Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Dopamine, Anticipation and the Future

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released by the "reward" system in the brain.  I quote mark reward because what dopamine actually does is stimulate you to take action due to the anticipation of a reward not the actual gratifying feeling you get when you have the reward in hand.

It's what causes yearning.

When you look at it this way, dopamine can kind of suck.  You wouldn't desire anything if you didn't have dopamine, which means you could never be disappointed when you don't get it.  Of course, you wouldn't get a lot of things at all either.

I've been struggling with the Law of Attraction and every Self Help books advice that you must fully experience and feel the thing you want for it to manifest into your life.  You must anticipate it coming, you must expect it coming.

Dopamine tells you, "Hey, do this and you'll get something in the future," but the future doesn't exist until it happens, aka until it's the present.  As Kelly McGonigal puts it, "Evolution doesn't give a damn about happiness itself, but will use the promise of happiness to keep us struggling to stay alive."

It's interesting when you contrast this info with what we know about ADHD.  According to medical research ADHD is a reduction of standard of dopamine and norepinephrine production.  Because you don't anticipate any reward in the future, you simply say "Meh, not interested."  As a true ADHD child I can attest to this my entire life.  The medical community also came up with a solution for this: feed them drugs to stimulate the production of dopamine and norepinephrine.  I will also vehemently attest to the absolute destruction of the mind this solution results in.

Let's jump to the more recent spiritual/woo-woo interpretation of ADHD and the Indigo Children. Most Indigos are ADHD and their lack of interest in most traditional subjects is simply due to an evolutionary jump in what is actually important in this world.  Turns out that if you put an Indigo on specific tasks they have relentless attention and can far outpace "traditional" minds.  I will also attest to this as fact, to me at least.

It really comes down to what it is you desire.  People with ADHD evidently desire different things so that when we present traditional subject matter, they just aren't interested.

You do have the ability to control the future, you control the future by living in the now.  You control the now by choosing what you desire.  You control what you desire by creating the future in your mind, now.

Friday, December 12, 2014

The Depression Epidemic

Maybe it's just me noticing it more as we focus on Suicide Prevention.  Some call this the Law of Attraction, I call it your Reticular Activating System (RAS).  I'm seeing a lot of posts on FB that appear to be cries for help in some way or another.  From bold, "Help me....for the love of God, help me!" to "All this positive affirmation stuff is crap, here's my science to prove it."

...And science becomes a religion once again.

Anyway, it's the Holidays and people get Holiday Depression.  Why is that?  Well the simple answer is they are living in the past or future.  They are thinking about how great things used to be and how they suck now.  Scientific fact: your brain actually changes the facts of the past to fit your current state.  This was demonstrated both by Shawn Achor and Norman Doidge.

Obligation

My theory is that people get depressed around the holidays because they feel the MUST do something or are supposed to feel a certain way and when they can't live up to that standard they get discouraged.

This is a lot like my theory on judgement.  The more judgmental you are the harder you are on yourself, the higher your standards are to adhere to and the more miserable you are in general.

So my solution is simple: replace the words want, need, have to get.  I want to do this, I get to do this, I have do to this, I get to do this, I need to do this, I get to do this.

This isn't as easy as it sounds.  You need to program yourself starting at the end of the day before you go to bed, focus on starting tomorrow with GET.  What do you get to do?  Wake up, take 2 to 3 minutes to focus on very simple little nice things.  Laying in the soft bed, warm and cozy, or snuggling with pets, or people.  Try to enjoy being alive for the first 2 minutes of the day.  Breath in and take notice of what you do have.  A roof over your head, a bed, clothes, health, a brain, etc, you have to start small with things you do have, make those your focus and then realize, you get to wake up you get to start another day.

Eventually, you get to change the fucking world.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Immediate Gratification: what is it?

Dr. McGonigal writes about "The Collapse of a Civilization" in The Willpower Instinct. She explains what happened to Easter Island natives when they sought immediate gratification over long term survival.  They cut down all the trees on the island and destroyed the ecosystem and this lead to their own deaths. The end result, a civilization exterminated itself.

This is odd.  Why have we evolved in such a fashion that we are able to destroy ourselves?  This is very different than any other species who are always looking to survive and nature is always presenting the best solution for said species.

She explains that our early primitive brain operates from the basis that we don't know where our next meal is coming from or where shelter is, etc.  Therefore immediate gratification is "what's best for us," to our primitive mind.

She also points out that we don't live in that world anymore.  You aren't going to starve if you skip a meal, but you're brain doesn't know that so it responds the same way it has for thousands of years. Fortunately humans developed this thing called foresight.  Also known as the Pre Frontal Cortex.

This rational area of our brain can put the kibosh on your "Lizard brain," aka your Limbic System, which is in charge of things like fight-or-flight and "OMG OMG OMG we're gonna die in the next 10 minutes."

At first, it looks as though our limbic system has a flawed design because nature designed us in such a fashion that we can harm ourselves.  However there are a couple of intricacies here that are beautiful.

1) Anytime anything disrupts the balance of nature, she corrects it  by over compensating the other way.  In this case a civilization went unchecked and broke the balance, to restore that balance nature extinguished them, thereby they can't do it again.

2) They became extinct precisely because they didn't evolve a larger PFC.  Had they used foresight and rational thought, they would have seen the errors in their ways and corrected before nature had to.  The survivors of our species are the ones who have evolved a larger PFC.

3) That doesn't mean we're out of the water yet.  That is Dr. McGonigal's  entire point, humans are still behaving like Easter Island residents, and the result will be the same if we don't check ourselves.



Sunday, October 26, 2014

Take your time...and shove it.

I myself have already admitted I never feel there is enough...I have't accomplished enough in an allotted time, always in a hurry, must to do more, etc.

I've already admitted I'm crazy by most standards, so now I'm really going to dive into the idea that Time Does Not Exist and why adopting this idea is freeing me from my own self inflicted turmoil and I hope it can do the same for you.

In the Sept 2014 issue of Discover, author Hillary Rosner wrote an article called Forever Young that talks about senescence, aka aging.  I love how ego is built right into science and scientists claim they are "impartial."  The article explains how science is having a tough time understanding aging because it's an assumption, not a fact.  Aging is "a priori" in science meaning it is a given fact and cannot be proven or disproven, therefore it is.  There were several theories to aging but they were just that because improvable. We all know that to assume makes an ass out of u and me.

Speaking on those theories:

"For years scientists have quibbled over which theory [of aging] proved the best.  Now a new branch of the science of aging has sprouted, from a part of the world that, oddly, was excluded before: nature." 

Many plants display negative senescence meaning they are actually getting stronger as time goes on.  The bristle cone pines in northern CA are 5000+ years old.  Science doesn't like this because it doesn't fit in the dogma it's created.  "There's dogma in the literature--which is more oriented toward the cell biology of aging--that wild animals don't actually senesce," says Daniel Nussey.  His point is that science as assumed senesce can be neither proven nor disproven, and now we are doing both through negative senesce.

Time is an illusion: I first received this idea when I was talking to a tree in BC, Canada (told you I was crazy).  Another fascinating topic is how we communicate w/o words but I will leave that for later.  I was simply looking at the tree, not old by any means, only maybe 6" in diameter.  I was looking at the bark and the many razor thin layers that make it up.  They shed, grow more, shed grow more...the old stuff falls to the ground and decomposes back into the earth where it becomes part of the nutrients that feed the tree, thereby becoming part of the thing it once was.

We always use the term "Nature" to describe everything on the planet that isn't us (that's funny too). Sometimes we use the term Mother Nature, and others refer to the entire planet with names like Gaia, Terra, or simply Mother Earth.

The tree, part of nature, sheds the bark and lands on the ground, part of nature, which sits there or  is picked up by an animal, both part of nature, and eventually decomposes back into the earth, part of nature, and becomes fuel for other plants, part of nature.  See the theme yet?  If it's all part of nature at all times, it always is. Now, one million years ago, one million years from now, it doesn't make a difference to nature.  To nature, time isn't there, it always was and always will be...hmm, just like God.

Here's the thing: we always use the term nature to describe everything that isn't us.  What if we are part of nature?

Shed your ego.

You'll have plenty of time to get everything you ever wanted done.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Who are you?

I can't stand the type of pompous, uber-egotistical writing that is in The New Yorker.  Like this article. However, I agree with Kathryn Schultz in her point.  The point being that self help is mostly filled with hacks and charlatans because to help the self, one must understand what the self is...otherwise what are you helping? And 99% of the "Life Coaches" out there don't have their shit together but feel that telling other people what to do makes them happy.

She concludes on the favorable side of self help because while there may be a "umptebajillion," ideas out there, at least they are putting out ideas as to what the self is.  Like most The New Yorker writers, her elitist arrogance seated in "higher order" rational thinking is also the reason she can't find the self.

The self is more than just your rational thought, masculine brain.  It includes our emotions, feelings, behaviors and reactions, which to this day have not been localized in the brain.  What this boils down to the separation between the brain and the mind.  A rationalist will kick and scream at the idea of a "mind" that is not in the physical brain.  Yet, science has had to alter course a little bit in the past few years because neurologists aren't able to explain psychological processes even though they can tell you in detail how the machine works.

Hence, a new branch of neurology, (with the backing of the scientific community) called Neuropsychology. 
  1. Neuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain as they relate to specific psychological processes and behaviors. It is seen as a clinical and experimental field of psychology that aims to study, assess, understand and treat behaviors directly related to brain functioning.
Like most "intelligent" people, only using the brain to solve everything is futile, as the answers you seek aren't answerable by the brain.  I could be 1000% wrong but Kathryn Schultz's article does not look like the writing of a happy person who loves life.

I once asked myself 100 questions in one sitting. 70% of them were pertaining to the same subject: "How do I feel more?"  While I finally found the answers I laugh at the irony of using the brain to understand feelings.  

If your in the camp that this type of cold, rational thought is all there is to "intelligence," and you don't walk around loving life and aren't consistently happy on a daily basis (which almost no one in this country is), I invite you try one thing.  If you want to know who you are, stop thinking!




Friday, October 17, 2014

Am

"I am here"

I is the ego

What are you without ego?

"Am here"

Here is everywhere

"Am"

You are everywhere and everything.

There is a reason este is the first verb you learn in Attic Greek and all of language in general, because it truly is the only thing there is.  Is is it.

Yes, it's totally new age cheesy crap and words don't do it justice.  Working with Satyen Raja a couple years back in a practice called Harmony Integration or Spiritual Technology, we asked a Zen Koan which allowed us a direct experience of the truth.  Meaning I can tell you exactly what the answer to the question is but it won't mean anything to you because you didn't experience the answer.

I asked the following: "What am I?"

Through a process called the Gnostic Intensive I cam to the answer of "I am here."  Which is really "when am I" but that was my answer.  It was the first time in my life I stopped my palsy.  I knew I'd stumbled upon a great truth that literally changed my physical being through a psychoactive process.

I lead a friend through the process and he concluded with "I am This."

....And now I see those answers are the same. All the reading I've been doing connects in the same idea, shed the ego and you will find peace and happiness.  You came to this planet with nothing and were happy, so riches are not the goal.  It is only after we develop the idea of the self we start to run into problems...this is why young children are so care free, there is no "self" to care about.

I picked up a little book called "Heal your Body" by Louise Hay.  It's pretty awesome.  She explains how the mental things we do cause physical ailments and man they are so right on.  Of course, I immediately set out to find all the things wrong with me and a theme quickly developed.

Here is a list of all the reoccurring ailments I have had since I can remember. See if you can spot a theme

  • Palsy: extreme control of anger, unwillingness to express feelings, an intense desire to control everything and everyone
  • Blackheads: small outbursts of anger
  • Coccyx: (My tailbone is broken w/o cause): Out of balance with yourself.  holding on.  Blame of self.  Sitting on old pain.
  • Poor circulation: the inability to express emotion
  • Earache: anger, not wanting to hear turmoil, parents fighting
  • Eczema: breath taking antagonism
  • Hemorrhoids: Fear of deadlines, Anger of the past, afraid to let go, feeling burdened
  • Kidney Problems: Criticism, disappointment, failure, shame
  • Liver: Seat of anger and primitive emotions
  • TMJ: Anger, a refusal to express feelings
  • Nail Biting: Frustration, eating away at the self
  • Nervousness: Not trusting the process of life
  • Sacrum: Loss of power.  Old stubborn anger.
  • Snoring: Stubborn refusal to let go of the old patterns
  • Sore Throat: Holding in angry words, the inability to express the self
  • Tinnitus: refusal to listen, not hearing the inner voice. Stubbornness
  • Tonsillitis: Fear. Repressed emotions.
I am my own worst critic. I judge myself most harshly, nothing I do is ever good enough. I feel the need to do everything and satisfy everyone.  It's actually not that I don't think others are capable, but that they aren't required to, only I am.  And when I can't do it, which is always because nothing is every good enough for me, I am angry, angry at myself.  I take these things in, I don't let them go, they seethe.  I makes me feel burdened and angry at everything, angry at the past. I never think I'm good enough so I don't let go, I need to do more, I have to be better and because I can never be enough, I'm fucking angry at existence.

As I mentioned before.  James Tywman put it this way: letting go of the ego means 1)Surrendering to a higher power, there is more out there than yourself and you are a part of it.  2)Trusting that you will receive the answers you need when they are needed. 3)Feeling grateful for the gifts you will be giving through trust and 4) sharing those gifts with the world through love.

"I am not good enough"
Who am I not good enough for?
"Me, everyone, anyone"

Who defines what good is?
"I do"

I is the ego, eliminate the ego.

"Am enough"






Monday, October 13, 2014

Phiolo.org is up and running

I've written over 50 pages of thoughts in the past 2 weeks.  I never realized how easy it would be for me to write a book until I just started typing this.  Whether it is a good book is an entirely different story.

I have attempted to take the best of those 50 pages and built it into Phiolo.org.  Phiolo is the new education system.  I say this because there are multiple facets that extend beyond a school.  There is the Career Services Divsion.  This is where students can go to find a job post high school, or where they will start their application process to the Universities of their choice.

One critical thing that's different about starting a university application at Phiolo....it starts in 9th grade.  I posted on the Phiolo blog about University of Texas new campaign talking about how their pumping out the greatest people in the country.  The major thing I took away from the campaign was that UT can indeed help those students become extremely successful by giving them the HOW.  But I saw nothing that supports that UT will supply the BE.

That is what we do at Phiolo. When you live your life with purpose, everything will fall into place.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Shed your Ego

My sister asked me the other day what I thought a specific Beatitude meant. She specifically asked me about the peacemakers but I will list them all for reference. 


Here is Richmond Lattimore's literal translation from the Greek, meaning he attempts to translate the word without implying any meaning.
  • Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven
  • Blessed are the gentle, because they shall inherit the earth
  • Blessed are they who sorrow, because they shall be comforted
  • Blessed are they who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because they shall be fed
  • Blessed are they who have pity, because they shall be pitied
  • Blessed are the pure in heart, because they shall see God
  • Blessed are the peacemakers, because they shall be called the sons of God
  • Blessed are they who are persecuted for their righteousness, because theirs is the the Kingdom of Heaven
At first you read these and think, "Basically I need to suffer my whole life to get into heaven," and a lot of people believe this, I know my aunts do and after going through 12 years of Catholic school, they essentially told us the same thing. But there is something more interesting behind this.  

First, there is no time table.  There is no "blessed are the poor because in 30 years they get to go to heaven."  Christ knew that only the present exists.  That is to say he understood the universal key to happiness and we don't have to suffer now to be happy later, if we are meek, poor, clean, etc, right now, we are in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Second, there is the "Poor in Spirit," bit, which always confused me.  I think Billy Graham actually got it right in his answer.  That is to say we must be humble.  One may also take this to mean we shouldn't have a big ego.

Lastly, ego, the answer and cause of all problems.

I'm reading a book called Emissaries of Light by James Twyman.   Light has many meanings, probably because light is everything, but I'm not going to get into that now.   Here's a brief idea of the concept: quantum mechanics teaches us that E=MC2 (yea that's supposed to be a squared). Meaning matter is proportional to energy, meaning they are really the same thing in 2 states, meaning we are beings of energy, meaning we are beings of light.

Twyman shows us that the "light bringers" are actually bringers of peace. Since my sister specifically asked about peace I figured here is the perfect answer.

When you understand you are light, you are at peace and you bring peace to all you meet.  All fear is based in the fact that we know we have separated from God. We created a "me" separate from everything else.  An ego.

Fear begets war.  War is simply when one does not agree with another and it is always based out of fear.  You know you have separated from God and you desperately want to reunite but you don't know how, the only thing you know is to defend that which you are, ego…even if it is very wrong….hence war.  War requires two ego's to both stake their claim.  I believe this is why Gandhi could not be defeated by the entire British empire. (David Hawkins calls it Power in his book Power vs Force).

There is no me, so there is no me to defend against you.  Therefore there is no war, only peace.

When you understand you are light and everything is light, you understand you are God and God is you, they are not separate.  2 important points here, you are (1) everything, therefore you are (2) God.  I understand this to mean Everything is God.  Some people call it Source, others Universe, other say God.  It's all the same to me now.   In Lattimore's translation of the New Testament he correctly translates Christ's words many times when Christ says "Son of Man." There are actually two complete wiki pages on this as people can't agree on what "Son of Man" means.  Christ uses it almost interchangeably with the "Son of God" aka, Christ.  No one has any problem with Christ calling himself the son of God yet this "Son of Man" is still disputed. 

Christ used them interchangeably because they are the same thing, he is the same thing, Son of Man and God because he is one with God, he is God, he is Everything...and you are everything.

When you understand you are one with God there is no fear, there is no war, there is only peace.

To be with God, truly, means one must shed the ego, for it is always the ego that puts the good and bad connotation on everything.  The sun burnt me, sun is bad.  The sun saved my life when I was getting frost bite.  The sun is energy, energy is neither good nor evil until the ego defines it as such. 

All 8 Beatitudes can be taken to mean that when you are without ego, you have found the Kingdom of Heaven.  
  • Poor in Spirit, humble, without ego
  • Sorrow, for you are not connected to God, seek to reunite and you'll be happy, aka, shed your ego
  • Hunger and thirst to be with all that Is and therefore is right, aka God, shed your ego
  • Extend Pity to everything, you are everything extend pity to you, shed your ego
  • Clean of heart, can't get much cleaner than shedding your ego
  • Peacemakers....shed your ego
  • If you are persecuted for being with God, you are in the Kingdom of Heaven, shed your ego (notice Christ never actually said you had to suffer, you are simply being persecuted)
Now, shed your ego.  How do we do this?  Haha, you have the rest of your life to figure it out, I can tell you that for me it started with abstaining from judgement.  The day you can stop judging others for what they have done is the day you will begin to be a happier person.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

How to create successful students

So Domenic, how did you do it?  How did you create such successful students?

Why do you ask how I did it?
Because I want to know the secret.

Why do you want to know?
Because I can then share it with others and they can have the same success.  You aren't greedy Mr. Weber, are you?

Well if I told you it wouldn't be much of a secret anymore would it! Let me ask you this, what do you think the secret it?
I don't know.

Well try.
You simply picked the best and the brightest, it was staged.

Say I did that.  What does the research show about the success of the best and the brightest?
Actually it says they pretty much end up average.

So try again, what do you think I did?
Did you start with a different understanding of how we learn?

Ah, you're closer
Is the secret in discipline and behavioral theory?

Now we're getting somewhere.  Keep going?
You focused on earning their respect so they paid attention, then they learned better.

No no, you're getting colder.
UGGH! I GIVE UP.

Ok, I'll tell you the answer.  I asked a simple question; what's the ONE thing I can do that will forever change a students ability to learn?
That's it?  What do you mean, you just asked a question?

Yep!
Well what's the answer to the question?

What question?
What's the ONE thing?

Well, what do you think it is?
I don't know...

Is it rote memorization of facts, memorizing the periodic table, speed reading, teaching the law of averages on a standardized test?
No, it couldn't be any of those things.

Ok, great, so what could it be?
Perhaps teaching students to write or read.  Maybe it's painting.  Teaching them right from wrong?

Yes.  You just did it, the ONE thing.
WHAT!?!

I told you the answer, I asked a simple question!

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Balance is a lie

Core Value: There is no balance

"A balanced life is a lie." ~ Gary Keller

Yep, it's true.  Would you rather have kids committed to success or evenly distribute their time to multiple endeavors, creative or cookie cutter, insightful or unaware, leading or listening to others, strategic or obedient.  If you chose the former in all the the cases, which I hope you did, then you chose someone who isn't going to be balanced in all aspects of life or education.

I'm pretty much going to quote Gary Keller's book, The ONE Thing, for the rest of this idea; "Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus."  We all agree on the greats in anything, great painters are great painters, they aren't great plumbers or computer programmers.  What about great athletes?  Look at all the scandals going on between 2010 and 2014.  Athlete after athlete is under the microscope for what they have done.  Are the things they have done wrong, absolutely.  They point being we were so focused on creating ridiculously awesome athlete we forgot they should probably learn some morals.

If you are going to build an extraordinary life; a life of passion, giving, caring, success and love, it won't be a balanced life. Furthermore, if you want kids to do math, give them a reason to do it.  If they are interested in drawing and design, they will learn the necessary math to do so.  They don't need to know how to know the FOIL method. If they want to get into politics to change the world, they will need to learn how to read and ask questions and type and spell, they don't need to know what the inner wall of a cell is called.

The point here is that through passion we actually will balance ourselves, exactly as much as we need in order to survive.  Funny thing is, you don't need anyone to tell you how much that is, your brain just knows.

Friday, September 26, 2014

The Law of Attraction

A very heated subject that rationalists loath and the New Age love.  I believe in the Law of Attraction, the main issue is the "woo woo" people espousing their theories about how if you love the universe and and only dwell on the positive then everything will be ok and work out for you and you will create the exact world you want.

I don't hear rich successful people talk like this.  Which is why you have the rationalists and science saying, "This is all bullshit, you sir, are a moron."  The rationalists believe their ideas are based on cold hard facts.

Here's a fact, focus on what you want, work your ass off and you'll get what you want.  Set your intention, make your goals, then pay attention.  It's called your Reticular Activating System (RAS) if you want to get scientific about it.  Simply put, when you buy a new car, you immediately start seeing that car everywhere.  It's not that more cars magically appeared, this is what science hates about the idea of the Law of Attraction.  It's that you are paying attention, which science loves to say.

Working your ass off isn't enough if you don't know what your working for.  People spend their whole lives working their ass off and they are completely miserable.  Others wake up everyday, excited to get started, work their ass off and love their life.  What's the difference?  One of them has an intention.

I agree with the New Age, they are coming from a place of love.  That doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want all the time.  That doesn't mean things will be easy.  That doesn't mean you don't have to get your hands dirty, and finally, it doesn't mean you won't have to work at it.  "Turning Pro isn't easy," says Steven Pressfield.

There is something mystical about how everything can fall into place for some people.  Is it luck, is it God, or were they simply paying attention?

My super power is putting it all together.  People have always labeled my as "super smart" or "intelligent" simply because I'm like a sponge when it comes to knowledge, I soak up a lot.  That's not what's special though.  What's special is my ability to pay attention to the current situation, go back into my database (aka brain), and pull some shit out from 5 years ago that is seemingly unrelated until I place it next to the current topic.  I told you we are non linear thinkers but we only manifest things in a linear fashion.  My super power is I will solve any problem put in front of me if I so choose to.  Everyone can do it, it simply takes practice.

The Law of Attraction is real, you just have to have the correct prospective.  Mr. Eker believes in the Law of Attraction and he's rich, so let's see how he puts it.  Thoughts beget Feelings beget Action, which equal Results.  T+F+A=R.  He's also not dumb enough to espouse to others he believes in mystical woo woo because people with think he's crazy.

Everything in the universe is created twice, once in the mind and again physically.  This is not a point I'm going to argue.  I like Z. M Slovinski's interpretation best.  You want a soda, you think of the idea of drinking a soda, it will make you feel good, you are motivated to take action, the result is you have a soda. What about a building? An architect must dream up what it looks like in his mind, put it on paper, and only then is it actually built.  You attract the soda into your hand, sure you went and got it, but it's simply relative.  The architect is so focused on creating his building he's super excited and it's all he thinks about.  Is it any wonder he will notice when he meets an engineer who can build it, or runs into someone who can fund it?  No, he was paying attention.  Btw, if you click on that ZM link, the first video I currently see is Tony Robbins, another rich dude who never mentions the words Law of Attraction.

Napoleon Hill says the same thing; you must have a burning desire for that which you want.  His famous book is call THINK and Grow Rich, not Do a Bunch of Shit and Grow Rich.  See the difference, the latter is always asking how, the former is focusing on creating and being.  Sound familiar yet?

Seth Godin says it again when he says, "Dreamers don’t have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams."

I have the thought of building a new education system,  this thought makes me feel very excited at the idea of helping hundreds of thousands of people and truly helping our planet.  My first action is simply writing it all down.  My next is to formulate a full business proposal with concrete goals.  I'm excited to see where these actions take me.


Let's create 1 percenters

Core Value: Love is everything, the more we love the happier we become

Creating 1%ers, I love this idea; it gets people so fired up.  My sister lost her shit when I told her I wanted to create a school of 1%ers.  She actually became blind with rage, which is exactly what I wanted, it got her attention.

If the 1% hold 99% of the wealth, they can easily help pay for the at least 50% of everything.  That is to say, if they are taught the joy of giving from a very early young age, they will give back and they will have ample money to help those who got them there, viz. Phiolo.

The first thing my sister said is, "They will never help you, they are too greedy, your entire system doesn't make sense."  I smiled and simply replied, "I'm creating 1%ers, not starting with them."  If I can take a kid living on the streets with a family income under $20k/year and give him a reason to live and love life.  When he becomes successful he will not forget who helped him and he will want everyone to succeed just as he did.

This system is built out of Love, it can not fail.

Furthermore, the more kids we turn into 1%ers, eventually the 1% will be 2%.  2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 10.  Within a generation I see us at least back to 80/20.  All of a sudden we have distributed the wealth!  Whoops, did I do that? This system will eradicate the 1%ers by creating 1%ers.

Money is a great thing

Core Value: Money is an important tools that helps you achieve success

I am a huge fan of Capitalism in it's native form.  Before you can say a word of criticism I suggest reading the original author on Capitalism, Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations, then read Marx's Communist Manifesto.  I actually love Marx's system as well.  The problem with it is Marx believed we ultimately were all good people and essentially you needed a Utopian society to make Communism work.  That is to say you needed to simply be happy being a Doctor and after spending 30+ years in school you were equally rewarded as the custodian mopping the floor who only received 8 years at best.

People feel the need to be rewarded for their actions in proportion to the effort they put in.  Granted this is different for everyone which has lead to our Entitlement Generation, but that is another topic.

Capitalism is a beautiful system designed to encourage growth and, by definition, it must always act in accordance what is best for the system.  To do harm to the system is, by definition, not being Capitalist. It is a self correcting system.  Furthermore Smith has one sentence in his book that the world has pondered ever since written; Capitalism is guided by The Invisible Hand.  Also, it's important to understand Smith didn't invent Capitalism, he very clearly states all he is doing is writing down what he sees.  Capitalism evolved to serve society.

People are misinformed on what Capitalism means.  Burning Man is called the "Anti-Capitalist" event because you give everything away.  Again, in the words of St Francis, "To give, is to receive."  Furthermore, how was all that stuff acquired to give away?  Capitalism has a huge part in it.

Money is not the root of all evil.  That is something poor people say.  Harv Eker has written several books on the subject and I encourage everyone to read Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. In fact, many of my ideas on education have come from Mr. Eker and his Peak Potential courses.  Mr. Eker and I actually share almost the exact same vision, except I want to focus on our youth.  He focused on adults who are now motivated to learn.  Those are eager learners that are easy to teach, helping the kids find motivation is what I'm concerned with.

Money is not the root of all evil, but it doesn't make you happy either.  This was already covered in To Serve Others and Adam Leipzig's Ted Talk.  Money is a tool you use.  We need money to make things happen.  Capitalism rewards systems that work by generating money, which can in turn further improve the system.

The current education system is fundamentally flawed in many ways.  Intent has been covered, now let's cover fiscal policy.  Schools get funding from basically 1 source, the government.  Colleges do have alumni that give back and that is a great thing, but that makes up very little of the funding. most is derived from Government funding.  Tuition is also another source, but that is just an alumni who hasn't graduated yet.  I've said this repeatedly, Time is an illusion, take away time and what is the difference between a student and alumni?  Furthermore, tuition is a small amount comparing to government funding.  This is why private schools cost so much more, they don't get government funding.

In Capitalism, if something isn't working, it's not rewarded and it dies away.  What if we created an education system that rewards itself.  In our current school system there is no motivation for improvement.  Kids simply get pushed through the system because there is no penalty for not pushing them through the system.  The school is rewarded with more money regardless of student performance.  This breeds mediocrity.  There are standards and state tests, but once again, what is their intent?  The intent is to teach the how, not the be.  

This even happens in college; students pay a tuition and they are supposed to be motivated by this, however if they don't succeed, the school doesn't care, it just takes their money and keeps going. Professors are notorious for not caring, they care about their craft, not educating others, it is for this reason they make such terrible teachers.  We always laughed, when I was getting my Masters in Education almost every professor told us they were absolutely terrified to teach us because they knew our success depended on them and we had no hesitation in telling them they sucked at their job.  Most students won't do this because they aren't students of education.

I know there are a ton of teachers out there that deeply care for their students, but they are plugged into a flawed system and trying to fix it from the inside out.  As I stated before, it can't be fixed.  With no motivation to improve, schools simply drudge along.  If the schools success depends on the success of the students, then we are getting somewhere.  Then we have a Capitalistic education system.

We create students who have their 10,000 hours in by the time they are 12.  Then aren't fully balanced across all subjects, but are you?  They love what they are doing and they love sharing their gift.  These are the types of people who will be heavily recruited and they may not even be out of high school.  Is there any doubt they will be super successful? They will be taught from a young age that there is nothing wrong with money and giving their art to others; their gift and their money results in their happiness.  The new education system is funded by the students, which eventually become alumni. The system will only succeed if the students succeed.

Furthermore, with a growing population of alumni, more and more money will come back into the system allowing it to further grow and expand itself.  A perfect Capitalist system.


Every Child Left Behind

Core Values: Love is everything, the more we love the happier we become. Money is an important tools that helps you achieve success

Since the foundation of the current system is broken, putting a band aid on it doesn't help.  We can not "fix" this system.  I want to believe No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an attempt to fix the broken, but I honestly think it was specifically designed to make our kids even dumber and shove HOW questions down their throats to create an even more pacified and unmotivated workforce.

When I was in post Grad at Oregon we had to take a class on school law.  The Constitution states that all education funding and direction is at the discretion of the state.  The Fed has nothing to do with it.  To summarize, NCLB is  Federal Law stating every child will meet a minimum score or else the school is "marked for improvement".  If marked for improvement the school then gets a small amount of Federal funding, but not until that point.

If you are marked for improvement too many years, guess who steps in, the Fed.  Now the Fed get's to start directing education and what will they do? They will essentialy build robots out of our youth.

Because schools aren't given money to implement NCLB and funding is always short, what are the first programs to get cut?  The ones that NCLB doesn't test, art, music, shop, etc.

It get's worse.  Essentially NCLB says that each state must show progress year after year.  If you are a state like Iowa or Wisconsin that started this system with really high test scores you now have the bar set very high and you still need to exceed it every year.  That sounds awesome except when you fail to exceed all of a sudden you have the most successful schools in the country "Marked for improvement." Whereas if you a a state like Tennessee, where the teaching of Intelligent Design is encouraged, and you have the lowest score starting out, the bar is very low and easy to eek by.  The result being the brightest schools are being punished and suppressed until the worst catch up.

It's not No Child Left Behind, it's pushing down the brightest.  Furthermore, if you are one of these top or even middle states, you are now motivated to barely, just by the least possible margin, raise your bar because you are ultimately penalized for raising it too much to fast.  There is a natural learning curve where we gain vast amounts of info very quickly on a new subject and as time goes on we pick get into the minute details.

NCLB wants to take the natural learning curve and turn it into a straight line.  This is not possible and I think the crafters of this bill, headed by President George W. Bush, knew this.

Most, if not all, teachers hated this entire idea because they saw the flaws from the beginning, but it was pushed through, then 9/11 happened and everyone stopped paying attention to education.

There have been mixed results from NCLB with math test scores increasing slightly.  Meanwhile kids in China can do calculus by 5th grade.  My point being, the system is flawed.  It's using inadequate standardized tests to measure content and curriculum that is designed to keep kids unmotivated and even suppressed.  This truly is Every Child Left Behind.

This is why The New Education System, right now I'm calling it Phiolo, which is a greek play on words of philos, love and olo, all, does not want government money and will not be subject to any government regulations or laws. We will not be suppressed, we will thrive as our system is built out of love.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

The New Education System

There is a lot to do and, right now, only me to do it.  Here's what I'm starting with. Always non linear


  • Pareto
  • Love
  • Duty
  • Profit
  • 99 to1
  • Giving Back
  • Success
  • Dynamic Grading
  • Foundation
  • Imbalanced
  • Remembering
  • Tim Ferris
  • John Carter
  • Harv
  • Devlyn
  • Drunvalo
  • Psychic Children
  • Recruitment: Students
  • Recruitment: Teachers
  • Board of Directors
  • Foundation
  • Marketing / Branding
  • Grants
  • Loans
  • Time as an illusion
  • The primitive nature of written language
  • Malcom Gladwell and 10,000 hours
  • The Brain that Changes Itself
  • Systems
All these things are related and fortunately for me, my super power is linking things together, so let's get started!

The foundation for our current education system is flawed.  What is the purpose of education... ultimately? It's the same as the purpose of life, to create, give and love.  Education is to aid you in these purposes. Be happy now.  Logan is right on track in this video.  Our schools teach how to do, they need to teach how to be.  Since they are focused on doing, the question is always "What do you want to do when you grow up?" And the question should be "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answer is always happy.  It's funny how many people identify themselves by their employment...in other words if you take away their job, what are they?  Well, they are still something but they don't know what that thing is. This identity crisis is caused by our education system.  It's fundamentally flawed.

It is a fact that government needs citizens to be productive to carry civilization along. For this reason government has been focused on creating people that do for the betterment of society and it's time to focus on creating people that are.  The basic verb of all western language is BE.

We ask how too much.  We've been programed from our earliest years to always ask how.  How do you get across the road, how to you multiply numbers?  Without a motivation these questions are pointless.  I used to teach Physics to high school kids and the question was always the same: "Um, why do I need to know this?" Why do you want across the road?  Why do I need to multiply numbers?  For what purpose do I need these things.  In fact, that's it, our current education system is either without purpose or has the wrong one.

"Kids will do things they are stoked on."  We fundamentally know this and it's where the idea of learning a span of all these different subjects stems from.  Exposure to multiple disciplines allows us to discover what we like and don't like.  What we have a natural affinity towards.  By the way, where does this "natural" affinity come from? Cosmic Contract, more on this later.  Doing things we don't like to do is how we grow.  Working out 6x/week isn't always what I want to do, but in long run I'm happier for being in great shape, my mind works better and my wife doesn't think I'm a fat slob... The point is I benefit from it even if I don't want to do it everyday....however eventually you get to the point where you only pay attention to the benefits, then I actually get excited about the idea of working out. I get stoked on it!  Some people love it so much all they want to do is work out and share what they know to others. They discovered what they love and give it to others and guess what, they are happy.

It's a fine line; we want to expose kids to multiple subjects so they may discover, (as I no longer believe we discover anything and we are actually just remembering it, see Plato for details, I will only use the word 'remember' henceforth, so if you read the word 'remember' and don't understand, just use 'discover,) what they love, and a lot of the time we need to push them into subjects they don't like because it will help them grow... after all we always know what's best for our kids don't we.  Oddly, people go their whole lives and never remember what they love or why they are here, so whatever we're doing isn't working.  This is why we keep pushing multiple subjects all the way through high school. We believe they need this "well balanced" education so they may discover what they love. Then, magically, after graduation they are supposed to know what they love and get specific in college and hyper specific in post grad. 

We need a remembering phase to start our education and this can easily happen before a child even gets to first grade.  It is as simple as asking the parents, "what does he/she like to do all day?" Sing, dance, write, paint, draw, build, count?  Then once discovered, have the kids do that!  They will realize on their own they need to read to get better at something, so they will want to learn to read.  They need to do math and geometry to paint better, or draw and architect buildings. They need to learn math and history to understand economics and become better traders.  They need logical skills to write better computer programs.  

In the words of Steven Pressfield, "Fuck the marshmellows"

We tell kids they need to be balanced for the first 20 years of their lives and then tell them once they are balanced they need to get imbalanced.  The universe is so beautiful because of it's diversity and how everything fits together.  The Universe is always in perfect balance with each of us being completely different.  If we were all balanced we'd all be the same person...yet we are not, so why keep trying to balance.  It's simple chaos theory, they is perfect order from all of us being different.  The balance is created from imbalance.  Even Tim Ferris who says it's good to be a jack of all trades wants to be completely imbalanced...he wants to become the greatest learner in the world, he's specializing in something, he's not balanced.  To my Johnnie friends, our school was imbalanced.  I once jokingly said to a tutor, Peter Pessic, at St John's we don't learn HOW to do anything, and he simply replied, "But with St John's you now can learn how to do anything."  We were imbalanced, we focused on learning how to learn, we weren't carpenters, engineers or programmers.

Malcom Gladwell wrote about the 10,000 hour rule.  This is the time it takes to get good at anything.  10,000 hours is only 3.5 years at 8 hours a day.  Imagine what we could do with this planet if kids were pro's before they turned 10.  Computer programmers developing entire new languages, traders pulling $1,000,000.00 by their 18th birthday, artists selling their works for $100k a pop, then donating the money to charity if they want.  If they choose to go to college, doctors and researchers curing disease. Solving world hunger, creating peace on Earth. the possibilities are endless.  This was the true purpose of education but it got lost somewhere.

Some of the most successful people on the planet don't graduate college.  

It is my mission to design a new education system.  One that allows kids to remember who they are and what they love and to be happy at all times.  By the time they leave high school they will either have 6 figure incomes, move on to study in college, or go off into the woods and live as a hermit for the rest of their lives...if that's what they want.  The point is they will be happy.  Because they are happy they will want others to be happy.  This is the foundation of the new education system. It is not flawed for it is based on love.

It starts with defining core values:
  • Be happy now
  • Love is everything, the more we love the happier we become
  • For it is in giving... that we receive (Prayer of St Francis)
  • There is no balance, do what you love, love what you do
  • Money is an important tools that helps you achieve success

I

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The purpose, the plan

We're at a point in human history where more and more people are becoming conscious of each other and the planet.  Yes, I'm speaking from the privileged 1st world viewpoint that I am a part of, which is exactly why I can say it.  We know we have ample and we know others are in need.  For the first time in history many of us can actually do something about it.

The 99%

This all stems from what many know as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 rule.  To summarize Pareto measured that 80% of the fruit from his pea pods came from only 20% of the crops.  You can then extrapolate out this ratio to 90/10 95/5 and 99/1...of course.

American citizens were in an uproar during the Great Recession about the 1%ers.  Whilst at the same time we were part of the 5% that controls all the money on the planet. If you are in the $20k/year bracket you're in the lowest in the US, and the highest in most 3rd world countries.

I'm not hear to argue about these numbers, I'm appreciating that many others see my view point. Even as part of the 99% in the USA, we know we have the knowledge, intelligence and money to help the rest of the world.

What I also find odd is how many always want to be a victim.  It's never their fault they aren't part of the 1%; they were born poor, they never had a chance to get an education, they choose [insert any excuse here].  Victimhood will kill you.  Look back in history at just about anyone successful, they were not born that way, they chose to be that way, and they were never a victim of anything because they chose not to be.  If you are smart enough to label ALL the reasons you can't, then you have identified all the things that needed fixing.  Great, get to it!

Rather than complain about being in the 99% and being a victim of the 1%, let's become 1%ers.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Open your Heart

Drunvelo says you need to open your heart for anything to work.  I couldn't agree more...how the how do I do that.

Open your heart
Open your heart
Open your heart.....

Today we went on a hike with a friend who is celebrating her birthday.  It wasn't extravagant and it didn't take a lot of planning.  She was so happy.  Her smile made me feel so good.  It's that easy to open your heart.

Friday, September 12, 2014

To Serve Others

It's strange, to say the least, what has happened to me.  I continue on this path and quietly ask myself in the back of my head, "Did you actually go crazy?"  By many's standards, I have.  But I have entered a new realm, I call this the realm of the heart because for the first time I'm thinking without words but with feeling.

Thinking with feeling....

I ask myself questions all the time, by now you think I'd know the answers are always nonlinear. I was given my purpose and then I asked, "Ok, where do I start." Shortly after the answer came.  Drunvalo entered my life.  Everything he says resonates with me.  The Egyptians sought the eighth chakra, the 4th dimension, the next life, "The primary experience they sought was to find this doorway and enter the higher worlds...this becomes apparent to almost everyone who reaches for these higher levels: There is only one thing to do when you return to Earth -- serve all life."

So yea, I did this.  Mahara Brenna took me through what she calls the rebirthing experience.  Yea, it's woo-woo to most, but wow.  She doesn't even know me and in 2+ hours she changed my life forever. Others who have gone through this experienced pain, agony, crying, wailing, probably even gnashing of teeth.  It sounded horrible.  Me, I was in pure ecstasy the entire time.  I had tears but I was laughing so hard they were tears of joy.  During this time I did exactly what Drunvalo talks about, leaving my body, going off into space, creating everything I wanted to, time not existing, yea yea all of that.  When I got back I knew things had changed, but I didn't know how.

The next day whilst plotting out my intensions it came to me.  I was specifying the intension of removing all monetary debt to be free to do as I choose.  They said, "No, that isn't it, you know better." And I was like, "But I have to do this stuff first to get to the hard one."  And They were like, "No, this is it, this is the reason you are here."  I explicitly wrote out my new intention, the reason I was put here, my Cosmic Contract.

What is it? Simple, to serve all life.
How am I going to do that?  Oh, that is a completely different question and the reason this blog exists. Well, technically the reason this blog exists is to simply lay out my thoughts.  No, I'm not one of those tools who is going to change the world by writing down words, this is simply a Web Log aka Blog.

I'm always doing everything backwards.  Finding the answer, then getting to the questions...non linear. After I remembered what I came to do, I found this Ted Talk from Adam Leipzig.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVsXO9brK7M




Thursday, September 11, 2014

Why a blog?

Pretty simple, to keep track of these thoughts and if they make sense when I or other's go back and read them.

Nonlinear: that is how brains work.  This will look like a T.S. Elliot poem.

Core Values: I've been tasked with creating the core values for Phiolo.  With these core values I will crystalize my desires.  With crystalized desires I will be able to focus my intention on what I want. With focused attention on what I want, it will show up, they always does.

For the last several weeks I've been pondering a bit of a conundrum.  We live in a world of every present shifting realities.  Now....is different than now....is different than now....etc.  Living in the present is the only way to be happy and avoid suffering.  Thinking on the past and future only creates worry, angst or desperation for reclamation.

Which reminds me, time is an illusion; be patient.

How do I reconcile this fact about the present with trading.  Many people always say, "Just trade the chart in front of you."  I have to reply, bullshit.  That is what most people  do.  "The market is going up, buy buy buy...oh shit it turned around on me."  Happens everyday, multiple times per day.  So, I must dwell on what will happen, aka the future.  Now I'm thinking about the future, now I'm thinking about my house not sold, the bills I need to pay, now I'm not happy.

I started studying sacred geometry, not sure when They told me to look into it but it's in my lap now.  I went to a local trader meeting the other day and one of the guys gave me a book on Fib Analysis by Carolyn Boroden.  I have to admit that I can't stand her in the chatroom but I knew she was most likely onto something.

After reading the book for 2 days now (about 1/2 way through) it dawned on me while on a walk with Rory.  If you find the proper coincidences through fib work, eventually the chart lines up with the work. When it get's there, take action in the present.  I can simply do a bit of Fib work, in the present....which is fun, and then set an alarm.  When the chart gets there, in the present, I can take action.  Always in the present!

I asked myself this question about 3 weeks ago at Wizard Training and I already have the answer.  This asking thing is getting faster.  Abraham calls it the Art of Allowing...set it and forget it.

Core Value: Patience
Core Value: Truth only exists right Now
Core Value: We all have the ability to love and help others.  This is the only thing that matters, this is the only way we will evolve.