Riding the Thought Cycle

A bit late this time. Well, I had a big weekend. Carmine gave an introduction to NLP, and I was at the training all weekend. This one was really different for me. I made a lot of changes, of course, but there was something more. I got to teach.

Days ago, when I used to think to myself, I would go in loops. I would revisit the same thought time and time again, make it better, or perhaps use the exact same words and pictures. That was comfortable for me. It got me this far.

My life is a little strange compared to most others. You see, I do what I want to do. At least, I have my moments. A couple months ago, I hopped on a plane to Atlanta for a training in Ericksonian Hypnosis and NLP. I just wanted to see what it was about, and I happened to have a little extra money, so I went for it.

Carmine impressed me. I met Lori that weekend. When I got back, my life as a reading tutor in a highly-structured education program was just not what I wanted to do anymore. Within a month I'd "untangled" myself from everything I knew, left school, and moved to Atlanta.

I have always been in the business of building lives. First as a writer, then a teacher, and now, as a practitioner of NLP. Some of these lives are imaginary, some are to be lived.

I once thought to myself about the far future, to a hypothetical time when the human race had truly learned everything there was to learn.

The thought strikes me as more than a little scary, actually. I take comfort that Godel proved we'd never know it all. The argument goes something like:

"Here is the set of all facts."
"Is that a fact?"
"Yep."
"Better add it to the set of all facts."
"Okay. HERE is the set of all facts."
"Is THAT a fact?"

And so on. That's one model, and I was playing with another. My question was, if human beings really did know everything, what would happen to the science fiction writers?

I thought about people having nothing to learn, and wondered what might be done about them. They must surely be awfully bored. Or perhaps they'd simply play, frolic, and enjoy their lives, as they'd have nothing to contribute to the rest of the world. Everything would have been done before.

I asked myself - what would happen if the science fiction writers took some of these bored souls and used them for characters in a culture?

NLP gives us the tools to change beliefs, habits, ways of interacting with others. Science fiction writers design these things when they create alien, alternate, or fantastic cultures. Why not put two and two together and make their fiction a reality?

While I was thinking about the ways in which future people might be entertained by hopping from one reality to another, I realized that a lot of the idea is already in place today. Forget virtual reality. Nations, cultures, and subcultures have existed since the dawn of man.

Every once in a while, someone comes along and designs a new way of life for a group of people. It might be a corporation, a commune, or a cult. Look at the Army. If that's not a different culture, what is?

I've also noticed something else. There are many people alive today, from children to the oldest adults, who just aren't interested in learning. They seem to settle in to a day-to-day reality, and never come out. It's almost as if they're living in that future world where everything's already figured out.

Maybe those of us who have stepped out of the box, who have realized that we can play with "reality", learn more, do more, whatever - maybe we can create something better for the others.

Others, eh? I used to call them mall people. Ever been to a mall? Everyone walks around in a trance. I say, why not give them a trance that helps us really thrive as a race? To connect with each other? To create more, learn more, teach more, and communicate more?

People are not meant to be boring! Each of us contains billions of cells, molecules, and atoms, configured into an intricate, self- contained, self-repairing cybernetic supercomputer.

We've spread across the world, gathered experience, formulated ideas, and now we're linking, one by one, into the huge hive mind of the internet, where almost any information or teacher we could ever use is instantly within our reach. We don't have to re-invent the wheel anymore. We don't have to struggle to learn how to tie a tie or fly an airplane.

The information is out there. It flows through the phone lines, through TV broadcasts and coaxial cable. It's sent over radio, it's stored on magnetic and optical media, it's written down. It's communicated in real time from person to person with our every word, thought, and action.

Someone once said that the Buddha nature is in everything. God is in the details. Everything is linked to everything else to the point that it's all one. And every atom, every leaf, every human being is a part of it.

We can each spend forever answering the question "Who am I?" The answer is not just a name. There's always more to express about ourselves.

And yet there are people out there who have the audacity to pretend that they are nobodies. I say take these little nobodies, pin 'em down, and hack the friggin buddha right out of them until they shine.

That's how my mind works. It goes in circles, linking every new thought to the ones before, building on one another, constantly improving, constantly giving me new ways to look at the world.

Then it stopped.

I looked out at the small group of students at the training this weekend. I saw faces waiting patiently for me to begin. I noticed the way each of them was breathing. How they held themselves. I was suddenly more aware of the world than I'd ever been before.

Inside me, everything was blank. Don't get me wrong. I was perfectly comfortable. I just hadn't expected the world to be so different.

I've taught before. I've been in front of plenty of rooms. I've given speeches, played with improv, even sung on stage. Somehow everything was different this time around.

I'd hit uptime - a state of acting on feedback from the outside world without conscious pre-processing. I opened my mouth, and began talking.

I don't know how well I did. I know I'll get better. I know it's on tape, so I'll eventually get to see myself. As it stands, I have very little conscious recollection of what it was like. On the other hand, I couldn't tell you what else is in this essay right now. I won't know until I read it.

You see, writing this is a little like being up on the stage. At least, I make it so. I may edit it later, but for now? Wild mind. I just leave my first thoughts here, as if some audience was actually watching the words appear on my monitor, and I had to give them a show. It adds a little excitement that way. It keeps my fingers moving.

It makes me wonder.

What if you, dear reader, were suddenly yanked out of your life for a moment, and you found yourself on a platform. Beneath you are all the people of the world - billions of faces looking up at you, silently, waiting for you to speak?

What would you tell us, if you had the chance? What could you share? How good does it feel that you can contribute something to these people's lives? And what prevents you from taking that feeling right out into your daily life?