Joe/Jeff first conversation 11/22/22
Thank you for doing this with me my friend , I very much appreciate this.
To recap the early morning hours are best in a darkened room with very little noise and other distractions.
Sit quietly in an open body posture whatever is comfortable for you.
And then focus on the idea or thought of I.
And watch what happens
pay attention
don’t get caught following the thought stream
if your attention starts to get pulled away to other thoughts, ask the question internally, “who am I” and see what comes up and then bring your attention back to the I
You can repeat, saying I a little more slowly than we did on the phone.😉
Sit for at least five minutes and as much more than you want after that.
And then feel free to do whatever you want after that.
But at least five minutes
make note of what comes up in your body and mind.
Also, see if you can detect a place or location within your brain where the thought I is located.
Have fun!❤️
Love experiments and the article gives me some background on what’s going on in the physical neurons. Life IS an experiment… or experiments make life more interesting and productive (assuming you run the experiment well and don’t skew the results in the direction of ‘what is best for me’.
Wish I had some way to monitor the DMN to see the pre and post activity.
I’ll need a bit of time, post experiment, to give you a behavioral analysis… or maybe there’s not one (at least that I know about now), but it’ll be interesting to see if there’s anything out there written about it.
So the question arises for me around the DMN: is that the complete explanation for all the spiritual stuff that has been taught over the years.
Or is there something more or less 😆
Is there a mystical/spiritual aspect to it?
What does that mean anyway?
Or is it just the way that they could talk about it before they had the models and the psychology and the chemicals and understanding of brain physiology.
Like the humors in the body possession, exorcism, and other things before we understood, schizophrenia and brain chemistry.
It is actually kind of nice to know that this is just something i can do and practice and produce over time.
But there’s also part of me that likes the mystical woowoo part – but I think that’s just a personality thing, as I like clairvoyance and divination.
I like tarot cards and runes and stuff like that and that has nothing to do with anything he’s talking about.
And the spiritual guys say the same thing those are separate powers you can gain and practice has nothing to do with letting go of the mind talk and identification thought.
From how he describes it is. It maps almost Word for Word from a lot of the enlightened guys that I’ve read Maharshi, nisargadatta, people like that, in terms of experience, once you take the ‘spiritual orientation’ away. I admit to having a little difficulty letting go of that, but if this is approachable, accessible and doable by everybody and it just turns off the ruminate of mind that’s great and again maybe that is just the language that they had at the time.
Like coming back to Jesus and the way, he talked about things at that time, which today we would describe differently.
I would say that I’m actually living proof of this –
– that a lot of the internal ruminate narrative that he talks about really has dropped away, less anger, and when it comes up, goes away really quickly and much more even tempered and as he says a better response to situations.
For example, discussing with Donna last night what I want and don’t want with her bringing parents furniture to the house. I’d never have brought that up before as cleanly and directly – but I felt a lot more space and was comfortable and I didn’t make her wrong and there’s no ruminative narrative getting in the way.
I’m actually very glad that you’re interested in doing this with me.
Does the type of explanation make a difference in understanding how to ‘work it’? Maybe, maybe not… Are you into understanding it or working it? The explanation is interesting from the aspect of how to determine a ‘path’ or ‘process’, but in and of itself, I’m not sure how I get there, just that I arrive.
I agree completely.
No, I do not want to turn this into a flow experience, which is when somebody ask you what time it is in you explain how the clock works.
And per what Gary Weber says by reducing the ruminative narration we don’t need to know how it actually works
if it works and you get the results do you actually care?
I imagine a lot of people would be really bummed that it’s not the spiritual God thing that they really want it to be
that I don’t care about at all.
Not to be greedy, but I’d like to experience the oneness, the nothingness, the non-duality the lack of separation, and all the other things he talks about and if it’s really just a matter of brain function and meditation in the right way and breathing great bring it on, and I don’t have to reincarnate a bazillion times to have it.🙏🏻👁😂
I think a lot of that stuff is strictly control like any religion.
Oh yah, you might enjoy this
so as I go vegetarian because I am feeling arising of non-injury as I mentioned.
On the list of things to not eat were mushrooms, onions and garlic, which would’ve created a real issue around the house.😥🫣
When I did the research about why those things are on the no-no list it comes down to religion and caste. 😳🤯 in India.
Ha! as soon as I read caste – I’m done!
I just made a lasagna went great and has onions, garlic and mushrooms.
This is three weeks in.
Could be a novices view point, but it’s a more interesting discussion that a dry one about how Verbal Behavior works.
What I was thinking about is the ‘Useful’ internal dialog and how it fits into the whole paper. thinking about problem solving is a useful bit of internal dialoging. Gives you a chance to examine multiple ways things could work, without spending the time with an option that could fail.
The internal dialog represented by the DMN, being in the off in Lala land, oblivious to what’s happening around is what we are trying to reduce or eliminate.
How it pop-up is very interesting. Leads me in the direction that ‘verbal behavior’ isn’t required to make things work.
Evolutionarily, we may have moved away from that model, because we opted for a more ‘social’ existence.
Exactly, and actually gets in the way and decreases the quality of the response.
Tis true that the longer the delay between Stimulus and Response, the weaker the response and the more undirected it is… says The Behavioral ME 😃
Let’s see how it goes with you
if there anything there and you can validate even some of it then I would be up for trying with some other people and eventually writing a paper and who knows maybe we can work with corporate America to actually start training their people like this, that we put it in the strict psychological terms “confirm or deny” – keep the religious stuff out of it and we get the results that we want – that would be amazing.
And a great way to end our careers no?
Was in a doctor’s office today for a routine check up and had 5 minutes to wait for the visit. Sat and concentrated on saying “I” to the exclusion of all else. After 5 minutes or so, when I stopped, I was much less interested in ‘sharing’ anything about myself other than the questions he was asking.
What I mean is that there was a picture not eh wall of the office that we have here in the family room. Initially, when I went in the office, I noticed it, thought about the one in our house and wants to share that with the doctor. After waiting and concentrating on “I”, there wasn’t the same interest in sharing anything other than what he wanted to know.
Any sense ??
Yes, I think you hit it on the head. I love that approach of bigger the delay between stimulus and response, poorer quality of outcome.
If we can reduce the gap or even get rid of the gap and we’re getting even better results. That’s gonna be pretty hard to argue with – nothing succeeds like success.
This is starting to remind me of the movie Limitless (Bradley Cooper) which I’ve loved since the very first time I’ve seen it, and if we can get into that realm, – basically turn off the parts of the brain that are actively working against the rest of the brain then effectively we’re getting that kind of result and experience. And it’s available to everyone.
And it’s not drug related back the issue that Skinner had with using neural chemicals to change behaviors.
Yes, your experience maps to mine. I didn’t want to give you any hints, but like yesterday when I was walking the cats, and focusing on, I
I notice a definite switch for a few seconds to kind 2d, surface-y plasticky sense to what I was seeing
I wasn’t caught up in what was going on. I was walking the cats for sure, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t emotionally and mentally pouring energy into that
by holding back a certain amount of energy in the center of my mind. It freed me up from that.
Superb. I’m really pleased.
Hey, keep it going, if you can focus on i and what am I in other areas and activities.
I would be very curious to see how your experience of golf would change with this
It would be pretty funny if you actually watch your scores, go down.
Do you have any idea how much money we could make if we could actually produce a usable, viable simple practice for golfers and sports people and sales people – it wouldn’t even have to be 100% . even an increase in performance a quality of 20% would be amazing
Not that I’m about the money Of course that drops away with this.
Hee hee
Love Limitless and was sorry to see that the behavior under the influence, had no strength what so ever, in the absence of the drug. I kinda wanted Cooper to have picked up some of the skills he had while under the influence and emmet them in the absence. I never saw the TV series to see if they explored that any.
Like At the end, when he has to keep all the different labs going.
And now that I’m thinking about it more and more I’m letting it in and LIKING this!
I really prefer this being a rational scientific testable provable repeatable technique that anyone can use to increase their concentration, performance, and quality of experience. And relationships.
And with the diminishment of narrative thinking, of course you get the compassion you get the love, you get the patience you, get the happiness all that comes along as well.
Watching some of the Weber videos he does talk about the fact that compassion doesn’t come up for him. He just does right action and it’s perfect for the moment.
Fine. Whatever.
Yes, the ending made me feel like all he experiences was a sham and he could only accomplish anything when he was chemically, under the influence.
Chemical substances expose you to stimuli and contingencies that you weren’t aware of. When the chemicals go away, the stimuli and contingencies are still around… granted more difficult to discern, but still there and able to exert their control on behavior.