How does our spiritual identity affect our actions and how we shape our world?
Modus Operandi
When I think of the “spirit” of something I think of its modus operandi; what is its “method of operating?” What makes it function? What drives it to work?
When I think of the spirit of a human being, I ask myself, “What does that being live for?” What makes him or her get up every morning? What makes his or her life worth living? What source of energy does that person draw upon to do what they do?
Unspoken Values
Evolution and biology can describe the reasons behind a lot of basic instincts and behavior, but they don’t answer a whole lot about the values we hold implicitly through our traditions, customs, culture, and art.
We all go through rituals that define our existence. It could be watching TV, going to church, reading books, meditating, playing sports, doing your job, eating, videogames, working out at the gym, writing, taking care of your kids… you get the point – if you do it periodically then it is a ritual – and these habits implicitly tell us what we value out of life.
But how often do you ask yourself, “Why do I do the things I do?”
It can seem like a stupid question because we take these things for granted. Maybe you do them because you have always done them and that is just who you are. I hear people give me that response a lot, but that is circular reasoning; saying those things only reinforces who we are, even if that modus operandi isn’t doing ourselves much justice.
Backbone = Identity
I wouldn’t say that our actions define ourselves (although that might be a behaviorist approach to identity), but I do think how we define ourselves plays a significant role in our actions.
Buddism and many Eastern philosophies put a strong emphasis on the “nature of self” as a spiritual guide. They also recognize that how we think of our self determines certain values we hold about our world. For example, many schools of Buddhism recognize a non-dualistic nature between self/other (that we are all interconnected and no one is separate), thus compassion and loving-kindness become logical moral values to hold in our relationships with friends, family, neighbors, coworkers other acquaintances, and nature itself.
Some of the big questions regarding anybody’s life are,
- “How do I fit into the world at large?”
- “What purpose do I serve in life?”
- “How can I improve conditions for myself and others?”
Only you can answer these questions with your own reason and experience, but let it be known that your answers have a profound impact on how you live your life. Thus, I would argue these questions are worth contemplating through daily introspection, meditation, or prayer.
Getting Off The Soapbox For A Moment
Before I conclude this post let me just clear up a few things that often get misunderstood when I write about spirituality. I do not intend to change anyone’s values or how they live their life. What I am suggesting is that we take the time to question why we live the way we do. It is a deep question, directed towards you, but not one that I can provide the answers for.
I think when we try to make a change or improvement in our lives we often take the most basic questions for granted. But often those fundamental questions are the catalysts for the biggest improvements one can make in their life.
I write in order to get people thinking and re-evaluating that world which we take for granted. I want to bring into light implicit assumptions and beliefs, and get individuals to think critically about these ideas they have grown up with all their life. Through doing this individuals can grow a stronger backbone, become more dedicated to what they actually love to do, and drop actions which have become “no good” habits of familiarity that we have wrongly identified to.
But – because we are all diverse individuals with separate interests and talents – it is up to each from their own individual perspective to decide what is right and wrong for them. There is no objective good for everyone; our traditions, culture, art, and tastes (our “pursuit of happiness”) should be particular to our personality. We should not take anything as given just because we have grown up with it or some higher authority has “bestowed” it upon us. Even the values I hold implicitly in my writings should be doubted and questioned.
A Healthy Backbone Builds New Elements, Gets Rid Of Old
A spiritual backbone gives you a center to stand on but it is not necessarily fixed in one place. Just like your spine is built of various bone elements, your spiritual spine too is mobile and multi-faceted. The only thing different is your spiritual spine never stops growing and evolving in new ways (whether you are conscious of it or not).
Your relationship with the world is never fixed, it is always changing; new aspects are constantly arising and fading into the ever-expanding shape of time. From a day-to-day basis things may seem to be moving slow, but when you reflect on months or years they can seem like eternities apart. The world is actually a really exciting and dynamic place if we keep our eyes open to it. Not many things remain the same over extended periods of time. Isn’t that what evolution is all about?
The only thing worse than not having a spiritual backbone at all is having a concrete one, which refuses to change in the face of new evidence and experience. Extreme fundamentalists from all religions share this illness, like when biblical literalism takes precedence over scientifically-gathered facts.
Man is not omniscient nor infallible, that is why God forgives and, most importantly, why we should forgive ourselves. All actions and creations of men, including the Bible, are not perfect. This is why spirituality in all of its form is a never-ending process and not a goal-seeking one.
Living In Congruence
When our unspoken values become spoken we are more conscious of the driving forces in our world. Now we know why we get up every morning and we are proud to live out our lives in congruences with those values.
This requires a higher level of consciousness. No longer is our modus operandi like a puppet on strings, but now we are the puppet masters. We understand the reason behind our rituals; we don’t just live them out obediently but with a sense of joy, flow, and engagement. There is purpose behind every action. We embody what we believe and we act in accordance. As Gandhi once said, we “Become the change we wish to see in the world.” Within that cycle, within every action, we are constantly being born and re-born into a different world.
So don’t stay static, never be afraid to re-align your spiritual backbone, and keep living the life you want to live (as you see fit). The world depends on your moral courage and aptitude.
Does this sound like you? You wake up every morning, checking your to-do lists, thinking to yourself: “OK, I have to be at A and B this afternoon and do X, Y, and Z before I leave.” As you are doing B, you are thinking about C, and as you are thinking about C, you remember you have to do D and E.
If that doesn’t get your head spinning like the possessed girl in The Exorcist then I don’t know what will. So, is it true – do you need to be exorcised? Don’t you want to re-claim your life instead of doing mindless task after mindless task?
Use Your Brain For A Change
You probably won’t be able to just throw all your lists in the trash today and still remember all the important things you need to get done. Instead – just like a drug addict – you need to ween yourself off of this nasty habit. You need to build confidence in yourself, in your mind, that you will know what you need to get done as each moment calls for it. Here are a few simple tips to get you started:
- Mental notes are better
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Your brain is a powerful tool, so use it! List maniacs build a habit of not trusting themselves enough to remember what to do. Because of this they never practice memorizing and find themselves becoming more and more dependent on list-making in order to keep in control of their world.
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Some people are so bad at memorizing that they even forget to bring their lists out with them. Thus, they find themselves walking into the office or a grocery store without a clue on what they need to do get done. They have completely detached themselves from their own life, without a reminder written on a little piece of paper, these people end up like zombies, aimless and barely (if at all) conscious of their surroundings.
- Use Your Imagination
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When I first read the book, “How To Develop A Super Power Memory,” by Harry Lorayne I was pretty blown away by just how reliable and effective our memory can be.
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The first thing to know is that there are essentially two main aspects of memory that are relevant to the everyday person: encoding and retrieving. The best way to encode is to build impressionable associations between you and what you want to remember. “Impressionable” meaning something that sticks in your head.
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Say you need to drop something off at the post office after you are done at work. Try imagining a mile high version of yourself walking from work to your place of destination. Imagine a humongous letter in your hand (maybe the size of a small house). The more detailed you are the better the memory will be; so also imagine birds in the sky flying into you and the ground shaking as your feet hit the pavement (almost like the State Puff Marshmallow man in the movie Ghostbusters).
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The more crazy you are with it the more likely you will be able to retrieve it. Often the best method is to take a situation from your everyday life (like walking home from work) and then exaggerate it in a way that reminds you what you need to do. A huge letter in your hand is a great symbol reminding you to go to the post office and drop something off.
- Actively Build Associations
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Now let’s say that you also want to get a haircut after your post office visit. What could you add to your “State Puff Marshmallow” version of you to remind yourself that you need to also stop off at the barbers? It could be anything, maybe a pair of scissors in your other hand or you can imagine yourself with a huge orange fro.
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The idea here is to add elements to your imagination that serve as reminders. You can add as many things as you want and, theoretically, remember as much as you need without ever having to find pen and paper.
Try This Exercise!
Now we are going to take all the things I mentioned above and try them out. I want you to find a friend and tell them to make a list of 20 objects. Once they have created the list, I want you to take some time to study it…
1. Apple
2. Car
3. Guitar
4. School
5. Clouds
6…
Once you have the list I want you to use your imagination and actively build associations to try and remember the whole 20-item list.
- Let’s work with the example above:
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The first pair we need to make is Apple and Car – so why not imagine an apple with four wheels, cut out inside to make it look like a car, with a steering wheel, leather seats and all.
- Now, we need to add a Guitar to it – maybe you can have a nice-looking, blue and glittery Fender on the top of your new AppleCar.
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Next is School – so imagine that you are driving on a road and in front of you is your old High School building.
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Now, Clouds – imagine above your school are these really nasty storm clouds: raining, pouring, thundering and lightning on top of your high school building.
- Now try it with your friends.
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Those associations I made above were just right off the top of my head, but you can do this however you want. Some associations are going to be more effective for you personally than others: so it is up to you to experiment and find what works best.
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I apply these principles to all different aspects of my life. They can be particularly useful for studying tests that rely on heavy memorization. They are also just fun to show off to family, friends, and coworkers.
- In Harry Lorayne’s book he mentions other mnemonics that help with names and numbers. I will try and touch on these techniques in future posts.
Whether it is an advertisement in Time Square, the opinion of a TV personality, or the rhetoric of a politician, we should always be mindful not to confuse the face with the idea. Often we get too caught up in the appearance of an idea and neglect how it relates to our world in the realm of logic, reason, and metaphysics.
Some like to blame corporations and mass advertising for our consumer culture, but I also believe it is partly our fault for accepting the lies that are constantly fed to us. Society, as a whole, seems like a very gullible bunch. Like savaged wolves we still like to travel in packs, always voting Republican or Democrat, always turning on our favorite TV shows, and constantly investing our time and effort into the same old patterns of thought.
Especially in this age of information, our minds are always being filled – like a sponge – yet at the end of the day we rarely if ever take the time to reflect, contemplate, and introspect on what ideas we should keep and what ideas we should throw away. We have become programmed by a culture filled with deception. It is not about who holds the truth, but who is the best persuader.
Be A Healthy Skeptic
Looking through our list of cognitive biases, it is hard not to be alarmed at all the different ways one can be duped. A big part of critical thinking is to be aware of these biases, another part is to always be what I call a healthy skeptic. By this I mean we should always leave room for doubt and always have the flexibility to change our views in the face of new information.
No kind of dogma, whether through religious authority or political consensus, should be held blindly as a truth – unless it stands to our own reason. People can certainly suggest ideas to us, but it is only through each individual’s critical thinking (or lack of) which determines if we accept an idea or not.
But even our own faculty of reason can be faulty. No individual is perfect or has all the information in the world; as the philosopher and scientist Alfred Korzybski points out, the map is never the territory, if it were it would have to be the same as the ground it covers. Since we are beings that can acknowledge our own ignorance, we must also include a healthy dose of skepticism in whatever it is we choose to believe regarding life. If we choose not to, we will surely find ourselves in the same cycles of behaviors and outcomes, and therefore never progress.
The Function Of Beliefs
A belief is confidence in the truth or existence of something without proof. For example, one can believe that “everyone is a good person at heart despite their actions,” but that is not a claim that can be properly falsified or proven (and therefore it is not a matter of science according to the philosopher Karl Popper). A belief is true only so far as it permeates each individual’s perspective. It is high-chunked information based on our everyday experience.
So despite beliefs inherit non-truthfulness in the face of scientific rigor, the human perspective necessitates that we hold beliefs about our existence in order to function effectively in our world.
Knowing that we all hold beliefs, we can begin understand why being a healthy skeptic is so important. A belief is only as important as it is a positive influence to our actions. And even our belief in what is a “positive influence” is a subject we should always debate (both in our heads and amongst friends).
So while I preach a philosophy of consistent skepticism, I also want to acknowledge that having beliefs, opinions, and presuppositions are important and necessary. They are information about how we view the world. The key is to be flexible with those views (and always willing to change in the face of new experience and evidence).
Reflection And Introspection
One important aspect to critical thinking is to contemplate why we believe the things we do. Why? is always the big question, and the more we ask it and attempt to answer it, the more we are aware of our patterns of thinking and our false assumptions.
The deeper we dig into our inquiries the closer we come to answers of “I just don’t know.” Acknowledging this ignorance can become an amazing insight, because to know what you know and know what you don’t know – that is true knowledge.
Introspection is such a great tool because it allows us to re-track the steps of our experiences and take notice of things we may have took for granted the first time around.
As far as we know, humans have the greatest ability to reflect on their experiences, but they aren’t the only animals to exhibit these characteristics. Studies have shown that when lab rats are given a chance to experience downtime after going through a maze, they are likely to learn the maze quicker than other rats who are simply put through trial-after-trial.
Researchers theorize through brain scans (although they can’t know the mind of a rat for certain) that this downtime is spent replaying memories. They paid particular attention to the hippocampus, an important structure of the brain responsible for learning. Researchers think this act of replaying memories may be a general mechanism of learning, and perhaps it explains the memory-formation theories behind dreams (which too can be seen as another kind of introspection).
What This All Boils Down To
The message I want my readers to walk away with is that our minds are incredibly powerful tools, and it is important that we actively and consciously use it to our advantage. I believe that sometimes we take our ability to think for granted and in the process we forget how to separate a lot of bullshit from the truth.
No scientist, politician, relative, or movie star can use our brains for us. And when it comes down to how we think of our world we need to distinguish between what we are told from what we believe to be true through our own experience and reason.
This doesn’t mean the scientist, politician, relative – or even movie star – can’t offer us information or insight into a particular perspective; I am only saying we must remain forever vigilant not to accept these ideas on any kind of dogma. Instead, we must look through our own mind’s eye to make the best and most cohesive sense of our world.
NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Processing, is a set of inter-and-intra-personal communication techniques first developed by psychotherapist Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder (who worked together under the tutelage of British anthropologist Gregory Bateson). It’s purpose was to discover the linguistic underpinnings of mental states and how they effect our behaviors, and to later use this knowledge to modify our habits. It can be practiced through introspection (now more scientifically known as metacognition) or guided conversation.
Specifically, the goal of NLP is to model how others think and behave, including those who are creative. What are the strategies a so-called “creative person” plays out in their heads? What is the structure of their experience, and what mental steps do they take before producing a creative outcome? Or, is it all spontaneous? And if so, how does one increase the chances of such a spontaneity occurring? These are the types of questions an NLP practitioner would ask.
The Disney Creative Strategy
The most popular NLP technique designed to enhance creativity is the “Disney Strategy,” (4 page PDF) first modeled by Robert Dilts based on his conversations with filmmaker Walt Disney.
- >”Dilts noticed that Disney had three separate approaches to his creative work and he alternated between these roles, which Dilts identified as Dreamer, Realist, and Critic. Each role has a distinct orientation in relation to the creative process: the dreamer is the place of free association, brainstorming and even fantasies; the realist is the place of action, of imagining putting the dreams into the physical world; and the critic is the place of testing the soundness of your idea’s, checking in on what will or won’t work.”
Dilts believes that we each have a part of us that can identify with these roles. However, some of us are more of one than another. What happens if we don’t find a balance?
- “A dreamer without a realist cannot turn ideas into tangible expressions. A critic and a dreamer without a realist just become stuck in a perpetual conflict. A dreamer and a realist might create things, but they might not be very usable ideas without a critic. The critic helps to evaluate and refine the products of creativity.”
So the main question is: throughout the creative process how can we develop each of these roles? The answer Dilts provides says that we should set aside a time and place for each of these mental attitudes:
1. First put yourself in the role of The Dreamer. Write down any and all ideas that come to mind. Make as many freely associated connections as possible, let your thoughts just flow without any limitation or worry on how to put these ideas into action.
2. Next put yourself in the role of The Realist. Now ask yourself, “How can I put these ideas into a reality? What resources (money/time/skills) do I need?” Write these down.
3. Then put yourself in the role of The Critic. Now it is time to try and find the flaws of your strategy. What don’t you like? What potential obstacles are there? What needs improvement? Write these down.
4. Now step outside your triangle of roles. Observe your reaction to each – are you being a good Dreamer, Realist, and Critic? How can you improve each?
5. Cycle through each role again. Using any insights from #4, cycle through the roles again, this time being an even better Dreamer, Realist, and Critic.
6. Take your ideas to action Do the above as many times as needed until you can begin putting your ideas to action. Even as you carry out your plan, keep these three elements in mind at all times.
How much time you spend in each session is up to you. I recommend at least 5-10 minutes of brainstorming, idea-jotting, and question-asking per role. When I first tried this strategy I used to even light different-scented candles; which became a self-conditioned stimuli (an anchor, for those familiar with NLP lingo) to help me get into each mindset. You can use other habits (or “rituals“) to help amplify your creative roles as you practice them more and more.
Another Way To Deconstruct Creativity
The other day I came across an article on the blog Litemind called, “Deconstructing Creativity: The 4 Roles You Need To Play To Be Fully Creative,” and although I don’t think the author Luciano Passuello intended it, his strategy is actually very similar to Walt Disney’s.
The 4 roles Luciano identifies are:
1. The Explorer (be curious and alert, seek out as many inputs as possible, and talk to a lot of different people).
2. The Artist (flex your idea muscles, play, use your imagination, and integrate different concepts).
3. The Judge (be real, develop critical thinking, and be aware of thinking traps/biases).
4. The Warrior (get into action, overcome resistance, be courageous, and find out how to market and sell your idea).
Passuello doesn’t mention NLP but, like in NLP, he creates a very thorough model of his own personal creative strategy.
Other possible models
1. Real world examples
Do you have a friend, family member, coworker, or acquaintance who you think makes a good Dreamer, Realist or Critic? Why not use that as a resource to improve your creative process? You’d probably be surprised how much you can learn by pretending to think as someone else. How does your physiology change? How do your thoughts change? How do your motivations change?
2. Fictitious characters
Same thing as above, but this time pay attention to the thoughts and behaviors of characters in movies, TV, books, or plays. Imagine yourself in those roles. How does your physiology change? How do your thoughts change? How do your motivations change?