pursue a crazy idea that nobody had evidence of actually being able to work.

    No computer can do that, or will do that – at least not as presently constructed. A series of binary switches, no matter how complex, is still just a responsive mechanism. There is no place for motivation in there. There are just inputs and outputs. That’s all. Those inputs and outputs may do some incredible things, and do them very fast. But at no time is it suddenly going to become magically “aware” as the computers get faster.

    A lot of people think that when computers reach the computing capacity of our brains that they will automatically become aware. Ummm no. That’s about as logical as saying that putting a bigger engine in your car will help it drive itself. Putting the bigger engine in your car will help it go faster, but the car still needs a driver.

    Computers are ultimately just machines, much like that car. It’s a fine and noble mission to be giving them ever “bigger engines” so that they can do more stuff and faster. But to assume that, at some point, this will automatically lead to them being self-aware and self-motivated is much like assuming that your car is going to suddenly start driving itself. It is just a fantasy.