Trapped in a Web of Certainty (Addendum)
By Paul W. Marko, Ph.D.
Since writing and posting the article, Trapped in a Web of Certainty a month ago, I have had much positive feedback from readers. Some have used the techniques proscribed as personal development cues and others have employed the ideas as teaching tools and points of departure for working with clients on growths issues. I thank everyone for taking the time to give me feedback, both positive and developmental.
Because of the feedback, I am motivated to post an addendum that explains two additional techniques that might serve to expand realities and break up developmental impediments.
Because of the adoration and reverence for normal waking consciousness (NWC) the rational, left-brain dominates the perspective of the conventional (C1 and C2) consensual network that most people refer to as reality. The main part of the brain, the cerebrum, is divided into two hemispheres with independent, but shared functioning. Although linked together by the corpus callosum, and able to communicate, the two halves have different functions and specialties. The left half is responsible for critical judging, verbal expression and logical thought while the right hemisphere maintains a different focus. It houses the imagination, spatial relationships, abstract concepts and the ability to access intuition. In some areas in South America, the right brain is called the “God Brain.” Autopsies done within the recent past demonstrate that the two hemispheres at the time of death are seldom the same size. This inequity results not in an overuse of one half, but the underemployment of half of the brain.
In order to free ourselves from the habitual conventional mindset it is important to work our way out of the domination of the left hemisphere and open our perception to some of the insights that the right brain has to offer. Of course, the first step involves realizing the extent to which your thoughts and actions are ruled by the ambient C1 and C2 worldview. The main body of this article articulates a broad brush of ideas related to this topic. Minimizing the viewing of or reading mass media from conventional sources (corporations, governments and others with a vested interest in keeping you in the confines of conventional thinking) is a good first step in cleaning the lens of your mind in preparation for new awareness. The elimination of coincidence, allows the non-logical right side of the brain to play (the right hemisphere is the playful half) with holding ambiguity and fostering creative insights. Other ways to engage non-conventionally oriented parts of the brain include meditation, the contemplation of koans (conventionally illogical propositions or questions), vision questing and various other forms of consciousness alteration or absorbing creative endeavors. Below are suggested two additional ideas that will contribute to the journey to full brain functioning.
The first suggestion, laughingly entitled surfing the HYP, exploits a time when the left brain (and its firm bonding of individual perception to the consensual network) is less than fully engaged in order to momentarily increase the frequency range of our current perceived reality. Upon awakening, we look around and see that we are again in normal waking consciousness. Immediately the left hemisphere takes charge; begins to make judgments and switches on the internal dialogue system to attempt to screen out direct insights by confounding right brain intuition with analysis and superfluous diversions. NWC attends to making judgments and finding diversions until an alternative mode of consciousness (for example; sleep) begins. In effect, NWC, tunes only to a one channel (the 5 senses of awareness or the 5 cents network) excluding all other frequency ranges of consciousness (of which there are many) outside of our very limited field of perception. Accessing these alternative channels allows glimpses into different realities and may have the affect of loosening the stronghold, (stranglehold) that NWC and the left brain has on what is allowed to be seen and known. One way to access these censored channels is to capitalize on a window of time when waking awareness is maintained, but only to a limited degree, and to seize on a time when NWC is not in total control.
When entering and leaving sleep humans pass through states of consciousness that are neither waking nor sleeping. Known as the hypnopompic and hypnogogic states (HYP) these momentary windows present opportunities to glimpse outside the frequency range of NWC while still in semi-conscious awareness. It allows access to other forms of knowing while still maintaining a mindfulness of what we are observing and that we are the observer.
To practice, one can access HYP while in the process of awakening or just before falling asleep. Be mindful as you begin to awake or as drifting into sleep as to your state of mind and attempt (rather than springing into full NWC or plunging into sleep) to “Surf the HYP” by staying in HYP as long as possible. Encourage your brain to keep you from sleep and roll back into HYP if you begin to pop into NWC. Benefits from this band of consciousness are often realized by sudden insights upon awakening or extremely vivid dreams that occur in the early morning and seem freakishly much more real than a dream.
I personally have benefited from insights gained in this range and you may recall benefiting as well. Using this method for gaining direct insight will foster a trust in your instincts and encourage using intuition (knowledge gained from the inside).
A second suggestion arises from research done regarding evolving consciousness. It has been shown that exposure and training in the concepts and ideas held in the expanded ranges of consciousness can stimulate the releasing of limiting conceptualizations and the embracing of more complex and profound ideas. This process likely involves the cognitive recognition of the idea and, if not immediately rejected, can involve the consideration and perhaps the understanding of the concept. The leap from understanding to embracing might involve the unfolding of life’s process (time and circumstance) or a concerted effort to place the new idea into practice. At any rate, the second idea involves looking at the concept of self and exploring this concept at various stages of consciousness development and then using the new concept of self to help eliminate routine fears, improve confidence and perhaps improve self- understanding.
As stated in the main body of this article, an overwhelming majority of individuals today, exist in C1 or C2 consciousness. In other words, most people see reality, make value judgments, and define good and bad based upon this collective worldview. This viewpoint represents the consensual network that most people are plugged into and determines to a large extent how human kind and its institutions act. This perspective, because of its power of influence and total authority to define right and wrong bares the responsibility for all of society’s triumphs and foibles. It defines what’s for dinner and who eats.
The type of consciousness experienced prior to this range can be referred to as preconventional. Most humans pass through this worldview on the way to the conventional viewpoint that for most of us falls into place around the age of 7.
This perspective could be characterized as one of radical self-interest. Might makes right and life is a jungle where only the strong survive. From this perspective, society and its structures are viewed as something that can and should be outwitted in order to get what one wants. No long term consequences are considered and only a basic set of emotions color the experiences for this no holds barred construction of reality. Most individuals will revert to this worldview from conventional consciousness or beyond when faced with extreme danger in the instances where fear melts away valor.
Many worldviews have been defined beyond the conventional range and involve more complex viewpoints and an ever expanded concept of the self. Where the preconventional personality defines the self as the individual – in the time frame of today, the conventional mind can see him or herself as part of a family or a cultural group – over the span of many years. The postconventional personality beginning with self-concepts and timeframes just slightly more encompassing than the conventional worldview, can eventually expand to see all of mankind and perhaps all of existence as self and view its continuation over an infinite amount of time. This radical expansion of the concept of self and the overwhelming empowerment that accompanies it is the focus of the second idea. And like in the first idea, the hemispheres of the brain play a role.
The left brain analyzes and the right brain synthesizes. The analysis process breaks things apart, sees separation, labels components and highlights differences. The synthesis process does just the opposite, it unites, brings together, finds similarities and “unlabels.” In preconventional consciousness reality is broken down to the self (the individual body) as the unit of concern. Everyone else is the “other.” Actually, in this range of consciousness the individual often refers to his or her hands, or other body parts as being separate perpetrators of actions acting independently from the human body unit as a whole. From this vantage point, one is small, separated and alone, a viewpoint that must engender fear, although often this fear is often expressed as anger. Consider the helplessness of this perspective.
Conventional consciousness exists as a bit more synthesized, but still dangerously separate. In C1, reality morality and beliefs often define the other and limit the self-concept to those with similar values. Religions often, although not always, form a repository for housing separate identities with which the self can identify. Of course there is always a diversity of beliefs in the world (the left brain at work) and so the role of sole moral standard barer is often treacherous and inspires endless crusades (wars) to protect the self-concept of the righteous individuals who hold a particular viewpoint. This is an uncomfortable position huddled inside of a belief system, especially since analysis keeps creating new others from within the ranks of self. The C2 worldview sees the world and the self in a similar way. Although tending to prefer more secular divisions (city, state, country), the self is still vulnerable from the attacks of other C2 and C1 groups. Corporate sport team business reinforce and play on this nationalistic (unit of self) tendency in C1 and C2 individuals to create allegiances and emotional involvement (and of course money). These perspectives necessitate armies to protect borders and waive flags to inspire the ultimate sacrifice for the avidly held, miniscule, self – identity of a country, religious doctrine, economic system or ethnic identity. Prisons to house the others eat up a large part of natural resource and the sweat of human labor to protect this fear encrusted, conceptualization of self. The most expanded ranges of consciousness live in a very different reality.
In the most expanded ranges, the parts of the cerebrum play different roles in the constructing of reality. The left brain is employed at the discretion of its owner and used primarily as a tool to communicate to individuals seeing the world in more constricted stages of consciousness. The right brain allows the individual as observer to take an enormously protracted vantage point. At these highest levels, one becomes one with infinite consciousness which is everything that is. Others don’t present a threat because there are no others. Consider the power of a self-concept of infinite consciousness – all that there is. Vulnerability vanishes because infinite consciousness cannot be destroyed. Death becomes a non occurrence since the life that is being experienced today is simply a vantage point taken by infinite consciousness to subjectively observe objective reality. Life becomes a flow of experience as the novel writes itself and the flow of the action can be fully experienced in all of its delight and color without the numbing and blinding affects of fear. Imagine how empowered you would be if you were to embrace this perspective.
Therefore, the second idea involves simply imagining the limitations that these other viewpoints have and trying to imagine the power and fun you would have by embracing the idea that you are limitless consciousness – free to experience life to its fullest.
Be prepared, however, because it is certain that your left brain is not going to let you get away with this exercise so easily. It will analyze and throw up problems with any idea outside of the range of consciousness that you are now seeing the world through. I invite you to take control of your left brain (it won’t like this either) and tell it to be quiet and take a break for a while. And then, in a calm and relaxed manner, read over the description of infinite consciousness (written in italics above) with a blank and empty mind. Do it as often as possible without the help of your left-brain. And since the devil demands its due, promise your left half a good old fashion corporate sporting event, political discussion or simply having great fun analyzing the faults of your spouse, child or parents.
